“How silly can you get?” Val Kilmer sings in the 1984 film Top Secret! and the answer would appear to be very silly. Extremely silly. Nonsensically silly. Unbelievable silly. So silly that it transcends all formerly known types of silliness. In other words, this is a very silly film but that’s okay because it’s meant to be silly.
Some people, I know, would probably argue that Top Secret! doesn’t really qualify as a Spring Break film but I have to disagree. Like any good Spring Break film, a good deal of Top Secret! takes place on the beach and Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, a singer who is obviously meant to be a parody of the type of singers who used to regularly appear in the beach party movies of the 60s. Nick’s number one hit song is Skeet Surfin, which celebrates the sport of skeet shooting while on a surf board. The movie opens with hundreds of handsome young men jumping on surf boards while holding rifles. I honestly don’t know whether skeet surfing was every an actual sport but I certainly hope that it was because it looks like it would have been a lot of fun. Certainly, it would perk up the Olympics.
Of course, Nick is not the only person in the film whose life is connected to the beach. Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) spent much of her youth shipwrecked on a beach with Nigel (Christopher Villiers). Unfortunately, one day, Nigel went out to sea to search for help and he never returned. Hillary was eventually rescued. That’s certainly a sadder trip to the beach than Nick’s but still, a beach is a beach.
Hillary and Nick’s paths cross when Nick is invited to perform at a cultural festival in what, in 1984, was known was East Germany. Hillary is a member of the Resistance while her father, Dr. Paul Flammond (Michael Gough), is being held prisoner by the government and is being forced to design the type of secret weapons that are always at the heart of espionage adventures like this one. When Nick and Hillary meet, it’s love at first sight. Nick gets involved in the plan to save Hillary’s father and to thwart the insidious plans of the East German government. He also finds the time to sing a lot of songs.
The plot of Top Secret! isn’t really easy to describe. That’s largely because there really isn’t a plot in a conventional sense. Instead, there’s just one joke after another. The dialogue is purposefully nonsensical. The visuals are full of odd details. The jokes are frequently hilarious and, because they’re so fast and relentless, they’re also next to impossible to adequately describe. Much of the visual humor simply has to be seen to be understood and appreciated. For instance, it may sound slightly humorous to say that a scene features a stern-looking army officer answering a giant phone but you have to actually see the film to truly understand just how brilliantly Top Secret! pulls off the gag.
Of course, what really makes the film is work is Val Kilmer, who is young, handsome, and incredibly likable in the role of Nick. Kilmer delivers every bizarre line with a straight face and an enthusiastic earnestness that makes him the perfect center for all the craziness raging around him.
How silly can you get? Watch Top Secret! and find out!
Spring Break is one of the things that I really miss about high school and college. Despite the fact that I don’t drink, I don’t swim, and I generally hate crowds, I always made it a point to celebrate Spring Break by going to the beach. Spring Break was more than just a week’s vacation from “preparing for the future” and everything else that I occasionally pretended college was about. Spring Break was a ritual. It was a tradition. Celebrating Spring Break was as much a required activity as dressing up for Halloween or going to fireworks on the 4th.
For the next two weeks, we’re going to celebrate Spring Break on the Shattered Lens. I know that some people are saying that no one should be celebrating the Spring Break this year. To be honest, there were people saying that before the pandemic broke out and there were be people saying that once the pandemic is under control. Wear your mask indoors. Social distance. Do whatever needs to be done and yes, definitely make sure that you know what’s going on in the world. But don’t ever let the professional killjoys tell you that you don’t have a right to enjoy your life.
If you want to check out a professional killjoy, just check out the scientist who is at the heart of the 1965 film, The Beach Girls and the Monster. Dr. Otto Lindsay (Jon Hall, who also directed) is an oceanographer who totally resents the fact that teenagers are partying on the beach. I mean, he’s even more obnoxious than that jackass lawyer who spent last year wandering around the beach of Florida while dressed up as the Grim Reaper. Obviously, some of Otto’s bad attitude can be explained by the fact that he’s old but it’s hard not to feel that there’s something bigger fueling his resentment. Maybe he’s angry that his young wife, Vicky (Sue Casey), doesn’t seem to be particularly happy with their marriage. Maybe he’s annoyed that there’s a sculptor named Mark (Waler Edmonston) living in his house. Mark is a friend of Otto’s son, Richard (Arnold Lessing). Richard was planning on following his father into the field of oceanography but then he discovered surfing. Now, the only thing that Richard wants to do is surf and hang out on the beach.
It’s a popular beach, though perhaps a little bit less popular now that people are being randomly killed on the sand. Who is killing off of all of the surfers and the beach girls? Richard thinks that it’s a maniac but Otto believes that it’s a prehistoric sea creature, come back to life and seeking revenge on all of the irresponsible young people who ruining the beach. Judging from the fact that the killer looks like some sort of humanoid-fish hybrid, we can only assume that Otto is right. But is he?
You’ll have to watch the film to find out and, fortunately, it’ll be pretty easy for you to do just that. The Beach Girls and The Monster is in the public domain and it’s been uploaded to YouTube about a dozen times. And you know what? You should watch it because this is an entertainingly dumb little movie. It’s not exactly a good movie, of course. The acting is …. not impressive. The killer fish is …. less impressive. But so what? This is a fast-paced and fun movie with a silly monster, a lot of beach parties, and just enough dancing to hold my attention. It’s nonsense but, in the best tradition of Spring Break, it’s entertaining nonsense.
The 1980 film, Schizoid, is all about the things you can do with scissors.
For instance, in the days before email, text messages, and social media, scissors could be used to cut words out of a magazines. Those words could then be carefully pasted onto construction paper and then sent to an advice columnist like Julie Caffret (Marianna Hill). Julie is pretty upset when she starts getting the notes, largely because they promise an anonymous reign of terror and murder. The police, however, say that the notes probably don’t meant anything. They’re probably just a hoax. I mean, it’s true that several members of Julie’s therapy group have recently been murdered but the letters all talk about committing murder with a gun. Whereas the members of the therapy group are being murdered by someone wielding …. SCISSORS! (Cue that dramatic music.)
Of course, Julie has other things to worry about. For instance, her ex-husband, Doug (Craig Wasson), is still in her life. He’s putting up wallpaper in her office. Or, at least, that’s what he says he’s doing. It’s hard not to notice that he doesn’t seem to be making much progress with the job. Plus, he apparently sleeps in the office, which just seems odd. Then, there’s the building’s creepy maintenance man, Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd), who specializes in making people uncomfortable on elevators. And then there’s the fact that Julie’s therapist, is played by Klaus Kinski!
Seriously, if you were looking for a therapist, would you go to Klaus Kinski?
From the minute Klaus shows up, it’s pretty obvious that the film wants us to assume that he’s the killer and really, it’s hard not to make that assumption. We’re so used to seeing Klaus Kinski play evil and villainous characters and, even 30 years after his death, there are so many stories out there about how difficult Klaus Kinski could be to work with in real life that our natural reaction is to believe any character he plays must have a sinister motivation. In this film, Klaus’s character has an out-of-control teenage daughter (Donna Wilkes) who tries to commit suicide by locking herself in the garage with a running car. When Klaus takes an axe to the garage door, we’re left to seriously wonder if he’s planning on killing her or if he’s actually trying to save her life. That said, Schizoid actually makes good use of Kinski’s menacing persona and Kinski himself gives a performance that elevates the entire film. Kinski actually does manage to keep you guessing as to whether or not the therapist is a monster or if he’s just kind of a jerk.
Schizoid is usually classified as a slasher film, though it actually has more in common with the classic Italian giallo films that it does with any of the Friday the 13th sequels. The killer’s identity is masked through POV shots and, in typical giallo fashion, the killer wears black gloves while committing his crimes. We spend a good deal of the film following the police investigation, which is a typical element of the giallo genre but which is usually treated as an afterthought in post-Friday the 13th slasher films. Much like Fulci’s The New York Ripper, Schizoid is a violent journey into the heart of darkness, a look at a world with no morality and no safety. Also like Fulci’s film, it’s so shamelessly sleazy that it’s easy to miss the fact that it’s actually rather well-directed and acted.
Schizoid turned out to be a better film that I was expecting. That said, I still have to wonder why anyone would select Klaus Kinski to be their therapist.
Between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964, 13 women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in the Boston area. It was felt that they had all been killed by the same man, a monster known as The Boston Strangler. Though the police investigated many suspects, they never made an arrest. (One should remember that this was before the time of DNA testing or criminal profiling. The term “serial killer” had not even been coined. Today, sad to say, we take the existence of serial killers for granted. In the 60s, it was still an exotic concept.)
In October of 1964, a man named Albert DeSalvo was arrested and charged with being “the Green Man,” a serial rapist who pretended to be a maintenance man in order to gain access to single women’s apartments. After he was charged with rape, detectives were surprised when DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler. When confessing to the murders, DeSalvo got a few minor details wrong but he also consistently included other details that the police hadn’t released to the general public. Even when put under hypnosis, DeSalvo’s recalled those previously unreleased details. Because DeSalvo was already going to get a life sentence on the rape charges and because there wasn’t any physical evidence that, in those pre-DNA, could have conclusively linked DeSalvo to the crimes, he was never actually charged with any of the murders. Still, with his confessions, the cases were considered to be closed.
In 1966, before DeSalvo was even sentenced for the Green Man rapes, Gerold Frank wrote The Boston Strangler, a book about the murders, the investigations, and DeSalvo’s confessions. It was one of the first true crime books and, in 1968, it was adapted into one of the first true crime films.
Directed by Richard Fleischer (whose filmography somehow includes not only this film but also Dr. Dolittle, Fantastic Voyage, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Conan The Destroyer, and Red Sonja), The Boston Strangler is really two films in one. The first half deals with the crimes and the police (represented by Henry Fonda, George Kennedy, Murray Hamilton, and James Brolin) investigation. This half of the film is pulpy and crudely effective, full of scenes of the cops rounding up every sex offender who they can find. There’s a scene where Henry Fonda talks to a prominent man in a gay bar that’s handled with about as much sensitivity as you could expect from a 1960s studio film. (On the one hand, the man is portrayed with respect and dignity and he’s even allowed to call out the patron saint of 1960s mainstream liberal piety, Henry Fonda, for being close-minded. On the other hand, everyone else in the bar is a stereotype and we’re meant to laugh at the idea that anyone could think that Henry Fonda could be gay.) Director Richard Fleischer makes good use of split screens, creating an effective atmosphere of paranoia. The scene where a woman tries to keep an obscene caller on the phone long enough for the police to trace his location made my skin crawl and served as a reminder that perverts predate social media. Another scene where a flamboyant psychic tries to help the police goes on for a bit too long but, at the same time, you’re happy for a little relief from crime scenes and terrified, elderly women discovering that their neighbors have been murdered.
The second half of the film features Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo. Curtis is effective as DeSalvo, playing him as being a self-loathing brute who is incapable of controlling his impulses. (Before committing one of his crimes, DeSalvo watches the funeral of John Kennedy, his face wracked with pain. Is the film suggesting that DeSalvo murdered to deal with the stress of life in America or is it suggesting that the hate that killed Kennedy was a symptom of the same sickness that drove DeSalvo? Or is the film just tossing in a then-recent event to get an easy emotional reaction from the audience?) As one might expect from a mainstream film made in 1968, The Boston Strangler takes something of a wishy washy approach to the question of whether DeSalvo’s crimes were due to sickness or evil. Yes, the film says, DeSalvo was bad but it’s still society’s fault for not realizing that he was bad. It’s the type of approach designed to keep both the law-and-order types and the criminal justice reformers happy but it ultimately feels a bit like a cop out. Still, the shots of DeSalvo isolated in his padding cell have an undeniable power and Curtis is both pathetic and frightening in the role. In its more effective moments, the second half of the film works as a profile of a man imprisoned both physically and mentally.
Watching the film today, it’s hard not to consider how different The Boston Strangler is from the serial killer films that would follow it. DeSalvo is not portrayed as being some sort of charming or interesting Hannibal Lecter or Dexter-type of killer. Instead, he’s a loser, a barely literate idiot who struggled to articulate even the simplest of thoughts. The cops aren’t rule-breakers or renegades. Instead, they’re doing their jobs the best that they can. Though the film ends with a title card saying that it’s important for society to make more of an effort to spot people like DeSalvo before they kill, The Boston Strangler has a surprising amount of faith in both the police and the law and it assumes that you feel the same way. It’s a film that takes it for granted the audience respects and trusts authority. It’s portrayal of the police is quite a contrast to the rebel cops who dominate pop culture today.
After the film came out, DeSalvo recanted his confessions and said that he had never killed anyone. He was subsequently murdered in prison in 1971, not due to his crimes but instead because he was independently selling drugs for prices cheaper than what had been agreed upon by the prison’s syndicate. After his death, many books were written proclaiming that DeSalvo was innocent and that the real Boston Strangler was still on the streets. Others theorized that the actual Strangler was DeSalvo’s cellmate and DeSalvo, knowing he was going to prison for life regardless, confessed in return for money being sent to his family. That said, in 2013, DNA evidence did appear to conclusively link DeSalvo to the murder of 19 year-old Mary Sullivan. Of course, that doesn’t mean that DeSalvo necessarily committed the other 12 murders. In fact, from what we’ve since learned about the pathology of serial killers, it would actually make more sense for the murders to have been committed by multiple killers as opposed to just one man.
Regardless of whether DeSalvo was guilty or not, The Boston Strangler is an uneven but ultimately effective journey into the heart of darkness.
I have to admit that One Foot In Heaven is a film that I probably never would have watched if not for the fact that it received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
This film from 1941 tells what I presume to be a true — or, at the very least, a true-ish — story. Fredric March plays William Spence. The film opens in 1904 with Spence explaining to his future in-laws that he’s spontaneously decided to drop out of medical school because he feels that he’s been called to become a Methodist minister. Though no one is happy or particularly encouraging about William’s decision to abandon the financial security of medicine to work as a minister, William feels that it’s what he was meant to do.
We follow William and his wife, Hope (Martha Scott), as they move from town to town, living in dingy parsonages and barely paying the bills by doing weddings. Though Hope is frustrated by the constant moving and the less-than-ideal living conditions, she remains supportive of William. They start a family and William goes from being a stern and somewhat judgmental man to becoming an inspiring minister. He even changes his opinion about the sinfulness of going to the movies. (All things considered, that’s probably for the best.) Eventually, William, Hope, and the family end up ministering to a congregation in Colorado. Determined to finally give his wife the home that she deserves, William tries to rebuild both the church and the parsonage. It turns out to be more difficult than he was expecting.
That’s pretty much the film. There’s not really much conflict to be found, until the final 30 minutes or so when William struggles to convince a bunch of snobs to help him achieve his dream of building a new church. The film opens with a title card thanking the Methodists for their help in the production of the film, which should tell you everything you need to know about the film’s attitude towards Protestantism. William does debate an agnostic at one point but it’s not much of a debate. William, after all, is played by the authoritative Fredric March while the agnostic’s name isn’t even listed in the credits. It’s a well-made film, in that sturdy way that many 1941 studio productions were, but — unless you’re just crazy about the history of Methodism — it’s not particularly interesting.
On the plus side, Fredric March gives a good performance as William Spence. March was one of the best actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age and he gives a sympathetic performance as a stern but well-meaning man who respects tradition but who is still willing to admit that he has much to learn. Probably the film’s most effective scene is when William reluctantly watches a movie with his son. March captures William’s transformation from being a disapproving father to an entertained filmgoer. It’s one of the few moments when the film really feels alive.
So, how did One Foot In Heaven receive a Best Picture nomination in the same year that saw nominations for films like Citizen Kane, The Little Foxes, Suspicion, and The Maltese Falcon? One Foot In Heaven is well-made and totally uncontroversial. It’s the type of film that, if it were made today, it would probably be directed by Ron Howard and it would star someone like James Marsden or Garrett Hedlund. One Foot In Heaven is not particularly memorable but there’s nothing particularly terrible about it either and it probably felt like a “safe’ film to nominate. Still, it’s probably significant that One Foot In Heaven didn’t receive any nominations other than one for Best Picture. It lost that Oscar to another film about family, How Green Was My Valley.
Chuck Norris is 81 years old today! Below are ten essential Chuck Norris films. These are the movies to watch if you want to understand how and why Chuck Norris, despite being an actor with an admittedly limited range, became not only an action hero but an enduring pop cultural icon.
The Delta Force (1986, directed by Menahem Golan) — The Delta Force, a.k.a. The Greatest Movie Ever Made, is the obvious pick for the top spot on our list of Chuck Norris essentials. Not only does it feature, along with Chuck, Lee Marvin, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Bo Svenson, and Robert Forster chewing up all the scenery but this is the film where Chuck rides a missile-equipped motorcycle. Not only does this film feature Chuck Norris at his stoic-but-determined best but it also features one the greatest lines in film history when a recently released hostage is handed a Budweiser and responds by shouting, “Beer! America!”
Code of Silence (1985, directed by Andrew Davis) — For a film that features Chuck Norris and a crime-fighting robot called THE PROWLER, Code of Silence is actually a tough, gritty, and realistic Chicago-based crime drama. Giving the best performance of his career, Chuck plays an honest cop who finds himself in the middle of a drug war. Henry Silva plays the main bad guy. Director Andrew Davis later went on to direct The Fugitive.
Way of the Dragon (1972, directed by Bruce Lee) — Chuck plays a rare bad guy here. He’s a mercenary named Colt and the film climaxes with a brutal fight between him and Bruce Lee. The fight is a classic, with a good deal of emphasis put on the shared respect between not only the characters played by Norris and Lee but also between Lee and Norris themselves, two masters at the top of their game.
Silent Rage (1982, directed by Michael Miller) — In this slasher/kung fu hybrid, Chuck is a sheriff who must stop a madman who, as the result of a poorly conceived medical experiment, is basically immortal. For once, Chuck faces an opponent who is just as strong and relentless as he is.
Invasion U.S.A. (1985, directed by Joseph Zito) — Chuck vs. Richard Lynch! This is one of Chuck’s best Cannon films. Chuck is as good a hero as ever but what makes the film work is the diabolically evil performance of Richard Lynch. They are ideal opponents, with Norris stepping up to not only defeat the bad guys but also to save America itself!
Lone Wolf McQuade (1983, directed by Steve Carver) — This is the first film to feature Chuck Norris as a Texas Ranger and, as we all know, it turned out to be the perfect role for him. This was the first of Chuck’s neo-westerns. Cast as the bad guy, David Carradine proved to be one of Chuck’s best opponents.
A Force of One (1979, directed by Paul Aaron) — A serial killer is targeting cops. Chuck essentially plays himself, a karate instructor who is brought in to teach the detective self-defense. This serial killer plot is actually interesting and the film features some of Chuck’s best fight scenes.
Missing In Action (1984, directed by Joseph Zito) — Chuck plays a vet and a former POW who returns to Vietnam in the 80s to rescue the men who were left behind. This is hardly my favorite Norris film and it owes too much to Rambo: First Blood II to truly be successful but this is also one of Chuck Norris’s biggest hits and it’s an essential film is you want to understand the man’s film career. It’s a cheap production but Chuck’s sincerity and his convincing skills as an action hero almost save the day. It’s also hard to overlook that, as far as I know, this is the only Chuck Norris film that features Chuck watching an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
An Eye From An Eye (1981, directed by Steve Carver) — Chuck Norris plays an undercover cop who quits the force and tries to bring Christopher Lee to justice. This one is worth seeing just because it brings together two pop culture icons, Chuck Norris and Christopher Lee.
Breaker! Breaker! (1977, directed by Don Hulette) — This was Chuck Norris’s first starring role. He’s actually miscast as a trucker but this film is still worth seeing just for the final scene, in which Chuck and his friends use their trucks to destroy an entire town.
Last night, for the first time, I watched the 1948 Best Picture nominee, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Directed by the legendary John Huston and featuring a wonderful performance from the equally legendary Humphrey Bogart, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has a reputation for being one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a reputation that is more than deserved. That makes the film a pleasure to watch but, unfortunately, it also makes it somewhat intimidating to write about.
(In the past, Leonard and I have discussed how it’s so much more difficult to write a review of a good film than it is to write a review of a bad film. Sad to say, it’s often easier to be negative than it is to be positive. Writing a review of a bad film only requires the ability to be snarky. Writing a review of a good, much less a great film, is far more difficult. It’s one thing to realize a film is good. It’s another thing to try to explain why.)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre tells the story of three Americans in Mexico, drifters living on the edge of society. Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) spend their days begging for spare change and taking whatever work they can find. When they meet an eccentric but wise prospector named Howard (Walter Huston), the three of them end up going on a quest for gold. It’s not a spoiler to tell you that the three men find their gold, though Dobbs is shocked to discover that gold dust can easily be mistaken for sand and doesn’t naturally shine in the sun. Just as Howard warned would happen, the three men start to grow paranoid about their newfound wealth. Meanwhile, others — including a pushy American named Cody (Bruce Bennett) and an outlaw known as Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya) — show up near the camp, leaving the men to wonder how far each of them will go to protect their shares of the treasure.
When the three of them first meet in a dirty flophouse, Howard warns Dobbs and Curtin that gold will drive a man to insanity. Howard says that he knows because it’s happened to him more than once. Still, as we watch the three prospectors descend further into paranoia with each new bag they fill with gold dust, we can’t help but wonder if the gold is driving them crazy or if it’s just causing them to reveal their true selves. From the minute we first see Dobbs on a street in a Mexican city, begging for money and snarling at a child (played, incidentally, by a very young Robert Blake) who tries to sell him a lottery ticket, it’s obvious that Dobbs is desperate, angry, and resentful. Finding the gold doesn’t do anything to alleviate the anger that Dobbs feels towards the world as much as it just gives him an excuse to indulge in it fully. Whereas, in the past, Dobbs always had to hold back his anger in hope of getting another handout, the gold allows him to fully embrace his seething resentment. Compared to Dobbs, Howard and Curtin don’t seem to change quite as much. Of course, it should be remembered that Howard is an old man who knows that he doesn’t have much time left. Meanwhile, Curtin is often too busy reacting to Dobbs’s anger to truly indulge in his own. Watching the film, you have to wonder how things would have gone if Dobbs hadn’t been there. Without the distracting of Dobbs’s growing instability, would Curtin have remained the sane member of the group? The scene where Curtin first meets Cody suggests that, on his own, Curtin is just as capable of being as paranoid as Dobbs.
Indeed, though greed is certainly a motivating force in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it’s not the film’s main subject. Instead, this film is a study of men living on the fringes of society. We learn surprisingly little about how Dobbs and Curtin came to be two beggars living in Mexico. We learn a bit more about Howard’s background, largely because Howard likes to talk. But again, we don’t really learn that much about who Howard was before he became a prospector. Howard, Curtin and Dobbs are forgotten men, without any real friends or family. They’ve got each other, though that bond doesn’t always appear to be a particularly strong one. Howard and Curtin have managed to find some sort of peace with their existence. Dobbs has not. While the film may partially be a portrait of the corrosive effects of greed, it’s also a character study of three men who have been forgotten and abandoned and how they deal with living outside of the world that everyone else takes for granted.
There’s much to love in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, from John Huston’s powerful direction to the dark humor that runs through some of the film’s best moments. Houston fills the film with little details that make it feel authentic. (My favorite little moment came towards the end when a man facing a firing squad makes sure that he’s wearing his hat before he’s shot.) Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett and Alfonso Bedoya all give strong performances, though the film is dominated by Humphrey Bogart. Walter Huston won a (deserved) Academy Award for his performance but one of Bogart’s best performances somehow went unnominated. Bogart gives a ferocious and never less than compelling performance as Dobbs. At his worst, Dobbs is almost like a trapped animal, roaming the cage of his existence and snapping at anyone who gets too close. At the same time, Dobbs’s naked desperation makes it impossible not to feel some sympathy for him. Bogart was never more vulnerable than when Dobbs was begging for money and never more frightening than after he got it.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a classic, one that has been endlessly imitated but which will probably never be equaled. Nominated for four Oscars, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre won three (for John Huston’s direction and screenplay and for Walter Huston’s performance as Howard) but it lost best picture to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. As much as I like Hamlet, this is a case where the Academy made a mistake.
The Oscar nominations are finally due to be announced on March 15th and the Oscars themselves are scheduled to be awarded at the end of April. In anticipation of the big event (and the end of this current lengthy awards season), I am going to spend the next two months watching and reviewing Oscar nominees of the past. Some day, I hope to be able to say that I have watched and reviewed every single film nominated for Best Picture. It’s a mission that, with each passing year, I come a little bit closer to acomplishing.
Tonight, I decided to start things off by watching the 1961 best picture nominee, The Guns of Navarone.
The Guns of Navarone takes place in 1943, during World War II. 2,000 British troops are stranded on the Greek island of Kheros and the Nazis are planning on invading the island in a show of force that they hope will convince Turkey to join the Axis powers. The Allies need to evacuate those troops before the Nazis invade. The problem is that, on the nearby island of Navarone, there are two massive guns that can shoot down any plane that flies over and sink any ship that sails nearby. If the British soldiers are to be saved, the guns are going to have to be taken out.
Everyone agrees that it’s a suicide mission. Even if a commando team manages to avoid the patrol boats and the German soldiers on the island, reaching the guns requires scaling a cliff that is considered to be nearly unclimbable. Still, the effort has to be made. Six men are recruited to do the impossible. Leading the group is Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), a natural-born leader who is described as having almost supernatural luck. Franklin’s second-in-command is Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), an American spy who speaks several languages and who is an expert mountain climber. Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren) and Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker) are both assigned to the team because they have fearsome reputations as killers, though it quickly becomes clear that only one of them kills for enjoyment. Colonel Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) is a member of the defeated Greek army and he has a complicated past with Mallory. Finally, Corporal Miller (David Niven) is a chemistry teacher-turned-explosive expert. Waiting for the men on the island are two members of the Resistance, Spyros’s sister Maria (Irene Papas) and her friend, Anna (Gia Scala). The mission, not surprisingly, the mission doesn’t go as planned. There’s violence and betrayal and not everyone makes it to the end. But everyone knows that, as tired as they are of fighting, the mission cannot be abandoned.
The Guns of Navarone was a huge box office success when it was originally released, which probably has a lot to do with it showing up as a best picture nominee. It’s an entertaining film and, watching it, it’s easy to see how it served as a prototype for many of the “teams on a mission” action films that followed. Though none of the characters are exactly deeply drawn, that almost doesn’t matter when you’ve got a cast that includes actors like Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, and David Niven. At it best, the film works as a triumph of old-fashioned movie star charisma. Peck is upright and determined to do whatever needs to be done to get the job done. Quinn is tempermental and passionate. David Niven is cynical, witty, and very, very British. Quayle, Darren, and especially Stanley Baker provide strong support. Before Sean Connery got the role, Stanley Baker was a strong contender for James Bond and, watching this film, you can see why.
Seen today, there’s not a lot that’s surprising about The Guns of Navarone. It’s simply a good adventure film, one that occasionally debates the morality of war without forgetting that the audience is mostly watching to see the bad guys get blown up. Some of the action scenes hold up surprisingly well. The scene where the team is forced to deal with a German patrol boat is a particular stand-out.
The Guns of Navarone was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Though it lost the top prize to West Side Story, The Guns of Navarone still won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
Since it’s due to leave HBOMax at the end of the day and since HBOMax isn’t exactly cheap, I decided that I should go ahead and watch The Little Things, the serial killer thriller that has been getting some unexpected Oscar buzz due to the performance of Jared Leto.
Taking place in the 90s, The Little Things follows two cops as they investigate a series of murders. Deacon (Denzel Washington) is the former hotshot homicide detective who, back in the day, allowed his obsession with an unsolved murder to destroy his life. He lost not only his wife but also nearly his life. Now, he’s a small town deputy who is still haunted by the cases that he didn’t solve. Jim (Rami Malek) is the detective who has picked up where Deacon left off. Deacon is haunted and unable to move on. Jim is young and cocky and obviously doomed to repeat all of Deacon’s mistakes. At first, Jim doesn’t want to work with Deacon and Deacon seems to be a little bit skeptical of Jim’s abilities. Eventually, though, they bond over their mutual righteousness. Jim is the type of who reminds the crime scene technicians that they’re working for the victim. Deacon is the type who muses about whether or not God has abandoned humanity. On the one hand, we should be thankful that they’re good at their job. On the other hand, you wouldn’t necessarily want to invite either of them to a party.
Deacon and Jim’s investigation leads them to a suspect named Sparma (Jared Leto) and you know that he’s a bad dude as soon as you learn that his name is “Sparma.” It sounds like too much of a mix of sperm and pharma for this guy to be anything other than dangerous. Sparma is an appliance repairman with unwashed hair, a permanent smirk on his face, and a disconcerting history of confessing to crimes that he didn’t actually commit. Jim and Deacon both think that Sparma is guilty but can they prove it? How far will they go to take a possible killer off the streets?
Jared Leto is certainly creepy as Sparma. In fact, I think you could probably argue that he’s a little bit too obviously creepy and unhinged in the role. Most real life serial killers — especially the ones who manage to kill for years without being detected — are able to blend in with society. Consider the cases of killers like Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer who avoided capture for nearly three decades, or Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK killer. While it’s true that everyone in his hometown apparently thought Rader was a dick even before he was revealed to be a serial killer, he also still managed to hold down a respectable job while raising a family and fooling people into thinking that he was just a normal jerk as opposed to a homicidal one. That ability to blend in and disguise their true selves is one of the things that makes real-life serial killers so frightening. Sparma, however, might as well have the words “murderer” tattooed on his forehead. I can understand why Jared Leto is getting Oscar buzz because it’s a showy role and it allows him to act up a storm. But it’s still hard not to feel that the film, which tries to introduce the idea that Deacon and Jim’s obsession with this case has led to them developing a tunnel vision that has left them incapable of suspecting anyone other than Sparma, might have been a bit more effective if it had taken a slightly more ambiguous approach to the character.
That said, The Little Things is a well-made movie. Though it’s bit overlong and occasionally meanders a bit too much for its own good, the film looks great and director John Lee Hancock does a good job of creating an effectively creepy atmosphere, providing the viewer with some wonderfully ominous images as Deacon and Jim search for the truth in the middle of the night. For instance, the scene where Deacon imagines himself talking to the ghosts of the killer’s victims really shouldn’t work but it does because Washington gives such a committed performance and Hancock, as a director and writer, is smart enough to just let the scene develop naturally. Even as he ages, Denzel Washington remains a compelling actor and he helps to carry The Little Things over more than few speed bumps on the way to the end credits. At its best, the film works as an examination of obsession and there is a haunting intensity to the film’s final moments that suggests the movie that The Little Things could have been if the film’s pace had been just a little bit tighter.
In the end, The Little Things is uneven but it has enough effective moments to be watchable.
We’re still in the process of recovering from last week’s winter storm down here and I have to admit that, for me personally, it’s been a bit of a struggle to actually maintain my focus. Last week’s combination of power outages and freezing weather threw me off of my usual rhythm and I’m still getting it back.
Fortunately, I have a little help from my friends. Earlier tonight, a group of us watched the 1983 film, Staying Alive.Staying Alive is the somewhat notorious sequel to Saturday Night Fever. If Saturday Night Fever was actually a dark and gritty coming-of-age story disguised as a crowd-pleasing musical, Staying Alive is …. well, it’s something much different. It’s a film about dancing and Broadway, directed and at least partially written by Sylvester Stallone. Why exactly would anyone think that Sylvester Stallone was the right director to make a movie about dancing and Broadway? Your guess is as good as mine but, in the end, the important thing is that Stallone wrote a key supporting role for his brother, Frank Stallone. Frank not only performs several songs but he proves that he can glare with the best of them.
As for the film itself, it opens with Tony Manero (John Travolta) having left behind Brooklyn and the world of disco. Now, he lives in Manhattan, he teaches a dance class, he humiliates himself looking for an agent, and he’s struggling to make it on Broadway. (Basically, he’s turned into Joey from Friends.) When Tony’s lucky enough to get cast in a lavish musical called Satan’s Alley, Tony has a chance to become a star but only if he can …. well, I was going to say control his ego but actually, his ego isn’t that much of a problem in Staying Alive. Actually, there’s really nothing standing in Tony’s way, other than the fact that — in Staying Alive as opposed to Saturday Night Fever — he’s portrayed as kind of being an irredeemable idiot. If Saturday Night Fever was all about revealing that Tony was actually smarter and more sensitive than he seemed, Staying Alive seems to be all about saying, “Whoops! Sorry! He’s just as obnoxious as you thought he was.”
Staying Alive is a notoriously ill-conceived film, though it’s also one of those films that’s just bad enough to be entertaining when viewed with a group of snarky friends. That said, the opening credits montage — which features Tony dancing while Kurtwood Smith glares at him — is actually pretty good. Travolta smolders with the best of them and the sequence does a good job of capturing Tony’s mix of desperation and determination. It’s unfortunate that Kurtwood Smith pretty much disappeared from the film following the opening credits. Judging from what little we see of him, Smith would have been pretty entertaining as a permanently annoyed choreographer. Finally, how can you not love the neon credits? This a scene that screams 80s in the best possible way.
So, while I continue to work on getting back to my usual prolific ways, why not enjoy this scene that I love from Staying Alive?
Through the Shattered Lens 