FILM FRENZY

Vera Drew in The People’s Joker (Photo: Altered Innocence)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979). One of the very best of the myriad social thrillers that emerged during the politically conscious 1970s, this initially opened across the country on March 16, 1979. A mere 12 days later, an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant occurred — suddenly, The China Syndrome, whose events mirrored those that took place at the Pennsylvania facility, became the must-see movie of the spring. Even without its eerie parallel to real life, this superb film generates enough drama on its own, as an ambitious TV reporter (Jane Fonda), her outspoken cameraman (Michael Douglas), and a concerned engineer (Jack Lemmon) square off against shady plant officials and timid network executives in an effort to expose a near-meltdown at a local facility. Guided by James Bridges’ taut direction and without the distraction of superfluous subplots, this movie — an indictment of corporate greed as well as a reminder of the necessity of responsible journalism — builds its case scene by scene, leading to a climax of unbearable tension. Although it was lamentably shut out of the Best Picture and Best Director races, this did earn four well-deserved Oscar nominations: Best Actor (Lemmon in one of his finest performances), Best Actress (Fonda, ditto), Best Original Screenplay (Bridges, Mike Gray, and T.S. Cook), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (for the meticulous recreation of a nuclear power plant). Lemmon’s committed turn also earned him the Best Actor prize at Cannes, an honor he would recapture just three years later with Missing (see From Screen To Stream below).

Blu-ray extras consist of two making-of featurettes featuring interviews with Fonda and Douglas; deleted scenes, and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★★

DOOR-TO-DOOR MANIAC (1961) / RIGHT HAND OF THE DEVIL (1963). Even if the quality of the movies greatly varies (Roger Corman’s The Little Shop of Horrors on the high end, Common Law Wife on the low end, and Creature From the Haunted Sea on the what-the-heck-did-I-just-watch? end), I’m always a sucker for the Blu-ray double features released on the Film Masters label. Here’s a twofer billed as “two independently produced films representative of the neo-noir crime films of that era.”

Unlike fellow country superstars Kris Kristofferson and Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash never really took to the movies, only appearing in a handful (usually as himself or as narrator) over the years. (Television was another matter, as he hosted The Johnny Cash Show for two years, headlined over a dozen specials, and guest starred on such series as Columbo, Little House on the Prairie, and The Simpsons.) Cash made his film debut in Door-to-Door Maniac, which had originally played movie houses under the less lurid title Five Minutes to Live. He plays Johnny Cabot, a hoodlum who teams up with fellow crook Fred Dorella (Vic Tayback, later Mel on TV’s Alice) to pull off a bank robbery. The scheme is for Cabot to invade the home of bank vice president Ken Wilson (Donald Woods) and hold his wife Nancy (Cay Forrester) hostage while Dorella collects a $70,000 bounty from Ken. Unbeknownst to everyone, Ken was planning to leave Nancy for his mistress (Pamela Mason) — while the wayward husband weighs what action to take, Cabot is busy terrorizing his wife by smacking her around, smashing her belongings, and sexually molesting her. Cash’s performance runs hot-and-cold (perhaps no surprise, since he was heavily into drugs during this period), and the film itself is mostly a non-starter as a compelling heist flick or exciting thriller. In addition to playing Nancy, Forester also wrote the screenplay, and that’s little Ron Howard (already a known commodity thanks to The Andy Griffith Show) as her son.

The original poster art for Right Hand of the Devil that’s shown in the booklet accompanying this Blu-ray makes the film look like some sort of bonkers cross between a monster movie, a burlesque show, and a comedy (and the tagline claims that it’s “The Most Satanic Plot Since Diabolique!”). In truth, it’s another heist flick, and a pretty wretched one at that. A Turkish immigrant, Aram Katcher was the owner of a Hollywood hair salon as well as a supporting player whose credits included portraying Napoleon in both the 1952 period romp Scaramouche and an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. He was reportedly a man with an enormous ego — according to a news item reprinted in the booklet, he loudly complained to the press about having one of his scenes in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1969 Topaz cut, leading to Hitchcock removing all his scenes and reshooting them with a different actor! Viewing himself as another Orson Welles, Katcher served as star, director, writer, producer, editor, and makeup and hair supervisor on Right Hand of the Devil, which finds his character Pepe Lusara wooing an older woman (Lisa MacDonald) who works as the head cashier at a sports arena. His plan is to gain her trust, steal her keys, and rob the venue alongside his hand-picked crew. This veers dangerously close to Ed Wood territory, and Katcher is a washout in pretty much every category, particularly leading man.

Blu-ray extras consist of podcaster audio commentaries on both movies; a visual essay on Katcher; and trailers for both films.

Door-to-Door Maniac: ★★

Right Hand of the Devil: ★

FOCUS (2014). With Will Smith and Margot Robbie at the top of the ticket, we’re guaranteed a movie that’s easy on the eyes, even if its inconsistencies render it occasionally taxing on the brain. Smith is Nicky, a seasoned con artist who agrees to let a novice named Jess (Robbie) join his team. For none-too-believable reasons, Nicky eventually parts ways with Jess, only to bump into her again three years later in Buenos Aires. He’s in the Argentinian capital to set up a scam at the behest of a race-car owner (Rodrigo Santoro), and he spots her when … well, let’s not reveal too much. There’s one sharply staged sequence involving a series of bets placed on a football game — BD Wong is memorable as this segment’s linchpin — but the rest of this draggy film offers nothing but surface sheen, with the supposedly riveting twists taking a back seat (make that a spot in the trunk) to the spectacle of watching two gorgeous people hungrily eye each other while engaging in flirtatious banter against luxurious backdrops. Unfortunately, that dialogue, like most of the yakking in this movie, is on the weak side, with only Gerald McRaney (as a grouchy bodyguard) accorded a few choice cracks. And as film fans know, yarns of this nature, from The Grifters to House of Games, live and die by the beautiful turn of phrase. Even David Mamet’s Heist, one of the lesser entries in this field, knew enough to stack the deck with quips like, “I’m as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton.” In Focus, what passes for profane and/or profound poetry? “You hittin’ that? You should be hittin’ that.” Clearly, the con is on viewers expecting more for their money.

4K UHD extras consist of behind-the-scenes featurettes featuring Smith and Robbie; deleted scenes; an alternate opening; and a demonstration of the con game by consultant Apollo Robbins.

Movie: ★★

NORTHWEST PASSAGE (1940). The onscreen title reads Northwest Passage (Book 1 — Rogers’ Rangers), but anyone combing eBay or Amazon for Northwest Passage (Book 2 — The Rangers Strike Back) or Northwest Passage (Book 2 — Rogers Takes Manhattan) or some such sequel will be sorely disappointed. While Kenneth Roberts’ source novel was split up into Book I and Book II and there were plans for a filmic follow-up, it never materialized, leaving this as a one-and-done. Filmed in lush Technicolor that allows the outdoor scenery to really pop (Sidney Wagner and William V. Skall shared an Oscar nomination for Best Color Cinematography), this stars Spencer Tracy as the real-life Robert Rogers, the leader of a team of frontiersmen (Rogers’ Rangers) known for their bravery, ruggedness, and unconventional methods of fighting (in other words, here was a ministry of ungentlemanly warfare long before Winston Churchill — or Guy Ritchie — appeared on the scene). The entry point into the saga is through the fictional Langdon Towne (Robert Young), an artist who gets expelled from Harvard for his cartoons ridiculing prominent British officials working in the New England Colonies. After lobbing further insults and threatened with arrest, he and his equally rebellious friend “Hunk” Marriner (Walter Brennan) escape into the woods — there, they meet Rogers, who convinces them to join his band of wilderness warriors as they carry out assignments during the French and Indian War. Northwest Passage is a hard-boiled adventure yarn that doesn’t skimp on the harshness or nastiness of the situations on hand, from a starving soldier embracing insanity to an entire Native American village being slaughtered while its occupants sleep.

Blu-ray extras consist of a 1940 promotional featurette for Northwest Passage and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

THE PEOPLE’S JOKER (2024). Those who found Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker edgy and exciting should steer clear of The People’s Joker. But those who found it shallow and sophomoric should take to this dazzling DIY achievement from writer-director-star-editor Vera Drew. Even with a “fair use” disclaimer at the beginning, it’s amazing that Drew gets away with so much, considering the picture presents Batman as a fascistic pedophile and Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels (rendered in CGI) as something of a nitwit. In a dystopian society where comedy has been outlawed, a transgender woman (Drew) moves from Smallville to Gotham City with the hopes of landing a spot on the government-approved sketch show UCB Live. Now called Joker the Harlequin and befriending a fellow performer (Nathan Faustyn) sporting a penguin-like nose, she decides to start an “anti-comedy” troupe. (Drew worked under Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim so that explains this plot point, but her film is infinitely superior to Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, reviewed below in From Screen To Stream.) Joker the Harlequin falls for a trans man known as Mr. J (Kane Distler) — they begin dating, but she soon realizes that their relationship is the working definition of toxic. At its center, this original and outrageous piece is a coming-of-age story in which the protagonist learns about both self and self-acceptance — everything else is a kaleidoscopic array of satiric superhero riffs and trippy visual flourishes (love the glimpse of the Superman II villains), with even a Trump joke tossed in to sweeten the deal.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Drew; audio commentary by Drew and Faustyn; audio commentary by assorted cast and crew members; a discussion with Drew; a longer look at the mock TV shows seen in the movie (Suicide Cop and Serve the Date); and the theatrical trailer. A booklet is also included.

Movie: ★★★½

SHORT AND SWEET

HILLBILLYS IN A HAUNTED HOUSE (1967). A sequel to the previous year’s Las Vegas Hillbillys, this dopey comedy finds country music stars Woody Wetherby (Ferlin Husky) and Boots Malone (Joi Lansing) and their perennially nervous manager Jeepers (Don Bowman) heading to Nashville but ending up in a haunted house instead. But are the ghosts real, or does a group of foreign spies (horror greats Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, and Basil Rathbone, plus Linda Ho) have something to do with the supernatural shenanigans? This probably turned out exactly as its makers hoped, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good movie worth checking out. An appreciation of country music helps, since there are 12 songs performed by various stars (including Merle Haggard) over the course of the film.

Blu-ray extras consist of podcaster audio commentary; a photo gallery; and the trailer for Las Vegas Hillbillys.

Movie: ★½

MARIE (1985). Sissy Spacek is typically solid in this adaptation of Peter Maas’ book Marie: A True Story. Spacek portrays Marie Ragghianti, a single mom whose hard work lands her a position in the administration of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton (Don Hood). As she moves up the ranks, eventually becoming the head of the state’s parole board, she realizes that dangerous criminals are being released in exchange for huge sums of money. When she turns whistleblower, she’s fired and framed for scandalous behavior; electing to fight back, she hires attorney Fred Thompson (playing himself) to represent her in court. This is no-frills filmmaking in the best sense, with a compelling storyline and a terrific cast that includes Jeff Daniels and Morgan Freeman as two of the corrupt officials. Thompson was a natural before the camera, and he subsequently appeared in numerous movies (The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard 2, etc.) and TV series (notably Law & Order).

The only Blu-ray extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

THE DIRTY SOUTH (2023). The entire South might indeed be dirty, but The Dirty South is only preoccupied with the incidents occurring in a small Louisiana town. Willa Holland (Thea Queen on The CW’s Arrow) stars as Sue Parker, a headstrong woman who takes care of her little brother Jacob (Caleb Quinney) and works as a bartender at the joint owned by her perpetually soused father Gary (Wayne Péré). Hailing from the wrong side of the tracks, Sue has only a short stretch of time to prevent the bar from being taken over by Jeb Roy (Dermot Mulroney), a local businessman and land owner who despises the Parkers for a number of reasons. After encountering small-time crook Dion (E.R.’s Shane West), she talks him into joining her on a crime spree in which they’ll steal valuable pieces of property (farm equipment, boats) and quickly sell them for the money that will save the bar. Matthew Yerby has written and directed a moderately engrossing drama whose greatest strength is its stars — it’s a good thing Holland and West are the leads since theirs are by far the most interesting characters. The film is at its best when it explores their burgeoning relationships, both professionally (criminally?) and romantically, and the scenes in which they procure and then get rid of the stolen goods (Gissette Valentin is sharp as their no-nonsense buyer) are interesting to follow. Other subplots fail to always hold attention, such as the antics of the drunken Gary or Jeb’s troubled relationship with his grown son Mark (Andrew Vogel) — the emphasis on these familial developments frequently threatens to turn the film into Dallas-style melodrama, with Mulroney as a small-pond J.R. Ewing.

Movie: ★★½

MISSING (1982). A riveting political piece from writer-director Costa-Gavras (scripting with Donald Stewart), this adaptation of Thomas Hauser’s book The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice centers on the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of an American citizen during Pinochet’s bloody coup in 1973 Chile. A good-natured if constantly questioning writer living in the country with his wife Beth (Sissy Spacek), Charles (John Shea) simply vanishes one afternoon, with neighbors insisting that he was taken away by soldiers. Charles’ father Ed (Jack Lemmon) arrives from the States to help search for his son, although this diehard conservative’s first (and second, and third) instinct is to berate his daughter-in-law for her and her husband’s liberal politics. Believing that any negative talk about the U.S. government is anti-American (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose), Ed has absolute confidence that the American embassy suits will help him find his son. But as he witnesses firsthand the atrocities around him and sees little progress in the search for his offspring, he comes to the crushing realization that not only are his government’s officials lying to him, but that they may have also had a hand in (or at least turned a blind eye to) the possible murder of his son. Spacek is in top form as the loving spouse whose soft-spoken demeanor belies a fierce determination to find her husband, yet it’s Lemmon’s amazing performance that dominates this important and — it goes without saying — still relevant film. The Cannes Film Festival committee handed this movie the Palme d’Or, with Lemmon taking Best Actor honors; on the homefront, it earned four Oscar nominations (including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress), winning for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Movie: ★★★½

TIM & ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (2012). Back in 2012, my 1-star review (for the alt-weekly Creative Loafing) of Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie — particularly my line “It’s about as funny as discovering that you have cancer, AIDS, and a brain tumor all on the same day” — so disturbed writer-director-stars Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, the duo of Adult Swim and YouTube infamy, that they phoned the CL office to voice their disapproval and asked my editor to print an apology for the review (he of course refused). Years later, I guess I do feel a bit bad about the harshness of the review, but, my God, is this one awful movie. Their schtick is anti-humor, which posits that the joke is that there’s no joke aside from the expectation of a joke. The guys’ popularity, particularly among young dude-bros, cannot be denied — sample online quotes: “Their humor is not funny because it’s stupid, it’s funny because they know it’s stupid”; “So bad it’s bad, in a funny way”; “If you get it you get it, it’s not that complicated”; “I think the film being a travesty is the point” — yet for me personally, this brand of anti-comedy has been going downhill ever since the days of Andy Kaufman. The plot centers around the efforts of Tim and Eric to earn a billion dollars running a dilapidated mall in order to recoup the money they lost making a movie; while there, Eric finds himself drowning in a tub full of diarrhea, Tim has sex with a blow-up doll, and every scene operates on the level of a 5-year-old boy picking his nose — unsightly, but hardly shocking as the filmmakers intended. Certainly, almost all taboos can be mined for buried humor, but this witless and puerile flick isn’t the place to unearth any.

Movie: ★

Review links for movies referenced in this column (links open in new windows):
Columbo
Common Law Wife
Creature From the Haunted Sea
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Joker
The Little Shop of Horrors
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Superman II