It's Noirvember, so I'm taking the opportunity to watch some film noir movies this month. Not gonna do one every day or anything, but I hope to cover one or two a week.
Who's In It: Robert Mitchum (When Strangers Marry, Out of the Past), Jane Russell (The Outlaw, Macao), Vincent Price (Shock, The Web), Raymond Burr (Rear Window, Perry Mason), and Jim Backus (Mister Magoo, Gilligan's Island).
What It's About: Gambler Dan Milner (Mitchum) is coerced by gangsters to stay at a Mexican resort for mysterious reasons. It sounds like an easy job, but it gets complicated quickly by the resort's other inhabitants, which include thugs and government agents, but especially a singer (Russell) and the famous, married actor (Price) she's dating.
How It Is: One of my favorite noir films, largely for the cast, but the setting plays a big part, too.
Most of the action takes place at the resort, which is a small enough place that everyone knows everyone else's business. It's full of colorful characters and reminds me of a tropical version of the resort in Dirty Dancing with lots of little dramas going on around the main one.
Mitchum is one of my favorite actors ever and he's got great chemistry with Russell. (So much so that producer Howard Hughes wanted them back together for Macao, which I also like; just not as much as this one.) The film doesn't ask me to believe that they're falling deeply in love, but there's a palpable connection between them that convincingly throws their other plans into question. Dan is a charming, likeable guy and Lenore Brent (Russell) is funny and easy-going, even though she's clearly got secrets and some tragedy in her past.
As the head of the gang that's manipulating Dan, Raymond Burr is neither as terrifying as his Rear Window character, nor as suave as Perry Mason, but he's intimidating as hell and makes the part better just by being in it. Backus isn't super important to the plot, but he livens up the place as one of the resort guests and I'm always excited to see him.
I've saved Vincent Price for last, because he's one of the best characters, but also one of the most out-of-place. He plays movie star Mark Cardigan, a married man who's having an affair with Lenore when she meets Dan. Dan isn't the only one to throw a monkey wrench into Mark and Lenore's relationship though. Mark's wife (Marjorie Reynolds) shows up partway through, determined to put an end to her husband's philandering one way or another. How Mark reacts to and deals with all of this is unexpected and priceless. I love the character.
Or I do until the climax of the movie. It's around then that Mark realizes that he's tired of just playing adventurers onscreen. As he discovers what's going on around Dan, Mark sees an opportunity to participate in a real adventure. Which is very cool, but the script turns him into a cartoon character after that. His dialogue becomes almost entirely quotes from Shakespeare and his decision-making is absurdly comical. Price is great at it - totally hamming it up - but the character doesn't fit the rest of the movie anymore. Mark doesn't ruin the movie at all, but he does keep me from loving it as much as I would if he'd been reined in.
Spent some time this week revisiting some of my favorite movies from 2016. Some of them were new to David and Diane, but all of them I wanted another look it.
I was especially eager to watch Jane Got a Gun again. I loved it last year, but lukewarm reviews by other folks made me wonder if I just wasn't in a really good mood when I watched it the first time. The answer is: nope! It's great.
I love how it unfolds in three different time periods with everything leading to a big showdown between Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor. Joel Edgerton helps Portman, but where most movies would have had him take over and become the hero, Jane lets Portman hold onto that role. She is awesome and the movie is awesome. Glad I put it in my Top 5 last year.
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
Liked it even better the second time. Alexander Skarsgård is an excellent Tarzan; probably the best ever, though we'll need to finish Greystoked before I can make that claim. Legend isn't a faithful adaptation of a Burroughs novel and it even changes some basic elements of Tarzan lore, but each change is considered and smart and exactly what's needed to keep the legend fresh and alive.
My only complaint is that the CG animals could be more convincing, but I'm thrilled with the story and the characters.
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
My favorite Kelvin Star Trek movie. That's not saying anything in comparison to Into Darkness, but I'm a big fan of the 2009 reboot and this is better. These are the characters - not growing into the people that I know and love - but already as I know and love them. Plus Jaylah. Plus everyone is 300% more kickass than they were in the original series. (And that's not because the original series wasn't kickass. It totally was. But not everyone got to do it back then and they certainly didn't get to do it directed by Justin Lin.)
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
After watching this again and loving it just as much, I realized that it's directed by the same guy who's directing Thor: Ragnarok. Which makes me 1000x more excited for that movie than I already was. Taika Waititi knows how to make stuff funny, but also full of heart. If I ever meet him, I'm going to have someone take a selfie of us.
The Island (1980)
This has been on my list for so long. Michael Caine in a horror/thriller about modern-day pirates who dress as Golden Age pirates? And written by Peter Benchley? Yes, please.
It starts well enough with some scary and gruesome boat attacks. Caine plays a reporter named Blair Maynard who wants to investigate the disappearances, but he gets stuck with his kid for the weekend and has to take the boy along. Maynard's a pretty lousy dad, but Caine plays him with charm and it's clear that he loves his son Justin, even if he doesn't really know what to do with him. The movie is pretty good while it's about the pair of them traveling around the Caribbean and trying to bond. In a cruel twist of fate, it's not until the pirates show up that the movie sucks.
I can see how this could be a fun adventure novel, but putting them on screen makes it impossible to take the pirates seriously as a threat. They're bloodthirsty and dangerous, but also unbelievable and goofy. How their civilization has been able to survive all of these centuries is never seriously addressed, so they come off as deadly historical reenactors. It's as silly as it sounds.
Also silly is the drama around Justin's joining the pirate gang. There's a great story to be told about a kid who deserts the already shaky relationship he has with his father to do some horrible things with a bunch of new friends. How far can a child go before a parent gives up hope of bringing them back? Unfortunately, this isn't that story. Justin's transformation from normal kid to Lord of the Flies is way too quick and the movie doesn't really care whether we believe it or not.
Yellowbeard (1983)
The '80s were full of pirate movies that didn't work as well as they should have. I'm sure I'll get back around to some more of them later, but Yellowbeard showed up on my TiVo, so I gave it another look.
I was so disappointed back in the day. You take most of Monty Python and put them in a movie with Cheech & Chong and most of the cast of Young Frankenstein. I don't care what the movie's about, that's got to be hilarious. Making it about pirates is bonus. But Yellowbeard isn't as funny as its individual parts promise. And when I first saw it years ago, the letdown was unrecoverable. I hated it.
Watching it again, I laughed quite a bit. As Stacia says at She Blogged By Night, "Yellowbeard is a complete disaster, but it’s a funny disaster." She has a great analysis of what went wrong (and what went right) and links to still further information from Yellowbeard's director, so I highly recommend checking out her review. I'll probably never watch it again, but I'm glad to have it redeemed at least a little in my memory.
High Road to China (1983)
Another one that I wanted to like back in the day better than I did. It suffered by getting compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's a comparison that the marketing of the movie asked for, but it's not the best way of approaching the film. I haven't done an exhaustive history of it, but I have no doubt that it was greenlit thanks to Raiders' success. High Road had been in development since the late '70s though, so it's conception was inspired by neither Indiana Jones nor '30s movie serials. High Road is an homage to a later genre: mid-century war/adventure movies.
It's telling that it was originally going to be directed by John Huston and was ultimately directed by Brian Hutton, because it has way more in common with The African Queen and Kelly's Heroes than The Adventures of Smilin' Jack. I still don't completely love High Road to China, because I never really care about whether Selleck and Armstrong get together, but I do appreciate it as a globe-trotting adventure with a war movie finale.
Argoman, the Fantastic Superman (1967)
Went to see Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live and this was the movie. I'm probably breaking some kind of social contract by telling you, because it was billed as a Secret Surprise Film. (There were two shows - an early and a late - and because of schedules, Diane went to the early one - which was Eegah - and I went to the late. David went to both.) Joel Hodgson was there to MC and he said that he wanted the second film to be a secret because he feels the show works best when the audience doesn't know anything about the movie. I'm only telling you, because the chances are really, really tiny of someone reading this who also has tickets to an upcoming late show of the tour. If I've spoiled it for you, I'm sorry. You're in for a great show, though.
It's hard to judge Argoman the Fantastic Superman in The Incredible Paris Incident on its own merits outside of the experience of the show that I saw it in, but I think it's safe to say that it's awful. It's a late '60s Italian film inspired by James Bond and Adam West's Batman. Mostly Bond, if Bond was the millionaire playboy secret-identity of a superhero. (Unlike Batman, Argoman the Fantastic Superman actually has powers. They're not defined very well, but telekinesis is part of it. And also unlike '60s Batman, it took me a long time to decide if Argoman was a good guy or a bad guy. That's probably the Bond influence again.) Calling it "camp" implies some intentionality that I'm not sure was there, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. If you like horrible Italian cinema from the '60s, it's bonkers enough to make it worth tracking down - whether or not you have wisecracking robots to watch it with.
Windjammer (1937)
It's a decent idea. A lawyer finagles his way onto a yacht to serve a subpoena to a well-protected tycoon who's leaving the country on a race across the Pacific. The execution is miserable though, with the lawyer's seeming super ineffectual and the tycoon's being infuriatingly entitled in a way that I think is supposed to seem whimsically charming. Maybe. I had a hard time telling what kind of tone the movie's going for.
Complicating things is the tycoon's equally entitled daughter who hates the lawyer for obvious reasons until she suddenly doesn't and we enter romantic comedy territory. I think maybe the whole movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy? That would explain why it doesn't really care about how horrible the woman's dad is. Anyway, I'm sorry I watched it.
Johnny Angel (1945)
A case study on why genres are important. I've got a few wishlist searches on my TiVo, so sometimes I record things and I don't really remember why. I bet I grabbed this one because it's about a sea captain investigating the death of his sea captain father and there's gold involved. But that's all I knew about it, so going in I was expecting some kind of adventure story. Which means that I got impatient with how slowly and moodily the story was unfolding.
When that happens, I usually stop the movie for a minute and do some research. Learning that Johnny Angel is a film noir (that just so happens to be about a sea captain and some gold in New Orleans) made all the difference in the world. I started it up again, confident that I could enjoy it for what it was. Expectations are weird.
It's pretty good. None of the cast is especially remarkable except Hoagy Carmichael as a really cool cabbie, but the mystery is good and the movie is awesomely atmospheric. I like how the mystery unfolds, too, with some pleasant (if not especially shocking) twists.
Black Bart (1948)
Between this and Frontier Gal, I'm pretty much done with Yvonne De Carlo Westerns. Or at least with seeking out Westerns specifically because she was in them. She may be Lily Munster - and she's certainly gorgeous - but man does she play some miserable characters. Black Bart isn't focused on rape the way that Frontier Gal was, but it's still about a supposedly strong-willed woman who bends to a man's wishes simply because he's the man.
In this case, the man is a stagecoach robber named Black Bart. He's kind of a Zorro character except that he deserves to be an outlaw. In fact, his master plan for robbing stagecoaches really puts him in the supervillain category. And yet I think we're supposed to find it tragic when he gets what's coming to him. I don't know. If he's supposed to be charming and likable, then the movie makes a huge miscalculation, because he's a boring weasel. I'm glad to see him fall and only sorry that he drags De Carlo into it. I guess it doesn't actually end too badly for her, but that's only because the movie completely forgets about her at some point and never comes back to her again.
Fort Apache (1948)
Got interested in watching John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" as a trilogy. I've seen Fort Apache before and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but I have no memory of Rio Grande. Or maybe I've seen it, but I'm getting it confused with the million other Westerns named after rivers. Anyway, I've certainly never watched the three movies close together enough to understand why people consider them a trilogy, so I'm gonna work on that.
Fort Apache is good, if frustrating. It's frustrating in the same way that Mutiny on the Bounty is. I don't have patience for rigid, narrow-minded characters who have authority over more level-headed people. The fear of that scenario playing out in real life is a big reason that I'd never fit well into a military organization. But Fonda is great at the role and the script gives him some humanizing moments in addition to the maddeningly bull-headed ones. I end up feeling bad for the guy, which is remarkable considering how much I dislike him.
Shirley Temple sure is a joy, though, as Fonda's daughter. And I like John Agar more in this than I usually do. John Wayne is typically watchable, too. So as this kind of military drama goes, Fort Apache is the best I've seen.
The Bribe (1949)
Finally, I checked off another Vincent Price noir movie with The Bribe. Robert Taylor plays a government agent investigating a ring of airplane engine smugglers (?!) and Price is the (not really a spoiler, because it's Vincent Price) mastermind behind the operation. Ava Gardner and her husband (John Hodiak) are suspects, but Taylor gets too close to Gardner and his loyalties are compromised. Charles Laughton is Price's front man in the operation; mostly there to give voice to Taylor's conundrum by reminding everyone of the stakes as often as possible.
Taylor is never a compelling lead. He even makes Ivanhoe boring, for goodness sake. I don't know that I've ever seen Ava Gardner in anything else, so I don't want to judge her too harshly for The Bribe. She's dull too, but that might be Taylor's rubbing off on her. Vincent Price is great, but he's barely in the thing, which leaves Laughton to do all the hard work. His character is purely there for exposition (and I guess a red herring, if you're super gullible), but he does fantastic things with it.
Kudos also to directors Robert Leonard and Vincente Minnelli for giving a mediocre story tons of style. The final showdown between Taylor and Price is unforgettable and there's a good reason that The Bribe was one of the movies edited into Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.
Song of the Week: "Goodbye" by Echosmith
I love the guitar in this and the chorus is amazing and hilarious: "When you finally find yourself... tell him I said, 'Goodbye.'"
Wanted to rewatch this and Dawn before seeing War. I'm still amazed by how much this works. Which is to say that it works completely and wonderfully, fully connecting me to its characters regardless of species. And what a great, cathartic finale as everyone gets their comeuppance. In the best Planet of the Apes movies, I should always feel conflicted about where my loyalties are and this is probably the best at accomplishing that in the history of these movies.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
I still care about the humans in Dawn - especially Keri Russell, Jason Clarke, and Kodi Smit-McPhee - but they're ultimately MacGuffins in the movie's real conflict between Caesar and Koba. It's a brilliant clash of ideologies and what I love most about this trilogy is the battle between compassion and hate. Which leads directly to the third film...
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
In Dawn, the compassion-hate conflict is between Caesar and Koba, but in War it's within Caesar himself. His conflict with the human Colonel (Woody Harrelson) has led Caesar down a dark path and threatens the beliefs that he holds most dear. War handles this in a beautiful, emotional way and it's a great conclusion to what's easily my favorite science fiction trilogy of all time (at least until the current Star Wars trilogy is done... fingers crossed).
Grease (1978)
Rewatching Back to the Future for an upcoming Mystery Movie Night got me in the mood for something else from the '50s. And this has been on the list for a while since a couple of shots from it are in that great 100 Movies Dance Scenes Mashup video that my family and I can't stop watching.
And it really is all about the music in this one. The story is mostly bunk and I don't like Danny, Sandy, or really any of their friends except Frenchie. The ending is stupid. But dang those are some great songs and I always forget how awesome Olivia Newton-John's voice is.
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Trying to clear out some room on my TiVo. I recorded this on a lark, because there's a John Denver song with the same title and I'm nostalgic for John Denver. That's a dumb reason to watch a movie, but I also like Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon, so what the heck.
I love this movie so much. Oberon plays a wealthy, young woman named Mary Smith whose widowed father is trying to get a Presidential nomination. Mary's not especially troublesome, but she's under especially tight scrutiny, so her dad sends her to the family's house in West Palm Beach to get her away from the New York paparazzi. There she cute-meets a rodeo cowboy named Stretch (Cooper), but she's pretending to be a lady's maid at the time and... well, you've seen a romantic comedy before, so you know how that goes.
There are some modern romcom tropes, but I found that refreshing in a '30s film. And I love that the story is told from Mary's point of view with Stretch being the love interest. The movie also has some nice things to say about the value of people, with both Mary and Stretch needing to adjust their ideas about what kind of people they're interested in.
Five Came Back (1939)
This one popped on my radar because a bunch of people crash in a jungle. And it's very early Lucille Ball and I'm always interested in her serious roles.
I love this one, too. It's sort of a proto-Lost with a varied group of passengers on a downed plane trying to survive until they can rescue themselves. There are three airline personnel, a young couple in love, an elderly couple in grumpiness, a bounty hunter (John Carradine) and his prisoner, a man escorting a young boy for mysterious reasons, and Lucille Ball's character: a beautiful, but ostracized woman.
What's great is that every one of these characters finds themselves challenged and changed by the ordeal in the jungle. Some for the better, and some not so much. As the title spoils, not all of them make it out, but that's a fascinating and touching story, too.
It was remade in 1956 as Back from Eternity with Anita Ekberg and Rod Steiger, so that also just went on my list.
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
I'm a huge fan of The Big Sleep, both the Raymond Chandler novel and the 1946 movie based on it. But I'm enough of a fan of the movie that I haven't been that interested in seeing other actors in the role of Philip Marlowe.
And here's another thing: my love of the novel is all about the mood and the dialogue. Chandler's an awesome writer, but - at least in The Big Sleep - he's not an awesome mystery writer. There are huge dangling plot threads and red herrings that don't make sense. Maybe he fixed that in subsequent books, but I haven't read them yet to find out. If Murder, My Sweet (based on Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely) is faithful to its novel, though - and I understand that it is - I still have concerns. For most of its run time, the story spins around without going anywhere. It relies on all the things I like about Chandler (mood, dialogue, and Marlowe himself) to keep me going, but the central mystery is kind of dull.
Phantom Lady (1944)
After enjoying The Web, I started looking for other Ella Raines movies to watch and this is a big one. She plays another secretary, but this time her boss is the one who's in trouble for murder, not the one trying to cover it up. And she's great in it, but neither her boss nor the story itself deserve her. The villain is easy to deduce as soon as the character is mentioned, but then the movie still confirms it way too early. The villain's motivation is super flimsy, too, and the scheme to cover their tracks is even shakier. This is a classic only because of Raines herself and an unforgettable scene with a ridiculously lewd drum solo.
Frontier Gal (1945)
Before she was Lily Munster, Yvonne De Carlo had a prolific film career. She made a lot of Westerns, so I wanted to check some of them out. I shouldn't have started with Frontier Gal, though, because hoo boy. Her character's unlikability in this movie is only surpassed by her co-star's.
Rod Cameron plays an outlaw who visits a saloon run by De Carlo. He takes a liking to her, but she insults him, so he kisses her against her will. She slaps him, so he kisses her again. She slaps him again, so he kisses her again. Repeat several times until she falls in love. And that sets the tone for the entire movie, which might as well have been called No Means Yes.
I'll watch more De Carlo Westerns, but yikes... this one.
Spellbound (1945)
One of my favorite Hitchcock films, partly because I love its two leads, but it's also a great story that keeps turning into something new. Showed it to David this viewing and he wasn't that interested to begin with. I asked him to give it 15 minutes and then decide if he wanted to keep going. We kept going.
That awesome dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali is a highlight, but it's the central mystery and the plot twists (and Bergman and Peck) that make Spellbound so rewatchable.
Shock (1946)
Phantom Lady wasn't the only movie I watched this week inspired by The Web. I wanted to see some more Vincent Price noir, too, so that's where Shock comes in. Price plays an adulterous psychologist who accidentally kills his wife. Unfortunately, he's seen by a woman (Anabel Shaw) who's already under a lot of mental stress. Watching the murder sends her into a catatonic state. When Price is called in to minister to her, he discovers that she's a witness to his crime. Under pressure from his girlfriend, he realizes that if Shaw never recovers, he's off the hook.
It's not my favorite kind of Price role. He's still great, but he's too much a victim of circumstance and his girlfriend to thoroughly relish his performance. Give me wicked and conniving - or at least charmingly caddish - any day.
Song of the Week: "Seagulls! (Stop It Now)" by Bad Lip Reading
This doesn't just crack me up; it gets stuck in my head for a week and I don't even complain.
I don't know if this is blasphemous, but I like Noir Vincent Price better than Horror Vincent Price. He's great in Laura, even better in His Kind of Woman, and now I have The Web to admire him in. There's a bunch of others that I haven't seen yet, so I'm making a list. If you have more to recommend, please do:
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) Shock (1946) The Long Night (1947) Moss Rose (1947) The Bribe (1949) The Las Vegas Story (1952) Dangerous Mission (1954) While the City Sleeps (1956)
Price is delicious in The Web, but he's not the only one. This was my first Ella Raines movie and I'll be seeking out more of her stuff as well. It's a great thriller in which a naive lawyer (Edmond O'Brien) is suckered by a wealthy businessman (Price) into committing murder. That's a bit of a spoiler, but O'Brien figures it out quickly and most of the film focuses on how he's going to prove his innocence. William Bendix steals every scene he's in as the lead detective on the case. He reminds me of John Favreau in a really good way: serious, but kind of goofy and totally likeable.
Raines plays Price's secretary and I like the dilemma that she's in as she starts to trust O'Brien and distrust Price. O'Brien's character is horribly sexist - assuming, for starters, that she got her job simply because she's gorgeous - but the movie kind of steers into that by explaining that he's also really socially awkward. It doesn't excuse some of the things that come out of his mouth, but I like that it offers a reason for them beyond "1947."
Lethal Weapon (1987)
This has been on the list to show David for years, but it got bumped up a few months ago when we watched Silverado. David mostly knows Gibson from Braveheart, so there's a lot of catching up to do on that filmography.
I hadn't seen Lethal Weapon in decades, so I was pleased to see how much it holds up. I'd forgotten a couple of important plot twists, so the story kept me interested, but mostly it's about Gibson's performance as possibly-crazy Martin Riggs. There's some damn good acting in there. And of course his relationship with Glover's Roger Murtaugh, which provides much needed relief from the palpable grief surrounding Gibson's character.
Father of the Bride (1991)
I'm trying to remember why I finally pulled the trigger and bought this, but I'm glad I did. I think maybe we were talking about Martin Short or BD Wong and I realized that David needed to meet Franck Eggelhoffer and Howard Weinstein. Especially Howard Weinstein.
But even though theirs are the biggest performances in the movie, they're not the most important or best ones. I'd forgotten how much I love late-'80s-era Steve Martin (which this fits into more naturally than '90s-era Martin). He's right in the sweet spot between the desperate craziness of his early years and the melancholy of his later stuff. He's confident, he's physical... Watching this makes me want to revisit Roxanne and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles immediately.
And the rest of the cast is great, too. Diane Keaton doesn't have a ton to do, but she's exactly what the movie needs to balance out Martin's overreactions. And Kimberly Williams is lovely as someone torn between excitement about the next stage of life and fear of leaving the previous one behind. The movie focuses on Martin's character, but never forgets that there are other, real people making the journey with him.
Camp Midnight by Steven Seagle and Jason Katzenstein
I'm a big fan of Steven Seagle, monsters, and stories about summer camp. Camp Midnight helped me understand why I like the last two so much: they're both about outsiders and the struggle to fit in. Seagle and Katzenstein are insightful and entertaining about why that can be so hard.
Jam of the Week: "Don't Take the Money" by Bleachers
Sometimes you just need a big anthem that you can scream along to. Even better when it's a reminder to not sell out, but stick with your passions. Even more better when the video is funny.
Who's In It: Dana Andrews (Laura), Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy), and Niall MacGinnis (Jason and the Argonauts). What It's About: A scientist (Andrews) travels to England to debunk a self-proclaimed warlock (MacGinnis), but his skepticism is challenged by strange doings and a threat on his life. How It Is: When the British film Night of the Demon was released in the United States in 1958, it was chopped down by thirteen minutes and renamed Curse of the Demon. Though the cut footage isn’t crucial to the story, it does help set the film’s tone, so the original Night of the Demon (which is only 95 minutes long to begin with) is the one to watch. The reason I bring up the US version at all is because of the title change.
According to the film’s screenwriter, Charles Bennett, Columbia Pictures thought that Night of the Demon sounded too close to the title of Tennessee Williams’ short story, “Night of the Iguana.” That’s odd, because the famous stage play that Williams eventually created from that story wouldn’t premiere until three years after the release of Curse of the Demon, and the even more famous John Huston film adaptation of it didn’t come out until three years after that in 1964. Tennessee Williams was far from an obscure writer in the late ‘50s, so maybe mass audiences knew about the “Night of the Iguana” short story, but it does seem weird to rename a horror film because of one word it has in common with a story in a completely different medium. Still, the Night of the Iguana comparison is interesting because the Huston film and Night of the Demon share something important: an adjacency to the film noir movement.
Even though neither movie is true noir, important noir directors were in charge of them and brought in elements that call that genre to mind. Night of the Demon’s Jacques Tourneur also directed Out of the Past, one of the definitive noir films, in addition to other horror pictures like Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. His use of light and shadow and cinematography gave his films a look and feel that fit right in with other noir films, even when his were about were-panthers and voodoo magic.
Night of the Demon has more in common with noir that just its look though. One of the things that stands out most about it is how it blurs the line between good and evil; quite a feat for a story about Satan worshipers. Dana Andrews (whose Laura is another film noir masterpiece) plays Dr. John Holden, a scientific skeptic from the US who travels to England to debunk the supernatural claims of a cult leader named Julian Karswell (MacGinnis). While there, Holden meets Joanna Harrington (Cummins from the film noir Gun Crazy), the niece of the last man to try to disprove Karswell’s abilities. Because Joanna’s uncle died horribly and mysteriously, she’s beginning to believe that Karswell may have the power he says he does. Holden believes none of it though. He stubbornly refuses to accept the supernatural, even when he sees evidence that he may be on the same path as Joanna’s late uncle.
Holden’s obstinate close-mindedness and his relentless persecution of Karswell keep him from being completely heroic and sympathetic. He’s also arrogant and not always pleasant to be around. Karswell, on the other hand, throws lavish parties for the kids near his estate and is convincing in his assertion that he only wants to be left alone to practice his religious beliefs with his followers. Of course those beliefs include killing those who stray from the flock, so he’s clearly the bad guy, but it’s hard to remember that when he’s dressing like a clown to do magic tricks for children.
Though it looks and feels a lot like film noir, Night of the Demon is inarguably horror. The film doesn’t rely on cheap shocks or even images of its titular monster to scare the audience, but Tourneur still delivers the creeps though stylish atmosphere and his viewers’ imaginations. The investigation story also builds tension and keeps the audience riveted as Holden gets closer and closer to the horrible truth.
The film doesn’t rely on images of the demon for scares, but it would have used them even less if Tourneur had had his way. His original plan was to be ambiguous about whether Karswell really had the power to summon demons, but his producer forced a definitive answer. In Tourneur’s initial vision, the demon would have never been shown, leaving the audience to decide for itself if Karswell had supernatural abilities or was just an extremely effective charlatan who perhaps believed his own lies. Producer Hal Chester had other ideas though, so the demon appears in the first several minutes of the film for the death of Joanna’s uncle and again at the film’s climax (you’ll have to watch the film to find out what happens there). Chester had to film the demon sequences after principal shooting though, without Tourneur’s help or cooperation.
While Tourneur’s version would have added a cool layer to the mystery, the version that exists is still an excellent, atmospheric, scary film. The vast majority of it operates on the principal that nothing’s as powerful as what you don’t see. But as effective as that is, the demon’s pretty scary too.
Even though the monster effects are primitive by modern standards, the design of the creature – based on actual, ancient drawings of mythological demons – is pretty terrifying. Tourneur’s version would have been stronger had it reinforced the themes of faith and skepticism by making the viewer decide which end of that spectrum he or she falls on, but the creature’s appearance doesn’t make the movie less unnerving. In fact, Martin Scorsese listed it as one of the eleven scariest movies of all time and he’s absolutely right.
Rating: Five out of five cordial conjurers.
This post was adapted from a guest post I wrote for my pal Ken's That F'ing Monkey blog.
This week's League of Extraordinary Bloggers assignment is simple, but difficult. Inspired by summer blockbuster season, Brian asks, "What are your Top Ten Movies?"
I'm always nervous about making these kinds of lists. My Top Two rarely change (though I do swap them back and forth and I've recently redefined how I think of one of them), but the rest of the list is hugely dependent on a) my ability to remember all the movies I love and b) my feelings about those movies at the exact moment I'm making the list.
So, with the major caveat that this is my list for right this very second, here we go. I'll look forward to reading the rest of the League's answers so that I can kick myself for not thinking of some of their movies. I'm already trying to figure out if Breakfast Club or The Lost Boys should depose any of the films on this list.
10. Dr. No
It's really tough to pick a favorite James Bond movie. I narrowed it down to this one and Casino Royale, but From Russia With Love, Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only, and The Living Daylights were also tempting. In the end, I went with Dr. No because it's the first. When I watch it, I'm not just thrilling to Sean Connery, Jack Lord (my favorite Felix), and Ursula Andress in the tropics; I'm thrilling to the knowledge that I'm going to watch the rest of the series as soon as I finish it.
9. Night of the Demon
For my full thoughts on this horror masterpiece, check out the guest post I wrote on That F'ing Monkey. The short version is that it's an awesome mash-up between horror (both supernatural and psychological) and film noir by one of the masters of both genres.
8. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Contains just about everything I want in an adventure movie. Undersea adventure, a lost civilization, weird technology, an eccentric billionaire, a stunning femme fatale, a jungle girl, Mike Mignola designs, a giant submarine, a diverse ensemble of complicated adventurers, and humor that works no matter how many times I watch it.
7. Pirates of the Caribbean (the initial trilogy)
I'm cheating by cramming three movies into one entry. I know that. I'm going to do it again later in the list, but that trilogy was at least always a trilogy and it stopped when the story was complete. I can't say that about the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. The Curse of the Black Pearl is a standalone film that became part of a trilogy when it turned out to be successful. And when the trilogy ended, the series continued. It feels haphazard to just pick the first three movies in a four (so far) movie series and try to make one entry out of them.
And yet, those three movies are undeniablya completestory. The fourth one starts something new and doesn't get to hold onto the coattails of the first three, but I'm counting the saga of Elizabeth Swann and Jack Turner as a single tale.
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark
Much like what happened with another popular series from my childhood, I've recently accepted that I'm not an Indiana Jones fan; I'm a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan. I do like those other movies, even Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, but I don't love them like I do Raiders. All of them have one element or another that I don't care for, but I love pretty much everything about that first one.
5. Love Actually
It really is just about perfect. The only stories that don't completely work for me are Laura Linney's and Alan Rickman/Emma Thompson's, but only because they're painful. They're also completely honest and vital to exploring the film's central theme, so I'm really not dinging it for including them. And otherwise, it has some of my favorite actors playing my favorite kinds of characters that they play in a funny, heart-warming, Christmas movie with a great soundtrack. And it makes me cry. That, it turns out, is an easy way to get on my Top Five.
4. Finding Neverland
Another movie that makes me cry. I explained why a couple of years ago and why at one point I had this in my Number One spot. It could easily be there again. It probably wouldn't take anything more than my watching it more recently than some of these others. Most of these rankings are dependent on how recently I've seen or thought about each individual film.
3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
I haven't written much about The Lord of the Rings, either the novels or the films. I don't know why that is; the films are some of my favorites because of how well they communicate the novels' most powerful themes. Much more than just Good vs Evil, Lord of the Rings is about faithfulness, redemption, friendship, loyalty, overcoming prejudice, fighting for justice, and seeing the value of the unvalued. It's that last theme - particularly in the scene where the entire nation of Gondor bows before four, small, humble Hobbits - that makes me blubber every time I watch it.
I've written about this one most recently, which may explain why it's at Number One for now. It's been slowly moving down the list over the years, but that's because - similar to Pirates and Lord of the Rings - I insisted on making one entry of the entire saga. Now that I've pruned my affection down to just the first film, Star Wars zooms back to the top again. Though it doesn't make me cry, there really is no other movie I love more or is as influential on my life.
The movies in today's list are ones that I generally liked, but wasn't able to get really excited about for various reasons.
Number 30
I like Thomas Haden Church and Elisabeth Shue and the premise of Don McKay grabbed me. Church plays a lonely, high school janitor who gets an unexpected letter from his own high school sweetheart (Shue) asking him to come home. She's dying and wants a second chance at their relationship before she goes. When he gets there though, he finds his true love surrounded by a creepy caregiver, an even creepier doctor, and an awful aura of Something's Not Right Here. It's a great setup and while the movie's focusing on Don and his loneliness and teasing the mystery, it's good stuff. Unfortunately, once it reveals what's going on, the movie gets a bit nuts and hard to connect to.
Number 29
It's Green Zone's marketers fault that I was in the mood for another Bourne movie when I saw this, but even had I been fully on board with the different tone, the preachiness of the film would've been enough to keep me from fully embracing it. I really like the character of Freddy (Khalid Abdalla) though and the perspective he gives to the differences between American and person-on-the-street Iraqi interests in that country. That alone made the movie worthwhile for me.
Although there are some cool fights and action sequences in it, Edge of Darkness wasn’t an action film like I’d hoped for. It was however a really nice little Film Noir mystery. By the time you get to the end of it, you realize that the mystery isn’t all that complicated and you’ve already seen the plot in a bunch of other thrillers, but that didn’t matter that much to me. What mattered was that as Mel Gibson was running around trying to figure out who killed his daughter, I cared about what happened to him.
I cared that Gibson’s relationship with his daughter hadn’t been all that great lately. I cared about his grief and his memories of her. I wanted him to find out who killed her and wasn’t sure how he was going to. I was pretty sure he was never going to find peace, but I sure wanted to see him find justice. I got totally sucked up into his character and didn’t even care that much that the trailer had given me all the clues I needed to solve the mystery. I just wanted to see him solve it.
That’s mostly due to the acting, I suppose, and not only Gibson’s. Unlike a lot of mysteries and thrillers, when characters in The Edge of Darkness talk about being scared, I believed them. Just about everyone in the movie looks frightened out of his or her mind and that made the threat to Gibson’s character that much more menacing. Most of all though, Gibson does a great job. I already tend to like his performances, but I didn’t even mind his Boston accent. He could have really overdone it, but he lets you believe he’s from Boston without being annoying.
There are some things I don’t like about the movie, the biggest of which I can’t talk about without spoiling the end, but if you like Mel Gibson’s work at all – especially the vulnerability he brings to otherwise hard-case heroes – this is a welcome, emotional return for him.
Public Enemies earned a lot of goodwill from me before I ever sat down to watch it. I love Michael Mann films almost as much as I love Johnny Depp ones. And Christian Bale's no slouch either. Also, since helping to write Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly I've taken an interest in the crime wave of the early '30s. So, I was interested and prepared to like it.
Unfortunately, the movie plays mostly like a very nicely shot History Channel dramatization of John Dillinger's career for all the pathos it inspires. I struggled through most of the movie to find something to connect to or someone to care about. I couldn't bring myself to root for the villainous Dillinger, but Bale's emotionless portrayal of Melvin Purvis made it so that I didn't particularly care how his career went either.
Except for one scene late in the film, Public Enemies gives us nothing to even make Purvis likable, much less the guy we want to see win. We don't learn anything about his motivations. Why did he join the FBI? Why is catching Dillinger important to him? The only thing I could come up with is that Dillinger was important to Purvis' career. But like I said, who cares?
I kept thinking about Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. That was my first Costner film and only one of three that I can think of right now that I even like him in. I usually can't stand Costner and I certainly think that Bale is a much more talented actor in general, but man Costner sold me on Eliot Ness. The Untouchables was a much less complicated film than Public Enemies (I mean, it's obvious that you're not supposed to root for Capone in it), but Costner also deserves credit for giving Ness a sense of purpose. You always knew why he was doing what he was doing and you wanted to see him succeed in doing it.
Eventually, I was able to find something to relate to in Public Enemies, but it's not until towards the end of the movie. I didn't really care about Dillinger's relationship with Billie Frechette most of the way through. He was an overconfident bum; she was an intelligent girl, but had such low self-esteem that she repeatedly hitched her fate to Dillinger's even when she had opportunities to ditch him. I just couldn't make myself feel sorry for her.
But even though they were a bad match that probably never should've been, Depp and Marion Cotillard are great enough actors that they succeeded in making me believe that they were truly in love with each other. Deeply. I have to throw up a spoiler warning for this next part in order to tell you why I started caring. It's not a huge spoiler, but it's significant, so...
SPOILER WARNING
The entire movie, Dillinger keeps telling Frechette not to run out on him. At first it comes across as a threat, but eventually you start to realize that Dillinger really loves her and wants to protect her. He promises this over and over again. "Stick with me and I'll always protect you," he says. Only there comes a point where he can't do that. The ability is taken from him and it breaks his heart. Depp's performance in that scene is awesome and for the first time in the film I thought, "Oh, crap. That poor, miserable guy." Sure he'd brought it on himself and that made it hard for me to feel too badly for him. But Depp sold it for me and I wanted Dillinger to be able to make good on his promise to her.
END SPOILER
Even so, that one moment was just a sip of water to a very thirsty man. It wasn't enough to satisfy. I came out of the movie with about as much knowledge about Dillinger and Purvis and J Edgar Hoover as I went in with and except for a couple of brief scenes I felt nothing about any of it.
There were a few other minor thrills though. It was interesting to see Dillinger and Company's changing relationship to organized crime (as represented by the character of Frank Nitti, the guy who kills Sean Connery and whom Kevin Costner throws off the roof in The Untouchables). It makes sense that the gangsters at first welcomed the robbers, but later withdrew their support when the robbers started drawing unwanted attention by the FBI.
There were also some great cameos. I didn't even recognize Emilie de Ravin as a hooker early in the film until I saw her name in the credits [Correction: Someone let me know in the comments that I misplaced de Ravin's character; she was actually a bank teller/hostage, not the prostitute I was remembering], but Leelee Sobieski was a welcome sight as Dillinger's date for that last movie at the Biograph (and Dillinger's reaction to that movie was probably the best shot scene in the whole show). Though he was barely in the movie, I could watch a whole film about Giovanni Ribisi as Alvin Karpis (who ran with Ma Barker and her gang). It was also cool to see Diana Krall as a torch singer.
Still, way too few positives for an otherwise uninspired piece of storytelling.
SCI FI Wire has the scoop on a noir mystery with a lady detective. Yesterday Was a Lieis still looking for a distribution deal and my interest in seeing a woman in the private eye role (as well as seeing Peter Mayhew act without his Chewbacca costume on) makes me hope it gets one soon.
Inside Man 2
It sounds like Jodie Foster's definitely back in for Inside Man 2. Here's hoping that she actually has something to do this time around. She has a fantastic character and I'd love to see her in action rather than making idle threats and being generally ineffective.
Play Dead -- about a dog who witnesses a murder and the lawyer who tries to keep him safe --isn't at all the kind of mystery I usually read, but that might be part of the attraction I'm feeling.
I don't know anything about Domino Lady, but I do love a crossover and a good femme fatale, so Moonstone's collection of Domino Lady stories -- featuring her meeting folks like Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom, and Airboy -- sounds worth checking out.
Spies
My Kill All Monsters! collaborator Jason Copland has an interview out on Newsarama about the thriller he and A. David Lewis did called Empty Chamber. The first issue was fantastic and the second one should be out soon (next week, I think?). Update: In the comments, Jason says that he just heard from Silent Devil that it'll be out July 27.
I'm not expecting much from it, but Paul W.S. Anderson (Alien vs. Predator) is directing a movie based on the Spy Hunter video game. The Rock was previously attached as the film's star a couple of years ago when John Woo was going to direct it. No word yet on whether he'll still be in it.
The trailer's out for Will Smith's I Am Legendmovie. It's very coy about whether the threat is vampires (like in the book) or zombies (yawn) or something else, but it looks good so far.
Fantasy
Warner Brothers wants to turn Terry Brookes' Shannara books into a movie franchise. Wisely, they plan to skip the first novel in the series, the Tolkein rip-off Sword of Shannara, and begin with the second book, The Elfstones of Shannara. As much as I complain about Brookes' style and the derivative plot of Sword, I really do have a fond place in my heart for these books and I'd love to see them done well as a series of movies.
It's been a while since I'd heard news about the next Narnia movies. Sounds like the next one, Prince Caspian, comes out next summer, with the third one, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, coming out the summer after that.
Blogger's acting weird, so I think I'm going to have to finish this in a separate post.
The Mummy 3 is in the works. Looks like Jet Li will be the bad guy and it's being written by Smallville's Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, which is all fine. Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) is directing and that's okay too. I'm just concerned that Stephen Sommers' producing credit means that we'll still get cheap, video-game-quality special effects for it. But maybe that's Cohen's call and I just don't know enough about how movies are made. Actually, if it is Cohen's decision to make, I'm very happy about that because the effects in his other adventure movies have been pretty darn cool.
Siskoid's Blog of Geekery should be called Blog of Awesomeness. He's been reviewing every episode of Star Trek, including the cartoon series, and is up into the movies now. I'm hoping he keeps it going through Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and the others. He also sprinkles in plenty of comics posts for variety. This is a blog I'm going to have to go back and read from its beginning.
Just discovered a cool site called First Writer with lots of advice and resources for beginning writers. They help find agents, publishers, contests, magazine markets, and lots of other stuff.
Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me
Men in Trees has been renewed for another season. Yeah, it's a girly show, but it's got great dialogue and interesting characters. I like it as much as I liked the first couple of seasons of Gilmore Girls, and that's a lot. (In that same link, Lost and Grey's Anatomy have also been renewed, but those are news to nobody.)
