I SHOT JESSE JAMES

d. Samuel Fuller (1949)

I Shot Jesse James was Samuel Fuller's directorial debut, but all of the Fuller trademarks are already in place: spinning headlines, omniscient narration, piquant dialogue, strong women, big close ups, love, hate, action, violence, death. But it's a bit of a muddle, as if Fuller (who also wrote the script) is trying too hard to find an oblique angle that will take the film into territory not normally covered by the standard and already well worn western tropes*. 

Bob Ford is the man who shot Jesse James, a man subsequently reviled in folk songs as a dirty coward (even by the authorities: he didn't even receive the full reward promised). Here, his motivation to kill his friend and colleague is not about the money: he simply wants to be free, to receive a pardon for his previous outlaw life and to get married to the girl he loves. His act of assassination (or murder, there's no clear line in this instance) doesn't liberate him, however, it kills him, filling him with self loathing and regret and making him a target for every kid with a gun who wants to be the man who shot the man who shot Jesse James. Worst of all, his girl turns away from him, no longer able to love a man whose name is synonymous with treachery. 

In this film, which is as much an old fashioned melodrama as a western, Ford dies in a gun fight with a love rival, an upright, honourable man who represents all the values that Ford lacks. It's a nice idea, but a load of rubbish. Ford was murdered by a man who walked up to him and, without warning, blasted him in the throat with a shotgun. There was no pomp, no ceremony, no build up, no drama, no tension, no honour. The man did it simply because he wanted to make a name for himself. For me, that's an ending that is heavy with irony but also sums up the circular nature of violence and, moreover, the savage nature of the old West.  

* Fuller is much more successful at this with his later 'Forty Guns' and 'Run Of The Arrow'.    

TARZAN TRIUMPHS

d. Wilhelm Thiele (1943)

I’ll start by saying that I love Tarzan films. I also hate Nazis, so Tarzan Triumphs, where Tarzan kills Nazis, is my sort of movie.

When the German army invade the sub-Saharan city of Palandrya it takes Tarzan a long time to intervene, despite the entreaties of an exotic Princess (Jane is away in England nursing wounded soldiers). Tarzan, played with implacable practicality by Johnny Weissmuller, doesn’t understand what it has to do with him – he fights as a last resort, and only to survive – this isn’t any of his business. When the Nazis impinge on his escarpment, however, and try to kill his son and his monkey, Tarzan, rather like the United States after Pearl Harbour, finally understands that tyrants don’t just stay in other people’s backyards, instead having a nasty habit of spreading out if unchecked. In perhaps the single most dramatic moment of the cycle, Tarzan’s face darkens and he grabs his knife, uttering the immortal line: ‘Now Tarzan make WAR!’ and, by Christ, he does.

We needn’t go into extensive detail about how he systematically wipes out the Germans other than to say he employs both his in-built talent for death (Tarzan is a good man, but he kills pretty much everything that he disagrees with) and the deadly natural accoutrements of his jungle home: crocodiles, rampaging elephants, some geographically misplaced piranhas. For all their arrogance and advanced ordnance, The Nazis have no effective answer to Tarzan’s primal savagery and so, accordingly, die, one by one, screaming in horror and incomprehension at how this could happen to a member of the master race. Aficionados of the series will be familiar with the relentless horror and violence of Tarzan films, and although this is relatively tame in comparison to, say, Tarzan Escapes, it is still strangely satisfying to see so many nasty National Socialists get their bloody comeuppance.

The pay off, in which almost psychotically naughty chimp Cheeta talks to Berlin on the radio and is mistaken for Hitler, is brilliant, propaganda at its best, although, even in her role as an agent of chaos and misrule, Cheeta consistently demonstrates more humanity and compassion than the fucking Fuhrer ever did.   

There are clips of this fantastically entertaining film all over the internet, including one which comes with a very 21st century proviso: *WARNING* Johnny Sheffield ('Boy') is only 12 in these clips. If you prefer to see older people in peril then please do not view.

Incidentally, if you are interested in Tarzan films AND what I have to say on the matter, I am currently working on a short book called Tarzanetics which will include far more analysis and graphs and things. It will be published via The British Esperantist, i.e. my own private vanity press.

OVER THE EDGE

d. Jonathan Kaplan (1979)

New Granada in Colorado is a planned community, an isolated new town full of vacant lots and half-built condos. The adults have moved there from bigger cities to give themselves and their children a better chance in life but, in fact, the environment is sterile, stifling and obsessed with rules and money. The biggest problem in the town is juvenile delinquency, or, more correctly, the juveniles themselves. With nowhere to go and nothing to do the kids, inevitably, make their own entertainment, much to the chagrin of the adults who believe they should be not seen, not heard and certainly not high.

The kids are drowning in boredom, and obsessed with drugs, drink, sex and vandalism. The cast are all so young and wholesome looking, it’s actually quite shocking to see a 12 year old boy swigging from a bottle of scotch, and both comic and disturbing to see the same boy at school flunking a test on Hieronymus Bosch (of all things) because the speed he thought he had taken is actually LSD. The parents are either preoccupied or don’t care, and the authorities are positively draconian: they don’t even want the kids to have a recreation center, and the Chief of Police is a blowhard and a fascist.

Bubbling tensions boil over after one of the boys is shot and killed by the cops during a prank, and the kids strike back: locking the adults into the school where they are attending a meeting about the delinquency problem and how it is affecting property prices. From 1933's Zero de Conduite onwards, there’s something very pleasing and cinematic about watching children getting their own back, and here the disaffected youths have a jamboree of destruction, channeling their frustration and excess testosterone and estrogen into trashing the library, flooding the gym, taunting their parents over the pa system and setting fire to vehicles in the car park. They know that at least some of them will get caught and sent to The Hill, the local juvenile correction centre, but they no longer care: so desperate for a change that even prison seems like a holiday. 

The edge the kids tumble over is clearly a threshold: geographically, mentally, morally. There are a number of beautiful shots of characters walking towards to the horizon, usually in the sun streaked light of evening or early morning. There may be an implication that there is potentially something better over the ridge, but we know there’s just more of the same. The town itself is plonked in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mud, an island suburb, a prison. These scenes are accompanied by a Debussy-esque Sol Kaplan score, also used to great effect when one protagonist Carl is beaten up by two older boys to ensure he doesn’t snitch on them for shooting at a police car with a bb gun.

Often reminiscent of a more suburban Badlands, the film presents the vast mid-west as a place of stasis where the quest for excitement and movement often leads to crime, and where love and pleasure is fraught with danger, tied up with transgression. The script was co-written by Tim Hunter, who would later direct his own masterpiece of teen angst Rivers Edge (1987) and work on both the original Twin Peaks series and the marvelous Eerie, Indiana. 

Poorly distributed and rarely revisited, Over the Edge is now best known as the film debut of the handsome but gormless Matt Dillon, who was trying to sneak out of class when he was spotted by the film’s visiting casting director, a big break that he must still be pinching himself about. Ironically, the 15 year old Dillon is perhaps the least accomplished actor amongst the film’s excellent young cast, but he does look the part, and, in Hollywood, that’s over half the battle. 

THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE

d. Eddie Romero (1972)

Edgar ‘Eddie’ Romero was a legend of the Filipino film industry. Working from the late 1940s up until 2008 (he died in 2013, aged 88), Eddie produced, wrote and directed dozens of films and TV shows, eventually attaining a respectability and artistry that few non-auteurs achieve. For the narrow purposes of this weblog, we’ll concentrate on the hugely entertaining English language exploitation films he made in the 1970s, specifically his shoestring take on The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Twilight People.

The film stars John Ashley, a recurring presence in Romero films of the period. Ashley had been a minor teen idol and even more minor pop star, playing eternal youths in AIP horror and beach films well into his thirties. He happily relocated to Manila when US roles dried up, eventually working behind the scenes of Apocalypse Now for an extended period: he was the guy who arranged to borrow the helicopters. Here he plays Matt Farrell, a slightly pudgy playboy and renaissance man who is kidnapped by a mad scientist who wants to splice his superior genes with wildlife, thereby creating a super race of human-animal hybrids that he believes will form the next stage of evolution. 

It’s not working too well so far, as all he’s managed to do is to create a menagerie of unhappy freaks: apart from his mad, mutated wife, he has a man bat (disturbing), a goat man (perplexing), a monkey boy (randy and annoying) and a young woman who has a very furry face who I eventually realised was supposed to be part dog. Oh, and he also has a constantly miaowing Panther Woman, played by the magnificent Pam Grier (underused). It’s all a bit disorganised and deeply unethical, and Farrell is the sort of straight up guy who inspires confidence, so he very quickly turns the mad scientists daughter against her Father and breaks out the hybrids, who make their way into the jungle in search of freedom, closely pursued by the scientists hired thugs, led by a peroxided sadist who only drinks milk. 

As you might expect, the film is no masterpiece but it is surprisingly well written, well directed and mainly well-acted, as well as being shot in a number of interesting locations. For all its quiet competence, however, it is sometimes marred by abrupt edits, as if material has been removed or added at the last minute, leading to jarring and sometimes noisy transitions. The monster make up is okay (lots of stick on fuzz and silly teeth), and the special effects, including spurting blood and some animation, are about right. In the end analysis, it’s a cheaply made but ambitious film about strange and fantastic things, kept from tipping into silliness by a matter of fact and professional approach - which sounds slightly dull but actually never is.