Cyrus?
He’s the one and only.
From 1979’s The Warriors (which I watched earlier tonight as a part of the #FridayNightFlix live tweet), here’s a scene that I love. Playing the role of Cyrus, the man who could bring all of the gangs of New York together, is Roger Hill. Playing the role of his assassin is the great David Patrick Kelly.
Cyrus knew what he was talking about but the world wasn’t ready for him.
Can you dig it?
I’m still struggling to get back into my non-Halloween routine of regular posting. If I remember correctly, I think I’ve had to deal with post-Horrorthon exhaustion every year since we first started the Shattered Lens. It’s worth it, though!
Fortunately, a trailer a film like Fortress can only encourage me to get back in the swing of things! Bruce Willis, Shannen Doherty, and Chad Michael Murray!? Hell yeah!
Anyway, here’s the trailer:
Georgetown is one of those films that’s been around for a while.
The movie, which is the directorial debut of Christoph Waltz. was originally filmed in 2017. It made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019, where it received respectful reviews. It played in at least some parts of Europe in 2020. But it didn’t get a limited theatrical release in America until May of 2021 and it was released on VOD just a few days later. Some of the delays in the film’s release were undoubtedly due to the uncertainty bred by the COVID lockdowns. And some of it was probably due to no one being sure how to market a true crime film about murder amongst the rich and powerful of Washington D.C. As such, Georgetown didn’t really get much attention when it was released. That’s a shame, because it’s actually a pretty good movie, a clever mix of social satire and legal drama.
Christoph Waltz not only directs but also stars as Ulrich Mott. Mott is a somewhat ludicrous figure. His past is shadowy. He claims to have served as a member of the French Foreign Legion, though his breaks down in tears after a snarky State Department official points out that none of Mott’s medals appear to be genuine. Mott claims to have a lot of powerful and influential acquaintances, even though many of them only know him because he aggressively approached them at a party and forced them to take one of his business cards. He occasionally wears a eye patch, even though he doesn’t need it. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mott announces that he has been named a brigadier general in the Iraqi army and he claims to be a lobbyist for the new government. Mott is also the head of a consulting firm called the Eminent Persons Group, which is later described as just being a Ponzi scheme for the rich and powerful.
It’s easy to make fun of Ulrich Mott but, throughout the film, we watch as he arranges dinners with men like future Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard. He meets with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He mentions the he knows George Soros. Mott is well-known among America’s elite, if not exactly respected. This is almost entirely due to his marriage to the much older Elsa Breht (Vanessa Redgrave), a journalist who is, at one point, described as being “the queen of Georgetown society.”
When the 91 year-old Elsa is discovered dead at the foot of her staircase, the police originally think that she may have just suffered from an accidental fall. Mott, however, declares that it’s obvious that Elsa was murdered by his enemies and that he will dedicate the rest of his life to tracking them down and getting justice. Meanwhile, Elsa’s daughter (played by Annette Bening) is convinced that Mott murdered her mother. The police agree and Ulrich Mott is soon on trial. Mott’s main concern is that he be allowed to wear his red beret in the courtroom. After all, it’s apart of his uniform as a brigadier general in the Iraqi army.
Flashing back and forth from the past to the present, Georgetown is primarily a character study of a man who has little talent and not much of a conscience but who does have a lot of ambition and a lot of charm. Mott works his way up into the upper channels of D.C. society through a combination of flattery and compulsive lying and Waltz gives such a charismatic performance in the lead role that you believe every minute of it. He’s appealingly vulnerable when he approaches the first clients for what will become the Eminent Persons Group and it’s hard not to sympathize with him when he breaks down in tears after being exposed, for the first time, as a fraud. However, as the film progresses, we’re left to wonder if the vulnerability and tears were genuine or if they were just another part of Ulrich Mott’s performance. Mott is both diabolically arrogant and almost compulsively self-destructive and Waltz does a great job of portraying those two seemingly conflicting sides of his personality. He’s well-matched by Vanessa Redgrave, who makes Elsa’s love for Mott feel real and credible. Watching the film, one can understand why Elsa initially believed in Mott and also why she stayed with him even as she discovered that he was never quite who he claimed to be,
Georgetown is nicely done portrait of duplicity and murder among America’s elite. It’s both sharply satiric and, in its way, rather heart-breaking. It definitely deserves more attention that it originally received.
Land tells the story of Edee, a woman who thinks that she wants to die. Edee is played by Robin Wright, who also directed the film.
Edee is dealing with a tragedy, one that the film provides clues to understanding without going into too much details. Edee has visions of a man and a child and it’s easy to figure out that they were once her family. There are other flashbacks of Edee’s sister, Emma (Kim Dickens), begging Edee not to harm herself. Edee meets with a therapist and says that she doesn’t want to share her grief with other people. She wants to deal with her grief alone, a perfectly reasonable request but no one that is likely to be understood in today’s age of social media oversharing.
When Edee drives out tp an isolated, mountain cabin, she says that she’s looking to start a new life, off the grid. However, as is quickly revealed by a conversation with the helpful Cole (Brad Leland), Edee doesn’t know anything about living in the wilderness. What’s more, she doesn’t appear to want to learn anything either. She has little interest in Cole’s advice. She asks Cole to return her rental car for her. When Cole says that it’s not a good idea to live in the mountains without some sort of a vehicle, Edee shrugs him off. She’s obviously not planning on coming down from the mountain.
Instead, she plans to die in the cabin. The sight of the man and the child, standing ghost-like in the woods, does not change her mind. And yet, when Edee finds herself with her forehead resting atop the barrel of a rifle, she cannot bring herself to pull the trigger. When she is approached by a bear, she retreats to her cabin, showing that she still has an instinct for self-preservation. (Either that, or she would just rather die in a less gruesome way than a bear attack.) Edee leaves it to nature to determine her fate. She’ll stay in the cabin and starve herself to death or she’ll let the elements take her out. It’s a plan that takes the responsibility off of her.
However, there’s a nurse named Alawa (Sarah Dawn Pledge) and a hunter named Miguel (Demien Bircher) in the area and when they discover Edee near death in her cabin, they nurse her back to health. Miguel tells her that there are better ways to die than starving herself and, in his polite but direct way, calls her out for not appreciating the fact that she has something that most other people don’t, the ability to retreat to her cabin when life gets to difficult. Miguel is recovering from his own tragedy and is also living off the grid. He offers to show Edee how to hunt and survive. Edee agrees, on the condition that he not tell her about anything that’s happening in the outside world.
The scenery looks beautiful and both Robin Wright and Demian Bircher give effective performances as two people who don’t necessarily talk a lot but who instinctively understand that they have much in common. The film is respectful of the grief that’s felt by both Edee and Miguel without descending into mawkishness or cheap dramatics. It’s a steadily-paced movie that trusts the audience to figure things out without having to spell everything out. Land is a simple film but it works.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of an actor who is very popular here at the Shattered Lens, Charles Bronson! In honor of the momentous occasion, we now pay tribute to the one and only Bronson with….
4 Shots From 4 Charles Bronson Films
Death Wish (1974, dir by Michael Winner, DP: Arthur Ormitz)
Mr. Majestyk (1974, dir by Richard Fleischer DP: Richard Kline)
Breakheart Pass (1975, dir by Tom Gries, DP: Lucien Ballard)
10 To Midnight (1983, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Adam Greenberg)
With horrorthon coming to a close for another year, I figured why not allow Conal Cochran to get in a word or two.
This is from Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Playing Conal Cochran, of course, is the great Dan O’Herlihy.
We hope you’ve all had a wonderful Halloween.
Have you ever wanted to enroll in a private school so that you could investigate a murder and maybe uncover some sort of occult conspiracy? Sure, we all have! Well, don’t worry …. there’s a place for you! Welcome to Salem Academy, an exclusive all-girl’s college where students learn all the basic subjects, along with taking courses in art and human sacrifice!
Salem Academy is overseen by the feared and intimidating Mrs. Williams (Jo Van Fleet), who keeps a close eye on her students and tries to make sure that they aren’t distracted or corrupted by any outside influences. However, not even Mrs. Williams can keep Martha Sayers (Terry Lumley) from fleeing the school and going to her sister’s house in Los Angeles. When Martha’s sister, Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin), returns home, she discovers that Martha has been hanged. The police say that it was suicide. Elizabeth believes that it’s something else.
So, Elizabeth does what any vengeance-seeking sister would do. Using an assumed name, she enrolls in Salem Academy herself. She meets and befriends three other students (played by Kate Jackson, Jamie Smith Jackson, and Cheryl Ladd). She gets to know two rather suspicious teachers, Prof. Delacroix (Lloyd Bochner) and Dr. Clampett (Roy Thinnes). She also manages to raise the concerns of Mrs. Williams, who doesn’t like the fact that the new girl keeps asking so many questions about why so many students at Salem Academy have died recently.
Still, Elizabeth continues to investigate. Perhaps the secret can be found in a mysterious painting that she comes across, one that appears to be of Martha? Perhaps the teachers and the students know more than they’re telling. But who can Elizabeth trust?
A made-for-television film from 1973, Satan’s School For Girls is frequently as silly as its name. Fortunately, the film, which was produced by Aaron Spelling and directed David Lowell Rich, seems to understand just how ludicrous it is and it totally embraces both the melodrama and the silliness of its plot. This film is totally product of the time in which it was made, from the dialogue to the hairstyles to the fashions to the ending that you’ll see coming from a mile away. At the same time, that’s also why this film is a lot of fun. It’s such a product of its time that it doubles as a time capsule. Do you want to go back to 1973? Well, go over to YouTube and watch Satan’s School For Girls. After you’ve watched it, step outside and ask anyone who the president is and they’ll probably say, “Richard Nixon.” And if you ask them who they’re favorite Brady is, they’ll look at you like your crazy because everyone know that Marcia is the best Brady. If you even have to ask, it’s obvious that you don’t really watch the show. After that, you should probably try to find a way to get back to 2021 before you change the future or something. You know how tricky time travel can be.
As for Satan’s School for Girls, it’s just a really fun movie so check it out and be sure not to be late for class!
For our final horror scene that I love of the 2021 Horrorthon, how about the ending of George Romero’s 1978 masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead?
Keep an eye out Tom Savini, going over that railing.
Look who’s back! He’s big. He’s bald. He’s now missing a bit of his face and an eye. He doesn’t look too good but still…. it’s Glenn Manning!
When we last saw Lt. Col. Glenn Manning in 1957’s The Amazing Colossal Man, he had grown to become a giant as the result of getting caught up in a nuclear blast. He had also gone totally mad and, after attempting to destroy America’s greatest city (Las Vegas, if you had to ask), he promptly fell off the Boulder Dam. Everyone assumed he was dead.
They assumed wrong.
1958’s War of the Colossal Beast (which came out a year after The Amazing Colossal Man) opens with the discovery that Glenn is still alive and he’s still wandering around in the desert. Of course, as the title suggests, he’s no longer a man. Now, he’s a crazed beast! Not only is he missing an eye and several teeth but he can no longer speak in intelligible words. Whatever bit of mind he had left when he went over the side of Boulder Dam, he lost it all when he landed.
That’s not to say that the beast that was once Glenn doesn’t have memories. In fact, a good deal of this film’s 69 minute run time is made up of flashbacks to The Amazing Colossal Man. It’s just that Glenn can’t figure out what those flashbacks mean. Perhaps it’s because Glenn is now played by an actor named Dean Parkin while the flashbacks all feature a totally different actor in the role.
Anyway, Glenn is once again captured by the army and once again, he manages to escape. This time, Glenn leaves Vegas alone and instead attacks Los Angeles and Hollywood. Spare the film industry, Glenn! It’s up to the army and Glenn’s sister to once again try to convince Glenn to stop ripping the city apart. Of course, they could just try to convince him to fall off another dam….
Like the first film, War of the Colossal Beast was directed by Bert I. Gordon. War of the Colossal Beast isn’t as much fun of The Amazing Colossal Man, largely because Glenn can no longer speak so, other than in the flashbacks to the first film, we don’t get any tortured monologues about the unfairness of it all. That said, the Colossal Beast make-up is actually pretty effective and I’m sure many kids in the 50s had nightmares about having to escape from a one-eyed giant.
War of the Colossal Beast will be best appreciated by people who have seen the first film and who are looking for some sort of closure to Glenn’s tragic growth spurt. God knows that when I first watched The Amazing Colossal Man, I went outside after it was over and I shook my hands at the sky and I shouted, “DAMN YOU! I NEED MORE GLENN!” The main lesson of these films is that you should never try to rescue anyone in the desert. If Glenn hadn’t tried to save that pilot who crashed in the nuclear testing site, Vegas and Hollywood would never have been destroyed. It’s something to think about.
First released in 1957 and beloved by B-movie lovers ever since, The Amazing Colossal Man tells the story of Lt Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan). It also tells the story of a country where bigger is automatically considered to be better but what happens when bigger leads to insanity?
In Nevada to observe the testing of America’s first plutonium bomb, Glenn panics when he sees that a small commercial plane has crashed in the test area. Glenn runs out to rescue the pilot and, not surprisingly, he ends up getting caught up in the bomb’s nuclear blast. Though he survives the initial explosion, he’s suffered severe burns and he’s not expected to live.
However, survive he does! Glenn Manning may now be totally bald but he still recovers from the burns. The only problem is that Glenn is growing now. He keeps getting bigger and bigger until eventually …. he’s colossal!
Unfortunately, becoming a giant doesn’t do much for Glenn’s overall mood. The film is rather unclear on what Glenn was like before he got dosed with radiation but afterwards, he’s kind of a jerk. He’s bitter about being so big. He’s upset that he has to live in a tent out in the middle of the desert. He resents being told that everything’s going to be okay. Worst of all, he’s reduced to wearing a really giant diaper which …. well, I don’t even what to think about it!
Eventually, Glenn gets so annoyed that he goes on a rampage, heading for Las Vegas! Realizing that America’s greatest city is in danger of being destroyed and that all the work of Bugsy Siegel will be wasted unless something can be done to stop Glenn, the military goes into action. While Glenn’s former friends try to inject him with a giant hypodermic needle (and seriously, the scene where a group of them charge at him with the needle simply has to be seen to be believed), the military tries to destroy him. As for Glenn, he just wants to visit the Boulder Dam….
As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but compare The Amazing Colossal Man to The Incredible Shrinking Man. One featured a man who became so big that he couldn’t be ignored. He got so big that he almost had no choice but to destroy everything smaller than him. Meanwhile, society had to conspire to keep him out of sight and to eventually destroy him before the rest of the world realized how small they were in comparison. Meanwhile, in The Incredible Shrinking Man, a man becomes so small that he’s forgotten and eventually, he vanishes from our world but, at the same time, he discovers a new existence and a new state of enlightenment? Is it perhaps better to be forgotten and unseen than to be known? Glenn Manning would probably think so.
Setting aside the quest for deeper meaning, The Amazing Colossal Man is pretty silly but it’s also undeniably enjoyable. It was directed by Bert I. Gordon (who was nicknamed Mr. Big because of the number of films that he made about giants) and there’s something undeniably charming about the sight of the giant Glenn towering over Vegas. Admittedly, if you’re looking for a film that realistically and sensitively explores what it would be like to be a mad giant, this isn’t the film for you. However, if you’re just looking for a short and silly movie with a giant bald man ripping up downtown Las Vegas, The Amazing Colossal Man is just what you need!
Through the Shattered Lens 