A Movie A Day #212: Fuzz (1972, directed by Richard A. Colla)

Posted on August 8, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Detective Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch) has just been given her new assignment and she is about to find out that there is never a dull day in the 87th Precinct. How could there be when the precinct’s top detectives are played by Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, and Jack Weston? Or when Boston’s top criminal mastermind is played by Yul Brynner? There is always something happening in the 8th Precinct. Someone is stealing stuff from the precinct house. Someone else is attacking the city’s homeless. Even worse, Brynner is assassinating public officials and will not stop until he is paid a hefty ransom!

Based on the famous 87th Precinct novels that Evan Hunter wrote under the name Ed McBain, Fuzz has more in common with Robert Altman’s MASH than The French Connection. (Skerritt and Bert Remsen, who plays a policeman in Fuzz, were both members of Altman’s stock company.) Much like Altman’s best-regarded films, Fuzz is an ensemble piece, one that mixes comedy with tragedy and which features several different storylines playing out at once. Scenes of homeless men being set on fire are mixed with scenes of Reynolds and Weston going undercover as nuns. (Of course, Burt does not shave his mustache.) Since it was written by Hunter, the film’s script comes close to duplicating the feel of the 87th Precinct novels. Unfortunately, Richard A. Colla was a television director and Fuzz feels more like an extended episode of Police Story or Hill Street Blues than a movie. Unlike Altman’s best films, Fuzz‘s constantly shifting tone and the mix of comedy and drama often feels awkward. Fortunately, Fuzz does feature good performances from Reynolds, Westin, Skerritt, and Brynner, along with a great 70s score from Dave Grusin. Raquel Welch is never believable as cop but she’s Raquel Welch so who cares?

A Movie A Day #211: Deja Vu (1985, directed by Anthony B. Richmond)

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Damn, son. I’ve seen some bad movies before but Deja Vu is something else altogether.

Around the mid-80s, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus decided to prove that Cannon Films was capable of doing more than making movies about Chuck Norris refighting the war in Vietnam. Golan and Globus had already made money, now they wanted respect. Teaming up with respected directors (Robert Altman directed an adaptation of Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love for them) and casting actors who had slightly more range than Chuck Norris or Reb Brown, Cannon tried to go the prestige route. Some of the Cannon’s quality movies actually were good movies. The same year that Deja Vu came out, Cannon’s Runaway Train scored several Oscar nominations. However, Deja Vu is a far more representative example of a Cannon prestige film. It may have had higher production values than Missing in Action but it was still a Golan/Globus production through and through.

Nigel Terry (best known for playing King Arthur in John Boorman’s Excalibur) plays Michael, a screenwriter who views a documentary about a famous and tragic ballerina and is shocked to discover that she looks just like his actress fiancée. (Both roles are played by Jaclyn Smith.) Michael is even more shocked when it turns out that he looks exactly like the ballerina’s husband. Convinced that his girlfriend is the reincarnation of the ballerina, Michael researches her life and murder. Meanwhile, his fiancée starts to act strangely.

Deja Vu starts out a merely mediocre, slowly paced and miscast. (There is no chemistry whatsoever between Nigel Terry and Jaclyn Smith.) But then Shelley Winters shows up, playing a Russian psychic named Olga Nabokova. As soon as Winters started to deliver her lines in one of the least convincing Russian accents that I have ever heard, Deja Vu made the leap from being merely bad to being a cinematic trainwreck. While Terry and Smith sleepwalk through their roles, Winters and, later, Claire Bloom (cast as the ballerina’s mother) chew up every piece of scenery that they can get their hands on. Though the plot may be so predictable that it will cause viewers to have deja vu of their own, it must be said that, eventually, Deja Vu becomes so bad and misjudged that it is impossible to look away. Golan and Globus may have had Oscars in their eyes when they decided to produce this prestige pic but instead, they won the laughter of anyone who comes across it on TV.

Soapy Noir: A KISS BEFORE DYING (United Artists 1956)

Posted on August 7, 2017 by gary loggins

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A KISS BEFORE DYING is part soap opera, part film noir, and 100% 50’s kitsch! Based on the best selling debut novel by Ira Levin (who went on to give us ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE STEPFORD WIVES), it’s also the debut of director Gerd Oswald (who went on to give us AGENT FOR HARM and BUNNY O’HARE !). Lawrence Roman’s screenplay has some suspense, but his characters are all pretty dull and dumb, except for Robert Wagner’s turn as a charmingly sick sociopath.

Wagner is college student Bud Corliss, from the wrong side of the tracks, dating rich but naïve Dorie Kingship (Joanne Woodward) to get his hands on dad’s copper mine loot. And when I say naïve I’m not just whistling Dixie; this girl’s downright dense! Bud, after learning she’s pregnant, decides the best thing to do is not marry her, but bump her off. He whips up some poison…

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Let’s Talk About Sharknado 5 (dir by Anthony C. Ferrante)

Posted on August 6, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just watched the latest installment in the Sharknado franchise on SyFy and what can I say? I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet so I’ll just say this:

Sharknado 5 is the best Sharknado yet!

Seriously, it’s amazing when you think about it. The annual premiere of the latest Sharknado film has literally become a national holiday. If you were to judge solely by what was happening on twitter tonight, you would be totally justified in thinking that literally everyone in the world was watching Sharknado 5. Who would have thought that a franchise about sharks in a tornado would become a pop cultural milestone? At this time, when the country seems so divided, Sharknado 5 brought us all together. That, in itself, is no small accomplishment.

But beyond that, these film are consistently and surprisingly entertaining. Considering that it was the fifth film in this particular franchise, Sharknado 5 felt remarkably fresh and creative. Have no doubt, Sharknado 5 had everything that you would expect from a Sharknado film. You had Ian Ziering grimacing as he manfully beat up sharks. You had Tara Reid acting like a super hero. To the delight of many on twitter, Cassie Scerbo returned as Nova, who is now the leader of the Sharknado Sisterhood.

(My friend Ian Rice tweeted me, during the movie: “What is that (the Sharknado Sisterhood)?”

“The Sharknado sisterhood follows and monitors sharknados across the world,” I tweeted back.

After a minute or two, Ian replied: “I’m sorry I asked, LMB.”)

Of course, the script was full of one liners and deliberately bad puns, all of which were delivered with a straight face by the dedicated members of the cast. There were plenty of homages and references to other films, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. The special effects were cheap in the most likable way imaginable. And yes, there were celebrity cameos but — as opposed to what happened with Sharknado 4, Sharknado 5 did not allow those camoes to distract from the story being told. Yes, Abby Lee Miller got eaten by a shark. Yes, Geraldo Rivera got sucked out of a blimp. But Sharknado 5 never lost its focus.

And what was that focus? Well, basically, Finn accidentally created another sharknado. No big deal, right? I mean, Finn specializes in destroying those right? Unfortunately, this time, Finn and April’s son, Gil, got sucked into the sharknado. So, for most of the film, Finn and April were chasing the Sharknado across the world while Gil spun around inside of it.

Of course, while Finn chased the latest sharknado, the world was being destroyed by flying sharks. A lot of famous landmarks ended up getting destroyed. Actually, at the rate that these movies go, I’m shocked that there are any monuments or memorials left. It was not an easy life for Finn but, fortunately, the Pope showed up and gave him a blessed chainsaw and…

Okay, never mind! Are you expecting a movie about a tornado full of sharks to make any sense!? What’s important is that the film is a lot of fun and Ian Ziering and Tara Reid, to their credit, are still going out of their way to make their characters vaguely credible.

What sets Sharknado 5 apart from the other Sharknado films is that, about an hour into the film (80 minutes if you’re watching with commercials), Sharknado 5 takes a very, very dark turn. People who you don’t expect to die, die. Places that you don’t expect to see destroyed end up getting destroyed. It all ends with an homage to one final film and a cliffhanger. You don’t want to miss it!

And I’m certainly not going to want to miss Sharknado 6.

A Movie A Day #210: Who’s Harry Crumb? (1989, directed by Pat Flaherty)

Posted on August 6, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Who’s Harry Crumb?

He is a private detective, the latest in a long line of gumshoes. While Harry’s father and his grandfather may have been great detectives, Harry is about as incompetent as can be. He is a self-styled master of disguise but not much else. He is employed at Crumb & Crumb Detective Agency, solely because of his family background. When the head of the agency, Eliot Draisen (Jeffrey Jones), engineers the kidnapping of a millionaire’s daughter, he gives the case to Harry because he knows Harry will never be able to solve it.

Who’s Harry Crumb?

He is John Candy, the much beloved and much missed comedic actor from Canada. As anyone who has ever seen an old episode of SCTV knows, John Candy could be one of the funniest men alive but Hollywood rarely knew what to do with him. Other than the movies that he made with John Hughes, Candy was always stuck in either supporting roles or in bad comedies. In Art Linson’s A Pound of Flesh, veteran film producer Linson writes that, because of Candy’s size, some Paramount executives wanted to cast him as Al Capone in The Untouchables. That is something that I would have enjoyed seeing. Instead, some actor named Robert De Niro got that role and Candy ended up making movies like Who’s Harry Crumb?

Who’s Harry Crumb? tries to be a mix of comedy and mystery but, due to a weak script and uncertain direction, it does not really succeed as either. John Candy delivers a few laughs because he was a naturally funny actor but, as a character, Harry Crumb is not that interesting. Instead, the film is stolen by Annie Potts, playing a duplicitous femme fatale. Potts and Candy previously came close to working together in the original Ghostbusters. (Candy pulled out of the role of Louis Tully so that he could play Tom Hanks’s brother in Splash. He was replaced by his SCTV co-star, Rick Moranis.) The rest of the cast seems bored and uninterested in what they are doing. Even Jeffrey Jones, usually so reliable in smarmy bad guy roles, seems bored.

John Candy died just 5 years after the release of Who’s Harry Crumb?, leaving behind two intriguing dream projects, one a biopic of Fatty Arbuckle and another an adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces. Sadly, Hollywood never really figured out what to do with this talented comedian.

Happy 100th Birthday Robert Mitchum!: THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (United Artists 1955)

Posted on August 6, 2017 by gary loggins

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Regular readers know I’m a big fan of Big Bob Mitchum, having covered nine of his classic films. The self-effacing Mitchum always downplayed his talents in interviews, but his easy-going, naturalistic style and uncanny ear for dialect made him one of the screen’s most watchable stars. Whether a stoic film noir anti-hero, a rugged soldier fighting WWII, a romantic lead, or a malevolent villain, Mitchum always delivered the goods. Last night I watched THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER for the first time, and his performance as the murderous ‘Reverend’ Harry Powell just zoomed to the top of my list of marvelous Mitchum performances.

Mitchum’s Powell is totally amoral and totally crazy, a sociopathic killer who talks to God about killing women, those “perfume smelling things, lacy things, things with curly hair” that The Lord hates, according to Harry. He’s sexually repressed to the point he must murder in the name of God to…

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A Movie A Day #209: Assassination (1987, directed by Peter R. Hunt)

Posted on August 5, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Charles Bronson, man.

Long before Clint Eastwood starred in In The Line of Fire, Charles Bronson played an over the hill secret service agent in Assassination. Having just returned to active service after a six month leave of absence, Jay Killian (Charles Bronson), thinks that he is going to be assigned back to the presidential detail. Instead, he is given the job that no one wants. Jay is assigned to protect the first lady, Lara Craig (Jill Ireland, Bronson’s real-life wife).

Lara is a handful. Every one tells Killian that she is “even worse than Nancy.” (This running joke probably played better in 1987. If Assassination had been released ten years later, Lara would have been described as being “even worse than Hillary.”) Lara does not like being told what she can and cannot do. When she refuses to follow Killian’s orders not to ride in a convertible, she ends up getting a black eye when a motorcycle crashes and Killian instinctively throws her to the floor. Lara may not like Killian but when, she is targeted by a notorious terrorist (Erik Stern), she will have to learn to trust him. Her life depends on it, especially when it becomes clear that the order to have her killed is coming from inside the White House. It turns out that the President has been impotent for years. That may not have troubled Lara before but now Killian is showing her that a real man looks like Charles Bronson. A divorced president will never be reelected. A widowed president, on the other hand…

Assassination was one of the last films that Bronson made for Cannon. It’s never as wild as Murphy’s Law, Kinjite, or many of Bronson’s other Cannon films but it is always interesting to watch Bronson acting opposite of Ireland. Bronson famously did not get along with many people but he loved Ireland and that was something that always came through in the 15 movies that they made together. Whenever Bronson and Ireland acted opposite each other, Bronson actually seemed to be enjoying himself. And while it may be subdued when compared to his other Cannon films, Assassination provides just enough scenes of Bronson being Bronson.

Who other than Bronson could tell his much younger girlfriend that, because of her, he might “die of terminal orgasm?”

Who other than Bronson could drive around a motorcycle with machine gun turrets and execute a jump that would put his old co-star Steve McQueen to shame?

Who other than Bronson could use a bazooka to kill one man and then smile about it?

Charles Bronson, man. No offense to Bruce Willis, who will be trying to step into Bronson’s gigantic shoes with the upcoming Death Wish remake, but nobody did it better than Bronson.

Let’s Talk About Trailer Park Shark (dir by Griff Furst)

Posted on August 5, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh hell yeah!

Listen, if you ever find yourself being unexpectedly menaced by a shark, you’re going to want a redneck around. Trust me on this. I may not be one myself but I’ve grown up around rednecks and I feel a lot safer around them than I do with sensitive types from up north. Seriously, if you’re under shark attack, who do you want protecting you? A guy with a gun and a cooler full of beer or someone who drives a Prius? Elon Musk may be smarter but, when it comes to sharks, Trace Adkins is going to be more helpful.

The other great thing about rednecks is that there’s nothing that they can’t do with duct tape. Give a redneck enough duct tape and a weather satellite and I guarantee that he’ll find a way to stop climate change. There’s a name for that: redneck ingenuity.

When I was watching Trailer Park Shark on Wednesday night, I was impressed with the amount of duct tape on display. As the main character, a redneck played by Thomas Ian Nicholas, was using duct tape to solve yet another problem, I tweeted that I was enjoying the music playing in the background. To me, it sounded like something that Ennio Morricone would have come up with for a spaghetti western. It fit the scene perfectly because Trailer Park Shark is a film that make duct tape feel just as epic as the final cemetery confrontation in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Andrew Morgan Smith, who did excellent work on the film’s score, informed me that the musical cue was called “Redneck Ingenuity.”

That’s a perfect name because, while Trailer Park Shark is about a lot of things, it is ultimately a celebration of redneck ingenuity and the never-give-up attitude of life in the Southern bayou. The characters in Trailer Park Shark have a lot to deal with. Because of a freak rains storm and some evil plotting by mean old Mr. Deconnard (Dennis Haskins), their trailer park has been flooded. And with the flood has come a shark! It would be easy to give up, especially when people and horses start getting eaten. But no one surrenders to fate! No one gives up!

It’s a lot of fun, as any movie about a shark attacking a trailer park should be. All of the characters in the park are memorable in their redneck way. Even with the majority of the park underwater and neighbors getting eaten left and right, they’re still just as likely to be fighting each other as they are the shark. While I personally have never lived in a trailer park, I’ve lived close to a few and I’ve spent a few nights visiting and this film gets the atmosphere just right. Griff Furst, who is something of a specialist when it comes to bayou chaos, brings this location to life. From the very first tracking shot to the film’s action-packed finale, the bayou feels alive. You can easily imagine this location and these people existing long before the cameras started rolling. The relationships feel real.

Speaking of feeling real, I always suspected that Dennis Haskins had the ability to play a really evil character. Seriously, go watch the earliest episodes of Saved By The Bell and you’ll see some hints of darkness underneath Mr. Belding’s goofy exterior. That said, Haskins does such a good job playing this film’s villain that you eventually forget that you’re watching Mr. Belding threatening to kill people. Instead, he’s just a very bad man with an interesting preference in weapons.

(Speaking of weapons, Tara Reid also shows up, playing a trailer park resident who has a wide variety of weapons at her disposal. Though her role is small, her appearance allows for some playful poking at the Sharknado franchise.)

I liked Trailer Park Shark. It’s a blast of pure entertainment and my favorite of the recent SyFy shark movies. Since SyFy reruns everything a hundred times, keep an eye out for it!

Watch it in honor of the rednecks who keep us safe from sharks, often at the cost of life, limb, and satellite dish.

Let’s Talk About Mississippi River Sharks (dir by Misty Talley)

Posted on August 5, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God — sharks in the Mississippi River!?

Hey, why not? Listen, SyFy has been showing shark films for over four years straight now. We’ve had zombie sharks. We’ve had toxic sharks. We had a ghost shark. We’ve had a planet of the sharks. The sharks have taken over the oceans. They’ve taken over the jersey shore. There’s even a movie called Sand Sharks, in which the sharks take over the beach! And, let’s not forget that SyFy and the Asylum have built an entire franchise around the idea that sharks can survive in a tornado. (And I haven’t even mentioned what happens in Shark Exorcist.)

My point is that there are a lot of shark movies and, as a result, the sharks are having to branch out and explore new aquatic territory. It was inevitable that the sharks would eventually find their way to the Mississippi River.

As soon as I saw the title of this movie, I thought to myself, “Please tell me that this movie will open with a big old riverboat getting attacked by sharks.” You can imagine how happy I was when, less than five minutes into the film, that’s exactly what happened. When you’re watching a movie on SyFy and you see a bunch of CGI sharks jumping onto the deck of a riverboat and snapping off people’s heads, you know you’re in a good hands. You know you’re going to be properly entertained for the next two hours.

Really, when it comes to shark movies, all you really need are the sharks and some victims who, for whatever reason, refuse to stay out of the water. However, Mississippi River Sharks offers a bit more than that. After the sharks get finished with that riverboat, they move on down the Mississippi and attack a small town’s annual “fish rodeo.” Needless to say, a fish rodeo always tends to attract the most eccentric among us and this one is no different. For instance, there’s Possum (Kevin J. McGrath), who isn’t going to let a little thing like a shark attack stand in the way of his quest to win a trophy. There’s Big Bill (Marco St. John), who owns the local car dealership and who doesn’t see why the presence of a few sharks should stand in the way of making a little money. There’s Wyatt (Dean West), who has a way with a quip and quickly emerged as a favorite of the viewing audience. And then there’s Tara (played by Cassie Steele, star of both Degrassi and Zombie Shark) who quickly shows that she knows just how to deal with ill-tempered sharks.

Finally, there’s Jason London, playing the role of …. Jason London! That’s right, Jason London plays himself in Mississippi River Sharks. In the film’s universe, Jason is well-known for starring in multiple editions of the Shark Bite franchise. (“We don’t talk about Shark Bite 3!” Jason snaps.) When Jason accepted the invitation to be the fish rodeo’s special celebrity guest, he never realized that he would have to face real-life sharks! However, when those sharks do arrive, this movie hero proves himself to be … well, not much of a hero. Watch the movie to see what happens. I’ll just say that London is hilarious and it’s a lot of fun to watch him pretending to be a pretentious and stuck-up movie star. He delivers his lines with just the right amount of weary annoyance.

(And yes, there is a Jeremy London joke but I won’t spoil it.)

(Also, it’s mentioned that Jason London also starred in Here Comes Santa Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Shark. Seriously, somebody needs to make these two films.)

Now that the sharks have invaded the Mississippi River, where will the sharks show up next year? Well, just remember this — the Mississippi River is the biggest river in the United States. Those sharks could end up anywhere. Personally, I’m hoping for Minnesota Winter Sharks.

We’ll see what happens!

Windmills of Your Mind: Alfred Hitchcock’s FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (United Artists 1940)

Posted on August 5, 2017 by gary loggins

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(When Maddy Loves Her Classic Films invited me to join in on the Alfred Hitchcock Blogathon, I jumped at the chance! I’ve just completed the Ball State/TCM 50 YEARS OF HITCHCOCK course, and have been knee-deep in his movies for a month now!)

Alfred Hitchcock’s second American film found the Master of Suspense back in the spy game with FORGEIGN CORRESPONDENT, this time with American star Joel McCrea caught up in those familiar “extraordinary circumstances” we’ve all come to love. Like REBECCA that same year, this film was nominated for Best Picture, an extraordinary circumstance indeed for a director new to these shores. Offhand I can only think of three other directors to hold that distinction – John Ford (also in ’40), Sam Wood (1942), and Francis Ford Coppola (1974). Good company, to say the least! (And please correct me if I’m wrong, any of you film fans out there).