Noir Watch: Pitfall (1948)

I've had this one sitting on the ol' DVR for months now.  It seems I overinundated Jamie with Noir over the summer, so I'm staggering the movies out a bit more so she won't seize the remotes and and hide them from me.

Starring Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott (and the omnipresent Raymond Burr), Pitfall (1948) is another movie that proves you should just really not have sex with Lizabeth Scott.  It always leads to shenanigans.

Also, this is Film Noir #875 where Raymond Burr plays a total jerk.  How he landed the good-guy role in the American release of Godzilla is just beyond me.

But I have really come to like Dick Powell a lot.  As I was reading Farewell, My Lovely, he's the guy I had in mind as Chandler's Philip Marlowe (Bogart will always be Sam Spade to me, man) thanks to his turn in Murder, My Sweet.  And, of course, I love Cry Danger.

Phantom Watch: "Phantom of the Opera" Kino Lorber BluRay review is up at TPR.org

Hey kids, I'll repost a version at some point, but for now, please go visit Texas Public Radio's website for my review of the Kino Lorber BluRay set of Phantom of the Opera.

Dead Watch: Evil Dead 2

What to even say about Evil Dead 2?

I assume a good chunk of the folks who come to this page routinely will have already seen it, and the folks strolling by looking for Evil Dead II info are already in.  It's not like we're talking about either a new or particularly obscure movie.  If you haven't seen it and you can tolerate some gore, it's a worthy entry for your Halloween watching.

For all of the rest of us - it holds up now as well as it ever did.  So, you know, depending on what you already think, your mileage is just going to vary.

This is the Evil Dead Sam Raimi and Co. made after the success of The Evil Dead and the failure of Crimewave (I've never the latter film, but I know it tanked at the box office).

It's a movie that's ridiculously simple, and, given a second go at the idea, the crew improves on the original by abandoning the horror tropes that made the first entry just one more movie where something happens to high schoolers in a cabin in the woods and, instead, throws strangers together against the evil that's been unleashed.  It's an odd mish-mash of genre, from horror to action to slapstick, but I'd argue that it works pretty well.

It's no secret this isn't a direct sequel to The Evil Dead so much as a replacement for that movie.  Evil Dead 2 cannibalizes portions of the first movie to establish Ash, but makes way for everything else the movie wants to do, creating an all new cast of victims characters.

I'll never say anything bad about the movie because I don't think there's anything wrong with the movie.  I've never really gotten over the first time I saw it, in a good way.  I won't say it inspired me to go to film school or any of that, but it's a reminder that in the middle of splatter-fest horror movie, you should be enjoying yourself, or else I don't even know what you're doing watching the movie.

The only downside to the movie is that it's absolutely at it's best when it's just Bruce Campbell fighting the Evil Dead on his lonesome.  You can't really do that for a whole movie, but while it lasts, it's maybe one of my top 20 favorite scenes in any movie.

Rocky Watch: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

So, Spring, Texas, as suburb of Houston, is pretty well situated along the Bible Belt.  Having had grown up mostly in Austin, a lot of what was a bit more flexible in perspective was, shall we say, of a more singular perspective when I got picked up and moved back to Spring a couple weeks shy of my sophomore year of high school.  It was a bit of an odd transition, and I'm not sure it ever took.

1990 saw the 15th Anniversary of the release of Rocky Horror, not knowing what it really was other than that it had midnight showings, I slipped it in the stack.

Now, it's true that my freshman year I was supposed to go see the movie one night with some friends who had parents who were, I guess, willing to drive us to the midnight show and back.  Little known fact:  Austin was one of the original locations where the midnight screenings took off as early as 1976, so its likely someone a bit more plugged in may have suggested the KareBear's youngest was a bit too fragile for the film, and the whole thing fell apart.  Age 40, I've still never been to amidnight screening.

But on VHS, nobody cared what I was watching.  We'd crossed the Rated-R threshold by accident when my mom took me to see Beverly Hills Cop somewhat by accident when I was 10 and my folks were dropping us off for Rated-R movies at the Showplace 6 by the time I was in 7th grade.*

Sci-Fi Watch: Earth vs. The Flying Saucers

I go into most movies with high hopes, good ratings or no.  I already turned off one movie this week (Godzilla:  All Monsters Attack, because it was just kind of stupid, even for a Godzilla movie), and I wasn't going to give up on another.  I hate giving up on a movie.

I had never seen Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), but it's a seminal bit of sci-fi filmdom and a Ray Harryhausen FX work of note.  The problem is, I'll be blunt, the movie kind of blows.  And let this be a bit of forewarning to our friends in the Hollywood dream factory.  I'm not saying you have to make a movie with staying power - you can make your money and go on to your next project, but people might actually see your movies later, James Cameron and Avatar, and when the FX get dated, you better hope there's something else going on in front of the camera that isn't "the most realistic spinning saucer money can buy in 1956".

slow posting - blame Nathan C

Hi all.

Posting may be slow this week as I've been given a writing assignment by Nathan C.  This one is a ton of fun, but it's going to take a while.  No worries.  When I'm done, I'll share it here one way or another.

To cut to the chase, I'm getting to review a really nice BluRay set starring this fellow:

Turns out the set includes multiple cuts of the movie and varying audio tracks, including film historian commentary.  So, what should have been about a 2-hour viewing is now stretching into something like 8 hours.  Plus, however long it takes to write about all this at some point.

Anyway, I look forward to sharing, but I'm doing a little legwork at the moment.  Fortunately, it's all around a movie I already like quite a bit and topics around which I already have a casual interest.  Movies, film history, film preservation and distribution, patient zero influential films, and, of course, movie "monsters" and horror/ thrillers.

Y'all give it up for Mr. Chaney.

Dead Watch: The Evil Dead (1981)

As I recently read the Bruce Campbell memoir, If Chins Could Kill, it seemed fitting to revisit the 1981 film that got Campbell in front of audiences, The Evil Dead (1981).

Firstly, for the many of you who have seen the movie before, I picked this up in a restored HD BluRay transfer, and this is by far the best presentation of the movie I've ever seen.  The disc actually had two aspect ratio options for viewing, and I selected the original 1:33/ 1 ratio, because, why would I not?  The 1:88/1 ratio option is weird.

The sound elements and picture elements have been cleaned up enough that the muddiness I've associated with the movie for years have been sharpened up to the point you'd never know this was shot on 16mm.  The colors look great and the dialog has lost that "in a well" quality I felt it had last time I saw the flick, which, honestly was either on cable or VHS.

80's Watch: Repo Man (1984)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  Repo Man (1984) may be the best time capsule for a 1980's that's been mostly lost to time.   Co-opted and reprocessed into mall fashion (eat hot death, Hot Topic), and generally been intentionally run over and run into the ground since, the subculture of disaffected, aimless youth of the 1980's has no real footprint remaining aside from the occasional nod to The Circle Jerks somewhere on a music website.  We've sort of made up the 1980's in the image of John Hughes movies and a Reagan's America that doesn't include the nuclear annihilation threat or the stagnant economy.

Signal Watch Reads: If Chins Could Kill, by Bruce Campbell

I'd almost picked this book up at Borders during its hardback, first-release era, and didn't, and was pretty aware if I did buy it, I'd never sit down to read it.  So Bruce never got any of my money from this project, but I was chatting with PaulT about Bruce Campbell, and I think he recommended the book.  Anyway, I thought "well, if he reads it himself, this could be all right."

And, sure enough, in 2010 or so he did record an audiobook version.  It seems the digital version led to a new edition as there are essentially three endings in the audiobook, and I suspect that since the initial book came out in 2002 and we didn't get an audiobook til 2010, and there was a surprisingly lengthy section after I initially thought the book was over with about the book tour, something got added somewhere.

If you don't know Bruce Campbell, he's most famous for his role as Ash in Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.  If none of those movies ring a bell, we have nothing to say to one another.  I don't love horror, but its fair to say the Evil Dead trilogy transcends genre and is its own, hard-to-pin-down thing.

Bette Watch: Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

I've seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? a few times, but somehow never watched the follow-up, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).   If you've never seen Baby Jane, first, fix that situation in your life, then come back and finish this blog post.

Let's get this out of the way - the price of admission is worth it just for the cast.  Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotton, and Mary Astor in her final film role before retiring.  It also features a young Bruce Dern, George Kennedy, and even the kid who plays "Dill" in To Kill a Mockingbird shows up for a scene.

This movie isn't a sequel to Baby Jane, but it's definitely a case of a spiritual and creative follow-up to the more famous first film.  And, this movie earned something like 7 Oscar nominations.  Personally, I'm not sure it's quite as good, and it drags quite a bit - something Baby Jane does in spots.

But here's the thing - if you can get through some of that "where is this going?" aspect of the movie, it's a taught melodramatic thriller seeping with creativity and its a true Southern Gothic in the best sense of the idea.   Pair that with the performers recruited for the movie, and you're definitely doing well.

Doc Watch: PBS's American Experience - Walt Disney, Part 1

True story.  The first birthday wish I remember making, and I'm not sure that I thought the mechanics of how this would work out or the sheer body horror of it all, but I distinctly remember wishing I'd become Mickey Mouse.  This went on for a few years until I read an article, probably in Dynamite! or something, about the fact there had been an honest-to-god guy named Walt Disney and it wasn't just a brand name like "Buster Brown" or "Cracker Jack".

Then, for a few years, I wished to become Walt Disney.  Then I wanted mutant powers or some such and all that went away.

I had a pretty good idea of what Walt Disney had done for entertainment.  Despite the fact the guy was dead (I was semi-obsessed with the fact that both Walt and Elvis were dead, but very present in our lives) I watched his cartoons, his TV network, his live-action adventure films, went to his amusement parks, watched his nature documentaries and I had a stuffed Mickey Mouse that was a pal.  My interest in animation and the entertainment industry continued, and at some point in high school I bought a Walt Disney biography and read one or two animation histories.  And not all of it was rosy.

In a lot of ways, reading up on Walt Disney was how I learned to reconcile the good with the bad when it comes to the folks we revere.

Super Watch: Superman IV - The Quest for Peace (Master Pancake Theater)

Oh, Superman IV.  You are not a good movie.

Maybe not the worst superhero movie ever put out, Superman IV was victim of severe budget cuts and shortfalls, overly ambitious filmmaking, muddled scripting and editing, and Jon Cryer just being a doofus.  I've written about the movie before.  At length.  So, go read that review.

For something like a decade, Austin has had it's own set of popular movie riffers in Master Pancake Theater.  It's sort of a cultish sort of thing to do in Austin, and they have their loyal legion, and while I like the idea, I've just never gotten off my butt to go see them.  After all, "riffed" movies are not something I've felt I've had a lack of access to in my lifetime after having grown up on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and still enjoying RiffTrax even today.

But I couldn't pass up this week's screening as it was, as you'll have guessed, Superman IV, a movie I have deep affection for, and am all too aware of its limitations.

Doc Watch: I Am Big Bird - The Caroll Spinney Story (2014)

If you want to watch a movie that will make you just kind of tear up for no reason over and over, I recommend the 2014 documentary I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story.

As you'd expect from the many context clues above, this is a documentary about the guy who has played Big Bird on Sesame Street since the character first wandered onto the show.   He also (and I don't know how this works) plays Oscar the Grouch.  So, there you go.  A guy you never heard of is the heart and soul of the show literally every one of you people loved as a kid.

Doc Watch: American Movie (1999)

Fist things first:  as regular readers may know, one of my two undergraduate diplomas from Ye Olde University of Texas is in Communications, where I was in the Radio-Television-Film Department, and happened to be one of the lucky stiffs who went through the "Film Production" track.  Which was kind of a big deal, at least to me, as they only let in a handful of students into that track every semester.

Here, you can see my first experience shooting 16mm.*  And you get special appearances by our own JAL, occasional reader and longtime pal Shoemaker, and Kerry, who wound up selling me the very house I live in today.  Thanks, Kerry!  (she doesn't even know about this site, so, whatever).  Oh, yeah, and Michael in an alien suit that he already owned.  Because, you know, Michael.

The documentary, American Movie (1999), stirs up a lot of very specific feelings for me when I give it a whirl - something I don't think I've done in 15 years.   If you've not seen it, it's the very real story of a filmmaker from Wisconsin who has a dream of making a horror movie called Northwestern.  Mark Borchardt, the film's main subject, is a high school drop out, he probably drinks too much (and, I think you can infer that drugs were or are also involved somewhere in the picture), barely holds together a job as a newspaper delivery man, is split from the mother of his three children, is 30 and lives at home with his dysfunctional parents.

Despite a lack of any formal training, a lack of experience on any other films other than his own 8mm projects, and a seeming inability to project manage himself whatsoever, Mark remains focused on the dream of finishing a movie.  Maybe.  Just maybe not Northwestern.

The movie uses the "aspiring filmmaker" as the excuse for really getting to know Mark, his family and friends, his corner of the world.  The film takes a look at what the American Dream means to a guy like Mark and his friends, guys from middle class families in middle America, folks for whom things haven't really panned out by the age of 30, and for whom it doesn't look as if things are set to improve a whole lot.

In a country built on the promise of opportunity, what does that really mean when the dream is creating a movie?  And, really, what's the dream behind the dream?

Sci-Fi Watch: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

It's been forever since I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and I wish that weren't so.  It's easy to bag on any movie from this era of self-serious science fiction, of lantern jawed scientists and sweetly passive women who just want to help our hero by making coffee or getting out of the way.  It's dated.  Right.  Got it.*

I will say, there's really nothing better than the scene with three doctors lighting up their Lucky Strikes and pondering the incomprehensibility of our visiting alien's medicine and lifespan.  That, you can take to the bank.

Six years on after the end of World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, director Robert Wise (a director with just an astounding filmography) lensed one of the most influential films of the era, and I'm not just counting sci-fi, where the impact was absolutely mind-boggling.  Where Gojira looked back at the nuclear nightmare as having unleashed an unthinkable beast as a testament to man's folly, The Day the Earth Stood Still stood as a warning about hubris, about our place in the universe as we believed ourselves now unstoppable.

Ape Watch: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

I had decided that for my Labor Day, I was going to watch a Planet of the Apes movie, probably the first one from 1968.  Instead, I wound up watching the recent Apes reboot reboot sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) as it started early on HBO.  A nice coincidence.

It's no secret I'm a big fan of the Planet of the Apes movies, starting with Heston.  I didn't like the Tim Burton attempt at a reboot in the slightest, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes got me back to the theater.  

The first time I saw this movie, it kind of got ruined by a drunk and/ or disorderly woman sitting behind me.  You hate to think something like that will color how you see a movie, but, boy howdy.

In the comfort of my own home, and with only Jamie and the dogs here to act drunk and disorderly, it was a lot less distracting to get through.

The movie begins after the Simian-Flu, the modern answer to the nuclear fears of the Cold War era Apes movies, has devastated humanity over the course of a decade or more.  In the forests North of the Golden Gate Bridge, the apes that escaped in the climax of Rise of the Planet of the Apes have settled and built a society.  They hunt, live in structures, communicate via sign language and seem to carry the intelligence of man.  A handy thing as "struggling with intellect versus the baser instincts of man" is the driving force of the picture.

Bette Watch: Now, Voyager (1942)

I have tried to watch Now, Voyager (1942) for years, and something always happens.  Well, the opposite of "something always happens" happened, and I accidentally ordered a Bette Davis 4-disc set from Amazon, which I was considering buying and accidentally did so while buying something else.

So, since the movie showed up, I gave it a whirl.

There's no question the movie is dated by any number of factors, from the club-like effectiveness of psychiatry to the social customs present in the movie.  And it's certainly a movie of war-time America, not in content, but who appears in the film (there's a shortage of name actors playing men of fighting age).

The movie belongs to Bette Davis, there's absolutely no question.  And that was what I paid my $2.50 for.  I may not have been the target audience for a "woman's picture", but I knew what it was, to an extent, going in.  I'm trying to shore up some gaps in my movie knowledge, and I haven't seen that many Bette Davis movies, and this is one of the big ones.

McQueen Watch: The Getaway (1972)

Full confession time.

I haven't seen that much in the way of Sam Peckinpah.  It's not usually something I think Jamie will like, and as we watch movies together, I haven't seen The Wild Bunch since college.  And, prior to this evening, I'd never seen this movie, but I didn't know it was Peckinpah until the credits rolled.  I just didn't say anything to Jamie because, well, I really wanted to watch this movie.

I also haven't watched all that many Walter Hill movies, and only saw The Warriors sometime in the last 12-24 months.  And I loved it for what it was.

And, of Jim Thompson's work, I've also only read The Killer Inside Me.  And, at that, a long time ago, and I barely remember it.

Still, I'm familiar with all of their work by reputation.  You can't watch and read what I do and not have that stuff enter your sphere a little.

I wanted to watch this because it's one of the three or four "must watch" Steve McQueen movies, and I'd never gotten around to it, and, I'll be honest, I'm totally kicking myself for not having had watched this 20 years ago so I could have re-watched it a bunch by now.  It's a @#$%ing good movie.

Directed by Sam Peckinpah.  Written for the screen by Walter Hill, based on a novel by Jim Thompson.  Shot in Huntsville, San Marcos, San Antonio and other parts of Texas.  Starring Steve McQueen and with a small role by Slim Pickens.

What's not to like?

Wes Craven Merges With The Infinite

The thing about being my age is that so many of the names we grew up with, who were just doing amazing work during my youth, are beginning to pass.

My social media is flooded with the news that writer/ director/ producer Wes Craven has passed at the age of 76.

If you grew up in the era I did, you saw Wes Craven movies one way or another.  Most famous of his movies, likely, is A Nightmare on Elm Street, something I was already planning to re-watch this Halloween and now have a moral obligation to take in.

He also brought us The Hills Have Eyes, Swamp Thing, The People Under the Stairs and Scream.

Here's my film-school story about Scream.

JAL managed a theater when we were in college.  They were showing Scream after they wrapped the rest of the movies in that theater.  It was all the way across town, and I don't really like horror movies, and I was just feeling cranky, and, etc....

JAL:  Do you want to see Scream tonight at the tech screening?
Me:  Man, I don't want to see that movie.  It's just some slasher shit, and it's going to be a total hassle.
JAL:  Wes Craven directed it.
Me:  What time does it start?

We'll miss you, Wes.  You were one of the good ones.

Disney Watch: Brave (2012)

I didn't intentionally miss Brave (2012) when it came out in theaters, and I certainly haven't been avoiding it.  But Disney/ Pixar doesn't just dump their animated films out there in the usual release windows, instead controlling them pretty carefully and maximizing profits, etc... none of which I hold against them.  They know what they're doing.  This I learned in 3 summers working a cash register at The Disney Store.

I was aware of how far Disney and Pixar have taken animation, and while I wish they'd delve into stylized pictures a bit more (Big Hero 6 is probably the closest to what I'm talking about in recent memory),* it is pretty amazing what they can do with blending the natural and real with the imaginary.  You have to be kind of crazy not to appreciate everything about the character animation in Brave, blending Disney cartoonism with the absolutely believable wild strays of Merida's red curls.

Further, a couple of years ago I was at Disneyland with The Dug, my brother-in-law, and we spotted Merida crossing the park, and he said "let me send you a video tonight" and, as it turned out, the actress had perfected Merida's determined walk, something that was very non-Disney Princess-ish in its galumphing purposefulness.  It's that kind of attention to character, rotoscoped or otherwise, that tells who the character is, that even the other big gun American animation studios could stand to pay more attention to.

Pixar has absolutely lit a fire under Disney Animation proper, and the self-awareness and deconstruction of traditional Princess ideals in Brave (Pixar) and Frozen (Disney proper) should hopefully resonate a bit more than Aurora passing out for a good chunk of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella sitting around thinking positive thoughts and, if not for deus ex machina and a rich guy, she'd be stuck in a life of domestic servitude.  Brave is a really solid first stab at dismissing the Disney Princess demure non-player-in-her-own-story problem Disney has had since Snow White stumbled her way into a house full of short miners, and may be a bit on the nose in making sure we know this is not a cute princess movie.