Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas

Background: The charm of The Muppets is undeniable.The lovable puppet characters created by Jim Henson have been going strong for over 50 years. Henson may have passed away in 1990 at the young age of 53, but his creations live on. To this day, if you need a quality puppet made, you go to the Henson Workshop. They've appeared in countless movies, some in starring roles (Like The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper and the recently released The Muppets), but have also shown up in more unexpected places, like Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are and the affable Jason Segel movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. No matter where they are, you can always tell a Henson creation. Their big, bulging eyes, wide mouths and felt skin can be seen from a mile away.

The Muppets have always had a strong tie to Christmas. My personal favorite Christmas movie of all time is Muppet Christmas Carol. It's a yearly tradition at the top secret Depths Of Netflix headquarters to sing along with Michael Caine, Kermit and the gang and totally not be embarrassed in front of my girlfriend. Another favorite is the TV special Muppet Family Christmas which you can find on crummy DVDs if you look for it, it has Fraggles and that's pretty cool. Before all that though was Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas. And since it's December officially, I think we need a little Christmas. Right this very minute. They totally sing that song in Muppet Family Christmas, and I have a hard time not singing their lyrics instead of the real ones.

Plot: Emmet Otter starts the movie rowing a boat down a river, sharing a song with his mother and delivering laundry. Emmet and his mom are poor little otters. It's just the two of them. Emmet's dad was a Snake Oil Salesman who died a few ago. Songs are a key part of Emmet Otter's life and the charm of Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas. Another key comes from the roving group of thugs known as The Nightmare. They're first introduced careening around town in their loud car, mouthing off to the local folk and making a ruckus in the music store.

The story revolves around a talent show with a prize of $50. The time period is never really stated, but it's implied that it's a lot of money. It would be more than enough for a new guitar that Emmet has his eyes on and his mom has quite the singing voice. Emmet wants to get his mom a nice present too, so he wants to enter with his newly formed jug band. The problem is that they both want to surprise each other and in order to get ready for the show, they each have to bet big with something the other needs. Ma needs to hock Emmet's tools to buy a dress and Emmet needs to put a hole in Ma's washtub to make a bass for his new band.

The night of the show fast approaches and the band practices all day long. Emmet's mom, meanwhile is busy making her dress. At the show, the real stars are the jerks from the Nightmare who entered late but they made an exception for. Where Emmet makes fun, folksy music, those guys make heavy hitting rock and roll and the small, sleepy town eats it up. Before Emmet and the gang have their chance at the stage, someone else sings their song and they have to quickly learn another one.  The Nightmare go on to win the talent show, forcing Emmet and his Ma to come to terms with what each other have bet on the show. They end up joining their songs together and getting a job as a house act at a restaurant and everyone has a Merry Christmas.

Why Was It Forgotten? For all I said about Muppets being instantly recognizable, they really aren't in this movie. The characters are all charming and cute and the voices are unmistakable. Frank Oz and Jim Henson's voices cover just about all the main characters, some voices even sounding like the more recognizable Muppets.  To oversimplify, the character design doesn't seem quite as sophisticated here. And who could blame them? They were making puppets for a weird project on a television special with likely little broad appeal. Speaking of a lack of sophistication, let's talk about walking. Walking Muppets have never looked great when the camera's zoomed out and you get to see their feet, but here it looks like some weird lock-kneed goose-step usually. Not quite there yet.

What Went Right? The music is some of my favorite music of any Muppet project. Which is saying something because the Muppets have always had great music. Though the story revolves around Christmas, the music is just good folk inspired music. It may just be the fact that I've seen this dozens of times, but the music really sticks with you. The story is earnest and the characters are fun, though it is fairly short so you don't spend as much time with them as you may like. For a Christmas special though, it's exactly what you look for.

Verdict: Come for the otters, stay for the music

Score: 90%

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today's regularly scheduled Depths Of Netflix has been preempted by pumpkin pie. Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and will celebrate glorious capitalism on today, the blackest of Fridays. I'd say support small business, but I just ordered a large TV from Amazon, so y'know.

See you all Monday!

Gunfighter (1998)

Background: The Coppola family is one of the most prolific in the world of cinema. Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most respected directors ever, still making great movies to this day (See Tetro, it's fantastic). His son, Roman did special effects work for his dad's underrated Bram Stoker's Dracula and has directed a bunch of music videos. His sister is Sofia Coppola, who's becoming quite the director in her own right. Francis' sister, Talia Shire is best known as Adrian from the Rocky series and she was also in The Godfather, as Connie. Her son is actor and sometimes drummer Jason Schwartzman, who has done great work in Wes Anderson's movies, among others. And we can't forget Francis' nephew/lunatic Nicolas Coppola, known to you and me as Nicolas Cage. His brother, Christopher is the director of today's movie, Gunfighter. That just about covers it, I think.

The movie stars Robert Carradine, who also comes from a prolific hollywood family. He is the son of John Carradine and half brother of David. At his side is Martin Sheen. Sheen, of course worked with Christopher's uncle Francis on Apocalypse Now where he had a heart attack. He bet big that it was just a fluke thing and not some sort of Coppola Curse that doomed him to suffering bodily harm on ever Coppola movie. Lucky guy. Sheen comes from yet another acting family (I'm getting tired of this) with his sons Charlie Sheen, who has been in the news lately, and Emilio Estevez. Rounding out the family is Martin's brother Joe Estevez, the less said about him the better.

Plot: Robert Carradine plays a country singer who shows up at a dark, dusty bar for a gig. The bar is completely empty though, save for a player piano and Martin Sheen. Sheen is a mysterious bearded stranger with black gloves with a shiny star on them. So shiny in fact that Carradine asks, incredulously, how he got them that way. Turns out the gloves used to belong to the fasted gunslinger in the west. They might have some magical properties that make whoever wears them a better, faster shot, but that's never really elaborated upon. The scenes in this bar between Carradine and Sheen act as a framing device for the real meat of the movie, which is the story of those gloves.

The main story involves two main characters. Hopalong Cassidy (No official word on whether or not this is supposed to be the Hopalong Cassidy or just some weird coincidence) is the infallible hero. He wears a white hat, has a pretty, though weirdly scrawny, horse and wears Martin Sheens' gloves. Tex, however, is the exact opposite. He's sometimes known as The Man In Black, he has a beard and is unmistakably evil. Cassidy humiliated him ages ago in a showdown and all Tex wants is revenge.

Tex learns Cassidy is in town and has ordered some cattle from the Bar 20 ranch. So he burns it down and murders a few of the employees. He also captures a pretty lady. That story plays out exactly how you'd expect without a shred of moral ambiguity, no unforeseen plot complications and very little excitement from the cast or the viewer. By the end, little was explained about the gloves, who Martin Sheen actually was (I think it's implied that he was a ghost?), or where my 90 some minutes went.

Why Was It Fogotten? It becomes painfully clear fairly early that not every Coppola can direct a movie. The acting is awful almost across the board. Sheen and Carradine aren't really in it long enough to make much of a difference. The only other actor of any note is Clu Gulager, a character actor who has appeared in a lot of westerns in the old days. He kept his career going through the 80s by  turning to horror movies. He also doesn't have a lot of time to make an impact. The plot is rote and told completely straight, it sometimes feels like it's supposed to more intentionally cheesy, but that might just be me. It also looks terrible, but now it just feels like I'm piling on.

What Went Right? There's a good idea for a movie in here. Using the framing device of Martin Sheen telling a classic western story with magical twists could have been really neat. Just look at The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. Sure, that was a wildly unpopular show, but it's very well remembered these days for its mixture of western traditions and supernatural craziness. All this movie needed to be tolerable was a tongue in cheek attitude, but this movie just couldn't find it. Okay, this movie probably needed a lot more than that, but that would have been a good start.

Verdict: There are a lot of other Coppolas you should check out first.

Score: 10%

Silver Streak (1976)

Background: Today I'm taking over for the usual man behind the Depths to talk about a film that's close to my heart (these reviews aren't supposed to be completely unbiased, are they?). I saw Silver Streak on TV a few years ago and got completely wrapped up in it, and ended up buying the DVD. It only has 53 reviews on Netflix, which is surprising considering the fact that it's the first film that featured the golden team of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor together. They went on to make several more movies together and have come to be considered one of the great comedy teams o the era. Oh, and the movie was directed by Arther Hiller, who also did Love Story, in case that means something to you (you know, "Love means never having to say you're sorry").

Plot: All over the place. This might turn some people off, particularly one or two Netflix reviewers who were pulling their hair out over the genre dilemma ("Is it a comedy? A murder mystery? A road movie? A buddy movie? A romantic comedy? WHAT!?") but I personally thought it was entertaining. The basic plot line is that Gene Wilder is on a train for a business trip and in the middle of seducing--or being seduced by--Jill Claybourgh when he sees a murdered man fall off the train outside his window. This leads him on a jaunty quest to solve the murder mystery, which involves him falling/being pushed off the train multiple times, striving to get back on it to save Claybourgh, and finally meeting up with Pryor for some comedic gold. Spoiler: there's a happy ending for everyone but the bad guys. Even the train is smiling at the end.

Why was it forgotten? It's a fun romp but even with Wilder and Pryor, I imagine it's hard for this film to be taken very seriously. It's basically a poor man's North by Northwest. Also, I can't say the suspense that's promised on the pictured DVD cover is really all that thrilling. Take it from someone who jumps while watching Halloween specials on the Disney channel (what? I have siblings): the murder mystery part of this movie is not very scary. Then again, it doesn't really need to be.

What went right? It doesn't take itself too seriously, and personally I'm a huge fan of pretty much anything Wilder does. Also, while some might complain about the film's inability to stick to one genre, I think the mashup is what makes it so much fun. It's definitely more of a comedy than anything else, but it has just the right amount of romance and shoot outs.

Verdict: Easy fun, worth watching just for Wilder and Pryor.
Score: 85%

Flakes (2007)

Background: I don't think lead actress Zooey Deschanel really needs much introduction. She's the sister from Almost Famous, Summer from 500 Days of Summer and you cannot legally mention her or any of her roles without using the word "Quirky." Her big blue eyes and singing voice that outclasses her acting by a damn mile have made her a staple of the dreams of hipster men nationwide. She also has a show on Fox called The New Girl that I know absolutely nothing about. Her sister, Emily Deschanel, has a show on Fox too, Bones, about which I know very little more. I don't mean to sound dismissive because I really actually like Zooey Deschanel and have watched movies specifically because she's in them, though I'll never forgive her for Yes Man.

Slightly less well known is Michael Lehmann, director of today's film. He's had quite an odd career. He's spent a lot of time directing TV shows. Though this usually means that the best one can hope for from the direction is "workmanlike," he's spent most of his time on more cinematic shows, usually on premium cable. His movie work is also pretty interesting. His first feature length credit is Heathers, a favorite among some. His cult hits don't stop there, he also made Airheads, a personal favorite of mine. Then again, he also directed Hudson Hawk…

Plot: As the manager of a restaurant that serves only cereal, Neil Downs feels slightly unsatisfied. He's a budding musician with writer's block, a cereal enthusiast and boyfriend to Zooey Deschanel, whose quirky character (sorry, just fulfilling my duty) changed her name to Miss Pussy Katz on her 18th birthday. The restaurant is called "Flakes," naturally and it's owned by Willie, a constantly pajama clad Christopher Lloyd. Other characters haunting the cereal bar include an amateur cereal historian and a man that just loves hats. He's apparently bad with their names though because he refers to a Deerstalker hat as a Deerslayer hat. This is never acknowledged. One day a business man comes in to Flakes and starts asking questions about franchising.

Turns out the businessman was just pumping them for information. His plan was to open up a new cereal joint right across the street called "New Original Flakes." This, of course, tanks at first. It's too clean, there's no atmosphere, etc. Everyone loves the old Flakes, why would they go to the cheap knockoff. Well, after a fight, Zooey goes to work there and gives it the atmosphere people crave. It's not clear why all the old regulars jump ship and go across the street to their beloved hangout's rival, but that happens.

This causes Flakes business to go down the tubes. Zooey figures this should give Neil more time to work on his album, but writers block is fickle (trust me) and all it does is make him frustrated. The plot has exactly zero moments that you don't see coming from the first moment the business man enters Flakes for the first time. That's not always a bad thing, but in this case, it certainly doesn't help.

Why Was It Forgotten? It's very hard for an indie movie to break through to the mainstream. Especially when the movie is as obtusely quirky as this one. When you think of movies of this ilk that the general population have embraced, like say Little Miss Sunshine or Juno, it can be hard to tell why those two are popular while no one cared about this one. It has well known names like Little Miss Sunshine, Zooey Deschanel and Christopher Lloyd in place of Steve Carell, Alan Arkin and the like. It has highly quirky characters like Juno, cereal and hat enthusiast stand in for the fast talking teens.

While those movies certainly have their fair share of problems, what they had was likable characters. Well, to a point at least. I thought Juno was a really terrible character and everyone in Little Miss Sunshine was just kinda boring, but they didn't hold the terrible opinions and make the awful decisions of the characters here. Especially those of the main character Neil. A main character that is impossible to like makes the movie hard to bear.

What Went Right? Christopher Lloyd is always a treat. He may be older and much more haggard these days, but when he gets worked up, it's just like the old days with Doc Brown in Back To The Future. Zooey Deschanel is also adorable as always, though her character doesn't really have personality. She does have moments though where she's funny. Makes me think I should check out that show, but chancres are I never will and I know that.

Verdict: Well, at least it's not Juno.

Score: 38%

Tekwar (1994)

Background: Imagine yourself as William Shatner on the set of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. You're getting way too old to play the dashing ladies man Captain James Tiberius Kirk, but you need a paycheck so you're doing it anyway. By this time, Star Trek: The Next Generation has been on TV for years. You've been replaced Captain of the USS Enterprise for an entire generation of young nerds. You've been going to conventions for decades, being hounded for autographs by millions of people who want nothing more than to correct you about some piece of Star Trek lore that you misspoke about at last year's convention. You probably want to break free from that whole world right? Maybe create your own sci-fi future nonsense? Well, in 1989, Shat did that.

In 1989, Shatner decided it was time to break out the… whatever existed before computers. Abacus? Anyway, he wrote a book called Tekwar. Then he wrote another book, TekLords. He's pumped out nine of these bad boys in total, all with "Tek" in the title somewhere. These books have been made into movies, a TV show, a series of comic books, and a pretty crummy looking video game. If you ask around the right circles, Tekwar is famous, but around the Netflix circle, it's lost. Why no love for the Shat?

Plot: There is a whole ton of plot here, as is often the problem when a book is made into a movie. There are right ways and wrong ways to do adapt a novel. You can choose to tell a stripped down story in detail, or you can briefly cover everything that happened in the book. This bets big on the latter. First thing's first. Tek is a new drug out on the streets. It's the microchip thing that when plugged into this little headset, lets you see in virtual reality. I'm not sure what makes one have to buy more of it though. Seems like a microchip is more than a one use thing.

Jake Cardigan is a cop who got thrown in cryo-prison. Sorta like John Spartan in the much better movie Demolition Man. He, of course, was framed. It's never really explained too well what happened, but there was a Tek deal, people think he paid off the bad guys, other cops got killed. Bad stuff, you know. He's looking for his wife and son, she left him while he was frozen. He goes to some hackers who are super annoying to try and find them. The computers are really secure though and they have to fly through hologram cyberspace to get through. I guess this is supposed to be tense, but it makes so little sense that it's hard to feel anything except confusion.

Speaking of confusion, the rest of the movie is some of the most confusing stuff I've ever watched. I'm sure that if one really tried, it wouldn't be too hard to follow, but there's just way too much plot for 90 minutes. There are TekLords like Sonny Hokori who control all the Tek. There's Shatner who runs a corporation that has a way to destroy the world's supply of Tek. Hokori's brand of Tek would be immune though. This seems like it should be the crux of the movie, but very little thought is given to it. There's also the eco-terrorist/Jakes ex-girlfriend Warbride. I can't make head or tails out of her involvement. There's a robot hitting snapshots at Jake in a hockey arena. I dunno, maybe the book makes more sense.

Why Was It Forgotten? The key to great sci-fi is telling a good story that works when you take all the spaceships and cyberpunk out. Take Star Trek for example. What made it stand out certainly wasn't the great acting and superior special effects. People loved that show because of the way the characters interacted and worked out the myriad of problems they were faced with every week. The recent reboot of Battlestar Galactica was so well respected because it would work if it were on Earth and there were no robots. This wouldn't work like that at all. Take away all the future mumbo jumbo and you have a really really boring, uncreative story. The only parts that are even a little interesting are just incredibly confusing.

The other fun part of Sci-Fi are the predictions it makes about the future. It's always neat to go back even just 15-20 years when this came out to see what they thought the near future was gonna be like. This movie gets shockingly few of them right. Sure, this movie takes place another 30 odd years from where we are today, but still. For just one example, money is transferred between people by linking up these personal devices about the size of a deck of cards. The way things are going with Near Field Communication and Bluetooth, there's no way anything will ever come in contact with anything ever again.

What Went Right? No part of this movie is particularly bad. Sure parts of it are dated and none of the future drug nonsense makes a whole lot of sense, but if you want to lose yourself in a world, there is a ton of information to lose yourself in. I think that's why there's still a small, but very loyal following around Tekwar. Outside the novels of Neil Stephenson, there's really not a whole lot of quality cyberpunk. Actually, you know what? There might be, I really have no idea. None of it has the name "William Shatner" on it though.

Verdict: There's a whole bunch of Tekwar movies on Netflix. I don't think I'll watch more of them

Score: 25%

The Wilby Conspiracy (1975)

Background: Sydney Poitier and Michael Caine ain't gonna play Sun City. It's safe to say that in 1975 Aparthied wasn't very popular around the globe. Enter The Wilby Conspiracy, a novel by Peter Driscoll turned into a film by acclaimed director Ralph Nelson. Nelson had previously directed the adaptation of Flowers For Algernon, Charly, which I watched in 8th grade English class and remember almost nothing about as a film. Most people would know him best for directing Lilies Of The Field, for which Sydney Poitier won the Best Leading Man Academy Award, the first African American man to do so. With two well known leading men, an equally well known director, and even a young Rutger Hauer in there being Rutger Hauer, it's hard to imagine this film getting lost to the ages, right?

Plot: Poitier starts out the film as a mere number, 34. A political prisoner in apartheid era South Africa, full name Shack Twala, incarcerated for a decade already, he stands trial to possibly spend even more time in prison due to a new law that prosecutes terrorists. He gets off the hook thanks to a pretty young lawyer named Rina Van Niekerk (These South African names are murder). To celebrate, she offers to take Twala and her boyfriend, James Keogh (Michael Caine) back to her office for champagne.

On the way there, shit gets real, they get stopped by the cops who say Twala can't be on the street. Because of racism. The cops cuff him and commence whaling on him because of racism. Twala and Keogh don't think this should happen, because they're the good guys and begin whaling on the cops back. They put the cops in the hospital, have to run away for obvious reasons, and the movie is underway.

They decide they need to make their way across the border to Botswana for safe haven. Along the way, it comes out that Twala is a member of the Black Congress, a group that helps blacks fight for freedom against the imperialist whites. At the head of this organization is the eponymous Wilby Xaba. The South African Bureau of State Security wants to capture Wilby, and now they have some unwitting patsies that will lead Major Horn, leader of the bureau, straight to him.

Along the way, the movie gets lost in some side plots with diamonds and Indian dentists that I won't give too much away about. Racism and getting lost in plot twists are the two leading themes of this movie.

Why Was It Forgotten? Apartheid was a total bummer, and that might have something to do with it. The main thing about apartheid is that it doesn't exist anymore, thus dating a few early episodes of The Simpsons where Lisa has an "End Apartheid Now" poster on the door to her room, also abolishing violent, deplorable segregation in South Africa. A movie that graphically shows the consequences of apartheid doesn't really play in this day and age. Also the movie only saw a limited release in North America and Netflix only services the U.S. and Canada. It has been released on region 1 DVD though, and the more global IMDb shows an almost equal amount of apathy.

What Went Right? Poitier and Caine show a playful, Lethal Weapon, anti-buddy relationship that is really fun to watch through the entire movie. The dialogue is consistently snappy, as in this quote from Caine: "A politically commited Indian dentist? That sounds like all the people I can't stand at a cocktail party!" It's unfortunate that Poitier is shackled (bad word choice, I guess) with a tricky native African accent that reigns in his performance hard. There are also a few genuinely exciting set pieces, one with a giant sinkhole, another with a bunch of planes, that keep the action going.

Verdict: It might get a little lost, but overall a pretty enjoyable watch.

Score: 80%

The Killing Of A Chinese Cookie (2008)

Background: First off, I should say that this is not a typo, and I am not actually reviewing the Cassavetes film The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie. Though that would be great and all, it goes against the idiom of The Depths. This, however, is a documentary about fortune cookies. I love fortune cookies, and I love obscure puns, so this movie has a hook in me from the start. Documentaries about unusual subjects have always fascinated me. Men Who Swim is a perfect example. The fortune cookie is about as unusual as a topic can get. At a mere 75 minutes, it seems like it might have been a little bit too unusual a subject, perhaps.

This is the first feature length documentary from director Derek Shimoda. He's previously worked in the film industry on small, independent movies. He's been featured in a number of film festivals though, including Sundance. The website for the movie is littered with wreaths of various film festivals, though distressingly, only one pull-quote from a critic. Even more distressingly, the critic is from Variety. 

Plot: As expected, this is a movie about fortune cookies. First thing, however, the lottery. It starts with a story about a Powerball drawing with over 100 winners. Every one of them chose the same numbers for the same drawing. The implication is that they used fortune cookies and the lucky numbers that appear at the bottom. This revelation, however, is left for the final scene. After that, it dives straight into the history and invention of the fortune cookie. Turns out, who actually made the first fortune cookie is hotly contested. There are three candidate. First is David (or Davis) Jung from L.A. He owned the Hong Kong Noodle Company, a longtime manufacturer of the cookies. Next was Japanese immigrant Seiichi Kito. This theory is put forth by Ripley's Believe It Or Not, but not too many people put a lot of stock into it. The third possible inventor is Hakoto Hagiwara, another Japanese immigrant who moved to San Francisco. This all takes place in the early 1900s.

The provenance of the fortune cookie is so hotly contested, that in the '70s, they held a mock trial called "The Court Of Historical Review" to decide once and for all. The trial takes place in San Francisco and Hakoto Hagiwara, the one who lived in SF wins. The advocate for David Jung from L.A. still seems surprising angry about the whole situation. You may notice that I said Hagiwara was Japanese and not Chinese like we associate with the cookie these days. Turns out the fortune cookie is based on a Japanese cooke called senbei. It has a similar shape and ingredients, though is slightly different and has no fortune inside. The Japanese immigrants of the time sold the cookies to the Chinese restaurants that were becoming more and more popular with the locals and thus it became known as a Chinese thing.

The movie then goes on to describe the differences between how the cookies were made when they were first invented and how they're made today. They used to be made one at a time by hand, now they have machines that pump out millions of the things every day. Most interesting is the talks with the people who actually write the fortunes. Though you may expect them to be taken from ancient chinese texts, one writer they tracked down isn't even Chinese or spiritual. There's also a whole lot of garbage and stories that are really only tangential to the cookie, but those really aren't important. Thankfully, the section about adding "In Bed" to the ends of fortunes is kept mercifully short.

I don't need to tell you that the movie also features scenes of the various interviewees cracking open the cookies and reading the fortunes.

Why Was It Forgotten? There is certainly a good documentary to be made about the history, manufacturing and current state of the fortune cookie, but this is definitively not it. To start, the section about the history of the fortune cookie has a serious problem with setups. It featured many interviews with descendants of the supposed inventors of the fortune cookie. However, none of those supposed inventors are introduced first. So the great grandson of Hakoto Hagiwara would talk about his family's history with the fortune cookie, but without the background of who Hakoto Hagiwara is, it's both hard to follow and hard to care about.

Another major problem is that it takes a lot of time, even during the short run time of the movie, telling stories that are only vaguely related to fortune cookies. The movie spends equal time on the history of the Japanese senbei cookies as it does with the background of the fortune cookie. Far less interesting is an extended section about an art show where the artists make pieces based on fortunes.

What Went Right? Some of the interviews are actually really interesting. As previously mentioned, the section with the people who write the fortunes was really neat. Also, some of the more famous interviewees provide much deeper insight than others. These include Martin Yan of the old cooking show Yan Can Cook and Philip Chiang, founder of the P.F. Chang's chain of restaurants. There's a lot of interesting ideas in this movie, but they are really poorly executed.

Verdict: I once got a fortune that said "You like chinese food"… In bed! Ha!

Score: 25%

Who Saw Her Die? (1972)

Background: This is a giallo movie. "What's giallo" you ask? Broadly, it's less a genre than a style of movie. After the spaghetti western crazy of the 60s, Italian filmmakers turned their fancies to other genre pictures. Giallo literally translates to "yellow," referring to the covers of pulp novels in Italy at the time. Giallo movies are noted for the pulp novel tendencies. They use atmosphere to set their moods, lighting and colors are very important. Typically giallo movies are thrillers, but also with modern slasher-movie tendencies. Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci are famous for their giallo work.

This movie specifically though has some interest about it too. It stars George Lazenby, one time James Bond. And I mean one time, he was only in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the gap filler between the great Sean Connery films and the unwatchable Roger Moore films. Another thing giallo films are known for is their score, usually huge and orchestral, and this one comes from the legendary Ennio Morricone. He, of course, is known for his work all over italian cinema, especially the riff from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I embedded the trailer because it's got most of the main musical themes and they're really great. Aldo Lado directs. He's done a bunch of stuff, none of which has really penetrated to the States. I just find it neat that his first and last names are anagrams.

Plot: Who Saw Her Die? is set up like a noir film. It's got loads of shifty characters, constant clues and misdirection, paranoia, everything you want from noir. As such, I'm only gonna talk in more general terms than usual or I'd be writing this for several days. The movie opens in France where we see a girl, probably around 8 years old, playing in the snow. Her mom leaves her for a bit and a veiled man dressed all in black sneaks up on her, murders her and buries her in the snow.

Cut to Venice, a year later. Franco (Lazenby) is getting a visit from his daughter. She usually lives in London with her mother, who's still in London, in fact. He's an artist who's been getting great reviews for his work. All the guys act really really creepy towards her, seemingly in a competition to be the guy in the phrase "That guy's totally the killer". The real veiled guy shows up one day when she's playing with playing with some other kids. Roberta is practically begging to be murdered at this point. All the other kids leave, she's approached by a strange man in all black and a veil, she stand there like an idiot. Oh well. She shows up face down in the canals of Venice. 

Franco isn't taking this sitting down. His friend quickly connects the dots to the other murder in France and he sets off investigating. His search takes him to interview the family of the other little girl, a fencing enthusiast, a pederast lawyer and more. The story keeps unfolding and unfolding, sometimes way too fast and for no reason. It comes together a bit at the end though. Stick around for the final gag in a film choch full of the murder of children!

Why Was It Forgotten? Giallo never really caught on in the main stream the way spaghetti westerns did. Genre films in general don't usually get much penetration, especially not in those days. They've always hit big when they hit, but they weren't always the successes that they are now. As such, giallo remains purely for the film nerds. They're a very selective bunch though, and they tend to celebrate filmmakers as much as they do the individual films they make. Truth is, Aldo Lado may have made a really good film here, but he hash't made a whole lot of other good films, or really any that were even released in the U.S. He'd never hold a candle to Argento or Fulci.

And frankly, this movie falls apart towards the end. It was always sort of hard to follow because of all the Italian names. It got hard matching up faces with such unfamiliar names with a cast of characters as large as this one. About an hour in though, the plot starts taking needless turns. It sticks with its great style to the end though.

What Went Right? Like I said, the style. It looks great, the atmosphere is great, the soundtrack is fantastic. There's one song that plays every time the murderer shows up that makes you wish for more murders. Even though, you know, sometimes kids get murdered, but still. Sometimes the music will start and the murderer will just be sneaking around, sometimes it'll take you by surprise. No matter how off the rails the plot went, I was always excited to hear that music.

I feel like I've been ragging on the plot too much though. For the first hour, it completely reeled me in. The viewer is left just as in the dark as to who the killer is as Franco, in classic noir style. It's only when he's sneaking around, talking to a bunch of different people for a bunch of different reasons that it gets confusing. It starts to pick back up in the endgame though, when he gets closer and closer to the killer. You start to think "It's gotta be that guy, who else could-- wait he's murdered. Who else?"

Verdict: Style for days, substance for about 65 minutes.

Score: 85%

The Masque Of The Red Death (1964)

Background: It's the Halloween season, and that means that The Depths Of Netflix, like every other website, is going spooky. Today, we're going to take a look at The Masque Of The Red Death, one of the last of Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe series. All told, he made 8 movies based on Poe tales. The Pit And The Pendulum, The Premature Burial, The Raven and more all got movie adaptations over the course of 4 years. The Raven is a bit of a curiosity. It was reimagined as a comedy and was written by famous Sci-Fi/Horror author Richard Matheson. Corman was famous for playing fast and loose with Poe's story lines and The Masque Of The Red Death is certainly no exception.

The original story, to refresh your memory from 10th grade English class, follows the nobleman Prince Prospero in his attempts to avoid the hot  new plague that's sweeping the nation, The Red Death. He, along with a bunch of his noble buddies hole up in his abbey and naturally they throw a masquerade ball. The abbey consists of seven color coded rooms, blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet and finally black. The black room is lit by a blood red light and in it is a large clock.  As the clock strikes each hour, the party momentarily stops, no more dancing, no more orchestra. At midnight, a mysterious shrouded figure enters the party. The figure is, of course, the Red Death incarnate. Though Prospero tries to stop him, the entire party succumbs to the horrible illness. That was the original plot, what of Corman's vision?

Plot: The first thing viewers see is The Red Death himself asking a woman to deliver a message to a town. The message isn't important, but it signals the coming of the horrible disease. Prince Prospero soon rolls into that very town and quickly establishes himself as a total wad. Before he even gets out of his carriage, he almost runs over a little boy. He sees that that town was infected with the red death and orders it to be burned to the ground. He rescues the fair Francesca in the process and imprisons her lover, Geno, and her father.

As in the original, Prospero hides out with the other members of the aristocracy in his castle. They're a hedonistic bunch, starting off with the feasting and partying quickly. On a tour through the castle, Francesca is introduced to the colored rooms, here truncated to only 4. Each has its own story, but the last, the black room, remains mysterious. Francesca goes sneaking around for some answers though, finding that the black room is where Prospero and his lady friend do their satanic rituals.

Prospero being a satanist figures prominently into why he's such a dick to everyone. He murders the peasantry, calling it a favor. He sets up life and death games, etc. It also sets up the way Vincent Price refers to Satan as "The Lord Of Flies" which is sublime. After some useless messing around between Francesca and her lover and father, the time for titular masque arrives. At that masque is The Red Death, obviously.

Why Was It Forgotten? Corman films always have a tough battle in the minds of the movie lover. He may have made a lot of movies, but very few of them are held in high regard. He was always known for quantity well before quality. This seems to be one of his better ones though. This suffers that curse more than even most of his other movies for being part of his series of Poe movies. As previously noted, Corman made 8 of these in a mere 4 years. It's a shame really, because this is probably the best of the bunch along with The Pit And The Pendulum, but they all get lumped in with dreck like The Raven, so it would take one hell of a movie to climb out of that hole

This movie really suffers, though, from the additions made by the screenwriters. Prospero being a satanist is okay and leads to some neat imagery. Sometimes, it leads scenes to drag on way too long though. The Francesca character is where the movie really falls apart sometimes, she's almost completely needless. The side plots with her father and lover are tedious and the movie would probably be much better if it had stuck more closely to the source material or at least just focussed on the hedonism of the noble class hiding with Prospero.

What Went Right? First off, this movie looks great. Far and beyond anything Corman or really anything from American International Pictures is known for. The shots are crisp and often framed in interesting ways. Though the movie does away with some of the colorful symbolism, there are plenty of great colors to be seen. The great hall, where much of the movie takes place has particularly striking floors.

Directorially, there's a lot of interesting stuff also. Corman uses a lot of wide angle lenses when shooting the great hall and he's not afraid to move the camera. This leads to an optical illusion where it seems like the walls and background characters are panning slightly faster than the objects in the foreground. It leads to everything shot this way having a ghostly, other-worldly quality. One can only hope this was done on purpose.

Verdict: Saying "Best of Corman" might be a pretty low bar, but this movie sails way above it.

Score: 75%

I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay (2006)

Background: Director Chan-Wook Park has become a cult hero since the release of his 2003 revenge thriller Oldboy. That movie with its distinctive style and its ability to plumb the depths of the human psyche has made it a must watch for anyone who loves film in the modern age. The movie has even reached a small amount of mainstream success through a poster prominently featured in the geek/spy show Chuck. Director and Reggie Miller provocateur Spike Lee is planning an American remake right now. 

Oldboy is but one of Park's movies though. In fact it was the second of his acclaimed "Vengeance Trilogy" including Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance from 2002 and 2005's Lady Vengeance. Recently, he's also gotten a lot of press from his latest movie, a vampire tale called Thirst. The Vengeance Trilogy and Thirst are recognizable for their violence first and foremost, but I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK is listed as a "Romantic Comedy." Chances are this one isn't gonna quite the same amount of bloodshed, but hey, you never know. It does, after all, star Rain, Korean Pop Star turned American box office flop artist as the star of the movie Ninja Assassin.

Plot: Let me get this out of the way first: The opening titles are really great. Not knowing Korean though, I think they might have extended into the opening sequence, but I'm not sure. The camera very clearly focusses on a few words in the actual environment of the opening, and the last one is the title, so they're probably more credits, right? Anyways, about that environment that those credits are in. A girl named Young-Goon hears voices that tell her to slit her wrist, insert some wires and plug them suckers in. For some reason, this is interpreted as a suicide attempt and she's committed to a psychiatric hospital.

She's admitted by a kind, over-sharing sort of nurse. She tells gruesome stories of other patients in the ward. One of them wears a rabbit mask made out of cardboard. The nurse says this is because while he was in the army, he was gang raped and had cigarettes put out of his face. She says he was once quite handsome, but now he's so damaged that he even went as far as to sew his own anus shut. But it's all a joke because she was an inmate too! Mythomania they call it.

Young-Goon's problem is that she believes herself to be a literal killing machine. She thinks she's a combat cyborg with guns for fingers, talks constantly to inanimate objects and needs electricity to recharge her batteries. Because of this, she thinks she doesn't need food, which is a problem for the orderlies. She finds out through a radio she has with her that her Grandma is in critical condition. She needs to get out of the facility and help her, so she needs to get rid of her sympathy and murder some orderlies to get out.

The masked man is the other main character worth mentioning. He is Il-Sun, a kleptomaniac schizophrenic. He doesn't just steal possessions though. He can also steal the attributes of the other patients, everything from compulsively walking backwards to one man's ping-pong ability. He's who Young-Goon goes to about her sympathy problem. She wants him to steal it away, but it really only gets weirder from there.

Why Was It Forgotten? This movie is about as far away from the movies Chan-Wook Park has become known for as one movie can get. It actually feels a lot closer to the whimsical nature of a movie like Amelie, but I totally hated Amelie and rather enjoyed this one. It has all the themes of a movie featuring cyborgs. Like Blade Runner, it asks what it really means to be human but that is absolutely the start and end of all the similarities to Blade Runner. 

The movie milks the cast of crazies for a lot of its comedy. this works sometimes, but gets old rather quickly. The backwards walking guy, the obese lady, all of them are fun the first time you see them, but never again after that. That's not to say that every character is completely annoying all the time, only when they're trying to be funny. Someone who has a higher tolerance for whimsy might really really love this movie.

What Went Right? This is unmistakably a Chan-Wook park film. The style of the shots and layering of themes into seemingly simple movies are staples of his films and to ally present here. He also known for his expert storytelling and that's on full display here. Also, since Young-Goon believes herself to be designed to murder, there's plenty of fun and stylish violence. There are a few scenes where Young-Goon imagines herself to but gunning down scores of orderlies in dramatic fashion. Surprisingly violent for an otherwise whimsical, easy going movie, really. For being tonally and thematically so different from Oldboy, it's a lot more similar than one would think.

Verdict: An odd film. An odd, odd, odd film.

Score: 80%

The Fighting Kentuckian (1949)

Background: John Wayne, the star of this picture, really needs no introduction. He's one of the most famous movie stars ever. He appeared in almost 250 movies, including a streak of at least one per year for fifty-one consecutive years. He barely slowed down when he had to have his entire left lung removed in 1964 (He was a chain smoker for many, many years). He's been consistently ranked among the best male leads of all time. Say what you will about his politics, he was very conservative and very anti-communist, but his popularity as an actor is undeniable, even to this day. One other knock against him: He's the great uncle of boxer/actor Tommy Morrisson, a.k.a. Tommy "The Machine" Gunn from Rocky V. Goddamn Rocky V.

Also starring in this movie is Oliver Hardy, of the famous comedy duo Laurel And Hardy. The two started in the era of silent films and lasted until their final film together in 1951. Hardy was another heavy smoker, so at least he had something to talk to Wayne about. Directing this film is George Waggner. Fans of early Universal monster movies will recognize his name, he directed The Wolf Man with Lon Cheney Jr. This movie is billed as an action comedy, and starring John Wayne (for the action) and Oliver Hardy (for the comedy) it can't go too far astray, right?

Plot: This story, despite being called The Fighting Kentuckian takes place entirely in Alabama. A small group of French separatists were exiled from their native land after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. They're given a few townships to make a small settlement of their very own. The story mostly takes place is the town of Demopolis, one of the towns taken over by the French.

John Wayne and Oliver Hardy are Kentucky riflemen, clad in fringe-y jackets and coonskin caps. On a detour through the French section, he meets Fleurette, a pretty young thing that has eyes for Wayne. The two fall for each other five minutes into the movie. Romance was uncomplicated back then I guess. There's a problem though, and its name is Blake Randolf. Randolf is the rich riverboat owner with his eyes on greater things, namely owning the French settlement as well as the marital hand of Fleurette.

John Wayne refuses to let Fluerette go to such a clearly evil man and takes up the fight against his thugs. I don't really need to type anymore plot synopsis after that. You know the rest.

Why Was It Forgotten? Well, to start with, this is a terrible copy of the movie. The film stock was in terrible shape when they transferred it, there are tons of scratches and much of the movie is washed out or blurry. Worse than the picture quality is the sound quality. Regardless of what you think about the movie itself, these are reason alone to forget about it. The movie itself is fairly straightforward. John Wayne's the hero, Oliver Hardy is a goofy sidekick. There's not really any surprises to be had, though few really come to John Wayne movies for surprises. I mean in his 200 or so movies, he's only died in a handful.

What Went Right? It's really hard to tell how much of the comedy really holds up due to the quality of the video. Most of it is just Oliver Hardy doing the Oliver Hardy thing without a whole lot of gusto. This is not a bad movie by any means, but it really seems like no one's trying that hard. Coming up with one or two specific things that went right is virtually impossible.

Verdict: Pretty rote, but a higher quality version of the movie shouldn't be excluded from John Wayne fans' veiwings.

Score: Movie: 60%, this version: 5%

My Favorite Spy (1951)

Background: Bob Hope and Hedy Lamarr star in a typical Bob Hope comedy from 1952. Bob Hope had already starred in a bunch of Road To... movies with his pal Bing Crosby and it’s easy to see how this one could get lost in the shuffle. The only real difference between this movie and those classics is a noticeable lack of Bing. Bob had also starred in a couple My Favorite...movies before this, but that’s unrelated, as this is actually a remake of a movie made only a decade prior. That one starred neither Bob Hope or Hedy Lamarr, so it’s easy to see why it was remade. Speaking of the lovely Ms. Lamarr, this was one of her final big screen roles. Director Norman Z. Macleod was no stranger to comedy, working with the Marx brothers and even worked with Bob Hope on Road to Rio. 

Plot: Bob Hope is Peanuts White, a no name vaudevillian whose name only gets top billing when he puts it there himself. Unfortunately for him, he bears striking resemblance to international spy Eric Augustine (Also Bob Hope). After a case of mistaken identity and Augustine getting gunned down, Peanuts is called up to the big leagues and asked to step in to act as Augustine to complete his mission, purchasing a million dollar microfilm for some unspecified reason. He’s given rigorous training on the dangerous life and lady-killing style of his doppelgänger. All the while, Bob Hope makes frequent use of that silly growling noise that made him a star.

His new mission sends Peanuts to exotic Tangier (which looks suspiciously like the San Fernando valley) where an attempt is quickly made on his life, shaking the comedian who finds it hard to keep in his spy persona. He soon meets Lily (played with no particular character by Hedy Lamarr) an old friend of Augustine who’s now working with the enemy. While in Tangier, he runs into various characters from Augustine’s past, former female companions, old enemies and the like, along with another government operative acting undercover as Augustine’s valet, Tasso.

Peanuts/Augustine finds his way to a casino where he gambles thousands of dollars and gives away thousands more. just like any international playboy spy. The comedy-thriller ramps up the thriller portion as he finds the man with the microfilm and the chase is on as the bad guys want the film too. The real Augustine, who has recently escaped his stay at the hospital, shows up in Tangier and is killed faster than any super-spy reasonably should be. The microfilm changes hands a few times before a big climax with Peanuts and the bad guys. A chase along the Pacific Coast Highw--- I mean Tangier ensues and after some wacky hijinx and an antic or two, the film finds its way to the right hands and the guy gets the gal.

Why Was It Forgotten? Well, as a comedy, it’s frankly not that good. There are a few funny scenes and Bob Hope never completely disappoints, but there’s something missing, and that’s a proper straight man. What made the Road To... movies so great was the mixture of Bob and Bing. The former would act wacky and the latter would have something to say about it. Here, Bob has to rely basically only on himself and it’s frankly just not his strong suit.

Where the comedy works great though, is when it really gets to ramp up the zaniness. When Peanuts and Tasso escape their pursuers under guise of a two man camel costume, it’s fantastic. When it’s Peanuts in his stage show just acting silly, it’s far less fantastic. I think the real reason few have watched this is that there’s really nothing in this movie that you can’t get in far better Bob Hope roles.

What Went Right? Surprisingly, it’s not bad as a spy movie. The plot moves fairly briskly in most places and when it slows down, it’s basically just so Bob Hope can show off his many talents. The aforementioned stage show is completely expendable and just gets the movie off to a slow start. Also, there’s a late interrogation, where Peanuts is given a truth serum that devolves into an extended song and dance sequence. This could be a bit of the Norman McLeod coming through, as his previous work with the Marx brothers always included those scenes with Harpo showing off that we all wanted to fast forward through when we were kids.

Verdict: Bob and Bing are better, bub

Score: 40%

So This Is New York (1948)

Background: So This Is New York is a comedy from 1948, though inexplicably set during prohibition. It follows the story of Ernie Finch, played by radio star and frequent I’ve Got A Secret panelist Henry Morgan, bringing with him his signature cantankerous sarcasm. Morgan was an established star of radio and television at this point, but this was his only leading role on the big screen. The movie was to be the big break for director Richard Fleischer who went on to be a legend, directing Fantastic Voyage, Tora! Tora! Tora! and the most spoiled movie of all time, Soylent Green (it’s people). Among the writing credits is another future legend, Carl Foreman who went on to write High Noon, The Guns Of Navarone and The Bridge On The River Kwai. With that much talent, how was this movie forgotten?

 

Plot: Ernie Finch, our star and narrator, is a humble cigar salesman from the sleepy town of South Bend, Indiana, known for Notre Dame football and not a lot else. He’s got a nice life for himself there and his beautiful wife Ella has just come into some money. She quickly becomes dissatisfied with small town living and insist that she and her sister, Kate, move to New York to find her a man with money. Kate, even though she already has a nice relationship going with the town butcher, agrees. The butcher, Willis, may be great and all, but the only bacon he brings home is actual bacon and not the metaphorical, green kind. Ernie doesn’t like the idea, saying that New York will eat through their money too fast and they argue about it while fiddling with the lights for some reason. Ernie makes a point and turns the light off, Ella makes a counterpoint and turns it back on. This repeats for several lamps. Finally, Ernie acquiesces and rolls his eyes all the way to NYC.

Kate makes short work of finding some gold to dig. In fact, she doesn’t even wait to get to New York, falling for a stock trader on the train. It quickly turns out he’s a con man, but that doesn’t slow her down one bit. In fact, over the course of this fairly short movie, she falls for an eccentric, world travelling old man, a race horse owner, his alcoholic jockey, back to the race horse owner (who may have been gunned down by the mob, but that’s another story) and a comedian, all before landing back with the butcher. As Ernie expected would happen, they quickly blow through all their money and end up right back where they were in the same house (oddly, because Ernie mentions them not owning that house anymore on more than one occasion) in South Bend.

Why Was It Forgotten? If I could narrow this movie’s legion of problems down to one word, it’d be focus. This movie shifts gears violently and often. It starts as a hateful screed against New York City, where everyone is rude and wants to take your money. One voiceover says “All you see is helping hands. Helping themselves.” You can almost hear his eyes rolling with a big exaggerated sigh off screen. After a stroll through a few of Kate’s more eccentric paramours, she meets the horse owner and they spend the middle third of the movie away from the city entirely, relaxing at a horse track instead.

There are also scenes that could have easily been lifted from other movies. One scene where Ernie send a telegram back home is very funny, but carries none of the “Ain’t the big city weird?” aesthetic that was in full swing all around it. Another particularly puzzling scene saw Kate getting proposed too in a hotel lobby while a random man shoots increasing amounts of water at his girlfriend. Yes, as the plot races forward, a man fires first a water pistol, then a seltzer bottle and finally a fire extinguisher in the middle of a hotel lobby. These people are never seen before or after this scene.

In any movie though, these characters are awful. All the women want is money, all Ernie wants is South Bend and all any of the New Yorkers want is to be as mean as possible. Ernie is supposed to be the sympathetic everyman, but instead comes off as mean spirited towards anything but small town livin’. He hurls insults at his wife with reckless abandon, he keeps a ledger of their expenses and has more one liners than Groucho Marx. And this is the nice guy. The only person spared the vicious barbs of this movie is the nobel butcher left at home.

What Went Right? Plenty. For all its hatefulness, there is plenty to laugh at in here. The scene with the telegram boy is really funny and some of Ernie’s bon mots are great. Towards the end of the movie, Kate’s final beau, a comedian named Jimmy Ralston produces a play he wrote. Tired of being ever the funny man, he puts on a drama about a soldier and his family during World War I. As to be expected, it’s almost as bad as Spring Time For Hitler. The acting is terrible, the one set “looks like you got it second hand” as Ernie quips, and heckles rain down from the audience.

Verdict: If you hate New York City, you’ll love this movie.

Score: 55%

Metroland (1997)

Background: This movie started, as many do, as a book. Written in 1980 by Julian Barnes, it's a semi-autobiographical novel about a young man from London who travels studies in Paris for a time. This book and many others by Barnes was quite well received. He's been shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, an award for writers from the British Isles, for four separate books. it's said that when Barnes' mother originally read Metroland she was disgusted by the "bombardment" of filth contained within. He's also written far more lurid tales under a pseudonym. She was, unsurprisingly, appalled by those as well.

The cast comes with its share of stars. Christian Bale plays the lead, author standin Chris, and Emily Watson plays his wife, Marion. Christian Bale has long been quite popular, though this was made in the duller part of his career between his Disney days in Newsies, and before his career took off again and stayed there with American Psycho. 

Both the writer and director, Adrian Hodges and Philip Saville, respectively, have worked almost exclusively for the BBC in their careers before and since this movie. The sorts of period pieces, costume dramas and stage plays that just don't translate to American audiences. I'm always leery of career television directors making the jump to the big screen, but I keep coming back for more. Also the music is by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, so that's kinda cool.

Plot: This movie starts in 1977, you can tell because Chris (Christian Bale) has some really terrible hair. He's a man of the suburbs, referred to herein as "metroland". He's married to Marion (Emily Watson) and has a baby. Their marriage is obviously stale, she refuses his sexual advances, and their baby interrupts what little momentum they get. One day, Chris gets a call from his old friend Toni, turns out he's coming to stay with them for a few days. Toni is an old friend from Chris' wild days, back when he hated suburban life. They roughhouse the way only fictional old friends do and they talk about the old days.

The movie spends much of its running time in flashback. First to when Chris was a teenager, angry and best friends with Toni. They smoke heavily and get angry at the metroland lifestyle. They get even angrier at the people who enjoy the metroland lifestyle. It's here that Chris decides what he wants to do with his life. He's gonna move to Paris and take photographs. Later, the timeline moves to a middle period, when Chris is doing just that.

In Paris, Chris gets a job working in a café. The interactions between him and his boss are all in French and not subtitled. I'm not sure how intentional that is, but it actually adds a neat layer, not being able to understand them. It's here that Chris meets Annick (pronounced An-neek), since she's very pretty, Chris chats her up on the job. I think the boss is annoyed by this, but I can't really tell. They two fall fast in love and have a ton of sex. This doesn't last long though, as he meets Marion a few months later.

Flash back to the present and Chris is conflicted. He goes to a party with Toni despite Marion's protestations. He's clearly flailing mentally, Toni has been bugging him to cheat on his wife, and now he decides to do just that. He gets a pretty lady in bed, but can't pull the trigger. When he gets home, he talks with Marion and their marriage ends up stronger than ever. I never once throughout the course of the movie expected the ending to be anything but that.

Why Was It Forgotten? This movie only saw a very limited release in the states. It was only shown on 12 screens, though it did pretty well on those 12 screens. It seems like it might have seen a wider release in England, but Netflix isn't in England yet. The story is quite good, though these days stories about growing up and leaving your past self behind are a dime a dozen. What a movie like this needs to set itself above the rest is style. This movie has absolutely no style whatsoever. Back at the top, I wrote about how I'm always leery of TV directors making the transition to feature films and this is why. Nothing about it feels at all cinematic.

I think part of the problem is that this movie doesn't do anything explicitly wrong. It doesn't reach to any great heights and instead hits pretty much smack dab in the middle. The stakes are never high, there's never any real drama, only mild internal conflict. It's the sort of thing that works well in books, but is almost impossible to translate to film. A book can write about a character's every emotion, whereas a movie has to show it. Internal emotions are very hard to put into external feelings.

What Went Right? Though the movie on the whole is unlikely to stick with me for very long, there are a few scenes that are quite striking. Two in particular. The first has a young Chris taking pictures of trains because he's English. He then jumps on the train on a whim and sits down with an older guy. He's just retired and received a whiskey decanter as a gift. he had worked there for 43 years and no one ever noticed that he didn't drink. He also mentions how this trip home would probably be the last time he ever made the journey that he's made the same way all those many years. The old man hates metroland as much as the teenage Chris, he rants about it angrily. It's a rare sincere scene that is, unfortunately, of zero consequence to anything else in the movie.

The second scene actually matters towards the plot. In it, Chris is laying in bed next to his wife, when suddenly she appears as his ex. She's wearing garish lingerie and is talking about the old days of when the two of them used to have constant sex at all times of the day. She talks about how she used to have three orgasms every time they had sex. He replies to this with "Really?" as if it was a surprise to him. But this entire thing is happening in his head, so it's really just him stroking his own ego. Later, we find out, though, that the first time they had sex, she didn't climax at all.

Verdict: I'm unable to make a verdict because I have absolutely no feelings about this movie

Score 60%?

Deadly Reckoning (1998)

Background: It's another Frank Zagarino banger here on the Depths. Zagarino is one of those actors that I can't help but keep coming back to. Sure, he's never going to win an Oscar. Hell, he's probably never made a movie that most people have heard of. That doesn't stop ol' Frank though. He always gives it his all and he doesn't care who see it. Which is good because no one does. Deadly Reckoning or The Company Man if you're IMDb also has Robert Vaughn in it for some reason. How far must the man from U.N.C.L.E. have fallen to star in a movie along side Frank Zagarino?

Behind the camera you have Art Camacho. He doesn't have a ton of directing credits, but what he does have is Fight Coordinator credits. That's never a bad sign for a cheesey action flick. A good fight can go a long way towards making a movie tolerable. Robert Preston Jr. wrote the movie and he's known for... let's see... Little Big Foot? That sorta rings a bell, maybe. Kid's movie, small sasquatch, I guess I might have heard of that. Who directed that? Art Camacho? The fight guy?

Plot: This movie sets the mark for its quality early on. It starts with a shadowy figure (Frank Zagarino, though I only know that because I've seen way too many of his movies) in a hallway, looking in doors, checking the place out, you know. Then starts firing at an empty doorway. Its empty because the guy that was supposed to be there missed his mark, after a shot or two he pops in and shoots back. One or both of them should have shot something, but they both miss. So Frank throws a grenade.

Turns out Frank is a CIA agent, code named Napoleon, and now he needs a new cover. Ten years later, he's Ernest Grey, bookstore owner. He's made a few new additions since we saw him last, glasses because he owns a bookstore, and his young daughter Jennifer. Her mom was killed in a car accident shortly after she was born. One afternoon, some local thugs shake him down for $50 and he just has to take it, he doesn't want his daughter hurt. His daughter, as it turns out, is a violin virtuoso, she's so good that she can take a real violin and make it sound uncannily like a cheap synthesized version of a violin. The next day at the shop, more thugs come around, but this time much more well armed. Then a terrible gunfight happens.

Frank goes to meet up with an old contact, Lewis and his old lover Marianna. Through Lewis, who's kind of a dick in a fun way, he learns that the murderous thugs were sent by his old boss, none other than Control 5. After this we learn about Frank's past with Marianna. They were lovers back when he used to be a spy, and she's hurt that he left so suddenly. They fight and cry for a little bit, but they make up with the worst sex scene in history. The gang (Frank, Lewis, Marianna and Jennifer) hides out in a large mansion for some reason which promptly gets invaded by more dudes with guns. The invaders wear all black, ski masks and all, even though it's broad daylight.

From about here on out, the plot gets just about as generic as possible. I could write about it, and you could read about it, hell you could even watch the movie if you want to, but it would just be a waste of your time and mine.

Why Was It Forgotten? Well, this was originally a Direct-to-Video release, so it had a hard life to begin with. Also, there are a lot of actors in this movie and just about all of them are truly terrible. Zagarino's daughter is a particularly bad case. Child actors are rarely the best actors, they're young, I get that. There's no excuse for her performance though. Even worse, she plays a constant, pivotal role in the movie, so you don't even get any reprieve from her. I'm not even criticizing the kid, I'm not a monster after all, I'm taking Art Camacho to task. A little coaching, maybe a second take here or there and her role might have been more tolerable.

Here's a fun game to play when watching crummy action movies like this one: Count how many bullets are fired between reloads. The shootout early in the bookstore is a few minutes long, and never once does anyone reload. It's amazing.

What Went Right? The few actors that actually do act, Zagarino and Vaughn are actually pretty good. Zagarino struggles on some more serious scenes, but when he has to crank it up a bit, he's a joy as always. Brian Genesse who plays Lewis is surprisingly fun as the good guy/dick, though he dies way too early. Vaughn, as you might expect revels in his villainous role. 

It's a shame so much of the movie is so poorly made because there is a real story somewhere buried deep beneath the layers of thick, hot mediocrity. In the right hands, with a decent budget and just a minor shift in focus, it could have been a real movie.

Also, Art Camacho's pedigree does shine though. The gun fights might be boring as all hell, but the hand to hand combat, on the rare occasions it shows up is pretty neat.

Verdict: I'm still willing to watch more Frank Zagarino, but I'm not sure why anymore.

Score: 10%

Beach Party (1963)

Background: This movie, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo and more defined the movie career of pop idol Frankie Avalon. Before making this movie, he had an impressive string of hits, charting 31 singles in just 4 years including a few #1s. These days he is arguably more famous for being teamed up with Annette Funicello in a series of breezey, easy going beach movies. It's surprising though that people seem to have forgotten entire about these movies. Most of the Beach series has fewer than 15 user reviews on Netflix. It's possible that I live in a complete pop cultural time warp, but I still think that most people of a certain age have a very specific image of "Frankie And Annette". No one would ever mistake these for classic or even particularly high quality movies, but even with the nostalgia for the '60s that shows like Mad Men and the new Pan Am have inspired, no one seems to care about these movies.

This was a breakout hit for the famed studio American International Pictures who are well known to cheap movie aficionados  like myself for putting out a seemingly endless string of truly crummy movies. The studio heads, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff were masters of making movies with low budgets achieve as much as possible. Arkoff had a system known as "The ARKOFF system" (That was a weird sentence to write). ARKOFF stood for "Action, Revolution, Killing, Oratory, Fantasy, Fornication". He figured out that if a movie had these things, it was bound to achieve at least moderate success. The studio even pioneered the use of focus groups in movies, something most people consider to be pretty terrible these days. The studio is best remembered for the series of Roger Corman (Corman!) directed movie based on Edgar Allen Poe stories, starring Vincent Price. He made 8 of these in four years. Yikes. 

Plot: Well, there's going to be a beach party. the viewers learn this through a song sung by Frankie and Annette first thing in the movie. Strangely, even though they're both really excited about the beach party (tonight), they're expecting to have a quiet  vacation together, just the two of them. Well, Frankie's expecting this, Annette has other plans though, she invited all their friends to the beach hose too. She does this because she doesn't trust Frankie alone with her. This sets up the main premise of the movie. Frankie desperately wants to fuck Annette. I know her character's name is Delores, but she's just going to be Annette here.

Enter the Professor, the venerable Bob Cummings. He's an anthropologist and he's studying the insanely horny teenagers at the beach. He compares to the other tribes he has studied in the past and comes up with a surprising number of parallels. It should be noted that the professor has a magnificent beard. Frankie hates the fact that Annette won't let him get his grubby hands on her, so he decides to make her jealous by making time with Eva, a vaguely European waitress. Annette decides to get back at him by drawing the shortest straw possible and falling for the much older, much more bearded professor. Prof had previously saved her from a roving biker gang.

The professor slowly starts assimilating himself with this tribe of teenagers. He goes to the beach with Annette and he learns to surf. Because he's a professor, before going out, he does a ton of bullshit math. He crashes instantly and repeatedly. Oops! He forgot to carry the two. Now he's got it though and he mugs straight into the camera. Also, one night when all the other kids are off banging, he shaves his beard. Annette falls further for him now.

The prof knows that he can't be with Delores, and his assistant, Maryanne, yells at him for going native. He concocts a plan to make it seem like he's involved with Maryanne so Delores will back off. And he falls instantly in love with her. Frankie's mad for messing with Delores, so he charges to the prof's hangout. There, he finds all the spying equipment and is, needless to say, outraged. Then there's a pie fight.

Why Was It Forgotten? This one's kind of a puzzle to me. Make no mistake, this movie has not aged well. The plot is paper thin and the characters are really really hard to give even one iota of a shit about. There are scores of criticisms to be made about this movie, but regardless of those this movie was really something at the time. This was just the first of many beach movies that littered the cultural landscape in the 1960s. Frankie Avalon alone made another half dozen of these bad boys. It's possible that the breezey comedy and teenage drama just doesn't mean anything in this day and age.

What Went Right? I've always had a soft spot for surf music, and this movie has surf music coming out the wazoo. Between Frankie Avalon and Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the hits never stop coming. At least in the first half of the movie, the music more or less dries up in the latter half. The comedy parts actually still work in a certain way too. The jokes are goofy and the sound effects doubly so, but somehow I still found myself laughing. I get the feeling that if you wanted to make a parody of this movie, you could just make a shot-for-shot remake and it would work perfectly. Again, every part of this movie is terribly dated, but tin a strange way it has come back around to being fun.

Also, right at the tail end, there's a great Vincent Price cameo. That always helps.

Verdict: Yeah, I'm surprised I liked it too.

Score: 70%

The House Of God (1984)

Couldn't find a movie
poster, here's the book

Background: The House Of God started as a novel by a psychiatrist named Stephen Bergman, though he used the name Samuel Shem, M.D. It was based on his grueling life as a medical intern in 1974. The book was held in high regard at the time, and is still popular among medical interns today. The book is a satire along the same lines as Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It was equal parts funny and scathing, to the point where established medical professionals were speaking out against it, or simply denying they had even heard of it. It introduced many acronyms that are still, apparently, in use today, like LOL in NAD, or Little Old Lady In No Apparent Distress.

There is no denying the impact of the original source material on the medical world, but the movie on the other hand... not so much. It stars Tim Matheson, known best as Otter from Animal House, and prominent TV Actor Charles Haid, in the middle of his long run on Hill Street Blues. This is a rare feature film from director Donald Wrye. His career is filled almost exclusively by TV movies. His other feature film was 1978's Ice Castles, which was later remade in 2010... by Donald Wrye again. I guess dramas about ice skating are timeless.

The opening credits also list Joe Piscopo. Good gravy.

Plot: This is the story of a group of new interns at The House Of God. the best teaching hospital in the world, according to Dr. Joe Piscopo. Dr. Piscopo is Chief Intern. Surprisingly, he never once does a cheesy Frank Sinatra impression, nor does he ever make stupid faces for the camera. I don't know who dropped the ball there. When we first meet the group of interns, they're all in various states. Some are bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to get doctoring and medicine doing. There's a black guy dressed like a pimp, there's a jewish guy that looks like Horshack. No asians though. Lead among them (meaning most handsome) is Roy Basch (Matheson).

The Fatman is there to lead them through their studies. he introduces them to the idea of a "Gomer" or "Get out of my emergency room".  Gomers, he says, never die. This is demonstrated a number of times with varying degrees of comedy. The first Gomer the interns meet immediately struggles against the interns helping her, and she falls out of the bed. This, as it turns out, is fairly common, so The Fatman hands the interns a helmet to slap on her. It's a New Orleans Saints helmet. Not sure if that's part of the joke.

The Fatman has a lot of advice along these lines. He says that since Gomers don't die, they have to be forced out of the hospital by other means. These range from creative (Scaring a patient with a painful procedure so she leaves) to the unthinkable (Raising a patient's bed so when he inevitably falls out of it, it causes a more serious injury and is transferred). The idea of getting these Gomers transferred is called "Turfing" them. All these acronyms and jargons don't really add up to much, but they're fun.

Along the way, the characters grow in various ways. The handsome one falls for a nurse. The black guy can't handle the pressure because he really just wanted to be a singer. They introduce a contest to see who can do the most autopsies so doctors start intentionally letting patients die. The handsome one wants to be the best doctor he can and lets relationships suffer. One guy, when blamed with a patients death, jumps off the building. It should be said, that while these are wildly varying themes, tonally, the movie handles these pretty well. If I had one complaint, it's that the plot is sorta cartoony at times, but the tone is unable to take it far enough.

Why Was It Forgotten? Scrubs. You remember that show right? Man, what ever happened to Zach Braff? Yeah, I don't care either. Where was I? Scrubs set out to say many of the same things this movie says. Now, I know this story predates Scrubs by several decades, but in a world where Scrubs exists, it's easy for this to get lost in the depths. In fact, tonally, this seems to have been the main influence on Scrubs. There are new doctors fighting against becoming completely jaded, but bonding with each other. Here though, the wise all knowing janitor is replaced by 2 wise all knowing police officers. Also changing, the main character falls for the nurse, not the sidekick.

Scrubs was far more accessible though. The dialogue moved fast, but not this fast. Also, smartly, it slowed down when they were talking about medical jargon. Here though, the characters talk equally fast no matter what they're talking about. While this may seem more realistic, but makes it harder to keep up with for the layperson.

Also, I dunno if this has to do with people forgetting this movie, but it is vaguely, and sometimes overtly, racist. There's only one black intern in the group. When we first meet him, he's dressed audaciously, pimplike if you will. Turns out he's from the inner city in Memphis. The only way he got into college is by filling out a card with his race and financial status. Same with med school and the internship itself. So the only black guy is only there because he's black. You can fill in the gaps.

What Went Right? Scrubs again. People should probably give this movie a shot if they liked Scrubs. it's funny enough, I found myself laughing quite a few times, and it has the more touching moments (far less compelling). It's fun watching the interns learn their ways around the hospital. Plus, Joe Piscopo is kept to a very minimal role, only appearing in a few scenes. That, above all else, is to be commended. It's unfortunate though that the movie completely falls apart whenever it attempts any sort of plot developments. The characters are fun at least.

Verdict: Proto-Scrubs and very little Joe Piscopo, not too shabby!

Score: 65%