The adventures of a professional screenwriter and sometimes film festival jurist, slogging through the trenches of Hollywood, writing movies that you have never heard of, and getting no respect. Voted #10 - Best Blogs For Screenwriters - Bachelor's Degree
Directed by: Joseph Sargent. Written by: James Bridges based on the novel by D.F. Jones. Starring: Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, William Schallert, Georg Stanford Brown. Produced by: Stanley Chase. Cinematography by: Gene Polito (WESTWORLD, PRIME CUT). Music by: Michel Colombier (MAN ON FIRE, NEW JACK CITY).
This was one of those movies I caught on TV as a kid, probably on NBC Monday Night At The Movies With Victor Bozeman, and I loved it. It was about computers and was science fictiony and had naked parts that they showed on TV! It was one of those movies that stuck with me, and when I found it on DVD I bought it and watched it again... and though it doesn’t hold up to memory, it’s still an okay film. Seems like a TV movie today, and since it was directed by Joseph Sargent who made a mile of TV movies and was directing TV episodes (IT TAKES A THIEF) just before this, that’s probably one of the reasons why. It was obviously made low budget by Universal (no real stars) and maybe it *was* a made for TV movie in the USA that was released theatrically to the rest of the world. It’s a movie about *ideas* rather than special effects.
Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden from RAT PATROL, though your mom may know him from YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS soap opera) has created the ultimate supercomputer the size of a city block. Probably the first time a film discussed artificial intelligence, because Colossus can learn. The computer itself is deep in a Cheyenne Mountain type bunker that is impenetrable to missiles from those Ruskies. There’s a cool opening scene where Forbin starts the computer and then walks through hallways, setting electronic booby traps behind him, over a bridge that retracts behind him... basically al of the stuff Indiana Jones has to go through at the beginning of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Forbin leaves the mountain entrance as thick steel doors close behind him. Army guys guard the doors.
A JFK like President Of The United States (Gordon Pinsent) addresses the nation on every TV channel (all 3 of them), and says that human error will no longer be a fear when it comes to our nuclear missiles. From this point on, all of our defenses are now being controlled by Colossus. The computer can sense an attack and instantly plan a retaliation. It collects data from millions of sources (did someone at the NSA see this movie as a kid, too?) and know more about a situation than any human. It is safer than having a human at the controls of our nukes. The Prez introduces Forbin who uses all kinds of words the country doesn’t understand: dude is an aloof genius. They press the button and a computer is the most powerful person in the world. Head of the CIA (William Schallert, Patty Duke's dad on that TV show) thinks this is all a mistake, we should do things the old fashioned way.
But the minute Colossus is activated it asks about the other computer. What other computer? Well, it seems that the Russians have their own version of Colossus and didn’t tell anybody. There’s a tense scene where the two computers hook up despite both Forbin and the Ruskies trying to stop it. And then the two computers become one... one computers that is more intelligent than anyone else on Earth... and decides that humans lie and cheat and steal and can not be trusted. So, before you can say HAL 9000 or Skynet, the computer threatens us with our own nukes. Actually firing nukes at both the USA and Russia in a tense scene after they have tried to separate the two computers. One of the interesting things from a film standpoint is that most of this story takes place in the computer command center: a big room filled with consoles like NASA mission control. There are a bunch of scientist types at the consoles, including James Hong, Georg Stanford Brown, and Susan Clark... all wearing labcoats and getting a line or two of dialogue.
Except for Susan Clark as Dr. Markham who is the driven female in the group. When Colossus demands that Forbin install cameras *everywhere* so the computer can keep its eye on everyone, Forbin comes up with a plan. He tells Colossus that he needs the camera in his bedroom turned off for a few hours a night, four days a week because he has a mistress and they need some privacy when they screw. Colossus has access to all of the information in the world, checks it out... and humans *do* screw and prefer to do it in privacy... but it will only allow one hour of privacy. Colossus asks who is mistress is, Forbin answers Dr. Markham.
Forbin needs someone who is believable as a mistress, but also understands all the technical stuff he needs to communicate. Colossus accepts this - she's single and young and attractive to humans. This gives Forbin and Markham one hour 4 days a week to plot against Colossus... but also requires those nekkid parts I mentioned.
Dr. Markham shows up for her hour of information exchange... and Colossus wants to watch them all the way up to the sex part. So they can have dinner together, a drink or two... and then Colossus demands that they both strip *before* going into the bedroom. Now Forbin and Marham have to strip in front of each other, then exchange information while naked in bed. Of course, in typical AUSTIN POWERS style, the naughty bits are always covered in these scenes. But it's funny to see two naked people trying to be business-like while the camera gives us shots through wine glasses with the wine covering the crotch and all sort of other silly lurid shots that were exciting when I was a kid.
While standing with their naughty parts obscured by an assortment of things on the table, they not only figure out a way to stop Colossus from taking over the world (it wants to build a factory that will make robots to keep us in line... SKYNET!!!) They also manage to fall in love. And almost the whole story takes place in that control room, the President’s briefing room, and Forbin’s living quarters. It’s an okay movie, but the first half has a handful of ticking clock scenes and the last half has people with their naughty bits obscured. Becomes less exciting as it goes along (unless you are a 12 year old boy). It really does remind you of Skynet and TERMINATOR and I wonder if James Cameron saw this around the same time he watched those OUTER LIMITS episodes that Harlan Ellison wrote?
I wasn't the only one who saw this movie as a kid, it has quite a following.
THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, like Hitch's MR. & MRS. SMITH, is an unusual film from the "master of suspense" because it is a comedy rather than a thriller. This was Shirley McLaine's very first film, and she played the *lead* - and is great. Jerry Mathers was on old pro with 8 previous credits when he made this film! So let's see what he has to say about the experience of working with Hitchcock and his memories of playing the role of a kid who may or may not have killed Harry with his ray gun...
- Bill
Of course, I have my own books focusing on Hitchcock...
HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE
LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!
Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?
This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!
Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!
We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?
Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 52 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.
Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.
Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.
The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!
Season: 1, Episode: 29. Airdate: April 18, 1961
Director: Jules Bricken Writer: Robert Bloch adapts... Robert Bloch! Cast: Macdonald Carey, Patricia Medina, Joan Tetzel, John Emery. Music: Big lush Morton Stevens score... heard it somewhere before. Cinematography: John Russell. Producer: William Frye.
Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “The name of our story is The Devil’s Ticket. It has to do with an artist, and they tell us that one picture is worth a thousand words. You will see Macdonald Carey, Joan Tetzel, Patricia Medina, and John Emery. Now there’s a rogue’s gallery if I ever saw one! And I can assure you they’re up to no good, as you’ll find out for yourself if you have the courage to stay with us.”
Synopsis: A Pawn Shop as the sun sets. Pawn Shop owner Spengler (Robert Cornthwaite) is nervous as he closes up, makes sure all of the doors and windows are locked as if he’s expecting an invasion... that’s when the bell over the door begins ringing like crazy. He carefully opens the front door... what could be on the other side? A creature? Sees his cat jumping up and grabbing the bell cord. Brings in the cat, relocks and bolts the front door, and goes to the counter where there’s a HUGE pile of money. He starts counting it when the back door BLASTS open, and fog enters the Pawn Shop. A voice startles him: it’s Satan, saying they had a deal... and now it’s time for him to pay. The cat freaks out...
Crappy apartment: Hector Vane (Macdonald Carey) and his wife Marie (Joan Tetzel) sit at the dinner table eating the last of their food. They are flat broke. He’s a painter who does amazing portraits which capture the souls of his subjects... but everyone wants abstracts these days. He hasn’t sold a painting in ages. He looks for something to take to pawn for a few bucks so that they can eat... realizes they have nothing left except his ratty old coat, and his paintings. He swore he’d never pawn a painting, but...
Pawn Shop: Hector goes to pawn one of his paintings, but Spengler isn’t there. A strange man lets him in... he doesn’t introduce himself, but he goes by many names (Satan played wickedly by John Emery). Satan loves the painting, but tells Hector that he’d rather loan him money on another commodity. In a sly and subtle scene, Satan introduces himself without names, explains that he will pawn Hector’s soul for 90 days in exchange for Hector’s dreams of success as a painter... but at the end of those 90 days Hector must return and give Satan the pawn ticket *and* a painting of someone else... a painting that captures their very soul. Hector’s soul will be returned, but the subject of his painting will lose theirs.
Hector puts the pawn ticket in the pocket of his ratty coat and heads home...
Where Marie tells him a gallery just called, they want to do a one man show of his work. Not just any gallery, but a big uptown gallery where rich people go to buy paintings! Any skepticism about whether the new pawnshop owner was Satan or not disappears.
The Gallery: *All* of Hector’s paintings sell for top dollar, and there are art collectors eagerly awaiting whatever he paints next! They are *rich*!
Luxurious apartment: Hector and Marie sit at a massive dinner table eating a feast. The same scene as before, just with a whole lot more money.
Hector goes to the Pawn Shop with a painting... a landscape. Satan tells him that’s not the way it works: it must be the painting of someone you know... and it must capture their soul. Their soul for yours.... and he has 26 days left to paint and deliver the picture.
Hector tells Marie he’s going to their old apartment, now his studio, to paint. She doesn’t understand why he kept that place... why not find a nice studio? They can afford it. Hector says he likes to be reminded of where he came from...
But really, he uses the studio to meet his mistress Nadja (Patricia Medina) a model he never got around to painting... but bedding? That’s what he does now instead of paint. Nadja wants him to ditch his wife and go to the Mexican Riviera with her. Problem is, the day she leaves is the day he needs to deliver his painting.
Hector sees a psychiatrist Dr. Frank (Hayden Rorke, Dr. Bellows from I DREAM OF JEANNIE) and explains the whole Satan thing. Dr. Frank doesn’t believe in Satan, thinks this new Pawnshop Owner is just some dude playing with Hector’s mind. He only has Hector’s soul if that’s what Hector believes. Hector asks if the dude isn’t Satan, how come Hector became instantly successful after making the deal? Dr. Frank agrees to go to the pawn shop and talk to this guy who may or may not be Satan.
At a fancy restaurant, Hector has dinner with Nadja... and tells her he *will* go away with her.
When he goes to see Dr. Frank the next day, the doctor is gone and Satan is behind his desk. Satan warns him not to do anything like that again. Don’t go to the police, don’t call a lawyer (“In my time, I’ve had dealings with many lawyers”), just deliver the painting... in 13 days.
Hector thinks he has a solution: he will paint Marie... who he no longer loves. But as he paints his wife, he falls in love with her all over again. This creates a problem: he finished the painting with just over 2 days until his pawn ticket and the painting are due... but now he’s fallen back in love with is wife.
When the wife is out, he brings his mistress over to see the painting... and she reacts like a madwoman! She can see that Hector is still in love with his wife just by looking at it, so she SLASHES the painting to ribbons! Then she runs off, saying their relationship is over. To make things worse, the phone rings and it’s Satan reminding him he has 48 hours to deliver the painting.
Hector locks himself in his room and paints nonstop for 48 hours... falls asleep. Marie knocks on the door, he says come in... that the painting is finished. As soon as he delivers it to the customer, they can run off together... a second honeymoon. Marie leaves for a moment, then returns... tells Hector he has a visitor. It’s Satan.
“You know why I’m here. Give me my painting!”
Hector invites Satan in, tells him he will really like the painting he’s done, it really captures the subject’s soul. He unveils the painting, and it’s... Satan! Hector explains that Satan kept asking for *his* painting, so this is a painting of *him*, as per contract. Satan is shocked, he has actually been bested by a mortal. This has never happened before! Satan tells Hector to give him the pawn ticket and Hector’s soul will be returned, and he gets to keep all of the fame and fortune he’s built for the past 90 days plus any he makes for himself in the future. Hector asks Marie to get him his old coat...
She returns with a brand new one. “Surprise!” She got him a new coat for their second honeymoon! Hector asks what she did with his old coat? Marie says it was so old and ratty that she burned it...
Satan smiles at Hector, “Now it’s your turn to burn!”
Review: Bloch adapts Bloch this week in a clever little weird tale probably from Weird Tales Magazine originally.
There have been some Bloch short stories adapted on Thriller before, but this is the first time he did it himself. Though best known for PSYCHO, Bloch is one of the great horror writers of the 1950s and one of my favorites. I probably discovered him through Norman Bates, but stayed for Weird Tailors and all of his wonderful short stories and novels. He is the master of the clever writing with lines like “He cut off her scream, and her head” and “He'd captured her heart, and put it in a glass jar”. In this episode there’s all kinds of clever lines, like Satan’s line about knowing a bunch of lawyers.
Even though this episode has a built in ticking clock, with the 90 day pawn ticket and the days ticking down throughout; this is more a twist end story than a tale of suspense like YOURS TRULY JACK THE RIPPER (which also has a twist end, but manages to build some real suspense and dread whenever one of the women goes walking after dark). No suspense situations in this episode, it ends up being more of a drama about the toll of success. Part of the problem might be the direction, which is typical TV so some of the things which might be milked for suspense end up being used for surprise. But the*type* of story is less suspense and more twisted tale.
Macdonald Carey is a really odd choice for the lead, who is supposed to be a young struggling artists and is even called “young man” by a couple of characters... Carey was not young when this was made. The other characters were adjusted upwards as well, with Nadja his mistress looking late 30s... compare her to the hot young artist’s model from YOURS TRULY! Even though Carey seems to old, that age adds a layer of desperation which may not have been there with a younger actor. This old man has been struggling all of these years and *still* hasn’t made it?
Just as beatniks were part of the time period so they pop up in YOURS TRULY, having an analyst or psychiatrist was also an element of the times... and shows up in this story, When Hector goes to see Dr. Frank, that would make more sense at the time than going to the police... people went to their shrinks. Their shrink would solve the problem. One of the elements of a thriller story like NORTH BY NORTHWEST is that the authorities have to be taken out of the equation... so Roger Thornhill is accused of a murder and can’t go to the police for help. Here, Hector goes to his shrink for help... and we must remove the authorities from the equation... so Dr. Frank’s power must be nullified. That kind of tells us something about the power of psychoanalysis at the time period: it’s equal to calling the police!
How do you show Hector worrying about his pawned soul? You can’t *show* someone’s soul, right? So you need to find a symbol of their soul... and that’s the pawn ticket. I call this a “twitch”, it’s a physical manifestation of the protagonist’s emotional conflict. He’s worried about his soul, so he pulls the pawn ticket out of the pocket of his ratty old coat and looks at it, and we understand that he’s worried that he might lose his soul. You find a symbol, and this one comes directly from the story. It’s a great device to show us what is going on inside a character’s head. Every time Hector takes the ticket out and looks at it, we understand what he’s thinking.
Speaking of that ratty old coat, because it’s the big end twist, in order to “play fair” we have to establish that the wife wants to get rid of that coat and make sure that’s understood by the audience but also forgotten by the audience (to make it a twist). Here’s where *the story* makes this work: Hector has a secret reason for keeping the ratty old coat that his wife doesn’t know: the pawn picket in the pocket. So even though it makes sense for him to throw away the old coat, we know why he wants to keep it. Several times, when the wife is wearing new clothes and Hector puts on his ratty old coat it makes sense for her to comment on it... and the audience doesn’t notice that they are being set up for that twist at the end. We’re so busy worrying that the wife will discover the pawn ticket that we don’t realize we’re being set up for her *not* discovering the pawn ticket. That’s some good writing!
Probably because I’m more into the suspense based episodes, this one is in the good category but not in my great category. It is very entertaining, and John Emery kills it as Satan... he milks every one of Bloch’s clever lines!
Next week we look at an episode that may have inspired Stephen King’s CARRIE.
Another ancient blog entry (from 2007) that I'm reprinting instead of writing anything new, because I'm lazy.
A whole bunch of posts and half a year ago, I wrote that my friend Rod and I were stuck in bumper-to bumper traffic on the 405, trying to get to a movie playing in Santa Monica. That movie is now out on DVD, so I thought maybe I’d talk about it. The movie was....
FIDO
Imagine that perfect 1950s suburbia from LEAVE IT TO BEAVER... combined with the bright, well manicured 1950s soap operas of Douglas Sirk (like ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS)... and throw in that wholesome all American 1950s classic TIMMY AND LASSIE...
But Lassie isn't a dog, it's a domesticated zombie.
That's FIDO.
This is not some scary zombie attack movie, no friends, after we won the zombie war (which seems a lot like WW2 in the newsreel footage that opens the film) zombies have been domesticated and are a servant class. Every suburban family hopes to one day have a zombie of their very own - to take out the trash serve meals, mow the lawn, wash the car, and any other task that sophisticated people may find distasteful.
You end up with a send up of 1950s TV & films, zombie movies, suburbia, the class system, government, Douglas Sirk films, and all kinds of other stuff. I actually laughed so hard at one point that I almost lost consciousness. My stomach hurt. This was the best film I've seen in a long time.
Carrie-Ann Moss is mom, Dylan Baker is very repressed dad, Tim Blake Nelson is the next door neighbor and Henry Czerny (the asshole political aid who double crosses Harrison Ford in one of those Tom Clancy movies) as the pipe smoking perfect dad down the street... and Billy Connelly as the zombie Fido (an amazing performance, since all he does is grunt and growl).
The film is supposed to be the most expensive Canadian film ever made (cast, probably) but only played on a couple of screens in the USA and the showing we went to wasn’t crowded at all. The plan was to expand to more screens if the film is successful...
But it never came to a cinema near you. Instead it vanished, only to appear a couple of weeks ago on DVD.
And, just like HOSTEL 2, I think the problem was in the marketing. (That’s *twice* I’ve blamed marketing - really unusual). Here’s the thing - you need to get the people into the cinema on a movie like this, so that they will laugh and then tell their friends that have to see it. That’s where marketing comes in.
The first problem with this film is the title: FIDO. When I read a list of new films opening over that weekend, I saw FIDO and skipped right past it. G rated family film about a dog. Not even a good title for a G rated family film - tells us *nothing* about the story. LASSIE COME HOME - hey, Lassie is lost and has to find his way home! So FIDO not only makes you think it’s a family film when it’s really a horror comedy, it also doesn’t tell us anything about the film. Your title is like a mini logline - it needs to tell us what the story is about. Some of you may be thinking, “Hey, it’s about a zombie named Fido!” But we only know that *after* we have seen the movie. We want the title to tell us what the movie is about *before* we see it.
The target audience for FIDO would never see a film with that title.
Then we come to the poster...
What the hell is up with that? The poster is supposed to sum up the story in an image... Can you tell from the poster that this movie takes place in the 1950s? Or that it’s about a boy and his zombie? That it is a comedy? Or that Billy Connelly is even a zombie? He looks kind of weird in the poster, and has that punk collar thing, but that poster tells us *nothing* about the movie. The artwork that was on the NuArt Theater’s flyer was much better - it had silhouettes of the 1950s family (iconic images) and the boy holding a leash... with a zombie on the other end. That sums it up... but it’s not the poster.
The poster is in collage style - and I hate that. I was in a book store a while back and bought a Greg MacDonald book about Inspector Flynn. MacDonald created Fletch - the clever investigative journalist who always gets involved in some murder mystery - you may know the character from the Chevy Chase movie. If you haven’t read the books - check them out. Great writing and fantastically witty dialogue. The paperback versions in the 70s used to have a dialogue passage on the *cover* instead of art work. That was the selling point - really clever writing. Inspector Flynn pops up in the 3rd Fletch book, accusing Fletch of murder and chasing him throughout the book. He spun off into his own series, and this was a recent book I didn’t know existed...
Even when I saw it, I didn’t know it existed. Because the book cover was some sort of collage with the title written with every letter in a different font. It looked like someone dumped a bunch of stuff on a table, glued it in place, and that was the cover. Huh? I probably looked at this book a hundred times before realizing that it was a Flynn book. And the cover gives me *nothing* about the story - actually, under the crap there’s a sketch of a guy with a nail in his ear. That’s part of the story. But the sketch doesn’t look like a crime novel picture, it looks like something you’d find on the cover of a Gay romance. Cover doesn’t match the contents at all. Though there is a boy with a nail in his ear, the main story is something entirely different and much more exciting: someone is sending death threats to a Harvard professor and breaking into his house. Flynn has only a few days to stop the killer from striking. The nail in the ear thing is a minor subplot... but the cover of the book. Was that because they could find a sketch of a boy and add it to the collage?
When you look at old movie posters, they are amazing. They tell the story, set the mood, and usually feature the star’s face, The lower the budget of the movie, they less they could depend on the star and the more they had to find an *image* the sums up the story. I just did an article for Script about creating the poster image for your screenplay - because I think it’s important to know how they are going to be able to market your work down the line. When some producer says, “I love the script, but kid, I have no idea how the hell we’re going to market it”, you can pull out your poster. If you can’t figure out what the poster for your movie looks like, how the heck do you expect some non-creative guy in a suit to figure it out?
The thing about collage posters and collage book covers is that it’s just gluing together existing elements. It’s not creating the one iconic image that sums up the book or film, it’s using someone else’s stuff. The movie posters of the past were amazing, but somewhere along the line, movie posters have become all about star faces. Instead of finding that image that tells us what the story is about, we get George Clooney’s face. “I have no idea what the movie is about, but George Clooney is in it, so I’ll see it!” Hey, that’s great for Clooney fans, but what about everyone else? What about people who want to know what the movie is about before they plunk down their $11.50 (what I paid last night at the AMC in Burbank). What happened to those folks who created the amazing images that summed up the story?
Did collages - the concept of using pieces of *someone else’s* creation - squeeze them out? Have we been breeding humans to think “collage” instead of “creativity”?
I read scripts (and even see movies) that are just collages. Take existing elements from popular films and glue them together. Quentin Tarantino is the king of Collage Movies. Take a Ringo Lam Hong Kong cop film about a jewelry store heist gone wrong and the band of bandits in a warehouse aiming guns at each other and wondering which one of them is an undercover cop and add the color name thing from PELHAM 1-2-3 and the... well, eventually you have a bunch of scenes from other people’s films processed into a new movie. Check out Mike White’s WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE FOOLING and YOU’RE STILL NOT FOOLING ANYBODY (about PULP FICTION).
Tarantino is a genius - he can take the pieces of other people’s work and turn them into something uniquely his own...
The funniest thing are the collage scripts that use bits from Tarantino movies - for a while it seemed like every other script was someone pretending to be Tarantino.
None of the other “collage scripts” I read seem able to do what QT does (make it work). All they have done is lifted scenes from better films. No creation involved, just some cut & paste. These scripts have no soul, no point of view, no theme... but they often have all kinds of scenes that would look good in a trailer. I think that’s why they sometimes get bought and made.
Now, I’m not talking about those homage scenes, or those scripts that have been influenced by some other writer (FIDO is influenced by Sirk and Lassie and George Romero - three things that don't seem like they'd work in the same movie)... I’m talking about the ones that are just collages. Nothing original about them. They were made on some assembly line somewhere. Nothing was created, it was just glued together.
I think fan fiction is the ultimate in collage writing. They take someone else’s character, someone else’s world, someone else’s basic situation... and they put together some sort of story *based on those existing elements*.
For me, movies and stories are *about* characters. The most important thing is to create your own, personal, characters.
One of the message boards where I regularly answer screenwriting questions has a large number of fan fiction people, all writing INDIANA JONES and STAR WARS and LORD OF THE RINGS and PIRATES movies. *Not* creating their own characters. Whenever I feel like tilting windmills and mention this, I get the “Every writer started off writing fan fiction” from a half dozen people. Well, I have no idea if that is true today... but it was not true when I began writing. The idea then was to create your own characters and stories and situations. Sure, you may have read a lot of Raymond Chandler (like me) and your early work is about a private eye and seems influenced by Chandler (mine was) but my stories were about a private eye in my home town area who had completely different character issues to deal with than Philip Marlowe and what was cool for me was to *create* his methods, his office, his weapons, his *world* and make it completely my own - based on things I loved and problems I was going through and the world I knew. My first stories were about a Private Eye named Nick Carrico who had an alcohol abuse problem after accidentally shooting his partner when he was a police detective. Now, none of that is Philip Marlowe. The idea of writing something back then - when dinosaurs ruled the earth - was to *create* something. To *create* your own characters and situations and worlds and dialogue and scenes. Not to write about the time Captain Jack Sparrow and Will went on a pirate adventure in Cuba... and fell in love.
How we went from that to fan fiction is beyond me. At what point in time did people say, “I’d rather not go through all of the trouble to create my own characters... I’ll just use somebody else’s work”? When did *not creating* become the norm? When did people begin thinking that someone else’s creation was better than theirs? That their original work wasn’t good enough, so they should use someone else’s? That collage is art?
Collage is not better than creation.
YOUR individual creation is YOURS.
George Lucas can send of C&D letters from his lawyers closing down fan fiction sites - because *he* owns those characters... but no one can take away original characters that you created. Original situations and worlds you created. Those are *yours*. The thing about fan fiction is that it diminishes the writer.
The collage poster for FIDO was used on the DVD box... what a mistake! Was this because no one in the marketing department is capable of creative thought? That evolution has created a generation of people who can cut & paste, but not create? Or was it just some lazy guy in marketing who thought the collage was good enough for the poster (that managed to kill a great film) so why not use it on the DVD?
Whatever the case - create your own material... and check out FIDO on DVD. It's really good on a bunch of different levels.
Directed by: Richard Lester. Written by: Lawrence B. Marcus. Starring: Julie Christie, George C. Scott, Richard Chamberlain, Joseph Cotten. Director Of Photography: Nic Roeg. Music: John Barry.
The British Invasion of the sixties extended to film, and two of my favorite movies are from UK directors who came to the USA in the late sixties to make films that partially take place in San Francisco and featured Alcatraz in the stories and used crazy fractured chronology that turned cinema into a visual poem... and both begin with the letter “P”. This is the *other one*. Everybody knows my favorite film is John Boorman’s POINT BLANK (1967) because it can be watched again and again and is open to so many different interpretations, not because the story is vague but because the story is so *dense*. Packed with more information than you can see at one viewing. Though PETULIA is probably something you might watch more than once, it’s more because you may not get the scene order in your mind first time around and need to see it again to confirm that you’ve put the puzzle together correctly... also because it contains some great performances and an amazing score by John Barry.
The story is kind of Plot 52B: Middle aged, recently divorced man Archie (George C. Scott) meets a free spirited young woman Petulia (Julie Christie) at a party and they have an affair that changes the direction of his life... except this is the dark, psychodelic version where nothing is as it seems. The story takes place in 1968 San Francisco. Which was ground zero in the cultural revolution. There have always been some form of “hippy”, a young anti establishment group that tries to shake up the world... from the Beats to Flappers to Wandervogels to Swing Kids. But add all of the things happening in the 1960s from Civil Rights to Women’s Rights to Viet Nam War Protests, we really had a cultural revolution. Add in the changes in technology and the explosion of drug culture in America and you have a volatile point in history... and that’s when and where this film takes place.
Where this movie takes that stock plot and makes it original is in its fractured chronology. It has flashbacks and flashforwards and flashsideways and just jumps around time like crazy... even pausing for some odd images that we can only assume are *symbolic* of the relationships. “It’s a Pepsi generation,” as Archie says at one point. Like POINT BLANK, the film comes off as a tone poem *and* a movie and has an amazing style that seems to have been lost today (except for filmmakers like Soderbergh who used it in his homage to POINT BLANK, THE LIMEY). Since two of my favorite films that begin with the letter P both use this technique... as well as all of those Nic Roeg films... I think it’s interesting that no one does this anymore. Oh, and speaking of Nic Roeg, he was the DP on this film... and his last film as DP for another director. He would co direct his next film, the equally trippy PERFORMANCE. Roeg's movies were a huge influence on me, and some of my screenplays (like the unproduced LAST STAND) use the fractured chronology that Roeg took away from this film directed by Richard Lester.
The other difference between PETULIA and all of the other films about middle aged dudes who hook up with a hippy girl half his age is the *bleak* and edgy look at life. This film has no shortage of shocking moments.
Archie is a doctor who attends a hospital fund raiser where Janis Joplin and Big Brother And The Holding Company and The Greatful Dead are entertainment, and this strange young woman Petulia keeps hitting on him. What? She’s half his age and way out of his league and doesn’t seem to take no for an answer. She points out her jealous husband (Richard Chamberlain) who is a wealthy failed yacht designer living off his uberrich father (Joseph Cotton) who is kind of the “whale” this whole shindig is aimed at. Petulia has only been married for six months, and is already trying to find someone to have an affair with... and Archie is the lucky guy. They head to an ultra modern no tell motel: where the desk clerk is on a video screen and the keys and credits cards or cash go into a vending machine below that video screen. Oh, the desk clerk on that video screen is played by Richard Dysart (from THE THING and a million other films) in his first role! So begins the affair from hell...
Petulia is wild and unpredictable, but not always in a good way. You see, she’s being physically abused by her husband who is a few steps from crazy. Returning from their honeymoon in Baja, a little Mexican kid tries to sell them some junk while they wait to cross the border back to the USA... and when Petulia jokingly invites the kid into the car... her husband David decides to *kidnap* the kid and take him all the way back to San Francisco! He beats the hell out of her a few times, and when Archie tries to talk to David about it, he’s basically told to mind his own business if he wants the hospital to get its regular donations. Petulia smashes windows in order to steal whatever she wants, including a *tuba* that Archie is stuck returning to the store (and probably paying for the broken window.) Archie gets more trouble than pleasure from this affair. Why did she pick him?
In a flashback at the *end* of the movie, you find out why... and it has to do with that kidnapped Mexican kid. The film is a puzzle, and you really have to pay attention to put the pieces together.
Along the way, Archie has to deal with all of the normal problems of a divorced guy, from his ex wife Polo (Shirley Knight) who is still in love with him... but dating the most boring man in the world (Roger Bowen) to try to make him jealous, to his two sons who like mom’s new boyfriend better, to fellow doctor Barney (Arthur Hill) who is about to break up with his wife, to the nurse May (Pippa Scott) who has a crush on him and wonders why he’s having an affair with a woman half his age who is so much trouble. Just as the film’s chronology is fractured, the way we live our lives is equally fractured.
PETULIA is more than just a time capsule of the late sixties, it’s a haunting film with a haunting John Barry score with strong images and a nightmare look at that cliche middle aged crazy plot... and an ending that might remind you of... ANNIE HALL! A movie you will never forget. Directed by Richard Lester, who probably invented the music video with films like The Beatles A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and HELP.
Trying to keep the blog slightly fresh, I have been scouring YouTube for newly uploaded interviews with Hitch or with people who worked with Hitch, and discovered this Masters Of Cinema interview from 1972. Over half an hour long! "Method actors are like children." Lots of great juicy stories about actors. What is always interesting are the film critics who don't understand film. Lots of silly questions. Early on, a great breakdown on the story of NOTORIOUS. On how to create a great villain (they are charming and frather normal). Why *humor* is required.
- Bill
Of course, I have my own books focusing on Hitchcock...
HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE
LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!
Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?
This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!
Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!
We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?
Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 52 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.
Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.
Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.
The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!
Season: 1, Episode: 11. Airdate: 11/29/1960 Director: Gerald Mayer Writer: Philip MacDonald based on a story by John D MacDonald. Cast: Robert Lansing, Witney Blake, Elisha Cook, Steve Brodie, Conrad Nagle and Mary Tyler Moore. Music: Pete Rugolo. Cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline.
Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “A phone call in the night. A threat to kill. And then a public announcement that the killing will take place. Is this man just a publicity seeker? Or will he be driven to kill? Will he succumb to the impulse? That’s the name of our story, “The Fatal Impulse”. Our principal players are Mr. Robert Lansing, Miss Witney Blake, Mr. Lance Fuller, Mr. Elisha Cook, Mr. Steve Brodie, and Mr. Conrad Nagle. Before very long, one of these girls unwittingly will be carrying a deadly bomb through the crowded city. As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, one man’s impulse will paralyze a great metropolis for six terrifying hours. I do hope you’re not addicted to biting your nails, because this, I’m quite sure you will agree, is a thriller!”
Synopsis: The episode opens with a campaign poster for Walker Wylie for Mayor next to a pay phone, then has a limping Harry Elser (Elisha Cook jr from THE MALTESE FALCON and just about every Film Noir ever made) dragging his leg to the pay phone, dialing a number, then putting a handkerchief over the phone to disguise his voice as he threatens to kill... Mayoral candidate Walker Wylie (Conrad Neagle, who manages to make everything he says sound like a lie, even his character’s *name*) who was sound asleep in his bed moments before. Wylie hangs up the phone and goes back to sleep. Elser puts some more coins in the phone and calls every newspaper, TV and radio outlet telling them that he will kill Walker Wylie, get those headlines ready!
Detective Rome (Robert Lansing who always reminded me of an alien) and his partner Sgt Hannigan go to Wylie’s office to question him... and his secretary just lets them through without even showing their badges! Rome chews out Wylie, who obviously doesn’t take the threat seriously. Wylie tells Rome he doesn’t have a single enemy in the world (but he’s so insincere that you know there must be millions of them)... Rome doesn’t believe it, says until they find out whether there is or is not a real threat, Wylie will have a policeman with him 24/7. Wylie argues that he’s running for *Mayor* and can’t have a bunch of stupid detectives interfering with his life. Plus, he’s the main guest on a late night talk show tonight! The interview will be shot here in his office at 11pm, can’t have a cop sitting next to him for that! Rome insists, leaves Hannigan behind for protection...
Elser in his garage carefully makes a bomb. It’s a small bomb with a mercury switch, about the size of a couple of packs of cigarettes. Gently places it in another box packed with cotton balls to keep it from being shaken, and...
At Wylie’s Office they are prepping for the TV filming. Crew guys are going in and out of the office... and Elser in a maintenance jumpsuit manages to sneak in with some, right past Hannigan, saying he’s there to change the light bulbs. . When the real crew guys leave, he sits in Wylie’s chair, opens a desk drawer, carefully takes the bomb out of the box and prepares to put in the drawer... when Wylie’s secretary steps into the office and yells for Hannigan! Elser slides the bomb into his pocket, tries to escape... But Hannigan rushes into the office and they fight. Elser tips one of the big TV lights onto Hannigan’s head, glass shattering and leaving Hannigan with raw hamburger for a face and completely blind. Elser makes his escape...
But the alarm has been rung. Rome and some detectives search the building for Elser (a limping man), who is hiding in a janitor’s closet. Elser changes out of the jump suit into a business suit and when the clock strikes 5 he leaves the janitor’s closet and joins the crowd of businessmen and secretaries leaving work for the day. He manages to squeeze into a packed elevator full of women and floor by floor suspense builds as people get on and off the elevator. We know he has the bomb in his pocket, and if it goes off? All of these innocent people will die.
When the elevator reaches the ground floor, everyone exits... and Rome and his men spot Elser and give chase! Elser races across a busy street with Rome and the cops right behind him... and then gets hit by a truck. Rome searches him for the bomb, can’t find it... and Elser’s last words are “girl in the elevator”. The figure the bomb was set to got off around 11pm when Wylie would be at his desk on the TV talk show... and there were around a dozen women on that elevator with him. But who are these women? One of them has a bomb in her purse that will blow up at 11pm tonight, unless she shakes it enough to blow up earlier. “There’s some girl walking around this city with a bomb” and she doesn’t know it.
Rome has his men track down the names of every woman on Wylie’s floor who left work at 5pm, plus any woman who had an appointment with a business on that floor who left at 5pm. Make a list on the squad room chalkboard. Find those women. Interview them. Search their purses for the bomb. Cross them off the list if they didn’t have the bomb. He knows that a couple of women got on the elevator at different floors, but has to start somewhere.
Meanwhile, Rome and his new partner Detective Dumont (Steve Brodie, who was Mitchum’s treacherous partner in OUT OF THE PAST and the father of the director of my movie TREACHEROUS) go to Elser’s house to search for clues. In the car on the way Dumont and Rome discuss Rome’s lack of love life after losing his wife, so we know these two guys have been friends or a long time. They discover that Elser was one of Wylie’s employees who was fired and denied his pension and holds a grudge (kind of like Dennis Hopper in SPEED). When Dumont goes to search the garage... booby trap! The whole garage blows up, killing Dumont right before Rome’s eyes. He’s lost two partners and the episode isn’t even half over!
8:15...
At the Squad Room, they are crossing names off the list on the chalkboard... it’s down to four *known* women who they have not been able to contact. Rome and another detective split the final four and try to find them. Rome tracks down an artist who had an appointment on that floor named Jane Kimball (Whitney Blake) who he finds in a night club with her boyfriend Robert (Lance Fuller). Robert is kind of combative to Rome, he’s on a date here and this cop is screwing it up. Rome explains about the bomb... and Jane and Robert become a lot more cooperative. Rome *carefully* takes the purse out of the crowded nightclub to the lawn in back and *cautiously* takes each item out looking for the bomb. Nothing. No bomb. When he gives Jane back her purse, Robert is mad as hell for ruining their evening... and then it gets *worse* when Jane says that she had been in the building applying for an artist job with her portfolio... and can *draw* all of the people in the elevator. Robert sits on the sidelines pissed off as Jane draws all of the faces.
The last girl on Rome’s list is a wife with a *very* jealous husband. They are fighting when Rome rings the doorbell, and the problem is... the wife was visiting her lover in the office building and lies to Rome about being in the building. But when Rome explains about the bomb, the wife must admit to cheating in front of her husband... and her husband grabs her purse looking for evidence! Now Rome must wrestle the bag away from the husband, and there may be a bomb inside! After the careful search of the purse... Rome finds nothing.
9:20...
At the Squad Room, *all* of the names are crossed off the list on the chalkboard. Rome is stumped. The only possibility is some woman *not* on their list. How can they find her?
In the night club, Jane remembers the woman in glasses who came into the elevator on a lower floor... and calls Rome.
Rome tracks down the woman in the glasses and goes to her apartment. The woman is played by a pre DICK VAN DYKE SHOW Mary Tyler Moore, who tells Rome she checked both her purse and her portfolio and no bomb in either one...
Rome realizes that Jane had her art portfolio with her in the elevator, and it was never searched. He tries to call her at the club, she’s left! He races to her home...
Almost 11:00!
Jane and Robert come home from the nightclub (to her house) and once the door is closed Robert’s hands are all over her... oh, and the bomb is there, too! It has fallen out of her portfolio onto the sofa... and is behind a cushion where it can not be seen. As Robert guides Jane to the sofa and makes all kinds of moves on her, the bomb is *underneath her head* behind that cushion. Jane is trying to get him to behave, when there’s a knock at the door. Detective Rome. He asks where her portfolio is, she tells him it’s in the bedroom, he carefully searches it... no bomb.
Tick tick tick... a minute before 11:00!
Rome has no idea where the bomb is... was there another woman on the elevator? Someone they missed? Robert wants him the hell out of there. Rome asks where she put the portfolio when she came home that afternoon, and Jane says on the desk.
Rome starts looking around the desk when Jane remembers it wasn’t the desk, it was the sofa. Rome carefully searches the sofa... finding the bomb! Tells Robert and Jane to get the heck out of the house and run like hell. Then carefully removes the bomb and as the clock strikes 11:00, tries opening the window and it’s *stuck*... breaks the window and throws it outside and explodes on the lawn!
A moment later Jane returns without Robert, and it kinda looks like she’s gonna hook up with Rome. The end.
Review: This was a good, tense, episode... really reminiscent of SPEED in many ways. The “shell game” of having one of 12 or 13 women be carrying around the bomb and not knowing it is a great device, and I’m guessing the John D. MacDonald story gets deeper into who these different women are (we only get 3 of them in the episode). They do a great job of showing us the clock every once in a while, and I wish they had done more of that... but there probably wasn’t time. You do get that ticking clock feel. And when we finally get to Jane’s house, that bomb becomes a great “focus object” ticking away under that sofa cushion as Jane’s boyfriend tries making out with her. The only hiccups in the episode are things that have to do with a limited TV budget: the night club that Jane and her boyfriend are in seems to be a set with one booth and no extras... so we really don’t get a scene where Rome has to carefully carry that bomb outside. And explosions are off camera. Also, some time restraints turn conversations like the one about Rome’s dating life into obvious expositional moments. But these are minor quibbles for an episode that keeps ramping up the tension and really has you worried at the end that they will not find that bomb that has fallen between the sofa cushions in time. This was a really good episode and shows the promise of what the show can do with purse suspense.
The show has finally found its footing, and for a while we’ll alternate between suspense and weird tales... though next week is more crime story, with a twist.
Some movies are so bad that they're good... and others are bad and weird and make you wonder about the people who made them. Here are two of the strangest films I have ever seen - both are about robot monsters and both have no shortage of topless women...
EXTERMINATOR CITY is a train wreck of a film that combines puppet robots and GIRLS GONE WILD. You know how some films require that you consume a 12 pack in order to enjoy them (I've written many of these)? This film requires you to drop acid *and* do mushrooms to fully understand the story. The robot puppets are kind of MST-3000 style - and the only thing that moves is their mouths. The bodies don't move, the camera doesn't move. I got the feeling the whole film was made by one guy with a tri-pod. He would set up the camera, then operate the robot puppet. There are no "two shots" of robots - that would require an extra person. So we get close up of Cop Robot intercut with close up of Psychiatrist Robot. Never both in the same shot. Never any two characters in the same shot. No long shots or wide shots at all.
The "story" has a robot serial killer attacking big breasted women just as they begin playing with their upper torso bundles of pleasure for no reason. But the robot serial killer is never in the same shot as the babes - and they aren't even on the same tape stock - the robots are crisp, the babes are fuzzy grainy - maybe shot on the director's mom's camcorder.
There is *never* a shot of the robots *and* the babes. Even the killing scenes have no interaction.
The robot serial killer was an exterminator - and kills all kinds of big plastic toy bugs. Oh, and mounted animal heads on his walls often talk to him. He's crazy... It doesn't make much sense, but it's just so weird you keep watching to see if it ever makes sense. No - it gets *weirder*. The Robot Cop begins to develop the traits of the Robot Serial Killer! And those plastic toy bugs show up all over the place. It's like NAKED LUNCH made by a really horny 13 year old boy obsessed by robots!
Because there are never any shots where the robots *move* or enter a room, there are these crazy shots used to connect scenes - a really bad miniature building with a toy space ship on a wire zipping past really fast. I think he made it really fast so that we wouldn't be able to tell it was some toystore model, but it ends up so fast that we aren't sure *what* it is.
This is Ed Wood film making at its finest. "Perfect!"
The only humans in this film are the topless babes... puppet robots play every other role.
I found out about this movie on a message board where people were discussing the weirdest movie they have ever seen. This was the "winner". I'll tell you, it's hard to imagine any film that is weirder now that I've seen it... but, you should *not* see it. EXTERMINATOR CITY is like a giant zit on someone's face - not pretty to look at, but can you really *not* look at it?
* * *
Meanwhile, LADY TERMINATOR is a film that should not be seen sober. It’s a Indonesian knock off of TERMINATOR, but obviously someone in the legal department was worried, so the opening of the film sets it up as based on the legend of the South Sea Queen (I think) who had 100 husbands and bite off all of their man-parts with an eel she hides in her woman-parts. Blood sprays from many a man’s groin area in this film. Like a garden hose of red liquid. Not subtle or realistic. Well, after husband #100 pulls out the eel and saves his man-parts, the South Sea Queen puts a curse on his family - specifically his great grand daughter - and returns to the sea.
Cut to decades later, this smokin’ hot babe who could not act her way out of a rice paper bag, claims to be an anthropologist studying for her thesis who is researching the South Sea Queen legend. Whenever she said she was an anthropologist, it got a laugh - like Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in that James Bond movie.
Just when you are about to leave the cinema because her acting is so bad it actually hurts, she dons a bikini and dives into the cursed area of the South Sea where the Queen vanished, and comes back as the Lady Terminator... hell bent on finding that Great Grand Daughter and killing her.
And now we get the silliest rip off of TERMINATOR you can imagine, as this often topless killing machine (not really a machine, just a possessed anthropologist) chases the Great Grand Daughter chick - who is a disco singer (so that we can get a bunch of disco numbers throughout the film) and also uses the eel hidden in her woman-parts to bite the man-parts off a bunch of guys. Yes, she comes naked from the ocean and steals the clothes from some punkers on the beach (and bites off their man parts with her hidden eel), yes there is a TechNoir bar scene where she finds the Great Grand Daughter chick singing and machine guns at least a hundred extras, yes there is a scene where her eye is injured and she cuts it out... then washes it off in the sink, dries it on a towel, and replaces it, yes there is a scene where she drives a car into the police station and kills at least a hundred extras dressed as cops with a machine gun, yes she (thankfully) doesn’t talk much as the Lady Terminator. She just walks around bare chested with a machine gun and kills people. Just like Ah-nuld did.
But the funniest parts of this movie are when they try to make it look like it takes place in America. The cops - in a police station unlike any you have ever seen before (there are sofas and recliners) have a never-ending conversation about how much they love hot dogs. After about the third hot dog conversation you wonder if there is supposed to be a strange Gay subtext to these scenes... and wonder if this is plot related. Will the Gay cops save the day because they don't put their man-parts in lady-parts and are immune to the Lady Terminator?
Two of the cops are some sort of Starsky & Hutch undercover team - one has a dyed blond mullet that does not match his very ethnic features at all. They say strange things like, “I’m here in the States” which make you wonder where they might have been before. It’s just crazy - bad!
The often topless Terminator chick can not be killed - she takes a million bullet hits that don’t scar her smokin’ hot body at all, her car gets hit by missiles (and even the car is unscratched!) and almost at the end of the movie after she has caught fire and comes out of it with a totally burned face - but her boobs are completely undamaged. This film has its priorities!
Oh, for some unexplained reason after catching on fire and losing her machine gun, she develops laser rays from here eyes that burn men’s man-parts off. The writer of this film has some issues.
What are your favorite So Bad They're Good movies and So Weird You Won't Believe It! movies?
Expanded version with more ways to create interesting protagonists! Print version is 48 pages, Kindle version is almost *200* pages!
Only $4.99 - and no postage!
Directed by: Ida Lupino. Written by: Collier Young, Malvin Wald, Ida Lupino. Starring: Mala Powers, Tod Andrews, Robert Clarke, Jerry Paris. Produced by: Collier Young, Malvin Wald, Ida Lupino.. Cinematography by: Archie Stout. Music by: Paul Sawtell. Production Design by: Harry Horner (THE HUSTLER and THE DRIVER!).
First off: There is no trailer available for this film. How is that even possible? So here is some guy's (great) review of the film that has all kinds of great shots in a brief running time.
No secret that I am a huge fan of Ida Lupino, a great actress who knocks it out of the park in one of my favorite movies THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT where she plays the wife of Alan Hale, who owns a long haul trucking company, and plots his murder... by electric garage door opener! She gives an amazing performance in that film... and many others. But as a film director, she became one of my favorites without even knowing that it was the same person! She directed my favorite episode of the THRILLER TV anthology show, GUILLOTINE, and had an interesting career in films as well. After a career of playing sexy young women, she began writing and producing her own films with screenwriter husband Collier Young - and even after they divorced, continued to work with him. Their first film as producers was NOT WANTED (about unwed mothers) and after their director had a massive heart attack a couple of days into filming, she jumped behind the camera and completed the film... not taking credit. But everyone knew she had made the film... and when she decided to direct their company’s second film, the financiers were happy to put up the money. She was a director... and extremely skilled (she paid attention as an actress to the big name directors on the films she starred in). This was her third film, the second film she was credited for as director, and a great example of her social issues films...
Ann Walton (Mala Powers) is a 20 something office worker in a small town, who lives with her parents and is dating a nice young man Jim Owens (Robert Clarke) who she will one day marry. They meet for lunch in the town square every day: he buys sandwiches on his way, she buys desert from a lunch counter (two pieces of chocolate cake, their favorite).The creepy waiter (Albert Mellen) at the lunch counter hits on her... hey, she’s pretty. She meets Jim, and he has good news - he just got a raise and now they can afford to get married. There’s a great bit here where a shoeshine boy and a nosey old woman do everything possible to kill the romantic moment as he asks her to marry him. Ann says he will need to talk to her father, first... who was Jim’s math teacher... and who came close to flunking Jim. After dinner, Jim asks her father and mother (Raymond Bond and Lillian Hamilton) for permission to marry their daughter. Mom is excited, Dad is against it - this is his little girl! She’s not ready to be married! After Mom pulls him aside, Dad reluctantly gives his approval.
The next day, after telling everyone at work that she’s getting married, Ann heads home... passing the creepy waiter, who is closing up shop and asks her out. She says no... and he begins following her. He unbuttons his shirt slowly - which is really creepy! Ann tries to lose him in the industrial section of town, but he is still following her - his footsteps echoing. This is a great suspense scene that builds and builds and builds. She runs... the Waiter walks... and seesm to be gaining on her. There is no escaping this creepy guy! She yells, “Please! Somebody help me!” But this is the industrial part of town, and darkness has fallen... no one to hear her screams. There’s a great overhead shot here, where she seems powerless as she tries to find a place to hide in a maze of parked delivery trucks. She hides inside a truck, but when the Waiter gets closer and closer and closer she ducks down to hide... hitting the truck’s horn. It gets stuck. The Creepy Waiter yanks her out of the truck, throws her down, and BRUTALLY rapes her - the truck horn drowning out her screams.
This is a film from 1950 - and the rape is shocking.
Ann staggers home - clothes and face dirty and torn... bleeding.
Her Mom finds her collapsed at the front door and pulls her inside.
LATER: A Doctor and a Police Detective talk to her Mom and Dad... Dad feels powerless. When the Detective questions Ann, she keeps saying “I couldn’t get away” and only remembers the scar on the rapist’s neck - not that he was the Waiter. There’s a great shot here of Ann through the bars of the bed headboard as if she is in prison. Trapped. She doesn’t get out of bed, doesn’t leave the house, for a long time. When Jim comes to visit, she tells Mom to send him away - there will be no marriage. She never wants to see another man in her life - severe PTSD. When she finally tries to go back to work, she breaks down - and there’s a great scene where an office worker stamping papers becomes the sound of the rapist’s feet as he follows her down the alley to the parked trucks. Everything reminds her of the rape. Everything.
The police have some suspects in a line up... including the Waiter who raped her. But she completely freaks out and can’t identify him. She’s a mess. Jim is there to drive her home, and he tells her that what happened hasn’t changed the way he feels about her. He loves her. They can get through this together... but she dumps him. “I don’t want you to touch me!”
She doesn’t want any man to touch her. Forever.
This film does a great job of making us understand just how emotionally damaging rape can be.
A man looks at her... it reminds her of the rape. Every man is a threat... and as the audsience, we understand that this isn't just paranoia, those men are real potential threats. She's an attractive young woman, and they see her as a conquest, their prey.
Ann runs away from home - hopping a Greyhound bus for Los Angeles. Not telling her parents or anyone else.
When the bus has a meal stop in some part of rural California, some guy hits on her at the lunch counter and she freaks again and takes off running. Trying to escape every man on earth. Running. Running. Eventually she falls down at the side of the road - passed out from exhaustion.
A car slows... passes her... stops... and a Man picks her up and puts her in his car. Then drives away.
Watching the movie, I said “No! No! Hell no!” Because this film had done such a great job of making me feel her trauma. And that Man who picks her up and puts her in his car? I didn’t trust him, or any other man. And I am a man.
Ann wakes up in a strange bed.
Oh, hell no!
In a strange house.
Oh, hell no!
She seems to still be wearing all of her clothes. The Man hasn’t done anything to her... yet. But when she tries to leave the bedroom... The Man blocks the doorway and tells her to get back into the bed.
Oh, hell no!
She tries to get past him - fighting - but he over powers her and tells her that she has to stay in the room. Orders her to get back into the bed. He begins pushing her to the bed...
Oh, hell no!
Okay, now what do you think has happened to her? Is about to happen to her?
This is a great example of leading the audience, because once the Man has her in the bed....
A kindly Older Woman comes in with some water and calls the man "Doctor" and we understand what the Man's intentions were.
This scene puts us in her shoes, and makes every man a potential threat. We feel what she is feeling and think what she is thinking. That is great directing. Always think about ways to lead the audience so that they are in your protagonist's shoes and feel what they feel - no matter what it is. The reason why we are talking about this film now, and Ida Lupino as a director now, are scenes like this. Where we are frightened for Ann. Where every man is a threat to Ann... and a threat to us. This film is 70 years old, and still powerful.
The bedroom, by the way, is in the Kindly Older Woman's house - her daughter's room before she got married and moved away. The Older Woman, Madge Harrison (Angela Clarke) and her husband Tom Harrison (Kenneth Patterson) own orange orchards in this part of California. A rural area. The Man who blocked her way is Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews), a hunky and handsome (and sexually safe) Minister nicknamed "Doctor", who only wants to help Ann. Make sure that she is safe. He knows that she is running from something, and maybe needs to hide for a while to get her life back together. He promises that he won’t tell the police about her, and will make sure that nobody bothers her... and then he asks Tom if he and will be accompanying his wife to church this Sunday...
Fatherly Tom gives Ann a job at the orange packing plant - it’s harvest season and they need to get the oranges packed in wooden crates so they can be taken by truck and train to market. She’s great at packing oranges...
And this is a great sequence for a lower budget film. We are taken inside the orange business and shown how the fruit are inspected and selected and packed into wooden boxes and the boxes are sealed for shipping - all on a conveyor belt. It’s fascinating. This was shot in Marysville, California and the production value from the endless orange groves in the background and the packing plant that Ann works in takes us into this world that most of us have never seen before. People are fascinated by how things are made, so any time you can show them the details of some job that we don’t really know anything about, it’s better than special effects. This is sort of an Orange Packing Procedural...
Reverend Bruce shows up to make sure that she’s okay, and asks her what she did for a living previously (one of the reasons why I like this movie is that it’s about working class people who have jobs and have to earn a living whether they are men or women), and Ann tells him that she was an accountant for a company... and Reverend Bruce says that Harrison needs an accountant more than he needs an orange packer... and gets Ann a promotion.
All of this is Ann finding a new home, and slowly getting back to normal. Sort of.
On Saturday, Reverend Bruce asks if she wants to go with him while he sketches. Ann alone with a man? She decides to go (showing us that she is healing). He takes her to this beautiful hilltop overlooking the whole town, and sketches the trees and flowers. Tells her that he wasn’t always a Reverend... he was raised in Philadelphia, went off to World War 2, and lost all faith in God during the war. After the war he ran away... finding himself in this small town... and realized that he needed time to heal. Which brought him back to the church, and he became a Reverend. Through his story, he hopes to find out what her story is... or at least to show her a path to peace.
Just as Ann is beginning to find peace in this small town, the County Sheriff (Roy Engel) stops by the orange packing plant to ask if anyone has seem a young woman reported as a runaway by her parents... Tom Harrison and Reverend Bruce cover for Ann... but she is afraid that the Sheriff will arrest her and take her back home... where everyone knows that she was raped. Where everyone knows...
So Ann runs away.
Both Tom Harrison, who has become her surrogate father, and Reverend Bruce (who is hunky and dreamy and not sexual - so maybe her surrogate boyfriend) are worried. They search for her and can not find her. Both want to keep her safe, even if it means continuing to lie to the Sheriff. These are good men.
They can’t find her.
Reverend Bruce goes home, worried, and begins playing the piano to calm himself... when Ann shows up at his front door. He invites her inside and she is alone with a man. She tells him that she is the runaway girl, and confesses to him. He thinks that this is the catharsis she needed. That now she can move on with her life...
The town has a post harvest dance, and Reverend Bruce convinces her to go... socialize. This is her town, now... she needs to meet people. She feels ready for this. She buys a pretty dress. She goes to the dance...
But she avoids dancing. She isn’t ready for that. There's a great shot of everyone dancing and our protagonist Ann and a homely woman standing on the sidelines watching.
A man comes up to Ann and asks her to dance, she says no.
He GRABS her and starts dancing with her.
She struggles and escapes, running away.
He CHASES her - and it's like a rural replay of being chased by the rapist.
Oh, hell no...
This man, named Frank (played by comedian Jerry Paris from the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW) catches her, says that all he wants to do is kiss her. Without her permission. She seems to have no say in this. It’s just a kiss... just a harmless kiss...
Then we get a big close up of Frank’s lips heading towards her face.
And this shot dissolves to the rapist's face coming closer to hers.
What would you do to this guy who just wants a harmless kiss?
The reason why this film is so effective is that by this point, that “harmless kiss” is rape. It’s some guy grabbing at this woman (who we identify with) without her permission, without her consent. Can’t these men just leave her alone? Can’t they just wait until she’s ready to dance or kiss? Can’t they ask first instead of take?
As Frank’s face dissolves into the rapist’s face, she grabs something from the old trailer behind her - a wrench - and slams it into his head until her lets go of her.
Frank lets go of her. Falls to the ground. Head bloody. Dead?
Ann sees what she has done and runs and runs and runs.
Reverend Bruce finds here at his special place, the hilltop overlooking the whole town. “Why’d you do it, Ann?” He tells her that he has to take her back...
At the Sheriff’s Station...
The County Sheriff tells Reverend Bruce that he has taken Ann’s fingerprints and IDed her as the runaway girl... who was raped. Frank who just wanted a harmless kiss and ended up with a wrench to the head, is alive in the hospital and should have no trouble pulling through... but Ann is still in big trouble. The Sheriff will have to charge her. She may go to prison.
Reverend Bruce goes to visit Ann in Jail. Real Jail, not pretty. Not some Hollywood set. This is a dirty, grungy place. He tells Ann that he knows what happened back home... and she opens up, tells Reverend Bruce everything about the rape... about how when that man chased her and tried to kiss her, she just snapped. Thought it was going to happen all over again...
Reverend Bruce makes a deal with the Sheriff - have Ann seen by the Court’s Psychiatrist for an evaluation... and let Reverend Bruce talk to Frank in the hospital. After everyone understands the circumstances, and that Ann snapped because she thought she was going to be raped again, the Judge decides to give Ann probation as long as she gets help.
This movie was amazing for a 1950 film - though the rape was nowhere near as brutal as IRREVERSIBLE, it’s still shocking when they go from the Rapist holding Ann down on a loading dock with the truck horn blasting louder than her screams and slowly move up to a Man who looks out his apartment window, then shuts it so that he doesn’t have to hear the truck horn. This was all in one shot - and that’s one of the amazing things about this director. Even in her first films she was using the camera to tell the story - not just an actress who knew how to do the acting part of filmmaking and thought that was enough to direct. Lupino studied the technical elements and used shots like that to tell her story visually. There’s a great shot in one of her THRILLER episodes from the 60s where she gives us a little girl’s point of view as she swings on a swing - and even though the cameras back then were as big as a Volkswagen, she manages to get one to mimic the point of view of the little girl. That was practically an engineering problem - and she did it in her TV episode, probably shot in less than 6 days. Most of the male directors on that show didn’t do any shots like that (with the same cinematographers - so it wasn’t the camera department covering for her). All of her films and TV episodes are filled with shots designed to tell the story. She understood the language of cinema. There are hundreds of male directors who were never as good as she was. In her first film - the one she took over from the director who had a heart attack after a couple of days of shooting - she has an amazing chase scene that rivals anything that men were doing at the time. One of her mentors was Don Siegel, another of my favorite directors, and her action scenes are comparable to his.
Just used to tell stories with female leads dealing with social issues that were (and are) of interest to women. Rape, unwed mothers, dealing with heartbreak, and many other issues that her films tackled because Hollywood Studios weren't dealing with them. But they would gladly make some money distributing them. Her independent company The Filmakers made close to ten great films... and we will be looking at them in future Trailer Tuesdays. Probably next up (later in the year) will be her first film NOT WANTED about unwed mothers. We still have a THRILLER episode of two that she directed coming up this year.
- Bill
PS: I know that it's a Counter Man not a Waiter - but it's 2020, and who knows what a Counter Man is?
