Rough Edges

And BUTTER is interesting. But it has a tone problem. Most of the time it seems to be trying for heartwarming Americana, but then it takes several dark, crude turns that are really jarring. What kind of movie is this, anyway? I’m not sure even the people who made it could answer that. But I have to admit, I stayed awake all the way through it, and I didn’t hate it. If you’re in the mood for an odd, obscure movie, it might do the trick.

If you want a much better small town dark comedy, though, watch 1971’s COLD TURKEY, which is also set in Iowa, by the way. I haven’t seen that in many years, but I remember it as being very good.

BULLETPROOF seems like the type of movie we would have watched when it came out back in 1996, but for whatever reason, we didn’t. It’s an okay buddy movie/road movie/action comedy but never rises above the okay level. The script moves right along but is completely predictable. I have a higher Adam Sandler threshold than a lot of people, but even I found him annoying at times in this one. But I like Damon Wayans and he and Sandler work well together for the most part. Mildly entertaining is the best this movie can do, but that’s all I expected from it so I wasn’t disappointed.

Will Murray, one of my favorite authors in the business today, contributes a fine article detailing the writing of his two novels featuring King Kong that also feature another couple of guys you might have heard of: Tarzan and Doc Savage. Even though we’re from different parts of the country and our careers have developed in much different ways, I’ve always felt a certain kinship with Will Murray during the 40+ years we’ve known each other, so it came as no surprise in this article when he mentions knowing the lyrics to the theme song of the King Kong animated TV series from the Sixties. At one time, so did I, and although I can’t recall the whole thing right now, I can definitely still hear parts of that song playing in my head!

Micah Swanson Harris continues the King Kong theme by examining the possible influence of H. Rider Haggard’s fiction on Kong’s creator Merian C. Cooper. Haggard is one of those authors I really need to get around to reading more of, so I appreciated this article.

Over on the fiction side, this issue reprints H.P. Lovecraft’s “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” (also published as “The White Ape”), which is a Lovecraft story I hadn’t read until now. (That’s not unusual since I really haven’t read that much of Lovecraft’s work.) As often happens with Lovecraft, I love the creepy concept of this one. There are other reprints by John Russell Fearn (a nifty little suspense tale, the first non-SF by Fearn that I’ve read), John Burke, and Shelley Smith, plus brand-new stories by Riley Hogan (a nice Weird Western tale), Dr. Richard A. Olson (one of his stories about private eye Nick Stihl, a series I haven’t tried until now, but based on this one, I need to), and an action-packed yarn by the always entertaining Teel James Glenn about a convenience store robbery that features some surprising sword-swinging. There are some assorted book reviews by me, as well.

All in all, this issue of PULP ADVENTURES is great fun with some fine articles and great artwook. You can find it on Amazon or on the publisher’s website. Highly recommended.

This is actually the first version of THE SPOILERS I ever saw. Rex Beach’s bestselling 1906 adventure novel about the Yukon Gold Rush (something he experienced first-hand) has been filmed five times, twice during the Silent Era and three sound films: a 1930 version starring Gary Cooper that isn’t available and may be lost; a 1942 version starring John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and Marlene Dietrich, the best-known and almost certainly best version if only for the cast; and this one from 1955 with Jeff Chandler, Rory Calhoun, and Anne Baxter.

It’s a familiar story: Chandler is the stalwart gold mine owner, Baxter is the flamboyant and beautiful saloon owner, and Calhoun, cast against type, is the charming but crooked gold commissioner who’s trying to swindle Chandler out of his mine and steal his girl, to boot. Elsewhere in the cast, Ray Danton is a gambler whose motivations are murky but who definitely can’t be trusted, John McEntire is Chandler’s crusty partner in the gold mine, Carl Benton Reid is a judge, Barbara Britton is the judge’s niece and some competition for Baxter, Wallace Ford is an old codger, and perennial villain Roy Barcroft is a good guy for a change, playing the local marshal. The characters jockey back and forth for position, romantic entanglements ensue, schemes are exposed, and it all culminates in a big battle between the miners and the bad guys in which a train crashes and stuff blows up real good, following by a brutal, saloon-destroying fistfight between Chandler and Calhoun.

As the only color version of THE SPOILERS, this one looks great. The location photography is good and there are plenty of bright colors. I’m not a fan of some of the Westerns made since the Seventies that are obsessed with muddy streets, filthy clothes, and scenes so dimly lit it’s hard to tell what’s going on. I don’t care if it’s realistic. The streets are muddy in this one, but other than that it’s definitely a Technicolor production. There’s some decent miniature work in the train crash, and the two leads (and their stunt doubles) throw a lot of enthusiasm into their big fight at the end. I’m not a huge fan of either Jeff Chandler or Rory Calhoun, but they’re fine here. It seemed to me that the fight is over quicker than I remember it, but it’s still pretty good.

If you’re going to watch only one version of THE SPOILERS, go with the Wayne/Scott/Dietrich effort from 1942. I’ve seen it several times, and it’s a better film. However, I think this 1955 version is worth watching, too. As I said above, I remember enjoying it the last time I saw it. I liked it this time, too, and I’m glad I saw it again.

Although I’ve been familiar with his name for years, I’ve never read anything by Rex Beach. Maybe I should. Most of his novels are in public domain, and free e-book editions are available on Amazon. If I ever get around to it, you can count on reading about it here.

Ray has just published his autobiography, HELL-BENT FOR HOLLYWOOD. I always enjoy reading about creative people, so I gave it a try. He doesn’t pull many punches in telling about his life, from his hardscrabble upbringing in Florida to his early desire to be a filmmaker to the many detours along the way to achieving his dream. It’s a compelling tale that Ray spins in straightforward, no-nonsense prose.

I especially enjoyed the sections where Ray talks about our mutual friend Terrell Lee Lankford, who wrote the scripts for several of Ray’s movies over the years. Lankford was a regular commenter here in the early days of this blog and is the author of several excellent crime novels including EARTHQUAKE WEATHER, BLONDE LIGHTNING, and ANGRY MOON. If you haven’t read his books, you really should.

But to get back to Ray, HELL-BENT FOR HOLLYWOOD is a wonderful book. I had a very hard time putting it down. If you want insights into filmmaking and fascinating, behind-the-scenes stories about many legendary Hollywood figures, you’ll find plenty of that in the book, along with the inspiring narrative of Ray’s own life. I have a feeling he might scoff at hearing himself described as inspiring, but that’s the way it seems to me. HELL-BENT FOR HOLLYWOOD is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I give it a high recommendation. It's available in trade paperback and e-book editions.

This was also my introduction to the work of Louis L’Amour, although that name didn’t mean anything to me then and it would be three or four years before I read my first L’Amour novel (THE SACKETT BRAND). In 1964, L’Amour was already a successful Western writer with good sales and a number of movies based on his novels, but he wasn’t the bestselling icon he became a decade or so later.

TAGGART, like all of L’Amour’s work, makes use of a traditional Western plot, or in this case, several of them. As the movie opens, an evil cattle baron and his equally evil son stampede a herd of cattle through the camp of a smaller rancher who’s encroaching on range the cattle baron considers his own. The small rancher, his wife, and their cook all wind up dead, and the couple’s son, Kent Taggart, is wounded. So is the evil cattle baron. Taggart catches up to them in town and kills the cattle baron’s son. Before dying, the cattle baron sends for three hired killers and sends them after Taggart.

From that point, TAGGART becomes a revenge Western—until it becomes a fight the Apaches Western. Taggart winds up at an abandoned Spanish mission where an old prospector has found a gold mine. The prospector has a beautiful daughter and a beautiful second wife. Emotional turmoil ensues. Two of the hired killers show up. (Taggart has already killed one of them during the pursuit.) Double-crosses, Indian attacks, and more Indian attacks eventually lead to a showdown at an army fort.

The movie makes considerable use of stock footage from earlier Westerns, something I didn’t notice at all in 1964, but it all works and the pace is excellent.

So is the cast, which includes Emile Meyer as the evil cattle baron (the same sort of role he played in SHANE), Dan Duryea as a charming but evil hired killer, Tom Reese and David Carradine (his film debut) as the other hired guns, Western veteran Dick Foran as the old prospector, and even good old Bob Steele in an uncredited role as the camp cook who gets gunned down early on. In the lead as Kent Taggart is Tony Young, who a year earlier had starred in a short-lived TV Western called GUNSLINGER, which I watched regularly and have fond memories of. Young should have been a bigger star than he turned out to be. He wasn’t really a polished actor, but he looked great and handled the action scenes well. He starred in one other Western feature, a movie I haven’t seen called HE RIDES TALL, but after that he played supporting roles and did guest star shots on numerous TV shows. He should have gone to Italy and made Spaghetti Westerns. He had the right look for them.

As I mentioned above, I loved this movie when I saw it in 1964. Then, eventually, I began to wonder if I’d imagined it because it never showed on TV and I never read anything about it. A few years ago I looked it up and found that it does, indeed, exist, and when I saw that it was playing on Grit TV, I had to watch it again after all that time. I’m happy to report that it holds up okay. It’s not the great film I thought it was back then, but it’s a solid, low-budget Sixties Western with a good cast and script. If you’re a fan of the genre, it’s well worth watching.

And for what it’s worth, at some point I did read the L’Amour novel in which it’s based. It’s okay, too. Being one of L’Amour’s earlier novels, it’s shorter, faster paced, and better written than most of his books from the late Sixties on.

Luckily, in THE OLD WAY we get that classic revenge plot as the son of a man Cage’s character killed twenty years earlier shows up looking to settle the score. He’s an outlaw who has three other owlhoots with him, and they wreak bloody havoc when they come calling. The script by Carl W. Lucas throws an unexpected twist into the story, though, as Cage is forced to take his 12-year-old daughter along with him on his vengeance quest. He’s really not suited for parenting, but when it comes to teaching somebody how to survive, he’s pretty good at that.

THE OLD WAY has a lot of things going for it. Brett Donowho’s direction keeps things moving along at a nice brisk pace, and the movie looks great with its Montana scenery and excellent photography. The cast is top-notch with Nick Searcy playing a federal marshal on the trail of the same outlaws Cage is seeking, Clint Howard (who I still remember as a very little kid actor!) as a grizzled old owlhoot, Abraham Benrubi as another member of the gang, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong, who absolutely steals the movie as Cage’s daughter. By the end of it, you’ll believe that a 12-year-old girl can be a badass when she needs to be, and there are some funny scenes along the way that demonstrate how the character has inherited some of her father’s borderline sociopathic tendencies.

I really enjoyed THE OLD WAY. It’s a well-made traditional Western with a few oddball qualities, and I found it very entertaining and well worth watching.

To get the negatives out of the way first, the film is long (two and a half hours), self-indulgent (there are a number of characters and scenes that come across as Spielberg getting even with people he holds a grudge against), and misfires badly at times (the scene where Sammy Fabelman’s new-found girlfriend tries to convert him to Christianity is pretty cringe-worthy).

All that said . . . Man, when the film talks about art and creatity and myth, and the conflicts between family and the passions that drive us, it really resonated with me. So much of the dynamic between Sammy and his family resembles my own life. The scene late in the movie where Sammy meets John Ford reminds me of all the writers I grew up reading, only to meet them and in some cases become friends with them later in life. I don’t want to make this post all about me, me, me, but maybe there’s some justification for that when I’m writing about a Spielberg film that’s all about him, him, him.

What I’m saying is that for all the times this film made me feel impatient or annoyed, in the end I loved it. It left me with a feeling of kinship. I can tell by reading the reviews that many people did not feel the same way. But it’s well-made, well-acted, and moves along at a pretty good pace despite its length. THE FABELMANS isn’t the sort of movie I usually watch, but I’m glad I did.

AMSTERDAM is a good film and I enjoyed it, but it’s not in CHINATOWN’s league. Few movies are. The sepia-toned photography is beautiful and the cast led by Christian Bale and Margot Robbie is good. Robert DeNiro is more restrained than usual and is effective in a supporting role. The bad guys are suitably despicable. In reading the reviews of this movie, which I usually do after I’ve watched one, I see that they’re pretty evenly split, and for the most part, people either love it or hate it. I come down in the middle of that. I think AMSTERDAM is a pretty good movie but not a great one.

And even then, I'm not sure if everything makes complete sense, but I'm not sure I care, either. The movie is full of fast-paced, over-the-top action and snappy dialogue, and I like complicated plots like that. The cast, led by Brad Pitt and the great character actors Michael Shannon and Hiroyuki Sanada, is good all around. There are several celebrity cameos to watch for. It's a little bloodier than I like, but in a movie about professional assassins, you've got expect some of that. Toward the end, the action is so over-the-top that it gets fairly ludicrous, but no more so than the Fast and Furious movies, and hey, I love those.

I had a really good time watching BULLET TRAIN. I don't think it's a great movie, but it sure is entertaining.