The Harder They Come (1972)

I’ll bet you didn’t know that I play the bass (the instrument, not the fish), did you?  It’s true.  I wouldn’t say folks like Geddy Lee or Chris Squire would be shaking in their boots upon hearing my musical skills, but for what they are, I’m not horrible.  Of course, I can’t read sheet music for squat, but my ear is fairly keen, and I can keep rhythm.  I even built my own upright, four-string, washtub bass (there are some issues with the foot peg that still need to be ironed out, but it works and actually sounds pretty darned good, if I do say so myself).  So, what does any of this have to do with a movie starring a reggae artist?  Well, for a short time I was a member of a ska band (yes, really).  And this always reminds me of the story I heard about how reggae was born (its attribution and/or veracity, I haven’t a clue about, but it was told to me by a good friend, not that that makes it Holy Scripture).  The story goes, first there was ska, and it started during the hottest time of the year, and people drank and had a good time.  The next year, it was a little bit hotter, so they slowed ska down a little, and they drank a little more, and rocksteady was born.  The year after that, it was hotter still, so they slowed rocksteady down, and they drank a little more, and reggae was born.  And while not everyone is familiar with ska or rocksteady, practically everyone is familiar with reggae (I’m pretty sure that the Bob Marley album Legend is handed out at most college orientations).

Ivanhoe Martin (Jimmy Cliff) returns to town from the country after his grandmother dies.  He is quickly taken advantage of, but makes his way home to his mother (Lucia White).  Being unskilled and unable to find work and discovering that the people with money don’t feel like handing it out, Ivan goes to the local Preacher (Basil Keane) for some type of job.  Elsa (Janet Bartley), the Preacher’s ward, takes a shine to Ivan, but the Preacher is angered, and she and Ivan are quickly out on their own.  Ivan records the titular song for producer Hilton (Bob Charlton), but finds out that people in the recording business are dishonest (shocking).  Ivan throws in with pals Pedro (Ras Daniel Hartman) and Jose (Carl Bradshaw) dealing ganja, and things go downhill from there.

Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come is a story about a dreamer.  Ivan wants more than anything to be famous, and he doesn’t really care how he attains that fame.  He starts at the bottom, and he does try hard to gain honest employ.  However, circumstances being what they are and living in an impoverished area, he soon realizes that it’s not hard to keep a good man down.  However, for what naïve charm Ivan displays at the start of the film, it’s soon shown that he is a truly unlikable character.  He cares nothing for other people’s property or time or rules.  More importantly though, the sadistic side of Ivan comes out in a brutal encounter with Longa (Elijah Chambers).  This is not to say that Longa’s behavior is exemplary or even all that much above pond scum, but what Ivan does to him takes it a trifle far.  We are repeatedly shown during this scene closeups of Ivan’s face, and he is positively beaming, taunting Longa.  And once this monster is let out of the box, he does not go back in.  Ivan rather quickly becomes a bloodthirsty, narcissistic egomaniac, and it makes it extremely tough to have any sort of sympathy for his plight.  Instead, we feel for Elsa (when the film decides it’s time to remind us that she exists in Ivan’s life), but she is powerless to stop Ivan by herself.  Of course, unlikable characters have populated and headlined stories since stories began, but they are either interesting to follow or have some aspect about them which gives us a hint of their humanity.  Personally, I never got that feeling about Ivan as a character, and he’s not really portrayed as anything other than a street thug (even after he gains popularity and despite the raw deals he’s handed), to my mind.  Consequently, the remainder of the film is just hoping, praying, and waiting that he will get picked off.

The film is definitely low budget, and it certainly shows in both the film stock and the shooting style.  The film is edited together in a frenetic fashion that gives the viewer more a feel for this part of Jamaica than anything concrete for us to go on, and it accomplishes this very effectively.  Henzell and company will even show a great many shots of the locations and activity around the characters rather than focusing on the characters themselves, because they are one.  By that same token, there are also some marvelously composed shots and smooth camerawork which provides bits of beauty, even while reminding you that mere feet away squalor and refuse permeates these tableaux.  Yet even with a style reminiscent of MTV but years ahead of it, the film’s pace is dauntingly slow (and not that a slow pace is a bad thing, but if the end result has the viewer [in this case, me] checking the clock every ten minutes, I don’t consider that a good thing), and I believe that part of the problem lies in this same, energy-infused style of editing.  The viewer is barraged with images and actions so manically, they are almost impossible to decipher, forming a sort of fugue in the audience’s mind after they have passed, and then the film suddenly switches to a more traditional style of filmmaking for a section or two.  At an hour and forty minutes, this constant start and stop quickly wears down the viewer’s tolerance, and the film becomes a slog rather than an experience (which, I suppose, still counts it as an experience).  Added to that, for as much as I like Cliff’s music (and I do), hearing two of his songs repeated four or more times each throughout the film (like some jerk at a bar playing “Stairway To Heaven” five times in a row on the jukebox) does nothing to make the film feel any shorter (even if they both illustrate in song the film’s main themes).

I know it feels like I’m being unfair to this film, that I’m being overly harsh on it and completely eliding the positives.  And there is much to like about the film.  The destruction of dreams and turning them into insanity, the achievement of fame through infamy, the failure of authority’s representatives to live up to their own image and the realities in such a setting which also prevent them from doing so and make abusing power that much easier are all themes in the film amongst others.  The music is great, when it’s not the same two songs being repeated.  The ending of the film almost makes up for a lot of my gripes with it, but the chaotic seeming-non-structure hurt the film to a large degree rather than helped it, in my opinion. 

 

MVT:  Jimmy Cliff may not be the world’s greatest actor, but the man is highly talented, and he does have plenty of charisma by himself.  That he’s playing an unrepentant, glory-seeking asshole is not really his fault, but he is totally convincing in the part.

Make Or Break:  The Break for me came at the point in the film when Ivan goes home to get his revolver, and he is absolutely thrilled to learn that he is now famous for being a villain, and doesn’t care about anything but his own press.  I get that it’s his fatal flaw, but all it honestly did was make me wish he were dead that much sooner.

Score:  5.75/10        

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Episode #199: The 36th Precinct

Welcome back for more action packed podcasting from the Gents at the GGtMC!!!

This week we have our boulevardmovies.com sponsored episode for everyone's earholes and it was Large William's selection this time around. Large William chose The 36th Precinct (2004) directed by Olivier Marchal and starring Gerard Depardieu and Daniel Autiel.

We also go over some listener feedback and let you in on what we have coming for episode 200!!!

Direct download: 36Precinct.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!!

Used Cars (1980)

“Used Cars” has one of the best jokes ever put on film. In it, Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell) is a used car salesman trying to raise ten grand to run for senate. What’s great is that Robert Zemeckis doesn’t make this a one-off joke. It carries on throughout the film. This isn’t a quirk of Rudy’s; it’s his goal.

That goal gets altered slightly when his boss, Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden), dies due to a heart attack. Knowing that his car lot will go to his brother, Roy (Jack Warden again, chewing up scenery in this role) and he’ll run it into the ground and spit on his brother’s life, Rudy and his gang of misfits bury Luke’s body in the backyard and tell everyone he went to Miami on vacation. He needs to keep up the charade until he raises the ten grand and figures out a way to keep the company away from Roy.

Luck be a lady in the form of Barbara Jane (Deborah Harmon), Luke’s estranged daughter who shows up conveniently a day later looking for her father. Knowing the company will go to her in light of her father’s passing, Rudy keeps up the act for a few days until he figures out a way for the owner to officially pass away. I won’t spoil how he does so, but it’s quite brilliant!

As to be expected, Rudy and Barbara fall for each other. I was groaning at first, as her character felt like a forced love interest. Zemeckis crushes this notion by making her a pivotal character. It also helps that she and Russell have good chemistry together. There’s a scene at a restaurant where Rudy’s trying to prevent Barbara from seeing the President’s address, as his boys are going to interrupt the feed and air a commercial for the car lot. First, he fakes having breathing problems, but he constantly runs into another television set. He gives this charade up once the two are standing outside of an electronics store showing the address and smooches her for at least three minutes.

The best aspect of this film are the gags such as that. There are two times that Rudy and his crew interrupt a live feed to air an illegal commercial. The first is during a football game that ends with a woman’s bare breast being shown on television (to the delight of horndogs everywhere) and the second includes them destroying a few of Roy’s cars. Both generate big business for them and huge laughs for the audience!

Rudy’s crew aren’t just a few nameless faces. They bounce off of Kurt well and deserve their own breakdown. Gerrit Graham is Jeff, Rudy’s right-hand man who has his own right-hand dog (who he makes fake his own death in order to sell a car, which got the biggest laugh from me). Frank McRae is Jim, a foul-mouthed mechanic who has little social skills (he forces a customer into a car and basically orders him to buy it). David L. Lander and Michael McKean (that’s right, Lenny and Squiggy) are Freddie Paris and Eddie Winslow, the two technical wizards who do the network hacking (as well as a great gag involving a pacemaker).

All of these men bounce off of each other wonderfully and work well with Jack Warden (in both his portrayals)! They can’t hold a candle to his manically hilarious performance as Roy Fuchs, though. Russell can, but that’s because he’s one of the greatest men to ever grace this Earth (no matter what my roommate says). Even he struggles in spots to challenge Warden’s pitch perfect act. There’s something about his delightful glee in destroying other people’s lives that makes me chuckle.

I was afraid going into the film that it wouldn’t be able to sustain itself for an hour and fifty minutes. That fear went away about an hour in, as it seemed Zemeckis had a lot in the tank. Once the film hit the hour and a half mark, my original theory was proven correct. The final twenty minutes seriously drag and almost crash the film’s goodwill that had been built up. The idea itself was good (get a mile of cars to the car lot before the judge arrives to shut them down for false advertising), but it’s played out too long. All of the jokes incorporated within are also very lousy (Jeff’s hatred of driving red cars was eye roll inducing). It’s a shame that the film had so much going for it in the first three quarters, but skidded by on empty for the finale.

It’s not enough to ruin the film by any means. There’s no denying that “Used Cars” is an extremely funny movie… during the first three quarters. During that period, the jokes come at a rapid pace and almost always connect. Once the film reaches it’s conclusion, Zemeckis loses sight of what made the film fun. I can’t complain too much, though. The hour and a half of the film that did work was amazing!

MVT: Kurt Russell. Do I even need to state why?

Make or Break: The first mention of Rudy’s dream of running for senate. It showed that this wasn’t just a dumb comedy (no offense meant). It was witty and quite brilliant.

Final Score: 7.75/10

Zombie Holocaust (1980)

It’s probably not a good idea for me to start this review off on a rant.  You and I have had a good rapport up until this point, I think, and I was debating asking you to come up to my place for a nightcap after this latest date (I really love you for your mind, baby).  But we need to get something situated first; there is no zombie apocalypse happening in the world (the real world, the one we all have to live in when more people than I’d care to contemplate don’t have their heads up their own asses).  Corpses are not rising from the dead and attacking the living.  There is no Zombie King orchestrating a coup d’ etat employing a brainwashed, braindead army of automatons.  We are not being overrun by the recently deceased and slowly being picked off, unsuspecting until it’s too late to stop the tidal wave of bodies.  The recent news reports you’ve been reading have no basis in the supernatural whatsoever.  No, gentle reader, we are actually in the midst of a cannibal apocalypse.  No living dead, rotting and maggot-riddled; just tribes of feral people, teeth filed to knife-sharp points and hunting for easy prey to rip the still-beating hearts out of and devour.  See?  Don’t you feel relieved, now?

A shadow-painted stalker skulks through the halls of a New York City medical school/hospital.  He doesn’t kill people, but he hacks up easily accessible corpses and makes off with various parts.  Of course, missing limbs will usually draw the attention of the higher-ups, and Doctors Lori Ridgeway (Alexandra Delli Colli) and Drake (Walter Patriarca) soon feel that something is amiss.  When the culprit is unveiled, Dr. Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch) shows up with all kinds of stories about worshippers of Quito the cannibal god (also the name of an island in the East Indies, one of the Moluccas, if you can follow any of this in the film) and plans an expedition, including assistant George (Peter O’Neal) and go-getting cub reporter Susan (Sherry Buchanan).  Of course, when they show up at Dr. Obrero’s (Donald O’Brien) island villa, they soon encounter more than they bargained for (go ahead, guess). 

This is the basic premise of Marino Girolami’s (pseudonymously credited as Frank Martin) Zombie Holocaust (aka Zombi Holocaust, aka Dr. Butcher, M.D., an American recut which included material from a never-released zombie portmanteau film produced by Roy Frumkes called Tales That’ll Tear Your Heart Out and even included a segment directed by Wes Craven).  Like so many movies coming out of Italy at this time, it piggybacks off George Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead (aka Zombi) but even moreso off Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (aka Zombi 2), which even if this wasn’t stated outright by Makeup Effects Artist Maurizio Trani is astoundingly evident just from watching the picture.  The zombies have that thrown-together, wax and clay, monsterfied look that Italians excelled at.  There is some juicy eye trauma that tries to one-up Fulci’s classic “Splinter Scene” (it doesn’t quite surpass it, but it is gross).  There is an abandoned mission in the middle of the jungle where the finale will take place.  Our protagonists consist of two men and two women (one of whom, Ian McCulloch, is in both films).  And just to take it to another level, the filmmakers chuck in cannibal/primitive elements made popular in such films as Mondo Cane, The Man From Deep River, and Cannibal Holocaust (which, as I understand, was released in Italy much earlier than it was in America).      

The film (as just about every film dealing with primitive, cannibalistic tribes in a jungle does) posits the question whether or not we civilized people are any better or different than the “savages” who will soon make life hellish for the cast?  But unlike films such as the aforementioned Cannibal Holocaust, the question is completely rhetorical.  Girolami and company could care less about exploring this question in any way, shape, or form.  In this filmic world, we white folk are, of course, superior to the aboriginal peoples of some far-off Caribbean island.  As the native bearers get picked off (after first behaving like superstitious knaves, but since they wound up dead, they were kind of proven right, now weren’t they?), the white party leaders tell the remaining bearers and the tellingly-named Molotto (Dakar, also a veteran of Fulci’s Zombie) to just bury them already, so they can move on.  When the cannibals (perpetually mud-encrusted) feast on the raw meat of their victims, the camera switches to handheld with a wide-angle lens moving in and out amongst them, accentuating their otherness and focusing on the gory details of their acts.  Any way you look at it, the film exists in whitey’s world, and is told exclusively from the white, “civilized” people’s perspective.  While this is, in and of itself, kind of offensive, the movie’s premise is so outlandish, it’s difficult to take any of this casual racism seriously on any level.  Despite this, the superficial racist aspects are largely undercut by a second theme; playing God.  To say more would be to spoil much of the insanity that makes this film fun, but suffice it to say, white people hold the power of gods here.  That they are not punished altogether for this hubris but individually (this behavior is displayed by both pro-and antagonists) could be seen as significant but more likely than not is simply expedient and/or arbitrary.

Zombie movies and cannibal movies both share a common element; they both deal directly in the realm of Survival and many times take on aspects of Siege films, for at least part of the runtime.  The main difference between the two is location.  When we think of Survival films, we think of protagonists trying to outrun a group of enemies (usually faceless, by and large) with limited to no resources to rely on.  The Siege movie takes the same premise but stages the action in a centralized location into which the faceless baddies are trying to break.  They can share aspects at various points or even side by side throughout.  And, of course, we have both facets in Zombie Holocaust.  What’s interesting here is that the cannibal scenes are faster-paced and tenser than the scenes involving zombies.  The pace, in fact, slows down once the zombies appear, thus allowing for one of the most fantastic info-dumps in cinema history, but also unfortunately killing the momentum needed to provide a fully satisfying climax.  The film is still fun, gory, and entertaining enough, though, that one could almost understand the general populace’s misunderstanding about the type of apocalypse in which our world (y’know, the real one) is currently embroiled.

MVT:  If I’m being totally honest, I have to go with the gore.  This flick is gory for gore’s sake, and there is blood and entrails galore.  Enough, in fact, to satisfy even the most discriminating (ahem) palate.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the wildly delirious, over the top monologue delivered in the old mission.  It’s ludicrous on its face, but spoken with such banal matter-of-factness, it will leave you grinning from ear to ear.

Score:  6.50/10

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Episode #198: Raid on Videodrome

Welcome to our diabolikdvd.com sponsored episode and this week Large William picked a doozie!!!

The Gents cover The Raid (2011) from director Gareth Evans and Videodrome (1983) from director David Cronenberg. We had a riot talking about these two films and we think you are gonna enjoy this episode very much!!

Direct download: Raid_on_Videodrome.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails 206-666-5207

Adios!!!

NOW ON SALE! Movienalia Volume One: Strippers, Bat Nipples & Plastic Dolls

It’s here! “Movienalia Volume One: Strippers, Bat Nipples and Plastic Dolls” is now on sale at Lulu.com! You can buy an eBook or have an actual copy in your hands in the form of a Paperback. I know there’s a bit of a price hike from the eBook to Paperback. It’s costly to print the book, hence the higher price. I won’t feel insulted if you choose the eBook. I expect to get more sales from that anyway.

To further entice you to buy this book, here’s a breakdown of the entire table of contents:

The History of Movienalia

The Studycove Era

-Star Crystal induction
-Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge induction
-Jaws: The Revenge induction
-Halloween III: Season of the Witch induction
-Super Mario Bros. induction
-Batman & Robin induction

Movienalia’s Freakin’ Awesome Return

-Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday induction
-High School Musical induction
-High School Musical 2 induction
-High School Musical 3 induction
-Men at Work induction
-Undertaker and his Pals induction
-Exorcist II: The Heretic induction
-Hellraiser: Revelations induction
-Rob Zombie’s Halloween II induction
-The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars induction
-K-9000 induction
-Jury Duty induction
-Wild Wild West induction
-Santa’s Slay induction
-Santa with Muscles induction
-Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 induction
-National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure induction
-Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure induction
-Nukie induction
-Antfarm Dickhole induction
-Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star induction
-I Am Here…. Now induction
-Robo Vampire induction
-Grease 2 induction
-Mannequin induction
-The Hottie & The Nottie induction
-Showgirls induction

The Book ExclusivesClassic Crap

-Reefer Madness induction
-Glen or Glenda induction

Hollywood Duds

-Freddy Got Fingered induction
-Gigli induction
-Catwoman induction

Outside the Demographic

-Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer induction
-Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in Getting There: Sweet 16 and License to Drive induction

Nazisploitation

-The Black Gestapo induction
-Ilsa She Wolf of the SS induction
-Son of Hitler induction

What Wouldn’t Jesus Do

-Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter induction
-Ultrachrist induction
-Jesus, the Total Douchebag induction

Lifetime A.K.A. All Men Are Evil and Stupid

-My Stepson, My Lover induction
-Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life induction

Buy it now at:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/justinoberholtzer

Night Of The Sharks (1987)

People often ask (and even moreso on the internet), "Why did that actor make that movie?" "Why did this actor stop being good?" "Why doesn't that actor seem to give a shit anymore?" What people fail to realize though, is that actors, like everyone else in this world, need to make money to survive. Believe it or not, actors still need to pay for things, they still need to eat, they still need to have health insurance, and all the pedantic bills you and I bemoan on a monthly basis. I grant you, actors (the bigtime superstars, not necessarily character actors and the like) are paying for these things on a different level from you and I. I doubt Robert De Niro eats much Ramen Noodles in the course of a week. I'm not sure, but I'd wager a guess that Al Pacino doesn't drive around in a 1989 Coupe Deville (well, okay, maybe he does, but still…). The point is, they have to turn a buck, and they do that by selling their talents. And since few producers and studios in Hollywood strive to make meaningful films with strong characterization and parts that talented actors would kill to play (yeah some do, but this isn't an argument we're having here), working actors are forced to act in a lot of shit (particularly as they grow older). These movies can often diminish an actor's standing in many people's minds, but I tend to think that usually we simply don't see the forest for the trees. In other words, you don't know Dustin Hoffman's pain.

David Ziegler (Treat Williams) has forsaken society and now lives a beach bum's life in Cancun, along with pal Paco (Antonio Fargas), and sort-of-girlfriend Juanita (Nina Soldano). Everything is going along just ducky, until perpetual screwup and brother of David, James (Carlo Mucari) decides to blackmail his criminal employer Rosentski (John Steiner) and needs some help from his (I assume) big brother. So naturally, things are going to go bad.

Why I'm covering another Tonino Ricci (aka Anthony Richmond) film is beyond me, especially after the apocalypse-heralding garbage that is Thor The Conqueror, but here I am. In all fairness though, it really wouldn't be right to dismiss the man's entire filmography based on one movie, particularly after penning the introduction above. While The Night Of The Sharks (aka La Notte Degli Squali, aka Jaws Attack) is not nearly as appalling as the aforementioned sword and sorcery lump, it's also not particularly well-made, coherent, engaging, or all that exciting. Regardless, let's press on.

Fargas, much more than Williams, stands out in the film, playing what is essentially a trickster character. Like Br'er Rabbit, the Coyote, and so on, ad infinitum, Paco loves to bedevil other characters for his own amusement. He produces a pack of rubbers to embarrass Juanita. He cheats at a bet involving sticking his hand in a shark's mouth (but in fairness, the people he was betting against were also poised to cheat). He even carries a double-bladed, handmade razor device, which never really pays off beyond one trivial usage, but does signify that Paco has two sides, both of them sharp but also reliable. Paco will stand by David towards the end, because of everyone, David is the only person that Paco trusts. Oh, he'll still try and cheat and irritate him, but the two have a connection, and Fargas does a solid job at playing both ends. That the filmmakers squander this talent is a shame.

Filmmakers have always taken liberties with the laws of physics and nature in their work, and we the audience have always forgiven them up to a point, so long as the violations are either motivated or fairly unobtrusive. This is why we accept the rumble of engines on a spaceship, even though we are told, "In space, no one can hear you scream," or the sound of a planet exploding, or that a radioactive spider's bite would induce superpowers rather than cancer. But this film goes the opposite direction. Ever since Joseph Sargent made a great white shark leap out of the water and shriek at the end of the baffling Jaws: The Revenge, it was only a matter of time before someone in Italy latched onto this idea as if it were truth and "borrowed" it for their own movie. Consequently, we get the one-eyed shark Cyclops, who appears to always be nearby whenever David goes anywhere near the water, rams his boat like it's a grudge match, and roars like he's about to be run through by Lorraine Gary. If Cyclops were a wild boar, it would be one thing, but to put a vocalizing shark in a movie which presents itself as being quasi-realistic is like putting dancing snakes in a horror movie (see Snake Island for further research).

David's grudge with Cyclops is interesting in that it does provide a type of metaphor for his character arc and his struggles. It's alluded to that he is a dangerous man, and that there is very little that he hasn't done, so we assume that he decided to take up the easy life in Cancun to put all that behind him. Yet Cyclops is ever-present in the water, a symbol for predation, revenge (did David take out its left eye?), and violence. Discounting the ridiculousness of a shark holding a grudge (ahem), violence perpetually looms over David's life and the lives of those who he allows/allowed into his life. However, this subplot is never sufficiently tied in to the rest of the film to give it any resonance as anything other than a time killer of sorts and a convenient plot device (and it's alarming how many people are menaced by sharks rather than by the human villains in a film which is not really about shark attacks, but stock footage of sharks is cheap, I suppose). And here is where we come to the movie's biggest problem.

As with Thor…, the movie is hampered by a heavy pall of arbitrariness. The scenes go through their paces, there is an end to be seen, but there's nothing really tying it all together. It's like going down a laundry list, checking off the requirements, and then finishing up for the day. The scenes with Cyclops have him change size, direction, and even makes his eye scar appear and disappear. The viewer is actually tricked (not intentionally by all appearances) into thinking that David has killed Cyclops offscreen at one point, when no such action has occurred. Steiner plays the villain as someone who doesn't want any real trouble if he can deal his way out of it, which is interesting, but it also robs he and his lackeys of any menace, since he's never motivated to escalate matters, and the filmmakers don't seem to care one way or the other. And since they don't care, neither did I.

MVT: The locale is nice for what we see of it, but Williams gets the MVT for being mildly charming despite the entirety of the movie trying to prevent him from doing so. Fargas runs a close second, but he has the juicier part, so his work was a little more cut-and-dry, I think.

Make Or Break: More a missing scene than anything, the Break is the cut between David chumming the water for Cyclops to him on a dock with a dead shark (I would swear it even has a wound where its left eye should be), which is not Cyclops at all, but we're never given any clue about this state of affairs, so it's somewhat baffling when the halfsighted fish makes a random kill later.

Score: 5/10

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Episode #197: Dr. Jekyll and the Hidden

Welcome to another glorious episode of the GGtMC!!!

This week we have a listener programmed episode from our Kickstarter campaign and listener Bernie de la Pez. Bernie chose Dr. Jekyll and his Women AKA The Bloodbath of Dr. Jekyll (1981) directed by Walerian Borowczyk and The Hidden (1987) directed by Jack Sholder.

We hope you all enjoy and we also go over, by request, how we met up and give you a history of the podcast. Much chatter and fond memories...

Direct download: Dr._Jekyll_and_the_Hidden.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!!

Bonus #46: A Chat with Andy Gill

In this special bonus episode, very good friend and fellow Gent David Allcock sat down and had a chat with Andy Gill. Andy is a well respected and very experienced stunt man in the industry and has some great stories to share with the listeners of our show. The below paragraph and info is directly from Dave:

Andy Gill

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0318617/

"This is an informal chat more than it is an interview. It was my last day working on FAST 6 (fast & furious part 6). We were in his office at the production company, Shepperton Studios, London, UK. I had been wanting to quiz him for ages about his amazing career, but never found the right time. I finally got the opportunity right at the end of my last day working on the movie and he graciously agreed to let me record it. So I fired up my macbook and hit record on garageband. He is a true gentleman and amazingly talented guy with a resume to die for. As you can see, he has worked on a ton of GGTMC favorites. I hope you and the listeners enjoy our conversation."

Direct download: AGillIntRM.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!

Thief (1981)

Large William stated that if you hadn’t seen “Thief”, you weren’t cool. After watching Michael Mann’s first film, I can see why he made such a bold statement. “Thief” is the personification of cool! It’s slickly directed, well acted, polished cinematography and a rocking soundtrack by Tangerine Dream! To bring it all home is an always welcome plot of a safecracker getting caught up with the mafia.

One could take a look at “Thief” and write it off as an average portrait of a criminal. Trying my best not to sound elitist, I’d tell them that they’re wrong. Mann may take what many would consider to be a regular plot and infuse it with energy and finesse. Besides, who cares if the story is familiar? All that matters if it’s engaging or not. “Thief” is highly engaging!

One of the most telling features of “Thief” is that Michael Mann found his niche early on. A good chunk of his trademarks are present in his first film. The grim and damp Chicago setting in the day that turns into a shining beacon of light overnight. The use of neon lights bouncing off of cars and windows to contract the darkness is a thing of beauty! The used car sale lot is stunning to look at after dark!

The most telling attribute is Mann’s attention towards a life of crime. He’s known taking a close look at someone involved in organized crime. Here, it revolves around Frank (James Caan), a self-employed safecracker trying to make enough money to settle into a normal life. He wants to marry and raise children with Jessie (Tuesday Weld), going so far to tell her of his criminal background (which he never told his first wife). He’s not the most pleasant guy (he’ll be the first to pull a gun when anger overcomes him), but he is devoted. There’s a touching moment between he and his mentor, Okla (Willie Nelson), that I won’t go into details to prevent spoiling it.

He’s against the idea of working with the mafia, preferring to work solely with his close friends, preferably Barry (James Belushi). Leo (Robert Prosky) is able to convince him to join his team to crack a highly secured safe. If he does so, he and Barry will net eighty-three thousand dollars. This is more than enough to allow Frank to live comfortably for the rest of his life. As anybody with a brain cell can tell, it’s not going to go down like that.

James Caan commands the screen as Frank! The only person to give him a run for his money is Robert Prosky. When the two of them share a scene (such as when Frank confronts Leo), it’s deep fried gold! It’s a tossup for me on whether or not the dialogue scenes are the best in the film or the safecracking is. One on hand, we have the aforementioned interactions between Frank and company (he and Weld have tremendous chemistry and I liked his friendship with Belushi). On the other, we have those wonderful scenes in the warehouse where Frank is getting assistance on discovering a way to crack the high-tech safe. Watching the sparks fly and the iron meld is as manly and gorgeous as they come!

Though it’ll always be a tossup, I’d currently argue that “Thief” is Michael Mann’s best film! It’s slick and entertaining and almost never misses a beat (there’s a brief spot between the actual heist and the aftermath that feels dry and could have been cut)! It also clearly helped inspire Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive”, which is one of my favorite films. It has enough working for it in it’s favor for it to take this honor for many days to come.

MVT: It’s hard deciding between James Caan’s performance or Michael Mann’s direction, but I’ll go with the director this time out. His visual style compliments the film and Frank’s actions. In another director’s hands, it could have easily been a great performance by Caan in a mediocre film.

Make or Break: The opening. It’s only apropos that Mann starts out with a heist involving Frank, Barry and their crew to warm the audience into the picture. It does a damn fine job in doing so!

Final Rating: 9.75/10

Death Knocks Twice (1969)

Edmund Kemper is, to my mind, one of the scariest serial killers in American history. Beginning with killing his grandparents in 1964 and ending with the murder of his mother in 1973, his list of victims is short, but they are all the more frightful for the dispassion Kemper displayed both during and after their committal. Compounding this was his proclivity for necrophilia, as well as the mutilations he performed on the corpses. After murdering his mother in her sleep, using her severed head for oral sex, and stuffing her vocal cords down the garbage disposal (he was quoted as saying, "That seemed appropriate, as much as she'd bitched, and screamed, and yelled at me over so many years"), he strangled his mother's best friend and then turned himself in after a brief flight from the law. This behavior is far removed from what we have been fed (mostly, but especially during the glory days of exploitation cinema) in popular narratives. There the killers are suave and charming, and when they kill, they typically do so with a bug-eyed mania. Yet the quiet force of will of someone like an Edmund Kemper makes him many times over more bloodcurdling than the majority of serial killers committed to film and certainly more so than Francisco Villaverde (Fabio Testi) in Harald Philipp's Death Knocks Twice (aka The Blonde Connection, aka Blonde Köder Für Den Mörder). 

After kibitzing in the surf with nubile blonde Lois Simmons (Femi Benussi) for a little while, Villaverde suddenly "goes nuts" and chokes the young woman. His crime is witnessed by both Riccardo (Mario Brega) and the unctuous Amato Locatelli (Riccardo Garrone), both of whom work at a beach hotel resort owned by Charlie (Werner Peters). Private dick and all-around physical specimen Bob Martin (Dean Reed) is hired by old pal and Continental Detective Agency owner Pepe(General Burkhalter himself, Leon Askin), and their first job (of course) is to find out what happened to the aforementioned Ms. Simmons and her bejeweled necklace. 

The no-bullshit private investigator is something that's been around for decades. Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, and so on all cut to the chase immediately. They don't bother with niceties and their social graces would make a caveman blush. But we love them because they do two things; One, they smack lowlifes around until they uncover the truth, and two, they get the girl (usually, though number one is definite). Unhindered by the red tape and laws that restrict most police officers from bringing swift justice to the bad guys, the PI can go where he wants, bend or even break the law, and get physical with no one to stop him from doing so. Bob fits into this category, in as much as the film allows him to do so. He is rude to his client (asking what he figures are vital questions but really just being kind of a jerk) and immediately knows what to do to catch Lois's killer (go undercover, of course, using his fiancée Ellen [Ini Assmann] as bait). And here's the first misstep that the film takes. For two people who seem so attached and devoted at the outset, neither member of this couple seems to give a second thought to making out with other people (and bear in mind, Ellen is not a PI, or at least we are not told she is) to get the job done. It would be one thing if they were forced into this position. It would be one thing if one or the other had to make a choice, knowing that their loved one is remaining faithful. But this just comes off in the film like cheap hustling, and even that could be forgiven if it weren't for the films other problems.

Investigation movies and movies about murderers will generally fall into one of two categories. They are either about uncovering the identity of an unknown villain and bringing him/her to justice, or they are about the characters of both the chaser and the chased and why and how they do what they do. Philipp's film does away with any real mystery by showing us Villaverde losing it and strangling Lois from the outset. What could have been interesting (the witnessing of said action and the consequences of it) is never explored (or at least not explored to its fullest or even in a relatively compelling way). Instead, the entirety of the film is a series of scenes which play out exactly as we expect them to, with no revelations (unless the filmmakers honestly believed that what they state about any of the characters could in any way be misconstrued as revelatory) save one at the climax, which by that point is so shrug-inducing as to make you wonder why they even bothered. Admittedly, the introduction of Sophia and the Professor (Anita Ekberg and Adolfo Celi, respectively) do give the viewer a dash of hope, but said hope is soon dashed, when these two (admittedly more menacing) characters are as mishandled as the others. The filmmakers don't just underplay the murders or the crimes and machinations, they seemingly just don't care about them. They're there, they happened, we filmed them, and then put them in order and put credits on it. The end.

Villaverde's character could have been used to make a statement (or at least be developed as more than just a movie psycho) about sex, art, and death. He gets horny, he gets kill-happy, and he paints a portrait of his victim. At an art show, we see many portraits of women, and we assume they were all painted by Villaverde (they do have a similar style). We also assume, then, that he may have killed all these women. Do the filmmakers show us anything to back this up? No. Do they even treat this aspect as if it were something with some significance? No. The paintings are just there in the background. Truthfully, I am projecting my thoughts about the artworks in some desperate bid to give this film, its characters, and story a scintilla of weight, but I'm afraid that it just doesn't fly. Like every other character and subplot in the film, Villaverde's story comes off as capricious and trivial, a character here to give us some flavor but utterly failing to do so. And by the time you get to the offhanded ending, you finally realized where you've seen this before: on some crappy, television show about some hunky PI and completely interchangeable with same, except for some nudity (which is the one thing that will pep up the audience through the runtime). So death can knock twice, it can knock a hundred times. Wait for a good film to knock, instead.

MVT: Adolfo Celi as the Professor is everything a villain can be, and the man tries. The scenes with him in them are more effective than any others (slight praise, indeed), but even his stoic performance (and he's the only character in the film who should be acting aloof) just can't raise this film past a very low bar.

Make Or Break: The Break is not any one scene. Instead it's the overall arbitrariness and general bungling of just about everything in the film with the exception of the groovy lounge score by Piero Umiliani.

Score: 5/10 

  

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Episode #196: Django Kill...If You Live Shoot!

Welcome back to the GGtMC, your home for sweaty men and sweaty cinema!!!

This week we bring you our episode sponsored by boulevardmovies.com and Sammy's selection of Django Kill...If You Live Shoot! on Blu Ray!!! One of the more infamous and well known spaghetti westerns and we also go over a good deal of feedback from our many great listeners!!!

Direct download: DKRM.mp3

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Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976)

Fred (Marc Porel) and Tony (Ray Lovelock) are the type of cops that only exist in the movies. They shoot first and ask questions later. They constantly bend the rules in their favor, which gets them on the wrong side of their boss (Adolfo Celi). As he states, they’re criminals with a badge. In their defense (and words), that’s the only way to fight crime. Their methods may be unorthodox, but they get the job done.

Their job this time out is to seek out Roberto Pasquini (Renato Salvatori), who goes by the nickname of Bibi. He’s a crime lord that… well, I honestly don’t remember. What his intentions are is irrelevant. He causes damage wherever he goes and is in trouble with the law. He’s a target for Fred and Tony, which is all he needs to be. He has cronies do his bidding so our heroes have pawns to play with. And boy, do they have fun with them!

Here’s a brief rundown of the action Fred and Tony get involved in. They foil a robbery by eliminating the criminals before they get a chance to enter the bank; they set dozens of cars ablaze at a snooty club; they take out four men who are holding a woman hostage by distracting them with a helicopter; they chase two thieves on a motorcycle throughout town (granted, they weren’t working for Bibi); they put more bullets in heads than a mob boss. They do all of this with a gleeful smile on their faces.

When they’re not disposing of criminals, they’re smooth talking the ladies. They both score with Bibi’s sex-craved sister and are fed dinner by her mother at the same time (not during the act, mind you). They constantly flirt with their boss’ assistant, who shoots them down with vitriolic insults. When being yelled at by their boss, they crack jokes. They never make light of a serious situation, turning on their game faces when the time arrives.

Ruggero Deodato works at a fast pace and keeps the proceedings running smoothly. He does run into the occasional lull, but quickly picks things up with an action sequence or by letting Fred and Tony let loose verbally. He runs through the motions of the buddy cop genre (70’s era buddy cop, I should note), but does so with finesse and exhilaration that you honestly don’t care that you’ve seen this before. That and the action scenes themselves sets this film apart from others in the genre.

What he does quite work out well is the ending. The idea behind it is clever, but I felt it ended abruptly and somewhat anti-climatically. There was so much build put towards it that it didn’t come close to meeting expectations. I wasn’t expecting a grand finale, but a little more than what we got would have been appreciated. It went against the heroes’ actions throughout, though I’ll admit that’s a part of the cleverness.

Weak ending aside, “Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man” is a wonderfully manic action comedy! The hour and a half running time breezes by at a swift pace, giving the viewer a comfortable relaxation with the film. The heroes are assholes, but they’re charming and likable (slapping women aside). The action sequences are the true highlight of the film. Without them, this film wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Thankfully, Deodato knows how to work an action sequence!

MVT: Porel and Lovelock. They may play assholes, but they’re so charismatic and charming that you can’t help but like them. In the hands of other actors, they would have been detestable, which would have tarnished the film.

Make or Break: The opening motorcycle chase. It starts with a woman’s purse being snatched, yet she’s still connected and gets dragged via a motorcycle into a pole that cracks her head wide open. Our heroes avenge her by chasing the thieves throughout town (including inside of a store), having them fly into the back of a truck. This impales one of them, while the other has his neck snapped. It’s the perfect mood setter!

Final Score: 8.5/10

Battle Beyond The Stars (1980)

Let's talk for a moment about how not to pull off an evil scheme. In 1980, Nick Perry had been the host of the nightly Pennsylvania Lottery drawing for three years on WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Along with the Maragos brothers, Peter and Jack, with whom Perry was in the vending business, Perry hatched a plot to exchange the official lottery balls for ping pong balls, all of which were weighted with the exception of the numbers 4 and 6. Ergo, the winning numbers would have to be any of eight combinations of the two numbers. On the evening of April 24, 1980, the winning number for the lottery was 666 (yes, really). This, of course, set officials' and authorities' bullshit-meters into the red. 

On the day of the drawing, the Brothers Maragos (proving themselves to be more like the Brothers Malachi than anything else) traveled around Pennsylvania, buying lottery tickets using the eight number combinations. At one of the ticket sellers' establishments, one of the brothers made a phone call and even held the receiver up, so the listener could hear the sound of the tickets being printed. Naturally, this call was traced back to the studio where the drawing was shot. Needless to say, the three were caught and Perry served time after the Maragos brothers testified against him. Even if the winning number wasn't statistically highly improbable, the fact that these three yutzes ran around, all but announcing their scheme (and sometimes flat-out announcing it) insured its eventual failure. So when Sador's (John Saxon) holographic head appears over the populace of the planet Akir in Jimmy T Murakami's Battle Beyond The Stars, you just know he's going down for the count. After all, according to Aleister Crowley, "It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth."

Anyway, after the aforementioned giant Oz-esque head appears to the Akira, Sandor orders his minions to open fire just to keep the natives on their toes. The vile warlord (is there any other kind?) declares he will return for the planet's crops in seven days time. Young Shad (Richard Thomas) affirms to the people's council that he will go into space and find warriors who will fight Sandor on behalf of the Akira. Setting off aboard the sentient starship, Nell (voiced by Lynn Carlin), Shad wends through the universe assembling a ragtag team of spacefarers which winds up numbering seven (there's that pesky number again). But can even the likes of Gelt (Robert Vaughn), Space Cowboy (George Peppard), and Saint-Exmin of the Valkyrie (Sybil Danning) stand up to Sandor's ultimate weapon, the Stellar Converter? What do you think?

After Star Wars sealed the deal on summer blockbusters begun in 1975 with JAWS, Science Fiction became big business in Hollywood (to be certain, it had been so beforehand as well, but normally this sort of genre picture was more often than not the province of the B-movie producers of the day). It also didn't hurt any when The Empire Strikes Back was released earlier in 1980 and reinforced the franchise's stranglehold on the youth of the day's disposable income. And so it was that Roger Corman got in on the act, but just as Lucas was influenced in his original movie by Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, Corman decided to borrow the plot structure of John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven, the American retelling of Kurosawa's superlative Seven Samurai. And just to be sure that gormless audiences wouldn't be able to tell the difference between his film and Kershner's (though I have yet to encounter anyone who ever mistook the two for each other), he also took elements from Lucas's original film and put his own twist on them. So, the Stellar Converter is like Murakami's Death Star. Shad visits a planet which mirrors the Mos Eisley cantina, but this one is scary and deep underground. The Akira create a series of precise canyons in their planet (like, say, the trench on a certain Death Star), but the fighting that takes place in this ditch is strictly on the ground level. None of the correlations are exactly direct, but they are just non-specific enough that the viewer gets the idea loud and clear. 

Along this same thought process, the filmmakers still use the Assemble The Team aspect of the Kurosawa/Sturges films, but not all of the characters remain true in spirit to their forebears. For example, Shad the boy farmer is now as much a fighter as any of the others (he is included in the seven and at least partly fulfills the Katsushiro Okamoto character). The lizard man Cayman (Morgan Woodward) has a personal grudge against Sandor and is aided by the Kelvins (Lawrence Steven Meyers and Lara Cody). Peppard's unlikely Space Cowboy (some people call him) is the Tanner/Katayama stand-in. The role of women is also far more prominent in this film with the inclusions of Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel) and Saint-Exmin. Of the two, Saint-Exmin is the more intriguing, because she not only partly fills the Kikuchiyo/Chico role of the brash, frank warrior, but she also is a character straight out of Norse mythology (the Valkyrie, of course, being the escorts of the worthy dead into Valhalla). It goes without saying that Vaughn is more or less reprising his role of Lee from the Sturges film, even sort of playing it as the same character years into the future (and in a galaxy far, far away). He has scads of money from the killings he has perpetrated (his name is even synonymous with money), but he seeks a place to hide out from the innumerable enemies he has amassed.

In essence though, Battle Beyond The Stars plays very much like an epic fable, and it is geared toward a family audience. Yet there are still exploitation aspects that the filmmakers threw in just to be sure and have some slight semblance of sleaze. Hence, we get a spaceship with boobies on the front. The planet where Gelt lives has such amenities as Dial-A-Drug and Dial-A-Date (the results of the latter proving especially dispiriting). Two of Sandor's cronies crash a wedding and kidnap the bride (Julia Duffy), who it is then heavily implied they rape. The very presence of Danning in skimpy outfits is enough to get any adolescent male's mind wondering about space exploration. There is even some mild gore when Sandor's sonic weapon makes its victims' ears bleed profusely. And yet, many of the story elements are depicted so lightly, so offhandedly, it detracts from the impact that the brave heroes' deaths have unlike in the Sturges/Kurosawa films. The film is still a fast, fun adventure romp, but compared to the films it's based on(perhaps unfairly, perhaps not, seeing as it's so heavily pervaded by them), this one's not going to touch you on the same core level. But have fun, anyway.

MVT: The special effects (especially those involving the spaceship shots) are highly effective and are on a level with the best Hollywood could put out on budgets much higher than the one for this film.

Make Or Break: The first shot in outer space displays the attention to detail, craft, and care that the filmmakers put into this film (or at the very least, its special effects). Despite the derivative nature of just about everything in it, the filmmakers still took their work seriously, and it shows.

Score: 7.25/10
 

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Episode #195: Over the Gutter

Welcome back Gentle Minions!!!

This week the Gents go to the arm wrestling championships in Las vegas to bring you reviews of Over the Top (1987) starring Sylvester Stallone and Men From the Gutter AKA An qu (1983) directed by Ngai Choi Lam.

Direct download: Over_the_Gutter.mp3

It was sweaty, it was meaty and you are gonna love it!!!

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Adios!!!