kingdaevid Reviews

A Safe Place (1971)

Henry Jaglom could have become an American Godard, had he wished---

[10/10 · 22 January 2008]

---and this brilliant little gem is proof thereof. Drawing almost equally from the French New Wave as he did Ambrose Bierce's AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, Jaglom's "safe place" for Tuesday Weld's character is her own imagination, where her eccentricities can bloom in complete innocence without being impinged upon by the "real world." A gorgeous salad of fragments that collect themselves into a unit of an ethereal base, A SAFE PLACE is the kind of film you would imagine the artists whose drawings graced the pages of the "underground press" art papers (the San Francisco Oracle, for example) would try to make out of their visions. There are also nice parts for the actors Welles -- Orson, happy to perform as a magician in an all-too-rare chance, and Gwen, who is touching and magnetic in her first film role. Both Welleses left us before their time, and A SAFE PLACE provides a beautiful and unique glimpse of each.

The Wrestler (1974)

Some prime nostalgia for Midwestern pro wrestling fans

[5/10 · 25 February 2007]

...first off, if you were hoping for a RAGING BULL or REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT about pro wrestling, this picture doesn't even step towards the goal, let alone come close. Ed Asner and Elaine Giftos are fine comic actors, but they're better sampled respectively on any given "Mary Tyler Moore" episode or in GAS-S-S-S. No, this picture is strictly for fans of the Minneapolis-based American Wrestling Association of the late '60s and early '70s. That promotion was owned and largely starred Verne Gagne, who was one of the greatest ring acrobats of all time. Gagne apparently had a commitment in the 1960s from Minneapolis theater owner W.R. Frank to make a theatrical film, essentially using the wrestlers in the AWA (as well as announcers Marty O'Neill and Rod Tronguard) as the main cast. The thing wasn't pulled together until several years after Frank died, even though his name appears on the credits; it's likely that Gagne himself also produced and wrote this movie while only taking the screen credits as executive producer and actor...

...after the movie made the circuit of drive-ins and four-wall theaters in the Upper Midwest towns where the AWA held their house shows, Gagne started claiming he made this movie to prove that wrestlers couldn't act. That was strictly a kayfabe bit to try to keep the marks in the fold, as latter-day wrestlers like Roddy Piper and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson have proved some of them can act up a storm on a movie set. But THE WRESTLER doesn't even give Asner a whole lot to work with, let alone Billy Robinson or Superstar Billy Graham, just to mention two of the top wrestlers in the AWA at the time. But if, like me, you were a fan of the Saturday night mayhem Gagne committed to video screens in '74, all the old ring faces are themselves worth the hour and a half it takes to watch this one...

Death of a President (2006)

The scariest part were the words "President Cheney"

[10/10 · 20 October 2006]

...make absolutely no mistake about this: DEATH OF A PRESIDENT is a picture that is brilliantly crafted, delivering its last drop of appalling circumstance with the very beginnings of the closing credits. But the coverage about the film's North American premiere at last year's Toronto Film Festival (where it deservedly won the Critic's Award) made it sound as if it was a critique of George W. Bush's presidency. It's not. What it *is* is a blacker-than-jet-black satire of conspiracy theories; those surrounding the John F. and Robert Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin Luther King and John Lennon assassinations appear to all be sampled herein for the threads making up the storyline. Toss in the parallels to MEDIUM COOL, BOB ROBERTS and the first season of "Prison Break" (even though this film was actually made before "Prison Break" premiered) and you'll almost swear you've seen everything in this movie before, but not quite as well done and not in the same unit. Native Chicagoans will receive an additional little jolt by seeing Walter Jacobson, a real-life news anchor in Chicago since the '70s (but unemployed when this picture was made), flashing across the screen to deliver the news that the President has died...

Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)

Chaney's favourite of all his pictures is a landmark weeper

[10/10 · 25 May 2005]

...the Pagliacci story has become a keystone of American popular culture, all the way from Enrico Caruso's Metropolitan Opera performances in the Leoncavallo classic (his various recordings of "Vesti la Giubba" combined to sell over a million copies according to the Guinness Book of World Records) through to the Smokey Robinson & The Miracles hit record "Tears of a Clown." This Lon Chaney movie was once a primary link in that chain, but because it was considered "lost" for many years (before a British release print with two reels missing was found towards the end of the century) it was forgotten. Now that it's available on DVD with a beautiful H. Scott Salinas musical score worthy of Morricone, as well as a scholarly audio commentary by Michael F. Blake, it deserves to be restored to its former status as one of the greatest American films of the silent era...

Seconds (1966)

A rare bird -- a science fiction film that comments just as much on the human condition as it does technology.

[10/10 · 20 July 2004]

...it's difficult to review SECONDS without turning into a spoiler right away, but I'll try. From Saul Bass' opening title sequence through to the next-to-last shot, SECONDS is a perfectly-realised vision of unrelieved discomfort and anxiety. Throughout the picture, the lead character is in one circumstance after another in which he distinctly does not want to be. And yet, every step he takes to extricate himself simply leads into another disagreeable circumstance. Much of the cast certainly knew how to convey that feeling, as three of the most important roles were taken by actors (John Randolph, Jeff Corey and Will Geer) who were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era; indeed, for two of them (Geer and Randolph), this was the first major studio production they'd appeared in for fifteen years*. For many, this is a depressing film, because so much of it can be related to out of our own lives; even the plastic surgery aspect that made it science fiction in '66 is science fact in this day of Michael Jackson. And, to say the least, it's one of the few times Rock Hudson was given truly demanding material, and he rises to the occasion, giving perhaps the finest performance of his entire career...

*Geer had appeared in ADVISE AND CONSENT four years previously, but that film was produced independently and distributed by Columbia.

Help! (1965)

Infinitely better than some would have you believe.

[10/10 · 16 July 2004]

...there are a bushel of reasons why HELP! has a lesser reputation compared to its Beatle predecessor, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. For one, The Beatles themselves, particularly John Lennon, were growing audibly weary to any artistic endeavors they couldn't control directly (Walter Shenson and Richard Lester were in charge here). Then there's the fact that Lester's style of direction seems to turn out better in black and white (compare THE KNACK...AND HOW TO GET IT to A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, if his Beatle flicks don't convince you of that point). The earlier film was closer to what The Beatles' real lives were like (as THE FIRST U.S. VISIT establishes). Then there's filming the second half of the picture in settings chosen on a whim (Switzerland) and for tax purposes (The Bahamas) rather than cinematic necessity. the title song to A HARD DAY'S NIGHT is generally celebratory, while that of HELP! is a personal cry from a despondent John Lennon. The original distributor, United Artists, never maintained good prints of the picture after the theatrical run, sending copies with faded colors to local TV stations throughout the '70s (when MPI first issued the movie on home video in '86, they had to colorise it to make it viewable). And the list goes on from there... ...given all of that, HELP! remains one of the few jukebox musicals to actually try something more ambitious than its genre would dictate, and on each level it succeeds. A brilliant comic cast (including Victor Spinetti, Roy Kinnear, Eleanor Bron and Leo McKern) was assembled in support, the comedy sends barbs at the British government as much as it does the entertainment industry, there are brilliantly surreal touches throughout (the bath scene during the "intermission" is my personal favourite), and the entire exercise is a spoof of the other United Artists gravy train of the period, the James Bond pictures. There's even my all-time favourite gag line, in which Kinnear turns to Lennon and says about Spinetti, "He's out to rule the world -- if he can get a government grant"...

In the Year of the Pig (1968)

Michael Moore must have picked up on this one.

[10/10 · 11 July 2004]

...Michael Moore's FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is making huge waves as I write this, and yet IN THE YEAR OF THE PIG proves that the concept Moore used was nothing new. Back when the war against Vietnam was being waged by LBJ, this Emile de Antonio classic connected the dots on what had actually been happening in Vietnam since the Japanese occupation forces of World War Two left. In fact, a few years later HEARTS AND MINDS used much of the same material (that time in color) but not with nearly as much historical background as de Antonio does here. This is a harrowing collection of fact, a heartbreaking showcase of official ethnic disrespect, and one of the few true staples of the '60s counterculture that neither originated from its own ranks nor is dated in its technique (black and white cinematography notwithstanding)...

Breathless (1983)

It ain't Godard, but it ain't anywhere near bad, either.

[9/10 · 25 June 2004]

...you knew when it was announced that the cine-snobs would love to hate BREATHLESS. No, it wouldn't be Godard's A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, and it wouldn't have all the revolutionary touches of the 1960 original. While the director had made a cult favourite a dozen years before (the post-nuclear tale GLEN AND RANDA), and would go on to make THE BIG EASY and GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!, Jim McBride wasn't even a tenth as well known as Godard. But it did have Richard Gere, at the peak of his popularity, as the male star, and he gave perhaps the most entertaining performance of his career to date... ...the story is basically that of the Godard picture, but instead of a French guy pursuing an American gal in Paris, here we have an American guy pursuing a French gal in California. Jesse Lujack, a charming but larcenous hustler, steals a car from a casino parking lot in Vegas and high-tails it to L.A. to hook up with Monica, a French exchange student he'd spent the previous weekend with. But on the way, he unintentionally kills a highway patrolman. Will Jesse make it out of Los Angeles with Monica before the law can catch up with him?... ...for the exchange student, we have Valerie Kaprisky in her English-language debut. She was supposedly hand-picked for the role by Gere himself, and while she puts in a good performance, one still gets the feeling Gere and McBride may have brought the wrong Valerie to the set; the last time I watched the picture, I kept wondering how Valerie Quennessen (FRENCH POSTCARDS, SUMMER LOVERS) would have done in this part. Perhaps it is significant that Kaprisky, while having a successful film and television career in France and Italy, did not perform in another English-language movie until GLAM in 2001, eighteen years later...

Patterns (1956)

Rod Serling's landmark teleplay still speaks truth to power today.

[10/10 · 25 June 2004]

...Rod Serling is recalled today almost exclusively for his speculative fiction television series "The Twilight Zone" and "Rod Serling's Night Gallery." Perhaps that's understandable, given the out-of-sight-out-of-mind nature of today's audiences, and the fact that the generation Serling first impressed with this lean but powerful work in 1955 on the "Kraft Television Theater" is now well into the process of dying out. Still, the kinetic nature of PATTERNS, either in this theatrical film or in the kinescoped original TV broadcast, is not lost on today's first-time viewers. It helped that two of the three leads in this picture, Everett Sloan and Ed Begley, were carried over from the TV productions (Richard Kiley was replaced in this film by Van Heflin, giving perhaps his single greatest performance). But Serling's screenplay has not lost one bit of its relevance; in fact, I'm surprised nobody's thought of remaking this one...

The Ace of Hearts (1921)

Lon Chaney's performance is the main reason to see it.

[7/10 · 20 June 2004]

...the plot isn't particularly strong to begin with; one has to have a good knowledge of the post-WW1 "Red Scare" to get out of it what the filmmakers intended, and even then it's not much to speak of. However, that actually works in an odd way, since it allows for this picture to be an example of how Lon Chaney's acting talents contributed to his movies. They truly carry the show here, especially the subtleties of his facial expressions. There's also a rare opportunity to see John Bowers, one of the stars of silent cinema whose career came to a screeching halt with the advent of talkies; the character of Norman Maine in the first two Hollywood productions of A STAR IS BORN was in part based on Bowers. It's also interesting to see the original Goldwyn Pictures logo at the beginning of the picture, before the design was only slightly adapted for use by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer three years later...

Genuine: The Tragedy of a Vampire (1920)

An example of going to the well one too many times...

[20 June 2004]

...yes, it's from the same director, Robert Wiene, whose landmark THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI was released earlier the very same year, 1920; and, yes, much of the same cinematic technique created for CALIGARI was used here as well. The main differences between the two utterly defeat any chance that GENUINE, at least in the 43-minute "condensation" that appears on the 2002 Kino DVD release, would ever be a tenth as watchable as CALIGARI (or, for that matter, THE HEARTS OF AGE, Orson Welles' self-described "amusement" that spoofed all the surrealist silent European cinema concocted by Wiene, F.W. Murnau, Salvador Dali and the like). First, the sets and makeup of the players are not as flamboyantly odd this time around. Second, the pacing is far too slow for the story. Third, the story is itself far too bizarre and convoluted for a casual viewer to find any interest in; CALIGARI's is relatively straightforward in comparison. If you want a pre-NOSFERATU take on vampires, track down the DVD of LES VAMPIRES instead...

Revenge of the Cheerleaders (1976)

Truly a classic of surreal American celluloid!

[10/10 · 24 May 2004]

Not only was this the most enjoyable of the three CHEERLEADERS flicks (see also THE CHEERLEADERS and THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS), it was the wildest of all the drive-in California teen sex comedies of the '70s. In this full blast over-the-top world of high school social anarchy, even the idea of Rainbeaux Smith wearing a cheerleading uniform while in the advanced stages of pregnancy actually fits. Undoubtedly the closest to a porno reel without actually becoming one, although the encounter between two of the cheerleaders and a Boy Scout out in the woods looks like there was some actual sex taking place that was hidden only by the camera angle and some judicious editing. The idea of a bubble-bath orgy in the basketball players' shower is truly inspired. Also a nice comic cameo by "McHale's Navy" veteran Carl Ballantine. (God, why couldn't I get a principal like that when I was going to school?) Forget David Hasselhoff here; in this movie he's (thankfully) a non-entity. But dig those dance numbers! My wildest teenage fantasies put on celluloid, and while I was still a teenager yet! Truly surreal!

In the Year 2889 (1969 TV Movie)

As cinematic cheese goes, this is some great aged brick...

[9/10 · 24 May 2004]

Back in '71 and '72, the local one-lung independent TV station I grew up watching subsisted on a weekend schedule of AWA pro wrestling, Milwaukee Brewers or Bucks games, "Roller Game of the Week" (the L.A. T-Birds version) and every American International film ever released to television syndication. This was one of those movies. Essentially a colour updating of THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (which was also frequently run on that station, once right before this very picture), IN THE YEAR 2889 covers pretty much the same territory as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (produced around the same time), except that it's a nuclear holocaust the housebound survivors are trying to live down rather than zombies. Paul Petersen gives a fairly good performance of what they handed him here. Look for it in one of those super-cheap DVD boxes of 10 or 20 movies on the same theme that the Brentwood label puts out.

The Pom Pom Girls (1976)

The teenage dream of the '70s lives on...

[9/10 · 23 September 2003]

...1976 saw two particularly notable depictions of high school life on the big screen. The one released later in the year, CARRIE, was a nightmare; the earlier release, THE POM POM GIRLS, was the dreamy ideal (at least to most high schoolers of the period). Interestingly, the dream has aged somewhat better than the nightmare, even if CARRIE is much more frequently run on cable nowadays. In a departure from the Crown International Pictures drive-in norm of the period, the young ladies aren't subjected to any hideously sexist hijinks (can't say that for THE VAN or VAN NUYS BLVD.), there seems to be genuine respect and friendship between the boys and girls, and what happens in this movie (except for the fire truck prank) actually seem plausible. There's even an airy quality to the soundtrack music, lifted from the previous year's debut album by Cotton Lloyd & Christian (including Michael Lloyd, whose record productions for The Osmonds these high schoolers obviously grew up on), that's surprisingly refreshing. Even James Gammon, playing a head football coach over a decade before MAJOR LEAGUE, seems rooted in the period. If you were part of the American Class of '76, this is your picture...

Bamboozled (2000)

Spike Lee's whole career is one long minstrel show

[2/10 · 11 September 2003]

...for all of his bluster about how he wants to "uplift the [African-American] race," Spike Lee -- with the sole exception of MALCOLM X -- has done nothing but present one stereotype after another as his "art." Even more demeaning to his casts is the fact that, in most of his movies, he sticks himself among the players for no good reason whatsoever. (Thankfully, his appearance here isn't in the flesh, so he has no speaking part to waste our time on.) The commentary track of the BAMBOOZLED DVD lays bare Lee's delusions of grandeur, trying to place this overlong piece of dreck alongside such truly brilliant pictures as A FACE IN THE CROWD and NETWORK. A vastly superior work on the talent and tragedy of minstrelsy is found in print and audio recording -- WHERE DEAD VOICES GATHER by Nick Tosches, inspired by the 1920s OKeh recordings of the great Emmett Miller -- and in a visit to America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee. If you must watch this one, wait for a run on premium cable, since you've paid for the channel already; avoid wasting green on the video...

Wednesday (1974)

Heart-pounding suspense comes in small packages, too

[9/10 · 11 September 2003]

...one of the finest student shorts ever produced. Jack Lemmon plays a radio talk show host (obviously patterned after legendary Los Angeles radio talker Bill Ballance) who airs a suburbanite's confession of an extramarital fling. Problem is, hubby's listening and calls the show to threaten his unfaithful wife, a call that the Lemmon character considers a prank from a competing disc jockey. Will the host accept the reality of the situation in time to prevent the death of a caller? A brilliant little pulp story that's every bit a nail-biter as Lemmon's feature hit of four years later, THE CHINA SYNDROME. And please don't be put off by the idea that this was the officially-cited basis for the '78 McLean Stevenson NBC sitcom "Hello Larry" -- there's absolutely no point of similarity between that series and this film. Any Lemmon fan worth their own salt must see this one...

Long Weekend (1978)

Don't mess with the Supernatural!

[8/10 · 11 September 2003]

...when I first saw THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, I kept thinking that I'd seen this basic idea before, and this was where it was. The basic setup is different -- this time it's a married couple who take their bickering into a camping weekend -- but the effect is identical, with supernatural forces terrorising them for daring to trespass onto the wrong territory. The suspense is a slow build, and there's even some touches that popped up in later flicks; for instance, the idea for the shot of the scorpion being run over by a truck in close-up during the opening title sequence of NATURAL BORN KILLERS was taken directly from this one. Part of the first major wave of Australian pictures that made a big splash in the States circa '79 and '80 -- among the others were GALLIPOLI, BREAKER MORANT and THE LAST WAVE -- LONG WEEKEND is, unfortunately, one of the forgotten gems of the period. If you ever see an old video of it in a shop somewhere -- anywhere -- grab it. And watch it...

The Van (1977)

A Time Capsule-worthy '70s artifact

[7/10 · 11 September 2003]

...this is, above all else, the typical Crown International Pictures drive-in (read "passion pit") programmer. The 1975 Sammy Johns hit record "Chevy Van" is heard repeatedly on the soundtrack (this movie has even been reissued with the title CHEVY VAN), despite the film's title vehicle being a Dodge. Danny DeVito makes only six minutes of on-screen appearance, but countless VHS reissues falsely credit him as the star of the flick. The movie is a comparatively sexist morality tale -- will Bobby find sexual satisfaction through the one-night-stand his customised van facilitates, or must he wait until Tina, the girl of his dreams, gives him the time of day? Still, it is representative of the prevailing carnal dream of male American high schoolers of the time, and on that basis alone THE VAN has, almost in spite of itself, become an artifact of the period that must be referenced in any honest retrospective of the period's popular American cinema...

Fade to Black (1980)

Fun homage to horror flicks

[7/10 · 8 September 2003]

...thanks to the gimmick of cross-referencing dozens of classic movies, mostly horror, this Dennis Christopher vehicle remains entertaining long after the show runs out of steam. Christopher plays a nerdy (what else?) movie fan who works in a film warehouse; after a string of personally upsetting episodes, including a perceived snub from a Marilyn Monroe lookalike (Linda Kerridge), he becomes unhinged and starts killing his tormentors while dressed as his favourite movie characters. Buried in the supporting cast is Marcie Barkin, a talented but neglected young comedienne of the late '70s, as Kerridge's best friend. Also look for a pre-DINER Mickey Rourke as one of Christopher's co-workers...

The Squeeze (1978)

Thoroughly enjoyable cheese

[7/10 · 8 September 2003]

...there's quite a bit to dislike in THE RIP-OFF (as the Goodtimes Home Video VHS release tagged this movie): Karen Black overacts hysterically (as do several of the dubbed German supporting players), Edward Albert looks like he was on a margarine diet during shooting, and whoever mixed the substandard musical score into the soundtrack should have been executed. But Lee Van Cleef, Lionel Stander and Robert Alda all perform well above the call of this duty; the dialogue is frequently witty, highlighting a generally intriguing premise (Van Cleef is lured back from pseudonymous exile as a Mexican rancher to perform one last safecracking job in order to keep New York gangsters from killing Albert); and the cheap 16mm location cinematography of New York in early January is oddly compelling. As things go for what's usually termed "European Trash Cinema," this is a nice little curd of cheese worthy of dropping five bucks on at better Wal-Marts everywhere...

Greed (1924)

Arguably the greatest film of Hollywood's silent era

[10/10 · 8 September 2003]

...that my ex-wife, whose cultural tastes were developed from "CHiPs" reruns and K-Tel record albums, absolutely adored this classic American tragedy says more than anything else about the inherent power of Erich von Stroheim's vision. That the power remained undiminished after the criminal mangling of the film by Louis B. Mayer's stooges for the 1925 release version is also remarkable. GREED is, in short, the quintessential American silent film...