As obliquely alluded to in “My Green Heaven,” I recently enjoyed one of the periodic gatherings of primarily ex-Penguin pals that we call Movie Nights, although since Tom and I kicked off around 2:00 this time—on Matheson’s birthday, yet—“Movie Day” would be more apt. Chris joined us at 7:00, which with an unusually high number of scheduling conflicts put us at only half-strength vs. our full merry band of six, but we made a maximum effort in the viewing department. Here are some random observations, not at all to be confused with full-fledged reviews, partly because some of these films are on the B100 list anyway, and partly because with all of the chit-chat and ingestion going on, any film we’re “watching” is lucky to get partial attention at any given moment.
After spotting it on my list, Tom realized he had a laserdisc of The Adventures of Robin Hood, and pulled that out for starters. He questioned whether the costumes—especially those on what I believe he called “the cleanest peasants in the world”—were historically accurate, but I countered that they sure looked good in Technicolor, which is probably all that mattered. And yes, we Movie Night Musketeers (aka the Movie Knights) are big proponents of laserdiscs, which for you young’uns is basically what DVDs used to be before there were DVDs. Not much to add to my B100 listing, except that in addition to Warner Brothers, Rains, and Curtiz, it has one more thing in common with Casablanca, i.e., one of the most impressive collections of memorable minor characters around.
I can’t recall what inspired me to suggest The Green Slime, but I think my previous post demonstrates that it was ideal for our purposes. ’Nuff said.
We’ve had a lot of internal debate over whether The Wild Bunch or Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid represents Sam Peckinpah’s best work. Since only one of them made it onto the B100, you can guess where I stand, but Tom dragged out his laserdisc of Pat and, while we were watching it, offered a plausible theory as to why. After Billy (Kris Kristofferson) did something disreputable, I said it seemed strange for the guy I always took to be the film’s nominal hero, but he pointed out that you’re not really rooting for either Pat (James Coburn) or Billy. Admittedly, the members of the Bunch are thieves and murderers, but by the end their particular code of honor definitely leaves us at least partly in their corner.
Chris had asked us to save Once Upon a Time in America until he arrived. It struck me as funny that Leone, who might by some standards be considered Italian, would make a movie about the Jewish rather than the Italian mob, but perhaps he didn’t want to be seen as ripping off The Godfather, especially since he borrowed the time-jumping structure from The Godfather Part II. Again, no need to pre-empt my B100 listing, yet we remain aghast that the studio’s initial U.S. release was not only shorn of something like an hour and a half, but also re-edited into chronological order, thus destroying all of the skillful transitions and ironic juxtapositions on which Leone obviously worked so hard. Duh!
Chris was kind enough to bring the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, about which we’d heard so much. Frankly, without having seen the Richard Lester version for some time, we really didn’t detect much difference between them. Although I’m a Marvel rather than a D.C. man, I stand by my opinion that Donner’s original Superman remains one of the best comic-book movies ever, marred only by excessive jokiness and Christopher Reeve’s overly nerdy interpretation of Clark Kent. But as Superman, I think he incarnated a superhero better than almost anyone.
After Chris left, and our planned program was exhausted—a state we were approaching as well—we went into channel-surfing mode and stumbled on a showing of Dario Argento’s The Mother of Tears that had just started. In my book, it matters less whether that film is any good (especially since I’m not a big Argento fan) than it does that after almost thirty years, he finally finished the “Three Mothers” trilogy he began with Suspiria and Inferno. Since we were well into the wee hours at that point, I missed more than a few nuances, but suffered through the usual sadistic excesses. One character has her jaw popped by some sort Saw-style screw gizmo; another undergoes the obligatory Italian eye-gouging with a tool that seemed to have been created especially for that purpose; and another has a huge spear shoved between her legs. These are all women, of course, and once again, Argento throws in some nude shots of his daughter and leading lady, Asia. So, yeah, tell me again what a well-adjusted, normal guy he must be in real life.
Last, and quite possibly least despite stiff competition, after Tom turned in I chanced upon Jaws III just as it was beginning. Although TGRM shared script credit on this film, it does not appear on the B100, and you can read all about why in Richard Matheson on Screen. Suffice to say for the moment that Richard’s script was rewritten by Carl Gottlieb, who worked on both of the previous Jaws films (the first of which is, not coincidentally, the only good credit on his resume), and that it was a good choice on which to doze off.
Whew! Well, I’m tired.