A Day with the Boys

Michael Hertel, not listed, but what a great actor!!! This movie is by far the best shorts ever. The Directing is remarkable. A must see for everyone!!! What ever became of Michael Hertel??

This Movie appears just be a cute day with the boys at first. But the suspense builds and builds. The ending is a climax which will never be forgotten.

I first saw this film in a small theater in Gainesville, Florida 1974. I remember the theater in total silence as the end credits rolled...we were deeply affected. I have not forgotten this movie, perhaps bits and pieces, but certainly not the overall feeling I had after watching it. Now, after 25 years, I find myself wanting to see this movie again...if I could find it!

Boy, there must have been a real dearth/scarcity of film fests back then!? (Not that being Nom'd for the Palme d' Or is chicken feed!!) But no others? Very odd!

Re: whomever's comment about Clu being "demented," he didn't seem that way to me, although I guess he had somewhat of a rep as an actor. Numerous actors who really care about their craft and/or are simply real people do have such days (or weeks, or years), so...!? His interview on the DVD of "The Killers" is very lucid, although it may have been rehearsed? No idea!

But this is a really terrific short film; it's worth renting "Geogre Washington" just to watch it, imo!!!

Clu Gulager is a familiar face as a veteran character actor. I had no idea he had briefly gone in for directing at one time and made this fine short, in the sixties poetic / experimental mode.

Note: this short is on the Criterion Collection DVD of "George Washington", evidently because David Gordon Green felt influenced by it. I'm glad it has been retrieved from the archives and made available to viewers of today's independent cinema. Green comments on the painterly visual effects (cinematography by László Kovács!), but the more obvious similarities are thematic: the world of kids in the semi-rural south, and how the world of adults impinges on them (and vice versa here of course).

Artsy nonsense rescued by Criterion from obscurity. Gulager, whom I remember for unpleasant macho roles, was, according to those who knew him, quite the opposite. Perhaps after a few more shorts or directing episodes of all the TV series he worked on, he would have moved on from experimentation to ambitious works, but apparently he never finished another film besides this not-very-good short.

Thirty years later, Brian Stirner (the main actor of "Overlord") directed the feature "A Kind of Hush", with a similar but more explicit storyline, based on "Getting Even", a semi-autobiographical story by actor Richard Johnson about the revenge of adolescents who were sexually abused in their childhood.