Back To School Part II #3: Lord Love A Duck (dir by George Axelrod)

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For my third Back to School review, I watched the 1966 satire, Lord Love A Duck!

Hey hey hey!

I have to admit that, because I’m writing this review in a hurry and because the D and the F key are located right next to each other, I keep accidentally calling this film Lord Love A Fuck. Somehow, that seems appropriate because Lord Love A Duck is a very odd and subversive little movie that deals with people who are largely motivated by lust and I’m pretty sure that, at one point, Roddy McDowall is seen saying, “Fuck off!” but, of course, we don’t actually hear him say it. But seriously, Lord Love A Duck is a weird movie.

Hey hey hey!

Roddy McDowall plays Alan Musgrave, a student at a “progressive” high school in California. Roddy was about 37 years old when he played a high school senior and he doesn’t look like a teenager at all but somehow, it’s appropriate. After all, Alan is no ordinary teenager! He’s smarter than everyone else. He’s wittier than everyone else. He’s more clever than everyone else. He’s also totally obsessive and willing to do just about anything to get what he wants. And you can be sure of one thing: whenever Alan does something borderline insane, you’ll hear a group of singers harmonizing, “Hey hey hey!” in the background.

Hey hey hey!

See, it’s happening already. It doesn’t matter what Alan’s doing. He could be kicking a skateboard in the way of a romantic rival. He could be interrupting the graduation ceremony with a tractor. He could be going to prison for life. No matter what it is, it will always be accompanied by:

Hey hey hey!

Anyway, Alan is in love with the innocent, sweet, and constantly flirtatious Barbara Anne Greene (Tuesday Weld). In fact, almost everyone in the film is in love with (or, at the very least, turned on by) Barbara. The only person who doesn’t seem to be in love with Barbara is her mother (Lola Albright), a former-beauty-turned-cocktail-waitress whose world-weary cynicism seems to offer a depressing hint of what’s in store for Barbara once she gets older.

Hey hey hey!

But everyone else loves Barbara. Especially Alan! In fact, Alan is so in love with her that he swears that he’s going to make sure that she gets everything that she wants. When she needs 12 cashmere sweaters so that she can join an exclusive girl’s club, Alan helps her to convince her father (Max Showalter) to pay for them. When Barbara needs a job after dropping out of school, Alan helps her get one as a secretary for the high school’s progressive principal (Harvey Korman). When Barbara decides she wants to marry the boring but respectable Christian youth leader, Bob (Martin West), Alan keeps Bob’s mother (Ruth Gordon) so drunk that she doesn’t get a chance to reprimand her son for falling in love with a girl from a divorced family. (As Bob’s mother explains it, she doesn’t believe in divorce. “We don’t leave our husbands. We bury them.”) Eventually, a movie producer decides that he wants Barbara to star in his beach films but Bob says no. No wife of his is going to be a movie star! So, of course, Alan decides to murder Bob so that Barbara can again have what she wants…

Hey hey hey!

Lord Love A Duck is a manic comedy that satirizes everything that mainstream audiences in 1966 would have held sacred. Teenagers, conservatives, liberals, love, hate, murder, justice, marriage, divorce, morality, sex, religion, television, movies — it’s all thoroughly ridiculed in this film. (It’s not surprising that the film’s director also wrote the script for The Manchurian Candidate, a satire disguised as a thriller.) To be honest, it’s probably a little bit too manic for its own good. At times, the film run the risk of becoming exhausting. But then there’s even more times when the film is absolutely brilliant.

Hey hey hey!

Speaking of absolutely brilliant, Lord Love A Duck makes brilliant use of Roddy McDowall’s eccentric screen presence but, even better, it features one of Tuesday Weld’s best performances. Weld was a talented actress whose performances often revealed that a fragile soul is often the price that is payed for great beauty. (There’s no greater insecurity than wondering whether people are responding to who you are or to how you look. Would you still care if I was ugly is not a question we’re supposed to ask but it’s one that we’ve all wondered.) It would have been far too easy to make Barbara either totally innocent or totally manipulative. Wisely, the film does neither. Barbara may occasionally be manipulative but she always means well. It’s not her fault that everyone around her is either idiotic or insane.

Hey hey hey!

Though Lord Love A Duck is obviously a time capsule of the culture of mid-60s, it’s also a film that remains relevant even today. Culturally, we’re still obsessed with fame, youth, and beauty. In many ways, the satire of Lord Love A Duck still feels more extreme that anything that any contemporary filmmaker would dare to attempt. I can only imagine what audiences in 1966 thought as they watched this subversive teen film.

Hey hey hey!

Back To School Part II #2: Vinyl (dir by Andy Warhol)

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For my next back to school film, I watched the 1965 underground film, Vinyl!

Now, admittedly, Vinyl does not appear to take place in a high school. Then again, maybe it does. All of the action takes place in a cramped corner of a room and we’re never really told, for sure, where the room is located. All we know is that various characters keep wandering in and out of the static frame while the film’s action unfolds.

The center of the film is Victor (Gerald Malanga) who appears to be in his late 20s but who insists to us that he’s a “J.D,” which stands for juvenile delinquent. He does what he wants, whether that means lifting weights or enthusiastically dancing. Victor may be a murderous teenager with a bad attitude but he truly loves rock music.

While Victor dances and occasionally stumbles his way through a monologue about being a J.D, there’s an ever-present audience in the background of the scene. Occasionally, they seem to be interested in what Victor is saying but, just as often, they seem to be bored with the whole thing. Sitting off to Victor’s right and smoking through nearly the entire film is the iconic and tragic Edie Sedgwick. Occasionally, she dances but, for the most part, she’s just observes with an enigmatic half-smile on her face.

Eventually, some men who we assume are the police get tired of Victor dancing and boasting about being a delinquent so they grab him, tie him to a chair, and force him to wear bondage gear while they beat him. It’s a new, government-sanctioned rehabilitation technique and it’s guaranteed to turn Victor is a responsible member of society. While they torture him, they play vinyl records in the background and Victor, possibly to his horror though, due to Malanga’s out-of-it performance, it’s often difficult to surmise what’s going on in Victor’s head, realizes that his beloved rock music is now being used to torture him.

All the while, Edie watches from the corner of the screen. She smokes a cigarette. She dances. Sometimes, someone will refill her drink. She holds a candle for a while. As a viewer who is more than a little obsessed with the tragically short life of Edie Sedgwick and who relates to her on a personal level, it was occasionally difficult for me to watch because, even in a non-speaking role, Edie’s star power was obvious.

Edie!

Of course, Edie isn’t the only person watching as Victor is tortured. Many people wander in and out of the frame. (Vinyl lasts 70 minutes and features exactly three shots.) For the most part, the majority of them regard the torture happening in from with a studied detachment. In fact, they’re very detachment and they’re very refusal to act in any sort of expected way becomes rather fascinating. Vinyl goes so far out of it’s way to defy our expectations of what a movie should be that it becomes one of the most watchable unwatchable movies ever made.

Vinyl was directed by Andy Warhol. Reportedly, it was filmed without any rehearsal and without multiple takes. Hence, when Malanga stumbles over his lines or occasionally turns his back to camera, the moment is preserved. When Edie Sedgwick breaks character and laughs, the film keeps on rolling. When another actor accidentally drops his papers and has to spend half a minute picking them up and trying to get them back in order, it’s saved on camera. And, because it’s in the final cut, Gerald Malanga forgetting his lines becomes as much a cinematic moment as Humphrey Bogart telling Ingrid Bergman to get on that plane or Clark Gable saying that he didn’t give a damn. There is no editing and, as a result, there is no protection. Instead, we just get a group of eccentric outsiders in their amateur glory. Yes, it’s self-indulgent and deliberately alienating but it’s also undeniably fascinating. (It helps that, while he may not have been a good actor, Gerald Malanga had an absolutely fascinating face.) When one watches one of Warhol’s underground films, the question always arises as to whether he was a genius or a con artist. Vinyl would seem to suggest that he was both.

(“What’s the point of all this?” some viewers may ask. The point is that it was filmed and now you’re watching and, because he’s at the center of a static frame, Gerald Malanga is now a movie star.)

Though you might have a hard time realizing it from just watching the film, Vinyl was also the first cinematic adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Victor was a stand-in for Alex and Alex’s love of Beethoven is replaced by Victor’s love for Motown. Six years later, Stanley Kubrick would release his better known adaptation of Burgess’s novel but Andy Warhol, Gerald Malange, and Edie Sedgwick all got there first.

Back to School Part II #1: Teenage Devil Dolls (dir by B. Lawrence Price, Jr.)

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(a.k.a. Teenage Devil Dolls)

Hi, everyone!

Well, down here in Richardson, Texas, today was the first day of school! That’s right, all the kids are going to be back to school and movie theaters are about to become a lot more pleasant. Now, you may remember that, two years ago, I observed the first day of school by launching a series of Back To School reviews! I reviewed 80 films about being a teenager and high school life. I had a lot of fun doing it and our readers seemed to enjoy it!

So, I figured — why not do it again!?

Now, as much as I’d like to, I’m not going to do 80 films this time. Instead, I have decided to limit myself to reviewing 56 films over the next 14 days. If I maintain a schedule of reviewing 4 Back to School films a day, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Can I do it?

Well, we’re about to find out!

I decided to start things off by reviewing a melodrama from 1955! I have to admit that, when I decided to review Teenage Devil Dolls, I didn’t know anything about the film. I just saw the title and I assumed that the whole film would basically be tight sweaters and juvenile delinquents. I figured it would be good and campy fun, something along the lines of Ed Wood’s The Violent Years.

Well, it turned out that Teenage Devil Dolls does feature some juvenile delinquents and a few tight sweaters but otherwise, it really wasn’t what I was expecting. For one thing, it turned out that the film didn’t have much to do with high school. And though the main character was described as being 19, she was played by an actress who appeared to be in her 30s so it really didn’t matter.

It also turned out that Teenage Devil Dolls featured absolutely zero dialogue! This is one of those films that was specifically made to be the second part of a double feature and, apparently, it was made without much of a budget. On-set sound recording was apparently a luxury that could not be afforded and, as such, the entire movie is narrated by a hard-boiled cop.

The cop tells us the story of Cassandra Leigh (Barbara Marks), who was an innocent 17 year-old until she started hanging out with the wrong crowd. We know that her new friends are the wrong crowd because they ride motorcycles and some of them wear leather jackets. They also smoke weed (or “reefer cigarettes,” as the cop calls them). At first, Cassandra turns down their persistent offers of marijuana but eventually, the peer pressure get to be too much. Cassandra doesn’t want to be a big ol’ four-sided square so she starts smoking the weed and her life quickly falls apart.

Not only do her grades suffer to such an extent that she barely graduates high school and loses any chance she ever had to attend college but Cassandra also ends up frequently running away from home and getting hooked on heroin. (If all this seems a little bit extreme, it should be remembered that Cassandra was previously seen smoking one of the biggest joints to ever appear in a movie. Though, in all honesty, she didn’t appear to be inhaling.) Cassandra marries a boring guy but the boring life is not for her! Not when she can make so much more money by becoming a drug dealer…

You know, it’s easy to be dismissive of a film like Teenage Devil Dolls, what with the low-budget, the hard-boiled narration, and the alarmist portrayal of marijuana as literally being the root of all evil. But honestly — whether intentional or not — there’s an intensity to Teenage Devil Dolls that makes it oddly hypnotic. Perhaps because they were filmed without sound, almost all of the actors give the type of over-expressive performances that one would typical expect to see in a silent movie. The contrast between the laconic narration and the theatrics on-screen creates a surrealistic and dream-like atmosphere.

Along with the narration, there’s also a few sound effects on the soundtrack but none of the effects really seem to sync up with the action on screen. A dog shows up and opens its mouth but the barking sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else. When a police car drives, the jarring siren doesn’t seem to fit the image. Most hauntingly of all, a chilling ringing sound is heard whenever a junkie starts to go through withdraw. At times, the film almost feels like a fever dream.

Teenage Devil Dolls (or One Way Ticket To Hell as it is also known) is an unexpectedly odd film. And you watch it below!

The Things You Find On Netflix: 13 Cameras (dir by Victor Zarcoff)

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you go over to Netflix right now, you can watch a film called 13 Cameras. 13 Cameras had a brief VOD and theatrical run earlier this year and, in 2015, it got some attention on the festival circuit where it played under the title Slumlord. It’s a film about a creepy landlord who rents out a house that is full of surveillance equipment and, what else can I say other than…AGCK!

I mean, this is a seriously creepy little movie and it’s even creepier if you actually have a landlord. I’ll admit that I’ve been checking the house for hidden cameras ever since I watched 13 Cameras.

Now, admittedly, 13 Cameras moves at a very deliberate pace. This film may be slightly less than 90 minutes long but it still requires a bit of patience. When the movie started and I first met Ryan (PJ McCabe) and his pregnant wife, Claire (Brianne Moncrief), I have to admit that I had my doubts about 13 Cameras. Both Ryan and Claire were such unlikable characters that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend any more time watching them. Claire came across as being the epitome of the self-centered friend who you always dread getting a phone call from while Ryan … well, Ryan was just a huge jerk. Because he was having a hard time adjusting to his wife’s pregnancy, he was cheating on her with his assistant, Hannah (Sarah Baldwin).

“Do you still love her?” Hannah asks him at one point.

“I don’t know,” Ryan shrugs.

Bleh!

(Interestingly enough, Hannah is probably the most sympathetic character in the film, despite the fact that she’s having an affair with a married man. I don’t know if that was intentional or if it’s just a result of Sarah Baldwin being a more likable performer than either McCabe or Moncrief.)

But no matter! In the end, the film really isn’t about Ryan, Claire, or Hannah. The film is about their landlord, Gerald. Gerald is totally frightening and he ends up doing some pretty bad things. (In fact, some of the things that he does are so awful that it’s actually probably for the best that Claire and Ryan aren’t particularly likable.) Gerald is played by an actor named Neville Archambault and, after I saw 13 Cameras, I immediately jumped over to his imdb page and I was both surprised and somewhat relieved to see pictures of him looking like a perfectly normal and pleasant human being. Because, in the role of Gerald, Archambault gives perhaps the creepiest psycho performance since William Tokarsky played The Killer in Too Many Cooks.

From the minute that Gerald shows up on-screen, he inspires unease. He’s a hunched over, heavy-set but muscular man who speaks only in grunts. He shuffles around, keeping his head down and perpetually breathing through his mouth. When he sits in his apartment and watches the footage from the 13 cameras that he’s set up around the house (including one located in the toilet — ewwwwwwwwwwww!), he sits there with his mouth open and literally never blinks. When she first meets him, Claire complains that Gerald smells like “spoiled mayonnaise” and looking at him, you can imagine the odor almost seeping out of the screen.

What makes Gerald especially frightening is that he’s a believable psycho. As I watched, I realized that I could easily imagine running into Gerald in real-life and then it dawned me that I actually have seen people like Gerald in real-life. Gerald is the guy who, when you have to talk to him, spends the entire conversation answering in monosyllables and staring at your breasts. Gerald is the disgusting, frightening psycho next door and the fact that you could easily imagine seeing Gerald walking down your own street is exactly what makes this film compelling. Neville Archambault deserves a lot of credit for bringing a nightmare to life.

As for the film itself, it requires patience but it pays off in the end. First-time director Victor Zarcoff does a good job, despite having to work with an obviously low-budget and only two locations. The film ends with a perfectly morbid little twist. While it’s not perfect, it’s definitely a promising debut.

Do I recommend watching 13 Cameras? I do. If for no other reason, see it for Neville Archambault’s wonderfully creepy performance!

The Holy Grail of Bad Cinema: THE PHYNX (Warner Brothers 1970)

Posted on August 20, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

(WARNING: The movie I’m about to review is so bad, I can’t even find a proper poster for it. Beware… )

I was so excited when I found out TCM was airing THE PHYNX at 4:00am! I’d heard about how bad it for years now, and couldn’t wait to view it for myself today on my trusty DVR. I wasn’t disappointed, for THE PHYNX is a truly inept movie, so out of touch with its audience… and just what is its audience? We’ve got a Pre-Fab rock band, spy spoof shenanigans, wretched “comedy”, and cameos from movie stars twenty years past their prime. Just who was this movie made for, anyway?

The film defies description, but I’ll give it a whirl because, well because that’s what I do! We begin as a secret agent attempts to crash into Communist Albania in unsuccessful and unfunny ways, then segue into some psychedelic cartoons…

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Film Review: Kubo and the Two Strings (dir by Travis Knight)

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How is it that, this weekend, so much hype is being given to War Dogs and Ben-Hur — two films that you knew weren’t going to be any good from the minute you first saw their trailers — while one of the best films of the year is running the risk of being overlooked?

I just got back from seeing Kubo and The Two Strings and I am insisting that, if you haven’t already, you go out and see it right now. If you’re busy today, I understand. See it on Sunday. You can even see it on Monday if you have to. But the important thing is that you see it soon. For the most part, 2016 in cinema has almost been as bad as 2016 in politics. The year has been dominated by big spectacles, the majority of which do not even attempt to create any sort of emotional connection with the audience. Don’t get me wrong — there have been some good films but not hardly enough. Fortunately, Kubo and the Two Strings is the type of film that, if people actually go and see it, can help to redeem an entire year.

In short, I want to wake up on Monday and I want to read that Kubo and The Two Strings won the weekend. Make it happen!

Kubo and The Two Strings is an animated film and yes, you need to see it in a theater and yes, you need to see it in 3D. It’s one of the most visually stunning films that I’ve seen this year and, even better, it’s a film that actually has a heart. When I watched Kubo and The Two Strings, I found myself both laughing and crying and feeling a renewed excitement about the potential of cinema.

Somewhat appropriately, this magical film is about magic, not just spell-casting magic but also the magic that we all have within our soul and locked away in our memories. Taking place in ancient Japan, it tells the story of Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson), a one-eyed child who lives in a cave with his sickly mother. Most of the time, his mother is so out-of-it that she can only sit at the cave entrance and stare out at the distant ocean. But occasionally, she is lucid enough that she remembers her past and she tells stories about how Kubo’s father was a mighty warrior who battled monsters and went on heroic quests. She also remembers that Kubo’s grandfather is an evil demon, who is searching for his grandson and who hopes to take away his other eye.

Kubo supports his mother by going into a nearby village and, through the use of origami, magic, and music, telling stories to the townspeople. His mother always warns Kubo not to say out after sunset. Inevitably, however, Kubo does just that and soon, his demonic aunts appear in the village. (The aunts, who are voiced by Rooney Mara, are truly scary.) The village is destroyed and Kubo’s mother sacrifices her life to save him.

This, of course, all leads to Kubo going on a quest of his own. He has to find his father’s armor so that he can defeat his grandfather. Helping him in his quest is Monkey (Charlize Theron) and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey, providing comic relief to an occasionally grim film). But really, the quest is less about finding the armor and more about Kubo both growing up and coming to terms with the loss of his parents. Yes, Kubo and The Two Strings may be an animated film and it may be a fantasy and it may feature bits of comedy but it’s a film that inspires very real emotions. It’s a film that made me cry and it earned every single tear.

(Seriously, I dare you to watch the final five minutes of Kubo and The Two Strings without tearing up.)

Visually, this is an amazing film. The images are often beautiful, sometimes frightening, and occasionally awe-inspiring. Kubo’s aunts are pure nightmare fuel and his confrontation with his grandfather (voice by Ralph Fiennes) is magical in more ways than one. Even beyond that, Kubo and the Two Strings creates a world that feels as real as our own. It not only visualizes and celebrates film magic but also real-life magic as well.

Kubo and the Two Strings is a great and magical film and it’s one of the best of the year so far. If you haven’t seen it, go out and see it. If you’ve already seen it, go see it again. Don’t wait for it to come out on Blu-ray. Don’t say, “I’ll see it on cable.” Don’t wait for Netflix. See it on a big screen and see it now.

Seriously, don’t miss your chance to experience this movie the way it was meant to be experienced!

Film Review: Isle of the Dead (dir by Nick Lyon)

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just finished watching the premiere of the latest Asylum-produced SyFy film, Isle of the Dead!

Oddly, this film premiered on a Thursday night at 10:00 pm and, especially when compared to Sharknado 4 or 2 Lava 2 Lantula, it did so with relatively little fanfare. Fortunately, I just happened to see the premiere mentioned on Facebook. Otherwise, I probably would have missed it all together.

And that would have been a shame because, for a low-budget zombie film that was reportedly filmed in just 12 days, Isle of the Dead was actually a pretty effective little film.

The film’s plot will probably sound familiar but there’s a reason for that. The action starts at a secret Army research post that is located on an isolated tropic island. While Dr. Wexler (D.C. Douglas) watches, a virus spreads through the lab, turning doctors and soldiers into ravenous zombies and leaving death and terror in its wake. Jump forward ten years later. A team of Navy Seals has disappeared on the island and a strike force has been sent to find out what happened to them. Leading the strike force is the tough Lt. Gibson (Joey Lawrence). Accompanying them is a CIA agent named Mikaela Usylvich (Maryse Mizanin). Early on, Mikaela establishes a simple run: If you’re bitten by a zombie, you’re as good as dead. A zombie bite means a bullet to the brain.

Eventually, the strike force makes their way to the old research post, where they discover a lot of zombies and one rather crazed Dr. Wexler. Wexler, who turns out to have a personal connection to Mikaela, has spent the last ten years experimenting on zombies. As a result, we now have zombies who can shoot guns as well as zombies who can talk and who can plot and plan…

If all of this is sounding familiar, it’s because Isle of the Dead is an homage to the Resident Evil games. (Douglas may play Dr. Wexler here but he’s best known for voicing Albert Wesker in the games.) As such, the film follows a pretty standard formula: we watch as the members of the strike force try to move from one area to another without getting ripped to pieces by zombies. Admittedly, I’m not a huge expert on the Resident Evil games but I’ve been told by people who are that Isle of the Dead was full of references that were both subtle and occasionally obvious.

What I can tell you is that, taken on its own terms, Isle of the Dead was an effective, no-nonsense zombie film. The zombies were relentless (and I personally like the idea of talking zombies), the gore was both credible and copious, and the entire film maintained a proper atmosphere of impending doom. Douglas did a good job as crazy Dr. Wexler and Maryse Mizanin got to kick a lot of ass as Mikaela Usylvich. If you’re into zombie films or you just enjoy the unique Asylum aesthetic, I suggest keeping an eye out for Isle of the Dead.

Cleaning Out the DVR Pt 9: Film Noir Festival Redux

Posted on August 16, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Welcome back to the decadently dark world of film noir, where crime, corruption, lust, and murder await. Let’s step out of the light and deep into the shadows with these five fateful tales:

PITFALL (United Artists 1948, D: Andre DeToth) Dick Powell is an insurance man who feels he’s stuck in a rut, living in safe suburbia with his wife and kid (Jane Wyatt, Jimmy Hunt). Then he meets hot model Lizabeth Scott on a case and falls into a web of lies, deceit, and ultimately murder. Raymond Burr costars as a creepy PI who has designs on Scott himself. A good cast in a good (not great) drama with a disappointing ending. Fun Fact: The part of Scott’s embezzler boyfriend is played by one Byron Barr, who is not the Byron Barr that later changed his name to Gig Young.

THE BRIBE (MGM 1949, D:Robert Z. Leonard) Despite an…

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Lisa Marie Does The Wrong Man (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday, I figured why not take a few minutes to recommend one of his films that you may not have seen. First released in 1956 but still painfully relevant today, The Wrong Man is one of Hitchcock’s best but it’s also one of his most underrated.

The Wrong Man deals with a common Hitchcock theme — i.e., an innocent man has been accused of a crime and, despite all of his efforts, cannot seem to convince anyone of his innocence. The difference between The Wrong Man and something like Saboteur or Frenzy is that The Wrong Man is based on a true story.

Manny Ballestro (Henry Fonda) is a struggling musician. He makes $85 a week, playing in a small jazz club. But even though he may not be rich, he’s happy. He loves his job. He loves making music. Even more importantly, he loves his wife, Rose (Vera Miles). But Rose needs to have her wisdom teeth removed and it’s going to cost $300. (As a sign of how much things have changed, I would have been relieved if it had only cost me $300 to get my wisdom teeth taken out.) Desperate for money, Manny tries to borrow money on his wife’s life insurance plan. What Manny doesn’t know is that the insurance office has been held up twice by a man who bears a vague resemblance to him. A clerk calls the police and Manny soon finds himself being taken down to the police station.

Two detectives say that they need Manny’s help but they don’t tell him why. But Manny knows he’s innocent of any crime and he believes that the police are on his side and he agrees to help. When they tell him to walk into a liquor store, he does so. When they take him to a deli, he goes in there as well. When they demand to know why he was trying to borrow money on his wife’s life insurance, he tells them. When they ask him about his financial difficulties, he tells them about that as well. Why shouldn’t he? He’s innocent and the police are just doing their job, right? And when the cops finally ask him to copy down a few words that were used in the note that the robber slipped the clerk at the insurance company, Manny does so. And when they then ask him to take part in a line-up, he does that as well…

And when Manny is arrested and charged with a crime … well, that’s when he finally understands that the system is not on his side. His wife manages to hire a reputable attorney, Frank O’Connor (Anthony Quayle), to defend him but it quickly becomes obvious that the world has already decided that Manny is guilty. When Manny and his wife try to track down some people who could provide Manny with an alibi, they discover that two of them are dead and one of them cannot be found. For once, in a Hitchcock film, it’s not a case of conspiracy. Instead, it’s just bad luck.

And, through it all, Rose continues to blame herself. In fact, she is so wracked with guilt that she has a nervous breakdown.

It all leads to an amazingly disheartening courtroom scene. As quickly becomes obvious, the judge has little interest in what’s happening in his court. Even worse, the jury is unconcerned with the evidence. Most of them are just annoyed at the inconvenience and punishing Manny seems like the perfect way to release their own frustrations…

It’s a bleak picture of the American justice system. Watching The Wrong Man today, it’s tempting to say that the film is just a reflection of society in the 1950s and that things have changed today. But really, have they? True, the police may now be required to read someone their rights when they’re arrested. A suspect can now ask for a lawyer. We’ve got laws against entrapment and all the rest. But that doesn’t matter. We still live in a society where people are still widely presumed to be guilty, even after they’ve been found innocent in a court of law. We still live in a society where the wrong man can have his life ruined because of one mistake.

The Wrong Man doesn’t get as much attention as some of Hitchcock’s other films. In many ways, it’s an atypical example of his work. Hitchcock was notorious for his dark sense of humor and his habit of waving away most plot points as just being mere “macguffins.” With the exception of two scenes, both of which are meant to depict Manny’s mental state, The Wrong Man is filmed in a documentary style, one that occasionally seems more like Sidney Lumet than Alfred Hitchcock. There’s next to no humor, nor are there any big or flamboyant twists. In short, The Wrong Man finds the director of Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window at his most sincere. It takes some getting used to.

But, once you do get used to it, The Wrong Man emerges as a powerful and bleak portrait of two innocent people at the mercy of a soulless system. It’s a must see so be sure to see it!

Film Review: The King of Comedy (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, do y’all want to see a really great film?

Then you need to do what I did earlier tonight. You need to sit down and watch Martin Scorsese’s 1983 media satire, The King of Comedy.

Want to know more about The King of Comedy? Then read on! But be aware that there are spoilers in the review below!

The King of Comedy tells the story of … well, it actually tells the story of several people. On the one hand, it’s the story of Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis, who gives a performance that is so good that you might even forget that he directed The Day The Clown Cried), a comedian who has his own late night talk show. Jerry is a celebrity, the type who is mostly famous for being himself. He makes his living by interviewing people at night but, in his daily life, he struggles to interact with the world at large. Whenever Jerry steps outside, people start yelling at him. When he walks away from one elderly fan, she responds by screaming insults at him. If Jerry seems to be paranoid, it’s because he has good reason to be.

For instance, Masha (a chillingly unhinged performance from Sandra Bernhard) is obsessed with him. When we first see Masha, she is jumping inside of Jerry’s limousine and refusing to leave. When she finally gets a chance to be alone with her idol, her manner alternates between desire and hostility. She may love Jerry but she could just as easily kill him.

And then there’s Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro). Rupert is the character who brings Jerry and Masha together. He’s a stand-up comedian, the self-described “king of comedy.” He’s convinced that he can be a star if he can just get on Jerry’s show. Rupert spends his time imagining the great friendship that he and Jerry could have, if only Jerry would let him on TV. In his mind, he plays out the scene in which Jerry begs Rupert to take over the show. Of course, in reality, Rupert lives in his mother’s basement and is surrounded by card-board cutouts of celebs that he will never meet. When we first see Rupert, his only real skill seems to be the ability to get on everyone’s last nerve.

It’s a little hard to believe now but, when De Niro started his career, he almost exclusively played fuck-ups. True, he may have won an Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II. But even while he was playing Vito, he was also playing the erratic and perpetually in debt Johnny Boy in Mean Streets. In Taxi Driver, he was the delusional Travis Bickle and, in Raging Bull, he was a boxer who managed to alienate just about everyone in the world before finally ending up as an obese self-parody. But, out of all the fuck-ups that the young(ish) Robert De Niro played, perhaps none was a bigger fuck-up than Rupert Pupkin.

Rupert Pupkin is a character whose sole purpose in life seems to be to make other people cringe with embarrassment. He is the type of guy who will always come on too strong and say the wrong thing. Even when Rupert manages to meet Jerry, he is so annoying that Jerry can barely wait to get away from him. He is the type who asks if you want to see a picture of his “pride and joy” and then shows you a picture of two bottles of dishwashing liquid. It undoubtedly took some courage to so fully commit to such an off-putting character but that’s exactly what De Niro did. Rupert is perhaps one of the most annoying characters in cinematic history and yet, perhaps because he’s played by Robert De Niro, you can’t help but feel sorry for him. You never exactly like him. But you can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for him. He is just so clueless!

Of course, what Rupert lacks in common sense, he makes up for in ambition. He truly believes that he’s destined to be the king of comedy and if he and Masha have to kidnap Jerry Langford for that to happen, so be it. It is perhaps not surprising that Rupert and Masha would kidnap Jerry and threaten to kill him unless Rupert is invited to appear on the show. What is surprising is the fact, once we finally see Rupert’s act, we discover that it’s not as bad as we were expecting:

Apparently, when the film was first released, there was some controversy over whether or not Rupert actually appeared on TV and became a star or if it was just another of his delusions. What’s funny is that there wouldn’t be any controversy today. In 1983, the idea of someone going to such extremes to be famous may have seemed over-the-top. In 2016, however, we all know Rupert would eventually end up with his own reality show. In its way, The King of Comedy is one of the most prophetic films ever made.

The King of Comedy is a great film that, even after all these years, still deserves to be seen. In fact, it’s probably even more relevant today than when it was first released.