Semiquincentennial Movie Project #24: The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #24: Missouri -

 

 

 

The state of Missouri was established on August 10, 1821 

Details about Missouri:

State bird: bluebird

State flower: hawthorn

State tree: flowering dogwood

Additional historical trivia:

There could be no such thing as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" without sliced bread. It was first sold in Missouri.

Missouri was where we first got instant pancake mix, too. 

The 1904 World's Fair introduced such things as the hot dog and cotton candy.

Missouri is the only state with an official "state grape", the Norton grape. (Gee. I'm hungry now...)

Missouri is one of only four states that have had two teams from the same state in a World Series. It happened twice, most recently in 1985 when the Kansas City Royals played the St. Louis Cardinals.

The famous Pony Express was headquartered in St. Joseph. 

Although the movie and it's literary source material place the events of The Exorcist in suburban Washington D.C., the actual historical events both are based on came from an event in St. Louis. {see footnote below}.  

Famous people born in Missouri: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), science fiction great Robert A. Heinlein, U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Albert Pujols, Walter Cronkite, Scott Joplin, Chuck Berry, Dick van Dyke and my personal vote for the greatest horror movie actor, Vincent Price.

{Footnote}: Check out the book Behind the Horror: True Stories That Inspired Horror Movies. It's a fascinating book that details the real events behind some classic movies, some you would be surprised to find are based on real stories.

 

 

 

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959): 

Note: The credits mention that many of the members of the St. Louis Police Department shown in the movie are actually the real members of the SLPD. Other sources state that even some of the local residents and bank employees are the real people involved.

 

The film opens as we get introduced to the gang who is planning to rob the local bank.  The guy in charge is John Egan (Crahan Denton). He has two cohorts, Willy and Gino. One of the subordinates, Gino (David Clarke), has brought along a newcomer, George Fowler (Steve McQueen). George is going to be the driver of the getaway car, although he has apparently never done anything illegal in his life up to this point.

 

George insists that all he will get involved with is to drive the getaway car. A guy as nervous as George comes off in this initial introduction seems to be an unlikely candidate even for something like driving a getaway car. I swear, I bet if someone lit a firecracker nearby he'd probably be a mile down the road before the echoes of the bang died down...

 

Willy (James Dukas) is immediately suspicious of this newcomer and doesn't trust him. Willy's obsession with trying to get John to get rid of him as a member of the gang becomes a key point later in the film. 

 

The nervousness of George is evident whenever he has to get more deeply involved than he really wants to. The first problem is John makes George steal a license plate. The second problem occurs when Gino forces George to go to Ann (Molly McCarthy), who is Gino's sister, to get some money they will be needing during the period of time staking out the bank, leading up to the robbery. Neither one is something that George really wants to do, but he keeps getting dragged in further and further to the plans than he really wants. It looks like he will be having a bigger hand in it than just the getaway driver after all.

 

The background of George comes out little by little, although all of the back story is not entirely revealed.  What we do find out is that George and Ann were involved in a relationship prior to the events in the film. Both were expelled from college, although it is never revealed why. For his part, George intends to use his cut of the loot from the robbery to get himself reinstated into the college and make something of himself. 

The rest of the gang have their own backgrounds. John is a career criminal, who is making one final grab before he intends to take off for Mexico, along with Willy. All three of the hardened criminals have their own issues. Gino is very worried about going back to jail, and his worry is foreshadowed early in the film when he has a panic attack, recalling the closed in feelings he had when he was a prisoner.

It takes a long time before anything exciting happens in this film. The first hour or so is just a character study of the main characters. We find out that John is misogynistic, due to his relationship with his mother, who was very abusive to him as a kid. (It is later implied, although not outright stated, that he was responsible for his mother's death). And I think maybe Willy is supposed to be gay, but I'm not sure. That too only is implied, as he doesn't exhibit any of the traits that were readily evident in other gay characters of the time period of the movie.

The whole thing comes crashing down as a result of Ann's discovery of George's plans. She promises not to tell the police about the plans, but she is not above leaving a message on the window of the bank. John is angry about this, but still plans to follow through with the robbery. The logical thing, to abandon the plan, is apparently not in the cards. 

Of course the whole robbery falls like a house of cards.  That can't count as a spoiler. After all, it's based on a real event and, in case you weren't paying attention, the movie opens with credits acknowledging real members of the SLPD playing the parts they had in the historical event.

Following his breakthrough role as the lead teen in The Blob,  McQueen makes a pretty good showing here. The rest of the main cast does a fairly decent job, although I think McCarthy as Ann is a bit over the top melodramatically. Her output following this film seems to make that a good judgement. Her list of credits only includes one other movie in the 60's, Blast of Silence, and a few TV appearances, and then she only has three more movies since 1979, all three with Matt Dillon (was she related to Dillon? I have no idea...)

If the only two contemporary reviews quoted in the wikipedia article are any indication of the reception, the movie wasn't really well-received. My personal opinion is that the only standout role in the film is McQueen. The main thugs are pretty much cardboard hoodlums, although the main one, Denton, is not all that bad. My basic suggestion is you could fast forward to about the 1:10 point in the film and watch the final 18 minutes and get the robbery and its aftermath, without missing much. McQueen completists might enjoy an early look at his work, but most people might get a little bored. Just a year or so later, however, McQueen would really start to shine, with his role in The Magnificent Seven (which, coincidentally, will be featured at The Midnite Drive-In next week...)

That wraps it up for this week. See you next time.

Quiggy

 

 

 

Book Review: How to Survive a Horror Movie by Seth Grahame-Smith

 

 

 How To Survive a Horror Movie by Seth Grahame-Smith:

 Firstly, if the very concept of "horror movie" makes you run for the bathroom until your friends and family are through with watching it, then this book is obviously not for you. On the other hand, if you are like me, and have enough horror movies on your DVD shelf to open your own library, you will probably get a kick out of it.

Consider this: You might just be living (if you can call it "living") inside a horror movie. There are any number of potential scenarios that could indicate this is so. Firstly, if you keep hearing a staccato screeching violin playing "eee eee eee eee eee", or a whispering "ki, ki, ki, ki, hah, hah hah hah", chances are there is some weirdo with a knife behind your back watching you as you undress for the shower.

Warnings of potential dangers abound in this volume. It goes without saying that you should probably never take a babysitting job, especially if you hear that some crazed maniac escaped his cell at the local mental institution. And, if you are on a road trip, never, under any circumstances, pick up a hitchhiker. (Despite the fact that some porno movies start out that way... see Detroit Rock City). And while on said road trip, always stick to main roads and avoid those short cuts through unfamiliar wooded areas.

A well equipped survivalist in a horror movie should have some working knowledge of the tropes that crop  up in horror movies. Knowing that you can outrun shuffling zombies, for instance. Knowing that sexual infidelity can leave you open to being trapped by sadistic sex-deprived outsiders who might be jealous that you are getting some while they were always unsuccessful is another. And, above all, knowing that, when Fido is acting peculiar around that wooden doll, it's probably a good bet there is something not normal about that doll.

Graheme-Smith's book is an invaluable asset to staying alive if you find yourself trapped in a horror movie setting. It is comical, and forewarning, it's a lot funnier if you actual have a working knowledge of the movies that he is referencing during his instructions. Does that mean if you haven't seen even one single horror movie that the book isn't entertaining? I couldn't say for sure, but I think even if you only know vaguely some details about Halloween or Friday the 13th or Alien or Child's Play that this book will provide some worthwhile reading. And if you do find yourself in one of these situations, you will be glad you read that the best way to avoid being trapped in a haunted house is to just not go in in the first place.

In addition to all the helpful  survival tips there is an appendix at the end that lists about 50 of the best movies to check out to expand your horizons in the horror movie pantheon. Some of which have been shown at The Midnite Drive-In, in case you are interested. (Note: The archives in that link contains both movies that the author includes in his list as well as others...)

Happy reading.

Quiggy 

  

Fear in the Dark

 

 

 

 

This is my entry for the Audrey Hepburn Blogathon hosted by Classic Film and TV Corner 

 

 

 

The essence of memory, given some 50 years past, tends to make things a bit vague.  Back in the late 60's and even into the 70's all three of the big networks of ABC, CBS and NBC had a weekly broadcast night that featured a recently released movie that had transitioned to availability to broadcast (edited, of course...) one or more nights a week. They weren't always movies that had a theatrical release, of course. Sometimes they were originally "made for TV" movies, but quite often the stations would edit a recent movie that had appeared in theaters and was now being broadcast into homes (for those folks who either had no budget for extravagances like going to the theater, or were just disinclined to venture forth to a theater.)

As such, Wait Until Dark was probably first broadcast on network TV in 1968 or 1969.  Of course I wouldn't have even been older than 7 by then, so I probably did NOT see it when it was first on TV, but I vaguely recall seeing it on TV at some point. And no, I couldn't be confusing it with the made for TV remake, which starred Katherine Ross in the Audrey Hepburn role. (That version came out in 1982, and I'm PRETTY sure I was probably in a bar that night, since those nightly movie broadcasts were usually on Friday or Saturday...) My vague memory of seeing it was from sometime in my early teens in the 70's.

Audrey Hepburn's output, at the time, was not in my bailiwick. I wouldn't have been caught dead watching a romance or a rom-com, therefore I would have gone to my room if Breakfast at Tiffany's or Charade came on (and I still haven't seen either...) And the only times I watched musicals was if Grandma and Grandpa were watching one when my sister and I visited. I do remember sitting through My Fair Lady, vaguely. But a  thriller, on the other hand, would intrigue me. And if Hepburn had starred in a science fiction movie I would have been all-in.

I could do a whole blog entry on the interesting pieces of trivia I found in the IMDb entry on this movie. I won't. But there are several that really intrigued me. 

Only Audrey Hepburn got an Academy Award nomination for this movie. Alan Arkin, who appears as the bad guy, was not nominated. When asked how he felt about that he said "You don't get nominated for being mean to Audrey Hepburn." (The same thing probably could apply to Bruce Dern, who I think ought to have been nominated for his role in The Cowboys, but you don't get nominated for killing John Wayne either...) 

Arkin, BTW, got the role because nobody else in Hollywood wanted to be mean to Hepburn. But there were a couple of intriguing possibilities that COULD have been: Such as George C. Scott, Rod Steiger and Sean Connery. Personally I think Scott would have been great, but I think Connery would probably have hurt his career at that time.... James Bond as a bad guy? The horror! Note: After writing that line I read another blogger's comments. The blogger in question thought  that the idea of Connery taking on that role may just be an urban legend, for basically along the same line reasoning that I suggest; James Bond? Really? His cache at the time would have probably precluded him taking a role that was not a starring role, according to this guy).

During WWII Hepburn was a nurse. During the Battle of Arnhem Hepburn was a nurse to soldiers injured during the battle and one of those soldiers was Terence Young, this movie's director.

The movie was based on a stage play. Interesting in the cast was Robert Duvall was cast as the villain, Roat, and Lee Remick, who won a Tony, was cast as Susy. Renowned director Arthur Penn was the director of the stage version.

The studio wanted Carol Reed, whose biggest film to date had been 1949's The Third Man, to direct, but Hepburn. who was already on board, and her then husband, Mel Ferrer, pushed for Terence Young. (Why not Arthur Penn? Most likely he was still tied up filming Bonnie and Clyde, which came out the same year, but I really don't know). Young, for his part, had garnered an impressive resume. Among his output were three early James Bond movies: Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball. 

Working against type was not only new for Hepburn, it was also new for musical director Henry Mancini. Mancini, whose name is more closely associated with such light-hearted fare as "Moon River" and "The Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet", was looking to break away from that into some more serious output, and many people remember the jarring soundtrack that he created for the film. 

 

 

Wait Until Dark (1967):

The film doesn't waste any time getting into the story. Sometimes in movies you get these long drawn out introductions or screen shots of the city, which to me seem to be there only to let you know this movie is taking place in New York City or San Francisco, so you don't get confused into thinking the setting is Timbuktu.

Instead, we get the scene where "Louis" (uncredited as "The Old Man" and played by Jean Del Val) is busy trying to sew up a stash of heroin into a doll for Lisa (Samantha Jones) to smuggle. Lisa is rather impatient, urging Louis to hurry up so she doesn't miss her flight. You know that Lisa is not a good girl because, instead of lighting up a cigarette she lights up a cigarillo. Which I personally think is a rather effective touch.

 

When Lisa gets off the plane she spots someone who appears to be waiting for her so she hands off the doll to a nearby guy. I know, logically, it doesn't make sense, at this point. She just handed off a batch of illegal drugs to a total stranger. The truth comes out later, when Susy relates that a woman her husband, Sam, met on the plane had asked him to hold the doll because it was a gift for a girl, but that Sam should hold on to the doll for her so that another girl she was meeting wouldn't get jealous. But you don't know what transpired between Sam and Lisa at this point, so it looks a little odd. (And truth be told, I think Sam must be the most naive person on the planet, since that whole thing sounds pretty suspicious, even if not in retrospect...)

 

This sets up the main story. Three unsavory characters come onto the scene, the worst of which is Roat (Alan Arkin). Roat lures two confidants to help him search the apartment of the guy Lisa handed off the doll to at the airport. The two confidants are basically roped into searching the apartment because Roat has engineered a devious blackmail. You see, he murdered Lisa and left her in the apartment. When Mike (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston) show up they think they are coming to collect the doll from Lisa, and they think that the apartment is Lisa's.

 

 

The truth of the matter is that it belongs to Sam and his wife, Susy (Audrey Hepburn), who is blind. 

 

 

There is a lot of subtle suspense going on at the very beginning, revolving on setting up Susy to believe that Lisa, whose body was planted near the apartment and later found by the police, may actually have been killed by Sam. The ruse involves the three convincing Susy, who has only been married to Sam for a year, was carrying on an extramarital affair. The whole ruse hinges on making Susy believe that a) Mike is an old friend who served in the war with Sam, and b) that Carlino is a valid police officer investigating the murder as well as an intruder who has been showing up at the apartment. 

 

 

(The intruder is actually Roat himself, in disguise, although why he needs the physical disguise is unclear, since Susy can't actually see him...)

 

 

Mike and Carlino are not entirely unsympathetic characters, although Carlino is somewhat obnoxious. The true villain, Roat, is much more sadistic. In fact, he takes both Mike and Carlino out of the picture before it's all over. (Truly, the saying that there is "no honor amongst thieves" applies in Roat's case). Susy eventually figures out that neither of these three is on the up and up. She has only been blind for about a year, but she has developed an acute sense of hearing generally applied to people who have been blind for some time, so apparently she is a quick study. She realizes that Mike is lying when he says he sees a cop car watching the apartment, and by that deduction she realizes that Carlino is not really a police officer.

 

Susy uses the help of a neighbor girl, Gloria (Julie Herrod), to help her. Gloria, at first, comes off as an unlikable little brat, but it turns out she does have a heart, and helps out at various points in trying to expose the ruse the three have been trying to play on Susy. 

 

 

With both Mike and Carlino no longer a part of the plot, however, and Gloria out to try to get Sam home quicky from the bus station when he arrives, Susy and Roat have a showdown. 

 

 

Susy takes all the lights in the apartment out, thus plunging the apartment into complete darkness, effectively putting her and Roat in the same boat: neither can see anything.

 

From the trailer for Wait Until Dark:

"During the last eight minutes of this picture the theatre will be darkened to the legal limit, to heighten the terror of the breathtaking climax which takes place in nearly total darkness on the screen. If there are sections where smoking is permitted, those patrons are respectfully requested not to jar the effect by lighting up during this sequence. And of course, no one will be seated at this time." 

That, in itself, would have been enough to intrigue me into the theater to see this. It must have been effective for theater goers at the time. In an interview on the commentary section of my DVD star Alan Arkin explains that final scene very succinctly:

"The more you show people, the less work they have to do. If you let the audience see what's going on it let's them off the hook and they're not sharing what's going on."

Thus that darkened theater becomes intensely more effective, because the audience shares in the blindness of the main character, Susy, and empathizes with the terror that she feels.  The final 10 minutes thus evokes a kind of claustrophobia, not only on the characters, but also on the audience. (Here's an interesting idea. Watch this thing in complete darkness, except for your TV. When this scene comes on you will experience a thrill unlike any you may have experienced before.)

Wait Until Dark made a decent profit, although it did not make the top ten of money makers that year (I read somewhere that it was #16 in that respect...). It went head-to-head against Camelot and The Jungle Book, which both hit the theater at the same time, as well as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, The Graduate and Valley of the Dolls, all of which came out in December, and all five were in the top ten that year.

As stated above, Hepburn received an Oscar nomination for her role, although ultimately she lost  to another Hepburn, Katherine, in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, although having seen both I would have had trouble making the choice. The main reason for that being that Audrey was absolutely fantastic at convincing me her character was blind. Only once during the entire film was there anything that happened that would give lie to that. (At one point, after Roat has murdered Mike and his body is at the foot of the stairs she actually steps over his body. There is no way she could know exactly how his body was laid out. This fact doesn't appear in the "goofs" section of the IMDb article, so maybe I missed something, however...)

Wait Until Dark has a Rotten Tomatoes ranking of 96% Fresh. Most of the reviewers of the time applauded the film, although even with it's high ranking, some reviewers had a bit of criticism to throw into their reviews. I liked the quote from Bosley Crowther, who said it was a "barefaced melodrama, without character revelation of any sort, outside of the demonstration of a person with the fortitude to overcome an infirmity." Yet he still liked Hepburn's portrayal. Roger Ebert criticized what he called the "idiot plot", wondering why the Hepburn character didn't just lock the door when she realized there was a threat present, yet he still gave it 3½ stars.

There are some strong hints of Hitchcock in the film, but one would be limiting oneself by saying it is essentially an attempt to create a Hitchcock film. It feels somewhat similar to Dial M for Murder, since both involve unsavory characters invading a closed set (apartment in both), and both were written by the same author. And the doll feels somewhat similar to the typical "MacGuffin" that typically showed up in Hitchcock films, an object that the story hinges on for a plot device, but is secondary to the nail-biting interaction between the primary characters. And that claustrophobia that the film exudes is reminiscent of Rope. Some people actually call Wait Until Dark the "best Hitchcock film not directed by Hitchcock".

Of all the films I have reviewed over the years, Wait Until Dark would rank very high. Although I tend towards more outre fare (tell us something we don't know...), I can still be entranced by the straightforward drama or thriller, especially when it is fronted by such talent as Hepburn (and Arkin).

That wraps it up for this time. Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #23: The Dead Zone

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #23: Maine-

 

 

 

The state of Maine was established on March 5, 1820. 

Details about Maine:

State bird: chickadee

State flower: white pine cone        

State tree: white pine tree

Additional historical trivia:

Maine came into the U.S. as a part of the Missouri Compromise, which established both Maine and Missouri as states to keep a delicate balance of free states (Maine) and slave states (Missouri). Note: See next week's entry which is when Missouri will become the focal state.

Machias was the site of the first naval battle of the American Revolution.

Campobello Island, a part of Nova Scotia in Canada, is only accessible by going through Maine. (Which means the island would be on it's own if the US and Canada ever went to war...)

Some Maine residents prefer "Mainiacs" over "Mainers" as a designation for residents. I know I would...

What we think of as a donut today, with it's iconic hole in the center, was invented in Maine. Before that donuts were more like the cream-filled variety (but without the cream filling...)

Your blueberries probably come from Maine. 90% of the world's supply is grown there.

Famous people born in Maine: Well, this list HAS to start out with Stephen King, of course. Also film director John Ford,  poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, actor Patrick Dempsey, vice Presidents Nelson Rockefeller (under Ford) and Hannibal Hamlin (under Lincoln) and athlete Cooper Flagg (who is just now becoming famous).

  

 

Forenote:I have been a Stephen King fan since first discovering him in high school (see the link for my history with him). Was The Dead Zone the first Stephen King movie adaptation of one of his novels that I ever saw in the theater? I claim a technicality on that. Admittedly I was still too young to go to movies without my father's permission when Carrie came out, and in truth, I hadn't even heard of him when it came out. I had, however, come to know his work by the time Salem's Lot was produced as a TV miniseries, and I watched that one. But The Shining, which came out in theaters after my turning to the age of accountability, I have to admit, was garnering such a negative reception in my group of like minded friends that I avoided it, and didn't watch it until years later. And Creepshow, while I did see it in a theater, was based on ideas from King, but not based on anything he had published in print at the time. So, yes, I guess The Dead Zone could probably count as my first in theater experience for his novels.

The Dead Zone (1983): 

The film first introduces us to Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) where he is an English teacher in high school. (Not sure how much of Stephen King is in Johnny Smith, but King did come from a similar background. He was an English teacher prior to becoming an author).

 

Johnny has a fiancee who is also a teacher in the school, Sarah (Brooke Adams). The two are going to be married soon. Johnny and Sarah have a date, after which Johnny takes Sarah home, but declines to spend the night there. "Some things are worth waiting for" he tells her. (Which, I think, implies that they still have not consummated their relationship by getting physical, which I think is rather quaint, but laudable).

 

 

The weather is bad, which is the reason Sarah wants him to stay, but Johnny insists on going, which in retrospect was a bad decision, because he gets involved in an accident with an 18 wheeler. One could reasonably wonder what happened in King's life that caused him to put semis as the cause of disastrous events in some of his stories. It was a semi truck that killed the little boy in Pet Semetary. The main villains of his short story "Trucks" (which was eventually filmed as Maximum Overdrive) were semis. They also crop up often in The Dark Tower series.

 

Anyway, as a result of his accident, Johnny ends up in a coma for five years. Much of his world before the accident has turned topsy-turvy. Not only has he lost his job during the interim (obviously), but Sarah has moved on herself. She got married and even now has a kid. 

 

The upside (or downside, depending on your perspective) of Johnny's accident and subsequent coma is that he has gained a psychic ability, of sorts. When he touches the hand of someone he can see their, or their closest people's, future. The first indication of this is when he sees a nurse's house on fire and her daughter in danger. The day is saved when the firemen arrive and rescue the daughter.

 

Johnny becomes a celebrity of sorts as a result. He of course is not altogether happy with the situation, as he would just like to blend into the background and live a normal life. But the public being what it is is not about to let that happen. One thing in particular; during his coma there has been a spate of serial killings and the sheriff (Tom Skerritt) is at his wit's end trying to catch the killer. He thinks Johnny might be of help. And. needless to say he is. 

 

Flash forward a few months. Johnny is still trying his best to fade out of the public eye. He has moved to another town and is working as a tutor. (I guess no high school is willing to hire a psychic célèbre...) A rich guy,  Roger Stuart (Anthony Zerbe), hires him to break through his son's distance and get him to be more sociable as well as improve his studies. But once again the boogieman of his psychic abilities causes a rift, as Johnny foresees an accident that would cause the son to die.

 

Things do work out as the son, Chris (Simon Craig), refuses to go along with his father's desires to start a hockey team. In the mean time, because Roger is rich, Roger has dealings with a political candidate seeking a position in the U.S. Senate. Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) is a smarmy little nobody, but he is gaining a following due to his adamant platform. He is an independent candidate, not associated with the political "business as usual" norm. (In other words, he is not a Democrat nor a Republican).

 

Johnny has another psychic interlude when he shakes hands with Stillson and sees a future where Stillson ends up causing the start of World War III. In a conversation with his doctor Johnny asks the doctor (Herbert Lom) what he would do if he had met Hitler before Hitler came to power, knowing how history would play out. The doctor says emphatically that he would have to "kill the S.O.B." What this, of course, leads into is Johnny deciding that he must do whatever he has to do to prevent Stillson from advancing towards that future.

 

In retrospect, some people have looked at Donald Trump and seen many parallels with the character of Stillson; an egotistical demagogue who rises to power from a relatively obscure status (politically speaking). Unlike King's insistence that he did not predict Covid in The Stand, he has not necessarily shied away from the idea that he may have predicted the rise of Trump in the form of Greg Stillson. You have to take that with a grain of salt, however. King has not been shy about his political leanings. As a Liberal, he has been vocal at times about his dislike for Conservatives.

 

You can decide for yourself whether there is any merit in that postulation. It's a sure bet if you are on one side of the political fence you will side with King and if you are on the other side of the fence then he is just full of it. But either way, you can't deny that a decent movie came out as a result of a very creative imagination. 

Whether or not it qualifies as "horror", however, given that that is King's chosen milieu, is another argument altogether. It's not, in my opinion. It is a great character study, one which admittedly has some horror aspects, but compared to something like 'Salems' Lot or Pet Semetary or Creepshow it is seriously lacking in the scare tactics that would generally accompany a horror movie. It's not a laughable attempt, like some I could name: The  Lawnmower Man, for instance, has the title of one of Stephen King's stories, but that's about the ONLY thing it has in common. But The Dead Zone does have many things going for it.

For one thing, it has Christopher Walken. Walken's presence in a film pushes it from being all bad to at least a mediocre level.  The 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives is pretty hard to slog through, but without Walken in it, I would postulate it wasn't worth the time. As a side note: Bill Murray was King's choice to play Johnny. Although Murray has since proven that he can sometimes handle dramatic roles (The Razor's Edge is not as bad as the critics suggest, in my opinion), I can't help but think that the reception of the news that Murray had been cast as Johnny would be received, pre-viewing, as somewhat similar to the way the news that Michael Keaton had been cast as Batman. Maybe he could have pulled it off, but I think it would probably have altered the dynamic.

An interesting little tidbit: You notice the startled look on Walken's face whenever he starts to get these premonitions? According to a "how it was made" documentary on my DVD, Walken told Cronenberg to fire off a pistol off screen, without warning Walken when he was going to do it. It got the effect it needed. 

The music was another factor that helped make the film work. Michael Kamen, whose output included all four Lethal Weapon films, the first 3 Die Hard films and the first X-Men had a knack for scoring films. Kamen won 4 Grammys and was twice nominated for Best Song Oscars.

The Dead Zone was very well received, critically On Rotten Tomatoes it currently holds a rating of 89% Fresh. Rogert Ebert gave it 3 ½ stars, saying that it "does what only a good supernatural thriller can do: It makes us forget it is supernatural."  It was a financial success, too. On a budget of only about $7 million it pulled in $20 million in the US alone, and another $17 million in sales outside the US. 

In the early 200's there was a TV series based on the novel which featured Anthony Michael Hall in the Johnny Smith role. I have to admit I have never watched even one episode and, although it lasted 6 seasons, I really don't see how they could have stretched it out to last that long. One of these days I have to give it a shot, though.

That wraps it up for this week. See you next time. Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

 

 

Celebrate the Drive-In Week: Drive-In

Celebrate the Drive-In is a tribute to a beloved venue of the past. During it's heyday, a trip to the drive-in was one of my favorite things, both on the rare occasions as a child, and in my early adulthood. This blog is going to celebrate Drive-In Day (June 6) with a series of movies that I was too young to see (or in a couple of cases, not even born yet) that I wish I could've experienced in a drive-in. Keep coming back for the entire week as there will be one per day for the duration.

It's Saturday night! Let's go somewhere where we can party like Monday isn't a school day! Presenting the next Coming Attraction! Drive-In!

 

The word "kismet" comes to mind. What better way to wrap up the Celebrate the Drive-In Week than with a movie titled Drive-In?

I would be highly surprised if you have heard of any of the actors and actresses that populate the cast of this movie.  Hell, the director is probably the most prominent name in the credits, Rod Amateau...  He directed most of the episodes of the 50's TV shows The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The Bob Cummings Show, as well as most of the episodes of the 60's TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He was primarily a TV director, although he did branch out occasionally to direct feature films. If you are, like me, a devotee of really bad movies, he was also responsible for The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (often cited as one of the "worst movies of all time").

I should point out that not ALL of the actors in this film are complete nobodies. The main character of Orville is played by Glenn Morshower, who had a recurring role on the TV show 24 over the span of it's life as a TV series. And if you saw the film Raising Arizona, Trey Wilson was the bigwig father of the baby that Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter kidnap. He was also Col. Nivens in a film I reviewed on this blog a few years ago, A Soldier's Story. Still, those two are exceptions. Most of rest of the cast have only this film, or maybe one or two more, to their credit. 

I would also be highly surprised if you don't think "Hey! I've seen this movie before!" The fact is there is almost nothing original going on here. Have you seen American Graffiti? Well, in this movie you get the white bread borderline goody goody redhead who is looking to hang out for one night with his tag along friend (here it's the character's little brother, but still...)  

 

Have you seen Grease? You get the somewhat rough girl who has grown tired of her hoodlum boyfriend as is looking to make a change. Have you seen Dazed and Confused? You get the fight between a guy who is out of his league taking on the hoodlum bigwig who is giving him hassles.  

 

Have you seen a movie (hundreds of possible comparisons here) where a wide-eyed African American is played up for laughs? Here the guy is a doctor instead of the typical stereotyped servant, but still the similarities come through.

 

The movie playing at the drive-in in the movie is not even original. Parodies of disaster flicks such as Airplane! and The Big Bus played out the theme with a bit more panache. But, in fact, most of the really funny parts of Drive-In occur in the movie within the movie (here titled Disaster '76), although I'm not entirely sure if Disaster '76 was intentionally meant as a parody, at least within the context of it's presentation to the audience in the film. That fake film uses some pretty funny stuff as it comes off like a parody of Airplane!, The Towering Inferno and Jaws, all rolled into one. But I think that the movie itself was supposed to be a serious disaster flick to the characters at the drive-in premiere.

 

Really, one of the better parts of Drive-In are some of the unique places where the soundtrack plays along with the action on the screen. The soundtrack is an anomaly, at least for a film that was made in 1976, and has a mostly teen cast. Instead of pop and rock songs, the soundtrack is filled with country(?) music. OK, so the movie takes place in west TEXAS, and probably more of the populace in that region were listening to the local country station as opposed to a pop / American Top 40 station, so maybe it was fitting in terms of it's setting.

The Statler Brothers song, "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?" plays over the opening credits (which credits, by the way, does not include the actors names... those don't come until the end credits. But like I said at the beginning, you probably don't know any of these people anyway...) The lyrics to that song fit along very well with the story as it plays out, however.

"Everybody knows when you go to the show you can't take the kids along.
You've gotta read the paper and know the code of G, PG and R and X.
And you gotta know what the movie's about before you even go.
Tex Ritter's gone and Disney's dead and the screen is filled with sex.

Whatever happened to Randolph Scott ridin' the trail alone?
Whatever happened to Gene and Tex and Roy and Rex, the Durango Kid?
Oh, whatever happened to Randolph Scott, his horse plain as could be?
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott has happened to the best of me.

Everybody's tryin' to make a comment about our doubts and fears.
True Grit's the only movie I've really understood in years.
You gotta take your analyst along to see if it's fit to see.
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott has happened to the industry.

Whatever happened to Johnny Mack Brown and Alan Rocky Lane?
Whatever happened to Lash LaRue? I'd love to see them again.
Whatever happened to Smiley Burnette Tim Holt and Gene Autry?
Whatever happened to all of these has happened to the best of me.

Whatever happened to Randolph Scott has happened to the industry."

 

Hey, as nostalgic and somewhat idealistic as it sounds, there were, and probably still are, people who feel the same way. My sister would be one of those. (And, no, she didn't watch this with me...)

 

 

  

Drive-In (1976):

In the summer of 1976, everybody in the small Texas town in this film are preparing for the event of the summer, a premiere of a new disaster movie, Disaster '76. (This is the glue that holds the film together, ostensibly.  There are a few subplots going on, but none of them would be enough to make this film interesting if they were the sole focus.) 

Note: The town, BTW, is never actually named, but it was filmed in Terrell, TX, which at the time only had about 15,000 population. So the small town feel comes through. And Terrell had it's own drive-in theater at the time which was used as the location for the drive-in in the film. Elsewhere I found out that that drive-in has been replaced by a bank... So their reminiscences probably parallel mine on the drive-in experience.

The main characters include Orville (Glenn Morshower) and his little brother (Gary Lee Cavagnaro). The brother (credited by the name "Little Bit", although I don't recall anybody in the film addressing him by any name), is looking up to his older brother, but is dismissive of being able to learn how to approach women, since he basically views Orville as a dweeb. 

 

Also, there is Glowie (Lisa Lemole; who is now better known to people as the wife of Dr. Oz, so maybe there is one more person in the film you might recognize...) Glowie has had a relationship with the leader of a pack of town hoodlums, Enoch (Billy Milliken), but she has grown increasingly frustrated with Enoch, probably mainly because he treats her like property instead of as an individual.

 

You can probably see the conflict coming a mile away, since early on Glowie hooks up with Orville, not only to the surprise of Little Bit, but also to the surprise of Orville himself.  Orville is not entirely on board with this new relationship, mostly because he has not had much success in attracting female companionship in his life. I think he is just a little "so, what's the catch..." viewpoint, which I would feel pretty much the same way, since I too was kind of like that when I was the same age. 

At the same time as all of this is going on, two rather dimwitted would be thieves are planning to rob the drive-in of it's cash collection. Gifford (Trey Wilson) and Will (Gordon Hurst) would be better off if they gave up the life of petty crime and instead went to Detroit to train to be diesel mechanics, as one of them suggests.  If you watch these two in action you may just wonder how they ever had any previous successes at their endeavors in crime. Although listening to them talk, I'm not sure that "success" was ever a part of their vocabulary...

 

The other running story in this film is about a gang called The Widow Makers (of which Enoch is the leader). Why are they called The Widow Makers? Who the hell knows? They seem to be some kind of nod to a motorcycle gang, except they don't ride around on motorcycles... Instead they drive around in a cheesy decked out van that looks like something that a disco dude would drive. 

 

They are on the lookout for a rival gang at the drive-in where they are hoping to have a rumble. The Widow Makers don't look like they could cause much fear, however. Looks like a gang of senior citizens could take them out with no problem. For that matter, so does the other gang (who also do their running around in a van...)

Enoch, having just been told by Glowie to go fly his kite in someone else's front yard, is also looking for the dude that Glowie left him for, who, coincidentally is also the guy who knocked the driver's side door of his van off it's hinges. And, as you found out from earlier in this review, is the town dweeb. The showdown at high noon midnight 9:17 PM is one of the focal events that happen at the drive-in that night, but it doesn't inspire an nail-biting, or for that matter any thumb twidgeting... 

The most exciting action in the entire movie is a car chase that occurs in the parking lot after our two bumbling desperadoes try to escape with the cash box. A would be hero, Bill (Kent Perkins, who, BTW, was married to Ruth Buzzi), chases the doofuses around the place, leading to one of the few times that I laughed at something that wasn't on the drive-in screen.   

 

And, of course, you couldn't have a 70's teen movie without an obligatory scene with someone smoking wacky tobacky...  A guy has taken his mother to see the picture, and when she complains about his hospitality, bemoaning the fact that he doesn't even offer her a cigarette, he obliges, but not with the kind of cigarette she was expecting....

 

 

It may take a concerted effort on your part to follow the plot lines of these individual characters, and just maybe you won't be entirely successful. But as I hinted earlier, it is worth a watch just to watch the scenes that are playing out on the theater screen. Word of warning, however: There is a scene in the film within the film where a plane crashes into a skyscraper. While this may have been funny in it's original playing, it is not at all funny now, given the recent history. But I think it is not entirely fair to retroactively judge it as ALL in bad taste. This movie was made in 1976, 35 years away from those horrific events of 9/11. 

The film has its share of incoherent scenes. I chalk this up to the mish mash writing by the screenwriter, who apparently tried to jam any references to current movies he could into one script. For instance, there is one scene early in the film where a semi driver is being chased by the local cops. He thinks he's ditched them when he hides the truck behind a building, but he's wrong. The problem with this scene is that driver never makes another appearance in the film, ever. So what was the point of the scene, other than to establish that this town does indeed have a police department? The best excuse I can come up with is it was some kind of nod to trucker movies (although the iconic trucker film,  Smokey and the Bandit, was still a year away from appearing on the big screen). 

In terms of reception of this movie, I really liked what Gene Siskel had to say: He gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and said he wished the film had been focused on fleshing out the fake movie, Disaster '76, rather than the activities going on in the theater. In the wikipedia article on the film, it apparently was received as a decent typical juvenile effort, not disparaged, but not lauded either, so Siskel's 2 out of 4 is probably about the same as the rest of the reviews at the time. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 53% Fresh. I couldn't find any information on what kind of profit the movie made, but given that it had no big name stars, it probably didn't cost a hell of a lot to make. I bet the biggest expense was renting the drive-in theater where the film was made. So a profit was probably a foregone conclusion.

As to my opinion: I have to admit this movie did have a small bit of appeal, but it's definitely not in my top 100 of movies I've seen. Give it a shot, but don't expect too much. I will say it is a damn sight better than the director's other foray into big screen work, the aforementioned The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. But, then, watching a marbles tournament would be more interesting than THAT one...

That's it for today, folks. And also a wrap-up for the Celebrate the Drive-In Week event. Hope you all had fun. Drive safely.

Quiggy