Category Archives: Movies Based on Novels

Pretty Poison (1968)

Posted on September 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Manipulated by attractive teen.

Dennis (Anthony Perkins) has been released from the mental institution after serving several years there for setting a home on fire. He gets a job at the local factory but finds it boring and begins to escape into fantasies. He spots pretty 17-yeard-old Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld) while she rehearses with her high school marching band and immediately becomes smitten. He’s never had experience dating anyone, so he decides he’ll pretend to be a CIA agent on a secret mission as a way to impress her and get her attention. He’s disgusted at the way the factory where he works at dumps pollution into the river and thus comes up with a scheme to destroy it using her help, but when a security guard spots them, Sue Ann kills him. Dennis is shocked with Sue Ann’s brazenness and realizes she’s not as innocent as she appears. He tries to cover-up the killing but finds that Sue Ann’s only getting started as her next target is her mother (Beverly Garland). Will Dennis try and stop it, or figure that appeasing her murderous desires may be the only way to keep her from going after him?

The film is based on the 1966 debut novel ‘She Let Him Continue’ by Stephen Geller and directed by Noel Black, who was just coming off the success of his award winning short Skaterdater and this was considered perfect material for his feature film debut. He described the story as “a Walter Mitty type who comes up against a teenybopper Lady MacBeth”. It was shot on-location in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which gives it a quant small town atmosphere where supposedly ‘nothing ever happens’ and Beverly Garland gives a terrific supporting performance as the caustic mother.

However, Black had no background in working with actors leading to many confrontations behind-the-scenes between he and Weld and keeping the shooting production on schedule proved equally challenging, which got the studio to believe they’d hired a director who was in over-his-head and helped bring in added pressures. When the movie finally did get released, it fared poorly at the box office. Black felt this was because of the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, which made the studio timid to distribute it and thus few people saw it though in recent years its acquired a small cult following. 

One of the elements that really makes it work is Perkins who gives a splendid performance. Initially I thought it was a mistake to cast him as he would seem too much like his earlier, more famous character of Norman Bates, but he plays this part much differently. Here he comes off as smarter and less crazy. He does dabble in make believe at times but only does it to mask his insecurities and lack of life experience. Watching his emotional arc where he goes from feeling confident, thinking he’s in control with this supposedly naive young teen, only to ultimately have to grapple with his slow realization that it’s really she who’s pulling-the-strings is the most captivating thing in the movie. 

Weld seemed initially to be perfectly cast as she had already shown a propensity at playing characters quite similar to this one in classic episodes of ‘Route 66’ TV-show and ‘The Fugitive’. However, her age clearly belies her as she was 24 at the time it was filmed and looking nowhere near 17. Having a true teen playing the role may have made what she does even more shocking. She later said in interviews that she hated working on this project mainly because Black wouldn’t let her improvise her lines and you could see she just wasn’t fully into it, and it diminishes somewhat the full effect.  

Spoiler Alert!

While it’s intriguing the whole way the ending, which has Dennis calling the police and allowing himself to be put into jail, didn’t have quite the bang I was hoping for. Dennis had fallen hard for Sue Ann to the extent he felt she had ‘changed his life’ and gave meaning to his otherwise lonely existence. When people are in love with someone, they tend not to see the same red flags that others do, so even though she does some evil things I was expecting him to make excuses for it. Like she killed the nightwatchman not so much because she was a sociopath, but more because of her ‘love’ for him and knowing it would help him in his ‘secret mission’. The murder of the mother could’ve been approached the same way in his mind. She killed her only so they could be together, and he would view it as an ‘unselfish’ act versus a selfish one.

Seeing someone who starts out a bit cocky thinking he can ‘trap’ others with his fantasies only to learn that his own fantasy had trapped him would’ve been quite ironic. He could still be convinced of her love even as he’s arrested and thus his final meeting with her, in which he realizes that she’s betrayed him by going to the police, would’ve had more of an impact.

I didn’t feel that Dennis should’ve had to spoon-feed to his psychiatrist, played by John Randolph, that Sue Ann was really the killer, as the doctor should’ve been smart enough to figure this out for himself. Watching the psychiatrist then follow Sue Ann around in his car as she finds another man (Ken Kercheval) that she intends to manipulate leaves things too wide open. What exactly will this lead to? Will the doctor stop her from killing again before it’s too late, or will Sue Ann realize she’s being followed and have the doctor killed? This is something I feel the film should’ve answered. 

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 18, 1968

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Noel Black

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 60's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Movies Based on Novels, Thrillers/Suspense

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Sunburn (1979)

Posted on September 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Couple investigates insurance fraud.

Jake (Charles Grodin) works as a private eye and gets hired by an insurance company wanting him to investigate a case that took place in Acapulco of a man who crashed his car into a building and died. The authorities have labeled it an ‘accident’, which would put them on the hook to have to pay out a large sum of money, so they’d like Jake to travel down there and find out if that were really the case, or if it could be deemed as a suicide. Jake decides to hire an actress from a modeling agency named Ellie (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) to act as his wife. Ellie takes an interest in the case and helps him search for clues while also forming a romance with him, which starts out rocky but becomes stronger as they find themselves sucked further into the mystery and the potential dangers.

The film is based on the 1970 novel ‘The Bind’ by Stanley Ellin, which had a grittier tone than the movie. Farrah’s agent Jay Bernstein felt this would be a good vehicle for her, but wanted the script turned into more of a lighter and comical story that the book did not have. This was at a crucial point in her career as the first film he got her cast in Somebody Killer Her Husband, did badly with both the critics and public, so it was important that she prove her box office ability with this picture and when this one also bombed she fired him complaining that both movies had been ‘put together with hustle and bubble gum’.

One of the elements that really hurts it is the casting of Charles Grodin, who by his own admission was their sixth choice for the role as they had initially pursued Robert Redford and even Harrison Ford, who would’ve both been way better. Grodin can certainly be funny, but this part doesn’t give him much to work with. He has a few amusing moments when he’s trying to scare away a lizard from entering their bedroom and then in an effort ‘to protect her’ from a further ‘lizard invasion’ agrees to sleep on a nearby chair, which cause him to do nothing but toss and turn the whole night in an effort to find a ‘comfortable’ position.

His character though didn’t seem all that professional as he leaves it up to her to place a listening device into one of the suspect’s phones, but she had no background in this kind of thing, so what would happen if she screwed it up? The insurance company is promising him a lot of money so it should be up to him to do most of the legwork to make sure it gets done right and if any ditzy amateur blonde can be pulled in off the street to do what he does then what’s the point in hiring him to begin with?

Farrah does much better here than her previous film. I enjoyed her dialogue with Grodin and how just because she was hired to play his wife didn’t mean she was automatically going to be one during their off hours when he for some chauvinistic reason expects her to make him a sandwich, which she immediately declines to do. I was confused though why her character would want to get so involved in the case. She’s just there to play a part, so why not just do her job and enjoy the sun? Instead, she constantly puts herself in increasingly dangerous situations for no real reason. She’s gets paid whether the case gets solved or not, so why jeopardize her life over something that she has no emotional or financial investment in?

It’s also hard to believe that such a hot looking lady wouldn’t be in a relationship. It would’ve been far more enjoyable had there been a jealous boyfriend who secretly followed her on her mission and even threw a few monkey wrenches into the investigation, which could’ve added extra spark into a movie that’s otherwise too leisurely. For her to then fall in love with Grodin was equally dumb. The guy could’ve been her father and lacked any type of sexual pizazz. Had Redford or Ford been cast then the romance might’ve made more sense, but such a beautiful woman like her would have no reason to settle for a doofus like him and would simply be there for the payout and then be long gone.

Art Carney is great in support and actually does most of the work making it seem like Grodin’s character wasn’t even necessary and in fact having Carney and Farrah team up would’ve made it unique and more entertaining as Carney despite his advanced age shows a lot of energy particularly when he goes out onto the disco floor. The rest of the cast though gets wasted with many of them having only one or two lines making you wonder why they’d bother to sign on at all.

The film does have one memorable moment where Carney and Farrah, in an effort to escape the bad guys who are pursuing them, inadvertently crash their car into a bull fighting ring and then must avoid the bull who goes after them. This action is both humorous and exciting, but otherwise unless you’re some super Farrah fan the movie offers little else that’s interesting.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: August 10, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard C. Sarafian

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: DVD-R (MGM Limited Edition Collection)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Romance

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Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979)

Posted on September 3, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Spinster teacher is raped.

Evelyn Wyckoff (Anne Heywood) is a middle-aged single woman who teaches high school in a small town in Kansas. She has never married and is showing signs of severe depression, which alarms her best friend Beth (Carolyn Jones) as well as the older couple (R.G. Armstrong, Joycelyn Brando) whom she’s living with. Both her doctor (Robert Vaughan) and her psychiatrist (Donald Pleasance) believe it’s because she is not in a relationship or having any sex and that she needs to get out more and meet people. She attempts at starting something with fellow teacher Chester (J. Patrick McNamara) but finds him to be too shy and embattled with his own problems to be able to recognize her interests. She also considers friendly bus driver Ed (Earl Holliman) only to call it off when she learns he’s married. Left alone after school one evening she comes into contact with Rafe (John Lafayette), a black man who works as the janitor, who sees her loneliness as a weakness that he can exploit. He comes onto her strongly and abrasively eventually forcing her to submit to his sexual demands, but she doesn’t go to the authorities and instead starts to enjoy the degradation and continues to come back for more until the rest of the students and teachers find out about it putting her job and reputation in peril.

The story is based on the 1970 novel of the same name written by William Inge. The film rights were sold in 1971 but sat on the shelf for many years until producer Raymond Stross found it and felt it would be a good vehicle for his actress wife Heywood who had already made a name for herself in tackling controversial, edgy material and even sought it out, so this was considered a perfect next project. While she had received critical accolades for her earlier work, The Fox, where she played a lesbian in a  relationship with Sandy Dennis, which was envelope pushing for its era, this one did not go over as well and was genuinely lambasted causing her career to take a downfall from which it couldn’t recover and she ended up retiring from acting just a decade later.

On a surface level it’s okay. The recreation of the 1950’s Kansas, while shot in Stockton, California, is still effective and the personalities of the people isn’t as cliched. There are those that show prejudices and oppressive mind sets, but there’s a healthy balance that don’t, which helps make it feel more realistic. The supporting cast is full of familiar faces though most of them are wasted in small roles that don’t add much and Carolyn Jones, in her last feature film appearance, stands out best albeit with an awful hairstyle.

The biggest detriment, besides the flat direction and booming music score, is Heywood who doesn’t offer enough nuance to her part. I’ll commend her for taking on a very difficult role that required at age 48 to be fully nude and allowing herself to be put into some very vulnerable and demeaning positions, but her facial expressions and responses are one-note. Her constant crying for no reason, which alarms those around her, and unexplained impulsive behavior, like smashing a mirror during a party, is too dramatic. Instead of using this to reveal that she’s unhappy it makes her seem more like a complete mental case that has far worse issues than just being lonely and I felt more sympathy for her friends trying to put up with her erraticism than I did with the main character who for the most part is rather whiny and annoying.

There’s never any explanation for why she’s unable to get into a relationship. She’s attractive, so you’d expect there would be eligible suitors who’d ask her out. All we see is a bus driver who’s already married, but what about other single men who would have to be out there? Why don’t we ever see one of them make a move and if so, how would she respond to them, which would be far more revealing than anything she says to her shrink, which amounts to talky pseudo-science.

The rape scene isn’t either shocking or effective and seems to come out of nowhere. It occurs in the middle of the second act, but before then we see the Rafe character only once while cleaning the chalk boards for a few seconds, so we have no idea what makes him tick, or why he chooses to prey on this woman and none of the others. Had she made the first move in an attempt to connect with someone and relieve her of her isolation, and this then inadvertently incited some inner aggression with him it might’ve made more sense and worked with the flow of the story, but the way it gets handled here makes it seem like two different movies: one dealing with the pain of being alone and the other about a man who enjoys exploiting women.

Ultimately nothing comes together. We don’t learn much about the protagonist. Yes, she’s sexually repressed, but the root cause is never made clear. The fact that she accepts her degradation at the hands of Rafe makes her even more confusing. When her friend Beth says that she feels like she didn’t really know her at all I the viewer felt like saying the same thing. The result is shallow using shock elements that are no longer effective causing the film to be both forgettable and boring.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: April 13, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Marvin J. Chomsky

Studio: Bel Air/Gradison Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Tubi

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Exploitation, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity

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Dead Ringers (1988)

Posted on August 18, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Twin brother’s relationship erodes.

Twins Elliot and Beverly (Jeremy Irons) work at a clinic as gynecologists with Elliot being the more outgoing of the two. Elliot routinely dates women many of them patients at their clinic but will then ‘hand them off’ to Beverly who is the shyer of the two and unable to get women without Elliot’s help. Since Elliot likes variety in his relationships, he’s okay with Beverly getting the women once he’s lost interest in them and the women can never tell the difference. Things though begin to change when Claire (Genevieve Bujold) enters into the picture. She, like the ones before her, was a patient whom Elliot is quickly able to hook-up with and then after a brief fling is given to Beverly, but this time Beverly falls for her in a deep way and not so eager to drop her. Claire also becomes aware that she’s been tricked by the two and has a confrontation with Elliot about it while she continues to see Beverly on the side. Beverly though becomes conflicted with his dual loyalties unable to handle how fractured his relationship with his brother, who he used to be quite close to, has become spiraling him into a depression that ultimately leads to a dangerous drug addiction. 

In 1981 David Cronenberg became interested in doing a movie about twins and producer Carol Baum sent him articles about Steward and Cyril Marcus. These were identical twins who were gynecologists working and living together in New York City. On the morning of July 17, 1975 both were found dead inside Cyril’s cluttered apartment in what had initially been perceived as being a suicide pact, which was later ruled out, but both did die within a few days of the other. While their deaths generated may articles and even a novel the cause to what circumstances lead to them dying together has remained open and thus Cronenberg decided to ‘answer’ that question with this story though he had to go through many years of different producers, screenwriters, and various different drafts before this version was finally given the green light.

If you’re a fan of Cronenberg, particularly his gore, which he’s best known for, then you may be disappointed with this as there really isn’t much. There are still some disturbing moments including the garish genealogical instruments that Beverly pays an artist, played by Stephan Lack, to create which he then plans on using on one of his patients, to the shock of his medical staff, which is a creepy moment. There’s also a dream sequence where Claire bites off a membrane connecting the two brothers, which is cool, but brief. There was also a scene shot that had the head of one of the twins coming out of the stomach of the other one, but this didn’t go over well with the test audiences, so it got cut, but I really wished had been left in. 

It’s really Irons and his incredible performance as the twins that makes this such an engaging movie to watch. Having one actor playing dual roles has certainly been done before, but never quite this effectively. Even though they look exactly alike I really got the sense these were two different people and Irons ability to craft such diverse personalities and postures, this was achieved by putting his weight on the balls of his feet while playing one of them and having his weight put on his heels while playing the other helps to, in a very subtle way, create a strong distinction and a hypnotic presence that sucks you into the story and never lets you go. 

My only quibble is that rarely have I seen twins that you couldn’t tell apart in some way. I noticed that Irons did have some minor moles on his right cheek and then another on the left side of his head near his eye. In the movie both of the brothers have these lesions in the exact same place, but I think in reality they wouldn’t, so they could’ve masked the moles on one of the characters through make-up, so it would only show on one of them and that could’ve been a way to tell them apart physically. There’s also the issue with one of them given a women’s name, which Claire does question at one point. Beverly gets quite defensive when it’s brought up insisting that his name is spelled in the ‘masculine’ way, but on the credits it’s spelled out just like it would had the name been given to a female, so I felt there should’ve been more explanation of why he’d been given an unusual name as it was something that would certainly come off as odd to many and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a man with that name. 

I also had some problems with Bujold’s character as she seems to be plopped in solely to get the story going and start the process of having the brother’s strong bond dissolve, but for a character to generate such a pivotal thing I think she should’ve stood out more. What was it about this woman that created a division between the boys that the other women hadn’t? I would’ve liked seeing her more involved in the conflict possibly confronting Elliot in an angry way, not the conciliatory one we see here, and forbidding Beverly to see him, which would’ve helped make her more prominent versus just being a story device. 

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 23, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 53 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Cronenberg

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Peacock, PlutoTV, Roku,Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Psychological

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Mommie Dearest (1981)

Posted on August 12, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Treating her children cruelly.

Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) is a famous actress who longs to have children, but unable to have any of her own. The adoption agencies reject her attempts to get a child because she’s divorced and a career woman, so she gets her boyfriend Gregg (Steve Forrest), who’s rich and influential, to pull-some-strings, which ultimately gets her a baby girl named Christina (Mara Hobel). Joan though proves to be a very strict parent and enforces harsh rules, which Christina rebels from and this leads to even harsher consequences. As Christina grows older, (Diana Scarwid) she begins a life on her own away from her mother including a fledgling acting career where she stars in the soap opera ‘Summer Storm’, but when she gets ill her mother, desperate to recharge her failing career, takes over Christina’s role while she’s recovering in the hospital that further erodes their already tenuous relationship. When Joan ultimately dies and Christina finds that both her and her brother have been written out of the will she decides at that point to write a tell-all book that will scratch away the glossy image of her famous mother and instead paint a ‘true’ portrait of who she really was.

The film is based on the autobiography of the same name written by Christina Crawford that was published in 1978 to much controversy as both family and friends denounced it as sensationalized and not an accurate portrait of Joan. Nonetheless it was a best seller, which quickly lead to a movie deal. Dunaway was excited to take the role convinced it would lead to her second Oscar, but instead, despite being directed by the talented Frank Perry, it was perceived as camp by both the critics and the public alike forcing Paramount to retool its marketing campaign selling it more as a dark comedy much to the dismay of the film’s producer Frank Yablans, who insisted it should be perceived as a serious drama.

On the one hand I think some of it is true. I have no doubt that Joan was a very strong-willed woman who had very particular ideas on child-rearing. Anyone who’s scratched-and-clawed their way to the stardom and able to maintain it over several decades would certainly have to be a driven person and I’m sure some of that would have to rub off in their home life. The scenes where she pushes Christina to be a better swimmer, so that she learns to understand the competitive world out there, made sense and parents pushing their children can happen a lot. Having her being controlling and a clean freak wasn’t all that surprising either and these scenes felt honest and revealing.

The problem is that the film makes no attempt to humanize Joan and instead becomes obsessed with portraying her as being a monstrous kook that scares everyone who’s around her including her dedicated servants who act in petrified fear every time they come near her.  The film fails to show any nuance and becomes a big trash feast intent at making her look as awful as possible and leaving no room to even consider the other side, which because she had already died by the time this movie was released, she wasn’t able to give. The most ridiculous moment, which wasn’t in the book, is when she goes into Christina’s room late at night while wearing white face cream that makes her appear almost demonic and then flies into a rage when she notices a wire hanger in her closet that is so over-the-top I’m surprised the cast and crew didn’t break out laughing while it was being shot.

There are issues with Christina too as she’s a little too good to be true. There are several scenes that had it been tweaked just a bit could’ve made her the difficult one instead of the mother. Case in point is when she refuses to do things that her mother asks that could easily be seen by some as Christina being a mouthy brat unwilling to do as she’s told and Joan simply stepping to create some discipline, which is why some attempt at balance would’ve helped and made it seem less like a cheap soap opera.

Spoiler Alert!

Another dumb scene comes near the end when Joan jumps on Christina and begins to strangle her and needs to be pulled off by two other women in the room (Rutanya Alda, Joycelyn Brando). It makes it look like she was close to dying had the two ladies not intervened, but Christina was at the time a grown woman and much younger than Joan, so she should’ve been able to defend herself and fight back. Having her essentially just lay down and take it seemed unrealistic and turning it into an all-out physical cat fight between the two would’ve far more entertaining and believable. Yet despite all this the production values are still top notch and in a tabloid sort of way it’s entertaining.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 16, 1981

Runtime: 2 Hours 9 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Frank Perry

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, PlutoTV, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels

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Little Big Man (1970)

Posted on July 25, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Raised as an Indian.

Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) has reached the age of 121 and agrees to a taped interview with a reporter (William Hickey). He recounts his life events including being kidnapped by Cheyenne Indians in 1859 when he was 10 and befriending their tribal leader Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) who gives him the nickname Little Big Man. He then goes on to elaborate other life events like being captured by the U.S. Calvary where he is placed in the home of a Reverend (Thayer David) and his beautiful wife (Faye Dunaway) who despite her professed Christianity is having an affair with a soda shop owner, which disillusions Jack from religion altogether. He also goes through his marriage to a Swedish immigrant named Olga (Kelly Jean Peters) and how she gets kidnapped by the Cheyenne during a stagecoach ride and Jack’s attempts to find her, which reunites him with Old Lodge Skins and leads him to meet General Custer (Richard Mulligan), who he initially admires, but eventually learns to despise.

The film is based on the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger of the same name and wonderfully mixes the whimsical style of that book into the movie and maintains overall an excellent balance between quirky moments, of which there’s many and jarring scenes dealing with Indian Massacres by the U.S. Calvary, which remains effectively disturbing and impactful despite all the humor that goes on in between. The impressive cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr. that manages to capture the Big Sky Country, filmed on-location in Montanna where many of these historical events actually occurred, in all of its glory and makes you feel like you’ve genuinely been physically transported back to that era.

The most amazing element though, which comes up right away, is the makeup effects on Hoffman where he’s made to look about as elderly as you can get and hats-off to makeup artist Dick Smith to achieve it in such an effective way. While aging of characters has been attempted in other films, I’ve never seen it so realistic as here and in fact it still holds claim even after all these years in the Guiness Book of World Records as ‘The Greatest Age Span Portrayed by a Movie Actor’. My only quibble is that his eyes as an old man appear to be blue even though for the rest of the movie Hoffman’s eyes are clearly brown.

The acting all around is superb starting of course with Hoffman and then moving onto Dunaway whose first attempt at comedy this was and she’s really funny if not a complete scene-stealer. Thayer David awesome too as her bombastic minister husband and I wished there had been more scenes with him. Chief Dan George is quite memorable as the Indian Chief, he became the first Native American ever nominated for an Oscar for his work here, in a part that was originally intended for Marlon Brando who thankfully turned it down as having a genuine Native American makes it so much more compelling. Great work too by the lesser-known Kelly Jean Peters whose frantic screams of terror, as she’s being kidnapped, I found to be both funny and frightening at the same time.

While it doesn’t affect one’s enjoyment of the movie, the film does have a few drawbacks, or moments that could’ve been done slightly better. Having Hoffman constantly come back into contact with people he had been with years earlier got a bit too cute for its own good. I was okay with some of it, like his reunion with the Indian Chief, but having him literally re-meet everyone he had known before got unrealistic and almost monotonous. I also couldn’t understand why the people he meets again don’t recognize him right away as is the case with Dunaway, as Hoffman has a very distinct face that really doesn’t change much even as he ages, so forcing him to have to remind her who he was should’ve been quite unnecessary. Same goes in reverse with the reunion with his sister, played by Carole Androsky, I immediately recognized her voice even before seeing her face, but for Hoffman it takes a long time to remember who she is, but if I the viewer could detect her voice right away why couldn’t he?

Another issue is when he meets his wife Olga many years later when she’s become a part of an Indian tribe. When he married her she had a very strong Swedish accent and due to the language barrier could only say a very few words, basically just ‘Yah’. Then, when he sees her again, she speaks fluent English, but how could she have learned that by being in an Indian tribe? Also, she had completely lost her accent, which I don’t believe would happen. I’ve known people who have lived in this country for 30 or 40 years, but where originally from somewhere else and no matter how long they’ve been here, or how ‘Americanized’ they may become they still retain their original accent, or at least sufficient hints of it.

Spoiler Alert!

There’s also issues with the General Custer character. Acting wise I felt Richard Mulligan nailed it as he integrates a great blend of comic self-importance to him, but on the satire end it goes a little too far. He gets portrayed as being a complete buffoon with a clownish logic and such a severe narcissistic ego he’s unable to realize when everyone else around him thinks he’s an idiot. There were many different issues that went into the Battle of Little Big Horn, or more commonly known as Custer’s Last Stand, and this movie answers it by saying the guy running it was a self-deluded moron, which I suppose comically and emotionally is satisfying, but doesn’t sufficiently tackle the others nuances that were also involved. There’s also the argument over the demise of Wild Bill Hickok though having him get killed by a little kid was historically inaccurate I felt it was so humorously ironic that I was willing to forgive it.

The ending, where in the book Old Lodge Skins dies, but in the movie he doesn’t, annoyed some fans as well. Director Arthur Penn admitted in interviews that the earlier script drafts had him dying, but then he felt that would be ‘too depressing’ so they had him live, but I felt with such a picturesque back drop that having him lay down for his final resting place was appropriate. He was really old anyways and had also become blind, so having him get up and be led away by Hoffman was just prolonging the inevitable anyways, so they might as well have him go down when it was his time as ‘cheating it’ like they do here doesn’t really add all that much.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 23, 1970

Runtime: 2 Hours 27 Minutes (Uncut) 2 Hour 19 Minutes (Studio Version)

Rated GP

Director: Arthur Penn

Studio: National General Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, PlutoTV, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Quirky, Revisionist Western

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Double Negative (1980)

Posted on June 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who killed his wife?

Michael (Michael Sarrazin) is a photojournalist tormented by fragmented memories of his wife’s murder. Paula (Susan Clark) is his girlfriend who’s trying to help him sort through these flashbacks, so he can find some answers. However, she too has things to hide as she’s busily paying off a man named Lawrence Miles (Anthony Perkins) who threatens to go to the police about what he knows about the killing. There’s also Lester (Howard Duff) a private investigator who sticks his nose too deeply into the case and finds himself at deadly odds with both Lawrence and Paula.

The film is based on the 1948 novel ‘The Three Roads’ written by Ross Macdonald under his real name Kenneth Millar. Macdonald later went on to have a stellar career writing novels about private investigator character Lew Archer and this story has plenty of potential but gets mishandled and ultimately becomes a misfire. A lot of the problem stems from the production employing three different writers who all had different perspectives on where they wanted the story to go and then relying on director George Bloomfield to cram it all together, which he doesn’t succeed at. The result is a fragmented mishmash that takes a long while to become intriguing and even then, remains interesting only sporadically. Lots of extended scenes particularly at the beginning that should’ve been trimmed and a poor pacing that barely manages to create any momentum.

It doesn’t help that the main characters are wholly unlikable and uninteresting. Clark especially comes off as arrogant right from the beginning when we see her drive by what appears to be Amish people in a horse and buggy fighting through the snow and cold while she enjoys things in her warm ritzy car, which makes her seem detached and uncaring. The scene where she’s trying to procure an important real estate deal and then gets hampered by Michael playing loud music in the other room, so she then excuses herself and promises to be right back. I was fully expecting her to yell at Michael for his misbehavior, but instead she strips off her clothes and the two make love, but it seemed like sex should be the last thing on her mind during such an serious business meeting and what would happen if the clients, who were just a door away and waiting for her return, would walk in on them? 

Sarrazin doesn’t cut it either. I know he’s been lambasted by critics in his other film appearances for being too transparent and forgettable and yet I’ve usually defended him as I feel he can sometimes be effective even given the right material. Here though he falls precariously flat. Some of it is the fault of the writing which doesn’t lend him to create a character with any nuance, or likability, but in either case he’s a complete bore and the viewer isn’t emotionally invested in his predicament. His flashback moments where he sees himself in some sort of prisoner of war camp doesn’t make a lot of sense, or have much to do with the main plot, and seems like something for a whole different movie. 

On the other hand, Perkins is fantastic and the only thing that livens it up to the extent that he should’ve been given much more screen time as the film sinks whenever he’s not on. It’s great too at seeing SCTV alums like John Candy, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, and Catherine O’Hara in small parts where with the exception of Candy they’re not comical but instead make a rare turn at being dramatic. Duff is kind of fun and has one great moment, really the only good one in the movie, where he gets trapped in an elevator and must escape being shot by Perkins, who has his arm lodged in the otherwise closed doors, by desperately running back and forth in the closed space that he’s given. Michael Ironside has a memorable bit too as a bar patron who becomes incensed at Sarrazin when he refuses to allow him to buy him a drink. 

Spoiler Alert!

The denouement just leaves more questions and fails to tie up the loose ends as intended. For one thing it shows Sarrazin as being the one who strangled his wife, which I had started to suspect a long while earlier, so it’s not a ‘shocking surprise’ like I think the filmmakers thought it would. It also has Perkins leaving the scene, as he was having an affair with the woman, and even briefly speaking to Clark who witnesses him going, so why he’d insist Clark needs to pay him hush money didn’t make much sense. Sure, he could still go to the police and say that it was Sarrazin that did it, but Perkins fingerprints were at the scene of the crime, so I’d think either way he’d get implicated, and Clark could come forward saying she was a witness who saw him leaving. If anything, Clark should’ve been pushing him to go to the cops versus bribing him to stay away.  

Also, the way it gets shown, Clark comes into the bedroom after Sarrazin has already strangled his wife, so all she sees is him weeping over his wife’s dead body. For all she knew, from that perspective, is that Perkins really did kill the woman and Sarrazin was simply the first to come upon her dead body and thus for it to be crystal clear Clark should’ve entered while he was still in the middle of the act versus when he was already done.

Beyond that is that question of why would Clark want to stay with someone she knew had such violent tendencies? Wouldn’t she be afraid he could get upset at some point and do that to her? Sarrazin even asks her at the very end if she is afraid and her only response is: ‘aren’t you’? This though only muddles things further cementing it as a botched effort. 

Alternate Title: Deadly Companion

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 12, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Director: George Bloomfield

Studio: Quadrant Films

Available: Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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Straw Dogs (1971)

Posted on May 28, 2025 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Man defends his home.

David (Dustin Hoffman), a nerdy mathematician, has been given a research grant and uses it to relocate to the rural countryside of England with his wife Amy (Susan George). They move into a farmhouse that was once owned by Amy’s father and they hire four men (Del Henney, Ken Hutchinson, Jim Norton, Donald Webster) to fix up the roof. The men though don’t work much and spend most of the time making fun of David and ogling Amy. After several bad encounters, including the grizzly death of their pet cat, David fires them and hopes that’ll be the last it, but things only get worse. When a teen girl named Janice (Sally Thomsett) disappears her violently drunken father Tom (Peter Vaughan) thinks it was caused by Henry (David Warner) a mentally handicapped man that Janice had shown an affinity for. Tom, along with the four other men, become a lynch mob determined to find Henry and bring him some ‘street justice’. David and Amy, while returning from a church service, hit Henry with their car as he’s running from the other men. David agrees to take the injured Henry into his home until a doctor can arrive, but the five men insist on getting inside to beat and kill Henry for his perceived crime. Since David had avoided having any confrontation with the men previously even when they had openly mocked him, they presume he’ll be a pushover this time as well, but David has finally decided to take a stand and will defend his home from the intruders in any way he can. 

While it was controversial at the time many now consider this the pinnacle of director Sam Peckinpah’s career and his directorial touches are supreme. The capturing of the brown empty vast landscape of nothingness, shot during the winter of 1971, brings out a surreal sense making it seem like the characters are living in a purgatory outer world where everything is dead and helps explain the deadness of the men’s souls that have been forced to endure their entire lives there. The climactic sequence where David’s home comes under siege is deftly handled. Normally in thrillers pounding music gets played during these segments to ramp up the tension, but here there’s only the sound of a distance foghorn, which makes it much more creepy, distinct, and helps accentuate the isolation. 

Some have been critical of the film’s violence especially at the time when there was activism going on that tried to stymie violent material on both TV and movies with the idea that violence was a ‘learned’ behavior and if people didn’t see it so much in entertainment, then they wouldn’t do it in real life. Peckinpah though saw it differently as he felt violence was an instinctual reaction that couldn’t just be ‘unlearned’ and that in certain situations it was necessary and not every conflict could be resolved peacefully, a message the film brings out quite well. 

While Susan George gives an excellent performance, as do the four villainous men, particularly Vaughan as their ringleader making them some of the creepiest bad guys in film history, I did find her character confusing. I didn’t understand why she’d marry a guy that she found by her own admission cowardly even bringing up that he was ‘running away’ from problems he was having at his university and his ‘hiding behind his studies’ in order to avoid it. She also shows no respect for his work and several times even vandalizes his chalk board that has his mathematical equations, so what attracted her to him in the first place? Would’ve made more sense had she initially idolized him for his academic status and then became painfully aware of his meekness as the film progressed, which would’ve made for a more interesting arch.

Spoiler Alert!

The film is based on the 1969 novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams, but with many changes some of which worked while others didn’t. In the novel the couple had an 8-year-old girl, but in the film there is no child. To a degree it doesn’t make that much of a difference though when the bad guys attack the house it might’ve heightened the urgency more knowing that David was not only defending his ‘home’, but also the safety of his terrified daughter. The biggest change that the film does is that it creates a connection between Henry and Janice where Janice sneaks away with him during a church party where she invites him to be intimate with her, but in the process, he accidentally kills her, which seemed too similar to Of Mice and Men. It’s confusing too why this teen girl, who outside of her buck teeth seems reasonably attractive, would feel the need to throw herself at a mentally handicapped man, or get flirty with David, who is married. Why can’t she find guys her own age to fool around with? Knowing the hormones of most teen boys that shouldn’t be too hard, so without further explanation to her psyche, which doesn’t happen, her ‘inviting’ of Henry is quite unnatural and forced. 

In the book Henry is instead a child killer who’s being transported back to prison when the vehicle he’s in gets stuck in the snow, which allows him to escape. At the same time Janice, who’s mentally disabled, which isn’t made clear in the movie, runs away from a Christmas party where she ends up dying from the exposure to the cold, but otherwise it has nothing to do with the escape of Henry and is only presumed to have a connection by the five men, which makes more sense and the screenplay should’ve have kept it this way.

On the other hand, in the book none of the attacking men die and are only badly injured, but I think death gives it a more final resolution, so the movie scores there. I also liked how David is forced to resort to items he can find around the house, much like in the film Last House on the Left, which came out a year later, to fight off the bad guys versus the cliched machoism of having a big gun to blow them away and it also helps to show how intellectual wits can ultimately be used to overpower the otherwise physically stronger attackers. 

The rape scene in which the wife gets assaulted by not only one, but two men was another problematic moment as the book had no such segment. For one thing it makes it seem like she’s actually enjoying the attack, at least with the first one, and she recovers from it much too quickly and doesn’t even bother to tell David about it and able to go on relatively normally afterwards, which didn’t seem realistic and thus I think it should’ve been excised since it comes off as exploitive and doesn’t have that much to do with the main plot. 

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 22, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Criterion Collection)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Classic, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Thrillers/Suspense

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You’ll Like My Mother (1972)

Posted on April 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pregnant woman held captive.

Francesca (Patty Duke) travels by bus to Duluth, Minnesota in order to meet her mother-in-law (Rosemary Murphy) after her husband dies in a plane crash in Vietnam leaving her alone and pregnant. When she arrives, she finds the woman to be cold and indifferent unlike how her husband had described her where he always insisted that ‘you’ll like my mother’. Francesca also finds out that he apparently had a sister, a mute girl named Kathleen (Sian Barbara Allen) that he had never mentioned. A snowstorm blocks her from leaving forcing her to stay in an upstairs bedroom where more troubling secrets come out including the fact that a young man named Kenny (Richard Thomas) is secretly residing in the home and has been accused in the past of being a serial rapist.

Blah thriller based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Naomi A. Hintze. The only interesting aspect about the film is that it was shot on-location at the Glensheen Historic Estate, which 5 years later became the site of a real-life crime when the mansion’s owner, Elisabeth Congdon and her nurse, were murdered by her son-in-law. The movie also marks the debut of Sian Barbara Allen, who died just recently and was quite active in TV and movies during the 70’s before retiring in 1990 in order to focus full-time on being an activist. She was, particularly in her prime, a great beauty with the most mesmerizing pair of blue eyes you’ll ever see. Unfortunately, her role doesn’t have her saying much outside of a few words she manages to mumble out and her character seems to be put in simply to help the protagonist figure out the mystery.

The story unfolds slowly and because the majority of it takes place in one building it becomes visually static. Since it was filmed in Minnesota during the winter the white stuff on the ground is real, which helps with the authenticity, but because it didn’t actually snow when it was being shot the crew was forced to use fake falling flakes in a feeble attempt to replicate a snowstorm, which they’re not able to pull off. Anyone who’s ever experience a real blizzard will see how tacky this one looks and thus the premise that ‘nobody can get through this storm’ is lost.

Patty Duke is good, but her character doesn’t do much outside of staying cooped up in room while Allen does most of the leg work. Her insistence that she didn’t need any help financially makes you wonder then why did she come at all? If it was just for a visit, she could’ve done that in the summer when Minnesota weather is more hospitable and after the baby was born. In many ways having her in need of money would’ve made more sense and heightened the dramatic tension since that would make her desperate with nowhere else to turn.

Murphy is a weak villain as half the time she’s more nervous than Duke and easily fooled making it seem that anyone could outfox her and get away. It doesn’t help that she stupidly gives away who she really is and why she’s there when she has a conversation with Thomas that gets overheard by Duke, which ruins the mystery when the film is only halfway through and thus killing what moderate intrigue there had been.

The foot chase through the snow at the end does offer some tension but waiting all the way until the finale for any action was a mistake and Duke should’ve tried to escape earlier. The plot twists aren’t enough to make sitting through worth it. It’s not adequate material for a 90-minute feature length film as there’s 30-minute episodes of the old ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ with more plot wrinkles than what you get here.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 13, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Lamont Johnson

Studio: Universal Pictures

Available: DVD (Warner Archive)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

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Cheech and Chong’s The Corsican Brothers (1984)

Posted on April 8, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Feeling pain from sibling.

In France during the 1840’s two brothers, Luis and Lucien (Cheech Marin, Thomas Chong), are orphaned when their fathers die during a duel. Over time they realize they can feel the other’s pain and then split up and go their separate ways at age 9 after they accidentally burn down their house. 20 years later they meet up but find that their personalities are quite different with Lucien upset about the treatment of the pheasants and hoping to start a revolution while Luis wants to avoid all confrontations. Both of them draw the ire of the Queen’s henchman Fuckaire (Roy Dotrice) forcing them go in disguise in order to visit the Queen’s two daughters (Shelby Chong, Rikki Marin).

If there was ever a movie idea that cried out impending disaster during the planning stages it was this one and how it ever went into full-fledged production is a mystery, but far more interesting to explore than anything that’s actually in the film. Possibly the two got the idea after having brief cameo’s in Yellowbeard, another period piece parody, but the red flags should’ve gone up immediately. The whole reason Cheech and Chong became such a hit was their stoner caricatures and without that there’s nothing to watch. The two have proven in previous installments of the film series to be very good at playing different characters, but they were always in support. It was the stoner comedy routine that made it a hit and getting completely away from that and even changing the time period to the 18th century was too extreme and fans of the duo’s earlier work rightly stayed away.

The only possible chance it could’ve had would’ve been if the stoners had found some sort of time machine and went back into history where their mentalities would clash with those from the different culture though even this could’ve backfired, but at least it would’ve kept some slim thread from the other films in the series versus this way where there’s no connection. Yes, it still has the two stars, but their roles here just aren’t funny or engaging. Clearly their egos had them thinking it was all about them, but it really wasn’t and without the right material these two really struggle with a lot of the attempted humor coming off as strained.

The running gag dealing with their ability to feel the other’s pain runs out of steam fast and outside of that there’s really no laughs with many of the bits seeming better suited for a TV-sitcom if even that. The ending scene where Cheech imagines what the women he’s about to marry will look when they get older is the only unique moment with everything else being borrowed from some other movie, or show, which in almost all cases did it better than here. Only Edie McClurg and Dotrice have anything that is even faintly memorable, and their presence help keeps it slightly afloat.

It’s also fun to see Rae Dawn Chong, Tommy’s daughter, in a small bit as a gypsy that they meet while at a restaurant. Rae has always seemed to have a much different mentality than her father who’s predominantly goofy while she comes-off as serious, so I liked the idea of them sharing some scenes together but wished it hadn’t been so brief and that she’d been given a bigger role.

The only good thing to come out of this is that it finally became clear to everyone involved that it was time to put the whole thing to rest and both men decided to split-up and go their separate ways. The reason for this came when the two had a falling-out during postproduction when Chong decided to dub Cheech’s wife’s lines with a voiceover expert. Both were able to find success individually and finally reunited to bring back their stoner characters in an animated film in 2013.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: July 27, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes 

Rated PG

Director: Thomas Chong

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Parody

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