Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) – A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review

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Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were brothers who studied German language and folklore during the 18th and 19th centuries.  They are best remembered by people today for their collection of German fairy tales.  And this movie is a fanciful story of the two brothers struggling to find a paying audience for their talents.  Wilhelm is presented as the idealist spending all his time collecting folktales from old women while his brother Jacob attempts to keep their heads above water by slaving away at tedious but paying work such as writing the family history of the local duke.

And interspersed with the story of the brothers are the fairy tale sequences of the film which correspond to three of the stories that Wilhelm hears from his sources.  They are versions of, “The Dancing Princess,” “The Cobbler and the Elves” and “The Singing Bone.”  In each case a different cast of actors portray the action.  And even though this is a German/American production there are some familiar American and British actors sprinkled in the cast.  Jim Backus, Claire Bloom, Beulah Bondi, Terry Thomas, Buddy Hackett and Barbara Eden are among the more well-known cast members.

The story about the brothers reaches its crisis when Wilhelm loses the draft of the duke’s family history in a river while rushing back from hearing a story in a “witch’s” cottage.  Jacob storms off vowing never to work with Wilhelm again.  The duke vows to prosecute Wilhelm if he doesn’t recompense him for the free home provided Wilhelm and his family during the unsuccessful project.  And simultaneously Wilhelm becomes seriously ill with pneumonia.  But hearing of Wilhelm’s dire straits Jacob sells his private library and uses the money to save Wilhelm.  Afterwards they continue on together with Jacob writing scholarly works on German philology and Wilhelm publishing his stories.  Eventually the king has the brothers nominated for the Prussian Royal Academy but the citation only includes Jacob’s scholarly works as cause for the nomination.  Saddened, Wilhelm still congratulates Jacob for the honor they will both be given.  But when they reach Berlin, the train is met by thousands of children cheering for Wilhelm to “tell them a story.”  And he starts off, “There once lived two brothers.”

I saw this movie as child when the nuns at my grammar school called an assembly in the gymnasium and played it to reward us for not burning down the school that year.  There was an unfortunate incident before the film.  A very good friend of mine, one of the most naturally talented comics I’ve ever known but who had extremely poor impulse control got in trouble for mouthing off to the principal, Sister Theodore.  She pulled him out of line and after a little back and forth dialog she slapped him in the face.  Unfortunately for his school career he slapped her back and added a few loud and obscene remarks.  Unsurprisingly he was expelled.  And the diversion made us pay less attention to the movie than we might have otherwise done.

But I remember from back then that it was an amusing movie.  And a recent viewing confirms that opinion.  The fairy tale sequences are played in a broad, very comical style.  Whereas the story of the brothers is in a dramatic style that chronicles the difficulty of trying to earn a living at a dull task when your heart is somewhere else.  Being a dreamer myself, may be why I’m so sympathetic with Wilhelm’s plight.

I’m not sure who I would recommend this movie for.  It’s not really a children’s story but I think many children might like it.  As for adults, it might be too primitive for people brought up on CGI special effects.  Maybe it’s only for old folks like me who are still young at heart.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 08 – For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

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I prefer to call this episode “For the Show is Cancelled and I Must Call My Agent.”  This one’s a doozy.  We start off with the Enterprise under attack from sub-light speed missiles which are easily destroyed by the ship’s phasers.  Following the path of the missiles back they find that an asteroid about 200 miles in diameter was the source and that the asteroid is a powered ship on a collision course with planet blah-blah-blah V.  The asteroid is hollow with a breathable atmosphere within but somehow the Enterprise’s sensors can’t detect the inhabitants.

Before Kirk and Spock can transport into the asteroid a panicked call from Nurse Chapel to the bridge warns us all is not well in Sick Bay but before we can assume that McCoy has gotten grabby with the good nurse, we find out that McCoy is dying of plasmopneumohyposarcocorneomyelofruitrolleos and has less than a year to live.  After the shock wears off for Kirk all three intrepid officers head for the transporter while Scotty is left holding the bag trying to keep Sulu, Chekov and Uhura focused on their work instead of talking about their favorite boy bands.

The people on the asteroid dress like denizens of Studio 54 with their pastel and plaid patterned pajamas and phony looking swords.  But phony or not they easily overpower the landing party.  The rather pretty high priestess Natira takes a shine to McCoy and brings the three spacemen to the presence of the Oracle.  The Oracle looks like an elevator button on a plaster cast wall display.  But he packs a wallop.  He zaps our three friends just to show them who’s boss.

A subplot is Natira convincing McCoy to stay on the asteroid to live out his year with her.  The catch is that McCoy has to have an implant that allows the Oracle to read his thoughts and kill him if he commits sacrilege, as for instance if he tells anyone that they are living inside of an asteroid instead of a planet.  When Spock and Kirk retreat to the Enterprise to escape a death sentence for spying on the Oracle.  McCoy gets zapped by the Oracle when he tries to tell them about how to fix the faulty guidance system that is heading the asteroid toward a collision with planet blah-blah-blah V which is supposed to be the destination of the asteroid/escape ship.

Kirk and Spock save McCoy by removing the implant and then save Natira by removing her implant.  Then Kirk hits Ctrl+Alt+Del to shut off the Oracle.  Spock fixes the glitch in the guidance system and hopefully turns off the murderous Oracle permanently.  McCoy decides to go back to the ship so that he can find a cure for plasmopneumohyposarcocorneomyelofruitrolleos (not for himself of course, but for the good of all mankind) but Natira decides to stay with her people and colonize planet blah-blah-blah V.  By the way, no explanation as to why the inhabitants there won’t take offense at illegal immigrants showing up uninvited but we’ll let that pass.  And right at the last-minute Spock scans the memory banks of the ship and determines that the Oracle has a cure for McCoy’s case of plasmopneumohyposarcocorneomyelofruitrolleos.  After some grunting and groaning and a blanket over him on the sick bay bed so he doesn’t catch cold, McCoy is cured.  And just to show everyone he’s a sport Kirk tells McCoy that he’ll make sure the Enterprise is near to planet blah-blah-blah V in 390 days when the asteroid shows up so McCoy can make a booty call on Natira.

Alright, this episode isn’t a total loss.  Natira is a pretty babe wearing some kind of a two-piece metallic silk wrap-around garment which sort of works on her.  Beyond that?  Well, not so much.  The plot has a dozen holes in it.  How exactly can sub-light speed weapons even find the Enterprise when it’s travelling at some supra-light speed?  How in hell could Spock find the cure for plasmopneumohyposarcocorneomyelofruitrolleos in an alien database in less than a minute and a half?  Why would a cute babe be interested in McCoy?  Why are there still 16 episodes left in Season 3 for me to suffer through?  But this is still not the worst episode I’ve seen.

I’ll give it a 5 // 2.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” tells the story of the Nolan family.  Johnny and Katie and their two school age children Francie and Neeley are a poor family living in Williamsburg Brooklyn and the story takes place close to the turn of the previous century (circa 1900).  Johnny is a singing waiter who lives for the day when his ship comes in but mostly, he drinks.  Katie makes the money that keeps the family alive by working as a cleaning woman in the tenement building they live in.  In several of the scenes we find her on her knees scrubbing the floors and staircases of the building.  Francie is a very smart and sensitive girl who wants to read every book in the library and grow up to be a writer.  She has a close relationship with her father who favors her love of learning and idealism.  This puts her in constant conflict with her level-headed mother who is determined to make her children successful by avoiding the “dreamy ideas” of her husband and teach them to work hard in life.  Neeley is a down to earth child of his environment and doesn’t suffer any angst over his downscale existence.  He has his mother’s temperament and rolls with the punches.

The movie tracks the downward trajectory of Johnny as he despairs of supporting his family.  But the one good thing he does for Francie is fake a move to another neighborhood that allows Francie to attend a much better public school than the one in her own neighborhood.  This opens her up to influences that teach her that in addition to enthusiasm a person has to “see the world as it really is.”

When Katie becomes pregnant, she tells Johnny that Francie will have to leave school to work to make up for Katie’s absence while she nurses the infant.  Johnny decides to do whatever it takes to save Francie from dropping out of school.  On Christmas Eve night he hears his daughter talk about the teacher who said that she must “see the world as it really is.”  And that resonates with his situation.  He must see himself as he really is.  He kisses her good night and walks out into the snow in his threadbare jacket and pants and goes looking for work as a sandhog for the burgeoning subway systems that were tunneling all over New York at that time.

Shortly after New Year Day the local police officer Mr. McShane comes to tell Katie that her husband is in a hospital in Manhattan having collapsed with pneumonia.  Shortly after she reaches him, he dies.  The funeral opens up Katie’s eyes as hundreds of Johnny’s friends pay their respects.  Her astonishment convinces Francie that her mother never understood her father and is a callous person.

Johnny’s friend, the local saloon owner Mr. Garrity, offers to let the two children work after school at his business setting up food for the free lunch.  Katie lets slip that she had decided that Francie would have had to quit school.  Hearing this Francie becomes truly embittered against her mother and fixes on the fact that letting her finish school had come once again through her father’s influence.  She accuses Katie of never having loved Johnny in life.

But the birth of the child at home forces Katie and Francie to bond and allows mother and daughter to see each other’s side of things.  With the help from the after-school jobs Francie and Neeley graduate grammar school and Katie predicts that the children will finish out high school too and go on to better than lives than their parents had.

And the movie has several other memorable characters.  Sissie who is Katie’s flirtatious sister and the scandal of the neighborhood is on her third husband.   Katie loves her but feels she is a bad influence on her children.  In each of Sissy’s earlier marriages her pregnancies ended in stillborn babies.  But a comment from Francie about the advantages of hospitals as a maternity setting, convinces Sissy to have her child in a hospital.  And the hospital uses oxygen to rouse the unresponsive new born.  And this probably saves Sissie’s present marriage.

Katie’s mother is a wise old woman who warns Katie against hardening her heart against the good things in life just because they don’t lead to monetary success.  And Officer McShane is a friend to Johnny, Katie and the children.  In several scenes he provides help to the family.  After Johnny’s death, he lets his intentions be known that he would like to court Katie.  Katie agrees and at that point even Francie is open to the idea.  So, the movie ends with Katie’s family finally able to cope with life in the modern world.

The cast does a phenomenal job.  Dorothy McGuire is Katie, Joan Blondell is Sissy, James Dunn is Johnny and Lloyd Nolan is Officer McShane.  And even some of the bit parts are memorable and splendidly acted.  The sets are evocative of Old Brooklyn and even mention of some of the place names still brings a smile to my face when I hear them in the movie.    Elia Kazan directed.

This is Camera Girl’s favorite movie of all time.  It speaks to her of families and it exhibits many of the qualities of life in Brooklyn that we still experienced two generations after the Nolan’s time.  I also think she identifies herself and me in the Nolans.  She as the hard-headed and hard-working woman and me as the ne’er do well but idealistic (and handsome and charming) husband.  But the one difference between myself and this Nolan guy is I was born lucky and he was born to fail.  But we watch this movie once or twice every year and we always end up feeling good.  Highly recommended for hard-working wives and lazy husbands.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966) – A Movie Review

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The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is the third movie in Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy.  As in the second movie, “For a Few Dollars More,” Lee Van Cleef joins Clint Eastwood.  And to round out the three eponymous characters we have Eli Wallach.  Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach are the Good the Bad and the Ugly in that order.  Eastwood is a nameless bounty hunter and con-man.  Lee Van Cleef is a killer for hire that goes by the name of Angel Eyes.  And Eli Wallach is a Mexican criminal named Tuco.

Eastwood’s racket is to capture criminals for the bounty but when the town gets ready to hang the criminal Eastwood shoots the rope just in time allowing the criminal to escape and Eastwood then sells him all over again in the next town.  After several iterations of this Eastwood takes two shots to sever the rope and when Tuco complains about this treatment Eastwood dissolves the partnership leaving Tuco to walk seventy miles through the burning desert and swearing revenge.

Meanwhile Angel Eyes is helping a man locate some stolen army gold that was hidden by a man named Bill Carson.  But then he decides he’d rather keep the money for himself so he kills his client.  He finds out Carson is in the Confederate Army in Texas so he joins the Union forces and searches for Carson among the prisoners.

Tuco survives his trek through the desert and hunts down Eastwood or Blondie as he calls him.  Eventually he catches up with him and forces him to walk bareheaded in the desert until he is close to death.  But just at the point where Tuco prepares to shoot Blondie a Confederate stage coach filled with dead and dying men rolls up to Tuco and he finds Bill Carson dying but willing to tell him the whereabouts of the gold.  Carson tells him it’s buried in a certain graveyard but he withholds the name on the grave until he gets a drink of water.  But when Tuco gets back with the water he finds Carson dead and Blondie next to him.  Carson told him the name before he died.  Now Tuco brings Blondie to a Mexican mission for medical care for his sun stroke and the two men ride to find the gold.  But dressed in confederate uniforms they are captured by Union forces and taken to a prison camp.  By a coincidence Angel Eyes is at this camp and he knows Tuco and when he learns that he is pretending to be Bill Carson he has Tuco tortured to learn the location of the gold.  Tuco tells him the name of the cemetery and tells him that Blondie knows the grave name.

After several escapes and gunfights Tuco and Blondie escape from Angel Eyes and head for the cemetery.  On the way they run into a Union force that is waging a futile daily battle over possession of a bridge across a river.  Blondie is struck by the futility of all these men dying over a bridge that has no intrinsic value.  But it also occurs to him that as long as the bridge is there, they won’t be able to get past the Confederate forces to reach the cemetery so he dynamites the bridge and the two armies end the operation.

Finally, Tuco and Blondie reach the cemetery.  But before the gold can be dug up there is a three-way duel between Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie.  The form an equilateral triangle and blast away.  Blondie kills Angel Eyes and Tuco discovers that Blondie took the bullets out of his gun the night before.  So, Blondie reveals where the gold is buried and makes Tuco dig it up.  But while Tuco is rejoicing Blondie has set up a hangman’s noose over one of the grave crosses and force Tuco to climb onto the cross and put his neck in the noose.  After tying Tuco’s hands behind his back, Blondie leaves him suspended there and rides off with half the gold.  But when he’s half a mile away he takes his rifle and shoots the rope and Tuco is freed to scream epithets at Blondie as he rides away.

This is the most entertaining movie of the trilogy.  Although technically Tuco is as much a hardened criminal as Angel Eyes he manages to become a somewhat sympathetic villain probably because of the large dose of comic relief he adds to the film.  Angel Eyes is the sadistic villain but he also is an interesting portrayal by Van Cleef.  And Eastwood’s character is, as always, resourceful, cool under fire and damn lucky.  This movie is highly recommended for fans of westerns and action-adventure films.  And it has a fantastic main theme song.

For a Few Dollars More (1965) – A Movie Review

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This is the second movie in director Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy but Clint Eastwood actually does have a name in this story.  He’s called Manco.  This is the story of two bounty hunters.  Manco (played by Eastwood) and Colonel Mortimer (played by Lee Van Cleef) are killing outlaws and collecting bounties when they meet up.  After a contest to see whose marksmanship is better, they team up to take down “El Indio” and his gang.  El Indio is a psychopathic killer whose gang has just broken him out of prison by killing all the guards and the warden.  Indio has a pocket watch with a music box built into it.  When he wants to have a shootout with someone he says, “Draw when the song ends.”  And usually, he kills the opponent.  But the song is so long and annoying I think most of the victims decide to die of gunshot wounds rather than live with the memory of the boredom of that song.

Indo is planning to rob the El Paso bank and Mortimer convinces Manco to join Indio’s gang and act as the inside man to allow Mortimer and Manco to finish off the gang.  The plan sort of works.  Manco manages to kill three of Indio’s men during a diversionary operation and Mortimer is able to gain Indio’s confidence too by helping Indo open the stolen safe using powerful acid to dissolve the lock.

But when Manco and Mortimer try to steal the bank money from Indio they are caught and beaten savagely in advance of their deaths.  Then a bunch of weird stuff happens that has Indo and some of his lieutenants murdering each other to increase their share of the loot.  As part of this plan Indio allows for Manco and Mortimer to escape and they finish off killing the gang.  By the finale it’s just Manco, Mortimer and Indio.  This sets up the duel between Indio and Mortimer.  We discover that Indio murdered Mortimer’s brother-in-law then raped his sister causing her to commit suicide.  The musical watch was stolen by Indio from the sister.  With a little help from Manco the duel is run fairly and Indio is killed.  Then Mortimer tells Manco that he can have all the bounties for Indio and the rest of the gang.  Mortimer just walks away, apparently finishing his stint as a bounty hunter and Manco loads the bodies on a wagon and takes the bank’s money along too.  It’s not at all clear whether he is going to return the money, which is much more than the bounties on the gang, or keep it.

This is a very enjoyable action film.  Eastwood and Van Cleef shoot a lot of bad guys.  The bank heist is a good chapter and little touches throughout the story keep the audience’s interest throughout.  There are several very humorous situations between the “partners” including a scene where Mortimer proves to Manco that a long-barreled gun trumps a Colt .45 even if the pistolero is the fastest draw around.

Indio is such a despicable psychopath that making his death the climax of the movie seems like a reasonable scenario.  But unfortunately, the whole musical watch thing is just too annoying.  It happens I think three times and by the finale I just wanted Mortimer to shoot Indio as soon as the watch started playing and then shoot the watch just to end the torture.

I think this second installment in the trilogy is even better than the first (A Fistful of Dollars).  Van Cleef is a welcome addition to the atmosphere providing a sort of older brother for the Eastwood character.

Highly recommended.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 07 – Day of the Dove

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The plot of this episode has the well-worn trope of a creature that feeds off of human emotions.  In this one distress calls summons both the Enterprise and a Klingon warship to a planet with each side believing that the other side has destroyed one of their colonies.  But when they reach the planet the Enterprise landing party finds no evidence of a colony at all.  Somehow the Klingon ship is badly damaged with all but forty of the crew killed.  The surviving Klingons beam down and attack the landing party and force Kirk to beam them aboard the Enterprise so that they can take it over.  But Kirk alerts Spock using a warning signal on his communicator and the Klingons are beamed up but subdued.  The Klingon captain, Kang and his wife Mara, who is also the science officer, of course, rage against the questioning by Kirk about their supposed massacre of a colony.  But suddenly the Enterprise crew’s phasers are turned into really phony looking swords.  And the Klingons are also armed with swords so the two sides start hacking away at each other.  Simultaneously the Enterprise bulkhead doors on most of the ship seal, cutting off all but forty of the crew from subduing an equal number of Klingons.  It turns out any injuries from the sword fighting heal at a ridiculous rate so the sides always remain balanced.  And most annoyingly the ship is taken over by some outside force that speeds it up to Warp Factor 9 and toward the edge of the galaxy.  And finally, just for good measure, the dilithium crystals begin to degenerate and only have enough power to last until the end credits of the show appear.  After four or five times that we see some sort of translucent spinning pinwheel thingy hovering around the Enterprise set, we are told that a creature composed of “pure energy” is on board and feeding off the hate of the two sides.  It even controls the minds of the crew and puts false memories in their heads like Chekov believing that Klingons were responsible for the murder of his imaginary brother.  Even McCoy, Scotty, Spock and Kirk start bandying racial epithets and insults against each other, which is quite amusing.

Eventually Kirk snaps out of his emotional state and figures out that he must call a truce with the Klingons and stop the fighting before the dilithium crystals are all gone.  When Kirk saves Kang’s wife from being sexually assaulted by Chekov, he tries to convince her to help him reason with Kang.  After Mara sees the alien, she is convinced and she and Kirk beam into the engineering deck somehow or other and confront Kang with the situation.  After a sword fight with Kang, Kirk convinces him of the truth of the alien situation and they yell at the alien and tell it to leave and then Kirk and Kang start yucking it up together and backslapping each other and this hurts the alien’s feeling and it leaves in a huff.

Surprisingly, this pathetic story was quite amusing to watch.  The actor who portrayed Kang, Michael Ansara, was quite entertaining in his Klingon face paint and swaggering insolence.  And all the hysterical overacting by Chekov, McCoy, Scotty and of course Kirk was also highly entertaining.  Chekov’s attempt to make out with the Klingon woman and Kirk’s outraged attack on Chekov in her defense were equally hilarious.  And there was terrible fake sword fighting and bellowing charges of red shirts in all directions.  I would say the highlight of Kirk mockery activity was Kirk lifting up Chekov and carrying him away in his arms like a child after he knocked him out for groping Mara.

I won’t try to defend my opinion of this episode.  I openly admit that the plot was hackneyed and idiotic.  But it was just the right amount of idiotic to allow Shatner and company to do their thing.  Well done!  One of the best season three episodes so far.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – Favorite Westerns

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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.

Stagecoach (1939) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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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

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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

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“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.