Actor Richard Thomas turns 74 years old today. He’s especially important to me because of two specific roles. First, he co-starred with my favorite actor Charles Bronson in the 1991 Christmas movie, YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS. Along with IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, I watch YES VIRGINIA every year during the Christmas season. Second, he filmed a movie in central Arkansas back in 1977 called SEPTEMBER 30, 1955. Part of the movie was filmed along the Arkansas River in Toad Suck, AR. This is the community I grew up in, and my parents still live there. As a matter of fact, I’ll be spending Father’s Day with my Dad in Toad Suck. In my “scene of the day,” I share a scene from SEPTEMBER 30, 1955 where Thomas’ character learns of the fatal car crash of James Dean. Notice in the scene that his shirt has the initials ASTC, which stands for Arkansas State Teachers College. My dad received his teaching degree from ASTC. This college is now called The University of Central Arkansas (UCA), and that’s where I received my Finance Degree. The entire scene is filmed on the campus of UCA, and I’ve played tennis on those courts many times. I’ve attended football games at that stadium. The campus has been completely updated since this move was filmed in 1977, but it still looked a lot like that when I began my college years in 1991. It’s a trip down memory lane for me.
Happy 71st Birthday to Dennis Quaid. He’s been in a lot of good movies over the years, but I’m quite partial to a movie he made in 1977 called SEPTEMBER 30, 1955. He stars alongside Richard Thomas, Tom Hulce, Susan Tyrrell, Deborah Benson and Lisa Blount. The movie is about a group of friends at the Arkansas State Teachers College, which is my Alma mater the University of Central Arkansas, who deal with the death of James Dean. It’s a good movie that was filmed all around central Arkansas, including my home community of Toad Suck, Arkansas. In the picture above he’s sitting on a “beach” along the Arkansas River in Toad Suck. I’ve been there many times. The movie was written and directed by the talented Arkansan James Bridges, of THE PAPER CHASE and URBAN COWBOY fame. It’s a film well worth searching out. I’ve included the trailer below.
Since Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people, I’m introducing #SundayShorts, a weekly mini review about a movie I’ve recently watched.
In BLIND FURY, Rutger Hauer does his best Zatoichi impersonation in a loose remake of a 1967 Japanese film called ZATOICHI CHALLENGED. The movie’s strongest quality is its ability to be both a kickass action film and a comic action film. That’s a fine line to walk and BLIND FURY does it exceedingly well.
Fast Facts:
Star Rutger Hauer is probably the greatest Dutch actor of all time where he often starred in the films of director Paul Verhoeven. My favorite of Hauer’s foreign movies is SOLDIER OF ORANGE.
ZATOICHI CHALLENGED, the inspiration for BLIND FURY, stars legendary Japanese actor Shintaro Katsu as a blind masseuse named Zatoichi. Katsu would play this amazing character in 26 films and 100 TV episodes between 1962 and 1989. You owe it to yourself to search out these films.
Former heavyweight boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb plays a heavy in BLIND FURY. In his time, he beat Leon Spinx and went the distance with Larry Holmes.
Australian director Phillip Noyce directed BLIND FURY. He’s an underrated director whose other credits include DEAD CALM, PATRIOT GAMES, and THE BONE COLLECTOR.
The 1981 horror film, Dead & Buried, takes place in the small town of Potters Bluff. It seems like it should be a nice place to live. The people are friendly. The scenery is lovely. The town is right on the coast of the ocean so the view is great. It’s a bit of an artist’s colony, the type of place where you would expect to find Elizabeth Taylor painting the sunset while Richard Burton battles a hangover in the beach house. It’s the type of small town that used to by very popular on television. It’s just one Gilmore girl away from being an old CW show.
It’s such a nice town. So, why are so many people dying?
That’s the mystery that Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) has to solve. Actually, it’s one of the many mysteries that Dan has to solve. There’s also the mystery of why his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson), has been acting so strangely. And then there’s the mystery of what happened to the person who, one night, Dan ran into with his car. The person ran away but he left behind his arm. When Dan gets some skin from the arm analyzed, he’s told that the arm belongs to someone who has been dead for at least four months!
Who can explain all of this? How about William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson), the folksy coroner who seems to enjoy his work just a little bit too much. In fact, Dr. Dobbs seems to be a bit more than just a tad eccentric. One would necessarily expect a coroner to have a somewhat macabre view of life but Dr. Dobbs seems to take things to extreme. Is it possible that Dr. Dobbs knows more than he’s letting on?
Dead & Buried has a reputation for being something of a sleeper, a deliberately-paced and often darky humorous horror film that had the misfortune to be released at a time when most horror audiences were more interested in watching a masked man with a machete kill half-naked teenagers. Because the studio wasn’t sure how exactly to market Dead & Buried, it failed at the box office and it was only years later, after it was released on home video, that people watched the film and realized that it was actually pretty good. And make no mistake about it, Dead & Buried is a fairly clever horror film, one that is full of effective moments and which does a good job of creating a creepy atmosphere. If I’m not quite as enthused about this film as others, that’s because I do think that it’s occasionally a bit too slow and the film’s twist ending, while well-executed, didn’t particularly take me by surprise. This is one of those films that you enjoy despite the fact that you can see the surprise conclusion coming from a mile away.
In the end, Dead & Buried fills like a particularly twisted, extra-long episode of one of those old horror anthology shows, like Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, or maybe even Ghost Story. It’s a nicely done slice of small town horror, featuring a study lead performance from James Farentino and an enjoyably weird one from Jack Albertson. Though the film is not heavy on gore, Stan Winston’s special effects are appropriate macabre. Even if it’s not quite up there with Gary Sherman’s other films (like Vice Squad and Death Line, to name two), Dead & Buried is an entertainingly eccentric offering for Halloween.
Speilberg had 1941, Lucas had Howard the Duck, and John Carpenter had Prince of Darkness. I’m not going to spend a whole review impugning the Master of Horror, BUT….this was really really really bad. When I was young, several months ago Pre-COVID (more on my COVID experience tomorrow- you’ll love it: there’s sweat, fever, explosive things, and I couldn’t smell any of it!) , I reviewed the Dracula mini-series and now Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter). You’re going to start thinking that I have a vampire fetish, but don’t worry Prince of Darkness not only does not have a Dracula figure; it’s unclear if it has much of anything going on at all. Imagine watching a movie called A Man Named John and John appeared briefly at the very end of the movie with no lines. You’d think that was really weird because you are a smart and discerning film consumer.
It starts out in Los Angeles in the 1980s, which looks like the LA of today, but it had MUCH less poop everywhere than today. Ahhh, progress. After the first 10 minutes of the film, I can tell you that: the Prince of Darkness is infact and evil alien who lives inside of a swirling Vitamix that looks alot the green juice they try sell me at the gym
– This is what the POD looked like for most of the film :
I always knew that the green juice smoothie was pure evil!!!
Jesus was also an alien and trapped the POD in the Vitamix above; furthermore, the Church was aware of it and kept it quiet in LA because they were Angels fans, a professor of physics at the local community college forced his physicist students to become Ghost Facers in exchange for a higher grade, and homeless people are murderers now. I know these things because I got an expositioning that I shall never ever forget. The students go to see the Eeeeeeevil Vitamix and get sprayed with evil juice and become really lazy zombies. This goes on for a LONG LONG time. You’d think they’d just use tomato juice to get out the evil or some Shout, but maybe Shout wasn’t invented yet?
One of the physicists becomes possessed with POD and tries to reach into a mirror to release her more evil dad. Ok, why not? It’s a family affair, it’s a family affaaaaiiiirr. Just as the evil is about to enter our world one of the physicists pushes the POD into the other dimension through the mirror taking her along with it. This was really dumb. Why not just shove the POD? She didn’t look very big. You’re also physicist; you could’ve made a lever or something. LAZY PHYSICIST!!! You never really got to know the POD or the physicists for that matter. It was like John Carpenter was willed an abandoned building and just wrote a script around that location because why waste a perfectly good abandoned building?!
The biggest puzzle of all was why the main physicist quasi-hero couldn’t get his mustache to line up properly? It’s like the left side of his mustache was trying to escape his face and was willing to leave the right side of the mustache behind- such a cowardly left-side mustache!
Hmmm, I wonder if anyone will notice that I trim my mustache while tilting my head?
Thank you all! You get to learn about COVID tomorrow; it’s pretty pretty…. pretty… gross.
Tim Murphy (Don Johnson, with a huge mustache) is a Vietnam vet who is still haunted by his actions during the war. As a result, he can’t hold down a job, he’s abusive to his wife, and he’s woken up in the middle of the night by constant nightmares. One day, at the unemployment office, he meets another vet named Luke (Robert F. Lyons) and the two of them bond over their shared experiences. While Tim tries to come to terms with what happened during the war, his wife Paula (Lisa Blount) tries to keep the household together.
Barely released in 1985, Cease Fire is a largely but unfairly forgotten Vietnam film. According the film’s imdb page, Don Johnson once told an interviewer that he couldn’t even remember starring in a film called Cease Fire. That piece of trivia sounded too good to be true and, after doing a google search, I have not been able to come across any interviews where Johnson says that. In fact, in an interview with the AV Club, Johnson says that he filmed Cease Fire in Miami shortly after doing his first audition for Miami Vice. According to Johnson this was in the early stages of Miami Vice‘s development, before Michael Mann was even attached to the project. Since Miami Vice premiered (with Mann producing and Johnson starring) in 1984, that probably means that Cease Fire was filmed in either 1982 or 1983. Considering that it was a low-budget and talky film about a very unpopular war, it is not surprising to discover that it sat on the shelf for a few years before finally being released in order to capitalize on the sudden stardom of its main actor.
Even though both take place in Miami and feature Don Johnson as a Vietnam vet, Miami Vice and Cease Fire are as different as night and day. Cease Fire is a low-key and muted character study of a traumatized man who is struggling to face what happened in the past. There’s not much action but there is a lot of talking. Some of the dialogue is clumsy and obvious but both Don Johnson and Robert F. Lyons give good performance as the traumatized vets and Cease Fire is honest enough to admit that, even if he does take a few steps in the right direction, Tim still has a long road ahead of him. Cease Fire, which never got a DVD release but which is available on Amazon Prime, is a sincere look at the reality of PTSD and the struggle that many vets face when they first return home. It’s not a perfect movie but it’s saved by its own good intentions and Johnson’s sincere performance in the main role.
Cease Fire was also the first film to be directed by David Nutter. Nutter is today probably best known for directing several episodes of Games of Thrones, a show that has even less in common with Cease Fire than Miami Vice.
Almost everyone knows that one scene from the 1982 film, An Officer and a Gentleman. You can probably guess which scene it is that I’m talking about. It’s been parodied and imitated in so many other shows and movies that it’s one of those pop cultural moments that everyone has “seen” even they haven’t actually watched it. It’s the scene where….
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
What?
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
I know, Mayo, I’m getting to that! Let me tell everyone about the iconic factory scene first, okay?
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
Uhmmm …. right. Where was I? Oh yeah, it’s the scene where Debra Winger is working in a factory and a youngish Richard Gere suddenly shows up and he’s wearing a white uniform and he picks her up and carries her out of the factory while all of her coworkers cheer. Meanwhile, that Up Where We Belong song starts to play on the soundtrack. Even though, up until recently, I had never actually sat down and watched An Officer and a Gentleman, I certainly knew that scene.
Last Friday, I noticed that I had An Officer and a Gentleman saved on the DVR and I thought to myself, “Well, I might as well go ahead and watch it and find out what else happens in the movie.” Add to that, I only had three hours of recording space left on the DVR so I figured I could watch the movie and then delete it and free up some space….
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
Goddammit, Mayo, be quiet! I’m getting to it!
Anyway, I watched the film and I discovered that it’s actually about a lot more than just Richard Gere getting Debra Winger fired from her job at the factory. It’s also about how Zack Mayo (the character played by Richard Gere) hopes to make something of himself by graduating from Aviation Officer Candidate School so that he can become not only a Navy pilot but also an officer and a gentleman. His father (Robert Loggia) is an alcoholic, his mother committed suicide when Mayo was a child and Mayo …. well, I’ll let him tell you himself.
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
That’s right. Mayo has not got anywhere else to go.
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
Ain’t is not a word, Mayo.
As you may have already guessed, we know that Mayo doesn’t have anywhere else to go because there’s a scene where he continually yells, “I ain’t got nowhere else to go!” over and over again. He yells it after being forced to do a thousand push-ups and sit-ups by his drill sergeant, Foley (Louis Gossett, Jr.) Foley thinks that Mayo doesn’t have the right attitude to be either an officer or a gentleman. Mayo is determined to prove him wrong.
I AIN’T GOT–
Oh give it a rest, Mayo!
Debra Winger plays Paula. Paula is a townie. She lives in a dilapidated house with her parents. Her friend, Lynette (Lisa Blount), dreams of marrying a Naval officer and getting to travel the world. Lynette gets involved with Mayo’s friend, Sid Worley (David Keith). Foley warns both Sid and Mayo to stay away from the townie girls because they’re not to be trusted. That turns out to be true in Lynette’s case but Paula’s love provides Mayo with the strength that he needs to believe in something more than just himself.
I AIN’T–
Yes, you do have some place to go, Mayo! That’s the point of the whole goddamn movie!
Anyway, watching An Officer and a Gentleman, I was kind of surprised to discover that it’s actually two movies in one. It’s a traditional army training film, one in which Richard Gere is whipped into shape by a tough drill sergeant. It’s also a film about life in an economically depressed small town, where the only hope of escape comes from marrying the right aviation officer candidate. As a military film it’s predictable if occasionally effective. As a film about small town life, it’s surprisingly poignant. An Officer And A Gentleman doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to depicting just how little life in the town has to offer to people like Paula and Lynette. They have spent their entire lives being told they can either work in a factory for minimum wage and get drunk on the weekend or they can land a man who will hopefully take them away from all that and give them something more to look forward to than cirrhosis of the liver. Lynette has accepted that as being her only option. While Paula dreams of escape, she dreams of escaping on her terms. She may fall in love with Mayo but she’s not going to pretend to be someone that she’s not just to keep him around.
Though he’s evolved into a good character actor, Richard Gere was remarkably blank-faced when he was younger and his performance as Mayo alternates between being bland and shrill. However, Debra Winger brings a welcome edge to her role. She plays Paula as someone who knows she’s stuck in a dead end existence. She’s not happy about it but, at the same time, she’s not going to surrender her principles in order to escape. She holds onto her ideals, even though she appears to be stuck in a crappy situation and that’s something that Mayo learns from her. In the end, Paula saves Mayo just as surely as the Navy does. And, just as Paula saves Mayo, Winger saves the movie.
I AIN’T GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!
Oh, shut the Hell up, Mayo. Go pick up Paula and carry her off to a better life….
First released in 1984, What Waits Below is a film about a bunch of soldiers and explorers that make the mistake of exploring a cave system in Central America. Needless to say, they’re not alone in that cave!
This film, to be honest, starts a bit slow but things do pick up once they get underground. Included in the cast is Richard Johnson, who all good horror fans remember for his role as Dr. Menard in Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.
In the 1950s, Jerry Lee Lewis (Dennis Quaid) plays what his cousin, Jimmy Swaggart (Alec Baldwin), calls the devil’s music. After signing a contract with Sam Phillips (Trey Wilson), Jerry becomes a star with his wild man persona and crazed piano playing. When Elvis is drafted, it appears that Jerry is destined to take over as the new King of Rock and Roll. But, then, while touring England, the press discovers that Jerry is married to his 13 year-old cousin, Myra (Winona Ryder). When Jerry refuses to apologize for his private life, his career falls apart.
The real Jerry Lew Lewis has stated many times that he hates this musical biopic and that it has very little in common with his actual life. Jerry has a point. Great Balls of Fire is a highly stylized film, one that greatly sanitizes both the life of Jerry Lee Lewis and the early days of rock and roll. In the film, there’s no struggle or even hard work on the road to becoming a star. Jerry just drops off a recording of himself playing piano and viola! He’s a star! Soon, teenagers are dancing around his convertible, both civil rights protestors and white Southern cops start dancing whenever they see him driving down the street, the local radio DJ waves whenever he sees them, and Jerry’s sneaking into Mississippi so that he can marry his thirteen year-old cousin.
Great Balls of Fire! takes a superficially mater of fact approach to Jerry’s marriage to Myra, neither condemning nor excusing, though it does cheat by casting the 18 year-old Winona Ryder as the 13 year-old Myra. (If the film had cast an actress who was closer to Myra’s actual age, Great Balls of Fire! would never have been released.) Fortunately, history helped the movie out by making Jimmy Swaggart into Jerry’s main critic. Alec Baldwin’s performance as Jimmy Swaggart makes his interpretation of Donald Trump look subtle, nuanced, and award-worthy.
Dennis Quaid, at the height of his 80s stardom, is ideally cast as Jerry Lee Lewis, giving a good if broad performance and doing a convincing job lip-syncing to the music. Quaid has said that he was struggling with an addiction to cocaine while filming Great Balls of Fire! and that might have made him the perfect actor to play the always conflicted and always wild Jerry Lee Lewis. The best thing about the film is that Jerry Lee Lewis provided the music, re-recording his best known songs. While the movie may not tell the true story of Jerry Lee Lewis, it does feature enough of his music that it is obvious why Jerry Lee Lewis nearly became the king of rock and roll.
Joseph Price (Colin Firth) was once a painter but now he is the world’s least likely park ranger. One day, he meets the beautiful and mysterious Cynthia (Lisa Zane). Within days, Joe and Cynthia are married but one morning, Joe wakes up to discover that Cynthia is gone and she has only left behind a brief note. Searching for his wife, Joe goes to Los Angeles and discovers how little he knew about Cynthia. Joe’s search eventually leads him into the world of porn, drugs, S&M, and performance art.
This month, every entry in Movie A Day has had a least one Twin Peaks connection. Femme Fatale has two. Joe’s best friend, a laid back artist who is usually seen painting a topless woman who sometimes wears a brown bag over her head, is played by Billy Zane, who appeared as John Justice Wheeler during the second season of Twin Peaks. Also, Catherine Coulson (the show’s famous Log Lady) appears as a nun who provides an important clue to Cynthia’s past.
Femme Fatale used to show up on HBO in the 1990s and it is currently on YouTube. It may not be a great film but it does have a good cast. Along with Billy Zane and Coulson, Femme Fatale also features Scott Wilson as a shady psychologist, Lisa Blount as an actress who used to work with Cynthia, and Pat Skipper and John Lavachielli as two talkative thugs named Ed and Ted. Both Carmine Caridi and the great Danny Trejo show up in small roles. It may seem strange to cast the very British Colin Firth as a park ranger but it works. As for Lisa Zane, who is Billy’s older sister, Cynthia was probably her best role.
Predictable though the movie may be, Femme Fatale is enjoyably stupid if you are in the right mood. There should always be a time and place for the old neo noirs of 1990s.
In the 1950s, Jerry Lee Lewis (Dennis Quaid) plays what his cousin, Jimmy Swaggart (Alec Baldwin), calls the devil’s music. After signing a contract with Sam Phillips (Trey Wilson), Jerry becomes a star with his wild man persona and crazed piano playing. When Elvis is drafted, it appears that Jerry is destined to take over as the new King of Rock and Roll. But, then, while touring England, the press discovers that Jerry is married to his 13 year-old cousin, Myra (Winona Ryder). When Jerry refuses to apologize for his private life, his career falls apart.
Joseph Price (Colin Firth) was once a painter but now he is the world’s least likely park ranger. One day, he meets the beautiful and mysterious Cynthia (Lisa Zane). Within days, Joe and Cynthia are married but one morning, Joe wakes up to discover that Cynthia is gone and she has only left behind a brief note. Searching for his wife, Joe goes to Los Angeles and discovers how little he knew about Cynthia. Joe’s search eventually leads him into the world of porn, drugs, S&M, and performance art.
Through the Shattered Lens 