The chase is on – and on – as Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll are pursued by cops and spies while pursuing a deadly secret in Alfred Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS. The “double chase”, first used by Hitch in his silent THE LODGER (1927), playfully keeps the film’s motor running in high gear, and introduces us to two of his soon-to-be famous tropes, the “McGuffin” and the ice blonde. It’s certainly an important film for Hitchcock, as it caught the eye of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, who would bring Hitch to America’s shores five years later.
Donat, later an Oscar winner for 1939’s GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, plays Richard Hannay, trapped in circumstances beyond his control. The film begins in one of Hitchcock’s favorite places, a crowded public landmark, in this case a music hall (the marquee reminiscent of the shot of Anna Ondry walking past “A New Comedy” in BLACKMAIL ), as Hannay watches…
Men of Respect comes to us disguised as a gangster movie but it is actually a modern-day version of MacBeth. Mike Battaglia (John Turturro) is one of Charlie D’Amico’s (Rod Steiger) top lieutenants but he is upset because D’Amico has announced that his successor will be Bankie Como (Dennis Farina). When Mike stumbles across a fortune teller, he is told that not only will he soon be in charge of the D’Amico crime family but that he will hold the position until the stars fall from the sky and that he will never be harmed by a “man of woman born.” At the instigation of his ambitious wife, Ruthie Battaglia (played by Turturro’s real-life wife, Katherine Borowitz), Mike murders Charlie, Bankie, and everyone else who is standing in his way. Even as D’Amico’s son (Stanley Tucci) starts to recruit soldiers for an all out war, Mike remains confident. Even when one of this soldiers sees a fireworks show and says, “Jeez, it looks like stars from falling from the sky,” Mike remains cocky. When his wife starts to complain that she can not get the blood stains (“the spot”) out of the linen, Mike is not concerned. Why not? “All these guys were born of a woman,” Mike says, “they can’t do shit to me.”
Turning MacBeth (or any of Shakespeare’s tragedies) into a Mafia film is not a bad idea but Men of Respect‘s attempt to translate Shakespeare’s language to 20th century gangster talk leads to some memorably awkward line readings from an otherwise talented cast. By the time Matt Duffy (Peter Boyle) announced, in his Noo Yawk accent, that he was delivered via caesarean section, I could not stop laughing. Even the scenes of gangland mayhem feel like second-rate Scorsese. The idea behind the film is intriguing and there are a lot of recognizable faces in the cast but Men of Respect gets bogged down as both a Shakespearean adaptation and a gangster film.
In this one, Stone plays Angela Anderson. Angela is a sexually repressed artist who is obsessed with scissors. When she is attacked in an elevator by a man with a red beard, her neighbor, Alex (Steve Railsback), comes to her rescue. Alex is an actor who lives with his twin brother, the bitter and wheelchair-bound Cole (Steve Railsback, again.) When Angela finds herself locked in an apartment with a dead man (who has been stabbed with a pair of scissors and who has a red beard), who is responsible? According to the dead man’s pet raven, it’s Angela. But could it also have something to do with Angela’s obviously evil psychiatrist (Ronny Cox) and his politician wife (Michelle Phillips)?
This extremely ill-thought attempt at Hitchcockian suspense came out after Total Recall increased Sharon Stone’s profile but before Basic Instinct made her (briefly) a superstar. Scissors, much like the later Intersection, is a film where Sharon Stone attempts to show that she has range by playing a frigid character. Instead, Scissors just reveals how limited Sharon Stone’s range was. For all of the film’s attempts to duplicate Repulsion, Stone is never believable as someone on the verge of losing her mind. To her credit, Stone does try really hard, which is more than can be said for anyone else in the cast. Railsback, normally a good actor, can barely summon up enough interest in the material to play one character, let alone two. To buy what Scissors selling, it is necessary to believe that someone would come up with an elaborate scheme to drive Angela crazy but would still be careless enough to accidentally leave a door open at a key moment.
When you go out to the neighborhood cinema, you’re indulging in a voyeuristic experience, watching the lives of people unfold before you on the screen. The theme of viewer as voyeur, peeping in on the privacy of total strangers, has never been done better than in Alfred Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW, nor more entertainingly. Like James Stewart’s protagonist L.B. Jeffries, we the audience are the voyeurs in the shadows watching from afar, stumbling onto things not meant for our eyes, and powerless to stop them without outside assistance. Hitchcock is not only the Master of Suspense, but a master of audience manipulation, and this dazzling piece of moviemaking is not only a hell of a thrill ride but a technical marvel as well.
The world of globetrotting photojournalist Jeffries has been boiled down to the view of the courtyard outside his apartment window, just as the audience’s world is now focused on…
Everyone’s favorite hippie action hero, Peter Fonda, plays Virelli, a long-haired Vietnam vet turned mercenary who is hired by a corrupt African general (Robert Doqui) to protect the construction of a dam that will result in the flooding of a native village. Got all that? Though Fonda is top-billed, he is not the star of the film. The star is Reb Brown, who plays T.J. Christian. T.J. starts out as a member of Fonda’s team but then he falls in love with a nurse (Joanna Weinberg) and he switches sides. The villagers need someone to lead their revolution and all it takes is hearing Reb Brown do one of his trademarks power yells to know that he’s the man for the job. Reb Brown was famous for yelling whenever he did anything and he yells a lot in Mercenary Fighters, even more than he yelled in Space Mutiny.
Mercenary Fighters is a typical Cannon film from the late 80s. Like many of Cannon’s mercenary movies, it was covertly filmed in South Africa, at a time when apartheid was still being enforced and Nelson Mandela was still sitting in a prison cell. (Cannon was not the only film company to secretly make movies in South Africa during the Apartheid Era. They were just the most blatant about it.) Richard Kiel apparently turned down Peter Fonda’s role. It’s hard to imagine Kiel in the role but perhaps that’s because Virelli is a quintessential Peter Fonda-in-the-80s role. Fonda glides through the film, delivering his lines like a California surfer who just smoked the kine bud. The presence of Ron “Superfly” O’Neal and James “son of Robert” Mitchum serves to elevate the film’s cool factor while Robert Doqui brings some “I’ve worked with both Robert Altman and Paul Verhoeven” credibility to his one-note role. Mercenary Fighters is good for anyone who is into either mindless Cannon action movies or Reb Brown yelling while shit blows up behind him.
Yesterday, after it was announced that actor John Heard had been found dead in a Palo Alto hotel room, I lost track of how many people declared that Cutter’s Way, a 1981 film in which Heard co-starred with Jeff Bridges, was one of their favorite movies of all time. (That includes quite a few people who write for this very site.) In fact, people were so enthusiastic about Cutter’s Way that I quickly decided that this was a film that I needed to watch for myself. So, last night, after watching All About Eve on TCM and My Science Project with the Late Night Movie Gang, I curled up on the couch and I watched Cutter’s Way.
Technically, Cutter’s Way is a murder mystery but it’s actually a lot more. In the grand noir tradition, the mystery is less important than the milieu in which it occurs. Cutter’s Way takes place in Santa Barbara, California, which the film presents as being a microcosm of America. It’s place where the rich are extremely rich and the poor are pushed to the side and expected not to complain. The Santa Barbara of Cutter’s Way is controlled by new money and haunted by old sins. It’s a world that is perfectly captured, by director Ivan Passer and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, in the film’s haunting opening scene:
John Heard plays Alex Cutter. Years ago, Cutter served in Vietnam and returned with one less eye, one less arm, and one less leg. An angry alcoholic, the type who always looks like he’s in desperate need of a shower and a shave, Cutter exists on the fringes of society. Like many alcoholics, Cutter is a master manipulator. When he has to, he can turn on the charm. When the police are called after a drunken Cutter purposefully destroys his neighbor’s car, we suddenly see a totally different Alex Cutter. He’s polite and apologetic, explaining that he was merely swerving to avoid something in the road and, by the way, he served his country in Vietnam. As soon as the police leave, the real Cutter comes out. He gets his bottle and starts to rant about how much the world owes him. Watching the film, you find yourself understanding why some people might want to push this one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed veteran down a flight of stairs, that’s how obnoxious Alex Cutter can be.
And yet, there are people who love Alex Cutter. There’s his long-suffering wife, Mo (Lisa Eichhorn). Mo lives in squalor with Cutter, taking care of him and putting up with his bitterness. There’s the local bar owner, who could probably put his kids through college on Cutter’s bar tab. (He even drives Cutter home in the morning, after everyone else has deserted him.) And finally, there’s Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges).
Bone is Cutter’s best friend. Whereas Cutter is perpetually pissed off, Bone is almost always laid back. Whereas Cutter feels that everything is his business, Bone prefers to remain detached from the world. Mention is made of Bone being a graduate of the Ivy League but he spends most of his time giving tennis lessons and sleeping with wealthy women. Bone takes care of Cutter, though their friendship is occasionally hard to figure out. Why does Bone stick with Cutter despite all of Cutter’s abuse? Perhaps Bone feels guilty because he avoided being drafted while Cutter lost half of his limbs in Vietnam. Or maybe it’s because Bone is in love with Mo.
One night, when Bone is leaving a hotel, he sees a man in an alley. The man appears to be hiding something in a dumpster. Later, when the body of a woman is found in that same dumpster, Bone realizes that he probably saw the murderer. Even more so, Bone thinks that the man resembled J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliott), one of the richest men in Santa Barbara.
Bone, however, isn’t sure that Cord’s the murderer. Even more so, even if Cord was the murderer, Bone prefers to not get involved. However, Cutter is sure that Cord’s the killer. To Cutter, it makes perfect sense. If men like Cord were willing to send boys to Vietnam and then refuse to take care of them when they returned both physically and mentally maimed by the experience, then why wouldn’t they also think that they could get away with murdering some hitchhiker?
Soon, Cutter has met the dead girl’s sister, Valerie (Ann Dusenberry). Cutter says that his plan is to blackmail Cord. He badgers the reluctant Bone into working with him. It quickly becomes obvious, however, that Cutter is after more than money. He is obsessed with proving that this rich and powerful man is a murderer. And he’s not going to let anyone stand in his way. Not even a stuffed animal:
As I said, Cutter’s Way is about much more than just a murder. It’s a film about class differences, with even the otherwise slick Bone discovering how difficult it is to infiltrate Cord’s wealthy world. It’s a film about disillusionment, cynicism, and the fleeting promise of happiness. As angry as Cutter is, he still ultimately possesses the idealism that both Bone and Mo have lost. He still believes in right and wrong. While that angry idealism may make Cutter a pain in the ass, it’s also his redeeming feature. As the youngest of them, Valerie is still an optimist but she is also the least prepared to deal with the sordid reality of the world around her. Bone and Mo, meanwhile, both appear to have surrendered their belief that the world can be and should be a better place. Ultimately, Cutter’s Way is a film that forces you to consider what you would do if you were in the same situation. Cutter’s Way is not a great title, largely because it makes the film sound like a CW western, but it’s an appropriate one. The entire film is about Cutter’s way of viewing the world and whether or not Bone will follow Cutter or if he’ll continue to refuse to get involved.
(The novel that the film’s based on was called Cutter and Bone. According to Wikipedia, the title was changed because audiences thought the movie was a comedy about surgeons.)
I have to agree with those who have called Cutter’s Way a great film. Not only is it gorgeous to look at but it’s one of the best acted films that I’ve ever seen, from the stars all the way down to the most minor of roles. John Heard dominates the film, giving a performance of almost demonic energy but he’s perfectly matched by Jeff Bridges. Bridges, back in his incredibly handsome younger days, gives a subtle and powerful performance as a man struggling with his conscience. In the role of J.J. Cord, Stephen Elliott doesn’t get much screen time but he makes the most of it. When he first see him, he’s riding a white horse and rather haughtily looking down on the world around him. When he last see him, he delivers a line of such incredible arrogance that it literally left me stunned. Though, when compared to Bridges and Heard, their roles are underwritten, both Lisa Eichhorn and Ann Dusenberry more than hold their own, providing able and poignant support.
Cutter’s Way is a great film and one that everyone should watch if they haven’t.
I know that almost everyone knows John Heard as either the father from Home Alone or as the detective on The Sopranos or maybe even the executive in Big. Over the course of his long career, John Heard played a lot of neglectful fathers, greedy businessmen, and corrupt politicians. Heard was good in all of those roles but he was capable of so much more. Though he did not get many chances to do so, he could play heroes just as well as villains.
One of his best performances is also one of his least seen. In Best Revenge, he plays Charlie. Charlie is a laid back drug dealer, someone who would probably hate and be hated by most of the authority figures that Heard was best known for playing. Charlie is the ultimate mellow dude, without a care in the world. All he wants to do is play his harmonica and spend time with his girlfriend (Alberta Watson). However, an old friend (Stephen McHattie) wants Charlie to help smuggle 500 keys of hash from Tangiers to America. Charlie wants nothing to do with it but then he finds out that the Mafia will kill his friend unless the drugs make it across the ocean. Charlie and his friend Bo (Levon Helm of The Band) fly over to Morocco but are betrayed. Charlie ends up in a prison cell, from which he has to escape so that he can rescue Bo, smuggle the drugs, and get revenge on those who betrayed him.
Because of the prison aspect and the fact that Charlie wears a fedora, Best Revenge was sold as being a combination of Midnight Express and Raiders of the Lost Ark but actually it is a character study disguised as an action film. Despite the title, Best Revenge is more interested in the real-life logistics and hassles of being an international drug dealer than in any sort of revenge. Though it is a role far different from the ones he may be best known for, John Heard was perfectly cast as a small-time drug dealer who suddenly finds himself in over his head. Heard gives such a good and sympathetic performance that this film, along with his work in Cutter’s Way and Chilly Scenes of Winter, shows what a mistake was made when Heard became typecast as the bad guy.
Best Revenge was filmed in 1980 but not released until four years later. Along with appreciating Heard’s performance, keep an eye out for Michael Ironside in an early, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role.
For my money, GOLDFINGER is the ultimate James Bond movie, serving as the blueprint for spy sagas to come. The action begins right off the rip as a scuba diving 007 infiltrates an oil refinery in an unnamed Latin American country, plants some plastique explosives, and changes into a tux as the whole shebang blows, then attends to some “unfinished business” with a beautiful Latina who sets him up to be killed by a bad guy, electrocuting his foe in a tub and wittily remarking “shocking, positively shocking” – all before the opening credits roll and Shirley Bassey belts out the immortal title tune by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse!
Our Man Bond is then off to Miami to meet with his CIA pal Felix Leiter. He’s put on the trail of one Auric Goldfinger, a legit gold bullion dealer suspected of illegal activities. The avaricious Goldfinger isn’t above running…
Detective David Chase (Jeff Fahey) should not be mistaken for the creator of The Sopranos. Instead, he is an eccentric and tough Chicago policeman, the type of cop who appears to have seen Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon one too many times. His superiors send Detective Chase and his partner to keep an eye on a strike occurring outside of a water purification plant. Chase, however, is less interested in the strike and more interested in hitting on Melissa (Carrie-Ann Moss), who works at the plant.
Before you can say Die Hard All Over Again, a band of terrorists led by Montessi (Kim Coates) seizes control of the plant. Montessi threatens to poison all of Chicago’s drinking water but, what the authorities don’t realize, is that the attack is really just a distraction, designed to keep everyone from noticing Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) and his men running off with a bunch of stolen government bonds. Since Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and even Jean-Claude Van Damme were busy, it is up to Jeff Fahey to save the water, the money, and the day!
A Die Hard rip-off starring Gary Busey, Kim Coates, and Jeff Fahey does not actually have to be any good. All the movie has to do is let those three actors do their thing and it will be watchable. That is certainly the case with Lethal Tender, which is entertaining even if it is, ultimately, just another predictable Die Hard ripoff. Jeff Fahey does okay as the hero but Lethal Tender belongs to the villains. This was made in the days when Gary Busey playing crazy was still enjoyable instead of just sad. Realizing that he was going to have to compete with Busey’s legendary ability to overact, Coates chews every piece of scenery that he can get his hands on. Launching a major terrorist strike to cover up a simple robbery might seem like overkill but watching Busey and Coates compete to see who can steal the most scenes is so much fun that it really doesn’t matter that Chicago’s drinking water might get poisoned as a result of their shenanigans.
For fans of Busey and Coates, Lethal Tender is required viewing. For everyone else, it’s the most successful attempt ever made to transport the plot of Die Hard to a water filtration plant.
Why, on June 3rd, did Billie Joe McAllister jump off of the Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi?
That was the question that was asked in Ode to Billie Joe, a 1967 country song by Bobbie Gentry. In the song, the details were deliberately left inconclusive. Why did Billie Joe commit suicide? No one knows. All they know is that he was a good worker at the sawmill and, the weekend before jumping, he was seen standing on the bridge with a teenage girl and apparently, they dropped something down into the river below. The song suggests that the girl and the narrator are one in the same but even that is left somewhat vague.
Ode to Billie Joe was a hit when it was first released, largely because it’s story could be interpreted in so many different ways. Why did Billie Joe kill himself? Maybe it was because he didn’t want to be drafted. Maybe it was because he and his girlfriend had killed their baby and tossed it off the bridge. Maybe it was because he was hooked on Dexedrine and his doctor wasn’t available to renew his prescription. It could be any reason that you wanted it to be.
However, in 1976, when Ode to Billie Joe was turned into a movie, ambiguity would not do. As opposed to the song, Ode To Billy Joe had to answer the question as to why Billy Joe jumped into that river. In the movie, 18 year-old Billy Joe (Robby Benson) works at the sawmill and spends his time courting 15 year-old Bobbie Lee Hartley (Glynnis O’Connor). Bobbie Lee’s father (Sandy McPeak) says that she’s too young to have a “gentleman caller,” even though Bobbie Lee insists that she’s “15 going on 34 … B cup!” Bobbie Lee warns Billy Joe that her father is liable to shoot his ears off but Billy Joe insists that he doesn’t need ears because he’s in love with her. That’s kind of a sweet sentiment, even though I don’t think Billy Joe would look that good without ears.
(Whenever I complain about how Southerners in the movies always seem to have two first names, my sister Erin replies, “Yeah, that’s really annoying, Lisa Marie.” So, I won’t make a big deal about it this time…)
One night, Billy Joe and his friends go out and Billy Joe ends up getting drunk. He disappears for several days and when he shows up again, something has definitely changed. After unsuccessfully trying to make love to Bobbie Lee, Billy Joe tells her what happened that night he got drunk. Billy Joe had sex with a man, something that he has been raised to view as being the ultimate sin. When Billy Joe is later pulled out of the river, the entire town wonders why he jumped off the bridge and how Bobbie Lee was involved…
Ode to Billy Joe, which aired last Tuesday on TCM, is a better-than-average film, one that I was surprised to have never come across in the past. That doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect movie. Robby Benson, in the role of Billy Joe, gives an absolutely terrible performance. You can tell that Benson was trying really hard to do a good job but, often, he goes totally overboard, making scenes that should be poignant feel melodramatic. Though it probably has more to do with when the film was made than anything else, the film is also vague about Billy Joe’s sexuality. Is Billy Joe in denial about his identity? Is he deeply closeted or was he in such a drunken stupor that he was taken advantage of? Ode to Billy Joe does not seem to be sure. By committing suicide, Billy Joe joins the ranks of gay movie characters who would rather die than accept their sexuality. Obviously, he had to jump off that bridge because that’s what the song said he did but there’s a part of me that wishes the movie had featured someone commenting that they never actually found Billy Joe’s body and then the final scene could have taken place 16 years later, with Bobbie Lee living as a hippie in San Francisco and just happening to spot Billy Joe walking down the street, hand-in-hand with his boyfriend.
Here’s what does work about the movie. Glynnis O’Connor gives a great and empathetic performance as Bobbie Lee. The scenes with her father and her mother (played by Joan Hotchkis) have a very poignant and wonderful realness to them. Though I’ll always be a city girl at heart (well, okay — a suburb girl), I spent some time in the country when I was growing up. And while I was never quite as isolated as Bobbie Lee (who lives in a house with no electricity or plumbing) and the film took place in the past, I could still relate to many of Bobbie Lee’s experiences. The film may have been made in 1976 and set in 1952 but life in the country hasn’t changed that much.
For instance, there’s this great scene where Bobbie Lee’s father is trying to drive across the bridge. The only problem is that there’s a bunch of drunk shitkickers on the bridge, sitting in their pickup truck and blocking his way. It’s a very tense scene, one that I found difficult to watch because, when I was growing up in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and South Texas, I saw the exact same thing happen more times than I care to admit. In the country, no one backs down. Scenes like that elevated Ode To Billy Joe to being something more than just another movie based on a song.
Finally, there’s a beautiful scene towards the end of the film, between Bobbie Lee and a character played by an actor named James Best. I won’t spoil the scene but it’s a master class in great acting. (Best also played one of the sadistic villains in Rolling Thunder, another good 70s film about life and death in the country.)
Though I wasn’t expecting much from it, Ode to Billy Joe was a pleasant surprise. It’s not perfect but it’s still worth watching.
That Bill Shakespeare really gets around.
Everyone’s favorite hippie action hero, Peter Fonda, plays Virelli, a long-haired Vietnam vet turned mercenary who is hired by a corrupt African general (Robert Doqui) to protect the construction of a dam that will result in the flooding of a native village. Got all that? Though Fonda is top-billed, he is not the star of the film. The star is Reb Brown, who plays T.J. Christian. T.J. starts out as a member of Fonda’s team but then he falls in love with a nurse (Joanna Weinberg) and he switches sides. The villagers need someone to lead their revolution and all it takes is hearing Reb Brown do one of his trademarks power yells to know that he’s the man for the job. Reb Brown was famous for yelling whenever he did anything and he yells a lot in Mercenary Fighters, even more than he yelled in Space Mutiny.
Damn … John Heard died.
Detective David Chase (Jeff Fahey) should not be mistaken for the creator of The Sopranos. Instead, he is an eccentric and tough Chicago policeman, the type of cop who appears to have seen Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon one too many times. His superiors send Detective Chase and his partner to keep an eye on a strike occurring outside of a water purification plant. Chase, however, is less interested in the strike and more interested in hitting on Melissa (Carrie-Ann Moss), who works at the plant.
Through the Shattered Lens