Based on a best-seller by Rona Jaffe, 1982’s Mazes and Monsters tell the story of some college students who enjoy playing a game called…. well, Mazes and Monsters. Now, I realize that Mazes and Monsters may sound a lot like Dungeons and Dragons but they are actually two separate games. One game takes place in a dungeon. The other takes place in maze, got it?
When the players decide to play the game in some nearby caves, it causes the newest member of the group (Tom Hanks — yes, Tom Hanks) to snap and become his character. Convinced that he’s living in a world full of monsters and wizard, Hanks runs away to New York. How does that go? During a moment of clarity, Hanks calls his friends and wails, “There’s blood on my knife!”
It’s all fairly silly. There was a moral panic going on about role playing games when this film was made and this film definitely leans into the panic. But, in its own over-the-top way, it works. If you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks battle a big green lizard, this is the film for you. And I defy anyone not to tear up a little during the final scene!
I had not heard of TOO SCARED TO SCREAM when I came across it the other day on Tubi, but there were a few things that caught my interest. First, it had some cool artwork on the poster, which my fellow TSL contributor Erin has highlighted on the site before during Horror-Thon past. Next, I saw that one of the leads was Ian McShane. He’s been around for a long time, but I didn’t really discover his work until I got wrapped up in his excellent characterization of Al Swearengen in the HBO series DEADWOOD. This was a chance to fill in some of his back catalog. And probably one of the more interesting aspects of the film to me is the fact that it’s directed by the actor Tony Lo Bianco (THE HONEYMOON KILLERS, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE SEVEN-UPS). This is the only movie he would direct, so I needed to see it!
Lieutenant Alex Dinardo (Mike Connors) is investigating a series of knife murders at the upscale Royal Towers high-rise apartment building in New York City. One of the building’s doormen, the odd and theatrical Vincent Hardwick (Ian McShane), quickly becomes a person of interest. Dinardo brings in undercover cop Kate Bridges (Anne Archer) to help with the investigation, going so far as renting a room at the Royal Towers. As the victims continue piling up, the story gives us a variety of strange and suspicious characters, along with enough twists and turns to keep things moving.
I must admit that it’s been a blast discovering so many movies during this year’s Horror-Thon that have slipped past my radar over the years. Of course, sometimes you find a hidden gem, and other times you find a movie that seems to have fallen by the wayside for good reason. TOO SCARED TO SCREAM falls somewhere in between, but I’m glad I watched it. It has some interesting elements for sure, but it’s also a strange, oddball of a film. Its pacing is slow at times, and the opening credits theme song got my attention for all the wrong reasons. However, I did enjoy the combination of police procedural and slasher movie. Charles Bronson may have done it better around the same time in TEN TO MIDNIGHT, but there was still something nice about seeing veteran TV star Mike Connors (MANNIX) on the case. Another thing this had in common with the Bronson slasher is some impressive nudity! There’s a scene in a sauna that any red-blooded American male should enjoy!
And what a cast this movie has! I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I love most about movies is watching actors I enjoy. This is filled with so many familiar faces. Honestly, the show MANNIX was a little before my time, as I was only 2 when it ended its run, but I still enjoyed seeing Connors and being able to appreciate him really for the first time. My guess is that the character he plays here is a lot like Joe Mannix. Ian McShane seems to be having a lot of fun. His character is very strange, but the actor goes all in, and his performance gives the movie some personality. Anne Archer has always had that ability to portray tough and smart, and her character here has that in abundance. To those leads, you can add even more flavor with actors like Leon Isaac Kennedy (LONE WOLF MCQUADE), Maureen O’Sullivan (THE TALL T), Murray Hamilton (JAWS), Val Avery (LOVE AND BULLETS), and even John Heard (HOME ALONE), with each actor taking me back to memories of movies past.
One of the more interesting aspects of watching this film is that it feels very much like watching an 80’s television show until the clothes start coming off or the blood starts flowing. We see the murders, watch the matter-of-fact investigation, meet the suspects, and at the end the killer is revealed. I’m not very good at guessing who the killers are in movies, and I certainly would not have gotten this one. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure the ending would stand up to the scrutiny of a rewatch, but it actually made me smile in its absurdity.
TOO SCARED TO SCREAM isn’t a great movie, and there’s probably a legitimate reason that it’s not very well known or remembered these days. However, with its oddball mix of the 80s slasher film and TV police procedural, I still had a good time with it, especially when you consider the game cast of actors that pop up throughout the film. Part of our joy in movies comes from discovering them at the right time. I may or may not ever watch this one again, but this year, it was a fun part of my October.
In the year 1979, a young Steven Spielberg attempted to conquer comedy in the same way that he previously conquered horror with Jaws and science fiction with Close Encounters of The Third Kind. Working from a script written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Spielberg made a film about the days immediately following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The name of the film was 1941 and it remains Steven Spielberg’s only attempt to direct a full-out comedy. There’s a reason for that.
The film follows a large group of characters over the course of one day and night in 1941. It’s been six days since Pearl Harbor was attacked and the streets of Los Angeles are full of young men who are preparing to ship out and older man who are paranoid about when the next attack is going to come. However, Major General Joseph Stilwell (Robert Stack) just wants to see Dumbo at the local theater. Meanwhile, his womanizing aide (Tim Matheson, giving the same performance here that he did in National Lampoon’s Animal House) just wants to get Stillwell’s aviation-lusting secretary (Nancy Allen) into an airplane.
Elsewhere, Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty) is happy to allow Sgt. Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and his men (including John Candy) to set up on an anti-aircraft gun in his front yard. Ward’s daughter, Betty (Dianne Kay), is only concerned about entering a dance contest with her friend, Maxine (Wendie Jo Sperber). Cpl. Sitarski (Treat Williams) and dishwasher Wally Stephens (Bobby D iCicco) both hope to be Betty’s partner and their rivalry leads to a massive (and seemingly never-ending) brawl.
While Ward deals with the gun in his front yard, another concerned citizen — Claude Crumm (Murray Hamilton) — keeps watch from atop of Ferris wheel, along with amateur ventriloquist Herbie Kazlminsky (Eddie Deezen).
But that’s not all! Susan Backilinie recreates her role from a previous Spielberg film, skinny dipping while the Jaws theme plays in the background and running straight into a submarine that is commanded by Commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune, trying to maintain his dignity). Mifune decides to attack Hollywood but no one on the submarine is sure where that is. Christopher Lee appears as an arrogant German who is along for the ride. Slim Pickens shows up as a lumberjack who is temporarily captured by the Japanese. John Belushi plays Wild Bill Kelso, who flies his airplane through Los Angeles. Warren Oates yells and laughs. Dick Miller, Elijah Cook Jr. and Lionel Stander show up in small roles.
“Since when is Steven funny?” According to Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, this was the reaction that most of Spielberg’s friends had when he announced that his next film would be a screwball comedy set during World War II. Watching the film, one gets their point. The majority of the film’s humor comes from people looking at the camera and screaming. There’s a lot physical comedy, which would undoubtedly work in small amounts but which grows rather tiring when it’s dragged out to the extent that Spielberg’s drags it out. (A brawl at a USO show seems like it should be funny but Spielberg allows it to go on for too long and the careful choreography takes away any element of spontaneity.) The film attempts to duplicate the style of Animal House (and it’s probably not a coincidence that Matheson, Belushi, and director John Landis all have roles in the film) but Spielberg often seems as if he’s trying too hard. There’s nothing subversive about the humor. It’s more antic than funny.
A huge problem is that there really isn’t much of a story here. Spielberg, who is normally one of Hollywood’s best storytellers, attempts to do a loose, Altman-style ensemble film and the result is that none of the characters feel alive and there’s never any sense of narrative momentum. There are a few performers who manage to make an impression amongst all the explosions and the yelling. John Belushi has the advantage of not having to share the majority of his scenes with anyone else. Warren Oates’s manic energy is more than welcome. Wendie Jo Sperber deserved more screentime. Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen frequently made me laugh. There’s a wonderful moment where Robert Stack’s intense general cries while watching Dumbo. But, for the most part, the film never comes together.
That said, 1941 is definitely a Steven Spielberg film. It received three Academy Award nominations, for Cinematography, Sound, and Visual Effects. (All three of those categories, not surprisingly, are more associated with spectacle than with comedy.) The film looks great! Spielberg’s attention to detail is there in the production design and the costumes. Watching 1941, you can see Spielberg’s talent while also seeing why he never directed another comedy.
Hi there and welcome to October! This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is our annual horrorthon! For the past several years (seriously, we’ve been doing this for a while), we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music. That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year!
Let’s get things started with 1982’s Mazes and Monsters!
Based on a best-seller by Rona Jaffe, Mazes and Monsters tell the story of some college students who enjoy playing a game called Mazes and Monsters. Now, I realize that Mazes and Monsters may sound a lot like Dungeons and Dragons but they are actually two separate games. One game takes place in a dungeon. The other takes place in maze, got it?
When the players decide to play the game in some nearby caves, it causes the newest member of the group (Tom Hanks — yes, Tom Hanks) to snap and become his character. Convinced that he’s living in a world full of monsters and wizard, Hanks runs away to New York. How does that go? During a moment of clarity, Hanks calls his friends and wails, “There’s blood on my knife!”
It’s all fairly silly. There was a moral panic going on about role playing games when this film was made and this film definitely leans into the panic. But, in its own over-the-top way, it works. If you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks battle a big green lizard, this is the film for you. And I defy anyone not to tear up a little during the final scene!
From 1982, here is MazesandMonsters! Happy Horrorthon!
In 1959’s The FBI Story, veteran FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart) delivers a lecture to a group of new FBI recruits. He tells them the story of both the FBI and his time as a member of the agency. Somewhat implausibly, it turns out that Chip was involved with nearly every major FBI operation, as we discover while watching this flashback-filled, episodic film.
Battling the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South? Chip was there.
Investigating the Oklahoma Indian murders? Chip was not only there but he was also the one who solved them through handwriting analysis! (Decades later, the crimes and the investigation would serve as the basis of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.)
During the public enemy era, Chip was there. He was there when Baby Face Nelson killed several unarmed FBI agents, including Chip’s best friend (Murray Hamilton). He was there when John Dillinger was gunned down in Chicago. He was there when my distant ancestor “Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed in Ohio. He wasn’t there when J. Edgar Hoover personally arrested Alvin Karpis or when “Machine Gun” Kelly said, “Don’t shoot, G-Man!” but Chip still makes sure to tell the recruits about it. He also talks about the gunfight that killed Ma Barker, presented her as being a machine gun-toting madwoman.
Chip investigates subversives during World War II and helped to round up Americans of German and Japanese descent during the internment era. (Chip insists that they weren’t rounded up because of their ancestry but because the FBI had gotten reports that they might be disloyal.) When the war wraps up, Chip turns his attention to fighting the international communist conspiracy and good for him. (Communism sucks!)
Strangely enough, it appears that Chip also tells the recruits a good deal about his personal life because we certainly do see a lot of it. Chip marries a librarian named Lucy (Vera Miles), who struggles with the demands of being an FBI agent’s wife but who ultimately accepts that Chip has to do his duty. Sometimes, Lucy wants Chip to quit and sometimes, Chip is tempted to get out. But they always remember that Chip and the FBI have a job to do. They raise a family. They lose a son at Iwo Jima. Their faith in God and country remains undiminished.
The FBI Story was made with the full cooperation of the FBI, with J. Edgar Hoover personally approving the script and making suggestions. Hoover even appeared as himself in the film, accepting a report about an airplane bombing with a grim look on his face. At one point, Chip is prepared to quit the FBI until he hears a speech from Hoover and he’s so inspired that he keeps his resignation letter tucked away in his suit pocket. Since this film came out in 1959, there’s no details of the FBI tapping the phones of Martin Luther King or Hoover collecting dirt on his political opponents. Instead, The FBI Story is pure propaganda, your reminder that law enforcement never makes mistakes and civil liberties can be always be sacrificed for the greater good.
It’s simplistic propaganda and it’s overlong and it promotes a few falsehoods as facts. (Despite what the film says, Pretty Boy Floyd had nothing to do with the Kansas City Massacre and most historians agree that Ma Barker was not the criminal mastermind that Hoover made her out to be after she was caught in the crossfire between her sons and law enforcement.) The film rather casually dismisses the concern over the World War II internments of American citizens. To me, something like that is a big deal but the film insists to us that it was all blown out of proportion. That’s the one moment when not even the film itself seems to be totally sold on what it’s selling.
Fortunately, the film stars the ever-reliable James Stewart, who brings his natural mix of charm and gravity to the role of Chip Hardesty. Stewart was a bit too old to play Chip as a bumbling young man in the early part of the film but, as the character grows up, so does Stewart’s performance. The scene where he and Vera Miles learn that his son has been killed in combat feels like it’s from a different and far better movie. I guess my point here is that James Stewart was one of those actors who could make even questionable material watchable and that’s certainly what he does with The FBI Story. The FBI, at a time when Hoover was aging and the excesses of the McCarthy era had left many Americans uneasy about the government, decides to borrow James Stewart’s credibility to boost their own. You may not like the FBI but how can you not love Jimmy Stewart?
The FBI Story came out the same year as one of Stewart’s best films, Anatomy of a Murder, a film that was a complicated as The FBI Story was simplistic. Stewart gives one of his best performances in Anatomy of a Murder, playing the type of character that Chip Hardesty probably wouldn’t want to have much to do with. With these two films, Stewart showed us both sides of the American justice system, the men who are tasked with enforcing the law and, even more importantly, the men who are tasked with making sure that law was enforced fairly. Whichever side your on, you have to be happy to have Jimmy Stewart there.
After watching 1967’s The Graduate, I defy anyone to listen to Simon and Garfunkel sing about the darkness without immediately picturing a young-looking Dustin Hoffman (he was 30 when the film was made but he was playing 22) standing on a moving airport walkway with a blank expression on his face.
If you don’t picture that, maybe you’ll picture Dustin Hoffman floating in a pool, wearing dark glasses and barely listening to his parents asking him about graduate school.
Or maybe you’ll remember him driving his car across the Golden Gate bridge. Or perhaps sitting at the bottom of his pool with a scuba mask on. Or maybe you’ll see him awkwardly standing at the desk in the lobby of a fancy hotel, trying to work up the courage to get a room. Or maybe you’ll just see him and Katharine Ross sitting at the back of that bus with a “what do we do now?” expression on their faces.
(Supposedly, that expression was not planned and was just a result of the shot running longer than expected.)
Ah, The Graduate. Based on a novel by Charles Webb, Buck Henry’s script remains one of the quotable in history. “Mrs. Robinson, you’re tying to seduce me …. aren’t you?” “Plastics.” “Elaine!” Myself, I have an odd feeling of affection for the line “Shall I get the cops? I’ll get the cops.” Perhaps that’s because the line is delivered by a young and uncredited Richard Dreyfuss, appearing in his second film and adding to the film’s general atmosphere of alienation.
Alienation is the main theme of The Graduate. As played by Hoffman, Benjamin Braddock feels alienated from everything. He was a track star. He was a top student in high school and college. Now, he’s just a college graduate with no idea what he wants to do with the rest of his life. One can argue, of course, that Braddock brings a lot of his alienation on himself. He can be a bit judgmental, even though he’s the one who is having an adulterous affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) while also falling for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). His parents (William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson) can be overbearing but it’s possible they have a point. Is he planning on spending the rest of his life floating in their swimming pool? Benjamin says that he just needs time to finally relax. After being pushed and pushed to be the best, he just wants time to do what he wants to do before his life becomes about plastics. When I first saw this movie, I was totally on Benjamin’s side. Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to understand where his parents were coming from. Still, it’s hard not to feel that Benjamin deserves at least a little bit of time to enjoy himself. That’s what Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) thinks, at least initially.
Mrs. Robinson is the most interesting character in the film, a force of chaos who lives to disrupt the staid world around her. She’s bored with her marriage and her conventional but empty lifestyle so she has an affair with Benjamin. Later, she grows bored with Benjamin and his desire to “just talk” for once and she moves on from him. Benjamin and Elaine are both likable and you find yourself wishing the best for them but Mrs. Robinson is the character who you really remember. Mrs. Robinson grew up without losing her sense of rebellion. One doubts that Benjamin and Elaine are going to do the same.
A portrait of American suburbia and 60s alienation, The Graduate would prove to be one of the most influential social satires ever made. A box office hit, it was nominated for seven Academy Awards. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Mike Nichols), Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Supporting Actress (Katharine Ross), Best Adapted Screenplay (Buck Henry and Calder Willingham), and Best Cinematography (Robert Surtees). The Simon and Garfunkel songs that set the film’s mood were, for the most part, not eligible. (Only Mrs. Robinson was written specifically for the film.) I would argue that the film deserved to be nominated for its editing as well. In the end, the film only won one Oscar, for Mike Nichols. But, regardless of what awards it won or lost, The Graduate‘s legacy lives on.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1971’s The Failing of Raymond! It can be viewed on YouTube!
Poor Raymond!
Played by a young Dean Stockwell, Raymond is patient at a mental hospital who blames everything that has gone wrong on his life on one failed test. During his senior year of high school, he got a 61 on an English test and, as a result, he not only only failed the class but he also wasn’t allowed to graduate. The test was administered by a substitute teacher named Mary Bloomquist (Jane Wyman), one who did not know that Raymond had a reputation for being a bit eccentric. When Raymond tried to ask her whether or not the final two questions were for extra credit, Mary refused to call on him because she was more preoccupied with her failed affair with another teacher (Dana Andrews). Raymond didn’t answer the final two questions, even though he believed that he had the correct answers. Now, locked away in a hospital, Raymond comes across an article announcing that beloved teacher Mary Bloomquist will soon be retiring and moving to England.
Seeking revenge, Raymond escapes from the hospital. While police Sgt. Manzek (Murray Hamilton) search for Raymond, Raymond returns to his old school. When he finds Mary in her classroom, Mary mistakes Raymond for a mover responding to a classified ad asking for help in getting all of her things packed up. Raymond may be a homicidal but he also craves direction and praise so he helps Mary with her packing. As he packs, Mary talks about her decision to retire and it turns out that she’s not quite the monster that Raymond imagined her to be. Mary is retiring because she feels that she has never made a difference as a teacher.
That said, Raymond is still determined to get his revenge. He wants Mary to give him the test a second time and to give him a passing grade. And if she doesn’t, he’s prepared to kill her. Unfortunately, despite claiming to have spent years studying the material, Raymond still thinks that Robert Browning wrote the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.…
As the old saying goes, you never know how much your actions might effect someone else’s life. Mary is a dedicated and well-meaning teacher who cares about her students but her decision to fail Raymond, made on a day when she was distracted by her own personal problems, is something that Raymond has never forgotten or forgiven. Mary can barely remember it happening but Raymond has based his entire life around that moment and, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that he’s incapable of understanding that the entire world doesn’t revolve around what happened to him during his senior year. On the one hand, Mary definitely should have answered Raymond’s question about whether or not the final two questions were multiple choice. On the other hand, Raymond has clearly been using the incident as an excuse to justify every mistake that he’s made sense. Ironically, Raymond’s quest for revenge gives Mary the chance to finally be the teacher that she truly wants to be.
It’s an intriguing premise. Unfortunately, like so many made-for-TV movies from the early 70s, The Failing of Raymond is occasionally a bit too stagey for its own good. Despite only being 73 minutes long, it never really develops any sort of narrative momentum. That said, Dean Stockwell gives a performance that makes clear why Alfred Hitchcock was planning on casting him as Norman Bates if Anthony Perkins somehow fell through. As played by Stockwell, Raymond is unfailingly polite and so obviously wounded that it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for him, even when he’s threatening to kill his former teacher. Jane Wyman, as well, gives a sympathetic performance as Mary, who, despite that one bad day with Raymond, really is the type of teacher we all wish we could have had.
This film was directed by Boris Sagal, who did several made-for-TV movies and also directed Charlton Heston in The Omega Man. His daughter, Katey Sagal, makes her film debut in a small role as one of Raymond’s fellow patients.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1971’s A Tattered Web! It can be viewed on YouTube!
Sgt. Ed Stagg (Lloyd Bridges) is a good cop and an overprotective father. Ever since his wife left him, Ed has been determined to make sure that his daughter, Tina (Sallie Shockley), has a good life. So, as you can probably guess, Ed is not amused when he finds out that Tina’s husband, Steve (Frank Converse), has been cheating on her with Louise Campbell (Anne Helm). Ed has never liked Steve and would love it if his daughter left him. But, Ed still doesn’t want want Tina to have to go through the pain of knowing that her husband is seeing another woman.
Ed decides to drop by Louise’s apartment and talk to her himself. Louise, however, is not willing to let some old stranger tell her how to live her life. After all, she’s heard from Steve about what a terrible and judgmental father-in-law Ed is. Ed gets frustrated and shoves Louise. Louise stumbles back, hits her head, and …. uh-oh. Louise is dead! To be honest, it didn’t really look like she hit her head that hard. In fact, I had to rewatch the scene to see if she actually hit her head at all. But no matter. Louise is dead and Ed’s responsible.
The next morning, when Ed and his partner, Joe (Murray Hamilton), are called in to investigate Louise’s homicide, Ed is approached by Louise’s neighbor (John Fiedler), who gives him a description of a young man who he says he frequently saw going up to Louise’s apartment. The description perfectly describes Steve. The police sketch artist draws a picture that looks like just like Steve. Joe thinks that Steve is responsible. Not wanting his daughter to think that her husband’s a murderer, Ed decides to frame Willard Edson (Broderick Crawford), an alcoholic who frequently comes into the station and confesses to crimes so that he can have a place to sleep for the night.
Yes, it’s a tattered web indeed. Ed is able to talk Edson into confessing to the crime but then Steve does his own detective work and realizes that Edson couldn’t be the murderer. Ed tells Steve that he should just let the police arrest Edson because, otherwise, they’re going to come after Steve. Steve, however, says that he would rather be arrested and be given a chance to prove his innocence than just stand by idly while an innocent man goes to jail. Being a veteran cop, Ed wasn’t expecting everyone to be so damn honest!
A Tattered Web isn’t bad for a 70-minute made-for-TV movie. The film’s main strength is the cast, with Lloyd Bridges, Murray Hamilton, and especially Broderick Crawford giving strong performances. The scene where Ed talks Edson into confession is especially well-done, with Crawford giving a performance of growing desperation while Bridges himself appears to be on the verge of tears as Ed realizes what his life has become. Like his sons Jeff and Beau, Lloyd Bridges is such a likable actor that it’s hard not to care about what happens to the characters that he’s playing, even when he’s playing a murderer. A Tattered Web is an effective thriller that reminds viewers that guilt cannot be escaped.
Loosely based on a novel by Norman Mailer, the 1966 film, An American Dream, tells the story of Stephen Rojack (Stuart Whitman). Rojack’s a war hero, a man who has several medals of valor to his credit. He’s married to Deborah (Eleanor Parker), the daughter of one of the richest men in the country. He’s an acclaimed writer. He’s got his own television talk show in New York. He’s been crusading against not only the Mafia but also against corruption in the police department. He has powerful friends and powerful enemies. You get the idea.
He’s also got a marriage that’s on the verge of collapse. Deborah calls Rojack’s show and taunts him while he’s on the air. When Rojack goes to her apartment to demand a divorce, the two of them get into an argument. Deborah tells him that he’s not a hero. She says he only married her for the money and that she only married him for the prestige. She tells him that he’s a lousy lover. Being a character in an adaptation of a Norman Mailer novel, the “lousy lay” crack causes Rojack to snap. He attacks Deborah. The two of them fight. Deborah stumbles out to the balcony of her apartment and it appears that she’s on the verge of jumping. Rojack follows her. At first, he tries to save her but then he lets her fall. She crashes down to the street, where she’s promptly run over by several cars. The cars then all run into each other while Rojack stands on the balcony and wails. There’s nothing subtle about the first 15 minutes of An American Dream.
Actually, there’s nothing subtle about any minute of An American Dream. It’s a film where everything, from the acting to the melodrama, is so over-the-top and portentous that it actually gets a bit boring. There’s no relief from the screeching and the inauthentic hard-boiled dialogue. When a crazed Rojack starts to laugh uncontrollably, he doesn’t just laugh. Instead, he laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and …. well, let’s just say it goes on for a bit. It’s like a 60s version of one of those terrible Family Guy jokes.
Anyway, the police don’t believe that Deborah committed suicide but they also can’t prove that Rojack killed her. Meanwhile, within hours of his wife’s death, Rojack meets his ex-girlfriend, a singer named Cherry (Janet Leigh). Rojack is still in love with Cherry but Cherry is also connected to the same mobsters who want to kill Rojack. Meanwhile, Deborah’s superrich father (Lloyd Nolan) is also on his way to New York City, looking for answer of his own.
An American Dream is a very familiar type of mid-60s film. It’s a trashy story and it’s obvious that the director was trying to be as risqué as the competition in Europe while also trying to not offend mainstream American audiences. As such, the film has hints of nudity but not too much nudity. There’s some profanity but not too much profanity. Rojack, Deborah, and Cherry may curse more than Mary Poppins but they’re rank amateurs compared to the cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s an unabashedly melodramatic film but it doesn’t seem to be sure just how far it can go in embracing the melodrama with alienating its target audience so, as a result, the entire film feels somewhat off. Some scenes go on forever. Some scenes feel too short. The whole thing has the washed-out look of an old cop show.
All of that perhaps wouldn’t matter if Stephen Rojack was a compelling character. In theory, Rojack should have been compelling but, because he’s played by the reliably boring Stuart Whitman, Rojack instead just comes across as being a bit of a dullard. He’s supposed to be a charismatic, two-fisted Norman Mailer-type but instead, as played by Whitman, Rojack comes across like an accountant who is looking forward to retirement but only if he can balance the books one last time. There’s no spark of madness or imagination to be found in Whitman’s performance and, as a result, the viewer never really cares about Rojack or his problems.
Noman Mailer reportedly never saw An American Dream, saying that it would be too painful to a bad version of his favorite novel. In this case, Mailer made the right decision.
For today’s horror on the lens, we’ve got the 1982 made-for-TV movie, Mazes and Monsters!
Mazes and Monsters! Sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? Well, have no fear. Mazes and Monsters is just a role-playing game, one that definitely should not be mistaken for Dungeons and Dragons despite the fact that it’s exactly the same as Dungeons and Dragons. Except, of course, for the fact that one game takes place in a dungeon and the other takes place in a maze.
A group of rich kids love playing Mazes and Monsters but, when they take it a step too far, it leads to the newest member of their group having a nervous breakdown, fleeing to New York City, and fighting demons that only he can see. Our delusional hero is played by an actor named Tom Hanks. Hey, whatever happened to him?
Anyway, Mazes and Monsters is kind of silly. You’re going to get sick of Chris Makepeace’s hats pretty quickly. It imagines a world where the most popular and attractive kids on campus just can’t wait to pretend to be clerics and magic users. And yet, in its own melodramatic way, the film works. If you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks stab a green demon, this is the film to watch! This was one of Tom Hanks’s first roles and he already looks a little bit too old to play a college student but his trademark likability is already evident. When Tom has a moment of clarity and desperately announces that “THERE’S BLOOD ON MY KNIFE!,” it’s impossible for your heart not to ache for him a little. Finally, as over-the-top as the moral panic about the possibility of LARPers going crazy in New York may be, the ending actually is surprisingly effective.
Based on a best-seller by Rona Jaffe, 1982’s Mazes and Monsters tell the story of some college students who enjoy playing a game called…. well, Mazes and Monsters. Now, I realize that Mazes and Monsters may sound a lot like Dungeons and Dragons but they are actually two separate games. One game takes place in a dungeon. The other takes place in maze, got it?
