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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.
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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.
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Mamo (2021) #5
I’m hesitant to use the word “perfect” to describe a work. Mainly because perfect is very subjective. At a certain point in Mamo’s final chapter, I turned each page, holding my breath a little, waiting to see where creator Sas Milledge would take the book in its conclusion. But Milledge never hits those targets; she’s hitting different ones, better ones. I was hoping she’d find a way to give it a great ending, wheres Milledge was getting it to that great ending. So, in the sense it delivers—page by page—exactly what I wanted from it, Mamo doesn’t finish perfect.It finishes perfect in a much better way than I ever imagined.
Despite the finale opening with an incredible action sequence—Jo and Orla spending last issue apart also makes more sense (again, it probably reads just right in the trade)—it’s all about character drama. The witchcraft is just an expression of all these buried, complicated feelings and bad memories. But the conclusion of Jo and Orla’s quest to properly bury Orla’s witch grandma is just the beginning; Milledge isn’t only telling that story. The action resolution changes the stakes for the characters, and Milledge sorts through it for the rest of the issue. The dynamic, visually thrilling action sequence is just an appetizer for the character drama.
Mamo’s a book about a lot, but it also does take place in a magical fantasy land, which figures into the resolution but never visually. Milledge focuses on Jo and on Jo and Orla, keeping it very grounded. The magic’s still out there kind of brewing, full of potential, but it’s not the point. The characters are the point, and Milledge does a phenomenal job with them. Perfect job. Down to the body language. Mamo #5 isn’t full of the swaying landscape—I kept wanting a double-page wide shot—instead, it’s full of breaths.
Outstanding work from Milledge. I can’t wait to read it again. I mean, I can because I want to give it time to settle, but, damn, Mamo is one hell of a comic. I know I’m going to miss Jo and Orla. Enough I hope Milledge does a sequel. Even a strong mediocre one. She’s created something special with Mamo and done so with exceptional skill.
It’s such a good book.
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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.
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American Gothic (1995) s01e11 – Rebirth
Rebirth’s a swing and a miss for American Gothic, even though it was an episode I’d been looking forward to seeing again, even though it’s directed by James “The Muppet Movie” Frawley. It also features garbage human being Danny Masterson as a teenage bad boy who helps Lucas Black against the normie teens bullying Black for… having had his entire family murdered. I didn’t recognize Masterson at that point (or at all, I needed the credits), but the mid-nineties white boy dreadlocks are a look.
Masterson needs some cash to get out of town, leading to sheriff Gary Cole harassing him. At least until Sarah Paulson figures out how to return from the dead: she needs to borrow someone else’s spirit. In this case, Paige Turco’s visiting pregnant friend, played by Amy Steel, is just what the proverbial doctor ordered.
I remembered the episode as being some complex character arc for Paulson, who only recovered her full faculties after her death, so she’s never gotten to be alive in this way before. Certainly not with all the grown men leering at her, which she doesn’t notice and, thankfully, doesn’t go anywhere. But her Rebirth gives Cole an idea for palling up to Black. All Cole’s got to do is turn Black against Paulson, which isn’t hard because Paulson’s hanging out with Masterson instead of brother Black. Even though she knows he’s super-lonely without her.
It’s also not a good brother-and-sister arc. It’s not immaterial, but it’s close.
Victor Bumbalo and Robert Palm get the writing credit, and it’s similarly nothing notable. Not in any good ways, especially in how lightly Black (and Paulson to some degree) take Cole raping their mother approximately nine months before Black was born—witnessing the event mentally traumatized Paulson for life. They’ve got no time to discuss it, not when Black can mope about Paulson hanging out with Masterson. He’s got a point—remove the real-life stuff, and there are still the dreadlocks and Masterson’s terrible Southern accent—but there’s also a severe lack of character development.
Is it worse than the scene where Turco makes light of Steel’s two previous miscarriages as she worries about her baby? I mean, no? Rebirth passes Bechdel in the worst ways.
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