Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Toshiro Mifune Edition

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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 lets the visuals do the talking!

104 years ago today, the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune was born in Qingdao, Shandong, China, which was under Japanese occupation at the time.  After working as a photographer and as an assistant cameraman, Mifune made his acting debut in 1947, playing a bank robber in Snow Trail.

Mifune would go on to become an international superstar, appearing in hundreds of films before his death in 1997.  Sixteen of those films would be directed by Akira Kurosawa and Mifune’s performances in Kurosawa’s yakuza and samurai films would go on to inspire actors the world over.  When Sergio Leone adapted Yojimbo into A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood based his performance on Mifune’s performance in the original.  George Lucas would later create the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi with Mifune in mind.

In honor of the man and his career, here are

4 Shots From 4 Films

Drunken Angel (1948, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Throne of Blood (1957, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Yojimbo (1961, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Shogun (1980, directed by Jerry London)

Music Video of the Day: The Sun and the Rain by Madness (1983, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This song from Madness is about walking and standing in the rain so, of course, the music video features the members of the band wrecking havoc in Suggs’s ear and Lee Thompson with a rocket strapped onto his back.  The video also features several fans of the band hanging out withe Madness and a clever parody of Bob Dylan’s music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues.

The store at the start of the video was “Holts,” a shoe shop in Camden Town.  The name of the store has since been changed to British Boot Company.

Who directed this video?  I can not find a credited director but Dave Robinson seems like a good suspect since he directed the majority of Madness’s early videos and this video does have the same light-hearted style that he brought to his other videos for the band.  But Madness also worked with other directors during this period, including Nigel Dick and Chris Gabrin so who knows for sure?

Enjoy!

Marked Man (1997, directed by Marc F. Voizard)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

How much keeffe is in this film?

Miles O’Keeffe!  But that’s still not enough.

Not even the presence of Roddy Piper is enough to make Marked Man work.  Piper plays an auto mechanic who kills the drunk driver who ran over his girlfriend.  Piper is sent to prison where he learns how to kickbox because why wouldn’t the authorities teach a prisoner foot-to-foot combat?  After ten years as a model prisoner, he is forced to run for his life after he witnesses a murder committed by two corrupt guards.  Piper jumps over the fence and, after finding a clue while breaking into one of the guard’s house, heads to Albany.  Miles O’Keeffe is the mercenary who is hired by the bad guys to track Piper down.  Piper not only has O’Keeffe after him but also every cop in the northeast.

When a movie has got both Roddy Piper and Miles O’Keeffe in the cast, there’s no excuse for it to be as boring as Marked Man.  Roddy Piper gets to kickbox and show off his wrestling moves but he spends most of the movie hiding in the back of pickup trucks and running away from prison guards.  For some reason, instead of just heading for the border and freedom, Piper sticks around America and tries to prove that the dead prisoner was killed by corrupt guards.  The final confrontation between Piper and O’Keeffe is as anti-climatic as everything else in the movie.  Maybe it would have been more effective if there had been a shared history between Piper’s prisoner and O’Keeffe’s bounty hunter but instead, they confront each other as strangers and their final confrontation feels impersonal.

Considering the cast and the story’s B-movie potential, Marked Man is a definite missed opportunity.

Music Video of the Day: When We Was Fab by George Harrison (1988, directed by Godley & Creme)

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George Harrison would have been 81 years old today.  Sadly, he was taken from us at far too young an age.  It only seems appropriate to honor him with today’s music video of the day.

When We Was Fab, which appeared on Harrison’s album Cloud Nine, was one of the many songs that the surviving Beatles wrote about their time as members of the world’s greatest band.  For the music video, Ringo Starr made an appearance, as did old Harrison friends like Elton John and Jeff Lynne.  It has been rumored that Paul Simon also appears in the video but directors Godley & Creme have both denied that Simon was present during filming.  Godley & Creme were known for their technically innovative music videos and I remember that the effects in When We Was Fab, as simple as they seem today, were considered to be ground-breaking when the video was first released.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Shot In The Dark by Ozzy Osbourne (1986, directed by Andy Morohan)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Shot In The Dark was the ninth and final track on Ozzy Osbourne’s 1986 album, The Ultimate Sin.  The video features a group of attractive women looking for a good time, which, in this video, means going to an Ozzy show.

Director Andy Morahan was a director who worked with everyone who was anyone in the 80s.  He directed music videos for Pet Shop Boys, Wham, Luther Vandross, The Human League, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, Wang Chung and others.  Later he would move on to feature films and direct the infamous third Highlander film.

Enjoy!

Smokey And The Good Time Outlaws (1978, directed by Alexander Grasshoff)

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After meeting a talent agent while spending a night in jail, aspiring singer J.D. (Jesse Turner) and his best friend, The Salt Flat Kid (Dennis Fimple), decide to leave Texas for Nashville.  J.D. wants to be a star and the Salt Flat Kid is a ventriloquist who doesn’t go anywhere without his dummy.

On the way to the Grand Old Opry, they pick up two women (Dianne Sherrill and Marcia Barkin), one of whom was engaged to marry the idiot nephew (Gailard Sartain) of Nashville’s Sheriff Leddy (Slim Pickens).  The sheriff sets out after the two men, planning on sending them back to Texas.

Despite the title and the subplot about the sheriff searching for his nephew’s former future wife, Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws doesn’t have much in common with Smokey and the Bandit.  J.D. has a Burt Reynolds-style mustache but he’s not a bandit.  He is just someone who wants to be a star and most of the movie is about him and the Salt Flat Kid tying to make their way onto the stage of the Grand Old Opry.  Helping them out is an eccentric woman named Marcie (who is played by Hope Summers, who older viewers will immediately recognize as having been Clara Edwards on The Andy Griffith Show).  When J.D. can’t get an audition, it occurs to him to just rush out on stage and start performing.

This film was a dream project for Jesse Turner, who was a real-life country musician.  He co-wrote and produced the film, as well as starred in it.  Jesse Turner wasn’t much of an actor but he’s surrounded by a good supporting cast.  Slim Pickens steals the show as a more menacing version of Buford T. Justice but he’s not in the film nearly enough.  Dennis Fimple is likable but appears to be too old to be known as “the Kid.”  You can tell this is a movie because no one is creeped out by the Kid’s ventriloquist dummy.

Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws was made for the Southern drive-in circuit and it is good-natured, even if the story is never that interesting.  Country music fans of a certain age will appreciate it.

4 Shots From 4 Sam Peckinpah Films

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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 lets the visuals do the talking!

Today would have been Sam Peckinpah’s 99th birthday.  During his time, there was no greater hellraiser in Hollywood so here are 4 shots from 4 of my favorite Peckinpah films.

4 Shots From 4 Sam Peckinpah Films

Ride the High Country (1962, directed by Sam Peckinpah, Cinematography by Lucien Ballard)

The Wild Bunch (1969, directed by Sam Peckinpah, Cinematography by Lucien Ballard)

Straw Dogs (1971, directed by Sam Peckinpah, Cinematography by John Coquillon)

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973, directed by Sam Peckinpah, cinematograph by John Coquillon)

Smokey Bites The Dust (1981, directed by Charles B. Griffith)

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Sheriff Hugh “Smokey” Turner (Walter Barnes) of Cyco County, Arkansas is determined to capture teenage car thief and prankster, Roscoe Wilton (Jimmy McNichol).  Roscoe is determined to disrupt the high school homecoming dance by abducting the homecoming queen, Peggy Sue (Janet Julian).  Peggy Sue is, at first, determined to escape from Roscoe but changes her mind as they flee from her father, who just happens to be Sheriff Turner.

From producer Roger Corman, Smokey Bites The Dust is an 88-minute car chase film where the most spectacular getaways and crashes are lifted from other Roger Corman productions.  Eagle-eyed viewers will spot footage from Eat My Dust, Grand Theft Auto, and Moving Violations.  In order to explain why the cars keep changing from scene to scene, the chase moves from county-to-county where both Roscoe and Sherriff Turner inevitably end up ditching (or crashing) their old car and then stealing a new vehicle to continue the pursuit.

That’s not much of a plot so the run time is padded out with several subplots.  A local moonshiner tries to sell his special brew to a group of Arabs.  Peggy Sue’s boyfriend, Kenny (William Forsyth, in one of his first films), joins in the chase.  Dick Miller flies around in a helicopter and also gets involved in the chase.  None of it makes any sense and none of it is particularly amusing but Roger Corman undoubtedly made a lot of money pushing this thing into Southern drive-ins and letting people assume it was some sort of a sequel to Smokey and the Bandit.

Most of the acting is pretty bad.  When it comes to being an incompetent sheriff, Walter Barnes is no Jackie Gleason.  Jimmy McNichol comes across as being seriously disturbed.  Of the main cast, Janet Julian is alone in giving an appealing and naturalistic performance as Peggy Sue.  While Julian (who has since retired from acting) never became the star she deserved to be, she is remembered for her later turn as Christopher Walken’s lawyer and girlfriend in 1990’s King of New York.

Music Video of the Day: Come As You Are by Nirvana (1992, directed Kevin Kerslake)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Kurt Cobain would have been 57 years old today.

Come As You Are was Nirvana’s first video after the monster success of Smells Like Teen Spirit.  Despite the commercial success of the previous song and video, Cobain has not enjoyed working director Samuel Bayer so, when it was time to do the Come As You Are video, photographer Kevin Kerslake was hired to direct.  At the time, Cobain told Kerslake that he just wanted the video to pay homage to the cover of Nevermind and to feature a lot of “purples and reds.”  Cobain and the band were happy with the way that Kerslake visually interpreted their song and he subsequently directed many more videos for the band.

This video was shot in a park in Hollywood Hills.

Enjoy!

Woman They Almost Lynched (1953, directed by Allan Dwan)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

At the height of the Civil War, the small town of Border City, Missouri has declared itself to be neutral ground.  Mayor Delilah Courtney (Nina Varela) announces that anyone who enters her town looking to recruit for either the Union or the Confederacy will be arrested and will face the possibility of being hung from the noose in the middle of Main Street.

That doesn’t stop Charles Quantrill (Brian Donlevy) from coming to town.  Quantrill is a former Confederate officer who now terrorizes the Arkansas/Missouri border with his gang of thieves.  Accompanying Quantrill is his wife, Kate (Audrey Totter), who once lived in Border City and who still enjoys singing a song at the saloon.

Another new arrival is Sally Maris (Joan Leslie), who comes down from Michigan to help her no-account account, Bitterroot Bill (Reed Hadley), run his saloon.  Sally attempts to bring some order to the rowdy saloon, which makes an enemy out of Kate.  When Bill is killed in a gunfight, Sally takes over the saloon and soon, she is being challenged first to a fight and then to an actual duel by Kate.  With the disapproving Mayor Courtney watching all of the action from her office, it is obvious that one of the women is eventually going to be taken to the noose in the middle of the street but which one?

This is one of the best of the many B-westerns that Allan Dwan directed in the 1950s.  Though much of the emphasis is on the usual western action — Quantrill wants to take over a mine, there’s a Confederate spy in town, and both Frank and Jesse James appear as supporting characters — the film is really about the rivalry and eventual partnership between a group of strong-willed woman who aren’t going to let anyone tell them how to live their lives.  As tough as Kate is, Sally proves to be stronger than she looks and, in the end, they realize that they are stronger working together for a common goal than trying to tear each other down.  Audrey Totter and Joan Leslie both give sexy and tough performances as Kate and Sally.  They’re equally believable hanging out in a saloon, flirting with a cowboy, or drawing guns on each other in the middle of the street.

Along with taking a strong stand against vigilante justice, Woman They Almost Lynched features an exciting stage coach robbery, an intriguing story, and two very interesting lead characters.  It’s a western that deserves to be better known.