Novel Ways to Commit Murder

 

 

This is my entry in the Classic Television Blogathon hosted by Classic Film and TV Corner

 

Who remembers Columbo? Probably close to 90% of you, I bet...

It was one of four recurring mystery series stories that ran during the 1970's. The show, The NBC Mystery Movie, was what is referred to in the language of the film industry as a "wheel" series. Originally the show would have a different character each week in a rotating fashion. One week it would be Columbo, the next week it would be McCloud (featuring Dennis Weaver as a New Mexico police deputy on loan to the New York City Police Department) and then the next week it would be McMillan and Wife (featuring Rock Hudson and Susan St. James as a husband and wife team solving murders). Additionally, for a brief period, Hec Ramsey (featuring Richard Boone as a lawman in the turn of the century old west) appeared in the mix, but that one never really took off.

The popularity of The NBC Mystery Movie series also spawned several imitations that tried to cash in on the concept. The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie also featured a rotating group of private eyes/ police detective dramas, some of which did garner some attention. Quincy, M.E., a series featuring Jack Klugman as a medical examiner in Los Angeles, got it's start under that banner, but most of the others are probably only known to those of us who were alive at the time of the series. (I always wished Lanigan's Rabbi, a series based on the mysteries of Harry Kemelman about a Jewish rabbi who constantly found himself in the middle of crime investigation, had made it, but it never took off).

For that matter, the whole project of the additional mystery "wheel" of The Wednesday Mystery Movie never really garnered the audience that NBC hoped for. I can't really say why, because a check of the TV schedule for that night, for the most part, had it up against ABC Movie of the Week, which was just made-for TV movies, and Cannon. Cannon, which starred an overweight William Conrad as a private eye, was pretty good, to be fair, but I thought some of those stories on the NBC wheel had potential.

Although both McCloud and McMillan and Wife both had their share of popularity, neither of them really had the lasting effect that Columbo did. After all, those other two only managed to get one, that's it, one follow up TV movie in the late 80's, at the same time they were resurrecting Columbo. That series, on the other hand, got 13 follow up TV movies in the 80's and 90's. Much of this had to do with how endearing Falk was as the title character to be sure. 

But the unique thing about Columbo as a mystery series was that we, as the audience, already knew who the murderer was and how he committed said murder. The hook was watching how Columbo (Peter Falk) would gradually break it all down and come across the clues that lead him to solve the murder. All the while coming across as a scatterbrain to his potential nemesis (the murderer in question).

 

Additionally, you got to see some pretty big names featured as the "Murderer of the Week".  Over the span of the 7 seasons of the original series as well as the 13 follow up TV movies we got to see Columbo match wits with the likes of Eddie Albert, Gene Barry, Dabney Coleman, Robert Culp, Faye Dunaway, Dick van Dyke, Lee Grant, Lawrence Harvey, Janet Leigh,  Roddy McDowell, Ray Milland,  Ricardo Montalban, Leonard Nimoy, Donald Pleasence, and William Shatner.

One of the more interesting actors playing the villain in these episodes was Jack Cassidy. Although Cassidy never really hit the big time in feature films, he was a recognizable face on TV, making guest appearances on dozens of TV shows in the 60's and 70's, as well as being a face on several celebrity game shows of the era. Whether or not you know the name, you would surely recognize his face if you grew up at that time.

 

Even if you don't know who he is, you would surely be familiar with his two sons, who were also big time faces in the 70's.

 

David (left) and Shaun (right) Cassidy

 

Cassidy played the villain in three episodes of Columbo.  If he hadn't passed away in 1977, I feel sure he could have gotten the casting call to play another villain when the TV movie Columbo fad hit the airwaves back in the 90's.

So, I am going to cover two of his better performances on Columbo. A website I saw when researching this blog entry, one dedicated to the whole series (Columbophile), ranks both of these episodes in his top 5 episodes. And I wholeheartedly agree.

 

Columbo "Murder by the Book" (aired Sept. 15, 1971):

"Murder by the Book" was the 3rd episode of the first season of the series (although officially, it was the first of the actual season run, since the first two were "one off" TV movies airing in winter of 1967-68 and the winter of 1970-71).

The central story is that Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) and Jim Farris (Martin Milner) have a successful tour as the writing team who created an amateur sleuth named Mrs. Melville. I say "team" because both their names are on the cover, but it becomes evident early on that Farris has been doing the bulk of the writing and that Franklin has been just the face you see on TV and in public. Franklin, according to Farris' wife, Joanna (Rosemary Forsyth), hasn't written a word of the Mrs. Melville books in years.

 

So Farris and Franklin have decided to terminate the partnership. Or Farris has determined that at least. It turns out that Franklin has a different termination in mind...

In a rather intricate plot, Franklin lures Farris to his cabin in the boondocks south of LA. Farris, although reluctant, agrees.  He even agrees to phone Joanna and claim he is "working late" at the office, so that Joanna thinks he is still in LA. When Franklin gets Farris to the cabin, he shoots his partner, all while Farris is on the phone with his wife, giving her the "ruse" that Franklin gave him to use.

In preparation, just before the pair leave LA, Franklin ransacks Farris office to give the impression that there was something going on in Farris own private life. Franklin has concocted a story that Farris was supposedly working on a new book which was supposed to be an expose of East Coast syndicate (read "Mafia", although that word is never used.)

 

Columbo is on the scene at the office, although as a homicide detective he is only there on his own initiative, since there is no indication that a homicide has been committed as yet. Franklin, having been called at his cabin by Joanna, commits his first mistake, in Columbo's thinking, by driving back to LA instead of flying.

The plot thickens when Franklin dumps the body on his front lawn, and tells Columbo that it is apparently a warning from the Mob, even though, as he admits, he, Franklin, had nothing to do with Farris new book idea. Columbo is slightly confused, since when Franklin called the police about the body, he was at the same time opening his mail. Why would anyone bother with opening their mail when there was a dead body on his front lawn, Columbo wonders.

In the meantime Franklin has to deal with Lily La Sanka (Barbara Colby), a woman who owns a store near Franklin's cabin.  Lily has an unrequited infatuation with Franklin, but she also saw Franklin with Farris just before Farris was murdered. So she knows that Farris was not in his office, but at the cabin. Instead of going to the police with her information, she tries to blackmail Franklin, offering to keep her knowledge to herself in exchange for $15,000.

 

Knowing that this is a loose end he must clean up, Franklin ends up luring Lily to a rendezvous where he kills her. Now he has two murders on his hands.  He tries to convince Columbo that he barely knew Lily, but Columbo finds an autographed copy of the new Mrs. Melville book with an inscription that reads "to my darling Lily" which  indicates to Columbo that their relationship was not so nearly as distant as Franklin intimated.

Little things like that keep Columbo hot on the scent of Franklin as the guilty party. What with the fact that Joanna has already told Columbo that Franklin's input into most of the Mrs. Melville books was negligible, and the fact that Farris had the habit of writing down brief ideas on scraps of paper and matchbooks, Columbo finds a piece of paper that pretty much encapsulates what Franklin did in reality. And Columbo presses Franklin with the evidence.

It turns out, in the denouement, that the idea that was on the paper was actually the "only good idea" that Franklin had ever posited during their partnership. 

The series just barely getting started there are a few things that became a regular part of the series that are missing from this episode.  For one thing, the classic "oh, just one more thing" line that would often be a part of the series never happens in this episode. But even without some of those quirks that would later endear the character to the audience, the episode clicks.  And of course, one of those things is an excellent villain. Cassidy is definitely one of the more believable and more sinister villains of the series.

A couple of other things: This was an early effort by Steven Spielberg as a director. Spielberg was still basically an unknown in Hollywood, still several years away from Jaws, but he had done some directing in TV by this time, in particular a segment of the first episode of Rod Serling's follow up to The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery. Also this was an early effort by scriptwriter Steven Bochco, who would later come to fame as a writer and creator for such shows as Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law.

 

 

Columbo "Publish or Perish" (aired Jan. 18, 1974):

Riley Greenleaf (Jack Cassidy) has a problem. Greenleaf is a publisher and his cash cow, the very talented Alan Mallory (Mickey Spillane) is about to jump ship and sign with another publisher. 

 

Greenleaf is so adamant about not having his prize writer go to a competitor that he is willing to kill off the man.  As such he has hired a would-be assassin, Eddie Kane (John Chandler), to break in to Mallory's apartment and shoot him.

 

But Greenleaf isn't going to do this without setting himself up with an alibi, because, after all, being that he has shown some reluctance to let bygones be bygones, obviously he would be the first candidate to be investigated should anything happen to Mallory. So he makes damn sure that his assassin knows that he should kill Mallory at a specific time, thus making an alibi that Greenleaf sets up for himself eliminate him as a suspect.

But Greenleaf has an even more devious mind than just that. He has Kane use a gun that will prove to only have Greenleaf's fingerprints on it. And to leave the gun and the key (which only Greenleaf supposedly has the second copy) on the floor of Mallory's apartment.

Meanwhile Greenleaf sets himself up with his alibi.  He is (supposedly) getting drunk in a town far away from the murder scene. And not only that, but just to put the final candle on the cake, he intentionally runs into another car in the parking lot as he is leaving the bar, one which has a husband and wife in it, thus establishing that he was nowhere near Mallory's place when he was shot.

 

So when Columbo arrives on the scene, he finds the key and also the gun. Open and shut case, thinks Columbo. Not only that, but initially Greenleaf says he can't remember where he was last night.  He woke up in the drunk tank at the jail is all he can remember. He has to admit that the evidence seems to prove that he actually did kill Mallory, probably in a drunken rage.    

 But fortunately for Greenleaf a call comes in from his insurance agent. He was in an accident in a parking lot of a bar across town. Relieved, Greenleaf says it's a good thing those people came forward. Except, Greenleaf makes his first stumble, because no one had said the accident involved more than one person... So how would he know there was more people than one in the car.

 

These things never get by Columbo. He points it out to Greenleaf, but of course Greenleaf manages to worm his way out of the faux pas... so he thinks.  But in addition there is the problem of the key.  How did the killer get the key?  Conveniently Greenleaf says he was in the habit of keeping it in his glove compartment in his car and it appears that both were stolen at some point.

But the key found in the apartment doesn't open the lock on the door.  Mallory had changed the locks a few weeks before. Greenleaf thinks he's in trouble, but he manages to get a new key for the door.  And he goes to see Eddie.  He poisons Eddie, who was a loose end anyway, plants the key on him. He thin types up a rough draft of the script that Mallory was working on, thus making it seem that Eddie had the original idea and killed Mallory and framed Greenleaf in the mix. And blows up the apartment, making it seem that Eddie, who was a demolitions expert, accidentally blew himself up.

 

The problem with the outline was that Greenleaf, who had been getting updates on Mallory's story because he was bribing a messenger for the typing service that was typing up the story from Mallory's vocal tapes, was going by the current story line. So, even though the incriminating plot outline that he left in Eddie's office seems to indicate that Mallory and Greenleaf had stolen Eddie's idea, there is no way that Eddie's "original" idea was really his, because Mallory had changed the ending only a few days ago.

The reason Mallory had changed the ending was that there was an interest in filming the story for a movie, starring Rock Hudson, but the original idea had the main character die, and Hollywood demanded the change. Because "for $100,000 you don't kill Rock Hudson". Mallory had edited his original outline to leave the central character of the novel alive at the end, not dead as he had originally envisioned it. So, in essence, Eddie could not have come up with the idea 9 months before after all.

Not only do you get Falk in his usual scatterbrained manner discerning the clues, and Jack Cassidy who probably is one of the better actors to play a villain on Columbo, but you get the added bonus of John Chandler's absolutely unhinged ex-Vietnam vet. Chandler's screen time is fairly brief, since he is after all just a secondary character, but I really believed he could have pulled off the things he does.  

One of the reasons that Eddie is willing to do this deed is that Greenleaf has promised to publish Eddie's own book, one on how to make bombs the right way.  This is one of the plot points that I found slightly unbelievable, because what publisher in his right mind would publish such a book? 

(Of course, a guy named William Powell had written a book in 1971, The Anarchist's Cookbook, which detailed how to do such things, but that book was published underground, not by a reputable publisher. BTW, according to a note on Amazon, the author himself has tried to take that book out of circulation as he claims he no longer agrees with what he wrote. Given the time of the show, 1974,  it would still have been relevant to some sects of society, since the ultimate goal of such groups, the end of the Vietnam War, was still a year or so way.)

 

There are a lot of details that become relevant at later points in the story, so this is one you have to be on your toes to watch.  In some of the episodes you could doze off for a few minutes and not miss much, but this one requires that you keep your full attention on it lest you miss some intricate clue. I will say that I agree with the rankings of the writer of the aforementioned blog, Columbophile, on these two episodes taken only for their position in his ranking. "Publish or Perish" is a better episode than "Murder by the Book", and it is more satisfying in the long run, although the way that Cassidy's character concedes defeat at the end is little to quick.  It seems to me that there is still some wriggle room for Greenleaf to get out of it even with the evidence that Columbo has stacked up against him.

Either way, these two episodes are a great introduction (or re-introduction, as the case may be) to the character of Columbo. If you are not blessed with access to a compilation of the series you can still access some of the episodes online.  The Columbophile blog has some of them here, including these two.

Well, that's it for now.  

Quiggy

 

The Hit The Road Blogathon Hits The Road

 

 

 

Finally! The last opportunity of the summer! Pile all the kids and the spouse in the car and head out for that last fling before the school year makes such things a difficult proposition. Or, just gather a few friends and make that fantasy of heading to Cabo San Lucas for a weekend fling. Or, just get the heck out of Dodge, with or without the authorities giving chase.

One of the great adventures that sit idly in the back of the mind of the average person is to take off on a journey to yet undiscovered locations. The purpose of the Hit The Road Blogathon is to highlight some of the great (or even not-so-great) films in which the goal was to get from point A to point B and all the shenanigans that come with it.

The Hit The Road Blogathon is not closed yet. You still have time to join if you so wish. In the meantime, this post will update you on the journeys some of my fellow bloggers have chosen to review. Keep coming back all weekend to see where my friends want to take you.

 

Realweegiemidget Reviews highlights Ron Ely's attempts to find romance on The Love Boat.

 

 

 

The Midnite Drive-In hits the road with rebel truckers (Convoy and The Great Smokey Roadblock) 

 

 

 life and death in l.a. takes us on a gritty cross-country car trip (twice) with Vanishing Point and Two-Lane Blacktop

 

 

Angelman's Place covers the Depression era back roads with Paper Moon 

 

 

 Make Mine Film Noir adds a film noir flair to the trip on an ocean liner with Dangerous Crossing

 

 

18 Cinema Lane goes out west with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon  

 

 Taking Up Room goes on a sea cruise from Heck with Out to Sea

Hamlette's Soliloquy rides the rails with a wolf with The Journey of Natty Gann 

 

 

18 Cinema Lane turns off the projector and reads a good book: Santa Cruise

 

 

Keep on truckin' back for other reviews, coming soon. 

Quiggy

 

 

Road Dogs

 

This is my entry in the Hit the Road Blogathon, hosted by yours truly.

 

If you weren't alive in the 70's, you will never know just how big the CB craze and the love affair with the trucker was.  The trucker was a standard fixture in country music for years. But with the recording of C. W. McCall's #1 hit Convoy, a veritable fad craze hit the country. And Convoy was #1 not only on country charts, but it held the #1 spot on American Top 40 radio for one week. It stayed in the Top 40 for 13 weeks, which is pretty impressive since most of the top 40 at that time was dominated by easy listening and disco.

Convoy triggered a smattering of follow-up CB and trucker songs in it's immediate aftermath. But unless you listened to country radio most of them probably would have escaped your notice. The White Knight, a favorite of mine by a guy who billed himself as Cleddus Maggard, would probably be the only song that music fans of the 70's would recognize (that one hitting #19 on AT40).

But the CB craze went far beyond top ten radio. For those of you not alive during that time, virtually EVERYONE had a CB radio at the time. It was such a popular thing that, when my Boy Scout troop looked to raise some funds, we raffled off a CB as the top prize.  And the craze even included the movies. Between 1975, when McCall first came on with his monster hit, until about 1980, when the CB craze and America's love affair with the "rebel" trucker was dying out, there were no less than about a dozen trucker movies to hit the big screen.

Besides today's two features, among others, there was also the first two Smokey and the Bandit films, Breaker! Breaker!, a Chuck Norris film, White Line Fever, High-Ballin' and Trucker's Woman. 

The American love affair with the trucker didn't stop with just feature films. There was also trucker TV shows and movies. Some of you may remember Movin' On, a short-lived TV series featuring Claude Akins and Frank Converse or B.J. and the Bear, another show featuring Greg Evigan and his more intelligent partner, "Bear", a chimpanzee riding the asphalt highway. 

I have a confession. For a brief period while still in high school I had  a flirtation with wanting to be a truck driver when I grew up. That only lasted as long as my first attempt at driving a stick shift car, however. I found out pretty quick that I had no aptitude for using a clutch.  But, damn, wouldn't it have been cool living the life of a long haul transportation executive...  

 

 

 

Convoy (1978):

A little background: As noted above, the song Convoy  was the inspiration of Bill Fries, who performed the song under the moniker of "C. W. McCall, and his writing partner, Chip Davis (who later created Mannheim Steamroller, a band you may have heard of due to their frequency on radio during the Christmas season).  The character of "C. W. McCall" came from a series of TV commercials for a bread company called Old Home Bread. In these commercials C. W. would tool into a roadside diner and flirt with the waitress, all the while with Fries' vocals delivering a trucker inspired voice over. Watching these old commercials is pretty interesting if you were a fan of the song that Fries eventually recorded. The style is the same as the song.

 

 

First things first. The original song Convoy had no real plot. It's just about a bunch of truckers and the ones they add along the way who are on a cross country trip from L.A. to the Jersey shore, dodging the various police along the way.  That's it.  Not enough there for even an episode on a half-hour sitcom. So the writers had to come up with a plot to flesh out a full-length  movie. You decide whether they did a decent job of it. For reference, here is the original song:

 

This entry is going to throw a lot of CB slang at you, but don't worry. For the uninitiated, I'll translate as I go. 

Arizona, noon, on the seventh of June

When they highballed over the pass.

Bulldog Mack with a can on the back

And a Jaguar haulin' ass.  

He's ten on the floor, strokin' a bore

Seat cover's startin' to gain.

Now, beaver, you truckin' with the Rubber Duck

And I'm about to pull the plug on your drain. 

 First verse of the title song (movie version)

 

OK. Here's your first lesson in CB slang:

"Bulldog Mack with a can on the back- a Mack truck semi with a tank that is hauling a liquid  (probably gasoline, but it conceivably be milk or some other liquid)

"Seat cover"and "beaver"- a female driver  

To set the scene. Big rig independent trucker, "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson) is hauling his rig across the Arizona desert. And note, while all these characters have real names, most of the time they are addressed by their CB handles (nicknames), which is fitting. Rubber Duck is minding his own business when a seat cover (good looking girl) passes him in a Jaguar. This is Melissa (Ali MacGraw). 

 

Melissa messes with Rubber Duck, because after she passes him, she slows down. Eventually the two get into a road race, which just happens to bring them into contact with a smokey (police officer) who pulls Duck over.  But Duck manages to get out of a ticket after he tells the smokey that the girl in the Jag isn't wearing any panties. Note: The immediate scene after the cop leaves to chase down Melissa has Rubber Duck giving a "smokey report" (letting fellow truckers know of a cop in the area). He says it is on "I-4-Oh", which would be 1-40, but if that's I-40, even in 1978, it's pretty run down...

 

Just down the way Rubber Duck hooks up with "Spider Mike" (Franklin Ajaye) and an old buddy "Love Machine" (Burt Young).  Because Love Machine's current cargo is a Bulldog (Mack truck) full of hogs, Mike suggests that the change Love Machine's handle to Pig Pen. Of course he isn't enamored with it.. (would you be...?)

The three end up in a bear trap (radar speed trap), caught speeding by the unscrupulous county mountie (police), Sheriff Lyle (or "Dirty Lyle", as he will be referred to by the truckers). Lyle having no moral compass, nicks the three for $70 each to avoid jail time and impounding of their trucks, which needless to say is going into Lyle's own pocket. Grumbling, the three pay the fine and leave.

After their run in the three decide to stop off at a truck stop to get something to eat. And guess who just so happens to be at the same truck stop... Melissa, who has sold the Jag and some other personal items to get enough money to get where she is going, ultimately Emerald City (Dallas). So she ends up hooking up with Duck.  But Duck and the boys are not through in town yet.  Who else comes in but Dirty Lyle. And we get to see just how unscrupulous as well as vindictive or villain is.  He tries to arrest Spider Mike for vagrancy, since Mike has no money after paying off his forced bribe to Lyle earlier.

 

The boys and Lyle go at each other, as well as some other cops who show up on the scene and ultimately Duck decides that their best bet is to get across the state line in to New Mexico, where they figure they will be safe since Lyle has no jurisdiction. But like Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit, Lyle isn't going to let anything like jurisdiction prevent him from settling scores.

New Mexico, on I-four-oh

Like a Texas lizard on glass.

One thousand pedals was mashin' the metal

Them bears was a walkin' the grass.

We trucked all day and we trucked all night

Big Benny was improvin' our style.

We could tell by the smell we was headin' for Hell

And the Devil was Dirty Lyle. 

Second verse of title song 

Along the way, Duck and his pals keep picking up more trucks some long haired friends of Jesus in a microbus. (Hey! Wait one damn minute... that microbus is supposed to be chartreuse... )  The rest of the truckers who join the convoy seem to be joining just because it's an act of rebellion. But somewhere along the way, someone gets the idea that it is a protest of what was then a 55 MPH speed limit, which many people, especially truckers, did not like. The governor sends a representative to try to interview Duck and the other members of the convoy.

 

Meanwhile, Lyle is still on a one-man objective to bring down the Duck, or even to the point of killing him. When Spider Mike breaks off from the convoy to get to his final objective, that of being with his wife who is about to give birth to their child, Mike is arrested and beat up by the local police.  It is Lyle's intention to use Mike as bait to get Duck to come and rescue him. Duck heads off by himself at first, but when he gets to the town he has several other truckers with him and they demolish the town in order to rescue Mike.

Now Lyle was a creep, he was tacky and cheap

But he had him a badge and a gun.

He hated the Duck and he hated his truck

And he loved to bust truckers for fun.

So he followed the line and he bided his time

As he watched for his time to strike.

Then he picked on a trucker, a wiry old sucker

Yeah, the trucker they called Spider Mike.

Third verse of the title song. 

After the rescue, Duck and several others decide to head south of the border to Mexico, and finally, we get that old Peckinpah touch, a scene of needless violence as Lyle and about a thousand national guard and army guys try to prevent him from crossing the bridge. 

But the great Rubber Duck sorta run out of luck

When he crossed that final bridge.

There's choppers and rigs full of guns and pigs

They's wall to wall on the ridge.

He showed no fear as he grabbed his gear

And he stuck it in granddaddy low.

Them guns went boom and his ass went zoom

And the Mack took a terminal blow.

Fourth verse of the song  

 

 

 

Well, all seems at a bad end, because it looks like the Duck is dead and Dirty Lyle wins the day. But you know that just can't be how the movie ends. I will say this, the final three minutes are satisfying.

This movie made a decent showing, despite the fact that it was mostly panned by the critics.  At a budget of $12 million, it eventually drew in $45 million in receipts. What happened to the movie is an interesting story in itself.  

Sam Peckinpah, director of such classics as The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and The Getaway was the director of the film, and some elements ca still be seen as classic Peckinpah. But the original running time was way too long for the brass at the front office.  The original running time was 220 minutes (compared the 120 minutes in the final cut. Because Peckinpah seemed to be dragging his heels on cutting it down he was fired and the studios brought in an editor who, according to Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons, :cut the life out of it". (I'd be interested in seeing a director's cut just to see what was culled from it.  This one is compact, but it is well put together, so I wonder what they left on the cutting room floor.) 

 

 

 

The Great Smokey Roadblock (1977): 

The scene opens with a poor old truck driver, Elegant John (Henry Fonda) stuck in a hospital (or maybe it's an old folks home), trying to figure out how to spring his beloved Eleanor, his truck, from the impound lot.  

It becomes revealed in the early part of the movie that John went into the hospital for a checkup.  But he is aging, 60 by his own admission, and he ends up having to stay in the hospital (and I still think it's an old folks home). His truck was repossessed by the finance company, so John basically has to steal the truck. A fellow hospital patient (inmate in the home) tells him if he steals the truck on a Friday night he may have a good three or four days before the authorities get wind of his theft.

 

 

In a roadside cafe, he has some words with a fellow trucker, Charlie (Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinatti TV fame), who tells John he won't get the load to drive because the truck is stolen, so apparently John hasn't quite gotten away with his subtle tactics.

 

John picks up a hitchhiker, Beebo (Robert Englund). Beebo is on his way to Florida, but since John is not going that far, Beebo may be out of luck. John carries a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which explains the name of the truck, and probably also indicates just how long John has been a truck driver.

 

Meanwhile, somewhere in Wyoming, a brothel being run by Miss Penelope (Eileen Brennan) and her crew of courtesans (which includes, among others, Susan Sarandon) is invaded by the authorities. They are given 48 hours to leave town. (Yeah, that's the same thing I thought...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the truck, John and Beebo are headed across Wyoming (surprise, surprise). Beebo, ever the picky freeloader, complains to John they are headed the wrong way if they are to get to Florida.  But we find out that John's goal is to find a load to haul, and has a line on one in Laramie. Only when he gets there, the boss tells him he can't let John have the job because his truck is reported stolen.

Eventually John and Beebo end up at the "now in the process of being evacuated" brothel, where it turns out that John knows Miss Penelope, and her girls.  Miss Penelope hooks up with John and Beebo to go to South Carolina (eventually). Since John's main driving goal is to make one last haul in his truck, it might be a while before he gets either of his passengers to their destinations.  Especially since now the police are on the lookout for John and his stolen truck.

But the advantage of having a rolling brothel is not lost on Penelope, or John, (or for that matter, the audience...) When you have such a viable source of bringing in money, little things like the need for gas for the truck or food to feed a dozen hungry souls on the road becomes a little insignificant.

 

The sad part of all this is that John really is sick, not just an escaped old folks home resident. (So much for my thoughts...) He apparently is getting a little worse for wear as time passes.  Making this goal of one last hurrah at driving his rig cross country more than just an idle dream of living the life he once knew one last time. (Side note: at the time of this movie Fonda really was suffering from complications of his age. You probably already know Fonda passed away just a few years later after having received an Oscar for On Golden Pond.)

 It isn't long before every cop in the south, north, east and west is on the lookout for the stolen truck and escaped prostitutes. (Wait a minute, you might be thinking... weren't those hookers just told to vacate town? Why are the police after them, too? Well, you know how Hollywood doesn't really care about coherency of plot if there's potential money in the offing...)

But John has the misfortune of getting snagged by a backwoods sheriff and his bogus stop light.  Sheriff Harley (Dub Taylor) knows exactly what he's got. Think of Harley as a low rent version of Ernest Borgnine's sheriff from the first feature in this blog. He arrests his victims with the sole purpose of turning them in just to get his picture in the paper. Of course, the girls have a different plan,,, and John and the ladies escape.

 

 

In a bar somewhere they see themselves on the news broadcast where the newscaster (Sander Vanocur, playing himself) gives the basic story so far to his television audience (and I guess the movie audience, too, in case they fell asleep...) He wishes on the behalf of the public a Good luck" to John in his goals. The first indication that the public might be on the side of the lawbreakers.. (seems like a pattern is developing...)

 Up until this point, that "great smokey roadblock" seems to be non existent (and there's only 20 minutes left in the film...) But never worry. We still get the roadblock. All 4 minutes of it. Along with some hangers on who seem to have joined this "convoy" just because there was nothing else to do at the time. And with only about four police cruisers, not so "great" a roadblock... 

 

I won't say this film ends on an entirely positive note. Sure, the crew gets to their goal before the credits roll. At least almost all of the crew.

Henry Fonda is pretty damn good in this movie, and Robert Englund proves he can do more than just haunt your nightmares with razor sharp fingernails. (Yes, that's Freddie Kruger from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise...) The film is billed as a comedy and there are indeed some comedic moments in the film, but the romantic relationship between John and Penelope will tear at your heart strings, too. Is this one a great movie? Not hardly. One review I read said the more appropriate title would be "The Great American Sex-Trafficking Trip". Personally, I think he or she is taking a way too modern PC attitude.

It's definitely not family friendly, although the endearing romantic relationship between Fonda and Brennan is pretty sweet. I wonder what Fonda thought of the final movie, however.  He had recently been relegated to just cameos and probably took on this role as a way to get back into the spotlight of his glory days as a headliner. You'll appreciate On Golden Pond even more as his final movie after seeing this one. So, no, it's not a great movie, but at least it wasn't his last hurrah after all. It's worth one watch, but I don't think I will seek it out again. 

One thing that cropped up in my research. The original title of this film was "The Last of the Cowboys" which makes better sense as a title, given that that titular "roadblock" only takes up 4 minutes of the running time. But, as Hollywood is often wont to do, they tried to cash in on the CB craze by changing the title, obviously to draw in the crowds who had seen Smokey and the Bandit. The unhinged demeanor that Burt Reynolds had in that movie is barely visible in Elegant John. Good thing, too, because who would have accepted an aging Henry Fonda as an all-out rebel? 

Well, folks, that sound you hear is not a big 18 ton big rig firing up. The old Plymouth just needs some new mufflers. Drive safely.

Quiggy

 

 

Lizards and Lassos

This entry is in celebration of Legends of Western Cinema Week

The hosts of the event are: Along the Brandywine, Hamlette's Soliloquy and Meanwhile, in Rivendell.

 

A note: As usual, I am pushing the envelope here. Our hosts were looking for classic westerns, and I actually like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and some other classic western actors. But I like to see just how far I can take the original theme and see if I can get a reaction. Thus, cowboys vs. dinosaurs. 

 

Dinosaurs crop up in the most unusual of circumstances.  The creatures dominated the landscape millions of years ago, but the pesky critters just seemed to be unwilling to let the past go.  

The first dinosaurs to appear on film were mostly set in prehistoric times, the actual dinosaur age. As near as I can tell, the first movie to have dinosaurs outside of their natural historic period was The Lost World, a 1925 silent film based on a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, he did publish stuff other than his most famous work featuring Sherlock Holmes). And several years later, in 1948, a similar story was filmed featuring dinosaurs on an Unknown Island. Both involved finding a heretofore unknown modern area of the earth that still had dinosaurs living on it.

Most of the films that came out during the history of dinosaurs fell into one of the two categories, prehistoric features or modern areas that still had some remnants. A couple of my favorites from the 70's The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot were set in the WWI era and featured a forgotten land under the icecaps, based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. You should check those out.

And we can't forget that Godzilla is basically a dinosaur that had been dormant for centuries but was resurrected by a nuclear bomb. And the Jurassic Park movies involved modern scientists using genetic material to recreate dinosaurs for a theme park.

Two movies that I watched way back in the 70's on UHF stations come to mind, though, which featured cowboys battling dinosaurs. Those more or less fit into that of the "modern times" category, despite the relative span of time between the movie release and the actual time period.  And they feature some rather "exotic" ways for the characters to deal with these historic anomalies.

 

 

 

Valley of the Gwangi  (1969):

   

In the pre-credits, the scene opens up with a group of people searching the desert for a lost friend. They find him, on the verge of dying, looking like he's been in some kind of monstrous fight.  The only thing he has is a bag with something in it squealing like the dickens, and his only word before dying is "Gwangi!" An old woman warns the leader of the search party to leave the bag and let whatever is in return to the valley from whence it came, but he just calls her a silly old fool and ignores her dire warning.

A Wild West rodeo comes in, making an appearance in a town in Mexico. The star of the show is also the host of the show, one T. J. Breckenridge (Gila Golan). T. J. has a trick pony show where she rides it on a diving board and jumps into a big vat of water. (Entertaining people was pretty easy back in those days).

 

Onto the scene comes a former lover of T. J., Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus). Tuck still has the hots for T. J., but holy ego-deflation, she rejects him. As well as his offer to buy out T. J.'s circus. Or at least her prize wonder horse that she uses in her diving trick. But T. J. is not impressed with Tuck or his offer.

 

Run out of town, so to speak, Tuck meets up with a British scientist,  Professor Bromley (Laurence Naismith),  out in the desert looking for dinosaur bones.  The professor shows Tuck a fossil he found which includes a footprint (or hoof print) of a creature Bromley refers to as an eohippus, an ancestor of the modern day horse, only the eohippus was much smaller. He relates to Tuck that his finances have grown slim in his quest to search for more proof that the eohippus existed alongside prehistoric man.

 

Meanwhile back at the circus a fellow circus hand, Carlos (Gustavo Rojo), {the same guy who told the old woman to go fly a kite in the opening} approaches T. J. and tries to convince her that this new exhibit he has brought her, referred to as "El Diablo" is the ticket to bigger fame and fortune. Tuck has come back, along with a young boy he has befriended, Lope (Curtis Arden). T. J. is still not receptive to Tuck's offer, but when Lope jumps into the bull ring to try to become an impromptu matador and finds himself in danger, Tuck jumps in to rescue him.  This act of heroism, of course, causes T. J. to immediately become re-enamored with Tuck. Enough so she decides to let Tuck see her new exhibit, "El Diablo" which turns out to be a real live eohippus!

 

Of course, Tuck sneaks in Bromley to have a look and leading to  visions of fame, fortune and a knighthood for Bromley. But other plans are in the works.  Professor Bromley meets the old foolish woman and her gypsy clan, who concoct a plan to steal the eohippus and return it to it's home. Of course, the old woman is only doing it to prevent a curse from falling upon her people, but Bromley is trying also the trick her in showing him the valley in which the eohippus was found.

 

Carlos, who tried to stop the act, is knocked out, but tells T. J. that Tuck was involved in the kidnapping. She and her partner give chase after Tuck, who is not involved, really, but is following Bromley and the clan. He catches up with Bromley who uses all his charms to convince Tuck to come in on his side; fame and fortune for Tuck and scientific notoriety for Bromley for a discovery of a hidden cache of prehistoric creatures that are bound to be in this hidden valley.

The gypsies release the eohippus and let him find his way home, but Tuck and the rest of the crew find it went into a hidden passage. On inspection they find it comes out in the hidden valley.  On coming into the valley they are attacked by a pterodactyl (flying dinosaur) . It looks like they have found a lost world of prehistorical creatures. But that's not the only creature. They also find an ornithominus, which is eventually attacked by an allosaurus (our titular "Gwangi").

The others are committed to get out of Dodge, but the professor, ever the scientist refuses to leave, at least until he comes face to face with Gwangi... In the mix also comes a stegosaurus. (It seems the producers and Ray Harryhausen (the stop motion animator of these creatures) decided to go all out on this endeavor.

 

 Despite the fact that Gwangi seems to be a destructive force to be reckoned with, the crew eventually captures it and takes it back to the circus, with visions of dollar signs dancing in their eyes. Obviously these people have never seen any of the previous films or even future films that pit a prehistoric behemoth against a public spectacle.  But, you know how all this is going to end don't you?

 

 

Ray Harryhausen was behind the stop motion in this endeavor. As usual, his work is pretty spectacular, taken in the context of the time it was made. Cinema goers today might be apt to laugh, since it doesn't compare to what can be done with CGI. 

 

 

The Beast from Hollow Mountain (1956): 

 In the beginning of the film we see three cowboys following a trail. Just in case you need to know what this movie is about, we get a voice over from the narrator:

"Deep in the back country of Mexico, there rises a grim and mysterious mountain, which is said to be hollow. It's interior has never been explored because, at it's base, lies an impassable swamp. The superstitious link of the hollow mountain and the swamp and their folk legends as places of evil... great evil. They tell of a strange animal from the dawn of creation that inhabits the area, coming forth to prowl and pillage only in time of drought. They tell of man and cattle disappearing without trace. But perhaps these are only tales.. tales told by simple people."

 

The three cowboys consist of Jimmy (Guy Madison) and Felipe (Carlos Rivas), co-owners of a cattle ranch, and Manuel (Jose Chavez). Manuel serves as the superstitious native in this piece.  He spouts the typical "we can't go there, we need to turn back, no one has ever come back alive" narrative we come to expect from the uneducated masses in these films.

 

Just after rescuing Felipe from a quicksand trap, Jimmy and Felipe find a dead cow, drowned in the swamp. Hot headed Felipe is convinced that rustlers are responsible for luring their cattle into the swamp, specifically Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega). Jimmy tells Felipe to stay calm and not use his gun instead of his brains.  Jimmy is going to town to visit the top dog, or alcalde, Don Pedro (Julio Villareal). 

While there, Enrique comes on the scene and we almost get our first fight but Don Pedro breaks it up. It seems that Enrique has it in for Jimmy not only because he is in competition for cattle sales, but Enrique's girlfriend / future wife is showing an interest in this American. Sarita (Patricia Medina) is showing way too much interest in Jimmy and Enrique thinks Jimmy is trying to move in on his woman.

 

In his effort to get Jimmy to throw in the towel Enrique has convinced Jimmy's farm hands to quit, ostensibly because of their superstitions about the haunted mountain nearby. But Jimmy gets Pancho (Pascual Garcia Pena) and his son, Panchito (Mario Navarro) to come on board. Jimmy and Felipe are still investigating the disappearance of cattle and are absolutely convinced that Enrique is behind all of the bad things that are happening.

 

 

But the truth of the matter is that there is another culprit. It takes  a full hour of the film for it's appearance in the film, but the real culprit behind the disappearances is an allosaurus, a remnant from prehistoric times. 

 

In terms of the concept of being believable, this creature, I have to note, is not the quality stop-motion animation that Ray Harryhausen  brought to the previous film in this blog entry. For one thing, this dinosaur can move like the wind. You might find yourself laughing at the chase scenes, and the closeups of just the feet of the creature are obviously some guy in dinosaur feet walkingaround. The creature makes it's way into the ranch and stampedes the cattle. Which helps Enrique's plan since he had actually planned a stampede anyway to cause Jimmy to lose his cattle.

Jimmy rides out to try to battle with the allosaurus and Enrique ends up showing up too, although not necessarily to help; he is still looking for a way to drive Jimmy out of Dodge. And of course our hero helps out Enrique when he gets in trouble and is on the verge of becoming the allosaurus' next meal. (Gotta wonder about this dinosaur... it seems to have an appetite that is never sated....)   

For the first hour of this movie it gradually plays out like a typical two reeler from the early cowboy pictures days. You get the good guy rancher, Jimmy, who just wants to make a decent go in the cattle business. You get the sneaky bad guy, Enrique, who just doesn't like the competition. You get a love interest and some sneaky goings on behind the scenes.  In fact, without the injection of a dinosaur into the mix, this could easily be mistaken for one of those generic westerns that the low-rent studios like Monogram and Mascot and Republic studios put out in the 30's and 40's.

The film was originally conceived as an idea by Willis O'Brien of King Kong fame, but was shelved for years. When it finally got a green light, O'Brien, who was still alive at the time, was considered for the job of special effects, but it eventually went to another team of artists. 

Beast will never be mistaken for a truly high quality film. The monster itself is pretty shoddy and the acting of the humans never really gets above a level of adequate. But if you like those old poverty ow westerns, the western part of the movie is decent enough. My only issue is that, as mentioned above, that dinosaur seems to be pretty damn quick. I kept waiting for it to roar "Epa! Epa! Epa! Andale! Andale! Andale! Arriba! Arriba! Arriba!" like the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez. Which wouldn't have necessarily been out of place since this movie was an American and Mexican co-production, and filmed in Mexico to boot.

Well, folks, the old Plymouth is warmed up and ready to make the run home. Gotta detour a little south to avoid that swamp, but I think I might make it.  Drive safely.

Quiggy