My favorite western is Once Upon A Time In The West, followed by True Grit/ Rooster Cogburn (I consider them to be part one and two of a whole story), followed by Eastwood’s spaghetti trio. After that I like western comedies such as the Trinity movies with Terrence Hill and sometimes Bud Spencer. Blazing Saddle is a joy but could not be made today. Honorable mention goes to Quigley Down Under as it is set in Australia, and besides Selleck as the protagonist, it has an absolutely smashing musical score. I grew up watching westerns on TV and at the drive in. Roy and Dale. Lash LaRue, Rin Tin Tin, Sky King, Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Cisco and Poncho, you name it. I even belonged to the Rin Tin Tin fan club.
Category: Movie Reviews
All movie reviews
Stagecoach (1939) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
Stagecoach was considered a classic western at the time it was made. It also proved to be the breakout performance for John Wayne’s career.
The plot involves a stagecoach making a run straight through an Indian uprising under Geronimo. The passenger list is a cross section of various types found in westerns. Driving the coach are a lawman named Curley Wilcox and for comic relief Buck, played by Andy Devine. There’s a prostitute with a heart of gold named Dallas who’s been thrown out of town by the ladies of the Decency League. There’s a southern gambler named Hatfield played by John Carradine. There’s the drunken Doc Boone played by Thomas Mitchell. There’s the obnoxious town banker Mr. Gatewood who has secretly absconded with the bank’s money. There’s Mr. Peacock who is a mild-mannered whiskey salesman. There’s Mrs. Lucy Mallory the pregnant wife of a cavalry officer. And last but not least, the Ringo Kid played by John Wayne. Ringo has busted out of jail and is headed to Lordsburg like the rest of them but in his case, it is to find and kill the three Plummer brothers who killed his father and brother and framed him for one of their crimes.
The passengers represent the various class and moral differences that make for friction and hard feelings between them. The main story is the journey through Apache territory and the gun battle with Geronimo’s men but along the way the drunken doctor sobers up long enough to deliver Mrs. Mallory’s baby. Dallas and Ringo strike up a romance. Doc Boone finishes off all of Mr. Peacock’s whiskey samples. Gatewood and Mrs. Mallory discover that he served under her father the general in the Civil War.
But the final chapter is the showdown between Ringo and the Plummers. And after Ringo finishes off all three of them (with just three bullets!) he gives himself up to Curley to finish out his sentence in jail. But Curley decides to take the law into his own hands and frees the Kid and sends him off with Dallas to start their new life together across the state line at Ringo’s family ranch. The storybook happy ending.
For our generation the story probably seems a little too stereotyped, the acting too broad and the ending too pat. The idea that a lawman would release his prisoner on his own recognizance to allow him to engage in a gunfight after which he would just walk back into custody to be brought back to prison seems like some kind of fantasy. The expectant mother travelling on a stagecoach through an Indian attack seems even crazier. But the movie does provide an enjoyable story. I wouldn’t consider it any kind of best in class western. I think it’s a good story with several good actors, especially Thomas Mitchell and John Carradine. And it’s fun to see a young John Wayne navigating around actors who were much bigger stars than he was at the time.
I recommend this movie to fans of westerns, John Wayne and movies of this era.
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) – A Movie Review
This is a British film from the 1960’s and reflects the filmmaking conventions of that place and time. This is seen in the realistic and drab scenery and even the look of the actors themselves. The atmosphere is depressing and claustrophobic in the extreme.
Bill and Myra Savage are a middle-aged married couple. Myra is a professional medium who performs seances for a small circle of believers who would like to communicate with the dearly departed. Bill is a man who was forced to stop working because of health problems. Myra is the dominant partner in the marriage and berates and orders Bill around. But it is apparent that Myra is delusional about many things including her “gift.” She wishes to be rich and famous for her ability to speak to the dead.
In support of this desire, she comes up with a plan. It’s a carefully detailed plan to kidnap the young daughter of a rich man and hold her for ransom. But in addition, the plan calls for Myra to use her “gift” to allow the girl to be found unharmed after the ransom is delivered. And of course, Bill will have to perform all the active parts of the plan. He is to kidnap the girl, make the ransom demand, pick up the ransom and drop the girl off for the return. Myra’s part is to set up the room for the hostage and act as a “nurse” for the girl in the fiction that they will try to maintain that she is a patient in a hospital. To that end they have a room painted white and a facsimile of a hospital bed set up in it. And finally, Myra will contact the kidnapped girl’s family and claim that she is in contact with the girl through her spirit world contact, “Arthur.” And when they have the money, Myra will tell the parents where to find their daughter after Bill has dropped her off at the pick-up spot.
Surprisingly, the plan is remarkably successful. The girl’s kidnap goes off without a hitch and the ransom is collected by a complicated and circuitous route that the father has to follow going in and around the London Underground Railway. But after the ransom pick-up the mother of the kidnapped girl shows up at one of Myra’s afternoon seances and we have the nerve-racking experience for Bill of trying to keep the little girl quiet as she calls out in a delirium of fever for her mother who is right in the next room taking part in a séance that is supposedly in contact with her. At the climax of the séance Myra faints and the séance is stopped and the girl’s mother departs without incident.
But the excitement that Myra felt during this bizarre and dangerous charade has inspired a new and hideous change in the plan. Myra tells Bill that Arthur, her spirit partner has asked that the girl be sent to him in the spirit world. In other words, Myra wants Bill to kill the girl with chloroform and thus allow Arthur to have her spirit as his companion.
This madness horrifies Bill and he tries to force Myra to confront her delusions. Arthur is the dead child of Bill and Myra but whereas Myra believed that Arthur was a child in their lives into his school age years the reality is that “Arthur” was a stillborn baby. He tries to convince her that there is no Arthur and all these fantasies are her imagination. And that killing the girl is madness. But Myra raves on about her gift and Arthur and screams at Bill until he agrees to do her bidding.
In the next scene we see Bill leaving the child’s body in a wooded area and then rushing away to his vehicle. When he gets home Myra is delighted at the way the plan has worked out. But suddenly there is a knock at the door. Bill answers it and comes back with three plainclothes policemen. They ask Myra if she will perform a séance to help the police locate the girl now that the ransom has been paid. She agrees and begins the performance with Bill and two of the policemen forming the circle around the table with her. Myra goes into her trance and starts talking to and for Arthur and slowly she begins to repeat the conversation that Arthur must have had in her mind about killing the child. When she lapses into silence where she is pantomiming herself cradling a small child in her lap the senior officer looks at Bill and says, “Where did you hide the money sir?” And Bill replies, It’s in the coal cellar.” Then Bill adds, “You found the girl alright?” and the detective says, “Yes, she’s alright.” And there the movie ends.
This is one weird and creepy movie. Myra is a deranged lunatic and Bill is a pathetic weakling. But he actually loves her. And the atmosphere and plot are quite effective at providing suspense and interest in the story. Interestingly, Bill was played by Richard Attenborough, the guy who played John Hammond, the man who built Jurassic Park in that movie. Taken all in all I recommend this movie to fans of suspense movies. It’s not as shocking as Psycho but it is a similar experience.
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – A Movie Review
“A Fistful of Dollars” was Clint Eastwood’s first spaghetti western with director Sergio Leone. As it turned out it was an unauthorized western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai film Yojimbo. These spaghetti westerns were produced in Europe and cost only a fraction of Hollywood movies and so could make a profit with a much lower box office. Leone featured Eastwood as “The Man with No Name.” He was an anti-hero who drifted from place to place and although of ambivalent morals he always ended up on the side of the less powerful.
In this story the stranger (Eastwood) shows up in the Mexican village of San Miguel and learns that two criminal gangs, the Rojos and the Baxters are in competition for control of the town. The stranger offers his services as a gun fighter to both gangs and by playing them off each other he slowly whittles away both gangs. There is a sub-plot about a family that is being victimized by the Rojos. The wife has been taken as a concubine by one of the Rojos while her husband and small child are hostages. The stranger manages to free the wife and aids the small family to escape San Miguel. For this he is tortured by the Rojos to learn where the woman has gone. The stranger manages to escape and the Rojos, assuming that the Baxters helped him, burn down the Baxters’ house and shoot down the whole gang as they flee the burning building.
The stranger is helped to escape the town by the undertaker hiding him in a coffin. He heals up and returns to save his friend Silvanito who is being tortured by the Rojos to find out where the woman has gone. The stranger faces off against all the remaining Rojos and with the help of a sheet of steel plate hidden under his poncho he shoots them all dead and frees his friend.
So, what’s the verdict? The acting is minimal, the characters are cartoons. The story is straight forward and transparent. But it is altogether an enjoyable hour and a half of pulp fiction. Good vanquishes evil. Violence gets splashed all over the screen and the stranger leaves town just as he entered it. A man with no past or future living by his wits and his gun.
As a final note, the film this was based on, Yojimbo, is a much different film because of the cultural and aesthetic differences between a Leone western and a Kurosawa samurai film. But it is a great picture in its own right. And if you enjoy Kurosawa’s films it is a good one. If you’ve never seen one before then start with his “Seven Samurais” first. It’s an excellent film.
“A Fistful of Dollars” is highly recommended for fans of the western and anyone with a simple taste for action.
Mystery Street (1950) – A Movie Review
“Mystery Street” is a 1950 black and white film noir that I decided to write about because it’s one of very few old Hollywood movies shot in the Boston area. The plot is the story of Vivian Heldon, a girl who works at a low-class bar called the Grass Skirt. She’s gotten pregnant by a married man and is trying to get him to pay for her child. She calls up the father Joshua Harkley who lives down on Cape Cod and tells him to meet her at her bar. When he doesn’t show up and leaves his phone off the hook, she convinces a drunk to let her drive him home. But instead, she drives sixty miles to Harkley’s town, Barnstable and calls him to force a showdown. Because the drunk (Henry Shanway) is starting to sober up and complain she abandons him on the side of the road and drives off with his car to the rendezvous with Harkley on a lonely road. Harkley shoots her and dumps her naked body in the ocean and drives the car into a canal.
Three months later Heldon’s skeleton washes up on the beach. The local police Lieutenant Peter Morales, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, goes to the Harvard Medical School’s crack forensic expert, Dr. McAdoo to try and discover whose bones were found and how she died.
Using estimated date of death and a photograph of the skull on a transparency they superimpose it over each photograph of a missing woman from that time period and are able to determine that Vivian Heldon was the probable victim. Also, they find the bones of her unborn child and a broken rib that showed traces of the metal from a bullet and they deduce that Vivian was murdered. Next, they find from the bar patrons that Vivian left the bar with a man driving a specific color and model car. Looking into stolen car records for that date they find Henry Shanway. Once the bar patrons identify Shanway in a police line-up he is arrested for the murder. Also, Shanway’s car is pulled out of the water sealing his fate.
After that there is a whole bunch of interaction between Vivian’s landlady and the murderer culminating in her stealing the murder weapon, a service .45 automatic that she found in his office desk drawer. Meanwhile Dr. McAdoo figures out that based on which rib was hit, it was possible that the bullet was still embedded in the car. Finding the bullet they then try to find the gun to cinch the story. But Shanway doesn’t have a gun. This disturbs Morales who then starts checking the rest of Heldon’s contacts to see if any of them had a gun. Of course, when he checks Harkley’s desk the gun isn’t there. But this alerts Harkley that the landlady has stolen his gun. He goes to her home and chokes her until she agrees to tell him where she hid it, a storage locker at the train depot. But just then the police show up and to keep her quiet Harkley hits the landlady on the head, knocking her out and eventually killing her. Harkley escapes but Morales finds the key to the locker and decides to stake out the depot and find out who tries to get the gun. After a lot of running around a train yard Morales catches Hartley and Shanway is saved from false conviction. Three cheers for forensic medicine and Ricardo Montalban.
This is a solid B movie. The acting is pretty good and the forensic science was state of the art in 1950. But I have to take off points for lack of local authenticity. At one point one of the “locals” pronounces Barnstable as if it sounded like the two words barn and stable. Now admittedly I’m a refugee here in New England with my Brooklyn accent and all, but even I’ve picked up more of the local names than that.
I’ll recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys both old movies and police procedurals.
M (1931 film) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
This old movie is in German. Peter Lorre stars as M, a psychotic murderer of young girls in Berlin. The movie chronicles how the murderer’s crimes terrorize the city and galvanize the police to roust the criminal element of the city in an effort to find the murderer. And this interference with their normal operations convinces the criminals to organize and find the murderer themselves. So, the movie is made up of the murderer’s actions including his killings, the police investigation and the effort of the underworld to find the murderer themselves.
Up front we have to address the foreign language aspect of the film. If you cannot tolerate a subtitled foreign film then let this one be. If you can, then follow my review and see if this sounds interesting. Peter Lorre’s character is satisfactorily creepy and despicable. Luckily a movie from this era would not include any graphic violence against a small girl so all the murders occur off camera. The police procedural scenes and the investigator’s analysis of the evidence and the psychological profiling of the killer are well done and satisfy that part of the movie’s work. But it is the underworld’s capture and subsequent treatment of M that are the centerpiece and most interesting aspect of the movie. Because after locating M. The underworld gang have to break into a bank building to extricate him from where he is hiding out. So, all of their criminal expertise is employed in an enterprise that is actually admirable.
And finally, after capturing M they put him on trial for his life. They provide him with a defense attorney and have a prosecutor, judge and the membership of the underworld serve as the jury. The only effective defense that might sway the jury is M’s own testimony that a terrible compulsion forced him to kill against his own will. But led by the women who formed part of the criminal jury the verdict comes in guilty and they are right at the point of carrying out the death penalty when the police break in and rescue M for his legal arrest and trial. The last scene is the judge giving a verdict which appears to be the death penalty and a sort of Greek Chorus of the mothers of the murdered children lamenting that M’s death will not bring back their children’s lives.
I like this movie. Certainly, it is so far removed in time and culture from our present world that it makes it slightly difficult to become submerged in the cinematic experience but I don’t find it too great a barrier to enjoying the story. And it is a very clever idea. Criminals policing their own and a parallel manhunt going on by the police and by their usual quarry. And a trial before the underworld is a wonderful invention. Finally, Peter Lorre is perfect for the part. Here he is a younger and surprisingly chubbier Lorre than we are used to seeing in such things as “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and the “Maltese Falcon.” But his manner with the young girls makes your skin crawl. So, acknowledging the caveat about foreign language films I highly recommend this film.
Sorry Wrong Number (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
“Sorry Wrong Number” is a film noir that starred Barbara Stanwyck as Leona Stevenson and Burt Lancaster as her husband Henry. They have trapped themselves in a relationship that will doom both of them. He is a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks and she is the daughter of James Cotterell, a very wealthy owner of a pharmaceutical company in Chicago. Henry’s life as Leona’s husband consists of working as a flunky for her father and begging for spending money from his demanding and neurotic wife. When he tries to break away and get a job outside of her father’s company Cotterell puts out the word on the street that no one will hire without losing his business. When Henry perseveres to break away Leona has an attack that her father tells him is a dangerous heart condition that could kill her at any time that she becomes excited.
So, Henry is trapped for good and all so he decides to take advantage of his position in the company by setting up a scheme with a chemist named Waldo Evans to steal extremely valuable drug intermediates and sell them to a gangster named Morano. But he tries to double-cross Morano but when he catches on the gangster tells him that he wants Leona’s life insurance payoff. Apparently, Leona’s doctor has told her she’ll only last a few more days. So, Henry agrees to pay off on the policy within a month. But they go to New York City so that Leona can consult with a heart specialist. And the specialist finds that Leona’s heart is fine, it’s a psychosomatic illness. So Morano is going to have Leona killed but in the meantime the police are closing in on Morano, Evans and Henry.
All this is learned during flashbacks in the movie during phone calls. The whole movie for Leona is taking place in an expensive apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in a series of phone calls with the other characters. In the opening scene Leona picks up the phone and thinks she’s hearing a crossed line with two other speakers and they are planning to murder a woman that night. For the rest of the movie, she tries to get in touch with Henry to get his help. Leona feels trapped in her bed because of her belief in a heart condition so she stays and becomes more and more hysterical as she calls from place to place looking for him. And along the way she learns, bit by bit, about Henry’s criminal business. But at the very end she finds out about the life insurance plot from Henry and he tells her the call she intercepted was about her own murder. But it’s too late, just as Henry tells her to scream out the window for help the killer comes up the staircase and strangles her. When Henry calls back to Leona the killer says “Sorry wrong number.”
This is a pretty clever set up for a movie. Having the whole movie take place in a room gives it a claustrophobic feel. The only problem is that Stanwyck tries so hard to make her character a neurotic shrew that it works too well. Halfway through the movie I wanted to murder Stanwyck myself. The rest of the movie was fine but every time Stanwyck started freaking out I felt like turning the movie off. And when the killer finally strangled her, I felt very relieved and grateful.
I would only recommend this movie to anyone who isn’t put off by the description I’ve given.
Nosferatu (1922) – Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) – A Science Fiction & Fantasy Movie Review
Last night I watched both Nosferatu movies. I believe they are best reviewed together since Herzog’s remake of the silent film is in many ways an homage. Almost all of the “dialog” of the silent film is reused word for word. The appearance of the Dracula character and even the sets have been constructed to mimic the look of the originals. Mercifully, the science of motion picture imaging had progressed tremendously between 1922 and 1979 so the picture quality of the latter film has none of the pioneering qualities of its predecessor. Night scenes weren’t shot during the day and there is sound so the actors can restrain their pantomime gesturing. But that being said it is essentially the same story.
In this version of Dracula, Renfield is a “land agent,” sort of a nineteenth century realtor and he employs Jonathon Harker to go to Transylvania to sign papers to buy a house in Bremen, Germany. Jonathon leaves his wife Nina behind fretting about his safety. When he gets to the environs of Castle Dracula the townsfolk warn him about spooky stuff but he goes anyway. Dracula meets him and signs the papers and then feeds off of Harker for a few days, packs his dirt boxes and drives off with horse and wagon. Harker escapes from the castle, and after recuperating for some time in the village heads for home by horse.
Dracula takes the slow boat across the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea to Bremen. Enroute, he sucks the life out of the crew so that the boat drifts into Bremen with only the captain’s lifeless body tied to the ship’s wheel. Somehow Dracula sneaks off the boat and takes up residence in the house across the street from the Harkers. Dracula also brings a goodly supply of plague rats with him and the town starts dying off of the bubonic plague in droves.
While Dracula was enroute by ship Renfield is somehow driven mad and starts eating flies and biting animals and people to get blood. He is cast into a mad house but eventually escapes and capers around town awaiting “the master” and acting like a gibbering idiot.
All this time Nina has been suffering mentally from the strain of worrying about Jonathon and because she seems to be a clinically depressed heroine. When he arrives, she reads this book on vampires that Jonathon has specifically told her not to read. This disobedience seemed the most realistic detail of the movie. Nina reads that a pure spirited woman who offers her blood freely to the vampire can keeps him drinking until dawn. And at that point the sun will destroy him. Nina feigns illness and sends Jonathon to get a doctor. She invites Dracula to her home and he falls for the trick and is evaporated in a puff of smoke. Jonathon and the Doctor arrive just in time for Nina to greet Jonathon and expire from exsanguination.
In the 1979 version the ending is less positive. When Nina expires Jonathon, who has been slowly becoming a vampire for the last few days goes full Nosferatu and escapes the town on horseback to start his own reign of death somewhere else.
So, what about these movies? The silent version is a product of German Expressionism and uses bizarre and unreal imagery to evoke the sense of fear and dread. The Dracula character is a cartoonish figure. He is exaggeratedly tall and gaunt, has a dead white skin color, an elongated hairless head, protruding front teeth and ridiculously long and curved fingernails. The sets at Castle Dracula showcase bizarre architectural details like the odd shaped doors and the monolithic walls in the crypt. Everything is unnatural and bizarre. I would say for a silent film this is a successful visual representation of a horror story. But remember, it’s a silent film. That means the acting is painfully exaggerated to pantomime the meaning. Both of the Harkers are always gesticulating and grimacing to let you know they are emoting something or other. I think very few modern viewers can get past the staginess of silent films to enjoy the story as a story. So, it’s a successful silent horror film but I couldn’t recommend it to the general audience.
As for Werner Herzog’s 1979 homage, that’s more of something we can discuss in normal movie terms. I’d call it an art film. It goes a long way to provide good cinematography, good (if odd) acting and a rationale for the actions of the primary characters. Dracula even gets to tell of his ennui and his envy for those who can die. And he invests the characters with a reasonable level of personality above what was provided in the silent film. There is even a small amount of humor thrown in, primarily around the character of Renfield but what struck me as funniest was a scene at the very end of the movie. Dr. Van Helsing is holding a bloody stake that he has used to permanently kill Dracula. Two town officials arrive on the scene and Jonathon denounces Van Helsing to them stating that the doctor has murdered good old Count Dracula. The magistrate orders his underling to have Van Helsing arrested and jailed for murder but the subordinate argues with him that there are no police left to arrest him, no jailors left to imprison him and no town officials left to charge and try him.
Herzog has succeeded in making an atmospheric, artistic horror film. It’s not particularly frightening but it attempts to adhere to the spirit of the original Dracula story, a sort of late nineteenth century gothic fairy tale. So, my recommendation is restricted to people who enjoy art films. And it wouldn’t kill a horror fan to watch it. It just might not be completely what he would be hoping for. So, there’s my Halloween day horror review that I promised.
30OCT2021 – OCF Update
Today I spent a good chunk of the day on fiction writing. And it was very productive and I think successful. But the trade off is no time for web site work. I’m going to have to get much more efficient at splitting my time between the two tasks. Tonight I am employed watching the 1922 and 1979 versions of Nosferatu. The original is a silent film that is without a doubt a puzzling experience for the modern audience. The film quality is terrible, the special effects are non-existent and the acting is highly stylized if I want to put it politely. The 1979 version is titled Nosferatu the Vampyre and was directed by Werner Herzog. I just started it but it looks like it could be okay. I hope to have the review out tonight.
Carnival of Souls (1962) – A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review
The “Carnival of Souls” is a low budget horror movie that consists of the life of a woman named Mary Henry after she is in a car accident. She and two other women crash their car off a bridge into a river. The car disappears into the muddy river and is given up for lost but after three hours Mary Henry crawls out of the water and claims that she has no memory of the crash or her escape. She decides to take a job out of state as a church organist in a town next to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Along the way she is haunted by the apparition of a man who looks like the animated corpse of a drowning victim. She is strangely attracted to an abandoned pavilion on the lakefront that had served as a carnival at one point. Her interactions with her minister employer, her landlady and the neighbor who attempts to interest her romantically are awkward and extremely detached on her part. And several times during her first few days in the new town she suddenly finds herself detached from the world around her. Specifically, no one seems able to see or hear her. Also, she cannot hear any sounds from her surroundings. Eventually she starts seeing visions of dead people rising out of the lake and dancing in the pavilion. These visions cause her to lose her job when the minister senses her morbid soul in her organ music. She turns to the young neighbor to try and ground her in reality but even his clumsy advances cannot spark any strong response from her. Eventually she is drawn to the pavilion and the drowned dead. She watches them dancing in the pavilion ballroom and finally they come so close to her that she panics and runs away. But they chase her onto the beach and finally catch her when she stumbles on the sand. They surround her and the scene changes to the next morning where a search party including the minister and a policeman look at some footprints on the sand and nothing more. She has completely vanished leaving just her car. In the next scene we are back in her home town and the crashed car has finally been located in the river and the bodies of the two women and Mary Henry are all in the car (and strangely not decomposed after all the time under water). The End.
There are a lot of things wrong with this movie. It was made on a very low budget without professional actors and it shows. I guess it would be called cinema verité. But the amateurish quality of the cinematography and the flat recital of the lines makes you wonder why you would watch such a cheesy offering. But the nature of the scene at the end of the movie with the dance of the drowned corpses is the very essence of horror. It is almost iconic and I think it has inspired some later works that are recognized as successful, specifically I think the haunted house in Stephen King’s “The Shining” owes something to this movie. And there is at least one episode of the Twilight Zone that seems to borrow heavily from this story.
So, there you have it. This is a cheesy amateurish film from 1962 that also contains an image that I think is authentically evocative of what we call horror in film. You’ll have to decide if that makes it worth seeing.