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

 

 

Sherlock Holmes vs. "The White Devil"

 

This is my entry in the Robert Duvall Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room.

 

 

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution started out life as a novel written by Nicholas Meyer. Meyer, by the way, is also a director of movies, having been at the helm of my two favorite movies in the Star Trek movie franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. He also directed Time After Time. He was not, however, the director for this movie. Instead, this film was directed by Herbert Ross. 

But this piece is not about Meyer, it's about Robert Duvall, whom we lost earlier this year. Duvall had a career that spanned from the early 50's, where he started out as a stage actor, through to his last film, The Pale Blue Eye in 2022. He was nominated 7 times for Oscars, winning only one of them, as the star of Tender Mercies. The first of those nominations, for Best Supporting Actor, came as a result of his portrayal of Tom Hagen in The Godfather. Unfortunately neither he, nor his co-star nominees, James Caan and Al Pacino, won the award. It went to Joel Grey for Cabaret. (And I'll just bet that, like the win for Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny a few years later, that Grey got the Oscar because the majority of the voters were split between those other three. My vote would have gone to Caan, if you're interested...)

An early window into what Duvall would become is his role in To Kill a Mockingbird. where he played Boo Radley. It was his first screen role ad, although he had no speaking lines in the film, his brief presence was somewhat impressive.  It was the beginning of a screen career, but he didn't just pop out of the ether: few actors do. He had about 10 years under his belt doing on stage acting and bit parts on TV. Just one TV episode worth checking out: In an episode of Combat!, he was a captured German officer and had a significant part in the episode.

 

Over his film career Duvall played many great roles. Check out his portrayal of Gus in the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove, which I watched as a part of a Film and Prose Fiction English class when I was a student at Southwest Texas State University. And although my vote is on record for Peter O'Toole in The Stunt Man for the 1980 Best Actor Oscars, I have to admit that Duvall was pretty good in The Great Santini. (They both lost to Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull, BTW).

My favorite outings for Duvall would have to be as Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H* and as the bad guy Ned Pepper in the John Wayne classic True Grit. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976): 

Dr. John Watson (Robert Duvall) has a problem. His good friend, Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson), has become very obsessive about a perceived threat from the most diabolical man on Earth, Dr. Moriarty (Laurence Olivier). As described by Holmes, Moriarty is basically King Spider, sitting at the base of his web and directing every evil and unorthodox act that is being committed, not just in London, or even the UK, but the world.

 

However, it would seem that Holmes' obsession is merely a part of his imagination. In reality Dr. Moriarty is just a humble teacher at a boys' school. His connection to Holmes is only that he was once a mathematics tutor to Sherlock and Mycroft when they were boys. And, as he points out to Watson during a private consultation, Moriarty has come to the conclusion that either Watson use his influence to get Holmes to leave him alone or he, Moriarty, is going to initiate legal action against Holmes. 

 

(The story diverges from the classic Conan Doyle story at this point. In "The Final Problem" Moriarty REALLY WAS a diabolical criminal...)  

The real problem is that Holmes has become unstable because he has become a victim to his seven percent solution of cocaine. In  other words, Holmes is now an addict. And since Cocaine Anonymous is still half a century in the future, other means are needed to engineer Holmes' release from the captivity of the white devil.

Watson knows of a man in Austria, Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin), who has had some success with helping others overcome their addiction to drugs. The problem is Watson knows Holmes will not admit that he is addicted, much less go to Austria, because that would leave his nemesis to run amok in London without Holmes' watchful eye. So some subterfuge is needed to get Holmes to go to Austria in the first place. With the help of Holmes' brother, Mycroft (Charles Gray), and Moriarty himself, a ruse is developed. Moriarty will go to Austria and hopefully Holmes will follow.

 

Of course, the ruse is a success, although when Holmes discovers the real reason for getting him to come to Vienna he is not at all happy. Such is the essence of the addict: he refuses to admit that he is addicted. (I like the way the first part of this film plays out. Even though my own addiction, to alcohol, never really got to the point that I was refusing to admit I had a problem, I have seen that played out in the form of fellow members in my dealings with my own recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous). Freud's process of curing addiction involves a combination of hypnotism and abstinence.

 

The D.T.s that Holmes goes through during the abstinence part are probably very graphic and shocking to anyone who has never dealt with such issues, either with a loved one or with one's own experiences. The movies do a pretty decent job of it, although mostly it can come off a little melodramatic on screen. A better portrayal of the experience, in my opinion, is Ray Milland's Oscar winning role as Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend. And, although I haven't actually seen the movie yet, I understand that a scene with Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas is one of the best. 

 

Holmes struggles are stark, to say the least. He goes through the stages of his addiction which parallel the classic stages of grief. At first he denies he has a problem with cocaine. He is angry at both Watson, for bringing him to Freud in the first place, and at Freud for his insistence that, despite Holmes' denial of a problem, insists that he is indeed an addict. The bargaining he attempts in trying to get his friends to leave him alone and  the depression and resignation that he will never become cured play out in the later scenes of the recovery process. It is only when he finally accepts his addiction and works with Freud to overcome it that he finally starts to achieve some success.

 

The second part of the film is when the classic Holmes mystery starts to come into the story. There is a woman under the care of one of Freud's colleagues has her own issues. She has tried to commit suicide. Lola Deveraux (Vanessa Redgrave) had previously been a patient of Freud whom he had cured of her addiction, but Freud believes she has relapsed. Instead, Holmes, now with his deduction capabilities on full alert, deduces that she had been kidnapped, given drugs by her captors against her will, and had attempted suicide as a result. 

 

Lola is kidnapped from the hospital and Holmes and company are on the trail. A capture  of one of the abductors reveals a sinister plot. Lola's former lover, a Baron (Jeremy Kemp), has engineered her kidnap with the intent of delivering her to a bigwig of the Ottoman Empire, who wants her for his harem. The reason behind the Baron's evil plans is that he owes the bigwig big money for gambling debts and is going to use Lola to get them dismissed.

 

Ultimately the finale involves a train chase across the countryside as Holmes chases the Baron, trying to stop him before he can reach Istanbul. Success is imminent, of course. (Did you expect otherwise in a Holmes adventure?) 

 

After the adventure is over Freud performs one last session of hypnotism with Holmes to get to the bottom of why he has such an animosity for Moriarty. After the session is over Holmes decides to take a vacation, and gives Watson a suggestion for his disappearance; tell his readers that Holmes and Moriarty died in a hand-to-hand battle (thus explaining why the story of "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House" were written but do not fit the real events).

Duvall has had a varied response for his characterization of Dr. Watson. Many reviewers have disparaged his accent, saying it's not entirely believable that he is a Brit. I personally didn't have a problem with it, for the most part. Only once or twice did it sound false to me. But then, you must know my only experience with people of British descent is either with films from that part of the world or the occasional online AA meetings I have sat in on on Zoom. It should be duly noted that the National Society of Film Critics, a British organization, had Duvall coming in 3rd in the voting for the Best Supporting Actor award, proving that at least some people thought he did a good job.

My main problem with the movie was that the mystery surrounding the second half of the film was rather mundane. Even compared to the outings which had Arthur Wontner in the Holmes role (which I rank as the worst Holmes, BTW) have a more intriguing mystery playing out on screen. At least the film stuck to the traditional setting, the late 19th century. Nothing in the film tries to put anachronistic aspects into the story. The Basil Rathbone Holmes stories sometimes tended to have Holmes doing battle with Nazis... (And, BTW, I do like the recent BBC series, Sherlock, which puts Holmes in the 21st century. It's just that, as a traditionalist, I tend to like my Holmes in a gaslight, hansom cab milieu as opposed to trying to make him relevant to the times, given a choice).

It's interesting to note that when the film was reviewed by the critics of the time that The Seven-Per-Cent Solution garnered good reviews from American reviewers, but British reviewers came down a little harder on it. One of the British reviewers said it was "a turgid concoction which draws no life from the Holmes/Freud confrontation and seems particularly ill-plotted". 

The film was nominated for two Oscars. It was nominated for Best Screenplay from Another Medium (which it lost to All the President's Men) and for Best Costume Design (which it lost to Fellini's Casanova). Somehow it also got nominated for a Saturn Award for Best  Fantasy Film (???), but it lost that one, too.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 78% Fresh rating, which I think is fair. However, as I intimated earlier, the best part is the first half of the film. The second half could have been much better, if you ask me. 

That wraps it up for this entry. Time to hail the hansom cab and head home. Have a safe trip, folks.

Quiggy

 

Celebrate the Drive-In Week: Hot Rod Girl

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 (Jun 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.

Don't! That's it. Just "Don't!" Presenting the next Coming Attraction! Hot Rod Girl!

 

"It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

                                     -quote from a television '70's PSA 

 

The above quote could have been inspired by the kinds of events that happened in this film. The movie poster says it all: "Are these our children?" it asks. Given that this is an American International Pictures film, whose main fare was designed to lure teenagers into coming to see them, this sets up an interesting question: Just who was the intended audience of this film? Perhaps that question could best be answered by the fact that this film was originally released to drive-in theaters as a double feature, with the other film being titled Girls in Prison (and I leave it up to you to determine what the focus of THAT movie was...)

 

There are several other questions that will come to mind if you watch this film. For one thing: the movie is titled "Hot Rod Girl", but except for the opening sequence the main girl, the one I assume is the "hot rod girl" the title refers to, is not seen hot rodding in the film. The other scenes in which Lisa appears show her driving rather sedately,

Another thing: the poster also trumpets "Rock 'N Roll", yet the music is almost entirely modern jazz and bebop music, not the kind of rock, or rockabilly, "rock 'n roll" you would expect coming out of the speakers. And the guys and gals in the film snap their fingers to the beat coming from the jukebox as if they are hipsters in a jazz coffeehouse. The music was written by Alexander Courage. Yes, the same Alexander Courage that Star Trek fans will recognize as the writer of the theme to the original Star Trek TV series. 

The film is full of some pretty laughable dialogue, as the main teen characters engage in some banter that, while maybe true to the characters and even the teen audience watching the film, comes off as pretty funny. That said, it's not a bad movie plot wise, although it is somewhat formulaic. But given the intended audience, and the low budget tendencies of the production company, that is to be expected.

The titular Hot Rod Girl, Lori Nelson, only had a brief career in film and TV, playing mostly as secondary characters in TV and film, although for one season she was the star of a TV show called How to Marry A Millionaire, based on the Marilyn Monroe movie. I would guess that the main reason she abandoned Hollywood stardom was to be a wife and mother. Interesting credit: She starred with John Agar in Revenge of the Creature in 1955, a sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon, and then 50 years later, in 2005, she reprised her role in The Naked Monster, a parody "sequel" to Revenge. (And, OMG, after watching a trailer for THAT one, I just gotta watch the film...)

The presence of Chuck Connors, TV's The Rifleman, playing an almost carbon copy personality that he would eventually come to be known in that classic TV series is one of the better parts of the film. In addition we also get Dabbs Greer, more well known probably as the reverend on Little House on the Prairie, and Frank Gorshin, ("The Riddler" on the 60's Batman TV show). Gorshin, by the way, is making his first appearance in a credited role in this film.

John Smith (from TV's Cimarron City and Laramie) is the only other big name you might recognize, although many of the rest of the cast did have careers as secondary stars on TV and in film.  The bad guy in this film, Mark Andrews, did not have much of a career, only appearing in a total of 8 roles. His IMDb profile seems to indicate his main job in life was as a fireman, so maybe acting was just a brief sideline. (It says, as a fireman, he once saved a man from drowning).

 

 

 

Hot Rod Girl (1956): 

In the opening sequence, local darling female hot rod driver Lisa Vernon (Lori Nelson) is preparing to show off her driving skills in a drag race at the local drag strip. 

 

The genesis of the drag strip is the inspiration of Detective Ben Merrill (Chuck Connors), a well meaning police officer who is trying to remedy the rampant drag racing by the local teens on city streets, which threaten to endanger the lives of the residents. 

 

But Ben's dream of solving the issue of the illegal drag racing is up against another blockade. See, the citizens of the town don't want the city streets being used for illicit racing, but they are also so tight-assed that they don't want a drag strip outside the city either. You get the idea that the city fathers would be just as happy if they didn't give driver's licenses to anyone under the age of about 40. (There are no adults in the film other than Ben, his boss (Russell Thorson),  and Yo-Yo (Fred Essler), the local diner operator, so this reluctance is only played out through the conversations that Ben has with his boss).

 

Jeff (John Smith) and his brother Steve (Del Erickson) are driving around town after the race when a hot rodder goads Steve into racing, and the result is Steve is killed. For some reason the authorities blame Jeff, seemingly because he didn't exercise enough influence to convince his brother to NOT race. So they take away Jeff's driver's license. (Huh?).

 

Jeff becomes depressed ad throws himself into his work, as a mechanic, in the process neglecting his girlfriend, Lisa (Lori Nelson), the "hot rod girl" of this film.  Which makes her the perfect attraction for the newcomer in town, Bronc (Mark Andrews). 

 

It doesn't help that she is the odd girl out since her friends, Flat Top (Frank Gorshin) and Two Tanks (Eddie Ryder) and their girlfriends, L.P. (Roxanne Arlen) and Judy (Caroline Kearney) are more interested in each other than the hanger-on, Lisa.

 

Newcomer Bronc is an obnoxious clod and goads Flat Top into a game of chicken. Which, if you are not familiar, is a "game" where two people get into their cars and drive flat out towards each other. The loser is the one who chickens out first.  Flat Top is that guy. Which ends up making Bronc even more cocky than he already is.

 

Ben sees Bronc for the threat he actually is, and in an effort to get him to leave makes Bronc go to the drag strip with his car. But Jeff, who is in charge of clearing all drivers and their cars disqualifies Bronc's car as not being safe enough to participate. Which of course makes Bronc mad. Instead of leaving town he vows to get revenge.

 

On a mountain road outside of town he tries to get Jeff, who is just out for a drive with Lisa, to race. Ultimately another accident occurs, with a kid on a bicycle getting killed. Based on Bronc's testimony, Jeff becomes accused of being the culprit, but Ben is not so sure.

 

Ultimately Hot Rod Girl is a typical teen movie as the kind that AIP put out at the time, featuring sex (50's family safe sex, but sex nonetheless), cars and rock 'n roll (or bebop jazz posing as rock 'n roll, anyway...) It does seem to have a family friendly message to it, though, unlike may of AIP's output. The message being that one should drive safely on the city streets and county roads and save the drag racing for the local legal dragstrip. Cheaply made, it had an appeal to it's intended crowd. It got fair to middling reviews at the time, and one reviewer noted that it was less exploitational than it's title implied.

That, I would say is an accurate description. One would expect with a title like Hot Rod Girl that there was some extremely hot subjects being addressed within the film, but the women in this movie are all the kind of women that you wouldn't be nervous about introducing to your mother. There isn't even a hint of implied sexuality, although both Flat Top and Two Tanks do have a slight hint of misogynistic tendencies, putting down their girlfriends on occasion. One wonders what these girls see in these guys. The only really polite guy when it comes to his female counterpart is Jeff.

Is it top tier cinema? Hardly. See The Born Losers, reviewed earlier this week, for much better drama and very much better bad guys. Mark Andrews' Bronc is not much more threatening than Fonzie, even the Fonzie that appeared in his introductory appearance  on Happy Days. Although, Jeff Smith could easily give Richie Cunningham a run for his money on the goody goody side, if Richie were a bit more introspective.

Still, it is worth checking out.

See you tomorrow. Drive safely, folks. Really. Drive safely. Don't get suckered into drag racing with that guy in the Corvette next to you in the theater. Come back tomorrow for Drive-In!

Quiggy