Tag Archives: Blue Steel

Blue Steel (1990, directed by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On her first night on the job, rookie cop Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) blows away a robber (Tom Sizemore) who was holding up a convenience store.  The robber was holding a gun when he was shot but, right after his body hits the ground, the gun is stolen by a stockbroker named Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver).  Somehow, no one notices Eugene grabbing the gun from the floor and he improbably gets away from the crime scene without any of the investigating officers noticing that he’s concealing a gun in his suit.

Because Eugene stole the gun, Megan is accused of shooting an unarmed man and she is suspended from the force.  Meanwhile, Eugene becomes obsessed with the gun, hears voices, and starts to shoot random people.  He even carves Megan’s name on one of the bullets.  When the bullet is found in the body of one of Eugene’s targets, Megan becomes the number one suspect even though it wouldn’t make any sense for a murderer to carve their name on the evidence.  This isn’t The Wire.  None of the dead are going to be found with a note in their hand that says, “Tater Killed Me.”  It should be obvious to everyone that Megan is being set up but instead, everyone just assumes Megan is a stupid murderer who doesn’t know how to cover her tracks.  Eugene also starts to date Megan but when Megan rejects him after he confesses to being the murderer, Eugene starts to stalk her and her friends.  Not even Megan’s new boyfriend (Clancy Brown) can keep her safe from a stockbroker with a grudge.

Blue Steel benefits from Kathryn Bigelow’s stylish direction and Jamie Lee Curtis’s dedicated performance but it suffers because Eugene is so obviously crazy from the get go that it never makes sense that he would be able to get away with his crimes for as long as he does.  Even after Megan realizes that Eugene is crazy, she can’t get anyone to believe her even though everything about Eugene suggests that he’s the murderer.  Not even confessing to the crime is enough to keep Eugene in prison.  Somehow, Eugene is able to commit multiple murders and attempted murders right in front of Megan and then escape before Megan or anyone else can even react.  Megan’s been trained at the Police Academy while Eugene has no criminal training whatsoever but he’s still always able to outthink and outrun her.  It makes it seem as if Megan just isn’t a very good cop.  Luckily, Bigelow, Curtis, Silver, and Clancy Brown would all be involved with better movies in the future.

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Double Dragon and Blue Steel!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1994’s Double Dragon!  Selected and hosted by Bunny Hero, this movie features double the action!  So, you know it has to be good!

Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet.  We will be watching 1990’s Blue Steel!  The film is on Prime and Tubi!

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in.  If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Double Dragon on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!  Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start Blue Steel, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag!  The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.   

 

Blue Steel (1934, directed by Robert N. Bradbury)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On a stormy night, frontier Sheriff Jake Withers (George “Gabby” Hayes) and undercover U.S. Marshal Carruthers (John Wayne) both check into the same inn.  They are both searching for the infamous Polka Dot Bandit (Yakima Canutt), who has been burglarizing homes and businesses all over California.  They both figure that, on a rainy night like this, there’s no way that the Bandit is going to be out.  It turns out they are both wrong.  The Bandit breaks into the inn and robs the safe but also leaves behind one of his spurs.  The sheriff comes across Carruthers investigating the safe and mistakenly believes that Carruthers is the bandit.

Later, when Sheriff Winters goes out to Carruthers’s cabin, he’s planning on arresting Carruthers.  Before he can do so, they both hear gun shots.  Outside, another group of bandits is chasing Betty (Eleanor Hunt) and her father.  The Sherriff and Carruthers manage to save Betty but her father is killed.  The grieving Betty is taken in by a local rancher named Malgrove (Edward Peil, Jr.) but it turns out that Malgrove is the head of the Polka Dot Gang and he is planning on killing Betty in order to keep a shipment of supplies from coming to the town!  Carruthers and the sheriff have to work together to thwart Malgrove’s plan and bring the Polka Dot Bandit to justice.

This 54-minute programmer was one of the many B-westerns that John Wayne made for Monogram Pictures in the days before John Ford made him a star by casting him in Stagecoach.  Though Wayne was still learning how to act on camera, the screen presence that would make him a star can be seen in Blue Steel and he and Hayes make a good team.  The story is simple enough but there’s enough horse riding and fistfights to keep most B-western fans entertained.  It’s still hard not to imagine how much different the movie would have been if the sheriff had arrested Carruthers at the scene of the crime instead of letting him ride out to his cabin.  It’s a good thing these old programmers never had to make too much sense.