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brionboyles
Reviews
The Savage Seven (1968)
So bad it's good
I hate you, I love you, I hate you, I love you, I stab you, I'm sorry...WOW....think 1960's TV Batman as Billy Jack, but in motorcycle gang garb, with a spacey Cher look-a-like floating dreamily around, alternately fighting and smootching the Chirakowa from F Troop, with King Tut and his henchmen pulling the puppet strings....
In the late seventies, I saw a Second City voice-over of an episode of The Cisco Kid, which was hilarious. This script is so bad, the acting so goofy, the music so jarringly inappropriate, the fight scenes so laughable....I thought I was seeing another Second City spoof. This would make an unbelievably fun evening for a Mystery Science Theatre 2000-type event. Gather your smarmiest friends, some likker and snacks...and have a blast. Perhaps one of the worst movies I have ever seen, I would GLADLY buy a copy. Monty Python couldn't have done it better. There's even a bit with a VERY young Penny Marshall getting raped by the campfire, asking "Does this make me seem cheap?" The intensely serious, psychoanalytic review provided by IMDb on the main page made me laugh even more.... just have fun.
Morituri (1965)
A good sea-yarn
I happen to like maritime tales and settings, so the previous reviewers' remarks about the engine room scenes being boring were actually fascinating to me (the reciprocating engines/engine room of this era ship is seldom seen). That said, the plot of this tale was a little busy for me...too many twists and turns, like it was racing from port to port to get as much in as possible. I love Brando and Brynner, and they don't disappoint: Brando's role as a German is as good as his similar role in "The Young Lions", which is to say outstanding. Brynner's tortured alcoholic skipper is equally rewarding. The introduction of a Jewish refugee--as a girl who survives by at once reviling sexual depredations forced on her by SS in her homeland and yet too quick to use her charms to manipulate her captors aboard ship--seems rather tawdry and gimmicky, to lure 60's era pubescent boys into the theatre. I found her Svengali-like "sex-stare" to unnerving and ridiculous. There are many good performances by several minor characters (the First Mate is one, Wally Cox anti-typecast as a morphine addict Ship's Doktor is another). GREAT cinematography--helo flying shots, wonderful angles). The end of the story is rather abrupt and unfulfilling...I thought perhaps they'd run out of cash. It appears they actually darned near destroyed an actual vintage freighter in the making of the movie...! All-in-all, a good sea yarn and war tale, but seemed to a vehicle to put Brynner and Brando together, with some gratuitous sex thrown in for those not viewers not attracted to the former virtues...