Ernest Borgnine

Torpedo Run (1958)

Torpedo Run (1958)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2020) As far as submarine movies go, Torpedo Run is slightly more melodramatic than most, harping on revenge through a WW2 submarine captain (Glenn Ford) explicitly gunning for the ship responsible for the death of his wife and children. The audience stand-in is his lieutenant, played by Ernest Borgnine, as he voices the doubts that the audience may be having as to his suitability for a task of such personal gravity. While this element drives Torpedo Run’s plot, much of the film itself is a fairly standard submarine film—executed with the cooperation of the US Navy and executed through then state-of-the-art special effects (nominated for an Academy Award). The mechanics of WW2 submarine life take a bit of a backseat to the drama, but this is otherwise an average war film, competently executed but overly familiar at times. Thematically, it still feels like a WW2 propaganda film even a decade and a half later—the personal vengeance is atypical (and would not have flown as a movie premise during WW2) but dovetails into the government’s war agenda, and the crimes of the enemies include shielding a warship with a transport filled by non-combatant prisoners of war. Ford and Borgnine do bring a bit of character work to the proceedings, and fans of the actors should be pleased by their performances. Otherwise, Torpedo Run ends up being a decent but unspectacular WW2 submarine movie—better than bad, more dramatic than most, but not as striking as others.

The Devil’s Rain (1975)

The Devil’s Rain (1975)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) All movie reviewers love to think that their bon mots are the best, that no one else will ever best them in describing a film, and that they certainly don’t need to do anything so vulgar as quoting some other critic. But sometimes, even the most egocentric of reviewers can admit defeat when a quote so perfectly formed comes to their attention. In The Devil’s Rain’s case, I bow down to Michael Adams, who in his book Showgirls came up with “the ultimate cult movie… It’s about a cult, has a cult following, was devised with input from a cult leader, and saw a future superstar indoctrinated into a cult he’d help popularize.” Whew—it’s so good a quote that it headlines the film’s Wikipedia entry. It’s a lot to unpack, but it says it all—The Devil’s Rain is a very 1970s satanic cult movie describing how a cult leader enslaves descendants of his cult centuries after being burnt alive. It’s absolutely not a good movie, but it has a bit of corny charm, and features such notables as William Shatner, Ernest Borgnine (with horns!), Ida Lupino (in a typical Golden-hollywood-star-slumming-in-1970s-horror-film role) and John Travolta in a supporting role. With a cast like that, you can see how and why the film developed a cult following—especially considering that the result, affected by production problems, isn’t particularly coherent on any level. To complete unlocking the quote, it’s worth noting that Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey was a technical advisor on the film, and that John Travolta first encountered Scientology on the set of the film. Whew. The final eight minutes of melting cultists is a lot, though. It would be professional malpractice to suggest watching The Devil’s Rain for its own intrinsic qualities, but as a budding film historian I’d be equally negligent if I didn’t single out the ways in which this movie has made a mark, as tiny as it was, on the grand film tapestry. [November 2024: As I edit this review for publication, years after seeing this wholly unremarkable film, I’m stuck at how I vividly remember at least one element of it—The repeated, “get me out of here!” lament heard over the Bosch-style opening credits. You never know what will stick!]

The Vikings (1958)

The Vikings (1958)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2020) There’s certainly a spectacular aspect to The Vikings that makes it interesting to watch: Kirk Douglas going toe-to-toe with a bearded Tony Curtis as they debate the leadership of a Viking colony. Made at a time when historical epics were trying to lure audiences away from the TV, it has lavish production values and some credible outdoor scenes and combat—with longboats! Plus: Ernest Borgnine and Janet Leigh looking a bit weird in non-contemporary setting. It may not be as well-remembered as some of the Roman epics of the time, and the lack of big Viking movies lately is a bit of a wonder by itself (wasn’t the latest one the motion-captured Beowulf from 2007?) Still, let’s not overstate things: The Vikings is not that interesting and even gawking at the stars in unusual turns or the scenery isn’t quite enough to make up for the tepid pacing and overall lack of interest in plot or dialogue. Fortunately, director Richard Fleischer creates a lot of bombast here to keep things afloat.

Deadly Blessing (1981)

Deadly Blessing (1981)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) Writer-Director Wes Craven has had a very strange career. His filmography includes everything between horror-defining classics and some of the ordinary derivative filmmaking imaginable. Deadly Blessing is closer to the bottom of the barrel, although not quite the worst. The story is pure farmhouse horror, as a widow and two visiting friends have to fend off the aggressive behaviour of a local sect of totally-not-Amish farmers. It’s all quite unusual in terms of what passed for slasher horror back in the early 1980s (the rural setting is distinctive enough) and while Craven’s execution still had some young-filmmaker energy, the sum of it all doesn’t quite make up something worth remembering. Weird ending, too; when is a slasher not a slasher, it perhaps should foreshadow that it’s not a slasher. Amusingly, Sharon Stone stars (not very well) in a very early role, while Ernest Borgnine doesn’t cover himself with honours with a histrionic performance as a sect elder. Some individual moments are interesting (the bathtub-snake sequence strongly suggests another bathtub scene in Craven’s later Nightmare on Elm Street) but Deadly Blessing as a whole is more dud than success—although, as any Craven fan knows, there are far worse movies in his filmography.

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, November 2019) I really like engineering fiction, and The Flight of the Phoenix is clearly a landmark of the genre. The setup is a classic, as a plane goes down in the desert and the survivors must rebuild a second plane out of the wreckage of the first to fly back to civilization. The sequences in which the crashed plane is taken apart and rebuilt in a different are delicious, and even having seen the 2004 remake doesn’t quite take away the fun of the original.   But if you take a closer look, little of the plot’s middle section has to do with engineering, though: humans are their own worst enemies, and the film’s second act eventually becomes a lot of bickering between those who think the plan will work and those who don’t. Happily, the last act tightens around the effort to rebuild the plane, and the results of those efforts. While a bit too early to be considered a disaster movie, The Flight of the Phoenix’s director Robert Aldrich does anticipate one thing: the use of an ensemble cast in portraying responses to a life-threatening event. Here, the cast is better than most in having James Stewart (as a pilot, naturally) but also notables such as Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Dan Duryea and George Kennedy. The desert cinematography will make you thirsty, but the reconstruction of the second plane is credibly portrayed. The film wasn’t without difficulties, though: ace aviator (and legendary stuntman pioneer) Paul Mantz died while filming, ironically because he was replacing his flying partner in shooting the scene. The result, however, is a film that pays good tribute to those aviation pioneers and daredevils of flying—and a captivating thriller to boot.

Ice Station Zebra (1968)

Ice Station Zebra (1968)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) Some movies pass into legend solely based on their fandom, and so one of the most interesting facts about Ice Station Zebra is how it was billionaire Howard Hugues’s favourite movie when he was in his reclusive phase—so much so that he took advantage of owning a local TV station by calling them to request that the film be shown in a loop all night long. (Later, he set himself up a private movie theatre and reportedly ran the film 150 times in the final months before his death.) Crazily enough, you can see in the film some of what may have attracted him to it. Adapted from an Alistair MacLean novel, Ice Station Zebra could justifiably be called a forerunner of the modern techno-thriller genre: Predicated on a high-tech plot device (a top-secret capsule from a satellite having crash-landed in the Arctic) and bolstered by good old-fashioned cold-war thriller elements (Americans vs. the Soviets, racing in submarines to retrieve the capsule), it blends the environmental hazards of polar conditions with human traitors and time-ticking suspense. It’s a high-octane thriller even by modern standards, and having a cast of big names (Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan) as headliners only helps. Shot in luscious 70 mm with then-terrific special effects, there’s a crispness to the cinematography (even on TV!) that does betray is studio-bound production. It’s hard to avoid thinking that if Howard Hugues had stayed in the movie business without going crazy, he probably would have gravitated to engineering-heavy big-thrill films such as Ice Station Zebra. Would an elderly Hugues have enjoyed things like The Hunt for Red October? Almost certainly. And while the movie will never attract as famous a fan again, you can have a look and see what the fuss was about.

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.

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2018) Frankly, I thought that I would have enjoyed The Dirty Dozen quite a bit more than I did. Part of it may have been shaped by modern expectations—in modern Hollywood, movies based on the premise of bringing together hardened criminals for a suicide mission are meticulously polished to ensure that the criminals aren’t too bad, or that they meet a morally suitable comeuppance. Our heroes have been unjustly convicted, or operate according to a sympathetic code of honour that may not meet official approval. Their adventures, first in training and then in combat, are calculated to meet focus group approval. But The Dirty Dozen, having been forged in the years following the breakdown of the chaste Hayes Code, is significantly rougher and grittier than the modern ideal. The dirty dozen members are in for reprehensible conduct, not pseudo-criminal malfeasance. The attitude of the film, as Hollywood was pushing the limits of what was acceptable in terms of violence, also permeates everything. While tame by contemporary standards of gore, The Dirty Dozen nonetheless feels … dirty. There are a lot of characters, and they’re often short-changed by the film’s juggling of roles. This being said, The Dirty Dozen is also a showcase of actors: In between Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy and an impossibly young Donald Sutherland (among many others), there are a lot of familiar faces here, and that has its own appeal. If you can go along with the film’s disreputable atmosphere, it remains a competent war film … but it may be difficult to do so.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2018) Considering my criticism of the Poseidon remake, I find it almost amusing that much of what I don’t like about the original The Poseidon Adventure is what didn’t work decades later. Much of the film feels like a repetitive loop as the survivors of a capsized cruise ship try to make their way out of the wreck: Encounter an obstacle, lose a member of the cast, and proceed to the next obstacle. There’s a high point during the initial disaster, and the plot does get slightly more interesting in the last half-hour, but much of The Poseidon Adventure feels too long and repetitive. The premise does have a whiff of originality to it (arguably extinguished by the remake), and it’s mildly interesting to see Leslie Nielsen pop up in what could have been a major role in any other movie. Otherwise, Gene Hackman is not bad as a priest questioning his own faith, and Ernest Borgnine makes for a capable foil throughout the ensuing adventures. The special effects are occasionally good, although the CGI achievements of the sequel clearly outshine the original in that area. There is a characteristic early-seventies feel to the entire film that some viewers will like. As for which version is better I’m curiously ambivalent—I usually prefer the originals on ideological grounds, but what I’m finding here is that the original The Poseidon Adventure doesn’t have much to recommend over its remake.

Marty (1955)

Marty (1955)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2018) The long list of Best Film Oscar-winning movies is definitely skewed toward big pictures: Big themes, big budgets, big actors. But there are exceptions, and Marty feels like one of the outliers. Not much more than a small-scale romantic drama in which a not-so-young man dares to come of age, this is a low-key film that works best in details. Good dialogue (by the legendary Paddy Chayefsky) brings the characters to life, blessed by good grounded performances by actors such as Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. Borgnine, in particular, is a revelation in a performance that breaks from his later tough-guy persona. Much of the film takes place in small apartments or in the streets of The Bronx, without too many dramatic flourishes. The result is striking in its own way, and having won the Oscar ensures that low-key low-budget Marty will remain seen for decades to come.