chall-5

Age of Consent (1969)

Badly miscast and boring movie

This is not a good movie. In fact it's so bad, one wonders why it was made. James Mason is a bored painter... who gives an appropriately boring performance. Helen Mirren is supposed to be a naive young girl, but she's too old for the part and comes across as mildly retarded.

The rest of the cast consists of character actors who were apparently directed to overact as much as possible.

There's also a repetitive music score which does nothing to help.

The scenery is beautiful, but that's not enough. Perhaps the nudity was considered ground-breaking back then, but the movie is just indecipherable today.

King Solomon's Mines (1950)

Perhaps the best "african trek" movie ever made.

I really love this movie. It has an intelligent script with none of the goofy inconsistencies that make most African trek movies so awful. And for once the safari does not include a bad guy who tries to sabotage everything.

All the actors are good, but I think this may be Stewart Granger's best role. He gives real feeling to the "burned out" safari guide character and is totally believable. A young Richard Carlson and Deborah Kerr perform well too.

It's based on an H. Rider Haggard story, but improves on the book by simplifying the climax so it'll fit in a movie. For once the movie re-write is actually better than the book it's based on.

But what is most surprising about this movie is how real everything is. When they show natives, they are actually African tribes. When they need Watusi's, they film in Watusi-land! Even the animal scenes fit smoothly into the flow. You NEVER get the feeling that the stars are in a studio and some African footage has been spliced in behind them.

The adventure builds to an exciting and believable climax, so you won't be disappointed. I think this may be the best such safari-trek movie ever.

Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983)

Powers Boothe excellent as Marlowe

As other reviewers have noted, the HBO Marlowe series consists of two different sequences. Shows 1-5 have great music, and a fine supporting cast as well as some novel plots. "The King is Yellow" is perhaps the best. Boothe is an excellent Marlowe and the period cars and sets are top notch.

The second sequence, shows 6-11 lack the music and some of the production values present in the earlier episodes. Too bad. But the scripts and Boothe are still good.

All 11 shows are now out as a 3-DVD boxed set for $20-$30 bucks from Gold Hill Entertainment. Video quality on the first 5 is not up to snuff, but this set is still worth having just to see Powers Boothe as Marlowe.

War of the Worlds (2005)

Not bad, but not good

You will willingly sit through this movie but when it's over you'll feel like you wasted two hours. The action is steady and the special effects are OK. Tom Cruise and the child actors do a credible job.

But the movie is somewhat claustrophobic. You keep wishing Cruise would dump the kids and go find out what's going on, but their safety is his primary task. Unfortunately, that makes for a pretty thin plot line to hang all your character development on.

The special effects are fine, but for some reason most of the movie is in a shade of gray after the opening scenes. Perhaps so the red of blood would be more dramatic.

After your two hours with this movie you will have your own ideas on how to fix it. I say swap the Cruise and Robbins roles and have the kids just be some passers-by he tries to help. Then the script could focus a little less relentlessly on "I must save MY children" and to hell with everyone (and I mean everyone) else.

Merrill's Marauders (1962)

Great cast wasted in cheapo production

It's too bad this great cast and interesting subject matter were squandered in this cliché-ridden, cheaply made production. The music is awful, except the bits they stole from "Objective Burma". The Phillipine Army, standing in for the Japanese, look way too modern and American with their equipment and uniforms. And from the look of it, the movie was filmed entirely in the Phillipines, which do not look like I imagine Burma to be.

Jeff Chandler is fine as Merrill, but the script is pretty limiting. It's a shame this was his last film.

Ironically, "Objective Burma", filmed entirely in California, has a much richer jungle feel than this movie. It's clear from reading about Burma that you need a machete to move about in the jungle and you see that in "Objective Burma". The Philipine terrain in "Merrill's Marauders" is much too open.

The Case of the Howling Dog (1934)

Unusual film in the Perry Mason series

Wow, can't top the "Lightning" review, but here's more about the movie itself. I believe this was the first in a series of Perry Mason films starring Warren William.

What's odd is that this film has no other cast members in common with the subsequent films and in fact the whole tenor of the movie is quite different. In this film Perry has a huge office and staff of detectives. He makes no quips. Has no comic-relief sidekick. And the mystery itself is actually quite good.

Later films gave him a goofy detective sidekick ("Spudsey"), made more of the romance between Della Street and Perry, and had much less mystery in the plots. The appeal of these movies is Perry's string of one-liners he gives to the police, witnesses, etc.

But give this first film a look. There's no comic relief, but the plot is very involved and interesting.

The Gypsy Moths (1969)

Unbelievable soaper with ludicrous plot elements

Most books of movie reviews agree with the other reviewer here, they like it a lot. Well I just saw this movie and I thought it was pretty awful. The incredible cast (Hackman, Lancaster, Windom, Kerr, Bonnie Bedelia, Sheree North) is just wasted. The dialogue is spoken with so many long pauses the movie would be 30% shorter if you edited it to sound like real people talk.

And to accept the plot, you must accept these premises:

• Professional sky divers are scared every time they go up.

• Professional sky divers would risk their lives to pop the chute too low to the ground to give the crowd a thrill.

• It's dangerous to jump with a "cape" because you will think you can fly and forget to pull the rip cord.

The Desert Rats (1953)

Unusually well done war flick - well worth a look

This is a really enjoyable movie. Burton and Newton do a fine job, as do a cast of familiar British character actors. James Mason in his first outing as Rommel is especially fun. He reprised the role in a later Rommel bio-pic (titled "The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel").

Despite it's age, most of the attempts at special effects (artillery in the distance, explosions done via matte) come off well. As for the scenes where they really shoot off some pyrotechnics, they spared no expense! The overall portrait of the desert and army life looks very real and has the ring of truth. The plot is exciting and never drags.

The only problems are the over-patriotic script (I guess we should cut them some slack here, this movie was made much closer to the war than we are today!) and as noted elsewhere, the inappropriate German weapons. It's amazing that they used Thompson machine guns instead of MP40's, when for the next 30 years everybody from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." to James Bond would use the MP40 all over the place. In summary I think this movie was a bit better than I expected and holds up well to repeated viewings.

The High and the Mighty (1954)

The father of airline disaster films has not aged well

"The High and the Mighty" has just re-appeared on AMC after decades of being inaccessible. Touted as the father (or mother?) of future airplane disaster films you will see all the clichés that would later dot other disaster films. The newlyweds, the grizzled old co-pilot, the plucky stewardess, the old rich guy, etc., etc.

While this may all have been fun years ago, it does not age well. The threadbare plot is padded out with all these silly passenger back-flashes. Oddly, a similar event in a real-life flight to Hawaii (TWO engines out) had many more "plot twists" than this novelized version.

Wayne does a fine job, as do the others, but there's simply not enough going on to keep the viewer interested. To see the same thing done better, see the original "Airport".

You will instantly recognize the main theme, as whistled by the John Wayne character. I had no idea it came from an airplane movie.

Oh, another movie to catch on this subject is "No Highway in the Sky" (1951) with Jimmy Stewart scaring a planeload of trans-Atlantic passengers with his theory of imminent tail collapse! Much more tense than this movie. "No Highway's" plot of metal fatigue actually became reality a few years later in a deadly series of DeHavilland COMET jet crashes.

Another suggestion would be "Man in the Sky" (i.e. "Decision Against Time"), a 1957 Jack Hawkins movie about a test pilot in trouble. Again, it gets much more mileage from the tension of a disabled airplane in flight than "The High and the Mighty".

Pursued (1947)

Boring unwatchable movie

I'm a big Robert Mitchum fan but even I couldn't sit through this one. Everyone acts as if they're asleep. They show the entire range of emotion from grim to grim.

After the first half I gave up and fast-forwarded to the unsatisfying conclusion. This is the slowest moving plot you'll ever see in your life and as near as I could tell none of any of the character's motivations was revealed until the final scene. Since all these stars have done great work elsewhere I guess the blame lies with the director and the script.

Just give this movie a pass and go watch ANY other Mitchum film.

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

Enjoyable entry in the Creature series

While the weakest of the three Creature films, it's held together by a fine cast and musical score. If you get the chance, buy the new "Creature from the Black Lagoon" DVD set which includes all three films plus great commentary tracks and a documentary. When seen together with the other two films it's much more fun than watching it by itself. Clearly the creators felt they'd "done" the underwater thing in the first two movies, and were trying something different in the third. When you see all three together it works fine, but by itself you kinda miss those underwater scenes. The bonus materials on the DVD set explain a lot about how they shot the underwater scenes in all three films, plus give credit to the guy who did the swimming scenes (Riccou Brown?).

The Jayhawkers! (1959)

Good movie, great score

It's been a while since I saw this movie, but I remember being impressed with the performances of both Fess Parker and Jeff Chandler.

The other person who commented on this movie implied the Chandler character murdered Parker's wife. I don't think that's correct. He just dumped her and she killed herself, or some sort of indirect thing like that.

I've since heard part of the movie score on a soundtrack CD showcasing the music of Jerome Moross. Wow! No wonder I liked the movie, the score is really great with a driving main theme. Look for a CD called "The Cardinal - Classic Film Scores of Jerome Moross". There is 16 minutes of music from "The Jayhawkers".