Category: Z-View

Marnie (1964)

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Marnie (1964)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay:  Jay Presson Allen based on the novel by Winston Graham

Stars: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Martin Gabel, Diane Baker, Alan Napier and Bruce Dern.

The Pitch: “Hey, Hitchcock wants to make ‘Marnie’!”

Tagline: On Marnie’s wedding night he discovered every secret about her . . . except one!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

 

Wealthy businessman, Mark Rutledge (Connery) falls in love with a beautiful pathological liar and thief (Hendren) when she tries to steal from his company.  Rather than turn her over to the police he decides to find the origin of her compulsions.

This film has all of Hitchcock’s flourishes but falls way short of his best for me.

Rating:

Looking for Danger (1957)

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Looking for Danger (1957)

Director: Austen Jewell

Screenplay: Elwood Ullman

Stars: Huntz Hall, Stanley Clements and Lili Kardell

The Pitch: “Hey, let’s do another Bowery Boys movie!”

Tagline: It’s a royal delight when Sach crashes the Sultan’s harem and teaches the gals with the seven veils to rock ‘n roll!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

 

The boys remember the time during the war when they were sent to spy behind enemy lines in an Arabian land disguised as Nazis.

Rating:

Of Mice and Men (1939)

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Of Mice and Men (1939)

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: Eugene Solow based on the novel by John Steinbeck

Stars: Lon Chaney Jr., Burgess Meredith, Betty Field, Charles Bickford, Roman Bohnen, Bob Steele and Noah Beery Jr.

The Pitch: “Hey, let’s turn Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men into a movie!”

Tagline: A mighty novel! A sensational stage success! Now! The year’s most important picture!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

George (Chaney, Jr.) and Lennie (Meredith) are old buddies who travel from farm to ranch looking for work just barely getting by during the depression. George is a strong giant of a man with the brain of a child.  Lennie constantly looks after George whose strength and lack of mental aptitude is always getting him them in trouble.   Although they dream of one day owning their own little place, it will probably never happen.

George and Lennie get work on a ranch owned by a mean old man and his son, Curley (Steele).  Curley takes an instant dislike to George.  Curley distrusts all the men on the ranch because of his attractive wife (Field), but he especially hates large men.  Lennie warns George to stay away from both Curley and his wife.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that they will stay away from him.

 

Rating:

The Birds (1963) directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Rod Tayler, Jessica Tandy; Suzanne Pleshette and introducing Tippi Hedren / Z-View

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The Birds (1963)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Evan Hunter from The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier

Stars: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, Charles McGraw, Ruth McDevitt, Lonny Chapman, Joe Mantell, Malcolm Atterbury, John McGovern, Karl Swenson, Richard Deacon, Elizabeth Wilson, Bill Quinn, Doreen Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and Veronica Cartwright.

Tagline: Suspense and shock beyond anything you have seen or imagined!

The Plot…

Something strange is happening in Bodega Bay.

Birds have randomly attacked individuals.  At first it is thought to be a coincidence.  Then a farmer is found dead, with his eyes pecked out and other wounds that appear to be caused by birds.

And now the birds are gathering…

Thoughts (Beware of spoilers)…

Another classic from the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.  This is one of a few movies I was always allowed to stay up and watch even on a school night as a kid.

Most of the birds seen in the film are real.  Hitchcock said that 3,200 birds were used during filming. They were combined with mechanical birds and special effects.  Hitchcock used several effects houses including MGM, Disney and FOX.

Hitchcock wanted the film to close with out a “The End” title card to leave the audience with a sense of unresolved terror.

The Bodega Bay school house where scenes were filmed was reportedly haunted.  When Hitchcock was told this he was thrilled to be filming there.

Hitchcock’s movie and Du Maurier’s story only share a bayside town setting and birds attacking humans. Du Maurier’s story takes place in Britain with a man protecting his wife and two children at their isolated cottage.

Rating:

Backtrack (2015)

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Backtrack (2015)

Director: Michael Petroni

Screenplay: Michael Petroni

Stars: Adrien Brody, Jenni Baird and Bruce Spence

The Pitch: “Hey, let’s make a ghost movie with Adrien Brody!”

Tagline: Nothing haunts like the past.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Psychologist Peter Bower (Brody) is having a terrible time dealing with the death of his daughter.  He was teaching her to ride a bike when he became distracted and she was struck by a truck and killed.  Bower begins to have dreams of the dead and even starts to see them while awake.

As Bower sorts out the meaning of his visions, he also tries to remember what distracted him and lead to the death of his daughter.  Bower believes that they are linked.  Following the clues, he returns to his boyhood home and a secret that ties it all together.

 

Rating:

Split (2017)

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Split (2017)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan

Stars: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Betty Buckley

The Pitch: “Hey, M. Knight Shyamalan has a cool idea for a movie!”

Tagline: Kevin has 23 distinct personalities. The 24th is about to be unleashed.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

 

Kevin Wendell has 23 different personalities.  One of them kidnapped three girls and locked them in a remote location.  All they know is that a new personality, ‘the beast’ is coming and they are considered sacred food.

M. Knight is back!  The twist ending has received a lot of buzz and is a cool reveal more than a twist.  With that said, I watched the movie thinking that one of the girls was actually one of Kevin’s personalities.  I really believe that M. Knight wanted us to lean that way… but I was wrong.  It’ll be interesting to see how M. Knight re-visits this story-line.

Rating:

Sleepless (2017)

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Sleepless (2017)

Director: Baran bo Odar

Screenplay: Andrea Berloff based on the French film Sleepless Night

Stars: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, Scoot McNairy, Gabrielle Union and Octavius J. Johnson

The Pitch: “Hey, let’s remake Sleepless Night!”

Tagline: Don’t judge a cop by his cover.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

 

Sleepless starts off with a lot of potential and then quickly becomes turns into a brainless action fest.  That’s not a bad thing if you’re not hoping for more, but based on the trailer I was.

Sleepless opens with a drug ripoff that turns into a shootout leaving the drug couriers dead. The two masked men who ripped off the 25 million dollars worth of cocaine get away and we learn that they are cops.  Vincent Downs (Foxx) and his partner show up at the station and Downs requests to investigate the case.  Pretty smart move since he and his partner committed the crime.  This is probably the last smart thing that happens in the movie.

Downs and his partner go to the crime scene and discover another pair of detectives are also working the case.  To make matters worse both the drug dealer and the drug buyer are on to Downs (how do they figure this out before the cops?) and so they kidnap Downs’ son.

Downs’ has a son and a wife.  He doesn’t live with them because he was never home.  Son tolerates dad who is always late or doesn’t show up for scheduled visits.  Wife is ready to move on to another man who has been in her life.  This family life could be expected from a drug dealing no good cop.

Downs gets a call and is told to bring the cocaine to the drug dealer’s casino.  Yep, just bring 25 million of coke to the casino and you’ll get your son back.  So what does Downs do?  He takes the satchel of coke to the casino.  Ah, but he has a plan.  He’ll go into the men’s room and hide half in the ceiling.  Then he’ll wait to give his son back before giving them the rest of the drugs.

Can you think of another place that has more cameras than a casino?  Not the brightest plan.  What follows are a bunch of fights as Downs gets his son back, loses his son, fights the drug dealers and fights the other cops investigating the crime.  There are fights in the hallway, fights in the kitchen, the disco, the spa, the pool and the parking garage.  You’ll see more people with guns get their guns taken away by unarmed folks than in any other movie I can remember.

The thing that bugs me is that this could have been a better movie with just a little more thought.  Nits I will pick…

  • Downs takes all the coke to the casino and then hides half of it in the casino.  What’s the point?  Doesn’t he know about cameras?
  • When the female cop trailing Downs discovers he’s brought the stolen coke to the casino she doesn’t call it in.   Instead she takes the coke and hides it in a locker in the spa in the same casino?!?
  • When Downs goes to get the coke he hid so they will give him his son he discovers it is missing.  So he goes to the kitchen and packs up sugar.  The drug dealers take it without checking because cops are supposedly on their way up.
  • In fight scene after fight scene someone with a gun has it taken away from them by an unarmed person.
  • In a scene in the parking garage, one of the thugs puts on a mask and begins firing off tear gas rounds.  The tear gas has no effect on anyone.  Perhaps he was just firing off smoke grenades, but if that is the case why is he wearing a mask and the smoke would hinder his and his partner’s vision as well.
  • Downs’ wife shows up at the parking garage just in time to kill a thug and save his life.
  • It turns out (major spoiler alert and cliché) that Downs is a good cop who has been undercover for two years.  His dedication to the case is an admirable thing.  Ignoring his family was all in the line of the job.  Aww!  His son and wife are going to forgive him and all will be well in the Downs’ household.
  • The cliché I was hoping that they’d avoid was that the bad cop was actually the female detective’s partner.

If it sounds like I hated Sleepless, I didn’t.  If you go in expecting a fairly mindless action flick, you should like it.  I was just hoping for so much better.

Rating:

“The Thing from Another World” (1951) / Z-View

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The Thing from Another World (1951)

Director: Christian Nyby, Howard Hawks (uncredited)

Screenplay: Charles Lederer based on the story Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr.

Stars: Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James Young, Dewey Martin, Robert Nichols, William Self, Eduard Franz and James Arness, Billy Curtis.

Tagline: What do you know about it?  What does science know about it?  What does ANYONE know about THE THING?

The Plot…

A small band of scientists and soldiers stationed in the Arctic discover a flying saucer buried in the polar ice.  Not far from the ship they find an alien also frozen in the ice.  When they bring the block of ice containing the creature back to their base camp, they have no idea the horror that is in store.

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)…

There are more uncredited stuntmen (14) on this picture than credited actors (11).

Although the thing is on screen for less than three minutes, the film’s Make-up Artist (Lee Greenway) spent five months making eighteen sculptures of the monster before Howard Hawks was satisfied with one.

The Thing from Another World is a Classic!

 

Rating:

Stagecoach (1939)

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Stagecoach (1939)

Director: John Ford

Screenplay: Dudley Nichols  from an original story by Ernest Haycox

Stars: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine and John Carradine

The Pitch: “Hey,let’s make a western that’s more than just white hats vs black hats.”

Tagline: Danger holds the reins as the devil cracks the whip ! Desperate men ! Frontier women ! Rising above their pasts in a West corrupted by violence and gun-fire !

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

 

Stagecoach is not only one of the best westerns ever made, but one of the best movies ever made.  It has it all, danger, romance, humor, mystery and more.  It could actually be the film that laid the ground work for disaster/apopcalyptic movies.  Throw a group of strangers together and drop in a disaster and see what shakes out.

The strangers include: The stage driver and his partner riding shotgun, an alcoholic doctor and a prostitute (who’ve been run out of town), a gambler, a pregnant woman, a bank manager (who has a bag of stolen money) and an escaped convict seeking revenge for the murder of his father and brother.

The stagecoach is traveling through Apache territory in the middle of an uprising.  As they get deeper and deeper into Indian territory, the odds of their surviving are dropping fast.

This is the movie that made John Wayne a star.

Rating:

The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake

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The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake

Publisher: Mysterious Press

First sentence…

Eddie Gato pleaded with us to take him on that run last winter but we said no.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

 

Eddie Gato Wolfe is an ambitious young man who wishes to make a fast rise in the vast Wolfe family criminal organization.  When things aren’t moving as fast as he’d like, Eddie heads down to Mexico and takes a security job for the La Navaja drug cartel.

Assigned to a remote but luxurious desert villa, days and nights are boring.  The only time things liven up is when the cartel bosses fly in with young women to party.  Although contact or conversations with the help is not allowed one of the women seems interested in Eddie… and he in her.  Eddie learns her name is Miranda.

On Miranda’s next visit he sneaks a visit to her and they hit it off.  All is going well until the man who brought her finds them together.  He and Eddie fight and the man ends up dead.  The dead man is the brother of  La Navaja’s leader.  Eddie knows that unless he and Miranda can escape across the desert and back into the United States, a brutal merciless death awaits them both.

Eddie and Miranda head into the desert with the knowledge that the entire La Navaja cartel will be looking for them.  They’re only hope is a lot of luck and maybe some help from the Wolfe’s… the family that he deserted.

James Carlos Blake has another winner!

Rating:

The Traveler (2010)

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The Traveler (2010)

Director: Michael Oblowitz

Screenplay:  Joseph C. Muscat

Stars: Val Kilmer, Dylan Neal and Paul McGillion

The Pitch: “Hey,let’s make a murder mystery with supernatural revenge overtones.”

Tagline: How do you catch a killer you’ve already caught?

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Late one evening a stranger walks into a deserted under-staffed police station and begins confessing to murders he hasn’t yet committed.

Interesting premise that falls way short in reality.  The underlying premise is that an innocent man has been killed by the officers in the station and that the stranger is there to get revenge.  What follows is a lot of stupid decisions made by characters that results in torture and gore.  Then at the end there is a reveal that makes all that we’ve seen even worse.  Bah!

 

Rating:

Hold That Hypnotist (1957)

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Hold That Hypnotist (1957)

Director: Austen Jewell

Screenplay: Dan Pepper

Stars: Huntz Hall, Stanley Clements and Jane Nigh

The Pitch: “Hey,let’s make another Bowery Boys movie.”

Tagline: They’re HYSTERICAL…They’re HYPNUTICAL!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Satch gets hypnotized and has visions of an earlier life when he was a pirate and wakes with the knowledge of a buried treasure.  Less laughs than most Bowery Boys films and one of the weakest in the series.

 

Rating:

San Quentin (1937)

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San Quentin (1937)

Director: Lloyd Bacon

Screenplay:
Peter Milne and Humphrey Cobb

Stars: Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Barton MacLane and Joe Sawyer.

The Pitch: “Hey,let’s make a dramatic romance focused around a prison.”

Tagline: “IT’S EASIER TO FIGHT TEN PRISON RIOTS THAN TAME ONE DIZZY DAME!”

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Captain Stephen Jameson (O’Brien) tasked with bringing discipline to the prisoners of San Quentin goes there to make a difference.  Jameson falls in love with the sister (Sheridan) of one of the convicts (Bogart).  When the convict escapes Jameson vows to bring him in.

One of the most unintentionally funny movie endings ever.

Rating:

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

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Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

Director: Don Siegel

Screenplay: Richard Collins

Stars: Neville Brand, Emile Meyer, Frank Faylen, Leo Gordon, Robert Osterloh, Paul Frees, Don Keefer, Alvy Moore, Dabbs Greer and Whit Bissell.

The Pitch: “Hey,let’s make a dramatic expose on prison life.”

Tagline: YOU ARE CAUGHT IN THE SCORCHING CENTER OF A PRISON RIOT! YOU feel the savage frenzy of 4000 caged humans! YOU see the horror of the wolf pack on a vengeance kick! YOU sweat out every second with tortured hostages! YOU rock with the impact of brute force against bullets!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

James Dunn (Brand) leads a prison riot intended to bring about better conditions for all prisoners.  Unfortunately, Dunn’s partner in the uprising is Crazy Mike Carnie (Gordon) who sees this as his chance to get back at guards and maybe more.

Leo Gordon is a force of nature in this.

Rating:

Fingers at the Window (1942)

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Fingers at the Window (1942)

Director: Charles Lederer

Screenplay: Rose Caylor and Lawrence P. Bachmann from a story by Rose Caylor

Stars: Lew Ayres, Laraine Day and Basil Rathbone

The Pitch: “Hey,let’s make a scary love story!”

Tagline: DANGER AT NIGHTFALL!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

An axe-murderer is terrorizing the city of Chicago with six killings so far.  When Oliver Duffy (Ayers) sees a strange looking man following a woman late one night he stops to warn her.  Although skeptical at first, Edwina (Day) comes to realize Oliver isn’t kidding.  Oliver walks her home and a second attempt on her life is made.

Soon enough they realize that the other murders were just a ruse and she is the real target.  But who wants to kill her and why?  Oliver and Edwina may die finding out.

 

Rating: