It Conquered the World: Roger Corman

In the realm of cheesy 50s sci-fi and B-movies, Roger Corman's It Conquered the World is revered with awe and respect. On the surface it doesn't seem to be different from any of the other creature features that Corman so diligently pumped out during the 50s like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and The Wasp Woman (1959). But I think I might know why it is so beloved: it approaches its subject matter with deathly seriousness despite its complete absurdity. It begins with a scientist named Dr. Tom Anderson making contact with a race of Venusian aliens with his radio transmitter. He becomes a pawn in their plan to invade earth and take control of humanity with mind control devices delivered via bat-like creatures. After he unsuccessfully tries to assimilate his friend Dr. Nelson, Anderson realizes his mistake. He joins forces with Nelson and a group of soldiers who escaped assimilation to try and kill one of the Venusian aliens who came to earth. It Conquered the World is an astoundingly cheesy film with a non-existent budget, hokey acting by Peter Graves (Dr. Nelson) and Lee Van Cleef (Dr. Anderson), and one of the most ridiculous monsters in cinematic history. Frank Zappa once lovingly described the alien as an "inverted ice-cream cone head with fangs." And yet, despite all of this, the film acts with the solemness of a Shakespearean tragedy. One of my favorite parts is how the aliens manage to cut off all the earth's power, thereby forcing the principle characters to get around via bicycle. And at the very end, Peter Graves delivers one of the dourest, most overly dramatic speeches about the ultimate fate of humanity ever seen outside of the works of Ingmar Bergman. Basically, It Conquered the World is a 50s B-movie that doesn't know it's a 50s B-movie. And for millions of low-budget horror aficionados, myself included, to have it any other way would be sacrilege.

6/10

Sleuth: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth is a film with two great actors and three great performances.  It is a film of twists, crosses, and horrific realizations that leaves its audience emotionally exhausted and stunned.  Based on the Tony Award-winning play of the same name by Anthony Shaffer, Sleuth magnificently transforms its story into the language of cinema. The film clocks in at over two hours. However, I can only reveal what happens in the first 30 minutes. To disclose anything else would be to rob potential viewers from an unforgettable experience.  So, allow me to set the scene: Andrew Wyke, a rich writer of detective fiction, invites a hairdresser named Milo Tindle to his country estate. Wyke reveals that he knows that Tindle has been having an affair with his wife, Marguerite. But instead of anger, Wyke expresses relief. It turns out that Wyke has grown weary of his marriage and was looking for a way out. So he shares a plan with Tindle: he will "break" into Wyke's mansion, steal a collection of priceless jewels, and sell them through a prominent fence that he knows in Europe. Then Wyke will collect the insurance money off the jewelry. That way, Wyke gets his money and Tindle will have a substantial nest egg with which to maintain Marguerite's lavish lifestyle. So Wyke helps Tindle stage the "perfect" crime. The only problem is that Wyke actually wants to kill Tindle for stealing his wife. By helping Tindle break into his house, he can kill him in "self-defense" and not be persecuted by the police. Now, you may think that I have spoiled the movie. The truth is that this is merely the first of three major plot twists that take place in Sleuth. Each one is more startling than the last. And, incredibly, none of them seem contrived.  As I mentioned, the film only has two actors. A surprisingly energetic Laurence Olivier plays the eccentric Wyke while Michael Caine takes the role of the unfortunate hairdresser. These two actors have more than just chemistry; they have a genuine presence onscreen. To watch them is to witness two of Britain's greatest screen actors at the very top of their game. After years of icy, restrained Shakespeare performances in such films as Henry V (1944) and Hamlet (1948), to see Olivier with such a spark in his step testifies to his indomitable talent as an actor. And Michael Caine...well...I'll let you discover what makes his performance so powerful. Abandon all preconceptions. Sleuth is a film that you simply can't predict or expect.

10/10

The She-Creature: Edward L. Cahn

Wait...didn't I just review another film about a psychic who hypnotizes women and makes them relive their past lives? Now that I think about it, I did! It was Roger Corman's The Undead (1957), a film which, while ridiculous, was sufficiently atmospheric and compelling. Edward L. Cahn's The She -Creature, on the other hand, while ridiculous, is neither. It is a clunky, drearily boring film. I'll be fair, though. The She-Creature has a somewhat interesting plot. Evil hypnotist (and really, is there any other kind of hypnotist) Carlo Lombardi travels the country with his assistant named Andrea. He puts on shows where he makes her regress to "past lives." However, while not performing, he hypnotizes her into murdering people Lombardi despises. He joins forces with Timothy Chappel, a local rich man, to create a scheme where they gain fame and attention by "predicting" Andrea's murders before they happen. I can actually imagine Hitchcock doing something interesting with this premise, particularly in his early Hollywood years during the 40s when he would occasionally make films that featured quasi-mystical elements and mental disorders like Rebecca (1940) and Spellbound (1945).  But Cahn ruins this premise with excruciating acting, horrific cinematography, non-existent pacing, and one of the worst monster suits this side of Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961). Oh, did I mention that this was a monster movie? For whatever reason, when Lombardi hypnotizes Andrea in order for her to do his bidding, she transforms into a hideous creature. There really isn't anything redeeming about The She-Creature. At the very least Creature from the Haunted Sea was funny...intentionally...

3/10

The Sun Shines Bright: John Ford

Who was John Ford? The legendary Hollywood director was a mess of seemingly impossible contradictions.  The man who would become so closely identified with the Western genre was born in Maine as the son of Irish immigrants. While he helped redefine the depiction of Native Americans in such films as Cheyenne Autumn (1964), he rode as a Klansman in D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915).  The same man who directed such ground-breaking progressive masterpieces as The Grapes of Wrath (1940) was instrumental in the casting of Stepin Fetchit, a very close friend, in many of his films. While he valued the institution of the family more than almost anything else in his films, in real life he was an absentee father and husband. At times staunchly conservative and at others unapologetically liberal, his political and social outlooks on life could change on a whim.  He was a kind, sensitive man who perpetuated the image of an angry perfectionist authoritarian out of fear that others would take advantage of him.  While he claimed to not give a damn about what other people thought about him and his work, his fear of being rejected would lead him to heartbreaking alcoholic breakdowns in between film productions. So I ask again, who was John Ford?

For a man who tried so hard to make an enigma of himself, the clearest picture of who Ford truly was can be partially glimpsed in his beloved films. But which film best represents Ford? I would answer a little known film from 1953 entitled The Sun Shines Bright. Ford described later in his life that it was “really my favorite, the only one I like to see over and over again.” Made following the tide of studio goodwill borne from the unexpected success of The Quiet Man (1952), the film is essentially a morality play about an elderly judge in a tiny Kentucky town in the twilight years of the 19th century. Based on three short stories by Irvin S. Cobb, the film revisits the character of Judge Priest, previously portrayed by Will Rogers in Ford’s film of the same name from 1934. Though Ford re-adapted some of the same material from his earlier film in The Sun Shines Bright, he was given a much wider berth of creative freedom.  The result was perhaps Ford’s most emotional and personal film.

It begins with a series of vignettes that form a picture of the town of Fairfield, Kentucky. We watch Judge Priest and his servant Jeff Poindexter (Stepin Fetchit) preside over a trial involving U.S. Grant Woodford, a black teenager who won’t work to support his relatives, that ends with a grimace-inducing impromptu performance of “Dixie.”  A meeting of Confederate veterans is held where they give a solemn and heart-felt eulogy to a Rebel Jack after dutifully saluting the Union flag. When a nearby gathering of Union veterans asks them to return the Union flag that they borrowed for their ceremony, Priest serves as an honorary color guard. Of course, once in the presence of the Union veterans he wastes no time to remind them that he is coming up for re-election.  Soon certain class and racial divisions are established: the well-to-do white folk, the Temperance League and their 200 votes (i.e. husbands), the subservient blacks, and the Tornado Boys, a large informal gang of backwoods hunters and trappers. But everything is pleasantly idealized. This is the South as envisioned by wistful romantics.

But the film’s early comedic tones soon take a turn for the worse. An old prostitute shows up, collapses, and dies in a local bordello. She is soon revealed to be the disgraced and disowned daughter of General Fairfield, the much revered and beloved local Confederate leader.  Meanwhile, Woodford has been arrested and wrongfully accused of raping a local girl. The enraged Tornado Boys begin to gather near the prison in order to lynch him. And finally, Priest’s chances to win the election become severely challenged by Horace K. Maydew, the “son of a carpet-bagger from Boston,” who seeks to destroy Fairfield’s idyllic community by forcing it into the future. 

With the town of Fairfield ready to rip itself asunder, the ailing Judge Priest must step in one last time to try and maintain the peace. Priest represents one of Ford’s favorite character archetypes: the reluctant patriarch. Just like in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man, The Sun Shines Bright revolves around an aging male authority figure who finds himself drawn one last time into a terrible conflict to preserve peace. These men are presented as relics of a bygone age who nevertheless must serve as a moral compass for younger generations. And, indeed, Judge Priest is considerably worse for wear. Despite Stepin Fetchit’s painfully hokum performance as Jeff, it is clear that Priest relies on him, and not the other way around. Priest is a rampant alcoholic who regularly uses the excuse “Jeff, I gotta take my medicine - I gotta get my heart started” to sneak off and take a massive drink from a hidden cask. He projects an aura of strength and vitality while courting voters...but it’s a sham. Priest is a tired, tired old man.

And yet Priest will not stand idly by and watch his beloved Fairfield destroy itself. He grabs a gun and single-handedly prevents the Tornado Boys from lynching Woodford (Ford had previously tried to incorporate this scene in Judge Priest, but it was cut by the studio). Afterwards, he shames the entire town by marching behind the white hearse holding General Fairfield’s daughter. This scene is easily one of the most powerful in Ford’s entire career. The town of Fairfield had tried to ignore the poor woman’s fate due to her lowly social status. But Priest marches right behind her fellow prostitutes in her funeral procession. Then, slowly, the rest of the town follows suit until over a hundred march with Priest. The procession leads to a black church where Priest delivers an earth-shaking sermon. And then, finally, in the middle of the service, General Fairfield enters the church to see his daughter one last time.

To say that Priest’s actions were controversial would be to criminally understate it.  His prevention of the lynching may have further endeared him to the black community, but it potentially lost him hundreds of vital votes from the Tornado Boys.  Respecting General Fairfield’s daughter may have been the righteous thing to do, but it disgraced him in the eyes of the community’s more unforgiving sectors. As Jeff mournfully notes, “Me ‘n’ the judge sho’ ain’t gonna get elected now.”

But then a miracle occurs.

On the day of the election, when Maydew seems guaranteed to win, the Tornado boys rally en masse and vote for Priest, securing his victory. Later that night, the entire town passes Priest’s front porch in review. Every social group is represented: Confederate veterans, Union veterans, Temperance League, Tornado Boys (holding a banner reading “He Saved Us from Ourselves”), and finally the blacks who are given a position of honor by marching at the very end in the opposite direction.  The film’s final shot has Jeff playing “My Old Kentucky Home” on the harmonica on Priest’s front porch. The 20th century and progress may soon arrive, but for tonight peace and balance has been restored to the town of Fairfield.

Of course, as any modern viewer will tell you, everything is not alright in Fairfield. Segregation remains the unwritten rule. The few blacks who have any screen-time are of the “yessuh” and “nossuh” variety.  The Confederacy is romanticized and fiercely defended by primary characters. Fairfield is quite obviously a white-washed charade. But look a little deeper. Ford isn’t romanticizing segregation or social inequality. He is obsessed with the idea of an ordered society founded on principles of justice and honor led by men who aren’t afraid of shattering taboos. Quite simply, Ford is Judge Priest and the cinema is Fairfield. By the time he shot The Sun Shines Bright, Ford was already tiring of the Hollywood establishment. As he stated in a 1953 interview, “I don't want to make the kind of junk the screen is offering today, because we made those pictures better thirty-five years ago.” The cinema that Ford loved was disintegrating right before his eyes. And so Ford endeavored to make intensely personal films like The Sun Shines Bright to help restore Hollywood to its former glory. One can almost imagine John Ford standing in Judge Priest’s shoes in the final scene with a legion of producers, screenwriters, actors, and directors holding a banner reading “He Saved Us from Ourselves.” And that is why The Sun Shines Bright is one of the best explorations into Ford’s mind. For just a moment we see the man that Ford truly wanted to be: venerated, respected, and loved by everyone. What he was too scared to achieve in real life he replicated on screen.

9/10

The Undead: Roger Corman

Every now and then, I'll discover a film by Roger Corman that legitimately surprises me with its quality.  These include such low-budget "classics" as Carnival Rock (1957), A Bucket of Blood (1959), and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), three films that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Now I can add another film to that list: The Undead.  Made during one of Corman's greatest bursts of creative energy, The Undead was the fifth of nine films that he would direct and release in 1957.  Like many of Corman's films, The Undead was made solely to cash in on a popular cultural trend. This time around the trend was reincarnation. It was originally going to focus on a prostitute named Diana Love who would relive one of her past lives as a "witch" in the Middle Ages via hypnosis. But when the film actually began production, Corman began to believe that the trend was dying down. So he decided to spice the plot up a bit by throwing in an element of time travel.  So after Diana goes back in time, the psychic responsible for the experiment named Quintus Ratcliff realizes that if she changes past events in her flashback they will alter the course of time in real life.  So Quintus also goes back in time to try and convince Diana's past life, a young woman named Helene, to allow herself to be wrongfully executed for witchcraft in order to save the future. This is a surprisingly compelling plot that more than makes up for its obvious budget limitations. And let me tell you...there were quite a few limitations. The film was shot in a "converted supermarket" in only six days.  But despite all of this, the acting is solid, there's a spooky atmosphere, and a clever storyline.  It's no masterpiece. But then again, Corman never set out to make them. And you know what? That's okay in my book.

6/10

Terror from the Year 5000: Robert J. Gurney Jr.

Why is it that in B-movies scientists almost never report miraculous discoveries or advances to the rest of the world?  I can't count the number of movies I've seen where a scientist manages to make contact with alien civilizations, invent world destroying robots, or engineer biological monstrosities without bothering to tell anyone else. It would seem to me that when their experiments inevitably go awry and start killing everybody, a little backup from the military or the police would be greatly appreciated. But, no, they almost never do. Robert J. Gurney Jr's Terror from the Year 5000 is such a film. Two scientists, Professor Howard Erling and his assistant Victor, manage to invent a time machine in their tiny laboratory. At first they manage to grab strange artifacts from the year 5200 AD. But then they are able to transport a woman from that futuristic era to their own.  Of course, she begins to attack and kidnap people all in an attempt to bring "healthy males" back to the future with her.  It is revealed that in the year 5200 mankind has nearly destroyed itself with radiation, thereby grotesquely deforming the survivors. And still, the scientists don't tell anybody. Terror from the Year 5000 is a clunky, obscenely padded, and boring film. The make-up effects are ridiculous to the point of hilarity. I have heard that this was one of the very first American feature-length films to contain time travel.  It's a pity that such a well-loved sci-fi trope had to begin so pathetically.

4/10

The Thing That Couldn’t Die: Will Cowan

If you plan on making a horror film centered on a single special effect, it stands to reason that effect should be convincing and effective.  Apparently director Will Cowan never got that particular memo.  His film The Thing That Couldn't Die focuses on a spectacularly silly effect: hiding an actor's body so that only his head is revealed, thereby creating the "illusion" that he is a living severed head.  It isn't hard to notice that every single time the head shows up it is sitting comfortably on top of something that could easily conceal the rest of the actor's body. But even a bad special effect can be salvaged by a good plot and a competent screenplay. Unfortunately, The Thing That Couldn't Die has neither.  It follows a family that discovers a mysterious chest in the middle of a field only to discover that it contains the severed head of Gideon Drew, a sorcerer executed 400 years earlier.  He was doomed to be eternally separated from his body which was buried elsewhere.  As a result, he cannot truly die. If his body and head are rejoined, he will be able to return to his full power.  As just a head, he manages to possess different members of the family to do his bidding.  The problem is that almost none of the characters are likable. The only character that we feel any sympathy for is Jessica Burns, the young woman who discovered the chest when she was dowsing for water. She has psychic powers which alert her to the head's evil. But even she quickly wears on our patience. The Thing That Couldn't Die is just a boring film.

4/10

The Deadly Mantis: Nathan Juran

As I mentioned in my review of The Mole People (1956), The Deadly Mantis is one of those cheap 50s sci-fi B-movies that tries to validate its preposterous plot by giving the audience science lectures at the beginning.  Where as The Mole People gave a lesson on hollow earth theories, The Deadly Mantis strangely begins by explaining the United States' northern radar defense system.  I can't for the life of me guess why it does so. This is a film about a giant praying mantis that eats people. Why did the director feel that it was necessary to discuss US defense logistics?  Oh well.  Anyhow, the eponymous giant mantis was released by a volcanic eruption from its icy prison in the North Pole. Some feeble explanations are given for how a mantis could have grown so large even in prehistoric times, but they are all patently nonsense. Of course there is the generic cast of scientists, soldiers, and reporters which miraculously manage to take down the giant creature after the combined might of the US military fails.  The few creature effects are cheap, poorly done, and unconvincing. I'll admit that as far as bugs go, a praying mantis is one of the scariest candidates for horror movie enlargement.  But The Deadly Mantis fails to deliver. Preposterously, the actual mantis has almost no screen time. When I go to a giant monster movie, I want to see a giant monster, dammit!  I don't want to see a bunch of insipid humans staring at radar screens for 80 minutes!

4/10

The Time to Live and the Time to Die: Hou Hsiao-Hsien

I'll admit that I wasn't initially very intrigued by Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Time to Live and the Time to Die.  I had only ever seen one of his other films, Daughter of the Nile (1987), which had bored me to the point of tears.  But I felt like giving the Taiwanese director another shot.  Much to my surprise, I found The Time to Live and the Time to Die to be a breathtakingly heartfelt and powerful piece of filmmaking.  Based on the director's own childhood, the film examines a young boy's coming of age after moving with his family from the Mainland to Taiwan.  The boy, nicknamed Ah-ha, tries to acclimate himself to his new country. But his family remains firmly entrenched in their old ways. So Ah-ha finds himself stuck between two cultures.  The film floats between different vignettes in Ah-ha's life.  One of the most powerful scenes occurs one night when the neighborhood's power goes out.  The family struggles in the darkness for a while until the power comes on again. Much to their horror, during the blackout, Ah-ha's father had suddenly died.  This is one of two very important deaths that take place in The Time to Live and the Time to Die.  The other, near the end, concerns Ah-ha's elderly grandmother who dreamed in vain for years of returning to the Mainland. But that's a scene best left to one's own discovery. Hou Hsiao-Hsien perfectly channels the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware, or the awareness of life's impermanence. Unlike many other coming of age stories, this film seems less concerned with its central character than with the passage of time itself.  After watching it, I felt spiritually fulfilled.  This is not so much a film as a cinematic meditation.

9/10

The Mole People: Virgil W. Vogel

I've begun to notice an amusing trend among some cheap B-movies from the 50s.  Occasionally these low-budget creature features will try and convince the audience of its story's credibility by giving science lectures insisting that there is some modicum of truth to them.  My all-time favorite example is from Nathan Juran's The Deadly Mantis (1957), a film about a giant praying mantis which bizarrely begins with a mini-documentary about the function and construction of the United States' radar defenses in Canada.  But Virgil W. Vogel's The Mole People also tries to justify its story through "science."  The film starts with a literal science lecture by Dr. Frank Baxter, a real-life English professor from the University of Southern California, who explains various hollow earth theories by John Symmes and Cyrus Teed.  Of course, the audience desperately needs this information since the ensuing film is about underground Sumerian albinos and their slave race of humanoid mole men.  Anyhow, The Mole People is a deliriously preposterous film about two archaeologists, Dr. Roger Bentley and Dr. Jud Bellamin, who discover this underground world during an expedition. They are immediately mistaken as Messengers of Ishtar due to their flashlights.  So, for a time, the scientists enjoy a regal life. But then one of their number is killed by one of the mole people. So the scientists must escape from the subterranean civilization before they are sacrificed to the ominously titled "Eye of Ishtar." And, of course, this being a 50s B-movie, they must also escape with Adad, a beautiful woman from the caves born with natural Caucasian skin.  The Mole People is a ridiculously absurd film.  Perhaps it would have been more enjoyable if the movie didn't try so hard to convince us that the idea of an underground race of ancient Sumerians was scientifically possible.  Still, it does have the occasional enjoyable moment. I love the actual design of the mole people and the way they seem to swim in and out of the very ground itself.  But other than that, The Mole People is just a silly, silly movie.

5/10

Act of Violence: Fred Zinnemann

People use the term film noir too casually these days.  It seems that all a film needs to be declared a neo-noir is heavy shadows, brooding voice-overs, and certain character archetypes.  But film noir isn't really a style. Oh, most of the great film noir are heavily stylized. But true film noir is a state of mind, a psychological underpinning, and a weary, cynical view towards the world.  That is why Act of Violence, a film without any private eyes or voice-overs, truly deserves to be labeled as a film noir.  It dives into one of the most powerful psychological injuries ever inflicted on America: World War Two.  At its center are two men.  The first is Frank Enley, a returning war hero who survived a year as a prisoner of war under the Nazis. He has since spent his time as a loving family man diligently working to improve the California community of Santa Lisa where he lives with his wife Edith and young child.  The other man is Joe Parkson. Joe was Frank's best friend while in the army. Well...they were friends, at least until Frank became an informer for the Nazis, betrayed an attempted prison escape, and watched as several soldiers under his command were savagely killed by attack dogs.  It doesn't help that Joe was the only soldier who survived the escape. Now Joe hunts Frank across California seeking vengeance for his treachery.  The film is comprised largely as a game of cat-and-mouse and Frank tries to avoid Joe.  But eventually Frank makes the poor decision of trying to hire a hitman to take care of Joe once and for all. But Frank's guilt catches up with him.  So the hunted becomes the hunter, desperately trying to find Joe to prevent him from getting killed.  This is a fabulous film.  Watch how three time Academy Award winning cinematographer Robert L. Surtees transforms the bright, sunny suburbs of California into nightmarish city slums and back alleys reflecting Frank's inner psyche. This is a haunting, powerful film that deserves the title of film noir much more than many other films that have been given that label.

9/10

The Leech Woman: Edward Dein

Somewhere buried deep inside Edward Dein's The Leech Woman there is the kernel of a good idea.  A foolhardy scientist named Dr. Paul Talbot is approached by an old woman who claims that she has the secret to eternal youth and beauty.  She explains that the combination of a particular orchid pollen native to her old home in Africa mixed with a mysterious substance reverses the aging process.  So Dr. Talbot and his alcoholic wife June travel to Africa and discover that the secret ingredient is pineal gland secretions. The problem is that the secretions are harvested with the use of a ring which is plunged into a victim's pineal gland, killing them almost instantly.  When June is de-aged during a savage ceremony, she goes insane and steals the pollen and pineal ring.  Once back in America, she goes on a killing spree to gather the precious pineal secretions needed to maintain her youth.  As I said, there's a good idea to be found in this film: a woman who kills to maintain her beauty. This could have easily been a taut, supernatural thriller where the police have to track down a serial killer who stabs her victims to death. But as it stands The Leech Woman is just a sub-par horror flick.  To be fair, Coleen Gray's performance as June is pretty damn convincing. But everything else about The Leech Woman, from its rampant use of stock footage to its mediocre make-up effects, is just so-so.

5/10

Creature from the Black Lagoon 2: Revenge of the Creature: Jack Arnold

Almost a year ago I reviewed Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) after watching it for the first time.  I found that the film, while certainly competent and entertaining, was average when compared to other famous creature features like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Invisible Man (1933).  Its sequel, Revenge of the Creature, saw the return of Gill-Man and director Jack Arnold. Having somehow survived the end of the first film, Gill-Man is captured and transported from his home in the Amazon to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida. Once stateside, Gill-Man is studied by animal psychologist Professor Clete Ferguson and ichthyology student Helen Dobson. Of course Clete and Helen fall in love and of course at some point she is threatened by Gill-Man.  But when those two aren't hogging the screen, the scenes with Gill-Man are surprisingly engaging. I particularly liked an early scene at the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium where Gill-Man is revived in a large pool surrounded by tourists.  The sheer hubris on display by the humans is stunning. If the scenes with just Clete and Helen were edited out Revenge of the Creature could have been a fascinating tale of the futility of man's attempt to control and profit from nature à la King Kong (1933).  Another great sequence involves the scientists attempts to teach Gill-Man human words via cruel negative reinforcement. But the film spends too much time on the ancillary human characters. At least in Creature from the Black Lagoon scenes without Gill-Man were aided by the mysterious and other-worldly atmosphere of the Amazon jungle. The sunny beaches of Florida are simply not as compelling as the rainforest.  But still, it is fascinating to watch how Revenge of the Creature manages to make the humans seem like the villains and not the prehistoric monster.

6/10

Laserblast: Michael Rae

Years from now, I'll probably only remember two things about Laserblast: a gas station that blows up 4-5 times in a row and stop-motion naked turtle aliens.  That may sound like obvious things to remember, but consider that the film is supposed to be about a teenager who discovers an alien arm cannon in the desert that transforms him into a psychotic, green-skinned maniac. Somehow, I feel like I should remember that premise more than a couple of special effects. But Laserblast sports such a painfully dull screenplay that even the silliest special effects come as electric jolts to the attention span. The teenager, named Billy Duncan, is such a wooden actor that the stop-motion aliens out-act him. It turns out that Billy is not the first person to be transformed by the arm cannon. In the opening scenes, the aforementioned aliens gun down another human being who went crazy under the arm cannon's influence. And then, for some insane reason, instead of retrieving the weapon of mass destruction, they just fly off after disintegrating the poor man. When they are informed by their leader that Billy has discovered the arm cannon, they seem shocked and immediately fly back to earth to kill him. And then, after stopping Billy, they leave the arm cannon on earth again. These are clearly not the smartest aliens in the universe. But then again this isn't the smartest film in the universe, either. If I've given you the impression that Laserblast is a thrilling, albeit poorly made, sci-fi film, then I apologize.  For a film about aliens and arm cannons there are a ton of pointless and drawn out driving scenes. Much of the film is spent watching the characters drive from scene to scene while listening to music that sounds vaguely like classic rock.  And, believe it or not, it's even less thrilling than it sounds.  Laserblast is a disjointed, nonsensical, and boring mess.

4/10

Comanche Station: Budd Boetticher

Randolph Scott has always been an enigma in the Westerns that he made with Budd Boetticher.  He seems to exist somewhere in between the dashing, white-hatted cowboys of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and the chiseled, amoral loners of Clint Eastwood and Franco Nero.  John Wayne and James Stewart occasionally occupied similar roles. But for John Wayne, roles like Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) which pushed the boundaries of typical romanticized Western morality were usually ignored or forgotten in the shadow of his image as the embodiment of American machismo and masculinity.  And despite his phenomenal collaborations with Anthony Mann, James Stewart is more remembered as George Bailey than as Howard Kemp.  But Scott was something else when he worked with Boetticher. In those films he would tip his hat to a lady, graciously help people in need, and follow it all up by brutally killing a group of outlaws.  After a while, Scott's smile seems to betray him as a man who knows and follows the rules but secretly laughs at their absurdity.  In one of his best collaborations with Boetticher, Comanche Station, this tendency becomes loudly pronounced. Scott plays Jefferson Cody, a loner who at the start of the film trades with a group of Comanche Indians in order to free Nancy Lowe, a woman they recently kidnapped. Cody had heard that the local Comanche had kidnapped a white woman who might be his missing wife. Much to his disappointment, it isn't. But regardless, Lowe's husband has announced a massive reward for her safe return, so he decides to lead her to safety.  As they return to Lowe's home, they are joined by a group of three outlaws led by the charismatic yet dangerous Ben Lane who also intend to turn her in for the reward. And so begins a long journey full of intrigue and danger as Cody must lead Lowe to safety through hostile Indian territory and protect her from the smiling men who suddenly decide to "accompany" them.  Comanche Station is classic Boetticher and stands as one of his best films in a distinguished, yet horrifically overlooked, career.  And, of course, there's Randolph Scott...that tired old man with an occasionally kind heart and a gun full of bullets.

8/10

Four Men and a Prayer: John Ford

It breaks my heart to give films by John Ford bad reviews. But in the interest of fairness, I have to try and be unbiased, even towards my all-time favorite director.  Four Men and a Prayer begins with quite a bit of promise.  It begins with Colonel Loring Leigh of the British Indian Army being dishonorably discharged and sent home to England after apparently issuing an order that resulted in the deaths of 90 soldiers.  He is met by his four sons who try and comfort him upon his return.  However, shortly after arriving, Colonel Leigh is shot and killed by an unknown assassin.  Believing that their father's assassination may have something to do with his expulsion from the military, the four sons set out across the globe to track down their father's old military comrades.  At first this seems like a great adventure film in the same tradition as Gunga Din (1939) and The Four Feathers (1939).  But it quickly deteriorates and losses track of its central narrative like the splayed end of a rope.  In one particularly bizarre change of pace, one of the sons and his American girlfriend witness a group of peasant revolutionaries brutally massacred by the government's army.  At first they are shocked, but after a few minutes they appear to forget the entire affair and move on.  When the final villain is discovered and confronted, the actors all seem bored and their characters uninterested in the fact that they have found their father's killer.  The best part of the film is near the beginning when each of the sons receives telegrams informing them of their father's dismissal. Ford magnificently introduces each son and establishes their distinct personalities in a matter of minutes. If the entire film had been as tight and focused as these early scenes, then this film might have become a classic.  But as it stands, Four Men and a Prayer is a film best left forgotten.

4/10

Red Zone Cuba: Coleman Francis

Is it weird that Red Zone Cuba reminded me of Budd Boetticher's collaborations with Randolph Scott? Wait, don't answer that. Yes. Yes, it is.  Red Zone Cuba is probably the most infamous film by Coleman Francis, a celebrated auteur of cinematic drivel. His films (all three of them) share certain elements: stoic, emotionally absent middle-aged men, a fondness for communal scenes of coffee-drinking and cigarette-smoking, and the violent deaths of central characters.  Red Zone Cuba is by far Francis' most improbable and ridiculous film. It follows three men who search for a lost treasure in a tungsten mine. Of course, mid-way through their search they decide to fly to Cuba and take part in the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. An invasion which, apparently, only utilized approximately seven American soldiers.  One of the film's prolonged sequences involves the three men as POW's trapped in a Cuban prison who watch as one-by-one the other prisoners are taken outside and executed by a three man firing squad.  Somehow, the three men escape from Cuba and return to the United States where they continue their search for tungsten treasure. And, of course, their little foray into Cuba is never mentioned again.  The film is long, drawn-out, and entirely pointless. Even the film's value as a "good bad" movie is diminished by its glacial pacing, nonsensical story, and robotic acting. But you know, come to think of it, the acting in Red Zone Cuba is exactly what Robert Bresson spent his entire career trying to coax out of his actors.  Wait...on second thought, even Bresson would probably flail his arms and screech for the actors in this film to emote.

As a side note, I just want to point out that I am mesmerized by the film poster provided above.  It's not enough that they had to fill 2/3 of it with a bland photo of three bored actors...they had to add facial profiles FROM THE SAME PICTURE in the lower 1/3.

2/10

The Pillow Book: Peter Greenaway

I almost dread watching Peter Greenaway's work because I've found that I'm quickly running out of ways that I can express my sheer amazement and admiration towards his work.  There are only so many words in the English language and the number that I haven't used in reviews of Greenaway's work is almost completely depleted.  But my curiosity towards his film entitled The Pillow Book finally got the better of me and now I must struggle to find underutilized words.  Greenaway's film is a kind of meta-adaptation of the famous book of observations of the same name by Japanese court lady Sei Shōnagon around 1000 AD.  The film follows a Japanese model named Nagiko who derives sexual pleasure from calligraphers writing on her body.  This fetish arose from a tradition when she was young where on her birthday her father would draw good luck characters on her face and upper back while her mother would read to her from the historical Pillow Book.  When she got older, she sought out famous calligraphers as lovers.  One of these was British translator Jerome (Ewan McGregor) who convinced her to try writing on other people's bodies.  However, through a tragic romantic misunderstanding, Jerome kills himself.  Nagiko, in her grief, decides to write her own Pillow Book based on her own life.  She writes 13 chapters of her Pillow Book on various models in different unusual circumstances before sending them to an evil publisher who blackmailed her father and Jerome for sex.  This is easily my favorite part of the film as it plays as a kind of philosophical answer to David Fincher's Se7en (1995).  For instance, the ninth chapter (The Book of Secrets) is delivered by a nude Buddhist monk with the text written in his "secret" spots, such as between his fingers, on his eyelids, and on the insides of his thighs.  Since Nagiko largely blames the publisher for her father's misery and Jerome's death, she uses the book to extract violent revenge against him.  This is a magnificent film that doesn't just mimic Japanese and calligraphic aesthetics but instead embodies them.  The first and third act of the film are absolutely riveting and transcendent in their execution and Kubrick-esque level of perfectionism. However, the second act which largely charts Nagiko's affair with Jerome is sadly lacking. For this section, the film largely wanders with no clearly defined destination.  Much of it plays like a music video. But the film's other strengths make up for this temporary lull in quality.  There simply isn't anything else quite like The Pillow Book.  To see it is an event.

9/10

The Avengers: Joss Whedon

I think I was naturally predisposed towards being excessively harsh in my evaluation of Joss Whedon's The Avengers for two reasons. First, I come from a film studies environment where many, if not all, of my peers had already condemned the film as trash before even seeing it.  Second, while I love Marvel Comics, I have always been a bigger DC fan. So I admit that I am biased against this film. But despite that, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.  The Avengers was the end result of a truly herculean cinematic effort that stretched four years, six films, and a countless number of writers, directors, actors, and editors. The fact that The Avengers was coherent and focused is a blessing. The fact that it is a great film is a miracle. It seems that Loki is on the loose and is using the power of a mysterious, potentially limitless source of energy called the Tesseract (known to comic book readers as the Cosmic Cube) to summon an alien army known as the Chitauri to conquer Earth. And so, the Avengers are formed with an all-star lineup of the world's mightiest heroes: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.  The film has a ton of plot holes. How did Thor get back to Earth (an unconvincing one-line explanation is given and promptly forgotten)? Who are the council of unknown people who sit in darkly lit rooms and secretly run the world? Did Loki really expect the Chitauri to hand over reign of the Earth after they conquered it? But these plot holes can be ignored due to Whedon's flawless grasp on dialogue and character development. I still don't think Whedon is a very good filmmaker, per say. Many parts of this film felt like a television show with an unusually large budget.  But the action is fluid, not annoying. The film is well-paced, a merciful change from more recent blockbusters who don't know the definition of the term "three act structure." Bottom line: while it doesn't do anything to push the superhero genre forward, it doesn't do anything wrong. Even a DC fanboy like me can admit that it's a very fun film.

7/10

Seven Men From Now: Budd Boetticher

Randolph Scott was one tough, mean sonovabitch. Of course, if you never watched the Westerns he made with Budd Boetticher, you may not know it. One of the best was Seven Men From Now.  I am not alone in this opinion. Legendary critic André Bazin once wrote that Seven Men From Now was "one of the exemplary successes of the contemporary Western."  Like most of Boetticher films, it has a very simple plot.  Scott plays Ben Stride, the ex-sheriff of Silver Springs.  He is on the search for seven criminals who accidentally killed his wife in the middle of a Wells Fargo freight office robbery where they ran off with $20,000 dollars in gold.  During his hunt, he encounters John and Annie Greer, two inexperienced settlers on their way from Kansas City to California.  At first he merely helps them along when they encounter serious problems such a thick mud.  However, it is revealed that the two may be more related to the Wells Fargo freight office robbery than Stride could have ever imagined.  Clocking in at under 80 minutes, Seven Men From Now is a tight ball of compressed Western drama.  For such a short film, it feels over two hours long. But instead of feeling drawn out, the entire two imaginary hours are absolutely riveting. Boetticher's Westerns have an aura of authenticity and authority. And Seven Men From Now is no exception.

8/10

Tall in the Saddle: Edwin L. Marin

It is said that Peter Bogdanovich once mentioned to Orson Welles that he had seen Touch of Evil (1958) four or five times before he even noticed the story.  The reason, he explained, was that he was so enamored with the direction that he couldn't focus on the actual plot. I feel much the same way after viewing Edwin L. Marin's Tall in the Saddle.  Only, instead of being captivated by the direction, I was mesmerized by the performances. If there is a plot to Tall in the Saddle, as I'm sure there is, then I entirely missed it. I was much too focused on the actors' various mannerisms and the tight, terse screenplay by Paul Fix and Michael Hogan.  Central to this film is the indomitable presence of John Ford as Rocklin, a cynical, no-nonsense ranch hand. Rocklin is openly misogynistic, delivering lines like, "I never feel sorry for anything that happens to a woman." It's obvious that some woman has gone and done him wrong in the past, but Rocklin isn't talking. He arrives in a small town to take over as foreman for a local ranch only to discover that its owner had been murdered weeks before his arrival. Furthermore, it seems that the new owner of the ranch, Clara Cardell, is being swindled from her inheritance. So, begrudgingly, Rocklin helps solve the murder and stop to plot to rob Clara. But as I said, I was too busy admiring the acting and dialogue to really pay attention to the story.  I most clearly remember tiny vignettes scattered throughout the film. One of my favorites is when Rocklin is cheated during a poker game in a hotel and calmly walks upstairs to his room. One of the other players tells the cheater that he had better give Rocklin his money back because he's "the kind of man who would come back downstairs." And almost on cue Rocklin slowly, deliberately walks down the stairs, stares the cheater in the face, and tells him to give him his money back. It's an astoundingly powerful scene. Another one of my favorites is when Arly Harolday, the sister of the poker cheat, is tricked into trying to get his money back. She confronts Rocklin in the street and shoots at him. But Rocklin just flat out ignores her and walks straight to the saloon under a hail of angry gunfire. This won't be the only time that I watch Tall in the Saddle. The screenplay is too rich and the acting too superb to warrant only one viewing.

8/10

Border Incident: Anthony Mann

What's that? A film noir directed by Anthony Mann featuring the cinematography of John Alton? Why, that sounds fantastic! It seems like Border Incident was custom made for cinephiles like yours truly. Well, I can say that as far as film noir go, Border Incident delivers the goods.  It focuses on a topic which has become a cause célèbre for politicians in the last few decades: illegal immigration.  After a number of illegal immigrants are brutally murdered, robbed, and thrown into quicksand while attempting to cross the border, the governments of the United States and Mexico decide to collaborate in order to stop the bloodshed. So both governments dispatch agents to try and shut down a group of criminals who illegally smuggle Mexicans over the border. The Mexican agent is Pablo Rodriguez, played by a young Ricardo Montalban, who goes undercover as a bracero seeking illegal transport to America.  It's quite odd to watch a film from 1949 deal with a problem that has dominated our modern politosphere for so many years.  If I was a more cynical man, I would openly mock the scenes where US and Mexican officials talk in deep, serious tones about how most Mexican workers and American ranchers obey the law.  But ignoring that, Border Incident is a decent film. There are a number of particularly effective scenes. In one scene, Rodriguez is almost revealed as an agent when an old woman touches his hands to see whether or not he is a true bracero and he has to improvise a back-story or face execution.  In another, a US agent is savagely murdered by being run over by a mechanized harrow. And it is fascinating to watch how Mann uses quicksand to heighten the tension of the climactic gunfight.  Border Incident may seem somewhat naive from today's perspective. But it remains a solid entry in both Anthony Mann's and John Alton's respective filmographies.

7/10

Buchanan Rides Alone: Budd Boetticher

The Westerns of Budd Boetticher hold a very special place in my heart. As Martin Scorsese once said, his Westerns distill the very essence of the genre into its purest form.  Many of his best Westerns were collaborations with an aged Randolph Scott.  I thoroughly enjoyed such films as Seven Men from Now (1956) and The Tall T (1957).  And yet I find myself feeling less enthusiastic about their 1958 film Buchanan Rides Alone.  The film follows Scott and Tom Buchanan, an ex-gunfigher looking to re-invent himself as a rancher.  When he arrives at the California border town of Agry, he becomes embroiled in a feud concerning the Agry family.  The Agry family dominates the town with members serving as mayor and sheriff.  When Buchanan first came into town, he made the mistake of aiding a young Mexican being brutally assaulted by several men.  What Buchanan didn't know was that the Mexican had just murdered one of the members of the Agry family.  And so Buchanan is pulled into a full-on struggle between the town (and family) of Agry and a Mexican group who are willing to pay a substantial ransom for the killer.  Buchanan Rides Alone contains many of the elements that made Boetticher's Westerns so fantastic: a lone, cynical gunfighter and a bleak landscape dominated by violence.  And yet, it doesn't feel like a Boetticher Western. Buchanan is just a little too happy.  There is just a little too much comic relief.  And most importantly, I never found myself intimidated by the Agry family. The Agry family can't seem to get their priorities in order. Near the start of the film, they stop Buchanan and the Mexican from getting lynched so that one of their number will be elected for mayor...or was it governor? But then the very same Agry who was so scared of upsetting voters hatches a plan to release a despised criminal in exchange for $50,000. Doesn't he realize that ransoming off a convicted murderer will ensure that nobody will vote for him?  Anyhow, the film does contain a few moments of brilliance. My favorite scene was the climactic shootout where the Agry family and Buchanan fight from opposite sides of a bridge with a sack of $50,000 in the middle.  As both sides send out envoys to retrieve the money, the number of bodies in the middle of the street increases. It is a savage, powerful scene. Too bad I can't say the same for the rest of the film.

6/10

The White Buffalo: J. Lee Thompson

Blatant historical inaccuracies can destroy my enjoyment of a film. The idea of Wild Bill Hickok and Crazy Horse joining forces would usually be enough to make me want to avoid a certain film. But The White Buffalo is concerned with myth and legend, dreams and visions.  J. Lee Thompson creates a foreboding fearscape out of the snowy wastes of the West, a setting which is much too often ignored by filmmakers and writers.  Haunted by dreams of a giant white buffalo, Hickok sets out to kill this mythical monster. However, the white buffalo is also being pursued by Crazy Horse. The white buffalo had killed his daughter while rampaging through his camp. His sorrow and tears over her death resulted in his elders taking away his name and replacing it with the title "worm" until he can kill the White Buffalo and wrap his daughter in its hide.  What could have been a very silly film was actually a surprisingly effective fantasy thriller.  Much attention is given to various shootouts where Wild Bill and Crazy Horse intelligently use the terrain to gain the upper hand. Also, the white buffalo becomes a true specter of fear and death.  Part of this has to do with how Thompson never lets us see all of the buffalo in a single shot. We see his side profile, head, and horns in various disjointed shots. But we are almost never allowed to comprehend where the buffalo is in comparison to his surroundings.  He becomes like the monstrous Jaws; capable of appearing wherever and whenever he wants to strike at helpless victims. The White Buffalo is now one of my favorite mythical creatures in the Old West. If I ever write a Western, you can be sure that somewhere inside of it there will be a White Buffalo.

7/10

Dodge City: Michael Curtiz

The opening scenes of Michael Curtiz's Dodge City contains one of the most striking metaphors for the encroachment of civilization upon the Old West ever filmed. The first train to Dodge City, Kansas carries a group of Irish investors who goad the engineers into a race with a nearby stagecoach. The two race along at breakneck speed until the horses tire and the train zooms to victory. The investors mention how anything, even the construction of a railroad, can be accomplished through the work of a "few Irishmen," completely oblivious to the suffering at the hands of the immigrants who built and died for the railroad.  This magnificent opening sequence frames a fantastic film by one of Hollywood's most reliable workhorses.  The film follows Wade Hatton, played by the always entertaining Errol Flynn, a cowboy who decides to clean up the town of Dodge City after a young boy is accidentally killed by a local gang of outlaws led by Jeff Surrett.  It's a pretty standard "good cowboy brings justice to lawless town" storyline. But Curtiz's direction and Flynn's performance help it come alive.  One particularly moving scene involves Hatton stopping a mob from lynching a member of Surrett's gang named Yance after the young boy is killed. It isn't enough that Hatton brings justice...he brings civilization and law as well.  Because Errol Flynn was the leading star, he must have been contractually obligated to have a love interest. Thankfully, this position was filled by the radiant Olivia de Havilland.  Dodge City came out the same year as John Ford's Stagecoach which has been celebrated for elevating the Western from pulpy, B-movie fare to genuine art.  While Stagecoach is a much better film, it's a shame that it overshadows this delightful treat of a movie.

7/10

Hannie Caulder: Burt Kennedy

Watching Burt Kennedy's Hannie Caulder, I found myself swimming in questions. These questions included things like: Oh, Ernest Borgnine...you are Hollywood's teddy bear...so how are you so good at playing amoral, psychotic villains? Why haven't I ever watched a film with Raquel Welch before? Is Raquel Welch my new crush? And, finally, am I really enjoying a rape/revenge flick?  The answers, in order, are: who knows, because I'm a moron, yes, and yes.  Hannie Caulder may be a rape/revenge flick, but unlike other "classics" of the genre like I Spit on Your Grave (1978), it doesn't linger on the actual rape and doesn't outright exploit the heroine.  Well, that's not true. There is one scintillating scene where Raquel Welch takes a back while wearing her pants and gives us a stunning profile of her backside. But even that didn't have any frontal nudity. This film is actually concerned about the central character and not her assault. Three outlaws named the Clemens brothers come to Hannie's homestead one day after a ruined bank job. They kill her husband, rape her, and burn her house to the ground.  Afterwards, she tracks down professional bounty hunter Thomas Price (played by the magnificent Robert Culp) and makes him teach her how to be a gunfighter. From there the film follows Hannie as she picks off the brothers.  Despite its sleazy premise, real artistry went into this film. Raquel Welch absolutely stunned me with her convincing performance.  The film boasted a surprisingly effective soundtrack and beautiful photography of the barren Southwest. I enjoyed this film. And, uh, not just for, *ahem*, Raquel Welch's backside.

7/10

Fort Apache: John Ford

Fort Apache was the first film in John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy, a series of films that focused on the U.S. Cavalry in the mythical Old West.  The other two would be the criminally underrated She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and the surprisingly overrated Rio Grande (1950).  All three would also star John Wayne. In this first film, he plays Captain Kirby York, a cavalry officer operating out of the eponymous Fort Apache, a cavalry post in the middle of nowhere.  But the film doesn't focus on Captain York. Instead, Ford focuses his camera primarily on Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday, played by Henry Fonda.  Thursday is sent to Fort Apache in order to serve as its new commander. However, despite having experience as a general in the Civil War, he is fool-hardy, arrogant, and full of himself.  His actions lead to the slaughter of most of his troops against a force of Chiricahua Apache.  It isn't until near the end of the film when the massacre takes place that the audience realizes that Fort Apache is a metaphor for the Battle of Little Bighorn and Custer's Last Stand.  The reason is that much of the film is devoted to that most central theme in John Ford's work: family. Thursday's daughter, Philadelphia (played by an astonishingly beautiful all-grown up Shirley Temple), falls in love with Second Lieutenant Michael Shannon O'Rourke.  Despite Michael's father receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions as a major in the Irish Brigade during the Civil War and therefore being allowed to study at West Point, Thursday refuses to let him court his daughter. Despite Michael's father's legacy, Thursday considers him to be of a lower class and therefore "unworthy" of his daughter. It is fascinating to watch how Ford mixes Thursday's duties as a soldier and responsibilities as a father and how his stances towards both leads to his downfall.  Fort Apache is a magnificent film that is stunning in scale, heart-breaking in emotion, and rich in subtext.

8/10

Pony Express: Jerry Hopper

Pony Express bugged me. I know that isn't a very precise or engaging critical evaluation, but it's the simplest way to express my feelings towards this film.  I know that American Westerns, particularly ones from the first half of the decade, were never known for their historical accuracy. But Pony Express takes it to such insane extremes that it pulled me out of the viewing experience. The film follows Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill as they give birth to the Pony Express by setting up a mail route from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Along the way they fight against California secessionists partially led by the owner of a stagecoach business.  Their journey includes a scene where Buffalo Bill engages in a tomahawk battle with a Sioux chief...and wins.  The film stars Charlton Heston as Buffalo Bill, but it is astounding how forgettable his performance is...as well as the rest of the film.  I watched this film very intently. But that was over a week ago. And amazingly, I cannot remember almost anything from this film.  There's just a giant...blank...where my memories of this film should be...

5/10

The Gunfighter: Henry King

Henry King's The Gunfighter isn't so much a traditional Western as it is a morality tale set in the Old West.  Similar to William A. Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) it uses the historical and mythological trappings of the Western in able to examine human nature.  The film follows Jimmy Ringo (Gregory Peck), an aging gunfighter with the unfortunate reputation of being the fastest draw in the West. Ringo wants nothing more than to abandon that life and settle down. But wherever he goes he is challenged by cock-sure youngsters desperate to make a name for themselves by killing him.  When a young man named Eddie tries to shoot him, Ringo is forced to kill him.  Despite clearly acting in self-defense, Eddie's three brothers swear a vendetta against him. Ringo flees to the town of Cayenne in order to see his wife and the son that he hasn't seen in eight years.  As Ringo waits for the brothers to catch up with him, he must confront shadows of his past, such as an old man who believes that he murdered his son.  And then, of course, there is the arrogant young whelp named Hunt Bromley who sees Ringo as the key to finally gaining fame as a gunslinger...The Gunfighter is a truly magnificent film with a cynical, yet realistic eye on human nature. The town of Cayenne becomes a vacuum in which this old shootist is poked, prodded, and abused by the people that he has touched, either directly or indirectly. The Gunfighter was one of the first Westerns of the fifties that injected the genre with a new sense of moral awareness. Along with Devil's Doorway (1950), one of the first of ten Westerns directed by Anthony Mann in the fifties that would redefine the genre, The Gunfighter helped revolutionize this most beloved of American cinematic traditions.

9/10

Machine-Gun Kelly: Roger Corman

A few minutes into Roger Corman's Machine-Gun Kelly, a loose biopic of real-life Prohibition-era gangster George "Machine Gun" Kelly, something about the lead actor began to bother me. Something just seemed off about him. Sure, his performance as the quasi-psychotic gangster fit the low-budget tone of the film. But a little voice in the back of my head wouldn't stop nagging me about how uncanny the whole ordeal appeared. So I paused the movie and checked its credits only to discover to my complete astonishment that "Machine Gun" Kelly was being portrayed by none other than Charles "Death Wish" Bronson.  That's right, the same Charles Bronson whose intense, stoic machismo made him a superstar in such films as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).  And here he was in Machine-Gun Kelly giving such an energetic performance that I initially couldn't recognize him.  Unfortunately, Bronson's performance is the highlight of the film.  The rest of the film follows a fairly stereotypical gangster plot: after a job goes sour and one of his boys is critically injured, Kelly attempts to orchestrate one final score.  His plan is to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy businessman and hold her for ransom.  However, the job is bungled by his underlings' ineptitude and the duplicity of former allies that he had humiliated and insulted.  There is a reoccurring motif of a feral mountain lion trapped by a gas station attendant in a tiny cage where it is poked, prodded, and provoked into a furious rage for the amusement of customers.  It doesn't take a Ph.D in film studies to realize that the mountain lion represents Kelly's barely concealed homicidal urges.  The scenes with Kelly and the mountain lion are surprisingly effective.  But almost everything else is just plain ol' by-the-books-and-budget Roger Corman. But, hey, I've never claimed that was a bad thing...well, usually...

6/10

The Big Chill: Lawrence Kasdan

Oh, William Hurt and Lawrence Kasdan...how much longer must you two plague me? Body Heat (1981) was great, but I think we all know that's because it was just an update on Double Indemnity (1944).  But after that...whenever you two are involved in the same film I feel an incredible sense of dread. The Big Chill is the kind of film that William Hurt does best, i.e. slow, plodding dramas about well-to-do white people. They include films like Children of a Lesser God (1986), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Smoke (1995). I just don't find Hurt a very compelling actor. Recordings of his voice should be sold as sleeping aids. But anyway, in The Big Chill Hurt is one of a group of college friends who re-unite after 15 years to mourn the death of one of their own. After the funeral, they congregate in his old South Carolina house and proceed to catch up on each other.  This, of course, involves several scenes of the women drinking wine and the men jogging together in a line. There are some good performances like Jeff Goldblum as Michael, a somewhat neurotic journalist, and Meg Tilly as Chloe, the eccentric and odd girlfriend of the recently deceased friend.  But the film takes the predictable path of establishing that each of them is unsatisfied with their lives.  But, conveniently, these problems can apparently be fixed when they inevitably pair off with each other. There are some dancing and shenanigans with a local cop that take place.  But the vast majority of the film plays like a session of group therapy for this gathering of unhappy thirtysomethings. The only real thing of note in The Big Chill is the exceptional soundtrack of classic rock and soul.  Otherwise, The Big Chill seems like an unnecessary time waster.  Although this film did make me release how much I enjoy Kevin Kline.  Whatever happened to him, anyway?

6/10

Tombstone: George P. Cosmatos, Kevin Jarre

This may seem like a strange thing to notice, but I have never seen a Western as clean as George P. Cosmatos' Tombstone.  I don't mean "clean" in the sense that there isn't any violence or cussing.  No, I mean that everything in Tombstone looks too neat and tidy for a period piece set in the Old West.  Let me explain. I recently watched Michael Curtiz's Dodge City (1939).  In the first few minutes, the film's star, Errol Flynn, appears with his face covered in dust and dirt.  This is the same Errol Flynn known for his dashing good looks and charm, mind you. And yet all of the characters in Tombstone look like they had just stepped out of a spa.  Even after supposedly riding all day, the characters in Tombstone all look immaculately clean and well-groomed. And therein lies my problem with Tombstone: it feels like a sterile attempt to recapture the glory days of the Hollywood Western.  The film is loosely based on the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the ensuing Earp Vendetta in Tombstone, Arizona during the 1880s.  The gunfight had already been the subject of three classic Westerns: Dodge City, My Darling Clementine (1946), and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).  But what Tombstone forgets is that the most interesting part of the story surrounding the gunfight was not the actual violence, but the characters who were involved, particular Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.  Tombstone presents these legendary figures as almost one-dimensional shadows.  Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp is mean and rugged. Sam Elliott's Virgil Earp is wise and stoic. The most memorable performance is Val Kilmer as the consumptive Doc Holliday. Most of the film is forced and unconvincing. Then the film devolves into a series of shootouts that would make Peckinpah blush.  I won't deny that the film does have a few great moments. Russell's "Hell's coming with me" speech remains one of the most chilling moments of his career. But overall, the film lacks purpose or direction. Somebody should have told Cosmatos that the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was much, much more than just a shoot-out.

6/10

The Premature Burial: Roger Corman

Most of the fun of watching Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films is in seeing how he changed and adapted the source material to suit his own ends.  Indeed, the most enjoyable entries in the series are the ones that strayed from the original stories.  The Raven (1963) used the famous poem as a spring-board for satirical comedy.  The Haunted Palace (1963) wasn't even based on a Poe story, but instead on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a novella by H. P. Lovecraft.  The only connection it had with the works of Poe was the title which was itself a quote from one of his poems.  And now we have The Premature Burial. Just like the original Poe story, it follows a man whose worst fear is being buried alive. Fully aware that catalepsy, a disorder which makes a person appear dead for prolonged periods of time, runs in his family, he sets several safeguards like a rigged coffin so that he won't be accidentally buried. I won't spoil the rest of the film, but suffice to say that despite his best efforts he still finds himself buried alive.  But curiously enough, he manages to escape. From there the film becomes a strikingly effective revenge thriller with a genuinely chilling twist at the very end.  All the while it maintains that brooding Victorian kitsch that made Corman's Poe films so memorable.  The Premature Burial may very well be the best Corman Poe film that didn't star Vincent Price.

7/10

The Wild Angels: Roger Corman

So this is the film that inspired the outlaw biker film genre of the late 1960s and 1970s, huh?  I don't understand why. When you get right down to it, Roger Corman's The Wild Angels isn't very good.  I guess it was so beloved and influential due to the lifestyle that it portrayed.  It follows the eponymous biker gang as they raise hell and havoc throughout California.  Near the beginning, one of the bikers named Loser has his motorcycle stolen. So the gang tracks down his motorcycle to a Latino garage near Mecca, California and demonstrate how they solve all of their problems: extreme violence.  However, the police come to break up the fight and Loser is shot in the back.  The Wild Angels then do the sensible thing and kidnap Loser from the hospital, only stopping to sexually assault one of the nurses.  Much to their great surprise, removing Loser from the hospital results in him going into shock and dying.  And so Blues, the leader of the gang played by Peter Fonda, takes Loser's body to his hometown to have him buried.  But first they stop at a small church to have a service.  Again, they seem totally surprised that the minister of the church would object to them hanging a giant Nazi Swastika Flag over the altar and showing up to the ceremony in leather and blue jeans.  Blues then confronts the minister midway through the service because he objects to the eulogy. The minister asks what exactly the Wild Angels want. Blues takes the stage and delivers a passionate plea: "We want to be free! We want to be free to do what we want to do! We want to be free to ride. And we want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man. And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time! And that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have a good time. We’re gonna have a party!" They then demonstrate their idea of "freedom" by destroying the church, raping Loser's girlfriend, and brawling with another gang. So, clearly these people deserve to have the freedom to do what they want. I'm sorry, but I just didn't like this film. It's poorly paced and features a completely unlikable set of protagonists. But then again, I'm just a square. So what do I know?

3/10

Gas-s-s-s: Roger Corman

While watching Roger Corman's Gas-s-s-s, I was reminded of his earlier film The Trip (1967) where a young Peter Fonda embarks on a surreal and mind-bending LSD trip.  Both films feature wild visuals, over-the-top characters, and odd cultural references. Who can forget the scene in The Trip where a midget riding a merry-go-round starts to scream "Bay of Pigs" for no logical reason?  Gas-s-s-s, on the other hand, starts with a strange animated sequence where a beefy army general modeled after John Wayne and a German scientist accidentally unleash a deadly gas upon the United States which kills everyone over the age of twenty-five.  There's some kind of political statement being said...but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is.  And, honestly, I don't think Corman knew, either. My suspicion is that with The Trip and Gas-s-s-s Corman inserted a large amount of politically and socially provocative material just for the sake of being politically and socially provocative.  Anything to sell movie tickets, I guess. But despite all of this Gas-s-s-s is a weak, incomprehensible film.  Other than its basic premise, I have no idea what Gas-s-s-s is about.  All I remember is a bunch of teenagers running around in ridiculous outfits who occasionally stop and engage in shootouts with other bands of derelict teenagers.  At some point a group of survivors take shelter in a kind of hippie monastery.  But it isn't long before a small army of jocks crossed with Mad Max rejects lay siege upon them and demand that they turn over all of their fruits and vegetables.  By that point I had given up trying to decipher this film.  I simply didn't care anymore.

4/10

Carnival Rock: Roger Corman

Only Roger Corman could take a title like Carnival Rock and turn it into a good movie. Carnival Rock was one of nine movies that Corman would direct and release in 1957.  It takes place largely in a rock and roll nightclub located on a carnival pier.  Of the film's 75 minute running time, at least half of it is comprised of musical performances by rock groups. The actual storyline follows the club's owner, Christy, as he struggles to keep his club from falling into the hands of debt collectors and rival businessmen.  Christy is madly in love with the club's star, Natalie Cook, but she refuses to return his affections. Instead, she is smitten with Stanley, a stone-faced businessman who is determined to own Christy's club. The plot is standard melodramatic fluff up until the mid-point when Stanley manages to manipulate Christy into betting away his club by challenging his affections for Natalie.  They play a simple game that involves cutting a deck of cards where whoever draws the highest wins.  Taking part in the bet seems like an insanely idiotic choice on Christy's part.  But what can he do? He's in love. This may sound corny, but this entire sequence contains a surprising amount of genuine pathos. I was amazed by how much I actually cared about Christy and his plight. This made it all the more tragic when Christy is forced to become the carnival's clown and get mocked nightly by customers.  When Christy finally snaps, I found myself rooting for him! But let's look beyond the plot for a second. I mentioned that a good portion of this film was comprised of musical performances. In many cheap B-movies, this can come as a death sentence.  Who can forget legendary composer John Williams' attempt at writing rock music with "Rock Rock Candy Baby" in Lou Place's Daddy-O (1958) or Arch Hall Jr.'s constant insipid mewling in Eegah (1962)?  But you know what? The performers in Carnival Rock are...pretty damn good! At one point, legendary R&B pioneers The Platters appear and sing a number! The PLATTERS! So I would recommend Carnival Rock. It's got a firm plot and a swinging soundtrack.  I wish I could say the same for the rest of Corman's 1957 films.  I'm looking at YOU Attack of the Crab Monsters. 

7/10