David Carradine

  • Bound for Glory (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) By all rights, Bound for Glory should have been more interesting. As an (admittedly very fictionalized) biography of Woody Guthrie, a very interesting figure at the intersection of American history, labour activism and entertainment, it’s clearly given the big-budget treatment. (It was reportedly the first film to use a Steadicam.)  The cast is striking even today, with David Carradine in the lead role and Randy Quaid in a supporting one. It comes with an illustrious pedigree, having been nominated and several won Academy Awards—among other honours. On paper, the one thing that gives me pause is that it’s directed by Hal Ashby, a director with more hits than misses as far as I’m concerned. (Not that this is a widely shared view—Ashby remains a favourite of New Hollywood fans… which I’m not.)  And indeed, it doesn’t take much until the brown-gray execution of Bound for Glory sucked all of my interest in the picture, with a slow pacing and cinematography taken straight from the Great Depression illustrated by the film. You can’t even try to explain the lack of interest by an overly faithful adhesion to facts, as even a cursory look at Guthrie’s biography shows numerous instances of fictionalization. I gradually become disengaged throughout the film’s gruelling two-and-a-half-hour running time, only perking up (or waking up?) once the classic “This Land Is Your Land” made its climactic appearance. Bound for Glory has a dull execution of a fascinating topic, and that makes it even more frustrating.

  • Boxcar Bertha (1972)

    Boxcar Bertha (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) In many ways, Boxcar Bertha isn’t particularly remarkable: As a better-than-average production from the Roger Corman filmmaking school, it heavily draws upon Bonnie and Clyde for inspiration at it shows a depression-era couple turning to crime in between love scenes. But here’s the thing: It’s Martin Scorsese’s second feature film, his first professional feature one after his quasi-student film Who’s That Knocking at My Door. As such, it’s practically mandatory viewing for fans. But it also shows what a good director can do with familiar material: While most movies produced by Corman had trouble even settling for capable B-movie status (“crank them out fast and cheap” seem to have been his American International Pictures’ unofficial motto), Boxcar Bertha does manage to become a decent genre picture. Despite a blunt script and low production values, it’s handled with some skill and meditative intent, reflecting Scorsese’s approach to the material and destiny to execute superior genre pictures. Barbara Hershey and David Carradine also do quite well in the lead roles. I’m not sure contemporary audiences will appreciate the film as much at the 1970s one did—after all, there’s practically a 1970s “violent couple picaresque journey” subgenre by now-famous directors in between Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, arguably Beatty), Sugarland Express (Spielberg), Badlands (Malick), and Boxcar Bertha fits right into what was then New Hollywood’s most salacious appeal. Decades and a few more Natural Born Killers later, it’s not as new or invigorating as it once was. Instead, we’re left with something far different: the movies as juvenilia, interesting not as much for what they were, but what they foretold.

  • Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

    Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) There is something true in the assertion that once you’ve seen a Chuck Norris film you’ve seen them all, and it’s certainly not going to be disproven by the generic Lone Wolf McQuade, where a rather great title can’t hide that this is Norris playing the same Norris. This time, he’s a rebellious Texas Ranger who (what else) is on the trail of an evil drug lord. He carries a .44 Magnum. He has a pet wolf. The drug lord is played by David Carradine. The love interest is played by the very cute Barbara Carrera. I’m not sure that there’s anything of substance to add to those facts. As directed by Steve Carver, the film is slightly more cinematographically ambitious than many of Norris’s other movies, clearly going for a Leone-type modern western in the American southwest. Still, Lone Wolf McQuade doesn’t have a whole lot to care about: There are few surprises here, although the sometimes-blunt execution does have a rough-hewn charm. Norris fans already know if they’re going to like it.

  • Evil Toons (1992)

    Evil Toons (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on Cable TV, February 2019) There’s some really weird stuff if you start looking in the late-night lineup of your Cable TV channels, and I was really amused to find Evil Toons on the schedule of French-Canadian horror-focused Frisson TV. It’s not exactly a well-known film. It’s not a good movie. It even stretches the definition of a “fun to watch” film. But it’s certainly weird enough to warrant a look. The premise is one that I find immensely charming, being about a few young women asked to clean a house that—obviously!—turns out to be haunted, possessed and just plain old evil. David Carradine shows up to looks spooky and deliver some exposition, but he’s not the main draw here. That would turn out to be pornographic actress Madison Stone in a relatively rare mainstream role, first as a funny sex kitten and then as a threatening vamp. The weirdness doesn’t stop there, as the antagonists of the film are realized as hand-drawn cartoons integrated in the live-action footage. Writer/director Fred Olen Ray has a checkered career in low-budget films (most of his movies don’t even have a Wikipedia page), but I’m sure that Evil Toons represents a career high of sort. Now, I wouldn’t want to overhype this—Evil Toon’s potential vastly exceeds what it ends up delivering. We barely scratch the surface of the naughty horror comedy that it could have been in better hands. Budget oblige, the toons barely show up … and the script can’t even be bothered with a few choice pieces of dialogue that even a marginally better comedy would have delivered without breaking a sweat. There’s no subtlety, the story’s development is lame and the characters have a tendency to under-react to sights that would have more realistic (heck, most comic) characters screaming their heads off—how dumb are these people? The end-credit music is catchy, though, and Evil Toons manages to go without nudity for a full twenty minutes. What we’re left with is still a weird movie, albeit with Madison Stone doing her best. It could have been quite a bit better but somehow, I can’t bring myself to condemn the result.