Tag Archives: Barbara Hale

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Airport (dir by George Seaton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1970, Airport is a real time capsule.

As one can guess from the title, it takes place over 12 hours at an airport.  The airport in question is a fictional one, Chicago’s Lincoln International Airport.  Over the course of one night, almost everything that can happen does happen.

A sudden snowstorm causes almost all of the other airports in the midwest to shut down for the night.  On Lincoln’s Runway 29, one of the airplanes gets stuck in the show when it lands.  No one is hurt but, until Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) and his men can dig out and move that plane, no one is going to be able to land on 29.

Runway 22 is still open but the homeowners association is currently picketing the airport to protest the amount of noise pollution that is caused whenever airplanes use Runway 22.  Using 22 in the middle of the night is sure to prove their point and make trouble for the airport.  Mel Bakersfield (Burt Lancaster), the airport manager, thinks that the only solution is to buy up all of the land around the airport but the Board of Commissioners disagrees.  Mel says that airports have to adjust to changing times but no one is willing to put up the money.

Mel is unhappily married to the wealthy and socially ambitious Cindy (Dana Wynter), who is not happy to learn that, due to the storm, Mel is going to miss an important dinner party.  Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg), head of customer relations for Trans Global Airlines, is in love with Mel but Mel isn’t the type to cheat, even if his marriage is troubled.

On the other hand, Mel’s brother-in-law, pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin, the hippest pilot in the sky), has absolutely no problem cheating on his wife (Barbara Hale).  Vernon is currently having an affair with flight attendant, Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset).  When Gwen tells Vernon that she’s pregnant, Vernon says that “it” can be taken care of in Sweden.  Gwen says that she wants to have the baby.

Meanwhile, Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes, who won an Oscar for her performance here) is an elderly woman who has developed an addiction to stowing away on flights.  She manages to sneak onto a plane flying to Rome, the same plane on which Vernon is the co-pilot.  (Technically, Vernon is on the plane to evaluate the captain, who is played by Barry Nelson.  Yes, the same Barry Nelson who played Jimmy Bond in 1954’s Casino Royale and Mr. Ullman in The Shining.)  Ada ends up sitting next to a nervous man named D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin).  Having failed as a businessman, Guerrero has a bomb in his briefcase and is planning on blowing himself and the airplane up so that his wife (Maureen Stapleton) can receive an insurance payment.

Seriously, that’s a lot of drama!  It seems like this airport has a little bit of everything!  But you know what this airport doesn’t have?  It doesn’t have the TSA groping people and telling them what they can and cannot take on the plane with them.  It doesn’t have the endless lines full of tired travelers who just want to be allowed to get on with their business.  It doesn’t have the suspicious atmosphere that has become a part of modern air travel.  Compared to the average airport experience of 2026, the movie’s airport is a paradise, full of people who are working hard, who are polite to each other, and who all seem to know what they’re doing.  I’d take the drama of 1970’s Airport over the reality of a modern airport any day.

Airport is very much a celebration of competent people getting the job done.  On the whole, we really don’t learn much about the characters played by Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Barry Nelson, and George Kennedy but we definitely learn that they’re all very good at their jobs.  Even Helen Hayes’s stowaway is meant to be likable precisely because she is so good at stowing away.  The only person who is portrayed as being a failure as Van Heflin’s D.O. Guerrero and he’s so upset about not being good at his job that he decides to blow himself up.  Though the film is full of split screens and dialogue that was probably risqué by the standards of a 1970 studio film, one gets the feeling that Airport probably felt old-fashioned even when it was first released.  One can only imagine what George Kennedy’s hard-working Joe Patroni would have thought about the characters in a film like Easy Rider.  About as close as Airport gets to the counterculture is Dean Martin mockingly calling Burt Lancaster “dad” while telling him to get his favorite runway cleared.  This is a film where even Dean Martin is a stickler for regulations.

Based on a best-selling novel, Airport is often listed as being one of the worst films to ever be nominated for best picture.  And …. well, okay, it’s definitely not a great film, especially when compared to some of the other films of the early 70s.  The film was the highest grossing film of 1970 and that, more than anything, probably explains why it was nominated.  Airport moves at a very deliberate pace and and visually, it is pretty flat.  It looks like a competently made television pilot.  When I first did a capsule review of Airport in 2010, I was fairly harsh towards it.  I have to admit, though, that when I recently rewatched the film, I actually kind of liked it.  Compared to today’s world, there’s something comforting about the competence of the characters in Airport.  Airport has its flaws and it definitely should not have been nominated for 11 Oscars but it presents a world that seems almost cozy compared to what we have to deal with nowadays.

Dean Martin as a pilot?  Helen Hayes as a chatty stowaway?  George Kennedy chewing on an unlit cigar and complaining to Burt Lancaster about how incompetent the TGA pilots are?  Hey, why not?  If it means not having to deal with the TSA and knowing that everyone is dedicated to getting me to where I’m going in comfort, I’m all for taking my next flight out Lincoln International.

Film Review: The Jackpot (dir by Walter Lang)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1950’s The Jackpot, James Stewart plays Bill Lawrence.

Bill has a job at a department store.  He’s not the manager but he’s still a respected member of the staff and who knows?  Maybe his boss (Fred Clark) will give him a promotion someday.  He lives in a big, two-story home with his wife, Amy (Barbara Hale).  He and Amy have two children, one of whom is played by a 12 year-old Natalie Wood.  By all appearances, Bill is doing pretty good for himself.  At one point, it’s mentioned that makes a grand total of $7,500 a year.

That definitely caught my attention.  “I make more than that!” I snapped at the screen.  I pulled up an inflation calculator and I discovered that $7,5000 in 1950 is the equivalent of — wait for it — $102,000 today!  (Technically, I still make more than that but still, it’s six figures.)

When Bill answers a phone call from a radio station and guesses the correct answer to a trivia question, he wins $24,000-worth of prizes.  (I didn’t bother to figure out how much that $24,000 would be be in 2025 dollars but we can safely assume that it would be quite a bit.)  Unfortunately, a lot of the prizes end up costing more than their worth.  Bill wins a side of beef , 7,500 cans of soup, and a 1,000 fruit trees but he doesn’t win anywhere to store it all.  He also wins a maid, an interior designer, a pony, a swimming pool, a trip to New York, and a session with portrait painter Hilda (Patricia Medina).  He also ends up with an income tax bill for $7,000.  Remember, he only makes $7,500 a year.  Damn the IRS!

Realizing that he’s going to have to sell the majority of his winnings, Bill loses his job when he’s caught trying to sell to the store’s customers.  Needing money to pay off his tax bill, he tries to pawn a diamond ring and ends up getting arrested.  With his anniversary coming up, he asks Hilda to paint a portrait of Amy from his description of her but Bill ends up spending so much time with Hilda that Amy becomes convinced that he’s having an affair.

Basically, one terrible thing after another happens to Bill, all the result of having won a contest.  (The film is loosely based on a true story, with James Gleason playing a fictionalized version of the reporter who wrote the original story.)  The movie’s a comedy but, as with the majority of the films that James Stewart made after World War II, there’s a sense of melancholy running through it.  Even before he wins the money, Bill doesn’t seem satisfied with his life.  Much like George Bailey, he’s restless and wondering if there will ever be more to his life than just his house in the suburbs and his job in the city.  Also, like George, Bill learns to appreciate what he has as the result of getting what he wants and discovering that he was happier before.  Few actors were as skilled at capturing ennui and dissatisfaction as Jimmy Stewart.  The Jackpot is a silly comedy but it’s also an effective portrait of a middle-aged man trying to find peace with the way his life has turned out.  That’s almost entirely due to Stewart’s likable but honest performance.

The Jackpot may not be one of Stewart’s most-remembered films but it’s entertaining, with the supporting cast all providing their share of laughs while Stewart provides the film with a heart.  The film may be a comedy but it’s also a look at America and Americans adjusting to life in the years immediately following World War II.  Suddenly, abundance is everywhere but, as Bill Lawrence, not without a price.

Horror on the Lens: The Giant Spider Invasion (by Bill Rebane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s Horror on the Lens we have the 1975 classic, The Giant Spider Invasion!

Directed by Wisconsin’s own Bill Rebane, The Giant Spider Invasion works specifically because it delivers exactly what the title promises.  The title says that you’re going to see giant spiders invading the Earth and that’s exactly what happens!  And, as someone who cannot stand spiders, I can only say, “AGCK!”

This is a fun movie.  Sadly, I don’t think it would be as entertaining if it were made today.  The budget would be too high.  The actors wouldn’t be in on the joke.  The whole production would be more concerned with creating the perfect CGI spider than just having fun with the concept.  For a film like this to work, you need someone who is willing to work with a low budget and you need someone willing to fully embrace the the idea of spiders invading the farmlands of Wisconsin and wrecking havoc, regardless of how silly it might seem.  You need a director like Mr. Bill Rebane.

Enjoy!

A Perry Mason Mystery: The Case Of The Wicked Wives (1993, directed by Christian Nyby II)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Famed fashion photographer David Morrison (Eric Braeden) has fallen on hard times but things are looking up.  The American Museum of Art wants to do a retrospective of his work.  He just has to get the permission of his current wife, Dee (Kathy Ireland), and his four ex-wives (Shelley Hack, Kim Alexis, Maud Adams, and Beverly Johnson).  All of them are super models who owe their careers to David but four of them hate his guts and Dee isn’t happy when she sees evidence that he has been cheating on her.  When David turns up dead, Dee is arrested.  She claims that she’s innocent but the prosecution is sure that they have an airtight case.

This sounds like a case for Perry Mason!

However, Perry’s out of town so it falls to Perry’s never previously mentioned best friend, Tony Caruso (Paul Sorvino), to solve The Case of the Wicked Wives!  With the help of Perry’s tireless associates, Della Street (Barbara Hale) and Ken Malansky (William R. Moses), Caruso works to solve the case and prove the Dee is innocent.  He also prepares many pasta dinners and frequently sings.

So, where was Perry?  As everyone knows, Raymond Burr played Perry Mason for 9 seasons in the 50s and the 60s.  20 years after the show aired its final episode, Burr returned to the role in a series of highly rated, made for television movies.  Unfortunately, Burr died in 1993 with several movies left to be filmed.  In his will, Burr specifically requested that production on the remaining films continue so that the cast and crew wouldn’t lose their jobs.  Since the role of Mason obviously could not be recast that soon after Burrs’s death, it was decided that the remaining movies would feature guest lawyers.  Enter Paul Sorvino.

The Case of the Wicked Wives was the first Perry Mason film to be made after Burr’s death.  As his replacement, Tony Caruso has much in common with Mason, including the ability to make the guilty confess in open court.  Unlike Mason, Caruso is also obsessed with cooking elaborate spaghetti dinners and singing operatic arias.  This movie came out just a year after Sorvino left Law & Order to specifically pursue his opera career.  Sorvino sings a lot in The Case of the Wicked Wives, sometimes in court.  Unfortunately, a love of singing and pasta are the only two personality traits that are really given to Caruso.  Through no fault of Paul Sorvino’s, Caruso is never as compelling a character as the coolly calculating Mason.  Mason could trick anyone into confessing through perfectly asked questions.  Caruso is more into courtroom stunts that would get most lawyer disbarred.

Because the mystery itself is a dud, the main reason to watch The Case of the Wicked Wives is for the wives.  Who wouldn’t want to keep Kathy Ireland from being wrongly convicted?  All of the wives get at least one big moment to shine and tear up the scenery.  You’ll guess who the murderer is long before anyone else in court.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Giant Spider Invasion (dir by Bill Rebane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to rural Wisconsin, where everyone’s running around in their underwear and getting attacked by giant spiders!

That’s not meant to be a dig at the 1975 film, The Giant Spider Invasion, either.  I mean, let’s be honest.  If you’re going to be running around the trailer park in your underwear, the last thing that you want to do is walk straight into a giant spider web.  That happens a few times in The Giant Spider Invasion and I cringed every time because …. AGCK!  I mean, it’s a scary thought and The Giant Spider Invasion understands that.  Years ago, I was riding a horse and I rode head first into a spider web and oh my God!  I lost track of how many hours I spent washing my hair afterwards.  Of course, fortunately, I wasn’t in my underwear when I rode into that spider web.  So, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Anyway, The Giant Spider Invasion opens with a meteorite crashing down to Earth.  As I previously mentioned, it lands in Wisconsin.  I can’t help but think that the alien spiders were a bit disappointed when they emerged out of their meteorite and discovered that they were in Wisconsin.  One would imagine that they were probably aiming for Washington D.C. and maybe they got off track.  Still, it works to the spiders’ advantage in that they’ve managed to land in a place so filthy and messy that no one is going to notice a few extra tarantulas crawling around.  Or, at least, they don’t notice until the tarantulas are gigantic and wandering through the fields.

(Go ask Alice …. when she’s ten feet tall…..)

We follow as various people deal with the giant spider invasion.  What we quickly discover is that, in 1975, America just wasn’t ready to make contact with alien spiders.  While Dr. Langer (Barbara Hale) and Dr. Vance (Steven Brodie) investigate the meteorite crash, the rest of the town is too busy with their own personal dramas to be of much help.  The Sheriff (Alan Hale, Jr.) is a buffoon who tries to coordinate a response from the safety of his office.  Dan (Robert Easton) and Ev (Leslie Parrish) obsess on whether or not the meteorites contain diamonds as well as spiders.  Dan has an affair with barmaid Helga (Christine Schmidtmer) while Ev’s younger sister, Terry (Dianne Lee Hart) dates Dave (Kevin Brodie), the son of the local newspaper editor.  Every 15 minutes or so, a crazed-looking preacher pops up and starts ranting about how the world’s going to end because of the sins of people like Dan, Eve, and Helga and, to be honest, the preacher seems to be the only person in town who understands just how much trouble they’re all in.

It’s all kind of silly but, because this is a Bill Rebane film, it all plays out with a certain unbridled enthusiasm that’s impossible to resist.  Rebane was never one to let a low-budget get in the way of his ambitions and the special effects in The Giant Spider Invasion may be cheap but they still have a charm all their own.  I mean, let’s face it.  Spiders are scary and any scene that features a giant one sneaking up on someone is going to be at least somewhat effective.  (I’ll even go on to say that a shot of a “giant” spider super-imposed over a field was actually rather effective and creepy.)  Add to that, The Giant Spider Invasion has only an 84-mintue running time so it doesn’t waste any time getting to the spiders.  This is a fun movie and a perfect one to watch in October.

Film Review: The Boy With Green Hair (dir by Joseph Losey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who is Peter Fry (played by a 12 year-old Dean Stockwell), the young boy at the center of the 1948 film, The Boy With Green Hair?

When we first meet him, Peter is a nearly mute child who has had all of his hair shaved off and who refuses to talk about either one of his parents.  He’s mysteriously shown up in a small town and it’s only after a kindly psychologist (played by Robert Ryan) speaks with him that we discover that Peter is an orphan.  Both of his parents are dead, victims of the Second World War.  Fortunately, a retired actor named Gramps (Pat O’Brien) is willing to adopt Peter and raise him as his own.  Gramps has all sorts of stories about the times that he performed in Europe.  The film hints that Gramps might be a damn liar but he’s well-meaning, nonetheless.

Peter starts to attend school and slowly, but surely, he comes out of his shell.  Soon, he appears to be just another carefree child and his hair even grows back.  But then, one day, he sees a poster featuring other war orphans, children like him who have lost their families to war.  When Peter overhears adults talking about how the world may go to war again and how there are now even bigger and more destructive bombs that can be dropped on America’s enemies, Peter start to get upset.  What’s the point of going to school and preparing for the future if there’s not going to be any future?

One night, Peter goes to sleep.  When he wakes up in the morning, he discovers that his hair has turned green!

Why has Peter’s hair turned green?  It’s hard to say but the town is remarkably unsympathetic.  It’s perhaps understandable that Peter’s classmates would make fun of him because they’re children and children are the worst about not being able to handle change.  But not even the adults seem to be able to handle Peter having green hair!  They want to shave his head again!

With even kindly old Gramps prepared to take away Peter’s green hair, Peter flees into the woods.  There’s where he runs into the spirits of all the children who have either died or been orphaned by war.  They have a message for Peter….

The Boy With Green Hair is both an antiwar parable and a plea for tolerance.  There’s not a subtle moment to be found in the entire film but, considering that it was made at a time when the world was still in ruins and people were still getting used to living in the shadow of the atomic bomb, it’s perhaps understandable that the film would be a bit heavy-handed.  It was, after all, made during a heavy-handed time.  That said, the film actually works better as a parable about racism than as a pacifist statement.  It’s kind of hard to see how Peter having green hair could convince people to pursue world peace but the way that Peter is ostracized for being different from everyone else is something to which many viewers could undoubtedly relate.

There’s some weird padding in the film.  For instance, there’s a weird musical number involving Gramps that comes out of nowhere.  Still, one can see why the film made an impression on some viewers.  Dean Stockwell gives a sympathetic and, most importantly, naturalistic performance as Peter and the film’s message is a sincere one.  One could easily imagine and also easily dread the prospect of this film being remade with Peter’s hair turning green over climate change.  I’m a little surprised that hasn’t happened yet, especially considering the amount of coverage that was once given to Greta Thunberg, whose pronouncements and fame have made her a somewhat angrier version of the boy with green hair.  Hopefully, a remake won’t ever happen, as the original film works just fine as it is.  Not everything has to be remade.

A Movie A Day #165: Big Wednesday (1978, directed by John Milius)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If there is a male bonding hall of fame, Big Wednesday has to be front and center.

This episodic movie follows three legendary surfers over twelve years of change and turmoil.  Jack Barlowe (William Katt) is the straight arrow who keeps the peace.  Leroy “The Masochist” Smith (Gary Busey) is the wild man.  Matt Johnson (Jan-Michael Vincent) is the best surfer of them all but he resents both his fame and the expectation that he should be some sort of role model for the younger kids on the beach.  From 1962 until 1974, the three of them learn about love and responsibility while dealing with cultural turmoil (including, of course, the Vietnam War) and waiting for that one legendary wave.

After writing the screenplays for Dirty Harry and Apocalypse Now and directing The Wind and The Lion and Dillinger, John Milius finally got to make his dream project.  Big Wednesday was based on Milius’s own youth as a California surfer and he has said that all three of the main characters were based on different aspects of his own personality.  Expectations for Big Wednesday were so high that Milius’s friends, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, exchanged percentages points for Star Wars and Close Encounters of  The Third Kind for a point of Big Wednesday.  The deal turned out to be worth millions to Milius but nothing to Lucas and Spielberg because Big Wednesday was a notorious box office flop.  Warner Bros. sold the film as a raunchy comedy, leaving audiences surprised to discover that Big Wednesday was actually, in Milius’s words, a “coming-of-age story with Arthurian overtones.”

I can understand why Big Wednesday may not be for everyone but it is one of my favorite movies.  It is one of the ultimate guy films.  Some of the dialogue and the narration may be overwrought but so are most guys, especially when they’re the same age as the surfers in Big Wednesday.  We all like to imagine that we are heroes in some sort of epic adventure.  The surfing footage is amazing but it is not necessary to be a surfer to relate to the film’s coming-of-age story or its celebration of the enduring bonds of friendship.  Katt, Vincent, and Busey all give great performances.  Considering their later careers, it is good that Big Wednesday is around to remind us of what Gary Busey and Jan-Michael Vincent were capable of at their best, before their promising careers were derailed by drugs and mental illness.  Be sure to also keep an eye out for infamous 70s character actor Joe Spinell as an army psychiatrist, a pre-Nightmare on Elm Street Robert Englund, playing a fellow surfer and providing the film’s narration, and Barbara Hale, playing the patient mother of her real-life son, William Katt.

One final note: At a time when the shameful stereotype of the psycho Vietnam vet was becoming popular and unfairly tarnishing the reputation of real-life vets, Big Wednesday was unique for featuring a character who not only joins the Army but who appears to return as a better person as a result.