What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Edward]

That's part of the problem right there. I was 26 years old when I saw The Running Man in '87; no longer a kid, and thought it was just...dumb.

I think I was maybe in my undergraduate years when I saw it on TV. It had its campy charms (which, at least on this side of the Atlantic, perhaps made more sense by the time the nineties really kicked off reality television in the way that we understand it now), though it lost a lot of the substance of the book. In that regard it was a bit like the transition from the dark, gothic, suspense-horror of Alien to the action-picture Aliens. Fun, but missing something. I have high hopes for Edgar Wright's take on it next month; I just hope it's on the same quality level as the Cornetto Trilogy, and not a let-down like Baby Driver.

A lot of original Dark Shadows fans like me - we were glued to this "spook opera" every afternoon for years as teens - absolutely hate the Tim Burton film because it's an out-and-out comedy, not the deadpan serious melodrama of the original.

But I love it. Any attempt to recapture Dark Shadows as serious drama - like the brief nineties revival - is doomed to fail, because almost everything about the story/characters is so silly.

Burton's film, though a comedy, is clearly coming from a team with enormous affection for the original show, and you can feel it. It's got a lot more legitimate charm than Burton's godawful recent films, that's for sure, and some strong performances too. Making Barnabas more a fish-out-of-water in the 1970s was a clever choice.

And if the beautiful witch Angelique (understand: Lara Parker's original was very important to my pubescent development!) is now Eva Green as a blonde in a totally unhinged, scenery chewing performance, what's not to like?!?

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The whole picture was beautifully cast, but Evan Green stood out as the perfect foil to play the villain opposite Depp. I've yet to get around to seeking out the original show; I must. I rather enjoyed how it played with the notion that Depp's character hadn't been entirely blameless in the way he'd treated her, which I expect was a modern addition?

Alice Cooper's cameo was the icing on the cake.

Actually I loved the adaptation. Unlike my sister... I did NOT run home to watch Dark Shadows on the tube after school. Later in life I watched the two films which I found entertaining but that was it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Johnny Depp version... Him walking through the town for the first time to the strains of Curtis' Mayfield's "Superfly" was hilarious. His reaction to television was equally funny. It was a good movie as far as I'm concerned.

Worf

I think the biggest laugh it (still) gets from me was at "That was regrettable." Such a fun picture, despite it having been so fashionable among critics at the time to do it down and claim Burton had "lost it". I still much prefer it over Beetlejuice. I mean, the latter is okay, I don't hate it, but I've never loved it the way so many do. I think in part I saw it too late (my early thirties, a good twenty years after it was released), so while I remember it being in cinemas and seeing the billboards, I have no nostalgic associations with it.

 

[Biff42]

I watched The Long Walk on Monday, a film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (originally published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman). As a lifelong endurance athlete, the premise resonated with me on a deeply personal level.

Plot (No Spoilers)​

Set in a dystopian, authoritarian America, the story follows a brutal annual contest known as the Long Walk. One young man is chosen from each state to participate. The rules are simple but merciless: maintain a pace of at least three miles per hour without rest stops or receive warnings. Accumulate too many warnings, and you’re executed on the spot. The walk continues until only one participant remains—the winner, who is granted a single wish of their choosing. The event is filmed and broadcast nationwide as a grotesque form of entertainment for the masses.

The Acting​

The performances were outstanding. I was surprised to learn that the main character, Ray Garraty, is played by Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Mark Hamill makes for a chilling villain as the Major, while David Jonsson delivers a memorable supporting turn as Peter McVries.

Criticisms​

The film completely changes the ending of the book. Without giving away spoilers, the new conclusion initially felt jarring, almost undermining the experience for me. However, upon reflection, I realized that King’s original ending likely wouldn’t have been palatable for most audiences. My mom, who watched it with me, even remarked that King often struggles with endings—something I tend to agree with.

My Thoughts​

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. While the ending diverges significantly from the novel, I ultimately found it more satisfying than King’s original conclusion. That said, the movie is relentlessly violent—often disturbingly so—and definitely not for the squeamish. Still, its intensity and atmosphere gripped me from start to finish.


Having completed an Ironman triathlon just the day before watching this movie, I felt a profound connection to the characters and their inability to stop or quit the walk. During my race, I wanted to quit several times but pushed through to the finish. Imagining my life on the line, as in the Long Walk, would have added an entirely different level of stress and desperation.

 

[Fading Fast]

...


Having completed an Ironman triathlon just the day before watching this movie, I felt a profound connection to the characters and their inability to stop or quit the walk. During my race, I wanted to quit several times but pushed through to the finish. Imagining my life on the line, as in the Long Walk, would have added an entirely different level of stress and desperation.

Kudos to you, that is very impressive. Congratulations.

And that is an excellent review too.

 

[Biff42]

Kudos to you, that is very impressive. Congratulations.

And that is an excellent review too.

Thank you!

My next movies to see (hopefully soon) are Yojimbo and One Battle After Another.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Lion (1962) with William Holden, Pamela Franklin, Capucine, and Trevor Howard


Set on a wildlife reserve in Kenya, whatever else one can say about The Lion, as a travelogue of early 1960s Africa, it is fantastic. That is not a surprise as star William Holden lived in Africa part time and, likely, made this film as a love letter to the continent he wanted to preserve.

The movie, though, holds up as a good story away from its incredible images. It's helped along by an impressive cast, yet despite the "heavy-hitter" adult actors – Holden, Capucine, and Trevor Howard – it's twelve-year-old Pamela Franklin who drives the movie.

Franklin plays a very polite but "wild" child who has adopted many of the native customs having been raised on the reserve her stepdad, played by Howard, runs.

Mom, played by Capucine, left her first husband, Holden – Franklin's father – for Howard when Franklin was just a baby, so Howard is the only father she knows.

Capucine, worried that her child has, using the expression of the day, "gone native," writes to her ex-husband to come and "help." She wants to steer Franklin to a more traditional course for a kid of American parents before she fully matures.

It turns out, however, that Capucine might have more than one reason for wanting Holden to come. Whose motives are ever perfectly pure when it comes to a former spouse?

Holden bonds quickly with his pleasant but quirky child, while he and Howard joust obliquely over Capucine – which is exactly what the insecure beauty wanted. Still, the ostensible story is "saving" Franklin who has a strong attachment to Africa and its tribal traditions.

Franklin's "pet" is a fully grown lion who clearly loves and protects her, but he is nevertheless an unpredictable wild animal. Franklin is also becoming attracted to the mating rituals of the local tribe, which is what really has mom in a tizzy.

The scene of Franklin getting noticeably aroused at a tribal ceremony where the new king chooses a bride is obvious but engaging. It's one of the few times the movie dips a toe directly in the ***ual passions that are driving everything in the story.

While all this good but standard soap opera is playing out, the movie doubles as a travelogue of Kenya, especially when Howard takes Holden on a tour of the reserve – to frighten Holden, but also wow the movie audience with Africa.

There are incredible scenes of rhinos, giraffes, elephants, and hippos, along with respectful depictions of local tribes and customs. Shot in DeLuxe color and CinemaScope, the cinematography is breathtaking

Modern scolds can always find something to complain about, but the movie was clearly made by people who love and respect Africa and the Africans, at least by the standards of 1962.

It is also refreshing to not be preached to by a movie that rightfully admires another culture, nor to be curb-stomped for your own culture having the audacity to confidently exist.

While Franklin drives the movie, the presence of three talented adult actors anchoring the love triangle gives it the gravitas needed to keep it from slipping into Disney territory. Even so, for the era, a more direct look at the ***ual passions behind it all would have helped.

You'll have to watch to see the climax, but you know Franklin isn't going full native and Capucine isn't going to have a ********* with Holden and Howard in a 1962 movie; nonetheless, a few surprises await.

The Lion is a pleasant movie that entertains while exploring Africa and its culture in the early 1960s. With a cast to match the grandeur of its scenery, it's a not-challenging but enjoyable effort for those interested in seeing Africa with some off-the-shelf melodrama mixed in.

 

[Fading Fast]

Murderers Among Us (1946), A German film


Sometimes, just showing is enough. Murderers Among Us, set in post-war Germany, looks at the nexus of a German medical officer traumatized by the horrors he saw; a concentration camp survivor desperate for a normal life; and a former Germany's WWII-era leadership officer thriving in business.

Post-war Berlin is a city of bombed-out and half-bombed-out buildings that many are living in anyway as that is their only option. A former military doctor, Hans, occupies a small flat in one such building alone, until the former resident, Susanne, a concentration camp survivor, returns.

He's a drunkard, and she has no fight in her, so she lets him stay. She then goes about turning the apartment from a rubble-strewn mess into a home, while he continues drinking his days and nights away.

Susanne then meets Hans' former commanding officer, Brückner, who is now a successful businessman – married, fat, happy, wealthy, and blithely free of guilt – whom Hans thought was dead. Rather than being happy with this news, Hans is agitated.

Through flashbacks, we learn that in the war Brückner gave the order to massacre civilians, including women and children, in Poland in 1942, despite Hans pleading with him not to. Later, a wounded Brückner asks for Hans' *** in case he needs to kill himself before being captured.

That is the setup: a former Germany's WWII-era leadership and unrepentant war criminal now conscience clear and getting rich; a former concentration camp inmate trying to forget and build something of a normal life; and a former medical officer haunted by the war and unable to move forward.

Hans tries to confront Brückner over Brückner's past crimes, while Susanne tells Hans to do like she is doing and just forget the past. Then as she and Hans slowly fall in love, she tries desperately to get him to return to being a doctor – something now much needed in Germany.

You'll want to see the ending fresh, as it pulls everything together and has some good tension, but is also too pat.

Compared to the novel, the movie changed the ending to comply with post-war demands of the occupying countries. Even then, only the Soviets were willing to give the go ahead for this modified – much tamer than the book – ending.

Shooting on location amidst the rubble of Berlin imbues this story of post-war angst with the proper atmosphere. All those crumbling shells of buildings and streets lined with piles of fallen bricks and smashed concrete give the city a post-apocalyptic feel.

While Hans and Susanne, both shattered people, live amidst that war detritus, Brückner has already rebuilt his upper-class home and works in a clean factory – which, ironically and symbolically, is turning Germany's WWII-era leadership war helmets into pots and pans.

Hans, played by Wilhelm Borchert, is outstanding as the PTSD-suffering doctor – he has the "thousand-yard stare" – but his casting as the anti-Germany's WWII-era leadership hero was controversial at the time, as he was a Germany's WWII-era leadership during the war.

Arno Paulsen, who plays Brückner, perfectly captures a jolly fellow who gives not a thought to the civilians he slaughtered. Paraphrasing, he says the war is over; it's time to forget and move on. That's wonderful if your conscience and the authorities let you do it.

The heavy lifting, though, is done by Hildegard Knef, playing Susanne, who, other than looking too healthy and pretty to be a concentration camp survivor, instills in her character a sadness and a drive to "normalize" her life that seems the best anyone like her could manage.

She is not only righting her ship, but she helps Hans to right his, which is probably the exact message the authorities wanted to send to the German people: it's time to right your ship and your country's ship.

The novel, as noted, is a much grittier tale of retribution, but the movie, judged on its own, has a power in its simple showing: Germany bombed out, a PTSD doctor unable to work, an unrepentant Germany's WWII-era leadership war criminal prospering, and a concentration camp survivor just wanting a regular life.

All this makes Murderers Among Us a time capsule of a defining moment in 20th-century history. Germany had been evil, but would become a respectable, western democracy (fully united after the fall of the USSR) – the movie poignantly captures the country's inflection point.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Phantom of Paris from 1931 with John Gilbert, Leila Hyams, and Ian Keith


It's hard today to appreciate all the drama associated with John Gilbert's unsuccessful transition to talking picture and, not unrelatedly, his personal battles with MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer and alcohol that, combined, resulted in the actor's death at the age of thirty-eight in 1936.

It was a big Tinseltown scandal then. However, because today there are no high-profile Gilbert talking pictures – Queen Christina (1933) is an interesting footnote, but much more Garbo's picture than his – even most old movie fans yawn at the "Gilbert saga."

With the distance provided by time and all but no personal feelings toward the event in modern audiences, a movie like The Phantom of Paris takes on a sort of Hollywood curio feel – as if someone brought down a dusty photo album of somebody else's long-dead relatives.

Seeing the movie, it's hard to understand what all the fuss was about. Gilbert is quite good in this mediocre picture. He seems almost like an American Ronald Colman – he's handsome in an urbane bon vivant way and, despite all the consternation, has a nice "Mid-Atlantic" voice.

The problem with The Phantom of Paris is not some imagined Gilbert voice shortcoming, but a plot that pushes hard against the suspension-of-disbelief window in the second half. In truth, the entire movie is a stretch, but that is a screenwriter issue, not a Gilbert's voice issue.

Gilbert plays a famous magician dating a society woman, played by the lovely Leila Hyams (it's like the vowels in her name were intentionally mixed up or something), whose father doesn't want his daughter to marry a performer. He prefers she marries a respectable Marquis.

Dad, though, doesn't trust the Marquis either, so he starts playing with his will, which sparks the greedy Marquis, played by Ian Keith, to kill dad and pin the blame on Gilbert. Hyams, in a fog of grief, believes the story and marries Keith while Gilbert goes into hiding.

With that setup, the movie is Gilbert playing the aggrieved outsider – a man who wants to clear his name and win back the woman he loves, but he has to do it all while on the run from the law. After many years, chance offers Gilbert a crazy opportunity that he takes against all odds.

With a hat tip to Fonzie and the 1970s TV sitcom Happy Days, the movie now jumps the shark. Or, if you prefer, it says, ignore the unbelievable stuff and just go with the thread of a wronged man fighting for justice and the love of his life as men and women did in the Romantic Era.

That era, the Romantic one, is the only framework that makes this a believable story, which is why it's such a stretch for modern audiences working from a "me generation, transactional approach" view of love.

It finishes with a typical precode rushed ending that, today, makes you wonder two things: why was there so much fuss about clearly talented Gilbert and his fine voice and, two, why didn't Leila Hyams have a bigger career (perhaps because no one could pronounce her name)?

If you like Romantic Era themed movies – lovers trying with all their heart to overcome great obstacles, grave injustices, and years of sacrifice to be together for life and even the hereafter – then The Phantom of Paris should work for you.

Otherwise, it's a mediocre movie, but an opportunity to see that John Gilbert, despite all the storm and stress at the time, had a good voice. It's also an opportunity to see that Leila Hyams is cute as heck and a talented actress.

 

[Edward]

View attachment 734023
The Lion (1962) with William Holden, Pamela Franklin, Capucine, and Trevor Howard


Set on a wildlife reserve in Kenya, whatever else one can say about The Lion, as a travelogue of early 1960s Africa, it is fantastic. That is not a surprise as star William Holden lived in Africa part time and, likely, made this film as a love letter to the continent he wanted to preserve.

The movie, though, holds up as a good story away from its incredible images. It's helped along by an impressive cast, yet despite the "heavy-hitter" adult actors – Holden, Capucine, and Trevor Howard – it's twelve-year-old Pamela Franklin who drives the movie.

Franklin plays a very polite but "wild" child who has adopted many of the native customs having been raised on the reserve her stepdad, played by Howard, runs.

Mom, played by Capucine, left her first husband, Holden – Franklin's father – for Howard when Franklin was just a baby, so Howard is the only father she knows.

Capucine, worried that her child has, using the expression of the day, "gone native," writes to her ex-husband to come and "help." She wants to steer Franklin to a more traditional course for a kid of American parents before she fully matures.

It turns out, however, that Capucine might have more than one reason for wanting Holden to come. Whose motives are ever perfectly pure when it comes to a former spouse?

Holden bonds quickly with his pleasant but quirky child, while he and Howard joust obliquely over Capucine – which is exactly what the insecure beauty wanted. Still, the ostensible story is "saving" Franklin who has a strong attachment to Africa and its tribal traditions.

Franklin's "pet" is a fully grown lion who clearly loves and protects her, but he is nevertheless an unpredictable wild animal. Franklin is also becoming attracted to the mating rituals of the local tribe, which is what really has mom in a tizzy.

The scene of Franklin getting noticeably aroused at a tribal ceremony where the new king chooses a bride is obvious but engaging. It's one of the few times the movie dips a toe directly in the ***ual passions that are driving everything in the story.

While all this good but standard soap opera is playing out, the movie doubles as a travelogue of Kenya, especially when Howard takes Holden on a tour of the reserve – to frighten Holden, but also wow the movie audience with Africa.

There are incredible scenes of rhinos, giraffes, elephants, and hippos, along with respectful depictions of local tribes and customs. Shot in DeLuxe color and CinemaScope, the cinematography is breathtaking

Modern scolds can always find something to complain about, but the movie was clearly made by people who love and respect Africa and the Africans, at least by the standards of 1962.

It is also refreshing to not be preached to by a movie that rightfully admires another culture, nor to be curb-stomped for your own culture having the audacity to confidently exist.

While Franklin drives the movie, the presence of three talented adult actors anchoring the love triangle gives it the gravitas needed to keep it from slipping into Disney territory. Even so, for the era, a more direct look at the ***ual passions behind it all would have helped.

You'll have to watch to see the climax, but you know Franklin isn't going full native and Capucine isn't going to have a ********* with Holden and Howard in a 1962 movie; nonetheless, a few surprises await.

The Lion is a pleasant movie that entertains while exploring Africa and its culture in the early 1960s. With a cast to match the grandeur of its scenery, it's a not-challenging but enjoyable effort for those interested in seeing Africa with some off-the-shelf melodrama mixed in.

View attachment 734022

Intriguing. I have a soft spot for lions. Partly as I'm told they're the closest genetic relatives of all the big cats to the domestic cat (surprised me, I thought it was tigers...). Partly also, admittedly, for the (entirely true) story of North Belfast legend, Alexander 'Buck Alec' Robinson. A troublesome past in the 20s as a loyalist ***man who "had to leave" the North of Ireland for a few years because reasons [as much as he remains loved as a folk-figure for his later years, his memory since he died in 1995 is also inevitably clouded by his associations with violence and the continued political climate today], and then, so he claimed, worked variously for Joe Kennedy and Al Capone in the US. He continued to be in trouble with the law right up to the WW2 period as a streetfighter. What he became best remembered for - and why he remains a legendary figure in Belfast alongside the controversial aspects is that some time around the early forties he acquired (in circumstances that remain vague) three lions. Actual, real lions, who he kept in a giant, home-made coop of sorts in the back yard of a Belfast two up, two down terrace. At one time he travelled Ireland as an attraction ,wrestling the lions. Reputedly the lions were toothless when he acquired them (believed to have been from a circus), but they were never actually tamed. He became famous for walking them on leashes on the streets of Belfast; a local, and highly likely false, rumour had it that any household pets that disappeared had been fed to the lions.

The Picture Post covered him in 1952. The article included a reference to how wild the lions were; the photographer got a bit too close to the wire of the coop, and got the fright of his life when it turned out the creatures were nowhere near as docile as he'd assumed.

Rightly, this would never be allowed nowadays, but I can never recall this story without smiling at the sheer absurdity of it all.

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Murderers Among Us (1946), A German film

That is one I must seek out. Interesting stuff. There are modern pictures which have tackled this sort of thing well (The Reader of course springs to mind), but to have something grappling with these issues in the immediate aftermath is something else again - particularly being made in such a context.

 

[Worf]

The Return of Dracula - Puddin' and I were watching Season 2 of Interview With a Vampire on Netflix and found it terminally boring with all the true "drama" of an afternoon Soap Opera. On a dare I was looking through Amazon's "free" movies and found a 4.5 out 5 rated movie I'd never heard of before "The Return of Dracula" (1958). Intrigued we decided to view the film, particularly since it was a scant 85 minutes long!

The first thing that struck me was the amazing soundtrack arranged by Gerald Fried. It's supposedly based in Gregorian Chants but I'd heard strains of it in the original "Salem's Lot" and other horror films. Filmed in atmospheric B&W the film follows Dracula escaping war ravaged Europe with a vampire hunter hot on his tail. I won't disclose how, but he winds up in a small town in California staying with a family who, of course, has a fetching teenaged daughter. The family, believe or not, are named the MAYBERRYS!!!!! After Drac's arrival the rest of the film goes to form and you can figure the rest out for yourself.

What stunned me however is how this little film drew us both in. Dracula, played by Francis Lederer, lacks both the animalistic ferocity of Christopher Lee and the suave charm of Lugosi BUT he does exude a certain menace that would have me locking my daughter up at night..... If I had one. Clearly a "B" drive in movie the film winds up being much more than sum of it's meagre parts. It probably would be more fondly remembered if Hammer hadn't released their "Horror of Dracula" the same year. Sometimes timing is everything.

Worf

PS: There is ONE drop of color in the whole film. Look for it towards the end. Made us both jump.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Mystery of Mr. X (1934) with Robert Montgomery, Elizabeth Allan, and Lewis Stone


Two things make The Mystery of Mr. X an enjoyable film from beginning to end: one is Robert Montgomery in a role tailor made for him and, two is the insanely good chemistry he has with his costar, Elizabeth Allan.

In the 1930s, Montgomery was his own cottage industry of movies about stylish rogues – wealthy men or men pretending to be wealthy who have a mirthful bad-boy streak, which have them having affairs, running ****s, or stealing jewelry – but darn it, you like them nonetheless.

In this one, Montgomery plays a product of both the real and Hollywood-imagined 1930s: a society jewel thief who takes pride in his "profession –" he would never stoop to violence or even bad manners, well, besides stealing.

Newspapers from the 1930s are full of stories about jewel thieves, with the thief occasionally moving in the same social circles as his victims. Hollywood, of course, glammed all that up having suave men like Montgomery be the thief, but at least there's a kernel of truth there.

Montgomery, mannered as he is though in this one, is mistaken for a serial killer when, purely coincidentally, he steals a noted jewel at the same time and place as a high-profile murder.

The murder – the knifing death of a policeman – is the eighth one in a row, which has Scotland Yard under pressure. The chief inspector on the case, played by Lewis Stone, puts two and two together to (incorrectly) add it up to Montgomery – but he has no proof for either crime.

Montgomery and Stone then proceed to play a game of cat and mouse. Working with excellent material, the two actors banter as Montgomery obfuscates and Stone patiently persists. It's a dynamic, although now with a harder edge, used in TV police dramas today.

That alone would make for a good movie, but it is kicked up a solid notch because, through a series of misdirects, Montgomery ends up romancing the daughter, played by Elizabeth Allan, of the head of Scotland Yard, after Allan's fiancé is briefly mistaken for the serial killer.

You want to look for the scene where Montgomery appears as a witness exonerating Allan's fiancé. It is simply a fun scene, but also Montgomery's acting talents are on full display as he perfectly plays a character – an innocent bystander – within a character – a jewel thief.

Throughout, Montgomery slips through several personas without missing a beat, helped by the one romcom essential: great on-screen chemistry with his co-star, Allan. They are so much fun together, you forget they're actors playing roles.

Look for any of their scenes together, but the one in his kitchen is crazy good. He's trying to make her a meal, so there are a lot of small props and mini actions going on in the kitchen, but they're so natural about it, you think you're watching it through a hidden camera.

In addition to Stone and Allan, Forrester Harvey plays urbane Montgomery's cockneyed sidekick in crime with a playful nervousness – "let's just give the diamond back before we are caught" – that perfectly complements Montgomery's always-confident persona.

Most likely because he made no major movies beloved to this day – no The Maltese Falcon or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town – Montgomery is unfairly forgotten by even some classic film fans. Yet as he shows here, he was a major talent who, like the true professionals, made it look easy.

What may surprise you after seeing her performance in this one is that Allan, who manages to be pretty while also looking a bit like a duck, didn't have a bigger Hollywood career (lawsuits and countersuits with MGM are probably the answer).

The Mystery of Mr. X could be the definitive Robert Montgomery movie even though the film is just a basic romcom-mystery mashup: he's witty, funny, masculine, and slyly complex, as he's a thief after all, but you're always rooting for him to escape punishment and to get the pretty girl.

It's a 1934 movie – set in England (but filmed on sets in Los Angeles) – about something that all but doesn't exist today, a society jewel thief, yet it's entertaining without any need of an explanation to a modern audience. Well-done movies like this one almost never do.

 

[Fading Fast]

Zero for Conduct (1933), a French film


Zero for Conduct is not the movie you use to introduce someone to the world of old movies – imports, black-and-white pictures, disjointed stories, abstract movies, or talkies – and expect to make a convert. It is not the movie to introduce anyone to anything in cinema, ever.

However, if you are already an old-movie fan, an import fan, a black-and-white picture fan, a disjointed or abstract story fan, or, finally, a talkie fan, you might just like this off-the-wall effort from noted French director Jean Vigo. Otherwise, it’s a heavy lift.

Surreal and abstract are the kind of adjectives used to describe a movie that only sometimes follows a storyline and that transitions from scene to scene with a breathtaking randomness that eventually has you shrugging and just going along.

At a high level, you get it: this French boys' boarding school is a miserable place run by petty teachers and a corrupt headmaster, so the boys stage ever larger acts of defiance – and it can all be read as a metaphor for the masses standing up to dictatorial oppression.

That point seems to help explain the inexplicable banning of the film by the French government. As a result, Zero for Conduct didn't get a full public screening until after World War II, a time when censorship probably had a particularly bad look for the new government.

What exactly, though, was banned in the first place? A pastiche of a movie following four boys who grow increasingly combative against a parochial, corrupt, and at times vindictive administration.

One scene shows a teacher rifling through the boys' possessions when they aren't in the classroom to steal their food – another shows a teacher spitefully waking the boys up by pulling off their covers. Compared to true cruelty, however, this school for the 1930s isn't that bad.

It's more the day-to-day petty discipline, monotonous routine, and stifling of any individuality that wears the boys down. Even the one "good" teacher is more an entertainer than an educator and mentor. The boys have no adults to confide in or commiserate with, so they rebel.

After doing all the rule breaking and small sabotage schoolboys have always done to show their displeasure, this short movie culminates in three escalating rebellions that, one assumes, inspired the *****ly French government to ban it.

The first rebellion is a food fight that foreshadows the one in Animal House; the second, a reasonably famous pillow fight (filmed in slow motion with floating feathers); and finally, the alumni-day rooftop throwing of shingles down on the celebrants as an act of defiance.

All this oppressing and rebelling is shot in black and white and, often, in a silent-film style that makes the movie seem older than it is. Vigo has an eye for capturing a meaningful moment and for staging a rebellious scene, but often, his movie feels like unedited documentary footage.

Supposedly, it's influential enough that movies including Diabolique (1955), The 400 Blows (1959), and even Au Revoir les Enfants (1987) owe it a hat tip. True or not, together these movies make you glad you weren't a French schoolboy in the first half of the twentieth century.

Maybe you'll love Zero for Conduct for its abstract joie de vivre and the boys' free-spirited rebellion, despite the movie's challenging nontraditional form (my kingdom for a few smooth scene transitions). It does, after all, have many advocates and can, at times, be engaging.

If you are a serious fan of old movies, you watch Zero for Conduct once – even if its abstract form and other oddities annoy you – to see what all the fuss is about. On the plus side, even if you hate it, it's only forty-seven minutes long.

 

[Worf]

"Laura" (The Proto "Modern Woman?")- It's funny how a re-watch of a classic you've seen many times before can strike you in a completely different way on a new viewing. After watching " Laura" again the other night on TCM I was dumbfounded by her similarities to some "Modern Women" I've known. By her actions I now see Laura Hunt as being just this side of a femme fatale. Though she never pulls the trigger. No denigration just listen to my premise.

1. She hails from nowhere, blows into town and through chutzpah and charm wrangles an endorsement from an older man, who happens to be one of the most powerful men in New York, completely out of the blue.

2. She takes up with said older man who shows her the ropes launches her career and grooms her for the corporate world and higher society to boot. She owes him EVERYTHING and he knows it!

3. When she's gleaned all she can from her mentor she then becomes restless for a younger more exciting model. First comes the artist that paints her portrait, then the broke ******* and eventually the handsome cop.

I'm throwing no shade here she's doing what she needs to do on the come-up. What worries me is what's gonna happen to Dana Andrews after they're "together". Is Laura gonna give up her career to be a Detectives wife? Live on his salary, give up the glamourous life she's carved out for herself? I think not. She may do it for a while, but she'll grow restless and bored and hate him for it. Is he gonna stand for her living the fast life she used to, earning more in a month than he can in 4 years put together? Probably not. She's still alive but two people are dead already and she's shown she can push a man to murder once and attempted murder as well. Throughout the film she's portrayed as being an innocent girl who's a victim of circumstances beyond her control. I think hardly!

For a woman to have that kind will, grit and foresight to work the "Long Game" in the 1940's is amazing. It's like the poor slobs (athletes and artists) that get tangled up with say.... the Kardashians... only to end up divorced, broke and/or insane. I maybe blowing smoke out my **** but that's how the film struck me.

Worf

"All About Eve" except with shotguns?

 

[Fading Fast]

Night Court from 1932 with Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes and Anita Page


While Warner Bros. usually threw the hardest punches in the precode era, MGM produced its share of bar-room-brawl precodes like Night Court, where a corrupt judge will stop at nothing to protect his illegal racket, keep his ill-gotten gains, and stay out of jail.

Walter Huston plays the corrupt night court judge who runs his court like a personal profit center, taking kickbacks from lawyers and others in return for favorable rulings, while using his power to sentence to cover up his crimes. He also employs henchmen when all else fails.

With a new anti-crime commission looking into corruption in the judicial system, Huston is being careful. When a series of events leads him to worry about an innocent young mother, played by Anita Page, exposing his hidden funds, he has her framed for prostitution.

Page is abruptly brought before Huston. She is intentionally given bad advice by a lawyer in Huston's pocket, and is then sent to a workhouse. The prison scenes are brief, but her rapid introduction to penal life is a frightening hellscape of locked doors, small cells, and indifferent matrons.

When her husband, played by Phillips Holmes, tries to find out what happened, Huston, once again showing his arrogance and the almost absolute power a judge wields, has Holmes and Page's baby taken away by social services.

Holmes is initially shocked and demoralized as all the trumped-up evidence points to his nice wife having truly been a prostitute. When he later finds evidence to the contrary, he wages a one-man campaign to free his wife, but Huston still has his hands on most of the levers.

At the same time, the crime commission, headed up by a judge played by Lewis Stone, is trying to turn the heat up on Huston, but Huston is smart and has covered his tracks well. The two engage in an early game of "honest versus corrupt official" cat and mouse.

The climax is more Hollywood than real world, with a burglary, murder, thugs, secret recordings, a dramatic hostage taking and torture, and several last-minute courtroom confessions. It leaves you breathless because the writers wanted to put a pretty ribbon on the solution to judicial corruption.

In the real world, these problems are solved through a slow and grinding process over many years with many ups and downs – not in one big, dramatic courtroom scene with multiple confessions. The drama here is amped up for the screen, but still, it doesn't undo what preceded it.

What preceded it is a shockingly graphic and detailed look at how corruption can work. It shows a powerful judge turning his court into a personal fiefdom. He makes deals with lawyers ahead of time, then heads into court – with the money already paid to him – and rules as agreed.

The scenes of Huston sitting imperiously on the bench spouting legal pieties as he rules based on kickbacks are frightening. You realize, like the poor souls in his court, you'd be powerless standing before him. The rule of law is the cornerstone of freedom, until it's corrupted.

It is also clearly not just one bad apple, as every lawyer, bailiff, or other court office that participated or turned a blind eye is guilty. Stone also states that Huston is just one of many corrupt judges and that the corruption reaches much higher up in the system.

It's not expanded on here, but the film implies widespread judicial rot that needs cleaning up—hence the commission. Contemporaneous audiences, seeing headlines about this corruption in their daily papers, would have understood, all too well, this framing.

Watching the movie today, one thinks we seem to hear less about judicial corruption; although "one off" cases against judges, especially in smaller locales, are not unusual. Sadly, it's an evergreen problem, but one that ebbs and flows, with the 1930s being a time of heavy flow.

Huston is one of those impressive actors who is all but forgotten today. Playing sanctimonious characters – or phoney sanctimonious characters – was right in his wheelhouse, so you're seeing him at the top of his game here.

Page is outstanding as the genuinely sweet young wife and mother who is thrown into a nightmare – going from her nice world to a workhouse almost overnight. It's the Hitchcockian fear of the innocent man being arrested before Hitchcock owned the phrase.

If there is a lesser performance it's Holmes who still has too many stage mannerisms for a film actor – a not uncommon trait in the early talkies era. Most actors adjusted over time, but Holmes struggled, resulting in his film career ending before the decade was out.

Shot in black and white and technologically challenged like most 1931 movies, there's an almost B-noir-movie feel to the now sometimes hazy picture, obvious sets, heavy-handed dialogue, and ripping pace.

It's 1931, well before film noir, yet precode movies were laying the groundwork for all the post-war crime-drama noirs about corrupt officials that were to come. In that light, Night Court can be seen as an engaging antecedent to mid-century noirs like The Judge (1949) and The Racket (1951).

These ripped-from-the-headlines precode movies show a free America willing to expose its own faults. Sure, in a perfect world, there would be no corruption to expose, but in comparison, the USSR in the 1930s wasn't making honest movies about its far worse corruption.

 

[Zombie_61]

Ahh, the classics...

Them! (1954). Atomic tests in New Mexico cause ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters. Starring James Whitmore, Joan Weldon, Edmund Gwenn, James Arness, Sandy Descher, and a cameo by Fess Parker, unlike most of the "insects the size of a building" movies from the post-war era this one's easily watchable.

 

[Worf]

Ahh, the classics...

View attachment 736281


Them! (1954). Atomic tests in New Mexico cause ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters. Starring James Whitmore, Joan Weldon, Edmund Gwenn, James Arness, Sandy Descher, and a cameo by Fess Parker, unlike most of the "insects the size of a building" movies from the post-war era this one's easily watchable.

Just watched it for the umpteenth time on Svengoolie this past weekend. The first and the best!

'If I can still lift an arm when this is all over I'll show you how well saturated I can get!"

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Frankenstein from 1931 with Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, and Mae Clarke


Does it take some understanding of horror movie history and early talking-picture technology to appreciate Frankenstein today? Overall, yes, but the movie still works on its own and is even more impressive when seen as the fountainhead of so many horror movies that followed.

Director James Whale's short, moody picture is but a hand-wave to Mary Shelley's psychologically complex 1818 novel Frankenstein. But her themes have been explored in the many movie versions that have followed Whale's original take, which helped kickstart the genre.

The stripped-down movie story begins with the obsessed Dr. Frankenstein, played by Colin Clive, fanatically attempting to create life from the parts of dead bodies. Having all but alienated his family and fiancée, played by Mae Clarke, Frankenstein works feverishly in his lab.

When he brings his monster to life – on an elevated platform raised through the skylight of his Gothic mountaintop laboratory so that the electricity of lightning can give the body life – we are watching one of the most famous and copied scenes in horror movie history.

What follows is all Frankenstein 101 by now – the monster, compromised from the start because it was mistakenly given a "criminal's brain," eventually kills a young girl by accident but still shows a version of remorse. That, unfortunately, is lost on the understandably angry and frightened villagers.

The famous "kill the monster" mob with iconic flaming torches and pitchforks follows, leading to Act Three and the impressively shot killing of the monster in a windmill. (Windmills were the location for several moody 1930s movie sequences, including an excellent one in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent [1940].)

Boris Karloff, playing the monster, imbues the creature with an incredible amount of emotion and, dare we say it, sympathy, as seen in his sad desire to live as beams rain down on him, while the flames approach from all around in the fiery windmill.

Karloff brings an equal amount of sympathy and nuance to the harrowing scene where the monster unintentionally kills the little girl. This raises the question of whether he is a monster or a being who sadly knows not what he does, but would be good if he understood life and morality.

It is Karloff's "humanizing" of the monster – an echo of a much stronger theme in Shelley's novel – that elevates the movie above two-dimensional horror to philosophy. The picture obliquely raises questions about ethics, societal responsibility, forgiveness, and understanding.

Whale brings all this to life in a hauntingly stylized world of German Expressionism blended with Hollywood moodiness. It so perfectly expresses the world of Frankenstein that the images and style still say "horror movie" to us today, even if just in a Halloween candy commercial.

Whale, with his theatrical instincts and visual flair, shaped the film’s strange rhythm and mood into something uniquely unsettling. Juxtaposing long shots of angry villages with close-ups of a confused, sad monster challenges the viewer's usually comfortable moral compass.

There's a datedness to some of the acting, including Clive's iconic (yes, the word really applies again) "It's alive!" scream that is all part of the lore today. We can only marvel at how Whale got so much right on the first try with clunky technology and no prior template.

There is still more iconography here – Karloff set a standard for Frankenstein's look that lives on today, even in a "Frankenstein Peep" that would be recognizable to 1931 audiences. You just have to watch the movie to appreciate it all – including a heck of a scream from Clarke.

Frankenstein is one of those kismet man-moment-machine happenstances – Whale/Karloff, 1931 Hollywood, Shelley's novel – when the stars aligned. Is it a great movie without all that followed? Maybe – but using circular logic, all that followed did happen, making it a great movie.

 

[Biff42]

Weapons (2025) – Rated R


Starring: Josh Brolin (Archer), Julia Garner (Justine), Alden Ehrenreich (Paul), Austin Abrams (James), Cary Christopher (Alex), Benedict Wong (Marcus), Amy Madigan (Gladys).


Plot Summary (No Spoilers):
In the middle of the night, 17 children from the same third-grade class awaken from their sleep and inexplicably leave their homes in unison. Despite an extensive manhunt, no trace of the children is ever found. Suspicion quickly falls on their third-grade teacher, and as the investigation unfolds, her troubled past comes to light.


My Thoughts:
Weapons is an excellent film. The story weaves together multiple character arcs that ultimately converge to reveal what happened to the missing children. Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys, who appears to be comic relief in the trailers, turns out to be one of the film’s darkest and most unsettling figures. While there are moments of humor, they’re laced with tension and unease, making this more of a dark dramedy than a straightforward thriller.


"Weapons' is well worth your time, especially with other adult family members this Halloween season.

 

[Biff42]

Hey guys, here's a post about a movie we should watch:

https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/i-swear-movie-and-shackleton.120499/#post-3212113

 

[Fading Fast]

Our Man in Havana (1959) with Alec Guinness, Noël Coward, Ernie Kovacs, Burl Ives, and Maureen O'Hara


Blending comedy and espionage in one movie is tricky business: go too far toward comedy and you have the slapstick of Get Smart, or make your agent insouciantly above it all and you drift into 1970s James Bond camp. Yet, thread the needle, and you have a darn good picture.

Our Man in Havana comes close to threading the needle – only briefly drifting into camp. The challenge is to never let the humor eclipse the threat of danger or the menace of a genuine life-and-death spy-versus-spy faceoff.

Based on a Graham Greene novel of the same name and set in Havana right before Castro grabbed power (yet shot in Cuba under the Castro regime right after it came to power), Alec Guinness plays a retail vacuum store owner recruited into the British Secret Service.

In a wonderful scene driven by two talented veteran actors, Noël Coward plays the senior agent trying to recruit Guinness, but he is so Britishly cryptic that, at first, Guinness has no idea what he's talking about. It's humor and spycraft wonderfully blended.

Guinness is, however, eventually recruited, as he needs the pay to fund his nice but spoiled seventeen-year-old daughter's spending. This leads to the problem of recruiting agents and obtaining valuable information on the enemy (the communists) to send back to headquarters.

What follows is an early spoiler, but there is no way to discuss the film any further without revealing it. Guinness, totally inept at real spying, is given the solution to his problem by his friend, played by Burl Ives, which is to just make it all up.

That is the crux of the movie and Graham Greene's novel. With agents like Guinness acting on their own – under intentional secrecy and with little oversight – who's to know? Soon Guinness' furtive mind has him running a network of non-existent spies sending made-up information back home.

The information he sends is so valuable, the head of MI6 in London assigns Guinness a professionally trained intelligence secretary, played by Maureen O'Hara, and a radio operator. The local and very corrupt chief of police, played with unusual nuance by Ernie Kovacs, now also takes an interest in Guinness.

Quite quickly, a humble vacuum cleaner dealer has become the center of Cold War espionage in the very hot country of Cuba – and all based on a bunch of lies he made up to keep his daughter's lifestyle going.

The smart move that Greene and director Carol Reed do in the Third Act is to lean into the serious espionage at play. It started as a lark to Guinness, but you can't just tell everyone – MI6 and Cuban and Soviet communist agents – "just kidding" to end it.

Credit for this story working goes first to, as noted, Reed – famous for directing The Third Man (1949) – as his on-location shooting in Cuba, smartly shot in black and white, instills a genuine and slightly menacing overtone in the movie that almost never feels campy.

Equally important are the performances of the key players. Guinness could not be more in his acting sweet spot as a man whose ordinary life spirals into a life-and-death espionage tale. Coward, too, was born to play an aloof British spymaster.

Ives is excellent as Guinness' friend, who becomes wrapped up in the spy tale with surprising seriousness. Kovacs gives one of his best performances as the too cocky chief of police, but he too, knows when to rein it in and play the deadly game for real.

Look for the scene where Guinness and Kovacs play a drinking game using mini-booze bottles as checkers. It's filled with tension and subtext from beginning to end, even riffing on Chekhov’s storytelling aphorism that if you show a *** early, it must be used later.

If an actor is underutilized here, it's O'Hara who is engaging in her scenes as the rational person who quickly realizes what Guinness has done – she intelligently sees Guinness' circus for what it is – but she stays mainly on the sidelines.

The balance between humor and espionage gets off-kilter in a few scenes where the comedy overwhelms, but otherwise, Reed and company keep the tension in good proportion. Still, the film only got mixed reviews upon its release, in part because – consciously or subconsciously – reviewers wanted another The Third Man.

Time has thus been a friend to Our Man in Havana – what once felt like an oddball spy lark now plays as a sly bridge between Greene’s cynicism and Reed’s noir touch, a Cold War curio that entertains while it nods at history.

 

[Fading Fast]

They All Come Out (1939) with Rita Johnson and Tom Neal


Despite being a B movie with a message that crime does not pay stamped on it, darn it, the acting, directing, and general tone keep you engaged in They All Come Out – even through the few cringeworthy parts.

MGM had plenty of talent back then to pull off these pro-government, pro-morality propaganda efforts. With director Jacques Tourneur at the helm (directing his first full-length movie) and stars Rita Johnson and Tom Neal in the lead, the picture became more than it sets out to be.

Shot in a quasi-documentary manner – a few government officials appear early and talk about the federal prison system and there are several "I'm the omniscient narrator" moments throughout – the hortatory message is clear, but you still get engrossed in the story.

It starts with Neal playing a vagrant, "a vag" as he calls it, getting picked up by a well-to-do-looking lady, played by Johnson, in a fancy car. She buys him a meal and drives him out west. Fast forward and he's now the driver of the bank-robbing gang she's a part of.

It feels like the start of a standard 1930s gangster movie. The gang pulls a successful job, while in the downtime, Neal and Johnson nibble at romance. But soon enough, they all get caught and sent to prison – and an incredibly thoughtful and efficient federal prison system it is.

The prisoners are examined by a doctor to see if they need care – Neal gets a formerly poorly set broken wrist fixed up. They are then sorted into categories to help rehabilitate them. As they work harder and behave, they get more privileges and have a better chance at parole.

Neal learns machine shop work, while Johnson learns beauty shop skills. But of course, their old gang boss, who has no interest in rehabilitation, plots to leverage them when they get out earlier than he does.

Later, out on parole and working hard in separate cities, Neal and Johnson correspond by letter. Then their old gang boss, through a proxy, tries to draw them back into his criminal world. The climax is the only one possible with Neal and Johnson having to decide their own futures.

This movie trumpets from the start that the government is good, the prison system is caring, and rehabilitation is the best outcome, but still, you’re vested in Neal and Johnson and worried if they’ll be unfairly judged.

It all works because you care – because Johnson and Neal create sympathetic criminals who want to make a fresh start, but first you have to truly believe they are criminals. The scenes where they meet and later pull a bank job are as convincing as the later reform scenes.

Yes, occasionally they have to say some corny "I just want to go straight" lines, but these are professional actors playing characters going through a life transition – it does happen. Some young men and women change their views and outlook.

How often does it happen? What was the federal prison system's success rate? That's for record books and prison officials, the intention here is to convince the public that reform is possible and, who knows, maybe even get a criminal thinking about reforming.

To the latter, the short film also does a good job of showing how criminals think, which includes the view that "it's the honest people who are the suckers." Working hard and paying taxes for a modest salary is laughable to these men and women, but no longer to Johnson and Neal.

Neal – confronted by his old world laughing at him for working an honest job – notes how nice it is not to always be looking over his shoulder. At that moment, Neal is being forced at ***point to work an acetylene torch on a safe – criminals feel very threatened by reformed criminals.

Director Tourneur sprinkles in several good scenes and moments like that – moments that feel like early film noir and help give this message movie some grit. Even the lighting and camera angles have an early noir feel from a young director who would later make his mark in noir.

They All Come Out could easily have become an "After School Special" treacly message movie – Hollywood made its share – but smart writing, directing, and acting lifts this short effort above its obvious moral platitudes to become, despite itself, a pretty good crime drama.