Film Journal Podcast
George (Film Journal) and Ryan (Cinecrisis) dig through film history one oddball pick at a time—hopping from cult horror to forgotten blockbusters, art house to trash fire (sometimes in the same episode). Whether it’s dissecting Hammer Horror, roasting the latest Studio Flop, or revisiting 70's exploration fare- they bring sharp takes, deep trivia, and the kind of banter only good pals can pull off!
No film school snobbery. No hot take clickbait. Just smart, funny conversations for people who like movies and think they actually matter.
Film Journal Podcast
Guns, Dames, and Atomic Briefcases: A Film Noir Expedition Part 2
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Step into the shadowy world of film noir as we explore four cinematic masterpieces that defined and transformed the genre. From the maternal sacrifice of Mildred Pierce to the atomic briefcase of Kiss Me Deadly, these films reveal how noir evolved to reflect changing American anxieties in the post-war period.
Joan Crawford's Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce offers a fascinating feminine perspective in noir, bookending a melodramatic core with classic noir sequences. We unpack how the film subverts expectations by revealing the daughter as the true femme fatale, manipulating her mother's sacrifices for social advancement.
Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai dazzles with its experimental visuals and the infamous hall of mirrors sequence. Shot partly with natural lighting and on-location in Mexico, the film's disorienting atmosphere and complex narrative create a dream-like quality that pushes noir into new artistic territory.
Gun Crazy delivers a visceral proto-Bonnie and Clyde narrative that electrifies with its innovative camera techniques and exploration of America's obsession with firearms. The unforgettable bank robbery sequence shot entirely from inside the getaway car revolutionized how crime could be depicted on screen.
Finally, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly brings noir into the atomic age, with Ralph Meeker's hard-boiled Mike Hammer investigating a conspiracy involving radioactive material. The film's apocalyptic conclusion and mysterious glowing briefcase would later influence generations of filmmakers, including Tarantino with Pulp Fiction.
Beyond individual analysis, we examine how these films collectively mapped America's changing cultural landscape through shadows, gunshots, and femme fatales. Discover why film noir continues to captivate audiences with its exploration of humanity's darker impulses and society's hidden anxieties.
Have you experienced these noir classics yet? Which one speaks most to your cinematic sensibilities? Join the conversation and dive deeper into film noir's murky waters.
Show Introduction and Recent Films
Speaker 1and we're back. What's going on, brother, not much how you doing good man. Did you enjoy watching these films?
Speaker 2I did, I really really did I. I thought this was a great choice of topic.
Speaker 1We had a good crop of movies. This time, I mean, we're really getting into the meat of the whole thing. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, for sure I mean a lot of these. It was good because I've seen quite a few of these before and then some I had not seen and some I hadn't seen in a really long time. So to get to re-experience them and have an excuse to put them back in not that you need one, but to then view them all together as well makes you really appreciate each one more.
Speaker 1Yeah, I, I agree with you. I took a film noir class in college and I think I watched all of these. Oh, really so it had been a while for some, a lot of them I had, like I, oh really.
Speaker 2So it had been a while for some, a lot of them I had like I got the criterion for kiss me deadly um mildred pierce.
Speaker 1I got the criterion for that. I was really impressed. I thought they did a nice job. Yes, um, you got any housekeeping. You see any good movies that we didn't talk about last time in between.
Speaker 2Uh, did we mention? We talked about the holdovers, I think last week, right I think we talked about that to each other.
Speaker 1We might've talked about it last week, no, I think we did cause.
Speaker 2I talked to you on the phone about a pre-show. Yeah, and then um killers of the flower moon, also really, really good. Uh, good movie, yeah, um, that I would highly recommend.
Speaker 1Go ahead, it's basically gone from theaters now.
Speaker 2Yes, it probably is, but if you can get it on on demand, you can. I think it's on apple included with that, but if you don't, have it. You can get it. I think you can get it. Just any on-demand service like you have to pay for it.
Speaker 1But sure, sure were you able to uh get oppenheimer on dv on blu-ray not yet.
Speaker 2No, I haven't, I haven't bought that yet.
Speaker 1But I saw it twice at the theater.
Speaker 2So I mean I'm not itching to like watch it again, right this second okay, yeah, I feel you.
Speaker 1I just I'm curious to see what the behind the scenes stuff is, because I know nolan said he was working really hard to put together a really good disc to kind of help save home video as well, which would be cool I will say one other movie I did watch, and I think I mentioned it to you, is a coma, michael. Yeah, dude, I love coma. I think I'm going to do a video on coma and kind of rope it in with Crichton's other movies, especially his early stuff like runaway and looker for sure.
Speaker 2Yeah, I really, really liked it. I had not seen it before, but I really enjoyed that. I liked it. I had not seen it before, but I really enjoyed that. I always enjoy these old-time medical thrillers. Certain things are just so outdated and some things are still the same, so it's just kind of an interesting curiosity from that regard.
Speaker 1You know, who I really like too is Geneviève Bujold. She had a lot of really great roles not in any huge movies, but she's in coma. She's in cronenberg's dead ringers, she's in de palma's obsession, right um. She made a lot of really cool earthquake.
Speaker 2Yeah, she made a lot of really cool um movies, so I I like her a lot too you know she was the original choice to play captain janeway, star Trek Voyager the captain, and she actually filmed, I think, part of the pilot episode and she couldn't handle it. It was too much for her to do a series.
Speaker 1I'm looking at her on the internet now here, and it looks like she did play Star Trek at some point.
Speaker 2Yeah, it didn't make it to air, but they replaced her with Kate. Mulgrew, halfway through the pilot.
Speaker 1That's too bad.
Speaker 2Well, I mean Kate Mulgrew was an excellent choice as the captain on that ship.
Speaker 1I've never seen that show. I apologize.
Speaker 2Yeah, you should definitely watch Voyager, highly recommend it.
Speaker 1I haven't watched Next Generation dude. I'm an OG guy all the way. Well, don't watch season one I don't like the aesthetics of uh the of next gen. It just looks like a best western hotel from the 90s or something that they're hanging out in all this. It's amazing what are you talking about?
Speaker 2I wish, I wish, I could decorate my house like that yeah, I don't like any of the people.
Speaker 1They all look sort of like off-putting to me, like data. I don't like him, I don't like uh you haven't watched.
Speaker 2You haven't watched it enough. You need to.
Speaker 1You need to watch, you can that that should be a show at some other point is picking specific episodes like the best all star trek, that the star trek next gen and uh, talking about like four episodes or something like that that could be a lot of fun actually, because then I would have to, kind of I would be like the fun ringer guy who didn't know anything.
Speaker 2you know the Star Trek Voyager is a really, really good spinoff show. That was in. It was the launch of UPN. So 1995, when they launched UPN Network, star Trek Voyager was the flagship show. Star Trek Voyager was the flagship show and it's kind of like goes back to the themes of exploration, more so that they had drifted away from in the previous show, deep Space Nine, which was set in a space station sedentary. They get trapped on the other side of the galaxy and have to find their way home. So they find all new alien species that they'd never encountered before. Until that didn't work out too well.
Speaker 1And they're like let's throw the Borg in.
Speaker 2They like to go back to that Borg, oh yeah, so ratings and winning strategy. Yeah, no I would actually be interested in doing that.
Speaker 1I'm excited for our next show that we're going to do at the start of the new year, which is we're going to do Space Ghost and Johnny quest and all the hannah barbara cartoons yes I'm a huge fan, not all of them, because there's too many.
Speaker 2Even the action adventure cartoons, there's too many to do in one thing um there's.
Speaker 1Yeah, I was gonna say I have like dino boy on my space, ghost blu-. I don't know if I have a lot to say about that.
Speaker 2There's not a lot to say about Dino Boy in the Lost Valley. It's okay, you can watch it. It was never my favorite, even when I was a kid, you'd have to sit through it to get to the second Space Ghost cartoon.
Speaker 1Yeah, which I do like I was screwing around with chat gpt the other day and I just said, hey, chat, will you uh write me a story of a space ghost, but written like ernest hemingway, and uh, it's okay, yeah I think I've mentioned this to you before, but uh, the um, in the past, the future, quest comic that came out.
Speaker 2It's been a few years now.
Speaker 1Yeah, I heard, that was cool.
Speaker 2It's new with Space Ghost new-ish. That's really great and that mashes all of the Hanna-Barbera superheroes into one cohesive story. So Johnny Quest, Space Ghost, Birdman, Galaxy Trio, Frankenstein, Jr, Mytor they're all in in there and the guy who wrote it clearly loves the material and knew who these characters were and cherished like the use of every single one of them.
Speaker 2It's, it's fantastic okay, I'm gonna check that out and then there's actually an anthology, um a series that came after that was done, where they did individualized stories of all the different characters. So there'd be like a three issue space ghost story, a bird man issue you know my tour et cetera.
Speaker 1Sounds cool. Anything else going on?
Speaker 2before. Dc comics is in their current state of decline. I should just end it with that.
Speaker 1Bummer, At least James guns coming to save the day, right dude.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, but I mean, even the comic division is in decline.
Speaker 1It's bad. Yeah, no, I agree, I'm with you. You want to start on Mildred Pierce here?
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Discussing Film Noir Topic Selection
Speaker 1This was one you were adamant to include. What do you think about it?
Speaker 2I was adamant to include. What do you think about it? I was um. I hope you enjoyed it, because oh, I did very much, so I'm not saying anything.
Speaker 1Yeah, but you're yeah, go ahead, go ahead, go off, yeah no, I think it's a.
Speaker 2It's a interesting choice to pick because it's the most unusual noir and um in in that I mean it's it's bookended by a noir and the middle of the movie is like a completely different movie that is not a noir. It's like a melodrama melodrama yeah, yes a melodrama, or as they used to call it, the woman's picture a woman's repeat.
Speaker 2Yeah yes, about a um, a working mother's struggle to provide for her, her daughter and her family, to provide the things that she could not have when she was a child growing up. But I also picked it because it stars Joan Crawford, who I'm very much a big fan of, and I know she probably has a more polarized reputation amongst film fans and audiences. Some people love her, some people hate her. I, I really do like joan a lot, but you don't think so.
Speaker 1I feel like why would anyone hate her?
Speaker 2people. I've.
Speaker 1I've read things and seen things where people just hate joan crawford for for whatever reason, I don't know why does she get lumped into a sort of um like a judy garland bucket where she has like a following amongst like, let's say, um, the gay community. You know what I'm saying, like you know the stonewall guys were kicked off by judy garland dying. I mean, is there sort of like a? Is that in there?
Speaker 2yeah, I think so. I think so, um, but I'm, I'm a big fan of jones, just because she's like one of those larger than life, um, movie stars right from that era that don't exist anymore in this day and age, right, they're totally manufactured image and star, right, somebody who came from absolute nothing. I'm reading the biography of her right now. It's a quick read. Yeah, I think I sent you a picture of that book, the Fred Lawrence Giles book. He, he wrote a book, a biography of her.
Speaker 2She was born into, like, I mean almost poverty in Kansas city near the turn of the century. She made her way to Hollywood, you know, became a huge star at MGM in the twenties and thirties and then became like, almost her career almost ended at a certain point. Her movies were doing terrible and she became labeled as what box office poison and then got canned from mgm, and that would have been the end for most people, right, if you, if you get fired from a major studio like mgm where you, you were disastrous. Well, she managed to get her new contract at warner brothers and then one of the one of the first few films that she makes is this is Mildred Pierce, for which she wins the Oscar for the best actress. So I mean talk about someone who persevered, someone who survived a sea of change throughout the industry and was making movies up until you know the early seventies really Um, and just kind of a remarkable career.
Speaker 1Kind of like a Catherine Hepburn where you know they, they pitched her as a leading lady but she had this core appeal with like actual women, right, rather than just like the ingenue for the lead man Right, so like she was able to sustain that cause. She had, like this, this, this hidden fan base, right.
Speaker 2Yeah, there were definitely, and the book talks about that as well. There was a dedicated Joan fan base even back then and a different type of audience came to see Joan's movies compared to other stars' movies. And a lot of these movies, some of them were not very popular at the time and they've been reevaluated and reclassified as cult classics. I mean, johnny Guitar is another one not to keep harping on that one all the time but that's a very unusual film for that time period. She dominates throughout that and it's been reappraised, as you know. A modern classic, you know. So.
Speaker 1I forgot to add our slides here for the people at home.
Speaker 2I also appreciate that later in her career she really didn't care what she was doing. She would take anything. She would take anything just to work. Whatever happened to Baby Jane, of course, was a big hit at the time and was a well-made movie You've never seen it.
Speaker 1My mom loves it. I've never seen it. I have not. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2Oh, okay. Well, we have to do that at some point. Okay, and it's also directed by Robert Aldrich, who did Kiss Me Deadly.
Speaker 1Oh, interesting. Yeah, you're right. That's right, he was an interesting guy, but go ahead.
Speaker 2But then after that, you know, she maybe got a pigeonholed into that weird, not sci-fi but like kind of horror genre at the time and she started teaming up with William Castle making his movies. She did Straightjacket and movies like that and then kind of ended her career with some real stinkers like um, trog and trog bro. Oh yeah, trog is that's.
Speaker 2that's like where I draw the line, that that that's like almost unwatchable, but uh shameful yeah, but mildred pierce, uh, as we, yeah book ended by like some of the most stunning textbook examples of noir. Right, absolutely. We begin at this isolated beach house where, um, you know, a man is shot. We don't see the identity of the killer, we see the broken glass and he stumbles onto the floor and we hear mildred and the drops and the gun drops.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2And that's our movie to begin.
Speaker 1Yeah, zachary Scott playing Monty Berrigan, sort of like a ne'er-do-well dilettante, fake rich guy, right yes who will be very aggravating throughout the movie. Not because his performance is bad, it's very good, and I'm excited actually to watch the series on HBO. Have you seen the modern remake? I have not.
Speaker 2But I'm very interested in looking that up as well.
Speaker 1I am too, because there's a lot to the story and I was actually surprised that James M Cain, a guy who wrote Postman, always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, is a very different type of story for him, because it's not like this steel trap you know, um premeditated murder premise which is you know what he's most known for, I would say but it's very much like a melodramatic thing and I was shocked by that. I was shocked by the relationship with the daughter. I mean, it's um, it's an incredible movie. I really enjoyed it. I was, I was, I was gripped the entire way.
Speaker 1But, yeah, I was blown away by the opening sequence where we have Jack Carson playing Wally Faye being ensnared into a trap by his old flame, mildred Pierce, and that little like beach house. What would you call that? Is it beach house? Or what's the word they use in California, bungalow, bungalow or whatever you want to call it. But just the sharp shadows and the way that it's shot in these wide angles where you see just this sheer, sharp, angular focus.
Analysis of Mildred Pierce
Speaker 1And it made me think a little bit about the director, michael Curtiz, who is a guy who I think doesn't get maybe his due credit, but it's possible that it's because he's not necessarily like in the traditional sense. He was like very adaptable and a total chameleon. So I think people tend to like attribute the successes of his films to other things, or there are other elements of his movies that kind of go beyond his direction. So he's just kind of thought of, as you know, like I don't even know, like a producer almost, and the way people talk about michael curtis, which is unfair perhaps, but no one's come up with like a unifying theory of his movies. Really, would you agree?
Speaker 2that's a good point. Yeah, no, I agree with that. It's like. It's like almost like howard hawks there's so much variability and there's so much he wasn't. It wasn't contained to one particular genre or idea, and when and when you cross that many different lines, it's hard to then find the, the thread that runs through them, unless you look really, really, really closely at, you know, the underlying themes of the way it's made and things like that, which, um, I try to have some blank.
Speaker 1Uh, captain, blood. With errol flynn, mildred pierce, robin hood, angels with dirty faces. I mean he made like if you were to look through genres in the early 20th century film. He made one of them, you know.
Speaker 2Yes one of every kind.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, but go ahead.
Speaker 2I was going to say this, as I sort of touched on. It is one of, if not the only film, or that I can think of, that centers from the woman's perspective. Right, the woman is the lead, she is the role that we typically put the man, the role that we typically put the man. The man usually serves in the role that Mildred plays in this part, and she is the victim. First, do you think that she is going to be the femme fatale in the movie? And it's set up that way, as she ensnares, you know, wally to take the fall for the crime, for the murder?
Speaker 1Who very much is a film noir protagonist in the context of it being his movie. Right, if it was his movie?
Speaker 2yes, he is, but go ahead, yes that's like a totally separate movie that then they abandon in order to focus on the melodrama, which is very compelling and it breaks your heart at different times. And then we are introduced to the true femme fatale of the movie, which is also one of the only teenage femme fatales, and that is daughter Vida. I would argue that Vida is the femme fatale of the film.
Speaker 1And she's staring at her own mother in her trap. Yeah, a horrible, horrible child.
Speaker 2Yes, one of the worst Just wicked to the core, spoiled, rotten. And I mean. There's no redeeming qualities to Vita whatsoever, she is just bad.
Speaker 1And I can totally see why this would have been so popular as a woman's picture, right, because it seems like there's sort of this perpetual battle throughout time with women and their mothers that is somewhat, I think, perplexing from the outside to men, but seems to be a mainstay in culture, right? So you could see how this is compelling to the test of time.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, for sure. This is like very, very high drama. I mean, you can't get better than this.
Speaker 1You know, and it kind of brings up ideas of class that we don't think about so much anymore, sort of the idea like today, I think that we do a much better job as a culture of exalting sort of like self-made people. I think about oh boy, she's the entrepreneur who came up with cookies they sell in the mall. You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2Oh, like Mrs.
Speaker 1Fields, yeah, or something like that. There's one of these cookies they sell in a mall maybe someone in the chat can fill us in but it was like created by a woman, like she was a stay-at-home mom and she made these cookies. Everyone said, boy, these are really good. And she became a multi-millionaire magnate who had like four husbands, right, very much sort of like a real life mildred pierce, um. But like the fact that the daughter would confront her with things like you know that she was ashamed that she was a waitress, that she had to hide that from her children. You know, like the idea of a single mother, like working overtime, multiple jobs, baking pies, etc. Like that you, you're a hero, you know, and rightly so.
Speaker 1Right, but back then that would have been seen as shameful because you just weren't the landed gentry, as it were, of America. It's kind of shocking. I think it makes that character more unappealing. I don't know if that would have been resonant at the time to an audience. Would they have said about the daughter well, she's got a point. Her mother is of low breeding. Would anyone have thought that?
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't think so in terms of, maybe, ordinary people, but I feel like that's still a popular or predominant sentiment amongst wealthy people that look down upon new wealth, old money, looking down on new money, that there's a sense of classlessness or uncouthness to them. And certainly that's not the case here. I mean Mildred does everything she can to be a more, you know, a higher member of society. She doesn't. She's not low class, right, she's just trying to make ends meet and she succeeds, beyond her wildest dreams, to make a successful life for herself, for her children, and then she has to virtually throw away everything in order to maintain this high on the hog lifestyle for the most ungrateful daughter ever, who's never satisfied with anything with anything, I mean.
Speaker 2It's exemplified at the beginning of the movie, when Mildred orders a dress for Vita and she makes it known to her husband who they're very poor. At this time the husband is not working and Mildred says that she baked pies and cakes for people in the community and sold them in order to buy this dress which she wants to give to the daughter so that she can have nice things. And the daughter is utterly ungrateful and says this is the most ugly dress, horrible, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing this. And the mother sees this without her knowing it and she just takes it. It's heartbreaking. Yeah, it's sort of interesting dichot, it's. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 1It's sort of interesting dichotomy to where she's a woman in professionally who won't be stepped on there, won't be, you know, won't be pushed around, but when it comes to her family life, her husband is a total loser and a bum.
Speaker 1Now, I think later on in the film, like you know, figure in their lives, it turns out he probably maybe was right about her spoiling the kids, but, um, he's basically kind of a bum, you know, when we begin the picture, uh, he needs to mature, I guess, and I think maybe had they been a younger couple like if you made a remake in 2023 he would be sort of like a young video game playing guy, right, like at home, you know what I mean and he would not want to, you know, become an adult, right, I guess it sort of it perplexes you to see a guy who wears a suit all the time as a bum, right, but we have to remember that they had higher standards for uh dress back then. But um, right, uh, but um, you know she picks wrongly when it comes to men. She just can't handle her social and family life, which is an interesting idea, I guess.
Speaker 2Yeah, she's only really good at business. That's where she excels. Everything else is kind of ancillary or incidental and she focuses and prioritizes what can she do to help the children and help and eventually one child tragically dies and the movie kind of presents it in a way that it's almost like a punishment for Mildred. Did you see this or pick up on this? I don't know? That's the weekend that she goes to spend with Monty. She's now separated from her husband. Monty's been courting her and kind of flirting with her and they finally go away for a weekend and sort of like as a punishment for her. When she returns she finds out her daughter is caught in pneumonia and is like a death's door and and just and dies and it's, it's it's horrible, I mean it's, it's.
Speaker 2It's horrible, I mean it's, and you don't, you don't expect something like this in a movie like this right and especially of this era, to see it so kind of not graphically, but it's, it's pretty pushed to the forefront.
Speaker 1There's no, there's no hand yeah scene, you know when you put it like that. Um, yeah, it's sort of like almost like a biblical trial for this job, like character we have in this film, and I expected, when I watch it, for it to be a movie about a woman who is just nonstop victimized, but it wasn't. It was a movie about a woman who ends up being able to take control of her life professionally after her man walks out on her right. But you're right, I mean I would be interested to read sort of a 1970s era feminist critique of this movie, you know, because it sort of sort of seeks to, I guess, answer the question, pre question of can you, can women have it all right, because the way you frame that as a punishment which I didn't think of, I just thought it was just sort of like like just more trials being heaped upon this poor woman so that you would have, you know, sympathy for her. But when you frame it that way, it makes me think of it.
Speaker 1Is it like a? Is this like a? A parable about a woman? Hey, well, you should stay with your man in the kitchen because other, when you went off on your own, it went totally haywire. You know what I mean. Would that be like the intention?
Speaker 2I don't, I don't know about that part, but I think, like more like um, anytime you, you she's work, like right. Her entire, her entire life at this point is work, work, work. She finally takes one vacation, one break, to try and focus on herself for once, right?
Speaker 2yeah, and it comes back to bite her that she, she relies on her ex husband to take care of the kids for like a couple days, not anything major, and what happens? Uh, she gets contracts a terminal illness and dies. You know, it's like, it's like you can't let your guard down for one second. I think is more, more along the lines of what.
Speaker 1What I'm talking about, like or or maybe you just can't. You can't live your life for your.
Speaker 2For yourself. You have to live for other. Well, she can't live for herself, she has to live for other people.
Speaker 1Well, but the yeah Cause, the idea I got from her marriage to her new husband her sort of foppish, like you know, ne'er do well new husband, um, supposedly rich, but, you know, depended upon handouts from her is that she married him because he has that kind of built-in class that her daughter was looking for that maybe this man can elevate her.
Speaker 2the hypocrisy of that being the, that's precisely why she marries him and it's just so that vita can feel a sense of being part of that higher class because he has that mansion which he's about to be foreclosed on right. He's about to lose everything and Joan and Mildred has to subsidize him by marrying him and giving him part of the business, all to pacify Vita.
Speaker 1Or is Mildred, pacifying Vita, because she's living vicariously through her and trying to give her all the things that she wanted and desired and didn't get. You know what I mean, like a sort of overzealous football coach, dad right.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's definitely one way to look at it as well. Okay okay, but I mean this is a very time-tested, um still relevant a way that um certain parents behave and act right. I mean, you see media examples, famous court cases where children uh commit crimes or or murder someone or something and the parents help cover it up, right, or they help help, uh, take the kids out of the country, or something like that. Right, I mean yeah. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but does that strike you as?
Speaker 1does that strike you as it might be unjust, but is that an unnatural?
Speaker 2It's not but, but she goes so far as to and I don't think, I don't know if you'd see this- now goes so far as to and I don't think, I don't know if you'd see this now the altruist altruism of the parent here, which is to take the blame, to uh, try and take the fall for the child.
Speaker 1Um, nowadays it's just uh, let's just take you out of the country yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't have any children, but from what I understand, there's a sort of brain rewiring that happens to where your priorities shift drastically. Sure, no, I get it.
Speaker 2I get it, but I'm just saying like the level of altruism for a child who has shown nothing but contempt for her mother to take the ultimate sacrifice, which may even include being executed for a crime you didn't commit, which may even include being executed for a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 1Well, we have to, we have. We can't like gloss over the fact that Wally Faye, she did try to set him up for the crime she did.
Speaker 2She did, I mean. And Wally Faye is a character.
Speaker 1So first of all, there's like three men in Mildred Pierce's life her sort of wooden husband that she divorces, her gallivanting fake rich husband.
Speaker 2Does he remind you of the Vincent Price character in Laura?
Speaker 1a little bit the Wally Faye.
Speaker 2No, no, no no, no, no, no, no, monty.
Speaker 1Yes, 100%, absolutely, absolutely. No, no, no, no, no, no. Monty Monty yes, 100%, absolutely, absolutely. Yep, absolutely no.
Speaker 1Jack Carson's character, wally Faye, the thing is I guess Mildred is being I mean, she should have been with him Like he's boorish, he's sort of like, but you know what? He's new money like her. You know, hard scrabble kid, probably from the streets, made good in the restaurant, bar, entertainment business. Right, he's not like you know very you know couth, but he's the guy for her and even though he does like make what you would be considered today like enormously inappropriate passes at her at home, right, he still has her back all the time. He has her best interest at heart.
Speaker 1You know, sometimes he had to make hard choices. You know, because he is a businessman, first, because he's smart enough to realize he can't exactly prioritize mildred because she keeps giving him the cold shoulder at every moment. Right, he sort of lashes out against her by hiring her uh vita to be a uh gasp. You know uh cocktail singer at uh for a bunch of uh troops at his bar, right, but um, and what's his payment? You know he's someone that his payment is that she sets him up as the fall guy. So in that way. Mildred pierce is a little bit of a femme fatale herself in that way. Now, luckily he was able to get off, you know of the crime.
Speaker 2But like I mean, he he's a victim here too yeah, I mean she, she tries the easiest thing she can to try and set, set someone else up for the fall. But I think the police I mean obviously the police saw through the entire thing and I think any rudimentary investigation would have you know, shine light through that, through that premise. But in terms of the interesting point you bring up about the three men in Mildred's life, all of them are losers right, just to varying different degrees, and Wally is by far probably the most successful and the least bad right.
Speaker 1The only way that he's a loser is that he likes Mildred so much that he and gets nothing in return. You know what I mean. He should have dropped there years ago.
Speaker 2He's not a good person because none of them are, but he is the least malignant of the three, monty being the absolute, worst, absolute parasite of a person. Being absolutely contributes nothing to society, to anybody. And then I forgot the husband, the first husband's name, but yeah, he's, he's yeah, immature. Immature is probably the best word for him. He has. He has a good heart, I think for him he had. He has a good heart, I think, um, but it's kind of muddled um and confused and he doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 1he doesn't realize how good he has it and he's saying like, yeah, yeah, but yeah, a great movie. Man, I thought it was terrific. And and yet, like um, the noir label, I think, is a little. I mean, it's a movie with a lot of sordid elements to it. But no, I, I, I thought it was absolutely terrific, I really liked it and I'd like to read more about it. I didn't have as much time to dig into it Cause I like again, I'd like to hear the glorious Steinem take on Mildred Pierce, but Absolutely.
Speaker 2I think the noir part of it really comes down to the bookends right, the beginning and the end, and we have a character who's being grilled by the police right and telling her story in flashback. So we have the overhead narration, which is very common trope. We have a murder that is, uh, you know, about to be solved through all this and um, the, the, the general themes of, uh, what do we say? It's like, um, alienation, kind of, um, everyone's out to get you.
Speaker 1All of these things come together, uh, and kind of make it a more, um, typical film in that regard you know what, maybe, maybe I would take that back, like the idea that it's just like a genre bending thing, because I think one of the cornerstones of the film noir is that it tends to sometimes be about a normal person who finds themselves in a criminal high stakes situation, which she does right Now. You can have a character like Michael O'Hara from Lady from Shanghai, who is already sort of a morally dubious adventurer guy who can get himself into trouble just through his personality. I mean, he's just, he's a, um, he's a sort of he's just a longshoreman kind of dude who goes all over the world and maybe killed somebody, right. But then you can have people like ray milan of the big clock, who just finds him a totally normal domestic guy, square, community A+, but he finds himself in a bad situation which is kind of like what Mildred Pierce devolves into.
Speaker 2I agree, I agree, but yeah, I'm a big fan of Joan and this is one of her best movies by far. Oh yeah that fur coat. I mean, come on, man, that's an iconic shot. She's walking across the pier at night wearing this ridiculous lavish fur coat and she's about to throw herself into the river to commit suicide. It's just.
Speaker 1It's a good hook when you see that, because you're like whoa, why would this guy want to? You know, end it all. I should have reversed these images in my powerpoint because, um, you know what I mean, but kind of it's a before and after sort of look right, she's very good at playing this um the murder, right.
Speaker 2She's like always the victim, but she's doing it to herself at the same time, right, yeah.
Speaker 1This is Scarface for women. Rags to riches, you know. I mean like brought down by your desire to you, know you're? I mean, think about it. Tony, tony Montana. He's all about his sister. In a weird way. It sort of brings him down, right, she's not bad, but but interesting.
Speaker 2Scarface for women yeah, I would highly, highly, highly recommend Mildred Pierce. I think, that's kind of. I think we beat that one to death and I'd be curious to read the book yeah, for sure, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1Orson Welles a film he called an exercise in eroticism and exoticism. Of course it went way over budget. He reshot a million things. Thought it'd be cool to shoot, you know, with natural light in Mexico. You know, for the most part I think it pays off.
Speaker 2This is a terrific movie. Yes, thank you for picking this one, because I had not seen this before and I am very glad that I did, because it was excellent. I loved it.
Speaker 1I just remember it being like chock full of like terrific cinematic moments of just images and like strange editing and strange blocking of characters and really interesting personalities and like a cacophony of like individual voices all talking over each other, like ramifying in this character's head. You know, and orson welles is, he's great in it and reed hayworth is as beautiful as ever um His former wife Yep.
Speaker 2They were married at the time during this film was made. No.
Speaker 1I had read, I thought that they were divorced at the time they were married.
Speaker 2From what I've read, maybe Robert Osborne was incorrect in his intro to the movie no, maybe you misread it.
Speaker 1He must have divorced his former wife, Because, yeah, how could you not so?
Speaker 2because? Because, from what I've read, the only way this movie got made was because they were married. So orson was was not a very, very popular or, uh, in vogue actor director at this time. Okay, so he was not considered, the studios were not calling on him to make movies. Let's just say because, like said, he went typically over budget and took too long to make these movies Right, and they were not very well received by the public. They were not commercial successes, they were not popular with audiences. I think they were too, maybe, maybe too advanced or too complex for the time they were. They were ahead of their times, right, like Citizen Kane. But what happened is that Orson was married to rita hayworth, who was the biggest star at columbia at that time orson was trying to make this broadway play of around the world in 80 days and he had no money to do that.
Speaker 2so he called up harry cone, who was the president or the in charge at columbia pictures, and said if you give me the money to make this for the play, I'll make you a movie. I'll write and star and direct a movie for you. And and then, in order to make Rita happy, who was their big star he agreed, and so he adapted this lady from Shanghai novel and put her in it and they starred together and put her in it and they start together. And then, of course, he um changed her hairdo, which was she was like the most popular redhead right in the world and uh he makes her a platinum blonde for this movie, and harry cohen apparently like had a fit about that too.
Speaker 2The movie went over budget, was not a success at all. It was like the first bomb of of rita's career at like after she became a star, and just kind of just was a disaster all around to put it in context.
Speaker 1I guess it may be like. This may be a bad example, like if sydney sweeney like married harmony corinne or something you know what I mean like and uh, they made a movie together that nobody liked, but this is a and I put this picture of um rita hayworth here from gilda with glenn ford, which is a terrific film noir as well, and to show her popularity. I mean, this is um the bomb that was dropped on bikini atoll to you know, uh do the run-through for the atomic mission in japan, and they plastered her picture on it. I mean, you don't get. I mean that's, you're a part of history. And this photograph was just recently found.
Speaker 1It was always an anecdotal story that they had either painted her on the bomb or slapped a picture of her on there, and they finally found the photographic evidence recently, like a year ago. But yeah, she was a bombshell and I mean just absolutely one of the most beautiful Hollywood actresses of all time. This is an awesome movie. This is an awesome movie and I hope you really enjoyed it as well oh, I did.
Speaker 2I loved it, I loved it. You don't have the English poster, but the American one has one of the greatest taglines. It just says in quotes I told you you know nothing about wickedness that's so cool, just emblematic of this movie and this character.
Speaker 2I told you you know nothing about wickedness. That's so cool, just emblematic of this movie and this character. This is like one of the other great Femme Fatales of all time, this character who is so manipulative and just very bold about everything. She makes no bones about hiding anything. It's just so transparent and so open and everyone falls for it. Everyone is victim to her, just her master plan here.
Speaker 1It's just so captivating. What does he say at the beginning? Some men can smell trouble, not me, right, and he knows it, his Irish accent.
Speaker 2He knows he's being played the entire time and he can't help it.
Speaker 1He knows, because there might be a 1% chance that he's not. I just think about all the terrific cinematography that they employ in this film, and it was shot by Charles Lawton Jr, who was a well-respected cinematographer at the studio, but Wells complained that he was too slow. But he got everything that he wanted and the movie is. I just think about that scene where he's behind bars, you know, half lit right in shadow, and some of those scenes in the courtroom where they the light that projects on the back of the courtroom is is like, you know, the, like, the, the iron work from outside the window and then the judge's bench, you know, and it's just a terrific movie and I terrific movie and I, I just I love those scenes that they used real world lighting, when they're on the boat, conversing with each other, and what does wells say? Something like is this how you talk to each other all the time? Because they're so spiteful and mean and evil? And he's like, you know, he, he's like drawn into this world of like rich um, ne'er-do-wells, you know, I mean, they're all just nasty I would also add the aquarium scene as well, where people are giant fish and people are almost completely in silhouette at certain times too incredible it would have been
Speaker 2that. And then, oh, I wanted to point out the grouping these two together um mildred pearson and lady from shanghai. They have almost like in this one more so they have almost like a fairy tale quality to them. There's nothing realistic about any of these, about either one of these, and it's great, I mean it adds to the flavor and the flair of it all Right. But as we as we'll move on to the other ones later, gun Crazy and Kiss Me Dead deadly is a very stark like visual difference between between these two, which have that dreamlike kind of like quasi fairytale um feel to them, and those which feel very stark, harsh and like unforgiving. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1Well, I think part of it is the shooting on natural locations, which is not easy, so the camera is sometimes framed oddly or the close-up is too close, you know which, which creates like a sort of disorienting factor, right, um, and the natural light is not something you see in most pictures from this time. So it can, it can appear, you know, like you're, just like in this weird void. You know, um, and wells, he, he cuts and uses so many different angles in a movie like you wouldn't do this. Like the studio was very upset because they shot multiple reshoots and they were mad that wells didn't shoot enough close-ups of himself, which he didn't. He only shot close-ups of rita hayworth and he's in the wide shot right, which made it tough for them to cut. It was tough for continuity, right. Then he has blocking where, like, five characters are talking over each other at once, you know, and a boat is rocking up and down and the light is shining. You know what I mean. It's like whoa. You know it's not made like any film of the time.
Speaker 2That's what makes it so good, though, right, I mean.
Speaker 1Absolutely makes it so good, though right, I mean absolutely yeah, it's, it's an incredible.
Speaker 2I um it's a great other, uh, important scenes in the movie I think are, um, you mentioned, the courtroom scene, which is such a travesty of justice that yeah the um husband of the of rita hayworth's character is defending um orson Welles, but he's setting him up to be convicted and it's just, it's all part of the plan, right, it's all part of the master plan, and it's just so, just, oh, you can feel it. And then at the end he tells him this, just before they're about to announce the verdict. He tells him I'm going to make sure you go to the gas chamber for this. And he didn't do anything.
Speaker 1Yeah, he didn't do anything and he's just ultimate sucker for that like he's the ultimate patsy and you get the feeling like you know, normally I think you would critique a script by saying, oh, our lead character sort of disappears for these moments and like fades into the background. And he doesn't really cut to himself very often either in these courtroom scenes Because you know, everett Sloan is like, is so good in just chewing scenery. He's got his cane and his goofy eye right, and when he puts himself on the stand, you know, but yeah, he, just he, it works though, because you feel like he's so minuscule and small. And I love the, you know, the use of the mirror which you can see here, which is the sort of climactic scene which would be used to great effect, I think, in Enter the Dragon. I mean they understood the power of this thing, but I mean you cannot underestimate how difficult it was to film that sequence.
Speaker 2Proceeded by the funhouse scene, which also kind of symbolizes his I wouldn't say descent into madness, but like entering like the bowels of hell, right and then yeah you kind of see a reflection of what your life is and what who this other person is, I don't know. It's, uh, it's. It's just a very unusual, something you've never seen before.
Speaker 1Really a shame Wells wasn't appreciated at the time. You know, I mean Citizen Kane, the Magnificent Ambersons, as much as the Magnificent Ambersons was, you know, mangled by the studio. It's still an incredible movie. You know, one of the movies I wish we could have gotten to but didn't, is Touch of Evil.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Which I guess is kind of a good demonstration of how long the film noir genre went for, because by then Wells is not so boyish, he's rather large at that point, right which he would remain. Well, no, I love Orson Wells. I mean, he's become sort of a joke, I think, because of his wine advertisements. And you know, have you seen those? I've not. Oh, you have not. No, I have not. Oh, dude, you have to see the Orson Welles wine commercials. No, I mean, they're bad enough on their own. What did he say? I'll serve no wine before their time. I'm trying to remember what the brand was, but the, they, they, but they unearthed the outtakes, like 10 years ago, where he just absolutely hammered on wine and can't get his lines out. God, what was that wine? He did a commercial for Paul Masson wine. Oh my God, oh yeah, oh yeah. He also didn't add for honeycomb cereal.
Speaker 2I mean, he just at the end, he just didn't care right.
Speaker 1No, he didn't. I should have included that I didn't want to make this a bag on Wells thing. That would be yeah, honeycomb, I'm a big director, I want a big cereal. I don't want to make that space.
Speaker 2Was he bigger? I would love to see it compared. Was he bigger or not as big as Raymond Burr got later?
Speaker 1in life. Oh, I'd say about, but he's just great. I love Orson Welles. I love his radio plays. He did so much. Anything about Orson Welles, did you ever?
Speaker 2see Me and Orson Welles. What is that? No, I've heard of that.
Speaker 1It's a slept on Richard Linklater movie with zach efron okay and it's about his production of hamlet and it's told from the perspective of a kid who wants to be an actor and gets to play like a little extra in that in that uh film. But the in the in the stage play, but the guy, but the guy who plays wells is terrific and I I thought the guy who did Wells and Fincher's Mank was pretty good too. Did you see Mank?
Speaker 2Yeah, I did. I did not like Mank. You can see I actually do have a review of that one.
Speaker 1Oh, you do. Oh, I missed that.
Speaker 2That was one of the first videos I ever did for the channel, back almost three years ago now. I didn't like it because I just felt like it didn't have a. It didn't have a point or a purpose in showing what.
Speaker 1It's been a while, but there's it's the Hollywood obsession of the romanticism of the blacklist. It's like that. Yes, it doesn't actually have a point.
Speaker 2It doesn't actually have a point that it actually sees through or or makes anything profound about. It's just kind of whining and complaining about that and it's obsessed with Hearst, william Randolph Hearst, and why he hates him so much, why Mank hates Hearst so much. But it's just petty politics. It's not anything profound or deep. It's just I don't agree with your politics so I'm gonna write this movie about you and and kind of taint all these repetitions and relationships that I've had with, with people that I know, and it felt kind of heartless and cruel it was like trumbo, but less lame.
Speaker 1Trumbo was a very lame boilerplate, like biopic um, which was bad, and uh, do you ever see that with brian cranston? No, weak. It's about dalton trumba, who also uh wrote gun crazy um under a pseudonym, because it was you know oh, yeah, yes, yes, yes, I do, yeah, yeah it was pretty weak, but um mank, I did like, so I thought the filmmaking was exciting well, that part was, part was, and it looked great.
Speaker 2I mean, I'm always happy to see a new movie in black and white as well. That's why I was super psyched about that, but I just found it kind of insufferable. The performance by Gary Oldman. I mean that character is not likable at all. He has no redeeming kind of qualities to him. I just was annoyed.
Speaker 1Which is exactly what my wife said when we watched Kiss Me Deadly about Ralph Meeker.
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 1Yeah, she was like I don't like this guy at all.
Speaker 2He's like no, he's cool, man, he's cool.
Speaker 1I agree, I thought he's like super cool you know which is which, which Robert Aldrich, I think he was basically a communist. He made a very, also very lame movie about Hollywood politics called the Big Knife, which I watched and is really lame and pedantic. Yeah, it's totally weak and I think it's supposed to be like some sort of expose on Hollywood and I think, you know, it's supposed to be like some sort of expose on Hollywood, but like it's just about how Hollywood won't let you be like a really cool communist and stuff. It's pretty lame.
Speaker 2He's dramatized in the TV series Feud, which was about the making of whatever happened to Baby Jane.
Speaker 1So I didn't know they OK they did.
Speaker 2They did a mini series on tv about the making of that movie. It's with susan sarandon and, uh, I think, jessica lange as betty and joan. Yeah, it's really really good, really worth it. You have to watch. You have to watch baby jane first, though, otherwise you're not gonna.
Speaker 1You're not gonna appreciate yeah, um, yeah, I, I will, I will, I will definitely do that. I I've also never seen All About Eve, so I missed like the. Oh my God, I know I've never seen it and I love.
Speaker 2You can do one of those first-time watching reaction videos.
Speaker 1Oh, I should First-time watching All About Eve. That would be great because I actually I really like George Sanders. I think he's like a terrific actor.
Speaker 2I love him oh my God, yeah, george Sanders, I should watch it.
Speaker 2And Anne Baxter in that movie. Like those are vile, wicked creatures in that movie and they the amount of backstabbing and just like pure visceral, like hatred for everyone in the movie. It's just, it's so good, it's so satisfying, like, and you can apply the theme. That's why I love all about Eve is that, even though and people will be like, why do you like this movie? It's about freaking Broadway stage performers and all this. It's like you can apply that to any industry, any office any trade, anything, whatever you want it's all the same, it's all professional rivalry and pettiness.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I love george sanders and I always think about him. You ever remember blue velvet, when dennis hopper is like swab, swab, damn your swab. That's how I feel about him. Same with uh. I feel about him Same with. No, I'll come to you, but have you ever seen Journey to Italy, the Rossellini film?
Speaker 2No.
Exploring The Lady from Shanghai
Speaker 1With Ingrid Bergman. He made like a trio of movies with Bergman when they got married, and Sanders isn't one of them. It's sort of like a marriage story style Kramer versus Kramer kind of thing, but from the 50s. Okay, we ready to move on.
Speaker 2I would just say that's another one Highly recommend. Very good, I mean definitely worth a watch. If you're getting into film noir at all, I would put this one high on the list.
Speaker 1Bing Gun, crazy dude. This is a fun little movie. I like this movie a lot.
Speaker 2I do as well. Definitely ahead of its time, kind of a proto Bonnie and Clyde a little bit.
Speaker 1Sure.
Speaker 2I put the stark demarcation between the ones we just talked about and this. This is like a totally different animal type of movie. It feels more real, it feels very gritty, it feels very realistic, I mean. But I can't help but feel we're also like in a comic book at a certain point. These feel like these should have been batman villains, these two, do you not see it?
Speaker 1you know the movie has such a sort of subversive message, but like um, you know it's filmed sometimes like a um uh, psa, or you know what I mean. Like what would you like?
Speaker 2you know, yes yes, there is a cautionary tale aspect to this, for sure, for sure don't go down this road because of crime, because your life will be a mess.
Speaker 1But then it celebrates it at the same time and it's so good, you know yeah, and it makes it like super romantic and sexy and cool, like, but the opening sequences with the judge being like now, bard, I'm sending you to a school because you can't.
Speaker 2You know, it's like a one reeler, like um, you know public information, you know, you know I'm saying I kind of like I think they had to do that part in order to get away with the rest of the movie Right, bypass the censors and anything else like that.
Speaker 1Yeah, and John Dahl is an interesting actor. I've always found him very appealing. Rope is obviously a standout role. Maybe he's remembered for more than this.
Speaker 2Rope though is one of my least favorite.
Speaker 1I cannot believe that rope is so cool.
Speaker 2I have to rewatch it, but it's one that I just kind of dread.
Speaker 1It's Hitchcock's scariest and most off-putting film.
Speaker 2It, just it doesn't. It doesn't do much for me.
Speaker 1I can't believe that. I just that, and the trouble with barry are my least favorite you want to put that in with the area um I would say huge cock is the wrong man, which is like oh yeah, that's another one that's at the bottom.
Speaker 2For me, the wrong that's that's tough.
Speaker 1That's a tough one. Yeah, um, uh. No, this movie's awesome. It's about um bart, who happens to be a great shot, sort of his doomed talent. He's doomed by his own abilities, it's the only thing he's good at, and he does a stint in a boys' reform school and he goes to the military for a while. Then he comes back to his hometown, visits the carnival with his buddies and falls in love with a traveling cowgirl shooting act played by Peggy Cummins. They go on the road together and they decide to get married which, by the way, was something I thought about when they're driving alone together and they go let's get married right. That would be a very sort of.
Speaker 1I don't think people understand that that means let's have sex, like in the context of these old films. Yeah, like you listen to um, let it snow. And there's that whole line about you know, we'll pretend like the snowman is the parson brown so we can get married right, and everyone's like oh, how wholesome they're getting married. It's like. No, that's about like it's like an extremely horny thing, right winter wonderland winter wonderland yeah yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 2Is that yeah, yeah, no, no, for sure, For sure. He, he, because I guess there is some semblance of good in him, still, right, he wants to have some kind of wholesome family life, even though he's roped into this kind of life of crime, bad situation. He, he feels like he can try and reform her and so he wants to kind of put the stamp on all this and make it everything official.
Speaker 2And she is a woman who is not going to be tied down and puts it in not so many words that I want nice things. We're not. We can't get them.
Speaker 1The honest way If you want to keep me, you have to do what I want to do yep wow if you want to be my lover exactly, exactly but I look at this thing about what they don't.
Speaker 2they don't. They seem like they should be like batman dillons. I mean, they are like two very, very odd, quirky characters who have these very, very unique and special talents with the guns Right and they they dress up in like kind of flamboyant costumes, they wear the Western outfits for some of the crimes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1Flamboyant alter egos of very Clark Kent style when they're evading the police and they're like the just good churchgoers, you know. And they dress up at the meat packing plant. You know they work. But look at this photograph. I mean this is like hyper rock and roll, like out of context. You can see how that would hang in like Haight-Ashbury Street somewhere. It's very much like defiant against the man sort of image and you can also see why the French, who coined the term film noir to begin with, would have found merit in this movie that was sort of considered to be trash in America. I mean, this looks like a, this looks like a still from, like a true foe movie, like band apart or breathless. You know what I mean. It looks like kind of what he was going for, you know.
Speaker 2It's all about the Calvary.
Speaker 1It's about the break. No, I'm like the sunglasses and the, you know. I mean it's like it's perfect, you know. But yeah, it's a it. But yeah, it's a terrific little fun movie. I like it a lot and it was a studio picture, correct, I mean it wasn't like a, it wasn't a poverty row. That's one other thing that I wish we would have included was sort of a discussion on the poverty row film. No, I was like detour.
Speaker 2It was not a major major. I mean it was distributed by United Artists, but it was more indie than what it wasn't made by, like republic or monogram or somebody like that, yeah, yeah, which I believe detour is made by monogram which is also a great barrel, you know have you seen detour?
Speaker 1no, oh, we should have watched it. That's okay. Very similar to gun crazy. It's a fine. It's fine, but I would. I would urge people to go out and buy the criterion of that movie detour is spectacular. Edward edwin g olmer film edgar g olmer um, yeah, gun crazy. You brought up the fact that it's very bonnie and clyde um, or who you know? Um badlands who's that? Based on charles starkweather um terence malick's badlands with Martin Sheen. You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2No, I can't say that I do.
Speaker 1Anyway, my point is, had there been a real life, I guess Bonnie and Clyde would have been 19, depression era, right, okay, so this was sort of like a takeoff on that, the romanticization of the husband and wife crime duo or the lovers expressing their passion through armed robbery and the love of guns too.
Speaker 2That's the other love of guns.
Speaker 2The love of guns, yes, absolutely and the, the um matching skill for skill, prowess with a gun. We talked about in the double indemnity one, the use of innuendo in the dialogue. This has just as much, if not with the dialogue, then with the body language. While they're doing the shooting, competition at the carnival, the flirtations and the just kind of sexual tension between the two is very, very strong at that moment and, uh, you can see that these two people are, like they're, very troubled souls that are kind of destined for each other at that point there's that great, that great sort of word's eye view.
Speaker 1I think it's a push in of her when she comes out shooting those guns and then she sees him in the crowd, I mean it's like one of the one of the great reveals of a character, in my opinion. Yeah, you know, in recognition of um attraction, yeah, through their talent, you know, and the gun itself is a sort of very, I guess, phallic, you know. Yeah, right, I mean like yeah yeah, gun crazy. You've seen that. Have you seen the remake with drew barrymore?
Speaker 1of this movie yeah I had no idea there was a remake there was a remake um with drew barrymore in 93, directed by tamara davis, who basically like, if you needed to make a movie with a rapper in it, she did it right, or a comedian, uh, she directed billy madison, but her first, and she did a lot of music video. She actually did two for the smiths, so she had a very prolific music video career. And she did the remake of gun crazy with uh with drew barrymore. I have not seen it but I'd be curious to watch it. Same with same with um, same with uh mildred pierce. It's like two movies with a sort of very strong female character and I think in the way that it would have been updated for the time would tell you a lot about what you know feminist ideas about the original are, but I can't imagine.
Speaker 2Is that I'm? Sorry, I don't remember what her name is in the movie Annie or any Laurie star. She's not sympathetic at all. I mean she's, she's a bad girl. There's no girl. There's no, there's nothing. There's nothing good inside there mildred was yes, mildred, uh, crossed the line and did some bad stuff here and there, but her intentions were generally good. Annie is rotten, you know, a rotten apple, self selfish, self-serving, she, she corrupts, um, leads him down to his death, basically.
Speaker 1But she likes him.
Speaker 2I mean she does, but she was more than willing to drop him if he didn't go along with, uh, what she wanted.
Speaker 1Is this a male um anxiety picture about providing for a woman in general, even in just a regular marriage?
Speaker 2I think so. I think there's definitely, that's definitely part of it there's um because. I mean that that becomes a thing Can you? Can you provide for me or not? And obviously you can't. You can't provide me with what I want. I want nice things. This is not cutting it, and uh can you stay sexual?
Speaker 1Can you stay rich? Can you know I mean, that's kind of the what will you do to keep this going?
Speaker 2for sure, for sure, and I mean, and he tries to keep it to the point where he's not, um, gonna kill anyone, but of course she has no qualms about killing people, which is what really sets them apart and what really drives a wedge between them. And then I think, partially the other thing is when they, when they go to visit his family, and you can, can see that I mean you wonder at certain times, is she going to, is she going to do something to the family? Is she going to kill his sister or do something to the kids?
Speaker 2I mean she's pretty vicious, and she wants to kidnap one of the kids at the end too.
Speaker 1And it's like all bets are off with her. John Dahl was gay, perhaps. I don't know if that hurt his career or not. Didn't affect his performance. Seems like he's pretty turned on by Peggy Cummins, but he was. He was just not in very many movies, which I think is unfair because he's such a great talent and to star in a Hitchcock picture. And then he was in Spartacus, but in a very small role in Spartacus. Then a lot of TV stuff, which is too bad.
Speaker 2He died relatively young, at age 50.
Speaker 1Yeah, I read that he drank a lot and he fell down some stairs and hurt himself really bad and died at 50 years old.
Speaker 2Yeah, died of serious fall while visiting London. Died of cardiac arrest, a complication of myocarditis.
Speaker 1Vaxxed.
Speaker 2No comment, no comment oh it looks like he was on Perry Mason multiple episodes yeah, he yeah, because he was living with his long roommate.
Speaker 1Oh, I see, okay, but they set up a fake, sort of in a Rock Hudson way. They planted fake stories about how he was going out with actresses and stuff the studios did. But he's terrific. I really like him. I think he's great in rope. He's great when he wears a toga in Spartacus and Kirk Douglas throws a trident at him.
Speaker 2And he was nominated for an Oscar for the Corn is Green.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Which. I've never heard of until now.
Speaker 1I feel like he just got blackballed. You know at this. You know what I mean. Like he wouldn't. You know what I mean, cause he's a terrific actor. Did it go for the Oscar which he won before this?
Speaker 2Yeah, that was in 1945. And this was what 1950?.
Speaker 1And there's not a lot of credits was after that as well right, you know. So, yeah, it's too bad. He was a terrific actor some people just can't catch a break you know he's so likable, he has such a great boyish charm to him. You know, and I think peggy cummings is likable too, I mean as a as a bad seed.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, for sure. She's definitely likable to the audience. But I mean in that way that you're supposed to subvert expectations and kind of sympathize and root for this character. That's so bad. But, she succeeds in that because she is charming. There's just something very magnetic about her personality. You, you want to be in the role that John doll is in right. You, you want to be in that position.
Speaker 1You want her you want her.
Speaker 2I mean it's like, what can you say? What else can you say about it?
Speaker 1Oh, and I I brought up poverty road too, because there's a great use of economy and shooting that ends up creating terrific effects, like the sequence in the car Right.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I mean I had a photo of I don't want to deal with it, but like that sequence where they they planted the car in the back and it's an extended, probably two and a half, three minute scene, shot from one angle behind a car as he goes in to rob a bank and she stays to.
Speaker 1You know, wait, be his getting getaway driver has to distract a police officer and knock him over the head with a, with a pistol before he gets back in. But when they're taking off and those, those, those bells are ringing inside the bank and they slowly fade away, you know you don't get a lot of like diegetic sound with doppler effects back. You know, back back in the forties, right, that sort of realism of as you drive away you know this sounds stupid, but like you don't, that didn't happen very often back then, right, that's like such a touch of realism. It's terrific. And I just love that turn of her as she looks to see if they're being pursued and then the camera pushes in on her Right and she just has this crazy smile and always this terrific red lipstick. Right, no, we're not being followed, right, it's just, it's one. It's a standout, spectacular, amazing sequence and done because they didn't have the money, they shot it in like 30 minutes yeah you know for sure
Speaker 2and um joseph h lewis, who directed this movie, was not a big director by any means, but I think it's been a little bit more appreciated in recent years. He also did the Big Combo, which I started watching, but I couldn't finish it. Not because it was bad, it was just that it was too late at night when I tried to watch it.
Speaker 1I have seen the Big Combo before. I tried to rewatch. It couldn't finish. It fell asleep. But also it's very hard to find streaming-wise. It's easy to find but not in a really good-looking format.
Speaker 2I was watching it in like a oh, I got the Blu-ray for it, oh you did.
Speaker 1Okay, I watched like a VHS transfer on Amazon Prime. No, no, dude, that guy's so awesome.
Speaker 2Like the Brian Donlevy, like he's like where's Waldo now?
Speaker 1What a trooper Brian Donlevy.
Speaker 2And he plays the guy with the hearing aid right.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2That's that movie, right yeah?
Speaker 1Yeah, Brian Donlevy, you know just the great McGinty.
Speaker 2Where's Waldo popping up everywhere now.
Speaker 1Some guy.
Speaker 2I never heard of before. We watched Equator Mass and now he's like in everything.
Speaker 1Someone who I didn't heard of after I saw Equator Mass.
Speaker 2Oh, fun fact, Joseph H Lewis also directed a movie that a Poverty Row Bela Lugosi monogram film called Invisible Ghost, which if you ever have the chance to see is. It's quite an interesting watch. It's a. It's a terrible movie, but there is no invisible ghost in the movie.
Speaker 1How did this guy make a terrible movie? This is not terrible, it's one of the best.
Speaker 2It's one of the best monogram Lugosi films, of which there are nine.
Speaker 1Bela Lugosi meets a brooklyn invisible man no, no, no, invisible ghost.
Speaker 2Um, unfortunately, the keno blu-ray is out of print. I'm so glad that I picked that one up um a while ago because it's like isn't that, isn't that keno's mo?
Speaker 1don't they do only a like? One print run and it's over with yeah, either that or they.
Speaker 2I mean there's no rights for this because this is a public domain movie.
Speaker 1So oh, okay, what invisible ghost.
Speaker 2Yeah, they should just be like the Warner archive, which is the they they manufactured on demand, you know as, as opposed to a, a visible. I need that people know a visible ghost. So many that people know a visible ghost? Well, there's no.
Speaker 2Well, the ghost in the movie is someone who's, I think, still alive if I recall correctly, it's like it's like a um, rich guy that thinks his wife is dead, but she's actually not dead. She has, like amnesia and she lives in underneath the mansion uh, that he lives in and like she goes and wanders around at night and he thinks that he sees her and he goes crazy and starts murdering people in the house because of that. Okay, yeah, it's definitely worth a watch, I mean if you love Lugosi.
Speaker 1Well, we should do a Bela Lugosi show.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, We'll do the monogram. You know what we should do? We should do the monogram.
Speaker 1You know what we should do. We should do. Broke down films from former great actors oh yeah. The man with the two heads, or whatever with Ray Moland.
Speaker 2Oh my.
Speaker 1God, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1I bet that'll be a huge hit. Anytime you just talk shit.
Speaker 2We're over here exalting great films and everyone's like boring, but when you start talking about dog shit, they're like let's go, you know there's some, uh, there's some whatever happened to baby jane like knockoffs that came after that with other former, um, once great stars, I mean, uh, um, where you go, hush, hush, sweet. Charlotte is like the good one, because that's betty davis and olivia de havalen, but there's ones with like shelly winners and like oh poor shelly winners it's like they and they all have those crazy titles like whatever happened to, or you know what I mean maybe a rip-off episode
Speaker 1what's that, like if we like a rip-off episode, like if we watched, like william girdler, famed director of manitow and grizzly, another favorite of this show, um, if we watched his like abby, which was the blaxploitation exorcist that would be. You know a great um, a great episode of ripoffs hit. You know a great um, a great episode of ripoffs and we should just we should go bottom of the barrel on this show.
Speaker 2Um yeah, and karloff certainly made a lot of stinkers later in his career too. Have you ever seen frankenstein 1970? Uh, was that a hammer film no, it's a um, it's a independent like 50. It's made in the 50s and they were like in the far off year 1970. And it's like Karloff just doing the worst performance ever.
Speaker 1It looks to me like a dog is billed second, so that's not a good sign.
Speaker 2Oh no, sorry, that's just when I searched Frankenstein, don Redberry.
Speaker 1When I searched Frankenstein 1970, I see Jane Alund, but like there was a giant, like retriever I don't know if there was some Lassie tie-in or something going on there like a famous dog, you know. Oh my God. And then Tom Duggan I don't know what the fuck he's up to and anytime you've got Don, quote, unquote red Berry. You know the guy with the little nickname.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a good sign.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Really bad. I watched, I posted on on Twitter. I bought that DVD collection of monogrammed Westerns from like the thirties and forties man.
Speaker 1Those are to watch. Those are really really like jimmy wakely, like I. These movies are. These movies are bad man.
Speaker 2You are a glutton for punishment, brother. I just find these things so fascinating that they exist, right like and there's nine volumes of that set monogram cowboys.
Speaker 1There's nine volumes with like eight or nine films in each set okay, I was reading, I was reading through, um, my copy of I'm trying to find I think I took it upstairs but there's a less daniels book on batman that was designed by chip kid. Um, it's pretty good. And um, he talks about the batman cereal and I'm like, should I watch that? No, no, it's that bad it.
Speaker 2it's pretty bad Cause I think I mentioned it, for it's a Columbia cereal. Columbia cereals are trash. I mean you have to if you're going to watch any. If you're going to watch a cereal, it has to be a Republic cereal. Those are like grade a, top-notch cereals. So the ones that I highly recommend. My favorites are Adventures of Captain Marvel, which is Shazam that's a really, really good cereal and Daredevils of the Red Circle.
Speaker 1Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2And that was on Blu-ray from Kino and it's out of print now.
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2So I don't know if you can get it used like how much it is Great title oh, it's still. If you can get it used like how much it is Great title oh, it's so good. And it's like, it's like pure comic book pulp. You know, action adventure, very thrilling, very easy to watch, fast paced.
Speaker 1Just great stuff.
Speaker 2Let's see, ooh, $45. There's a DVD ford for 13.
Speaker 1oh, no, this is why I haven't moved up to the 4k, uhd or whatever fake bullshit. It's not fake, because blu-ray looks good enough to me, man. I mean, like I watch a dvd and I'm like you know, I need that Blu-ray. It depends on certain movies, the 4K we heard from our friend who we want to have on the show the damn fool, I don't list a crusader that he was very upset with the Maltese Falcon 4K UHD. I thought it looked good. You don't know shit.
Speaker 2I have the 4K from Maltese Falcon. I watched it and it looked okay to me, but what do I know?
Speaker 1You don't know anything. Apparently, it was a giant pile of shit from. So I mean, apparently you're just going to want to. You know, cut your wrists every three seconds, doesn't appreciate or know what I'm.
Speaker 2I'm being.
Speaker 1I'm being fed garbage and I just enjoy it. This guy's gonna. This guy's gonna think we're the biggest goons of all time. I'm gonna be like hey, um, you know encoding what are you talking about? You know he's gonna be like oh my god, you slop beast just eating your slop.
Speaker 2I'm like you don't win it for me. What did he say? You Philistine, or something like that.
Speaker 1Yeah, man, I mean like if I were working in like the home video department of any studio, I'd live in fear of this man Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Meticulous. It's good though.
Speaker 2I mean I wish I had that level of knowledge.
Speaker 1Yeah, had that level of knowledge? Yeah, I don't. I do not because I want to talk to him. I want to just ask extremely rudimentary, correct um questions, because I I've yet to find a video on his page that says like, hey, uh, what? This is what I'm talking about do you know?
Speaker 2what I would like to know is how he what, where does he get the information about some of these things?
Speaker 1because he watches all these movies like 10 times. This guy guy has the click Adam Sandler remote. He stops time and just watches fucking 15 movies, no problem. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2He must have some background in that industry. I mean there has to be. I mean it can't be 100% hobby. It can't be 100% hobby.
Speaker 1I mean he'll say stuff like oh my God, the 2006 DVD reissue had way better sound, and it's like I can't tell Sorry, yeah, I'd be like. I'd be like, oh, oh, lost on me. Yeah, I guess you know what I mean, but he has a very, very, very exacting, really fascinating.
Speaker 2I have more power to him.
Speaker 1He's an autodidact.
Speaker 2I also find it fascinating. He seems like an avid Laserdisc collector too, which is very cool.
Speaker 1I want to have him on and I want to say explain the history of home video formats, right. Explain to me why anyone would want to go back and watch a laser disc. I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason, but, like, explain to me why is it just collecting? I mean, does he find there to be anything interesting? You know?
Speaker 2laser disc collect. I mean I've, I've, I've thought about it and I've tried to dabble in it. I mean there's something very appealing about buying those giant LP size records that are the discs that have that very different artwork that you're not expecting with the square artwork, which would be like the VHS cover. There's something cool about it. Vhs collecting is also in vogue these days.
Speaker 1Which I do have some VHSs, and when I made my short film I I taped it to vhs and sold it as a vhs tape. That was the only format I wanted people to watch it on because I actually thought it looked kind of good and it like disguised everything bad about the sound and picture of the movie and like it kind of worked like with the theme of it. So like, um, it was cool. I bought, like I bought a bunch of box sets of highlander, the series at an antiques shop and taped over them with my movie. Um, but it was, it was a fun process and kind of interesting. You know, I had to hook a dvd player into an old analog tv and then hook a vhs player into that and play the dvd on the on the tv and then record it on the vhs player. You know, um, which was an interesting hack, we got battle elf, first comment of the night. Wow boy, this has been a flop. Uh, two scoops like trump. All right, bro, thanks. Um, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2I don't know what that means is that prince?
Speaker 1that is a little confused um.
Speaker 2I was going to say the VHS thing. Did you have a lot of VHS as?
Speaker 1a kid. Yeah, yeah, we got rid of them all when DVD came out.
Speaker 2See, I didn't have very many movies, not adult movies but real movies. Most of the VHS. I still have them all. They're all cartoons or TV shows or something like that. You know, I was big into that. So we'll have like all the X-Men cartoon videos Each one was its own separate tape All the Batman animated series, the Scooby-Doo, flintstones, things like Ninja Turtles, you know whatever else. Things like that, mostly the VHS, I else things like that Mostly they have.
Speaker 1We had that. My mom was a huge, a very prolific buyer of home video and so, like that was how I kind of got into movies was, when I got old enough to babysit my brothers, my parents went out. I would just watch Howard's end, or you know like she really liked those merchant ivory movies, like you know room with a view, um, and then she would have shit like reservoir dogs and you know casino and just stuff like that, like anything that was like a cool, like film for adults, like last the mohican stuff they don't really make anymore. You know movies that were for your parents to go see when you were a kid, right, yeah, um, and so I would watch a lot of those when I was like you know 11 or 12, that was a big thing, I didn't care.
Speaker 2They were on vhs but well, that was what was around. I mean I mean I still.
Speaker 2I still remember buying the x-men movie on vhs, so you know, um. But like the other movies that I had that were real movies I bought, remember, because it'd be after I'd go to Universal and as a little kid I didn't know what Jaws was, or King Kong, or Earthquake or all these things. And I would say, well, what are these movies? And so my parents would buy me the video and we'd have Earthquake, a Jaws series like the 70s. King Kong, the Back to the Future series, which came in a very nice box set. King Kong, the Back to the Future series, which came in a very nice box set.
Speaker 1Those were mainly the real movies that I had as a kid. I remember my mom. I miss video sections at Target and Best Buy. Oh yeah, I was at.
Speaker 2Target the other day and I don't even think they have a movie section anymore. It's pitiful because it's an easy gift. Also, that's an easy gift idea for people. I mean it was a great gift, great stocking stuffer.
Speaker 1I still ask for. You know, I'm like hey, give me that's what I'm getting for christmas.
Speaker 2I'm getting blu-rays and 4ks and and books, but that's something else too.
Speaker 1Criterion started on laserdisc and you could only get them on laserdisc. They weren't on v? Vhs because they would have audio commentaries, because you could flip audio tracks on a Laserdisc and you could not do that on VHS. I know some of the special features on films like I think King Kong is the first Criterion film released. I think on a lot of those there are some special features you can only still watch on Laserdisc or some commentaries you can only get on Laserdisc.
Speaker 2Well, our friend would know.
Speaker 1He would definitely know Okay, we've put off for far too long on our final film.
Speaker 2Oh, we have an explanation for the two scoops, the picture you have up and this is part two of Film Noir, hence two scoops the picture you have up and this is part two of film noir, hence two scoops it looks like he's okay he looks like he's got three scoops though does he not?
Speaker 1he's got three. He's got three. Okay, um, kiss me deadly. Mickey's playing huge. Author. I guess I don't know if this is apocryphal, but in the Criterion pamphlet it says that at one point in time he had written seven of the top 10 best-selling novels in America.
Speaker 2Did I know that?
Speaker 1Yeah, Huge huge.
Speaker 2You know, I don't even realize sometimes that there's stuff written on those Sorry.
Speaker 1On what oh the comments?
Speaker 2On those booklets those booklets inside.
Speaker 1Oh, dude, I I love those. They give me a big, thick booklet with a nice academic essay in there. I'm like let's go time to get my new opinion. You know, um, no criterion's great about that. This is a beautiful booklet for the kiss me deadly blu-ray. I. I mean, look at this, it's so cool. I mean it's awesome. So they did a great job with it. This is an awesome movie. My wife hated it.
Speaker 2Why.
Speaker 1She thought that my dude was a bad guy.
Speaker 2Well, he's not a bad guy. He's rough, he's tough, he's kind of playing fast and loose. But he's not a bad guy, he's a. Robert aldrich thought he was a bad guy.
Speaker 1He, because this movie is very much in the line with, like starship troopers, where, um, it's supposed to be an indictment of the thing, but instead it makes just makes the thing look awesome, you know, yeah no, uh, mike.
Speaker 2Mike hammer is a cool dude and he's, yes, he's, he's doing things probably for the wrong reasons, but I don't know, it's because aldrich said, oh, this is a fascist movie, a fascist script.
Gun Crazy: Violence and Passion
Speaker 1And they actually took um mike hammer because in the books he's a private eye. But they were like no, let's make him a divorced dick, like a guy who just kind of peeps on people. You know what I mean. They're like let's make him a bigger scumbag, but it doesn't work because he's like Ralph Meeker's super cool.
Speaker 2Who we saw 20 years later in Kolchak.
Speaker 1Remember that's right, almost unrecognizable. I remember we talked about this movie. Then I was like, oh, kiss Me Deadly, let's go.
Speaker 2Right the Night Stalker?
Speaker 1I think the first one Incredibly cool, pulpy, genre-bending film that I think features more overtly something that informs film noir throughout its entire lifespan. This film is from 55, which is where a lot of people find the cutoff for film noir throughout its entire lifespan. This film is from 55, which is where a lot of people find the cutoff for film noir. Um, but I think there's a huge unspoken fear and anxiety of the bomb in a lot of film noir movies, especially ones that take place in the city. Uh, when I was reading this book somewhere in the night, the author made a great point about how it opened up a new reality where you could be just completely vaporized at any time and the cities became even more dangerous place to be and a more anonymous place to be. And this movie takes the idea of the bomb head-on and inspired pulp fictions. Uh, ending, you know, inspired the pulp fiction briefcase in the process. What do you think?
Speaker 2yes, I would say film noir enters the atomic age with this movie, in a very blunt way. I was not expecting that to be the payoff. Um, the first time I watched this I had no idea what I was in store for. I mean, I'd seen this now. This was the second time I watched this, uh preparing for this.
Speaker 2This uh stream tonight, but the first time I was never in a million years would I have guessed that there was going to be some kind of radioactive material inside the box. And I mean, obviously it's played to the most dramatic effect possible where at the end she has a Raiders of the Lost Ark moment there and she literally explodes, explodes into flames, yeah.
Speaker 1And it's played so like over the top, and I I loved it, though like she's like screaming her head off and she's clearly like a mannequin on fire, but it's so good, it's so good the movie is incredibly sadistic and violent yes I mean I was watching it again and I go, oh my god, like that part when the guy's tailing him and he like grabs him and he goes drop the knife and he punches him twice and he slams his head against the cement block. I was like Jesus Christ. And he twists that guy's hand and then kind of smiles like he's enjoying it.
Speaker 2You're like, wow, how about at the pool house when he just we don't even see what he does to that one guy. He has a funny name.
Speaker 1Oh, great name, Sugar Smallhouse. Yes.
Speaker 2We don't even see what he does to him.
Speaker 2And he is out cold, but you feel no mercy for these. Mike Hammer may not be the most altruistic person in the world, but you can relate to him and you can sympathize with him in his plight. The but the other people in the movie are so bad, so evil, so just disgusting, that you at least relish in his like retribution to them for payback for what they did to him and what they did to uh, christina the, the girl that gets murdered at the beginning, played by cloris leachman there should be some kind of term for that kind of character too, which is not a film noir, but like sort of an enticing female character.
Speaker 1That is the setup, you know. I mean, like she brings the guy into the story. She's not evil, but she's sort of this enticing female character. Um, I guess I'm not a big perm guy, but, um, you know, I mean, I just think about the part where she's being tortured.
Speaker 2I was like, oh my god, you just see her legs, the feet, yeah, oh my god crazy.
Speaker 1So yeah, basically, ralph meeker, um, mike hammer picks up, um, picks up, uh. I remember there was a james bond tv advertisement that said that James Bond makes Mickey Spillane look like a grandmother, right as in like he puts to shame all of Mickey Spillane's hard edged heroes. But you know he's cool. He picks up a gown, his really cool card. We get like terrific, you know lockdown cameras on the back and front of the car. We get real driving and it's like really pretty neat effect.
Speaker 1Right Picks up this girl, covers for her when she says she escaped from a madhouse but she's looking for something. Then they get, uh, cornered by some bad guys who we don't see, and, um, she's tortured and murdered and he escapes with his life after they stage their demise right, and then from there he goes on to investigate exactly what's going on, which leads him to a mysterious briefcase and a whole lot of other uh issues. Look bad, I'm sorry, I'm gonna interrupt your battle. Elf says um, almost as shocking as hearing, george is married to a live woman. Allegedly stress, allegedly. You know, I can make up whatever I want, but go ahead um, oh okay, I was gonna say um, uh, I don't remember, it can happen to me, it can happen to you, bro.
Speaker 1Keep, keep trying, go ahead I had a presidential moment.
Speaker 2Um, yeah, I mean this movie is brutal. This movie is, uh, totally different than all the others that we've talked about tonight, in that what I was saying is that it feels it feels very mean, it feels very visceral, like there's. There's something you can. You can kind of feel it like under your skin, like the anxiety of what's going to happen next. Anything's, anything's on the table, right, I mean people come and go, people get killed very, um, casually, yes, for for no reason, uh, other than they just get in the way. I mean, in fact, it's, it's, it's. When I say it's brutal, I mean, uh, he survives the car crash that's meant to kill him with, with the dead girl in the car but when he doesn't the um, the uh, the killers.
Speaker 2they call him up and they say hey, how about you just forget about everything? And you know he could have just said OK, he doesn't really say he's not going to forget about it, but they're like we're going to give you a gift tomorrow and of course there's a bomb in the car connected to the starter, and then there's another bomb connected to the odometer and it's like well, it's like now he has to. Now you've just incentivized him even more to come after you. If you just left him alone, he probably would have gone on his way and none the wiser. But you, you keep enticing him to find, keep looking more and more, because there's something there that they don't want him to find. And what do you?
Speaker 2want a detective on your trail exactly, and he's.
Speaker 1I think ralph meeker is really cool. I mean, I like him a lot as an actor. I'm too bad he didn't do more. Uh, he was in a film called the naked spur with jimmy stewart oh yeah great revisionist western where he plays the foil to jimmy.
Speaker 1Uh, a great movie. I would say jimmy stewart's the searchers, if. If you know jimmy stewart were, it's kind of like his revisionist Western Come to Jesus kind of a thing. But this movie is badass and that's really I'm trying to think if you have anything else to touch on about it. I mean it's pretty neat and the way it sort of confronts the idea of nuclear war and nuclear Armageddon is interesting. Also, there are a lot of parallels with this movie and if you've seen David Lynch's Lost Highway the hidden, obscure cabin that everyone returns to to be tortured or killed, very similar to the climax of that movie You've seen Lost Highway, mm-mm, oh, you should. You like David Lynch?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean not everything. I think we've had this talk. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, you mean not everything.
Speaker 1I think we've had this. I think we've had this talk. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, well, you should see Lost Highway, but go ahead.
Speaker 2I was going to say. Also, interestingly, our climax takes place at a very similar beach house as in Mildred Pierce, where everything comes unraveling down. Of course, this ends with a more explosive finale, unlike that film. But yeah, I really really like this. Um, it subverts your expectations. It offers something more to think about than just, you know, politics in the city or, uh, gangsters or family drama. There's higher stakes involved here. What are they planning to do with that radioactive material? They're planning to sell it? They're gangsters or family drama. There's higher stakes involved here. What are they planning to do with that radioactive material? They're planning to sell it? They're planning to use it? We don't know. And, of course, the femme fatale here, who I don't even remember, does she? Did they ever tell you what her real name is?
Speaker 1No, it keeps changing yeah.
Speaker 2It keeps changing because she's imitating the roommate of Cloris Leachman, who then throws herself at Mike Hammer to protect her, but of course she's not really the roommate. The roommate was found in the river several days before, unbeknownst to him, and she's been playing it the entire time and uses him to track down the package. So she is and she is merciless as well and she backstabs and two times her, her boss. Who's this? I mean, I feel like we could have used a little bit more backstory or info on this. Dr. Dr Soberin, who kind of just comes out of left field, and what is his connection to all this? Is he just a broker or a con man? What's his deal?
Speaker 1These were things that I think I read a great quote from Robert Altman, who did a remake of the Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould, which is really good from 1973, if you can check it out Poorly received at the time because it wasn't really a great adaption of Chandler, it wasn't really a great remake of a you know it wasn't the Marlow of Bogart, right, but it's a great movie. And Altman said he was drawn to film noir detectives because what he called them were thumbnail essays on specific elements of life and the plot that strung them together did not matter, right. But it's about the detective like spillane here, like a lot of great detectives, like sam spade, is someone who transcends class, as we've talked about, to where he can hang out at the boxing gym. He can hang out with his italian car, guy vavroom or whatever, who sadly has exploded right or dies or tortured. Yeah, what do they?
Speaker 2they drop the car on him they drop the car on him, yeah yeah, yeah, um and I guess soberin does it himself, because we see the, the I guess they're the blue, safe blue suede shoes that, uh, every time right he was, he was, yes, at the um, the torture scene with the girl, we always see the, the tips of the shoes for this guy and not until we do we realize that who it is?
Speaker 2but that's the thing is like in the multi-stock and you mentioned Sam Spade like we get an idea of who that kind of collection of criminals and ne'er-do-wells are, that that are all after the burden, and you get a sense of they want that. They want that bird because it's valuable. They're going to sell it, okay. Motivations are very clear, explicit. They're going to sell it. Okay. Motivations are very clear, explicit, not very complicated, and that's fine. And it's not about that, it's about the process here. I mean, I feel like we don't, we don't, we don't know the, the antagonists at all and kind of get shoehorned in at the end and you know I'm not a big stickler for stuff like this.
Speaker 2But I think it would have helped flesh it out because I felt myself a little confused by who all the players were at different times and what they were doing other than just obtaining a box, which is fine, but it makes it a little bit more impactful.
Speaker 1I got a quote for you. The script was written by a guy named Bezerides. He said he wrote it fast. It was automatic writing. Things were in the air at the time and I put them in. Now you talk about this sort of obfuscation of who's after this thing. What do they want? What's their motivation? This is sort of a reflection of the political change, I think, after world war ii that we get the introduction of the cia, we get the introduction of like the war footing has shifted to spying. It's shifted to clandestine bureaucracy. Things don't make sense. Nuclear Armageddon can be kicked off through just haphazard circumstances of Mike Hammer tooling around town. I think that is kind of the idea. That's like the sort of nascent emerging idea of this film. Right, and why? It doesn't necessarily, I guess, make sense from a plot perspective.
Speaker 2It doesn't matter, I mean, but it's just. I'm just saying it would have been. It would have been nice, I think, to illuminate the villain a little bit more. To have it more impactful.
Speaker 1The other thing I like about all these guys, these detective characters, is I love their contempt for the police but how they sort of like operate, you know, in line with them, sort of adjacent to them, but that they can be brought in to be, you know, questioned, and just have total contempt for the operation, right, they're kind of like more the police and the police like better than them, right?
Speaker 2You know, if you're, how much can I get away with before I call them, before I have to tell them what I know, before I have to ask for their help?
Speaker 1Great way to put it. How much of a cowboy can I still be in modern America?
Speaker 2Yes, and if you watch Perry Mason and I'm reading reading the novels now too that's a common thread and a common through line through all of those too is that they're always trying to subvert the police, and he knows just how far he can push the line because he's an attorney. And then at certain times he has to capitulate and kind of just put his cards on the table and sell them because now he's in, he's in deep water there.
Speaker 1He's in deep. Yeah, no, it's a good movie, man. It's a good. It's a good one to end on, I think definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2I really liked this one a lot too. It's not my favorite of the lot, but I I mean I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1Kind of a little proto James Bond energy going on here. As you can see from all of the promotional stills, all had to do with the women of Mike Hammer Right Reminds me of that Only Live Twice poster where Bond is being bathed by various women in China or Japan.
Speaker 2It's funny that I recognize Cloris Leachman only from her voice, because she's so young here that I did not know that was her. But then I heard her voice and I'm like, is that her? Did not know that was her. But then I I heard her voice and I'm like, is that her? And then I look at it, it's her. She's, uh, she's the girl at the beginning. Of course she was on, uh, mary tyler moore show and many other things I do not have.
Speaker 1I know I've heard that name before, but I don't have the oh and she's a?
Speaker 2uh, she's a native Iowan. She's a native Iowan.
Speaker 1From Des Moines.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah, you never watched the Mary Tyler Moore show.
Speaker 1Mike Hammer wasn't married. No, he was a confirmed bachelor with a voicemail reel-to-reel, which would have been some big shit back then, dude.
Speaker 2Who's the lady on the recording, though, and how does she know that he doesn't have any messages when he gets home?
Speaker 1Wasn't that his gal Vera.
Speaker 2Where is she recording that from? How does she know Did she go to his apartment and why does she need to record that?
Speaker 1there's no message.
Speaker 2Yeah, his apartment's like his office, it's his hang, it's his pad apartment's like his office, it's like his kind of, it's his hang, it's his pad. But then what is somebody called while he was out, after she left? How would she not know that there's no new messages?
Speaker 1it was new tech, it impressed everybody at the time. You're not impressed, you're a philistine, um, you know whatever I love that.
Speaker 2I mean, come on that, does that not look like god? Does that not look like the ending of raiders of the lost ark there?
Speaker 1yeah, it absolutely does.
Speaker 2Absolutely, it does um, and that's what I like about this it's um, it's not afraid to um, to, to take that next level into, like the space age here, and I'm all for that. Throwing in that otherworldly, I mean it's real, you know it's of this world, but it's fanciful.
Speaker 1To that regard, I mean, even this costume that she's wearing looks like some you know things to come style, or like Captain Marvel style, you know what I mean? Like a space cadet outfit, almost oh, how about the beginning?
Speaker 2you have the photo of her stopping the car I mean she's it's, it's implicitly stated, but she's completely naked under that trench coat right, because they have that.
Speaker 1They have that back and forth with the uh, with the grease monkey guy at the gas station where he's like oh, you pulled over to the side of the road and got a little wood stuck in your car. Pulling over the side of the road and got a little wood stuck in your car pulling over to the side of the road. Right, there's that kind of right. Yeah, with the trench coat. Wow, we have five guys going just into, not do, never mind tuned out Nothing. I was looking at the eyeball at the top of the screen. It tells you how many people you have watching. Yeah, battle of thanks for stopping by, brother, what else you got? Can we wrap this up succinctly and and tell the audience what they've? We've? They've gone on this, this journey, with us, not as long as the hammer journey, but I think it was a nice primer.
Speaker 2Uh, these would be good intro films for you from a film noir perspective oh for sure, I think all all eight of the films that we talked about. I mean, you may hate me for saying, but I wouldn't put the glass key at the top of these, but um, maybe that was a poor choice. I apologize I think it was good to talk about, but I wouldn't put it up there as a movie I know you do, I know you do, but like we could watch the maltese falcon.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah I would put the maltese falcon uh in place of that as one to watch, for sure.
Speaker 1You know, DOA is one that I like the Big Clock. I'm planning on doing a solo video review of the Big Clock, which is good.
Speaker 2And I think I mentioned.
Speaker 1Orson Welles.
Speaker 2Did you see the Stranger?
Speaker 1No, I've not seen the Stranger.
Speaker 2Okay, it's very good. I think he also directed it as well. But it's him playing an escaped Nazi who comes to America and hides out in rural, small-town America to start a new life. And Edward G Robinson is like a G-man who's on the trail of this guy and is out to expose him and take him out. So it's very good. And then you wonder is is uh, orson will is going to kill his wife, who starts to become um suspicious that he may be this escaped nazi oh so that's a really good one.
Speaker 2And then, um, also edward g robinson in woman in the window is another one that I really, really liked I watched. That was one of the other ones I've watched at the. I watched like the first ones I watched when I was getting into that with Joan Bennett.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm looking through lists here and of course we talked about how there are ones we disagreed with, like Notorious. I wouldn't have thrown that in there.
Speaker 2Notorious is hard to put in a category. It's like a romance, melodrama, suspense, picture. Yeah.
Speaker 1The Blue Dahlia. Maybe that would have been a better Alan Ladd one to watch with Veronica Lake. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2Would you say Suspicion is more noir? Would you say suspicion is more noir than I mean? I think that's more norm. I wouldn't put suspicion as a noir, but I think, as for Hitchcock, suspicion is much more in that style than notorious.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Um, the killers from 1946, not bad, but the remake from 64 is better. Have you seen that?
Speaker 2is that the one with ronald reagan or? Yes, it's so good that's the only film where he plays a villain. I think right, yeah it's scary.
Speaker 1He's really good. That's a great with john cassavetes is the lead, and then we have, um uh uh, police woman oh, you know, ronald reagan films, that's another, that's another.
Speaker 2Uh, idea boy bedtime for bonzo have you ever seen um newt rockney, american hero, or whatever it's called?
Speaker 1yeah, yeah, I didn't understand it. I had a bunch of yeah, it's a terrible fucking movie. I'm with, it's terrible and like he just like dies for no reason and I'm like what the fuck?
Speaker 2is that? That's where the the uh give one for the gipper, this guy?
Speaker 1that's where the give one for the Gipper yeah, let's, let's do it for the Gipper or whatever. Yeah, I had a couple of uncles and aunts that went to Notre Dame and they were like, oh, newt Rockne is a badass. And I was like I guess he just died from like alcohol poisoning.
Speaker 2I don't remember, I almost couldn't finish it.
Speaker 1No, they don't tell you that in the movie because it's embarrassing. He just dies. He lost the will to live, padme style.
Speaker 2Years and years ago, probably around 2000, 2001,. Something like that when I went to California for the first time and went on the Warner Brothers studio tour back then, they used to have an entire wall and section devoted to Ronald Reagan and his films and his photos and everything and um. And then when I went back, like I don't know, 15 years later or something like that, I was all gone. It's all Harry Potter, you know.
Speaker 1It's like so sad they got rid of all that, because it's this party was one of those studios major stars, you know, one of the most important sad they.
Speaker 2they got rid of all that Cause it's it's part. He was one of those studios major stars, you know one of the most important Americans. Yeah, but I mean, if you're, if you're he was, he was a star at that studio and you know those movies are all terrible but yeah, I don't, I don. He was in Dark Victory with Betty Davis in a supporting role and that's probably one of the best movies he's in. Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 1No, I have not.
Speaker 2It's really good. She plays a woman who's going blind and losing her sight throughout the entire picture. At the end, I think she actually does go blind, but it's her emotional struggle and things like that.
Speaker 1What's the big movie he's very famous for? For where's the rest of me? Or whatever. For what? Where he loses his legs, Where's the rest of me? Right?
Speaker 2I don't remember.
Speaker 1No, that's like his big famous line, isn't it oh?
Speaker 2law and order. Oh no, law and order. He's not, doesn't lose his legs, and I've seen that one.
Speaker 1That's a no no, it's not that, I'm just. I'm reading off his filmography here. Law and order. That wouldn't be a bad show to do.
Speaker 2Actually I'm trying to remember law and order. They it's like the same movie as they it's like been remade like a hundred times. It's like the same movie made over and over. It is aping You'd have to see it again, but that one's really good. I did enjoy Law Order. It's a nice Technicolor Reagan film with. I think they loaned him out to Universal for that one.
Speaker 1Oh, really, yeah the other thing.
Speaker 2I was thinking about which would be a really good topic would be Abbott and Costello.
Speaker 1I'd love to do that. What, yeah, I'd love to do that.
Speaker 2What yeah, I'd love to do that, yeah, um, and not just the monster films, I mean, cause that's been like, that's just too easy, like some of the other films.
Speaker 1Yeah, like um what.
Speaker 2Well hope. I mean I don't. I wouldn't put hold that ghost as a monster film, but sort of in that. But Hold that Ghost is really good. One of the ones I really like is Abbott and Costello meet the Keystone Cops. That's a really fun movie. Because it's kind of like movie-based they're filming a movie, there's a lot of cameos and things like that.
Speaker 1Sounds fun. Do you like Scooby-Doo?
Speaker 2Love it.
Speaker 1Would you ever want to do a Scooby-Doo? Meets Don Knotts and meets phyllis diller, and all that shit, yeah. New scooby-doo movies yeah battle elf, I was gonna make fun of your ass. I was gonna say, yeah, you're gonna go. No country for old men. Number five miller's crossing we talked about last week that's a great movie, no doubt we can do uh, we can do Scooby-Doo.
Speaker 2After the Johnny Quest Space Ghost one, my favorite one for the Scooby-Doo team-ups, I mean it's got to be the Batman and Robin one, that's awesome.
Speaker 1I mean there's two of them.
Speaker 2The best one, though, is the one where they're in the campgrounds and the Joker and the Penguin are trying to steal the flying suit. That's the best one.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2And then my other favorite one is the Davy Jones one, where he has like the mansion in England and there's a headless horse, there's a headless horseman, a black knight on horseback.
Speaker 1That's like haunting the castle with Davy Jones from the monkeys. Yeah, okay, and he sings a song you want to guess.
Speaker 2So there's guests, I mean. I remember these off the top of my head there's the real, live people, and then there's the people that were just like cartoon characters and like dead celebrities. Sandy Duncan yeah, sandy Duncan, they did Sunny and Cher Dick Van Dyke, mama Cass she died, they did Mama Cass. Mama Cass was alive though at that time I mean, this is like 73 or so, I mean. So she was still alive.
Speaker 1The Harlem Globetrotters. I remember that one.
Speaker 2But they were not. Those are not the real, those are just voice actors.
Speaker 1Same with the.
Speaker 2Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy, and you know people like that. They're dead.
Speaker 1Jerry Reed Jerry.
Speaker 2Reed's people like that.
Speaker 1They're dead, jerry okay, jerry reed, jerry reed's in there, yeah what there was a meet jerry reed, not harry reed, jerry, that's what I said.
Speaker 2Yeah, not harry reed I don't think he was famous enough.
Speaker 1No, jerry reed Bandit.
Kiss Me Deadly and Atomic Age Noir
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and he sings the song as well. He sings the Pretty Merry Sunlight. The Sonny and Cher one is really good. Actually, the, I think, is that the one with no, that's the shark. The shark god one, yeah. And then there's the cool ones where they meet other Hanna-Barbera characters, like Josie and the Pussycats and the Speed Buggy Gang.
Speaker 1Yeah, it meets Sonny and Shira. It looks awesome.
Speaker 2Yeah, sandy Duncan, one's pretty good. Oh, phyllis Diller, that's a good one, don Knotts, like he said. Oh Don Adams from Get Smart.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2That's a good one. He plays an exterminator. There's so many good ones. I used to love that All those celebrities were like has-beens then.
Speaker 1I know I knew who Don Knotts was, but when we were kids watching Boomerang I'd be like Jerry Reed.
Speaker 2I was like yeah, todayooby-doo meets diller and it's like, yeah, yeah, I mean, she was still alive even then, like like when you're watching these like she only died not that long ago and she would still be like around, but it's like man.
Speaker 1These references are way old and it's, I know about all these things though oh, professor, hide white, that's the one I remember the most that's so.
Speaker 2That's the first episode. What a night for a night is it? Yeah, professor, hide white is the guy that is, um, the professor that gets kidnapped and they find him, like stuff, behind a plant or something like that. Scooby-doo is cool. Yeah, I love it. I know way too much about it.
Speaker 1Do you ever listen to that bald guy on the internet who talks about Scooby-Doo all the time?
Speaker 2Is it the Scoobypedia?
Speaker 1There's a channel.
Speaker 2It's like okay.
Speaker 1Yeah, he talks about Scooby-Doo all the time. He loves Scooby-Doo.
Speaker 2There's a couple channels out there, but I don't know. I really should do something, but I got too much stuff to do. Yeah, I feel you brother. I feel like I did a disservice to myself not focusing on I want to do too many different topics. And it actually undercuts, like the growth of the channel, you know, like. I should be doing like cartoons, or I should be doing Scooby-Doo, or I should be doing only this, and it's like no, I want to do everything, but then I ended up doing nothing.
Speaker 1I know what you mean and and like I'm trying to figure out. Like I had a one movie in mind, but I got a lot of followers recently from that cone of the barbarian video oh yes, congratulations, by the way that's yeah, thank you, that was huge. That was huge for my show still going too yeah, yes, which is cool. I'm kind of waiting for it to peter out, but um, it's just very consistent, like you know 2000 a day, or something.
Speaker 1But, but I'm like oh shit, I want to capitalize On these new followers that like Conan. So I'm like what do I do next? Robocop, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 2Do Conan the Destroyer or do Red Sonja? I thought about doing Conan the Destroyer Red Sonja would be an interesting choice, though, because it's related to that and it's at least different.
Speaker 1Yeah, because I was going to do the big clock, but then I was like no what are you going to say?
Speaker 2Oh, they're going to. The Conan audience is going to be like they're going to be like don't care, yeah.
Speaker 1So I'm thinking A dirty movie. Yeah, something I have wanted 80s movies man. Yeah, battle of the City. You said Krull. Yeah, I've thought about doing Krull many times. Yeah, maybe I will. But I'm thinking maybe I'm going to do a Planet of the Apes retrospective of the original series. I've wanted to do that for a long time. It's going to take a lot of research and stuff, because I want to talk about the cartoon and the tv show in the comics too yeah but um, I'm thinking about that do you have a favorite of those?
Speaker 1I mean, the first one is obviously the best, but of the sequels, I think beneath is pretty cool, I think they kind of progressively actually you know what um battle. No, I mean, what's what's the fourth one with? With, uh, caesar, when he like comes up and it's like this, like um I think, battle for battle for the planet of the ace I think battle's the last one. The fourth one is big geek girl moment yeah, yeah, let me look it up um but I've thought about doing a plan to the eggs.
Speaker 1I got conquest that whole mixed up, that one is really cool and like very dystopic and and unique. The third one, not huge on it, um matt says I should probably do escape from the planet of the eggs.
Speaker 2That's my favorite. You don't like that one where they come back, where they go into modern times not really.
Speaker 1No, oh my god, I love that movie. It's so cheap out. Third one, dude, that's the cheap, amazing I love it.
Speaker 2The social commentary and allegory is phenomenal in that one it's not bad.
Speaker 1I mean I don't, I don't hate it, but I like. I like the fourth one, maybe the better, but I like beneath the plan of the apes a lot. The first one is obviously unparalleled. The best. Matt o'brien, buddy of mine, says, probably should do conan the destroyer next. Yeah, I know well, thank you. Uh, thanks, matt. You know, yeah, I, I probably should to capitalize on the success but at the same time, like I do this because I like to do it and I don't want to just start being like what do I gotta do? You know what I mean to keep the followers? You know, I kind of just want to do what I want to do.
Speaker 2You should do a reaction, first time watching.
Speaker 1First time watching Conan Destroyer. Yeah, you and me just sit there. Oh, you got a big sword in this one, oh my god, it's no shame, I just can't stand those things.
Speaker 2It's just driving me nuts and it's like half a million views. First time watching Robocop.
Speaker 1Seriously nuts, and it's like half a million views like first time watching robocop, and it's like seriously, like you got any interesting comments on that? Yeah, like, um, like, if I really wanted to take off, man, I just start making, like you know. Oh, the new um, the new superman, is woke. Oh, my god, just start bitching or something. You know what I mean, just do one of those kennedy's at it again. God, star wars sucks. Yeah, just do that kind of thing, yeah disney is in decline yeah, exactly, yeah got anything new got anything go woke, go broke, yeah, and now that, now that south park has done it.
Speaker 2I don't think. I don't think we need any more videos online talking about?
Speaker 1no, we don't, it's officially hit critical mass. Exactly Conan the Maid Impregnator.
Speaker 2Yes, that's the real life version.
Speaker 1That is funny.
Speaker 2Excalibur, that's a nice choice that is a good one.
Speaker 1That's a good one. I would be happy to do Excalibur. That would be cool, and I love John Borman too, so that's a pretty unique movie for for me I am.
Speaker 2I actually have started working on it now. I just ripped the files I'm doing. I need to get it out. Before christmas is the flintstones christmas special review you gotta get that out before christmas.
Speaker 1Dude, I'm gonna get it out before christmas.
Speaker 2I ripped the files and I recorded the audio so my christmas special, my friend footstone there's, uh, there's a surprisingly four of them, which, uh, you know it's a lot. I always wonder what are they celebrating? It yeah it's the time before christ, so how are they?
Speaker 1exactly, exactly celebrating on christmas exactly they had all the same shit back then as they had now. Remember that. Uh, they had a tony curtis episode.
Speaker 2Remember watching that return of stony curtis stony curtis.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's right, stony. I was gonna include that in my sweet small success video, but I uh opted not to. That would be a very um video also.
Speaker 2It's like flintstone, just a little um review of all the flintstone guest stars real people, because there's quite a few. I mean there's ann margarock, um yeah, and then the one that was like the most obscure as a kid. I I mean like I knew who ann margaret was even as a kid, I mean you know, and even stoney curtis and stuff like that. But but Hoagie Carmichael always was like who is this?
Speaker 1He was appointed by the Senate of the United States to be a celebrity.
Speaker 2He was like a big jazz guy and I saw him later in a movie. Have you ever seen Kirk Douglas in Young man with a Horn?
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2That's also one I thought about doing a video on. It's a. It's a really interesting movie. I think Michael Curtiz also directed that one, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1I really you know what. Maybe what I'm going to do next is Kirk Douglas, a Vikings movie.
Speaker 2Which one?
Speaker 1was Tony Curtis. He made a movie called the Vikings. Yeah, it was Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in it, and it's pretty sweet.
Speaker 2Tony Curtis, and it was actually the Manitow.
Speaker 1The fun thing about the Vikings from the 60s with Stoney Curtis and Kirk Douglas, is that it was directed by Richard Fleischer, who then directed Conan the Destroyer.
Speaker 2And I think Did he do Red Sonja too, he might have.
Speaker 1I think he did. I think did he do. Red Sonja too, he might have. I think he did. I think he did. Matt says is there an Amelius movie? You would do yeah.
Speaker 2Dillinger. Richard Fleischer is a pretty interesting guy. Did a lot of films, a long career. I'm pretty sure he did. Yeah, he did 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Speaker 1Which is dope, which is dope, great movie.
Speaker 2Yeah no, which is dope great movie. Yeah, no, I mean I love, I'm totally down for all those disney um those disney 50s like live action adventure.
Speaker 1That is a cool movie.
Speaker 2I got to see that in theater, treasure islands also phenomenal I just watched it recently again and it just it holds up. It's really good. Um what's trash are like the, um, the, the ones that are not adventure films, like I tried to watch pollyanna. Don't ask me why uh jane wyman's in it. So I figured like, oh, it'd be cool.
Speaker 1It was so boring, it was so dreadful, I turned it off um, I've done a lot of movies, got that one on blu-ray I got that one on blu-ray.
Speaker 2Old yeller, yeah, I do, I've actually done.
Speaker 1Old Yeller.
Speaker 2Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1I've actually done a lot of Kirk Douglas. I'm going to be like the Kirk Douglas channel. I've done a bunch of shit with him.
Speaker 2Paths of Glory, another great one. I was with him in it. What was I watching that he was in?
Speaker 1Yeah, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is dope.
Speaker 2It's a great movie yeah, well, anything with james mason, right, I mean oh yeah, it's captain nemo.
Speaker 1He's so cool, he's underwater base for sure. You know what I mean. Like that was.
Speaker 2That was badass I I remember the ride existing during like my visits, to like the magic kingdom as a little kid, but I do not remember going on the ride like have any experience, like they had a 20 dozen leagues under the sea ride at the Magic Kingdom, but I don't remember it at all, unfortunately.
Speaker 1You know, what I would love to have seen that I read about in Starlog magazine was the I think it was on the Paramount lot. You could go on a Battlestar Galactica ride for like three years, from 1978 to 80.
Speaker 2At Universal on the studio tour.
Speaker 1Universal, universal Okay.
Speaker 2They had that. Um, it was one of the. It was like one of the major additions to the studio tour, yeah, and it was like the silence, like shooting at you and stuff like that. It looked pretty awesome.
Speaker 1I mean, I wish I had animatronics.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1I wish.
Speaker 2I'd been alive during that time. Um, now they, at least they still have the jaws um encounter and I think the earthquake thing is still there. But the king kong experience burned down like oh no over a decade ago when they had the big fire on the lot and the clock tower. The back to the future clock tower burned down and the king kong encounter oh no yeah, and now they have that trash uh fast and the furious um.
Speaker 2And now they have that trash uh fast and the furious um simulator thing which they ported over to florida and they got rid of earthquake and beetle juice here for that. And it's like the most abysmal ride like ever. Like you literally sit in a bus and there's screens yeah, you sit in a party party bus, okay, and there's screens on both sides and in the front and like the most like video game style bad cg graphics of like all the characters flying around and like doing the most ridiculous stunts, um ever. And then like you don't know what to look at because it's so much stuff.
Speaker 2It's like sensory overload and then, yeah, and then it's over and you're like what just happened?
Speaker 1kind of like that shitty millennium falcon ride at disney in florida oh, this is better than that.
Speaker 2That's trash, that's the worst it's so bad, it's pathetic did you? Did you um actually go on the other one though? No, it was like it like broke oh, okay, it's, it's a real, it's a good ride. It's not worth the wait, um, but yeah it's still not. It's still not that great. I mean it's good. It's based on the sequel trilogy too, so like who cares?
Speaker 1yeah, it's all secret.
Speaker 2Everything is there, everything is there's like a kylo ren um animatronic that like flails around at one scene when like the air that decompressurizes and stuff like that we just went to the bar, which was kind of fun, like they just like you had to pay like a lot to get in. It's just just to go to that.
Speaker 1Yeah, we like wait for the bar forever and then we got in there. But it was kind of fun. They had like guys like you know pretend like they were in star wars serving you beer.
Speaker 2So it's okay but I'd love to do uh the aesthetics of that area are so ugly though they're bad rock based like uh tan, I don't get it I don't get what looks like stoney curtis's hang like.
Speaker 1It looks like a fucking flintstones or something.
Speaker 2Yeah it does. I mean, if you go to the bedrock thing in arizona, it's probably more uh, interesting than that. You know there's a bedrock that exists out near the grand canyon. This is one of my goals in life is to go there. Oh that, you know there's a bedrock that exists out near the Grand Canyon. This is one of my goals in life is to go there.
Speaker 1Oh, I think I went there as a kid, but it was like closed.
Speaker 2It's like a Flintstones village. Yes, I need to get out there.
Speaker 1You got to get there and take a picture with Fred Flintstone.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, I intend to, but yeah, no, yeah, no, it kills me. I think I've mentioned this before. It kills me.
Final Thoughts on Film Noir Series
Speaker 2that star wars land and then the toy story land that they added to the hollywood studios park here in florida what they not that I care so much, but like what they got rid of, to put that there, they got rid of the studio back lot. They got rid of the hollywood tram tour, like the catastrophe canyon thing that was. You never build anything like that nowadays and they destroyed all of that. To put this mediocre subpar ip in there, yeah exactly. And then toy story when they that's the slinky dog, uh roller coaster or whatever it it's like, who cares?
Speaker 1Yeah, who cares?
Speaker 2I would have been unimpressed, as a child, by these things.
Speaker 1Right, you're a sophisticated child, you know, what I've done. A King Kong. I would love to do a King Kong review.
Speaker 2Yes, Of the which one though?
Speaker 1The original.
Speaker 2Okay, what about? I mean, I love the 70s one.
Speaker 1I like the Peter Jackson one a lot.
Speaker 2I like that one too, but to be fair.
Speaker 1I haven't seen that since it came out you should re-watch it and watch the director's cut. It's terrific. I think the movie is badass. I'm going to need like 3 nights to watch it and the fact that he came out with that 2 years after Lord of the Rings is just astounding what are your thoughts on these movies that are like three hours and something, three and a half hours long, like that.
Speaker 2Do you like that or do you not like that? I'm not a huge fan of this.
Speaker 1I like it as a home video consumer. I like it when it's a popular film and they go hey, you want more With Lord of the Rings, let it go, baby. That's cool with me. The extended versions I love. Cool with me, you know the, the extended versions, I love those. The peter jackson king kong.
Speaker 2Um, I think it's terrific. I love. What about the theatrical experience?
Speaker 1though I don't know. It just makes it tough to um. You know, when I was a younger guy, I used to go to movies by myself all the time. But you know, I'm married to a real life, uh woman, ostensibly. You know allegedly, as battle elf says so like I to drag her along to this shit too. Then we have to make plans. When are we going to eat dinner? What time should we go? I have to go do this. I'm not the freewheeling guy I used to be, whereas I used to go see three movies in a day.
Speaker 2Really, I've never done three in a day, I've done two.
Speaker 1In college I used to have not a lot of classes on Friday when I was a freshman. I'd just go watch three movies on Friday and then come back and head to the party or whatever.
Speaker 2Very different college experience than myself.
Speaker 1I remember going to see Seven Psychopaths Dread and Looper on the same day, like 2013. I did see Dread. I did see dread. I did see dread.
Speaker 2I do, I do and I do go to the movies by myself, unfortunately sometimes, because I see movies that no one else wants to see and I don't want to be responsible for their good time, you know oh yeah, or lack thereof, right, yeah bring them, bring them there and then have them not like it and be like oh, what kind of movie was that?
Speaker 1like I took a date to go see like um gray gardens documentary, right? Yeah, uh, she didn't like it. You know, she was like this is not really a great, like you know, date uh thing, and we also saw only lovers left alive, oh my god, I, I, um, I've had horrible theatrical experiences lately though the post-covid.
Speaker 2I think that the decorum of audiences has just devolved like way worse than even used to be.
Speaker 2It used to be bad before, but like, after two years of people just watching things at home on their couch, like now, thinking that that that exists in the theater as well, like the behavior of people, is absolutely atrocious.
Speaker 2I mean, I told you, when I went to see the holdovers, the guy next to us sounded well. First of all there was nobody sitting next to us when we picked the seats, okay, but then they came and sat right next to us and the guy was like, first of all sounded like he was going to die. He was like breathing heavily and then he was like burping and belching the whole time too, crinkling the little plastic candy that he clearly brought from outside the theater, and it was like we moved Because it was like I can't sit here for two hours and listen to this. This is like. And during when I went to see Blue see blue beetle, the girl like at the other side of the the row had her screen on the phone on the entire time during the movie oh my god, I can't stand that and she didn't.
Speaker 2She wasn't looking at it, she had it like turned sideways, but it was facing me, like put it, facing you, like put it the other way, exactly like put it like hide it or something, yeah, don't.
Future Show Topics and Film Recommendations
Speaker 1Yeah, I know, I know there people are so ridiculous. Like it's also the same thing with this sort of um advanced boomer mentality of not being able to like turn your fucking phone off ever, and I mean like it'll be on high ringer and just ring, and then somebody has to dig through her purse for like two minutes to find it and then finally turns it off. Yeah, you're like my god, hit the sleep button on your fucking phone.
Speaker 1You know what I mean yeah, yeah, I can't stand that like they get the phone and then you hear it and then it gets louder because they pulled out of their pocket for like two minutes before they get it turned off, you know when I took, I went with some friends to see thanksgiving, which was great, by the way.
Speaker 2Highly recommend that if you're into slasher movies. I don't know if I talked about this or not, but man, the guy sitting behind us in the virtually empty theater, by the way, but of course there was somebody sitting behind us he was making. He was very much into the film and it was a little scary, let's just say. The comments that were being made of the like a vicariously living through the movie was a little disturbing.
Speaker 1What was he saying?
Speaker 2That's how I would do it.
Speaker 1Like that.
Speaker 2Things similar to that he was. He was celebrating and like living in the moment of the kills and it was. It was very disturbing.
Speaker 1It's a little much.
Speaker 2Yeah, but otherwise the movie was hilarious Like it was. It was meant to be a farce, a parody of like consumerism and like the scenes where the black friday shopping are just like over the top. Hilarious people just like stomping, trampling people, bashing people's heads in for no reason, just to get the freaking like toaster oven I should.
Speaker 1I should see that I. Uh, I've never been a big eli roth guy.
Speaker 2I thought the green oh, the green was kind of good, yeah, I did. I thought it was funny because they kind of loved it, loved it, loved it yeah, a little much for me on the gore factor, but I uh but that's that's. You're not going to get that from anybody else. There is no other director working now on that professional level who's going to do that style of gore effects. I mean, that's like a lost art at this point.
Speaker 1Yeah, is Thanksgiving that extreme?
Speaker 2No, the green Inferno is like the most extreme movie Like I've ever seen to be honest, like a cannibal Holocaust thing.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, um, I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um. I mean there's no scenes where there's almost a similar scene where they're, when they they do cook a live person in thanksgiving and serve them up as a turkey, yeah, yeah, but because it's so ridiculous, it's meant to be like you laugh at it because it's so, it's so stupid green inferno is like deadly serious and it's yeah, it's terrifying when they're cooking the people alive and eating them yeah but I love that movie because it's like the green piece people go to to protect the rainforest and then the cannibals.
Speaker 1I mean it's like you ever remember that south park with jennifer aniston where she? She took them to the rainforest and their tour guide got eaten by a giant bug and like all this shit happens to him. And then at the end of it she's like this place sucks right and they get saved by the guys tearing down the rainforest. They're like keep going, fucking, tear it down uh yeah, I mean eli roth is a special.
Speaker 2I mean now uh, so we've had that, we've had machete. I have not seen the hobo with a shotgun oh, oh, from the grindhouse trailer the grindhouse but they need um. What's his name? Rob zombie needs to make werewolf women of the ss yeah, yeah, and then you're right, you're right needs to make, don't. And then it'll be complete yeah, and also the best line in the movie. I mean spoilers for the movie, do you care or not?
Speaker 1I don't care.
Speaker 2Okay, spoilers for Thanksgiving. Patrick Dempsey is the killer. Okay, and at the end of the movie he delivers in the most over-the-top hilarious fashion year, as he's hunting the. As he's hunting like the remaining victims. He's like this thanksgiving, there will be no leftovers. And as he's about to like tear into the last, like victim yeah and you can just imagine like eli roth telling him okay, do this in the most worst delivery ever.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2We had a kick out of that.
Speaker 1I will have to check it out. That sounds fun. That's all I got, brother.
Speaker 2Okay, we're going to take a break for a little bit, until the end of the year. Then when we come back, we're doing the Hanna-Barbera.
Speaker 1Hanna-Barbera, hanna-barbera. So we're doing Space.
Speaker 2Ghost and Johnny Quest right, Not anything else.
Speaker 1That's fine with me. I'm fine with just doing Space Ghost and Johnny Quest.
Speaker 2Okay, I got some good references.
Speaker 1I'm going to watch a few more for context, but I mean I'd watch the whole thing of both of those if we just stuck with those.
Speaker 2Yeah, if not, I those. If we just stuck with those, yeah, um, if not, I'll pick out some specific episodes that I think are the best, but it'd be interesting to see which, if you watch, if you're gonna make your way through the whole thing which you think are the best, because there's different.
Speaker 2There's different um styles to the episodes. There's different types of episodes johnny quest. There's some that are more sci-fi. There's some that are more horror. There's some that of episodes of Johnny Quest. There's some that are more sci-fi, there's some that are more horror. There's some that are kind of like espionage. There's a lot of different flavors.
Speaker 1What kind of space ghost is there? Space ghost flies by a planet and there's like a big lava monster and then they stop it and that's it right, yeah yeah, well, jace is crash land on that planet and um he has to rescue him you know I love that space ghost the most when his spaceship goes invisible, when it goes invisible power yeah, yeah it has like that wonk kind of like yeah yeah, all right brother
Speaker 1everyone thanks for tuning in. All right, man, thanks for tuning in. Alright, matt, thanks for tuning in. I'm gonna do like a just a live stream hangout one of these nights too, like on a weekend or something. We'll just bullshit, we'll have you on have a good one. Merry Christmas everyone yeah, merry Christmas everybody.
