Monthly Archives: January 2020

The Odd Couple
Directed by Gene Saks
Written by Neil Simon from his play
1968/US
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Amzazon Instant

[box] Oscar Madison: Wait a minute, you’re not going anywhere until you take it back!

Felix Ungar: Take what back?

Oscar Madison: “Let it be on your head.” What the hell is that, the Curse of the Cat People?[/box]

Despite a few now cringe-worthy jokes, the performances are classic and it’s pretty funny 50 years latter.

Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau) is a divorced sportswriter, who relishes his freedom to be a slob.  Felix Unger (Jack Lemmon) has just been given the boot by his wife, leaving him feeling mighty sorry for himself and announcing suicides plans.  They are friends who play poker weekly with several other guys in Oscar’s pad.  Oscar invites Felix to move in. He eagerly accepts.

It soon seems obvious why their wives couldn’t take any more.  Oscar is a complete slob. Felix takes his chosen “housewife” role to hilarious extremes.  This gives everybody the opportunity to lob one-liners back and forth for the duration of the movie’s running time.

Little attempt is made to open up Simon’s stage play.  With acting as good as this, it’s still quite watchable.  If you like Neil Simon, you should love this.

The premise was made into a long-running TV sitcom with Tony Randall and Jack Klugmann.  They also made a perfect “odd couple”.

The Odd Couple was nominated by the Academy in the categories of Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and Best Film Editing.

Clip

The Lion in Winter
Directed by Anthony Harvey
Written by James Goldman from his play
1968/UK
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Eleanor of Aquitaine: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians! How clear we make it. [/box]

This movie holds up so damn well to a re-watch.

The plot is kind of convoluted.  It takes up the dual tasks of conveying some history of the Plantagenets of England and trying to be sort of a 12th Century Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) with three bickering sons thrown in for good measure.

At any rate,  King Henry II (Peter O’Toole) is enjoying his romance with Alais, a woman many years his junior, as well as the enforced absence of his headstrong wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn.  But now the succession to the throne is weighing heavily on his mind.  The choices are between the somewhat feeble minded (?) John (Nigel Terry), war-like Richard (Anthony Hopkins), and the conniving Goeffrey.  Henry favors John and Eleanor, who has friends in high places, favors Richard.  Henry summons Eleanor from the convent for Christmas.  Then the plotting among the sons and their champions begins in deadly earnest.  At the same time King Phillip of France (Timothy Dalton) shows up to add to the fun and try to enforce Henry’s promise to allow his sister Alais and John to marry.

And then there are many scenes in which Henry and Eleanor bicker on and on about whether they ever loved each other and whether they love each other now.  This is interspersed with some of the most cutting domestic ddialogue in any movie, in which the spouses take low blows at each other’s known weaknesses.

Well, I fell in love with this all over again after many years.  The acting by the both principals is remarkable.  Such mastery of conveying real feeling under the carefully crafted dialogue.  The movie also has a fiery early performance by Anthony Hopkins and I thought Timothy Dalton was excellent.  Made me wonder why he is not better know outside of being Bond.

My only problem with the film was its script.  I have a bias against the ‘I love you, I love you not’ theme.  I also thought the melding of the modern sensibility of the script with the 12 century authentic production design was not well-handled.  Again, both the performances and the production values outweighed any small niggles .  I felt exhilerated when it was over.  Recommended.

Katharine Hepburn won an Oscar for Best Actress in a tie with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl (1968).  The film also won in the categories of Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from another Medium and Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a musical.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Director and Best Costume Design.

Pretty Poison
Directed by Noel Black
Lorenzo Sempel Jr. based on a novel by Stephen Geller
1968/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Sue Ann Stepanek: You are some character, Dennis. I’m surprised the C.I.A. lets you out without a keeper.[/box]

Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins made this a must-see for me.

Dennis Pitt (Perkins) is released from the psychiatric institution where he has been an inmate since the age of 15.  He is ill-equipped to re-integrate into society and is still delusional  Then he skips out on his case-worker and moves to a city where he has no support.  He meets high-school cheerleader Sue-Ellen (Weld).  She believes it when he tells her she is pretty and when he tells her he is a spy.

It turns out that Sue Ellen has problems of her own – problems that make them a perfect couple.

This is a nice little thriller.  Perkins had the dazed, sensitive, disturbed look down pat by 1967 and he employs it to the hilt.  I will watch Weld in anything.  Not a must-see but entertaining.

Girl in Gold Boots
Directed by Ted V. Mikels
Written by Leighton J. Peatman, Art Names, John T. Wilson
1968/US
IMDb link
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Michele Casey: Leo says I’m really going places. Just because he deals in dope, that doesn’t tarnish me.

Critter: Oh, that’s what you think, baby. Tarnish isn’t a strong enough word for what he’ll do to you. Try “corrode” for size.[/box]

Michelle has big dreams, dreams of being a go-go dancer.  She leaves her drab job slinging hash in a diner for the bright lights of L.A.  She is accompanied by a couple of deadbeats who both lust after her.  Despite the fact that she can’t really dance, her gorgeous body ensures instant stardom.

The plot is accompanied by several dreadful musical numbers and songs.  There is some amusing stuff here, but IMO not amusing enough to go out of your way to seek out the movie.  That is unless you are a connoisseur of scantily clad women, which this movie has  in abundance.  Seems to have been made for, and got, the MST3K treatment.

The Queen
Directed by Frank Simon
1968/USA
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “Drag is armor, darling. No matter how you look at it. Once I become Bambi, nobody can hurt me. Not my family, not the drunk assholes at the bar, nobody. A good lace-front wig and the right contouring are as strong a bulletproof vest as I’ve ever needed.” ― Jeffery Self, Drag Teen[/box]

Catty, campy, fun documentary about preparations leading up to a national drag beauty pageant.  No talking heads.  Not essential but entertaining, if you like this kind of thing.

They Saved Hitler’s Brain (AKA The Madmen of Mandoras)
Directed by David Bradley
Written by Peter Miles; original story by Steve Bennett
1968/USA
IMDb link
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Adolf Hitler: Mach schnell! Mach schnell![/box]

Not much to say about this one.  Mad Nazis on a remote tropical island keep Hitler’s head in a jar.  They plan to reanimate the whole man when the time is right to launch the Fourth Reich.  They kidnap a top scientist to assist in their work and are pursued by various intelligence agencies.

The movie’s lone source of enjoyment are the scenes with Hitler’s head.  Unfortunately, these are few and far between.

Funny YouTube review

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Directed by Jack Kaufman
Written by Jack Kaufman, Alan Landsberg, etc. from a book by William L. Shirer
1968/USA
IMDb link
First viewing/YouTube

[box] What good fortune for governments that the people do not think. – Adolf Hitler[/box]

Loved the book; liked the movie.

Surely everybody is acquainted with the story of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his downfall.  Narrated by Richard Basehart.

For some reaon, I have to watch all of these things.  I live in eternal hope that one will add to my understanding of how people could have been so evil.  The search continues to be futile.

The title was irresistible.  I love Shirer’s book so much.  What makes the book so great is that the author was a Berlin-based correspondent from 1933 to 1940.  Later he had unprecedented access to documents seized by the Allies at the end of the War.  The result is an intimate and personal perspective on the time.

Despite Shirer’s participation, the film is reminiscent of the many, many documentaries on the same subject.  Most of the films seem to rely on the same newsreel footage and/or on scenes directly taken from Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935). This one doesn’t really add a lot to the others.