What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

I'm too old. Can't remember...

Stumbled across this:

A 1934 staged photo by photographer A.L. "Whitey" Schafer, mocking the Hays movie censorship Code by violating as many of its rules as possible in a single image.

A Town Without Pity from 1961 starring Kirk Douglas, Christine Kaufman and E.G. Marshall

Long-time classic movie fans live for finding a hidden gem - that unknown or little-known movie you've never seen before, but that is so incredibly well done and engaging that you become an instant fan: A Town Without Pity is the first hidden gem I've found in a long time.

To be sure, this is not an easy movie: its plot is the gang rape of a local German girl by four serviceman from the nearby US Army base and their subsequent court martial.

By the early '60s, movies starting taking on tough subjects with a reveal and frankness that had been all but disallowed since 1934 when the movie production code was enforced. But by the early '60s, many movies finally discussed and showed infidelity and pre-marital sex; however, rape - gang rape - was taking it deeper into ugly reality. To be sure, other movies - Anatomy of a Murder, for one - dealt with rape, but the graphic, brutal, gang-rape nature of this movie was on a much harsher plane.

Shot in crisp black and white, in a decidedly not picture-post-card old German town - where it seemed to almost always be overcast - and with a jarring, but haunting jazz theme song that doubles as the majority of the score, the mood is not one of a bright future, but of a struggling humanity barely keeping its depravity hidden under a very thin veneer of civility.

And that's the movie and that's the town without pity. A town without pity for the slightly stuck up - knows she's pretty because she is - blonde beauty who gets gang raped by four drunken, on-leave soldiers who stumble upon her in the woods where she is enjoying being naked (she intentionally does that as she lingers while changing from her bikini to her regular clothes after a swim in the nearby lake).

After that - and the trip to the hospital, and the arrests, and the push and pull between the town authorities and the US military - the movie shifts into trial mode where the soldiers' appointed defendant (Douglas) finds a surprising number of local folks willing to help him gather evidence against the girl's character.

Fifty-plus years later, we are familiar with the challenges of a rape trial - the presumed victim gets "raped" again in the court as the defense tries to tear down her character while the accused demand and a deserve a fair trail, which all but guarantees said assault on the presumed victim's character.

And Douglas is powerful as the attorney doing what he knows he has to do but hating it at the same time. The scene where he begs the young girl's father not to put his daughter on the stand (if she refuses, the defendants can't be sentenced to death, but she also can't be cross examined) is tense, sad and gripping. He warns - nay, pleads - with the father that he will have to tear his daughter apart, as we know, the town without pity willingly provided him with all the character-debasing evidence a smart attorney would need to demolish a, for the time, free-spirited, pretty young girl.

At the end, a lot happens quickly, but you want to see it without advanced insight. In truth, though, the end only matters from a story telling perspective; we already know from the setup to the trial everything we know today - there aren't any good answers to a rape trial, so we have them and we hate them. Which leaves us with Douglas' performance - up there with any he gave - serving as our troubled conscience.

That's not an answer to the problem, but it is a reflection of the challenging and impressive film making on display here. Not noir, but dark and sad - it's another and surprisingly under-the-radar early '60s movie that lets much of society's unpleasantness hang out in a stark and painfully realistic manner.

Full disclosure: I think I might have seen parts of this one before as I kept having déjà vu moments during some scenes, but I don't know if that is true. If so, shame on me for missing the value of this hidden gem the first time.

On in the background and with the sound off, I saw bits and pieces of The Land of the Pharaohs on TCM this morning.

I've never seen it, but it looked good in a 1950s epic-ancient-history-movie way. Has anyone seen it - thoughts?

"The silence of the lambs"

Scott Glenn, "Mr. Cool".

A couple nights ago I watched one heck of a stinker called Kull the Conqueror starring Kevin Sorbo and a red haired Tia Carrere (Carriere?). It was such a train wreck I couldn't look away and ended up watching the WHOLE THING.

It defies description it's so bad. Here, read for yourself. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/kull-film-review.html

Brian Banks

Since it is based on real life so makes you wonder about certain things.
Though I wished the tone of movie was more grim, dreary and depressing.

Fading Fast said:

On in the background and with the sound off, I saw bits and pieces of The Land of the Pharaohs on TCM this morning. I've never seen it, but it looked good in a 1950s epic-ancient-history-movie way. Has anyone seen it - thoughts?

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That film traumatized the heck out of me as a little kid, but leaving that aside for the moment, I watched it again just recently with my daughter. It's not a good movie, but it's fascinating in a number of ways. It is indeed a prime example of a mid-fifties ancient world epic made to combat the rise of TV, a widescreen color film with great costumes, exotic location shooting, and a literal cast of thousands. And it was made by legit geniuses: directed by Howard Hawks and written by no less than William Faulkner!

(Faulkner in a memo to the producers: "I must admit that I have no idea how an Egyptian pharaoh talked. So I'm going to write him like a Kentucky Colonel." !!!)

But again, it's not a good movie. It's worth seeing once... just barely. The long sequences of thousands of extras as the Egyptian army, citizens, slaves, and the builders of the pyramid are epic... but there's far too much of this second-unit material, and it eventually gets really boring. The acting varies from almost believable to terrible: Jack Hawkins as the pharaoh is miscast and seems uncomfortable. As a turncoat noble, Sydney Chaplin is terrible, as always. As the genius engineer of the pyramid and leader of his people (*), James Robertson Justice isn't bad. The method he uses to seal the pyramid is really interesting.

(* His people are newly captured slaves brought to Egypt, an insular people with odd beliefs... but the film doesn't have the guts to call them Hebrews, it's just left hanging for you to figure out! In this story, Egyptian citizens are happy to work on the pyramid to honor their living god... until years go by and they must to be forced to keep working. It's never even implied that the foreign-origin slaves help to build the pyramid.)

The main reason to see Land of the Pharaohs is 20-year-old Joan Collins as the villain, a scheming princess with her eye on the throne. She's an embryonic version of Alexis Carrington, and she slinks around and vamps it up - if not quite as over the top as Anne Baxter a bit later in The Ten Commandments - quite entertainingly. She's certainly the most compelling character, and she really sells her comeuppance at the end.

Doctor Strange said:

That film traumatized the heck out of me as a little kid, but leaving that aside for the moment, I watched it again just recently with my daughter. It's not a good movie, but it's fascinating in a number of ways. It is indeed a prime example of a mid-fifties ancient world epic made to combat the rise of TV, a widescreen color film with great costumes, exotic location shooting, and a literal cast of thousands. And it was made by legit geniuses: directed by Howard Hawks and written by no less than William Faulkner!

(Faulkner in a memo to the producers: "I must admit that I have no idea how an Egyptian pharaoh talked. So I'm going to write him like a Kentucky Colonel." !!!)

But again, it's not a good movie. It's worth seeing once... just barely. The long sequences of thousands of extras as the Egyptian army, citizens, slaves, and the builders of the pyramid are epic... but there's far too much of this second-unit material, and it eventually gets really boring. The acting varies from almost believable to terrible: Jack Hawkins as the pharaoh is miscast and seems uncomfortable. As a turncoat noble, Sydney Chaplin is terrible, as always. As the genius engineer of the pyramid and leader of his people (*), James Robertson Justice isn't bad. The method he uses to seal the pyramid is really interesting.

(* His people are newly captured slaves brought to Egypt, an insular people with odd beliefs... but the film doesn't have the guts to call them Hebrews, it's just left hanging for you to figure out! In this story, Egyptian citizens are happy to work on the pyramid to honor their living god... until years go by and they must to be forced to keep working. It's never even implied that the foreign-origin slaves help to build the pyramid.)

The main reason to see Land of the Pharaohs is 20-year-old Joan Collins as the villain, a scheming princess with her eye on the throne. She's an embryonic version of Alexis Carrington, and she slinks around and vamps it up - if not quite as over the top as Anne Baxter a bit later in The Ten Commandments - quite entertainingly. She's certainly the most compelling character, and she really sells her comeuppance at the end.

View attachment 186575

As I said, I saw this film on TV circa 1962, and Collins' vivid performance at the end (which I won't spoil here) freaked me out, it took me a while to get over it. When Joan Collins next showed up on my TV - as Edith Keeler on Star Trek in 1967, when I was 12 - I was instantly totally smitten. But I didn't realize that it was the same actress who'd played evil Princess Nellifer, who'd made such a strong impression on me as a little kid, until decades later.

Anyway, Land of the Pharaohs is definitely worth a viewing as a curiosity... just don't expect a good movie!​

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Great comments and insight - thank you. I'll look out for it so that I give it the one viewing it sounds like it deserves.

Sure. As you can see, I have a special personal relationship with this not-good film, and have researched it and watched it way more times than it deserves over the years! One more image, from a set of lobby cards:

Mae, that Kull movie was a cheap quickie made to cash in on Kevin Sorbo's success in the syndicated Hercules TV series at that moment. It's truly terrible. Robert E. Howard no doubt turned over in his grave!

I'm surprised there hasn't been another attempt at adapting Kull yet as a film or streaming series. It seems like a natural, especially in today's post-Game of Thrones media world!

^^^ You really think so? I don't see it. But I can't picture what actor would willingly let themselves be all oiled up for schlock like that these days. Not that that's bad. The Schwarzenegger Conan movies were hilariously watchable. I recall Red Sonja and the like from when I was a kid.

It'd have to be a WHOLE LOT better! LOL!

The 1990's version of "Cape Fear"

Black Book from 2006

• I don't know why this ripping WWII Dutch resistance/spy thriller seems to get no notice. I saw it in the theater in 2006, thought, "outstanding movie" and, then, nothing - never see it on cable, regular TV, etc. (I just watched it on DVD.)

• Full-on-evil Nazis, complicated not-full-on-evil Nazis, selfless Dutch resistance fighters, turncoat Dutch resistance fighters, a normal woman forced to become a super spy and endure a Candide-like journey landing her on a Kibbutz in scrappy Israel in the '50s - all larger than life and all reflect people who existed in this larger-than-life period in history

• I have no idea what its budget was, but money was spent as the scenes, period details, action sequences, rich colors, dramatic shadows and, well, everything is beautiful and impressive - an early entry in the modern era of almost every movie being visually gorgeous

• Director Paul Verhoeven has somewhat of an all-over-the-map movie directorial resume, but most of his films have a strong sexual drumbeat (loudest in his Basic Instinct all-but-porn effort) that is present in Black Book and, for the most part, is effective and not forced. Desperate people, pushed to the wall, will use every single asset, bodies included, they have to survive

• There are a lot of WWII movies - define a century and you'll get your deserved share of artistic effort - it's just surprising that this one never seems to show up on TV or in commentaries on WWII movies

We had that picture here during its first run, and there are scenes in it I will never forget. Very very strong stuff.

LizzieMaine said:

We had that picture here during its first run, and there are scenes in it I will never forget. Very very strong stuff.

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Yes, I hadn't seen it since '06, but knew exactly what was coming next at several points.

Is that, perhaps, why it is not well known - is it too strong / too raw?

Our patrons thought so. They'd all come out the door after the show shaking their heads.

LizzieMaine said:

Our patrons thought so. They'd all come out the door after the show shaking their heads.

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I didn't know you in '06, but having just watched it again, I thought it would have been a good movie for your theater.

What do you think - too raw?

I saw it at a film club showing back before it was released, haven't seen it since. But I liked it then, and found it atypically disciplined and focused for a Paul Verhoeven film. (Don't get me wrong, I like some of his nutso over-the-top films too. His output is... interestingly diverse.) The folks I saw it with - this was a Sunday morning film series in Westchester with a largely Jewish audience - had widely mixed reactions.

Folks who only know Carice van Houten as "the red woman" Melisandre on Game of Thrones will be impressed with her very different performance in this.