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%