Dracula 1979 A Movie A Day Day 71

Frank Langella should have sued Michael Crawford and "The Phantom of the Opera" years ago for misappropriation of acting. It is clear that the Phantom cribbed his unique sensual gestures and body movement from the performance of Langella as the title character in this film. Frank Langella did the play for a year before they made the movie, so I'm sure all those New York stage actors (paging Mr. Crawford) saw him do it live. Of course the film version keeps it preserved for everyone to see up till this day. All of Dracula's hand gestures are slow, sensual and purposeful. No actions are wasted. His bearing and posture are commanding when they need to be and yielding when needed to convey his love for the bride that he has chosen for himself. I don't want to sound too gay, after all I watched "Xanadu" right before this today, but Frank Langella was a good looking man. He made this movie and the best reason to see it is his presence and performance.

I remember reading about the play while I was doing research on one of the debate topics in college. Remember in the late seventies, there was no internet and if you wanted access to the New York papers in Los Angeles, you went to the library. There I came across the reviews of the stage production and I heard the rumors of a movie being made. As it turns out, the movie is a revision of the Dracula legend from a romantic perspective. The stage play is only partially included, since it was so bound to the format of a Broadway play. The script and the director for this project did an excellent job of capturing the romantic elements of the play while still making this an effective motion picture that has a broader canvas to work on. There are horror elements but they are all very subtle, the focus is on the sexual power that Dracula wields over the other characters. I was quite looking forward to this when it came out and I was surprised how effective it was despite the absence of big action set pieces and the bloody horror you would expect from a film about Dracula. That is not to say it was not frightening, but the scares come from background scenes and cool photography with a splattering of make up effects. To add an expectation of horror, listen to Percy Rodriguez do the voice over for the trailer. This is the same guy that sold Jaws to millions four years earlier.

While the two women that Dracula seduces, do have some horror elements and sport the teeth we come to expect, our lead character never shows fang and blood is not present in any of his scenes. The atmospheric elements account for most of the chills. We see a hand creeping slowly around the top of one of the boxes that carries Dracula's native soil, there are some shots of the dead crew of the ship that brings him to England, but best of all, there is a fantastically spooky scene of Dracula crawling down a wall that raises the hair on the back of your neck. When Van Helsing confronts his own dead daughter, the denouncement is one of the most chilling things that you will experience. There are a couple of other effects and horror moments, but let's get back to the romance. Dracula make his first full appearance in the film after several minutes of set up. It is a grand and sweeping entrance into a dining room by the door, not through the window at night. He is dressed to the nines and ready to lay-down some vampire pipe on the local lovelies. They are all too willing once they get a look at him. His hypnotic powers are enough to cause one woman to collapse and another to leave her fiance. Lucy is so anxious to get her some vampire loving that she does not even wait to greet the father of her dead friend when he arrives, instead she goes rushing into the arms of her dark lover. I think women were very understanding of this the way Langella was shot and dressed.

I looked at Bingo Long's Traveling All Stars and Motorcade a couple of days ago, this movie was shot by the same director. This was John Badham's third feature after "Saturday Night Fever". He is a much more assured director with this movie. All of the first three films he did work because he gets the location of the story correct. 1930's America was evoked very effectively in the baseball movie. Brooklyn in the 70's feels like Saturday Night. The late Victorian era of this movie is wonderful, from the castles that are used as the exteriors for the asylum and the abbey to the sets of the interiors with grotesque faces as doorways, spiders in the foreground and mist in the hills and cemeteries. This movie was not nominated for any Academy Awards but it deserved to be for Art Direction and for one other element. The score of the film is by the great John Williams and it is lush, foreboding and romantic. I think it may have been overlooked because it was not as grandiose as the work he did for Lucas and Spielberg, but it adds the the atmosphere of the movie immensely.

We saw this movie at the Garfield Theater with Kathy and Art a year before both sets of couples married. My memory is that all of us liked it quite well and I think of course the girls liked it especially. I would not be surprised if romance that night got a bit overheated. The theater was huge, the movie was romantic and the crowds were somewhat sparse. I think I expected it to be a huge film with long lines, but it was only a modest hit and we probably saw it later in the week that it opened so on a weeknight the crowd was not great. The theater was not a passion pit drive in, but I think there was some cuddling going on and a couple of sloppy kisses exchanged. Youth of course is wasted on the young, it is so much easier to appreciate the time s of your life well after they occur. This was a late entry into my favorite summer ever and I have not seen it in twenty years, but it still holds up. Dee watched some of it tonight with Amanda and Allison watching as well. They have gone out with their cousin for dinner. I think I'll sneak back in the family room and see if Frank Langella had the same effect 31 years later.

Mother, Jugs & Speed 1976 A Movie A Day Day 70

I picked this movie for today because I just heard from by best friend in college, Dan Hasegawa, and he is in town for a couple of days. We are going to have dinner with him tonight and catch up a bit. I have not seen Dan in 12 years or so and I have not talked with him for about 18 months. He and I saw a lot of movies together while we were both in college and even after I was married, we had time during the day to see films because I taught part-time at night. We saw this movie together when it first played in theaters back in 1976, we saw it on the big screen in Hollywood at the Egyptian Theater. I'm not sure why except sometimes Hollywood was the only place a film would play for a time so maybe we saw it early in it's run. It was promoted like an irreverent comedy with personality plus. I think that is a little misleading. There is quite a bit of humor but it is frequently offset by grim circumstances and some unpleasant characters. I did not care for it much when we first saw it and after today's viewing my position is only slightly less negative.

There are several things going for the movie that ought to make it sing a lot more. For instance it is set in Los Angeles, my city of choice for school and social activities, but you never get much sense of the place. The ambulance crews do not seem to work in one specific neighborhood or with any particular group of people. Part of the drama ends up being about how these guys need to function without feeling too much for the people that they cannot help. The problem with that is there is very little drama if everyone is detached. Harvey Kietel is third billed and his character is supposed to be a suspended police officer. At first it seems that he is the one that will bring some conscience to the group, but not much comes out of that. Bill Cosby is supposed to be the mother hen of the band of pirate ambulance drivers but there is very little to distinguish him from anyone else on the staff. He does not really come across as sympathetic. I loved Bill Cosby albums,and his stand up routine. As a comedian he is fine, but as an actor he just seems a little flat. Sometimes he mugs for the camera, but other then the familiar smart ass grin he gives in the funny scenes, his dramatic expression is blank faced. I think he worked on television better because as a weekly visitor to our homes we get a chance to know the quirks of the character and get used to the way he communicates. Here and in other movies, he just seems to be forcing it or underplaying so much that it doesn't work. His character is underwritten so that he can riff on the part, which should work for a comedian like him, but the story needs a bit more focus and he fails to provide it.

Raquel Welch was never a great actress, but she was good for the roles she was given. She is also lovely to look at but her moniker in this film is only hinted at, there are no sexy shots of her and she is pretty much playing it straight. As a crusading woman seeking equality in the workplace, the character is actually pretty representative of issues that women might have faced in the work environment. She has a love affair with Kietel that needs a little more development. He is almost wasted in the part, but he does have a couple of good scenes and the comic part he plays in Raquel's first ambulance chase is actually a strong motivation for her to overcome her previous ambivalence. Larry Hagman is in the film as a bad guy but he is supposed to be a comic bad guy. Unfortunately he turns out to be a rapist and a potential murderer under the influence of alcohol. He is actually the best performer in his role in the film, but it is not the lead, he disappears for most of the second act, and he is a lousy human being. I remember one thing from the first time I saw the movie that always disturbed me. Hagman basically sexually assaults a comatose coed in the back of the ambulance and it was sort of played for laughs, but I found it disgusting and it was one of the sad things about the movie that turned me off of it.

Bruce Davison from Willard and X-Men, is Mother's first partner, his story is over too quickly. Dick Butkiss is in the background of the movie but barely has any lines, none that are funny and he does nothing in the story. Allen Garfield, has been in a ton of stuff over the years, he was in the Candidate a couple of weeks ago. Here he is the owner of the ambulance company and he is sometimes funny, sometimes obnoxious and sometimes sympathetic. His opening take on the "Patton" type introduction is very effective and they used it in the trailers. L.Q. Jones plays a corrupt sheriff's officer that gets kickbacks for tipping off the ambulance company. He needs to have more to do in the story because there is a lot of charm in his voice and manner, but the part could have been done by anyone.

I hate to dump on Tom Mankiewicz, who we lost just a week ago and who Amanda and I saw last year at the Bond festival, but he is a producer and screenwriter for this movie and it is underwritten. The Director was Peter Yates who did "The Deep" that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago as well. This movie feels like a shaggy dog story that needed to be developed more as a dramatic piece and tightened when it came to the humor. The trailer makes it a much funnier film, so if the editor of the coming attractions can see what is worthwhile in the picture, it befuddles me why the screenwriter and director could not. The actors are a little lazy in their performances and the action is too random to keep us very interested. This is a movie that needed to decide what it wanted to be and then pushed in that direction. As it is it seems aimless.

Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings 1976 A Movie A Day Day 69

We are back from the wilds of the U.S. northernmost state a place of great beauty and bountiful resources. I'd like to thank my padwan learner for taking over while we were gone. I checked in on line several times and enjoyed the posts at 75cents a minute. This is a good reason for her to take over, as slow as I type if I had tried to do the posts from the boat, I'd have spent as much as I did sending her to U.S.C.. It also helps that she did a bang up job on the movies she watched. You can check the comments sections for additional info, I'm sure you all enjoyed them as much as I did.

Today, Lando Calrissian faces down Darth Vader a year before either of them appeared in the Star Wars movies. This showdown tales place right at the start of this movie and you know these two will be the featured stars of the film from the dialogue and set up we get in the first couple of minutes. This movie is set in 1939, before World War II, before the breaking of the color barrier in baseball and well into the depression era. The times were politically charged and there is a strong socialist theme underlying some of the motivations of the ballplayers. The only way that it works though is if they are entrepreneurs and take some risks in order to get a profit. I guess that undercuts the revolutionary talk in the movie, this is really a story about how a group of oppressed people take charge of their own lives and try to make it work the old fashioned way, by building a better mousetrap.

It has been a number of years since I saw the movie but I remembered most of it pretty well. There are good guys and bad guys, tight scrapes, a old time car chase, and some fun baseball shenanigans for everybody. The actors are solid for the parts that they play except on the diamond. James Earl Jones looks like a ballplayer from the times but he can't really swing the bat convincingly. Lando, I mean Billy Dee Williams, is the All Star Pitcher, but there is nothing intimidating about him or his pitching style. He is our hero, the one with the chip on his shoulder that inspires the others to band together to form a barnstorming baseball team to compete with the owners of the negro league teams that they all come from. The Negro leagues had some of the finest players in the history of the game and it is a shame that it took so long for this country to grow up in regard to race. 71 years ago a black man could not play professional baseball with white men. Today, the President of the United States still can't play baseball, but that is because he is a basketball player, not because he is black.

The struggles of the characters against not only economic strife and racism, but against a group of owners that treated their teams like sharecroppers. I don't know how accurate the portrayal of the black owners is, but it helps make the film more accessible because it is injustice that the players are fighting against, not simply another race. The owners scheme to break up the all-stars as a threat to their power, and insensitive bigots take advantage of their racial power to cheat the team. At each juncture, the team comes up with creative solutions and makes a go of their enterprise as best they can. The two leads represent the moral conscience of their situation and are usually in agreement. The final breakdown of the team before it's resurrection, occurs because one of the leads will not tolerate theft, as justified as it might appear to have been. In the end there is a reconciliation because they face a bigger common enemy.

Richard Pryor is in this movie and he plays it mostly for laughs, but he is not mugging it up, his character is just a funny guy. Some of the same themes are in "Greased Lightning" which I wrote about earlier in the summer. There are a lot of familiar character actors working in this movie. One of them, Tony Burton, is best known as Apollo Creed's manager in the Rocky films. He was a customer of Bert Kaplan's insurance office when Dolores worked for Bert in the early 1980's. He is a good actor and was a very nice man as well. I always get Ted Ross and Reginald VelJohnson from "Die Hard" confused with one another. They both have those voices that work so well in these character roles. Ted Ross is the evil team owner in this movie, in "Arthur" a few years later, he plays the very sympathetic chauffeur. This was a mostly black cast in a movie that was designed for a broad audience. Some of that kind of film-making seems to be missing these days. It seems too often that the audiences are targeted too narrowly today. I still want to see the re-make of "Death at a Funeral" because I enjoyed the original, but why is it remade three years later with an all black cast? This is a marketing decision not a artistic choice.

The movie looks really good, the production is very authentic. The baseball parks and automobiles fit the times really well. I loved the uniforms of the team, the way they extended a rainbow theme and the name of the team across each player's chest so that you can see the rainbow and read the title when they stood next to each other in order was really original. I watched this today on my trusty laser-disc player and it was a good print with one terrible jump cut when the disc changes sides.This was the first feature film of John Badham, a director that made a lot of noise in the late seventies and early eighties. Originally, Steven Spielberg was going to do this film, but when Jaws broke open the money flood, he was given a chance to do his pet project "Close Encounters" instead. It is interesting to think how the movie might have been different if Spielberg had directed. I think Billy Dee Williams performance might have been stronger with a director who knew how to get the right emotions out of the actors. Billy Dee is not bad, but this movie could have been great instead of just really good if he had been more effective.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Today is my last post. I have had a lot of fun watching these films and writing about them and I hope you all have enjoyed hearing my thoughts and opinions. The film I chose for today is one of my favorites. It's a musical and, it might even be my favorite musical. I always go back and forth on musicals because I think my taste in them is really dependent upon my mood at the time.

Jesus Christ Superstar was released in 1973 and is based on the musical stage play of the same name. Music by Andrew Llyod Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice. I love the music in this film. I've always been really picky about the soundtrack of a musical. If I like the film version, I usually don't like the stage version. I guess that's because I'm usually exposed to the film version first and it's what I base my rating system off of. I do enjoy seeing the stage versions of the stories though, seeing a live presentation of the story and music I enjoy so much. I just don't want their soundtracks. I do have to admit though that I've never seen a stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

I took a class on musicals at USC this last semester and we learned about the history of the film musical and the transformations it has undergone. We very briefly spoke abut this film. My professor used it as an example of the genre adapting to changing practices of the industry. After the studio breakup and the breakdown of the star system, musicals lost a lot of funding because they were so expensive to produce. The costumes and sets alone could cost the same as two sets of costumes and sets for two dramatic films. Musicals were all about spectacle, which meant they needed a lot of people and a lot of colorful props and fixings. So, once the studios broke up, musicals weren't affordable any more and it was hard to find a producer who would back such a risky investment. The musical genre had other issues to deal with as well, such as on location films. Musicals couldn't be easily moved from the soundstage to an actual location because of things mentioned before. However, some tried because that's what audiences wanted to see.

So, Jesus Christ Superstar is an example of a "runaway production." it's a film that takes its cast and crew out of the studio, and even country, to go to a location and film there. It was filmed in Beit Guvrin, Israel. It takes everything on location. This is done for many reasons. It helps compete against other genres that can show widescreen landscapes and, it's cheaper to shoot outside the US. So this film adapted to the times it was in.

I like that I was able to take a class that talked about some of my favorite films and teach me new things about them. But back to the film and why I love it. I'm not sure exactly what makes it so enjoyable for me. I love the music, the stylization and the atmosphere of the whole thing. I think its imagery is indicative of the time it was made in, and I don't think that's bad. The tanks and airplanes are war symbols and war and protest were prevalent during this time. Even the "den of thieves" scene was indicative of the time period. The items for sale date the film a little and I wonder what a modern version would have instead of some of the items seen in the film. Perhaps cell phones and iPods would be items for sale in a modern "den of thieves" but I still think guns, other weaponry and drugs would also still be there.

I know a lot of people love it and a lot hate it. Some people don't like what it says religiously, others hate the rock opera aspect of it. For me, both these things make it a movie I never get tire of year after year.



Also, I just have to say I think this is actually a pretty cool trailer.

Live and Let Die

Today's film is my favorite Roger Moore Bond film. Live and Let Die was released in 1973 and was Roger Moore's first film as James Bond. Now, Moore isn't my favorite Bond, Sean Connery is, of course. Connery is, I think, the perfect representation of Ian Fleming's Bond. He has just the right amount of charm, sarcasm, badassery and dickery (Allison's word). Moore is also good for the interpretation that he does. I like the puns and gimmicky stunts and gadgets. He's the "funny" Bond, which works well for the stories told in his films.

Live and Let Die is an interesting film in the Bond series because, not only does it have to introduce a new Bond, it has to do so after the filmmakers already tried a new one, and went back to the original. Moore is very different than Connery and Lazenby, although more so like Lazenby. They had to establish him as a different character and I think they did a pretty good job. He is still the charming, flirtatious Bond but now with a little more humor and corniness. It works, and so does Live and Let Die. It has Jane Seymour, a pretty cool boat chase, and the amazing alligator/crocodile stunt. It drags a little at some points but I think it makes up for those moments during the action sequences. It's also restricted by a lot of 70s' trappings like costuming and some of the technology. However, I think the Bond films still work years later because the action is still thrilling, the women are still beautiful and Bond is still every one's hero.

I just saw that Tom Mankiewicz passed away on July 31st. I had the good fortune of seeing Live and Let Die on the big screen a few months ago for a class I took on the James Bond phenomenon and right before we watched the film, he did a Q & A with us. I also saw him at a panel I attended with my dad that USC set up for the James Bond Festival they put on that my professor actually hosted. I realize now how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to hear him speak on something he seemed to take much pride in. He told us many stories and he was a joy to have come to our class. I just can't believe that I saw him just a few months ago and now he's gone. I really enjoyed hearing the stories he told us about working on the Bond films. His favorite seemed to be the one where Albert Broccoli made sure he got a suite when working on Diamonds are Forever. I believe he said Broccoli spoke to Harry Saltzman, who explained that the suite would cost more than they were paying Mankiewicz. Broccoli responded with, "I don't care. He's writing the f*@king movie."

I really like this film and I am so happy I had the chance to hear from the writer, not once but twice. I can't believe he's gone. He seemed so happy and full of life when I saw him and he seemed incredibly proud of the work he did. I have enjoyed his films over the years and I expect that I will enjoy them for many more.



I love the James Bond character and I have enjoyed all the interpretations so far. I was worried though, and even asked the creators of the last two Bond films at the panel whether or not they were concerned, that the films were getting too serious. I love the new style and approach taken but I worry that some of the things that make Bond so fun and enjoyable to watch is being lost in these new films. I think each Bond has contributed to what the character should be, and is. Connery personified the character by lifting him from the pages of the novels and onto the screen. He gave the character life. Even Lazenby contributed by showing a different side of the character. And Roger Moore made the character light and funny. I know the character's main sensibilities come from the writing but I really do think the actors make the writing real for the audience and contribute just as much. Both are needed and both are just as important and I just worry a little that all the work done on the character by all these great actors and writers may be tossed away in the upcoming films (if we even see a new one). I just hope the creators remember what the character has been through and how it has grown. Bond really is the world's hero. He deserves the best because he has provided material for many entertaining stories that generations and generations of people have enjoyed. Every time I see a James Bond film I am surprised by new things I discover about the film. I hope that in the future, I will continue to enjoy these and future films and be able to share my love of the character with those I love.

The Longest Yard (1974)

Football film today! I love football and I love football films. Of course, I don't love all football films. I really hate it when a film gets something wrong or asks its audience to suspend its disbelief too much. If I'm watching a sports film I want the sports parts to look like sports. Luckily The Longest Yard didn't do anything like this to piss me off.

I really enjoyed today's film. It had football, a car chase and Burt Reynolds. Where could it go wrong? I was surprised by how violent it got at some points. For example, when Caretaker is killed, I was really taken aback. It was a harsh reminder that these guys are in prison because they are bad people who have done bad things. I think that's one of the things that made me like the film so much. It is so funny at times and then it can quickly get serious. There is the murder scene and at the beginning Burt Reynolds attacks the woman and throws her to the ground. There are even slight moments like when they're in the file room. They're going through the records on the inmates and listing off some of the things they did. I liked that it could balance those funny and really serious moments well.

The football scenes were good too. I jumped up at one point and was screaming at the player on the screen saying, "Go! Go! Go!" Allison watched the film with me and at this point she looked at me and told me it was just a movie. I can always tell when a sports movie gets the sports parts right because I usually end up standing on furniture yelling at the tv.

I'm sorry about the trailer today. I couldn't find the actual film trailer but I found the one for the DVD. All I found film related were a bunch of clips from the movie and the trailer for the 2005 remake. I have to say even though I haven't seen the new one, I am pretty sure I would not like it. I'm not a huge Adam Sandler fan, in fact I usually hate his films. We saw the trailer for this one before the film started and I kept thinking "man I hope the film isn't like this." And, it wasn't!

Battle for the Planet of the Apes

This was the last of the Science Fiction films for me this week. Next we have a football movie, a Bond film and a musical. Hope these posts have been entertaining in some way, and now on to today's film.

Today's film, released in 1973 is the last in the Planet of the Apes series. I don't really know how I feel about today's film. I really liked Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and its underlying messages but today's film wasn't as ... eloquent? I don't think it was as cohesive as yesterday's movie, both in its story and message. It fell a little flat for me. I wasn't as caught by the anger between the apes and humans as I was yesterday. It was okay, not great.



I don't know why but the ape faces really bothered me in this film. They looked especially fake and I don't think it would have been as distracting as it was to me, except that, as I said, I felt the story was lacking. But it is hard to be the last in a series that starts with such a groundbreaking film as Planet of the Apes.

To give the film a little break, I did like Lew Ayres as Mandemus. I thought the questioning required to obtain the weapons was a nice touch. It is also the last in the series so it has questions to answer or paths to change. It ends fairly hopeful and I guess that's a good thing.

The film also attempts to answer the question of whether or not people (or apes) can outrun, change their destiny. Throughout the film it is suggested that the paths may change but the end result will be the same but the ending suggests that people/apes can, and did choose their futures. That's a more positive outlook than most Science Fiction films of this time. Of course, the film does start off with the end of a nuclear war and people and apes at odds with each other, though trying to live peacefully.

So, the two Planet of the Apes films I watched were entertaining, I liked one a little more than the other, and thought it was a little more developed but, in the end they both had the same effect on me. They made me want to watch the original Planet of the Apes.