Futureworld 1976 A Movie a Day Day 15

Spoiler Warning!!! if you watch the Trailer Before the Movie, Some Secrets Are Revealed, the same goes for the poster image.


I got to this one a little late in the day. One of the reasons I picked it was I thought it would be relatively brief. It was just over two hours so my memory is clearly fuzzy on this one. This was an August 1976 release, so it is possible that I saw it with Dolores but that seems less likely than I saw it with someone else. It might even have been a movie I saw with my friend on the USC Debate team, Jon Cassanelli. We hung out a lot during this summer, getting ready for the next year of debate.I was at his house in North Hollywood a lot that summer. We sat at a partner desk and did research, typed briefs and tried to stay cool. The main reason I think he must have been the person I saw it with, was that it was the kind of film he would like. It is not very serious, had some fun lines and bits of business and I think we may have gone to a multiplex in the valley in search of better air conditioning.

This is a sequel to the more well known "Westworld". The rights must have belonged to someone not at MGM, because this is an American International film. They were famous for drive in exploitation and cheap European dubbed cinema. While this is clearly not a high budget production, they get a lot of bang for their buck. There is a clever sequence involving holographic chess, that is a year before the scene in Star Wars on the Millennium Falcon. The special effects are not amazing as they were in Star Wars but the concept is well executed and it fits with some of the other material in this section of the film pretty well. Most of their money probably went to Yul Bryner, to get him to come back and play the role of the iconic robot gunman from the original film. He is only in the movie for one five minute scene, and it is a dream sequence that has nothing to do with the story except it showcases the machine that the bad guys can use to get all of your personal information. There is probably a reason that the female character has a sex fantasy related to the gunslinger, but it is not really explained. Early in the movie a comic character, who disappears after the first half of the movie, talks about robot sex and even asks our heroine if she is going to try it. This may be the source of the dream, but it gets Yul Bryner in the movie and allows the filmmakers to use his image in the advertising.

If you watch the trailer or see the movie poster, you will know the secret plot of the movie much sooner than necessary. Amanda had not seen either and while we were watching, she was creeped out by a couple of the things that are going on and she was in suspense as the story unfolded. She did not know where things were headed and it kept her in the movie. Another thing that might have helped is that she has not seen all those other films from the 1970s where there is a conspiracy to do something terrible and political and the journalists are the Hero (Capricorn One, The Parallax View among others.) So this movie does march out a bunch of familiar tropes from that time period. After the stuff that happened in the 60s and 70s, everyone was a little paranoid and looking for trouble. I hope we have gotten over that, but I still see those 911 truthers selling books and see people posting on news sites about the space program that deny the moon landings. I guess paranoia isn't going to disappear, but it is less part of the popular culture than it once was.

There have been attempts over the years to re-make Westworld. In fact, I think there was a script and pre-production and casting but the green-light went red. Arnold was going to play the gunslinger, and that might have worked because although he does not look much like a cowboy, the robot part fits him well and he has no lines. Futureworld is not likely to get remade, although it is not a bad idea. It was not a big hit, it has largely been forgotten, and there are technical advances that would make it a very interesting movie. As I said earlier, they did get a lot out of what they spent. The film does not look cheap, but there are very limited effects. I did think that unlike the original Westworld, the things to do in the differnt parts of the Delos Park this time, seemed more intriguing.

Blythe Danner is the female lead and she looks very much like her daughter, Gweneth Paltrow in a couple of scenes. Her big dream sequence is sexy without having much sex in it, and she carries off the showdown she has at the end pretty well. Peter Fonda is OK, but fairly standard issue. After the clunky opening set up of the mystery, he settles in nicely. There are not a lot of movies that end with a middle finger being slung at the antagonists, but along with Easy Rider, Peter Fonda is in two of them. Arthur Hill, who seemed like he lived at my house in the 1970s because he was on so many TV programs and movies, plays a pretty familiar genial on the surface but not very trustworthy otherwise character. Hal Holbrook could easily have replaced him and I would not notice. They must have auditioned for the same roles all the time in the 70s. Also in the film is Stuart Margolin, a TV actor that showed up in movies pretty regularly. If you ever watched the Rockford Files, he played Angel, Rockford's weaselly friend. He is also well cast for his part.

This is another one of those high concept science fiction movies from the 1970s, that existed before the term high concept was widely used a few years later. It is not as great as Soylent Green or Capricorn One, but it will entertain you for a couple of hours and that's what Westworld and Futureworld are all about (just remember that the people you watch this with are not sex robots waiting to entertain you after the feature).

Rocky II 1979 A Movie a Day Day 14

This time I want to start with a story about the movie going experience instead of the movie itself. This is one of the few things in my life that I am ashamed of, rather than just embarrassed. I went to see this movie twice on opening day. The first time was with Dan and Art, and we went in the afternoon and had a great time. Here is the part I don't like to admit, we then picked up Dolores and Kathy, and took them out for the evening, and we did not tell them we had already seen the movie. I'm not sure why we did this, except that we suspected they would not be interested in going if we had already gone, and we wanted to experience their reaction to the movie. It was a lousy thing to do, to keep this from them. On the way out of the movie, one of us finally announced that we had gone that afternoon, and all hell broke loose. It was some kind of violation that in retrospect seems obvious, but at the time probably appeared to be inoffensive. I'm not sure if Kathy ever recovered from this, and we had weird episodes at the movies with her on many subsequent occasions.

I know I apologized to Dee, and I have never done anything like this since. I have done plenty of other stupid things related to movie going, including seeing a movie or two that she wanted to go to without her. That was usually a result of my not realizing her goal in the situation, it has never been a deliberate deception. By the way, Dolores, once again I am sorry.

Now to the movie itself. I have read other comments suggesting that the Rocky sequels are all unnecessary. I would have been perfectly fine if they had not happened because I agree, there was nothing to fix in the original. The first Rocky is perfection. It was the little movie that could and did win us over. There were no big stars or expectations, just the strength of the story and the passion of the writer/creator of the character. Over the years, Stallone probably got a bad rap for many of the choices he made. Some of the acting roles he took just did not work, and some of the films he directed, although successful, were not very good. That having been said, Rocky 2 represents the qualities of the underdog he was and it is true to the character he created. After the success of the original Rocky, Stallone made a couple of duds and it looked like his career might flame out. He had enough cache left however to leverage himself the directors role on this movie as well as star and writer.I think he acquitted himself very well.

My memory of the original LA Times review was that they thought it did not seem true to his character, some of the things he does in the movie. I think that is exactly the point. Rocky needs to figure out who he is. That he created a name for himself in the first fight with Apollo Creed, doesn't mean he knows how to handle his life and new notoriety. In a contemporary version of this story there would have to be a couple of violent confrontations and cruel teasing to get him back in the ring. There is a bit of psychological manipulation, but most of the motivation to fight comes from the fact that this is how he finally defined himself. He does not get back into the ring with Creed because he has been called chicken, but because he defined himself as a man by being a fighter and taking care of Adrian. When he no longer fights, he has a hard time doing the one other thing that defined him.

The movie starts off by repeating the last few minutes of the previous film. There is a lot of positive emotion in that, and it is dangerous, because you remind the audience of their high expectations. The final outcome however is earned because what goes on during the middle part of the film is a reminder of why we loved these characters in the first place. It is manipulative, but guess what, that is what a good director does. He finds the right buttons to push so that you will care about the story and be satisfied that you took the trip. There is not a betrayal of the first film by the second. It is a different story,with a different outcome but with the same honest circumstance we began with in the first movie. The biggest theft of a movies well earned love with characters, came in the opening of Alien 3. That movie flushed the preceding movie down the toilet and said,"let's start it over by kicking the audience in the teeth." Rocky 2 doesn't make that mistake. Of course it can't live up to the first time, that movie came out of nowhere. Just as a second kiss or date is an extension of the relationship you started, it will not have the same electricity. Does that render it worthless? I'll tell you what, I've kissed my wife a thousand times since the first electric touch of our lips. It has not always been the same, but they are all worth something and they don't make the first time meaningless. The slogan in the trailer captures the true nature of the movie; "His whole life was a million to one shot" (the original tagline for Rocky), "Now he shows he's one in a million." It fits but yet it is different. Just like the movie itself.

High Plains Drifter 1973 A Movie a Day Day13

We just got back from the Yenny's where we had a great visit with our friends and a wonderful meal. Rick and Mary were on their way to Ontario to pick up Jimmy, so they stopped and had dinner with us as well. I reminded them about this blog and if they don't bother to bookmark it and read it on a regular basis, the next entries will be less friendly. All of this fits in with the theme of today's movie "High Plains Drifter". A vengeful spirit finds cruel ways to extract justice from a town that ignored the desperate pleas of their last lawman. Ok, I'm not a Marshall and no one is whipping me to death, but I am flogging this blog so give it some attention or I will haunt you.

Clint Eastwood is the star of at least a half dozen films on my summer blog list, this is the first one that he is featured in that I got to. I was a little annoyed to hear that Sam and Nate had not seen "Dirty Harry", and Ellie came in after the Rollino's left and did not even know what "Dirty Harry" was. Now let's get this straight, Clint Eastwood has been a movie star for twice as long as any of these kids have been alive, and It is just Un-American not to have seen Clint in his most iconic role. However, since it was not available at Blockbuster at a price the young Yenny boys could afford, I will give them some credit if they see this movie this summer. Other than Harry Callahan, Clint is best known for his westerns. "High Plains Drifter" was Clint's third directorial effort and it is a western that is substantially different from the Italian films he made in the 1960s. Although it might at first appear that the character of a nameless gunfighter is not too far from the Sergio Leone epics, the truth is this movie is a lot more twisted and the protagonist, a lot less sympathetic or heroic. In fact, this is actually a ghost story masquerading as a western. As the movie goes on, it gets creepier and crueler, and most of us would hope not to have a vengeful wraith like this after us.

A town is deeply afraid of three violent criminals that are set to be freed from the penitentiary. Their hired gunslingers are killed and they turn to the man responsible for leaving them in this situation. It turn out that this is not a remake of High Noon, with Clint in the Gary Cooper role. Instead, this movie is more like "The Haunting", where the innocent are few and the guilty are punished. The town of course has a secret, and none of the townsfolk are blameless in the back-story. Clint's character gets away with mentally torturing the towns people, stealing from them in the most obnoxious ways, and even getting away with rape. Still as the history of the story is told you don't take much pity on the residents of Lago. When the town gets relabeled "HELL", it is literally true. I may have already given away more of the story than I should, but you oldtimers who have seen it won't care and if any one has yet to see it, there are still a lot of key things I have left out. The trailer at the top of the page is actually pretty effective at setting up the movie and not giving anything away. The supernatural twist is left out entirely, but I think you will enjoy the movie more if you are spooked a little from the beginning.

There are a bunch of familiar faces in the cast. Anthony James appears as one of the merciless outlaws, his is a face you will recognize from a dozen places. He usually plays a sniveling heavy,he has a gaunt, greasy look that filled that bill in most of his movies. Early in his career, he played the killer in "In the Heat of the Night", and his last movie before retiring from acting was "Unforgiven" where he played "Skinny" the owner of the billiards parlor that makes the mistake of decorating his saloon with the body of Clint's friend. Not a bad pair of films to bookend your career. Geoffrey Lewis plays another of the killers, and he must have been in every movie Clint made in the 1970s. His daughter is the actress Juliette Lewis. There are several other faces that will pop up in Clint films over the next twenty years. Everyone one in the movie is just fine, and the whole town plays chicken quite convincingly. The only brave souls are the little person that becomes sheriff/mayor of the town and the current sheriff.They might be considered brave because they parade around a target for the rest of the town's men to practice shooting at, and none of these guys could hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun. The two sheriffs could have been drilled during target practice.

For at least a year, Dan Hasegawa, Art Franz and I would accuse anyone who couldn't hear us of having "pigshit" in their ears because of a line in this movie. When you are fifteen, saying "pigshit" seemed cool. Clearly it was not and that might explain why none of us had a date to take to the prom in high school. Well, live and learn.

Enter The Dragon (1973) A Movie A Day Day 12

Let's face it, Bruce Lee is cool and will be for as long as anyone remembers him. His is an iconic image that radiates self confidence and power. There are many stars that you can clearly say are born with charisma, and Mr. Lee is right there. The closest approximation to "Cool", based simply on image that I can come up with is Steve McQueen. When I first heard about this movie, and saw other Kung Fu flicks that were coming out at the time, I was a doubter. "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid". Han Solo was talking for me when I first thought about these movie. Come on, a guy by himself kicking ass on dozens of other guys? Just step back and take a shot. In fact there is even a moment in Enter the Dragon, where they bother to explain that there are no guns on the island. None of that matters when Bruce Lee swaggers onto the screen. He sells the idea on one against a hundred. I would pity the guy who tried using a gun, Lee would have smirked him right off the screen.

I can't say that this movie was the template for every other chop socky film to come out since, especially since I haven't seen them all. I can say that everyone who has come after Bruce Lee, has always been measured by him. Fair or unfair, he is the gold standard for martial arts. What is remarkable about this is that this movie is actually fairly primitive. The flashback structure for our characters introductions, the impenetrable fortress, the martial arts tournament; all of these are pieces of business that are found in other films and often done with greater panache. The dialogue and the acting is spotty, and some of the plot just seems like warmed over spy stuff. None of that matters because they had a STAR. There are two film making choices that I thought worked in this movie; the one against a hundred fight with the guards, and the final fight against Han as it is reflected in a series of mirrors. Lee makes the mass battle work with his choreography of the stunts and confrontations. He sells it with his persona. He can't quite do that alone in the last scene because the guy playing the villain is not a very interesting actor, and he looks like he knows less kung fu than I do. So this is where the director and cinematographer earned they pay for the project. They shoot the moves through a prism of mirrors and angle to make it seem much more dramatic than it really is.

Everybody rightly mourns the early loss of Bruce Lee the actor, this film showed the world what his potential was. If he was this good in a piece of high grade schlock, it is easy to imagine how he could have evolved in some better projects. The movie is not bad, but there is a reason that it was so easy to parody over the years. There are over the top moments and cliches galore. Every henchman is loathsome, and is replaced by another equally loathsome. The goals of our heroes are straightforward and the plot does not surprise. As we were watching it this morning, Amanda commented that the Kentucky Fried Movie we saw a couple of weeks ago, was even funnier now. Allison is fascinated with "Balls of Fury", a stupid ping pong takeoff on this movie, I think she would enjoy it even more if she watched all of Enter the Dragon.

My memory is imperfect, I do know that some other Bruce Lee movies played at the Alhambra Theater on Main and Atlantic. I know because Art and his brother Jamie, changed the marquee each week and he joked about Fists of Fury. Enter the Dragon though, played at the Garfield Theater to my recollection. I don't remember who I saw it with, it might have been my late older brother Chris. We did see some films there together and this might have been one of them. There is some very brief nudity but the violence is not as graphic as it is today and I don't think I heard any curse words this morning. That could be a simple magician's trick however. Who would notice bad language when there is such coolness to look at?