It appears that YouTube is finally back up (for the sake of future historians, YouTube was down for several hours on the night of Tuesday, October 16th, 2018, leading to great panic on twitter) so I can share tonight’s episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker!
In this episode, our favorite neurotic journalist investigates several cases of spontaneous human combustion. It all appears to have something to do with the spirit of a dead gangster, one who is wandering around in the form of a famous (and still living) conductor.
I swear, Chicago was a crazy place to live in the 70s.
This episode originally aired on November 8th, 1974.
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? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If, at one in the morning on Wednesday, you were suffering from insomnia, you could have turned over to TCM and watched the 1970 film, Rabbit Run. That’s what I did.
Rabbit Run is the epitome of a dumb lug film. In a dumb lug film, a male character finds himself living an unfulfilling life but he can’t figure out the reason. Why can’t he figure it out? Because he’s a dumb lug, with the emphasis on dumb. Usually, the viewer is supposed to sympathize with the dumb lug because he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone and everyone else in his world is somehow even more annoying than he is. Typically, the dumb lug will have an emotionally distant wife who refuses to have sex with him and who is usually portrayed as being somehow at fault for everything bad that has happened in the dumb lug’s face. (Want to see a more recent dumb lug film than Rabbit Run?American Beauty.) Ever since the silent era, there have been dumb lug films. In particular, male filmmakers and critics seem to love dumb lug films because they allow them to pat themselves on the back for admitting to being dumb while, at the same time, assuring them that everything is the fault of the wife or the girlfriend or the mother or the mother-in-law.
In Rabbit Run, the dumb lug is named Harry Angstrom (James Caan), though most people still remember him as Rabbit, the high school basketball star. Harry’s life peaked in high school. Now, he’s 28 and he can’t hold down a job. He’s married to Janice (Carrie Snodgress), who spends all of her time drinking and watching TV. He has a son and another baby is on the way. One day, when the pregnant Janice asks him to go out and get her a pack of cigarettes, Harry responds by getting in his car and driving all the way from Pennsylvania to Virginia.
When he returns to Pennsylvania, Rabbit doesn’t go back to his wife. Instead, he drops in on his former basketball coach (Jack Albertson) and begs for advice on what he should do. The coach, it turns out, is more than little creepy. He also has absolutely no practical advise to give. He does introduce Rabbit to a part-time prostitute named Ruth (Anjanette Comer). Rabbit quickly decides that he’s in love with Ruth and soon, he’s moved in with her.
Meanwhile, there’s all sorts of little things going on. Rabbit gets a job working as a gardener. Rabbit befriends the local Episcopal minister (Arthur Hill), even while the minister’s cynical wife (Melodie Johnson) tries to tempt Rabbit away from both his wife and his mistress. Rabbit both resents and envies the sexual freedom of the counter culture, as represented by his younger sister. And, of course, Janice is pregnant…
Rabbit Run is based on a highly acclaimed novel by John Updike. I haven’t read the novel so I can’t compare it to the film, beyond pointing out that many great works of literature have been turned into mediocre movies, largely because the director never found a way to visually translate whatever it was that made the book so memorable in the first place. Rabbit Run was directed by Jack Smight, who takes a rather frantic approach to the material. Since Rabbit Run is primarily a character study, it needed a director who would be willing to get out of the way and let the actors dominate the film. Instead, Smight overdirects, as if he was desperately trying to prove that he could keep up with all the other trendy filmmakers. The whole movie is full of extreme close-ups, abrupt jump cuts, intrusive music, and delusions of ennui. You find yourself wishing that someone had been willing to grab Smight and shout, “Calm down!”
(On the plus side, as far as the films of 1970 are concerned, Smight’s direction of Rabbit Run still isn’t as bad as Richard Rush’s direction of Gettting Straight.)
James Caan actually gives a likable performance as Rabbit, which is good because Rabbit would be totally unbearable if not played by an actor with at least a little genuine charisma. There’s nothing subtle about Caan’s performance but he makes it work. You never like Rabbit but, at the same time, you don’t hate him.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing subtle about the rest of the cast either. Something rather tragic happens about 80 minutes into the film and, as much as I knew I shouldn’t, I still found myself giggling because Carrie Snodgress’s performance was so bad that it was impossible for me to take any of it seriously. Even worse is Arthur Hill, as the minister who won’t stop trying to help Rabbit out. I eventually reached the point where, every time that sanctimonious character started to open his mouth, I found myself hoping someone would hit him over the head and knock him out. Among the major supporting players, only Anjanette Comer is allowed a chance to be something more than just a sterotype. Like Caan, she does the best that she can but ultimately. this is James Caan’s movie.
It’s a disappointing movie but it did not put me to sleep. Give credit for that to James Caan, who is the only reason to see Rabbit Run.
(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by the end of Thursday, December 8th! Will she make it? Keep checking the site to find out!)
On October 30th, I recorded The Baby off of TCM.
First released back in 1973, The Baby is a seriously strange little movie. It’s about a 21 year-old man named Baby (played by David Manzy). Why is he called Baby? Because he lives in a crib. And he wears a diaper that occasionally needs changing. And he sounds exactly like a baby. (Whenever he opens his mouth, the sound of an actual baby is dubbed in.) When he’s alone with his babysitter, he eagerly sucks on her breast, half-nursing and half-perving.
Baby is the only son of Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman, giving a chillingly evil performance). Mrs. Wadsworth was abandoned by her husband shortly after Baby was born and the film implies that she’s taken a lot of her hatred towards her ex out on her son. Despite not liking her son, Mrs. Wadsworth is determined to hold onto him. She gets a weekly welfare check from the state. The money is supposed to be used to take care of Baby but Mrs. Wadsworth uses it to take care of herself and her two daughters.
Who are her daughters? Alba Wadsworth (Suzanne Zenor) is an implied nymphomaniac who has a way with a cattle prod. Germaine Wadsworth (Marianna Hill) is an actress and model who, it’s suggested, has incestuous designs on her brother.
That’s right — they’re a messed up family! However, they do throw great parties, the type that are full of all the typical characters who you would expect to appear in a low-budget film from 1973. Hippies, hipsters, aspiring disco dancers, they all show up. Michael Pataki shows up as well! You my not know the name but if you’re a fan of 70s exploitation films like me, you’ll immediately recognize Michael Pataki.
In order to continue receiving money from the government, the Wadsworths have to impress their case worker. They’ve moved through several social workers and, for the most part, they’ve survived by being so strange that no one wants to spend too much time dealing with them. However, their case has just been assigned to Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) and she actually takes an interest in Baby and his life with the Wasdworths.
Ann says that she thinks Baby could benefit from going to a special school. The Wadsworths suggest that she mind her own business. Ann, however, has no intention of doing that. Ann refuses the give up on giving Baby a chance at a better life.
Sounds heart-warming, right?
Well, no.
At first, Ann seems like just another concerned do-gooder. But, at the film progresses, we start to suspect that Ann might have some secrets of her own. We’re told that she lost her husband in a car accident but the details are left intentionally vague. What we do know is that Ann lives in a huge house with her mother-in-law (Beatrice Manley Blau) and we find ourselves wondering why, if her husband is gone, are the two of them still living together.
We also fin ourselves wondering: Does Ann have Baby’s best interests in mind? For that matter, does anyone?
Being a 70s movie, it all ends with a violent home invasion that’s followed by a surprise twist. The twist caught me totally off-guard and forced me to reconsider everything that I had previously seen. It was shocking, it was borderline offensive, it was just a little bit ludicrous, and it was rather brilliant in its odd way.
The same can be said for The Baby as a whole. This is one weird movie and you’ll never see another like it. For that reason alone, The Baby is worth seeing at least once.
In this independent 1958 film, Dracula (Francis Lederer) comes to a small town in California in the guise of being an artist. As you can probably guess, a lot of typical Dracula things start to happen, especially after Dracula meets the lovely Rachel Mayberry (Norma Eberhadt).
The Return of Dracula came out around the same time that Hammer Film’s brought new life to the Dracula legend with The Horror of Dracula. As a result, The Return of Dracula has always been overshadowed by its British cousin. And that’s a shame because, while undoubtedly being a low-budget affair, The Return of Dracula has a lot of atmosphere and is effective when taken on its own terms. The film features a great musical score and Francis Lederer makes for an imposing Dracula.
Through the Shattered Lens 