Thunder Road (1958)

☆ ☆ ☆

Thunder Road (1958) – A. Ripley

Robert Mitchum plays up his “bad boy” charm as a “transporter” running illegal moonshine across the South in a souped up 1950 Ford.  Mitchum also produced and co-wrote the title song (not the Bruce Springsteen song, which only stole its title from this film) and no doubt selected his son, James, to play his younger brother.  You’ll need to set aside the unusual move that sees Mitchum still playing a kid at 40 but that’s probably not all that requires suspension of disbelief here.  Yet the action sequences, with the Feds and some crooked mobsters chasing Mitchum, feel authentic and so too do some of the Southern locations (filmed in and around Asheville, North Carolina).  I hear this is a “cult classic” and I don’t think it warrants that status but it’s not bad.  If only the rest of the acting was on Mitchum (Senior)’s level. 

  

The Young Savages (1961)

☆ ☆ ½

The Young Savages (1961) – J. Frankenheimer

Sober social problem drama that tackles juvenile delinquency by pointing the finger directly at broken homes and the slum environment.  Burt Lancaster is the District Attorney, formerly from the slums himself, who wants to put three young hoods who killed a blind Puerto Rican boy into the electric chair.  His boss, aiming for the governor’s office, approves; his wife, a rich white liberal, disapproves.  Lancaster takes his time investigating both viewpoints, including the families of the victim and the accused murderers (with Shelley Winters as his former girlfriend, the mother of one of the accused) as well as other members of both the Italian and Puerto Rican gangs involved in the incident.  And then he basically throws the case in a quest for the truth, demonstrating to the jury how the killers came to be killers and why they should be treated with mercy – of course, the victim’s family is stunned and disappointed (especially because the truth involves a dose of victim-blaming).  If the film didn’t discuss the institutional racism present in America, one might worry that its conclusion itself smacks of bias.  But no one would disagree that Lancaster has done the right thing by showing mercy – it’s just that it’s all a bit preachy as directed by earnest young John Frankenheimer fresh from live TV and not yet up to the standards of his classic films (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May).  Rather dated too.   

  

El Cuerpo (The Body) (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆

El Cuerpo (The Body) (2012) – O. Paulo

Slick Spanish thriller that takes the Hitchcockian path of revealing who the killer is from the start and then creating suspense as the police close in on him.  I can’t remember Hitch using flashbacks however (except perhaps in Vertigo) but here they add to the tension because we can see moments when even the victim may have discovered the plot to kill her.  This is a key part of the plot because, you see, the victim’s body has gone missing and all signs point to the possibility that she is still alive and leading the police to clues that identify her “killer” (and, of course, tormenting him psychologically along the way).  The whole film takes place in the morgue (more or less). Belen Rueda (from The Orphanage, 2007) plays the victim, a successful but emotionally cruel businesswoman, and Hugo Silva plays her younger husband with the incentive to kill his wife arising due to her large fortune and his much younger mistress (Aura Garrido) who wishes to have him all for herself.  Jose Coronado plays the stereotypic seedy police detective with problems of his own.  So, in many respects, El Cuerpo is straight genre film-making with no aim except to thrill and to entice viewers with a hard-to-anticipate twist ending.  The cinematic style is noirish (rainy nights, dark medical rooms) but nothing special.  Whether the ending is earned or not is up to viewers to judge – but, as with many pictures of this type, thinking back over the film after the ending is known does highlight its improbabilities.  But don’t let that spoil your fun. 

  

Safe in Hell (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆

Safe in Hell (1931) – W.  Wellman

Pre-Code (i.e., before censorship and enforced happy endings) Hollywood feature by William Wellman and starring Dorothy Mackaill (who is in every virtually scene).  She is a call girl (the only way she can make a living, she claims, and the woeful status of women might support it) who accidentally kills her former pimp.  When her true love, a sailor, returns just at that moment, he loyally helpls her to escape to a Caribbean isle with no extradition laws to the US.  She promises to be faithful and, despite the fact that alcohol is not banned, not to party either.  As you would expect, her new land is filled with dissipated criminals who are sex-starved for a white woman (the film is as racist as it is sexist, although the two black characters, who run the hotel, are not caricatured fortunately).  Eventually gives in but still keeps her chastity awaiting the return of her sailor; instead her pimp arrives seemingly back from the dead (but of course he was never really killed, just using the opportunity to score some insurance money).  But, lo and behold, when he makes a move on Gilda this time, she kills him for good.  The plot goes on – will she get the death penalty or not? And there are a few more twists and a fully downbeat conclusion (after only 73 minutes).  At the end, I thought, well that wasn’t much -- but somehow, over night, it haunted me a bit.  Mackaill is a charismatic figure and she evokes the desperation of her plight and the psychological issues (faithfulness vs. hedonism in the face of a cruel unjust world) pretty well. Director Wellman is better known for The Public Enemy (1931) and A Star is Born (1937).

  

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008) – M. Zenovich

Even-handed review of the Polanski statutory rape case that manages to make relatively clear the legal shenanigans that have been involved while also making it clear that the director was guilty.  Just taking one look at the school photo of the 13-year-girl makes you realize how wrong he was – so young.  I don’t think it mitigates things to ponder the fact that Polanski’s parents died in the Holocaust and his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson family. In archive interviews, Polanski himself seems to brush off the seriousness of the charges, as did the French, who received him when he fled the US.  However, this documentary does make it clear just how much Polanski was jerked around by the judge, a publicity-seeking knob (as suggested by both prosecution and defense lawyers in interviews), and why he decided to escape to avoid any further complications in the case and its resolution.  I didn’t realize that the film was 8 years ago and therefore omits the most recent moves by the U. S. to extradite Polanski again and their unwillingness to allow him to wrap things up with “time served” as even the victim and her family now think should happen.  I’m of two minds – 42 days isn’t much of a sentence (the time he actually spent in prison) – but 40 years in exile might be. As a parent (albeit of boys), it is hard not to see the ugly side of things and hard not to doubt the complicity of the victim at the time.  All told, this is a lot of talking heads to watch but director Marina Zenovich keeps things interesting.

  

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

☆ ☆ ½

The Conjuring 2 (2016) – J. Wan

You’ve seen this one before (and not necessarily in the first The Conjuring, 2013).  All the various tics and tropes of the haunted house picture are dutifully trotted out by director James Wan, along with a healthy dose of The Exorcist (1973).  The film takes place in the 1970s (mostly England) and is based on a “true” story taken from the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, psychics and investigators of the supernatural for the Catholic Church.  Can one really complain about genre pictures that don’t innovate (beyond updating slickly to 21^st century technology and methods)?  After all, you get what you pay for and I certainly didn’t check out the Conjuring 2 hoping for Ingmar Bergman.  So, does it deliver?  Yes and no.  There is a good effort to generate the requisite creepy atmosphere and there are a few unfair shocks, but the film feels overlong with a few too many bits of furniture thrown around the house.  The primary evil spirit is pretty scary but its underling, an angry old man, is more pathetic than frightening.  Everything wraps up rather quickly and defeating the evil was surprisingly easy.  But I still felt a bit wary heading off to bed in the dark, so I guess this sequel works at some fundamental level.

Black Friday (1940)

☆ ☆ ½

Black Friday (1940) – A. Lubin

Karloff is dapper as the doctor who illegally performs a brain transplant to save his friend, a professor of English literature.  But the picture really belongs to Stanley Ridges who, as the professor who has the brain of a gangster inserted into his head, has to act out these dual personalities.  Of course, Karloff has ulterior motives for the transplant as well – the gangster had hidden $500K just before he was killed (by Bela Lugosi and other former gang members) and Karloff hopes that the professor will remember where it is, with his new brain.  But things take a turn for the worse when the professor essentially becomes the gangster.  Since the film begins with Karloff being walked to the electric chair, you get no points for guessing how this will end.  Solid tale from the Karloff and Lugosi heyday (but the latter has only a bit part this time).