No sooner had I finished writing my post about the trailer for The Devil Within than another horror trailer dropped. This is for a Korean anthology film, one that features several different tales of terror.
The title of the movie? Urban Myths: Tooth Worms.
AGCK!
Even the title is scary!
The trailer for the upcoming horror film, The Devil Within, dropped today and….
….actually, it doesn’t look that bad.
If nothing else, the trailer seems to suggest that the film tries to put a different spin to the usual exorcism film. Does everyone get a chance at the exorcism? Do all other exorcists eventually team up, Avengers-style? Who knows? To be honest, there’s no evidence from the trailer that they do but that’s still something I would like to see. If you’re a filmmaker looking for an idea for your next horror movie, jot that down and give me “suggested by” credit. Thanks!
Anyway, here’s the trailer:
When you wish upon a star….
Well, I guess you get another live action remake of a beloved Disney classic. In this case, the remake is Pinocchio. Now before anyone rolls their eyes at another Disney remake, it should perhaps be considered that this one is being directed by Robert Zemeckis and it stars Tom Hanks as the lonely puppet maker. To be honest, this seems like a good fit for Zemeckis’s style of storytelling and Tom Hanks seems like a good fit for Geppetto and he’s got experience playing a toy so he should at least understand Pinocchio’s point of view.
The film is set to drop on Disney+ on September 8th and I know at least one member of the TSL crew will be watching. At the very least, this will probably be a little bit better than the Roberto Benigni film.
Here’s the trailer!
by Mort Kunstler
True Adventures was a pulp magazine that ran from 1955 to 1971. Each issue featured stories about manly men doing manly things and they were all supposedly true. Today, True Adventures not because of the stories but the very pulpy and often very violent covers.
Here, for our adventurous readers, is just a sampling of the covers of True Adventures:
by Basil Gogos
by Doug Rosa
by Earl Norem
by Joe Little
by John Leone
by Norm Eastman
by Robert Schulz
by Victor Olson
by Victor Prezio
1973’s Breezy tells the story of two seemingly different people.
Breezy (Kay Lenz) is a teenage girl who moves to California after she graduates high school. Breezy is intelligent and free-spirited. She’s also practically homeless, moving from bed to bed and never getting tied down to anyone. Many people assume that Breezy is a runaway but her parents died a long time ago and her aunt approves of Breezy pursuing her own happiness. Many people also assume that Breezy is a hippie but Breezy doesn’t consider herself to be one and doesn’t even smoke weed. She may hang out with hippies and runaways but, for the most part, Breezy just wants to be herself, free of all of society’s labels and hang-ups.
Frank Harmon (William Holden) is a fifty-something real estate agent. He drives a nice car. He owns a lovely home. He has money but he’s also freshly divorced and obviously in love with his best friend, Betty (Marj Dusay). Most people would consider Frank to be a part of the establishment, though it soon becomes clear that he’s as disillusioned as any long-haired protestor. Frank has reached the point of his life where he looks at everything that he has and he asks, “Is this all there is?”
Together …. they solve crimes!
No, actually, they fall in love. Breezy ends up outside of Frank’s house after escaping a creepy man who had earlier offered her a ride. When she sees that Frank is getting into his car and driving into the city, she decides that Frank can give her a ride too. She also decides to keep hanging out near Frank’s house. Though Frank is initially annoyed by Breezy’s presumptuousness, he still allows her to spend the night when a sudden storm comes up. Frank and Breezy become unlikely friends and eventually, even more. But Frank continues to worry about the difference in their ages, especially when his friends find out that Breezy is living with him.
Really, Breezy is a film that should not work and it does run the risk of turning into a typical midlife crisis fantasy, with Breezy having no concerns beyond keeping Frank happy. That the film does work is largely a testament to the performances of William Holden and Kay Lenz and the sensitive and nonexploitive direction of Clint Eastwood. When screenwriter Jo Heims first wrote the script for Breezy, she envisioned Eastwood in the role of Frank. Reading the script, Eastwood said that he could relate to Frank’s disillusionment but that he felt he was too young for the role. Instead, Eastwood directed the film and he cast William Holden as Frank. Breezy was Eastwood’s third film as a director and the first in which he didn’t star. It was also nobody’s idea of what a Clint Eastwood film would be and it struggled at the box office. That said, it’s a film that has a legion of devoted fans. Paul Thomas Anderson is one of those fans and even worked a few references to the film into Licorice Pizza.
Holden and Lenz both give excellent performances, with Lenz playing Breezy as being free-spirited but not foolish. Holden, meanwhile, captures Frank’s boredom without giving a boring performance. (It helped that, while Holden was the right age of the role, he still retained enough of his good looks and his movie star swagger that it was believable that Breezy would find him attractive.) Wisely, the film doesn’t make the mistake of idealizing either Frank or Breezy. They’re both complex characters, with their own individual flaws and strengths. At the end of the film, one can be forgiven for having doubts about whether or not they’ll still be together in a year or two but one does definitely wish them the best, no matter what happens.
Though politically conservative, Breezy reveals that Clint Eastwood had some sympathy for the counter-culture. Eastwood has always straddled the line between being a member of establishment and being a rebel. Like Breezy and Frank, he belongs to both worlds.
The 1979 film, Escape from Alcatraz, opens with Clint Eastwood and a group of policeman taking a barge across San Francisco Bay, heading towards Alcatraz Island. As any fan of Eastwood’s 1970s film work can tell attest, this is hardly the first time that Eastwood has gone across the bay to Alcatraz. In The Enforcer, Eastwood went to Alcatraz to kill a bunch of hippies and save the Mayor of San Francisco. It wasn’t easy but, fortunately, Clint found a rocket launcher.
However, in Escape from Alcatraz, it’s hard not to notice that Clint is wearing handcuffs. And the cops beat him up while traveling to the island. And once they reach the prison …. oh my God, they’re making Clint Eastwood walk down a prison hallway naked and shoving him into a cell! Is this some early form of 60 Days In or could it be that Clint Eastwood is playing a convict? After starting the 70s in the role of Dirty Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood ended the 70s playing one of the people who Callahan would have arrested. (Or, if we’re going to be totally honest, shot.)
Specifically, Clint Eastwood is playing Frank Morris. The real-life Morris was a career criminal. He had a genius IQ but he loved to steal and he spent most of his known life in prison. He was specifically sent to Alcatraz because he had a history of escaping from other prisons. Because Alcatraz was sitting on an island in the middle of the difficult-to-cross San Francisco Bay, it had a reputation for being inescapable and, indeed, every previous escape attempt had failed and led to someone getting gunned down by the guards. Morris, of course, immediately started to plot his escape. Working with three other prisoners, Morris managed to tunnel his way out of the prison. (Famously, Morris and his accomplices also managed to create papier-mâché dummy heads, which were left in their beds and kept the guards from realizing that they had escaped from their cells.) No one knows whether Morris and his accomplices managed to cross the bay, though I think most people would prefer to think that they made it to freedom. Our natural tendency is to root for the underdog, even if they are a group of car thieves fleeing from a federal prison.
For the most part, Escape from Alcatraz sticks to the facts of Morris’s escape. Of course, because Frank Morris is played by Clint Eastwood, there’s never really much doubt as to whether or not he’s going to figure out a way to get out of the prison. There’s not a prison in the world that could hold 70s-era Clint Eastwood!
The casting of Eastwood, however, adds another layer to the story because Eastwood, especially at the time that Escape from Alcatraz was made, was the ideal representation of individualism. From the minute the smug warden (played by Patrick McGoohan) tells Morris that it will be impossible to escape from Alcatraz, it becomes obvious why Morris has no other option but to escape. The warden thinks that he can tell the prisoners what to do, when to talk, and what to think. The warden expects his prisoners to live and act like monks who have taken a vow of silence but, instead of offering the hope of salvation, the warden is more concerned with exercising his own power. The warden doesn’t flinch at taking away the rights of the prisoners, even after his actions lead to an otherwise harmless prisoner having a mental breakdown and chopping off his own fingers. As such, Escape from Alctraz is not just another mid-budget, 70s action movie. Instead, it’s the story of the State (represented by McGoohan) vs the Individual (represented by Eastwood). It’s a film that says that yes, Frank Morris may be a criminal but he still has a right to his humanity. Society may want to forget about the prisoners in Alcatraz but Frank Morris has no intention of being forgotten,
Escape from Alcatraz was Eastwood’s final collaboration with the director Don Siegel. Siegel instinctively understood how to best use Eastwood’s laconic presence. Siegel previously directed Eastwood in Dirty Harry, another film that featured a conflict between the State and the Individual. Perhaps even more importantly, Siegel directed the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, another film in which one man struggles to maintain his humanity and his sense of self. In many ways, both Alcatraz’s warden and the alien body snatchers are portrayed as having the same goal. They both want to eliminate free will and human emotion. In the end, the viewer doesn’t just want Morris to escape because he’s Clint Eastwood. Instead, the viewer knows that Morris has to escape before he’s robbed of his soul.
(Sadly, Siegel and Eastwood had a bit of a falling out during the direction of Escape from Alcatraz, with Siegel apparently buying the rights to the story before Eastwood could purchase them in order to make sure that Siegel and not Eastwood would be credited as the film’s producer. This led to a rift between the two men, one that was wasn’t healed before Siegel’s death in 1991. However, even after their rift, Eastwood continued to say that everything he knew about directing, he learned from watching Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. Unforgiven was dedicated to both of them.)
Escape from Alcatraz is an enjoyable and entertainingly tense action film, one that convinces us that prison is Hell and which also features one of Eastwood’s best performances. (Like many actors, Eastwood seems to have more fun playing a rule-breaking rebel as opposed to an upholder of law and order.) The supporting cast is also great, with McGoohan turning the warden into a truly hissable villain. Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin all make good impressions as Morris’s accomplices while Roberts Blossom will break your heart as a prisoner who just wants to be allowed to paint.
Personally, I don’t know if Frank Morris survived his escape attempt but I know that Clint Eastwood definitely did.
Paul Newman as San Francisco Police Detective Harry “Dirty Harry” Callahan?
Today, it sounds unthinkable that the outspokenly liberal Newman could ever have been a contender for the role of Harry Callahan, a police detective who is quick with a quip but even quicker on the trigger. As everyone knows, Clint Eastwood played Harry and, as a result, he finally became as big of a star in the United States as he already was in Europe. Today, it’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Clint Eastwood torturing the Scorpio Killer for information and then announcing himself to be “all torn up about his rights.” Just try to imagine Paul Newman snarling as reflexively as Clint Eastwood did upon hearing that the whiny guy in the liberal office taught constitutional law at Berkeley. Try to imagine Paul Newman calling someone “a punk” or bragging about the power of his gun. It can’t be done.
And yet, as hard as it is to believe, Clint Eastwood was not the first choice for Harry Callahan. In fact, Eastwood apparently wasn’t even on Warner Bros.’s list of contenders when they initially bought the rights for the script that would eventually become Dirty Harry.
Written by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink, that script was originally called Dead Right and it took place in New York. In the original script, Harry Callahan was world-weary, veteran New York cop, in his 50s and just a few months away from retirement. In the original script, Harry pursued a serial killer named Travis. When Warner Bros. bought the script in 1969, they viewed it as being a potential vehicle for Frank Sinatra with Irvin Kershner directing. (Kershner is probably best remembered for later directing The Empire Strikes Back.) As was his habit, Sinatra immediately demanded rewriters. John Milius wrote three drafts, each one expanding on the idea of Callahan as a rebel against the system. Terrence Malick (yes, that Terrence Malick) was also brought it and came up with a storyline in which the serial killer would specifically be targeting mobsters and other people who had escaped justice. Somewhere, amongst all the rewrites, the action moved from New York to Seattle.
After all that effort, why didn’t Frank Sinatra play Harry Callahan? Reportedly, he broke his hand and, as a result, he was told that he wouldn’t be able to hold a microphone or a gun or anything else while it was healing. Since you really can’t have Harry Callahan without a gun, Sinatra left the project and Irvin Kershner went with him.
While trying (unsuccessfully) to recruit Sidney Pollack as their new director, Warner Bros. searched for a new leading man. Reportedly, the script ended up on John Wayne’s desk. Wayne later said that he turned down the role because he felt the violence was gratuitous. Other sources indicate that John Wayne actually was interested in the role but that the studio didn’t consider him to be contemporary enough. (After the success of Dirty Harry, Wayne would play a similar cop character in McQ and would provide a hint of what Dirty Harry starring John Wayne would have been like.) Burt Lancaster turned down the role because he didn’t like the script’s politics. Lee Marvin and Robert Mitchum both turned down the role because they refused to play cops. George C. Scott reportedly refused the role because of the violence. Marlon Brando was considered but, probably wisely, was never approached.
Having been turned down by all of the older tough guys, Warner Bros. went with the younger tough guys. Steve McQueen turned down the role because he had already played a cop in Bullitt and he felt the critics would accuse him of repeating himself. (He was probably right.) Paul Newman refused the role on political grounds but, as he often tended to do whenever he turned down a role, he also recommended another actor for the part. That actor was Clint Eastwood who was an old friend of Newman’s and who, obviously, had no problems with the film’s politics.
(Let’s take a moment to give some respect to Paul Newman, who was reportedly one of the nicest guys in Hollywood.)
Once Eastwood was on board, his requested that his friend and frequent collaborator, director Don Siegel, be hired to direct the film. The script was again rewritten, moving the action to San Francisco and making Harry into a far less talkative character. The serial killer known as Travis became the serial killer known as Scorpio. The idea of the killer targeting criminals was abandoned at Siegel’s insistence, though Eastwood liked the idea enough to use it for Dirty Harry’s first sequel, Magnum Force.
Audie Murphy
Originally, James Caan was approached for the role of Scorpio but Caan turned it down (which, of course, left him free to play Sonny in The Godfather). Perhaps most intriguingly, Audie Murphy was offered the role. Murphy was one of the most decorated combat soldiers of World War II. He had gone from the Army to appearing in movies. By the time Dirty Harry went into production, Murphy was largely appearing in B-westerns and was as known for his temper as his films. (He was acquitted of attempted murder shortly before filming began on Dirty Harry. Murphy said that his anger issues were largely due to the trauma of World War II and he was one of the first prominent people to openly speak about what has since become known as PTSD.) Murphy undoubtedly would have been an intimidating Scorpio but he died in a plane crash before he could accept or refuse the role.
Instead, the role went to Andrew Robinson, who an unknown at the time. He was also, in real life, a pacifist who had difficulty not flinching whenever he had to fire a rifle in the film. That said, Robinson gave a brilliantly unhinged performance as Scorpio and reportedly had to get an unlisted telephone number because of all the angry and threatening phone calls that he received after the movie was released.
Now, I have to admit that I personally find the idea of Frank Sinatra/James Caan or, for that matter, a John Wayne/Audie Murphy police procedural to be kind of intriguing. And goodness know, I would certainly like a chance to see Marlon Brando doing the “do you feel lucky, punk?” speech. In the end, though, I think things turned out for the best.
Today, we celebrate the 92nd birthday of screen icon Clint Eastwood.
Of the many characters that Eastwood has played, Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan is one of the best-remembered and is still popular to this day. When he first appeared, Dirty Harry was so willing to break the rules to bring the Scorpio Killer to justice that some critics accused 1971’s Dirty Harry as being a “fascist work of art.” Callahan answered those critics in 1973’s Magnum Force, when he faced off against true fascism in the form of a group of vigilante motorcycle cops. The motorcycle cops thought Harry would be happy to join them in their crusade to murder every criminal in San Francisco.
As Harry puts it when he runs into them in a parking garage. “I’m afraid you’ve misjudged me.”
Though Magnum Force never reaches the heights of the first Dirty Harry, the scene below is a classic and the line, “All our heroes are dead,” is one of the most important of the 70s. (And, for that matter, the 2020s as well!)
Happy birthday, Clint Eastwood!
The Delta Force (1986, directed by Menahem Golan)
93 years ago, on this date, Menahem Golan was born in Israel. After serving in the Israeli Air Force, Golan would attend the Old Vic Theater School in London before returning to Israel and launching his legendary career in film. With his cousin, Yoram Globus, and using Roger Corman as both a mentor and a inspiration, Golan would go on to producer and direct some of the most successful films in Israeli history. Eventually, Golan and Globus would purchase Cannon Films and would be responsible for some of the greatest (in a fashion) films of the 80s.
Though Golan was best-known as a producer, he never stopped directing. Today, on what would have been his birthday, Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse Trailers presents 6 trailers for 6 Golan films!
After finding great success in Israel, Golan first attempted to break into the American market with this biopic about the head of the Mafia’s Murder, Inc., Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. Though the budget was low, Golan managed to get a name — in this case, Tony Curtis — to play the lead role. As you can tell, the trailer wanted to make sure that you knew that this film was about Lepke.
2. Enter the Ninja (1981)
This was, I think, the first film that Golan directed after buying Cannon Films. How great is Enter the Ninja? It stars Franco Nero as a ninja! Seriously, you don’t get much greater than that. Anyway, as I think I’ve stared on this site before, Enter the Ninja is a lot of fun and Franco Nero was the sexiest ninja of the 80s.
3. The Delta Force (1986)
Chuck Norris was a Cannon mainstay and it seems appropriate that he starred in The Delta Force, a film that was very important to Golan. The Delta Force was essentially a remake of an 1977’s Operation Thunderbolt, an Israeli film that earned Golan his only Oscar nominations when it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. The Delta Force did not receive any Oscar nominations but it has a legion of fans. Our own Jedediah Leland has frequently described this film as being the greatest ever made. I don’t know if I’d go that far but still, it is always satisfying to see Chuck blow up the bad guys at the end of the movie.
4. Mack the Knife (1989)
Menahem Golan directs a musical! Unfortunately, this film has never received a proper DVD or Blu-ray release. Though it was a Cannon production, Golan and Globus had a falling out (one that was, at least partially, caused by Golan spending money on films like Mack The Knife) and Golan ended up distributing this film himself. I find the trailer to be intriguing. The film itself is on YouTube so I’ll watch it someday …. maybe.
5. Hit The Dutchman (1992)
Much like Lepke, this film is about a real-life gangster. In this case, the gangster was Dutch Schultz. Interestingly enough, the trailer suggest that Al Capone was active in New York whereas everyone knows that, though Capone did get his start in New York, he didn’t become a prominent gangster until he relocated to Chicago.
6. Crime and Punishment (2002)
Finally, this adaptation of the great novel was a bit of passion project for Golan. He filmed it in Russia in 1993 but, because of financial difficulties, it was not given a release until 2002.
What goes up must come down
What goes ’round must come ’round
What’s been lost must be found
As the song says, what goes up must go down. The 1977 film, The Incredible Melting Man, is about a man who went up and then came back down and …. AGCK! What a mess!
The Incredible Melting Man opens with the launch of the first manned spaceflight to Saturn. That’s right, Saturn. The film takes place in the 70s, when mankind was still lucky to just be able to make it to the Moon and back. But somehow, this rocket and its three passengers are going to fly all the way to Saturn, land, and then return to Earth. And speaking of landing, how exactly do you land on a planet that doesn’t have a solid surface? And, even more importantly, why do all of the shots of Saturn look like the sun? How come there aren’t any rings? WHAT IS GOING ON!? Could it be that the rocket went off track and went to the sun instead? It’s possible, I suppose. Mistakes cannot be avoided, much like a spinning wheel turning around.
Anyway, the rocket eventually returns from Saturn or the sun or wherever it went. Unfortunately, most of the crew is dead. The only survivor is Steve West (played by Alex Rebar). Apparently, West was so physically strong that he was able to survive whatever killed the other astronauts. Unfortunately, West was still infected with Saturn microbes and now he’s slowly melting. Steve doesn’t react well to that news so he escapes from the hospital and goes on a poorly-defined rampage. He kills a nurse. He rips the head off a fisherman. He kills two old people who were trying to steal oranges. Steve loses an eye. His arm falls off. He leaves behind a trail a radioactive goo. Apparently, Steve has to consume human flesh to slow down the melting process but make no mistake, there’s no way he’s not going to end a puddle of goo.
Steve’s friend, Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning), decides to try to track down Steve so that he can get Steve to stop eating people and just melt away in peace. Ted can’t even tell the local authorities what he’s doing because that information is classified and Ted’s boss is like a total jerk. Ted does tell his wife, Judy (Anne Sweeny). Judy and Ted then get into an argument because Judy forgot to buy crackers the last time she went to the grocery store. Some may scoff that the lengthy and not very relevant cracker discussion was included just to pad this film’s running time but I think it adds a level of reality to the proceedings. People like crackers, even when they’re looking for a friend who is melting.
Anyway, The Incredible Melting Man is a weird little movie but I always kind of enjoy it. As played by Burr DeBenning, Dr. Ted Nelson is one of the least likable heroes to ever show up in a movie. He always seems to be annoyed about everything. Even when Steve West is killing people, Ted mostly just seems to be annoyed by the fact that he’s having to go outside to deal with it. Fortunately, Ted’s unlikability makes it fun to watch as absolutely nothing goes right for him over the course of the film. Ted is beyond surly and Steve is beyond melty. As bad as most of the dialogue and the acting may be, the melting man makeup is actually really effective and Alex Rebar does about as good a job as anyone cast as a melting man could. Let’s give this one two and a half star and wonder how many people in 1977 saw it on a double bill with Saturday Night Fever.
Through the Shattered Lens 