Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977, directed by David Greene and Gordon Davidson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

What if, instead of being shot by Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald had survived and been put on trial for the murder of President John F. Kennedy?

That’s the question asked by this television film.  John Pleshette plays Lee Harvey Oswald while Lorne Greene plays his attorney, Matt Weldon and Ben Gazzara plays the prosecutor, Kip Roberts.  The film imagines that the trial would have been moved to a small Texas town because Oswald presumably wouldn’t have been able to get a fair trial in Dallas.  While Roberts is forced to deal with his own doubts as to whether or not Oswald actually killed the President, Weldon is frustrated by Oswald’s paranoid and self-destructive behavior.  Oswald insists that he’s a patsy and that he was framed by “them” but he refuses to tell Weldon who they are.

With a running time of four hours, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald is a courtroom drama that tries to be fair to both sides and which ends with a frustrating cop-out.  While Weldon presents all of the evidence that real-life conspiracy theorists frequently cite in their attempts to prove Oswald’s innocence, Roberts makes the case that was presented in the Warren Commission.  Unfortunately, the film ends up trying too hard to avoid coming down on one side or the other and just proves that it’s impossible to be even-handed when it comes to conspiracy theories around the Kennedy assassination.  It’s either buy into the idea that it was all a huge conspiracy involving mobsters and intelligence agents or accept that it was just Oswald doing the shooting as a lone assassin.  Trying to come down in the middle, as this film does, just doesn’t work.

John Pleshette does a good job as Oswald and bears a passing resemblance to him.  Because the movie refuses to take a firm stand on whether or not Oswald’s guilty, the character is written as being a cipher who claims to be innocent but who, at the same time, also refuses to take part in his defense.  Pleshette plays up Oswald’s creepy arrogance, suggesting that Oswald was capable of trying to kill someone even if he didn’t actually assassinate JFK.  Both Greene and Gazzara are convincing as the two opposing attorneys, even if neither one of them really does much more than offer up a surface characterization.

The majority of the movie takes place in the courtroom, with a few flashbacks to Oswald’s past included to keep things from getting too stagnant.  When the film was made, people were still learning about the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination and The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald might have had something new to tell them.  Seen today, the majority of the film’s evidence seems like old news.  The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald never escapes the shadow of later films, like Oliver Stone’s JFK.

It’s hard not to regret that The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t willing to come definitively down on one side or the other.  Instead, it ends by telling us that we’re the jury and that the only verdict that matters is that one that we come up with.  They could have just told us that at the start of the movie and saved us all four hours.

White Rush (2003, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Five friends, while on their annual camping trip outside of Salt Lake City, stumble across a cocaine deal gone bad.  They think that all of the drug dealers have been killed and Chick (Louis Mandylor), who happens to be a police detective, suggests that they should take the cocaine for themselves and sell it to the local drug lord.  Everyone agree but Eva (Tricia Helfer), a former addict who is so disgusted by Chick’s plans that she runs away from the group.

While she’s stumbling through the wilderness, Eva runs into Brian Nathanson (Judd Nelson), the sole survivor of the drug deal.  Determined to get his cocaine back, Brian convinces Eva to help him out by explaining to her that there’s an even worse drug dealer than him who also wants the cocaine.  In fact, that even worse drug dealer has already sent a sexy assassin named Solange (Sandra Vidal) to kill everyone involved in the botched drug deal.  The obvious solution would be to just return the drugs to Brian and let him take the fall but Chick and his friends aren’t that smart.

A film starring Judd Nelson and directed by Mark L. Lester, the man behind such classics as Class of 1984 and Commando?  Sounds pretty good, right?  Actually, the film isn’t bad.  Or, at least, it’s better than you’d expect from a low budget, direct-to-video Judd Nelson movie.  Even though the plot may be full of holes that you could drive a semi-trailer truck through, Mark L. Lester doesn’t waste any time getting the story rolling and he keeps the action moving.  Lester knows better than to pretend that this movie is anything more than just a B-action movie.  Judd Nelson gives one of his better performances as Brian, playing him as if John Bender grew up and became a drug dealer.  (We all knew that was going to happen, no matter what happened at the end of The Breakfast Club.)  Finally, Sandra Vidal is sexy and convincingly lethal as Solange.

White Rush is currently available on Tubi and Prime.

The Strangers in 7A (1972, directed by Paul Wendkos)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Artie Sawyer (Andy Griffith) is a man who no one respects.  Having recently been fired from his long-time job, he’s forced to take a job as a superintendent for an apartment building in New York.  The tenants don’t think much of him.  His wife, Iris (Ida Lupino), is getting tired of his self-pity.  The only person who seems to like Artie is Claudine (Susanne Benton).  The young and beautiful Claudine approaches Artie in a bar and, after flirting with him, reveals that she needs a place to stay.  Artie agrees to let Claudine check out Apartment 7A.  At the apartment, Claudine rolls around in the bed, dances seductively, and then reveals that she has three male friends who are going to be staying in the apartment with her.  Billy (Michael Brandon), Virgil (Tim McIntire), and Riff (James A. Watson, Jr.) all served in Vietnam together and now they need to crash at the apartment for a while.  Artie can either let them stay or they can reveal to his wife that he was at a bar, trying to pick up young women.

Led by the psychotic Billy, the three men are planning on robbing the bank next door.  When Artie, who is having doubts about whether or not it was a good idea to let four obviously unstable people live rent-free in his building, discovers their plans, he and Ida are taken hostage.  When the bank robbery goes wrong, Billy tries to use the hostages and a bomb as leverage for his escape from the police.

As far as films about bank robberies goes, The Strangers in 7A is no Dog Day Afternoon.  While it’s interesting to see the usually confident Andy Griffith play a loser, he never seems like enough of a loser that he would actually risk a job that he clearly needs just because Claudine flashed a little leg at him.  Even when he’s playing a character who is down on his luck, he’s still Andy Griffith.  Along with the lead role being miscast, the bank robbers are too generic to really be credible or threatening.  Susanne Benton is sexy as the femme fatale and Ida Lupino is sympathetic as Artie’s wife but otherwise, The Strangers in 7A is forgettable.

The Strangers in 7A was made for television.  At the time, Andy Griffith was still trying to escape being typecast as Mayberry’s amiable Sheriff Taylor.  Griffith was a convincing villain in movies like Pray For The Wildcats and Savages but he’s just not believable as a loser in this film.

Cinemax Friday: Not Of This Earth (1988, directed by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Since today is director Jim Wynorski’s birthday, I want to review one of his early films.

A remake of the Roger Corman classic, Wynorksi’s Not Of This Earth stars Traci Lords as Nadine Story, a nurse who works in the office of Dr. Rochelle (Ace Mask) and who has a boyfriend named Harry (Roger Lodge) who is also a cop.  (The leads to jokes like, “Harry called.  He said he left his nightstick with you last night.”)  Dr. Rochelle’s main patient is the mysterious Mr. Johnson (Arthur Roberts), who dresses in all black, always wears sunglasses, and who needs frequent blood transfusions.  When Dr. Rochelle takes a look at Mr. Johnson’s blood, he sees that Mr. Johnson has a strange blood disease that has apparently never been discovered before.  Dr. Rochelle sends Nadine over to work at Mr. Johnson’s home as his private nurse.  Of course, Mr. Johnson is not of this Earth.  His planet is dying and, as Nadine discovers, he is on Earth to search for a new supply of blood.

Wynorski’s version of Not Of This Earth follows the exact same plot of the Corman original, right down to having a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman fall victim to the alien’s bloodlust.  (In the original, the salesman was played by Dick Miller.  In the remake, he’s played by Michael Delano.  Miller does not even get a cameo in the remake of Not of this Earth, which is surprising considering it was still a Corman production and Wynorski previously cast Miller in Chopping Mall.)  They’re both enjoyable movies, especially if you’re in the mood for something that won’t require much thought.  The main difference between the the two versions of Not of this Earth is that the Wynorski version features a lot more nudity and that it makes no pretense towards being anything other than a comedy.

This was Traci Lords’s first role in a non-adult film and she knocks it out of the park.  The scandal surrounding her adult film career has always overshadowed the fact that, for all of her notoriety, Traci Lords was actually a pretty good actress who could handle comedy.  While the deliberately campy humor in Not of this Earth is no one’s definition of subtle, Lords shows good comedic timing and, most importantly, she delivers her lines with a straight face and without winking at the audience.

Wynorski later said that the movie was so popular on video that he was able to buy a house with his share of the profits.  Not of this Earth is a classic Wynorski production, featuring everything that made Jim Wynorski a late-night cable and direct-to-video favorite in the 90s.

Music Video Of The Day: Love Ain’t No Stranger by Whitesnake (1984, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

After you watch enough Whitesnake videos, you can be excused for wondering if David Coverdale spent the entire 80s walking in the rain.  In this one, he’s searching for the woman that he loves.  He finds her but she pulls a fast one and manages to get away from him while he’s being driven away.

The woman in this video is NOT played by Tawny Kitaen so I’m not sure if it even qualifies as a real Whitesnake video.  The song, however, is definitely a Whitesnake song and it’s still one of their most popular.

Enjoy!

Yuma (1971, directed by Ted Post)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

At the start of this made-for-TV western, experienced lawman Dave Harmon (Clint Walker) has just been appointed the new marshal of Yuma.  He’s served as the marshal of several towns, all of which were near rowdy army bases.  He’s a laconic, no-nonsense lawman who is quick with a gun and smart enough to negotiate with the local Indian tribes.

As soon as Harmon rides into town, he comes across the King Brothers (Bruce Glover and Bing Russell) making trouble.  He kills one of the brothers in a saloon and then takes the other one to jail, where he’s mysteriously gunned down during a midnight jailbreak.  It turns out that there’s a third Harmon brother, cattle baron Arch King (Morgan Woodward), and he rides into town looking for revenge.  He gives Harmon a set amount of time to find and arrest his brother’s killer or Arch and his men are going to return to town and kill Harmon.

Fortunately, Harmon has a witness to the jailbreak murder.  Andres (Miguel Alejandro) is a young, Mexican orphan who sleeps at the jail.  He witnessed the murder but he only saw that the killer was wearing what appeared to be army boots.  Harmon’s investigation brings him into conflict with the local army base’s commandant (Peter Mark Richman) and also leads to the discovery of a plot to defraud the local Indians.

The main problem with Yuma is that it was clearly designed to be a pilot for a weekly television series and, as a result, it introduces a lot of characters who don’t get much to do.  There’s a lot of talk about how Harmon is searching for the men who earlier killed his family but that subplot is never resolved.  (If Yuma had been picked up as a weekly show, maybe it would have been.)  Yuma has to set up the premise for a potential show and tell a complete story in just 70 minutes.  That’s a lot to handle and Yuma ends up feeling rushed and incomplete.

As a B-western for undemanding fans of the genre, it’s acceptable.  Clint Walker was a convincing lawman and the film was directed by Ted Post, who knew how to stage a gunfight.  But it’s not really a western that you’re going to remember for long after you watch it.

Ghost (2020, directed by Anthony Z. James)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Tony Ward (Anthony Mark Streeter) is a former London gangster who, on the morning of his release from prison, discovers that his wife would rather hide in her flat than talk to him, that his son, Conor (Nathan Hamilton), is going to head down the same path as his father if he doesn’t learn to control his temper, and that his former partner in crime (Russell Barnett) has no interest in helping Tony go straight.

Bearing no resemblance to the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore/Whoopi Goldberg Oscar nominee of the same name, Ghost is a British film that was shot, on location in London, with an iPhone.  Ghost is a deceptively simple film.  Until the final few minutes, there’s not even much violence.  Ghost, though, really isn’t about crime and gangsters.  It’s about a man who is trying to move on from his past and who can only watch as his son makes some of the same mistakes that he made.  Ghost is about whether or not anyone can ever start their lives over again.  It started out as a short film but director Anthony Z. James was so impressed with Streeter’s performance that he expanded the film to feature length.  As a result, there are a lot of scenes in Ghost that feel like they’re there to pad out the running time.  At the same time, James is proven correct in that Streeter gives a very strong performance as the haunted Tony.  Throughout the film, Tony is constantly struggling to not give into his old ways and Streeter does such a good job of communicating that conflict that even scenes of him nervously walking around London feel compelling.

Considering it was shot on an iPhone, Ghost looks great.  Anthony Z. James has a good visual eye and the movie was filmed in some of the most haunting areas of London.  Usually, I visit London two or three times a year.  In 2020, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, I have only been able to visit once and I don’t know when I’ll be able to visit again.  Watching Ghost made me homesick in the best way.

 

Music Video of the Day: I Forgive It All By Mudcrutch (2016, directed by Sean Penn and Samuel Bayer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This was one of Tom Petty’s final songs and it’s also one of his best.  This somber song features Petty looking back on his own past and forgiving his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship while he was growing up.

The video was shot on location in Los Angeles and simply features a man driving while thinking about the past.  Of course, in the video, that man is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, who grew up not in Los Angeles but in Wales.  However, Hopkins has spoken of having a similarly difficult childhood to Petty’s.

This video was directed by actor Sean Penn, who was a friend of Petty’s, and Samuel Bayer.  Bayer has directed several music videos but will probably always be best known for directing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Enjoy!

The Pledge (2001, directed by Sean Penn)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) is a detective who, on the verge of retirement, goes to one final crime scene.  The victim is a child named Ginny Larsen and when Ginny’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) demands that Jerry not only promise to find the murderer but that he pledge of his immortal soul that he’ll do it, it’s a pledge that Jerry takes seriously.  Jerry’s partner, Stan (Aaron Eckhart), manages to get a confession from a developmentally disabled man named Jay Wadenah (Benicio del Toro) but Jerry doesn’t believe that the confession is authentic.  When Wadenah commits suicide in his cell, the police are ready to close the case but Jerry remembers his pledge.  He remains determined to find the real killer.

Even though he’s retired, the case continues to obsess Jerry.  He becomes convinced that Ginny was the latest victim of a serial killer and he even buys a gas station because it’s located in the center of where most of the murders were committed.  Jerry befriend a local waitress named Lori (Robin Wright) and, when Lori tells him about her abusive ex, he invites Lori and her daughter to stay with him.  Lori’s daughter, Chrissy (Pauline Roberts), is around Ginny’s age and when she tells Jerry about a “wizard” who gives her toys, Jerry becomes convinced that she’s being targeted by the same man who killed Ginny.  Even as Jerry and Lori fall in love, the increasingly unhinged Jerry makes plans to use Chrissy as bait to bring the killer out of hiding.

The Pledge was Sean Penn’s third film as a director.  As with all of Penn’s directorial efforts, with the notable exception of Into The Wild, The Pledge is relentlessly grim.  Freed, by virtue of his celebrity, from worrying about whether or not anyone would actually want to sit through a depressing two-hour film about murdered children, Penn tells a story with no definite resolution and no real hope for the future.  The Pledge is a cop film without action and a mystery without a real solution and a character study of a man whose mind you don’t want to enter.  It’s well-made and it will keep you guess but it’s also slow-paced and not for the easily depressed.

The cast is made up of familiar character actors, most of whom probably took their roles as a favor to Penn.  Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Noonan, Patricia Clarkson, Sam Shephard, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, and Mickey Rourke have all got small roles and they all give good performances, even if it’s sometimes distracting to have even the smallest, most inconsequential of roles played by someone familiar.  Most importantly, The Pledge actually gives Jack Nicholson a real role to play.  Jerry Black is actually an interesting and complex human being and Nicholson dials back his usual shtick and instead actually makes the effort to explore what makes Jerry tick and what lays at the root of his obsession.

Though definitely not for everyone, The Pledge sticks with you and shows what Jack Nicholson, who now appears to be retired from acting, was capable of when given the right role.

Music Video of the Day: You Don’t Know How It Feels by Tom Petty (1994, directed by Phil Joanu)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Believe it or not, this song was considered to be controversial when it was first released.  Even in 1994, there were apparently people shocked to discover that some musicians not only smoked weed but openly admitted it.  The song actually played on some radio stations with the words “roll’ and “joint” blanked out.  On MTV, the lyric was changed to “let’s hit another joint.”  I’m not sure how “let’s hit another joint” is somehow less pro-weed than “let’s roll another joint.”

This video was directed by Phil Joanou, who also did several videos for U2 and who directed the cult classic, Three O’Clock High.  The woman in the video is Raven Snow, who is apparently best known for appearing in several episodes of Red Shoe Diaries.  Remember Red Shoe Diaries?

I miss Tom Petty.  Don’t we all?