This Week in Rixflix #19 : August 18-24, 2017

OK, let's get this ship righted... I have missed a few weeks in-between my last supposedly weekly installment of this series and this post. I am not going to go into the hows and whys, apart from saying that I, for the last week of July and the beginning of this month, decided to concentrate full-time on the TCM online course on Alfred Hitchcock in order to complete everything before the course's expiration date (August 5th). That's my excuse for the first couple of weeks I missed for This Week in Rixflix; the rest is my own concern. 

But complete the TCM course I did, and not only that (as I posted on Facebook a while back), between July 6th and August 10th – a span of 36 days – I watched 42 of the 56 feature-length films that Hitchcock directed in his lifetime. Twelve of those movies (about half of them silent features) were first-time views for me, of which I will speak more on The Cinema 4 Pylon in coming weeks. (If you think this isn't going to turn into a couple editions of my All or Nothing series, you'd better rethink your position...) Most amazingly to me, in that group of 42 films, I never got around to watching some of my favorite selections of The Master, such as Psycho, North by Northwest, The Birds, To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, and my #1 Hitchcock film overall, Strangers on a Train. So now I have decided to casually play catch up with the rest of the films, so I can say that I have watched as much of his available oeuvre as I could within the same year. The Birds was the first film in that follow-up, and I plan on relaxing with NxNW this coming weekend, if not more. 

I just couldn't stop at 42, you know...

The Numbers: 

This week's feature film count: 21; 15 first-time viewings and 6 repeats.
Highest-rated feature-length film: The Birds (1963) – 9/9
Lowest-rated feature-length film: Toxic Shark (2017) – 4/9
Average films per day in August so far: 2.4167
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 2.97
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 254

And, to finish off the course, here is the list of the 42 Hitchcock films that I watched from July 6, 2017 to August 10, 2017. I have lined them up chronologically by release year (but not necessarily in order of release) so you can get a quick snapshot of the breadth of the man's career. The list covers 49 years of the man's work, extending from the silent era all the way up to Family Plot in 1976, the only Hitchcock film I saw in a theatre within the same year of its release:

1927
Downhill (1st time)
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
The Ring (1st time)

1928
Champagne (1st time)
The Farmer's Wife (1st time)

1929
Blackmail
The Manxman (1st time)

1930
Murder!

1931
Mary
Number Seventeen (1st time)
The Skin Game (1st time)

1932
Rich and Strange (1st time)

1934
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Waltzes from Vienna [Strauss' Great Waltz] (1st time)

1935
The 39 Steps

1936
Sabotage
Secret Agent

1937
Young and Innocent (1st time)

1938
The Lady Vanishes

1939
Jamaica Inn

1940
Foreign Correspondent
Rebecca

1941
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Suspicion

1942
Saboteur

1943
Shadow of a Doubt

1944
Lifeboat

1945
Spellbound

1946
Notorious

1947
The Paradine Case

1948
Rope

1950
Stage Fright

1953
I Confess (1st time)

1954
Dial M for Murder
Rear Window

1955
The Trouble with Harry

1956
The Man Who Knew Too Much

1958
Vertigo

1964
Marnie

1966
Torn Curtain

1972
Frenzy

1976
Family Plot


This Week's Reviews:

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) Dir.: Edward Zwick – I would ask "Did we need another Jack Reacher film?" but then I would have to also ask "Did we need the first Jack Reacher film?" No, and no, would be my hard answers. This is not Tom Cruise hate, because as my wife will tell you, he is my boyfriend. Or at least she loves to say that because I seemingly have no qualms about going to the theatre to see the latest Mission: Impossible installment or the latest big-budget sci-fi or action flick featuring him in the lead. (There is a huge story behind all of this Cruise discussion between my wife and myself, only some of which I have made clear on Facebook; maybe in the near future.) Despite my dislike for his weird religious cult (sorry, but until their practices are more open to the public, that's what they are), I think Cruise is just fine as an action star, and even a pretty good actor in the right role. (And he is dead on hilarious in Tropic Thunder...)

So, I do see nearly everything that Cruise puts out eventually, though I don't necessarily see many of them in theatres apart from the hugest blockbusters. And then there are these Jack Reacher films, based on an extremely popular series of books that I cannot (and possibly never will) ever fathom. Of course, people I knew made a lot of jokes when the first movie came out about "Jack Reach-around," and other people told me how fantastic the books are but that Cruise was the completely wrong choice for the titular role. Part of this attitude is pretty easy to understand: Cruise is very nearly a foot shorter than the six-foot-five Reacher in the books, and at least 75-80 pounds lighter. And I totally understand that if you read the books and envision this Paul Bunyan of a man battling against the world, and then you go to the movies and see what amounts to a pipsqueak – a very muscular pipsqueak, but a pipsqueak nonetheless, I can understand your disappointment. I am not going to rip on the books only to say, "Not interested" because from the plots of the two films that I have seen, they would not be my thing at all. It doesn't matter who is in the role. Seems more like a thing for people who enjoy JAG or NCIS. I liked the first film a little bit more, which surprises me, because this sequel has Cobie Smulders in it, whom I like in everything. (Sometimes, she is the best part of that "everything," but you know what I am saying...) I just found myself mired in a pool of general annoyance at the absolutely incoherent and unbelievable plot line – especially the parts involving a girl who may or may not be Reacher's daughter – which itself has found praise in its book version.

So that's the split line between me and the book-reading world right now. (OK, there are actually a great many places where I am divided against the rest of the book-reading world, but this is the one under discussion right now.) I am not going to hold forth further until the day that I, out of sheer desperation in an airport somewhere, decide to actually read a Jack Reacher novel. Perhaps I will get swept up in Lee Child's prose and find a way to buy into this world of a brooding drifter who gets caught up in conspiracy after conspiracy against him; perhaps I won't. For now, I will just say that I am not fond of the movie series, but apparently, neither are many fans of the books. On this, we can at least currently agree. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

Blair Witch (2016) Dir.: Adam Wingard – Why? I am a horror movie fan of longstanding, but even I did not want to see another iteration of The Blair Witch Project come around at all. Do I still like the original film? Well, I did when it came out even though many people of my acquaintance claimed they got sick from the whirling handheld camerawork or just thought the movie was a dumb idea and poorly acted. I thought the original film was pretty spooky, was a clever way to transfuse some new blood into what at that point was a fairly stale horror environment (in my opinion, though I am sure you can always find others who professed the same at the time), and yes, was amateurishly acted and produced but with a huge amount of chutzpah. That chutzpah got its creators, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, a ton of box office and critical buzz, and even put them on the cover of Time, and that was pretty remarkable at the, ahem, time. I saw it a couple of times in the theatre in 1999, bought the DVD, and watched it twice more trying to convince people they should also "at least see it" before badmouthing it. Then I saw Joe Berlinger's cranked out sequel in 2000 on DVD instead of the theatres because of poor word of mouth, though I did watch the phony documentary promoting the second film at the time it appeared on TV. At that point, I then promptly set the Blair Witch story aside, possibly even to shut it away forever. I just no longer cared. Stand me in the corner.

It's 18 years later, and there is a whole new generation of suckers, er, young millennial horror fans out there that may not even know that The Blair Witch Project was ever even a thing. The found footage device that served as the original film's gimmick is now done practically everyday on YouTube and other sites, and there have been innumerable feature films since released in the style (the bulk of them in the horror genre), many of them quite successful. While The Blair Witch Project was nowhere near the first such film to use found footage, it was certainly one of the biggest in terms of the cultural impact it had almost immediately. I am also pretty sure that someone more knowledgable on the entire subject than I probably has connected all the dots between TBWP and the Creepypasta phenomena that we must suffer through today.

If there were a chance for a remake/sequel (because, come on, the new film really serves as both) of TBWP to be pulled off even halfway decently, I would think that director Adam Wingard would be in the list of those who could do it. A hugely prolific talent, Wingard tends to work mainly in horror, but also has a foot in the supposed "mumblecore" genre (a term that I hate). While I did just finish watching his new Netflix version of Death Note and was mildly disappointed in the result (possibly more on that film next week), WIngard has, in recent years, directed two of my favorite recent horror films – You're Next and The Guest – and I am also excited about his involvement in the eventual production of Godzilla vs. Kong (to be released in 2020). As for the movie at hand, I will say that he is the perfect pick for someone to replicate the look and feel of the original film, which is what Blair Witch tries and mostly succeeds at artistically. The film builds up some decent atmosphere, and the house they find (c'mon, you know they have to find her house eventually) is a good deal more extensive and the action there more explicitly detailed than in the original. While I never agreed with those who ripped into the amateurish acting, I will say that the cast in the new film are all most likely professionals (hey, the girl with the purple hair plays Arthur's sister Dot in the new Tick series on Amazon), but the downside to that is the original amateur feel is what I liked in the first film. The people in this film, girls included, all seem to have boners over having as many cameras as possible on them.

Now about those cameras... For me, not being a video game player of any real account, when the film starts revving up and looking more like a first person shooter being attacked, I kind of tuned out of the whole thing. I also felt, despite being told how everybody had body cameras and whatnot filming the affair that some of the angles still did not make sense to me. I am certain someone out there will protest that the angles all made sense – "You're forgetting about the crotch cam she crammed in her shorts, dude!" – but to me, that is always an annoyance in found footage films. (The only thing more annoying is when someone doesn't just drop the goddamned camera and just fucking run for it...) Me? I don't care if I saw film footage of my long lost sister (Heather Donahue, the girl from the first film) in window of the house where the evil witch supposedly lives (the premise of this film), I'm not going out in those stupid woods. I don't even believe in the supernatural at all, but if I found evidence, however sparse, that my sister is where many people are rumored to have gone missing over the years, I will hire every private detective in the book to go do the dirty work. When they don't come back, well, gather everything you have and bring it to the cops. Fuck those woods. As for the film, I am not going to tell it screw off, but I have seen it, and now I have seen two Wingard films in two weeks that have left me mostly cold. Not what i was expecting from someone that I thought had caught fire. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015) Dir.: Tomm Jacobsen, Michael Rousselet and Jon Salmon – I completely stumbled upon this film by absolute accident, and then I spent a couple of wild hours early that morning reveling in sick, gory effects and an almost completely unrestrained comic sensibility. I laughed so much that I couldn't believe it, and then I had to keep stopping the video so that my brain could catch up with the flurries of rapid fire gags and insults via a great many replays of scenes. The third in a series of films that don't really exist, Dude Bro Party Massacre III operates somewhere in the vicinity of South Park as far as humor goes, and if that is not your cup of tea, please move it along, because we won't be friends. As I said, this is supposed to be Part III of a series, and the first two non-existent films are recounted at the very beginning, much in the style of the Friday the 13th series. But the film is far more than a mere slasher parody; it acts like a lost VHS tape of a film that would have disappeared altogether if some über-geek hadn't plopped a tape into his deck and captured the thing for his own collection. (It seems an impossibility that anything could disappear like that, but there are still some obscure films from the '80s that I have on tape that I have yet to see on DVD.)

I don't know which channel that makes its hay by selling advertising would have shown this film uncut back then, but we get flashes of fake advertisements intermittently throughout Dude Bro III that, even at a mere second or two are pretty entertaining. (The feeling is that the taper paused the tape at each commercial break and then started it again at the end of the break.) In one ad is Matt Oswalt, brother of Patton Oswalt, and that is more than mere coincidence, because Patton shows up in a supporting role (as a favor) in the main plot of the film (as the sheriff). We also get a brief flash, most surprisingly, of Larry King – yes, that Larry King – in another intentional cameo. The people behind the film are a comedy troupe called 5-Second Films, who are pretty well known on the interwebs for their long-running site of the same name. I have been to the site off and on over the past decade, but it had been long enough (certainly more than five seconds) that I was completely unaware they had sprung this film upon the world. I think that I may have enjoyed it even more the way that I did discover it, rifling through archive.org that morning. (Yes, I found it because someone posted it illegally; no, I did not download it for myself.) This one will definitely get added to my collection once I start buying discs off Amazon again, but if they don't put this out as a collector's item on VHS, I would be really upset. A must watch for me again (and again) in the very, very near future. It may become a perennial. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Last Girl Standing (2015) Dir.: Benjamin R. Moody – Longtime followers of this site might recall that over the past couple of years, I reviewed two different titles based around the popular slasher movie concept of the last survivor who fights the villain/monster to the death known as the "final girl". I hated one of those films, that being Final Girl (with Abigail Breslin) but loved the other one, the far more intentionally comedic and dimension-warping The Final Girls (with Taissa Farmiga, Vera's little sis). Of course, just like slasher films themselves, those two films weren't going to be the only films that would dabble with the fringe concept outside of the normal run of slasher films. At the same time as those other films were released in 2015 came Last Girl Standing (though I have only discovered its existence recently), yet another variation on the final girl trope. While I still feel The Final Girls is the most fun and accomplished of the three films, but Last Girl Standing has plenty of spunk – and loads of great gruesome gore – of its own.

Just like Dude Bro Party Massacre III, this film is technically a sequel to a movie that does not exist. The difference in tone is one of awareness. Dude Bro is completely aware of its existence as a winking and more than nudging comedy in a completely ridiculous film universe; it never allows for reality to step into it in any way, not even in its fake commercial breaks. Not so with Last Girl Standing, where its heroine, Camryn (an excellent Akasha Villalobos), is the lone survivor of a horrific attack on herself and her fellow campers by a serial killer known as The Hunter. That set-up may be a basic one for a slasher scenario, but for Camryn, the horror is all too real. This film is no tongue-in-cheek affair; Camryn has PTSD from what occurred, and it is affecting her life from every possible angle. She shuts herself down from the world and hides behind the counter and clothes at the dry cleaning establishment that has hired, where the owners have special rules where she doesn't interact with customers. Camryn is haunted by constant flashbacks of The Hunter, to the point where she starts confusing reality and what both she and we first think are hallucinations. Or is she being stalked by someone posing as The Hunter, the killer she herself dispatched by hand? Or is The Hunter really back in her life? And then stuff starts to get really weird, and bodies start piling up...

Last Girl Standing is a bare bones production, filmed in Austin, Texas with a mostly local cast and crew. (Villalobos' husband plays her love interest; that's how tight-knit the work is.) This is not to say that there isn't production value on display in the film, especially in relation to the rather extensive gore effects, all practical and mostly terrific. Don't be fooled either... the film looks and feels like an earnest drama (which it is) that takes a deeper look into a stock slasher character than we normally get to see, but it doesn't, to paraphrase Mr. Creosote, skimp on the pâté. And yet, for much of its running time, it is not a normal genre film either, though it does take a turn deep in the second half where it goes full bore towards its grim conclusion. I was more than pleasantly surprised by the film, though it certainly has some areas with which I found fault. Since I first watched the film, I wavered a bit in my feelings for it, and felt I was a bit stingy in my initial response when I added it to my film diary on Letterboxd. But after thinking about it for over a week and also watching a big chunk of the film a second time to get the mood back, I finally settled on 6/9.

The Big Sick (2017) Dir.: Michael Showalter – You know, sometimes you just need The Big Sick to clean out your system. I love the summer movie season. I love the middle months of the year where giant action blockbusters all try to outdo each other for the weekly box office take. And you will never hear me cry about there being too many superhero movies, because they are exactly the movies I wanted to see when I was a kid but were rarely made because the effects just weren't there. But even I long for the occasional break from BIF! POW! WHAM! KA-BOOM! and that is where The Big Sick came to our rescue today.

Jen and I had been planning to see if for a good while now – pretty much since its creators hit the talk show circuit – but just hadn't made it. The Big Sick is a marvelous comedy-drama about the beginnings of the real life relationship between comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife, writer and producer Emily V. Gordon. They meet cute, they fall in love, they break up, and then he ends up having to sign as her husband (even though they weren't married then) to induce a coma to possibly save her life. It's quite funny and adorable, but becomes almost entirely a drama for a long chunk of the film as he not only juggles possibly losing the women he loves, but also dealing with her initially surly parents and with his own family, who want him in an arranged marriage with someone else from Pakistan. Kudos to Michael Showalter, Nanjiani, Gordon, and Judd Apatow for bringing this story to the big screen. It's a pretty satisfying, small film, and I hope it gets some recognition come awards season. – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) Dir.: Mike Flanagan – A while back, my pal Aaron mentioned to me via Facebook Messenger that the Ouija sequel was, in his words, "surprisingly enjoyable". We had been discussing numerous other items of worth (to us, at least) and so I rather passed by his statement without comment. I hadn't the inclination to watch the sequel, as I had leapt on the first film, mostly out of loyalty to Olivia (Bates Motel) Cooke, and found it severely lacking apart from her participation. And so I wandered for weeks after that, secure in the knowledge that I would probably avoid the sequel for a good while, but Aaron's words kind of nagged at me. Our viewing tastes are fairly similar, and even when we don't agree on a project, we still are able to see what it is the other one found intriguing in a film. Seeing the film pop up on Cinemax one evening, I recorded Ouija: Origin of Evil and when I started watching it the next day, I found the opening of the film a lot of fun and pretty captivating. As the film rolled on, I continued to enjoy what I was seeing, and it was only in perhaps the final half hour that I finally wearied of the story they were telling me, which was that of the fate of a family that occupied a house visited by the characters in the original film. There was also the use of an effect that I am not especially fond of in films today, something I will refer to as the "Black Hole Sun effect" (after the Soundgarden video) that really takes me out of nearly any film that employs it (which, today, is a lot of horror films).

Still, even after tiring of the story and that stupid effect, I felt the film was pretty taut and sharply directed, and a damn sight better than the original. About halfway through, I decided that I needed to look up the director and found out it was Mike Flanagan, who had already delivered the truly excellent Hush a couple years ago as well as the really spooky mind-bender, Oculus. (I also liked, but not to the same degree, Absentia, from 2011.) It seems, with the recent loss of Romero and even more recent loss (this past weekend) of Tobe Hooper, that perhaps there are some openings in the ol' Masters of Horror lineup. It might be a little premature, but might I offer up Flanagan's name to the list? II feel like Wingard will eventually hit that list as well with a couple more solid films.) Flanagan has an adaptation of Stephen King's Gerald Game, in the works as a major release, so maybe his time has come. We shall see. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Until next time,

This Week in Rixflix #18: July 7–13, 2017

So, I am finding that I am far more interested at this point in just watching all of Alfred Hitchcock's film than in taking the TCM online course about them. I thought that once I got through the silents and early talkies, that I would leap into online modules and first couple of tests, but I was wrong. I feel no drive toward doing it right now, and frankly, just want to dive into ever more Hitchcock films.

Part of this comes from my general dislike of schooling in any form, especially in taking time on my own to go back to doing it, and the other part is probably due to my belief that I am not going to really learn all that much more about The Master's work than I already know. (Certainly I have forgotten more than I remember, but I still feel like I have pretty good recall on the important stuff.) This is sheer arrogance and bullshit on my part. What it really comes down to is that I am a lazy bastard who believes deep inside that the really important part of all this is actually watching the films. And I have done that part already.

Inside, though, I know that I really would benefit from hearing someone else reliably explain the history behind the films and their director, so the problem now is to convince myself that cutting some time out in the next couple of weeks to really knuckle down and complete this project would be a desirous thing. After all, I have been working on convincing myself that perhaps I should go back to school to get a journalism degree. Completing such a course as this, on even a small scale, could do wonders in showing myself that I am capable of sustaining focus long enough to bring such efforts to a satisfying close. Let's see if I can...

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 22; 14 first-time viewings and 8 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length films: The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Scared to Death (1947) – 4/9
Average films per day in July so far: 2.69
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 2.84
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 212

The Reviews:

When Animals Dream (2014) Dir.: Jonas Alexander Arnby – If one reads through the capsule reviews about this Danish fantasy-horror film, submitted by users of IMDb – and I highly recommend that you don't, for the most part; it can be as bad an experience as reading random anonymous comments after any story online – one would gather that When Animals Dream is not only excruciatingly dull but also NOT a werewolf movie. They seem to be especially loud on this last point, that the film, which features a young woman slowly discovering she is starting the process of turning into a creature not definably in the realm of appearing human, is not a true werewolf film. Well, yes, When Animals Dream is not full of the usual talk of silver bullets and full moons that we see in the usual sort of "B" pictures featuring lycanthropes and the stilted mythology that has grown up around how to deal with them, most of which was largely instilled in us by Hollywood. Forget all that, though... this is a movie where a human female transforms into an altogether different creature, which is recognizably lupine (or even vulpine) in basic nature, the townsfolk have an awareness of her potential for violence, and go about attempting to torment her and ostracize her from the community because of this. The results might be different from what you think is a "werewolf" movie, but since when is experimenting with form a bad idea, especially when everyone yells about seeing the same old stuff over and over again? 

Me? I'd make friends with the cute shape-changer and get her on my side, because you never know when you will need her in a scrap. Especially with the awful people who populate the small fishing town in When Animals Dream. These people are fuckers, and a bunch of glum ones at that. I will say, there is some history on their side, as the girl's mother – who appears as a mere invalid (and almost catatonic at that) from the start of the film – has previously run amok in the town. Still, throwing fish at the girl and attacking her on the job at the canning factory are pretty stupid ideas if you think she is capable of turning into something horrible and killing you. What a bunch of dopes. However, the film goes no place that you really think it is, and this too might be why so many people on IMDb are critical of the results. Geez, first they swear it is not a werewolf picture, but then they get surly when it doesn't turn out the way a werewolf picture should. What a second bunch of dopes. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Our Miss Brooks (1956) Dir.: Al Lewis – Eve Arden's comic timing and sarcastic edge were the saving grace of many a tepid comedy from the Hollywood studio factories throughout the late '30s and through the '40s. I chiefly know her from the television sitcom version of Our Miss Brooks, a character which she first made famous via the radio series, which ran from 1948 through 1957. The TV series ran concurrently for several years (1952-1956) with the radio version, and was the one to which I had access in my youth. The basic set-up of the show had high school English teacher Connie Brooks constantly trying to snare Philip Boynton, a fellow teacher, while also having to save the school from the self-serving whims of its blustery principal, Osgood Conklin. Sometimes, the show could get truly odd, which caught my eye as a teenager, as I always appreciated a show which could get away with parodying other shows and genres (on occasion) within the context of its own style. (What can I say? Maxwell Smart, along with Bullwinkle and Rocky, opened that door early...) Gale Gordon, who played Conklin, was also a favorite of mine on reruns of The Lucy Show that I saw some afternoons, so Miss Brooks gave me a double dose of his adept second banana skills. To be fair, the show  wasn't exactly at the top of my watch list, and still isn't, but I really enjoyed the show then and now.

I found out over the years since that there had been a movie version of Our Miss Brooks, released in 1956, the final year of the show's existence, but I never got the chance to see the film until recently when it aired on TCM. Using most of the television cast and having it directed and co-written by Al Lewis, who served as head writer on the TV series, seemed like it would just continue the wacky fun by jumping it over to the big screen. But this Our Miss Brooks almost feels like the life has been drained out of it. To be sure, Arden is spot on as always, and Gordon is his usual loud, quick-fuse self, but in ignoring the TV series altogether and basically doing a reboot instead (long before anyone ever really said "reboot"), the movie uprooted what was fun about the show – its fast talking, manic sensibility – and mires it squarely in a dull romantic plot and some sporadic slapstick by Gordon. If I had seen the film first as a kid and found out there was a TV connection, I would have never watched the series as a result. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

This Week in Rixflix #15: June 16-22, 2017

As I predicted in last week's column, my revived interest in westerns due to the online film course in which I was taking part found me continuing my deep plunge back into the genre. While I purposefully avoided them for the first three days of the week in question, six of the last eleven films I watched were in the western genre, including my 84th John Wayne feature, Dakota, as well as The Hangman, The Last Frontier, Comanche Territory, and The Kentuckian. I had planned to watch the Duke in The Undefeated (and had announced it last week too), but it fell by the wayside at the tail end of the week when I ran into a 1946 Jacques Tourneur film called Canyon Passage.

With but a single viewing, I already have to count Canyon Passage amongst my favorite films in the western style (though it is more of a "pioneer" film and mostly takes place in a forest area). Tourneur, who directed many of my favorite horror films from the Golden Age such as Cat People, Night of the Demon, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Leopard Man, as well as the noir classic Out of the Past, is always on my must-see list, and being able to track down another one of his westerns had me diving into the film the moment that I found it online. For that matter, being a fan of Dana Andrews' acting too, it was grand to see him outdo himself in one of his finest performances here. Helpful, too, was the inclusion of Susan Hayward in the female lead, in a place where I would not have expected her. The best role was that portrayed by songwriter Hoagy Carmichael as a neighboring business owner who seems to end up in the middle of everything while roaming about playing his ukulele and singing songs (and getting an Oscar nomination to boot). Fully loaded with tough guy fist-fighting, swirling gun action, sordid business dealings, a romantic triangle bound for trouble, and those swell Carmichael tunes, I am most certain that Canyon Passage will get watched again by me rather soon.

I found myself with some unexpected downtime this week, and as a result, my numbers were really up overall. I had hoped by this time of the year that I would be tailing off and perhaps get down to just one or two films per day, but I have been far more focused on watching things lately than writing about them, or even in doing other projects. That will have to change – in fact, I rather demand that I change it by force – but with the TCM Hitchcock online course just starting (as of this writing), in which I will be most likely attempting to watch all 42 features (and two short films) of Hitch's they are spotlighting through the month of July, it will be interesting to see what happens. I also have some time on the road to see family coming up soon, and thus I will have no access to my normal channels for viewing in that span (though I will have an iPad with me). The two events should even each other out, but then again, with my ability to cram in film viewings at any given opportunity, you never know. (Hmm... maybe I will get my dad to watch Canyon Passage with me. That's right up his alley...)

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 26; 19 first-time viewings and 7 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: The Big Sleep (1946) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (2016) – 2/9
Average films per day in June so far: 3.13
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.03
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 191

The Reviews:

Raiders from Beneath the Sea (1964) Dir.: Maury Dexter – I record an awful lot of films simply because I hope that there will be a shark scene or two inside one of them. Quite often it is because I have heard there might be such a scene, but mostly, I look at the premise of the film or the shooting location or, in the case of this film, merely the title, and see promise that I might be graced with the presence of toothy, finny friends. A low budget creaker from "B" movie vet Maury Dexter (The Day Mars Invaded Earth, Surf Party, Hell's Belles), Raiders from Beneath the Sea is a true snooze-fest about four Neanderthals planning the dumbest armed robbery in the history of dumb armed robberies, specifically, holding up a small bank on Catalina Island while walking all the way from the pier and back in full scuba gear. Yeah, it doesn't go smooth, and while you only have to wait about an hour to get to the heist, that hour seems to take about fourteen. Sure, these raiders do indeed come from beneath the sea to do their crimes, but they barely hit the water in the buildup to those crimes. The bad guys certainly talk about diving a lot, but most of their time on the water is spent timing out their trips to the island via its famous ferry and working out how to make off with the loot afterward. (As it turns out, a magnetized plate that they slap to the underside of the ferry.) When they finally do get in the water, it is for the briefest, murkiest underwater footage this side of Catalina Caper, another 1960s heist flick that at least made some attempts at intentional humor, however hackneyed. (And if you've watched Caper as it was tortured on MST3K, it then became truly fantastic.) This one, though, has no such such saving grace; poorly made, poorly filmed exploitation, but apart from some peeping tom shenanigans on the part of the lead character's creepy, drunken brother as he gets off to Merry Anders, Raiders' tank barely allows it to make it offshore. And by the end, there is not one damn shark to be seen. At least Catalina Caper had an animated one in its opening credits.   – TC4P Rating: 3/9

S if for Stanley (2015) Dir.: Alex Infascelli – Hardly a week goes by that I am not surprised by the appearance of some new documentary on Amazon Prime, Hulu or Netflix about the making of a particular film or the work of a filmmaker. Last week, it was Becoming Bond; this week, there are two such films that I will cover, the first being S Is for Stanley, the story of Emilio D’Alessandro, Stanley Kubrick's driver and personal assistant for a thirty-year period beginning in the early '70s when Kubrick was making A Clockwork Orange. It seems that Kubrick was impressed by Emilio's demeanor when he showed up as the delivery man for that certain, massive ceramic phallic piece that is used in one of the attack scenes in that epic of ultra-violence, and instantly hired the man to be his Man Friday. The film takes us through each Kubrick film all the way through Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick's death in 1999, mostly told by Emilio himself, a former race car driver who suddenly found himself immersed in Kubrick's obsessive nature. (His wife also plays a big part in relating events to us.) It is clear, at least from the material given here, that he and Kubrick formed a close bond that could not be shaken, even when Emilio left his employ for a handful of years. Usually, I find that a film documentary that is not rife with clips from the films under discussion is usually to be found lacking in flavor, but that is not the case here. There are enough behind the scenes details and set photographs to keep one interested throughout, and it is almost enough that Emilio has plenty of marvelous vignettes about his life spent catering to Kubrick's every possible whim that the film never gets tiresome. D'Alessandro is an engaging interviewee with a rather introspective way of looking at life, and it is perhaps that very quality that kept him at Kubrick's side for so long. I do wish someone from Kubrick's family had weighed in here and there, but overall, an enjoyable look at a side of filmmaking well off the set most of the time. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

A Canterbury Tale (1944) Dir.: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – With every film by the Archers that I check off my list, I feel my cinematic knowledge and eye becoming purer and sharper. Such is the way that the films of Powell and Pressburger play off of me, always elegant, always studied, always balanced deeply with wit, irony, grace and heart. In A Canterbury Tale, while it starts out with a visual nod to the older work by Chaucer, this tale swiftly transports itself to then-modern times – during World War II in the British countryside – as we are introduced to a trio of "pilgrims" all making their way to the same location, or thereabouts, for differing reasons. We are given army sergeants both British (Dennis Price, the lead from one of my all-time faves, Kind Hearts and Coronets) and American (actual U.S. Army sergeant John Sweet) and a "Land Girl", a term used for women hired during the war to replace men on farms who were off serving in the army, here played charmingly by Sheila Sim. The three bond almost instantly over a mystery that they encounter when they reach the fictitious town of Chillingbourne (though supposedly set near Canterbury), when Sim has glue poured into her hair by a shadowy assailant. The mystery will consume most of their time and direct their actions during the film, during which they encounter the fourth major character of the film, the local magistrate played by Eric Portman, who will prove both daunting and helpful in turn during their investigations. Films by the Archers are almost always more than merely the sum of their parts, and that is the case here. There is so much going on in every scene, that it is easy to lose the plot because the characters and scenarios are each individually engaging enough to make you want to live inside the film for days. Especially effective is the non-actor Sweet, whose off-the-cuff but oddly effective delivery of his lines make you wish he had found greater acting opportunities on the screen elsewhere. (His IMDb resume only lists one other film, both biographical details do say he did some theatre in the ensuing years before he died in 2011 at the age of 95.) A very worthwhile and lovely experience, as is nearly every film by Powell and Pressburger. – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017) Dir.: John Campopiano and Justin White – This is the other film documentary that I mentioned briefly above in the S Is for Stanley review. Popping up on Amazon Prime at the exact moment that I really needed this type of film to fill some open time, Unearthed and Untold is a pretty detailed look at the production of the late '80s horror classic (yeah, I said it) Pet Sematary. While I was never a huge fan of the film at the time (though I liked it just fine), I have grown fonder of it over the years, during which I have had the opportunity to see it a couple of times more. Unearthed and Untold gathers just about any artist and actor who worked on Pet Sematary that was willing to recount their tales of working on the film, and despite there not being any actual final film footage from the production (probably because they didn't have the budget for it), this film is pretty thorough with its excellent use made of behind-the-scenes photos and video that gives us a neat glimpse into how it all went down on the set. Visits to the location sites in Maine are an added and sometimes rather creepy bonus. Even Marky Ramone, the sole main member of the Ramones left alive today, gets in briefly to talk about how they were brought in to provide songs on the soundtrack and record the title song. The big question is whether tiny Miko Hughes had turned into a murderous psycho after being subjected to some truly horrific scenes as a two-year-old (they even talk about being worried about at points in the film), but no... Miko is just fine and still acting at age 31, and seems a normal guy here in his interview scenes. The doc is sorely missing the inclusion of a fresh interview with King himself about the film, but I don't know that they didn't try to get one, so I will leave that as a stray thought. I am certain that somewhere in the near future, my writing partner Aaron and I will be re-reading Stephen King's original novel and watching Mary Lambert's film freshly to review and compare both for our Stephen King site, We Who Watch Behind the Rows. (Yes, this is an unabashed and unashamed plug.) – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (2016) Dir.: Sean Patrick O'Reilly – There are many things that I really hate in films, but two of them are very evident here in Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom. First, I hate badly done computer animation. I can live with a single bad CGI shot or two in a larger film if their harm to the film is contained to a few seconds, and I can be accepting of a limited animation budget if the film in question is a mere few minutes and at least has a clever premise or voice performance to counter it. The other thing I hate is "Muppet Babying," where a franchise or character is cleaned up and/or dumbed down from its original form to appeal to a younger audience. This video feature is pretty much just "What if H.P. Lovecraft was a kid?" and has him having all sorts of misadventures on another dimensional plane with a monstrous tentacled pal that he names Spot, not knowing the creature is actually a younger form of the Elder god Cthulhu himself. I am a fan of Lovecraft's writing, but I am fairly certain that I am happy with the proper age for discovering his writing being approximately around the same as when I did, as a middle teenager, and not when young readers are six or seven, which seems to be the target audience for this film. It's not so much the existential dread and horrific implications of his words that causes me to state this, but rather the more than casual racism that also lurks within his stories, perhaps not in all of them but lightly throughout most and pretty hard in some. Such words might fly over the heads of many younger readers, especially since the style of his writing is itself antiquated enough by today's standards that his stories may seem rather dull to a generation that banks upon immediate thrills and not slow-boiling suspense and atmosphere. This is all for the better, and I find it fairly hard to believe that watching this animated crap pile will inspire anyone to seek out anything written on paper except perhaps to carefully edit their own self-penned suicide note.

This video pretty much jettisons anything worthwhile in Lovecraft's writing and mostly co-opts character and place names along with the occasional magical spell and slams them into a stiffly animated, witless, cliched children's film. The look of some of the goblin guards from Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty are also swiped for that of the villainous henchmen throughout the film as well. I have not read the graphic novels that form the basis for this film (nor for the planned sequel and the inevitable third production, since there are three comics in total), but taking a quick look at the first few pages of the Frozen Kingdom volume reveals that hewing closer to the style of the comic would have been a far more intriguing direction. At least in a visual sense, the comic doesn't look half bad (though a little generic). Instead, in the film version we get a design that pretty much made me feel like I was watching the truly atrocious Food Fight again, and goddamnit, I never needed to have that feeling! I've lived through it once. The only compliment I can give is that at least the story made a little more sense scene to scene than Food Fight, and for that I am truly thankful. The other thing that got my notice in Frozen Kingdom is that there are hammerhead sharks in the tank of the villain's fortress. Sure, they swim the same exact way, over and over again, in every single shot in which they appear, but there are at least sharks here. Otherwise, this video is a bloody mess. But without the blood, of course... this is for the kiddies, after all. Poor, poor kiddies... – TC4P Rating: 2/9

Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2016) Dir.: Dominik Hartl – Oh, it is Wednesday? Must be time for yet another goddamn zombie movie... OK, despite my living dead ennui here in 2017, I will say that if I had encountered Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies in 1988, I would have loved it without any reservations. However, it is 2017 and I am where I am at currently, having seen so many zombie films by now that I think I might be one. Sure, Jen and I love iZombie and watch it reverentially (it thrills me to no end that Jen loves a zombie show), but for me, that reverence might be mostly out of obeisance to Ms. Rose McIver. And I still love all the old zombie flicks that I grew up with in the '70s and '80s, and even many of the newer ones, but there are just so many out there now, and they just keep coming... almost like a zombie apocalypse. And everyone thinks they have the greatest, newest twist on the genre, and really, nearly all of them don't. But would I want everyone to stop trying? Of course not. That would block even the occasional innovation, and I don't want that. Lederhosen Zombies is a full-on slapstick gore comedy filmed at a ski resort in the Alps of South Tyrol where someone stupid has the idea to use this untested formula to create instant snow, but of course, what the formula really does is make someone sick enough to turn into an instant zombie instead and the fun begins. Crazy, non-stop action, Rube Goldberg-style gags involving snowboards and skiing equipment, a genuinely insane Austrian barmaid with a fully stocked arsenal for fightin' the undead, and some pretty noxious moments that even had me thinking about blowing chunks early on in the action... that sounds like fun to me. However, many of the jokes are too stilted and don't land with the impact that the filmmakers thought, the editing is pretty haphazard, and the (dubbed) acting is fairly wooden on occasion. Still the insanity is as infectious as a zombie plague, and the film goes by incredibly smoothly at under 80 minutes. A good film for a party night of horror heads. Not that I have been around one of those for, oh, far too many years. (I miss my horror peeps...) I can't rate this one too highly due to its many faults, but I will no doubt watch it again for kicks. – TC4P Rating: 4/9

This Week in Rixflix #14: June 9-15, 2017

Going into this week, there was just one film on my mind: the new Universal version of The Mummy. I had a sense going in that it was probably not going to be great, and in a way that is quite unusual for me, I did not prepare for the film by watching a marathon of the original Universal Mummy flicks (all six of them, including the Abbott and Costello one), nor did I wade into the later Universal Mummy series with Brendan Fraser. (And don't even get me started on The Scorpion King spin-off series... to be fully honest, I am no fan of the Fraser films either.) Instead, I concentrated on other films and just waited for The Mummy to arrive. Jen had no interest in all with it and told me to "go see your buddy Tom" (a running gag that I must explain fully at some point in the future).

And yeah, the result was rather tepid. I did manage to have fun enjoying the film as a straight ahead monster flick, and enjoyed some of the character and set design. But I am so confused as to why Universal dropped the Universal Monsters label they had been pitching and keeping alive (like the truly undead) for so many decades. Now I can't, officially, say that I am going to the latest Universal Monsters picture, and am instead told that this is the first film of their – big fucking yawn – DARK UNIVERSE series, a title that has already supposedly been co-opted by Warner Brothers and DC Comics for their adaptation of Justice League Dark, which I guess is their own stupid move to not burning out the Justice League brand (even though they put out a comic and an animated film (this year nonetheless!) called Justice League Dark (which I will get to next week). So, now instead of a Universal Monsters series and Justice League Dark live-action, we have two stupid things called Dark Universe from different studios, neither of which has anything to do with the other except for shared elements of basic horror.

I have so much more to gripe about how Universal is screwing up the use of their monster franchises, especially at their theme parks. (You know how annoying it is to walk through Universal Studios in Hollywood and not find a single Dracula shirt in their gift shops? And yet, you can walk straight past the Universal store in CityWalk and go to Things from Another World and find scores of monster t-shirts. The company itself, though, doesn't care for selling its own creations.) Once I saw the new Mummy, apart from watching Svengoolie have fun with The Mummy's Tomb on his show the next day, Universal went away almost immediately in my mind. The film did not propel me into maintaining the mood because there was no real mood to maintain. (Honestly, the films it really reminded me of were Van Helsing and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, both huge disappointments in my book. I thought the new version of The Mummy was much better than both of them however.) 

I instead spent the week concentrating on classic western films. Five such films to be precise, starting with Stagecoach, and then plowing through They Died with Their Boots On, Red River, Winchester '73, and High Noon throughout the remainder of the week. The reason? An online course on the History of the Western that I found while signing up for TCM's upcoming course on Alfred Hitchcock. I decided to take the Western course to see if I would enjoy and benefit from the experience, and while I still have a few last items to complete, I have passed all of my tests and found it to be great fun. (I still have to watch Fort Apache this weekend, which I don't own anymore but is showing on TCM; Turner Classic Movies isn't hosting this particular online course, so it is complete coincidence that it is airing.) Mostly, I enjoyed simply watching each of these films again, even the one that I don't like all that much (the Custer one starring Errol Flynn).

Next week, you will notice that the aftermath of taking this course has done something the new Mummy movie couldn't. It inspired me to do an immersion in a bunch of westerns over a couple of days, including one this morning (the day of this writing). I have more lined up for this weekend, including two more John Wayne films, that should be the 86th and 87th films of his that I have seen in my lifetime. (Just writing that last part exhausted me...) I may not enjoy the western genre as much as I do classic horror or film noir, but I have always had more than a quiet appreciation for the genre, and taking this course has truly made me remember my roots in film, having watched a great number of western films and shows growing up in the '70s. 

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 24; 13 first-time viewings and 11 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: Red River (1948), Stagecoach (1939), Out of the Past (1948), Winchester '73 (1950), High Noon (1952), and The Lost Weekend (1945) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Island of Lost Women (1959) – 4/9
Average films per day in June so far: 2.86
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.02
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 184

The Reviews:

Becoming Bond (2016) Dir.: Josh Greenbaum – Riding to physical therapy on the bus towards Riverside, I looked out the window at one of the bus stops and saw the smirking face of George Lazenby staring back at me. I was absolutely not expecting it, and in my half-awake daze, I started to wonder if I had really seen the poster that I had or if I had some strange daydream in which Lazenby popped in for a non-sequitur cameo. Riding on the bus back, I managed to look across the several lanes and see the poster at that stop. Then I started wondering if it was a film playing at a theatre at the mall next to that bus stop. Looking up the Jurupa Valley theatre there, I found no such reference to such a film as Becoming Bond. Riding the bus two days later (once again to PT), I took a longer look at the sign as we stopped to pick up a couple of passengers. Ah, so it is a Hulu documentary! The second that I got home, I fired up the Hulu page and found myself watching a most surprising and entertaining look at the most unlikely and oddball career of the guy who played James Bond once and lived to tell about it... almost 50 years later. And it is hard, even with it being so entertaining (or especially because of that) to believe many of the stories that spill out the corners of Lazenby's still charming, wide, handsome smile. 

This film may contain some of the best and most imaginative dramatic reenactments that I have ever seen in a supposed documentary, and the use of prime cameos by the likes of Jeff Garlin, Jake Johnson, Jane Seymour, and especially Dana Carvey (doing a full-size Johnny Carson impression) make this film a bouncy, fun trifle. Some names do get changed to keep off the lawsuit monsters, and so those not already aware at least lightly about Lazenby's story coming in may be confused about who is who behind the scenes on his single Bond effort, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It is no secret that OHMSS is my personal favorite of the entire Bond series, so I had no problems. In fact, this film goes down so smoothly, I don't care at all if ol' Georgie Boy is stretching the truth a little bit here and there. You know, just like the best spies do...  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Phantom Lady (1944) Dir.: Robert Siodmak – One of the joys of watching TCM's Noir Alley show on Sunday mornings is not necessarily discovering obscure film noir gems but actually speeding up the inevitability that I will get to each of these films on my own naturally. I am so attuned to tracking down as many of these films that I can that I really begin to surprise myself more and more when I watch a truly incredible example that has largely slipped by my notice to this point in time. Such is the case of the truly insane drumming scene by Elisha Cook, Jr. midway through this film as he practically drools over the prospect of an evening spent with the admittedly smoking hot Ella Raines. Cook bashes the drums in a sweat-filled jazz room in such an increasingly rabid manner that you swear he is going to collapse in post-orgasmic exhaustion. In the words of Doug Stanhope: "Blort!!!" (Raines is definitely blort-worthy, and is she ever gorgeous throughout this film.) Phantom Lady is soaked in noir atmosphere, and boy, is the villain (I won't say who) an utter creep every second he is onscreen (and they give it away fairly early anyway). I am not so big on the set-up of the film involving the lady in the outrageous hat who becomes the catalyst to the mystery, but I believe a viewing down the road may relieve me of my initial reluctance to accept this film wholeheartedly. With noir, familiarity only breeds greater obsession. Once you are in, you can never get out... – TC4P Rating: 7/9

The Strawberry Blonde (1941) Dir.: Raoul Walsh – When I saw this title pop up on TCM one afternoon, it was a total impulse watch for me. Deep in my movie history is the knowledge that The Strawberry Blonde was the very first film featuring James Cagney that I ever saw as a kid, and I had not really sat down to watch it since then. The real coincidence though comes from the fact that this film was directed by Raoul Walsh in the same year in which he lensed They Died with Their Boots On, one of the six classic westerns I watched this week for the Western Film History course. On a personal level, I enjoyed this film much more, especially as a showcase for Olivia de Havilland, who may play second fiddle to Rita Hayworth as the titular character, but who is (eventually) first in the heart of the film's main character. Cagney's tough guy dentist is by turns blustery and amusing, and well matched by de Havilland's slightly more intentionally modern (and shocking to others) version of a female at the turn of the 20th century. The film is caked thick in nostalgia for a bygone era but also is just spry enough to know that wallowing in it too long is no good for anyone. Cagney's dentist realizes he must move forward and so must the viewer. A far more rewarding return to this film for me than I expected. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Girl of the Port (1930) Dir.: Bert Glennon – A guy wallowing in self-pity and clearly suffering from PTSD from his World War I experience loses himself in the Fiji Islands. He falls in love with a barmaid who works in the saloon where he has chosen to drink himself to death, but he doesn't let on that he is a British lord who is hiding out from his family and peers. And it is an appropriate thing that his war scars are embodied by a crippling fear of fire (from being surrounded by enemy flamethrowers) because the natives of the island practice the art of fire-walking. Eventually, all of this is going to work out exactly as you suspect from the start, and the film is fairly creaky as it glides by rather mechanically. But Sally O'Neil is pretty charismatic as the love interest, and the war scenes are well sketched (if not nearly on the same battlefield as All Quiet on the Western Front artistically). Intriguing enough for a quickie talkie but no more. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

The Boy (2016) Dir.: William Brent Bell – There are just so many of these types of horror films today that it becomes hard to recall which ones one has seen or not. Luckily, the inclusion of Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) was pretty much the only catalyst I needed to allow this one into my life. We have here another creepy doll movie, and I must say that this is not my favorite subgenre of horror. Fine with the Chucky series and a few other examples of the ventriloquist dummy variety, but I just really don't clamor for them when we start talking porcelain or baby dolls. Sure, I find them equally creepy -- all dolls are that way naturally -- but the films using those types usually are too far out of my disbelief range. The doll here is a boy who may or may not contain the black-hearted soul of an elderly English couple's son, who died mysteriously decades earlier. The couple insist on treating the doll like their dead son, Cohan is hired as an au pair to spell them for a short vacation, and all sorts of madness begins. The film had me until about halfway, until coincidence and logic refused to play together nicely any longer. Cohan is good in the role, though, as is Rupert Evans as the local delivery grocer who develops a more than slight interest in Cohan's well-being and other parts. Overall, the film is well filmed with an interesting score by Bear McCreary, but I can only give it a TC4P Rating: 5/9.