Castro Theater's August 2016 Calendar

This blog is really limping along.  I'm not posting at all and I'm watching fewer films than at any time in the last decade.  I don't know what I'm going to do with this blog.  My life is still in transition since my father's death last year.

Wednesday nights at the Castro in August were I Wake Up Dreaming by Elliot Lavine - allegedly his final noir series program.  I had seen several of the films on the program but still it was unfortunate I couldn't catch any of the programs.

I only saw two films at the Castro in August.  It was a double bill on August 12 that looked a lot a Midnites for Maniacs program but it wasn't.  Speaking of which, Midnites for Maniacs launched a new website in July.  It also appears that the Maniac's new home base is at the Roxie.  They haven't held an event at the Castro since May.

The Goonies starring Sean Astin & Corey Feldman; with Josh Brolin, Robert Davi & Joe Pantoliano; directed by Richard Donner; (1985)
The Lost Boys starring Jason Patric & Corey Haim; with Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman & Dianne Wiest; directed by Joel Schumacher; (1987)

I had never seen The Goonies.  It's a cult classic but I'm about 5 to 10 years too old to have appreciated it as a child.  I've seen portions of it on television many times but I never really got into it.  I decided to watch it once through on the big screen to see if I could appreciate the film.  The short answer is no.  I always thought Steven Spielberg directed the film but to my surprise Richard Donner helmed the film.  Donner would make Lethal Weapon (a film I still admire) two years after The Goonies.  Goonies is filled with too much slapstick and silliness for my taste.  It's difficult for this 40something year old to embrace his inner child via The Goonies.

I saw The Lost Boys when it came out in the theaters in 1987.  The film was directed by Joel Schumacher who would go on to make some of the less admired Batman films of the Tim Burton era.  Scanning Schumacher's filmography, I think The Lost Boys ranks among his best.

Jason Patric plays the new kid in town who falls for the beautiful motorcycle chick (Jami Gertz).  What he doesn't know is that the gang she rides with aren't just Goth bikers but vampires.  Led by the charismatic David (Kiefer Sutherland in a flashy performance), the gang initiates Michael into their gang/coven. 

Fortunately for Michael the initiation is a two step process:  first he gets bitten by a vampire and second he must feast on the blood a victim.  Michael steadfastly resists the second part.  Serendipitously, Michael's younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) has become acquainted with the Frog brothers - two comic book store workers who are vampire hunters as a side gig.  These two are memorably portrayed by Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander. 

Patric & Sutherland provide the angst & menace (which works equally wells as teenage rebellion or vampiric tendencies).  Feldman & Newlander provide the comedy.  Haim provides the most outlandish 80s fashion.  If you throw in memorable rock-n-roll soundtrack & a particularly effective climax battle, The Lost Boys ranks as one of the 80s classics; it was as enjoyable as I recalled.  I think I enjoyed it more in my forties than my late teens.

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Castro Theater Calendar - August 2016

Castro Theater's May 2016 Calendar

I haven't been writing much.  I'm still dealing with my father's estate and I was in a minor car accident in March which has taken up an outsized portion of my time & attention.  I've also been seeing quite a few movies and seeing a film always takes precedence over writing about a film.

The Castro Theater's May 2016 calendar is underwhelming for me.

I'd like to catch the double feature of Mommie Dearest and Gypsy on May 4 but that is the penultimate night of the 2016 San Francisco International Film Festival and I have purchased tickets to 2 films that evening.

Similarly, I have never seen Valley of the Dolls which screens May 10 with The Miracle Worker as part of a Patty Duke tribute.  Unfortunately, I have other plans that evening.

Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (May 14) caught my attention.  From May 13 to 16, the Roxie in conjunction with Midcentury Eclectic! (Elliot Lavine, Don Malcolm, et al.) is screening 12 films under the series title Archaeology of Arthouse.  I've bought a pass and plan to see several films in the series.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to get away to the Castro to see Argento's film.

I have yet to visit the new PFA.  There are three film series beginning in May which will likely lure me to Berkeley:  Mexican Film Noir (May 7 to June 11), The Films of Seijun Suzuki (May 7 to June 30) and the UCLA Festival of Preservation (May 15 to June 26).

Not shown on the Castro's May calendar is the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival which runs from June 2 to 5 at the Castro.

Many years ago (the early 1990s), one of my first visits to the Roxie was to see a Pedro Almodovar film.  I think I caught a double bill or a couple films over a few night.  I recall one film distinctly as Tie Me Up!  Tie Me Down!  The other film was Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls like Mom which I thought was unbelievably outré at the time.  I subsequently seen films which renders Pepi, Luci, Bom...as passé.  Almodovar has a special place in my cinematic pantheon as I relate those films with my early days in SF.  I mention this because the Roxie is screening six of his early films as part of a retrospective from May 20 to 26.

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Castro Theater Calendar - May 2016

The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's March 2016 Calendar

For the third consecutive month, there is not a puzzle in the Castro calendar.  As the saying goes, once means nothing and twice is a coincidence but thrice is a pattern.

Cinequest runs from March 1 to March 13 and CAAMFest runs from March 10 to March 20 so I won't have much time to drop by the Castro until the final part of the month.

Among the Castro highligts:

Elliot Lavine is back with Pre-Code films on Wednesday nights. 

Akira Kurosawa's Ran is paired with A.K. a documentary biopic on March 6.

A Sean Connery & Pierce Brosnan series from March 17 to 22 with an emphasis on their James Bond films.

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The March series I am most excited about is not a Cinequest or at the Castro but instead at the Roxie.  From March 21 to 31, the Roxie is presenting Greenaway Week with screenings of The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Number, The Baby of Macon and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.  Greenway's latest film Eisenstein in Guanajuato plays from March 25 to 31. 

It was The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (which I saw in a Los Angeles theater in the summer of 1989) that turned me on to art house films.

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Castro Theater Calendar - March 2016

The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's August 2015 Calendar

The clues in the Castro Theater's August 2015 calendar were easy to solve.

August 4 - I immediately recognized Omar Sharif since he passed away on July 10 and had been in the news lately.

August 10 - having recognized Sharif and even suspecting the August 4 photo was from Dr. Zhivago, it was easy to identify Julie Christie (again the photo is from Dr. Zhivago).

Seeing a pattern with Dr. Zhivago & the Russian headgear in the photos, I quickly identified August 17 & 24.

August 17 - Geraldine Chaplin

August 24 - Rod Steiger

August 31 - this took me a bit of time but browsing through photos of the cast of Dr. Zhivago, I found this was Rita Tushingham whom I recall from The Knack ...and How to Get It.

So the clues are screaming Dr. Zhivago but that film is not on the calendar.  I'm a little surprised that there are no Omar Sharif films on the calendar to pay tribute to the actor.

By the way, 2015 marks Dr. Zhivago's 50th anniversary.  Regarding the puzzle in the calendar, I'm not sure if it is pointing to any specific film or event other than Sharif's death.

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Another month, another screening of Blade Runner at the Castro.  I guess it packs them in.  Having seen the film so many times, I'll probably skip the August 9 screening.

The Muni Metro will be closing at 9:30 PM every night for the next six months.  I typically take the K, L or M to Castro Station when I go to the Castro Theatre.  Muni will run bus shuttles between West Portal & Embarcadero Stations during the closure.  I have yet to experience the bus shuttles so I cannot say how much (if any) delay is caused by the closure.

Thursday nights in August (up to September 3) at the Castro are programmed by Elliot Lavine and are collectively called I Wake Up Dreaming.  Lavine has moved his popular series from the Roxie to the Castro.  The move caught me by surprise.  Somehow, I missed the news.  Five consecutive Thursdays is preferable than 10 consecutive days which they did at the Roxie.  However, of the 12 films being screened over the five Thursdays, I have seen 10 (possibly 11) of the films.  I will likely be skipping I Wake Up Dreaming this year. 

The Castro is closed for six days in August which seems high.   Even though the printed calendar states "TBA" for August 11, their website states the theater will be closed on that date.  August 18 & 25 are still TBA on the website.

What will I be seeing at the Castro this month?

August 5 (today) - a Maysles Brothers documentary double feature:  Grey Gardens is about the impoverished aunt and first cousin of Jackie Kennedy.  Iris is Albert Maysles final film about New York fashion maven and nonagenerian Iris Apfel.

August 12 - Blue Steel is director Kathryn Bigelow's effort in between Near Dark & Point Break and I have read it features a strong performance by Jaime Lee Curtis.  Blue Steel is paired with James Cameron's Aliens.  Cameron is Bigelow's ex-husband.

August 22 - Capricorn One; a cult film which has escaped me for many years.  In this one, NASA fakes a manned landing on Mars (with OJ Simpson as one of the astronauts!).

August 23 - Zardoz; another cult film which has escaped me.  Starring Sean Connery & directed by John Boorman, this 1974 sci-fi film has the added bonus of creating an Easter egg on the calendar.  The title of the film is derived from the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which is the source material for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz which screens August 14-16.  Capricorn One & Zardoz screen with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

August 26 - Mad Max: Fury Road was the critics' darling at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

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Castro Theater Calendar - August 2015

The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's October 2014 Calendar

The October calendar at the Castro Theater was tough.  The only person I quickly recognized was Ralph Bellamy on Halloween.  My co-worker, whose facial recognition skills I praised in my September post, drew a blank for the other three.

I cheated and used Google Image Search to identify Ruth Gordon on October 6.  Ms. Gordon is best known for her role in Harold and Maude which doesn't get screened as much now that the Red Vic is closed.  She was also memorable in Every Which Way But Loose and Rosemary's Baby.

That knowledge broke the logjam for me.  I recalled that Ralph Bellamy & Ruth Gordon appeared together in Rosemary's Baby (1968).  Then I noticed the guy on October 20 looked a lot like the actor who portrayed Ruth Gordon's character's husband in the film.  A quick IMDB search resulted in his name - Sidney Blackmer.  That only left the woman shown on October 28.  Seeing the Rosemary's Baby association, I looked each actress in the cast up in IMDB until I found Patsy Kelly.

Summarizing:

October 6 - Ruth Gordon

October 20 - Sidney Blackmer

October 28 - Patsy Kelly

October 31 - Ralph Bellamy

The clues obviously point to Rosemary's Baby but unfortunately the film is not on the Castro Theater's October calendar.  Roman Polanski directed the film so I looked for other films by Polanski on the calendar this month. No luck.

After perusing the calendar for a few moments, I recalled what Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnites for Maniacs had told the audience at the September 19 screening of Inside Llewyn Davis and Coal Miner's Daughter.  He mentioned his upcoming events.  On October 17, Ficks is screening The Dark Knight & Reign of Fire.  Although not listed on the Maniac's website nor the Castro's, I recalled that Jesse had said he was screening a double feature consisting of The Notebook (directed by Nick Cassavetes) and Minnie and Moskowitz (directed by John Cassavetes) in November.  John Cassavetes was in Rosemary's Baby but it seems a stretch for the clues in the October calendar to be pointing to a November film event.

I can't find anything with Mia Farrow on the calendar either.

I also tried looking for anyone whose mother was named Rosemary.  The following individuals' mothers were not named Rosemary - Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak (Vertigo), Bernardo Bertolucci (October 18), Nicholas Kristof (October 7), Lauren Bacall (several films on multiple dates) and Andy Warhol (Chelsea Girls).

I notice Ghostbusters on October 24.  That movie deals with a case of demonic possession which is close to the plot of Rosemary's Baby.

Halloween is the most obvious choice for the object of the calendar's clues, but I don't think that is right.  Kind of life, the puzzle on the calendar don't come with a key so I can never know with 100% certainty if I am right or wrong.

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I've never been a big fan of horror films or Halloween.  Halloween always seemed silly to me and now seems like an excuse for people to get drunk.  Horror films rarely frighten me anymore.  I guess I'm just becoming a grumpy old man.  For that reason, the Castro's October calendar is not particularly appealing to me.  Also by my count, the Castro is screening 21 films in October which I have seen before.

I would have liked to have seen Gandhi on Sunday but had other plans.  Orpheus (October 21), The Pawnbroker (October 22) and Giuseppe Makes a Movie (October 27) interest me.  All three non-film events sponsored by the Bay Area Science Festival on October 25 interest me as well.

However, it is the Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective at the PFA which excites me the most in October.  With 18 films in the series, I believe the series contains all of the Taiwanese director's feature film efforts.  The series begins Friday (October 10) with The Sandwich Man and Cute Girl and continues until December 14.

At present, the Mill Valley Film Festival is occurring.  It will continue until Sunday (October 12).  I have seen several films there this past weekend and intend to see more this upcoming weekend.

November looks to be a busy month compared to October.  The San Francisco Film Society is sponsoring three mini-festival:  French Cinema Now (November 6-9), Hong Kong Cinema (November 14-16) and New Italian Cinema (November 19-23).  All three series will be at the Vogue Theater; their lineups are scheduled to be posted tomorrow.

Third I's program has already been announced.  The San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival runs in two segments.  The festival will be at the Viz and the Castro from November 6-9 and at CineArts in Palo Alto on November 15.

Finally, Elliot Lavine (and Don Macolm) returns to the Roxie from November 14-17 for a French film noir series titled "The French Had a Name For It: Classic French Noir from the 40s through the 60s."  The program for the series is not yet posted.

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Castro Theater Calendar - October 2014

Child's Pose and It Felt Like Love

I saw two very good films at the Roxie earlier this week.

Technically, I saw both films at the Little Roxie.  I have noticed that their film screenings do not always match their website.  Their website lists whether a film will screen in the Big Roxie or Little Roxie for a particular showtime.  As I have stated before, I try to avoid the Little Roxie for various reasons.  I can't remember which but one of the two films was scheduled to be in the Big Roxie on the website but I was sorely disappointed to see it was screening at the Little Roxie when I arrived at the box office.  This is not the first time this has happened.

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Before I forget, the Roxie has posted the schedule for Elliot Lavine's 2014 edition of I Wake Up Dreaming.  I notice he has combined some pre-Code films into the mix.  For the past two or three years, Lavine has programmed a one week pre-Code film series in March as well as the two week I Wake Up Dreaming series in May.  Unless it slipped past me, there was no pre-Code series this year.  I suppose Elliot is merging the two.

The lineup looks interesting because there are so many titles I'm unfamiliar with.  Giving it the once over, I only recognize eight films I have seen before:  The Locket, Fall Guy, When Strangers Marry, The Window, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, Al Capone, While the City Sleeps and Brainstorm.  With 30 films in the lineup, that means 75% of the films are new to me.

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Child's Pose starring Luminița Gheorghiu; directed by Călin Peter Netzer; Romanian with subtitles; (2013) - Official Website
It Felt Like Love starring Gina Piersant; directed by Eliza Hittman; (2013) - Official Website

Child's Pose won the Golden Bear (highest prize) at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.

It Felt Like Love is Eliza Hittman's first feature length film.

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Child's Pose is notable for the tremendous performance by Luminița Gheorghiu.  Gheorghiu plays Cornelia Keneres, a sixtysomething woman who is something to behold.  As the film starts, we see that Cornelia is part of the well-to-do set in Bucharest with important people attending her party.  She complains to her sister that her son never calls which would seem like a familiar refrain except she speaks as if she is in competition with her son's live-in girlfriend.  Cornelia's maid is also her son's maid and she bullies and bribes her into providing information about her son's life.

The film veers into more dramatic territory when we learn that Cornelia's son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) has killed a boy with his car.  Cornelia quickly springs into action.  She races to the police station where she ignores the victim's family, uses her contacts to influence the police investigation, browbeats the police detectives taking his son's statements and even instructs her son to change his initial statement.

Although Cornelia clearly loves her son, she also is one ballsy bitch that needs to control every situation.  For his part, Barbu is tired of his mother and the possibility of prison times seems less frightening than having to deal with his mother.

Over the course of the film, we learn the depth of dysfunction in the mother-son relationship although we are never told the exact cause.  Cornelia's manipulative manner is implied to have been the root cause of many of Barbu's problems - which includes a failing relationship with his girlfriend, drug abuse and other problems.

Two scenes stand out for me.  In the first, Cornelia and Barbu's girlfriend Carmen (Ilinca Goia) have as close to a heart-to-heart as Cornelia can have.  Eventually, Cornelia elicits detailed information about Carmen and Barbu's sex life.  First, it seemed peculiar for a woman and her boyfriend's mother to have such a conversation.  Second, the revelations imply that Barbu's problems with his mother have spilled over into his relationship with Carmen.  For her part, Cornelia desperate need to be close to her son has left him frustrated, emotionally stunted and angry at the world.  Still Cornelia cannot let her son go.  It is hinted, ever so slightly during a scene where Cornelia rubs ointment on her son's back, that incest is either in their history or on Cornelia's mind.

The pièce de résistance is the extended scene at the end of the film where Cornelia visits the parents of the dead boy and reveals her feelings while pleading for her son's freedom.  Cornelia has fixed things enough that if the parents will withdraw their complaint, her son will likely receive little to no punishment.  Having seen her manipulations throughout the film, the audience wonders how much of what she is saying is true.  Gheorghiu plays the scene without giving any indication of Cornelia's veracity - reinforcing how good a liar Cornelia is.

Gheorghiu's Cornelia is the type of woman you'll always be weary of but can never put your finger on exactly why she makes you feel uncomfortable.  It's a great role and a great performance and by extension a great film. 

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The plot for It Felt Like Love is a little thin.  Gina Piersanti is Lila, 14 year old Brooklyn girl who spends her summer vacation hanging out with her best friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni) and her boyfriend Patrick (Jesse Cordasco).  Chiara & Patrick are quite affectionate and Chiara is very willing to speak with Lila about her sexual experiences.  With her mother dead and a strained relationship with her father, Lila is left to wonder if her lack of sexual experience is normal.

Uncomfortable at being a third wheel, Lila fixates on Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), an older acquaintance of Chiara whom she refers to as a "total douche."  Pursuing him by stopping by his workplace and leaving behind her sunglasses as a pretext so they can meet again, Lila is more intrigued with the idea of sex than actually having sex.  Taking advantage of Sammy's drunken state, Lila claims to have had sex with Sammy although the audience knows this to be false.

Sammy is doubtful that this occurred and put off by the lie; not to mention he could be prosecuted for statutory rape if the authorities believe Lila's claim.  Lila is still not dissuaded and goes to Sammy's house to seduce or relent to him.  In a disturbing scene, Lila offers to give Sammy and his two friends fellatio.  At first, the three young men are dubious but one by one, each man pulls down his pants while Sammy kneels on the floor.  The scene cuts away so we don't know what transpired although it is implied she left without performing the act. Eventually, Lila "falls out of love" with Sammy but is left confused and frustrated by her own lack of sexual exploits.

It Felt Like Love is the summer nothing happened to Lila although she put herself in dangerous situations and spread false rumors about her own sexual escapades. Lila is a typical teenage girl.  Still a little coltish, she's definitely not a  woman but she doesn't want to be a child anymore.  Encouraged and envious of her friend's sexual experiences, Lila is anxious to move to this phase of her life but I was relieved that she didn't.

Gina Piersant gives a strong performance as Lila.  She captured the teenage angst that I recall from that age.  Perhaps it was stretch for Miss Piersant to play the awkward Lila or perhaps not.  Regardless, she conveyed a difficult period of a woman's life very effectively in It Felt Like Love.  The film was more of a mood piece than complete story.  It was a quick peek into the summer of a young girl where something life altering could have occurred but didn't.  Rather than feel disappointed by the film that didn't deliver, I felt happy for Lila which is one indicator that the film was effective - it made me care about the protagonist.

I Wake Up Dreaming 2013 - 99 44/100% Noir

I saw 17 films at I Wake Up Dreaming 2013 which was held at the Roxie from May 10 to 23.  I Wake Up Dreaming is programmer Elliot Lavine's spring event.  His late summer/autumn event is typically called Not Necessarily Noir.  The 2013 edition of I Wake Up Dreaming had the subtitle of "99 44/100% Noir."  I wonder how many people under the age of 50 picked up the Ivory soap slogan.

Of the 30 films on the program, I had seen 12 before including All Through the Night which I saw again during the 2013 festival.  The two films which I had not previously seen and did not watch during the festival were My Gun is Quick (1957) and The Tattooed Stranger.

The 17 films I saw during the festival were:

Blues in the Night starring Priscilla Lane, Richard Whorf, Betty Field, Jack Carson & Lloyd Nolan; with Elia Kazan & Howard DaSilva; directed by Anatole Litvak; (1941)
I Wake Up Screaming starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar & Elisha Cook, Jr.; directed by H. Bruce Humberstone; (1941)
The Monster and the Girl starring Ellen Drew, Robert Paige, Paul Lukas & Joseph Calleia; directed by Stuart Heisler; (1941)

Fall Guy starring Leo Penn; with Elisha Cook, Jr.; directed by Reginald Le Borg; (1947)

Club Havana starring Tom Neal; directed by Edgar G. Umer; (1945)

Island of Doomed Men starring Peter Lorre, Rochelle Hudson & Robert Wilcox; directed by Charles Barton; (1940)

Nightmare starring Diana Barrymore & Brian Donlevy; directed by Tim Whelan; (1942)

All Through the Night starring Humphrey Bogart; with Kaaren Verne, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, William Demarest, Jackie Gleason & Phil Silvers; directed by Vincent Sherman; (1942)

Bewitched starring Phyllis Thaxter; directed by Arch Oboler; (1945)

Five  starring William Phipps, Susan Douglas, James Anderson, Charles Lampkin & Earl Lee; directed by Arch Oboler; (1951)

All Night Long starring Patrick McGoohan, Marti Stevens, Paul Harris & Richard Attenborough; directed by Basil Dearden; (1961)

Autumn Leaves starring Joan Crawford & Cliff Robertson; with Vera Miles & Lorne Greene; directed by Robert Aldrich; (1956)

Killer at Large starring Robert Lowery; directed by William Beaudine; (1947)

Key Witness starring John Beal; directed by D. Ross Lederman; (1947)

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons starring George Sanders; directed by W. Lee Wilder; (1960)

Death of a Scoundrel starring George Sanders, Yvonne De Carlo & Zsa Zsa Gabor; directed by Charles Martin; (1956)

The Crooked Way starring John Payne; directed by Robert Florey; (1949)

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Although I enjoyed several of the films, overall I was slightly disappointed with the program.  Granted, I missed two films in the program which are among the all-time great noir films - Sweet Smell of Success and Criss Cross.

The best double feature was a George Sanders' pair on the penultimate night.  Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons was a dark comedy which reminded me of Sweeney Todd with a dash Hitchcock cheekiness.  Sanders plays a used furniture dealer who is in love with a chanteuse.  Unfortunately for him, she has expensive tastes and monogamy is not exactly her strong suit.  One thing leads to another and Sanders ends up a killing series of women whom he is romancing.  Now that sounds very harsh but director W. Lee Wilder handles it with a deft touch.  Sanders is very frugal and keeps track of all his costs in a little ledger.  When he buys train tickets to take his victim to his country cottage, he saves money by only buying her a one-way ticket.  How does he dispose of the bodies?  Fortunately, his cottage has a large stove that custom built to cook large game animals.  A better man would be offended but the film tickled my admittedly perverse funny bone.

Whereas Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons was a fun little film, Sanders strives for the epic in Death of a Scoundrel.  Oddly, Sanders with his RP accent plays Sabourin, a Czech refugee in New York by way of South America.  Having survived a Nazi concentration camp, Sabourin calls on his brother only discover he has married his true love.  Undeterred, he sells his brother out to the police in exchange for passage to New York.  Once in NYC, he spots Yvonne DeCarlo pulling a scam.  Seeing a chance to scam the scammer, he steals her stolen loot.  For his trouble, he gets shot but that leads to better things. The back alley doctor tips him off to penicillin which he promptly buys on the stock market.  With his insider tip, he makes friends with the wealthy Mrs. Ryan (Zsa Zsa Gabor).  Eventually, Sabourin sets up a company and parlays unscrupulous and fraudulent deals to great wealth.  Juggling amorous intentions towards Mrs. Ryan, her secretary cum actress, his sister-in-law, Sabourin is a scoundrel in every sense of the word.  Only DeCarlo understands and even appreciates his flaws and strengths.  Sanders is magnificent in the role.  His performance is even more incredible given that Sanders and Zsa Zsa Gabor were less than 2 years divorced in real life at the time of the filming.

About 15 years after making Death of a Scoundrel, Sanders married (and divorced) a second Gabor sister (Magda).  If he hadn't committed suicide in 1972, Sanders might have been able to pull off the Hungarian Hat Trick given his apparent partiality towards the Gabor sisters and their collective propensity for marriage.  Magda, Zsa Zsa and Eva had something on the order of 20 marriages between them.

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I Wake Up Screaming features one of the iconic images in film noir:  Victor Mature standing with the shadow of an elevator cage partially obscuring his face (see program below).  The film was quite good but not in the pantheon of noir.  Victor Mature is a Broadway producer who "helps" young actresses.  Together with newspaper columnist Allyn Joslyn and Broadway actor Alan Mowbray, the three seem to make sport of building up the next big thing.  Carole Landis is a waitress who is the latest object of the trio's attention.  However, she ends up dead and creepy cop Laird Cregar thinks Mature is the prime suspect.  Betty Grable shows up as Landis' sister who develops an unusual attraction to Mature, who was in love with her sister and is the prime suspect in her murder.  Elisha Cook, Jr. is the front desk worker at the apartment building where Landis & Grable live.  Most memorable for Cregar's menacing performance, I Wake Up Screaming is a solid film.

Autumn Leaves was paired with Female on the Beach which I saw at the 2011 edition of Not Necessarily Noir.  Both films feature Joan Crawford as vulnerable woman.  In Autumn Leaves, she is a lonely spinster who is won over by Cliff Robertson.  At least they acknowledge the age difference in the film.  Crawford was 20 years older than Robertson.  Interestingly, Lorne Greene played Robertson father despite only being 8 years older than Robertson.  In true noir fashion, Robertson's Burt turns out to have serious psychological issues and Vera Miles shows up claiming to be his ex-wife.  Crawford's Millie has a strong nurturing streak due to childhood trauma.  Desperate to personally care for her husband, Millie rejects all entreaties that she commit Burt to a mental sanatorium.  As you see, Autumn Leaves is fairly melodramtic.  In addition, Crawford is vulnerable and I think she is at her best when she has a bitchy role.  We do get to watch Robertson chew up the scenery when he is in one of his fugue states.

Peter Lorre seems to be one of those actors whose presence elevates a film.  Such was the case with Island of Doomed Men.  Lorre plays the warden of an off-the-books private island prison which is kind of cross between Devil's Island and a slave plantation.  Lorre takes sadistic pleasure in lording over the prisoners and his beautiful but captive wife.  A G-man goes undercover to break up the racket but needs the help of the wife.  Lorre is the best thing about the film and makes it worthwhile.

The final film of the festival was The Crooked Way, another amnesia film.  John Payne is a soldier convalescing (at Letterman Hospital in the Presidio) after WWII.  Permanently unable to regain his memory, his doctor decides to send him back home to Los Angeles where familiar surrounding may help him adjust.  What doctor & patient are unaware of is that he is a former gangster who joined the army under an alias and his return stirs up old feuds with the cops, other gangsters and his ex-wife.  It's a run-of-the-mill plot with above average performances.  Sonny Tufts as the gang boss and Rhys Williams as the hard-nosed cop stand out among the cast.

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I had never heard of Arch Oboler before this festival.  Lavine programmed a Oboler double bill one night.  Bewitched was about a young woman who "hears voices in her head" and whose fiancé ends up murdered.  Technically, she only hears once voice but that's enough to lead to multiple homicides.  It was a nice try but ultimately the film fell flat.  Phyllis Thaxter gives it her all as the lead character.

Five was more interesting for me.  The premise is that a nuclear holocaust has killed everyone in the world except for five people.  Interestingly, the buildings are still standing and the nuclear fallout doesn't seem to be particularly fatal.  Even more amazing is that these five people find each other but contrived situations and incredible coincidences are part and parcel of cinema.

Anyway, the five consist of Roseanne (Susan Douglas), a woman who turns out to be pregnant.  She goes to take refuge at her aunt's remote home only to discover her aunt is missing and man is living there.  His name is Michael (William Phipps) and  I believe he was an architect.  Later, two men drive down the deserted road near the house.  The younger man is Charles (Charles Lampkin), an African American who worked at a bank.  The older man is Oliver (Earl Lee) and also worked at the same bank.  The four of them survived due to chance - Roseanne was in lead lined X-ray room, Oliver & Charles were accidentally locked in the bank vault and Michael was in an elevator in Empire State Building.  Wouldn't the EMP knock out the elevator?  As Oliver shows signs of radiation poisoning, they take him to the beach to recuperate where they meet the fifth survivor.  Eric (James Anderson) is a mountain climber was trapped at the top of Mt. Everest at the time of the nuclear detonation.  After the blizzard passed, Eric flew back to the US (despite having a French accent) where his plane ran out of fuel just off the coast.

With the quintet set, we see societal ills played out in a microcosm.  Eric brings discord to the group.  He and Michael both have romantic intentions towards Roseanne.  He is also a racist which causes tension between him & Charles.  His greed and selfishness causes problems for the small group (by this point, Oliver has died of his illness).  From a rational perspective, Eric's behavior is counterproductive.  Everyone knows that all three of the men should impregnate Roseanne to created the large gene pool but I guess that would be a little risque for 1951.  Eric's desire to go to the city and "steal" jewelry and money is ridiculous in a post-apocalyptic world as is his destruction of the crops Michael & Charles have cultivated.  Human foolishness knows no bounds.  The film was a little predictable and pedantic but interesting nonetheless.

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Lavine appears to have an affinity for the obscure and B-films.  Sometimes this results in unearthing hidden gems.  Other times, I feel as though these films were obscure for a reason.  I wouldn't say the films were "bad" but they were largely forgettable.

As I scan the list of films I saw, I cannot recall the full plot for many of them.  A scene or two is as much as I can remember per film.

Blues in the Night - a jaxx band gets mixed up gangsters at a roadhouse.  Jack Carson played the trumpeter, Elia Kazan played some instrument.

The Monster and the Girl - a human brain in a gorilla; enough said.

Fall Guy - a guy has no memory of the previous night but he is covered in blood and a woman is dead.

Club Havana - a large cast and multiple subplots set in a nightclub.  There was a shootout in the parking at the end.

Nightmare - Brian Donlevy breaks into a house and makes himself some fried eggs.  A woman in the house confronts him and the next thing you know, they rooting out Nazi spies in wartime England.  There were explosives in marked bottles of wine or some liquor.

Key Witness - a guy has no memory of the previous night but he is covered in blood and a woman is dead.  Sounds like Fall Guy, eh?  I liked this one more because the guy goes on the lam and eventually switches identities with a dead man whose face is disfigured.  It turns out the dead man is the estranged son of a wealthy industrialist.  The older man has not seen his son since he was boy so he doesn't recognize the man claiming to be his son.  Actually, now that I started writing I think I liked Key Witness more than the other films in this section.  The man's achieves success as the rich man's son which brings him to the attention of his wife who has assumed he was dead.  The ending was pure hokum but it was fun ride until that point.

Killer at Large - two newspaper reporters (one male & one female) investigate the murder (suspicious suicide) of a city leader.  Eventually, the trail leads back to the female reporter's father.

All Night Long - I forgot I saw this at the 2009 I Wake Up Dreaming.   A retelling of Shakespeare's Othello set in a London jazz club in the early 1960s.  An impressive array of jazz musicians appear as themselves over a long night at the club. Patrick McGoohan's performance stood out.  He always seems to stand out from the cast.

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All that is left is All Through the Night.  About as noirish as a Bowery Boys film, the film is essentially a screwball comedy.  It was embarrassing to see Humphrey Bogart ham it up and sprout gibberish.  I guess I've typecast Bogie but he seemed to want to have it both way - part tough guy, part comedian.  Growing bored with the film about halfway, I wondered how Bogie & Gleason got along.  Gleason was infamous for his all night parties and the prodigious amounts of money & alcohol he consumed.

2012 Not Necessarily Noir

I mentioned that I had recommended Body Double and Something Wild to Elliot Lavine during one of his previous Roxie series.  I spoke with Lavine during the last month's Not Necessarily Noir 3 (NNN3) festival at the Roxie.  He was a bit cagey when I mentioned our conversation to him.  He said "I remember that conversation."  He didn't say "I took your programming advice" or even "I'm glad you recommended those films" but was noncommittal.  He acknowledged the conversation if not the "cause and effect."

NNN3 ran from October 19 to 31 at the Roxie.  I saw 14 of the 26 films screened.

Of the 12 films I missed, I had seen six of them on the big screen within the last few years.   A seventh film, From Dusk Till Dawn, has had heavy rotation on cable TV.  I've seen parts of From Dusk Till Dawn at least two dozen times.  The seven films I passed on due to familiarity were:  Reservoir Dogs (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1992), Cockfighter (dir. Monte Hellman, 1974), The Burglars (1971), Eyes of Laura Mars (dir. Irving Kershner, 1978), Sugar Hill (1974), From Dusk till Dawn (dir. Robert Rodriguez, 1996) and Near Dark (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1987).

The five films I passed on due to scheduling conflicts or fatigue were:  Day of the Wolves, Peur Sur la Ville, Manhunter, White of the Eye and Ganja & Hess.  I remember reading Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris novel Manhunter was based on.  I can still recall some of the plot including the serial killer's obsession with William Blake's paintings.  I particularly regret missing Day of the Wolves.

I noticed that Lavine was absent quite a bit.  He typically introduces the films but he was absent from many of the screenings I attended.  As Lavine noted, NNN3 had the misfortune of competing the San Francisco Giants playoff run which ended in a Word Series title.  On seven of the 13 days, NNN3 competed against Giants playoff games.  I definitely noticed that attendance was off compared to previous festivals.

I was in the Roxie watching Who'll Stop the Rain when the Giants clinched the Series.  I could hear the cheering on Valencia Street when the final out was recorded.  When the movie ended about an hour after that, the streets around the Roxie were crowded with revellers celebrating the win and police cars were escorting a makeshift victory parade.

The 14 films I saw were:

Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun-fat & Tony Leung Chiu Wai; directed by John Woo; Cantonese with subtitles; (1992)
To Live and Die in LA starring William Petersen & Willem Dafoe; directed by William Friedkin; (1985)
One False Move starring Bill Paxton, Cynda Williams & Billy Bob Thornton; directed by Carl Franklin; (1992)
Charley Varrick starring Walter Matthau & Joe Don Baker; direcited by Don Siegel; (1973)
Miami Blues starring Alec Baldwin, Fred Ward & Jennifer Jason Leigh; directed by George Armitage; (1990)
Darker Than Amber starring Rod Taylor; directed by Robert Clouse; (1970)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia starring Warren Oates; directed by Sam Peckinpah; (1974)
Body Double starring Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith & Gregg Henry; directed by Brian De Palma; (1984)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starring Robert Downey Jr. & Val Kilmer; directed by Shane Black; (2005) - Official Website
Something Wild starring Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith & Ray Liotta; directed by Jonathan Demme; (1986)
Cisco Pike starring Kris Kristofferson, Harry Dean Stanton & Gene Hackman; directed by Bill L. Norton; (1972)
Who'll Stop the Rain starring Nick Nolte & Tuesday Weld; directed by Karel Reisz; (1978)
Night of the Following Day starring Marlon Brando, Richard Boone & Rita Moreno; directed by Hubert Cornfield; (1968)
After Dark, My Sweet starring Jason Patric, Rachel Ward & Bruce Dern; directed by James Foley; (1990)

The print of Who'll Stop the Rain listed the film title as Dog Soldiers.

There were quite a few pleasant surprises in the series.  Prior to the series, I had seen Body Double, Something Wild, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and To Live & Die in LA.  After Dark, My Sweet looked familiar but while watching it I was not able to recall or predict the plot.

I'm going to save Body Double & Something Wild for their own posts.  There was a time in my life when those two films and Blade Runner formed the triumvirate of influential films in my life.  It's been at least 10 years since I saw any of those film in they entirety in one sitting.  I was very anxious about seeing Body Double & Something Wild after perhaps 15 to 20 years since seeing them.

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To Live and Die in LA is one of those films I kind of remember from my teenage years.  I recall Wang Chung did the soundtrack and the title track had heavy airplay on MTV.  I remember an intense car chase scene.  I remember a line by John Tuturro - "And the check is in the mail, and I love you, and I promise not to come in your mouth..."

I was expecting Live & Die to be stylish but I was surprised at much I was drawn into the plot.  Willem Dafoe is a counterfeiter who is ruthless in murdering anyone who gets in his way including Secret Service Agent Richard Chance's (William Petersen) partner.  Change is an adrenalin junkie and cowboy cop who becomes obsessed with arresting Eric Masters (Dafoe).  As Chance resorts to criminal behavior (which results in the death of an undercover FBI agent), the line between cop & criminal is blurred.

Petersen comes on a little too strong but I guess the character requires an outsized performance.  Dafoe is very creepy as Masters.  John Pankow as Chance's tenderfoot partner shows quite a range of acting.  The ending was also shocking because it went against the typically Hollywood playbook.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang features Robert Downey Jr. at his snarkiest.  Clever and very funny, KKBB is comedy masquerading as a neo-noir.  Downey plays a small-time thief pretending to be a method actor who teams up a Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), a homosexual private eye.  Filled with Hollywood references and strong comedic chemistry between Downey & Kilmer, KKBB is an under-appreciated film.

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Hard Boiled is an HK action film with Chow Yun-fat as a cop and Tony Leung Chiu Wai as an undercover cop trying to bring down gangster Anthony Wong.  Featuring John Woo's trademark ballet of violence, Hard Boiled ends with extended finale which takes place in hospital.  For my tastes, the explosions and running battles were emphasized too.  I recall Woo's best films had more character development.  I'm thinking of A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Face/Off.  Hard Boiled isn't bad as much as it suffers in comparison to Woo's (and Chow Yun-fat's) best works.

Darker Than Amber was also disappointing.  I never got into the film which is a tale of murder involving a prostitution ring.  The highlight of the film is fight scene between Taylor and William Smith.  While I was watching the scene, I was surprised at how realistic it was.  It was step above the normal 1970s fight sequence.  I later learned that the fight scene is infamous because the two actor were really fighting - real blood & real missing teeth.  Lavine, who introduced the film, made sure to mention the print he was screening had the original fight which has been edited down in many prints.

Cisco Pike & Who'll Stop the Rain seemed like 1970s time capsules which was distracting.  It wasn't just the clothes but the post-Vietnam Was disillusionment that seemed foreign to me.

After Dark, My Sweet which is well regarded by many seemed bogged down in Patric's performance & the ending seemed to come out of nowhere.  It's one of those films where they take time and care to establish the characters and then at the end, they change the characters' motivations to resolve the plot.  Maybe I missed something.  It was the last film I saw in the series & I remember I was anxious to get home that night.

Night of the Following Day was a kidnap for ransom caper involving Marlon Brando, Richard Boone & Rita Moreno as the kidnappers of  a teenage heiress.  Richard Boone is a great villain.  I vividly recall his performances from two of John Wayne's later films - Big Jake and Wayne's final film, The Shootist.  Night of the Following Day didn't really distinguish itself.

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Charley Varrick was a nice surprise..  Featuring the always reliable Walter Matthau as a small-time bank robber who has inadvertently rips off the Mob.  John Vernon (another reliably great villain) plays the mob banker and Joe Don Baker is the hitman out to retrieve the money and kill Varrick (Matthau).  Charley Varrick is a nice caper film.

One False Move was also a surprise.  I had never heard of the film (which was co-written by Billy Bob Thornton).  Billy Bob, Michael Beach & Cynda Williams play a trio who pull off a particularly violent drug robbery.  Billy Bob is coked up, Beach is calculatingly ruthless and Williams is kind of along for the ride.  The three drive from LA to the small Arkansas town that Billy Boy & Williams grew up in.  Bill Paxton plays the sheriff of that town & he and Williams share a secret.  Billy Bob, in his first screenplay, explores small town life and race relations.  What starts off as noir, ends in tale of redemption.  The film is very well made and explores the interactions within two trios - the criminal trio and the second trio consist of Paxton & two LA cops in Arkansas waiting for the first trio.  The trio of cops offer their commentary on small town life and urban view towards rural life.  Paxton is outstanding as Sheriff Hurricane Dixon but the rest of the cast is quite good as well.

Miami Blues was a film I had never heard of before the festival.  Part comedy, part noir, Miami Blues stars a young Alec Baldwin as a goofy psychopath who upon arriving in Miami hooks up with a naive prostitute (an unrecognizable Jennifer Jason Leigh).  Baldwin & Leigh immediately set up house but Detective Moseley (Fred Ward) comes around investigating the murder of a Hare Krishna which was committed by Baldwin.  Later that night, Frenger (Baldwin) assaults Moseley and takes his gun & badge.    Trying to go legit for Susie's (Leigh) sake, Frenger uses the badge & gun to break up robberies  by robbing the robber or shaking down the victim he saves.

Moseley eventually tracks them down and he & Frenger have a showdown after a darkly comedic interlude involving Frenger, a pawn shop owner and a machete.  Baldwin shines as the off-kilter killer.  He has a certain glow about him as if he is loving every minute of the shoot.  As a time marker, Miami Blues was released about a month after The Hunt for Red October.

Those three films (Charley Varrick, One False Move & Miami Blues) made NNN3 worthwile for me.  They were completely unknown to me and thoroughly enjoyable.  A fourth film also made the top of my list but I was aware of it before the series.  Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is well known due to its title and director (Sam Peckinpah).  Peckinpah's low-budget follow-up to the commercially disappointing Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Alfredo Garcia is mostly a psychological profile of Bennie (Warren Oates), a American expat in Mexico making a living playing Guantanamera on his piano (I know that's Cuban not Mexican).  Alfredo Garcia is guy who impregnated El Jefe's daughter and he has put a bounty on his decapitated head.  The word goes out and two Americans (Robert Webber & Gig Young) start looking for Garcia.  They cross paths with Bennie who pretends he doesn't know Garcia.  In fact, he is a regular in the bar Bennie plays piano in.

Bennie finds out that Elita (Isela Vega), his prostitute girlfriend, knows where he is buried.  Garcia died in a car accident recently.  Eager to collect the bounty, Bennie and Elita set off to dig up the corpse, decapitate it and collect the money.  Bennie approaches this grisly task with a nonchalance which is interesting.  The trip will change his life forever as he has contend with biker rapists, robbers who steal the head and kill Elita, Garcia's family, the two Americans and eventually El Jefe.  Bennie undergoes a profound metamorphosis as result of his tribulations.  It's a nightmare road trip on acid as Bennie begins to talk with Garcia's rotting head (kept in a burlap bag).

Before, I said Cisco Pike & Who'll Stop the Rain were distracting because its time setting was so prevalent.  Alfredo Garcia looks like a 1970s film (Oates made a lot of films with Monte Hellman that looked similar), but the themes in Alfredo Garcia translate better to present day.

Women in Touch With Their Sexuality

In June, I caught three films about women embracing their sexuality despite considerable obstacles.

Turn Me On, Dammit! starring Helene Bergsholm; directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen; Norwegian with subtitles; (2011) - Official Website
Barbarella starring Jane Fonda; with Milo O'Shea, John Phillip Law, Marcel Marceau & Anita Pallenberg; directed by Roger Vadim; (1968)
Cherry 2000 starring Melanie Griffith & David Andrews; directed by Steve De Jarnatt; (1987)

I saw Turn Me On, Dammit! at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema.  Barbarella and Cherry 2000 played together as a double feature at the Castro.  Perhaps it didn't register with me before but at some point the Castro Theater raised their regular admission price from $10 to $11.

I recall seeing the title Turn Me On, Dammit! at a film festival, but a check of the 2012 Cinequest and 2012 San Francisc International Film Festival websites revealed nothing.

I thought Turn Me On, Dammit! was a delightful comedy dealing with a teenage girl's (overactive) sexuality.  Helene Bergsholm plays Alma, a 15 year old girl with the sex drive of a 15 year old boy.  She masturbates during paid phone sex (in fact, she uses it so much, she frequent customer bonus calls), masturabates while fantasizing about various people (man or woman, young or old), masturbates so loudly that her mother has to wear earplugs, masturbates...you get the point.  At a party one night, Artur (a classmate & main object of Alma's desire) shows Alma his penis.  The film has numerous fantasy sequences so the audience is not sure if the incident actually occurred or was just another of Alma's fantasies.

Alma tells her best friend and her sister (who is keen for Artur).  So the news is all over school and rather than prosecuted for sexual assault (which would be the likely result in the US), Alma is ostracized for making up the incident.  Why would a teenage girl make up such a story?  The same reason an attractive, 15 year old, blonde would need to resort to phone sex.  It's a movie; more specifically a Scandinavian film whose humor and cinema I am liking more and more.

The remainder of the films shows how Alma deals with her ostracization.  Quirky and good natured, Turn Me On treads some potentially salacious ground to give a new wrinkle on the coming of age story. 

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Barbarella is a very famous film.  I saw a restored version on HBO about 25 years ago and recall being sufficiently "impressed" with Jane Fonda.  Campy but undeniably sexy, Barbarella would be a career defining role for a less accomplished actress.  I enjoyed watching the film on the big screen at the Castro and am pleasantly surprised that I could enjoy the film from the perspective for a 40something.  In fact, I think I appreciated the film more this time.  Fonda delivered her lines with a dry, vapid cadence which nonetheless suggested something more meaningful in Fonda than the character.  Of course, I may be inferring more from her performance given what was to come in her life.  Even if true, Hanoi Jane playing Barbarella is more interesting than the 1968 version of her playing Barbarella.  Milo O'Shea's performance as Durand Durand stood out in this viewing.

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Cherry 2000 is a film I don't recall ever hearing about much less seeing. In the mid-1980s, I was a big Melanie Griffith fan.  Two of my all-time favorite films are Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984) and Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986); both star Griffith and sadly, I haven't watched either in several years.  I suggested both film in passing to Elliot Lavine in May; I'm hoping he programs them soon.

Cherry 2000 is notable for its lengthy delay between production and release.  It was never released to US theaters.  Instead it was released on VHS which makes me wonder what format the Castro screened.  Although the picture quality was fine, the audio was hard to understand.  I attributed it to the low production standards but who knows...who cares?

The plot (which sounds like a pastiche of various Sci Fi films) is set in 2017.  In this timeline, there are Fembots not unlike Austin Powers.  These androids are sexy, attentive, take care of household chores and other needs that a man may have.  Sam Treadwell (David Andrews) has a Cherry 2000 model which he loves...literally.  When she short-circuits (I'm not sure if it resulted from the soapy water of the dishwasher or Sam's ardor), it's kaput for Cherry.  She can't be repaired and they don't sell her model anymore.  The repairman pops out her disk storing her memories and points Sam to Glory Hole, NV which is on the frontier of a post-apocalypitic wasteland.  Cherry 2000s can be found in Zone 9 or somewhere but Sam will need the help of E. Johnson, a tracker with a souped up muscle car and knowledge of the area.  E. Johnson turns out to be Melanie Griffith sporting a Raggedy Ann dye job and not looking half as good as she did in Body Double or Something Wild.

Edith Johnson is an ass-kicking machine who bemoans the fact that Sam is gaga for a robot.  How is a gun-toting, free-thinking mercenary like Edith Johnson supposed to compete against the ultimate Stepford wife?  Most of the rest of the film is predictable - Sam & Edith fight their way to Zone Whatever, Sam proves surprisingly adept with automatic weapons, they get some help for Edith's mentor Six-Fingered Jake (Ben Johnson) & their romance heats up.  The only original part of the story is the villain.  Instead of S&M bikers or zombies or talking apes, Cherry 2000's villains are a gang of surbanites who will kill to maintain their way of life...which mainly appears to be barbecuing in Bermuda shorts with their fembots.  They can't let anyone steal their fembots because that would leave less for them.  Tim Thomerson is memorable as the gang leader.

You can guess how it ends.  Cherry 2000 is just as good as any other film from the 1980s as long the other film has cheesy production values, silly dialogue, a predictable script and goes to great lengths to make a young Melanie Griffith look like a car mechanic. Griffith didn't show much in terms of sex appeal or screen presence.  On the other hand, Pamela Gidley was not just sexy but damn sexy as Cherry.  Harry Carey Jr. (unrecognizable from Red River) has a small role.  Laurence Fishburne had an even smaller role which made me wonder what he did between Apocalypse Now and The Matrix.  Ben Johnson always has screen presence and shines as much as he can in this film.

Cherry 2000 has a cult following and strangely I was drawn in at certain points of the film.  The best that can be said is that I didn't fall asleep during the screening.  Although I can understand why there could be a cult following, once was enough for me.  Let's hope its another quarter century before I see it again.

I Wake Up Dreaming 2012 - The French Have a Name For It!

The Roxie ran I Wake Up Dreaming 2012 - The French Have a Name For It! from May 11 to 24.  Programmed by Elliot Lavine (with assistance from Johnny Legend and Paul Meienberg), the series featured 30 films; most of them 65 to 75 minute B films.  Despite having already seen 8 or 9 of the films, I still caught 22 films in the series.

This series was the first since I received my Roxie membership card.  For the cost of $23 per month, I receive admission to most Roxie programs.  Film festivals screenings are excluded.  Since Lavine was programming the series under the auspices of the Roxie, my membership card granted me access to all the I Wake Up Dreaming screenings.

The 22 films I saw were:

The Big Combo starring Cornel Wilde & Richard Conte; with Brian Donlevy, Lee Van Cleef & Earl Holliman; directed by Joseph H. Lewis; (1955)
Hollow Triumph starring Paul Henreid & Joan Bennett; directed by Steve Sekely; (1948)
Edge of Doom starring Dana Andrews & Farley Granger; directed by Mark Robson; (1950)
Such A Pretty Little Beach starring Gerard Phillipe; directed by Yves Allegret; French with subtitles; (1949)
The Strange Mr. Gregory starring Edmond Lowe; directed by Phil Rosen; (1945)
Return of the Whistler starring Michael Duane; directed by D. Ross Lederman; (1948)
Highway 13 starring Robert Lowery; directed by William Berke; (1948)
The Devil's Henchman starring Warner Baxter; with Mary Beth Hughes, Mike Mazurki & Regis Toomey; directed by Seymour Friedman; (1949)
Storm over Lisbon starring Vera Ralston, Erich von Stroheim & Richard Arlen; directed by George Sherman; (1944)
Shadow of Terror starring Richard Fraser; directed by Lew Landers; (1945)
I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes starring Don Castle; Elyse Knox & Regis Toomey; directed by William Nigh; (1948)
When Strangers Marry starring Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum & Dean Jagger; directed by William Castle; (1944)
Female Jungle starring  Lawrence Tierney, Jayne Mansfield & John Carradine; directed by Bruno VeSota; (1956)
Killer's Kiss starring Frank Silvera & Jamie Smith; directed by Stanley Kubrick; (1955)
The Scarf starring John Ireland & Mercedes McCambridge; directed by Ewald Andre Dupont; (1951)
Chinatown at Midnight starring Hurd Hatfield; directed by Seymour Friedman; (1949)
Bluebeard starring John Carradine; directed by Edgar G. Ulmer; (1944)
Shoot to Kill; directed by William Berke; (1947)
Deadline for Murder; directed by James Tinling; (1946)
He Walked by Night starring Richard Basehart; directed by Alfred Werker and (uncredited) Anthony Mann; (1948)
Guns, Girls and Gangsters starring Mamie Van Doren; with Gerald Mohr, Lee Van Cleef & Grant Richards; directed by  Edward L. Cahn; (1959)
Inside Detroit starring Dennis O'Keefe & Pat O'Brien; directed by Fred F. Sears; (1956)

The sound quality for Shoot to Kill and Deadline for Murder was very poor.  I unable to make out all the dialog which hampered my ability to follow the considerable twists and turns of the respective plots.  Deadline for Murder looked like a decent whodunit if not for the sound issues.

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I think noir genre exhibition has become a little frothy to borrow from Alan Greenspan.  I don't know how many noir themed film festivals are regularly being held.  Elliot Lavine has programmed two per year at the Roxie for a few years.  Eddie Muller hosts his Noir City for two weeks every January at the Castro.  I know that Eddie takes his festivals on the road.  Palm Springs has a well regarded film noir festival as well.  The PFA frequently screens noir themed series. With all these festivals, you would think there is a vast library of noir flims for exhibition.  However, I get the sense Lavine was sacrificing quality to feed the exhibition beast. Several of the films in series left me luke warm...and the ones I enjoyed to most seemed not quite noir.

My favorite film of the series was He Walked by Night which was more of a procedural than film noir.  Richard Basehart plays a murderer whose underlying motives or sociopathy is never explained.  He steals electronic equipment for the parts which he reassembles into new pieces of his own design.  Rather than take a legitimate job designing electronics, he sells his own pieces which is comprised of stolen components.  Confronted by a police officer while robbing an electronics store, Basehart shoots and kills the cop which sets off a citywide manhunt.

Cinematographer John Alton gives the film his signature look with several scenes where he plays with light and shadow.  The film also reminded of The Third Man as the final chase takes places in the storm drains beneath Los Angeles.  Throughout the film, I kept expecting a scene with expository dialogue to explain Basehart's character's behavior but none was forthcoming.  The directors (Anthony Mann was uncredited) did a nice job escalating the tension as the police investigation close in on its pray.  A scene where the police position themselves for a raid on Basehart's bungalow was notable for its extended silence.  Told with the dispassion of a documentary (the plot was based on a true story), He Walked by Night dispensed with some of the more showy elements of film noir.  Jack Webb plays a police lab technician.  Apparently, it was on this film which Webb developed contacts with LAPD personnel which he would later use in developing Dragnet.

In a similar vein was Chinatown at Midnight.  Not as detached as He Walked by Night, this film told the story of a murderer who steals rare Asian art.  During one such robbery, he kills a young Chinese couple which unleashes the full investigative might of the SFPD.  Again, Chinatown does not shed much light on the reasons why the villain (Hurd Hatfield) murders but Hatfield does so with more evil flourish than Basehart in He Walked by Night.  Chinatown focuses more on the police investigation and more obvious in ratcheting up the tension.  Whereas He Walked by Night had a distinct look and feel, Chinatown feels like an overachieving B-film.

The Big Combo was also quite good although I saw it at Noir City a few years ago.  Richard Conte delivers a flashy performance while Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman play a pair of gay hit men.  In fact, there is a remarkable scene where Holliman says, in response to being offered a sandwich, "I couldn't swallow any more salami."  Then he later talks about living in a closet or something.  Beyond the scenes hinting at the sexuality of Messrs. Mingo and Fante,  The Big Combo is buoyed by the prolific John Alton's cinematography.  Standout sequences include a scene in total silence where the deaf McClure (Brian Donlevy) meets his demise and the finale set in dark airplane hangar featuring a spotlight on Conte.

I also saw Edge of Doom at Noir City a few years ago. The film features an outstanding performance by Farley Granger as a troubled youth who kills a priest.  Dana Andrews gives an understated performance as the patient priest who ministers to his impoverished congregation.  The film is as much a social commentary as a film noir.

Killer's Kiss was an early Stanley Kubrick film about a glass jawed prize fighter, a world weary taxi dancer and their difficult romance.  The climax featured an extended fight sequence in a mannequin warehouse which reminded of another film that I can't quite identify.  The film also has some great shots of old Penn Station in New York.  One of Kubrick's lesser works, Killer's Kiss is more valuable for what it portends for Kubrick later films.

Such A Pretty Little Beach was a French film that felt like an Albert Camus novel.  Bleak and elliptical, this existential noir was quintessentially French.

Guns, Girls and Gangsters is a caper film featuring Mamie Van Doren.  I had never seen her in a film.  She was a passable singer (perhaps her singing voice was dubbed).  Her voice and physique reminded of Jane Russell.  Most of the film follows the meticulous planning of an armored car robbery which is jeopardized by the appearance of Van Doren's psychotic husband, Lee Van Cleef.  Mainly a vehicle to showcase Van Doren's various talents, Guns, Girls and Gangsters was a mediocre film which more or less formed the cut line of films I enjoyed at the series.

The Devil's Henchman, Hollow Triumph, Storm over Lisbon, When Strangers Marry and Inside Detroit held some of my interest but I could easily have skipped them in hindsight.  I had seen Hollow Triumph before and remembered enjoying it more.  I guess it's one of those films which doesn't hold up well to a multiple viewings.

My favorite noir films usually feature normal guys who are placed in difficult positions due to their own greed and a beautiful woman.  None of the films in the series really met that criteria.

Four at the Roxie and I Wake Up Dreaming Again

In March, I saw four films at the Roxie which is really programming the most eclectic lineups in the Bay Area.

The four films I saw were:

Fake It So Real; directed by Robert Greene; documentary; (2012) - Official Website
The FP starring Brandon Trost & Lee Valmassy; directed by Brandon and Jason Trost; (2011) - Official Website
Secret Honor starring Philip Baker Hall; directed by Robert Altman; (1984)
Pudhupettai starring Dhanush; directed by K. Selvaraghavan; Tamil with subtitles; (2006)

The FP was on the program for the 2012 SF Indiefest. It looked interesting but I missed the one screening at Indiefest with the knowledge I could see it when the Roxie ran it for a week in March.

The opening night film of this year's Indiefest was 4:44 Last Day On Earth. I skipped it to see The Killing of a Chinese Bookie at the YBCA. I see that 4:44 is opening on April 20 at the Balboa.

Coincidentally, Indiefest is sponsoring a different kind of 4-20 celebration on that date at Roxie. The two are co-presenting Dark Side of Oz which is The Wizard of Oz set to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. Someone discovered that the music on Dark Side of the Moon synchronizes perfectly with the scenes from The Wizard of Oz. Typically, the sound including the dialogue from the film is muted completely while the soundtrack plays. Close captioning makes it easier to follow the film although most people in the audience are usually under the influence of the devil's cabbage.

Speaking of the Roxie's programming. They are bringing Elliot Lavine back again for another I Wake Up Dreaming noir series. The 30 film series runs from May 11 to 24.

Pudhupettai played at the 2011 Third I South Asian Film Festival in November which I completely missed.

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Fake It So Real is an appealing documentary about professional wrestlers. We're not talking about big time WWE matches in arenas but guys who wrestle in the MWF in North Carolina venues which look like a school cafeterias with linoleum floors and an audience sitting on folding metal chairs.

The most interesting character is Gabriel Croft, a rookie who gets a lot of razzing from the other wrestlers for being young, inexperienced and in their opinion of questionable sexual orientation. Earnest and eager to please, Gabriel is developing a wrestling persona modelled after Gabriel the Archangel. The highlight of the film is wrestling match between Gabriel and the league champ which surprised me for its athleticism.

Fake It So Real captures "the little train that could" feeling for both itself and its subjects. I can't say I was inspired by the wrestlers but I was entertained.

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The FP, which stands for Frazier Park, takes place in an alternate reality. Reminding me a little of Streets of Fire (dir. Walter Hill, 1984), FP takes place in the current time and location except rival street gangs solve their disputes by having competitions on Dance Dance Revolution which is called Beat Beat Revolution; most likely to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. I think that says enough. The recurring theme throughout the film is every female character seems to perform fellatio at least once.

Co-director Jason Trost plays J-Tro, the hero who looks like Snake Pliskin and actor Lee Valmassy plays El Double E, the villain who looks like a white Mr. T. For some reason, co-director Brandon Trost did not play B-Tro.

So the film had a few laughs. The final scene which would be a passionate kiss in most genre films is turned upside down and becomes a blowjob complete with soaring musical score and a pan out camera shot. That pretty much describes the film. Funny at times; not as consistently funny as I was hoping for.

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Secret Honor was a one man film with Philip Baker Hall as Richard M. Nixon. Made in 1984, the film is also an alternate reality where Nixon, oiled up with liquor and in possession of a handgun, wants the set the record straight. Set in his office within his compound with closed circuit TV and film and audio recording equipment, Hall as Nixon launches into a boozy confession blaming the Bohemian Club, the Kennedy family, Kissinger and other for his downfall. I can't recall his explanation of Watergate.

One of the toughest performances is the solo act. Within anyone to react or react to, Hall delivers these extended monologues and diatribes which can beome tedious. Secret Honor clearly looks like a one-man stage show that Altman adapted for film. I don't think Altman and Hall were completely successful but they were on to something. Not to equate The FP to Secret Honor but to paraphrase, Secret Honor was engrossing at times, but not as consistently engrossing as I was hoping for out of an Altman film.

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Pudhupettai was described as "operatic" in the Roxie program guide. Director K. Selvaraghavan made great use of color and lighting in several of the scenes. It reminded me of some of the productions at the San Francisco Opera although that comparison may have been liminally suggested by reading the program. At nearly three hours, the film was certainly operatic in length.

The story of the rise and fall of a gangster, Pudhupettai is an unremarkable and oft-told story with adequate performances and a few scenes of eye-popping cinematography.

Not Necessarily Noir II

In November, the Roxie brougt Elliott Lavine and Johnny Legend back to program Not Necessarily Noir II.

The film I most wanted to see was The Killers (1964) with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and Ronald Reagan in his last role. Based on a Hemingway story and a remake of the classic Burt Lancaster/Ava Gardner film (1946), this was a made for TV film which was deemed too violent and released in the theaters. It was paired with Clint Eastwood's directorial debut Play Misty For Me (1971) which I had seen before. Unfortunately, I was more tempted by a Jeanne Moreau double feature at the PFA.

Actually, I had seen a number of the films at Not Necessarily Noir II before including Blow Out and Johnny Guitar.

I ended up seeing four films.

Brainstorm starring Jeffrey Hunter, Anne Francis and Dana Andrews; with Strother Martin; directed by William Conrad; (1965)
Female on the Beach starring Joan Crawford & Jeffrey Chandler; (1955)
Girl Gang; (1954)
Teenage Gang Debs; (1966)

The series closed with three Ed Wood film (Jail Bait, Glen or Glenda? & Plan 9 From Outer Space) and Johnny Legend's Woodworld, a documentary on Ed Wood. I didn't think I was up for four hours of Ed Wood so I passed on the final evening's program.

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None of these films were what you would call masterpieces. Each of them had some serious flaws.

Brainstorm (directed by the actor William Conrad) was about a man (Jeffrey Hunter) who pretends to be crazy to justify a murder but then actual becomes insane with a little help from roundheel Anne Francis. The setup was solid but the film lost my interest midway.

Female on the Beach star Joan Crawford as a vulnerable widow living in a beach house next to some cardsharks and beach bum Jeffrey Hunter. I've noted before that Crawford plays the weakling or the bitch. In this one, she tried go half and half but the film had B picture written all over. A predictable script with Jan Sterling looking beautiful and future Gilligan's Island co-star Natalie Schaefer looking out of place. Girl Gang was notable for its explicit depiction of heroin use; I would even say it was a tutorial on how to mainline coke.

That leaves Teenage Gang Debs which was by far my favorite. Even at a modest 75 minutes, the film had a lot of filler in the form shots of motorcyclist riding around and dance sequences. The plot was essentially Lady MacBeth Joins a Motorcycle Gang. Actually, she (Diane Conti) is just the girlfriend of the gang leader but she is one pulling the strings and acting Machiavellian. Conti shines in the film. I'm surprised she didn't go on to bigger and better things.

Teenage Gang Debs is an unusually rough-edged, juvenile delinquency film featuring not one but two gang rape scenes, multiple murders and a biker gang that dresses like they're in a college fraternity.

Although the film was clearly padded out to get to 75 minutes, one dance sequence deserves a mention because the tune was great. Lee Dowell's The Black Belt had me tapping my feet and smiling.

Teenage Gang Debs deserves cult film status.

TV Noir

From July 18 to 20, the Roxie presented TV Noir. The films were introduced by Johnny Legend. Legend is a compatriot of Elliot Lavine and mentioned the three day series was a preview of a longer series he and Lavine were planning for September. Legend has quite a pedigree that probably merits a documentary about him. Legend has been an rockabilly singer, actor, pro wrestling promoter, porn producer and now television archivist.

Each night, they screened a double feature which were generically named Program 1 and 2. I was able to catch both programs on July 18 and 19. I skipped July 20 to see The Last Waltz at the Red Vic which I have recounted. Each program consisted of television shows from the 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them screened with the original commercials.

I can't recall all the programs but a few highlights were:

Johnny screened the premiere episode of Medic, a show which ran from 1954 to 1956 and starred Richard Boone as a doctor. In this episode, Boone's patient was a pregnant woman (Beverly Garland) who is diagnosed with late stage cancer (leukemia I believe). Boone must keep the woman alive long enough for her to deliver her child. Dispensing with the melodrama, the episode tells the story with cold and sober delivery. Boone's voiceover narration recites the facts - "patient admitted on March 20 in her 28th week of pregnancy; white blood cell count is 35,000." Boone's character keeps a detached professionalism when dealing with the woman and her husband (Lee Marvin). Any doubt about the doctor's passion is put to rest during the 5 to 10 minute finale. Set in the operating room, the doctor struggles to save the woman. When she dies, he delivers the baby who appears stillborn. Boone won't give up as he tries every method to save the child before ultimately being successful. If that episode was any indication, Medic was a very intense 30 minutes drama.

In a 1960 episode of The Dupont Show, Harpo Marx appears as Benson, a deaf mute who witnesses a murder. Spotted by the killers but unable to communicate what he has witnessed (he's also illiterate), Benson has to hide as the killers come looking for him. At age 72, this was billed as Marx's final performance although I can find later credits for him on IMDB.

Treasury Men in Action ran from 1950 to 1955 on ABC. The title says it all and the 1955 episode with Charles Bronson was just as subtle. Bronson plays a wife beating, gun toting, heroin smuggling, jail breaking, clipped syllable speaking tough guy. Similar to Medic, I liked the way the show stripped away everything but the facts to give a detached view of the story; although according to the prologue, the T-Man story was taken from actual case files.

Bronson had a supporting role in a Dan Duryea episode of Suspicion, an anthology series produced by Alfred Hitchcock which ran from 1957 to 1959. How many times did Dan Duryea play the brains of an outfit that planned a heist? In this one, Duryea is planning a bank job. Duryea infuses his character with a lot of depth and the ambiguous nature of who fired the fatal shot at the end elevated this episode above the crowd of anthology series from the period.

In an 1950 episode of Suspense (1949-1954), a struggling actor (Leslie Nielsen with dark hair!) overhears a conversation to kill a bigshot Hollywood agent (George Reeves) and has to overcome numerous obstacles in his attempt to save the day. Shot live (with a few goofs visible), the episode had that early television look and spirit. As Johnny Legend mentioned, in the early days, Suspense wasn't called a television show but rather a teleplay. Shooting live probably gave the actors and crew an adrenaline rush but give the visible mistakes, its not surprising that television evolved to filmed or tape-delayed programming. Saturday Night Live, one of the few current series I watch on television, is a notable exception.

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I don't know how a one or two week series of TV Noir will work out. There were several segments that left me less than impressed & I dozed off a few times. I find myself dozing off more during films. If a film isn't keeping my attention, I tend to drift off to sleep. It's become my new litmus test as to whether a film met the base criteria of being worthwhile.

Even the best segments were 30 minutes or less so it was impossible to flesh out the plots and characters. Whereas a good film feels like having a nice meal, the best TV Noir segments felt lilke I just had a tasty appetizer and left me wanting more.