2026 - THE HISTORY OF CONCRETE, on the big screen

I suppose you could classify The History of Concrete as a documentary but it's really an extended version of one of John Wilson's episodes from his HBO series How To With John Wilson.   It's well known that Wilson decided to end his HBO series after three seasons.  After that he opened a repertory theater in Queens, New York and somehow got it into his head to make this oddball film.

The premise of this alleged documentary has Wilson deciding to make a film about concrete.  We see him attempting to get financing from friends and partners who understandably have more than a few doubts.  In a particularly amusing scene, Wilson decides to use the plot structure of a Hallmark film to make his film.  This is just a jumping off point as Wilson travels around NYC and the country where he encounters one quirky person or situation after another. 

There are a couple of tattoo artists who frame skin tattoos from dead people to sell like they are posters from a museum gift shop. Then there is the only man in New York City who has a chewing gum removal business since apparently the streets of NYC are covered with people who just spit out their gum anywhere

Moving on, Wilson makes a strange visit to an Ohio town to look at the oldest concrete road which somehow finds him spending time at a driver's training school.  I also have to mention a foot race where the runners race around and around a city block endlessly. To give out any more of these vignettes would really ruin the film.  

Wilson was at the Sundance film festival with this film and got good reviews.  Unfortunately the 3000 pound monster in the room that he is competing with is the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything which is really sucking up all the air in the room.

This is a very entertaining film.  I'm not exactly sure what the point of all of this is but if you are looking for something different and frankly very funny it's well worth a look. 

The running time is 101 minutes.  

1954 - THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE, an apocalyptic tale for our times

You better keep your house clean and tidy and mow that lawn if you want to survive a nuclear bomb.  That's the message of this odd and interesting short film.  The film was sponsored (produced?) by The National Paint,Varnish, and Lacquer Association and The National Clean Up–Paint Up–Fix Up Bureau along with the Federal Civil Defense Administration. 

Three small houses are constructed near a nuclear bomb test site.  Two of them are what you would probably call today hoarder houses.  Their lawns are a mess with stuff laying around everywhere. But The House in the Middle is all clean and tidy and well taken care of.  Boom goes the nuclear device and the fire storm comes raging into the model homes.  The houses to the left and right are decimated but the house in the middle the one with the good paint job and the mowed lawn in the desert no less just has some minor peeling.  The lesson is a very clear one and the results speak for themselves.

This film has some self important narration by a guy sitting at a desk.  Is he a spokesman for The National Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer Association or The National Clean Up–Paint Up–Fix Up Bureau?  Probably the truth will never be known.  He drones on and on while the viewer is waiting to get back to more good stuff with things "blowing up real good."  Instead the film ends with some kids running around picking up trash, a real letdown even for a short informational film like this.

This film exists in two versions, black and white and color.  If you want to watch it and get some insight into how the government and apparently The National Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer Association along with The National Clean Up–Paint Up–Fix Up Bureau tried to down play a nuclear attack you can give it a look.

 The running time is 12 minutes.   

1961 - SCARLET SAILS, a Russian fairy tale

 From filmmaker Aleksandr Ptushko comes this romantic fairy tale filmed on an elaborate scale.   Ptushko loads the film up with epic photography, large scale sets and characters who are more symbolic than real people.  It kind of tends to overwhelm the story but that's the way Ptushko liked to make films.

This is a very uncomplicated love story/fairy tale.  A young girl living on a coastal town, is filled with stories from some old geezer sailor about how she will meet her true love when he sails into port on a ship with scarlet sails,  Parallel to this plot is the story of a young aristocrat who longs for a life at sea  away from the stifling environment of his rich parents and estate.  Since the film is called Scarlet Sails  he ends up becoming captain of a ship and there isn't much doubt that this twosome will meet and fall in love. 

I always enjoy Ptuhko's films.  He usually worked on a vast canvas in widescreen and with lots of special effects and amazing large scale scenes.  The word subtle was not in his vocabulary.  Putshko's early films were in the stop motion field and I believe some of them are floating around on YouTube and might be worth a look.  

Scarlet Sails running time is short which is probably a good thing especially for such a simple fable.  This film is available on YouTube in a good copy

The screenwriters were  Alexandr Yurovsky and Semyon Nagorny, the running time is 88 minutes. 

2019 - THE MASTER OF DARK SHADOWS, a look at the gothic/horror soap opera

Well you would be hard pressed to say the world really needed a documentary on the cult soap opera  Dark Shadows and it's creator and producer Dan Curtis but here it is.  Dark Shadows was a soap opera where the gimmick was that it was a gothic romantic novel in the soap opera format.  The show was created by Dan Curtis who to put it nicely was a "type A" Hollywood personality in the best tradition.

The show was cheaply done and had that soap opera touch of dragging out story lines episode after episode where essentially nothing really ever happened.  Initially filmed in black and white it had a not that bad cast which featured Joan Bennett who had been a star in Hollywood during the 1940's working for director Fritz Lang.  This show really revolved around a performer named Alexandra Moltke who played the damsel in distress.  Moltke may not have been much of an actress but she certainly had a very interesting personal life.  She was the mistress of a German millionaire named Claus von Bulow who was accused of murdering his wife by administering an overdose of insulin.  Von Bulow was put on trial not one but twice where he was eventually acquitted.

Dark Shadows struggled along for a while and was on the verge of cancellation when producer Dan Curtis hit on the idea of actually adding a horror element to the show.  Enter the character of Barnabas Collins who turned out to be a vampire and also a very popular character.  Dark Shadows was off and running while reworking just about every horror movie plot Curtis and his writers could think of.

Producer Dan Curtis

This documentary does a fairly good job of recounting the Dark Shadows phenomenon.  It was a very hot show for a while.  Dark Shadows aired in the late afternoon and was extremely popular with kids getting home from school.  This film has the usual archival film clips and interviews with the remaining cast members.  It's certainly a lot more entertaining than the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie version that showed up in 2012.  The Master of Dark Shadows  turns out to be a real nostalgia wallow for people who remember the show.

The running time is 92 minutes.

1973 - WAVES & 1970 - ERRIGAL, two films by Patrick Carey

While bouncing around the internet the other day I happened to stumble onto the Irish Film Institute and in particular a filmmaker named Patrick Carey.  Carey was a cameraman who worked In Ireland and Canada. He has credits on some major motion pictures.  Barry Lyndon, Julia and A Man For All Seasons on his resume.  Carey returned to Ireland and with his wife formed his own film company where he created short films about and around the Irish countryside. 

Waves, was photographed off the Irish coast. Carey had worked as a cameraman on David Lean's epic Ryan's Daughter and after watching this film you can see that he definitely had a big influence on Lean's picture in the seascape scenes.

Errigal  is apparently the highest point in an area of Ireland called the Derryveagh Mountains.   It's the perfect place for lots of impressive nature photography.

Waves feature no narration and Errigal has some introductory remarks at the beginning of the film after that it's narration free for the remainder of it's running time.  Both these films clock in under a half an hour.  These films are art films. The films are what you would call mood pieces or visual essays.

These films can be viewed at the Irish Film Institute website https://ifiarchiveplayer.ie/patrick-carey/  but they would probably look more impressive on a large screen format.  These films are not paced for today's ADD film viewer who are conditioned to overblown action scenes with rapid editing.

The running time for Waves is 26 minutes.  The running time for Errigal is 14 minutes.

1971 - TWO LANE BLACKTOP, an excellent cult classic

This film has a very simple premise.  Two gear heads in a Chevy sedan drive around the southwest challenging car nuts to drag races.  Eventually they end up in a coast to coast race with the owner of a GTO.  It's mano a mano with souped up cars.

  

Two Lane Blacktop has one of the most interesting casts I have seen in films.  Musicians Dennis Wilson and James Taylor are the gear heads.  Apparently the director Monte Hellman liked how they looked.  Hellman knew he did not have a couple of actors on his hands and kept their dialog to a minimum.  There is a strange girl groupie played by an actor named Laurie Bird who shuffles between these two guys.  Finally there is character actor Warren Oates as the driver of the GTO.  Oates gives an amazing performance as a braggart racing around the southwest telling one outrageous story after another.

The backgrounds and locations in the small towns and gas stations and road side dinners really help set the mood for the film, and add to a unique feel for the film.   This is one of the most impressive films of the 1970's dealing with the male persona in the American culture.

Universal Studios financed this low budget film in an attempt to get in on the action of the low cost but money making Easy Rider. However when the film was finished they hated it.  Perceptive critics at the time understood that Two Lane Blacktop was an existential masterpiece disguised as an AIP car race movie. 

The film's screenplay was by the amazing writer Rudy Wurlitzer who was also responsible for the unique nature of this story.  The running time is 102 minutes.