Book Review: Justin Perry: The Assassin by John D. Revere

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

About a month ago, as I continued to make my way through the paperbacks that I inherited from my aunt, I read five short paperbacks about a character known as Justin Perry, the assassin.

Who is Justin Perry? As was explained in the first book in the series, 1982’s Justin Perry: The Assassin, Justin’s name used to be Roger Johnson. He was raised in a world of wealth and privilege, the son of a general and a socialite. Like his father, Roger enlisted in the army. He ended up in Vietnam and, when he saw a friend of his get blown up the Viet Cong, Roger discovered that he had it in him to be a very savage and efficient killer. Back in the States, Roger was hailed as a hero. He married the beautiful Bambi and they had a son named Roger, Jr. But then, Bambi was murdered by a commie spy and Roger went mad. A mysterious figure known as the Old Man recruited Roger to work as an assassin as the CIA. Now known as Justin Perry, the assassin lives to kill the nation’s enemies and to have sex with every woman he meets. Seriously, that’s all he does.

The book not only gives us Justin’s origin story but also presents us with a rather sordid adventure in which Justin Perry tracks down a Nazi collaborator in Europe. It’s while on that assignment that Justin discovers the existence of SADIF, a secret organization that we know is evil because its acronym sounds a lot like SADIST. His pursuit of SADIF leads to several over-the-top torture sequences and also the discovery of a huge conspiracy, one that involves almost everyone that Justin has ever known. We also discover that SADIF has infiltrated the Church and that Josef Mengele is now working as a gardener at the Vatican. (As an Irish-Italian-Spanish Catholic, I would be offended it wasn’t all so stupid.) None of it makes much sense but, to be honest, I’m not totally convinced that the Justin Perry books weren’t meant to a parody of sex-obsessed pulp fiction.

When I say that Justin Perry is sex-obsessed, that is literally all that he seems to think about. He gets an erection when he kills a man. Every woman that he wants automatically wants him (and, apparently, they’re all into S&M to boot). One sexual encounter is ruined by an attack by an assassin, which leads to not only Justin’s masochistic lover killing herself with a knife (and getting off on the process) but also Justin obsessing over the fact that some of his sperm ended up on a hotel room floor. Justin, in fact, is so hypersexual and so obsessed with proving himself sexually that it’s hard not to wonder if maybe he’s killing people because he’s trying to kill something about himself that he doesn’t want to accept. I haven’t even gotten into the weird torture sequence where Justin and his friend, Bob Dante, are threatened with being sexed to death by a group of SADIF nymphomaniacs and a feet-licking chauffeur.

Actually, I have a feeling (or maybe it’s a fear) that I’m making this book sound more interesting than it is. Despite all of the insane things that happen, the prose itself is actually fairly dull. If one takes the book seriously, it’s a celebration of a sociopath. If one takes the book as being satirical, it’s still just one joke repeated over and over again. What is interesting is that the next four books in the series were even stranger and I’ll be reviewing those over the days to come. For now, let’s just be happy that Justin Perry: The Assassin never made it to the big screen.

Guilty Pleasure No. 58: Robot Jox (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the future, the world has been ravaged by a combination of nuclear war and infertility. The face of diplomacy has changes as well. Instead of wasting time with negotiations, treaties, or lengthy wars, countries now settle disputes through giant robot combat.

In fact, robot combat is the most popular sport in the world! The men who sit inside the head of the giant robots and who push the buttons that make the robots do their thing have all become national heroes. They’re even more beloved than the robots that they control. America loves Achilles (Gary Graham). Russia loves Alexander (Paul Koslo). Every fight is observed by hundreds of spectators sitting in the stands.

That becomes a problem when Achilles and his robot accidentally fall backwards and land on top of the stands. Not only does this mean that Russia will claim ownership of Alaska but it also kills a lot of people who were only there because they thought they would get to watch some good old-fashioned giant robot combat. Achilles is so upset that he announces his retirement. He leaves robot combat camp and walks around the most depressing, dreariest city imaginable. It’s hard not to notice that the city is full of signs imploring couples to have as many children as possible. The humans would seem to be on the way out, regardless of what happens with the giant robots.

Fortunately, Achilles’s retirement only lasts for a day or two. Once he learns that he’s going to be replaced by Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), Achilles returns to fight Alexander. It could be that Achilles is in love with Athena. It could also just be evidence that it takes a lot more than a nuclear war to wipe out misogyny and Achilles can’t handle a woman controlling his robot. Who knows? Achilles is determined to redeem himself but Athena still wants her chance and it turns out that there is a double agent who is giving information to Alexander and the Russians!

Featuring a plot that was apparently made up on the spot, 1990’s Robot Jox is about as silly as a movie can get. Several scenes are devoted to showing Athena and the other young robot pilots going through their training and it’s hard not to notice that none of it actually has anything to do with sitting inside the head of a giant robot and telling it what to do. Instead, they do a lot of physical stuff, which makes no sense because piloting a robot would be a mental task, not a physical one. But it gives the film an excuse to put a bunch of toned 20 year-olds in skin tight outfits and that was probably the main concern. As for the double agent subplot, there’s only two possible suspects and it’s not difficult to guess which one is guilty. The actors, for the most part, go through the motions though Michael Alldredge has some good moments as Achilles’s trainer and Paul Koslo is a blast as the maniacally evil Alexander. In the future, it’s just not enough to destroy a man’s giant robot. You have to laugh about it, too.

But, to be honest, Robot Jox is one of those movies that is so extremely silly that it’s impossible not to kind of like it. The special effects may be on the cheap side but the robots themselves are actually fairly impressive and it’s hard not to smile at the sight of them stiffly walking across the combat area. The film’s finale features not only a giant chainsaw that is stored inside the crotch of one of the robot’s but also a bizarre and impromptu trip into space. I’m not really sure why the robots flew into space but it really doesn’t matter. No one is going to watch Robot Jox for a coherent story. This is a film that people watch because they want to see giant robots fighting. And, on that front, Robot Jox delivers.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #221: Drawn Into the Night (dir by Bill McAdams, Jr.)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, Erin and I started to watch a film called Drawn Into The Night on Tubi. Erin abandoned the film after 10 minutes but I stayed for the whole thing!

Why Was I Watching It?

According to the film’s description on Tubi, the film was about a cop who goes undercover in a high school in order to investigate the disappearance of three cheerleaders. I love film about undercover high school cops and I figured that Erin would enjoy critiquing whether or not the film was an accurate representation of the high school cheerleader experience. Anyway, Erin stopped watching after 10 minutes but I stuck with the film because I feel guilty whenever I stop watching a movie before the end credits start.

After the film was finished, I did a little research and I discovered that Drawn Into The Night (which Tubi claimed was a 2022 release) was actually a heavily edited version of a 2010 film called A Lure: Teenage Fight Club. Teenage Fight Club was a little over 90 minutes long. Drawn Into The Night had a running time of 67 minutes. Just judging from the reviews that I read of Teenage Fight Club, it would appear that a lot of nudity and excessive violence was edited out of the film that became Drawn Into The Night. That’s fine by me. I love a good thriller but I’ve grown a little bored with violence for the sake of violence.

What Was It About?

After three high school cheerleaders mysteriously disappear, a detective named Maggie (Jessica Sonneborn) goes undercover as a high school student. She joins the school’s field hockey team and makes a quick frenemy out of spoiled Brittany (Augie Duke). An invitation to a rave turns out to instead be an invitation to be forced to take part in a teenage fight club, where the fights are to the death!

What Worked?

The film was short. That may sound like a back-handed compliment but, after sitting through countless films that rua over two hours despite not having enough story for 30 minutes, it was kind of nice to see a film that wrapped everything up in 67 minutes. Of course, some of that is because this was a heavily edited version of a longer film but no matter. It still worked!

The film had some nicely atmospheric shots of people running through the night, often being pursued by an inbred hillbilly. Some of those scenes had a dream-like intensity to them.

Augie Duke gave a good performance as the hilariously self-centered Brittany.

What Did Not Work?

Because of the way the film was edited, there were several continuity errors. One character, in particular, is seen in one location just to be show up in a totally different location one jump cut later. I’m going to guess the original version of the film included a scene of her arriving at the different location. In the edited version, she just appears to teleport from place to place.

Maggie going undercover would have been more interesting if not for the fact that all of the high school students already appeared to be in their 20s. Despite the fact that three cheerleaders had mysteriously vanished just a few days previously, none of the other students at the school seemed to be the concerned about it. At my high school, if someone popular was kidnapped, people definitely would have been talking about it.

The identity of the main villain seemed to come out of nowhere but I am, once again, going to assume that’s because of how this version of the film were edited down from the original version.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

One character has asthma and you better believe that I was cringing when she was trying to catch her breath while running away.

I did sneak out to a few all-night parties when I was in high school and I usually did ruthlessly critique the type of car my older friends drove so I could definitely relate to Brittany. But I’m happy to say that I was never forced to take part in a teenage fight club.

Lessons Learned

When there’s a kidnapping spree going on, don’t accept invitations to parties in the middle of nowhere.

Film Review: A Day To Die (dir by Wes Miller)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A Day To Die is a low-budget action film with a ludicrously complicated plot.

The film opens with an elite SWAT team reacting to a terrorist incident in a small town. A group of white supremacists have taken over a hundred hostages in a high school. An elite SWAT team, led by Brice Mason (Frank Grillo) and Connor Connolly (Kevin Dillon), attempt to rescue the hostages but a mistake leads to the school blowing up and many of the hostages dying. Corrupt police chief Alston (Bruce Willis) breaks up the SWAT team. Some of the members become auto mechanics. Some of them become drug addicts. Connor becomes a …. parole officer.

A year or so later, Connor is forced to kill one of the henchmen of the local drug lord, Pettis (Leon). Pettis is upset because, by his estimation, the dead man would have brought in over two million dollars over the course of his career. Pettis orders Connor to steal two million to pay off his “debt.” Pettis gives Connor 12 hours to find the money and, just for good measure, he kidnaps Connor’s pregnant wife (Brooke Butler).

Pettis suggests that Connor get the money by robbing a rival’s drug house. With no other choice, Connor puts in a call to Brice and soon, the old SWAT team has gathered in a garage. Quicker than you can say Fast and Furious, the team is talking about how they’re family. If Connor needs them to rob a bunch of drug dealers, that’s what they’re going to do. However, they’re also going to take down Pettis in the process. Of course, what they don’t realize is that Pettis has a connection of his own with Chief Alston.

Probably the best thing that can be said about A Day To Die is that Bruce Willis seems to be remarkably steady on his feet. This was one of the batch of films that Willis made before his family announced that he was retiring from acting. Knowing what we now know about not only his health but also the allegations that Willis wasn’t always sure what type of films he was being singed up for, it’s always a bit awkward to watch his last few films. But, in A Day To Die, Willis actually gives a credible performance as the corrupt police chief. Though there’s not much of evidence of the swaggering wise guy charisma that made Willis a star, Willis still delivers his lines convincingly and he seems to be invested in the character. While I’m faintly praising the film, I should also mention that Leon appears to be having fun with the role of the sharply-dressed drug dealer and Frank Grillo is his usual rugged self. They’re all good enough to keep you watching.

Unfortunately, Kevin Dillon uses the same facial expression that he used when he played Johnny Drama on Entourage and, as a result, it’s a bit difficult to take him seriously as an action hero. (If anything A Day To Die seems like the type of film that everyone would laugh at Johnny for doing while Vince was appearing in Martin Scorsese’s Gatsby.) Ultimately, the film is done in by an overcomplicated plot that really doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. As entertaining as Leon is, Pettis’s actions never really make sense. In the end, A Day To Die is better than American Siege but nowhere close to Gasoline Alley.

Book Review: Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 2009, Hellraisers is a fast-paced look at the life and times of four men, Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed, and an examination of what they all had in common.

First off, they were all talented actors who were at the height of their careers in the 60s and the 70s.

They all first came to prominence in the UK. Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed were English. Richard Burton was Welsh. Richard Harris was born in Ireland.

With the exception of Oliver Reed, all of them were multiple Oscar nominees but none of them actually won the award.

All four of them could boast filmographies that included some of the best and some of the worst films of all time.

And, of course, all four of them were infamous for their drinking. They were all, if I may borrow the book’s title, famous for raising Hell.

Hellraisers is a frequently entertaining look at their careers and their legendary off-screen exploits. All four of them come across as being very different drinkers. Richard Burton was a depressing drunk, one who drank because he was aware that he was wasting his talents in mediocre films. O’Toole was a drunk who alternated between being charming and being dangerous, someone who was capable of coming across as being a bon vivant even at his lowest moments. Richard Harris was the angry drunk but he was also the one who seemed to have the both the best understanding of why he drank and why, at a certain age, it was necessary for him to cut back. And, finally, Oliver Reed was the showman, the one who viewed drinking a beer the way that others viewed having a cup of tea and who would rather damage his career than allow anyone else to tell him how to live. He knew that he had a reputation and he was determined to live up to it, even at the risk of his own health.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s Oliver Reed who dominates the book. There was very little that Reed wouldn’t do while drunk and he was drunk quite a lot of the time. He was also perhaps the most unpredictable of all of the actors profiled in the book, a raw mountain of energy who kept audiences off-balance. Personally, I would not have wanted to have been along in a room with a drunk Oliver Reed. The book has too many stories of Reed dropping his trousers and asking everyone to look at what he called his “mighty mallet,” for the reader to feel totally safe with Reed. At the same time, anyone who has seen a good Oliver Reed performance knows that he deserved better roles than he was often given. (Then again, the book is also honest about the fact that a lot of filmmakers would not work with Reed because they had justifiable reasons to be terrified of him and his erratic nature.) Over the course of the book, Reed comes across as hyperactive, easily bored, and also far more intelligent than most gave him credit for. In many ways, he was a prisoner of his own reputation. He was outrageous because he knew that was what was expected of him. As shocking as some of his behavior seems today, he felt that he was giving the people what they wanted and Hellraisers suggests that he may have been right.

Personally, I don’t drink and I find most heavy drinkers to be tedious company at best. That said, Hellraisers is an interesting book. Burton, Harris, O’Toole, and Reed are all fascinating talents and the book takes a look at how their hellraising reputations both hurt and, in some cases, helped their careers. However, the book is more than just a biography of four actors who drank a lot. It’s also an examination of a different era, of a time when performers were expected to raise Hell and when one could get away with being a contrarian just for the fun of it. One can only imagine what the moral scolds of social media would have to say if Oliver Reed were around today! As a result, this is a book that can be enjoyed by both film lovers and history nerds, like you and me.

Cleaning Out the DVR: Scared Straight! Another Story (dir by Richard Michaels)

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who is ready to be scared straight … again!?

Scared Straight! Another Story is a made-for-television movie from 1980. As you can tell by the name, the movie was inspired by the documentary Scared Straight! and the addition of Another Story to the title would lead one to suspect that this was actually a follow-up or continuation to that documentary and I guess it kind of is. A group of teenagers, all of whom have been in trouble with the law, are sent to a prison where they are finger-printed, forced to stay in a cell, and then yelled at by a bunch of prisoners who assure them that they don’t have what it takes to survive in prison. Then, just as in the documentary, the teenagers leave the prison. Some of them continue to get in trouble and some of them are scared straight. As for the prisoners, they remain imprisoned.

The main difference is that, instead of featuring real prisoners and real delinquents, Scared Straight! Another Story is a dramatization. As a result, the prisoners are saying the same thing that they said in the first Scared Straight! but now the prisoners themselves are played by actors who will be familiar to anyone who has watched enough old TV shows. The prisoners may be yelling about how much life sucks but the viewer knows that they are all actors and, as a result, Scared Straight! Another Story lacks the rough authenticity of the first film. (It also doesn’t help that most of the profanity from the original documentary has been replaced with softer expressions of disgust.) The film again makes the argument that the Scared Straight program can turn someone’s life around but it’s not as effective because, again, the troubled teens are all actors. The viewer knows that they’re actors. Their lives have already been turned around.

Surprisingly, the scenes of the prisoners yelling are the least effective parts of this film. Instead, Scared Straight! Another Story works best when it is exploring everyone’s life before and after the trip to the prison. Stan Shaw, in particular, is effective as a prisoner who is inspired to take part in the program after he comes across the body of an inmate who has been driven to suicide. Also well-cast is Terri Nunn, playing Lucy, the girlfriend of a small-time drug dealer. Both she and her boyfriend are scared straight but it turns out to be too little too late as her boyfriend is eventually sent to jail for the crimes that he committed before the program. (There’s an interesting scene, one that I wish had been explored in greater detail, where Lucy’s father observes the scared straight program and, instead of understanding that prison is a terrible place to send a kid, reacts by saying that the prisoners are all getting what they deserve.) Finally, Cliff De Young, who has played a lot of corrupt government agents and out-of-touch teachers over the course of his career, gets a sympathetic role as Paul, the idealistic juvenile probation officer who sends three of his clients to the program. The program works for two of them while the other eventually ends up joining the inmates who previously tried to warn him. If nothing else, the film deserves some credit for admitting that the Scared Straight program isn’t going to magically reform everyone who attends.

Despite some good performances, Scared Straight! Another Story lacks the rough edged authenticity of the documentary. It’s just not as effective when you know that everyone, including the prisoners, could go home at the end of the day. Today, this is one of those films that is mostly interesting as a historical artifact. Apparently, there really was a time when anything could inspire a TV movie.

Film Review: Scared Straight! and Scared Straight! 20 Years Later (dir by Arnold Shapiro)

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember Beyond Scared Straight?

Beyond Scared Straight used to air on A&E. It was a reality show, one where teenagers would be taken into a prison and harassed by the guards and eventually the prisoners. The teenagers were usually guilty of things like skipping school, shoplifting, and either smoking weed or underage drinking. Oddly, I can remember one episode where all of the teens had to wear signs that announced what their crime was. One of them was wearing a sign that simply read, “I disrespect my parents.” I mean, that may be bad manners but is it really a crime for which you can be sent to jail?

Beyond Scared Straight was best known for the segments in which prisoners would yell at the teens and tell them about life in prison and say stuff like, “You don’t belong here! This is not for you!” What is often forgotten today is that the prisoners were usually only a small part of each episode of Beyond Scared Straight. Usually, more time was spent on the guards. Beyond Scared Straight visited a lot of towns and a lot of jails but the guards always seemed to remain the same. The male guards were always bulked up and bald and would try to yell like a drill sergeant. The female guards would always scream at anyone who didn’t stand up straight. “Kids today,” one of them said during one particular episode, “do not respect authority the way they should.” Considering what we’ve seen of authority over the past few years, that lack of respect is perhaps understandable. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that suggests that the Scared Straight program does more harm than good. Whenever I watched Beyond Scared Straight, it always seemed like the program was more about humiliating the teens than actually trying to help them or to understand why they were doing the things that they were doing. It reminded me a bit of something that I read about the psychology behind spanking. It’s more about the anger of the adults than the behavior of the children and it usually leads to a lot of resentment down the line. There’s only so many times that anyone can be spanked or yelled at before they strike back.

I have to admit that, whenever I watched Beyond Scared Straight, I always enjoyed it whenever one of the “bad teens” would smirk at some screaming guard. There were a few episodes where a teen would actually take a swing at a guard and those were my favorite episodes. (I guess I have issues with authority, too.) If I had a difficult time taking Beyond Scared Straight seriously, it was because it hard for me to watch it without thinking of Steve Carell’s performance as Prison Mike on The Office.

Far more effective than Beyond Scared Straight was the documentary that inspired it, 1978’s Scared Straight! Scared Straight! followed a group of juvenile delinquents who were taken to a prison in New Jersey. The film didn’t waste any time with the guards and indeed, the documentary emphasized the fact that the convicts ran the prison and not the guards. (That’s the sort of thing that Beyond Scared Straight, with all of its “respect my authority” rhetoric, would never have the guts to admit.) In fact, the documentary really didn’t even reveal much about the teenagers being yelled at, beyond the fact that they all thought that they were tough (or, at least, they did before going into prison) and that all the boys had really thin, barely-there mustaches.

Instead, it’s the prisoners who dominated this documentary. The majority of them were serving life sentences. A few of them were murderers. They were angry, they were loud, and they made it clear that they didn’t like the people listening to them, filming them, or watching them. They left the audience with no doubt that the prisoners would hate them just as much as they hated the teens in the program. The prisoners stole everyone’s shoes. They knocked a stack of cards out of one teen’s hands. They regularly threatened to break one kid’s neck. They talked about what it was like to be raped in prison. They talked about what the teens would have to do in order to survive in prison. Scared Straight! was narrated by Peter Falk who, early on, informed the audience that they would be hearing some “rough language.” Falk wasn’t lying. The prisoners in this film were frightening in a way that their later television counterparts never could be. One doesn’t have to be a believer in the Scared Straight! program (and you’ve probably noticed by now that I’m not) to find the prisoners to be both compelling and disturbing at the same time. All of the prisoners were obviously intelligent but, just as obviously, prison had left physical, mental, and emotional scars that would never heal.

Scared Straight! was a huge success, winning both an Oscar and an Emmy. It led to various follow-up documentary, which explored whether or not the teens had actually been scared straight. After I watched the original Scared Straight!, I watched Scared Straight: 20 Years Later. Released in 1999, this documentary was narrated by Danny Glover and featured interviews with the surviving prisoners and program participants. At the time the documentary was released, almost all of the prisoners had been paroled. Three of them had died, one from a drug overdose, one from AIDS, and another from a sudden heart attack. A few of the parolees had been re-arrested and were now back in prison and, just as importantly, a few others had stayed out of trouble. As for the teens, one had died of AIDS and one was in prison but the rest of the surviving teens claimed that they had all learned from the program. At least two were involved in the ministry. The others all had families and steady jobs. None of them seemed to be particularly well-off financially but, at the same time, the majority of them seemed to be happy.

Of course, Scared Straight: 20 Years Later was filmed over 20 years ago. Things change. One of the graduates of the original program, Angelo Speziale, appeared in 20 Years Later, playing with his children and talking about how he had a few minor run-ins with the law immediately after the program. At the time, Speziale said that was all behind him and he was now just focused on being the best father that he could be. As I watched Angelo Speziale talk about how perfect his life was, I couldn’t help but think that there was something slightly off about him. He seemed to be trying too hard to come across as just a regular suburban dad. In 2011, long after he was interviewed for 20 Years After, Angelo Speziale was arrested and charged with raping and murdering one of his neighbors in 1982, four years after he took part in the Scared Straight program. Angelo Speziale is now serving a life sentence at the same prison where the original Scared Straight! was filmed. As for the rest of the participants, who knows? Hopefully, they’re doing well.

The Unnominated: Johnny Got His Gun (dir by Dalton Trumbo)

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

The 1971 anti-war film, Johnny Got His Gun, tells the story of Joe Bonham (played by Timothy Bottoms). When America enters World War I, Joe enlists in the Army. He leaves behind his small-town life. He leaves behind his patriotic father (Jason Robards) and his loving girlfriend (Kathy Fields). As he leaves, everyone tells him that he is doing the right thing to protect democracy. Joe’s a hero!

Joe expects war to be a glorious affair, one that will make a true man out of him. Instead, he’s hit by an artillery shell while huddled in a muddy trench. Though he survives the explosion, he loses his arms and his legs. He loses his face. He’s taken to a field hospital, where the doctors say that, though he’s alive, he’s incapable of feeling or thinking. He’s left alone in a room and is occasionally checked on by a sympathetic nurse (Diane Varsi).

The doctors are wrong. Joe can think. Even if he can’t see where he is now, he can still remember the life that he once had and the events that led him to the hospital. The film switches back and forth, from the black-and-white imagery of the hospital to the vivid color of Joe’s memories and fantasies. In his mind, Joe remembers his father, who encouraged him to go to war and perhaps was not the all-knowing figure that Joe originally assumed him to be. (The film makes good use of Jason Robards’s natural gravitas. Like Joe, the viewer initially assumes that Robards is correct about everything.) Joe also imagines several conversations with Jesus (a stoned-looking Donald Sutherland), who turns out to be surprisingly mellow and not always particularly helpful. Jesus suggest that Joe may just be naturally unlucky and he also suggests that Joe perhaps keep his distance from him because, sometimes, bad luck can rub off. Joe, meanwhile, wonders if he could be used as a traveling exhibit to portray the futility of war. When Joe finally realizes that a nurse has been checking on him, he tries to figure out a way to send a message to both her and the military that is keeping him alive in his captive state. S.O.S. …. help me….

Johnny Got His Gun is based on a novel by Dalton Trumbo. The novel was first published in 1939, at a time when the debate over whether the the U.S. should get involved in another war in Europe was running high. At the time, Trumbo was a Stalinist who opposed getting involved because Germany and Russia had signed a non-aggression pact. After the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, Trumbo and his publishers suspended reprinting of the book until the war was over with. Needless to say, this was all brought up in the 50s, when Trumbo was one of the more prominent writers to be blacklisted during the Red Scare. On the one hand, Dalton Trumbo does sound like he was more than a bit of a useful idiot for the Stalinists. On the other hand, if you’re going to suspend the printing of your anti-war polemic, it should definitely be because you want to help defeat the Nazis. In the end, what really matters is that Johnny Got His Gun is an undeniably well-written and effective book, one that works because it eschews the vapid sloganeering that one finds in so many works of left-wing literature and instead focuses on the emotions and thoughts of one human being.

The book was later rediscovered by the anti-war protestors of the 60s, which led to Dalton Trumbo directing a film adaptation. The film is a bit uneven. Dalton Trumbo was 65 years old when he directed the film and there are a few moments, especially in the scenes with Sutherland as Jesus, where he seems like he’s trying a bit too hard to duplicate the younger directors who were a part of the anti-war moment. However, the scenes in the military hospital are undeniably moving. The hospital scenes are shot in a noirish black-and-white and they effectively capture the stark horror of Joe’s situation. Left alone in his dark and shadowy room, Joe becomes the perfect symbol for all the war-related horrors that people choose to ignore. He becomes the embodiment of what war does to those who are scarred, both physically and mentally, by it. The scenes where Diane Varsi realizes that Joe is aware of what’s happened to him and that he can still feel are powerful and emotional. In fact, they work so well that it’s hard not to wish that the film could have done away with the fantasies and the flashbacks, despite the fact that Timothy Bottoms gives an appealing performance as the young and idealistic Joe.

Johnny Got His Gun didn’t receive any Oscar nominations. Should it have? The 1971 Best Picture line-up was a strong one, with the exception of Nicholas and Alexandra. Johnny Got His Gun was definitely superior to Nicholas and Alexandra. However, Dirty Harry is definitely superior to Johnny Got His Gun. (For that matter, Two-Lane Blacktop also came out in 1971 as well.) But, even if Johnny Got His Gun didn’t deserve to be one of the five Best Picture nominees, it did deserve some consideration for its cinematography and Diane Varsi’s performance. If the flashbacks and the fantasies were handled a bit more effectively, I would suggest that Jason Robards and Timothy Bottoms were worthy of consideration as well.

In conclusion, I should note that 1971 was a good year for Timothy Bottoms. Not only did he star in this film but he was also the star of The Last Picture Show.

Previous entries in The Unnominated:

Insomnia File No. 55: FTA (dir by Francine Parker)

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having some trouble getting too sleep last night, you could have taken some sleeping pills and allowed them to knock you out for a day or two. Or you could have logged into Netflix and watched the 1972 anti-war documentary, F.T.A.

The year was 1971 and the United States was bogged down in a deeply unpopular war in Vietnam. While protests continued in North America, the soldiers who were actually serving in Asia started to become increasingly outspoken about their own doubts about whether there was any good reason for the U.S. to be in Vietnam. Often at the risk of being court-martialed, these soldiers started to make their voice heard through underground newspapers and by hanging out at coffeehouses that anti-war protestors had started near military bases. “F.T.A.” became a rallying cry for these anti-war soldiers. A play on the army’s then-slogan of “Fun, Travel, and Adventure,” F.T.A. was also said to stand for, “Fuck the Army.”

F.T.A. also stood for Free Theater Associates, an anti-war vaudeville-style troupe that spent 1971 performing at G.I. Coffeehouses. The show was specifically set up as a parody of Bob Hope’s USO Shows. Each performance featured music, skits, and a reading from Dalton Trumbo’s anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun. Headlining the FTA show were actors Donald Sutherland Jane Fonda, comedians Michael Alaimo and Paul Mooney, and musicians Swamp Dogg and Holly Near.

F.T.A. is really two documentaries in one. One documentary features the F.T.A. performances and follows the troupe as they travel to military bases in Hawaii, The Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan. The other documentary features interviews with the anti-war soldiers who came to see the show. They discuss how they feel about the prospect of dying in a war that none of them support and few of them understand. They discuss how clueless the officers are. Black G.I.s discuss the racism within the ranks and wonder why they should die for a country that discriminates against them.

For the most part, the celebrities come across as being dilettantes. With the exception of Swamp Dogg (who is obviously sincere in his concerns for the people that he’s performing for), the F.T.A. performers come across as being a bit too enamored with themselves and a lot of what we see of the F.T.A. Show seems to be more about impressing the activists back home than entertaining the G.I.s. (Many of the skits reminded me of the worst of the Freedom School scenes from Billy Jack.) However, the soldiers themselves are fascinating. The soldiers discuss their anger, fears, and experiences with an honesty and an authenticity that is never less than compelling. If nothing else, this documentary highlights the difference between people who are anti-war because they’ve experienced it firsthand and people who are anti-war because it’s the latest thing to be.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a history nerd. Seen today, F.T.A. is an interesting historical document, one that’s all the more fascinating because it’s a Vietnam documentary that was filmed while the war was still being fought. As such, there’s no hindsight or attempts to mold the material into something designed to appeal to those looking back with either nostalgia or disdain. Instead, it’s a time capsule, one that takes you back to a tumultuous time and allows you to experience it for yourself. On that level, it’s a history nerd’s dream.

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Book Review: Message From Nam By Danielle Steel

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is a review of another novel from my aunt’s big collection of paperbacks.

First published in 1991, Message From Nam follows Paxton Andrews as she grows up in the 1960s. She goes from being an idealistic, Kennedy-inspired teenager in Savannah, Georgia to being a hardened and brave war correspondent in Vietnam. Along the way, she defies the wishes of her wealthy family, who would rather that she live in a conventional life in Georgia. She goes to college, she protests the war, and she eventually even gets to write a weekly column about the war and how it is effecting both the combatants and the folks back home. She also falls in love with several different men, the majority of whom end up dying in Vietnam. I guess that’s one of the dangers that you run into when you’re a war correspondent. Eventually, the great love of her life also disappears in Vietnam. Is he dead or is he just waiting for Paxton to come and find him?

So, I don’t know about you but when I think of an American author who could deftly capture the intricacies of American foreign policy and the turmoil of the late 60s and the early 70s, Danielle Steel is not necessarily the first name that comes to mind. Steel fills the book with historical detail but it all feels a bit rudimentary. Naturally, the book opens on the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and, of course, there are references to all of the other big events of the 60s but the book’s examination of those events don’t go much deeper than acknowledging that they happened and that Paxton was upset about some of them. Even when Paxton goes to Vietnam, it’s an experience that’s pretty much interchangeable with what the reader might expect to see if they were watching a movie about Vietnam as opposed to reading a book about it. There are no details that make the reader pause and think, “I bet that’s what it was really like.” Throughout the copy of the book that I read, Steel continually referred to Vietnam as being “Viet Nam.” Admittedly, I usually make the same mistake before autocorrect jumps in to help me out but, then again, I’ve also never written a novel about being a war correspondent in Vietnam.

I suppose Message From Nam was Steel’s attempt to show that she could write a novel that didn’t take place in a world of glamorous and glitzy rich people but the fact of the matter is that Paxton still comes from a rich family and nearly every man that she meets falls in love with her so this really isn’t that much different from a typical Danielle Steel novel. Indeed, the novel could use a little glamour and glitz. To be honest, the book works best when Steel stop trying to make history come to life in all of its gritty reality and instead, just embraces the melodrama. When the book focuses on people declaring their undying love right before tragedy ensues, it works just fine. Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with being a good romance novelist.