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DOLEMITE 1975
Written by Jerry Jones. Directed by D’Urville Martin.
Starring Rudy Ray Moore, D’Urville Martin, Jerry Jones, Lady Reed and West Gale.
As a time capsule from a particular social, cultural and economic era, Dolemite is remarkable. As a movie, it sucks very, very, very, very hard.
This is one of those so-called “blaxsploitation” films from the 1970s and before you watch Dolemite or any of these films, you’d probably be well served to at least check out the Wikipedia entry on “blaxspoitation”. If you don’t, you could suffer a severe case of brain cramp trying to figure these things out.
Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore) is pimp/spoken word artist/night club owner/street avenger who starts out the movie in jail, where he may or may not have been framed by the cops for dealing in drugs and stolen furs. Yeah, I don’t understand the stolen furs either. It must have been a 70s thing. Anyway, Dolemite is offered the chance to get out of jail if he’ll go back to his old neighborhood and put a stop to the out of control crime and violence that’s taken it over. Accepting the offer, Dolemite is picked up by a carful of his “ladies” and exchanges his prison-issued suit for his first of many pimptacular outfits. Returning to his neighborhood, Dolemite discovers that Willie Green (D’Urville Martin) has taken over his old night club. As Dolemite basically wanders from scenes of sex to scenes of violence and back again, we learn that Willie is connected to the mayor of the city and essentially runs Dolemite’s old neighborhood to suit the mayor’s agenda. Essentially, it’s the story of the white power structure co-opting elements of the black community to “keep the black man down”, with Dolemite being the returning hero spoiling that plan. It’s a brutally primitive rendition of that story, but subtlety’s not exactly a strong point of this movie. A couple of racist cops hassle Dolemite, a black FBI agent gets involved and Dolemite and his “ladies” use some amazingly bad 70s karate to defeat the forces of evil. I mean, seriously, there are 10 year olds in karate dojos all across America who could more convincingly kick people’s butts.
From almost every technical aspect, this is a laughably bad movie. It’s poorly shot, poorly written, it looks cheap and the acting is almost uniformly terrible. Jerry Jones as the black FBI agent and D’Urville Martin are passable, I suppose, but Rudy Ray Moore’s alleged acting consists of a “Can you dig it, baby?” nonchalance interspersed with the overemphasis of the word “motherf****r”…and he gives the third best performance of the film.
For all of it’s flaws, there are two things for which I can recommend this movie.
1. This is a film made by 1970s urban black people, for 1970s urban black people, about the world of 1970s urban black people. I’m not saying this is some sort of documentary about the way the 70s actually were for African-Americans, but it does give you a theatrical view of how they looked at and felt about their world. I don’t say that as some kind of excuse for how crappy this movie is, but this was the era when African-American filmmakers were getting their first meaningful chance to tell their stories their way. In a country where history is what happened last month and everything before that has vanished into the mists of time, this is a movie that slaps you in the face with how different things are today from how there were just a generation or so ago.
2. For all the bad acting, bad camerawork, bad dialog and bad fight scenes, there’s an infectious energy to Dolemite. Everything about this movie is raw and unpolished and unpretentious. If you ever got together and made movies with your friends when you were kids, the same honest joy that you can still see in those stories is the same thing you can see in Dolemite. These filmmakers and these performers are all so clearly caught up in what they’re doing that they’re extremely likable, no matter how awful they are. A great example of that is the clothing in this film. It is hilariously bizarre, but the performers AND the characters they play are so utterly at ease in these fashion disasters, so convinced that these fabricated atrocities are the greatest thing since sliced bread, that you’ll end up wishing you could wear those sorts of outfits to work.
If you want to watch a good movie, I really can’t recommend Dolemite. There are just so many ways that it’s not at all good. But this is a fun movie, I enjoyed it and it’s a reminder of how weird the 1970s actually were. So, if you ever are in the mood to watch a terrible film about a pimp/spoken word artist/night club owner/street avenger and his army of karate chopping prostitutes, you now know where to look.
DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE 1980
Written by Joseph Ellison, Ellen Hammill and Joseph R. Masefield.
Directed by Joseph Ellison.
Starring Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth, Ruth Dardick, Ralph B. Bowman, Johanna Brushay, O’Mara leary and Gail Turner.
I’m sure Don’t Go In The House wasn’t a very good movie back in 1979 and it certainly isn’t one by today’s standards, but it is a reminder of how much more interesting and worthwhile horror movies were before they became pornographied.
Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) is a sick, sick man. Horribly abused as a child, Donny developed a fascination with fire. When his abusive mother dies, that fascination ignites into murderous insanity. Donny creates an “oven room” in his mother’s house where he burns kidnapped woman alive, then dresses up the torched corpses and leaves them sitting around so he can yell at them. Donny turns to his priest (Ralph B. Bowman) for help in stopping his deranged obsession but after a night at the disco with his only friend Bobby (Robert Osth) turns into a brutal disaster, Donny returns to his murderous ways and is eventually consumed by his own madness.
Everything about this movie is primitively simple. The writing, the acting, the direction and the moral are all things you might see today from a very bright middle school student who makes a film with his family’s old video camera and his friends from school. It may have had some shock value in the late 70s, but is tame by modern standards of violence and gore. There are a few moments that are still unnerving, but that’s due to the difference between Don’t Go In The House and what the horror genre has mutated into.
Most modern horror films have a tinge of pornography to them. Their violence, depravity and gore are meant more to titillate and excite than to disgust or horrify. The audience isn’t meant to identify with the victims. They’re not even meant to identify with the killer. They’re just meant to react to the acts of brutality on screen. Don’t Go In The House predates that mindset. The violence in this movie isn’t meant to be cool or entertaining. A scene of female nudity isn’t meant to entice, but to emphasize how awful a situation is. This film doesn’t want to thrill you. It wants to disturb you.
Another way it departs from the rollercoaster approch to horror movies is that Donny Kholer isn’t some unknowable, unreachable monster. He’s a human being terribly twisted by childhood trauma, yet he still has all the normal feelings and needs of a human being. Donny is meant to elicit both revulsion and sympathy as the film raises the idea that people who do awful things are just repeating the awful things that were done to them. That’s a much more nuanced take on evil than you generally get from any film, let alone a low-budget horror movie from 1979.
Don’t Go In The House isn’t much as entertainment goes. Most of its frightening elements are dated and its pacing is flabby and flaccid. As a piece of cinematic anthropology, it’s slightly interesting as a contrast to the modern horror film. If that sort of intellectual take on the genre appeals to you, give it a watch. Otherwise, I’m not sure it would be worth your time or money.
DROP DEAD GORGEOUS 1999
Written by Lona Williams.
Directed by Michael Patrick Jann.
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Amy Adams, Shannon Nelson, Brooke Bushman, Brittany Murphy, Laurie Sinclair, Tara Redepenning, Sarah Stewart, Michael McShane, Will Sasso, Allison Janney, Sam McMurray, Mindy Sterling, Alexandra Holden, Matt Malloy, Lona Williams, Nora Dunn, Mo Gaffney, Mary Gillis and Claudia Wilkins.
Drop Dead Gorgeous is an incorrigible satire that overcomes that doomed reputation of its genre to be one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a long time. Even when it’s well done, satire tends to be more clever than comedic…and it usually isn’t that well done in the first place. This movie spectacularly succeeds by not only offering up sharp takes on fairly obvious and easy targets, but also delivering delightful bits of lunacy that will make you laugh at everything from horrific eating disorders to physical mutilation.
The story is about a documentary film crew that goes to the small Minnesota town of Mount Rose to cover the local qualifying pageant for the America’s Teen Princess competition. They film and interview the pageant organizers, young contestants and their friends and family. The crew is also around to record the deaths and maimings that surround the pageant and always seem to benefit Becky Leeman (Denise Richards), the jaded and two-faced daughter of Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley), the pageant organizer, a former pageant winner and a stage mom desperate to relive her past glory. The only real competitor to Becky, at least the only one that luckily remains unharmed, is Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst). She’s the good hearted trailer park girl who squeezes in tap dancing practice during her two jobs, one in the school cafeteria and the other putting make up on stiffs in the town funeral parlor.
As you might expect, a lot of the satire of Drop Dead Gorgeous is aimed at the natives of Minnesota and the classic tropes of small town life. It’s reflected best in some of the pageant contestants. There’s the slutty cheerleader (Amy Adams), the drama club chick (Laurie Sinclair), the tomboy of ambiguous sexuality (Brooke Bushman) and the fat girl who loves her dog a little too much (Shannon Nelson). But these filmmakers then compliment those fairly obvious characters with some wonderfully off kilter contestants. One young woman is a future fag hag (Brittany Murphy), another lives her life as a tribute to her deaf mother (Sarah Stewart) and another is a white girl adopted and raised by Japanese parents that are pathetically desperate to assimilate into the good ol’ U S of A.
By adding bizarre and outrageous bits that are only trying to make you laugh, it makes the satiric and darker outlook of the film go down a lot smoother. Many satires fall into the trap of being self righteous or exploitative but because there’s a different and separate layer of comedy running through the story, Drop Dead Gorgeous is just plain hilarious. As you react to the crazy, non-satiric jokes, it becomes easier to appreciate the humor underlying the satire. And since the non-satiric comedy is more over-the-top and potentially offensive than the satiric moments, it never feels like the film is being judgmental about these characters or their dreams.
Helping things out is a cast that’s as good as the material they’re given to work with. Kirsten Dunst and Amy Adams are the highlights, both absolutely adorable and just close enough to being realistic to give their characters that extra oomph. Ellen Barkin is also great as Amber’s “rode hard and put away wet” mother and Allison Janney almost steals the show as her outspoken and cougarish trailer park neighbor. The other actors are also very funny and screenwriter Lona Williams gives one of the best performances in the movie without saying a word. Denise Richards is…well, she’s Denise Richards. If you’ve seen her in other films, you know what to expect. She’s good looking and makes an effort, but there’s just not a lot going on.
Drop Dead Gorgeous is a movie about teenage beauty pageants that’s so funny and bold, even a lot of high school boys could enjoy it…and I’m talking about heterosexual high school boys. I’m not sure there’s any higher praise that I can give.
DUEL 1972
Starring Dennis Weaver.
Directed by Stephen Spielberg. Written by Richard Matheson.
If you’re too young to remember what life was like before cell phones, Duel is a great reminder of how dramatically that device has changed the world. Today, people take for granted being able to call the cops, call their loved ones or call anyone at all whenever they feel like it. It’s easy to forget just how different things were before such omnipresent communication.
Duel, which became the first brick in Stephen Spielberg’s House of Greatness, is the story of David Mann (Dennis Weaver). He’s a mild-mannered, somewhat henpecked guy who sets out one morning on the California highway system for an important business meeting, and ends up in a desperate battle against a mysterious semi driver. Mann finds himself stuck behind this slow moving, smoke belching fuel tanker and passes it. It seems like the most normal thing in the world, until the tanker races back in front of him and then slows down again, setting off a game of cat-and-mouse with the semi driver becoming more and more dangerous, getting closer and closer to forcing Mann into a terrible accident.
One of the unusual things about Duel is how quiet it is for this sort of thriller. Spielberg uses very little background music for most of the film, relying on the sounds of the road, the vehicles and the radio to hold your attention. The roar and clatter of the grime covered fuel tanker becomes as ominous and as threatening as the Jaws theme or that “kah-kah-kah” from Friday the 13th. The other really interesting thing is that this sort of story is usually set in an isolated environment. Being trapped alone with a killer is one of the fundamental plots of the suspense thriller, but Mann encounters other people four different times while trying to elude his pursuer. But first at a café full of people before he understands how much danger he’s in, then with a school bus full of kids stopped on the side of the road, then trying to call the police from a gas station and finally begging a passing car for help, Mann finds himself unable to get any help from anyone else. Eventually, he has to take up the challenge of defeating his enemy on his own.
Dennis Weaver gives a good performance as a normal man caught in an abnormal crisis. For most of the movie, he acts like an ordinary person, saying and doing things that an ordinary person would do. He overreacts and overthinks and he never really turns into a “hero” until the very end. The climax of Duel does seem a little weak by modern standards where we’re used to things being resolved in the most spectacular fashion possible, but there’s a realistic beauty in its non-theatrical ending.
Spielberg’s direction is also quite appealing. For mostly being just two vehicles on the open road, Spielberg works hard at using different approaches at framing the images. Duel is a little more measured than what we’re used to today, reflecting an era when movies didn’t have to hit you over the head with something new and different every 5 minutes to keep your attention. But if someone tried to make Duel today, they’d probably have David Mann pick up a cute, wise-cracking hitchhiker and turn the final battle between car and semi into a cartoonish, CGI extravaganza.
Duel is a thriller that still works over 30 years after it was made, which is about the highest praise you can give this sort of picture.
THE DUEL AT SILVER CREEK 1952
Written by Gerald Drayson Adams and Joseph Hoffman.
Directed by Don Siegel.
Starring Audie Murphy, Stephen McNally, Susan Cabot, Faith Domergue, Eugene Iglesias and Lee Marvin.
The Duel at Silver Creek is a nice example of how much fun the Western used to be before the genre got all serious and realistic.
In this story, claim jumpers are running wild near the town of Silver City. They’re bushwacking people who have small claims around the gold rich Silver Creek, forcing them to sign over their claims and then killing them. But they get more than they bargain for when they try to jump the claim of a father and son. They do get the claim and kill the old man, but his son (Audie Murphy) kills three of the gang with his silver-handled revolvers. “Lightning” Tyrone (Stephen McNally), the marshal of Silver City, rounds up a posse to go after the claim jumpers but he ends up shot in the shoulder and the gang escapes. “Lightning” is taken to nearby Fort Lowell, where he’s patched up but his shooting hand is crippled. He doesn’t have the strength to pull a trigger anymore. While recovering at Fort Lowell, “Lightning” becomes infatuated with Opal Lacey (Faith Domgergue), a pretty lady in a pretty dress he takes to calling “brown eyes”. But the audience soon discovers those brown eyes disguise a great many unpleasant things. “Lightning” returns to Silver City to find an old friend dead, shot in the back. He suspects Johnny Sombrero (Eugene Iglesias), the local bad man who happens to look like a Mexican Liberace, but has no proof. The marshal also runs into the son of the gold miner slain at the start of the film. Dubbed the Silver Kid now, the young man becomes “Lightning’s” deputy and the two of them are pitted against the machinations of Johnny Sombrero, the claim jumpers and the beautiful Opal. Joining them is Dusty (Susan Cabot), a tom boy who’s had a crush on the older “Lightning” for years. He doesn’t see her as anything more than a little sister, but the Silver Kid has more romantic intentions toward her. The fast moving story has quite a few twists and turns before climaxing in a big gun battle between the claim jumpers and a new posse, which finally ends when one of the oldest and dumbest tricks in the book actually works.
I liked this film a lot but I have to admit, it’s a fairly generic 1950s Western. By modern standards it’s corny with two-dimensional characters and unremarkable dialog. The plot is a bit more involved than you might expect, however this isn’t a story with any great depth or meaning to it. It’s a fairly basic Western with good men, a bad woman and guns getting shot out of people’s hands. If you’re looking for gritty realism and edgy storytelling, this isn’t the movie for you.
The Duel at Silver Creek is never anything more than a pleasant diversion and I don’t think the filmmakers wanted it to be anything more than that. It moves at a brisk pace with plenty of traditional Western action. There’s actually a great deal of stuff going on in the story, leading to simplistic but believable conflict between the characters. It’s a great looking film with a couple of scenes that have a quite a visual kick to them. All of the actors do a good job for this sort of melodramatic tale. It’s just a nice piece of entertainment.
It’s nowhere near being one of the great Westerns, but The Duel at Silver Creek is a good Western. If you can get past stuff like the claim jumpers leaving a ransom note and literally signing it “The Jumpers”, I think you’ll get a kick out of this movie.
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