Georgie, the Chaser (Cesar Romero) is a con artist who works for a low-level gangster named Sunshine Joe (William Frawley). When Georgie reads about an heiress named Clarice van Cleve (Patricia Ellis) who impulsively falls in love with any man wearing a uniform, Georgie pretends to be a member of the Foreign Legion and tracks her down. Georgie thinks that Clarice’s father will pay him off, just as he’s paid off all of her other suitors. Instead, Clarice’s father disinherits her and Clarice ends up living at Georgie’s place, along with his other criminal associates (Andy Devine, Warren Hymer, and George E. Stone).
Georgie reacts by getting out of town, leaving Clarice behind with his good-natured gang. However, even the gang gets tired of Clarice insisting that they dress up for dinner and that they all get a good night’s sleep. After Sunshine Joe cheats them out of their money, the remaining criminals head to the Yale-Harvard football game, hoping to win some bets and to set Clarice up with the player that her father wants her to marry, studious benchwarmer Hector Wilmot (Buster Crabbe).
Just a little over an hour long, Hold ‘EmYale is actually a pretty amusing movie. It was based on a short story by Damon Runyon and all of the characters are familiar Runyon types, streetwise but good-natured criminals who enjoy drinking and gambling and the film gets a lot of laughs out of their reactions to Clarice’s attempts to civilize them. Patricia Ellis is great as the ditzy Clarice and this film provides a chance to see Buster Crabbe playing a character who isn’t a natural-born athlete for once. It’s a minor film but worth watching for the cast and the snappy dialogue. Who would have guessed a good movie could be built around Ivy League football?
As Guilty Pleasures go, The Shadow is a movie that has absolutely everything you need for a fun, campy ride. An Al Leong cameo, alongside James Hong? Check. Heroes and Villains taking time out to discuss their wicked plans (and how they’ll be stopped) over a glass of fine American Bourbon? Check. Early 90s Era CGI? Mark it down. Duel Wielding Pistol shooting action? Got it. Tim Curry just being there? Sweet.
After the wild success of Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989, Hollywood was scrambling to squeeze what they could out of the Superhero Movie. The Punisher, with Dolph Lundgren, would come out the same year. We’d end up with The Rocketeer (one of my personal favorites), BarbWire, Dick Tracy,The Crow, The Mask, and The Phantom, among others leading into the mid-90s. Among these was 1994’s The Shadow, based off the 1930’s character from Walter B. Gibson. Pre-dating all of the before mentioned characters (including DC’s Batman by almost a decade), The Shadow started as a series of radio stories before moving on to other forms of media. The movie didn’t do very well on it’s original release. Much like the magic that clouds men’s minds, audiences were more enraptured with The Crow months before and The Lion King. Some may remember a Shadow movie was made, but it was eclipsed by more popular films at the time.
At the same time, there were major advances happening in audio technology, thanks to a tiny Universal film called Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park helped to usher in an update in sound quality known as The Digital Experience (which we now know as DTS for short). As theatres coverted to the new sound system, various films in the early to mid nineties would make use of it, such as The Crow, The Mask, Timecop and The Shadow. By the time my family picked up their first Laserdisc player, DTS quality sound was available at home. My dad had a series of speakers lined around the living room of our house so that regardless of where you sat, the sound would move around you. One of the best tests of it was with John Carpenter’s The Thing, where Blair is standing off against the crew. The gunfire from his pistol would richochet from the front to the rear speakers, making the kids duck down.
The Shadow also made of use of this in certain areas, particularly with the way voices carried in a room. The part with Shiwan Khan’s voice moving over the city at night was amazing to hear with the right sound system. Just about any scene where The Shadow spoke had this sweet spatial effect that I loved.
The Shadow is the tale of Ying Ko (Alec Baldwin, The Getaway), a.k.a. Lamont Cranston. Living high in the Opium Fields of Tibet, he is a man of darkness, having inflicted great evil over time. Kidnapped and brought to a Tulku (a wise man) who has decided it’s time for redemption, Cranston is taught to cloud men’s minds, bending people to his will and to hide every aspect of himself save for one thing, his Shadow. He then returns seven years later to that “most wretched lair of villainy we know as” New York City, for we all know that the weed of crime bears bitter fruit.
Cranston spends most of his nights at The Cobalt Club with his Uncle Wainwright (Jonathan Winters, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), who also happens to be the Police Commissioner. It allows him to keep up appearances while making sure the police don’t put The Shadow in their spotlight. When he meets the beautiful Margot Lane (Penelope Ann Miller, The Relic), he’s not only smitten, but finds her ability to read minds a dangerous threat to him.
When a metal casket from Tibet arrives at the New York Museum of Natural History, it reveals Shiwan Khan (John Lone, The Last Emperor), the last descendant of Genghis Khan. Gifted with the same abilities as Cranston, Khan has plans for the city and the world. He would rather have Cranston join him than to kill him. This turns the story into a classic Bond-like cliche where the hero and villain spend the bulk of the movie explaining their plans.
Enjoying the successes of Death Becomes Her and Jurassic Park, writer David Koepp was on a roll. The Shadow doesn’t take itself too seriously. Koepp and director Russell Mulcahy (Highander) splash moments of light comedy at just about every turn, mostly through the witty banter between characters. Some are over the top, particularly with Tim Curry’s character, while others are more subtle, like with Ian McKellan (The Lord of the Rings). If you’re looking for a serious drama in your superhero film, this isn’t it. Additionally, there are one or two elements that make no sense whatever. Mongol warriors walking around in full armor that no one ever seems to notice and taking rides in taxicabs (unless we assume they’re masked by Khan’s magic).
Most of the movie was filmed on the Universal Studios New York backlot, which explains why some scenes look like they were borrowed from Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire (that also used it years before). The mystical Tibetan Phurba dagger that echoes the disposition of its owner was a variant of the one used in Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child in the late 80s.
if the movie’s climax between The Shadow and Khan feels a bit abbreviated, it’s because of a last minute change in filming. The original plan for the ending involved a series of mirrors, but an earthquake earlier in the year caused damage to the props the production team planned to use. So, what we get is a quicker scene, still falling in line with Mulcahy’s penchant for glass shattering, but leaving the audience to partially wonder what we could have had if everything worked out.
Finally, the real gem in all this is Jerry Goldsmith’s score. Although out of print, you can still find most of the tracks on YouTube, and the songs keep the immersion flowing. While I don’t see the film getting any kind of remakes in the near future, it’s nice to know everything came together (as well as it could) for this entry. Then again, who knows?
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite American directors, the one and only Sofia Coppola! In honor of this day, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Sofia Coppola Films
The Virgin Suicides (1999, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Edward Lachman)
Lost In Translation (2003, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Lance Acord)
Marie Antoinette (2006, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Lance Acord)
The Bling Ring (2013, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Harry Savides and Christopher Blauvelt)
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a very happy birthday to the great Robert Zemeckis. Today’s scene that I love comes from Zemeckis’s 1985 film, BacktotheFuture.
Did you know that rock and roll was invented by a time traveler? Well, let’s not overthink things. Let’s just enjoy the scene.
So we meet again….Alex … Magana. Now look, I assume that most of my readers are good, kind, and decent, but what if you’re not?! I mean what if you’re not that great or you did one REALLY bad thing that you feel guilty about. I’m not saying putting your neighbor in a woodchipper kind of thing, but let’s just include the lessor felonies. If you just need that self-flagellation, my dear ne’er-do-well compadre, this film and Alex Magana is for you.
Alex Magana assaults the senses and art herself. In fact, from the hackneyed plots to the p*rn quality acting, he is the Ed Wood of the digital age! If you don’t believe me, check out the “Smiling Woman”… SERIES…yes, it’s a series! I refuse to call it a franchise! I won’t do it! Luckily, your misery is brief because as terrible as Alex Magana’s films are – he can’t write stories longer than 4 minutes.
“Don’t Lie” shows an influencer, who I think seems a little old for the gig; however, we must let all things slide with Alex. Typically, Alex just films out of his apartment and the hall in his apartment building. The lead actress could be homeless or just live near the building; so, she could be young, but life on the street is hard. In fact, all of the actors could be homeless and this brief filming was their only exposure to …. home. *Sheds Tear*
The story continues where her boyfriend stages her murder to gain additional subscribers, which doesn’t make sense because why subscribe to the deceased? But, Whatever. A psycho then teaches her and her boyfriend a lesson about … honesty… with a knife. Apparently, neither she nor her boyfriend understand how their legs can make them move around and even away from things or people.
If we look at “Don’t Lie” like an industrial film, like “The Importance of Good Manners”, “Why you should drive safely”, and “Don’t ever put that in your Bu..” anyway. My point is that maybe “Don’t Lie” is salvageable as a lesson film. The lesson is this: Don’t let Alex Magana have any recording devices! EVER! He’s got to be stopped! He’s really prolific! How is paying for all this very very low budget dreck?!
Captain Gary Hart (Buster Crabbe) and his sidekick, Sgt. Mike Jenkins (Paul Bryar), are sent to the jungles of Africa, where Nazi infiltrators are encouraging Chief Selangi (Jess Lee Brooks) to side with the Third Reich and allow them to set up a base. In their effort to stop the Nazis, Hart and Jenkins are aided by Kuhlaya (Ann Corio), a woman whose parents were killed by Selangi and who now lives in the jungle with a chimpanzee and a doctor (Milton Kibbee) who serves as her protector. Kuhlaya carries a bow and arrow, which she used to battle the Nazis. Hart and Jenkins have actual guns and probably could have ended the Nazi plot early just by using them as soon as they arrived but then the movie couldn’t be stretched to 68 minutes.
This is a pretty bad Poverty Row film, memorable just for Crabbe’s typically earnest and athletic performance and the presence of Ann Corio, who was a famous stripper in the 40s who tried to transition into films after Mayor La Guardia ordered the closure of New York’s burlesque houses. Corio had legs for miles but she was a terrible actress. At one point, Mike Jenkins says that if he keeps exercising, “I’ll have a physique like Buster Crabbe!” That’s about as clever as this slow-moving film gets.
As is typical of jungle films that were made in the 40s, the “tribesmen” are pretty much treated as if they’re interchangeable and the only one who is given a personality is the evil Selangi. Several of them are killed over the course of the movie, not because they were doing anything wrong but just because they were in the wrong place. (The most egregious example is an innocent native who ends up with one of Kuhlaya’s arrows in his back because he was unfortunate enough to step in front of Selangi at the last moment.) No one, our heroes included, really seems to care about them or their future. Even by the standards of the era, JungleSiren feels extremely condescending and prejudiced in its portrayal of the natives. The idea that the Nazis, with their Aryan obsession, would ever team up with Chief Selangi is just one of the film’s problems.
Director Sam Newfield was responsible for some entertaining and cheap westerns. I’ve reviewed a few of them. He should have stayed out the jungle.
One of my favorite Chow Yun-Fat action films is Ringo Lam’s FULL CONTACT. Up until FULL CONTACT, Chow Yun-Fat was mostly the suave hitman or tough cop in his action films. Here, he’s a man content with operating on the wrong side of the law to try to get ahead. Unfortunately, he is betrayed by his best friend and criminal cohorts and left for dead in a foreign country. This rock-fueled montage sequence shows him healing up and then preparing to take his revenge, while his best friend / betrayer tries to “be there” for his girlfriend who thinks he’s dead. It’s a badass, multi-fingerless, Chow Yun-Fat who wears bandanas, rides a motorcycle, hangs with a cute dog, and ultimately takes no prisoners. My guess is this scene will make you want to watch FULL CONTACT!
(Note: The video is frozen for the first 8 seconds. After that, the fun begins)
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is Harvey Keitel’s 86th birthday! Harvey Keitel is one of the great, fearless actors of our time (BAD LIEUTENANT, anyone). He has been working hard since 1965, and he’s still going strong today, adding up to a career that spans 60 years and counting. His work for great directors like Scorsese and Tarantino has been vital to the quality and success of those films. I really came to appreciate Keitel when he had somewhat of a career resurgence in the early 90’s when I was in my late teens. He’s just a great actor who makes everything he appears in better.
Today, in honor of Harvey Keitel’s 86th birthday, here are 4 Shots from 4 Films!
Dolph Lundgren is Jack Crain, a Houston cop who teams up with FBI agent Larry Smith (Brian Benben) to investigate who is killing criminals in H-town. The killer is a drug dealer but not your everyday drug dealer. He’s an alien named Talec (Matthias Hues) and he’s figured out how to say “I come in peace,” but the rest of the English language is beyond him. “I come in peace,” turns out to be the scariest phrase you can hear when you’re being pursued by a white-haired, intergalactic mass murderer. His targets include Jesse Vint and Michael J. Pollard. This terminator wannabe is after character actors!
On the second-tier action stars of the 90s, Lundgren was the one who could actually act. Van Damme could actually do all the acrobatic stunts his characters did but he couldn’t show emotion like Lundgren. Steven Seagal seemed like he could handle himself in a fight but he lacked Lundgren’s self-aware humor. Lundgren plays Jack as almost being a parody of the type of hard-boiled cop who is always getting yelled at by the commissioner for wasting the city’s money. Brian Benben is remembered, by some, as the star of HBO’s DreamOn, the sitcom that convinced a generation of young men that there’s nothing women love more than obscure pop cultural obsessions. Benben is actually pretty funny in IComeInPeace. He’s the everyman who can’t believe he’s having to deal with an intergalactic drug dealer. Good heroes need a good villain and Matthias Hues is just right as the drug dealing alien who literally doesn’t know what he’s saying.
If you want to see a Terminator rip-off with nonstop action, a memorable villain, frequently (and intentionally) funny dialogue, an Al Leong cameo, and Dolph Lundgren as a hero who pushes people around just because he feels like it, IComeInPeace is the movie for you!
Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday May 12th, we are showing STRATEGIC COMMAND (1997) starring Michael Dudikoff, Paul Winfield, Richard Norton, Amanda Wyss, Bryan Cranston, and Michael Cavanaugh.
This movie focuses on Rick Harding (Michael Dudikoff), a former Marines officer, who’s now working in the FBI as a chemical weapons designer. While packing up one night, a group of armed soldiers break into the FBI research lab. Interestingly, these soldiers are led by a man named Carlos Gruber (Richard Norton).
So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch STRATEGIC COMMAND! It’s on Amazon Prime. The trailer is included below:
Georgie, the Chaser (Cesar Romero) is a con artist who works for a low-level gangster named Sunshine Joe (William Frawley). When Georgie reads about an heiress named Clarice van Cleve (Patricia Ellis) who impulsively falls in love with any man wearing a uniform, Georgie pretends to be a member of the Foreign Legion and tracks her down. Georgie thinks that Clarice’s father will pay him off, just as he’s paid off all of her other suitors. Instead, Clarice’s father disinherits her and Clarice ends up living at Georgie’s place, along with his other criminal associates (Andy Devine, Warren Hymer, and George E. Stone).
