BADLANDS

1975/Director: Terrence Malick/  Writer: Terrence Malick

Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri,  Alan Vint, Gary Little John, John Carter

Terrence Malick has never been a director I cared much for though he is considered a great film maker by the deep meaning of life crowd. Since the 1970’s he has only put out four full length films and those are often lauded as masterpieces. Well, I just cannot relate to them. I simply could not finish The New World, the John Smith, Pocahontas story with Colin Farrell. It was so excruciatingly dull and long. I liked The Thin Red Line in a general way, but I felt he took a great war novel by James Jones and turned it into the type of thing he is known for, an introspective and meandering view into the conflicts of the human soul. Well, that is all fine and dandy  but I really wanted an exciting war movie and maybe one that was a little more pro-American than what has been coming out in the last decade or two. Instead there was this transcendental trip into the human psyche that I did not care for and found it a little pretentious .  His directing style seems to be the complaint a lot of people have with Badlands, that it has lost the impact it once had as a unique film and is in fact boring and plodding (as Malick tends to become). In fact in this case it is the spacey, lazy pacing of the film that appeals to me the most, along with the great performances by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.

Based loosely on the real life killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate across Nebraska and middle America during the late 50’s the film follows the ruthless exploits of Kit and Holly as they roam the badlands of South Dakota and kill most everyone who gets in their path.  The Starkweather/Fugate story has been retold many times in film before and after Badlands. It is not a remarkable film especially and yet it seems to stand apart from the other boy/girl killing spree films in that there is not a tinge of humor or optimism in the film. Even the ending with Holly getting probation (contrary to the real Caril Fugate who was still in prison at the time of the movie’s making) does not seem to offer anything uplifting, and in fact the fact she escaped some form of justice at all seems depressing. The direction and cinematography are slow and colorless. The movie does seem to fall short of what it could have been. But it is the performances by Sheen and Spacek that make this film worth seeing and deserving of a recommendation from the Café.

Kit Carruthers has had it with dead end jobs and fathers who stand between him and his gal. Holly Sargis seems lack-a-daisical and without rudders as she watches Kit shoot her dad (played by Warren Oats) and then tags along for the ride after he burns their house down. Okay, she did slap him. She voices her confusion and halfhearted disapproval of Kit’s murders but stays in the car seat until the cops corner them a in helicopter. Neither seem to care or have any remorse for the people they leave behind them dead, but they do not glorify their deeds either. They seem to see it has doing what had to be done until they were stopped. The killings are cold and sometimes pointless but well acted and filmed.

It is the best of Malick’s films in my opinion and the dreamy, spacey, artsy quality that distances me from his other work is what attracts me to this one. A young and lean Martin Sheen is a killer who is never really menacing but is as remorseless as a snake, and Sissy Spacek is excellent as the lost waif with nothing better to do.  My review may sound loaded with ambiguity, but to be clear, I likes this film and I will see it again. If you have only seen The New World then please check out Badlands and see what Rhodes scholar Terrence Malick should have continued to do with his film work. People praise his films as deep and full of the mysteries. I see them as sominex in digital format except for this low budget classic.

Memorable quotes from Badlands. All quotes from IMDB:

Kit Carruthers: I’ll give you a dollar if you eat this collie.

Holly Sargis: At this moment, I didn’t feel shame or fear, but just kind of blah, like when you’re sitting there and all the water’s run out of the bathtub.

Kit Carruthers: You Tired?
Holly Sargis: Yeah.
Kit Carruthers: Yeah, you look tired… Listen, honey. when all this is over, I’m going to sit down and buy you a big, thick steak.
Holly Sargis: I don’t want a steak.
Kit Carruthers: Well, we’ll see about that… Hey, lookie.

Holly Sargis: [a while after shot friend Kato] How is he?
Kit Carruthers: I got him in the stomach.
Holly Sargis: Is he upset?
Kit Carruthers: He didn’t say nothing to me about it.

Holly Sargis: One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad’s stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody… this very moment… if my mom had never met my dad… if she had never died. And what’s the man I’ll marry gonna look like? What’s he doing right this minute? Is he thinking about me now, by some coincidence, even though he doesn’t know me? Does it show on his face? For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened.

Holly Sargis: He needed me now more than ever, but something had come between us. I’d stopped even paying attention to him. Instead I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of mouth where nobody could read them.

Holly Sargis: [Last lines of the film] Kit and I were taken back to South Dakota. They kept him in solitary, so he didn’t have a chance to get acquainted with the other inmates, though he was sure they’d like him, especially the murderers. Myself, I got off with probation and a lot of nasty looks. Later I married the son of the lawyer who defended me. Kit went to sleep in the courtroom while his confession was being read, and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair. On a warm spring night, six months later, after donating his body to science, he did.

Kit Carruthers: Sir… Where’d you get that hat?
Trooper: State.
Kit Carruthers: Boy, I’d like to buy me one of those.
Trooper: [the trooper smiles] You’re quite an individual, Kit.
Kit Carruthers: Think they’ll take that into consideration?

Kit Carruthers: Hey, I found a toaster.

COME DRINK WITH ME (DA ZUI XIA)

1966/Director: King Hu/ Writers: King Hu, Yang Erh

Cast: Pei-pei Cheng, Hua Yueh

Cheng Pei Pei was a formal dancer who Shaw Brother’s actor, set designer and eventually director King Hu cast as the master sword fighter Golden Swallow in the groundbreaking film Come Drink With Me. She was most recently known as Chow Yun Fat’s antagonist Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Cheng Pei Pei could easily be said to be the first of the sword fighting women and 1966’s Come Drink With Me was her grand entry into the world of Kung Fu cinema. The film followed the tradition of Wuxia (wu=kung fu, martial arts, xia=hero, chivalry) literature and films (wu xia pian, pian being a term for movies) in China. The hero in the tradition is similar to the hero in Japanese Samurai films or the gunfighter in American Westerns. Usually a lone traveler with a code, or on a quest of some nature, confronts a ruthless opponent or gang. There is usually the matter of justice being served or an old score being righted and honor upheld. The film is actually part of a larger tradition of such films from China (Hong Kong) and was not the first one that spawned the genre as is sometimes claimed. The film is memorable for the way the fight scenes are filmed, the way it used music, Hu King’s marvelous sets and of course the lithe and elegant moves of Cheng Pei Pei ( this is the Hong Kong spell/Hollywood spelling of her Chinese name, while the Mandarin pinyin spelling is Zheng Pei Pei,  and is the name she is known by to most Chinese).

This film follows the wuxian tradition and many martial arts that followed do seem  influenced by this early classic of the genre. It is not a comedy and the fight scenes are not flashy or hyper by today’s standards but they are finely choreographed. The general storyline tells of the hero Golden Swallow on a quest to free her brother from the hands of a ruthless gang. There is the first confrontation with the gang in a tavern where everyone thinks she is a young man. This is my only complaint about the film and a similarity here exists with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Cheng Pei Pei not for one instant resembles a young man or boy, anymore than Zhang Ziyi does in the nearly mirror scene in the Ang Lee (Li Ang)  film. There seems to be no reason for them thinking she is and it does not add to the story at all, and when they discover she is not a boy later in the film they show no surprise at all. It is never explained why she was supposed to be a boy and it is really rather funny and confounding to watch the scenes where this beautiful woman is confused for a guy.
She meets up with the alcoholic beggar (but also skilled  Kung Fu master) Drunken Cat played by another early star of Kung Fu cinema Yang Erh  and soon they are both on the same mission but for different reasons. In the tradition of many Wu Xia Pan films Drunken Cat is on a personal quest to avenge the death of his teacher by another Kung Fu students, whose Kung Fu skills surpasses he own, but Drunken Cat is motivated by a just cause.

As in cowboy westerns whose heros rely on their fast and accurate gunplay, the life of the Wuxia  hero hinges on his Kung Fu and sword skills as he or she travels the land righting wrongs and confronting those who have submitted to the dark temptations of their Kung Fu mastery. One thing I noticed, and liked, about this film was an absence of a music score during the fight scenes as well as the absence of the swooshing sounds the fighter’s feet and hands would later make. It added to the realism. And while there are some super Kung Fu moments like gliding through the air or running up walls it is not as over done as in later movies. This film along with Dragon Gate Inn and A Touch of Zen are considered King Hu’s best works and reviews of those two films are in the works here and will be posted soon.

THE FIGHT SCENE IN THE TEMPLE FROM COME DRINK WITH ME

One of the more enduring Hammer Queen legends Veronica Carlson was a talented art student who gained some popularity as a model after a few small film roles. She appeared here and there in the British tabloids with a few lines of gossip under a pin up style picture that usually focused on her legs. Hammer head James Carreras saw one such picture of Veronica and decided to cast in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave with Christopher Lee, to be directed by Freddie Frances, more renowned for his cinematography, especially his b/w work. This has become one of my all time favorite Hammer Films, if not my favorite. She also did Frankenstein Must be Destroyed with a thoroughly menacing Peter Cushing as a Dr Frankenstein who will let nothing or no one stand in the way of his goals, including hapless little Veronica. She and director Terrence Fisher were upset over a rape scene included in the film at the behest of the American distributor. I must say that the scene of Peter Cushing assaulting her is one of my lest favorite and unnecessary scenes in the Hammer catalog. It is totally incongruous with the way Frankenstein is portrayed in other Hammer films and not consistent with Pushing usual on screen personas.

She came into the Hammer scene towards the end of its glory days and when the American distributors were seizing more control over the British studio resulting in the more exploitive period of the studio before its demise. This is the period where Hammer’s output tended to resemble the Euro-Sleaze work going on across the channel. She made one last substantial last film with her by now good friend Freddie Francis called the Ghoul before going into film retirement and moving to Florida to paint fulltime. While she seems to remembered as a long legged pin up model, I simply adore her innocent face and thick blonde hair. A short film career but she is still remembered fondly.

THUMBNAIL GALLERY COLLECTION OF VERONICA CARLSON

A - Z LIST OF URANIUM CAFE POSTS

THE GIANT CLAW

1957/Director: Fred F. Sears/Writers: Paul Gangelin, Samuel Newman

Cast: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Edgar Barrier, Robert Shayne

The Giant Claw sports simply one of the worst, least frightening monsters in the history of movies. But don’t let that stop you from checking out this camp, schlock classic from director Fred F. Sears and producer Sam Katzman and starring Jeff Morrow and Playboy Playmate Mara Corday . The plot is not much different from the multitude of other big bug or animal movies coming out at the time. Mara Corday also starred in two other memorable big creature flicks, Jack Arnold’s Tarantula and The Black Scorpion (reviews coming eventually on both of these flicks). A bird as big as a “battleship” that comes either from the ice age of 17,000 BC or an antimatter universe hovers over the world and makes meals out of jets, airplanes and French Canadians. The giant “chicken” is one of the oddest looking beasts ever, and is simply a string controlled puppet whose wings always stay spread, even when it is nesting. My wife was utterly dumbfounded when she watched some of the film with me. I loved the movie and all its corniness and I am sure any regular reader of the Café will have a good time and more than a few unintended laughs at this movie full of quirky dialog and chessy special effects. One story tells of director Sears sneaking out of a screening of the film as the audience burst out in laughter each time the bird appeared on screen. The monster was added later and none of the cast had any idea what it was going to look like until they say the film themselves. Well we don’t watch this stuff to be wowed by the special effects or captivated by the story. I personally watch them to just escape and have a good time. And if you need a break from the routine I suggest you shake hands with The Giant Claw.

I am including here an audio sample I extracted for your entertainment of a classic scientific explanation of how to destroy the beast that all these old films seemed to have. This is one of the best I have ever heard. Also included along with my usually selection of images are some quoted from IMDB. I love quotes from old films and you will find them here as long as they are good and available. In the next post is a clip I put together on youtube with the trailer and a scene of the antimatter turkey attacking some reckless 1950’s style teenagers, who no matter how rebellious always look like Republicans by today’s standards. The video is in a separate post for technical reasons. The quality of the film trailer is not great but the best I could find, but the clip sample is pretty good. If camp is your cup of tea please check this one out.

A REASONABLY SOUND SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR A SURE FIRE METHOD TO FRY THE CHICKEN FROM OUTER SPACE (OR, MAYBE THE ICE AGE, WHO KNOWS).

MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM THE GIANT CLAW. ALL QUOTES FROM IMDB.

Mitch MacAfee: I know another poem. Be plain in dress and sober in your diet. In short, my dearie, kiss me and be quiet.

Gen. Van Buskirk: Three men reported they saw something. Two of them are now dead.

Mitch MacAfee: That makes me Chief Cook and Bottle Washer in a one-man Bird Watcher’s Society!

Narrator: Once the world was big, and no man in his lifetime could circle it. Through the centuries, science has made man’s lifetime bigger, and the world smaller. Now the farthest corner of the Earth is as close as a pushbutton, and time has lost all meaning as man-made devices speed many many times faster than sound itself.

Narrator: Something, he didn’t know what, but something as big as a Battleship has just flown over and past him.”

Sally: Well, flying Battleships, pink elephants, same difference.

Mitch MacAfee: I said it looked like a Battleship, not that it was a Battleship.

Sally: Oh, come off it, Mitch, you’ve done enough harm with your flying Battleship…

Narrator: An electronics engineer, a radar officer, a mathematician and systems analyst, a radar operator, a couple of plotters. People doing a job, well, efficiently, serious, having fun, doing a job. Situation: normal. For the moment…

Sally: Will it work, Mitch?

Mitch MacAfee: I don’t know. I honestly haven’t the faintest, foggiest idea. It’s one of those cockeyed concepts that you pull down out of Cloud Eight somewhere in sheer desperation.

Sally: Something that seemingly destroyed four planes and just missed you the first time. Something like your flying Battleship?

Sally: Oh, nothing so domestic as a flying saucer, officer. Just a flying Battleship.

Police Officer: Well, have a good time with your flying Battleship.

Sally: If felt like something collided with us up there!

Mitch MacAfee: Yeah, a flying Battleship that wasn’t there.”

Narrator: Once more a frantic pilot radios in a report on a UFO. A bird. A bird as big as a Battleship!

Sally: Did he say what it was?

Gen. Van Buskirk: Yes, he did. A bird. A bird as big as a Battleship…

Mitch MacAfee: You keep your shirt on and I’ll go get my pants on.

Mitch MacAfee: Now, I don’t don’t care if that bird came from outer space or Upper Saddle River, New Jersey; it’s still made of flesh and blood - of some sort - and vulnerable to bullets and bombs.

Maj. Bergen: By the time I get through with you, Mr. Electronics Engineer, you’ll be lucky if they let you test batteries for flashlights.

Lt. Gen. Edward Considine: It’s hard to come up with answers when you don’t even know what the question is.

IN A LONELY PLACE

1950/ Director: Nicholas Ray/ Writers:Dorothy B. Hughes (story), Edmund H. North (adaptation)

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart

It has been said that the character of “Dix” Dixon Steele in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place comes closer to conveying Bogey’s real character than any other of his film roles. Steele is a once successful screen writer who has not had a hit in years and now is cynical and inclined to drink heavily and sulk. His disposition is moody and prone to violence. It is a small wonder that he becomes the main suspect when a young girl is found murdered after she spent her last night alive at his apartment reading a book meant for adaptation. Steele is so burned out and bitter at the shallow movie industry that made him a celebrity he cannot even read the book himself.

Gloria Grahame plays Steele’s neighbor Laurel and she is drawn into his cynical charm easily as they spare back and forth with witty barbs and jabs. As the film develops she becomes more and more aware of Steele’s very dangerous side and soon begins to wonder if he is in fact the killer or not. Steele seems to take delight in giving confusing information to the cops who he sees as unable to solve the matter alone, at one point over dinner with a cop buddy reinacting the way the murder may have taken place with sadist relish.

Obviously Steele is a troubled man with a history of violence and we find out a history woman beating as well. He is soon irrationally jealous and suspicious of Laurel and the tensions gets more severe as she tries to get away secretly. The movie ends with Steele being cleared of the charges but losing Laurel because of his own possessiveness and violence. Originally Ray and screenwriter Andrew Solt had Steele murder Laurel in a rage at the same time he is cleared of the murder he was suspected of originally. Ray saw this as simply too nihilistic and felt marriages and relationships could end on some less solemn note. Interestingly during production Ray and his wife, Gloria Grahame herself, were as privately as possible ending their rocky marriage. Ray often slept on the sofa in the studio office and a contract was written up stipulating what duties, and what duties only, Mrs. Grahame were responsible for while on the set in the presence of her director husband. Who knows if this real life drama had any influence on the hastily improvised ending Ray suddenly felt compelled to add on even after the more tragic ending had been shot and approved.

The film was produced for Bogart’s Santana Productions at a time when the big film studios began to see independent studios as threats to their power. It is a fine performance by Bogart. He is funny, brooding and menacing. Some of the dialog and interchanges seem a little over the top at times but they are all the more engaging for that reason. I tend to like the types of performances given in older films though they seem exaggerated by todays post method acting standards. It is considered a film noir classic though it is hard to really fit into a niche neatly. Didn’t fare too well at the box office but has become a cult classic by virtue of its quality alone. And aren’t those the best kind of movies anyway? Ones that bomb and get no awards when they are released but get all the respect they deserve day in and day out for decades. The film has since justly received all the honors it deserves including one of the highest any film can receive… a haphazard review here on my measly blog.

A SELECTION OF QUOTES FROM A LONELY PLACE. ALL QUOTES FROM IMDB.

Mildred Atkinson: Before I started to go to work at Paul’s, I used to think that actors made up their own lines.
Dixon Steele: When they get to be big stars, they usually do.

Sylvia Nicolai: Well, he’s exciting because he isn’t quite normal.

Brub Nicolai: Maybe us cops could use some of that brand of abnormality. I learned more about this case in five minutes from him than I did from all of our photographs, tire prints and investigations.
Dixon Steele: Nobody can call me the things he did.

Laurel Gray: A blind, knuckle-headed squirrel. That’s REAL bad.

Dixon Steele: There’s no sacrifice too great for a chance at immortality.

Dixon Steele: I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.
[last lines]

Laurel Gray: [tearfully] I lived a few weeks while you loved me. Goodbye, Dix.
Frances Randolph: Remember how I used to read to you?

Dixon Steele: Uh huh. Since then, I’ve learned to read by myself.
Dixon Steele: Go ahead and get some sleep and we’ll have dinner together tonight.

Laurel Gray: We’ll have dinner tonight. But not together.
Dixon Steele: It was his story against mine, but of course, I told my story better.

Mel Lippmann: What does it matter what I think? I’m the guy who tried to talk Selznick out of doing “Gone with the Wind”!
Actress in Convertible: Dix Steele ! How are you? Don’t you remember me?
Dixon Steele: Sorry, can’t say that I do.
Actress in Convertible: You wrote the last picture I did… at Columbia

Dixon Steele: Oh, I make it a point to never see pictures I write.
[referring to the book Dixon is supposed to adapt into a screenplay]
Mildred Atkinson: Oh I think it’ll make a dreamy picture, Mr. Steele. What I call an epic.
Dixon Steele: And what do you call an epic?
Mildred Atkinson: Well, you know - a picture that’s REAL long and has lots of things going on.

Capt. Lochner: Why didn’t you call for a cab? Isn’t that what a gentleman usually does under the circumstances?
Dixon Steele: Oh I didn’t say I was a gentleman. I said I was tired.

Mildred Atkinson: It must be WONDERFUL to be a writer!
Dixon Steele: [sarcastically] Oh, thrilling!

Capt. Lochner: [Dixon has replied with sarcasm to Lochner's questions] You’re told that the girl you were with last night was found in Benedict Canyon, murdered. Dumped from a moving car. What’s your reaction? Shock? Horror? Sympathy? No - just petulance at being questioned. A couple of feeble jokes. You puzzle me, Mr. Steele.
Dixon Steele: Well, I grant you, the jokes could’ve been better, but I don’t see why the rest should worry you - that is, unless you plan to arrest me on lack of emotion.

Dixon Steele: [noting the geography of their apartments] You know, Ms. Gray, you’re one up on me - you can see into my apartment but I can’t see into yours.
Laurel Gray: I promise you, I won’t take advantage of it.
Dixon Steele: [wryly] I would, if it were the other way around.

Capt. Lochner: Considering that you’ve never met Mr. Steele, you pay quite a bit of attention to him.
Laurel Gray: Hmm-hmm. I have at that.
Capt. Lochner: Do you usually give such attention to your neighbors?
Laurel Gray: No.
Capt. Lochner: Were you interested in Mr. Steele because he’s a celebrity?
Laurel Gray: No, not at all. I noticed him because he looked interesting - I like his face.

Brub Nicolai: You know, I got married.
Dixon Steele: Why?
Brub Nicolai: Oh, I don’t know. I guess she had a couple of bucks to spare.

Dixon Steele: [to Laurel] I’ve been looking for someone a long time… I didn’t know her name or where she lived - I’d never seen her before. A girl was killed, and because of that, I found what I was looking for. Now I know your name, where you live, and how you look.

Laurel Gray: [on a scene in Dix's script] I love the love scene - it’s very good.
Dixon Steele: Well that’s because they’re not always telling each other how much in love they are. A good love scene should be about something else besides love. For instance, this one. Me fixing grapefruit. You sitting over there, dopey, half-asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we’re in love.

Dixon Steele: Anything you want to make you happy?
Laurel Gray: [whispers into his ear] I wouldn’t want anyone but you.

Dixon Steele: You know, you’re out of your mind - how can anyone like a face like this? Look at it…
[leans in for a kiss]
Laurel Gray: I said I liked it - I didn’t say I wanted to kiss it.

Dixon Steele: You annoy me!
Laurel Gray: If I do, it isn’t intentional.

Capt. Lochner: I didn’t expect you to give me more information… but certain facts contradict your original statement.
Laurel Gray: [flatly] I wish you’d say what you mean.
Capt. Lochner: Yes, let’s do that. On the night of the Atkinson murder, you looked at Dixon Steele and said you didn’t know him.
Laurel Gray: I didn’t.
Capt. Lochner: Since then, you and he have been inseparable.
Laurel Gray: He’s writing a script. I’m doing the typing.
Capt. Lochner: Do you receive a salary for this?
Laurel Gray: No. I’m doing it for love.
Capt. Lochner: [surprised] Are you in love with Mr. Steele?
Laurel Gray: For the record, I am in love with Mr. Steele.
Capt. Lochner: Are you going to be married?
Laurel Gray: [pause] If we do, I’ll send you an invitation - after all, it was you who first introduced us to each other.

Dixon Steele: Oh, I love a picnic. Acres and acres of sand and all of it in your food.
Laurel Gray: Stop griping. Just lie still and inhale.
Dixon Steele: What, sand?
Laurel Gray: No, air - and don’t let it go to your head.

Laurel Gray: [to Capt. Lochner] Yesterday, this would’ve meant so much to us. Now it doesn’t matter… it doesn’t matter at all.

Dixon Steele: You know, when you first walked into the police station, I said to myself, “There she is - the one that’s different. She’s not coy or cute or corny. She’s a good guy - I’m glad she’s on my side. She speaks her mind and she knows what she wants.”
Laurel Gray: Thank you, sir. But let me add: I also know what I don’t want - and I don’t want to be rushed.

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I recievied an invitation from both Chick Young at Trash Aesthetics and Gilligan over at Retrospace to participate in something called a "meme", but I am so out of touch I have no clue what that is (but that has never stopped me from getting involved before). Seems it originated from Piper and Brian over at Lazy Eye Theatre blog (a couple of the more active LAMBers) and there have been good fantasy film festivals so far by Chick, Gilligan and Barbarella apologist Becca at No Smoking in the Skull Cave. I do not know if Tal at Taliesen Meets the Vampires has contributed as of this moment, but I will plug his excellent site anyway, free of charge. The rules (as laid down by the crew at the Lazy Eye site) are:

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1) Choose 12 Films to be featured. They could be random selections or part of a greater theme. Whatever you want.

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2) Explain why you chose the films.

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3) Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre so I can have hundreds of links and I can take those links and spread them all out on the bed and then roll around in them.

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4) The people selected then have to turn around and select 5 more people.

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So, there you have it, now lets get on with the Uranium Cafe Film Festival . I think it was supposed to be some 12 day marathon, but we here at the Cafe know a lot of you have to work and maybe forking out a movie ticket each night for twelve days can be tough in these days of fiscal woe. So we are having a double feature each night for six days (with Chili Cook Off and Pentacostal Healing Revival over the weekend). Here are the films I decided to play and it was not easy to select 12 from the many I would want to see on the big screen ( I assume we are fantasizing that this is on some big screen venue and not over at my place on the sofa):

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Day 01 Japanese Cult Cinema/Matango-Branded to Kill

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Day 02 Exploitation Classics by Jack Hill/Switchblade Sisters-Spider Baby

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Day 03 Drifters and Desperados/Hombre-The Wild Bunch

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Day 04 Psychotic Women Haters/The Boston Strangler-Frenzy

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Day 05 Cops on the Edge/Bullitt-Dirty Harry

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Day 06 Monsters from Space/The Thing-Alien 3

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Branded to Kill-

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I have only been able to see this 1967 film by Seijin Suzuki in Japanese without subtitles so I really do not know what is going on all the time, but the film has a reputation for being “absurdist” and surrealistic anyway, so I am not sure if subs would help, and the experience of watching this visually mesmerizing movie is rewarding enough. The truth is Nikkatsu studios actually fired Suzuki for this film and the conflict following got him blacklisted by Japanese studios. It is the story of a hit man who himself becomes the target of another ruthless hired killer and of course a super sexy and dangerous girl. I don’t know what else you need to know, check it out. A longer essay of this odd movie is in the oven.

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Matango (aka, Attack of the Mushroom People)

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Matango is a 1963 film by Ishiro Honda and is a departure of sorts for the man who made the best of Godzilla and Toho monster movies. Bleak and claustrophobic the action and drama centers around a group of ship wrecked young Japanese people who suddenly realize there are reasons there are no birds and turtles on the foggy, dismal little island they find themselves on. Also released as Attack of the Mushroom People it found its way into late night TV in the 70's (I saw it on Project Terror in San Antonio as a wee lad) and eventually into VHS And DVD cult-dom, though never having been distributed in movie houses in the States. A longer review and critique is coming soon as I recently came into the original Japanese language version.

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Spider Baby -

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I understand a remake of this 1964 (though released in 1968) Jack Hill film is in the works, with Hill as a producer. I once had a signed copy of Spider Baby by Jack Hill but my buddy Matt inherited that when I left for China some years ago. The story revolves around f a family who suffer from a congenital disease that causes them to eventually regress in mental condition to imbecility. Gee, sounds familiar. It is a black comedy with some creepy moments and fine b/w photography. Lon Chaney Jr and Sid Haig appear in the film. I don't really know how the remake will turn out but will check it out if I can since Hill is producing it, and his original never got the distribution or attention it should have until only recently.

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Switchblade Sisters-

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Both Spider baby and Switchblade Sisters are films cited by Quentin Tarantino as heavy influences, though with Switchblade we can see a more direct influence on his work and the film was restored and released on his Rolling Thunder Pictures label in 1996. A gang deb flick with lots of great dialog and over the top acting, including squeaky voiced Robbie Lee, it is the type of action movie Hill became more associated with than horror/suspense pieces likeSpider Baby. It is really fun to watch and some consider it to be Hill's best film. There is a fight scene in the jail between the guards and the Dagger debs and you have to watch for the male stand in for the butchy female jail guard. Gets no better.

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Hombre-

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A psychological western starring a brooding Paul Newman as a "half-breed" Apache who inherits a hotel and suddenly finds himself reluctantly in the white man's world with a hair cut. Directed by Martin Ritt and based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, this is a moody and depressing film (and that is a thumbs up in other words from me) that deals with issues under the surface other than cowboys and Indians. Hardly a music score is to be heard and Richard Boone is menacing as the bad guy. No one is perfect and everyone finds themselves in the middle of the desert where a glass of water is more valued than the stolen loot most of them are trying to salivate over. A great film I have not not seen in way too long.

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The Wild Bunch-

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A totally great western (and film period!) by Sam Peckinpah about a group of mercenaries led by William Holden that try to get a kidnapped girl back from Mexican bandits and revolutionaries. The film is most famous for it cinematography and editing, using slow motion in ways that had not been done much before (like showing hordes of drunk Mexican soldiers being blasted to bloody smithereens). The men are all tough and ruthless, and there is a fine line between the good guys and bad guys. The violence is basically splatter film material and the acting and dialog is great from start to finish. Expect a longer critique one day. I love this movie.

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The Boston Strangler-

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I actually went to 1st grade in Boston at the time Albert DeSalvo (and perhaps another man as modern police theory speculates) was finishing up a series of 13 murders of women, many, though not all, found with stockings around their throats. While The Boston Strangler has receiived some criticism because of its liberty with the facts of the case that does not deter me from recommending this well made suspense film. Tony Curtis is out of character and does great here as the killer, and Henry Fonda is equally in fine form as police detective John S. Bottomly. A lot of unnecessary split scene photography and I have never subscribed to the “split personality” disorder, especially as it is shown here, but so what. It’s a just a movie and a damn good one at that.

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Frenzy-

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As far as I know 1972’s Frenzy was Hitchcock’s only R rated film. Of course back then it took much less to get an R rating than it does now. It is one of my favorite Hitchcock films outside all of his work with Jimmy Steward. Jon Finch plays Richard Blaney, a man with anger management issues who soon finds himself the fall guy for a series of neck tie stranglings that have been terrorizing the citizens of London, where the film was shot. Along with the iconic shower sequence in Psycho Frenzy contains one of Hitchcocks most graphic murder sequences. Finch is great as his life unravels and there is no where he can turn as all the evidence begins to point towards him. The ending is a classic ending where the killer is undone and apprehended and shown humiliated, rather than the stock ending of today’s film where the killer simply has to be killed off himself in some action scene or worse a hostage scene where the cop has had to lay down his weapon. Whatever happened to endings like this?!

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Bullitt-

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1968’s Bullitt created so many of the genre formulas for the 70’s cop movies and TV shows that is hard to image that they all seemed to come from one film essentially. Steve McQueen plays Bullitt, a outsider cop having issues with insubordination and driven by an instinct to bring the bad guy to justice (of any type) regardless of who is in the way, including corrupt city officials, here played by Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Robert Vaughn. Of course the most famous sequence is the car chase, pitting Bullitt’s Ford Mustang against the hitmens’s Dodge Charger. Contrary to legend McQueen did not do the bulk of the stunt driving but he is still cool. Action packed and gritty with Jaqueline Bisset as his sensitive, artsy girlfriend who comes to realize Bullitt lives in a world she knows nothing about. The movie serves as a template for my next cop on the edge selection…

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Dirty Harry-

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“Dirty” Harry Callaghan, like Bullitt, is a cop more concerned with justice than with city politics and the rights of murderdous bad guys. Clint Eastwood with his .44 Magum is immortal in the role (and I do not think Clint is compensating for anything), and while the film is not really as good as Bullitt story wise in my opinion, it revived the spirit of the outsider cop film established by Bullitt and cop movies and TV shows have never been the same since. Reni Satoni is simply great as well as the serial killer Scorpio (based somewhat less than loosely on real life serial killer Zodiac). Full of classic quotes and action it is really the only one of the Dirty Harry franchise I really like. The other ones just got sort of cheesy and Callaghan became comic bookish, whereas here the character, like his Sergio Leone loner cowboy, simply stands mythic in proportions to the world around him. -

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