I’m a big fan of the novels and short stories of Edgar Award-winning writer Donald E. Westlake , named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. His comic-laced crime capers featuring master planner Dortmunder were well suited for films and the first book in the series, THE HOT ROCK, was filmed by Peter Yates in 1972 with Robert Redford as the mastermind. Two years later came BANK SHOT, the second Dortmunder novel, starring George C. Scott but changing the character’s name to Walter Ballentine due to legal issues. Dortmunder or Ballentine, BANK SHOT is a zany film with a fine cast of actors that deserves another look.
Ballentine is doing life in Warden “Bulldog” Streiger’s maximum security prison, but when his shady “lawyer” and confidant Al G. Karp visits with an idea for a new “shot”, the hardened criminal makes his escape. Karp needs Ballentine’s expertise to plan the robbery of Mission Bell…
San Francisco in the 1970s. Revolution is in the air. Hippies are on every street corner. A man named Gus Niles knows that he’s being tailed by an off-duty cop, Dave Evans. Gus boards a city bus, knowing that Evans will follow him. On the bus, an unseen gunman suddenly opens fire with an M3 submachine gun, not only killing both Evans and Gus but six other people as well. After the bus crashes, the gunman calmly departs. At first, it is assumed that the massacre was another random mass shooting, like Charles Whitman in Austin or Mark Essex in New Orleans. But one San Francisco detective is convinced that it wasn’t random at all.
The Laughing Policeman was one of the many police procedurals to be released after the box office success of Dirty Harry and The French Connection and, despite the name, it’s also one of the grimmest. While the complex mystery behind why Evans was following Gus and who killed everyone on the bus is intriguing, The Laughing Policeman‘s main focus is on the often frustrating nitty gritty of the investigation, complete with false leads, uncooperative witnesses, unanswerable questions, and detectives who frequently make stupid mistakes. The movie’s first fifteen minutes are devoted to the police processing the bus, with Stuart Rosenberg (best known for directing Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke) using overlapping dialogue to give the entire scene a documentary feel. As Detective Jake Martin, Walter Matthau is even more cynical and downbeat than usual while Bruce Dern provides good support as a younger, more volatile detective. The supporting cast is full of 70s character actors, like Lou Gossett, Anthony Zerbe, Gregory Sierra,and playing perhaps the sleaziest drug dealer ever seen in an American movie, Paul Koslo.
The Laughing Policeman was based on a Swedish novel that took place in Stockholm but, for the movie, Swedish Detective Martin Beck became world-weary Sgt. Jake Martin and Stockholm became San Francisco. Rosenberg directed the entire film on location, giving The Laughing Policeman the type of realistic feeling that would later be duplicated by TV shows like Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and Law & Order. Though it may not be as well-known as either Dirty Harry or The French Connection, The Laughing Policeman is a dark and tough police procedural, an underrated classic of the genre.
Incidentally, The Laughing Policeman was one of the first films for which character actor Bruce Dern shared top billing. According to Dern’s autobiography, Matthau generously insisted that Dern be credited, with him, above the title.
With the success of films like WHITE LIGHTING, CANNONBALL, DEATH RACE 2000, and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (not to mention the continuing fascination with Evel Knenevel), movies revolving around stunts and stuntmen were big box office in the 1970’s. New Line Cinema took note and produced STUNTS, a murder mystery about stuntmen being killed off that gives us a behind-the-scenes look at low-budget filmmaking in addition to a good cast and well-staged action.
When stuntman Greg Wilson’s hanging from a helicopter gag goes horribly awry, resulting in him plummeting to his death, his brother Glen arrives on the set determined to do the stunt himself and investigate Greg’s demise. Along the way he picks up B.J. Parswell, an attractive reporter doing a story on stuntmen. Glen’s fellow stuntmen start getting picked off one by one in gruesome “accidents”, and he must find the killer before he becomes next.
After I finished up my review of Seeds of Yesterday, it was time to rewatch and review A Mother Betrayed. Last Sunday, A Mother Betrayed premiered on Lifetime. I watched it and I had a lot of fun live-tweeting it. Seriously, it’s a fun movie.
The plot may, at first, sound similar to Dangerous Company but A Mother Betrayed quickly establishes it own nicely berserk identity. When we first meet Monica (Lynn Collins) and Jonathan (David Paetku), they’re standing on the beach and declaring their love for each other. Since this is a Lifetime movie, we know that early declarations of undying love will only lead to tragedy. Sure enough, Monica and Jonathan are soon in a car accident. Monica, who was pregnant at the time, survives. Jonathan does not.
Just forward 3 years and Monica is now a single mother who is obsessed with her job (she’s in charge of an architectural firm) and her daughter, Maddy (Ariella and Isabella Nurkovic). At a party, her assistant, Lisa (Bree Williamson) introduces her to a single man named Kevin (Adam Kaufman). Within a few minutes of meeting, Monica and Kevin are in love. Ignoring the concerns of her mother (Joanna Cassidy), Monica marries Kevin. Kevin adopts Maddy and appears to be both the perfect father and the perfect husband.
But is he!?
Well, the name of the movie is A Mother Betrayed…
It turns out that Kevin has plans of his own and Lisa, the perfect assistant, is a part of them. Of course, what’s interesting is that Maddy is a part of Kevin’s scheme as well. No, Maddy is not conspiring against her mother. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Kevin really does love Maddy and he actually is a pretty good father. He wants to take over Monica’s business because he’s greedy but he wants custody of Maddy because he appears to genuinely love her. That plot development brings an unexpected amount of depth to this Lifetime movie.
(And other plot development that I, speaking as an administrative assistant who happens to be named Lisa, appreciated was that the movie’s Lisa actually made a pretty good point when she eventually taunted Monica by pointing out that Lisa was doing a better job running the company than Monica ever did. Up to that point, everything that we had seen in the movie seemed to indicate that Lisa was correct. Between Kevin’s parenting and Lisa’s efficiency, the villains of A Mother Betrayed were nicely nuanced.)
Much as in Dangerous Company, Monica soon finds herself suffering from terrible headaches, forgetfulness, and even hallucinations. Kevin arranges for Monica to be committed because, in the tradition of all paranoia thrillers, literally everyone appears to be in on the plot — even the doctors!
However, Monica is not alone! She starts to see Jonathan. Is she hallucinating or has his spirit really returned to help her?
A Mother Betrayed was a lot of fun and I recommend it to everyone who wants to watch an enjoyably over-the-top Lifetime melodrama. The entire cast does a pretty good job, with Adam Kaufman even managing to generate some sympathy for the duplicitous Kevin. (Seriously, Kevin is so good with Maddy!)
Finally, on a strictly personal note, there’s no way that I couldn’t appreciate a film that features an administrative assistant named Lisa. Finally, a character to which I could relate!
Seriously though, Lifetime replays their movies constantly. A Mother Betrayed is one to keep an eye out for.
The great character actor Warren Oates appeared in a lot of fairly obscure movies but none are as obscure as Prime Time.
With a running time of barely 70 minutes, Prime Time is a comedic sketch film that was meant to capitalize on the then-recent success of The Groove Tube, Tunnelvision, The Kentucky Friend Movie, and the first season of Saturday Night Live. According to the Unknown Movies Page, Prime Time was financed independently and was picked up for distribution by Warner Bros. After the Warner execs saw the finished film, they decided it was unreleasable so the film’s production team sold the film to Cannon Pictures, who were famous for being willing to release anything. The movie played in a few cities under the terrible title American Raspberry and then went straight to VHS obscurity.
Sketch comedies are usually hit-and-miss and Prime Time is definitely more miss than hit. The majority of the film is made up of commercial parodies but, since most of the commercials being parodied are no longer on the air, the humor has aged terribly. There is also a wrap-around story. The President (George Furth) and a general (Dick O’Neill) try to figure out where the commercial parodies are coming from and stop them before the broadcast leads to a riot. There are a few funny bits (including Harry Shearer as a stranded trucker looking for a ride and Kinky Friedman singing a song about “Ol’ Ben Lucas who has a lot of mucus”) but, for the most part, the film is epitomized by a skit where people literally get shit dumped on their head. The film’s opens with an incredibly racist commercial for Trans Puerto Rican Airlines and it’s all downhill from there.
As for Warren Oates, he appears in an early skit. He and Robert Ridgely (best known for playing Col. James in Boogie Nights) play hunters who take part in the Charles Whitman Celebrity Invitational, climbing to the top of the Tower on the University of Texas campus and shooting at the people below. It’s even less funny now than it probably was in 1977.
How did Warren Oates end up in a movie like Prime Time? Even great actors have bills to pay. As for Prime Time, it is the one Warren Oates film that even the most dedicated Warren Oates fan won’t regret missing.
In 1988, the same year that he was forcing Michael J. Fox to snort cocaine in Bright Lights, Big City, Kiefer Sutherland played a far different role in the film 1969.
As you might guess from the film’s title, 1969 takes place in 1969. Scott (Kiefer Sutherland) and Ralph (Robert Downey, Jr.) have just graduated from high school and are facing a future that involves either going to college or going to Vietnam. Scott’s older brother, Alden (Christopher Wynne), has already enlisted in the army and has made their father, Cliff (Bruce Dern), proud in a way that Scott knows he will never be able to match.
So, Scott and Ralph make plans to go to college together and basically stay there until the war ends. But, needless to say, things don’t work out as perfectly as Scott assumed that they would. Scott and Ralph spend the summer on a road trip, during which time they meet the usual collection of hippies and fascists who always populate films like this. They also discover that they have less in common than they thought. Scott is an idealist who is convinced that he can change the world. Ralph is far more fatalistic, a cynic who hides his pain behind a constant stream of sarcasm.
When Ralph is kicked out of school (and loses his draft deferment as a result), Alden is killed in Vietnam and Scott sees his father in a potentially compromising position with Ralph’s mother (Joanne Cassidy) (on the night of the moon landing no less!), the disillusioned Scott feels that he has to take action. With the help of Ralph and Ralph’s sister, Beth (Winona Ryder), Scott breaks into the local draft office and tries to destroy all the records.
Now, if you guessed that the police arrive and that Scott and Beth eventually find themselves in a van, driving for the Canadian border, then you’ve probably seen countless other films that were set in the same year as 1969…
1969 is a rather predictable film but, at the same time, it’s likable in much the same way that a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond is likable. It’s not something you really need to watch but, if you do watch it, you won’t necessarily be filled with regret. I imagine that one reason why 1969 tends to show up on networks like Antenna and This TV so much is precisely because it is such a thoroughly inoffensive little movie.
The film also features some above average performances. It’s not surprising that Robert Downey, Jr. and Winona Ryder both give good performances because, to a large extent, their characters mirror their own public personas. But, considering that he’s best known for playing Jack Bauer in 24, it’s still somewhat surprising to see a much younger Kiefer Sutherland playing such an essentially gentle character and being totally convincing in the role. (He already had that sexy growl of a voice, however.) And finally, the film’s best performance comes from Bruce Dern. Eternally befuddled and confused by the changes around him, Cliff is ultimately the film’s most sympathetic character, even if he wasn’t originally meant to be.
And needless to say, considering that the film is called 1969, it’s got a great soundtrack!
Much like yesterday’s offering of Summer of Fear, today’s horror on the lens is a made-for-tv movie directed by Wes Craven.
First televised in 1984, Invitation to Hell is a wonderfully over-the-top depiction of what happens when an engineer (Robert Urich) sells out and goes to work for a big evil corporation. Long story short, Satan (in the form of Susan Lucci) takes over his family. Admittedly, this film does start slowly but, in the end, it’s a lot of fun.
Through the Shattered Lens 