Tag Archives: Dean Stockwell

10 Oscar Snubs From the 1980s

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ah, the 80s! Ronald Reagan was president. America was strong. Russia was weak. The economy was booming. The music was wonderful. Many great movies were released, though most of them were not nominated for any Oscars. This is the decade that tends to drive most Oscar fanatics batty. So many good films that went unnominated. So many good performers that were overlooked.  Let’s dive on in!

1980: The Shining Is Totally Ignored

Admittedly, The Shining was not immediately embraced by critics when it was first released.  Stephen King is still whining about the movie and once he went as far as to joke about being happy that he outlived Stanley Kubrick.  (Not cool, Steve.)  Well, none of that matters.  The Shining should have been nominated across the board.  “Come and play with us, Danny …. AT THE OSCARS!”

1981: Harrison Ford Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders received a lot of nominations.  Steven Spielberg was nominated for Best Director.  The film itself was nominated for Best Picture.  (It lost to Chariots of Fire.)  But the man who helped to hold the film together, Harrison Ford, was not nominated for his performance as Indiana Jones.  Despite totally changing the way that people looked at archeologists and also making glasses sexy, Harrison Ford was overlooked.  I think this was yet another case of the Academy taking a reliable actor for granted.

1982: Brian Dennehy Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For First Blood

First Blood didn’t receive any Oscar nominations, not even in the technical categories.  Personally, I think you could argue that the film, which was much more than just an action film, deserved to be considered for everything from Best Actor to Best Director to Best Picture.  But, in the end, if anyone was truly snubbed, it was Brian Dennehy.  Dennehy turned Will Teasle into a classic villain.  Wisely, neither the film nor Dennehy made the mistake of portraying Sheriff Teasle as being evil.  Instead, he was just a very stubborn man who couldn’t admit that he made a mistake in the way he treated John Rambo.  Dennehy gave an excellent performance that elevated the entire film.

1984: Once Upon A Time In America Is Totally Ignored

It’s not a huge shock that Once Upon A Time In America didn’t receive any Oscar nominations.  Warner Bros. took Sergio Leone’s gangster epic and recut it before giving it a wide release in America.  Among other things, scenes were rearranged so that they played out in chronological order, the studio took 90 minutes off of the run time, and the film’s surrealistic and challenging ending was altered.  Leone disowned the Warner Bros. edit of the film.  Unfortunately, in 1984, most people only saw the edited version of Once Upon A Time In America and Leone was so disillusioned by the experience that he would never direct another film.  (That said, even the edited version featured Ennio Morricone’s haunting score, which certainly deserved not just a nomination but also the Oscar.)  The original cut of Once Upon A Time In America is one of the greatest gangster films ever made, though one gets the feeling that it might have still been too violent, thematically dark, and narratively complex for the tastes of the Academy in 1984.  At a time when the Academy was going out of its way to honor good-for-you films like Gandhi, it’s probable that a film featuring Robert De Niro floating through time in an Opium-induced haze might have been a bridge too far.

1985: The Breakfast Club Is Totally Ignored

Not even a nomination for Best Screenplay!  It’s a shame.  I’m going to guess that the Academy assumed that The Breakfast Club was just another teen flick.  Personally, if nothing else, I would have given the film the Oscar for Best Original Song.  Seriously, don’t you forget about me.

1986: Alan Ruck Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Poor Cameron!

1986: Blue Velvet Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

Considering the type of films that the Academy typically nominated in the 80s, it’s something of a shock that David Lynch even managed to get a Best Director nomination for a film as surreal and subversive as Blue Velvet.  Unfortunately, that was the only recognition that the Academy was willing to give to the film.  It can also be argued that Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and Dean Stockwell were overlooked by the Academy.  Dennis Hopper did receive a Supporting Actor nomination in 1986, though it was for Hoosiers and not Blue Velvet.

1987: R. Lee Ermey Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For Full Metal Jacket

One of the biggest misconceptions about Full Metal Jacket is that R. Lee Ermey was just playing himself.  While Ermey was a former drill instructor and he did improvise the majority of his lines (which made him unique among actors who have appeared in Kubrick films), Ermey specifically set out to play Sgt. Hartmann as being a bad drill instructor, one who pushed his recruits too hard, forgot the importance of building them back up, and was so busy being a bully that he failed to notice that Pvt. Pyle had gone off the deep end.  Because Ermey was, by most accounts, a good drill instructor, he knew how to portray a bad one and the end result was an award-worthy performance.

1988: Die Hard Is Not Nominated For Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, or Director

Die Hard did receive some technical nominations but, when you consider how influential the film would go on to be, it’s hard not to feel that it deserved more.  Almost every action movie villain owes a debt to Alan Rickman’s performance as Hans Gruber.  And Bruce Willis …. well, all I can say is that people really took Bruce for granted.

1989: Do The Right Thing Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

Indeed, it would take another 30 years for a film directed by Spike Lee to finally be nominated for Best Picture.

Agree?  Disagree?  Do you have an Oscar snub that you think is even worse than the 10 listed here?  Let us know in the comments!

Up next: It’s the 90s!

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #222: Banzai Runner (dir by John G. Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the 1987 film, Banzai Runner!

Why Was I Watching It?

Last night, it was my turn to host the #MondayActionMovie live tweet!  The loyal members of MAM trusted me to find an exciting, action-filled movie with which they could start their week.  I failed.

What Was It About?

Listen, it’s not totally my fault.  I checked with the IMDb.  I checked Wikipedia.  I read the film’s description on YouTube.  They all said that the film starred Dean Stockwell as a cop who goes undercover to bring down a group of wealthy street racers.

And technically, that is what the film’s about but only at the very end.  Before we get around to any of that fun stuff, the film is basically just Highway Patrolman Billy Baxter (Dean Stockwell) driving around the desert and trying to keep his dumbass nephew, Beck (John Shepard), from getting into trouble.  How big of a dumbass is Beck?  He’s so dumb that he lights up a joint while he’s driving and while his uncle — the policeman — is sitting right next to him.  Needless to say, Billy gets upset about that.  (The scene is amusing if — and only if — you know that Dean Stockwell was one of Hollywood’s most prominent hippies.)

Eventually, Billy and Beck do go undercover to take out Syszek (Billy Drago), a wealthy drug dealer who likes to street race but who also does to much cocaine.  In a coincidence that comes out of nowhere, it turns out that Syszek is responsible for the death of Billy’s brother and Beck’s father.  Neither Billy nor Beck really seem to be too upset about it, though.

What Didn’t Work?
(Usually I like to start with what did work but I’m making an exception here.)

It’s an 84 minute film (not counting the end credits).  It takes 60 minutes for Billy to go undercover.  It takes another 5 minutes or so for Billy to actually meet Syszek.  The only reason that anyone is going be watching this film is because they want to see Dean Stockwell and Billy Drago race against each other but that part of the film doesn’t even kick in until the movie is nearly over!  Instead, we get an hour of Billy aimlessly doing his job and Beck complaining about his uncle being too strict.  It’s very slow and dull.

Dean Stockwell was a good actor who gave some wonderfully eccentric performances in his adult years but he’s miscast as Billy.  John Shepherd played Tommy in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and I’ve always preferred Shepherd’s interpretation of the character over Thom Matthews’s performance in Jason Lives.  Shepherd had an appealing vulnerability in A New Beginning but none of that is present in Banzai Runners.  It doesn’t help that the script portrays Beck as being a combination of every bad boyfriend I had from the sixth grade through my senior year of high school.

What Worked?

I’m a Southern girl and I’m also enough of a country girl that I do have a weakness for fast cars and the people who drive them.  So, I could appreciate the film on that level.  The car chases were fun, I just wish that there had been more of them.  All of those scenes of Billy worrying about paying his mortgage (and yes, that was a huge subplot during the first hour of the film) should have been edited out and replaced with scenes from The Wraith.  Or maybe just the Shangri-Las singing Leader of the Pack.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

There’s a scene where the rich daughter of one of the racers announce that she’ll remove a piece of clothing for every mile that Beck goes over 55.  On the one hand, it’s a scene that feels like it was lifted from a Crown International cheerleader film.  On the other hand …. well, like I said, I had a weakness for bad boys who drove fast cars.  So, even in this rather bland film, I still found someone to whom I could relate.  Yay!

Lessons Learned

Never assume that a movie is exciting just because of its name.

In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance (1994, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Johnnie Moore (Brent Jennings) is a former limo driver turned criminal mastermind.  The members of his gang look up to him with cult-like admiration.  On his orders, they have been robbing businesses all over town.  Johnnie says that he is a man of God but he has no hesitation when it comes to ordering his men to threaten and sometimes kill any witnesses.  When Detective Tom Williams (Michael Gross) comes to close to finally convincing someone to testify against the gang, Moore orders his assassination.  When the members of his gang fail to get the job done because none of them want to shoot Tom when his family is around, Johnnie does it himself by dressing up as a clown and gunning Tom down in front of Tom’s son.  That was Johnnie’s biggest mistake because now, he’s got Tom’s best friend, Detective Jack Lowe (Dean Stockwell), after him.

After Street Wars, NBC’s next two In The Line of Duty films both focused on FBI sieges.  Both The Siege at Marion and Ambush in Waco featured true stories of the FBI trying to arrest religious fanatics and having to wait out a stand-off.  Ambush in Waco was controversial because it was not only based on the Branch Davidian stand-off but it was actually filmed while the stand-off was still going on.  Perhaps because of the controversy, The Price of Vengeance tells a much simpler and less exploitive story.  Johnnie Moore is a criminal who kills a cop.  Jack Lowe makes it his mission to put him away.  There’s no risk of anyone watching siding with Johnnie Moore like they may have done with David Koresh while watching Ambush in Waco.  Moore kills a man in front of his son and then laughs about it.  Everyone watching is going to want to see him get punished and they are going to cheer on the efforts of law enforcement to make sure the punishment fits the crime.

The Price of Vengeance is a typical police procedural but it has a good cast.  After playing a killer in the first In The Line of Duty movie and the lead FBI man in the third one, Michael Gross is cast as the victim here and he’s so likable that you’ll be angered when he gets gunned down.  Dean Stockwell brings his no-nonsense, down-to-Earth style to the role of Gross’s best friend and Brent Jennings is smug and evil as Johnnie Moore.  Mary Kay Place, Kathleen Robertson, and Justin Garms play the members of Gross’s family and they all do a good job of showing the trauma that they’ve suffered as a result of his murder.  Keep an eye out for Courtney Gains, playing a member of Moore’s criminal crew.  Gains played this same character in a dozen different films.  If you see Courtney Gains in a movie, look out because he’s up to no good!

The Price of Vengeance is a standard 90s cop show.  Nothing about it will take you by surprise but it’s partially redeemed by its cast.

Lisa Reviews a Palme d’Or Winner: Paris, Texas (dir by Wim Wenders)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2022 Cannes Film Festival coming to a close in the next few days, I’ve been watching some of the films that previously won the prestigious Palme d’Or.  They’re an interesting group of films.  Some of them have been forgotten.  Some of them are still regarded as classics.  Some of them definitely deserve to be seen by a wider audience.  Take for the instance that winner of the 1984 Palme d’Or winner, Paris, Texas. This is a film that is well-regarded by cineastes but it definitely deserves to be seen by more people.

Though released in 1984, Paris, Texas opens with an image that will resonate for many viewers today.  A dazed man stumbles through the desert while wearing a red baseball cap.  Though the cap may not read “Make America Great Again,” the sight of it immediately identifies the owner as being a resident of what is often dismissively referred to as being flyover country, the long stretch of land that sits between the two coasts.  Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is lost, both figuratively and literally.  After he stumbles into a bar and collapses, he’s taken to a doctor (played by German film director Bernhard Wicki) who discovers that Travis has a phone number on him.  When the doctor calls the number, he speaks to Travis’s brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell).  Walt has not seen Travis for three years and the viewer gets the feeling that Walt spent those years assuming that Travis was dead.  Walt agrees to travel to West Texas to retrieve his brother and take him back to Los Angeles.

When Walt retrieves his brother, he’s annoyed that Travis refuses to explain where he’s been for the past three years.  In fact, for the first fourth of the film, Travis doesn’t say anything.  He just stares into space.  Finally, when he does speak, it’s to tell Walt that he wants to go to Paris.  Walt tells him that going to Paris might have to wait.  Travis elaborates that he wants to go to Paris, Texas.  He owns an empty parking lot in Paris, Texas.

It takes a while to learn much about Travis’s past.  Like many of Wim Wenders’s films, Paris, Texas moves at its own deliberate pace and it features characters who tend to talk around their concerns instead of facing them head-on.  What we do eventually learn is that Travis has a son named Hunter (Hunter Black).  Travis’s wife, Jane, (played by Natassja Kinski) disappeared first.  Travis disappeared afterwards, leaving Walt and his wife (Aurore Clement) to raise his son.  At first, when Travis arrives in Los Angeles, he struggles to reconnect with Hunter but eventually, he does.  He tries to be a father but, again, he sometimes struggles because, while Travis has a good heart, he’s also out-of-step with the world.

As for Jane, we eventually learn that she’s in Houston.  She’s working in a tacky sex club, one where the customers and the strippers are separated by a one-way mirror.  The customer can see and talk to the stripper but the stripper can’t see the customers.  It’s all about manufactured intimacy.  The customer can delude themselves into thinking that the woman is stripping just for him while the woman doesn’t have to see the man who is watching her.  There are no emotions to deal with, just the illusion of a connection.

Even as Travis begins to make a life for himself in Los Angeles, he finds himself tempted to return to Houston to search for his wife….

As I said, Paris, Texas is a deliberately paced film.  With a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes, it feels like it’s actually three films linked together.  We start with Travis and Walt traveling back to Los Angeles.  The second film deals with Travis’s attempts to bond with his son.  And the third and most powerful film is about what happens when Travis finally finds Jane.  It all comes together to form a deceptively low-key character study of a group of lost souls, all of whom are dealing with the mistakes of the past and hoping for a better future.  The film’s most memorable moment comes when Travis delivers a long and heartfelt monologue about his marriage to Jane.  Beautifully written by Sam Shephard (who co-wrote the script with L.M. Kit Carson) and wonderfully acted by Harry Dean Stanton, it’s a monologue about regret, guilt, forgiveness, and ultimately being cursed to wander.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Paris, Texas is an undeniably joyful film.  In a rare leading role, Harry Dean Stanton plays Travis as someone who is full of regrets but who, at the same time, retains a spark of hope and optimism.  Life has beaten him down but he has yet to surrender.  Once he reaches Los Angeles and Travis starts to fully come out of his fugue state, there’s a playful energy to Stanton’s performance.  The scene where he dresses up as what he thinks a dad should look like is a highlight.  For Travis, being a responsible adult starts with putting on a suit and walking his son home from school.  Stanton’s excellent performance is matched by good work from Dean Stockwell and, especially, Natassja Kinski.

Visually, the film is all about capturing the beauty and the peculiarity of the landscape of the American southwest.  Like many European directors, Wim Wenders seems to be a bit in love with the combination of rugged mountains and commercialized society that one finds while driving through the west.  In the scenes in which Stanton wanders through West Texas, the landscape almost seems like it might consume him and, later, in Los Angeles and Houston, the garishness of the city threatens to do the same.  Wherever he is, Travis is slightly out-of-place and the viewer can understand why Travis is compelled to keep wandering.  At times, it seems like Travis will never fit in anywhere but the fact that he never gives up hope is comforting.  In many ways, Travis’s own journey mirrors Stanton’s career in Hollywood.  He had the talent of a leading man but the eccentric countenance of a great character actor.  He may have never been quite fit in with mainstream Hollywood but he never stopped acting.

The film itself never visits Paris, Texas.  Travis just talks about the fact that he owns an empty lot in the town and that he would like to see it.  Still, I like to think Travis eventually reached Paris and I like to think that he did something wonderful with that lot.

Cattle Drive (1951, directed by Kurt Neumann)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this coming-of-age Western, Dean Stockwell plays Chester Graham, Jr., the spoiled and unruly son of a railroad owner (Leon Ames).  While riding on his father’s train and making trouble for the conductor, Chester overhears his father talking about sending him to a military school.  When the train makes as top, Chester impulsively runs away.  The train leaves without him and Chester finds himself stranded in the middle of the wilderness.  That’s when he sees cowboy Dan Matthews (Joel McCrea) trying to catch a wild stallion.

Dan is a part of a cattle drive.  Knowing that he can’t leave Chester to die in the wilderness, Dan brings him back to his camp.  The other members of the company aren’t too keen on having to look after a spoiled brat along with the cattle and Chester isn’t too happy to hear that he’ll be expected to work if he expects to get fed.  But with no choice but to work together, Chester, Dan, and the rest of the company make the journey to Santa Fe.  Chester finally drops his attitude enough to work with the company’s cook (Chill Wills) while Dan deals with a rival cowboy named Currie (Henry Brandon). Chester learns about responsibility and Dan finally finds the courage to consider settling down.

Of the many westerns that Joel McCrea made over the course of his career, he considered Cattle Drive to be his favorite and it’s easy to see why.  Cattle Drive features McCrea doing what he did best, playing a tough but good-hearted and down-to-earth cowboy who looked after an outsider.  If you were ever lost in the old west, Joel McCrea is precisely the type of cowboy that you would hope would come to your rescue.  The plot features almost every single cattle drive cliché that you could imagine but McCrea plays his role with a winning combination of grit and compassion and he and Dean Stockwell, who is also very good, make a good team.  Shot in Death Valley and Utah, Cattle Drive feels and look authentic and should be enjoyed by anyone looking for good, heartfelt western.

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.

Film Review: Psych-Out (dir by Richard Rush)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

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

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1965 film, Rapture, is an odd one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: Gentleman’s Agreement (dir by Elia Kazan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, as I was watching the 1947 film, Gentleman’s Agreement, I found myself thinking about a conversation that I had in 2006.

This was when I was in college.  I was having lunch with some friends from one of my classes.  As we were eating, the conversation turned to the war in Iraq.  That, in itself, was not surprising because, in 2006, it seemed like every conversation somehow turned to what was happening in the Middle East.

One of the people with whom I was having lunch was Olivia, self-styled intellectual who fancied herself as the most knowledgeable person on campus.  To be honest, I can’t think of anyone who liked her that much but she had a skill for subtly weaseling her way into almost every conversation.  She was one of those incredibly pretentious types who started every sentence with “Actually….” and who had embraced Marxism with the shallow vapidness of someone who had grown up in Highland Park and who would never have to struggle to pay a bill.

On that day, Olivia announced to us all that the only reason we were in Iraq was because we were doing the bidding of Israeli lobbyists and then she went on to talk about how 9-11 was an inside job.  She repeated the old lie about Jews calling in sick on 9-11 and claimed that five MOSSAD agents were arrested in New York for celebrating after the collapse of the Twin Towers.

After Olivia said this, there was the briefest silence as everyone else tried to figure out how to react.  Finally, someone tried to change the subject by making a joke about our professor.  Realizing the no one was going to openly disagree with Olivia and risk an argument, I said, “That’s not true.”

“What’s not true?” Olivia asked.

“About Jewish people calling in sick on 9-11 and celebrating after the Towers fell.  That’s not true.”

Olivia looked a little bit surprised that she was being openly challenged.  Finally, she said, in a surprisingly sincere tone of voice, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”

I’m not Jewish.  I’m Irish-Italian-Spanish and pretty much all of my immediate ancestors were Catholic.  But, as far as Olivia was concerned, I had to be Jewish because why else would I object to her repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory?  When she apologized (and, make no mistake, there was not a hint of sarcasm in her tone when she said she was sorry), it wasn’t for being a bigot.  Instead, it was for being a bigot in front of the “wrong” person.  It didn’t occur to her that I was upset because what she said was bullshit.

Anyway, I wish I could say that I threw a drink in Olivia’s face or that I stood up on the table and delivered an impassioned speech but, once again, the other people at the table hastily changed the subject.  Anything to avoid a conflict, I suppose.  That was the last time I ever had a conversation with Olivia.  For the rest of the semester, I ignored her and I felt pretty proud of myself for shunning her.  It’s only been recently that I realized that Olivia also didn’t really make any effort to really talk to me after that conversation.  I shunned her because of her bigotry and I can only assume that she shunned me because of her misconception about my ancestry.

Gentleman’s Agreement is about a Gentile reporter named Phillip Green (Gregory Peck) who, while researching a story about anti-Semitism, poses as a Jew and discovers that the world is full of people like Olivia.  His own fiancee, a self-declared liberal named Kathy (Dorothy McGuire), reacts to Phil’s plan by asking him, “But you’re not really Jewish …. are you?”  By the simple act of telling everyone that his last name is actually “Greenberg,” Phil discovers that he suddenly can’t get a hotel reservation.  People stop returning his calls.  When he and Kathy have an engagement party in a wealthy community in Connecticut, many of Kathy’s friends stay away.  (Kathy, meanwhile, begs Phil to let her tell her family that she’s not actually engaged to a Jew.)  When Phil’s son, Tommy (Dean Stockwell), is harassed at school, Phil is shocked to hear Kathy tell Tommy that he shouldn’t listen to the bullies not because they’re a bunch of bigots but because “you’re not actually Jewish.”

Meanwhile, Phil’s friend, Dave Goldman (John Garfield), has returned from serving in World War II, just to discover that he can’t even rent a home for his family because many landlords refuse to rent to Jews.  When Phil learns that Katy owns a vacant cottage, he suggests that she rent it out to Dave.  Despite her sympathy for Dave, Kathy is shocked at the suggestion.  What will the neighbors think?

Gentleman’s Agreement was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who took on the project after he was refused membership in the Los Angeles Country Club because the membership committee assumed that Zanuck was Jewish.  It was considered to be quite a controversial film in 1947, as it not only dealt with American prejudice but it also called out two prominent elected anti-Semites — Sen. Theodore Bilbo and Rep. John E. Rankin — by name.  Zanuck often claimed that the other studio moguls asked him to abandon the project, saying that a film would only inspire more of what it was trying to condemn.  Still, Zanuck stuck with the project and it was not only a box office hit but it also won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Seen today, Gentleman’s Agreement has its flaws.  In the lead role, Gregory Peck is a bit of a stiff and Elia Kazan’s directs in an efficient but bland manner.  Because this film was made in 1947 and a happy ending was a must, Kathy is given a rather convenient opportunity at redemption.  The film’s most compelling performers — John Garfield, Celeste Holm, and June Havoc (playing Phil’s Jewish secretary, who had to change her last name before anyone would even consider hiring her) — are often underused.

And yet, with all that in mind, Gentleman’s Agreement is still a very effective film.  Gentleman’s Agreement understand that there’s more to prejudice than just the morons who go to rallies or the degenerates who shout slurs across the street.  Gentleman’s Agreement understands that, for prejudice to thrive, it also needs people like Kathy or Olivia, people who have that prejudice so ingrained in their system that they don’t even think twice about it and Dorothy McGuire does a very good job of playing a self-satisfied liberal who is blind to her own prejudice.  Gentleman’s Agreement understands that bigotry isn’t just about the openly hateful.  It’s also about the people who silently tolerate it and who refuse to stand up against it.  It’s about the people who respond to prejudice not with outrage but who instead attempt to change the subject.

In the UK, one of the two major political parties has basically surrendered itself to anti-Semitism.  Here in the US, Congress can’t even bring itself to condemn the frequently anti-Semitic comments of two of its members.  Elected leaders and pundits only offer up the weakest of condemnation when Jewish people are viciously attacked in the streets.  When a man attacked a group of Jews on Hanukkah, many excused the man’s attack by trying to say that he was just upset about  gentrification.  For many reasons, Gentleman’s Agreement is still relevant and important today.

Horror on the Lens: The Failing of Raymond (dir by Boris Sagal)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Raymond (Dean Stockwell) has just escaped from a mental hospital and he has only one thing on his mind.  Raymond wants revenge.  Having looked over the past events of his life, Raymond has figured out that things started to go downhill for him when he failed a test in high school.  He blames his failure on his old teacher, Mary Bloomquist (Jane Wyman).

At the same time that Raymond is escaping, Mary is planning her retirement.  She’s decided that she no longer wants to teach.  The job just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.  But Raymond has other ideas.  Raymond wants her to give him the same test that he failed ten years before.  And this time, Raymond wants her to pass him or else.

The Failing of Raymond is a made-for-TV movie from 1971 and it features a good performance from Jane Wyman and a great one from Dean Stockwell.  The film ultimately hinges on one question.  Did Raymond really fail that test or did Mary fail Raymond?

Enjoy!