Video Eyeball

DVD of the Day • Cabin Boy

Cabin Boy
1994
80 minutes
Walt Disney Pictures
PG-13

Cast • Chris Elliott, Ritch Brinkley, James Gammon, Brion James, Brian Doyle-Murray, Bob Elliott, I.M. Hobson, Melora Walters, Ann Magnuson, Russ Tamblyn, Alex Nevil, Ricki Lake, David Letterman (credited as Earl Hofert)
Writer • Chris Elliott and Adam Resnick
Director • Adam Resnick

Don't forget — VE's CREEPFEST '07 begins tomorrow!

IF CHRIS ELLIOTT'S LONE big screen vehicle, Cabin Boy, has any legacy at all, it’s as an embarrassment, thanks in part to David Letterman’s repeated mid-1990s mocking of the movie and his cameo in it, on his own nightly show and at the 1995 Academy Awards, which he hosted. But Cabin Boy wasn’t “misunderstood” or “ahead of its time” or qualified for any other label people slap on a movie they don’t get. It’s not for everyone, but for a lot of people, it was funny in 1994 and it’s still funny today.
      The surprise in revisiting Cabin Boy today isn’t that it’s still laugh-out-loud funny at several points. What’s amazing now is how well-imagined the movie is, from its spoof of old-time seafaring tales like Captains Courageous (from which it gets its spoiled brat at sea in need of an attitude adjustment) and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (from which it gets its style of stop-action, humongous monsters) to its adolescent tale for adults and its quite beautiful sets. Years later, Cabin Boy seems very much in the spirit of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and anyone into that show’s old-school animation, self-centered hero and overgrown kid’s stuff has a good shot of liking Elliott’s movie. The behind-the-scenes work on Cabin Boy is truly brilliance on a budget, yet few noticed the clever backdrop of this “dumb comedy” when it was originally released. Considering that Tim Burton’s name is slapped on it as a producer and its shared sensibility with his early movies is fairly obvious, this oversight shows you how much the movie was summarily dismissed.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Family DVD of the Day • Son of Flubber

Son of Flubber
1962
100 minutes
Disney
Not Rated

Cast • Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, William Demarest, Paul Lynde
Writer • Samuel W. Taylor, Don DaGradi
Director • Robert Stevenson

NOTE: Video Eyeball's Halloween Creepfest '07 starts October 1 and runs the entire month — a different creepy movie each day!

CALL ME CONTRARY, but I prefer Son of Flubber to its more successful source, The Absent-Minded Professor ('61, also directed by Robert Stevenson). In fact, given my druthers, I’d cut the two together and make one hell of a film. The core of my discontent with Professor lies in the film’s refusal to delve into the character of the absent-minded Professor, Ned Brainard. Fred MacMurray is unavoidably associated with the role, and few could have performed it better—he’s as earnest and amiable as a happy baby. But his character’s motivation and development are ultimately sacrificed so as not to upstage the film’s real star—the hyperkinetic goo called flubber. Brainard’s devotion to the stuff makes him seem more regressive than forgetful, preferring, as he does, to muck about in his own synthetic poop than to show up at his own long-forestalled wedding. With its central character operating on the level of scatology, the film has little chance to develop the transformational insights which attract an audience beyond the psychic diaper stage. In spite of fine performances, I feel a little sorry for everyone in this film, set-up as they are to play second fiddle to a bit of flying fudge.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Friday Night at the VE Drive-In • The Wild Angels

The Wild Angels
1966
87 minutes
MGM
PG-13

Cast • Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Nancy Sinatra, Michael J. Pollard, Lou Procopio, Coby Denton, Buck Taylor, members of Hell's Angels
Writer • Charles B. Griffith
Director • Roger Corman

NOTE: Video Eyeball's Halloween Creepfest '07 starts October 1 and runs the entire month — a different creepy movie each day!

SOMETIMES IT JUST DOESN'T PAY to be a nice guy. Take Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda), president of the Venice, California chapter of the Hell's Angels. When his gang rides down to Mexico to retrieve a chopper stolen from his buddy, The Loser (Bruce Dern), a rumble with the locals goes sour and Loser catches a bullet from The Man.

Blues smuggles his pal out of the hospital, but Loser up and dies — talk about ungrateful! Now everyone's coming down on Blues: the preacher at Loser's funeral (a karate chop to the neck sets him straight), his old lady, Mike (Nancy Sinatra), even a gang of rednecks who won't let him bury Loser in their town. All Blues wants to do is ride and get loaded...

If you're one of those art-flick squares (or from France), you'll dig The Wild Angels for its dark, nihilistic undertones and its exploration of loyalty and individuality. But if you're a red-blooded drive-in patriot, the Angels is Hog Heaven: cool cats and wild chicks in leather and Luftwaffe gear, plus an essential does of vitamin B-4 — Bikes, Brawls, Beer and Bongos! Often imitated but never matched, The Wild Angels is righteous fare from Roger Corman, the Big Daddy of the Outdoor Screen. Don't be a loser, man. Grab your old lady (or man) and a case of skunked beer and make the scene!  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • The Tingler

The Tingler
1959
82 minutes
Sony Pictures
Not Rated

Cast • Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Patricia Cutts, Darryl Hickman, Pamela Lincoln, Philip Coolidge
Writer • Robb White
Director • William Castle

NOTE: Video Eyeball's Halloween Creepfest '07 starts October 1 and runs the entire month — a different creepy movie each day!

NOT THE KING OF GIMMICK'S BEST film (Mr. Sardonicus, '61, is), but Willam Castle's most memorable, thanks to a completely berserk publicity stunt called "Percepto," the "newest and most startling gimmick on the screen," for which Castle wired selected theater seats to give unsuspecting patrons' asses a mild electric shock during frightening scenes. Enterprising VE readers may attempt to recreate this in their own homes for full effect, but you'll enjoy this loopy monster flick even without a couple of hundred volts. 

Vincent Price (in his second Castle feature after House on Haunted Hill, '58) is at his smoothest as a scientist who discovers a hidden organism living at the base of the human spine. The creature, dubbed "the Tingler" (which looks like a king-size Gummi lobster), comes to life when a person is frightened, and the only way to kill it is to scream, SCREAM, SCREAM FOR YOUR LIFE!  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • California Split

California Split
1974
105 minutes
Sony Pictures
R

Cast • George Segal, Elliott Gould, Ann Prentiss, Gwen Welles, Bert Remsen
Writer • Joseph Walsh
Director • Robert Altman

THE UNDERLYING FOCUS OF ROBERT ALTMAN'S FILMS is American culture and the interaction of individuals. Onscreen, the themes of the community versus individualism, conflicts between men and women, minority voices, politics and fraternity, mediation versus "reality" and the myth of the hero are explored in a varitety of settings.

Central to Altman's explorations are characters who project alienation and isolation, yet are dependent on interaction with others. Their interactions sometimes suggest a communal bond, although moments of true community are rare. Discovering how characters behave alone and teogether takes precedence over plot in any Altman film.

Altman creates characters who initially appear to be stereotypes, but when we have identified the filmic type (the lone gambler, the detective, the journalist), he subverts our expectations and assumptions by having the character behave in a contradictory way. Altman is not interested in why characters behave the way they do (bucking the Freudian tradition of filmic characterization) but in what they do and how they interact with others.

The viewer is invited to participate, to make connections and choices. Altman accomplishes this using a number of different techniques, the common thread being what theorist Helene Keysser calls "multiplicity of points of view" -- that is, he uses the camera and sound to present multiple perspectives.

Altman updates his examination of social and economic classes (after releasing the Depression-era set Thieves Like Us in the same year) and the limits of possibilities of community with California Split, which centers on the formation of the friendship of Bill (Segal) and Charlie (Gould). The two men meet at a casino where, by chance, they become partners in a card game. When the two are accused of cheating by a sore loser, the game breaks up and the two meet at a local bar. 

In a great scene, they drunkenly strike up a friendship based on the shaky tenets of fraternity -- gambling, music, beer, and naming all of the Seven Dwarfs (recalling Marlowe and Lennox's naming the Dimaggio brothers in The Long Goodbye). The buddies are from different worlds, though, which becomes more apparent with Charlie's irresponsible outings and Bill's struggles at his office. Again, the exclusion of women and misreading of signs causes the dissolution of this community of men, and the film ends with a heady high stakes gambling scene that redefines their relationship.  DAVE YOUNT

Saturday Morning Cartoons • Clutch Cargo

Clutch Cargo
1959
Two Volumes, 520 minutes each
Brentwood Home Video
Not Rated

Voices • Richard Cotting, Margaret Kerry, Hal Smith
Director • Phil Booth

FAMOUS FOR ITS INNOVATIVE and funky "Synchro-Vox" technology (U.S. Patent No. 2,739,505) and unusual animation style, Clutch Cargo is not loved by all, but is a nostalgic treasure for some and a unique landmark in the animation landscape for others.

Each episode has Clutch on a new (yet always familiar) adventure with his friends, a young boy named Spinner and a Dachshund named Paddlefoot. His pith-helmeted friend Swampy was voiced by Hal Smith, better known to many as Otis Campbell of The Andy Griffith Show. Those adventures have them meeting all manner of stereotypes: Scotsmen with red noses, Native Americans who say "How", and villains of the Cold War persuasion. The stories are told using a voiceover narrator accompanied by flute and bongo music. Dig that crazy beat!

But it's  "Synchro-Vox" that sets Clutch Cargo apart and makes it worth watching for those who are too young for it to have a nostalgia factor.  The drawings are mostly static here, with only "Synchro-Vox" — the imposition of footage of the voice actor's mouth on the character's face — providing motion. Conan O'Brien fans will immediately recognize where he stole his bit from.

It's unfortunate that Space Angel, the other cartoon from the same time and production company that also used "Synchro-Vox", is unavailable on DVD. The art director was Alex Toth,  (sounds like "both") the brilliant graphic artist who's best known as the designer of Space Ghost and Johnny Quest in mid-1960s. It's more complex and looks  cooler. Nobody creates space heroes like Alex Toth — here's hoping Space Angel will soon be released.  DAVE YOUNT

Friday Night at the VE Drive-In • Wild in the Streets

Wild in the Streets
1968
97 minutes
MGM
R

Cast • Christopher Jones, Shelley Winters, Hal Holbrook, Ed Begley, Millie Perkins, Diane Varsi, Richard Pryor, Kevin Coughlin, Larry Bishop, Barry Williams, Melvin Belli, Dick Clark, Pamela Mason, Louis Lomax, Allan J. Moll
Writer • Robert Thom
Director • Barry Shear

AT 18, SUBURBAN MALCONTENT Max Flatow (Christopher Jones) flips the bird to his overbearing mom (Shelley Winters), blows up Dad’s Caddy and splits for L.A., where he redubs himself Max Frost and fronts the most popular band in the land, The Troopers.
    Max’s on-stage rants against the voting and draft ages attract the attention of Kennedy-esque Senator Jimmy Fergus (Hal Holbrook), who hopes to use Max’s enormous fan base to gain the youth vote.
    With Max’s help, Fergus manages to quell a nation-wide teenage riot and lower the voting age to 16, but his brush with power leaves Max hungry for more. In a surprise move, he rallies his “troops” to vote him into the White House. Once elected, he begins a brutal ageist campaign, interring everyone over 30 in concentration camps where they’re kept pacified by force-fed doses of LSD!
    But as the U.S. of A. slides into one big paisley-patchouli-oil-and-love-bead-wearing state of total anarchy, Max learns the cold hard facts about the Shape of Things to Come: no matter what your age is, there’s always gonna be someone younger who thinks you’re old...and obsolete. Wild in the Streets is a campy, creepy classic from American International Pictures, THE home of the Drive-In.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Clean, Shaven

Clean, Shaven
1995
80 minutes
Criterion Collection
R

Cast • Peter Greene, Jennifer MacDonald, Robert Albert, Megan Owen
Writer • Lodge Kerrigan
Director • Lodge Kerrigan

AN OMINOUS, CLOSELY OBSERVED PORTRAIT of paranoid schizophrenia, Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven follows Peter Winter's (Peter Greene) attempts to find his nine-year-old daughter, Nicole (Jennifer MacDonald). Painfully vulnerable, and unable to curb his desperate self-mortification, Peter returns home to New Brunswick to search for the girl, whom his mother (Megan Owen) has given up for adoption while Peter has been in a mental hospital. Peter's compulsivity — and the profound ambiguity of his actions — draw the attention of a local detective, who tries to prevent their reunion.

Coming down hard on the nurture side of the old debate (note that Mom's dress matches the wallpaper), Lodge Kerrigan has created a spare, studious depiction of mental illness, yet one with enough pathos (not to mention self-mutilation and murder) to keep the viewer engaged. The simple story is marred by a couple of distracting plot twists (a one night stand between the detective and the girl's adoptive mother? Why?), but overall the film is so lean, so focused that we, like Peter, hardly even notice.

Kerrigan spent three years making Clean, Shaven, then another year and a half trying to find a distributor willing to handle its unflinching depictions of violence. If you turn away, as I did, it's from the truth.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

DVD of the Day • Sudden Fear

Sudden Fear
 1952
110 minutes, b&w
Kino Video
Not Rated

Cast • Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston
Writers • Lenora J. Coffee, from the Enda Sherry novel
Director • David Miller

CAST JOAN CRAWFORD AND JACK PALANCE AS LOVERS in a noirish melodrama, and you're going to generate sparks. Throw Gloria Grahame — that little tramp — into the mix and you've added nitro.

Myra Hudson (Crawford) is a successful playwright who marries Lester Blaine (Palance), an actor she turned down for a role in her hit play. She learns (in an interesting way) that he and his lover are plotting to kill her, so she uses her skills as a writer to foil their plans. Fun to watch, especially when Crawford loses it.  DAVE YOUNT

NOTES:

• Despite the numerous close-ups of Crawford's feet, this film was directed by David Miller, not Luis Buñuel.

DVD of the Day • The Conversation

The Conversation
 1974
113 minutes
Paramount
PG

Cast • Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Michael Higgins, Elizabeth MacRae, Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, Mark Wheeler, Robert Shields, Phoebe Alexander, Robert Duvall
Writer • Francis Ford Coppola
Director • Francis Ford Coppola

MADE BETWEEN HIS TWO BLOCKBUSTER HITS The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is a character study, a mystery and a meditation on voyeurism and perception. While many of Coppola’s movies are theatrical, characterized by lush surfaces, The Conversation is a stark, minimalist film. Winner of the Palm d’Or at Cannes (apparently an honor sure to sabotage a film’s popular reception), the movie is often praised for its innovative use of sound (by aural wizards Walter Murch and Arthur Rochester). As in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, a film to which The Conversation is often compared, an initially innocent “recording” reveals, upon closer inspection, a darker “reality.” Yet it is reality in this complicated film which is ultimately suspect.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP