campfire Reviews

All-American Co-Ed (1941)

Kent Rogers

[7/10 · 28 July 2007]

The rather sourpuss comment by another reviewer, "In addition, having Kent Rogers along for support didn't help. While Rogers imitations were funny and helped in his brief appearance in STALAG 17 a decade later, here he just seemed like someone's obnoxious child mugging at the camera and doing some terrible impersonations" is aesthetically questionable and factually incorrect. Rogers' impressions were really quite good, although very badly integrated into the scenes in which he appeared. That was the script's fault, not his. And he was NOT in Stalag 17--he was killed in the war a couple of years after making this film.

Frankenstein (1910)

One of Edison's Flashes of Brilliance

[10/10 · 18 July 2006]

The output of the Edison movie studio was for the most part pretty mundane, but with occasional flashes of intuitive brilliance, as in The Great Train Robbery, for instance. Their 1910 adaptation of Frankenstein was one of those flashes, a truly remarkable film for its time. The one-reeler covers Frankenstein's creation of a misshapen monster who subsequently haunts him and his fiancée. Unlike later films, this monster is formed out of a huge vat of primordial goo in a scene that must have been incredible in its day. It is achieved by filming a wax figure melting into the pot, and then reversing the action. But the movie's real stroke of genius is its very modern psychological approach to the spiritual link between the monster and its creator. Probably inspired by Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the movie uses some very carefully staged scenes with a full-length dressing mirror to suggest that the man and the monster are two aspects of the same person. The scariest thing about the movie, though, is how close we came to never being able to see it at all. For decades the only surviving copy was in the hands of a nutty film collector with a grossly exaggerated view of his property's financial, as opposed to historical, value. He sat on his print while it deteriorated, too paranoid to allow it to be seen by the public or preserved by any responsible film archive, for fear that "bootleg" copies would diminish the value of his unique possession. Only quite recently did more rational minds convince him to allow a professional preservation back-up to be made of the film and to authorize a DVD release for public viewing.

Monarch of the Glen (2000–2005)

A Series in Transition

[20 March 2006]

I've always really enjoyed this series. However, for a show that extols the virtues of tradition, stability and family, it has possibly the highest casualty rates among its cast of any television series in history. In just five years, only one member of the original ensemble cast remained with the show. Together with all the supporting characters who were brought in for a few episodes before moving on, the impression was that there was a stampede to get away from the crumbling Highlands estate of Glenbogel. Recently BBC America has been racing through the series on a five-day-a-week schedule, exhausting the entire life of the show in only three or four months. With this accelerated viewing, you can see the series morph before your eyes. It remained entertaining throughout, but the organic balance of the original quickly evaporated.

The main problem is that although the show started with a well-balanced cast, the only departing cast member who was replaced with a dramatically similar character was Archie (Alastair MacKenzie), whose half-brother Paul (Lloyd Owen) stepped seamlessly into his shoes. Beyond this, the original equilibrium was quickly thrown off-kilter. The show particularly felt the loss of Archie's father (Richard Briers), who provided most of the original whimsical comedy. After that the show became a succession of stories of unrequited love and hurt feelings with little or no leavening for several seasons. Finally in the last year or two the whimsy returned in the person of Donald, the family's black sheep brother (Tom Baker) and Ewan, a lovable young scamp who apparently hailed from the Scottish branch of the Bowery Boys clan (Martin Compston). These two and their wacky schemes together finally brought the levity of the original back to the series.

Through all its iterations the show remained warm and entertaining. What it could have used was more stability.

Custer's Last Stand (I) (1936)

Uniquely Complex Serial

[7/10 · 4 February 2006]

Movie serials generally have pretty simple, single-minded stories. There's a series of skirmishes between the good guy and the bad guy over some treasure or doomsday weapon, and that's pretty much it. But Custer's Last Stand is unique among all the serials I've seen. It has many more principal characters, each with their own story thread. It's all tied together by a quest for a ceremonial Indian arrow with coded directions to a cave of gold, but that's strictly a continuity device. The cave is never even found. Along the way there's a hero searching for his father's killer, a disgraced soldier battling alcoholism, a renegade Indian trying to foment a battle with the white settlers, an Indian girl with divided loyalties, an equally conflicted saloon owner, shoot-outs, fist-fights and large-scale battles, cameo appearances by Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock, and of course the climatic massacre at Little Big Horn. This is one brim-full serial! There are always at least two or three separate story threads playing out simultaneously, with the action cutting back and forth among them. We're used to this kind of story construction today--it's standard television soap opera technique--but in a mid-1930s serial it was pretty revolutionary.

The cast is full of veterans of the silent era, including former serial queen Helen Gibson. Performances tend toward the florid and aren't helped by the serial's rapid shooting schedule. There are shots in which actors stumble over lines or the director can be heard barking directions, and no time was wasted re-shooting them. For me the most interesting performance was by Marty Joyce, playing the teen character's sidekick. Joyce is clearly having a good old time embellishing and ad-libbing all his dialog. It's too bad he was killed in an auto accident shortly after making this film. It would be interesting to see how he handled other roles.

I highly recommend Custer's Last Stand to fans of pre-Republic serials. It's as rich and panoramic an epic as you're likely to find.

Force of Impact (2006 TV Movie)

Oddly constructed movie

[7/10 · 30 December 2005]

On the surface, this strikes me as an oddly constructed movie. It's a stock sci-fi thriller whose hero and his friend/sidekick happen to be lovers. This fact is brought out in two bedroom scenes and is mentioned very briefly in a couple of other lines of dialog. But other than these brief, isolated moments it is never mentioned, never referred to, and it has absolutely no bearing whatever on the story as our hero battles to save the world from destruction. A standard subplot in this kind of action film is a romantic triangle of some sort, but these two lovers are in league with an extremely attractive computer jock and they never even notice him. Someday there may come a time when an action hero can be gay just because he is and it would not have any impact on the story, but we're not there yet. I'd bet good money that this movie was originally made as a standard thriller, that none of the cable services bought it, and that turning the hero gay was an afterthought accomplished by an additional day or two of shooting new footage in order to open up the gay cable network market. Whether or not the hero is in love with his buddy, the film is a decent low-budget thriller. You can see worse on the Sci-Fi Network any night of the week. Michael Moriarity is clearly having great fun as the scenery-chewing military villain and the gay moments give the producers a chance to get Antonio Sabato naked, which is never a bad thing. In short, it's definitely an enjoyable movie - just don't expect any dramatic revelations about gay action heroes.

Ben & Arthur (2002)

One-Man-Show is Turgid Melodrama

[27 April 2004]

Like many young writers who believe passionately in their cause, Sam Mraovich clearly hasn't a clue about what motivates those he sees as "the enemy". Therefore he writes his villains as irrational monsters acting out of sheer evil, not as human beings with their own concerns, wrong as they might be. Ben and Arthur are two gay guys being menaced by one's religious zealot brother, who plots with his priest to murder his brother in order to "free his soul". Meanwhile the other guy is being stalked by an ex-wife who would rather see him dead than lose him to another man. In more skillful hands, this could be the stuff of a wickedly funny black comedy, but Mraovich apparently believes he's writing serious drama. I don't think he even sees the humor in a credit list in which "Sam Mraovich" is practically the only name that appears anywhere, except for the occasional "Chris Mraovich". Sam wrote, produced, directed, stars, photographed, edited, and undoubtedly swept the floors when he was finished. Unfortunately he doesn't do any of the tasks which are visible on the screen very professionally (I don't know how he was at sweeping up). And in one final lapse of judgement, the plain and slightly dumpy Mraovich, sandwiched between two extremely attractive actors, gives HIMSELF the film's only nude scene! Bad choice, Sam!

Treasure Island (I) (1999)

Communication Breakdown

[28 February 2004]

The Treasure Island DVD should be required viewing in any film production course! It's a textbook example of how NOT to make a movie. Watching the movie and then listening to the writer/director's commentary demonstrates graphically the vast chasm between what he knows about the characters and what he communicates to his audience about them. Call me old-fashioned, but I think of movies as a means of communication, and communication isn't complete if the audience doesn't know what the hell the director is talking about. The director's avowed purpose is to make a movie void of "Hollywood conventions". Among those conventions, alas, is consistency of character and clarity of concept. The director himself realizes that audiences often don't understand points where he has purposely avoided a "Hollywood cliche". However, he never seems to grasp the idea that cliches exist for a reason. They are shorthand for conveying complex ideas quickly and clearly. It's fine to avoid them, but they need to be replaced with some other way of communicating the same idea, not simply eliminated. The film is built on an intriguing premise, rich with potential. Two guys are assigned to fabricate a personality and background for an unidentified corpse that is to be used in a disinformation mission in the closing days of WWII. Soon each begins to populate their personal fantasies with the character and their invention becomes increasingly real to them. Someone with less disdain for the "Hollywood convention" of traditional storytelling could create a wonderful film with this idea. This film certainly isn't it! The actors do everything they can to bring consistency to these characters, but they are all too often defeated by the dazed and confused script. In particular, I'm becoming increasingly impressed by Jonah Blechman, who plays the lively corpse. In a number of independent films, he always stands out as a very charismatic young actor.

Murders in the Zoo (1933)

Classic casting blunder

[5 June 2002]

There's a famous gag that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee. Murders in the Zoo is a good, creepy early '30s thriller with one design flaw so wrong as to sink the whole thing. Every thriller has a little comic relief character. In this one it's the zoo's publicist who is afraid of animals. But somebody came up with the bright idea of casting Charlie Ruggles in this role. Now Ruggles is basically a one-note comic actor who inexplicably attained name-above-the-title stardom. And with his name in the cast, suddenly this supporting role became the starring role. You can see all the places where scenes were added or expanded to give the character more screen time. But he is still just the comic relief--he is not involved in any way with any major development in the storyline. He could be excised completely and never be missed. Randolph Scott is the hero and Lionel Atwill the villain, and both acquit themselves admirably. But every few minutes the forward movement of the story comes to a screeching halt while we are treated to the antics of the "star", and so the poor camel never quite gets his gait. The film has some genuinely classic "horror movie" moments, but it would be so very much better with a reliable character man providing the "comic relief" instead of making this relatively insignificant role into a star turn (for ANY star).