Spring Break is one of the things that I really miss about high school and college. Despite the fact that I don’t drink, I don’t swim, and I generally hate crowds, I always made it a point to celebrate Spring Break by going to the beach. Spring Break was more than just a week’s vacation from “preparing for the future” and everything else that I occasionally pretended college was about. Spring Break was a ritual. It was a tradition. Celebrating Spring Break was as much a required activity as dressing up for Halloween or going to fireworks on the 4th.
For the next two weeks, we’re going to celebrate Spring Break on the Shattered Lens. I know that some people are saying that no one should be celebrating the Spring Break this year. To be honest, there were people saying that before the pandemic broke out and there were be people saying that once the pandemic is under control. Wear your mask indoors. Social distance. Do whatever needs to be done and yes, definitely make sure that you know what’s going on in the world. But don’t ever let the professional killjoys tell you that you don’t have a right to enjoy your life.
If you want to check out a professional killjoy, just check out the scientist who is at the heart of the 1965 film, The Beach Girls and the Monster. Dr. Otto Lindsay (Jon Hall, who also directed) is an oceanographer who totally resents the fact that teenagers are partying on the beach. I mean, he’s even more obnoxious than that jackass lawyer who spent last year wandering around the beach of Florida while dressed up as the Grim Reaper. Obviously, some of Otto’s bad attitude can be explained by the fact that he’s old but it’s hard not to feel that there’s something bigger fueling his resentment. Maybe he’s angry that his young wife, Vicky (Sue Casey), doesn’t seem to be particularly happy with their marriage. Maybe he’s annoyed that there’s a sculptor named Mark (Waler Edmonston) living in his house. Mark is a friend of Otto’s son, Richard (Arnold Lessing). Richard was planning on following his father into the field of oceanography but then he discovered surfing. Now, the only thing that Richard wants to do is surf and hang out on the beach.
It’s a popular beach, though perhaps a little bit less popular now that people are being randomly killed on the sand. Who is killing off of all of the surfers and the beach girls? Richard thinks that it’s a maniac but Otto believes that it’s a prehistoric sea creature, come back to life and seeking revenge on all of the irresponsible young people who ruining the beach. Judging from the fact that the killer looks like some sort of humanoid-fish hybrid, we can only assume that Otto is right. But is he?
You’ll have to watch the film to find out and, fortunately, it’ll be pretty easy for you to do just that. The Beach Girls and The Monster is in the public domain and it’s been uploaded to YouTube about a dozen times. And you know what? You should watch it because this is an entertainingly dumb little movie. It’s not exactly a good movie, of course. The acting is …. not impressive. The killer fish is …. less impressive. But so what? This is a fast-paced and fun movie with a silly monster, a lot of beach parties, and just enough dancing to hold my attention. It’s nonsense but, in the best tradition of Spring Break, it’s entertaining nonsense.
The 1980 film, Schizoid, is all about the things you can do with scissors.
For instance, in the days before email, text messages, and social media, scissors could be used to cut words out of a magazines. Those words could then be carefully pasted onto construction paper and then sent to an advice columnist like Julie Caffret (Marianna Hill). Julie is pretty upset when she starts getting the notes, largely because they promise an anonymous reign of terror and murder. The police, however, say that the notes probably don’t meant anything. They’re probably just a hoax. I mean, it’s true that several members of Julie’s therapy group have recently been murdered but the letters all talk about committing murder with a gun. Whereas the members of the therapy group are being murdered by someone wielding …. SCISSORS! (Cue that dramatic music.)
Of course, Julie has other things to worry about. For instance, her ex-husband, Doug (Craig Wasson), is still in her life. He’s putting up wallpaper in her office. Or, at least, that’s what he says he’s doing. It’s hard not to notice that he doesn’t seem to be making much progress with the job. Plus, he apparently sleeps in the office, which just seems odd. Then, there’s the building’s creepy maintenance man, Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd), who specializes in making people uncomfortable on elevators. And then there’s the fact that Julie’s therapist, is played by Klaus Kinski!
Seriously, if you were looking for a therapist, would you go to Klaus Kinski?
From the minute Klaus shows up, it’s pretty obvious that the film wants us to assume that he’s the killer and really, it’s hard not to make that assumption. We’re so used to seeing Klaus Kinski play evil and villainous characters and, even 30 years after his death, there are so many stories out there about how difficult Klaus Kinski could be to work with in real life that our natural reaction is to believe any character he plays must have a sinister motivation. In this film, Klaus’s character has an out-of-control teenage daughter (Donna Wilkes) who tries to commit suicide by locking herself in the garage with a running car. When Klaus takes an axe to the garage door, we’re left to seriously wonder if he’s planning on killing her or if he’s actually trying to save her life. That said, Schizoid actually makes good use of Kinski’s menacing persona and Kinski himself gives a performance that elevates the entire film. Kinski actually does manage to keep you guessing as to whether or not the therapist is a monster or if he’s just kind of a jerk.
Schizoid is usually classified as a slasher film, though it actually has more in common with the classic Italian giallo films that it does with any of the Friday the 13th sequels. The killer’s identity is masked through POV shots and, in typical giallo fashion, the killer wears black gloves while committing his crimes. We spend a good deal of the film following the police investigation, which is a typical element of the giallo genre but which is usually treated as an afterthought in post-Friday the 13th slasher films. Much like Fulci’s The New York Ripper, Schizoid is a violent journey into the heart of darkness, a look at a world with no morality and no safety. Also like Fulci’s film, it’s so shamelessly sleazy that it’s easy to miss the fact that it’s actually rather well-directed and acted.
Schizoid turned out to be a better film that I was expecting. That said, I still have to wonder why anyone would select Klaus Kinski to be their therapist.
Between June 14, 1962 and January 4, 1964, 13 women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in the Boston area. It was felt that they had all been killed by the same man, a monster known as The Boston Strangler. Though the police investigated many suspects, they never made an arrest. (One should remember that this was before the time of DNA testing or criminal profiling. The term “serial killer” had not even been coined. Today, sad to say, we take the existence of serial killers for granted. In the 60s, it was still an exotic concept.)
In October of 1964, a man named Albert DeSalvo was arrested and charged with being “the Green Man,” a serial rapist who pretended to be a maintenance man in order to gain access to single women’s apartments. After he was charged with rape, detectives were surprised when DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler. When confessing to the murders, DeSalvo got a few minor details wrong but he also consistently included other details that the police hadn’t released to the general public. Even when put under hypnosis, DeSalvo’s recalled those previously unreleased details. Because DeSalvo was already going to get a life sentence on the rape charges and because there wasn’t any physical evidence that, in those pre-DNA, could have conclusively linked DeSalvo to the crimes, he was never actually charged with any of the murders. Still, with his confessions, the cases were considered to be closed.
In 1966, before DeSalvo was even sentenced for the Green Man rapes, Gerold Frank wrote The Boston Strangler, a book about the murders, the investigations, and DeSalvo’s confessions. It was one of the first true crime books and, in 1968, it was adapted into one of the first true crime films.
Directed by Richard Fleischer (whose filmography somehow includes not only this film but also Dr. Dolittle, Fantastic Voyage, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Conan The Destroyer, and Red Sonja), The Boston Strangler is really two films in one. The first half deals with the crimes and the police (represented by Henry Fonda, George Kennedy, Murray Hamilton, and James Brolin) investigation. This half of the film is pulpy and crudely effective, full of scenes of the cops rounding up every sex offender who they can find. There’s a scene where Henry Fonda talks to a prominent man in a gay bar that’s handled with about as much sensitivity as you could expect from a 1960s studio film. (On the one hand, the man is portrayed with respect and dignity and he’s even allowed to call out the patron saint of 1960s mainstream liberal piety, Henry Fonda, for being close-minded. On the other hand, everyone else in the bar is a stereotype and we’re meant to laugh at the idea that anyone could think that Henry Fonda could be gay.) Director Richard Fleischer makes good use of split screens, creating an effective atmosphere of paranoia. The scene where a woman tries to keep an obscene caller on the phone long enough for the police to trace his location made my skin crawl and served as a reminder that perverts predate social media. Another scene where a flamboyant psychic tries to help the police goes on for a bit too long but, at the same time, you’re happy for a little relief from crime scenes and terrified, elderly women discovering that their neighbors have been murdered.
The second half of the film features Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo. Curtis is effective as DeSalvo, playing him as being a self-loathing brute who is incapable of controlling his impulses. (Before committing one of his crimes, DeSalvo watches the funeral of John Kennedy, his face wracked with pain. Is the film suggesting that DeSalvo murdered to deal with the stress of life in America or is it suggesting that the hate that killed Kennedy was a symptom of the same sickness that drove DeSalvo? Or is the film just tossing in a then-recent event to get an easy emotional reaction from the audience?) As one might expect from a mainstream film made in 1968, The Boston Strangler takes something of a wishy washy approach to the question of whether DeSalvo’s crimes were due to sickness or evil. Yes, the film says, DeSalvo was bad but it’s still society’s fault for not realizing that he was bad. It’s the type of approach designed to keep both the law-and-order types and the criminal justice reformers happy but it ultimately feels a bit like a cop out. Still, the shots of DeSalvo isolated in his padding cell have an undeniable power and Curtis is both pathetic and frightening in the role. In its more effective moments, the second half of the film works as a profile of a man imprisoned both physically and mentally.
Watching the film today, it’s hard not to consider how different The Boston Strangler is from the serial killer films that would follow it. DeSalvo is not portrayed as being some sort of charming or interesting Hannibal Lecter or Dexter-type of killer. Instead, he’s a loser, a barely literate idiot who struggled to articulate even the simplest of thoughts. The cops aren’t rule-breakers or renegades. Instead, they’re doing their jobs the best that they can. Though the film ends with a title card saying that it’s important for society to make more of an effort to spot people like DeSalvo before they kill, The Boston Strangler has a surprising amount of faith in both the police and the law and it assumes that you feel the same way. It’s a film that takes it for granted the audience respects and trusts authority. It’s portrayal of the police is quite a contrast to the rebel cops who dominate pop culture today.
After the film came out, DeSalvo recanted his confessions and said that he had never killed anyone. He was subsequently murdered in prison in 1971, not due to his crimes but instead because he was independently selling drugs for prices cheaper than what had been agreed upon by the prison’s syndicate. After his death, many books were written proclaiming that DeSalvo was innocent and that the real Boston Strangler was still on the streets. Others theorized that the actual Strangler was DeSalvo’s cellmate and DeSalvo, knowing he was going to prison for life regardless, confessed in return for money being sent to his family. That said, in 2013, DNA evidence did appear to conclusively link DeSalvo to the murder of 19 year-old Mary Sullivan. Of course, that doesn’t mean that DeSalvo necessarily committed the other 12 murders. In fact, from what we’ve since learned about the pathology of serial killers, it would actually make more sense for the murders to have been committed by multiple killers as opposed to just one man.
Regardless of whether DeSalvo was guilty or not, The Boston Strangler is an uneven but ultimately effective journey into the heart of darkness.
You run and you run and you run and where do you end up? You just end up still running. This video appeals to my existential side, which is probably why I like it so much. The whole grainy retro feel, combined with the run through the universe makes this entire video feel like sort of existential daydream. Keep running because who knows where you’ll eventually end up.
I have to admit that One Foot In Heaven is a film that I probably never would have watched if not for the fact that it received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
This film from 1941 tells what I presume to be a true — or, at the very least, a true-ish — story. Fredric March plays William Spence. The film opens in 1904 with Spence explaining to his future in-laws that he’s spontaneously decided to drop out of medical school because he feels that he’s been called to become a Methodist minister. Though no one is happy or particularly encouraging about William’s decision to abandon the financial security of medicine to work as a minister, William feels that it’s what he was meant to do.
We follow William and his wife, Hope (Martha Scott), as they move from town to town, living in dingy parsonages and barely paying the bills by doing weddings. Though Hope is frustrated by the constant moving and the less-than-ideal living conditions, she remains supportive of William. They start a family and William goes from being a stern and somewhat judgmental man to becoming an inspiring minister. He even changes his opinion about the sinfulness of going to the movies. (All things considered, that’s probably for the best.) Eventually, William, Hope, and the family end up ministering to a congregation in Colorado. Determined to finally give his wife the home that she deserves, William tries to rebuild both the church and the parsonage. It turns out to be more difficult than he was expecting.
That’s pretty much the film. There’s not really much conflict to be found, until the final 30 minutes or so when William struggles to convince a bunch of snobs to help him achieve his dream of building a new church. The film opens with a title card thanking the Methodists for their help in the production of the film, which should tell you everything you need to know about the film’s attitude towards Protestantism. William does debate an agnostic at one point but it’s not much of a debate. William, after all, is played by the authoritative Fredric March while the agnostic’s name isn’t even listed in the credits. It’s a well-made film, in that sturdy way that many 1941 studio productions were, but — unless you’re just crazy about the history of Methodism — it’s not particularly interesting.
On the plus side, Fredric March gives a good performance as William Spence. March was one of the best actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age and he gives a sympathetic performance as a stern but well-meaning man who respects tradition but who is still willing to admit that he has much to learn. Probably the film’s most effective scene is when William reluctantly watches a movie with his son. March captures William’s transformation from being a disapproving father to an entertained filmgoer. It’s one of the few moments when the film really feels alive.
So, how did One Foot In Heaven receive a Best Picture nomination in the same year that saw nominations for films like Citizen Kane, The Little Foxes, Suspicion, and The Maltese Falcon? One Foot In Heaven is well-made and totally uncontroversial. It’s the type of film that, if it were made today, it would probably be directed by Ron Howard and it would star someone like James Marsden or Garrett Hedlund. One Foot In Heaven is not particularly memorable but there’s nothing particularly terrible about it either and it probably felt like a “safe’ film to nominate. Still, it’s probably significant that One Foot In Heaven didn’t receive any nominations other than one for Best Picture. It lost that Oscar to another film about family, How Green Was My Valley.
When I first saw this, I have to admit that I misread the title as being “You got in my way” and, since I suck at understanding lyrics, I assumed that this song was about a hit-and-run accident or something like that. Like maybe Ali was explaining that it was unfortunate that she ran you over but she was driving home at four in the morning and she was a little distracted and then you just happened to step off the curb. Seriously — what were you thinking!?
Actually, though, this is song is abut Ali singing about a boy who seems to be perfect but who still kind of cramps her style. She’s got the stability of a relationship but sometimes, that stability gets in the way of her just doing what she wants to do. Is she sacrificing her freedom? It’s a legitimate question and one to which I think any former or current wild child can relate.
Hi, everyone! I’m in charge of “music video of the day” for this week so let’s get things started with this trippy little video from Laurence-Anne.
Basically, you remember those big bulky computers that everyone used to have? Well, judging from this video, it’s a pretty good thing that we got rid of the because they’ll cause you to sucked into a maze and then melt away. Seriously, everyone …. melting is just not worth it. While I personally don’t know anyone who has melted, I imagine that it would be a pretty difficult thing to come back from. You melt and you can pretty much say goodbye to whatever future plans you may have had.
Last night, for the first time, I watched the 1948 Best Picture nominee, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Directed by the legendary John Huston and featuring a wonderful performance from the equally legendary Humphrey Bogart, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has a reputation for being one of the greatest films ever made. It’s a reputation that is more than deserved. That makes the film a pleasure to watch but, unfortunately, it also makes it somewhat intimidating to write about.
(In the past, Leonard and I have discussed how it’s so much more difficult to write a review of a good film than it is to write a review of a bad film. Sad to say, it’s often easier to be negative than it is to be positive. Writing a review of a bad film only requires the ability to be snarky. Writing a review of a good, much less a great film, is far more difficult. It’s one thing to realize a film is good. It’s another thing to try to explain why.)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre tells the story of three Americans in Mexico, drifters living on the edge of society. Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) spend their days begging for spare change and taking whatever work they can find. When they meet an eccentric but wise prospector named Howard (Walter Huston), the three of them end up going on a quest for gold. It’s not a spoiler to tell you that the three men find their gold, though Dobbs is shocked to discover that gold dust can easily be mistaken for sand and doesn’t naturally shine in the sun. Just as Howard warned would happen, the three men start to grow paranoid about their newfound wealth. Meanwhile, others — including a pushy American named Cody (Bruce Bennett) and an outlaw known as Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya) — show up near the camp, leaving the men to wonder how far each of them will go to protect their shares of the treasure.
When the three of them first meet in a dirty flophouse, Howard warns Dobbs and Curtin that gold will drive a man to insanity. Howard says that he knows because it’s happened to him more than once. Still, as we watch the three prospectors descend further into paranoia with each new bag they fill with gold dust, we can’t help but wonder if the gold is driving them crazy or if it’s just causing them to reveal their true selves. From the minute we first see Dobbs on a street in a Mexican city, begging for money and snarling at a child (played, incidentally, by a very young Robert Blake) who tries to sell him a lottery ticket, it’s obvious that Dobbs is desperate, angry, and resentful. Finding the gold doesn’t do anything to alleviate the anger that Dobbs feels towards the world as much as it just gives him an excuse to indulge in it fully. Whereas, in the past, Dobbs always had to hold back his anger in hope of getting another handout, the gold allows him to fully embrace his seething resentment. Compared to Dobbs, Howard and Curtin don’t seem to change quite as much. Of course, it should be remembered that Howard is an old man who knows that he doesn’t have much time left. Meanwhile, Curtin is often too busy reacting to Dobbs’s anger to truly indulge in his own. Watching the film, you have to wonder how things would have gone if Dobbs hadn’t been there. Without the distracting of Dobbs’s growing instability, would Curtin have remained the sane member of the group? The scene where Curtin first meets Cody suggests that, on his own, Curtin is just as capable of being as paranoid as Dobbs.
Indeed, though greed is certainly a motivating force in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it’s not the film’s main subject. Instead, this film is a study of men living on the fringes of society. We learn surprisingly little about how Dobbs and Curtin came to be two beggars living in Mexico. We learn a bit more about Howard’s background, largely because Howard likes to talk. But again, we don’t really learn that much about who Howard was before he became a prospector. Howard, Curtin and Dobbs are forgotten men, without any real friends or family. They’ve got each other, though that bond doesn’t always appear to be a particularly strong one. Howard and Curtin have managed to find some sort of peace with their existence. Dobbs has not. While the film may partially be a portrait of the corrosive effects of greed, it’s also a character study of three men who have been forgotten and abandoned and how they deal with living outside of the world that everyone else takes for granted.
There’s much to love in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, from John Huston’s powerful direction to the dark humor that runs through some of the film’s best moments. Houston fills the film with little details that make it feel authentic. (My favorite little moment came towards the end when a man facing a firing squad makes sure that he’s wearing his hat before he’s shot.) Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett and Alfonso Bedoya all give strong performances, though the film is dominated by Humphrey Bogart. Walter Huston won a (deserved) Academy Award for his performance but one of Bogart’s best performances somehow went unnominated. Bogart gives a ferocious and never less than compelling performance as Dobbs. At his worst, Dobbs is almost like a trapped animal, roaming the cage of his existence and snapping at anyone who gets too close. At the same time, Dobbs’s naked desperation makes it impossible not to feel some sympathy for him. Bogart was never more vulnerable than when Dobbs was begging for money and never more frightening than after he got it.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a classic, one that has been endlessly imitated but which will probably never be equaled. Nominated for four Oscars, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre won three (for John Huston’s direction and screenplay and for Walter Huston’s performance as Howard) but it lost best picture to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. As much as I like Hamlet, this is a case where the Academy made a mistake.
The Oscar nominations are finally due to be announced on March 15th and the Oscars themselves are scheduled to be awarded at the end of April. In anticipation of the big event (and the end of this current lengthy awards season), I am going to spend the next two months watching and reviewing Oscar nominees of the past. Some day, I hope to be able to say that I have watched and reviewed every single film nominated for Best Picture. It’s a mission that, with each passing year, I come a little bit closer to acomplishing.
Tonight, I decided to start things off by watching the 1961 best picture nominee, The Guns of Navarone.
The Guns of Navarone takes place in 1943, during World War II. 2,000 British troops are stranded on the Greek island of Kheros and the Nazis are planning on invading the island in a show of force that they hope will convince Turkey to join the Axis powers. The Allies need to evacuate those troops before the Nazis invade. The problem is that, on the nearby island of Navarone, there are two massive guns that can shoot down any plane that flies over and sink any ship that sails nearby. If the British soldiers are to be saved, the guns are going to have to be taken out.
Everyone agrees that it’s a suicide mission. Even if a commando team manages to avoid the patrol boats and the German soldiers on the island, reaching the guns requires scaling a cliff that is considered to be nearly unclimbable. Still, the effort has to be made. Six men are recruited to do the impossible. Leading the group is Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), a natural-born leader who is described as having almost supernatural luck. Franklin’s second-in-command is Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), an American spy who speaks several languages and who is an expert mountain climber. Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren) and Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker) are both assigned to the team because they have fearsome reputations as killers, though it quickly becomes clear that only one of them kills for enjoyment. Colonel Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) is a member of the defeated Greek army and he has a complicated past with Mallory. Finally, Corporal Miller (David Niven) is a chemistry teacher-turned-explosive expert. Waiting for the men on the island are two members of the Resistance, Spyros’s sister Maria (Irene Papas) and her friend, Anna (Gia Scala). The mission, not surprisingly, the mission doesn’t go as planned. There’s violence and betrayal and not everyone makes it to the end. But everyone knows that, as tired as they are of fighting, the mission cannot be abandoned.
The Guns of Navarone was a huge box office success when it was originally released, which probably has a lot to do with it showing up as a best picture nominee. It’s an entertaining film and, watching it, it’s easy to see how it served as a prototype for many of the “teams on a mission” action films that followed. Though none of the characters are exactly deeply drawn, that almost doesn’t matter when you’ve got a cast that includes actors like Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, and David Niven. At it best, the film works as a triumph of old-fashioned movie star charisma. Peck is upright and determined to do whatever needs to be done to get the job done. Quinn is tempermental and passionate. David Niven is cynical, witty, and very, very British. Quayle, Darren, and especially Stanley Baker provide strong support. Before Sean Connery got the role, Stanley Baker was a strong contender for James Bond and, watching this film, you can see why.
Seen today, there’s not a lot that’s surprising about The Guns of Navarone. It’s simply a good adventure film, one that occasionally debates the morality of war without forgetting that the audience is mostly watching to see the bad guys get blown up. Some of the action scenes hold up surprisingly well. The scene where the team is forced to deal with a German patrol boat is a particular stand-out.
The Guns of Navarone was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Though it lost the top prize to West Side Story, The Guns of Navarone still won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
