Suspicion (1941, Alfred Hitchcock)

Suspicion is a peculiar picture, both in terms of content and context. It’s one of those Hollywood pictures from late 1941, before Pearl Harbor, but it takes place in England, which was already in the war. So it’s set before the war. It’s an all-British cast (not to mention director Hitchcock) making an American film, so it feels a little like a thirties British Hitchcock but not really. Then there’s the ending, which certainly seems like someone had it changed—but did they—with Hitchcock saying he wanted to keep it different from the source novel’s finish.

The film’s about well-off but not too well-off Joan Fontaine falling for broke playboy Cary Grant, who’s got blue blood and empty pockets. He’s presumably a gigolo, though he reforms for Fontaine. They have a meet-cute on a train, where he makes fun of her appearance, then he later sees her on a horse and becomes enthralled. In their subsequent outing, the film hints at some sinister nature, with director Hitchcock and editor William Hamilton very deliberately implying Grant’s doing violence to Fontaine. Except, really it’s windy, and he’s just trying to steady her, or something. It’s an incredibly distinct moment—and the only thrill for the next twenty minutes or so—but the film never uses the device again. Just this one time do Hitchcock and Hamilton decide they want to trick the viewer.

The rest of the film is about the characters trying to trick one another.

See, Fontaine didn’t know Grant was a lazy, no good when she fell for him, but once they’re married, there’s really not much she can do about it. The film occasionally hints at Fontaine leaving Grant and turning back because she’s just so enamored with him—even though starting at the one-hour mark, every one of their interactions involves him lying to her and manipulating her—so instead, she’s just going to wait for the next scene. Now, Fontaine’s great. Like, her stressed-out, terrorized performance is amazing stuff. Unfortunately, her part is just paper thin. I misremembered she had some pride thing for not wanting to throw in the towel with Grant before she starts suspecting he’ll murder his best friend for money, but, no, he’s just Cary Grant, so what can she do?

Hitchcock focuses on Fontaine’s experience–occasionally pulling the camera back long enough for him and cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. to show her literarily trapped in a spider’s web—which apparently pissed Grant off because he thought the movie should focus on… him gaslighting his wife about money. Grant just fell too hard for Fontaine to do due diligence and find out what dad Cedric Hardwicke would be willing to cough up to support the newlyweds. Grant’s disappointment leads him to take a job with a cousin, Leo G. Carroll, before deciding to convince his chronically drunk, questionably intelligent best friend, played by Nigel Bruce.

Suspicion is at its most charming when Bruce is around. Bruce brings comic relief even to the scenes where Grant’s being an obnoxious prick and Fontaine’s defending him way too long. Until Grant gets outright hostile to Fontaine—how dare she talk about business when there are men around—the film’s a series of scenes where Fontaine discovers Grant’s lying about something, Bruce makes it weird (and funny), and there’s some character development for Fontaine at least as far as Bruce is concerned. Unfortunately, when Bruce leaves, so end Fontaine’s regular interactions with anyone besides Grant.

Fontaine does become convinced Grant’s too obsessed with village celebrity Auriol Lee’s crime thrillers, leading to some scenes with Lee around, but none of them amount to anything. Instead, they’re third act filler when the film’s got to keep Grant and Fontaine apart so she can’t get wise to what he’s doing. And apparently, he doesn’t notice her becoming increasingly terrified of him at every moment.

The film infamous doesn’t go for one ending but then doesn’t fully commit to the other either. They’ve got a chance to change gears—and some great devices they introduced in the first act during Grant and Fontaine’s courtship—which could be well-utilized in the finish, but instead… the audience just isn’t privy to the specifics of the resolution. Instead of expressively not copping out, Suspicion goes for an incomplete.

While Fontaine gets to stay busy, active, and inventive with a shallow part, Grant does not. At one point, Hitchcock breaks the fourth wall with Grant laying on the charm, which doesn’t work once but might’ve been an okay recurring bit. But, alas, it is not. Bruce’s fantastic, Hardwicke and May Whitty are fun as Fontaine’s parents. And Lee and Carroll are good. The problem with the supporting cast isn’t ever the performances; it’s just the parts being too minor.

The technicals are all great, especially Stradling’s photography and Franz Waxman’s music. Hitchcock’s direction is usually phenomenal. Suspicion’s a great time; it’s just clear—studio or not, code or not—they didn’t have the right ending.

This post is part of the Master of Suspense Blogathon hosted by Maddy of Classic Film and TV Corner.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977, John ‘Bud’ Cardos)

Kingdom of the Spiders opens with some scary music for the title reveal, then an original country song by Dorsey Burnette starts playing over the titles, extolling the virtues of Verde Valley, where Kingdom takes place. It’s a terrible opening titles sequence, followed by the film’s first failed attempt at suspense. Unfortunately, it will not have any successful ones. This first one, involving a bunch of spiders attacking a cow, forecasts the film’s lack of ability for suspense, humor, or anything whatsoever. I mean, there’s good photography from John Arthur Merrill and a handful of affable or inoffensive performances, but otherwise, Kingdom hasn’t got it. It doesn’t even have a kingdom.

After the spider attack—entirely from the spiders’ points of view, so we don’t know it’s spiders yet—the film introduces leading man William Shatner. He’s just a small-town, rural vet, but he carries a lot of sway. He could quarantine the farmers, and wouldn’t it be too bad if he did, what with the County Fair coming up? Shatner’s actually pretty good as the town vet. He and Woody Strode have decent chemistry, even though neither is doing a particularly good (or bad) job. Of course, Shatner’s first scene involves his widowed sister-in-law Marcy Lafferty (married to Shatner in real-life at the time, which ends up being awkward given the love triangle). Shatner gets to ride a horse and do his own stunts, so he’s having fun. Then Lafferty comes on to him because all the ladies love Shatner in Kingdom, only she moans her dead husband’s name (his little brother who died in “‘Nam.”). Shatner tosses her off him—not the last time Shatner tosses a costar violently in the film—and heads off, but not before shaming her a little for her behavior.

Shatner heads off to the state lab to turn in the cow’s blood for testing in what seems the set-up for a scene at a university, but the action just cuts to Strode and wife Altovise Davis having a quiet night at home. Strode and Davis are fine in the movie, but they give off big “Davis married her dad’s best friend Strode” vibes. Or “Davis married Strode in exchange for Strode giving Pa some acreage.” It never feels quite right. But then the movie treats them like they’re living in the thirties, so maybe Strode’s lying to Davis about the state of reality. So it would track, especially for Davis’s frontier woman costumes.

Pretty soon—in time to threaten the County Fair, natch—big city spider scientist Tiffany Bolling comes to town to see what’s happening with these spiders. She’s snooty to Shatner, who mocks her, but then once they’re working together, he just constantly sexually harasses her, sometimes physically, as he makes it clear they need to find the nearest bed or sleeping bag. Bolling manages to churn out endless expository passages while Shatner’s mooning at her, touching her, or otherwise distracting her. Bolling’s not exactly good. The writing on her part’s lousy and director Cardos doesn’t do anything for his actors, but Bolling’s got great timing. Up until she falls for Shatner’s macho charm, anyway. Until then, which is when he starts bossing her around like a possession, Bolling’s the only one who seems to know how to keep Kingdom moving.

Because, otherwise, it’s a slog. An intentional one. Cardos and editors Igo Kantor (the film’s producer) and Steven Zaillian (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List) belabor every action beat, drag out every shot, and just generally pace Kingdom like a slow roll through a rock pile.

There are some other surprises. Bolling and Lieux Dressler pass Bechdel in their first scene. They never do in any other scenes, quite the opposite, but it’s initially pretty cool.

Did I say “surprises” plural? It’s the only surprise. Except when Shatner flaunts Bolling to Lafferty almost immediately after telling Lafferty he’d eventually get horny enough he doesn’t care she’s his dead little brother’s wife, so he’d knock on her door. The longer the movie goes on, the less likable Shatner becomes. By the third act, you’re just waiting for a spider to get him.

Or for anything to happen, which it doesn’t. Except for a bewilderingly inept town panic scene.

With a better director, better script, better editors but the same cinematographer, and maybe even Shatner, Kingdom could be a fun homage to fifties sci-fi. Instead, it’s a dull, joyless turd.

Blankman (1994, Mike Binder)

Blankman is surprisingly good. Even after showcasing its initial strengths, then taking a second act tumble, the movie picks itself up for a strong finish. Given the subject—a neurodivergent-coded man becomes a superhero—there are plenty of poorly-aged, ableist jokes. But the jokes made at hero Damon Wayans’s expense always say more about the teller, with Wayans usually having a good rejoinder. It’s often David Alan Grier, as Wayans’s older brother, who’s making the jokes, and Grier being a boob is one of Blankman’s standards.

But Grier’s a likable boob; he’s just rarely the most likable character in a scene. Definitely not with Wayans or Robin Givens. Givens is the love interest in a riff on the old-fashioned superhero movie love triangle: Grier’s the third wheel since Givens doesn’t know Wayans exists when not running around in his tights. The third act rushes through all the reveals (or skips them entirely) because it’s campy enough by that time it doesn’t need much reality.

The movie opens with Grier and Wayans as kids watching the Adam West “Batman” show, with already different Wayans (Wayans’s sons play the kid versions) stringing together all the metal in the house to improve the TV reception. Blankman’s got a lot going on with its superhero concepts. The movie’s an homage to “Batman,” complete with the spinning transitions and fight scene onomatopoeia, but it can’t do anything with the actual property. They even downplay Wayans’s gadgets, made with recycled junk, being “Blank” this or “Blank” that. They say it, but never with a wink to the “Bat” naming scheme.

Then there’s Wayans’s motivation. He’s inspired by personal loss, but he’s not a dark and brooding hero. There’s literally a place in the Blankman for that lousy Dark Knight monologue, but the movie heads happily—and successfully—into camp instead. He inspires the citizenry with his heroics and catches the eye of news anchor Givens. Grier works at the same station but in the basement on the tabloid TV show for Jason Alexander. Besides the unfortunate bald cap, Alexander’s quite funny as a loathsome producer. Unfortunately, some of it doesn’t age well, as Alexander’s in a wheelchair, primarily for sight gags.

Grier’s much more likable than Alexander.

Until Wayans decides to become a caped crusader, most of Grier’s time is spent flirting with Givens. Again, part of the joke is he’s laying it on so heavy he’s icky, but it’s still a lot sometimes. Once Givens gets to laugh at him, however, it all evens out.

The secret to Blankman’s success is Givens.

So the movie’s got the “Batman” camp thing going on, the recycled junk wonderful toys, a neurodivergent hero, but then there’s Givens. Blankman—both in the script, from Wayans and J.F. Lawton, and in Binder’s direction—plays Givens as Lois Lane… from Superman: The Movie. Only giving her more to do (there are also some Superman nods in dialogue from other characters). It’s an excellent showcase for Givens, who’s fantastic.

The other essential performance is Jon Polito, as the cartoonishly evil (and capable) mobster. He’s funny, absurd, and dangerous. And the film seems to know how well he does with the material, giving him campier and campier bits as things progress, with Polito knocking all of them out of the park.

Wayans and Grier are both good, to be sure. Wayans is something of a slow burn, not really getting to do much until his superhero arc has started. And Grier’s got to flex like he’s the protagonist in the first before sharing the back seat with Polito. The late second-act stumbles are mostly about how the film tries to get itself rearranged in time for the finale.

There are some missed opportunities—they had a perfect post-credits tag and didn’t do it—and some of the jokes, problematic and not, land soft, but Blankman’s an excellent superhero comedy. With a little more money (the special effects range in quality) and an impossible “Batman: The TV Show” license, it could’ve been a singular homage.

Instead, it’s still one heck of a success. Stellar performances from Givens and Polito, strong turns from Wayans and Grier, an empathetic, nimble script, and more than adequate direction from Binder. He’s not an action director, but Blankman doesn’t have the budget for it, and he gets the timing, both the performances and the comedy.

Really nice photography from Newton Thomas Sigel too.

Blankman. He’s not the hero we deserve, but he’s the one we need right now.

A Whale of a Tale (1976, Ewing Miles Brown)

A Whale of a Tale is very much not a “whale” of a tale. The film’s about a little kid (Scott C. Kolden) who spends a summer working at Marineland of the Pacific. While Marineland clearly let the film production shoot on location, it also feels very much like the whole venture is Marineland-produced. At its best, Tale feels like an extended commercial for the park, complete with lengthy sequences showcasing its attractions.

It’s also not very animals’ rights. At one point, Kolden chastises Orky the Orca (a real-life Marineland attraction) for not wanting to perform even though people paid good money to see a show. Marineland’s the bestest oceanarium in the world… or at least America (inside joke you hopefully don’t get), and it’s really neat they let Kolden work there, even though his evil aunt Nancy O’Connor thinks it’s too dangerous a place. Kolden lives with aunt O’Connor and mom Abby Dalton. Dalton’s a recent-ish widow, and they’ve moved close enough Kolden can walk to the park from home, sneaking out so O’Connor doesn’t know.

For a while, the film’s biggest drama is whether or not Dalton’s going to let Kolden work at the park, but once Dalton meets handsome and single marine biologist William Shatner, the writing’s on the wall. Despite Shatner initially considering Kolden a pest, he soon comes to like the kid. And especially like the mom.

Sort of. Just like everyone else in the film, Shatner’s utterly lacking in character. All of his character’s busy work throughout is nonsense. Someone’s training the dolphins to do some kind of Navy rescue thing or something. The details don’t matter because they’re nonsense. Shatner and the other actors deliver their lines like someone’s feeding them off-screen. And then there are the times there’s obvious looping, like when Shatner and park fisherman Marty Allen are around the real animals and clearly trying not to get whacked by a killer whale. Shatner does better than Allen, which isn’t saying much, but there aren’t any good performances in Whale. Director Brown’s not capable of directing good performances or writing good parts.

Though there is an okay enough cameo from Andy Devine, who doesn’t have the lung capacity he did as a younger man, but occasionally still sounds familiar. Richard Arlen’s the other big cameo, as the park owner. Even more than Devine, Arlen’s just there for a familiar name in the credits.

The film was shot in the early seventies, then sat around for a few years. Then, in the interim, Jaws came out, and the lethargic tiger shark capture sequence—which seems to go on for ten minutes—ends with similar but not too similar music to John Williams. What’s more amusing is the first half of the sequence, when you wish they’d have some Jaws music just so it wouldn’t be boring, only for it to come in later and still be boring.

The animal showcases don’t feature composer Jonathan Cain’s songs, which are inane and from the perspective of Kolden. School and aunt O’Connor suck, and life’s so much better at Marineland. It’s also unclear why Marineland okayed the plot, which has Kolden become the most invaluable employee in the park. Literally. Can’t run without him. You go see Whale of a Tale and go to Marineland; if Kolden weren’t there, the place couldn’t run.

But then putting any thought whatsoever into Whale is way too much.

Director Brown and editor Ronald V. Ashcroft also endeavor to push the audience throughout, constantly repeating the same thirty seconds of carnival music in the park scenes.

Whale could be worse. It’s an absolute bore, but it’s just a bloated, inept industrial film with a mostly slumming cast. While Kolden’s bad—but he can’t be good with Brown’s writing and directing—he’s far from the worst kid actor in the world–or even America.

But Whale’s not even worth it for the curiosity factor. Especially not since Marineland of the Pacific showed up in lots of popular entertainment. If you want to see the park in its heyday, you might even be able to find a movie or show you can stay awake during.

Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973, Joe D’Amato)

Until Death Smiles on a Murderer gets so inane it’s exasperating, at least the music (by Berto Pisano) isn’t terrible, and the editing (Piera Bruni and Gianfranco Simoncelli) is excellent. I don’t think either of them get worse once the rest of the movie does, but at that point, the film’s so bad it’s not like not incompetent music or even good cutting will make a difference.

Murderer opens with Luciano Rossi mooning over sister Ewa Aulin’s corpse. In flashback, we learn Rossi assaulted Aulin at least once and planned to take her somewhere else so they could live as a couple, not siblings. Not surprisingly, Aulin runs away into the immediate arms of older man Giacomo Rossi Stuart. Rossi is chasing her when she meets Stuart. Basically, Aulin sees Stuart on a park bench and is like, take me away.

I need to mention Rossi–the actor and his character—is a man with a hunched back. The film codes it as terrifying and evil.

The action then jumps ahead approximately three years, where bored landed gentry marrieds Sergio Doria and Angela Bo watch a speeding carriage crash at the front gate. The driver’s dead, the passenger’s unconscious. The passenger… is Aulin, alive and groggy and suffering from amnesia.

Police inspector Attilio Dottesio comes out but doesn’t bother interviewing Aulin or even checking in on her (later on, the movie says it’s important; it’s not). Instead, he just tells Doria to have doctor Klaus Kinski check on her and then write the death certificate for the driver. Kinski then inspects Aulin with Doria and Bo, then tells them to leave so Aulin can undress for his further inspection. It seems suspicious because Kinski can’t do anything without it being suspicious, but we’ll soon learn he’s not a perv. Or, at least, he’s not just a perv. He’s got his reasons for being curious about Aulin.

Could they have anything to do with what maid Carla Mancini finds so interesting about Aulin? We’ll have to wait for that answer, which will never be satisfactory.

Kinski tells Doria and Bo to keep an eye on Aulin until her memory returns, then heads off to his laboratory to do a bunch of chemical mixing. There’s got to be six minutes of chemical mixing montages. The first act of Death is incredibly padded, which ends up being okay because at least the music’s pretty and the editing is good. The less story, the better.

But pretty soon, Doria confesses his love to Aulin, who reciprocates (albeit without much enthusiasm). She’s a lot more enthusiastic—or at least director D’Amato’s more enthusiastic—when Bo also confesses her love to Aulin. Apparently, D’Amato convinced Bo to do a lot more nudity than Aulin; in addition to Bo and Aulin’s Skinemax scene, Bo’s also got one with Doria. Their scene—intercut with other footage of the throuple possibly happy (it’s very unclear)—also implies a new status quo, which we soon learn isn’t accurate. Except the inciting incident isn’t shown in scene. It’s like D’Amato knew not to ask his actors to do too much acting. Especially not Aulin, who spends the film looking diminutive and subservient in various outfits.

Everything eventually comes together—inspector Dottesio, Kinski’s experiments, older man Stuart—except D’Amato and his two co-writers are rather bad writers, so instead of tight knots, it’s a loose jumble of threads, less tied than tangled. Except for the music and editing, it often seems like no one’s invested in Death except to get Bo or Aulin undressed. Then there will be some gory sequence and, even though the gore’s low budget, at least the filmmakers were engaged.

D’Amato also photographed, and he’s most competent in that role. He’s downright bad at directing actors, regardless of who dubbed them later on (Death’s Italian), and low middling as far as composition, but his lighting’s fine.

I guess the best performances are Bo and Dottesio. Bo because she gets the only honest part, which helps her through the exploitative aspects. Dottesio’s just the most obviously competent.

Death is gory, lewd, lurid, and inordinately bad.

Impulse (1974, William Grefé)

It’s an insult to hacks to describe Impulse director Grefé as such. There are very few directors with less sense of how to direct a movie (or anything) than Grefé. But then he’s simpatico with cinematographer Edmund Gibson at least in terms of skill. Grefé’s got terrible shots, Gibson shoots them terribly. But Gibson’s credited as Edwin, so apparently, at some point, he realized maybe he was impulsive working on Impulse.

Grefé kind of—and only because every other option is exhausted—but he reminds of a TV commercial director. Like, a seventies TV commercial director. He’s got way too much headroom, and he never does close-ups during the protracted expository scenes. Outside a handful of action sequences and field trips, it’s primarily people standing or sitting inside talking to one another. Impulse filmed in Tampa, Florida, but it’s supposed to be in a much smaller place. Maybe. Maybe Shatner just drove from one side of town to the other, looking for his next mark.

More on Shatner in a bit, I promise. But there aren’t any real exteriors. Either the producers couldn’t figure out how to get permits, couldn’t afford them but then also couldn’t just guerilla the shots. Impulse is artless low-budget filmmaking. If the whole thing was about getting Shatner to wear a bunch of silly, silly, silly seventies outfits—silly—to embarrass him later, it might make sense. Except in 1974, the producers wouldn’t have known Shatner can survive anything–even seventies Florida fashion.

So it doesn’t look anywhere near as good even a TV movie from the same period. Impulse is unpleasant to view. But it’s surprisingly well-edited. Editor Julio C. Chávez initially seems as unimpressive as everyone else involved, then there’s a long shot beach scene, and it’s ADR, but it’s not bad. And then there’s some sound work where it ends, kind of breaking the third wall. Like, someone’s not hearing a conversation, then the conversation directly addresses them, and they hear.

It’s wild. It’s not good; it’s bad, but it’s at least something different.

Then the last half hour, which has Shatner’s mentally unwell gigolo conman breaking down and attacking the entire supporting cast… the editing’s really good. The scenes are still crap—especially Gibson’s day-for-night, which is ghastly—but the cutting’s nice. So, kudos to Chávez.

Otherwise, there’s Ruth Roman.

Impulse is just degrees of bad performance and how close the needle gets to embarrassing. Shatner’s spins around the whole time occasionally slows down a little, but then reliably zooms. For terrible camp Shatner, Impulse delivers.

But Roman’s all right. She’s the local rich lady whose mansion gets the only establishing shot, and her best friend is young widow Jennifer Bishop. Bishop has a late tween daughter, Kim Nicholas, who cuts school to go moon over her father’s gravestone. She even projectile cries on it. She’s very sad.

So Bishop doesn’t date.

At least not until stud Shatner arrives. Of course, he neglects to tell everyone he first met Nicholas, giving her a ride to the graveyard one day. But don’t worry, Shatner’s got no further designs on Nicholas than killing her for being a tattle rat.

Nicholas is bad, Bishop’s bad. Harold Sakata—Odd Job from Goldfinger—cameos as Shatner’s former partner-in-crime who wants in on the take. He drives around an RV with a giant “Karate Pete” sign on it; like on the crime job. It’s silly.

Sakata just embarrasses himself. He’s at least having fun. Or what amounts to it in Impulse.

For the Shatner-inclined, Impulse is required viewing, like Portrait of the Artist at a Low Point. It’s also early-to-mid-seventies-low budget Shatner, so it’s hard to be too upset at the film. It’s always bad, it’s always strange, it’s always problematic. From the start—the flashback where young Shatner (Chad Walker, in his only credit) kills his mom’s violent john, defending them, but she resents him because women are awful. Only they won’t be later; they’ll do everything Shatner says; except Nicholas because kids are terrible. Anyway.

It’s poorly shot, but it’s also exceptionally mean to Walker.

Then the opening titles are actually incompetent. The title cards pause the action, but they’re not in line with the current action. They’re mini-flashbacks. It’s inane, in addition to incompetent. Another reason Chávez is an unexpected boon.

Impulse is awful. Of course, it’s awful. It exists just to be awful.

Except for Roman and Chávez, obviously.

Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

I’m hesitant to call Amélie whimsical, though it’s the closest adjective. The film’s kind of a French New Wave-inspired fairy tale, except instead of being about magic magic, it’s about the magic of the everyday and, especially, its residents. There’s also something decidedly not fairy tale about protagonist Audrey Tautou’s quests. Broadly, Amélie is about Tautou interceding in her neighbors’ lives for good, but getting reluctant when she needs to act with as much agency in her own life.

The film sets Tautou’s character up with narration, something it keeps up throughout the whole film (flawlessly performed by André Dussollier). In summary, we meet Tautou’s individually and collectively odd parents—father Rufus and mother Lorella Cravotta—who keep young Tautou (a delightful Flora Guiet) isolated from other children. When Cravotta dies tragically, it gets even worse. A time-lapse and some narration later, Tautou enters the film.

She lives alone, except when babysitting someone’s cat, and keeps to herself. Then one day, she discovers someone’s forgotten treasure and charges herself with returning it to the person, who she doesn’t know, and who she doesn’t have any good information about. Getting better information requires Tautou to branch out into the world, which also provides her with further “do-gooding” opportunities (the film’s—or at least the English subtitles—word) for later as she discovers the sad state of her neighbors.

The film runs two hours, which includes a full subplot about annoying but apparently not dangerous and still lusty Dominique Pinon. Tautou works at a café near her apartment. Pinon used to date her co-worker, Clotilde Mollet, and now spends his day in the café stalking Mollet. Does France not have the right to refuse service? Café owner Claire Maurier knows Pinon’s harassing Mollet, knows Pinon’s interfering with Mollet doing her work, and being disruptive to other customers, but just shrugs at the inevitably of some men being that way. Eventually, as part of her new lifestyle approach, Tautou decides the best solution is to set Pinon up with another employee, hypochondriac Isabelle Nanty.

Tautou also gets involved with grocery clerk Jamel Debbouze and his abusive boss, played by Urbain Cancelier. Despite Cancelier being profoundly shitty to Debbouze, this subplot is probably Amélie’s lightest or at least most played for laughs. Tautou ensures Cancelier gets his just desserts in a pair of hilarious echoed sequences.

But her two most significant relationship developments are with dad Rufus and neighbor Serge Merlin. Rufus and Tautou start just as detached as the flashbacks show; once she realizes her capacity for playfully interfering for good, she also figures Rufus can benefit. It’s another subplot played for humor, with Merlin taking on the surrogate dad-for-character-development part.

Merlin’s a painter with osteogenesis imperfecta. Tautou’s only slightly aware of him, seeing him through the window in his apartment where all the furniture is covered in pillows so he doesn’t break any bones on it. The narration fills in the rest—the narration foreshadows all the pertinent characters, pausing on everyone long enough to give a brief character description and (usually for a smile) likes and dislikes. Amélie’s narration spends the first act handing the film over to Tautou and then shares some space with her alter ego and potential love interest, played by Mathieu Kassovitz. While Kassovitz doesn’t really join the action until halfway through the film, the film at least lets Tautou find out about him in scene. Tautou’s ground situation is dead mom, distant dad, isolated childhood, now in her early twenties. She doesn’t have a character development arc because the film never takes the time to establish her as a character, which allows for fun, impromptu diversions, but—even for something straddling magical realism—is a noticeable dodge.

Tautou’s charming, but director Jeunet’s exceptionally deliberate about framing her as such. In the third act, when people around her have to conspire to get her more active in her own destiny, there’s a slightly jarring shift in the narrative distance. Kassovitz suddenly becomes more the co-lead and even protagonist, with Tautou reduced to her life only having meaning as a romantic pursuit. At that point, Amélie starts leaning hard on the affable supporting cast—Debbouze and Merlin in particular—to distract from Tautou’s agency going out the window.

Though I suppose the approach would work just fine if Jeunet and screenwriter Guillaume Laurant (well, Jeunet and Laurant did the scenario, then Laurant did the dialogue; no WGF, I guess) were trying to comment on Tautou’s interfering adventures when she’s on the other side, but they don’t. Tautou’s strangely disinterested in the results of her actions, regardless of their positive or negative outcomes.

All the acting’s good or better. Ditto the technicals. Hervé Schneid’s editing is excellent, and while surprisingly muted, Bruno Delbonnel’s photography is strong. Good music from Yann Tiersen. And while I’m curious if Jeunet asked costume designer Madeline Fontaine to make Tautou dress like an Audrey Hepburn character or if it was Fontaine’s idea, very good costumes.

It’s a little long, and the third act’s wobbly (but most of the second act already forecasts the wobble, so it’s not a surprise); Amélie’s often hilarious, usually funny, and always delightful.

I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957, Gene Fowler Jr.)

I Was a Teenage Werewolf opens with a reasonably impressive—for 1957–schoolyard fight. Throughout the film, director Fowler will have these entirely competent low-budget action sequences, with much thought put into them by Fowler and his uncredited editor. It’s not because they’ve got ambition with Werewolf; they’re just trying to pad the runtime.

To its seventy-six minutes.

Anyway. The opening fight: troubled teen Michael Landon is at it again with the roughhousing. Someone slapped him playfully on the back, and Landon doesn’t like being touched, so he went from one to nuclear.

Responding police detective Barney Phillips says Landon’s out of chances. He’s got to go to the aircraft plant psychiatrist to get himself head-shrunk. Of course, Landon’s not into any of that mumbo jumbo and walks off. Sort of.

He walks over to his waiting girlfriend (Yvonne Lime) and is shitty to her in a different way, but it’s 1957, and she’s going to do what he says.

Landon’s issues about being touched—he initially recoils at Lime’s embrace, but if he’s initiating, it’s fine—those issues will never be addressed. When Landon goes nuclear again—beating up on his friend Ken Miller (who deserves it for his ghastly song)—he’ll end up seeing the shrink. The aircraft plant thing is a red herring (unless the plant’s in the middle of downtown), and evil psychiatrist Whit Bissell doesn’t care about Landon’s anger management issues. Bissell’s been waiting years for this perfect test subject; he’s going to give Landon a serum to revert him back to his primal stage. The problem with the modern world is too much thinking; we need to regress to the missing link and start over.

Aiding and abetting Bissell is reluctant fellow scientist Joseph Mell. There could be a whole movie about their antics over the years, with Mell cautioning Bissell not to kill this or that person and Bissell doing it anyway.

Werewolf’s about Landon’s anger issues for the first act, plus setting up the town—he and his fellow kids (he’s the leader of a significant clique) have a clubhouse where they dance, play slapstick pranks, go to second base with girls, and drink root beer probably. It’s entirely inconsistent with Landon’s previously established character. Especially since none of these kids seems to know about his fighting. It’s Halloween when the movie starts (something else entirely unimportant), which means end of October.

Landon’s had the cops called on him for fighting six times already this school year or something.

As time passes, Landon eventually turns into a werewolf—more like reverts to the missing link, but whatever—and starts killing his classmates. At that point, it becomes a police procedural for chief Robert Griffin, with already established Phillips the backup. Landon spends most of the second half of Werewolf in his makeup. He’s an enthusiastic werewolf (missing link), even if the teeth are exceptionally silly.

The finale warns of the dangers of… psychiatrists. The story’s moral is if a boy’s mother dies, he’s broken; just put him out of his misery there. Otherwise, he’ll end up in the gas chamber, and especially don’t send him to aircraft plant psychiatrists. They’re all just out to destroy modern civilization.

Unfortunately, the movie’s too rushed in the third act to embrace any of these big swings. Werewolf pads with teen exposition, fisticuffs, a posse with torches, and slapstick. When it’s actually interesting—like Landon’s dad, Malcolm Atterbury, waiting for news about his murderous son—it’s in a rush.

The best acting is Atterbury, followed by Guy Williams as Griffin’s initial sidekick (who loses his spot to Phillips because the film’s got a weird structure). Bissell’s an over-the-top caricature. Mell’s an under-the-top caricature. Vladimir Sokoloff plays the Maria Ouspenskaya part (it should’ve been Lon Chaney Jr. in a cameo), proving they could still be racist to Eastern Europeans in 1957.

Landon gets a lot to do being an inexplicable jerk and running around in his Larry Talbots. But he doesn’t get an actual arc—when he’s on the run, knowing he’s a murderous werewolf (missing link), the movie’s about everyone but him. So no character arc. His showdown with Bissell doesn’t even pay off.

Lime’s second-billed, but… has very little to do by the film’s end. She starts having very little to do after her second scene. Werewolf’s got no time for love.

The film’s got some definite camp value—Bissell alone—and there’s not-bad low-budget filmmaking on display, but Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel’s script sinks it.

This post is part of the Favorite Stars in B Movies Blogathon hosted by Brian of Films From Beyond The Time Barrier.

The Naked Kiss (1964, Samuel Fuller)

The Naked Kiss is an exceptional motion picture. However, it’s never not without its problems: it’s an astoundingly classy exploitation picture about an ex-prostitute (Constance Towers) who tries going straight, only to discover the other side of the tracks just hides their secrets in different places.

The film will also explore the lack of honor (and humanity) among thieves and just how low cops will go, all while reinforcing the cops and “moral” society as worthy and everyone else as lost. Since Kiss is a character study of Towers, one could say writer, producer, and director Fuller’s message is believe women… except it turns out most women lie. Fuller’s not subtle about the message—Towers gets at least two monologues about it, while copper Anthony Eisley gets one—though I suppose the film does technically pass the Bechdel Test. Albeit due to censoring the language.

Other side of the tracks town madam Virginia Grey has “bonbon girls,” which also gives Fuller a couple opportunities to clarify in dialogue they’re not really talking about bonbons. Once the film hits the final third—Kiss is almost equally split into thirds. The first third is about Towers arriving in a small city and becoming a nurse’s aide at the local children’s hospital. The second third is about Towers’s romance with town hero Michael Dante, which is complicated by Towers’s general past as well as her single trick in town—with copper Eisley (the film’s hero who tests out all the traveling sex workers before setting them up at Grey’s, where he visits them for bonbons, presumably). The final third is Towers in trouble, learning just because Dante and the town accepted her, they might not have done it for the right reasons.

Of course, the film opens two years before the main action, with Towers beating the crap out of her pimp (a profoundly smarmy Monte Mansfield) before revealing she’s been wearing a wig and is shaved bald. The opening titles are set over Towers calmly getting her makeup on while Mansfield wallows on the floor. Kiss is never quite as in-your-face exploitation again, but Fuller never lets the audience forget where the film started.

Fuller breaks the story into vignettes, separated by fades out, which lets him establish Towers’s new persona in town offscreen. Eisley’s initially convinced Towers is doing it as some kind of weird gag—how could a sex worker want to work with kids with terrible injuries and diseases, even though everyone at the hospital says she’s a godsend. They’re all a bunch of ladies, too; they don’t know things like Eisley. Eisley’s worlds colliding changes the direction of the film in the third act, and even though it is offscreen, too, it’s clearly momentous.

Eisley’s okay. He’s a little flat, which helps since his character’s despicable, but once it’s clear he’s fallen for Towers, there’s a nice bit of depth to his actions. Especially once he’s de facto competing with Dante, who not only saved Eisley’s life in Korea but is also a millionaire who can promise Towers the world.

Kiss is rather low budget, so the world is just film strips and stylized daydream sequences. Until the second half, when Fuller can’t stop beating the drum on how Towers is only worthwhile because she got out of the bad life and everyone else there is too vile or dumb to save, it really seems like Kiss’s low-budget is going to be its Achilles Heel. While Eisley’s just a little flat, it clearly could’ve been a bigger name. Towers, too—though she’s phenomenal, so you don’t really want to see anyone else there. But then there’s Dante. Fuller’s got a lot of character actors in the supporting roles, sometimes making the thin parts more substantial, sometimes not (though usually because of the moralizing). But Dante’s usually just plain not good. He’s never terrible, but he’s sometimes bad, and he’s never any good. Watching Towers hoist their scenes up over and over looks exhausting.

Towers and Fuller are Kiss’s big achievers. He gives her a great part, problematic as it might be, and she’s outstanding. Even when she’s got to do something silly, she makes it work. It’s a superior performance. And Fuller’s direction is singular too. He uses these smash cuts to second-person shots; the camera—sometimes Towers, sometimes not—peering into someone’s face. It’s particularly devastating with the sick kids, who have an initially adorable, then infinitely macabre musical number. However, Fuller’s careful to empathize with the kids. He’s making an exploitation picture, sure, but it’s more a melodrama, after all–a didactic one at that.

Every ten to fifteen minutes—the film runs ninety—Fuller has one visually dynamic sequence or another. There’s a phenomenal synergy to the whole thing. He amps up the melodrama either through Towers’s experience of the narrative or through masterful visceral visual scenes. Great stuff.

Fuller’s crew is excellent; Stanley Cortez’s moody black and white photography is crucial, and, outside the times they reshot something but from the exact same setup, and he couldn’t cut to match, excellent editing from Jerome Thoms. Fuller, Thoms, Cortez, and composer Paul Dunlap set Kiss’s tone fast and strong while still leaving themselves room to flex throughout.

Naked Kiss has problems—heaps and heaps—but it’s one hell of a picture. And Towers is sublime.

History of the World: Part I (1981, Mel Brooks)

History of the World: Part I is funny about twenty percent of the time. The eighty percent of the time, it isn’t funny, it’s either because the jokes are too homophobic, sexist, racist, or punny. If you’re not laughing out loud, you’re ready to hiss.

Since twenty percent doesn’t quite qualify as a mishmash, it’s good the film’s a technical success. The matte paintings alone are an achievement, but Woody Omens’s Panavision cinematography is a delight. Writer, director, producer, and usually star Brooks does an okay job with the direction. Of course, if he doesn’t, he’s got Omens, editor John C. Howard, or composer John Morris to cover for him. But—at least as far as direction—Brooks is solid.

The film’s a pageant, starting in the Stone Age with a profoundly ahistorical 2001 sequence led by caveman Sid Caesar. Orson Welles narrates the whole movie, but never more than the caveman sequence. Welles’s outtakes are probably hilarious. Following that sequence, it’s off to the Ten Commandments and Brooks. It’s a short, funny scene, which Brooks brings back later. Despite Moses, the Last Supper, and the Spanish Inquisition, History’s pretty hands-off with religion, even though every time Brooks touches on it, the scene’s a winner.

Especially the Spanish Inquisition musical number.

But History spends the most time in Ancient Rome and the French Revolution—also note there’s no American history—which go on so long Brooks, the writer, needs rescuing. Literally.

In Ancient Rome, Brooks is a stand-up philosopher who gets a gig at Caesar’s Palace. The casino. Get it? He teams up with escaped slave Gregory Hines and vestal virgin Mary-Margaret Humes (who deserved an Oscar for pretending to lust after Brooks) for misadventures involving emperor Dom DeLuise and empress Madeline Kahn. Kahn’s mostly great. DeLuise is fine, but way too many of the jokes in his scene—it’s a billed cameo—are homophobic. Brooks, the writer, often runs out of ideas once he gets to a scene and tries to cover it with bad jokes and cleavage.

The Spanish Inquisition musical number comes between Rome and the French Revolution. It’s Brooks’s best writing in the film and, since it doesn’t have a chance to go stale, his best performance.

The French Revolution sequence involves Brooks playing both the King and the King’s pissboy, who holds the bucket for nobles to pee in. When the Revolution’s clearly on the horizon, noble Harvey Korman has Brooks, the pissboy, stand in for the King at the guillotine. Korman’s good—though Andréas Voutsinas’s much funnier as his sidekick—while Brooks is one-note. Pamela Stephenson plays a busty young woman who needs to curry the King’s favor (physically). When she discovers the pissboy isn’t going to force her, they have a few scant moments to become love interests before the Revolution—led by Cloris Leachman as Madame Defarge (which could’ve been the whole movie)—knocks down the door, leading to another chase sequence.

The finale’s contrived and hurried—despite a gigantic cast and elaborate production, Brooks entirely runs out of ideas before the ninety-minute mark. It only worsens in the epilogue, which promises Part II and completely deflates Part I.

The best performance is easily Hines, followed at a distance by Kahn, Voutsinas, and Korman. Both Stephenson and Humes are fine; they’ve just got terrible parts. Stephenson’s better, though. Despite the more objectified, exploitative part, she’s got some character, while Humes is just… madly in love with Brooks.

History’s got its moments, but nowhere near enough. Especially since the bad jokes are really bad. Again, thank goodness Brooks has his crew to make up the difference.