On July 18th, 1969, while American astronauts were preparing to land on and then take their first steps on the Moon, a 28 year-old woman named Mary Jo Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts.
A former aide to Robert Kennedy who was reportedly devastated by his assassination, Mary Jo was one of several former campaign workers who gathered at an isolated cabin that night. According to the others at the party, Mary Jo (who was described as being a devout Catholic who rarely drank) was one of the first people to leave the party. She left with another guest. The next morning, that guest’s car was found overturned in Poucha Pond. Dead in the backseat was Mary Jo Kopechne, who had suffocated as the car slowly filled up with water. It was later determined that she had been alive and trapped in the car for hours before dying. The owner of the car was back at his hotel. He had returned there after crashing his car and, while he had taken a shower and combed his hair and called his father, he had not bothered to call the police.
Normally, a driver in this situation would be in serious legal jeopardy. Along with having left the scene of the accident, he also left Mary Jo to die. It was generally agreed that if he had called the police within an hour of the accident occurring, Mary Jo could have been saved. However, because he was Ted Kennedy and the last remaining of the fabled Kennedy brothers and a man who many expected would someday be president, he was given a slap on the wrist and the death of Mary Jo would be forever described as being a “Kennedy tragedy” as opposed to a Kopechne tragedy.
Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of speculation about what had happened in the moments leading up to the crash. Like his brothers, Ted Kennedy was a notorious and reckless womanizer. Unlike his brothers, Ted also had a reputation for being a heavy drinker. Some went as far as to accuse Ted of deliberately murdering Mary Jo, as if the actions that Ted later admitted to were not, in themselves, already bad enough. While people may disagree on the circumstances that led to the accident, it is generally agreed that, if Ted had been anyone other than a Kennedy, he would have served time in prison. The incident ended Ted’s presidential dreams but it didn’t keep him from being described as being the “lion of the Senate” when he died in 2010. Indeed, when Ted died, many people on twitter expressed their shock as they read or heard about Mary Jo Kopechne for the first time in their lives.
(In 2010, Mary Jo would have been seventy years old.)
Obviously, no one was going to make a movie about Mary Jo Kopechne’s death while Ted was still living. Indeed, even after Ted died, it still took seven more years for the story to be turned into a film and producer Byron Allen struggled to even book the film in theaters. 2017’s Chappaquiddick stars Jason Clarke as Ted and, briefly, Kate Mara as Mary Jo. The film speculates as to what happened that night and it probably gets fairly close to the truth. The accident is an accident, a result of Ted freaking out when a cop stops him for speeding and sees him with a woman who isn’t his wife. Ted, who is portrayed as being an immature manchild, turns to his handlers and then his family for help. His fails to call the authorities because, to Ted, there is no greater authority than his abusive father (Bruce Dern).
For the most part, Ted passively sits by as associates of his late brothers — including Ted Sorenson (Taylor Nichols, giving the film’s strongest performance), Joe Gargan (Ed Helms), and Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan) — take over his defense and carefully craft his every response. Ted’s attempts to provide input are shot down and it’s made clear that his job is to shut up and concentrate on returning the Kennedys to the White House. The film’s best scenes feature Sorenson growing frustrated at all of Ted’s mistakes. Very little concern is shown for the fact that Mary Jo Kopechne, a Kennedy true believer, is dead due to Ted’s recklessness. When she was alive, Mary Jo was held up as a symbol of the Kennedy youth. When she died, she was just viewed as being an obstacle to keeping the Kennedys from reaching the power to which they felt entitled.
As you can probably guess, Ted Kennedy does not come off particularly well in this film. At his best, he’s a wimp who is struggling with a legacy of which he knows he’s not worthy. At his worst, he is pathologically self-absorbed and incapable of feeling empathy for the woman he left to drown in the backseat of his car. Both he and Mary Jo and ultimately the voters who are expected to reelect him even after he leaves Mary Jo to die are ultimately portrayed as just being pawns of the shadowy men who lurk behind the scenes of every political operation.
It’s not a happy film and it certainly has its flaws but it provides an important service, reminding viewers that death of Mary Jo Kopchene was more than just as a “Kennedy tragedy.”
First released in 1971, Drive, He Said tells the story of two college roommates.
Hector (William Tepper) is a star basketball player who everyone expects to turn pro. His intense coach (Bruce Dern) is always yelling at him to stop fooling around on the court but Hector is more interested in fooling around elsewhere as he’s having an affair with Olive (Karen Black), the wife of a self-styled “hip” philosophy professor named Richard (Robert Towne).
Gabriel (Michael Margotta) is Hector’s best friend. They live together, even though Hector’s coach thinks that Gabriel is a bad influence. Gabriel is a self-styled campus radical. He has a devoted group of followers who will do just about anything that he tells them to do. Gabriel is big into guerilla theater and symbolic protests. Nothing he does seems to add up too much but, unlike Hector, he’s good at giving speeches.
Together, they worry about the draft!
Of course, they’re both worrying about two different types of drafts. Hector is worried about the NBA draft and whether he should enter it. He’s been playing basketball for as long as he can remember. The only thing that he’s really good at is playing basketball. And yet, Hector isn’t sure if he wants to spend the rest of his life taking orders from his coaches and devoting every minute to playing the game. However, Hector’s worked himself into a corner. When one NBA official asks him what he’s going to do if he’s not drafted, Hector admits that he doesn’t know. When asked what his major is, Hector replies, “Greek.”
Gabriel, on the other hand, is worried about being drafted into the military and being sent to Vietnam. Gabriel considers himself to be a revolutionary but it soon becomes clear that he really doesn’t have much of a plan for how to start his revolution. Indeed, the film suggests that his activism is more about his own insecurity over his own sexuality than anything else. Gabriel particularly seems to be obsessed with Hector’s affair with Olive. While Hector reaches new highs on the court, Gabriel comes closer and closer to having a psychotic break.
Director Jack Nicholson found a way to work in shout out to his friend, Harry Dean Stanton
Drive, He Said was one of the many “campus rebellion” films that were released in the early 70s and, much like Getting Straight, it’s definitely a product of its time. Today, it it’s known for anything, it’s for being the directorial debut of actor Jack Nicholson. (Nicholson has said that, before he was cast in Easy Rider, he was actually planning on abandoning acting and pursuing a career as a director.) The film features many of the flaws the are typically present in directorial debuts. The pacing is terrible, with some scenes ending too quickly while others seem to go on forever. At times, the film feels a bit overstylized as Nicholson mixes jump cuts, odd camera angles, and slow motion to little effect. It’s very much a film about men, so much so that the film’s ultra-masculinity almost verges on self-parody.
And yet, there are moments of isolated brilliance to be found in Drive, He Said. Some of the shots are genuinely impressive and the army induction scene shows that Nicholson could direct comedy, even if he does let the scene drag on for a bit too long. Though Nicholson doesn’t appear in the film, his approach to the story features his trademark cynicism and sense of fatalism. Though he was often associated with the counterculture, Nicholson was more a member of the Beat generation than of the hippies. As such, Drive, He Said has more in common with Jack Kerouac than Abbie Hoffman. Drive, He Said is definitely an anti-establishment film but, at the same time, it doesn’t make the mistake of glorifying Gabriel or his followers. Gabriel, with his constant demand that everyone join him in his ill-defined revolution, is almost as overbearing as basketball coach and, towards the end of the film, he commits an act of violence that leaves no doubt that his “revolution” is all about his own self-gratification. The film is less a polemic and more a portrait of people trying to find their identity during a time of political and cultural upheaval.
The film’s biggest flaw is that neither William Tepper or Michael Margotta really have the charisma necessary to carry a movie, especially one in which even the main characters often do unlikable things. Tepper is dull while Margotta overacts and, at times, comes across as if he’s trying too hard to imitate his director. It falls to the film’s supporting cast to provide the energy that Tepper and Margotta lack. Fortunately, Bruce Dern and Karen Black are both perfectly cast. Bruce Dern seems to be having a blast as the fanatical basketball coach while Karen Black brings a fierce intelligence to the role of Oliva, an intelligence that one gets the feeling wasn’t really in the original script. Considering how misogynistic every other character in the film is, it’s impossible not to cheer when Olive announces, “I’m not going with anybody, anywhere.”
(For whatever reason, there was a definite strain of misogyny that seemed to run through the majority of the late 60s and early 70s counterculture films. Just consider the amount of time Getting Straight devoted to Elliott Gould shouting at Candice Bergen.)
Drive, He Said is flawed but interesting. As a director, Nicholson understood how to frame a shot but he wasn’t quite sure how to tell a cohesive story. That said, the film itself is a definite time capsule of a very specific cultural moment.
Don’t ask me. I just watched the movie and I’m not particularly sure what the point of it all was. Released in 1987, World Gone Wild is one of those films that was made to capitalize on the post-apocalypse boom of the 70s and 80s. Basically, imagine a Mad Max film that sucks and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what World Gone Wild is like.
There’s been a nuclear war. Civilization has collapsed and now, there are just tiny outposts of humanity who are trying to survive. It hasn’t rained in decades. Old-timer Ethan (Bruce Dern) is in charge of a town called Lost Wells. He remembers what rain was like and he also remembers what rock music used to sound like, too. As for Lost Wells, it’s one of those dreary little desert communities that always tend to pop up in movies like this. Angie (Catherine Mary Stewart) teaches the community’s children in an abandoned school bus. They have a bunch of books on etiquette. One little girl can recite every word ever written by Emily Post. That gets annoying fast. Emily Post didn’t live on a school bus in the desert.
That etiquette doesn’t do much good when it comes to protecting Lost Wells from Derek Abernathy (Adam Ant), a cult leader who dresses in all-white and who wants to take control of Lost Wells away from Ethan. (In a somewhat clever twist, it turns out that Ethan learned how to become a cult leader by reading a book about Charles Manson.) Knowing that the majority of the people in his town are too obsessed with Emily Post to fight off Derek and his army, Ethan recruits a group of mercenaries led by George Landon ( who is played by Michael Pare, who looks like he was absolutely miserable while shooting this movie). George and his men agree to protect Lost Wells from Derek and, in the process, they regain some of their lost humanity and they start to believe in the possibility of rain. Or something like that. Fortunately, one of George’s mercenaries is played by the supercool character actor Anthony James. He doesn’t get to do much but hey, it’s still Anthony James and Bruce Dern in the same movie! Yay!
For a film called World Gone Wild, this is a strangely low-key affair. Even the most unimpressive of Mad Max rip-offs will usually have an exciting car chase or two. At the very least, there’s usually a big battle where people sacrifice their lives for the future of humanity. In World Gone Wild, the mercenaries pretty much just go to Lost Wells and then wait for Derek to come back. And when Derek returns, there’s a few explosions and some gunfire but that’s pretty much it. Neither side really puts up much of a fight, which leads me to wonder if Derek really even cared about Lost Wells.
On the plus side, the film has got Bruce Dern, doing his wild-eyed old-timer bit. That’s always fun to watch and, if nothing else, Dern appears to be having fun in this movie. At the very least, he’s having more fun that Michael Pare and Catherine Mary Stewart, both of whom seem to spend the majority of the movie looking for a way to make a quick escape. And I suppose the film does win some novelty points for casting Adam Ant as the main villain, even though Derek ultimately turns out to be not much of a threat.
In the end, World Gone Wild‘s greatest strength is Bruce Dern. He’ll make you believe in the rain again.
Aileen Wurnos was often described as being America’s first female serial killer.
Wurnos was born in 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. From the start, her life was a mess. Her father was both a diagnosed schizophernic and a sex offender who was incarcerated when Aileen was born and who hung himself in his jail cell when Aileen was 13. (Aileen reportedly never met him.) Aileeen’s mother abandoned her children when Aileen was four, leaving Aileen and her younger brother to be raised by their alcoholic grandparents. Aileen later said that she was regularly beaten by both grandparents and sexually abused by her grandfather. Aileen also said that she spent her youth dreaming of being famous and being loved, like Marilyn Monroe.
By the time she was eleven, Aileen was already having sex in return for food, cigarettes, and drugs. She was pregnant at 14, which she later said was the result of being raped by a friend of her grandfather’s. She gave up her son for adoption and dropped out of school when she was 15, the same year that her grandmother died of live failure. Kicked out of the house shortly afterwards, Aileen survived through sex work and lived a semi-nomadic existence. While other people her age were starting high school and looking forward to the future, Aileen was living in the woods and going for days without food.
Aileen Wurnos and her husband
By 1976, she had hitchhiked her way down to Florida and her life briefly seemed to turn around when she met and married a wealthy 69 year-old man named Lewis Fell. Fell was president of a yacht club and prominent enough that his marriage to Aileen was announced in the society pages. That marriage didn’t last, however. Aileen was arrested and served with a restraining order for reportedly beating Fell in much the same way that she later said her grandfather beat her. They were divorced within weeks and, for the next 13 years, Aileen’s life consisted of one arrest after another. She returned to sex work, hitchhiking on the highways. With her looks fading due to her lifestyle, Aileen resorted to carrying around a picture of her adopted sister’s children, showing it to potential customers and telling them that she needed money so that she could go to Miami and be with them, in an attempt to play on her customer’s sympathy. Wurnos was repeatedly raped and beaten by the men who picked her up. By the time she came to fame, she was suffering from PTSD and, in her own words, hated the world and men especially.
Wurnos shot and killed at least seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990. At her trial, she claimed that every shooting was self-defense. She said that she had been raped and nearly killed by her first victim, who had previously be arrested for rape. She went on to say that all of her subsequent victims had been planning on raping but sh shot them first. Once she was on death row and waiting to be executed, she changed her story several times and said that only the first of the shootings was in self-defense and that the rest were simple robberies. The men, she explained, picked her up. She took their money and then she shot them because she didn’t want them reporting her to the police. Of course, she then later told documentarian Nick Broomfield that all of the killings actually were self-defense but that she changed her story because she hated Death Row and she was eager to die. There were a lot of stories when it came to Wurnos and determining what was true was often difficult.
That said, while Wurnos was undoubtedly a female serial killer, I doubt that she was our first. It depends on what you consider a serial killer to be, with some FBI profilers claiming that Wurnos was unique in that she eventually grew to enjoy killing and that she set out each night looking for someone to kill. That said, throughout history, there have been stories about women who married and murdered multiple men, the infamous black widows. Between 1884 and 1908, Belle Gunness murdered at least 14 people in Illinois and Minnesota. Working with her boyfriend, Martha Beck murdered an estimated 20 people in the late 40s. If so inclined, one could go all the way back to ancient Rome and read about the poisoner Lucasta, whose victims reportedly included at least one emperor.
So, no, Aileen Wurnos was not the first female serial killer but she was the first one to come to prominence after the term was coined. She was the first well-known female serial killer of the post-Ted Bundy era. And because she also committed her crimes at the dawn of the 24-hour media cycle, she achieved a level of fame that was denied to Gunness, Beck, and even Lucasta. Aileen held press conferences as she waited for her execution date. She made the news by alternatively praising and cursing the people who had arrested her and sent her to Death Row. She yelled at judges and threatened reporters. She was, for lack of a better term, good television. She became an icon to some, a sex worker who turned the tables on the potential killers who picked her up. She was also the subject of two documentaries from Nick Broomfield.
That was how I first found out about her. 2003’s Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer used to air on HBO frequently. The film followed the final days of Wurnos’s life and featured an interview with her in which she went from being surprisingly lucid and articulate to being frighteningly unhinged. While a sympathetic Broomfield tried to get her to discuss the circumstances that led to her committing the murders, Wurnos ranted about how the prison was using “sonic pressure” to control her mind. In 2002, when Wurnos was executed, her last words were to compare herself to the “mother ship” from Independence Day and to promise that she would return. With her wild eyes, rotting teeth, and unpredictable anger, Wurnos was frightening but, at the same time, there were brief moments of clarity where Wurnos seemed to understand the gravity of both what she had done and her current situation.
Charlize Theron as Aileen Wurnos
The same year that Broomfield released his documentary and a year after Wurnos was executed, a film called Monster was released. The feature directorial debut of Petty Jenkins, Monster starred Charlize Theron as Aileen Wurnos. Theron, who also signed on as a co-producer, would win her first Oscar for her performance as Wurnos and, indeed, when the film was first released, the majority of the attention centered on how the glamorous Theron transformed herself into the not-so glamorous Aileen Wurnos. Theron famously gained weight and wore prosthetic teeth in order to resemble Wurnos but, as anyone who has seen Broomfield’s documentaries can tell you, she also captured Wurnos’s odd speech patterns and her jittery physical movements. Theron perfectly recreated Wurnos’s trademark wide smile, which somehow managed to be both vulnerable and menacing at the same time. Theron deserved the praise that she got for her performance and she certainly deserved to win that Oscar. And yet, so much attention was paid to Theron’s performance and her physical transformation, that the overall film itself was a bit overshadowed. Along with being one of the saddest films ever made, Monster is a portrait of life on the fringes and of existence in the shadows of conventional American society.
The film opens with Wurnos siting underneath a highway overpass and staring down at a loaded gun, debating whether or not she should just end it all. Occasionally, she provides narration, discussing how she eventually came to find herself homeless and struggling to survive. Her narration frequently switches from being insightful and darkly comedic to being angry and bitter, often in the same sentence. Deciding not to kill herself, she instead goes to a gay bar when she meets another outsider, Selby Wall (Christina Ricci). Selby awkwardly flirts, telling Aileen that she’s the most beautiful woman in the bar. Aileen replies that she’s “not into women.” (Of course, she also lies and claims that she’s only in the bar because her truck broke down and she’s just waiting for a ride.) Yet, before long, Selby and Aileen are in love.
Selby was a heavily fictionalized version of Aileen’s real girlfriend, who didn’t want to have anything to do with Monster and who requested that her real name not be used in the film. In the film’s reimagining of the story, Selby has been exiled to Florida from Ohio, rejected by her religious father. Selby lives with her homophobic aunt but yearns for escape. That’s what Aileen provides for her and, to an extent, Selby provides the same thing to Aileen. There’s an unexpected sweetness to the early scenes between Aileen and Selby, albeit a sweetness that it continually undercut by the fact that we know we’re watching a movie about a serial killer. We watch as they go roller skating together and as they share their first kiss afterwards. We watch as they run off together and as they get their first place together and yet, at the same time, we also watch as Selby pressures Aileen to continue “hooking” so that Aileen will have enough money to support the two of them. As played by Ricci, Selby is a character about whom many viewers will have mixed feelings. When she first appears, it’s hard not to have sympathy for her. She seems to be a naïve outsider. But, as the film continues, she sometimes reveals herself to be just as manipulative as Aileen. Selby may claim to be shocked when she discovers that Aileen has been killing and robbing the men who pick her up but, just like Aileen, we don’t quite buy it. Selby knew what was going on, even if she wasn’t willing to admit it to herself.
In the film, Aileen’s first murder is presented as having been committed in self-defense. The man is a rapist and a sadist and was clearly planning to kill Aileen once he was done with her. Again, as portrayed in both the film and Wurnos’s version of events, he unquestionably got what he deserved. With one notable exception, Aileen’s subsequent murders are presented a bit more ambiguously. The majority of the men that Aileen meets are threatening, even if she shoots most of them before they get a chance to try anything. One can understand why some felt that the film was a bit too sympathetic to Aileen while, at the same time, also acknowledging that the men who would pick up a hitchhiker and expect sex in return are not exactly going to be the greatest group of guys.
Only Aileen’s final victim is presented as being a sympathetic figure. Played by the great Scott Wilson, he picks up Aileen just to get her out of the rain, refuses her offer of sex, and says that he and his wife would be willing to help her get to wherever she needs to go. He picks Aileen up for her own safety but, when Aileen tries to get out of the car, he sees her gun and Aileen kills him to keep him quiet. It’s a powerful scene, brilliantly acted by both Theron and Wilson and it’s hard to watch. (It’s also debatable whether or not it actually happened, which is the danger when it comes to making a movie about someone like Aileen Wurnos.) It’s this scene that shows how far Wurnos has gone. “You don’t need to do this,” he tells her and Wurnos knows that he’s right but, by this point, she’s beyond going back.
The only other truly and unconditionally kind character in the film is Thomas (Bruce Dern), a former biker who allows Aileen to keep her things in his storage locker and who is perhaps the only character to really care about Aileen as a human being. (Even Selby mostly views Aileen as a way to escape her current life.) Thomas is a Vietnam vet, one who suffers from PTSD and who, as a result, understands Aileen’s anger and mood swings. Dern doesn’t get a lot of screen time but he’s a welcome presence whenever he shows up. In the end, though, Aileen knows that even Thomas’s kindness can’t save her from what’s going to happen.
As I said before, it’s a sad film. It’s always watchable because Theron, Ricci, and Dern all give such good performances but it’s still a film that’ll leave you shaken. It’s a trip to the fringes, the corners of existence where there are no exits beyond death. Those who have criticized the film for taking Wurnos at her word do have a point but, at the same time, Theron is often as frightening as she is sympathetic. The viewer may understand why Wurnos does what she does but they still would not want Wurnos anywhere near them. I imagine that, for every viewer who sympathizes with Wurnos, an equal number will breathe a sigh of relief at the knowledge that Wurnos was subsequently executed by the state of Florida. Myself, I’ve always been against the death penalty, regardless of who is sitting on death row or what their motives may have been. At the same time, I can understand why others support it. It’s a frightening world and the death penalty allows people to feel that there are consequences for committing the worst of crimes.
Monster was a critical and, somewhat surprisingly, a commercial hit. Theron won an Oscar and proved herself to be a serious actress. (One doubts Theron would have ever played Furiosa if she hadn’t first played Aileen Wurnos.) Though Patty Jenkins were struggle to get several other projects going, it wasn’t until 2017 that she would make a second film. That film, of course, would be Wonder Woman, a film that was as joyous as Monster was dark.
On February 14th, 1929, seven men were murdered in a garage in Chicago, Illinois. Five of the seven men were known to be associates of gangster George “Bugs” Moran. The other two men were considered to be innocent bystanders, a mechanic and a dry cleaner who just happened to enjoy hanging out with gangsters. Though no one was ever convicted of the crime, it was well-known that the murders were carried out on the orders of Al Capone.
In many ways, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was a turning point in America’s relationship with organized crime. Before the massacre, Capone had become a bit of a folk hero. He knew how to talk to the press and he was viewed as merely breaking a law (in this case, prohibition) that most people opposed in the first place. However, after the murders, public opinion soured on Capone.
Some of it was the brutality of the crime. It’s been said that over five hundred bullets were fired in that garage, all to kill seven defenseless men who were lined up against a wall. Grisly pictures of the victims were released to the press. Perhaps if the seven men had been carrying weapons and had been involved in a shootout with their murderers, the public’s reaction would have been different. But this was a cold-blooded execution.
Personally, I think the fact that the killers disguised themselves as cops also played a role in the public’s outrage. It was a very calculated move on the part of the killers and it highlighted just how much planning went into the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. As well, it undoubtedly made people paranoid. If a bunch of killer could dress up like cops, who knew who else they could dress up as?
Finally, I think that Capone’s biggest mistake was carrying out the crime on Valentine’s Day. You don’t murder people on a holiday. Anyone should know that. If Capone had waited until February 20th, he probably could have gotten away with it.
The 1967 film, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, details the rivalry between Capone and Moran, starting with them fighting for control over the Chicago rackets and ending with the title event. Moran is played by Ralph Meeker while Jason Robards plays Capone.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking. Perennial WASP Jason Robards as Al Capone? That may sound like odd casting and, let’s just be honest here, it is. However, it actually kind of works. Robards may not be convincingly Italian but he is convincingly ruthless. Add to that, one of the major subplots of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is that, even as the head of the Chicago Outfit, Capone still feels like an outsider in the world of organized crime because, while he is Italian, he isn’t Sicilian. Capone feels as if Lucky Luciano and all of the major New York crime bosses look down on him and one reason why he’s so ruthless about taking over Chicago is that wants to show Luciano that he can be just as effective a crime lord as any Sicilian. Capone feeling out of place in the Mafia is reflected by Robards initially seeming to be out of place in a gangster film. By the end of the movie, of course, Capone has proven himself and so has Jason Robards.
Robards isn’t the only familiar face to be found in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Though this film was released by 20th Century Fox, it was directed by Roger Corman and Corman fills the production with members of his stock company. Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, and Jack Nicholson all have small roles as gunmen. Bruce Dern plays the unlucky mechanic who enjoys hanging out with gangsters. Buck Taylor, Leo Gordon, and Joe Turkel all have small roles. John Agar plays Dion O’Bannon and is gunned down in his flower store. Though not members of the Corman stock company, George Segal and David Canary plays brothers who work for Moran. There’s a lot of characters wandering through this film but Corman makes sure that everyone gets a chance to make an impression.
It’s a good gangster film. Though he was working with a larger budget than usual, Corman still brought his exploitation film aesthetic to the material and the end result is a violent, melodramatic gangster film that looks really impressive. The film’s recreation of 1920s Chicago is a visual delight and looking at the well-dressed and stylish gangsters walking and driving down the vibrant city streets, you can understand why organized crime would have such a draw for some people.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is a classic gangster film and a classic Corman film. It’s an offer you can’t refuse.
There’s a scene in the 1968 film, Psych-Out, in which a group of hippies are talking to be a liberal-minded minister, asking him if a mysterious figure known as “The Seeker” has even come by his church. The minister tells them that he has not seen the Seeker, though he has heard of him. As the hippies politely leave the church, one of them accidentally brushes past a middle-aged woman. Though the hippie politely apologizes, the woman is still obviously disgusted by his presence in the church. She asks her companion how the minister can possibly allow people who “dress like that” into the church.
As the woman complains, the camera focuses in on the stained glass window directly over her shadow. There’s Jesus and the disciples. They’ve all got beards. They all have long hair. They’re all wearing simple clothing …. oh my God, they’re hippies!
That’s actually one of the more subtle moments to be found in Psych-Out, an entertainingly heavy-handed film about hippies and wanderers in California. Psych-Out was made at the height of the counter culture. It was filmed on location in the San Francisco neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury, where both the love and the clothes are free and no one is about judging anyone else’s thing. Into this neighborhood comes Jenny Davis (Susan Strasberg), who has run away from home and who is looking for her brother, Steve (Bruce Dern). Jenny may have been raised in a conservative household but she’s eager to embrace the counter-culture. Jenny is also deaf but she can read lips. She also has the police looking for her but fear not! The residents of Haight-Ashbury look after one another! They have to, considering that there are still cops and even a few rednecks hanging out around the neighborhood.
No sooner has Jenny arrived in San Francisco than she falls in with a 30-something hippie named Stoney (Jack Nicholson, with a pony tail). Stoney is a member of a band, along with Elwood (Max Julien) and Ben (Adam Roarke). Even though Stoney says that he doesn’t care about material goods, he’s still eager to become a rock star. Stoney also says that he doesn’t want to get tied down by any commitments. He wants to do his own thing. He may sleep with Jenny but that doesn’t mean that either one belongs to the other. Stoney may say that but he certainly gets jealous when he sees Jenny talking to the local guru, Dave (Dean Stockwell). Dave calls Stoney for being a phony. “You may be righteous but you’re not hip,” Dave tells him. Can Stoney become both righteous and hip before the film ends? Can Jenny find her brother? Will the band get signed to a recording contract and will the menacing junkyard rednecks ever see the errors of their fascist ways?
Today, of course, Jack Nicholson is probably the main reason why most people would want to see Psych-Out. Ironically, for a figure who is so identified with the counter-culture, Jack Nicholson did not make for a very convincing hippie. A lot of that is because Nicholson’s trademark sarcasm (which is on full display in Psych-Out, as this is a far more typical Nicholson performance than the one that would make him a star a year later in Easy Rider) owed more to the beats than to the hippies. Nicolson’s persona always had more in common with Jack Kerouac than Abbie Hoffman. In Psych-Out, he comes across as being too much of a natural skeptic to fit in with the free-spirited hippies all around him. Nicholson is fun to watch because he’s Jack Nicholson but you never buy him as someone who would really want to live in a commune where no one has any possessions and money is frowned upon.
Dean Stockwell, on the other hand, is a totally believable hippie guru though, to his credit, his still brings some welcome wit to his role. The script may call for him to recite some fairly shallow platitudes but he does so with just enough of a smile to let use know that not even Dave takes himself that seriously. As for the rest of the cast, Bruce Dern gets to do his spaced-out routine and Henry Jaglom, who would later become an insufferably self-important director, plays an artist with huge sideburns who tries to chop off his hand while having a bad trip. Jenny is horrified but everyone tells her not to judge. Susan Strasberg is sympathetic as Jenny and is convincing as a deaf character. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t give her much to do other than walk around San Francisco with a dazed expression on her face and stare lovingly up at Jack Nicholson.
Psych-Out‘s greatest value is probably as a time capsule. It was filmed on location and it features actual hippies. Watching it is like getting a chance to step into a time machine and go back to San Francisco in 1968. Of course, judging from this film, San Francisco in 1968 wasn’t that appealing of a place but still, Psych-Out remains an entertainingly silly historical document. Just a year after the release of Psych-Out,Charles Manson and his followers would come out of the canyons and the Altamont Free Concert would end in murder and the 60s would come to an abrupt end. Watching Psych-Out, it’s hard to believe all of that was right around the corner.
Well, here we are! It’s January 1st. In just a few days, the Oscar nominations will be announced and then, on February 9th, the winners will be revealed! From now until the day of the ceremony, I will be taking a look at some of the films that were nominated for and won Oscars in the past. As of this writing, 556 films have been nominated for best picture. I hope that, some day, I will be able to say that I have seen and reviewed every single one of them.
Let’s start things off with the 1978 Best Picture nominee, Coming Home!
Coming Home takes place in California in 1968. While hippies stand on street corners and flash peace signs, teenagers are being drafted and career military men are leaving for Vietnam and people continue to tell themselves that America is doing the right thing in Indochina, even though no one’s really sure just what exactly it is that’s going on over there. At the local VA hospital, the wounded and the bitter try to recover from their wartime experiences while struggling with an often heartless bureaucracy and feelings of having been abandoned by their country.
When Marine Corps. Capt. Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) is deployed to Vietnam, he leaves behind his wife, Sally (Jane Fonda). Told that she can no longer live on the base while her husband is overseas, Sally gets an apartment, a new car, and eventually a new hairdo. She also gets a new friend, Vi Munson (Penelope Milford). Vi smokes weed and is critical of the war in Vietnam. It doesn’t take long for Sally to start to enjoy the idea of being free and not having to cater to Bob’s every whim. Sally even ends up volunteering at the local VA hospital.
That’s where she meets Luke (Jon Voight, looking youngish and incredibly sexy), a bitter but sensitive vet who, having gone to Vietnam and returned to the U.S. as a paraplegic, is now outspoken in his opposition to the war. Luke is also friends with Billy (Robert Carradine), who is Vi’s shell-shocked brother. When Luke and Sally first meet, they collide in a hallway and Sally gets a bag full of urine spilled on her. It’s only later that Luke and Sally realize that they knew each other in high school and soon, they’re having an affair. Luke, who is as gentle a lover as Bob is brutish, brings Sally to her first orgasm in a sensitively-directed scene that should be studied by any and all aspiring filmmakers.
Unfortunately, the problem with having an affair while your husband is away is that, eventually, your husband’s going to come back. Bob returns from Vietnam and he’s no longer the confident and gung ho officer that he was at the start of the film. He now walks with a pronounced limp and, like Luke, he’s angry. However, whereas Luke has channeled his anger in to activism, Bob tries to keep his emotions bottled up. (He does take the time to give the finger to a few protesters and, considering how obnoxious most of the protesters in this film are, you can’t help but feel that Bob may have had a point.) When Bob discovers that Luke and Sally have been having an affair, he snaps….
Meanwhile, Billy is having a hard time readjusting to life, Vi is getting picked up by sleazy men in bars, and there’s a ventriloquist who shows up a few times. There’s a lot going on in Coming Home and, at times, it feels like the film’s trying to cram in too much. The film often seems a bit disjointed, with semi-documentary footage of Voight hanging out with real paraplegic vets awkwardly mixed in with didactic scenes of Sally turning against the war.
That the love story between Sally and Luke is so effective has far more to do with the performances of Jane Fonda and especially Jon Voight, than it does with anything in the film’s script. Indeed, the script itself doesn’t seem to be too concerned with who Luke and Sally were before they collided in that hallway and it also doesn’t seem to be all that interested in who they’ll be after the end credits role. As written, they’re just plot devices, specifically created and manipulated to express the film’s antiwar message. But then you see Jon Voight’s haunted eyes while he’s listening to a group of vets discuss their experience or you hear the pain in his voice while he talks to a bunch of high school students and it’s those little moments and details that tell you who Luke is. By that same token, Jane Fonda does a good job of showing each stage in Sally’s liberation, even if you can’t help but feel that the main reason Sally becomes an anti-war feminist is because she’s played by Jane Fonda.
Of course, in the end, the entire film is stolen by Bruce Dern. You actually end up feeling very sorry for Bob Hyde (and, to the film’s credit, you’re meant to). It would have been very easy to just portray Bob as being a close-minded pig but the film respects his pain just as much as it respects Luke’s anti-war activism and Sally’s need to be free. In the end, you actually feel worse for Bob than you do for either Luke or Sally. Bob is as much a victim of the war as anyone else in the film.
Coming Home was one of the first films about Vietnam to ever be nominated for best picture. Jane Fonda and Jon Voight both won Oscars but the film itself lost to a far different look at the war in Vietnam, The Deer Hunter.
If you’re as much of a movie/television/pop culture fanatic as I am (and if you weren’t, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog!), I’m here to tell you you’re gonna ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LOVE this latest Quentin Tarantino epic!
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD takes place in 1969, at the tail end of Tinseltown’s Glory Days, and the tail end of TV actor Rick Dalton’s career. Dalton (splendidly played by Leonardo DiCaprio) was the star of the late 50s/early 60s TV Western BOUNTY LAW (modeled after Steve McQueen’s WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE), whose drinking problem has led him on the road to nowheresville, grabbing quick paychecks by guest starring as bad guys on episodic TV. He’s offered the chance to make some low-budget Spaghetti Westerns by producer Marvin Schwarsz (a bloated looking Al Pacino), bottom of the barrel stuff that’ll keep Rick’s name above the title.
Critics in 1976 were divided over Alfred Hitchcock’s FAMILY PLOT, which turned out to be his final film. Some gave it faint praise, in an “it’s okay” kinda way; others decried it as too old-fashioned, saying the Master of Suspense had lost his touch – and was out of touch far as contemporary filmmaking goes. Having recently viewed the film for the first time, I’m blessed with the gift of hindsight, and can tell you it’s more than “okay”. FAMILY PLOT is a return to form, and while it may not be Top Shelf Hitchcock, it certainly holds up better than efforts made that same year by Hitch’s contemporaries George Cukor (THE BLUE BIRD), Elia Kazan (THE LAST TYCOON), and Vincente Minnelli (A MATTER OF TIME).
Hitchcock reunited with screenwriter Ernest Lehman (NORTH BY NORTHWEST) to concoct a devilishly clever black comedy about phony psychic Blanche Tyler who, along with…
Last night, as a part of my attempt to get caught up with the films of 2018, I watched White Boy Rick.
As you might guess from the title, this film is about a white boy named Rick. It’s based on the true story of Richard Wershe, Jr., who grew up on the streets of Detroit. His father sold guns out of the trunk of his car and, by the time he turned 14, Rick was running with drug dealers and street gangs. (The fact that he was white while all of his friends were black is what led to him getting his nickname.) Rick became an informant for the FBI and, according to Wershe, the government helped him build up his reputation by supplying him with the drugs that he would then sell on the streets. When the FBI eventually decided that Wershe was no longer a useful asset, he was arrested for dealing and sentenced to life in prison.
The story seems like one that has the potential to say a lot that needs to be said about not only the economic realities of life in a dying city but also about the role that race plays in America’s often misdirected “war on drugs.” Unfortunately, the film falls flat because, with the exception of a few scenes, it never really convinces us that Rick was really worthy of being the subject of a film. While the film surrounds him with interesting supporting characters, Rick himself remains something of a cipher. Rick is played by a young actor named Richie Merritt. Merritt’s has the right look for the character but you never get the feeling that there’s anything going on underneath the surface. Rick comes across as just being a moron who got lucky and then, eventually, not so lucky.
The supporting cast fares a bit better. For instance, Matthew McConaughey plays Rick’s father with just the right amount of manic energy and Bel Powley has a few harrowing scenes as Rick’s drug addicted sister. Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie don’t get to do much as Rick’s grandparents but it doesn’t matter because they’re Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie. (All Bruce Dern has to do to make a character interesting is look at the camera.) Jennifer Jason Leigh plays one of Rick’s FBI handlers with the perfect hint of subversiveness. You’re never quite sure whether she’s messing with Rick’s life because she’s incompetent or because she’s enjoying it. Unfortunately, the supporting characters are often so interesting that Rick often gets overshadowed. He’s a bystander in his own story, which may have been the film’s point but, from a storytelling point of view, it hardly makes for compelling viewing.
Admittedly, there are a few memorable scenes to be found in White Boy Rick. At one point, Rick goes to a wedding at the mayor’s mansion and he’s a sight to behold in his blue tuxedo. In another scene, it’s explained to Rick why, when it comes to being arrested, charged, and incarcerated, the stakes are very different when you’re black than when you’re white. In scenes like that, you kind of get a hint of White Boy Rick could have been if it had been centered around a more compelling character.
As it is, though, White Boy Rick is well-made but kind of dull. It’s definitely a missed opportunity.
Through the Shattered Lens 