4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Myra Breckenridge (1970)
Hannie Caulder (1971)
Kansas City Bomber (1972)
Wow! I’ve watched and reviewed 60 Hallmark movies in a row. I then watched two more and started another one when I cracked. I’ll remember those two movies, but I need a break. So of course I watched Nukie! You know when you watch The Cinema Snob or AVGN, then you watch the movie or play the game and find out it’s not quite as bad as they made it seem. No, not here. Brad Jones wasn’t exaggerating about Nukie. Not at all.
So what is Nukie? It’s a message film chastising America while simultaneously begging for it’s help, but just being a total and complete mess of filmmaking instead. I really hope IMDb isn’t correct because it says that Nelson Mandela said this was one of his favorite films of 1988. I’m going to assume that must be wrong cause IMDb also says it premiered in South Africa in 1987, but based on the content, I think it’s probably true. Really really sad, but true.
The movie begins with two flying lights in space. They are talking about what they call “the blue planet” as they fly over it. They are two aliens called Miko and Nukie. Miko is like a two year old who spotted something shiny because he gets too close and goes careening downwards. His brother Nukie chases after him. Nukie crashes in the middle of Africa and I kid you not, Miko appears to land at the front door of the “Space Foundation” that has things that say NASA inside it. I say this because Miko is instantly captured. By that I mean he is just wheeled in like he literally landed at their front door.
This film gets stupid really quick. First, Steve Railsback’s character is introduced with this shot.
He looks happy to be there doesn’t he? Did he even know they were filming him? The funniest thing is that they use that exact same shot later in the movie when they call him at home again. Well anyways, take a look at this.
If you are going to watch Nukie, then you better get used to that shot because they will cut to it over and over again. Each time a voice that doesn’t match anyone in the lab will either tell you what is going on or that nothing is going on. Let’s get this over with.
You see that shot there? That’s Nukie using the moon as some sort of satellite to communicate with Miko in the science lab. It’s the last time you will see him do that. No, I don’t mean the last time he talks to his brother, but the last time he will use the moon. After that, they just seem to be able to hear each other. The magic of inconsistent powers that plagues this film. Wonder if anyone involved in the production of Nukie worked on Heroes.
Now Nukie knows that his brother is a prisoner of America, but he doesn’t know what that is. He asks a giraffe if it’s America. That’s the screenshot at the start of this review. In short order, Nukie runs into two little kids that are twins. This is the first time Nukie displays powers that apparently he can’t use to get to America. This time it’s to teleport. One moment he’s one place, and then suddenly next to the kids surprising them. Yet, you’ll see him walk throughout most of the movie. Considering this is a message movie, I’m sure it’s meant to match the many refugee marches that we have seen on the news. Hopefully, you haven’t actually been part of one. But I’m sure if you were and could teleport, then you would have used that handy ability instead of just walking. Not Nukie though. And this is just one of many powers Nukie will display.
Yep, when Nukie sleeps, he becomes invisible. So we’ve seen teleportation and that he can become invisible. Yet, Miko isn’t teleporting and is completely visible while we are told he is in a deep sleep. While we are frustrated that Nukie isn’t using his powers to get to America, we are also left wondering why Miko isn’t escaping.
Also, keep that shot in mind. Nukie says the “light beam transformer” is working again. Then he turns into the light he was at the beginning and flies around. Not to America mind you, but instead he lands somewhere near water.
Nukie looks into the water and sees he looks like a pregnant bag of trash. Apparently, that’s news to him. So, in the horrible Highlander sequel, they become immortal when they come to Earth. In Nukie, they look like that. Bummer for them. Then this happens.
Yep, no explanation how he got down there or how he is instantly on his feet again in a few seconds. However, we actually do get an explanation of what he was doing down there. Despite the fact that what we see happen is a storm in the nearby village, Nukie was down there causing earthquakes. Why? Who knows, but it gets him a reputation as a “bad god” by the villagers nearby. Not dumb enough for you yet? Don’t worry, there’s more. We now meet a talking monkey.
The other monkeys/apes/whatever also talk. Of course Nukie asks them about America. They point him to the monkey above who lives with the humans. Oh, then Nukie freezes someone.
I really wish a plane would fly over and dump massive numbers of Coke bottles on Nukie. No such luck, but there is plenty of product placement in this. Clearly we are meant to see these things in the science lab, then in Africa to see how the worst things about America are being brought to Africa. That, and there’s an ad for South African tomato sauce. Back in the science lab, Miko comes out to quote Scotty from Star Trek IV.
This is when we really get introduced to EDDI. That’s the computer at the Space Foundation. It’s a weird weird computer. It can put Miko to sleep, it can make one of the scientists dance, it tries to hit on a lady named Pam, and at one point I swear Miko was giving it a hand job via the keyboard, but actually he was just giving it a heart. Of course, right after getting the heart, he hits on Pam. Meanwhile, back in Africa.
Yep, don’t use that light transformation thing to save your brother, but go ahead and nearly kill people by trying to fly a chopper. That will certainly convince them you’re not a bad god. Especially after you used telekinesis to push over and explode pots. Oh, and at this point Railsback is in Africa to investigate Nukie and Glynis Johns is there as a missionary of sorts named Sister Anne. She was there at the beginning of the film. Honestly, they’re not important.
Because that crap landed on there the way it did, and because Nukie has been acting like a jackass, the twins from earlier are banished into the wilderness. Something to do with an old legend about twins and bad gods. Who cares? We need Nukie to show more powers.
After flying around for no good reason, and certainly not to reach America, Nukie lands and shoots a lightning bolt from his hand to start a fire for the kids. Then this happens.
To help the kids sleep, Nukie goes into a dance number. He also does a fireworks display. But that’s not the dumbest part. No, no, no. This is where Nukie, who can’t fly to America, flies into space, around the moon, and back to to the kids.
Meanwhile, back in the science lab.
Really, once you see Nukie fly around the moon and that guy regress to childhood, you’re numb to the rest of the movie. After Sister Anne gives us a speech about the evils of Americanization, one of the kids is bit by a cobra. Unfortunately, his brother sucks out the poison. But fortunately, this happens.
I love when the kid cries out “Nukie! Nukie! You killed my friend!” At this point you are crossing your fingers, but of course you don’t get your wish. This is when the film finally decides to wind things down, and it does it pretty fast. I will do the same.
Nukie is captured and nearly killed, but gets away. The twins are separated. One is in a hospital and the other is out and about. Nukie briefly stops at the hospital to heal the kid with his magic hand. Miko finally decides to do more than just talk to the computer and hides in a trashcan. Pam finds it and that stupid voice tells us the program was shut down and classified. Railsback goes back to Africa. At this point the one kid joins Nukie and they go on a final march to reach America. Nukie gets really tired and then Nukie finally does what we have been begging him to do all along. He tells the kid that the two of them can fly to America. Seriously, after almost 100 minutes, they finally use this power that has been paraded in front of our face the whole movie.
They don’t reach America, but land on some beach, then Nukie seems to die. The boy makes a wish that everything will just magically resolve and it does. His mom, Sister Anne, Railsback, and Miko just show up on this random beach. With Nukie and Miko reunited it’s time for them to leave, right? Well, almost. I forgot to mention that the talking monkey also shows up on the beach. They take the talking monkey with them. THE END.
If there is a worse E.T. ripoff film out there, then I’m really scared. I can’t even imagine that the E.T. porn films are more annoying than Nukie. Just a little gross.
The great character actor Warren Oates appeared in a lot of fairly obscure movies but none are as obscure as Prime Time.
With a running time of barely 70 minutes, Prime Time is a comedic sketch film that was meant to capitalize on the then-recent success of The Groove Tube, Tunnelvision, The Kentucky Friend Movie, and the first season of Saturday Night Live. According to the Unknown Movies Page, Prime Time was financed independently and was picked up for distribution by Warner Bros. After the Warner execs saw the finished film, they decided it was unreleasable so the film’s production team sold the film to Cannon Pictures, who were famous for being willing to release anything. The movie played in a few cities under the terrible title American Raspberry and then went straight to VHS obscurity.
Sketch comedies are usually hit-and-miss and Prime Time is definitely more miss than hit. The majority of the film is made up of commercial parodies but, since most of the commercials being parodied are no longer on the air, the humor has aged terribly. There is also a wrap-around story. The President (George Furth) and a general (Dick O’Neill) try to figure out where the commercial parodies are coming from and stop them before the broadcast leads to a riot. There are a few funny bits (including Harry Shearer as a stranded trucker looking for a ride and Kinky Friedman singing a song about “Ol’ Ben Lucas who has a lot of mucus”) but, for the most part, the film is epitomized by a skit where people literally get shit dumped on their head. The film’s opens with an incredibly racist commercial for Trans Puerto Rican Airlines and it’s all downhill from there.
As for Warren Oates, he appears in an early skit. He and Robert Ridgely (best known for playing Col. James in Boogie Nights) play hunters who take part in the Charles Whitman Celebrity Invitational, climbing to the top of the Tower on the University of Texas campus and shooting at the people below. It’s even less funny now than it probably was in 1977.
How did Warren Oates end up in a movie like Prime Time? Even great actors have bills to pay. As for Prime Time, it is the one Warren Oates film that even the most dedicated Warren Oates fan won’t regret missing.
Warren Oates and Robert Ridgely in Prime Time
W.C. Fields was a one of a kind genius. Fields’ unique brand of comedy was born in vaudeville, polished on Broadway, and reached perfection on the screen. There’s nothing to compare him to, his singular skewed worldview is that distinct. He made his firrst movie 100 years ago, the 1915 silent short POOL SHARKS, and today still has legions of loyal fans. I’ve just finished watching THE BANK DICK, and though it’s impossible to describe the lunacy, I’ll give it a whirl.
Egbert Souse’ (“accent grave over the E”) is a henpecked husband who spends most of his time at The Black Pussy Café. After taking over directing a movie for the drunken A. Pismo Clam, he inadvertently captures a bank robber and becomes a local hero. Souse’ is given a job as a “bank dick”, working alongside his daughter’s beau, Og Oggilby. A con artist selling shares in a “beefsteak mine” has Souse’…
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So, I just watched the trailer for Deathgasm, a new horror comedy from New Zealand and seriously, what else can I say other than…
Oh. My. God!
To be honest, when I read that this film was about a heavy metal band fighting a demon, I was kinda like bleh. I mean, that is so seriously not my type of music. (If the movie was about a DJ fighting a demon with the the power of EDM, that would be a different story.) But the trailer is just so over-the-top and crazy that I may have to give Deathgasm a chance.
Here’s the trailer for The Lobster!
It’s a film in which a government forces single people to a resort where they are transformed into animals. (Like a lobster, for instance.) The film caused quite a stir at Cannes earlier this year and personally, I can’t wait to see it for myself!
Beasts of No Nation.
Could this film be the one that nets Idris Elba his first Oscar nomination? And, considering that it will be premiering on Netflix at the same time it gets its limited theatrical release, will Beasts of No Nation change the way the films are distributed? We shall see!
Beasts of No Nation will be released on October 16th.
Fritz Lang is one of the most influential film directors of all time. Getting his start in Germany’s famed Ufa Studios, Lang became world renown for masterpieces like METROPOLIS (1927) and M (starring Peter Lorre, 1931), and his Dr. Mabuse series. Lang fled the Nazi regime in the early 30s, coming to America to ply his trade. He became a top Hollywood director particularly famous for film noir classics like SCARLET STREET (1945, a personal favorite of mine), THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953), and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1954). One of the best of these is 1953’s THE BIG HEAT.
The movie starts with the suicide of Tom Duncan, head of the police records bureau. Sgt. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in and interviews the widow. Bannion’s a family man with loving wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) and young daughter. While at home enjoying some quality time, he receives a call from a woman named Lucy claiming Duncan didn’t…
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For the past week and a half, I have been on a major Warren Oates kick. The latest Oates film that I watched was Kid Blue, a quirky western comedy that features Warren in a small but key supporting role.
Bickford Warner (Dennis Hopper) is a long-haired and spaced-out train robber who, after one failed robbery too many, decides to go straight and live a conventional life. He settles in the town of Dime Box, Texas. He starts out sweeping the floor of a barber shop before getting a better job wringing the necks of chickens. Eventually, he ends up working at the Great American Ceramic Novelty Company, where he helps to make ashtrays for tourists.
He also meets Molly and Reese Ford (Lee Purcell and Warren Oates), a married couple who both end up taking an interest in Bickford. Reese, who ignores his beautiful wife, constantly praised Greek culture and insists that Bickford take a bath with him. Meanwhile, Molly and Bickford end up having an affair.
Bickford also meets the local preacher, Bob (Peter Boyle). Bob is enthusiastic about peyote and has built a primitive flying machine that he keeps in a field. The town’s fascist sheriff, Mean John (Ben Johnson), comes across Bob performing a river baptism and angrily admonishes him for using “white man’s water” to baptize an Indian.
Bickford attempts to live a straight life but is constantly hassled by Mean John, who suspects that Bickford might actually be Kid Blue. When Bickford’s former criminal partner (Janice Rule) shows up in town and Molly announces that she’s pregnant, Bickford has to decide whether or not to return to his old ways.
Kid Blue is one of a handful of counterculture westerns that were released in the early 70s. The film’s biggest problem is that, at the time he was playing “Kid” Blue, Dennis Hopper was 37 and looked several years older. It’s hard to buy him as a naïve naif when he looks older than everyone else in the cast. As for Warren Oates, his role was small but he did great work as usual. Gay characters were rarely presented sympathetically in the early 70s and counter-culture films were often the worst offenders. As written, Reese is a one-note (and one-joke) character but Warren played him with a lot of empathy and gave him a wounded dignity that was probably not present in the film’s script.
Kid Blue plays out at its own stoned pace, an uneven mix of quirky comedy and dippy philosophy. Still, the film is worth seeing for the only-in-the-70s cast and the curiosity factor of seeing Dennis Hopper in full counterculture mode, before he detoxed and became Hollywood’s favorite super villain.
Over the course of his legendary career, filmmaker Roger Corman produced two films about the life of Al Capone. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which starred Jason Robards as the famous Chicago mobster and featured Jack Nicholson in a two-line role, is the one that everyone remembers. The other one was simply titled Capone and starred Ben Gazzara.
Capone opens in 1918, with Al Capone as a cunning young criminal who cons his way into the trust of Chicago racketeers Johnny Torio (Harry Guardino) and Frankie Yale (John Cassavetes, appearing in two scenes and probably using his salary to produce The Killing of a Chinese Bookie). The tough and streetwise Capone works his way up, becoming Torio’s right-hand man before eventually betraying his boss and taking over the Chicago rackets himself. Al rules Chicago with an iron fist and has an affair with a flapper named Iris (Susan Blakely). After killing nearly all of his enemies, Al is taken down on a tax evasion charge and, after contracting syphilis, he ends up a pathetic and lonely man, sitting by his pool and ranting about his enemies.
Despite being one of the few movies to depict Al’s final days, Capone makes little effort to be historically accurate. Instead, it’s a gangster film in the tradition of Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and both versions of Scarface, complete with nudity, tough talk, and plenty of tommy gun action. (Since this is a Roger Corman film, Capone also features Dick Miller and footage that was lifted directly from St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.) There is nothing surprising about Capone but it’s still entertaining.
Al Capone has been played by everyone from Rod Steiger to Robert De Niro to F. Murray Abraham. Ben Gazzara may not have been the most subtle Capone but he was one of the most watchable. Gazzara played Al Capone like a snarling animal, always ready to bite anyone who gets too close. My favorite Gazzara moments come at the end of the film, when a syphilitic Capone bugs his eyes and starts to rave about Bolsheviks.
Today, Capone is best remembered for featuring Sylvester Stallone in the role of Frank Nitti, Al’s right-hand man and eventual successor. One year later, Rocky would turn Stallone into a superstar and his days of working for Roger Corman would be over.
Through the Shattered Lens 