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

A Fishy Story

This is my entry in the Hotter'nell Blogathon hosted by Moviemovieblogblog(ii?)

Recently Avengers:Endgame blasted records for a movie release, surpassing every movie ever released in history except Avatar (and it may yet surpass even that.)  The so-called "summer blockbuster"  has been a designation that has been around for about 40 years or so.  Of the top grossing films of all-time, at least half if not more were released during the summer.  (The other half were released during what is at least equal to summer as a big money time to release movies, during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season).

The one that started it all for the summer blockbuster designation however was Jaws.  This movie proved that a great movie, released at an opportune time, could mean profits that could line studios pockets for months (or even years) to come.  When people forgo going to the beach for the weekend in order to spend two or three hours in a theater to watch a film, that says something about the power of movies.  And studios for the last 45 years or so have strained to capitalize on that market.  Jaws made some $470 million off a $9 million budget.  (It also had the effect of reducing the amount of traffic at the beach that summer, but that is for later in the review...)

Jaws was such a huge hit that, of course, Hollywood tried to go back to the well again and again.  It spawned 4 sequels, to date, each increasingly worse than the original.  Fortunately for us it didn't make it to Jaws 19... (a movie "predicted" in Back to the Future II.  "This time it's REALLY REALLY personal!")

But the original still can be an exciting film.  A couple of weeks from now Flashback Cinema is going to re-release the original for a one-week stand.  The theaters that will have it are part of a conglomerate of theaters and if you'd like to see if it will be showing anywhere near you, you can check out the list here.

Jaws (1975):

"You're gonna need a bigger boat..."  -Chief Brody.


Villains come in all shapes and sizes.  What motivates a villain to act the way he or she does can vary across the entire spectrum of the so-called "seven deadly sins".  The predominant one in my opinion, having seen hundreds of movies featuring villains, is greed.  The villain of Jaws is not the shark, in this view.  The villain (or villains, if you will) are the greedy townspeople of Amity, who don't want their money ticket, the summer vacationers, scared away by a "rumor" of a shark.  In other words "money talks and BS walks".

At the start, on Amity Island,  a girl goes skinny-dipping with a guy, and is attacked by a shark  (and this should be a warning to you youngsters.... it's a bad idea to go "skinny-dipping"...)  After discovering remains of the body,  Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches, but the Mayor (Murray Hamilton) won't hear of it.  Doesn't Brody realize that the entire economy of the island depends on vacationers coming to use the beach during the summer?

When the coroner (who was either uneducated in shark attacks or maybe bribed by city officials) determines that the death was the result of a boating accident, Brody reluctantly agrees to forgo his plans to close the beach.  But the shark attacks another boy.  What ensues is havoc, as the mother of the boy offers a reward for the capture of the shark.  This brings out every amateur money hungry fool to try to get the reward.

At a council meeting local fisherman and would -be aquatic hero, Quint (Robert Shaw) offers his services, but for no less than $10,000.  His offer however, is rebuffed, and in the meantime two of the fools trying to get the smaller reward bring in a tiger shark, which is pronounced by everyone to be the culprit shark.

Everyone that is except for marine scientist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), who claims that the tiger shark is too small and proves his theory by cutting open the shark and finding no proof that it had attacked either of the victims. 

The second half of the movie includes the (finally) introduction of the shark in question.  (Imagine!  We were halfway through the movie and had not actually seen the monster.  That's a tribute to how intense the build up was.)  Our first introduction is when Brody, who is rather reluctantly tossing chum out into the water in order to attract the shark actually succeeds in bringing the culprit to the surface, and determines that the boat they are in is a bit inadequate for the job.

 

Quint, saddled with two amateurs, and being overly enthralled with his own abilities, has his hands full.  But the three manage to survive without killing each other.  Can't say the same about the shark.  Old "Bruce" (as the mechanical shark was called during production) has other ideas about who is going to come out on top in this battle of wills.

In the end, all the sophisticated gadgetry is pretty much useless.  Saddled with no less than three barrels which have been harpooned into him, the shark continues to wreak havoc, and while the ultimate end may come off as a little anti-climatic (at least it did to me), it does satisfy.

The movie had an affect on people who watched it.  It caused many to be wary of going into the ocean.  I don't know what the actual figures were, but the reduction in beach traffic seems to be a given in talking about the effect Jaws had on the public.  

And it became a part of the zeitgeist of American culture for years to come.  It continues to be an influence.  It crops up in political cartoons, TV and movies (just the strains of John Williams' "Duh-dum duh-dum duh-dum" and most people know exactly what the film is referencing, even if they haven't seen it+.  And being afraid to go into the water?  That crops up too.  A 1981 film, Blood Beach, capitalized on the theme with a catch-phrase of "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...you can't get to it!" (That movie featured what was apparently a giant ant lion living on the beach).

The Jaws phenomenon made Steven Spielberg a household name.  Its success opened the door for a wealth of great (and not-so-great) movies over the years.  Spielberg followed up Jaws with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, the Indiana Jones movies and Schindler's List (which netted him his first Best Director Oscar), just to name a few.

As stated earlier, I will be going to see Jaws on the big screen later this month.  Although it will be at an indoor theater...
 

Well, folks, time to get the old Plymouth fired up for the ride home.  Drive safely folks.

Quiggy

Road Rage

This is my first entry in the Great Villain Blogathon hosted by Speakeasy, Silver Screenings and Shadows and Satin

Here he comes!  Machine Gun Joe!  Loved by thousands, hated by millions!

Yessiree!  They don't come any badder!  Darth Vader eat your heart out.  Machine Gun Joe Viterbo could run rings around your black-caped ass and have time to eat a stromboli or two in between acts.

Machine Gun Joe, who has the second best record in the annual Death Race runs has a deep and abiding hatred of his rival Frankenstein, the only other two-time winner of the Death Race and the only one who has a better record than Viterbo.  But Viterbo hates being second best in anything.  (Which is why I won't even put him below Darth Vader on the bad guy list.  Strangulation I can deal with.  But a couple hundred machine gun bullets?  That'd hurt...)

Death Race 2000 (1975):

In the year 2000, the world is a vision of dystopia that seems somewhat familiar today.  Albeit one in which America has somehow garnered a President-for-life dictator. The President, in all his magnanimous glory, has established an annual race in which all of the racers are given the task of racing across the United States from New York to Los Angeles.  The first one to arrive in Los Angeles is not necessarily the winner, however.

Because in the violence loving future, the racers have an added goal of running over any civilians they can find in their path.  Points are given based on the age of the victim and these are accrued to their score.  So technically, a racer could arrive in LA first, but still be second in the winner's bracket because he or she didn't kill enough people en route.

The racers are a hodgepodge of tropes, much like the WWF of today.  And each racer has their own navigator/sidekick who helps the driver achieve his or her goal.  .You have Matilda the Hun ( Roberta Collins) and her second, "Herman the German" (Fred Grandy; Gopher from "The Love Boat") who are a Nazi-themed duo.

You have Nero the Hero (Martin Kove) and Cleopatra (Leslie McRay), who are Roman gladiators.

You have Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov) and Pete (William Shephard) who are Western heroes.

You have the favorite star Frankenstein (David Carradine), who in the tradition of all Frankenstein's is supposedly pieced together with spare parts after numerous accidents in previous races, along with his navigator, Annie Smith (Simone Griffith).

And then you have Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), a gangster with his moll, Myra (Louisa Moritz).

Frankenstein, for his part, is just another driver, although he has been saddled with a new navigator.  Unbeknownst to him, Annie is the granddaughter of Thomasina Paine (Harriet Medin), the leader of a resistance group determined to bring down the Death Race and to overthrow the rule of the President.

The race begins with a real bang as Viterbo shows up, and hearing the cheers for Frankenstein and boos for him opens up fire on the stadium.  Those kills don't count, Joe.  You gotta run them over, not shoot them...  Joe does have some sense of the rules though.  And at one point he takes out his own pit crew.  Which the judges determine counts in the total of his "kills".

The race takes off, and Joe scores first.  But the fly in the ointment is the resistance group who aren't above setting up traps to kill the drivers in order to achieve their goals.  They lure the drivers into apparently easy kills only to have them blown up or drive off a cliff (through a fake detour tunnel, shades of Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons!)

Eventually, of course, it comes down to our two "heroes"; Frankenstein and Viterbo.  And with Frankenstein apparently swayed over to the side of the resistance by Annie, that leaves only Viterbo to fight for for the good old American Way of violence at all costs.

Some of the better side scenes come from the trio of commentators who give the play by play action.  Harold (Carle Bensen), a Howard Cosell knockoff, gives a straight forward no-nonsense account.

Grace Pander (Joyce Jameson) is the on the scenes girl, with a penchant for calling all the riders "a dear dear friend of mine".

And Junior Bruce (played by disc jockey "The Real Don Steele") is a riot as an over the top play-by play guy.

The dark comic aspect of the film may be missed by some due to the bloodshed on screen, but Paul Bartel, the director of the film, as an eye for real black comedy.  You should check out Eating Raoul, another of Bartel's genius black comedies, for a true look at his bizarre wit. Lust in the Dust is also worth a look.  Bartel only directed a handful of films, and may be more recognizable as a character actor.  (he has 91 credits as an actor).  But among Roger Corman's impressive list of "discoveries" in the field of directorship, Bartel stands out as one of the best in  my opinion.

Stallone was still a year away from true stardom with his role in Rocky, but this movie  represents an excellent window into the kind of character with which he would make a name for himself, as a gung-ho don't give a rat's ass about the rules type of guy.

Well, folks, that revving sound you hear is me firing up the old Plymouth.  Drive safely, folks.  (After all, this is only a movie.  We don't actually have  a Death Race...yet...)


Quiggy