Category Archives: Film

Scenes That I Love: The Opening Credits of Saturday Night Fever

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Saturday Night Fever (1977, dir. John Badham)

Today is John Travolta’s birthday!

In honor of this day, here’s a scene that I love, the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever.  Watch as John Travolta, playing the role of Tony Manero, walks down the streets of Brooklyn, not letting the fact that he’s carrying two cans of paint do anything to lessen his strut.  Watch as Tony puts a down payment on a pair of shoes!  Thrill as Tony buys two slices of pizza!  Cringe as Tony bothers a woman who wants absolutely nothing to do with him!

This is one of the greatest introductions in film history.  Not only does it set Tony up as an exemplar of cool but it also subverts our expectations by revealing just how little being an exemplar of cool really means.  I always relate to the woman who gets annoyed with Tony and tells him to go away.  I know exactly how she feels, as does any woman who has ever been stopped in the middle of the street by some guy who thinks she has an obligation to talk him.  It doesn’t matter how handsome he is or how much time he obviously spent working on his hair.  He’s still just some guy carrying two buckets of paint and acting like she should be flattered that he spent half a minute staring at her ass before chasing after her.  For all of his carefully constructed attitude, Tony comes across as being a rather ludicrous figure in this introduction.  He carries those cans of paint like he’s going to war and you secretly get the feeling that he knows how silly he looks carrying them but he’s not going to allow anything to get in the way of his strut.

The rest of the film, of course, is about presenting who Tony actually is underneath the disco facade and it’s not always a pretty picture.  I actually discussed this with some friends this weekend while we were listening to combination of disco and punk music.  Saturday Night Fever has a reputation for being a fun dance movie but actually, it’s an extremely dark and rather depressing movie.  The opening song isn’t lying when it says that “I’m going nowhere.”  Tony is lost and, despite what happens in the sequel, he’s probably never going to escape his circumstances.  Even though he clearly wants to be a better person, you’re never quite convinced that he has what it takes to truly do that.  At least he can strut a little while waiting for the world to end.  It takes guts to give an honest performance when you’re playing as imperfect a character as Tony Manero but Travolta pulls it off.  (We won’t talk about some of the films that he made in the years immediately after this one.  Eventually, he did make a comeback with Pulp Fiction and spent several years again appearing in good films.  And then somehow, last year, he ended up starring in The Fanatic.  Oh well.  66 is not that old and I’m sure Travolta has more than one comeback within him.)

Anyway, happy birthday to John Travolta!  And here is today’s scene that I love:

I Escaped From Devil’s Island (1973, directed by William Whitney)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1918 and the French penal colony, Devil’s Island, is renowned as the world’s most brutal prison.  Hidden away from mainland Europe, it is populated by the worst of the worst.  The prisoners have been sentenced to either spend their life on the island or to die at the blade of guillotine and the guards are all sadists.  Le Bras (Jim Brown) has been sentenced to die but he impresses his fellow inmates by putting up a fight on his way to have his head chopped off.  He doesn’t succeed in escaping but, fortunately for him, the death penalty is abolished mere moments before the blade falls.

Le Bras is alive but he’s still been condemned to spend the rest of his life on Devil’s Island, under the sadistic eye of the head guard, Maj. Marteau (Paul Richards).  However, Le Bras has no intention of being anyone’s prisoner.  He teams up with two other prisoners, a pacifist named Davert (Christopher George) and Jo-Jo (Richard Ely), who, because he is gay, is abused by both the guards and the other prisoners.  The three of them manage to escape from the prison but they still have to make their way through the jungle.  Along the way, they visit a leper colony and Le Bras takes some time to get busy with a native woman.  Meanwhile, Marteau remains hot behind them, determined to capture them and send them back to the prison.

If I Escaped From Devil’s Island sounds familiar, that may be because you’ve seen Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in Papillon.  Papillon was a major studio production with big stars, a huge budget, and an epic running time.  I Escaped From Devil’s Island was a low-budget film starring B-movie stars and with a 90-minute running time that was the exact opposite of epic.  Roger Corman produced I Escaped From Devil’s Island to capitalize on the expected success of Papillon and he started production early enough that I Escaped From Devil’s Island actually beat Papillon to theaters by a matter of weeks.  Corman originally tried to hire Martin Scorsese to direct I Escaped From Devil’s Island.  When Scorsese decided to follow John Cassavetes’s advice and do a personal film instead, Corman ended up hiring William Whitney to direct.  (Scorsese’s personal film turned out to be Mean Streets, so he probably made the right decision.)

I Escaped From Devil’s Island is an entertaining B-movie.  It doesn’t have the epic sweep of Papillon but it does have a fun cast and all the action that you would expect from a 70s Corman production.  Jim Brown was never a great actor but he never claimed to be.  What Brown had was a tremendous physical presence and a confident movie star charisma and both of those are put to good use in I Escaped From Devil’s Island.  Whether he was playing football or beating up bad guys, Jim Brown was always the epitome of cool and that’s especially true in this film.  Christopher George has some good scenes as a pacifist who believes in non-violent resistance and Paul Richards is a great villain but this is a movie that you watch for Jim Brown and he doesn’t disappoint.

As of today, Jim Brown is 84 years old.  As anyone who has seen him interviewed recently can tell you, Jim Brown is still the epitome of cool.  When Jim Brown speaks, whether people agree with him or not, they still shut up and listen.  Happy birthday, Jim Brown!

Love on the Shattered Lens: Rapture (dir by John Guillermin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1965 film, Rapture, is an odd one.

It takes place in France, largely at an isolated home sitting on a cliff above the Brittany coast.  Frederick Larbaud (Melvyn Douglas) is a former judge who has largely retreated from society.  He lives in his house with his teenager daughter, Agnes (Patricia Gozzi) and his promiscuous housekeeper, Karen (Gunnel Lindbloom).  He’s a stern man, one who is obviously struggling to overcome a vaguely defined personal tragedy.  He is very overprotective of his daughter, Agnes.

As for Agnes, she alternates between moments of childish immaturity and moments of surprising clarity.  She’s the type who still plays with dolls but who also casually tosses them over the cliff so that they can shatter on the rocks below.  She seems to be naive and innocent but, at the same time, she’s also capable of blackmailing Karen and threatening to tell her father that Karen’s boyfriend sneaks into the house at night.  When the sheltered Agnes gets her father’s permission to make a scarecrow for the garden, she throws herself into the work, even going so far as to flirt with the scarecrow after it’s been built.

Meanwhile, a sailor named Joseph (Dean Stockwell) has been arrested for getting into a fight during a drunken night on the town.  While he’s being transported to jail, the prison bus runs off the road.  Joseph escapes from the bus and runs up a hill, passing by Frederick, Agnes, and Karen.  Though the police manage to seriously wound Joseph, he still escapes.

Later that night, during a violent storm, Agnes is shocked to see that her scarecrow has vanished.  While she’s out searching for it, she comes across a delirious Joseph.  Because Joseph has stolen the scarecrow’s clothes, Agnes decides that her scarecrow has come to life and, as a result, Joseph belongs to her.  Surprisingly, Frederick expresses no reservations about allowing Joseph to stay at the house while he recovers from his gunshot wound.

Once Joseph recovers, he explains to Frederick what happened and says that he should probably turn himself in and hope for the best.  Frederick, however, disagrees.  It turns out that Frederick has an agenda of his own and part of that agenda is revealing that brutality of the police.  He continues to allow Joseph to hide out at his house but little does Frederick know that Joseph is falling in love with Agnes (and, of course, Agnes still thinks that Joseph is her scarecrow come to life).

Rapture took me by surprise.  When the film started, I honestly thought it was going to be unbearably pretentious and I wasn’t exactly filled with confidence when I discovered that the film was directed by John Guillermin, a prolific British director whose career spanned from the 50s and the 80s but whose overall output is not particularly highly regarded among film historians.  With its obvious debt to Ingmar Bergman, Rapture did not seem like the type of movie that one would expect to be successfully directed by the 1960s equivalent of Taylor Hackford.  And, it should be said, that the first fourth of the film is rather pretentious and a bit silly.  The black-and-white cinematography is frequently gorgeous and atmospheric but Agnes’s eccentricity often feels overwritten and it seems to take forever for Joseph to actually show up at the house.

However, things get better.  The film, itself, doesn’t become any less pretentious but eventually Joseph starts to fall for Agnes and the chemistry between Dean Stockwell and Patricia Gozzi is strong enough that it carries the viewer over the film’s rough spots.  The film becomes less about how strange Agnes is and more about a sheltered girl falling in love for the first time and, freed from the inconsistency that marred her characterization during the first part of Rapture, Patricia Gozzi’s performance starts to click as Agnes becomes relatable and even sympathetic.

The film hits a high point when Joseph and Agnes try to start a life for themselves away from Agnes’s father and we watch a lengthy montage of their steadily deteriorating relationship.  In a manner of minutes, we witness how quickly the intrusion of the real world threatens to cause their too perfect romance to go awry.  Most of the montage is made up of overhead shots and it captures the feeling of two naive lovers being overwhelmed by the difficulties of living in the real world.  With each movement of the camera, we feel Agnes and Joseph’s world getting a little bit more claustrophobic and a little more threatening.

The film ends on a sad note, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone watching.  From the minute that Agnes leads a wounded Joseph into the house, we know that their love is doomed.  That said, it’s still a rather odd ending and one that raises more questions than it answers.  It’s a strange ending for a strange film and it’s one that will stick with you long after you watch it.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Alejandro Jodorowsky Edition

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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 91st birthday of one of cinema’s greatest surrealists, Alejandro Jodorowsky.  When it comes to Jodorowsky, finding 4 shots from 4 films is not the difficult thing.  The difficult thing is trying to narrow down all of the options to just four.  Along with directing the first midnight film, El Topo, Jodorowsky was also the first director to make a serious effort to bring Dune to the big screen.  No offense to either David Lynch or Denis Villeneuve but it’s hard to think of any other director who would have been more suited to the task.  Sadly, Jodorowsky’s Dune may never be made but he’s still responsible for a filmography that continues to intrigue and outage to this day.

4 Shots From 4 Films

Fando y Lis (1968, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

El Topo (1970, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

The Holy Mountain (1973, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Santa Sangre (1989, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Bravo Two Zero (1999, directed by Tom Clegg)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In 1991, during the Gulf War, a British SAS patrol — codenamed Bravo Two Zero — is dropped behind enemy lines in Iraq.  Led by Andy McNabb (played by Sean Bean), their mission is to track down and destroy Iraqi scud missile launchers and also to disrupt communications between Baghdad and Northwestern Iraq.  Almost from the minute that the 8 member teams is dropped behind enemy lines, things start to go wrong.  The weather turns against them.  They’re spotted by both Iraqi civilians and soldiers.  While the team tries to make it back to safety, McNabb and three others are captured by the Iraqis and are forced to endure torture while looking for an opportunity to escape.

Bravo Two Zero, which originally aired in two parts on the BBC, is based on Andy McNabb’s memoir about what happened when Bravo Two Zero found themselves trapped behind enemy lines, their mission compromised.  It’s a rousing story but it’s also a controversial one.  Several other people who were involved with the operation claimed that McNabb (which was a pseudonym adopted to protect the identities of the other members of the unit) exaggerated certain details, particularly the extent that he was tortured and the number of Iraqi soldiers that the unit had to fight on their way to the Syrian border.  What is known for sure is that the unit was trapped behind enemy lines and, of the 8 who set out, only five returned, having survived against almost impossible odds.  It’s possible to debate the exact details but no one debates the bravery of the men involved.

As a film, Bravo Two Zero takes McNabb at his word.  It’s a tough and gritty war film and Sean Bean gives an excellent performance in the role of McNabb.  Real-life footage from the Gulf War is mixed in with the recreation of what happened to the unit and it gives the film both a semi-documentary feel and it also ratchets up the suspense.  While the news broadcasts present what appears to be a very easy victory over Iraq, we’re reminded that it wasn’t as easy for the men who were actually getting shot at on a daily basis.  Will the men be able to make it to Syria before the rest of the world moves on?  Though the film is clearly on the side of the Coalition Forces, it’s hardly blindly jingoistic.  While the Iraqis who torture McNabb are presented as being sadists, the majority of the Iraqi citizens come across as just people trying to survive day-by-day while bombs rain down upon them.  For the most part, the Iraqi people are presented as being caught in the middle of a war that, regardless of who wins, will never benefit them, pawns in a battle between competing super powers.  The film’s villain is Saddam Hussein and not the people living under his dictatorship.

Bravo Two Zero is an excellent war film, one that emphasizes the hard work and training that goes into serving with the SAS over the usual action film heroics.  While never glamorizing combat or war, it pays tribute to those who have served and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Mitchell (1976, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Mitchell (played by Joe Don Baker and don’t you forget it) is a detective who rubs everyone the wrong way because he’s a huge slob.  In order to keep Mitchell from investigating a murder committed by a mobbed-up lawyer named Walter Deaney (John Saxon), Mitchell’s superiors order him to conduct surveillance on businessman James Arthur Cummings (Martin Balsam).  Cummings is in the export/import game, which can only mean that he’s looking to smuggle heroin in the United States.  Mitchell balks at having to spend hours sitting in a car and watching a house but he finally agree to do it just so he can show up his superiors.  “I’m going to get Deaney and Cummings!” he says.

In order to get Mitchell off of his back, Deaney sends him a prostitute named Greta (Linda Evans).  Mitchell doesn’t have any problem having sex with Greta but he does have a problem with her smoking grass.  After spending two nights with her, he hauls her off to jail for possession because the only intoxicant that Mitchell needs is Schlitz beer.

Eventually, both Deaney and Cummings get tired to being harrassed by this slob so they team up to kill him.  This leads to both a dune buggy accident that has to be seen to be believed and an exciting helicopter chase.

Mitchell is best-known for having been featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Everyone remembers Joel and the bots making savage fun of Joe Don Baker and commenting on the plot’s incoherence.  What is less well-known is that the version that was shown on MST 3K was a heavily edited version that was missing some key scenes.  Earlier today, I watched the unedited version of Mitchell.  It’s still pretty bad but the plot does make slightly more sense.  In the unedited version, we actually learn why John Saxon just vanishes from the movie and we also see the end result of Mitchell’s final confrontation with Cummings, instead of just cutting away.  Even more importantly, in the unedited version, we discover that Mitchell spends the entire movie being threatened, abused, and insulted.  It makes it easier to understand why he’s in such a terrible mood throughout the entire film.  The unedited version of Mitchell is not much better than the edited version but it is a tougher and more violent film in every way.

Mitchell is usually described as being a take on Dirty Harry but it’s actually more of a French Connection rip-off.  The slovenly Mitchell has more in common with the erratic Popeye Doyle than with the cool and collected Harry Callahan.  Unfortunately, Mitchell doesn’t have any scenes that can compare to the chase scene from The French Connection nor does it have that film’s gritty, semi-documentary tone.  Whereas Doyle and Callahan got results through being smart along with being tough (Dirty Harry, for instance, goes out of its way to show that Callahan is dogged investigator and not just a trigger-happy cop), Mitchell just annoys people until they try to kill him.

For all the shit that Joe Don Baker has taken for starring in Mitchell, his performance is not that bad.  He’s convincing as a borderline fascist cop who doesn’t get much sleep and who doesn’t trust anyone.  It’s just that Mitchell, as written, is never a likable hero.  Instead, he’s the type of hero who busts his girlfriend because she has a tiny amount of grass in her purse.  Of the villains, John Saxon is believably sleazy as Deaney but Martin Balsam sleep walks through his role as Cummings and, even in the unedited version, his plan never makes much sense.  Balsam and Saxon should switched roles.

Finally, no review of Mitchell would be complete with including the lyrics of the haunting Mitchell theme song, sung by Hoyt Axton:

“My my my my Mitchell
What do your Mama say?
What would she do
if she knew you
were fallin’ round and carryin’ on that way…
Crackin’ some heads, jumpin’ in and out of beds
and hangin’ round the criminal scene…
Do you think you are some kind of a star like the guys on the movie screen…

Well oh my my my Mitchell
What would your captain say?
If he knew you was hangin’ round
Eatin’ with the crooks and shootin’ up the town
Know you been out there, roundin’ up the syndicate
succeedin’ where the others have failed
Oh my my my Mitchell
You shoot ’em just to get ’em in jail
When they take a look in the record book, they’ll find you got a lot of class…

The whole shebang, arrestin’ painted ladies for a little grass
Oh my my my Mitchell!”

“Mitchell!”

The cover of the unedited Mitchell DVD features Joe Don Baker from Walking Tall, Linda Evans from Dynasty, and a publicity still of John Saxon. Martin Balsam, however, does appear to have been taken from the film.

Cinemax Friday: Final Impact (1991, directed by Joseph Mehri)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

 

The girl on the back cover of the VHS box is only in the film for 5 seconds.

Danny Davis (Michael Worth) is the light heavyweight kickboxing champion of Ohio but he wants to be the national champion so he approaches Nick Taylor (Lorenzo Lamas) for training.  Nick used to be the national champion but he is still haunted by his brutal defeat at the hands and feet of Jack Gerard (Jeff Langton).  Nick is now an alcoholic who makes his money on the oil wrestling circuit.  (The girls wrestle in oil while Nick kickboxes in a ring.  Guess what most of the people in the bar end up watching?)  When Danny and Nick first meet, the arrogant Nick refuses to have anything to do with him.  But when Nick sees Danny win his match and shout out, “I am invincible!,” Nick decides to take him under his wing.  The kid’s good but he needs to learn some lessons about making potentially ironic declarations in the ring.

Nick trains Danny and shows him that all of his talent won’t mean anything if he allows himself to become predictable.  Soon, Nick and Danny are making the national circuit and fighting in Las Vegas.  But as Danny becomes successful, Nick starts to grow jealous.  He starts to feel as if his girlfriend, Maggie (the incredible Kathleen Kinmont), prefers Danny to him and he becomes so insecure that he can’t even perform long enough to cheat with a local prostitute that he picks up in a bar.  Making matters worse is that, for Danny to become the champ, he’s going to have to defeat Jake Gerard, the man who ended Nick’s professional career.

Occasionally, late night Cinemax took a break from showing nudity-filled neo-noirs to show films like this one, a low-budget rip-off of Rocky, The Karate Kid, and Kickboxer.  Of all the films that came out of this very 90s genre, Final Impact is one of the better examples.  The fight scenes are exciting but the real appeal of this film is that it stars Lorenzo Lamas and Kathleen Kinmont, back when they were still a couple.  Kinmont was one of the best of the 90s video vixens, beautiful and not a bad actress either.  Meanwhile, Lorenzo Lamas was the male Shannon Tweed.  Lamas may not have been a great actor but his total lack of shame and his ability to deliver deadpan dialogue like, “No one is invincible,” without cracking a smile made him more entertaining than many of his fellow direct-to-video stars.  Lamas lurches drunkenly through Final Impact, taking both himself and the movie far too seriously and playing Nick’s emotional breakdown like an actor begging the Academy to just take a look.  It’s fun to watch.

Final Impact ends as these films always do, with a champion being crowned.  As far as I’m concerned, everyone in the film is champion, a champion of 90s Cinemax.

Love on the Shattered Lens: Lying Eyes (dir by Marina Sargenti)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you want to see something creepy, just check out the first 5 minutes of the 1996 television film, Lying Eyes.

It takes place at a high school basketball game.  While the team is heading into the locker room for halftime (which is something that I assume they do in basketball, though I’ve never actually watched a game so I could be wrong), the cheerleaders run out onto the court and do their routine.  The camera switches back and forth from closeups of the cheerleader’s backsides to shots of a handsome man named Derek Bradshaw (Vincent Irizarry) sitting in the stands and obviously enjoying the show.

The scene already has a leering quality but what makes it disturbing is the little smile that comes to Derek’s face while he watches the cheerleaders.  Derek maybe handsome but he’s also quite a bit older than the teenagers who are sitting around him.  It’s obvious that he’s come to the game alone and it’s also obvious, just from the way that he’s watching, that he didn’t come because he’s a fan of high school basketball.  Instead, he’s there to ogle the cheerleaders.

Later, one of the cheerleaders — Amy Miller (Cassidy Rae) — is driving home.  We’ve already seen a scene where Amy explains to her best friend, Dana (Ashlee Levitch), that she’s tired of dating immature teenage boys.  While Amy’s sitting at a stop light, another car rear ends her.  The driver gets out and checks to see if Amy’s okay.  The other driver is ….. DEREK!

Amy is immediately charmed by Derek, especially after he offers to pay for the damage done to her bumper so that she won’t have to report the accident to her insurance company.  Later, when Amy goes to pick up her car from the garage that Derek recommended, she discovers that not only has the bumper been replaced but that Derek also had the mechanic install a CD player!  (Remember, this movie was made in 1996.)  And Derek’s given her a bundle of CDs!  When she thanks him, he smiles and says that he hopes that she likes Hootie and the Blowfish.

(Seriously, he says that.  I’m not joking.)

Anyway, Derek and Amy are soon having an affair.  Amy thinks that Derek is the best and even accepts his word when he explains that he’s married but he and his wife are separated.  However, everyone else in Amy’s life is suspicious of Derek and so are we, because we’ve seen a 100 movies just like this one!  Plus, we saw Derek acting all pervy at the high school basketball game….

Soon, Amy’s grades are slipping and her friends are getting mad at her because she’s no longer spending any time with them.  However, Amy has other things to be concerned about.  For instance, someone leaves a note in her mailbox, calling her a whore.  Someone keeps calling the house.  Someone takes a knife to her new leather jacket.  Apparently, someone is not happy about Amy’s relationship and, even after Amy breaks it off with Derek, the harassment continues.

Who is out to get Amy?  Could it be Derek?  Could it be Derek’s wife?  Could it be Dana or maybe even Dana’s older sister, Jennifer (Alison Smith)?  Or could it be someone who Amy doesn’t even suspect?

Lying Eyes is an enjoyably trashy film.  This is one of those movies where you know exactly what’s going to happen but the film itself is just so cheerfully melodramatic that you can’t help but get sucked into it.  Though the film was originally made for NBC, it has since become a Lifetime staple.  This really is the ultimate Lifetime film.  Unfortunately, it’s not as a good as it used to be because, the last few times I watched the film, I noticed that the original kickass soundtrack had been replaced by a generic soundtrack.  I get that this sort of thing happens and it has to do with whether or not the distributor feels like its worth the trouble to pay for the rights to the songs that originally appeared in the film.  But seriously, the generic music that replaced the original soundtrack often doesn’t even go with the scenes in which it is heard.  This is especially true of the film’s opening, where the cheerleaders’ opening routine was obviously choreographed to totally different music from what is now playing in the background.

On the plus side, Vincent Irizarry is both perfectly sleazy and perfectly charming in the role of Derek and Cassidy Rae is relatable and sympathetic at Amy.  Falling for a guy who is obviously wrong but refusing to listen to your friends and family because you want the fantasy to be true?  Seriously, we’ve all been there.  That was pretty much my entire life when I was 18 years old.  Rae does such a great job that you don’t even mind that Amy often behaves like an idiot.  (Seriously, if someone is stalking you, threatening to kill you, and forcing your car off the road, you might want to consider not shrugging it off.)

Lying Eyes is a good, trashy melodrama and if you’re looking for some Valentine’s Day counter programming, it’s on Amazon Prime.  I just wish they would bring back the original soundtrack.

Love On The Shattered Lens: Romeo and Juliet (dir by Franco Zeffirelli)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Now that the Oscars and the Sundance Film Festival are over with, it’s time to start a new series of reviews here on the Shattered Lens.  For the rest of February, I will be looking at some films that deal with the universal topic of love.  Some of these films will be romantic.  Some of them will be sad.  Some of them might be happy.  Some of them might be scary.  Some of them might be good.  And some of them might be bad.  In fact, to be honest, I haven’t really sat down and made out a definite list of which films I’ll be reviewing for Love On The Shattered Lens.  Instead, I figure I’ll just pick whatever appeals to me at the moment and we’ll see what happens!

Let’s start things off with the 1968 film version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

“Oh my God!  Romeo and Juliet are hippies!”

Well, that’s not quite true.  I mean, it is true that Romeo (played by Leonard Whitting) and Juliet (Olivia Hussey) are played by actual teenagers in this version of the classic play.  It’s also true that, even though the film is set in a painstakingly recreated version of 15th century Verona, almost all of the actors have what would have then been contemporary haircuts.  Romeo, Benvolio (Bruce Robinson), and Mercutio (John McEnery) all have longish hair, dress colorfully, and look like they could all be in the same band, covering the Beatles and writing songs about dodging the draft.  Even Tybalt (Michael York) seems a bit counter-cultural in this version.

As played by Olivia Hussey, Juliet comes across as being far more rebellious in this version of Romeo and Juliet than in some of the others.  It’s hard to imagine that Olivia Hussey’s Juliet would have much patience with Juliets played by Norma Shearer, Claire Danes, Hailee Steinfeld, or even the version of the character that Natalie Wood played in West Side Story.  Olivia Hussey’s Juliet is always one step away from running away from home and hitch-hiking to the free Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway.  Like the audience that the film was intended for, Romeo and Juliet both know that their parents are out-of-touch and that their friends are only temporary.  Embracing love and pursuing all that life has to offer is what matters.

Was this the first film version of Romeo and Juliet to make explicit that the two characters had consummated their marriage?  I imagine it was since it was apparently also the first version of Romeo and Juliet to feature on-screen nudity.  That’s quite a contrast to the largely chaste 1936 version, in which Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard both seemed determined to keep a respectable distance from each other.  Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey have an amazing chemistry together.  They’re the two prettiest people in Verona and they just look like they belong together.  From the minute they meet, you believe not only that they would be attracted to each other but that they’re also meant to be lovers.

Of course, we all know the story.  The Capulets and the Montagues are rival families.  Juliet is a Capulet.  Romeo is a Montague.  Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, kills Romeo’s friend Mercutio.  Romeo kills Tybalt.  Juliet fakes her death.  Romeo commits suicide.  Juliet wakes up and does the same.  The Prince shows up and yells at everyone.  This film version moves around some of the events and it leaves out a few scenes but it actually improves on the play.  For instance, poor Paris (Roberto Bissaco) doesn’t die in this version.  Seriously, I always feel bad for Paris.

Throughout it all, director Franco Zeffirelli emphasizes the youth of the characters.  It’s not just Romeo and Juliet who are presented as young.  The entire Montague and Capulet feud is largely portrayed as being just a silly turf war between two competing high school cliques.  When Tybalt and Mercutio have their fateful duel, it starts out largely as a joke and, when Tybalt kills Mercutio, it comes across as if it was an accident on Tybalt’s part.  Tybalt appears to be just as shocked as anyone, like a scared kid holding a smoking gun and trying to explain that he didn’t know it was loaded when he pulled the trigger.  When Mercutio curses both the Capulets and the Montagues, it’s all the more powerful because Mercutio is undoubtedly wondering how the duel could have so quickly gone from playful taunting to a fatal stabbing.  The entire conflict between the Montague and the Capulets is a war that makes no sense, one in which the young are sacrificed while the old retreat to the safety of their homes.

Romeo and Juliet was a hit in 1968 and it’s still an achingly romantic film.  Whiting and Hussey generate more chemistry in just the balcony scene than Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Danes did in the entirety of Baz Luhrmann’s version of the tragic tale.  Along with being a box office hit, it was also a critical hit.  The Academy nominated it for best picture, though it lost to Oliver!

City on Fire (1979, directed by Alvin Rakoff)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In an unnamed city somewhere in the midwest, Herman Stover (Jonathan Welsh) is fired from his job at an oil refinery.  Herman does what any disgruntled former employee would do.  He runs around the refinery and opens up all the valves and soon, the entire location is covered in a combustible mix of oil and chemicals.  One spark is all it takes for the refinery to explode and the entire city to turn into a raging inferno.

While Fire Chief Risley (Henry Fonda, getting a special “And starring” credit for doing what probably amounted to a few hours of work) sits in his office and gives orders to his subordinates, Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman) cares for the injured at the city’s new hospital.  Also at the hospital is Mayor William Dudley (Leslie Nielsen) and local celebrity Diana Brockhurst-Lautrec (Susan Clark), who is having an affair with the mayor.  Diana also went to high school with Herman and he still has a crush on her.  When he shows up at the hospital to try to hit on her, he’s roped into working as a paramedic.  Also helping out at the hospital is Nurse Shelley Winters.  (The character may be named Andrea Harper but she’s played by Shelley Winters and therefore, she is Shelley Winters.)  At the local television station, news producer Jimbo (James Franciscus) tries to keep his anchorwoman, Maggie Grayson (Ava Gardner), sober enough to keep everyone up to date on how much longer the city is going to be on fire.

Mostly because it was featured on an early pre-Comedy Central episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, City on Fire has a reputation for being a terrible movie but, as far as 70s disaster films are concerned, it’s not that bad.  The special effects are actually pretty impressive, especially during the first half of the film and there’s really not a weak link to be found in the cast.  It’s always strange to see Leslie Nielsen playing a serious role but, before Airplane! gave him a chance to display his skill for deadpan comedy, he specialized in playing stuffy and boring authority figures.  He actually does a good job as Mayor Dudley and it’s not the film’s fault that, for modern audiences, it’s impossible to look at Leslie Nielsen without instinctively laughing.  Of course, there is a scene towards the end where Leslie Nielsen picks up a fire hose and starts spraying people as they come out of the hospital and it was hard not to laugh at that because it felt like a scene straight from The Naked Gun.

What the film does suffer from is an overabundance of cliches and bad dialogue.  From the minute the movie starts, you know who is going to live and who isn’t and sometimes, City on Fire tries too hard to give everyone a connection.  It’s believable that Herman would be stupid enough to start a fire because we all know that happens in the real world.  What’s less believable is that, having started the fire, Herman would then go to the hospital and keep asking Diana if she remembers him from high school.  It’s not asking too much to believe that Diana, as wealthy local celebrity, would be invited to the opening of a new hospital.  It’s stretching things, though, to then have her deliver a baby while the hospital is in flames around her.

Coming out at the tail end of the disaster boom, City on Fire didn’t do much at the box office and would probably be forgotten if not for the MST 3K connection.  A year after City on Fire was released, Airplane! came out and, through the power of ridicule, put a temporary end to the entire disaster genre.