Friday, December 23, 2011
Now We Know Why They Call Him Dirty Harry
By Damian Arlyn
I don't particularly like television, so I don't really watch a lot of it nowadays. Still, there are a few shows which I enjoy and one of those happens to be Fox's House, M.D. My wife had to turn me onto it because I thought it looked like just another hour-long medical drama in the vein of St. Elsewhere, ER or Chicago Hope. She told me that it was really more of a mystery show (she knows I love mysteries) and informed me that its protagonist, Dr. Gregory House, is a complex, charismatic and provocative character. His antisocial, unethical and misogynistic tendencies are matched only by his brilliant, obsessive and astute mind. Although it jumped the shark a couple seasons ago, I continue to tune in every week. Even through the worst of its outrageously cheesy and absurdly melodramatic plot twists, House himself (superbly played by Hugh Laurie) remains a fascinating character.
Right now, you're probably wondering to yourself why I'm talking so much about House in an article that, given the headline and picture above, is clearly about the 1971 Don Siegel film Dirty Harry, which celebrates its 40th anniversary today. Well, here's my reason. Although it is obvious that House is based on Sherlock Holmes, it occurred to me at a certain point that another fictional character has about equal claim to being a source of inspiration: San Francisco cop Harry Callahan. Harry may not be as brilliant as House, but he has about as much regard for social niceties, can be about as misogynistic and, just as House, always acts in the best interest of those he's trying to help (even if it means disobeying his superiors, putting his own life and career in jeopardy or even tricking, manipulating and sometimes even hurting those he's working to save) in his drive to ensure that justice prevails. The criminals' rights and the rules and regulations that his bosses demand he follow while pursuing those perpetrators concern him less. Harry, like House, just doesn't give a damn and when I realized that in many ways House could be described as "Dirty Harry with a medical degree," I understood not only how iconic Clint Eastwood's brave, tough-talking cop had become but what purpose characters such as Harry, House and their ilk serve for audiences.
Dirty Harry was made in a time when society wasn't feeling particularly safe. This seemed especially true in San Francisco, where the film is set, with the activity of the Zodiac Killer (on whom the movie's psychotic Scorpio Killer, broadly but effectively played by Andy Robinson, clearly is based). Much of that anxiety and frustration ended up being directed at the state and the filmmakers captured it. This anger doesn't seem aimed primarily at cops (indeed the film is even dedicated to San Francisco police officers who have given their lives in the line of duty) but rather to the system for which they work, a system that many people (much like today) felt had gone out of control. It presumed to function in the interests of the innocent but instead came off as more dedicated to preserving itself and/or the rights of the criminals. There is a very strong "anti-authoritarian" attitude present in Dirty Harry.
Throughout the film, Harry's desire to protect civilians from the malevolent force of evil, much to his dismay, constantly gets hindered or thwarted. Consequently, Harry, in essence, becomes a vigilante with a badge. He renounces his oath to serve the law and devotes his efforts to serving justice. In the film's final scene — with the Scorpio Killer in his sights — when he utters those famous lines ("I know what you’re thinking: 'Did he fire six shots, or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself., etc.) for the second time in the film, Harry clearly snarls the words with much more rage and menace — his attitude has changed. The bureaucracy's incompetence always annoyed him, but he has become so "fed up" with the whole thing that he wants no part of it. After dispatching Scorpio with his Magnum, Harry removes his badge and tosses it away. Obviously, no one planned any Dirty Harry sequels. This truly ends his character's story, not the subsequent adventures where Harry softens a little more in each new film.
When Dirty Harry was released in 1971, it caused quite a stir. Many critics, including Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, articulated concern over the ideas and values expressed in it (with Ebert even calling it "fascist"). While I fully understand having such a reaction, I can't help but think that they are somewhat missing the point of what role such an extreme character can play for audiences and why Dirty Harry
proved to be such a commercial success in its day. We all feel oppressed at times. We all feel abused or maligned and we all secretly wish we could act out the fantasies of retribution we have. Fortunately, we don't (or at least most of us don't) act on these impulses. Still, there is something appropriate about wanting to see good triumph and evil punished. Dirty Harry serves as a vessel for pent-up frustrations with our own impotence, an ideal of the kind of courage and tenacity it takes to do the right thing (regardless of the personal consequences) and watching him do what he has to do proves cathartic. We live vicariously through him as he says and does the things that we can't say and do but wish we could. He understands that the law is merely a man-made institution — it is not sacred — and if he must circumvent it sometimes in the name of the greater good, he'll do it. In fiction, one can get away with this. In reality, we don't have that luxury — reality always turns out to be far more complex, messy and nuanced than the simple black-and-white moral universe represented onscreen. So, we watch the rogue endeavors of vigilante heroes such as Harry, House, Robin Hood, Zorro, Batman or, even on occasion, James Bond (such as in Casino Royale when he just marches into an embassy, grabs a guy by the scruff of the neck and drags him out) and rightfully admire, respect and perhaps even envy them. As long as we don't imitate them, they fulfill their proper role in our lives. Sometimes to do good, you gotta get your hands a little dirty.
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Labels: 70s, Don Siegel, Eastwood, Ebert, House, Kael, Movie Tributes, Sequels, Television
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Saturday, November 12, 2011
"Careful! I might put your eye out."
By le0pard13
The year 1971 was a distinct one in film…at least for those of us around during that period. The bloody tally of the Vietnam War still was scrolling by in snippets across our television news broadcasts. And those returning from it (in whatever state) already were impacting upon our population and culture at the time. For sure, all of that had an effect on anti-war protests, which carried over from the previous decade (to the vexation of one side and the spurring of the other). Despite that, we were in the midst of several other dramatic changes as well. Civil and women's rights were center stage, to say nothing of a sexual revolution. Yet, it all evolved into more critical examinations of American society and questioning who we were as a whole. As is our trait, it included our expression and reactions through violence in real life and through the popular arts. Whether it was the war we waged abroad or on the homefront, it was reflecting back on us in our own cinema. Remarkable films debuted that year. From such prominent film releases such as The French Connection and A Clockwork Orange, to the small and influential movies such as the controversial Straw Dogs, the initially TV-released Duel and, hell…even Billy Jack. Violence and upheaval were at their core.
Many more were to come this decade, especially in the crime genre. However, this year in particular stood out for one actor and his burgeoning career as a filmmaker: Clint Eastwood. Three critical films with him in the lead debuted in '71. To their benefit, the highly undervalued director Don Siegel had involvement in all of them. Two of the three had Clint as the clear hero. Regardless, none of Eastwood's characters in any those pictures were portrayed anywhere close to the unblemished saviors of yesteryear. The Siegel-directed Dirty Harry and The Beguiled offered unusual, contrasting stretches in character for the actor (and audience expectations). Still, only one movie had the rangy Mr. Eastwood in the director's chair for the very first time. Appropriately enough, it was the underrated, psychological thriller of its day: Play Misty for Me. This one marked the popular film star's first steps at the helm of a Hollywood studio-backed motion picture. As well, the audience would begin to glimpse a number of Clint's penchants in what would become a template for his filmmaking style. Prime among them, his preference for showcasing actors (other than himself) with meaty roles in the films he would come to produce, whether they were men and/or women. And it would be his film's co-star, Jessica Walter, who'd take the part handed to her and reach heights unanticipated as his deranged nemesis in the story. At length, she'd trail-blaze for those who'd come in subsequent and obsessive fare such as the barely disguised remake Fatal Attraction (1987), its teen equivalent, Swimfan (2002) and other fanatical fare. Even so, Jessica's character didn't take a back seat to any of them.
Clint Eastwood always has been a fascinating actor to me ever since watching him on TV's Rawhide series as a boy. He never appeared to he doing much on-screen (on TV or his early movies), looking towering and brooding, but ever cocksure. That is, till you observed carefully and found he was doing more than you ever thought. Tall, lanky and good-looking, he possessed the rare quality of being attractive to women, and yet having a majority of men wanting to be exactly like him (and all without a hint of resentment). Plus, he was just plain cool; all the while he was kicking your ass, that is. He built a career in film in many ways like that of other movie and Western icons, John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Still, in another manner, he was quite different from that duo and decidedly more in-tune to this era, which was very much the Sexy '70s. Besides, Gary Cooper never directed. Wayne did, but he never developed as much as he may have wanted to — perhaps, being held back beneath the shadow of his mentor, John Ford. Only Eastwood ever rose to being the world's biggest star and box office champ and enjoy an accomplished directorial career that almost rivaled the former. Allowed to handle the reins in this 1971 feature film, after a pretty successful period starting in the mid-'60s, it was here where that new vocation began to borne fruit.
Younger generations of moviegoers likely will roll their eyes or give knowing glances when reading the synopsis for this early '70s film (released on this autumn date 40 years ago): radio disc jockey Dave Garver (our man Eastwood) has one sweet gig going. He slings jazz tunes at a station in the jewel of California beachside communities, Carmel-by-the-Sea (the only town I know that has hyphens in its official name). Being on-the-air with frequency, Dave gets his fair share of 'play' with the ladies, too (sorry, couldn't resist the puns). One evening, Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter) let's herself get picked up at a bar by Dave. Only later, after letting him believe he is seducing her, does Evelyn reveal that she's his longtime admiring fan. She being the same one who frequently calls the station to request the classic Erroll Garner ballad, "Misty." From that point forward, the carefree radioman begins to learn his casual "fling" means a hell of a lot more to the certifiably jealous and clingy inamorata. As their encounters grow in number, even as an old flame returns to Dave's life, the increasingly obsessive and violent relationship with Evelyn threatens his job prospects, those he cares about and eventually his own life. Hearing "Misty," either requested or played, will never mean the same thing again.
Though this was his first stint as a director, it wasn't done on a whim or for ego-polishing. Eastwood had been steadily prepping for this for some time. In point of fact, all the way back to the Rawhide series (picking up second-unit work when allowed, purely to build
experience). Plus, being exposed to a couple of great directors (Sergio Leone and Don Siegel) in the '60s-era films that established him, only fed that drive. His major sponsor to get him into the director's chair was none other than Siegel himself (and you can spot his influence on the actor-turned-filmmaker from this inception…along with a film cameo from Don as the bartender). It culminated with the Play Misty for Me opportunity after a string of films with Universal, using an original story by Jo Heims (one Eastwood optioned beforehand). Jo would go on to work with Dean Reisner on the final screenplay. I think you have to give Clint credit for choosing something as unexpected as this material was at the time. Given his filmography to that point, an action film would have been the safe and anticipated move for the actor-cum-director (at least from the studio's standpoint). It certainly would not have been the Hitchcockian psychological thriller he eventually made. And thank God for that. As well, he was willing to give himself a role that was clearly nothing like his Man With No Name persona. Coldly endearing Dave is not as that icon was — he's very much the flawed protagonist.DAVE: Don't you like me?
Let's be honest, the Dave Garver character is a bit of prick, literally, in Play Misty for Me. Tooling around in a two-seat convertible roadster (the 'Tang mobile of its day) says it's all about him. His wants, his desires, are all that matter. When the film opens (with a great long tracking shot by longtime collaborating cinematographer Bruce Surtees), he's at his old girlfriend's cliffside house (foreshadowing where the film will end), staring at himself. A portrait his ex Tobie (played well by a young Donna Mills) painted of him is visible through the window of that now vacant flat. He's definitely not the badass cowboy from the previous decade's stable of roles. Clint's Garver has a familiar connection with the period that was the time. Manifestly, he is the inheritor and purveyor of all that "free love" behavior and mentality the '60s offered. Perhaps his only real talent, besides his looks, is jumping beds and partners. All at the cost of Tobie, the woman he loves. Still, that's not enough to slow this one down (as his housekeeper plainly warns him half-way through the picture). The film makes clear that everything comes home to roost. Just like the rise of venereal disease rates that followed in the wake of all the "uncomplicated" Free Love Movement sex everyone with a pulse was into back then, there were repercussions. The point, even in that pre-AIDS era, was there were no free rides during this transformation of mores. As his disc jockey cohort, Al Monte (James McEachin), later notes with only the thinnest veil of symbolism:
AL: He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword.
That such requital is delivered in spades by an outstanding performance by Ms. Walters, is what makes this film special. While the studio wanted the remarkable Lee Remick in this role, Eastwood insisted on the relatively unknown Jessica (through her small work with Sidney Lumet at the time). It proved to be another deft move by Clint. And it is the character of Evelyn Draper that really is the key to this movie. The tragic Madame Butterfly nature of the tale lies with her. A pivotal scene where Dave forcibly puts Evelyn into a taxi, after their confrontation, still packs a wallop after all these years. It's raw and intense as you catch sight of the vulnerability of her character, one plainly on the edge of sanity. Yeah, she repels you, but simultaneously you feel bad for the woman. Even if the audience wants Evelyn to die by the movie's end for the damage done, some part of you feels remorse when it comes to that. Play Misty, with its sexual underpinnings, could have been something Alfred Hitchcock chose to film (he'd release his sexual murder thriller Frenzy the following year). All the same, the women in Eastwood's film are the core component (and director Clint doesn't treat them as merely beautiful objects like Sir Alfred was prone to do).
At the beginning, Evelyn seems fragile, almost doleful. But like a thin glass, she's the one that's going to shatter and cut the one holding it. Evelyn only wants what she loves (in this case, most obsessively), and all during a period when there was little commitment to be had. Yet, between her and the object of her desire (her Dave), she's really the only one that you could actually say "cares." Dave wants nothing to do with strings (unless he's the one tying them). I believe the most compelling line Evelyn delivers in the film (and she has more than a few), also is the most simple (just three words) in entire the picture. On one hand she's revealing who she is to the unsuspecting Tobie, but on the other she's telling her rival she still doesn't realize that Dave is never really going to change his ways:
EVELYN: God, you're dumb.
It's the underlying thread of the film. In many ways mirroring the frustrations of living in a man's world, Evelyn is no longer going to be the doormat and nor be stepped on from a certain point on in Play Misty for Me. This wasn't the domestic '50s nor was it the bra-burning '60s where anyone could do what they wanted. This was something else altogether. And women of this decade weren't going let men have it both ways:
DAVE: Get off my back, Evelyn.
EVELYN: Get off your back? That's where you've been keeping me, isn't it!
In a number of ways, this film turns the table on men (another element this movie had in common with The Beguiled). Eastwood's picture plays very much like a throwback to the films of Alfred Hitchcock when he was still at his peak, specifically Psycho and Vertigo. And yes, it's nowhere near as invented or iconic as those two. However, like that pair of films, Play Misty for Me did offer some groundbreaking aspects in its story. In this case, the film's tale is one where the women drive all the action and dominate the male character in unforeseen ways.
Eastwood's use of music also should be noted. With original tracks supplied by Dee Barton (who'd collaborate again with Clint in High Plains Drifter and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot), this was very much a personal statement of the budding director — another trait that would mark his future productions. Jazz always has been central to this actor and he made sure to showcase it throughout as the story unfolded (John Larch's Sgt. McCallum "Montivani" crack offering humorous counterpoint notwithstanding). Perhaps not surprisingly, his sequence at the Monterey Jazz Fest was at a level near the best of the early music documentaries at capturing the essence of what it'd be like to be there during this transformational time. Reportedly, Clint shot 30,000 feet of film toward it. And he was very much the auteur in putting together the unexpected montage to "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Clint went out of way to acquire the rights to that sensual rendition of the song (performed by Roberta Flack, written by Ewan MacColl) and Garner's title tune for his movie.
Shot in three weeks time, entirely on location with not a soundstage in sight, Clint Eastwood delivered the picture with time and budget to spare (probably the studio's most admired trait of the new actor/director). All in all, the film he delivered passes the test of time and stands up to repeat viewing (even if you've never seen a rotary dial phone before, or only have begun to understand what it was like before Caller ID). In contrast to the Hitch classics mentioned (as great as they are), but like the blood that flowed more freely in this post-'60s cinematic era, Eastwood's first film is much warmer to the touch, I think. I'm not saying the 1971 movie surpasses the British suspense master's work — but it was one of the best psychological thrillers of its decade. Plus, the film had something to say about those changing times. Not to mention, like the actor himself, his initial foray in the director's chair seemed competent enough. That is, till you looked more closely and found he accomplished a hell of lot more than you ever thought.
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Labels: 70s, Cooper, Don Siegel, Eastwood, Hitchcock, John Ford, Leone, Lumet, Movie Tributes, Television, Wayne
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Sunday, September 18, 2011
Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain/ Wishin' you were here by me,/To end this misery
By J.D.
Fresh from the success of Miami Vice in the mid-1980s, Michael Mann parlayed his powerful clout to produce a new television show entitled, Crime Story. It was a pet project that he developed with good friend, Chuck Adamson, and Gustave Reininger. Like Vice, Crime Story was a cop show but set in the early 1960s and with a grittier, darker edge as opposed to the stylish, brightly lit pastel look of its predecessor. To this end, Mann not only cast Hollywood outsider Dennis Farina (whose unconventional looks must've terrified NBC executives), but had exploitation filmmaker Abel Ferrara direct the pilot episode. The result is a lean, mean drama that features politically incorrect police officers battling it out with nasty criminals.
The pilot episode for Crime Story begins with a daring restaurant robbery gone bad. Del Shannon sings "Runaway" (re-recorded especially for the show) as the hold-up turns into a hostage situation. Three police detectives led by Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) race to the scene (blink and you'll miss a young Michael Rooker as a beat cop). No words are spoken between the men as they calmly check their guns and get ready. As the criminals are about to take off with their hostages, Torello leans in menacingly and says to one goon, "you hurt anybody else, when this is all over I'm gonna find what you love the most and I'm gonna kill it. Your mother, your father, your dog. Don't matter what it is — it's dead." Welcome to the world of Crime Story.
It turns out that the criminals are working for local wise guy, Ray Luca (Anthony Denison), a vicious thug with a short fuse and an awesome pompadour that defies gravity. This guy isn't afraid to smash bottles and furniture over hapless underlings to get his point across. Luca plans to steal some valuable European royalty jewels from the Lakeshore Museum but Torello intends to link the restaurant robbery to the thug and stop the heist from going down. Mann has said that he was influenced by working on the Police Story TV series (1973-1977), which was run by playwright Liam O'Brien and included famous crime writer Joseph Wambaugh (who wrote The Onion Field) as a contributor. Each episode was based on a real event, working with the policeman whose story it was based on. Mann "learned a lot about writing and about working with real guys." Crime Story was based on the experiences of Chuck Adamson, a former Chicago police detective for 17 years. He claimed that the stories featured on the show were composites rather than actual events, “but they’ll be accurate.” According to Mann, the project's genesis was to follow a group of police officers in a 1963 major crimes unit and how they change over 20 hours of television.
He asked Reininger and Adamson to write the series pilot and a "Bible." Reininger was a former Wall Street international investment banker who had come to Mann's attention based on a screenplay he had written about arson investigators, and a French film that he had written and produced. Reininger researched Crime Story by winning the confidence of Detective William Hanhardt, who put him in touch with undercover officers in Chicago. They sent him on meetings with organized crime figures. Reininger risked wearing a body microphone and recorder. After visiting the crime scene of the gruesome gangland slaying of bookmaker Al Brown, Reininger backed off his mob interviews.
Mann said that the first season of the show would go from Chicago in 1963 to Las Vegas in 1980 where the characters would have "very different occupations, in a different city and in a different time." He said, "It's a serial in the sense that we have continuing stories, and in that sense the show is one big novel." Mann and Reininger's inspiration for the 1963-1980 arc came from their mutual admiration of the epic 15+ hour film Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), by German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Mann said, "The pace of our story is like the speed of light compared to that, but that's the idea — if you put it all together at the end you've got one hell of a 22-hour movie."
NBC President Brandon Tartikoff gave an order for a two-hour movie, which had a theatrical release in a handful of U.S. theaters to invited guests. Tartikoff also ordered 22 episodes which allowed Reininger and Adamson to develop character arcs, and tell continuing stories (instead of episodic, self standing shows). Mann predicted a five-year network run for the show. However, due to budgetary constraints (the need for four sets of cars proved to be too expensive). Tartikoff eventually allowed their series to move to Las Vegas for the last quarter of the 22 episodes. By the second season, an average episode cost between $1.3 and 1.4 million because it was shot on location, set during the 1960s and featured a large cast.
However, Universal Pictures decided not to make Crime Story because they deemed it too expensive to go through several different period changes in one season and a small studio called New World Pictures Ltd., stepped up to finance it. It allowed them to work in the big leagues with a major TV network such as NBC and a chance to sell the show overseas while Universal would retain the domestic syndication rights. The production schedule was a grueling two episodes every three weeks, shooting 12 hours a day or more every day of the week.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Crime Story is the look, the attention to period detail. Hilda Stark worked as an art director on the pilot and was asked back by Mann after seven episodes to be the production designer. To achieve the show’s period look, Stark and her team would go to second-hand and antique stores, run ads in the in newspapers seeking articles from the period, and sometimes build furniture if they could not find it. According to Stark, the overall design or look of the show featured “a lot of exaggerated lines. We go for high style — sleek lines and high style…We go for the exaggerated shapes that recall the era.” Stark and her team also came up with a color scheme for the show that featured “saturated color, and certain combinations — black, fuchsias — reminiscent of the ‘50s.” She finds inspiration from a library of old books and magazines, in particular Life. For the vintage cars in the show, they buy or rent from private owners.
It's a testimony to Mann's reputation at the time that Crime Story was even greenlighted. NBC would have never gone for the casting of Dennis Farina, with his pockmarked face and lack of acting experience, had Mann been a neophyte producer with no proven track record. The choice of cult film director Abel Ferrara also must have freaked out network execs. His previous films included The Driller Killer (1979), where a deranged psycho gruesomely kills people with a power tool, and Ms. 45 (1981), where a rape survivor viciously kills the men who attacked her with a .45 pistol.
Still, the final product proves that Mann's instincts were right on the money. Farina delivers the hard-boiled dialogue with the perfect amount of intensity. (Farina orders a loose cannon cop, "Why don't you get unconscious for awhile?") You can see it in his eyes and the way he barks out orders that this a no-nonsense guy who isn't going to let anything get in the way of his job. In many respects, he is the prototype for Al Pacino's equally driven cop in Mann's Heat (1995). Farina's Torello is the prototypical Mann protagonist: a professional and a perfectionist, at the expense of everything else.
Ferrara directs with the same proficient skill of crime auteur, Don Siegel. Like Siegel's two best crime films, Charley Varrick (1973) and The Killers (1964), Crime Story depicts a harsh world where life is cheap and characters will do anything — even if it means bending or breaking the law — to achieve their goals. Crime Story would provide the blueprint for Ferrara's later forays into urban crime films such as The King of New York (1990) and Bad Lieutenant (1992).
When the show debuted Sept. 18, 1986, following Miami Vice, the two-hour pilot had a 20.1 national Nielsen rating and a 32 percent audience share. The ratings dipped when it was counter-programmed against ABC's Moonlighting. By October, the show dropped below a 22 Nielsen share, where a series is deemed a "failure.” Despite low ratings, Crime Story was picked up by NBC to finish the 1986-87 season. This prompted the network to move the show to Friday nights after Miami Vice on Dec. 5, 1986, where its ratings improved but it still lost to Falcon Crest. NBC temporarily pulled Crime Story off the schedule on March 13, 1987. In order to get more people to watch, Farina and other cast members promoted the show in five U.S. cities.
One of the most striking aspects about Crime Story is that it feels like it was ripped right from the pages of a James Ellroy novel. It is even more surprising that this show was done before Ellroy had written his famous L.A. Quartet of books that featured L.A. Confidential, which Crime Story most closely resembles. The author claims that he hadn't seen the show until after he wrote these novels but he does admit to being a fan since then. In an interview with Paul Duncan, Ellroy said, "I think Dennis Farina as Lieutenant Mike Torello is a force of nature. When the hatred between him and Anthony Denison fuels the plot, it's great, it's epic. but after a while it just goes to hell."
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Labels: 80s, Don Siegel, Farina, Michael Mann, Pacino, TV Tribute
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Howlingly Scary, Howlingly Hilarious
By Phil
What can you say about a movie in which the villain digs into his own forehead to retrieve a bullet, but not before quipping to a woman unlucky enough to be witness, “I want to give you a piece of my mind”? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question. Suffice it to say that The Howling, released 30 years ago today, understood the irresistibility of dishing up horror with a dash of humor. A werewolf picture jam-packed with B-movie references and a giddy love of the genre, it quickly earned a cult following that has remained loyal since the film first hit screens in 1981.
It had to share the love from fanboys. While The Howling helped steer the career of director Joe Dante into (regrettably) safer, more mainstream fare, the movie was initially overshadowed by another man-becomes-wolf horror-comedy from 1981, John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. Comparisons between the two flicks were inevitable. Released within four months of each other, both embraced the spirit of drive-in exploitation while boasting more polished filmmaking, and both featured onscreen werewolf transformations that would have made Lon Chaney Jr.’s head spin with envy.
Still, I prefer The Howling for its generous humor, genuine creepiness and willingness to sleaze it up. It’s a nicely calibrated blend of smart camp and lowbrow shocks, anchored by Dee Wallace’s surprisingly effective performance as a woman trapped between lycanthropy and self-help jibber-jabber. A year before she would be Elliott’s mom in E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Wallace plays Karen White, a TV news reporter in Los Angeles with the misfortune of having drawn the affection of a serial killer. As the film opens, Karen has agreed to meet with the psychopath, Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo), in a peepshow stall at a seedy porn store. Eddie appears behind Karen in silhouette, hissing about what he’s going to do to her. Karen stares ahead, in mute horror, at a grainy bondage reel being projected.
Then Eddie commands Karen to face him. She turns and sees…Well, we don’t know what she sees exactly. Karen lets out a scream, the first of many in The Howling. Two police officers who have been trailing Karen open fire, killing Eddie Quist.
The incident naturally rattles our heroine. When she returns to work, Karen freezes up under the unmerciful gaze of the camera. At home, she rejects the loving arms of husband Bill Neill (Christopher Stone). Knowing she needs help, Karen is intrigued when a courtly therapist, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), suggests she join his self-help group in Big Sur called The Colony.
The ensuing detour into quasi-psychobabble gives Dante and screenwriter John Sayles, at the time just coming off Alligator and Piranha (also helmed by Dante), a ripe avenue for satire. Karen and Bill are bemused by the goings-on of The Colony, whose inhabitants soak in Dr. Waggner’s cautionary line that “repression is the father of neurosis.” The good doctor might be on to something, but his EST-styled knockoff includes some curious aspects. The Colony appears to host more barbecue cookouts than your average pop-psych cult.
There are other red flags, too, including John Carradine as a crazy old coot and Elisabeth Brooks as a resident nymphomaniac outfitted in what looks to be an early prototype for Xena: Warrior Princess. There is more to The Colony than meets the eye. Chris and Terry (Dennis Dugan and Belinda Balaski), an intrepid pair of reporters who work with Karen, discover mysterious links between Dr. Waggner’s sanctuary and Eddie Quist. And speaking of the slain killer, his corpse has suddenly disappeared from the morgue.
It all makes for an irrepressible horror flick that delivers its jolts with a grin. Unlike a raft of slasher flicks of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Dante and Sayles mined the inherent absurdity of their yarn but, honestly, there’s really no other way to approach a story of werewolves who are urged on by a pop psychiatrist to embrace their inner animal.
The Howling exposes its funny bone in the opening minutes, with a sly bit involving a news anchor whose authoritative delivery masks an aw-shucks Southern twang. Dante, an avid movie buff, peppers the proceedings with knowing winks to the genre. Several characters’ names are lifted from movie directors of werewolf flicks, such as George Waggner (1941’s The Wolf Man) and Lew Landers (1944’s Cry of the Werewolf). Dante also isn’t shy about shoehorning in wolf references in everything from cartoons to literature.
Similarly, The Howling makes room for an array of B-movie icons. Kevin McCarthy of Don Siegel’s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers portrays Karen’s boss at the TV station, while The Thing from Another
World’s Kenneth Tobey turns up briefly as a cop. Forrest J. Ackerman, the man behind Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, makes an appearance. Dante’s mentor, the notoriously penurious Roger Corman, has a fitting cameo as a guy checking a pay phone for forgotten change. Corman even gets a second, however peripheral, nod in The Howling. His 1959 comic-horror picture, A Bucket of Blood, is referenced when its star, Dick Miller, turns up to play a slick occult bookshop owner named Walter Paisley. The name is the character Miller played in — wait for it — A Bucket of Blood. Miller’s performance in The Howling launched what would become tradition for Dante, who went on to cast the actor in a slew of his movies. 
Despite the cornucopia of inside jokes, The Howling is, above all, a monster picture and it offers a humdinger of one thanks to the inventiveness of special-effects maestro Rob Bottin. By inflating various-size bladders pasted on to the face and body of actor Picardo, Bottin fashioned an impressive, before-your-eyes transmogrification from man to beast. In today’s world of CG wizardry, where even the lamest schlockfest can be visually interesting, it is tempting to forget just how eye-popping Bottin’s feat really was. Moreover, The Howling’s fully realized werewolves are a far cry from the mega-hirsute guys who roamed the Hollywood countryside of yesteryear. Bottin’s creations, shot at oblique angles and occasionally backlit in cartoon-friendly colors, look as if they just padded in from Little Red Riding Hood’s neck of the woods. These are giant wolves, not wolf men.
The non-monster moments also are memorable. Dante assembled a strong cast; it’s a kick to see veteran character actors such as Carradine and Slim Pickens (as a yokel sheriff, of course) chewing on the scenery, especially when the aforementioned chewing involves fake fangs.
At the center of it all is Dee Wallace. With her feathery blonde hair and all-American good looks, she is an appealing damsel in distress. But she does one better, imbuing her character with melancholic vulnerability and investing The Howling with a welcome depth of emotion. It makes the film’s ending, in which Karen transforms into a werewolf for the local TV news, as heartbreaking as it is howlingly hilarious.
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Labels: 80s, Corman, Don Siegel, J. Carradine, Joe Dante, Landis, Lon Chaney Jr., Movie Tributes, Sayles
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Thursday, February 17, 2011
Just the Facts Remain in This Thriller
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of the For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren. To donate to the fundraiser for The Film Noir Foundation, click here.
By J.D.
Coming early on in his career, The Lineup (1958) is the kind of no-nonsense crime film that director Don
Siegel excelled at and, in some ways, anticipates the same approach he took in his remake of The Killers (1964) years later. He wastes no time as The Lineup (1958) starts off with an exciting chase as a taxi cab driver tries to drive away from a pier full of disembarking passengers with a stolen suitcase, runs over a cop and is shot and killed. Inside the case is a statuette containing $100,000 worth of heroin. The two detectives investigating the case — Lt. Ben Guthrie (Warner Anderson) and Inspector Al Quine (Emile Meyer) — return the case to its owner in the hopes that he’ll lead them to a narcotics ring.For the first 22 minutes of the film, Siegel does a good job showing us the nuts and bolts of a police investigation: inspecting the crime scene, questioning witnesses, the forensics lab and organizing line-ups of potential suspects. Guthrie and Quine soon discover a rather elaborate heroin smuggling ring.
The first third of The Lineup has the look and feel of an episode of Dragnet as we follow around these two just-the-facts cops, but this changes once we are introduced to Dancer (Eli Wallach) and his partner Julian (Robert Keith) — two hitmen. They soon meet up with Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel), their wheelman who replaces the dead cab driver.
Eli Wallach plays Dancer, a sociopathic hitman who figures into the drug deal. He’s a consummate professional judging from the way he questions McLain about the job at hand. The beauty of Wallach’s performance is how Dancer gradually becomes unraveled over the course of the film and embodies Julian’s observation, “He’s a wonderful pure pathological study. A psychopath with no inhibitions.”
Veteran character actor Robert Keith (The Wild One) plays well off Wallach. He’s got a fantastic froggy, weathered voice that you imagine got that way from years of smoking and drinking. He’s the elder, cultured counterpart to Dancer’s younger vulgarian. Richard Jaeckel is excellent as the alcoholic driver who talks big and always tries to scam a swig of booze, much to Julian’s chagrin. In a nice touch, Emile Meyer plays one of the investigating detectives, the straight arrow counterpoint to the corrupt cop he played a year earlier in Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
The Lineup was based on the popular television series of the same name. The show’s producers had hired Siegel to direct the pilot episode and then Columbia Studios asked him to direct the film version. Siegel convinced the producers to hire Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) to write the screenplay. The screenwriter started writing a story about two hitmen. He and Siegel felt that the film should not be named after the show because audiences would be confused and suggested The Chase instead, which, not surprisingly, the studio did not accept.
Siegel makes great use of all kinds of San Francisco locations, which really gives a sense of place, from the scenes at a pier to the Steinhart Aquarium where Julian and Dancer trail a mother and daughter who unwittingly carry a packet of heroin to the Sutro Museum with its ice rink and observation deck, the start of the film’s exciting climax.
The Lineup’s most memorable sequence is an intense car chase that takes place on the then-unfinished Embarcadero Freeway, anticipating another insane West Coast car chase, To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Siegel’s film is a stripped-down film noir devoid of any narrative fat with a fairly simple, crime does not pay message, but within that structure is a pretty fascinating relationship between Dancer and Julian who carry on, at times, like a bickering old married couple — again a dynamic that Siegel would revisit in The Killers.
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Labels: 50s, Blog-a-thons, Don Siegel, Television, Wallach
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Sunday, September 12, 2010
Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010)
Though Kevin McCarthy had a lengthy life and acting career, he's always going to be remembered best as the first person to discover the existence of those pod people in the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The actor has died at the age of 96.
He made his Broadway debut in 1938 in Abe Lincoln in Illinois He returned to Broadway frequently throughout his career in a variety of plays including the original productions of Advise and Consent and Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June. His last appearance was in 1985.
In the late 1940s, he began appearing in televised plays, some of which he appeared in on Broadway, before making his film debut in 1951 in Death of a Salesman as Biff, for which he received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor.
He confined his screen work to televised plays until returning to the big screen in 1056 for Don Siegel's classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Again, he returned to television after that, adding some episodic work including an appearance on The Twilight Zone.
When he did make films, they tended to be notable ones such as John Huston's The Misfits, The Best Man, Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Philip Kaufman's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Innerspace.
He also appeared in films that fell somewhere short of being classics such as Piranha, The Howling, Hero at Large, My Tutor, Twilight Zone: The Movie, UHF and Greedy.
His television work was so prolific, I won't attempt to scratch the surface except to mention his regular roles on Flamingo Road and the Dynasty spin-off The Colbys.
RIP Mr. McCarthy
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Labels: Altman, Don Siegel, Huston, Obituary, Oscars, Television, Theater, Vonnegut
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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Hawks' Rio Bravo marks a half-century
By David Gaffen
The era of the revisionist Western is generally associated with the early 1990s, but the reality is that the subversion of the genre began in earnest several decades earlier. It picked up steam with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns and films directed by Don Siegel and Sam Peckinpah, but Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo was one of the earlier entries to play with the conventions of the genre.
It is well known that Hawks disliked High Noon, which was released in 1952, seven years before Rio Bravo — in part because of the anxiety and insecurity displayed by Will Kane, the hero played by Gary Cooper. In and of itself, this was already a subversion of the archetypal protagonist of the western, although the stoic nature of Cooper’s character fit squarely into the conventions established already within the Western’s short history on film.
Rio Bravo features John Wayne in another performance as the towering authority figure, but after his iron-clenched performance a few years earlier as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers — another film directed by John Ford that presents a protagonist as separate from the family he serves — his John Chance is another stoic, laconic type, but his relationships with the other principles have a more relaxed, lived-in quality, particularly Dean Martin, the town drunk who later redeems himself. This was Wayne entering the latter stages of his career, when his performances brought with him a quiet steadiness, devoid of the coiled rage one saw in The Searchers, which remains his best performance.
The other characters in the film are archetypes in and of themselves — the drunk, the kid, the grizzled codger — but they’re invested with a light spirit. While Hawks and Wayne may have wanted to answer High Noon’s supposed take on blacklisting with one that did not show society abandoning a man who was protecting them (the very position taken in The Searchers), this take was in some ways a more liberal, community-oriented one. Wayne’s allies are of varying ability, what with a drunk, an inexperienced kid, and a coot to protect the town against the rancher seeking to bust Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) out of prison — and Wayne’s Chance is constantly turning down entreaties from other townspeople who want to help him.
It’s hard to believe that Hawks’ chief problem with High Noon was its political bent and what they interpreted as weakness in the main character, particularly as Rio Bravo works more effectively as a rejoinder to the somber High Noon. Much of the film’s relaxed nature comes from Wayne’s interaction with Angie Dickinson’s Feathers character and the elderly deputy, Stumpy, played by supporting actor du jour Walter Brennan. Dickinson more than holds her own here — the film has several gentle moments of interaction between her and Wayne, always underrated, who as usual says more with the phrasing of one line or a reaction than plenty of actors could with a five-minute soliloquy.
And the movie remains a great showcase for what can only be described as the enjoyment of filmmaking, best illustrated by two of Martin’s big moments. One, of course, is the scene where he walks into a bar to find a character’s killer, and spots drops of blood falling into a beer mug, cluing him into the outlaw’s presence in the rafters; it’s the kind of moment Quentin Tarantino lives to include in his films.
Of course, there’s the brilliant scene prior to the climax where Martin and Nelson — both possessing terrific voices, as it was well known — sing “My Rifle, My Pony and Me.” The scene serves its purpose as a break from the rising tension throughout the latter part of the film, but who could cast a movie with Martin and Nelson and not have them collaborate with a vocal performance?
Rio Bravo is one of those films that a person could see once and feel they’ve seen it five times, so lived-in is its appeal, so comfortable its presence. In a sense one could see it three times while only seeing it once, as
Hawks and Wayne teamed up for two more versions of the tale. El Dorado (1967), in a way, improves on the original (Robert Mitchum and James Caan are superior actors to Martin and Nelson), but the villains are stronger in the original, but these are minor differences. It’s hard to say to whom this film belongs. Martin was never stronger than in this movie, a surprisingly effective cowboy who generates a ton of empathy as a result of his character’s struggle with booze. He commands the screen in his scenes in part because Wayne was a consistently generous performer on-screen, allowing the other actors room to breathe while he comfortably let his presence do the work for him. Wayne’s ability to slip comfortably from the foreground to the background in favor of his co-stars was among his greatest strengths — the subtle approach is also probably what kept him from winning awards until he took on the more colorful Rooster Cogburn role in True Grit — but Rio Bravo is one of his best roles. It is justly remembered as one of the classics of the genre.
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Labels: Angie Dickinson, blacklist, Caan, Cooper, Dean Martin, Don Siegel, Hawks, John Ford, Leone, Mitchum, Movie Tributes, Peckinpah, Tarantino, W. Brennan, Wayne
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Sunday, May 20, 2007
Gremlins: A Segregationist Nightmare
BLOGGER'S NOTE: We're coming a little late to the Misunderstood Blog-a-Thon party at Culture Snob, but better late than never.
By Odienator
Joe Dante's Gremlins has a place in history for several reasons. It helped usher in that destroyer of good adult-oriented Hollywood cinema, the PG-13 rating. It generated a near-brilliant satire on consumerism disguised as a sequel. It gave Phoebe Cates something else to be remembered for besides Judge Reinhold's self-abuse fantasy. And it remains the best thing Chris Columbus ever did, though Dante forced him to repeatedly rewrite his extremely gory first draft.
While watching Gremlins recently, I noticed that it was more than a product of its time, namely a movie with an '80s penchant for jokey treatments of violence and murder. It's something more sinister, subversive and creative. Everyone thought Gremlins was a monster movie with cute toy tie-ins and an early job for Howie "Deal or No Deal" Mandel. Which it is. But it also uses the best purpose of the science fiction genre: to illustrate things that could not so politely be uttered in public. The sci-fi genre uses otherworldly prestidigitation to distract you from its real messages. Science fiction doesn't get in trouble because, unlike satire, it doesn't have to be realistic; it tends to be allegorical.
Underneath Gremlins' monster movie surface bubbles a tale of the suburban paranoia over "the new neighbors," those folks who moved next door who don't look like the rest of town. At the time of its release, minorities were beginning a bigger migration to the suburbs, and the filmmakers use cute and malicious little creatures as stand-ins for the paranoia faced by suburbanites who were afraid their property values would go down once their neighborhood got a little colorized. Don Siegel gave McCarthyism its pod people in 1956, and in 1984, Joe Dante gave the Boondocks its Mogwai. Gremlins is really a tale of suburbanites freaking out over the integration of the 'burbs.
Gremlins' Kingston Falls spoofs It's A Wonderful Life's Bedford Falls right down to its own Mr. Potter, personified here by Polly "Kiss My Grits" Holliday's rich and angry Mrs. Deagle. But the rest of the town is populated by '50s types. Billy (Zach Galligan) is the Blob-era Steve McQueen of Our Town, the wide-eyed, clean cut kid who has to convince the town it is in grave danger. Phoebe Cates is Kate, the cute girl who assists the hero. Billy's Mom is a housewife who makes pies and dinner, and his father Rand is a quirky inventor, family man and the narrator of the film. There's also the wacky paranoid conspiracy guy, played by B-movie vet and Dante favorite Dick Miller, a meta tie to the '50s universe Gremlins seeks to create and destroy. The town is homogeneous save for the token Black guy (Glynn Turman) who serves the standard purpose in this type of picture.
Destruction is accidentally brought to Kingston Falls by Rand, who visits a mystical Chinese shop in Chinatown and convinces the proprietor to sell him a Mogwai, the latest hot toy from Asia. The mystical Chinaman is played by China-born Keye Luke, who was once No. 1 Son to Swedish-born Charlie Chan Warner Oland. Rand is played by the man who wrote the greatest opening line in pop music history, Hoyt Axton. Luke tries to dissuade Rand from buying Mogwai, but finally acquiesces. Before Rand leaves, Luke gives him those famous three rules for dealing with Mogwai: Keep them out of bright light, don't get them wet, and never ever ever feed them after midnight. Luke doesn't tell Rand why because he's too busy stewing in his own mythical otherness. He does paraphrase Spider-Man to Rand: "With Mogwai come great responsibility."
Rand brings Mogwai home, and Kingston Falls gets its first Asian. Billy names him Gizmo and thinks he's adorable and exotic. However, Rand should have heeded the lyrics of Ringo Starr's "The No No Song" (which, coincidentally, Axton also wrote) and passed on satisfying his addiction for weird inventions. Billy accidentally breaks one of the rules, wetting Gizmo and causing him to reproduce. Billy brings a Mogwai to Turman, who runs some experiments on him in an attempt to understand his strange culture.
Soon after, that "never ever ever" rule gets broken. The Mogwai kids get food after midnight. It is telling that some of the food they get into happens to be fried chicken. The cute brown and white Mogwai cocoon and transform into hideous looking dark green creatures with red eyes and teeth like the Zuni Fetish Doll from Trilogy of Terror. They also do stereotypically "urban" things, but more on that later. Turman's Mogwai gets food in his lab after midnight. Serving his purpose, Turman winds up being needled in the ass to death in an offscreen occurrence of black (Gremlin) on Black crime. He's the first person to die in the movie.
The first thing boondock denizens think is that their way of life will be corrupted by neighbors with cultural differences. It's like the old Western adage "this town ain't big enough for the both of us." The newly transformed Gremlins attack Billy's Mom in a scene that symbolically plays like an assault on a way of life. Mom is attacked in her kitchen — her sanctuary — and has to fend off her attackers with the tools of her trade, nuking one in the microwave and Cuisinarting another. In the original script, Mom got decapitated by the Gremlins. In Dante's forced rewrite, she is saved and escapes the vicious assault. Paranoiac xenophobe Dick Miller isn't so lucky. "You gotta watch out for them foreigners cuz they plant gremlins in their machinery," he tells Billy early in the picture. Ironically, he gets crushed by a foreigner Gremlin driving machinery.
The second fear boondock denizens have of change is that their new neighbors will bring in more people that look like them, leading to a takeover of the neighborhood. The leader of the mean Gremlins is named Stripe and wreaks all manor of havoc. Now that he's in town, he brings in his own gang courtesy of that watery reproduction method. The town is overrun with Gremlins who do those aforementioned stereotypically "urban" things. They breakdance, mimic scenes from juke joints, shoot each other, write graffiti on the walls, commit loads of crime, have too many kids and, in a great nod to the 1958 version of The Blob, invade a theater and talk during the movie.
The third fear boondock denizens fear is the lowering of property values due to those new neighbors. Stripe's gang destroys Kingston Falls, causing traffic accidents, fires and other destructive mayhem. They destroy the bar where Kate works, leading her to the infamous speech about why she's so cynical about Christmas. It's the only time in the film where the movie hints at how fucked up a suburbanite's life could be regardless of whether the neighborhood is heterogeneous.
Billy and Kate destroy the Stripe gang with help from Gizmo, the "good" Gremlin. Gizmo serves to offset all that paranoia. He's smart, resists the temptation to eat anything after midnight, and helps save what's left of the town. After the big showdown, Keye Luke returns to retrieve his Mogwai. Suddenly, the film turns into an unconvincing environmental message. "You do with Mogwai what you do with all of nature's gifts," Luke says. "You are not ready." It's the most telling line in the film: "You are not ready." Luke tells Billy that when he understands things, that is, when he and his neighbors can accept without paranoia the differences and cultural rules of "the others," he'll reap the rewards of befriending other types of people. Mogwai will be waiting.
Twenty three years later, the 'burbs are a lot more colorful and cultural than they were when Gremlins came out. Having lived in suburban Ohio, I can attest that all that paranoia still exists, but not at the level that Gremlins brought to us. It's not as unusual to see people of all shades on the block, and at least where I was, the town managed to stay in one piece despite the presence of people who looked like me and other minorities.
Gremlins is misunderstood because everyone thinks it's a horror comedy, but it's really social commentary filtered through the sci-fi genre.
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Labels: 80s, Blog-a-thons, Don Siegel, Joe Dante
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
For a Few Decades More: The Leone Trilogy Turns 40
BLOGGER'S NOTE: The first film in Sergio Leone's famed No Name trilogy was made in 1964, but amazingly all three parts opened in the U.S. in the same year, 1967, so today Odienator commemorates the 40th anniversary of the films on these shores.
By Odienator
My Mom loved Westerns. It was a trait she inherited from my grandfather. Sadly, that gene wasn't passed down to me, though she tried to get it into my system by visual osmosis. Whenever a Western was on, she'd sit me in front of the TV and make me watch it, no matter what it was. I watched reruns of The Big Valley (no complaints — Stanwyck was on that), Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel and The Rifleman. Since she had a thing for Dennis Weaver, I had to watch Gunsmoke too. Despite all the force-feeding, I grew to enjoy some of the Western movies and shows I watched. High Noon was a favorite, as was Red River despite my dislike of John Wayne.
Back in the '70s and early '80s, the movies that make up The Man With No Name trilogy were heavily rotated on the independent stations in New York City. These were Mom's favorite Westerns, but I couldn't stand them. Watching them gave me a headache. It felt like they were crammed into the screen as sloppily as possible. Everybody's head looked elongated and sometimes you couldn't tell what was going on due to cuts or people being cropped off the screen. People were clearly dubbed. Clint Eastwood, whom I loved as Dirty Harry, just seemed to stare at the screen and shoot people which, truth be told, was the same thing he did in Dirty Harry. I didn't know what the big deal about Leone's trilogy was.
In the late '80s, one of the revival houses ran a screening of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I was invited by my (at the time) fiancee and went solely because I didn't want to be cut off from sex. Of the three films in the trilogy, this was the one I thought most tolerable as a kid, so I was sure watching — it wouldn't be as painful as blue balls. As the film unspooled, I suddenly realized that my problem with the trilogy didn't come from its construction, the story, the acting or Sergio Leone's direction; my problem came from my television. These movies looked like shit on TV, with the pan and scan and the editor's butchering for content and time. I saw an entirely different movie in the theater.
When I volunteered to provide this piece on the 40th anniversary of the release of The Man With No Name Trilogy, I did so with the knowledge that I had no idea how I would feel about the first two films. I hadn't seen them in about 25 years, and only on television. With the knowledge that letterboxing might change my opinion, as the cinematic experience had done, I hoped for the best.
First up was Leone's take on Kurosawa's Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Kurosawa borrowed heavily from the Western genre, so remaking a movie that was technically an homage to the remake's genre seemed a little too meta. Years later, Walter Hill would do a Prohibition-era remake with Bruce Willis that played like Die Hard meets Scarface, so Leone is to be commended for at least sticking close to the feel of the source material. The plot and situations are so similar that calling Fistful a ripoff would not be hyperbole. A hired gun (or sword) finds himself between two warring gangs, works both sides and pits one against each other. Both sides destroy each other, and hired gun goes "HAAAAAA-HA!" like Nelson on The Simpsons. What makes Yojimbo the better feature is Kurosawa's surefootedness and Toshiro Mifune's familiarity with the character he plays, one he could do in his sleep.
Fistful feels like a trial run for Leone's latter parts of the trilogy. All the trademarks are there, the quick cuts and close-ups of faces, the brutal violence, the oppressive desert heat that almost burns a hole in the screen, the music by Dan Savio (more on him in a second) but something is off. It's as if the song is in the wrong tempo. Eastwood commits himself to his character, but has not yet mastered how to play it. Fistful features some of his lightest, most amusing work in the trilogy (the way he says his first word in the film, "hello," is intentionally hilarious), but Yojimbo's humor is darker and better paced.
Both films have a scene with the protagonist talking to a coffin maker about how many coffins he'll need before a showdown. Both have scenes where the lead character does a nice deed for a couple. Both films have a character who constantly has an arm hidden under his clothing. And both films are quite amoral about the actions of their characters. Watching the two side by side is fascinating, as you can judge which has the better version of the same scene. Even though I liked Fistful more than I did before, I still found it, the shortest of the trilogy, to be the one that dragged the most. Leone's next film with Eastwood would do a better job of pulling all the aspects of the "spaghetti Western" together.
Like his fellow Italian director, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Leone loves eyes. If you played a drinking game where you took a shot every time the director's camera went for an actor's eyes, you'd die of alcohol poisoning. Fistful contains the least amount of shots like this, but you could tell Leone realized how effective these shots were by the amount of times he used them in the latter films of the trilogy. The constant back and forth on the eyes during a showdown is like a Mexican standoff with stares instead of drawn guns. Leone lets these scenes go on too long, purposefully pushing the suspense to the point where the action stops being anticipatory and escalates into a near parody of machismo. How long can you hold out before shooting your load, the director seems to be asking us.
Leone also loves faces, but his compositions are far from glamorous. These men look like they've been outside a long time, and they smell as funky as you imagine. Leone's close-ups fill the screen with the visage of his male characters in various states of decay, after beatings by human beings, tooth decay and the Sun. The rare female character — always gorgeous — is rarely allowed that type of intimacy. At the beginning of Fistful, Eastwood stares down Marisol, the married object of affection of one of the gang leaders. Leone gives us a moderately tight close-up of her face behind a window, then she slams the shutter closed. Conversely, at the beginning of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a panoramic view is rudely interrupted by a rugged looking cowboy; so close to us is he that we can see right up his nose.
Though Clint's name may be the first one onscreen, and the trilogy is named for his character, Lee Van Cleef owns For a Few Dollars More. Van Cleef plays General Mortimer, a bounty hunter whom we see plying his trade at the beginning of the film. Van Cleef has a bad ass gun and a face that, compared to the others that populate this series, is the nicest one Leone thrusts at you. Van Cleef is such a bad ass that he strikes a match on the hump of Klaus Kinski's hare-trigger hunchback. Kinski reacts the way you'd expect. So does Van Cleef.
Van Cleef has more on his mind than just bounty hunting; he's after bandit El Indio for personal reasons of revenge. Said vengeance has something to do with a watch that plays an eerie chime melody whenever El Indio opens it. When the watch chime stops playing, El Indio starts shooting. Think of the watch as El Indio's Ezekiel 25:17.
Meanwhile, that guy with no name shows up in town looking to ply his bounty hunting trade. He forms an alliance with Mortimer to split the money for El Indio's gang after a pissing contest of such absurdity that it reminded me of Keith David and Roddy Piper's fight in They Live. The duel consists of both characters shooting each other's hats repeatedly. Leone loves scenes where his marksmen are so good with guns that their bullets can clip a man's cigar or remove his hat without causing his head to explode in the process. This is a trick that never gets tired, but I wouldn't want to try this William Tell shit at home.
Clint joins El Indio's gang at Mortimer's infiltration request and attempts to double cross Mortimer several times, but Mortimer's too smart for him, and a great source of amusement is waiting for Van Cleef to spoil Clint's fun.
For a Few Dollars More ups the violence quotient — women and children are not spared in this one — and features fleeting glimpses of nudity. It also pulls together what makes a Leone Western work. The editing, music and story are top notch, and Leone has finally found a way for his operatic notions to co-exist with quieter moments in the story. They aren't called horse operas for nothing. Van Cleef is more memorable than any character in Fistful, and the type of role he played in this film is in stark contrast to how Leone would use him next.
The best thing about the Man With No Name trilogy is the music by...Dan Savio? During the credits for A Fistful of Dollars, as Ennio Morricone's memorable whistling score plays, a screen credit says "Score by Dan Savio." Who the hell is that? While watching the trailer for For a Few Dollars More, the announcer calls the first film "For a Fistful of Dollars" and says the second one is "directed by Sergio Leone, better known as Bob Robertson." He is?! I can only assume that the names were changed because they sound too foreign, though Dan Savio still sounds like some Italian guy to me. Perhaps it's easier to say than Ennio Morricone.
Morricone's spaghetti Western scores rank as some of the most memorable in film history. Full of strange instruments, whips, gunfire and voices grunting out unintelligible lyrics, Morricone's scores burst out of the speakers with an originality that's impossible to ignore. They also make for great road trip music, especially when you're driving down dark highways at night.
The Italian name for the epic that closes out the Man With No Name Trilogy is il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo. Clint plays the Good, whom we meet last. Eli Wallach plays The Ugly, whom we meet first. And in a shocking departure from his good guy role in Few Dollars, Lee Van Cleef plays The Bad, whom we hope we'd never meet. Van Cleef coldly puts a pillow over a guy's head and shoots him multiple times. (Walter Hill would rob this too — see The Driver.) Van Cleef beats a woman so brutally that I was surprised she had the strength to say "Enough!" to stop the violence. People call his character Angel Eyes, but there's nothing angelic about them. Any glimmer of goodness in his close-ups from the last film have been replaced with a stone malevolence.
While I think For A Few Dollars More has a tighter screenplay, this is the best film in the series thanks to the director and the performance by Eli Wallach. Clint's character says very little, but Wallach's Tuco won't shut up. Some of Wallach's dialogue is hilarious and profane in ways I didn't think you could get away with in 1967. Wallach runs off with the picture, even though his character is at times quite reprehensible. Wallach also gives us a shot of his bare ass, something they graciously cut out of the TV print.
Wallach and Clint have a racket going where they have Wallach imprisoned so the reward money can be collected. When Wallach's about to be hanged, Clint shoots the noose (and the hats off several people) and Wallach rides away scot free. Wallach and Clint share the money until Clint doublecrosses him in the first of a series of doublecrosses.
Clint, Van Cleef and Wallach have to get together not just because the title puts them there; they all have a piece of the "treasure map" that will lead them to $200,000. Wallach knows the name of the cemetery where it's buried (something he shares with Van Cleef) and Eastwood heard the name of the person whose grave contains it, a fact gleaned from a dying soldier named Bill Carlson. This is all quite melodramatic well before the Civil War shows up. Clint dons a Confederate uniform — he'd later don the opposite for Don Siegel's The Beguiled — and Van Cleef impersonates a violent Union army general. It's a diversion that technically isn't really necessary but only adds to the epic nature of the film.
Leone is on all cylinders here. His direction adds some great visual humor with ghoulish flourishes, gives us the ne plus ultra of Mexican eye showdowns, and allows Wallach to spiral out of control without overacting. The screenplay is frequently hilarious and compelling, though it missteps by dropping the Van Cleef character for far too long. Morricone, listed as himself here, contributes the best theme of the trilogy (wah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh! Wah-wah-wah!). Where was Wallach's Oscar nomination? People have won for far less than the performance he gives here.
The cinematography and the sound mix deserve mention here. The cin-tog really gives off how hot it must have been out there on the desert. The sound mix is fascinating for the sound the bullets make when they are fired. A lot of bullets get fired, and each one of them is loud as hell.
Speaking of violence, the MPAA changed the original rating of M (which was PG's first incarnation) to R presumably for the violence. While the films are quite violent, I'm not sure if the R's are justified — at worst, they're soft R's. This is reminiscent of the MPAA's decision to bump The Wild Bunch from its original R to an NC-17.
Clint's character is referred to in ads (and the box which bears the name of the trilogy) as "The Man With No Name." This isn't technically true. He gives his name in the second film, and in the third, he answers when Wallach's Tuco calls him Deborah Harry, I mean Blondie.
Clint also utters more dialogue than I remembered. He's downright talkative in Fistful.
In all three of these movies, Leone has a scene where guns are fired and you see and/or hear a cat go "MEYOWWWWW" and run away. It seemed like a throwaway comic effect, but it's used in all three films. What are cats doing in the desert anyway?
After my screenings, I concluded that these films still hold up as exercises of style, even in today's Deadwood age. More importantly, I was reminded that the venue in which a movie is watched can alter the way one feels about a movie. Some things just need to be seen in a theater or in their original aspect ratio.
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Labels: 60s, Deadwood, Don Siegel, Eastwood, HBO, Kurosawa, Leone, Mifune, Movie Tributes, Peckinpah, Sequels, Stanwyck, The Simpsons, Wallach, Wayne, Willis
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