The Curator of Schlock #386: The Black Windmill

21 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Michael Caine, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #386 by Jeff Shuster

The Black Windmill

Michael Caine versus Donald Pleasence’s mustache.

I had blacked out after seeing the denizens of Mooseville devour a roasted kangaroo right in front of me. I came to.

Larry was standing over me. He helped me up and told me his story.

Apparently, Larry was an undercover agent working for the Canadian government. He was trying to uncover an illegal kangaroo slaughterhouse. I panicked.

Then Larry told me the kangaroo I saw was not Edwige and that she was still alive.

— To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1974’s The Black Windmill from director Don Siegel. I think I was waxing nostalgic for the trio of Harry Palmer movies I watched a couple years back. The Black Windmill is not in the Harry Palmer series, but Michael Caine plays a middle class spy in the employ of Her Majesty’s Government, so close enough.

The movie starts with two young English schoolboys exploring an abandoned military base with their toy plane. Two RAF officers grab them and drive them to one of the abandoned buildings, chiding the boys for trespassing. A man named McKee (John Vernon) drugs the boys and has them tossed in the back of a car. Turns out he isn’t really an RAF officer. The whole thing was a ruse to kidnap the son of a prominent British spy.

That spy is a Major Tarrant played by Michael Caine. He’s busy investigating arms smugglers selling weapons to the IRA. He meets a woman named Celia Burrows (Delphine Seyrig) who tells him to stop by next week to meet the big boss. That big boss must be McKee because he’s hiding out in that house and one gets the impression that he and Celia must be ten steps ahead of Tarrant.

Tarrant meets up with his wife, Alex (Janet Suzman), who’s in a panic over a call she’s expecting regarding their son. When the call comes in, it’s McKee. He says he’s kidnapped Tarrant’s son and he’s got some demands, first of which is to talk to Tarrant’s boss, Cedric Harper (Donald Pleasance). McKee will call back at 7 PM and Harper had better answer or else bad things will happen to the boy. Tarrant relays this request to Harper who agrees to take the call.

I don’t like Harper. The man seems more interested in the latest item from Q Branch, a travel bag that can shoot missiles, than the fate of a child. When Harper takes the call from McKee, he keeps fiddling with his mustache the whole time. You’re a grown man. Don’t fiddle with your mustache! It’s revealed that McKee wants a bag of diamonds that Harper has sealed away in a vault. Tarrant is supposed to travel alone to France and deliver them. Harper says no and gives Tarrant his condolences on the fate of his boy.

Tarrant has been surprisingly stoic during this whole affair. His wife is in pieces over the kidnapping, but Tarrant is strangely unaffected. Still, the decision by his boss to leave his son to a horrible fate, motivates Tarrant to steal the diamonds and confront the bad guys. A wine barrel gets blown up and McKee takes a bunch of bullets to his crotch area. Yeah, seeing John Vernon get machine gunned in the crotch almost made the movie for me. Almost.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Buzzed Books #95: The Art of Soul, The Art of Raya and the Last Dragon, and The Art of Luca

18 Tuesday Jan 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Art, Buzzed Books, Disney, Film

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Chronicle Books, The Art of Luca, The Art of Raya and the Last Dragon, The Art of Soul

Buzzed Books #95 by John King

The Art of Soul,

The Art of Raya and the Last Dragon,

and The Art of Luca

As a lifelong fan of Disney films, there’s not much nostalgia in my obsession. I have never found ways to make Condorman, The Fox and the Hound, or Herbie Does a Thing important or fun or profound. The only connection I feel between my childhood and films I saw then is how the great films still loom in my imagination. In the 1970s, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Star Wars, and The Rescuers would repeat in my mind for months after seeing them in the theater. One movie ticket provided me with rich experiences that endure.

Sometimes, though, the art and music of Disney films transcend the actual overall film itself, such as Alice in Wonderland (1951). Oliver Wallace’s score, sometimes combined with Lewis Carrol’s poetry as lyrics, is a wonderful soundscape; the 1997 compact disk release interpolated dialogue and sound effects, in essence creating a sonic film for the mind that is a better experience than the film. The film itself quivers with the miraculous design work of Mary Blair. Alice in Wonderland has some colorful, very daft scenes. But the parts surpass the whole. Listen to the soundtrack in the dark instead.

Such have been my musings while considering the extraordinary Disney titles recently released by Chronicle books. Chronicle publishes Didier Ghez’s exceptional series, They Drew as They Pleased, which unveils never-before-seen artwork from the developmental stages of classic Disney films.

Separate from Didier Ghez’s series, Chronicle also publishes volumes devoted to the creation of recent offerings by Pixar and Disney, such as Soul, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Luca.

The Art of Soul is one of my favorite books in my Disney library for how well the volume allows me to appreciate the mind-bending, yet somehow familiar visual grammar of the film.

The running time of Pixar’s Soul might be too short, which is to say, the visual experience is too sublime to appreciate in real time, with the film’s half-abstract, celestial sense of realms for the creation and dissolution of souls and, in contrast, the film’s densely realistic New York City.

As an animation nerd, I am also gratified to learn more about how the designs of Soul were worked out, with digital sketches that look rather like hand-drawn sketches—with enough practice, digital work was certain to catch up to hand-drawn illustration.

And The Art of Soul also focuses on the designs within the designs, such as jazz signage. In this deeply original film’s design art, I can see elements of Modern art, along with jazzy resonances with Disney’s 101 Dalmatians and the “Rhapsody in Blue” portion of Fantasia 2000. This book is both frozen in time—allowing the reader to experience the art as slowly as the reader wants—and also bursting with the intelligence and inspiration of the film’s creation.

I liked Raya and the Last Dragon. The Chronicle book may persuade me that the film is better than I thought. On my first viewing, the narration seemed a touch glib, the setting seemed too allegorically on-the-nose, and the water dragon seemed too goofily comic. I suspect that the filmmakers aimed for a YA audience, a demographic that clearly isn’t me.

The mythic setting of Kumandra seemed like a generalization of lots of Asian tropes and imagery, and this seemed indiscriminate to me when I watched the film. The Art of Raya and the Last Dragon points out that the inspiration for the film was Southeastern Asian countries: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. So I was partly right, but in a wrong way.

In the Chronicle book, the different regions of the Dragon Lands—Heart, Spine, Talon, Fang, and Tail—are explained in terms of philosophy, architecture, and costuming. The art is transcendent, reminding me of how beautiful the film is, all while encouraging me to look deeper into its world-building.

The Art of Luca focuses on Italy, tales of merfolk, and friendship. The film is a charming meditation on childhood conflicts and life in a seaside Italian village in the 1950s. The art style is vibrant and iconic, yet original. For example, the merfolk’s design do not look like mermaids from Peter Pan or The Little Mermaid, but more humanoid, like transitioning-tadpoles, with cartoony, detailed faces.

The settings of the seaside village and the ocean are stunning (reminding me of the contrasting settings of Soul). The claustrophobic clustering of colorful dwellings in the hilly town of Portorosso makes me want to live there, in a modest, beautiful, shabby place in a time when a Vespa was the most beautiful thing in a beautiful world. The dark aquamarine of the underwater world somehow feels spooky, yet comforting, a dreamscape that makes the merfolk seem like a realistic possibility.

The character designs, even the human ones, are memorable.

I cannot assert this enough: I tend to take for granted how sublimely beautiful Disney and Pixar films are. Seeing the storyboards, character design, and concept sketches in so many styles is a gift that Chronicle brings to animation fanatics.

Enrico Casarosa, the film’s director, makes this unusual plea at the end of his introduction to this book: “I have a favor to ask … Reach out to that friend you once had from those formative days of awkward adolescence and self-discovery. It’ll give you the opportunity to tell them how important they’ve been in your life. I bet they might even remember some hilarious moments you’ve long forgotten.” This is true of friends, but also true of the great films I and my friends love, Disney and Pixar films among them.

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

The Curator of Schlock #385: Berlin Syndrome

14 Friday Jan 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #385 by Jeff Shuster

Berlin Syndrome

Don’t go to Germany.

There I was, in the middle of a crowd of malcontents gussied up in moose heads and moose leggings. The sound of a horn silenced the raucous crowd. Eight bare chested men emerged wearing executioner hoods carrying a huge aluminum dinner platter. A medley of carrots and potatoes surrounded the roasted carcass of what used to be a kangaroo.

My thoughts turned to Edwige, my beloved kangaroo companion of the past year. The crowd roared applause at the site of the forbidden delicacy in front of them. My screams got cut short as someone behind me clonked me on the back of the head. All went dark. — To be continued.

I’m done with Arrow Home Video for a while. They gave me a great 2021, but now I must go out into the wild for schlock. This week’s movie is 2017’s Berlin Syndrome from director Cate Shortland. At first, I thought this might be another in the line of Harry Palmer movies. Maybe they got Michael Caine to reprise the role of the working class spy one last time.

Sadly, this is not that movie. It does take place in Berlin much like Funeral in Berlin, but the similarities stop there.

Berlin Syndrome stars Teresa Palmer as Clare Havel, a young Australian woman traveling by herself throughout Europe. Berlin is her latest destination and Teresa is taken in by the sites and sounds of this famous city. Her first night there, she attends a drinking party on a rooftop near a hostel she’s staying at. The next day she explores the city and runs into a handsome young gentleman named Andi (Max Riemelt). He offers her a strawberry from his father’s garden and the two of them hit it off and spend the night together.

Teresa wakes up in an empty apartment. Max has gone off to teach high school English. Teresa goes to leave, but can’t as she is locked inside. That would be the first red flag for me. After all, apartments are supposed to be locked from the inside, but maybe Germans have a different way of doing things. When Max returns, she lightly confronts him about being locked inside the apartment for the day. He jokingly says something like, “At least I didn’t tie you to the bed.”

They go out for dinner and dancing. Teresa spends the night again only to find herself locked in the next day. She also can’t find her mother’s wedding ring that was attached to a chain around her neck. Max promised to leave a key for her, but there is no key, no way out. She tries breaking the windows, but they’re reinforced glass. The apartment is the only inhabited place in the empty building so crying out for help does no good. Teresa is Andi’s prisoner.

For the next few days, he ties her to the bed before heading to work. Teresa plays along until Andi believes she’ll behave while he’s away. Teresa finds a screwdriver that she uses to stab Andi’s hand to a table in a futile effort to get away. While exploring the apartment, she manages to break into a locked room where she finds a photo album filled with pictures of the last woman Andi imprisoned in his apartment.

Berlin Syndrome belongs to the film genre as Hostel and Turistas, movies that warn moviegoers of seeing the world and broadening their horizons. Just stay home, don’t go outside, and binge watch shows on the streaming channel of your choice. It’s the only way to live.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #384: Schlock

31 Friday Dec 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #384 by Jeff Shuster

Schlock

Now that’s a movie title!

I was stumbling around the town of Mooseville in the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan searching for my lost kangaroo, Edwige. I made my way to the festival in the town square, some kind Canadian Thanksgiving celebration. The whole scene reminded me of something out of The Wicker Man, everyone wearing moose masks and moose leggings over their jeans. The revelry stopped when a horn blew in the distance. — To be continued.

Tonight’s Arrow Home Video release is 1973’s Schlock from director John Landis. What! What? A movie called Schlock! How can this be? Well, it just is. This movie is a bit of comedy gem as it features an ape named Schlock running rampant in a suburban neighborhood. What more can you ask for in a movie?

What’s the plot? Police are dumbfounded when piles of dead bodies turn up. A Detective Sgt. Wino (Saul Kahan) has no idea what he’s doing and admits so freely to a reporter named Joe Putzman (Eric Allison). The bodies are gathered up in Hefty trash bags and, naturally, a contest is held. Viewers are asked to guess the number of dead bodies in those plastic bags. The closest to the actual number will receive a free chicken dinner from the Colonel!

Some teenagers investigate an underground cave and get attacked by Schlock, an ape-like creature which is just John Landis in an ape suit, but who cares? The gorilla suit is one of the greatest Hollywood inventions. Why do you need an actual gorilla when you can have an actor in a gorilla suit? I should buy a gorilla suit. I could go around town wreaking as much havoc as I want and no one would blame me.

Putzman interviews Professor Shlibovitz (Emile Hamaty), a prehistoricologist. He rambles on about a prehistoric ape creature that existed eons ago. This interview is happening while Schlock emerges right into frame. Shlibovitz goes to explore the cave while Putzman interviews Schlock. Somehow Putzman doesn’t see Schlock as a killer ape. That assessment changes when Schlock rips his arm off.

Schlock busts into a trailer and eats an entire chocolate cake while washing it all down with a carton of milk. He breaks into a convenience store when he sees they sell bananas. Schlock accosts a local hippies soon after. I think my favorite scene in the movie is when Schlock sits down next to a blind piano player and starts bopping his head to the rock ’n’ roll tune. There’s another funny scene where Schlock is in a movie theater and tall people keep sitting down in front of him, blocking his view.

Did I mention there’s a love story in this movie? Schlock falls hard for a young blind woman named Mindy (Eliza Roberts) who mistakes him for a dog before she gets her eyesight back. Long story short, the situation evolves into a King Kong scenario with Schlock holding her captive above a department store. The movie promises a sequel, Son of Schlock, before the end credits roll, but sadly, such a movie never materialized. Anyway, check out Schlock if you need some joyous humor in your life. Happy New Year!

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #383: A Pistol for Ringo

24 Friday Dec 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #383 by Jeff Shuster

A Pistol for Ringo

And Ringo was his name-o

Larry had just revealed to me that Mooseville (a small town in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan) celebrates Canadian Thanksgiving by eating roast Marsupial, of which the species kangaroo is a member. I tore away from him toward a festival I could hear in the distance. I had to see for myself if Edwige, my kangaroo companion, was being served as the main course to these barbarians. — To be continued.

Merry Christmas to all of you out in the blogosphere. Tonight’s movie marks the end of my spaghetti western selection for this year, but I will be fulfilling a promise I had made to myself on July 8th of 2016. I had just watched a little western called The Return of Ringo and meant to review A Pistol for Ringo the following week. Well, I guess five years later I am now fulfilling that promise. Looks like Arrow Home Video released a Ringo twofer on Blu-ray, so let’s boogie.

1965’s A Pistol for Ringo was directed by Duccio Tessari and stars Montgomery Wood as Ringo, a gunslinger that also goes by the name of Angel Face. I guess they call him Angel Face because he’s so good looking. Anyway, Ringo gets arrested for shooting some malcontents that were tailing him. Sheriff Ben (George Martin) hopes the judge will stick it to Ringo so he’s less trigger happy. This mustn’t take place in Texas because I heard all you needed back in the day was to tell a Texan sheriff that the man you shot “needed killing.” And that would be good enough the sheriff.

A group of Mexican bandits led by a rotund man named Sancho (Fernando Sancho) rob a bank and shoot up the town. Seriously, none of the local cowboys can seem to get a shot off, each taking a bullet before their hands reach their holsters. The bandits escape, but Sheriff Ben and his posse are in close pursuit. Sancho’s gang then finds a ranch to hold up in and warns the sheriff that he’ll be sending out a dead ranch hand every dawn and dusk until his gang is allowed to escape with the money.

The ranch is owned by a Major Clyde (Antonio Casas), a rather wealthy land baron. He lives on the estate with his lovely daughter, Ruby (Hally Hammond), who herself is engaged to Sheriff Ben. They were getting ready to celebrate the Christmas holidays, but their new houseguests are a rather rude bunch of individuals with all of the drinking and shooting and what not. Major Clyde has taken a shine to Sancho’s sexy girlfriend, Delores (Nieves Navarro), and starts romancing her as any silver fox would.

Ringo offers his services to the bank and Sheriff Ben. Ringo will infiltrate the gang in exchange thirty percent of the money retrieved. The bank figures seventy percent of something is better than zero percent of nothing and thus the scam begins. Ringo is seen by the bandits to be narrowly escaping Sheriff Ben’s wrath. Ringo tells Sancho that if he gives him forty percent of the take, he has a surefire plan for the gang to escape. Just whose side is Ringo on anyway? You’ll have to watch and find out.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #382: Texas, Adios

17 Friday Dec 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #382 by Jeff Shuster

Texas, Adios

Goodbye Texas!

Larry and I had dug our way out of a prison in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. We made our way back into the town of Mooseville. I thought we should lay low, but Larry insisted it was okay. The townsfolk would be too busy in the town square feasting and drinking as it was Canadian Thanksgiving. I had asked him if Canadians eat turkey like we do in the states.

“Some do,” Larry said. “But the residents of this town tend to go for more exotic fare. They eat roast marsupial.” — To be continued.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1966’s Texas, Adios from director Ferdinando Baldi. Hey, this is the same director as Django, Prepare a Coffin. This is not a Django movie, but it was known as Django 2 in some territories. Perhaps, this is because Texas, Adios stars none other than Franco Nero in the lead role.

Nero plays Texas sheriff Burt Sullivan, a lawman who fights for justice, but has a dark past he must contend with. Burt Sullivan also has a younger brother named Jim, a plucky young man eager for adventure. Wikipedia says that even though this western was made in Italy, Texas, Adios plays out like a traditional American western rather than the much grittier spaghetti westerns of the time. Well, I don’t know what movie they were watching, but Texas, Adios is one of the more depressing movies I’ve seen in recent years. No singing cowboys in this one.

I suppose things are fine in Texas, but Sullivan wants to head down to Mexico to catch Cisco Delgado, the criminal who murdered his father when he was just a boy. Jim tags along and they cross the border. Maybe the Texas we were seeing was the stuff of classic Hollywood westerns, but the Mexico we see in this movie is a horrorscape littered with bodies.

One of the first things we see are the Mexican authorities gunning down some peasants one by one. The town drunk cackles as each of these men gets popped. This is a bad place, but Burt Sullivan is determined to track down Cisco Delgado by bribing every no-good thug and harlot he can find. The closer Burt gets, the more likely he’s to run into Delgado’s men who like to spend their time shooting men and kidnapping pretty women.

Eventually, Delgado’s men capture the Sullivans and bring them before Cisco Delgado, who decides to spare their lives. He even throws a party in honor of Jim Sullivan. As it turns out, Jim Sullivan is his son. Yeah, old Cisco had his way with Burt’s mom right after killing his dad. Naturally, Jim doesn’t take too kindly to this revelation, but I guess that’s what happens when you learn that the man who killed your father is actually your biological father. That reminds me of another movie that will be unmentioned on this blog.

Anyway, it all leads to a very depressing finale in which nobody really gets what they and any justice that wins out feels hollow. Well, if you’re looking to get more depressed during the holidays, check out Texas, Adios!

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #381: Django, Prepare a Coffin

12 Sunday Dec 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #381 by Jeff Shuster

Django, Prepare a Coffin

Does lightning strike twice for the Django series? Yes, it does!

I woke up to the sound of Larry slapping my face.

“I thought you were a goner,” he said, pulling me upright. I gradually got to my feet, feeling like I had been kicked in the tailbone. The two of us were still on the premises of a prison in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.The only thing separating us from freedom was a barbed wire fence. Larry handed me a gardener’s trowel and told me to start digging. — To be continued.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1968’s Django, Prepare a Coffin from director Ferdinando Baldi. Let me just say that this movie has one of the best title sequences I’ve ever seen. You’ve got cowboys riding horses and gunslingers duking it out in a rotoscoped silhouette. This is all done to the sound of a rousing chorus composed by Gianfranco and Giampiero Reverberi. I’m pumped! I even bought the soundtrack from a seller on Ebay.

Our movie begins with Django’s good friend David Barry (Horst Frank) getting elected as state senator or some public office to that effect. David Barry makes grandiose proclamations about a new day for freedom and democracy. Some rabble-rousers pick a fight with David Barry accusing him of being a dirty politician who only cares about getting rich, but Django makes short work of them. After all, Django is good friends with David Barry and knows he doesn’t have a crooked bone in his body.

I should mention that Franco Nero doesn’t reprise the role of Django in this sequel. He was off in Hollywood, cast as Lancelot in 1967’s Camelot from Joshua Logan. So for this Django, we get Terence Hill in the lead role. Terence Hill played Guido Falcone in Mr. Billion, a movie I’d never heard of before, but that director Jonathan Kaplan called the biggest failure of his career. I’ll have to check that out one day, but in the meantime, Terrence Hill makes a suitable Django as he looks a bit like Nero.

Django tells his good friend David Barry that he’s supervising the transport of bags of gold. Django’s wife is also traveling with him. Guess what? They get ambushed by a gang of bandits. Everyone gets shot up including Django’s wife. Django takes some bullets in the back and looks up to see who’s leading this gang and it’s none other than his good friend David Barry. Django is left for dead, but survives his multiple gunshot wounds. And then he plans his revenge.

Django gets a job as a hangman for several western towns. It seems that David Barry has been getting his political enemies falsely accused and convicted of heinous crimes and sentenced to death by hanging. Django then uses trickery to fake hang each man and fake bury him. Each man he rescues from the gallows becomes part of the “ghost army” set to right the wrongs of David Barry and his cohorts. This is an engaging followup to the original Django and almost serves as an origin story for the character. That’s it for Django movies this month as I’ll be returning with Texas, Adios next week. I’m sure I’ll cover more Django movies some day. They only made about fifty of them.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #380: Django

03 Friday Dec 2021

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Ángel Álvarez, Django, Eduardo Fajardo, Franco Nero, Loredana Nusciak, Sergio Corbucci

The Curator of Schlock #380 by Jeff Shuster

Django

Don’t bug the man dragging the coffin around.

My friend Larry and I were trying to scale a Canadian prison wall using a rope made of used men’s briefs. I went first, inching my way ever so clumsily to the ground below. I was about halfway down when Larry decided to follow. The combined weight of us both proved too much for Larry’s amateur knot job. I was free-falling and the last thing I saw was Larry’s protruding butt cheeks before everything went dark.

— To be continued.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1966’s Django from director Sergio Corbucci (who is referenced in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Django is one of the more notable spaghetti westerns.

We don’t get Clint Eastwood in this motion picture, but does star the one and only Franco Nero in the title role. The movie begins with Django dragging a coffin through the muddy wasteland of the old west.

This behavior brings to mind questions like for what purpose does one drag a coffin around with him and who is in said coffin? One wonders if it’s some sort of fashionable affectation, or does the coffin give this man comfort like a baby blue blanket does for Linus?

A prostitute named Maria (Loredana Nusciak) gets whipped by a gang of evil Mexican bandits. Then the Mexican bandits are shot to death by an evil gang of ex-Confederate soldiers called the Red Shirts. Naturally, these Red Shirts want to kill Maria by tying her to a burning cross. Then Django shows up, shoots the Red Shirts dead with his six gun, and brings Maria with him to the nearest small town, complete with a brothel run by Nathanial the pimp (Ángel Álvarez).

Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo) is the leader of the Red Shirts and demands Nathanial give him his weekly cut of the brothel’s profits. Django sees this and shoots up the Major’s men, but tells the Major to go and to bring his whole army back with him next time. Well, the Major does just that. One would think that’s more than even Django can handle, but it’s at this point that we get to what’s in the coffin and it just happens to be a machine gun that Django uses to mow down every Red Shirt that enters town.

This gives him clout with the Mexican bandits and their leader, General Rodriguez (José Bódalo), who wants to start a revolution back in Mexico and take over as ruler of that country. He also has a penchant for slicing off the ears of those who cross him. So General Rodriguez wants ten of those new fangled machine guns, but those cost money so Django and General Rodriguez’s gang assault the Mexican Army at Fort Charribba. They steal a whole lot of gold, but the General doesn’t want to give Django his share just yet. They lock the gold away, but Django enacts an elaborate plan to steal it. He then makes a break for it with Maria.

I like this picture, which has the spirit of A Fistful of Dollars. We get a particularly nasty villain in Major Jackson, a man whose idea of sport is shooting poor Mexican farmers. And Django is especially cunning as our anti-hero. Deep down we know he won’t get away with his scheme, but we root for him all the same. Apparently, there was a whole slew of these Django movies made back in the day so I may return with another next week.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #378: Terror in a Texas Town

19 Friday Nov 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #378 by Jeff Shuster

Terror in a Texas Town

Don’t bring a gun to a harpoon fight.

I was trying to break out of a prison in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan with Larry, a Don Knotts lookalike. Larry had spent the last ten years tunneling the walls of this place with nothing, but a worn rock hammer to get him through all this concrete. Seems he was sent to prison for killing his wife though Larry protested his innocence. He said a guy with a Strawberry Shortcake tattoo on his right bicep did the deed, but the authorities didn’t buy his story. I told Larry I’d do everything in my power to help him clear his name once we got on the outside and he helped me rescue my kangaroo.

Tonight’s Arrow home video release is 1958’s Terror in a Texas Town from director Joseph Lewis. This one is distributed under the Arrow Films moniker as it’s a bit more high class than their usual fare, but don’t let that scare you. This is an incredible western penned by Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood 10 that was blacklisted. Also, the star of the movie, Sterling Hayden had also been investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

So there’s this evil land baron named McNeil (Sebastian Cabot) who wants to buy up all of the land surrounding Prairie City. The trouble is the land is owned by a group of salt-of-the-earth farmers who don’t want to sell. Enter Johnny Crale (Nedrick Young), an evil gunslinger working for McNeil. Any farmer that doesn’t sign his land over gets a gut full of lead. One such unfortunate farmer is a Swedish immigrant named Sven Hansen.

You see, Sven and neighbor, Jose Mirada (Victor Milan), discovered oil on both their properties and figure that’s the reason behind McNeil pressuring everyone to sell. Jose and his son even witness the murder of Sven at the hands of Johnny Crale, but Jose’s wife tells him to keep silent as she’s expecting a baby and wants the baby to born in peace.

Anyway, it turns out old Sven had a son named George (Sterling Hayden, naturally), a whaler by profession who has decided to settle down on his father’s estate. George shows up to town, asking questions about how his father died and how to get to his father’s estate. The town sheriff tells him that things in America aren’t like they are in Sweden. You can’t just expect to come over here and inherit your father’s land, but George isn’t buying any of that. George says that his father’s will filed away up in Austin and that he plans to get a lawyer.

The sheriff then tells McNeil about this Swede that’s been asking too many questions. McNeil offers George three hundred dollars for his land that really belongs to McNeil anyway due a contract that George’s dad had signed with him. George is suspicious of McNeill and refuses to deal with him. I have to say, Sebastian Cabot plays a perfect ass and one can’t wait to see him get what’s coming to him. And if you want to see the bad guy getting speared with a harpoon then this is the movie for you.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #377: Ronin

12 Friday Nov 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #377 by Jeff Shuster

Ronin

More like this, please!

I had lost all hope of escaping Mooseville, a small town in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan when a gentleman resembling Don Knotts broke into my prison cell decrying, “This isn’t the way out.”

“Hey, can you get me out of here and help me rescue my pet kangaroo and get my truck back?” I asked. He dug into his ear and blew the wax off his pinky.

“Okay, but I’ll need a favor in return. Follow me,” he said before crawling back into the hole in the wall. “By the way, the name’s Larry.”

“I’m Thomas, but my friends call me Big Tom,” I said knowing those words were a lie. — To be continued.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1998’s Ronin from director John Frankenheimer. As I’ve said before, Arrow is known as “the Criterion of Shit,” but they don’t just put out what the mainstream would consider schlock. Here we have a classic John Frankenheimer film with a stellar cast and impressive stunt work. The screenplay was co-written by David Mamet. Come on.

If we go back to the 1990s, there was a resurgence in the espionage genre starting with the return of James Bond in Goldeneye. So we got a bevy of these types of movies, but the best of them was Ronin. The movie begins with a bunch of shady individuals meeting at a Paris bar. First among them is Sam Regazolli (Robert De Niro). We don’t know much about him, but from the constant prodding of the characters, we get the idea that he’s an ex-CIA agent turned mercenary.

An Irish woman named Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) has the group moved to a warehouse where she can discuss the plan her organization wants them to undertake. We don’t know the name of her organization, but I think the IRA would be a good guess. The plan is to steal a suitcase. What’s in the suitcase is anyone’s guess because Deirdre won’t tell them. I suppose it’s a weapon of some kind, but all we know is that the Russians want it and are willing to pay top dollar for it. The group has to intercept it before the exchange takes place.

It’s dawning on me that writing about a perfect movie is difficult and Ronin is as close to perfect as movies come. This is like a Mission Impossible movie, but in reverse, with a team made up of criminals, some of whom are downright villainous. They’re not all bad though. Jean Reno plays Vincent, a French marksman that befriends Sam. And Sam will need friends when the group is double crossed. Expect some excellent car chase scenes, explosions, gunplay, the works. Stellan Skarsgård, Sean Bean, and Jonathan Price round out the cast.

I don’t want to give any more 23-year-old spoilers as you should go into this movie with fresh eyes. The Arrow Blu-ray has some excellent special features such as an audio commentary with director John Frankenheimer and an episode of Cinefile detailing the career of Robert De Niro with interviews with Quentin Tarantino. Arrow also remastered this movie in 4K so this is the best the movie has ever looked on home video. Check it out!

Photo by Leslie Salas.