Flickers in Time

Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (Zatoichi to Yojinbo)
Directed by Kihachi Okamoto
Written by Kihachi Okamoto and Tetsuo Yoshida from characters created by Kan Shimozawa
1970/Japan
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Kuzuryu: You just lie around and drink. Don’t you ever take your job seriously?
Sassa the yojimbo: I get by.

Our invincible blind swordsman comes up against the invincible Toshiro Mifune.  Great fun.

Zatoichi (Shintaro Katsu), having once again killed several men who ambushed him, returns to his home town for some peace and quiet.  He gets anything but.  The town is divided up into feuding gangs. The town boss is the son of the merchant that is rumored to have stolen gold from the Shogunate.  The boss has hired Sesso the Yojimbo (Mifune) as his enforcer.  Behind his back, Yojimbo is spying for the Shogunate and is also in love with prostitute Umeno, who is the merchant’s mistress and will be until she can repay a debt. Umeno also happens to be an old friend of Zatoichi.  Zatoichi and Yojimbo dislike each other heartily but eventually achieve a grudging respect.  All this plot is accompanied by the usual amount of action.

I will watch anything with Mifune in it and you know how I feel about our blind hero.  I would say this movie has a better than average script for the series but less awesome action than the best of the bunch.  I enjoyed it.

Trailer- no subtitles

Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Written by Werner Herzog
1970/West Germany
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

Hombré: When we behave nobody cares. But when we are bad nobody forgets.

I generally love Werner Herzog’s films.  But this sophmore effort was a bridge too far for many reasons.

There is really no plot, per se.  The inmates of a correctional institution trap their overseers in a room and proceed to destroy the facility. All these people happen to be dwarfs.  They revel in being sadistically bad.  Unfortunately, this involves abusing various farm animals and a camel.  They also get a kick out of abusing farm machinery, motor vehicles, and each other.

With a team like Herzog, regular cinematographer Thomas Maunch and composer Florian Fricke, you can expect first-rate production values despite a bargain basement budget. But it’s all in the service of watching amateur actors tear things up.  Not for me.  WARNING:  There is graphic cruelty to animals in this movie.  Best to avoid if this kind of thing triggers you.  I’m serious.

I Never Sang for My Father
Directed by Gilbert Cates
Written by Robert Anderson based on his play
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

Gene Garrison: Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship;which struggles on the survivor’s mind,toward some resolution,which it may never find.

This excellent domestic drama is lifted by its superb performances.

Gene Garrison (Gene Hackman) is the dutiful son of his octogenarian father Tom (Melvyn Douglas) and mother Margaret (Dorothy Stickney).  Margaret has been left frail by a heart attack suffered the previous year.

Tom has been a pillar of the community and seems to be known and liked by everyone in town.  At home, however, he is domineering, stubborn, self-centered, controlling and manipulative.  To add to that, he is growing senile and has started to repeat the same stories over and over again.  Margaret is his biggest cheerleader and tolerates his weaknesses.  Tom has already banished Alice (Estelle Parsons), Gene’s sister, from the family.  Gene has never been able to love Tom.

Gene, a widower, tries to break the news that he intends to move to California to marry a woman  he met there on a business trip.  Tom warns that such a move would “kill” Margaret.  Next Margaret supports Gene in his decision but cautions it could be hard on Tom.

Before Gene can take the next step. Margaret has another heart attack and dies.  Now Tom needs Gene more than ever.  Alice comes home for the funeral and gives Gene some advice.

I really liked this movie.  The whole cast is strong but Douglas is stunning.  He has a master actor’s gift of making the audience feel compassion for and frustration with a character at the same time.  It’s a beautifully nuanced performance. Recommended.

I Never Sang for My Father was nominated for Academy Awards in the category of Best Actor (Douglas); Best Supporting Actor (Hackman); and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Derby
Directed by Robert Kaylor
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime

Roller derby is a roller skating contact sport played by two teams of fifteen members. Roller derby is played by approximately 1,250 amateur leagues worldwide, mostly inside the United States.  Game play consists of a series of short scrimmages (jams) in which both teams designate a jammer (who wears a unique designation on the helmet; currently a star) and four blockers to skate counter-clockwise around a track. The jammer scores points by lapping members of the opposing team. The teams attempt to hinder the opposing jammer while assisting their own jammer—in effect, playing both offense and defense simultaneously.

Interesting backstage look at that slice of Americana known as the Roller Derby, back when the sport entertained millions with its theatrics and slugfests.

This gritty documentary features looks at both male and female derby action and conversations with players.  It gains additional interest by focusing on a charismatic bad-boy named Mike Snell who is a skater wanna-be.  His womanizing, slacker lifestyle is contrasted with the material achievements of veteran skater Charlie O’Connor.

It looks to have been a tough business.  The fights might have been staged but I’m sure a lot of the bruises were  real.  We get a chat with a couple of real bloodthirsty fans as well.  I enjoyed this mostly for nostalgia value.  When I was in Junior High I had a friend whose mother was a big fan and I got to go to a live match once.  I’m not really into fisticuffs so the attraction escaped me.

Leon Russell signs “Queen of the Roller Derby”

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Holmes: Criminals are as unpredictable as head colds. You never know when you’re going to catch one.

This movie doesn’t quite have that prime Wilder zing but it is entertaining.

The story is set in Victorian England and Scotland.  As the movie begins, we learn that it will concern cases solved by Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) that have been sealed for 50 years and were never published by Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely).  We then segue into flashback for almost the whole film.  We learn of Holmes’s cocaine addiction.

The first story, which I wouldn’t call a mystery, concerns a Russian ballerina who wants Holmes to father her child.  The second involves the case of Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page).  She is saved from drowning and taken to 221B Baker Street by a cabbie.  At first, she seems to be suffering from total amnesia.

But Holmes’s deductions begin to establish her identify and awaken her memories.  She is searching for her missing husband, a mining engineer.  The investigation takes Holmes, Gabrielle, and Watson to Scotland where Watson spots the Loch Ness monster.  With Christopher Lee as Mycroft Holmes.

This movie had been intended as a big-budget  road show production complete with intermission.  Financial problems at the studio scaled the project back to a standard release time and subjected the finished film to over an hour of cuts.  So it’s understandable that some of Wilder’s finesse might have ended up on the cutting room floor.  Then again a Victorian period piece doesn’t quite fit in with Wilder’s wise-guy urban style.  I must say the movie kept my interest throughout and presents a different more vulnerable Holmes than previous adaptations.

The Wizard of Gore
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Written by Allen Kahn
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel
They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?

Montag the Magnificent: How do you know that at this second you aren’t sleeping in your beds dreaming that you are here sitting in this theater?

Goriest by far of the films I have seen by the Godfather of Gore.

Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager) is a magician/hypnotist who takes the “saw young woman in half” act to outrageous extremes.  He hypnotizes the audience to witnessing a magic trick ending with an intact victim.  We see that and him physically sawing, etc his victim then pulling the innards out and running his fingers through them.  The women are later found murdered in various locations

His act draws the attention of a local TV anchorwoman and her boyfriend who start some investigative journalism.

The movie ends with the boyfriend doing a kind of plot synopsis and concluding that none of it made any sense.  He certainly got that right.  I keep watching these things because previously in Lewis’s films the gore is over the top but so obviously fake (bright red paint subbing for blood) that one could handle it and even laugh at it.  This one made me turn away from the screen in disgust.  I think this ends my exploration of Mr. Lewis’s filmography.