1979 - CITY ON FIRE, aka burning people

Why review a film called City on Fire?  Well it's a nostalgic look back to a time in my life when I was younger and forced to watch movies on television which were loaded with lots of commercials.  Well to get to the point, City On Fire was one on the earliest films that got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 comedic voice over treatment. 

MST3K originally aired on a Twin Cities UHF channel KTMA 23.  At the time much of the show's comedy revolved around references to Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Being a resident and younger I found all of this stuff quite funny.  Well the rest is history as they say.  The show got picked up and they were off and running.   Watching the unaltered (original) version of this movie was a chance to see if it was as dumb as it seemed in 1989.  The answer is a resounding yes.  

An extremely disgruntled employee of a large metropolitan city sabotages an oil refinery which ignites a fire that basically consumes the entire city.  Coming to the rescue is a group of television and past their prime actors trying to save the day.

And what a cast.  Henry Fonda in a where's my paycheck role is the fire chief.  Fonda probably shot this film in a couple of days since he never leaves the command center set.  Whoa, Ava Gardner one time screen queen is a television reporter and she's looking mighty rough after years of partying.  Leslie Nielson is the slimy mayor of the city.  Nielson was a Canadian by birth and that's only right because this film was shot in Canada.  Hammy actor Shelly Winters is a nurse.  

Finally there are the supposed leads of this film.  Barry Newman's career started out strong with the cult film Vanishing Point but descended into mediocre made for television films.  He's the lead playing the ER doctor running around saving people's lives.  His leading lady was played by Susan Clark who I swear was in just about every other piece of junk Universal Studios cranked out.  Seeing her in a television show was like visiting an old friend.  Clark actually started her career playing in the classics on the stage.

This post could go on and on but it's safe to say the plot, the dialog and the acting are shall we say not exactly something Harold Pinter would write.  Actually the burning city fire effects are fairy well done for this poor man's version of The Towering Inferno.

It took three writers to put this together,  Jack Hill, Dave Lewis and Céline La Frenière^.  

The running time is 106 minutes.

1957 - HELL DRIVERS, the world of macho British truck drivers

Stanley Baker is an ex-con looking for work.  He ends up getting a job at a company that hauls gravel for a road construction project.  The catch is that the drivers are expected to drive really fast in order to meet their daily quota.  A young Patrick McGoohan is the leader of the truck drivers.  He's a nasty bully and we know this because he always has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.  Peggy Cummins is the office secretary who knows where all the dirty secrets are buried at the trucking company,  Sean Connery and Gordon Jackson are also in the cast as truck drivers in smaller roles. 

As some critics pointed out at the time this was an unusual film since it was filled with lots of macho posturing and tough action.  Usually British films had a more shall we say refined approach to excitement as in the boring film The Scarlet Pimpernel.  For a change Hell Drivers was a rare film at this time that focused on the lives of the British working class.

The film was directed by a blacklisted American writer/director Cy Enfield.  Enfield relocated to England and filmed some tough crime and action films.  Enfield's big picture was Zulu which he produced with Stanley Baker.

Peggy Cummins had an aborted career in Hollywood after being recast in Forever Amber is in this film to sex it up.  Cummins most memorable film was the classic Gun Crazy.  Perennial British character actor Herbert Lom shows up playing Baker's Italian friend.  Ace cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth shot the exciting driving scenes.  Overall an entertaining action film. This film is dripping with testosterone and mano a mano fighting.  The action is rough and exciting.

The screenplay is by Cy Enfield and John Kruse, the running time is 108 minutes.

1960 - CIRCUS OF HORRORS, what passed for a horror film in the early 1960's.

Well they really went for it with Circus of Horrors.  Or went for it as about as much as they could for an early 1960's horror film,  A maniacal plastic surgeon has developed a new surgical technique that unfortunately has a side effect of disfiguring one of his patients.  He goes on the run and ends up at a defunct circus.  He gets the brilliant idea of performing plastic surgery on criminals to hide them from the police.  Lots of plot later the circus ends up in London where the plastic surgeon who now runs the circus kills off anyone who might reveal him to the police.

We get lots of scenes of women getting transformed into beautiful babes before that are knocked off by the surgeon.  For good measure there is a nasty bear in the circus who occasionally gets out of his cage so he can maul someone.  There's also a knife throwing act that doesn't end well for the woman on the receiving end of the knives.  

The film has quite a cast.  Perennial bad guy Anton Differing plays the plastic surgeon.  Donald Pleasence plays the original owner of the circus and he's not around very long.  Yvonne Romaine was in a lot of Hammer films.  She's a lion tamer who doesn't have much luck taming one of the lions.  Yvonne Monlaur played the daughter of Donald Pleasence.  I remember her as one of the future brides in Brides of Dracula.    

Circus of Horrors was photographed in very bright colors by Douglas Slocombe.  Slocombe went on to work with Steven Spielberg on the first three Indiana Jones films.  He was a major factor in the success of that series.

The screenplay was by George Baxt, the running time is 87 minutes.

1953 - PLUNDER OF THE SUN, a noir film more interesting for it's location

During the 1950's John Wayne along with his producing partner Robert Fellows formed a production company called Wayne-Fellows Productions.  Their goal was to make a series of modestly budgeted films some of which Wayne would appear in and some without him.  As with these actor created companies they had their hits and misses.  Plunder of the Sun was one of the films that was produced by Wayne-Fellows that did not star Wayne.

Glenn Ford plays a down on his luck adventurer who gets involved with a dealer of antiquities played by character actor Francis L. Sullivan.  Sullivan is looking for him to smuggle a map with the location of treasure supposedly hidden in the Zapotec temple ruins in Mexico.  Ford is channeling a Humphrey Bogart type of cynical character.  He has not one but two femme-fatale characters he has to deal with.  There is also another treasure hunter on the prowl played by a blonde haired Sean McClory.  McClory was part of John Ford's stock company and is the bad guy this time instead of some whimsical boob of an Irishman in a Ford film. 

 

Frankly the treasure hunt story isn't anything special.  The director John Farrow does a decent job moving things along but the script doesn't really do him any favors.  What this film really has going for it is the on location filming at the spectacular Zapotec temple locations and the city of Oaxaca, Mexico.  This is really the only reason to watch this film.  The locations are well photographed in black and white.  The film has a nice noir look to it.

 

The film was written by Jonathan Latimer, the running time is 82 minutes. 

1920 - NEIGHBORS, Buster Keaton's version of Romeo and Juliet

After sitting through the almost 3 hour version of Romeo and Juliet called West Side Story it is a relief to see Buster Keaton's version of Romeo and Juliet.  Let's face it West Side Story gets mighty pretentious at times for a musical.

Keaton's film is set in the courtyard of a tenement building where Buster is in love with the girl next door. As in Shakespeare's story the families are feuding and Buster and the girl are forced to see each other on the sly.  There are a lot of very impressive slapstick scenes.  The tenement courtyard isn't really conducive as a location for humor.  However Keaton and his co-director Edward Cline came up with some really amazing stuff.  The film climaxes with Buster balancing the girl on his shoulders while being chased by her family.  What makes this chase special is that Keaton is on the top of two other individuals as they are being chased down the street.  Apparently these men were part of an acrobatic act.

 

The worst thing I can say about this film is that it has some stupid blackface humor which I never care for.  I did spot Buster's father Joe Keaton playing who else but Buster's father.  Neighbors gets the job done as another version of Romeo and Juliet and Keaton does Shakespeare one better, he has a happy ending instead of all that young love suicide stuff in the original.  Let's see the Bard top that.  Neighbors is available on YouTube.

 

The film was written by Buster Keaton and Edward Cline, the running time is 18 minutes.  

1955 - A KID FOR TWO FARTHINGS, a fable about 1950's London

 One of England's best directors took on this very delicate story about the lives of people living in an area of London's East End called Petticoat Lane.  The film was shot in very garish color.  Petticoat Lane at the time was populated with Jewish immigrants.  For some reason the film barely gets into this and it's almost impossible to tell that any Jewish people live there and this is a story where the setting is very important to the film.

The story follows a young boy who has been listening to stories from an old tailor.  One story in particular is about a magical unicorn that grants wishes.  The boy  finds a young goat with only one horn and believes it to be be a unicorn.  The story focuses on the boy's fantasy about the goat and how it affects the lives of people living in Petticoat Lane.  We get a body builder who has put off marrying his girlfriend due to lack of money.  The tailor wishing for a steam machine to iron his customer's clothes. The boy's mother waiting for the return of her husband who is working abroad etc.

 

You can't fault the cast of the film.  Celia Johnson one of the mainstays of the British acting establishment plays the mother.  Diana Dors who was considered the British version of Marilyn Monroe gave a very good performance as the girlfriend waiting to get married. A very young actor named Jonathan Ashmore also does very well as the boy with the goat.  One of Carol Reed's strengths as a director was working with actors.  Orson Welles had said that Carol Reed was one of the few directors who really liked actors.

 

I think the problem with this film is that the story is maybe just a little to whimsical for it's own good.  It's also very tough to pull off a story that is told from a child's point of view.  Not to say that the film doesn't have good scenes in it.   But overall it just seems a little lacking.  Still Carol Reed was a superior director and the film for the most part is certainly worth a look.

The screenplay was by Wolf Mankowitz, the running time is 96 minutes.

1961 - WEST SIDE STORY, in 70mm on the big screen, accept no substitutes.

West Side Story is part of a 70mm film series that is being screened at our revival theater The Heights located in Columbia Heights Minnesota prior to the release of The Odyssey.  The 70mm print was in very good shape and it played to a packed house.  The film definitely has it dated aspects but this is film making at a very high level.

The film was directed and produced by Robert Wise.  The choreographer Jerome Robbins received co-director credit but was fired during the production on the film.  Apparently somewhat of an arrogant perfectionist Robbins went a month over the allotted schedule.

 

This film was a high point in the career of Robert Wise an excellent director. He had one of the best production teams in Hollywood working on the film.  Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, Daniel L. Flapp was the cinematographer, Boris Levin was the production designer,  Saul Bass was a visual consultant responsible for the titles and most importantly Thomas Stanford did an outstanding job editing this film.  These craftsmen were working at the top of their creative abilities. 

 

The film was an important role for Natalie Wood.  She had started her career as a child actress and moved into adult roles.  She was a total professional on about any film she worked on.  It's well known that she didn't like her leading man Richard Beymer during production but you would never know it watching the film.  Rita Moreno had been stuck playing stereotypical Hispanic parts early in her career.  This was her big breakout but it didn't really do much for her career.  Russ Tamblyn was more an acrobat than dancer but he didn't seem to have any problem with the strenuous musical numbers in this film.

 

West Side Story was a big commercial and critical success and an award winning film during it's initial release.  Viewed 65 years later what really stands out are the impressive musical sequences.  Steven Spielberg for some reason remade West Side Story in 2021.  It was a critical success but a commercial failure.  I suppose I'll have to give his version a look.

The running time is 152 minutes 

2025 - NOW YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON'T, the 3rd in the magicians turned crime fighters series

Amazingly another in this magicians turned do-gooders film series. The gang known as the 4 Horsemen specializes in elaborate and improbable large scale magic tricks.  In the first film Now You See Me (2013) they showed up where I believe they were sort of bad guys who eventually saw the light.  That film made a lot of money.  The Horsemen returned in a sequel called naturally Now You See Me 2 in 2016.  This time they had to stop evil Michael Caine and that guy from those Harry Potter films from doing something bad.  That film also made a lot of money.

Well it's been 9 years since the last film and the original gang is looking a little long in the tooth so some hip, younger and more importantly sexier magicians are now recruited to this magical gang.  This time they are going to steal a diamond from evil Rosamund Pike.  Rosamund Pike has carved out a career in the entertainment business playing criminals.  It seems like she is in a lot of streaming shows where she is naughty and eventually gets what's coming to here. 

 

For the most part these movies are all okay if very repetitive.  They all follow the same formula, lots of chases, some elaborate if very improbable magic tricks and finally many and I mean many plot twists kind of like in The Sting.  By now these films are what they are entertaining and very undemanding time killers.   

 

Why do these films keep getting made?  Well because they still make money, what else.

This film was written by Michael Lesslie, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Seth Grahame-Smith.  These writers specialize in this kind of light weight story telling.  The running time is 112 minutes. 

2004 - IKE: COUNTDOWN TO D-DAY is an acceptable version of the D-Day story

TV star Tom Selleck is General Eisenhower in this version of the events leading up to the World War II invasion into Normandy.  Selleck has given interviews in which he has stated that this is the performance he is most proud of.  For the most part his portrayal is decent I guess.  Frankly the problem I have with Selleck is that every time he's on screen all I can think about is Magnum P.I. goes to war.  I kept looking for Higgins and the "Lads" to show up.  

This film gets it's facts reasonably straight. It refers to the training debacle in England called "Exercise Tiger" that cost the lives of over 700 soldiers conducted prior to the invasion.  It also focuses on General Henry Miller who got drunk in a restaurant and blurted out the time and location of the invasion.  The film also covers Eisenhower's message to the allies that had him taking blame if the invasion failed that fortunately was never needed.  It's all fairly well known history stuff.  

 

The film has the usual World War II celebrities.  Winston Churchill turns up, George S. Patton gets yelled at by Eisenhower and British General Bernard Montgomery is here in all his arrogant glory.

The production of this film was on the modest end.  It was apparently filmed in New Zealand in 10 days. The film is an okay if kind of boring version of a major World War II event. 

The film was written by Lionel Chetwynd who has done a lot of these docu-dramas.  The running time is 89 minutes. 

1974 - THE CASTAWAY COWBOY, another mediocre live action Disney film

Another live action Disney film made after the death of Walt.  I really don't understand these live action films they are just so poorly conceived and executed.  It's like the Disney organization needed to keep the movie pipeline going.  For the most part they put very little thought into the screenplays of these films.  The actual film making is at best dull. 

 

The Castaway Cowboy is just so typical of these films.  James Garner is what else, a castaway cowboy. Garner washes up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai where he ends up on the farm of widow Vera Miles.  Naturally Miles has a son badly in need of a male authority figure.  Garner uses his cowboy skills to round up cattle for Miles who is going to lose the farm to evil businessman Robert Culp.  The sale of the cattle will help her pay off the mortgage on the farm.

As you can tell, this film has a fairly decent cast.  It was filmed on location in Hawaii but the plot is just so lame.  Garner has to train a bunch of natives to be cowboys and there's a cattle drive you have to sit through.  This whole film could have been set in Texas instead of Hawaii but then the actors wouldn't have had a nice vacation in Hawaii.

 

This film was directed by Vincent McEveety a proficient and for the most part decent television director.  However his feature films are mostly forgettable in particular his Disney films.  Disney live action films were always considered safe entertainment for the entire family.  However what kid ever wanted to go see boring family films with their parents?

The film was written by Don Tait, the running time is 91 minutes.  

2022 - SISU, apparently the first in a series of two films.

Probably should have watched this film first instead of Sisu: Road to Revenge.  However both films are essentially the same plot our hero kills a hell of a lot of people but he does it very creatively.  

As it turns out the guy's name isn't Sisu.  Sisu is evidently a state of courage or something. The film is set in Finland.  Our hero, Aatami Korpi digs up a load of gold.  Unfortunately for him a German patrol finds out about his stash of gold and we are off and running as Aatami fights them off with probably some of the most graphic violence possible.

Is Aatami tough?  Well at one point he takes off his shirt and his body is covered in very large scars.  He's also clearly been working out at the Helsinki YMCA because he is very buff and he's got a dog just like The Road Warrior.  Those German soldiers are clearly outclassed in the brutality department.

 

This mayhem is once again orchestrated by the director Jalmari Helander.  Heander is very skilled at staging the action stuff in his films.  He has an interesting sense of humor, the violence at times gets mighty ludicrous.

Sisu is recommended for the action movie fans who like it tough and fast.

The film was written by Jalmari Helander, the running time is 91 minutes.  

 

2026 - VOICEMAILS FOR ISABELLE, rom-com time

Zoey Deutch races around San Francisco like a "manic pixie dream girl" (do they still use that term?) bemoaning that she can't keep a boyfriend.  Never mind the fact that she looks like a movie star with makeup and a wardrobe that would be the envy of any single woman living on an assistant chef's salary.  At one point you want to scream at the television set and tell her to calm down and take some Adderall.

Well let's get the synopsis out of the way.  Zoey is a chef working for a Hitler like master chef.  She has a terminally ill sister who she talks to on the phone all the time.  When the sister passes away, Zoey continues to call her sister's phone and leave voicemails to cope with her grief.  Little does Zoey know that her sister's phone number has now been reassigned to a cute real estate salesman who listens to the voicemails and falls in love with Zoey.  He arranges to meet her and we get the usual falling in love montage between the two of them.  Will the cute guy fess up to Zoey about the voicemails so we can get to a happy ending as quickly as possible?

 

 While viewing this I could hardly believe Zoey Deutch was the same performer who did such a good job playing actor Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague.  Deutch's over the top performance would probably keep any normal guy from ever getting involved with such a disturbed nutcase.

  

The plot owes a lot to You Got Mail and the Ernest Lubitsch film The Shop Around the Corner.  I will give the writer/director Leah McKendrick credit for injecting enough humor and clever moments to make this film watchable.

The running time is 118 minutes.  

1967 - THE PANTHER WOMEN aka Las mujeres panteras

 Marching to the beat of it's own drummer is this Mexican horror film The Panther Women.  This is a very mixed bag of occult horror, female wrestlers, family curses, weird satanic ceremonies in underground vaults and for good measure a monster.

Our hero is a masked wrestler named El Angel who is clearly a copy of everyone's favorite heroic wrestler El Santo.  He even dresses like El Santo.  When El Angel isn't being called in to solve weird crimes he's in his laboratory experimenting with stuff in full wrestling apparel complete with a bulletproof and fire proof cloak he has invented

 

Well the plot is off and running as an evil sect of panther women want to destroy the heirs of a family that cursed them hundreds of years ago.  When I say panther women they are panther women, they turn into sort of panthers at 10:00 PM.   They have claws for hands and some nutty fangs in their mouths and a hair style that is supposed to look like panther ears I guess.   Frankly the makeup on the panther women is a little questionable.

 

The Panther Women is such a mixture of genres that it has already been ordained as a classic cult film which it certainly is.

The film was written by Alfredo Salazar, the running time is a brisk 88 minuts

1988 - MARRIED TO THE MOB, a gangster comedy

Michelle Pfeiffer has to play "straight man " to a bunch of eccentric performers in this gangster comedy.  She's married to a young Alec Baldwin who is working as a hit man for gangster Dean Stockwell.  But Baldwin is also having an affair with Stockwell's mistress which is a bad idea.  Stockwell kills Baldwin, but Stockwell's bigger problem is his very scary wife played by Mercedes Ruehl.  Throw in an eccentric FBI agent played by Matthew Modine who gets romantically involved with Pfeiffer.  Well it's funny stuff.

 The director is Jonathan Demme who learned his trade working for Roger Corman.  From Corman Demme learned how to mix comedy, violence and action.  He brought a light touch to this nutty version of The Godfather.  Married to the Mob was a turning point for Demme.  After this film he moved into more serious film making with The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia and the probably ill advised Beloved.  For the most part he really didn't make entertaining films like this later in his career.

 

For a woman who started her career as a beauty pageant winner Michelle Pfeiffer turned out to be a very good actor.  She manages to hold her own with this incredible cast.  Former child actor Dean Stockwell is the scary but goofy mob boss.  One minute he's hitting on Pfeiffer after her husband's funeral and the next minute he's putting down an attempted assassination.  Not to be outdone is Mercedes Ruehl who plays it very broad as Stockwell's extremely jealous wife and is definitely not a person to be trifled with.  Matthew Modine is the FBI agent keeping an eye on Pfeiffer and at times he's growling like a tiger in his pursuit of Stockwell for no particular reason.

 

This kind of story is extremely hard to pull off but everyone in this film was on top of their game.  A very funny film. 

The film was written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, the running time is 104 minutes.