Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

*chomps on garbage eclair*

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I fell asleep halfway through Nude on the Moon, so i never got to the nudity.

Lol


The lunar nudity is definitely like the fabled fireworks factory from the Poochie episode.

I've started a couple of the Doris Wishmans on the CC, but I quickly realized I was not in the mood for them at the time. So decided to 'save them for later'.



I imagine when I they are about to be taken down, and Criterion informs me I only have a couple more days to experience them, I will have a sense of obligation of watching them all in one go....and oof, what a bad week that is going to be.

Fear not, I will be your guide into this pile of trash, join me as I dig for that mythical half-eaten eclair in her filmography.


But yeah, probably gonna prioritize the soon to be leaving films over the next week or so. There's a bunch on there I've been interested in for some time.

Michael Winner's "Big Sleep" is close to the top of my list for what is outgoing.

I just got through Out of the Past. (It's great! Also, Mitchum wasn't even 30 when he made this? Yikes!) Want to get to Nayakan next, but will probably use the next two days for Christmas-related rewatches (Black Christmas, Police Story, Die Hard).

Mitchum is definitely in the same club as Max Von Sydow and Danny Glover in that they all looked super old their entire lives.

Don't forget about that weird physique:

I was thinking about this recently, when my "Watch Every Coppola Movie" project led me to view one of his '60s "nudies". (I think that's the correct term. There's no sex and possibly not even kissing. Just some ladies without shirts on.) The premise was that our main character suffered from a malady which caused him to imagine the women in his surrounding area topless. So if he's at a diner, his waitress is topless. Or if he goes out to a cow pasture, the cows turn into topless ladies. An unexpectedly large portion of the film involved this guy talking to another guy about his problem, which is no doubt not what anyone asked for. The attempts at humor were excruciatingly unfunny. And then when the topless ladies do show up, they're performing decidedly non-sexy tasks like bussing tables or typing. It was an interminable hour-and-twenty minutes and all I could think about was how much effort it used to take for a fella to see a boob. Like you had to get in the car and drive somewhere, and then sit through this? How desperate did a guy have to be? Granted, I've sat through approximately one of these films, so this might have just been a terrible example of the genre. Maybe there were others that were worth the effort.

I don't have a point here, just noting what a different time it was. (The film was from '62)

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Imagine if you had to drive to another town to see one of these. What would you tell people? (Although I assume these movies wouldn't be sought out, just watched if that's what the theatre was playing, but it's fun to pretend otherwise.) There's a scene in Nude on the Moon where one of the characters says he went to see one of these movies and claims it was well worth staying up for. Ood course that one was also directed by Wishman.



I can't say I'm an expert in the genre by any means, but would like to get to the Coppola at some point. I've been surprised at my tolerance for unfunny attempted humour in certain contexts, given that I don't consider myself much of a fan of the comedy genre (at least in its current state).


I assume Russ Meyer's early movies are worth seeing (I've only seen his stuff from the mid-60s onward, when restrictions started to ease up). Although aside from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the state of his films on DVD is appalling. Apparently his estate is holding on to the rights pretty tightly (as per his wish), meaning they're not getting the kind of fancy treatment a boutique Blu-ray label normally would offer.

Mudhoney is my favorite Meyer. I've been hit and miss with a bunch of his work but that one rocks.



And the worst example of nudie films I've seen were the early nudies of HG Lewis. Holy **** those are bad.

I remember the copy of Mudhoney I rented crapped out with less than five minutes to go, so I had to look up the ending in YouTube, where it was uploaded on terrible quality and stretched to the wrong aspect ratio. Although I suppose back in the day I'd have to drive to another town, so I should stop complaining.


Lol @ HG Lewis. Probably the worst important director, even if I do like some of his movies. I read somewhere that he considered one of his films well made if it was in focus or something to that effect. That level of commitment is apparent on screen.

Just rewatched Police Story. Don't mind me, just digging up an old review from my blog.

When I first watched Jackie Chan’s Police Story some odd years ago, I was floored by the action but found myself unused to the seemingly raggedy structure and frequent tonal shifts. Now, revisiting the film several years later, my appreciation of the action has not lessened (and has actually grown, as I’ve gotten more knowledgeable about how action movies are made) but the overarching mastery of the film has come into focus. On one hand, getting more experience with the cinema of Hong Kong has primed me to more easily accept the tonal shifts, but more than mere familiarity, I think the looseness of the film is actually one of its strengths. Police Story is a film of tremendous precision (the meticulously crafted action sequences have been analyzed in depth by the likes of David Bordwell and the YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting) but also one of great spontaneity and constant surprises, both within a scene (fights and chases escalate in unpredictable ways, like a stakeout that leads to a shantytown-levelling car chase) and across them (a brief interlude where Chan’s attempt to scrape doo doo from his shoe results in an unintended moonwalk).

The movie goes for broke in every scene, seemingly scanning every situation for every lunatic stunt it can throw in, as if trying to top itself moment-by-moment. Chan’s production methods lend to this dynamic, as he used his greater creative control on this picture to plan for longer and better tailor his action to the locations, and his reliance on a regular group of stuntmen allowed him to really push his performers and himself to the limit. Some of the spontaneity of the film is true to the production, as some of the most famous moments, such as the bus screeching to a halt and the goons hurtling out, were in fact stunts gone wrong. (I would use the term “happy accident” if the stuntmen didn’t need to be rushed to the hospital after.) There are more examples of things not going as planned in the end credits blooper reel, some of which are amusing (Chan missing a pencil flip) and some of which are hair-raising. Of course the most hair-raising stunt is in the finished film, with Chan managing to top what’s already one of the greatest fight scenes of all time (in which seemingly every participant is hurled through a pane of glass, which Chan had made thicker than usual for flashier onscreen results) by sliding multiple stories down a pole adorned in Christmas lights (which get painfully shattered all the way down). It’s the one time the film really stops to admire its handiwork by showing the footage three times, but in its defense, it’s pretty ****ing astounding. Don’t try this one at home, folks.

The sequel, which clocks in at around twenty minutes longer, is not as tight as the original, and it sets its climax in a less glamorous environment (an abandoned factory/warehouse instead of a mall), yet it has a lot of the same pleasures as the original with its unpredictable structure, commanding action filmmaking and eagerness to please. I don’t know if there’s much to be said about the sequel that can’t be said about the original, but I do appreciate its commitment to smaller scale stunts and set pieces (the climax isn’t as extravagant as the one in the original until it sets off a giant explosion right at the end) as well as the increased Maggie Cheung quotient. She’s adorable in these movies and Chan’s attempts to make it up to her for a series of unintended slights to exacerbate the situation without fail are endearing and a reliable source of laughs. Watching these movies in this exact moment may leave some uneasy with their vehement pro-cop stance, and while I don’t think the films’ politics are well considered enough to really unsettle, Chan clearly does admire the police and the sequel emphasizes this element even more with the addition of a sexy streetwise surveillance squad that assists his character. I think Chan’s persona makes this and other objectionable elements more palatable, as while these movies are obvious testaments to his talents as a filmmaker and star, his character has an affable everyman quality, unafraid to seem foolish or vulnerable even when Chan the actor is demonstrating his tremendous action-comic prowess, so that when he triumphs, it’s that much more exhilarating.

I haven’t followed the series all the way through, although I did enjoy Supercop, Chan’s team-up with Michelle Yeoh (at the time best known for her girls with guns movies and her return to film after a brief retirement) as well as the mostly Chan-less Supercop 2, although Chan’s absence in the director’s chair is definitely felt in both. (Supercop has its share of great stunts, the whole film doesn’t seem as focused as the first two. The sequel is smaller-scale and bizarrely sidelines Yeoh during the climax.) My viewing of the original all those years back was an English dub, so it was great to see the beautifully restored version on the Criterion release, which includes the usual slew of great special features, explanatory (Grady Hendrix’s analyses of Chan’s screen presence and direction, excerpts from My Stunts) and otherwise (a reunion special where Chan and his stunt crew sing the theme song from the film). (I’d seen the second last year in a theatre, one of the highlights of my filmgoing experience, a pleasure that sadly I won’t be going back to anytime soon, it seems.) I do think comparing it to its imitators helped me bring its qualities into clearer focus. (Sidenote: not an imitator, but it was amusing chasing these movies with a rewatch of A Better Tomorrow, another classic of the genre in a very different key, as it contains a similar but decidedly more serious home invasion sequence.) The bus goon stunt gone awry was copied in Tango and Cash, and while that iteration is amusing, there’s a slight smugness, as if the film is standing back and admiring its own handiwork, something Chan’s film has no time for (that one stunt in the climax being the one exception). The shantytown car chase was recreated by Michael Bay, a filmmaker I sometimes admire, in Bad Boys II, and it’s certainly one of the most memorable moments in that film. But I’ve wondered why I found the scene so enjoyable in Chan’s film and so off-putting in Bay’s. I think it’s for two reasons. One, like Tango and Cash, Bay’s version comes across as relatively self-satisfied while Chan’s has a grungy, touch and go quality that I find immensely more appealing. The latter is the difference in worldviews. Bay’s is a testament to the sociopathy of its heroes, who see no problem with destroying dozens of homes and likely killing at least a few innocent people. The chase in the Chan film is instigated by the villains and Chan’s character, for all his recklessness, is determined to contain the situation against all odds. Which in a way is an extension of Chan’s directorial ethos, his determination to entertain the audience by any means necessary.

Ain't nothin' wrong with some high rise pants. I picked up a pair earlier this year. Extremely comfortable, would recommend.

Like many people, my primary reference point for Danny Glover's career is his role as Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, wherein he famously declares that he is "too old for this ****" and grows exasperated at the unpredictable behaviour of his loose cannon partner and the escalating violence that surrounds him. What I'm saying is, there's a certain geriatric quality about him. He holds his own in an action movie context, but also comes across like a relatively nonthreatening figure. (It was a bit startling to see Silverado recently, where he comes across as much more potent and even a bit cool.) In To Sleep With Anger, he takes that veneer of harmlessness and subverts it, rendering insidious his usual geniality and bonhomie. Glover plays a man who shows up at a family's house claiming to be a distant relative and never leaves, insinuating himself into the fractures in the family's relationships. It's the kind of performance that gets under your skin and stays with you, much like the character he plays.

Soon after he arrives, Burnett signals to us something is off about this character, with his insistence on clarifying that he's been invited and specifying his sleeping arrangements. This is something that struck me as almost vampiric, but the Criterion Collection essay by Ashley Clark cites the Hairy Man folktale as the inspiration. Likewise, there are further hints to his sinister nature when another character (played by Sy Richardson, known to me for his collaborations with Alex Cox, and who I just learned also played the father in Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law) prods him about the fates of three boys who were murdered, only for him to provide the cagiest of responses. And while his presence hangs psychologically over all members of the household, his influence proves greatest on the ne'er-do-well son (Richard Brooks), who is seduced by his rejection of traditional values like hard work and religion. There's also a slyly comic angle to the proceedings, like the arrival of Glover's increasingly fogeyish friends who like him never leave and proceed to wear on the family's patience, as well as the slapstick- and satire-tinged fate of his character.

Burnett plays all this at a level just below horror, preferring to let the sense of unease simmer rather than accumulate into a clearer sense of threat. We know something is off, but can't really grasp what or rationalize it away. When I read Roger Ebert's review, I can understand his frustration that the film never reaches a boil like the premise would suggest. But Burnett is less interested in suspense than in observing how the rhythms of this family's domestic life are disrupted by the presence of the Glover character. It's informed by the neorealist style of his earlier Killer of Sheep, but not limited to it. (I do owe that movie a rewatch, as it's been a couple of years and for whatever reason I wasn't in the right mood when I watched it.) And it's not just in the abstract, observational sense, as Burnett will focus his attention to specific objects or events of implied symbolic value, like Glover's lucky knife, his nudie deck, his snakeskin-like shirt during a dinner party, the remedies the wife tries when her husband falls ill (only to be chastised by her preacher for not settling for the power of prayer), and the suggestion that the number of patients in the hospital correlates to the full moon. I confess that the resonance of some of these things went over my head, but I appreciate the way Burnett avoids clear explanations and prefers to transplant us into this situation. We don't need to be told that something is off about Glover, we can feel it just like the protagonists.

Have you seen A Color Purple? It was the first thing I ever saw Glover in and because of it I tend to think of him as anything but harmless.

I have not, but I will add it to my watchlist.


Also, ngl, one of the first things that comes to mind with Glover is somebody joking on RT about a Danny Glover Spider-Man (I think the punchline involved an elderly Spider-Man using a gun). This was back when people wanted Donald Glover to be Spider-Man.


Btw, this leaves the Criterion Channel at the end of this month. If you can make room for an additional movie this week, I would humbly suggest checking this out.