Movie Monday: Houdini

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1953 bio-pic Houdini!
 
Paramount went all out for this portrait of the legendary magician, springing for color photography and big stars:

The film opens at a circus, where young Bess (Janet Leigh) is with her girlfriends, enjoying the attractions. When they see the wild beast man, Bess pipes up, decrying the cruelty with which he is treated by the carnival barker.

Later, Bess wanders away from her friends, and makes the wild beast man's acquaintance:

Of course, the wild beast man isn't a real "missing link"; rather, he's Harry Houdini, an aspiring magician who appears in disguise for the opportunity to go on stage with his illusions, which don't attract much of a crowd:

 

Bess departs, but when she comes back to the circus, it's clear that Houdini is smitten with her. As he lays strapped to a table, headed for certain death via buzzsaw, all he can do is look longingly at Bess, as she watches, horrified, from the crowd:

 

Eventually Houdini and Bess get together, and get married, living in a small apartment with his mother. Bess becomes his on-stage assistant, but it doesn't take long before she tires of the grind--the endless travel, the low pay, and the rough crowds. At one point an audience member hurls something at Houdini, only for the magician to reappear, as if by magic, in the crowd, where he exacts some revenge on the heckler:

Eventually Bess convinces Harry to quit the life, and he gets a job at a safe factory, where he is bored, working on the assembly line. The only thing that keeps him involved is the work of another man at the factory, an old hand who brags of crafting uncrackable safes. Houdini offers to be locked inside, just to see if he can escape, but is gruffly rebuffed.

On Halloween Night, Houdini and Bess go to dinner at a fancy hotel, which just happens to be holding a banquet for a club of magicians. An offer is made for five members of the audience to try and escape from unbeatable strait-jackets. Bess tries, and fails, to keep her husband in his seat, but of course destiny calls:

As the four other magicians struggle, flopping around the stage, Houdini stays still. He focuses on a glowing ball dangling from chandelier, and begins to sweat profusely. Bess looks concerned, as done the head magician. Seconds tick by, and Houdini frees himself from the strait-jacket, almost as if he was in a trance. The prize is two tickets to Europe, but they come with a warning: Houdini is told by the head magician to stop pursuing this new line of illusions; that it might be dangerous.

Houdini ignores this, and after a brief fight he and Bess go to Europe. Houdini tries to track down a master magician named Von Schweiger. He is told by the man's assistant, Otto (Torin Thatcher) that the great man died just a few days earlier. Otto decides to become Houdini's assistant and travel with him and Bess.

During one series of sold-out shows, Houdini is challenged to break out of an English jail cell, considered impossible to escape from. He takes up the challenge, and while he makes his escape, we see Bess pretend to be Houdini on stage, giving the real man time to get to the stage, stunning everyone:

They return to America, where Houdini's fame grows. His tricks grow ever more dangerous, like being dropped into the icy waters of the Detroit River while being locked in a box. Things go wrong when a cable snaps, dropping him into the river before he is ready, and Houdini barely escapes with his life, lost beneath the ice, desperately looking for a hole to the surface.

When reunited with Bess, he tells her the only way he found his way out was following the voice of his mother--who he learns, died at almost that exact same moment, many miles away. It's at this point Houdini becomes obsessed with communicating with "the other side", which of course would be the ultimate trick.

Two years pass (where, strangely, Houdini and Bess seemed to have aged by more than a decade), and in that time we learn through a reporter that all Houdini has been doing, in lieu of stage appearances, is trying to find someone who can truly communicate with the dead. They go to visit a medium, who seems to be the real thing:

Of course, it doesn't take long (mere moments, in fact) for Houdini to reveal the woman to be a fraud--all the ghostly goings-on are faked. Houdini's quest continues.

He returns to performing, looking to perfect the "Water Torture" escape, which worries Bess to no end. One night, on Halloween, Houdini feels ill, suffering from appendicitis. He ignores the pain, and goes on with the show--but something goes wrong, and Otto must free Houdini from the tank:

Bess rushes to the stage, where Houdini, about to die, promises that, if he can, he will come back. As Bess sobs, the camera pans on a poster of The Great Houdini. The End.



Houdini is a lot of fun; it's fairly well acted--Curtis is a bit of a cipher as Houdini, but Leigh is great, and they have a lot of chemistry (no surprise, they were a real life couple off screen when this movie was made). The film is nice to look at, and gives us the inside scoop on how Houdini pulled off some of his tricks (though not all; a nice touch). Historically, it takes a lot of liberties with real story; Houdini didn't die on stage--it was that infamous punch to the gut, combined with the appendicitis, that slowly killed him a few days later. But dying on stage is very dramatic, and I guess the movie makers thought it was just too good to resist, ending the movie like it began--on stage.

Other than the seance scene, the movie doesn't do a whole lot, visually, with the whole world of magic. The film was directed by George Marshall, who did a lot of "B" comedies and thrillers, and (later) TV work; it's kind of a shame Paramount didn't get someone with a little more flair to tackle this story--Orson Welles comes to mind.

Still, Houdini is a solid classic Hollywood biopic; it's kind of amazing there's never been another version of this story done in the sixty years since the film came out; it's seems like such ripe subject matter. Until that time, though, Houdini does the job.

Movie Monday: Scorpio

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1973 spy thriller Scorpio!

Scorpio stars the legendary Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon as spies during the Cold War:

Lancaster plays Cross, and Delon is the titular Scorpio. They were once mentor and student, but Scorpio has since gone on to a "great" career as hired killer (we get to see him pull off an assassination at an airport, and as usual Delon shows no emotion while doing the grisly work).

Scorpio has now been hired by the CIA to take out his mentor, because they believe Cross has become a traitor and is now working for the Soviet Union.

Cross learns he's been targeted by his own country, and he escapes to Europe. This sets up the bulk of the film, which is the classic cat-and-mouse set-up with Scorpio chasing after Cross, and Cross escaping, etc.

In between, Cross visits an old friend, a Russian spy played by Paul Scofield with the awesome name of Zharkov:

 

Cross and Zharkov have a couple of big talky scenes together, where they debate all sorts of issues. While they are technically enemies, it's clear they deeply respect one another and have a similar code of ethics. They are similarly put off by the new generation of spies, who seem more like ruthless killers who will do anything for a buck, rather than patriots willing to work for their country's benefit.

Lancaster was a pretty physical guy, in real life and the movies, and he frequently did his own stunts. There's a well-paced, lengthy shoot-out at a construction site, where it's clear that Lancaster is really doing a lot of the running and jumping himself. He gets the drop on the guy chasing him (not Scorpio), and deals with him the most effective way possible:

 

Finally Scorpio catches up to Cross, and the two of them have a stand-off in a parking garage:

I won't say what happens, of course, but this is a 1970s movie, a political thriller produced during Vietnam and the build-up of Watergate, so you can imagine this film's attitude is more than a little cynical: the final scene pulls a metaphorical shroud over all the proceedings. The End.


I enjoyed Scorpio fairly well; at almost two hours its a bit too long and at times fairly confusing. We never learn if Cross indeed has gone rogue, I guess maybe that's the point--that it doesn't even matter anymore. Lancaster is as good as always, though he was looking a bit long in the tooth for some of the scenes where he's in disguise (which at one point is so comically bad that it reminded me of a scene from Fletch) or lustfully bedding down his main squeeze.

Scorpio was directed by Michael Winner, who did the mega-hit Death Wish a year later. The man loved his gun play, and he, er, executes those scenes well (the airport assassination is particularly well done, as it goes from real time to a news report covering the event. And the back-and-forth between Lancaster and Scofeld is fun to watch; as two old pros debate Big Ideas.

So all in all, Scorpio is pretty good, with some great moments, but certainly no undiscovered classic. I guess it's a only matter of time that they remake it with Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington.

Movie Monday: Time Limit

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1957 war drama Time Limit!

I had never heard of this film before, but I dig Richard Widmark, and the movie had a good cast, so I thought why not give it a spin (or click, more accurately):

Time Limit stars Widmark as Colonel William Edwards, who is charged with investigating a case against Major Henry Cargill (Richard Basehart), who is accused of collaborating with the enemy while he was imprisoned at a North Korean POW camp.

But right from the get-go, Edwards feels there's more to this story than the open-and-shut case everyone is telling him it is:

First off, Cargill refuses to defend himself. Second, the supposed collaboration occurred immediately after the deaths of two other men in the unit, and third, the surviving soldiers all have the same story about what happened, repeating each other almost verbatim. That includes Lt. George Miller (played by a very young Rip Torn):

Pressure mounts on Edwards just to wrap the case up, but he resists. The father of one of the dead men is also a General, and he strongly suggests that Edwards stop digging and just move on.

Edwards talks further with Cargill and Miller, as well as Cargill's wife, who reveals that her husband has been a shell of a man since he got home. Edwards
right hand man, Sgt. Baker (the great Martin Balsam) also provides pressure, but in a different way: fiercely loyal to Edwards, he tries to talk his boss into dropping the whole thing, afraid that it will ruin his career in the Army.

For most of the film, all the action is centered around Edwards' office and the homes of who he visits. But as the truth of what really happened in the POW camp starts to come out, it flashes back to Korea:

Cargill starts to crack under the pressure, as does Lt. Miller, their stories start to fray at the edges, which only emboldens Edwards further. In a crackerjack extended sequence we see how the two soldiers ended up dead, which is full of tension and excitement, as good as anything in the classic Stalag 17.

Edwards finally gets to the truth, and Time Limit wraps up with a long, talky, but superbly delivered scene of Cargill and the General arguing about what, exactly, a soldier's duty is. Widmark's character is mostly standing off to side, watching these two men go at it, which (IMO) was a gutsy thing for the movie to try--pushing your main character out of the action for the final third. Dramatically it makes total sense, but it's still something you don't see much of in movies.


Time Limit was the sole directing effort by legendary actor Karl Malden, who took on the project as a favor to his friend Widmark, who produced. While most of the scenes in the various offices and homes are solid, if unremarkable (they feel and look a lot of the low budget live dramas in TV's Golden Age), the sequences set in Korea are superb; Malden knew how to sustain a level of tension and dread that, like I said above, compare favorably against the more renowned war thrillers like Stalag 17 and The Manchurian Candidate.

Also helping make the film an underrated gem is the screenplay by novelist/playwright/screenwriter Henry Denker--it's taut and sharp, with the characters interacting in a very direct way (even when they're being evasive). He/it manages to get away with pushing the envelope as to content, as well: while talking with Cargill's wife (June Lockhart!) she mentions that she and her husband "haven't been to bed together in five months." The line is hardly shocking now, but even mentioning a sexual relationship in 1957 was still pretty risky; maybe it's was Lockhart's fairly de-sexualized look that helped the line get by the censors, who were probably busy dealing with Otto Preminger's movies, which were pushing buttons all over the place.

Time Limit is a really solid war/legal drama, full of good performances and some exceptional scenes; it deserves more recognition than it currently has. It's well worth taking a look at, especially for free on Netflix WI.

Movie Monday: Dark City

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1950 film noir Dark City!

Dark City is not the (IMO) vastly overrated 1998 sci-fi film, but rather a mystery thriller that features the first starring role of some kid named Charlton Heston--plus a supporting cast that is about as cool as it gets:

Heston plays Danny Haley, a n'er-do-well on his way to visit the illegal gambling hideout he runs with his cronies. But on his way there he sees the cops headed in the same direction, and hides out in a nearby coffee shop as the place gets busted.

Inside the hideout are the three guys who are in cahoots with Heston, played by Jack Webb (Dragnet), Ed Begley (12 Angry Men), and Harry Morgan (M*A*S*H and, funnily enough, Dragnet):

Webb and Begley are busted, but Morgan--playing the sweet and appropriately named Soldier--escapes the long arm of the law. For now.

Later, Haley arrives, and is at a loss as to what to do now that their livelihood has been decimated by the cops. While visiting a nightclub singer named Fran Garland (Lizabeth Scott), he meets a good-natured business man named Arthur Winant (Don DeFore), who makes the mistake of revealing he's carrying a cashiers check for $5000, to be delivered to a business associate.

Haley invites DeFore to a poker game with his pals, and at first he manages to clean up against them:

But something's wrong--while visiting, Fran notices the other guys are purposely throwing the game, so Winant will win. Its all a plan, so when he's invited back the next night, they turn the tables on him. Winant loses his shirt, and is pressured into signing over the check, even though the money isn't his.

Shortly thereafter, Winant, in a fit of panic, hangs himself. The local police captain (Dean Jagger) tries to get Haley to confess to being involved, but Haley professes his ignorance to the whole thing.

But it doesn't end there--Winant has a brother, a psychopath named Sidney, who takes it upon himself to extract revenge against the guys who swindled his brother. His first victim is Barney (Begley), who Haley finds dead, hanging by a noose. Soldier, who is disgusted at even being involved, heads off for Vegas, leaving Haley to try and flush Sidney out into the open.

After making friends with Arthur Winant's widow (Viveca Lindfors) and her young son, Haley takes off for Vegas as well, where Soldier gets him a job as a dealer. Haley thinks he's escaped, but as we see the darkness follows him to his new home, in the form of the murderous Sidney Winant, whose identity is kept from us until the very end of the film:

I won't say any more about Dark City, because anyone who is a fan of film noir should head over to Netflix right now and watch it. At around 90 minutes, the film is a crackerjack piece of "B" filmmaking, featuring an excellent supporting cast, sharp noir visuals, and some scenes that verge on almost a horror film (Sidney Winant, with his whole "hanging" MO, could have been a Batman or Dick Tracy villain).

It's not perfect--we're treated to four(!) musical numbers by Elizabeth Scott's character, which is three and a half too many. And when the identity of Sidney Winant is revealed, it's all over too quickly and it doesn't really get a chance to register as effectively as it might have.

But overall I thoroughly enjoyed Dark City; it's a tough little movie, and one that's well worth seeking out for film noir fans. I wonder if this Chuck Heston ever did anything else after this?

 

Movie Monday: Apache Drums

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1951 western Apache Drums!

Apache Drums is no ordinary western. It was the last film to be produced by the legendary Val Lewton, who of course is most famous for his horror films, like Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and (my personal favorite) The Seventh Victim. After completing his soon-to-be-legendary run at RKO, Lewton moved on to other studios, with Apache Drums inadvertently being the last movie that bears his stamp.

We'll get into the hows and whys of this movie in a moment, but right now let's see just how well the words "Val Lewton" and "western" go together:

The town of Spanish Boot is undergoing a makeover, away from the typical lawless western town to something more respectable, the kind of place you can bring your family up in. The only problem--well, the main problem--is inveterate gambler and scoundrel Sam Leeds (Stephen McNally), who we are introduced to while he's doling out some hot lead to someone who has done him wrong:

Sam claims the shooting was in self-defense, but the town's Mayor (Willard Parker) is having none of it. He wants Sam out of town, and organizes with the town preacher (Arthur Shields) to force Sam to leave, in an effort to clean up Spanish Boot. Their efforts don't end with Sam--they also buy-off the local madam (Ruthelma Stevens) and send her and her girls out of town:

Complicating the issue between the Mayor and Sam is they're both sweet on the same woman, Sally (Colleen Gray), so the Mayor has even more motivation to get Sam out of the way. After pleading his case, and failing, Sam leaves, only to find the wagon train of prostitutes (now there's an idea for a movie!) who left ahead of him slaughtered by Apaches. The only survivor is their stagecoach driver, who is surprisingly still wearing his bowler hat. "Leave it on...they took my hair" is what he's able to say as he dies.

All this is a set-up for a long set-piece which takes up the final third of the film: after Sam returns to warn them of what's coming, the Apaches attack the town, forcing everyone--men, women, and children--into a small church where they are cornered. Night falls, and the air is filled the sounds of the ominous apache drums:

The Apaches kill a young man who tries to escape (James Best, Rosco P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard) and dump his body in the local well, poisoning the water supply, tightening the noose on everyone in Spanish Boot.

Everyone tries to keep the spirits of the young children up, by doing magic and singing songs (one song heard in the movie is "The Bells of St. Clements", a song sung by Kim Hunter in Lewton's The Seventh Victim). But the Apaches get ever closer, closer, closer, until:

After fighting off one attack, the Apaches begin to burn the town down all around them--all the lights go out, with the only illumination coming from the flames outside. The Mayor volunteers to go outside and try and bargain with the Apaches, and then everyone inside hear a knock at the door. Then the voice of the Mayor is heard, telling them not to open the door. But they can't help themselves:

This is an amazing sequence, tense and scary. It doesn't quite come off--it's awkwardly staged, which I can only think is the fault of director Hugo Fregonese. I can only imagine what Lewton's horror directors, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, or Mark Robson would have done with this.

Still, this whole final sequence in the church is superb--all the time, the we hear the Apache drums, signifying death to those in Spanish Boot:

There's one final battle between the townsfolk and the Apaches, and the film ends on a lighthearted note, a callback scene involving a donkey and its mother. The End!


Apache Drums is no classic--in many ways its a conventional western, with somewhat bland characters. But the final third, with the Apaches attacking, is so well staged and tense that it makes the film a true pleasure, especially for Val Lewton fans. There are so many Lewton hallmarks here, recalling his previous films, that it was clear he hadn't lost his touch, even after the years of creative setbacks following his leaving RKO in 1946. He apparently had a hand in the screenplay as well (based off a book, Stand at Spanish Boot), adding little bits of wry humor that give the film an extra edge, hinting at things that could not be explicitly stated in movies at the time (the dialog between the Reverend and the Madam being a particularly fine example).

Apache Drums shows that Val Lewton was capable of bringing his particular brand of movie genius to a non-horror movie, turning what could have been a routine oater into something unusual and memorable. Sadly, Lewton died shortly after the movie premiered, making it the last time he would have his name on. Apache Drums is a melancholy symbol of What Could Have Been.

Probably due to its lack of stars, Apache Drums has never been released on DVD or for streaming; but you can find it if you really want to. If you're a Lewton fan, it's worth the effort!

Movie Monday: The King and Four Queens

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1956 comedy/drama/western The King and Four Queens!

I spent way too much time toiling at a video store, back when those things existed. It was hardly my chosen career path, but I will say this: our store had everything, a real movie lover's paradise. So I took advantage of our vast selection (and free rental policy) to send myself to film school, in that I watched everything I could get my hands on.

One of the sections we had was called Hollywood's Best, which grouped films by star, and sometimes director. I would pick a particular star--say, Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood--and simply go through every one of their films. For some stars, I was surprised how many films there were I had never heard of. Sure, everyone knew Dirty Harry, but what the heck was The Beguiled (more on that later)? I enjoyed rummaging through the lesser known films of certain stars; it seemed like you'd find an occasional overlooked gem, some odd little movie that probably only got made because the Big Time Movie Star was in it.

That's what I thought of when I came across The King and Four Queens, starring none other than Clark Gable, on Netflix WI. I had no familiarity with this movie at all, so the combo of Gable and director Raoul Walsh (White Heat) was enough to get me to try it out:

Gable plays con man Dan Kehoe, who wanders into the proverbial small western town (called Wagon Mound), that was probably used in several thousand previous westerns. He stops by the local saloon, grabbing a drink and a shave:

...you gotta love those Character Actor faces. People don't look like this in movies anymore.

Anyway, Kehoe learns about the McDade family at the edge of town, consisting of all women: a mother (Jo Van Fleet), and four daughters-in-law (Barbara Nichols, Jean Wiles, Sara Shane, and Eleanor Parker), who are supposedly sitting on a cache of stolen loot. Of course, it only takes Kehoe a few minutes to head over there, where he introduces himself by firing his pistol in the air. All five women hear the shot, and each gets a marvelous introduction:

Ma McDade wounds Kehoe for getting too close, and then they take him in and bring him back to health (seems counterproductive to me, but then I never lived in the Old West). After he wakes up, Kehoe tries to charm each of the daughters (not bothering with the Old Lady, even though the actress playing her--Jo Van Fleet--was a full thirteen years younger than Gable) to see if he can find the location of the loot.

It's at this point the movie settles into what you could call a rut: Gable seems a bit long in the tooth to be playing the charming young buck, and because of the Production Code, there's only so much passion that could be shown: at one point Kehoe is bathing in a pond, and the daughter known as Birdie decides to join him, only to get interrupted by some visitors before she can even get one article of clothing off.

Ma McDade has four sons (of course), who are stagecoach robbers. She hears three of them have been killed, but doesn't know which one. Each daughter-in-law hopes its her husband who has survived, since he will presumably come home, take his wife and the loot, and head out for a better life than the one in Wagon Mound. The one mild surprise in the movie is that one of the daughters isn't exactly who she claims to be--and eventually pairs up with Kehoe to double-cross her family and run away with him.

"Frankly, Ma McDade, I don't give a damn."

Kehoe finally decides to leave, having found the loot (in a reveal so anti-climactic I almost thought I had missed something). He runs into some trouble (again, mild) with a sheriff's posse, who have captured the remaining brother. Kehoe talks his way out of trouble, only to be rewarded for his honesty, in a roundabout way. He meets up with the fake McDade daughter, and together they ride off into the sunset.


Most reviews of The King and Four Queens say the same thing, and I guess I'm going to as well: there's nothing inherently wrong with this movie, it's just so bland that it seems like a waste to have such talents like Gable and Walsh involved in it. The comedy is mild, the action very mild, and the drama mild--no one in the movie ever gets too worked up about anything, so why should we?

I mentioned Clint Eastwood's The Beguiled at the beginning of this review, and I couldn't help but think of that movie while watching The King and Four Queens. Both films feature an decidedly rugged, adult man (Eastwood as a Confederate soldier, Gable as an outlaw) who ends up being cared for a group of young women, led by an older one. The Beguiled, made in 1971, was able to take advantage of loosened content restrictions by playing up the sexual tension unleashed when a capital-M Man is dropped into such a controlled setting. In this film, things get barely more heated than your average episode of Gunsmoke.

And that's too bad; it's a handsome film, with some gorgeous, widescreen vistas, it's a shame that the filmmakers couldn't find a more interesting story taking place in front of them.


One final note: The title, The King and Four Queens, really makes no sense, other than being related to the fact that Gable for many years was called "The King of Hollywood" (as he is referred to on the poster, which should have won an award for Biggest Hyperbole). By 1955 Gable's star was still bright but significantly dimmed; calling him King reminded me of how some partisans insisted on referring to Michael Jackson as The King of Pop long, long after he began his sad descent.

This was the first film Gable ever produced; apparently just getting it made was so tortured and stressful(?) to the star that he never bothered trying to create his own material again, going back to being an actor for hire.

Movie Monday: Catching Hell

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 2011 documentary Catching Hell!

I normally don't cover documentaries on Movie Mondays, but sometimes one of them is so unusual and so captivating I can't help but talk about it. And that's definitely the case with Catching Hell.

Directed by master documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side), Catching Hell is part of ESPN's "30 for 30" series of docs covering all different sports-centric stories. I had heard that this series was unusually good, that ESPN clearly really wanted to come up with real documentary films, not glorified "Behind the Music"-style TV specials. Catching Hell was one that I had heard about, so when it popped up on Netflix WI I watched it immediately:

Catching Hell is, on the surface, the story of Steve Bartman, the infamous Cubs fan who reached out during a Cubs/Marlins playoff game, seemingly interfering with the ball being caught by Cubs outfielder Moises Alou. This happens all the time every Baseball season, so what made this moment so special?

The story of Steve Bartman is almost the definitive case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To this point, the Cubs were (it was assumed) on their way to defeating the Marlins and then the World Series. But after Bartman got his hands on the ball, knocking it into the hands of another fan, it all seemed to fall apart for the Cubs: the Marlins scored a series of hits, with Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez making an error and ruining a near-certain double play. The Marlins ended up scoring eight runs that inning, winning the game, and then going on to win Game 7, ending the Cubs' only chance at a World Series appearance in almost seventy years. Despite all the catastrophic errors on the field, Chicago fans aimed their fury at Bartman, making him the scapegoat for the Cubs' collapse.

Gibney starts the movie with the story of another scapegoat, Red Sox First Baseman Bill Buckner, who infamously let a simple ground ball go through his legs during the 1986 World Series, leading to the New York Mets eventual win:

Catching Hell shows that the same curious events took place in 1986 that repeated themselves in Chicago in 2003: the fans' unwillingness to see what really happened in front of their eyes, instead choosing to pin all the blame on one person, whose life was almost ruined in the process. Buckner received death threats and endless teasing, so much so he and his family had to leave Boston.

In the case of Steve Bartman, the anger directed at him played out in real time, on live television. Director Gibney manages to track down nearly everyone who was there that night, including players, TV producers, even some fellow fans who were sitting around Bartman and also tried to catch the soon-to-be-famous ball:

Using modern filmmaking techniques (including digitally removing everyone else from the scene, leaving only Bartman and the ball), Gibney examines the moment as if was the Zapruder film: frame by frame, moment by moment, trying to prove conclusively one way or the other whether Bartman is even guilty of the "crime" he was instantly convicted for.

Two amateur filmmakers happened to be at that game, sitting in the same part of the park as Bartman, and videotaped it all go down, and we can see the creeping sense of violence hanging in the air. One fan walks by and throws a beer at Bartman, splashing him right in the face:

We then get to meet that guy, in 2011, and he is (barely) apologetic for his douchebag behavior, still seemingly holding his grudge towards Bartman. We also meet one of the Cubs' security team, who explains that she was in charge of getting the young man out of the park, under cover, lest real violence break out. She recalls, nearly in tears, talking with Bartman at her apartment, realizing how out of control it all got, so fast, and how his life would never be the same.

And it wasn't. The next day, a newspaper revealed Bartman's address(!), and cops had to show up to keep people away. Bartman, ironically a Little League coach in his spare time, had to hide inside his home while the media gathered. His Little League team shows up, too, carrying signs supporting him and asking everyone to leave their coach alone. Bartman releases a statement to the press, expressing his horror at what he did, but even that doesn't quiet things down: people are mad. Why?

To be fair, Gibney doesn't have a lot of answers to this question, why are people so determined to pin all the blame on one person. Is it easier to deal with disappointment and hurt if there's just one thing to focus all that emotion on? Is there something about the human psyche that needs us to be able to point to one person, or cause, and say "It's their fault"?

Steve Bartman does not appear in Catching Hell, and the movie points out that he has almost completely disappeared, even in this age of omnipresent social media. He stills lives in Chicago, as we learn through an ESPN reporter who tracked him down, only to essentially be rebuffed.

The film winds back to where it started, with Bill Buckner, who returned to Boston for a special event and was greeted as a returning hero. A generation or two has passed since the 1986 World Series, and it seems that Boston was ready--eager--to patch up old wounds give the man the due he deserves. Maybe someday, Steve Bartman will similarly be able to go back to a normal life.


I don't think you need to be a sports fan to enjoy Catching Hell, though if you're a baseball fan (as I am) you'll probably get a little more out of it. In any case, Alex Gibney is such a natural storyteller that he after making documentaries about such titanic issues--Enron, the Iraq War--that he can turn his attention toward a seemingly trivial topic such as this and craft a compelling, almost gripping, tale. Highly recommended.


Fun Fact: In 2003, I was doing illustration work for a company based in Chicago. Around late October, they came to me and asked me to produce a piece for their company's annual Christmas card. I had been following the Bartman story and had seen the name of the company he worked for, which was the same as the company I was working with. At the end of an email about the job, I asked my contact if, indeed, this was the same company and did Steve Bartman work there? My contact informed me that, yes, he did, and at the time, it was really, really awkward around the office!