Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

The Dirty Dozen (1967) – A Movie Review

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The Dirty Dozen is a fictional story about a clandestine American military mission during WW II.  Disgraced Army Major John Reisman, played by Lee Marvin, is ordered by Gen. Sam Worden (Ernest Borgnine) to select twelve court martialed Americans whose sentences vary from 20 years at hard labor up to hanging and train them up for a mission behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied France.  If they survive and complete the mission honorably their sentences may be commuted.  If not, they will be returned to serve their sentences.

The beginning of the movie is our introduction to the prisoners.  Each man has an aversion to authority, several are hardened killers and one man (Archer Maggott played by Telly Savalas) is a delusional psychotic.  The most sympathetic characters are played by Charles Bronson, Jim Brown and Clint Walker.  Each has been convicted of murder but in each case, extenuating circumstances have been ignored by the military court that decided the case.  Probably the least sympathetic convict (other than Maggott) is V. R. Franko played by John Cassavetes.  He is a Chicago gangster who murdered a British civilian for less than ten dollars-worth of money.  But he is also the everyman of the outfit whose defiance of authority becomes the rallying point for the prisoners to gel into a functional team.

The movie progresses from the team being trained by Reisman, then to a confrontation with a hostile base commander, Col. Everett Dasher Breed, played by Robert Ryan, then to a test of their competence in a War Game against Breed’s elite troop and finally to their mission.

This mission is a night time parachute drop into occupied France where the team will infiltrate a château where the German High Command are assembled and kill as many of the high-ranking officers as possible in the hope that it will disrupt the command and control of the Nazi military response to D-Day which is scheduled the morning after the raid.

The action goes according to their very detailed plan until Maggott finds himself in a room with a young German woman and proceeds to sadistically murder her before running amok with his machine gun thus prematurely alerting the Germans to their peril.  The climax of the attack is James Brown tossing a series of grenades into the gasoline soaked and explosives filled ventilation lines for the bomb shelter where the Germans have taken cover.  The whole château goes up in pyrotechnic splendor and only Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson and one supporting cast member live to return home from the mission.

The full list of the actors who played the twelve prisoners is John Cassavetes, Tom Busby, Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland, Ben Carruthers, Clint Walker, Charles Bronson, Colin Maitland, Stuart Cooper, Al Mancini, Trini Lopez and Telly Savalas.

As absurd as this whole mission sounds, and it is absurd, the movie, especially the mission in France, is exciting, interesting and very well done.  Telly Savalas is a little over the top in his psycho characterization but he sells it well and it isn’t hard to see it coming.

Bronson and Marvin impersonating German officers in the château is fun to watch and the amount of gun play and other diverting activities is sure to keep a male audience’s attention.  I highly recommend this movie for its entertainment value.  It isn’t an actual war movie.  It’s more of a caper movie but a very exciting one.

Above and Beyond (1952) – A Movie Review

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“Above and Beyond” is a dramatic portrayal of the Air Force’s project to deliver the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan (Hiroshima).  Col. Paul Tibbets, played by Robert Taylor, is selected for the mission because of his combat record and also for his knowledge of the capabilities of the B-29 bomber.  The movie has two aspects.  It documents the difficulty of the mission to combine the scientific, military and logistical requirements while maintaining absolute secrecy.  The second aspect is the toll that this secrecy takes on the marriage and family life of Colonel Tibbets, his wife Lucey and their two young boys.  I watched this movie along with Camera Girl and I made sure I emphasized how truly annoying wives are when husbands are trying to get something really important done.  Like when I have a really important horror movie that I need to watch and she bothers me with unimportant stuff right in the middle of a very important scene.  Very annoying.  But I digress.

Since mission security is one of the crucial aspects of the story they gave the part of security chief, Major Uanna, to James Whitmore whose other credential for atomic energy related movies was his turn as a police officer in “Them,” the story of giant ants created by the original Manhattan Project blast in New Mexico.  And the Air Force general overseeing the project was Major General Curtis E. LeMay who is played by Jim Backus, better known to television audiences as Gilligan’s Island’s very own millionaire, Thurston Howell III.

The melodrama of Col Tibbet’s disrupted family life is reasonably well done.  But the payoff is the bombing mission.  And it is compelling.  The men in the plane other than Tibbets didn’t know about the atomic bomb.  Tibbets reveals this during the flight to Japan.  And he reveals to them that for all anyone knows their plane will be destroyed by the radiation or the subsequent shock wave.  Actual footage of the Hiroshima blast is run during this sequence of the film and the devastating nature of the detonation is conveyed in Tibbets’ reaction to the blast.  Even all these years later and in context of our familiarity with the much more powerful hydrogen bombs that were to follow, the sight of the Hiroshima explosion is still a sobering sight.

I recommend this movie based on its temporal proximity to the events.  It gives us a chance to see the transition from the almost naïve mindset of the WW II Americans to the almost overwhelmed perspective of inhabitants of the new atomic age.  And it gave me new-found admiration for the courage and determination of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations who combined intelligence and hard work to produce the horrible miracle that became the basis for our modern world.  If we still had their clarity, I wonder whether we’d be in the mess we’re in now.

Arkhaven Comics – A Review

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Vox Day is an idiosyncratic guy who will be remembered, if for no other reason, because he waged the hilarious Rabid Puppies War against the pink science fiction doofuses of WorldCon in 2015 and 2016.  But he is also the proprietor of a book publishing company, Castalia House and recently he has branched into comics with a company called Arkhaven.

Last month Arkhaven started up a comic site that publishes the various stories on-line for free at  https://www.arkhaven.com/  .  I’ve never been a comic book guy.  I did watch a few of the Marvel tv shows when I was a kid and I did bring my grandsons to watch the Marvel movies until they started getting too woke.

But there are at least a couple of comics on this site that I can appreciate.  One is Ben Garrison’s Editorial Cartoons.  Ben’s editorials are from the right and his drawings are clever.

The other that I just started following is a dark fantasy (supernatural) comic called Chicago Typewriter.  It’s very well drawn and the story so far is entertaining.

Anyway, if you have any interest in comics, check out Vox’s site.  I think he should be congratulated for jumping into a field that up till now has been more than dominated by woke publishers who have made their former readers unwelcome.  I hope this venture is a great success and Vox makes a pile of cash.  Vox is one of the few people on our side who has walked the walk and built his own platform.  Kudos to him.

Nicholas Cage – The Man, the Myth, the Legend – Giving Shatner a Run for his Money

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It has been brought to my attention that a film version of “The Color of Space,” one of the only good H.P. Lovecraft stories, was made last year and it starred Nick Cage.  I vowed I would watch, no matter how bad.  And to get my self in the mood to appreciate this cinematic experience, I watched a very funny SNL skit from back in 2012 when the show was only mostly bad.

Here’s the trailer for this magnum opus.  How could it go wrong?

Larry Correia Teases a TV Deal

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Larry posted about a convention he was Guest of Honor for (FantaSci in Raleigh-Durham).  And then he teased a TV deal he has.

“Also during that I asked Toni if I could talk about something else really cool, she gave me permission and I mentioned a new TV deal (contracts are in the mail!). Except I just realized before I blab about that on the internet, I should probably wait for her official announcement before posting more. But stay tuned, it’s really awesome news.”

Can I imagine a Monster Hunters International tv show?  Well yeah!  And of course I already have Adam Baldwin as Agent Franks.

Be still my defibrillating heart!

Well, to be continued when Larry lets the other shoe drop.  But this sounds like fun.

Gilda (1946) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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This is considered a film noir.  I’d call it a happy ending in search of a plot.

The movie begins with Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell, a down on his luck American in Argentina that is rescued from an armed robbery by a mysterious man with a sword cane.  This man, Ballin Mundson, ends up hiring him to run his illegal casino and soon enough he is Mundson’s right hand man and has all the secrets of Mundson’s fabulous wealth and power.  Apparently Mundson was in cahoots with Nazis who gave him fabulous secrets for cornering the market on fabulous tungsten.  Really, tungsten.  We’re told that a monopoly on tungsten will give Mundson control of the world!  So, since this is 1946 there are disgruntled ex-Nazis running around.  Apparently, they gave him the secrets of tungsten.  Plus, Mundson marries Gilda (played by the very beautiful Rita Hayworth) who was heavily involved with Farrell back in the United States.  But although Mundson suspects that they have history neither will admit to it.

For whatever reason that you care to come up with yourself we’re supposed to believe that Johnny and Gilda hate and love each other and all the tricks Gilda plays to make Johnny either jealous, or worried about Mundson becoming jealous, or both, make sense.  But they don’t.  It’s silly and annoying.

But all good things must come to an end.  Both the Argentine police and the Nazis are closing in on Mundson.  Probably a spike in the price of tungsten.  In rapid succession, Mundson kills one of the Nazis, orders a plane to be ready for him at an airfield, sees Gilda and Johnny kissing in her bedroom then flees to the airfield with Johnny and the police in hot pursuit.  They arrive in time to watch Mundson’s plane take off and then explode over the Atlantic Ocean.  But Mundson parachutes out and is picked up by a waiting boat.

If that’s not goofy enough, Johnny then marries Gilda, the heiress to the tungsten cartel and takes the reins of tungsten power.  He then tells Gilda that she will be treated as a prisoner with no conjugal privileges until she admits to all the love affairs she’s had since Johnny left her in their old life.  Huhh?  She runs away to Uruguay (!) but the Tungsten King has his henchmen bring her back.  Gilda and Johnny are very unhappy.

Meanwhile the police want to bust up the tungsten cartel and they close the casino to force Johnny to give them the information.  When he does, the police inspector tells Johnny that Gilda and Johnny are both in love with each other and they should go back to America and be happy.  So, Johnny walks into the casino to ask Gilda to forgive him and return to America with him.

Just then Mundson returns and intends to shoot Johnny and Gilda.  But the bathroom attendant stabs Mundson in the back with his own sword cane.  And the police inspector tells Johnny and the bathroom guy that since Mundson committed suicide months ago he can’t be murdered.  Huhh?

I forgot to tell you about the bathroom attendant.  He’s comic relief that advises both Johnny and Gilda on life.  Plus, he’s a bathroom attendant.

So, Gilda and Johnny live happily ever after unless they screw up again.

Okay, that’s unbelievable isn’t it?  But the guy who plays Mundson is fun to listen to with his German accent and his love of canes and capes and stuff.  Rita Hayworth is fun to look at and she dances sometimes and lip synchs to someone singing “Put the Blame on Mame.”  And even though all this stuff sounds absurd the movie moves right along and, well, before you know it there’s that plane crash and then that happy ending.

This is a silly movie but I think it’s worth watching because Rita Hayworth is very pretty and looks swell dancing.  And there are Nazis and there is that bathroom attendant who is sort of a home-grown philosopher and pretty handy with a sword cane.

So, I recommend this film but if what I wrote doesn’t convince you then give it a pass.

Last Man Standing – Thoughts on the Last Episode of the Series – A Television Review

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Back in January 2021 I wrote a review of the last season of “Last Man Standing” that was beginning at that time and I said the show was unwatchable.  And it was, but being the stubborn fool that I am, I decided to watch the final season as a lesson to myself.  And as predicted it was unbearable.  Sure, every once in a while, Tim Allen would inject a funny moment.  But the overall unfunny, bland, bad writing, the trivial plot elements and emasculated male characters was beyond awful.

But I stuck it out until the bitter end and I’m glad I did.  Because in the last half of the final “double episode” Tim Allen injected a plot element that was an open metaphor for the hijacking of his series by the network.  The story element was that Mike’s classic pick-up truck that he restored from the ground up was stolen.  Now just in case the metaphor escaped anyone he even slips and says “show” instead of “truck” in one place.  He stresses several times that he’s had the “truck” for ten years and of course “Last Man Standing” premiered in 2011.

At one point the characters are talking about the fact that they can’t find the truck because the tracking GPS is off the “network.”  One of them asks if it could be found on another network and someone else says he’s heard of something like that and then Tim Allen says he doesn’t think it will work.  So, he’s hitting out at both ABC and Fox with this statement.  Later on, he asks “Who steals somebody else’s work like that?”  And there is a mock wake where the various actors talk about their feelings for the “truck.”  And finally in the Mike character’s final VLOG episode Tim Allen says just like Ronald Reagan after his 1976 defeat in the Republican primary that he is bloodied but he’ll get back up again.

So maybe Tim Allen thinks he has another show in him.  But what network will play it without neutering all the normal masculinity that Allen is known for?  I don’t see it happening.  But at least it was something that he at least acknowledged that his brain child had been butchered by the powers that be.  For that at least I salute him.

If he ever does start a new series, I’ll give it a look.  Who knows?  Miracles can happen.

Robinson Crusoe (1954) – A Movie Review

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This is a Mexican production (in English) directed by Luis Buñuel.  And surprisingly contains none of the sensationalistic or bizarre affectations that he usually included in his films.  In fact, it is a very faithful and normal portrayal of Daniel Defoe’s classic tale.  For anyone who is unfamiliar with the plot.  Crusoe is an Englishman of upper-class background who decides to leave his family and make his fortune in the wide world of the late 1600’s.  He gets a ship and is headed to Africa to bring a cargo of slaves to the New World.

But the ship founders in a terrible storm and Crusoe swims off and eventually reaches the shore of a remote island somewhere in the tropical Atlantic Ocean off Africa.  The ship that he abandoned ends up as a wreck stuck on some rocks close to the island Crusoe is on.  He builds a raft and uses it to transport supplies from the wreck.  He takes food, guns, powder, tools, clothes and even a dog and cat that were his pets on the ship.  Shortly afterward the wreck sinks.

Crusoe builds a stockaded cave dwelling and improves his life with the tools he has saved from the ship.  He grows wheat from seed and bakes his own bread.  He builds a potter’s wheel and a kiln.  He builds a calendar out of a log and tracks his imprisonment.  But when his dog finally dies of old age then Crusoe finds his loneliness unbearable.  And he comes close to losing his sanity.  But one day he finds a human footprint on the beach.  He discovers that African cannibals visit the island occasionally to feast on their captives.  One day a captive breaks loose from the cannibals and Crusoe kills his pursuers and takes the escapee to live with him as his servant.  He names him Friday after the day he found the man.  Slowly Crusoe learns to trust Friday and they become true friends.

Years later a ship arrives and the crew comes to the island to collect water and also to maroon the captain and boatswain that they’ve mutinied against.  With the help of Crusoe and Friday, the captain is able to capture the leaders of the mutineers.  In gratitude the captain agrees to sail Crusoe and Friday back to England.  The mutineers are allowed to be marooned on the island rather than hanged for mutiny and Crusoe leaves them his settlement and instructions on how to live comfortably on the island as castaways.

None of the actors will be familiar to an American audience but the direct visual nature of the movie, and the sparse dialog or even narration works perfectly well to tell the story.  There’s nothing complicated here, just an adventure story.  But the concept of complete isolation is a sort of profound human condition.

Not to belabor the point I enjoyed the film and on its own terms it is well done.  And since you know exactly what to expect you can make up your own mind ahead of time whether this kind of story appeals to you or not.

Quote – The Vegetable Motif

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“A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing. I had never seen the proletariat really stirred before, and I’m bound to say it rather awed me. I mean, it gave you some idea of what it must have been like during the French Revolution

From every corner of the hall there proceeded simultaneously the sort of noise which you hear, they tell me, at one of those East End boxing places when the referee disqualifies the popular favourite and makes the quick dash for life. And then they passed beyond mere words and began to introduce the vegetable motif.

I don’t know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be a potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wiser heads than mine. These blokes who have grown up from childhood in the knowledge of how to treat a dramatic entertainment that doesn’t please them are aware by a sort of instinct just what to do for the best, and the moment I saw that banana splash on Tuppy’s shirtfront I realized how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.

Not that the potato school of thought had not also its supporters. As the proceedings warmed up, I noticed several intelligent-looking fellows who threw nothing else.

The effect on young Tuppy was rather remarkable. His eyes bulged and his hair seemed to stand up, and yet his mouth went on opening and shutting, and you could see in a dazed, automatic way he was still singing, “Sonny Boy.”

Then, coming out of his trance, he began to pull for the shore with some rapidity.   The last seen of him, he was beating a tomato to the exit by a short head.”

(from “Jeeves and the Song of Songs”

by P. G. Wodehouse)

Touch of Evil (1958) – A Movie Review

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Here’s a movie directed by and starring Orson Welles.  Makes you think of Citizen Kane?  Well, not exactly.

Charlton Heston is Ramon Miguel “Mike” Vargas, a Mexican prosecutor on vacation with his American wife Susie played by Janet Leigh.  As Mike and Susie are getting ready to cross the border from Mexico into Texas we watch as a bomb is planted in a car with a man and woman as passengers and in the extended opening shot the Vargases and the car wend their interweaving ways toward the border crossing from Mexico to Texas.  When the car explodes on the American side of the border and the passengers are killed Ray gets involved to represent the Mexican authorities in this cross-border incident.

Local police captain Hank Quinlan, played by Orson Welles arrives with his associate Pete Menzies to investigate the crime and almost immediately start to clash with Vargas.  Quinlan is trying to frame a Mexican local who is married to the daughter of the man killed in the car explosion.  Vargas works with the local District Attorney’s Assistant, Al Schwartz to uncover a pattern of planted evidence in several of Quinlan’s old cases.  At the same time some local Mexican criminals, the associates of Joe Grandi, are after Vargas because of a conviction he got against one of their family.  The Grandis reach out to Quinlan and he agrees to allow the Grandis to kidnap Susie.  Susie is staying at an isolated rural motel on the US side of the border which is owned by Grandi.  Grandi’s henchman terrorize her then apparently rape her and inject her with a narcotic and drag her back to town.

Meanwhile Quinlan, for no apparent reason, strangles Grandi and tries to pin the murder on Susie.  Mike Vargas goes berserk and beats up the entire Grandi gang single-handedly for attacking his wife.  Then he convinces Quinlan’s assistant Pete Menzies to wear a wire to prove that Quinlan is guilty of corruption.  But because of the hokey nature of 1950’s surveillance equipment Quinlan hears the feedback between the microphone on Menzies and the speaker Vargas is pathetically carrying around with him to remain in range of the perambulating fat police captain.  Quinlan shoots Menzies and is just about to shoot Vargas when a dying Menzies shoots Quinlan and he slowly sinks into a wastewater pond like a dying whale.

This movie seems to be Welles daring us to find something good to say about it.  I will admit that the long opening scene with the car and the Vargases is very well done and interesting both dramatically and visually but after that this whole movie is a hot mess in every way possible.

Let’s start with Charlton Heston as a Mexican.  Oh, come on!  Sure, they put some bronze-o on him and gave him a thin moustache but then it’s still Charlton Heston.  He looks like Charlton Heston; he sounds like Charlton Heston.  He even walks like Charlton Heston.  All he left out was saying, “Let my people go.”  Heston runs around the movie with great energy and reasonableness.  All the viewers are rooting for him.  All the other characters including Janet Leigh’s Susie are making his life extremely difficult.  He’s finding decades old evidence against Quinlan and beating up hundreds of Mexican gangsters and setting up and monitoring very ticklish radio-frequency surveillance equipment.  And all the time hard at work trying to look and sound Mexican while being Charlton Heston.  I’m giving Heston a solid B for effort.

Next there’s Welles.  He looks like he weighs 400 pounds.  They must have used a special lens to make him look even fatter.  It’s awful.  I can’t figure out if they’re trying to make him seem somewhat sympathetic.  If so, they failed.  He’s loathsome and repulsive.

Then there are the supporting characters.  During the rape scene at the motel, the “night manager” is played by a young Dennis Weaver who seems to be playing the role as a hick who also is some kind of psychiatric patient.  I found him more off-putting than the “Mexican biker gang” that is there to torment Susie.  But they’re weird too.  There is some kind of implication that we are seeing some subculture involving drugs and possibly lesbianism but it’s so confused and furtive that I’m not sure the actors even know what they supposed to be portraying.

And then you have a very worn looking Marlene Dietrich playing a brothel madame named Tanya who Quinlan still remembers fondly and visits for some reason.  The scene is so bizarre that it reminds me of Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles doing an homage song to Dietrich called , “I’m Tired.”  It’s like Dietrich is doing a bad impression of herself.

And finally, they made Zsa Sze Gabor a strip-club owner.  But her part was so minor that mercifully she didn’t have to pretend to act.

So, who should watch this movie?  I guess people studying film in college.  Fans of Orson Welles who want to talk about his evolution as a director.  And people who like really bad film noir.  That should do it.  You have been warned.