Return from Witch Mountain

John Hough – 1978

John Hough achieves the miraculous in this film; namely, making Bette Davis boring. Maybe she wasn’t in top form at the time, but this was before her strokes and she sure loved acting and would certainly have welcomed the chance to chew the scenery and act circles around her costars. Here, she seems confused and ill-at-ease, as if waiting for the director to tell her anything helpful. (For comparison, see a sharp and dynamic Davis in her two other 1978 projects, Death on the Nile and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home.) Hough was no auteur, but he made a few good films, and would even make another (far better) film with Davis after this, 1980’s The Watcher in the Woods. It’s apparent that he did these Disney films for the paycheck and functioned as a very groggy crossing guard more than any kind of self-respecting director. It defies credulity that the man could have been pleased, let alone satisfied, with the film’s sloppy overflow of cornball comedy cliches and horrendously awful special effects, inexcusable in a major studio film in the post-Star Wars era. Christopher Lee and Anthony James, as Davis’ henchmen, are the only adults who seem to be taking anything seriously and making an effort. As the two kids, returning from the superior original film Escape from Witch Mountain, Kim Richards and Mike Eisenmann give the film whatever heart and endearing quality it has. The whole thing would have been much better off focusing on them and giving them normal teenage things to do, like trying to integrate into high school or acclimating to life with a foster family; anything other than being targeted by sinister weirdos wanting to exploit their psychic powers, again. Return from Witch Mountain is easily one of the worst films the Disney company put out in the 1970s, and this was the decade that left us The Million Dollar Duck and Superdad.

The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee

Jon Spira – 2024

I was excited for this as Christopher Lee is one of my all-time favorite actors and he’s only been the subject of pretty flimsy, amateurish documentaries up to now. I have mixed feelings about this film by Jon Spira, who made the excellent Elstree 1976. Both the content and the presentation are fairly straightforward, even routine, and I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know just as a fan. Possibly to compensate for the absence of either compelling storytelling or a unique angle to develop, Spira opted to use animation – always a red flag for me. A marionette of Lee appears on screen, narrating his own story, and a voice-actor impersonates Lee not terribly well. I’ve heard much better impressions of Lee. The actor gets the accent right, but captures none of Lee’s grand cadence. It’s hard to believe this was the best they could do. These complaints aside, Lee’s story is so impressive on its own that it’s hard to screw up a faithful retelling of it, which the film does well enough. The strongest material consists of a few moments of Lee himself seen in newsreel footage or interviews, especially towards the end of his life when he was enjoying not only a Knighthood and a side career as a metal opera singer, but a major resurgence in his 80s thanks to appearing in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and the films of Tim Burton. Oddly, only a few luminaries appear to appreciate Lee on camera; (Joe Dante, Peter Jackson, and John Landis are the only directors interviewed, and Dante and Landis don’t even discuss the films in which they directed Lee). Where are Burton, George Lucas or Martin Scorsese, all of whom directed Lee within the last decade of his life? I would really have preferred some more in-depth discussion or analysis of the connecting themes in Lee’s many roles, such as apostacy and sorcery, or even his swordsmanship. Bottom line: it’s a standard biographical documentary, which is fine, and it’s well worth seeing.

The Pick-up Artist

James Toback – 1987 – USA

 

My first reaction to The Pick-up Artist was amazement that great actors like Harvey Keitel and Dennis Hopper could be wasted in such a blah movie. But on reflection, I see that they weren’t really wasted. They come off stellar as always. It’s everything else in the movie that’s dull. Robert Downey Jr is set up as a promiscuous ladies’ man in the first act, but then nothing more is made of the very subject that gives the movie it’s title. The rest is about him falling in love at first sight with fellow brat-packer Molly Ringwald. They don’t have much chemistry and their dialogue is too clever to be realistic. There’s a valid nostalgia factor in seeing 1980s New York City, and the film occasionally lights up when some fun supporting actors pop up in cameos, but overall, it’s pretty weak because it never successfully makes you want to see the two stars get together.

The Reluctant Dragon

Alfred L. Werker, et al – 1941 – USA

“Any resemblance to a regular motion picture is purely coincidental.” – Epigraph to The Reluctant Dragon

Fascinating omnibus film made at the height of Walt Disney’s boldness as a movie mogul. It’s an artifact from a time when a producer with the right amount of clout and vision at the same time could simply decide to make something original and imaginative because he wanted to, regardless of risk. Coming off the success of the ultimate dual art film/commercial film Fantasia a year earlier, The Reluctant Dragon is kind of a companion piece in being comprised of vignettes linked by a loose framing story. It has scripted and stages scenes mixed with documentary elements, along with episodes created with different types of illustrative storytelling, (storyboards and finished animation). Playing himself, writer Robert Benchley is introduced trying to figure out how to get Kenneth Grahame’s book The Reluctant Dragon to Mr. Disney in order for him to make it into a film. Why Benchley would have control of these rights is never explained, but it matters little as that’s one of the least implausible things in the film. (Much is made over establishing the idea that the Disney studio apparently has an open-door policy for anyone in the world to stop by and give much-needed movie ideas to Mr. Disney.) Easily getting into the brand-new Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, (which opened in 1940), Benchley ducks his guide and finds himself in one department after another, getting a little demonstration in each of them on how the films are made. Many real Disney animators appear as themselves in these scenes. As if trying to top the famous switch from black-and-white to color in The Wizard of Oz two years earlier, this film includes a similar moment in which Benchley abandons the pristine, monochromatic hallways of the studio and enters one of the animation rooms, where everything suddenly comes alive in vivid color. (Benchley even comments on the brilliance of the color, suddenly noticing that his own undershirt is bright red.) Both the comic and straight acting from everyone is typically cornball, nothing unique in Disney movies for decades to come. One of the most delightful things about the film is seeing a surprising number of previews of forthcoming Disney projects, even some that wouldn’t be complete for over a decade. These include samplings of elements from the planned films Bambi, Peter Pan and The Lady and the Tramp, the latter two of which would be delayed due to World War II. At last, Benchley is presented to Mr. Disney, only to learn that the studio has already made an adaptation of the Grahame story, and is, in fact, about to run it in the screening room at that very moment. Thus, the film climaxes with a complete short film of The Reluctant Dragon. The overall final product is a kaleidoscope of film techniques, black-and-white, color, live-action, animation, that also pulls the curtain back to show how many different types of films are made, and shows off not only a new, state-of-the-art studio but the method of interacting live-action with animation that will be used in subsequent films like The Three Caballeros and Song of the South. Being a mixed bag, The Reluctant Dragon is not usually listed among Disney’s greatest films of the 1940s, but I think its bold, experimental quality makes it more than worthwhile and one of the studio’s greatest achievements in this period.

Mrs. Doubtfire

Chris Columbus – 1993 – USA

Chris Columbus is a director I hate almost as much as I hate Lars von Trier, though for different reasons, obviously. Of all the gross movies he’s made, Mrs. Doubtfire is by far the most sickening and loathsome. Bulging at a merciless two-hours-and-five-minutes to accommodate endless “comic” improvisations by star Robin Williams, it manages to move from one TV sit-com cliche to another while slathering every scene with shameless Spielbergian camera push-in's and schmaltz. At least they bothered to make Williams’ character a voice artist in this one. Usually, his movies just made inexplicable hard stops to let him do his five-or-six-wacky-impressions-in-a-row routine, with no regard for it making any sense in the context of the plot. If you’re after a thorough representation of everything repugnant about popular Hollywood movies in the 90s, Mrs. Doubtfire has it all: Robin Williams’ trademark man-boy persona complete with quasi-racist and homophobic gags, doe-eyed children who were probably forced to audition two dozen times to prove they could cry on cue, Sally Field as the estranged wife who’s so sweet and darling you can hardly stand it, Pierce Brosnan as the creepily good-looking (and British of course) romantic rival, Harvey Fierstein as the cliche non-threatening gay uncle, implausible plot coincidences present only because Columbus and the writers didn’t think it was worthwhile coming up with a plot that didn’t require the audience to play dumb, and, last but not least, just the right pop songs on the soundtrack to make the scenes extra hilarious, songs that relate to cross-dressing in some way, like ‘Walk Like a Man’ and ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’ and ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.’ And don’t forget ‘Jump Around,’ for the scene where kids are jumping around. God forbid a scene goes by without an amusingly appropriate song underneath it. The whole thing just reeks of boardroom thinking, the end product of dozens of executives all making sure this or that proven successful element has been crammed into it, like a Frankenstein’s monster put on display before covering up the stitches holding together all the mismatched body parts. Worst of all, the basic notion that Williams’ make-up as Mrs. Doubtfire is so great that even his wife and children don’t recognize him is completely insane, which the movie fails to use to its advantage. I would have been impressed if the family immediately knew it was dad in drag and just played along anyway. Or why not sprinkle pixie dust on them to dull their ability to truly see him? Both options are better than being expected to believe that no one can tell it’s Williams in disguise. That’s the problem in a nutshell. The characters are too dumb to recognize Williams, but the audience has to recognize Williams or else there’s no comedy. Are we supposed to relate to the characters because they’re stupid or in spite of that fact? That Columbus never bothered to think about stuff like that and come up with a smart solution is why he sucks as director.

Bonjour Tristesse

Otto Preminger – 1958 – UK/USA

Hello sadness. Sumptuous, widescreen CinemaScope production all about the aesthetic beauty of natural surfaces, sea and skin. Idle rich Anglo-American family that hardly anyone in the world could relate to vacation in the French Riviera and fret over their romantic pastimes while not busy with their athletic pastimes. Surly, sober tyrant auteur Otto Preminger somehow achieves a light, almost frivolous delight sandwiched between his Saint Joan and Anatomy of a Murder. Something about the saturated color of Mediterranean vistas contrasted with crisp black-and-white scenes of chanteuse Juliet Greco singing a torch song in a night club makes for a remarkable fusion of the avant-garde and kitsch, made at the very moment when bloated Hollywood extravaganzas were about to cave in under their own weight while being nipped away in little chunks by the influence of the Nouvelle Vague and independent cinema. At the center of it is mercurial, spritely Jean Seberg, Joan of Arc a year earlier, star of Godard’s Breathless a year later, but here a capricious socialite out for a good time and nothing more, a wealthy Gidget. Frequently seen in and out of the water in swimsuits, both she and Geoffrey Horne seem to have been cast strictly for their trim, tanned, youthful beauty, which, posed in tableau with aqua blue sea and sky and jutting rocks and green trees, whip up overwhelming sensuality. When Deborah Kerr appears, moving in with Seberg’s father, David Niven, and wants Seberg to do her homework, she is targeted for destruction. (Frankly, if I was a 17-year-old on the loose in the Riviera in the late 1950s, I would murder anyone who tried to interfere too.) The sudden burst of tragedy in the film’s last five minutes is somewhat awkward and incongruous compared to the tone of the rest of the film, but it does add to the overall feeling of soap opera-like passion that was threatening to interrupt the pleasant vacation all along. The film ends with a humbled Seberg, back in tinted black-and-white, gazing into a mirror and smearing cream on her face, distantly, maybe unconsciously, hoping to stave off the withering effects of age that will soon enough transform her into the Deborah Kerr character she so despised, a middle-aged woman jealous of youth who can only gain pleasure from spoiling the carefree fun of young people. Special mention must be made of the phenomenal, painfully gorgeous hand-animated main title sequence and poster design by the great Saul Bass, from the same year he did likewise for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. (Preminger and Hitchcock were the two greatest employers of Bass’ talent in the late 50s and early 60s.)

I Married a Monster from Outer Space

Gene Fowler, Jr. – 1958 – USA 

Bearing one of the greatest titles in movie history, Gene Fowler, Jr.’s follow-up to I Was a Teenage Werewolf shares with some of the best 50s sci-fi – including It Came from Outer Space, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Incredible Shrinking Man – the overarching subject of Cold War anxiety: i.e. worries over atomic power, communist subversion and hysteria-fueled witch-hunting. But, of course, there is a slightly deeper theme running through all of these films. In retrospect, it seems that 50s sci-fi is not so much an isolated genre to be ignored and dismissed by intellectuals as B-movie kids' stuff, but is actually not far removed from more safely respectable movies of the same period that dealt with post-war insecurities about identity, masculinity, feminism and existential panic. Sensing something inexplicably off about a loved one, becoming suddenly conscious of being treated like livestock by government bureaucracies, catching a glimpse of irrational violence or insanity behind the conservative veneer of modern culture, are all things that happen just as often in 50s dramas like Bigger Than Life, Patterns and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, as well as, more famously, the major works of Douglas Sirk like All That Heaven Allows and There’s Always Tomorrow, which in turn were once considered kitsch before eventually being accepted as masterpieces. Gloria Talbott, the prim, brainy, self-centered daughter of Jane Wyman in All That Heaven Allows returns as a young newlywed in I Married a Monster from Outer Space, virtually the same character, a sheltered product of suburbia and finishing school, thrown into the real world of flawed adults like a lobster into a pot of boiling water. In the first act, her groom, the blandly handsome and polite Tom Tryon, (a mother-in-law's dream), is late for their wedding ceremony. Days later, she writes in her diary that her new hubby isn’t the man she thought he was and is, in fact, a complete stranger to her. That the immediate cause of this trouble is an alien invader taking over Tryon’s body is almost incidental, and feels like Dorothy Gale dreaming of a mean neighbor woman as a green-skinned witch. Not only does the “monster” have no libido and hate dogs, but he abandons his bride every evening to go meet with other like-minded men in a local bar, where they ignore women and alcohol and seem content to sit and commune together quietly. This potent core idea – a young person’s dread at discovering that his or her chosen partner is a complete alien, unknowable and even hostile – is what gives this film and its siblings their power, being something that most people can relate to at one time or another, whether they opt to admit it or not. As a potboiler thriller with meager special effects, it’s entertaining enough, but more than some of the less thoughtful flicks of the day, such as its double-bill partner The Blob, I Married a Monster from Outer Space uses its outrageous gimmick as a thin veil to deal pretty bluntly with some highly charged issues about sexuality and conformity in a society that was just on the brink of the radical movements of the 1960s.