Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot

Partners (1982)

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sat, 03 May 2025 22:47:00 +0000

A 92-minute gay panic joke, PARTNERS put a pin in Ryan O’Neal’s career as a leading man. After a string of flops (anyone remember GREEN ICE, SO FINE, or OLIVER’S STORY?), O’Neal hit a wall with this regressive comedy that not only failed to click with both critics and audiences, but also offended nearly everyone who saw it with its homophobia. Even in 1982, the film’s bad taste was obvious to everyone except Paramount Pictures.

The only feature directed by television legend James Burrows, whose career ranges from THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW to WILL & GRACE, PARTNERS treats homosexuals as if they’re aliens from another planet. References are made to “their stores” and “their restaurants,” as if gay people don’t shop and eat in the same places straight people do. Gays are portrayed in PARTNERS either as mincing queens who will screw anybody who asks or violent psychopaths. Or in the case of John Hurt’s character, fussbudgets who cook and clean and listen to 1940s music while sipping tea.

The humor, such as it is, in the screenplay by Francis Veber (LA CAGE AUX FOLLES) is centered around the odd coupling of macho Homicide detective Benson (O’Neal) and closeted records clerk Kerwin (John Hurt, just off THE ELEPHANT MAN), who are assigned to investigate the murder of a cover model on a gay magazine. Their gruff boss (Kenneth McMillan) forces them to move in together and pretend to be a couple. One would think driving around Los Angeles in a pink Volkswagen is bad strategy when working undercover, but who am I to argue with Kenneth McMillan?

The only fun in PARTNERS is O’Neal’s obvious discomfort knowing he’s in a career-killing turkey. You can almost smell the flop sweat. Though none of PARTNERS is funny — or maybe because none of it is funny — Burrows makes the odd choice to basically chuck the comedy heading into the third act and concentrate on the mystery angle, which is ludicrous. The cops spend precious little time investigating, and the clues are designed to get super-straight O’Neal into wacky gay situations instead of solving a case. It’s clear the filmmakers put little thought into who the serial killer is or the motivation for the murders.

To give the film some credit, Hurt plays his role sympathetically, as if he’s actually in a drama about a gay man in an unrequited relationship. O’Neal’s character faces his own prejudices after getting up close to the same cruel treatment Hurt’s character and other gays live with every day. Oddly, Burrows later directed two television sitcoms titled PARTNERS, but neither was related to this film.

The Tall Texan

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 21:04:00 +0000

The same year Elmo Williams won an Academy Award for editing HIGH NOON, he made his directing debut with another western, which was partially filmed at City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico. Hiring a trio of then-blacklisted performers — Lloyd Bridges (SEA HUNT), Lee J. Cobb (OUR MAN FLINT), Luther Adler (D.O.A.) — as well as Marie Windsor (THE NARROW MARGIN), all of whom shared an agent, Williams shot THE TALL TEXAN in eight days with Elizabeth Reinhardt (LAURA) typing new dialogue during production.

With its genesis in an original screenplay by Sam Roeca (ANGEL BABY), THE TALL TEXAN stars Bridges as a convicted murderer being escorted by sheriff Samuel Herrick to an El Paso prison aboard a covered wagon. The wagon is attacked by Indians, who kill one of the passengers and overturn the wagon. Stranded in the desert without horses, Bridges, Herrick, and the other survivors, who include sea captain Cobb, Eastern widow Windsor, driver Syd Saylor (THE THREE MESQUITEERS), and Indian George Steele (BADMEN OF THE WEST), team up with trader Adler to investigate an alleged gold cache.

Suffice to say, many of them come down with a wicked case of gold fever, even the sheriff, who neglects his duties in taking in Bridges. The emphasis is on drama over action in this agreeable B-picture with more than a little debt to TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. Bridges and Cobb predictably clash over the only woman in the group. Whether the short schedule or Williams’ status as a first-time director is to blame, the movie suffers from occasional sloppiness, such as the tire tracks of the camera car consistently getting into the shot. Though the film establishes Bridges’ conviction earlier, later dialogue calls for Bridges to continue to El Paso to stand trial (Reinhardt probably has to take the hit for this).

On the other hand, Williams served as his own editor and cut the picture to a tight 81 minutes. He does a nice job moving the camera to spice up the visuals, and uses his barren New Mexican locations to good advantage. The blacklisted stars appear to relish their roles at a time when they weren’t getting many. Cobb and Bridges cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee and resumed their careers.

The Tall T

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 13:51:00 +0000

Elmore Leonard’s “The Captive” is the basis for this tough western, one of many collaborations between director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott. Filmed at Lone Pine, California, THE TALL T was the first Leonard property to be turned into a motion picture. The prolific Burt Kennedy (SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF) wrote the screenplay, which is one of those thrillers that cast the hero and the villain as two sides of a coin. With Kennedy’s words and the fine actors speaking them, however, the “we’re a lot alike, you and I” trope doesn’t feel cliched.

Scott is, of course, the hero, a bull-riding rancher traveling on a stagecoach with driver Arthur Hunnicutt (CAT BALLOU) and newlyweds John Hubbard (BIG JIM MCLAIN) and Maureen O’Sullivan. Now, O’Sullivan the actress was a gorgeous woman — check out those old MGM Tarzan movies — but she is dressed down here to play a plain woman, the daughter of a millionaire whose husband married her for her money...and she knows it.

All are waylaid at the nearest relay station by three hard men played by Skip Homeier (CRY VENGEANCE), Henry Silva (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE), and Richard Boone (THE SHOOTIST), the leader. Boone is flat-out brilliant as the cold, intellectual leader, a Bizarro Paladin who just wants enough money to buy a little piece of land, which is also Scott’s goal.

That’s just one of the similarities between the Scott and Boone characters brought out in THE TALL T. Kennedy’s plot may be routine B-movie fare you could find in any Wild Bill Elliott second feature for Monogram, but the characters aren’t. They’re mature and complex, and the actors give them a lived-in quality that vaults the film above most other 1950s westerns. A terse exchange just after Boone and Scott meet in which Boone asks Scott if he knows what’s going to happen to him says as much about their characters as twenty minutes of backstory.

Except for some ill-conceived slapstick near the beginning, Boetticher’s western classic is a taut, uncompromising thriller in the Elmore Leonard tradition. It was the second of seven westerns that teamed Scott with the director. All are worth watching, and THE TALL T is among the best of them.

Night Of Bloody Horror

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 03:37:00 +0000

Yes, that’s Emmy-winning star Gerald McRaney of SIMON & SIMON, DEADWOOD, MAJOR DAD, HOUSE OF CARDS, and THIS IS US fame making his film debut in NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR. Then a local New Orleans actor cast by the aunt of executive producer Albert Salzer (NIGHT OF THE STRANGLER), McRaney plays young Wesley Stewart, whose lady friends have a nasty habit of getting dead around him.

Shot in “Violent Vision,” which represents the psychedelic blue swirls surrounding McRaney during his periodic headaches, the film opens with Wesley and Susan (Lisa Dameron presenting the requisite bare breasts) finishing up a roll in the sack. Several slowly paced minutes later, Susan is stabbed in the face while giving confession!

The bikinied body of Wesley’s next girlfriend, a nurse named Kay (Charlotte White) who dragged his drunk ass home one night after he was mugged outside a bar, takes a fatal axe to the chest. Not that two murdered girlfriends and a trip to the cop shop prevent a pretty reporter (Gaye Yellen) from asking him out to a bar to watch a groovy (real) band called The Bored.

Directed by Joy N. Houck Jr. for his father’s Howco International outfit, NIGHT OF BLOODY TERROR is dreadful but watchable, if only for McRaney and Houck’s earnest attempts to be hip. Besides the psychedelic pinwheels, Houck adds fast zooms and solarized effects to The Board’s number while McRaney punches the hell out of a bully. The fight choreography is as bad as the photography and particularly the sound, which was recorded on Louisiana locations with poor acoustics. If you’ve seen PSYCHO — and if you’re reading this, you have — you’ll suss out what’s happening.

The skinny McRaney (who is shirtless a lot) gives a credible performance — he obviously took the role seriously — though you wouldn’t have predicted he’d have the career he did. To his credit, in his later years, he didn’t put NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR down. McRaney did another movie for Houck, WOMEN AND BLOODY TERROR, before moving to Los Angeles and working regularly in episodic television until landing the co-lead on SIMON & SIMON in 1981.

The Prince

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 07:37:00 +0000

Jason Patric (RUSH) is The Prince in this dreary direct-to-video crime meller courtesy of dreary direct-to-video director Brian A. Miller (VICE). At least The Prince is what mechanic Patric (with remarkably clean hands) used to be called in the old days when he was a professional assassin.

Now retired with daughter Gia Mantegna (THE FROZEN GROUND) away at college, Patric is pulled back into his old life John Wick-style when his junkie daughter leaves college to hook up with New Orleans drug kingpin 50 Cent (ESCAPE PLAN). While bashing his way through the underworld in search of Mantegna, Patric gains the attention of Bruce Willis (DIE HARD), a big-time mobster still seething from the deaths of his wife and child by Patric’s hand twenty years earlier, the result of a hit gone awry that led Patric to retire.

The plot by SAN ANDREAS writers Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore is ridiculous. For some reason, Patric drags along his daughter’s cokehead friend Jessica Lowndes (90210) to New Orleans so she can “point out” where to find a drug dealer, but all she had to do was tell him the name of a bar. Willis tells his goons to bring him The Prince alive, yet their strategy is to immediately shoot at him. But the biggest flaw is that Willis’ character doesn’t seem like a heavy. After all, he’s just looking to enact revenge against the hitman who murdered his wife and daughter, which would make him the hero in almost any other movie.

Miller has no idea how to shoot an action sequence. It’s pretty easy for Patric to shoot down a dozen bad guys when they stand right out in the open or run straight at a concealed target. John Cusack (THE SURE THING), of all people, shows up for a few scenes backing up his old pal Patric, “Jung Ji-Hoon aka Rain” (which is how he’s billed) does some kung fu, Johnathon Schaech (THE THING YOU DO) cameos in a gun shop, and the palpably disinterested Willis, who makes no effort to change his appearance in scenes set twenty years apart, never left his Mobile hotel (better tax breaks in Alabama than Louisiana) to shoot his scenes.

George Peppard is Banacek in Detour To Nowhere

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 06:59:00 +0000

Movie star George Peppard (THE CARPETBAGGERS) turned to network television in the fall of 1972 as BANACEK, which rotated with Richard Widmark’s MADIGAN and James Farentino’s COOL MILLION under NBC’s WEDNESDAY MYSTERY MOVIE banner. Before that, however, Peppard gave the character of Thomas Banacek, a proudly Polish freelance investigator based in Boston, a test run in DETOUR TO NOWHERE, an acceptable pilot movie directed by Jack Smight, with whom Peppard had worked on THE THIRD DAY and would work again on DAMNATION ALLEY.

BANACEK’s gimmick, introduced in this pilot written by series creator Anthony Wilson (LOST IN SPACE), is the “impossible crime,” akin to the classic locked-door mystery. Banacek is called in to investigate the baffling theft or disappearance of an expensive item. In DETOUR TO NOWHERE, the object is an armored car carrying nearly $2 million in gold that vanishes from a desert highway, its drivers left dead at the bottom of a cliff with no trace of the vehicle. Obstacles between Banacek and the mystery’s solution include corrupt sheriff Don Dubbins (THE ILLUSTRATED MAN), grinning tycoon Ed Nelson (PEYTON PLACE), and rival investigator Christine Belford (TO KILL A COP).

The pilot was clouded with controversy. During location shooting in Boston, a 24-year-old female extra accused Peppard of rape. He was eventually cleared in court of all charges. Also, KNBC, Los Angeles’ NBC affiliate, threatened to not air the pilot because guest star Ed Nelson was running for city council in San Dimas, California, and his opponents wanted air time under the equal time rule. Nelson withdrew from the race, and DETOUR TO NOWHERE aired on KNBC as scheduled.

Oscar-winning cinematographer Sam Leavitt (THE DEFIANT ONES) was nominated for an Emmy for his photography here (he lost to KUNG FU’s Jack Woolf). BANACEK was the only NBC WEDNESDAY MYSTERY MOVIE spoke to earn a second season, where it rotated with Dan Dailey’s FARADAY AND COMPANY, James McEachin’s TENAFLY, and Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick’s THE SNOOP SISTERS. Belford, Ralph Manza as chauffeur Jay Drury, and Murray Matheson as bookstore owner Felix Mulholland made the jump from pilot to series with Peppard. Sixteen BANACEK episodes aired in total. Peppard, of course, found greater television success as the leader of THE A-TEAM.

The Snow Creature

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 19:20:00 +0000

From the father/son director/writer team who gave you KILLERS FROM SPACE, PHANTOM FROM SPACE, and MANFISH comes THE SNOW CREATURE. And because you’ve seen those other films by W. Lee Wilder and Myles Wilder — the great Billy Wilder’s brother and nephew, respectively — you know to stay the hell out of THE SNOW CREATURE’s way. Its only claim to fame is that it is the first American science fiction movie about the Abominable Snowman. It also holds the distinction of being the first American science fiction movie with an actor (reportedly Lock “Gort” Martin) inside a cheap-looking Abominable Snowman suit.

Probably the only Abominable Snowman (hell, I’m calling it a Yeti from here on — less typing) movie partially set in Southern California, THE SNOW CREATURE stars Paul Langton (patriarch of the Harrington family on PEYTON PLACE) as a scientist in charge of an expedition into the Himalayas. He scoffs when his Sherpa guide Teru Shimada (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) tells him Shimada’s wife has been kidnapped by a Yeti, so Shimada kidnaps the whole party at gunpoint and forces them to search for his wife. Of course, they find a whole family of them, but only one survives (see the title) to be taken KING KONG-style back to Los Angeles.

Here the movie bogs down (as if it hadn’t already) in an inexplicable subplot about governmental red tape as Customs and Immigration argue whether a frozen Yeti is cargo or a person. Nobody is interested in this — it’s hard to believe the Wilders did — and it would be a huge relief when the Yeti inevitably escapes to wreak havoc in L.A., except the Yeti scenes are so cheap and boring. The creature is tall, but too slight of build to raise fear on its own, and W. Lee uses the same dull shot of it walking out of the dark toward the camera many times, even in reverse.

Oddly, climactic scenes of policemen (including FIVE’s William Phipps) chasing the creature through Los Angeles’ storm drains bring to mind THEM!, another 1954 release. Langton, who provides narration throughout, is a dull leading man, as if a more exciting one would have saved this movie. United Artists gave it a theatrical release.

The Frozen Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 14:21:00 +0000

I don’t know if Herbert J. Leder is the only filmmaker to write, produce, and direct a Warner Brothers double bill, but I feel safe saying he is the worst. Both THE FROZEN DEAD and IT, a killer Golem movie starring Roddy McDowall, were filmed in color by Leder in Great Britain, but released in the United States in black and white.

Dana Andrews — a long way from LAURA — stars in THE FROZEN DEAD as a Nazi mad scientist in London twenty years after the fall of the Third Reich. Undeterred, Andrews moves forward with his heady scheme to rejuvenate the 1500 Nazi soldiers he placed in suspended animation during the war. Unfortunately, their brains don’t work, leaving Andrews with drooling idiots in full Nazi uniforms stinking up his lab (one of them is played by Edward Fox, future star of THE DAY OF THE JACKAL).

To Andrews’ and Leder’s credit, everything is played completely straight. Even the mere hint of camp would have made this material insufferable rather than silly. Though Leder’s direction is unexceptional, some of his images are indelible: a trio of Nazis hanging in a meat locker awaiting eventual reanimation, a wall of dangling arms (foreshadowing!), the decapitated but still living head of a young woman (Kathleen Breck) who can somehow communicate psychically with her best friend Anna Palk (THE SKULL), Andrews’ innocent niece.

No matter how many times filmmakers attempt it (here’s looking at you, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE), a disembodied talking head on a tray is impossible to take seriously (which is why the great RE-ANIMATOR didn’t try), and who knows what Andrews was thinking in his scenes with Breck. Too static and talky to work as a thriller, THE FROZEN DEAD wins points for its ridiculous premise and Andrews’ professionalism, but not enough points to recommend.

Colossus: The Forbin Project

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:29:00 +0000

Universal’s perceptive science fiction thriller owes a tad to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but manages to stand on its own, thanks to a literate script by James Bridges (THE CHINA SYNDROME) and taut direction by Joseph Sargent (THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE).

Though THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS star Eric Braeden isn’t without talent, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT could have used more star power to counteract the drab photography (by television vet Gene Polito) and costuming (Edith Head). Albert Whitlock’s visual effects are quite good.

American scientist Forbin (Braeden) creates a super-computer called Colossus that is designed to keep an eye on the Soviets and launch nuclear missiles automatically if it senses an imminent attack. But — whoops — Colossus discovers the Soviets have their own super-computer, and the two machines team up to rule the world. They even shoot off a few nukes to prove they mean business. Can Forbin find a way to destroy his indestructible creation?

Considering COLOSSUS is mainly white guys in suits (and Georg Stanford Brown) looking at monitors, Sargent manages to work up a great deal of suspense. Stakes couldn’t be higher — nuclear annihilation — and the film melds elements of espionage and foreign intrigue into the sci-fi plot. Braeden was known for playing German soldiers in World War II mellers — he was a semi-regular on THE RAT PATROL — and brings a firm intelligence to Dr. Forbin. He and colleague Dr. Cleo Markham (drab Susan Clark) cleverly pretend to have a sexual relationship in order to have private conversations — Colossus agrees not to monitor the couple in bed — but expanding it into an actual romance is the film’s only major misstep.

X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 04:37:00 +0000

With more money for special effects, X (often given the off-screen subtitle THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES) could have been a science fiction classic. In one scene, leading character James Xavier looking with x-ray vision at a skyscraper is represented by a shot of a building under construction! As it stands, however, X ranks among director Roger Corman’s finest science fiction movies, anchored by a committed performance by Ray Milland (THE LOST WEEKEND) and an acerbic dramatic turn by standup comedian Don Rickles (BEACH BLANKET BINGO). Plus, boy, what an ending.

Dr. Xavier (Milland) is carving new paths in optical research, but is in danger of losing the grant money necessary to continue. Out of desperation, he tests his new eyedrops on himself, and gains the ability to see through walls, book covers, clothing, anything. Unfortunately, as his powers grow, his human brain isn’t advanced enough to process the otherworldly information his eyes absorb, which leads to insanity. Instead of the scientific breakthrough Xavier intended, his new power turns him into a sideshow act. He hits the road after being falsely accused of murder and hides out in a traveling circus owned by the crooked Crane (Rickles).

Though AIP marketed X with an exploitative subtitle, it’s evident Corman took the film more seriously than that, turning out a mature, thoughtful sci-fi parable. Robert Dillon (FRENCH CONNECTION II) and Ray Russell (THE INCUBUS) wrote the screenplay, and while Corman must add bits of unnecessary padding to reach a scant 79-minute running time, the script is intelligent and ambitious — too ambitious for the visual effects department to reach.

Diana van der Vlis (THE SWIMMER), Harold J. Stone (later in Corman’s THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE), and John Hoyt (ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE) provide more than capable support, and Corman repertory players Jonathan Haze (LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS) and Dick Miller (A BUCKET OF BLOOD) offer humor as hecklers of Xavier’s carny act. AIP released X on a double bill with Francis Ford Coppola’s DEMENTIA 13.

Demon Seed

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 22:55:00 +0000

Four-time Academy Award nominee (and winner for DARLING) Julie Christie may have given the screen performance of her life in this literate and underrated science fiction movie with a daring premise. Based on a Dean Koontz novel, DEMON SEED is a computer-goes-rogue story in the tradition of COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT and hundreds of other films, stories, and television shows as far back as Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN. However, it’s directed so intelligently by Donald Cammell (PERFORMANCE) and given such visual and dramatic flourish that it plays like a true original.

Fritz Weaver (BLACK SUNDAY) co-stars as Alex Harris, a scientist developing an artificial intelligence called Proteus IV. Advanced enough to cure cancer, Proteus is advanced enough to want — and what it wants is Harris’ wife, Susan (Christie). Living alone after Harris’ obsession with Proteus broke up their marriage, Susan becomes trapped in her home by Proteus, which has taken control of the entire house with plans to impregnate Susan and live forever in human form.

The actors and the screenplay by Robert Jaffe (MOTEL HELL) and Roger O. Hirson (THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN) take the outrageous premise seriously — wisely so, as any hint of humor would blow the film apart. Though serious, the plot is also sloppy at times with a few annoying questions left unanswered (for instance, what happens to a car belonging to one of Susan’s visitors?) The special effects, particularly a snake-like tetrahedron that represents one of Proteus’ physical forms, are imaginative, and the orchestral score by Jerry Fielding (THE ENFORCER) is impressive.

Because DEMON SEED is basically a two-hander, it’s important that Christie play off an impressive foe, and she does — not just the mechanical effects representing Proteus, but also the uncredited Robert Vaughn (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.), whose voice is perfectly menacing and controlling. Weaver is believable, Gerrit Graham (USED CARS) is an effective sacrificial lamb, and Berry Kroeger (BLOOD ALLEY) gets to be a good guy in his final film.

Scream (2022)

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 06:19:00 +0000

More than ten years after SCREAM 4 stank up American multiplexes, another sequel to Wes Craven’s influential 1996 slasher classic hit screens. Inexplicably given the same title as the original film, SCREAM brings back several original cast members, though not Craven, who died in 2015.

Less a movie than a collection of “ho ho remember that” and “okay yeah I get it” fan service callbacks to earlier SCREAMs, SCREAM 5 even opens with a less scary retread of the first movie’s famous teaser with Drew Barrymore. This teen, Tara (Jenna Ortega), who is totally into “enhanced horror” like THE BABADOOK, survives the Ghostface attack, spurring her older sister Samantha (Melissa Barrera) and Sam’s boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) to return to Woodsboro, where Tara is hospitalized.

While Sam conducts her own investigation into Tara’s precocious high school friends, former Woodsboro sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette, still accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s BROKEN ARROW cue), a survivor of previous Ghostface attacks, checks in with ex-wife Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), now a network television host, and Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who seems to have adjusted well to her past trauma, which includes shooting to death a close relative in SCREAM 4.

While the veteran SCREAMers have grown comfortably in their roles, bringing authentic mileage to their characters, the newcomers are awkward and unconvincing, stricken by some awful dialogue by screenwriters James Vanderbilt (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) and Guy Busick (READY OR NOT), the worst of the SCREAM series. With Craven gone, SCREAM 5 is in the restless hands of co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, whose superior READY OR NOT is, oddly, more faithful to the mix of scares and smiles in the original film’s DNA than this dismal sequel.

In the middle of the dull fan service and lazy plotting (the people of Woodsboro are remarkably incurious about police sirens blaring during the day in quiet residential neighborhoods) is Arquette’s remarkable performance, projecting human pain, loss, and regret in a movie that frankly doesn’t earn it. Long live Deputy Dewey.

The Final Option

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sat, 19 Jun 2021 22:00:00 +0000

Right-wing propaganda masquerading as shoot-’em-up entertainment, this thriller was known as WHO DARES WINS upon its original British release, but was retitled THE FINAL OPTION for MGM’s U.S. release. It was not a hit in American theaters, but it played on HBO seemingly 70,000 times, despite its R rating, so somebody must have been watching it. It’s too long (125 minutes) and the political story is not terribly interesting, but when director Ian Sharp, who later directed second unit on GOLDENEYE, gets the opportunity to stage violent action, THE FINAL OPTION is impressive. If only there was more of it.

Based loosely on the Special Air Service’s 1980 raid on London’s Iran embassy, which had been hijacked by Arab terrorists, THE FINAL OPTION stars Judy Davis (A PASSAGE TO INDIA) as the leader of “The People’s Lobby,” a terrorist organization that takes over the home of the American ambassador to England (Don Fellows), who is hosting a dinner for Secretary of State Richard Widmark (COMA) and Army general Robert Webber (S.O.B.). All she wants is for the U.S. to blow up one of its Navy bases in Scotland. Fat chance, sister, with the SAS on the case!

The SAS’ secret weapon, luckily for them, is already in the house. Top-billed Lewis Collins (TV’s THE PROFESSIONALS) botched his undercover assignment to infiltrate the People’s Lobby, but Davis takes him along on the hostage-taking anyway, probably because he turns her on in the sack (anything for England, dear boy). Edward Woodward (THE WICKER MAN) is properly staunch as the SAS man who sends Collins on the mission, and horror fans may recognize Ingrid Pitt (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) as one of the terrorists (British television star John Duttine is another).

Collins was almost in OCTOPUSSY, but judging from his work in THE FINAL OPTION — his first lead in a feature — he would have been a Lazenbyesque James Bond. He’s okay in the fight scenes, but has little chemistry with Davis or the actress playing his wife and is generally lacking in color and charisma. That’s a problem with a thriller with so little action (Davis’ group doesn’t invade Fellows’ home until the third act) and so much dialogue. His mainstream film career never took off, nor did that of director Sharp, who went back to television.

She Devil

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Mon, 10 May 2021 15:07:00 +0000

Scientists Dan Scott (Jack Kelly, who went from this to MAVERICK) and Richard Bach (Albert Dekker, who played mad scientist DR. CYCLOPS in 1940) live platonically with their elderly maid Hannah (Blossom Rock, Grandmama on THE ADDAMS FAMILY) in a mansion with a lab in Los Angeles. This may actually be the least believable element of SHE DEVIL, which 20th Century Fox released on its Regal Films label for exploitation movies as a co-feature with KRONOS.

Stanley G. Weinbaum’s short story “The Adaptive Ultimate” starred Zachary Scott and Peter Hensen when it was adapted as an episode of SCIENCE FICTION THEATER, Richard Derr and Lola Albright as a TALES OF TOMORROW, and Richard Hart as a STUDIO ONE. So it was already a well-worn tale on television when Carroll Young (JUNGLE JIM) and Kurt Neumann (THE FLY) adapted it for Regal. Dr. Scott believes he has created a serum that can cure all diseases, punctures, broken bones, and other ailments. He wants to test it on humans, but Dr. Bach isn’t sure that’s ethical.

However, one patient, Kyra Zelas (Mari Blanchard), a terminal tuberculosis patient with no family, friends, or income, interests Bach, and he okays the injection of Scott’s serum. It works. She’s up and walking around Beverly Hills in no time, and the two doctors invite her to move in with them and Hannah. They don’t yet realize Kyra has also changed into a stone cold killer who can mentally change the color of her hair (director of photography Karl Struss achieves this without cutting or visual effects by using lens filters).

The worst of Neumann’s four science fiction films as a director, SHE DEVIL basically just plods along with Kyra vamping the men around her to get all the nice things she’s always dreamed of and poor lovesick sap Scott falling for her. It isn’t the fault of Blanchard (ABBOTT & COSTELLO GO TO MARS), who looks smashing as a blonde and acts believably as a murderous trollop. It’s merely that the story’s stakes aren’t high enough. Kyra is dangerous, but she isn’t that dangerous. Bach and Scott don’t even kick her out of the house, and Scott remains in love with her even after she has killed two people.

Plus, SHE DEVIL is just sloppy. Neumann expects the audience to believe that just changing her hair color makes Kyra unrecognizable to others. When she forces her new husband (John Archer) to drive over a cliff, Neumann cuts to a stock shot of a car backing over the cliff. Blanchard made a few more movies and plenty of television episodes before dying of cancer in her 40s.

World Without End

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:57:00 +0000

Writer/director Edward Bernds was better known for comedies starring the Three Stooges and the Bowery Boys, but he also made occasional forays into science fiction (SPACE MASTER X-7, QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE). He directed WORLD WITHOUT END, a time travel adventure, for Allied Artists in Technicolor and CinemaScope. Despite the advanced technical specs, Bernds does little with the camera to provide visual excitement, and the scenes of the rocketship barreling through outer space are cribbed from Monogram’s earlier release FLIGHT TO MARS.

A flight from Mars opens WORLD WITHOUT END, as four astronauts played by Hugh Marlowe (EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS), Rod Taylor (THE TIME MACHINE), Nelson Leigh (CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN), and Christopher Dark (SUDDENLY) return to the Iverson Ranch 500 years after they left it. Nuclear war has devastated the Earth’s surface, and the survivors, who are mainly hot young chicks in short skirts and middle-aged men jealous of the glamorous astronauts, live in an underground city. Apparently only Caucasians survived “the big blow.” Above live “mutates:” hideously deformed beasts who attack the astronauts on sight.

The opposite of sophisticated 1950s sci-fi like FORBIDDEN PLANET and THIS ISLAND EARTH, Bernds’ film is akin to MISSILE TO THE MOON, CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON, and other silly films about stiff Earthmen stumbling onto futuristic civilizations populated by horny women looking for mates. It allows Australia native Taylor to use his natural accent, but the performances are stiff, and the actors playing the future Earthmen look silly in their costumes and skullcaps. Nothing is sillier than the foam spiders that “attack” our heroes in a cave.

Allied Artists released WORLD WITHOUT END on a double bill with INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN. Noted character actors Paul Brinegar (RAWHIDE) and Strother Martin (COOL HAND LUKE) are “underground people,” and Herb Vigran has lines in an early scene as a reporter. Considering the similarities between the two films, Rod Taylor must have felt deja vu when he starred in THE TIME MACHINE four years later.

Night School

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 05:34:00 +0000

The director of CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG ended his career with the atrocious SEXTETTE (starring a stuffed Mae West) and this minor slasher movie filmed in Boston. Paramount released Ken Hughes' NIGHT SCHOOL on a double bill with the slasher spoof STUDENT BODIES, but you’d be hard-pressed to decide which film is funnier.

NIGHT SCHOOL is certainly the duller, and hardly anyone would remember it if not for its 24-year-old star, Rachel Ward, making her first feature. The English actress quickly appeared in SHARKY’S MACHINE and DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID before THE THORN BIRDS, which aired on ABC a year and a half after NIGHT SCHOOL vanished from theaters, made her a brief household name.

Not much about her performance in NIGHT SCHOOL indicates success in Ward’s future, though she’s certainly beautiful (and isn’t shy about revealing her body). Producer Ruth Avergon also provided the screenplay about a mysterious killer in a leather jacket and motorcycle helmet who decapitates young women and deposits their heads in containers of water. Leonard Mann, usually the star of Italian thrillers (THE HUMANOID), plays the Boston detective in charge of the case. His main suspect is anthropology professor Drew Snyder (AMERICAN HORROR STORY), who is boffing his live-in teaching assistant (Ward).

Hughes, perhaps unsurprisingly for a filmmaker with British classics like CROMWELL and THE TRIAL OF OSCAR WILDE on his resume, seems unsuited for bloody horror and unwilling to get into it. Keeping the murders off-camera lowers the interest of horror fans, but NIGHT SCHOOL is too dull, stiffly acted, and light on characterization for more refined thriller fans. The only suspense is the revelation of the killer’s identity, but Avergon’s script provides too few suspects to make a real game of it. Ward made another cheap horror flick, THE FINAL TERROR, but it didn’t get released until after she was famous. Composer Brad Fiedel (THE TERMINATOR) and director of photography Mark Irwin (SCREAM) also went on to better things.

Red Heat (1988)

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:10:00 +0000

Yes, Virginia, there once was a very small window of time in which husky comic actor Jim Belushi (THE PRINCIPAL) was not only a major Hollywood action star, but one who received equal billing with superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger (COMMANDO). Both actors are cast according to type in RED HEAT, a raucous action comedy directed by the man who helped create the genre with 48 HRS.: Walter Hill. It opened at #1 (the same weekend BULL DURHAM and THE GREAT OUTDOORS opened), but was not one of Arnold’s biggest hits. But, hell, neither was THE TERMINATOR.

Schwarzenegger is Ivan Danko, a tight-lipped Moscow cop with a dangerous reputation for kicking bad guy ass, even naked in the snow. Belushi is Art Ritzik, a laidback slob and Chicago cop whose clowning rubs the ultra-serious Danko the wrong way. Their common goal is Viktor Rosta (ACTION JACKSON’s Ed O’Ross), a druglord who escapes Danko’s clutches in Russia, but ends up in Chicago. The two cops tear hell out of half the Windy City in pursuit of Rosta...if they don’t kill each other first!

Action fans eager for a chase or shootout every ten minutes and plenty of smart talk will find RED HEAT worthwhile. The story is more formulaic than might be expected from credited writers Hill, Harry Kleiner (BULLITT), and Troy Kennedy Martin (EDGE OF DARKNESS), but in the steady hands of action craftsman Hill, the film is fast, funny, foul-mouthed, and full of interesting character actors. Peter Boyle (TAXI DRIVER) has the thankless role of Belushi’s boss. Laurence Fishburne (THE MATRIX) shows up as an uptight cop, Gina Gershon (BOUND) is a dancer, Pruitt Taylor Vince (BEAUTIFUL GIRLS) is a hotel clerk, Brion James (BLADE RUNNER) is an informant, and Peter Jason (ARACHNOPHOBIA) is a television host.

In the grand tradition of Sean Connery playing an Irish cop in THE UNTOUCHABLES and a Spaniard in HIGHLANDER, Schwarzenegger makes no effort at a Russian accent. RED HEAT did, however, shoot one day in Moscow’s Red Square — the first American production to do so — so there’s novelty value in seeing Arnold there. If you watch a lot of action movies, you may recognize the bus chase, which the studio sold as stock footage to independent movies that couldn’t afford to shoot their own.

State And Main

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 05:42:00 +0000

Writer-director David Mamet (GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS) adapts his trademark rat-a-tat-tat style to screwball comedy for this rollicking swipe at Hollywood movie-making. Fast-talking director Walt Price (William H. Macy) and his crew invade sleepy Waterford, Vermont to make a period piece called THE OLD MILL. Problem is there’s no old mill in Waterford anymore (it burned down in 1960—those troublesome teenage arsonists!), so it’s up to first-time screenwriter Joseph White (Philip Seymour Hoffman as the romantic lead) to make some script accommodations.

Other Waterford invaders include leading man Bob Barrenger (Alec Baldwin), whose proclivity for teenage girls got the crew kicked out of their former location; female lead Claire Wellesley (Sarah Jessica Parker), who demands an extra $800,000 to pop her top on camera; and profane producer Marty Rossen (David Paymer). Adjusting to the Hollywood gang’s frantic ways are befuddled mayor Bailey (Charles Durning) and his trophy wife (Patti LuPone); saucy teen Carla (Julia Stiles); and sweet bookstore owner Ann (Rebecca Pidgeon), who falls for Joseph against the wishes of her arrogant lawyer fiance Doug (Clark Gregg).

Although satirizing Hollywood has been done to death on screen (Alan Alda’s SWEET LIBERTY was also about a film crew invading a small New England town), STATE AND MAIN feels fresh due to its razor-sharp dialogue and terrific acting. Macy comes off best as the alternately fawning and ferocious filmmaker, delivering lines like “It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.” with aplomb. Baldwin has fun sending up his own image, while Hoffman and Pidgeon lend the film its heart. STATE AND MAIN doesn’t seem to come up much in discussions of Mamet’s filmmaking career, making it probably his most underrated feature. “Go, you Huskies.”

Demonstone

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 03:08:00 +0000

R. Lee Ermey (FULL METAL JACKET) is radically cast against type as a foul-mouthed Marine (“I got more pesos in my pocket than a big horse can shit.”), and a visibly drunk Jan-Michael Vincent (WHITE LINE FEVER) is his partner in DEMONSTONE, an action movie with supernatural elements shot in the Philippines.

Director Andrew Prowse’s background as an editor (his credits include THE SIEGE AT FIREBASE GLORIA for director Brian Trenchard Smith, who receives a producing credit here) came in handy when staging DEMONSTONE’s action sequences with stunt coordinator Patrick Statham (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD). Surprisingly, given the participation of writer Frederick Bailey (SILK) and producer Clark Henderson (ANDROID), as well as the film’s story, tone, and Manila production, Roger Corman had nothing to do with DEMONSTONE. The prolific Charles Fries, who jumped between film (TROOP BEVERLY HILLS) and television (THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES) productions with equal aplomb, was DEMONSTONE’s executive producer and theatrical distributor.

An Australian co-production with producer Antony Ginnane (TURKEY SHOOT), DEMONSTONE puts Ermey and Vincent on the trail of a killer. The suspect is fellow Marine Tony McKee (Pat Skipper, Scully’s brother on THE X-FILES), but the murders are too vicious and gory to have been committed by one person.

The real killer is Sharon (Nancy Everhard, fresh off DEEPSTAR SIX), a television reporter possessed by a long-dead monk who placed a curse on the descendants of the tribal chief who burned him alive. Because said descendant is Belfardo (Joonee Gamboa), a corrupt senator, and the victims are in his circle, the admiral (FOXY BROWN’s Peter Brown) is on Ermey’s back to solve the case. Ermey is probably ad-libbing half of his profanities. Somehow, not a single bamboo hut is blown up. You should watch DEMONSTONE anyway.

Bear Island

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 16:32:00 +0000

Except for Cannon’s little-seen RIVER OF DEATH, released to a handful of theaters in 1989, BEAR ISLAND was the last adaptation of an Alistair MacLean novel to play on the big screen. It was the 13th of MacLean’s novels to be turned into a film (though WHERE EAGLES DARE was written as a novel and a screenplay at the same time), beginning with 1961’s THE GUNS OF NAVARONE. Amazingly, despite MacLean’s enormous popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, he seems to be a forgotten author today. A pity, as his best thrillers still hold up.

Director Don Sharp (THE FACE OF FU MANCHU), who rewrote MacLean’s PUPPET ON A CHAIN screenplay and directed second unit on it, must have thought 1971’s BEAR ISLAND didn’t hold up well. He, along with David Butler (VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED) and Murray Smith (SCHIZO), made a lot of changes in the BEAR ISLAND screenplay. Whereas the novel told the story of moviemakers shooting a production on remote Bear Island, well above the Arctic Circle, the film turns the doctor protagonist Christopher Marlowe into an American named Frank Lansing (Donald Sutherland), one of several United Nations scientists who travel to Bear Island to study climate change.

Everyone seems to be harboring a secret, and some of the scientists are murdered. Lansing, surrounded by snow, ice, and suspicion, investigates and comes to believe the violence has something to do with the abandoned German U-boat base located on Bear Island. And that leads to Lansing’s secret: his late father was the captain of that U-boat during World War II, and family legend is that a cache of Nazi gold is hidden on Bear Island. Well, it’s not all that secret, because it seems everyone on the island is posing as someone else as an excuse to search for the treasure.

Sharp was an effective action director, and his BEAR ISLAND setpieces are the best part of the film. It was not a hit, which is why future MacLean adaptations were scrapped, nor was it critically praised. Second unit director Vic Armstrong (JOSHUA TREE) also contributes to the fine stuntwork. The script takes shortcuts with characterization and throws in an unlikely romance between Lansing and a humorless psychologist played by Vanessa Redgrave, but the actors’ chemistry is as icy as the Bear Island winter. It’s fun to watch the all-star cast, including Richard Widmark (MADIGAN), Christopher Lee (HORROR OF DRACULA), Lloyd Bridges (TV’s SEA HUNT), and Barbara Parkins (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS), wrestle with their accents.

The Satan Bug

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 00:45:00 +0000

A great cast of character actors and a crackerjack premise for suspense are the highlights of THE SATAN BUG, which is based on Alistair MacLean’s excellent 1962 novel. Transplanting the action from rural England to Los Angeles, screenwriters James Clavell (KING RAT) and Edward Anhalt (THE BOSTON STRANGLER) otherwise stick pretty closely to the book as far as the plot goes. However, the telling of the tale leaves a bit to be desired. Though beautifully photographed by three-time Oscar winner Robert Surtees (BEN-HUR), THE SATAN BUG is dramatically inert with more middle-aged white guys in conservative suits standing around than a GOP convention.

Former government agent Lee Barrett (ROUTE 66 star George Maharis) is recruited by his ex-boss Cavanaugh (Richard Bull) and General Williams (Dana Andrews) to investigate the murder of a scientist and the disappearance of another at top-secret Station Three, where deadly biological agents are developed. Barrett learns the Satan Bug — a virus that could destroy all life on Earth in a couple of months — is missing, probably taken by a madman who will threaten the world with it.

Frank Sutton (GOMER PYLE, USMC) and Edward Asner (LOU GRANT) are heavies working for the villain. Richard Basehart (VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA), Simon Oakland (PSYCHO), John Anderson (5 CARD STUD), Henry Beckman (HERE COME THE BRIDES), Harold Gould (RHODA), and James Hong (CHINATOWN) work at Station Three. Anne Francis (FORBIDDEN PLANET) has little to do, but serves the film as its only female and the only character wearing color.

The talky script fails to generate much excitement, as do the drab Maharis and director John Sturges, otherwise a master director of thrillers (BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, THE GREAT ESCAPE). A sequence with Maharis and two government men (one played by STAR TREK’s James Doohan) trapped in an abandoned shack with a fatal virus packs the movie’s biggest thrill. The climax is a dud, though it offers some gorgeous views of the relatively new Dodger Stadium.

Firepower (1979)

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 23:34:00 +0000

FIREPOWER is a deliriously silly international thriller with an affecting cast of middle-aged movie stars and one of the most absurdly convoluted storylines I’ve ever attempted to decode. At one point, when director Michael Winner (DEATH WISH) and screenwriter Gerald Wilson (THE STONE KILLER) get trapped in a corner, they reach into their rear ends and pull out an exact double of James Coburn’s character, who is never seen or heard from again.

If nothing else, Winner knows how to grab an audience’s interest. Before the main titles have started to unspool, Winner kills off a chemist, the husband of Sophia Loren’s Adele Tasca, in an explosion and then guns down the chemist’s brother and a bunch of hoods at the funeral parlor. It’s an effective formula that works for Winner. When the plot starts to get confusing, blow up something or kill a bunch of guys to wake everybody up.

Adele believes the man responsible for her husband’s murder is the mysterious Karl Stegner, a wealthy recluse in Antigua who’s wanted by American authorities, but can’t be extradited, and nobody knows what the hell he looks like anyway. The Feds, with FBI agent Frank Hull (Vincent Gardenia) in charge, want flower-loving merc Jerry Fanon (Coburn) to go get Stegner, so they bribe retired mobster Sal Hyman (Eli Wallach) to convince Fanon to do the job. See what I mean about convoluted? Why couldn’t Hull just ask Fanon directly? Probably because Sir Lew Grade at ITC wanted to squeeze another star, Wallach, into the production somewhere.

Fanon takes along heist man Catlett (O.J. Simpson) as backup. Neither seems to be the brains of the outfit, as their plan involves setting Stegner’s house on fire and then running inside the abandoned blaze to find clues. The piling on of twists over doublecrosses grows silly after awhile, but FIREPOWER is always watchable for its star power and its harrowing stunt sequences involving airplanes, helicopters, automobiles, boats, bulldozers, whatever it takes. Trying to follow the plot is more effort than it’s worth.

Robert Forster: An Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 04:59:00 +0000

Although he often refers to his career as a "five-year surge" followed by a "25-year downhill slide," actor Robert Forster has been appearing steadily in television and motion pictures since the late 1960s, when he made his film debut opposite Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. After a few promising follow-ups, Forster disappeared from mainstream features for constant work in television, including the title roles in the TV series "Banyon" and "Nakia," and low-budget exploitation. Films like ALLIGATOR, VIGILANTE, HOLLYWOOD HARRY and STUNTS may be unfamiliar to general audiences, but Forster became a genre fan favorite for his consistently solid performances, often containing brooding heroics and a wise-guy blue-collar sense of humor, in films that were often not worthy of his presence. The pendulum clicked back the opposite direction in 1997, however, when Quentin Tarantino cast Forster in the role of lonely bail bondsman Max Cherry in JACKIE BROWN, which earned Forster an Academy Award nomination. Since then, Forster has worked almost non-stop in a great number of films, ranging from major studio pictures like SUPERNOVA and ME, MYSELF & IRENE to indie fare such as OUTSIDE OZONA and DIAMOND MEN.

In April 2002, Forster appeared at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where Ebert was introducing DIAMOND MEN, an outstanding drama co-starring Donnie Wahlberg (TV's "Blue Bloods") and directed by Daniel Cohen. As an occasional freelance writer for a local zine called Micro-Film, I sought out Forster for an interview. Because Micro-Film's emphasis is on independent film, most of our half-hour together consisted of talk about DIAMOND MEN and HOLLYWOOD HARRY, an oddball comedy produced and directed by Forster in the mid-1980s, although we did touch on a few other subjects as well.

I certainly wish I had more time with the man. In person, Forster seems to be a genuinely nice guy, appreciative of his fan base, politely signing autographs, shaking hands and even asking the names of everyone who stopped by to say "hello" or "I loved you in JACKIE BROWN." Whatever good things are happening to him personally and professionally these days couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow.

Marty McKee: How did you get involved with DIAMOND MEN? You seem to be doing a lot of studio pictures and then small pictures.

Robert Forster: Well, not that many studio pictures. Studio pictures are really hard to break into, so most of the things I've been doing are independent. I did ME, MYSELF & IRENE (with Jim Carrey), SUPERNOVA (a notorious SF flop released by MGM that was directed by Walter Hill, who took his name off of it, and re-edited by Francis Ford Coppola), and maybe one other picture, but most everything since JACKIE BROWN has been an independent start. Dan Cohen was a first-time writer/director who approached us with this script. I read it and my daughter (Kate) read it and my lawyer read it and everybody liked it. We were trying at that point to find pictures where there was at least a small paycheck. This was a "no paycheck," so basically we fit this in between paying jobs and made it work. It took several months. We wanted to do it in the late summer or fall (1998) and I wasn't available, so we waited until spring.

What drew you to this particular story? Because I know you get a lot of scripts.

The writing was good. And I understood the character. That's the first thing — you gotta understand what you're doing. If you understand it, then it's like falling off a log. I understood JACKIE BROWN. I understood the character of Max Cherry, so it was a cinch to do. I understood this guy (his DIAMOND MEN character). My father was an old salesman. He'd been selling for 30-something years. He sold to bakers. I'd been on the road with him once or twice. He wanted me to meet his customers, so occasionally I'd go out with him, and I got a feel for what he and his life was like on the road. We liked the story and decided to do it. As I say, we slipped it in between two paying jobs. However, this, among all of them, has really risen to the top. It's little, but nice.

Did you do much research? You seem like an expert on diamonds.

Dan Cohen, whose family are diamond salesmen, gave Donnie Wahlberg and me a course. We spent several days visiting where they process them and where they set them and where they grade them. We actually took a diamond course — an abbreviated one, of course — but we learned a few things about diamonds. For instance, I remember the Four Cs: Clarity, Cut, Carat and Color. You can tell from the picture that we had enough conversation on the subject to feel confident discussing it.

You were an executive producer on DIAMOND MEN. Were you involved in Donnie Wahlberg's casting? He's very good, but he wouldn't have been my first choice for the role.

He was wonderful, and, no, I had no part in his casting. Dan Cohen did the casting. I consider that to have been one of his brilliant jobs. He cast this thing beautifully. The only reason I'm on as an executive producer is because they had no dough. So they give you a title instead.

Someone else I was so happy to see was Bess Armstrong.

She's great.

The best smile in Hollywood.

She knew what that job required. Keeping the audience unaware of her real convictions until late in the picture. To make sure the audience did not know whether she was trying to exploit my character or whether she was honest.

I know that you know a little more about independent filmmaking because you made your own, HOLLYWOOD HARRY.

The only picture I ever "made." I worked with the writer (Curt Allen) …

Who is Curt Allen?

He is a guy who wrote WALKING THE EDGE. I had worked on that picture a year or two before, and I said, "Y'know, Curt Allen is a guy who could probably help me out here," and I told him I wanted to do a picture …I'll tell you what I started with, I started with the "Banyon" suit. The chalk-stripe "Banyon" suit.

There's a photo from "Banyon" in the film, right? A publicity still?

Yep. And I said to him, "I want to do a story playing a modern detective. A broken-down detective in Hollywood who doesn't want to fall in love anymore and who's got a kid. A 12-year-old." By the time we made the picture, she was 14, but basically my daughter Kate played the kid. She told me years before this that she wanted to work (as an actress), and I said, "Honey, if I ever get an opportunity, I will put you to work."

When she was 12, I went to Cannes (with director William Lustig and co-star Fred Williamson to promote VIGILANTE at the famous Cannes Film Festival) and I realized how they made independent movies. How they sold movies and what B.S. artists they were. Very often, they just created a one-sheet poster with the title. They sell (the film on the basis of) the poster, and with the sales of the poster, they made the movie.

So I said, "I can do that. How hard could that be?" It was much harder than I imagined and I haven't produced and directed another picture since. All I can tell you is that being an actor is much, much easier. Being a producer is …augh …it's so rough. Being a director, you gotta constantly be asking yourself how to present the material. The actor has to ask himself, "What does the material mean? How will I make the audience understand it?" A director, on the other hand, has to be thinking about how to present it and the shots and so forth. I don't find that to be my strength. Dealmaking as a producer is too rough. Asking people to do for you things that you don't have enough money to pay them for. Begging people to do things for you. Making deals and a lot of paperwork and I figure, "That's not for me." So one and one only: HOLLYWOOD HARRY. Not much, but not junk.

No, it's not junk. It's a fun movie. It's also got a different Robert Forster, one we've not seen before, sort of a loosey-goosey Forster.

Yes, thank you, loosey-goosey, that's exactly correct.

I haven't seen you play much comedy.

OK, well, I did a picture called RAT IN A CAN last year. And it's now called something else. It's now called STRANGE HEARTS.

You played "Jack."

That's correct. It's as close to loosey-goosey as I have gotten in bigger pictures.

Do you still dance?

Of course!

HOLLYWOOD HARRY must have been a great labor of love. Your daughter's in the picture. Your good friend Joe Spinell …tell me about Joe.

Joe Spinell has, in the history of his career, been used as a good guy only once — in HOLLYWOOD HARRY. He has otherwise played a greasy, rotten bastard. And I knew this guy — he was a good guy. He never swore in movies, are you aware of that? You look at his old movies, and I don't think you'll ever find that he swears in movies. He always said, "No, no, you're not supposed to do that." He played rotten characters, but he never wanted to swear. He said his mother might see the picture.

You also worked with Joe in VIGILANTE, which is a good picture.

I like VIGILANTE. (Director) Bill Lustig kept me alive! He brought me to Cannes. They ran out of money while we were shooting the picture. I borrowed some money, a hundred-and-some thousand dollars, and we finished the picture. For that, they brought me to Cannes, and that's where I got my first look at how they sold movies.

Tell me about the "Hammer," Fred Williamson (Forster's co-star in VIGILANTE), whom I interviewed years ago. A colorful guy.

He is a colorful guy, and I'll tell you what. He makes (Williamson still produces and directs movies through his Po' Boy company) low-budget pictures. He makes them out of the spur of the moment real, real cheap. Every time a new actor comes, on the first day, he gives them this speech: "Now, look," he tells the new actor, "this is a low-budget production. We don't shoot a lot of takes. If it's good on the first take, we print it and move on. So just you remember this — if you do bad on that first take, you're gonna look bad in the movie." That focuses an actor's attention, I promise you.

What kind of budget and schedule did you have on HOLLYWOOD HARRY?

I did everything one step at a time. First of all, I picked an arbitrary number: $500,000. I said, "For $500,000, I can make this picture." And, of course, you can. But I didn't know where to get $500,000. I kept trying to sell the idea to prospective producers, and, finally, a couple of exhibitors — these guys had exhibited ALLIGATOR (in which Forster starred for director Lewis Teague) and made money with it in Europe — said, "Yeah, we'll work with you. What's the budget?" "$500,000," I told 'em. They said, "You come up with a third. We'll come up with two-thirds." And we made a deal.

I sold the only investment I had — the only thing I owned — which was some investment I had made some years before. I got $150,000 for it. I called these guys up in England, and I said, "OK, guys, I got my money, it's in the bank," and they didn't return my phone call. Ohhhhhh, one of those absolutely typical stories. You think you got a deal and you trust somebody and they did not come through with it. So I made HOLLYWOOD HARRY with $125,000 of that $150,000 — I had to have some money to live on. I borrowed another $10,000 from my cousin and another $25,000 from a friend, and we finished up a rough cut for approximately $160,000. Later, I had to borrow even more money to post-produce.

Each step of the way, I said, "OK, what do you do now?" By the time we got to a finished picture, I knew that I had to get it to a salesman. We got it to Cannes the following year. We sold to about five small territories. That was 1985. Later that summer, I went to work for Menahem Golan in THE DELTA FORCE (Forster played an Arab terrorist in this Chuck Norris/Lee Marvin action flick for Cannon). While we were working on DELTA FORCE, Menahem, who I had run into in Cannes, asked, "How did you do with that little picture of yours?" I said, "Oh, we sold Australia and Denmark and …" He said, "I will buy the rest of the world." This guy got me out! We sold Golan the picture. Now comes Christmas time …

How much did you sell it for?

Wait, I'll tell ya. They originally offered me $400,000. I figured, OK, that's about $75,000 profit. When I first started making this picture, I thought it was going to get me a house on the beach in Malibu. At best, I wound up with a condo in West Hollywood. I figured I was gonna grab 75-Gs on this picture for my efforts. And that was a two-year effort. Eventually, I went in to Cannon to sign the deal. By then, they kept "grinding" the deal. They take a little bit here, they take a little bit there. Finally, they found out exactly how much money I had in the picture, which was roughly $325,000. And that's exactly and only what they would give me. I had no choice. Now I was working for nothing, but at least I was gonna pay off everybody. I went in around Christmas time to sign the paperwork, and as I was signing, Golan's partner, Yoram Globus, said, "We changed the name of your picture." "Changed the name of my picture? From HOLLYWOOD HARRY to what? And why?" "Well, we had to change the name of your picture." "But why? To what?" "We're going to change it to HARRY'S MACHINE." I said, "Wait a minute, why do that? This is a beautiful title — HOLLYWOOD HARRY. It said something. And my titles (opening credit sequence) are animated. You can't change the name of the picture." He said, "Yes, well, we're going to change the name of the picture."

I was heartbroken. I was devastated. I'm signing the paperwork, I have no choice, I gotta get the $25,000 they're giving me as an advance, I had no Christmas money, I was dead broke. I'm signing the thing, I think, "Oh, God, this is what happens when you make a little movie." Later on, I discovered that Cannon had sold a package of about twenty movies, one of which was titled HARRY'S MACHINE, but they had never made it. So they bought my picture to substitute for a picture they had already sold called HARRY'S MACHINE! Wow!

I'm sure it's out of print now, but the videocassette I have is HOLLYWOOD HARRY. I think Media Home Entertainment put it out.

Yes, yes, you never saw HARRY'S MACHINE. It's HARRY'S MACHINE only in a descriptive list of the pictures that they sold. They never touched it.

Who owns HOLLYWOOD HARRY now?

I don't know who owns it now. All I know is it sold 26,000 units (videocassettes) its first quarter. That's a lot of units for a little, tiny picture.

It really is a lot of fun.

I agree.

I also want to ask you about "Banyon." Everyone I've ever spoken to about "Banyon" has fond memories of that show. Did you think that was going to be big?

I don't know. I had no idea. All I know is I loved doing it.

Joan Blondell was on that show.

Yes, indeed. She played the operator of a secretarial school, and she would give me a free secretary every week. So I always had a free, new secretary that I had to break in every week.

But it only lasted, what, thirteen weeks?

Fifteen shows. Half a season. The guy who wrote and produced and created it, Ed Adamson, died while we were shooting our first order. The show just did not survive his death.

Then a couple of years later, you played a Native American detective.

"Nakia." Good guy. Indian. Deputy sheriff. New Mexico. Contemporary. Cops-and-robbers in the desert. And the thing about that was the pilot to that was (very similar to) BILLY JACK. As is obvious. When the pilot went on the air … by then, we had already gotten an order for thirteen (hour-long episodes), and we were getting ready to shoot them. The day after the pilot showed, Tom Laughlin (the producer, writer, director and star of BILLY JACK) sued Columbia for never having purchased the rights to BILLY JACK. Whoops. What did I know?

There's another pilot you did called "The City" with Don Johnson, which looked like it could have been a pretty decent show.

Not a bad show …and it didn't go.

Do you know why it didn't work?

Ah, you never know why.

A Quinn Martin production, right? Did you ever work with Quinn Martin before?

Oh, yes, Quinn Martin produced "Banyon." He was the executive producer. He picked it up after it had been a pilot, but before it got its order. He was the one that got it its 15 episodes. Quinn Martin was a very good guy. He always overpaid his actors.

I've heard that's why he was always able to attract such extraordinary casts, including guest stars.

He always exceeded the going rate for guest actors. I don't think he paid many actors scale. He bumped it up just a little.

In THE DARKER SIDE OF TERROR, you played two roles. You played a scientist and you were cloned.

Ah, THE CLONE! It was originally called THE CLONE. It's a picture about a guy who is a scientist and Ray Milland is another scientist and he takes a bit of my blood and clones me. And now the little clone is growing up inside a tank of fluid, and when the clone is exactly my age, height and weight, somebody breaks the tank, and I come flowing out. Now there's two of me, and they dress me up the same. This is the big gimmick at the end — I am presented to the faculty. Two of us, both dressed the same. Then there is a fight and a fire in which one of us killed the other, but the audience doesn't know which one survives, and the surviving one gets in bed with the wife (Adrienne Barbeau) and she doesn't know which one survived. And I'm telling you, for many months after that was shown, people would come up to me and ask me which one survived. And I would try and explain that the actor's job is to create a possibility on both sides of that balance without tipping the action. So after I would give them this explanation about "an actor's not supposed to … " they would say (in a whispered tone), "Yeah, yeah, I know, but who really survived?"

It's an actor's dream to play two roles, isn't it?

Well, in this one, I got the opportunity to fool the audience and they were fooled.

MEDIUM COOL. Was it as adventurous for you guys to make as it looks like on-screen?

It was for me. I had no idea they asked actors to say things that weren't on the script. In this picture, there was a great deal of improvisation. Lots of scenes were improvised. So I got the realization that the actor was not only responsible for the words on the page, but for bringing a frame of reference to his material and embodying the character he's playing, so that, if necessary, you can enter any circumstance and be that character. I also realized that being yourself is oh so much easier than putting a veneer over yourself and trying to be somebody else.

At Paramount, did they bury it or did they just not get behind it or …?

Later they put it out on video. They also put it out on DVD. So it's become a little cult classic as maybe the only example of film vérité in American cinema. I can tell you one other thing about this picture, and that is that the phrase, "The whole world is watching," was coined exactly at that instant that is presented in the picture. They say, "Don't leave us! Don't leave us! The world is watching! The whole world is watching!" and it became a chant. That phrase had a lot of use during the '60s and '70s, and it was coined right then and there.

And your first nude scene in MEDIUM COOL … how many times have you performed nude?

(Laughing) I apologize …

HOLLYWOOD HARRY has one too.

HOLLYWOOD HARRY?

You've got a butt shot in HOLLYWOOD HARRY.

Yeah, well, uh …(laughing) … well, all I know is that when I first saw in REFLECTIONS OF A GOLDEN EYE (Forster's first film), a guy rides a horse naked.

Oh, that's right, I forgot that one.

I said to myself, "God, I wonder how they do that?" Probably trick photography or something. When I got out there on the set, I saw an Italian extra riding around on the horse, and I thought, "God, I don't want that guy to do it. That's my shot! I wanna be doing it." I said to (REFLECTIONS director) John Huston, "I can do that." He says (Huston impression), "Could ya, Bobby?" I said, "Yeah!" I hadn't ridden a horse, you know, not since ten-cents-a-turn around the circle when I was a kid. I'd never really ridden a horse, but I said, "I could do that." Next thing I know, the wardrobe department hands me a little cup from a jockstrap and a roll of tape. That was for my modesty. After two or three takes on that sweaty horse, the cup was gone and I stopped worrying about it. I figured if you're gonna do something like that, you just gotta do it, no reservations. If you go do it scared, you'll never, never do it right.

Action Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 00:13:00 +0000

Finally, a movie where Craig T. Nelson has a karate fight with Apollo Creed. I’m still sad we didn’t get, like, nine Action Jackson movies. Carl Weathers (ROCKY) plays Jackson like Fred Williamson Meets Apollo Creed and definitely worthy of the nickname “Action.” Somehow, ACTION JACKSON was not a hit, and Weathers ended up in television.

So, yeah, Jericho Jackson. Track star. Harvard Law grad. The Detroit Police Department busted him back down to sergeant after he tore off a pervert’s arm. Evil auto manufacturer Peter Dellaplane, portrayed deliciously by a bleached-blond Nelson (COACH), hates Jackson, because his son was the pervert.

Dellaplane wants to be the puppetmaster of the next U.S. President, so he engineers the murders of big-time union officials. Sure, that could work. He has a sexy wife, Patrice (Sharon Stone), and an even sexier mistress, a junkie nightclub singer named Sydney (Vanity, way too sexy to play junkie roles). Life is pretty good for Peter Dellaplane, the kind of rich asshole who breaks his karate teacher’s arm just for laughs.

The feature directing debut of ace stuntman Craig R. Baxley, ACTION JACKSON is farfetched, slick, often hilarious, and populated by ace character actors who bring a lot of color to their roles, such as Ed O’Ross (RED HEAT), Robert Davi (LICENSE TO KILL), Thomas F. Wilson (BACK TO THE FUTURE), and Bill Duke (PREDATOR). This movie may hold the record for macho ball-busting. A running gag is a young purse snatcher who keeps fainting in fear of the badass Action Jackson.

The performers help ground the nonsense in Robert Reneau’s (DEMOLITION MAN) screenplay in some sort of reality. Everyone plays it with the right amount of tongue in cheek, so when Weathers leaps over a speeding taxicab or swaps karate blows with Nelson after driving a sports car into his house and up the stairs to the second floor, it seems like, well, of course that’s what would happen. Joel Silver produced, which explains the constant quipping and huge explosions. Baxley blew up a lot more cars in I COME IN PEACE and STONE COLD, as perfect a trifecta of badass action flicks as any director can boast.

Messenger Of Death

noreply@blogger.com (Marty McKee) — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 03:56:00 +0000

Charles Bronson worked with director J. Lee Thompson (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE) nine times, and MESSENGER OF DEATH may be the least of the lot. It was Bronson’s next-to-last collaboration with both Thompson and Cannon Films, which opened it in just 450 theaters to moribund business.

Nine women and children from the same Mormon family are murdered by a shotgun-wielding assassin. The lone surviving family member, husband and father Orville Beecham (Charles “Flat Nose Curry” Dierkop), refuses to identify the killer. Bronson plays Garrett Smith, a Denver newspaper reporter investigating the massacre, whose path leads to Orville’s father Willis (Jeff Corey) and Willis’ brother Zenas (John Ireland).

Both men hate each other passionately and blame the other for the murders. As the intrafamilial blood feud boils over into violence, Smith becomes a target for murder by mysterious employees of the Colorado Water Company, a corporation owned by one of Denver’s richest and most respected families, one with little connection, it would seem, to the wild-eyed Beecham clan.

An unusual action vehicle for Bronson, MESSENGER OF DEATH casts the stone-faced icon as a passive observer, fighting only when attacked. He doesn’t fire a gun at anyone, nor does he have much to do with identifying and apprehending the killers. In his most notable setpiece, he battles a trio of water trucks, but even there, Bronson plays the victim.

Though it’s more of a mystery thriller than action flick, MESSENGER OF DEATH is solid enough with an unusual setting and interesting supporting cast, but it doesn’t quite come together satisfactorily. Thompson and Cannon cinematographer Gideon Porath (AVENGING FORCE) do an outstanding job staging the opening massacre with dread and stark menace, using the Colorado scenery to creepy advantage.

As well, Robert O. Ragland’s score adds novelty, but MESSENGER OF DEATH is barely distinguishable from Bronson’s other Cannon pictures, except it’s classier. The screenplay by Paul Jarrico (TOM, DICK AND HARRY) holds little water, and the climax plays like MURDER, SHE WROTE with a line of red herrings gathered in a parlor waiting to be identified by a convenient witness. Themes of religious persecution and revenge add some flavor to the mystery.

Trish Van Devere (THE HEARSE), Marilyn Hassett (THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN), Laurence Luckinbill (STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER), Daniel Benzali (MURDER ONE), Gene Davis (10 TO MIDNIGHT), and Penny Peyser (THE IN-LAWS) fill out the cast. Jarrico was blacklisted during the 1950s and ended up writing spaghetti westerns in Europe, making him perhaps the perfect scribe for a tale about persecution.