Reviews

Caught the un-cut version DVD the other night, The audience it was shooting for is too young to view this, but any adult can't or won't be able to enjoy this mish-mash. Juvenile doesn't begin to cover how pathetic this film is. It's sort of like an old Mad magazine satire but without the humor. Most of the movies it tries to make fun of are themselves very fragile "today" films which have already started to "date" themselves. The actors! Jennifer Coolidge has a fun part as the "White Bitch", Fred Willard should be embarrassed to have his name in the credits. Nothing else is of any value as entertainment. Costuming and sets are lush, but don't help.Carmen Electra has a fun part which she has fun with. Our 4 adoptees? Jayma Mays, perky and maybe a comedy star ala Goldie Hawn some day, but not yet. Kal Penn was good with what he had to work with, which is what you find on the floor of a cow pen. Think name change my friend. Faune A. Chambers needs to go back to commercials and stay there. Adam Campbell comes off as totally gay whether the script calls for it or not.

When I first viewed "The Fighting 69th", I was probably 8 years old, around 1948 I'd say. It literally scared me out into the lobby more than once. At that age you're not ready for trench warfare that up close and personal. Being Irish, Catholic and a kinship with people named O'Brien, I have always liked this movie on many levels for a variety of reasons. I have watched this film many times over the years, including a "colorized" version, when they were in vogue. Now comes the definitive DVD copy of the film. I watched it again in all it's 42 inch LCD, near "Hi-Def", glory again recently. I was affected by it again but in an entirely different way. Basically the story is about bright, mostly full of pluck and good humor, young men who want to get this war over with and get home again. Now it could be viewed an "anti-war" movie in some ways. It also very much is like the young men,today, shedding blood in hell holes named Iraq and Afganistan. Quite a comparison. It hit home. I'm an older man and I cried and sniffled through the entire film, and I know the film! I didn't have any lobby to run out into. Bobsluckycat, in all his reviews, has tried to give you some out of the box appreciation for whatever film he reviews and this is no exception. Yes, the stars are all fine, but look to the mostly young supporting cast, many of whom would go off to WWII and come back having served proudly and heroically, and you'll see the meat of this film. William Lundigan, George Reeves, and many many others with a line or two here and there just outstanding and would go on to long acting careers post war. Gwinn "Big Boy" Williams, Frank McHugh, Dick Foran, Sammy Cohen among many of the "pros" doing superior work. Not one casting note rings false throughout. World War I does not play well in color, with the exception of John Fords' "What Price Glory" also starring Cagney, maybe. It's meant to be in black and white. Today, it's not the "rah,rah" picture it was made to be, but a stark reminder that war kills our youngest and brightest before they mature to fullness, just as today. In that light, It's one of the best war movies EVER made, period.

I missed Captain Video in the theatre in 1951. It played on an usual morning bill (for our town)for 15 weeks with cartoons and shorts. This was before most of the hinterlands had TV. We had heard about Captain Video, even seen the comic book, however this serial, even with the tinted sequences now available on DVD, bears absolutely no relationship to the TV series except for the name. I recently bought the DVD set and I must say even for Columbia and Sam Katzman this is just about, no make that the worst serial they even put out. Judd Holdren as the Captain comes across as very gay at times, not a lot of character development. Not much outer space goings on either. The villains on the red tinted sequences (especially poor Gene Roth)are dressed as Mongolian Tartars. The good guys on the green tinted sequences are all dressed as Arabs, everything else in outer space and on earth is in black and white. Special effects? Don't ask. The episodes and the cliff-hangers (where you can call them that) are just ridiculous by any standards. Knowing full well that this was directed towards 8 year old kids of 1951 and written by a veteran crew of serial writers, its an ungodly disaster! Approach it at your own risk.

This was an exceptional western in it's day. Filmed on location, in Technicolor no less, with top B-list stars Robert Sterling, the bland good-guy type and Robert Preston, the evil bad-man brother with good support by Cathy Downs, John Barrymore Jr., Chill Wills, John Litel among others including Jack Elam. After viewing this again after a long while, it's obvious that the more "adult" aspects of the story were eliminated or toned down so drastically that the drama was just too tame by todays' standards, but they had the "Code" in those days. It also appears as if the studio (Eagle-Lion)may have also edited some scenes down to fit a particular running time (approx. 83 minutes). It makes no sense to spend the money they did on this film and then cut it to it's running time. If this film had a couple of the Alan Bates, Susannha York, John Hurt scenes from "The Shout" written into this "re-make" it would be more explosive and make more sense. I would also explore and expand the strong-willed father, weak son sheriff sub-plot a little more. Yes it's watchable still as is, but when we bring back the Western some day, let's re-make this one early on.

I recently picked up the DVD of this film for a look. I originally saw it in 1951 when it got to my town on the bottom of a double bill with the western of the day. At that young age, the screaming cave-girl was my most vivid memory, but I liked it. Also saw it maybe 20 years ago on VHS. Still pretty good. Lloyd Bridges was cool, underplayed the whole part. On this last viewing, it's still a good sci-fi flick but from a vastly different point of view. The science as since provided by the real rockets that have been put into space was fairly on the money, especially the two-stage rocket explanation. Since special effects are practically nil, the look is O.K. The fiction, on the other hand was way, way out there. Please note, that all instruments were manual and mechanical and calculations were done with pencil and paper. Not a digital instrument or computer in sight. The idea of doing the Mars locations in Sepia-tone was as brilliant as it was cheap, as well. Lloyd Bridges and Morris Ankrum were head and shoulders the most talented actors in the cast of otherwise good players. Ankrum especially ,always under-rated, could read a grocery list and make it sound important. It also didn't hurt that Kurt Neuman put the whole thing together, either. This film probably inspired in it's own way a lot of young people to explore science and space exploration for real.

This is one of the films that killed the "spaghetti" western. It not only loses something in the translation, it is a total chaotic mess of editing as well. Either chunks of it have been edited out and or re-edited for an English language version. In any case, it makes little or no sense, period. It makes the "Trinity" and the Eastwood "Man With No Name" films look like John Ford/John Wayne by comparison. Nothing in this film is original. Somewhere in there is a beginning, a middle, and (finally)an end. Except for the end, not everything is exactly in that order. Robert Wood seems personable enough. The rest of the cast, especially the women, should have made better career choices.