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Reviews
Route 66: 1800 Days to Justice (1962)
East Meets West...with a soundtrack to match
This was definitely East Meets West. I mean, the boys from NYC get lost in a dry Texas community with the look of a ghost town and the plot is right out of GUNSMOKE, THE LONE RANGER, BONANZA, etc.
I could even more see the Cartwrights being held hostage by a crazed wrongfully incarcerated man than I could Tod & Buz. I know Texas towns hadn't changed much in the late '50s and early '60s; I mean, there WAS the tradition the dated back to the late 1800s, but this was obviously lifted from one of the Westerns of the latter period. I guess for that reason, Nelson Riddle employed a score that was part jazz and part Frontier. It worked.
The Outsiders (1983)
This should be shown in the same art theaters in Greenwich Village as THE WANDERERS and THE WARRIORS
Really, it would really complete a 'THE' trilogy of gang films that came out in the '80s and late-'70s...and spoke of a time (the '50S & '60S) when gangs were fighting over not drugs and drug turf but over grudges and girls. I mean, I know these were considered 'bad seeds' for the period between 1946-1969, but I'd rather see them fighting amongst themselves (as do the Socs and the Greasers) than creating a whole urban crime scene with heroin and crack as the Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings do today. They're so tame by comparison.
Maybe I'm just being a concerned mom, but I feel that there's too much of a drug thing these days - and maybe that's why a film like THE OUTSIDERS (along with the book) can still be a nostalgia thing whether you hung around with kids like these or not. At least those of us who grew up between the Late '40s-Late '60s period knew OF them. Kids like these were as much part of our culture as beats and hippies.
The Death of Richie (1977)
OK, I KNOW it's a true story, but....
I think the book was more insightful than the film as it showed more of the events that led up to this...and not to defend drugs but I really have to say that there was more to it than that.
George Diener (the supposed real name of the father) was a sort of 'What I say goes' and 'You DARE to defy me?' type and that would naturally play havoc with the personality of anyone in the most difficult of their teen years. I mean, I'm not saying that he pushed his son into drugs and a life of crime, but I think his sort of sternness would at least make any 16 year-old want to say 'Why don't you F--- OFF?!!!'
Another thing I found was that the film version tended to follow a REEFER MADNESS formula (I remember when I was in college, we deliberately planned to smoke while we watched this after seeing the coming attractions...so we could laugh at the exaggerations...and there WERE plenty). I mean, in the book the writer was more explanatory in that he'd smoked several times since he was 14 (which WAS still unusual as it was for 1966, so it figures that Brick was a hood) and acid, speed, heroin, etc., followed. What appeared to be implied was that Richie became a deranged would-be killer from the first puff, with some help from a little speed...and unless you're a total maniac in the first place, that's almost never the case.
I really think that the way the film depicted the situation belonged more in the '50s. As this was 1977 (or '73 for the book), if they really wanted to warn kids away, they should have focused on what came in between. Really!!!
Tell Your Children (1936)
Boy, were they IGNORANT back in the day!!!
This whole film was nothing more than typical propaganda that had been circulating around since Repeal in 1933...and considering that the drug scene, period, was TOTALLY underground at that time, it was easy for people in this country, like my grandparents, to swallow. I mean, you had to go to someplace like China or Africa or The West Indies to know what the truth was.
And it didn't stop there, did it? I mean, in the '50s they came out with HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL and in the '60s MARY JANE. Even THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE shows a couple of the gang members (Vic Morrow and Dan Terranova) smoking a J and drinking (perhaps) Brass Monkey while they plan a robbery. Then in the '70s the same brains came up with THE DEATH OF RICHIE (which WAS a true story, but I think this was more along the lines of what happened between Marvin Gaye and his father; they got into an argument and it became physical). Wouldn't this also be propaganda that cheeba leads to a life of crime? I should think so.
Anyway, even my parents had to admit that it was a good laugh. Their own kids smoked without becoming criminal or weird, so they should know.
Shivering Shakespeare (1930)
Obviously inspired several Three Stooges films
I first saw this as a kid (THE LITTLE RASCALS first went on TV the year I was born) and fairly recently bought this on DVD. In between, I watched it on the occasions it was on and took careful notes at 1) the pie fight itself and 2) how racist some of these parts were: Farina as a Nubian slave, doing voodoo, for example. I think Roach and McGowan would have been beaten to death if they'd tried to do that now.
Notice how the pie fights in The Three Stooges' HALFWITS' HOLIDAY and IN THE SWEET PIE AND PIE resemble this one...and this film came out a few years before their initial contract with Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures. There was obviously some inspiration from SS and Laurel & Hardy's THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY for these films...remember, at that time, they all stole from the best, each other!!!
One more note: Laurel & Hardy buffs, that bake sale lady was none other than Dorothy Coburn, who also appeared in TBOTC-the 'flapper' getting into her car and getting it in the rear end. It always escapes me why she was never credited?
One Good Turn (1931)
This is as much sentimental as funny
Welcome to Hooverville, Laurel & Hardy style!!! (A chicken in every pot? Well then I hope the soup that was ruined wasn't chicken soup.) I feel that this is the most sentimental of all the L&H films I've seen...as much as it is funny. It even concerns a theme that certainly holds up today: unemployment and homelessness. Difference between '31 and '05? Then they were just generally 'victims' and even willing to work for their food, as Hardy had suggested; today they're probably on heroin or crack and will probably mug you for a fix, not food.
Of course, then there's the victims of President Bush...
And the ending? OK, I know that it was more than likely personal, but being a lady who turned 50 a month ago and has seen more than her share of what life has to offer, I could never conceive of ANYone not getting 'fighting mad' after being wrongfully accused of stealing. In fact, today - rightly or wrongly accused - someone would more than likely take out a gun and shoot you point blank, not merely try to break open your head with firewood logs.
How times have changed from the '30s. Maybe THAT'S where the 'sentimental' part comes in?
Block-Heads (1938)
One of L&H's best
It's the last of Laurel & Hardy's old style; in all their subsequent films, the comedy becomes more sophisticated.
It's easy to have pity on Babe, especially when you consider how many times Stan has ruined his life, marriages, etc. Of course, it beats me as to why he keeps coming back for more punishment, especially considering the fact that during his service in WWI, Stan was such an idiot that the Captain literally abandoned him in the trenches while the rest hit the battlefield...he probably hoped the Red Baron or someone would kill him off? : ))) Compare that to dropping someone off in one of NYC's worst slums and tell them to find their way out.