erikpsmith Reviews

Presumed Innocent (1990)

Crackles with tension, but ending makes no sense

[8/10 · 25 March 2018]

Warning: Spoilers ahead

Presumed Innocent was one of several taut thrillers of the late '80s and early '90s containing a mystery that keeps you guessing until the end, combined with a healthy dollop of sex. Really one of the best of its genre. But the reason I'm commenting here is that I caught something a bit troubling on a repeat viewing last night. For a thriller to work, everything has to make sense, the clues, the explanations, the red herrings - everything. And there's a weak link in this plot that borders on the preposterous.

I sat down to watch it last night, 28 years after release, because I'd just gotten done watching "Scott Turow's Innocence" - a new film featuring the same characters (but different actors) that really functions as a sequel. And as I watched it again, something struck me that I missed all those years ago in the theater. I ask you please to stop reading if you haven't seen this movie yet - I'm about to spoil the whole thing for you.

The key point of evidence is a water glass found at Carolyn Polhemus' apartment with Rusty Sabich's fingerprints all over it. If he didn't commit the murder, how did it get there?

We learn in the final scene that Sabich's wife committed the murder and planted the water glass. She explains that she knew the kind of water glasses Polhemus used, because she happened to buy a set for her husband to give to Polhemus as a housewarming present. She says she bought an identical set, and that one night she served Sabich a beer in one of those glasses, got his prints and tucked it away for later use in framing him.

I'll grant the movie this assumption. It's a little far-fetched - what's the chance that Ford's wife would know what kind of water glasses Polhemus used, because she happened to buy them for her? It borders on coincidence. Yet I'm always willing to grant a movie one far-fetched plot point, as an element of the premise. It's just that everything else ought to proceed in a logical manner, lest the plot become a matter of coincidence and contrivance.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't hang together. As Sabich investigates the crime, he learns that a water glass was found at the scene of the crime, likely with someone's fingerprints on it. For some reason, he delays running a test, perhaps an oversight (though of course it is one of those red herrings designed to make us think he might be guilty).

The trouble is, if Sabich were to actually see this drinking glass, he might well recognize it and start putting two and two together. So events unfold in such a way to prevent Sabich from seeing the glass. This vital piece of evidence disappears right after the test is done and Sabich's prints are found. The trial is overshadowed by this piece of missing evidence. Eventually its disappearance leads the judge to dismiss the case. I can buy this, and later a logical explanation for its disappearance is provided.

So we have a lucky contrivance that serves the plot. It certainly is a stretch, but I can see how maaaaaaaybe things might happen that way.

But's let's imagine this in real life. Your wife hands you a glass of beer in an unfamiliar drinking glass. It might seem unremarkable at the time, and you might say nothing. But you know what your drinking glasses look like. You'd notice the difference.

I ask you to put yourself in the place of a deputy prosecutor. He's got a hundred crime scene photographs. He has to have access to them because he's going to be using them in presenting his case - later we see that the jury looks at a few of them during the trial. Of course the crime scene photographer would snap a few shots of the drinking glass on the table, before it is taken into evidence, to establish its provenance at the crime scene. It's standard police procedure.

So Sabich would have seen the glass in the photo. And if that doesn't start him thinking about the fact that his wife handed him a beer sometime shortly before the murder in exactly the same type of glass, it certainly should have.

During the trial, we learn something else that can be explained only two ways. The sperm discovered during examination of Polhemus' body is consistent with Sabich's, but all the sperm is dead, killed by some sort of spermicide. Yet Polhemus didn't use birth control - she didn't need to, because she had her tubes tied. (Another lucky coincidence for the plot's sake.) Either the coroner bungled the investigation (which is what the court assumes) or the sperm was somehow provided by someone who had treated it with spermicide. Like someone who had sex with Sabich. His wife, for instance.

My thought is that Sabich, sitting in the courtroom, learning for the first time about this business involving sperm and spermicide, should have started thinking - wait a second! That water glass - I handled one just like it before the murder, handed to me by my wife. And she'd have access to my bodily fluids - OMG. Sabich is no dummy. I submit he should have figured it out right there in the courtroom. Which makes the whole surprise ending a bit silly and overwrought. Sabich would have to be a complete dolt not to see it coming.

Even though the movie doesn't play fair with us, it doesn't really spoil things. On first viewing, 28 years ago, I certainly didn't see the problem. I'm sure everyone who watches the movie for the first time will miss this point. Only because I knew how it ended was I watching for clues last night. But come on, you have to admit this really doesn't make much sense at all.

Max (I) (2002)

Why? Why? Why?

[1/10 · 22 September 2015]

Why on Earth was this film made? I mean, really? Didn't anyone stop to think about what they were doing?

In this fantasy tale in we get to see Adolf Hitler as a tortured artist. But here's the problem. This story didn't happen. And why in heaven's name do we need to see a fantasy about, for God's sake, Adolf Hitler?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not offended per se by never-coulda-happened movies about Adolf Hitler. I loved "Hitler Dead or Alive." "Inglorious Basterds" was a wonderful thrill ride. But when you film an earnest character study about the formative years of the fellow who becomes the greatest evil ever known, you owe it to your audience to ground the story in reality.

Things LIKE this story happened. But not this particular story. So we wind up with something so incredibly false that when I sat in my living room watching it on cable TV last night my jaw about fell open. And running through my head was the title song from "Springtime for Hitler," that brilliant musical-within-a-movie from "The Producers." At least we knew that was supposed to be a joke.

I read a book years ago about Hitler's starving-artist period, and as the movie began I thought this might be an interesting story about a little-known chapter of Hitler's life. But any illusion I might have had about the movie's reality was dispelled when I saw John Cusack listening to an early-'30s tombstone radio (in 1919!), to a radio report about the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Umm, radio broadcasting started in 1920; newscasts came later. It's sort of like seeing a movie in which Lewis and Clark settle in for the winter and spend it playing Super Mario Brothers.

That was when the truth began to dawn on me, and I put the movie on pause to check the Internet and confirm my suspicion. Yes, they were making the whole thing up.

From that point I watched with a growing sense of horror. Like when Hitler explains that his political speeches are actually a new form of art. Or when I watched John Cusack deliver the line, deadpan, "You're a hard man to like, Hitler."

We see Hitler in 1920 or so sketching his plans for the Nuremberg rally of 1936 and for the shimmering imperial city we know from the never-built blueprints of Albert Speer. His buddy Cusack, an art dealer, delightedly pronounces them "future kitsch!" So Hitler readies them for an art exhibition that never comes off -- and because it doesn't happen he takes a different path and becomes Fuhrer instead. And the Astoundingly Manipulative Coincidence that ends the movie is really, really just too much to bear.

This movie is so wretched in its conception, so appalling in its construction, and so serious about it all, that it deserves a place of honor among the worst films of all time. Heartily recommended for fans of "Plan Nine From Outer Space," but now that I've seen it I'll skip a repeat showing and go watch Hogan's Heroes instead.

The Curse of Oak Island (2014– )

A Mystery That Ranks With the Pyramids

[7/10 · 19 October 2014]

SPOILER ALERT! Okay, some things are pretty hokey about this series -- the slow pace, the constant use of creepy music, the repetition of the theories about the way the Oak Island treasure came to be. But I'm willing to forgive. Let's face it, folks, this about as good things are going to get for any of us who have ever wondered -- what's at the bottom of that pit? You've wondered, haven't you? I know I have.

So I'm willing to forgive this series' tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill. Or -- I'm sure there's a better metaphor here, since we're talking about something buried beneath the earth, a hundred feet deep or more. Let's just say our favorite explorers, at the end of season one, really haven't scratched the surface.

If you don't know this story already, some 200 years ago some teen-age boys found evidence of an odd dig on this island just off the shore of Nova Scotia. They started digging and found clear evidence that some sort of a hole had been dug there and then filled in. People have been digging there ever since, and there are many, many indications that the shaft was dug by human hands and that it was booby trapped to fill with seawater if the "wrong people" came looking. That's what happened. No one has ever gotten to the bottom of it.

The thing I find hilarious is that our heroes were inspired by an article that appeared in the May 1965 Readers' Digest, apparently reprinted/condensed from a piece in the Rotarian magazine. You know what? When I was a kid in the late '60s/early '70s, I saw a piece about the famed Oak Island money pit in one of the kids' magazines I was reading at the time. Or maybe it was in one of those two-page text stories they used to publish in comic books. Maybe it was in one of those early-reading textbooks they had us read in school. Maybe it was in all of the above, but the thing is, it was probably inspired by the same source, the same darn story that ran in the Reader's Digest, reprinted from the Rotary Club magazine. So I've been wondering about this thing almost as long as the brothers who are doing the digging on this fascinating reality-TV series. They're actually doing something about it, and all the power to them.

The only problem so far is really that not much has happened. At the end of five episodes, apparently covering the summer of 2013, here is what has taken place: We have seen the boys pump the water out of a shaft drilled years ago, adjacent to the money pit, and they are using a time-tested oil-drilling technique to burp sediment back up to the surface. They've pumped the muck into a dumpster, letting the water drain out, and they are sifting through it. So far they've found a few bones and a few bits of rusty metal. I use the present tense even though this took place more than a year ago, because we haven't seen the final result of their inspection.

Down at the beach, they find some bits of coconut fiber under a foot or so of dirt. They have it dated, to AD 1260-1400.

They've investigated a theory that the treasure might lie somewhere on the island other than the money pit. Odd stones on the island have been found, making a cross; a Scandinavian theorist presents his theory that they are actually part of a more complex "tree of life" configuration. They go to a place where a stone ought to be buried, and sure enough, they find one, and it does appear to have some human carvings. Clues indicate the treasure ought to buried at another point of this symbol, but this point lies in a swamp, underwater. They try to pump the swamp dry, but can't get all the water out. Using advanced metal-detection equipment, they appear to find something big under the swamp, but when they get a diver to look, the signals apparently disappear and what they come up with is some sort of 15th-century Spanish coin, and a number of oddly configured flat stones.

Okay, reading this summary, you can tell that something actually happens on this show; there are signs of human activity on the island centuries ago, and maybe there really some sort of treasure. But it seems a little maddening that it takes five episodes to cover these few details. Preposterous, really. There should have been a lot more going on here. What was the final result of the sediment inspection? Were those strange bones ever tested? And did our boys do the logical thing and go to the other likely points of the "tree of life" and see if there were oddly shaped stones buried at those locations as well? The series gives the impression that we have a large-sized crew at Oak Island with plenty of time on their hands, and it is bizarre to think that none of these things were done. I'll bet they were, and for some reason none of it was caught on camera. So we have a series that seems a little thin and shouldn't be.

Anyway, I'm hoping that this series continues until somebody finally finds something. I have been intrigued with the story of the money pit since, like, forever. As mysteries go it's right up there with the pyramids. I am certainly cheering the boys on. Hey, if I demonstrate my support for this series by sitting through every advertisement, does that mean they will see it through? I hope so. But I also hope season 2 digs a little deeper.

Fracture (2007)

Utterly implausible -- but other than that...

[5/10 · 23 December 2010]

Okay, it's been three years since this movie came out, and I'm finally catching up with it, but...

I guess you can say that I'm disturbed a multi-million-dollar Hollywood feature, something that people spent, oh YEARS of their lives making, would have at its core a plot so utterly unbelievable.

The plot depends on contrivances and coincidences, and the legal point upon which the final twist turns is so questionable that it really needed to be explored and addressed. If you're with me so far, I'm sure you must have seen the movie, and believe me, I don't want you to read any further unless you have, because I'm about to give the whole thing away.

But since you've seen it, I feel safe in saying that the final plot twist has something to do with double jeopardy. And if it provokes this legal layman jump up in his chair and say, wait a second, double jeopardy doesn't work that way! -- and if a thousand lawyers on the Internet say the same thing (they do) -- you know there's a problem. Look, even if the movie was right about this plot point -- let's say there's something quirky about the law in the state of California that makes double jeopardy work differently there than it does anywhere else in the country -- the problem here is so obvious that it should have been addressed, just to keep people like me from jumping out of their seats.

But the problem runs far deeper than that. Why on earth does Anthony Hopkins choose to murder his wife in such a complicated way? Seems to me that there are a thousand easier ways to go about these things.

The scheme itself doesn't make any sense, either. How could Hopkins possibly know that the investigating officer would be his wife's lover? How could Hopkins assume that he would have a chance to switch guns and reload without being seen? And let's take that one a step further. How could he assume that only one police officer would come inside, and that this one officer would breach every standard of law enforcement protocol by being dumb enough to set down his pistol and leave it unattended while an armed psycho killer stood a few feet away? How could Hopkins know the exact make and model of gun that the detective was using, so that a switch could be made? Some folks say they figured out the gun-switch angle right off the bat. But I didn't, because I didn't think anyone would be so stupid as to write something like this.

You know, basic and obvious questions like these bother me -- and they really destroy the movie-going experience. I have to wonder if the original script made more sense, and the producers meddled with it somehow, and then maybe it all got rewritten at the last second to cover up botched plot holes or something. Anyway, it just doesn't work.

And that's a shame, because the rest of the movie is so good -- the main character's backstory, the fine acting, and dialogue that sparkles in places.

This is the kind of movie where maybe you ought to have seven or eight beers first before turning on the DVD player, so you won't bother thinking about anything. It's the only way you can enjoy it.

The Wheeler Dealers (1963)

Has anyone noticed the "wheeling and dealing" doesn't make sense?

[3/10 · 7 September 2010]

**this review contains spoilers**

Finally got a chance to catch this movie on TCM the other day, and what a disappointment it was. I mean, this movie seemed like a slam-dunk from the description. James Garner, fresh from Maverick, playing a Texas oilman who isn't above a con or two. And Lee Remick, one of the most beautiful women in the movies, playing a stock analyst. Put 'em in one of those big, glossy Hollywood comedies they made in the early sixties, with all the wonderful character actors who were around at the time, like Jim Backus and Pat Harrington, and you have a heckuva package.

So I always wondered why all the movie-review books gave it a mediocre rating.

Well, now I know. This movie just doesn't make any sense. It's incoherent. Garner and Remick are immensely appealing, and I especially would have liked to have bumped into Remick on Wall Street in 1963, though if I had I wonder if I would have retained the power of speech, so gorgeous she was. But you know, to be successful, a movie needs more than actors. It also needs a storyline that works.

This one? Well, it starts out with Garner drilling for oil in Texas, and hitting a dry hole. He discovers he and his company are broke and he needs to go to New York to raise some money. He has some leases that are about to expire.

So he goes to Wall Street and immediately convinces three financiers to put up $300,000. That's all the money he asked them for. So is the problem solved? I dunno. The movie doesn't tell us.

Then Garner goes to a brokerage and tries to sell the owner on buying stock in his company. Okay, so maybe that $300,000 didn't solve the problem. Who knows? Anyway, here he meets Lee Remick.

She has another mission. She has to sell stock in a widget firm or else she'll be fired. She figures Garner is her mark. Okay, not a bad setup. Romance ensues, with all the usual complications.

Here we start seeing the stuff that doesn't make sense. Garner buys a restaurant. I guess he wants to impress Remick. But he's broke, scrambling for cash. Huh?

Then he hooks up with a painter, disappears for a week in Europe and starts buying up abstract paintings. I guess it's because he thinks Remick is into abstract art. There's some blather about how the whole thing is a tax dodge. He can make ten cents on the dollar by donating to museums. But again, he's broke, his company needs every dime. Huh?

Three fellow Texans arrive on the scene, apparently so eager to invest in Garner's schemes that they flew after him to New York in their private jet. Does he pitch them on his drilling venture? No. He sells them on joining the painting scheme instead. Huh?

There's a throwaway line in there somewhere, indicating that the Texans aren't keen on oil ventures. Okay, I'll grant the movie that -- it's a stab at logic -- but Garner never even tries to ask them for money. Here we are at the halfway point of the movie and this is the last time we even get a hint about his problems in Texas. This whole idea is abandoned. We never find out what happens to Garner's Texas drilling venture.

Now we get into an entirely new storyline. Garner, for some unexplained reason, decides to run up the price of the widget company stock. What is the scheme? What is the con? I don't get it.

Is Garner planning to purchase stock on the cheap, then resell it? The final scene of the movie belies that. He purchased four percent of the stock and his buddies purchased 48 percent, and all of them kept every penny. So it wasn't a swindle. Okay, fine. But why does he expend 20 minutes of comedic gyration on running up the price?

Actually, the widget company stock sounds like a steal. Turns out the widget company is a holding company for AT&T stock, bought on the cheap befoie WWI, and the principals have been collecting fat dividends ever since. Why wouldn't Garner try to acquire a controlling interest as cheaply as possible? He could liquidate the widget company and make money by selling the AT&T stock. If this was the plan, that might make sense, but the movie owes it to viewers to explain it. And in this scenario it wouldn't make any sense for Garner to run up the price of the stock. Anyway, Garner doesn't even seem to recognize that the widget company has value. I just don't get it. Huh?

And while this was playing out, I wanted to scream -- what about the Texas drilling venture? Anyway, all this is backdrop to the lovely romance between Garner and Remick, and it all culminates in a securities-fraud trial. The two of them do what they're supposed to, they're cute as heck and all that. But I say the "heart" part of the story doesn't work if the "head" part is a failure.

Public Enemies (2009)

Book Was Brilliant, Movie a Dud

[4/10 · 3 January 2010]

I'm probably a little different than most of the people who saw this movie in that I read the book upon which it was based. You really have to read it in order to understand the opportunity that Michael Mann squandered.

Bryan Burrough's "Public Enemies" was a brilliant book -- the first time I've really seen anyone tie together the full story of the "crime wave" of 1932-34, and the massive national manhunt for the "public enemies" that created the modern FBI. Judging by the notes in the back, it seems there might have been one other author who attempted the same task back in the sixties (and wound up inspiring the film "Bonnie and Clyde") but Burrough had the benefit of internal FBI files. Comparing them against the newspaper accounts of the time, and weaving in the recollections of the few survivors (notably Alvin Karpis), Burrough seemed to put together the full story for the first time.

It is dramatically different than the story that is generally known. Let's just say that J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men were waaaay out of their depth at first -- but over the course of about a year and a half they learned from their mistakes and established a somewhat competent national police force that could track fugitives across state lines, and respond quickly and fairly effectively when suspects were sighted.

It's a dramatic story of bank robberies, kidnappings, gunfights, car chases and police corruption, involving a cast of characters we know mainly by legend today -- Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, the Karpis-Barker Gang, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, and a supporting cast of hundreds.

The author apparently got started on this work as a miniseries for HBO, and then sorta lost his way or something -- the Internet is a little unclear on this -- and then he finally decided to write a book instead. We're all the better for it. Read the book. It's terrific.

And then somehow it landed in the hands of Michael Mann, who had to figure out how to turn the sprawling story into a two-hour movie. How did he do it? He didn't bother.

The movie is a travesty of the real story, every bit as distorted and inaccurate as all the other movies and books that Burrough set out to challenge. We see it in the opening minutes, when Pretty Boy Floyd is gunned down, and then we see Dillinger happily roaming the countryside with his tommygun. Floyd was gunned down months after Dillinger.

And if you know that fact, you know that much of what follows has been made up. Fact is, the movie has only a nodding resemblance to the truth of that Midwestern crime wave. It makes Melvin Purvis the hero, while the book makes him out to be incompetent. It restages the "Little Bohemia" siege in a way that fails to convey the far more interesting story of what really happened. Dillinger has his brains blown out at the Biograph but somehow manages to offer some poignant dying words. So on and so forth.

Now, I understand that a filmmaker has the "right" to take a little license with his source material. I understand that he can't tell an epic story in two hours, and he probably has to dispense with some of it. He also has to find a hero somewhere in it all. In an enormous story like this one, he has to find its spine, twist and reshape it and make it cinematic. All those points I grant.

I'll also admit that Mann is a stylish filmmaker, and all his flamboyance is in evidence here.

But my gosh -- there was a terrific story here, and neither Mann nor his screenwriters managed to see it. If there had to be a "hero," it might have been Hoover himself, whose frank, blunt and somewhat self-serving words (from his internal memos) might have offered a subversive commentary on the whole affair. There's more to it than that, but trust me, the story is dramatic.

Instead, what we got in this movie was yet another rehash of the Dillinger story, every bit as distorted and inaccurate and just plain wrong as every other Dillinger movie. Really, if you're going to tackle a story that's been done before, you ought to do something new. There just wasn't much point. Mann had the opportunity to break new ground and tell a story that has never been done before. He blew it.

Let's hope that someday someone makes that HBO miniseries.

Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)

Absolutely brilliant editing -- one of Berkeley's best

[12 December 2009]

Among the films Busby Berkeley was associated with, Golddiggers of 1935 is a standout. Other viewers have noted the astonishing "Lullaby of Broadway" sequence, which, yes, is everything they say it is. And the dreamy "white piano" sequence is pretty amazing, too.

But you know, there's more to it. And I think you just have to chalk this up to Berkeley's drill-team background. The sequences come off with such precision.

There's the crisp editing at the beginning, when the hotel managers are explaining the financial arrangements at the hotel to their employees. No pay, just tips, and make sure the managers are cut in. It's a funny bit, of course, but the way the film is assembled here accentuates the humor in a way you just don't see in your typical movie of 1935.

The part that really is memorable, though, is the sequence at the beginning where Dick Powell escorts his young lovely through the hotel lobby. I guess I really ought to go back and time it, but I think it runs for something like three minutes without a cut. And all the while, hundreds of extras are rushing back and forth, and you can tell the crew must have been dashing in and moving things that were just out of camera range. You know how much work that must have took? You know how everyone on the set must have been sweating at the 2 1/2 minute-mark, worrying that someone might trip and they'd have to start all over again? I have to wonder -- how many takes were required? It's a scene every bit as complicated as the celebrated opening shot of "Touch of Evil," and maybe more so, certainly a dozen times more tricky than anything in "Rope" -- and yet this one doesn't seem to be noted anywhere in the annals of Hollywood.

So let's just say that this film is one of Berkeley's most inventive and technically interesting offerings. And you know what else? It's a fun movie, too.

Freaks (1932)

More Than One Version of Movie Exists

[10/10 · 2 August 2009]

There's nothing, really, that I can add to the comments I see here on the movie itself, except to say that I belong in the "masterpiece" and "delightfully disgusting and exploitive" camp. "Freaks" is one of the finest horror movies of early Hollywood, even more effective than the Universal horror movies we all know and love. After all, Universal's monsters were created with makeup.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out something I caught on TCM's most recent showing of this movie. Apparently, more than one version of this movie exists.

The version that aired last week on TCM starts with a single title card. It stays on-screen long enough to read. Then someone rips it across the middle, and we see that it's a carnival poster. In the next shot we see the crumpled poster in the hands of a carnival barker, and he begins escorting an audience through the freak show. No doubt this is the way the movie was intended to begin.

Well, the funny thing is that this isn't the only version of this movie. I have a VHS copy that I taped from TNT in '89 or '90, back when TNT was still showing black-and-white movies.

The TNT version starts with the same single title card. Then there's a cut to one of the longest crawling text frames ever seen in the history of motion pictures. I swear to god, this crawling text must last two full minutes. The text basically apologizes for the movie and reminds the audience that people born with birth defects are human, too, and says they deserve our sympathy and support. Tinny classical music plays in the background.

And then, finally, the movie cuts to the carnival barker.

My guess is that this TNT version was an early re-release. The movie created a storm of protest on the original release and no doubt was a bit of an embarrassment, hence the apology.

Years later, "Freaks" was still an embarrassment. Back in the '70s and '80s, when I was growing up, it was one of those movies you read about in horror-movie fan magazines but never saw on broadcast TV. It really wasn't until the Turner stations went on the air that anyone had a chance to see it. For all I know, that TNT showing I caught in '89 or '90 might have been its first airing in years.

Guess I'll have to find that TNT version and compare it to the version shown on TCM. I'll betcha that the crawling-text apology isn't the only change that was made for the re-release.

Erik Smith Olympia, Wash.

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Interesting to compare with book/ radio version

[10/10 · 1 August 2009]

This movie is one of my all-time favorites, and I don't suppose there's anything I can add to the comments about the movie itself. Except that the final scene leaves you with such a sense of tragedy that it darn near brings tears to your eyes.

But I think that anyone interested in this movie might also be interested in its path to the screen -- the book by Dorothy B. Hughes was considerably different.

In the book, there's no question about it -- Dix Steele is a crazed psycho-killer. It's a routine story that poses only one question -- how he'll be caught. There is nothing redeeming whatever about Steele. Yes, there's a romance with Laurel, but she's a minor character. She sees there's something wrong with him that can't be changed, and she gives up on him well before the conclusion.

The book was rather faithfully adapted on the radio show Suspense in 1947.

On the way to the screen, Nicholas Ray dumped about half the story and gave us a much more interesting, much more nuanced tale about a man tormented by his demons -- and who might or might not overcome them and succeed in an adult relationship with a beautiful and complex woman. Our hero has a network of sympathetic friends, all of whom hope he'll see his way out, and whose patience is tested by his violent behavior. They see the good qualities that balance the bad. And then, as sort of a subplot, we also have to wonder if he's a crazed psycho-killer.

Man! What a difference! The book is the stuff of a thousand mystery plots, no more subtle or interesting than the ten thousand serial-killer stories that clutter the paperback racks and multiplexes these days. I don't even think there was anything new or interesting about the story in the forties. Seems like there were a jillion movies like it back then. Serial killers were big back in the black-and-white era, too.

The book was so uninspiring that it's a wonder anyone in Hollywood bothered optioning it.

What may have brought this one to Hollywood's attention is that Dorothy B. Hughes also wrote the splendid "Ride the Pink Horse," which was adapted faithfully for the screen and made a terrific movie.

Anyway, if I was ever to compose a list of movies-that-were-better-than-the-book, this would be at the top of the list.

Erik Smith Olympia, Wash.

Speechless (1994)

Wonderful movie with a third-act botch

[8/10 · 7 June 2009]

I guess you could say this contains a partial spoiler.

* * * * I'm a little perplexed at the low ratings most folks seem to give this movie. I think it's because people tend to look at movies as a total product. Me, I'm the kind of guy who can appreciate a classic car, and overlook the rust spots.

That's kind of where we are on this movie -- a movie that hits on seven out of eight cylinders. The problem is that romantic comedy is the most difficult of genres, and for most folks, it has to hit on all eight to "work." Viewers think about their feelings; they don't analyze a romantic movie in an intellectual way, and if something doesn't quite work, they leave the theater feeling dissatisfied without knowing exactly why.

This movie has so much going for it -- a good premise, clever banter, believable characters, and a romance that doesn't seem forced. And for me, there's a double appeal -- I've worked in the press/political world, and all I can say is I can tell the writers must have been there, too.

Was it miscast? Was it shallow? Was the dialog unrealistic? Was everyone too cute? Was the "strange bedfellows" premise beyond belief? Naah. None of that.

The problem is the third act. I don't want to give away too much, but we have a scene in a bar in which Michael Keaton is given some interesting information, and he has a choice to make. Now, the movie might have spun in a half-dozen interesting directions from this point -- first time I saw it, I was half-sitting up in my chair, once I recognized where the whole thing was leading. I couldn't tell quite where it was going, but I knew it was going to be mighty interesting. There was plenty of dramatic potential, the sort you always need at the start of the third act in a comedy, to make the ending seem a happy relief. The way it spun out in my mind, I suppose the movie would have gone on for another five or six scenes.

But here's the trouble -- the next scene is the big climax at the balloon fiesta, and the producers settled for an ending so simple, so dishonest, so downright cheap, that I'm sure it's the thing that left the bad taste in most moviegoers' mouths. Up to this point the movie was a clever comedy of words and ideas and romance; suddenly we got slapstick.

How on earth could something like this have happened? How could writers who had done such a good job up to this point have failed so miserably at the climax? My guess is that they didn't -- my guess is that someone with a complete lack of understanding of the material took a movie with a complex, adult, and somewhat ambiguous ending, something in which there were no heroes and no villains, and decided to "improve" it.

Or maybe a different ending was shot, and it didn't test well in Pomona, and the studio tried another approach.

Or maybe the studio decided to save a little money by cutting 15 minutes out of the script.

But I suspect some big-time tinkering here -- something that basically spoiled the movie for most viewers, and turned a potential classic into a bomb.

Wouldn't it be cool if another ending was shot -- and if someday a "director's cut" might be made available? There was so much "right" about this movie, I hated to see it spoiled by a botched last couple of minutes.

Erik Smith Olympia, Wash.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

Incompetent product from Disney's worst period

[24 November 2004]

I remember seeing this movie at age eight, when it hit the theater, and thinking it was the best movie I'd ever seen. And so I had a little trouble understanding, when I told my father that he might have enjoyed it if only he'd come with us, why my mother gave him a weary nod and told him maybe he didn't need to rush to the theater.

Well, I just finished watching "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" again, 33 years later, and I think I know now how my mother felt. It was only out of a sense of duty that I stuck through it to the end. My two children were watching.

If you're above the age of twelve or so, there must be a better way to spend your time. "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" is a perfect example of everything that went wrong at the Disney studio in the late sixties and the early seventies, an incompetent piece of movie-making that seems to have been shot from a first draft of the script, before anyone had a chance to think about it.

Some people seem to think that the problem is the Disney restoration -- the 139 minute version now available on DVD. This restoration adds 22 grueling minutes to the running time of the theatrical version. I have to think that it must have been excruciating to adults even in its shorter incarnation. It seemed to me that the movie could have been cut to half its length, and nothing would have been missed. Though no amount of cutting could have made it a good movie.

The problem isn't just that the musical numbers seem to go on forever, though they do, especially the restored "Portobello Road" sequence. The problem is that the story really doesn't hang together, and the characters are poorly drawn. In the amount of time that David Tomlinson spends on screen, we might have gotten a deeper look at a man whose life really has had no meaning, and for whom the con provides the only thrill. (His opening musical number provides a hint of that idea, without really presenting it in a coherent way.) We might have gotten a sense of Angela Lansbury's loneliness, and the desire that led her to enroll in a correspondence course in witchcraft. These are the sorts of ideas that can be conveyed by a line or two, an odd facial expression -- in other words, the sort of subtext we expect a competent movie to deliver. But here there's not even a hint.

The cartoon sequence halfway through the movie is utterly no fun whatever, and ultimately it makes no difference to the plot. A mystery is solved during the first 90 minutes or so of the movie, but this problem-solving element of the story is presented without any sense of mystery, and the solution arrives so perfunctorily that it makes the viewer think the last 60 minutes or so have been a waste.

I'm not saying this is the worst of Disney's late-sixties, early-seventies product. When I was a kid, I never did get around to seeing "The Boatniks" or "Superdad," not that I plan to seek out the opportunity at this late date. But I did see most, if not all of the rest of Disney's output during that period, and I can definitely say this one approaches the "Pete's Dragon" standard of wretchedness, without quite surpassing it. It definitely provides spirited competition for "The Black Hole."

The movie might be worth watching, I suppose, as an example of the depths to which the Disney studio sank in the fifteen years or so after Uncle Walt died. But remember -- the 139 minutes you spend with this movie are 139 minutes you'll never get back.

The Bamboo Blonde (1946)

A wonderful piece of WWII fluff

[25 August 2004]

Okay, this movie isn't Citizen Kane. But it is an hour of so of zippy well-produced entertainment -- and I think you have to say it is one of the most perfectly typical movies of its time. I mean, it has every stereotypical character, traditional plot device and normal production touch you might expect in a light comedy produced during wartime. We have a fast-talking and slightly corrupt nightclub promoter. We have an adorable torch singer with a heart of gold. And we have a somewhat naive leading man who nevertheless possesses the sterling qualities that will make him a war hero. Oh, and don't let me forget -- we also have a beautiful and manipulative woman, the sort who doesn't like to lose.

The plot is your basic boy-meets-girl stuff. It concerns a man who meets a nightclub singer -- very cutely, of course. They have a nice long chat over dinner and fall deeply in like. The fellow goes to war the very next day. Boy and girl secretly pine for each other, even though each of them knows they really don't have a right to do so. The girl's lovely face gets painted on the nose of our hero's B-29. The plane and crew becomes famous for heroic exploits (which consist mainly of surviving) and then hero and torch singer are reunited for a bond tour. They have to pretend to be lovers. The problem here is that the hero's rich-bitch fiancé intrudes. She doesn't love the guy at all, but now that he's a war hero, she demands that the big lunk go through with the ceremony.

You can kind of guess how this one ends. Can't you? Oh, please. And there's a big twist at the end, when we find out about the fellow's family background -- but if you don't see this one coming a half-hour in advance, you probably haven't seen enough thirties and forties movies.

Naturally the lovely Miss Langford has some elaborate production numbers, with a wonderful big-band soundtrack.

Now, this sort of summary might make this movie sound like the oldest and tritest story ever filmed. But the fact is that every now and then someone produces a movie that so perfectly encapsulates every convention of its genre that you stop seeing a lack of originality as a flaw. Instead you can marvel at its perfection, the way you can admire a perfectly cut diamond. Nothing original about a perfectly cut stone, is there? But it sure looks purty.

So of course the boy and girl fall in love. Of course they conquer all. Of course Frances Langford gets to wear skimpy outfits and sing her lungs out. No wonder Bob Hope took her on so many USO tours.

I gather that Anthony Mann's involvement is one of the reasons this movie works so well. He became a noted director in the years after this film was made, and while I can't count myself as one of those who is obsessed with his work, I know that there are many who are. Suffice it to say that some directors might have made a mess of a movie like this one, but Mann keeps it moving right along, and the level of acting is pretty much what it ought to be.

Okay, so maybe the critics were right when they called this movie clichéd and hackneyed. But there was a reason for those clichés: Sometimes they actually worked. Next time this one shows up on cable, put your feet up, put your mind on hold and let yourself enjoy the darned thing.

Ellery Queen (1975–1976)

A mystery show that actually played fair

[24 August 2004]

Ellery Queen was one of the greatest television programs of the seventies, and given the short history of the medium, that makes it one of the greatest of all time. Splendid atmosphere, above-average acting and writing, and a wonderful gimmick -- the way Ellery (Jim Hutton) would turn to the camera and tell viewers that they'd already seen all the clues that were necessary to solve the mystery. What separated Ellery Queen from shows like Perry Mason was the fact that it played fair -- everything you needed to know was presented during the first 45 minutes, and if you were smart enough you could figure it out yourself.

Perhaps my view is colored by nostalgia -- I was 13 years old when the show aired. The show is rarely repeated -- the last time I caught a rerun was more than 20 years ago. It's hard to know whether my viewpoint would be different today, though I certainly wish I had the opportunity to find out. (Universal Studios, take note: Here's one guy who would buy the DVD box set.)

Let me add a story here. I remember going door to door one night in 1976, collecting payments for my newspaper route, and I noticed that a family was gathered in the living room, watching "Ellery Queen."

"Heck," I said. "I started watching that show, but it was so easy to figure out, I decided I might as well go around banging on doors instead."

They looked at me, a little dumbfounded. "You figured it out?"

"Sure," I said. "The killer had to be someone who had a copy of the updated movie script. There was only one person who had the copy, and that was..."

Well, I can't remember the actual name of the villain, not all these years later. But I remember these people looking at each other, and saying it made sense, and darned if I might be right, and they'd have to stay tuned to see if I really did figure it out. And of course I was right. For weeks, every time I saw these people, it was all they could talk about. How on earth could I have figured it out? Of all people, their 13-year-old paperboy?

I never did tell them the episode was a repeat.

Ghost Ship (2002)

Not nearly as bad as reviewers thought

[31 July 2004]

I caught this movie the other night on cable, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Reviewers upon its release thought this movie was execrable, but if you see it as an entry in the slasher/horror genre, it's definitely what you would call above-average.

The first few minutes are among the most gruesome and inventive I've seen in any such movie -- what sort of sick mind could have dreamed up something like that? The screenwriter ought to take a bow. And the scene in the third act that explains all the horrors that took place on the boat is really sort of a masterpiece of its kind -- kinetic, visual, and even funny (if you can look past all the gore). Of course, you might find yourself wondering how that horrible opening scene could actually have happened as the movie suggests it did -- but you don't watch a movie like this one expecting plausibility.

As for the rest of it, well, the movie and plot hangs together, and there really aren't any slow spots. Solid moviemaking technique covers over the weaknesses in the story. I guess I did find the ending amusing, in a way that doubtless wasn't intended. I'd spoil things by explaining why, but umm, let's just point out that the story IS supposed to take place someplace rather near the North Pole, in one of the most frigid oceans of the planet. Oh, never mind. It's just not the kind of movie that has to make a whole lot of sense.

Anyway, if you're the sort of person who'd give Halloween an "A," you'd have to give this one at least a "B-minus."

Erik Smith Whittier, CA

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

The best movie Bob Hope never made

[18 July 2004]

Most people seem to consider "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" a failure, either because of casting or the joke-a-minute script. But I think they're wrong about that. It's just that it was made about sixty years too late. It's really an homage to the sort of comedy/mysteries that were produced in the early forties -- the same time period in which the movie is set. Seems to me most people didn't get that. Maybe people these days don't watch enough old movies.

Everyone was correct, of course, when they said Woody Allen was miscast (and since Woody Allen did the casting, he deserves the blame). But it's not that great a sin. Basically, this is a movie that should have been a vehicle for Bob Hope, but since Bob Hope wasn't exactly available in the year 2001, someone had to stand in for him. I daresay there isn't an actor in Hollywood these days who can do a good Bob Hope, and since there isn't, I have to say Woody Allen isn't such a bad substitute.

Actually, I remember reading somewhere that Bob Hope was a major inspiration for the young Woody Allen, and he was stung in the late sixties when Hope told a few mean-spirited jokes about him. Maybe, all these years later, Woody Allen decided that all was forgiven.

Anyway, don't let yourself be bothered by the fact that the lead actor is about 30 years too old for the part. Also, try to forget that nasty business with Soon-Yi. Just relax and let yourself laugh at the one-liners. Better yet, try and imagine that the lines are being delivered by someone with a ski-jump nose. You may see this movie for what it is -- a screamingly funny comedy, and the best movie Bob Hope never made.

You know, someday Hollywood might find another actor who can play a role the way Bob Hope did, back in his heyday. And when that happens, this movie would be an excellent candidate for a remake.

The Moderns (1988)

A screwball comedy classic, destroyed by poor direction

[18 July 2004]

If ever there was a movie that demanded to be remade, this is the one. The script is a comedy classic, but the direction made it look more like an episode of Twin Peaks or the X-Files. The pacing is sluggish; the actors are dour. What was Alan Rudolph thinking, anyway?

The script, taken by itself, is hilarious, a meditation on art and the pretensions of the "lost generation" of Americans in Paris during the 1920s. It might have been the best American screwball comedy of the eighties -- at least in script form. Most of the time, when a movie goes as far awry as this one does, you think the studio simply assigned the wrong director. But since this was a personal project for Alan Rudolph, and he presumably shaped the script every step of the way, I'm at a loss to understand what went wrong.

I just imagine what this movie might have been, in the hands of, say, Woody Allen, as long as he wasn't doing his Ingmar Bergman thing. Had the characters delivered their lines at a snappy pace; had they kept their tongues in cheek and played their characters as the sly weasels they were supposed to be, well, then, what a romp it might have been. With a jaunty 20s-jazz score, this movie might have been a classic.

As it stands, it's a failure, and I can only hope that someday someone will resurrect the property and give it the production it deserves. But you know, that script is so good -- I still say the movie is worth watching.

The Big Clock (1948)

Another key difference between book and film

[16 July 2004]

I posted a message last night about some of the differences between the book and film, and the reasons I think the film is superior, but it strikes me that I left out the most important one. The title, "The Big Clock," carries a much different meaning.

In the book, it's a tortured metaphor, nothing more. There's a big clock up the sky, you see, ticking away, and there's nothing you can do about it, and it just ticks and ticks until finally something happens. This is probably not as eloquent as author Kenneth Fearing's explanation, but it ought to suffice. It's not such a bad idea, really -- the story is one of the best examples of the "ticking clock" device ever set to paper or film, and it's interesting to note that the book was written long before critics started using the term to describe stories of this kind. But Fearing uses this metaphor awkwardly. He describes the concept at great length in the first few pages of the book, and it shows up several more times throughout the novel. And yet it is inserted so clumsily that you have to wonder if he wrote the book first, and then decided he needed a dandy metaphor, so he added a few pages here and there to boost his word-count. It seems to be dropped into the narration without much justification, and the explanation of the concept seems to go on forever. It comes out sounding something like the narration in an above-average forties radio play, the sort of thing you might have heard on, say, Suspense.

The film dispenses with this metaphor, at least in such an obvious way. Instead, it gives us a great big clock in the skyscraper's lobby. (There's no such thing in the book.) Beyond that, no one bothers to explain the title.

The metaphor is present in the movie, of course -- it's just that the entire story serves as an illustration of the concept. It goes without saying; the idea is presented more subtly. No doubt the screenwriters decided that it was a terrific title, but if they were going to dispense with awkward metaphors, they needed a different sort of justification for the name. Their solution works. The clock in the lobby gives the movie a focal point. Better yet, because the movie opens with Ray Milland hiding from his pursuers within the "big clock," we know that a climactic scene will eventually be played out there.

The screenwriters buttressed this idea with other clock references. Ray Milland is late for a train. Much of the dialogue concerns the passage of time. People keep checking watches. And notice that Janoth's girlfriend is beaten to death with a sundial?

Let me add one other thought. The narration in the book and movie carries many similarities to the sort of narration you might have heard on the radio show Suspense, perhaps the best of all nourish radio programs. This type of narration was a standard device in radio and the movies, back in the forties. But there's another connection. In the original trailer for this movie, we see Ray Milland in a radio studio as the show Suspense is being recorded, and the show's director (Anton M. Leder, I believe) steps out from the broadcast booth to offer a testimonial for the movie. An interesting bit of trivia.

The Big Clock (1948)

A rare gem -- in more ways than one

[16 July 2004]

This is one of my all-time favorite films, and while so many of my own thoughts have already been expressed by so many others, there is one other point worth adding. This movie is one of those rare cases in which the film is better than the novel. I know; I've read it.

The novel, by Kenneth Fearing, takes a rather odd approach -- it's told in first-person form, from the viewpoint of several characters, shifting POV throughout. I wouldn't take it to task for that: It might be unusual, but it's certainly an interesting idea.

But there are several elements that just don't work. For instance, the hero, in the book, is a former barkeeper from upstate New York. How on earth he could become a top editor at a national magazine is left unexplained. The movie's explanation -- that he is a former newspaper reporter from a smalltown paper in -- if I remember correctly -- West Virginia -- is certainly more plausible. The magazine setting, as portrayed in the book, is entirely unconvincing.

The book bogs when it means to twist. Plot points hang on implausibilities. And the conclusion is certainly quite a bit different, and less dramatic. I guess this ought to be considered a spoiler, so be warned:

*SPOILER ALERT* In the book's finale, the hero learns third-hand that Earl Janoth, the Laughton character, has committed suicide, plunging from the top of his beloved skyscraper. We -- the readers -- don't even get to see it happen. *END SPOILER ALERT*

The movie's script tosses out most of the extraneous elements and boils the story down to Kenneth Fearing's astonishingly original concept. A man is trapped in a building. A manhunt is taking place, for a person unknown, in an attempt to frame that person for murder. The hero knows that the manhunt will eventually lead to him. He takes charge of it, and attempts to divert its course.

These elements were present in the original novel, and the screenwriters took them and polished them to the point where we have a movie in which not a line of dialogue is wasted, and every word and every scene propels us toward the conclusion. We can feel Ray Milland's rising sense of tension as the net closes in. And if you watch the composition of the shots -- something I suppose comes easy for me, after watching this masterpiece a half-dozen times -- you can see that even the photography was carefully managed to give us a sense of Ray Milland's claustrophobia and fear.

The only off-putting note comes at the end -- a bit of comic relief from Elsa Lanchester. But hey, in any movie, you can overlook ONE thing. The eighties remake "No Way Out" does not in any way approach the achievement of this film, but it's interesting to note that one element we find in the eighties version was present, in oblique form, in the book -- the intimation of homosexuality. (Naturally it doesn't appear in the forties version.) In its own way, the eighties film also takes an element of Fearing's story, and runs with it.

Anyway, I can only think of a few examples in which a movie is superior to the book on which it was based -- "In a Lonely Place" comes to mind, and perhaps the more recent films "Fight Club" and "Election." "The Big Clock" is another one of those rare cases in which Hollywood took a flawed property and turned it into something great.