This movie has a reputation as kind of a mess. Admittedly it is a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In my opinion a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was not necessarily one of the top two or three things the world hoped for as Steven Spielberg’s followup to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. But fuck ‘em. It’s what they got and they oughta fuckin appreciate it.
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Posts Tagged ‘Warren Oates’
1941
Thursday, January 5th, 2012
The Split
Monday, April 20th, 2009
There are two Richard Stark based movies left that have never been released for the home video in the U.S. One is MISE A SAC, a French one based on The Score, where Parker and a crew try to rob an entire mining town. The other is THE SPLIT, based on The Seventh, where Jim Brown as the Parker character robs a football stadium and then has some trouble afterwords. My man David M. in France has seen both – he saw a restored print of MISE A SAC and told me it was great. As for THE SPLIT he did me one better than telling me about it, he sent me a recording from when it played letterboxed on the French Turner Classic Movies channel. (I don’t know who the French Ted Turner is, but it sounds like he plays better shit than the American one.)
If you’re reading this in the future maybe every movie ever made is available for instant download, but in my day you had to be patient. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to see this thing. The closest I came before now was an old movie magazine I bought at an antique mall because it had Barbarella on the cover (wait a minute, is Roger Vadim the French Ted Turner?) So I bought it for the Barbarella, because a man has needs, but it turned out there was also an “article” – really just a plot summary – about THE SPLIT. I’d been meaning to read it and write a book-to-movie-summary comparison until they get off their ass and release it. But now thanks to French Ted Turner I don’t have to stoop to that. (more…)
92 in the Shade
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007This guy Don’s been bugging me to review 92 IN THE SHADE since he nominated it for the BADASS 100 update and nobody else had seen it. And it clearly sounded worth seeing but I think the title had bad associations for me because it reminded me of a porno this dude I used to work with liked to watch. That one was called 92 AND STILL BANGIN’. Don’s movie is alot better, in my personal opinion. Your mileage may vary.
The title probaly could describe the heat in Key West where it takes place, but the movie never really shows or mentions it being that hot. So it could also describe the tensions between the young man (Pete Fonda) back in town resuming his job as a fishing guide and his main rival (Warren God Damn Oates). That’s a hell of a ’70s cast already, and then you also got Harry Dean Stanton as another rival, Margot Kidder as Fonda’s girlfriend, William Hickey as his dad, Burgess Meredith as some other dude, even Joe “MANIAC” Spinell as a client.
It’s a meandering movie that doesn’t build to a whole lot, but it’s got a nice feel to it. Kind of a tribute to southern eccentrics and working men. Reminded me a little bit of my man David Gordon Green of SEAGALOGY introduction fame. For example William Hickey is Peter Fonda’s dad, he spends most of the movie in a bed that’s in his backyard, as some kind of protest against modern life. And his dad is a rich guy on the lecture circuit, spends most of the movie complaining about everybody else and being classist, but also talks about his love for the word “pussy.” Alot of the movie is just strange conversations between weirdos, and you don’t really know if it’s a goofy script or if they just left the camera running while crazy people were free to babble about whatever came to mind. (more…)
Cockfighter
Thursday, July 6th, 2006Well when you want a good sports movie you go to Monte Hellman, the fellow who also did the great racing movie Two Lane Black Top and Silent Night, Deadly Night 3. Now I know some of you from the title, you’re gonna say, “Oh, Vern’s reviewing a gay porno” but no, it’s about chickens.
I don’t know if you are familiar with cockfighting, cock is a term for rooster and what they do, they put two roosters in a circle and have them fight each other. Sometimes they put little metal hooks on their legs to make them more deadly. You know, it is basically like the dog fights we have up here but this is what they do in the south, because chickens are more readily available I guess.
I know what you’re thinking, chickens are pussies compared to dogs. But they’re not. I mean you should see these fuckers fight. The feathers on the back of their neck stick up like a cobra and they just start tearing into each other. I mean it’s creepin me out.
You probaly remember the actor Warren Oates, from Alfredo Garcia. He’s not the guy from the singing group Hall and Oates, he is an actor. Well here he plays an individual so dedicated to his sport of cockfighting that he has taken a vow of silence. In a flashback you find out that he lost one of the big derbies because he was shooting his mouth off about how great his rooster was, until Harry Dean Stanton challenged him to an off-the-record match in a hotel room. Of course, his bird was killed and he missed his big chance to win the Cockfighter of the Year medal which all young boys dream of getting when they grow up. So from that point on he stops talking in order to protect his career.
So the movie is kind of like any other sports movie, except with cockfighting. Warren takes on a new partner, he buys and trains new birds, he enters big matches. He has his old arch rival harry Dean Stanton stirring up trouble and marrying his old girlfriend. There is one guy who tries to cheat but they catch him and beat him up. There is an armed robbery. (more…)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Can you believe that? Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Has there ever been a better title for a film of Badass Cinema, because I don’t think there has. Leave it to Sam Peckinpah, that lovable old drunk who spent his whole career fighting with studios and filming innocent kids standing by the side of the road watching as horrible atrocities took place in slow motion to come up with a title like that. I don’t think that one will ever be topped.
I really like Peckinpah, especially one that I guess is not generally considered one of his best, The Getaway. I like that this is a guy who makes violent westerns and crime movies but instead of trying to dazzle the audience with explosions and car chases, he seems to pour his filthy old grizzled alcoholic soul into it. All of his frustrations, problems and paranoid delusions seem to end up in there somewhere. He knows that a good personal film is not necessarily about some dude reading poetry and being misunderstood by the ladies.
I never knew what this one was about, but I always wanted to see it because of that title. And people recommend it to me all the time as one of the greats of Badass Cinema. It placed #77 on the original Badass 100, but with its reputation and inevitable some day release on American DVD, I bet it will slip up a little higher if we ever revise that list.
But I gotta be honest, just to help out anybody that might be in that same situation. As great as this movie is, it is not as COMPLETELY FUCKING BAD as the title may imply. And I’ll explain why but let me tell you what it’s about first.
The movie starts out like a beautiful postcard in some Mexican villa somewhere. Ducks swim in a little lake while a young girl, obviously pregnant, sits at the shore. The girl gets brought inside to face her rich and powerful dad, who has his men rough her up until she will say who the father is: Alfredo Garcia. The old man is sad. “He was like a son to me.” And then of course he tells his men there will be a million dollars for whoever brings in this Alfredo’s head. (more…)
