The Fabulous Forties #42: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (dir by Lewis Milestone)

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 41st film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set was the 1946 film noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. While The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is definitely a superior example of noir and features Barbara Stanwyck in one of her best femme fatale roles, the film is best remembered for being the film debut of a Hollywood icon.

In December of this year, Kirk Douglas will turn 100 years old. He is one of the few stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood left. (Olivia De Havilland is another. She’ll be turning 100 on the 1st of July.) Though he’s had his share of health issues over the past few years, it is somehow not surprising that Kirk Douglas is going to make it to a hundred. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be surprising if he lasted for another hundred after that. Regardless of how old or young he may have been at any point in his career, Kirk Douglas has always epitomized virile masculinity. Whenever you see Kirk Douglas in a film, you know that you might not like or trust his character but you definitely want him around if things start to get tough. That remains true whether you’re watching Kirk in The Bad And The Beautiful or in Holocaust 2000.

That’s why it’s interesting to see Kirk cast very much against type in his very first film. In The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Kirk Douglas plays Walter O’Neil. Walter is the district attorney of a Pennsylvania mining town called Iverstown. He is married to Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck), the niece of the widow of the man who founded Iverstown. Walter owes almost all of his success to the influence of the Ivers family and he knows it. He’s also in love with Martha but she doesn’t love him. And he knows that as well. Walter deals with his insecurity by drinking.

Walter and Martha have a secret. Seventeen years ago, Walter witnessed Martha murder her abusive aunt. (The aunt is played by Judith Anderson, the creepy housekeeper from Rebecca.) Walter helped Martha to cover up the crime, lying that he saw a burglar beat the aunt to death. As a result of their lies, an innocent man was executed for the murder.

Now, many years later, Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) has returned to Iverstown. Sam was a friend to both Martha and Walter when they were younger. Sam came from the poor section of town and ran away shortly after the death of Martha’s aunt. Walter has always suspected that Martha truly loves Sam. When Sam — now a drifter and a gambler — shows up in town, Walter fears that he knows the truth about the aunt’s death. Walter is scared that Sam is going to blackmail him. Even worse, he’s scared that Sam is going to steal Martha away from him.

Walter has reason to be worried. Having met a troubled young woman named Toni (Lizabeth Scott), Sam believe he is no longer in love with Martha. However, Martha does claim to love Sam and Sam finds himself being drawn back to her. In fact, Martha loves Sam enough to suggest that maybe he should murder Walter…

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is an entertaining melodrama, one that features great performances from Heflin, Stanwyck, and Scott. However, in the end, it’s mostly interesting because Kirk Douglas is not only making his debut in a totally atypical role but he also does a fantastic job. If The Strange Love of Martha Ivers had been made in the 50s, Kirk probably would have been cast as Sam but he’s unexpectedly perfect in the role of the angry, self-loathing, and ultimately tragic Walter.

You watch The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and, even with Kirk Douglas cast against type, you can’t help but think, “No wonder he made it to a hundred!”

The Movie That Nearly Killed The Godfather: The Brotherhood (1968, directed by Martin Ritt)

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

Brotherhood_1968 Once upon a time, Paramount Pictures released a movie about an Italian-American organized crime family.

It was a self-styled epic that used the Mafia as a metaphor for both business and politics. The movie mixed scenes of violent death with family and community ceremonies. The main mafioso was played by a famous actor who was a big box office draw in the 1950s and another character, a war hero who was initially reluctant to get involved in the family business, was played by an up-and-coming young actor. The majority of the movie took place in New York but there were several scenes that were set in Sicily.

It may sound like The Godfather but actually, it was The Brotherhood, a film that flopped so badly that Paramount executives nearly passed on the chance to make a movie out of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel. According to Peter Biskind’s The Godfather Companion, Francis Ford Coppola frequently cited The Brotherhood as being exactly the type of movie that he did not want to make while he was directing The Godfather.

Kirk Douglas, who both produced and starred, plays Frank Ginetta. Frank, an old-fashioned and honorable mobster, is hiding out in Sicily with his wife, Ida (Irene Pappas). Frank knows that a rival gangster, Jim Egan (Murray Hamilton), has put a price on his head. When Frank’s brother, Vinnie (Alex Cord), shows up in Palermo, Frank is overjoyed at first. But Ida reminds him, “They’re going to send someone.”

Most of the film is taken up with flashback to Frank and Vinnie’s old life in New York. When Vinnie returns from serving in the army, he marries Emma Bertolo (Susan Strasberg), the daughter of Don Bertolo (Luther Adler who, as a stage actor and director, served as an early mentor to the future Don Corleone, Marlon Brando). Frank grew up idolizing their Sicilian father and, at first, he is happy when Vinnie announces that he wants to enter the “family business.” But then Vinnie starts to side with non-Sicilian gangsters like Egan and Sol Levin (Alan Hewitt).

The scenes in Sicily work the best, with Frank unsure as to whether or not Vinnie has arrived to visit or to murder him. But the scenes in New York are such a mess that it took me a while to realize that they were even supposed to be flashbacks. It is hard to keep track of how much time has passed from scene to scene and Alex Cord and Kirk Douglas are two of the most unlikely brothers imaginable.

The main problem with The Brotherhood is that it is impossible to watch it without thinking about The Godfather. The Brotherhood has much in common with The Godfather but it has none of its authenticity and does not come close to matching its epic scale. Kirk Douglas tries his best and puts a lot of effort into talking with his hands but he is miscast from the moment he first appears. Robert Evans once said that he chose Coppola to direct The Godfather because he wanted to “smell the pasta.” The Brotherhood was directed by Martin Ritt and you never smell the pasta.

The Brotherhood is an interesting footnote in the history of The Godfather but ultimately, it’s an offer you can refuse.

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Steampunk Disney: 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (Walt Disney Productions 1954)

Posted on March 15, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

When TCM aired this movie last week, I just had to watch. It was one of my favorites as a kid, and I was curious to see how well it held up with the passage of time. To my delight, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is even more enjoyable in adulthood, a joyous sci-fi adventure film thanks to the fine cast and the genius of Walt Disney.

Based on the Jules Verne novel, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA takes us back to 1868, where rumors of a sea monster attacking ships are running rampant. Eminent scientist Professor Aronnax and his protégé’ Counseil are invited to join a voyage to investigate the matter, along with the free-spirited harpoonist Ned Land. They encounter the beast and are shipwrecked, only to discover the monster is actually a fantastic, futuristic submarine, The Nautilus. The sub is commanded by Captain Nemo, who picks up Aronnax, Counseil, and…

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Film Review: There Was a Crooked Man… (1970, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Jedadiah Leland

I first saw There Was A Crooked Man as a part of TCM’s tribute to the great actor Warren Oates. Warren Oates was rarely cast in the lead but, as a character actor, he appeared in supporting roles in several great films. Unfortunately, There Was A Crooked Man is not one of them.

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and written by the screenwriting team of Robert Benton and David Newman (best known for writing Bonnie and Clyde), There Was A Crooked Man is meant to be a comedic western. Outlaw Paris Pittman (Kirk Douglas) is arrested while visiting a bordello. Paris is sent to an Arizona prison, where everyone tries to get him to reveal where he has hidden the stash from a $500,000 robbery. Pittman uses everyone’s greed to manipulate them into helping him attempt to escape. Standing in Pittman’s way is the new warden, a liberal reformer played by Henry Fonda.

There Was A Crooked Man is a long movie that features a lot of familiar faces. Burgess Meredith plays The Missouri Kid, who has been in prison for so long that he is now an old man. Hume Cronyn and John Randolph play a bickering gay couple who eventually become a part of Pittman’s scheme to escape. Even Alan Hale, the skipper from Gilligan’s Island, shows up as a guard named Tobaccy! There Was A Crooked Man is a big movie but it’s also not a very good one. It’s not serious enough to be a good drama but it’s not funny enough to be a good comedy either.

At least the movie has Warren Oates going for it. Oates plays Harry Moon, a prisoner who is drafted into Pittman’s escape plot. It is a typical Warren Oates supporting role but he steals every scene that he appears in. Even in the smallest of roles, Warren Oates was worth watching and he’s the best thing about There Was A Crooked Man.

Hume Cronyn, Warren Oates, Kirk Douglas, Michael Blodgett, and John Randolph in There Was A Crooked Man

Happy Birthday Robert Mitchum: OUT OF THE PAST (RKO 1947)

Posted on August 6, 2015 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

One of my favorite actors, the laconic, iconic Robert Mitchum was born August 6, 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Rugged Robert had a wandering spirit, riding the rails in the days of the Depression, and even did time on a Georgia chain gang. Mitchum eventually ended up in California , and was bitten by the acting bug. After small roles in Laurel & Hardy comedies and Hopalong Cassidy oaters, Mitchum got noticed in a series of B-Westerns based on the novels of Zane Grey. His big break came as a tough sergeant in 1945’s THE STORY OF G.I. JOE, which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But the role that made him a star was world-weary private eye Jeff Bailey in the film noir classic OUT OF THE PAST.

We meet Bailey running a gas station in the small town of Bridgeport, California (an homage to Mitchum’s hometown, perhaps?) He has a mute…

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Embracing the Melodrama Part II #18: A Letter To Three Wives (dir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last week, I started a little series that I call Embracing The Melodrama, Part II. Over the next three weeks, I will be reviewing, in chronological order, 128 cinematic melodramas. I started this series with the 1927 silent film Sunrise and now, we have reached our 18th film, the 1949 best picture nominee, A Letter To Three Wives!

Now, I’m going to start this review by pointing out something that will probably scare off some of our readers. So, before you read the next paragraph, understand that A Letter To Three Wives is a great film that’s full of great performances and witty dialogue and you really should watch it the next time that it’s on TCM. Got all that? Okay. Good. Moving on…

A Letter To Three Wives feels a lot like a 1949 version of Desperate Housewives. Now, before you freak out, I’m talking about early Desperate Housewives as opposed to later Desperate Housewives. The similarities are actually pretty striking. Both A Letter To Three Wives and Desperate Housewives take place in an upper class suburb. Both of them deal with women who appear to have happy marriages but who are all actually dissatisfied with how their lives have turned out. Both of them are satires disguised as mystery stories. (The mystery in Desperate Housewives involved murder. The one in A Letter To Three Wives involves adultery.) Perhaps most significantly, both Desperate Housewives and A Letter To Three Wives are narrated by a snarky woman who exists largely off screen.

The narrator in A Letter To Three Wives is named Addie Ross and voiced by Celeste Holm. We never actually see Addie but we hear a lot from her and a lot about her. Apparently, every man in town has, at some point, been in love with Addie. Every woman is jealous of her. And Addie, amazingly enough, seems to have the power to know exactly what’s happening in everyone else’s marriage. At the start of A Letter To Three Wives, Addie has sent … well, a letter to three wives. In the letter, Addie explains that she’s run off with one of their husbands but she declines to reveal which husband. Each one of the wives thinks back on her marriage and wonders if her husband is the one.

Deborah (Jeanne Crain), for instance, is a country girl who met and married Bradford “Brad” Bishop (Jeffrey Lynn) during World War II. Deborah is insecure about the fact that Brad comes from an upper class background and that he was apparently engaged to marry Addie before he met Deborah.

(Here’s an interesting piece of trivia for those of you who, like me, are into true crime stories. Along with the movie character, there’s also a real-life murderer named Bradford “Brad” Bishop. Like the character in the movie, he came from an upper class background. Unlike the film character, the real Brad Bishop ended up murdering his wife, his children, and his mother and then fled to Europe. He’s been a fugitive for close to 40 years and is believed to still be alive. He’s currently on the FBI’s most wanted list.)

And then there’s Rita (Ann Sothern), who is an old friend of Brad’s. Rita is married to George. George is a quiet and intellectual English professor who is insecure over the fact that Rita, working as a soap opera writer, makes more money than he does. George is played by Kirk Douglas and, admittedly, it does take a while to get used to the idea of Kirk Douglas playing an introverted intellectual. But, once you get over the initial shock, Kirk Douglas gives a pretty good performance. Kirk may be miscast but that actually works to the film’s advantage. In a world where surface appearances hide the unexpected truth, it only makes sense that a mild college professor would look like Kirk Douglas.

My favorite wife was Lorna Mae (Linda Darnell), who grew up next to the train tracks and who pursues and eventually married a wealthy, older man (Paul Douglas). It was impossible for me not to relate to and even admire Lorna Mae. Much like me, Lorna Mae was determined to get what she wanted. Perhaps my favorite scene with Lorna Mae was when she blatantly did everything possible to get stuffy old Paul Douglas to look at her legs, largely because I’ve done the exact same thing on occasion.

A Letter To Three Wives is an entertaining and witty film that still holds up today. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz deservedly won the Best Director Oscar for his work here. The film itself was nominated for best picture but lost to All The King’s Men. I actually happen to like All The King’s Men but, if I had been an Academy voter in 1949, my vote would have totally gone to A Letter To Three Wives.

44 Days of Paranoia #39: The Fury (dir by Brian DePalma)

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For our latest entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, let’s take a look at one of the silliest films ever made, Brian DePalma’s 1978 horror/thriller hybrid The Fury.

The Fury opens on a beach in Israel. CIA veteran Peter (Kirk Douglas, who grimaces up a storm) is hanging out with his teenage son Robin (Andrew Stevens) and his friend and colleague Ben Childress (John Cassavetes). Two things quickly become apparent.

First off, Robin has psychic powers. We know this because Peter is obsessed with protecting him from being captured by a shadowy government agency that wants to use his power as a weapon.

And secondly, Ben is evil. We know that Ben’s evil because he’s played by John Cassavetes. As one of the first truly independent filmmakers, Cassavetes would often raise the money to make his fiercely individualistic films by playing villains in bad B-movies, like this one.

Ben, in fact, is so evil that he’s arranged for terrorists to attack the beach. After Peter is apparently killed in a ludicrously violent gunfight, Ben takes off with Robin.

However, Peter is not dead! Somehow, despite the fact that both the beach and the ocean were pretty much blown up with him on it, Peter survived and now, he’s looking for his son. Peter makes his way to Chicago where he calls up his girlfriend, Hester (Carrie Snodgress), and says things like, “I want your body, baby.”

Hester, meanwhile, works at the Paragon Clinic, which is run by Dr. James McKeever (Charles Durning) who, himself, is secretly working for Ben. The Paragon Clinic is a front to try to discover other teenage psychics and to turn them into weapons as well. The newest patient is Gillian (Amy Irving), a teenage girl who might be able to help Peter track down his son.

Of course, what Peter doesn’t take into account is that, in his absence, Robin has turned into a power-mad sociopath who spends his time doing things like killing tourists at amusing parks…

Wow, that’s a lot of plot, isn’t it? And, with all of that, I haven’t even gotten into what happens during the second half of the film!

The Fury is an enjoyably silly film, an awkward attempt to combine DePalma’s previous film, Carrie, with a paranoia-fueled political thriller. There’s a certain charm to a film that takes itself so seriously and yet, at the same time, manages to be totally over-the-top and ludicrous.

For example, just consider the performances of the high-powered cast and the fact that none of the actors appear to be acting in the same film. Playing a character who is a bit of a hero by default (because, seriously, how stupid did he have to be to not realize that Ben was evil to begin with), Kirk Douglas grimaces so manfully that Peter’s stupidity almost starts to feel like a satiric comment on hyper-masculinity. John Cassavetes, on the other hand, is so disdainful of the film that he actually rolls his eyes while delivering some of his more melodramatic lines. Meanwhile, Carrie Snodgress is forced to say things like, “Here comes the Pony Express!” and Charles Durning brings the full weight of his talent to deliver lines like, “If you’re having your monthlies, I don’t want you near the patient.”

And finally, there’s Amy Irving. In DePalma’s Carrie, Irving played Sue Snell, the sole survivor of a psychic rampage. In The Fury, Irving gets to play the psychic and she gives such a dramatic and emotional performance that you almost get the idea that she was trying to challenge Sissy Spacek. “This is how you play a psychic, Sissy!” she seems to be shouting. Of course, the big difference is that Carrie was actually a good film whereas The Fury is a bad film that happens to be watchable.

Finally, no review of The Fury is complete without talking about Brian DePalma’s direction. To put it lightly, Brian DePalma directs the Hell out of The Fury and the effect is something like what an episode of Agents of SHIELD would look like if directed by Martin Scorsese. The entire film is a collection of tracking shots, zoom lenses, and sweeping overhead shots with the camera only stopping long enough to linger over scenes of violence and spilled blood. In perhaps the film’s most ludicrous scene, Amy Irving runs away from the clinic in slow motion while the orchestral score plays out on the soundtrack. We get close-ups of Irving’s face and close-ups of the faces of her pursuers. One character gets shot multiple times but we don’t hear the gunshots. Instead, we only hear the music and watch as the character overacts and dies in slow motion. It’s almost as if DePalma was trying to win a bet by achieving the most counter-productive use of slow motion in film history.

Ultimately, The Fury is so thoroughly silly and over-the-top that it simply has to be seen.

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44 Days Of Paranoia #20: Seven Days In May (dir by John Frankenheimer)

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, let’s take a look at the 1964 political thriller, Seven Days In May.

Directed by John Frankenheimer (who also directed the conspiracy classic, The Manchurian Candidate), Seven Days In May opens with unpopular President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) on the verge of signing a treaty with the Russians. The chairman of the joint chiefs-of-staff, Gen. James Scott (Burt Lancaster), is opposed to the treaty and feels that Lyman’s actions will lead to the collapse of the U.S. When Scott’s aide, Jiggs Casey (Kirk Douglas), thinks that he’s come across evidence that Scott is planning a military coup, he takes his suspicions to the White House. Working with an alcoholic Senator (Edmond O’Brien) and a cynical political aide (Martin Balsam), the President launches his own investigation into Scott’s activities.

When it was first released, Seven Days In May was very successful with both critics and audiences. Edmond O’Brien even received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. When viewed today, however, Seven Days In May feels rather quaint. A good deal of the film’s suspense was meant to be generated by the question of whether or not Gen. Scott is actually planning a coup. However, for the modern viewer, it’s really not a question worth asking. For us, it’s easy to watch this film and shout, “Of course he’s planning on overthrowing the government! He’s the most obviously villainous character in the entire film!” The idea of a military conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government was perhaps shocking back in 1964 but today, we take the existence of such conspiracies for granted.

Seven Days In May is definitely a product of its time. Unlike John Frankenheimer’s other well-known conspiracy film, The Manchurian Candidate, there’s no sly undercurrent of satire or subversion running through Seven Days In May. Instead, Seven Days In May epitomizes everything that we think of when we think about the early 60s. The film’s politics are liberal but not radically so. The President is such an honorable leader that he won’t resort to the politics of personal destruction and reveal that Scott has a mistress. Casey explains that he disagrees with the President’s politics but that he is bound by duty to reveal Gen. Scott’s subversion. Indeed, by the end of the film, it’s obvious that we’re meant to condemn Scott not because he might overthrow the President but because he would subvert the democratic process to do so. Seven Days In May is a film that tells viewers to support and respect their elected leaders, whether they be good or evil and whether they’re played by Fredric March or Burt Lancaster.

When I listened to Casey explain why he was informing on a man who he claimed to admire and agree with, I was reminded of some of the recent political debates that we’ve had deal with her in America. All of those debates can pretty much be summed up by whether we, as citizens, are obligated to support a law even if we personally don’t agree with it or to respect a leader even if we do not agree with him. The answer, according to Seven Days In May, would appear to be yes.

While Seven Days In May is often a bit too ponderous for its own good, it’s still a well-made and watchable film. If you’re a history nerd like me, you’ll enjoy the film as a portrait of its time. John Frankenheimer directs as if the movie is a film noir and the film’s shadowy black-and-white cinematography looks great. Finally, if you’re a fan of the old school movie stars, how can you not enjoy a film that features Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, and Burt Lancaster?

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Lisa Marie Reviews The Oscar Winners: The Bad and the Beautiful (dir by Vincente Minnelli)

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What can I say about The Bad and the Beautiful?

Released in 1952 and directed by Vincente Minnelli, The Bad and the Beautiful is arguably one of the greatest films ever made. It’s certainly one of my favorite films.

Perhaps appropriately, The Bad and the Beautiful is a film about the movies.

Jonathan Shields (played in a truly amazing performance by Kirk Douglas) is a legendary film producer. He’s won Oscars, he’s got a reputation for being a genius, and, as the film begins, he is one of the most hated men in Hollywood. It’s been years since Shields made a succesful film but he thinks that he’s finally come up with a movie that can put him back on top. His assistant, Harry Pebbel (played with a weary dignity by Walter Pidgeon), invites Hollywood’s best director, actress, and screenwriter to a meeting and he proceeds to spend the rest of the film trying to convince them to help Jonathan make his comeback.

The only problem is that all three of them hate Jonathan Shields and have sworn that they’ll never work with him again. Through the use of flashbacks, we see how each of them first met Jonathan and how each eventually came to despise him.

Director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) first met Jonathan when Jonathan hired him to pretend to be a mourner at his father’s funeral. With Jonathan’s help, Fred moves up from directing B-movies to finally getting a chance to make his dream movie, an adaptation of a believably pretentious novel called The Far Off Mountain. With Jonathan’s help, Fred even gets womanizing film star Gaucho Ribera (a hilariously vain Gilbert Roland) to agree to star in Fred’s movie. Jonathan also introduces Fred to Georgia (Lana Turner), the alcoholic daughter of Jonathan’s mentor.

Jonathan eventually makes Georgia into a film star and Georgia falls in love with him. Of all the major actresses of the 1950s, Lana Turner seems to get the least amount of respect from film historians. She’s more remembered today as the epitome of glamour and scandal but, in The Bad and the Beautiful, Turner gives one of the best performances of her career. In her best scene, Georgia has a nervous breakdown while driving in the rain and, for those few minutes, you forget that you’re watching an iconic film star. Instead, you’re just amazed by the performance.

Finally, the screenwriter is James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), an intellectual novelist who is brought to Hollywood by Jonathan. While the reluctant Bartlow finds himself being seduced by J0nathan, his flighty wife (Gloria Grahame) is seduced by Gaucho.

The Bad and the Beautiful is perhaps one of the few perfect movies ever made, a film that qualifies as both art and entertainment. There are so many reasons why I love this film that its hard for me to describe them all. The film snob in me loves the fact that Minnelli directed The Bad and the Beautiful as if it were a classic black-and-white film noir. The entire film is lit and shot to emphasize shadows and moral ambiguity. As played by Kirk Douglas, Jonathan Shields is as seductive and dangerous a figure as Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. My inner film historian loves the fact that the film is full of barely disguised portraits of real life Hollywood figures like David O. Selznick, Val Lewton, Alfred Hitchcock, and Diane Barrymore. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, my girly girl side loves that this film is basically a big melodramatic soap opera. Lana Turner’s outfits are to die for and Jonathan Shields is the ultimate bad boy that we can’t help but love.

The Bad and the Beautiful received 6 Oscar nominations but it wasn’t nominated for best picture. (This snub is all the more surprising when you consider what the Academy did name as the best picture of 1952 — Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth.) Out of those six nominations, the Bad and the Beautiful won five Oscars. (Of all the film’s nominees, only Kirk Douglas failed to win.) As of this writing, The Bad and the Beautiful still holds the record for most Oscars won by a film that failed to be nominated for best picture.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: Eddie Macon’s Run (dir. by Jeff Kanew)

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, as morning slowly approached, I curled up on the couch in my comfy Hello Kitty bathrobe and turned the TV over to the Retro Channel, where I watched a film from 1983. The name of that film? Eddie Macon’s Run.

Why Was I Watching It?

The short answer is insomnia. The long answer is that, when I checked the guide to see what was on TV at 3 in the morning, Eddie Macon’s Run was the only film listed that I had never heard of before. Since my life’s goal is to see every single film ever made, I knew I would have to watch this mysterious Eddie Macon’s Run at some point so I figured, “Why not tonight?”

What Was It About?

Eddie Macon’s running! Okay, well, there’s actually a little more to it than that…

Eddie (played by John Schneider, who has appeared in countless SyFy films) is a nice, blue-collar guy who finds himself wrongly imprisoned in Hunstville, Texas. During the prison rodeo, Eddie manages to escape and soon, he’s running down to Mexico where his wife and son are waiting. Kirk Douglas plays the cop who chases Eddie across Texas. Whenever Douglas shows up on screen, we hear a saxophone playing on the soundtrack. Scenes of Eddie thinking about his family are accompanied by country songs that, the credits reveal, were sung by John Schneider. Yes, it’s that type of film.

What Worked?

To be honest, the main thing that worked for me about this film is that it was shot on location in rural South Texas. That’s the same part of Texas that my mom grew up in and whenever I would bug her to tell me a story about when she was “my age,” the stories always took place in South Texas and I always enjoy seeing it in films (even if that film, as in the case of this one, goes out of its way to make South Texas seem like the 9th circle of Hell).

John Schneider, all hot and sexy here, gave a surprisingly good performance.

Kirk Douglas, meanwhile, didn’t really give that good of a performance but my God, that man could grimace with the best of them.

A kind of youngish John Goodman shows up for about 2 minutes and the whole process of going, “Oh my God, is that John Goodman!? I think that is John Goodman!” provided a nice break from the film’s general monotony.

What Did Not Work?

This is one of those films that, though it was filmed in Texas, was obviously made by Yankees. As such, the movie is full of actors who were obviously imported from up north and who are painful to listen to as they attempt to recreate the accents of South Texas.

The film, itself, moved about as slowly as the sun going down over the flat plains in North Texas. Seriously — for a film that featured nonstop running and Kirk Douglas finding about a hundred different ways to clench his jaw, Eddie Macon’s Run sure was boring. There’s a scene where Eddie is menaced by two ranchers and I swear to God, it seemed to last for a few hours.

It also quickly became apparent that the only way for the film’s plot to be believable was for every single character in the film to be a complete idiot.

“Oh My God! Just Like Me!” Moment

Eddie eventually meets the niece of the governor of Texas (played by Lee Purcell) and she agrees to help Eddie run because it’s “just a slow Wednesday.” That’s totally why I would get involved with an escaped fugitive as well.

Lessons Learned

Give me a couch and put me in a Hello Kitty bathrobe and I’ll watch anything.