Sowing My "Wilder" Oats 2: Stubbornly Clinging to This Awful Title: Witness for the Prosecution and Kiss Me, Stupid

Hey, everybody, I'm back, and I have more "Wilder" oats to sow. As I mentioned last week, Billy Wilder is one of my favorite directors and I recently decided that I needed to see more of his films. Luckily, there's a wealth of them on Netflix Instant, including some of his best work.

Witness for the Prosecution, by Billy Wilder, 1957


One of my favorite things about Witness for the Prosecution was the end credits. And no, not because the movie was over. What I liked was that a card came up on the screen that politely advised outgoing cinema-goers to not spoil the twist ending for anyone. I wonder if it worked?

Witness for the Prosecution isn't one of Wilder's screwball comedies, in fact it's an adaptation of an Agatha Christie play. It's something more along the lines of Ace in the Hole, a drama with some comedic moments balancing out some very dark moments. He was very good at walking that line and finding the necessary balance between the two.

Charles Laughton plays Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a highly respected barrister brought out of retirement to defend a man (Tyrone Power) of the murder of an old woman. Making the case more difficult is the man's wife (Marlene Dietrich) who is uncooperative and clearly hiding something, or perhaps many things. Robarts deduces that she is the key to finding the truth of this case, as she takes the witness stand against her husband.

Laughton's Robarts is a really great character. He puts himself through a lot of physical and mental stress when he's defending someone. He's large and unhealthy, and when he's working, he drinks and smokes a bunch and pops heart pills like crazy, so the stress of this trial could very well kill him. He's actually quite loveable, despite his self destructive tendencies. They even make him kind of heroic, like 'this is how I am while I'm working, but I'm still going to see this trial through even if it does me in.' Robarts also has a great repartee with his nurse (played by Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester), trying to avoid her throughout. Most of the light moments come from the two of them.

Marlene Dietrich is excellent too. I don't want to say too much about her, because many of the film's twist and turns are placed on her shoulders, so I'll just leave it at that.

Witness for the Prosecution is one of Wilder's strongest films, and that's saying quite a bit. The word 'cynical' gets thrown around a lot in reference to Wilder, and this is no exception. His cynicism has always worked in his favor, though. Most of his films have that edge. It's weird, I don't generally like my cynical side, and try to avoid letting it loose, but I sure enjoy his.

Kiss Me, Stupid, by Billy Wilder, 1964


I'm not much for the crooners, so I really never felt much need to watch any of the movies featuring the Rat Pack guys. The only movie I think I've ever seen with one of those guys is Scorsese's The King of Comedy with Jerry Lewis. I'm not even sure if that counts. Anyway, if it weren't for Billy Wilder, I don't think I ever would have given a Dean Martin movie a shot, but as expected with Wilder, Kiss Me, Stupid is smart, funny, and edgy for its time.

Dean Martin stars as himself, though just referred to as "Dino" throughout. Like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, he's playing a broadly exaggerated version of the way the public perceives him. You know, drunken and lecherous. He's pretty gross in this movie, but I always assumed he was pretty gross in real life too, so I don't know how exaggerated it is. I just assume there was some self awareness going into his performance.

Anyway, Dean Martin drives through a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Climax, Nevada (get it?). When a couple of struggling songwriters named Orville and Barney (Ray Walston and Cliff Osmond) stumble across him, they concoct a plan to strand Dino there overnight so they can pitch him their songs. Dino refuses to deal with them because he's horny, and he hears good things about Orville's wife (HINT HINT). Orville understands the implied trade, a night with his wife for a song, but can't bring himself to sell her out like that (plus he's worried that she, a HUGE Dino fan, just might say yes). So they do the right (?) thing and instead of prostituting Orville's wife, they get her out of the house and hire an actual prostitute named Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) to pretend to be her. All sorts of screwball scenarios then ensue as they try to keep the ruse going.

This isn't one of my favorite Billy Wilder movies, but I still liked it. Ray Walston played things a little too big. He mugs a lot for the camera. I read that Orville was supposed to be played by Jack Lemmon but he wasn't available, and that makes a lot of sense. Then Peter Sellers was supposed to do it and he had a heart attack during filming. It goes without saying that both of those guys would have killed, but Ray Walston is what we got and I can accept that, I guess.

By far my favorite performance in the movie is Kim Novak as Polly the Pistol. She steals the show and by the end of the movie I was totally crushing on her. I also read (thanks, Wikipedia!) that Marilyn Monroe was meant to play the role, but of course, she died during pre-production. Well, I could see why they wanted a Lemmon/Monroe reunion, but I'm glad Novak got the part, because she brought a soul to the character that I'm not entirely sure Monroe could have.

Dean Martin wasn't actually a huge part of the movie. He spends a lot of it sleeping, actually, occasionally waking up to sing a song or complain about not having had sex yet. I don't know how self aware of his character's portrayal that Martin was for this, but he comes across as a total creep. It seems to me that Dino might not have realized that Wilder was sometimes lighting and shooting him to look like a home invader or a rapist or something. If he was aware, that's awesome that he's willing to let himself be portrayed that way, but if he wasn't aware, that's kind of even more awesome.

Just like up above, I won't spoil the ending, but I was genuinely surprised at how adult it was! Things have come a long way in the nine years since the relatively chaste days of The Seven Year Itch. So to sum things up: Dino's a creep, Walston is hammy, and Novak steals it. The script is sly and edgy, but with a better protagonist, the movie could have been a whole lot more. Still, Wilder pulls it off and Kiss Me, Stupid is still a good time.

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If you want to read more of my Billy Wilder reviews, follow these links!
- The Front Page
- Ace in the Hole
- The Seven Year Itch / Sabrina

Sowing My "Wilder" Oats: The Worst Possible Title For This Entry: The Seven Year Itch and Sabrina

Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, right up there with Hitchcock and Kurosawa, but there are still a bunch of his movies that I haven't seen yet. Yes, I've seen The Apartment and Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole and Some Like it Hot, but there are still some big ones (and little ones too) that I never got around to. In the last month or so I began to notice how many Billy Wilder movies were piling up in my Netflix Instant queue, so I decided to make up for lost time and watch them. Here are the first couple.

The Seven Year Itch, 1955

Part of the fun of watching a Billy Wilder comedy is seeing how much he can get away with, in the context of the time the movie came out. Even his raunchiest comedies had a smartness and sophistication to them, though he wasn't afraid to go low-brow for a laugh. Of course, today most of these raunchy comedies seem positively chaste, but at the time, he was getting some pretty shocking stuff through the system.

The Seven Year Itch is one of Wilder's dirtiest movies. It stars Tom Ewell as Richard Sherman, a man with a wife, a kid, and an overactive imagination. He sends the wife and kid away on vacation while he stays behind to keep working, promising his wife he won't get wild while they're gone. He really means it to, but as he settles down at home for a quiet night in, he meets the new upstairs neighbor: Marilyn Monroe. Well, not really Marilyn Monroe, but they never say her character's name, and she's even jokingly compared to Marilyn Monroe at one point.

Richard now must resist the temptation of cheating on his wife of seven years with the woman who is generally considered the sexiest of all time. He talks to directly to the audience when he's alone, and through this and cutaways to his imagination, we see that he believes himself irresistible to women (his wife correctly laughs this idea off), and we see all his neuroses and fears that maybe his wife is cheating too. Will schlubby Richard sleep with Marilyn Monroe, or will he resist his urges and stay true to his wife?

Marilyn Monroe is actually really funny in The Seven Year Itch. She is basically playing the broadest possible version of her on-screen persona. There's some self awareness in her performance, though her character is always oblivious to the fact that she's radiating sexuality. Pretty much everything she says and does has some sort of sexual implication and she's completely unaware of it. Like that famous scene where she walks over the grating in the city and the wind blows her dress up. The only Marilyn Monroe movies I've seen so far have been this and Some Like it Hot, and you know, I totally get why she's a sex symbol and everything, but I'm always kind of grossed out by that baby talk thing she does. I don't really know what to call it, but you probably know what I mean.

The Seven Year Itch is a very funny 50's sex comedy, but it's too bad they couldn't push things further. I know Wilder wanted things to go past where they ended up, but was restricted by the Hays Code that still had a stranglehold on Hollywood. Still, it's a testament to his talents that he could turn in such a good product even when he's being held back. It's also fun to watch his movies get more and more daring as the years go on and the Code's hold on things starts to crumble. This movie surely played some small part in chipping away at it.

Sabrina, 1954

Of course, Billy Wilder didn't just make boundary-pushing sex comedies. He had a rich and varied career, and made all sorts of movies. Sabrina is a simple, charming, romantic comedy. In fact, it's one of the best ever made. I can't believe I didn't watch this sooner.

Sabrina stars Audrey Hepburn in the title role, the daughter of a chauffeur for the extremely wealthy Larrabee family. Hopelessly in love with the playboy son of the family, David (William Holden), a despairing Sabrina attempts suicide. Her concerned father sends her away to a culinary school in Paris to help her get over her troubles. She never gets over her infatuation with David, though, and instead hatches a plan to return from France the most sophisticated beauty she can be, with the hopes that he'll finally notice her.

And notice her he does. David flips for Sabrina the moment he sees her. The problem is, he's been promised to the daughter of another corporate head, in order to cement a merger between to companies that would earn everyone millions. To make sure the merger happens, the elder brother, career-minded Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart), attempts to sweep Sabrina off her feet and keep her away from David. Of course, Linus, too, falls for Sabrina.

While this movie isn't all sex jokes like The Seven Year Itch, Billy Wilder still touches upon some taboo topics. Suicide, for instance. Even though it's made clear that Sabrina's suicide attempt is more a teenager's cry for help than a serious suicide, Wilder still treats it with compassion. He would explore suicide more in depth six years later in his Oscar-Winning (and my favorite) The Apartment.

As with Marilyn Monroe above, I haven't seen too many Audrey Hepburn movies. Just this one now and the one where she's a blind lady being terrorized by Alan Arkin (Wait Until Dark, which is AWESOME). I think I like her more than Marilyn, she was classier and a better actress, though I don't think that has ever really been up for debate.

One thing I'm noticing more and more when I watch these old movies is how the leading men get older and older, but the women keep getting replaced with young ones. I was a little weirded out by the fact that a 20-ish Sabrina was so in love with 37-year-old David, but then when 50-something Humphrey Bogart is thrown into the mix, and is validated, that's just crazy! Not that Holden and Bogart weren't great in their roles, but the movie would have been more believable and less creepy if these guys were no older than 30.

What a fun movie. It's so smart and genuinely romantic, but also instilled with a healthy dose of Wilder's trademark cynicism. I really wish they still made romantic comedies like this, instead of the formulaic, machine-made "chick-flicks" we've been getting for the last 25 years or so. Romantic comedies used to be date movies, and told stories that both women AND men could enjoy together. If they were still that way, they might actually be my favorite genre.

Hey, everybody, check out the Polish poster!!!

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That's all for now, everyone! I've got more Billy Wilder movies to review in the coming days, and even more still to watch when I get the chance, so expect me to sow more of my "Wilder" oats (UGH) in the near future.

Also, if you're interested, follow these links for previously written reviews of Wilder's Ace in the Hole and The Front Page.

Mon Oncle

Mon Oncle, by Jacques Tati, 1958

The word "delightful" is surely applied to a lot of films, but few embody delight as wholeheartedly as Jacques Tati's gently satirical comedy, Mon Oncle. I think I was probably smiling through the whole film. Winner of the 1958 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Mon Oncle is the story of, well, not so much a story as an episodic progression of events, of Monsieur Hulot, played by Tati himself, his signature character. He lives a relaxed life in an old building in a more traditional part of France. He is worshiped as a hero by his nephew, a little boy whose parents take great pride in their ultra-modern, high tech, comically unwelcoming, house of the future. There's a series of events, and a beginning and end, but that simple premise is pretty much the bulk of the story.

Mon Oncle is basically a silent film. There's dialogue, but it's mostly inconsequential. The narrative is carried by elaborate comedy set pieces and sight gags, commenting on, among other things the coldness and lack of function of modern 1950's design, as compared to the warmth and charming inefficiency of the old world. Monsieur Hulot's sister is obsessed with showing off all the pointless flourishes and gadgets of her home to all who visit, eager to impress them and be the envy of her neighborhood with her spitting fish statue, which she noisily turns on whenever somebody walks to the front gate. Her front yard is a labyrinthine series of stones, the lawn is off limits.

Hulot, on the other hand, fumbles through the modern world, never quite in step with it. This is demonstrated as his meddling sister tries to get him out of her son's life by getting him a job and setting him up with a lady. Tati plays Hulot much in the way Buster Keaton played his characters, with a cryptic expression that we the viewer can apply all sorts of emotions to. Is he annoyed or is he just baffled? Or is he amused? He quietly observes, and never seems to judge, or at least is too polite to do so openly.

The comedy set pieces are truly masterful. These aren't big pratfalls and stunts. Tati's physical comedy is much smaller in scale and more mundane. He sets up a plethora of motifs and recurring jokes and then builds them through repetition and slight variation, and they get funnier and funnier as they progress. The timing of the gags are some of the most intricate I've ever seen, and not just the comedic timing of the actors, but also of the world around them. It's like watching a symphony of comedy.

And speaking of music, the music and sound effects are just as important as the visuals. Tati does some truly incredible stuff with sound. Each location has a theme, and each recurring joke has its own recurring sound effects to go with it.

This is the first of Tati's scant six films I have seen, but I have a feeling I'll be seeking the rest out in the coming months. I think Tati is going to join the ranks of my favorite filmmakers.

Grab Bag Smoochies Edition: The Pajama Game, A Farewell to Arms, As Tears Go By

Got three more reviews. These movies all have romances at their center, so I guess that's kind of a theme.

The Pajama Game, by Stanley Donen and George Abbott, 1957
Ok, I admit I wasn't prepared for The Pajama Game. I knew little about it when I pressed play. I just saw that Stanley Donen directed it, and hey, I love Bedazzled. And I saw that Doris Day was in it, and with that title, I assumed it was going to be like Pillow Talk or something (which I've never seen either but have an idea in my head of what it's like). Well, instead, it was a musical about... unions.

The Pajama Game is about a guy (John Raitt) brought in to oversee a pajama factory who falls for the girl (Doris Day) who represents the workers in the union. She's fighting for a 7 1/2 cent raise and he's just trying to prevent a labor dispute, and their relationship gets in the middle of it.

I'm not one of those guys that goes "UGH, musicals". In fact, I quite like them. This one had some pretty good numbers in it, with catchy songs, though I thought some of them went on for way too long and did little to advance the story. Overall, I don't think The Pajama Game was really my thing, but I could see how the Broadway show of it might have been pretty fun.

I'm glad I watched it, though, because of all the decades of American cinema, the one I'm least knowledgeable of is definitely the 1950's, and this was a film from that period that I wouldn't have normally thought to watch. So it was worth it.

A Farewell to Arms, by Frank Borzage, 1932
A classic, Best Picture nominated adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's story, A Farewell to Arms is a tragic love story between an American ambulance driver and an English nurse set in the backdrop of the first World War. I've never read any Hemingway, so I can't judge it based on any knowledge of him, though I did read on the Wikipedia entry that the film is less pessimistic.

I enjoyed A Farewell to Arms a great deal. Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper were both very good in the leads. I totally bought into the love story. But the best part of the movie for me was the beautiful and dense black & white cinematography, for which it won an Oscar. I would recommend the movie for that alone.

As Tears Go By, by Wong Kar-Wai, 1988
I've been reluctant to watch more of Wong Kar-Wai's films for quite some time. I saw Chungking Express many years ago and loved it, and then I watched Ashes of Time and didn't care for it at all. I know he's one of the most acclaimed and respected directors out there, but I was unsure where I stood with him, after that.

His debut film, As Tears Go By, falls somewhere in the middle of those two for me. It's one of his most successful films over in Hong Kong, but I don't think it wears it's age very well. It screams 1988 in just about every way imaginable, all the way down to a Chinese cover of 80's cheese ballad "You Take My Breath Away". The cover of The Cranberries' "Dreams" in Chungking was much much better, in my opinion.

As Tears Go By is the story of Wah (Andy Lau), a mob enforcer, who is good at his job, which from what I gather is collecting money from other mob guys and beating the shit out of those that don't have it. He keeps himself out of trouble by following the chain of command and laying low. His brother, Fly (Jackie Cheung), on the other hand, is all talk and no game. His belligerent attitude gets him in trouble time and again, and it's up to Wah to keep him in line and protect him from those who hate him (EVERYONE). You already know from that set up that things aren't going to end well for these two, right?

Meanwhile, Wah is tasked with letting Ngor, a distant cousin (Maggie Cheung), stay at his place while she is visiting Hong Kong for medical reasons. They connect with each other and soon fall in love, even though she knows the world he lives in. I never felt that creeped out by the cousin thing, because it was pretty well established that she's not that closely related (Wah never even knew she existed), and found myself rooting for them to work out.

The movie is decent. Wong Kar-Wai's talent is on full display, though not as honed as it comes to be, and with a pretty low budget. His films always have such sharp and vivid colors. There are a lot of reds and blues in this, and his reds are very red and his blues are very blue. It got a ton of award nominations in Hong Kong, and won for art direction, which is unsurprising.

I found the little brother character pretty hard to bear, but I think that was sort of the point. He won the Hong Kong best supporting actor award for it. He was super insecure from having Andy Lau as a big brother, and wouldn't we all be? There's a part where Andy Lau shoves a gun down the front of a guy's pants and pulls the trigger. He doesn't hit anything, but he makes it clear that he could have. How can you live up to that?

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Boy, I didn't expect that last one to be so long. That was practically a full review itself, wasn't it? These mini reviews were supposed to save me some time! Oh well, I had fun writing it. Hope you enjoyed. I've got a lot more movies to talk about, including some new releases here and there, and even one that is only playing festivals here in America.

Thanks for reading!

Vampirama 2: Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, The Nude Vampire, The Return of Dracula

More vampires, everyone! There are so many vampire movies out there, I bet I could do these forever. But I'll probably get sick of it before then. Here is a link to the first Vampirama set of reviews, if you are interested.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, by Brian Clemens, 1974

This is a pretty awesome Hammer production starring Horst Jansen as Captain Kronos, who is on the trail of a vampire who feeds on youth, rather than blood. What really took me by surprise is that it doesn't entirely match the moody feel of the other Hammer horror films I've seen. Instead, it appeared to me that Brian Clemens was taking a visual and rhythmic cue from the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and maybe Kurosawa's samurai films as well. There is even a bar room showdown that played out like something straight out of a Man with No Name movie, but with swords. A very cool movie with an original take on vampire mythology and a visual style unique to the genre.

The Nude Vampire (La Vampire Nue), by Jean Rollin, 1970

I watched Rollin's previous film, The Rape of the Vampire, for my last Vampirama entry. What interested me about him is that he seemed to make a lot of vampire movies, but because he wanted to, not because the industry had pigeonholed him into it.

The Nude Vampire is even weirder than Rollin's first movie. It's about a rich guy who lives a bit of a hedonistic lifestyle who finds out his dad is into even weirder stuff. As he investigates, he learns of a suicide cult of vampire worshipers and of a vampire girl that his dad is actually trying to cure.

Anyway, the story doesn't exactly add up, and I'm not entirely sure if the movie fully engaged me, but Rollin's movies are strange and interesting and that should count for something. There appears to be a recurring motif in his films, combining cultish or mystical imagery with scientific and medical stuff. This one was a lot more exploitative than The Rape of the Vampire (which was thankfully not very rapey). The Nude Vampire definitely lives up to its title many times over. Not sure if I would recommend it, but it's somewhat interesting, so maybe it's worth your time if you're into the strange and obscure. Gotta love that poster art, though.

Also, I was disappointed to find that, unlike the first film, the version on Netflix Instant was dubbed rather than subtitled. Boo, Netflix!

The Return of Dracula by Paul Landres, 1958

This is a little bit older than most of the vampire movies I've been watching, and it is maybe more in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 vein. Things are getting too hot for Dracula in Transylvania, so he takes the identity of an artist he kills and moves to California, where he stays with his victim's distant cousin, feeds off the neighbors, and tries to seduce the cousin's daughter.

My favorite part was at the beginning, when he somehow takes a train all the way from Romania to California. OK, maybe he got off the train and took a ship from Europe to the States, then got on another train, but all we see is him get on a train in Transylvania and get off a train in California. The Return of Dracula is silly and certainly not great, but there's definitely a level of camp enjoyment to be taken from it. Not very memorable, though, to be honest.

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Of this batch of movies, I would definitely go with Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. It's super cool.

Grab Bag: Peeping Tom, Hopscotch, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Three more movie reviews coming your way. No theme today, just some good old movies that I think are all worth your time. Enjoy!

Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, 1960

Mere months before Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was released here in the states, a somewhat similar film was released in England, to much less acclaim: Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. The story of a cameraman who kills women in order to preserve the look in their eyes at the moment of their death, Peeping Tom is a bit edgier than Psycho, focusing less on the Hollywood thrills and twists and turns that Hitchcock preferred and instead takes a more subdued, realistic, and well, British approach.

I actually may have liked Peeping Tom better than Psycho, if that's possible. Mark Lewis, the killer character played by Carl Boehm, is a more realistic portrayal of the psychology of a serial killer than Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. He is less charming than Perkins, and is more of the quiet, strange man who lives upstairs. As a child, his psychologist father filmed him at every moment of the day, often intentionally scaring him to record his reaction. There's a very unsettling sexual subtext to the footage and Mark's reaction while watching it. There's a lot of sexual subtext throughout.

Upon release, Peeping Tom tanked, but over the years, the critical reception for it has completely turned around. Now regarded by many as a masterpiece, it was a bit ahead of its time, I think, and people didn't know what to make of it. Anyhow, this movie is a must. Check it out, if you haven't. It would make a perfect double feature with Psycho.

Hopscotch by Ronald Neame, 1980
Whew, look at that poster. That is not a movie I would want to see. Perhaps not the ideal marketing campaign for Hopscotch, but then again, what do I know?

Hopscotch is the story of Miles Kendig (Walter Matthau), an experienced CIA field agent who is punished for no good reason by his superior, and put on a desk job. To get back at them, Kendig runs off, goes into hiding, writes a tell-all book exposing all of his dirty laundry, as well as the CIA's and the KGB's, and threatens to publish.

The movie is a smart, funny, and spirited chase movie, as Kendig leads his CIA superior (Ned Beatty) and replacement (Sam Waterston) on just to mess with them. It's unpredictable, since Kendig keeps his plan under wraps, even to the audience. I like the low tech, analog aspect. Spy movies with crazy technology are cool, but there's something really fun about it all being done the old fashioned way. It's sort of like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in that way, but, you know, funny. Walter Matthau is great here as always.

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Otto Preminger, 1950

This has nothing to do with the Shel Silverstein book. It's a film noir, and a good one, at that.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is about Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews), a hotheaded detective, recently demoted for his violent impulses. When investigating a murder at an underground gambling house, Dixon is sent to question a possible but unlikely suspect, one that he shouldn't have much problem with. Well, Dixon ends up accidentally killing the guy.

He attempts to cover it up, but things only get worse from there, as he takes a liking to his victim's estranged wife and father-in-law, a cab driver prone to exaggerating stories. How far can Dixon carry his guilt? When will the lies pile up too high?

Where the Sidewalk Ends is a satisfying film noir, though in the end, it's a lot less nihilistic than some of its peers. I always wonder when I see a film noir end with anything but the darkest of outcomes if this was a compromise with someone at the studio. Not necessarily, I know, but I bet there are many cases where it is.

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That's all for today. I've got a lot more stuff to review, so I'll try to have three more tomorrow.

The Fly (1958)

Kurt Neumann's original 1958 version of The Fly was way better than I thought it would be. I expected the usual 1950's monster movie, something along the lines of the stuff you would see on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There is some camp, of course, but there are some genuinely creepy moments, the characters are three dimensional, and the narrative structure is quite smart.

The story begins in a factory, where the body of Andre, a scientist, has been found, his head and arm crushed in a pressing machine. We meet the scientist's brother Francois, played by Vincent Price, and his wife, Helene, who was at the scene of the crime, and under suspicion for murder. They are unsure if she is insane or just faking it. After earning her trust, Francois gets Helene to tell the story of the events leading up to the incident.

In flashback, we learn that Andre was developing a matter transporting machine. He excitedly shows it to his wife, demonstrating it on an ashtray. When it dissipates and appears in another chamber, the letters on the bottom are all jumbled up, so apparently it still needs work. After fixing it, he tries it on the family's cat. It disappears and never reappears. It's one of the creepier moments in the movie, when you just hear the cat's seemingly tortured cry coming from nowhere. Finally, sure he's fixed it, Andre tests his matter transporter on himself. Unfortunately, a fly gets in with him and their bodies are crossed with each other.

The movie is told from Helene's point of view. She is unsure what has happened to Andre, just that he refuses to leave his lab and speaks to her through notes. When she finally does see him, he has his head covered up by a cloth, which is also creepy. She finally learns that the fly has his head and one of his arms, and the only hope of returning him to normal is to find that fly. She and her son and the maid all go on a hunt for a fly with a white head, before Andre loses his grip on his humanity and becomes a monster.

I liked the slow reveal of Andre in fly form. It's sort of like how you don't see the shark in Jaws until the end, just glimpses. This works the same way, where you know whatever is under that sheet is horrifying, and when you finally do see it, well, it's kind of fake looking but it looks pretty great for the 1950's.

I won't spoil the ending, of course, but since you know that Andre's head and arm are smashed from the very beginning, you know it can't end well. I actually can't believe they got away with the way they ended the movie. Or the whole pressing machine thing. The movie is pretty gruesome for its time, and unsettling.

I enjoy being surprised by a movie like The Fly. I had already written it off as B-movie fare before even watching it, and it wound up being genuinely good. It's nice when one's preconceived notions are proven pleasantly wrong.

Ace in the Hole

I didn't know anything about Ace in the Hole before I watched it. I knew it was by Billy Wilder, who has made some of my favorite movies. From the premise, I actually thought it was a comedy, and it even started out somewhat light. But I didn't expect what I got at all: A dark, cynical, noirish satire.

Ace in the Hole is a 1951 film starring Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, a disgraced New York reporter who must now resort to begging for a job at a tiny, inconsequential newspaper in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has been fired from so many other jobs that he is perfectly honest and upfront with the editor about his past indiscretions. The editor gives him a chance anyway.

Tatum wiles away the time until, on assignment to cover a rattlesnake hunt, he lucks his way into a man trapped in a mine. Seeing his opportunity back into the big time, he uses every dirty trick in the book and manipulates the story of the man into a national sensation.

The man in the hole, Leo Minosa, is everything a reporter could want: He fought in the war, he worries that he's awakened an ancient Indian curse, and he has a wife and family waiting for him back home. Tatum manipulates the facts to his favor, going so far as convincing Leo's wife, Lorraine, just about to run out on him, to stay and reap the benefits of her husband's plight.

As the story goes national, crowds begin to form, gawkers camping in front of the mine to watch the rescue effort and be a part of history. The site becomes a carnival, both figuratively, and quite literally, as vendors come and set up rides, live music, and food. Leo's family's little roadside shop, once devoid of life, is now booming with business.

Ace in the Hole doesn't let up for a minute. It's about as vicious and viciously entertaining as a movie can get. Kirk Douglas' Chuck Tatum isn't exactly likeable, but he sure is fun to watch. Blinded by greed, he makes dirty deals with the sheriff, cleverly cuts all the rest of the news reporters out of his story, and even works to keep Leo in the hole longer to drag things out.

I read that Ace in the Hole was not very well received. That doesn't surprise me. It's not exactly a feel-good movie, and I can't imagine it was something an audience from 1951 would go nuts for. Fortunately, it has aged ridiculously well. The dialogue sounds as good and real today as it did then, and the ruthless skewering of the press milking a story for all its worth is only a million times more relevant now than it was sixty years ago. It actually reminded me of Sidney Lumet's Network in its prescience, though Network was so on-the-nose it's scary.

Any lover of classic films should definitely watch Ace in the Hole. The same goes for pretty much every Billy Wilder film, from what I can tell. He was smart, observant, versatile, and unafraid to shy away from adult issues. I'm sure there's a Billy Wilder movie for everyone. I think my favorite will always be The Apartment, but I still have a lot more to watch.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

I would stay the night at a haunted house for $10,000.  The trick is this: Stay in one place for the whole night, and never separate from the group.  Why doesn't anybody ever do this?  Come on, losers!

House on Haunted Hill is a fun little chiller brought to us by the great P.T. Barnum of B-Movies, William Castle.  He added another layer of fun to his movies with his love of twists, gimmicks, and trickery.  Even though these gimmicks were primarily to put butts in seats, there was a real sense of showmanship behind them too. 

The characters in this movie are a lot like the audience of a William Castle movie.  They have been issued a challenge by a millionaire to stay the night in a haunted house.  If they stay all night, they get $10,000, no ifs, ands or buts.    The millionaire is played by Vincent Price, a man who is on his 5th unhappy marriage.  The other four wives have met unfortunate ends. 

One of the guys staying in the house is played by the jittery dude from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.  He's a bit of a drunk, but he knows the history of the house, and he explains to the others (and the audience) that there have been a lot of grisly goings on in there.  Bodies found with missing heads, a giant pit full of acid in the basement.  A question to all you homeowners: If you buy a house with a giant acid pit already installed in the dungeon, do you keep it?  Does that increase the property value? 

So the group gets locked in, and there are some ghost sightings, but to me they don't look like ghosts, they just look like an old lady on wheels.  But still, severed heads appear and disappear.  One particular lady appears to be seeing all these things.  Then somebody turns up dead, hanging from a rope.  Also, I don't know how far ahead Vincent Price planned for this, but he has a bunch of adorable little coffin shaped boxes containing a handgun for each of his guests, just in case.

Anyway, the plot makes little sense, and once the twists start adding up, one after the other, the house of haunted cards comes tumbling down with even a little bit of questioning.  Who is betraying who?  Is the house really haunted or not?  How long did they have that planned?  Not important.  What matters to Castle is that the shocks keep coming.  He surely knew if he kept surprising the audience, the logic of the surprises wouldn't really matter in the long run.

I've read that House on Haunted Hill played in theaters specially rigged to release skeletons upon the audience at certain times in the movie that might call for skeletons.  See?  That sounds like fun, doesn't it?  That's what William Castle's movies were all about.  Fun.  And as ridiculous and hilariously convoluted as House on Haunted Hill was, it was still a lot of fun.

The Bad Seed

It's October, everybody! I'm sure most of you know what that means. That's right, horror movies. I'll be watching as many as I possibly can over the next month, so keep checking back!

The first movie in my month-long celebration was the classic 1956 evil kid thriller, The Bad Seed, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and based on the play of the same name, which was based on the novel of the same name. Like all movies from the 1950's, it's about the Penmarks, a happy, loving family with the sweetest little girl in the world. For the first five seconds, anyway, because the very moment you meet little Rhoda, you can tell something's off with her. She's just a little too sweet. It's got to be an act.

It doesn't take long before her true colors are revealed. When the matter of a penmanship award she lost to another kid in class is brought up, she goes batshit. Then, when Leroy, the simple groundskeeper they employ sprays her feet with his hose, she flips again. Leroy isn't fooled by her act, though. He can see right through her with his powers of simplicity.

While Rhoda is away at a school picnic, her mother, Christine, while entertaining company, hears on the radio that a child has drowned at the park. Afraid at first that it was Rhoda, she is relieved to hear that it was another child. But when Rhoda comes skipping into the house like nothing has happened, Christine is more than a little bit unsettled. She talks to Rhoda about it and Rhoda doesn't seem phased by it in the least; she just wants a peanut butter sandwich.

Fuel is further added to Christine's suspicions when Rhoda's teacher comes to visit her, and she learns that the child that drowned was the little boy that Rhoda lost the penmanship award to. On top of that, Rhoda was seen fighting with the little boy on the dock that he fell off of. Aw, crap.

I won't go any further than that. The Bad Seed is meticulously and cleverly plotted, and I don't want to ruin too much, in case I've already convinced you to watch it. If you need more convincing, I'll say this: the little boy isn't the last person to kick the bucket.

The acting is really great, especially the little girl, who, along with Nancy Kelly as Christine, and the lady that played the grieving mother of the little drowned boy all got Oscar nominations. I honestly wasn't expecting the acting to be so good. I just expected a campy 50's B-movie. The screenplay based on the play based on the book is solid and entertaining. Whoever wrote it must have done their research on psychopathic behavior, because little Rhoda fits the description to a tee. The cinematography, also nominated for an Oscar, does something very difficult to pull off: keeps the storytelling fresh and interesting, even though the majority of the movie is confined to one small set.

The 1950's offered a particular challenge for filmmakers: finding ways to tackle mature subject matter, without falling under the scrutiny and censorship of the Hayes Code. There is a certain slyness in the best films of the period, like, say, how smartly Billy Wilder's The Apartment dealt with suicide. The Bad Seed is plenty subversive, but even it ran into some walls. The original, much darker, and more appropriate, ending had to be changed. I think they did a decent job with the new ending, but now knowing how it should have been, I have to say I would have preferred that.

After the movie is over, there are still a couple more surprises. First, a card comes up, entreating the audience not to spoil the ending for others. How cool is that? It would be pointless to even try to ask people not to ruin endings nowadays, since all the information is readily available before the movie even comes out. After the card, we're treated to a final curtain call of the cast, each taking their bows, smiling, and with good humor. It's really funny, especially the very end of it, with Rhoda. If you don't already know about the last shot in the credits, I won't ruin it here. Watch the movie!

Killer's Kiss

As I mentioned in my previous review for Stanley Kubrick's film, The Killing, his previous film, Killer's Kiss, was included on the special features of the Blu Ray. It was very nice of Criterion to do this, since many would consider it worthy of a release of its own.

Killer's Kiss follows Davey, a boxer, who at the start of the movie loses a big fight. He meets a dancer named Gloria, who is dealing with her abusive boss always forcing himself on her. The two of them decide to run off together, but she gets kidnapped by the boss, and Davey gets a murder pinned on him. It all comes to a head with an exciting chase sequence and a showdown with sharp objects inside a creepy old mannequin warehouse.

That's about it for the story. It's not even really a story in any kind of linear sense. There are several diversions in the narrative, like Gloria's story about her ballerina sister. Gloria narrates the whole story over a long ballet dance. Killer's Kiss has a real stream of consciousness feel to it, like Kubrick was making it up as he went along. In some sense, he probably was.

Killer's Kiss was made independently by Kubrick with a little bit of money he borrowed from an uncle. He shot it in the streets of New York, using what was available to him. No elaborate sets, or crazy attention to detail here. He's just grabbing shots whenever and wherever he can. As a result of this, Killer's Kiss has a realism not generally found in his later films. You really get a sense of how run down and seedy the Times Square area was in the 50's.

The final chase and showdown is pretty badass. From the way it started, I didn't expect the movie to get so exciting at the end. The rooftop chase has some extremely real moments, one where one of the crooks trips and falls and gets back up. I assume that Kubrick just kept that in. At another point, one of the guys hurts his leg and can't go on. I think this was just to get the boss guy alone with Davey, but still, that's not something you see in very many action movies. The mannequin factory showdown is crazy, too. The boss guy has an axe and Davey has this hook thing that he's catching it with. All the while, Kubrick is cutting away from the fight to show us creepy, foreboding shots of severed mannequin heads and hands. Really cool stuff.

While not quite as good as Kubrick's later work, you can see the seeds of what he was to become in Killer's Kiss. The running time is crazy short, just a bit over an hour. It's kind of noir-ish, but without much plot to speak of. The dialogue doesn't pop like it did in The Killing. Still, it's an enjoyable little thriller, and worth watching just to see the humble beginnings of a cinematic giant.

The Killing

Recently, I purchased the Criterion Collection Blu Ray of Stanley Kubrick's classic racetrack heist film noir, The Killing. This was my first time seeing it, as well as his previous film, Killer's Kiss, which is also featured on the Blu Ray.

I've seen I guess about half of Kubrick's films now, maybe a little more than that, but The Killing was the first one I've ever seen that feels, you know, kind of mainstream. It follows a group of guys plotting to steal $2 million worth of betting money at a racetrack. Besides Johnny, the mastermind, these guys aren't criminals, just normal guys who have some unfortunate circumstances in their lives to motivate them. Each have an important role to play in the heist itself.

The first two acts follow the plotting of the heist, as Johnny gets all of the pieces in line. We also see all of the guys at home, and learn what is driving them. One of them, George, is a pushover in a loveless marriage. If they remade this, he would be played by William H. Macy. Hoping for a little bit of respect, he tells his wife what's going on, and she, in turn, tells the guy she's sleeping with on the side, and they hatch a little plot of their own.

The third act is, of course, the heist itself. It's pretty brilliantly staged, where we see one guy perform his duty, and then jump back in time a bit to see what the next guy does. Though techniques like this are not rare for slick heist movies now, it was pretty unique for the 1950's. It reminds me, surely not coincidentally, of the third act of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.

I won't spoil the ending, of course, other than to say that things do get bloody. Do they get away with the robbery? And then what after that? It has one of my favorite endings I've seen in a long time. The last line of dialogue is killer.

Even though it was still very early in his career, Stanley Kubrick's presence is still very much felt. The lower budget probably prevented it from having the ridiculously exacting detail that Kubrick later obsessed over, but the cinematography is still great. The acting is good, too. Little flourishes and details in their performances make the characters seem far more human than a lot of other movies from this time did. My favorite character was probably the sharpshooter Johnny hires to take down a horse to cause a distraction. When we meet him, he's demonstrating his skills by shooting a string of man-shaped targets. When he's done shooting, Johnny hands him his little dog back and he plays the rest of the scene cradling a puppy.

I really enjoyed The Killing. It was noir all the way, with razor sharp dialogue, but not so dark as to be depressing. The heist was truly fun to watch play out. It was interesting to see a young Kubrick at work, and I admit, even a bit of a relief that it wasn't as esoteric as his later work tended to be. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite Kubrick film is cinema's greatest riddle, 2001: A Space Odyssey. See it if you haven't already!

Good Morning

I feel like we American moviegoers don't see enough of Japan's cinematic gentle side. When we think of Japanese cinema over here, we think of violent Samurai epics, intense, hyper-stylized anime, or men in monster suits pummeling each other over miniature cityscapes. There are, of course, all kinds of movies in Japan; it's just rare that a small, heartwarming domestic comedy finds it's way across the Pacific.

Yasujiro Ozu's 1959 classic, Good Morning, is just that, a gentle satire about communication and the way we all fit together. It follows the day-to-day lives of several families living in a tiny suburban cluster of homes. The wives spend their days gossiping about each other, the husbands fret about their jobs and getting by, and the local boys practice farting on command on the way to and from school.

When I said the living area is tiny, I mean tiny. No room for yards, no driveways, the homes all face each other with nothing but a narrow pathway between them. There is hardly an interior shot in the movie that isn't shot through at least one open doorway, sometimes with more in the frame. With the close proximity, crowded living areas, and paper-thin walls, there's no room for privacy either. The neighbors walk right into each others' houses to talk. One husband mistakenly comes into the wrong house after a night of drinking.

Anyway, the story kicks into gear when one of the families gets a television set, and two of the boys go over to watch sumo wrestling. They decide then and there that they want a TV too. When they ask, their parents say no. When they demand, their parents still say no. When they yell, their parents say no, and be quiet. They then resolve to do just that. Minoru, the older boy, says that adults talk all the time and don't ever say a thing that matters, so he and Isamu, the younger, decide not to speak again until they get that TV.

The two lead boys are excellent. The younger one dresses in the same brown sweater and mimics the older one's every move. I love that little boys loved farting in the 1950's. I had an inkling that that was the case, but you can't find a trace of evidence that people even farted in American movies until, let's see, the earliest movie fart I'd ever heard before this was Blazing Saddles, so let's say 1974?

The movie is loaded with little stories and subplots, all about communication, and sometimes miscommunication. The wives are in a tizzy about a new washing machine that they believe was purchased with stolen dues from the neighborhood group they're in. A pushy salesman won't leave them be. The boys' teacher has a crush on their aunt, and can't express the words for it. Everything and everybody is tied together by life. Ozu expresses this very poetically with an ever-present network of telephone wires in the background. You see them in just about every external shot, crisscrossing the sky.

Another theme of the movie is poking fun at the onset of television. The boys, of course, love it. The father worries that TV is going to create a nation of idiots. This was especially interesting to me, and even prescient, because, in modern times, Japanese culture is probably the most willing in the world to embrace new technologies. The father's hesitance almost marks the end of a generation. Then there's the issue of the boys' insistence that adults make no conversation but meaningless chatter. Isn't that just what the father is trying to prevent by keeping the TV out of the house?

That is the essence of Good Morning. Sometimes more significance can be found in chatter than in meaningful words. Sometimes a world can be communicated by saying nothing at all. Sometimes talking just leads to misunderstandings.

In some ways, Good Morning reminded me of the last movie I reviewed, Summer Wars. Despite also being a hyper-stylized anime, that, too, explored the internal workings of family, and also, mirrored it with a burgeoning new technology. I can't help but wonder if Mamoru Hosoda was in any way influenced by this movie in making his film.

I wholeheartedly recommend Good Morning. It's a nice, simple story with a theme that transcends cultures. I also think it would be a great film to show a class of, say, 10 or 11 year old kids. There's a lot to talk about in it, and it would be a great way to introduce kids to the concept of subtitles, something many Americans grow up way too afraid of. Besides, what 10-year-old doesn't laugh at fart jokes?