Movie Monday: Viva Knievel!

What better movie to celebrate July 4th with than the all-american Viva Knievel!?

For those of you who don't know (you poor souls, you), Viva Knievel! is the sole movie-starring role for motorcycling stunt hero and Great American Evel Knievel, who parlayed a career of crashing into things to fame and fortune. As is typical with movies trying to "cash in" on a particular pop culture craze, Viva Knievel! gets there a little late, arriving in theaters a couple of years after Evel had peaked. But that shouldn't dull your enjoyment of this cinematic epic, because in many ways Evel is Forever.

After an opening credits sequence straight out of a Wonder Woman episode, the film proper opens with Evel sneaking into an orphanage late at night (a middle-aged man skulking around a kids' bedroom in the dark, no problem there) to deliver toys for the kids. Not just any toys, though: Evel Knievel toys!

One kid, inspired by Evel, throws his crutches aside and says if Evel can walk away from all those horrible crashes (which he really shouldn't have had if he was any good at jumping over stuff), then he can do! One of the nuns who runs the place chastises Evel for stirring up the kids, but even an agent of The Lord is no match for Evel Knievel! So suck it, God!

Evel then starts to prepare for his next big jump. We meet his mechanic, the once-great-but-now-boozed-up Will Atkins (Gene Kelly, on the road to demolishing a great career), and a reporter named Morgan (Lauren Hutton), who is there to cover Evel's next jump. Because if he crashes (likely) and dies, it'll make a make a great story!

The filmmakers assumed they could give Knievel and Hutton some Tracy/Hepburn sparkling repartee, because they start squabbling from the first scene. But Hutton is no Hepburn, and Evel Knievel is not exactly Spencer Tracy, so all their scenes just seem pissy and weird: Hutton's photographer seems less than professional, and Evel just looks like a big jerk.

Before Evel performs the big jump (which looks like it's taking place at a high school, in front of about a hundred people), he takes a moment out to tell kids: hey, don't do drugs!

With that weirdness out of the way, Evel does the jump--or, more accurately, doesn't: he crashes and is immediately taken to the hospital, leaving all those spectators to wonder why they paid full ticket price for something that would have been a five minute show, at best.

While in the hospital, Evel resists all efforts to return to the game (remember, he's the hero of this movie), despite the urging of his former protegee Jessie (Marjoe Gortner, whose screen presence was as awkward and ungainly as his name). Turns out that there's more to Jesse than meets the perm: he is being backed by some drug runners (one played by Leslie Nielsen!) who want to use Evel's convoy to sneak drugs from Mexico (this was the 70s, was that even illegal then?).

There's a whole subplot involving Will and his estranged son (who is way too young to be the sire of Gene Kelly, who was in his 60s here). Will is a big jerk to the young boy, so he is looked after by fraidy-cat Evel Knievel. Will learns of the plot to have Evel die during his Mexico stunt and the drug smuggling, so some goons knock him out and put him in a mental institution under the care of a corrupt doctor (Dabney Coleman). Evel sneaks into the hospital and rescues Will:

Well, sort of rescues: in a move that Spielberg and Lucas would steal for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Evel leaves Will in the place so the drug runners don't realize Evel is onto them.

Having decided to resume his stunts, he's about to do the big jump in Mexico when Jesse--high on drugs (say no, kids!) confronts him and says he is the best jumper. He knocks Evel out with one punch, climbs on his bike, and does the jump. But because the bike has been tampered with, it crashes, killing Jesse.

Evel finally learns of the whole plot and, and hour in, the film finally delivers something like an action sequence: Evel, astride his motorcycle, busts into the hospital and grabs Will, and off they go to find the caravan (which also features a kidnapped Morgan and Will's son; don't ask).

Evel and Will split up, and our hero stops the drug runners, ending with a nice car crash. Will and his son are reunited, and Morgan realizes she has the hots for Evel. He performs the original stunt scheduled for Mexico, and in the final shot the film freezes on Evel, with the opening theme making a return. The End!

As you might have guessed, Viva Knievel! is a terrible film. Evel, through no fault of his own, is a terrible actor, and has no business being the lead of a major movie. When they made a bio-pic about Evel's life in 1971, they cast George Hamilton in the role. I've never seen that film, but odds are it's better than this, which feels like an extra-long episode of pretty much any cop show from the time. The stunts are okay of course, but almost all the other characters are extremely unlikeable. And for a movie about a motorcycle daredevil, having him try to make jump, fail, and then lay in a hospital bed whining for the middle section doesn't really make you root for the guy.

But I will say this: Viva Knievel! is never boring: I watched it with some friends a few months ago and we had a great time yelling at the screen. And right at the point where you start to get a little bored, it wraps up with some nic explosions. How Mystery Science Theater 3000 never got around to this movie is beyond me.

Viva Knievel!

Movie Monday: Cannery Row

This week's movie is the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's classic Cannery Row!

A few weeks ago I took out Cannery Row from the library (The Grapes of Wrath was checked out) and found that, despite its brevity (less than 180 pages) I found the book difficult to comprehend. There isn't much plot really, just a series of vignettes about the various denizens of Cannery Row, and I kept saying to myself, what is Steinbeck saying here?

I was interested enough to keep reading, and I eventually finished it. I still felt confused as to what the deeper themes were, so I did some research online and came away with a greater appreciation for the book. I did genuinely like Cannery Row, so it made me think maybe the movie version was worth checking out as well?

The films stars Nick Nolte as the main character, Doc, a marine biologist. After a quick tour of the other locales in Cannery Row, it's clear that while Doc is admired and respected in the town, he doesn't really fit in: highly educated, he has a purpose of intent that a lot of the others do not (including a comical gang of underemployed fisherman, led by Mack, played by M. Emmet Walsh). Doc collects octopi for research, much to the general confusion of the others.

New in town is Suzy (Debra Winger), who comes looking for work but finds there isn't much. She's forced to look for room, board, and work at the local bordello, run by Fauna (Audra Linley).

The film tries to recreate the book, in presenting a series of short sequences about the citizens of the town. The one story thread from the book adapted here is when the motley gang of fisherman, all of whom like Doc very much, decide to throw him a party. But the festivities get out of hand and a brawl breaks out, which ends up breaking Doc's octopus tank.

The other story thread is lifted from Steinbeck's Cannery Row sequel, 1954's Sweet Thursday (which I have not read). That's where all the stuff with Suzy comes from, for she is not a character in the original book. Here, Suzy thinks she recognizes Doc, and wonders why such an accomplished man would choose to live in such a depressed (in more ways than one) little burg like Cannery Row. That sets up the movie's main plot, and gives the chance for Doc and Suzy to fall in love.

I had a difficult time with Cannery Row the movie as I did with Cannery Row the book, but for different reasons. From the Steinbeck I have read (which is, admittedly, not all that much), one of the virtues of the man's work was a directness and lack of sentimentality, even when he's talking about eccentric bums like the ones here, or his faithful dog Charley in Travels with Charley. But the movie--directed by first-timer David S. Ward (Major League and, er, Major League 2) is so cutesy presenting these lovable losers that the whole thing feels quite twee, an experience I've never had while reading Steinbeck.

Nolte is good as Doc, and Winger is okay as Suzy, but everyone else in the movie just doesn't feel real. There's narration from John Huston(!) which feels like the voice of Steinbeck himself. It works some of the time, but other times it feels like you're just having someone read the book to you. Visually, everything is shot through a gauzy haze, which again romanticizes all the goings-on, when living in Cannery Row was actually probably pretty depressing at times. I'm not saying the film should have been some gritty drama, but I can't help but feel that Ward just couldn't quite pull this tricky tone off. As I was watching, I wondered what Robert Altman might have done with this material.

Even with all my misgivings, I found Cannery Row tough to actively dislike, because it seems like the cast and crew is in their pitching (no pun intended, for those of you who have seen it). But overall the movie just doesn't really work, so I think you can call Cannery Row a noble failure.

"4 Reasons Why Aquaman Deserves More Respect: A Fan Speaks Out"

Upon news of Jason Momoa's casting as Aquaman in Batman v. Superman, Yahoo Movies was nice enough to ask me to write an article about why Aquaman is no joke. The piece, "4 Reasons Why Aquaman Deserves More Respect" can be found here!

Movie Monday: Mansion of the Living Dead

Note: This scene does not appear in the film!

I was watching some trailers at work the other day (actually part of my job!), and there was a series of films that were the work of infamous sacred cow-poker Jesus "Jess" Franco. I had heard of the man before but, like Eddie Romero, I had never seen a single example of the work, despite the fact that Franco has over 200 films to his credit! So I thought why not give one a shot?

Mansion of the Living Dead's plot, such as it is, is both childlike in its simplicity and also bizarrely confusing. Four girls go on vacation, ending up at hotel resort. They are quite obviously looking to party hard, so much they barely notice that there doesn't seem to be a single soul anywhere around:

Director Franco wastes no time--literally--in getting the girls naked. They pair off into two rooms, and each set starts going to town on each other, convinced that the other pair are frigid prudes. They are all willing to sleep with the first guy they see but, for now, bedding each other will suffice.

They decide to bathe topless when someone from a few floors up throws a meat cleaver at them. It misses but, instead of, you know, leaving, they stick around and have more sex, some of it so explicit I wondered just how far Franco was going to go. Soon after, one of the girls wanders off to take photos, never to be seen again. The other three run into the hotel's gardener, who is only interested in peeping on them.

Another one ends up getting grabbed and dragged off to a nearby courtyard (has anyone seen a mansion yet?), where she is deemed to be a sacrifice but a cult of hooded bad guys wearing skull masks:

They talk a bunch of gibberish about their god and stuff, which all leads to the woman being gang raped then murdered. Meanwhile, not all that far away, Meryl Streep was making Out of Africa. Anyway, Girl #3 stumbles her way into another room where she finds the wife of the hotel's manager, who is kept chained to the wall in perpetuity.

As this woman explains what's going on here, she shovels food in her mouth, explaining that she's only fed once a week. I have to admit, watching her smear food all over her face was, for me, the most difficult scene to watch in the whole enterprise:

Basically, this whole place is built on sacred ground, blah blah blah, and they lure innocent people to this place (damn Travelocity!) and kill them as holy sacrifices. The hotel manager is in on it of course, and he plays a large role in the final scene, where Girl #3 is about to be sacrificed (having, in a stupor, killed Girl #4 earlier):

There's more, but what's the point? If you're the kind of person who wants to see this kind of movie, it doesn't matter how it ends!


I wasn't sure what I was hoping for, trying out some of Franco's work. I've seen enough horrendously gory Italian horror to last me a lifetime, so I wasn't looking for extreme violence. The sex is not very tittilating, either: the girls are shot in such unflattering ways and in such dismal settings that the whole thing just felt dirty, which may of course been part of the point.

Sure, there are some nice moody scenes: Franco shoots this empty hotel in ways that make the place seem terribly threatening, even though there's nothing inherently scary about these bland halls and florescent lighting. A few minutes in, when it becomes clear these four dingbats have exactly zero sense of self-preservation, you have to accept that this world is not like ours, and thereby plays by its own rules: while you or I would put the car in reverse once we saw how big and creepy the hotel is, these girls' natural reaction is to get as naked as possible as quickly as possible.

With literally another 200 films to choose from, I can't say this will the first and last Franco movie I will choose to hunt down, but I'm not exactly in a hurry, either.

Movie Monday: Wonder Woman (1974)

You're sort of a wonder, Wonder Woman!

Pretty much every comic book fan is aware (if not having actually seen) Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, from the 1975-1979 TV series of the same name. Fewer people, however, know that this was not the first live-action Amazing Amazon to appear on television! No, a year earlier, then-tennis star Cathy Lee Crosby, trying to break her way into acting, nabbed the title role in a TV movie that was intended as a pilot for a series.

After an intro that shows us various MPs seemingly stealing volumes of top secret information from various locales (Paris, Istanbul, etc.) and delivering them to the very 1970sish George Calvin (Andrew Pine), who summarily has his field agents executed by a brother and sister assassin team!

Our first shot of Diana Prince (the very blond Crosby) is on Paradise Island, as she prepares to leave this paradise and enter Man's World. She bids a melancholy goodbye to her mother Hippolyte and some of her Amazonian sisters, one of whom who all but begs to go with Diana.

The whole Paradise Island sequence must be a flashback, because after a jump cut we find Diana comfortably ensconced with some sort of government agency, with her boss being one Steve Trevor (Kaz Garas):

Trevor calls a meeting of the top brass to tell them about how the code books (seen at the beginning of the movie) have been stolen. Diana seems to be Trevor's secretary and, after fending off the advances of some other guy, overhears her boss's meeting. Trevor seems to know that Diana is Wonder Woman, or something, because she heads out to find the person who stole the books, with Trevor's winking approval.

This George Calvin guy is working for another guy, named Abner Smith, played in a series of scenes by Ricardo Montalban where you never see his face. I'm not sure what the makers of this movie thought they were doing here, since Montalban is credited at the top of the show, and his voice is so unmistakeable that there's zero suspense trying to guess who it is.

Diana starts tracking down Smith, starting with a trip to a posh hotel. Calvin meets her there, and he asks her out, going so far as to saying how much he'd like to make love to her(!). Diana takes all this sexual harassment in stride, never wavering from her mission (more on that in a second). 

For the first 2/3rds of the movie, Crosby never wears any sort of costume, preferring to beat guys up in red slacks. When she finally does put on a superhero suit, it's a sort of Adidas-style running outfit, though it's not without its charms:

This scene--where they lure Wonder Woman into some sort of weird-ass mud room--is the only prototypical comic book moment in the whole movie. Otherwise, it's pretty much all talk talk talk, even when WW escapes and finally meets up with Abner:

Even the final scene, with Wonder Woman apprehending Smith (spoiler alert!), is done in such a low-key, almost comical way that I was scratching my head, wondering (no pun intended) just who this movie was supposed to appeal to: probably way too silly for adults, but too bizarre and idiosyncratic for kids. Ratings were medicore, but apparently ABC had enough faith in the Wonder Woman concept that they recommissioned a new pilot, starring Lynda Carter, and the rest was history.


The one worthwhile element to Wonder Woman is not so much Crosby's portrayal (which is dull, if not bad), but how Diana is written: she is never anything but completely confident in herself and her ability to finish her mission. You get the sense she's pretty much just toying with all the men in her way, willing to lead them on in one way or the other to get what she needs. I found that quite refreshing, especially when you compare it to the starry-eyed schoolgirl version found in the failed 2011 Wonder Woman pilot. This is progress?

Other than that, this is pretty much a disaster: the effects are nil (Wonder Woman mentions, but we never get to see, her Invisible Plane--what a tease!), the dialogue ranges from weak to bizarre, and the whole thing just feels like a Bionic Woman episode. I guess this was simply a reflection of when it was produced--clearly, filmmakers didn't think a "straight" superhero show would work, so they had to dress the comic book parts in standard TV fare--Wonder Woman feels like a spy show, Dr. Strange was in parts a medical drama, etc etc.

Like Justice League of America a few weeks ago, this is only worth tracking down as a curio. It will be interesting to see if Warner Bros. has learned any lessons between 1974 and 2016, when the first silver screen Wonder Woman makes her debut!

Movie Monday: The Wrath of God

I came across the trailer to 1972's The Wrath of God--a movie I had never heard of before--at work. Once I saw it featured Robert Mitchum as a machine gun-wielding preacher, and featured Victor Buono, Frank Langella, and Rita Hayworth(!) in the cast, I knew I had to see it!

The film opens in a very Wild Bunch-y way: In some unknown Mexican town, three "revolutionaries" are gunned down in the street. As they fall, the screen turns red, and we get our title, zooming out at the audience:

We meet Irish adventurer Emmet Keough (Ken Hutchinson), who has finally scrounged up enough money to buy a train ticket out of this town. He is offered a bootlegging job by a local businessman named Jennings (Buono), and when he turns the job down, Jennings has Keough's ticket and passport stolen. Later, Keough meets a beautiful Indian girl named Chela (Paula Pritchett), and he is forced to risk his life saving her from being raped by some local hoods.

 

Keough is strung up, about to die of hanging, when Catholic priest Oliver Van Horne (Mitchum) shows up, and...persuades the bad guys to rethink their actions:

Soon after, Van Horne, Keough, and Jennings are arrested and sentenced to be executed. After an inventive use of the subjective camera during the execution scene (a nice goofy touch from director Ralph Nelson), they are spared by Colonel Santilla (John Colicos), who says they won't be executed if they do a little "job" for him.

The job entails assassinating a local warlord, a real loose wire who keeps his people in the iron grip of repression. His name is Thomas De La Planta and is played by an impossibly young Frank Langella. His mother is played by none other than screen legend Rita Hayworth, in her last film role:

Apparently Hayworth was already starting to suffer from the Alzheimer's Disease that would later (much later) take her life, and I think you can see a little of that here: she sort of seems like she's in a different movie than the rest of the actors. Her scenes are minimal, and short, but it's still a thrill seeing someone from Hollywood's Golden Age showing up in what (then) such a post-modern movie. While she is Thomas' mother, Hayworth's character is a deeply religious woman and is happy to have a priest in town, thinking it will help save the souls of the locals.

Our three heroes hatch a plot (pretending to be investors in the town's local mining operation) to lure La Planta out into the desert and kill him, but (as you might have guessed) it doesn't quite work out that way. The Wrath of God has a kind of sleepy, laconic tone, led by Mitchum, despite the occasional burst of violence. Barney Miller's Gregory Sierra shows up as a one-eyed bandito, who gets in a fistfight with Keough, and the final ten minutes or so is one long action sequence that's both funny and kinda horrifying.

I did enjoy The Wrath of God, though it wasn't quite the lost classic I was envisioning when I saw the aforementioned trailer and cast. Still, Mitchum is a lot of fun (of course), and enough general 1970s weirdness to make it worth your time.