In short: Thief (1971)

Neal Wilkinson (Richard Crenna) is a professional burglar. Two convictions and prison sentences behind him, the next time he’s caught he’d be up for a mandatory ten year sentence (because US laws make no sense). Neal also has a son somewhere he genuinely wants to regain custody of, and a new, increasingly serious girlfriend in Jean (Angie Dickinson), who knows nothing of his past. So he has every reason to keep on the straight and narrow; he’s even serious enough to have hired a lawyer (Cameron Mitchell) to help him there.

But right now, Neal really isn’t quite as straight as he pretends to be. He’s still clearly enhancing his income through opportunistic acts of thievery, and he’s lying through his nose to his probation officer (Michael Lerner). To make matters even more dicey, the thief also has a gambling problem, and he’s stupid enough to pay his gambling debts to civilians with cheques he knows will bounce and end his parole. To keep that particular wolf from the door, Neal is all too willing to go on a rather more risky crime spree than is his usual style.

As directed by TV movie specialist William A. Graham, this crime drama is an unassuming little film. Its protagonist’s troubles are life-shattering for him but not terribly dramatic in form or execution.

This will make Thief a bore to some, but I’d argue its small scale and its air of the quotidian are the film’s strengths. While this always stays a – well, if unspectacularly, directed – TV movie and can’t go as far in certain directions as contemporary theatrical films would have, there’s a groundedness and a sense of somewhat sad, small-scale reality to the film that works very well for it. Not every genre film needs to be big and spectacular.

Thief also recommends itself through a very 70s style downer ending with a side dish of dramatic irony. One could find it unpleasantly moralizing – thieves weren’t allowed to prosper by the era’s TV rules, after all, but Graham throws his ending at the audience so quickly and off-handedly, it feels organic and surprisingly true to the rest of the film.

Breakheart Pass (1975)

An Army train secretly carrying diphtheria medication, a doctor (David Huddleston) and replacement soldiers led by Major Claremont (Ed Lauter) for Fort Humboldt, has to cross the Rocky Mountains. The train also carries US senator Fairchild (Richard Crenna) who accompanies his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland) to her father, the highest officer of the Fort. Apart from the Doctor and the senator, nobody else on board knows about the diphtheria situation, and that will only change when the train will have reached the point of no return.

On the last stop before that point is reached, the train rather unwillingly picks up Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) who has just rather accidentally caught former doctor, con artist and murderer John Deakin (Charles Bronson). Ironically, Deakin will turn out to be the ideal detective when a series of curious accidents and murders begins to hinder the train’s journey.

Though Tom Gries’s (who was also responsible for the fantastic Will Penny) direction seems a bit perfunctory and TV movie like from time to time, lacking a bit of edge and sometimes even the sense for making the best out of some of the film’s set pieces, Breakheart Pass still turns out to be an excellent film. The script by Alistair MacLean based on his own novel provides a surprisingly clever, and often cleverly surprising mixture of the mystery and the Western genres, both working well together not just because of the relative (there are of course other genres mixtures of its type) novelty of the mix but because MacLean (and perhaps Gries) actually seems to have a very clear idea which parts of the Western genre and which of the mystery film mix well and which don’t.

Some of the film’s better red herrings are more effective if the audience involved has some working knowledge of the Western genre and its clichés and habits because they are at times running against exactly these expectations. Not with a grand gesture of deconstruction or from a position of ironic knowingness, as much as from the more practical kind of view the sort of commercial writer MacLean was for better (in this case) or for worse (in many other cases) comes to reach with experience in his craft, using the expectations of an audience against it not to necessarily to make it think about genre structures and what they might mean but to provide it with the joy of surprise. One might complain that this approach lacks a certain depth, but then one should by all rights be too entertained by the little games MacLean is playing here to care.

I certainly found myself too entertained to complain. Watching Breakheart Pass, I also found myself appreciating many of the little things the film does right: how it introduces the Bronson character as a man focusing on using his brain instead of using his brawn to make the latter scenes when Gries’s depiction of the action becomes more exciting and our hero suddenly does use his brawn a bit surprising and certainly more exciting, while still emphasising the character’s intelligence before his propensity for physical violence; the way Bronson makes tiny little shifts to his at this point well established screen persona that actually make his performance here very convincing; the excellent supporting cast of character actors doing what these people always do in the best, the worst, and the most mediocre films; the moments of witty dialogue that generally come when you least expect it; and how the film implicitly suggests more mysteries should end with a climactic Indian (and these are “Indians”, that is, a bizarre product of unexamined clichés, suppositions and plot functions rather than Native Americans, which are of course various generally mistreated culture groups who have little to nothing to do with Hollywood’s Indians) attack instead of a chunky guy with a fake Belgian accent explaining the plot to people assembled in a room.

All the competence and these minor delights probably don’t turn Breakheart Pass into what people are bound to call a classic, but it’s such a fine example of unassuming yet not stupid genre filmmaking, I can’t say I care if that’s the case or not.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,mystery,western,tom gries,charles bronson,ben johnson,richard crenna,jill ireland,ed lauter

The Deserter

aka Devil’s Backbone

aka Ride to Glory

When US cavalry captain Victor Kaleb (Bekim Fehmiu) loses his wife in an Apache attack on a catholic mission, he holds his superior Major Brown (Richard Crenna) just as responsible for her death as the people who killed her. So, after an altercation with Brown that just barely ends with Kaleb deciding not to kill his superior, he deserts, going native in the desert bordering Mexico.

There he probably would have stayed, if not for the arrival of General Miles (John Huston) at Brown’s fort. Miles is convinced that the apache war chief Durango (Mimmo Palmara) is staying in the border countries of Mexico preparing an attack that would drench the whole Southwest of the US in blood – Native American and white alike. Of course, Miles can’t just waltz an army over the border of Mexico to try and stop Durango, and has decided on an alternative plan of attack. To fetch Kaleb – a man made for guerrilla war – give him a handful of men, and use him and these men to scout out and perhaps resolve the situation.

So Kaleb soon finds himself working for the US cavalry again, turning the obligatory rag-tag bunch of fighting men – among them his old Native American scout friend Natachai (Ricardo Montalban), British import Crawford (Ian Bannen), explosives-loving chaplain Reynolds (Chuck Connors), big angry black man Jackson (Woody Strode) and professional asshole Schmidt (Albert Salmi) – into an effective guerrilla force. Afterwards, the bloodshed starts.

Burt Kennedy’s The Deserter (going by the IMDB with directorial contributions of Yugoslavian Niksa Fulgosi, but I wouldn’t know) is yet another of those early 70s international co-productions – this time under the auspices of Dino de Laurentiis – that finds itself trying to mimic many elements of the Spaghetti Western, probably on a budget much superior to most anything Italian and Spanish productions companies who didn’t have a leg in Hollywood like Dino did could come up with. At the very least, there was enough money involved to lavish it on quite a cast of actors who mostly never quite made the big time but are – at least in my home – always a pleasure to watch. Bekim Fehmiu was quite the star in his native Yugoslavia and across Eastern Europe, though, and this film was a fruitless attempt to give him a foothold in Hollywood or at least Western Europe.

Of course, this being a de Laurentiis film, it then goes and doesn’t really do much with these actors, using a script that is decidedly one-note in characterisation, with the little character development that is there so underwritten it’s often difficult to make out why the film thinks the characters act like they act, or change when they do. Fortunately, the ensemble consists of men (and this is as much of a sausage assembly as you’ll ever find) quite used to, if they aren’t given much to work with, at least making the little they have count, always giving the impression the viewer is watching quite interesting people, even if there’s never anything visible on screen that would actually make them interesting.

Characterisation really is the weakest point of The Deserter’s script, though it is generally more serviceable than strong, providing a Man’s Adventure style men on a mission western. From time to time, writer Clair Huffaker – who was responsible for quite a few better scripts for westerns – does add some interesting flourishes to the proceedings, though. While the Apaches are the enemy of the day, and not given luxuries like characterisation or names, the film does more than once suggest that their grievances are very much justified. The film even, as much as a film very much in love with its own violence can, the way the conflict between Apache and post-settlers is fought: full of atrocities committed by both sides, one cruelty always leading to the next, with no side seeing itself in the position to ever stop escalating. Men of peace aren’t to be found on both sides anyhow, so the only thing they’ll use to resolve their conflict will be violence. Moral right and wrong don’t ever come into play. In the film’s world, a morally decent action can lead to as horrible consequences as a morally abhorrent one. In the very end, after quite a bit of slaughter, the film does suddenly start to argue doing “the right thing” might be important and worthwhile in itself even when the consequences are dire, but then it’s a bit too underwritten to really convince me of anything more than its good intentions. Which, come to think of it, is more than a lot of films bother with showing, so it’s still a point in The Deserter’s favour.

If you take the film for what it is, though, you can have a good time with it. Even though Kennedy is the archetype of a hired gun director never bringing any visible personal touches to anything he’s working on, he does his job well enough here, pacing things well, often letting the actors’ faces and the impressive landscape of Arispainia speak for themselves, getting the action done in professionally exciting manner. The resulting film is not exactly one of the greatest pseudo-Spaghetti Westerns ever made but it’s an entertaining time, if you can cope with a lot of unpleasant violence in your entertainment.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,american movies,yugoslavian movies,western,reviews,burt kennedy,bekim fehmiu,richard crenna,chuck connors,ricardo montalban,ian bannen,woody strode

The Man Called Noon (1973)

aka Un hombre llamado Noon

A man (Richard Crenna) is nearly assassinated while making what looks like preparations for a classic western showdown. He barely manages to escape with his life and – after a somewhat nightmarish chase – finds himself sharing a hobo-style train ride with the surprisingly friendly outlaw Rimes (Stephen Boyd). The man does need all the help he can get, it seems, for a grazing shot to the head has left him without memory; he only remembers that his name is Jonas, and that someone named Janish was involved in the attack on him, but apart from that he has no idea what’s going on with him whatsoever.

Rimes takes Jonas with him to the ranch of Fan Davidge (Rosanna Schiaffino), which just happens to be a place a certain Janish has turned into a safe house for his bandit gang - without Fan’s consent. Janish isn’t on the ranch right now, but various dangerous developments suggest that Jonas is actually a gunman called Noon. At the very least, he has very practical experience with meting out brutal violence, and is certainly a ruthless man.

Both traits will come in handy once various people start trying to kill Noon while he’s trying to solve the mystery of his own identity; a gold treasure is involved too.

Peter Collinson’s British-Italian-Spanish co-production (of course shot in Spain) The Man Called Noon is quite an interesting film. An adaptation of a Louis L’Amour novel, the film stands with one foot in the realm of the psychological western as made in the United States during the 50s, with the other – particular when it comes to its depiction of violence - in the world of the Spaghetti western. Collinson made quite a few fine genre films that often seem to straddle eras and sub-genres the way Noon does, never quite reaching the heights that give one posthumous cult status as a director, but generally turning out films at least worth watching.

Noon certainly is, despite being marred by a slightly overcooked finale that contains more melodramatic posturing than the rest of the film together. Outside of the finale, the film is tight, yet often growing unreal and dream-like. Particular some of the scenes of violence are filmed with stylistic methods you can often see connected with dream sequences, suggesting its action taking place in Noon’s (to leave it at that name) mind as much as in the outside world.

Even outside the action scenes, Collins tends to position his camera at peculiar angles, shooting very traditional western scenes in uncommon ways that turn the often seen into something a bit stranger. I suspect it’s an attempt to let the audience share some of Noon’s confusion, the befuddlement of someone who still knows the rituals of his job and genre by instinct, but doesn’t know what they’re actually meant for. From time to time, Collinson overdoes this a bit and things threaten to feel a bit silly, but the largest part of the film expresses a peculiar mood of alienation very much its own, with Noon stumbling through a fun house mirror world quite like a noir protagonist who isn’t at all sure anymore if he’ll want to find the truth about himself. Although, it has to be said, Noon lets its main character off quite lightly in the end.

Richard Crenna does a good job on the acting side, believably embodying Noon’s state of confusion and basic decency as well as the coldness and ruthlessness he only still remembers as reflexes. Crenna’s performance even suggests another dimension the script doesn’t really seem to be interested in: that forgetting parts of what he was is exactly what enables Noon to change and possibly find a future, his loss of memory helping him regain some buried part of his humanity (while killing a lot of people, of course).

As a fan of European genre cinema of the era, I’m also happy with the rest of the film’s cast, the well-known faces of Farley Granger, Rosanna Schiaffino, Aldo Sambrell and last but not least Patty Shepard, who gives a pretty unhinged performance as capital-e evil Peg Cullane. Why, Shepard’s so evil, she even owns an adorable black cowboy outfit she wears when she’s out doing evil!

And if that doesn’t sound like a recommendation, I don’t know what does.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,spanish movies,italian movies,reviews,western,peter collinson,richard crenna,stephen boyd,rosanna schiaffino,farley granger,patty shepard

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978)

A bunch of worshippers of The Beast has the best plan ever: they buy (how fiendish!) a worthy female Alsatian (only the best breeding dogs for evil!) and impregnate her with the seed of "the Barghest" (not really your mythological Barghest). Then, they run over the dogs of random typical US upper class (yeah, sorry, these rich people may call themselves middle class, but they can't fool anyone) families and then flaunt adorable devil dog puppies in front of their children's eyes.

That's what happens to the Barrys, at least. Soon, the dog has made adorable puppy eyes at the family's housemaid (who, not being white, at once identified the cute little bugger as evil) until she catches flames and dies, corrupted the innocent Barry children Bonnie (Kim Richards) and Charlie (Ike Eisenmann) until they lie, cheat, and paint pictures of a three-eyed demon, gets to mother Betty (Yvette Mimieux) as well, and has killed various neighbours and do-gooders with the power of its mind (no dog attacks in this devil dog movie). Only father Mike (Richard Crenna) seems immune to the mutt's evil influence, well, except for an episode in which the dog tries to hypnotize him into sticking his hand into a running mower and nearly succeeds. What is a man to do?

Fortunately, the powers of good, as represented by a lady occultist with a British accent and a toothless Ecuadorean shaman (Victor Jory) are able to identify the dog, and explain to Mike that he's one of the Blessed of the Light whose job it seems to be to send evil dogs back to hell by showing them their new magical tattoos.

It's not uncommon, at least among people talking about the director at all, to see Devil Dog as the point when Curtis Harrington's career as a director derailed completely. What he made after this TV movie seems to confirm this theory, at least, but it's a mistake to see Devil Dog as a failure.

Sure, the film is about as effective a horror film as a nice, relaxing evening in front of a fireplace, but seen as a comedy, the film's brilliant. In fact, there aren't many films I laughed as long and hard at as this one, and the longer the film went on, the clearer it became to me that Harrington must have known as well as anyone he wasn't really making a weird The Omen rip-off where the antichrist is replaced by a particularly friendly looking dog, but a parody of such a film; unless Harrington was a much dumber man than any of his other films suggest, but if you believe that, there's still that bridge for sale.

Once I began interpreting what I was seeing as consciously comedic, the whole film began to make much more sense to me. After all, there's no other reason to cast your devil dog with such a good-natured looking dog (not to speak of the adorable puppy phase of the film) who hypnotizes his victims to death (while looking bored), to give your actors lines like "My dog...he's taken over my wife and children. And somehow he kills anyone that tries to stop him", or to feature some fascinating information by that British lady about the differences between one-eyed and three-eyed demons (turns out one-eyed demons are much easier to fight because they are pretty stupid; now would you like a cuppa, my dear?). There are also some fantastic moments in bad acting on display, with hardly a scene featuring an evil family member that isn't made hilarious by the most excellent "evil" facial expressions (well, and the choice dialogue, too), and of course the epic final fight between Richard Crenna and his lantern hand against a large-rear-projected dog with horns and a lot of fluffy bits (are Barghests part bird, all adorable?). It also bears repeating that the film indeed tries to pretend a story about good white upper-class people being driven to evil by the family dog is somehow frightening; seldom has a horror comedy been that straight-faced.

Barely a scene goes by that does not feature something sublimely ridiculous. Especially the death by hypnotism scenes are awe-inspiring in their wrong-headedness, but really, every second of the film made me happy.

Unless I produced this write-up under the influence of my new demonic dog, and am now lying to you to provoke you into watching Devil Dog.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,reviews,curtis harrington,richard crenna,yvette mimieux,comedy,horror

Three Films Make A Post: Prepare yourself for the HORROR of PSYCHO! The TERROR of EXORCIST!

War of the Arrows aka Arrow, The Ultimate Weapon (2011): I was all pumped to enjoy this South Korean historical action blockbuster thing, hoping for some hot archery action. And, as long as the film spends its time with scenes of people hitting each other with sharp and pointy objects and (even better) shooting each other with other sharp and pointy objects, all is well. Alas, writer/director Kim Han-min also feels the need to make very, very clear how cardboard cartoon villain evil the Mongol enemies of his hero are, so about half of the film consists of one scene of Mongols behaving demonstratively shitty after the other. So, as if one early scene of rape and throwing a baby into a well weren't more than enough to make that point clear, there's a never-ending - and after the second time or so, actually pretty boring on a narrative level - series of "OMG! Mongols are bad!" moments. Clearly, the Mongols weren't nice, civilized people, but it's one thing knowing and showing that, and quite another being as much of a racist prick about it as the director of War of the Arrows is. And while we're talking of being evil, what about the way women and the lower classes were treated in Korea during the Joseon era, Mister Kim?

I Wake Up Screaming (1941): This murder mystery is often cited as an important step on the way to the genre later interpreted as film noir, and yes, I can clearly see why that's the case. Many of the tropes of the non-genre are already here, as well as the narrative techniques that would dominate it. Unfortunately, I Wake Up Screaming is not yet willing to actually delve into the darkness the true noir would make its home in, and is made more frustrating to watch by it than a movie that didn't show all the enticing elements would have been. Despite its awesome title, I Wake Up Screaming just isn't ready to hit its audience where it would truly hurt or excite.

Un Flic (1972): Being outwardly exciting isn't anything you'd accuse the late period movies of Jean-Pierre Melville of, either, but where I Wake Up Screaming pretends not to know about inner abysses, Melville's characters know them so well they have internalized them, and been outwardly frozen in the process, leaving them as the living dead going through motions that could be interpreted as "cool" if trying to be cool weren't too outwardly emotional. In the wrong mood, one could surely argue that Melville overstretches this aspect of his worldview in Un Flic to the point where it could be read as self parody, but in the right mood it's just as possible to see the whole project of Melville's late films, and of Un Flic especially, as a way to make a state of mind people who have suffered from depression know just too well visible and relatable through the lens of an abstract crime film.

As a bonus, Un Flic, which happens to be Melville's last movie, is also the one where the latent homosexual undercurrents in the director's body of work get so close to the surface one would have to be blind not to see them; not surprisingly, the film already delivers its own backlash by making its main character (Alain Delon, of course) the sort of homophobe who really protests too much.

Technorati-Markierungen: south korean movies,american movies,french movies,kim han-min,jean-pierre melville,action,crime,film noir,mystery,alain delon,richard crenna,in short

In short: The Evil (1978)

Sceptical psychologist C.J. Arnold (Richard Crenna) and his M.D. wife Caroline (Joanna Pettet) have bought themselves a fine new home. It was dirt cheap, which might have something to do with the fact that the house is in fact cursed and haunted.

It's also badly in need of renovation, so C.J. calls together a group of people he once had in a therapy group (at least, if I understand the film right; clarity is not one of its virtues) and a former student (Andrew Prine) coming complete with girlfriend to help bring the house in order. Before you can shout "SPOOK!", the obligatory strange things begin to happen. Loud noises and winds from nowhere are only the beginning. Soon ghosts, very localized earthquakes, and demonic possession with frightening eyebrow growth begin to assault the protagonists. A very malevolent force locks the group inside the house and begins to kill them off one by one.

In the end, it all turns out to be the fault of the gate to hell sealed in the cellar, or rather the fault of the Devil as played by a drunken Victor Buono.

Future boring TV show director Gus Trikonis' The Evil is what happens when a guy with neither knowledge of nor interest in haunted house movies is hired to shoot one based on a script that is as rote and by the numbers as spook house movie scripts come.

Because neither Trikonis nor scriptwriter Galen Thompson have ever heard of the word subtlety, their attempts at scaring their audience consist mostly of auditory attacks in the form of loud screaming, loud "dramatic" music (by one Johnny Harris), and wind noises that at times have a striking resemblance to the noise tie-fighters make. There are no attempts at building mood, no concept of what is frightening beyond shouting at the audience very loudly, and not a single idea used in an interesting way. If I had ever looked for the true inspiration for Jan de Bont's dreadful remake of Robert Wise's The Haunting, this film would probably be it.

As it goes with shocks that aren't and lots of dramatic shouting, The Evil quickly gets tiresome, and - once the demonic possessions and attempts at more bloody effects start - unintentionally humorous.

At least the acting - if I just allow myself to pretend Victor Buono's performance doesn't exist - is as good as is possible with the script. Prine has always been fine in dubious or plain bad films, and the rest of the cast just follows suit and gives this mess a sheen of professionalism it doesn't deserve, as does the solid photography by Mario DiLeo.

It's just too bad that Trikonis just doesn't have a clue what to do with their efforts.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,in short,andrew prine,richard crenna