Category: 1967
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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…
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The strangest thing about the first five stories in Omnibus Volume 1 isn’t how writer Gardner Fox uses Barbara Gordon’s position at the Gotham Public Library to explain how she somehow targets criminals. She violates professional privacy standards—if not laws (it was the late sixties, who knows)—to figure out where the bad guys are going…
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Maybe a third of the way into Cool Hand Luke, the film all of a sudden starts getting really good. It’s when Jo Van Fleet makes her appearance, which provides the film both its single best acting—Newman and Van Fleet are exquisite in the scene—and also director Rosenberg showing he’s actually got a handle on…
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Charming Toho (paired with Rankin-Bass) KING KONG features a lot of homage to the original, great villains, appealing romantic leads (albeit chaste ones because 1967 and interracial romance), and an excellent fight scenes. Drawbacks include bland white guy lead Rhodes Reason and the King Kong suit. Also Ifukube Akira’s self-derivative score (reusing classic GODZILLA themes)…
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The Tiger and the Pussycat tells the sad tale of forty-five year-old businessman, Vittorio Gassman. He’s just become a grandfather. His college-age son wants to have long hair. All of his wife’s friends are abandoned women; their husbands have run off with younger women. Gassman is dissatisfied. Upon finding his son attempting suicide over a…
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Warning Shot is almost successful. For most of the film, director Kulik and screenwriter Mann Rubin craft an engaging mystery. Then the third act happens and they both employ cheap tricks and it knocks the film off course. It’s a rather short third act too–the film’s got a peculiar structure, probably to allow for all…
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Strangely enough, Son of Godzilla ends well. It’s a surprise because the film loses a lot of steam throughout. Whether it’s the human plot or the Godzilla plot, the scene inevitably fails because of director Fukuda. Unless it’s one of the multiple times writers Sekizawa Shin’ichi and Shiba Kazue completely fail. Son of Godzilla constantly…
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Bonnie and Clyde opens with two immediate introductions. First, in the opening titles, photographs from the 1930s set the scene. Second, in the first scene, with Faye Dunaway (as Bonnie) and Warren Beatty (as Clyde) meet one another and flirt their way into armed robbery. Okay, maybe in the latter, director Penn does start with…
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Despite good performances and direction, Godard’s examination of the bourgeois out of their element–and in the purview of communal cannibals and people out of novels–is rarely effective. Godard immediately puts the audience on guard, then tries to shock with violent misogyny, animal cruelty, and sight gags involving car accidents. He’s not interested in connecting with…
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Evening Classes is a bit of a surprise; without Jacques Tati’s involvement, the short would almost work more as an examination of his films. With his involvement, Classes certainly has some outstanding moments, but director Ribowski and Tati (who also wrote the short) don’t really have a point. The film opens with Tati as M.…
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Director Corman and–probably more so–writer Howard Browne construct The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre as a docudrama. Paul Frees narrates the entire film, introducing characters, providing their backstories–Corman sometimes mutes the film’s dialogue (during boring parts) so Frees can explain a little about the person. Massacre might be mostly authentic in its portrayal of the titular…
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“Dick Tracy” is shockingly all right. About half the pilot plays like a bad James Bond movie–villain Victor Buono is ludicrous and in it way too much, even if there’s an amusing revelation at the end. But the other half, with Ray MacDonnell as Dick Tracy, is pretty good. He’s got a house full of…
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I’m not sure the actual story, but I’ll just assume at the height of the “Batman” show’s popularity, the producers thought about doing a “Batgirl” series. The pilot, if it’s any indication of the prospective series, suggests the world didn’t miss anything by it going unmade. The approach is a sexist one, with everyone mooning…
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Here’s a weird one. A short pilot for a “Wonder Woman” sitcom. Ellie Wood Walker’s Diana Prince lives at home with her mother (Maudie Prickett), who wishes her daughter would just find a man. The pilot consists mostly of their bickering, which isn’t unfunny–thoroughly modern Walker versus nagging Prickett. But once Walker changes into Wonder…
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As hard as director Melendez tries, there’s not much he can do with “You’re in Love, Charlie Brown.” The special’s two salient problems are the animation and the writing. Melendez comes up with some truly stunning shots in the special; for example, he closes with a beautiful zoom out with a lot of activity. But…
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Big ensemble adaptation of Arthur Hailey novel about a grand (albeit failing) New Orleans hotel and how hotel manager Rod Taylor tries to keep things afloat while also dealing with difficult guests. Quine occasionally makes some poor choices, but he’s got a fine handle on the material–especially keeping the serious fun and vice versa. Strong…
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Even though The Elephant Spider clearly takes place in a three dimensional world, it’s hard to think of it working if the animation weren’t so two dimensional. The short takes place around the Big Bang… probably before. A poor creature called the Elephant Spider spends its life walking in one direction (see why the dimensional…
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Okay, why didn’t anyone tell me about Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB? I mean, I knew of it, but no one ever sat me down and told me it was startlingly brilliant. From the opening second, the film is absolutely astounding. The entire film is a chase sequence, though the protagonist (played by Dan Natchsheim,…
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Sidney Poitier is the big (Northern) city Black detective, Rod Steiger is the Mississippi redneck sheriff, can they work together to solve a murder? One hopes so. Excellent direction from Jewison, excellent performances from Poitier and Steiger (Steiger even gets too much to do considering it’s Poitier’s movie), meandering Stirling Silliphant script (from the John…
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My wife walked out on You Only Live Twice. She got up and left about forty minutes in. I finished it because I figured forty minutes was halfway and I could make it. It was tough. The film’s memorable because of the beginning, where James Bond dies. It’s an interesting scene, even though it’s never…
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Play Time opens as an attack on modernity worthy of George Amberson Minafer, dealing with the personality-free office place populated by cubicles, to the lines of similarly dressed men on their ways home after work or the same type of men all getting into the same kind of car after their work day. There’s some…
The Stop Button 