Tormented (1960, Bert I. Gordon)

Tormented is the story of how the world’s greatest jazz pianist (Richard Carlson) lost it all because he wasn’t a forty-eight-year-old virgin. I mean, also because he let his former lover, played by Juli Reding, fall to her death without trying to help her. Good thing they’re on an island where any peculiar death results in a ghost haunting. Hence, Reding can take her vengeance while also revealing Carlson’s skinny moral fiber.

Carlson’s on the island preparing for his big Carnegie Hall debut. At some point, he met and fell in love with local girl Lugene Sanders. She’s from a wealthy family and is “young,” according to Reding. Sanders is actually older than Reding, but… Sanders is virginal, and Reding is in showbiz. They’re a week away from the wedding, so many scenes involve Sanders being interested in the preparation and Carlson not being very interested.

Sanders’s little sister (daughter of director Gordon, Susan Gordon) thinks Carlson’s just the best and wishes he’d marry her but he can’t because she’s only ten. Too bad they don’t live in one of those places where you can get married at twelve. Yow and double yow.

Most of Carlson’s scenes are by himself, looking around for Reding’s ghost, who starts haunting him the day after her death. It takes him a few close encounters to believe it’s real, but then he spends a long stretch trying to ignore the haunting. If it weren’t for meddling water taxi captain Joe Turkel, he’d have gotten away with it, too.

Turkel shows up around halfway through the movie and, poking around, realizes either Carlson has Reding in some pleasure hideaway… or she might just not be anywhere anymore. That kind of information should be worth some money, shouldn’t it? Especially since Sanders’s parents are rich (the actor playing her father, Harry Fleer, is younger than Carlson, but mom Vera Marshe is actually older than Carlson, who’d have thunk).

At a certain point, the blackmail plot takes over from the haunting plot. Island horticulturist Lillian Adams seems to know what’s going on—even threatening Reding’s (unseen) presence—but then immediately disappears from the movie so Turkel can come in. Adams doesn’t even come back for the big wedding scene. The character is a blind person, and Adams does a lot of work for it, but there’s a scene where it’s apparent none of that work includes using the cane. See, Reding fell off a lighthouse, so everyone in the cast has to go to the lighthouse at one point or another.

The special effects are, frankly, too cheesy to be taken seriously, but they’re not poorly done. Some of them are okay. And Tormented’s got great cinematography from Ernest Laszlo. Most of the movie is profile two-shots, but they fine.

The same cannot be said for the music, composed by Albert Glasser. It’s a jazz score, but not a jazz piano score, and it seems like it’s for a beach party spoof version of the film.

Carlson’s not good, but rather convincing as a very bad dude as the film progresses. Gordon gets a bunch, and she’s terrible–though with all of the ten-year-old’s dialogue being upset about not being a sexual object yet, did she have a chance? Yow, yikes, and yuck.

Turkel is awesome. Sometimes, he’s good, and sometimes, he’s as good as the material lets him get, but he’s always awesome.

Tormented’s too long at seventy-five minutes, but the various curiosity factors keep it going until Turkel shows up and takes over.

Zero Hour! (1957, Hall Bartlett)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: fighter pilot suffering PTSD boards an airplane in a last-ditch effort to salvage a bad relationship only for the plane to serve rotten fish, requiring this unstable pilot to fly the jet to safety. And there’s an exclamation point at the end of the title.

No, it’s not Airplane!, it’s that film’s (still) unofficial source material–Zero Hour!. The difference being Hour plays it straight, instead of making fun of playing it straight, but it’s all the same material; only, you’re watching it and not supposed to laugh at it.

And it’s a long eighty minutes, especially once Sterling Hayden shows up to start barking absolutely pointless exposition.

The movie begins with narration explaining just before the end of World War II, Canadian squadron leader Dana Andrews made a bad call and got most of his men killed. Or at least a large number of them. Hayden may or may not have been one of those men. The movie’s strangely opaque about it. When we leave 1945 for the future, Andrews is in bad shape. Fast forward ten years, and we find out he’s never made anything of himself, despite marrying Linda Darnell and having a kid (an abjectly annoying Ray Ferrell). Darnell’s fed up, and she’s leaving, so Andrews chases her to the airport and buys another seat to follow her.

There will be numerous moments throughout Hour when it seems like Darnell’s going to have something to do other than debase herself at the altar of machismo. She can’t respect Andrews because he won’t get over getting those guys killed and man up. The movie simultaneously tries to show the horrors of experiencing PTSD while also lambasting him for having it. When Andrews has to fly the jet, Darnell’s in the co-pilot’s chair, and it seems like there’s going to be the couple teaming up to solve their problem.

No, not at all. However, that sequence features Andrews’s best acting in the film, when he successfully intensely stares straight ahead in static panic. However, Andrews isn’t the worst performance. Thanks to Hour’s casting choices, the bloated screenplay, and director Bartlett’s failings… every performance in Hour is eventually bad except maybe Jerry Paris, who plays flight attendant Peggy King’s boyfriend. Sorry, misspoke—stewardess, and not just stewardess, but “Stewardess,” most of the characters refuse to acknowledge she may have a name. Paris is bland, but he’s consistent. For a while, it seems like King might turn in a good turn, but then no. She also can’t stop looking into the camera in the third act, which just makes the whole picture seem more embarrassing.

Geoffrey Toone plays the doctor, who luckily didn’t have the fish. He’s absolutely flat and delivers mouthfuls of exposition. Hour’s script is pretty sure all you have to do to convince people it’s legit is use enough jargon. But Toone’s not forceful enough. Hayden’s arguably worse—heck, he’s arguably the worst performance, and Hour also stars former pro-football star Elroy ‘Crazylegs’ Hirsch, and Hirsch is a very, very bad actor. But Hayden’s a phenomenon, chain-smoking, yelling at thin air, staring into space. It’s a masterclass in how not to do a solo performance.

Though he’s not solo, he’s got a bunch of yes-men around to look worried (and get coffee). Charles Quinlivan plays the main yes-man. And until the third act, Quinlivan seems like he will get through Hour unscathed. He does not, but he gives that impression the longest of anyone in the cast.

The special effects are ambitious—except the lousy stock footage (including when the Canadian jet becomes an American Airlines one). They’re not good, but they’re ambitious. The sets are either too big, or Bartlett doesn’t know how to shoot them.

Skip Zero Hour! and watch the remake.

This post is part of the 2nd Annual “Favorite Stars in B Movies” Blogathon hosted by Brian of Films From Beyond The Time Barrier.

One-Percent Warrior (2023, Yamaguchi Yudai)

The One-Percent in One-Percent Warrior’s title does not refer to the super-rich, but rather when someone transcends in their film-related martial arts excellence. The majority of the film is just a forty-minute action sequence with star Sakaguchi Tak roaming around an abandoned zinc factory—on its own little CGI island—and kicking various butt. A lot of it is the same butt. It was in the second or third big beat-down I realized all of the bad guys have their faces covered so they can keep getting beaten down.

But forty minutes isn’t a movie, so Warrior’s has a very complicated story tacked on.

The movie opens with documentary interview footage about how Sakaguchi’s such a badass; even though he’s just an action movie star, he can kick his special forces buddies’ asses too. He can dodge bullets. Sakaguchi doesn’t necessarily get a lot to do in the film—even when he’s got the big reveal, which I’ll dance around later—he doesn’t do a lot. But he manages to make the bullet dodging believable.

And he’s socially awkward enough you can believe it when he can’t hold a steady job. His latest gig is on a period piece where he very quickly mouths off too much and gets fired. On this particular job, however, he meets Fukuyama Kohei, who thinks Sakaguchi’s an action god. Fukuyama becomes Sakaguchi’s sidekick and trainee, listening to Sakaguchi talk about his martial arts and his dream of the perfect action film.

So much talking.

Fukuyama convinces Sakaguchi to try to get funding, which leads them to the abandoned zinc factory island. They’ve got to find a location, after all. There, they discover another film crew already scouting the same location. Before that scene even finishes, Warrior adds the next plot wrinkle—they’re both scouting a location where a dead mobster hid his cocaine and now one set of bad guys has brought the dead mobster’s daughter (Fukuda Rumika) to find it.

Except… there’s also another set of mobsters who want the cocaine, so they’re trying to kill those gangsters without hurting Fukuda. They’ve got other gangster’s daughter Harumi Kanon with them. Harumi’s a vicious killer, not naive like Fukuda, so there’s a whole juxtaposition thing.

Fukuyama will end up bonding with Fukuda, but there’s no payoff for it, which stinks because Fukuyama’s really likable in the scenes. It also stinks because it plays into the third act reveal, which part and parcel lifts one of the more famous movie twists from the twentieth century. While Warrior uses the twist just to get to stop the movie—it’s very low budget, and they do a lot with that budget, but there’s a limit, and they do hit it multiple times—but the twist also suggests there’s all sorts of character development they could’ve done but didn’t. Even within the constraints of the established format (the documentary interviews and so on).

It’s a real bummer because Warrior overcomes a turgid first act to actually get moving once the action starts. Sakaguchi can obviously do his job, but Fukuda, Harumi, Fukuyama—they all come through. Even the gangsters are solid. Warrior goes into the finale much stronger than expected, albeit because we’re worried about characters we may or may not need to be worried about, but still. Warrior’s second act rally is significant.

And then it all crashes down.

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961, Roger Corman)

If Creature from the Haunted Sea weren’t atrocious, it’d have to be fantastic. There’s no possible in between for the film, which is high concept, no budget.

The film starts as a political spoof about Cuban generals fleeing the revolution with gold. They enlist the aid of gambling gangster Antony Carbone, who has a yacht. Carbone’s also got a wacky crew—Southern belle girlfriend Betsy Jones-Moreland, her goofy younger brother (Robert Bean), an undercover agent (Robert Towne), and a… guy who does animal noises (Beach Dickerson). Only Dickerson doesn’t make the noises; they’re playback. He just makes gestures.

Again, it’d have to be good if it weren’t terrible.

Towne narrates the film. He’s a manic jackass who’s in love with Jones-Moreland, convinced she’s just down on her luck and not Carbone’s accomplice. Carbone’s going to double-cross the Cubans, of course, with the most excellent plan anyone’s ever concocted—he’s going to pretend there’s a sea monster killing off the Cuban soldiers. Eventually, the General (Edmundo Rivera Álvarez, who keeps it together quite well) will agree to change course to avoid further attacks.

Hence the title of the film.

There’s one night of sea monster attacks before Carbone convinces Álvarez to change course. Haunted Sea runs just over an hour; there’s no time for skepticism, further attacks, nothing. Let’s just move right along.

Right up until they land and—thanks to Carbone contriving a silly reason to dump the gold—hang out while going diving for the gold every couple scenes. In between, Esther Sandoval joins the film as a love interest for Towne—he’s just as disinterested in her as Jones-Moreland’s disinterested in him, wokka wokka—and Dickerson finds his soulmate in Blanquita Romero (a local woman who can also mimic animal noises). Except Bean brought Sandoval into the movie and he’s bummed he’s out a love interest, so Romero introduces him to her daughter—Sonia Noemí González—who doesn’t understand mom has taken up with this weird Americans and is just planning on buttering Bean up to sell him some coconut art.

Once again, if it weren’t terrible, it’d have to be good. Writer Charles B. Griffith has lots and lots of ideas. All of them just happen to flop.

Some of the problem is the acting, and some of it is the directing. And maybe some of it is the audio looping. Lots of Haunted Sea is looped. Carbone’s a little too charmless, even as a lousy heavy. Jones-Moreland might have the best acting in the film outside Puerto Rican actors, who play it straight and find the joke, but there’s no competition. Towne’s almost likably bad. Dickerson gets better once Romero shows up. And Bean… well, Bean’s just around.

There’s some solid day-for-night from cinematographer Jacques R. Marquette and an almost successful chase scene.

Haunted Sea definitely rallies somewhere after the first act, but it still doesn’t add up. Cute last shot, though.

The Book of Life (2014, Jorge R. Gutiérrez)

The Book of Life has a very nice style once the story starts. Everything looks like it’s a miniature, like Life is a CG Rankin/Bass “Animagic.” Not quite as good, but there’s a charm to it. To the style. Not to the movie. Life’s oddly and relentlessly charmless.

It begins with the first bookend device: a group of behavior disorder kids arrive late for the school trip to the museum. They bully the first tour guide, but then a smoking hot lady tour guide winks at them the right way, and they’re all entranced. Life’s not going to get better about objectification of women. It’s the plot, actually.

Christina Applegate voices the tour guide. Why? No reason. She’s not good. She doesn’t have any personality. There’s not a deep “Married With Children” cut involving her character. There is a deep Labyrinth cut, so maybe someone else dropped out or turned them down. Doesn’t matter. The bookending device is just so the behavior disorder kids can mouth off. They range in age from toddler to tween, and their character design ranges from seventies theatrical Charlie Brown doofus villains to Baby Huey in drag. Also, they’re a drag.

Then Applegate starts reading to them from the Book of Life, mentioning far more interesting stories than the one we’ll watch. I foolishly thought it would be an anthology of Mexican folk tales. Instead, it’s all about how Zoe Saldana needs to marry Diego Luna or Channing Tatum so Ron Perlman can get a job transfer.

Perlman’s Xibalba, lord of the Land of the Forgotten. His lady love is La Muerte, the lord of the Land of the Remembered. Kate del Castillo voices her. Del Castillo de facto gives the second-best performance in the film. Luna’s a great lead. When he’s talking, you forget what you’re watching and think it might actually be all right. Then Saldana shows up, and that all right gets qualified. Then Tatum shows up, and that all right becomes impossible. Tatum isn’t even particularly bad—Saldana’s worse—but he’s charmless. His character is the town hero; he’s only the town hero because he has a magic tchotchke. It makes him invincible. When it looks like Saldana is going to marry Luna because of true love and all that jazz, Tatum says he’ll abandon the town and stop protecting it unless she marries him.

Luna’s the hero of the movie, but Tatum’s a good guy. Everyone trading Saldana is a good guy. She may spout off about her independence, but she’ll always immediately relinquish it. Director Gutiérrez and co-writer Doug Langdale don’t write a character capable of withstanding a gentle breeze. They’re all so thin.

Life’s got some original songs. Luna’s okay at them, but not any good. Then again, the songs aren’t good; some are better than others. All of them, much like the film itself, are tedious.

Gutiérrez’s direction peaks at middling. There are some rather poorly directed sequences; Gutiérrez’s always in a hurry like he’s convinced there’s nothing worth seeing anywhere in the film, which is funny because the production design is far more compelling than the story. Ahren Shaw’s editing doesn’t help things.

Book of Life seems like Luna’s charm will somehow carry it, but then it doesn’t. By the third act, Luna can’t hold it up anymore, not with everyone else pounding down on it.

Life’s a long ninety-five minutes.

Ghostbusters II (1989, Ivan Reitman)

About the only compliment I can pay Ghostbusters II is the first half or so doesn’t reveal how terrible the movie’s going to get. The film had a troubled production, which might explain the special effects looking rough for the third act. II’s third act apes the third act from the first movie, only without any of the stakes. Ghostbusters II is profoundly without stakes.

Ostensibly, the boys in beige (and navy blue to fit into the popular contemporary cartoon series “The Real Ghostbusters”’s continuity) are trying to save Sigourney Weaver’s baby from Peter MacNicol, her pervy boss who’s become an agent of evil. Except the movie’s not going to kill a baby. So it’s all about how they save the baby. Except Ghostbusters II’s third act is horrible. It gets worse every stake-less scene. The movie’s also got this “New York City sucks” undertone, which is kind of strange. It could work—the movie picks up after the Ghostbusters have been sued out of business, so maybe they could hate the Big Apple, but… no, it’s just for the jokes. The really tepid jokes.

The first act establishes the new ground situation—Weaver’s got a baby (Murray’s not the daddy), Murray’s a psychic TV talk show host (which fits because the character’s written like a talk show host the entire movie), Harold Ramis is doing hard science, Dan Aykroyd is running a used book shop while not doing appearances with Ernie Hudson. Does Hudson have anything else going on the side? Don’t ask; the movie doesn’t care.

Along the way, we’ll learn Rick Moranis has gone back to school and become a lawyer. Annie Potts will be back, then David Margulies comes back as the Mayor, too. Margulies seems exhausted at the whole production, which tracks. Kurt Fuller plays his dipshit aide, who doesn’t trust the gang.

The movie feels long because nothing connects. Ackroyd and Ramos’s script gives them more to do for a while (Ramis especially), but it doesn’t go anywhere. Moranis and Potts get about the best subplot, which is only fair since they’re giving the best performances, but they also don’t have the worst writing. Ramis and Ackroyd saved it for themselves—plus Hudson. II forgets about Hudson for most of the first act, then turns him into an exposition delivery device in the second—alongside Ramis and Ackroyd—and it’s way too much.

Then Weaver starts phoning it in for the finale, which is not good, given it’s all about her baby becoming an evil god. I can’t remember when she goes flat, but it’s way too early, and it’s way too flat. II can’t figure out how to make her and Murray cute together, so they have him play with the baby a lot. Ghostbusters II targets the weirdest demographics—boys who love “Real Ghostbusters” and their moms who didn’t like the first movie but can handle it because the baby’s adorable.

Reitman can’t direct that movie. He does an awful job. As far as the technicals, no one does a good job, really—Michael Chapman somehow shoots it poorly, and then Randy Edelman’s score is arguably offensive—but there’s some basic competence to the production. Dennis Muren’s special effects leave a lot to be desired, though.

So it’s all doomed.

There are also a bunch of stunt cameos for some reason. They don’t amount to anything.

As for top-billed Murray… maybe HBO should’ve given him a talk show or whatever. But it’s not a performance. Many people embarrass themselves in II—Aykroyd, Weaver, Hudson, MacNichol, Harris Yulin—but nothing compares to Murray. He’s been fixed. I’m not sure II’d have been any better without the snip-snip, but it might not have been so dull.

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.

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.

Dead Man’s Curve (1998, Dan Rosen)

Dead Man’s Curve’s opening titles are intercut with someone meeting with Dana Delany—playing a college campus therapist—and asking questions about signs of suicidal thoughts. Delany makes a joke about how first-time efforts from writer-directors might do it. Then the title card cuts to director Rosen’s writing and directing credit. All his other references are on the nose. Some of the plot involves the latest gaming craze on campus—you write a bunch of names on scraps of paper, mix them together in a glass bowl, then your partner has to identify them–Trivial Pursuit but from when they first invented paper.

There’s a lengthy sequence where the players list off famous female actresses of the era; it’s surprising no one turned to the camera and informed the audience they were the actresses who turned down Keri Russell’s part.

For her part—no pun—Russell does almost all right. It’s a lousy, good-girl coed femme fatale part, and Russell handles a lot of it. Starts falling apart halfway through and never comes back. It’s a bummer because her performance gets more impressive just around the time Matthew Lillard’s takes off, so it seems like it’s a rising tide raises all ships type situation.

Even Lillard cannot hold on for all of Curve’s twists and turns. Rosen homages almost seventy years’ worth of thrillers but forgets he might want some sympathetic characters. While Rosen’s clearly overconfident from jump, he does have some great instincts, and it seems like—given the movie wants to take “nothing is what it seems” to the nth degree—he might pull it off.

But then Russell starts falling apart, Delany goes nowhere, and top-billed Michael Vartan finally assumes the hero spotlight. The real question of Curve is whether or not Vartan is going to be able to hold the water on his own. Rosen knows when Delany’s good; he knows the movie mostly rests on Lillard and spotlights him monologuing at least twice—Rosen knows Vartan isn’t cutting it, but nothing’s to be done. The Curve spills out of Vartan’s barely cupped hands.

And it’s not just about Vartan playing a bland white guy. Randall Batinkoff plays a bland white guy; he’s (relatively) great. Let’s say… surprisingly good. Even though he looks way too old. They’re all supposed to be college seniors; all the guys are clearly in their late twenties.

Russell’s about the right age. She’s Vartan’s girlfriend.

Tamara Marie Watson plays Batinkoff’s girlfriend. He’s terrible to her, so it’s okay his roommates are plotting to kill him. Lillard’s only got a love interest for a scene, though apparently, it’s a steady thing, so her not being around doesn’t help things.

Watson’s awful. She’s in a thankless spot—Batinkoff berates her, and all their friends ignore it because they’re all rich together, and she’s poor. So there’s this wonderful collision of misogyny, patriarchy, and classism.

The movie’s on location at a college campus but on a tight budget. The lack of scale doesn’t help things.

Kevin Ruf plays the dipshit campus cop. He’s terrible.

Dead Man’s Curve doesn’t exactly have its moments, but it has moments where it has potential. None of it pays off. Surprisingly decent soundtrack, though.

The Missing (2003, Ron Howard), the extended cut

There’s a moment in The Missing when Tommy Lee Jones appears to be dead-panning at the camera, clearly as exasperated being in the film as the people watching him in the film. He’s tired because The Missing makes sure to keep him busy, but he easily soldiers on because Jones is in Missing to soldier on. No one in The Missing can be relied upon for anything except Jones. And all Jones promises is not to embarrass himself further than the project’s conceit.

Too bad the conceit is so damning, particularly for Jones.

See, The Missing is about Jones returning to his daughter, played by Cate Blanchett, in 1885 New Mexico. Jones ran off to… join a Native American tribe? It’s unclear. He ran out on Blanchett and her mom and eventually ended up living with various Native tribes, but how they knew he ran off to join up is unclear. Given the thoughtfulness of Ken Kaufman’s screenplay, maybe they thought he jumped on a freight train like he was running off to join the circus.

Jones goes to find Blanchett, so he’s around when she needs an experienced tracker to go find her daughter Evan Rachel Wood, who renegade Indian Scouts have kidnaped. Eric Schweig plays the main villain, a witch. His gang kidnaps young women to sell in Mexico. The calvary is after them—led by Val Kilmer in one of the film’s rare good casting ideas—except the calvary are dipshits, and they’re going the wrong way.

It’s up to Jones and Blanchett to put aside their differences and team up to save Wood, with Blanchett’s younger daughter, played by Jenna Boyd, tagging along. Boyd’s supposed to be precocious. She’s terrible. Blanchett’s supposed to be… well, actually, Blanchett’s not supposed to be anything. Missing is terrified of spending any time with Blanchett, which tracks because her performance is embarrassingly bad, but still. The film’s ostensibly about Jones and Blanchett’s relationship, except the only time they have an honest conversation is like ninety seconds about halfway through the movie and then never again. They have other conversations pertaining to their character arcs, but they’re all bad because Blanchett’s terrible. That first conversation is the only time she actually works at the character.

She’s playing The Woman With No Name the rest of the time. Except she’s got a name. But also has a pretty cool Western wanderer outfit courtesy costume designer Julie Weiss, who’s otherwise just trying to make the Native characters’ costumes as close to cartoonishly racist without some respectability line. Missing thinks it gets a lot of mileage from having Jones culturally appropriating the Native Americans while villainizing the Native Americans who sold out to the white man. It’d be more cringe if the movie weren’t such garbage.

Mostly good photography from Salvatore Totino. Totino has a lot of bad moments, particularly with composite shots, but otherwise, it’s competent work. The editing not so much, but director Howard’s got no ideas for his set pieces, so it’s not the editors’ faults. Not entirely.

James Horner’s score is repetitive but has its moments. At least until the end of the second act when it craps the bed and basically sits out all the moments the film needs it in the third act. The music’s never good, but at least it seemed professional. Not in the finale.

The Missing seems like someone’s very bad idea for Oscar-bait, not realizing Jones wasn’t going to make a part for himself and Blanchett wasn’t capable of holding an accent, much less making up for zero character development. Sure, it’s about Blanchett never giving up on daughter Wood, but only after all the men who care for her fail her.

There are some abysmal performances in the film besides Blanchett and Boyd, like Aaron Eckhart, who is so bad he makes Blanchett look good. Eckhart’s utterly inept in the film—it’s not his fault; he’s just so obviously miscast it’s silly. It’s director Howard’s fault. Lots is Howard’s fault.

Sergio Calderón’s bad. Ray McKinnon’s awful. Max Perlich’s bad.

Wood’s okay. The movie spends a lot of time with her in the second act because it’s an excellent way to avoid character development for Blanchett, and Wood’s got some good scenes. Unfortunately, the movie gives her some really lousy material for the third act.

The Missing’s tedious and terrible.