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The Quick and the Dead (1995)
The problem with this film is....men! (Spoiler Alert)
Every review I read about this film dissed it and every review I read was written by men! This was a film about a woman protagonist and hero. Of course men don't like it! I just read another review on IMDb by a GUY who said the plot wasn't original. I've never seen or heard anything similar to a story about a little girl who was given a chance to save her Marshall father, who was about to be lynched by Hackman and his crew, by shooting the rope to free him and instead killed him because she didn't know how to handle a gun!! Could any person imagine the guilt a person would carry around if that happened to them? Leonardo DiCaprio had just finished filming Titanic and Russell Crowe was hardly new to feature films. One of my favorite westerns of his was 3:10 to Yuma, but that's another story.
Basically, I'm sorry you guys hate it when testosterone isn't what wins the day in a good western, but real history tells the story of many women gunfighters who were as good or better than any man: Cattle Annie, Calamity Jane and many more.
I admire Sharon Stone for a good story told with realism of the period. I happen to be a hobby historian about the old west and in real life, the good guys weren't always men and even when they were, they didn't always win, and those popular history paints as heroes weren't as good as people think they were, such as the Earp's and Doc Holiday.
Yes, there are thousands of western movies with plots that are similar but The Quick and the Dead has a plot unlike any other I've ever seen and while I haven't seen all of them, I have seen most.
Tales of Terror (1962)
A good introduction to original Kings of Horror Movies
When I was in 7th grade (many light years ago in a galaxy far, far away), the schools used to show movies on Saturday on 16mm in the cafeteria and they charged like 25 cents to get in. It was a cheap way to see a lot of different movies and this was one of them.
We also saw things like "Earth v. The Flying Saucers" (one of Ray Harryhausen's wonderful magic tricks with stop motion animation), and Abbot & Costello Meet Dracula and Frankenstein series of movies. "Ch...Chh...Chip!!!"
I guess my generation was a bit more naive than today's is because this one scared the pants off me (particularly the final segment which was taken from the Edgar Allen Poe tale; "The Strange Case of Msr. Valdemar").
My parents had dropped me off at the movie and some of my friend's parents took me because my parents had gone out, so I was home all alone.
Have you ever had a case of the crawling creepies? Between the experience of the movie and the 8 hours of being home alone, it burned this memory into my brain that won't ever go away, but the strange thing is that despite excellent acting, a great adaptation of Poe's short stories and great direction by the King of nickel horror films, Roger Corman, I never saw this film again until I tripped across a copy of it on DVD on Amazon.
As I have often found with films that made a huge impression on me in my younger years, I expected to be disappointed but I was surprised to be caught up in the narrative and acting of all the people involved in the project. It's impossible to hate Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone and Roger Corman can definitely make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
This movie helped to launch a lifelong love of Edgar Allen Poe and other writers of horror bent fiction--but not the slasher flicks or needless and gratuitous sex and blood movies of today.
If you want a quality piece of horror cinema then go see Dracula with Bela Lagosa, or Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, or even The Fly with Vincent Price.
If you're not interested then this review won't mean much to you anyway so you can just breeze by to the next one and no hard feelings.
Heartbeeps (1981)
Vastly under rated
First of all, consider that this was the only motion picture Andy Kaufman made before he died. He was quite sick when he made it and he never defined himself as a comedian; he always defined himself as a "song and dance man." It was the rest of the world who kept trying to shove him into the comedy can. Andy was perhaps the most misunderstood performer of all time and undoubtedly a genius. At the time this movie was made, Kaufman's break-out TV series, Taxi, had just been cancelled and he had just been diagnosed with a rare large cell carcinoma in his lungs. He wanted to get away from the disastrous "Inter-Gender Wrestling" gig he started that caused his popularity to fall flat and got him banned from Saturday Night Live. Bernadette Peters had just come off playing a cupie-doll airhead against Steve Martin's moron in "The Jerk" and Heartbeeps seemed like a good follow-up role. It's nuances you need to watch for in this film. The unlikely allies of the robots, Val, Aqua and the Catskill Performer, while being pursued by a crazed police robot, makes for a simplistic, yet classic tale of good vs. evil and good wins (spoiler alert!). Much of Kaufman's performance reminds me of the innocent, yet poignant Latka from Taxi. Thank you very much!
Getting Straight (1970)
Watch the apple...
The first time I saw this movie was in a drive-in movie when I was in high school (just make a left turn at the submarine races and you'll find it). and the film opened uniquely enough to keep me from ignoring it for better things to do.
As the opening credits rolled, the students were tossing this nice red apple across the campus, looking at it, smiling or laughing, and tossing it on to someone else. This kept up all the way through the credits until it drove you nuts. What the hell was on that apple that was so damned fascinating?!?!? Just when the credits ended, the camera angle changed over this student's shoulder and you could see that someone had carved (very neatly, mind you) into the apple, the following message: "THERE IS NO GRAVITY--THE EARTH SUCKS" I have never forgotten that opening scene nor the message on the apple because as I got older, I found that indeed; the Earth does suck--I can see it in the mirror every day.
I think everyone should see where we came from and what historically we've lived through so I recommend this movie for when you're stuck inside on one of those dreary weather days when you've got nothing to do.
There is a good point and bad point to every argument and that's what this movie is all about and remember that if we don't learn from our past then we're doomed to repeat it.