Bad Movies You Love

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi,

Thanks Moira; I'll view that thread..

Larry

[Bronxgirl48]

moira, the bizarre piece de resistance in R.P.M. comes when Perez, at the faculty lunch table, imagines (gauzy camera) the hard-headed school board members as various Machiavelli figures, including a starchy female administrator giving him a de Medici Mickey Finn in his coffee through a poison ring.

[Bronxgirl48]

Drat!! I didn't realize MIAMI EXPOSE was on the schedule, and it was only through sheer luck, lol, that I at least managed to catch the last twenty minutes or so. Geez... You know the world's topsy-turvy when Alan Napier plays a criminal toughie, and lords it over one-foot-in-the-grave stooge Edward Arnold (his prime corporate villany long gone) of whom he dismisses with: "Get out of here! I don't want to see your silly face in Florida again!" However, equilibrium was perhaps restored, in that by using the word "silly", Alan's character seemed more the effetely insecure, big-man wannabe than a naturally crude and rugged underworld type. A screechless Lee J. Cobb, apparently on the side of the law, resolutely plowing through the Everglades on an airboat, was a unique sight, as were a bunch of city hit-men along the same route, their unflattering, weather-inappropriate boxy 1950's suits adding incongruously (perhaps intentional? in which case, okay, there's actually some irony going on I didn't realize?) sartorial touches against the subtropical background. And then up pops Patricia Medina, who I swear was channelling a blowsily sardonic Ava Gardner: "The swamp was made for me, baby!"

[moira finnie]

Hey, I think I came upon Miami Expose at the exact moment you described, Babs. I love the way that the guys in the business suits piled out of the airboat and dodged between the oil barrels on shore to give the guy in the shack a better shot at them. You didn't miss much. I saw the beginning of this movie a few weeks ago. Patricia Medina was wonderfully grasping as a money-hungry moll dodging the bad guys and the feds.

Poor Edward Arnold. I guess he was supposed to be catatonic in that last scene, but all I could think of was that the blood stains and sweat from those guys must have played havoc with those white satin couches they found Eddie and his dead pal sitting on when they burst in. That last line of Lee J. Cobb wondering about what legal gambling might have been like in Florida made me do a spit take. I talked back to the television, telling Lee and his righteous pals to stick around for a few decades to see.

[JackFavell]

Is Lee J. Cobb's hair real? I imagine they would have had to superglue his toupee on for a speedboat ride.

[Bronxgirl48]

[youtube][/youtube]


moira, what was that little boy doing amidst the gunfight-at-the-O.K. corral goings-on in that shack? You'd think the parents would have gotten him out of harm's way. But the kid was thrilled!

Even if you say I didn't miss much, I still wish the movie was on YouTube! Knowing Fred Sears directed THE GIANT CLAW makes me want to see ME even more.

Love Mr. and "Mrs." Cobb's hotel wallpaper. And I like the way Patricia stacks those two pieces of luggage at the foot of her bed. Today that form of decorating is considered vintage global chic!

[Bronxgirl48]

GABLE AND LOMBARD.


"Well, Pa, it just might be fun living on a ranch and raising chickens"

"Yes, Ma, we can finally get away from all this stupid movie star stuff"


Flash Forward:

Brolin: "I told her to take the train..."

[MissGoddess]

A screechless Lee J. Cobb

that alone would be something to see!

[Bronxgirl48]

A screechless Lee J. Cobb

that alone would be something to see!

LOL

I think Lee was quiet in, of all things, THE EXORCIST.

[MissGoddess]

I don't even remember him in The Exorcist! Don't tell me he was a priest.

[RedRiver]

Lee J. Cobb played Kinderman. The detective investigating the murder. I had read the book prior to seeing the movie. Kinderman was my favorite character!

[moira finnie]

So happy that you also "enjoyed" Two Weeks in Another Town aka The Bad and the Beautiful Part Deux, kingrat. Well, they may have taken the movie away from Minnelli, but having read Shaw's book long ago, I can't say that the movie was better than the book.
*Mild Spoilers*
FYI, in the book, Kirk Douglas' character Jack Andrus was a Hollywood actor who went by the moniker of Jack Royal (oy!) before WWII. After leaving tinsel town to do his duty for his country, Jack returns to LA and finds his wife has acquired other interests, though emotionally she is unable to let go of anyone or anything in her life. By the beginning of the story, Jack and the now ex-wife have a college age son, Steve, whose mild rebellions cause her to try to tempt Jack back into involvement with her again, despite both being married.

Jack doesn't crack up as flamboyantly as Kirk did in the movie (does anyone?), but moves to France after realizing that his career in the movies is over, eventually acquiring a rather passive French wife, children and a job with NATO. The best parts of the book are about life in Paris in postwar Europe (which was something Shaw was interested in and actually living then). Later, his former movie mentor contacts him, sucking him back into the Mafia the Hollywood spin cycle, and electrifying Jack's rather dull life once again.

I've been reading the interesting A Hundred or More Hidden Things: VIncente Minnelli by Mark Griffin, and recalling what John Houseman wrote about the film experience in his memoirs. Their accounts of this debacle verify that it is not surprising that Two Weeks in Another Town turned out the way it did with MGM cutting it under the direction of the famed editor Margaret Booth (who had a rather fanatical reputation for her loyalty to the studio rather than the directors she worked with--and against). According to Cyd Charisse, the editing puzzled her too. She commented that "The picture should have been better than it was, When I finally saw it, I couldn't make heads or tails of the story--and I was so disconnected--and I'd been in it."

[moira finnie]

On New Year's Day I saw most of The Lost World, which deserves a note here with regard to Jill St. John's costumes. A number of pretty young women eventually learned to act, though apparently Ms. St. John was not one of them. She does, however, have a great if limited wardrobe for hunting dinosaurs. The lavender outfit was my favorite, though the shocking pink slacks were good, too.

As usual in Hollywood movies, being lost in the jungle does not prevent a gal from having flawless hair and makeup.

The movie is fun if you're taking a break from serious masterworks. I don't think Claude Rains has ever been so hammy, but that's enjoyable in this context.

Ha! You didn't even mention Claude's red wig, flaming beard and horn rim glasses. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Rains was hoping that he wouldn't be recognized under that mufti. Say, what ever happened to Michael Rennie's career? He started out so promisingly in bodice rippers and wartime melodramas at Gainsborough, segued into the whole otherworldly dreamboat persona at 20th Century Fox, and then wound up holding Jill St. John's handbag while she tried on some alligator shoes in the jungle department store. Sad, eh?

Warming up in the Bad Movie Bullpen for tomorrow morning:
The Naked Maja (1959) at 8:15am (ET) on TCM on Sat., Jan 11th



Moldy movie gossip has it that the far too gentle direction of Henry Koster (Deanna Durbin was never like this!) and a script that was a fleshed out fantasy by no less than the once fine radio scribe Norman Corwin and one-time Hollywood intellectuall Albert Lewin (among many others) led to the spectacle of Ava and Tony carrying on to a fare-thee-well. In between Ava's search for a coherent character (though she certainly seethes well) & Tony's Method acting style and dodging of Shelley Winters, who showed up on the set, the beautifully photographed film was an international shambles. If only it weren't so dumb.