The Forgotten Movies: Cy Endfield's HELL DRIVERS

If you want to define the quintessential British movie tough guy, then look no further than Stanley Baker. Over the course of a full, yet too-brief career (Baker died of a lung cancer at 48) he defined postwar British action and tough guy roles in such films as CRIMINAL, ZULU (which he also produced), HELL IS A CITY, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and ROBBERY, among just a few of his hits. As much of a respected dramatic actor as he was a popular movie star (he played Henry Tudor in Olivier’s RICHARD III and made several acclaimed film with Joseph Losey, including ACCIDENT, written by Harold Pinter), Baker often found himself playing a tough guy with heart - like Cagney, Bogart, or Marvin - types are those who are rough around the edges, but good souls who truly want to be left in peace. But like most tough guys, they find themselves in situations where been pushed too far and have to fight back, and they sure as hell know how to fight when the situation demands it. This, in a nutshell, is Baker’s role in Cy Enfield’s HELL DRIVERS, a guy who finds himself in a situation where it’s a fight for survival, even though it’s the last thing he wants. Of course, none of this is nothing new or really original – even back in 1959, when the film was made – but there’s a fine British grit to HELL DRIVERS that makes it feel just right, and even though it doesn’t hold much in the way of surprises, it’s a solid piece of entertainment that still works, 50 years later.

When I made the Bogart/Cagney comparison to Stanley Baker, it’s not just because he’s in their league, but also because HELL DRIVERS is the kind of picture that Warner Brothers could have made back in their crime drama/social outrage drama heyday of the 1930s. It also takes a page from the likes of Jules Dassin’s THEIVES HIGHWAY to discuss the seedy world of trucking and the exploitation of the drivers – always overworked, always struggling to fill their quota, always in fierce competition with each other – while remaining a tough guy movie all-around. Baker’s character is just out of prison, looking for work, and is sent to a small trucking company (hauling gravel) out in the countryside. He’s without a license, so if he’s caught he’s doubly screwed, and as the new guy he instantly butts heads with most of the other drivers, especially top hauler Patrick McGoohan, who’s also a bit of a psycho. So yeah, the script to HELL DRIVERS was already nothing new back in ’59, and I’m not saying that it’s anything all that special. But presentation is indeed everything in this case, and HELL DRIVERS is certainly a fine example of taking familiar material and making something tasty (if not fresh) out of it.

A large part of this is in the casting, not just with Stanley Baker, although he definitely makes for the right lead needed in a picture like this, but also with a supporting cast that seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’ve already mentioned McGoohan (perfectly scummy), but you’ve also got a young Sean Connery, CARRY ON’s Sidney Havers, Herbert Lom as an Italian who’s Baker’s sole friend and confidant (needless to say, he’s toast), and a young David McCallum as Baker’s brother. Thanks to this cast, HELL DRIVERS is a movie with some personality and they all make it very easy to watch even when you know what’s coming. Enfield (who would later direct ZULU), generally a muscular director to begin with, also infuses it with some tight pacing and always keeps it moving (there’s a lot going on within each frame), so it’s easy to get caught up in it all. But at the center of it all is Baker, easy to like and root for, who is the key to HELL DRIVERS’ success. He makes otherwise tired material fresh simply by showing up and caring enough to do a good job, and it’s no surprise this was one of his biggest hits. It gives the British tough guy movie a good name.

The Forgotten Movies - John Frankenheimer's 52 PICK-UP

In honor of Larry Aydlette's Welcome to L.A. John Frankenheimer tribute comes this tribute to one of my favorite Frankenheimer films, 1986's 52 PICK-UP. All HQ 10 readers are advised to check out Welcome to L.A. and this wonderful tribute to this great American filmmaker. Great work, Larry!

There are a lot of things you can say about Cannon Films, but you can’t deny that within all of the crap and muck of the Chuck Norris and AMERICAN NINJA, they actually did find the time to make some terrific movies. Golan and Globus were known to be pretty crazy (or at least Menahem Golan was) and pissed away their money on a number of substandard films, but they did know talent when they saw it, which is why the likes of Robert Altman, Jean-Luc Godard, Franco Zeferelli, Barbet Schroeder, Norman Mailer, and Hebert Ross made pictures there. They were generally not known as meddlers, although they were always committed to their release dates and certainly were cheap, no question about that. There are numerous stories about Cannon shortchanging filmmakers (usually at the last minute), but the best Cannon pictures are usually the ones that were delivered by total pros who knew how to operate within the Cannon confines. Quick, cheap but good was not impossible, and for my money there’s no better example of this than John Frankenheimer’s 52 PICK-UP, a film which, the more I think of it, is probably my favorite Cannon film of all. I know I said that about LIFEFORCE some months back, and I love them both, but LIFEFORCE is crazy and stupid, while 52 PICK-UP is crazy and smart, and that every time in my book. It’s great sleaze made with great style and I’ve come to love it to death.

The main thing that makes 52 PICK-UP so damn good to me is in that it’s an excellent match of director and material. The film is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard (which Cannon previously adapted 2 years earlier as THE AMBASSADOR, shot in Israel by J. Lee Thompson with Robert Mitchum), and it seems as though Frankenheimer could have directed nothing but Elmore Leonard adaptations for the rest of his career and he would have made one terrific picture after another. Those who know Leonard’s work know that he really understands the criminal underworld pretty well and never skits back from presenting it as it pretty much is, so part of what’s great about 52 PICK-UP is how Frankenheimer understands this, too, and likewise doesn’t hold back. They give us a great team of villains taken straight out of the book and don’t sugarcoat them in any way; these guys are pretty fucking brutal. But they’re not as smart as they think they are (they attempt to blackmail businessman Roy Scheider with the murder of his mistress, only to learn that Scheider is in debt to the IRS), which makes them even more dangerous. One of the great things about Leonard’s writing is that he knows that criminals are generally not as ahead of the curb as they think they are, which is how they get caught or get the better of, but he also knows that because they’re criminals and murders, they don’t really care about what happens to them or to others, and that’s part of the thrill of the story. When things go south they really go south, and while it’s great to see these guys get theirs, there is also an understanding that they will most likely come back shooting, so the fun is in watching how pissed they’re going to get and how Scheider is eventually going to get back at them. In that regard, 52 PICK-UP ends like a motherfucker.

All of this also makes 52 PICK-UP a great Cannon movie, too. It’s pretty obvious to see the appeal of the material to Cannon – it’s got all the ingredients that the 42nd Street and Hollywood Boulevard audiences would want – and Frankenheimer doesn’t dare class it up. It’s got some pretty brutal killings, lots of nudity, and it wallows in its late-80s porn scene setting (all you fans of that era will notice a lot of familiar faces in those scenes), but that’s what this film needed. Hell, even Gary Chang’s totally 80's synthesizer score works just right. Frankenheimer knew he had to keep this gritty and dirty or it wouldn’t work. He also cast this one beautifully, getting John Glover and Clarence Williams III (later a Frankenheimer regular) as the villains, and they’re two of the best of the era. Glover, with his Philly accent and Wesley education, is terrific, a real hoot in a lot of ways but also smooth and deadly in the most appealing of ways; only Dan Dureya could have delivered a performance this alluringly dangerous. Williams, meanwhile, really does come across as a guy who’s done time, and to see him always cleaning his gun and looking behind his shoulder without cracking a smile you get the feeling that he’s the one who can take this whole thing to hell in a split second. But it’s because 52 PICK-UP has two solid leads in Roy Scheider and Ann-Margaret that it works like a good thriller or film noir should. Both are enormously appealing actors, instantly likeable, and you feel what they’re going through in an instant and don’t want to see them go through all this horrid shit. You want a guy who looks like he can convincingly outwit three crooks and even kick their ass, and that’s Scheider all the way. Once he’s figured these guys out and has them in his pocket, much of the delight in this film goes to seeing him turn it to these guys, and he also does a fantastic job with all of the sweet Elmore Leonard dialogue (Leonard may be the best dialogue writer in all of crime fiction), so much so you wished he could have done all those hypothetical Leonard adaptations with Frankenheimer (though they did reunite for THE FOURTH WAR, which I have yet to see). Big props, too, to Frankenheimer’s great use of backstreet L.A. locations. Hell, there ain’t nothing wrong with this film at all.

Happily, 52 PICK-UP is available on DVD from MGM, and even though there are no supplements, the transfer is lip-smackingly beautiful and the disc is quite cheap (only $15), so it’s definitely worth the purchase. I’m proud to place it with all the numerous Frankenheimer films on my shelf.

The Forgotten Movies - Jack Arnold's NO NAME ON THE BULLET

I used to know someone who was downright obsessed with Audie Murphy. He was a fanzine writer who wrote about almost nothing but Murphy and 50s westerns - not very well, despite the passion - and his idol worship of Murphy, who I had never heard of before I met this guy, tainted my initial impression of this unique individual. He'd talk of Murphy like some genius talent we should all bow down to, while Murphy's films were spoken of like they were they were Kurosawa's, and it got to be embarrassing after a point. But I eventually did learn a lot about Murphy (he claimed to be working on a book about Murphy which, no surprise, never materialized): That he was the most decorated solider of WWII and that he stumbled onto acting not long after that (Cagney apparently saw star potential in him and suggested he give acting a try), eventually becoming a star. He specialized in westerns and war pictures with his most famous being John Houston's film version of THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE and then TO HELL AND BACK, where Murphy played himself, based on his autobiography. NO NAME ON THE BULLET happened to be the name of this person's fanzine, so when I finally found out that there was, in fact, an Audie Murphy movie by that title, I was under no real hurry to seek it out. But as the years went by - and as I dropped any contact with this person - I'd read a bit more about Murphy, and especially his westerns, and I took an interest. And now having seen NO NAME ON THE BULLET, I have to say that Mr. Murphy's overzealous fan was at least right about one thing: This is a pretty damn good movie, and Murphy's the best thing about it.

One thing about NO NAME ON THE BULLET I personally find to be interesting is that it comes from the tail end of the 50s western revival (1959, specifically), when the genre had evolved throughout the decade to become smarter, more mature, even darker at times. It was this decade that brought us the best the genre ever had to offer, like WINCHESTER '73, THE SEARCHERS, THE TALL T, 3:10 TO YUMA and GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, and NO NAME ON THE BULLET was a picture that took the genre as seriously as they did, even though it was, on the outside, a mere Universal programmer. Well throughout the decade, Universal made numerous quickie westerns (and some classics, too, like the Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart pictures), and NO NAME ON THE BULLET was meant to be nothing more than that, teaming Murphy with top Universal contract director Jack Arnold (best known for his sci-fi films like IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE). But in what seems to be a fine example of pure luck or the stars alligning, Arnold and Murphy got their hands on a solid script from Gene L. Coon (later a regular writer on STAR TREK) and made a quickie western that has stood the test of time pretty well. The thing that makes NO NAME ON THE BULLET works so well is that it's got a hook, and if you've got a hook, then you're always off to a solid start in my book. Premise finds notorious professional gun Murphy riding into a small town that suddenly grows paranoid over his appearance. It's known that Murphy is there to kill someone, but just who is it? Those with something to hide are suddenly running scared, while those who suspect others of hiring Murphy, call out their enemies. Murphy, meanwhile, just sits out all the paranoia, befriending doctor Charles Drake, and waiting for the right time to make his kill, which he always does by getting the other person to draw first. That, my dear readers, is what I call a good hook.

What sets NO NAME ON THE BULLET apart, aside from said hook, are two things. First, Arnold keeps things small and efficient. Even though he's shooting in Cinemascope (as was pretty much the norm at the time), he's basically got a small cast of capable players (including the always-welcome R.G. Armstrong), not a lot of locations (Universal lot, mainly) and little in the way of unnecessary plotting. NO NAME ON THE BULLET is only 77 minutes long, but it's a tight 77 minutes, with little to none wasted material or ideas. Within all of this, Coon's script is able to bring up some parallels to 50s paranoia (McCarthyism and the Red Scare) while smartly sticking within western genre conventions of the time. And it's also got a good villain, which makes for that second plus, Murphy's lead performance. This was the only villain Murphy ever played, and it's a solid piece of work all-around, especially in how his character spends a lot of time just sitting back and watching others trip all over themselves to discover what he's after. By doing that, Murphy convincingly comes across as the intimidating and cruel man this character is supposed to be, and he stays very much in character throughout (he never tries to show a softer side) to help put this one over the top as a quality picture. What's interesting is trying to figure out if this guy is truly smarter than everyone else, or simply just good at killing and drawing out his prey. He's a legitimately dangerous character, and by using someone like Murphy - who always possessed a simple, down-home Texas charm - Arnold is able to add an element of dread that casting someone who specialized in villians might not have brought to the film. Needless to say, this is very effective casting, and it pretty much makes the movie.

Unlike a lot of The Forgotten Movies, NO NAME ON THE BULLET is available on DVD in a relatively satisfying presentation from Universal. It's widescreen and contains a trailer, but it doesn't cost too much and what matters here is the movie, not any fancy add-ons. It's a quick, easy watch, and you get a pretty satisfying 77 minutes out if it.

The Forgotten Movies - Bruce Beresford's MONEY MOVERS (1979)

The big thing in the cult movie universe these days is Ozploitation, or Australian exploitation films of the 70s and 80s, as highlighted by Mark Hartley's excellent documentary NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, due to open in March from Magnolia Pictures. It's nice to see these forgotten pics get their due here in the U.S., and hopefully it will open the gates for several of these films to get a release over here, since the Aussie cinematic golden age gave us a hell of a lot of good films that either never made it here or have fallen out of license. (My pals at Synapse Films have already gotten the ball rolling with such films as PATRICK and STRANGE BEHAVIOR, with the excellent giant croc epic DARK AGE due for release some time in '09.) While many of these films have been released on DVD in their homeland, there's zero market for them, import-wise, and there's unquestionably some hidden gems out there. Having dug into some of these imports recently, one of the first that I've discovered is Bruce Beresford's MONEY MOVERS, a heist flick from '79 that shows that Aussie crime cinema of the 70s was as solid as it was in the states and that the conventions of film noir transplanted just as well to Australia as they did to France in the 50s and 60s.

A film titled MONEY MOVERS could only be a heist movie (or an expose on the life of accountants), though in this case it has a literal meaning, too, since the heist concerns a Sydeny-based payroll company. Based on a book by a former security officer (and inspired by two 1970 robberies), MONEY MOVERS wisely begins by dictating the inner workings of the company itself for its first 15 minutes so that we get a good idea of not just how difficult it would be for someone to knock it over, but also what exactly is at stake. Since this is a security company and not a bank, everyone has guns, everyone has an attitude and, most important of all, most everyone has a reason to knock the place over. It's an inside job all the way, planned by Terrance Donovan, his brother Bryan Brown and another employee, three guys who've been with the company long enough to be trusted and long enough to be enticed by all that money. Their motives are practically secondary; they're determined to do the job they've been planning for 5 years and now there's a fire lit under them to finally get it done. These things don't always go as planned, of course, and there are numerous complications - unwanted third parties muscling in on the job, suspicious co-workers, fall guys who don't fall so easily - and much of what makes MONEY MOVERS so compelling is the matter-of-fact storytelling technique that Beresford employs, while at the same time never losing sight of the genre he's in or pretending that he - or the film - are above it. The fact that MONEY MOVERS feels very much like many of the other quality Aussie films of its era - while at the same time a heist movie - is what makes it feel fresh to me. This is one of the few attempts to make a modern day noir that works on its own terms, especially without feeling like a rip-off or (even worse) a homage. Yes, it could have been made by Fox in the Forties with Tyrone Power or Dana Andrews, or by Melville with Lino Ventura in the early 60s, but with all the bright Aussie locations and Down Under attitudes, MONEY MOVERS is very much its own movie.

That said, it's also very much Bruce Beresford's movie, and it serves as a reminder that this guy used to be a really good director some time ago. Well before he turned Hollywood, Beresford's Aussie films (and the fine TENDER MERCIES, his U.S. debut) had this natural quality to them that helped to define the Aussie cinema of the 70s that felt lived-in and felt organically Australian (the BARRY McKENZIE films excepted, of course). Many of these pictures were quiet, character-based stories about simple people whose problems Beresford was able to make seem enormously important and became intriguing because of that. MONEY MOVERS takes the same approach and it not only proves to be completely the right but also makes it unique for this genre; Making the characters all working class Aussies make them feel more human, easier to relate to and empathetic (for as much as thieves can be), and the lack of a score helps to add to the natural feeling and brings up the tension. At the same time, I'm also impressed by MONEY MOVERS as a thriller and in how respectful it is of the heist film genre. All of the usual trappings are there, but the feeling is fresh and unique.

Apparently, MONEY MOVERS was not a hit in Aussie cinemas back in '79 and its sole U.S. release was on VHS back in the early 80s, so it's ripe for a rediscovery and a re-evaluation. I'm gonna call Don over at Synapse and see what we can do.

The Forgotten Movies (Thanksgiving Edition): Richard Brooks' FEVER PITCH (1985)

Another Thanksgiving, another "turkey" edition of The Forgotten Movies. Unlike most other sites that decide to focus on "Thanksgiving Turkeys" and just end up re-hashing the same titles over and over again (BATTLEFIELD EARTH and SHOWGIRLS are really bad! Thank you, Ben Lyons.), I like to focus on movies that are truly, unquestionably, unmistakeably bad, but bad in ways that most other movies - be they good or bad - would be jealous of. Truth is, most "bad" movies are actually mediocre ones that don't have a lick of ambition about them, so when a film with certain pretensions flop endlessly like a whale on the beach, it's much more intriguing. It's also a bit more difficult to watch, partly because someone usually had a good idea or had a passion to say something and they simply couldn't do it right. Richard Brooks' FEVER PITCH, I think, is a perfect example of this, because Brooks was a smart filmmaker who could usually be counted on to make smart, slick, professional movies, and he was also a director who would bust his ass to go all-out on making films that would possibly be the ultimate word of that certain subject matter. Ambition was never his short suit, but a misplaced ambition, like the kind on display in FEVER PITCH, is pretty embarrassing to watch. A part of me wants to cut Brooks a break for this, but you can't watch this film and not think to yourself, "Just what the hell was he thinking?" If FEVER PITCH were any more of a car wreck, the prints would have been delivered to the theater in a tow truck.

Pretty much from the outset, you know FEVER PITCH is in trouble thanks to the tone that Brooks sets with his opening montage, set to narration spoken by star Ryan O'Neal that sounds like it comes out of a 40's Monogram rip-off of a 30's Warners social outrage picture. It tries for this hard-boiled, seen-it-all, DRAGNET approach that even in 1985 people would ask the person sitting next to them, "Does anyone really talk like that?" Unfortunately, this is the approach that Brooks takes throughout the entire picture, as most every character speaks like that, putting this film in a non-reality that is just way too out there. ''Gambling. Series. How many people gamble. How. Why.'' is but one example, and it keeps rambling on and on like that for the whole film. People talk in clichés all throughout FEVER PITCH that it becomes maddening, and very quickly in you're thinking, "Does Brooks truly expect us to take this seriously?" But then beyond the dialogue, it's an entire film full of clichés, one where every moment is maddeningly predictable (O' Neal's sportswriter turned gambling addict is writing a series about a gambler named "Mr. White" who is, unsurprisingly O'Neal himself) and laughably hokey; when O' Neal's daughter says, "I sure miss mommy", we're treated to a ridiculous flashback of how his wife died in a car crash while on her way to bail him out of a gambling debt. I mean, this thing is just stupid beyond belief.

What hurts here is that there's a good movie in here somewhere, or at the very least a good movie somewhere in Brooks' honest intentions. FEVER PITCH seems to know a thing or two about gambling (leading one to wonder just where Brooks' inspiration came from) and for 95% of its running time it has its heart in the right place about the subject. Someone could (and should) make a searing film about the subject, but when Brooks ends his picture by having O' Neal - having settled with loan shark Chad Everitt (in the film's one decent performance) - winning back all his debt in one night at the tables, you know this thing is not - what's the word? - good. It's quite possible this was a studio-imposed happy ending (though Brooks commanded enough respect in his career to have achieved final cut), but since this ridiculous is so much in line with the film that came before it, you have to assume that Brooks thought he knew what he was doing. Now, with all this said, I do feel the need to say that FEVER PITCH is also a very entertaining bad movie, and if you're indeed looking for a Thankgiving turkey then this is your cinematic Butterball. It does provide certain unique pleasures, such as the sight of the great Giancarlo Giannini sharing the same frame with Everett and William Smith (strangely enough, I know Quentin Taratino has expressed a certain admiration for it, and even screened it at his 2nd QT Fest back in 1998, but I don't know just what his approach is to this), but it's all still something of a shame. It's a head-scratcher, head-slapper of a motion picture that is out of time and out of place (I didn't even get to the weird Thomas Dolby score), and if it came from anyone else I would say give it a Golden Turkey award, but from the director of THE PROFESSIONALS, BITE THE BULLET, and IN COLD BLOOD, it truly does register as a "What the fuck?" kind of movie. But it does have to be seen to be believed, there's no question there.

The Forgotten Movies, Fantasia Edition: Yudai Yamaguchi's CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL

The Fantasia Film Festival begins today in dear old Montreal, and I'm flying up on Saturday to experience a week's worth of flicks and friends, a welcome break from spending all my time working... on a film festival. With this I bring to you, the HQ 10 readership a Forgotten Movie from one of the many great Fantasia's of year's past.

In a lot of ways, there's nothing better than a good comedy. Solid laughs throughout a film's running time often leaves one with a happy and memorable experience. This is why I own a copy of DODGEBALL. But you know what's better than a good comedy? A good comedy that comes from out of nowhere, that's what. A good comedy that surprises the living hell out of you by being good when all signs pointed to being bad, and that was my experience with Yudai Yamaguchi's CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL. And what's even better, this is one good comedy that came out of both nowhere and bad expectations, something that doesn't happen very often, if ever. Does that make any sense? To explain, the director of this film previously made a movie called BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL, which I have not yet seen but have been told by pretty much everyone it sucks to high heaven, so that explains why expectations were low. When I saw this film was on the Fantasia 2005 schedule, I had to question why. And it got a prominent Saturday night slot, too. What's up with that? It wasn't until I was sitting in my seat and laughing my ass off with 700 others, some of them my best friends, that I realized why - CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL is fucking hilarious.

Like most every other Japanese movie these days, CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL is based on a manga (Japanese comic book), proving that Hollywood is not the only film industry bereft of original ideas, and I'm told it's loyal to its source. But it also seems extremely cinematic in its execution, made with the crackerjack timing of the Zuckers for nonstop nutty jokes, and dry, dry humor. The plot of the film is that the worst high school in Japan is the title school (named after Japan's top baseball player, apparently) and at the start we find an otherwise clean-cut, intelligent student transferred to the school by mistake. But he finds that the supposedly bad students are actually just misunderstood and that the school is simply a magnet for weirdness. The student body includes yakuzas, a robot, a gorilla, Freddie Mercury, and Japanese actor Kai Ato, while the episodic nature of the plot gives us the birth of the Global Defense Force, a robot exorcism, and an alien invasion. With that, I have just skimmed the surface of what happens in CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL; this is a picture where a lot happens, but it doesn't so much happen as just flow in from one scene to the next. There is the basics of a plot in there, but it's mostly a lot of unrelated sketches that kinda sorta flow into a narrative. Some, film critics mostly, would probably take issue with this approach and maybe they're right. But they're also assholes for simply not just giving in and enjoying themselves, which is sure as hell what the audience I saw this film with did. I also experienced an interesting phenomenon with this film that I'd only experienced a few times before. There was a 10-15 minute stretch where there were absolutely no laughs. Lots of funny stuff was happening, but strangely, the laughs just stopped. I started to think that the film had lost its mojo and that it was all downhill from there. But then the laughs started up again and by the end of the picture the audience was on its feet. So what the fuck happened? It wasn't until much later that I realized that the problem wasn't the film, it was the audience: they'd been laughing so much they need to rest! This was pretty astonishing, I thought, and I remember the first time I ever experienced this was with the original AIRPLANE!, and it's nice to see someone who knows what they're doing invoke the unspoken comedy rule that you've got to give your audience a break sometimes. But this bodes well for CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL, because it means that it will stand up well to repeat viewings, that people will think that they missed something when in fact they were just tired.

Unlike a lot of other films in The Forgotten Movies, CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL is available on DVD in the U.S., from Media Blasters, although it's a bit of a bitch to find if you're looking to get it in stores (Netflix does stock it, though). It's recommended, of course, and as I travel up to Fantasia this weekend for another week of film fest fun, I will take with me fond memories of such films as CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL for making the event so much fun, and if that's not the dumbest thing I've ever written I don't know what is.

(Parts of this review were lifted from an earlier piece that I wrote on my MySpace blog some years back. A bit of laziness on my part, sure, but I, unlike some people on the internet, will actually cop to that. Just sayin')

The Forgotten Movies: Arthur Dreifuss' RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP

God bless Lars Nilsen.

The host of the Alamo Drafthouse's Weird Wednesdays screening series, Lars is one of the smartest, wittiest, and most perceptive exploitation film experts in the world, and I always look forward to his weekly WW introductions sometimes more than the movies themselves. When Lars gets to talking about these films, he's more than just a mere cheerleader or supporter, he's someone who is telling you all this stuff for your own good; this isn't merely the information about that particular film that would be helpful to know, it's information that's imperative to know. Lars is not always able to make the films better, but his introductions makes the evening worth it and he's always able to get you excited about what you're going to see.

Case in point: His introduction to RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, which screened this past Wednesday. He made a point of saying that RIOT was not an especially good film in a lot of ways; it was a 60s youth film that was made by old-time pros who had been working in movies as far back as the silent era, like producer Sam Katzman, who were looking to make a quickie teenage movie that would go in and out of theaters for a few months, make a small profit and that was it. RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP is pretty much that anyway, but when Lars introduced it, he told everyone, "No matter what, just wait for the scene where Mimsy Farmer takes her shoes off". The film would go downhill after that scene concluded, but man, was it worth it, Lars said and damn if he wasn't right as rain. RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP is really more a movie of moments - what's choice is very choice and what isn't isn't - but those moments when the film is on there's a little bit of a feeling of lightning in a bottle. It may not be the preeminent film of the late 60s youth movement, but it's not completely squaresville, either.

Something I though Lars would mention in his intro (something he should have mentioned) was that RIOT was produced back in 1966 (though released in '67), which for most people was the year that really defined what the 60s were all about. The revolution was just starting, the possibility of real change was in the air, and the youth of America was rioting on the Sunset Strip, so why the hell not make a movie about it? Hey, so what if it didn't last, no one knew that then. Even more so, '66 was quite possibly the finest year for music ever, from the likes of Revolver to Pet Sounds to Blonde on Blonde to Aftermath and such earth-shattering songs as The Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction"; The Sonics' "Psycho"; The Creation's "Makin' Time"; "Wild Thing" by The Troggs; James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's Man's World" and thousand other musical masterpieces still worth listening to. What little RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP gets right is those few moments when it's accurately recounting the era, namely in the musical performances of bands like The Standels and The Chocolate Watchband, and then there's a real electricity that reminds you of the great line Peter Fonda has in THE LIMEY about how the 60s really meant '66 and a little bit of '67. That's what RIOT ON THE SUNSET STRIP should be, but quite isn't.

The problem stems from the fact that the film took an exciting real-life event (the Sunset Strip curfew riots) and turned it into a cheap, quickie Sam Katzman production that was in theaters six weeks (six weeks?!?) after the riots occurred. It's a movie that wants to have it both ways; fair to the kids, who are most likely going to be the ones to see it, but it doesn't make the adults or the establishment into villains, casting Aldo Ray (a severely unappreciated actor) as a sympathetic police chief whose daughter (Farmer) gets mixed up with "the wrong crowd". It's this part of the picture that gives it an entertainment value that even the hippies of the day could appreciate, camp. Watching square adults trying to make the hippies of the day look like the juvenile delinquents of the 50s, but watching them not event truly understand "where it's at" still makes it a lot of fun. All you really need is for one character to turn to another and just say, "Freak out", and you've got some memorable movie entertainment, even if it is for the wrong reasons.

So RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP isn't especially great, but you can't deny that it has something that makes it worth seeing, even remembering a little bit. Lars sure nailed this one.

PS - Now that this piece is done, you can all go read Lars' new Weird Wednesdays blog, which I was going to mention at the beginning but then I realized you might get so caught up in reading it that you might not come back, so feel free to go there if you like now, because I'm done.

Go, shoo!

The Forgotten Movies Week - Christian Blackwood's ROGER CORMAN: HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL

This may sound a little odd, but Christian Blackwood's ROGER CORMAN: HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL is one of the most important and influential films I've ever seen. I'd done so at an extremely impressionable age, 14 going on 15, and even though I loved the mainstream cinema of the era, the Lucas and Spielberg blockbusters (have I written about that yet?), the idea of independent cinema, specifically exploitation cinema (back when it was still "drive-in cinema"), was pretty foreign to me. I knew who Roger Corman was, thanks to articles and interviews in Starlog, Fangoria and Twilight Zone Magazine, but the only film of his I'd seen at that point was DEATH RACE 2000, and I'd only seen that on commercial television. I knew that he had launched the careers of many directors I admired - specifically Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese - and others I'd heard of but whose works I hadn't seen at that point (Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Kaplan), but if I'd seen the likes of ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS or THE RAVEN on TV, I didn't remember them all too well. On a cold Saturday night in January of 1985, the WNET, NYC PBS affiliate aired HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL and I felt compelled to watch it (possibly because Dante was one of the interview subjects), but little did I know it was going to change my life. From that point on, I fell in love with Corman, New World Pictures, and exploitation movies. Wait a second - this fucking movie ruined my life!

So now that I've supplied the back-story, let me tell you what I learned from HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL:

A) The importance of maintaining your independence. Corman made and distributed the films he wanted to make and didn't have to adhere to a committee or a boss above him. Couldn't do this working for someone else.

B) Entertainment doesn't have to be stupid. Corman always encouraged his films and filmmakers to place not-so-subtle social statements within the usual car chases and T&A. In the doc, Jonathan Demme points out that CAGED HEAT spoke about illegal lobotomies in prisons and mental hospitals, while Paul Bartel discusses how the satirical elements of DEATH RACE 2000 were encouraged.

C) Cheap doesn't equal bad. Corman's directors always have to pay attention to the bottom line, but instead of stifling them, he encourages them to be creative. When Corman gave Joe Dante and Allan Arkush the opportunity to direct their first feature, he only gave them 10 days and $65,000 dollars; they compensated by using footage from other Corman productions and ended up with one of New World's finest features, HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD.

D) "Breast nudity possible here?" Demme talks about some of the script notes he got from Corman on CAGED HEAT and concedes that, yes, some breast nudity is indeed possible at this point in the film. Corman is, beyond any doubt, a man with his eyes always on the wants and needs of the audience.

Beyond having mentored so many big name filmmakers, Corman is an essential part in film history for being the best of all the exploitation filmmakers and for having been an excellent filmmaker in his own right. From THE INTRUDER, one of the best films ever made about the civil rights era, to the Poe films (THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH is Corman's masterpiece and possibly the best horror film of the 1960s) to such funky efforts as THE WILD ANGELS, THE TRIP and GASSSSSSSSSS, Corman made one solid film after another, and even such silly earlier efforts as IT CONQUERED THE WORLD have still have their charms. This extended into New World, where films that were made because of the marquee value of their titles (THE STUDENT TEACHERS; THE BIG BIRD CAGE) actually lived up to their promise and hold up quite well today. Most of the best exploitation films of the 70s (BIG BAD MAMA; DEATH RACE 2000; HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD) came from New World, and one of the things that makes HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL so great is that it was shot at the very apex of the New World era; Dante and Arkush are interviewed in the New World trailer suite just after making HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD, while Corman discusses taking a risk on an upcoming project called I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN. A number of the interview subjects (Demme, Scorsese, Kaplan, Paul Bartel, David Carridine) are fresh out of the Corman factory and working in Hollywood and they all discuss their times in the trenches with tremendous admiration and respect, all of them acknowledging that Corman really did teach them what they needed to know to make a good movie. Blackwood traces Corman's history quite well, treats him with respect and doesn't pass judgment on the man and his work, which is probably the reason why I took so well to it. It's OK to like or love Roger Corman, because he's the best at what he does and what he does can be pretty damn great at times. It was an absorbing film for me at that young age and I'm glad I was taping it, because I viewed it countless times since and have committed much of it memory. And it should go without saying that so many of the Corman films that I had never seen when I first viewed HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL have gone on to become favorites. This was a hell of an introduction.

Sad to say, ROGER CORMAN: HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL isn't available on DVD and the VHS probably went out of print some time in the early 90s. I have no idea where the rights are (Blackwood passed away in 1992), although Lincoln Center showed it last year as part of a tribute to the New Directors/New Films series (where this debuted). It would make for a great supplement on a DVD release at some point or even just on its own, because it really does deserve to be seen again. It's still the best documentary about the movies I've ever seen.

So concludes The Forgotten Movies Week here at HQ 10 - Hope you enjoyed it! We'll have another cool weeklong series next month; what is it? You'll just have to wait to find out.

The Forgotten Movies Week - Michael Tuchner's FEAR IS THE KEY

Some movies deserve rediscovery; they fall through the cracks for some reason (bad distribution, poor box office, dated elements) and need someone (a Tarantino or Pauline Kael) to prop them back up into the public consciousness. Some Forgotten Movies aren't exactly all that great to begin with and some are just merely "good" and nothing more. Some good parts to them, some lackluster, but all in all they work even if it isn't the best thing you've ever seen. I think this is the reason Michael Tuchner's FEAR IS THE KEY has fallen off the radar; it's got a fantastic opening, then a troubled midsection, followed by a workable resolution. It has an excellent cast (with one glaring exception), a classy production and it feels like a much more solid piece of entertainment than it actually is. You finish it feeling more or less satisfied with what you've seen and then you move on from it; because it's not better than it should be it doesn't exactly stay with you, but you remember liking it well enough. No wonder it's a forgotten movie.

FEAR IS THE KEY is based on a novel by Alistair MacLean (sorry, it's got nothing to do with the Iron Maiden song), who is usually known for huge adventure stories that take place on several continents and feature the fate of the free world at stake about three or four times in the course of the story. There have actually been some very good films made out of MacLean's novels (Brian Hutton's WHERE EAGLES DARE and J. Lee Thompson's THE GUNS OF NAVARONE being the best), so when I see his name pop up in the credits I think I have an idea just what to expect. What I am not expecting is a story about kidnapping and oil drilling set in Louisiana, but that's what FEAR IS THE KEY is, though I'm not holding that against it. In going over my research on the novel (the Wikipedia page, I mean) it seems like the movie is pretty faithful to it, but you certainly can't help but notice that the film makes a couple of concessions to early 70s cinema, though not in the form of gratuitous nudity or foul language but rather an extremely lengthy opening car chase. And an excellent opening car chase it is; what probably took up a few pages in MacLean's novel takes up about 15 minutes of screen time and it's an absolute blast to watch. The reason for the chase probably has about as much to do with the casting of Barry Newman, fresh off of VANISHING POINT, as the film's lead than it does anything else; they had to figure, "OK, we've got the VANISHING POINT guy, the VANISHING POINT audience will show, so why not give them a bit of VANISHING POINT?". The reasoning isn't to be faulted too much because they've come up with a killer car chase, blazing all around the back roads of Louisiana in a sweet red '72 Torino, that's expertly handled by Tuchner and his stunt team. It's an applause-worthy chase, and even when it's over the rush you get from it keeps FEAR IS THE KEY moving for a bit before it winds down and actually gets into the film's story, and as you can guess, that's when the film begins to bog down.

Without getting too much into it so I don't spoil it, FEAR IS THE KEY then becomes a bit of a hostage drama, then an espionage movie and finally a revenge movie and it's so over the map that while it certainly keeps you on your toes, you're kinda in, like, "wait, where are we now?" territory. Some of this works, however; I like the hostage stuff because you're still not sure of the direction of the rest of the film. The espionage stuff kinda lost me (wait, he's some kind of salvage expert?), but when they got to the revenge part I went with it and felt that they'd made it work enough for me to care. I know that I'm sounding quite vague, but I'd like you, the reader/viewer, to experience this one as blind as I did. I'd never heard of the film before, never seen it, so when a friend told me about it (it was just released on DVD in the U.K. in a bare-bones edition with a very nice widescreen transfer) I experienced it with very little idea of where it was going and I liked that. Maybe it didn't go into all the right directions, but it's still nice to not always have the road ahead of you be so crystal clear, you know? And there is a lot to like in the film, enough to recommend it with reservations on my end. Of course, Newman is a big plus, a solid lead and thanks to VANISHING POINT and a more than credible action hero; the guy should have had a bigger career than he did, but it was nice to see his late 90s comeback in THE LIMEY with FEAR IS THE KEY as a reminder that, yeah, the guy had what it took. Newman gets a good group of villains to go up against with John Vernon (in his pre-ANIMAL HOUSE days, when he gave really good performances) and none other than Ben Kingsley, in his film debut and no doubt testing the maters for SEXY BEAST 30 years later. Dolph Sweet also supplies some good support, but if there's a weak link in the cast it's Suzy Kendall as basically just the female lead; while there's no character for her to play, she does an excellent job of not playing it, which is to say she's awful. She doesn't drag the film down, but in looking around at some solid players doing their thing well and then watching her non-acting in the same scene you've got to wonder if Valarie Leon wasn't available or something. I know she was a bit of a name at the time, but... ah, what does it matter? Anyway, there's also a solid score by Roy Budd (available on CD) and the Louisiana locations (with exteriors filmed in the U.K.) are also pluses.

So yeah, FEAR IS THE KEY is a solid effort, but not my favorite film of the week, I don't mind saying. And yet, I felt the need to discuss it, because I think others will probably take to it and some may find it to be a new favorite. I don't know if it's going to end up on disc here anytime soon (Lionsgate has the rights), but if you can get an opportunity to check out the Region 2 disc, I say do so. It's not perfect, but it does have its pleasures.

The Forgotten Movies Week - Boro Draskovic's VUKOVAR

One of the points of The Forgotten Movies isn't just to shine a light on good films I think have been forgotten, but as an opportunity to take a second look at these films before I forget them myself. I'm not one to revisit films very often - too many films I haven't seen yet take prescience - but the really good ones, especially those that you think you might benefit from a another viewing, are always worth a second look. The downside to this is watching something you really liked ten years ago or so and finding that it's not really the movie you remember; this happens often to childhood favorites, but when it's a film that's more recent it tells you that your taste is changing, perhaps for the better. You've been exposed to more of everything, so something that was revelatory at 24 isn't quite the same at 34. It happens.

One such film I was reticent to revisit was Boro Draskovic's VUKOVAR, about the 87 day battle that marked a turning point in the Croatian-Serbian war, which I had seen once in December of 1995, just before its limited U.S. theatrical release. My original viewing was back in my days as a projectionist at the old HQ 10, where I viewed the film by myself one afternoon while the theater was closed to the general public (oh, the benefits of the job). The HQ 10 would play host to one of those "Sneak Preview" film series, where they show an upcoming film and get some kind of guest in to discuss the movie, so I would get the prints a few days in advance and check them out and then inform the instructor if the movie was any good or not. I hadn't heard of the film before it showed up at the theater - it played festivals but didn't get a lot of press - so this really was a matter of going into a film completely blind and the result was a film I was quite impressed with. It was the first dramatic presentation I'd seen about the war in Croatia, something I hadn't really understood much of at that point, and it was unquestionably an eye-opener and not an easy movie to sit through. But it was important viewing, too, and though it felt like a punch in the gut, it was a much-needed punch that we all need when we learn something about the ugly truth of the world around us. The film then came and went very quickly, had a VHS release in the summer of '96, and then it fell into the void like so many foreign films before it, victim to the collapse of its distributor, Tara Releasing (hard to say where the rights are now). While I'd never forgotten VUKOVAR, I hadn't seen it any since that original viewing, but I've long kept it in mind for The Forgotten Movies, and once I'd decided to do this week-long special, I figured it was time to check it out again. Having amazingly found a copy of a rather lackluster Chinese DVD (not a bootleg) in NYC's Chinatown in 2000 or so, I was pleased to see it holds up, but it isn't quite what I remembered it to be.

Made just a few years after the 1991 battle, VUKOVAR has the advantage in that its drama is all still pretty fresh; shooting in the actual location, the filmmakers could take advantage of newly-built locations for the early scenes and bombed-out rubble left over from the actual battle. Certainly the memories of those events were incredibly fresh, giving the film a sense of urgency about it, that the filmmakers feel this story must be told at once. The plot is a simple one: Croatian Mirjana Jokovic (later to star in Kusturica's UNDERGROUND) marries Serb Boris Isakovic just before the war breaks out (their wedding ceremony is interrupted by Croat and Yugoslavian protestors) and the two are soon separated when he is drafted into Milošević's army and she is forced to flee when the battle starts to move into Vukovar. What follows is a story of survival on both sides (very even-handed, too), as they each lose friends and family and find themselves without a home, and it's impossible not to be moved by all of it. But in seeing it again, the film also reveals itself to fall into the dramatic patterns of several other war films of this type: characters who say "I'll be back soon" never return or return to find others gone; characters who say they would never kill anyone find themselves willing assassins; the family pet will get killed for food at some point, things along that nature. It takes away some of the impact and makes you question the filmmakers abilities - did they really want to tell this story or did they just want to tell a story about the war - but I can't deny that it does get to you. There are some moments in VUKOVAR that are very difficult to forget; the truth behind them is simply too much to pass them off and they are well-handled with a dramatic urgency by Draskovic. More so, Jokovic's performance is absolutely superb, and as we see the bulk of the film through her eyes a tremendous amount of credit for the film's success has to go to her. Her character goes through pretty much an emotional tsunami and her face tells the whole story - beautiful and joyous at the beginning, then tortured and deadened by film's end. Draskovic is also wise to not play up the drama too much and to let some horrific images - like bodies floating down the Danube - speak for themselves. But the familiarity of the storytelling feels like a bit of a drawback at times. Still, VUKOVAR is well worth seeing, if only one could find a copy, because events like the ones portrayed here shouldn't be forgotten, even though they sadly can be and already have been in the time since this story took place. It may not have the same impact for me, but VUKOVAR is still undeniably moving and not easily forgotten.

The Forgotten Movies Week - Brian Trenchard-Smith's THE MAN FROM HONG KONG

In keeping with Stacie Ponder's "Don't Be a Douche, Internet" day of saying nice things about people, allow me to take a moment to run a little appreciation of George Lazenby. The guy's been a bit of a whipping boy ever since he replaced Connery as James Bond in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and I for one am sick of it. It seems to me that the reason people don't like him is because he's not Sean Connery; hey, I'm not Sean Connery, either, and plenty of people don't like me, although for completely different reasons. There are plenty of folks who think that he either ruined OHMSS (I like that abbreviation) or that if it wasn't for Lazenby, it would have been the very best Bond film, instead of just one of the best Bonds. Now, this is just complete and utter bullshit, if you ask me. No, the guy isn't as talented as Connery. He may not have his guy's style and inherent coolness, but you know what? Lazenby, as it turns out, has a coolness all his own. Perhaps my favorite moment in the entire Bond series comes early on when Diana Rigg is pointing a gun at Lazenby and he grabs her arm in half a second and gets her to drop the gun (which, of course, leads to the inevitable seduction scene). This isn't just the kind of thing Connery would have done, it's right out of the book and Lazenby handles it all perfectly, and at this moment (along with that great "This never happened to the other fellow" line), Lazenby makes his mark on the role and at no point in my many viewings of this excellent film have I ever imagined Connery playing Bond in it. He may not have owned the role, but Lazenby owns ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, no question.

A lot of people look at OHMSS and say, "Well, that was the high point for George Lazenby", and again I tell you all that you're wrong - wrong, I say! - because Lazenby's follow-up films were a very interesting lot. He produced and starred the mercenary film UNIVERSAL SOLIDER (directed by ZULU's Cy Enfield), which remains a forgotten film in its own right (I've never seen it, but it sure sounds intriguing), and followed it with Aldo Lato's WHO SAW HER DIE?, one of the best Italian horror films of its time and one of the most cynical, too. But it was what he did after that, a three film deal with Hong Kong's Golden Harvest, that earned Lazenby even more respect on my end. Lazenby was an avid martial artist who trained under Bruce Lee, and the first film was supposed to be a co-starring role opposite Bruce Lee in GAME OF DEATH, which fell apart after Lee's death. STONER was supposed to follow that up, so Lazenby took the Lee role (with Angela Mao playing the role Lazenby was to play) and while it's no classic, it's still a solid Golden Harvest production and Lazenby remains quite impressive as an action hero. Doing many of his own stunts (he was considerably taller than most of his fighting opponents, which made finding a double quite difficult) he's quite good in all of the martial arts sequences, holding his own against some of the all-time greats and he has a nice rapport with the great Angela Mao. STONER was both a hit and a quality flick, but it was with THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, Lazenby’s next Golden Harvest feature, that he proved that he knew who to work with in order to make him look good. A co-production between Golden Harvest and the Australian Film Company and written and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (with fight scenes handled by Sammo Hung, who also has a small role), this one is an absolute drive-in/Grindhouse winner, one of the best action films of its era. It's filled with plenty of great action and a nice, almost (though not quite, thankfully) tongue-in-cheek sense of humor about itself that keeps the film equally amusing when people aren’t beating and kicking each other. And George Lazenby’s in it – what more could you want?

Opening with a Sammo Hung fight scene on Ayres Rock (!), the film is mainly shot and set in Australia, so therefore the man from Hong Kong is not Lazenby but rather Jimmy Wang Yu (who the IMDB credits with co-directing the film), coming off of the huge international success of THE ONE-ARMED BOXER. The title credits sequence gives us a wonderfully goofy idea of what to expect, with a Wang Yu martial arts demonstration intercut with footage of hang-gliding over Hong Kong, all to the tune of Jigsaw's awesome 70s hit "Sky High" (which was written for the film). Do these two elements intersect? Yes they do, and once that happened it I quickly came to the realization that I going to love this movie; my friends who I watched the film with agreed, as we then re-watched the opening credits, sang along to "Sky High", and couldn't get the grins off our faces for the entire 103-minute running time. The plot is standard stuff: HK cop Yu goes to Australia is catch criminal mastermind Lazenby and lots of stuff blows up. Cars crash, houses get demolished, the top floor of an apartment building is destroyed, the usual. But it is all done so well, a perfect mixing of Aussie and Hong Kong talents at their peak, that I dare you not to enjoy it. It's one of those great action movies where all of the set pieces would be highlights in lesser films, but you put them all together and you've got pure movie gold. It's hard to pick just which scene is the best, but I think the edge has to go to an extended chase/fight scene between Yu and STUNT ROCK's Grant Page that just keep going and going and gets better and better as it does; you keeping saying to yourself, "Jesus Christ!" with each insane, back-breaking stunt and why this scene isn't considered a classic I don't know. The film is really a vehicle for Yu (one of the first martial arts movie stars), with Lazenby merely stepping back and playing bad guy, but he makes for a satisfactory villain and he and Yu have an outstanding fight at film's end that sends it all out on a high note - a "sky high" note, at that. Yeah, unoriginal as it is, this is still one awesome movie.

THE MAN FROM HONG KONG is currently available as a beautifully remastered Region 3 DVD from Fortune Star, who has an output deal here with Fox, so hopefully they'll get around to it in the U.S. at some point. But if you've got the region-free player (and you really should), this is one really worth picking up, because god damn is it fun.

The Forgotten Movies Week - Takashi Miike's SHANGRI-LA

I don't know if Japan's recent resurgence as an international film juggernaut is due to Takashi Miike or if Miike just happend to come around at just the right time, but I don't think there's any doubt that the two of them needed each other in order to make it. Things were starting to get interesting in Japanese cinema in the mid-90s and new talent was starting to emerge from the Japanese film industry. Beyond Miike, the likes of Sabu (THE BLESSING BELL; DRIVE), the great Kiyoshi Kurosawa (CURE; PULSE and DOPPLEGANGER), Susuke Kaneko (the GAMERA trilogy, DEATH NOTE), and Hideo Nakata (RINGU) emerged, while masters such as Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLE ROYALE) and Yôji Yamada (THE TWILIGHT SAMUARI) came back with new classics. It's exciting time in Japanese cinema (as it is in all Asian cinema), but without Miike it would unquestionably be a lot less so, no matter what you think of the guy. Some people absolutely hate him: A friend of mine, editor at a major genre publication, absolutely refuses to see any more of his films, though he loved AUDITION, "until the last 15 minutes" (I'm gonna let that comment stand), and there are certainly a number of respectable critics who don't get what he does, which is fine. His films are certainly not for everyone and the provocative nature of what he does easily puts him in the "love him or hate him" camp. Add to that the appeal that many of his films have to the fanboy community, who are more interested in the sex and violence and outrageous comedy in his films than any of their social commentary or avant-garde nature, has labeled him as a "cult" director when he really is something more than that.

Miike is famous for being so damn prolific (usually making 4 or 5 films a year for the last decade) but what's even more impressive about him is that most of these films are actually pretty good. He's able to cross genres with surprising ease and as offbeat as all his pictures are, there's also some strange sort of focus to his work, like we're inhabiting a Miike universe and have to leave any and all preconceived notions of what a film is and just trust him (as it should be with any filmmaker). Usually a director for hire, Miike usually leads us to terrifying and weird places, but he can also leads us to happy places, like he does in 2002's SHANGRI-LA, actually one of Miike's sedate and commercial pieces, and yet also one of his best. It was screened at the 2003 Fantasia Film Festival and hasn't been seen anyplace since, which I find odd considering Miike's popularity with festival programmers. In fact, as far as I know, no U.S. fest has touched this wonderful and charming little film, and if they'd like to show them something that people will genuinely like - or if some theater would like to pony up the dough to host the official Headquarters 10 "Forgotten Movies Festival" (I'm available) - then this is a perfect title to show. SHANGRI-LA is the Miike film for those who don't like Miike films; it's sweet and funny and it puts a smile on your face. You sure as hell can't say that about VISITOR Q now, can you?

SHANGRI-LA is a nice, quaint little comedy about resourceful homeless people who help out a man who is about to lose his life and business. Now, I know what you're thinking: This movie sounds like a giant turd. And if it were directed by the Japanese equivalent of Stephen Herek then it certainly would be. But Miike is a smart director and in his hands the material never feels cloying or superficial. It has the right amount of charm and whimsy and the laughs are plentiful. When this kind of thing is done right (and it's done right here) it works and SHANGRI-LA really works. More so, Miike seems to channeling the spirit of the great Ealing Studios, because it has this wonderfully breezy feel about it, gently gliding from one scene to another with a sense of confidence and ease about it that few comedies have these days. Miike makes it clear that the down on their luck situation that everyone finds themselves in is no fault of their own (the film's subtitle in Japan is JAPAN GOES BANKRUPT); the people who populate this film are all resourceful, all honorable and all worthy of better things in life. If I didn't know any better I would say that Miike actually cared about these people, you know? The offbeat humor of Miike's past works is still present, just toned down and more-family friendly but using that great comic timing that Miike possesses. His secret weapon here is his regular star Shô Aikawa (from the DEAD OR ALIVE series and ZEBRAMAN) whose assuredly dry and deadpan characterization of the homeless community's "mayor". In a film where the balance could tip from clever into the dreaded cute, you need someone who is going to keep it smart and continue to give it all an edge, and Aikawa is the right man for the job. He elicits many a giggle and also reminds you that it is indeed a Miike film, because no other director would let Aikawa run with the role like this, and yet it all stays on track and yet never gets weird. This is the one Takashi Miike movie you could show to your grandmother.

Like with most of The Forgotten Movies, SHANGRI-LA is not currently available in the U.S. (surprisingly, considering how many Miike films get picked up here) and I've never come across a fan-subtitled bootleg. But considering it's Miike, I suspect that this one will turn up eventually, and when it does I think it's going to surprise and delight a lot of people. When people talk about why they like Takaski Miike they almost always site AUDITION or ICHI THE KILLER, but for me it's THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS and this. I tell ya, the guy is full of surprises.

The Forgotten Movies - Andre De Toth's PLAY DIRTY

"War is a criminal enterprise. I fight it with criminals."

That line. God dammit, I do love that line. It's spoken by the great, great, great British character actor Nigel Green to the equally great Michael Caine (can we all agree that he's one of the finest actors in screen history?) discussing the ragtag platoon of killers and criminals he's assembled for a suicide mission behind enemy lines (is there any other kind?) in Andre De Toth's PLAY DIRTY. Now of course, THE DIRTY DOZEN had the same idea behind it and came out one year earlier, but unlike the Aldrich classic, that's not what PLAY DIRTY is really all about. THE DIRTY DOZEN, an absolutely terrific movie in its own right, is about how these guys are all criminals and the mission they find themselves on is secondary to that, whereas PLAY DIRTY is about that mission and how the fighting men get fucked over by the officers above them. The entire essence of the movie is right there in that line. PLAY DIRTY is a movie that celebrates the solider but also questions the necessity of war and extends its finger at the powers that be. It's one of the best WWII movies and one of the best anti-war movies, too. God damn, do I love this movie.

On paper, PLAY DIRTY doesn't really sound all that exciting or original, and even during the first twenty minutes or so you're not expecting it to pack the punch that it does. The mission is to destroy German fuel tanks in North Africa, just as Rommel is starting to retreat; that's a pretty standard WW II movie plot. It's once the mission gets underway that PLAY DIRTY reveals that its title is indeed quite apt. Turns out that Caine's crew (which also includes an awesome Nigel Hawthorne) is, in fact, a decoy meant to be caught or killed, leading the way for a more established crew to actually complete the mission and take all the glory. But things don't turn out the way they're planned and the way that they don't is pretty damn shocking, even to an audience today. Caine, chosen to head the mission only due to his experience with petrol, learns the hard way of the realities of war; men on both sides are killed for the slightest wrong move and no one is spared any indignity. Even routine moments of the squadron traveling are shown as being difficult and treacherous; tires have to constantly replaced due to the rocky North African terrain, mines can be buried anywhere in the desert, and the enemy can be found lurking anywhere. PLAY DIRTY is a true "War is Hell" made about a supposedly noble fight made at a time when war was proving itself unpopular and it's not much of a surprise that it hits home even today.

But like almost all great war movies, there's a level of excitement to it that cannot be avoided and with an expert action/suspense director like De Toth behind the camera (it's his final completed film) you know for sure that's going to happen. PLAY DIRTY's most memorable sequence isn't even a battle scene but rather a fantastically intense (no, really - it's fantastically intense!) scene where they pull their trucks up a mountainside. Conceptually, it seems like a kind of standard WW II "behind enemy lines" scene and as it begins you think "What's the point of this?". But once it's over you've invested so much in it that you know this is the moment when the film becomes something special and not just another WW II movie. It takes up about 10 minutes or so, but what you see is a beautifully handled exercise in suspense, which then becomes dramatically powerful as it continues on and it really makes the movie. From this moment on, PLAY DIRTY has you.

War movies don't come as cynical as PLAY DIRTY. This is an angry film about war and it's interesting that it came at a time when other similar films, such as Jack Cardiff's DARK OF THE SUN, were also getting made. Just as GRAND ILLUSION was the film that noted that the "honorable" warfare of WW I was a thing of the past in a new world order, PLAY DIRTY announces better than any film of its time that the nobility of a war like WW II was a falsehood. Unlike many other anti-war films, it's also a terrific action picture, one that knows that the best way to get a message across to an audience is to smuggle it in an entertaining package. I think it's a subversive little masterpiece and it keeps growing as a personal favorite. And yes, it's on DVD.

The Forgotten Movies - Walter Hill's THE DRIVER

I have kind of a vague recollection of when Walter Hill's THE DRIVER came out in back in '78, mainly from the commercials (I was but a wee lad at the time and there was no way I was going to see it), but what I remember about them was the concept: Ryan O'Neal drives a getaway car for bank robbers. That part I understood, a concept so simple that even kids could get it. Had I seen the picture back then would I have gotten it? Perhaps to a certain extent, but I just would have dug on the car chases and not much on anything below the surface. And even though I knew it had a good reputation, it was never on the top of my "must see" list, despite a rare 4-star review from Halliwell's Film Guide, which doesn't hand these things out regularly. But I picked up the DVD a few years back because it was so damn cheap (something like $10) and I knew somewhere in the back of me head that someday I would get to it, so - hey! - I finally did a few weeks ago.

What's interesting to me about THE DRIVER is that it comes from that early stage of Walter Hill's career when he was not so much finding his voice but finding a way to get his voice to break through. It was only his second film as a director (after HARD TIMES) but thanks to scripts like HICKEY & BOGGS and THE GETAWAY, he was already defining himself as a distinctive writer of pulp; someone who appreciated the thriller genre, specifically crime stories and tales of tough and brutal men, but who was also able to take those kind of stories and update them for the 1970s. Novelist like Jim Thompson, Donald Westlake and Raymond Chandler were obvious influences, as were filmmakers like Robert Aldrich, Don Siegel and Jean-Pierre Melville, but THE DRIVER doesn't exactly come across as a homage, just more like a late 70s version of those types of films. It's possible that it could have been made ten years earlier, but the 1978 time frame suits the film fine and makes it a little bit more interesting, since it was one of the few films of its type made during that era, instead of dating it. Like POINT BLANK a decade before it, it feels like the definitive crime film of its era.

The premise, like I said before, is simple: O'Neal is a getaway car driver (the best there is, of course), hunted by ruthless cop Bruce Dern while also trying to rid himself of the crew who screwed him over on the last job. The film is almost half car chases (which are all extremely well done) and O'Neal doesn't really say much, leaving Dern to do all the talking. It's the kind of picture that can translate into any language, but it's distinctly American in its way (L.A. locations are used beautifully); I recall reading a draft of Hill's proposed remake of THE KILLER (which Hill co-wrote with David Giler) and it was absolutely wretched, just a horrendous piece of shit, but I flashed back to it after watching this film because the sparse use of language that Hill employed so well here sure as hell couldn't translate to that material. It wasn't so much that he was the wrong guy for the job, but that he was the wrong guy for that material. THE DRIVER is Woo's KILLER made well before then (and was possibly an influence) and as Hill's "Melville film" it's a really solid piece of work, though nowhere nearly as stylish as Melville (or Woo's) films. Interestingly enough, it does feel like an early version of a Michael Mann film, so perhaps it became influential in its own right.

What really makes THE DRIVER for me, though, are O'Neal and Dern; here you have two actors basically owning two different parts of the film (they only share a few scant scenes together) and each is first-rate. Dern's threatens to take things over the top with his obsessed cop at more than one point, but he pulls back right when he needs to and because of this it all works. An apt comparison is Pacino's character in Michael Mann's HEAT, although with Dern's character it's less of a matter of drive (no pun intended) than all-out obsession. He's really out to get this guy, no matter what, with any and all means at his disposal, which he most certainly does. Contrasting this is O'Neal's driver, basically a blank slate of a human being who is no doubt smart and shrewd but also doesn't seem to have too much of a need for people in his life. Again, the HEAT comparison has to be brought up, though O'Neal's character isn't quite as intriguing as DeNiro's or as deep; I'm sure there's a good back story to the character, but we don't really get one and it doesn't seem to serve Hill much anyway, as THE DRIVER is a film solely interested in the here and now. But O'Neal, a very underrated actor (he's brilliant in BARRY LYNDON), is quite good. He's often been accused of being nothing more than a pretty face, but there's more there than people seem to think there is, and with THE DRIVER his blank stare actually adds a lot, because it's often tough to understand just what's going through his head, and that's the right note for this character. Whereas Dern's thoughts are written all over his face, O'Neal keeps everything hidden inside and doesn't budge much. Some will look upon him as being a cipher, but O'Neal does give you the impression that there's a lot more to this guy going on in his head, but he sure as hell isn't going to let you in on any of it. And it all works.

So over the years THE DRIVER has become known only to Hill fanatics, Noir fans, or 70s movie lovers and hasn't gotten much recognition beyond that. Apparently, Hill attended a 2002 American Cinematheque screening of his director's cut, which was about 30 minutes longer, none of which is on the DVD. Perhaps it's time for a double dip, huh Fox? I'd be up for that.

The Forgotten Movies (Halloween Edition) - DRACULA'S DAUGHTER

I was part of the last generation of kids who grew up watching the old classic Universal horror films on broadcast television, and by the end of their regular TV run the films had been delegated to public TV (which was happy to have them) as opposed to the broadcast channels that had hosted them for so many years in the past. That was actually better for all concerned, since WNET, NYC's longtime PBS station, would air the films uncut and uninterrupted and often in blocks of two on weekends, meaning classic late-night double features on Friday and Saturday nights. It was during the summer of '81 (a memorable summer for me) that I dove in to all of these films (most of which I'd already seen, of course) and became a fan for life. The later films mostly became run of the mill fodder (precursors to today's many lame genre franchises), but the early stuff from the 30s remains some of the best cinema you're ever going to see, genre or otherwise; experimental, expressionistic, even self-expressive, and I'm not just talking about the two James Whale FRANKENSTEIN pictures, either. Edgar G. Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT is still a brutal shocker; Karl Freund's THE MUMMY, though pretty dull, is full of remarkable imagery; and though its script falls short at the end, Rowland V. Lee's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is a more-than-worthy follow-up to BRIDE, which is still one of the all-time great films. But when revisiting the Universal horror cannon, the film that sticks out today and is a more than pleasant surprise is Lambert Hillyer's DRACULA'S DAUGHTER, a surprisingly mature and touching work that, though rarely spoken about, is one of the very best in the Universal cannon.

I had no real memory of ever seeing DRACULA'S DAUGHTER back when I was young, so when I got around to revisiting the Universal films on laserdisc around 1998, this was the one that stuck for me big time, because it wasn't your run-of-the-mill Universal film by any means. As the title implies, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is about Marya Zeleska, the daughter of Count Dracula (beautifully played by Gloria Holden), and from the very first scene this one sets itself apart from many other films of its type (and from most any horror film of the era) by establishing the monster as a fully sympathetic character. She hopes her father's death will "cure" her of her vampirism and allow her to lead a normal life, and if there's one thing that we've all learned in vampire movies throughout the years, whenever vampires think they can cure themselves, it's a damn good shot that such is thing is only going to stand a snowball's chance in hell of happening. Though she finds herself falling in love with a mortal, her vampyric desires (and the intrusion of her servant Sandor, played by future DESTINATION MOON director Irving Pichel) end up getting the better of her. And I think you can guess that things may not end too happily.

For a picture that's only 71 minutes, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is pretty damn rich in content; It's well-paced, the performances are among the best in the Universal genre films, the script is surprisingly intelligent and adult (it questions whether Marya is really a vampire or just delusional, and the psychiatric profession is respectfully regarded as a possible "cure" for her), the characterizations are much fuller than many of the other Universal films, and it's a very classy production in all regards. It's also rich in another manner: Lesbian subtext! The film is actually famous for it (clips were featured in THE CELLULOID CLOSET) thanks to a scene where Marya seduces and hypnotizes a half-clothed girl, and the scene works on every level. It's shocking, it's erotic, it's disturbing and over is easily the highlight of a really good picture. Beyond even that, many have come to speculate that the "cure" Holden seeks isn't to being a vampire but to being a lesbian, but it's to the film's post-code credit that never once is she seen as a villain, but a completely sympathetic (though tragic) character who the audience is to care for, if not root for, throughout. Lugosi's Dracula was never seen like this and it's a big plus to the film, as Marya remains fascinating to the audience (or at least the audience of me) all throughout the picture.

I was saying to someone the other day that vampires are so overexposed that they aren't really scary any more, but the good ones can be haunting and DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is indeed a haunting piece of work. I know that the film's reputation has grown more in recent years and it would be nice to see it continue so that more and more folks would pick up on this fine film. Needless to say, it's perfect Halloween viewing, especially if you're into old timey horrors and you want something that won't scare you in the traditional sense but will stay with you for a while. You can't say that about all of the Universal horror films, but you certainly can here.

The Forgotten Movies - A CINEMA OF UNEASE: A PERSONAL JOURNEY BY SAM NEILL (and Happy Belated Birthday, Sam Neill!)

Hey, you know who kicks ass? Sam Neill, that's who.

Sam Neill has been one of my very favorite actors for a long time now. This is a guy who should really be a bigger star than he is, but for some reason he hasn't quite been embraced like he should have. I suppose that's OK for him, as it allows him to take more work in his native New Zealand and in Australia, but for a guy who's appeared in some huge blockbusters (JURASSIC PARK; THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER) and some acclaimed classics (THE PIANO; MY BRILLIANT CAREER; UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD) and has been dubbed "The thinking woman's sex symbol" for his work in "Reilly, Ace of Spies" (not to mention he was almost James Bond at one point), he's an actor who deserves to be bigger than he is. He's certainly a recognizable face to a lot of people, but I'm sure most of them can't place his name.

Like most people my age, I first spotted Neill as the adult Damien in THE FINAL CONFLICT, the final OMEN flick, and he was a pretty cool spawn of Satan, I must say. After that I'd see him pop up in a lot of different things and you'd see a guy who was making interesting choices (anyone who's in a mindfuck like POSSESSION deserves some respect) while also paying the bills with a lot of TV, but then around the late 80s he seemed to be hitting his stride; he was absolutely superb in Fred Schepsi's A CRY IN THE DARK, where he matched an Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep scene for scene, while in films like DEAD CALM and RED OCTOBER he was part of an ensemble in quality films and with the one-two punch of JURASSIC PARK and THE PIANO, where his excellent work is criminally underrated, it seemed like he was going to hit the big time. Hell, he even got to do THE SIMPSONS, so you know things were good. But again, the American public just didn't seem to get Sam Neill, so he went back to New Zealand to do a very cool and unique documentary that I've only seen once and has never been released over here. Henceforth, The Forgotten Movies presents Sam Neill's A CINEMA OF UNEASE: A PERSONAL JOURNEY BY SAM NEILL.

Produced as the New Zealand Film Commission's entry for the BFI's A Century of Cinema series, A CINEMA OF UNEASE has, as far as I know, been shown in the U.S. only once, at the 1995 New York Film Festival, which just happens to be where I saw it. (Coincidence? I think not.) Paired with a documentary on Henri Langlois, Neill was there to present the film personally, opening by saying, "Good evening French film lovers", with effortless charm to big laughs. (The film curiously began with the Miramax logo, which might explain why it's never been seen in the U.S. since - zing!) So in the film, Neill, uh... hang on a sec here...

Can you give me a minute? We're talking about a 52-minute films that I only saw once 12 years ago. My memory's a bit hazy, to be honest, and I never took any notes. I wasn't think that 12 years later I'd be blogging about the damn thing, ya dig? OK, here's what I remember about A CINEMA OF UNEASE: I remember Neill showing clips from an early 60's NZ rock 'n' roll beach party movie that I feel I must see before I die; I remember him discussing how he grew up in the same town as Julite Hulme and Pauline Parker (the subjects of HEAVENLY CREATURES) and remembered when the event occurred (Neill is even seen walking through the same garden path where the event took place; I remember Neill being a charming host showing a lot of film clips, everything from SLEEPING DOGS (not only the film that launch Neill's career, but of NZ cinema in the U.S.) to DEAD ALIVE, whose morbid sense of humor took some NYFF attendees by surprise; I remember him wearing a little bumblebee pin on his suit throughout the entire film, which he later said in the Q&A symbolized nothing and was there because he liked it (the same pin later shows up with Neill in Peter Jackson's brilliant FORGOTTEN SILVER); I remember asking him at the Q&A what he felt was the finest of all NZ films, and he turned to the festival programmer sitting next to him and mentioned that they had "Just been discussing this backstage" and that it was a film that the NYFF turned down the previous year, HEAVENLY CREATURES; and that's about it. Oh, I remember thinking that it was really, really good. That should account for something, shouldn't it?

So I know this isn't really selling A CINEMA OF UNEASE to you guys, but like I said, it's been a while since I've seen it. I recall hearing at the time that Miramax was going to pair it with FORGOTTEN SILVER, but that never materialized and SILVER ended up going with some little rinky-dink outfit that never did much with it. So I'm sure the film is just sitting on the Miramax shelf somewhere (more than likely the new managers don't even know they own it), and it's a shame, because I think it would be of interest to many, especially when you consider how far New Zealand has come to the international film scene since then. Perhaps even a update might be in store, in order to discuss all that's happened in NZ film; I'm thinking it would be a good supplement for a 2-disc edition of HEAVENLY CREATURES. Get crackin' Miramax monkey boys!

Anyway, Sam Neill will forever be awesome in my book. He just turned sixty the other day (I had hoped to have this up there then, but it's been a busy weekend and it's going to be an even busier week), so happy birthday, Sam Neill, and enjoy some of your fine wine and keep on doing what you're doing because you're doing it awfully well. Yeah, that's not the finest piece of writing a guy can do, but at least I said all I have to say. Go Sam Neill!!!