Film Noir Review: Highway Dragnet (dir by Nathan Juran)

Posted on August 9, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Nifty is not really a word that I ever use, mostly because I’m not 80 years old and I’m not totally sure what the word means. I’ve always assumed that nifty is way of saying that something is good without being too good and, if that’s true, then I have to say that the low-budget 1954 film noir, Highway Dragnet, certainly is a nifty film.

Highway Dragnet opens with Jim Henry (Richard Conte, who decades later would play the evil Barzini in The Godfather) in Las Vegas. Jim’s just gotten out of the army and he’s visiting his friend, Paul (Frank Jenks). Paul is a secret agent who is often unexpectedly called away. Unfortunately, this means that Paul is not around when Jim is accused of murdering another man. Since Jim was previously seen hitting on the dead man’s girlfriend, the police naturally assume that Jim’s the murderer. When Jim says that Paul can provide an alibi whenever he gets back from doing his super secret spy stuff, the cops assume that Paul doesn’t actually exist.

Under the direction of the stern Lt. White Eagle (Reed Hadley), the cops are doing a lot of assuming! Now, if Jim was smart, he would say, “Hey, White Eagle, you know what? When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me!” But Jim’s not smart so he decides to fire a gun at the cops and then go on the run!

Hey, Jim …. none of that makes you look innocent!

Anyway, while making his way across the desert, Jim comes across two women who are having car trouble. Mrs. Cummings (Joan Bennett, who went from nearly getting cast as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind to becoming a low-budget noir mainstay) is a fashion photographer and Susan Willis (Wanda Hendrix) is her model. Jim fixes their car and then asks them for a ride. They agree, little knowing that they’re heading straight into a …. HIGHWAY DRAGNET!

Of course, it turns out that Jim’s new friends have a connection to the crime of which he’s been accused. The plot of Highway Dragnet hinges on a totally implausible coincidence. This is perhaps not surprising when you consider that the script for Highway Dragnet was written by the legendary Roger Corman. In fact, it was the first script that he ever sold and, though the film was directed by Nathan Juran, Highway Dragnet feels very much like a Corman quickie. The plot is whatever it needs to be to get the story from the beginning to the end in 71 minutes. Whether it all makes sense or not doesn’t appear to be all that much of a concern.

So, here’s what does work about Highway Dragnet. First off, director Nathan Juran (who was also an award-winning art designer) manages to capture some memorable images of the Nevada desert and the film ends with a wonderfully over-the-top and atmospheric confrontation in a flooded house. Secondly, Joan Bennett is as passive-aggressively menacing in Highway Dragnet as she would later be in Dario Argento’s Suspiria. I also liked the performance of Reed Hadley, playing the unstoppable and incorruptible Lt. White Eagle.

Last Saturday, I watched Highway Dragnet with my friends in the Late Night Movie Gang and we enjoyed it. It’s undoubtedly a minor film noir but it’s still entertaining when taken on its own terms. If nothing else, the box office success of this low-budget production (which was shot over ten days) reportedly inspired Roger Corman to get serious about pursuing his own career in the film industry and, for that, movie lovers will always be thankful.

West-Teen Angst: GUNMAN’S WALK (Columbia 1958)

Posted on August 6, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

GUNMAN’S WALK may not be a classic Western like THE SEARCHERS or HIGH NOON, but it was entertaining enough to hold my interest. That’s due in large part to a change of pace performance by All-American 50’s Teen Idol Tab Hunter as a sort-of Rebel Without A Cause On The Range, an unlikable sociopath with daddy issues, aided and abetted by Phil Karlson’s taut direction and some gorgeous panoramic Cinemascope shots by DP Charles Lawton Jr.

Boisterous cattle rancher Lee Hackett (Van Heflin) is one of those Men-Who-Tamed-The-West types, a widower with two sons. Eldest Ed (Hunter) is a privileged, racist creep who’s obsessed with guns, while younger Davy (played by another 50’s Teen Idol, James Darren) is more reserved. The Hacketts are about to embark on a wild horse round-up, and enlist two half-breed Sioux, the brothers of pretty young Clee (Kathryn Grant, young wife of crooner Bing Crosby).

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Film Review: Missing Link (dir by Chris Butler)

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 1886 and Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) is the world’s greatest adventurer.

Or, at least, that’s what he says. Actually, Sir Lionel may have made a name for himself and gained some popularity as a result of his many adventures but his fellow explorers and adventurers don’t take him seriously. They view Sir Lionel as being little more than a self-promoter and they’re largely unimpressed with the all the time that he’s devoted to searching for mythical beasts like The Loch Ness Monster and lost lands like El Dorado. Sir Lionel desperately wants to join the London-based Society of Great Men but the snobbish Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry) refuses to accept his application.

When Sir Lionel receives a letter from someone in America who claims to have tracked down the legendary Sasquatch, Sir Lionel and Lord Piggot-Duncey make a bet. If Sir Lionel can prove that the Sasquatch exists, he will be allowed to join the Society. Sir Lionel heads off to America while Lord Piggot-Dunceby promptly hires an evil bounty hunter named Willard Stenk (Timothy Olyphant) to prevent him from accomplishing his mission. As Lord Piggot-Dunceby explains to his assistant, Mr. Collick (Matt Lucas), the world is changing too quickly. If Sir Lionel isn’t stopped, people might start to believe in things like evolution or women’s rights.

When Sir Lionel arrives in America, he promptly starts searching for the Sasquatch and, amazingly enough, it doesn’t take him very long to find him. It turns out that the Sasquatch — who Sir Lionel names Mr. Link — not only speaks remarkably good English but he’s also the one who wrote to Sir Lionel in the first place. As played by Zach Galifianakis, Mr. Link is a rather laid back and good-natured Sasquatch. In some ways, Mr. Link is surprisingly worldly and, in other ways, he’s rather naive. He takes everything that he hears literally, which poses a problem since Sir Lionel has a tendency towards sarcasm. It also turns out that Mr. Link is lonely but he thinks that he might be related to the Himalayan Yetis. And Mr. Link thinks that Sir Lionel is just the man to help him get from America to Asia!

Sir Lionel reluctantly agrees. Accompanying them on their journey is Sir Lionel’s former girlfriend, Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana). And pursuing them, every step of the way, is Lord Piggot-Dunceby and Willard Stenk.

Missing Link is an enjoyable and undeniably cute stop-motion animated film. It was produced by Laika, the same animation outfit that previously gave us Kubo and The Two Strings. While Missing Link is never as memorable or emotionally resonant as Kubo, it’s still a good-hearted film and entertaining enough that an adult can watch it without wanting to tear their hair out. Blessed with impressively detailed animation and the comedic vocal talents of Hugh Jackman, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, and Zach Galifianikis, Missing Link has enough funny moments and clever lines that most audiences should be able to overlook the fact that the story itself sometimes feels a bit haphazard in its construction. Much like the Sasquatch at the center of its story, Missing Link is a rather laid back film. If Kubo was a carefully-constructed work of art, Missing Link feels like it was almost thrown together at random. The film is at its best once it reaches the Himalayas, where the humor becomes very barbed and Emma Thompson steals the show in a sharp-witted cameo.

I enjoyed Missing Link. It’s just too sweet-nartured not to like.

Documentary Review: Unmasking Jihadi John: Anatomy of a Terrorist (dir by Anthony Wonke)

Posted on August 4, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was Jihadi John?

He was the black-clad terrorist who haunted the news in 2014 and 2015. He was the faceless man with the London accent who was frequently filmed standing in the desert, taunting Barack Obama and David Cameron before then beheading a hostage. In total, Jihadi John was filmed either beheading or directing others to behead 29 hostages. Among his victims were American journalist James Foley and British aid worker David Haines.

Up until he was apparently blown up by a drone strike in 2015, Jihadi John was, for many of us in the West, the best-known member of ISIS. When we heard the word “ISIS,” he was the one we pictured. Because his face was always covered, his identity was unknown. All we knew about him was that he spoke perfect English with a British accent. He was like a creature sprung from a nightmare, a monster who materialized out of nowhere and taunted us for our inability to defeat him. There was much speculation about who Jihadi John was. Even after we found out that he was probably a Kuwait-born British citizen named Mohammed Emwazi, we still wondered how this man came to be standing in the desert, being filmed as he committed terrible crimes.

The new HBO documentary, Unmasking Jihadi John, is an investigation into the origins of terrorism. The film attempts to reconstruct Emwazi’s early life as an outsider in the UK. His teachers describe him as being quiet and somewhat forgettable. Video from that period shows a skinny and awkward-looking teenager, one who covered his mouth whenever he spoke because he had once been taunted for having bad breath. When he was ten, he wrote that he wanted to be a soccer player. A few years later, he was caught on video, smiling while sitting in a computer lab. And then, just a few years after that, he was in Syria, committing horrific acts of evil. And make no mistake about it — the Emwazi who we see waving a knife while condemning the West is evil. Evil comes in many disguises and will often try to justify itself by hijacking a religion or an ideology. But in the end, evil is evil.

Because Emwazi was vaporized in 2015, he’s not around to explain just what exactly led him to join ISIS. The film speculates that Emwazi initially joined because he was looking for both a surrogate family and a place where he actually belonged. The documentary contains clips from several ISIS propaganda videos and what’s interesting is that the images that ISIS used — children playing in the streets, men working together to rebuild a city, and friends hugging each other — are many of the same images that one would expect to find in western advertising. They’re seductive images, ones that offer up a promise of a better life as long as you follow orders and don’t question authority. They were exactly the type of images designed to appeal to someone like Emwazi (and countless others), who had a need to feel as if they belonged to something bigger than themselves.

If the first half of the documentary focuses on Emwazi and the founding of ISIS, the second half deals with the aftermath of Emwazi’s actions. Interviews, with the hostages who survived and the families of those who did not, drive home the pain that was caused by the actions of ISIS as a whole and Emwazi in specific. It’s in those interviews that we are reminded that Emwazi’s evil cannot be excused by a turbulent childhood or misplaced idealism. Towards the end of the documentary, the man who controlled the drone that fired the missile that ended Emwazi’s life is interviewed. When we watch the grainy and coldly impersonal footage of Emwazi’s car blowing up, we feel no sympathy for the man who was called Jihadi John. As to whether or not there’s joy to be found there, well, that’s up to the viewer to decide for themselves.

It’s a compelling documentary but it’s also frustrating, if just because it poses a question that may be impossible to answer. Why does evil exist? How can one go from being a normal, if awkward, teenager to being a savage murderer? Like the rest of us, the documentary can only wonder why.

Film Review: Cold Pursuit (dir by Hans Petter Moland)

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released back in February (just in time for Valentine’s Day!), Cold Pursuit was this year’s Liam Neeson revenge flick.

This time, Neeson played Nels Coxman, a snow plow driver who speaks in a raspy tone of voice and tends to walk around with a thousand-yard stare on his face. After his son is killed by gangsters, Nels sets out for revenge. It turns out that Nels’s father was some sort of mob enforcer so both Nels and his brother (William Forsythe) have apparently inherited the “instinctively know how to kill” gene So, while Nels’s wife (Laura Dern) stays at home and has a nervous breakdown, Nels heads out and starts killing folks. Since the gangsters are led by an idiot named Viking (Tom Bateman), they all assume that they’re being targeted by a rival drug gang, one which is led by a Ute named White Bull (Tom Jackson). So, while the two drug gangs are killing each other off, Nels is busy killing any stragglers that he comes across. It all adds up to a lot of killing.

Cold Pursuit is different from other Liam Neeson revenge films by the fact that it’s an out-and-out parody of the genre. So, while Neeson walks through the film with his usual glum expression and commits all the usual mayhem that we’ve come to expect from a vengeance-driven Neeson, everyone else plays their role as broadly as possible. Tom Bateman leaves not a single piece of scenery unchewed in the role of Viking while Tom Jackson is stoic to the point of insanity in the role of White Bull. Whenever a gangster gets killed, a title card appears, listing his name, his nickname, and his religion. Meanwhile, two cops (Emmy Rossum and John Doman) prove to be comically ineffective.

And I will admit that I did laugh a few times while watching Cold Pursuit. The scene where Neeson asks his brother to explain why everyone has a nickname made me smile. Some of the murders are clever and the action scenes are frequently so over-the-top that you can’t help but be amused by them.

That said, Cold Pursuit didn’t really work for me. I think the problem is that the filmmakers spent so much time trying to parody Neeson’s films that they didn’t consider that the majority of those films are themselves already parodies. I mean, just watch The Commuter and tell me that film isn’t cheerfully winking at the audience. Since Neeson’s screen persona hasn’t really been a serious one for close to ten years now, parodying it isn’t quite the subversive act that Cold Pursuit seems to think it is. The difference between Neeson’s other films and Cold Pursuit is the difference between merely winking at an audience or pulling a gun on an audience while demanding, “LAUGH, DAMN YOU!” Sometimes, the funniest jokes are the ones that you pretend you’re not making.

On the plus side, the film looks gorgeous. It takes place in the Colorado mountains and makes great use of the frozen landscape. And George Fenton’s score is nicely evocative and well-used in the film. Finally, Liam Neeson is always fun to watch, even when it’s in a somewhat flawed film like this one.

Film Review: The Upside (dir by Neil Burger)

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a lot of opera in The Upside.

That, in itself, is not a surprise. The Upside is about a wealthy, emotionally repressed white man and, if there’s anything we’ve learned from the movies, it’s that wealthy, repressed white people always love opera.

Another things that we’ve learned from the movies is that wealthy, emotionally repressed white people always hire a streetwise person of color to help them learn to appreciate life. This person of color will inevitably not care for all of the opera and will then introduce the wealthy, emotionally repressed white person to their own type of music. If the movie’s a comedy, that music will be rap. If it’s a drama, that music will be jazz. The Upside is a dramedy so the music of emotional liberation is Aretha Franklin.

There’s not a single cliche that goes unused in The Upside. Actually, I take that back. As opposed to so many other films of this short, Phillip (Bryan Cranston) does not start the film as a politically incorrect bigot, which means that we’re spared of any cringey scenes of Philip trying to bait Dell (Kevin Hart) by being casually racist. Otherwise, every cliche imaginable is present in The Upside and it all gets to be a bit much after a while. I’m sure that the film means well and there’s a part of me that felt a little bit guilty about not liking it but seriously, this is one of those movie’s that just keeps coming at you.

Phillip is a paraplegic who wants to die, though not before listening to a lot of opera. Dell is an ex-con who needs to find a job so his parole doesn’t get revoked. Yvonne (Nicole Kidman) is Phillip’s personal assistant. She’s obviously in love with Phillip, though for some reason this fact is never acknowledged until the end of the film.

Together …. they solve crimes!

No, actually, they all become friends and learn the importance of celebrating life. It’s a good lesson to learn, make no mistake. But it’s just all so predictable that it’s hard not to resent just how thoroughly and blatantly the film insists on trying to manipulate you. You get the feeling that the filmmakers didn’t have any faith in their audience’s capability to feel empathy. Director Neil Burger did such a great job with Limitless but, with this film, he seems to have lost his sense of pacing. The movie drags from one heartwarming cliche to another, without any hints of the type of quirky self-awareness that would help to make those cliches easier to digest.

Bryan Cranston’s a great actor but, perhaps realizing that he’s merely playing a more a benign version of Walter White, he seems a bit bored here while Nicole Kidman is sabotaged by a script that doesn’t allow her to do much other than reproachfully shake her head. Kevin Hart, however, actually gives a pretty good performance, one that suggests that he actually has a lot of potential as a dramatic actor. The character may be a stereotype but Hart at least brings a bit of energy to the film.

The Upside came out this January and it was actually a modest box office hit. I imagine that a lot of people loved this film for the exact reason that I disliked it. The film’s just too predictable for me to embrace The Upside.

Film Review: Palm Springs Weekend (dir by Norman Taurog)

Posted on July 31, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1963 film Palm Springs Weekend asks the question, “When is a beach film not a beach film?”

When it takes place in the freaking desert!

That’s right, Palm Springs Weekend takes place in the middle of the California desert. There’s no ocean in sight nor are there any beaches on which to frolic. Instead, there’s just a cheap motel and a swimming pool. That said, Palm Springs Weekend pretty much follows the same formula as all of the beach films that were released in the early 60s. A group of college students hop on a bus and head off for the weekend. One student is wacky. One student is rich, wild, and dangerous to know. And, of course, one student is clean-cut, responsible, boring, asexual, and studious and all about doing the right thing.

Troy Donahue, the blandest teen idol of all time, plays the clean-cut student. His name is Jim and he’s a college basketball star. Even when he’s on the bus traveling to Palm Springs, he’s still got a book to study. Jim’s the type who wears a suit and a tie to the pool. He ends up falling in love with Bunny Dixon (Stefanie Powers) and the two of them spend a lot of time talking about sex in the most chaste way possible. Bunny’s father (played by Andrew Duggan) is the chief of police and he doesn’t want any crazy college kids causing trouble in his town! Well, it’s a pretty good thing that all he has to worry about is Troy Donaue asking his daughter if she wants to take a moonlight stroll in the middle of the desert.

(Trust me. I’ve spent enough time in the desert to know that the last thing you want to do when you live near rattlesnakes is take a moonlight stroll.)

Jim’s best friend is Biff (Jerry Van Dyke). Biff is the wacky college student, which means that he plays the ukulele and he gets all the comedic moments. In this film, that amounts to getting babysitting an annoying boy and, at one point, falling into an extremely sudsy pool. Luckily, Jim’s there to deliver CPR, which leads to soap bubbles floating out of Biff’s mouth and …. you know what? I’m tired of writing about Biff.

Anyway, Biff and Jim really aren’t that important. The entire film pretty much belongs to Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens, largely because they’re the only two actors who are allowed to break out of the trap of always either being bumbling and innocent or dramatic and self-righteous. Robert Conrad plays Eric Dean, who is a spoiled rich kid who owns an expensive and fast car and who is basically a fun-loving sociopath. Meanwhile, Connie Stevens plays Gail, who is a high senior and who is pretending to be a college student. And while the film insists that we should somehow be disappointed in Gail because she’s acting wild and breaking curfew and doing more than just talking about whether or not it’s appropriate to kiss on the first date, she’s actually the most compelling character in the film because, at the very least, she’s actually setting her own rules and making her own decisions. Since Palm Springs Weekend was made in 1963, it ultimately feels the need to try to punish Gail for thinking for herself but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still a far more interesting character than the blandly innocent Bunny. Gail’s a rebel. Gail’s the future. All hail Gail!

Anyway, Palm Springs Weekend is pretty forgettable and it’s never as much fun as any of AIP’s old Beach Party films. That said, I’d still recommend it if you’re a history nerd like me. It’s definitely a film of its time, a time capsule of an era.

Jungle Boogie: Ed Wood’s THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST (Allied Artists 1958)

Posted on July 30, 2019 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Reincarnation and past lives were popular themes in the 1950’s, mainly because of the success of THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY, which spawned a host of imitators. One of these was THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST, a bizarre take on the theme written by the legendary (for all the wrong reasons!) Edward D. Wood, Jr. In this incarnation of the reincarnation subject, we find a pretty young bride who improbably discovers she was once a fierce jungle gorilla!

Big Game Hunter Lance Fuller and his new wife Charlotte Austin are honeymooning at his stately manor. She finds out he’s keeping a gorilla named Spanky in the basement to be shipped to a zoo, and gets a ‘sinister urge’ (sorry!) to see it. Charlotte goes ape over Spanky, and he obviously digs her, too. But worried Lance warns her to keep her paws off the big ape because he’s dangerous.

Later that…

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Film Review: The Hot Spot (dir by Dennis Hopper)

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As befits the title, the 1990 film, The Hot Spot, is all about heat.

There’s the figurative heat that comes from a cast of characters who are obsessed with sex, lies, and murder. There’s the literal heat that comes from a fire that the film’s “hero” sets in order to distract everyone long enough so that he can get away with robbing a bank. And, of course, there’s the fact that the film is set in a small Texas town that appears to be the hottest place on Earth. Every scene in the film appears to be drenched by the sun and, if the characters often seem to take their time from getting from one point to another, that’s because everyone knows better than to rush around when it’s over a hundred degrees in the shade. As someone who has spent most of her life in Texas, I can tell you that, if nothing else, The Hot Spot captures the feel of what summer is usually like down here. I’ve often felt that stepping outside during a Texas summer is like stepping into a wall of pure heat. The Hot Spot takes place on the other side of that wall.

The Hot Spot is a heavily stylized film noir, one in which the the traditional fog and shadows have been replaced by clouds of dust and blinding sunlight. Harry (Don Johnson) is a drifter who has just rolled into a small Texas town. Harry’s not too bright but he’s handsome and cocky and who needs to be smart when you’ve got charm? Harry gets a job selling used cars, though he actually aspires to be a bank robber. Harry finds himself falling in love with Gloria (Jennifer Connelly), a seemingly innocent accountant who is being blackmailed by the brutish Frank Sutton (William Sadler). Meanwhile, Harry is also being pursued by his boss’s wife, Dolly (Virginia Madsen), an over-the-top femme fatale who is just as amoral as Harry but who might be a little bit smarter. Complicating matters is that, while Harry’s trying to rob a bank, he also ends up saving a man’s life. Only Dolly knows that Harry isn’t the hero that the rest of the town thinks he is. She tells him that she’ll keep his secret if he does her just one little favor….

The Hot Spot was directed by Dennis Hopper (yes, that Dennis Hopper) and, from the start, it quickly becomes apparent that he’s not really that interested in the film’s story. Instead, he’s more interested in exploring the increasingly surreal world in which Harry has found himself. The Hot Spot plays out at a languid pace, which allows Hopper to focus on his cast of small-town eccentrics. (My particular favorite was Jack Nance as the alcoholic bank president who also doubles as the town’s volunteer fire marshal.) The film is so hyper stylized that it’s hard not to suspect that every character — with the possible exception of Harry — understands that they’re only characters in a film noir. For instance, is Dolly really the over-the-top femme fatale that she presents herself as being or is she just a frustrated housewife playing a role? Is Gloria really an innocent caught up in a blackmail scheme or is she just smart enough to realize that the rules of noir requires her to appear to be Dolly’s opposite? And is Harry being manipulated or is he allowing himself to be manipulated because, deep down, he understands that’s his destiny as a handsome but dumb drifter in a small town? Do any of the characters really have any control over their choices and their actions or has everyone’s fate been predetermined by virtue of them being characters in a film noir? In the end, The Hot Spot is more than just a traditional noir. It’s also a study of why the genre has endured.

It’s a long and, at times, slow movie, one that plays out at its own peculiar pace. As a result, some people will be bored out of their mind. But if you can tap into the film surreal worldview and adjust to the languid style, The Hot Spot is a frequently entertaining and, at times, rather sardonic slice of Texas noir.

Film Review: One Night With The King (dir by Michael O. Sajbel)

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2006 Biblical film, One Night With The King, opens with God ordering King Saul to conquer and execute all of the Amalekites and their livestock. However, as so often happened whenever God ordered him to do something, Saul manages to screw everything up. He does conquer the Amalekites but he decides to keep their best livestock for himself and he also declines to execute the Amalekite king or his pregnant wife. The prophet Samuel (played by an uncomfortably frail-looking Peter O’Toole) shows up and tells Saul that he’s screwed up for the last time. Samuel goes off to execute the Amalekite king. However, the queen escapes into the desert.

And that’s the last we see of her. It’s also the last we see of O’Toole who, despite being top billed, has about a minute of screen time.

Jump forward several hundred years. We are now in the city of Susa, Persia. It’s the center of the known world. We know this because characters tend to say stuff like, “We are living in the center of the known world.” Xerxes (Luke Goss) is the king of Persia, a somewhat uncouth man who is obviously used to getting everything that he wants. Xerxes is plotting on marching off to war. However, his current wife is opposed to the war and refuses to attend Xerxes’s pre-war banquet. Scandal! Xerxes’s advisor, Prince Memucan (Omar Sharif, who co-starred with Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia), suggests that perhaps Xerxes should get a new wife.

Every female virgin in the city is brought to Xerxes’s palace so that, under the watchful eye of the king’s eunuch, Hegai (Tommy Lister, Jr.), they can compete for the chance to become queen. Among the women is the beautiful Hadassah (Tiffany Dupont), who is the niece of one of the king’s scribes, Mordecai (John Rhys-Davies). Hadassah does not tell the king that she’s related to Mordecai and instead says that her name is Esther. With the help of Hegai, Hadassah soon emerges as the favorite to become the new queen.

Meanwhile, an evil man named Haman (Boo! Haman! Boo!) has shown up on the scene. Haman (played by James Callas) is a descendant of the Amalekites that Saul failed to destroy. (Dammit, Saul!) A greedy astrologer, Haman (Boo!) has been appointed to the position of vizier by Xerxes. Haman (hiss!) demands that all of the king’s servants bow before him. However, because he has a pagan symbol sewn onto his clothes, Mordecai refuses to do so. Driven by hate (Boo!), Haman makes plans to execute not only Mordecai but every other Jew in Persia. With the king unaware of Haman’s intentions, only Hadassah can stop his plans but to do so, she’ll have to risk seeing the king unsummoned….

The story of Esther, Mordecai, the king, and the moment that Haman (Boo!) discovers that karma is a bitch has always been one of my favorites so I’ve always enjoyed One Night With The King whenever I’ve watched it. Don’t get me wrong. It has its flaws. Though the film does a pretty good job of recreating the past on a low budget, it’s still one of those films that’s full of awkward exposition, cringe-worthy dialogue, and more than a few inconsistent performances. (Sharif and O’Toole, for instance, both go through the motions, doing just enough to pick up a paycheck.) At the same time, Luke Goss is properly rough-around-the-edges as the king and Tiffany DuPont is well-cast as Hadassah. Tommy Lister, Jr. appears to be having a lot of fun in the role of the world’s most unlikely eunuch and, as a result, he’s entertaining to watch. Visually, it’s a pretty film and the costumes are to die for, as they should be in any film about a royal romance. And, even if the story is at times awkwardly told, it still reaches a deeply satisfying conclusion.

James Callas is convincingly evil and properly detestable as Haman (Boo! Haman! Boo!). Haman is an archetype of evil, the ant-Semite whose evil legacy has continued to haunt the world in the centuries since he met his own fate. Though the film at times spends too much time playing up the romance between the king and Hadassah (which, while nice to watch, is not the point of the source material), One Night With The King does include enough scenes of Haman (hiss!) ranting to make clear the link between Haman and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis and those modern day hate mongers who try to hide their bigotry behind claims that they are “only criticizing Israel.” Haman’s evil makes his final fate all the more satisfying but the film leaves no doubt that, unless the world remains vigilant, there will always be new Hamans threatening to come to power. That’s an important enough message to make up for many of the film’s missteps.

One Night With The King is a flawed, low-budget film. But I like it.