April 2003

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Tom Brokaw never could talk

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Here's the latest Brokaw blooper that's been going around, where Tom adds a letter to the word "cuts".

The problem is, even when he fucks up, Tom's just kind of dull. Here's a somewhat better clip where he tries his laid-back best to ad lib a promo. It comes from the "Found Sound" area on Harry Shearer's website.

In fact, the only time Tom's really fun to listen to is when Harry does his talking. Or singing. (There's a little left-over Le Show from Jan. 5, 2003 at the end of the bit.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 30, 2003 5:56 PM

 

Everybody Loves Raymond Huffman

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Here are some more quotations from Peter Haskett's roommate, the little man among men, Raymond Huffman (again, brace yourself-- the following remarks contains nothing but hatred and profanity):

"The cops said, 'If we have to come out here again, we'll turn your fuckin' hair a-fire next time,' and I said, 'Fine-- I've got too much hair anyway, let's do it right now!'"

"You think your mother and father were a couple of fuckin' boys?"

"Name something that's wrong with you. There ain't a fuckin' thing wrong with you except that you're a lazy cocksucker."

"Which end is his ass?"

"Liars are usually queers."

You can read all about them (and should) as well as buy all kinds of fine merchandise like copies of Pete and Ray's death certificates at the official Shut Up, Little Man website.

And now a special treat: the nasal tones of Pete and Ray themselves. Here's a brief sample of the boys having another light-hearted discussion. The first voice you'll hear is the manly baritone of Ray, followed by Peter's lilting tenor.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 29, 2003 4:24 PM

 

Hey, Jack Valenti-- you suck!!

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A friend passed on a news story titled in part, "MPAA's Stealth Attack on Your Living Room". This part gets to the heart of the matter:

"Under existing law, those who have legitimately purchased communication services (e.g., cable TV, satellite, or broadband Internet services) are free to connect whatever they like to the wires they pay for, so long as they do not violate any otherwise applicable law. So, for example, you are free to connect a new TV, PC, VCR or TiVo to a cable television connection that you pay for. Similarly, you are free to connect a Wi-Fi wireless access point to your DSL line in order to share your broadband connection among several computers in your house. This freedom has encouraged technology vendors to compete and innovate in response to the demands of consumers.

"The proposed super-DMCA statutes reverse this traditional rule. Under these statutes, you would not be entitled to connect anything to your cable, satellite, or DSL line without the express permission of your service provider. The model MPAA bill accomplishes this by making it a crime to possess a device to 'receive � transmit, [or] re-transmit' any communication service without the 'express authorization' of the communication service provider. The various pending state bills include similar language.

"This provision would make you a criminal for simply connecting a TV, PC, TiVo or VCR (all of which can 'receive' communication services) to the cable TV line in your living room without your cable company's permission. It could also make you a criminal for connecting a Wi-Fi wireless gateway (which can 'retransmit' Internet traffic) to your DSL or cable modem line without the permission of your ISP. The shift proposed by these bills is radical: all technology that is not expressly permitted becomes forbidden. This would give communication service providers unprecedented control over the home entertainment and the technology marketplace. For example, your broadband ISP could force you to use only certain brands of computers, or force you to pay extra if you wanted to connect more than one computer to your DSL line. Cable and satellite TV services could forbid you from using a TiVo, or could charge you extra to connect a VCR to your TV."

There's more, and none of it is good. One especialy outrageous part of the bill is the one-sided liability concerning legal fees: if the MPAA sues you and wins, you pay your legal costs and theirs. If they lose, however, you still pay your own.

In light of the ruling the other day, which now allows the record industry to force Verizon to reveal the identities of two downloading customers, this is even worse news than it appears on the surface. Give it a look while you're still allowed to use the Internet at all.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 29, 2003 4:00 PM

 

BLUEBEARD (1944) directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

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Ulmer is best known for Detour, which is on everyone's best-ever list of B movies. (Some place it higher than that.) A year before that film, he directed John Carradine in Bluebeard, another no-budget gem. The story takes place almost entirely after dusk, and the nighttime mood of the black-and-white photography is so lovely, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite moments.

I'd give anything-- well, at least the price of a ticket-- if movies today had credits like this.

Besides being a painter and killer of young women, Bluebeard is also a puppeteer, and his production of Faust is one of the very best things in the movie. Here's Mephistopholes.

Carradine did a good job changing from charming gentleman to insane murderer, and the latter scenes are made even more effective by the way Ulmer chose to shoot them.

Jean Parker plays Lucille, Bluebeard's latest love. She looks lovely all through the movie, but I especially liked this shot.

When Bluebeard begins his final spree, Ulmer turns up the atmosphere, with several scenes that look this good:

And the best of all, the secret entrance to Bluebeard's lair:

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 29, 2003 12:42 AM

 

Take the AMAD Movie Quiz!

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On my old radio show, we used to do a regular quiz where we'd play three dialogue clips and lavish expensive prizes (bumper stickers, fridge magnets) on the person who guessed the movie.

Well, here in blogdom we don't even have prizes that ritzy, but you can get your name in next week's AMAD if you email me by next Sunday (May 4) and identify this movie.

If you don't know old movies, you probably won't get this one, but if you do, you should be able to figure it out. (Hints: From the sixties, with two big stars of the decade.)

Our announcer is my friend and broadcast legend, Don Forsling of WOI radio. Thanks, Don!

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 28, 2003 1:16 AM

 

Like we're not online enough already

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My eyesight is plenty bad as it is, I don't need to squint at tiny Real Player videos for hours. But how can you help yourself with the huge list of online stuff cataloged at Videofreak.com? Webcasts, music videos, movie trailers, short indy films . . . it never ends!

I've only scratched the surface of this page's resources, but I've already been entertained by Department of Energy films from the '50s showing radiation experiments on animals and human beings, as well as a video of an insane unicyclist.

But the one thing about the site that made me the happiest was that it has a link to one of my all-time favorite news stories: the dynamiting of a dead beached whale. All our news should be so funny.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 26, 2003 6:38 PM

 

The two faces of Jack

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There are few actors who have lived as much of their lives in front of a movie camera as Jack Nicholson. When I was trying out some discs with a new DVD player the other day, I accidentally came across a couple of great shots of the guy, 42 years apart.

The first one is from one of his earliest movies, THE WILD RIDE, where he plays rich-boy deliquent Johnny Varron. Here he is at the police station, getting the following lecture from a cop:

"You know how it goes, Johnny-- speeding . . . reckless driving . . . and then the chicken scene. And finally, you run a policeman off the road."

His reply: "Sarge, I wanna tell you something-- you're a very far-out stud."

And now here he is from ABOUT SCHMIDT, at his daughter's wedding rehearsal, after taking some of Kathy Bates's Percodan:  "Uh . . . Mr. Schmidt?"

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 26, 2003 3:54 PM

 

This movie brought to you by Kentucky Fried Chicken

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Blast-Off Girls is an ultra-cheap but surprisingly entertaining '60s rock movie directed by the king of chintz, Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, 2,000 Maniacs). Someday I'll go into greater detail about the story of sleazy rock promoter Boojie Baker and his top band, The Big Blast. Right now, though, I wanted to focus on a pioneering bit of product placement found halfway into the film.

The segment begins when our poverty-row mop-tops stop their psychedelic frolicking long enough to get some lunch.

Boojie's assistant, Gordie (played by a funny actor named Ray Sager) goes in to negotiate a deal on the meal, and look who he meets:

GORDIE: Hey, man-- do you serve fried chicken?

COL. SANDERS: Do we serve fried chicken? Woo-eee! We do serve fried chicken!

Gordie trades a concert by the band for free meals all around (which he then sells to the guys for a buck apiece).

Of course, the shots of the band are secondary to extended takes of Gordie working on a chicken leg like he owed it money:

The segment ends with a grease-fuelled freakout, with the Colonel's bucket prominently displayed. (And speaking of his bucket, is it just me or does it look like Sanders is exposing himself?)

Blast-Off Girls was released in 1967, when it was still unusual to see any kind of real product label in a movie. One can only speculate what kind of arrangement was struck between Lewis and KFC. Considering the movie's budget, it may not have been much more than Gordie's free-lunch deal.

Speaking of product placement, my good friend Dewey Webb did a piece a few years ago on the person who originated the practice, none other than Joan Crawford-- go read "Pepsi Dearest."

And believe it or not, Herschell Gordon Lewis is still around and even has a website all about himself. Described as "the world's best-known copywriter" (name the second-best), the site's main page asserts, "Nobody has written more books. Nobody has written more articles. Certainly nobody is more respected." And nobody else ever filmed a school play and then passed it off as a kid's movie, either.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 25, 2003 2:59 AM

 

Bob Hope turns 100, but he won't know it

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Before we get to the news item, let me tell you about a dream I had 25 years ago. I swear this is true:

In the dream, I was reading a newspaper, and I found a gossip column that said Bob Hope had a terminal illness and wasn't long for this world.

Apparently, the columnist wasn't a fan, because the headline read, "Cross My Heart-- Hope to Die!"

A quarter-century later, I wonder if he ever will.

 

Anyway, from the BBC (and note the cameo appearance by that would-be Bob, Dennis Miller):

"Stars gathered to celebrate Bob Hope's new title of Hollywood 'citizen of the century' on Tuesday ahead of his 100th birthday in May.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 24, 2003 12:24 AM

 

Nina Simone-- To Be Drunk, Angry and Broke

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It took me awhile to locate it, but here are some excerpts from a piece I read in 1999 about Simone by Precious Williams for The National Post (Canada).

"Nina Simone is furious that there is no alcohol left in the house. It's not even 11 o'clock in the morning, yet the 66-year-old jazz legend has already drunk a whole bottle of Baileys.

"[She] moves unsteadily around her squalid, cluttered villa in the south of France, hurling insults at Clifton, the gay, black, American male nurse who acts as the latest in a string of personal managers.

"'You have no idea of what I can drink, you damned fool! I once drank five bottles of champagne in one afternoon!' she bellows in the rough-edged voice that has sold millions of records. 'Gays like you ought to be lined up and shot. You go against God!'"

[snip]

"She is keenly observed by local French police today, who have kept their eye on her ever since she shot and wounded the teenage son of her next-door neighbour three years ago. Simone fired a bullet at the boy after his laughter interrupted her piano practice. The $7,000 fine and probation order she subsequently received appear to have done nothing to quell her aggression.

"'I'm itching to use my gun again!' Simone shrieks, her face lighting up with enthusiasm. [ . . . ] 'I'll do what I damned well like. I hate children. That child should have learned how to stay quiet when I'm playing my piano.'"

[snip]

"It's time to say goodbyes. As Simone shuffles up the rickety, winding staircase toward the unmade bed in her bedroom, she turns and says: 'Please tell my public that there aren't many of us geniuses still living. Hardly any of us left at all. It's down to Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder. And Frank Sinatra.

'Except Frank's already dead,' she adds, almost as an afterthought."

(UPDATE: After doing a little more looking around, I found the entire article in a newsgroup. Wordwrap seems to have failed this poster, but it's still readable enough. Here it is.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 23, 2003 7:51 PM

 

Wonder if they played it at his funeral

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LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - The inventor of the machine that provides canned laughter for television shows, boon to some producers and bane to some viewers, has died. Charles Rolland Douglass, a longtime CBS engineer, died April 8 at age 93.

Douglass invented the "Laff Box" in the 1950s when he was working as a technical director on a number of TV shows that broadcast live. The idea was to enhance the audience reaction that home viewers heard -- or cover over dead spots if a joke failed. He earned an Emmy for engineering in 1992.

(The rest of the story is here.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 23, 2003 7:00 PM

 

Maybe for the series' finale, he'll kill Anna Nicole

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MIAMI (Reuters/Hollywood Reporter) - O.J. Simpson is preparing for his debut as the star of his own "Osbournes"-esque reality show.

Fort Worth, Texas-based Urban America Television Network said it will distribute a 13-week series about the former football great -- who was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1995 -- to its 75 independent broadcast TV station affiliates starting in June.

The series will chronicle Simpson's daily life in Miami using footage collected over several months of filming in 2001 and 2002.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 23, 2003 5:18 PM

 

Quotations from Chairman MAO Inhibitor

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First, meet my heroes, Peter Haskett and Raymond Huffman, and read all about the greatest audio verite recordings ever made, Shut Up, Little Man. Take your time.

Anyway, these candid-microphone tapes of Pete and Ray have been a bottomless well of laughs for yours truly. The original cassettes included liner notes that suggested that they be used as anti-depressants, and I wholeheartedly concur. Once the knee-jerk, shocked reaction to their white-hot and genuine hatred of each other wears off, they ultimately come across as what they were meant to be: one of the greatest comedy duos of all time.

So here are some dog-biscuits of wisdom from my favorite philosopher, Raymond "Little Man" Huffman. Before reading, please note: Ray knew about 200 words, and at least half were profane. Enjoy.

 "My mind is nine-tenths more intelligent than yours'll ever be. Cocksucker."

"I am not going to die. I will tell you if I'm dead."

"Shut your fuckin' mouth-- if you wanna talk to me, then shut your fuckin' mouth."

"I love people, I love the world, I love a lotta things . . . but I sure the fuck can't love a piece o' shit like you."

"Hey, Tony, can you wear a pair of fuckin' shirts?"

"I'm not talkin' to a fuckin' asshole-- you are!"

(Coming soon: counter-philosophy by Ray's roommate, Lady Peter Haskett.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 23, 2003 5:02 AM

 

GUNSLINGER (1956)-- directed by Roger Corman

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Tight-fisted taskmaster that he may have been, it still must have been a blast to have worked on those early Corman films. One actor who thought so was Dick Miller (he was the flower-eater in the original Little Shop of Horrors)-- he said that the first time he worked for Corman he got to play a cowboy and an Indian in the same picture.

Today, Corman as a director is known primarily for his horror films, but in the '50s and early '60s he made everything that could possibly play in a drive-in, including a handful of Westerns. This is one of the more interesting, possibly because it was co-written by Charles B. Griffith, author of Little Shop and its equally funny companion, Bucket of Blood. It's mostly just a six-gun potboiler, but there are still enough odd touches to make it interesting today.

The credits on Corman's movies from this period were always striking and sophisticated, not to mention a far cry from the typical Western opening:

 

Corman mainstay Beverly Garland is widow Rose Hood, who takes over for her late husband as town marshal. Much is made of how unfeminine she must be to want the job (her deputy asks if she's really going to go around in pants) and how out of her league she'll be once she has to deal with bad guys. She proves them wrong from the first second her husband is gunned down, when she picks up his rifle and lets one of the killers have it.

(She gets the other one when he's stupid enough to attend her husband's funeral.)

The "chesty marshal" has a contract taken out on her by the the town's saloon owner (played by 50 Foot Woman Allison Hayes) after the two ladies have one fine catfight and slugfest, which is hands down the best part of the movie.

And yes, that's Jonathan Haze, the star of Little Shop, in the middle.

The hitman is Cane Miro, a name in the tradition of other Griffith monikers like Walter Paisley and Wilbur Force. The romance that develops between the gunslinger and the marshal has some funny dialogue, intentional or not. During their final to-the-death shootout, the lovers reassure each other that they have "a two-way thing" going on.

The movie's too short to be dull, and the nearly-full Corman cast of regulars make it as fun as possible. Besides, you can get it on DVD for only $4.49!

 

 

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 22, 2003 6:16 PM

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY restored on AMC

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I don't like American Movie Classics any more than you do-- edited films, eight minutes of commercials an hour, mostly titles from the '80s and '90s . . . fuck 'em!

But for one night next month (May 10th, 8 p.m. EST), the channel goes back to its good old days, with the uninterrupted premiere of the fully-restored version of Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, aka The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There has never been a complete U.S. version until now (14 minutes were cut when it was released in 1966), and while the missing scenes were included as "extras" to the DVD of a few years ago, they weren't in English and they weren't incorporated into the film.

For the first time, these scenes will be dubbed into English-- they weren't in '66 because they weren't being used-- and this is where the project gets interesting, and a touch worrisome. Of course, someone else will be doiing the dialogue for the late but almighty Lee Van Cleef, but Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach will be doing their own dubbing, 37 years later. Let's hope for the best. I'm actually more concerned about how Eastwood will match his younger self than I am Wallach, because Eli was already over 50 when he made the original. (By the way, legend has it he was furious when he found out that he was the "Ugly" character instead of Lee.)

Years ago, I saw a very bad-looking composite video where the original Italian scenes were edited into the traditional American print, and while none of them was crucial, every one made a later plot point make more sense. It's going to be great having my favorite Western of all time in the form it was supposed to be in all along. (And many thanks to Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation for making it possible.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 21, 2003 6:20 PM

 

Introducing DARNA the Wonder Woman!

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While most comics fans in the U.S. have never heard of her, Darna is a Filipino superheroine much like Wonder Woman (maybe too much, and I wonder if DC Comics ever sued).

She's been a pop staple in her home country for over 50 years, and has been featured in movies for nearly as long. I've only seen one, made in 1991, and it seems to be a good introduction to both the main character and the truly cracked collection of her arch enemies.

(There was a minor problem with my copy of this: it had no English subtitles. But the story is pretty easy to follow, and often the cast will actually break into English at the times when further explanation is needed. But please understand that the following is only my loose translation of the story's details.)

Darna is actually Narda, a girl who finds a magic stone that flies into her mouth; when she pronouces her name backwards, she transforms into the superpowered Darna. When she grows up, she adopts the alter ego of a reporter and has a boyfriend who doesn't know her secret. It's interesting how many American comics are used in Darna's origin story-- besides Superman and Wonder Woman, the name-speaking part is from the original Captain Marvel, and her major enemies are grotesques like Batman's.

It's the villains that give the movie its kick, and the two main ones go all the way back to Darna's first comics. There's Valentina the Snake Goddess:

And Armida the Hawk Woman:

Plus, there's this companion of Valentina's-- I don't know what the hell it is:

The movie crams in as much action as possible, and even though the budget is next to nothing, the energy level in most scenes makes up for the ultra-cheap fx. There's a funny scene at a fashion show that's disrupted by the sudden appearance of dozens of Valentina's snakes, which Darna rounds up in the kind of fast-motion photography that went out with the Keystone Kops. Even better is a  creepy moment after Armida swoops down on a poor family scrounging through garbage-- the only one left is their little girl, and the hawk woman coaxes the kid to her death by offering her a rag doll.

(From an American perspective, it is strange to see a junk-food movie like this with so many genuinely grim scenes where small children are injured and even killed.)

It's certainly not in the rarefied league of The Heroic Trio, the Hong Kong classic that is probably the best comic book movie ever made, but Darna is still more fun than most American superhero flicks. Recommended.

(I was helped a great deal both in writing this and understanding the movie itself by a very good Darna website. The comics reproductions are especially interesting.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 20, 2003 7:54 PM

 

Look who's reading AMAD!

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Thanks to webpage stats, you can tell not only when someone found your blog through Google but the specific thing they were searching for. For example, there have been several referral hits that have been for a variation of "Dennis + Miller + Tonight" (I hope they weren't fans), and one for someone who looked up "Blake + Edwards + scripts", who was undoubtedly steered to the write-up of The Lineup and left feeling cheated.

My favorite, though, was the anonymous surfer who was directed to the piece on Coffin Joe. I mentioned that it was, in a way, a holiday movie, because Joe goes around on Good Friday looking for meat. That's the only reason I can see why my blog came up for the following search: "Easter + nude + teenager + girl."

That's right-- I'll wager this is the only blog on City Pages' site that has readers who are looking for nude teenage Easter girls.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 19, 2003 5:15 PM

 

Pretty raunchy for the old days

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Here's a funny sequence from Dwain Esper's 1936 reefer classic, Marihuana ("Weed with roots in Hell!"). It occurs in the opening speakeasy scene.

This joker's so bombed, he can't even pour.

 

A blonde barfly-ette glances in his direction.

 

And this is what she sees.

 

"Well! I never . . . "

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 19, 2003 3:11 AM

 

PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

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 Here are some screen-grabs from a few of my perennial favorites. More to come, one of these days.

Curse of the Crying Woman

aka La Maldicion de la Llorona, a 1961 Mexican horror movie that's one of the strangest and creepiest of them all. It opens with an atmospheric killing on a moonlit road-- the murders are committed by this guy:

who takes orders from this lady, the title character.

 

The Bank Dick (1940) with W.C. Fields         

Years before Travis Bickle did his mirror routine, there was the great Egbert Souse'.

 

Chinatown (1974) - Nicholson, Dunaway, Towne & Polanski

Everybody knows how great this movie is-- it's so great that even the world's biggest grouch and beloved City Pages editor Steve Perry likes it. So whenever I get around to writing something about it, I'll probably focus on the smaller beauties of the film, like this:

When the opening credits sequence is a work of art, the film that follows usually is, too.

And then there's the nursing home scene:

GITTES: It's Dad-- I can't seem to handle him any more.

LISPING CROOKED NURSING HOME MANAGER: Goodness!

GITTES: One question-- do you accept people of the Jewish persuasion?

LCNHM: I'm sorry but, uh, we don't.

GITTES: Don't be sorry, neither does Dad.

 

Finally, there's the scene with Gittes and Noah Cross (the immortal John Huston), a Q&A about wealth that's been in my head for weeks:

GITTES: How much are you worth?

NOAH CROSS: I've no idea-- how much do you want?

GITTES: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?

Amen, Jake.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 18, 2003 5:28 AM

 

ANGORA LOVE (1929)-- Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy

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This was the last silent L&H picture, and it's smooth as silk. It was the work of seasoned comedy pros in their prime, including Leo McCarey and the ever-smoldering Edgar Kennedy, who never needed to say a word to be funny.

A goat has a crush on Stan, and the boys can't get rid of it. (One of the title cards reads, "They lost the goat once, but it caught up with them in St. Paul.") Most of the two-reel running time is devoted to L&H trying to keep their landlord (Kennedy) from finding their pet, and to keep their pet from eating everything in the room.

The gags are literally non-stop. Naturally, there's plenty of slapstick, especially when they try to bathe the goat (today's animal rights groups would never allow the scene of Ollie trying to cram it into the washtub), and there's a round-robin waterfight at the end that's silent comedy at its best. But some of the funniest jokes are subtler, like Kennedy telling Stan and Ollie that they're in a respectable hotel, while behind his back a slinky young lady walks by followed by a horny-looking sailor.

The nine volume DVD series The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy is almost too good to be true-- not only does it include all of L&H's silent films as a team but all of their solo comedies of the era as well, and all of them transferred from original Hal Roach Studio 35mm material. We can't get enough good laughs these days, and this collection offers 18 hours of them.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 17, 2003 2:50 AM

 

A fantastic new teaching tool-- maggots!

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"Maggot Art is a fantastic new teaching tool for use in the elementary school setting. Children get hands-on experience with insects that most people find truly disgusting -- maggots -- while creating a beautiful piece of artwork to share with others."

An extra note for the soft-hearted: "We use only non-toxic water-based paints to make Maggot Art. The maggots are not harmed by this paint, and they are released as adults after they have completed their development." Coming to a pile of dogshit near you . . .

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 16, 2003 3:54 PM

 

If you could just listen to this, that'd be great

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Good news: the movies' creepiest boss has his own soundboard. Now go make some prank calls! (Don't forget to punch *67 first.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 16, 2003 3:30 PM

 

REVENGE FOR A RAPE (1976) with Mike Connors and Robert Reed

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Mike Connors, aka Krekor Ohanian, had just finished eight years of Mannix (blecchh!) when he did this lurid TV Movie of the Week, a heterosexual ripoff of Deliverance. Lucky Mike-- although he was really 51, he got to pretend that he was 40 (we have to pretend, too, and with his tidal-wave toupee and sparkling dentures, it's not easy), playing a rugged he-man who marries a "free-thinking woman" (read: libber) who's only 25.

On a camping trip to celebrate their timeless love, they're spied by a trio of rapists, unseen to the viewer and the lovebirds. When they first see Mike and his bride, one of them calls out, "Check out the body on the chick with the old guy!", a line of dialogue that never would have been used on network TV just a few years before. Neither would the gangrape scene that follows. (The scene wouldn't be used today, either, but only because it's now too tame for a TV movie.)

Things get really good when Mike goes after his three pounds of flesh, because his character supposedly goes crazy and, as an actor, Mike just can't do it. Imagine Jack Lord trying to emote like a psycho, then make it twice that bad. The best moment is when, high atop a cliff, he spies his last victim far below in the rapids-- raising his arms and bellowing like The Hulk, he jumps in after him, gun and all.

The ending is a bummer, at least for Mike: it turns out his wife pointed out the wrong guys, making him guilty of three murders!

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 16, 2003 2:22 AM

 

Double feature: THE LINEUP (1958) & PHONE BOOTH (2002)

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The Lineup was originally a not-bad '50s radio series that had some episodes scripted by Blake Edwards. In 1954, the radio show stopped and a TV spinoff began, and apparently it was popular enough to inspire this B-feature movie version. While the stars are the leads from the series-- two completely nondescript character actors, Warner Anderson and Tom Tully-- what makes this stand out today is a young Eli Wallach (in his second film) as a brutal but businesslike assassin and direction by Don "Dirty Harry" Siegel that's as good as his later, better-known work. (Extra bonus: a Naked City-caliber script by Sterling Silliphant.)

It's a dope-smuggling story, and Wallach and the underrated Robert Keith are the hired killers who retrieve the stuff from three innocent, unsuspecting mules. (One is a bald Raymond Bailey, who later donned a toupe and became Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies.) Keith plays the old pro who is grooming Wallach to be a world-class hit man, right down to correcting his grammar, and who keeps a notebook where he records the last words of all their victims. He also has the best line: when a female victim weeps, he sneers, "See? You cry! Women have no place in society-- they don't appreciate the need for violence."

The scenes with the TV characters are the only dull spots; otherwise, The Lineup holds up great. There's lots of real exterior scenes, which wasn't common in the '50s, and Wallach's character is a precursor to the deadpan killer in Siegel's Charley Varrick, Mr. Molly (played by the all-powerful Joe Don Baker).

Phone Booth could very well have been done as a radio drama, since the entire story centers around one long telephone conversation, like a sniper version of Nicholson Baker's sex-line novel Vox. In fact, it's a lot like some of the ultra-dark phone-oriented radio dramas done by Joe Frank (link below). And Kiefer Sutherland's perfect obscene-caller performance is in the tradition of classic radio deep-voice men like William Conrad.

Almost everything about the movie is anachronistic, even its running time (it's six minutes shorter than The Lineup). That's refreshing, but it's still basically a pay-phone variation of Speed. Like most of screenwriter Larry Cohen's other work, it's decent fun if you don't think too hard about it. But it's not good enough to leave the house for, either. Because the R rating is mainly for language, it won't be diminished when it shows up on FX in a year or two, which is where I recommend you catch it.

Now-- about Joe Frank. If you've never heard what he does, telling you that he is a long-time practitioner of state-of-the-art performance radio doesn't do him justice. The shows page on the website is a treasure trove of great stuff to listen to, but I do mean listen.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 15, 2003 2:27 AM

 

Jerry Lewis's THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED-- online!

Filed under: Imported

Well, the screenplay is, at least, in two different versions. If you're not familiar with the film and its legend, this is the unreleased movie that starred Jerry as a clown in a concentration camp, whose job was to lead the children into the ovens! It was meant to prove to the world that Lewis was a great artist. The very few people who have actually seen it, however, think otherwise. (One of them, Harry Shearer, equated it to a black velvet painting of Auschwitz.)

The screenplays and an impressive collection of articles about it can be found at a webpage titled Subterranean Cinema, which has some other online screenplays, including Andy Kaufman's unfilmed The Tony Clifton Story and the original, long-discussed screenplay for the original movie version of Stephen King's The Stand. But it's the collection of Clown material that delighted me most, right down to this Drew Friedman cartoon. 

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 12, 2003 8:46 PM

 

TIME's online cover history of Hollywood

Filed under: Imported

Time has a searchable online archive of their covers going back to 1923, and it's pretty slick. 

A few of my faves are The Marx Brothers, Jack Nicholson and Paul Muni-- what are yours?

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 12, 2003 3:49 AM

 

Dennis Miller's audition for Bush court jester

Filed under: Imported

From his recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, it's clear that Dennis Miller is either auditioning for some new right-wing gig or he's already got one and Tonight was his debut performance. Either way, it was a jaw-dropping sight.

The first tip-off that something unusual was happening was Leno's part in the routine (I don't know exactly what to call it, but it was certainly no interview, even by Leno's standards). Amazingly, he kept his mouth shut-- he'd ask a simple, one-sentence question ("So how do you think the war's going?") and then just sit back and let Miller go.

And Jesus, did he ever go. Relatively cleaned up for his new role as Bob Hope Jr (no more mullet, an American flag pin on his lapel), he rattled off paragraphs about war protesters, celebrity traitors (Natalie Maines, Peter Arnett and Michael Moore) and, of course, Saddam. The final bit ended with instructions to the troops not to destroy all the statues of Saddam "because we're gonna need a headstone for my main man's grave." (Yes, he actually said "my main man".)

Pop-culture references flew as always, but I couldn't help wondering what percentage of his new intended audience would get them (of course, even if you do, they're never funny). At the end, he also tacked on a couple of lame, out-of-place jokes about global warming and Alaskan oil, undoubtedly just to prove his allegiance to his new bosses.

The 10-12 minute performance took a lot out of Miller physically-- visibly nervous the entire time, he gulped, gasped for breath and fidgeted so much that by the end, with his collar crooked and his necktie spread out, he looked like he'd been in a fight. And lost.

When he was on Bill Maher's show, co-panellist Arianna Huffington told Miller that, if he got any cozier with Bush & Company, he might end up as their Sammy Davis Jr. She meant it as an insult and he took it as one, but on The Tonight Show he worked his ass off applying for that very job. I hope he gets it, because then maybe we'll be rid of this unfunny, sanctimonious creep for good in 2004.

P.S. Barry Crimmins, a very funny guy who actually wrote for Dennis Miller's talk show in 1992, did a piece for The Boston Phoenix about Miller's transformation. Here's a good part:

No longer the youthful and sassy anchor of SNL�s "Weekend Update" of all those years ago, Miller has become a national father figure. And what a lousy dad he is. Listening to his act is no longer something we look forward to; it is more like getting stuck in the back seat of your pop�s station wagon while he lectures you on "Americanism" through 30 miles of heavy traffic. In front of your friends.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 11, 2003 7:44 PM

 

Ebert: "Moore blew it"-- Moore agrees

Filed under: Imported

I'm no fan of Roger Ebert-- any movie expert who doesn't know who Whit Bissell is is not my kind of expert-- but I found this "Movie Answer Man" column interesting.

Here's the best part:

On a day of bad war news, Moore cued the Academy negatively with his hurried delivery and defensive body language. He came on fast and strong; they instinctively recoiled from being identified with him. In a similar speech the day before at the Indie Spirits, he took his time, made eye contact, and used the much better line, "The message for the children of Columbine is that violence is an acceptable way to resolve disputes."

At the Oscars, when the boos grew louder, he got rattled, I think, and shouted "Shame on you, Mr. Bush!"--which was guaranteed to turn a large part of the audience against him. Moore turned a standing ovation into a mixed reception by replaying his old tapes when a new speech for that day, occasion and mood was called for.

Interestingly enough, Moore agrees. He told me: "I completely blew it by not saying what I wanted to say, or using my sense of humor. I have played this over in my head so many times. I don't disagree with what I said in terms of content. It's about the delivery. I didn't expect to win, and I started to panic. It was a classic example of poor delivery, improper reading of the room, and not feeling comfortable in the moment."

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 11, 2003 4:01 PM

 

BEYOND THE MAT (1999)-- starring Mankind

Filed under: Imported

I came away from this documentary with renewed respect for the accomplishments of Jesse Ventura, because the film makes it clear that no millionaire's son ever became a wrestler. One section shows the entry-level league where these poor devils start their "careers" by destroying their bodies for $25 a night. When the salary of Mick Foley, aka Mankind, is cited to be in the high six figures, he notes that there's no mention of all the years it was in the low four figures.

Most of the movie is filmmaker Barry Blaustein's character studies of three of wrestling's superstars, and it could have been subtitled The Good, The Bad and The Crazy. The film's genuine good guy is Terry Funk, a soft-hearted guy who cries at his daughter's wedding, then goes off to his job and sets another guy on fire. Funk was in his middle fifties when the film was made, and such a wreck that he could barely get out of bed, but he just can't bring himself to retire.

No question that the bad is Jake "The Snake" Roberts, a one-time superstar who now works the shit-circuit. When Blaustein's DVD commentary reaches Jake's final segment, where he rasps sadly about his failures, the filmmaker mentions how they edited out all the footage of the wrestler firing up a crack pipe-- there were so many towns that had warrants against Jake that Blaustein didn't want to provide them with any filmed evidence that could be used against him.

Needless to say, the crazy is Mick "Mankind" Foley, the most likable guy in the film, and the most troubling. The film's most talked about scene is when Foley and his wife take their two very young children to a match, who then see their father nearly get his brains knocked out (for real), and the camera is there to record it all. It's very hard to watch but riveting at the same time. Just as riveting is when Blaustein, to his credit, shows the footage to Foley, who-- to his credit-- is devastated by his kids' reaction.

Throughout the movie, Blaustein conveys his own love of this goofy entertainment so well that it gets across even to non-believers like yours truly. Recommended.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 11, 2003 2:22 AM

 

PRIME CUT (1972)-- Lee Marvin & Gene Hackman

Filed under: Imported

I wish this had held up, because it's a perfect example of how nuts Hollywood went in the early '70s, when it finally saw how much it could get away with under the new 'R' rating. Sadly, it now seems almost quaint.

Prime Cut basically took the hard-boiled crime film of the '50s, where all the main characters were the baddest of bad guys, and turned up the violence while adding outrageous gore and sex. The tone is set with the opening credits, which is still a funny sequence-- a start-to-finish, finger-lickin' tour of a slaughterhouse, accompanied by the chirpiest of Muzak. The gambit that sets everything off is good, too-- one gang sends another gang a present through the mail: one of the latter gang's best men, in the form of link sausage.

Maybe because of all the extreme stuff that follows, including an auction scene where the penned-in "cattle" are nude teenage girls, director Michael Ritchie and the cast thought it best (or safest) to underplay an already deadpan script. So despite its genuine charms, too often its pacing is like a Lifetime movie. Even the bits that burst through the screen when the movie was new, like Hackman's crazed rough-housing with his cannibalistic brother, now look forced and even mundane.

Still, it's a great time-capsule if the coffee's strong enough. And for hetero men of a certain age, PRIME CUT's real claim to fame is that it was Sissy Spacek's first major film, in a role that required scenes of complete nudity. It's a great reminder that, in the slang of those male chauvinistic times, Sissy was a piece!

This would be the perfect time to put in a good word for one of the greatest websites ever: The Stinkymeat Project. A couple of science buffs decided to see what happens to a platter of grocery-store meat when it's left out in the sun for a few weeks. (Of course, they leave it in their neighbor's yard). As each day passed, they documented the results with a picture. Hilarious, if you can stand it.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 10, 2003 4:35 AM

 

More Moore "fallout"

Filed under: Imported

A high school principal in Lynn, MA (according to Mike Malloy's radio show) stopped an English teacher from showing BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE to 12th-grade students because its anti-war message was inappropriate while troops were fighting overseas.

The principal said, "I just pulled it. This isn't the time or the place to be showing something like that."

The head of the high school's English department said, "We are a school. This is a place where ideas are exchanged, right?"

My question: Where did the English teacher get the copy of the movie? My guess: The same place I got mine-- a high school kid. (Incidentally, Mike Malloy does the best fire & brimstone left-wing radio in the country-- you can listen live here or download archived shows here.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 4:58 AM

 

THE RICHARD SPECK VARIETY HOUR (aka A&E Biography)

Filed under: Imported

I was tipped to this by AMAD's favorite video trash-tout, who told me that these jailhouse tapes starring the '60s most pizza-faced serial killer contained "everything but a little nurse's uniform." He wasn't kidding.

For starters, they show the happy-go-lucky murderer enjoying many illicit substances in his cell with a black buddy who also doubles as an interviewer. "Do you like to have sex with men?" he asks ol' Dick, who replies, "Absolutely."

"Are you wearin' those blue panties?"

"Yeah."

"Let's see 'em."

"Sure."

It plays like a death row version of an old Calvin Klein ad. Then, best-- or perhaps "breast"-- of all, Speck goes topless, showing off two swollen, saggy teats that must have come from an overdose of black-market estrogen.

I'm grateful that A&E cut out the triple-X stuff that was reported to have made up a fair portion of the tapes' running time, but I have faith that the complete and uncut show will surface soon. Then it can join the short list of videos I'll never watch.

So much for the effectiveness of our drug laws, prison system and the deterrent qualities of the death penalty. At the end of this genuine travesty of justice, Speck grins and says, "If they knew how much fun I was havin' in here, they'd throw me out!"

Of course, everything has its own webpage, including this tape-- check it out at your own digestive risk.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 2:55 AM

 

THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS (1957) with Mamie VD!

Filed under: Imported

Mamie Van Doren, that is, aka Joan Lucille Olander. And there are other cult standouts in the cast of this sleazy murder mystery set in a Utah (!) hotel-- John Dehner plays his usual wooden lawman, and Lex "Tarzan" Barker even makes out with a young, pre-Miracle Worker Anne Bancroft-- and the dialogue has some bright spots (my favorite: a quadraplegic tough guy tells his sister, played by Marie Windsor, that she's the only woman who truly knows how to blow a man's nose).

But the main reason to see this so-so who-done-it is an amazing two minutes midway through, when a far-from the-Ponderosa Dan Blocker appears as a sweaty, leering bartender. You've never seen him like this-- his eyes and tusks shining with lust, he concludes his disrespectful description of the just-murdered title whore by saying, "And then she'd get out on the dance floor and really fry eggs!" Truly a Hoss of a different color.

By the way, Mamie is making the most of the internet, if you're interested. (And bless her blurry, 72-year-old heart, she appears to be against the war.)

Of course, since he died over 30 years ago, Dan Blocker hasn't done much on the 'net, but for those who don't remember his handsome face, here's a nice page of pics from the collection of Michael Landon (another dead Ponderosan).

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 1:49 AM

 

AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL-- Coffin Joe!

Filed under: Imported

If only for this film (and he did a couple others that are close to this good), Jose Mojica Marins, aka Coffin Joe, belongs in the first rank of '60s horror directors, a group that includes Roger Corman, George Romero, and Mario Bava.

This was the first-ever Brazilian horror movie, and Marins supposedly screened it as a roadshow attraction in tents when the country's theater owners wouldn't touch it. Another film-maker who had the idea to show his own masterpiece in tents as "the movie they don't want you to see" was Orson Welles with Citizen Kane.

Like Welles, Marins was a triple threat: director, writer and leading man. Well, maybe not "leading man"-- the alter ego he dreamed up for himself was a murderous mortician named Ze do Caixao (in English, Joseph of the Coffins, ergo Coffin Joe).

This month would be a great time for watching it again or, better still, for the first time, since you might say it's an Easter movie: On Good Friday, our villian Joe sets out to find himself some meat for his evening meal ("Even if it's human flesh!"), a quest that launches a non-stop reign of terror and blasphemy that's a joy to behold.

I can't imagine how horrifying Joe's sacrilege must have been to his very Catholic Brazilian audience almost 40 years ago, but the verbal looies he hawks in God's face during a fantastic graveyard speech in a thunderstorm would get him in trouble even today. Of course, he pays for his sins many times over in the final scene, when the entire cemetary rises up against the guy who put 'em there, but it's too little, too late-- when it comes to total acts of death and destruction, old Joe beats the Lord by a wide margin.

The inventiveness of the horror is what's most amazing, though. Years before Night of the Living Dead, Marins showed how gory black and white could really be. There's plenty ahead-of-its-time ultra-violence (graphic scenes of chopped-off fingers and poked-out eyeballs, the latter special effect involving Marins's real fingernails), but at the same time the scares are very much rooted in old superstitions and storytelling-- the title credits are even introduced by an old witch, who warns the audience to leave immediately!

If you're a horror buff who thinks you've seen it all . . . well, not until you've seen this one, you haven't.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 1:31 AM

 

HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (1940)-- Vincent Price

Filed under: Imported

Even though it really doesn't have much in common with the novel it was based on, this is still a decent and atmospheric Hollywood period piece with a solid cast of character actors like Margaret Lindsay, George Sanders and Cecil Kellaway. None of them, however, are as interesting to watch as the picture's star, Vincent Price. His performance is enlightening, if you believe as I do that some people were just born to be old.

Price plays the good Pyncheon brother, Clifford, who's framed by his evil brother Jaffrey for a murder the latter committed, and his first several scenes are when his character is youthful, happy and in love. He's not very good at conveying any of those conditions (even though he was only 29 at the time); in fact, when he laughs good-naturedly he looks demented, and when he sings-- yes, sings-- a love song to his lady he sounds like he's possessed by an evil spirit with adequate pitch.

But when his character returns to the Seven Gables years later, a broken and bitter man, suddenly he's the good old Vincent we all came to know and love later on. Shoulders hunched, face lined and his voice dripping with doom, it all makes him appear normal again!

Price himself said that his physical presence dictated the roles he got to play throughout his career, but after having now seen him crooning murderously at the harpsichord, the notion of him as a romantic leading man seems even more outlandish than it already did.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 1:30 AM

 

Michael Moore's Oscar speech-- one week later

Filed under: Imported

The week after Moore gave the Academy Awards one of the few genuinely interesting moments in its history, the right-wing screechers came out with the usual insults: Big mouth! America-hater! Fat! Send him to Iraq, the callers raged-- better yet, Somalia! (Yes, I actually heard that one.) For them, the boos were deafening and proof that Moore and his traitorous message were despised by the crowd.

Moore was also attacked by a fair number of what I call "internet Democrats," the ones who spend just as many hours a day gnashing their teeth on-line at their party's message boards as the enemy does at his. They went after him for acting inappropriately at a great American ceremony, for supporting Nader (who caused the current war, of course-- I heard that one, too) and just all-around making their side look bad. (They still don't see that no one can make them look worse than their own candidates.) For them, the ratio of boos to handclaps varies according to the liberalism in the ears of the beholder, but the consensus is no better than 50-50. Besides, he is really fat.

Of course, in order for the war networks to point out how evil the speech was, they had to play it many times, which gave everyone who hadn't seen it the opportunity to do so. Apparently, they considered Moore and his anti-war, anti-Bush message so dangerous that, in order to stop him, they actually exposed their audience to a political viewpoint they'd ordinarily never allow to be expressed in their no-spin zones. (His line about the stolen 2000 election undoubtedly got more airplay and discussion than the actual story ever has.)

What everyone's missed, however, is the amazing artistic moment that occured with Moore's speech. A serious American writer and filmmaker, who also happens to be a widely liked and admired pop culture everyman, used both his art and celebrity to make a genuine political scene, and he did it in front of one billion people.

He took his meager 45 seconds of speech time-- bestowed on him for making one of the best, most original movies ever made about the United States-- and used it to briefly pull the mask off the celebration, making everyone consider the red death "outside." His own country needed the slap in the face-- how dare we watch crap like the Oscars and forget about the war our leaders had just started? And the rest of the world needed to be reminded that not all Americans had forgotten.

If the above didn't sufficiently express how I feel about Moore's performance, this cartoon by Steve Benson will.

P.S. Moore's webpage has been getting 10-20 million hits a day! Go ahead, make it 20,000,001 and read his take on what happened in the theater when he started to speak as well as all the good things that have happened since.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 1:08 AM

 

A MOVIE A DAY-- The Reposts

Filed under: Imported

I'm finally getting around to correcting a tech problem I was having, so I'm reposting all the earlier-posted write-ups in one batch. We'll finally be back to the original concept of a movie a day tomorrow. Sorry about all the down time.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 12:57 AM

 

Double feature: BLACK LEGION and FIVE STAR FINAL

Filed under: Imported

These Warner Brothers gems from the '30s are ultra-hard-boiled from beginning to end and deal with a couple facts of life from our own happy era: hate groups and yellow journalism.

In Black Legion (1937, directed by Archie Mayo), Humphrey Bogart plays a gung-ho factory worker who gets passed over for a promotion in favor of a guy with a "funny" name; a co-worker then introduces him to a secret society that takes care of "them" with floggings, fires and other all-American pranks.

The movie gets even small details of characterization right and takes no easy ways out-- the "good" guy is a drunk with an unhappy home life, while Bogie's character is shown as a concerned family man with an admirable work ethic. Another beautifully-observed detail is Bogart's sudden fascination with radio demagoguery, and the Father Coughlin-like blowhard he listens to sounds very much like Limbaugh and his clones today.

Good as Black Legion is, Mervyn LeRoy's Five Star Final (1931) is even better, and its contempt for tabloid journalism and its practitioners seems especially fresh in our current embedded times. Whenever the movie shifts focus from the press's victims to the newspaper characters themselves, it almost leaves a grease stain on the TV screen, with hilarious scenes of scoop-happy creeps breaking into people's homes and (especially) an unholy-looking Boris Karloff impersonating a preacher to get a story.

Edward G. Robinson, who became (to me) unbearably hammy in later years, is just right as the tough-guy editor. His final speech, where he actually tells the boss to take his paper and shove it up his ass (he throws a phone through the window in place of the last word), should be much better known today as the classic movie moment it is. Double recommendations!

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 12:50 AM

 

An Introduction

Filed under: Imported

Welcome to the weblog version of A Movie a Day, aka AMAD, one of the Internet's oldest movie-related e-zines. The gimmick is a simple one: I watch, on average, a movie a day, and the zine is my on-line diary of what I'd seen. This blog will take up where the zine left off.

I watch *everything*, but some of my loves are silents, pre-code films, the '70s, spaghetti Westerns, classic comedies (Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields), and anything by Jose Mojica Marins, aka Coffin Joe.

The old e-zine was text only, so I'm happy to be able to add pictures and sounds to the write-ups. Now if you don't remember what, say, Michael J. Pollard looks like, you can just go see. I'm pleased to be able to bring AMAD back, especially with all the new and improved bells and whistles. (And thanks to City Pages for the opportunity.)

As for yours truly, I've been a movie fan since I saw my first one (wish I remembered what it was) and have written about them for over 20 years. From 1997 to 1999, I did a public radio program in my state (Iowa) that was about all aspects of movies, with special attention to answering questions from listeners. Not to brag, but I had a 99% success rate most shows.

And despite occasional purges of hundreds of old tapes, the Monaco video vault always seems to have between 1,200 and 1,500 titles, many of which would irk the shit out of Jack Valenti.

Posted by Steve Monaco at April 9, 2003 12:42 AM

 

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