Film Review: The Don Is Dead (dir by Richard Fleischer)

Posted on January 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“The Don is Dead!” shouts the title of this 1973 film and it’s not lying.

After the powerful and respect leader of the Regalbuto crime family dies, the Mafia’s governing body meets in Las Vegas to debate who should be allowed to take over the family’s operations. Frank Regalbuto (a smoldering Robert Forster) wants to take over the family but it’s agreed that he’s still too young and hot-headed. Instead, control of the family is given Don Angelo DiMorra (Anthony Quinn), an old school Mafia chieftain who everyone agrees is a man of respect. Don DiMorra will serve as a mentor to Frank while Frank’s main enforcers, The Fargo Brothers, will be allowed to operate independently with the understanding that they will still respond if the mob needs them to do a job. Tony Fargo (Forrest) wants to get out of the rackets all together while his older brother, Vince (Al Lettieri), remains loyal to the old ways of doing things.

Frank is not happy with the arrangement but he has other things to worry about. He knows that there’s a traitor in his family. While he and the Fargo brothers work to uncover the man’s identity so that they can take their revenge, Don Angelo falls in love with a Vegas showgirl named Ruby Dunne (Angel Tompkins). However, Ruby is engaged to marry Frank and, when Frank returns from taking care of the traitor, he is tipped off as to what has been happening in his absence. Frank goes crazy, nearly beating Ruby to death. Don Angelo declares war on Frank and the Fargo brothers are forced to decide which side they’ll serve.

In the 1970s, almost every crime film was either a rip-off of The French Connection or The Godfather. The Don Is Dead is unique in that it attempts to rip off both of them at the same time. The film opens French Connection-style with a couple of hoods trying to double-cross Frank during a drug deal, leading to shoot-out. (Keep an eye out for Sid Haig as one of Frank’s men.) The film is full of scenes that are meant to duplicate the gritty feel of The French Connection though, needless to say, none of them are directed with the cinema verité intensity that William Friedkin brought to that classic film. Meanwhile, Anthony Quinn plays a character who is very much reminiscent of Don Vito Corleone, even pausing at one point to tell Frank that “drugs are a dirty business.” The Godfather‘s Abe Vigoda and Al Lettieri show up in supporting roles and Robert Forster gives a performance that owes more than a little to James Caan’s Oscar-nominated turn as Sonny Corleone. (Interestingly enough, both Quinn and Forster were among the many actors considered for roles in The Godfather.)

Unfortunately, the film itself is slowly-paced and never really draws us into the plot. Director Richard Fleischer, who directed a lot of films without ever developing a signature style, brings none of the intensity that William Friedkin brough to The French Connection nor can he duplicate Francis Ford Coppola’s operatic grandeur. The Don is Dead plays out like a particularly violent made-for-TV movie. There’s a lot of talented people in the cast but they’re defeated by thinly drawn characters. Robert Evans often said that Coppola was hired to direct The Godfather because, as an Italian-American, he would bring an authenticity to the material that a non-Italian director would not be able to do. The Don Is Dead would seem to indicate that Evans knew what he was talking about.

Film Review: The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir by George Stevens)

Posted on April 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1965 biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told, tells the story of the life of Jesus, from the Nativity to the Ascension. It’s probably the most complete telling of the story that you’ll ever find. It’s hard to think of a single details that’s left out and, as a result, the film has a four hour running time. Whether you’re a believer or not, that’s a really long time to watch a reverent film that doesn’t even feature the campy excesses of something like The Ten Commandments.

(There’s actually several different version of The Greatest Story Ever Told floating around. There’s a version that’s a little over two hours. There’s a version that’s close to four hours. Reportedly, the uncut version of the film ran for four hour and 20 minutes.)

Max von Sydow plays Jesus. On the one hand, that seems like that should work because Max von Sydow was a great actor who gave off an otherworldly air. On the other hand, it totally doesn’t work because von Sydow gives an oddly detached performance. The Greatest Story Ever Told was von Sydow’s first American film and, at no point, does he seem particularly happy about being involved with it. von Sydow is a very cerebral and rather reserved Jesus, one who makes his points without a hint of passion or charisma. When he’s being friendly, he offers up a half-smile. When he has to rebuke his disciples for their doubt, he sounds more annoyed than anything else. He’s Jesus if Jesus was a community college philosophy professor.

The rest of the huge cast is populated with familiar faces. The Greatest Story Ever Told takes the all-star approach to heart and, as a result, even the minor roles are played by actors who will be familiar to anyone who has spent more than a few hours watching TCM. Many of them are on screen for only a few seconds, which makes their presence all the more distracting. Sidney Poitier shows up as Simon of Cyrene. Pat Boone is an angel. Roddy McDowall is Matthew and Sal Mineo is Uriah and John Wayne shows up as a centurion and delivers his one line in his trademark drawl.

A few of the actors do manage to stand out and make a good impression. Telly Savalas is a credible Pilate, playing him as being neither smug nor overly sympathetic but instead as a bureaucrat who can’t understand why he’s being forced to deal with all of this. Charlton Heston has just the right intensity for the role of John the Baptist while Jose Ferrer is properly sleazy as Herod. In the role Judas, David McCallum looks at the world through suspicious eyes and does little to disguise his irritation with the rest of the world. The Greatest Story Ever Told does not sentimentalize Judas or his role in Jesus’s arrest. For the most part, he’s just a jerk. Finally, it’s not exactly surprising when Donald Pleasence shows up as Satan but Pleasence still gives a properly evil performance, giving all of his lines a mocking and often sarcastic bite.

The Greatest Story Ever Told was directed by George Stevens, a legitimately great director who struggles to maintain any sort of narrative momentum in this film. Watching The Greatest Story Ever Told, it occurred to me that the best biblical films are the ones like Ben-Hur and The Robe, which both largely keep Jesus off-screen and instead focus on how his life and teachings and the reports of his resurrection effected other people. Stevens approaches the film’s subject with such reverence that the film becomes boring and that’s something that should never happen when you’re making a film set in Judea during the Roman era.

I do have to admit that, despite all of my criticism of the film, I do actually kind of like The Greatest Story Ever Told. It’s just such a big production that it’s hard not to be a little awed by it all. That huge cast may be distracting but it’s still a little bit fun to sit there and go, “There’s Shelley Winters! There’s John Wayne! There’s Robert Blake and Martin Landau!” That said, as far as biblical films are concerned, you’re still better off sticking with Jesus Christ Superstar.

The First Police Story: Slow Boy (1973, directed by William A. Graham)

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

Long before The Wire, Homicide, Chicago PD, NYPD Blue, or even Hill Street Blues, there was Police Story.

Co-created by cop-turned-writer Joseph Wambaugh, Police Story aired on NBC from 1973 to 1978. It was an anthology series, with each episode following a different member of the LAPD as they deal with crime and social issues in Los Angeles. For its time, it was ground-breaking in its realistic approach to the life and work of the police. Interestingly, the show wasn’t always blindly pro-cop. Often the cops featured were deeply flawed and the war on crime was frequently portrayed to be unwinnable. Over the course of its run, Police Story was a regular Emmy nominee and won the award for Best Drama Series in 1976.

Police Story started, in 1973, with a two-hour TV movie. At the time it aired, the pilot was called Stakeout but it has since aired in syndication under the title Slow Boy. Vic Morrow stars as Sgt. Joe LaFrieda, a plainclothes detective who can’t keep his marriage together but who can take criminals off the street. LaFrieda is the second-in-command of a special squad of detectives who specialize in watching and taking down high-profile criminals. Their methods frequently come close to entrapment but they usually work. Their current target is Slow Boy (Chuck Conners), the son of a mafia chieftain, who enjoys robbing stores. When LaFrieda’s first attempt to put Slow Boy in jail is thwarted by a liberal judge and departmental bureaucracy, he and the squad come up with a second, less-than-legal plan to take Slow Boy down.

Considering the involvement of Joseph Wambaugh, it’s no surprise that plot is secondary to exploring the day-to-day lives of the blue-collar cops trying to take Slow Boy down. The heart of the movie is in the scenes of the cops shooting the breeze and trying to keep each other amused during length shakeouts. Their humor is often grim and the fascinating dialogue is cynical, dark, and, even by today’s standards, surprisingly raw. One of the detectives (played by Harry Guardino, who specialized in loud-mouth city cops) is an unapologetic racist. Though he gets a comeuppance of sorts, the way the film and the rest of his squad handle his racism will undoubtedly make modern audiences uncomfortable, even if it is authentic to the era in which Slow Boy was made.

The underrated Vic Morrow gives one of his best performances as the tough but sympathetic LaFrieda, who is bad at everything but his job. He is ably supported by a host of familiar character actors. Ed Asner plays LaFrieda’s reactionary lieutenant while Sandy Baron is great in the role of an informant. Diane Baker was also perfectly cast as LaFrieda’s potential girlfriend. (She first meets the detective while Slow Boy is holding a gun to her head.) Finally, Chuck Conner is as intimidating as always as the sadistic Slow Boy.

Slow Boy is a tough and uncompromising police procedural and it provided a great start for Police Story. Reruns of Police Story currently air on H&I on Sunday morning.