Picture Perfect Wednesday: The First Action Movie Stars!

It was 1915, and the Keystone Cops left their mark on the world of cinema as the original action movie heroes.

Forget all the current hype surrounding "The Expendables", including my own effort The Expendables Week at Watching the Detectives. When the mothers of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwartznegger, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and Jason Statham were barely gleams in the eyes of their mothers, the Keystone Cops were beating up bad guys, getting into car chases, and generally being men of action, adventure, and bad-assery!


And there can be little doubt that the Keystone Cops invented the cinematic car-chase, as automobiles were coming into wide use as their films were being made.


You can watch one of their pulse-pounding adventures in these videos from YouTube. (Of course, I'm partly kidding. While it's true that the "Keystone Cops" films in all likelihood did invent the car chase, I don't think they can seriously be considered the first action heroes. It is interesting to note, though, that the storyline for "Love, Loot, and Crash" could be transferred into a modern action film with no changes.)

Peter Cushing goes in search of Yeti!

The Abominable Snowman (1954)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Forrest Tucker, and Maureen Connell
Director: Val Guest
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

English botanist John Rollson (Cushing) joins an expedition led by American explorer Tom Friend (Tucker) to find proof of the existence of Yeti, the Abominable Snowmen of the title. Once the expedition is deep within the frozen wastes of the Himalyas, Rollson and his fellow explorers learn that they aren't hunting some subhuman primate, but are instead tracking what seems to be highly intelligent creatures with supernatural abilities. What's worse... the hunters eventually become the hunted.


"The Abominable Snowman" is an average thriller with great sets, great performances from all the featured actors, and a tense, suspenseful finale. Unfortunately, it moves a bit too slowly, but when it does get to the action or the drama, the pay-off is worth it.

The greatest weakness of the movie is the fact that it doesn't just wear its message on its sleeve, it shoves it down the viewers throat with a number of long speeches delivered in turn by Tucker and Cushing. Yes... man is a destroyer, and man is but a guest on this planet, and life is precious and nature is precious.... The viewer gets the message just from the way the various characters behave, and the way the Yeti behave. The speechifying gets dull after the first run-through, despite the fact that the lines are delivered with great skill and fervor by the actors.

Despite this flaw, I enjoyed the film for the great performances by its actors and the sets. The story also has a numer of chilling moments. In balance, it's worth seeing.

'Green Eyes' not worth looking into

Green Eyes (1934)
Starring: John Wray, Charles Starrett, Alden Chase, and Shirley Grey
Director: Richard Thorpe
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A millionaire is murdered during his own costume party, and a police inspector (Wray) sorts through the motives and deceptions of his staff and house guests to figure out who did. He is helped (and annoyed) by a mystery novelist (Starrett) who was in attendence.

"Green Eyes" could have been a slightly-below-average mystery movie if the writers and producers had even possessed the slightest sense of how a mystery like this is supposed to work. The movie goes off the tracks in the vvery first scene, because it starts too late.

Basically, a movie like this is either supposed to start AFTER the detectives arrive on scene, or its supposed to start with a set-up introducing the suspects and the victim, while providing a couple of hints and clues as to who did it and why. Here, we get something that's a little bit of both, but not enough of either to really make the movie satisfying... and as the clues are uncovered, they don't make much sense to the viewers, because the movie left out the piece of information that would have let us "play along" with the detectives as they solve the crime.

Another problem with the film is the mystery novelist amateur detective. That character has got to be the most annoying and obnoxious iteration of that type to ever appear on screen. (His never-ending obfuscation of facts and disturbing of evidence should at least get him arrested on 'interferring with police business.')

Although decently acted and well-paced, the fact this movie gets off on a bad track from the get-go, and it's got a "hero" who's so obnoxious that it's amazing the police detective doesn't just arrest him for the murder and call it a day, degrades "Green Eyes" from 'classic' to just plain 'old.'

Sub's secret mission is 'Destination Tokyo'

Today, it's exactly 65 years ago that the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. This post is my way of marking that anniversary.

Destination Tokyo (1943)
Starring: Cary Grant, John Garfield, John Ridgely, Alan Hale, Robert Hutton, William Prince, Tom Tully, and Warner Anderson
Director: Delmer Daves
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A veteran submarine crew have all their skills and loyalty to their captain and country tested when they are sent on a covert mission to scout the defenses surrounding Tokyo in preparation for an air strike on the Japanese capitol during World War II.

"Destination Tokyo" is an expertly paced war story that features great performances from all cast members while providing an (admittedly idealized) look into life aboard a submarine in WWII. Viewers are walked through the entire command structure and almost every position on the ship, starting first with sailor on his first tour-of-duty as our stand-in character, and later through a reserve officer who comes aboard to help with the boat's covert mission. Exchanges between officers and crew further bring to light unique aspects of Navy life, and the battle scenes stress the unique dangers and advantages to sailing under instead of upon the sea. Using a mixture of decently done miniature special effects and real battle- and harbor-footage provided by the War Department, the film draws viewers into this suspenseful wartime tale of danger and heroism.

Sadly, this is the kind of movie they just don't make anymore. It's a suspenseful adventure tale as well as a story that highlights the real and substantive differences between the American outlook and the outlook of the oppresive and evil governments that we go to war against. A key moment in the film comes shortly after a grizzled old veteran sailor is stabbed to death by a downed Japanese pilot the submarine diverted to rescue; they didn't have to try to save the pilot, yet they did... and they were repaid with their mercy by savagery. Just like the U.S. military is rewarded for fighting humanely and decently today. A bit of dialogue spoken by Grant after the death of the sailor further highlights the fact that America doesn't indoctrinate its children into a culture of death and savage murder, like our enemies. We likewise don't target civilans nor force them into being meat-shields for soldiers, as do our enemies... we, just like we did in WWII hope instead to destroy governments that encourage such behavior. As Grant says in the film, "There's lots of Mikes dying right now. And a lot more Mikes will die. Until we wipe out a system that puts daggers in the hands of five-year-old children."


Today's Hollywood filmmakers are too busy trying to paint the U.S. military as the bad guys while trying their best to paint those who "put daggers in the hands of five-year-old children" as heroic freedom fighters. The various fascist Muslim terrorist movements around the world, the government of Iran, the government of North Korea... they're no different than Imperial Japan during World War II, and the men and women serving in the United States military are no different than the those who served 65 years ago. All that has changed is the creative community, who, for some inexplicable reason, feel sympathy toward those who would happily murder them all (and have murdered some of them, like Mustapha Akkad).

"Destination Tokyo" is also a far better crafted movie than the vast majority of what is being made today, especially those that contain propaganda elements like this one. Films like "Lions for Lambs" and even the somewhat more evenhanded "The Kingdom" grind to a halt when characters start their earnest soap-boxing. Today's writers and directors, are either so deficient in talent, or so desperate to shove their twisted and wrong-headed messages down the throats of viewers that they don't understand that such messages are best received when they grow naturally out of the film's events, so characters can deliver the message points in what seems like natural conversation.

I supposed we can count ourselves lucky that those who try their hands at war movies today don't have the talent and skill of those working during the 1940s. Otherwise, their lies wouldn't be so transparent and the truths of classics like "Destination: Tokyo" wouldn't shine so brightly.

A trip back to the roots of cinematography

Lumiere & Company (1995)
Starring: The Lumiere Camera (and a whole bunch of actors and directors)
Directors: Sarah Moon (and 40 different filmakers from around the world)
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the motion picture camera by the Lumiere Brothers, 40 diffferent directors (of wildly different level of international fame and wildly different degrees of creativity and apparent talent) were taksed with creating 52-second shorts filmed using restored Lumiere camera, just like the pioneers did 100 years ago.

The best shorts in this anthology package of the cinematic equivalent of haikus are very, VERY good. They give us some very interesting visuals and a number of them even manage to provide engaging or amusing storylines in just 52 seconds. David Lynch (who gives us a bizarre mini sci-fi thriller), Youssef Chahine and Merzak Allouache (who shine lights on the negative and retrograde aspects of Muslim culture a decade before it became a fashionable topic), Claude Miller (who tells the tale of a little girl trying to weigh herself), Idrissa Quedraogo (who captures some Africans playing and working on a river bank), Claude Lelouch (who shows us how cinema is at once never-changing and ever-evolving), and Zhang Yimou (who captures the march of time and change of cultures effectively with a surprising film made atop the Great Wall of China).


The mediocre ones are by filmmakers who failed to take the opportunity to allow the Lumere camera to live in the modern day but merely used their 52 seconds to ape Lumiere's style of film... a style that is entirely too basic in the modern age where simple motion isn't enough to make the time spent on even the shortest film worthwhile. (Some of these are quite beautiful visually, but they still needed more.) The best of these is John Boorman's documentation of activity on a movie set and Jacques Rivette's strange film involving a girl playing hopscotch, a man reading a newspaper, and a young woman rollerblading while carrying a lamp.

The worst of the batch barely have any motion in them and they are so boring that they make 52 seconds seem like forever. The worst of these is Spike Lee's eternal close-up of a baby doing nothing but smiling or looking akward. Whatever he got paid for his participation in this project was too much. (It's a prime and very distilled example of why I've always felt Spike Lee is overrated.)

The film is also hampered by some truly asinine interviews with the featured directors (which record their answers to lame questions like "why do you film?" and "is cinema immortal?"--although they do manage to show a few of the directors to be so pretentious that one feels embarrassed for them) and hit-and-miss mini-documentaries that capture the fimmakers setting up their mini-movies while marveling at simple beauty of Lumiere's creation (which even dissasembles into serving as its own movie projector).

At its best, "Lumiere and Company" gives the viewers some bite-sized samples of what talented and creative directors can do with even the simplest of filmmaking tools and those segments make this worthwhile viewing for lovers of movies. As for the rest of this effort (much of which is noteworthy only because it demonstrates how the emperor is indeed naked when it comes to some of these "leading directors")... well, it's why God gave us the Lumiere camera, followed in short order by the shuttle button on the remote and DVD chaptering.

The A-bombs didn't just bring giant lizards

'The War Game' is chilling look at consequences of nuclear war

Today is the 65th anniversary of the A-bomb being dropped on Nagasaki, the second such weapon to so far ever be used in war. This is perhaps one of the most appropriate reviews I could post on this day.

The War Game (1964)
Starring: Michael Aspel and Peter Graham
Director: Peter Watkins
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

"The War Game" is an extremely well-done docu-drama depicting what a Soviet nuclear strike might have done to a small British town located between two targets for enemy missiles. It is perhaps the most real-seeming film I've ever seen of this kind.

Originally produced for TV but eventually only released in movie theaters because the British censors thought the film too intense, this is a bone-chilling exploration of the hell that those who survive a nuclear strike will suffer.

While the filmmakers annoyingly show their political leanings during the course of the film ("by jove, those peace-loving Soviets won't have a choice but to fire nukes at heavily populated areas if those eeeevil Americans and their NATO allies use a small-scale nuke on the battlefield") the vast majority of the film is gut-wrenching and very difficult to watch.


Because this film is difficult to watch, it's tempting to turn it off and dismiss it with the thought that it's outdated--a historical artifact that now can only serve as a time-capsule to give us a glimpse into the attitudes of people during first decades of the Cold War. Unfortunately, this is untrue. We still live under the threat of suffering the sorts of horrors that this movie depicts. Equally unfortunate, though, is that an increasing number of people who control nuclear weapons would actually desire to inflict the horrors in this movie upon the world... they might even see it as their divine duty. It's imperative that the civilized peoples of the world do what they can to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, so we may avoid scenes like those in "The War Game" becoming reality.

Or, for that matter, have a repeat of what happened 65 years ago today in Nagasaki.

Oh, another reason to watch this film is that it won the Best Documentary Oscar for 1964. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" is therefore not the only work of fiction to win in the wrong category.

'The War That Time Forgot' is the weirdestof the Weird War Tales.

It's sixty-five years this month since the United States dropped two atom bombs on Japan, bringing the Empire of the Rising Sun to its knees and bringing an end to World War II. This post is part of my marking of that occasion.

Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot, Vol. 1 (DC Comics, 2006)
Writer: Robert Kanigher
Artists: Ross Andru, Mike Espisito, Joe Kubert, Gene Colan, and Russ Heath
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

"Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot" is 500+ pages of the strangest war comics that DC Comics put out during the 1960s, most of them culled from the appropriately named "Weird War Tales" comic book series.

"The War That Time Forgot" pits the U.S. Navy and Army against dinosaurs on uncharted islands in the Pacific during WW2, showing that giant monsters were running rampant even before the atom bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Toss in a few recurring characters--such as the G.I. circus acrobats, The Flying Boots, and their manager-turned-drill sargeant Zig-Zag; the mechanical G.I. Robot; and the Suicide Squad ("the only soldiers who hated each other more than the enemy")--and you've got some entertaining, fast-paced, and quite bizarre war stories.


I won't say the work here is the best that any of the creators involved produced. Andru and Colan both went onto to better work at Marvel during the 1970s, and while Kanigher is as creative as ever here, the flaws that were almost constantly present throughout his work are very clearly on display... and amplified as you read the stories in this book back-to-back.

Kanigher had a habit of enfusing stories with a theme that ran heavy-handed through the events of the story and ultimately played an equally heavy part in the resolution or moral. He also had a habit of having things happen in threes--such as the soldier testing the G.I. Robot criticising it three times for being an unfeeling, unthinking machine... before it strangely breaks programming and rescues him from certain doom without being ordered to do so.

The weaknesses, however, in this book are outweighed by its strengths--fun stories and decent (if not spectacular) artwork.

"Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot" is available from Amazon.com for less that $12. I think it's a book that a young boy that you want to encourage to read will enjoy... it's got soldiers, guns, robots, and dinosaurs. What more could a 2nd or 3rd-grader ask for between two covers? For the adult reader, I think these stories get old fast, but I think a kid will enjoy them immensely.

Japanese occupiers menace the 'Lady From Chungking'

Today, it's exactly 65 years since the United States of America dropped an atom bomb on Japan, setting into motion the events that finally ended World War II, as well as Japan's vicious empire in the Pacific. This post is one of several I've made that mark occasion.

Lady From Chungking (1942)
Starring: Anna May Wong, Harold Huber, Ted Hecht, Ludwig Donath, Mae Clarke, Rick Vallin, and Paul Bryer
Director: William Nigh
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A Chinese aristocrat, Kwan Mei (Wong), who has been reduced to working in the rice fields along side the peasants by the Japanese invaders of China during World War 2. She continues to lead her people by convertly organizing her fellow laborers into a guerrilla fighting force, but when she is picked by a slimey Japanese officer (Hecht) to serve as mistress to General Kaimura (Huber) she must convince the peasants she hasn't betrayed them, or they won't be in a position to stop the arrival of massive Japanese reinforcements that will assure Japanese dominance over the whole of China.


"Lady From Chungking" is a fairly standard WW2 resistance fighter tale, although the fact it deals with the Chinese resistance against the Japanese occupation of their land sets it apart from the typical partisan films. (They still manage to work in a bit of Nazi flotsam in the form of the German owner of a hotel that serves as the headquarters for the Japanese forces, home to the general leading them, and prison for a captured American fighter pilot (Vallin).)

Something else that sets this film apart from many others of its kind (especially if they were released by PRC like this one) is the well-crafted story and superior acting.

Aside from the plotline with a pair of downed American Flying Tigers that have to released and returned to their base so they can give the guerillas air support when they attack the arriving troop transport trains, which feels a little like filler, despite the tie-in with the film's climax, the script is a tightly written one, with nary of moment of wasted screen-time and a set of characters that makes the nameless German-run hotel feel a little like Rick's American Cafe from Casablanca (only without the money for sets and extras). The ending is also very strong and somewhat unexpected.

The superior acting of all players--from a child playing a Chinese boy cowed by the Japanese oppressors, through star Anna May Wong--brings a collection of stock characters to full life as the story unfolds. Although Caucasian actor Harold Huber looks more like a Mexican gardner that's stolen some Japanese general's uniform, he nonetheless gives a fine performance as the vicious, wholly self-absorbed Kaimura. Star Wong also shines very brightly as Kaimura's opposite in all things, the noble and utterly selfless Kwan Mei.

I suppose one can't complain too much about White actors like Huber and Ted Hecht (who plays Kaimura's unfortunate aide-de-camp, Shimoto) being made up as Japanese with limited success. This is a William Nigh film, and he seems to have been the guy to call when you were casting a Caucasian as an Asian in the lead. At least here, he had an honest-to-God Asian as his star, which, as far as I know, is the one and only time this was the case.

While "Lady From Chungking" is a superior WW2-era low-budget quickie, it is one of the few of its kind that time hasn't passed by completely. It's a well-made film, with good acting and an uplifting message that speaks to audiences even today. It's not quite what I'd call a classic, but it's timeless (despite being a clear product of its time) and still very much worth watching.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Anna May Wong

Anna May Wong was the first movie star of Chinese-American extraction, achieving international fame in a time when Asian characters in American-made movies were almost always played by Caucasian actors in heavy make-up.


Wong began her career in silent movies and easily made the transition to Talkies where many of her contemporaries saw their careers shrivel up and vanish. While the naked racism of early Hollywood kept her from the highest reaches of celebrity, she was still an extremely popular actress with the movie going public.