I record a LOT of movies. Probably around ten per week, more or less. And since I also have to do little things like work, exercise, cook, clean, breathe, etc etc, I don’t always have time to watch them all (never mind write full reviews), so I’ve decided to begin a series of short, capsule reviews for the decades covered here at Cracked Rear Viewer. This will be whenever I find my DVR getting cluttered, which is frequent! I’ll try to make CLEANING OUT THE DVR a bi-weekly series, but there are no guarantees. Monthly is more realistic. Anyway, here are five films from the 1930s to the 1970s for your reading pleasure.
Two years ago, there was a rumor that Jack Nicholson had announced his retirement from acting because he was starting to suffer from memory loss. Even though Nicholson’s people later claimed that this was false and that Jack was actively reading scripts, that rumor still left me feeling very depressed. Jack Nicholson is such an iconic actor that it’s difficult to think that there will be a time when he’ll no longer be arching his eyebrows and delivering sarcastic dialogue in that signature voice of his. When you look at a list of his films, you find yourself looking at some of the best and most memorable films ever made. Chinatown, The Shining, The Departed, The Shooting, Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Nicholson has appeared in some truly great films.
But every actor, no matter how iconic he may be, had to start somewhere. For Jack Nicholson, that somewhere was the 1958 Roger Corman-produced film, The Cry Baby Killer. The good news is that the 21 year-old Nicholson starred in his very first film. The bad news is that there’s absolutely nothing about Jack’s performance that would give you any reason to believe that he would eventually become one of the best known and most-honored actors of all time. It’s not that Jack gives a bad performance. In fact, it’s somewhat disappointing that Jack doesn’t do a terrible job in the role. When you’re seeing the obscure film debut of a cinematic icon, you always hope that the first performance will either be amazingly good, shockingly bad, or just embarrassingly inappropriate. But, in Jack’s case, he’s neither good nor bad and he doesn’t really embarrass himself. Instead, he’s just bland.
Yes, you read that right.
Jack “HEEEEEEEEEERE’S JOHNNNNNNNY!” Nicholson was bland in his debut film.
As for the film itself, Jack plays Jimmy. We’re told that Jimmy is 17 years-old and he’s still in high school. (Since Jack Nicholson’s hairline was already receding at 21, we automatically have a difficult believing him in the role of Jimmy.) Jimmy’s a good kid but he’s kind of stupid. Also, his ex-girlfriend Carole (Carolyn Mitchell) is now dating an 18 year-old gangster named Manny Cole (played by Brett Halsey, who would later have a prolific career in Italian exploitation films as well as appearing in The Godfather, Part III). Jimmy confronts Manny. Manny has two of his thugs beat up Jimmy. Jimmy grabs a gun off a thug and shoots someone. Scared of going to jail, Jimmy runs into a store and takes three hostages — a stocker and a young mother with a baby.
The rest of the 70-minute film consists of an understanding policeman (Harry Lauter) trying to convince Jimmy to surrender while the crowd of reporters and observes outside the store hope for a violent confrontation. The film does make a still-relevant point about how the media exploits the potential for tragedy but, for the most part, it’s pretty forgettable.
As I stated above, Jack is adequate but forgettable. If I had seen this movie when it first came out in 1958, I would have expected handsome and charismatic Brett Halsey to become a huge star while I would have predicted that Nicholson would spend the rest of his career in television.
However, we all know that didn’t happen. Jack Nicholson became an icon. Sadly, Jack hasn’t appeared in a film since 2010. Hopefully, he’ll give us at least one more great performance. Who knows? Maybe some aspiring screenwriter will write as script for Cry Baby Killer 2: Jimmy’s Revenge.
So here we are, 24 days into October, and I have yet to share an old Vincent Price film! It’s not October without at least a little contribution from Vincent. Well, allow me to correct that with today’s horror on the lens, the 1964 Roger Corman film The Masque of the Red Death.
Based on the classic story by Edgar Allan Poe, this film features Vincent Price giving one of his best performances as the doomed and decadent Satanist Prince Prospero. The film’s cinematographer was future director Nicolas Roeg and The Masque of the Red Death is probably one of the most visually impressive of all of Corman’s films.
Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…
Watching the original 1960 Little Shop of Horrors is another Halloween tradition here at the Shattered Lens. And why not? It’s a lot of fun! Everyone always mentions the fact that Jack Nicholson pops up in an early role but, for me, the entire film is stolen by the great Dick Miller.
Incidentally, when I was 19, I was a dancer in a community theater production of Little Shop of Horrors. I really should have been cast as Audrey.
For today’s horror on the lens, we present a film from the legendary Roger Corman. First released in 1956, It Conquered The World tells the tragic story of what happens when it … well, conquers the world. It, by the way, is one of the most iconic of the 1950 sci-fi monsters. It is kind of a crab-like thing but … well, just watch the film. It’s kind of hard to describe.
The film also features future spaghetti western star Lee Van Cleef as the human scientist who foolishly helps It conquer the world. Van Cleef’s wife is played by one of the greatest B-movie actresses of all time, Beverly Garland. Hoping to thwart It is Peter Graves who spends the majority of the film riding around on a bicycle. Also keep an eye out for Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze, who both play soldiers here and who would later co-star in tomorrow’s horror on the lens.
I’ve been reviewing film on this site for over four years now and one theme that I find myself returning to, time-after-time, is that I love movies that serve as time capsules. I love movies that were made specifically to capitalize on specific trends, culture, and fashion. Many people dismiss these films as being dated but that’s precisely why I enjoy them. I just love seeing how the world once looked and how life was once lived.
The 1984 film Suburbia definitely falls into that category. Produced by the legendary Roger Corman and directed by documentary filmmaker Penelope Spheeris, Suburbia tells the tale of The Rejected, a group of teenage runaways and other outcasts who, having both rejected and been rejected from conventional society, now illegally live in an abandoned house in the middle of the suburbs. The film focuses on two runaways — Sheila (Jennifer Clay), who was abused by her father, and Evan (Bill Coyne), who is fleeing an alcoholic mother. Both of them — along with yet another runaway named Joe Schmoe (Wade Waltson) — are invited to live in the “T.R. House” by the group’s leader, Jack Diddley (Chris Pedersen), on the condition that all three of them allow themselves to be branded with the letters “T.R.” In short, when you’re rejected, you’re rejected for life.
Eventually, all three of them settle into life at the house. Joe and Sheila start a tentative relationship. Evan brings his younger brother Ethan (Andrew Pece) to the house. They spend their days frightening their conventional, middle class neighbors and being harassed by a group who, rather ominously, refer to themselves as “Citizens Against Crime.” When they need food, they either steal it or they rummage through other people’s garbage. Jack’s stepfather, a cop named Bill (Donald Allen), drops by the house and tells them that they need to leave before someone tries to make them leave. The Rejected, however, refuse to forced out. It all leads to both violence and tragedy…
What makes Suburbia an interesting film (even for someone like me, who would probably be spit at by the residents of the T.R. House) is that Spheeris is both clearly on the side of the Rejected but, at the same time, she also makes no attempt to idealize them. The film does not shy away from showing that the residents of the T.R. House are, for the most part, angry, violent, and self-destructive. However, Spheeris suggests that, in a society that continually tries to co-opt and neuter all forms of rebellion, the Rejected don’t have much of a choice but to continually go to the next extreme. She finds a humanity and a beauty in their often hopeless existence because, even if they are doomed, at least they’re going to be doomed on their own terms.
Spheeris filled the film with non-actors and local Los Angeles musicians (A very young Flea plays one of the residents of the house) and, as a result, Suburbia features some of the most wooden performances and awkward line readings that I have ever seen or heard. But, what the cast lacks in acting ability, they make up for with the right attitude and the right look. And you can see that in perhaps the film’s best and most iconic scene, the infamous punk parade.
Two of my favorite films of all-time happen to be very similar. In fact, one could say that they’re pretty much the same films. I’m talking about Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and it’s Western-remake by John Sturges, The Magnificent Seven. Kurosawa’s film is one of the greatest films of all-time and it’s no wonder that many have taken the film’s story of the downtrodden hiring a band of misfits, rogues, but still honorable men to help them fight against huge odds.
One such film that tries to add onto Kurosawa film’s legacy was the Roger Corman-produced scifi-adventure film Battle Beyond the Stars. This 1980 film was one of Corman’s many attempts to cash-in on the Star Wars phenomena, but in his usual low-budget style.
For a low-budget scifi film, Battle Beyond the Stars happened to have quite a cast one doesn’t usually see in such productions. While it had such grindhouse and exploitation regulars as John Saxon and Sybil Danning, it also starred the wholesome Richard Thomas from The Waltons and George Peppard (who would later become famous with a new generation as Hannibal Smith of The A-Team). The film would be directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, but from watching the film one could see Corman’s fingerprints all over the production from the script which was pretty lean and cut to the basic outline of Kurosawa’s original film. There’s not much fluff to bog down the pacing of the film.
This film has always been a guilty pleasure of mine because it so resemble Seven Samurai and The Magificent Seven, but adds in it’s own unique style and look to a well-worn and well-trodden plot. It was much later that I found out that James Cameron had a major hand in the special effects work in the film. Think about that for a moment. The self-proclaimed “King of the World” who literally breaks film budget records every time he begins work on a film did FX work on battle Beyond the Stars whose effects budget probably wouldn’t buy a day’s worth of crafts table eating for his most modestly budgeted films.
Lisa Marie always loved to say that grindhouse and exploitation films are some of most honest films out there. There’s no bullshit to what we see on the screen. It’s filmmakers forced to be daring and inventive because the lack of resources forces them to think outside the box. Battle Beyond the Stars might be seen as a mediocre attempt to cash-in on a scifi cultural phenomena, but it does so with a go for broke mentality that makes it such a fun film to watch. It’s not the greatest thing Corman has ever produced and some would even call it a very bad film, but once one looked past it’s rough and flawed surface then one could see a gem in the rough hidden beneath.
Oh, this remake of the remake of the original also happened to star one Robert Vaughn who was one of original Magnificent Seven.
I have this fear that someday I’ll meet Roger Corman and before I can compliment him for directing and producing so many entertaining films or praise him for helping so many women break into the film industry or talk about the subversive feminism of his 70s exploitation films, Corman will ask me something like, “So, what did you think of Creature From The Haunted Sea?”
Because, seriously…
Creature From The Haunted Sea, which the Late Night Movie crew and I watched after Space Raiders, was originally released in 1961. It tells the story of a mobster named Renzo (Anthony Carbone) who flees Cuba with a bunch of stolen gold. Renzo finds himself stranded on a boat with a group of revolutionaries, a guy who communicates by making animal noises, and a CIA agent (played by future Oscar-winning screenwriter, Robert Towne). Anyway, Renzo plans to double-cross everyone by exploiting their fear of the legendary creature of the haunted sea. However, the joke is on Renzo because it turns out that the creature is real.
In the past, I have defended Roger Corman as a director and I imagine that I’ll do so again in the future. However, Creature From The Haunted Sea has got to be one of the most boring films that I have ever seen, a film that starts as a comedy and then tries to turn into a horror film but never really succeeds in being funny or scary. So little happens in the film that it ends up becoming oddly fascinating.
That said, if you’re a fan of Roger Corman’s or a student of B-cinema, you should make time to watch Creature From The Haunted Sea. While the film might not be exactly watchable, the story behind it is vintage Corman. Reportedly, Creature From The Haunted Sea was produced because Corman had just finished directing The Last Woman On Earth in Puerto Rico and had some film left over. So, he decided why not make another movie? Regardless of the film’s final quality, it’s hard not to respect Roger’s refusal to allow any opportunity to pass by.
Beyond that, I would recommend Creature From The Haunted Sea for two reasons. Number one, the opening credits feature some cute cartoons and you know I can’t resist a cute cartoon. Finally, the creature itself simply has to be seen to be believed. How can you not be somewhat charmed by a monster that appears to be made out of sea weed and ping-pong balls?
If you dare, check out Creature From The Haunted Sea below.
Last Saturday was Roger Corman’s 88th birthday and what better way to celebrate than to watch one of the many low-budget but undeniably entertaining films that the great man has produced?
That’s just what I did on Saturday with my Late Night Movie friends. The movie we watched was an obscure 1983 science fiction film called Space Raiders. Now, technically, this film was directed by Howard Cohen but, from the first frame, it was obviously a Roger Corman film. It was also a lot of fun.
Space Raiders takes place in the distant future, at a time when intergalactic corporations have colonized planets with sullen children and space criminals spend their spare time hanging out in dank space stations. From the minute the film opens with a scene of robots doing menial labor in a factory while a the factory foreman assures the human workers that the next company picnic will take place on a planet where it doesn’t rain, there’s little doubt that the main message of Space Raiders is that the future sucks.
10 year-old Peter (David Mendelhall) lives on the planet of Proycon III (which, if nothing else, is a great name for a planet). Neglected by his wealthy parents and apparently being the only child on Proycon III, Peter spends his spare time sneaking into robot-filled factories and capturing space bugs. That’s what Peter is doing when he witnesses a daring raid by a group of — wait for it — space raiders! Led by the surly but kind-hearted Hawk (Vince Edwards), the raiders steal a spaceship from the factory. What they don’t realize is that Peter (and the bug that he had just captured seconds before the raid) has stowed away on the ship.
At first, Hawk is not enthusiastic about Peter being on the ship and Peter just wants to get home. However, as the space raiders deal with both intergalactic cops and alien gangsters, Hawk and the kid start to bond and Peter gets to know the rest of the crew.
Now, to be honest, the majority of Hawk’s crew were pretty interchangeable but my friends and I quickly decided that our favorite was the one that we named Capt. Forehead (played by Thom Christopher). Capt. Forehead was an alien who had psychic powers and who carried himself with the wounded dignity of a head waiter having a bad night. It was hard not to like him.
Anyway, Peter’s parents want their son back and, since they work for an evil corporation, they have no problem hiring evil mercenaries to get their son back. It all leads to a lot of people shooting lasers at each other and exploding spaceships.
Now, honestly, we can get all technical and picky about whether or not the plot of Space Raiders made any sense or whether or not any of the actors gave good performances. We can even talk about the logic of the scene where Peter –upon realizing that Hawk is on a different spaceship than him — responds by attempting to yell, “HAWK!” across the far reaches of space.
But you know what?
That’s missing the point.
In the way that only a low-budget science fiction film produced by Roger Corman can be, Space Raiders was a lot of fun. The movie moved quickly, the aliens were fun to look at, and the special effects were charmingly cheap. Flaws and all, Space Raiders had more humanity than Man of Steel, more humor than Gravity, and it was a lot shorter than Avatar.
For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take a look at one of the most underappreciated films of all time, Roger Corman’s 1962 look at race relations, The Intruder.
Despite the fact that he’s regularly cited as being one of the most important figures in the development of American cinema, Roger Corman remains an underrated director. Many critics tend to focus more on the filmmakers that got their start working for Corman than on Corman himself. When they talk about Roger Corman, they praise him for knowing how to exploit trends. They praise him as a marketer but, at the same time, they tend to dismiss him as a director.
I would suggest that those critics see The Intruder before they presume to say another word about Roger Corman.
The Intruder opens with a young, handsome man named Adam Cramer sitting on a bus. The first thing that we notice about Cramer is that he’s wearing an immaculate white suit. The second thing we notice is that he’s being played by a very young (and, it must be said, rather fit) William Shatner.
I know that many people will probably be inclined to dismiss The Intruder from the minute they hear that it stars William Shatner. Based simply on Shatner’s presence, they’ll assume that this film must be very campy, very Canadian, or both. Well, they’re wrong. Shatner gives an excellent performance in this film, bringing to life one of the most evil characters ever to appear on-screen.
Adam Cramer, you see, is a representative on a Northern organization known as the Patrick Henry Society and he’s riding the bus because he’s heading to a small Southern town. The high school in that town has just recently been desegregated and Cramer’s goal is to make sure that no black students attend class. As Cramer explains it, he’s a “social worker” and his goal is to help preserve Southern society.
To achieve this goal, Cramer partners up with the richest man in town, Verne Shipman (who is played, rather chillingly, by Robert Emhardt). With Verne’s sponsorship, Cramer gives an inflammatory speech in the town square and then later returns with a group of Klansmen. As opposed to recent films like Django Unchained (which scored easy laughs by casting Jonah Hill as a Klansman and playing up the group’s ignorance), The Intruder presents the Klan as figures that have stepped straight out of a nightmare, making them into literal demons who appear at night and disappear during the day. In a genuinely disturbing scene, the Klansmen set a huge cross on fire. As the flames burn behind him, Cramer seduces the wife of a local salesman.
After Cramer delivers his speech, the local black church is blown up and a clergyman is killed. The editor of the town newspaper — who, before Cramer showed up, was opposed to desegregation — changes his mind and publishes an editorial strongly condemning Cramer. Cramer’s mob reacts by nearly beating the editor to death. Realizing that he’s losing the power to control the mob that he created, Cramer frames a black student for rape which leads the film to its powerful and disturbing conclusion.
Particularly when compared to other films that attempted to deal with race relations in 1962, The Intruder remains a powerful and searing indictment of intolerance and a portrait of how demagogues like Adam Cramer will always use fear, resentment, and ignorance to build their own power. Corman filmed The Intruder on location in Missouri and used a lot of locals in the cast. Judging from the disturbing authenticity of some of the performances that Corman got from some of these nonprofessionals, it’s not unreasonable to assume that quite a few of them agreed with everything that Adam Cramer was saying.
As opposed to most films made about the civil rights era in America, The Intruder doesn’t shy away from showing the ugliness of racism. The Intruder casually tosses around the N word (and yes, it is shocking to not only hear Shatner use it but to see him smile as he does so) but, unlike a lot of contemporary films, it does so not just to shock but to show us just how naturally racism comes to the film’s characters. The scene in which Verne repeatedly strikes a black teenager who failed to call him sir is also shocking, not just for the violence but because of how nobody seems to be particularly surprised by it. As a result, The Intruder is not necessarily an easy film to watch but then again, that’s the point. The hate on display in The Intruder should never be easy to watch.
The Intruder was written by Charles Beaumont, who also wrote several classic episodes of The Twilight Zone. I think it can be argued that The Intruder represents the best work of Beaumont, Corman, and Shatner. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, The Intruder was the only film directed by Roger Corman to not be a box office success.
However, in a world where people are patting themselves on the back for sitting through The Butler, The Intruder is an important film that deserves to be seen now more than ever.
Through the Shattered Lens 