And another roll-up of classic movies…
1924 – Sherlock Jr. – Laugh-out-loud funny bits mixed with classic Hollywood stunts that you might charitably call a little reckless. I had a lot of fun with this Buster Keaton classic, especially with how it plays with cinema… an art form not too old at the time. Keaton is a projectionist who falls asleep and dreams of entering the silent film he’s projecting… he imagines himself a world-class detective in the film within a film… he just has to watch out for the sudden screen transitions. Very clever flick.
1932 – The Old Dark House – It was a dark and stormy night… and I rented a James Whale movie from Amazon Prime. <insert thunder>. I’m a bit baffled by this flick since, for a while, I was laughing… was it a horror comedy? And then I was confused and then what’s this with a crazy old man or two? And was that a Frankenstein “It’s alive!” reference? I mean… yeah… Boris Karloff so that tracks. Definitely more slyly humorous than I expected. Can’t say I was scared but I can see where they were going at least.
1946 – Dressed to Kill – A perfectly cromulent Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes mystery. I haven’t seen too many of his Sherlock Holmes films but I know him by reputation. This one was fine. A little lite on the thrills and danger but the mystery involving music(al) boxes and a secret code was a pretty clever setup. Alas, no relation to the steamy Brian DePalma film of the same name. Alas.
1966 – Django – A spaghetti western that I honestly only rented because of the price (99 cents) and because I was curious about what Tarantino borrowed for his Django Unchained. Turned out not much but that got me into the rabbit hole of what was going on with the title. Turns out, over 30 movies with the Django name that were otherwise unrelated to the original (due to lax copyright laws in Italy). So cool on Tarantino for following a cinematic tradition. As far as the movie itself, eh… not really my thing. Not a big fan of westerns on a good day and just adding some 60s era ultraviolence isn’t enough for me.
1971 – Fiddler on the Roof – wasn’t sure what I was getting into other than a movie about Jewish peasants in Russia. But was pleasantly surprised with Topol’s character… a put-upon devout man who has a personal (if argumentative) relationship with God (and daughters who keep on insisting they can make their own choices… despite TRADITION!). Liked the songs, dug the dances… nice to have variety in a big Hollywood musical. Amused when I realized (after only having seen stills of the movie) that the lead was not Brian Blessed (Voltan from the Flash Gordon movie).
1973 – The Crazies – an early John Romero movie (remade in 2010 in a much glossier manner). The film is a little rough around its low budget edges but is also a fascinating look at Watergate/Vietnam-era cynicism. When the end comes, it’ll be due to bureaucratic indecision and incompetence. No surprise there, I guess! The editing was probably pretty revolutionary with its very quick cuts, especially for the very early 70s.
1975 – Deep Red – The first Dario Argento film (of a very limited operating set) that I’ve actually enjoyed. Can’t say I was always following the plot but, thinking back, it all starts to make sense. Or, well, at least most of it does (random robot children may be an exception). But that’s the thing… I am still thinking about it and that’s more than I can say for a lot of films.
1975 – The Switchblade Sisters – Sometimes you just need to watch a schlocky 70s exploitation flick because it’s a schlocky 70s exploitation flick. This is a pretty cheeky fun little flick… not sure how it was received then, but it’s certainly a kind of throwback, winking fun now. Grinned my way through the first two acts but was kind of let down by the final act. It needed more pizazz, pep, grime, meanness, or, yes, trashiness. But it’s still a good, fun example of its ilk.