The Black Windmill (1974)

Posted on January 24, 2024 | Leave a comment

black

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Agent’s son is kidnapped.

Michael Caine plays Major John Tarrant, a British Intelligence Officer, whose young son David (Paul Moss) gets kidnapped by an underground criminal organization headed by McKee (John Vernon). McKee is aware of John’s profession and insists that to get his son back he must fork-over some uncut diamonds, which had already been purchased to fund another operation. John informs his supervisor, Harper (Donald Pleasance), about their demands, but Harper begins to suspect that John may have orchestrated the kidnapping himself and thus refuses to go along with the turnover of the diamonds. Frustrated John decides to deliver them himself, but finds that he’s put himself into a perilous situation that he might not be able to get out of.

The film is based on the novel ‘Seven Days to a Killing’ by Clive Egleton and directed by Don Siegal who’s most notable for having done Dirty Harry. On the technical end it’s masterful. The lighting and editing are pristine and shot on-location in England in many scenic spots including the historic, but now closed Aldwych underground train station and the Shepherd’s Bush station as well as the climactic sequence, which takes place at the Clayton Windmills, known as Jack and Jill with Jill being built in 1821 and Jack in 1866. There’s also a terrific supporting performance by Pleasance who plays this uppity agent who won’t allow smoking in his office, nervously fiddles with his mustache, and is shocked by the forwardness of one of the other elderly agent’s younger wife, played by Catherine Schell. In fact his eye brow raising expression during his visit with her is one of the more amusing moments in the film.

The story seems a bit pedestrian with elements stolen from other better spy films including a Q-like moment where a  researcher shows Harper and John how they’ve come-up with a new invention, which is a briefcase that can shoot bullets just like a gun. Another segment has John being followed by a bad guy while hopping onto the subway, which looks like it was taken straight out of The French Connection, though much better done there.

There’s also the part where John, upset with Harper’s refusal to deliver the diamonds, breaks into Harper’s office and steals the key to the bank safe that has the diamonds in it, but this seems much too easy. You’d think an operation that has lights on top of the office doors, with green to be allowed in and red to be locked, would have a better contraption to stop someone from breaking in like burglar alarms to sound when somebody trespasses, or laser beams that would trip off and sound alarm on a mobile device carried by a security guard. Yet John is able to break-in with hardly any effort and the way he tries to disguise his voice to sound like Harper is pathetic and should’ve been enough to alert the bank manager that something fishy was going on. Also, you’d think Harper would have his eye on John, or had someone else keep tabs on him since he’d most likely be angry over the news that the agency wasn’t going to help him and thus already be predicting that he’d make an effort to steal the key before it actually happened.

The biggest issue though is that John is not emotional. His stoic nature makes him seem almost inhuman and like he may not actually care about his son’s safety at all. Supposedly this is because he’d been trained as an agent to hide his feelings, but the viewer still needs to see his softer side at some point, so we know he’s suffering inner turmoil about what’s going on and the fact that this is never shown makes it hard for us to side with him. It also gives Caine one of the flattest performances I’ve ever seen and is so stone cold it could’ve been done by a robot and you’d never know the difference.

The kid is far more engaging and if the movie had shown him more it might’ve worked better, or at least shown John and the boy together, we only see a fleeting few seconds of a photo of them, but we should’ve viewed them in a fun activity before the kidnapping, so we could feel the bond that is otherwise quite hollow. John’s relationship with his wife, played by Janet Suzman, doesn’t gel either. They’re already separated apparently because John put his career ahead of the family, but there needed to be more of an arc to make it interesting like having them bitterly at odds at the beginning only to realize they must put their animosities behind them in order to work together to find their son, but here there isn’t enough dramatic friction between the two, so seeing them rekindle things near the end packs no punch at all and like with everything else here emotionally vanquished for the audience.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 17, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Don Siegel

Studio: Universal Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Spy/Espionage

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Ten Little Indians (1989)

Posted on January 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

tenlittle

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Everybody is getting killed.

Ten strangers get together on an African safari. The group includes: A doctor (Yehuda Efroni), a judge (Donald Pleasance), a captain (Frank Stallone), an actress (Brenda Vaccaro), a General (Herbert Lom), a nanny (Sarah Maur Thorpe), a detective (Warren Berlinger), along with a man named Marston (Neil McCarthy), and a couple with the surname Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister). They’ve been invited by a man named Mr. Owen, but upon their arrival he’s nowhere to be found. Instead they hear his voice that’s been recorded onto a phonograph where he tells them that they’ve been invited because they’ve been accused of committing a crime years ago and gotten away with it, but he intends to put a stop to that by killing them off one-by-one. As each guest gets murdered one of the heads from the ten little Indians statues that sits in the middle of the dining room table goes missing.

The film has the distinction of being the third movie version of the story done by producer Harry Alan Towers as the first one was produced in the 60’s and the second, which also starred Lom, in the 70’s. The story itself is based on the Agatha Christie novel ‘And Then There Were None’ though the ending was changed to replicate the stage play, which was considered more upbeat. While in the novel and play the setting was an island here it’s the desert of South Africa, which I liked as it gives the proceedings a distinct atmosphere. However, there’s an unusual moment at the beginning where the natives help carry the guests’ luggage to the camp site, but then halfway there for no explicit reason they turn on them by clicking their tongues in unison and ultimately abandoning them, which is creepy, but there’s never an explanation for why they do this.

The landscape looks hot and dry though there’s no sweat glistening off the actor’s faces leading me to believe it was shot in the winter time and thus the complaints about the heat, which are casually mentioned are invalid. I did get a kick out of one of the tents, the main one, having an upright piano. Don’t know who in the world would want to painstakingly haul a piano into the desert sands, or essentially the middle of nowhere, but the appearance of it gave me a chuckle. I was also amused by the elevated lift, held together by a frayed rope, that each guest is forced to sit-in as it takes them many feet in the air of a wide gorge, in order for them to get to the campsite. The contraption looks flimsy and it’s rather unnerving seeing them get into it and ride it all the way down.

The acting is entertaining and made-up of many B-stars whose faces you’ll recognize though not necessarily their names. Vaccaro fares best as a bitchy, spoiled, Hollywood star whose career has gone on the decline. Lom is good as an aging man whose memories plays tricks on him, but Stallone, who’s the younger brother of Sylvester and could almost pass of as his twin, has little to add. Berlinger had gained a lot of weight to the point that he’s rounder than a beach ball, is adequate, but the normally reliable Pleasance appears elderly and lacking energy making his presence almost sad. Smith continues in the mold of the jail guard in Midnight Express, a part that made him famous, but his heavy breathing and lurking ways are not interesting and his acting one-note.

The mystery angle doesn’t get played-up too well as the guests get killed-off with a boring regularity making it at times seem almost like a low-grade slasher. The characters don’t respond to their stressful conundrum realistically. For instance one of the guests dies by drinking alcohol that was linked with cyanide, but the rest of them in the ensuing days go on eating and drinking even though you’d think they’d be nervous about ingesting anything for fear that whatever they put in their mouths could also poisoned. They also go back to their tents each night and peacefully sleep despite seeing the other guests get offed by a unseen killer, which would’ve made me, and most others too fearful to get any shut-eye and instead stay wide awake for fear that the killer would attack the minute anyone closed their eyes.

Spoiler Alert!

The tension is nil and there’s really no interest in finding out who the culprit is. In the book everyone dies and the authorities are only able to figure out what happened from a message that they find written by the judge. Here both Stallone and Thorp make it out alive though Thorp lets go of the rope that had been around her neck just as Stallone comes to her rescue making me believe that she would’ve hung herself before he would’ve been able to get her out of the noose. The rescue plane flies over them instead of landing making it unintentionally seem like they had been left stranded and not saved after all. Having everyone die except for Stallone, which is what I thought was going to happen, and then having him arrested for the murders he really didn’t commit would’ve been a much more ironic twist.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 17, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Alan Birkinshaw

Studio: Cannon Films

Available: Blu-ray, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with a rural setting, Mystery, Remakes

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Something for Everyone (1970)

Posted on January 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

something1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Charming his way up.

Konrad (Michael York) is a young man with no money, or status, who dreams of one day owning the large Bavarian castle that he spots in the outskirts of a town that he’s passing through. He learns that it’s the property of the widow Countess Herthe (Angela Lansbury), who’s unable to live in it due to lack of finances. He schemes to become one of her servants by getting her regular butler, Rudolph (Klaus Havenstein) run over by a train. He then gets into a romantic relationship with Anneliese (Heidelinde Weis) whose parents (John Gill, Eva Maria Meineke) are quite wealthy while he also becomes lovers with the Countess’ son Helmuth (Anthony Higgins). Konrad hopes that Anneliese’s wealthy parents can use their money to reopen the castle and convinces Annelise to get into a fake romance with Helmuth that will lead to a marriage and then this will hopefully have her parent’s money flowing into the castle to get it reopened. He assures both Anneliese and Helmuth that he’ll remain their lover on the sly, but without each one knowing that they’re having sex with the same man. The elaborate plan though comes to a crashing halt when Anneliese accidentally walks in on Konrad and Helmuth and sees them kissing.

This super black comedy may be one of the darkest every made as it has no let up and absolutely everyone of the characters is a schemer and no better than the others. It’s based loosely on the novel ‘The Cook’ by Harry Kressing, but the story here is much different. In that one the main character is Conrad who spells his name with a ‘C’ instead of a ‘K’ and portrayed as a gaunt man who’s over seven feet tall and dresses in an all black unlike here where Konrad is young and handsome. In the book Conrad uses his cooking skills to get everyone to be ‘eating out of his hand’ with his delectable dishes while in the movie Konrad shows no such talent. The book had a much creepier tone while the film plays it all up for dark laughs and keeps the horror elements completely out.

I’m not exactly sure why there was such big changes made from its source material as keeping it truer to the novel had the potential of making this into a ‘food porn’ movie, which could’ve been visually sumptuous. However, the way it’s done here is still enjoyable with the majority of props going to York’s splendid performance whose boyish smile and dashing looks keeps it all quite engaging no matter what dastardly thing his character does. Reviled by the critics at the time for its ‘glorification of homosexuality’ it’s pretty amazing in retrospect how daring it was as this was filmed in 1969 and quite possibly the first film to ever show two men kissing. I remember in 1982 it was considered still quite shocking when Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve did it in Deathtrap, so much so there was a report about it on CBS Evening News under the theme of movies ‘going too far’ while this movie had already been showing it, in a rather gleeful way, 13 years earlier, but maybe that’s all because this was done in Europe and not stuffy old America.

On the flip side I didn’t feel Lansbury had much of a presence. A talented actress for sure, but she doesn’t have a lot to do until well into the second act and even then isn’t real funny, and seems upstaged by the supporting cast who come-off as more colorful. It’s also frustrating that we spend the whole runtime seeing this gorgeous castle in the distance, in this case the famous Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, but never able to go inside it. The few scenes that were supposedly its interior were instead very obviously shot on a soundstage.

Spoiler Alert!

While the script is full of many crafty twists and witnessing each nefarious character go down in a unique way is quite fun I did feel the way Konrad kills Anneliese and her parents by acting as their chauffer who crashes the vehicle down an embankment didn’t work. For one thing the killing of a wealthy family would’ve lead to a major investigation and since Konrad was driving the car, which he ‘miraculously’ jumps out of before it crashes, but he would still have to come up with a reason for why the car spun out of control. Since he doesn’t have one he would come under suspicion of the authorities instead of getting off scot-free like here.

Having Herthe’s nerdy daughter Lotte (Jane Carr) suddenly become instrumental in the whole thing by exposing the fact, at the end, that she’d been spying on Konrad the whole time and using what she knew to force him to marry her, leaved even further plot holes. The viewer should’ve been tipped off about what she was doing, even subtly, during the story as having her just turn up with all this new information makes it seem like it was tacked-on as a convenience without having it thought through with the rest of the plot. Not sure why Herthe, who was expecting to marry Konrad herself, would’ve gone along with Lotte marrying him instead, or what explanation was given to her in order for her to accept, which again just leaves open even more questions that in a truly well-crafted script should’ve been answered.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 22, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 52 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Harold Prince

Studio: National General Pictures

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, British Movies, Foreign Films, Gay/Lesbian, Movies Based on Novels

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Garde A Vue (1981)

Posted on January 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

garde1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Interrogation of a lawyer.

Jerome (Michel Serrault), is a rich and powerful lawyer who is brought into a police station late one night during New Year’s Eve in order to be questioned about the rape and murder of two young girls. Antoine (Lino Ventura) is the lead investigator while Marcel (Guy Marchand) sits in the back and assists him during the interrogation. At first the conversation is light and civil, but as Antoine brings more circumstantial evidence to the forefront Jerome becomes nervous yet insists he’s still innocent. Marcel even implements some physical force against him, but Jerome’s stance never changes. In another room Antoine has a conversation with Jerome’s wife, Chantal (Romy Schneider), who confides to him that she secretly suspected Jerome to be in-love with an 8-year-old girl. Once Jerome gets confronted with this his story soon begins to change.

The film is based on the novel ‘Brainwash’ by John Wainwright and shot entirely in a studio soundstage and in chronological order. Why director Claude Miller would want to film a story that had very little if any cinematic elements to it is a mystery and if anything this might’ve fared better as a stage play. I was initially impressed with the police station room as you’d swear it was an authentic building and not just a prop built for the production. The drenching rain seen pouring down outside the windows is impressive as it gives the viewer a claustrophobic feel and I liked how eventually, when the clock hits midnight, you hear car horns honking outside to represent the New Year. However, every interrogation room I’ve seen, and I watch a lot of confession videos on Youtube from real-life cases, the rooms are very small and with no windows and the film would’ve been better served had it reflected a setting like this as it would’ve brought out better the psychological tension of the suspect and his feelings of the ‘walls closing in on him’, which with here you don’t get.

You can’t help but connect this movie with The Offence, which starred Sean Connery and was directed by Sidney Lumet. That movie came out 8 years before this one, but had the exact same theme of a suspect being brought in over the murders of some school girls. That movie was well directed but did annoy me for the fact that in that one the suspect, played by Ian Bannen, did nothing, but give off this smirk the whole time.  This one has a much better back-and-forth between the investigator and suspect, which helps keep it compelling as more evidence gets introduced. However, in the Lumet film it had constant shots of this big bright light shining into the camera giving the viewer a point-of-view feeling of what someone in that situation would feel and thus helping hype the sense of urgency of wanting to get out of there, or say anything one needed to in order to stop the pressure, which this film doesn’t do very well. Both films though have cutaways showing the dead girl’s bodies from a distance in a secluded area, which are visually creepy, though again Lumet’s film scores a bit higher in that category too.

Spoiler Alert!

Ultimately the ending is a letdown and rather baffling as it features Jerome caving and admitting to a crime that he really didn’t commit due to the perceived police pressure. For one thing it’s hard to imagine that a seasoned lawyer would be that dumb and wouldn’t just ‘lawyer up’ himself and demand counsel of his own when interrogation got to be too much. I’ve seen a lot of true life interrogations where the pressure put on the suspect was far worse and those people refused to buckle, so seeing the character fall to pieces so relatively quickly especially when he was educated to know better makes the whole thing pathetic.

Didn’t quite get why the wife shoots herself at the end either. Supposedly it’s because she feels guilty about tabbing him for the murder when the real killer eventually gets exposed, but she did it out of honesty as she really felt he had a thing for young girls, so why should she feel tortured about saying something she truly believed? It would’ve been more surprising if she had pulled the gun on Jerome himself as he got into the car and shot him as she would feel, even if he hadn’t been arrested for this crime, that he still had some dark perversions and thus should be killed before he goes and carries out his fantasies on some other girl. Of course if she lied about him having a thing for an 8-year-old in order to get back at him over their contentious marriage then her guilt and suicide would’ve been more plausible, but I didn’t get that from watching it, so if that was ultimately her motivation then the filmmakers should’ve done a better job at intimating it.

This is the rare case where I’d say the Hollywood remake, which came out in 2000 as Under Suspicion and starred Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman was much better done. It had a better visual balance that didn’t keep the whole thing stuck inside a police room and it better tied-up loose story ends that this one leaves open.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 23, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Claude Miller

Studio: AMLF

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Police Drama

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Silver Streak (1976)

Posted on January 11, 2024 | 2 comments

silver

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Murder on a train.

George (Gene Wilder) is a book editor taking a train ride from Los Angeles to Chicago. Along the way he gets into a relationship with Hilly (Jill Clayburgh) who is staying in the neighboring compartment. After a night of drinks they go back to her bed and begin making-out only for George to see a murdered body of a professor, whom Hilly works for as his secretary, get thrown off the train. Nobody else sees it except for him and everyone, including Hilly, believe it was a figment of his imagination, but George persists by doing the investigating himself. He goes to the compartment that the professor was staying in to see if he’s there, but instead he meets two men (Ray Walston, Richard Kiel) who throw him off the train. George then must find a way, in the middle of the empty desert, to get back on the train, so as to warn Hilly, whom he fears may be their next victim.

The script was written by Colin Higgins who up to that time was best known for having done Harold and Maude. He said he had always fantasized about meeting a beautiful blonde on a train and when it never panned-out in real-life he decided to write it into a story. Initially he was expecting an uphill battle to get it sold, but to his amazement it instead set-off a bidding war between Paramount and 20th Century Fox who both wanted to purchase the rights and it ended up selling for a then record $400,000. Originally Amtrak was going to be used as the setting for the Silver Streak, but the company became panicked that the film could cause bad publicity for them and ultimately refused to allow the studio to use any of their trains, so the film crew was forced to go north of the border and use the Canadian Rail System in its place while still pretending that it all takes place in the US when really all exteriors are Alberta, Canada and the skyline that gets seen in the distance that’s supposed to be Kansas City is really Calgary.

The reason the film works so well is that the comedy is on-target the whole way, but also manages to deftly blend it in with some nerve wracking action making the viewer let out belly laughs while also sitting-on-the-edge-of-their-seat at the same time. The pace is brisk with some amazing and very realistic stunt work that not only shows the train crashing through the wall of Chicago’s Central station, but also a few scenes with the character’s dueling it out on the roof of the locomotive as it’s going at high speeds. In fact the only slow spot in the entire movie is when Gene and Jilly make-out in the train car, which goes on too long and may make some people, including my conservative parents who watched the film with me when I first saw it on Showtime in 1982, as thinking this might be more a soft core porn flick than an action thriller and about ready to turn-if-off before it finally gets going with the plot.

Wilder, who was not Higgins’ first choice for the role as he intended it to be played by George Segal, is quite engaging and this was the first of several pairings that he did with Richard Pryor, who doesn’t appear until an hour in, but manages to take over quite nicely and makes a strong, memorable impression. Patrick McGoohan is sinister as the villain and one of the rare instances where in an otherwise comedy the bad guy isn’t funny and instead nasty, usually in comedies it’s considered mandatory that all the characters, even the bad guy, have some amusing moments, or lines, but McGoohan is just mean, which enhances the suspense element. Scatman Crothers, who initially seems to be playing an insignificant roles as the train’s porter, but in the end becomes quite crucial in getting everyone saved. Richard Kiel is good, though he speaks no dialogue, as one of McGoohan’s henchmen, in a role quite similar to the Jaws character that he played in two James Bond films that came out a year later, he even walks around with the same mangled up dental work in his mouth.

Spoiler Alert!

While the film works for the most part quite flawlessly I did find a few tidbits to quibble about. One is the scene where Gene accidentally bursts open the patrician door that divides his room from Jill’s who is busy dressing and doesn’t act startled when he suddenly breaks into her room, which I would think anyone, especially in a state of undress, would’ve responded with a scream and a look of shock, which would’ve made the segment funnier if she had.

Later on a police chief, played by Len Birman in a very bad impression of Mike Connors from ‘Mannix’, tells Gene that they know he’s innocent and have simply been putting-up manhunt posters with his picture on it for his own safety, so they could catch him and get him away from the evil McGoohan and his cronies who want to kill him. However, after he explains this he then hands Gene a gun and some bullets and tells him to come along with his men to help nab McGoohan who is still on the train, but how would this police chief know that Gene could handle a gun and was trained on how to shoot it, let alone even need him since his own men were well armed with rifles and could easily shoot down the bad guy themselves? There’s also another moment where the police chief shoots into a large crowd in an effort to hit McGoohan, which sends everyone into a panic and would be considered a major act of negligence for a cop to do.

Another scene has McGoohan explaining to Jill, Gene, and Richard about how he and his men never meant to really kill the professor, or at least not upfront, but when he did die that’s when they had to immediately ‘get’ a lookalike as an imposter to give everyone the idea that the professor was still alive. However, how exactly where they going to be able to find someone who looked so similar to the professor in such a quick, speedy way and then get him on the non-stop, fast-moving train?

The biggest exaggeration for me though is when Gene unhooks the back part of the train from the engine, while standing on a thin ledge and holding on for dear-life via a small metal rail and then able to successfully hop onto the train car that he had just decoupled from the other one. With them both going at high speeds I don’t think he’d be able to do it. Of course in the movie it gets done by a professional stunt man, who was able to time it, and rehearse it, to make it look easy, but in reality the average person would’ve either slipped, or missed grabbing the rail and thus fallen to the side of the tracks. This though could’ve actually been funny as we would then see Gene’s body roll on the ground and initially make it seem like he was hurt, or injured and then have him look up in aggravation and go: ‘Damn, I got thrown off the train for a fourth time!”

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 8, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 54 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Movies with a train setting, Mystery

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Eureka (1982)

Posted on January 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

eureka1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He discovers some gold.

Jack (Gene Hackman) has been searching the Yukon for over 15 years in the hopes of one day coming upon some gold. Then one day he finds it and becomes super rich. 20 years later he’s living on his own island, married, and with a grown daughter named Tracy (Theresa Russell). Jack though has grown ornery through the years and has managed to alienate most of his family including Tracy’s husband Claude (Rutger Hauer) whom Jack can’t get along with and the two regularly argue to the point that it also affects his relationship with his daughter. Jack is also at odds with the local mobsters headed by Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci) who wanted to open a casino on the island and are willing to resort to any violent means necessary in order to get that done.

The film is based loosely on the life of Sir Harry Oakes who, like with the main character here, scoured many countries looking for gold for 15 years before finally laying claim to a fortune. He then retired to the Bahamas and ultimately was found murdered in 1943 in a crime that has remained unsolved. The studio though did not know what type of audience to aim the film to and thus shelved it for a year only to release it to limited theaters where it managed to recoup a paltry $123,572 out of its initial $11 million budget making it one of the biggest box office bombs in history.

As a visual exercise, given its director, its a spellbinding ride. Director Nicholas Roeg approaches it as a fable-like tale and creates the artic in a surreal type of way giving it an almost outer-worldly look and feel. To an extent this works and there’s a few memorable scenes including a barefoot man lying in the cold who blows his head-off, via a loaded gun, in one very unexpected, shocking moment that’s very realistically grisly. The death by blowtorch, which happens a bit later is effectively vivid as well. However, there’s other metaphysical elements like a mysterious stone that gets handed to Jack that alludes a bit too much to a magical quality and takes away that this is actually based on a true story and instead makes it seem like it’s all just a made-up metaphorical fable, which starts to have a pretentious quality.

The plot is too thin and the second act labors badly. Joe Pesci is a dynamic actor, but here his part is boring and he doesn’t come-off as threatening enough to give his scenes the proper tension. There’s also no insight given to why the gangsters choose to pick-on Jack, as this is a man who is quite rich and could hire his own protection and enforcers and not someone you’d think could be easily intimidated. So why bother with him at all and just find another island to build a casino on? In the real-life incident Harry Oakes went out of way to try to ban casinos from the entire island nation as he did not approve of gambling and thus caused the ire of the criminal underworld, but the movie doesn’t bother to explain this and thus makes the motivations of the bad guys confusing.

Acting-wise its a joy to watch especially Hackman. He has played so many heroes in his film career that it’s fun seeing him be a jerk and he does it well particularly when he gets on his alcoholic wife about ‘laying off the sauce’. Ed Lauter, who’s usually a heavy, is entertaining with this constant nervous look on his face as he ends up being the reluctant middle-man who gets played by both sides. Rutger Hauer is brilliant as usual giving each of his moments a creepy finesse as only he can do. Two of his more memorable bits are when he swallows a small piece of gold while in Jack’s presence and when he has a meltdown at a formal dinner party and angerly, even frighteningly, demands they all must go home.

Of course being that she’s the director’s wife you get ample visuals of Theresa Russell with and without clothes on. The two became a couple while filming Bad Timing a few years earlier and despite a nearly 30-year age difference got married. I’ve often think it’s odd though when a husband directs a movie in which she’s in bed naked with another man, in this case Hauer, who’s also sans clothes. Don’t know if many other husbands would like that idea as the erotic scenes weren’t necessarily needed though I kind of wonder if it’s not another case of the trophy wife syndrome where the old guy wants to brag to the world: look at this hot little number I get to go home to and you don’t and thus the nude scenes are just there to make all the other guys jealous.

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic court room scenes, in which Hauer is placed inside a cage during the proceedings, aren’t effective. Mainly because he acts as his own lawyer and questions Russell on the stand who goes on a long, teary-eyed, rant about her father and his perceived psychological motives, that ceases to be the proper question/answer decorum that would be expected in a regular court setting. It’s unlikely that any judge would let this go on the way it does, or that the jury, or other attorneys would be so captivated as they are and not begin rolling their eyes after awhile, or objecting to the histrionics. Having Hackman killed off doesn’t help things as he was the guy the viewer most connected with while Hauer was a creepy guy who behaved erratically and expecting the audience to suddenly emotionally side with him at the end was an overreach.

Released: May 20, 1983

Runtime: 2 Hours 10 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Nicholas Roeg

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Court Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (1976)

Posted on January 5, 2024 | Leave a comment

strange

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cop’s sister dies mysteriously.

Tony (Stuart Whitman) is a tough-as-nails veteran cop who gets the shocking news that his younger sister Louise (Carole Laure) is found dead at a party she had attended. Initially he presumes it’s George (Martin Landau) a middle-aged doctor whom she’d been having an affair with and who gave her a injection at the party, but later he realizes there might be more to the story than he thought and begins investigating other avenues that leads him to a wild and completely unexpected conclusion.

The film was directed by Alberto De Martino who had done other Italian produced films that were rip-offs of better known Hollywood hits with this one clearly being inspired by Dirty Harry. It was filmed in Montreal and Ottawa, Canada, but done by an Italian film crew making it seem more like an overseas production with very little Canadian elements to it. Overall the quality looks cheap and the story has a lot of twists that don’t make a lot of sense, or are believable.

Two that stood out right away to me is during the party scene where Louise fakes illness simply to get George’s attention to make him come over there and away from his wife. Then when he tries to help her she lets him know it was all a gag. A few minutes later she passes out for real and he responds in a worried way, but you’d think since he got taken advantaged of just moments earlier he’d presume this was just another prank and not take it seriously. Also, at her funeral Tony begins to suspect there’s more to her death than what is known and requests an autopsy be done, but an autopsy is standard procedure that should be done after any unexplained death, especially since the victim was so young, and thus seems absurd that he should have to request it only as her body is already in the casket and ready to be buried.

Whitman, who was nearing 50, looks too old for this kind of thing and it’s hard to imagine he would, in reality, be able to physically keep up with these much younger suspects who force him to chase them around in airports, along crowded city sidewalks, and even in hospitals. He’s not the most ethical guy either as he has no problem drowning one of the men he’s questioning in a sink of water as a method of interrogation, which should normally get an officer in trouble. There’s also no glimpses of his personal life, so we never learn anything about him, or see any other dimension except for his rough cop persona. Most other cop movies, or at least the good ones, do have a few scenes dealing with the policeman’s private side, but here there’s none, which makes the character flat and uninteresting. Having the victim be his sister didn’t make too much sense since she was clearly quite a bit younger than him and making her his daughter would’ve been more believable and more devastating when he has to come to terms with her darker side.

The supporting characters are, just like with Whitman’s, poorly fleshed-out. It’s hard to be intrigued who the suspects are when they all seem alike and say and do nothing that’s interesting. The film does have one long car chase, which has some impressive stunts, but it seemed unnecessary as the man driving away from the cops really didn’t have much to hide and is essentially not interrogated once Whitman catches up to him, and he offers only a little piece to the puzzle, so why tear up the city streets and completely destroy two cars if he’s not in dire trouble? Better to have saved this for the finale with the bad guy who really is the culprit than just some minor player who isn’t seen, or heard of again.

I did enjoy the foot chase through the hospital that comes at the end and even goes through a maternity ward and ultimately onto the roof of the place. The story does feature many twists and I did appreciate the way it shows how policeman can make the wrong guesses on who they think is guilty and go on many long tangents that don’t lead anywhere before they realize their mistake. However, more effort should’ve been made to create unique characters as the ones provided here are wooden and banal.

Alternate Title: Blazing Magnum

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alberto De Martino

Studio: Fida

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies from Canada, Mystery, Police Drama

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A Perfect Couple (1979)

Posted on January 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

perfect2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Meeting through dating service.

Sheila (Marta Heflin) is a singer in a traveling rock band run by Ted (Ted Neeley) who is quite demanding and openly berates and even fines members of the group who do not follow his orders. Alex (Paul Dooley) is a middle-aged Greek man still living at home with his domineering father (Tito Vandis) and extended family who berate him at every turn for not conforming to the family orthodox. Both are single and lonely and decide to join a dating service. From there they get connected and go on a first date at an outdoor orchestra concert where it rains and they both get wet. Despite the mishap Alex pressures Sheila for a second date, but miscommunication causes problems here as well. They eventually go their separate ways by dating other people they meet at the service, but Alex feels the need to try one more time to make it work and thus goes on tour with Sheila’s band as they hit the road, but finds their communal lifestyle is not for him.

The inspiration for the movie came while Robert Altman was shooting A Wedding and intrigued with the idea of what would happen if Paul Dooley’s character in that film started dating Sandy Dennis’ character and thus decided to write a whole movie about them. Problems though started right away during rehearsals when Dooley, who’s allergic to cats, could not handle being in the same room with Dennis, who was a major cat lover and would usually bring her pets to the reading, which would send him into a severe allergic reaction. Even when she quit bringing the felines with her it still caused issues with Dooley due to the cat hairs on her clothing. Altman then cut Dennis from the cast and had the part rewritten for Heflin, who was 33 at the time, but looked much younger like she was only 22 or 23 and thus accentuating the differences between the couple.

The film starts out with the two already on their first date instead of showing them viewing potential dates through the taped interviews that the service had available, which I felt was needed. As a guy I could see why Dooley would get into a young, semi-hot chick like Heflin as lonely guys, no matter their age, can instantly ‘fall-in-love’ with a woman from their looks alone, but both need to agree to the date before they go and I couldn’t understand why Heflin would to go out with a guy who was way older and didn’t seem to have much going for him. Maybe all of the other prospects were total duds and he was the best of the lot, so she decided to give it a try, or maybe she had some sort of father complex, but that’s something that still needs to be revealed and the fact that it isn’t leaves a big gaping logic hole.

The characters are palatable to some extent, but behave in ways that makes them at times quite infuriating. Dooley is especially problematic. Granted he’s playing someone who is socially clumsy and not real slick with the dating thing and trying a bit too hard to make it all work, but still insisting that he enter her apartment even when she makes it quite clear that she’s more comfortable just saying goodbye at the door is creepy. Having him show up at her place unannounced and demanding she see him for a second date and not leaving until she relents makes it even worse. There needs to be someone to tell him that his behavior is out-of-line and this isn’t a way to ‘woo a woman’ and in many cases will justifiably scare them off. Unfortunately the Heflin character doesn’t do this. Even though everything he does makes her quite uncomfortable she never protests it and lets him keep having his way, which makes her as annoying as he is.

Their unique living arrangements brings up even more issues. For Heflin I could understand her situation and it made sense. Sure the band manger is a demanding jerk, but I could see her feeling the need to put up with it because she wanted to break into the rock singing business and felt this was part of the crap she had to get through while she works her way up. For Dooley, his living arrangements are just downright baffling as he plays a 50-year-old who’s still residing at home with his father who’s highly demanding forcing Dooley to become a pathetic, obedient simp when around him. I could understand if the guy was like 20 how this might be somewhat believable, but by 50 he should’ve broken away a long time ago and the fact that he hasn’t needs to be explored and explained as it’s highly unusual and seems to intimate that there’s a serious personality disorder of some kind that begs for analyzation that never comes.

The entire runtime has the two going through every bad date moment you could think of. They have absolutely nothing in common and repeatedly talk past each other, so there’s no constructive communication whatsoever and yet somehow at the end they ‘fall in love’, but how? To make a relationship work there needs to be a connecting bond, but the film fails to show what it is making it quite shallow. There’s also an abundance of music played by the band Heflin’s a part of called ‘Keepin’ Em off the Streets’, which gets way overdone. There’s 12 different numbers, which bogs down the pace and makes it seem like a band’s demo reel instead of a movie.

The only memorable bit is when Allan F. Nichols, who co-wrote the script, appears as Dana 115, one of Heflin’s dates for the night and he has a physical confrontation with Dooley, which ended up making me laugh, but that’s about it. Nothing else happens that is either amusing or insightful. A fluffy movie that doesn’t go far enough to be either compelling or memorable.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 6, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Altman

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Dry Humor, Musical, Obscure Movies, Romance

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My Bodyguard (1980)

Posted on December 31, 2023 | 1 comment

my1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hiring protection from bullies.

Clifford (Chris Makepeace) is a new student at a tough Chicago high school who finds himself at odds with the bullies who are headed by Melvin (Matt Dillion), who goes by the nickname ‘Big M’. He and his cronies want Clifford to pay them ‘protection money’ in order to defend him from Linderman (Adam Baldwin) who is a big, loner kid that supposedly killed his own brother. Clifford refuses and thus gets constantly hounded by them, so he decides to go to Linderman and offers him a deal where he’ll pay him some money each week and even agree to do his homework if he’ll become his bodyguard. At first Linderman declines, but eventually comes on board, which is enough to get Big M and his gang to leave them alone. Then a few days later Big M returns with his own ‘bodyguard’ named Mike (Hank Salas), a big muscular guy, who challenges Linderman to a fight, which he at first resists.

This teen movie is unusual in that it was not based off of a novel as its source material, even though you’d be convinced it was, and although a novel version of the story was eventually written after the film was released, it’s ultimately an original idea by screenwriter Alan Ormsby. Ormsby was at that point better known for writing low budget horror movies, with a couple of them he even starred in, and seemed the least likely to have penned something as good natured as this. It also stands out from other teen movies in that its music isn’t some pounding rock score, but instead soft classical that helps give it distinction and let it stand-out from just about all the other high school flicks out there particularly those from the 80’s.

Kids today may not relate to a school where every student doesn’t have an I-phone, a laptop, or piercings, but if you were a teen back then this movie captures that experience to a T. Everything from the bland school lunches where you had to drink milk out of a small carton to the creaky old school buildings (this one was filmed on-location at Lake Forest High) gets recreated. The teens are all realistically geeky and awkward, even Joan Cusack, in her film debut, looks nerdish especially as she smiles exposing a mouth full of metal. Many who see this, or see it again, it will bring back a fondness to their own school days to the point it may even make you feel you’re right back there.

Chris Makepeace is perfectly cast as a sensitive youth who must learn to ‘make connections’ or ‘network’ his way around the new environment and use what social skills he has to maneuver through the teen jungle. Dillon, in only his third movie, makes for a believable bully and Baldwin, in his film debut, is also excellent and while his character doesn’t say much he gives off a very effective almost creepy stare that proves memorable. In support I really got a kick out of Paul Quandt, who’s only film appearance this was, as a scrawny tyke who befriends Makepeace and always supplies funny side comments and reactions. You also get to see Joan and Jon Cusacks’ dad, Dick Cusack, as the school’s much put upon principal.

The only segments and characters that really don’t work are the scenes involving Makepeace’s home-life that are a bit unusual since he resides in a hotel that his father, Martin Mull, manages. He has no mother since she died in a car accident years earlier and Mull behaves more like a big brother, who is into looking at naked women with his son through their telescope, than any type of disciplinarian. Ruth Gordon plays Mull’s goofy mother and while Gordon is quite amusing her scenes go on too long and don’t have much if anything to do with the main plot. Mull’s moments don’t help either though one could argue that his scenes do have some outside connection to the theme as it shows adults have to deal with their own type of bullies in this case his crabby and demanding boss, played by Craig Richard Nelson, who is always threatening to terminate his employment.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is different too in that it essentially says fighting may sometimes be necessary though many administrators of today try to persuade against the idea that violence is the answer and there are other more constructive ways to tackle conflicts. Of course watching Makepeace clobber Dillon while Baldwin handles Salas is quite satisfying especially since the whole rest of the movie is watching the kids, including even Baldwin, getting humiliate by the bullies, so the bad kids do ultimately get a much deserved come-uppance. However, just because one person ‘kicks some other person’s ass’ means only that they were the more skillful fighter, or just bigger physically, and not necessarily the moral superior.

Still it’s a very pleasant movie that has a rites of passage/ fleeting moment in time quality. The situation is portrayed as a growing pains issue and not a dire one. This is well before mass shootings and all of the ugliness you see happening in schools today where everything spews out into the adult world. Here it was still done at a time where these problems were contained within the school walls, which is the best thing about it.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 11, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Tony Bill

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity

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The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975)

Posted on December 29, 2023 | 2 comments

sherlock

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sibling solves the case.

Gene Wilder plays Sigerson Holmes, the jealous younger brother of Sherlock, who is upset that his sibling is so famous for solving crimes while he sits in obscurity having not seen as much success though he feels he’s just as smart if not smarter. One day Sigerson gets a case that his brother doesn’t want to get involved in due to him desiring to lay low for awhile. It involves Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn) who’s a beautiful music hall dancer who is being blackmailed by an opera singer named Eduardo (Dom DeLuise) over a lewd letter she sent him years ago. However, the document proves to be much more than just a letter and is in fact an important paper that foreign powers will pay high price to get their hands on. Eduardo agrees to sell it to the evil Professor Moriarty (Leo McKern), but will only hand it over to him during one of his operas, which Sigerson and his loyal partner Orville (Marty Feldman) plan to attend in order to intercept the paper before it gets into the wrong hands.

Gene Wilder was approached by producer Richard Roth to do a parody of Sherlock Holmes, but Wilder didn’t like the idea of poking fun of what he felt was an iconic character. Roth told him to think about it and then approached him a week later. By this point Wilder said he had come up with a better idea instead of it being about Sherlock it would focus on his jealous brother Sigerson. Roth found the premise intriguing and suggested Wilder begin writing the screenplay which he did while working on Young Frankenstein. Once completed he asked his friend Mel Brooks to direct, but Brooks declined saying he didn’t like working on projects that were not his own idea, so Wilder took the reins himself calling it a ‘terrifying commitment’.

While the movie has some good moments the Sigerson character is not interesting. For one thing he’s poorly defined. One minute he’s cunning and sharp and then the next he proves dimwitted and clumsy almost becoming another Inspector Clouseu. The comedy should feed off the character, but with it unclear whether he’s brilliant or buffoon it never catches its stride and for the most part the scenes with him in it are boring and the audience doesn’t care if he solves the case nor feel that there’s any redemption if he does. He’s also genuinely unlikable particularly with the way he snaps at Jenny Hill making you almost want to despise the guy and hope he doesn’t succeed. Also, if he really is Sherlock’s brother then I felt there needed to be some scenes with them together and the interplay between the two could’ve been amusing if done right, but this never happens.

Wilder directs the film the way most actors turning director do by having the scenes more extended and allowing the actors to drive the pace and momentum versus the editing. With a so-called ‘zany’ comedy like this that doesn’t work and there’s several segments that go on too long until it becomes dull and looking a bit amateurish. The biggest example of this is when Jenny arrives a Sigerson’s place to tell him about the letter. Their interplay doesn’t go anywhere and ultimately in order to get out of it the characters, for some unexplained reason, break-out into song and dance making it seem like its a musical, which it isn’t, but either way it’s dumb and not funny. During Jenny’s music hall show, which Sigerson and Orville attend, she sings a long song there too, which wasn’t needed and saps the comic energy.

There are though some offbeat moments much of which comes from McKern a usually serious actor who shines in his campy part and really plays it up to the point that he becomes the highlight. The part where he goes to a fortune telling machine, that he has inside his residence, is inspired and his visit with Eduardo in which the two strangely fondle each other and even go to bed together that gives off weird homoerotic vibes is good too in a sort of bizarre ‘what am I looking at’ type of way.

The best part though is when a giant saw blade cuts off the back of Wilder’s and Feldman’s trousers causing their bare behinds to be exposed. They then go to a formal dance party and shock everyone who sees their asses with them still not aware that they’re showing. What’s so interesting about this part is that they both have really good looking butts especially Feldman. You’d think with his freaking looking face that his rear wouldn’t be so hot either, but it amazingly is, so in keeping with our current male ass scorecard we still have Dabney Coleman, who bears his behind in Modern Problems, coming in first and Tim Matheson’s in Impulse, being a close second and then Wilder and Feldman tying for third place.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 14, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gene Wilder

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Quirky

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