THE BAD SEED

THE BAD SEED-
The first time I saw this I was like "What the-?" but once little Rhoda (Patty McCormick) starts killing people... I knew I was going to love this flick for the rest of my life!

This film was considered to be shocking for its time, because for the very first time a child is portrayed as a "serial killer". I only wish the kids of today would show the same kind of effort and creativity Rhoda had in killing people in this film.

A wonderful over-the-top performances by Nancy Kelly as the tragic mother Christine Penmark, tormented by the fact her little angel is really a cold blooded killer, while blaming her own genetic history as the cause of Rhoda's inability to understand what's right or wrong.

Eileen Heckart who won a Golden Globe Award as best supporting actress, as the lush Hortense Daigle. Hortense is the aging mother of the little boy murdered by Rhoda. She comes storming in to the Penmarck home loaded with alcohol and tears screaming things like : I'm drunk. It's a pleasure to stay drunk when your little boy's been killed...He used to say I was his sweetheart and he'd marry me one day. I would laugh... and say "No, you won't. You'll forget about me long before then. You'll find a prettier girl and marry her." And he said "No, I won't. 'Cause there isn't a prettier girl in the whole world than you are." That must've won her an Oscar nomination as well. Or perhaps it was the line "I know you're a superior person...Christine that's such a pretty name, Hortense sounds fat!"

Henry Jones was wonderful as the evil janitor Leroy and Evelyn Varden as the annoying Monica Breedlove. This movie is a must see and you'll be shocked by the suprise ending too! Another wonder quote from the movie you may want to use for your little ones everyday...

Rhoda: What will you give me for a basketful of kisses?
Dad : I'll give you a basketful of hugs!

TOUCH OF EVIL

TOUCH OF EVIL
Is actually a really good movie and yes the evil in this film is very evil. Orson Wells plays the evil Hank Quinlan, a dirty police captain, the kind who plants evidence, accept bribes, and beats his suspects for a confession,he should work for the department of homeland security.
Charlton Heston plays Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas a Mexican detective, well if he can play Moses a Jewish Pharaoh, then a Mexican cop is not too much of a stretch for him.
The opening scene of this film is a classic, it does hold you in suspense and there's really hip music playing in the background.
Actually the whole movie is a really good piece of drama, it's just amusing to see Janel Leigh as Heston's wife having another bad experience at a deserted motel!
Marlena Detrich also has a small part in this film, personally I don't know what's the attraction for her, I think she's kind of butch. But here she plays an old Gypsy that kind of makes her a bit more interesting. It's also refreshing to see a rather large Latino supporting cast in the 1950's.
Watch for Dennis Weaver with a very funny performance! Again don't blink your eyes during the first five minutes of the film, it does send you to the edge of your seat!

TORCH SONG

TORCH SONG-
Starring Joan Crawford, this has the be the funniest movie ever made!! Crawford plays Jenny Stewart the mean queen of Broadway, she doesn't take any crap from anybody!
Throughout the entire movie Joan flaunts her body and walks around with her "DON'T F*CK WITH ME" face!

She grunts her commands to her directors, her producers, her co stars and musicians, simply because SHE CAN!

BUT inside this TOUGH B*TCH exterior hides an insecure little girl starving for love....Love that no man can give her until she meets Tye Graham. Tye is played by Michael Wilding, he is different from all the other men in Jenny/Joan's life, because he's blind and also he's sober. All the other men in her life seems to be alcoholic cowards.

Tye is honest, sensitive, kind, and Because he's blind he can call it as he "sees" it. He's the only man that has the nerve to tell Joan she's lousy, her singing stinks and her dancing is ever worst. This brings out a love hate relationship that causes Joan to go on a drinking binge, screaming fits of rage and lots of throwing things and people out the door, it's hilarious!

The movie is filled with wonderful glimpse of Jenny/Joan's psychotic behavior...
"TAKE THAT OFF!" she screams as she rips her coat off of her admiring niece but 2 seconds later she hands the coat back and say "Here keep it...it looks lovely on you".

Marjorie Rambeau plays Joan's alcoholic mother, a wonderful treat to the cast. The movie has a corny ending, but a wonderful musical number featuring Joan in black face....another Oscar for the lady!

THE SWINGER

THE SWINGER -First of all Ann Margaret is HOT! No questions there, so no matter how bad this movie is having Ann Margaret running in leather pants, tight sweaters and bikinis, nothing else mattered in this typical 60's movie.

Margaret plays Kelly Olsson a serious journalist out to get even with Tony Franciosa, the owner of a "Maxims"-type girlie magazine. She feels that the magazine treats women unfairly by presenting them as nothing but an sex object. So what does she do? She pretends to be the nymphomaniac she's writing about in a filthy sex novel, by holding orgies, drug parties and stripping at a bar, all that to get even with male chauvinist pig.

Lots of go-go music and cat suits are featured in the movie, the best scene of the movie featured a group of men in loin clothes pouring paint all over Margaret's body, spins and roll her over a giant canvas to create an abstract painting.

The the movie go into a ridiculous ending, almost as ridicuouls as "Lord love a duck"...yep that's the 60's for you.

THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT

THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT-

Doris Day joins the genre of spy movies parody in this Frank Tashlin comedy. Day plays a widow working for NASA as a tour guide and on the weekends she plays a mermaid entertaining passengers of her father in law's boat tours, you guessed it, it features a glass bottom boat.

But while giving one of her tours at the space center she catches the eye of a top notch rocket scientist played by Rod Taylor. Rod pretend to hire our 50 year old virgin as his personal secretary, in order to get close to her everyday.

Then things get really funny when Doris gets mixed up with a clumsy spy from the other side (Dom Delouise) and an over zealous security guard (Paul Lynde)! Lots of usual slap stick humor and low tech gadgets of the future 1960's style.

This is one of those films from the 60's that feature everyone you've seen on TV shows, you literally sees Mr. and Mrs. Kravitz of "Bewitched" playing the another set of nosey neighbors.
Some laff riot moments when Day tries to be sexy and Paul Lynde shows up in drag. Paul Lynde is about as believable as a security guard as Dick Matin as a government scientist or Dom DeLouise as a spy...lots of realistic characters in the flick!

Of course this will not be a Doris Day movie with Lady Day herself performing her all time hit "Que Sera, Sera", she was able to squeeze that annoying tune in the Hitchcock thriller "The man who knew too much", so why not have it in modern James Bond spy thriller as well.

CLEOPATRA JONES & CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD

CLEOPATRA JONES (1973)

CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD (1974)

There's nothing wrong with "Women's lib" and having a main character being a beautiful, strong and smart female, but somehow female action heroes just fail miserably on the big screen. The Cleopatra Jones series is no different, super heroine Cleopatra Jones is a 7 foot tall black woman with lots of make up, a dazzling wardrobe,master in kung fu and highly skilled with all kinds of weapons, basically she's Dennis Rodman.

The first movie "Cleopatra Jones" (Tamera Dobson) basically introduces her as this powerful secret agent of the U.S. government out to get the evil drug lord known as "Mother". Shelly Winters plays Mother a middle aged, over weight lesbian in leather. Her over acting is the best part of this movie. The action and plot is pretty lame. Cleopatra Jones is seen wearing a different outfit for each fight scene, outfits that include big hats, long capes and platform shoes. Cleo is probably bald underneath the scarf, the hat and the Afro wig.

The second of the series is probably the better one, "Cleopatra Jones and the casino of gold". This was filmed in Hong Kong, following the death of Kung Fu master Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong martial arts add a great touch to this another lame blaxploitation flick. Cleo is joined by the stereotypical Chinese girl with the name "May Ling" played by Tanny. May Ling is a detective of the Hong Kong police, she is also a master in Kung Fu, while the long haired skinny male cops working under her are a bunch of useless goofs on motorcycles.

However the villain this time is played by Stella Stevens as "The Dragonlady". Dragonlady is also a drug dealing, money smuggling lesbian, with a lair decorated with gold dragons located in the island of Macu outside of Hong Kong.

Although Bruce Lee brought the action of Kung Fu from Hong Kong to the big screen, the fight scenes from the 70's lack a lot of the sharp skills and choreography of the martial arts films of today. Unfortunately, most of the action sequences you can see Cleo, Dragonlady or May Ling were all stuntmen in drag.

Ironically this was the first of a series of cat fight films featuring Stella Stevens and Tamara Dobson. They played against each other in several other low budget movies through the 70's to the mid 1980's, one of them "Chained Heat", yep you got it, a women's prison movie.

One interesting note: Cleo's boss in Hong Kong was played by Norman Fell whose name in the film was Stanley. The next character named Stanley played by Fell was the famous Stanley Roper of "Three's Company", I wonder if they are one and the same?

The HUDSUCKER PROXY

This Coen Bros. production is something of an homage to those zany-patter fests of the 1930's & 40's. Released after BARTON FINK and before FARGO, it flopped at the box office and was panned by critics ( "two thumbs down" by S & E), it seems to be one of the (unfairly) forgotten works of the Coen oeuvre. I think it gets better every time you see it.

After Waring Hudsucker takes a 44 story dive (45 with mezzanine) out the window of the Hudsucker building, boardmember J.T. Mussburger (Paul Newman) decides that the board "...can't let John Q. Public waltz in here and by our company." and hatches a plot to hire a doofus as president who will inspire panic with the stockholders, thus allowing the board members to buy up controlling interest in the company cheap. They have "... one month to make a blue chip investment look like a round trip ticket on the Titanic."

Enter Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) newly hired mailroom troll fresh from Muncie Indiana.





Through series of mishaps, the board finds the man they're looking for.














































The Argus managing editor wants the low-down on Norville; "How tall is he? What's his shoe size? What does he eat for Breakfast?"















Ace newshound Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) decides pose as a secretary at Hudsucker to get the scoop on the wonderboy from Chumpsville




And from there things continue on their wacky way -- hilarious snappy dialog, wacky bit players, amazing cinematography. The flick's quite a gem, I'd say!

ALL ABOUT EVE

ALL ABOUT EVE -
This hilarious Oscar winner from 1950 really deserved all the awards and recognition. Eve (Anne Baxter) is one evil b*tch, worst than original Eve from the garden of Eden. Eve is out to get the even more evil Margo Channing (Bette Davis), first by impersonating to be her biggest fan, then her flunky and then she weasel her way to getting Margo's friends, job and most of all her man!

Thelma Ritter plays "Birdie" Margo's maid , she's wonder, just like her character Stella in "Rear Window". Her bickering with the mean Davis is priceless with lines like:
Margo Channing: You bought the new girdles a size smaller, I can feel it.
Birdie: Something maybe grew a size larger.

Then the over acting like Bill Sampson's (Gary Merrill) soliloquy about the theater is so bad it's wonderful, you can even picture him practicing for hours in front of a mirror for that corny over dramatic delivery. George Sanders as the entertainment columnist Addision Dewitt was perfect! He totally fit the mold as the "New York/high society/ gossiping/heavy drinking/gay/greedy/ manipulative/ in love with himself/ son of a b*tch", you see hanging around cocktail parties stabbing everyone's back.

Everything Eve does is so corny that only an idiot would not see through her, I love the comment Birdie makes about the sob story Eve tells about her past in the beginning of the film: " What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end. " And at the end of the movie Eve does get her rear snapped by some bloodhounds!