Pan Am

A couple of weekends ago, I binge watched all 14 episodes of Pan Am.  It's a real shame that this got cancelled or didn't get picked up by somebody else.  Reportedly, there were talks with Amazon.com to pick it up and make it an original to web show like Orange is the New Black or House of Cards but the talks fell through, so we are apparently left with only one season of Pan Am.  I am still going through withdrawal.

Pan Am is a soap opera about the life and loves of a group of stewardesses and pilots for Pan American Airlines in the early 1960s.  Like the hugely popular Mad Men, Pan Am is full of pop culture references.  A stylized and sanitized Disneyland version of the early sixties, the sets, costumes and props are visually stunning.  The real sixties never looked this great.  With Sinatra crooning "Come Fly With Me" in the background Pan Am soars.

The series ended with a bunch of open story threads for a second season which we will, alas, never be able to see.  We'll never find out if Maggie (Christina Ricci) is ever going to be caught in her life of crime or will be fired for lying about her background.  We'll never find out if Laura (Margot Robbie) is going to get in trouble with the airline for those nude pictures of her which have been published or if she and Ted are going to be able to get together after he's found out that his former fiancee, who is really a lesbian, is pregnant with his baby.  We'll never find out if Kate (Kelli Garner) becomes a full fledged CIA agent or if her cover as a Pan Am stewardess will be blown.  We'll never find out if Colette (Karine Vanasse) can find her brother who was lost during the Holocaust.  We'll never find out if Dean (Mike Vogel) and Bridget (Annabelle Wallis) can patch things up.  And we'll never find out if Ted (Michael Mosley) can shake himself loose from his pregnant frigid lesbian fiancee, Amanda (Ashley Greene), and get together with the love of his life, Laura.

Guess I'll just have to go take a cold shower and try to get over it.

The Mothman Prophecies

I picked up a copy of the DVD of The Mothman Prophecies (2002) on the bargain bin at a local video store.  The only thing I knew about the Mothman was what I had seen on a documentary on The Travel Channel about how some kids in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the late sixties kept seeing a man with moth like wings right before a bridge over the Ohio River collapsed and killed a bunch of people.

Richard Geer and Laura Linney ponder reports of Mothman

Unfortunately, the only sighting of Mothman in this movie is the shadowy images which come to people’s minds.  Richard Geer’s wife (Debra Messing), who is dying of a brain tumor, saw the shadowy image of Mothman just before having a car crash.  While lying in the hospital dying, she keeps drawing pictures of the demon looking Mothman.

This movie is mostly a psychological drama.  The stuff that you don’t see is a lot scarier than what you do see.  Richard Geer plays John Klein, a Washington Post reporter who’s beloved wife has just died.  Strangely drawn to the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Klein is drawn into the mysterious goings on.  People in Point Pleasant hear and see weird stuff just before something bad happens.  Klein talks to people who have seen and heard the entity and talks to the entity himself.  In fact the entity calls him on the phone and keeps calling after the phone has been unplugged.  A local eccentric (Will Patton) hears the entity talking to him and telling him what will happen in the future.  It eventually drives him crazy and he goes out in the cold and dies from exposure. Klein seeks out a para-normal expert (Alan Bates) who tells him that he is dealing with beings who live on another plane of existence who can see the future.  The expert tells Klein that he can’t change the future and the entities will drive him to his death and to quit talking to them. 

Klein becomes involved with a police woman Connie Mills (Laura Linney) who sees and talks to Klein’s dead wife and has a recurring dream in which she is drowning and told “don’t worry number 67.”  Later, it becomes apparent that this was a reference to the fact 66 people died in the bridge collapse and she was supposed to be number 67 but is saved when Klein decides to stop talking to the entities, who are taking the form of his dead wife, and return to Point Pleasant to be with Connie.

The Mothman Prophecies is a creepy movie.  The thing that makes it the most creepy is the eerie musical score.  Geer and Linney put in good performances and are convincing in their roles as people who are caught up by the weird and supernatural and don’t know what to do. 

All in all, The Mothman Prophecies was worth the dollar that I paid for it.  Three out of Five Vampire Bats.            

TRUFFAUT'S DAY FOR NIGHT (1973)

Day for Night (La Nuit Americaine) released in 1973, is famed French director Francois Truffant’s homage to movie making.

This is a movie about making movies.  Truffaut plays Ferrand, the director of a melodrama called Meet Pamela (Je Vous Presente Pamela) about a young man whose father abandons his mother and runs off with his hot young wife.

The action in “real life” among the cast and crew mirrors what’s going on in the film.  The actor who plays the jilted husband in the movie, Alphonse (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud), is sleeping with the script girl who he wants to marry.  But Alphonse’s girlfriend runs off with the stunt man leaving Alphonse devastated.

The sexy leading lady, Julie (played by Jacqueline Bisset), had a nervous breakdown and an affair with her doctor who left his wife and children to marry her.  When Alphonse freaks out over his girlfriend abandoning him Julie sleeps with him out of sympathy.  Mistaking this for true love, Alphonse calls Julie’s husband back in the United States and tells him that their marriage is over.   Needless to say, Julie almost has another nervous breakdown.

Severine (Valentina Cortese)

Alphonse’s on-screen father is played by Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont) an aging leading man and sex symbol who is, a la Rock Hudson, secretly gay.  The jilted mother played by Severine (Valentina Cortese)  is an aging Italian bombshell who has turned into a sad alcoholic with a son who is dying of cancer. 

   

We see all aspects of movie making: sets, trick camera shot, stunts, fake snow and on location shooting.  There is a cat who fails to like the milk out of the saucer on cue. We also see aspects of the behavior of movie crews like recreational sex.  The title “Day for Night” refers to the process where a scene is shot in daylight using a filter to make it look like night.  Called “day for night” in the U.S. and Britain, in France the technique is known as La Nuit Americaine or “American Night.”

Ferrand (Francois Truffaut) and crew on the set of "Meet Pamela"

According to Roger Ebert, “Francois Truffaut (1932-1984) was one of the most beloved of filmmakers, a man whose own love of film was in such details as the old-fashioned iris shots he borrowed from silent films (That’s a shot where the screen seems to screw down to circle one detail, before going to black). . . Truffaut was a founder of the New Wave generation – French film critics who celebrated Hollywood’s veterans in the 1950s and then made their own films. . . . In 25 years he directed 23 films. Why did he make so may? I think because he loved to be on the set.  The young actor in “Day for Night” is heartbroken after his girl runs off with the stuntman.  Truffaut’s character consoles him: “People like us are only happy in our work.”

I enjoyed Day for Night a lot and would definitely recommend it.  It’s currently available on DVD and on Amazon Instant Video.  I watched the movie in the original French with subtitles.  The film was released in the United States in a dubbed English version.

100 Rifles (1969)

A movie that opens with Burt Reynolds in a hotel room with a very nude Soledad Miranda, has Raquel Welch running around half naked for most of the movie, has a thumping original score by Jerry Goldsmith and has interracial sex and lots of guns and violence should not be boring.  But 1969’s 100 Rifles is boring.  I half to confess, halfway through I gave up and started playing games on the Ipad. 

I don’t know exactly what it is, but 100 Rifles wound up being just another formulaic B grade Western.  Set in the early 20^th century during the Mexican Revolution, 100 Rifles involves an outlaw named Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds).  The son of an Alabama father and Yaqui Indian mother, Joe has robbed a bank in Arizona and used the money to buy one hundred rifles to arm the Yaqui Indians who are being systematically murdered and wiped out by the Mexican General Verdugo (Fernando Lamas). 

Joe is pursued into Mexico by American lawman Lyedecker (former NFL star Jim Brown).    Lyedecker’s plans to bring Joe back to Arizona and collect the reward money and get a permanent lawman job is thwarted by General Verdugo and his German Army advisor (Hans Gudegast).   Lyedecker and Joe wind up hooking up with the beautiful Indian revolutionary Sarita (Raquel Welch). 

Controversial and shocking for 1969 is the scene in which Lydecker is seduced by Serita.  A movie showing a black man and white woman making love was hot stuff in the late sixties, but watching it today, my primary emotion was, “that’s nice,” and it only made me take a momentary break from playing Ace Patrol on the Ipad.

The climax of the film comes when, Lydecker, convinced now to fight for the Yaqui’s, stages an ambush of the train carrying General Verdugo’s soldiers by distracting them by having Sarita get half naked and take a very suggestive shower in front of them.    Lydecker uses the train as the centerpiece of the big gun battle during which Sarita is killed but the Yaqui’s win their freedom.

The best summing up of 100 Rifles is from a review on the blog friar’s fires: “Of the lead cast, Reynolds and Lamas offer much.  Reynolds seems to recognize the ridiculous story he’s in so he goes into full smart-aleck Bandit mode, mugging and grinning as much as this movie lets him.  Lamas throws a big slab of ham on the grill and proceeds to chew whatever scenery he can sink his teeth into.  Brown and Welch aren’t exactly bad, but neither of them had developed yet into actors that can transcend the material, and this is material that desperately needs transcending.”

BANDOLERO! (1968)

1968's Bandolero! is star studded shoot em up in the tradition of the Hollywood "B" grade Western.

The Bishop Gang, led by former Quantrill Raider Dee Bishop (Dean Martin), botches a bank robbery in Valverde, Texas in which a rancher is killed.  The dead rancher, Stoner, was the husband of the beautiful Maria (Raquelle Welch).  Stoner bought Maria from her Mexican family.  As Maria tells the local bank president, played by Denver Pyle, "I was a whore at 13, and my family never went hungry!"

George Kennedy as Sheriff July Johnson

Dee and the gang members, who include Will Geer and his bad luck sons, are tried and sentenced to death. Luckily for Dee and the other gang members, the Valverde Sheriff, July Johnson (George Kennedy), has sent off to Oklahoma for an expert hangman.  Dee's brother Mace, who had fought in the Union army in the Civil War, is returning home to Texas and hears the hangman bragging that he is on his way to Valverde to hang the Bishop Gang.  Mace intercepts the hangman, presumably kills him, and steals his identity.

Dee Bishop (Dean Martin), Maria Stoner (Raquel Welch), and Mace Bishop (James Stewart)

Mace sneaks Dee a pistol which he pulls while standing on the gallows, and the gang head off to Mexico. Sheriff July Johnson, Deputy Roscoe, and the entire male population of the town soon form a posse and head off after the escapees.  Finding himself alone in the town, Mace robs the bank and takes off with $10,000.

Maria falls for her bad boy kidnapper Dee Bishop

Along the way, the fleeing outlaws kidnap Maria Stoner and take her with them.  Sheriff July is in love with Maria and relentlessly pursues the outlaws into Mexico.  Although Maria has never loved any of the men in her life, she falls head over heels in love with Dee.  Unfortunately for everybody, the outlaws are now in bandolero country.  The Bishops find refuge in a town which has been abandoned by the townspeople out of fear of the banditos or bandoleros.   Sheriff July and what's left of the posse track the fleeing outlaws to the town and get the drop on them.  However, the bandoleros launch a full scale attack intent on killing all the gringos and raping the gorgeous Maria. (Probably as punishment for her fake Mexican accent!)

Dee and Maria get cozy

Both Dee and Mace are killed.  Taking a gun, Maria kills the leader of the bandits.  After the smoke clears, no one is alive but Maria and July. Maria reluctantly returns to Texas with July, presumably to be his wife in a love less marriage.

Maria after El Jefe the bandit leader tries to rape her.

According to Wikipedia "The film was shot at the Alamo Village, the movie set originally created for John Wayne's The Alamo.  The Alamo Village is located north of Bracketville, Texas.  The location closed in 2009 after remaining open to movie companies and the publich since 1960."   Apparently, Larry McMurtry put a Sheriff named July Johnson, a Deputy named Roscoe and an outlaw named Dee into Lonesome Dove as an homage to Bandolero!

Despite the star studded cast, and the drop dead gorgeous twenty something Raquel Welch, this is definitely B grade Western stuff.  The plot is conventional, and quite honestly it got really boring to watch.  Some of the lines in the film were pretty good, like when Dee says that July Johnson will pursue them into the interior of Mexico, "We made a man that rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest look foolish in his own town.  He'll follow us."   After telling Dee and Mace that the Bandoleros will find them and kill all of the Gringos, Dee says "Well you don't seem to be worried," to which Maria replies (in Raquel Welch's lame fake Mexican accent) "I am not a Gringo."

Bandolero! is worth watching as a cultural artifact if nothing else.  Even though Dean and Jimmy and the boys are pretty much just going through the motions in this one, Dean Martin and Jimmy Stewart couldn't seem to be bad in a movie even if they tried.

The Bad Catholic gives this one three out of five six guns.

MOTHER, JUGS AND SPEED (1976)

Mother, Jugs and Speed is one of those gritty 1970’s “dark comedies.”  It’s basically MASH in Los Angeles.   Harvey Fishbine owns the F&B Ambulance company and is competing with the Unity Ambulance company for a city contract.   Harry “Doughnut” Fishbine has been staying in business by means such as bribing sheriff’s deputies to call F&B instead of the competition.

Mother (Bill Cosby), Jugs (Raquel Welch) and Speed (Harvey Keitel) provide kick ass emergency medical services.

“Mother” Tucker (Bill Cosby) has the reputation of being the best ambulance driver in the city.  However, Mother likes to do things his own way.  He keeps a cooler of beer in the front seat of the ambulance which he is constantly drinking, he likes to buzz a group of nuns when they cross the street in front of the convent, and he takes his breaks at a massage parlor.

Mother (Bill Cosby) takes a break from a hard day on the job.

Jennifer (Raquel Welch) is Mr. Fishbine’s secretary who has secretly been studying at night to be a paramedic and ambulance driver.   The other employees of F&B have nicknamed Jennifer “Jugs” because of how well endowed she is in the chest department. (In the 1970s it was still OK to sexually harass the female employees!)  Throughout the movie Jennifer is constantly telling the men to “Stop Calling Me Jugs,” which they never do.   Jennifer wants to be an ambulance driver and paramedic but the sexist boss, Harvey FIshbine, won’t let her work a rig until he’s shorthanded.

Tony Malatesa (Harvey Keitel) is a police detective who is under suspension while he is investigated for allegedly selling cocaine.   A former Vietnam medic, Tony is hired to replace a paramedic who fell through a rotten staircase on a call.  Due to the allegations of selling drugs, Mother nicknames Tony “Speed.”

 

In his review of June 14, 1976, Roger Ebert said that this movie was “an unhappy cross between ‘MASH’ and ‘As the World Turns.”  It can’t decide whether to be slapstick or hard-boiled, (and) winds up not being much of either . . .”  Watching the movie last night for the first time in years, I have to say I enjoyed “Mother, Jugs and Speed” a great deal.  Of course, I kind of like all of that gritty urban 1970s stuff.  The thirty something Raquel Welch is, of course, HOT, HOT, HOT!   And I loved Bill Cosby’s performance as the rebellious anti-hero who is the best at his job so long as he gets to do his own thing and do it his own way.  (This was quite prevalent in 1970s fiction.   Mother is kind of the Dirty Harry of the ambulance business.) 

Larry Hagman’s performance as the sociopath Murdoch is also outstanding.  Murdoch is a sex obsessed psychopath who has sex with comatose patients in the back of the ambulance and makes bets on how many dead patients they will have to transport each night.  The ending of the film involves Murdoch finally snapping.  

Like Roger Ebert says this movie goes from tragic deaths to Jugs and Speed having sex in the back of an ambulance.   When the city requires Unity and F&B to merge in order to stay in business the new company is called the F&U Ambulance Company.  (They weren’t afraid of profanity in the 70s either).

While it’s pretty dated,  Mother, Jugs and Speed is a great movie for those who are nostalgic for bell bottoms, elevator shoes and polyester slacks. 

Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: This Week in Geek (7-13/04/14)

Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: This Week in Geek (7-13/04/14)