The Killer Shrews (1959, Ray Kellogg)

I’m not sure The Killer Shrews is the best movie with a protagonist with the first name Thorne, but it’s got to be very high on the list. James Best plays that lead—Captain Thorne Sherman of the S.S. Minnow, and he and first mate Judge Henry Dupree are on a three-hour tour… okay, no, but only because the script doesn’t put any thought into the setup.

Sherman’s delivering supplies to a remote island. It’s his first time doing the run; the other guy is sick. There’s a hurricane due in, so Sherman and Dupree are racing it to the island. They’re planning on holing up onshore until it’s done, then heading back. When they arrive on the island, they discover a peculiar setup.

Swedish mad scientist Baruch Lumet is trying to shrink human beings so we use fewer resources. Except they’ve been testing on shrews—oh, there’s an opening monologue about how shrews need to eat three times their body weight in a day, or they’re going to eat people (basically)—and one of their treatments turned the shrews into twenty-pound beasts. The shrews run the island, except they’re nocturnal (basically evil moles), so the movie’s first act is Lumet’s daughter, Ingrid Goude, trying to convince Best to stay in the house.

Most of the film takes place in the living room of the house. It’s an unconventional lab, but they’re an unconventional team. There’s Gordon McLendon as the brain, Lumet as the visionary, and Ken Curtis as the drunken screw-up whom Lumet’s paired off with daughter Goude. The general assistant, Alfredo de Soto, gets stuck making drinks and doing security rounds.

Everyone on the island is a big lush because they spend all their time waiting for the shrews to eat each other, except before then, the shrews will try to break into the house and eat the people. The people also don’t have radio, so they’re unprepared for the hurricane.

The movie is Best unraveling the initial mystery, falling for Goude, and fighting back 800 giant Killer Shrews. It’s a mix of labored exposition, dogs dressed up as shrews (badly; very badly), adorable, cheap rodent puppets (a quick FYI: shrews aren’t rodents; I was serious before: they’re really mole cousins), and violent love triangle stuff. See, Curtis isn’t ready to give Goude up to some flyboy skipper like Best.

Best, bless him, is a thirty-year-old man dressed up in a captain’s outfit like a five-year-old getting his picture taken. He deserves an award for keeping that hat on. While the special effects have considerable ambition, which they fail to deliver on spectacularly, Best’s hair is always great. Must have used so much product.

Best does not make the material good. But he manages not to embarrass himself too much in the film, which seems impossible thanks to director Kellogg’s failings as well as the supporting cast.

Lumet’s quite bad as the mad scientist. Goude may be worse as the daughter. Curtis isn’t good—though he does have a couple good scenes—and he sometimes does particularly poorly, but he’s nothing compared to Lumet and Goude. They’re atrocious.

Curtis also produced, which is funny since his character’s a complete shitheel.

Dupree and de Soto do all right considering they’re the two people of color in the film, and Shrews is definitely a horror movie if you’re wondering how to figure out who will get it first.

There’s some good photography from Wilfrid M. Cline and some bland photography from him. The house isn’t a great set, and Cline can’t make it not look like a cheap set. Certainly not with Kellogg’s tedious direction. Shrews is either talking, action, or waiting for action. Kellogg directs the talking and waiting exactly the same, leaving all the suspense for the action. Except Jay Simms’s script is all about the tension breaking people down. It’s practically a Southern Gothic, and Kellogg totally misses it.

Simms’s script deserves better, even with its not inconsiderable problems.

But, all things considered, Shrews isn’t bad for a no-budget fifties atomic-age sci-fi monster movie.

The Watermelon Woman (1996, Cheryl Dunye)

The Watermelon Woman is the story of video store clerk slash filmmaker Cheryl Dunye making a film about a 1930s Black female actor known only as “The Watermelon Woman.” At least initially. Dunye, in character, will spend the film discovering more and more about her subject, culminating in a documentary short. Surrounding Dunye dans le personnage’s professional aspirations are her friends and lovers. Dunye’s best friend is fellow video store clerk and videography business partner Valarie Walker.

Walker’s the film’s comic relief (until she’s not). Woman is split between Dunye’s documentary footage in the film, shot on video; she and Walker’s professional videography outings, shot on video; the dramatic narrative, shot on 16mm; flashback film footage to 1930s movies, played on video; and occasional still photographs, sometimes on film, sometimes part of the video documentary, maybe sometimes just on video without being part of the documentary. Woman’s an editing masterclass. Dunye en tant que réalisateur and editor Annie Taylor do some sublime cutting, which isn’t always easy since Woman’s scenes all end in fade out. Dunye and Taylor will drop whole subplots in the fade-out, adding another layer. Woman’s about Dunye, the character, making the documentary, and the video stuff in Woman is footage from that documentary, but assembled—presumably—with agency by Dunye (the character). In the film made by Dunye, the writer and director. It plays incredibly naturally, down to Dunye just enjoying having the camera for the weekend and having fun.

And that natural feel also works in the reverse; when Dunye, the character, gets to the third act, she’s cagey about everything except her final product (which we don’t see her assemble). As well as Woman being the general story of her and Walker being two Black lesbian best buds in Philadelphia in the mid-1990s, with their dating and professional woes, it’s this particular, intentionally unexplored romantic drama about Dunye and Guinevere Turner. Turner’s a hip, upper-class WASP, who Walker can’t stand. Things just get worse when Dunye starts involving new video store clerk Shelley Olivier in their videography business; Walker really doesn’t like Olivier, and it’s when Walker stops being comic relief and instead Woman becomes this uncomfortable friendship drama, except Dunye (the filmmaker) doesn’t show much once Dunye (the character) strikes research gold.

Only then the research doesn’t reveal what Dunye (the character) expected, which plays out not in narrative drama but through videography narration.

Woman’s indie budget, but Dunye makes it work for the film instead of against it. The cost-saving measures (16mm only for controllable shots, video for the rest) and the occasional scene where they could’ve used another take (or ADR) add to Woman’s pulsing grip on reality. Because the film’s fiction. Dunye, the director, wanted to make a documentary about forgotten Black female actors of the 1930s and discovered they’d been forgotten. So she created the history for the film, with Zoe Leonard creating the period photographs while Dunye, Alexandra Juhasz, and Douglas McKeown made the old films. Woman’s from the better universe where women made independent movies in the 1930s and then made it to Hollywood. Just white women, so better comes with caveats.

Juhasz plays the 1930s director in photos and film clips, which strikes a chord with Dunye (the character). Except Juhasz is a white woman director involved with her Black female star (Lisa Marie Bronson), while Dunye is the Black woman director involved with a white girl (Turner). Dunye dans le personnage’s relationship with the material changes orbits during the film multiple times, often in reaction to events shown in the “uncut” footage from the documentary shoots.

It’s sublime narrative weaving.

With fades to and from black transitioning every scene, Dunye (often thanks to Walker) gets some great mic drop moments, and there are numerous good, encapsulated scenes. There are some definite standouts, but watching Camille Paglia say interracial dating didn’t exist in the thirties because Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was in the sixties….

It’s hilarious. And one assumes Dunye just asked Paglia to play the bit like she’s a male film professor.

Technically, Woman’s outstanding. In addition to that wondrous cutting, Michelle Crenshaw’s photography is fantastic. The 16mm sequences are exquisite. Really good score from Paul Shapiro.

Watermelon Woman’s awesome.

The Giant Gila Monster (1959, Ray Kellogg)

I thought this one was called The Great Gila Monster, not The Giant Gila Monster. During the first act, I kept thinking how Great was one heck of a flex given the content, but it’s not Great; it’s Giant, which is technically correct. The film is about a giant Gila monster terrorizing a bunch of hot-rodding Christian high school post-grads as they try not to go too fast, either with their cars or their girlfriends.

The film never identifies the location beyond “The Southwest,” with an opening narration about the vast empty plains (they’d be perfect for high-speed rail, don’t you think), in what turns out to be an homage to one of the Citizen Kane newsreels.

In this no-budget regional indie giant monster movie. It’s a cool enough way to start, and while the film never reaches those heights again (knowing Citizen Kane exists), it’s reasonably good, all things considered. The leads are Don Sullivan and Fred Graham. Sullivan’s the leader of the hot-rodders; the film opens with their richest kid member getting eaten by the Gila monster, which leads to the kid’s obnoxious father, poorly played by Bob Thompson, getting sheriff Graham to start an investigation. Thompson’s kid was with his girlfriend, but besides acknowledging she has a family, the film completely forgets about them.

What’s interesting about Gila is how long it takes everyone to find out about the monster. They don’t have the budget for much in the way of special effects—the Gila is an uncredited Mexican beaded lizard who only gets to crawl around the model train set when there’s an effects sequence. There aren’t even miniature cars until the finale. For a movie without Matchbox money, Gila does all right.

There are some obvious problems. Texas explains the casual, low-key racist slang and Christianity (Sullivan’s also a singer-songwriter who’s got a doozy about Adam and Eve, apparently because he doesn’t know the end of the story). Kellogg’s a lousy director for most of the material; everything’s a medium two-shot, which is fine with Sullivan and Graham; they’ve got personality and charisma. Everyone else is an energy vampire, starting with Thompson. Oh, wait, I’m forgetting about town drunk Shug Fisher. He hates his wife and drives drunk everywhere and gets away with it. He’s not good, but he’s not an energy vampire.

But Sullivan’s got a little sister—Janice Stone—who just got her leg braces, so she’s learning to walk again; their dad recently died (which is apparently when Graham took an interest). Thompson hates Sullivan, whose father died working for Thompson, and Sullivan’s dating Thompson’s French maid, Lisa Simone.

It’s all very convoluted, and only in Gila to get the run time past sixty minutes. Without the character drama and musical numbers, Gila would struggle to crack an hour.

Surprisingly good photography from Wilfrid M. Cline—his black and white day-for-night is noteworthy—and maybe an actually great score from Jack Marshall. Maybe some of it on a Theremin. It’s weird but also way more imaginative than the film needs.

Sullivan’s not exactly good, but he’s got a decent screen presence. Though once you realize he looks like a young Robert Taylor doing a James Stewart impression, you can’t unsee it. Graham’s just full-stop good. It’s a bewildering, welcome performance.

Giant Gila monster isn’t great (or really giant), but it’s engaging and successful as a “Giant” monster picture, at least a close to no-budget one.

Saratoga Trunk (1945, Sam Wood)

I cannot, in any conscience, recommend Saratoga Trunk. The list of caveats to work through is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of racism, ableism, and low-key misogyny (though less of the third, what with the first two). If you’re a Flora Robson completist, you presumably know about the time she was Oscar-nominated for playing Blackface, and so you’ve already made your peace with Trunk. For Gary Cooper completists, there are undoubtedly less shockingly exploitative lousy historical soap melodramas in his filmography.

So then Ingrid Bergman presents the most compelling reason to watch Trunk; she’s in quarter-Blackface (she powders a lot is the film’s excuse) as the illegitimate daughter of a New Orleans blue blood. After her mother “killed” her father–the film skirts around it, presumably for Code reasons (the Code memos must be a sight), but probably Dad killed himself, and Mom found the body. But after the father’s death (after he’d left Bergman’s mother to marry a fellow, white, blue blood), his family paid the mom off, and she took baby Bergman to Paris.

Now Mom has died, and Bergman is back in New Orleans to exact revenge on family matriarch Adrienne D'Ambricourt. In tow, Bergman has family servant Robson and valet Jerry Austin. Austin’s a little person. Trunk plays him for adorable comedy every time. With music. It’s a lot.

Bergman’s got a simple plan—she’s going to blackmail D'Ambricourt, possibly into ruin, as payback for Mama, and then she’s going to marry a rich guy, pass as white, and live a life of luxury. Unfortunately, Bergman almost immediately meets Texan Cooper, and he’s such a tall drink of water in his ten-gallon hat and legs for days, she immediately puts off the marriage pursuit to enjoy some Texas.

The movie initially can’t decide if Cooper’s a mark or an accomplice. Once he and Bergman get canoodling and fading to black together, he’s at least aware Bergman’s a scam artist, and she’s out to fleece D'Ambricourt (deservedly or not). The first act takes a lot of time establishing Cooper as Bergman’s love interest, including having him bond with Robson, which features Robson demanding Cooper respect her.

As a Black woman.

I’ll just give everyone the opportunity to google Flora Robson.

Yikes.

That scene ends with the fastest fade out in the film like the Hays Office told them they could do it because having a white woman say she deserves respect as a Black woman is at least better than a Black woman saying it? Again, the memos must be a treasure trove of racism, misogyny, and misogynoir. But, really, just yikes.

The movie’s first half, with Bergman hanging out in New Orleans with Cooper on her arm (and vice versa), giving the blue bloods heart palpitations, is bad. The second half of the movie (less than half, unfortunately) has Bergman on the prowl in Saratoga, her eyes set on marrying would-be railroad tycoon John Warburton. The Trunk in the title refers to a railroad’s main line.

Bergman and Cooper have to keep their hands off one another long enough for Bergman to marry rich. She’ll get help from busybody Florence Bates and have all sorts of awkward interactions around the grand hotel where they’re staying in Saratoga Springs. Saratoga’s about how New Orleans is crappy, and the most beautiful place on the planet is in upstate New York.

Sure, Jan.

After a brief rally in the late second act—Bates gives Trunk some unproblematic gas, arguably the first player to do so—things fall apart for the finale. The Trunk finally becomes important, only it’s dramatically inert. I’m curious if Edna Ferber’s source novel is a spoof of objectivism or if it’s sincere. The movie doesn’t really have time for it—the capitalist philosophy is Cooper’s story, and the movie does Cooper’s scenes away from Bergman in quick exposition dumps. He’s just around for beefcake. Or the early-to-mid-forties version of Gary Cooper beefcake.

Cooper’s never good, but—when he’s not being racist or ableist to the sympathetic supporting players—he’s likable. Bergman’s either great or terrible. She’s doing high melodrama. I mean, she’s not great, but she’s (problematically) compelling. And they do have lots of chemistry together.

Director Wood and photographer Ernest Haller deserve kudos for the ways they find to squeeze all of Cooper’s limbs into the frames. The movie makes lots of hash about him being so tall, and Wood does his damnedest to make Cooper seem too tall for the screen.

Technically, Trunk’s a solid studio melodrama. Wood’s direction is fine. He likes implying sexy time more than he likes doing action scenes, which is a problem. Max Steiner’s score would be excellent if it weren’t for his comedy themes for when Austin walks, talks, or exists.

Fabulous gowns for Bergman from Leah Rhodes.

Saratoga Trunk is in the “needs to be seen to be believed” camp (or is it “needs to be seen to be believed camp”), but not in a good way. Beware.

This post is part of the 6th Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blogathon hosted by Virginie of The Wonderful World of Cinema.

Night Shift (1982, Ron Howard)

Night Shift distinguishes itself immediately. The opening sequence is magnificent, featuring two crooks (Richard Belzer and Badja Droll) chasing down pimp Julius LeFlore and inciting the incident for the film. Director Howard has three credited editors on Night Shift—Robert James Kern, Daniel P. Hanley, and Mike Hill—and their cutting is deft. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel’s script gives them plenty of opportunities for layering the narrative impacts just right, and Howard and cinematographer James Crabe are big on keeping things fluid. The camera moves, the people move. There’s maybe one mediocre sequence in Night Shift, and it jumps out because the rest of it has been so sublime. Starting from the prologue, which leads directly into the opening titles.

The film’s got one great eighties montage sequence—the story’s about two morgue attendants who decide to offer their location and management services to LeFlore’s call girls, who are having a tough time without him. Shift’s filmed—in part and quite effectively—in Dirty Old New York. However, even with the spots of violence, it’s not about the city being dangerous. The characters sometimes find themselves in danger, but everyone’s jazzed to be living in the Big Apple. Or at least, not un-jazzed.

Anyway. That great eighties montage sequence is when the girls go to work for the the guys (Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton); as Keaton drives them around, buys them glamorous clothes because Winkler’s a Wall Street burnout who starts investing for the girls, and is able to get them into legit businesses… in less than four weeks. Don’t pay attention to the timing; just enjoy the movie. Especially with that accompanying Al Jarreau song.

For some wonderful, peculiar reason, Night Shift went with Burt Bacharach for the score, which is a great move on its own, but then Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager and friends wrote original songs for the film. There are some more familiar ones than others, but Bacharach’s on fire, with the soundtrack always lending to Howard’s constant movement themes. Again, Night Shift is all about fluidity.

Winkler’s the protagonist. He’s the nebbish burnout who no one takes seriously—not boss Floyd Levine, not fiancée Gina Hecht, not mom Nita Talbot—who finds himself demoted back to the night shift at the morgue so Levine can give nephew Bobby Di Cicco an easy gig. Di Cicco’s only in a few scenes, but he’s an awesome dipshit. No notes.

Starting on the night shift with Winkler is new guy Keaton, who’s a delightful jackass.

In addition to breaking in the new guy and fretting over the wedding with Hecht—the wedding is in nine months—Winkler also starts hanging out with neighbor Shelley Long, who just happens to be a call girl. They meet in the second scene, when Long’s identifying a body and realizes she knows Winkler, who does not remember her and who the investigating cop is sure is a john. Eventually, there’s confusion involving Hecht, who the film does no favors in the nagging girlfriend part. Overcoming how poorly Hecht gets treated is one of Shift’s initial hurdles. It clears, but just barely. They delay the fallout from Winkler and Long’s new friendship until they’ve got Hecht in a part to make her seem villainous in addition to pitiful.

Hecht being really good helps.

At the heart of the film are Winkler and Keaton. Keaton’s trying to convince Winkler they’re in a buddy picture, while Winkler just wants to be left alone. Lots of good friendship bonding, with lots of laughs (and then heart), for Winkler and Keaton.

For most of the second act, their friendship is the core; then things gracefully transition to Long and Winkler.

The third act opens clunky–Night Shift certainly seems like they went back and re-did some of the film to make it work better. It’s so clunky it entirely stalls the film. Then, in an effort worthy of Atlas, Winkler singlehandedly (though Vincent Schiavelli contributes) gets the film moving again. It’s all in a big comedy set piece with multiple moving parts moving across plot levels, and it’s glorious. The finish is then gravy, pay-off after pay-off.

Keaton gives one of the exceptional comic performances, Winkler’s a wonderful lead, Long’s outstanding. It’s so well-acted, so well-made. So surprisingly unproblematic in its portrayal of the subject matter (I mean, there are some problems, but a lot less than you’d think).

Night Shift’s phenomenal.

Day of the Dead (1985, George A. Romero)

Day of the Dead is a nightmare. Occasionally literally, with writer and director Romero not afraid to rely on a recurring “it was just a nightmare” bit. But more symbolically… Day is about a group of scientists working in a secured location in the Florida Everglades, ostensibly protected by the U.S. Army; they’re on a mission from the government, which started in the early days of the undead plague. It’s unclear how long they’ve been at it—at least a month (Romero’s got a great calendar device). Long enough scientist Lori Cardille has had time to get romantic with soldier Anthony Dileo Jr. and long enough the group has lost something like six men.

There’s a helicopter and its pilot (Terry Alexander, the only Black non-zombie), a radio operator (Jarlath Conroy), the soldiers, the scientists, the zombies they’ve captured, and the zombies above waiting to get into their bunker. The movie opens with Alexander, Conroy, Cardille, and Dileo on a search mission to Fort Myers. Real impressive empty street shots, but it’s the only time the movie’s out of the bunker until the end. As usual, Romero’s got to do what he can on a budget.

We get some of the team dynamic, but mostly Dileo going through a mental breakdown and Cardille unintentionally aggravating the situation. Dileo and Cardille’s relationship status is never important to the plot, but since the other soldiers really hate Dileo and really want to rape Cardille, it gets an early emphasis. The soldiers in question are mostly bully Gary Howard Klar and comical(?) dipshit Ralph Marrero. Klar’s super-duper racist towards Dileo (for being Hispanic, though Klar seemingly has no issues with other Hispanic soldier Taso N. Stavrakis; well, playing Hispanic). It doesn’t help the situation Dileo’s falling apart and can’t do his job, which usually involves keeping zombies from eating his fellow soldiers.

When the helicopter expedition returns to base, we find out the Major has died and, now, Joseph Pilato is in command. Pilato thinks the scientists are wasting everyone’s time and making things more dangerous. Given what it’ll turn out lead scientist Richard Liberty has been doing… Pilato’s not exactly wrong. Cardille’s trying to either reverse the zombie process or at least prevent the continued contagion, while Liberty’s training the zombies as pets. His main project is played by Sherman Howard. Howard won’t single-handedly save the film, but he gives its only transcendent performance. There will be other good performances—there will be abysmal performances—but Howard’s is singular.

The majority of Day is the human drama. It’s the end of the world, you get eaten when you die, there’s nothing to eat but beans. Everyone’s on edge. Romero’s script keeps moving pretty well, but he gives his actors dialogue they can’t possibly essay. Like, again, there’s bad acting. But, holy cow, is Romero’s writing a lot at times. It’s like he’s compensating for the lack of budget both in scope and casting—why give Liberty great (or even good) dialogue when he’s just going to play it like he’s cutting prices on a used car commercial. Eventually, Alexander will get to walk off with the movie (for the humans), but Romero spends a lot of time focused on “protagonist” Cardille. Cardille’s always fine, often good, especially considering how bad the other acting gets.

Pilato’s amazingly bad. Klar, Marrero, and Dileo are all varying degrees of bad, but Pilato turns it into an art form. Day’s all about how much you don’t want the U.S. Army involved in anything. No lies detected and all, but they’re still cartoonish.

Of course, one can easily make the argument no one knows how living in a zombie apocalypse is going to affect id vs. superego when communicating with others (i.e., the Howard Hawks “no one knows how Ancient Egyptians talked” argument from Land of the Pharaohs). It also doesn’t matter because the human drama’s real enough, and the zombie horror is exceptional. Once things go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. And there’s such good gore. Day’s mesmerizingly revolting.

Exceptional editing from Pasquale Buba is a plus, but the technicals are all solid. Michael Gornick’s photography’s always at least good, sometimes better (though he can’t hide some reused locations), and John Harrison’s score is outstanding. And Romero’s direction’s exceptional.

If only he had the budget to hire some better actors. At that level, he’d presumably have the time to fix the dialogue too. But still, good show. Day of the Dead’s an exceptionally human (and humane) nightmare.

Mr. Mom (1983, Stan Dragoti)

Approximately three-quarters of the way through Mr. Mom (approximately because the movie is a series of sitcom set pieces, not necessarily in sound narrative order), I realized it wasn’t just about sitcom set pieces; the whole thing is a situation comedy. With very low stakes. When the third act has to gin up the big drama, each resolution is a little more pat than the last, with Mom putting the whole weight on Teri Garr.

Sort of sums up the entire picture.

Mr. Mom opens with its pilot episode—Detroit auto engineer Michael Keaton gets laid off, even though his boss and carpool driver Jeffrey Tambor said it wasn’t happening. Keaton also works with Christopher Lloyd and Tom Leopold; Lloyd must’ve been doing someone a favor. Mom plays like a prestige sitcom in an era where the concept was before its time… except the script’s bad and the direction’s terrible.

Anyway.

Keaton’s laid off, so both he and Garr are going to look for work. They bet on it. After a commercial break, Garr’s got a job, and Keaton doesn’t. We get a little of their characters’ backstories throughout, without any actual insight, obviously. Garr went to college for something advertising-like and worked for two years before leaving to homemake for Keaton. Keaton was in the Army, then went to college, then got a job in Detroit designing cars. They can’t afford actual cars, just filming at the plant, so it’s not like there’s a failed supercar subplot. “Tonight on NBC Mr. Mom” doesn’t have supercar money.

Garr goes to work for Martin Mull, Keaton starts hanging out with her housewife friends. Mull’s a sleaze, but Garr doesn’t acknowledge it because it’s the eighties and it’s messed up. Garr’s Mom’s secret weapon. Like, it’s Keaton’s test run for sure—is Michael Keaton ready for his own “The Michael Keaton Show”? Most of his scenes are like he’s doing stand-up, presumably because director Dragoti hasn’t given him any other instruction or input. Mr. Mom has a lot of pitfalls—spoiler, the screenplay (credited to John Hughes) was worked on by a room of Aaron Spelling TV writers. And Hughes’s screenplay was only ever intended for television anyway, in that weird era of TVM comedies.

So Mom’s got a lot riding against it.

But nothing compares to Dragoti’s abjectly bad direction.

Obviously, some of the fault lies with Victor J. Kemper’s photography. Kemper’s not incompetent, just generic. But there’s better generic than what Kemper shoots for Dragoti. And Patrick Kennedy doesn’t know what he’s doing with his cutting, either. The technicals on the movie, outside Garr’s work outfits (they get the only costuming credit), are rough. I forgot about the hair and makeup on the housewives.

So why isn’t Mr. Mom the worst, then? Keaton and Garr are likable. Keaton never has to be particularly cute with the kids—any parenting mishap scenes are short, and the biggest plot arc for any of the kids is middle child Taliesin Jaffe having to give up his blankie. Though even it’s an incomplete plot arc, with Mom skipping the middle section. The movie does multiple montage sequences to cover the lack of story, including one involving Keaton growing a beard and being a layabout. The problem is the anti-beard coding doesn’t age well. Luckily he’s slobbing out in other ways… at least until Garr tells him a homemaker has to take pride in the home.

Plus divorced housewife Ann Jillian is hot to trot and after Keaton for absolutely no reason other than there aren’t any other men in the movie.

Garr’s coworkers don’t even get names.

And, of course, despite having such a limited cast of fellas… Mr. Mom doesn’t pass Bechdel. It fails proudly.

Do Keaton and Garr save it? No. But there aren’t any casualties among the cast—even with lousy sitcom bits and Dragoti’s bad direction, everyone makes it through. Eldest son Frederick Koehler gets less than Jaffe but is perfectly solid. Koehler and Jaffe are professional kid actors. They can do this job. Mull’s fine. It’s not a standout performance, but it’s not bad. Jillian’s fine. Not sure about that hair. After them, everyone else is basically just a guest star.

Nice cameo from Edie McClurg. Miriam Flynn’s good for barely having a name (it’s also unclear how well Garr knows the other housewives or if Keaton joined someone else’s gang).

I wish it were better. And not just because it’s somehow a long ninety-one minutes—you’re being forced to marathon a sitcom you didn’t agree to marathon. But there are some really obvious misses—Keaton and Garr never get to be together, which I know is a feature, not a bug, but it’d have been nice to see how they worked together. Especially since they’re then left running their own shows without reward.

Also… the final joke is dreadfully unfunny. There’s a good reason Aaron Spelling didn’t make sitcoms.

Chaw (2009, Shin Jeong-won)

Chaw tells the familiar tale of a man-eating wild boar and the brave villagers who confront it. The boar’s descended from the mutant boors the Japanese created when they invaded Korea. These abominations have been low-key terrorizing the countryside for decades and as the hipsters started doing weekend trips from Seoul into the countryside, things have gotten worse. The boars have gotten a taste for man-flesh, which post-grads Jung Yu-mi and Ha Sung-kwang have been investigating for years in hopes of breaking it big into tenured positions. They just happen to be in this one particular village when the giant man-eating boar attacks, and the timing coincides with Seoul cop Eom Tae-woong getting reassigned to this one particular village, which is important because Jung and Eom are going to be the third act action heroes.

Eom’s brought along mom Park Hye-jin and wife Heo Yeon-hwa; Park’s got dementia (you wouldn’t feel good about it, but you’ll laugh at her dementia antics too) and Heo’s pregnant. Heo and Eom might have chemistry together, but they’re never in the movie long enough together for anyone to find out. Heo’s got home stuff to do, not protagonist work like Eom.

Eom initially shares the spotlight with absurd Seoul detective Park Hyuk-kwon. Chaw actually has an incredibly complicated first act, lots of characters, lots of layers. But the movie starts with a horrific Jaws-inspired death scene, followed by exceptionally straight-faced slapstick. Director and co-writer Shin isn’t shy about setting Chaw’s tone, which is one of its greatest assets. Along with his confidence. Chaw’s finale, which attaches the second half of Predator to the first half of Jaws, with some Aliens thrown in, is exceptional action direction. Especially since the film’s shot in frequently iffy DV. Shin and cinematographer Kim Yung-chul compensate—and the silliness but thoroughness of the CG wild boar helps a lot (it’s intentionally cute)–and it all works out.

But the first act is a lot. There are multiple victims to remember—and to remember who, if anyone, knows about the victim (since it’s a vacation town, I’m pretty sure at least one victim gets forgotten). Eom’s subplot initially seems to involve Park and Heo, but it doesn’t. Instead he becomes best friends with adorably weird detective Park—who never breaks character, which is the point, and it’s superb work start to finish, especially since all the village cops are buffoons. It’s like a mix of Se7en and Keystone Cops.

Eventually–Chaw’s real confident in its runtime—Shin knows they can keep this going for a couple hours, they just need to make it to the second act, and so the first act throws a bunch of spaghetti at the wall. All of it pays off in the end, which is chef’s kiss; Shin and Kim Yong-cheol’s script is so narratively sound it rings. But the first act. So lots of comedy, lots of characters.

The second act brings in master hunter Jang Hang-seon. He quickly becomes everyone’s grandpa. What if Robert Shaw was cuddly? Jang’s great.

So then it seems like it’s Eom, Jang, and Park. Jaws. Including some great homage scenes. Though much grosser with mammals than fish.

Then the movie adds Yun Je-mun to the mix. He’s Jang’s former protege who’s become a TV celebrity hunter. Yun’s weird. He does this macho thing until he gets sweet on Jung, then he’s very… inappropriate at times. Harmlessly? But grossly? Don’t sniff girls’ hair when they’re asleep, fellas.

It’s a neat, very amusing subplot the movie introduces in the second half for Yun and Jung. There are a number of major subplot resolutions in the second act. Chaw’s clearing the deck for the finale but also compensating for it not having an infinite amount of space for the hunting party to cover. There are only so many places the boar can be.

Chaw’s great. The main cast members all get nice standouts, the script’s strong, production’s good. Shin even knew not to show off too much when shooting with DV because who’s going to notice? It’s a delight.

Mad Monster Party? (1967, Jules Bass)

Mad Monster Party? spends a solid portion of its runtime only slightly amusing. It’s technically competent stop-motion animation with a charming voice performance from Boris Karloff as Boris von Frankenstein. He’s just discovered the anti-life formula and has become destroyer of ravens, potentially worlds. Having run the gamut from creating life to creating anti-life, Karloff decides it’s time to retire, and he’s leaving the whole thing to nephew Felix Flanken (voiced by Allen Swift). And he’s going to reveal both his achievement and his succession plan at a meeting of the Worldwide Organization of Monsters.

So Karloff invites all the monsters to come down to the island, have a few laughs, have their dreams of world domination crushed.

The opening titles are a usually amusing, always competent series of bits involving the various monsters getting their invitations to the party. There’s Dracula (voiced by Allen Swift), there’s the Invisible Man (voiced by Allen Swift), there’s Dr. Jekyll (voiced by Allen Swift), and there’s Mr. Hyde (voiced by Allen Swift). Swift has two more major characters—the zombie and the Frankenstein Monster. Phyllis Diller plays the Bride of the Frankenstein Monster, though Mad Monster doesn’t do the obvious hair bit.

Finally—at least in terms of unique performers—there’s Gale Garnett. She plays Francesca, Karloff’s ample-bosomed assistant. She thinks she ought to be the heir and starts plotting against Karloff, enlisting the aid of Count Dracula.

Swift plays Dracula as a Borscht Belt Bela Lugosi. Outside Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Swift has a bit for all the voices. Invisible Man is Sydney Greenstreet, specifically in Casablanca, including the fez. The zombie character is Peter Lorre (looks like him too). Felix, the lead (who looks like a variation on Hermey from producer Rankin/Bass’s Rudolph), is Jimmy Stewart. It’s very disconcerting to watch the Stewart bit fail over and over; like, did they really think it would work?

Swift will also voice “Mafia Machiavelli,” who is the chef. It’s a surprisingly intentionally problematic scene with the killer chef threatening the Lorre zombie, who’s busy mooning over Garnett.

Garnett is Mad Monster’s secret weapon. When she does her song about betraying everyone—in alliance, at that time, with Dracula–the movie suddenly gets strangely good. At first, it seems like a brief flash of goodness, but then Garnett keeps going, both in her performance and the occasional song numbers. She and the Felix puppet get a good moonlit duet and such.

There’s a surprise monster—a deus ex machina in a movie about a literal deus ex machina—but there’s enough humor in the finale for the movie to surpass the contrivances. Even the worst characters have some charm to them, and the stop-motion’s always fun. There are a couple of great action sequences, including one coming immediately after Diller and Garnett’s puppets start wrestling, and the soundtrack plays cat yowls. Repeated ones, like the sound editors demanded more, drilling in the “joke.”

But then the movie immediately recovers with a phenomenal action sequence.

Mad Monster Party?’s got lots of moments ranging from fun to actual funny, a surprisingly good performance from Garnett, a fun one from Karloff, way too broad work from Swift, and superb stop-motion animation.

It all evens out well enough.

Sudden Impact (1983, Clint Eastwood)

At least a third of Sudden Impact is director, producer, and star Eastwood doing a Hitchcock homage starring Sondra Locke. Locke doesn’t speak during the Hitchcock homage sequences; she just walks silently, staring at various things, remembering her horrific origin story, then shooting some rapist in the balls and then the head. Now, Sudden Impact is Dirty Harry 4, coming seven years after the previous entry; Eastwood’s in his fifties now. There aren’t young chippies throwing themselves at him (I mean, Locke’s fourteen years younger, but she’s still a grown woman), but he’s still got to contend with unsympathetic police brass. They don’t understand how dangerous the world has become, and only a man like Dirty Harry can get results.

The movie opens with Locke offing her first rapist, but we don’t know he’s a rapist yet. She’s just killing some guy in a Hitchcock homage. Then it’s off to court for lady judge Lois De Banzie to disrespect Eastwood’s authority and let young punk Kevyn Major Howard back out on the street. Eastwood didn’t have any evidence. Then Eastwood goes and interrupts a coffee shop robbery where he kills the only four Black people in the movie so far, just before Locke has an interaction with some Hispanic toughs. Impact’s main villains will be all white, but the movie is determined to remind the audience cities are full of ethnic types who are just criminals.

Also, one of the main villains will be a lesbian. Audrie Neenan. She hopefully fired her agent after this one.

But we’re getting ahead because it takes Sudden Impact forty minutes to get the actual plot, which will be Eastwood investigating the secrets of coastal city “San Paulo” (filmed in Santa Cruz), where Locke just happens to have returned to kill all her assaulters. See, ten years before, Neenan brought coworker Locke to a party (along with Locke’s little sister) but as a set up for some local boys to rape them (occasionally under Neenan’s direction). Sudden Impact is Eastwood doing a seventies exploitation picture in the eighties, with the Hitchcock vibes, and then all Eastwood’s one-liners about how all those liberals, and intellectuals, and smooth-talkers don’t understand how policing needs to be done. From the business end of a very special .44 Magnum, because it’s the eighties, and there’s got to be some kind of tech angle to it.

Just to pad out the run time, Eastwood also stars a gang war with uncredited Michael V. Gazzo, so there can be lots of shootouts in scenic San Francisco. Eastwood, as a director, does a great job showcasing the locations. Impact’s got a great crew—Joel Cox’s editing is great, and Bruce Surtees’s photography is muted and lush—even if the action set pieces are a bit blah. It’s just Eastwood going from shootout to shootout. Occasionally, boss Bradford Dillman yells at him. Dillman’s back from the previous movie playing the same part but with a different character name. Eastwood’s only friend—his Black friend, no less—is played by Albert Popwell. Popwell’s back from the original Dirty Harry, where he was at the business end of a one-liner; apparently, since 1971, Eastwood rehabilitated him and turned him into a cop.

Better movie, no doubt.

Lalo Schifrin’s music varies from inspired to grating–his Hitchcock-y music for Locke’s great. The opening music’s weird, though, especially since the titles are an homage to The Maltese Falcon’s San Francisco Bay shots. Shame Eastwood didn’t realize they could’ve nodded towards movies with good stories for the plotting.

He’s not good. He’s bored all of the time, annoyed some of it. The director’s cut must be about him having to pass bladder stones. Locke’s awesome during her silent walking around scenes. Once she’s got to talk, she’s terrible. Except when she’s got the exploitative but prestige scene where she tells her catatonic sister how she killed the first rapist. From that scene, it seems like Locke will have some pay-off dramatically.

Not so.

Not even after Eastwood gives her an excellent thriller chase sequence on a carousel.

By the third act, Impact’s gotten over its intentional casual racism and dog whistling. It seems like there’s nothing anyone can do to stop the momentum, especially not after that great thriller sequence. But then it turns out Eastwood had one more homage up his sleeve; for some inexplicable reason, which either has a great story or a tragic coincidence, Eastwood directs his Dirty Harry action scenes like he’s the slasher in a slasher movie.

So bad.

Then it’s nice the end titles have a Roberta Flack song, but it’s not a good Roberta Flack song. Sudden Impact makes some very intentional references to the previous Dirty Harry movies, but only their very seventies technical choices.

Again, the whole thing’s fascinating. But certainly not rewarding. Certainly not any good.

There is—eventually—a cute bulldog, however. Though Eastwood really leans in on bulldog’s farting. Uncomfortably so.