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ronyo9
Reviews
Miracle on 34th Street (1973)
I saw this production in the making and that's why I like it
I worked on this made-for-TV-movie as a set dresser back in 1973. It was my first job as a returning Vietnam war era veteran. The art director was a woman named Jan Scott who offered me more work as Set dresser but I chose to attend college on the GI bill as an art major, with the eventual goal of teaching art, though I did continue to work on a few more film projects on occasion.
What is very noteworthy about this production was that the majority of the crew had just finished Martin Scorcese's "Mean Streets" and many of the locations used to film Mean Streets, most notably the Green Hotel in Pasedena, were used to film Miracle. In retrospect it's funny to think about how so many who had worked with Scorsese all thought that while he was a fairly good director, he was such a neurotic quirky sort that he probably wouldn't last long in the business and also no one seemed to think much of Mean Streets as a finished product. Most did, however, have a high opinion of De Niro's acting ability.
Fielder Cook the director, was an early Hollywood television pioneer having directed episodes of Playhouse 90 and many other early TV productions. He was also quite the colorful character and well-liked by the crew. The two other people who impressed me were actors Roddy McDowell and Sebastion Cabot. Cabot, for his acting ability and McDowell Because after the project was wrapped he personally and quite sincerely thanked every crew member for a job well done.
I was so impressed by Cabot's portrayal of Kris Kringle that as a college student, during Christmas vacation I got a job as a Department store Santa at a somewhat upscale large retail establishment in L.A. and played the "role" of Santa Claus much the way Cabot did and put on makeup for every "performance".
On one occasion where there was a crowd of people waiting to bring their children up to sit on my lap and be photographed by my attractive young female "elves" I noticed a distinguished looking and portly white-haired older gentleman standing in the back of the crowd watching who I swear to God, MUST have been the Real Santa.
Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972)
Way better than Killer Tomatos!
To assemble an entire cast and crew and come up with a ridiculous premise and then play the whole thing completely straight with not even a trace of tongue-in-cheek is sheer genius. Ed wood is probably the only one who ever came close to achieving anything on that level.
This film would be a huge cult classic if more people had been fortunate enough to have experienced it. I happened to see it at the age of 16 when my older boyfriend snuck me into a sleazy hard core movie theater called "the World" somewhere in Los Angeles in the late 70's.
I like the scene where the sangroid druids pick up a stoned hippy who is hitchhiking. After they drink his blood and dump him out of the car, the "blood-farmers" all pile out of the car and half of them are "tripping out" and can hardly walk a straight line, and the other half are throwing up and moaning in agony.
Blue Steel (1990)
Incoherent and uneven
Sketchy continuity and slovenly attention to detail. Bad guy has a magic gun that never runs out of ammo, which is hardly an original technical flaw but one expects it in an action movie, not in a drama. The entire film itself is completely full of holes, more so even than the passing cars riddled with bullet holes from the bad guy's magic gun.
And indeed "the gun" was magic because seemingly it was the pre-ordained kismet of psycho finding the gun at a crime scene which was what magically turned him from successful Wall street day trader to full blown wacko seemingly in an instant.
Background into the psycho's character might have been somewhat helpful. After all, that's what made Taxi Driver such a masterpiece just as the lack of character development made this film such a dud. I was quite surprised to find that this was actually a feature film and not a low budget made-for-TV movie having viewed it on television years after it's release. If not for late night insomnia, I might have missed this gem entirely.
The one big shoot-out begins on a crowded street in early morning New York city which is somehow completely evacuated for the dramatic moment almost as if it were filmed on a film studio lot rather than on location.
In the final scenes, how the protagonist knew right where to find bad guy in middle of New York City was stunningly inexplicable, but oh, well, the plot, such as it was, must stumble forward.
Without giving away the details of the ending I can only comment as to how the film seemed to me to have ended somewhat abruptly to allow the audience to ponder these many incongruities rather than offering an epilogue of some sort to give the audience a sense of badly needed closure. Jamie Lee Curtis did the best she could in her role but her character was unfortunately as one-dimensional as everything else about this turkey.
I think all in all, even though I was frustrated at times with the film's lack of coherency, I very much enjoyed watching this film in a perverse sort of way and then being able to articulate just exactly how bad it really was.