Quarterback Cat Catlan (Charlton Heston) used to be one of the greats. For fifteen years, he has been a professional football player. He probably should have retired after he led the New Orleans Saints to their first championship but, instead, the stubborn Cat kept playing. Now, he is 40 years old and struggling to keep up with the younger players. His coach (John Randolph) says that Cat has another two or three years left in him but the team doctor (G.D. Spradlin who, ten years later, played a coach in North Dallas Forty) says that one more strong hit could not only end Cat’s career but possibly his life as well. Two of former Cat’s former teammates (Bruce Dern and Bobby Troup) offer to help Cat find a job off the field but Cat tells them the same thing that he tells his long-suffering wife (Jessica Walter). He just has to win one more championship.
Number One is unique for being one of the first movies to ever take a look at the dark side of professional football. At 40, Cat is facing an uncertain future. His years of being a star have left him unprepared to deal with life in the real world. He has no real friends and a wife who no longer needs him. This would seem like a perfect role for Heston, who always excelled at playing misanthropes. Heston is convincing when he’s arguing with his wife or refusing to sign an autograph but, surprisingly, he is thoroughly unconvincing whenever he’s on the field. For all of his grunting and all the lines delivered through gritted teeth, Heston is simply not believable as a professional athlete, even one who is past his prime. (When he played the 40 year-old Cat, Heston was 46 and looked like he was 56.) Whenever Cat throws a football, he’s played by Heston in close-ups and very obviously replaced by real-life Saints quarterback Billy Kilmer for the long shots. A football film is only as good and convincing as the football action and, on that front, Number One leaves much to be desired.
This 1969 press photo displays Heston’s throwing technique.
Two final notes: For the scene in which Cat is tackled by three Dallas Cowboys (all played by actual players), Heston requested that the players actually tackle him. Heston ended up with three broken ribs.
Finally, Number One was made the cooperation of the New Orleans Saints and features several players in the cast. When Number One was filmed, the Saints were still a relatively new expansion team. Cat is described as having already led the Saints to a championship but it would actually be another 40 years before the Saints would finally make their first trip to the Super Bowl.
Are you confused by the ratings system? Well, fortunately for you, Charlton Heston was willing to take some time out of his tennis game in order to explain it to you. This short film is from 1972 so it’s a little bit out-of-date. There’s no mention of PG-13 or NC-17, for instance. (And, of course, Charlton Heston is no longer with us…) But the point comes across regardless.
When I went to see Kingsmenat the Alamo Drafthouse, they showed this clip before the movie. The audience absolutely loved it.
I’m actually kind of upset with myself because, at one point, I was planning on spending all of February watching TCM’s 31 Days of Oscars and reviewing all of the best picture nominees that showed up on the channel. Unfortunately, I ended up getting busy with other things (like Shattered Politics, for instance) and it was only tonight that I finally got a chance to sit down and watch TCM. Oh well, maybe next year! But for now, I’m just going to watch and review as much as I can before the month ends.
With that in mind, I just spent four hours watching the 1959 best picture winner Ben-Hur.
In many ways, Ben-Hur feels like a prototypical best picture winner. It’s a big epic film that obviously cost a lot to produce and which features a larger-than-life star surrounded by a bunch of a memorable character actors. It features two spectacular set pieces and some human drama that’s effective without being particularly challenging. It’s a film that deals with big themes but does so in a rather safe way. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a film that, today, is often dismissed as being old-fashioned and simplistic and yet it’s still a lot of fun to watch.
Opening with no less of an event than the birth of Jesus, Ben-Hur tells the story of Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), a wealthy Jewish aristocrat who, as a young man, was best friends with a Roman named Messala (Stephen Boyd). When Messala is named as the new commander of the local Roman garrison, he is upset to discover that Ben-Hur is more loyal to his religion than to the Roman Empire. Feeling personally rejected by his best friend (and perhaps more, as there are a lot of theories about the subtext of their relationship), Massala frames Ben-Hur for the attempted assassination of Judea’s governor.
Over the next 220 minutes, we watch as Ben-Hur goes from being a prisoner to a galley slave to the adopted son of a Roman general (Jack Hawkins) and finally one of the best chariot racers in ancient Rome. Throughout it all, he remembers a mysterious man who once attempted to give him a sip of water. Meanwhile, Ben-Hur’s family has been imprisoned and afflicted with leprosy. Appropriately, for a film that opened with the Nativity, it ends with the Crucifixion, during which Ben-Hur’s struggle to save his family also comes to a climax.
Ben-Hur is undoubtedly flawed film. (Among the film that were nominated for best picture of 1959, my favorite remains Anatomy of Murder.) The film runs about an hour too long, some of the supporting actors give performances that are a bit too over-the-top, and the entire film is so reverential that in can be difficult for modern audiences, especially in this age of nonstop irony, to take it seriously. In the lead role, Charlton Heston is always watchable and has a strong physical presence but you never quite believe that he’s the thinker that the script insists that he is. There’s nothing subtle about Heston’s performance but, then again, there’s nothing subtle about the film itself.
And yet, if the film struggles to connect on a human level, Ben-Hur still works as a spectacle. The gigantic sets and the ornate costumes are still impressive to look at. The film’s two big action sequences — a shipwreck and the chariot race — are still exciting and thrilling to watch. Ben-Hur may be dated but you can still watch it and understand why it was so popular with audiences in 1959 and, though I may not agree with a lot of the decisions, I can see why the Academy honored Ben-Hur with a record 11 Oscars. It’s the type of spectacle that, in 1959, could only have been found on the big screen. By honoring Ben-Hur, the Academy was honoring the relevance of the Hollywood establishment.
In the end, Ben-Hur may not hold up as well as some best picture winners but it’s still worth watching.
“Charlton Heston IS the Omega Man!” This movie is the second of three film adaptations of Richard Matheson’s classic novel I am Legend.
2) Last House On Dead End Street (1977)
This film is reportedly one of the most purely grindhouse films ever made. It’s also next to impossible to see. The Trash Film Guru has seen it and I’m insanely jealous. As for this trailer, it’s short but rather effective. It’s also perhaps the hundredth trailer to feature the “It’s only a movie” tagline.
3) Deranged (1974)
“A man so obsessed with death that he became…DERANGED!”
4) Equinox (1970)
I own the Criterion edition of this film. It’s actually kind of fun in its own silly way.
5) Vengeance of She (1971)
This is a Hammer film. I love how increasingly excited the narrator gets as he talks about vengeance.
6) Endgame (1983)
Finally, let’s end this entry with yet another look at a post-apocalypse future. From the iconic Italian director Joe D’Amato, it’s Endgame.
Yesterday, I posted a tracking shot from Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend. Today, I want to offer up another great tracking shot, this one from a much better director and a much better movie: Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. This 3 and a half-minute, unedited tracking shot begins in the United States and ends in Mexico. It also starts off one of the greatest films of all time.
Continuing my look at the original Planet of the Apes film series, we now come to the first sequel, 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Rather blandly directed by Ted Post and featuring only a cameo performance from Charlton Heston, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is rarely given the credit it deserves. Yes, the first half of the film is rather forgettable but once you get through it, you discover one of the darkest films of the 1970s.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes begins with yet another human astronaut crash landing on the Earth of the future. This astronaut is Brent and, as played by James Franciscus, he comes across as a slightly more earnest, far less charismatic copy of Charlton Heston’s Taylor. Brent has been sent in search of Taylor. Anyway, once he lands on the planet, he is quickly arrested by the apes, meets Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (David Watson, stepping in for Roddy McDowall), and then escapes with the still-mute Nova (Linda Harrison). With Nova, Brent makes his way to the Forbidden City where he comes across the ruins of Grand Central Station and discovers that he’s actually on Earth.
Yes, that’s right. The first hour of this 95 minutes film is essentially just the first movie all over again. And yes, this film’s (many) critics are correct when they say that this first hour drags and tests the audience’s patience. Obviously, Brent may be shocked to discover he’s on Earth but it’s old news to us and many viewers are probably tempted to give up on this film before Brent even figures it out.
But don’t give up! No, because if you stick with this film you’ll discover that, once Brent figures out where he is, things get really, really fucked up.
Essentially, Brent discovers that the ruins of New York City are now underground. And in this underground city, there are people. But they’re not people like Brent or Nova. No, these are people who have been horribly scarred by radiation. They’ve also mutated to the extent that they’ve developed the powers of telepathy and mind control. Under the leadership of Mendez the Tenth (Paul Richards), they spend their time singing hymns to the Alpha/Omega nuclear bomb, or as they call it “The Holy Bomb.” They keep the Holy Bomb in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
These mutants capture both Nova and Brent. Brent is tossed into a cell and who else is there but Taylor? And Taylor, believe it or not, has become even more sarcastic and scornful than before! Seriously, Charlton Heston frequently spoke about how much he hated this film and it’s obvious in his performance. Heston might not have been happy about being there but the audience is because, even if he is busy hating himself, Taylor brings a jolt of life to the film.
And just in time because the Apes, led by Urko (James Gregory), have invaded the forbidden city! They gun down all the mutants. Brent , Taylor, and Nova manage to escape their prison and all three of them are promptly gunned down as well. As he dies, Taylor manages to set off the Alpha/Omega bomb. We see a blinding white light followed by a somber voice over that tells us: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”
And that’s it! There’s no final credits, not even a black-out. Instead, on that note, the movie just stops.
With Rise of the Planet of the Apes coming out in August, I figured why not go ahead and review the original Planet of the Apesfilms. No, I don’t mean the terrible Tim Burton film. I’m talking about the old school sci-fi series from the early 70s. For the next five days, I’ll be reviewing each installment of this landmark series of monkey-centric Let’s start at the beginning with 1968’s Planet of the Apes.
The plot of Planet of the Apes is pretty well-known. Arrogant earthman takes off from Earth, goes through some sort of time portal, and crash lands at some point in the far future. Our “hero” finds himself on a planet where all the humans are mute savages and society is dominated by equally arrogant, talking apes. (“A planet where apes evolved from man!?”) Eventually, the Earthman reveals that he can speak, he escapes captivity, and — accompanied by his mute concubine — he enters what the Apes call the forbidden zone. And, once in the forbidden zone, he discovers “his destiny” as old Dr. Zaius puts it.
It’s difficult to review a film like the original Planet of the Apes because the film itself has become a part of American culture. Even if you’ve never seen the film, you feel as if you have. Whether you’ve seen the famous ending or not, you know that it features Taylor (Charlton Heston) on his knees in front of the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, raving and cursing while the mute and confused Nova (Linda Harrison) watches. Everyone understands the significance of such famous lines as: “Take your stinking paws off of me, you damn, dirty ape!” and “Goddamn you all to Hell!” regardless of whether they’ve actually seen them delivered.
Of course, it can be argued that the fact that the film has become such a part of our culture is proof of the film’s quality. However, I would argue that the proof of the film’s quality comes from the fact that it remains a watchable and entertaining film despite having become such a part of the culture. It says a lot that a film can stay enjoyable despite being respectable.
Why does the film still work despite the film’s main selling point — the surprise ending — being neautralized by the passage of tinme? A lot of the credit, I think, has to go to the apes themselves. Even under all that makeup, Roddy McDowall as Cornelius, Kim Hunter as Zira, and especially Maurice Evans as the iconic Dr. Zaius all manage to create interesting and intriguing characters who just happen to be apes. Before long, you forget about the makeup and instead, you’re more interested in seeing how Zaius is going to handle this latest challenge to his society.
That challenge, of course, comes from Charlton Heston. Everyone is always quick to make fun of Heston as an actor and it’s true that his range was limited. Frequently, the men he played came across as the type of chauvinistic, pompous heroes that were never quite aware of the fact that everyone was secretly laughing at him. And it is true that Heston has several of those moments here in Planet of the Apes. Even his famous final scene is, to be honest, almost painfully over the top.
And you know what?
In this film, it works perfectly. I don’t know if an actor has ever been more perfectly cast than Charlton Heston was in Planet of the Apes. In the role of Taylor, Heston basically spends the entire movie acting like a complete and total pompous ass. Whether he’s recording a “fuck you” message for Earth at the beginning of the film or if he’s arrogantly dismissing Zaius before entering the Forbidden Zone, Heston comes to epitomize every single thing that we tend to dislike in our fellow human beings. As played by Heston, Taylor is the perfect clueless hero and a lot of the film’s perverse pleasure comes from watching this paragon of masculinity and superiority repeatedly humbled.
And that, ultimately, is why Planet of the Apes remains a watchable film so many decades after it was made. Good satire never goes out of style.
Hi there! Welcome to the first edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers for 2011. All 6 of our trailers in this edition are Italian. And, as always, most of them should be watched with caution and definitely not watched at work. (Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Youtube yanked one or two of them offline within a week or so. So, watch while you can.)
This is actually one of Umberto Lenzi’s not that terrible movies. Which doesn’t mean it’s good. Just means that it’s not that terrible. This is the movie in which Lenzi manages to turn the Jonestown Massacre into a cannibal film. Ivan Rassimov, who looks like a Russian Charlton Heston, plays Jim Jones. Also, you might recognize the music because it ended up being used in about a 100 different Italian exploitation trailers.
One of the most misleading titles of all time as Warhol had very little to do with this film beyond lending Paul Morrissey and Joe Dallesandro. This is better known as Flesh For Frankenstien. The trailer really doesn’t do justice to the movie but I had to include it because, even if it’s not my favorite trailer, it’s a classic exploitation trailer in just the shameless way that Andy Warhol’s name is used to sell the film.
Believe it or not, this movie is actually a lot of fun. One of the stars is apparently a gay porn star but I’ve never been able to figure out who he’s playing in the film.
I had to finish out this all-Italian edition with a little Lucio Fulci. And I had to go with Murderock because it features a lot of dancing. The trailer is also memorable for revealing the identity of the killer.
Sometimes, you have to be careful which films you choose to watch over the course of the day.
Such as, last Friday night, I heard the news that Jill Clayburgh had died and I ended up watching An Unmarried Woman. This, along with the fact that I also watched the Black Swan trailer, led to me dancing around the house in my underwear, en pointe in bare feet, and doing a half-assed pirouette in the living room. And I felt pretty proud of myself until I woke up Saturday morning and my ankle (which I don’t think has ever properly healed from the day, seven years ago, that I fell down a flight of stairs and broke it in two places) literally felt like it was on fire. That was my body’s way of saying, “You ain’t living in a movie, bitch. Deal with it.”
So, come Sunday, I decided to play it safe by watching something that I was sure wouldn’t lead to any imitative behavior on my part. Since I had previously reviewed Earthquake on this site, I decided that I would devote some time to the movies that started the entire 1970s disaster movie genre — Airport. Watching Airport led to me watching Airport’s three sequels.
I was able to do this largely because I own the Airport Terminal Pack, a two-disk DVD collection that contains all four of the Airport films and nothing else. There’s no special features or commentary tracks. That’s probably a good thing because these films are so extremely mainstream that I doubt the commentary tracks would be all that interesting except to people who love “Me and Jennings Lang had the same lawyer…” style stories.
The movies are a mixed bag of ’70s sexism, mainstream greed, and casts that were described as being “all-star” despite the fact that they featured very few stars. They’re all worth watching as time capsules of a past time. Some of them are just more worthy than others.
Below are my thoughts on each individual film in the collection…
Airport (directed by George Seaton)
First released in 1970, Airport was nominated for 10 Academy Awards (including best picture), broke box office records, and started the whole 70s disaster movie trend. It also has to be one of the most boring, borderline unwatchable movies ever made. The fact that I managed to sit through the whole thing should be taken as proof that I’m either truly dedicated to watching movies or I’m just insane. Take your pick.
Anyway, the film is painstakingly detailed account of the every day operations of an airport. Yeah, sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? Burt Lancaster runs the airport. His brother-in-law Dean Martin flies airplanes. Both of them have mistresses but we’re told that’s okay because Lancaster’s wife expects him to talk to her and Martin’s wife is cool with him fucking around as long as he comes home at night. I would be tempted to say that this is a result of the film having been made in 1969 and released in 1970 but actually, it’s just an introduction to the sexual politics of the typical disaster film. Men save the day while women get in the way. And if you think things have changed, I’d suggest you watch a little film calledf 2012…
The only interesting thing about the film is that Lancaster’s mistress is played by Jean Seberg who, ten years earlier, had helped change film history by co-starring in Jean-Luc Godard’s classic film Breathless. Nine years later, after years of being hounded by the American press and the FBI for her radical politics, Seberg committed suicide.
Airport 1975 (directed by Jack Smight)
As opposed to its predecessor, Airport 1975 is actually a lot of fun in its campy, silly way. This is the one where a small private plane (flown by Dana Andrews, the star of the wonderful film noir Laura) collides with a commercial airliner. The entire flight crew is taken out and head stewardess Karen Black has to pilot the plane despite the fact that she’s obviously cross-eyed. Luckily, since Black is a stewardess, she has a pilot boyfriend who is played by Charlton Heston. Heston talks her through the entire flight despite the fact that she was earlier seen trying to pressure him into not treating her like an idiot. Anyway, Heston does his usual clench-jaw thing and if you need a drinking game to go with your bad movie, just take a shot every time Heston calls Black “honey.” You’ll be drunk before the plane lands.
There’s some other stuff going on in this movie (for instance, Gloria Swanson appears as “herself” and doesn’t mention Sunset Boulevard or Joseph Kennedy once!) but really, all you need to know is that this is the film where Karen Black acts up a storm and random characters keep saying, “The stewardess is flying the plane!?”
Odd trivia fact: Airport 1975 was released in 1974.
Airport ’77 (directed by Jerry Jameson)
In Airport ’77, a group of art thieves attempt to hijack an airplane which, of course, leads to the airplane crashing into the ocean and somehow sinking down to the ocean’s floor without splitting apart. The crash survivors have to try to figure out how to get to the surface of the water before they run out of oxygen.
In this case, our resident sexist pilot is Jack Lemmon who has a really ugly mustache. He wants to marry head stewardess Brenda Vaccarro. Vaccarro doesn’t understand why they have to get married to which Lemmon responds, “Because I want a wife and kids!” The film also gives us Lee Grant as a woman who is married to Christopher Lee but who is having an affair with another man. She also drinks a lot and dares to get angry when she realizes that the airplane is underwater. While this sort of behavior is acceptable from Dean Martin, Charlton Heston, and Jack Lemmon, the film punishes Lee Grant by drowning her in the final minutes.
Technically, Airport ’77 is probably the best of the Airport films. The cast does a pretty good job with all the melodrama, the film doesn’t drag, and a few of the scenes manage to generate something resembling human emotion. (For instance, when the blind piano player died, I had a tear in one of my freaky, mismatched eyes.) Unfortunately, the movie’s almost too good. It’s not a lot of fun. Everyone plays their roles straight so the silly plot never quite descends into camp and the key to a good disaster film is always camp. This film also has the largest body count of the series, with most of the cast dead by the end of the movie. (And, incidentally, this film did nothing to help me with my fear of water…)
The Concorde: Airport ’79 (directed by David Lowell Rich)
The last Airport movie is also the strangest. Some people have claimed that this film was meant to be a satire of the previous Airport films. I can understand the argument because you look at film like Concorde and you say, “This must be a joke!” However, the problem with this theory is that there are moments of obvious “intentional” humor in this film (i.e., J.J. from Good Times smokes weed in the plane’s bathroom, another passenger has to go to the bathroom whenever she gets nervous) and none of them show any evidence of the type of wit and outlook necessary to come up with anything this silly on purpose. Add to that, the film’s story is credited to Jennings Lang, a studio executive. Studio execs do not take chances. (Plus, the actual script was written by Eric Roth, who went on to write the amazingly humorless The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).
No, this film is meant to be taken seriously and oh my God, where do I start?
Our pilots are George Kennedy and Alain Delon. The head stewardess (and naturally, Delon’s girlfiend) is played by Sylvia “Emanuelle” Kristel who, at one point, says, “You pilots are such men!” “Hey, they don’t call it a cockpit for nothing, honey,” Kennedy replies.
Meanwhile, Robert Wagner is trying to destroy the Concorde because one of the passengers is his girlfriend who has proof that Wagner has been selling weapons to America’s enemies. So, he attempts to blow the plane up with a guided missile and when that fails, he sends a couple of fighter planes after them. Kennedy responds by opening up the cockpit window — while breaking the sound barrier mind you — and firing a flare gun at their pursuers.
After this, there’s stop over in Paris where Delon arranges for Kennedy to sleep with a prostitute who assures Kennedy that he made love “just like a happy fish.”
The next day, everyone returns to the exact same Concorde — despite the fact that just a day earlier they’d nearly been blown up by a squadron of fighter planes — and take off on the second leg of the flight. Let me repeat that just to make sure that we all understand what this film is asking us to believe. After nearly getting blown up by a mysterious squad of fighter planes, everybody shows up the next morning to get on the exact same plane.
Oh, and it never occurs to Wagner’s ex-girlfriend that Wagner might have something to do with all of this.
Now sad to say, Concorde is the one of those films that’s a lot more fun to talk about than to actually watch. It should be a lot more fun in its badness than it actually is. Still, the movie has just enough camp appeal to make it fun in a “what the fuck…” sorta way.
And that’s how the Airport series comes to an end.
Quarterback Cat Catlan (Charlton Heston) used to be one of the greats. For fifteen years, he has been a professional football player. He probably should have retired after he led the New Orleans Saints to their first championship but, instead, the stubborn Cat kept playing. Now, he is 40 years old and struggling to keep up with the younger players. His coach (John Randolph) says that Cat has another two or three years left in him but the team doctor (G.D. Spradlin who, ten years later, played a coach in North Dallas Forty) says that one more strong hit could not only end Cat’s career but possibly his life as well. Two of former Cat’s former teammates (Bruce Dern and Bobby Troup) offer to help Cat find a job off the field but Cat tells them the same thing that he tells his long-suffering wife (Jessica Walter). He just has to win one more championship.
Through the Shattered Lens 