Flickers in Time

The Trip (AKA “A Lovely Sort of Death”)
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Jack Nicholson
1967/USA
American International Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Paul Groves: [Holding an orange up to the horizon] That’s the sun in my hands, man! Oh, it gives off an orange cloud of light that just flows right out over the sea! Wow![/box]

The stars of Easy Rider (1969) team up with Roger Corman to bring us a sort of Reefer Madness (1936) updated for the 60’s.  Film director Peter Fonda decides to take LSD under the guidance of Bruce Dern.  The film starts with a stern warning against using the drug then makes it look like a total gas, starting with loads of free love and sexual fantasies.  With Dennis Hopper as a pot dealer and Susan Strasberg as Fonda’s estranged wife.

There is no real plot just oodles of psychedelia and music by The Electric Flag.  Jack Nicholson takes the writing credit.  Corman, Fonda, and Nicholson and Hopper all experimented with acid before making the movie. Dern apparently had no love for the drug culture.  I can’t really recommend this but it does recall a long-gone time for those of us who lived through it.  

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Mars Needs Women
Directed By Larry Buchanan
Written by Larry Buchanan and Enrique Houston Touceda
1967/USA
Azalea Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Dop: Since the Earthmen, especially the Americans, seem to place their faith in luck rather than scientific certainties, I wish you all luck.[/box]

As everybody who has watched 50’s sci-fi knows, both the moon and Mars are lacking in one half of the reproduction equation.  Here, a group of Martian men land on earth looking for beautiful, smart, single women to take home.  Tommy Kirk is their leader.  He just happens to locate a beautiful, smart genetisist.  Another one chooses a stipper, intellect unknown.  Of course, the entire U.S. Government must go into action to shut the operation down.

Is Tommy Kirk’s costume a wet suit and duct tape? Yes, I believe it is!

As usual, schlockmeister Larry Buchanan manages to suck the life out of a fun premise.  Who knew Martians look exactly like humans and speak English?  Light on the old special effects budget, thats for sure.  Gets an extra point for being the first movie I remember to mention DNA.  Gets multiple point deduction for lack of truth in advertising.  Copious use of cheesecake for the teenagers in the audience.  I did laugh a couple of times, actually.

Trailer – version I saw was in color

Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates at the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade)
Directed by Peter Brook
Written by Geoffrey Skelton and Adrian Mitchell from the play by Peter Weiss
1967/UK
Marat Sade Production/Royal Shakespeare Company
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Herald: The revolution came and went, And unrest was replaced by discontent.[/box]

Director and his stellar cast make compelling viewing of this play within a play within a film.

The long version of the title gives a good summary of the basic plot of the play and movie.  It is 1808 and Napoleon reigns. Aristocrats visit an insane asylum.  Its head and celebrity inmate the Marquis de Sade prepare a play for them.  The ostensible purpose is therapeutic. The oppressed general population serves as a kind of Greek chorus.  All hell breaks loose.  With Patrick Magee as de Sade, Ian Richardson as Marat, and Glenda Jackson, in her first credited film role, as assassin Charlotte Corday.

The film is kind of a Brechtian enterprise, complete with songs, that serves as much as a commentary on the revolution that was brewing in the late 60’s as on the fate of the French Revolution.  The performances are outstanding.  It’s a unique little film and hard to find but I recommend it if the premise sounds appealing and you are in the mood for something avant garde.

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Yesterday, I also watched Night Fright (1967), a movie that should be avoided at all costs.

Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin)
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Written by Hachiro Guryu, Takeo Kimura, Chusei Sone, and Atsuye Yomatoya
1967/Japan
Nikkatsu
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] No. 1: This is how Number 1 works: first he exhausts you, and then he kills you.[/box]

Seijun Suzuki did it his way.  And didn’t work again for ten years.

Goro Hanada (chipmunk-cheeked Jo Shishido) is No. 3 hitman in Japan.  We soon find out he has a fetish for the smell of rice cooking.  He and the wife have rough sex throughout the film.  He is hired by a yakuza organization as bodyguard for a client.  The wife begins an affair with the yakuza boss.  The bodyguard operation is successful, but not before the body count approaches the double-digits.  Hitchhiking home, he is picked up by the mysterious beauty Misako.

Misako, a connoisseur of dead butterflies and birds, hires Goro to perform four hits.  She also knows how to boil rice and I don’t have to explain what happens with that.  One of Goro’s hits goes badly wrong.  The rest of the movie is devoted to a cat-and-mouse game with Japan’s No. 1 killer.

Suzuki put every bit of his sense of the absurd and experimental style into this film.  He was promptly fired on the ground that his films “make no sense and no money”.  The studio was right about that and yet Suzuki’s films have lived long after conventional potboilers had completed their brief but profitable runs.

The convoluted plot doesn’t really matter.  This is Suzuki’s chance to do what he loved best – make the most over-the-top scenes of death and sex oddly beautiful.  I can’t exactly recommend this film, but I think it would be worth it to try at least one.  You might like it.

Two for the Road
Directed by Stanley Donen
Written by Fredric Raphael
1967/USA
Stanley Donen Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mark Wallace: Just because you use a silencer doesn’t mean you’re not a sniper.[/box]

Two gorgeous people falling in and out of love in the South of France. How could you lose?

The story explores the ups and downs of Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna’s (Audrey Hepburn) 10-year romance and marriage in a non-linear fashion.  The Wallaces vacation every year, usually by car, in the South of France.

They fall in love, marry, bicker, and look about to break up but not necessarily in that order. The more money they have, the rockier their marriage gets.

I’ve been waiting a long time to finally see this and came out of it a bit disappointed.  I had expected something far edgier and ahead-of-its-time.  Maybe it seemed more that way in 1967.  Certainly Hepburn had never appeared in something with this much sex and cussing.

However, Albert Finney attempts an American accent that got on my last nerve.  It resembles no known dialect.  Then he goes for some Humphrey Bogart impressions and gets even worse.  I found this a terrible distraction.  Of course you do get Finney and Hepburn in their prime, the scenery, and Henry Mancini’s own personal favorite score.

Oscar-nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen.

A Time for Burning
Directed by Barbara Connell and Bill Jersey
1967/USA
Quest Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Tagline: A Dramatic Portrait of American Conscience

An intimate look at a time that could be both then and now.

Lutheran minister Bill Youngdahl believes passionately in Civil Rights and in promoting understanding between races.  He comes up with the idea of having 10 couples from his church meet with their counterparts in an African-American Lutheran Church.  Innocuous, no?  But Bill’s congregation is fearful and the African-Americans aren’t sold on the idea either.  Contains many enlightening conversations both between and among the various “sides”.  One of the most outspoken of the African-Americans is barber Ernie Chambers, who went on to become the longest serving U.S. Congressmen in Nebraska history.

This seems both extremely dated and extremely relevant at the same time.  Talking heads include black activists and young people and some very square white people, well-meaning or not so much.  DVD includes a good commentary by those involved in the making of.

Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clarke
1967/USA
Shirley Clarke Productions/Graeme Ferguson Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box]Jason Holliday: They (psychiatrists) ask, “Do you please them?” I say, “If I don’t please them, it’s because I’m not trying.”[/box]

Documentarians ask a black gay prostitute/houseboy/aspiring nightclub performer the big questions.  The answers come back raw and unfiltered and are alternately hilarious and pretty sad.

The flamoyant Jason Holliday took on a new name and life when he moved to San Francisco.  Later he moved back to New York where documentarian Shirley Clarke was granted a 12-hour interview.  Jason gets progressively more drunk and stoned as the day wears on.  He maintains his razor-sharp wit and viciously insightful observations until almost the end when he turns maudlin.

I had heard of this before but did not expect to laugh so much.  Between the lines, Jason has some pretty dark stuff to stay about being gay and black in the 60s.  I liked this but come prepared for some pretty explicit talk about the lifestyle and loads of expletives.

Restoration Trailer

The Two of Us (Le vieil homme et l’enfant)
Directed by Claude Berri
Written by Gerard Brach, Claude Berri, and Michel Rivelin
1967/France
PAC/Renn Productions/Valoria Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather. James Earl Jones[/box]

Claude Berri’s autobiographical tale of a childhood spent in hiding is a beautifully heartfelt film with a stunning performance by the great Michel Simon.

Jewish parents try to keep their irrepressible 8-year-old Claude from drawing too much attention to himself in Occupied Paris. Eventually the situation deteriorates further and they send him off to live with a friend’s elderly parents in the countryside.  There old man Pepe (Simon) immediately tells the boy to call him grandpa.  The couple take tender care of Claude, not suspecting he is Jewish.  Grandpa continually harps on the world problems caused by the Jews and Bolsheviks and is full of praise for the Vichy Government.

But despite any hate in his ideology, Pepe has only love in his heart.  He adopts Claude as a kind of playmate and confidant.  The boy reciprocates completely.

Claude Berri, director Jean de Florette and Manon des sources (1986), both tragically missing from The List, shows he was as capable of evoking the beauty and warmth of the French countryside in black-and-white as he was in color.  Simon is a totally lovable force of nature as the old man.  The images and mood are complemented masterfully by the Georges Delarue score. The movie engaged me throughout and is a sure thing for my Favorite New-to-Me Films of 2019.  Very warmly recommended.

Yongary, Monster from the Deep (Taekoesu Yonggary)
Directed by Ki-duk Kim
Written by Ki-duk Kim and Yun-sung Seo
1967/Korea
Keukdong Entertainment/Toei Company
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Tagline: A Monster from another age … with terrifying destructive powers …[/box]

Take the cheesiest Godzilla movie you can imagine, ramp the cheese factor to 11, and you get this awesomely bad Korean giant monster flick.  Goes into my pantheon of best bad movies ever.

A new Korean groom is called away from his wedding night to investigate mysterious earthquakes that are rocking Korea.  His bride’s annoying little brother accompanies him every step of the way.  Soon enough, we are introduced to Yongary, a Godzilla look-alike with a giant rhinoceros horn that changes color with the monster’s emotions.  Yongary apparently has come to the surface to gorge on gasoline, its favorite food.  Little Brother forms a special bond with the monster that allows him to save the day by figuring out how to kill his friend.  Plenty of sit-com situations to go with the giant monster action.

This movie has, by far, the worst miniature effects I have ever seen.  The various badnesses of the enterprise had me howling with laughter about once a minute.  Not to be missed is the bit where Little Brother and Yongary dance together to rock and roll music. Connoisseurs of this stuff should be thoroughly entertained, as I was.  Full feature currently available on YouTube.

Clip – When will they ever learn?