Gates of Heaven (1978)
This is a delightful documentary about a depressing topic: dead pets.
Errol Morris interviews Floyd McClure, who dreamed of creating a pet cemetery, and did it, and went bankrupt. He talks with members of the Herbert family, who run the Bubbling Well pet cemetery. These interviews are sorta bookends to the movie, because when McClure’s pet cemetery went out of business, the pets buried there were exhumed and reburied at Bubbling Well.
 |
| NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL #285 [archive] MAY 3, 2024 |
In between we hear from the manager of a rendering facility, which is where your pet probably ends up if you don’t have them buried by the professionals. At a rendering facility, the animals are very efficiently harvested, the bones boiled for broth, even the toenails from the pets’ paws won’t go to waste.
Morris’s style is perfect for an intimate topic like this. He doesn’t ask questions in his interviews, at least not on camera; he simply sets up the camera and invites the person to talk. And talk they do, about pet families, relatives, how an old woman’s (living) dog talks, an insurance salesman who lucked into the pet cemetery business, etc. The art is in the editing, and what Morris leaves on screen is a lot but never too much. Good boy.
When a man on screen who looks about 60 remembers the death of a dog he’d loved when he was a child, the movie becomes more profound that you could’ve expected.
It brought to mind the pets who’ve left me over the years. I’ve always cried and buried their bodies in the yard, wherever I was living; you can follow my trail to find Blackie and Tigger and Spider and Fletch. When my previous cat, Minky, died in my arms, I dug a hole for her in the narrow strip of grass between my apartment building and the building next door, thinking it was the perfect place — she’d be right outside my window.
But the neighbor’s dog dug Minky up, something that’s never happened with any other pet I’ve buried. I found my Minky a week later, chewed-up, beginning-to-mold, half a block from home.
So what’s to do? Bury her again, to probably be dug up again? I buried her a second time in the same plot, but left a couple of $3, 5-pound lawn bricks over her grave, which proved too heavy for a dog to nudge out of the way.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Mimi (Ginger Rogers) wants a divorce, but back in the old days a divorce required grounds, so a harebrained lawyer (Edward Everett Horton) arranges a staged adulterous affair. Mimi is supposed to be “caught” with a hired Lothario not her husband, which will be grounds for divorce.or the Freak from Suckweasel Mountain (1983)
A bunch of amateurs play with a camera, and put on a do-it-yourself satire of Frankenstein.
The acting is almost as bad as the photography and direction, the sound jumps and quiets at random, and I’m skeptical that there was even a script, but so what? It’s not like they were trying to make a movie. They’re goofing around with a camera, that’s all.
This is a 12-minute sci-fi short from Dust, the sci-fi website, but it feels like an hour.
Doris (Kim Darby) is pregnant, and marries her boyfriend Walter (Pete Duel). It’s 1969, so when she tells her father (David Janssen) the news, she leaves out the ‘pregnant’ part, because it’s a comedy. Ha!
The movie is more about Dad than about the new happy family, but even with Carl Reiner and James Coco in the cast, you could wait a long time for any laughs. Janssen looks uncomfortable delivering comedic lines, but looking uncomfortable was always his shtick.
who lived on the wrong side of the tracks…”
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a simply fabulous musical comedy about two woman on vacation together, sailing across the ocean and chasing men. Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) wants a millionaire and actually has one snagged, but she’s still looking, and Dorothy (Jane Russell) thinks money is mostly unimportant, but she loves muscles and red corpuscles.
The film is genuinely funny, with excellent singing and dancing, and kooky and exaggerated as everything here is, you get the impression that Lorelei and Dorothy really are best friends.
The songs range from pretty good — “Bye Bye Baby,” “Chez Louis,” “Down Boy,” to very good — “A Little Girl From Little Rock,” “When Love Goes Wrong,” to stunning — “Ain’t There Anyone Here For Love?” and “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.”
these gals must have their rocks…”
Geronimo (1962)
Geronimo (1993)
Gerry (2002)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises
especially starting with the letter ‘H’.
Just add a comment, below.
Leave a Reply