The Amputee (1974)

Here’s more certified strangeness from the early career of David Lynch — a 9-minute short, one shot taken twice.

A woman who’s had her legs amputated sits in an easy chair, writing and narrating a rather tedious letter, while a nurse or attendant unwraps and tends to her stumps. When it’s over, everything happens a second time, and then it’s really over.

The legless woman in the chair is Catherine Coulson, who later played the Log Lady on Twin Peaks. I’ve done some stump maintenance and it’s not as complicated as Lynch makes it look, but extreme stump accuracy was not the intent. I dare you not to watch, as she goes on and on reading the letter, twice, and the attendant’s careless care continues, twice. The attendant, of course, is David Lynch, both times.

The link above plays the short, but only once instead of twice. If she can take it, so can you, so for the full effect, play it again.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

I Met a Girl (2020)

There’s a wanna-be rock star, and you know everything about him in his first few seconds on screen. He’s the standard-issue talented and sensitive fuck-up drug addict who’ll either turn his life around or be dead by the end of the movie. He’s played by the standard-issue handsome 20-year-old who’s been playing this role since the 1950s.

He tries to kill himself, and awakens in a mysterious but beautiful woman’s bathtub. You’ll instantly know everything about her, too — caring, kind, she’s been hurt before, yadda yadda. She’s naked in her first scene, then slips into a Marilyn Monroe dress and blonde wig. The movie’s musical score is all tinkling piano when she’s on screen.

Twenty minutes was all I could stand before clicking it off.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

I Saw What You Did (1965)

A teenage girl and her best friend are babysitting in a secluded house way out in the country. To amuse themselves, they make prank calls to random numbers from the phone book, which leads to trouble.

The teenagers look like teenagers, which is rare in the movies, and the movie itself is two movies at once. It’s squeaky clean high school hijinx, like an episode of The Patty Duke Show without a laugh track or a laugh, plus a secondary plot that’s supposed to be scary but is accidentally kinda funny. Joan Crawford gets top billing for appearing in three brief scenes.

This was produced and directed by famed gimmick-maestro William Castle, and the gimmick was installing shock-proof seat-belts in movie theaters. That’s moot for home viewing, so maybe tie yourself to your couch.

Verdict: YES. Pure schlock, but fun.

♦ ♦ ♦

I Want to Live! (1958)

Before the opening credits, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist swears that what follows is a factual story, bold print and underling the words factual and story. Albert Camus promises that the film you’re about to see contributes to the coming “true civilization.”

It’s about Barbara Graham, a good-time party girl with a rap sheet of petty crimes — check-kiting, perjury, prostitution. She’s had a rough life, did a year in prison, and hangs around with the sort of people who don’t teach Sunday School. Young but already bald, Gavin MacLeod tells Hayward she’s a “lousy hop-headed slut,” and he’s right, but at least her crimes have all been non-violent.

Her cohorts, though, testify that she was the one who garroted an old crippled widow. Seems unlikely, and the movie is completely convinced of her innocence, but she gets her ‘fair trial’ and death sentence. The day of her execution draws nearer and nearer, and then it’s today. Will the governor or the Supreme Court come to Barbara’s rescue?

Susan Hayward won an Oscar for this performance, which gets no second-guessing from me. She’s great, and the script by Nelson Gidding (The Andromeda Strain, Odds Against Tomorrow) and Donald Mankiewicz (Mannix, Star Trek) is jammed with noir-quality wisecracks and angst.

Says the grizzled reporter: “It’s Mrs Graham’s tough luck to be young, attractive, belligerent, immoral, and guilty as hell.”

Directed by Robert Wise, with style when style is needed, or without when it’s not. There’s also a sometimes-sensational jazz score by Johnny Mandel, who wrote MASH‘s “Suicide is Painless” theme song a dozen years later.

Despite the lowbrow title, this is a very good movie. With all due respect to Mr Camus, though, it hasn’t and won’t usher in a true civilization.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (2018)

Someone with assault weapons, grenades, and body armor has opened fire and taken out a police officer’s funeral. Everyone is pretty sure the local wingnut militia is behind the killings, which angers the handful of angry white men who make up that militia, because they’re pretty sure they didn’t do it.

Their weapons storage facility is missing an assault rifle and some grenades, though, and a Kevlar suit of armor. Sure looks like one of them shot up the cop’s funeral.

Figuring out who the perp is and turning him over to the police is the only way to prevent war with the local, state, and federal cops that’ll all be swarming over the area within hours. So the militia’s top guy needs to find out which of his wingnuts went full metal jacket, and needs to find out quick.

Investigation and interrogation come easy for the top guy, since in addition to being chief of the wingnuts, he’s also a cop. And of course, he’s not the only cop in the militia.

From everything I’ve read and what little contact I’ve had with such lunatics, your average militia member is not as clever as anyone in this film — hate makes people stupid, not smart. And a working warehouse for a militia would also have food, porn, and beer on hand, none of which is seen or mentioned in the movie. These are mere quibbles, though.

Writer-director Henry Dunham has put together a taut thriller with no loose ends, lots of tension and intelligence, and he’s done it all in darkness. The movie mostly takes place at the militia’s storage unit, with the lights out or turned way down low. After 15 minutes of trying to figure out what’s going on, I re-started the movie using VLC, software that allows me to brighten the show. I recommend the show, and also recommend brightening it with VLC.

Verdict: YES.

5/15/2025

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