The Guru (1969)
British rock star Tom Pickle (Michael York) comes to India to learn to play the sitar, which turns out to be more philosophically complex than he'd expected.
This is an early Merchant Ivory collaboration, scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Howards End, The Remains of the Day, A Room with a View).
The sitar music is rockin' good, as are the performances, especially Utpal Dutt as the musical guru, and Rita Tushingham as an ephemeral hippie chick wearing way too much eye makeup.
So much makeup, honestly, that it's a distraction when she's on screen.
Filmed on location, the Indian scenery is lovely, but the plotting putters around, and yawns are unavoidable.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Gutter Girls (1963)
a/k/a The Thrill Seekers
a/k/a The Yellow Teddy Bears
With a title like
Gutter Girls, you'd expect something
raunchy, tawdry. It's not, though. Sure, there are dated aspects to this, easy
to chuckle at, like the boyfriend whose nickname is Kinky and nobody
thinks twice about it. Mostly, though, this is a serious 'issue picture',
and the 'issue' is premarital sex, which was a controversial topic
indeed in 1963. And still is, I suppose, among the religious.
Some students at Peterbridge New Town Grammar School for Girls wear yellow teddy bear brooches. The teachers don't know the meaning and think it's only a fad, but one teacher makes the connection — the brooches secretly signify that the girls wearing them are no longer virgins.
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After the teacher figures that out, all heck breaks loose — a pregnancy, an interrupted abortion, a girl who runs away into the night.
"What sort of a world are you girls living in? Is it a place where sex is given out like soap coupons?"
The response is what you'd expect — when the pregnant girl's father discovers the fact of the matter, his response is, basically, How could you do this to me? The girl is desperate for an abortion and a normal life, but Daddy wants to punish her by forcing her to have and raise the baby.
Humans are horrible.
The drama comes to a head in a long meeting of the school board where the ramifications of all these issues are discussed, fairly realistically, even intelligently. But there's no neat and tidy happy ending. It's just, Hello, world, the '50s are over.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
A Guy Named Joe (1943)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
It's clear from the first moments that this is a gung-ho military movie, with the Air Force anthem "Wild Blue Yonder" as its theme song, guys on the ground saluting fighter planes a mile above them, kids oohing and aahing and idolizing the pilots, etc.
My patriotism reserves are running low, and I would've clicked the movie off right then, but the screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo — Johnny Got His Gun, Lonely Are the Brave, Papillon, Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and more — so I stayed with it.
First thing to know is that there's nobody named Joe in A Guy Named Joe.
"Don't you know anything about slang? In the American Air Forces, anybody who's a right chap is a guy named Joe."
The movie's main guy named Joe is Pete Sandidge (Spencer Tracy), a fighter pilot in World War II. He gets shot down dead, and sent to a strange military Heaven where the angels wear US military uniforms, and you still gotta salute and follow other angels' orders. Which sounds more like Hell.
His post-mortem assignment is to fly with junior pilots, invisible and unseen, to give them good advice that somehow gets through to them even though they can't hear him. And it's kinda sweet to imagine that the dead ride with us, a hand on our shoulder — a childish fairy tale, but lots of movies are.
Nothing's seriously wrong with this flick except the schmaltz, which drips from every scene and stained the book that was under my monitor.
Eventually, and unexpectedly, the drama comes down to Irene Dunn, playing the woman who'd been Joe/Pete's fiancée, as she decides whether to heed or ignore his angelic advice in her ear. Her choice, and Dunn's silent acting as she mulls it over, lifts the movie out of its swamp of schmaltz.
Verdict: YES, but a BIG YES for the last 15 minutes or so.
♦ ♦ ♦
Guys and Dolls (1955)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Guys and Dolls is a musical about illegal gambling, and a preacher lady in a thinly-disguised Salvation Army, who hopes to bring bookies and numbers racketeers to our Lord and Savior. Presumably this was a drama with some heft in Damon Runyan's original short story, but reworked as a musical it's entirely for laughs.
As gambler Sky Masterson, Marlon Brando sings on key, but so does my mom and she'd give the songs more emotion. As money man Nathan Detroit, Frank Sinatra is Sinatra, but strangely he isn't given as much signing duty as Brando. Jean Simmons plays Sarah Brown, the shrew-like preacher Masterson is pursuing, and when she sings it's piercingly unpleasant. Vivian Blaine plays a showgirl, Detroit's moll, who speaks and even sings in a thick Bronx accent that's amusing until it's annoying, which doesn't take long.
But jeez, the dancing is great, most of the songs sizzle, and ample laughs lighten the stodgy plot.
The film's rendition of "Fugue for Tinhorns" ("I got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere…") is a marvel of not just song and dance, but sound engineering — three guys sing it, not as a trio but with each man singing different lyrics, and yet, even on my mono sound system, not a word of the lyrics is lost.
Other great numbers include "Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat," "The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York," "Luck Be A Lady Tonight" (which would be so much better sung by Sinatra instead of Brando), and the snapping title tune, "Guys and Dolls."
There's terrific ensemble dancing throughout, and the sets, costumes, and colors pop. Other than the formulaic story and a few of the lesser songs, it's a pleasant diversion for two hours, though it's 2½ hours long.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Guyver (1991)
a/k/a Mutronics
Streaming free at Internet Archive
This cheapo sci-fi opens with more than a minute of crawling text read aloud, explaining the movie's far-too-detailed set-up, which I won't repeat or even summarize. Suffice to say, people turn into reptilian air-breathing fish or turtles or something.
Mark Hamill plays a tough guy, which is not believable, but there's nothing here that is. There's another white guy who (when he's not a walking turtle) looks so much like Hamill that it's confusing. Also, there's a black guy doing a bad Jimmie Walker impression, and guess what? It's Jimmie Walker.
Some of the spacey get-ups are cool, and horror mainstay Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes) is a bit gentler than you've usually seen him. The dialogue never rings real, though, and there's palpable anti-chemistry between the romantic leads.
Produced by Brian Yuzna, who's had a fine career in schlock — he produced Re-Animator, directed Society, and wrote Honey I Shrunk the Kids — but this is not one of his greats.
I might have fallen asleep while watching it. I'm not sure, which is probably all the review anyone needs.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
• ReelSF is a delightful blog for movie buffs, San Franciscans, and ex-San Franciscans. Each entry susses out the actual San Francisco locations of movies that were filmed there. Today it's Chan is Missing, but sometimes it's Vertigo, Experiment in Terror, The Laughing Policeman, or a movie I'd never heard of but have to see.
7/25/2024
• • • Coming attractions • • •
Gymkata (1985)
Gypsy 83 (2001)
Habit (1997)
Hail (1971/1973)
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises
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