Semiquincentennial Movie Project #31: The Giant Spider Invasion

 

 

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 #31: Wisconsin -

 

 

The state of Wisconsin was established on May 29, 1848.

Details about Wisconsin:

State bird: robin    

State flower: wood violet

State tree: sugar maple

Additional historical trivia:

Two Rivers is the birthplace of the ice cream sundae. Note: this claim is contested, but the city does date the invention of the sundae at it's earliest date here.

The iconic cheese head you see at Green Bay Packers games actually debuted at a Milwaukee Brewers game.  

You can thank John J. Blaine, a senator from Wisconsin, for introducing the bill that finally repealed Prohibition, making it legal to sell alcohol again.

Quite possibly an intentional marketing ploy if you ask me, but for a brief time in 2009 an exit sign in Wisconsin had every word on it spelled wrong except "exit".  (Might not have even been exit #185, for all I know...)

 

On the "beware your neighbor" side, both Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, two infamous serial killers were from Wisconsin. 

 The iconic TV shows Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley were set in Milwaukee. (Additionally, That 70's Show was set in a fictional town in Wisconsin.) 

Famous people born in Wisconsin: Orson Welles, Gene Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame), Liberace, astronaut Deke Slayton, Oscar "Happy" Felsch (one of the infamous "Black Sox" who threw the 1919 World Series) and Bob Uecker.  

 

The Giant Spider Invasion (1975): 

What's scarier than a little spider?

A bigger spider.

And what's scarier than a bigger spider? 

A spider that's grown to gigantic proportions, of course.

But you know what's not scary?

A Volkswagen Beetle decked out with legs to look like a giant spider....

I honestly don't know if this movie was meant to be taken seriously as a horror movie or not. After all, in the opening scene, we witness a cheesy shot of what is supposed to look look like a UFO (but actually more resembles a blue PEZ pellet) flashing across space. 

 

we zoom in on a small town where the sheriff, Sheriff Jones (Alan Hale, Jr.) is working at his desk, when in walks Dave (Kevin Brodie). The Skipper (I mean "the sheriff") greets him with a "Hi, little buddy!" and Gilligan (I mean "Dave") and he talk about a revival going on later.

It's nice to finally be off that island

 

Dave has a date with Terry (Diane Lee Hart). The Sheriff warns him that fooling around with Terry might not be a good idea because her brother-in-law Dan (Robert Easton), is not one to get on the wrong side of. But Dan is a good guy... he actually went to a revival. Ummm... no he didn't. But that's what he told his wife, Ev (Leslie Parrish).

Not tonight, honey. I have a bug...

 

When he comes back home, Ev doesn't believe his story.  But Ev has been doing exactly the same thing that Dan has been doing... fooling around with someone else. While they are discussing their fictional evenings the UFO from the opening sequence crashes in their back forty. But Dan says whatever it was will wait until morning.

Dan and Ev are not the typical happily married couple. Some of the best lines come from one or the other during this film.

Ev: "Sometimes the only way I know you're alive is when I hear you flush the toilet!" 

Dan: "You're so dumb, you wouldn't know rabbit turds from Rice Krispies."

 

These Rice Krispies taste funny, Ev...

Meanwhile a physicist at the nearby observatory notices some peculiar increases in gamma radiation in the area. Dr. Langer (Barbara Hale) calls in help to investigate this mysterious phenomenon. NASA sends out Dr. Vance (Steve Brodie, who, BTW, is the father of the actor playing Dave, in case you were wondering...). 

Just a typical family get together

 

Out at the farm Ev and Dan check out where the crash occurred. They don't find a UFO, but they find a couple of mutilated cows, which the unscrupulous Dan plans to chop up and sell to the owner of the local diner. They also find a bunch of meteorites. When Dan opens one up he finds... diamonds! (And a tarantula, but he doesn't see that). And quicker than you can say Spider Robinson Dan gets $$$ in his eyes.  

Later, when searching for more meteorites, Dan finds a dead body. He secretly buries the body, but he tells Ev they can't tell the sheriff because he'll find  out about the meteorites and diamonds. Of course, he'll also find out that one of their cash crops is a kind of grass that the sheriff would find not entirely orthodox...

The movie trudges along as just a normal spider movie (well, as normal as a "spiders from space" can hope to achieve. But the problem is we have a movie called The GIANT Spider Invasion. So, unless there are thousands of meteorites, that invasion is going to be pretty tame, don't ya think?

But (finally)  40 minutes into the movie we get some larger spiders. And the jump scares for this portion are worthy of pushing this movie from the "laugh riot" side of film into horror/monster film, as Ev is attacked in her farm house by a couple of big bear sized spiders. 

Meanwhile our intrepid doctors are scoping out the area and theorize that a miniature black hole crashed into Earth outside Dan's farm. (And every real scientist watching this movie is about to have a brain hemorrhage.) The whole theory is that that is where this invasion of spiders is coming from; essentially this miniature black hole opened a rift in the space-time continuum, I guess. What it looks more like to me is that the scriptwriters just did a scan of a few scientific articles and took words that sounded "science-y" and molded a story around it.

(Now, I will interject here that some scientists theorize that the Great Tunguska Fireball was the result of a miniature black hole falling to Earth, but to date no one has seen gigantic spiders in the region).

It takes 50 minutes before we see the really large spider come out of the ground. At first, the spider looks halfway decent. But as hinted in the introduction, eventually the film has to give us some long shots of the spider, and despite some fairly decent music to enhance the scare tactics of this "spider from Mars" (or wherever it's supposed to be from), it basically looks like what it is; a car with spider legs attached to it.

Well, a "beetle" and a spider are both insects, anyway...

 

Of course, when it becomes known that there is a giant predator on the loose, every redneck in town with a gun or a slingshot starts thinking, "hell, that's nothing we can take it", despite the Sheriff trying to convince them to let the authorities take care of it. And then, from out of nowhere, there's a....

CARNIVAL!

You heard that right, folks! Smorgasbord for the giant spider made to order, I guess....

Panic at the carousel

 

Ultimately the scientists decide that the solution is to set up some kind of device that will (hopefully) seal off the black hole so that nothing else can come through, and in the process kill any of the creatures that already have come through.

This movie is absolutely bonkers. The highlight for me is the preacher (Tain Bodkin). Remember the revival that Dan was supposed to be going to? Well, that preacher keeps popping up now and then spouting end of the world predictions. The final line from the film is the preacher expostulating:

"When pharaoh refused the children of Israel their right to exist, the heavens opened up and deluged the land with flies, frogs, lice and locusts! It happened before and it will happen again!" 

 Believe it or not, this film actually made a profit. Not entirely unreasonable since it was made for only about $300,000 (and most of that was probably spent on the spiders...) It made, by different accounts, either $3 million or $15 million at the box office. It doesn't have enough reviews to receive a rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but another website, the Popcornmeter, rates it at 14%. One review quoted on wikipedia calls it "self-subconsciously ludicrous". 

For entertainment value, it's a hoot (if you look at it as a comedy). But since I think it was actually supposed to be a serious horror movie I'd have to say, except for a serious sufferer of arachnophobia, it's not all that scary. The music does try it's best to enhance the scary parts, but even then it's sometimes lacking. However, give it a try. 

Until next time folks, drive safely.

Quiggy

 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #5: The Stepford Wives

 

 

 

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 #5: Connecticut-

 

 

The state of Connecticut was established on January 9, 1788. 

Details about Connecticut:

State bird: American robin

State flower: mountain laurel

State tree: white oak

Connecticut is the only state to have an officially designated state composer: Charles Ives. Although every state does have a state song, and some acknowledge the state song composers, none have a "state composer" designation.

Do you get annoyed with that 60 or 70 MPH speed limit? Blame Connecticut as it was the first state to establish a speed limit. Although be glad it progressed over the years. Originally the rural road limit was only 15 MPH... And while on the subject of cars, the first permanent license plate originated here.

Connecticut is the home of the origin of such things as the sewing machine and the Frisbee.

Famous names who claim Connecticut as their birthplace: Katherine Hepburn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Bolton, P. T. Barnum and our 43rd U.S. President, George W. Bush. 

 

 The Stepford Wives (1975): 

"Something strange is happening in the town of Stepford..." 

You know what the perfect wife would be? Someone who is docile, agreeable, a homebody, doesn't spend too much of hubby's money, in essence, that age-old male chauvinist idea of the perfect woman, whose only purpose is to stay "barefoot and pregnant". And it seems that the men of Stepford, Connecticut, are more lucky than the rest of the world in finding these ideal wives.

The Stepford Wives started out life as a novel by Ira Levin. Levin is the author who gave us Rosemary's Baby, A Kiss Before Dying, Sliver and The Boys from Brazil, all of which were made into great, or at least fairly good movies.  (Some may disagree whether Sliver was any good at all, but I like it...) Levin wrote 7 novels in his career and 6 of them were made into movies. That's 86% of his novel output that is on celluloid. (Eat your heart out, Stephen King). I just wish someone would tackle This Perfect Day, the only one that hasn't been made, and #2 on my list of favorites of his work.

The cache of talent involved doesn't stop with the author, however. The screenplay is credited to William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  All the President's Men and Misery, among others.) Of course, director Bryan Forbes rewrote a lot of it, but Goldman's touch is still there. The cast included Katherine Ross in the headliner role of Joana Eberhart, with her husband played by Peter Masterson. (And here's an interesting tidbit. The part of one of their daughters, Kim, was played by Peter Masterson's real daughter, Mary Stuart Masterson, in her film debut.)

Tina Louise (Ginger on Gilligan's Island) and Franklin Cover (Tom Willis on The Jeffersons) were also among the supporting actors in the film. There could have been other big names involved. Diane Keaton, for instance, was approached to be the lead, but turned it down because her analyst didn't like it. (it may be overstated, but I think about at least 50% or more of Hollywood was in some sort of psycho-therapy in the 70's...)  Jean Seberg and Tuesday Weld were also considered.

The movie starts as Joanna Eberhart (Katherine Ross) and her husband, Walter (Peter Masterson) and their two daughters, Kim (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Amy (Ronny Sullivan) prepare to depart from New York City on their way to their new home in Stepford, Connecticut.  The trip is approached with varying degrees of attitude. Walter is enthusiastic about it (at one point he even gushes that "you don't even have to lock your doors in Stepford"). The kids are oblivious, since it's just another day, and probably just thinking about the new friends they'll make.

 

On the other hand, Joanna seems to be having a little apprehension. After all, moving to a small suburb from the hubbub of the big city affects her in more ways than one. For one thing, she is an artist (photographer), and the move will take her away from the artistic word in, say, Greenwich Village, or wherever she happens to do business.

To make things even more disconcerting for her, she finds that most of the women in Stepford are the exact opposite of her: they are more interested in being dedicated housewives, keeping clean kitchens and making exquisite meals, rather than being open to the feminist ideals that Joanna adheres to. And strange things happen; like when Carol Van Sant (Nanette Newman) takes a blow to the head in a traffic accident and Keeps repeating the same thing over and over again.

 

To make matter worse, there is a thriving social club in town, but it is strictly "men only", which is an affront to the radical feminist Joanna. One of things that stands out early in the picture is that Walter seems to be overly eager to cave in to his wife (to use a derogatory term; [expletive deleted]-whipped).

 

But he gradually gets his own backbone upright by joining this men's club, albeit to the objections of Joanna.  Joanna meets a neighbor, Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), who is like her a free-spirited feminist, and the two decide to start their own "women's club". But while Joanna and Bobbie, and another woman in town, Charmaine (Tina Louise), are receptive to the concept, the rest of the women fit into that dedicated housewife category. 

 

Bobbie

Charmaine

 

In fact, at their first meeting, although the feminist sector open up about their feelings on the male-dominated society in Stepford, the housewives delve into what the best product is to keep food from sticking to the pan when baking. (It all comes off like a TV commercial...)

 

Joanna and Bobbie start to get suspicious when Charmaine suddenly turns into one those dedicated housewives. Initially Bobbie thinks there must be something in the water and takes samples to a science lab, but they find it's nothing but ordinary tap water. And then, somewhere along the way, Bobbie also turns into one of those dedicated housewives. Joanna decides she's had enough, and if Walter won't pack up and leave Stepford, then she will take the kids and leave herself. 

 

The roadblock to that occurs when Walter, for some reason, has sent the kids off, so he can have a quiet weekend with Joanna. Since the "quiet weekend with the husband" occurred prior to her friends becoming the "alien" personalities, she gets her hackles up and decides to delve into this mysterious "men's club" meeting house.

 

I'll leave just enough for you to be curious about the ending, although it's a good bet that most of you already know, even if you never have watched the movie. The term "Stepford wife" has insinuated itself into the lexicon far enough that just the basic idea may be in your mind already. 

The film was released in February of 1975. The only real competition for it appears to be Shampoo, a Warren Beatty film that ended up being  the third highest grossing film of the year, making $49 million dollars. The Stepford Wives, although not a "dud", only managed to pull in $4 million dollars. Critical response was generally mediocre. It currently holds a rating of only 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic even stated that the screenplay from the source material was "tedious and padded".

One of the more interesting aspects of it's reception was with the feminist sector of the population. I personally thought that the film had a fairly strong feminist tinge to it, but then, I am a male, and a single male at that, so what do I know? Wikipedia, quoting an article from Entertainment Weekly, says that at one showing to an audience of feminists, it was met with "hisses, groans and guffaws." Betty Friedan, a respected leader of the feminist movement, called it "a rip-off of the women's movement." However, some feminist authors did come to it's defense, and director Bryan Forbes objected to the criticism by claiming that if the message of the movie was anything it's anti-men.

The movie spawned three made-for-TV sequels and, in 2004, a remake starring Nicole Kidman in the Katherine Ross role. Haven't seen that, but I am given to understand it was beneath the original, and only barely made back it's production costs in the theater. 

In my opinion, the 1975 version gets a lot of bad press. I think that Katherine Ross carries the film well, and some of those "transformed" Stepford women give me the creeps, which says a lot about how well they became the docile, subservient women the men of Stepford created. There are also some decent parallels to the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in that sometimes the changes in the "victims" can be so insidious and yet subtle that you just don't realize until it's too late. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence, to me at any rate, that both movies take place in bucolic suburbs rather than in the big city. (Of course, the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers did occur in a big city, and as I said in my review of that movie, it's up to you to decide which is a more scary scenario.

The one issue that I had with the movie is that it seems to ignore the children. One wonders how the children responded to the change in Mommy's personality. After all, besides Joanna, I'm sure there must have been some of the others who had had kids prior to their change. What did they think of the new attitude of Mommy?

The Stepford Wives was a much better movie than the remake with Nicole Kidman, that much is certain. Watching Ross and her gradual realization dawn that something is not quite kosher in Stepford is well worth the price of admission. 

Well, that's it for this time folks. Drive safely.

Quiggy

  

Wayne Got His .44 Magnum After All

 

 

 

John Wayne had a career that spanned decades. He began with bit parts in the late 20's, until his first real meaty part in The Big Trail (1930). Then he wallowed in "poverty row" westerns (cheap B movies cranked out by such studios as Monogram and Liberty, with budgets lower than even the quality) until John Ford rescued him and gave him what is referred to commonly as his breakthrough role as "The Ringo Kid" in Stagecoach (1939). Over the next 40 years, Wayne's name became a drawing factor in dozens of movies.

Admittedly, he was involved in some clunkers over that span. Not too many would disagree that probably his worst was when he tried to play Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956).(Wayne as a Mongol warrior? See the link to see what I thought of that decision). A lot of those poverty row westerns rank pretty low on a list of Wayne movies, too, and admittedly, to me at least, most of them could be confused with each other, because they all basically had the same story.

Personally, I think Wayne was at his best when he stayed with the westerns genre.  My personal favorites in this category are El Dorado, The Horse Soldiers, The Shootist, The Sons of Katie Elder, Stagecoach, The Train Robbers, The Undefeated and The War Wagon, all of which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog. You can also add a few that I haven't gotten around to reviewing (yet): Chisum, Fort Apache, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, Red River, The Searchers and True Grit. I also like Rio Bravo, but not nearly as much as I like the remake, El Dorado.

When Wayne tried to branch out from his western hero mold, at times he came across as a western cowboy in a role that was decidedly not a western, but many times did a good job at it anyway. As jingoistic as they come across, both Sands of Iwo Jima and The Green Berets are still standout Wayne performances. But both of those are war movies, and cowboys and soldiers are not all that far apart, at least in the Hollywood tradition. You could have transplanted both of those in the realm of the Civil War and made him a Union officer leading troops and they still would have been mostly the same.

In my opinion, however, when Wayne tried to play modern day characters outside of the war and western pictures, his films were not all that great.  Circus World, Jet Pilot and even Hellfighters are probably some of the worst films my admitted movie hero ever made.

Two movies Wayne made just prior to his last, and one of his greatest, films, The Shootist, rank among those that many Wayne fans are not overly fond of.  Both, I think, were made in response to Dirty Harry (1971) and involved him playing modern day detective/cop characters. In McQ (1974) and Brannigan (1975) Wayne played the rogue cop role already made famous by Clint Eastwood, and followed by such TV shows like Baretta. Of course, in McQ Wayne's character quits the force and takes on the role of private investigator to complete his goal, but he starts out as a sort of Harry Callahan character at the start.

It's not that Wayne is absolutely horrible in these two. The fact is, being an avowed Wayne western aficionado, I myself just had a hard time with accepting him playing the gritty modern cop character. Now it must be said, Wayne had been approached to play Harry but turned it down, and admitted later that he thought he had made a mistake. So his taking on these two roles probably had a lot to do with that decision. 

Contrary to the title of this blog entry, Wayne's gun(s) in these films is not a .44 Magnum as Eastwood uses in Dirty Harry. In Brannigan his preferred weapon is a Colt Diamondback, and in McQ, it is a SW Model 10, but I couldn't resist the title, given that these two films were basically knockoffs of the Eastwood film.

Both films have something to keep the interest of people. There is a little bit of film noir running through each, what with a lot of surprise double crosses, and a few "didn't see that coming" twists, but in my opinion, Wayne was the fly in the ointment here. Clint Eastwood was 40 when he made the first Dirty Harry, and as such somewhat believable as the rogue cop with some vigor still in his body. Wayne, on the other hand, was in his mid-60's when he made these two, and even taking the cancer that was starting to take toll on his body by this time, just didn't have the oomph to look like he could still hang with the big guys. 

 

 

 

 

Brannigan (1975):

Jim Brannigan (John Wayne) likes doing things his way, regardless of what objections the bosses might have. He is hot on the trail of a mobster named Larkin, and he'll stop at nothing to get him.  But Larkin is no longer in America.  He is currently in London, where the Brits have offered to extradite him to the Americans, and the powers that be send Brannigan to collect him. But basically Larkin is walking around free until at such a time. That's because the Brits have some "by the rules" laws, which includes the fact that he could go on bail.  Not to worry, however, Jimbo, they have him "under surveillance". Jolly good, eh, what? 

 

Larkin has a hit out on Brannigan, and has hired a hit man to eliminate him, this despite the fact that even if he succeeds the Americans will just send another man.  But Larkin doesn't like Brannigan very much, so he has his sights set on just the immediate future. 

 

And he has one of the best hit men in the world on the pay roll, Gorman (Daniel Pilon). He also has no intention of taking the advice of his "lawyer" , Fields (Mel Ferrer), to skip town through a bit of subterfuge because Larkin really likes London and wants to hang around.

 

Brannigan is met at the airport by a police officer, a woman (bit of a change from his last stint in London during the war.) Det. Sgt. Jennifer Thatcher (Judy Geeson) escorts Brannigan to meet with the head honcho in Scotland Yard, Sir Charles Swann (Richard Attenborough), who assures him they can pick up Larkin any time Brannigan is ready to do so.  But there is a fly in the ointment.  While Larkin was at a men's club getting a massage, he is kidnapped, and now even the Yard has no idea of his whereabouts.

 

Brannigan gets off to a bit of a bad start with Swann over his insistence to wear his firearm, which, although regulatory by American standards is against British law.  "When in London, do as the Londoners do" is not a part of Brannigan's repertoire, however. Despite many demands put on him by Swann to turn over his weapon, he refuses to do so.  Which decision comes in handy quite often over the course of the film.

 What keeps this movie from becoming an unintentional farce like the Conqueror is the fact that the action gets gritty enough to hold your interest.  And the chase scenes through the London streets are exceptionally well paced.  I am especially grateful for the fact that when, in the inevitable scene in which Wayne is forced to take the wheel in one car chase, the film didn't sink into the "fish out of water" driving I half expected: that of Wayne, being American, driving the wrong side of the road or some such ridiculousness.  At least they kept that joke out of the picture.

There is some very interesting twists going on, and Brannigan seems to think that maybe, just maybe, that kidnapping of Larkin isn't as on the up-and-up that it would seem to be.  Although you might think it was given the fact that one scene involves the "kidnappers" sending the police one of Larkin's fingers as proof they mean business. Which just goes to show how committed some people can be in hoodwinking others.

Over the course of the film there is always that hit man working his way into the objective, and in one scene, the female detective almost buys it just because the hit man mistakes her for Brannigan.  Fortunately she is saved, because that would have been a very serious letdown if she had died.  I liked the girl playing her.

The final shootout with the bad guys goes pretty much as you would expect.  But wait! Remember the hit man?  He is still determined to finish his assignment. OK, so this movie (and as you will see, the other one) are not really horrible. And with a younger guy than Wayne, these movies both might have been good moneymakers, whether or not a star name was in the title role. 

 

 

McQ (1974):

 

The beginning has a guy driving around the city where he kills two uniformed police officers.  One is a guy on early morning patrol checking locks when he sees the car and investigates.  The driver shoots him and speeds away.  But not very far because he shoots another a few blocks away.  Then he goes to a diner where he stashes the gun in a satchel.  And we find out that he is a police officer himself... He takes the satchel outside and throws it in a car that pulls up, but as he is walking away, the driver of that car shoots him. It turns out that the original shooter was a Det. Sgt. Boyle, who was a partner and friend of Lt. Lon "McQ" McHugh (John Wayne). 

 

It's a bad morning for McQ. Not only does he learn that his partner and friend has been shot, but when he goes outside, he finds some guy trying to hijack his car.  He yells at the would-be thief  who runs away, but someone has been lying in wait for him and tries to shoot McQ.  He dodges the bullets and ends killing his would be assassin instead.  Already, barely three minutes into the picture, we have 4 dead bodies.

In the tradition of film noir, it gets even more complicated as it goes along.  McQ's boss, Capt. Kosterman (Eddie Albert) thinks the whole thing is a plot by radicals. (This being the 70's, liberal anti-war student radicals were often the bad guys.) 

 

But McQ is convinced it is the work of a local drug lord, Santiago (Al Lettieri).  He tries to do his own work in solving the murders (Boyle has in the meantime died), and ends up beating the crap out of Santiago to try to get a confession.

 

 

That doesn't work so well.  McQ ends up in hot water with his bosses and is told to take a desk job pending investigation.  But McQ is in no mood to give up so easily.  He quits the force and then goes to a private detective friend to get hired on as a private investigator. This is just a cover, since McQ's "client" is himself, thus giving him some freedom to operate on the case in another capacity. He still retains a compadre on the inside of the force, however, to help him wangle the necessary information he might need; J.C. (Jim Watkins)

In the process of investigating he finds out from a former snitch, Rosey (Roger E. Mosely), that there is a planned heist, and from another snitch, Myra (Colleen Dewhurst) that the planned heist is going to be from the police department itself.  

 

It turns out that about $2 million worth of drugs is about to be burned, but hoods posing as laundry men, take the drugs.  McQ gives chase but loses them in a confusion during the chase. Capt. Kosterman is none too pleased and threatens McQ with removal of his private license. But McQ is still on the case, with or without his legal license to carry. Ultimately he breaks into Santiago's offices where he finds, conveniently, a desk littered with bags of the "drugs".  But he is caught by Santiago and his henchmen, and finds out that even crooks can be taken for a ride.  What Santiago actually ended up with in his drug heist are bags of sugar. 

You get it now?  There are some police men on the inside who are dirty, taking the drugs for their own profit and basically leaving the real drug dealers high and dry.  McQ suspects that the Mr. Big on the inside must be Kosterman, who, after all, has been doing everything he can to get McQ off this case.  But don't be too sure about that...

Of course, it turns out, as anyone watching must have cottoned to, that Boyle was involved in some dirty dealings, but he had to have a partner in the ring, one who knew all about his dirty dealings, and one who was higher up in the echelon on the inside.  But maybe there were a couple of other partners that were in on it that no one else knew about. And possibly, just possibly, friends that McQ has may not entirely be the friends he thinks he has.

At this point I would normally tell you how it all panned out.  But despite  the fact that I thought Wayne was out of his element in this role, I still liked the double cross the film makers put on the viewing public as to the real solution.  Maybe you will see it coming a mile away, but I was thrown for a loop. Which is why I think this movie is worth watching, at least plot wise. Wayne may not be believable as an obviously aged cop trying to pull off stuff that someone 20 years younger ought to be doing, but the story makes it worth a watch.

One of the important reasons why this film works is that it had a guy behind the camera who knew how to make the action interesting.  John Sturges, the same man who gave us such classic action oriented movies as The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven (and there's a movie long overdo for an appearance at the Drive-In...), Ice Station Zebra and his last film, The Eagle Has Landed knew how to hold the viewers interest. Many of you could name others, I'm sure, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind for me.  

Well, folks, as opposed to most of my Wayne movies, this time I won't have to try to saddle up a horse, although the Plymouth is no match for the kinds of cars Wayne gets to go home in...

(And, in case you missed it a few years ago, for those who might be wondering, I present the Plymouth...)

 

 

Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The Odd Couple

 

This is my entry in the Mismatched Couples Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews and Cinematic Catharsis

 

 

 

The "odd couple" trope never really got as weird in straightforward drama and comedy as it did when used in science fiction.  You could expand that concept to more outré ideas when you didn't have to stick with what was currently acceptable possibilities (human on human; whether male on male, female on female or male on female, or even younger on older of any of those. Or for that matter, even human and animal, at least animals that didn't speak...)

Once in the realm of science fiction you could get such odd couples as robots (i.e. R2D2 and C3PO from Star Wars or even the lovelorn pair from Heartbeeps ) or an alien paired with a human (i.e. Jareeba and Will from Enemy Mine) or in the case of today's feature, an apocalyptic movie featuring a boy and a faithful companion, a dog that is telepathic.

A Boy and His Dog  was the second of only three directorial efforts by a man who was better known as a character actor, L. Q. Jones. 

 

 

 

 

You will undoubtedly recognize Jones.  He was a frequent guest star on TV shows as well as a subsidiary character in several movies (many of them westerns).  An interesting tidbit for you:  Jones' real name was Justus McQueen, but in his first role on film he played a character named "L. Q. Jones" (Battle Cry).  He liked the name so he used it as his stage name ever afterwards.   

The movie features, also, one of the first appearances by a young Don Johnson, and I KNOW you know who HE is...  (even if you may not quite recognize him in a photo from the movie here...)

Also included was Tim McIntyre as the voice of the dog, Blood.  (And McIntyre, BTW,  just missed his shot at iconic stardom a few years earlier.  In the late 60's, Norman Lear's first attempt at creating what eventually became All in the Family, a pilot called Justice for All, featured McIntyre in the role of the son-in-law of Carroll O'Connor's character.)

Oh, and by the way, does Blood himself look familiar?  The dog that did all the physical action and reactions required of him in this film was a consummate actor in his own right.  It was "Tiger", the dog that was the 10th star (after the 2 parents, 6 kids and Alice, of course...) of the classic TV show The Brady Bunch! So he came by his ability to convey frustration and disgust quite naturally.

The story comes from a short story written by Harlan Ellison.  Ellison had some Hollywood efforts that made it to film, but the one you the reader might be most familiar with is the Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever.  Some liberties were taken with the story as it transitioned from print to film and Ellison himself tried to adapt it first, but after a while the script duties were taken over.

 

 

 

A Boy and His Dog (1975):

Note the movie poster above.... "The year is 2024... a future you'll probably live to see."

Well, congratulations.  If you are reading this now, you DID live to see 2024. (Unless you are reading this 100 years hence, of course... a distinct possibility,  given the eternal life of the cyberspace.)

Although, to be fair, the future depicted in A Boy and His Dog is not the future we actually lived to see... As noted in the opening sequence (after some stock footage of some nuclear explosions) the screen crawl told us:

World War IV lasted five days.

 

Politicians had finally solved the problem of urban blight.

(To say the least...)

So wait a minute... "World War IV"?

Well, as we discover in the process of the first reel, World War III was actually the Cold War and some of the conflicts that occurred over the span of time from 1950-1983.  (The optimistic end of the Cold War, of course.  The actual Cold War didn't end until a few years later...) 

Anyway, the peace only lasted a few years, then, as stated the ultimate conflict happened and everyone started firing off their rockets and made the apocalyptic future as now ongoing...  In this world roving bands of renegades vie for their own little bit of "paradise".  In this future comes Vic (Don Johnson) and his companion, a telepathic dog named "Blood" (voiced by Tim McIntyre).

Blood helps Vic out by TRYING to keep him alive, as well as directing him to the one thing he wants more than anything else.  And what, you may ask, is that?  Hint: Vic is an 18 year old boy.  What do YOU think is primary on his brain?  (And if you said a college degree, boy are YOU naive...)

One thing to warn those of you with more conservative sensibilities; Vic is not necessarily a good guy.  His quest is NOT for love or even a compatible companionship.  He just wants sex and usually in a form that does not include the willingness of the recipient. (Yes, that means he is raping the victim.)

Blood also does his best to educate young Vic.  History lessons and the like.  Including the Presidents.  (Apparently after Ford, the Kennedy clan was able to lay claim to a succession of presidencies... which Kennedys I don't know.  But Teddy tried his hand at the job several times back in the late 70's and early 80's so...)

But Blood has very little patience as a teacher.  Plus, like Vic, Blood has a one track mind too.  He wants food.  Which means that Blood occasionally resorts to coercion to get Vic to find food.  You want women? I want food.  You bring me food and then we'll talk.; "Albert".  (For some reason, which is never really made clear, Blood sometimes calls Vic "Albert", apparently just to annoy him...)

Blood keeps urging Vic to seek out "Over the Hill" an idyllic legend that Blood heard about from a police dog (which Vic doesn't actually believe), a place where food grows right out of the ground (instead of the way they have to find it now, scavenging demolished buildings for storehouses of canned goods.)

Vic and Blood end up trading in some of their goods to attend a movie theater, one which apparently deals in cheap cheesy stag (read: pornographic) films,

Vic is being observed by three mysterious characters who come from "Down Under".  They come to the conclusion that he is the best candidate for what, at this point, remains a secret mission.  But they decide to send in the "cheese".  What is the cheese.  As it turns out it is a girl, Quilla June (Suzanne Benton), who is put into place to entice Vic into "Down Under".

After (multiple!) sexual liaisons with Quilla she deserts Vic, and Vic, being someone with only one mind, decides to try and follow her.  (Which was the whole plan.)

"Down Under", it turns out, is an underground society, a leftover from the days before the war.  The Down Under society coincidentally calls itself "Topeka", so maybe the location that Vic wanders with Blood above ground is Kansas.  The Topeka (as I will refer to it here out) society lives on, having separated itself from those "savages" who live on above ground.  And they need Vic because, while the Topeka society still functions, they somehow don't have the ability to generate the necessary qualities to procreate that someone above ground does, and Vic becomes their goal to help resolve that deficiency.

The society in Topeka is bizarre, to say the least.  It appears to be run by religious fanatics, with some really outré Christian basis.  (And a penchant for wearing white face, which is never really explained...)

A Committee runs the show and any citizens who do not fit and follow the strict rules of the society are judged to be uncooperative and sent to The Farm (which turns out to be a death sentence, more or less, and which is completed by an android named Michael, who is dressed, coincidentally,  as a farmer.) 

The process by which Vic is induced to help Topeka get repopulated is not to his preferences however.  What it involves is his being strapped down and manipulated by machine to generate vials of his procreative seed (I am TRYING to keep this entry as "family friendly as possible, but it's not easy).  He has to come up with 35 vials of said seed, but then he is scheduled to be relegated to "The Farm".

If Vic had been required to use his prowess to physically become active with his potential "mates", I doubt he would have wanted to leave Topeka, even if all of them did have that off-putting white face fetish.  

But he is not happy with the situation he has to endure.  Not that he has much choice since he is strapped down and has duct tape over his mouth to prevent any objections.

 Eventually Quilla June comes along to help Vic escape, but her goal is not due to a change of heart.  What she really wants is for Vic to help her make a change in the leadership in Topeka. Failing getting a position on the Committee by peaceful means, she tries to manipulate Vic into helping her in a revolution, by killing off the leaders so she can take over as the leader of Topeka. But Vic just wants to get the hell out of Dodge  (I mean Topeka).

With an effort Vic and Quilla escape Topeka, destroying the android Michael in the process and make their way back to above ground.  But is Blood still there?  And will Quilla convince Vic to make a new life with her?  Or will Vic and Blood chase the elusive dream of Over the Hill, a realm where you don't have to scavenge every single day just to survive?  He eventually chooses Blood, and gets him the food he needs to survive.  The "food" that Vic gets for Blood is not stated in overt terms, but as Blood tells Vic in his final line, about Quilla: "I would say she had marvelous judgement, Albert, if not particularly good taste". So maybe you can draw your own conclusions...

Friends stick together, through thick and then, even in the strange post-apocalyptic worlds of the future (or present, if you want to be technical).  And you couldn't find a better friend to get you through hard times than a super-intelligent dog.  So odd couples, even in sci-fi, are friends to the end (or the end of the movie anyway).

Well folks, time to fire up this old Plymouth and head back to the hovel I call home.  Drive safely.

Quiggy