Tag: William Prince

Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun (1986, Ron Satlof)

So Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. It’s not good. It is not a good TV movie. Even if the writing were better, Satlof is a lousy director. And Héctor R. Figueroa’s photography is quite bad. The lighting in the courtroom finale changes between shots. The editing is already graceless–more because of Satlof’s weak composition and blocking than the editors–and the lighting just kills it.

But the real problem is something else entirely–Joel Steiger’s teleplay is bad. It’s kind of ambitious, but it’s bad at it. The design of this Perry Mason is as follows, there’s Raymond Burr doing stuff, there’s William Katt doing stuff, there’s Barbara Hale sometimes doing stuff with Burr but not really anything consequential except provide emotional support to Michele Greene (the titular Notorious Nun), and Green’s crisis about taking her final vows. Steiger gives all the character development to Greene and it’s awful. Greene tries with it too. She really does try to make this material work and maybe if Satlof weren’t terrible, it’d go better.

Then there’s the guest stars. Timothy Bottoms as an honest, priest stud. Jon Cyphers as an arrogant doctor. Tom Bosley as a sweet priest. Arthur Hill as a prick lawyer. Not much inventive casting, but sturdy acting. Of those caricatures, Cyphers does the best. He has the most to do. Decent villain in Hagan Beggs. He gets a lot of Dick DeBenedictis’s craziest thriller music. Can’t forget to talk about the music.

But real quick on the cast–David Ogden Stiers as the D.A., James McEachin as the cop. These character slots aren’t really important–McEachin does get to show some personality opposite Katt, but none in the expository-only scenes. And Stiers is competent but the material’s bad. You watch him and wonder if he knows his legal reasoning lines are stupid.

Burr’s fine, of course. Katt’s a little bit too much of a jackass this time out. And Hale really doesn’t have enough to do.

Oh, right, the music. Dick DeBenedictis does some crazy music for this thing. Slasher movie, gothic horror synthesizer music for the main cast’s theme, melodramatic tripe. It’s all over the place and occasionally awesome.

There’s not a good reveal at the end, which is all a Perry Mason needs to be a success. Steiger backloads the thrills and it ruins to momentum. It’s a TV movie, it’s got to keep you occupied through commercials, only Steiger and Stalof haven’t got any momentum. Only DeBenedictis does. And the cast could be charming with better material. But it’s still not successful, not at all.

Second Sight (1989, Joel Zwick)

There are some funny lines in Second Sight. Not many, but some. And they’re good, laugh out loud lines. It’d be hard for John Larroquette, reacting to Bronson Pinchot acting like an idiot, not to get some laughs.

The whole thing feels like a “what I did on summer hiatus” for Larroquette and Pinchot. It’s impossible not to think about their television series when watching the film, though the Boston location shooting does help. Director Zwick is rather boring, but the film’s visibly shot on location, so regardless of his inability, the film does have a fair amount of texture.

Stuart Pankin rounds out the trio–Pinchot’s the wacky guy, Larroquette’s the straight man (just like their TV shows) and Pankin’s sort of the second straight man. He’s mostly support for Pinchot, but manages to have a bigger role. Pinchot does voices, acts goofy and does manage to be funny a couple times. Larroquette’s somewhat sturdy, a character actor thrown into a leading man role. He’s competent.

What Second Sight does right (rhyme unintentional) is portray Pinchot’s psychic abilities (complete with possessions and magic) as matter-of-fact. There’s no discovery of them, they’re real and they’re acknowledged. It makes Larroquette reacting to them a lot funnier.

The movie gets a little tired when it’s handling the case (they’re private investigators) but it’s genial enough as a bland comedy. Bess Armstrong, John Schuck and Christine Estabrook are fine in supporting roles.

A better director probably would have helped a lot.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Joel Zwick; written by Tom Schulman and Patricia Resnick; director of photography, Dana Christiaansen; edited by David Ray; music by John Morris; production designer, James L. Schoppe; produced by Mark Tarlov; released by Warner Bros.

Starring John Larroquette (Wills), Bronson Pinchot (Bobby), Bess Armstrong (Sister Elizabeth), Stuart Pankin (Preston Pickett Ph.D.), John Schuck (Manoogian), James Tolkan (Coolidge), William Prince (Cardinal O’Hara), Michael Lombard (Bishop O’Linn), Christine Estabrook (Priscilla Pickett) and Marisol Massey (Maria).

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Spies Like Us (1985, John Landis)

Spies Like Us ought to be better. The problem is the length. Well, the main problem is the length. Donna Dixon having a big role is another problem.

The movie’s just too short. At 100 minutes, it actually should be just the right length, but there’s a lot Landis skirts over because he doesn’t have enough time.

Unfortunately, a lot of the abbrievated sequences could have laughs–the film’s front-heavy when it comes to laughs. The last act is still amusing, but it doesn’t have anything like the funnier moments from the rest of the film.

The plotting just doesn’t work–the screenwriters are never able to make Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd funny when they get to the Soviet Union. One problem is Dixon–she’s an unfunny third wheel–but they’re also isolated in the wilderness. Not a lot of material around.

The film has some hilarious scenes–Chase disastrously cheating for a test is great and he’s fine as a slacker moron who lucks his way into things. But in the second half, the film plays up his stupidity while establishing Aykroyd is smarter as a fake spy than many real ones. Landis never concentrates on that situation, but it’s obvious.

There’s a lot of good acting. Unfortunately, Bernie Casey isn’t as good as I expected. But Bruce Davison is great as a slimy bureaucrat.

Landis’s direction is solid if unspectacular. The film’s always racing to something, so he never gets to rest.

Decent Elmer Bernstein score too.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by John Landis; screenplay by Dan Aykroyd, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, based on a story by Aykroyd and Dave Thomas; director of photography, Robert Paynter; edited by Malcolm Campbell; music by Elmer Bernstein; production designers, Terry Ackland-Snow and Peter Murton; produced by George Folsey Jr. and Brian Grazer; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Chevy Chase (Emmett Fitz-Hume), Dan Aykroyd (Austin Millbarge), Steve Forrest (General Sline), Donna Dixon (Karen Boyer), Bruce Davison (Ruby), Bernie Casey (Colonel Rhumbus), William Prince (Keyes) and Tom Hatten (General Miegs).

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The Gauntlet (1977, Clint Eastwood)

I think I watched The Gauntlet for masochistic reasons, namely screenwriters Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack, the late 1970s, early 1980s version of Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner–incompetent Hollywood writers. Even so, the film’s not wholly terrible. It’s rarely exciting, just because the action sequences are so poorly written, and Clint approaches the whole thing with a sense of boredom. His character’s real shallow and the film would barely work if it weren’t for Sondra Locke and Eastwood’s chemistry. Locke’s actually got some really good moments–which is hard, considering how bad her character is written for the first half or so–including a great monologue comparing hookers and cops. In the later half of the film, once the two of them improbably fall in love, there’s even a neat idea of a scene, but again the writing kills it.

About fifteen minutes into The Gauntlet, I realized it was not dissimilar to Clint’s earlier, Coogan’s Bluff, but the greatest difference between the two is that lack of interest I mentioned before. Clint shoots this one in lots of long shots, concentrating on the physicality of the situations and not the characters, as though if he did, the characters might have to realize the absurdity of their situation. So it isn’t just the script making the character shallow, it’s also Clint’s direction of himself–those long shots make the character empty. His performance is sort of broad. When he’s interested, he acts; when he’s not, he’s on autopilot.

The supporting cast is fantastic–William Prince, Pat Hingle, and Michael Cavanaugh are all good. The names in the movie are some of the most absurd I’ve heard: Blakelock, Feyderspiel, Shockley. The actors stumble over them with a lot of trouble–audible trouble, which sometimes makes the more boring scenes funny. An interesting, IMDb-fueled note: this film reunites Clint with Mara Corday. They both appeared in Tarantula twenty-two years earlier, though they didn’t have any scenes together (and Clint wasn’t credited). That bit of trivia–and the possibility of a story behind it–is more interesting than anything in The Gauntlet, except, I suppose, my newfound regard for Sondra Locke’s acting ability.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Clint Eastwood; screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack; director of photography, Rexford Metz; edited by Ferris Webster and Joel Cox; music by Jerry Fielding; produced by Robert Daley; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Clint Eastwood (Ben Shockley), Sondra Locke (Gus Mally), Pat Hingle (Josephson), William Prince (Blakelock), Bill McKinney (Constable), Michael Cavanaugh (Feyderspiel), Carole Cock (Waitress), Mara Corday (Jail matron), Douglas McGrath (Bookie) and Jeff Morris (Desk Sergeant).

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The Very Thought of You (1944, Delmer Daves)

Delmer Daves–for someone whose directing occasionally makes me cover my eyes in fright–does an all right job with The Very Thought of You. He has these tight close-ups and, while there are only a few of them, they work out quick well. Otherwise, technically speaking, he doesn’t have many tricks. He’s on the low end of proficient and I kept thinking, as I watched the film, what a better director could have done with the material, since the film’s so strong.

There isn’t much internal conflict in The Very Thought of You. World War II applies pressure on the characters, pushing them into conflicted situations, which gives the film a nice lightness. It gets slow occasionally, since the only foreseeable suspense throughout is Dennis Morgan’s character getting killed in battle–except he and Eleanor Parker have multiple goodbyes, only to get to see each other again before he goes off. The first act is loaded with good scenes and great conversations and, while the second doesn’t have as many, it has enough the pacing doesn’t get too bothersome.

I suppose the film is propaganda, but it’s incredibly light propaganda if it is–a shot here or there, an extra line of dialogue. Morgan looks like a leading man, but he’s probably the weakest actor in the film. I’ve seen it before but didn’t remember much and I was worried he’d be expected to carry it. Instead, Parker’s got an awful family–Beulah Bondi and Andrea King remind of wicked characters from a fairy tale and both are excellent. Obviously, Parker needs some support in the family scenes, so Henry Travers is her understanding father and does some nice work. Georgia Lee Settle is her precocious little sister and she’s good too. The 4F brother, played by John Alvin, also does some good work. The family scenes are most of the best written ones, since they have visible conflict. The other good scenes are the ones with Parker and Faye Emerson and the ones with Dane Clark as the comic relief (with a heart of gold). The romance between Morgan and Parker–the majority of the film takes place over two days–has all off-screen conflict and, though it’s the subject of the film, one just takes it for granted and engages with the rest.

The film is well-made (though there’s mediocre direction–with a few exceptions) and it’s nice and a pleasant viewing experience. Still, without any conflict and any real suspense, it’s a chore to maintain interest. It’s rewarding, but still a chore.