Hurry on down to Hardie’s

My fellow classic movie mavens are well aware that in the month of February (and first three days of March—except leap year), The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ runs their “31 Days of Oscar” tribute.  This event and “Summer Under the Stars” usually allows me to catch up with whatever I have squirreled away on our DISH DVR, and I was very much looking forward to watching the content (and slapping my favorites onto disc).

But…in the immortal words of Robert Frost: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley.” (Who says this blog isn’t highbrow?  Besides 98% of the blogosphere, I mean.)

The good people at DISH decided to have a “freeview” weekend of HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime the weekend of February 17-20.  The following weekend, we were treated to free Starz.  The weekend after that, Encore.  And we just finished up a freeview of Epix this past weekend.  For a recovering movie nut like your humble narrator, this is an embarrassment of riches—particularly because when there isn’t anything on the schedule worth grabbing, there’s always On Demand offerings I can download.  I have been spending every free waking moment luxuriating in movies, movies…and more movies.

Laramie stars John Smith and Robert Fuller

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I went hog wild during the Encore freeview…because their On Demand features episodes of the classic TV westerns they offer on their schedule—this is how I was able to build my substantial Wanted: Dead or Alive collection back in December of 2015.   Encore Westerns on Demand has episodes of Death Valley Days, Laramie, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Tales of Wells Fargo (a recent acquisition), and Wagon Train—which presented me with a dilemma: which show do I download?

I eliminated Death Valley Days and Wagon Train right off the bat; I like both shows—but they’re not something I have to have.  I leaned heavily toward Laramie, particularly due to the piss-poor quality of the Timeless Media Group DVDs…but I’ve got a 30-day window with these downloads, and I didn’t think I could get all EW had in that amount of time (particularly since they’re 50-minute shows).  There’s DVR space to consider, too—I like to have enough of a “buffer” in case Mom (who learned how to work the DVR during her convalescence) wants to grab any Rambo movies or something with Jean-Claude God Damme.  (I don’t know why she insists on recording stuff with commercials…particularly since she hasn’t learned to fast-forward yet.)  So, it came down to either Wyatt Earp or Wells Fargo…and since all six seasons of Earp have been released to disc, I went with Fargo (its DVD release history is a little spotty).

Tales of Wells Fargo originally premiered as a December 14, 1956 episode of CBS’ Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, “A Tale of Wells Fargo”—with a teleplay by Frank Gruber from a Zane Grey story.  The producer of this episode, Nat Holt, had also produced the 1949 film that gave future Wells Fargo star Dale Robertson his first onscreen credit, Fighting Man of the Plains (Fargo creator Frank Gruber also wrote this screenplay…in addition to the novel on which it was based).  Holt had quite a time talking Robertson into doing “Tale” as a regular series—Dale initially didn’t think much of the script, and only agreed to commit to the pilot as a favor to his friend.  He never dreamed that the show would leap to #3 in the Nielsens in its second season (Tales of Wells Fargo officially premiered over NBC on March 18, 1957).  (Wells Fargo remained in the Top 10 in its third season, and continued to be a solid ratings performer until its final season in 1961-62.  More on this in a bit.)

I thought that by downloading all the Wells Fargo Encore Westerns had to offer, I could play a few for mi madre—a longtime fan of the show.  I know I mentioned this on the blog in the past (my previous experience with Wells Fargo was a single episode, “Jesse James,” which was on Timeless’ The Classic TV Western Collection) but my father used to tease my mother unmercifully about this series, derisively referring to the star as “Dale Roberts” and saying…well, I won’t repeat exactly what he said (it’s a little insensitive) but he hinted that Mr. Robertson was a few horses shy of a remuda.  I’ve watched 13 out of the 14 episodes in the first season (“The Silver Bullets” did not download properly, much to my dismay) and a couple from Season Two…and I don’t know why Dad kids Mom so.  Granted, I do not possess the sophisticated television tastes as my old man (and by “sophisticated television tastes” I mean shows about UFOs and cops placing people under arrest) but I’m finding Tales of Wells Fargo to be a pretty entertaining series.  It’s not a great show (there are superior western half-hours, like Gunsmoke and Have Gun – Will Travel) but it’s far and away better than The Cisco Kid or any other juvie oater you’d care to name.  Robertson didn’t consider Wells Fargo an “adult western” or a “kids western”—but a “family western,” assuming your family conducted private investigations for the Wells Fargo company for a living.  (That’s the premise in a nutshell: as Jim Hardie, Robertson chased down bad hombres who robbed the company’s stagecoaches or freight wagon in the 1860s/1870s/1880s, and brought the miscreants to justice.  This was quite a few years before the Wells Fargo company started committing fraud on a major scale.)

Hugh Beaumont as Jesse James

One of the aspects of the program that I’ve observed is its rather compassionate portrayals of its outlaw element: in the aforementioned “Jesse James” (07/01/57), future Leave it to Beaver dad Hugh Beaumont portrays Jesse as a very sympathetic sort, and in “Sam Bass” (06/10/57), rifleman Chuck Connors makes the titular bandit a jovial, happy-go-lucky fella (the real Bass was apparently also a “no worries” kind of guy).  (Connors also appears in the premiere episode of Tales of Wells Fargo, “The Thin Rope”—adding some interesting shadings to the villain.)  The nature of Hardie’s work dictated he make contact with many Old West legends, including Belle Starr (a nice turn by Jeanne Cooper), John Wesley Hardin (Lyle Bettger), Billy the Kid (Robert Vaughn), and Butch Cassidy (Charles Bronson).

Jack Elam

Of the episodes I’ve viewed so far, I was very impressed with “The Hijackers” (06/17/57); Hardie puts a premature end to his vacation by tracking down the son (Harry Holt, Jr.) of a wealthy man and his fiancée (Jacqueline Holt) and finds their trail leads to a ghost town, where they’re being held captive by Jack Elam and his gang.  There’s a beautifully done (and wordless) sequence in which Robertson and Elam play hide-and-seek in the abandoned burg, and when the closing credits rolled I was not at all surprised to see serials ace John English attached as director.  (The author of this one is N.B. Stone, Jr., later responsible for Ride the High Country.)  The following episode, “Stage to Nowhere” (06/24/57), is also first-rate; Hardie is escorting an outlaw (Walter Coy) to the hoosegow when their stagecoach is chased down by the man’s gang—also on board are a timid newspaper reporter (the ubiquitous Lyle Talbot) plus a woman (OTR’s Barbara Eiler) and her son (Bobby Clark), who have an important connection to Jim’s prisoner.

Michael Landon

You’ll spot a good many familiar future TV faces and veteran character thesps in these episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo: Michael Landon is not only in “Sam Bass” but “Shotgun Messenger” (05/07/57)—which I’d wager was the first time he worked with his future Little House on the Prairie co-star Kevin Hagen (as one of the bad guys, of course).  Some time back on Facebook, I made a joking reference to actor John Carroll being “the poor man’s Clark Gable” …and my social media compadre Christopher Snowden (the proprietor of Television Diary) responded that he always considered Dale Robertson to be quite Gable-ish.  When I concurred that I can definitely hear a Gable-ness in Robertson’s speech patterns, Chris observed: “[H]e's also there in scenes where Robertson's character is charming the ladies—chin down, and eyes uplifted as a big ingratiating smile spreads wide.  And all of these mannerisms are still in place twenty-odd years later, when he appears for short stretches on Dallas and Dynasty.”

The moustache helps a lot.  (From a 1965 TV pilot, Diamond Jim.)

William Demarest with star Robertson

In the fifth season of Tales of Wells Fargo, Earle Lyon replaced Nat Holt as the series’ producer; Lyon related in an interview: “I took over the last two years.  Dale Robertson called me one day and said he felt Nat was getting too old and couldn’t remember things.  Dale was pretty upset with the way things were going with the series.” NBC decided to side with the show’s star, and Holt’s inaugural season as producer went so swimmingly the network made the decision to not only expand Wells Fargo to an hour in Season Six but produce it in Living Peacock Color.  A cast of regulars was also added as Jim Hardie acquired a horse ranch near San Francisco (star Robertson was quite the horseman in real life) including future My Three Sons co-star William Demarest (as the stock crotchety ranch foreman, Jeb Gaine) and future Folgers’ pitchwoman Virginia Christine (as Hardie’s neighbor, The Widder [Ovie] Swenson).

Tales of Wells Fargo had stiff competition in its final season—it was scheduled Saturday nights opposite Perry Mason, and though it came in a respectable second, ratings-wise, the decision was made (the show was getting a bit expensive for the cost-conscious MCA/Revue to produce) to send it to the Old Syndication Retirement Home.  Star Robertson would later headline Iron Horse, another boob tube oater that barely hung on for two seasons, and J.J. Starbuck (1987-88), a Stephen J. Cannell creation that also resurrected Ben Vereen’s character of E.L. “Tenspeed” Turner (which he had played on the short-lived 1980 series Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, also created by Cannell).

Tales of Wells Fargo’s first and second seasons are available on DVD (Tales of Wells Fargo: The Complete First and Second Seasons); in addition, there’s a collection containing “selected” episodes from Seasons 1-5, and Tales of Wells Fargo: The Best of the Final Season in Color.  In looking at what I downloaded from Encore Westerns, neither seasons five or six seem to be in their package—perhaps they will air these in the future.  Wells Fargo plays much, much better than I had hoped…and later, I will make a small sacrifice to the satellite gods for allowing me to grab these episodes for the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives.

Adventures in Blu-ray: Johnny Guitar (1954)

This past Tuesday (September 20), Olive Films rolled out their “Olive Signature” series with a re-release of the 1952 classic High Noon…but what distinguishes this Blu-ray (and DVD) from past incarnations is its amazing new video/audio transfer, not to mention some bodacious bonuses and extras to enhance the home video experience.  In addition to High Noon, the company has afforded the same blue ribbon treatment to another oater that’s held in high esteem here in the House of Yesteryear: Johnny Guitar (1954), which director Bernardo Bertolucci once described as “the first of the baroque westerns.”

Danny Peary’s essay on Guitar in Cult Movies inarguably whetted my appetite to initially see this film, and my first opportunity arrived when it turned up on Cinemax in the 1990s (along with Pursued and Force of Evil), where it was introduced by director/movie buff Martin Scorsese.  (Scorsese’s introduction to Guitar is one of several extras on the Olive Signature Blu-ray.)  It’s a Western unlike any other, loaded with subversive, radical content (it’s even more of an indictment of the political climate in Hollywood than High Noon) and sexual imagery that gives it a most contemporary feel.  Guitar is also an example of what critic Andrew Sarris labeled “Freudian feminism”; it’s unavoidable noticing that the two female characters in the movie are far more “tougher” than their male counterparts.

The plot involves a saloonkeeper named Vienna (Joan Crawford), who is not held in particularly high regard by her fellow townsfolk, a mob headed up by Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge) and wealthy rancher John McIvers (Ward Bond).  Emma condemns Vienna for consorting with a group of outlaws led by “The Dancin’ Kid” (Scott Brady), a man for whom she secretly has strong feelings herself.  This alleged collusion with the Kid and his gang is really just a smokescreen for the fact that Vienna’s establishment lies in close proximity to a transcontinental railroad being constructed in the area; if Vienna goes through with her plans to build a rail station she will be a very wealthy woman indeed.

Conflict arises when Vienna hires an old flame (Sterling Hayden) who calls himself “Johnny Guitar” to protect her interests; unbeknownst to anyone else, Johnny is actually an ex-gunslinger named Johnny Logan.  During the course of the movie, Vienna finds herself accused of helping the Kid stage a bank robbery (one of the Kid’s minions lies about her participation in a futile attempt to escape a lynch mob) and is forced to take it “on the lam” with Johnny.  Johnny Guitar concludes with the anticipated showdown between Vienna and Emma, and presumably Vienna and her Guitar man will be free to pursue a life of marital fulfillment.

My enthusiasm for Johnny Guitar is such that I selected it as the topic of my sermon during the Classic Movie Blog Association’s Fabulous Films of the 50s blogathon in May of 2014…so if you want a more thorough examination of this fascinating film, I implore you to click here.  It’s a movie that without question demands multiple viewings in order to take in all of its sly subtext (for example, the way the various characters’ wardrobe colors comment on their motivations).  It also helps to know the fascinating production history of the film; sure, Joan Crawford’s Vienna and Mercedes McCambridge’s Emma square off against one another in Guitar…but the two actresses tangled off-screen as well (Joanie was jealous of her younger co-star—a sentiment expressed to any ingénue who appeared in a movie with Joan).  There was no love lost between the male (Hayden) and female (La Joan) stars, either: “There’s is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford,” Hayden purportedly remarked after his experience.  “And I like money.”

Because Johnny Guitar was filmed in what Republic Pictures labeled “Trucolor”—a more economical alternative to Technicolor—the movie was the victim of severe fading over the years until it underwent significant repair in the 1990s.  The new 4k restoration featured on the Olive Signature Blu-ray only highlights the film’s dazzling color scheme, making it sparkly as all get out.  Accompanying the disc is a first-rate essay (“Johnny Guitar: The First Existential Western”) contributed by film critic/author Jonathan Rosenbaum (who included Guitar on his list of the 100 best American films in a 1998 Chicago Reader column in response to the American Film Institute’s Top 100), and an audio commentary track from Geoff Andrew (author of The Films of Nicholas Ray).

Of the Blu-ray’s supplementary material, my fascination with movies that either deal directly or indirectly with the Hollywood blacklist made me gravitate toward “Tell Us She Was One of You: The Blacklist History of Johnny Guitar.”  Historian Larry Ceplair and blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein (The Front) encore on this (they do a similar mini-feature for High Noon).  Film critics Miriam Bale, Kent Jones, Joe McElhaney, and B. Ruby Rich are featured on “Johnny Guitar: A Western Like No Other” (an overview of the movie) and “Is Johnny Guitar a Feminist Western?”—which offers some lively give-and-take on “questioning the canon.”  Rounding out the bonuses are reminiscences from Tom Farrell and Chris Sievernich on working with director Ray (“My Friend, the American Friend”—which references the 1977 Wim Wenders movie) and another one I enjoyed (I only wish it had been longer), “Free Republic: The Story of Herbert J. Yates and Republic Pictures,” from archivist Marc Wanamaker (author of Early Poverty Row Studios).

“Coveted editions of the films you know and love, Olive Signature is our gift to the many fans, aficionados, and cinephiles who hold these films near and dear,” a press release from Olive Films boldly states.  In the case of both Johnny Guitar and High Noon, they are among my favorite films and most worthy of rediscovery time and time again.  (Many thanks to Bradley Powell at Olive Films for providing Thrilling Days of Yesteryear with the Johnny Guitar screener.)

Rethink unpossible

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there are quite a few old newspapers piled up in the driveway of the blog…and while I have been occupied with an outside project or two, the inactivity is due mainly to sloth, which may very well be my favorite of the Seven Deadly Sins.  Okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh on myself.  I’ve written a piece or two at the Radio Spirits blog—commemorating the anniversaries of Night Beat and The Adventures of Superman—and that review of Without Warning! (1952) I alluded to in my last post is now up at ClassicFlix…though this is cheating a bit; I wrote that last year.

I’ve not been idle in the movie-watching department, however; I took advantage of the Netflix trial period to catch two documentaries that I had read about in past reviews and mentally attached to my “must-see” list.  Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five (2012) was most assuredly time well-spent (my father had a dissenting opinion, and rose from his recliner about a half-hour into the movie), but I can’t say the same for Room 237 (2012)—a quirky offering that reads entirely too much into Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) (one individual posits that Shining is an allegory about the genocide of Native Americans while another argues that it’s an admission that Kubrick faked the moon landing for the television audience back in 1969).  I probably would have enjoyed 237 more if I had a higher opinion of Shining, whose cult has eluded me ever since I saw it back in the day.  I also watched a couple of movies that I DVR’d during a free Showtime weekend: Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013) features a performance from Forest Whitaker that surpasses his Oscar-winning turn in The Last King of Scotland (2006) (seriously, he’s first-rate…but the film itself has problems).  I was also amazed at how much I enjoyed Philomena (2013), which I didn’t think I would but I identified most strongly with Steve Coogan’s atheist journalist, who lends a helping hand to a woman (Judi Dench) who had her son stolen from the nuns at the convent in which she was placed after her teen pregnancy.  (I recorded this one for Mom, who’s quite the fan of Dame Judi; she loved it, and even my Dad stuck around for it.)

In the classic movie arena on Netflix, I got to see Raw Deal (1948) in its entirety; the first time I watched it back in the 90s I dozed off a couple of times due to lack of rest.  (Sensational noir with TDOY faves Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt.)  I also enjoyed The River’s Edge (1957), which a couple of folks recommended to me via Facebook after I posted a link to a Salon.com article about the other River’s Edge (from 1986), which I revisited at about the same time (DVR’d it from the MGM HD channel).  The 1957 Edge features Ray Milland at his nastiest, though I was so underwhelmed by Anthony Quinn I was kind of hoping sexy red-headed Debra Paget would wind up with Ray.  (I always forget Paget is in House of Strangers, which I caught on Fox Movie Channel this morning.)   The bulk of the classic movies I’ve caught lately emanates (of course) via The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™, where I’ve been in the throes of a mini-John Barrymore festival with viewings of Svengali (1931), The Mad Genius (1931) and Counsellor at Law (1933; this one is a piperoo).  I’ve been trying to “clean up” the DVR of late; I caught Doubt (2008) courtesy of TCM (good performances but I wanted to hit Meryl Streep’s nun with a ruler) and Todd Haynes’ Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven (2002) via Cinemax (another movie that I thought would be cinematic vegetable but instead was a most gratifying experience).

I also mentioned in the last blog post a bit o’trouble with the AT&T U-Verse people.  We signed up with U-Verse in mid-January of 2014, and both Los Parentes Yesteryear and I knew that when our year was up, the amount of money we generously give them each month to maintain contact with the outside world would increase…so I called U-Verse to see if I could do a little shrewd horse trading.  AT&T and other cable-like folks really don’t want you to leave; when you call them and state “We’re going to cancel our service” they immediately transfer you to what they call a “retention specialist,” who’s prepared to do whatever it takes to keep you doing bidness with them.  Mostly lying their asses off.  (Oh, I forgot to explain this to Mom the day I called U-Verse, by the way; I thought she was going to have a heart attack when I said “We’re going to cancel our service.”)

The U-Verse rep explains to me that if we agree to take on their U-Voice service for a year we could expect to be paying roughly the same monthly rate for TV and Internet.  Truth be told, I wasn’t particularly wild about doing this—we use Magic Jack as our phone service (and you don’t even want to get me started on that, or we’ll be here for a lifetime)—but Mom had made it clear that it was either re-negotiate or go back to Charter.  (Talk about being in Hell with your back broken.)  So, under the auspices of it being a “second emergency landline” (the rep’s phrase—not mine) I agree to the deal, and ask how much effort it will take to get this set up.  No problemo, he says in his faux Spanish—all I have to do is plug our phone into the phone jack of the U-Verse modem the following day.

I’m sure once I got off the phone with this mook he and his fellow retention specialists had a hearty guffaw at my expense…because when I followed the instructions he gave me the set-up refused to work, and so I had to call Customer Service to find out what the hell was going on.  That is when I learned that the order to start the U-Voice had been bumped up to January 22 (I made the call on the 16th)…and what’s more, I would have to wait until U-Verse sends me another modem via UPS.  (The modem we had was, I thought, perfectly fine…but they argued we need one with a battery backup.)  The January 22 deadline came and went, and was then bumped up to the 26th.  February 7 was the next date after the 26th had passed.

In the meantime, because we’ve not started the U-Voice, the amount of our service soars to a level that generates much profanity from Ma and Pa Shreve.  I had been proactive in watching the bill online to see if it would change, and when it did I spoke to another service rep, who assured me we would not see this amount on the paper statement they send us.  Well, he lied.  He lied a lot.  (That’s where the parental swearing came into play.)  After I got the bill, I called U-Verse and spoke with a woman who told me that this was the amount we would be paying from now on.  Then I started swearing, and asked to speak to a supervisor to straighten things out.

As of this post, we have received the modem; I was able to connect it with little trouble (well, except I had to reset the wireless connection—that was a small pain in the tuchus) and in AT&T’s favor, sending them the modem back isn’t too difficult—you just drop it off at a UPS store, fill out a metric ton of paperwork, and they box it up for you.  But the U-Verse experience left a sour taste in our collective mouths here at Rancho Yesteryear; Mom has already said we’re crawling back to Charter next year, something I thought I’d never hear from her.

I saw this article at Raw Story, Salon and a few other places (it was originally published at Alternet)—it explains why the cable industry is so horrible (they single out Bombast Comcast, a company so loathsome they’ve started to refer to themselves as “Xfinity”), and tells a few jaw-dropping tales of mistreated customers.  If anyone out there in Blogland is employed in that capacity…you should really look into getting into a more honorable line of work, like cooking meth or working for the USPS.

Still can’t get the parts…check back next week

Earlier this month, I received an e-mail from the folks at AT&T U-Verse that over the (Thanksgiving) holiday weekend, they were going to give all subscribers a free preview of their “U-450” package—which is the company’s top of the line subscription deal (the ‘rents and I have the “U-200”).  What this entailed for us was four days of premium channel largess: HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Starz—you get the idea.  What this entailed for me was that because the On Demand access is also included (I think the only channels exempt from this were the ESPN stuff and Disney), it gives me carte blanche to add a few movies to the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives.

They have some sort of block on the HBO/Cinemax stuff, so I wasn’t able to record anything off of those channels.  (Drat.)  This didn’t keep me from helping myself to a look at a few newer movies that I had not seen; my BBFF Stacia mentioned in an e-mail that she and Mr. Stacia were amused by The Lego Movie (2014), and I sat down with that Friday night.  I wasn’t particularly fond of the fact that the movie shifts gears toward the end (it gets a bit sappy) because a good portion of it is some fairly smart satire in a kind of Rocky and Bullwinkle mode (the kids will enjoy the Legos while the adults chuckle at the jokes) but overall it was most entertaining.

The best HBO offering I watched was Dallas Buyers Club (2013), which I thought Mom would like because she’s a big Matthew McConaughey fan (though not so big that she’s been able to figure out why I keep saying “All right, all right, all right” every time his Lincoln commercial comes on) and I didn’t think I would because the subject matter sounded depressing.  Yet I thought the movie was sensational (both McConaughey and Jared Leto won well-deserved Oscars) and she hated it (thought the profanity was a bit much—“It’s Texas, ma…whaddya gonna do?”).  A genuine first-rate film, one of the best I have seen in a long while.

Starz offered up the 2011 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature—Inside Job (2010), which I also thought was a winner.  (I put this on for Dad…and he shrugged at it in a most uninterested way.)  Curiosity also bid me welcome to Saving Mr. Banks (2013), which, sadly, was simply not my cup of Harmless Harvest.  I liked Emma Thompson’s performance as P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins…but the movie seemed to suggest that she was a bitch because she had daddy issues and it was up to ol’ Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) to come to her rescue.

I guess what I’m trying to say is because I have been distracted by all this movie goodness—not only have I been able to watch some more recent films but I’ve been indulging with past favorites like Blow Out (1981), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)—that’s the reason why there’s no Serial Saturdays in this space…and why there’ll be no Doris Day(s) on Monday.  (Now…now…let’s not all be disappointed at the same time.)  But I will have material at the ready this week, including an interesting entry in Tuesday’s “Overlooked Films” feature and a review on a Grapevine Video purchase as well.  In the meantime, my look at The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) is available for your perusal at ClassicFlix.  Now—back to the screening room!

Power-Mad – The Tyrone Power Centennial Blogathon: Nightmare Alley (1947)

The following essay is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s contribution to Power-Mad, a blogathon celebrating the centennial birthday of actor Tyrone Power and hosted by The Lady Eve at The Lady Eve’s Reel Life and Patti at They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To.  For a list of the participating blogs and topics discussed, click here.  (Warning: I give away the ending to this remarkable film…so on the off-chance you’ve not yet seen it you might want to wait until you have before reading.)

Here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, I’ve joked in the past about a creation of mine I call The Blind Squirrel Theory of Film™; it states that no matter how much animosity I possess toward a particular classic film performer, I can usually find something they were in that allows me to say in complete honesty, “I liked him (or her) in that.”  For example—I’m on record as often referring to a certain revered child actress on the blog as She Who Must Not Be Named…but I thought she gave a great performance in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945).  On the male side of the coin, I thought Mickey Rooney (my other bête noire when it comes to kiddie thesps) did phenomenal work in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962).  (The theory was inspired by the old maxim “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.”)

The same theorem can be applied to the man whose centennial birthday we’re observing with today’s blogathon…although to be honest, I’m a bit more charitable when it comes to Tyrone Power in that I can think of more than one movie he graced that I like—Jesse James (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), Rawhide (1951) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957) to name a few examples.  But the one film of Power’s that I can sit down with over and over again is a cult noir classic that the actor had to fight his boss, 20th Century-Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck, to make.  In 1946, author William Lindsay Gresham published a best seller that showed readers the seamy side of the human condition with a sordid tale about carnival hustlers…and in 1947, it reached motion picture screens: Nightmare Alley.

Con man Stanton Carlisle (Power) is working as a barker in a traveling carnival, alongside a phony mystic named Mademoiselle Zeena (Joan Blondell) and her besotted husband Pete (Ian Keith).  Zeena and Pete were once the toast of vaudeville with a boffo mindreading act that relied heavily on a words-and-numbers code…but the couple’s fortunes have since fallen, because Pete climbed into a bottle and pulled the stopper in after him years ago due to one of his wife’s indiscretions.  Zeena is still supportive of Pete, and believes that she could raise enough scratch to send Pete to detox by selling their code (what she calls their “nest egg”), but Stanton quickly has other ideas.

One of the interesting visual touches in Alley: as Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) whistles a happy tune, the word "geek" appears above him on the tent...foreshadowing his life station by the end of the film.

While playing a town in Texas, Stan purchases a quart of moonshine from a fellow carny and after taking a few swallows, hides it in a prop trunk when he spots Pete knocking on the carny’s trailer door in search of booze.  Stan takes pity on Pete’s condition (Zeena has cut down his intake considerably), and hands him the ‘shine from the trunk…only to discover to his horror that he accidentally gave Pete a bottle of wood alcohol Zeena used in the act when the carnival folk find Pete dead as a doornail the next morning.  Zeena is then forced to keep the act going with Carlisle replacing Pete, and she teaches him the code that the couple used so successfully in vaudeville.

Carlisle has ambitions beyond the popcorn-and-sawdust circuit, however.  To stave off any romantic notions that Zeena might have, Stan learns the code alongside a young carnival performer named Molly (Coleen Gray), with whom he’s flirted in the past.  This arrangement does not sit well with her protector, Bruno (Mike Mazurki)…and when it’s learned by Zeena, Bruno and the other carnies that Stan has had his way with Molly, they force the two lovers into a shotgun marriage.  This doesn’t turn out to be as bad as Carlisle had anticipated; the couple soon find themselves playing swanky Chicago nightclubs in a mindreading act that bills Stan as “The Great Stanton.”  It is during a performance that Carlisle crosses paths with a psychiatrist named Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker), whose recordings made of patients seeking help will prove an invaluable asset to Stan’s unquenchable ambition.

The light patterns from the window in Lilith's (Walker) office form a spider web...with the good doctor in the role of black widow (seen here with patient Julia Dean).

With Lilith’s help, Stan cons a nightclub patron (Julia Dean) into believing he can communicate with the dead…and his scam proves so convincing that a millionaire named Ezra Grindle (Taylor Holmes) soon becomes Stan’s patron—with a big payoff guaranteed if Carlisle can conjure up the spirit of Grindle’s deceased love.  Stan will need Molly to pose as the dead woman, but she’s starting to have second thoughts about the direction their lives is taking…it was fine when it was just show business, but she considers Stanton’s claims of communicating with spirits to be blasphemy.  She reluctantly goes along with the scheme…until she has a change of heart at the sight of Grindle begging The Almighty for forgiveness.  With Stan’s racket exposed, he and Molly will need to take a fast train out of the Windy City at their earliest opportunity.

I can smell the corn dogs and funnel cake from here.

Stan asks Molly to wait for him at the station while he collects money that he left for safekeeping with Dr. Ritter.  The con man learns that he himself has been bamboozled—and when he returns to Lilith’s to demand what’s his she proves herself to be every bit his equal, threatening to reveal to the authorities the circumstances behind Pete’s demise (the details of which she surreptitiously recorded one night as Carlisle was unburdening his troubles on her).  Stan gives Molly what little money he has as the train pulls out of the station without him.

Carlisle descends into alcoholism, and winds up destitute at a carnival whose manager (Roy Roberts) has the perfect job for him: performing as “the geek.”  Asked if he’s up to the task, he drunkenly slurs “Mister…I was made for it.”  And so our anti-hero embarks on a life of biting the heads of chickens in exchange for a bottle a day and a warm place to sleep.  Nightmare Alley ends on a small note of redemption when Molly discovers the true identity of the new “geek” and, consoling her husband, vows to nurse him back to health.

One of the grimmest entries in all of film noir, Alley was adapted from an out-of-the-box best seller from the aforementioned William Lindsay Gresham, who was inspired to write the novel from conversations he had with an ex-carnival worker while the two fought for the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War.  Gresham later pounded out Alley while working as an editor for a NYC magazine; like his protagonist Stanton Carlisle, the book represented his one big chance to grab the brass ring—but he was never able to follow up its initial success and ended up overdosing on pills in a hotel in 1962…the very same hotel in which he once worked on Nightmare Alley.

Alley provided the grist for what is truly one of the grimmest entries in the film noir style.  Its seedy carnival show business milieu offers an ironic commentary on the country’s malaise after World War II.  The main character, while receiving a little Hollywood redemption at the end of the film (though it’s not hard to imagine he’ll wind up in the same fate as the alcoholic Pete), shares many facets of what we would recognize as sociopathic behavior; Stanton Carlisle uses his glib, superficial charm and knack for manipulation to swindle “marks” and inch closer and closer to meeting his lofty goals.  Though he does romance a trio of women throughout the film, his relationships often seem to be means to an end—any compassion or emotion seems feigned and insincere.  Furthermore, he doesn’t seem to exhibit any remorse or guilt for his pathological lying; Carlisle’s background is pockmarked with a history of juvenile delinquency and other misbehavior from an early age.

The fascinating aspect of Nightmare Alley is that despite the caddishness on full display from Stanton Carlisle, he’s a piker compared to femme fatale Dr. Lilith Ritter, who’s truly a piece of work (she reminds me of that line from Out of the Past, “just a bit cold around the heart”).  It’s interesting to note that while we expect the carnival people to be a bit on the dishonest side (they have sort of acquired that reputation); they do adhere to some semblance of a moral code (they pledge to Zeena that they’ll keep Pete away from the booze…and also insist on the marriage of Stan and Molly) whereas the wealthy, respectable Ritter has thrown away the rule book and eventually brings about the downfall of Stanton with her wonderfully wicked amorality.  As the icy cold Lilith Ritter, Helen Walker would have the greatest role of her tragically short career…and later made return trips to Noir City in vehicles like Call Northside 777 and The Big Combo. 

The other themes addressed in the film involve spirituality and religion; Stan and Zeena play on the primal fears of the unknown of the various rubes that attend their carnival performances…yet Zeena fervently believes in the power of her Tarot cards (which predict the demise of Pete…and how Stan will eventually follow in his footsteps).  Joan Blondell made her reputation at the Warner Brothers studio in the 1930s gracing Depression-era musicals and racy pre-Codes…but because age comes to us all, her career in the 1940s took the character actress exit ramp and she started getting good notices for mature turns in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Alley—which I think showcases Joan at her finest. 

It is hinted that Carlisle might actually exhibit a small amount of psychic ability (I personally chalk it up to an intuitive talent that some sociopaths are known to possess) despite his conviction that it’s nothing but bunk.  Unbothered at first by using all this as a means to obtain a fast buck, Molly later experiences a crisis of conscience…she’s convinced that her husband is trespassing in God’s domain and that he risks being struck dead on the spot.  Up-and-comer Coleen Gray plays the sweetly supportive Molly; Gray would use this film as a stepping stone (as well as the same year’s Kiss of Death) for later noirs like Kansas City Confidential and The Killing.

Shocking.  Positively shocking.

Another noir icon in the form of former athlete Mike Mazurki is on hand in Alley; playing the menacing Bruno, Mazurki’s best known as the hulking Moose Malloy from the hard-boiled classic Murder, My Sweet…but in addition, he made unforgettable impressions in Night and the City and Dark City.  Character favorites Ian Keith and Taylor Holmes also do excellent work, plus there are plenty of TDOY faves such as Oliver Blake, George Chandler, Emmett Lynn (as the hobos who make Carlisle’s acquaintance toward the end), Harry Cheshire, Julia Dean, Roy Roberts, Gene Roth (as a masseuse!) and Marjorie Wood (OTR announcer John Wald can also be heard plying his trade).

But Nightmare Alley is Tyrone Power’s show all the way—Ty was never better as a hustler whose reach clearly exceeds his grasp.  Upon his discharge from the U.S. Marines in January of 1946, First Lieutenant Power was anxious to start making films again; his last movie was 1943’s Crash Dive, and Ty wanted very much to shake off that romantic, swashbuckling image that marked many of his earlier vehicles by seeking out the types of more mature roles he had played on stage.  His first post-War production was The Razor’s Edge, based on the 1944 novel by W. Somerset Maugham, which wound up being nominated for four Academy Awards (winning one for Anne Baxter as Best Supporting Actress).  Ty then moved onto his next project; he purchased the rights to Gresham’s Alley for $60,000 and was determined to bring the book to the silver screen over the objections of Fox studio head Zanuck.  The actor was able to use his pull in the industry to bring the movie to light…and despite his reservations, Zanuck awarded what would normally be B-movie material the production values of an A-film…even going so far as constructing a full working carnival (complete with 100 sideshow attractions and plenty of extras) on ten acres of Fox’s backlot to make the proceedings “realistic.”

Director Edmund Goulding—who had been at the helm of Power’s previous Razor’s Edge and whose cinematic oeuvre included Grand Hotel and Dark Victory—was picked to ride herd on a film produced by, of all people, “Toastmaster General” George Jessel.  (“Georgie” had been producing many of Fox’s splashy Technicolor musicals since the mid-40s.)  Jules Furthman, an expert at scripting films with complicated, labyrinthine plots (hello Big Sleep!), adapted Gresham’s book and did an expert job…even though he did have to tack on a more optimistic ending at Zanuck’s request.  With breathtaking cinematography courtesy of Lee Garmes (and special photography effects from Fred Sersen), the result was a gorgeous-looking “A” picture containing non-mainstream elements like geeks, dipsomaniacs and premarital sex…which does not result in negative consequences, oddly enough.

One can only imagine if Darryl F. Zanuck had a “told you so” dance in his holster; Nightmare Alley did dismal box office and D.F.Z. eventually pulled the film without giving a re-release a second thought.  Those critics that did see the film, however, gave Tyrone Power some of the best notices of his career…and with Alley, the actor demonstrated to naysayers (myself included) that he was more than just a pretty face.  From the time I read Danny Peary’s essay on this essential film noir in the movie buff’s bible, Cult Movies, I sought out Nightmare Alley with a fervor and passion unparalleled in the annals of film aficionado-dom.  This was before the wonders of the Internets; I finally tracked it down one Saturday morning on Cinemax (the cable channel used to have a regular feature then entitled “Not Available on Home Video”) and later got a repeat showing via the glory days of American Movie Classics, when it was featured in a film noir festival.  For a time, television was the only readily accessible way to see Alley; sticky legal complications between the Jessel estate and other involved parties kept the movie out of the VHS racks for a number of years but in June of 2005 it was finally released on DVD.  I’ve enjoyed the movie countless times since then.  Mister…I was made for it.

Game of Showns

It was a most productive cinematic haul this weekend as I enjoyed AT&T U-Verse’s free HBO/Cinemax weekend; I watched a bodaciously large number of flicks courtesy of their On Demand service…and what offerings weren’t On Demand I DVR’d off the schedule for transcription at a later time.  (Something that takes meticulous planning, I should add…I’m like one of those generals you always see in the movies playing with toy cannons and soldiers on a map.)  I was stymied by a power outage this morning (something that apparently affected U-Verse subscribers all across this great land of ours) that kept me from recording Walk the Line (2005), so I guess Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon will wait another day.

Oh, and a little poking around at AT&T U-Verse’s website revealed that a free Showtime preview is in the works for May 9-11.  And with that, here are some of the movies I gazed at intently this weekend.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) – Okay, I knew from the title that this one was going to induce a lot of eyeball-rolling…and it’s pretty much what you’d expect: an over-the-top horror pic that posits that the sixteenth president of the United States was also a badass destroyer of the undead in his copious free time.  Based on a novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (who also penned the screenplay), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter stars Benjamin Walker as the rail-splitter himself…who teams up with a man named Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper) to dispose of bloodsuckers willy-nilly when his ma (Robin McLeavy) dies at the hand of a slave trader (also a vampire) named Jack Barts (Marton Csokas).

Again, a guy who’s also written a book entitled Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which will be released to motion picture theaters in 2015) is naturally going to take a little literary license…but I think Vampire Hunter would have worked better if they had left such figures as Harriet Tubman (Jaqueline Fleming) and Jefferson Davis (John Rothman) out of the narrative (in this alternate universe, the institution of slavery was set up so that the undead would have access to a constant food source) as well as concentrated Abe’s hobby to the years before he became president.  Still, while I was able to tolerate a lot of the explodiations and stuntery of this popcorn movie (including a fiery train sequence that’s impressive in its sheer audaciousness) the disappointment came in the performance of my beloved Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who I adored in Smashed) as Mary Todd Lincoln (way too anachronistic, even in this wacked-out world).

Dark Shadows (2012) – Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’s Seth Grahame-Smith also wrote the story and screenplay for this one (so it seemed only fitting that I watched it after Vampire Hunter—sort of a bloodsucker two-fer), inspired by the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which was a cult favorite of TV audiences from 1966-71.  Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins, the heir to the substantial Collins estate who receives a mojo from a vindictive witch named Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) that transforms him into a vampire.  Imprisoned underground for nearly two centuries, he’s freed from his coffin and sets out to restore the family fortunes that have suffered from the machinations of the same sorceress who cursed him.  Barnabas also falls for the new family governess, Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcoate), whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his dead wife.

When I saw the trailer for this movie back in 2012, I fell prey to that familiar eye-rolling malady of mine because the coming attractions played up the comedic aspects in the film—and while there are light moments in Dark Shadows it’s a fairly straightforward homage to the TV series, with a few tongue-in-cheek tweaks here and there.  (I’m not sure if this was such a good idea because part of the appeal of the TV show was that it was unintentionally funny.)  Johnny Depp is not a favorite of mine, though I am considerably more charitable to him than my mother (which is probably why I watched this one alone), yet I’ll freely admit he’s pretty good reprising the role made famous by Jonathan Frid (who makes his swan song in a cameo in this film, along with Shadows alumni Kathryn Leigh Scott, David Selby and Lara Parker in a party sequence)—particularly when he’s able to deliver a line like “Goest thou to hell, and swiftly please, and there may Azmodaeus himself suckle from your diseased teat!” while maintaining a straight face.  (It helps that he’s a fan of the show.)  Any movie that features Christopher Lee (as a sea captain) and Alice Cooper (as himself—Depp’s Collins remarks he’s the “ugliest woman I’ve ever seen”) can’t be a total loss, and I was amused that famous movie creep Jackie Earle Haley plays Willie Loomis (essayed by future Cagney & Lacey cast member John Karlen in the original TV version) because it’s pretty much the part he was born to play.  Watch this one if you’re in the mood for something silly.

Disconnect (2012) – One of the real gems I watched this weekend; Disconnect highlights three stories—a couple (Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgård) find themselves victims of computer identity theft; a teenager (Jonah Bobo) tries to take his life after being cyberbullied; and an ambitious TV reporter (Andrea Riseborough) wants to interview a teen (Max Thieriot) who earns his living at an adult webcam site.  Written by Andrew Stern and directed by Henry Alex Rubin, the movie’s stories are separate yet intersect at two points: the father (Jason Bateman) of the suicidal teen is also the lawyer for the station that employs the reporter and the ex-cop (Frank Grillo) investigating the identity theft is the father of one of the kids responsible for bullying the teenager.

This engrossing thriller hooked me from the get-go and marvelously sustained itself from start to finish; I applaud its message of how individuals find it difficult to relate to one another despite the leaps and bounds made by “social media.”  The writing, direction and performances are all solid but I was pleased that one of my favorite actresses, Hope Davis, plays the role of the suicidal teen’s ma (I’ve loved her since the days of The Daytrippers and Next Stop Wonderland)…and Kasi Lemmons, best known as Jodie Foster’s roommate in The Silence of the Lambs, also appears as an FBI agent.  (Lemmons’ directorial debut, Eve’s Bayou, was a film that I enjoyed tremendously and recommended to one of my friends during my exile in Morgantown.  A decision I would soon regret, since one of her friends watched it with her and never missed an opportunity to inform me how much it “sucked.”  Philistine.) 

The East (2013) – If you stop by the blog on a regular—or even irregular—basis, you know I’m not much of a fan of noisy movie blockbusters with their penchant for blowing things up real good.  The East is a remedy for that: an operative (Brit Marling) for a private security firm infiltrates an anarchist collective (I will not refer to them as “eco-terrorists” because I don’t believe any of them work for BP) whose mission is to give corporations a taste of their own medicine; led by their charismatic leader (Alexander Skarsgård again!), “The East” crashes a party and dopes the champagne swilled by pharmaceutical execs with a drug that they sell (and claim is safe), for example.  The agent, who identifies herself as “Sarah,” soon develops an emotional attachment to the group members that threatens to compromise her allegiance to the people for whom she works.

What impressed me so much about The East is that while it’s truly a first-rate suspense thriller…it doesn’t need to throw in a bunch of car chases or explodiations.  The movie’s star, Marling, co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij, and the screenplay also promotes the belief that irresponsible corporations need to be confronted about the severity of their actions (even though Sarah doesn’t entirely improve of the methods used by the group).  Patricia Clarkson co-stars as Marling’s formidable boss, with Ellen Page in a nice turn as one of the group’s purely idealistic members and Jamey Sheridan as her dad, an exec whose company’s chemicals resulted in a young boy’s death from cancer.  (Julia Ormond is also on hand as one of the Big Pharma bosses.)  John Ritter’s son Jason also has a small role as Sarah’s husband, demonstrating that talent is often diluted the farther down the family tree you go.

Infamous (2006) – George Plimpton’s book on Truman Capote (which interviews folks who knew him) was the source for this movie written and directed by Douglas McGrath that was released the year after the movie bio Capote won the late Philip Seymour Hoffman a Best Actor Oscar.  Infamous covers similar ground, focusing on the background that would inspire the author (played by British thesp Toby Jones) to write what many consider to be his finest novel, In Cold Blood—in fact, it wouldn’t be stretching things to note that the film is in many ways a remake of the 1967 Blood…only told from Capote’s point of view.  (McGrath does take a few liberties with the book, including a sexual encounter between Capote and Perry Smith that would not have happened unless both of them were in the sneezer.)

Film critic Rex Reed went on record as saying that he wasn’t particularly on board with Hoffman’s Academy Award triumph, noting “they gave the Oscar to the wrong Truman Capote” and that Hoffman was doing more of an impression while Jones “moves into Truman's skin, heart and brains.”  I never met the real Capote so I’m not going to split hairs as to whether Reed is accurate (he would probably know him better than I) but I did enjoy Jones’ performance, as well as Juliet Stevenson’s dead-on portrayal of Diana Vreeland and Sigourney Weaver as Babe Paley (the wife of CBS president William S.).  (Hope Davis is in Infamous, too—that was a plus.  But I will warn people who are not Bill Crider that Gwyneth Paltrow is also in this movie…and that she sings.  Run fast, run far.)  I was less enamored of Peter Bogdanovich’s attempt to convince folks he was Bennett Cerf…for the simple reason that Bogdanovich was pretty much playing Bogdanovich.  I’ll admit that my longtime preference for Catherine Keener gives her a slight edge in her Capote interpretation of Truman’s longtime BBF (Nelle) Harper Lee over Sandra Bullock (I’m just not a fan of hers—she’s like TDOY bête noire Julia Roberts, only with less teeth) but I did think Bullock acquitted herself nicely here.  As for Daniel Craig—he’s a shoo-in for the eventual Tommy Lee Jones biopic (the man known as the current 007 plays murderer Smith).

Killer Joe (2011) – Playwright Tracy Letts reworked his 1993 play into this film (directed by William Friedkin) that casts recent Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey as an ice-water-in-his-veins hit man who’s hired by a trailer-trash family to dispose of a relative in order to collect the insurance.  The son (Emile Hirsch) can’t come up with the $25,000 deposit for McConaughey’s services so McConaughey arranges to avail himself of the sexual charms of the son’s Baby Doll-like sister (Juno Temple) as a “retainer.”

This jet-black comedy thriller is admittedly not for all tastes but I thought it was a crackerjack piece of filmmaking; Friedkin nicely captures that endearing (if dangerous) loopiness that often defines the Lone Star State (there are a lot of Blood Simple overtones in this) and the performances are superb, particularly McConaughey as the titular assassin and Thomas Haden Church as the clueless patriarch (I’ve been a longtime fan of Church’s since Wings, and his Ansel Smith in Joe makes Lowell Mather look like a Mensa candidate).  Gina Gershon is Church’s duplicitous wife, who performs a bit of fellatio on a KFC chicken leg (she calls it “K-Fry-C”) that won’t disappear from your memory banks anytime soon.

Mama (2013) – Oddball horror film focuses on the plight of two little girls (Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse) whose father (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) scoops them up and takes them with him when he has to lam it out of town (he’s just killed two of his business partners and his estranged wife), only to be murdered by a mysterious “something” as he and his daughters become stranded in the woods.  Five years later, the girls are located (and are in a feral state) and returned to his twin brother (also Coster-Waldau), who attempts to provide a home for them along with his girlfriend (Jessica Chastain).  The problem is—that “something” (which the girls call “Mama”) has followed them home—and when “Mama” ain’t happy…ain’t nobody happy.

An exercise in “old school” horror, Mama terrified the absolute sh*t out of me even though a few of the plot strands left me a little bewildered.  Directed by Andrés Muschietti (who elaborated on his 2008 short of the same name), the movie delivers the fright goods in spades; I was thinking the whole time that if I saw half of what goes on in Chastain and Coster-Waldau’s house you’d be forwarding my mail to Cleveland someplace.  Produced by famed director Guillermo del Toro, whose The Devil’s Backbone (2001) I would have DVR’d during the free Starz/Encore preview had U-Verse not demonstrated such ruthless efficiency by removing the channel on schedule.

Man of Steel (2013) – I don’t remember if it was Matt Zoller Seitz—or possibly the crazy lady who stands outside the Golden Pantry every morning yelling at invisible people (I didn’t take notes)—who mused some time ago that a movie like Superman (1978) could never do well in the current tenor of the times, when most of the “superhero” motion pictures have a kind of dark quality about them (thank you, Tim Burton).  Man of Steel adds a little “dark” to the Superman story (the screenplay is by David S. Goyer and directed by Zack Snyder…but Batman rebooter Christopher Nolan left a few fingerprints as producer) by re-telling the legend of the superhero (played by Henry Cavill): from his escape of doomed planet Krypton (Russell Crowe plays his pop) to arrival on Earth (Kevin Costner as his Earth Pop), where he must do battle with some renegades from planet K, led by bad guy General Zod (Michael Shannon).

Confession time: I am such a huge Superman fan (I even liked Superman Returns—sue me) that I enjoyed Man of Steel…even though I was disappointed that a lot of the wonderment from the 1978 classic has given way to that darkness I mentioned earlier.  I don’t think Cavill or Brandon Routh can measure up to Christopher Reeve’s take on the World’s Mightiest Mortal so the strengths have to be searched for elsewhere: Crowe and Costner are great as Jor-El and Jonathan Kent, respectively (though I will admit Kev pales slightly in comparison to Glenn Ford in the role) and Diane Lane was a revelation as Supe’s mom (I always have difficulty seeing beyond her teen years in The Outsiders and Streets of Fire).  I also liked Amy Adams as Lois Lane but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with a Daily Planet that erases Jimmy Olsen (I know he’s useless…but it’s Superman, ferchrissake) from the masthead.  Man of Steel was pretty much what I expected—stunts and explodiations—but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit it makes me want to see the sequel.  (By the way, I told Mom that Christopher Meloni was in this movie—and she still took a pass on seeing it.)

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) – Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) gives up his stunt motorcycling gig with a traveling carnival to stick around the burg where his girlfriend Romina (Eva Mendes) hangs her hat; he’s just learned that she has sired him a son and to make life better for them he embarks on a career of robbing banks with the help of a mechanic buddy (Ben Mendelsohn).  But Luke’s outlaw spree comes to an end thanks to the expert police work of uniformed cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who capitalizes on his “hero” status to fulfill his political ambitions.  Along the way, Cross gets an idea of what the concept of what bearing “the sins of the fathers” is all about.

Derek Cianfrance’s three-act tragedy was promoted relentlessly last year—it seems like every time I watched an episode of Community or Parks and Recreation on demand I’d also be treated to that damn trailer.  My hesitancy to fully embrace The Place Beyond the Pines stems from the fact that by the time the movie enters its third act—concentrating on Luke and Avery’s sons (Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen)—the viewer finds out that their story just isn’t as compelling as their dads’.  Cianfrance is reunited with Gosling after the two of them worked together on the critically-acclaimed Blue Valentine; Pines also features Ray Liotta (playing a corrupt cop, which is a bit out of his wheelhouse—don’t you think?) and TDOY fave Harris Yulin as Cooper’s dad.

Teeth (2007) – Here’s another offbeat horror vehicle that didn’t quite scare me as much as Mama (though I laughed a lot more): chaste teen Dawn O’Keefe (Jess Wexler) is saving herself for marriage (she even belongs to an abstinence group dubbed The Promise) but it’s not easy—she begins to have impure thoughts about Tobey (Hale Apperman), a fellow Promiser she’s just met, and the afternoon the two of them head off for an innocent swim results in alarming consequences.  Tobey starts to have his way with her the way rough boys often do…and discovers to his horror that Dawn has what is referred to in various mythologies as vagina dentata.  (Google it, non-Latin majors.)

For those males out there who just crossed their legs after Googling that last part—Teeth assures us in the closing credits that “No man was harmed in the making of this film.”  It’s a hysterically original film that explores the horrifyingly comic side of teenage sexuality, with a wonderful performance by Wexler (who won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance that year).  There’s plenty of smart satire on hand, as well as none-too-subtle symbolism and in-jokes (my favorite is the clip from The Black Scorpion)…and the fate that befalls Dawn’s surly stepbrother (John Hensley) shouldn’t happen to a dog.  (Apologies for that last part.)  If anything, Teeth lets us know that Lenny Van Dohlen—who I remember from Tender Mercies and Electric Dreams (the Her of its day)—is still working; he plays Dawn’s pa.