A Movie A Day #189: Knock On Any Door (1949, directed by Nicholas Ray)

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Knock On Any Door opens with the murder of a policeman in New York City. Nick Romano (John Derek) is arrested for the crime. Nick is a troubled young man who has grown up in the slums and is fond of saying that his goal is to “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.” Now on trial for his very life, Nick reaches out to lawyer Andrew Morton (Humphrey Bogart), who once unsuccessfully defended Nick’s father in a similar criminal trial. At first, Morton wants nothing to do with Nick but he changes his mind, partially out of guilt over Nick’s father and partially because Morton himself came from the same slums that produced Nick. Even as the district attorney (George Macready) goes for blood, Morton argues that Nick isn’t a menace but instead a victim of a society that left him with little choice but to become a criminal.

Knock Any Door is heavy-handed but, for fans of Humphrey Bogart and Nicholas Ray, this is an essential film. Bogart produced this film himself and the subject matter was very important to him. Bogart, the classic tough guy with a heart of gold, gives one of his best performances, delivering his closing statement with such conviction that it is impossible not to be moved. Though Ray’s direction is often heavy-handed and the courtroom scenes are sometimes too stagey, Knock On Any Door sees him exploring the same themes that he would later explore in Rebel Without a Cause and with the empathy that made that later film a classic.

A Movie A Day #188: The War Game (1965, directed by Peter Watkins)

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

“Do you know what Strontium-90 is and what it does?”

That question is asked as part of a man-on-the-street interview in The War Game. Despite a pledge by the Home Office to educate the British public on the possible effects of atomic war and nuclear fallout, the man being asked has no idea what Strontium-90 is. For that matter, I have no idea what Strontium-19 is. The War Game makes a good case that the only way anyone will ever understand that true horror of atomic conflict is to live through it but, by the point that we have no choice but to know what Strontium-90 is and what it does, it will be too late.

Clocking in at a brisk 50 minutes, The War Game is set up like documentary, though the majority of the film is staged. (That did not stop The War Game from winning an Oscar for best documentary feature.) Made at the height of the Cold War, The War Game suggested that not only was Britain not prepared for a possible nuclear attack but that the attack itself would be so devastating that was literally no way that it ever could be prepared. Opening with interviews with typical Britons expressing both their ignorance about the longterm effects of an atomic war, The War Game proceeds to visualize what would actually happen if the UK ever did find itself attacked. When the bomb falls, most people are nowhere near a shelter. (“Within this car,” the narrator says, “a family is buring alive.”) Even for those who get to safety, it turns out that there is no shelter strong enough to protect its inhabitants from both physical and psychological damage. The film ends with chilling scenes of London bobbies executing looters and British children saying that they never want to grow up.

The War Game was originally made for the BBC, which deemed the program to be to “upsetting,” refused to air it, and subsequently tried to bury it. This attempt at censorship had the opposite effect, earning The War Game a theatrical release and exposing it to an even larger audience than would have seen it originally. However, it would be another 20 years before the BBC allowed The War Game to air on television. Though, especially for media-savvy viewers, the staged nature of this “documentary” is sometimes too obvious, The War Game is still a powerful and bleakly disturbing vision of an all-too possible future.

Bloody Good Show: Franco Nero in DJANGO (Euro International 1966)

Posted on July 15, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

A solitary man is dragging a coffin through bleak, rocky terrain. He comes across a helpless female tied to posts, being whipped by a gang of banditos. A group of mercenaries, adorned in red scarves, shoot down the bandits. The group, members of ex-Confederate Major Jackson’s marauders, plan on burning the woman alive. The solitary man, watching all this, guns down her attackers with blinding speed, freeing her and offering protection. The man’s name is… DJANGO!

Any resemblance between Sergio Corbucci’s seminal 1966 Spaghetti Western and Sergio Leone’s 1964 A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS is not strictly coincidental. Both movies are uncredited adaptations of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 YOJIMBO, though Corbucci’s version of the tale takes more liberties and he succeeds to out-Leone Leone with the brutal, unrelenting violence, making this a must-see film for fans of the genre.

Django takes the woman, a half-Mexican named Maria, to a desolate ghost town inhabited only by saloon proprietor Nathaniel…

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A Movie A Day #187: The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 (1997, directed by Sam Green)

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Who was Rollen Stewart?

Briefly, he was a celebrity. In the 1970s, he was inspired to start appearing at every sporting event that he could, wearing a leisure suit and a rainbow afro wig. As the Rainbow Man, Rollen became a familiar face on television, even getting to appear in a beer commercial. What no one knew was that, before he became the Rainbow Man, Rollen was the child of an abusive alcoholic and that he never emotionally recovered from the murder of his sister.

Rollen Stewart was also an aficionado of marijuana, which perhaps led to the next stage in his odd career. While possibly high, Stewart became a born again Christian and he traded in his disco lifestyle for a hand-made signs and t-shirts reading John 3:16. When his new religious persona proved to be far less popular than his Rainbow Man persona, Rollen decided that it was a sign that the end of not just his celebrity but also world itself was near. He started to leave stink bombs in various churches and Christian bookstores. (Because, according to him, “God thinks this stinks!”) In 1992, Rollen entered a motel room, lit a joint, covered the windows with religious placards, and then took a hotel maid hostage. He is currently serving a life sentence.

The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 is a documentary about the strange life and times of Rollen Stewart. Along with plenty of footage at Rollen at the height of his fame, the documentary also includes footage of a visibly unstable Rollen in prison. The documentary is 20 years old so I don’t know if Rollen still believes the world is about to end. He comes up for parole later this year.

The documentary is only 48 minutes long. I wish it had been longer because Rollen’s life was an interesting one. His greatest tragedy is that this attention-seeker became famous before the advent of reality TV. Today, he could have revived his career by appearing on Dancing With The Stars or I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Instead, he is just another inmate at California’s Mule Creek Prison.

A Movie A Day #186: Joysticks (1983, directed by Greydon Clark)

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

It’s Porky’s in an arcade!

Every gamer knows how accurate this is.

Jeff Bailey (Scott McGinnis) is the manager of the hottest (and only) arcade in town. His grandfather owns the place and Jeff is everyone’s friend but he does not play any of the games. When he was younger, he was caught getting it on with his girlfriend in an arcade. She was sent out of town and Jeff was left so traumatized that he swore he would never touch another joystick. However, he may have to go back on his pledge because the local evil businessman (Joe Don Baker) is determined to take over the arcade and he has recruited King Vidiot (Jon Gries) to help him do it. In between Jeff getting laid and King Vidiot scheming, there are all the usual teen sex comedy hijinks. Just like in real life, the arcade is perpetually full of hot, single girls wearing bikinis. A hot dog gets stuck between a pair of breasts. Pacman is played by a topless video game groupie. Inevitably it all leads to a training montage and a showdown between Jeff and King Vidiot, with whoever gets the highest score at Super Pacman winning control of the arcade.

King Vidiot was the height of 80s fashion.

Joysticks is as dumb as it sounds but it is also a lot of fun, especially if you want to see what life was like before everyone had internet access and their own home gaming console. The movie is full of classic games, from Pac-Man to Satan’s Hollow. The best thing about the arcade is that the final video game duel is played with giant, floor-mounted joysticks. I’m not sure they would work well in real life but they look extremely cool.

Check out those joysticks!

For those wondering, at no point does Joe Don Baker play Pacman during Joysticks. If he had, the end result would have been a classic for all time.

Grab that joystick, Joe Don. You know you want to.

Joysticks? I wonder if that title was supposed to have a double meaning.

Arcade Life, 1983

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2017: Life (dir by Daniel Espinosa)

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I don’t care what Neil deGrasse Tyson says. Space is dangerous.

Just judging by what I’ve seen in the movies, it might be a good idea for humanity to stay earthbound. Seriously, it seems like every time a group of astronauts and scientists spend an extended period of time off of our planet, bad shit happens. They either end up leaving behind someone on Mars or sometimes they crash land on a planet inhabited by vampires. Occasionally, they end up with evil creatures bursting out of their chest and, if they’re not careful, they might even end up accidentally traveling all the way to Hell and back.

For that matter, it might be a good idea to also stop listening to Bill Nye. I’ve seen enough movies to know better than to trust science. Did you know that every time a revived corpse has gone on a killing spree, a scientist has been to blame? In the movies, science always says it’s going to make the world a better place but ultimately, it just seems to make things worse.

Consider Life, for instance.

This science fiction film, which came out earlier this year and didn’t stick around in theaters for very long, opens with the crew of the International Space Station taking questions from a group of school children on Earth. Everyone is really excited because a probe has been picked up evidence that there was once extraterrestrial life on Mars. Starting from one cell, the scientists have managed to clone an alien organism. (Or something like that. Wisely, the movie doesn’t waste too much time on how all of this actually works.) The school kids name the organism Calvin.

Isn’t that cute?

But here’s the thing. Life is a science fiction/horror movie hybrid and, as a result, we already know that it was a mistake to bring that alien to life. We know that almost everyone in that space station is going to die a terrible death. It doesn’t matter that the scientists are played by people like Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, and Rebecca Ferguson We know what is going to happen because we’ve all seen at least one movie in the Alien franchise. We know what’s going to happen and, when things start to fall apart, the entire audience nods and says, “I told you so.”

That’s not to say that Life doesn’t work. Life may be predictable but that’s actually a part of the film’s charm. This is the type of film that you need to watch with a group of your loudest and snarkiest friends. (I watched it with my sisters during the 4th of July weekend. We all love Jake. We all love Ryan. Things got a bit out of hand.) You don’t watch Life because you’re looking for an upbeat portrait of space exploration. You watch Life so that you can yell, “No, don’t bring Calvin to life! No, you idiot! Don’t go into space! Don’t lock yourself in the lab! HAVEN’T ANY OF YOU SCIENTISTS EVER SEEN A HORROR MOVIE BEFORE!?”

(Indeed, one of the unexpected pleasures of Life was seeing that even brilliant people will do stupid things when confronted by the unknown.)

That said, Life occasionally caught me off guard. It’s not that I was shocked to see the members of the cast being picked off one by one by Calvin. Instead, I was shocked by the film’s relentlessly dark and bleak vision. For a film called Life, it’s ultimately all about death. Just because a character is being played by a big star, that doesn’t mean they won’t end up with Calvin entering their body and graphically devouring them from the inside out. Calvin was a truly frightening creation and director Daniel Espinosa does a good job of capturing the claustrophobia and clutter of the space station. Even if they didn’t exactly break any new ground, Espinosa and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick deserve a lot of credit for pursuing the film to its dark conclusion. In space, they seem to suggest, there is no hope.

In conclusion, the main lesson of Life seems to be this: outer space is a terrible place and the worst thing that humanity can do is leave the planet. Science is going to be the death of us. Neil deGrasse Tyson has a lot to answer for.

A Movie A Day #185: Emperor of the North Pole (1973, directed by Robert Aldrich)

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Emperor of the North Pole is the story of depression-era hobos and one man who is determined to kill them.

The year is 1933 and Shack (Ernest Borgnine) is one of the toughest conductors around. At a time when destitute and desperate men are riding the rails in search of work and food, Shack has declared that no one will ride his train for free. When Shack is first introduced, the sadistic conductor is seen shoving a hobo off of his train and onto the tracks. Shack smiles with satisfaction when the man is chopped in half under the train’s wheels.

A-No.1 (Lee Marvin) is a legend, the unofficial king of the hobos. A grizzled veteran, A-No. 1 has been riding the rails for most of his life. (The title comes from the hobo saying that great hobos, like A-No. 1, are like the Emperor of the North Pole, the ruler of a vast wasteland). A-No. 1 is determined to do what no hobo has ever done, successfully hitch a ride on Shack’s train. He even tags a water tower, announcing to everyone that he intends to take Shack’s train all the way to Portland.

If A-No. 1 did not have enough to worry about with Shack determined to get him, he is also being tailed by Cigaret (Keith Carradine), a young and cocky hobo who is determined to become as big a legend as A-No. 1. Cigaret and A. No. 1 may work together but they never trust each other.

Like many of Robert Aldrich’s later films, Emperor of the North Pole is too long and the rambling narrative often promises more than it can deliver. Like almost all movies that were released at the time, Emperor of North Pole attempts to turn its story into a contemporary allegory, with Shack standing in for the establishment, A-No. 1 representing the liberal anti-establishment, and, most problematically, Cigaret serving as a symbol for the callow counter culture, eager to take credit for A-No. 1’s accomplishments but not willing to put in any hard work himself.

As an allegory, Emperor of the North Pole is too heavy-handed but, as a gritty adventure film, it works wonderfully. Lee Marvin is perfectly cast as the wise, no-nonsense A-No. 1. This was the sixth film in which Marvin and Borgnine co-starred and the two old pros both go at each other with gusto. Carradine does the best he can with an underwritten part but this is Borgnine and Marvin’s film all the way. Marvin’s trademark underacting meshes perfectly with Borgnine’s trademark overacting, with the movie making perfect use of both men’s distinctive screen personas. As staged by Aldrich, the final fight between Shack and A-No. 1 is a classic.

Even at a time when almost every anti-establishment film of the early 70s is being rediscovered, Emperor of the North Pole remains unjustly obscure. When it was first released, it struggled at the box office. Unsure of how to sell a movie about hobos and worrying that audiences were staying away because they thought it might be a Christmas film, 20th Century Fox pulled the movie from circulation and then rereleased it under a slightly altered name: Emperor of the North. As far as titles go, Emperor of the North makes even less sense than Emperor of the North Pole. Even with the title change, Emperor of the North Pole flopped at the box office but, fortunately for him, Aldrich was already working on what would become his biggest hit: The Longest Yard.

Keep an eye out for Lance Henriksen, in one of his earliest roles. Supposedly, he plays a railroad worker. If you spot him, let me know because I have watched Emperor of the North Pole three times and I still can’t find him.

Early Hitchcock: BLACKMAIL (1929) and MURDER! (1930)

Posted on July 12, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

TCM is running Alfred Hitchcock movies all month long under the umbrella of “50 Years of Hitchcock” and, in conjunction with Ball State University, conducting a six-week course on The Master of Suspense’s life and works. Since I’m participating, I figured it would be a good excuse for me to write some blog posts on Hitchcock’s films, sort of killing two birds with one stone. Today I’d like to discuss two of his early talking films, both produced at British International Pictures. Let’s start with Hitchcock’s first “talkie”, 1929’s BLACKMAIL.

BLACKMAIL was originally scheduled to be a silent film with some sound sequences, but Hitchcock clandestinely shot the whole thing with sound. Producer John Maxwell liked what he saw and released it in both silent and sound versions. BLACKMAIL is considered the first British talkie, though some of its scenes are silent with music only, and Hitchcock, ever the innovator, was there…

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A Movie A Day #184: A Letter From Death Row (1998, directed by Bret Michaels)

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Songwriter Michael Raine (Bret Micheals) moved to Nashville from Philadelphia, searching for a new life. Instead, he ended up convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Michael says that he is innocent but the police have a video tape of him smothering his girlfriend with a pillow. Michael says it was just a sex game. He was in the bathroom, testing out his karate moves, when someone else broke into the house and smothered the victim for real.

In prison, Michael is interviewed by Jessica Foster (Lorelei Shellist), who says that she is working on a book that has nothing to do with her other job as chief adviser and mistress to the governor of Tennessee (Swan Burrus). Meanwhile, another prisoner on death row, a former priest named, I’m not joking, Lucifer Powers (Drew Boes), claims that he has been framed by the governor and only Michael can help him get justice.

A Letter From Death Row not only starred Poison frontman Bret Michales but it was directed, produced, written, and scored by him as well. If it sounds like a vanity project, it is. It was also apparently a passion project. Michaels had something important to say, though I doubt anyone could guess what it was from watching this movie. Making a movie as incoherent as A Letter From Death Row requires real commitment. Just check out the scene where the sadistic prison guards make Michael remove his false teeth before allowing him to speak to Jessica. A less committed director would have cut this scene, just because it was unnecessary and did not add anything to the movie. Not our Bret. He knew it was important to show the world that he could act like a man with no teeth.

Like Michaels’s other film, No Code For Conduct, both Martin and Charlie (or Charles, as he insisted on being called at time) Sheen are giving co-star billing in A Letter From Death Row. However, Martin is only on screen for 90 second and Charlie’s role as a police officer is literally a case of blink and you’ll miss him. The rest of the cast was made up of local Tennessee actor and it shows in their frequently stiff performances. Radio talk show host Phil Valentine is especially bad as Raine’s defense attorney.

I would not call A Letter From Death Row a good film but, even if it is for all the wrong reasons, it is still more interesting and watchable than No Code For Conduct. As opposed to the blandly serviceable work that he did on No Code For Conduct, Bret Michaels embraced his pretentious inner film school grad for A Letter From Death Row. Dutch angles, extreme closeups, black and white flashbacks (or are they flashforwards?), oversaturated color, and random slow motion are all used to tell this incredibly pointless story. Michaels not only divides the movie into chapters (complete with titles like “The Famous Final Scene”) but also includes scenes of himself writing and reading the movie’s script. Bret directs the Hell out of this movie and, if nothing else, the contrast between his ambition and the actual results makes the movie as watchable as the typical train wreck.

Though maybe not for the reasons intended, A Letter From Death Row ain’t nothin’ but a good time.

A Movie A Day #183: No Code of Conduct (1998, directed by David Lee…sorry, Bret Michaels)

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

From the strange period of time in which Charlie Sheen wanted people to call him Charles, comes this generic action movie.

Detective Jake Peterson (Charles Sheen) is a loser. Even though his father (Martin Sheen) is the chief of police, Jake is so bad at his job that he has been assigned to work in the evidence locker. His wife (Meredith Salenger) is always yelling at him for being a neglectful father. The only person who likes Jake is his partner (Mark Dascasos, who is wasted) and partner’s never live for long in cop movies. When Jake discovers that evil businessman Julian Disanto (Ron Masak) is plotting to smuggle Mexican heroin into Arizona, he has a chance for redemption but it will not be easy because Disanto is not only working with a corrupt DEA agent (Paul Gleason, of course) but he also has a band of psychotic henchmen.

This predictable and not very exciting action film is interesting for two reasons. First of all, it was directed by the poor man’s David Lee Roth, Bret Michaels. At the time, the future star of Rock of Love and Celebrity Apprentice winner was best known for being the lead singer of the most boring hair metal band of the 80s, Poison. It is always interesting when someone who found fame as something other than a filmmaker tries his hand at directing. Sometimes, the results can be surprisingly good and sometimes, the result is No Code For Conduct. Michaels and Sheen (who co-wrote the script) may have been trying to pull off an homage to the action films of their youth but No Code For Conduct has more in common with the work of Uwe Boll than the work of William Friedkin.

The other interesting thing about No Code for Conduct is that, even though “Charles” and Martin are top-billed, it is actually a four Sheen/Estevez movie. Renee Estevez briefly appears as a cop while Martin’s brother, Joe Estevez, is in charge of the police motor pool. If No Code For Conduct is an act-off between the members of the Sheen/Estevez clan, Joe emerges as the clear winner. Charlie does his wide-eyed intense thing. Martin goes through the movie with a “the shit I do for my son” air of resignation. Renee is not around long enough to make an impression. But Joe?

Joe Estevez is the man!