MARS ATTACKS!

The Martian Ambassador

MARS ATTACKS! (1996). Director: Tim Burton. 

"They blew up Congress, ha, ha, ha!" -- Grandma.

President Dale (Jack Nicholson of The Fortune) and his military advisers, including hawkish General Decker (Rod Steiger) and General Casey (Paul Winfield), prepare to welcome Martian visitors, not certain if they are friend or foe. When the Martians open fire, initially it is all blamed on a miscommunication, but when the Martian ambassador and his envoys disintegrate all of Congress, it is clear they are up to no good! 

Jack Nicholson as the president

Mars Attacks! is based on a bunch of trading cards that were packaged with sheets of bubble gum, so with source material that looney you know you're not going to get anything that serious, especially not from Tim Burton. My opinion on this film has gone from liking it to hating it and back again -- it would be all too easy to tear it apart, as it is monumentally silly, and I'm not certain that the black comedy approach is the best idea when you're dealing with an alien invasion that will leave thousands dead. But I have to say this is not an unmitigated disaster like Burton's Dark Shadows, and good taste was never the filmmaker's strong point. 

In the Kennedy Room: Martin Short and Lisa Marie

There is a lot of funny stuff in the picture, especially the sexy, buxom alien visitor (Lisa Marie of We Are Still Here) who winds up in the White House in the--get this! -- Kennedy Room for a supposed assignation with the press secretary (Martin Short). Most of the actors -- the cast includes everyone from Glenn Close to singer Tom Jones -- play this stuff just the way it was intended, with the cast stand-outs being Nicholson (who plays two roles) and Steiger. The cinematography and FX work are excellent -- including a homage to Ray Harryhausen's flying saucers in Earth vs the Flying Saucers -- and there's an especially exciting sequence when a giant, Martian-controlled robot chases pell mell after Richie (Lukas Haas). It's nice that his elderly grandma (Sylvia Sidney) survives and even becomes a hero of sorts. There are occasional flashes of humanism, but mostly this is just weird fun. 

Verdict: Unless you're in a peculiar mood, you might prefer to watch The War of the Worlds, either version. **3/4. 

THREE INTO TWO WON'T GO

Rod Steiger: lover boy?

THREE INTO TWO WON'T GO (1969). Director: Peter Hall.

43-year-old serial cheater Steve Howard (Rod Steiger) works in sales and goes off on frequent business trips. On one of these he picks up 19-year-old Ella (Judy Geeson of Berserk), a free-living, promiscuous, borderline hooker, installs her in a nearby hotel, and sleeps with her. Steve wants to keep seeing Ella -- no wonder! -- but then she shows up at his house when he's away and becomes friends with his wife, Frances (Claire Bloom). Frances buys Ella's story, takes pity on her, and invites her to stay in the guestroom. Then Ella announces to all that she is pregnant -- with Steve's child! Three Into Two Won't Go is halfway between a trashy exploitation picture and a serious marital drama and doesn't quite work as either, although the acting by all three leads helps put it over. Bloom [The Chapman Report] and Steiger [The Sergeant] were a real-life married couple at the time of filming although they were divorced this very year (after ten years), which may be why they don't quite come off as a realistic match in the picture. Or maybe it was Steiger's unappealing semi-nude scenes! Peggy Ashcroft certainly scores as France's mother, Belle, whom Frances brings home from a retirement village. One gets the feeling that the more interesting parts of the story happened after the end of the picture, and a lot is left unsaid.

Verdict: Several excellent performances help create a fairly interesting and not bad picture. ***.

BACK FROM ETERNITY

BACK FROM ETERNITY (1956). Director: John Farrow.

In this widescreen if black and white remake of Five Came Back (which was also directed by John Farrow), a motley group of passengers survive a crash in the South American jungle, only to realize that only a few of them can fly away and there are headhunters right around the corner. Back from Eternity could have been a terrific, gut-wrenching movie if only all of the dumb "Hollywoodisms" had been excised from the script. True, I've watched plenty of silly if entertaining dumb Hollywood movies, but what makes Eternity worse is that it had so much potential. True, the final few minutes are suspenseful, the acting isn't bad, and the conclusion has a certain power, but otherwise it's not a very good movie. Anita Ekberg [Screaming Mimi] got the lion's share of the publicity, and aside from being beautiful and busty, she's not a bad actress, either [by Hollywood standards, at least], although her American career didn't last long. (She appeared in this before her famous role in Fellini's La Dolce Vita.) Robert Ryan as the possibly tippling pilot is perhaps less effective in this than in other films, but Rod Steiger offers the best performance as a condemned man being brought back for execution. Phyllis Kirk and Gene Barry are effective enough as an engaged couple who have problems, and Beulah Bondi and Cameron Prud'homme are fine as an elderly professor and his wife. Jesse White is Jesse White.

SPOILER ALERT: Now let's talk about those "Hollywoodisms:" Fred Clark is taking Steiger back for execution, but he uses no handcuffs on a supposedly dangerous felon. Kirk and Ekberg have a completely ridiculous "cat fight" over a man that serves only to show the latter in a wet, clinging outfit. Worse still is the whole business with the lovely stewardess, Maria (Adele Mara of Night Time in Nevada). First let's make it clear that Maria is a friend and co-worker of the pilot and his co-pilot (Keith Andes), and is an attractive and really nice person. Saving a little boy (Jon Prevost) from falling out of the plane when a tank smashes open the door, she herself falls to her death in a horrifying moment. There is no scene when Andes tells Ryan what happened. After the plane lands in the jungle, Ryan says to Andes "everyone all right?" to which Andes replies that the passengers were only a little bruised. There's absolutely no mention of brave Maria and her horrible death throughout the rest of the movie, and these are her co-workers!  [A somewhat similar sequence occurred in another plane crash drama The Crowded Sky.] Admittedly, the passengers are having their own problems, but even during a quiet, contemplative moment much later on, when the pious professor and his wife lead everyone in the Lord's Prayer, nobody offers up a prayer for Maria. It's unbelievable, cold-blooded and illogical scenes like this (or the lack of them) and others that make me classify Back From Eternity less as drama than as schlock. Farrow's direction, although the plane scenes are well-handled, also does little to disguise/detour around some moments of really bad acting.

Verdict: The final quarter has its moments but then there's the rest of it ... **.

THE BIG KNIFE

Everett Sloane talks to Jack Palance

THE BIG KNIFE (1955). Producer/director: Robert Aldrich. Screenplay by James Poe from the play by Clifford Odets.

Movie star Charles Castle (Jack Palance) was involved in a hit and run that killed a child, but his p.r. man, Buddy (Paul Langton), took the rap for him. Charles' wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), who is separated from him, swears she'll divorce him if he re-signs with Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), who probably helped engineer the deception. Now there's a new complication: Castle had a woman with him in the car that night, Dixie Evans (Shelly Winters), and she's drunkenly shooting her mouth off everywhere she goes. Now Hoff and his associate Smiley (Wendell Corey), want to take care of Dixie -- permanently ... The Big Knife might have worked on the stage, and the Odets original was undoubtedly better than this half-baked adaptation, but the film sinks almost from the get-go. The chief problem is the epic miscasting of Jack Palance. Charlie might have evoked some sympathy in the viewer if he was played by a man who could get across his essential weakness and confusion, but Palance seems incapable of ever displaying the slightest trace of vulnerability. It gives the actor his presence and strength, but he's just all wrong for this picture. His scenes with Ida Lupino are stagey and over-rehearsed and just don't work at all -- both of them are busy "acting" instead of being. We're constantly being told of how wonderful Castle is and of his supposed integrity, but all we see is a corrupt, self-absorbed individual who allowed another man to take responsibility for his actions, slept with the man's wife, and acts like a dickhead throughout. When he protests at the idea of "silencing" Dixie, it's hard to believe that he would object -- he's the last one to take a high moral stance. It's up to the supporting cast to give the film whatever limited stature it has. Rod Steiger has some ferociously effective scenes as Stanley [some might think he's merely showing off]; Wendell Corey underplays beautifully as the slimy Smily; Everett Sloane is as solid as ever as Charles' agent; and Paul Langton has a beautifully and powerfully delivered speech to Castle at the end of the film that is one of the most memorable bits in the movie. As for the women, Ilka Chase offers a dead-on portrait of an oily, if stereotypical, gossip columnist, Shelley Winters is so-so as Dixie, and Jean Hagen fails to impress as Buddy's sluttish wife, Connie. Wesley Addy has a nice turn as the writer Hank Teagle. Oddly, a confrontation between Dixie and Hoff that might have been quite cinematic and dynamic is mentioned but not shown, but the film isn't "opened" up very much. It's hard to like or enjoy a movie in which virtually every character is either unpleasant or annoying. Robert Aldrich was the wrong director for this, as well. For a worthwhile Odets adaptation, see Clash By Night.

Verdict: A fairly embarrassing mess of Hollywood pseudo-profundity with horribly miscast leads. **.

THE SERGEANT

John Phillip Law and Rod Steiger

THE SERGEANT (1968). Director: John Flynn. Screenplay by Dennis Murphy from his novel.

"Rod Steiger Stuns as The Sergeant" -- poster tag line.

Although he's virtually unknown today [he passed away in 2005] Dennis Murphy garnered a lot of praise for his first and only novel, "The Sergeant," published in 1958. He wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation ten years later, and only did two other screenplays -- not exactly prolific. Murphy was married three times and was, presumably, straight. I have not read the novel, but from reviews it sounds like it might have been a triumph of style over content, with little in-depth characterization. And today would be considered hopelessly dated [like the movie]. In the film the two main characters are perhaps brought to life more by the actors than by Murphy's dialogue.

Master Sergeant Albert Callan (Rod Steiger), winner of the distinguished service cross, is assigned to a dreary maintenance outfit in post-war France. He is attracted by a young soldier, pfc Tom Swanson (John Phillip Law), who at first resists working as Callan's assistant when he offers him the job. But Swanson relents, and a kind of friendship develops between him and the lonely, rather unlikable Callan. Swanson is in the midst of a romance with a young lady named Solange (Lydmila Mikael), which Callan gets impatient with. He basically acts like a bastard with Swanson, until one day he can no longer control his passion ...

The Sergeant today comes off like a anti-gay diatribe against "queers" in the military. One review of the novel hinted that the Swanson character may have been a bit sexually ambiguous and conflicted, but there is no trace of that in the movie, which might have made it more interesting. While Steiger and Law both give excellent performances, and the film is professionally done, it is quite slow-paced and has no point to make aside from the obvious one: self-loathing closet queens in "macho" environments are doomed to miserable lives and suicide. There's no real attempt made to understand the sergeant and few attempts made to humanize him. A suggestion that Swanson might remind Callan of a young man he killed during the war is too ambiguous to make any impression. It's hard to understand why the film was even made, accept it may have been seen as a prestigious adaptation of a well-received literary novel. Old-fashioned "gay" movies like this can at least sometimes be entertaining, but The Sergeant isn't much fun at all.

Verdict: Steiger is fine but he's in the wrong movie. **.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979)

James Brolin and Margot Kidder

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979). Director: Stuart Rosenberg.

After a real-life multiple murder case in a house in Amityville, Long Island, the new owners, George and Kathleen Lutz, claimed that the place was haunted, that they had horrendous experiences, and had to flee to a motel in the middle of the night, never to return. Writer Jay Anson cobbled together a book telling of their "true" experiences, and enough gullible people bought it to make it of interest to Hollywood. Even American-International was surprised when Amityville turned into a monster hit; it's spawned two theatrical sequels, a remake, and a host of direct-to-video movies. In the meantime, only the intellectually challenged believe this is anything other than fiction. Even the stars of the movie thought the Lutzes' story was, well, not quite believable. The lawyer for the real-life murderer later sued the Lutzes for a cut and claimed they all dreamed the whole thing up while drinking wine.

In the film, the Lutzes move into the house although they know of its bloody history. A priest (Rod Steiger) who comes to bless the house is assailed by flies and nearly gets in a car accident, then becomes blinded by an accident in his church [apparently the "evil" in the house has a long reach]. Other odd things happen, such as the doors of the house being blasted off in the night, and they discover a walled-up chamber in the basement which is supposed to lead to Hell. [No one can say the Lutzes weren't ambitious in their fantasizing!] The implication is that the house's evil force is taking over the mind of George Lutz (James Brolin)  as it supposedly did the man who murdered all those people in the house [apparently his defense lawyer didn't bring that up at trial.] Kathy Lutz (Margot Kidder) looks up a photo of the murderer and he resembles her husband, even though George is approaching middle-age and the killer (Ronald Defeo) was only 23 at the time of the murders. It all meanders along not very suspensefully until a conclusion that has a couple of minor harrowing moments. The Amityville Horror is basically an inept bit of horror fiction with passable performances and a score by Lalo Schifrin that rips off Psycho at key "shock" moments. It's also quite tedious. The best scene of the movie has a bunch of priests being bitchy with each other when Steiger talks about the evil in the house and his superior (Murray Hamilton) basically tells him he's nuts.

Verdict: A stinker for the sub-literate. *.

SUSPICION VOLUME 1

SUSPICION Volume 1.1957 TV series.

Fifteen of the filmed episodes (apparently half of the show's episodes were taped live) of the mystery/suspense series Suspicion have been collected on three discs in an initial volume. The show was produced by Alfred Hitchcock's TV unit, and the Master directed the first episode, "Four O'Clock," himself. Taken from a Cornell Woolrich story it concerns a jealous husband (E. G. Marshall) who plants a time bomb in his basement to kill his wife and her alleged lover. (Frankly, Hitch seems a little disinterested with the material until the nail-biting final minutes; still this is a good episode.) Other memorable shows include: "Heartbeat," a sad tale in which David Wayne gets a misdiagnosis from a heart specialist and doesn't realize how much he is in danger if he exerts himself (also in this episode is that very weird actress Barbara Turner); "Protege," an All About Eve variation with an excellent (as always) Agnes Moorehead  as an alcoholic actress on the comeback trail bedeviled by a viper-like, ambitious assistant (Phyllis Love); and "Death Watch" in which witness Janice Rule and protector-cop Edmond O'Brien learn that the former is to be targeted by a dirty cop whose identity is unknown. (The only trouble with this suspenseful episode is the highly illogical wind-up). 

The best episodes in this collection are "The Way Up to Heaven," a Roald Dahl concoction in which a wife (the wonderful Marion Lorne), who desperately wants to fly to Paris to see her grandchildren, is continuously stymied by the selfish manipulations of her husband (Sebastian Cabot) until he gets his amusing comeuppance; and especially "Doomsday," which features a knock-out performance by Dan Duryea as a notorious criminal planning a major bank heist -- with major complications. Other guest-stars on the show include Donna Reed, Audie Murphy, Michael Rennie, Rafael Campos, Rod Steiger (excellent in "The Bull Skinner"), John Beal. Joseph Cotten, William Shatner, and Bette Davis in the fairly awful "Fraction of a Second," in which she gives another of her pretty terrible latter-day performances.

Verdict: Good old show with more hits than misses. ***.

THE UNHOLY WIFE

THE UNHOLY WIFE (1957). Director: John Farrow. 

Paul (Rod Steiger) is a vintner who marries a woman, Phyllis (Diana Dors), who admits from the first that she's not very good. It's not just that she has no maternal instinct, she doesn't even have any particular love for her little boy, Mike (Gary Hunley), and as he's a charmer that puts her in an especially bad light. We learn from the first that Phyllis has fallen for hunky rodeo man San Sanders (Tom Tryon, who later became a novelist), and wants to murder Paul. But will she succeed in her plans? There are ironic and compelling aspects to this sultry melodrama, which features an interesting cast and good performances. Steiger is excellent, as usual, and Dors is pretty good, although one could say that she plays it a little too cool and unemotional for the most part. [Even sociopaths can at least act emotional when they have to.] Tom Tryon, little Gary Hunley, and Arthur Franz as Paul's priest brother are notable, as is Beulah Bondi as Paul's mother. [It's hard to imagine Diana Dors and Beulah Bondi in the same movie, but there they are, sometimes in the same frame.] Marie Windsor is her usual sardonic self in a brief bit as an associate of Phyllis' in a nightclub. Dors appears very deglamorized in certain sequences. 

Verdict: May not seem promising at first but stick with it. ***.

JUBAL

JUBAL (1956). Director: Delmer Daves.

Shep Horgan (Ernest Borgnine) is a kindly if clueless rancher who gives a drifter named Jubal (Glenn Ford) a job, but trouble takes the form of another hand, Pinky (Rod Steiger), who takes an instant dislike to Jubal. Matters aren't helped when Horgan's overheated wife Mae (Valerie French) takes a shine to Jubal, even though she's already dallied with Pinky. This all leads to melodramatic but not very interesting complications. This silly sex-western has okay performances but the soap opera plot is predictable and the ultimate effect is tedium. A sub-plot with a group of religious wanderers and a pretty gal that Jabal falls for (played by Felicia Farr) doesn't help much. Charles Lawton Jr.'s cinematography is wonderful, however. Charles Bronson has a small role. Valerie French later wound up in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

Verdict: No jubilation in Jubal. **.

ON THE WATERFRONT

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954). Director: Elia Kazan.

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a once-promising boxer, is (somewhat) innocently involved in the death of a young man who dared to speak out against mob control of the waterfront union. Confused and guilty, he begins a relationship with the man's grieving sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint). Wanting to do the right thing but not wanting to go up against the brother he loves (Rod Steiger), Terry struggles to decide whether or not to testify against crooked boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), knowing it may destroy his brother (who in a sense destroyed Terry's life) and himself in the process. This is a trenchant study of good versus evil -- with shades of gray -- and features many excellent performances. Brando may not be to everyone's taste, but he gives an undeniably expert performance in this. Eve Marie Saint, who was introduced in this film, is lovely and affecting and totally believable as Edie. The other cast members are also very effective, especially Pat Henning as "Kayo" Dugan. Strong, unsentimental script by Budd Schulberg (one possible flaw -- we never get to know much about the man whose death precipitates the story. Also Karl Malden's priest character, while well-played, is perhaps too stereotypically saintly to be believed.) Strikingly photographed by Boris Kaufman and expertly directed by Kazan. Interesting score by Leonard Bernstein. Brando's "I coulda been a contender" speech to his brother remains one of the best sequences in the movie. Highly influential on many subsequent movies, including Raging Bull, which is nowhere near as good.

Verdict: A masterpiece. ***1/2.

THE COURT-MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL

THE COURT-MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL (1955). Director: Otto Preminger.

Gary Cooper offers a low-key, occasionally wooden, but overall effective enough performance as the flying officer who deplored the conditions of the United States' military planes in the days after WW1 and before there was an Air Force. Poorly maintained and falling apart, the planes are responsible for the deaths of many military men, including some of Mitchell's colleagues. The problem is that few in the Army or Navy believe that planes will be the key to warfare in the future [despite their use in WW1, oddly enough] and are too short-sighted to see how sophisticated and fast planes will become and how they might be used to attack the U.S. in the future. Mitchell, on the other hand, can describe how easily, for instance, the base at Pearl Harbor could be wiped out by planes [which, of course, happened a few years later]. Statements deliberately made to the press after a friend dies gets Mitchell court-martialed, through which he hopes to get across his point of view to the military and the American people. Charles Bickford is excellent as his lawyer, who fears that Mitchell will be muzzled before he can say a word in his defense, and Rod Steiger plays one of the prosecutors with an oddly epicene oiliness that isn't quite as mesmerizing as he might have intended. This is an interesting if imperfect film, however, with an attention-holding courtroom climax.

Verdict: Worth a look, especially for Cooper fans. **1/2.