Don Rickles

  • The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

    The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) I’ve been watching so many great (or at least respectable) 1960s movies lately that an impulse viewing of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (motivated by no other reason that the title was similar to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) brought me back to some kind of more reasonable assessment of the period—let’s face it: the 1960s weren’t all French New Wave and New Hollywood: there were plenty of crude B-grade (or worse) stinkers in the mix. So it is that The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is far closer to mediocre zero-effort filmmaking: pedestrian direction, lame jokes, unlikable protagonist (Don Rickles isn’t for everyone, I guess) and very predictable plotting in the Scooby-Doo vein. (Of course, it wasn’t supernatural… OR WAS IT?!?)  Even using the old favourite “spend a night in a haunted house!” premise doesn’t do much to raise any interest in the final result. There’s little artistic intent here nor skillful execution in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken—just a cheap comic star vehicle that falls almost completely flat if you’re not already a fan of the actor being featured.

  • Kelly’s Heroes (1970)

    Kelly’s Heroes (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2018) In-between MASH, Kelly’s Heroes and Catch-22, 1970 was a banner year for using other conflicts to talk about the Vietnam War. MASH transposed late-sixties war cynicism on the Korean front, while Catch-22 talked disaffection among WW2 bomber crews and Kelly’s Heroes has greedy American infantry soldiers teaming up with a hippie-led crew of tankers to go steal a few million dollars’ worth of Nazi gold. This certainly isn’t your fifties war movie—in between the self-interested soldiers, corrupt officers, friendly fire incidents and a long-haired tank leader memorably played by Donald Sutherland (who was also in MASH), it’s obvious that Kelly’s Heroes had far more on its mind than just a WW2 adventure. It’s clunky (legend has it that the filmmakers didn’t quite get what they were going for, largely because of studio interference) but it still works on a pure entertainment level largely because of the terrific cast. Sutherland aside, there’s Clint Eastwood in the heroic role, supported by Telly Savalas, Don Rickles and Harry Dean Stanton in a small role. The adventure gets going quickly and gets weirder and wilder the deeper in enemy territory it goes. The final resolution has the so-called good guys bribing Nazis to get what they want (with cues echoing Sergio Leone), which is interesting on its own. Kelly’s Heroes is more palatable now that it must have been at the time—we’ve grown used to anti-heroic portrayals of the military, and Vietnam-era attitudes toward war and war movies are now far more familiar. Still, the result is entertaining enough, and while many prefer more straight-ahead drama along the line of Where Eagles Dare, there’s no dismissing that Kelly’s Heroes can still be watched eagerly today.