The Last Detail

I'm working through the last of the movies that TCM ran as part of last year's Two for One programming block. (As I write this, I haven't seen any of TCM's fall schedule to know is TCM is going to rerun this year's Two for One spots the way they did last year.) One of the movies that was selected that I had never actually seen before is The Last Detail. So, I recorded it, and eventually got around to watching it.

At a naval base in Norfolk, VA, Billy Buddusky, nicknamed "Badass" (Jack Nicholson) and Richard Mulhall nicknamed "Mule" (Otis Young) are called in to see the master-at-arms. Now, for those who don't know, the master-at-arms is a sort of police chief responsible for on base law enforcement and base security among similar duties. Neither Badass nor Mule is in trouble, however. Instead, they're being given the task of transporting a young naval recruit, Seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid), to the military prison in Portsmouth NH where Larry will be sent to serve an eight-year sentence. Now, it's not explained how Badass and Mule got selected for this detail since it's not either of their specialties, but go with it. I wouldn't think Norfolk and Portsmouth are that far away (Google Maps suggests about 12 hours by I-95), but the two men are given a week to get Larry there, which I suppose is to make certain he gets there on time.

In any case, Badass figures that since they've got that week, and because they're being paid a per diem, why not use all the time they're allotted and try to pocket some of what's left of the per diem? And then, they ask Larry why he's being sent to prison. Larry turns out to be a naïve young man who is also a bit of a kleptomaniac: he was allowed to enlist in the navy despite several run-ins with the police on shoplifting-related charges, never actually having been sentenced to prison before. This time, however, he tried to steal $40 out of a charity box. That doesn't seem like it would warrant an eight-year sentence, but the charity box in question was being administered by the wife of the base commander, which might explain the long sentence. Piss off the rabble and we don't care; piss off the powerful and screw you.

But Badass in particular develops a sense of sympathy toward Larry. Mule does to a lesser extent, although he knows there's a job to be done and trouble if they don't do it. Badass wants to make Larry's last days of freedom memorable, and so sets up all sorts of experiences including drinking and visiting a brothel so Larry can lose his virginity. A detour to visit Larry's mother is unsuccessful, while getting sucked into a prayer service at a Buddhist cult has a bit more of an effect on Larry. But constantly hanging over the movie is the fact that there is a duty to get Larry to prison, and the question of whether he'll ever try to escape and what would happen after such an escape attempt.

I can see why there are so many film critic and industry types who would love a movie like The Last Detail. I didn't dislike it, although I have to admit that I had a bit of a problem with the Badass character. Unlike Larry, who is clearly sympathetic because he's getting a totally disproportionate sentence, Badass comes off as a loud, obnoxious brute, consistently violating the rules as well as being manipulative. One may think he's doing this stuff for Larry's benefit, but at the same time, he's exhausting to watch and I can only imagine being stuck with him in close quarters for a whole week.

Still, The Last Detail is a movie that's absolutely worth watching.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Fans of classic movies will know the classic post-war movie The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and based on the book by James M. Cain. It had already been made into a movie in Italy during World War II, and I think that one, called Ossessione, has turned up on TCM a couple of times. For whatever reason, although one likely being the fact that there were no longer any Production Code restrictions, MGM remade The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1981. TCM ran the 1981 version a few months back, and not having seen the remake before, I decided to record it.

Jack Nicholson plays Frank Chambers, the Depression-era drifter who hitches a ride and gets dropped off at the Twin Oaks, a combination diner/service station back in the days when that sort of multi-purpose rest area was common. (See the Aline MacMahon movie Heat Lightning for something similar.) The Twin Oaks is owned by a Greek immigrant, Nick Papadakis (John Calicos), who is married to a much younger American-born woman, Cora (Jessica Lange). Frank, being a former prisoner, needs a job, and Nick could use the help. so he hires Frank in exchange for room and board.

Cora isn't very happy being stuck in this middle-of-nowhere joint and being married to an older guy who isn't all she thought he was going to be when she married him. So now, with a much younger guy around, her female hormones start kicking in. Frank, needless to say, being a youngish man, also has hormones, and having spent time in prison is in need of a woman, so the two of them are able to get it on in rather greater detail than was possible in 1946.

Cora would like to be rid of Nick, but the laws are such that she can't simply divorce him as she wouldn't get Twin Oaks or even half of it. If he were to die, however.... And, as you might be able to guess, there's a way to speed up that death. The only issue, of course, is that this way is rather illegal as it's generally considered murder. But Frank is thinking with his little head, so Cora has someone whose help she cn enlist to get rid of Nick.

As you can guess, the authorities suspect that Nick's death wasn't quite kosher, so eventually the authorities try to prosecute the case as the murder that we know it really is. But as an attempt to get the two lovers to turn on each other, they only try Cora. The defense attorneys come up with a ruse that involves her revealing the truth, but in a way that the authorities don't find out. This eventually gets Cora off in a highly-publicized trial, but it leaves some evidence with the defense attorney, and his staff isn't entirely ethical. Not that you'd expect ethics from an attorney.

Of course, you probably knew most of the story already, since the 1940s version of The Postman Always Rings Twice is so well-known. So was it worth remaking? I'd say it's a mixed bag. The fact that the 1940s version was made during the Production Code means that there are some issues they couldn't really show on screen and that the 1981 version can be more honest about discusscing. I'd also argue that the Nick character is better cast. In 1946, it was Cecil Kellaway playing the part, and he always came across as so much of a nice guy that it's tough to imagine the young wife wanting to kill him and the viewer having sympathy with her.

The casting of Jessica Lange versus Lana Turner is a double-edged sword. Lana Turner is the sort of actress where it's easy to see any man falling for and doing all sorts of terrible things as she uses her sex appeal to manipulate him. Lange isn't quite so glamorous, but she's also more realistic. I can't imagine someone with the looks of Lana Turner decided to go off to a middle-of-nowhere diner.

In the final analysis, the 1981 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice is also worth a watch if only to compare and contrast it to the Lana Turner version.

The Eastwick Witches

It's just a matter of coincidence that I've been watching multiple 80s movies lately, although one of the reasons for yesterday's pick of a Wheeler and Woolsey movie was because of the surfeit of more recent movies. But I watched another 80s film recently: The Witches of Eastwick.

The movie begins in Eastwick, the sort of New England small town that you might have seen in a studio era movie as the sort of idyllic place where everybody knows everyone else and there's a lot of civic pride with the students also taking part in that, here in the form of the school band conducted by cellist Jane Spofford (Susan Sarandon) at a speech given on the front lawn of the school given by the principal. It's a boring enough speech that Jane and two of her friends: sculptress Alex Medford (Cher) and newspaper reporter Sukie Ridgemont (Michelle Pfeiffer) are all bored out of their minds. Suddenly, however, a surprise thunderstorm breaks out.

Now, because the title of the movie is The Witches of Eastwick, we can take an educated guess that these women are likely to be witches. However, in the context of the movie, they don't realize it. Nor do they realize that their witching power is amplified by being together; they'll learn these thing over the course of the film. Instead, the three friends get together and talk about their sexual frustrations over their failed marriages, going into fairly explicit detail over the type of man they'd like as Mr. Right. Little do they know that by doing this, they're actually casting a spell that will bring said Mr. Right to Eastwick.

Everybody in town is talking about the mysterious stranger who has bought the mansion on the edge of town, a mansion that has lore in the town's history for its involvement in its own Salem-like witch trial 300 years earlier. They all know the man is charming, even if for some weird reason they can't remember his name. The only person who sees through all of this is Felicia Alden (Veronica Cartwright), the wife of the newspaper editor (and Sukie's boss), Clyde Alden (Richard Jenkins).

That strange man is Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson), who by this age isn't exactly a sex symbol, but is at least the sort of good-enough well-to-do man that a woman desirious of stability would want. But because it was the three witches who were responsible for Daryl's coming to Eastwick, it turns out that he's also a warlock himself, more or less a spawn of the devil. Daryl sets about charming the three witches, while also trying to remove the threat that he sees in Felicia. Will the witches figure out how much of threat Daryl is before it's too late?

The Witches of Eastwick is based on a novel by John Updike, one that has a very interesting premise. For the most part, the movie handles the premise well, at least in terms of the script. The performances are also uniformly strong, notably Nicholson, who was quite good at playing the sort of charming character he has here. Some critics at the time had a problem with the climactic battle of good and evil, suggesting that it was almost cartoonish. I can understand why somebody would have that sort of criticism, although it's not one that I found myself having.

For me, the big problem is that this is another movie with intrusive direction. I get that portraying magical powers is sometimes going to require special effects, and that with special effects not being quite so good 35 years ago the effects might not always look right. But here the problems were more with camera movements and shots that were overdone; two scenes that come to mind are a string of pearls breaking up and the tennis match. This camerawork wasn't as obnoxious as, say, Darkest Hour, but every time it showed up it was jarring.

Still, The Witches of Eastwick is an interesting movie, and one that definitely deserves to be seen.

The Missouri Breaks

TCM ran a spotlight some months back on revisionist westerns. Among the titles that I hadn't seen before is The Missouri Breaks, so I recorded it to be able to watch at a later date and do a post on it here.

The title refers to an area in Montana, in the upper headwaters of the Missouri River, where the waters have flowed in such a way such that the landscape is full of "breaks" cut out by the erosion of the river. It's some time after the Civil War but before statehood in 1890, which means Montana is still a federal territory and the law is not always present. Cattlemen like David Braxton (John McLiam) hold a lot of sway, and they're none too happy with rustlers. Indeed, in the opening scene of the movie, we see Braxton carrying out an extrajudicial execution of one alleged rustler.

Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson) is another rustler, leader of a gang of rustlers. He too is none too happy with what's going on, but obviously for opposite reasons. He wants to be able to continue stealing cattle and horses, and doesn't want people like Braxton stopping him and killing his men. He vows to get revenge on Braxton for killing one of his men.

To that end, Logan goes into town and finds that there's some land bordering on Braxton's ranch that's available for purchase. Logan decides that he's going to rob a train to get the money to buy that land and start a ranch of his own, so that he'll be able to rustle more of Braxton's cattle. Meanwhile, Logan meets Braxton's daughter Jane (Kathleen Lloyd), and falls in love with her. The feeling is mutual, as Jane has been chafing at her father's authority and, being naturally rebellious, sees a good way to tick off her father.

Meanwhile, Braxton isn't about to take any of this lying down. He hires what is known as a "regulator", which is similar to a bounty hunter except that this is somebody who goes after rustlers and is in the employ of a rancher. The regular in question is Robert E. Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando), who is obviously different from the normal sort of person you'd meet in a Hollywood western. He serenades his horses and disrupts funerals, among other things, and underneath this odd exterior is a particularly brutal killer. He unsurprisingly figures out that Logan isn't much of a farmer, and sets out to find the men in Logan's gang, killing them one by one. Logan plans to stay alive, however....

The Missouri Breaks is an odd little movie. Well, perhaps it's not such a little movie, as it runs over two hours. It also runs at a fairly sedate pace, being the sort of movie that you feel could have been given a script to run a good 20 minutes shorter. The movie has a good premise, and I personally don't have an issue per se with "revisionist" westerns, so the fact that all of the characters have moral issues doesn't bother me. However, Marlon Brando's character is way over the top, and director Arthur Penn didn't bother to rein him in; as I understand it, directors at the time thought that letting Brando go off like a loose cannon was a good thing. I'm sorry to say I disagree. Also, as I said, there's a whole lot of nothing going on at times.

The Missouri Breaks got scathingly bad reviews at the time of its release. I think that's somewhat unfair, although I can certainly see why the reviews would be significantly less than positive. I would say that it's worth a watch if you know what you're getting into. (I'd guess the critics of the time didn't know what they were getting into.) Also, as always, judge for yourself.

Chinatown

If I were taking part in the "Blind Spot" series that one of the other movie blogs runs, in which you blog over the course of a year about a dozen movies that are generally considered must-see but you haven't seen before, one of the movies I might have selected would be Chinatown. I recently had the chance to record it from the free preview of the Showtime channels, and see that it's going to be on multiple times in the next week, starting overnight tonight at 3:55 AM on TMC Xtra and tomorrow morning at 10:45 AM on Showtime Showcase.

Jack Nicholson plays J.J. Gittes, a private detective in 1930s Los Angeles. One day, into his office comes Evelyn Mulwray, saying that she's worried that her husband Hollis is stepping out on her. Could J.J. investigate and get the goods on Hollis? It'll take some money, and Gittes seems to have some pretty high rates for the mid-1930s, but he's willing to take the job.

Mulwray works for the Los Angeles Water Department, which is trying to get a dam built to deal with the chronic water shortages stemming from the fact that Los Angeles is a growing city and that it never rains in southern California. Mulwray, opposes the buidling of the dam, and probably has evidence that building the dam wouldn't be necessary, which is why he's so dangerous. Gittes does his usual bang-up job, gets photos of Mulwray that sure make him look unfaithful, and then lives happily ever after.

Well, that last part about living happily ever after is clearly wrong, or otherwise we wouldn't have a movie. Gittes goes to the Mulwray house to speak personally to Hollis, but Evelyn tells him to look for Hollis at one of the reservoirs. There, Hollis is found -- but he's quite dead, having drowned. So the police investigate, which is where Gittes finds out that it wasn't Evelyn who hired him, but a woman named Ida Sessions (Diane Ladd) who was made up to look like Evelyn. Obviously somebody had it in for Hollis. But who, and why?

So Gittes finds himself investigating a lot more. Among the possible suspects are Yelburton (John Hillerman), now one of hte bigwigs in the Water Department, who gives Gittes a lie about water being sent to irrigate the orange groves out in the San Fernando Valley. There's also Noah Cross (John Huston), who used to work in the Water Department before it was sold to the city. Noah and Hollis had a falling out over that, but also over the fact that Noah's daughter was born Evelyn Cross, the same Evelyn who married Hollis.

Gittes continues to investigate, working somewhat with Evelyn as he had to lie to the police who thought that she had hired Gittes to figure out if Hollis was being unfaithful. Indeed, if the detective investigating the murder, Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) knew the truth, Gittes could be in big trouble for withholding evidence. And the case is about to get a whole lot more complicated, as Gittes discovers those orange groves are being sold off to dummy buyers as the land would be more valuable as residential tracts -- if only they had enough water. As you can figure, the point of building the dam is to get that water for the putative new housing developments. Oh, and Hollis did drown -- but the water in his lungs was salt water, which raises further questions about where and how he really died.

Chinatown is one of those movies that gets notoriously high rankings on all-time movie lists like the AFI lists or even IMDb's Top 250, which tends to skew towards more recent movies because of their methodology. It's certainly a well-crafted movie, and one worth watching. But it's also something that I found myself thinking I wouldn't put quite as high as all those other critics do. It's not that there's anything wrong with it; it's more that I tend not to buy into hype.

So by all means see Chinatown. It's a darn good movie. It's just that for me it a bit less good than all the other vintage movies on those "best of all time" lists.

Goin' South

Some time back, during one of the free preview weekends, I was able to DVR the comic western Goin' South. I finally got around to watching it recently to do a review here.

Jack Nicholson plays Henry Moon, who at the start of the movie is fleeing south through Texas toward Mexico, with the sheriff (Richard Bradford) leading a bunch of men chasing Moon. Moon crosses the Rio Grande, which means going into Mexico, and thinks he's gotten away. But either that's not the Rio Grande, or the sheriff just doesn't care about jurisdiction and crosses the river to apprehend Moon.

Moon is sentenced to hang, but the town where he's held, Longhorn TX, has an interesting law. This is the era just after the Civil War, and marriageable men are apparently in short supply. So men can avoid the gallows if an unmarried woman in the town offers to marry the condemned man, and the two can stay married. Julia Tate (Mary Steenburgen) is just such a woman, and she says she'll marry Moon.

Naturally, she has ulterior motives for marrying Moon, which is that her father had set up a small mine on the land he owned and bequeathed to her, and Julia is convinced that her father was right in his assertion that there is gold on the property. She wants to marry Moon because she needs somebody to dig for gold, not because she loves Moon.

Indeed, the lack of love between the two leads is a source of tension between the two throughout the movie, although things do soften somewhat over the course of the movie. But even when it turns out that Julia's father was correct and there is in fact gold on the property, there's tension over how much each of the two gets.

And that's not the only problem. Looming in the background is the fact that there's a railroad that wants to buy up land for a right-of-way to build a new railroad, and good luck trying to mine on railroad land. (Other farmers are willing to sell largely because there's oil bubbling up that they don't know what it is.) Perhaps more pressing is Moon's past. He wasn't a lone horse thief, but part of a band of outlaws, having served first with Quantrill's raiders (or so he claims) and then, after the Civil War ended, joining up with a gang. They eventually show up, knowing that something must be going on for him not to have been hanged.

I basically only mentioned Nicholson and Steenburgen out of the cast, and that's largely because they're the two who come off best in the movie. If I had to give a reason for that, I think it comes down to Nicholson, who also directed. He seems not to know how to use his actors in the material, with the results being underused (Christopher Lloyd as one of the deputies) to the sort of obnoxious that you want to tell to shut up (John Belushi playing to every stereotype as a Mexican-American sheriff's deputy).

The scenery is nice, having been filmed in Durango like a lot of westerns, and the music is suitably offbeat for a romantic comedy western , but in my mind I don't think these positives were enough to outweigh the negatives from the direction. The movie was a critical and commercial flop on release and I personally can see why. Still, Goin' South has gained in reputation over the last 40 years, so this is definitely another one that you're going to want to watch for yourself.

Endearing terms

When Shirley MacLaine got a day in TCM's Summer Under the Stars this year, one of the movies TCM ran was Terms of Endearment. Not having blogged about it here before, I finally sat down to watch it and do a post here.

Shirley plays Aurora Greenway, a new mother in Houston TX some decades back with a young daughter Emma. She's extremely protective of Emma, getting up in the middle of the night just to make certain the baby is breathing. Some years pass, and Aurora's husband dies. Aurora offers to comfort Emma by letting Emma sleep with her, but Emma doesn't need that. So Aurora gets into Emma's bed! Like I said, she's overprotective.

More time passesand we see a near-adult Emma with her friend Patsy (Lisa Hart Carroll), and finally, about to get married to Flap (Jeff Daniels), who is looking to start a career as a college English professor, something that's going to take a lot of struggle. Mom is none too certain that Flap is right for her daughter, to the point that Mom is willing to skip the wedding to protest.

So as we can see there are any number of complicated emotions between mother and daughter. However, they still get along well enough to call each other on the phone all the time, as they discuss Emma's path through life. First it involves her getting pregnant with her first son, followed by an event that's sure to be traumatic for Mom: Flap has gotten a job that might be tenure-track, but it's up in Des Moines, IA, a good 15-hour drive away if not more. Mom's going to be left all alone!

Well, not quite. Mom has a few friends in a doctor as well as Vern (Danny DeVito). There's also the next-door neighbor, astronaut Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson). He's a bit of a hard liver, constantly coming home with young women. One day he offers to take Aurora out to lunch, but she politely declines. Now that Emma is going off to Iowa, however, Aurora is thinking of finally taking Garrett up on that offer.

Life continues to go on for the two women, as Aurora and Garrett have an on-again, off-again relationship, while Emma has a second son, followed by a daughter, and figures that Flip might actually be cheating on her. As a result of that, when she makes the acquaintance of local banker Sam (John Lithgow), she decides to have an affair of her own.

Through it all, mother and daughter keep up their long-distance phone relationship, until a sudden change when Emma is diagnosed with cancer. Aurora goes up north to take care of the children, and possibly even take custody, while Flap is faced with the big choice of what he wants to do in life.

The idea of Terms of Endearment is quite a good one, and I found it interesting that it's based on a book by Larry McMurtry, since this is the sort of material you'd expect to have "chick flick" written all over. To be fair, that is at least somewhat the case, and any guy who prefers action movies to straight-up dramas may find this movie a bit tough to get through, especially in the last half-hour or so once Emma is diagnosed with cancer.

However, the performances are quite good, with Nicholson taking a step down and winning a Supporting Actor Oscar. MacLaine won the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Winger, as she gives an excellent portray of a mother who is at times obnoxiously overbearing. That having been said, some people might find the character a bit too overbearing; I know I wanted to shake some sense into her once or twice. Jeff Daniels is good in another dramatic role, although I'd mentioned that once before regarding Marie: A True Story. DeVito doesn't have much to do despite fourth billing, while Lithgow is surprisingly good in a drama, getting his second straight Oscar nomination.

Terms of Endearment may not be everybody's cup of tea, and I'm not certain if it deserved to win Best Picture -- I think I'd pick The Dresser. But it's certainly a fine movie worthy of seeing.

The Shooting

The Criterion Collection released a DVD containing the 1960s westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind. With that in mind, I watched The Shooting off my DVR to do a full-length post on it here.

Will Hutchins plays Coley, one of four men who were prospecting for gold together somewhere in Arizona. One of the other men, Willet (Warren Oates) returns to find the dim-witted Coley afraid because a third member of their number, Leland, has been murdered. Apparently Leland and the fourth, Will's brother Coin, went to Winslow and got involved in an incident that left somebody dead, so other people (unseen by Coley) came back to the camp looking for revenge. Coin had already fled, so the people shot Leland.

Eventually, Coley and Will hear another gunshot, which might be the folks from Winslow come back to look for Coin. That's not the case, however. It's an unnamed woman (Millie Perkins), who had to shoot her broken-down horse. Except that when Will examines the dead horse, he can't find anything wrong with it. The woman wants to get to Kingsley, and she's willing to pay Will and Coley big bucks to lead her there. Coley, idiot that he is, begins to fall for the woman. So, the three of them set out across the desert.

The woman is obnoxious and keeps shooting her gun for no good reason. Well, actually, there's a good reason. Will figures that the woman must be signaling to somebody. Sure enough, one night another man, hired gun Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson), joins the camp. The woman has been treating Coley badly, but that's nothing compared to the way Billy is about to start treating Coley. The four continue across the desert in pursuit of... well who?

It goes on like this, with the horses slowly being broken down, Billy being increasingly mean to Coley, and Will getting ticked off by Billy's treatment of Coley. Eventually, the trail leads to.... I'm not giving away the ending, other than to say it's not much of an ending.

I had some pretty big problems with The Shooting. It was apparently shot on a limited budget, which would explain the mysterious plot and the paucity of characters. I found the story to be something that, while it has a clear story line, is one that doesn't seem to go anywhere in that everybody is just there instead of having good, clearly-defined motivations for what they do. The characters are in many ways ciphers. And in the ways the characters aren't ciphers, they're annoyingly unlikable. It didn't help that the print I saw looked grainy in spite of its being in the proper aspect ratio as far as I could tell. (The DVR showing was letterboxed which means it was wider than 16:9.)

However, The Shooting is one of those movies that has apparently gained cult status in part due to its back story of never having received a wide theatrical release in the US. So this is definitely one you'll want to watch and judge for yourself.

Back Door to Hell

I DVRed the movie Back Door to Hell this morning because I saw that FXM Retro was going to be running it again tomorrow at 6:00 AM.

In the late 50s/early 60s tradition of trying to make pop singers into movie stars, this one star Jimmie Rogers as Lt. Craig. He's leading a mission with Burnett (Jack Nicholson) and Jersey (John Hackett). The three of them are to land on the island of Luzon in the Philippines in 1944, when it was still under occupation by imperial Japanese forces. The Americans are of course now winning the war, and since the Philippines were an American colony before Japan invaded, and Doulas Macarthur vowed to return, the Americans are planning to invade. They'd like to know more about how the Japanese are going to defend against a possible US invasion.

The three men are supposed to meet a particular contact, but instead meet guerrilla leader Paco (Conrad Maga). Maga executed that contact because Maga couldn't trust him, so obviously it's going to be tough for Craig and Paco to work together. Add to this the fact that the cynical Jersey thinks that Burnett is losing his leadership capbilities. It's partly because Craig sees the Japanese as human, so by the same token he doesn't like it when Paco tortures a Japanese commander to get information, and then executes one of the commander's underlings.

The ultimate goal is for the Americans to radio their information back to their superiors, because there's no way they're getting off the island. To that end, there's another underground group that would like the radio so they can use it for their own broadcasting needs. And they end up sabotaging the Americans' radio, so Craig and his men have to take over a Japanese shortwave transmitter in the climax of the movie.

Back Door to Hell is another of those short movies that Fox seemed to distribute a ton of in the era when they were making Cleopatra; I'd assume it was an easy and cheap way for the studio to have content. One thing that's particularly interesting about this one is that it was a co-production between an American and a Filipino company, filmed on location in the Philippines. There's really not much happening in this one, unsurprising when you consider it clocks in at a brief 68 minutes. But it's adequate for what it does.

If you're a Jack Nicholson completist or absolutely love love love World War II movies, you'll want to check this out. It is available on DVD, but the current release seems to be from the Fox MOD scheme, which makes it ridiculously pricey for the brief running time.

The Broken Land

When I mentioned The Reward a couple of days ago, I didn't mention that I had watched it in a double feature with the movie The Broken Land. As for The Broken Land, it's showing up on FXM Retro tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM, so this is your chance to catch it.

The film starts off with some falderal about how, in the years after the Civil War, there were a bunch of loner types who banded together and were... the insurgents! The worst thing about this scene is that Fox needed to keep the movie in the Cinemascope aspect ratio to show the text, and then switch to a grainy 4:3 panned-and-scanned print thereafter. Boo hiss. Anyhow, the panned-and-scanned portion of the movie begins with a stranger named Dave Dunson (Robert Sampson) coming into one of those old western towns in the territories on his horse. He stops outside a general store, but unfortunately the shop assistant Billy (Gary Sneed) knocks over some of those giant metal bulk milk containers that they used back in those days, an act which startles Dave's horse. It was of course an accident; Billy is probably just a bit slow although they wouldn't have used words like that back in the day either. Walking into all of this is Marshal Jim Cogan (Kent Taylor) who doesn't like what he sees.

Marshal Jim doesn't like anything, to be honest. He shows up at the restaurant where Dave stops to have a bite to eat, only for Dave to get involved in another accident when the waitress Mavera (Diana Darrin) accidentally knocks a glass off the table. Jim is enraged enough that he wants to throw Dave out of town for this! He also wants to throw Mavera out of town, but that's because she's got a past with him and clearly knows something about him that he doesn't want the rest of the townsfolk to know.

These three folks on Jim's enemies list are about to get involved with Jim again, this time in an incident that leads to a police-instigated brawl, and Billy and Dave being put in the town jail. Already there is Will Brocious (Jack Nicholson in one of his early roles), who hasn't done anything wrong, but who is the son of a man who was a notorious criminal. Will and Dave are used to this sort of treatment, but poor Billy isn't. Worse for Billy, the marshal is bullying the shopkeeper of the place where Billy works into pressing charges! Is there nothing bad this marshal won't do? Mavera has seen it all before, so before she gets on the stagecoach that's going to take her out of town for good, she goes to the jail and frees the three men. They, having learned a bit of Marshal Jim's bad nature, decide that they're going to stop the coach and rescue Mavera.

That goes wrong, Billy gets nicked in the arm by a shot, and the coachman drops the money bag thinking this is a holdup, which wasn't the intention at all. Now the marshal is really going to be after them! This time, however, at least one other person, Deputy Ed Flynn (Jody McCrea, son of Joel McCrea) has come to the conclusion that Jim is a hothead and he'll try to stop Jim from being too severe.

The Broken Land is a decidedly B movie that never really lets the viewer in too much on where the plot is going to go next, something which works for the movie. There's nothing spectacular here, just a bunch of solid entertainment. The only reason most people would think to even give this movie a chance is if they saw Jack Nicholson's name in it, and that's a shame, because the movie does deserve a bit more attention than that. It's also a huge shame that the FXM print is panned-and-scanned, because what we see in the opening credits makes it look like there's probably some nice cinematography here. Still, this is a movie more for the story than the backgrounds.

I don't think The Broken Land has received a DVD release, so you'll have to catch the FXM showings.