1959 - THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, more of the same

Another monster is on the loose full of radioactivity in this very derivative science fiction film that steals from about every plot and situation from every other previous giant monster on the loose film up to this time.

The main films that this lack of monster inspiration seemed to borrow from are Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  The director/writer Eugene Lourie was also the director of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms so he was essentially stealing from himself in this film.

Some of the special effects particularly the monster rampage in London were done by Willis O'Brien the special effects guy behind King Kong.  However the very cheapness of the film particularly the monster who never moves his mouth really kill any effective moments the stop motion animation might contribute to the film.

The film has as it's lead Gene Evans one of Sam Fuller's regulars.  Evans usually played dog face soldiers but here he's a clean shaven marine biologist it's all very odd.  Well I've seen worse films.

80 minutes

1970 - FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON, more Mario Bava Eurotrash

 Mario Bava's film is a direct ripoff from Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians.  Stick a bunch of people on a remote island than have one of them bump them off the rest one at a time.   

This is not one of the better Bava films but it does have it's moments.  The hanging of the dead bodies in the walk in meat locker, the usual graphic and kind of sick killings and the general Eurotrash vibe throughout the film are worth a one time look

As with some of these later films Bava, the inspiration and lack of creativity seems extremely apparent.  Perhaps the lack of originality in the story just couldn't get Bava to work up much enthusiasm.   He had been making these mad killer movies for about 15 years.

On the positive side, the film is nice and short.

78 minutes, written by Mario di Nardo.

1963 - COME FLY WITH ME - the old single girls on the make for a husband film.

Talk about a personal nostalgia wallow, Come Fly With Me, was a film that seemed to be in constant circulation on the CBS Thursday Night Movie when I was growing up.  I have seen pieces of this film many times.  The film was produced by Anatole de Grunwald who seemed to specialize in these multiple cast, multiple story films like The V.I.P.s and The Yellow Rolls Royce.  This cast isn't as star studded as those films, it's sort of the B squad of starlets and TV actors.

Dolores Hart is the cynical stewardess looking for a rich husband, she thinks she has scored with a European Baron played by Karl Bohm.  Bohn is actually an impoverished diamond smuggler.  If Dolores had watched more movies she would have known that Bohm played the crazed killer in Peeping Tom who stabbed women with his camera tripod.  Lois Nettleton is the stewardess who has been used and abused by married men and is staying away from nice guy Karl Malden in a very rare romantic lead part.  Nettleton was on about every TV show I every watched in the 60's and 70's.  Finally there is Pamela Tiffin who always seemed to get cast as the beautiful but wacky all American girl.  Tiffin spends most of the film trying to get Hugh O'Brian to abandon his loose moral playboy ways.

Well anyway the girls have lots of boyfriend problems as they are photographed on location in widescreen in Paris and Vienna.  Karl Malden probably comes off the best in this film.  Malden had been associated with Elia Kazan and I suppose Come Fly With Me is sort of a career comedown but hey he gets to romance a woman about 20 to 30 years younger than him.  Probably the best thing in the film is the Jimmy Van Heusen /Sammy Cahn title song but apparently they couldn't get the Frank Sinatra version so they settled for Frankie Avalon crooning away on the title track. 

Come Fly With Me was fun to watch because it is such an early 1960's film.  The weird attitudes about that sex stuff have to be heard and seen to be believed.  If a woman sleeps with a man before she is married no good will come of it.  In  Dolores Hart's case she may end up as a nun after sleeping with Karl Bohm. 

109 minutes, written by William Roberts.

2003 - THE HUNTED - a pretty good thriller from William Friedkin

A pretty decent "crazy psycho war vet on the run" film from William Friedkin who actually manages to restrain himself from his own excesses. 

Tommy Lee Jones is the guy who trains special ops soldiers for secret missions, Benico del Toro is one of his soldiers who turns out to be a nutcase who runs around killing deer hunters in northwest Oregon because he can.  It's mano a mano with some pretty tough fight scenes between the two of them.

For a director who never met an excess that he wouldn't put on film this is a fairly restrained film considering how violent it is.  The action is tough but realistic, and there are no apparent over done special effects with computer imagery.  Connie Nielsen is the hot looking FBI agent assigned to the case but Friedkin is having none of that lovely dovey stuff in his film.

The film is a fast moving hour and a half.

94 minutes.

2013 - DRINKING BUDDIES, will this be the future of movies?

Drinking Buddies is an independent feature made on a very low budget probably with a digital camera.  For a low budgeted film it has a high degree of polish mostly because digital technology has come such a long way now that a film can be shot and edited quite proficiently. 

 

 The cast is a group of actors that probably had a couple of weeks of free time and worked for minimum wage.  Their hope was that the film would find an audience,  give them a little serious actor cred in Hollywood and a piece of the profits if there were any to be made.

The film is about a couple of work buddies.  The woman played by Olivia Wilde is the secretary at a brewery.  She is best buds with a very hairy factory worker.  They eat lunch together, hit the bar together and generally do the work hangout thing.  Both of them have significant others.  She is involved with a nice intellectual boyfriend, the hairy guy is involved with a petite teacher with a nice butt.  I'm not sure what factory the writer/director Joe Swanberg every spent time in but I can guarantee you I was never in a place where there was a super hot administrative assistant with model looks who guzzles beer like a lumberjack.

What's kind of depressing about Drinking Buddies if you ignore the nonexistent and frankly uninteresting story, is the whole general vibe of this film.  As the film industry continues to fragment and digital delivery systems find their place in everyone's home we will probably get even more of this kind of stuff.  Films made to fill the increasing need to feed these on demand delivery systems to keep the general public loaded up with some sort of entertainment no matter how poor or mediocre it might be.  The film business is already drowning in lots of these sort of crummy movies with sort of low rent Hollywood actors

Written by Joe Swanberg, the running time is 90 minutes.

90 minutes

2001 - AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS - sort of a hollywood satire and a romantic comedy.

Pretty poor film considering the cast who for some reason didn't read this script.  But the fact that the director Joe Roth managed to rope in this cast is a not inconsiderable accomplishment.  Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, John Cusack and Catherine Zeta Jones are the leading players in this so called romantic comedy.  Only Catherine Zeta Jones is any fun as a self absorbed movie star and the supporting players Christopher Walken and Stanley Tucci get whatever laughs they can find.

Billy Crystal co wrote the script but the jabs at Hollywood are pretty lame for a guy had been around the acting block a few times.  The various spoofs of the movie genres are too broad and the idea that the public would be so enamored of a movie star couple that they would make their lame movies a success just isn't how the entertainment business works anymore.

Probably the only real fun in the film Christopher Walken doing his weirdo film director bit otherwise the film is just pretty lame.

102 minutes.

1980 - CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, The Village People Musical

Of course it's bad, it's a musical with The Village People top billed it couldn't be anything else but bad.  Besides the Village People, the film also stars Valerie Perrine who looks great until she opens her mouth, Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner who unsurprisingly can't act but can get away with wearing a tank top and Steve Guttenberg star of the Police Academy series. The film also features Tammy Grimes, Barbara Rush a former 1950's ingenue and June Havoc the sister of legendary stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

The producer Allen Carr had been associated with the success of the film Grease.  Hollywood though Carr had the Midas touch which allowed to produce a couple of musical flops like Grease 2 and this film.  Carr hired Nancy Walker, a comedian who had directed a few TV sitcom episodes but never a motion picture.  The Village People had been popular in the 1970's during the disco craze but this was 1980 and disco was dying on the vine like the Commodore 64.  It was the perfect storm of creative failure.

To address the "gay thing,"  yeah it's there and not even in some kind of subtext but right in the open particularly during the YMCA number featuring a chorus of men executing some of the same moves as the Busby Berkley bathing beauties of the 1930's.  Even Valerie Perrine in short and tight clothes couldn't disguise this stuff.

The bottom line even as gay camp the film kind of stinks with it's crappy original songs, strange casting of middle aged actresses and the sight of the Village People running around in their persona's of cowboy, indian, construction worker etc.

124 minutes

1978 - MESSAGE FROM SPACE, Japanese Star Wars ripoff

Released a year after the very first Star Wars film, Message From Space rehashes a lot of the same situations and characters as that film while throwing in a few silly ideas of it's own.  The film is clearly no Star Wars and can't even hit the lunatic heights of Latitude Zero. 

The planet Jillucia has been attacked by the Gavanas Empire.  The Gavanas warriors all look like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.  The Emerald Princess of the planet Jillucia sends eight Liabe Seeds into space to find eight warriors to save what's left of her people.  The Liabe Seeds look like walnuts and glow when they find the chosen warriors.  The seeds end up with a Space General played by Vic Morrow of all people and a couple of hot shot fighter pilots clearly standing in for Luke and Han.  The seeds also happen to find a guy to provide comedy relief and a feisty gal named Meia.  Sonny Chiba star of the Streetfighter series also shows up as a space guy with a sword.  This is essentially the plot of The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai).  If you've seen Star Wars you know where this is going and it doesn't disappoint.

The space ships literally look like ships and the special effects are miniatures hanging from wires while they are whisked across miniature landscapes.  The weapons used are ray guns and swords and the film is dubbed and daffy as they like to say.

Overall, Message From Space is probably a waste of time although I wasted my time watching it.  Kinji Fukasaku the director should have really known better.

105 minutes, written by Hiro Matusda. 

1977 - DAMNATION ALLEY or cheesy science fiction film time

A quick 90 minutes for a silly end of the world science fiction film.  Damnation Alley has a low rent cast consisting of George Peppard, Jan Michael Vincent and Dominique Sanda.  Sanda was a French actor who had worked with Vittorio de Sica and Bernardo Bertolucci.  Seven years later she was stuck in crap like this working for studio hack Jack Smight, I wonder what happened to her career?

The real star of the film was the armored personnel carrier the "Landmaster."  It's kind of amazing this goofy thing even ran at all since it looks like it was made out of leftover corrugated boxes.  The plot of this film has the three actors driving down some corridor of the United States that doesn't have high levels of radiation in search of other people after the end of World War III.  They pick up a kid on their journey because in films like this there is always a kid that tags along.

The film definitely has a late 70's vibe to it with it's optical printer special effects of the sky on fire and the large fake scorpions that wander around the desert.  The film is also known for Peppard's famous line, "This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches." 

But perhaps I am being a little two hard on this film.  Damnation Alley does meet the 10 year old boy requirement when it comes to movie viewing.  It has a cool car gizmo, monsters and enough action to keep their interest.  The film does move along and it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is, a "B" movie.

91 minutes.

1962 - LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is half a great film.

Considering the amount of work and the difficulties in filming in the desert with the 70mm camera back in 1962, this is an amazing film.  However I believe the problem with Lawrence of Arabia has always been the inability of Lean and his writers Michael Wilson and particularly Robert Bolt to get a focus on exactly who or what the character of  T. E. Lawrence was.

 I really can't find anything wrong with the first half of this film.  The scenes of Lawrence traveling in the desert in search of Prince Faisal and the rallying of the Arabs to attack the seaport of Aqaba are brilliantly done.  The acting, the scenery, Freddie Young's photography in the middle of the god forsaken desert are about as good as you will see in a film especially an epic like this.  The film ends somewhat satisfactory with Lawrence's return to Cairo.  I would quibble a bit with some of the first half of the film.  Lawrence is presented as if he had never traveled in the desert, the reality was that he was stationed in the middle east during World War I because of his knowledge of that part of the world.  However after the intermission the real problems with Lawrence of Arabia begin.

The second half of the film focuses on the political maneuverings of the British government and the puzzling character of Lawrence himself.  The script does not make it very clear regarding the motivation of the British government is in the middle east.  Clearly it's to have some sort of presence but what exactly?  To me, it sounds like the British and the French want to take over the middle east after World War I.  First they have to deal with Prince Faisal played with the usual "Arab horse trader" cliches by Alec Guiness spouting lots of wise old middle east cliches.   After watching the first half of a film which is essentially an adventure epic, the film stops cold for lots of talk about treaties and agreements which are probably only of interest to middle eastern history majors not the general public.

Then it's on to the utter failure to define exactly what is going on with this T. E Lawrence guy.  The film would like people to believe that he is some sort of intellectual sadist who was also a homosexual masochist with a touch of the exhibitionist in him, really?  Peter O' Toole has a great presence on screen with his deep blue eyes but David Lean has directed him to play the character like some sort of odd creepy weirdo.  The audience is also supposed to believe that Lawrence had the best interests of the Arabic people at heart but by the end of the film they come off as a bunch of clueless morons who need a nutty British officer to tell them what to do.

Lawrence of Arabia is the first of David Lean's super epics along with Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. All of these films are visually impressive and well made but they all suffer from script problems which David Lean and his writer Robert Bolt were unable to get a handle on.

228 minutes, written by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson.