Anthony Perkins

  • Green Mansions (1959)

    Green Mansions (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) I usually worship Audrey Hepburn and the films she stars in, but I’m willing to make an exception for Green Mansions. While Hepburn does look very cute with longer straight hair, the film itself hasn’t aged well at all. How could it? Adapted from a 1904 adventure romance novel, it features Anthony Perkins as a rugged adventurer (!) who escapes into the jungle and ends up meeting, and romancing, a native princess played by Hepburn—before some more action-filled adventures. This is already bad enough, but let’s just say that the result is a dull jungle romance. Perhaps the best thing about Green Mansions is its cinematography, which introduced Panavision widescreen lenses and features the Venezuelan jungle in lush green detail. Said to be based on true events, the film is sadly not terribly interesting—and whenever it is, it’s usually to make twenty-first century viewers stand up and say, “oh, come on.” Hey, even goddesses can make mistakes.

  • I’m Dangerous Tonight (1990)

    I’m Dangerous Tonight (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Inconsistent director Tobe Hooper gradually sank into mediocrity as the 1980s advanced and he was never quite able to recapture the spark of his early films. Even moderately successful movies like I’m Dangerous Tonight would become increasingly rare as he kept working to diminishing returns. Adapted from a short story, the film takes place on an American campus where a murderous cloak (taken from a sacrificial altar) can take over the body of anyone wearing it. Made for TV, the film clearly doesn’t have a large budget but still manages to have a few strong moments, including a better-than-average car chase. Lead actress Mädchen Amick doe a fine job going from mousy to murderous under the influence of the evil artifact. While I’m Dangerous Tonight does match a certain level of directorial competence (especially for a 1990 TV movie), there isn’t much to the script to make it more than a mildly entertaining horror film in a familiar vein. It does get better as it goes on, as it partly becomes about the fight against evil (culminating in the famous Nietzsche quote) in addition to the evil itself. I saw I’m Dangerous Tonight largely because I was checking off my Hooper filmography, but the film itself is solid enough if your expectations are reasonable.

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) As a made-for-Cable movie, it’s not that surprising if I’m Dangerous Tonight isn’t as unleashed as it could have been. It does start with a good premise and acceptable characters, as an ancient relic shaped in the form of a red cloak causes anyone wearing it to behave murderously. After the requisite initial incidents to mean that the dress means business, things kick in high gear when our sweet nerdy heroine (the cute Mädchen Amick) gets ahold of the fabric, sews it into a dress and the dress gets ahold of her. It escalates all the way to the wood chipper, although the gore remains blissfully restrained due to its made-for-TV status. Anthony Perkins shows up for a few scenes as a surprisingly non-evil character, while the atmosphere of an American campus does much to keep the film grounded in a familiar movie reality. The script is not that good and the execution feels restrained, but director Tobe Hooper still knew how to keep things hopping, and so I’m Dangerous Tonight remains watchable without being all that memorable.

  • The Actress (1953)

    The Actress (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) While adapted from the life of actress-playwright Ruth Gordon, The Actress (despite being scripted by Gordon herself) aims for amiable family comedy more than biographical sketch. By using Spencer Tracy as the sometimes-goofy family patriarch, it’s likely that director George Cukor meant to evoke fresh good of his then-fresh turns in Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend. The theatrical origins of the story aren’t readily apparent in the film’s eagerness to vary locations, but the quality of the dialogue is there. Still, the film does feel (especially seventy years later) like a small-scale domestic comedy. The biggest conflict is whether the family will accept the daughter’s dream of becoming an actress, and this being a Classical Hollywood movie, you can guess how that ends. There’s an affectionate component to the film’s look back to 1913 Massachusetts, and an amiable tone to the family’s small-scale troubles. Anthony Perkins shows up (in his debut) as a would-be suitor. The Actress, in many ways, is charming in its mediocrity—something to watch if you haven’t got enough of Tracy’s patrician roles.

  • The Black Hole (1979)

    The Black Hole (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, September 2019) I distinctly remember seeing trailers for The Black Hole on TV—it’s hard to forget the spectacular “meteorite heading for the heroes” shot that capped it off. Viewing the film as an adult is something else—It’s a film with a strong split personality, both aimed at kids with cute robots and terrible logic, but also a dark and nightmarish Science Fiction drama that almost literally ends in hell. (“Event Horizon for kids” strikes far too close to the truth to be a joke description.) As a result, The Black Hole can feel like a schizophrenic experience: a special effects showcase (they aged better than you’d expect), a summer blockbuster clearly taking aim at Star Wars’s success, a horror-lite story with easily guessable “twists,” and a good old-fashioned space adventure. In the middle of so much stuff, the cast doesn’t get enough attention, what with names such as Maximillian Schell, Robert Forster, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and Ernest Borgnine—what kind of movie was this? There is stuff in there that is so clearly of the 1970s that watching them today feels alien—I mean: a robot shooting gallery, ESP with robots, a quote-spewing robot? If you haven’t seen The Black Hole in a while, have another look at it. If you haven’t seen it yet, do it now, and strap yourself in for a wild mixture of elements that you wouldn’t necessarily put in the same movie.

  • Friendly Persuasion (1956)

    Friendly Persuasion (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) If ever I’m handed a time-travel machine, there are places and times that I’ve got no interest in ever visiting, and I know this because I’ve seen enough from Hollywood depictions of those times and places. Friendly Persuasion, for instance, takes us in a small nineteenth-century rural American community away from it all, and specifically in the life of a Quaker family. What could have been a semi-idyllic pastoral existence is challenged when strangers come into town announcing the big news: The United States is in the midst of a civil war, and recruits are needed to fight the enemy. This, obviously, challenges the Quaker’s pacifist, non-interventionist convictions, and most of the film’s plot is a debate of ideas about whether the kids should go to war. But this Oscar-nominated film isn’t solely about that—in many ways, it doesn’t have a plot as much as a threadbare narrative to link together a variety of vignettes about life in a village. At 137 minutes, it does end up feeling long and dull, not helped by the very loose plotting. The atmosphere will be a calling card for some viewers yearning for a rural fable, but not for others. Gary Cooper is his usual solid but bland self, while Anthony Perkins gets an early role playing the protagonist’s son. If you are in the mood for immersion in 19th century rural America, go ahead and watch Friendly Persuasion—otherwise, you may find yourself patiently waiting for the film’s second half, in which the story picks up substantially as war comes closer and the characters are called into action. That’s the point at which the film’s themes are finally confronted. While there is something admirable (and, frankly, still a bit unusual) in hearing Americans question the use of violence, the film simply isn’t tight or fast-paced enough to make the discussion more accessible. Fortunately, you can snap back to reality after a mere two hours and fifteen minutes.

  • Le procès [The Trial] (1962)

    Le procès [The Trial] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) I generally enjoyed watching much of Le procès, but it’s clear that I’m not smart enough to understand this film. Coming from writer-director Orson Welles’s middle-years phase, it’s an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and it plays up the disorienting nature of the original text. As a man is accused of some unspecified offence, his attempts to understand the charges and defend himself are constantly rebuffed by an uncaring system that barely seems human. The story is not meant to be understood—it’s meant to be felt, and Welles gets to work in splendidly visual fashion, putting his characters in vast cavernous spaces, confronting them with early computers and nightmarish bureaucracy. From a purely cinematographic standpoint, there’s a lot to like here. The casting is also nothing short of amazing, in between names such as Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Michael Lonsdale and Orson Welles himself. Where the film intentionally falls apart is in making sense of it all. It’s not supposed to, and yet at times it feels like anything for anything’s sake. Many shots are arresting; some of the absurdity is funny; but eventually, Le procès hits a point where the whole thing feels too long and undercooked. Nonetheless, it clearly remains an Orson Welles film, and one where he really gets to work his magic.