Neverending Film Festival
#345 — Oct. 28, 2024

You’ll be rooting for two screwball ladies, Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly, to keep the $50-grand they got from a man about to be killed. It’s 18 minutes, with cowardly cops, a demanding landlord, superstition galore, and a murphy bed. It’s complicated but sometimes funny.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

An American Senator’s daughter has been kidnapped by criminal elements in Chang Long, and they’re threatening to kill her if her father doesn’t quickly quash a foreign aid bill in the US Congress. The response is, “Where the hell is Chang Long?” but after that, the USA sends kung fu master Johnny Jones (Jim Kelly) to the rescue.

In addition to action, the movie goes for laughs, but delivers none. It was filmed in Thailand, so some of the outside scenery is pretty, but the movie is pretty bad.

Someone named Christopher Trussell wrote the music, plagiarizing obviously from Enter the Dragon.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Robert Redford gets out of prison, and his old partner-in-crime George Segal has a museum heist planned. Zero Mostel elbows in on the deal.

The story sputters and seems contrived, but it’s written by William Goldman, music by Quincy Jones, directed by Peter Yates, so it’s adequate, if you have nothing better to do.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

This starts as a fluffy comic-drama about a pretty young woman named Ruth (Nancy Carroll), who enjoys being pursued by men, but only in the old-fashioned and completely chaste way. She’s a good girl, she is, in a small town where the leading pastime is nosiness.

The first half of the film is enjoyable, with a few sparkly moments, but in the second half things take a darker turn. One of the men Ruth has spurned spreads rumors that she spent the night with dashing millionaire playboy Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant, in his first leading role).

Suddenly Ruth is the talk of the town, and she’s fired from her job at the bank, because “the moral conduct of our employees is a very important consideration.” Ruth’s friends stay away, her own mother slaps her in the face, and her fiancé (Randolph Scott!) wants to call off the wedding. All this leaves Ruth to decide who her friends are, if she has any at all, and what’s important and what isn’t.

The movie’s morals are dated, but in the context of 1932 it’s astonishing — especially the twist at the end. Wow!

Not particularly pertinent to the plot, there’s a marvelous pre-code fight between Ruth and her teenage sister, who’s swiped a nice new pair of underwear. Ruth wins the wrestling match, lays her sister across the bed, and pulls the panties right off of her.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Shirley Booth plays the frustrated but devoted housewife of Anthony Quinn, who’s cheating on her. She’s determined not to notice, though, and busily planning his birthday party.

They have three grown children who still live in the family’s slightly less-than-middle class home. Not yet a star, Shirley MacLaine plays their daughter, and she’s cute enough to hold my attention when the movie didn’t, which was often.

Set in the South, Hot Spell is based on a play, and feels very, very serious, like Tennessee Williams but without the laughs. Every line hides angst and yearning and frustration, and every scene is a struggle between hopeless hopes and broken dreams and yadda yadda yadda.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

… and out of alphabetical order …

Hobo (Rutgar Hauer) rides the rails, but hops off in the wrong city, where everything’s under the control of a super-bad guy called Mr Drake, and Mr Drake’s almost-as-evil sons.

The otherwise nameless ‘Hobo’ wanders wide-eyed, watching the city’s seemingly endless violence. After witnessing a few gruesome murders, saving a pretty hooker from being raped and murdered, and having a bad guy carve vulgarities into his chest, finally Hobo has had enough, and reaches for a shotgun.

This is stylized like a comic book movie, bloated with blam and blood, and every scene is over-the-top. People get dropped into manholes, hands splattered in propellers, a foot gets sledgehammered, etc. Instead of speaking, you expect the characters to have word balloons pointing down at their mouths.

The movie was inspired by a joke “coming soon” reel in Quentin Tanantino’s Grindhouse. Expanded to feature length, Hobo with a Shotgun blasts with both barrels, and it’s rockin’ good for what it is. Gets a thumbs up, definitely.

But it’s only what you’d expect from the title and the Grindhouse joke. What if… what if they’d dropped the exaggerated villains and comical grotesqueries, and given the concept to a moviemaker like Abel Ferrara? He’d make it a serious and terrifying movie about America’s homeless and forgotten people, and one bum with a bad attitude blowing people away for justice. I liked this, but man, I would’ve loved that.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Fact-checking that crappy new movie about Saturday Night Live

Putting the boot into soccer movies

10/28/2024

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

The Hot Spot (1990)
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Hot Water (1924)
Hotel Du Nord (1938)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises …

— — —

If you have trouble finding any of these films, say so below, and I’ll try to help.

— — —

Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter ‘I’.
— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

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