#362
February 21, 2025
Hunted (1972)
Not quite a feature at 41 minutes, this is a ‘long short’ about an increasingly odd man who’s asked a real estate agent to show him an office he might rent. What he actually wants is something else again.
Won’t say any more about the plot, but the presentation is minimal, the writing is sharply pointed, Edward Woodward stars, and the drama holds up well 50+ years later.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982)
Set somewhere in Asia, this is about an American ‘adventurer’ and an English officer, who’ve teamed up to find a golden cobra which has mystical powers. It’s a Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off, with lots of unfunny wisecracks and a story that must’ve been written on drugs.
It’s very badly-dubbed, but otherwise a nearly competent Italian action movie, neither dreadful nor really any good. It does offer perhaps the worst fight scene I’ve ever seen, about half an hour in. None of the shadow punches come close to connecting, but every windy whif is accompanied by bone-crunch sound effects.
Verdict: MAYBE, for giggles.
♦ ♦ ♦
Las Hurdes (1933)
a/k/a Land without Bread
Luis Buñuel was known for surrealism, but this seems to be a straightforward 27-minute documentary about the hardscrabble life of peasants in the most remote and poorest corner of Spain. The narration is bemused, describing the ugliness and difficulty sorta blithely. The camera just ‘happens’ to be there for some very photogenic moments, like a mountain goat’s oops moment and fatal fall from a cliff, a donkey being fatally stung to death by an entire colony of bees, and a sickly little girl who turns up dead on cue.
Amidst all this poverty, in keeping with the stupidity of people everywhere, the only building that’s not a shack is the ornate, magnificent church. There are many dwarfs and cretins (which I thought meant people from Crete but here means “virtual savages”.) Malaria is endemic. The cameras follow the dead girl’s corpse on the long haul to a distant cemetery.
It’s as bleak as death itself, but fascinating.
When the film is over there’s a brief inspirational text crawl on the screen, almost a memo to 2025, calling for people to join together and stand up to fascist dictatorships. “But the workers and peasants of Spain will defeat Franco and his cronies with the help of anti-fascists from all over the world… and the miserable homes you saw in this film will disappear for ever.” One would hope.
After watching the flick, I came across this article, suggesting as I’d suspected that much of it was staged and faked, which to me just adds to the film’s appeal and allure.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Hurricane (1937)
In Tahiti, a native man named Terangi punches a French officer who’d insulted him in a racist manner. For this Terangi is sentenced to a short term in prison, but for repeatedly trying to escape from the prison, he’s sentenced to a longer and longer stay there.
The face of the government is cruel, but the face of Terangi couldn’t be whiter, so despite some fine writing and performances and the film’s cogent and sympathetic argument against tyranny, it’s near ridiculous every time Terangi is on screen. He’s not even grease-painted to look ‘swarthy’; he’s simply a white guy, as white as his jailers and oppressors. Raymond Massey, playing the French overlord, looks far more ethnic than the natives.
If you can overlook that, everything else works quite well. There are a few paternalistic lines, and since the title gives it away, I’ll reveal that bad weather is part of the plot.
Directed by John Ford. The cast includes Dorothy Lamour, John Carradine, and someone named (seriously) Jon Hall as Terangi the native, who looks like any of the Beach Boys.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Husbands and Wives (1992)
This is one of Woody Allen’s best comedies, though it pretends to be a drama. Mostly it’s about two couples, both married and all friends, and the complications that arise in their relationships after one of the couples divorce.
The movie’s conceit as that these ordinary people (well, ‘ordinary’ for an Allen film — highbrow high society sorts) talk to the camera, being ‘interviewed’ as if their love lives are being made into a documentary.
Allen and Mia Farrow, playing one of the couples, are who and what you’d expect, but the other couple is played by Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack (usually a director), and they’re both hilarious without really any jokes. Their character flaws aren’t hidden, they’re plain and obvious, which makes every awkward mistake they make (and they never stop) more and more comical.
I do hope we’re supposed to find their foibles funny. I laughed a lot, but the movie’s ‘serious message’ is that nothing lasts forever, and even the happiest marriages can crumble.
Allen and Farrow broke up during the making, and then came the next 30 years of accusations and headlines and OMG what a monster and are we even allowed to like Woody Allen movies any more? Well, screw that, I still like Woody Allen movies that aren’t shit, and this one’s quite good.
It’s icky, though, when the movie has Allen, pushing 60 and looking it, hook up with 19-year-old Juliette Lewis, who’s supposed to be some worldly writing student in Professor Allen’s class. Then again, without an ick factor, would it even be a Woody Allen film?
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
… and out of alphabetical order …
The Plot against Harry (1970)
Harry (Martin Priest) is a gangster, newly released from prison and not particularly looking to go straight, until his doctor tells him he has heart issues. The hook here is that Harry is Jewish, with a weary attitude and a wearier face. The film is a comedy, and Harry’s face is about half the jokes, and they’re funny.
So here’s this nebbish schlemiel facing his own mortality, and half-against his own will he starts to 180° his life. He literally runs into his estranged ex-wife and ex-family, goes to a bar mitzvah, buys into his brother-in-law’s mostly-legit business, donates to charity, and even testifies before a congressional committee. Through it all, though, he remains a schlep but a lovable schlep, and The Plot against Harry remains enjoyable. Is there a Yiddish word for ‘droll’?
Writer-director Michael Roemer made the marvelous Nothing but a Man, but didn’t get to make many other films. This one was from 1970, but got shelved and wasn’t released until almost twenty years later.
I was amazed to see the logo of a local TV station, Seattle’s KING-TV Channel 5, superimposed over the title card. Turns out Channel 5 briefly had a subsidiary that made exactly one feature film, and this is it, but it’s definitely not a TV movie.
Verdict: YES.
2/12/2025
Logo 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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