Monthly Archives: June 2016

Hannie Caulder (1972)

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hanniecaulder71aThe long-threatened western.

It took some time with Google to remember what made me watch this. Turns out, it was a reference in a review of Jane Got a Gun to the hat worn here by Raquel Welch.[1]  Leave it to the New Yorker to remember Raquel’s iconic role as hat-centric, rather than the obviouses.  But then, the new movie stars waifish Natalie Portman, so a comparison couldn’t really be drawn based on Raquel’s usual calling cards.

The Clemens brothers [2] ride up to the local banco (bank, according to Google Translate).  In a scene sure to warm The Donald’s heart, the Mexican Police are all comically lying about, taking siestas in the sun as the gang robs the banco across the street; also heart-warming because they are still in Mexico.  An overzealous teller triggers the non-silent alarm — i.e. a bell with a rope — waking up the policias, triggering a chase on horseback with a great pounding orchestral score.

hanniecaulder01The three gringos — despite one being shot and another being Ernest Borgnine — escape the pursing cops. They stop at an adobe ranch house where a man introduces himself as Jim Caulder — I don’t like his odds.  Not surprisingly, he is dispatched within seconds and the gang goes inside to find the titular Hannie Caulder.  Over a static shot of the house we hear her screams as she is raped.  Nothing funny about that, although there is an odd bit of business with one of the men being thrown out the front door . . . twice.  Or maybe they were different men; they were indistinguishable from the distance.  No idea what they were going for there.

The next morning, the gang stumbles out the front door and leaves Hannie and her burning house behind as they oddly just walk their horses away.  It is a nice shot as she comes out of the flaming house holding a serape around her to find her bloody husband dead.  Like all good movie characters, she digs a back-breaking grave in the desert and buries her husband without breaking a sweat; a glistening, clothes-clinging sweat.

hanniecaulder32Up rides bounty hunter Thomas Price (Robert Culp) asking for water from her well. Hannie quite understandably points a rifle at him.  He easily takes it from her, but she is learning the ways of men . . . and brains him when his back is turned.  They end up riding together to find a gunsmith to outfit Hannie.  As you would expect, the gunsmith is played by Christopher Lee.  Wait, what?

After they are attacked by a band of illegal aliens — wait, I mean citizens — we see that Hannie has become a killer.  They ride to a town where they meet up with the Clemens bothers.  Hannie’s luck with men continues as Price is knifed by 1/3 of the Clemens gang.

The ending is a little anti-climactic, but it might have not been so at the time.  This was an early example of the rape-revenge genre, so maybe audiences were shocked enough just by a woman avenging her rape, that it had an excitement not conceivable today.  Hannie is also ahead of her time in getting off some good zingers as she kills the bad guys.  Finally, there is a strange deus ex Messala appearance by Stephen Boyd that makes no sense to me, and undermines Hannie’s accomplishment.  That’s men for ya.

hanniecaulder55It is obvious this was filmed in the early days of Hollywood’s new freedom.  A few son-of-a-bitches and asses are thrown around, but they come off as being spoken by a 10 year-old who just discovered them. There is no weight to them — to be fair, a lesson Martin Scorsese still has not learned.

Shockingly, Raquel is the best performer in the film.  Culp is perfectly fine in a TV movie sort of way, but nothing special.  The Clemens brothers are just boobs.  Ernest Borgnine screams every line.  Strother Martin and Jack Elam are just there for the comic effect of their antics and squabbling, but consistently fail.  Raquel, however, pulls it together with as much subtlety as the role allows, and with her natural beauty.  I’ll go out on a limb here and say there is just a pleasure in watching her on the screen that you don’t get from, say, Ernest Borgnine.  Strangely for the era, and for this actress in particular, there really is no gratuitous exploitation of her looks or figure.  Well, one shot of her bare back, but nary a hint of side-boob.

hanniecaulder23

The only example I’m aware of that has shotgun-POV. Literally, first-person-shooter as the viewer is the shotgun.

There is enough thick red paint for a barn-raising, although not the projectile bleeding that Sam Peckinpah was pioneering at the time.  The natural pre-CGI sets, the natural pre-silicone set, the non-Clemens performances, and the always-welcome story of a woman getting revenge make this a good one.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The New Yorker only referenced Hannie Caulder to say that, bad as it was, it still “blew away” Jane Got a Gun.  It did, however, say that the supporting cast had “gusto.”
  • [2] Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin.  Say, this supporting cast does have gusto!
  • Director Burt Kennedy previously directed Support Your Local Sheriff.  In 1969, the other New York braintrust over at the Times called it “dreadful”, illustrating that the NYT’s utter detachment from reality is nothing new.  The trailer I linked actually is pretty poorly done, but the film itself is 2nd only to Blazing Saddles in the comedy-western genre.  Granted, with competition like A Million Ways to Die in the West and The Ridiculous Six, the bar is lower than the saloon’s in The Terror of Tiny Town.
  • OK, the hat was pretty cool.

Fear Itself – Eater (07/03/08)

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It takes two cops to bring Duane “Eater” Mellor into the station.  They install him in the kind of cage that we need more of — unpainted, crumbling walls, exposed bricks, a metal toilet.

After the officers leave, he pulls a butt-plug out of his sleeve, rattles it, and begins chanting.  Upon closer examination, it might be some sort of voodoo paraphernalia.  It has feathers on on end, so would be ticklish in either case.

At the night shift roll call, the guys are making fun of Officer Dani [1] Bannerman [2] for reading a horror magazine.  The Sargent advises them that Eater is upstairs.  “Over the last two years, he has killed over thirty people in five different states [3].  In each case, he took the victims home, usually killing the males outright; keeping the females alive for days, sometimes weeks, playing with them, torturing them, and eventually eating them.”

Dani is quite the horror fan, correcting the other dopes when they get facts wrong about Silence of the Lambs.  She can’t wait to get her hands on Eater’s file to check out the grizzly pictures.  The other cops are fairly dickish, teasing her for being a girl-cop.  She is slapped on the head with a magazine, food is rubbed on her uniform, and an inflatable sex doll is hidden in her locker.

As Dani reads the file, she imagines the scene where Eater cuts off a captive woman’s tongue and fries it up.  Despite not being very bloody, this is admirably horrific for network television.  When he goes back for seconds and raises the tin-snips to her nose, I was genuinely disgusted.  Kudos to everyone involved.

Dani goes upstairs to take a fan-girlish look at the killer.  She is worried when she sees him motionless under a blanket in the cell.  The rest of the episode is an exercise in suspense and mistaken identity.  Eater is a Cajun which — like being African American on Tales From the Crypt — automatically means he has voodoo powers.  You rarely see mystical Asian stereotypes because that would mean they would have to hire Asians. He has eaten the hearts of Dani’s fellow officers Mattingley and Steinwitz, and is thereby able to shape-shift into their form.  In fact, he is so skilled at the blackened arts that he is able to shape-shift into their differently ranked uniforms also.

That is both the appeal and the curse of the episode.  Mattingley and Steinwitz as themselves were obnoxious jerks of Trumpian proportions.  When possessed by Eater, they become even worse — fidgety, sweaty and grotesque.  As the last half of the episode consists of each them alternately alone with Dani as she figures out what they really are, they wear out there welcome very quickly.

Finally, the Sargent comes back and Dani shows him the two officers’ dead bodies. Unfortunately, there is a third dead body.  As in Triangle, Timecrimes and others that don’t leap to mind, its head is conveniently covered.  When Dani unmasks him, it is the real Sargent — dead with a hole in his forehead.  This is strange as the ritual was said to require a still-beating heart — so why the head-shot?

The end is abrupt, silly and awesome.  Another good episode from the short-lived series. They got away with some surprisingly gruesome images and a pretty graphic blowjob gag (no pun intended).  Elizabeth Moss as Bannerman really made the episode.  Russell Hornsby as the Sargent and Stephen R. Hart as Eater were both solid, but were not on screen as much as Moss.  Maybe the other two cops needed to be repulsive to make the story work — if so, well done.

Post-Post:

  • [1] IMDb credits Elizabeth Moss as Danny, but that just doesn’t work for me.
  • [2] A clear reference to Stephen King.  Sheriff George Bannerman appeared in five King novels / short stories.
  • [3] I have to give Fear Itself credit — they don’t believe in half measures or full lives. The killer in Family Man with 26 must be humiliated net to this maniac

Tattooed Blonde – Ellery Watson Calder (1935)

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sascoverA young, lithe and beautiful blonde is on stage at a rally screaming at the crowd.

“You spineless cowards!  Are you going to let the Dixon interests get away with their high-handed methods?  Are you going to let them pay you slave’s wages forever?  Are you going to let them treat your women as they’ve treated me?”

With a dramatic gesture, the girl’s hands went to the neck of her cheap cotton dress.  She ripped at the material — tore it open.  Terry Dixon gasped.  In the nickering flare of the torches that lighted her, he saw her suddenly-bared breasts, unbrassiered, and incredibly lovely.  Across her milk-white bosoms, standing out boldly against the satin-smooth skin appeared the word “Striker”.

Terry Dixon is appalled and knows his family would not have abused the girl like that.  A “huge, hulking man, beetle-browed and powerful” takes the stage — Stanislaus Slavich implores the crowd to strike against Dixon Mill.  After his speech, the girl finally “drew the torn shreds of her dress over her naked breasts.”  Dixon follows her to a one-room shack at the edge of the company compound.

He peers through a window and sees she is alone.  He breaks down the door, ties her wrist and ankles, and gags her.  “With a savage gesture, he tore the cheap cotton dress away from her shrinking shoulders, baring her body to the waist.  For an instance his eyes rested upon her exposed beautiful breasts.”  He grabs a washcloth and begins scrubbing the tattoo, although we are sadly lacking the critical 4-page scene where he soaps her up.

Slavich bursts in and tells Dixon that he has played right into his hands by coming to the shack.  He plans to hold Dixon hostage until his father gives in to the strikers’ demands. Now Dixon is the one with his wrists and ankles tied.  Thankfully, he is not stripped. They stuff Dixon into a car and take him to a cabin in the woods.

The girl sneers, “With this guy captured, his old man will have to agree to the demands of the workers.  If he does, the increased wages will bankrupt him.  If he doesn’t, the men will strike — and the mill will close anyhow.”

Slavich — no rocket scientist — leaves to personally deliver the ransom note.  In his absence, the girl breaks into a trunk and retrieves a document proving that Slavich is an agent for a competing mill.  His agitation for a strike is just to bankrupt Dixon Mills.  The girl reveals that she is a Pinkerton operative who was undercover to get the goods on Slavich.

Unfortunately, as she is cutting Dixon loose, Slavich returns.  Ticked off at being described by the author as beetle-browed for the third time, Slavich lunges at the girl. “He grabbed at her, ripped the tattered dress from her shoulders.  Naked to the waist, she backed away from him, her bared breasts rising and falling swiftly, pantingly.” This girl’s boobs get more fresh air than Bear Grylls. [1]

Dixon manages to get free and beats Slavich to a spicy pulp.  He averts the strike, foils the competition, and gets the topless girl.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Alternatively:  Her bare girls get more fresh air than Bear Grylls.
  • First published in April 1935.
  • As far as I can tell, the girl never has a name.
  • Maybe the only book, short story, poem, movie, TV show, play, or folk song in history where Management is the good guy.

Tales of Tomorrow – The Invader (12/12/51)

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ttinvader04Dr. Burroughs, his son Roy, and Roy’s fiancee Laura and are heaving over the side of a boat.  No wait, they are searching the sea with flashlights.

Burroughs hauls up a specimen of what appears to be seaweed. Burroughs and Laura go down to the lab to analyze this great find. Burroughs calls his son “junior” and tells him to stay on deck where he will not get in the way.

Burroughs dictates his findings as Laura writes them down.  He reveals the date to be in the exotic distant future of May 1952.  What the hell?  There really is no reason for this to be set in the future at all.  But why would you set it just 6 months in the future?  Well, the doctor has said that this deep sea vessel has collected this sample from a whopping 32 feet down.  So these aren’t exactly envelope-pushing visionaries we’re dealing with.

Laura tells Burroughs that he should be nicer to his son.  He is sensitive and wants to be a writer, she tells him.  The doc sneers and says, “A poet, no doubt.”  He says that Roy has never proven to him that he is a man.  I wonder if Laura has the same complaint.

ttinvader12Hearing a commotion on deck, they rush up.  They believe they see a meteor, but it starts zig-zagging before it crashes into the sea. Burroughs orders the ship’s diver to go down and take a look, but he refuses because he is chicken of the sea.  Roy sees his chance to look like a man in front of Laura and his father, so he puts on the skin-tight rubber suit and mask.

This episode is again sponsored by Kreisler watchbands.  I’ve said about all I can about about these commercials, but I did notice something new on this one.  As the watchband is shown on a rotating display, there are little hairs caught in the metal band. Nothing says comfort like having hairs pinched out of your arm by a watchband, fellows!

After the commercial, Roy surfaces and reboards the ship. He tells his father that it really was a meteor.  The zig-zagging must have been an atmospheric condition or an optical illusion.  The old man admits he thought it was a spaceship.

Down below, Laura discovers that Roy has murdered a crewman.  He also says, “Roy is dead, too.”

ttinvader18

Shockingly, this is not the invader.

He is an alien who has assumed Roy’s form and left in dead in his spaceship below.  He then kills Laura.  When confronted by Burroughs, he admits that he plans to destroy the human race.  “You Earth people are no use to us.  You’ll be as primitive as animals.  We are a superior race.”  Burroughs dowses him with acid and opens the nozzle on some poison gas.

That’s it.

Just an utter nothing.

Post-Post:

  • Not worthy of any further effort.
  • I could pad it out to 500 words, but to what end?  491.

Talisman of Doom – James W. Marvin (1935)

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sascoverFlaming death rattled from Brad Langdon’s gun. Yeah, baby!

In WWI The Great War, when men were men, women were women, and planes were bi, Langdon and his boys are attacked by nine German Fokkers (heh, heh).  Langdon gets his Mann, sending him “screaming to earth in a billowing black cloud of smoke.”

Sadly, one of his mates is shot down and the other is being pursued by the eight remaining Fokkers (heh, heh).  He is able to identify the plane as his brother’s because of the titular talisman fluttering from the strut, “a girl’s brassiere that Rocky had brought triumphantly back to the tarmac with him from his last leave of absence in Paris.”

The Germans shoot down Rocky’s airplane.  He is already dead as he falls from the cockpit and no chute is seen, his last words being, “Yo Ardennes!”  Langdon, in a rage, dives after them, but they retreat back to Deutschland without engaging him. He can see Germans on the ground already swarming over his brother’s crashed craft.

Back at HQ, Colonel Higgins tells Langdon that three ammunition dumps have been bombed that month.  It is believed German spies are secretly sending intel from France to Germany — written on items of lingerie.  When the Germans see such an item fluttering from a strut, they focus their attack on downing that particular plane to get the info.

Langdon knows the name — Jeanne — and address of the mademoiselle who gave his brother the bra.  He bravely volunteers to remove another bra from this French babe. War is hell.

Langdon goes to her maison and is surprised to see Jeanne is “a girl, half-child, half-woman.”  Which makes sense —  the Germans had tried using more voluptuous women, but their bras made the planes fly in circles.  She gets over Rocky pretty quickly and Langdon stays the night.  She gives him her bra as a souvenir.

The Colonel writes a new message in the bra and Langdon goes on a suicide mission to deliberately get shot down for having a bra on his strut.  If the target the Colonel wrote in the bra gets bombed, then they will haul the French girl in and shave her head; and maybe work on those ‘pits too.[1]

The plan works.  Langdon is shot down, but does not fall like a Rocky — he is able to make a controlled landing in his damaged craft.  Flight Commander Higgins [3] is then able to rescue him before the Germans get to the site.

When the bogus target is bombed, Langdon goes to Jeane’s house.  He tells her he had to abandon the titular talisman she gave him.  She gamely offers the bra off her back to replace it.  He rips the bra off, and for the third story so far, a character exhibits a weird fetish for piercing a woman’s left breast:

  • Talisman of Death: He trained [his service automatic] at her naked left breast. 
  • Black Murder:  The figurette was unmistakable — it was Wynne Dana herself, entirely nude, with white jutting breasts tipped and pointed.  The head was lowered over a long, shiny pin that transfixed the left breast.
  • Suez Souvenir:  Buried to the hilt in the firm white flesh of her young, virginal, rounded left breast was a short oriental scimitar.

One of the better stories in the collection — this one actually had a plot.  This one also did the best job at making nudity actually be both German and germane to the plot — not essential, but appreciated.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I had a link to pictures of French women getting their heads shaved after D-Day for sleeping with Nazis.  Even though they are likely dead and they did offer comfort to the enemy, it seemed a little mean-spirited at this point.
  • [2] On the other hand, I did learn that their act was called “collaboration horizontale”  That’s even more awesome than my idea of “aiding and a-bedding the enemy”.
  • And way, way better than my first draft “providing aid and a comforter to the enemy.”
  • [3] Either this is the same guy as Colonel Higgins, or the service back then was literally a Band of Brothers.
  • First published in April 1935.