7/29/15 (Part Three): Uncle Herschell’s Dirty Movies

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1960's films, adults only, auteur theory, bachelor party, bad films, Blood Feast, Bonnie Clark, casual sex, cheating fiances, cinema, Dee Howard, Ed Wood, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Forman Shane, go-go dancers, Godfather of Gore, grindhouse, Herschell Gordon Lewis, houseboat, infidelity, James Brand, Jeanette Mills, lingerie salesman, lost films, Mark Hansen, Movies, non-professional actors, pseudonyms, set in 1960s, sexploitation films, Sharon Matt, soft-core, strippers, Suede Barstow, Swingers, terrible films, the 1960s, The Ecstacies of Women, The Wizard of Gore, Two Thousand Maniacs!, Victoria Bond, Vincene Wallace, Walter Camp, William Allen Castleman, William Vickers, writer-director-cinematographer, X-rated films

With some directors, you never know what you’re going to get from one production to the next: they might try out a few new techniques, opt to shoot in a completely different format, attempt a genre they’ve never tried before, move on from “popcorn movies” to “prestige films”…with some filmmakers, it’s all about shaking it up, constantly moving and evolving in order to prevent falling into a rut. The progression from the first film to the thirteenth? The difference between fish with legs and early Homo Sapiens. And then, of course, there’s Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Across a career that’s spanned over five decades, Lewis (the original “Godfather of Gore”) has been responsible for some of the most amateurish, inept and flat-out mind-boggling films to ever screen in actual theaters (grindhouses count, folks). Touching on everything from “nudie-cutie” movies and soft-core sexploitation flicks to outrageously splatterific horror films and impossibly wrong-headed treatises on social mores, Lewis has jumped genres with reckless abandon, even if he’s still most famous for his gore epics like Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). Indeed, the only constant in his impressively broad career has been the excruciatingly bad quality of his films.

You see, for all of his passion, drive, inherent chutzpah and genuine innovations (in almost every way, shape and form, the world had never seen anything like Blood Feast, especially in the dawning of the ’60s), ol’ Herschell is a truly terrible filmmaker. To a one, his films are characterized by non-professional actors doing their best to maintain character, poverty-row sets, an inability to do anything with the camera but set it in one place and hit “record,” some of the worst sound recording in cinematic history, the appearance of lights and equipment in every other shot…you name it, Lewis has done it. As writer, director and cinematographer of his films, Lewis is a true auteur, albeit one more closely aligned with Ed Wood than, say, Orson Welles.

For all of this, however, one fact remains plainly evident: despite their endless shortcomings, Lewis’ films have another common denominator…they’re (usually) a tremendous amount of fun. As someone who grew up on his gore films (I’m not ashamed to admit that Two Thousand Maniacs! is one of the greatest horror films of all time, regardless of the quality), Lewis has been a go-to of mine for some years now. Despite this, however, I was woefully ignorant about his other films, particularly the soft-core adult films that were liberally sprinkled throughout his career. Of these films, a couple were considered “lost” to the world at large until they popped-up several years back. The Ecstacies of Women (1969) is one of those films. It is, of course, absolutely terrible.

In a nutshell, The Ecstacies of Women concerns Harry (Walter Camp) and the bachelor party thrown by his friends, Gene (William Vickers), Fred (James Brand) and Ted (Forman Shane). As the guys hang out at a strip-club and ogle the awkward dancers (there really is no other word to describe them), Harry entertains the others with “wild” stories about his numerous sexual conquests, all by way of “purging his system” for his upcoming nuptials.

The pattern is so simple that it’s basically a loop: the guys sit around, conversing in ways that could never be considered natural (everyone seems genuinely drunk, for one thing, which might explain a lot) before Harry puts his head back and seems to go into a coma. This, of course, is our cue that we’re about to move into the “adults only” portion of the program. If anyone out there thinks things get better from there, let me remove all doubt: they get much, much worse.

All-in-all, we get several different vignettes involving Harry and his random conquests. Harry picks up a woman (Jeanette Mills) in a bar, takes her back to his houseboat to “model lingerie” (he’s a traveling lingerie salesman, dontcha know) and proceeds to grope her into orgasm. Harry gets picked up by an aggressive health-freak on the beach (Vincene Wallace), takes her back to his houseboat and proceeds to grope her into orgasm. Harry gets picked up by an aggressive teenager (Sharon Matt) while parked at a stoplight, takes her back to his houseboat and proceeds to grope her to orgasm. Finally, we get the piece de resistance as Harry, Gene, Fred and Ted take a bunch of strippers back to the houseboat and proceed to grope them into orgasm. Harry decides to run away with Summer Frenzy (Bonnie Clark, who seems to be on heroin for the entirety of her performance, at least judging by her slurred speech, unfocused eyes and baffling “performance”), leaving his unlucky (very, very lucky?) future spouse in the lurch. The End.

Lest it seem from the above description that there’s an overwhelming sense of repetition to what we see, let me clarify it: the whole film is, essentially, the very same scene played out, multiple times, with slightly different people. Each of the “dream sequences” lasts for about 20 minutes (most of which are awkward dialogue scenes that don’t seem improvised so much as dropped from the sky, like bird shit) and features Harry dry-humping and pawing his nude conquests. For variety, Harry sometimes wears his tighty-whities during the “action,” while other scenes give us glorious shots of his pale, pimply ass. There’s never any sense of “realism” to the scenes, which mostly involve Harry fondling bare breasts until over-dubbed heavy breathing indicates a sprint to the finish-line.

There’s absolutely nothing sexy, titillating or, to be honest, particularly interesting about anything that happens. In fact, The Ecstacies of Women might be the single dullest film that I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through, regardless of the “adults only” designation. As with all of Lewis’ films, the camera-work is as basic as it comes, the non-professional actors constantly flub their lines and talk over each other (one amazing scene features the guys trying their damnedest not to crack up as one “actor” manages to call everyone by the wrong name, several times) and the whole thing looks about as ugly as could be expected.

We could talk about the film’s representations of women, the sex-positive natures of the encounters (at the very least, everyone seems to be having fun, although I’m not quite sure how) or the ridiculously “groovy” catchphrases that must have made this hopelessly dated the week after it came out. We could put a little thought into it but, really: who the hell would we be kidding? The Ecstacies of Women is pure crap, through and through, the kind of oddity that no one could possibly take seriously. In certain ways, the film is absolutely critic-proof: who goes into a Herschell Gordon Lewis film (especially one of his skin flicks) expecting anything more than what’s been presented here?

While I can usually find at least something to recommend in a film (satisfying curiosity, if nothing else), I find myself at a complete loss here: unless you’re a Herschell Gordon Lewis completist (or Mark Hansen, as his pseudonym reads here) or the kind of person who prizes non-acting, tone-deaf dialogue and unattractive people pretending to have sex…well, friend…there’s just not much for ya here.

To quote Harry’s immortal final words: “Gang, goodbye. Goodbye, gang.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

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6/14/14 (Part Two): When Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend

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1960's films, American Old West, Andy Devine, auteur theory, cinema, classic films, classic movies, Denver Pyle, Edmund O'Brien, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, gunslingers vs lawyers, James Stewart, James Warner Bellah, John Carradine, John Ford, John Wayne, Ken Murray, lawyers, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, legend vs reality, Liberty Valance, Movies, Ransom Stoddard, senator, Shinbone, statehood, Strother Martin, the law vs the gun, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the myth of the Old West, the Old West, the taming of the Wild West, the Wild West, Tom Doniphon, Vera Miles, Westerns, Wild West, William H. Clothier, Willis Goldbeck, Woody Strode

In many ways, the American “Old West” is just as mythical a location as Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Lewis’ Narnia: composed of equal parts real history, tall tales, folk legends, personal myth-building, self-rationalization and flat-out malarkey, the Wild West has become so absorbed into the fabric of pop culture, by this point, that is hard to say where the stories end and the truth begins. Much of this mythologizing is thanks to the work of American filmmakers like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah and Fred Zinnemann, directors who helped shape the public’s opinion of the American Old West as a rough-and-tumble, lawless land where the six-gun was the only jury and where a strong-willed man could carve out an empire with his bare hands. Classic Hollywood Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), Broken Arrow (1950), High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956),  Rio Bravo (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Wild Bunch (1969) have long posited the West as just such a brutal, beautiful and untamed wilderness, America’s last refuge against the relentless march of progress and industrialization that swallowed the rest of the nation part and parcel.

Nothing, of course, can withstand the march of time for long and the “Wild West” was no exception. Once the railroad began to unite far-flung settlements into something that resembled a larger community, as well as linking the West with the much much-maligned, industrialized East, it was only a matter of time before the formerly untamed frontier would fall to the natural progress of the modern world. As someone who became one of the mythologized West’s biggest proponents, it likewise fell to auteur John Ford to write its eulogy, once the time had passed. To that end, Ford tolled the funeral bell with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a film that purported to bring together two of the Westerns biggest stars, John Wayne and James Stewart, even as it brought the curtain down on traditional notions of the Old West.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is structured as a flashback narrative, beginning in the “present-day” and moving backwards in time to show us the events that led us to where we are. In the present, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), have returned to the tiny frontier town of Shinbone in order to attend the funeral of one Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Once there, Ransom and Hallie reconnect with old friends, including Shinbone’s former marshal, Link Appleyard (Andy Devine) and Doniphon’s faithful manservant Pompey (Woody Strode). When the local newspaper editor pressures Stoddard for a story concerning his return to the dusty hole-in-the-wall that is Shinbone, Stoddard deigns to give him the full scoop, telling the story of how he first came to Shinbone as an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school and met Tom, his future wife, Hallie, and the miserable human being that would end up helping Stoddard secure his reputation: the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).

Stoddard describes how he came to Shinbone after being waylaid, beaten and robbed by Liberty Valance during a stagecoach holdup. Despite the continued advise of the cowardly Marshall Appleyard and all-around good-guy Tom, Stoddard is determined to bring Valance to justice with the letter of the law, rather than the vengeance of a six-gun. Easier said than done, however, as Valance and his minions, Floyd (Strother Martin) and Reese (Lee Van Cleef), pretty much run the town, keeping everyone scared (including the Marshall) and under the thumbs of the local land barons. When the topic of statehood comes up, Valance and Stoddard end up on opposite sides of the issue: Stoddard knows that statehood will lead to modernization, industrialization and law and order, whereas Valance’s employers know that statehood will spell the end of their unchecked land rights. Neither man will back down, sending everyone in Shinbone, including Tom and his then-girlfriend Hallie, hurtling towards a violent confrontation that will signal the end for some while heralding a bold, new beginning for others. Liberty Valance is the second fastest gun in the territory, however, and Stoddard is the epitome of the “citified dude” – he’ll need more than justice on his side to take on Valance…he’s going to need a guardian angel.

As with any elegy, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an exceptionally sad film, not only for the events which take place on-screen but for the greater significance that these events held for our society. Although Ford’s film is full of rousing action set-pieces, lots of sharp humor and some nice, broad characterizations (Andy Devine is particularly goofy as the whiny, constantly eating sheriff), there’s a muted, toned-down feel to the proceedings that mark this as the furthest thing from one of Ford’s more “traditional” Westerns, such as Fort Apache or Rio Grande (1950). There’s very little in the way of celebration here, even in those moments where the “good guys” are succeeding (the saloon scene where Tom kicks Valance’s guy right in the face, the statehood representative meeting), since the film seems to be all too aware that these successes will, ultimately, spell doom for the old-fashioned Old West. If Tom Doniphon stands for the traditionally rugged Western settler/survivor, he also stands for the mythologized Western director, as well: whereas artists like Hawks, Ford and Zinnemann plied their trades for a particular mindset in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, auteurs like Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood were dealing with not only the “death” of the traditional American Old West but also changing audience expectations and perspectives.

Your particular stance on progress and industrialization will probably color your particular view of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as being more or less a tragedy. On the one hand, Ransom Stoddard’s relentless quest to bring law and order, along with the niceties of “polite” society, to the untamed West is a noble (if slightly naive) pursuit. Industrialization in the American West led to a number of irrefutable benefits, such as the proliferation of better medical practices, educational institutions, the creation of a justice system that was wholly dependent on mob justice, etc… but it also led to the marginalization of hard-scrabble folks like Tom Doniphon (and Liberty Valance, if we want to split hairs), folks who would be completely out-of-step in a newly “Easternized” West. After all, this was their land, too, and there’s something inherently sad about the notion that a fundamentally good person like Tom (at least as portrayed in the film) will be allowed to lose everything, including the love of his life, in order to uphold Stoddard’s “new order.”

This notion of “the good of the many vs the good of the few” seems to be foremost on Ford’s mind, as the film makes no bones about the fact that Hallie and Tom were the “truer” couple, whereas Hallie and Ransom are the more “proper” couple. Hallie and Tom’s love is portrayed as passionate, romantic and messy, whereas Hallie and Ransom’s marriage seems to be more convenient, albeit more clinical. This, in micro, is the argument between the messier, more wild and more “authentic” Old West versus the more restrained, civilized and law-abiding “New” West. It’s the cactus rose versus the actual rose…Tom Doniphon’s antiquated notions of right and wrong versus Ransom’s Stoddard’s stubborn reliance on the rules of law and order…the emotion versus the intellect.

While The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is full of great performances, particularly John Wayne’s out-of-place cowboy Jimmy Stewart’s pompous, blowhard but well-meaning lawyer, the film really belongs to Lee Marvin’s dastardly villain: Liberty Valance is easily one of the greatest cinematic monsters to ever slime across the big screen and Marvin brings him to terrifying, shuddering life. He’s able to spit out “dude” with the same venom that others might reserve for “motherfucker” and the scene where he horsewhips Stoddard is as horrifying as something from a fright film. Marvin, ably backed up by Peckinpah mainstay Strother Martin and the one and only Lee Van Cleef, is a true force of nature in the film but he’s anything but a one-dimensional villain. In many ways, he functions as the flip-side to Doniphon’s “noble cowboy” character, showcasing the dark side of the Wild West that made Stoddard’s brand of law and order such a necessary, if game-changing, development in the building of the West.

Elsewhere, on the acting front, Edmund O’Brien provides some welcome comic relief as the besotted local newspaper editor/newly-elected statehood rep Dutton Peabody, while Vera Miles is an expressive, eternally sad presence as Tom Doniphon’s beloved Hallie, who ends up embracing both Ransom Stoddard and the change that he embodies. Truth be told, the only performances that grate a bit are Andy Devine’s ever-foolish Link Appleyard and Woody Strode’s ever loyal Pompey. Devine’s whiny schtick gets old quick, although he has some really nice, emotional beats in the “present-day” part of the film, particularly his quietly lovely scenes with Hallie, whereas Pompey is pretty much a non-entity, serving only to follow around and support Tom without much characterization of his own (the most we get is the rather on-the-nose bit where Pompey is able to remember everything about the Declaration of Independence except for the “All men are created equal” part).

As with all of Ford’s films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance looks great, a truly panoramic vision of the Old West that still manages to convey a sense of muted sadness. The black and white cinematography, courtesy of William H. Clothier (who shot several dozen other John Wayne Westerns), is always crisp and clear and there’s a typically expert use of directional lighting and shadows, particularly in the climatic scene where Stoddard and Valance face-off in the streets of Shinbone. Fittingly, the film often feels slightly oppressive, as if there’s a hanging sense of doom over everything: it’s the sense of tension befitting something like High Noon but with none of that film’s sense of release. Even after Valance is dead, Doniphon isn’t (personally) victorious and Ford’s film doesn’t seem particularly interested in celebrating his failure to preserve the old way of life.

Despite it’s status as a classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is just as much a character drama or tragedy (Doniphon’s fatal flaw is his inability to change with the times, which ends up being Stoddard’s biggest strength) as it is a traditional oater. While John Ford was responsible for some of the most iconic visions of the Old West put to film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is just a little bit different. Rather than a celebration of a by-gone era and the people who forged a nation, Ford’s opus is a quiet, serious meditation on the unflinching nature of progress, industrialization and the “taming” of the Old West. In any other film, the moment where Ransom and Hallie end up together would be the culmination of their struggles and a source of joy for the audience. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford asks viewers not to focus on the “winners” in the foreground, but the “losers” in the background, those men and women, including Tom Doniphon, who triumphed over a harsh landscape but ended up being shot straight in the heart by that most unavoidable of all enemies: the modern age.

6/14/14 (Part One): That Sparkling Film of Gold

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1960's films, Arthur Hunnicutt, auteur theory, based on a book, Charlene Holt, Christopher George, cinema, classic films, Cole Thornton, drunk sheriff, Ed Asner, El Dorado, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, friendships, George Alexander and the Mellomen, gunfighters, Harold Rosson, Howard Hawks, iconic film scores, James Caan, John Wayne, Leigh Brackett, male friendships, Michele Carey, Mississippi, Movies, Nelse McLeod, Nelson Riddle, ranchers, Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, Robert Mitchum, romance, Sheriff Harrah, The Big Sleep, The Empire Strikes Back, The Long Goodbye, the myth of the Old West, the Old West, the Wild West, The Wizard of Oz, theme songs, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, water rights, Westerns

If you’re anything like me, selecting one film as your “favorite” is probably a pretty impossible task. My likes can change based on mood, time of day, the weather outside, research I’ve done, other films I’ve seen and conversations I’ve had with other cinephiles. If 100 different people were to ask me the same question, they might receive any of seven or eight different answers, depending on any of the above. Rankings, of course, are a strictly arbitrary construction: if it seems difficult to select your favorite film of all time, try choosing your fourth favorite film of all time…at some point, it all just comes down to a question of personal preference. Truth be told, I don’t know that I could ever come up with a definitive answer to the question, although I’ll make damn sure to take a stab at it on my deathbed. By that time, hopefully, I’ll have been able to make up my mind a little better.

While it may be all but impossible for me to ever choose a “favorite” film, however, it’s a whole lot easier to choose the possible candidates. From my childhood all the way up to the present day, there have been some films that just get more attention from me than others. This group of films (more than five but less than ten…I think) still gets watched on a regular basis, at least once a year if not more often, despite my ever-present desire to continue to see as many new and previously unseen films as humanly possible. Some of this group of films tends to be seasonal (Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978) and Dougherty’s neo-classic Trick ‘r Treat (2007)), whereas others are good to go anytime, anywhere (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Goodfellas (1990)). The one common thread that all of these films share is that I never get tired of them, regardless of how many times I’ve seen them. Each viewing of these favorites bring me some deeper understanding of the films and solidifies my notion that these films are, for better or worse, the very best (at least as far as I’m concerned). If you’ve spent nearly 30 years watching the same film and aren’t tired of it, I think you can pretty much assume you never will be. In this vein, Howard Hawks’ legendary El Dorado (1966) must surely take a position of honor in my list: I first saw the film when I was a little boy and have loved it unconditionally ever since. After 30-odd years, El Dorado is still as fresh, fun, thrilling and fist-raising as it ever was.

I like to think that I’m able to view films with a particularly critical eye but there are still certain movies that produce an almost Pavlovian response in me: Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) get me with their scores, The Man With No Name trilogy and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre get me with their openings and Dirty Harry (1971) gets me pretty much every damn time Eastwood is on-screen. With El Dorado, my adrenaline starts pumping the second the opening kicks in and that glorious theme song, performed so perfectly by George Alexander and the Mellomen, begins. For my money, El Dorado may just have one of the most perfect opening credit sequences in the history of film: as Alexander’s tuneful baritone begins the tune by referencing Edgar Allen Poe’s eponymous poem, we get a series of old-fashioned oil-color paintings that depict various mainstays of the Old West: the range-riding cowboy, covered-wagon riding settlers, stampeding herds of mustangs and dusty twilight landscapes. Alexander’s mellifluous voice continues to rise, creating a truly cinematic moment: you feel not only the history and “reality” of the Old West but you feel the myth and legend, as well. Never mind that the song is absolutely brilliant, perhaps the best Western theme song ever: when combined when the paintings, the tune manages to not only tell a story (in some ways, the whole of the film is in there, writ small) but to flood the viewer with the notion that what we’re about to see is just as much glorious make-believe as it is reference to a real era. Regardless of my mood on any given day, just watching the opening credit sequence for El Dorado is enough to put a smile on my face and keep me humming along for the next 24 hours.

We begin with Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), the sardonic, dead-eye sheriff of the frontier town of El Dorado. Harrah’s best friend, the plain-talking hired gun Cole Thornton (John Wayne), has come through town in order to go see land baron Bart Jason (Ed Asner) about a potential job. Turns out that Jason wants to use Thornton to help steal water from the MacDonald family, in order to help with his own developments. Harrah talks Thornton out of taking the job and Cole hits the road, leaving behind his “best girl” Maudie (Charlene Holt) and Sheriff Harrah to keep the peace. On the road, Cole is forced to gut-shoot Luke MacDonald (Johnny Crawford) after the startled lookout starts shooting at the gunslinger. After the boy ends up taking his own life, Cole brings the body back to the MacDonald ranch: “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” he tells the elder MacDonald and he’s right. So right, in fact, that MacDonald’s fiery, take-no-shit daughter Joey (Michele Carey) decides to head-out and wait for Thornton on the road. While her ambush doesn’t kill Cole, as planned, it does leave him with a bullet in his back and plenty of residual pain.

Seven months later, Cole returns to El Dorado and finds the place in a bit of an uproar: Sheriff Harrah has turned into the town drunk (and laughing-stock) thanks to a bad relationship and Bart Jason rules everything with an iron fist. He’s brought in a ruthless gunslinger, Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), to finish the job that he tried to start with Cole. Things aren’t looking too good for Cole, who’s still experiencing pain and loss of feeling from the bullet which is still lodged near his spine. Things get a whole lot better when Cole happens to meet young Mississippi (James Caan), however: Mississippi is a bit of a hot head and is completely wet-behind-the-ears but he’s also whip-smart, fiercely loyal and absolutely lethal with a hunting knife. If he can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a sixgun…well…that shouldn’t be too much of a problem: as Cole points out, you don’t need to aim with a sawed-off shotgun…you just gotta point and shoot. After cleaning up the sloshed sheriff, Cole, Mississippi and Harrah join forces with Harrah’s deputy, former “Indian fighter” Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt), in order to bring down the villainous Bart Jason. The bullets are gonna fly as Cole and his friends seek to bring peace to El Dorado one way or another.

In many ways, El Dorado functions as a remake of Hawks’ own Rio Bravo (1959): the basic plot is the same and many of the characters in El Dorado seem to be slight variations on the characters from Rio Bravo. John Wayne plays, essentially, the same character in both films, while Robert Mitchum, James Caan and Arthur Hunnicutt are just variations on the characters that Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan first established in Rio Bravo. That being said, however, El Dorado is anything but a pale imitation of Hawks’ earlier film. For one thing, Mitchum is miles above Dean Martin as far as acting goes: sorry, Dino, but them’s the facts. When Mitchum was on point, he was pretty much invincible and Sheriff J.P. Harrah might be his best role besides Night of the Hunter (1955). I’ve also got nothing against Ricky Nelson, whose Colorado Ryan is a nice addition to the “naive, wet-behind-the-ears gunfighter” club but compared to James Caan? Sorry, Ricky…lights out on this one. Caan is absolutely fantastic in El Dorado, striking a perfect synthesis of “newbie jitters” and ridiculously self-assured braggadocio.  His plain-spoken, painfully honest declarations would be the highlight of any lesser film but, here, are just another brick in a pretty amazing wall. And as for Brennan versus Hunnicutt? This is a tougher call but c’mon: Bull is such a kickass character that Hunnicutt almost wins by default.

On top of those stellar four, we get a virtual constellation of glittering stars to support them. Ed Asner does villainy up right with the merciless Bart Jason but Christopher George is a revelation as Nelse McLeod, the second-best gunfighter in the area (after Cole Thornton, of course). Coming off as a more handsome, if no less nutty, Willem Dafoe, George is able to make McLeod more than a worthy adversary for Wayne’s Thornton. One of the best moments in the film is the part where McLeod watches in curiosity (and admiration) as the “unarmed” Mississippi steps up to one of McLeod’s men and demands retribution for a previous killing. George could have played the scene any number of ways but the quiet, slightly amused tone to his delivery and his obvious interest in seeing the outcome of the skirmish mark him as a much more complicated villain than simply another “black hat.” Likewise, the part where McLeod tells Thornton that “with two like us in the same batch, sooner or later we’d have to find out who’s faster” is a masterpiece of economy, giving us not only a little good old-fashioned foreshadowing but some great character development, as well. McLeod’s laid-back, if ruthless, attitude also leads to one of the film’s funniest, most tense moments as Thornton has McLeod exit the saloon first, in order to foil Pedro (John Gabriel) and Milt’s (Robert Donner) ambush attempt. His arch, slightly bemused delivery is pitch-perfect, going miles towards establishing his begrudging respect for Thornton.

Phenomenal acting aside, El Dorado is a marvel of filmmaking craft, which shouldn’t be surprising considering that Hawks produced and directed the film. A true film auteur in every sense of the word, Hawks was an amazingly adept filmmaker who, along with John Ford and Sergio Leone (go ahead and shoot me but I’ll be damned if Leone isn’t at least as responsible for the modern Western as his American counterparts) was pretty much responsible for the entire world’s view of the American West during the Golden Age of cinema. Here, Hawks is pretty much flawless: working with legendary cinematographer Harold Rosson, he’s created perhaps one of the finest evocations of the “mythical Wild West” ever put to film. El Dorado would actually be Rosson’s last film, capping off an astounding 51 year career that included such mainstays as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Asphalt Jungle (1951), Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and The Bad Seed (1956). While the photography in El Dorado is absolutely gorgeous, full of bright, vibrant and crystal-clear images, Rosson’s use of lighting really makes everything stand out. Favoring hard, directional lighting, Rosson often produces shots that resemble German Expressionism which, when combined with the beautifully artificial sets, tends to create a real fairy tale atmosphere. It’s heady stuff and none more so than towards the end of the film, where Thornton, Harrah and Mississippi stalk the deserted streets of El Dorado, picking off McLeod’s men one by one.

One aspect of El Dorado that can’t be lauded enough is the excellent, witty script, courtesy of screenwriter Leigh Brackett (Rio Bravo, Hatari! (1961), Rio Lobo (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)). The script is tight and filler-free (at slightly over two hours long, it actually feels like about 90 minutes), full of great dialogue, one-liners and asides. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the scene where Mississippi finally meets Maudie, Cole’s kind-of/sort-of girlfriend. Up to that point, Cole had been pretty tight-lipped about his past, frustrating his young partner’s attempts to get to know him. After laying eyes on the comely Maudie, Mississippi lets out a low whistle: “Well, I found one thing out,” he tells Cole. “What’s that,” the laconic gunslinger snaps back. “You know a girl,” Mississippi replies, without missing a beat. It’s a great moment between Caan and Wayne and but one example of an exceedingly fun script.

In all honesty, I really can’t find enough good things to say about El Dorado: it’s been one of my all-time favorite films since I was a boy (this and Clint Eastwood’s Westerns were the only ones I truly loved, as a boy, and I really couldn’t stand John Wayne until I was much older) and my love and appreciation for the film have never waned. Not only is it my favorite Howard Hawks film, it’s also my favorite John Wayne film and one of my favorite Mitchum and Caan films, which actually says alot. When I went to re-watch the film for purposes of my recent “film festival,” I went into it with the goal of being as critical as possible: it’s often too easy for us to simply accept our childhood loves unconditionally, without giving them proper critical consideration. I was ready to tear the film to pieces: after all, I used to love Clerks (1994) and find it to be absolutely pointless as I approach forty years on Earth.

But then, of course, a funny thing happened: the more critical I became, the better the film held up. The movie looks and sounds gorgeous, is filled with instantly memorable characters, has tons of iconic set-pieces (like Mitchum and his crippled quarry in the saloon) and has some really insightful points to make about friendship and duty. Wayne, Mitchum, Caan and Hunnicut make a perfect team, Asner and George make perfect villains and Michele Carey is one of the most amazing spitfires to ever grace the silver screen. In short, El Dorado is an absolutely perfect film. If I had my way, everyone would be required to see it at least once, regardless of their feelings about Westerns, in general. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. If you’ve seen it in the past, go ahead and watch it again. In many ways, El Dorado represents the very best that “film as entertainment” has to offer: it might not change your life but it may just make it a whole lot happier.

6/9/14 (Part Two): Father of the Living Dead

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1960's films, behind-the-scenes, cinema, Civil Rights Movement, documentaries, documentary, Elvis Mitchell, film criticism, film reviews, film theory, filmmaking, films, George Romero, guerrilla filmmaking, horror, horror film, horror films, independent film, independent films, interviews, Jr., Larry Fessenden, Mark Harris, Martin Luther King, Movies, Mr. Rogers, Night of the Living Dead, Pittsburgh, Prof. Samuel D. Pollard, Rob Kuhns, Robert Kennedy, Russell Streiner, social upheaval, societal changes, talking heads, the 1960s, The Birth of the Living Dead, visual effects pioneer, Whine of the Faun, writer-director-producer-cinematographer

By 1968, the Summer of Love was officially over: the war in Vietnam was in full escalation, racial tensions led to race riots in the inner cities and the disastrous Altamont Free Concert was but a year away, although neither Robert Kennedy nor Martin Luther King, Jr. would survive to know about it. The Zodiac Killer was still killing, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was still decades from thawing and the hippie “revolution” of the early-mid ’60s had failed to bring about the kind of lasting, peaceful change that adherents hoped for. Hope had been replaced by anger: the 1960s had failed to fix anything and the system was just as broken as ever. Into this caustic stew of fear, anger, war and turmoil slipped a humble little film that would go on to revolutionize not only horror films but the world of cinema, in general. When 27-year-old college dropout George Romero first unleashed his seminal horror film, Night of the Living Dead (1968), on an unsuspecting populace, little did he know that the film would permanently change everything that came after it, directly influencing the next 46 years of horror filmmaking.

Rob Kuhns’ exceptional documentary, Birth of the Living Dead (2013), gives an insightful and in-depth look into not only the making of Romero’s classic film but also the societal issues and developments that made the film not only possible but necessary. Night of the Living Dead was a new kind of horror film for a new era of horrors: when the horrors of Vietnam were being beamed into homes on a nightly basis, the same old “haunted house” scares weren’t going to work anymore. Kuhn’s film does an amazing job of showing just how truly groundbreaking NOTLD was, especially concerning its views on race and the family unit. By the end, he actually managed to give me new respect for a film that I’ve idolized for more years than I care to remember: no mean feat and a pretty sure sign that Kuhns is a filmmaker to keep an eye on.

Birth of the Living Dead takes us through the entire process of NOTLD, beginning with Romero’s background making short films for Mr. Rogers (I was surprised, to put it mildly) and beer commercials before taking the filmmaking leap with his first attempt, Whine of the Fawn (what a name!). When his art film tanked, Romero decided to try his hand at horror and the rest, as they say, is history. Romero served as cinematographer, director and editor, while the entire cast pulled double (sometimes triple) duty both in front of and behind the scenes. Some of the most glorious moments in the film come from the fascinating behind-the-scenes insights that Romero shares about the making of the film. Some of my favorites include the special effects experts who constantly smoked cigars while working with explosives and fuses, the actor/producer who built a wooden bridge with his own hands and the fact that the crew only got their sound edit after actor Russell Streiner (who played Johnny in the film) challenged the owner of the sound lab to a chess match: he won and the crew got their sound mix. For anyone interested in filmmaking, particularly ultra-low budget guerrilla filmmaking, the behind-the-scenes stories about NOTLD are absolutely priceless and worth a watch all by themselves.

Far from just being a “making-of,” however, Kuhns film is filled with plenty of insightful “talking head” interviews and commentary on the era that was directly responsible for Romero’s chiller. We get plenty of great stuff from independent filmmaking majordomo Larry Fessenden, whose enthusiasm for Romero’s film is absolutely infectious, along with historians and critics like Elvis Mitchell, Mark Harris and Prof. Samuel D. Pollard. In a truly magical bit, Mitchell talks about seeing NOTLD at a drive-in, when he was 10, and how it absolutely changed his life. There’s also plenty of on-point discussion about the casting of Duane Jones as the lead in a time where a strong, black hero in an all-white film would have been not only eye-opening but revolutionary. This was, after all, the era where one of the biggest black movie stars of all-time, Harry Belafonte, was not allowed to touch Petula Clark (a white singer/actress) in an advertisement. The fact that Ben’s race is never brought up in NOTLD was totally radical: for the first time in popular cinema, a leading black actor was just allowed to be a man, instead of a symbol. There’s real power in the stories about how the black inner city adopted Ben as a true hero, especially when they’re told by commentators who were actually in the theaters at the time of the film’s screening.

As a film, itself, Birth of the Living Dead is a complete success. The structure is well-organized, the footage and interviews are perfectly integrated and everything has a really exciting, kinetic sense of energy. Even better, Kuhns utilizes some really badass “Sin City-esque” red-and-black graphic-novel-type animation for many of the behind-the-scenes bits, making the whole film even more visually appealing. Birth of the Living Dead looks and sounds fantastic, although that just ends up being icing thanks to the fundamentally solid information being shared. If you’re a fan of Night of the Living Dead, Kuhns’ documentary is an absolute must-see, helping to fill in any gaps and offering up a virtual treasure trove of previously unknown insights. If you’re a fan of independent filmmaking, Birth of the Living Dead is a must-see for the ways in which we see Romero and his small band of true-believers literally wrestle this iconic film into being. Basically, if you like movies in any way, shape or form, you owe it to yourself to see Birth of the Living Dead: documentaries about horror films don’t get much better than this.

6/8/14 (Part One): Where is Mothra’s Power of Attorney?

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1960's films, Akira Kubo, Akira Takarada, alternate title, astronauts, auteur theory, cinema, Emi Ito, fighting monsters, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, Ghidorah, giant monsters, giant moth, Godzilla, Godzilla film, Godzilla films, Godzilla vs Monster Zero, Godzilla vs Mothra, Godzilla vs The Thing, Hiroshi Koizumi, Invasion of Astro Monster, Ishiro Honda, Japan, Japanese cinema, Jun Tazaki, Kenji Sahara, Kumi Mizuno, Mario Bava, monster movies, Monster Zero, Mothra, Mothra Island, Movies, Nick Adams, nuclear radiation, Planet of the Vampires, Planet X, Rodan, sci-fi, science-fiction, taking over the world, tropical islands, Yoshifumi Tajima, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Yu Fujiki, Yumi Ito, Yuriko Hoshi

While I’ve never been as big a fan of him as I am of King Kong or the Kraken, I’ve always enjoyed Godzilla films over the years. While the Toho Godzilla films tended to range in quality and focus over the years (at least as far as I’m concerned), there are a few that have managed to stake out their individual claims on my movie-loving heart. In particular, I’ve always been fond of Godzilla vs Mothra (1964), which features a fairly nutso storyline that manages to ape King Kong (1933) in more ways than one and Godzilla vs Monster Zero (1965), an even battier film that welds Planet of the Vampires (1965)-era Mario Bava to more traditional American ’50s sci-fi. Even though neither film is what I would call amazing, I’ve spent countless rainy afternoons watching them, over the years, and never cease to be entertained.

Godzilla vs Mothra (alt title: Godzilla vs the Thing) bears the benefit of featuring one of Godzilla’s more infamous opponents: the enormous, titular moth. Mothra leaves the relative comforts of its island (Mothra Island) where it’s worshipped like a god (probably because it has an island named after it) and travels to mainland Japan in order to retrieve one of its missing eggs. A recent typhoon (featuring some genuinely cool storm effects) ripped the egg away from the island, depositing it onto the shore where reporter Ichiro Sakai (Akira Takarada) and photographer Yoka Nakanishi (Yuriko Hoshi) just happen to be covering some storm-related flooding. The greedy locals quickly sell the massive egg to a local entrepeneur, Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tajima), who conspires to build a large amusement park around the egg and charge exorbitant admission prices. Kumayama is working hand-in-hand with Banzo Torahata (Kenji Sahara), an even shadier land developer. The twin fairies Shobijin (Emi and Yumi Ito) show up to try to convince the developers to do the right thing and give Mothra Island back their egg but are nearly captured for their troubles. When Sakai, Nakanishi and their new ally, Professor Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi), try to help the fairies appeal to the villains, they are met with the classic request to “provide Mothra’s power of attorney for the egg.” Looks like this is about to go…to the People’s Court.

This wouldn’t be a Godzilla film without the big green guy, however, and it seems that the rampaging typhoon also disturbed his resting place. In short order, Godzilla is stomping about Tokyo, destroying things left and right and generally making a colossal pain in the ass out of himself. When all attempts to subdue/kill/get Godzilla’s attention, someone has the bright idea to see if Mothra might be able to help. As can be expected, however, the folks of Mothra Island are a little bit peeved at the mainlanders and don’t see much reason to lend them their all-powerful moth god. Will Sakai and the Professor be able to convince the people of Mothra Island to give them another chance, even though they’re selfish jerks? Will the aging Mothra be able to summon enough fury to kick the crap out of the big radioactive lizard one last time? Will Reporter Jiro Nakamura (Yu Fujiki) be able to stop eating eggs long enough to cover any of this unfolding chaos?

As previously mentioned, the basic plot and several additional elements of Godzilla vs Mothra definitely owe a debt to King Kong. Mothra Island is similar to the primitive Kong Island, complete with natives doing mysterious rituals, while the “captive egg” and surrounding media circus aspect are pretty easy to peg. Mothra Island is a pretty great location, to be honest, full of strange bleached bones, hypnotic chanting and tropical beauty. It makes a nice contrast to the mainland locations and provides for some nice contrast between the more primitive islanders and the modernized city folks, especially the brash young reporter. The scene where the fairies sing the song to Mothra is hauntingly beautiful, evoking a smoky, mysterious atmosphere that would seem to be at home in either a dark night club or a giant moth’s place of residence.

There are also plenty of genuinely funny moments sprinkled throughout the film, whether the ongoing joke of Jiro’s constant egg eating (this never got old for me) or the His Girl Friday (1940)-esque banter between Sakai and Nakanishi. I also like the surprisingly dark edge that Kenji Sahara brings to the proceedings as the genuinely dangerous Torahata: he doesn’t come across as goofy which provides a nice counterbalance to Tajima’s more bafoonish performance as Kumayama. The rest of the cast is pretty good, with Takarada proving a capable hero and director Ishiro Honda’s direction is typically assured throughout. If I had any complaints, really, it would have to be that the climatic battle between Godzilla and the larvae gets to be kind of tedious: it seems like we watch them spray silk on Godzilla for at least a few weeks, if not longer, and this gives the otherwise kinetic film a rather deflated ending.  Nonetheless, there’s a reason that Godzilla vs Mothra tends to be one of the most widely recognized and liked Godzilla films: it’s a fast, fun romp that’s light on big concepts but heavy on well-filmed destruction.

On the other end of the spectrum from Godzilla vs Mothra, we have Godzilla vs Monster Zero. Here, the P.T. Barnum influence from the first has been replaced by a more daffy, 1960’s swingin’-cocktail kind of sci-fi, the kind perfectly exemplified by Mario Bava’s pioneering Planet of the Vampires. The emphasis here is on strange alien worlds, as the Earth makes contact with a mysterious planet dubbed Planet X. Heroic astronauts Glenn (Nick Adams) and Fuji (Godzilla vs Mothra’s Akira Takarada) are the first earthlings to make contact with the Xers and they find the aliens to be cordial, technologically advanced and in need of a bit of help. It seems that the tyrannical, three-headed dragon Ghidorah (known as Monster Zero to the Xers) rules the surface of their planet, forcing the Xers to live underground. If the humans will be so kind as to lend the Xers Godzilla and Rodan, they’ll be able to use the monsters (known to them as Monsters One and Two) to chase Monster Zero away, allowing them to reclaim the surface. In exchange, the Xers will give Earth a formula for a medicine that will cure all know ailments. Too good to be true, eh?

The plot thickens as nerdy inventor Tetsuo Teri (Akira Kubo), who just happens to be dating astronaut Fuji’s sister, Haruno (Keiko Sawai), runs into some strangeness with the noise-emitting device that he just sold to an educational toy company. The company rep, Miss Namikawa (Kumi Mizuno), seems to be stonewalling Tetsuo: she’s also dating Glenn, which makes everyone’s private lives as intricately intertwined as an Escher drawing. When Glenn and Fuji see the supposedly benevolent Controller of Planet X (Yoshio Tsuchiya) on Earth, they begin to think things are a little fishy. And they are, of course, although no one realizes this until Godzilla and Rodan have already been sent to Planet X, where the Controller turns around and threatens Earth with the combined might of Monsters Zero, One and Two. If Earth doesn’t agree to become a colony of Planet X, the whole place will be destroyed by the radio-wave-controlled monsters. It’s up to Glenn, Fuji and Tetsuo to figure out a way to thwart the Xers and save the people of Earth from three very pissed-off monsters.

As a huge fan of Mario Bava (Planet of the Vampires is easily one of my favorite sci-fi films), I absolutely love the “Bava-lite” atmosphere that can be found all over Godzilla vs Monster Zero. From the coolly retro space-suits and electronics to the vivid glowing elevators that bring people to the surface of Planet X, the film is a marvel of set design and is pure eye-candy from beginning to end. Toss in some pretty great monster designs (in particular, Ghidorah looks absolutely terrifying during his initial appearance) and you have what definitely has to be one of the best-looking Godzilla films. As with Godzilla vs Mothra, the performances are universally solid, although they tend to be a bit pulpier and hammier than the previous film (in particular, Glenn is a real jewel, prone to plenty of great lines like “You rats! You dirty, stinking rats!”). Takarada turns in another self-assured lead performance, although his Fuji is an even bigger shithead than Sakai was.

The colonialism subplot is an interesting one, especially during the scene where the people of Earth begin to choose sides: pro-X or anti-X. Rather than being buried in the subtext, the colonialism aspect is pushed right to the forefront, making this a film that’s as much about overcoming an oppressive outside force as it is about subduing Godzilla. In fact, Godzilla and Rodan (incidental damages notwithstanding) definitely function more as anti-heroes than straight-up bad guys, with the denizens of Planet X taking the “black hat” role. It’s another interesting aspect of the film that seems to distance it from other Godzilla films a bit, making it seem a little more “mature” even as the sci-fi aspects become more outlandish and pronounced. As with Godzilla vs Mothra, Ishiro Honda’s direction is self-assured and there are several standout moments: in particular, the scene where Godzilla and Rodan are raised from their respective watery resting places is quite a sight to behold.

As with Godzilla vs Mothra, there are minor quibbles to be found throughout the film. Some of the stereotypical ’50s sci-fi stuff can get more than a little cheesy, for example, and Godzilla had an unfortunate tendency to do a “Super Bowl Shuffle”-type endzone dance whenever he was victorious that positively drove me up the wall. That being said, Godzilla vs Monster Zero is a fun, fairly unique and reasonably exciting entry in the Godzilla canon. For the hell of it, put this on a double-bill with Bava’s Planet of the Vampires sometime and tell me there’s not some kind of weird synergy going on there.

5/31/14 (Part Four): The Boys Are Back in Town

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1960's films, A Fistful of Dollars, bounty hunters, cinema, Clint Eastwood, Col. Douglas Mortimer, cult classic, El Indio, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, film reviews, films, flashbacks, For a Few Dollars More, Gian Maria Volonte, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, James Bond, Klaus Kinski, Lee Van Cleef, Mario Brega, Monco, Movies, Sergio Leone, spaghetti Westerns, The Bad and The Ugly, The Good, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, the Man with No Name, the myth of the Old West, the Wild West, trilogies, Westerns

Crafting a sequel to a successful, popular film is no easy feat. If the followup is too much like its predecessor, it has no individual identity, seeking only to remind audiences of the original material, usually in a watered down manner. If the sequel is nothing like the original film, however, either in content or tone, then filmmakers run the risk of losing their crossover audience: audiences who flocked to see dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) might not have been so eager to see the followup if it featured kittens instead of velociraptors. The key, then, is to make the new film work for the same reasons the old one did: if you can tap back into an audiences’ emotions, you can produce a new film that will be just as successful, in its own way.

In many cases, the most successful sequels that don’t directly continue a larger storyline (The Godfather, etc.) are the ones that make subtle tweaks to the original property, while still maintaining the core feel/vibe. One of the best examples of this is the difference between Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens (1986). Both films are very good at what they do, for very different reasons. Scott’s film is a claustrophobic horror film that is equal parts “haunted house in space” and savage childbirth nightmare, whereas Cameron’s film is a fast-paced, tense and adrenaline-soaked action film about space marines destroying the living shit out of vicious alien foes. Two very different films but each wildly successful, in its own way and for its own reasons. In this spirit, then, we can see For a Few Dollars More (1965), Sergio Leone’s sequel to his iconic A Fistful of Dollars (1964), as being a wildly successful attempt to tweak the formula from the first film. While A Fistful of Dollars was a small film about one man and his interactions with a particularly lethal town, For a Few Dollars More is a much bigger, more epic story, prefiguring the Civil War epic that is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), Leone’s magnum opus. It also ends up being a surprisingly big-hearted buddy picture, albeit one where Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef end up being the buddies. Huzzah!

The film begins with a nifty opening sequence that features someone on horseback getting gunned down in an extreme long shot, before another classic Ennio Morricone score kicks in. While the opening sequence isn’t quite as dynamic as the black-and-red James Bond nod of the first film, the song, itself, is pure gold, hinting at the titanic awesomeness that would arrive the following year with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. An inter-title introduces us to the concept of the bounty killer (“Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price”) and we’re off to the races. Right off the bat, For a Few Dollars More has a larger, more expansive feel than its predecessor: Leone has a few more things to say, this time around, and he’s going to make damn sure we’re listening.

In short order, we meet Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), a man so completely badass that he makes his own railway schedule: “This train doesn’t stop in Tucumcari,” a nervous agent tells Mortimer. “This train’ll stop in Tucumcari,” Mortimer drolls back. And he’s right, of course, because he’s Lee Van Cleef: you try arguing with the dude. We then see Mortimer, as unhurried and cold as the Angel of Death himself, take out a bounty with a specially modified rifle. This guy, we see, is not the kind of fella you want to fuck with. As Mortimer gets a lead on his next bounty, he learns that someone else has been asking after the reward…some guy named Monco…some guy that we’d probably recognize better as…The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood). And now, kids, we’re really off to the races.

After we see Eastwood handily collect his bounty via well-timed karate chops and a blazingly fast six-gun, we also get to see him practice a little good ol’ fashioned frontier justice. Approaching the worthless sheriff who did nothing to either capture the fugitive outlaw or prevent his gang from attempting to shoot him in the back, Monco looks the guy in the eye and deadpans, “Aren’t you supposed to be courageous and, above all, honest?” Without looking him in the eye, the sheriff responds back in the affirmative. Eastwood then takes the star off the sheriff’s chest, tosses it to a couple of guys hanging around outside, says “You need a new sheriff,” and rides out of town. In a word: badass.

At this point, with our principals firmly established, we meet the third point to this triangle: the vicious, blood-thirsty El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte). El Indio is a monstrous figure, a villain whose modus operandi involves gunning down people after his pocket watch has finished playing its delicate melody. Through a series of flashbacks, we get a gradual sense of the backstory behind the watch, leading to a pretty huge revelation in the final act. Indio is a complex man, equal parts brutish thug, calculating schemer and charming leader. He also has a $10000 bounty on his head, a reward which both Col. Mortimer and Monco have their eyes on.

After dancing around each other for a bit, Mortimer and Monco gradually settle into an uneasy partnership, one defined by an almost student/teacher relationship: Mortimer is the old-guard and Monco is the upstart young guy who will, eventually, take his place in the history books. There’s a genuine depth to Mortimer and Monco’s relationship that pays off in some surprisingly emotional ways throughout the film, while still allowing the titanic actors behind the performances to have their respective field days. It’s like a spaghetti Western version of Godzilla vs Monster Zero (1965), with Eastwood and Van Cleef subbing in for Godzilla and Rodan.

After Monco is “convinced” to infiltrate Indio’s gang (“One of us will have to join Indio’s band.” “Why are you looking at me when you say ‘one of us’?”), the two come up with a plan to take down Indio and his gang, including Klaus Kinski as a notoriously bad-tempered hunchback named Juan Wild. Things don’t go according to plan, of course, and Mortimer and Monco end things the way they began them: with steel reserve, a sneer and a whole lot of hot lead.

Right off the bat, For a Few Dollars More exists in a much more expansive universe than the first film. For one thing, we actually get to travel around a bit and see more of the Wild West than the dusty town of San Miguel. As Mortimer, Monco and El Indio continue their deadly game, audiences get to experience a much fuller dose of Leone’s vision of the West, a vision that’s every bit as interesting as John Ford’s, as far as I’m concerned. Leone’s vision is a romantic, fantastical one, informed as much by tall-tales and campfire stories as it is by actual historical precedent. At one point, as we get our first glimpse of the “impenetrable” El Paso bank, I found myself wondering if actual Old West banks bore any resemblance to the eye-popping, baroque edifice that Leone portrays in the film. I’m pretty sure they didn’t but I sure do like Leone’s idea better.

While A Fistful of Dollars was full of great one-liners and some truly ironic moments, For a Few Dollars More is a much more intentionally funny, “good-natured” film. At one point, a young boy tries to entice Monco into staying at a particular hotel by telling him that an attractive landlady runs the place. When Monco asks if she’s married, the boy shrugs and says, “Yeah, but she don’t care.” The initially throwaway bit pays off, later, when we see the landlady swooning over Monco. “He’s tall,” she says dreamily, which produces a nice moment when her husband storms off, in a huff, revealing him to be exceptionally short. It’s a pretty great gag and seamlessly integrated into the film. There’s another truly funny scene where Mortimer and Monco try to exert authority over each other by shooting their respective hats down the street: the two titans are so evenly matched that they eventually give up and just go have a drink. If only all conflicts could be resolved this way, eh?

Like the first film, For a Few Dollars more looks and sounds beautiful: the wide-open vistas are as stunning as ever and Morricone’s score is phenomenal, leaps and bounds above the already notable Fistful of Dollars score. Leone uses the score to much greater effect in the followup, culminating in one of the greatest scenes ever committed to celluloid. When Indio is broken out of jail, he gets revenge on the man who ratted him out by having his wife and baby killed right before his eyes. As is usual for Indio, he offers the poor guy a “chance” to fight him: when the music from his pocket watch stops, they can both come out blazing. In a fantastic use of sound, the music from the watch starts off as tinny and diegetic before becoming part of the score, where the music warps into a massive, Gothic processional, drenched in church organs, before returning to tinny and diegetic as the music stops and El Indio blasts his victim straight to Hell. It’s a massively impressive scene, one that didn’t really have any precedents in A Fistful of Dollars but will have plenty of competition in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Acting-wise, this is another home-run, featuring typically iconic performances from Eastwood and Van Cleef and another great turn from Volonte. Whereas Volonte’s Ramon Rojo, in A Fistful of Dollars, was akin to a rabid dog, his performance as El Indio is much fuller and more subtle. In many ways, Indio comes across as a really good Bond villain, sort of an Old West Blofeld. In fact, the James Bond parallels from the first film really come home to roost in this one, especially during the bit where Indio and his second-in-command, Nino (Mario Brega) prepare to doublecross their own gang. There’s one moment where Indio says, “It’s done now: prepare to get out of here” where I fully expected to see SPECTRE baddies running around while their lair collapsed. If this sounds like some kind of faint praise, believe me: it’s not.

Ultimately, For a Few Dollars More is that rare sequel that actually manages to expand on and improve on its predecessor. While I’ll always love the smaller, more intimate feel of A Fistful of Dollars, there no way I can deny how much fun it is to see Leone playing in a larger sandbox. The second film in the trilogy leads us perfectly into the last, where everything becomes much bigger, more epic and more badass. While there’s an undeniable joy in seeing Eastwood and Van Cleef face-off in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, there’s something just as cool about seeing them team-up to administer a little good, ol’ fashioned ass-kicking. You can keep The Expendables (2010): who needs a whole team when you have the two biggest badasses in the universe?

5/31/14 (Part Three): Better Make it Three Coffins

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1960's films, A Fistful of Dollars, Akira Kurosawa, cinema, Clint Eastwood, cult films, Eastwood, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, feuding families, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gian Maria Volonte, gunfighters, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, James Bond, John Wayne, Marianne Koch, Movies, Ramon Rojo, Sergio Leone, Shakespearean, spaghetti Westerns, the Man with No Name, the myth of the Old West, the Wild West, trilogies, Westerns, Wolfgang Lukschy, Yojimbo

As a kid, I was raised on a pretty steady diet of movies…I can’t really recall a time when we were at home and not watching something, to be honest. My parents had fairly wide-ranging tastes, although certain things were pretty sacrosanct: Westerns, musicals and crime films always ruled the roost in our little castle. In particular, my parents loved John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films. Growing up, I was never particularly into Wayne: I’d seen almost all of his films by the time I was a teenager, I believe, but very few aside from El Dorado (1966) and North to Alaska (1960) ever stuck out for me. As I get older, I find myself with a little more appreciation for his body of work, although he’ll never be close to my favorite Western star. Eastwood, however…Eastwood was a different story.

To not put too fine a point on it, I absolutely idolized Clint Eastwood growing up. Not just enjoyed his films, mind you, but voraciously devoured them, sometimes watching the same movies over and over again to the point of rote memorization. There was a certain inherent badassness to Eastwood that always hit me right in the primal center of my brain: I didn’t just love his movies…I wanted to be this dude! It didn’t matter what the films were…Westerns, war movies, cop thrillers, chimpanzee road movies…I loved ’em all, man. The Dirty Harry series will always have a special place in my heart but, for my money, Eastwood was the most unstoppable during his classic run of mid-’60s-’70s Westerns. To this day, I can watch any or all of these at the drop of a hat: A Fistful of Dollars (1964); For a Few Dollars More (1965); The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); Hang ‘Em High (1968); Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970); Joe Kidd (1972); High Plains Drifter (1973); and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). For this decade+ timeframe, beginning with Sergio Leone’s unbeatable Dollars trilogy, Eastwood, as far as I’m concerned, was the single greatest action star in the world. But it all began with a humble little spaghetti Western called A Fistful of Dollars.

The setup for A Fistful of Dollars is almost Shakespearean in its simplicity: a mysterious, nameless man (Clint Eastwood) wanders into a lawless town and ends up in the middle of a seemingly eternal struggle between two feuding families. In this case, the town is San Miguel and the families are the Baxters and Rojos and each one controls a vital aspect of the town – the Baxters run all of the guns and the Rojos take care of the liquor. As The Man With No Name knows, any town with liquor and guns has got money…and he wants in on the action. Soon, the stranger is pulling strings every which way, inching both clans towards a fiery Armageddon that will see him sop up the remains like soup from the bottom of a bowl. Caught between Sheriff John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) on one end and the feral Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volonte) on the other, the stranger is able to find a friend in the enigmatic saloon-keeper, Silvanito (Jose Calvo)…always a good thing when you need someone to watch your back. He even finds a cause, in a way, as the stranger seeks to reunite Ramon’s captive Marisol (Marianne Koch) with her husband and young son. It’s just business as usual in San Miguel, where a man can either get rich…or dead.

Right off the bat, astute viewers will note that the plot of A Fistful of Dollars bears a striking resemblance to Akira Kurosawa’s iconic Yojimbo (1961). While this is pretty obvious, I’ll go a little further out on the branch and suggest another possible influence: the James Bond films, which began with Dr. No (1962). While this may seem a bit odd, think about it for a minute. Consider the highly stylized credit sequence, which features stark red and black silhouettes. Compare The Man with No Name’s offhand, cool demeanor and way with a (subtle) wisecrack to Sean Connery’s portrayal of the British super-spy. Think about the effortless way in which the stranger executes highly complex plans, sort of like Rube Goldberg devices minus the bowling balls. While the James Bond similarities will really come to the forefront in the followup, For a Few Dollars More, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point them out in this one. Truth be told, I’ve been a gonzo fan of both the original Bond films and the Dollars Trilogy for so long, by this point, that I’m a little surprised I didn’t make the connection earlier.

New revelation aside, my biggest takeaway from yet another viewing of A Fistful of Dollars is how really unbeatable the film is. In fact, the only Western that might be better than this is For a Few Dollars More. And, of course, the only one better than that would have to be The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (RIP Mr. Wallach), which looks down on most films from a godly height, Western or otherwise. There isn’t really any aspect of Leone’s classic film that doesn’t work splendidly well, as far as I’m concerned. Eastwood is the perfect hero/anti-hero (although his actions to help Marisol and her family seem to tip him more in the “hero” direction for this outing). The story is streamlined and quick-paced, full of lots of natural wit and some truly funny moments, much of it thanks to Eastwood’s spot-on delivery of some pretty classic quips. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, full of the huge, wide-open vistas that would make The Good, The Bad and The Ugly such an epic film. And that score…yeesh, who could ever forget about Ennio Morricone? Although he’ll always be best known for the iconic score for the final Dollars film (wah wah….wa wa waaaah…), the threads are here and they’re pretty damn glorious.

When all of the elements come together (that amazingly vibrant cinematography, the stirring score, the sight of Clint squinting, cheroot in mouth, finger itching to pull the trigger), they create a sensation that I can best describe as a purely cinematic experience. My adrenaline starts to pump, I mutter things at the screen and, before long, I’m throwing my fists in the air like it was an Iron Maiden concert: I’ve had the same, basic experience when watching these films for the best 30 or so years, without fail. Unlike other beloved films from my childhood that currently have as much relevance as month-old milk (I’m thinking specifically of Clerks (1994), which I can’t even sit through nowadays), my opinion on A Fistful of Dollars (and the Trilogy, in general) has never changed. I loved the film back then and I still love it now. Although I’m able to articulate my feelings a little more eloquently these days (“Clint Eastwood kicks ass!” has been replaced by examinations of the cinematography, dialogue and musical score), I still arrive at the same conclusion: this film kicks ass.

While it’s impossible to completely quantify what works so well about A Fistful of Dollars, I’ll close with one of my favorite moments in the film. Towards the end, as we near the final shootout, Silvanito has been taken hostage by the Rojos and severely beaten. There’s little hope of rescue for him: after all, it’s not like him and the stranger are comrades…they’re just a couple of guys who don’t have any reason to kill each other. Silvanito has no reason to believe the stranger will come to save him, even though he’s kept his mouth shut and given the Rojos nothing regarding the Man with No Name. Suddenly, the stranger appears in the street, stepping from behind a plume of dynamite smoke. Eastwood stands there, wearing that classic serape and hat, a cheroot between his teeth and steel flint in his eyes. Silvanito looks up, just then, squinting to see through swollen eyes. He sees Eastwood and a small smile creases his weary face: help has arrived after all…all hope is not lost. As Eastwood strides forward, my heart soars, like it always does. There is about to be a stomping and it’s going to be an especially righteous one.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what movies are all about. You could argue, of course, but you would be wrong. So very, very wrong.

2/18/14: No Ins and Outs

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"Sour" Crout, 1960's films, Bernard Cribbens, British comedies, British films, Carlton Browne of the F.O., Chief P.O. Crout, cinema, comedies, David Lodge, Dodger Lane, Dr. Strangelove, film reviews, films, heist films, Jelly Knight, jewel heist, Lennie Price, Lionel Jeffries, Movies, Peter Sellers, Pink Panther films, prison break, Robert Day, Soapy Stevens, The Mouse That Roared, The Pink Panther, Two Way Stretch, Wilfrid Hyde White

Although perhaps best know for his iconic roles in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and the trio of Pink Panther films (1963, 1975, 1976), the variety of roles in Peter Sellers’ career is pretty breath-taking. Playing everyone from idiots to evil geniuses, romantic leads to comedic sidekicks and cops to robbers, Sellers was a masterful actor who never failed to completely inhabit his roles, regardless of the general quality (or, occasionally, lack thereof) of the actual films. For my money, my favorite period in Sellers’ career has always been the late ’50s/early ’60s. This era produced a series of films that rank as not only my favorite Sellers’ films but also some of my favorite films, in general: Carlton Browne of the F.O. (1959), The Mouse That Roared (1959), Lolita (1962), The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) and Heavens Above! (1963). Fitting neatly into this batch is one of Sellers’ lightest, funniest films: Two Way Stretch (1960).

Dodger Lane (Sellers), Jelly Knight (David Lodge) and Lennie “The Dip” Price are cellmates who seem to have it better than the actual warden: they sneak gourmet food in via a basket through their cell window, drink booze, wear robes, gamble in the prison’s gardens and teach safe-cracking classes to the other inmates in-between “surprise” inspections that are anything but. They’ve also only got a few days left on their respective sentences, meaning that the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter than ever. Why, Dodger may even decide to do right and marry his long-suffering girlfriend: the sky’s the limit!

Enter their former partner (and reason for imprisonment) Soapy Stevens (Wilfrid Hyde White), however, and things begin to get a bit more complicated. Soapy, disguised as a vicar, comes to see his former gang with a new job: steal two million quid in diamonds from a visiting maharaja. All they’ll need to do is break out of prison, steal the jewels, break back into prison and walk out free men a few days later. What could possibly go wrong? The boys find out when kindly Chief Prison Officer Jenkins (George Woodbridge) suddenly retires and is replaced by their former nemesis, “Sour” Crout (Lionel Jeffries). With the clock ticking, Dodger, Jelly and Lennie must out-maneuver Crout, out-think Soapy and outwit the British military, all while the sweet smell of freedom constantly reminds them of the odds.

Two Way Stretch is the kind of quick-paced, dialogue-heavy, near-slapstick comedy that the British film industry seemed to specialize in the ’50s and ’60s but it’s easily one of the finest examples of its kind. Not only is the dialogue rich and full of some truly witty bon mots (one of my favorites is the bit where Soapy, disguised as a vicar, turns down the Warden’s offer of a cigarette: “No, thank you: one of the sins I can refuse.”) but there are some wonderfully absurd moments sprinkled throughout the film. A one point, the guys need to send a message via carrier pigeon: the obstinate bird takes the message, flies to the ground and proceeds to walk to its destination. Dodger’s girlfriend flirts with a guard during visiting time, distracting him and allowing ever other prisoner and guest in the room to frantically exchange contraband, mostly by throwing it through the air. At one point, the guys trick Crout into detonating an inordinately large cache of dynamite. Rather than blow him to bits, the explosion merely renders him sooty, tattered and pissed off, ala Daffy Duck. There’s a wonderful sense of cartoon anarchy to the proceedings that’s both breathless and lots of fun.

Sellers, obviously, does a magnificent job but he’s ably supported by a very capable cast, especially the wonderful Lionel Jeffries as the eternally apoplectic Chief P.O. Crout. Any scene that he shares with Sellers is worth the rental, alone, but throw in Wilfrid Hyde White’s deliciously slimy Soapy and Sellers is left with no shortage of folks to riff off/with. Truth be told, there isn’t really a dud in the bunch: this is definitely an example of a good ensemble cast helping to elevate the material.

The script’s quite good and the heist itself is well-executed, if sped through a bit too quickly. In fact, my biggest overall complaint would have to be that the film’s relatively short running time (under 80 minutes) doesn’t leave much room to linger on any one scene/gag/event. In the end, however, perhaps this is to the film’s immense benefit: nothing outlasts its welcome and I was hard-pressed to find much that struck me as tedious or unnecessary.

Nevertheless, despite my desire for more, I really can’t fault what’s here. Sellers is completely charming, in a performance that definitely strikes me as one of his best “rogue” roles, the film is consistently (and genuinely) funny and everything culminates in a near-perfect ending that allows the film to have its cake and eat it, too. If you’re a fan of Peter Sellers, British comedies or heist films, Two Way Stretch should scratch your itch.

1/25/14: The Father of the Giallo

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1960's films, Alfred Hitchcock, auteur theory, cinema, Dario Argento, Film, Film auteurs, foreign films, giallo, Italian cinema, John Saxon, Mario Bava, Movies, murder-mystery, suspense, The Evil Eye, The Girl Who Knew Too Much

As a huge fan of Italian cinema, particularly in its glorious ’50s-’70s heyday, there are a few auteurs that I hold especially dear to my heart: Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica and, of course, Mario Bava. As spiritual (and technical) forefather to the more extreme Italian horror directors that would follow, including his own son Lamberto, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and Michele Soavi, Bava was a fascinating bridge between more classical filmmaking styles and the rougher, edgier fare that would begin to permeate the genre by the mid-’70s.

If Bava, himself, was a transitional figure in Italian cinema, than his 1963 mystery The Girl Who Knew Too Much (cut and re-released in America as The Evil Eye, which should be summarily avoided) functioned as a transitional film within his own catalog. For one thing, The Girl Who Knew Too Much would be Bava’s last black and white film: his very next release would be the landmark anthology film Black Sabbath, marking his first foray into the world of Technicolor. This might have been sad news for those who looked forward to another black and white world as lush and atmospheric as the one presented in Black Sunday but it also opened the door wide for my personal favorite Bava film, Planet of the Vampires: this cotton-candy nightmare was a direct inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Alien and should be required viewing for anyone who has even a passing interest in cinematic sci-fi.

More importantly, however, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is generally regarded as the first giallo, although it’s a much more gentle affair than any of the films that would follow it. Bava’s best giallo is probably Blood and Black Lace, since I’ve always considered Bay of Blood to be a proto-slasher as opposed to a true giallo. Although Bava would only make two giallos in his long career (three if you count Five Dolls for an August Moon but that’s more bizarro spy story than anything else), he would serve as an undeniable influence on the man who would become the undisputed master of the giallo: Dario Argento.

But enough backstory, already: how about the actual film? While it may be of slightly more interest historically, The Girl Who Knew Too Much still holds up today as a pleasant, if slightly weightless, mystery/thriller.  Nora, an American tourist, is on a vacation in Rome when things begin to get a little crazy. She’s come to stay with Ethel, a dear old friend who also happens to have a bad heart. Handsome Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon, making about as effective an Italian here as he made a Mexican in Joe Kidd) is taking care of her but, alas, Ethel is not long for this world: that night, she passes away before Nora can administer her medicine.

After imagining that Ethel’s body has inexplicably moved (shades of Black Sabbath), Nora runs in terror from the house, only to get mugged and knocked unconscious. When she comes to, she witnesses what appears to be a man killing a woman before dragging her body away. Not sure whether this is all real or the result of head trauma, Nora pursues the mystery, dragging new beau Marcello along for the ride. Along the way, she meets Laura, a strange friend of Ethel’s and a shadowy reporter named Landini, either one of whom may have more to do with the mystery than they let on. Has Nora actually witnessed a murder? Could she have seen a ghost? Who keeps sneaking around her house at night? And what, if anything, does a hobo’s daughter have to do with anything?

While not a mind-blowing film, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is quite good, reminding me more than once of a Bava homage to Alfred Hitchcock. Even the title seems to reference Hitchcock’s own The Man Who Knew Too Much. One scene, at the beginning, made me think directly of the suspense master: Nora has (inadvertently) been carrying around a cigarette pack full of marijuana and realizes it just as she is about to go through security. We watch as she slowly works the pack out of her pocket and drops it, centimeter by centimeter down her leg, lower and lower, until it finally drops onto the floor. Relieved, she walks away, only to have a friendly security guard immediately hand her back the pack she “dropped.” It’s a genius moment and I could practically feel ol’ Alfred grinning from the afterlife.

There’s another nice moment where Nora sets up a trap that she read about in a mystery novel. She decides that it’s safe to try the trap, since the novel has yet to be published in Italy. “Killers don’t read mystery novels,” the narrator helpfully adds, putting the audience at ease.  Poor John Saxon getting caught in the elaborate web of strings and tripwires when he goes to check on Nora is, if you think about it, the only acceptable way for that situation to end. There’s also a great reveal as the camera swoops through a closed-door, showing the audience a photograph that would explain everything to Nora…if she could only swoop through that locked door, of course.

All in all, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a good film, filled with some decent performances, some great music (the opening theme is so brassy and sleazy that I automatically figured this would be grittier than it really is) and a pretty lo-cal, Scooby Doo-ish mystery. As a work that not only gestured at Bava’s past but also pointed towards his epic future, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is important for not just Bava completeists but anyone interested in Italian cinema, in general.

Just remember: be sure not to accept strange packs of cigarettes from handsome strangers on airplanes. As Nora found out, that’s always how trouble starts.