Welcome to the American frontier. The time is the 1880s and men and women everywhere are heading out west in search of their fortune. While stowing away on a train, veteran cowboy Johnny Wade (Brian Keith) meets the naive Steve Hill (Gary Clarke) and becomes a mentor to the younger man. Johnny teaches Steve how to shoot a gun and, when they get off the train at Medicine Bow, Wyoming, they get jobs working on the ranch of Georgia Price (Geraldine Brooks). When Georgia and Johnny plot to overgraze the land, Steve must decide whether he’s with them or with a rival rancher, Judge Garth (Lee J. Cobb).
At the same time, Ben Justin (Charles Bronson) has arrived in town with his son, Will (Robert Random), and his new wife (Lois Nettleton). Ben is determined to start his own ranch but, because of his taciturn and stubborn personality, he alienates the Cattleman’s Association, which led by Judge Garth and Bear Suchette (George Kennedy). Will wants to help his father but Ben keeps pushing him away. It’s up to Judge Garth’s foreman, the Virginian (James Drury), to bring the family together.
Just like The Meanest Men In The West,The Bull of the West was created by editing together footage from two unrelated episodes of The Virginian. It works better for the Bull of the West because the two episodes had similar themes and the footage mixes together less awkwardly than it did in The Meanest Men In The West. But Bull of the West is still just a TV show edited into a movie. The main reason to see it is because of all the familiar western faces in the cast. Along with Bronson, Keith, Cobb, and Kennedy, keep an eye out for Ben Johnson, DeForest Kelley, and Clu Gulager.
Watching SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS is like taking a slog through a sludge-filled, rat infested sewer. It’s “a cookie full of arsenic”, with two of the most repellant characters to ever worm their way across the silver screen. It’s also a brilliant film, with superb performances from stars Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, wonderfully quotable dialog by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, tense direction by Alexander Mackendrick, and stunning black and white photography by James Wong Howe . It’s a movie that demands repeated viewings; just make sure to take a shower after each one!
Powerful Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker is dead set on destroying the relationship between his kid sister Susie and up-and-coming jazz guitarist Steve Dallas. To achieve this goal, he uses his toady, press agent Sidney Falco. Sidney, forever trying to curry favor with the great Hunsecker, pimps out cigarette girl Rita to rival columnist Otis Elwell, in exchange for…
(Lisa is currently in the process of cleaning out her DVR! It’s going to take her forever but, with the help of Dexedrine and energy drinks, she is determined to get it done! She recorded 1967’s Fathom off of FXM on April 3rd of this year!)
Fathom is a spy spoof, one that was made the height of the initial James Bond craze. It’s very much a late 60s film, in everything from the way the film looks to the overly complicated storyline to the film’s cultural attitudes. This is one of those films that you know was probably considered to be “naughty” when it was released but, seen today, it’s all rather quaint. There’s no nudity, there’s no cursing, and there’s very little violence. However, it does feature in Raquel Welch in a lime green bikini and you just know that, when this film came out, there were probably people bemoaning it as the end of civilization. “What happened to the movies that you could take the entire family too!?” they probably wailed. That’s the way history works. What was once daring now seems remarkably innocent.
I watched the film last night but I’d be lying if I said I could follow the plot. I think that was intentional on the part of the filmmakers. Fathom satirizes the spy films of the late 60s by taking all of their familiar elements to their logical extreme. Spy thrillers feature unexpected twists and turns. Fathom has a new twist every 10 minutes or so. Spy thrillers feature sudden betrayal and double agents. With the exception of Raquel Welch, literally no one in Fathom is who they initially claim to be. It becomes exhausting to try to keep up. In many ways, Fathom plays out like an old serial. Every few minutes or so, there’s another cliffhanger. Oh no, Raquel Welch is on an out-of-control motorboat! Oh no, the bad guys have got Raquel Welch on an airplane! Oh no, Raquel Welch is being chased by a bull and she’s wearing a red dress! ¡Olé!
Raquel plays Fathom Harvill, who works as a dental hygienist except for when she’s touring Europe as a member of the U.S. parachute team. She’s recruited by some spies to help track down a nuclear triggering mechanism, one that is being hidden somewhere in Spain. The Scottish secret service just wants her to parachute into a villa owned by a mysterious American named Peter Meriweather (Anthony Franciosa) and plant a recording device. Things don’t go quite as smoothly as they should and soon, Fathom’s going from one extreme situation to another.
(Even though Peter is supposed to be a suave, James Bond-type, Franciosa gives such an oddly intense performance that it feels like a dry run for his later work in Dario Argento’s Tenebrae. Interestingly enough, in Argento’s film, Franciosa’s character is named Peter Neal. Is it possible that Peter Meriweather changed his last name?)
But really, the entire plot is just an excuse to get Raquel into that lime green bikini and she totally owns the moment. Raquel Welch is one of my favorite of the old film stars because she never apologized for who she was. She had the body, she was sexy, she knew it, and she used it to her advantage. Of course, when seen today, it’s disappointing that Fathom spends the entire movie being rescued by men but then again, I imagine that just the idea of a woman being a secret agent was revolutionary in 1967. Actually allowing her to get out of situations on her own might have made heads explode. If Fathom were made today, Fathom would at least get one scene where she gets to kick some ass, Angelina Jolie-style.
Anyway, Fathom is an enjoyably silly spy film. Don’t worry about trying to follow the plot and, instead, just enjoy it as an over-the-top time capsule. It doesn’t get more 1967 than Fathom.
Since I started with Rainbow, I might as well do a video by Dio next.
This video is bizarre. Not only because of Ronnie James Dio watching children through a crystal ball…
but because this music video seems to exist in a universe parallel to Young Turks by Rod Stewart where the kids happen to be metal-heads.
Unlike a lot of the videos I do on here, this one comes with info from the book I Want My MTV. The following is from the director Daniel Kleinman about Ronnie James Dio and this video:
Ronnie Dio was a funny little guy. I made a video called “Rock n’ Roll Children” for him. He had two huge minders with him. Because Ronnie was very short–about five-foot-four–they told us we weren’t allowed to allude to his height. But there’s a type of spotlight in America called a “midget.” It’s a very small spotlight, and it has a different name in England. We were getting ready to do a take and the gaffer shouted, “All right, bring on the midget!” The minders thought we were referring to Dio. They went out of their minds.
The video starts with a couple of young lovers who are on the outs that decide to take refuge from the rain in a shop. What they didn’t know is that the shop is Dio’s. I like to think that he waits in there in the dark for runaway metal-heads.
The kids spot someone with a cop looking for them so they go hide in Dio’s closet. This transports them inside Dio’s crystal ball. Dio flips his “Open” sign and pulls down the blinds. Two are his max for a trip through the maze of conformation confrontations.
Inside, we get a far-shot of the maze.
After getting separated, we get the first confrontation. It’s Christmas time, or the time when parents get you things they want you to wear instead of letting you be yourself.
Inside is a sweater that is a far cry from the kind of thing she wants to wear.
Then we get a nice little touch that Kleinman didn’t have to do, but I’m glad he did. The mirror not only has lets her see the sweater over her, but it changes her appearance in general to the established norm that these kids don’t fit into.
Next we cut back to the other kid who has to face the double whammy of a We’re Not Gonna Take It reference by Twisted Sister after he picks up his guitar on the bed and a Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper reference in the form of an abusive looking version of “Captain Lou” Albano.
Jeez! I’ve lost count of the number of 80’s music videos that seem to be inspired by German Expressionism.
You’re not welcome here.
Now she faces a teacher because if you’ve already referenced We’re Not Gonna Take It, then why not I Wanna Rock.
Sorry kid, you’re not the kind of help we want at our store.
Metal-heads don’t play basketball. Get out here!
Get out of here wannabe T-Bird.
I’ll kick you out of my home if you don’t cut that hair!
The kids are finally reunited and get ambushed by actors from the previous scenes, so Dio smashes his crystal ball to let them out.
They leave Dio’s shop and seem to be reunited to fight for their right to be themselves.
Then Dio flips the “Closed” sign back to “Open.”
I’m a little confused here. Does that mean Dio has a supply of crystal balls in there in case more kids wander in? Does he magically repair the ones he breaks? Did Dio cause the rain in the first place to rescue the kids? Was he invisible in there or was he really just cloaked in darkness? Also, again, why does this feel like the dark metal version of Young Turks? So many questions!
The video was produced by Simon Fields who there are some stories about in the book I Want My MTV. In particular, the ones that involve Madonna. I’ll just quote the one from director Daniel Kleinman about him in general.
Simon Fields and I used to share a house together. Simon has an edge of the wheeler-dealer about him, but he’s also the most charming man in the world, which is quite a quality for a producer. I had the looks and no charm, and he had the charm and no looks. I thought he had a face like the back of a bus. I mean, how he got Janice Dickinson into bed, I do not know.
I know these aren’t the best pictures, but here’s a comparison between Daniel Kleinman and Simon Fields as they appeared in Billboard magazine back then.
Daniel Kleinman
Simon Fields
Simon Fields
Simon may or may not have slept with Madonna as well. I’ll include those quotes when I do one of her videos where he was involved.
Crystal Lujan was the casting director for the video. She’s worked on at least 100 music videos. She’s also worked in casting in related fields like feature films and television.
The Meanest Men In The West may “star” Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller may be credited as being one of the film’s two directors but don’t make the same mistake that I made. Don’t get too excited.
There was once a TV western called The Virginian. Starring James Drury as a ranch foreman, The Virginian ran for nine seasons on NBC. A 1962 episode, which was written and directed by Sam Fuller, featured Lee Marvin as a sadistic outlaw who kidnapped The Virginian’s employer, a judge played by Lee J. Cobb. Five years later, another episode features Charles Bronson as a less sadistic outlaw who kidnapped the Judge’s daughter.
The Meanest Men In The West mixes scenes from those two episode with western stock footage, a bank robbery that originally appeared in The Return of Frank James, an intrusive voice-over, and an almost incoherent prologue, all in order to tell an entirely new story. Now, Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin are brothers and rivals. After Marvin snitches on Bronson’s plan to rob a bank, Bronson blames his former friend, The Virginian. In order to get the Virginian to come to his hideout, Bronson kidnaps Cobb’s daughter. The Virginian manages to convince Bronson that he didn’t betray him, just to arrive back at the ranch and discover that Cobb has been kidnapped. Meanwhile, Bronson and his gang set off after Marvin and his gang. It ends with Charles Bronson, in 1967, shooting at Lee Marvin, who is still in 1962.
The Meanest Men In The West is so clumsily edited that the same shot of Charles Bronson holding a gun is spliced into a dozen different scenes. Filmed on different film stocks, the Bronson scenes and the Marvin scenes look nothing alike and, since the two episodes were filmed five years apart, James Drury literally ages backwards over the course of the film.
The Meanest Men In The West is for Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin completists only. I think Bronson and Marvin are two of the coolest individuals who ever existed and even I had a hard time making it through this one. If you do watch it, keep an eye out for a young Charles Grodin, thoroughly miscast as a tough outlaw.
Can I milk Twin Peaks some more? I hope so, because I’m going to do 30 days of surreal–or at least weird–music videos. Twin Peaks being back on TV is totally the reason I’m doing this. It’s not just a flimsy excuse to do some videos I’ve wanted to do for awhile that share a similar quality.
You probably recognize the name of the director. That is thee Storm Thorgerson. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, then some of the album covers below should look familiar.
He also did the cover for the album this song is on called Bent Out Of Shape.
What you may not know is that he also directed around 50 music videos. I would love to know if mvdbase is accurate when it comes to the release date of this video. I say that because according to them, it first aired in August of 1983. If you’ve already listened to the music video, then you might of heard something that was new in 1983: dialog. According to mvdbase, Love Is A Battlefield by Pat Benatar aired in September of 1983, making this the first music video that used dialog. Then again, if the music video for Dead Ringer For Love by Meat Loaf & Cher did come out in 1981, as it appears it did, and wasn’t part of the 1981 movie Dead Ringer, then that one proceeds both of them by two years.
The last time I did a Rainbow music video, it was for Since You’ve Been Gone where I spent most of the time talking about the different covers of Roger Glover’s song that have been done over the years. I didn’t really talk too much about Rainbow.
Groups like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple are household names. The first is obvious, but if you need proof of the second one, then just watch 2016’s Hush, and you’ll notice that the female lead is wearing purple for the length of the movie. Hush being one of Deep Purple’s best songs. It was also used in I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). They may have also done something about smoke and water.
Rainbow is what I think of as a pet project for a bunch of heavy metal icons of the 70s and 80s. The group was created by Richie Blackmore after moving on from Deep Purple. He joined forces with Ronnie James Dio’s band Elf, and soon Rainbow was born with Dio fronting the group. He eventually left, and would take Ozzy Osbourne’s place fronting Black Sabbath. Then Graham Bonnet came in for a short period of time. This song was done with Joe Lynn Turner on vocals. He would front the group till their first break-up in 1984. You can think of him as the MTV-face for Rainbow. That amuses me since between Ronnie James Dio, Graham Bonnet, and Joe Lynn Turner, I would pick Bonnet in a heartbeat to usher my group into the age of music videos.
The video itself features a woman being locked in a room while her boyfriend gets hypnotized onto the sets of a music video. In the end, someone gets caught in the dreamworld. I’m not exactly sure who it is: the male lead or the psychiatrist. I wanna say it’s the second one, but the body moves so fast that I can’t tell. Also, as the boyfriend is freeing the woman, you can still hear water in the background.
My favorite part of this music video is what I have to imagine is an in-joke about music videos. One of the things the guy says is that the band he sees is always playing the same song. A surreal music video for a good song is like a repeating dream–except swap sleep for watching MTV and swap repeating for a video in heavy rotation.
There seems to be some disagreement between whether this aired on MTV in the first place. I’m inclined to believe that it did. Blackmore apparently said it was banned. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t ever aired. The reason this seems to be in dispute is that a Dr. Radecki said the following in a report on MTV for the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV):
“Street of Dreams” by Rainbow has a psychiatrist dominating a man through hypnosis intermixed with male-female violent fantasies including a bound and gagged woman.
Then again, based on the Wikipedia article on him, he doesn’t sound like the most reliable source on anything. However, he had to have seen it somewhere back when it would have come out. It’s kind of funny that about thirty years later, he would get arrested and sentenced for one to two decades for an opiates scandal. He appears to have had a checkered past in the field of medicine in general. In other words, it sounds like he sorta became the psychologist in the very video he chastised. It’s coming across weird stuff like this that helps to keep me motivated to continue doing these posts.
Anyways, enjoy the video! It is there. It’s just one of those videos that doesn’t like to show the thumbnail when you embed it.
California. The 1870s. Sheriff Pearce (Ben Johnson) boards a train with his prisoner, an alleged outlaw named John Deakin (Charles Bronson). The train is mostly full of soldiers, under the command of Major Claremont (Ed Lauter), who are on their way to Fort Humboldt. The fort has suffered a diphtheria epidemic and the soldiers are supposedly transporting medical supplies.
However, it’s not just soldiers on the train. There’s also Gov. Fairchild (Richard Crenna) of Nevada, his fiancée (Jill Ireland), the Reverend Peabody (Bill McKinney), and a conductor named O’Brien (Charles Durning). As the train continues on its journey, it becomes obvious that all is not as it seems. People start to disappear. A man is thrown from the train. Two cars full of soldiers are separated from the train and plunge over a cliff. There is also more to Deakin than anyone first realized and soon, he is the only person who can bring the murderers to justice.
In both real life and the movies, Charles Bronson was the epitome of a tough guy, so it’s always interesting to see him playing a more cerebral character than usual. There are some exciting and surprisingly brutal action scenes, including a scene where Bronson fights a cook (played by former professional boxer Archie Moore) on top of the speeding train, but Breakheart Pass is more of a murder mystery than a typical action film. If Louis L’Amour and Agatha Christie had collaborated on a story, the end result would be much like Breakheart Pass. Bronson spends as much time investigating as he does swinging his fists or shooting a gun. It’s not a typical Bronson role but he does a good job, showing that he could think as convincingly as he could kill. Acting opposite some of the best character actors around in the 70s, Bronson more than holds his own.
Apparently, back in 1975, audiences were not interesting in watching Bronson think so Breakheart Pass was a disappointment at the box office and it is still not as well known as Bronson’s other films. However, even if you’re not already a fan of the great Bronson, Breakheart Pass is worth discovering.
Considering that he was one of the most prolific pulp artists working in the 50s and 60s, there’s not much biographical information on Victor Prezio. He worked in all genres but he’s best known for the work he did for the “men’s magazines” for the era. He died in 1976, when he was only 52 years old.
Welcome to the American frontier. The time is the 1880s and men and women everywhere are heading out west in search of their fortune. While stowing away on a train, veteran cowboy Johnny Wade (Brian Keith) meets the naive Steve Hill (Gary Clarke) and becomes a mentor to the younger man. Johnny teaches Steve how to shoot a gun and, when they get off the train at Medicine Bow, Wyoming, they get jobs working on the ranch of Georgia Price (Geraldine Brooks). When Georgia and Johnny plot to overgraze the land, Steve must decide whether he’s with them or with a rival rancher, Judge Garth (Lee J. Cobb).
The Meanest Men In The West may “star” Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller may be credited as being one of the film’s two directors but don’t make the same mistake that I made. Don’t get too excited.
California. The 1870s. Sheriff Pearce (Ben Johnson) boards a train with his prisoner, an alleged outlaw named John Deakin (Charles Bronson). The train is mostly full of soldiers, under the command of Major Claremont (Ed Lauter), who are on their way to Fort Humboldt. The fort has suffered a diphtheria epidemic and the soldiers are supposedly transporting medical supplies.
Through the Shattered Lens 