For once, I am a force for good! Huzzah!
In the wake of LERNER INTERNATIONAL’s First Quiz and My Answers to said quiz, the fabulous Sq.Dave of The Zed Zee Conundrum (and the unfortunately now-defunct Rockin’ Monkey) posted his
own quiz!
Quiz! Quiz-quiz-quiz!
Quizitty-quizzy-quizerino!
Very much a continuation of my own topic for
quizification—that topic being “Favorite That’s Not”/“Silver Medal,”
Sq.Dave has come up with several excellent questions
of his own—
Answers below/Gentlemen, start your engines!
12/12/12 Update: Damn, I am taking too fucking long
between posts, and I hate that. But it’s been tough lately…
How’d he get that nickname? If he wants you to know,
he’ll leave a comment—but maybe you shouldn’t know.
Perhaps the Mysteries of the Whispering Yakuza of the
Northern Fires should never be
known…
Maybe you should find out on your own…like during a
long car ride down an empty country road…after seeing a Lucio Fulci
double-feature….
And now, onto The Zed Zee Conundrum’s “RIGHT BACK AT
YA! More 'Favorite that's Not' questions from ZZC...”
1) Favorite revenge movie that's not POINT BLANK, GET
CARTER, or ROLLING THUNDER:
Revenge! It’s that dish best eaten cold—if at all—but
it’s what we all want, especially me.
So many fuckers are going to get away with their
crimes!
That’s not right! If I was fearless, and maybe knew
kung-fu, they would pay…
Sigh…
Right off the top of my head—and I know I’m forgetting
something, and I’ll be kicking myself really hard later—but I’m going with Chan-Wook
Park’s Oldboy (2003), one of the most
intense revenge films ever, a grueling flick to get through.
Love this movie although—SPOILER—I hate that the
protagonist cut out his own tongue. That angered me.
No spoilers here—the very theatrical and twisting
mystery/thriller Sleuth (1972; Joseph
L. Mankiewicz), where revenge is a major component of the plot, but I refuse to
say how (it’s a mystery!). The film is an essentially two-man show, with
Michael Caine versus Laurence Olivier, both of them at the top of their powers.
Sam Fuller’s Underworld
USA (1961) Yep, one of my fave Fullers—see question #8 below—
Quasi-Shakespearean neo-noir where a street urchin
devotes his life to revenge against a very corporate mob organization: lots of
opportunities for Fuller to engage in sick humor, and honestly, there’s no way
this flick wasn’t an influence on John Boorman, director of Point Blank.
Revenge Ping-Pong/Warring Families:
The Hills Have Eyes (1977; Wes Craven)
Pink Flamingos (1974; John Waters)
Nevada Smith (1966; Henry Hathaway) Steve McQueen’s a
half-breed out for blood! Great knife fight between McQueen and villain Martin
Landau.
Favorite Movie with “Revenge” in the title: Godzilla’s Revenge (1969; Ishiro Honda)—I’ve championed this film before, and will continue to do so: More of an “Afterschool
Special” than kaiju, this film is derailed by expectations placed on the flick
by the mention of The Big G. Don’t bring those expectations, and you will be
vastly rewarded.
2) Favorite martial arts movie that doesn't star Bruce
Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Lee, Sammo Hung, Gordon Liu, Donnie Yen, or Tony Jaa
(Chuck Norris and Steven Segal films don't count):
Urrrrrrrrrgh, this is tougher than smashing a
cinderblock with my forehead!
Flying Swords at Dragon Gate (2011; Tsui Hark) fookin’
incredible, and the best use of 3-D ever); written about HERE.
Then:
Sonny Chiba’s The
Street Fighter (1974; Shigehiro Ozawa)—beautiful mad brutality! And the
infamous X-ray head smash!
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009; John
Hyams)–Dude, this new breed of mixed-martial arts direct-to-DVD madness/reboot,
especially with its mind-blowing cameo by Dolph Lundgren (JCVD ain’t too bad in
this flick, either), is GREAT.
This is the shit we would’ve killed to see back in the
day on Kings Highway or in Chinatown.
Can’t wait to see the sequel Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.
3) Favorite post-apocalyptic movie that's not part of
the MAD MAX franchise:
A Boy and His Dog (1976; L.Q. Jones) written about extensively HERE.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970; Ted Post) yeah,
yeah, yeah, it’s not as good as PotA,
annnnnnd so what?
There’s telepathic mutants, bad ape makeup on the
extras, mediocre matte paintings that I love, “All Hail the Mighty Bomb,” the end of the world, much more, and as
the warmongering Gorilla General Ursus, we have JAMES GREGORY, a reason to love
a movie unconditionally (and you must
see the film The Love God? (1968; Nat Hiken) to catch his insane performance as a right-wing ACLU lawyer).
Beneath is one of those sequels—like French Connection II (1975; John Frankenheimer) or Alien³ (1992; David Fincher)—
that would’ve been better appreciated by the general
public if they’d been rip-offs of
their original films, as opposed to continuations, like William Castle’s Homicidal (1961) as opposed to Psycho II (1983; Richard Franklin).
Another example is Halloween
2 (especially when compared to the monumental success of Halloween rip-off, Friday the 13th):
These movies cannot live up to the first film’s
innovation or infamy, but have enough unique ideas that they’re not complete failures.
Just a bit off, that’s all.
Like the ways that Clint Eastwood’s Tightrope (1984; Richard Tuggle) and The Gauntlet (1977) aren’t as derided as
Magnum Force (1972; Ted Post—also Beneath’s
director) was, even though they could all fall into the broad definitions
of a Dirty Harry-esque Eastwood Rogue Cop…
But that’s only if you are a sucker for the “accepted
wisdom” that used to prevail that sequels were never good. Nowadays, the sequel
is usually better than the original.
Back to Beneath—
Rushed into production, so never quite given the time
to improve the script (its dialog repeats a lot of PotA, especially as new astronaut Brent follows Taylor’s footsteps—quite
literally; and the question of Nova’s being sloppy seconds does come to mind
unfortunately), and with a much-reduced budget from the first film (it does
look cheap—the underground NYC sets were reused from 20th Century
Fox’s production of Hello Dolly), and
hamstrung by headliner Heston’s demands (he would only work one week on the
flick), Beneath is far from
perfect—but all those “negatives” help increase the sci-fi lunacy and turn the
flick more into some B-movie sci-fi rip-off of PotA.
Giving credit where credit is due: much of the
long-lasting love of the 1970s Apes
films is due to the hard work of screenwriter Paul Dehn, who wrote the second
through fourth films, destroying, recreating and then mutating the world via
intelligent apes and their human slaves.
Dehn was a spy during WWII for the limeys, and after
being a film critic, he worked on such pictures as the still-topical nuclear
terrorism film Seven Days to Noon (1950;
John & Roy Boulting; for which Dehn won an Oscar), Murder on the Orient Express (1976; Sidney Lumet) and Goldfinger (1964; Guy Hamilton), which
created the template that so many James Bond films still follow.
While sci-fi master Arch Oboler has been reported as
an uncredited co-screenwriter on Beneath
(and I could see him coming up with the telepathic mutants), Dehn was the prime
writer on the three films and provided much of what is canon.
Personally, I love the dialog in Escape between the President and Dr. Otto Hasslein, where questions
of morality, political expediency and the implications of time travel are
discussed and dissected: the type of wordsmithing hardly seen in good science
fiction films these days.
Taylor’s spirit, the world, Cornelius and Zira, Human/Modern
Civilization—
Also, that god among men, John Kenneth Muir gives a
thorough going-over of Escape at his site HERE.
[And BTW, that’s why we’ve got all these Apes and related pix all over the
place.
Enjoy!
And a special thanks to all the sites that I’ve swiped—uh, borrowed images from! Love ya!]
4) Special question for those of us that dislike John
Wayne but love westerns—
Favorite John Wayne movie, even though I hate him,
that's not The Searchers:
John Wayne is hard to like: he was the Tom Cruise of
his day, always playing the same part over and over again, and for that crossdresser The Duke, it usually meant playing some
lunkhead, anti-intellectual caveman that we’re supposed to like because every
once in a blue moon he’ll mutter some inarticulate phrases that (because the
music is telling us what to think) indicate that he has feelings.
As readers of “My Answers” know, I do love They Were Expendable (1945; John Ford), but that’s despite Wayne’s presence—he’s especially jerky in this one: uno hijo de puta grande!
In fact there are several Ford films I like that Wayne
is in (and Hawks’ Rio Bravo, but
mainly because of Dino and Angie—meeeeeeeeeeow!—Dickinson),
that could easily be recast with, say, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea or Robert
Ryan, and the flicks would be fine.
Hell, The
Searchers with Robert Ryan would’ve been blistering!
THREE-WAY TIE FOR MADNESS:
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971; Mel
Stuart)
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953; Roy Rowland)
Skidoo (1968; Otto Preminger) (written extensively about HERE)
Sentimental Favorite:
Mad Monster Party (1967; Jules Bass)
These are all MUST-SEEs, if you haven’t yet, do so
immediately, no matter how “old” you think you are. They will all make your
life better.
All of these films are in my personal collection. Love
’em all!
Was it Brian Epstein who told the Beatles that
maintaining constant cutting edge success meant that they had to know what the
avant-garde was doing, as well as what the lowest-common-denominator was doing,
then find the point in-between the two?
Because that’s exactly what late, great composer Jerry
Goldsmith (1999-2004) used to do. Listen carefully; he’s often “borrowing” from
Penderecki and others, with pop culture tweaks, like xylophones or the Moog, or
all-wooden percussion, depending on the cultural zeitgeist he’s grooving on at
the time.
I love Goldsmith’s work, especially on some “lesser”
films when he’s encouraged to go way
over-the-top, like:
Logan’s Run (1976; Michael Anderson), the bombastic
score to Peter Hyams’ underrated Capricorn One (1978), the psychotic
Middle-Eastern dirges that pepper Damien: Omen Two (1978; Don Taylor—who
replaced Get Carter’s Mike Hodges as
director), and Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971; Don Taylor, again)
which lays an incredible layer of proto-Funkadelic fuzz-guitar over Goldsmith’s
already established Apes themes.
All of it beautiful, mad turbulent stuff—give it a
listen!
Runner-Up: Christopher Komeda, composer of Polanski’s
early films and creator of the haunting and unforgettable theme to Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
BTW, the music John Williams was making before
Spielbergian radiation infected him horrifically was pretty nifty—check out the
soundtracks he did for Irwin Allen, like the Lost in Space theme.
7) Favorite special effects make-up artist that's not
Rick Baker, Lon Chaney Sr., Tom Savini, Dick Smith, Jack Pierce, or Carlo
Rambaldi (I think this one is really hard):
Oh Squeaky, your plan to confuse me backfired—had you
included Rob Bottin on this “favorite that’s not” list, I would have had a really hard time of it.
Unfortunately, Bottin hasn’t been working much lately.
Come back, Rob, we love you! (That said, a big shout-out to the legendary John Chambers who created the make-up effects for the original Apes films, and is currently saving CIA agents in Iran in the film Argo.)
8) Favorite Sam Fuller film that's not SHOCK CORRIDOR,
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, or THE NAKED KISS:
The Steel Helmet (1951)—one of the best war movies
ever, and then under-appreciated super-noir Underworld USA (1961), written
about above, and HERE.
Damn you, you damn enticing Mind Parasites!!!
Nor do I feel that these black clouds are completely
gone—but I have survived their first attack, and that gives me hope. But I also
know it means I will be putting a lot of hard work into other things,
and I worry that it may continue to interfere with my
ability to post; creative brainpower needs to be focused on writing cover
letters these days….
Now that I’ve gotten a preemptive mea culpa out of the
way, hopefully I will learn to start posting shorter, more concise essays with
more frequency. Maybe…
Thanks for letting me babble….
COMING SOON:
The November 2012 Index! The Best New Old Films Discovered
This Year! And More!
(Promise…)
No comments:
Post a Comment