TRUCK TURNER (1975)

With films that moved more freely between HIGH Art and LOW than nearly anyone else in Hollywood at the time, director Jonathan Kaplan, who died last year at 77, didn’t put up the usual neat career arc.  His epitaph might read: Memorably Malleable.  Here, he’s down with a Blaxploitation pic for Isaac Hayes as an ass-kickin’ Bounty Hunter working with partner Alan Weeks in violent pursuit of bail skippers.  Hayes in big gun/love machine mode; Weeks making like Richard Pryor as sidekick.  Both hitting the mark.  The first half holds to larky fun (sex, bloody fights, snappy comeback lines, car chases), but the second half changes gears with the belated entrance of Yaphet Kotto.  Not that it gets serious, we’re still pushing Blaxploitation tropes, but deadly consequences are suddenly in effect.  Kotto taking over a revenge mission of Hayes’ enemies, backed by Nichelle Nichols’ rich avenging Madame; Kotto a more formidable antagonist and, as a actor, good as it gets in this sort of thing.  Actually, Kotto good as it gets in just about anything he turned his hand to.  (But as a Black actor at the time, he simply didn’t get the chance to show his full range often enough.)  TURNER remains good fun of its type, and very well-handled by Kaplan given the low production values you expect with American International Pictures.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Quentin Tarantino’s Blaxploitation pastiche JACKIE BROWN/’97 probably got as much from this film as it did from the Pam Grier films of the ‘70s.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/04/jackie-brown-1997.html

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980)

Call it THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD GOOD FRIDAY.  Highly-rated British mob pic, regularly short-listed for U.K. honors is something of a disappointment.  Blame journeyman director John Mackenzie, not that he does anything blatantly wrong, but he rarely rises above the adequate.  Still, a pretty good snapshot on the early Thatcher Era as seen thru the Rise & Fall of Gangster Capitalism pursued by Bob Hoskins’ Lower Class mob boss, a sort of Cockney Little Caesar.*  Over the course of one long day, he tries to close a waterfront development deal with help from American Mafia investor Eddie Constantine (excellent) while trying to figure out who’s attacking him and his organization.  Refined partner Helen Mirren tries to distract everyone from what’s going down (bombings, murder, financial melt down, Hoskins’ quick-trigger temper), but not even police quiescence and a roundup of rival gangsters can keep news from spreading.  With plenty of odd period detail to hold your attention (hideous menswear; apology-free gay players; an IRA angle), but the package feels both over and under-cooked.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Hoskins, at 5'3", even shorter than Little Caesar himself, 5'5" Edward G. Robinson.  But for a better match here, skip CAESAR for a mob pic made soon after with Eddie G. and James Cagney, SMART MONEY.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/04/smart-money-1931.html

NIGHT MOVES (1975)

Improbably, this private detective pic has, in the long run, proved director Arthur Penn’s best work.  Improbable when you consider how seriously he was taken, commercially & critically after THE MIRACLE WORKER (tv/stage/film), LITTLE BIG MAN/‘70 and of course BONNIE AND CLYDE/’67.  Yet NIGHT MOVES now the one Penn title whose rep has improved rather than diminished over time.  An also-ran on release, the oxygen having been sucked out of the room by Francis Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION/’74, first out with too many similarities and a seductive Euro-Art tone.  (It was also, as Coppola’s team must have known, BLOW-UP for Beginners.)  Similarities start with Gene Hackman starring in both as an investigator with a troubled private life misreading recordings (audio in CONVERSATION/16mm here) to deadly effect.  An underlying human alienation and dirge-like inevitability that seethes just below the surface.  Finally surging over its limit with a technically challenging flourish.  Writing off MOVES as just a genre vehicle for Hackman’s P.I. a mistake; and a poor excuse then & now to skip this well worked up missing person case that leads to a murdered man and half-a-million bucks in stolen art.  Plus four lying dames if you include a cheating wife and 16-yr-old Melanie Griffith's nude debut.  And Penn's got the cast to pull it off: Susan Clark’s inconstant wife; Jennifer Warren as tempting stand-in; Edward Binns as careless movie stunt arranger; James Woods as car mechanic & probable accomplice and Harris Yulin as limping lover.  A personal best from scripter Alan Sharp and boasting a grounded ‘70s Cali style look from cinematographer Bruce Surtees, elsewise shooting everything Clint Eastwood & Don Siegel were doing at the time.  Penn never tried something like this again.  Perhaps he considered it slumming.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE CONVERSATION.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/conversation-1974.html

EKO / EKÕ (2025)

Indian director Dinjith Ayyathan had a local hit on this mixed genre film, shot in Malayalam, a language mostly spoken in the South which boasts some verdant mountainous terrain used here for some spectacular views & action sequences.  Spanning decades, the non-linear story construction goes back to WWII and forward to . . . when?  Now?  Just how old is that health-compromised loner supposed to be?; living with her attack dogs in a mountaintop cabin with a  hunky helper who’s not what he appears to be.  He’s surely no gentle caregiver, turning into a fighter with Martial Arts chops for an acrobatic battle with the two baddies who’ve been tracking granny.  For those pedigree dogs?  For land rights?  Hard to know under Ayyathan’s incomprehensible style of unmotivated camera movement (panning, circling, spinning in place) used for all occasions, worsened by quick, off-the-beat editing.  Scene by scene, you can tell the bad guys from the good, but even that’s subject to misreading.  (Ayyathan got his start in animation, so perhaps the technique worked better there.)  Or does Malayalam culture regularly flaunt the time/space continuum?  These eyes were lost in translation.  Literally so as the subtitles whiz by too fast to read.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008)

Unnecessary corporate product, director Scott Derrickson’s wholly unmemorable remake of the beloved 1951 Sci-Fi classic misses on all fronts.  (Though it does serve to represent a lot of what we won’t miss about our current Hollywood trends.*)  While still the story of a ‘man’ from Outer Space come to warn Earthlings on the consequences of screwing up the planet (War, Pollution, Self-Destruction), it’s without wonder; philosophy; believable F/X working for rather than instead of plot; quotidian exploration of big city life by a stranger in a strange land; New-Age metal on a spaceship that has no seam (a simple, but wonderful detail in the original); nor the most thrillingly suspenseful PAUSE in film history.  (Imagine anyone quoting lines from this remake seven & a half decades later) and you sure won’t find a cast to equal the one in 1951 or match Bernard Herrmann’s groundbreaking electronically enhanced music score instantly setting scene & tone.  Keanu Reeves sounds right as Alien Cassandra, but he seems to have beamed up to play Mr. Spock.  Or is it the man who fell to Earth?  As the girl in the case (don’t be fooled by her role as expert scientist), Jennifer Connelly has zero chemistry with Reeves, though perhaps on purpose.  At least you don’t want to slap her every time she comes on screen as you do with obnoxious step-son Jaden Smith.  Yikes!  Positive notes?  Well, the film won’t wreck any feelings you hold for the original.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Naturally, the Robert Wise 1951 beauty, personal bests for Patricia Neal, Michael Rennie, Sam Jaffe and Gort.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Giving credit where credit is due.  Here that's scipter David Scarpa whose most recent are NAPOLEON/’23 and GLADIATOR II/’24, both for Ridley Scott.

THE RAT (1937)

Remembered today, if at all, as the vain, age-denying wife of Walter Huston’s plainspoken businessman in William Wyler’s superb 1936 adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s DODSWORTH (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/04/dodsworth-1936.html), Ruth Chatterton found her highest acclaim in the role; and, at merely 44, a full stop to her Hollywood career.  Previously known for sex-hungry Pre-Code feminists, she tried England for two final pics before hanging it up as far as film was concerned.*  Here, in spite of that off-putting title, she found something of a return to her daring Pre-Code heyday as a French society lady stringing along an older SugarDaddy to foot the bills while seeking sexual excitement and the thrill of danger in a low-down joint in Montmartre.  She finds it in Anton Walbrook, still new to British film after leaving Nazi Germany, a cat burglar more interested in her pearls than herself.  Always on the verge of getting caught, Walbrook is currently stuck with a pretty young thing, his ward René Ray, daughter of a condemned pal who swore him to watch over her; the platonic pair sharing a garret above the bar/brothel where he’s something of a local hero.  Robbery, rape, defenestration, redemption, they all lead to a notorious court case where each of our principals either lies to protect someone or ruins a reputation with honesty.  A feast of renunciation.  Director Jack Raymond isn’t much known, but with Herbert Wilcox producing from a play by Ivor Novello & Constance Collier, got names like Art Director David Rawnsley, cinematographer Freddie Young, and actors Felix Aylmer & Leo Genn to play a few scenes as counselors-in-court.  Surprisingly good stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: * The same year, Kay Francis, another Warners star dimmed by strict enforcement of the Production Code, got similarly good results with similar elements in CONFESSION/’37. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/confession-1937.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note the title card billing that has Chatterton first-billed (on the left), and Walbrook top-billed (on the right).  A first?

KNIFE IN THE WATER / NÓZ W WODZIE (1962)

On his debut feature, Roman Polanski is already a master of elegant malice & menace in a compact three-hander about a day-trip at sea for a married couple and pick-up that goes wrong, but comes out right.  The Polish film industry, still State controlled, but loosening up to accommodate the Polish New Wave, gave Polanski development funds, perhaps unaware this leans more toward Michelangelo Antonioni (L'AVVENTURA/’60;  LA NOTTE/’61), a sort of Existential Shaggy Dog tale.  Driving to their boat, a blasé, slightly put out couple stop (or rather get forcibly stopped) by a solopistic hitchhiker, a college-age jerk who piques their interest.   At worse, he’ll liven things up.  But the boat trip keeps drifting off course, in every possible way as a mano-a--mano pissing contest breaks out between the men after they’re too far out to turn right back.  Then rough games, missing swimmers, missing rescuers, a storm that traps them overnight, lust unbound, a session of pick-up-sticks (!), and a knife for five-finger-filet before it goes overboard.  (The knife in the water.)   All beautifully staged (no easy thing at sea), well acted and neatly structured.  The film more than just advance notice for more than sixty years of film to come.  Listen closely and you’re sure to recognize Polanski doing the dub for the kid.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL:  If you get the Criterion edition, a second disc collects Polanski’s early shorts.  There's your Double-Bill.  And look on Disc One for an excellent interview from 2002 that reveals Polanski at 69 as a dead ringer for Danny Kaye at 69.

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED (1964)

The late Baby Boom years of the early ‘60s weren’t only fecund with tots but also with fears of their eventual takeover.  No wonder Creepy Kids genre pics came into fashion as The Greatest Generation started having second thoughts on what they’d wrought.  In the U.K., British M-G-M showed the way with VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED/’60 and this follow-up.  While horror house Hammer Films unofficially made it a trilogy with THESE ARE THE DAMNED/’62 coming in-between.*  All three featuring a new wave of dangerous brats (super alien brats at that) bringing death or disease (or could it be salvation?) to earth.  The films unusually grown-up horror, far removed from the super-charged monster movies aimed at kids.  (The elevated tone beginning perhaps on THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51.)  This one fairly effective, but losing punch in shifting its focus from local in the first film (native blue-eyed blondes from interstellar seed) to international (six global Junior U.N. representatives of various ethnicity appearing with a million years of DNA evolution in their blood).  Structured as a chase, the hunt for the six brilliant boys & girls by military and scientific forces, it’s mostly fun, cleverly worked out to end up at an ancient gothic cathedral* (a real one) where the kids gather to hide out while authorities panic.  Briskly helmed by journeyman director Anton Leader, with strong low-key noirish cinematography from Davis Boulton, who’d just shot Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING/’63.  Plus a better than usual cast for the genre than was common at the time.  The kids let their glowing eyes do most of the work; none as memorable as the look-a-like crew in VILLAGE.  But it’s always a kick to note just how much Alan Badel looks like Peter Sellers under a comedy restraining order.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A triple bill if you start with VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and follow with THESE ARE THE DAMNED.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/village-of-damned-1960.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/these-are-damned-aka-damned-1963.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *No wonder they wind up in a Cathedral, as all the kids born of ‘virgin' mothers.

BUG (2007)

Easy to see how effectively Tracy Letts’ scary thriller might work on stage.  Even with a cast of five, it functions like a classic ‘Lost Souls’ two-hander.  Or does till Letts swerves into Body Horror in the last act.  Creepy stuff with sadder-if-not-wiser waitress Ashley Judd meeting up for the night with shaky military vet Michael Shannon.  The two something of a match: she’s being stalked by violent ‘ex’ Harry Connick Jr (excellent); he’s stalked by demons in his head.  Her monster corporal/his a manifestation of bug infestation.  Yikes!  Their deteriorating psychological condition visually climaxing in a last act coup de théâtre opening curtain.  All dutifully recreated by director William Friedkin in this low-budget, yet technically immaculate film transfer.  But any effect doomed without the possibility to think Shannon’s bug paranoia might be real.  And Shannon, repeating his stage triumph, is far too obviously paranoid schizophrenic, even with those nasty skin bruises, to let us imagine they ain’t self-inflicted.  Judd also too busy working the sensitively angle.  You see what they’re all trying to get across, but the modest result is predictable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  CHILD’S PLAY/’72;  SLEUTH/’72 & 07; DEATHTRAP/’82; the list of stage thrillers that went flat on film is a long one.  Though there’s always Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54 (which hardly changed a thing) and George Cukor’s GASLIGHT/’44 (which changed a lot).  Go figure.  (Look up most of these in our SEARCH BOX - upper left corner.)