An Offer You Can Refuse #5: The Happening (dir by Elliot Silverstein)

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1967 film, The Happening, opens with two “young” people — Sureshot (Michael Parks) and Sandy (Faye Dunaway) — waking up on a Florida beach. The previous night, they attended a party so wild that the beach is full of passed out people, one of whom apparently fell asleep while standing on his head. (It’s a happening!) From the dialogue, we discover that, despite their impeccably clean-cut appearances, both Sureshot and Sandy are meant to be hippies.

After trying to remember whether or not they “made love” the previous night (wow, how edgy!), Sandy and Sureshot attempt to find their way off of the beach. As they walk along, they’re joined by two other partygoers. Taurus is played by George Maharis, who was 38 when this film was shot and looked about ten years older. Taurus is a tough guy who carries a gun and dreams of being a revolutionary and who says stuff like, “Bam! Et cetera!” Herbie is eccentric, thin, and neurotic and, presumably because Roddy McDowall wanted too much money, he’s played by Robert Walker, Jr.

Anyway, the four of them end up stealing a boat and talking about how life is a drag, man. Eventually, they end up breaking into a mansion and threatening the owner and his wife. Since this movie was made before the Manson murders, this is all played for laughs. The owner of the mansion is Roc Delmonico (Anthony Quinn). Roc used to be a gangster but now he’s a legitimate businessman. The “hippies” decide to kidnap Roc because they assume they’ll be able to get a lot of money for him.

The only problem is that no one is willing to pay the ransom!

Not Roc’s wife (Martha Hyer)!

Not Roc’s best friend (Milton Berle), who happens to be sleeping with Roc’s wife!

Not Roc’s former mob boss (Oscar Homolka)!

Roc gets so angry when he find out that no one wants to pay that he decides to take control of the kidnapping, He announces that he knows secrets about everyone who refused to pay any money for him and unless they do pay the ransom, he’s going to reveal them. We’ve gone from kidnapping to blackmail.

Along the way, Roc bonds with his kidnappers. He teaches them how to commit crimes and they teach him how to be anti-establishment or something. Actually, I’m not sure what they were supposed to have taught him. The Happening is a comedy that I guess was trying to say something about the divide between the young and the middle-aged but it doesn’t really have much of a message beyond that the middle-aged could stand to laugh a little more and that the young are just silly and kind of useless. Of course, the whole young/old divide would probably work better if all of the young hippies weren’t played by actors who were all either in their 30 or close enough to 30 to make their dorm room angst seem a bit silly.

It’s an odd film. The tone is all over the place and everyone seems to be acting in a different movie. Anthony Quinn actually gives a pretty good dramatic performance but his good performance only serves to highlight how miscast almost everyone else in the film is. Michael Parks comes across like he would rather be beating up hippies than hanging out with them while Faye Dunaway seems to be bored with the entire film. George Maharis, meanwhile, goes overboard on the Brando impersonation while Robert Walker, Jr. seems like he just needs someone to tell him to calm down.

But even beyond the weird mix of acting style, the film’s message is a mess. On the one hand, the “hippies” are presented as being right about the establishment being full of hypocritical phonies. On the other hand, the establishment is proven to be correct about the “hippies” being a bunch of easily distracted idiots. This is one of those films that wants to have it both ways, kind of like an old episode of Saved By The Bell where Mr. Belding learns to loosen up while Zack learns to respect authority. This is an offer that you can refuse.

And that’s what’s happening!

Previous Offers You Can’t (or Can) Refuse:

Music Video of the Day: Round And Round by Ratt (1984, dir. Marshall Berle)

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

First things first here. Yes, that is Milton Berle in the music video both as the husband and wife. He agreed to be in the music video because his nephew Marshall Berle was the manager of the band at the time. It’s interesting to note that while Wikipedia says he is his nephew, mvdbase says that he is Milton’s grandson. Thankfully the Wikipedia article on Milton Berle also states he is his nephew, so I think we can safely say that’s the case. The Google Knowledge Graph also says that Milton Berle’s only grandchild is Tyler Roe via his son William Berle.

The second thing is about who the woman is in this that is drawn to the attic where Ratt is apparently playing for the convienent brittle floor that makes for a great guitar solo scene when guitarist Warren DeMartini crashes through it. That woman is Lisa Dean. She would go on to play Diana in the music video for Michael Jackson’s Dirty Diana. She died of colon cancer in December of 2009 at the age of 50.

I guess the last thing to bring up about this video is that it doesn’t matter how many times I watch it, the butler is still the real star of the show. The information I provided above is all over the Internet, but I can’t find who played the butler. I can find that apparently the song is about a girl who initially pushes a guy away, but ends up coming back to him. I guess that’s the reason they play in that attic a la John Cusack in Say Anything… (1989) till she turns into a rat (???), and comes to them. I can find a person that thinks this is sexist and refuses to show it to their kid, but still loves it regardless. As somebody who is transgender, I could find that it’s transphobic, but whatever, it’s Round and Round by Ratt. I don’t care. Yet, the most simple thing, like who is the awesome butler, is lost to the sands of time. This is particularly sad when he is not just the real star, but the music video is arranged like a mystery about who let the band in the house, and it of course turns out to be the butler.

Anyways, I was able to find out that Ken Barrows was the 1st assistant camera on the music video. He worked on music videos such as Hold On by Wilson Phillips and Burning Up by Madonna. It looks like he is still working in music videos today as I can find a credit as recent as 2015. Outside of music videos, he has also worked on movies such as The Master (2012) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991).

So, enjoy this ridiculous music video for a band that would have probably been long forgotten without it, and don’t take it seriously.

Lisa Marie Reviews The Oscar Nominees: The Oscar (dir by Russel Rouse)

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I stayed up way too late last night but it was totally worth it because I was watching a film from 1966, The Oscar.

Among those of us who love bad and campy movies from the 50s and 60s, The Oscar is a legendary film. It has a reputation for being one of best so bad-its-good-films ever made. The Oscar is a film that I’ve read about in several books but, until last night, I had never gotten a chance to actually see it. When I saw that the film was going to be on last night, I said “Sleep be damned!” and I stayed up and watched. What other choice did I have?

The Oscar takes place in a world where women are “dames” and men are “fellas” and everyone acts as if they’re a character in a Rat Pack-themed fanfic. One look at Frankie Fane (played by Stephen Boyd) and you know he’s the type of guy who snaps his fingers when he walks and probably uses pig Latin when he flirts. He’s one cool cat and as the film begins, he’s been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

The film begins at the Oscars. Frankie sits out in the audience, surrounded by Hollywood royalty and nervously waiting for the envelope to be opened. The camera pans over to Frankie’s personal manager, Hymie Kelley. Hymie stares bitterly at his former friend and suddenly, we hear his thoughts and do they ever let us know what type of movie we’re about to see.

As Hymie himself puts it:

“You finally made it, Frankie! Oscar night! And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called “success.” You’re one of the chosen five, and the whole town’s holding its breath to see who won it. It’s been quite a climb, hasn’t it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do…”

Hymie, incidentally, is played by the singer Tony Bennett. This was Bennett’s first dramatic film role and it was also his last. Whatever talent or magnetism Bennett may have had as a singer, it didn’t translate into screen presence. Bennett goes through the entire film looking embarrassed but who can blame him when the script calls for him to constantly tell Frankie that, “You lie down with pigs, you stand up smelling like garbage…”

As we discover through the use of flashback, Frankie has had to lay down with a lot of pigs to get his chance at winning an Oscar. After starting out his career working at sleazy clubs, Frankie, Hymie, and Frankie’s stripper girlfriend (Jill St. John) find themselves in New York. Frankie dumps his girlfriend (unaware that she’s pregnant with his child) after he meets artist Elke Sommer at a “swinging party.”

“Are you a tourist or a native?” Frankie asks her.

“Take one from column A and one from column B. You get an egg roll either way,” Sommer replies.

No wonder Frankie tells her, “You make my head hurt with all that poetry.”

Eventually, Frankie is discovered by a talent agent who takes him to see studio mogul Joseph Cotten (who went from Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Third Man to this). Cotten is so impressed with Frankie that he says, “Once in a while, you bring me meat like this. It all has different names: prime rib of Gloria, shoulder cut of Johnny. MEAT!”

With the help of savvy talent agent Milton Berle, Frankie becomes a film star but he’s still a total heel who cheats on Sommer and takes advantage of Hymie’s loyalty. When Frankie gets nominated for an Oscar, he hires a sleazy private investigator (Ernest Borgnine, of course) to leak a story about Frankie’s criminal past. Frankie assumes that one of his fellow nominees will be blamed for the leak and that he’ll be able to ride a wave of sympathy to victory.

And who are Frankie’s fellow nominees? We only learn the identity of three of them – Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, and Burt Lancaster. We never find out what movie Sinatra was nominated for but we’re told that Burton was nominated for The Grapes of Winter (which, I’m going to assume, was a film version of a Shakespeare play about Tom Joad) while Lancaster was nominated for his amazing performance in The Spanish Armada. Doesn’t that sound like an amazing film?

Oh, how to describe the delirious experience of watching The Oscar? In many ways, it is a truly terrible movie but it’s fun in the way that only a “racy” film from the mid-60s can be. Nobody plays his or her role with anything resembling subtleness. Instead, everyone spends the entire film yelling, screaming, and gritting their teeth while flaring their nostrils. Everyone, that is, except for Tony Bennett who gives a performance that has a definite community theater feel to it. Even better is the dialogue. People in this film don’t just say their lines – they exclaim them. If you’ve ever wanted to spend two hours in a world where every sentence ends with an exclamation point, watch The Oscar.

For a film that was apparently meant to be something of a love letter to the Academy, The Oscar was only nominated for two Oscars. It received nominations for Best Art Design and Best Costume Design. While I had a hard time seeing what was so impressive about the film’s art design (in the world of The Oscar, Hollywood has a definite Ikea feel to it), the costumes were fairly impressive in a tacky, 1966 type of way.

Finally, I think it’s time that somebody remake The Oscar. David Fincher can direct it, Aaron Sorkin can write the script, Jessie Eisenberg can play Frankie Fane, and Justin Timberlake would make for an adorable Hymie Kelley. For the supporting roles, I think Billy Crystal would be a natural for Milton Berle’s role and perhaps Philip Baker Hall could step into the shoes of Joseph Cotten. Perhaps veteran film blogger and self-described very important person Sasha Stone could make her film debut in Ernest Borgnine’s role.

Seriously, I think it would be a winner.