Category Archives: Imaginary US Cinema

Action/Adventure, Imaginary US Cinema, Science Fiction

#64 – Beyond the Stars

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(1954, US, 123 min) Dir Hal Douglas. Cast Jim Thorn, Alice Patrick, Ed Dietrich.

The best that can be said about Beyond the Stars is that it’s right. If you wanted to go into space yourself then you could watch it and take notes and construct the same rockets and use the same methods that are used in the movie and it would work. The problem with that is that the film will be super exciting to rocket scientists but to your average Joe and Sally on a Saturday afternoon it may as well be filmed in Snooze-A-Rama. And that’s just the plot – you can have the dullest script sold to you by the magnetism of a bona fide star but Thorn, Patrick and Dietrich seem to have been cast on the size of their jaws rather than on their ability to react before a camera better than a slab of aged steak. Add that all together and you’ve got a film that plays at two hours plus but feels like a year. The title’s a con too by the way – they get to Mars by the halfway point and waste precious celluloid standing around in the dirt for the rest of the film. Avoid like a holiday in a vacuum.

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Documentary, Imaginary US Cinema

#62 – All Art is a Sham

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(2014, US, 80 min) Dir Alex Gibney. Cast Anthony Kane.

The gazillionth documentary from Gibney in the last couple years and the simplest in execution, being basically an illustrated talk from Kane punctuated with interviews with him and with famous faces that either back or dispute his thesis. And what a thesis – Kane famously quit The New Yorker in 2005 to write the book this documentary is named after, causing a kerfuffle in the arts in the process. The big idea, from the man himself: “We’re always told that what separates us from the animals is math, science and art. This is bunk – the first two undoubtedly serve a purpose but art only exists to fuel our narcissism. All art, no matter how misanthropic it appears to be, exists to reinforce our status and worldview. It’s essentially propaganda that is made by us, for us. In my book I describe it rather crudely as masturbating while looking in the mirror but that’s what it is – a luxuriating in our own self-regard while we destroy all around us in fulfilment of our childish gratification. Anyone who tells you otherwise – about the transformative nature of art or whatever else – has a stake in making you believe that to be so.” This is from a former cultural reviewer too! He expands on this with reference to the history of art, from Monet to Hirst, cave painting to Tarantino. The only time the unflappable Kane loses it is at the end, at a Q&A when an audience member calls him a fascist. “I am not a fascist,” he replies, red-faced, “The fascists loved art because it flattered them! I require no such flattery!” The film, much like the man himself, is mad and occasionally bizarrely persuasive. “Once we cast off the shackles of art,” he concludes, “We will finally be able to grow up.”

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Imaginary US Cinema

#61 – Laika

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(2008, US, 60 min) Dir Alex Lopatin.

A film about the famed first dog into space, directed by Russian-American artist Lopatin: “I wanted to make a film about how I felt about Laika,” he has said, “Initially it was going to be an installation, more free-flowing and associative like my usual work, but I discovered that it was impossible, for me, to make a film about her that wasn’t her story.” He funded the film entirely too and the amount of money up on the screen is testament to his commitment to the subject. It’s not a conventional biopic either, not that a canine biopic has much trouble being mistaken for one. It’s a diptych – the first part about Laika’s discovery on the streets of Moscow and her training up to the point where she is sent into space as well as being about the people who trained and grew attached to her. The second, shorter part follows Laika’s story on Earth as it’s been told from the moment she left the it’s orbit to date, specifically focussing on how she died and the cover up of the facts surrounding it. One benefit of this method is that while we get to hear the heart-breaking particulars of how she died we’re spared a reconstruction of the event. A great, sad film that, disappointingly, will more likely than not stay in the gallery and won’t make it to the cinemas that it deserves to be seen in.

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Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#60 – Los Data

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(2006, US, 110 min) Dir Jay White. Cast Seann William Scott, Diego Luna, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Humberto Busto.

Bored programmer Joe (Scott) works for internet company Doodle, the kind of benign behemoth that fills its floors with foosball tables and vintage arcade games – exactly the kind of environment where Joe could get away with doing nothing all day if his bosses didn’t require work from him. Unfortunately for them Joe secretly knows nothing about programming but hits on an idea – for a fraction of his own huge wage he hires a programmer in Mexico called Juan (Luna) to do his work for him so he can lounge around all day and not get fired. His bosses, seeing how much he’s doing while still committing to the social aspects of the company give him a significant pay rise. The email confirming this is seen by Juan, who has access to Joe’s email, and when he sees how much he’s getting screwed by Joe he enlists his criminal brother Sebastian (Busto) to get revenge. Soon every aspect of Joe’s life is under Juan’s control and he has to go offline and get to Mexico to sort it all out. Hijinks follow with Joe ending the film having been drugged with peyote, blown up and, of course, finding a newfound respect for his Mexican neighbours and love with Moreno’s Claudia. Pretty good fun, gamely played by the cast and it doesn’t push the message button too much despite obviously being a parable for society and inequality and stuff.

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Black and White, Drama, Imaginary US Cinema, Silent

#55 – Lodge-House, The

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(1915, US, 65 min, b/w) Dir Rudolph Henry Barrett. Cast Thoda Deane, Thomas Meecham, Alice Batt.

One of only six films made in the space of eighteen months by the unknown Thoda Deane who was being positioned by upstart company Star Film Productions as a ‘vamp’ rival to the likes of Theda Bara, Valeska Suratt and so on. Unlike the other five The Lodge-House was a success, even inspiring a minor craze in ‘cat’ collars (although I’m not sure what these are exactly). Unfortunately for Deane that success didn’t transmute into popularity for herself and soon enough she was, like so many others, tossed aside for the next in line. With all prints lost pretty much everything we know about The Lodge-House comes from posters and lobby cards that survive and there aren’t many of those. The most substantial source is an issue of Film Explosion found in a Long Island coal bunker in 1982 which includes a summary of the plot as such: “Mean Deane is at it again and this time she has Meek Tommy Meecham in her sights. Can he resist? Can YOU? Sweet Alice Batt will have to fight for her man in the ‘Lodge-House’ of SIN that she calls HOME! She demands PEARLS! She demands DIAMONDS! She demands THE WORLD!!” As you’ll admit, that’s some pretty vague stuff. The pictures show a pretty boilerplate melodrama of the day enlivened by the striking Deane with her slim face and big, dark, cavernous eyes and the set of the Lodge-House itself, which looks like an Orientalist’s opium nightmare.

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Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#47 – Hell on the Prairie

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(1984, US, 100 min) Dir Steve Miner. Cast Tom Atkins, Dorothy Fielding , Jason Lively, Amanda Fox.

AKA Death Wagon. Mitchell Thomas (Atkins) has taken his family on holiday to rural Kansas so that they can experience the land that their forefathers crossed in hardship to make a new life in the west. Of course none of the rest of his family actually want to be there – his brattish adolescent son and daughter (Lively and Fox) spend the whole time fighting and his wife (Fielding) doesn’t take her nose out of any of the suitcase of books that she’s brought with her. The others are so preoccupied with everything that’s not the countryside that it’s him alone who notices the covered wagon in the distance, the one that appears to be getting closer no matter where it is they go. The first half is goofy but unsettling but the second half turns into a completely different film as the wagon arrives just as they arrive in the middle of nowhere and it’s inhabitants are revealed to be crazed murderers. It’s all cat and mouse chase stuff from then on out. The film never reveals where these crazed murderers have come from either – are they modern-day lunatics who have taken to travelling about in an antiquated vehicle or are they the spectres of some Donner Party types, come to wreck misguided vengeance? Either way there’s no real metaphorical value in them being pioneers – I mean something something Reagan’s America? Who cares though – they do their job well enough.

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Erotic, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#46 – What Did They Do To Patricia?

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(1974, US, 92 min) Dir Art Blitzen. Cast Angela Raider, Pete Diggs, Harry Pork.

Given that The Exorcist’s release coincided with the ‘Golden Age’ of porn with Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and so on, it should come as no surprise that someone would meld these two types of blockbuster together. Unfortunately that person was ‘Artless’ Art Blitzen and his effort What Did They Do To Patricia? (whose title, incidentally, is nonsensical) might actually be a step down from the likes of Jesus Franco’s Lorna the Exorcist, if such a thing can be believed. Angela Raider plays history student Patricia who has been possessed with the Paluzu, a spirit from an old icon, and of course this  renders her an insatiable nymphomaniac. By the time the church gets around to drafting in a pair of priests to rid her of the demon she’s already drained three men of their ‘lifeforce’, which means exactly what it sounds like. Unfortunately for both the viewer and everyone in the film too, the aforementioned priests are sex-crazed lunatics with a rather unfortunate method in mind of divesting Patricia of her demon. This film is all kinds of wrong – not just in a moral sense (though you’ll feel in need of a wash afterward) but also aesthetically, as everything seems to take place in a series of nightmarish bedsits and in them ‘Artless’ Art seems to spend as much time lingering on the appalling décor or figuring out how to pull focus as he does on recording the ‘action’ itself. Grim.

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Drama, Imaginary British Cinema, Imaginary US Cinema, Romance

#43 – Buried Hearts

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(1985, US/GB, 105 min) Dir Alastair Hirst. Cast Jessica Lange, Julian Sands, Denholm Elliott, Hugh Grant.

Jessica Lange is the young American widow Ms Allison Fairley, the kind of person who one finds depicted in films as a ‘live wire’ or a ‘free spirit’ but that you, in real life, wouldn’t wish to be trapped in an elevator with. Since she has a lot of money from her late husband’s estate and a lot of free time Ms Fairley has decided to travel to Edwardian England to indulge herself in her latest hobby – the digging up of dinosaur bones. The reason she has her eye on England of all places is because of Sir Evelyn Pearson (Sands), the internationally acknowledged expert on all things paleontological. Of course he wants to have nothing to do with this forthright and crude American but she’s not easily put off – even if it means turning up at every one of Pearson’s digs she’ll get her man in the end. In the end, of course, she does but that’s not really a spoiler, is it? Produced by the estimable Merchant Ivory team though written and directed by TV veteran Alastair Hirst, this slight film seems at times to be trying a little too hard to out-Merchant Ivory the duo themselves. A young Hugh Grant adds value as Pearson’s flabbergasted student who is alternately appalled and besotted by the manic Fairley.

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Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#39 – Rolling Free!

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(1981, US, 88 min) Dir Andy Farmer. Cast Tommy Chong, Christopher Guest, Kirk Douglas, Jack Palance.

Dismal stoner cowboy ‘comedy’ featuring Chong sans Cheech and an awfully miscast Guest (who mostly seems to be asleep upright on his horse). They play low-level crooks in the Old West smuggling drugs up from Mexico to the big cities up north and evading the law on the one hand (Douglas, manic) and their sinister rival the Black Moustache (Palance, scenery chewing) on the other. With no discernible plot bar their travels from one place to the other and no perceptible peril via their low-consequence run-in’s with both Douglas and Palance there is only infantile word play, flatulence, the prostitution of women and the inherent hilarity of marijuana left to get by on. Even the potentially glorious scenery provides no relief – it’s shot by first-time director and future journeyman Farmer as though Monument Valley had for him the same visual interest as an inner city laundromat. The most fun to be had is in spotting cameos from John Candy, Harry Shearer and Paul ‘Pee Wee’ Reubens, all acting away under three acres of fake facial hair each.

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Animation, Childrens, Imaginary US Cinema

#38 – Velvet Paw, The

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(1990, US, 81 min) Dir Art Stevens, Ron Clements.  Cast Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds, Freddie Jones.

Originally intended for cinema release in 1984, The Velvet Paw was shelved by Disney for unknown reasons and then, following the disappointing box office of The Black Cauldron, it remained on the shelf, not being released until 1990 and then going straight to video. With all of this The Velvet Paw has been perhaps unjustly forgotten – it’s certainly stands up better than some of it’s pre-Disney Renaissance contemporaries. The titular Velvet Paw is a jewel thief in a 1920’s Paris populated by anthropomorphic animals who is being hunted by the inept Detective Copper (a bloodhound of course, voiced by Jones) and is, in reality, sophisticated high society rag doll Lady Fluffington (the appropriately husky Turner, recorded prior to Jessica Rabbit). Into her life comes streetwise con artist Max (Reynolds) to sweep her off her feet. Will she give away her secret to Max? Is he only in it for the money? The time and the place are well evoked (down to a bear Hemingway and a fox Scott Fitzgerald) with a couple of choice ragtime numbers in the place of the usual treacley Disney tunes. Throw in a couple of exciting jewel heists and a moonlit rooftop chase and you have enough to distract from the muddled pacing of the rest of the film.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms