Vanishing Point, She (1935), and Sleep, My Love

Vanishing Point, by Richard C. Sarafian, 1971


Vanishing Point took me by surprise. I expected a badass 70's car chase movie, and on one level that's exactly what it is. But it's also the story of one man's existential race into oblivion.

It begins with the hero, Kowalski (Barry Newman), a car delivery man who is taking an awesome car (I guess, anyway, I'm not a car guy) from Denver to San Francisco. He bets a guy that he'll be able to get it there by 3PM the next day, only 16 hours from his time of departure. I just did the math, and that means he would have to go a minimum of 80 miles for hour the whole way in order to make that goal, and that's not counting stops. So Kowalski takes a bunch of speed and sets out on his mission.

It doesn't take long before Kowalski gets the attention of the police, and it's no wonder. Nothing is going to stop him. If he sees a road block, he just jumps the median and goes around it on the other side of the road. He's getting help in avoiding the law over the radio from his friend Super Soul, a DJ (played by Cleavon Little of Blazing Saddles) who talks in a secret code of jive poetry.
All the while, the police are bearing down on Kowalski, as he edges closer and closer to the end of his race.

Vanishing Point is a really cool oddity among car chase movies because of its dark, psychedelic, and philosophical overtones. Things get more and more surreal for Kowalski as he goes deeper into the desert, meeting snake handlers, desert hippies and naked motorcycle riding hippie girls on the way. We get an idea of what is driving Kowalski through some sketchy flashbacks of his past, but he never states explicitly why he's doing it.

One last thing: If this review is selling you on Vanishing Point, and you decide to watch it, try to find the UK cut. It was available on the flipside of the DVD I had, so it shouldn't be too hard. It has an extended sequence cut from the American version, a surreal scene where Kowalski picks up a hitchhiker. It's one of the most important scenes in the movie, and we Americans didn't see it upon release because someone decided we were too stupid to get metaphors. That happens to us a lot, doesn't it?

She, by Irving Pichel and Lansing C. Holden, 1935


Based on a popular series of novels by H. Rider Haggard, She is an epic adventure produced by the man who brought King Kong into the world, Merian C. Cooper. It was intended to replicate the success of Kong, and despite its wonderful production design and special effects, it failed to do so, and I can tell you exactly why: NO MONSTERS.

She is the story of a man's quest to a lost land to find the Fountain of Youth deep in the arctic. Family lore has it that his ancestor found the fountain centuries ago. There they find an ancient race of cannibals and their ruler, She Who Must Be Obeyed. She believes the guy is his own ancestor that she had taken as a lover 500 years ago, and She wants him back.

The film is decent, but never achieves the blend of wonder and high adventure that King Kong did. There's never the feeling that you're seeing something you've never seen before. They are, after all, just shooting on a big soundstage, right? Couldn't they have thrown a giant spider or something in somewhere?

Still, She is full of rich movie history. One cool little fact is that She Who Must Be Obeyed was the visual inspiration for the evil queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Another is that it was thought lost until a print was found in Buster Keaton's personal collection. It's a fun, pulpy little movie, and it's totally worth watching, but it's not going to change your world.

Sleep, My Love, by Douglas Sirk, 1948


I've been meaning for some time to watch something by Douglas Sirk. Sleep, My Love happened to be the only one of his films on Netflix Instant, and though it's not one of his more well known titles, I decided to give it a look.

Sleep, My Love stars Claudette Colbert as a New York woman who wakes up on a train to Boston, with no idea how she got there. When she returns to her husband (Don Ameche), we begin to see things take a much more sinister turn. He's cheating on her with a younger woman, and wants her money, and is manipulating her through hypnotic suggestion to drive her mad and commit suicide. It's pretty ridiculous, I know, but it's a fun little movie.

I can see now why women at the time responded so well to Sirk's films. He seems pretty sympathetic toward them. Like, if a 40's or 50's housewife believed her husband was cheating (chances were fair that she was right), most people would just roll their eyes and talk down to her. But she could go and see Sleep, My Love and have all her suspicions validated. See? Husbands CAN be evil. And that younger girl he's seeing is nothing but a money grubbing floozy. And that shrink he's sending me too IS a fraud. And look, she met a nicer man on the plane back from Boston. There's hope!

As I said above, this isn't one of Sirk's better known films, but it's a fun little diversion. I would very much like to see the 1950's films he would later become so well known for.

This Day and Age: Cecil B. DeMille's Solution for a Broken System

This Day and Age, by Cecil B. DeMille, 1933


While best known for the historical epics that the latter part of his career focused on, Cecil B. DeMille was actually a quite versatile director. This last sentence makes me sound like an authority on Cecil B. DeMille, which I'm totally not. I haven't even seen The Ten Commandments. Cut me some slack, OK? It's four hours long. In fact, This Day and Age is the first of DeMille's films I've ever seen.

This fact is especially odd when you consider that This Day and Age is one of the director's only films not made readily available on DVD or some other format. Not 100% sure why, either due to mild racism or political wrongheadedness, you take your pick. You see, America was well into the Great Depression at the time of its release, and people were looking for solutions. This was DeMille's proposal. By the way, I'm going to be SPOILER-iffic this time around, because this is one of those movies you might not get many chances to see, and it's just too weird to not talk about.

This Day and Age is about a group of high school seniors at the top of their class, selected to take part in "Boys Week" (girls aren't qualified, I guess), where they shadow the men who hold high city positions. One boy goes with the Chief of Police, one with the District Attorney, one with the Judge. When the friendly local Jewish stereotype is gunned down by the local gangster stereotype for not paying for protection, the boys witness firsthand just how broken the system is. The gangster gets off because none of the evidence can prove conclusively that he did what they all know he did. The boys decide to investigate on their own, and the gangster ends up killing one of them and pinning it on another. Disenfranchised at the way the institution handles things, the remaining boys hatch a plan to bring this gangster to justice: mob justice!

Yes, DeMille was proposing that if the system can't do things right, let's form a mob and do it ourselves. The boys mobilize and form a secret army of all the high school boys in the entire area. They whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy as their secret code. Their plan to get the gangster alone to kidnap him, yes kidnap him, is to have one of their girlfriends seduce his righthand man, who really wants to have sex with a high school girl. Oh, and did I mention that when the boys get the gangster, they hold a trial themselves, and torture a confession out of him by lowering him into a pit of live rats? Then they carry him back to the judge and the judge commends them for doing the right thing! Yes, this movie is crazy!

I mentioned above that This Day and Age is also mildly racist. It's not really so bad. Though the Jewish characters were broad stereotypes, the movie was really standing up for them. The worst part is when the Jewish tailor's shop is blown up as a threat, and the tailor, lying in a pile of rubble, goes "Oy, this damage is going to cost me $432...", then a bit of plaster breaks over his head and he goes, "...and 64 cents!" Yeah. But there was actually a really cool line, involving a black student. The boys need a black person to pretend to be a shoeshine (yeah, I know) for the plan to work. They go up to a boy and say "hey, do you shine shoes?", and he looks at them and says "I shine my own shoes". So I don't think the racism was necessarily coming from bad intentions, just, you know, ignorance.

Despite the fact that this film is a political minefield (I heard it was banned in Holland for being too fascist!), it's actually insanely well directed. Cecil B. DeMille totally knew his stuff. The performances, cinematography and production values are exceptional. There's a fantastic sequence between the creepy second-in-command mobster and the girlfriend of the valedictorian boy. It's played entirely in closeups on their hands while they talk to each other. He's locking the hotel room door and she's sliding a knife into her purse. Really cool stuff.

As outdated and messed up as This Day and Age is, it's still an extremely watchable film. I would recommend it as both an entertaining movie and a historical curiosity. If you hear of it playing near you, or if it is made available to you somehow, you should definitely check it out.

The Hurt Locker, The Long Good Friday, Scarface (1932), The Last Laugh

The Hurt Locker, by Katheryn Bigelow, 2008

It took a long time before I got around to seeing The Hurt Locker. I really should have seen it in the theaters, but for some stupid reason, I didn't. Well, I saw it, and like everyone said, it's pretty awesome. It might go down as one of the few times the right movie won the Best Picture Oscar.

Jeremy Renner stars as a leader of a military bomb squad in the Iraq war. He's cocky, has a reckless attitude, and seemingly a death wish. The movie doesn't necessarily have a plot, so much as an episodic series of bombs, each situation elevating in intensity from the last, as the men count down the days, wondering if they'll survive to the end of their tour of duty under this guy.

The performances are all around great, especially Renner. I can see why Marvel wanted him as Hawkeye now, though he had little opportunity to show these traits in The Avengers. Director Kathryn Bigelow, who has been around and doing solid work for some time now, steps up her game big time. The movie is well shot and edited and loaded with tension of both kinds: between the characters and in diffusing the bombs. I really have nothing negative to say about The Hurt Locker. Great movie.

The Long Good Friday, by John Mackenzie, 1980

You know, I couldn't get into The Long Good Friday at first, but it became more and more engaging for me as it went on, all the way to the end. The last ten minutes or so are excellent. It might just have been the time of night that I watched it, which I think was pretty late, or maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention at the start. Either way, I know it's a well regarded film, and I liked it enough.

The Long Good Friday is the movie that really put Bob Hoskins on the map. He plays gangster, trying to become a legitimate businessman (with funding from the mafia, whaaaaaaat?). When his men start getting picked off by someone, he goes on a violent manhunt trying to find the culprit. Hoskins' character is pretty nuts, leaving a trail of bodies wherever he goes, and by the end, even the mafia has second thoughts about associating themselves with this guy.

It's pretty good, probably actually better than I'm giving it credit for. Really strong performance by Hoskins. I was sad to hear about his recent retirement due to Parkinson's. The guy was great in a ton of stuff.

Scarface, by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, 1932

Forget the Al Pacino/Brian De Palma remake, this is the classic Scarface. Based loosely on Al Capone, this Howard Hughes production is probably about as over the top and violent as a film in 1932 could possibly get.

Scarface is Tony Camonte, played by Paul Muni, an ambitious gangster, second in command to Johnny Lovo, who runs the south side of Chicago. Camonte begins to eye both the Irish-run northside of the city, as well as the leadership position held by Lovo. He even makes moves at stealing away Lovo's girl. Eventually, Camonte's ambitions get the best of him, and, you know, a hail of bullets.

Scarface is pretty excessive, even for a Pre-Code movie. I read that Howard Hughes just had Howard Hawks make the movie how he wanted it, and they would worry about getting it through the system later. That was pretty ballsy at the time. As a result, we got one of the first truly great gangster films, and still one of the best ever.

The Last Laugh, by F.W. Murnau, 1924

F.W. Murnau, best known as the director of spooky silent masterpieces Nosferatu and Faust, brings us a smaller and more personal, but no less interesting film. The Last Laugh is the story of an old man (played by future Nazi Emil Jannings), content in his job as a hotel doorman. His increasing age and infirmity are making it harder to do his job, and his boss reassigns him to the undignified job of a bathroom attendant. The old man falls into a depression, his life has lost all its meaning, and becomes a laughing stock to all his friends and family.

That's pretty depressing, right? What a horrible statement on life to have to hear, huh? Well here is why the movie is great: After all that heavy stuff, the audience is given a reprieve. A title card comes up and says something along the lines of "This is where the story should end, but we took pity on this guy and decided to give him a break". The final act of the movie is an improbably joyful payoff, where the doorman randomly inherits a bunch of money and lives like a king, while those who treated him poorly are punished.

The film flat out tells us that this isn't how real life works, that this is just a fantasy, but despite that knowledge, we still take joy in his happiness, and leave the movie feeling a little better about things. The Last Laugh is, ultimately, a movie about the very purpose of going to the movies. They're a brief escape from the harsh reality of life.

Pygmalion, Detour, A Hen in the Wind

Pygmalion, by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, 1938

I haven't seen My Fair Lady, and while I probably still should, I instead decided to go straight back to the source. This is a wonderful adaptation of the famous George Bernard Shaw play, largely written by Shaw himself.

For those who might be unfamiliar with it, Pygmalion is a witty and observant takedown of class disparity in England about Henry Higgins, a wealthy dialect specialist who, on a bet, takes in Eliza Doolittle, a girl from the lowest walks of London society, and teaches her to pass herself off as a noblewoman. As his instruction begins to take hold, the two opposites, both equally headstrong, become enmeshed in a stubborn battle of wills.

The dialogue in Pygmalion holds up amazingly well, just as sharp today as it was in 1938 (and presumably in the 1912 play as well). The performances are great too. I loved Henry Higgins' character, played by co-director Leslie Howard, the way he was so sure of his high place in society, oblivious to his own lapses into bad language and slobbish behavior. He's definitely kind of a selfish jerk, but you come to actually like his company in the end, just as he and Eliza grow on each other. Wendy Hiller is also wonderful as Eliza Doolittle, not only playing a thick cockney accent, but convincingly evolving it into a posh English over the course of her training. What's really great about her performance are the subtleties in her pronunciations. Certain Cockneyisms stay with her, and sometimes sneak out, all the way to the end. She always has difficulty with the letter "H" and often puts a noticeable effort into hitting it, which proves Shaw's choosing of the name "Henry Higgins" a brilliant little metaphor for the distance between the two of them.

I'm sure I'll enjoy My Fair Lady too, whenever I see it, but I'm not sure I'll like it as much as I did Pygmalion. It's a true classic, often overshadowed by its flashier counterpart.

Detour, by Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945

It's weird to think that there were a bunch of different tiers in the early days of Hollywood filmmaking. Unlike today, where a movie is either HUGE and Hollywood or tiny and independent, with nothing in between, they used to have movies that ranged from the big Hollywood pictures with all the big stars, all the way down from the movies made on Poverty Row, for dirt cheap and with no-name actors. Not many of those dirt cheap movies are remembered too favorably these days, but Edgar G. Ulmer's film noir Detour is consistently listed as an important American film.

Detour is the story of Al (Tom Neal), a struggling pianist, who sets out on a hitchhiking journey from New York to Los Angeles to reunite with his girlfriend who left him to become an actress. Along the way, he accidentally kills a man and covers it up, and is then blackmailed by a woman who had encountered that man before. There are several interesting twists and turns in the story, especially considering that the movie is only just over an hour long.

The tone of Detour is actually very dark and haunting, even for a film noir. My favorite shot was early in the movie, as we see a close-up of Al's hands playing a jaunty song at the club he's employed at. We then see his face as he's playing the song, and it's just about the most unhappy face you'll ever see. I also like that the scheme that drives the main characters in the second half of the film is just as low-rent and sleazy as the movie itself. There's no Maltese Falcon or other such Hollywood film noir MacGuffin. The characters are doing what they're doing to sell a dead man's car and keep the money. When the opportunity for a bigger piece of the pie comes along, the movie stops short of exploring it.

Detour is definitely worth a watch, and since it's in the public domain, it's very easy to come across. A very cool way to spend a mere hour of your time.

A Hen in the Wind, by Yasujiro Ozu, 1948

I'm still quite new to the films of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, but so far, I'm pretty well blown away. The only film I had seen of his was Good Morning, his gentle and loving tale of two little boys who refuse to speak until their dad buys them a TV. A Hen in the Wind is a very different film from the rest of his body of work, but no less powerful.

Kinuyo Tanaka plays Tokiko, a housewife left alone with her son while her husband fights in the second World War. Japan's economy is in a deep wartime depression, and Tokiko's resources have dried up. When her son falls ill, she makes a difficult decision to save him: Selling herself as a prostitute in order to pay for his medical costs. Soon, when the war ends and her husband Shuichi (Shuji Sano) returns home, Tokiko confesses to him, unable to lie, which causes a seemingly insurmountable rift in their loving marriage.

Many have criticized A Hen in the Wind for being so much darker than a typical Ozu film. It even has one of, if not the, only act of violence in one of his films. It's not like a guy getting chopped in half or anything, or even someone getting killed. The act is relatively small in terms of movie violence, but it still feels pretty real and brutal in the context of this story. Despite the realness and brutality, I found the film to be very uplifting and beautiful in the end. Ozu doesn't demonize Tokiko for doing what she did. In fact, it seemed like the only decision available to her. Nor does he make Shuichi out to be in the wrong for his inability to process this. In fact, he does his best to try to understand her, and even forgive her, but still is unable to get her transgression out of his mind. Japan was in a dark place after the war, and the film reflects that, but also looks to the future with a message of forgiveness and new beginnings.

A Hen in the Wind is a beautiful film by one of the true masters, which is all the more surprising that this hasn't found its way onto DVD in the states. I think the Criterion Collection owns the rights, and they've released a lot of Ozu's other films, so it's probably only a matter of time. I had the wonderful opportunity to see it projected on film, and I'm glad that I did. It's definitely a film worth seeking out, should the opportunity arise.

Three Early British Thrillers: Night Train to Munich, Sabotage, Secret Agent

Night Train to Munich, by Carol Reed, 1940

Even though the James Bond movies may have defined the spy genre over the last fifty years, the British had been making great spy movies for decades before that. Night Train to Munich is just one example, directed by the great Carol Reed, who also brought us the post-war masterpiece The Third Man and the Oscar winning musical Oliver!

Night Train to Munich is the story of Anna (Margaret Lockwood), the daughter of a scientist wanted by both the Germans and the English. She and her father are kidnapped by the Nazis, and a dashing secret agent (Rex Harrison) goes undercover as a German officer to rescue them. They hatch a plan together to escape Germany to the Swiss border. Along the way, they get help from Charters and Caldicott, two comical Brits who seem to find themselves in interesting train adventures all the time (they previously appeared in the same roles in Hitchcock's classic The Lady Vanishes, which also features Lockwood in a different role).

The movie is an intelligent, sometimes tense, sometimes funny, thriller. Harrison and Lockwood have a great "I know we hate each other but we have to pretend we're lovers" chemistry going on. Basil Redford and Naunton Wayne provide a bit of comic relief, but also give the audience an everyman perspective on these extraordinary events. It had been years since I've seen The Lady Vanishes, so I forgot that they were the guys from that too, but I think that's totally awesome. The climax, set high in the Alps at the Swiss border, is an action packed shootout revolving around those cable cars that carry you from mountain to mountain. I won't blow the details, but it's a fantastic ending.

Sabotage, by Alfred Hitchcock, 1936

And speaking of great British thrillers, let's move right on to the absolute master. Sabotage is a fairly early Hitchcock film, made not long after he had found international success with The 39 Steps, a good couple years before he repeated that success with The Lady Vanishes, and four years before he moved to Hollywood and became THE Alfred Hitchcock with Rebecca.

Sabotage is the story of a terrorist placing bombs around London while Scotland Yard tries to hunt him down. What is extremely interesting, especially for its time: Hitchcock paints the terrorist as a normal man, hiding among us, a European immigrant with a loving wife, whose younger brother lives with them and looks up to him. We, the audience know his motives all along, though his family is oblivious, which is where much of the suspense is mined from.

Though not Hitchcock's best work by any stretch, we do see a lot of the tricks and techniques that will later become his trademarks. The story itself is pretty daring and he doesn't wimp out when it gets to the climax. My favorite piece of Hitchcockery in the film is when the terrorist sends his wife's brother out with a package, which, unbeknownst to the boy, contains a bomb. He shoots a close-up of the package, overlaid with a shot of gears turning, and then a shot of a clock ticking.

Sabotage is a really cool movie, made at a time when Hitchcock was still defining himself. His voice isn't entirely clear yet, but you can watch him as he figures it out. He would, of course, go on to make many of the greatest suspense thrillers ever. If you've seen a bunch of those, and still want to dig a little deeper, this would not be a bad place to start.

Secret Agent, by Alfred Hitchcock, 1936

I guess I already covered a lot of what I would say about Secret Agent in Sabotage. It was made in the same year as Sabotage, though it seems to be more following on the heels of The 39 Steps. Where Sabotage is darker and edgier, Secret Agent is a spy adventure.

John Gielgud stars as a writer sent on a spy mission, along with two other agents, one pretending to be his wife (Madaleine Carroll), and Peter Lorre as a Mexican, or possibly just a guy who is called a Mexican. Lorre was my favorite part of the film. He was such a great character actor, and this was very early in his English language career (which Hitchcock started two years before with The Man Who Knew Too Much).

I didn't enjoy Secret Agent as much as Sabotage, though it, too is one of those early films where you can see Hitchcock developing right in front of you. Many early examples of his techniques are on display here too. This is probably one for the hardcores only. If you want to be a Hitchcock completist, Secret Agent has its moments for sure, but many of those moments appear in later (and a few earlier) movies with much better execution. This guy made a lot of amazing movies, arguably more than any other great director, so go watch ALL those first, if you haven't already.

Electric Dreams and Just Imagine: Two Quaint Science Fiction Comedies

In this entry, I'm going to look at two futuristic comedies made more amusing by the fact that they were so of their time. Sadly, neither of these movies are commonly available, but both can be found if you know where to look.

Electric Dreams, by Steve Barron, 1984

In the 1980's, the dawning age of home computers was all the rage. There are tons of classic movies from the era looking at this new technology, from Tron, to War Games, to Weird Science. For some reason, as time made classics of these films, Steve Barron's Electric Dreams fell by the wayside.

Electric Dreams follows Miles (Lenny Von Dohlen), a man who purchases a home computer to help him with his work as an architect. He gets way into his computer and buys all sorts of nonsensical add-ons, giving his computer control of all the appliances in his house. When he spills a bottle of champagne on the keyboard, the computer (of course) gains sentience (and amorousness). The computer, named Edgar, is voiced by Bud Cort. Things heat up when they both fall for the cute cellist next door (a young Virginia Madsen), and a jealous Edgar tries to woo her away by composing electronic songs for her and sabotaging Miles' life.

It's a very cheesy and VERY 80's movie, but I have a soft spot for stuff like this. There are a lot of clever scenes in it, and though it's not a great movie, it certainly has its moments. It has very good music, too. The score is by synthesizer wizard Giorgio Moroder, best known (by me, anyway) for producing a new wave version of Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis, and the soundtrack features songs by Jeff Lynne and Culture Club, among others.

Now I know I said Electric Dreams is not a great movie, but I would argue that in it's way, it's kind of an important movie. You see, director Steve Barron, who permanently has a place in my heart for directing the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, will probably be best remembered for directing some of the most important and groundbreaking music videos of the early MTV era. Michael Jackson's Billie Jean? That's his. A-ha's Take On Me? His too. Dire Straits' Money for Nothing, Thomas Dolby's She Blinded Me With Science... If you're a child of the 80's, you get the picture.

When Electric Dreams came out, it drew criticism for having a flashy, MTV-style look. The editing feels just like an 80's music video. Videos didn't yet have the respect and acceptance as an art form that they came to earn (due in no small part to Barron's work). Flash forward a decade and many of the most acclaimed movie directors were coming out of MTV, from David Fincher to Spike Jonze to Michel Gondry. Now Barron's editing technique is completely accepted and even internalized in the industry. Electric Dreams, though firmly dated by its tone and content as a movie from 1984, is, in a way, years ahead of its time.

Just Imagine, by David Butler, 1930

I'm genuinely surprised that Just Imagine is not officially available on DVD, or even to stream. It's a true curiosity of its time, one of only a few science fiction features to be released in the 1930's, and a musical, to boot.

Just Imagine takes a look at earth in the distant future of 1980(!), where people are named with numbers (this was five years before Social Security), the government chooses who a woman must marry (they're working on that now), and couples order their babies from vending machines (why not just have sex?). Fear not, some things are still the same. The cops are still Irish stereotypes.

Our hero is J-21 (John Garrick), a man who wishes to marry his sweetheart, LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan), but must find a way to distinguish himself before the judge chooses her other suitor, MT-3 (Kenneth Thomson), a rich, mean jerk. J-21's best friend, RT-42 tries to cheer him up by taking him to watch some scientists revive a man who had died in 1930, who they take under their wing. He takes the name Single 0, and is played by El Brendel, a vaudevillian whose schtick was playing a bumbling Swedish immigrant, which seems weird and totally random but probably made more sense in 1930, because he made a ton of movies. Together, in hopes that J-21 will gain the fame necessary to win LN-18, they make the first flight to Mars, where an adventure awaits them.

The futuristic world is gloriously ridiculous, with wonderful, top notch production design, but as this was a year into the Great Depression, most of the jokes are gentle pokes at the world of 1930. When Single 0 asks if Prohibition is still on, they tell him that the government is talking about legalizing wines and beers. His response: "They're still saying that?"

The musical numbers are a little lacking. None of the songs are about the future! They're all about the 1930's, or things the audience could relate to, I guess. They could have been a whole lot more clever. There's one song, no kidding, about how J-21 wants an old fashioned girl like his grandmother. While he sings this they cut to shots of LN-18 as a modern 1930's woman doing 1930's things. You know, like smoking cigarettes. There is one really cool musical number toward the end, with a bunch of sexy martian women dancing in worship of the huge martian god statue.

Just Imagine is certainly no Metropolis, but it's one of the few cinematic attempts to look into the future we have from that time. Though most of the movie consists of cute observations and sentimentality, beggars can't be choosers.

Grab Bag: Diary of a Lost Girl, Transatlantic Tunnel, Series 7: The Contenders

Hey, sorry I haven't updated in a while. I'm in the midst of a big cross-country move. I'll still post reviews whenever I can, but I'm guessing they'll be a little less frequent for the time being.

Diary of a Lost Girl, by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1929

I challenge you to watch Diary of a Lost Girl and not fall in love with Louise Brooks. Louise Brooks was a silent movie star in the 1920's whose hairstyle became a big fashion thing. When sound movies started happening, she's one of many who didn't make the transition (see: The Artist), but before giving up completely, Brooks went to Germany and starred in three more silent films by director Georg Wilhelm Pabst.

Diary of a Lost Girl is a silent masterpiece, starring Brooks as Thymian, a girl raped and impregnated by her father's associate. When she refuses to marry him because she doesn't love him, her parents give her baby away and places Thymian in a cruel and abusive boarding school. And so on. Lots of tragic, horrible things happen to Thymian, and she stays strong throughout it all, showing love and compassion in the face of a cruel, uncaring society.

I really loved this movie. The storytelling is timeless (except for the no sound thing, I mean, that kind of dates it), and Louise Brooks is great. Totally worth watching. In fact, I think it's essential. I want to see her other films now too, especially the ones with Pabst.

Transatlantic Tunnel, by Maurice Elvey, 1935

"The Tunnel" was a 1935 British science fiction film chronicling the building of an underground tunnel beneath the Atlantic Ocean from London to New York City. Somewhere along the way, they picked up the word "Transatlantic", which was added to the title for the US release.

The movie actually treats the subject matter rather realistically, and spends much time on the difficulty, danger, personal toll, and great expense of such a massive undertaking. The narrative takes place over a period of many years.

Though I did not think it was a very good movie, I found Transatlantic Tunnel's very existence interesting. You don't hear of a lot of science fiction films from the 1930's, and this might be the only one I know of that actually tries to project an accurate future. The idea of building a tunnel between the continents has been proposed and explored in the past as far back as the late 1800s, and found to be physically possible but not worth the time, money, resources, effort, and danger inherent in building it. They use televisions a lot in the movie, which I thought was cool, since they weren't widely available for another 15-20 years.

I probably wouldn't recommend Transatlantic Tunnel, unless you're interested in the history of science fiction. It's more of an interesting artifact than anything else.

Series 7: The Contenders, by Daniel Minahan, 2001

I remember when Series 7: The Contenders came out. I was only 18, and it was the peak of the reality TV boom. I thought the idea of a satirical movie about a reality show where people were given guns and given a legal pass to kill each other was really cool. It IS the kind of idea a teenager would find really cool. I never got to see the movie, though. Until now.

It's pretty corny stuff, man. The story was rather silly and contrived, and the execution was trying to emulate the feel of a reality show, but it just didn't feel slick and polished enough. It could have gone so much further. I'll give it a few points, though. There are a couple of good moments. Some nice bits of irony here and there. A couple of surprising twists and some original ideas. I liked that the people were no-name actors, who just looked like real people. The soundtrack by the alternative band Girls Against Boys was decent, I always kinda liked them. The biggest, most pleasant surprise for me, though, was a brief appearance by a pre-Arrested Development Will Arnett as an MC for the reality show.

It's not worth watching for that, though. He doesn't ride around on a Segway or do an impromptu magic show to the Rocky IV music. Series 7: The Contenders has its moments, but there are better satires about reality TV out there. Just watch The Truman Show. Or if you want a reality TV thing with killing, watch Battle Royale or The Hunger Games.

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Well, this wasn't the greatest bunch of movies. Diary of the Lost Girl was lovely, though. That's the one to watch. More to come as soon as I can!

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!

Murders in the Zoo

I did a lot of reading over the month of October on movies made before the Hays Code went into effect. Hollywood movies were allowed to be a little more violent, or a little more sexually liberated, until the code was passed in the early 30's, which was filled with all sorts of ridiculous rules and limitations that haunted movies until the late 1960's. You know, how a man and woman weren't allowed to be seen in a bed together? Stuff like that.

Murders in the Zoo was made just before the time these rules started being enforced. It's a relatively minor film, but there is at least one scene that is one of the most messed up I've seen in a movie this old. It is the very first scene of the movie, where we are introduced to our villain, sewing a man's mouth shut and setting him loose in the jungle to fend for himself. The act of sewing is conveniently happening just below the frame, but you do see the results, and you know from the very beginning what this guy is capable of.

This villain is an explorer and zoo owner who is extremely jealous and vengeful when it comes to men making eyes at his wife. Which appears to happen quite a bit. His wife really wants out of this marriage. On the way home from the very expedition that he sewed a guy's mouth shut, another guy falls for her, against her warnings.

When they get back home to the zoo, the murders of the title start happening. The zoo guy has devised a murder weapon that can make the cause of death look like a snakebite. There are several other characters, some destined to be victims, some not. There isn't really a hero, everyone is pretty much a good guy compared to this monster. There's a scientist, and a jittery guy who is afraid of all the animals (rightly so in this movie). The fun of the movie isn't watching the good guys stop the bad guy, it's watching the bad guy bring about his own comeuppance.

Murders in the Zoo is only an hour long, which is actually pretty nice. It's a fun little horror movie that breezes right by. And by fun, I mean uncharacteristically dark and grisly for its time.

Dracula (1931)

Whaaaat? Dracula? But Halloween is over, you might say. And I might say you're right. I planned on watching Dracula in October, but I missed my arbitrary deadline by a week or so. I did, however, finish reading the book before Halloween, and holy crap, it was good.

As those scant few followers of this blog surely know, I've been watching all the Universal monster movies over the course of the year. I've enjoyed the lot of them, especially the James Whale ones, so I went into Tod Browning's Dracula with reasonably high expectations. Sadly, it was not able to live up to them.

The movie opens with Renfield visiting Dracula's castle in Transylvania, right away a huge departure from the novel, where it was Jonathan Harker's duty. Dracula uses his hypnotic powers on Renfield to turn him into his lacky. He comes along on the boat to England, where Dracula abandons him to be committed. While in England, Dracula uses his powers to seduce and transform Lucy Westenra and begin the same process on Mina (now Dr. Seward's daughter), while they try to hunt him down and prevent Mina's transformation.

There are some inspired scenes and moments that were sufficiently creepy. I loved the way the lights would only shine on Bela Lugosi's eyes when he was using his hypnotic power. And there was a great shot of the dead captain of the ship that brings Dracula to London. But despite the expressionistic style and moody atmosphere, I felt the movie suffered from being too cheap. Yes, I know all these Universal movies were made on a shoestring, but some were able to work around it and hide it more creatively than others. This movie has a scene where they're watching a wolf (Dracula in wolf form), and since they couldn't get a wolf, they just stand there and describe to the audience what the wolf is doing. I felt a little cheated.

Bela Lugosi, is of course, magnetic in the role. I can see why he is iconic. I think it's weird the way people paint such a pointy widow's peak on their forehead when they dress as Dracula, because his isn't that pronounced. I also liked Dwight Frye as the lunatic Renfield a lot. He was awesomely over the top and really fun to watch. I don't think the rest of the cast deserves much mention, though. They were for the most part forgettable, if not kind of bad. That's too bad, too, because in the book, Professor Van Helsing is every bit as iconic as Count Dracula and Renfield, and Mina Murray/Harker/Seward is a fantastic character, too.

Maybe it was because I had just read the book and they left out a lot of my favorite parts, I don't know. I thought Dracula was a pretty slow movie and was kind of bored. You know what? Besides Monster Squad, I'm pretty sure this was the first movie I've seen with Dracula in it. I would like to see other adaptations, but I hope some of them are more faithful to Bram Stoker's story. What's the best Dracula movie? Is the Coppola movie worth watching? Keanu Reeves as Harker worries me a bit. Hey, I like Keanu in things, and am willing to defend him, but even I have my limits.

I seem to be rambling, so I guess it's time to go. Final thought? Dracula has its moments, but if given the choice, watch Frankenstein or The Invisible Man instead. Blah!

Vampyr

The 1932 film Vampyr, by director Carl Theodor Dreyer, begins with a card that reads: "This story is about the strange adventures of young Allan Gray. His studies of devil worship and vampire terror of earlier centuries have made him a dreamer, for whom the boundary between the real and the unreal has become dim." It's a fitting way to start this film, which, like its hero, blurs the lines of reality and dream.

Vampyr follows Allan Gray, who stops at an inn to sleep. He is awakened by a strange old man in his room, who mysteriously tells him "you mustn't let her die", and leaves behind a package with instructions not to open it until the event of the man's death. Sensing the urgency in the old man's plea, Allan investigates, and is guided by shadows, independent of their owners, to the home of the old man, just in time to witness the man murdered by gunshot.

When Allan opens the package, he finds a book on vampires and demons. Upon reading this, he realizes that the old man's youngest daughter, who has taken ill, has been bitten, and he must find the vampire who has taken control of this family.

Vampyr is very dreamlike, with haunting and surreal imagery. There were times when I wasn't sure if Allan was supposed to be dreaming or not, because it felt like I myself was dreaming. The film was shot with blurry lines around the borders of the frame. It was made very early in the development of sound movies, so the talking is few and far between. It plays like a combination of a silent film and a talkie. When there is talking, it's in German and kind of muted and unclear. It almost sounds like English, but what it really sounds like to me is when someone is talking to you in a dream, and you can't quite make out what they're trying to tell you, but you sort of get their intent.

Though very short in length, the hazy, dreamlike quality had a bit of a soporific effect on me. I didn't fall asleep, but I could have laid down and took a nap as soon as the movie ended. I'm sure you're all happy to know that I stayed awake so I could bring you all this masterpiece of a review while the film was still fresh in my mind.

Some of the other great expressionistic horror films of the silent period, such as Der Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Nosferatu, really have a way of staying with you. The lack of sound just adds to the power of the images. Vampyr is right on the tail end of that whole thing, though it does have some sound, it still feels very sparse, and the imagery still holds a lot of power. This is a great movie for a late October night.

The Invisible Man

It's been a while since I reviewed an old Universal horror movie. Maybe I should have waited a few weeks and saved this for October, but I had some spare time for a short movie, and The Invisible Man fit the bill at only 70 minutes long. Once I discovered that it was directed by James Whale, the deal was sealed.

The only James Whale movies I'd seen were Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. I think it's safe to say that those are both pretty great movies. I don't know that much about Whale except that he was openly gay in the 30's and the movie Gods and Monsters, which I haven't seen but want to, is about him. His Frankenstein movies were both pretty amazing feats, the first one a dark and emotional Gothic horror story, the second one a smart, fun, and inventive sequel.

Whale made The Invisible Man in between Frankensteins. Based on the story by H.G. Wells, it follows Jack Griffin, a chemist who experiments on himself, only to make himself invisible. Being able to do anything he wants, Griffin goes mad with power and goes on a killing spree. Meanwhile, the townspeople of a small English village, the police, and Griffin's own former colleagues go on a manhunt for the man they may never be able to find.

Claude Rains owns it as Griffin. He's already invisible at the start of the film, and he spends pretty much all of it either completely wrapped in bandages or voicing over a special effect, but he remains charismatic and engaged in his role. At the beginning, while he is locked away in an inn trying to find a cure for his condition, he's actually sympathetic. He's mean and abusive to the innkeeper and his wife, but you can understand why he's so tortured. As the movie goes, he finally snaps, strips off his clothes and starts breaking stuff and attacking people, laughing maniacally all the way. He'd almost still be likeable if it were just mischief that he's causing, throwing mugs on the floor and stuff. But all the stranglings kind of undo that. You can't like a guy who strangles and laughs.

Visually, The Invisible Man really feels like a stepping stone from Frankenstein to The Bride of Frankenstein. It's still moody, atmospheric, expressionistic, and full of pathos like the first Frankenstein film, but Whale's knack for innovative special effects is starting to shine through. I hate to be the guy who doesn't do research, but I didn't, so I don't know if these invisible effects had been done before this movie. Even if they have, though, he integrates them and utilizes them very adeptly. And I'm guessing a lot of the tricks he used are still used today, but with the aid of computers and whatnot.

So The Invisible Man was good stuff. I need to watch the rest of these Universal monster movies. I might try to in October. I still haven't seen The Mummy, The Wolf Man, or Dracula. There's also another James Whale horror film from the period, a haunted house movie, from the looks of it. I plan on checking that out too. So, I guess you might consider this review a taste of things to come.