All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Young German students are urged to enlist for honor and glory, then find out the true meaning of trench warfare.

I had not seriously considered this movie because I mistakenly presumed it was either German with subtitles or, even worse, silent. I also thought it was very long. TCM aired it recently and because it sparked an interest with my 17 year old anti-war military buff son, we watched it together. It's 2 hours fifteenish run time was reasonable for this short-attention-span viewer.

I expect modern HD movies to wow me away visually, what with their CGI and other tricks, but this low-def, 4:3 aspect, black and white movie was impressive. Now when a crane shot spins 360 around someones head, goes up their butt crack, then pans back into outer space, we know a fat guy on a million dollar computer worked the weekend. Here, when soldiers march out of a building that then explodes, we know that the friggin' building the actors walked out of friggin' blew up! This added touch of reality makes all the difference.

The principle message of this story is that nobody wants war, nobody needs it, and the empty headed motormouths back home spouting patriotic clap-trap need to spend an evening stringing barbed wire during a down pour while the enemy strafed them with gunfire. And that message was delivered crystal.

Being an early talkie (the first sound Best Picture winner), the acting styles were clearly influenced by the pantomime era. As such, it is easy to typify the acting as terrible. Mostly because much of it was ... terrible. But these were style choices of the time and later in the film there are nuanced scenes and quiet transformations that are quite remarkable. When the main character goes home on leave and hears the bravado from his father and others in a bar, the restraint in Lew Ayres' performance was wonderful.

The gruff but lovable Sargent Kat (Louis Wolheim) would die a year later from stomach cancer. Uncredited student Arthur Gardner who went on to fame as a TV producer, is a hundred and three. The director looked around the Los Angeles area for real German war veterans to insure uniform and tactic accuracy and found so many he hired some as extras.

The anti-war message was preaching to the choir in my household, but it was a fantastic film. Had it a clearer soundtrack it's impact might even be greater. It's unflinching look at the realities of war, pre-code gore, and surprising performances make this a triumph. AMRU 4.

"I think it's more a kind of fever. Nobody wants it in particular, and then all at once, there it is. We didn't want it. The English didn't want it. And here we are fighting."

The Mouse that Roared (1959)

The tiny and impoverished nation of Fenwick declares war on America in order to lose and reap the benefit of war reparations. When they happen upon the only working prototype of the Q-Bomb (way more powerful than that wimpy H-Bomb), they accidentally win.

The real story here is Peter Sellers playing three rolls. The surprising thing is that he played them rather well. The ditsy Grand Duchess, the conniving prime minister, and the simple and good-hearted Tully Bascombe. Each character very different and well developed. This is his first foray into multiple screen personae (he was emulating Alec Guinness), and would make it something of a trademark. His real talent, in my opinion, was doing nuanced yet over the top characters in virtually every role. Sometimes very understated, sometimes Clouseau. He was a troubled comic genius whos art was built for longevity, if not his lifestyle.

Anything else of interest? Cutie Jean Seberg would take her own life twenty years later. Or was murdered by Nazi ninja alien bigfoots. The jury is still out on that one. She lived a life of drug abuse and infidelity. That's all I got this time. Amusing and well made, but no real LOL moments. Worth the time spent watching. AMRU 3. They made a sequel, but without Sellers, is it really worth watching?

"I warn you, madam - I know the entire Geneva Convention by heart!"
"Oh, how nice! You must recite it for me some evening; I play the harpsichord."

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

The Navy brings researchers to an island with an abandoned research facility. The previous occupants disappeared with no trace. What could have happened to them? Spoiler alert: they were eaten by crab monsters.

Well, the island experiences strange earth quakes, giant holes in the ground open up, and they start to hear the ghostly voices of their departed colleagues. It seems that when the crabs eat people, they gain their knowledge. How did they get so mutated? Atomic radiation. Oh, yea. That old chestnut.

I watched this for one reason only. On my way home from work I heard of the death of Russell Johnson, the great Professor from Gilligan's Island. Dedicated readers will also remember him from This Island Earth and It Came from Outer Space. He was a hard working actor, all around nice guy, and a bone fide war hero, earning the purple heart during World War II. But enough about Russ, back to the movie.

If goofs are your thing, then you are in luck, because goofs are this movie's thing. It would be tedious to mention them all (IMDB lists only seven). Let's take an early scene as an example. Within a yard and a half of shore, one of the Navy doofs falls out of the boat into very deep water. There he sees a giant crab monster and swims frantically to the surface. When the other doofs bring the obvious mannequin back on board, they discover it has no head. Forgetting for the moment that it should have been his feet that got chopped, the rest of the cast act as if this was a regrettable accident and don't find his decapitation all that shocking. Maybe the crabs get stupider as they eat them.

Typical Roger Corman material. Mediocre acting, terrible accents, clumsy scenes, substandard script, forgettable story, but otherwise watchable. Corman is famous for spending $100,000 and grossing a million. But if he could spend $110,000, still earn that million, and make something worth remembering, he wouldn't hesitate to pocket the ten grand. I have a hard time respecting that. Still, maybe because of my fondness for Johnson's Professor, I enjoyed Crab Monsters. Foreshadowing his later role, Johnson even makes a radio out of the unlikeliest of materials: radio parts. Go figure!

Watchable, short, and dumb. Today I give it an AMRU of 3. Rest in peace, Russ.

2013: My Film Blog Year in Review

I missed doing a year-end wrap up last year and I didn't want that again. Let's start with the movies I actually saw in a theater: Star Trek Into Darkness and Jurassic Park in iMax 3D. Yup, that's about it. Not bad. Laura Dern is a terrible actress. Maybe I saw The Hobbit. Not sure if it was in December or January. 30 minutes shorter would have been 30 minutes better. Now onto the state of the blog.

The 45 posts represent 44 movies. While I might be disappointed at the low number, I'm not. I think I hit a relatively good quality of movies. While only seven were rated at 4.0 (and none higher), only six got failing grades. I completed the original Universal Horror collection (with the exception of The Mummy series - can't find a copy of The Mummy's Tomb), I explored my interest in Val Lewton, Russ Meyer, and William Castle, Ray Harryhausen, Lon Chaney, and the Marx Brothers. I did good work on the 50's rocket and saucer sub-genre, and saw Jane Fonda's ta-tas back when that was a good thing. Not a bad bunch of films, if not exactly a film student's dream list.

29 of the 44 were either Sci-Fi or Horror, two were musicals (although I didn't initially classify Duck Soup as such), and the three silent films fared way better than the three exploitation films. I think I'll do more of the former and less of the latter. Musicals will continue to be sparse.

Many of the year's winners were flawed gems: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Carnival of Souls, The Leopard Man, and Laugh, Clown, Laugh. Good, enjoyable, and imperfect. The best movie, from the traditional viewpoint, was The Bridge on the River Kwai, the year's only Best Picture. The biggest surprise may be Valley of the Dragons. Not that it was all that great, I just had rather low expectations. Daughter and Son of Dracula were also better than I expected. Son of particularly because Creighton the Crappy was in the lead. Biggest disappointment was Things to Come. It wasn't the worst, but I had heard of it and it's an H.G. Wells film for cryin' out loud!

I've taken to hitting documentaries whenever the mood strikes me. Girl 27 was a complete fraud and a total disappointment. Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies was an overly glowing portrait of the actress. I don't know much about her and not sure that changed any. I watched Lon Chaney: Behind the Mask and learned nothing of the man. TCM ran a Bio and I learned loads. I forget what, however. I've mentioned The Story of Film: An Odyssey and still recommend it greatly. Watch it quick before Netflix pulls it. The Celluloid Closet is a great look into gays in film. I saw it years ago and made a point of seeing it again. TCM is great for that stuff. I've seen more, I'm sure, but nothing else comes to mind.

When I began this journey all I really had was the local library and hand-me-down tube televisions. Now I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, TCM (my best source), and a TV that does YouTube. I have a Roku in the bedroom that has many channels for public domain films, though I don't frequent there often. I seldom hit the library at this point. Not much room for improvement there.

My expectations for 2014 (as far as the movie blog is concerned) is to get back to the 50 post plateau. I hope to hit more "classics" and go lighter on Sci-Fi/Horror. Let's see how that goes. After my Halloween Horror fest, my plan was to hit some classic romantic comedies, but I found it hard to get excited about that topic. I think I'll be opportunistic and grab what tickles my fancy for the time being.

The Tingler (1959)

A pathologist (Vincent Price) is doing research on fear. He notices that the spines of executed criminals are split open leading him to believe that terror, not the electric chair, is what kills them. When the deaf mute wife of a theater owner dies unexpectedly, he x-rays the body and discovers the culprit: The Tingler! He cages the creature for further research and determines that a) everyone has one of these in their bodies and b) you can keep them from killing you by screaming.

The Castle-gimmick was that some of the theater seats were wired to give the occupant a shock at appropriate times during the film. Presumably the appropriate time was when the tingler escaped into the theater (the one in the movie), they cut the house lights, and Price tells everyone to scream or else the tingler will get them. That might have worked.

Here's something cool. The movie is in black and white except for one of the scare scenes, where the blood is red. The effect worked but it kinda makes you wonder why they didn't film the whole thing in color. Also, the actors playing the young couple actually got married (kinda cool) then divorced (not so cool). The actors playing the older couple (the theater owners) both died eight years later in May of 1967 (totally uncool). The creature itself was modelled after a Velvet Worm. Wikipedia doesn't say if this species moves through the use of visible wires. Another interesting part is when the Price character wanted to feel fear (you see, he's super macho-brave and is never afraid), so he takes a hit of acid. The first time an acid trip was featured in a movie.

Typical William Castle. In a TCM Biography his daughter said of the film, the biggest obstacle for the actors was to not burst out laughing at the silly prop and absurd dialog. Typical Vincent Price rising above the source material. There was a background story about Price's philandering wife, or her sister dating his assistant (see above comment regarding a "young couple"), but it doesn't play much into the film except maybe to give Price an opportunity for biting dialog. A fair effort all-in-all. A well made, cheesy, B horror movie. AMRU 3.5.

"The tingler exists in every human being, we now know. Look at that tingler, Dave. It's an ugly and dangerous thing-ugly because it's the creation of man's fear; dangerous because... because a frightened man is dangerous."

The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)

Man on bicycle looks at breasts. Roll credits.

Russ Meyer has long fascinated me. Undoubtedly the biggest name in the 60's "nudie cutie" genre, his movies are legendary and annoyingly hard to come by. Netflix? Never heard of him. Amazon Prime has nothing for free. And forget about your local library. YouTube to the rescue, believe it or not. That can't be legal.

Anyhow Mr. Teas (actual name!) sells dentist stuff door to door and along the way is greeted by unusually well endowed women showing unusual amounts of cleavage. The dental hygienist, his office secretary, the counter woman at the diner, some chick at the beach. And he concludes there must be something wrong with him because, and here's the sick part, he LIKES it! He even starts fantasizing about the women! Clearly he needs serious therapy.

A few odd things about this movie. First, there is no actual dialog. The movie is done in voice over narration (frequently a bit of trivia about a non-fleshy element on screen) with an insipid soundtrack. Secondly, with one exception, nobody appears to notice or care that Mr. Teas is snooping on the ladies. Also, there is no inference of sex. Well, except once and that turns into a comedic moment. There are just breasts for our man to look at. And the on-screen talent is quite impressive.

Surprisingly, this, Meyer's first, is a well photographed movie. The ladies are well lit, the editing crisp, good pacing, and the overall craft well done. Citizen Kane this is not, but take it for what it is: Cheesecake pornography. Remove the fleshy elements and you don't just have less of a film, you basically don't have a film. That said, AMRU 3.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Showgirls are in a musical that is shut down before it even opens. Behind in the rent, they have to steal their neighbor's milk for breakfast. The depression is hard. When they learn that an old employer is putting on a new show, they fall over themselves trying to get the role. And they are hired! With one problem: no money. Details.

When the songwriter boyfriend of one of the girls provides the funds, they are all suspicious how he came up with the bread (spoiler alert: he's a secret millionaire!)

Anyhow, the executor of dreamy's fortune disapproves of this budding romance, they try to nip it in the ... well, bud. The ladies don't take too kindly to the implication, so the game is afoot!

Somewhat witty musical romantic comedy with a little bite, replete with ridiculous Busby Berkeley signature numbers. Ginger Rogers had a fairly small role, but does get to sing "We're In the Money" including a verse sung in pig latin. The almost eerie closeup gives evidence that depression toothpaste was not as effective as the modern counterpart.

Much of the movie revolves around Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, and Aline MacMahon's characters as they try to pull a fast one on the men. Having initially seen Blondell only in later films (Desk Set and The Cincinnati Kid), it's surprising to see her as a young hottie. Nine year old Billy Barty was absolutely creepy dressed as a baby. Gold Diggers is an excellent example of pre-code Hollywood. It wasn't afraid to discuss real issues with women wearing over sized lingerie. And one of the musical numbers gives us a little more.

Not a fan of musicals, I haven't made a secret of that. And the over-the-top production numbers aren't exactly my cup of tea either. However, the fast pace, interesting story, and other elements, made it definitely worth watching. AMRU 3.5.

So, what exactly did they mean by "Pettin' in the Park" anyhow?