Every so often I’m going to throw out a movie that I don’t think gets enough love, and that just doesn’t set right with me. Today’s movie is RED SUN.
In RED SUN, two of the most macho actors in the history of world cinema team up in a western where train robber Link (Bronson) is forced to lead the honorable samurai Kuroda (Mifune) on a cross country trek to reclaim a stolen sword that was intended to be a gift from the Empire of Japan to the US President. If the two men can’t get the sword back in a week’s time, honor demands that the two men will lose their lives out of shame. Link isn’t really down with this plan, but he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter due to the power and skill of Kuroda. Charles Bronson & Toshiro Mifune command the screen, with Charlie showing a likable sense of humor in his role as the bad / good cowboy. The two must find the evil Gauche (French superstar Alain Delon). Gauche is Bronson’s old train robbing partner who stole the sword and killed a samurai in the process, providing even more motivation for Kuroda. Add in Ursula Andress as a sexy woman who has a history with both Link and Gauche, and it doesn’t get much better than this!
RED SUN is not a perfect movie, but I couldn’t imagine anyone being disappointed by this enjoyable East meets Western that features true international superstars. In my book, it’s highly recommended!
In the late 60s, The Velvet Underground often performed at the Boston Tea Party, a concert venue in — you guessed it! — Boston. Lou Reed described the Boston Tea Party as being the band’s favorite place to play and the Velvets’ performances at the venue would eventually become legendary. The Velvet Underground would attract an audience made up of bikers, Harvard students, MIT Students, Northeastern Students, celebrities, and a young Jonathan Richman.
In 1967, artist Andy Warhol attended a performance and filmed the show. He got 33 minutes of footage, one that doesn’t quite work as a concert film but which does work marvelously as a time capsule. While the music itself is often distorted (and this is not the film to watch if you’re wanting to hear your favorite songs performed live), Warhol’s camera does capture the feel of the psychedelic 60s, complete with strobe lights, sudden zoom shots, and an audience that alternates between moving to the music and standing still in a state of stoned contemplation. Warhol films like someone who has just gotten his first camera and can’t wait to experiment and see what it can do. The end result is actually rather likable, even if it is often incoherent. The enthusiasm and the excitement of filmmaking and capturing history comes through. When you’re first learning and experimenting with film, there’s nothing cooler than a sudden close-up or a sudden pull back to reveal the size of the crowd. The film finds Warhol having fun with the camera and the footage is ultimately rather hypnotic.
It’s a true time capsule. Here is The Velvet Underground in Boston.
Yes, the 1976 film Dixie Dynamite is supposedly set in Georgia but it’s hard not to notice that all of the hills and mountains in the background look like they’re from California. The story features two sisters, Dixie (Jane Anne Johnston) and Patsy (Kathy McHaley), who go into the moonshine business after their father drives his car off a cliff. Their father was the best moonshiner in the business and they aim to carry on his legacy, despite the efforts of Sheriff Marsh (Christopher George) and banker Charlie White (R.G. Armstrong). Blowing up their stills and threatening to auction off their land isn’t going to stop these two from doing whatever it is exactly that they’re doing in this film. Eventually, the sisters steal a bunch of dynamite and start blowing stuff up. Normally, I’d say “Woo hoo!” but this film even makes random explosions seem as boring as the 4th of July in Canada.
Warren Oates plays Mack, a motocross champion who occasionally helps the daughter’s out. At least, I think he’s helping them. To be honest, it’s not always easy to tell what Mack’s purpose actually is in this story. He tends to show up randomly, usually after all the action has ended. He’s kind of a useless friend, to be honest. Warren Oates brings his rough-hewn charm to the roll and you’re usually glad to see him, if just because the actresses playing the sisters are genuinely lousy, but you’re never quite sure what he’s doing there. Watching the film, one gets the feeling that Oates just dropped by the set whenever he felt like it and filmed a scene or two.
It’s really not that crazy of a possibility. Actor Steve McQueen makes a cameo appearance in this film, riding a motorcycle and challenging Oates. McQueen didn’t make many films in the 70s. Let’s consider some of the films that he turned down: The Great Gatsby, Jaws, Apocalypse Now, The Driver, The French Connection, Sorcerer, and Hard Times. None of those films appealed to McQueen but he was still willing to show up for a day’s worth of shooting on Dixie Dynamite. Of course, McQueen does go uncredited.
This is an odd film, full of slow spots that not even actors like Warren Oates, Christopher George, and R.G. Armstrong can make up for. Director Lee Frost was best-known for his softcore exploitation films and Dixie Dynamite is full of odd transitions and jump cuts, leading me to suspect that the film was originally meant to be a lot more like a typical Frost film before it was decided to go in a PG-direction as well.
Perhaps the oddest part of the film is that the daughter’s final scheme to get revenge on the sheriff and the banker involves stealing two dead bodies from the local morgue. The bodies are made up and dressed to look like Dixie and Patsy so that the sisters can fake their own death. I can understand that and even give them credit for hatching a clever plan. But I still find it weird that the film never really explains how the bodies were stolen or why they were in the morgue in the first place. What are the chances that Patsy and Dixie would head down to the morgue and find two look-alikes?
The film features dynamite, Warren Oates, and corpse-stealing but it’s still incredibly dull. That’s just weird.
John Wayne plays Dare Rudd, a friendly rogue who aspires to be the best poker player west of the Mississippi. When he and his sidekick, Dinkey Hooley (Syd Saylor), ride into Montana, they meet up with Dare’s cousin, Tom Filmore (Johnny Mack Brown, billed as John here). Filmore needs some help on his cattle drive and Dare sure does like Tom’s girl, Judy (Marsha Hunt). Dare replaces Lynn Hardy (John Patterson) as head of the cattle drive and Lynn teams up with rustler Bart Hammond (Monte Blue) to try to get revenge. While Dinkey tries to sell lightning rods, Dare moves the herd and even finds time to play poker with notorious gambler Buck Brady (James Craig).
This is another one of the B-westerns that John Wayne made before John Ford made him a stars by casting him in Stagecoach. This one is interesting because Wayne is not playing his usual stolid do-gooder or even an expert marksman. Instead, Dare is impulsive and reckless and he’s ultimately not as smart a card player as he thinks he is. It’s rare to see John Wayne need help from anyone but that’s what he gets from Johnny Mack Brown, who shows up in time to reveal that Dare is getting cheated in his poker game. For fans of the genre, this short oater is worth watching for the chance to see two western icons acting opposite each other. Johnny Mack Brown and John Wayne would both go on to appear in a countless number of westerns. Wayne became a superstar, appearing in big budget studio films. Brown remained a mainstay on the B-circuit. They’re amusing to watch in this film as they bounce dialogue off of each other and continually try to steal scenes from one another. Brown is playing the type of no-nonsense, hard-working westerner who would later become John Wayne’s trademark character.
Based on a novel by Zane Grey, Born to the West is a fast-paced western featuring two of the best to ever ride a horse.
Barry Gabrewski (Jonathan Brandis) is a teenager living in Houston with his father (Beau Bridges). Barry has asthma and has a hard time at school, being picked on by everyone from the school bully (John Buchanan) to the athletics coach (Richard Moll) to the clueless principal (Gerrit Graham). Barry has only one ally and his name is Chuck Norris! Whenever Barry is having a hard time, he imagines taking part in an exciting mission with Chuck Norris. In his imagination, he and Chuck recreate scenes from all of Chuck’s movies even though Barry is really too young to be watching anything that violent.
Barry wants to learn karate but is turned down by an arrogant dojo owner (Joe Piscopo, channeling Martin Kove). Barry finally finds a teacher (Mako) who uses Barry’s love of all things Chuck Norris to train him. Barry enters the local karate tournament and wouldn’t you know it, there’s Chuck! He’s attending as a guest and he’s hoping to see Joe Piscopo taught a lesson in humility. When Barry and his sensei are told that they don’t have enough members for their team, Chuck volunteers to fight with them. No one objects to the world’s most famous martial artist deciding to take part in a local, largely amateur karate tournament. Can Barry win the tournament with the help of his hero?
Chuck Norris famously turned down a role in The Karate Kid. Some sources say that he was offered the John Kreese role while others say that Norris was offered the sensei role that eventually become Mr. Miyagi. Chuck has always said that his agent turned down the script and he didn’t even know it had been offered to him until years later but Sidekicks sticks so close to the Karate Kid plot that it does sometimes feel like it was made so that we could see what Karate Kid would have been like if Chuck Norris had accepted a role. The movie follows the Karate Kid formula while lacking the edge that made Karate Kid stand out. Karate Kid was a coming-of-age movie with a lot of karate. Sidekicks is a blatant celebration of Chuck Norris.
Fortunately, Chuck Norris has always had the moves to back up his high self-regard and, in this film, he actually seems to be relaxed and having fun playing a version of himself. Sidekicks is predictable and ego-driven but it has a likable energy and Chuck shows a willingness to poke fun at his earlier movies. Whatever else you might say about Sidekicks, there were a lot of bullied kids would have loved to have had a friend like Chuck Norris. Sidekicks is also the only place where you can see Chuck Norris fight Joe Piscopo and there’s something to be said for that.
The 1980’s saw the what film enthusiasts saw as the death of the grindhouse experience. Major cities had begun to clean up their skid rows and the $1 all-day matinee theaters were closing down left and right. By the late 80’s gone were the buckets of stale popcorn, watered down sodas, carpets so sticky that one didn’t even want to think was made them that way and, of course, the sketchy individuals who always seemed to in every showing no matter the time.
Yet, the grindhouse never truly left the cinema, but became a bit more “mainstream” under the many independent studios that came about during the early 80’s. You had Cannon, Carolco, United Film and Orion to name a few. It was with Orion that we get the latest guilty pleasure of mine and that was the one really good film that Chuck Norris ever made: Code of Silence.
Chuck Norris was the Jason Statham and Scott Adkins of the 1980’s action scene. He was cranking out action flicks almost on a yearly basis trying to cash in on not just the Bruce Lee martial arts phase, but also the action hero phase that was beginning to be dominated by Schwarzenneger and Stallone. While Norris never reached the heights of those two action stars, his list of action films from the 80’s and into the early 90’s were decent and, dare I say, very workmanlike.
Code of Silence was the one film that had a decent story of the lone good cop that has to fight not just the criminals but also the corrupt cops and system that allows crime to run rampart. Norris as Sgt. Eddie Cusack of the Chicago PD has become the template for the loner hero cop who ends up not just fighting the mob (of differently nationalities) but also a corrupt partner and, they always have one or two, a couple of retired cops who help him but also die in the process.
Norris doesn’t lean heavily on the martials arts of his previous action films. Code of Silence was the film that helped transition him to the gunplay of the action flicks that the public couldn’t get enough of. While the film could and never truly escape it’s grindhouse influence it was very good enough both in characters, plot and direction (director Andrew Davis would later film later classics with The Fugitive and Under Siege).
The film really gets its grindhouse bonafides with the addition of Henry Silva as the main antagonist. Silva would make a career out of being the villain in many 80’s action flicks and in Code of Silence he steals the limelight with his over the top performance as Colombian drug trafficker Luis Camacho. Where Jack Palance got more praise for being the preeminent villain and tough guy of from the 70’s and 80’s, I do believe that Silva was the more sinister of the pair when it came to their performance.
Code of Silence shows that Chuck Norris can carry a film with minimal dialogue and on the power of his silent, seething stares. He was never one for quippy one-liners and Code of Silence is all the better because of it.
Since Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people, I present #SundayShorts, a mini review of a movie I’ve recently watched.
The 1987 movie ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR is the historical re-creation of the escape from the Nazi Death Camp Sobibor, where approximately two hundred fifty thousand Jews were executed. Of the approximately six hundred prisoners who attempted to escape, around three hundred succeeded with somewhere between 50 and 60 surviving to see the end of the war.
The plot of ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR revolves around Leon Feldhendler (Alan Arkin), the leader of the Jewish prisoners at Sobibor, who eventually comes to realize that they are being held in nothing more than a death camp. He figures out that the only people being allowed to live are the goldsmiths, seamstresses, shoemakers, and tailors; these are the people who are able to repair the shoes, recycle the clothing, and melt down any silver or gold for the Nazis. He also knows that once the trains stop coming in, all the remaining Jews will be murdered. As such, he and a group of men devise a plan for every prisoner to escape by luring the Nazi officers into the prisoners’ barracks and killing them as quietly as possible. With the help of a group of highly skilled Jewish, Russian soldiers, led by Sacha Pechersky (Rutger Hauer), their plan was put into action on October 14th, 1943, leading to the largest escape from a prison camp of any kind in Europe during World War II.
ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR is an excellent film, and it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime and TUBI as I type this. If you enjoy THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963), I promise you will enjoy this film. It’s very hard to watch at times, as most Nazi concentration camp movies are, but you can’t help but be completely invested when the prisoners attempt their escape at the end. It’s always important to remind ourselves of the levels of evil and heroism that our fellow humans are capable of. ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR does an excellent job of that.
Here are five interesting facts about the film:
Y’all know how much I love Rutger Hauer. He won a 1988 Golden Globe for his performance as Sasha Pechersky.
Not only did Hauer win a Golden Globe for his performance, the movie itself won as the “Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.”
Over 30 million Americans saw this movie when it premiered on CBS on April 12th, 1987.
Shortly after the revolt depicted in the film, Camp Sobibor was closed down and any trace of its existence was removed. Pine trees were later planted on the site.
The movie ends with famed newscaster Howard K. Smith narrating the fates of the survivors on whose accounts the film was based. It’s an amazing, uplifting, and sometimes heartbreaking way for the outstanding movie to end.
I highly recommend ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR. It’s an important film and one of the greatest films that Rutger Hauer ever worked on. Enjoy the trailer below!
Entertainer Johnny Roman (Ed Winter, best-known as the crazed Colonel Flagg on M*A*S*H) sends an invitation to New York P.I. Mike Hammer (Stacy Keach), asking him to come to Vegas for a job. Hammer refuses. Vegas is not for him. He’s pure New York. So, someone has Hammer abducted and thrown out of an airplane over Vegas. Luckily, they gave Hammer a parachute. Unluckily, for them, Hammer is now in Las Vegas and he’s pissed off.
Johnny, who says he had nothing to do with the kidnapping and just wants Hammer to help him deal with a singer who has been stealing from him, is killed by an explosive device while hosting a telethon. Everyone suspects Hammer. When the singer that Hammer was supposed to investigate also turns up dead, Hammer is again suspected. Hammer has to clear his name while dealing with guest stars ranging from Lynda Carter to Michelle Phillips to Jim Carrey.
Stacy Keach was Mike Hammer for most of the 80s, playing Mickey Spillane’s notorious detective in a television series and in several made-for-TV movies, like this one. Television was an awkward fit for Mike Hammer, or at least Hammer the way he was imagined in the books. Mike Hammer was written to be a killer with his own brand of justice. He was not written to be a nice person. Instead, he was the brutal but intelligent warrior that you hoped would be on your side. The television version of Mike Hammer was considered to be violent for the era but the show still toned down Hammer’s signature brutality. Keach’s Hammer still killed people but he no longer gloated about it. Stacy Keach, with his trademark intensity, was a good pick for Mike Hammer, even if the show’s scripts often let him down.
This movie is hamstrung by the fact that it was made-for-TV. Hammer is not happy about being in Las Vegas but he can’t go off on the city in the same way that he would have in one of Mickey Spillane’s novels. Keach still gives a good and tough performance as Hammer, getting as close to the character as anyone could under the restrictions of 80s network television. The mystery is interesting, though Hammer doesn’t really solve it as much as he just waits until all the other suspects have been killed. The main attraction of this one is the amount of guest stars who show up. Lynda Carter is a great femme fatale and it’s always good to see Michelle Phillips, even in a small role. Jim Carrey, in his pre-In Living Color days, plays an accountant and does okay with a serious role.
Who could play Mike Hammer today? It’s hard to say. There aren’t many believably tough actors around anymore and even those who do seem like they could hold their own in a fight don’t have the gritty world-weariness that the character requires. (Just try to imagine Dwayne Johnson reenacting the end of I, the Jury.) A few years ago, I would have said Frank Grillo. In the 90s, Bruce Willis would have been the perfect Hammer. Today, though, Mike Hammer’s time may finally have passed.
Elite cop Sam Kettle (Sam J. Jones) just wants to get out of Los Angeles and live a peaceful life with his girlfriend, Sara (Linda Blair), but the streets have other plans. The evil Kendrick (Gustav Vintas) has kidnapped Dr. London (Bill Erwin) and is determined to get the code for a deadly bioweapon. For reasons that are never made clear, Kendrick has also kidnapped young Joanna (Joanna Chong). Backing Kendrick up is the evil Miss Amy (Rebecca Ferrati). Backing up Kettle is Joanna’s uncle, Jun Kim (Jun Chong) and Bernard (Phillip Rhee), the son of Oyama (Mako), the owner of the local dojo. Can Sam save the world, saved the doctor and the girl, and also save his relationship with Sara?
Silent Assassins is a terrifically fun martial arts movie. The action is well-choreographed. The film’s plot doesn’t make a bit of sense. The movie is full of weird throw-away dialogue, like an offended Ms. Amy announcing that she’s “a biochemist too.” Chong shows off his moves, Rhee plays his character as a playboy having the time of life, and Jones glowers at the camera as only Sam J. Jones can. There’s an army of loud ninjas (so much for the silent part) and Vintas is so villainous that he even carries around a red rose as some sort of strange trademark. The movie is full of weird details and no one seems to be taking any of it too seriously. Movies like this are why people like me always went straight for the direct-to-video releases when we went to Blockbuster back in the day.
Linda Blair is second-billed. When Lisa and I watched this movie, she kept track of Linda’s screentime. Linda’s onscreen for a total of ten minutes and she spends most of that time doing the worried girlfriend thing. It’s a sad waste of Linda Blair, the one misstep of an otherwise great experience.
In the days of the wild west, Tom Cameron (George Houston) rides the range alone, seeking vengeance for the murder of his family. They were killed when their wagon train was ambushed by the same outlaws who has previously sold them a plot of land. Tom was a child at the time and he only remembers that the leader of the outlaws had a distinctive facial scar. Tom Cameron is The Lone Rider.
No, not the Long Ranger. The Lone Rider! George Houston was an opera star who made for a surprisingly convincing gunslinger and the movie opens with him singing I Am The Lone Rider, just to make sure that it was understood that his vengeance-driven vigilante was a completely different character from that other vengeance-driven vigilante. The Lone Rider is looking to avenge his family and, with the help of store keeper “Fuzzy” Jones (professional sidekick Al St. John), the Lone Rider does just that. Though this is a standard B-western, the plot is a little more serious than most other B-movies. This was the first of several Lone Rider movies and, despite the obviously low budget, there’s some emotional heft to its story. Tom discovers that his brother (Lee Powell), who he thought had died in the attack, actually survived and joined up with the gang. The story is about both Tom’s vengeance and his brother’s redemption. Fans of the genre will enjoy the film’s classic western story and George Houston’s convincing performance as a gunslinger on a mission.
The Lone Rider would ride on for 16 more movies, the last one being released in 1944. In 1942, George Houston was replaced in the lead role by Robert Livingston. Houston went from starring in westerns to becoming one of Hollywood’s most respected vocal coaches. (Howard Keel was one of his students.) Shortly after the Lone Rider road for the last time, George Houston died while planning his musical comeback. He had a heart attack and the police, thinking he was just intoxicated, tossed him in the drunk tank where he subsequently died. He was only 48 years old.
Through the Shattered Lens 