A Fish Called Wanda and The Fisher King, and a few more films

First Man into Space (1958)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#267  [archive]
MAR. 27, 2024

Sci-fi flicks from the '50s are cool. Atomic energy and weaponry was new and scary, radioactivity could make things huge or tiny or monstrous, and space felt like a realistic destination. Amazing new technology was emerging — credit cards, diet soft drinks, music synthesizers, power steering, transistor radios, TV dinners. Anything was possible with Hollywood special effects, which made the 1950s the golden age of science fiction films. 

First Man into Space, though, has no monsters or alien invaders. It's about a test pilot who wants to take bigger chances and go higher into the atmosphere, to the edge of space itself. His commanding officer wants the same thing, but wants it step-by-step and without taking big chances. The pilot, being cocky and gung ho, ignores radio commands and pushes his winged rocket-ship higher than it's supposed to go.

So here's a serious drama about man's quest for science and the limits of risk, from a 1950s perspective. It's a think piece, not a monster movie, so I adjusted my expectations. Hey, not every sci-fi needs action, adventure, aliens, etc. 

But wait, I was wrong. At about exactly the halfway point, there's suddenly a monster! Yippee!

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

First Spaceship on Venus (1959)
a/k/a The Astronauts
a/k/a Planet of the Dead
a/k/a The Silent Star
a/k/a Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply
Streaming free at YouTube

In 1908, a huge meteor rocked a remote corner of Russia. That's history. It's called the Tunguska event.

The movie's fiction begins 50 years after Tunguska, when an unearthly rock is discovered miles from where the meteor struck. Eggheads figure out that it's a remnant of Tunguska, and inside the rock there's a magnetic data-storage spool. When part of the spool's data is decoded, it's a flight data recorder, proving that whatever hit Tunguska was actually a vessel from Venus. So of course, Earthers start planning a mission to Venus to say howdy.

The movie is in wide-screen Technicolor with state-of-the-1950s special effects. The spaceship looks like a giant spinning jack (does anyone remember spinning jacks?). A brief, playful bit about zero-gravity is well-staged, and the eye-popping landscape and skyscrapers of the planet Venus are well above the era's sci-fi standard.

First Spaceship on Venus was the first big-budget sci-fi made by commies behind the Iron Curtain, and it's based on the novel The Astronauts by Polish literary giant Stanisław Lem.

In the process of being imported to America, though, the movie lost fifteen minutes and was dubbed into English, and the dubbing is quite bad. It sounds like the voice actors received minimal or no direction, and certainly no coffee. Were they as bored as I was?

Wikipedia tells me the film was restored and released in 2010, under its original name, Milcząca Gwiazda, or The Silent Star, with English subtitles instead of dubbing. It's on my wish list, but I've been unable to find it without buying it, and I ain't buying it.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Streaming free at Tubi

"Avoid the green ones. They're not ripe yet."

This is a wacky comedy of the kind they don't often make any more. It's right up there with The Lavender Hill Mob, or the 1930s screwball comedies of Cary Grant — jammed with colorful characters in a convoluted storyline full of tight situations and genuine laughs.

A gang of four — George, Ken, Otto, and Wanda — pulls a jewelry heist, which goes splendidly. Wanda and Otto, while pretending to be siblings, are actually lovers, and they immediately call the cops and doublecross George by ratting him out. But George has already doublecrossed them — he was supposed to leave the heist's takings in his safe, but hid it elsewhere instead. Where? Being in jail now, George is unlikely to tell, so Wanda decides to seduce his lawyer, to see if she can weasel some info from him.

The lawyer is John Cleese, playing England's most repressed Englishman in a powdered wig. Wanda is Jamie Lee Curtis, always lying, scheming, and up to something. Ken is Michael Palin, with quite a stutter and a passion for animal rights and Wanda. Otto is Kevin Klein, a dull-witted cro-magnon who fancies himself intellectual.

Cleese, Curtis, and Palin are as good as they always are (and Cleese co-wrote the script) but most of the comedy revolves around Kline's character. He is stupid, cruel, ill-mannered, ill-tempered, jealous, vain, and violent, yet you have to kinda like the guy, and indeed, Klein is adorable. He won the Oscar for it, and stole my heart.

A Fish Called Wanda has oodles of inappropriate and mean-spirited humor — Otto is always mocking Ken's stutter, killing and even eating pets, etc. It's two hours of double-crossing and triple-crossing, and maybe it's also an affectionate look at the difference between Brits (Cleese & Palin) and Americans (Curtis & Klein).

And it is far, far funnier than my description of it, but I refuse to retell any of the movie's jokes.

Directed by Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob).

Cleese's character is named Archie Leach, the unlikely name Cary Grant was born with, which nobody in the film even mentions.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

A Fish in the Bathtub (1998)
Streaming free at Tubi

Sam (Jerry Stiller) is always angry, has to have his way, and treats his wife Molly (Anne Meara) poorly. This is funny at first, then beyond comedy and into cringe, until he's so insufferable it's not funny.

It isn't often you watch a movie about a quarreling couple and hope they'll get a divorce and never see each other again, but this is that movie.

One way Sam's craziness manifests is that he buys a fish that's bigger than my forearms, and keeps it in the bathtub. The movie doesn't explain how or where Sam bathes, and we never see him cleaning the water, but that's OK — the titular fish is just a bait-and-switch, and isn't in the movie more than a few minutes.

Maybe they were before your time, but Stiller & Meara were a major comedy team in the '60s and '70s. They appeared on variety shows, briefly had their own sitcom, and they were always funny. This is Stiller & Meara, and that's enough to recommend A Fish in the Bathtub. 

It's a wisp of a movie, though, especially when the bickering stars are off-screen for the boring subplots involving Mark Ruffalo and Jane Adams.

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver (Chilly Scenes of Winter). 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

The Fisher King (1991)

"You’re not so invisible. You want a personality? Try this on for size: you can be a real bitch sometimes."

Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is a radio shock jock in New York City, funny but also callous and cruel on the air. Think Howard Stern.

One day, talking to a caller on his show, Jack makes a flippant remark that yuppies "must be stopped. It's us or them." The caller takes this too seriously, heads for a yuppie bar, and shoots up the place. "Seven people were killed," says a newscast, "before he turned the gun on himself and shot a hole in his head."

Well, there goes Jack's career. He's the radio star who inspired mass murder, so he's unemployable, full of self-loathing and deeply depressed. He'd be on the street if not for his long-suffering girlfriend (played splendidly by Mercedes Ruehl).

Three years later, Jack wanders out one night, a little drunk and dressed sloppy, and he's mistaken for a homeless man... by two people whose hobby is burning the homeless to death. (Director Terry Gilliam is British, but understands America well).

Luckily for Jack, an eccentric street character named Parry (Robin Williams) comes to his rescue. Parry is loopy, delirious, and has a crush on lovely Lydia (Amanda Plummer)...

Gilliam gives The Fisher King many magical and phantasmagorical moments. It is psychologically dark, but with wondrous imagination, romance, and humanity. It's been on my list of favorites since the day it opened in 1991, but let's admit that it's somewhat dated. The plot revolves around talk radio and a video store, two things that aren't now what they were then. Even the word 'yuppie' is from another era.

Seeing homelessness every time I step out the door of my house, I gently take issue with Gilliam's world where street people can be rescued and mental illness cured by singing the Frank Sinatra song, "How About You?" It's intended to be inspirational, and it is, but that song is sung about half a dozen times here, and becomes tedious.

Overall, though, The Fisher King is a beautiful fairy tale. And there's a scene at Grand Central Station that's among the most marvelous in movie history.

Written by Richard LaGravenese (Behind the Candelabra, The Horse Whisperer), with an effective score by George Fenton (Groundhog Day, The Lady in the Van, Shadowlands).

Ms Ruehl won the Oscar for this, and deserved it. Mr Williams was also nominated, but lost to Anthony Hopkins' hammy Hannibal Lecter in the always-overrated Silence of the Lambs.

Verdict: YES.

 3/27/2024  

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

F.I.S.T. (1978)
Fist of Fury (1972)
Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Fitzwilly (1967)
Five Came Back (1939)

... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises

— — —

Not much pisses me off more than 'movie reviews' that describe the plot, paragraph after paragraph. My pledge to you: I'll only give the basics of a movie's premise, with no spoilers after that.  

— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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