Movie Review

  • Cops and Robbersons (1994)

    Cops and Robbersons (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) I haven’t held back in calling out Chevy Chase as one of the unfunniest comedy stars of the 1980s — while his shtick occasionally works (I’m a big, big fan of Christmas Vacation), it’s often smarmy to an intolerable degree, and it’s interesting to see that it got worse with time, until his hubris grew too big for audiences to like. After his 1980s heydays, he experienced flop after flop in the early 1990s, with Cops and Robbersons arguably being the nail in his box-office coffin — you can just look at his filmography before and after 1995 to see a striking difference. To be fair, the problem with Cops and Robbersons isn’t just Chase — but other than “this is not a great script,” most of the specific problems with the film can be summarized as “Chase.”  It could have been much, much worse — rather than being portrayed as an “irresistible” ladies’ man as in Fletch or Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Chase here reverts to a variation on his bumbling suburban dad persona made famous in the Vacations films. A familiar character played on autopilot — with the same largely being true of Jack Palance as a misanthropic hard-boiled veteran cop forced to play Granddad in moving to the suburbs for a stakeout. The casting of Dianne Wiest as a funny mom is slightly perplexing considering her persona and the sitcom nature of the gags, but that’s among the least of the film’s problems. The main issue here is that the script has one good idea (encapsulated in the too-cute title) executed in very familiar riffs. You’ll say that this does make it look like plenty of other mainstream comedies of the time and you’d be right — the failure mode of Cops and Robbersons is being overly familiar, and that’s better than being actively obnoxious as other Chase films. Still, that doesn’t make it a better film — and for Chase it was a three-strikes-you’re-out kind of career realignment, not helped along by his abysmal reputation off-screen. When egomaniacs get humbled, not all of them repent and change their ways — some simply take their ball and go home.

  • The Mark of the Renegade (1951)

    The Mark of the Renegade (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) You can approach The Mark of the Renegade in a few different ways. Factually, it’s an early 1950s MGM western adventure set in Mexico, featuring Ricardo Montalban and Cyd Charisse. There are obvious Zorro similarities in the setup of a Mexican adventure featuring a lone adventurer fighting a local lord and romancing a luscious heroine — and we’re blessed by history that a dashing young Montalban plays him. (The similarities are not just me pulling out “um, Mexican adventure… Zorro!” out of a hat, considering that the film is based on a novel by Johnston McCulley, who created Zorro.)  As a Charisse fan, I’ll note that the film is one of the last of her pre-stardom days and the third I’ve seen in which this German-ethnic actress played a Mexican character. The two other films (Sombrero and Fiesta) also played on a similar register, purporting to bring some Mexican content to Hollywood but often perpetuating stereotypes. I would like to be a bit more enthusiastic about the swashbuckling adventure aspect of the film, but there’s not much here that’s overly memorable on that front. It’s more perfunctory than anything else, with the notable exception of a dance number between Montalban and Charisse — those two were dynamite together and The Mark of the Renegade is one of their hottest pairings. (I have seldom envied another man more than when seeing Montalban’s suave dance moves with Charisse and Ann Miller in 1948’s The Dancing Bandit, but I’m digressing.)  In other words — I’m happy that The Mark of the Renegade exists and it certainly has its strength, but it could have been much, much more memorable and it just isn’t. That’s really too bad: it’s watchable, but you may not remember much of it the next day.

  • Seven Keys to Baldpate (1929)

    Seven Keys to Baldpate (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) If I’m reading Wikipedia correctly, there are no less than seven movie adaptations of the play “Seven Keys to Baldpate” (three of them silent, six of them between 1916 and 1947) and it’s easy to understand what captures the imagination in a story about a writer going to an isolated mountain cabin in the dead of winter to write and being humorously interrupted by various characters. (As a writer with a backlog taller than I am, the idea of shacking up to write and having some romantic complications is irresistible. Sign me up.)  The 1929 version is the first adaptation of the story in the sound era, and perhaps the one with the most gusto despite some early-sound-era technical roughness. Richard Dix plays the writer, Miriam Seegar the lovely romantic interest and the supporting cast list is surprisingly long considering that it’s supposed to take place in an isolated mountain retreat. But that’s the plot, as an increasing number of characters sniff around the place to get their hands on a significant amount of money and the protagonist can’t get either a single line or a snuggle throughout the film. As far as 1920s early-sound films go, this one is a bit better than most. Shackled by the original theatrical play, it’s not free to fully explore the possibilities of its premise — but it’s decently funny, interesting to watch and clearly plays on a specific fantasy. One day, I may have myself a Seven Keys to Baldpate marathon and screen as many versions of the story as possible in order to identify the best one. But it’s perfectly possible to just watch one and be happy about it.

  • Zero Hour! (1957)

    Zero Hour! (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) These days, Zero Hour! is far better known as the thriller that most inspired the classic spoof Airplane! —but the film’s intricate production history and influence are a far more interesting tangle of names and genres. Thanks to Wikipedia, here’s a summary: In 1955, thirtysomething Canadian writer Arthur Hailey, while flying commercially between Vancouver and Toronto, came up with the idea of a flying crew being incapacitated by food poisoning, forcing a traumatized veteran to pick up the controls to land safely. His script was sold to the then-new Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which turned it into a successful 1956 live television play named Flight into Danger. That led, a year later, to this American studio remake titled Zero Hour! But it doesn’t stop there — In 1958, the story was novelized as Flight Into Danger: Runway Zero-Eight; in 1971, turned into American TV movie Terror in the Sky. In parallel, Hailey became a writer of international best-selling fame, whose famously long novels offered lavish exposés of familiar industries—the best-known of them being 1968’s Airport, which led to the 1970 film of the same name that launched the disaster-movie subgenre of the following decade… which was spoofed by Airplane! which would launch the spoof subgenre of the 1980s–1990s.   Whew — talk about tangled webs. As for Zero Hour! itself, its viewing experience can feel scattered: While viewers having seen Airplane! will have fits of unintended grinning at seeing the raw material later parodied (down to character names, specific plot points, character dialogue and stylistic devices), the film itself does remain a solid airborne thriller. The late-1950s style makes it just bombastic enough to be good fodder for parody, but it’s also very much in-line with what was done at the time. The special effects shots obviously don’t pass muster these days, but they do add a bit to the period charm of the film. I remain impressed that the film, produced by an American studio, kept the Canadian nature of the film in featuring Canadian characters going to Vancouver on their ill-fated flight. It’s still moderately involving as the thrills escalate and the rather impressive plotting all neatly slots together in a very watchable whole. I wouldn’t expect any twenty-first century viewer to see Zero Hour! and follow it with a first viewing of Airplane!, but that would be an amazing experience. Otherwise, reactions to Zero Hour! are likely to be unintended — giggling in the wrong places, either by remembering the parody over the original, or simply reacting incredulously to the overblown style of late-1950s thrillers. I quite liked it, but I really can’t guarantee the same thing for anyone else.

  • The Front Page (1974)

    The Front Page (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) On the one hand, I’m happy they remade the classic 1920s newspaper comedy The Front Page in the 1970s, and that they got talents such as Billy Wilder, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon to take part in it — it’s a slick update to a good movie, and it’s far more accessible to modern audiences. It’s an easier way to experience the story by virtue of being in colour, with a clean soundtrack and mature camerawork, more familiar actors, etc. The skill though which Wilder and often-unrecognized co-writer I.A.L. Diamond retools the story is a case study in subtlety and appropriateness — executed up to the 1970s standards (with a few additions), it generally feels like the original, while sanding away a number of the rougher edges that weren’t as acceptable fifty years later. It’s decently amusing, especially as an affectionate look at the rough-and-tumble world of city journalism in the 1920s. On the other hand, I have deliberately avoided comparing 1970s The Front page to 1930s His Girl Friday, because there really isn’t any comparison: Wilder/Matthau/Lemmon are fantastic but not trying for the same thing as Hawks/Grant/Russell were going for, and the 1934 film is probably (still!) faster-paced than the later film. The gender flip that brought so much romantic tension to the story is not there, as it reverts to the original premise, and you can see the repercussions of that decision nearly everywhere in the result. In other words, The Front Page remake is good, while His Girl Friday remains terrific. You could ask if merely remaking a film was the best use of Wilder/Matthau/Lemmon’s talents, especially at that late stage of Wilder’s career, but second-guessing veteran directors looking to scratch an itch (Wilder having been a newspaperman early in his career) isn’t always useful. The result does have a few misfires — Carole Burnett isn’t up to her usual standards here in a role that remains atonally troublesome even with the Wilder/Diamond sanding of its rough edges. Still, I’d probably screen this version of the story as appetizer to anyone not used to classic films but interested in watching His Girl Friday — it’s a good basic presentation of the story, and it can ease viewers into progressively older material. I’m still glad that it exists and it may have been the best film that Wilder could have done at the time. Still, I can’t help but wonder what other films Wilder could have done instead.

  • Suspense (1946)

    Suspense (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) In a sense, Suspense is a familiar oddball movie — a fusion of film noir with a star vehicle for its Olympic ice-skating lead. Yes, you read that right — Belita was, at the time of the film’s production, a 1936 Olympian who turned to movies, carrying with her the dancing skill, ability and precision of her former profession in roles that often managed to work in an ice-skating angle. So it is that Suspense is firmly in the tradition of Hollywood star vehicles, building a generic plot around the specific abilities of its lead. Here, she plays (what else?) an ice-skating sensation who becomes embroiled in the usual murder mystery. It’s unique all right, but is it good? Widely hailed upon release as an ambitious (and expensive) release from a smaller studio, Suspense is worth a look for the gimmick, but the film itself doesn’t have much to stand on its own — as bland as its title, it travels over familiar terrain, with little to distinguish itself than the ice-skating angle. Contemporary fans of the art form will find some historical worth to the way it’s portrayed: ice-skating has changed a lot since then. It’s distinctive, but in a fashion that feels remarkably similar from decades of Hollywood vehicles all trying an angle tied to their headliners. Hollywood, throughout the decades, has remained unerringly consistent even in the way it showcases novelty.

  • Buio Omega [Beyond the Darkness] (1979)

    Buio Omega [Beyond the Darkness] (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) I’m not always a giallo fan, and Beyond the Darkness is another example of why. Director Joe D’Amato here energetically takes up the inherent goriness of the genre and wraps it up in revulsive eroticism, voodoo curses, wild plotting, sadistic characters and other fixtures of the form. It’s all meant to be upsetting to viewers, but you have to wonder who D’Amato is playing for — fans of the subgenre will get what they’re looking for, while anyone unhappy at the ridiculous escalation of gore will simply shrug, stop watching and tell themselves that it’s all the same. There’s plenty of gratuitous violence (the vast majority of it against women, one notes without subtlety), and the amount of sexual content seems higher than usual. But then again, D’Amato did have a solid footing both in horror and pornography. The audiovisual aspect of the production is typically extreme, with vivid colours (usually red), better-than-average visual style and a soundtrack from Goblin all begging for association with better-known work from Argento. I usually prefer giallo when it features supernatural narrative elements, but the ones in Beyond the Darkness are perfunctory at best — it remains, at its core, about humans going terrible things to each other and there’s a hard limit to how much of that I can enjoy. While there’s some occasional dynamism to how D’Amato executes his humdrum script, I found myself more bored than interested by the result. But then again, I’m not always impressed by giallo — Beyond the Darkness is no exception.

  • Mr. Sardonicus (1961)

    Mr. Sardonicus (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2021) Coming toward the middle of writer-director-producer William Castle’s better-known period as a horror film tycoon, Mr. Sardonicus is not usually recognized as one of his most famous films. But you can clearly recognize his huckster’s imprint on the material, from the film’s gimmick to his introduction to his gradual walking away from a familiar opening to something a bit weirder. Watching Castle in full frame introducing his own film, I suddenly started wondering how much inspiration he derived from Alfred Hitchcock as acknowledged auteur of his films — was he trying to make himself the trademark of his own films, spurred by Hitchcock’s own celebrity? No matter why — here he is setting the tone of the film, relishing the bloodthirstiness of his audience and clearly playing to those identifying with the macabre dark humour of the horror genre. The opening moments of the film have an over-familiar tone to them, aping Stoker’s Dracula as a young English doctor travels to mysterious rural East Europe and sets out to investigate a mysterious summons. But this isn’t about a vampire — it’s about a baron left disfigured in a horrible rictus after profaning his father’s grave. The supernatural is absent, leaving psychological foreboding in its stead. While the extended flashback is clunky in extending the film’s thin plot to a commercially viable length, Mr. Sardonicus does score a good shock in its revelation of the baron’s horrifying face — and preserves its effect by having the character wear a mask for most of the film. The film’s gimmick comes toward the end, as audiences are asked to “vote” on whether the grave-robber deserves further punishment: Castle comes back on screen as the film’s host, explains how to vote and pretends to count the votes while making comments to the theatrical audience. The outcome is predictably rigged in favour of more horror and punishment: After Castle commends his audience for its deviancy from the norm, how could it be otherwise? (Film historians agree that an alternate merciful ending was never filmed.)   As a horror film, Mr. Sardonicus is a curious thing — clearly patterned early on after Dracula, but swerving at the end of the first act, hobbled by an extended flashback that doesn’t do much to crank up the tension, then going into psychological drama territory for much of the third act. The ending gimmick does add interest, but it’s not in service of the film’s narrative — it’s another piece of evidence of Castle’s showman instincts and the fourth-wall-breaking lengths to which he could go to play with an audience expecting such antics. I liked it well enough, but then again, I’m more curious about Castle’s gimmicks and persona-grooming than the films themselves. At least Mr. Sardonicus holds attention — not always consistently nor all that well, but even more so than many comparable films.

  • Alien from L.A. (1988)

    Alien from L.A. (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Both ambitious and terrible, Alien from L.A. has ended up as a minor cult movie for a reason — sure, an MST3K appearance has helped, but it takes a special kind of audacity to propose no less than supermodel Kathy Ireland as a mousy shut-in nerd, or to portray an underground civilization of aliens with a threadbare budget. Producing company Cannon Group and director Albert Pyun have seldom courted mainstream success, and so the result of their efforts here is a strange mixture of silliness and incompetence, grand ambitions and haphazard execution. Sure, it’s slightly amazing to see an ultra-low-budget trying to create an alien society with crowd sequences — it makes a bit more sense once you learn that Alien from L.A. was shot in South Africa for even greater budgetary efficiency. The plot barely holds together, what with a father having fallen into a hole, an underground spaceship, bland plotting contortions and some severely underwhelming execution. Ireland squeaks her way through some terrible dialogue, but the film does swing for the fences at times, especially in trying to portray something outside human existence. Still, ambition isn’t necessarily an achievement by itself, and for all of the film’s welcome weirdness, it struggles with being anything other than a curio. Still, I’ll take a curio over anything forgotten five minutes after the credits roll — and for all its faults, you will remember Alien from L.A. for a while.

  • Tenebre [Tenebrae] (1982)

    Tenebre [Tenebrae] (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) While I haven’t seen all of writer-director Dario Argento’s filmography yet, I have a strong preference for his supernatural films over the more “realistic” ones. Tenebre is similar to other Argento films in that it features an American in Rome, getting embroiled in a sordid series of murders and the hunt for the killer. Like other Argento films, it’s also very stylish — colourful, with strong images and deliberate directing choices. There’s not much left to happenstance or merely “ordinary” filmmaking here. With Goblin providing the score and a typically twisted psychology at the root of the film’s premise, the film feels very much of a piece with other parts of his filmography. Structurally, the film is clearly made around its high-strung death sequences, going from one horrifying sequence to another but not forgetting to have a rather sophisticated narrative to wrap it all up. In the grand tradition of giallo, it takes a repulsive kind of serial-killer story and makes it more watchable by sheer injection of style. I’m still not a fan, but as a late-period giallo Tenebre is significantly more watchable than the explosion of slasher movies that took place at the same time in the United States.

  • You’ll Find Out (1940)

    You’ll Find Out (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) I’ve written before about the brief and unlikely stardom of Kay Kyser, band leader and radio personality (as the host of “Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge”) who, in the early 1940s, got to star as himself in a series of rather charming vehicles before retiring and living to have a long and rewarding pastoral life. Most of his movies rely on his very curious personal charm as a slight, soft-spoken, bespectacled presence in contexts where you’d expect a traditional Hollywood leading man. (Swing Fever is the film that got me wondering, “how is this guy presented as a leading man?”)  Even in a short but outlandish filmography, You’ll Find Out is in the running as one of the weirdest — here, Kyser plays himself as he and his band are invited to an heiress manor to help celebrate her birthday party, and end up discovering a plot against her. While that doesn’t sound too bad, consider that this is a film with supporting roles for Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi — the only time those three legends would share the screen. The film soon takes a turn for the haunted-house occult (how could it be otherwise with that cast?) but don’t worry: it’s all a comedy with a few musical interludes provided by Kyser’s band. One musical number, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” eventually got nominated for an Academy Award. It’s rather fun to watch, and a must-see if you’re a Kyser fan. (If I can become one, I’m sure there are dozens—dozens—of us.)

  • Inferno (1980)

    Inferno (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) As regular readers of these reviews already know, I despite slasher movies — for their creative laziness, for their cheap nihilism, for their low production values. But I’m willing to make exceptions when these movies veer toward the supernatural, when they’re stylishly made, when there’s something in there that goes beyond the obvious. And that does describe Dario Argento’s Inferno rather well. The second of the “Three Mothers” trilogy inaugurated by Suspiria (but articulated here), it’s a horror film that largely (and wisely) confines itself to a New York City apartment building where there are strange things on, in, between and under the floors of the building. Faithful to his mastery of giallo at the time of its release, Argento goes for bright red blood, striking visuals, unsettling mythology and an audacious mid-film protagonist switch. I really liked the sense of increasingly uncanny discoveries within an ordinary-looking apartment building: it takes a demented imagination to mix fire cauldrons and submerged ballrooms in the same location, and that’s what sets Inferno apart from Argento’s later, far more mundane work. The expressionism of his visual style is still a cut above most other horror films, and the entire thing often plays like a nightmare. Inferno is deservedly overshadowed by many of Argento’s work (particularly Suspiria, a comparison made even worse by their belonging to the same rough cycle) but it’s a serviceable horror triller that may convince even those who are dubious about the whole giallo slasher trend.

  • The Mob (1951)

    The Mob (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Genre can be as important as topic matter in distinguishing a film, and for a good example of this, you can take a look at quasi-contemporary The Mob and On the Waterfront, two early-1950s films both dealing with crime and corruption among longshoremen. But whereas On the Waterfront attained immortality through a finely drawn dramatic portrait of people fighting the system, The Mob goes for a cops-versus-mob film noir. I’m not necessarily complaining: The Mob is far more entertaining on a basic level, and it doesn’t need Marlon Brando when there’s Broderick Crawford to play the tough grizzled cop going undercover to expose a crime ring. While technically a film noir due to its tone and production era, it’s a film that harkens more to the 1930s gangster pictures — there’s not much darkness to the protagonist, order is restored in the end and the status quo of American society is not seriously questioned. Chalk it up to another subgenre distinction. Still, it’s a solid crime picture, and it clocks in at an economical 86 minutes. Unlike On the Waterfront, there aren’t that many wasted moments and dull sequences in The Mob — it’s mean and lean, and it affirms Broderick’s stature at the time. Not a bad pick for a quiet evening, and you get a lot of mileage out of a double bill with its illustrious waterfront companion.

  • Gatto nero [The Black Cat] (1981)

    Gatto nero [The Black Cat] (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) I may own a cat, but that doesn’t prevent me from making a point of watching every single cat-themed horror film I can find. (Well, maybe it’s because I own a cat that I do that.)  To say that The Black Cat is a wild ride is merely being descriptive in discussing a film from giallo director Lucio Fulci. Headlined by Patrick McGee going all-out on a villainous character, it’s a film with bright-red blood, a black cat attacking humans and a bit of nudity to wrap it all up. What’s perhaps more unfortunate is that, despite all of those promising elements, the film can’t quite become anything better than a watchable film. Despite the lugubrious Poe-inspired atmosphere of an English town, the film struggles to become something truly interesting. Part of it has to do with a script that, in fine giallo fashion, privileges shocks over buildup and could have used another tune-up before being put on the road. While I’m still happy that I can add another evil cat horror film to my notes, I can’t say it’s my favourite by a long shot.

  • My Favorite Spy (1942)

    My Favorite Spy (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Coming from the middle of the short, curious and still enjoyable film career of bandleader Kay Kyser, My Favorite Spy tries to jam his affable professorial persona into an espionage comedy… and generally succeeds. “Contrived” doesn’t start to describe the plotting circumlocutions that the film sets in motion in order to showcase Kyser’s talents in a spy movie, but it’s so outlandish that it works. Other things that work: Jane Wyman as a romantic interest, the very cute Ellen Drew, Ish Kabbible in a short comic appearance, a few band numbers, by-the-numbers suspense and, most of all, nebbish Kyser as a counter-spy. He’s not an ideal lead (too soft-spoken to deliver punchlines, too stiff for physical comedy), but that in itself becomes a bit of an endearing joke. I wouldn’t recommend this film to Kyser neophytes — he’s better introduced in other films, and much of My Favorite Spy’s fun is a complex interplay between the man propped up to become a movie star versus his undeniable talents as bandleader. If you’re a Kyser fan, though, this is one of his best films — RKO was clearly trying to make him a star, and the narrative is better than many of his other films.