kennedya-1 Reviews

The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955)

The revolution amigo, she is but a fashion parade!

[26 June 2009]

Great film for Gilbert Roland fans. He goes the full nine yards in sartorial fetishism. The thigh-high multi- buckled leather boots, the narrow wrist thongs to emphasise his thewed hirsute forearms, the double flap-pocketed and epauletted safari shirt diagonally crossed with a bullet-laden bandoleer, the mandatory trouser belt above the matching holster belt (if the revolution succeeds, gringo, everyone in "May-he-co" will be able to dress like theece). This ensemble is topped off with the classical Gilbertian contest between his moustache and his cheroot as to which was thinner. In this period he starred in any film in which he appeared notwithstanding his actual billing which was dictated by him being Mexican rather than WASP(apart of course from his waist).

Inn for Trouble (1960)

An Ailing(not Ealing) Comedy that finally dies!

[1/10 · 3 April 2006]

Why was the British film industry always in trouble? Watch this "comedy" and much of the mystery will be resolved. Meretricious tripe which wouldn't raise a laugh in a hyena colony- Peggy Mount screaming abuse at people ; David Kossoff doing his folksy "the thinking man's Mr Pastry" act;and a reasonable cast of character actors who struggle with an infantile script and dig their own cinematic graves as you watch.

Even allowing for changing tastes and different social mores how anyone ever found any of this funny is simply incomprehensible -makes the test card seem like the Marx Brothers!

Unfortunately this is not an isolated example and just represented yet another nail in the already over- secured lid of British cinema's coffin.

No Place Like Homicide! (1961)

What a c**k up!

[1/10 · 20 March 2006]

Absolute dross, totalling wasting the talents of Michael Gough, Dennis Price, Shirley Eaton and Donald Pleasance. Kenneth Connor as always overacts and overdrools(over Shirley Eaton)in his usual brow - furrowing scenery-chewing excuse for comedic acting. Sid, aware that the script contains no real humour, laughs at his own "jokes" in the hope that the audience will be conned into joining him; a ploy he was to use the rest of his life. How anyone ever found this mess even mildly amusing beggars belief. Surely the production team should have jacked it in after viewing the initial rushes and spent their money more wisely on Rolls Razor shares or bought up unexpurgated copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover to cash in the recent court ruling. Incredible to think that this tosh was contemporary with Beyond The Fringe and several years after The Goon Show.

The Big Steal (1949)

Big Rab goes south of the border

[25 October 2005]

Mitchum at his laconic best does his usual insouciant but studied sleepwalking act through post-war Mexico. This is a road movie that moves along so well that the improbability of the plot is but a minor problem. Patric Knowles discards Will Scarlet's camp threads for the caddish tropical white suit of a womanising embezzling bounder hotly pursued by Mitchum and Greer, in turn being chased by William Bendix at his lisping homicidal craziest. Played out at an unflagging pace against a backdrop of arched cantinas and dusty but picturesque roads this is great entertainment and the type of escapist exotica at which Hollywood used to excel. As usual the hotter the clime the cooler Big Rab's behaviour.

The Dresser (1983)

high camp versus Mein Kampf

[18 October 2005]

This is a tremendous adaption of Ronald Harwood's play. The two leads are as hammy as a spam factory, but having witnessed Sir Donald Wolfitt( or Chewitt,scenery, that is)on whom the thing's based trying, unsuccessfully, to tone it down for the cameras in Room At The Top Finney and Courtney are understated by comparison. "Sir" as Finney's character is referred to is an unbearable egotist and tyrant; you wonder why the rest of the company put up with him but you stop wondering when he stills the whole house with his hauntingly visceral"Never, Never, Never" in the last scene of the play. Not only the audience cry but the first violin and even performance-hardened stage hands in the wings who have seen the play a hundred times. Although primarily theatre bound the exteriors of war time England are wonderfully evoked. But the lasting greatness of this piece is that it imparts the magic that an hour or two of theatre can create to spellbind an audience and the life long thrall in which "the boards" hold the players

Only Two Can Play (1962)

Sellers dallies in the valleys

[8/10 · 18 October 2005]

This an unconsidered little pearl and indicates where British film comedy might have gone in the 60s and 70s had it not tumbled into the abyss of the Carry On series and the Neanderthal Confessions of a Window Cleaner/Driving Instructor etc. The former was bad but the latter made Sid, Kenneth and co look like the RSC. This Sellers vehicle on the other hand, from a book by Kingsley Amis, is tightly written,well acted and genuinely funny. Apart from Sellers, Richard Attenborough is particularly good as Probert the belligerent Welsh bard who in deference to his role model has no intention of going gentle into that good night. His acerbic exchanges with Sellers' librarian are the highlights of the film. And unlike practically( I must exclude Shirley Eaton!) any female who ever appeared in either of the horrendous series mentioned above Mai Zetterling is sexy and believable. A great treat for a rainy afternoon and a chance to reassess whether Sellers' best work was in Strangelove and the Cloiseau films or were some of his earlier more understated characterisations actually superior.

Three Violent People (1956)

(Thirty) Three Violent People and a very angry group of extras

[5/10 · 17 October 2005]

How can you not like a film that has characters named Colt Saunders, Beauregard 'Cinch' Saunders, Ruby LaSalle and the ageless Gilbert Roland as someone rejoicing in the misleading nomenclature of Innocencio Ortega.The three violent people of the title is a gross numerical understatement - all the male cast in his part of the west seem to be capable of giving and receiving their fair share of violence -Forest Tucker and Richard Jaekel are particularly outstanding in this line of work and they get great back up from Bruce Bennett and Barton MacLane. Charlton Heston as usual mistakes tightening his jaw as equating to exuding dramatic power while Tom Tryon demonstrates the technique that got him cast as a emotionless extra terrestrial on at least one occasion. The show, as was so often the case, is stolen by Gilbert Roland. Enjoyable nonsense from the golden decade of the Horse Opera.

Bad Company (1972)

new western for a new age

[8/10 · 17 August 2005]

In the 60s and 70s each week on television you had a form of Western Noh theatre with mock heroics and homilies on the "human condition" acted out against a backdrop of vast picturesque ranches owned by omniscient and benign plutocrats who lived in ranch houses that resembled Francis Albert's retreat at Lake Tahoe e.g. The Virginian, Bonanza et al. In 1972 BadCompany, like a shot of espresso after a forced regime of milky sweet tea, showed a west where many people walked to get about, the "good"were practically indistinguishable from the "bad", the weather was brutal and the scenery harsh and depressing. A west where a leader of a gang of "desperados" rather than hurry his dinner lets his ineptleaderless gang attack two men - an attack he knows they'll screw up,as he attests with this summation of their chances of success " If they was up against a blind woman in a wheelchair -I'd still give her theedge" Jim Davis's Sheriff, presumably representing law and order, looks like he'd string up his own granny if the job required it (or maybe even if it didn't!). Individual characters are by turns cowardly,heroic, vainglorious, noble, back stabbing ,loyal, cruel and sensitive-just as people were in those days and, come to think of it,still are. Just one film role in a long line of thoughtful and considered parts played by Jeff Bridges in his quest for quality whileletting popularity, if it chose to follow, mosey along behind. One of his best. Still fresh -still relevant - still thoughtful - still, above all, entertaining. See it.

Murder by Decree (1979)

Holmes cracks the greatest whodunnit

[8/10 · 17 August 2005]

This a film that has found its proper acclaim not from the "critics" but by word of mouth from people who have watched it years after its cinematic release at home on television. It is hard to believe what has been achieved on such a limited budget - in one scene a whole London Square has been commandeered:in the foreground Holmes and Watson talk in their carriage whilst in the distant other side of the crowded square all sorts of Victorian conveyances are passing - this was done the hard way, before computer generated graphics/special effects could create this type of scene. Foggy and dangerous London is perfectly evoked and the actors(yes ,even Christopher Plummer) are uniformly superb with James Mason portraying the best ever Watson. The plot is not as far fetched as some commentators have suggested. The identity of the Ripper has been speculated on by many quite scholarly and serious writers but never resolved so how do we know that the Masonic angle is just another conspiracy theory. There may in fact be a conspiracy to label it a conspiracy theory (work that out, my dear Watson!). Subsequent Ripper films ( starring Michael Caine and Johnny Depp) have leant heavily on this film for set design, location and mood and also in their use of the Ripper's black horse-drawn carriage as representative of evil in itself even though it is only the conveyance used by the murderer. The film despite its morbid theme is not without humour - the crushing of Watson's pea and the good doctor lifting a bent hypodermic syringe to admonish Holmes, not for his cocaine habit, but for using the needle to clean out his Meerschaum. How could the same director who directed this have reduced himself to directing Porkies!

The Idol (1966)

tortured artist seeks revenge by torturing cinema-goers!

[5 August 2005]

This is the worst film I have ever seen - Michael Parks' performance as a tortured artist is so bad it practically surpasses criticism and moves into another zone where terms like "ham", "pretentious" and "posturing" seem barely adequate to impart the true awfulness that is his portrayal. I first saw it one night in a hotel bedroom in Portugal when I couldn't sleep ;after 5 minutes my instinct was to turn it off but I then developed a morbid and masochistic desire to see if the rest of the film could get worse than the few minutes I had already seen - it did not disappoint! Such was my disbelief that anyone would finance such meretricious tripe that I actually spent time trying to find out the title to enable me to tell my friends! (I missed the starting titles and thankfully fell asleep before the end). Move over Plan Nine From Outer Space and The Swarm - This is a turkey the size of Turkey!

Dead Man (1995)

Strange Film

[11 April 2005]

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Comment preferences: Name: kennedya-1 Location: United Kingdom

Preview: Summary: Strange Film

This is truly a weird and fascinating film. I started to watch it half heartedly and was about to turn it off after Johnny Depp started doing his "eye thing" in the railway carriage but something (the photography ,the music?) made me compulsively stay with it. It looks as if the director has spent a some considerable time looking at post Civil war plates/photographs and then attempted to replicate on film the monochrome characters, clothing, weather and bleakness he found there. There is also a nice tip of the hat to William Blake's "dark satanic mills" in the factory in Machine made more infernal by Robert Mitchum's "psycho with a cigar" owner. In so far as Dead Man strives to replicate what is contained in the still images we have of the period it would seem to represent a more authentic version of frontier life than most of the genre(although to classify this as merely a genre Western is like describing Reservoir Dogs as just another Heist movie). This is not the Technicolour West of gold and amber sunsets,

pastel coloured bandanas and perfectly tanned leather waistcoats colour co-ordinated with the hero's chestnut horse (a la the Duke or Randolph Scott). This is a much darker place where the population seem to bath about once every decade and are all drunk, mad or angry- or,in some cases, all three. The film is the best evocation so far on film of Native American mysticism and spirituality-something that has been tried with only a limited degree of success previously. I am thinking of Little Big Man and Dances with Wolves,to name just two. The fact that Gary Farmer as "Nobody" on initial introduction looks like a hybrid of Benny Hill and Michael Moore actually latterly in the film helps to humanise the character and give him greater depth and eventual kindliness (although he does manage to add to the film's not inconsiderable corpse tally). His fellow "Indians" are not from central casting and their lodges (or are they hogans?)and totems are like those of Canada or the Pacific North West the remnants of which could be seen in The National Geographic photographs of the 1950s. The spiritual dimension is carried off so successfully that in the end (hope I'm not disclosing the plot!) you do believe that William Blake just may be going to a better place where he might even meet his mystical/poetical namesake. A strange, different, mystical, dark but ultimately redemptive film. Thank God(or the Great Spirit) that someone is making stuff this good in a movie age of Special Effects blockbusters and tawdry remakes of 30 year old second rate television series. Finally I do not find the cannibalism totally unbelievable;surely it was not just the 20th century which bred serial killers who liked to casserole their victims!