Where to start?! Not much time for detailed analysis of everything I've cleared from the DVR so this'll be quick(ish).
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Robert Mitchum stars as a down on his luck low-level hood from Boston. After getting busted by the FBI he has to turn informant on the criminals he supplies guns to and eventually has to rat out his own gun supplier. But as always, no good deed goes unpunished in noir and Eddie finds himself being double-crossed by his bartender pal Dillon (Peter Boyle) who is also working both sides for the mob and the FBI.
This may be one of the more authentic crime films made in the 70's. It's an unglamorous life for Eddie with clandestine meetings in supermarket parking lots and all night diners. After setting up his gun supplier Jackie for the Feds, Eddie expects that his debt to Agent Foley is paid but Foley wants more. Eddie then tries to set up his bank robber friends Jimmy Scalise (Alex Rocco!) and Artie Van. But Eddie doesn't know that they've already been pinched by the Feds and that he is the mob's prime suspect for ratting them out. And the man ordered to kill Eddie is his pal Dillon. In the most middle class murder plot ever filmed, Dillon takes Eddie out to a Bruins game, gets him shit house drunk, and then shoots him in the car on the way home.
It's a great low key film. Mitchum is perfect, looking beat and tired, desperate to get himself clear of any debt owed to Foley and the FBI. The bank robbery scenes with Alex Rocco and crew are realistic without being over the top. And the Bruins game is understated perfectly. It's incredibly mundane and sinister at the same time.
And as a side note, I discovered The Friends of Eddie Coyle in the back pages of Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips' comic Criminal. Every issue has an essay dedicated to great and sometimes obscure crime films or writers. Seriously, pick up an issue or trade paperback of Criminal if you see it, you won't be disappointed and the essays have never steered me wrong.
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I always wondered what was the story behind the character of Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs. Aside from padding the crew out, he only features in a handful of scenes and then dies off-camera. It wasn't until years later when I saw the film Animal Factory that I learned just who Eddie Bunker was and why Quentin Tarantino had cast him as Mr. Blue in the first place.
Eddie Bunker was the real deal. He lived nearly his first 40 years in jails and institutions, finally changing his life by writing books and screenplays based on his experiences. His first book No Beast So Fierce was adapted into Straight Time in 1978 as he was finally released from prison for his last crime.
Straight Time is the story of Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman), an ex-convict on parole who finds that adapting to life on the outside is a stacked deck and he eventually returns to crime because that it's the only thing he knows how to do.
Everything is pitch perfect. Cinematography, music score, cast, you name it. This is a certified Lost Classic of 70's Film. I can never find it in the DirectTV listings so I bought the DVD.
This might be one of Dustin Hoffman's greatest performances. Burning with anger at a world that will never give him a fair shake, he lashes out the only way he knows how. Harry Dean Stanton plays his partner in crime, Jerry Schue, another ex-con who is seemingly well adjusted to domestic life but is dying to pull another job. But Jerry soon finds out that Max is too impulsive and pays the price when a jewelry heist goes wrong for them. Their getaway driver Willy (Gary Busey) loses his nerve and leaves the scene of the crime without them.
M. Emmet Walsh plays Max's parole officer Earl Frank, and if you know M. Emmet Walsh, you know that he plays a smarmy, sleazy, and underhanded son of a bitch who's out to get Max. On a visit to check up on Max, Earl handcuffs him to the bed and searches his room, eventually finding a burnt up book of matches that Willy used to cook up a heroin fix. Holding this over Max's head, Earl busts him for parole violation and sends Max back to prison, causing him to lose the job he had just found. Upon release, Earl gives Max a ride home, but Max punches him and takes control of the car. Max leaves Earl handcuffed to a fence on the highway with his pants pulled down. Max has now passed the point of no return, he'll have to return to a life of crime.
Theresa Russell plays Jenny, a woman Max meets at an employment agency who gets caught up with him. She goes on the run with Max after his botched jewelry heist but he leaves her behind at a dinner with a bus ticket back to Los Angeles. He knows he'll eventually be caught and doesn't want her to come to any harm. Russell plays it cool and aloof, which some might criticize but I think works to make her desire to hook up with an ex-convict ambiguous. In the real world, lots of people enter into relationships with criminals for seemingly no real discernible reason.
Also making appearances are a young Kathy Bates as Willy's wife who asks Max to not come around and Eddie Bunker himself has a role as Mickey, a friend of Max's who tips him off to a poker game that could be robbed. Even 7 year-old Jake Busey shows up as Willy's son!
Highly recommended, as are any of Eddie Bunker's books.
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Back when I was in high school, me and my pals would get high and watch Naked Lunch a lot. What's odd is that I had never seen Videodrome until about a month ago. How did I miss out on this? I've seen quite a few David Cronenberg films but I guess those early 1980's ones never caught my eye. Or they just weren't readily available at the neighborhood video store. Having worked at the neighborhood video store, I can tell you, a lot of stoners in NE Minneapolis were terrible about returning trippy movies. I think we went through 5-6 copies of Pink Floyd's The Wall due to people never returning it.
So yeah. Videodrome. Jesus. What a creepy film. James Woods is perfectly cast as an underground cable station's program director who gets into some borderline snuff films called "Videodrome". He also starts a somewhat sadistic romance with Deborah Harry, who may or may not speak to him through his TV set. In classic Cronenberg style, he starts to hallucinate and lose touch with reality after coming into contact with the Videodrome programs. Eventually he confronts feelings of body terror, mainly is there a vaginal-like hole in his stomach where he stashes a gun that he's supposed to execute someone with? Who knows?! I need to see this again! And while I'm at it, I should really see The Boost, the Great 80's Coke Movie starring James Woods & Sean Young as two yuppie cokeheads. Word was they became "invloved" on set and Sean Young went coo-coo-crazy on Jimmy in real life. Sounds like the perfect companion piece to Videodrome.
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Another classic film I had never seen until last month! Can you believe that kids? While I pride myself on knowing quite a bit about cinema history, there are some films that I know a lot about but have never actually seen. I guess my mom's subscription to Movieline magazine back in the 90's was worth it.
A quick look at the IMDB listing for Alien also told me that there are about as many "Director's Cuts" of it as there are of Blade Runner. From what I can tell TCM were showing the Original Cut. Which I think is perfect. I as surprised how much tension and build up there is and how little the actual Alien is seen in full. Ripley barely even seems like the main character. For 1979 audiences, they must have been led to believe that Tom Skerritt was the big star of the film until more than an hour in.
What's funny is that I half-remembered that Ian Holm plays the traitor, but I got so caught up in the story that I forgot he's also an android. Hot damn! I knew that going in, but Ridley Scott directed it all so well that I was surprised. That's what I get for reading about films without ever seeing them.
The art direction and set design are incredible. Alien is more of a successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey than 2010: The Year We Made Contact. Every beautifully crafted spaceship set is imbued with menace. Even the brightly lit sets are imposing.
I've seen all of the sequels so I can now say, the original is still the best.
Alright. That's it for now. I hope to get back on the blog soon. Next should be my thoughts on The Magnificent Seven, The Magnificent Seven Ride!, as well as Sabata and Adios Sabata, all films starring Yul Bryner or Lee Van Cleef who exchange roles, kind of, between franchises.
And I did get to see Winter Kills but I'm going to have to see it again to get all the head scratchers worked out and I might as well sit down and watch 8 Million Ways To Die while I'm at it before writing some more about Jeff Bridges.
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