BLOODY, SPICY MOVIES: Bare Knuckles (1977)

     When I started this blog, I occasionally did some movie reviews and I'm going to try to add a new one every now and then to shake things up. Never fear, I'll figure out how to tie it all back to books. 

    Bare Knuckles is a L.A. shot 70s grindhouse/drive-in picture. So, a good kind of picture. Robert Viharo stars, he's probably best known for being in Valley of the Dolls. It co-stars former child-star Sherry Jackson, Gloria Hendry (from Live and Let Die) pops up too. Helping Viharo along the way is John (Black Shampoo) Daniels as, uh, a character named Black.  Even my man George "Buck" Flowers is in it, so you really know it was shot in L.A. It's got a pure-paperback-plot. Viharo is Kane, a bounty hunter on the trail of a kung-fu serial killer who's targeting women using his own martial arts skills. Yeah. Radical, right?

    Writer/director Don Edmond had a brief directorial career in the 70s, directing this, but most notably Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, its sequel and a handful of other movies. So, he's got some trash credentials. And he made a pretty fast-moving picture with all the things a drive-in audience would want in 1977. There's nudity, there's sexism, racism, a slight hint of giallo and plenty of sleaze. But most importantly there's plenty of action, both in the fist-fightin' and a you-know-this-was-too-dangerous car chase where Kane drives a bitchin' 1968 Plymouth Road Runner and hunts a guy on a motorcycle. This chase goes on forever and morphs into foot chase and then into the climatic brutal fight scene between Kane and the evil Kung-Fu Killer, who unfortunately for the movie, looks like a buffer Rick Moranis. 

    Low-budget 70s filmmaking hits different. They were shooting in dingy places, on the street without permits and the whole thing just has a dangerous vibe. Half the fun of these kinds of movies is checking out the surroundings, seeing long-lost artifacts on the street of a time long gone. There's a scene that takes place outside an old Pizza Hut and you can't buy that type of nostalgia. There are times where really feels like one-step above porn-level filmmaking, but that's charming to me at this point. Also, the picture looks pretty good which isn't surprising because this an early D.P. credit for Dean Cundey who shot Halloween (1978) and a lot of other John Carpenter films. Carpenter's early partner Debra Hill even served as script supervisor. It's funny how things like this happen. 

    But this is primarily a book blog, right? Yep. I'm getting there. First off Bare Knuckles is one of the closet films to really capture the seedy vibe of a 70s Leisure/Manor/Canyon paperback. It could have been a story from the pen of someone writing as Bruno Rossi, Len Levinson on vacation to Hollywood or a tale someone paid William Crawford to drunkenly write for the movies. And with Kane albeit brief partnership with, uh, Black there's minor shades of Ralph Dennis's Hardman books. I'm surprised there was never a really long going Men's Adventure series about a bounty hunter. It seems like a no-brainer. Tough crime stories, nasty villains on the loose, tough guy hero, seems simple. Alas it never was. But we have Bare Knuckles to show us what we missed. 

    But wait, wait there's more! Lead actor Robert Viharo is the father of private-eye writer Will Viharo who's first book, Love Stories Are Too Violent for Me is minor classic. Viharo's an interesting cat, living a Tiki-fused life with side gigs as a film programmer and hosting Thrillsville a burlesque/film show. He continues to write novels, but now openly experiments with the private eye novel form with added science fiction, horror and other gonzo touches. He's a great writer. Will talking about Bare Knuckles at some point got me to be on the look-out and eventually watch it.

    So, if any of that sounds good to you, check it out. It's free on Tubi, the best place to find every movie you forgot about and tons you've never heard about. 

They Call Her Death Movie Review Plus Book Recommendations

I've spent the weekend in one of my natural habitats, the film festival I wander through them like a Bigfoot in the woods. In case you're wondering the other natural habitat is "used bookstore," for obvious reasons. My brain is fried from film, late-nights, free-drinks and a million new friends and conversations, but I'll do my best to be coherent. My first feature film that I wrote and produced, Arrive Alive, had its premiere at the Tallgrass Film Festival. It's the hometown fest and its WONDERFUL! Better than some much larger fests that I've been too, with a caring and cool staff and solid movie choices. Besides a murder's row of great movies to watch film fests are an incredibly fun place to meet new film-minded buddies. But more on that later. 

Early on Thursday of the fest I had my mind blown by a fellow Kansas filmmakers Austin Snell's new movie, They Call Her Death. A homage to my early (and continuous) film love, Spaghetti westerns. It was shot on glorious 16mm with vintage equipment and completely captured the style, grit, grim, blood and love of an Italian production from the late-60s. I think a lot of people have the wrong notion that Italian movies (outside of Fellini, Antonioni and the like) were all cheap knockoffs of American movies and are mostly jokes due to the dubbing, the Italian sense of humor and the Grand Guignol leanings of their violence. They were big dogs in the world film market, pretty much second only to the U.S. They were professional filmmakers bending the lines of filmmaking and crafting a new visual landscape out of necessity and artistic leanings. Obviously, Leone was quick accepted as the genius he was, but the rest had to struggle for their world-wide expectance. It's just in the era of boutique Blu-Ray levels are we seeing some wonderful new reappraisals of oft-looked-over directors and series. I'll watch the 100th Django knock-off or a Fulci cosmic-gore-picture over most modern film any day.

They Call Her Death is about pig-farmer Molly Pray (Sheri Rippel) hits the bloody trail of vengeance after a bounty hunter (Devan Garcia) kills her beloved husband (Patrick Poe). Along the way Molly grows and changes into a masked (shades of 66's Johnny Colt) stone killer as she uncovers the local conspiracy that may have had something to do with her husband's death. There are gunfights, gold bars, awesome miniatures, fisticuffs, explosions, blood and guts (literally) and some wonderful SUPRISING moments. The jolts of humor come from stress-relieve after shocking gore and the "stock" town characters, something EVERY western's needs, drunk dicks, barflies, sassy bartenders, and eventually Dané Shobe as the dedicated deputy who rides along with Molly. It's a hand-crafted movie that works incredibly well. It even veers into uncharted territories, let's just say Italian Horror was also on Austin's mind; to keep you guessing but I'm not spoiling anything.

Obviously, the dedication to the recreation of the feel of Italian cinema is commendable. But without solid characters to latch onto a homage can feel hollow, luckily you feel for Molly Pray. And interestingly she's not a totally innocent character. This isn't the standard "women's revenge" picture, though obviously stuff like They Call Her One-Eye is in its DNA, but Molly's a different kind of lead. She's a hard-bitten woman even before the death of her husband, perhaps a little "nicer" but not an innocent. 

If you're interested in this kind of movie, I'm sure you're aware of Grindhouse, the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint that pushed a lot of these kind of movies to the movie-nerd forefront. It also started a wave of filmmakers to make grindhouse-style films. Some good like Hobo with a Shotgun, others, uh, not good. Good news if that turns you off, because it's not that. It's not all faux-film grain and sepia tone for "effect," it's a well-crafted film with a certain look and it's so much fun that you forget all about the aesthetic and just chug along with the picture. Probably with a smile on your face or maybe wincing at the gore.

To be transparent, I have been hearing rumblings of this movie for a while. The film scene in Kansas is nebulous and small. I know a few of the people in it, one stayed at my house during the fest (Hi, Patrick!) and the other actor dies in my film as well. So, I was ready to see it and luckily it lived up to expectations. Also, I hung out with director Austin, make-up man Jake Jackson and producer Adam Jeffers. All cool dudes, but if I didn't LOVE the movie, I would have slunk into the night and not written this review.  

And here's the good news this week (through November 3rd, 2024) you can WATCH this movie (and mine if you want) buy purchasing a Virtual Pass to watch it before most folks and be super cool. 

Now, while I have occasionally done movie reviews in the past on the blog here, it has mostly devolved into a dedicated book blog, so I can't let you leave without some book recommendations if you watch They Call Her Death and have a hankerin' for bloody, spicy western books, there's some good 'uns. The Joe Millard's for the further adventures of The Man with No Name, George G. Gilman's Edge for their bloody violence, John Benteen's Fargo for some rollicking action, and a double dose of Joe R. Lansdale, one as Ray Slater for its rock-solid western feel and Dead in the West for the touch of the "weird western" sub-genre. 

"The Honest Thief" 2020 Movie Reivew

I'm pretty easy to entertain. I can usually turn off my "writers brain" and just go along for the ride when a movie is simply made to be enjoyed. If a movie is supposed to be something special I tend to be a lot harder on it. "The Honest Thief" was made to be enjoyed, but why the hell was it constantly making me think about how half-ass it is? It seems to go out of it's way to be a sloppy mess. I love Liam Neeson. Even before his "Taken" inspired second act. "Darkman," "Next of Kin," Michael Collins," and then I do really love "Taken," though the cottage industry of "Liam Neeson Punches People" movies are a decidedly mixed bag. Movies like "The A-Team," "The Grey," and "Run All Night" deliver the goods, while others seem like pale imitations of themselves on a loop. 

I guess I'm harder on crime movies then about any other genre, its a genre I truly love and when they are good can be a tightwire escapade of tension and thrills or serious ruminations on the nature of crime and law. "The Honest Thief" wants to be be a thrill ride with a love story at the center. Unfortunately it rarely thrills and gave us no time to develop any feelings toward our happy couple Liam Neeson and Kate Walsh. A tired "meet-cute," then a time jump do not make a solid love story. The love is supposed to be strong enough for bank robber Liam to give back the money and go to prison for her. Maybe if the two had chemistry or any substantial screen time together. Yeesh.

One of the big issues is that the script seemed to be written for someone half Liam's age. I spent a good chunk of the runtime trying to figure out who old the characters were supposed to be. Liam's character Dolan was supposed to be a war veteran, purposely left vague who came home and ended up robbing bank because a bank foreclosed on his father's farm. He continued to rob banks just for the thrill, never spending the money and now feel guilty about it. Here's were the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too. Liam could easily burn the cash and never get caught and live his life, the FBI are not onto him. Hell, it takes them a while for them to even believe that he's (snicker) "The In-and-Out Bandit." Of course he doesn't tell the love of his life he's a bank robber, cause women love giant surprises like that. Instead he goes off and gets a hotel to wait for the feds. Which turns into a limp "on the run from dirty cops" story. They want Dolan to be a noble Robin Hood type instead of a cold thief like Richard Stark's Parker, I guess so he can fall in love and the audience won't feel in conflict in rooting for a seemingly "bad guy" but its such a limitation to the character. If the Dolan character who was a hardened crook known to the FBI but never caught and decides to retire only to get caught up in the same dirty cop story you might have something compelling. A little moral ambiguity goes a long way.

Nobody in this movie has enough to do, especially Kate Walsh; who stands around, sometimes mad then sometimes is cool with Liam being a bank robber and mostly just dresses like a 20-year-old in a number of jean skirts. My wife is a costume designer and I never took much notice of how much a characters clothes and draw you in or pull you out of a film until watching movies with her. She simply couldn't get over the number of short jean skirts 50 plus Kate Walsh wears and soon I couldn't un-see them either. As much as the female lead is lacking; it completely wastes awesome actors like Robert Patrick and Jeffery Donovan. Jai Courtney is supposed to be the bad guy but the writing is so flat that he never comes off as a real threat to Liam, maybe Courtney and Donovan or Patrick should have switched parts. Anthony Ramos playing the conflicted FBI gives it his best shot at making a compelling character and at least comes off as noble despite his faults. He really is the strongest secondary character, but like everyone really doesn't have a big moment or scene with enough weight to fully land. It plugs along, there's an explosion and then it just sort of ends. Oh, there's a nice dog in it. I liked the dog.

This movie simmered in my brain for a few days before I latched onto the one thing that I think really cheesed me off. In 2014 Liam starred in "A Walk Among the Tombstone" an adaptation of Lawrence Blocks monumental Matthew Scudder series of private eye mysteries. And it's a really good movie, not absolutely perfect but nice and close. Liam is perfect, his Scudder is wounded, trying, failing and its encased in a nice mystery with plenty of thrills. Writer/director Scott Frank is one of those guys who would have been Don Siegel league in the 70's, just churning out great material year after year. It could have been the first in series of Scudder movies. But the movie bombed. And what annoys me is that this could have been the third or fourth Scudder movie by this point, each nestling in to Liam's low-budget "Taken"-ish place on his filmography, between the "serious" movies he does. I really miss an era of smart-escapist fair. Plus as Liam ages, its really getting harder to buy him as an action hero. A tough detective, on the other hand absolutely. It really grinds my gears.

Plus it only makes me think that Liam Neeson might have been a really strong Parker. Liam Neeson starring in "Slayground" or "Butcher's Moon." Yeah that could have been pretty rad.

"Inside Out" 1975 Movie Reivew

I haven't done a movie review in quite a while, though I've watched a ton of them; don't you worry. My triumphant return to movie criticism is about a little seen 1975 caper picture called "Inside Out" starring Telly Savalas, Robert Culp and James Mason. I've been going a little crazy on the manufactured on demand DVD's, which is a godsend for odd little pictures to see the light of day on DVD. I've ordered "The Scorpio Letters" starring Alex Cord based on the Victor Canning novel, "The Double Man" starring Yul Brenner, Rod Taylor in John Gardner's "The Liquidator," "Assignment to Kill,"  "Avalanche Express" with Lee Marvin and Robert Shaw, and "Inside Out." I've been picking up various MOD titles since Warner's and MGM started putting them out. It's nice to cross off films that have been nagging at me to buy/watch for years. 

First off my main interest in this movie is the stars. I'm a big fan of Telly Savalas and Robert Culp. James Mason too, I mean you can't dislike James Mason. I'm such a big Telly fan that I have a vintage Kojak action figure. I was first stuck by him with "On Her Majesty Secret Service," he's truly the only Blofield that counts. Certainly the only one that is Bond's true equal; Donald Pleasence may have crafted the image of the character but he's quiet and demure and Charles Grey, whew boy...nah. Telly's nature swagger, toughness and intelligence came through in his Blofield. He's a presence on screen. He obviously is most famous for "Kojak," but he's works better on the big screen, he's bigger then life. He's a lot of fun in "Inside Out," playing a WWII-vet turned con-man/thief, a true hustler who doesn't worry about little things like money when there's five-star hotel rooms to stay at and manicures to get.  He's playing Telly but that's what I want to see. 

Now Robert Culp was a lot more then just an actor. As a director and (co)writer he made on of my favorite private-eye movies "Hickey and Boggs." It's a real shame he didn't get to direct again because he knew story telling. Obviously I enjoy him as Kelly in "I Spy," it's easily one of the best spy shows of the 60's, being low-key and less flashy then some of it's competitors it counts on good story and interaction and fine adventure to hook it's audience. It's a real-shame that Bill Cosby turned out to be such a slimy-bastard because it sure puts a smudge on Culp's career. The Culp written episodes of "I Spy" are some of the best. In "Inside Out," he plays a career criminal talked into returning to the life for the big score. He plays it a lot like Kelly facing the danger of it with a twinkle in his eye.

The movie? Eh, it's okay. The plot is a lot of paperback-fiction fun, basically there's lost Nazi gold (I seriously never get tired of Nazi gold stories) and in order to get to the gold they have to break the only old Nazi-man who knows its whereabouts out of a military prison. Jason Mason plays James Mason with a slight German accent since he's the ex-commandant of a German military prison where Telly once was imprisoned. Mason comes to Telly with the scheme remembering him as a crafty fellow. Telly ropes in Culp and the as with most heist pictures rounds up a couple more for their team. One is Günter Meisner who was in Willy Wonka and played a Nazi's a lot in the 70's although he was actually in a death camp during the war, he's a welcome face; an actor you've seen a lot but wouldn't know his name (I do cause I'm a weirdo) and Doris Kunstmann as a nurse who Culp falls in love with after one boinking session, a morning-after game of chess and a silent montage lover's stroll. Plus Aldo Ray as a convenient buddy of Telly who is running the American's shift at the prison. The plan involves having Meisner, who's character is an actor, play Adolf Hitler and trick the old Nazi-man into giving the location of the gold. It's a fun scene and makes little sense when you think about it. The gold is unfortunately hidden in East Germany, though further complicating matters.

The main problem is that it's far too light-weight, there's never a hint of real danger, even when folks die. You never once wonder if our team will get the gold. Everyone goes along with the plan with like no hesitation, risking their lives and careers for the hint of the treasure. Every obstacle is meet with near instant solving and the few ties a "tension" falls flat. It's a shame it's a fun premise (which is totally ripped-off for "Wild Geese II") and has a good cast which looks like their were having fun making it, but the lack of real stakes makes it ultimately a little forgettable. It's a nice way to waste a couple of hours but I wouldn't seek it out unless you love Telly and Culp like I do.

Goodnight My Love and Peeper: A Tale of Two Hyams

Peter Hyams is an interesting director; largely ignored, his films are always on cusp of greatness. Above-average fairly conventional films that are done exceedingly well. He never quite made it to the upper-level of the directors club. But he made solid movies, his take on the buddy-cop film produced two of the best examples of the genre: 1986's "Running Scared" and 1974 "Busting" both stand up extremely well have interesting action and easy-going charm. Hyams career is an odd collection of films he bounces between genres and mixes them; the outer space western "Outland," the bonkers fantasy-satire "Stay Tuned" or the action-adventure-horror film "End of Days." He is also responsible for Jean-Claude Van Damme's best movies, so points for.

 

Hyams described himself as a "Chandler freak," he must be because he made two films within a few years of each other that are total love-letters to cheap detectives and film noirs. One is the TV movie that put him on the map: "Goodnight My Love." Which he followed up with "Peeper." They both rode the 70's wave of 40's nostalgia that gave us a number of great detective and crime movies. Hyams does love Raymond Chandler but Hogan, Boyle and Tucker seem like detectives straight out of Dime Detective magazine, not quite the knight that Chandler wrote about. Maybe detectives from the pens of Norbert Davis, Frank Gruber, or Merle Costiner, writers with a bit of the tongues in their cheeks. Maybe even Robert Leslie Bellem mixed in there for spice.

Get it? Spice? Bellem wrote for the Spicy pulps. God, I'm a nerd. 


"Goodnight My Love" is the better of the two movie, even if it shows it's television roots in production, it's got that great studio-feel and recreates 1946 pretty well. I'd love to see a nice clean print of it to see how good the film looks. Hyams is also a cinematographer and a fine one, he makes good looking pictures. Sadly the old VHS rip that's on Youtube is fairly, uh, shitty. The movie works past the format. Hogan is a grouchy P.I. played by Richard Boone is sleepy and bored. Barbara Bain is gnawing on the scenery as the femme fatale that no one buys. Victor Buono made a career out of being the 60's-70's Sidney Greenstreet and he plays the 60's-70s Sidney Greenstreet. The whole film is stolen right out from all of them by Michael Dunn as Boyle, Boone's sidekick who's a dwarf and is always hungry and underestimated. It's a standard twisting missing-person's case with twists and turns and dead bodies. Boone and Dunn play off each other well, they really remind me of Frank Grubers eccentric con-men-detective-duos. Their so down-on-their luck and can't even afford a hamburger when Bain walks in with enough cash to make their mouths water. They know she's lying but, hey, money. Boone gets conked on the head a lot and mostly tries to nap. It follows the hard-luck duo through near misses at the hands of gangsters and dangerous women. It's an fantastic little film that has unjustly has fallen through the cracks.


"Peeper" is the big-budget cousin to "Goodnight My Love," it mines the same territory 40's L.A. with a oddball detective at its helm. This oddball detective is the very British Michael Caine sporting glasses, bow-tie, fedora and lapping up murder and mayhem while on a (also) missing person's case. This one is leans on "The Big Sleep" fairly hard. It's based on "Deadfall" by sci-fi author Keith Laumer that was a contemporary (70s) private eye novel. Its odd that they'd time-jump a then-modern novel to make a period piece instead of just adapting an era correct book, but that's Hollywood for ya. Making things overtly complicated since day-one. The screenplay was by W.D. Ritcher of "Big Trouble in Little China" and "Buckaroo Banzai" fame and it's a lively script with a lot of wonderful ideas and set pieces in it, but it never matches up to "Goodnight My Love" in terms of execution. Caine is always great and he plays a British 40's private eye exactly like he should, his voice overs are spot on. Natalie Wood is amazingly charming as the Lauren Bacall part of the picture. David Thayer takes on the Sidney Greenstreet part in this one, Buono must have been busy. Timothy Carey and Don Calfa (in Peter Lorre mode) work great as a pair of goons out for Caine. The thing that is mostly remembered and its a stroke of genius is that the main titles are spoken aloud by a Humphrey Bogart impersonator. It sets the mood perfectly. It's a lot of fun to be hold, really only paling in comparison to what had came before.

You'd probably have to love the genre to understand the greatness in the to films, an outsider wouldn't appreciate the little details and call-backs. I wonder if Hyams has another 40's detective movie in him. I'd love to see it. It's his own shared universe. Tucker, Hogan and Boyle could probably all go watch a ballgame over beer, hot dogs and tea and get along fine. They are all cut from the same rough cloth. If there was a hundred movies that filled this universe I would watch them all. I've watched both movies a handful of times each and will continue to watch them. It strikes me as an long-gone era in this world of multi-media franchises, where studios made quirky little movies for niche audiences. It probably struck Hyams in the time that they didn't make movies like they did in the 40's and he tried his best to recreate it. He succeeded whole-heartily.

"Dark of the Sun" 1968

You make a movie about hard-bitten mercenaries and I'm there. You make those hard-bitten mercenaries Rod Taylor and Jim Brown? Whew. I'm in hog-heaven. My love of James Bond led me to 1978's "Wild Geese" starring the then Bond Roger Moore with Richard Harris and Richard Burton, that's one of my top-ten movies of all time and it paved the way for me to watch about anything about mercenaries with titles like "The Professionals," "The General Died at Dawn," "Dogs of War," "Men of War," "The Last Grenade," "Professional Soldier," and so on. I knew of "Dark of the Sun" for years but it alluded me. Shame on me.

Now, I'm not getting the morals of being a professional solider i.e: murder for hire basically. Throughout history there has always been a demand for them, so that's on human nature.  I enjoy mercenary fiction for the same reason I prefer private eye fiction to say a police procedural: being anti-establishment stories about the outsiders and underdogs fighting cash and maybe what's right along the way appeal to me. In the actual mechanics of the writing they usually fall into the "men on a mission" category of war-fiction which is a nice combination of a spy adventure and a war tale. You may not know who the heroes can trust, they get shot at from both sides of the conflict, double-crosses are abound, everything that can go wrong will and at least one of the characters will doubt their allegiance to the all-mighty dollar and might just do the right thing. It's all good stuff. Alistair MacLean is the father of the modern version of this type of story though he never really wrote a soldier of fortune tale, but books of high adventure like "Where Eagles Dare" and "The Guns of Navarone" certainly set the tone for most stories of professional soldiers. Besides that real-life merc and charted accountant Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare published a memoir in the late 60's called  "Congo Mercenary," and popularized the interest in the profession anew.  In the 70's through the 80's there were a few Men's Adventure series built on men in these professions like the amazing John Benteen Fargo books, Peter McCurtin's badass Soldier of Fortune, Jerry Ahern (as Alex Kilgore) kick-ass They Call Me Mercenary, Peter Buck's Mercenary, Peter Leslie's Soldier of Fortune etc. etc. Wilbur Smith wrote in the High-Adventure mold, while I haven't read "Dark of the Sun" the few that I have read a very good examples of the genre. 

Rod Taylor is a badass mercenary hired to built a train with his buddy Jim Brown to go down deep into enemy terrority and save stranded townspeople...sorta mostly they have been hired to retrieve an ass-load of mined diamonds for a Dutch company. And yeah, sure they say, save the people along the way. To do this they have an old Nazi tagging along, a drunk doctor, .50 machine guns mounted on the train, and an army regiment. Jim Brown has morals he cares about the country because he was born there but raised and taught in America. Rod Taylor is a merc through and through, he's in it for a payday and maybe a little action from Yvette Mimieux who got picked up along the way. The old Nazi is a dick who wants the diamonds for himself 'natch. Kenneth More is the drunken doctor bringing more to the part then was probably necessary but he was an old school pro and his part reflects it. Jim Brown is the moral compass of the movie and it's a part he plays well he exudes confidence, and righteousness. You know Jim Brown will always do what his morals dictate. It's a hard part to nail but he does it with ease. Rod Taylor was always a little better actor then you'd think he'd be; being that he was pure beefcake.  Rod was made for these kinds of parts and he really moved hard into action pictures after this one. He could have played most any paperback hero of the era. In fact he's the big-screen's only Travis McGee in "Darker than Amber," and Boyise Oakes in "The Liquidator," that's range folks! Plus he's who I picture when I read a Doc Savage. Taylor and Brown play off each other well with a natural unspoken macho-man friendship that anchors the film.

This must have been a shocker of a picture in '68 it's brutal and hard-boiled in a way so few movies are. I mean there's a chainsaw fight. But the truly unsettling scenes of the rape and pillage of a town that our leads have failed to save is shocking fifty years later. I know very little about the actual conflict that is fictionalized in the movie so I cannot comment on the factual basis but it's unsettling in the film. The action is of the old Hollywood two-fisted variety in the film is handled very well, lots of jumping from tall things onto various moving vehicles, heavy machine guns blast at fighter planes that strive the train, and bloody fist fights lead into chainsaw fights. Jack Cardiff was mostly a cinematographer (he lensed "The African Queen" for one) and it shows. It's a nice looking picture. Unfortunately it's not perfect the Yvette Mimieux sub-plot is forced and doesn't really go anywhere. Kenneth More's character is sorta tacked on as well and there's a bit of slog in the middle of the picture. In the hands of say Robert Aldrich, Don Siegel or J. Lee Thompson it would have been a stone-cold classic war movie, but as it stands its just a perfect little cult-type film. The problems are not out-weighed by the great stuff in it, it's a real exploding roller coaster ride of a movie. It's not quite up there with "Wild Geese" for me but it's top-tier soldier of fortune action.

St. Ives (1976) Gentlemanly Bronson Badassery

Charles Bronson was THE badass of the badasses. But like all regular working stiffs he liked to take it easy now and then. St. Ives is Bronson taking it easy, he doesn't have to ride a horse or shoot a lot of people or get into TOO many fistfights. No, Bronson wanted to hang around talk-act to people like John Houseman and look at women like Jacqueline Bisset Who could blame him?

There was a time where Bronson was LITERALLY the biggest movie star in the world. He name put people in seats. It seems like such a far-away notion that a man that looks like you made him from chopped rock and who is a "presence" as apposed to an actor could really be that big. Of course it was the foreign markets that really love Bronson. He was a man's man. In an era of hard-case actors he reigned supreme over the likes of Steve McQueen or Lee Marvin, no small feat. The part that doesn't seem to be in the public perspective of Bronson is that he had a lot of laid-back charm, he showcased it some in the 70's this and "Breakout" show a different Bronson, one who gets the job done still but through being crafty as opposed to simply blowing people away. To be fair he only really had to successful gears: he could give you intense ass-kickery or laid-back ass-kickery. This is a Bronson is a author who sleeps late, eats deli meat in a cafeteria, and drives a classy vintage Jaguar. He also works a "go-between" for crooks. Transferring money for good. It pays good enough I guess to keep him in chicory coffee and very wide neck ties. But it doesn't keep him out of trouble.

St. Ives was created by an author named Oliver Bleeck who was actually an author named Ross Thomas who COULD MOTHER-FUCKIN' WRITE A BOOK. Seriously he started late in life, wrote his first book "The Cold-War Swap" in six weeks and won a Edgar for his trouble. Right out the gate. He had a colorful life of  politics, soldiering, corresponding and maybe spying. He went on to write a good number of books that are all damned good, written in a witty style of blood and guts that is hard to come by. Along the way he wrote a series about St. Ives under the fake name, but they are clearly his work. He also had to particularly good series following spies/bar-owners Padillo and McCorkle and another one about con-men Artie Wu and Quincy Durant.  

The 70's had a resurgence of love for the 40's crime/mystery film after "Chinatown" blew everyone's mind. You had "Peeper," "The Late Show,""Pulp," "The Big Fix," "The Outfit," etc. etc. A lot of them had Elisha Cook Jr. (of "Maltese Falcon" fame) in them. This one does too. He's always nice to see.  It's got a old-school ascetic with clear direction from J. Lee Thompson, who I'm forever in debt to for directing "The Guns of Navarone."  There's nasty rich people played very politely, run down hotels, cop-shops, stoolies, killers, the hero getting conked in the head; basically all its missing is a voice over from Bronson and to be in black and white.

Is it a great film? Eh, probably not. The plot is a thin-jumble on loop, parts of it are just going through the motions of "find dead-body, rinse, repeat" but I enjoy the hell out of it though. There is some good old-fashion thrilling sequences, including a elevator gag that made my wife gasp. It's nice to see Bronson have a lighter touch. Jacqueline Bisset is spunky and cool, she seems to be having fun playing Cops and Robbers. It's got call-backs to an era of cinema that I couldn't love more. Add a fantastic cast with the likes of Harry Guardino, Harris Yulin, Dana Elcair and Maximilian Schell hamming it up with a fantastically dramatic moustache. Plus bits parts by Robert Englund and Jeff Goldblum who seems gets his ass kicked by Bronson a lot. St. Ives will never be ranked in the great films of the 70's but rankings are for dicks.

I got through this whole thing without saying "No dice." Shame really.

"The Yakuza" 1974

Since I've been married one of my goals is to show my wife the movies that really matter. Namely ones that star middle-aged badasses taking on The Yakuza.

The only one that fits the bill in my mind is the nearly perfect movie "The Yakuza," starring Robert Mitchum, directed by Sidney Pollack and written by a helluva trio, Paul and Leonard Schrader and Robert Towne.


Mitchum is an old-school tough-guy. He's also that in the movie. Playing ex-cop/private eye/military intelligence man Harry Kilmer who travels to Japan to save a buddies kidnapped daughter and maybe reignite an old flame from his days in Occupied Japan. Mitchum is a guy who couldn't hide his life on his face. He lived it hard and it showed, he's often remembered solely for his detached coolness. But in his later work like this and "Friends of Eddie Coyle," he showed that he be coolly detached and utterly vulnerable. Kilmer is a movie loner who's actually lonely having his love and adoptive family ripped from him all those years ago. But being Mitchum he had shoot a .45 and a double-barrel shotgun simultaneously hit the Yakuza while he is doing it.

When a lot of actors try to be stoic it comes across as dynamic as a floorboard. Ken Takakura is stoic in a way that shows his rage, anger, lust, pain and hope. He's also damned good with a samurai sword. He's shown as a "man out of time," in the movie, his code of honor and discipline being at odds with the modern world (the 70's anyway) as a man who has walked away from the Yakuza and lived to not talk about it.

The Supporting cast is full of character actors, Brian Keith is always the bomb. He could be anything you wanted and make it look like it was his day-to-day, good, bad, indifferent, not to mention doing it all in 70's plaid and cowboy hats. Richard Jordan was the perfect young buck tagging along with Mitchum. He proves himself to a man who is quick with a gun but obviously wants more from life then being a hired gun. He also wears plaid pants. Keiko Kishi is letter-perfect as a woman who has had many years to live with what her life has become and the ideas of what could still blossom from it. My wife got a kick out of Herb Edelman being in it, better known as Stan on "The Golden Girls," and here being a man in over his head but dedicated to his friends.

The bad guys are bad, the good guys are mostly good, the motivations are deep and rich and what could have been pure melodrama is reigned into a difficult love story. Pollock was a great director who mostly made fine movies. This is never really counted among those but it should have been. There will never be another movie like this.

So, why is this on a book blog? See it's really a book. It's a hard-boiled Gold Medal paperback original. It had a painted cover of a tough guy holding a Colt with a slinky dame in a kimono on his arm and the looming death of the Japanese mafia creeping around the corners. The byline was a pseudonym.

Of course it wasn't a book, though it did have a tie-in book written by co-screen writer Leonard Schrader but it was spiritually a pulp paperback novel. Arms get chopped off, your buddy has an arsenal for you to pick your hardware up from, and the mobs on your tail. But it's too deep to just be an action movie but goes by fast enough not to get bogged down in "feelings," a waste of your breath to talk it all out, no just look at the man you've hated for 20 years and then go risk your life for him. Its a movie about destruction. Not just property destruction, but personal destruction. Destruction is what Gold Medal Paperbacks were about. Going too far and never being able to take it back.