Category Archives: Movies Based on Novels

Six Weeks (1982)

Posted on June 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

sixweeks

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Young girl has leukemia.

Patrick Dalton (Dudley Moore) is running for political office in the state of California when he becomes lost while trying to find his way to a political fundraiser where he is to be the keynote speaker. He stops to ask a young girl, Nicole (Katherine Healy), for directions and the two strike-up a conversation. He invites her to the fundraiser and finds that she’s the daughter of Charlotte (Mary Tyler Moore) who is the wealthy owner of a cosmetic company. Initially Charlotte is frosty towards Patrick convinced he’s just another opportunist politician. Nicole though grows very fond of Patrick and volunteers to work on his campaign. Charlotte, after seeing how much her daughter likes Patrick, even agrees to give him a generous donation, which he initially rejects until he learns that Nicole has been diagnosed with leukemia and has only a short while to live. This causes Patrick to become quite close to Charlotte and Nicole and he begins visiting them frequently much to the concern of his wife Peg (Shannon Wilcox) who thinks he’s having an affair.

Hard to find much to like about this shallow tear-jerker that was based on the novel of the same name by Fred Mustard Steward. I did though like seeing Dudley, who also composed the film’s score, in a rare dramatic turn. He’s best known for his comedy, but even when he was at his goofiness I still detected a serious side to him and this role here brings that out quite well. I did though have issues with the marriage angle as I felt the wife gave up too easily. She does show-up at a party that the three others are at in an attempt to make them uncomfortable, which it does, but I felt she should’ve created more of a scene. This was done in an era where putting up a veneer of civility was expected even when it was with people who shared intense feelings towards each other, but these days there’s jilted women out there that don’t take kindly to those that are out to ‘steal their man’ and could lead to some very public catfights, which could’ve given the film a lively energy as well as making the viewer more sympathetic to Dudley for leaving her as she would be better deemed as a ‘psycho’. Yet the way the film does it here you’re actually sympathetic to the wife and Dudley, as noble as his intentions are, comes off looking a bit like a cad for literally just abandoning her and getting with the other two essentially full-time.

I was confused too why this didn’t hurt him politically. If I’m his opponent and I catch-wind that he’s been seen regularly with another women that’s not his wife I use it to my advantage to crush him in the polls with it, or this is something his wife could’ve done by tipping off to the press that he was seeing someone else in order to ruin his bid and get back at him, yet none of this occurs. What’s the point of having him be in politics if it’s not going to be used to enter in some potentially delicious dramatic conflicts? Might as well have him being a bland accountant since him as a politician doesn’t really add much, or make that much of a difference to what happens.

Healy, who as of this date is the only theatrical film she’s been in and much better known for her ballet work, is fantastic and shows a lot of poise for someone who never acted in a movie before. I enjoyed her worldly-wise character who despite her age shows a keen awareness to many adult topics, which I appreciated. Kids can be far more observant about things than many adults would like to think, so I was glad she wasn’t played-up to being cute, but painfully naive. I did though feel her protruding, poorly spaced teeth should’ve been straightened with braces and was surprised that her mother, being as rich as she was, hadn’t had that done.

Her leukemia that she’s supposedly suffering from is problematic as she goes through the great majority of the film showing absolutely no symptoms of it. She states that she’s refused treatment, so I guess that could explain why her hair doesn’t fall-out, but I’ve known people who’ve suffered from the illness and it takes a toll on one’s energy to the point that they become bedridden as it progresses and yet here she shows nothing but boundless energy and even dances on stage without any signs of exhaustion near the end. It got to the point that I started to wonder if she was faking being sick and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking the same thing.

The casting of Mary Tyler Moore, who won the Razzy award for her work here, was a real mistake. Although she was only 45 she looked more like she was 55 and too old to have a daughter that wasn’t yet even in high school. She shows at times quite a cold demeanor making the way she melts away and falls for Dudley seem too quick and forced. Watching the two walk side-by-side where she’s clearly way taller than him makes it resemble a mother walking her son than a couple and thus has the romantic angle visually look even more odd and awkward than it already is.

I was confused too about who this girl’s father was. I have never read the book of which this is based, so maybe it gets talked about there, but here it’s never mentioned. I would think that even if she was a product of a painful divorce her father would still want to see her especially if he knew she was dying. Even if it was just a passing fling that the mother had year’s ago it would be presumed that Dudley would be curious about it and at least ask since he was essentially taking the father’s place with his presence.

Having the Dudley character ‘pull some strings’ in order to get Nicole to perform onstage in the New York Ballet at the last minute was too fanciful to be believed. The other cast members would resent that they would have to rehearse for weeks, even months and years, just to get the opportunity to be on the show and yet this kid gets whisked into the lead, at the sacrifice of someone else, all at the last minute. I admit I liked seeing the Nutrcracker production, but having Nicole already a part of the cast, but afraid due to the onset of the disease she might not be able to do it when it became time for the performance, and having some overly ambitious understudy ready to take over if she couldn’t, would’ve made more sense and been more interesting drama.

Spoiler Alert!

The death scene has got to be one of the lamest I’ve ever seen. Again, she spends virtually the entire movie showing no outward signs of any problem and then while on a subway car she starts feeling ‘weird’ and then a few seconds after that she promptly falls over dead, which was so corny it was almost like the movie makers were begging the viewers to make fun of it.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Tony Bill

Studio: Universal Pictures

Available: Amazon Video, Tubi, Freevee, YouTube, VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

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Magic (1978)

Posted on May 19, 2024 | 1 comment

magic

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ventriloquist has split personality.

Corky (Anthony Hopkins) is an aspiring stand-up magician who’s finding it hard to play in front of live audiences. After a particularly disastrous effort he comes upon the idea of adding in a ventriloquist dummy named Fats into his act. The addition helps him become a top act and soon gets him the attention of well known agent Ben Green (Burgess Meredith). Ben wants to get Corky a TV contract, but first Corky must undergo a health physical, which Corky refuses to do. Ben insists that Corky has no other option, so Corky leaves the city and drives via a cab to the Catskills where he grew up and rents a lakeside cabin from his former high school sweetheart Peggy (Ann-Margaret). The romance between the two quickly renews, but then Ben finds out where Corky is staying and catches Corky alone in his cabin having an animated argument with his dummy convincing Ben that Corky has mental issues. Ben tells Corky that he’s going to get him psychiatric care, but Corky fears that if it gets out that he’s mentally ill he’ll never get another job offer and thus resorts to drastic action in order to keep Ben quiet.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman who also wrote the screenplay. The novel was unique in that it was told through the voice and point-of-view of the dummy. While there had already been several stories and movies dealing with the ventriloquist/dummy persona including the film Dead of Night starring Michael Redgrave and a famous episode of ‘Twilight Zone’ where actor Cliff Robertson played a ventriloquist that gets tormented by his dummy. This film takes a slightly different approach where upfront the protagonist is clearly shown as having a major personality disorder and thus he’s the real threat while the dummy only symbolizes his inner turmoil between the ego and the id.

The film definitely has some creepy moments especially the dummy, whose spooky appearance is what makes it worth catching. It was modeled after Hopkins with oversized blue eyes, head, and mouth gives it an almost monstrous presence. Supposedly when it was completed and Hopkins first took it home to rehearse he got unnerved by it in the middle of the night and called Goldman to come over and pick-it-up or he was going to destroy it. The placid, gray setting of the isolated cabin, which was actually filmed in California despite it looking like northern New York, is perfect for this type of story and the serenity helps accentuate the suspense.

I really liked too the opening bit where a sweating Corky is seen bombing on stage in front of a apathetic crowd, which realistically hits home how nerve-wracking being up onstage for the first time can be though I wish we could’ve heard what Corky angrily shouted at the audience instead of having the sound of this blotted out by a voice over. It is though hard to believe that a man in his 40’s would get so addicted to his dummy, something he hadn’t used before then, that he couldn’t communicate without it and would have to take it everywhere he went. For a relationship to become this deep seated I’d think he’d have to have been doing a ventriloquist act from childhood on and thus the alter-ego of the dummy became meshed with his own as he grew older.

The acting is excellent by not only Hopkins, but also the supporting cast. Meredith is especially enjoyable playing the caricature of a Hollywood agent, which was modeled after the real-life one of Swifty Lazar, with his best moments coming whenever he takes out one of his expensive cigars, which are each separately incased inside a glass cannister. When he pulls the cigar out he then flings the cannister away, which can then be heard shattering onto the floor. Ann-Margaret known for her beauty and flair plays down her looks here as she wears no make-up and takes on a more earthy persona. Ed Lauter is also interesting playing her husband. Normally he’s a tough guy/bully and I thought this was going to come-out when he takes Corky out on a boat in the middle of a lake where he was going to threaten him to stay away from ‘his girl’, but instead he surprisingly displays a more vulnerable side and makes an emotional appeal to Corky to leave Peggy alone versus a strong-armed one.

Spoiler Alert!

The pacing is slow and the suspense builds very gradually though ultimately there are a few good spooky moments including a brief moment when Fats begins moving itself without the help of an operator and when Corky’s face suddenly begins to resemble the wooden dummy’s. Yet I felt it could’ve gone farther. The segment which has Corky crawling on the floor doing whatever the dummy tells him is certainly unnerving, but could’ve been accentuated more by showing it from Corky’s perspective where the dummy’s head would’ve grown to giant size as it looks down on the meek Corky as it gives him the orders.

The ending, at least when I first saw it, had me confused. The film climaxes with Corky returning to his cabin having stabbed himself and bleeding to death where he and Fats then slowly die together, but outside of the cabin Ann-Margaret appears telling Corky she has now changed her mind and wants to go away with him. Initially though it had been made to seem like Corky had killed her, so seeing her reappear as she does comes-off as almost dream-like. She also begins to speak in the dummy’s voice making it seem like his spirit had transferred to her.

Upon the second viewing many years later I came to the conclusion that this scene was meant to only be ironic. That if Corky had simply held-out longer Peggy would’ve agreed to go with him and thus him killing himself was a horrible waste, but in retrospect since he was suffering from such severe mental issues it was unlikely a long lasting relationship would’ve happened, so having her come back the way she does doesn’t really make much sense since she had been deeply offended by what he had said earlier, via the dummy. It would’ve been more horrifying had he chased her around the house and then killed her and the viewer seeing that get played-out.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: November 8, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Attenborough

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Thrillers/Suspense

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Bug (1975)

Posted on May 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

bug

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Underground insects set fires.

A small, rural California community becomes besieged by a violent earthquake that opens up large cracks in the ground that allows a type of bug to come up through them that can start fires by rubbing its two legs together. Soon fires begin everywhere and there are many casualties. Professor James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman), a local scientist, is put in charge to research these new insects and see if there’s a way to control them. He eventually learns that their time is limited because they can’t handle the low pressure of our climate, but then one of the bugs kills his wife (Joanna Miles) and this creates an obsession in him to save the last of the species and breed it with a cockroach to create a new hybrid, which he successfully does, but with horrifying results.

The film’s greatest achievement, which was the last to be produced by famous horrormeister William Castle, is the photography of the bugs, which is sure to make anyone who is queasy about insects to be squirming in their seats. My favorite moment is when the professor stabs the bug’s underbelly and all of this white puss explodes out of its insides in slow motion. Some may also enjoy the weird electronic score by Charles Fox, but for me its the quiet moments that were far more effective with my favorite part coming right at the beginning during the opening credits where we hear nothing but the wind blowing off the open prairie while a white church can be seen in the background.

The fatal flaw is the fact that the characters are dull and one-dimensional with none of them standing-out, or having any discernable personalities. In order for the viewer to get emotionally wrapped-up in their fate they need to be interesting enough to save and these people clearly aren’t. What’s worse is that the protagonist, whom we are supposed to bond with and root for, begins behaving in stranger and stranger ways until he becomes as creepy as the bugs he’s fighting.

There’s just so many fires one can watch before it becomes redundant, so during the middle of the second act the film takes an awkward transition from being a disaster flick into a mad scientist one, but the way it gets done is confusing. Why would the professor want to keep the bug species alive as they’ve just killed his wife, so you’d think he’d be happy that they were dying off, but instead he saves one by putting it into a pressure chamber and then tries to mate it with another bug species. His motivations though needed to be better explained, but aren’t, which makes the whole second-half off-putting. Some fans of the film in their reviews on IMDb say it’s because the man goes ‘insane’, but why? Some may argue it’s because the death of his wife, which causes a breakdown, but there’s many people who survive the death of a spouse and it doesn’t turn them into a nutjob. If the man does have weak mental state that could collapse under a stressful event then this needs to be eluded to, or hinted at right at the beginning, so the viewer can be clued into the idea that the individual has mental issues, but it never is.

There are also those that say in the novel version, ‘The Hephaestus Plague’ by Thomas Page, which the film is based on, better explains the reason for the professor’s mental decline, which I don’t doubt, but the filmmakers cannot depend on the audience having read the book beforehand, nor should it be needed. The film needs to make the inner-workings of it’s lead character clearer on its own and in that respect the movie fails.

Spoiler Alert!

The way he’s able to create this new type of insect happens too quickly and seamlessly. Normally it should take many generations of breeding for a bug that doesn’t originally have any wings, and neither of the parents do, to finally begin to form them in their offspring and yet here this occurs literally overnight. The bugs are also capable of spelling out words with their bodies, but even a super smart species must learn the English language before they’re able to communicate it. No one has a language imprinted on their minds as they come out of the womb, or in this case the larvae, and yet here that’s exactly what we’re expected to believe.

Personally if I had directed it I would’ve done the storyline in reverse. Started with the professor already  in a secluded room in his house secretly trying to create a new species of bug because he has a God complex and wants to have an insect named after him. Then have the bugs escape from his lab and kill his wife and then go out into the town and start killing everyone else with their fires. I’m not saying this version would be perfect, but at least the narrative would be linear and the action better connected versus here where it comes-off like two different plotlines awkwardly spliced together.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Studio: Paramount

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Sci-Fi, Thrillers/Suspense

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End of the Game (1975)

Posted on May 8, 2024 | 1 comment

endofgame

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Unable to prove crime.

Richard Gastman (Robert Shaw) makes a bet with his young friend Hans (Martin Ritt) that he can commit a crime in front of him, but Hans will be unable to prove who did it. Later Hans’ girlfriend (Rita Calderoni) plunges to her death from off of a bridge. Hans is convinced Gastman did it, but just like he predicted he cannot prove it. 30 years pass and Hans is now a police commissioner with only a few months to live due to suffering from stomach cancer. His Lieutenant Schmied (Donald Sutherland) is found shot to death inside his police vehicle. He’d been assigned by Hans to keep tabs on Gastman as Hans was still intent on making him pay for what he did to his girlfriend, but he again can’t prove that Gastman killed Schmied though he’s certain that he did. Walter (Jon Voight) gets assigned to the case, but Hans can’t be completely honest with him about the case, so instead he sets Walter up to witness firsthand the brutality of Gastman for himself.

The story is based on the 1950 novel ‘The Judge and the Hangman’ by Frederich Durrenmatt who also wrote the screenplay and has a very amusing cameo as a man who plays chess against himself and always loses. The novel was first adapted into a broadcast for German television in 1957 and then again in 1961 for British TV, and then it got adapted for a third time for Italian television and then a fourth as a TV-movie for French broadcast before finally making it’s way to the big screen with this version, which so far has been the last adaptation to date.

The film was directed by Academy Award winning actor Maximillian Schell who was unable to get along with either of his leading actors with Shaw accusing him of being a ‘clockwatcher’ and ‘pocket Hitler’ while Voight described him as being humorless and overly demanding. The film is well directed for the most part, but an unusual reliance on humor almost kills it. The story itself is certainly not meant to be funny, but Schell implements comedic moments particularly in the first half when they’re not needed and almost a distraction. This is particularly evident during Schmied’s funeral and earlier when Schmied’s body is found and another cop drives the corpse to the hospital with Donald Sutherland, in an unbilled bit, playing the dead man and his body twisting around in weird ways as the car goes down the curvy road, which is humorous, but unnecessary and doesn’t help propel the plot. Initially too the corpse is spotted by some pedestrians who stare at it through the car window and seem amused by it, which isn’t exactly a normal reaction people have when witnessing someone who has just died. Possibly this was meant to show the public’s distrust, or disdain for the police, but if that were the case it should’ve been explained and elaborated.

The casting is unusual as it features Ritt in the lead who’s better known as a director, but here ultimately shines and becomes the film’s only likable character though the way he behaves throughout still makes him seem sketchy like everyone else. Shaw, who complained that he never got paid the $50,000 that he was owed for doing this, is commanding as usual, but Voight who wears a shaggy bleached blonde look comes-off as creepy right away. Technically the viewer is expected to side with his character, at least upfront and consider him a ‘good guy’, but right away Voigt telegraphs it in a way that makes him seem ‘off’ and hence kind of ruins the stories eventual twists.

For those who like complex whodunits this might fit the bill. The plot certainly does constantly unravel in surprising ways and no one should be bored, but the characters are cold and unlikable. There’s no one to root for and therefore the viewer is not as keyed into the outcome as they would’ve had they been more emotionally invested. The editing is also quite choppy and there seems to be certain key elements that get left out, which most likely due to the fact that the original runtime was 106 minutes, but the DVD version, the only one publicly available at this time, runs a mere 92 minutes.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 21, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes (Director’s Cut) 1 Hour 33 Minutes (DVD Version)

Rated R

Director: Maximillian Schell

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama

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Footprints on the Moon (1975)

Posted on May 3, 2024 | Leave a comment

footprints5

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Tormented by a nightmare.

Alice (Florinda Bolkan) is tormented by a constant dream involving an old movie she saw when she was younger that dealt with a man being left on the moon to die. She awakens one morning to find that she’s slept for over 2-days and when she arrives at her job she learns that she’s been fired for not showing up and not calling-in. She gets back to her apartment and spots a postcard revealing a hotel, which she vaguely remembers being at. She decides to travel there, which is off the Turkish coast, and meets people who say they’ve seen her before, but while wearing a wig and going by a different name.

The film’s chief asset is the directing by Luigi Bazzone, who had a brief 10-year career where he did 5 films and then inexplicably retired when he was only 46 and never to do another film after this one, which is a shame as he had many more years ahead of him and could’ve helmed a slew of interesting movies in the process. This one definitely relies on a good visual touch. The opening bit done on the moon has certainly a tacky quality, but is also captivating. It doesn’t exactly look authentic, but captured in a way that gives it a dream-like feel and makes it gripping. The island setting that Alice goes to, shot in Phaselis, has such a unique topography that it gives the whole thing a very outer worldly appeal and helps enhance the bizarre story elements.

Bolkan’s presence though does not help. She wears a perpetual scowl, outside of one moment when she smiles to greet a child, that makes her unappealing and hard to sympathize with. She also lost too much weight, reportedly 11 pounds by her own admission, making her look scrawny and like she could tip over with the slightest breeze. She already had a thin frame, so for her to lose anymore, makes her anorexic and not sexy particularly when she goes nude during a shower scene.

Her character is ghost-like and transparent. Some may say this is due to the twist, but for the viewer to get wrapped-up into the character’s quandary they need to see her as a multi-dimensional person. Instead we get someone with no apparent connections to the world around her. Having her go through the plot with some other friend beside her, which she could’ve fed-off of emotionally whenever she got upset, or confused would’ve helped tremendously. Trying to care about a person who’s not fleshed-out doesn’t work and I went through most of it feeling ambivalent about the protagonist’s fate.

Nicoletta Elmi, who plays a young girl that Alice meets while on the island, has far more appeal especially with her striking red hair and clear blue eye, and thus her scenes allow for some intrigue though her conversations with Alice seem to just be repeating themselves. Klaus Kinski is only on hand for a little while and never interacts with anyone making it seem like he’s in some other movie with no connection to this one. In fact his moments could’ve been cut, he only gets shown sporadically anyways, and the movie would not have been hurt by it.

The plot, which was based loosely on the novel ‘Las Huellas’ by Mario Fenelli, doesn’t have enough going on to hold the viewer’s attention. This is yet another example where had it been shortened it would’ve worked perfectly as an episode for the “Twilight Zone’, but here it labors along. It gives out a lot of tantalizing clues at the beginning, but the second act goes nowhere with not enough twists. The concept becomes highly strained with a character that doesn’t interact enough and the few conversations she has are bland and don’t allow the story to progress. The ‘surprise ending’ doesn’t make-up for the lulls and only leads to more questions than answers.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 1, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Luigi Bazzoni

Studio: Cineriz

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video, Screambox

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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Daniel (1983)

Posted on April 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

daniel

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Researching his parent’s execution.

Based on the 1971 novel ‘The Book of Daniel’ by E.L. Doctorow, who also wrote the screenplay, which was inspired by the true story of Ethel and Joseph Rosenberg, who were convicted and executed in 1953 for being spies to the Soviet Union. The story here centers on Daniel (Timothy Hutton), the now grown son of Paul (Mandy Patinkin) and Rochelle (Lindsay Crouse), who many decades after his parent’s execution now decides to research their case to see if his parents really were spies, or not.

Despite being well produced the film failed at both the box office and with the critics, which is a shame as I felt director Sidney Lumet does some marvelous work here and creates a few powerful scenes. One is when the the FBI agents raid Daniel’s house, who is played at this stage by Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and the look of horror in his eyes as the home gets torn up from top to bottom and his father violently removed in handcuffs. Another great moment are the execution scenes filmed in the actual death chamber at the Sing Sing Prison. These moments are quite chilling as Lumet’s focuses in on the close-up shots of the two being strapped in and the leather flaps of their hoods pulled down over their frightened eyes and then seeing their bodies shake violently while a group of men sit quietly observing it is effectively disturbing and one of the more impactful execution segments put on film.

There are though some things that could’ve been done better. The jumping back and forth between time periods proves distracting and takes the viewer out of the story instead of wrapping them in. The book of which it’s based had a very fluid structure as well, but here the scenes involving Daniel and his sister as children prove far more impactful while segments involving Hutton all grown-up are weak by comparison. The film would’ve been more effective had it taken a linear structure.

Watching Hutton walk along the sidewalk while voice overs are heard from his sister, played by Amanda Plummer, chastising him for not caring more about what happened his parents, was unnecessary and heavy-handed as we had heard her saying all this earlier to him at the dinner table and could see by the shocked reaction on his face that it really got to him, so we didn’t need the same lines getting repeated again. The music particularly the singing, is way too intrusive and having almost no music and just relying on the action and visuals would’ve been far better.

I was also confused who Linda was, played by Tovah Feldshuh, whom Daniel comes upon at a dental office years later and acts like he knows her from childhood. I didn’t remember seeing a young Linda, though one is listed in the closing credits, and then it dawned on me that there was a quick moment when a snotty girl tells Daniel and his sister, when they’re kids, that they ‘smell’ while they’re riding in a car, but because this character does end up returning and playing a pivotal role to the plot I felt the confrontations between them as kids should’ve been more pronounced and extended instead of so fleeting that you completely forget about it.

Hutton, who turned down the starring role in Risky Business to be in this at the protest of his agent, gets wasted. He gives a strong performance, but is over shadowed by Ilan Mitchell-Smith. His character also had too wide of an arch as he seems to have a complete personality change after the argument with his sister even though I thought he should’ve been shown harboring the same feelings and questions about his parent’s death for a long time and decided to explore the case out of his own curiosity and anger. I also felt that both he and his sister should’ve done the investigation together instead of discarding her off to a mental institution and barely seen. I know the book had her going to a mental hospital as well, but we see them go through the trauma together as children and therefore it seemed only right that they should work as a team as adults to find the answers.

The film offers no conclusions. The parents are portrayed in a highly sympathetic way like they didn’t really do anything and it does play with the idea that there might’ve been another phantom couple ‘who were the real culprits’ though it doesn’t pinpoint to anyone specifically. I felt it would’ve been a stronger movie had it based itself on the real children of the Rosenbergs, Michael and Robert, and detailed things from their true-life experiences. Maybe they didn’t want the limelight, which is okay, but fictionalizing a real historical event with a lot of made-up people and situations doesn’t have the same profound effect.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: August 26, 1983

Runtime: 2 Hours 10 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Sidney Lumet

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, Paramount +

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Conspiracy Theories, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975)

Posted on March 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

one2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Nannies to the rescue.

Lord Southmere (Derek Nimmo) is on the run from Chinese spies lead by Hnup Wan (Peter Ustinov) after he gets his hands on a microdot that carries top secret information. After escaping the clutches of an assassin disguised as a chauffeur he runs into a nearby building, which happens to be the Natural History Museum. It is there that he hides the microdot in the skeleton of a dinosaur that’s on display. He then bumps into Hattie (Helen Hayes) who used to his nanny and is taking a tour at the museum with other nannies. Southmere tells Hattie about the microfilm inside the dinosaur just before he faints and is captured by the Chinese. Hattie then takes it upon herself, along with her nanny friends Emily (Joan Sims) and Susan (Natasha Pyne) to retrieve the important hidden document and take it to the proper authorities.

The film is based on the 1970 novel of the same name written by David Eliades and Robert Forrest Webb, but with many changes. The book took place in the 70’s in New York City while in the movie the setting is 1920’s London. The book was also intended for an adult audience and had sex and violence in it, which got taken out for the movie, which angered the authors, who later disowned the film, as they felt the plot got too ‘dummied-down and sanitized’ in an effort to appease children viewers.

The movie really has only two amusing moments. One is where the group of nannies get on the tall skeleton of the dinosaur to search for the microfilm, which from simply a visual perspective is goofy to see and most likely will elicit a few chuckles. The second is when Hayes and company steal the dinosaur on the back of a steam lorry and the spies give chase throughout the streets of foggy London, which offers some moments of humorous reaction shots from bystanders. Otherwise there isn’t much else going for it. The opening bit that supposedly takes place in China clearly has an outdoor backdrop that is a painting and looks tacky like it was done by filmmakers that really didn’t have much heart in the material and didn’t care how cheap it came-off looking. The interior lighting is dark and dingy and having the whole plot revolve around the extreme coincidence of the protagonist bumping into his childhood nanny at the most opportune time is a bit much.

The film’s main controversy, at least by today’s standards, is Ustinov’s portrayal of a Chinese spy. To his credit he at least puts more energy into it than he did as Charlie Chan in the 80’s film Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, where he seemed noticeably uncomfortable and just phoning-it-in. Yet even here nothing his character says or does is funny. The humor is intended to come from the broad caricature, which along with his sing-song sounding delivery quickly becomes tiring. Clive Revill, another white European, also gets into the Asian get-up as Quon Ustinov’s chief rival, but he proves to be just as bland. Why they needed to be Chinese at all is hard to answer as they could’ve easily been Russian, or German and might’ve been better had they taken that route.

Hayes for her part is engaging. Most people think of her as just being this sweet old lady of which she’s the perfect caricature, but here she gives her character a feisty side. I enjoyed seeing her strut, which is far funnier than anything Ustinov does and without even hardly trying. Her ordering the other nannies around like they’re on a big-time mission and her interactions with Natasha Pyne, who plays her polar opposite as this naive and fun-loving youth who approaches the whole thing as some cool diversion, are the only things that help keep it mildly watchable.

The twist ending may make it worth it to some, but overall it’s a second-rate Disney effort that’s so poorly shot and dated. I can’t imagine any kids today could get into it. It seems like the only fans of the film were simply kids back in the 70’s who saw it then and now enjoy watching again simply for nostalgic reasons, but everyone else won’t be missing much if they decide to skip it.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 9, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Robert Stevenson

Studio: Buena Vista

Available: DVD (Region 2), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Farce, Movies Based on Novels, Movies for the Whole Family, Obscure Movies, Spy/Espionage

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The Island (1980)

Posted on March 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

island

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Journalist investigates pirate hideout.

Blair (Michael Caine) is a newspaper reporter who becomes intrigued about the reports of missing boats in the Caribbean. He gets the permission from his editor to travel down there to investigate and he takes along his 12-year-old son Justin (Jeffrey Frank). The trip proves dangerous right from the beginning when the plane they’re traveling in crashes on one of the islands when the wheels of the craft fail to operate as its trying to land. They then go on a fishing trip only to be attacked by some pirates living on an uncharted island. Justin is brainwashed by the head of the group, Nau (David Warner), to become heir while Blair is put to the task of being the resident scribe and in the process becomes the source of romantic affection to Beth (Angela Punch McGregor) whose husband he killed earlier during the attack on their fishing boat. While Blair desperately searches for an escape he becomes even more worried about his son who no longer shows any loyalty to his father and instead considers himself a descendant of the pirates.

This was another one of Caine’s ‘paycheck projects’ where he’d do the film simply on the basis of the monetary offer regardless of the script quality. He has since regretted this decision and refuses to talk about it in any of his interviews while privately labeling it the worst film of his career. The script was written by Peter Benchley and based off of his novel of the same name. Since Benchley also wrote Jaws he was for awhile deemed a hot commodity in Hollywood, but after this movie tanked his status diminished completely and he was never offered another script deal again though his 1991 novel ‘Beast’ did get adapted into a TV-movie.

The main problem is the disjointed tone that comes off at times as a thriller and at other moments a comedy. The scenes of violence, which start out right away, are completely botched. The first one has what’s clearly a mannequin put in place as the victim and thus makes the stabbing sequence unintentionally laughable. The second violent episode where the pirates raid another boat has the victims not making a single sound as they’re being hacked and thus allowing their daughter to sleep through it, but I feel men and women will definitely yell out in terror as their fighting for their lives. The third raid features one of the victims trying to take on the pirates, one-by-one, karate style, but this turns the thing into a farce and makes the pirates engaging in a weird sort of way, which saps away all the suspense.

The concept that this pirate community would be inhabiting an uncharted island for centuries and not found out is unbelievable to the extreme. They come-off like people lost in a time warp who are confused and baffled by modern technology, but they’re clearly able to get off the island whenever they want, so why wouldn’t they travel to other islands, or even the mainland where they would come into contact with the modern day civilization? Even if the whole group didn’t go there would most likely be a few who’d be curious enough to want to explore what else was out there. Having the pirates get into a time machine from the 1600’s to the modern day, or be the ghosts of pirates from long ago, as wacky as those concepts may be, would still be better than doing it the way it gets done here.

The Caine character is boring and the way he gets put on this assignment is ridiculous as his boss just tells him ‘to go’, without putting up any provisions like how long he’ll be staying, where exactly will he be traveling to, how many articles would he be writing and when would they be due, or even whether the newspaper would even be compensating him for the cost. With terms this loose a person could frolic away on some tropical vacation and his employers wouldn’t have known the difference. He’s also never shown writing anything on a notepad, or typewriter, or dictating into a tape recorder, so it barely seems like he’s a journalist at all. The idea that Caine would be the only person on the planet intrigued by these disappearances is absurd too as relatives of the victims would be demanding answers and there would be other news reporters wanting to travel there in an effort to be the first to get the ‘big scoop’.

It’s also odd that a father would choose to take his son on such a dangerous mission knowing full well that others who have traveled to this area have disappeared without a trace making it seem like he’s an  irresponsible parent. The kid also gets ‘brainwashed’ too quickly, literally overnight, making it seem like he might have some sort of mental disorder if he’s able to change personalities and allegiance that fast. The idea of putting match sticks in his eye sockets and thus not allowing him to sleep would most likely dry his eyes out and blind him instead of getting him to come onto their side and like them. The pirates are also able to do the same ‘brainwashing’ with another young girl they kidnap, but how is this primitive group so adept at child psychology in ways that modern man isn’t?

Spoiler Alert!

The ending, which features Caine annihilating the entire group via a M2 machine gun is cool though it should’ve been done in slow motion to fully accentuate the violent depravity. The subsequent chase through the dark bowels of the ship between Caine and his son and Nau where you hear the creepy splashing of the sea water hitting against the ship’s bottom isn’t bad either. Unfortunately everything that comes before is a wretched mess making it by all accounts one of the worst and most inane films I’ve ever seen.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: June 13, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 54 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Ritchie

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Cult, Drama on the High Seas, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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This Sweet Sickness (1977)

Posted on March 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

sweet2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Obsessed over childhood friend.

David (Gerard Depardieu) can’t seem to get over Lise (Dominique Laffin) who was a childhood friend of his. Now as adults Lise has married Gerard (Jacques Denis) and even had a child, but David keeps believing that she’s in-love with him and will eventually leave Gerard for him. On weekends he spends his time finishing up with a country house that he has bought, which he plans for he and Lise to live in. He repeatedly calls Lise and meets up with her in public in an effort to beg her to come back to him, but she resists while also advising him that he is mentally unwell and needs to see a psychiatrist. Meanwhile there’s also Juliette (Miou-Miou) who resides in David’s apartment building and has strong feelings for him. David is aware of her presence, but rebuffs her at every turn and yet Juliette persists. She secretly follows David to his country home and when she figures out what he’s doing the two have a confrontation.

While there’s been many movies involving stalkers and jilted ex-lovers that can’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer this one was done when stalking was still considered an isolated phenomenon and thus there’s a lot of things that work against the modern-day formula, which is what makes it fascinating to watch. For one thing it’s not approached as a thriller, or even a horror, but instead a drama. David is not perceived as threatening, but mentally confused and needing help learning to move-on. Lise does not respond in a frightened way when he approaches, but more just annoyed.

The stalker is three-dimensional as well. One of the most intriguing moments is after Lise’s husband dies in a car accident and David convinces her to come to the country home to check-it-out. Initially she acts impressed with it and gives-off the perception that she might seriously consider moving-in, but David eyes her suspiciously, which is quite revealing. He’s spent the entire time convincing himself and others that she’s truly in-love with him, but now when she actually gives him what he wants he’s not sure he can believe her. This shows subconsciously that he’s aware she doesn’t have the feelings for him like he consciously wants to believe and he actually does know the reality of the situation, but the emotional side of him just doesn’t won’t accept it.

The addition of Miou-Miou  adds another fascinating element. It brings out how stalkers aren’t the way they are simply because they may be lonely and unable to find anyone else, which then supposedly forces them to become so fixated on one person since Miou-Miou is openly interested in him and just as attractive and yet David consistently rejects her. Her stalking on him becomes just as intrusive as David’s to Lise and in some ways just as creepy. The sex scene between her and Gerard, or at least an attempted sex moment, is quite interesting because just a few years earlier the two starred in another film called Going Places. There Gerard played the aggressor who rapes Miou-Miou here though she’s the aggressive while Gerard lays virtually frigid, which shows how brilliant these two actors are that they can play such opposite people so convincingly.

Spoiler Alert!

The story was based on a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith though there are a few key differences starting with the fact that the novel has the two in a previous, but brief relationship while in the movie they were just friends from childhood. In the book David works as a scientist and purchases the country home under an assumed identity. The Lise character is named Annabelle in the book and her husband Gerard dies after tracking David to the isolated home and getting into a fight with him where in the movie Gerard is killed when his car slides off an icy roadway. In the movie the house burns down when a drunken David knocks over a TV-set, but in the novel he simply sells it and buys a new one that’s closer to where Annabelle lives. The ending is a lot different too with the one in the movie, which takes place at a health spa, being far better and in fact it’s the most memorable moment as the scene is able to balance both an artistic and horrifying elements all at once.

Alternate Title: Tell Her That I Love Her

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Claude Miller

Studio: Filmoblic

Available: DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies Based on Novels, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Without a Trace (1983)

Posted on March 4, 2024 | 1 comment

without

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Her child goes missing.

Susan (Kate Nelligan) works as a college professor while also raising her 6-year-old son Alex (Danny Corkill) as a single parent. Alex normally walks 2-blocks to his school every morning in their Brooklyn neighborhood, so Susan thinks nothing of it when she waves goodbye to him as he turns the corner towards his school while she goes the other way to her job. However, when she returns home and finds that he’s not there she begins to worry. She calls her friend Jocelyn (Stockard Channing), who has a daughter the same age as Alex, only to learn that Alex never showed up to school that day. She then immediately calls the police and Detective Al Manetti (Judd Hirsh) becomes the lead investigator in the case to find the child.

The story is loosely based on the real-life case of Etan Patz who disappeared one day while walking to school on May 25, 1979. Not only did he become the first child to appear on a milk cartoon for missing children, but it also inspired Beth Gutcheon to write a novel, which was a fictionalized account of the his case that was later purchased by producer Stanley R. Jaffe in the amount of $350,000 to turn it into a film, of which Gutcheon was hired to write the screenplay.

While the film has a riveting quality that keeps you watching it does also have a certain ‘genteel atmosphere’ that critic Leonard Maltin complained about in his review, that keeps it a bit sterile for its own good. The film acts like child abduction is almost a novelty that’s rare to happen and shocking when it does though kids can go missing each and every day in this country. The detective states that children can be sexually molested by adults though if children came forward about it they’d ‘never be believed’ or ‘taken seriously’, which is something that I think has certainly flipped the other way in this day and age. He also brings up the subject of child porn, which gets called ‘chicken porn’ here, and parents respond in a naive way to this concept, which again is something I think most adults in this era would’ve been familiar with its existence and not act like they’re being told about something completely new they had never heard about.  The police also ‘set-up-shop’ in the women’s apartment turning it into a virtual police station and remain there day-and-night for 6-weeks, which I couldn’t see happening now.

The sequence with a psychic, played by Kathleen Widdeos, I found unintentionally laughable. Her ‘visions’ are quite vague and when she gets pressed to give something specific, like the license plate number of the car, or identity of the kidnapper, she can’t. Yet the mother acts relieved when the psychic says the child is still alive, but since her ‘information’ is so nebulous she could be a con artist making it all up and no one would know the difference.

David Dukes, who plays the ex-husband and father of the child, who at this time was best known for playing the man who tried to rape Edith Bunker, in a memorable episode of the classic TV-show ‘All in the Family’ of which he received several death threats, plays the only character that shows any emotion and thus the only one who stands-out. The movie also examines the detective’s home-life, which I didn’t feel was needed. Normally I say it’s good when we learn more about a cop’s private side, but since he wasn’t the film’s protagonist I didn’t find it necessary and only helps to lengthen the film’s runtime, which was too long anyways and could’ve neatly been told in only a 90-minute time frame instead of 110 minutes.

I did come away liking Nelligan’s performance, some critics at the time labeled her as coming-off as ‘cold’, but I felt she did alright, but was kind of disappointed that Stockard Channing didn’t get the lead instead. At the time Nelligan was considered the up-and-coming star while Channing had been mostly relegated to comedy including two failed sitcoms, but in retrospect Channing has become the better known actress and proven to be highly versatile, so seeing her in the part of mother would’ve been quite interesting and she might’ve even been able to do it better.

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest beef though is with the ending, which is much different than in the actual incident. In the Patz case his body was never found and it turned into a cold case for many years before a man named Pedro Hernandez came forward in 2012 and confessed to the crime. Here though the boy gets found alive having been kidnapped to help take care of a man’s disabled adult sister, but it’s very hard to fathom how much help a 6-year-old could be expected to give an adult woman nor has there ever been in the annals of crime where a kidnapping has been done for this reason. Having the kid immediately answer the door of the home he is supposedly being ‘confined in’ hurts the tension and would’ve been more suspenseful had the police had to search the place before finally finding him hidden somewhere. Also, if the kid is able to open the front door then what’s stopping him from running out at some point and finding help?

The fact that a neighbor woman named Malvina Robbins (Louise Stubbs), who lives next door to the kidnappers and keeps calling the police about it, but they ignore her, really hurts the credibility of the Manetti character who we’re supposed to like and he’s portrayed as being ‘super dedicated’. If that’s the case then he should’ve followed-up on every single lead he could’ve even if he thought some of them might be ‘cranks’ it shouldn’t matter because you just never know. The fact that he doesn’t do this even after she calls the police hundreds of times makes it seem like a dereliction of duty who should be investigated for not  following up and certainly not some ‘hero’.

I realize most audiences want some sort of resolution and making a movie like this that doesn’t have one might prove frustrating, but in real-life a lot of cases like these don’t get resolved, or if they do the findings are a grim one. To have a movie stay realistic the whole way only to tack-on a feel-good ending does a disservice to the many parents whose missing children never come home and thus hurts it from being as insightful and compelling as it could’ve been.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: February 4, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 50 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Stanley R. Jaffe

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R, VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

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