BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (1997)

The ultimate Hollywood sin? Self-inflicted ‘franchiside.’ And while THE EXORCIST II/’77 holds as champ chump, this follow-up to BABE/’95 isn’t far behind. (BABE - cost $30 mill/Original Stateside Gross - $66.6 mill; BABE II - cost $80 mill/Original Stateside Gross - $18 mill.) Perhaps you’ve forgotten BABE, the endearing tale of an adopted pig who saves his bacon by learning to herd sheep, an Æsop Fable for our times, told with a seamless blend of trained animals, puppetry & animation techniques, it made for a volume-filled verisimilitude you could believe in. But something went terribly wrong with both the story and the story construction here. There’s little conviction to the darker tone as the farm goes broke and Babe seeks his fortune in the big city. George Miller, directing as well as producing, blinks at the story’s implications, sidestepping three or four fatalities with back-from-the-brink feints that come off as equally mean-spirited and sentimental. Disney killed off Bambi’s mom for a first act finale and Miller won’t even lose a goldfish? Yet, amid the stumbles, a couple of reels midway thru find all the abandoned animals of the city coming together co-op style, then fighting an impounding. Saint-Saens comes up on the soundtrack and you remember what an unexpected joy the first film was . . .briefly. Soon things retreat into chaos with an endless, overblown action-climax and a tacked-on happily-ever-after epilogue. Even the returning trio of singing mice can’t save this one.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: BABE.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Miller reemerged with HAPPY FEET/’06. And damned if he didn’t franchiside all over again on HAPPY FEET II/’11.

THE WRONG BOX (1966)

With the glorious exception of Ralph Richardson, hilarious as England’s most distinguished bore, everyone works too hard at being funny in this wild Victorian farce. The set-up, taken from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, follows the machinations to get at a fortune pledged to the sole survivor of a school-boy ‘tontine,’ now whittled down to two elderly brothers (and their various relations) who play out a comic death watch. Megger Bryan Forbes loads up on stylish furnishings & William Morris wallpaper, but consistently keeps his camera too close to allow for comic breathing space, instead letting his starry cast go with nudge-nudge/wink-wink overplaying. Still, what a cast! Richardson, John Mills, Michael Caine, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Peter Sellers (in a bad turn), the great Wilford Lawson (in a divine swansong) & Cicely Courtneidge (the Edith Evans of the Music Hall). Forbes also indulges his wife, Nanette Newman, a handsome gal, miscast as an ingénue. But the indulgent spirit works in both directions, so you’ll laugh, and not even mind seeing the same messed up chase-finale that co-authors Larry Gelbart & Burt Shevelove used in the year’s other farce, that classic of ancient Rome, Titus Maccius Plautus’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM/’66.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *In a critical flip-flop, BOX now looks somewhat over-praised and AFTHOTWTTF, somewhat under. Directed by Richard Lester in the chop-sloppy manner of his famous BEATLES pics, the film overcomes stylistic pratfalls with comic pratfalls by endearingly low Stateside jesters & tony Brits on holiday, gamboling away on Tony Walton's suburban Rome sets which are something of a marvel.

NARCOTIC (1933); MANIAC (1934)

Shot on a dime for the exploitation market, these two oddities from Dwain Esper (paired on a KINO DVD) are siblings with a difference. MANIAC is a campy, DIY attempt at a Universal Horror pic; think zero-budget FRANKENSTEIN with a bit of ‘nudie’ action tossed in the mix. Fodder for the Mystery Science Theater wiseguys* and not far from Ed Wood territory. Whereas NARCOTIC, made just the year before, is something else again. A supposed exposé of one man’s decent into drug addiction, it's less the work of someone who’s never made a film then of someone

who’s never seen one. Jumping around in time, place & action with the logic of an unintentional Dadaist, Esper seems to be making up his own film grammar & syntax as he goes along, we might be deciphering the cries of a babbling baby. What did patrons of the day make of it? The best scene, if you can call it that, is a little drug shindig with a smorgasbord of stimulants, guests in formal garb and a glossary’s worth of the hep slang of the day in addict terminology. Little approaches this level of deconstruction in MANIAC, but within the stock footage Esper haphazardly puts in to pad out the running time is some truly nasty animal atrocity stuff and a remarkable clip from an Italian silent pic that’s superimposed over some villainy. KINO gives us a clip of this from the original film, MACISTE IN HELL/’25, a sort of Hercules in the UnderWorld pic, which looks pretty cool . . . in its creepy way. Sort of Italian-UFA style, and well worth checking out if you can find it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Why listen to those MST guys? Do your own obnoxious comic commentary.

DOUBLE-BILL: It’s its very own Double-Bill.

LOVE IS BETTER THAN EVER (aka THE LIGHT FANTASTIC) (1950; released '52)

Plenty of drama on this one . . . all behind the camera. On screen, it’s painfully innocuous; a thrill-less romance between a New Haven kiddie dance teacher, 18 yr-old Elizabeth Taylor, and Larry Parks’ smooth-operator NYC theatrical agent, her senior by nearly two decades. These two are in love from the start, but she’s got to convince the mug he’s really the marrying kind. Director Stanley Donen manages some passable NYC atmosphere with just a couple of location shots, but there’s only so much he can do with this trifle. He shows off Liz’s gams, hides her dance steps behind a big bass fiddle and tries not to embarrass anyone. All gentlemanly stuff, probably because he & Taylor were in the midst of a major affair. A relationship Taylor’s mom & Howard Hughes (!) were each trying to sabotage with rumors that Donen was a Pinko fag. (So how come he’s screwing La Liz?) Taylor was just getting divorced from the horrid Hilton boy and Donen was leaving his first wife, Jeanne Coyne. (She’d soon marry Gene Kelly, who makes a cameo appearance here.) Meantime, there was an ex-Commie-Red on the set, co-star Larry Parks who’d soon testify before the infamous HUAC Committee and get BlackListed. (His next Hollywood production would also be his last, John Huston’s FREUD/’62.) So, this 1950 film didn't get a release ‘til ‘52, after studio chief & super patriot Louis B. Mayer had been forced out. Wait . . . there’s more! Take a look at Larry Parks. (See photo below.) Remind you of anyone? He’s a positive ringer for Taylor’s third hubby Mike Todd! (The one after second hubby Michael Wilding, the guy she left Stanley Donen for.) And Parks doesn’t just look like Todd, he might be playing Mike Todd, an older, take charge New York theatrical guy who sweeps Liz off her feet. (If only they’d have cast Joan Blondell, Mrs. Mike Todd at the time, to play Taylor’s mom.)

Mike Todd & ET

ET & Larry Parks

 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Oh, hell, this whole posting is a Screwy Thought of the Day.

MIKE'S MURDER (1984)

Writer/helmer James Bridges never quite recovered from the one-two punch of this artistic flop and his follow-up pic, the commercial, but cruddy PERFECT/’85. Here, he was trying for a French-styled thriller, more Claude Chabrol than Hitchcock, set in the midst of the High/Low intersecting worlds of ‘80s L.A. drug culture. Debra Winger’s a young bank exec whose on-and-off affair with a drifting tennis pro ends after his casual drug dealing escalates with fatal results. Winger finds she can’t turn the page without knowing what the hell happened and winds up learning some dangerous facts. It’s a great set-up, if only Bridges had the technical chops to pull it off. But a vague narrative tone needs precise shots; and Bridges is no Antonioni, there’s not a memorable image in the pic. Worse, a lack of chemistry between ‘Missing Mike’ and Winger makes her character look dim instead of blinded by a failed romance. (Too bad, Mark Keyloun has the necessary fast-fading pretty-boy insipid looks, but the guy just can’t act.) And a big thriller-diller climax, though reasonably effective, feels tacked on, less Hitchcockian than WAIT UNTIL DARKish/’67. Though it does give an unlikely grand piano a non-symbolic role to play.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The trailer hints at intimate (i.e. European) sex scenes missing from the final cut. No doubt, co-editor Dede Allen (under studio orders?) tried to make this a bit less artsy.

DOUBLE-BILL: You can imagine how this might have worked by watching Robert Altman’s THE PLAYER/’92.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952)

This lesser-known work from Nicholas Ray (co-written with A. I. Bezzerides) is one his best. An unusual structure starts with an extended prologue that sets up the violent character of city detective Robert Ryan, and the numbing brutality of his assignments. His two partners, squeezed into cars & suits too narrow for such big men, find release valves in their home life, but the solitary Ryan is like a loose grenade with the pin pulled. In a fix after roughing up too many scumbags, he’s sent up north to cool down and help a county sheriff track down a killer. The shift in tone, and the start of a normal three-act structure, is signified by a distinctive Bernard Herrmann music cue.* But within minutes, Ryan is thrust straight into a chase for a mentally unbalanced killer thru the snowy countryside, accompanied by Ward Bond as the victim's avenging father. (He's also accompanied by one of Herrmann’s greatest agitato set pieces, very chromatic, with wicked horn licks & pre-echoes of his scores for NORTH BY NORTHWEST/’59 and MARNIE/’64.) Ryan winds up meeting the suspect's sister, Ida Lupino, fashioning a real character out of mere dramatic convenience; and making their meetings the emotional center of the story, with a real D. H. Lawrentian aspect to it. Sometimes, Ray’s films get away from him, but not here. (Though the two sides of the story play better on second viewing.) It’s also quite dazzling on a technical level with fine perfs from actors you rarely see and some daring hand-held action camera work from George Diskant that still make a big impact.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Producer John Houseman was the likely connection to Herrmann from their days with Orson Welles at The Mercury Players.

DOUBLE-BILL: Ray was an uncredited co-director on John Cromwell’s THE RACKET/’50, something of a warm-up for the city side of this film. But with Ryan as a psychotic gangster and Robert Mitchum playing ‘good cop.’

PARANORMAN (2012)

This Stop-Motion animated feature has so many bewitching things in it, especially in establishing a sense of place, character development & community, that it’s frustrating to see it fall short of its potential.  But technically and in story construction, everything feels about two drafts shy of being production-ready.  (Rushed along to meet a pre-scheduled release date?)  It makes for a very muddled middle. Still, it’s never less than passable, gosh darn likeable, and the opening & closing chapters function in a state of near bliss. Norman is the usual outsider kid you find in these things, ghoulish, friendless, and with a propensity for speaking to the dead. And that comes in handy when his Uncle dies, leaving Norman with the secret for keeping the peace between the living townies and the Zombie World hoping to attack. There are plenty of gags for parental units, school bullies and various undead types, and the film hits its peak in the penultimate climax as Norman takes on Zombies on one side and riotous, lynch-happy townfolk on the other. The final climax is both scary & touching, a technical tour-de-force with lots of digital effects blended into the Stop-Motion action. All good. But it also forces Norman to suddenly turn himself into an unlikely top-flight child psychologist. Not so good. Still, kudos to directors Chris Butler & Sam Fell for getting as much right as they do.

DOUBLE BILL: Butler did CORPSE BRIDE/’05 with Tim Burton, so similarities with FRANKENWEENIE/’12 were probably inevitable. Instead, try Suzie Templeton’s outstanding Stop-Motion re-imagining of Prokofiev’s PETER AND THE WOLF/’06. This Peter could be Norman’s Russian cousin though Templeton’s unity of vision quite outstrips all these films.

THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN (1975)

Once you take away the three collaborations with thorny playwright (and Nobel Laureate) Harold Pinter, it’s hard to justify Joseph Losey’s post-BlackList reputation directing films in Europe. You’ll certainly need those Pinter works as hindsight if this bumpy marital-thriller is to gain even a reasonable measure of interest. Glenda Jackson, the moody wife of frustrated novelist Michael Caine, is taking a marriage break at Baden-Baden when she starts a momentary affair with mysterious gigolo Helmut Berger. Or is it just happening in Caine’s novelistic imagination? Things get more complicated when Berger all but invites himself into their home, provoking Caine to taunt his wife by keeping him around as assistant and general provocateur, unaware of Berger’s current troubles as a drug courier on the run. It’s a lot of plot for a plotless film! Especially since the main point is getting the three leads back to PinterLand in an ominously threatening second act with plenty of emotionally opaque darts to throw, courtesy of another acclaimed playwright, Tom Stoppard. If only those terribly non-Pinteresque explanations didn't keep getting in the way, what with Caine seeking to spark his dried out writer’s imagination (Check!); Jackson seeking passion & escape (Check!); and Berger seeking to avoid the thugs who are after him, but finding an emotional involvement new to him (Double Check!). We’ve dipped pretty far from faux-Pinter to sub-par-Pinter. Losey seems unconcerned, setting up his preferred window-framed shots and mirror images within a typically brusque style. Only, Michael Lonsdale, playing an enforcer out to get Berger, finds the droll unease that’s missing elsewhere. But it's too little, too late.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The early Losey/Pinter projects, THE SERVANT/’63 and ACCIDENT/’67 hold up brilliantly, chilly as ever.

THE MAN IN GREY (1943)

Gainsborough Pictures found a profitable commercial niche on this one, the first in a series of costume melodramas about randy Lords and wicked Ladies, usually in hideous Regency Period outfits. (Great for showing off Margaret Lockwood’s lovely bosoms!) This release set the pattern while upping the profiles of stars Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, James Mason & Stewart Granger. Calvert is the sweet young bride to the brooding Mason. He’s indifferent to her, but not to her old school chum, Lockwood, who soon starts plotting to move up from mistress to second wife. Meantime, Granger, who was ‘walking the boards’ with Lockwood as a traveling player, brings happiness & tru-love to Calvert, along with an offer to carry her away to his island estate . . . as soon as he wins it back from ‘the savages.’ There’s not a character or a plot point in here that hasn’t been lifted from something far better (The Brontes & Daphne Du Maurier are the main targets), but there’s still a bit of fun to be had seeing the nice Calverts & Grangers of the world being had by selfish villains like Lockwood & Mason. If only it weren’t so darn clunky. Watch for an appallingly staged fist-fight/duel between the boys; a typically eccentric appearance by Martita Hunt as the proprietress of a school for ladies; and (BLACKFACE ALERT!) young Harry Scott, in his one & only film role, as Toby, a blacked up Blackamoor. Were there no actual black kids in wartime England? (Plus, a BlackFace Bonus for Granger as Othello.) The recent Criterion DVD restores the original 116 minute running time, but the story still makes little sense.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: With so many good versions of JANE EYRE out there (‘43; ‘70; '11), why bother with Gothic imitations? Though, if imitation it must be, go with REBECCA/’40.