Tag Archives: Norman Burton

The Towering Inferno (1974, John Guillermin)

Posted on 13 January 2010 | Leave a comment

For a disaster movie to succeed, I suppose all it really has to do is keep you interested for its running time. The Towering Inferno runs almost three hours and manages that task, so much so, the ending seems a little abrupt. It’s not like the first act breezes by, either. In fact, it only makes it through the first act because of the goodwill the opening credits–with an amazing John Williams piece–earn. There’s maybe five minutes of setup they could have done without, to get to the fabulous first death sequence a little earlier.

The worst performance in the film is probably Richard Chamberlain, but even he’s solid. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman are good, Jennifer Jones, Robert Wagner–Norman Burton’s excellent in a small part. Faye Dunaway and William Holden appear busy. Even O.J. Simpson is good–the film’s treatment of race is particularly interesting, as Simpson plays the chief of security (and Felton Perry later shows up as a senior fireman).

The mattes all hold up and the action sequences, until the fire’s put out at the end (why do the flames recede before the water hits them?), do too. It’s well-made nonsense, with the majority of the cast managing not to look embarrassed.

Of particular interest is how Gullermin and cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp shoot the dramatic scenes. It’s not like a seventies movie at all, instead aping Cinemascope methods.

It’s a shame the genre failed. The Towering Inferno is a fine diversion.

CREDITS

Directed by John Guillermin; screenplay by Stirling Silliphant, based on a novel by Richard Martin Stern and a novel by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson; director of photography, Fred J. Koenekamp; edited by Carl Kress and Harold F. Kress; music by John Williams; production designer, William J. Creber; produced by Irwin Allen; released by Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox.

Starring Steve McQueen (Fire Chief Michael O’Hallorhan), Paul Newman (Doug Roberts), William Holden (Jim Duncan), Faye Dunaway (Susan), Fred Astaire (Harlee Claiborne), Susan Blakely (Patty Duncan Simmons), Richard Chamberlain (Roger Simmons), Jennifer Jones (Liselotte Mueller), O.J. Simpson (Harry Jernigan), Robert Vaughn (Senator Gary Parker), Robert Wagner (Dan Bigelow), Susan Flannery (Lorrie), Sheila Allen (Paula Ramsay), Norman Burton (Will Giddings), Jack Collins (Mayor Robert Ramsay), Don Gordon (Fireman Kappy), Felton Perry (Fireman Scott), Gregory Sierra (Carlos), Ernie F. Orsatti (Fireman Mark Powers) and Dabney Coleman (Deputy Chief #1).

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Posted in 1974, 20th Century Fox, Action, Color, English, Thriller, USA, Warner Bros.

Tagged Carl Kress, Dabney Coleman, Don Gordon, Ernie F. Orsatti, Faye Dunaway, Felton Perry, Frank M. Robinson, Fred Astaire, Fred J. Koenekamp, Gregory Sierra, Harold F. Kress, Irwin Allen, Jack Collins, Jennifer Jones, John Guillermin, John Williams, Norman Burton, O.J. Simpson, Paul Newman, Richard Chamberlain, Richard Martin Stern, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Sheila Allen, Steve McQueen, Stirling Silliphant, Susan Blakely, Susan Flannery, Thomas N. Scortia, William Holden, William J. Creber

Bloodsport (1988, Newt Arnold)

Posted on 5 August 2008 | 1 Comment

At least Bloodsport is earnest. It’s also atrocious and unwatchable, but it is earnest. It really thinks the scenes with Jean-Claude Van Damme staring into space and flashing back to his childhood are a good idea. It thinks the crappy dialogue is okay. It thinks casting very recognizable (as the Hong Kong gangster from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) Roy Chiao as a Japanese guy is okay. For all the Cannon movies I’ve seen… I think Bloodsport might actually be the worst made.

The movie has absolutely nothing going for it, except conjuring the image of a Bloodsport rerelease box touting the presence of (now) Academy Award winning Forest Whitaker. Newt Arnold–who apparently did a lot of second unit work–cannot compose a shot, cannot move a camera, cannot direct actors. The writing’s laughable and only made worse by the performances.

It doesn’t open with Van Damme, which turns out to be a bad idea. Instead, it opens with a montage of the preparations for a highly secretive (and now presumably fictional) martial arts competition. This montage was, I think, meant to be classy, but thanks to the music, it’s a joke. The bigger joke is Donald Gibb getting the focus of the opening montage–Gibb is a recognizable big and gruff guy, he’s got lots of TV bit parts in his filmography–since he can’t even deliver a line.

Van Damme’s awful, but in a funny way. His earnestness comes through, but the acting in Bloodsport is like a public access commercial for a plumber. It really is the worst Cannon movie I can remember seeing–part of, anyway. I had to stop a few seconds after Leah Ayres shows up. It just gets too moronic.

I realized, as I stopped the movie, I haven’t been watching a lot of movies this bad lately. I only tried Bloodsport again because I remember thinking it was really good when I was nine (was I wrong) and I’d heard, ten years later, it was decent. Then the widescreen DVD came out and I kept tripping over references to it, so I rented it.

Bloodsport and its genre–the white guy martial artist–ended up direct-to-video pretty quick (and the whole genre got a footing because of video) and it’s embarrassing. I’m sure there are now direct-to-DVD movies just as bad–worse probably, thanks to the cheapness of video–but there’s an unfortunate legitimacy to these movies. They did indeed get theatrical releases. People did go and see them. Major newspapers did… occasionally… review them.

I couldn’t even get to the fighting scenes.

Someone needs to interview Whitaker about all the crap he’s made, I’m sure he’d be in good humor about it and it’d be funny to hear his stories.

CREDITS

Directed by Newt Arnold; screenplay by Christopher Cosby, Mel Friedman and Sheldon Lettich, based on a story by Lettich; director of photography, David Worth; edited by Carl Kress; music by Paul Hertzog; production designer, David Searl; produced by Mark DiSalle, Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan; released by Cannon Films.

Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme (Frank Dux), Donald Gibb (Ray Jackson), Leah Ayres (Janice Kent), Norman Burton (Helmer), Forest Whitaker (Rawlins), Roy Chiao (Tanaka), Philip Chan (Inspector Chen), Pierre Rafini (Young Frank), Bolo Yeung (Chong Li) and Ken Siu (Victor Lin).

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Posted in 1988, Action, Biography, Cannon Films, Color, English, Sport, USA

Tagged Bolo Yeung, Carl Kress, Christopher Cosby, David Searl, David Worth, Donald Gibb, Forest Whitaker, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ken Siu, Leah Ayres, Mark DiSalle, Mel Friedman, Menahem Golan, Newt Arnold, Norman Burton, Paul Hertzog, Philip Chan, Pierre Rafini, Roy Chiao, Sheldon Lettich, Yoram Globus

Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner)

Posted on 10 July 2006 | 1 Comment

Planet of the Apes is, I’m fairly sure, the first film I’ve ever watched and known the director started in television. Franklin J. Schaffner has a lot of dynamic shots–helicopter shots, three dimensional motion and camera movement (which is rarer than one would think)–but none of them go together. It’s like watching a different movie every cut. There are also definite commercial breaks in the film and the first hour, until Charlton Heston speaks to the apes, is really a fifteen minute teaser drawn out with a lot of monologues, walking, and chase scenes.

When I started watching the film, I marveled at how bad Charlton Heston’s performance is. He actually gets better, but it’s one of those cases of not knowing if he actually gets better or if the viewer has just been conditioned to his performance. It’s kind of funny, though, to see über-Conservative Heston in a role basically advocating (small c) communism. That correlation is about the only one I could pull out of Planet of the Apes and I had to use a big pair of pliers. We’ve gotten used to seeing science fiction as metaphor and there’s none of it in Apes. It’s an incredibly straightforward approach, which could work well in the film’s favor, if it wasn’t so inconsistent with its characters and generally dumb.

The problem with the film–its stupidity–is in the package. The film asks the viewer to accept this ape civilization–a planet–which doesn’t seem to be larger than a city, doesn’t know anything about science except has verbose scientific terminology (how did they learn them?) and has working firearms–lots of them–but supposedly is opposed to killing. The characters, with the exception of Heston and the two good apes, flip back and forth, the worst being Maurice Evans’s. He goes from being the big bad guy, to just a guy, to sort of a good guy, to a bad guy, to just a guy. Or ape. Whatever. I think he’s supposed to be an orangutan, actually. He generally changes character between commercial breaks (oh, and Schaffner doesn’t know how to do establishing shots). The film’s about ideas (and running) and getting them presented is the only important thing.

Once the movie gets to the end and Heston’s wailing in the surf, I realized it actually could have worked. There was a big thing–during the opening, the twenty minute walk–about Heston wanting to get off the planet Earth because he hated the way things were going (war–yes, this film does actually star Charlton Heston and it has a big anti-war message, one about 150 feet tall). Anyway, there’s a metaphor there, about Heston returning to the Earth he dreaded, where everything he feared had come to pass, and so on and so on. I wouldn’t want to write it, but I would have wanted to see it. Or, at least, I know it’d have been better than what they did.

CREDITS

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner; screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle; director of photography, Leon Shamroy; edited by Hugh S. Fowler; music by Jerry Goldsmith; produced by Arthur P. Jacobs; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Charlton Heston (George Taylor), Roddy McDowall (Cornelius), Kim Hunter (Zira), Maurice Evans (Dr. Zaius), James Whitmore (President of the Assembly), James Daly (Honorious), Linda Harrison (Nova), Robert Gunner (Landon), Lou Wagner (Lucius), Woodrow Parfrey (Maximus), Jeff Burton (Dodge), Buck Kartalian (Julius), Norman Burton (Hunt Leader), Wright King (Dr. Galen) and Paul Lambert (Minister).