The Eric Roberts Collection: Beyond The Trophy (dir by Daniel J. Gillin)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Does this plot sound familiar?

There’s a gang war brewing. An undercover cop is sent into one of the gangs and ends up falling in love. Another cop is involved in the undercover operation but he’s actually working for one of the mob bosses. And then there’s a Russian mob boss who keeps complicating things. The whole thing plays out with a lot of scenes of people pointing guns at each other and randomly shouting before gunfire erupts. No one can trust. There’s plenty of twists. There’s narration from one of the mob bosses. The plot is actually pretty confusing as one person after another turns out to be working for someone else. The whole thing leads to so many betrayals that it almost become comical in its indulgence.

The Departed, you say?

No, this isn’t a Scorsese film. Instead, this is 2012’s Beyond The Trophy, which has a plot that borrows a lot from The Departed. Then again, the film actually borrows a lot from every other mobster film that’s ever been made. Most gangster films aren’t really about the activities of real-life gangsters as much as they’re about recreating the classic film scenes that the director enjoyed while growing up. As a result, we get a few Scorsese-style freeze frames to go along with the narration. We get plenty of Tarantino-style stand-offs. We got the Russian mob because every film has to have the Russian mob nowadays.

We also get Michael Madsen and Eric Roberts. Roberts plays Sgt. Bachman and his role is small. He smiles while barking out orders and he looks after his daughter, another undercover cop named Chastity (Brooke Newton). Roberts doesn’t get to do much and I’m not sure how many big city police departments are run by people with long hair but he’s Eric Roberts. You can’t help but love him. As for Madsen, he narrates in his trademark threatening whisper. Madsen is one of those actors who was born to play tough guys so he’s credible as a mob boss, even if he doesn’t really put much effort into the film. You can usually tell whether or not Madsen is invested in a film by whether or not he bothers to wash his hair. For the most part, his hair look pretty oily in this film.

The majority of the film revolves around Stephen Cloud and Michael Masini as the two cops and they both give credible-enough performances. Because the script is basically just a recreation of scenes from other mob films, neither one really gets a chance to surprise us. The one member of the cast who actually does manage to break free and make an impression is Robert Miano, who makes his Vegas mob boss into a somewhat sympathetic figure.

File this one under standard mafia nonsense.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Insomnia File #69: Candy (dir by Christian Marquand)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you find yourself having trouble getting to sleep tonight, you can always pass the time by watching the 1968 film, Candy. It’s currently on Tubi.

Based on a satirical novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, Candy follows Candy Christian (Ewa Aulin), a naive teenager from middle America as she has a number of increasingly surreal adventures, the majority of which end with her getting sexually assaulted by one of the film’s special guest stars. It’s very much a film of the 60s, in that it’s anti-establishment without actually seeming to know who the establishment is. It opens with a lengthy sequence that appears to be taking place in outer space. It ends with an extended sequence of Candy walking amongst the film’s cast and a bunch of random hippies. Director Christian Marquand appears as himself, directing the film. Yep, this is one of those films where the director and the film crew show up and you’re supposed to be say, “Far out, I didn’t realize I was watching a movie, man.”

The whole thing is a bit of a misfire. The novel was meant to be smut that satirized smut. The film isn’t really clever enough to work on any sort of real satirical level. As was the case with a lot of studio-made “psychedelic” films in the 60s, everything is a bit too obvious and overdone. Casting the Swedish Ewa Aulin as a character who was meant to represent middle America was just one of the film’s missteps. Based on The Graduate, Mike Nichols probably could have made a clever film out of Candy. The French Christian Marquand, a protegee of Roger Vadim’s, can not because he refuses to get out of the film’s way. It’s all jump cuts, flashy cinematography, and attempts to poke fun at American culture by someone who obviously knew nothing about America beyond the jokes told in Paris.

That said, the main reason that anyone would watch this film would be for the collection of guest stars who all show up and try to take advantage of Candy. Richard Burton plays an alcoholic poet named MacPhisto and his appearance goes on for far too long. (Burton, not surprisingly, appears to actually be drunk for the majority of his scenes.) Ringo Star — yes, Ringo Starr — plays a Mexican gardener who assaults Candy after getting turned on by the sight of MacPhisto humping a mannequin. When Emmanuel’s sisters try to attack Candy, she and her parents escape on a military plane that is commanded by Walter Matthau. Landing in New York, Candy’s brain-damaged father (John Astin) is operated on by a brilliant doctor (James Coburn) who later seduces Candy after she faints at a cocktail party. Candy’s uncle (John Astin, again) also tries to seduce Candy, leading to Candy getting lost in New York, meeting a hunchback (Charles Aznavour), and then eventually ending up with a guru (Marlon Brando). Candy’s adventures climax with a particularly sick joke that requires a bit more skill to pull off than this film can afford.

If you’re wondering how all of these famous people ended up in this movie, you have Brando to thank (or blame). Christian Marquand was Brando’s best friend and Marlon even named his son after him. After Brando agreed to appear in the film, the rest of the actors followed. Brando, Burton, and Coburn received a share of the film’s profits and Coburn later said that his entire post-1968 lifestyle was pretty much paid for by Candy. That seems appropriate as, out of all the guest stars, Coburn i the only one who actually gives an interesting performance. Burton is too drunk, Matthau is too embarrassed, Starr is too amateurish, and Brando is too self-amused to really be interesting in the film. Coburn, however, seems to be having a blast, playing his doctor as being a medical cult leader.

Candy is very much a film of 1968. It has some value as a cultural relic. Ultimately, it’s main interest is as an example of how the studios tried (and failed) to latch onto the counterculture zeitgeist.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary
Girl Lost
Ghosts Can’t Do It
Heist
Mind, Body & Soul

One-Eyed Jacks (1961, directed by Marlon Brando)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Rio (Marlon Brando), a young outlaw in the Old West, is betrayed by his partner and mentor Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) and ends up spending five years in a Mexican prison. When Rio escapes, he gets together a new gang and heads for Monterey, California. He wants to both get his revenge on Longworth and also rob the local bank. Things get complicated when Rio actually confronts Longworth and suddenly realizes that he can’t bring himself just to gun the man down in cold blood. Rio is not as ruthless of an outlaw as he thought he was.

However, Rio then meets and falls in love with Louisa (Pina Pellicer), Longworth’s stepdaughter Longworth is willing to do whatever he has to keep Rio away from Louisa and, when Rio starts to think about going straight in an effort to win Louisa’s love, his new gang turn out to be even less trustworthy than his old partners.

A teenage rebellion film disguised as a western (and it’s not a coincidence that the main bad guy is named Dad), One-Eyed Jacks was Marlon Brando’s only film as a director. The film was originally meant to be directed by Stanley Kubrick, who was working from a script written by a once-in-a-lifetime combination of Rod Serling and Sam Peckinpah. Kubrick and Brando worked together to develop the film, with Brando insisting on Karl Malden as Dad. (Kubrick wanted to cast Spencer Tracy.) Ultimately realizing that working on One-Eyed Jacks would mean essentially taking orders from his star, Kubrick stepped down from directing so he could focus on Lolita and Brando took over as director. The film finally went into production in 1958 and would not be released until 1961. Brando’s perfectionism was blamed for the film going massively overbudget and, when it was finally released, One-Eyed Jacks was the first of Brando’s films to lose money. The combined box office failures of One-Eyed Jacks and the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty left Brando in the cinematic wilderness for much of the 60s.

As for the film itself, One-Eyed Jacks takes what should have been a simple story and attempts to turn into an epic. Rio spends a good deal of time brooding and the film seems to brood right along with him. What starts out as a western becomes a forbidden love story as Rio and Louisa fall for each other. Dad Longworth may be an outlaw-turned-sheriff but Malden plays him more as a possessive father who can’t handle that his two stepchildren — Rio and Louisa — are both turning against him and his strict rules. Brando obviously viewed the film as being something bigger than a standard western. Sometimes, his direction works and he does manage to get the epic feel that he was going for. Other times, the film itself seems to be unsure what direction it wants to go in telling its story. This is method directing.

Ultimately, One-Eyed Jacks is an interesting experiment, one that doesn’t really work but which still features Charles Lang’s outstanding cinematography and one of Karl Malden’s best performances. As Brando’s only directorial effort, the film is a curiosity piece, one that will be best enjoyed by western fans who have the patience for something a little different. And, for what it’s worth, based on the film’s visual beauty and the performances that he gets from the cat, I think Brando could have developed into a fine director with a little more experience. However, it was not to be.

Film Review: A Dry White Season (dir by Euzhan Palcy)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1990, Marlon Brando received his final Academy Award nomination when he was nominated for his supporting performance in 1989’s A Dry White Season.

Brando played Ian McKenzie, a human rights lawyer who lives and work in South Africa at the height of the Apartheid regime. When we first see McKenzie, he’s sitting in his office and complaining about how all the flowers surrounding him have given him a permanent allergy. When Ben Du Toit (Donald Sutherland) explains that he’s trying to learn the truth about why his gardener and his gardener’s son both died in the custody of South Africa’s “special branch,” McKenzie replies that bringing the case would be a waste of time. McKenzie makes several dismissive comments about the case and tells Du Toit that pursing the matter would lead to Du Toit becoming a pariah himself. Only when Du Toit says that he’ll just find another lawyer to pursue the manner does McKenzie agree to take the case. His comments may have seemed callous but they were McKenzie’s way of testing Du Toit’s commitment to actually getting to the truth.

Up until the death of his gardener, Ben Du Toit was someone who blindly believed in the system. A former rugby star and a teacher, Ben grew up in South Africa and is proud to call himself a “true African.” (In one of the film’s best scenes, Ben’s driver, Stanley — played by Zakes Mokae, — informs Ben that being an African in South Africa means not being allowed to vote and having to carry identification papers everywhere with him.) When the gardener’s son is first arrested, Ben repeatedly says, “He must have done something.” When Ben’s gardener is arrested, Ben believes that it’s all just a terrible mistake and that he’ll be released soon. Even after the gardener is killed, Ben initially believes the official story that the death was a suicide. It’s only after Stanley takes Ben to the funeral home and shows him the gardener’s tortured body that Ben finally comes to realize that he was tortured to death by Captain Stolz (Jurgen Prochow).

Still, Ben is naive enough to assume that McKenzie will be able to get some sort of justice. In court, McKenzie easily exposes the flaws in Stolz’s story. When Stolz claims that the dead man’s injuries were the result of the man throwing himself against the bars of his cell, McKenzie mentions that the man’s back was injured and then asks if he was throwing himself backwards. Stolz smirks and says that the man was “an animal.” McKenzie may be a brilliant lawyer but it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s going to lose the case. Stolz is exonerated and the expression on McKenzie’s face is one that indicate that he is not surprised at all.

It’s a small role. Brando gets less than ten minutes of screentime but he makes perfect use of them and shows that, even in the latter half of his career, Brando could still give a good performance when he cared about the material. Both Brando and Susan Sarandon took small roles in this anti-Apartheid drama because they believed in the message. Sarandon’s casting is a bit distracting. She never becomes the journalist she’s playing, instead she just seems like a movie star lending her name to a cause that she believes in. But Brando becomes Ian McKenzie and he expertly reveals the absurd lengths to which the Apartheid government will go to excuse its actions.

The majority of the film deals with Ben Du Toit and his slow-awakening about the truth of the country that he calls home. Upon realizing the truth about the country’s government and its actions, Du Toit declares that he can no longer go back to being who he once was and it costs him his family, his home, and ultimately his life. Donald Sutherland does a wonderful job, portraying Du Toit’s growing understanding of what’s actually happening in South Africa. Wisely, the film doesn’t portray Du Toit as being a saint. It fully understands that Du Toit only started to care about Apartheid when it effected somebody that he knew and fortunately, Stanley is always there to call Du Toit out whenever he starts to forget about his own role in supporting the system that he now opposes. It’s a powerful and heartfelt film, one that is well-known for Brando’s performance but works just as well when Brando is off-screen as well.

On Stage On The Lens: The Andersonville Trial (dir by George C. Soctt)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1970’s The Andersonville Trial takes place in one muggy military court room. The year is 1865. The Civil War is over but the wounds of the conflict are still fresh. Many of the leaders of the Confederacy are still fugitives. Abraham Lincoln has been dead for only a month. The people want someone to pay and it appears that person might be Captain Henry Wirz (Richard Basehart).

Originally born in Switzerland and forced to flee Europe after being convicted of embezzlement, Henry Wirz eventually ended up in Kentucky. He served in the Confederate Army and was eventually named the commandant of Camp Sumter, a prison camp located near Andersonville, Georgia. After the war, Captain Wirz is indicted for war crimes connected to his treatment of the Union prisoners at the camp. Wirz and his defense counsel, Otis Baker (Jack Cassidy), argue that the prison soon became overcrowded due to the war and that Wirz treated the prisoners as well as he could considering that he had limited resoruces. Wirz points out that his requests for much-needed supplies were denied by his superiors. Prosecutor Norton Chipman (William Shatner) argues that Wirz purposefully neglected the prisoners and their needs and that Wirz is personally responsible for every death that occurred under his watch. The trial is overseen by Maj. General Lew Wallace (Cameron Mitchell), the same Lew Wallace who would later write Ben-Hur and who reportedly offered a pardon to Billy the Kid shortly before the latter’s death. Wallace attempts to give Wirz a fair trial, even allowing Wirz to spend the trial reclining on a couch due to a case of gangrene. (Agck! The 19th century was a scary time!)

The Andersonville Trial started life as a 1959 Broadway production. On stage, George C. Scott played Chipman, an experience he described as difficult because, even though Chipman was nominally the play’s hero, Wirz was actually a much more sympathetic character. When the play was adapted for television in 1970, Scott returned to direct. Admittedly, the television version is very stagey. Scott doesn’t make much effort to open up the play. Almost all of the action is confined to that courtroom. We learn about the conditions at Fort Sumter in the same way that the judges learned about the conditions. We listen as the witnesses testify. We listen as a doctor played by Buddy Ebsen talks about the deplorable conditions at Fort Sumter. We also listen as a soldier played by Martin Sheen reports that Wirz has previously attempted to suicide and we’re left to wonder if it was due to guilt or fear of the public execution that would follow a guilty verdict. We watch as Chipman and Baker throw themselves into the trial, two attorneys who both believe that they are correct. And we watch as Wirz finally testifies and the play hits its unexpected emotional high point.

As most filmed plays do, The Andersonville Trial demands a bit of patience on the part of the viewer. It’s important to actually focus on not only what people are saying but also how they’re saying it. Fortunately, Scott gets wonderful performances from his ensemble cast. Even William Shatner’s overdramatic tendencies are put to good use. Chipman is outraged but the play asks if Chipman is angry with the right person. With many of the Confederacy’s leaders in Canada and Europe, Wirz finds himself standing in for all of them and facing a nation that wants vengeance for the death of their president. Wirz claims and his defense attorney argues that Wirz was ultimately just a soldier who followed orders, which is what soldiers are continually told to do. The Andersonville Trial considers when military discipline must be set aside to do what is morally right.

Admittedly, when it comes to The Andersonville Trial, it helps to not only like courtroom dramas but to also be a bit of a history nerd as well. Fortunately, both of those are true of me. I found The Andersonville Trial to be a fascinating story and a worthy production.

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Reliant (dir by Paul Munger)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 2019 and funded by an Indiegogo campaign, The Reliant is the epitome of a late-era Eric Roberts film.

Roberts appears towards the beginning of the film. He gets roughly 45 seconds of screen time. He delivers three lines, all in close-up. His character is named Mr. Johnson but, to know that, you have to sit through the entire film so that you can track down his name in the end credits. We don’t know anything about his character, other than he’s a hardware store owner. We don’t know anything about his fate. When last seen, his store is being overrun by a bunch of Antifa goons. It’s not looking good for Mr. Johnson but luckily, he has a lot of weapons.

Kevin Sorbo is also in the film. His role is slight larger. He only gets maybe 16 minutes worth of screentime. His character is killed off fairly early but he does get to appear in a few flashbacks and a fantasy sequence. He plays a father who has taught his children how to shoot guns and survive in case society breaks down. Society does break down and he dies while defending his family. He probably would have survived if his liberal daughter Sophie (Mollee Gray) hadn’t hid the key to the gun safe. Sophie (boo!) doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment and doesn’t like it when her father goes shooting. Not even the sight of hundreds of angry rioters getting ready to open fire on her house can change Sophie’s mind. Boo, Sophie, boo!

Sophie doesn’t believe in killing, even if self-defense. (I don’t believe in killing either. That said, if someone’s coming at you with a gun, you have every right to defend yourself.) When she finds out that her fiancé, Adam (Josh Murray), has had to kill people while she and her siblings were hiding out in the woods, Sophie throws a fit and says that she doesn’t even want Adam — who can barely walk due to an injury — staying at her family’s camp. Sophie is a …. well, I swore off profanity for Lent.

Sophie and her family are being stalked by Jack (Brian Bosworth), an angry man who has a personal grudge against them. Along with Roberts and Sorbo, Bosworth is the other “name” in this movie and he actually does get substantial screentime. And he actually gives a good performance as well, certainly the best in this film.

The Reliant is a technically well-made film and some of the action sequences are surprisingly effective. Unfortunately, whenever the characters are arguing about faith and whether or not guns cen be a useful tool, the movie becomes painfully draggy. The Reliant is occasionally fun in a “I’m going to show this to the most annoying leftie I know and watch them get offended” sort of way. But, for the most part, it’s just too talky and slow for its own good.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Runaway Train (dir by Andrei Konchalovsky)

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1985’s Runaway Train, Eric Roberts plays Buck McGeehy, a prisoner at Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison in Alaska.

Like the majority of the prisoners, Buck looks up to Manny (Jon Voight), a bank robber who has just been released from spending three years in solitary confinement. Manny is a tough guy who refuses to allow the prison system to beat him down. Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) views Manny as being a threat to his authority and he’s especially angry that it was the courts that ordered that Manny finally be released from solitary. When Ranken tries to arrange for Manny to be assassinated at a prison boxing match, it’s Buck who saves Manny’s life. When Manny later manages to escape from the prison, Buck tags along.

Manny and Buck are a study in contrasts. Manny is as cold as the Alaskan landscape. He’s ruthless and doesn’t allow himself to get too close to anyone but, at the same time, he does live by a definite code. Buck is simple-minded, an earnest guy who talks too much and who probably wouldn’t have survived a day in prison if it wasn’t for his skill as a boxer. Buck and Manny manage to make their way across the frozen wilderness but, when they hop on a train, they soon find themselves trapped on the out-of-control locomotive, along with a railroad engineer named Sara (Rebecca De Mornay). The three of them have to find a way to either escape from or stop the train. At the same time, the obsessed Warden Ranken is determined to recapture Manny and, if that means flying a helicopter over the train so that Ranken can lower himself onto it, so be it.

Runway Train, which was based on a script by Akira Kurosawa, was one of the few Cannon films to find success with not just critics but also audiences and the industry. The Golden Globes nominated it for Best Film. The Academy didn’t go quite that far but they did nominate the film for Best Editing, along with also nominating Jon Voight for Best Actor and Eric Roberts for Best Supporting Actor. While Voight is a multiple-Oscar nominee (and one-time winner for Coming Home), Runaway Train is, so far, the only film for which Eric Roberts has been nominated. (He should have been nominated for Star 80 but his character in that film was a bit too realistically sleazy for the Academy to honor.) Roberts has described Runaway Train as being one of his favorite films and he even used the title for his autobiography. It was on this film that he met Danny Trejo, who not only trained Roberts for the boxing scenes but also helped Roberts kick his addiction to cocaine.

And Roberts has every reason to be proud. Runaway Train is a fast-moving, visually stunning thrill ride, a masterpiece of the pulp imagination. Yes, the symbolism of the runaway train is a bit obvious. Yes, the philosophical edge of the film’s dialogue can sometimes feel a bit out-of-place. Who cares? John Voight and Eric Roberts sell their characters with such skill that you don’t care that they’re both criminals who have done terrible things. From the minute we see that frozen jail and the prisoners tossing burning pieces of paper at the guards, we know why both Manny and Buck have to escape. John P. Ryan turns the warden into everyone’s worst nightmare of a small, pretty man with power, an authoritarian who uses the system to control the lives of others and who resents anyone who does not bow down before him. Even though her role is largely limited to reacting to what everyone else does around her, Rebecca de Mornay still turns Sara into a compelling character and never allows her to become merely a damsel in distress. Runaway Train is a heart-pounding action film and one that still holds up today.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Real Genius (1985, directed by Martha Coolidge)

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarrett) is a teenage genius who is recruited by Prof. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) to study at Pacific Tech University. The real reason why Hathaway has recruited Mitch is because Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), another genius, has been slacking on developing the power source for an experimental laser called “crossbow.” Hathaway hopes that Mitch can get Chris to take his work seriously and to focus on the project. Instead, Chris teaches Mitch that he has to learn how to enjoy life or his great intelligence will become a burden and he’ll end up burned out and living in the tunnel underneath the university. That’s what happened to Laszlo Holyfield (Jon Gries). That’s what nearly happened to Chris. Chris is determined not to let it happen to Mitch.

Real Genius combines college hijinks with a serious examination of the pressures of being a “real genius.” Mitch knows everything about laser physics but he still misses his parents and cries after getting yelled at by Prof. Hathaway. He’s just a kid, no matter how smart he is. Chris proves himself to be a good friend, encouraging Mitch to relax and enjoy life. Just because you’re a genius doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun. As played by Val Kilmer, Chris Knight is the best friend that everyone wishes they could have, whether they’re a genius or not. Even when the film gets sophomoric, Kilmer plays his role seriously and never loses sight of Chris’s humanity or why it’s so important to Chris that Mitch not become consumed by the pressure of being smarter than almost everyone else in the room. This is one of the early Val Kilmer performances that showed just how good an actor he truly was. With Chris’s encouragement, Mitch pursues a romance with Jordan Cochran (Michelle Meyrink) and gets revenge (more than once) on the arrogant Kent (Robert Prescott).

Eventually, Chris and Mitch realize that their research is being used to construct a weapon for the CIA and this leads to the film’s famous ending. Ever since this movie came out, there’s been a debate over whether or not a laser could be used to make popcorn and, even more importantly, whether or not a gigantic amount of popcorn could actually destroy someone’s house. I don’t know the answers to those questions but I’d like to think that Real Genius got it right and I have no interest in any evidence that suggests otherwise. Sometimes, you owe it yourself to believe in the power of lasers and popcorn. The next person who takes advantage of your hard work, destroy his house with popcorn and then sing Everybody Wants To Rule The World. Learn the lessons of Real Genius.

Finally, when I was growing up, Real Genius was one of those films that seemed to be on HBO all the time. Somehow, I always turned it on right when the popcorn started popping. That popcorn-filled house, followed by Everybody Want To Rule The World, was a huge part of my childhood. Real Genius will always bring back good memories for me.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse: Dragnet (dir by Jack Webb)

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1954’s Dragnet opens with a gangland slaying. We watch as a man is brutally gunned down in a field in Los Angeles. The rest of the film deals with the efforts of the LAPD to track down and arrest the killers.

Based on the televisions show that gave birth to the whole “cop show” format, Dragnet features Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday, calmly and efficiently investigating the slaying. Working with Friday is Officer Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) but the film (just like the show) is ultimately about how the whole criminal justice system works together as a machine designed to protect the citizenry and to punish crime.

Or, at least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Especially if you’re only familiar with Dragnet from its late 60s incarnation and the countless parodies that followed, the 1954 Dragnet can seem surprisingly cynical and rough-edged. The killings are violent, the criminals are ruthless, and the cops are often frustrated in their attempts to solve crimes. In this film, at least, justice is not guaranteed.

The shooting victim is identified as a low-level gangster named Miller Starkie and Friday and Smith immediately suspect that he was killed on the orders of West Coast mob boss Max Troy (Stacy Harris). Friday and Smith know that Troy is guilty and they even figure out who worked with Troy to kill Starkie. But, throughout the film, they struggle to get any sort of concrete evidence tying Max to the crime. Dragnet is a police procedural that follows every bit of the investigation, including the attempts to convince a grand jury to indict Max. One of the more interesting moments in the film is when Friday gives his grand jury testimony and it becomes obvious that the district attorney was right to be skeptical about trying to bring charges. Friday really doesn’t have enough evidence to justify arresting Max for the crime that everyone knows he committed. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t attack the grand jury system or suggest that the system is unfairly rigged for the criminals. Friday may be frustrated but he understands that the system has to protect the rights accused first. One has to be presumed innocent until proven guilty even when everyone knows that person is guilty.

That said, Friday and Smith and the entire LAPD end up harassing Max Troy in a way that would probably not fly if the film were made today. At one point, a line of police cars park in front of Max’s house and then all shine their lights into his windows. Friday and Smith end up following Max everywhere that they he goes, stopping him and randomly frisking him before ordering him to empty his pockets. Today, I imagine this would lead to lawsuit. Even in the film, it doesn’t exactly pay off.

What does pay off is sending a police woman (played by Ann Robinson) into Max’s nightclub undercover, with a recording device. This whole sequence is interesting because it’s apparent that the idea of a tiny recording devices — something that we take for granted nowadays — was apparently a new and exciting concept in 1954. (Indeed, the one used in this film actually looks a bit bulky.) For a few minutes, the action stops so Dragnet can show off the LAPD’s latest toy.

I liked Dragnet. It’s an nicely-paced time capsule and, despite its docudrama style and television origins, director Jack Webb manages to come up with a few memorable visuals. As someone who has binged the late 60s version of Dragnet, it was interesting to see a tougher and much more cynical version of the series. While Webb was hardly an expressive actor, his dour demeanor serves him well as Joe Friday and Stacy Harris is appropriately sleazy as the crime boss. Despite all of Friday’s frustrations, the case eventually comes to a conclusion in the 1954 film, even if it’s not the one that Friday and his bosses wanted. Max may be able to escape the police but he can’t escape his own health. Friday and Smith move on to investigate the next case. As always, the names will be changed to protect the innocent.

A Blast From The Past: A Force In Readiness (dir by Col. William L. Hendricks)

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

105 years ago today, Jack Webb was born.

Webb appeared in a handful of films but he’s probably best remembered for developing, directing, and starring in America’s first cop show, Dragnet. As Sgt. Joe Friday, Webb dealt with crimes both big and small. In the late 60s, he dealt with hippies and other anti-American forces. A few years ago, I binged the 60s version of Dragnet and I have to admit I got totally addicted to it. It was somehow both effective and totally camp at the same time. That takes skill!

Webb is the narrator of today’s Blast From The Past. 1961’s A Force In Readiness is a 30-minute short film about the Marines. Seen today, it seems like a lengthy commercial but, when it was first released, the director was awarded a special Oscar “for his outstanding patriotic service in the conception, writing and production of the Marine Corps film, A Force in Readiness, which has brought honor to the Academy and the motion picture industry.”

Webb provides the narration in his trademark style. If the Greatest Generation could all speak in one voice, that voice would probably sound a lot like Jack Webb’s.