When Strange Dogs Meet

I've been on a Jayne Mansfield kick of late, and while checking out some of her more obscure films, I came across the 1964 crime opus Einer Frisst den anderen (One Eats the Other) aka When Strangers Meet aka Dog Eat Dog!. Having thoroughly enjoyed Mansfield's understated performance in an earlier noir from 1957 called The Burgler with Dan Duryea, I thought I might have tumbled onto another undiscovered gem. What I found instead was one of the most tonally odd crime films I'd ever seen.

"Quite a party - no dough, enough stiffs for a graveyard,
 no way out, nobody knows who's next and nobody knows who's doing it."

- Lylle Corbett (Cameron Mitchell) in When Strangers Meet

Synopsis: A small group of gangsters, who have just stolen one million dollars, attempt to hide out on what they believe is a deserted Aegean island.

From the opening, zippy, Goodfellas-like credits, this German/Italian/Liechtensteinian co-production interested me in a variety of ways. In terms of plot, it's a standard crooks-get-away-but-turn-on-each-other type of story. However, it's the odd, borderline grotesque characters, over-the-top acting, strange directing choices, Aegian resort locations and surprisingly sharp, black and white cinematography that give the film its distinctive, off-kilter tone and unexpected quality. As I watched the intercut opening scenes of Mansfield bouncing orgasmically on a bed with money cascading down on her while Cameron Mitchell is simultaneously being chased on foot by a car whose driver looks like Quenton Tarantino's less attractive, dentally challenged brother, I moved my cinematic interest mental peg one notch toward the win side. Then I saw these credits come up...

... and realized I'd just died and gone to krimi heaven as these three actors between them have co-starred in over a dozen of the Edgar Wallace-based, German produced mysteries. At this point, I couldn't have been more intrigued and baffled as to what sort of European cinematic goulash I'd gotten myself into. Veteran Italian genre composer Carlo Savina wrote a jazzy, Peter Thomas-like score for the opening of the film giving it even more of a krimi feel. However, the production was principally helmed by Croation director Gustav Gavrin who was mainly known for his Yugoslavian war films, so I had no clear indication which way this movie was going to go. The strange, near grotesqueness of the picture manifests itself almost immediately in the form of English character actor Ivor Salter who plays the head gangster Dolph Kostis aka Mr Smithopolis. Between the thin, yet jutting, lips, lack of discernible jaw, greasy receding hairline, sunken tombstone teeth, overhanging forehead and (gag) patchy body hair, this character is truly repulsive. I've seen Salter in other movies and TV shows and he's never even come close to this nausea inducing. Whether being force fed from a koi pond, dancing at gunpoint or running around half shirtless, there's something just downright gross about his character and Gavrin seems to accentuate and revel in it.

Mansfield, who plays Kostis/Smithopolis' girl, is likewise a slightly exaggerated caricature of herself (although not repellant like Salter) who wears inappropriately sexy garb, exclaims the word "crackers!" constantly and chases after dough when not rolling in it. The actress might have been just a bit too hefty to play the sex bomb (she was several months pregnant with a future SVU detective while filming) and I never got over the feeling that she was doing an over-the-top impression of herself. She does tone the character down as the film progresses, but her near female impersonator performance adds one more slightly surreal element to the proceedings.

Cameron Mitchell, whose character, Lylle Corbett, is a cohort of Kostis, seems somewhat normal in the first half of the film but goes absolutely bat-poop looney in the latter half. To make matters worse, his character suffers some facial lacerations from a fall early on and so Mitchell must spend almost the entire movie with make-up schmutz on his face which only adds to the general bizarreness.

Then there's Ines Taddio the Hotel Americano's perky lounge singer who really doesn't have anything to do with anything, she just comes in and does an entire German pop ditty for no known reason. It's weirdly enjoyable, but what it's doing in the film, I have no idea. Don't get me wrong, I love off-kilter stuff like this but it makes recommending the film tough as it is indefensibly weird. Why does a hotel that caters to Americans on the Aegean feature a German singer anyway? Beats me, but it only gets stranger as hotel manager and part-time gigolo, Livio Morelli (Pinkas Braun), tries to go after the gangsters' and Mansfield's respective booties. To this end, he nonchalantly orders his sister Sandra (Dodie Heath) to plant a bomb on the gangsters' escape boat. Sandra, who appears shocked by this, follows through anyway but gets nabbed and everyone splits for the island of Tramiros. The former home of the biggest "fun house" in the Aegean, Tramiros is now purportedly deserted. Or is it?

It turns out the former madam of the brothel on Tramiros, Lady Xenia (the fantastic Elisabeth Flickenschildt), has returned with her manservant, Jannis (Werner Peters) to spend her last days. This creates complications for the gangsters, their moll, the hotel manager and his sister as everyone vies for at least a portion of the stolen loot and, of course, trouble ensues.

The story is nothing out of the ordinary and mostly takes a backseat to the overall weirdness in tone. The odd moments of forced koi feeding, awkward fighting, vulture closeups, shirtless doll playing and bizarre lines of (dubbed) dialogue apropos of nothing like, "The dogs shall eat Jezebel", are what kept me interested. With all these oddball aspects, one would expect a very uneven tone but the film somehow sustains a consistent flavor that's only betrayed occasionally by Mansfield's goofiness. In the end, it's the unusual execution of a very conventional story that gives the picture its uniqueness and makes it worth viewing. That the movie has very crisp, clean, black and white cinematography, is a nice bonus that made it a much easier watch than most films of its era and budget. Riccardo Pallottini, who worked on a ton of Italian genre films including Fulci's Massacre Time, Baldi's Blindman and Margheriti's And God Said to Cain, photographed this one and it has to be among his best work. The shots inside of the former brothel look especially good with everything professionally lit and well defined. So sharp is the photography, it's actually detrimental to the make-up effects at times. Finally, I loved the krimi actors who seemed to understand what kind of crazy-ass movie they were in and delivered the WTF-ness like nobody's business. Flickenschildt is superb in her confused, grand dame role and Peters, who is always a welcome sight, is solid in his supporting role. Mitchell and Mansfield seem a little uncertain of themselves from scene to scene which they really can't be blamed for given the outright strangeness of the film. There are times when they are completely going for broke acting-wise and it shows. Of all the actors in the cast, they seem the most uncomfortable. Finally, the film is quite well-paced with very little time wasted on long establishing shots or drawn out action. It gets right to the point, as weird as it is.

Score 6.25/10

April Apocalypse part IV: Francoblivion

When you think of a post-apocalyptic film, the setting that usually comes to mind is typically urban in nature, like the vacated freeways of Los Angeles in The Omega Man, or the deserted streets of London in 28 Days Later. If it's a non-metropolitan locale you imagine, it's probably the barren Australian outback of Mad Max 2 or the Italian rock quarry landscape of Warriors of the Wasteland. One of the last things you would think of would be a medieval castle in rural France. However, that is exactly the location of the 1981 Christian de Chalonge film Malevil. The movie takes its name from the fictional castle and surrounding community of farms in a modern day, agrarian section of France. Based on the novel by Robert Merle, who is most known for Day of the Dolphin and Weekend at Dunkirk, the movie paints a vivid picture of a small, family-like community enduring, and subsequently recovering from, a nuclear attack. Unlike many pessimistic post-apocalyptic films of the time, such as Threads or Testament, the French production presents a less nihilistic view of the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. The film begins with beautiful establishing shots of the countryside which contrast mightily to the ash-strewn aftermath imagery of the subsequent apocalypse. Along with the way, we meet the some of the denizens of Malevil.

Lead character, Emmanuel Comte (Michel Serrault), is the mayor as well as a local farmer, winemaker and the castle's owner. After running errands, which include helping his elderly housekeeper La Menou (Émilie Lihou) to force-bathe her lovable, mentally challenged, adult son, Momo (Jacques Villeret), Comte holds a council meeting among his friends and neighbors in the castle's wine cellar to iron out some local improvements. Attending the meeting are Bouvreuil (Jean Leuvrais) the persnickety town chemist, Colin (Jacques Dutronc) the electrician, and Peyssou (Robert Dhéry) a neighboring farmer. Just after the meeting ends and everyone takes a wine tasting break, a bright flash of light is seen through the crack of the cellar door followed by a sudden rise in temperature. This section of the film is excellent as there is no dialogue inserted to state the obvious. The film explains everything through the characters' mute behavior, bursting wine casks and subsequent outdoor visuals which are particularly effective in establishing the destruction.

Despite the devastation, other survivors are found in and around Malevil like the veterinarian (Hanns Zischler) who was in a protected downstairs animal corral when the explosion struck and young Evelyne (Pénélope Palmer) who was in a nearby cave. When still other groups are subsequently discovered, complications and conflicts ensue. What's interesting and refreshing was there were no long philosophical debates that sprang out of the conflicts. The characters pretty much did what was practical rather than ideologically or morally sound. There weren't any high-falluting speeches about the brotherhood of man or struggles of conscience and so on. This sense of practicality logically fit right in with the rural environment, the main character's nature and the overall theme of the story. It's a bit of a simplistic and well-worn theme of simple country folk being wiser than their urban counterparts, but it's effective in Malevil at least until the end when the point gets needlessly hammered home. The minimalist approach used by Christian de Chalonge, who also co-wrote the film, works well throughout  with images and behavior given precedent over dialogue at the small cost of some overt exposition and character development. In one scene, while out looking for a mare, Colin and Emmanuel come across a figure aiming a rifle at them. Colin instinctively shoots the person only to realize it's a charred corpse. Colin calmly takes the rifle off the dead man and they continue their search for the horse. The entire seen is played out silently, with the exception of Colin's gunshot, and needed no additional explanation or enhancements. The music is similarly subdued when present but it's just outright absent most of the time. I counted only four instances of very brief musical interludes in the entire film with two of those coming from radios or loudspeakers within the story. This absence gave the film a curious aloofness and haunted quality which I found very effective in setting the tone. The imagery spoke for itself and needed no further comment or underscoring from characters or music.

Novel vs Film

Overall, I found the writing and the tone of the film much more honest and believable than Merle's novel. I also found it much more efficient, direct, surely paced and thematically relevant. Christian de Chalonge deserves much credit in going a different direction by getting rid of all the book's interpersonal chafe and keeping the edible bits. The book, in contrast to the film, is nothing but character development focusing especially on male/female sexual politics within Malevil. Many times in the novel the Comte character beds one of the few available women and advocates polyandry to his fellow survivors. I found this utterly distracting, irrelevant and more than a little misogynistic. Apparently, so did the screenwriters as they got rid of three of the book's prominent female characters, along with their subplots, and dropped Comte's sexual escapades entirely from the film. It made for much more efficient storytelling skipping the male fantasy and female soap opera-type melodrama. There is just the slightest hint of female machinations in the film, from the rescued character of Cathy, but it is completely understated and understandable as she is trying to save her female friends and it fits neatly into the plot without being sleazy. Also, I was pleased with the film's treatment of the Evelyne character who went from a dull, lovestruck, underage nymph in the novel, to a vital, confident, kick-ass young women in the movie. There are only two areas where I'd give the book the advantage over the film. One is in the character of Fulbert who is played by the great Jean-Louis Trintignant. Fulbert is a much more malignantly evil character in the novel whereas Trintignant just looks tired and unthreatening in the movie. I can't blame the filmmakers for casting him as he's legendary but he just didn't bring the thunder in this instance. Second, although the book's ending just kind of fizzles out, the movie tacks on an unneeded denouement which really feels forced and unnecessarily preachy thematically speaking. There was a very good natural ending at the hour forty-five minute mark, but the filmmakers had to throw in some heavy-handed irony that just felt very out of place given the subtlety of the rest of the film. Despite this, I think it's still a strong, artistically sound effort and worth tracking down for fans of P/A movies.

Final Scores 

Film: 7.50/10

Novel: 5.75/10

April Apocalypse part III: Poodle-geddon

"I want an orderly nuclear holocaust."

-Robert Klein, Child of the Fifties

About ten years ago, I was taking a back road in to my former job when I came across a single police car blocking the way. Being a little-trafficked side street in an industrial complex, I was the first vehicle to encounter the roadblock. I knew better than to ask the lone officer manning the barricade what was going on (cops hate that question even more than "Do I smell bacon?" and are prone not to answer it) so instead, I asked if it was OK for me to turn around and exit the area. The officer, looking extremely put-upon, did not reply. Just then, two more cars rolled  up behind mine with both drivers giving the universal palms-to-heaven questioning gesture of 'what's going on?'. Since the cop next to me continued to stand like a statue hit by a curare dart, I began directing traffic by motioning the drivers to turn around and go back the way they had come. I followed suit and the cop never moved maintaining his perpetual 'why do I get stuck with the crap details?' demeanor. When I got to work, I found out there had been a hazmat containment situation in one of our neighboring industrial sites. The cop had set up his roadblock directly downwind of it. Smooth. The road he had blocked had a ninety degree turn further down where it intersected with a main thoroughfare, so he would have been safer blocking it there and subsequent traffic could not have even entered the area.

It was after this encounter that I realized there were incompetent law enforcement officers in the world. Make no mistake, I understood this prior to this incident in an intellectual way, but it's one thing to be cognitive that there is such a thing as the world's worst dentist, it's quite another to be sitting in his chair.

Nine motorists and passengers run into the same situation I did in Fredric Gadette's 1962 atomic scare movie, This Is Not a Test. The film takes place on a lightly traveled piece of highway in the hills of the fictional "Del Oro county" California. It begins with Deputy Sheriff Dan Colter receiving orders over the radio to set up a roadblock at a predesignated point. A group of characters soon coalesse there only to discover the end of the world is nigh. Deputy Dan, played by the unfortunately-named, Seamon Glass, looks much like a punch-drunk boxer in a Looney Tunes short and sounds like he founded the Steven Seagal school of broadcasting. The first two people to encounter the officer at the blockade are kindly grandpa/chicken rancher Jake Saunders (Thayer Roberts) and his pretty, adult granddaughter, Juney (Aubrey Martin). They cooperate with the Deputy and Grandpa Jake even helps out by laying down some highway flares.

The next couple to come along aren't nearly as cooperative as the Saunders owing to the massive amount of booze they seemed to have ingested. Actress Mary Morlas as Cheryl Hudson gives one of the most over-the-top drunk driving performances ever as she seems to take orgasmic delight in operating a vehicle under the influence. Her boyfriend, gambler Joe Baragi (played by character actor Michael Greene in his first role) is a slick talking hepcat who has just made a big score and thinks booze is also groovy daddy-o. You dig man? Deputy Dan has more than a little trouble keeping these two live wires corralled and sober.

Next up is wealthy, married couple, Sam and Karen Barnes (Norman Winston and Carol Kent). Sam is the rule-following, meek conservative, obsessive-compulsive type. Karen wears expensive clothes and carries a toy poodle named Timmy, but surprises by not adhering to the Lovey Howell stereotype. Also arriving at the roadblock is good-looking, young, easy going, trucker Al and the weird, semi-catatonic hitchhiker he's picked up, Clint. Last to arrive is a porkpie hat-wearing, scooter-driving, young man named Peter.

Initially, none of the characters know the reason they've been stopped. There is a nice little red herring plot point involving a wanted criminal that seems to explain the roadblock, but it turns out it's only a coincidence. As the real reason becomes apparent, a possible nuclear war, the deputy directs everyone to seek refuge. Obviously this doesn't sit well with many in the group who want to make a run for it instead. I don't want to spoil the ending but it is quite satisfying and surprising in more ways than one.

Technically, the film has problems mostly stemming from its low budget. The editing is somewhat choppy with parts of the movie confusing as a result. For example, the unintentionally comic, Conan O'Brien-type stare-down scene between Glass and the poodle near the end of the film made me laugh out loud, only to be horrified moments later when it's meaning became clear. The acting ranges from passable to non-existent. Thayer Roberts is decent as gramps but he, by far, had the most experience of anyone in the cast at the time. Sometimes the bad acting is distracting and goofy, as in Ron Starr's spastic, kamikaze, chicken attack, at other times it's an enjoyable hoot like Mary Morlas' drunk mugging. Overall though, most of the sub-par performing didn't take me out of the movie.

On the positive side, the concept is very solid, the characters distinctively enough drawn to easily differentiate them from one another and the film takes care of business in a very efficient 73 minutes. Yet there's still enough interaction and screen time that no one character gets lost in the shuffle. Scooter-riding Pete seems a bit too much of a plot convenience as he is just used to form the male half of a couple later on, but I liked the relationship that springs up between trucker Al and rich lady Karen which subsequently creates a little love triangle tension. Despite the somewhat low rent look of the film, I was impressed by how many of the scenes were more than adequately lit and didn't appear to be day-for-night filtered shots. In so many low budget films set at night, it's difficult to discern what's going on but that's not the case here as a lot of poor-man process illuminates the proceedings quite well. Another pleasant surprise was the Greig McRitchie score, which starts out big and brassy, but goes quiet and subtle soon after and remains so for the duration of the film. I really appreciated that he never felt the need to musically pound home the point with a lot of overdramatic stings. 

Finally, I wanted to point out the fascinating dichotomy between This Is Not A Test and another atomic scare film that was also made in 1962, Ray Milland's Panic in the Year Zero. In Milland's film, authority, in the guise of the military, is viewed as the heroic restorer of order even though they are more than a little bit responsible for the nuclear apocalypse in the first place. The policeman in This Is Not A Test also represents authority, but an officious, hidebound, misguided type of authority of the "Duck and Cover" school. The individuals who appear to fare best in this film, are the ones that defy authority and strike out on their own. This is a pretty revolutionary theme for a culture that was still relatively conformist at the time of the film's production and I wonder if it accounts, even in a small way, for it not being theatrically released. In any event, both This Is Not A Test and Panic in the Year Zero would make an excellent double-bill and indeed feel like different chapters in the same apocalyptic anthology.

Score 6.5/10

April Apocalypse Part II: Day O

Quietly influential on many subsequent post-apacalyptic films, Ranald MacDougall's 1959 melodrama, The World, the Flesh and the Devil is a flawed but interesting entry in part II of my April Apocalypse series of P/A favorites. With a cast of only three actors and set mostly in the heart of a deserted New York City, this movie captured my imagination as a youngster and is, in large part, responsible for sending me down the cinematic, post-apocalyptic path in subsequent years. The film focuses primarily on character interaction touching on gender and racial themes but brings some striking visuals to the table early on as well.

The first third of the story belongs exclusively to the character of Ralph Burton, played by calypso singer extraordinaire, Harry Belafonte. Ralph is a good-natured miner/electrician who is doing some underground work one day when a cave-in takes place. Ralph initially hears rescuers digging for him, but the sounds mysteriously cease after a time. Ralph eventually digs himself out but finds everyone has disappeared. This first half hour of the film is easily its visually strongest and most surely paced section. It also establishes Belafonte's character as not only a competent, resourceful guy, but likable, with a good sense of humor. After traveling to New York City and finding it suddenly has a major housing surplus, Ralph sets himself up with some posh digs, and brings home a grinning, business suit-wearing mannequin he dubs Snodgrass for company. After a time, Ralph begins to feel mocked in his solitude by the presence of the ever-smiling dummy and tosses him out the window which serves as a catalyst to meet another character.

Snodgrass facsimiles would show up in later P/A films like The Omega Man, as Charlton Heston's mute, skipper-hat-wearing bust of Caesar, and Castaway, as Tom Hanks' annoying volleyball. Likewise, Bruno Lawrence sets up an entire faux audience for himself in The Quiet Earth. There are also several other aspects of this film that would be repeated in subsequent movies like Dawn of the Dead, I Am Legend and The Quiet Earth. First and foremost, the interracial nature of the last survivors and the oft occurring love triangle can be seen in numerous P/A movies after The World, the Flesh and the Devil. It's easy to understand why, the thematic and dramatic tension fostered by these elements were just so ripe for exploration particularly in the socially evolving 60's and 70's.

In the second act of the film, the character of Sarah Crandall, played by Inger Stevens, is introduced. Sarah has been watching Ralph from afar, but has been to fearful to approach him. When they ultimately meet, they form a friendship that Sarah in a subtle fashion, tries to forge into something more. Ralph is resistant to a more intimate relationship as illustrated in the awkward haircutting scene (a skilled beautician, Ralph is anything but). This is where I really start having problems with the script in regards to character behavior. Having been born a year after the film was initially released, I certainly understand the interracial taboos of its time, however, seeing that Ralph and Sarah are likely the only survivors on the eastern seaboard, who cares if they get down to business? Thematically, it smacks of gutlessness on the part of either the screenwriter or studio not to have these characters at least on their way to consummating their burgeoning romantic relationship. It's not like it would be unprecedented. In George R. Stewart's 1949 P/A novel, Earth Abides, the main character of Isherwood Williams discovers his dusky, last-woman-on-earth love interest is in fact black, and quite logically laughs at his own 'what-will-the-neighbors-say' initial reaction. And Earth Abides was adapted to radio ten years prior to The World, the Flesh and the Devil. Speculative fiction has always been a great place to disguise and discuss progressive social messages and the fact that the filmmakers shied away from even the slightest controversial elements really disappoints.

In the midst of Ralph and Sarah's odd, non-intimacy, the final act of the film kicks in with the introduction of Mel Ferrer's character, Benson Thacker (I was kind of surprised the writers didn't go with Whitman Masterson as a name). Ferrer's character is the biggest, most glaring flaw of the film and makes very little sense as written. Benson is taken in and nursed back to health by the two characters upon arriving in New York after six months on his own. Immediately after recovering, he begins moving in on Sarah. Even though Ralph saved Benson's life and "clears the way" for Benson to start a relationship with Sarah, Benson still has a problem with Ralph! Is it bigotry? No, the characters explicitly establish that color is not an issue. So what is going on? Again, I'm going to blame the people behind the film for lacking the intestinal fortitude to make Ferrer's character either a racist or some other kind of repugnant antagonist. It seemed like they were trying to play Benson as some kind of temporary bad guy which served to confuse more than anything else. But the character does an about face more than once in the film for reasons unknown. I suppose the writers could also have gone for a polyandrous solution to the issue, but being the 50's, I understand this was really out of the question. Instead, there is a completely non-sensicle climax and ending which only serves to frustrate.

But despite the characters' sometimes erratic, inexplicable and illogical behavior in the suspect script writing, there are elements I do love about the film. As I said, the early visual images of an abandoned New York are superbly eerie. I thought I spotted a matte painting or two, but if so, they were so well rendered, I couldn't distinguish them from the actual city shots. There was a stylistic (or budgetary) choice made by someone not to show moldering corpses laying around, and despite their illogical absence, it actually adds to the film's chilling ambience. The pacing of the movie is steady without a lot of wasted time. We get into the story literally seconds after the movie begins with the cave-in and aborted rescue of Ralph and it rarely falters from there on. Harry Belafonte even manages to seamlessly slip in a few songs, a couple when he's alone, one recorded for the Sarah character's birthday, that are quite enjoyable. The three actors are all good looking and charismatic and do as good a job as they can with pretty murkily written characters. Finally, the black and white film is put to perfect use in the bleak P/A setting.

There is one other problem I haven't touched on which is the intrusive, BIG, dramatic soundtrack by Miklós Rózsa. A great composer who has certainly done some inventive and iconic work, Rózsa overplays it with grand, over the top, melodramatic stuff which underlines scenes that needed little, if any, accompaniment or highlighting. The era can't be blamed for his choices as he did some nice subtle soundtracks decades earlier, but he seemed to be stuck in Ben Hur mode here.

Although it's a far from perfect film, in the end, it is quite entertaining and surely paced with an influence on subsequent P/A films that is obvious to see.

Score: 6.75/10

April Apocalypse Part I: Life's What You Make It

Like any hack-y, low quality, amateur writer, I'm all about alliteration, so for the month of April, I thought I'd look at some of my favorite end-of-the-world movies in a series called April Apocalypse. In my opinion, the best examples the genre has to offer are films that bring some allegorical elements to the table and comment on society, human behavior, religion, politics or what-have-you. No P/A film that I know of is more ambitious in this respect than Daniel Bourla's 1975 oddity, The Noah. In it, people, cultures, armies, even entire civilizations are created and destroyed by just one character.

In a mash-up of Robinson Crusoe, the Book of Genesis and twentieth century history, writer/director Daniel Bourla creates a film that is both intimate and epic in scope. With a lead character that can easily be interpreted as either the solitary everyman or the lord almighty Himself, Bourla ambitiously critiques mankind, religion, indoctrination, and well, just about everything to do with anthropology. He attempts to relate this monumental allegorical tale through a lone soldier who has survived the apocalypse and landed on a deserted island paradise. The soldier emerges from his small life raft with his gear including, amusingly, a set of golf clubs. The island is devoid of all former enemies but is littered with a multitude of their broken down vehicles and abandoned structures some of which house pictures and busts of ideological leaders. The soldier wastes no time and sets up camp in an orderly, military fashion.

Oscar-nominated character actor Robert Strauss basically puts on a one-man show, with some voiceover and newsreel audio assists along the way, and plays the lead as arrogant, bellicose but ultimately pitiable. Imagine a much angrier, misogynistic, ultra-conservative Tom Hanks (minus the volleyball) from Zemeckis' Cast Away and you'll have an idea of Strauss' character in The Noah. Despite the initial churlish aspects of the soldier, one can't help softening toward him once he meets/creates his companion Friday. Friday, who is voiced by Geoffrey Holder in his maaaavelous baritone, is initially subservient to "The Noah" nearly to the point of noxiousness. But since The Noah is Friday's creator, his eager-to-please attitude makes perfect sense. And the soldier seems only too happy to be worshipped by Friday. As a sign of friendship (or his ever-spiraling decent into madness), The Noah builds Friday his own latrine.

Trouble comes, however, with the introduction of The Noah's next creation - a woman. The soldier tips his hand early on about his feelings on women in monologue statements like "I never had to pay for it in my life" which when a man states this, it generally indicates two things:
1. He has always had to pay for it.
2. He can't relate to women in any way, shape or form.
The woman, Friday-Anne, voiced by the great Sally Kirkland, immediately throws passive-aggressive attitude The Noah's way while simultaneously warming up to Friday. It's exactly the kind of antagonistic relationship I imagine Lilith would have had with God. She never becomes outright disrespectful, but just questions everything in a snarky tone. Of course, the ersatz Adam and Eve are eventually tossed out of paradise in a somewhat darkly comical scene leaving The Noah to start from scratch. His next effort begins with teaching children all the important things.

Eventually the children grow up, form cultures and begin to argue causing an ever-increasing cacophony of voices which The Noah attempts to quell with religious dogma.

Ultimately though, the chaos not only continues, but morphs into 20th century history. As The Noah perpetually wanders through the broken down, abandoned vehicle remnants on the island, the audible history of the past decades play out. By the end of the film, whether you interpret the soldier as a solitary, mad survivor or a lone, flawed god, you wind up feeling quite sorry for him and mankind in general.

Bourla's concept is absolutely brilliant and quite well executed, considering it's his only directorial effort. Strauss is just the kind of range-y character actor to handle a role that is alternately amusing, serious or sad. My only problems with the film were the slow pace and the needlessly long dirge-like, audio stroll through 20th century events. A few minutes of it brought home the point, but Bourla let it play out for nearly half an hour. I can enjoy a prolonged sequence like that in a Béla Tarr film, but it seems excessive here. 

The film has a strange history in that it was made in 1968, not screened at all until 1975 and never released theatrically. It is available on DVD and highly recommended for the patient, intellectual, P/A fan.

Score 7.75

It's All About the Benjamins

"In all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones."

-Benjamin Franklin

"Mrs Robinson, you're trying to seduce me."

-Benjamin Braddock

When I was in high school, the slangs "MILF" and "Cougar" had not entered the vernacular. When referring to a good looking, sexy, mom-aged lady, we usually used the title, "Mrs Robinson". I was lucky enough to live across the street from a "Mrs Robinson" all through my formative years. She scandalized the neighborhood and got tongues wagging by having the temerity to ride her bike and do her gardening in short shorts. I had a front row seat to her supposed lasciviousness as my bedroom window faced her garden. It was torture, but the good kind, if you know what I mean. I was painfully shy and had a tough enough time getting to first base with a girl my own age, much less, swinging for the fences with an older woman, but nevertheless, I did wonder...

The fascination with my high school neighbor probably goes a long way in explaining my love of the formerly taboo-breaking cinema involving younger man/older woman romances. There were a flurry of these type of films, that came out between 1967 and 1973 including The Graduate, Harold and Maude, Summer of '42, The First Time and 40 Carats. It's not surprising that they are all comedies given the success of The Graduate and the inherent, sexually charged subject matter of the films. Joking about the age difference between the leads makes it a much more palatable affair but, unfortunately, also lessens the drama and outright shock value. What is surprising, is that all the aforementioned movies were beaten to the screen by a somewhat risque, 1961 melodrama called, A Cold Wind in August that features a relationship between a 17-year old maintenance boy and his sophisticated stripper neighbor.

Iris (Lola Albright), is a worldly stripper who keeps her business on the low-down and outside of New York where she resides in her brownstone apartment anonymously. As the story begins, she receives a visit from her loser, ex-husband who begs her to perform at a local club he's booking. Iris' air conditioner is on the fritz so the scene plays out in sweaty desperation with Iris giving her ex a reluctant maybe response while he looks out the window on a youth below who's playing with a broom he's just set alight. The youth turns out to be Vito (Scott Marlowe) the son of the building's maintenance man (Joe De Santis). When Iris calls to get her A/C fixed, Vito's father dispatches him and the fun begins.

The most surprising aspect of the movie is that it's played as a straight-up drama from start to finish, and although it does slip into melodrama near the end, it respects its characters throughout keeping them both believable and sympathetic. Although Iris does initially put the moves on Vito (and boy, does she ever) she's neither predatory nor pathetic in her pursuit. She seems somewhat of a lonely person and weary of the people that populate her life. She genuinely falls for Vito, seemingly in a large degree, because he's not a part of her other life. Vito himself is age appropriately innocent, although he does chase girls occasionally bringing them up to the roof for make-out sessions. What I particularly enjoyed about Marlowe's performance is that he didn't play Vito as a jittery, clumsy dork. Vito is certainly out of his element with the more experienced Iris, but he doesn't fall apart in the face of her considerable sultry, sex appeal or sophistication. One of my pet peeves in these type of stories is that no intelligent, experienced woman would ever go for a hapless geek because he has nothing to bring to the relationship table or bedroom for that matter. Vito has confidence born out of boyish charm, good looks and success, albeit limited, with the opposite sex. This is what makes his character, and thus the relationship, believable. 

Another element that came as a pleasant surprise was the incredible sweetness of the relationship, not only between Vito and Iris, but Vito and his father. I kept waiting for Joe De Santis wise, old father character to pull his son aside and chastise him for being with an older woman, but the character stunned me by not taking the same old hackneyed moralizing path and actually had a genuine talk with his son about not denying emotional involvement and behaving like a grown man. The loving, involved, believable relationship between father and son was incredibly refreshing and something that's rarely seen in modern cinema. Although Marlowe and De Santis only have three or four brief scenes together, they really resonate and are well written and performed.

In addition to the sweetness, there is an overt, undeniable sexiness to the Vito/Iris relationship that, for the most part, is played very matter-of-factly. Certainly, there are notable exceptions, as when Iris is flirting early on and asks Vito to light her a cigarette. When he attempts to hand it to her, she refuses to take it in her hand and motions for him to put it directly into her mouth (God, I miss smoking). For the most part though, their sexual intimacy is portrayed very casually, playfully and balanced making it that much more authentic and erotic. It doesn't hurt that Albright and Marlowe are two of the better looking character actors of their time and seem to have genuine chemistry not too mention a lot of acting experience between them.

The film was Alexander Singer's first directing turn and he did an excellent job especially in framing the shots. Singer would go on to be a journeyman TV series director for the next four decades, most notably directing no less than 22 episodes of the later Star Trek incarnations, but his cinematic skills are apparent even in this initial effort. The crisp, black and white photography was shot by Floyd Crosby who did a lot of great genre stuff, not the least of which was the Corman/Poe films of the early sixties as well as classics like The Old Man and the Sea and High Noon. The music, by Gerald Fried, is one of the few flaws of the film as it is overblown, big band stuff that is mostly at odds with the quiet intimacy of the story. 

In summary, the film is a surprisingly serious and somewhat erotic romance that doesn't take it's characters or story lightly. It's intelligent, mature and sexy especially considering the year it was made.

Score: 7.25/10

Britannic

Beginning in 1968 with the first Airport film, disaster movies ruled mainstream cinema well into the mid-seventies. For some reason, audiences of the time seemed to like watching stuff get "blowed-up real good". The typical disaster flick featured big casts of A-list (and former A-list) stars like Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, William Holden along with high production values and special effects. Most of these films were overly earnest, highly melodramatic affairs that became ripe for parody late in the genre's cycle by films like Drive In and Airplane. In 1974, at the zenith of the disaster film's popularity, a year in which both The Towering Inferno and Earthquake were released, a big budget movie with an all-star cast about an ocean liner in peril was also debuted.

The movie's poster screams disaster flick and it was certainly marketed that way, but unlike The Poseidon Adventure or the numerous versions of Titanic, Richard Lester's follow up to The Three Musketeers is anything but a melodrama driven, special effects orgy of destruction. Quite the opposite, Juggernaut is an almost intimate, intense thriller, laced with an undercurrent of subtle but brilliant humor.

Synopsis: When an extortionist known only as "Juggernaut" threatens to set off seven bombs placed on an ocean liner unless he's paid £500,000, a group of military explosive experts are parachuted in to disarm the devices.

The plot basically takes a three-pronged approach following three different groups involved in the story. The first group is the explosive ordinance disposal team led by Richard Harris as Lt Commander Fallon. The second follows the Scotland Yard investigation led by Anthony Hopkins as Superintendent McLeod. The third group consists of the ship's passengers and crew featuring Omar Sharif as the ship's Captain, Roy Kinnear as the Social Director, Clifton James as a passenger along with various others. Ian Holm also has a small but important role as the sympathetic Managing Director of the cruise line. The movie alternates between the different groups keeping the story moving at a sure pace and preventing boredom from setting in by not sticking with any given character for too long. While Fallon and his team go about the delicate work of disarming the intricately crafted bombs on board the ship, Scotland Yard begins looking for suspects on land who have the required knowhow to construct such devices. Meanwhile the crew attempts to deal with the passengers who suspect something's amiss.

The filmmakers did a very good job at creating tension but what really kicks the movie up a notch is the humor that's woven in throughout. Most of it comes, not from the leads, but from the supporting players. Roy Kinnear's character is the most overt example as he plays a hapless social director who now must keep the entertainment going on a possibly doomed ship filled with a lot of worried passengers. His character appears to be inept even under ideal conditions. More interesting and subtle is  Roshan Seth's Indian steward Azad who plays up his foreign-ness so as not to have to interact with the passengers as much. One moment, he'll be fumbling for words and speaking with a heavy accent while dealing with passengers, seconds later he's talking in a passable English accent about football with fellow crew mates. There's also a running joke with the crew who pretend not to notice that Shirley Knight's married character is clearly the Captain's mistress. When the 3rd mate reports to the Captain's cabin and observes what is obviously a 'morning after' situation, he turns down a cup of coffee from Knight, by replying clumsily, "Thank you, but I've already had some - coffee". As in Lester's, The Three Musketeers, this type of throwaway humor appears again and again, but is so matter-of-fact and underplayed, it's easily missed on the initial viewings but nevertheless enriches the film greatly especially on re-watch.

The casting is brilliant right down to the minor roles. In particular, David Hemmings as Fallon's sidekick, Charlie Braddock, was strategically smart as it means Harris' A-list status will not save him from being taken out of the film at any time. The way in which the bomb defusing works is Harris' character attempts to disarm the first device with Hemmings following his moves with the second bomb and so on. Casting a big name like Hemmings as the second in charge really removes the 'they won't kill the star' factor and adds to the tension. I also liked Ian Holm's tortured manager character as he was written against type and played beautifully by Holm who seems genetically incapable of a sub-par performance. There's also a surprisingly non-cartoonish turn put in by Clifton James who plays a smart, perceptive and decent guy for a change, although he still chomps his signature cigar. Overall though, it's the magnificent bastard, Richard Harris, who anchors the movie as the wry, self-confident but fatalistic Fallon. Few actors can hold the screen like Harris and this is a perfect, intimate type of role where most of the time it's just Harris and the camera. He does start chewing scenery with Sharif later on in the film but I think it was in response to a rare fallow point in the script where they just needed some drama planted and Harris took it upon himself to be the farmer.

The negative aspects of the film are fairly innocuous but quite apparent script shortcomings. For example, the coincidence of the Scotland Yard inspector's wife and kids being passengers on the ship is a bit much to believe and really does nothing to add to the tension. A brief explanation on how the explosives were brought on board would have plugged an obvious plot hole. And Omar Sharif's Captain doesn't seem to have a heck of a lot to do besides getting yelled at by Harris and looked at forlornly by Knight. On the other hand the film did a few crucial things right. The parachute scene was critical in showing why it would be to dangerous to just off-load the passengers to avoid getting them blown up. The chalkboard diagram of the bomb was a nice visual touch to help the audience understand what was going on. And lastly, much of the film actually looked shot on board a ship as opposed to a set with a fake sea backdrop which really helped sell the ocean-bound feel.

In summary, the attention to detail, the subtle humor and the stellar cast make this one of the great thrillers of the 70's. The fact that it's not a disaster movie is actually a good thing.

Score 8/10