The Rescuers 1977 A Movie A Day Day 22

Once upon a time, all my movie viewing at home was done on an amazing invention called a laserdisc player. These discs were 12" the same size as a vinyl LP. Many people these days imagine that this large and clunky process was problematic, but nothing could be further from the truth. Laserdiscs are elegant and the artwork for the packaging puts most DVDs to shame. The Laserdisc pioneered the notion of special editions, deleted material, feature archive, trailers and second audio soundtracks years before the smaller DVD came along. The movie I watched today is from my collection of over six hundred laserdiscs that I acquired between 1990 and 2008. I have transfered many to DVD, but this one I watched on my still functioning laser disc player.

The Rescuers was one of Disney's 1970s features that showed how the animation styles had grown tired and stilted. The drawings of contemporary cites, buses and buildings, look flat and uninteresting. The characters move well enough but with one or two exceptions, the degree of attention paid to the animated performance was not up to snuff. The songs are cute but not memorable in any way. I am not saying this movie was a failure, it just shows how the studio had reached the end of the line. There were two or three features that followed this one, before "The Little Mermaid" revitalized the feature animation business.

The script from the Rescuers may have followed the book closely, I don't know, but it does seem that we jump from one scene to another without much reason or rhythm. The plot is OK, but it is very dreary from the beginning, and is actually quite grim for most of the movie. In the sequel, there was another grim scenario but it was made much more appealing by spectacular vistas and flying sequences. Disney's latest traditionally drawn "Princess and the Frog" owes a lot in art design to the Rescuers. The two Alligator characters are templates for the gator in the recent film. The bayou setting has many of the same kinds of smokey images in both films. The southern accents in the Rescuers are much more comic in nature than accurate. It fed a stereotype of slow taking, lazy thinking southerners that I suspect people today would find offensive. Speaking of offensive, there is an element in the Rescuers that you would never see in a politically correct movie produced in the current environment. One of the minor characters makes his own alcohol and then consumes it to comic effect. Later in the movie another character is heroically revived by taking a big swig of this moonshine and everyone celebrates how it helps save the day. Can you imagine such a sequence from a kid's movie today? The studio would be pilloried by social and parents groups for selling the idea that alcohol has any redeeming features. If this movie were being rated today, instead of a G rating it would probably get a PG-13 for drug and alcohol use.

The voice actors were especially well cast and that makes up for some of the un-inventive animation. Bob Newhart is perfectly cast as the timid voiced but brave hearted Bernard. Eva Gabor is exotic and winsome as Bianca. They reprised their characters in the sequel as well. I was frustrated while watching the movie, trying to place the voice actor who played Mr. Snoops. I recognized the voice from the past but I could not quite put my finger on it. I finally cheated and looked on IMDB and it turned out to be Joe Flynn. He played the fussy and officious Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy. He did a dozen other Disney movies I'm sure. He died just a few days after finishing the voice work on this movie, which did not come out until three years after his death.

There is a lot to recommend in the movie, but it has very little life and older kids are likely to get bored because there is really not action or comedy for a long stretch at the beginning of the movie. Dolores was working at Disneyland the summer this movie came out, we did not get any discount but I remember merchandise and displays in the Main Street shops that featured the film. If you had a pleasant memory of the movie and want to share it with your child, it would be alright. Just don't expect the awe that comes with later Disney efforts or the classics from before Walt's death.

Sssssss (1973) A Movie a Day Day 21

As many of you are aware, Strother Martin was my mother's cousin. He lived with her family for a period of time when he was going to college and they were pretty close. When I was growing up in the 1960's I remember going to his home with Helen out in Agoura Hills for dinner on several occasions. One time when we were out there we visited a Animal Rescue Ranch, it might be the one Tippi Hedren ran but I'm not sure. I do know that as a kid I didn't like the baked beans Helen served one night and she told me to skip the next dinner. I was embarrassed because I was rude to my Mom's family. Helen seemed to forgive me though because later on as an adult, I was always greeted warmly when she came to my parent's place for dinner after Strother (Jay to all of us) had passed away. I know the date of his death because it was the night before my wedding. My Mom did not tell us, and I was so busy that I did not even realize they had not made it down for the service. I found out reading the paper a couple of days into our honeymoon and immediately called home. Mom said she did not want it to overshadow the day so she had just kept quiet. I was to discover over the years that she was pretty good at that kind of thing.

Sssssss, is one of the few starring roles Jay had in the movies. It was a B-type picture, but I am happy to point out that the producers were Zanuck/Brown, who two years later would create the greatest adventure/action picture of all time, (If you don't know,I'm not going to tell you). A couple of years before, he also starred in a low budget horror film called the Brotherhood of Satan. Brotherhood was not a summer release so it will not make this blog, but I am proud to stand up for Sssssss, as a good example of a 1970's style horror film. There are limited special effects, some good make-up, a creepy concept and some fine performers. Those things can go a long way in entertaining people. Cynical modern audiences might scoff at some of the visual concepts or plot points, a remake of this movie would feature CGI to a ridiculous degree. That is when the idea and the actors would become less important to telling a story.

Jay plays Dr. Stoner, an expert on snake venom and snakes. He is involved in some secretive research. The opening of the film, is a very creepy scene that features two good actors and a sound effect on the audio track that will give you nightmares, and you will see nothing. The story then sets up a couple of revenge plot elements and lays the foundation for some slow building ickyness. If snakes creep you out, this would make a good double feature with "Snakes on a Plane". You will see how effects and concept don't always make a movie better, sometime it is just different. Anyway, Dr. Stoner and his daughter run a research lab, and they do a venom milking show as a way to raise money. The new lab assistant from the University is given injections to help protect him from snake bite, or so he thinks.

The actors are all competent. Dirk Bendict plays the new assistant. He has some whiny moments because of the thing that happens to him, but he also gets to chase the girl in the lake naked. This was a sexy scene that is cleverly covered up by key placement of tree branches and leaves in the foreground. I don't remember that from when the film played in theaters, and I can' imagine any reason why it would be added later, except for TV showings. I was fifteen when the movie came out, so I probably imagined a lot more than was actually there. I remember thinking that the girl played by Heather Menzies was very attractive. She comes across very nerd like in the movie, so she may not have hit the spot for everyone, but she was my cup of tea at the time. I may be biased, but I thought Strother was great. He plays the role with the right amount of sympathy, sadness and crazy as a loon goofiness. There is a nice scene where he is reading Walt Whitman to a snake, and he is slightly drunk. It comes off as a little weird but also kind of sweet. The snake is his closest friend, and when bad things happen, he plays out the part like a geek based Charles Bronson. Richard Shull, another well known character actor, plays Dr. Stoner's nemesis, and he is pretty good at being pompous. The comeuppance he gets is disturbing with just one or two camera shots. This would be an unnecessary CGI shot today, good for shock value and laughs but not adding to the horror. This movie played on a double bill with "The Boy who Cried Werewolf", a movie I remember not at all. This was one of the final examples of a studio booking two films together. Double features continued for another 15 years, but the movies were put together by the theater management rather than the distributor.

The resolution of the movie is a little abrupt, but it coveys a strong horror response in one of our lead characters. It is definitely a 70's style shot and cut, designed to leave the audience aghast. The movie is not a world beater, but it has enough creeps and a fine performance from the star to justify seeing it. Jay was a nice man and an excellent actor. He died too young and he would have been great in some 80's movies also. He worked with Paul Newman a half dozen times, and John Wayne about the same. Most people will remember him from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he utters the famous line"What we've got here is a failure to communicate". His costars in this movie are not as famous, but one of them is a King. (Cobra that is.)

[This Poster is on my wall right now]

Summer of '42 1971 A Movie a Day Day 20

Was there ever a woman so longed for as Jennifer O'Neil in "the Summer of 42"? She was the epitome of beauty, grace and idealized love. Not just for the main character in the movie, but for all the men in the audience watching. She is seen early on in the film from afar, and in the last twenty minutes barely speaks a word, but her character is imprinted on every scene in the movie, including those that are comic and that she is not a part of. Our hero "Hermie" can't get her out of his head and neither can we. The casting agent that put her in this film should have received an award. This was a very effective performance, but it was a match between image and actress that makes the the movie work.

Gary Grimes, the actor that plays Hermie had some other parts in early 70's movies, but his performance here is really delicate and spot on, and he was really just a kid. Jerry Houser, who plays Hermie's best friend Oscy, has had a successful voice over career and still works. Neither will probably ever match the nuanced and comical work they did in this movie. The film came out in 1971 and I remember it well because it was a big hit and was playing in the theater in Crestline, Ca., the summer that my family performed for three months in a tent at Lake Gregory. I had always thought the movie was based on a book, but it is one of those rare cases where the book was based on the screenplay, became a bestseller before the movie came out, and made the author a bundle in two distinct ways. It is a memoir, so much of the story is supposedly based on the life of the author.

When I was in high school, I did an speech interpretation, using a section of the book , for my training at the Western Forensic Institute. I don't think I ever used it in competition myself, but I know I lent my interp to Bill Gross and Leo Mohr, for them to use as a duo interpretation when we were in college. My debate partner Rick and I, did Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane and they did the Summer of 42. Everybody seemed to get a kick out of the four of us "serious" debaters doing oral interpretation. If there is a list of the funniest pieces of business in the cultural atmosphere in the early 70's, right next to Monty Python's Knight's of Nee, would be the episode from the film where Hermie goes to the pharmacy to buy condoms. Watching it tonight, I was worried that it would not come across very well, times have changed so much. Amanda was cracking up however, so the point still seems to be funny, even if schools are passing out condoms at lunch these days. The movie is set of course in 1942 and the main characters are the same age as my parents would have been in that same year. I sometimes feel that I can see my folks when they were growing up because of this movie and a film set in the same time period called "Racing with the Moon". The clothes and music and cars and wartime background, are visualized very realistically, and the kids act like kids might have in that time period, not precocious transplants from contemporary times. Every outfit Jennifer O'Neil wears in this movie is sexy, without being flashy. People wore clothes everyday, that were fashionable but also elegant. Kids did dress down, but when they dressed up you knew it.

The music from this movie may be the most romantic tune ever created for a movie. I will include a link for you below, but it has images from the movie that you might want to wait to look at until after you have seen the movie yourself. Oh yeah, you should see the movie, It is a sweet meditation on the key moments in our lives. Those moments are not the same for everyone, but there is a point when you can say, after this I was different. The experience shared in this movie is a romantic one, but for anyone of us it could be unique; your first car, losing a job, changing schools, finding a new best friend. The movie is very tender and discrete in handling the coming of age story. The mood that permeated our family room afterward was somber. Amanda asked me if I had seen Jules and Jim because she felt very much the same at the end of that movie. I had not looked at this movie in twenty-five years or more, but I remembered it almost word for word. I guess it made quite an impression on me. I think everyone else will be impressed as well.

"Lifeguard" 1976 A Movie a Day Day 19

For all my friends from Torrance, here's one for you. This movie was filmed at the beach in your hometown. Maybe you will recognize it or maybe even better, you will remember them doing the filming and have some comments to post about that. I looked all over the place for a trailer for the movie and could not find one. Even the DVD does not provide a trailer. Also, it appears that prior releases of the film on home video and television have left out the original songs that were written by Paul Williams for the movie. The above clip contains the most effective use of the song in the movie and it gives you a much better sense of what the tone of the film is then the poster which you will find below.

There is only one reason to see the movie, and that is Sam Elliot. Not that there isn't a pretty good slice of life story and that it is done poorly. Quite the opposite is true, but the selling point and the whole reason the movie matters is Sam Elliot as the star. This guy should have been the biggest movie star in the world. He is not necessarily a great actor but he has charisma to burn, and frankly is better looking than just about anybody you or I ever met. There is a line in the movie where his character is discussing with an old girlfriend, some options he has, and she reassures him by saying, "You could always get everyone to like you", truer words about a character were never spoken. He is not always admirable in the movie. He casts aside a sexy blond he has been sleeping with pretty casually, and he gets involved with a girl who is underage. Still, despite the fact he is a scoundrel, he is a likable one that we understand.
This is a low key movie. There are only a couple of memorable events that you hang a story on, most of it is character based and very quiet. Elliot's character Rick, is facing a fork in the road. How long can he go on doing a job like his, and feeling like life has not passed him by? There is a very good sequence set at his 15th High School Reunion, that gives us a chance to see how conflicted he is about being a lifeguard, when the rest of his classmates appear to be more accomplished. Of course if you watch the first fifteen minutes of the movie, you will understand his dilemma because his job is great. He gets to go to the beach everyday, watch gorgeous women in skimpy swimsuits, work on a fantastic tan, and then go home and have beautiful women throw themselves at him. Is he refusing to grow up or has he grown up and no one else recognizes it?

There was only one scene that seemed a little false to me. He goes home and has dinner with his parents. They seem to have a very good relationship and there is a lot of warmth. Over the course of the dinner, his brother's research and new job are mentioned and his dad suddenly jumps on him about his lifestyle. Based on what came earlier, it just seemed like a plot point, not something that grew out of the story or character. A similar shift in tone occurs when he goes to interview for a job selling Porsche s, only here the switch in attitude better fits the situation and the character.

The movie is only an hour and thirty seven minutes, but it is a leisurely trip. I can't imagine this movie being made today by a major studio. Even independent films are more focused on plot than a character study like this. From the poster you can tell the studio was selling this as a comedy, and there are a few funny lines (Watch Rick at the bar, talking to a blond receptionist who doesn't get any of his jokes), but if you go into this expecting a sex comedy, you will be disappointed. It is a drama about a man, faced with his own questions about his life. Maybe all of us can see ourselves in this situation, wondering what it all adds up to and hoping that we are going to be OK. I know when I see myself confronting those questions however, I'd feel a lot better if I looked like Sam Elliot.

The Mackintosh Man 1973 A Movie a Day Day 18

Well, I've been out of town a couple of days so I have fallen a little behind on the blog. Vegas is great for a couple of days and then it is time to get out and that's what we did. While I was there, I did do a little experiment related to this blog. The only copies of this movie I could find where old VHS tapes that were marked up substantially or were being auctioned, so I might not be able to get my hands on it. I checked i-tunes however, and it is available there for purchase or rent. Since I would not be able to transfer it to a DVD anyway, I decided I would rent it. This is the first time I've rented on i-tunes. I have some movies that I bought, but I was not familiar with how the whole process worked. You get access for a month but the minute you start watching your movie a clock starts running and your rental expires in 24 hours. I took this movie with me to Vegas, and I thought since it was on the i-pod that the 24hour limit might not matter. I was wrong on that count, the i-pod indicated a countdown had begun, there is even a little warning when you start so if you want to wait longer you can. So this is the first movie I have rented for the project, the first digital rental I have ever done, and the first movie for this project that I watched on a really small screen.

This is a thriller from John Huston, that I'll bet most people have not seen, in fact there are probably a lot of you out there that have never even heard of it. I don't recall any reviews from the time the movie came out, and I don't know how successful it was. Most of us nowadays are used to seeing box office returns being reported on every Monday morning. Prior to E.T., most box office was only know widely in the film industry. Occasionally a movie like the Godfather, Goldfinger, Jaws or Star Wars became a cultural phenomenon, and then there would be press coverage. Clearly this movie does not fall into that category, so it's level of artistic and financial success are something you would have to dig up. Like a great many of the movies on this list, it is of it's time, and reflects the world of the 1970. Most of it is set in London, but there are sequences in Ireland and Malta as well. Because it deals with thieves, spies, and prison in a realistic way, there is not much of the glamor left over from the mod 60's here. In fact, there is a nice sense of the oppressiveness that wore out the English political scene in the 70's.

I could not remember but two things from this film before I re saw it; the prisoner's clothing for the high risk prisoners was distinguished by bright yellow graphic patterns and that the gun Paul Newman uses toward the end of the movie was an automatic that looked pretty distinct and weird to me. If you look at the trailer above, you will see how the gun is used to create a memorable graphic for the movie.



This is probably why I remembered the gun, because I remembered the poster. The plot of the movie is actually quite complicated, and that makes the tag line "whoever he is, he's not what you think" pretty accurate. In my head, this would sit on a shelf with another movie on my list, that I have not seen since it opened, "The Black Windmill" with Michael Caine. They are both blurry spy thrillers from the 70's that featured actors I would usually be willing to go see. The Mackintosh Man features a pairing of Paul Newman and James Mason nearly 10 years before their film "The Verdict". I haven't looked to see if they did any more films together, both were nominated for Academy Awards for the Verdict. This current movie was not an award type of film, but there was good suspense and some unique elements that are worth seeing it for. I want to make particular note of the music score by Maurice Jarre, it is elegant and haunting in a manner very similar to "The Third Man", a comparison that I'm sure was not accidental. Just a couple of years later, Jarre would score Huston's masterpiece, "The Man Who Would Be King".

Since this blog is not just about movie reviews, but also an attempt to help me avoid forgetting everything that makes me who I am (as well as letting my kids pass on stories when I am gone), I will mention one last thing about the movie going experience. I opened a closet with skeletons I did not know would be there when I mentioned that I saw this with a date, a girl I am not currently married to. This made my wife very irritable, I guess I was not supposed to exist as a romantic character in any context other then our own. I have thought of Robin, the ice-skater from Granada Hills maybe a half dozen times over the last 37 years, you would think I took her out last night from the stink eye Dolores gave me when I told her about this. My suggestion to everyone else, write a memoir for your kids, but don't let anyone see it until after you are dead, otherwise that point might come earlier than you expect.

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES - A Movie aDay Day 17

The Planet of the Apes Series is really an attempt to cash in on the success of the original movie, in the cheapest manner possible. The follow up movies are really done in a style that was more befitting television rather than film. In fact by 1975 I think, there was a television series based on the concept. It lasted only one season so it appeared that the story had run it's course, at least as far as the audience was concerned. This is not to say that the movies that came after were worthless, but they were unnecessary and sometimes kind of weird.

I actually saw this movie on a triple bill in 1973 I think. That was another one of the differences between movie going as a kid and the way we experience movies today. Since there were no video releases, studios could either sell their material to play on TV or they could find other ways to exploit them. Re-releases are most well know as the tool that Disney used to generate cash on a regular basis. Every seven years or so, they would take out one of their classic animation films, and play it in movie theaters. This was also done with the James Bond films. The first time I saw a Bond film was on a double bill and a second release (From Russia With Love and Thunderball). I had seen the original Planet of the Apes when it first came out, and I was it with my family. I saw the trailer for the movie at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena. I don't remember what it was playing with, and I don't recall where we went to see it, I do remember being blown away by the ending.

I am pretty sure that I did not see the second "Apes" film when it first came out, and I don't know how long it took to put all three together on one bill. Almost all movies in those days played as double features. Typically a new release was paired with a film that was a few months older. The addition of a third film was somewhat unique, and I know I went with a friend, because there was no way my family would have been able to sit through three movies. (I loved going into the theater in early afternoon and coming out in the dark, of course I am a bit of a freak like that). I do know that I saw the three films playing in Pasadena. I thought there was a big movie house on Colorado between the United Artists and the State, but it just might have been the UA that I went to.

"Escape" is a reversal of the original film. The humans are in charge and the Apes are out of place and can talk. This probably seemed like a clever twist on the original movie, and saved a lot on building new sets, since you could film around town and the setting was contemporary. You can add a lot of fish out of water sequences, and it sets up the rest of the series in a somewhat logical fashion. The opening revelation of the Apes returning to Earth in the 1970's is a good visual sequence set on a beach, but once we get past the opening, things progress much too quickly to be very believable. Sal Mineo, an actor with an Academy Award nomination from Rebel Without a Cause, plays Dr. Milo, the Ape visitor that is killed ten minutes into the movie. This was his last feature role, he was murdered in 1976. So his last movie role you don't even get to see his face. After the death of their colleague, the other two Apes end up in a series of comic scenes based on sexual stereotypes and the world at the time. It is hard to believe that the government would decide to put up these Ape visitors from the future at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, much less send them shopping and to cocktail parties, but that is what happens.

The villain of the movie is the science adviser to the President. In truth, he has a legitimate concern for future events. By the end of the movie however he has become so self righteous and single minded that he is pretty loathsome. I thought the President was well played by an actor I remember liking from a lot of things in the 60's and 70s, William Windom. He may have the best written part in the movie, he comes across as smart, conscientious and politically savvy. The President has not ordered the elimination of the Apes, but the advisory committee he appointed is largely responsible. The President actually is sympathetic to the apes situation, and even though they have no scenes together, conveys a general feeling of what the world opinion about this situation might really be. On the other hand, the committee is played for laughs at first and then they become the heavies that enable the science adviser to act.

Bradford Dillman plays the supportive veterinarian, who tries to assist our heroes through the political events and then their escape. This might be the only sympathetic role he ever played. In most of the movies and TV shows I saw him in, he was the heavy or the slimy political hack. Roddy McDowell reprises his role from the first film, and I believe is in all of the following movies as well. I'm not sure why he was replaced in the second movie, but the character was nearly invisible in that film so it did not matter. His soft voice and genteel manner is one of the selling points for making us sympathetic to the apes in the first place. The movie is not great but of the five films, it is in the middle both in production and quality of the story.

North Dallas Forty (1979) A Movie a Day Day 16

This was a movie I saw late in the summer of 1979. The subject is football but not so much the game as the business of the game. I'm not sure that I like it as well as I thought I did. Part of the reason is that the movie is sold as a comedy, and while there are several amusing bits, the majority of the film appears to be a criticism of the game. I'll add that it was not a very focused criticism.

Nick Nolte and Mac Davis are the hot shot stars of the Dallas football team. They drink , smoke pot, and generally carouse with the other players on the team. For some reason Nick Nolte's character thinks better of himself than this. He is supposed to be an outsider, because he does not toe the company line. It is not clear what the team wants from him that he sees as being untrue to himself. His closest friend on the team, the quarterback played by Mac Davis, pretty much does things the same way he does, and nobody seems to be upset about that. As far as you can see, Nolte's character follows the directions of the coach and performs on the field. This movie is apparently based on a book that was a loose expose of the Dallas Cowboy organization. If Mac Davis is supposed to be a stand in for Dandy Don Meredith, then Roger Staubach is not the man he claimed to be, or he ought to sue. The episode in the film that contains the biggest laughs, focuses on a story involving the religious married rookie quarterback,being involved in a disgusting sexual peccadillo. The tag line for the poster about waiting for the Weird stuff comes from this story.


The movie is two hours and it has 15 minutes, at best, worth of funny. What it does have going for it is a locker room view of the professional game. The supporting characters feel real, even the ones that engage in some outrageous stunts. The two offensive line men are slightly crazed and seem like exaggerations, but it never goes to the point of parody. On game day their ritual is one of the most real things in the movie. Another thing that is real, or at least feels real, is the way the players are manipulated by the coaches to get the most out of them. My guess is that this was true at the time the movie was being made.

Here is the problem with the movie in a contemporary context. The players today have much greater power, the league does not treat the injuries of star players or others lightly. The mechanical approach that the coach takes in the movie, is a big part of the game today, but instead of the game suffering for it, the quality of play has improved. Maybe the guys in the old days were tougher but they were not faster, or stronger or more professional than the NFL players of today. If Nolte's character took that damn cigarette out of his mouth occasionally, and took the workouts a bit more seriously, he would not need as many pills and shots as he takes in the movie. The character played by Bo Svenson is supposed to be hopped up on steroids, that would account for his rage and the sexual frustration he shows at the party. However, the word "steroid " is never used, and all he gets are B-12 shots. Maybe we are supposed to see thru this, but since every other argument against the game is spelled out in big letters to get the message across, it seems strange that they pull their punches here. This movie wants to have it both ways. It wants us to root for the team, see the player perform, and then afterward, we are supposed to dismiss all of this as something childish. The girlfriend that Nolte's character gets involved with is a good illustration of this. She is an outsider at the wild party, who holds the players in disdain (Justified in this scene but not others), she points out all the problems that her boyfriend has with his body, but appreciates the play he makes in the big game at the end. She is a plot device to allow Nolte to work off of and verbalize his criticism so we can hear it out loud.

There is a lot that is fine in this movie, the atmosphere of professional football in the 1970's is probably right on. The characters, when they are not advancing the point of view of the message, are real. G.D. Spradlin,a familiar character actor from the time (he should have played Darrel Gates in a movie about the LAPD) does a very good job as a coach that knows what it takes to win in the league, even if talent is only part of the game. The character Nolte plays, wants to be judged only on his talent, but the game is planning, adjustment, strategy, study, hard work. The coach conveys that he know talent, but what never seems to get into our protagonist's head is that there are other people that are part of the game too. I think my recently retired colleague Bob Phelan, would appreciate the coaches point of view. "Hey Nick, You're Not the Center of the Universe."