The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974).

The Scoop:
One of the best, if underrated, action movies of the '70s, "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" stars Walter Matthau playing against type to excellent effect as a shrewd New York subway cop who must outsmart a gang of thugs (led by the always terrifically villainous Robert Shaw) who hijack a train car full of passengers.

Director John Sargeant and screenwriter Peter Stone (working from John Godey's novel) tell this gripping story with equal parts suspense and humor. Matthau and Shaw get plenty of great support from a cast that includes Martin Balsam, Hector, Elizondo, Dick O'Neil and Jerry Stiller. But more than that, the city of New York itself, in all its dysfunctional '70s glory, becomes a central player in the drama, creating a vivid record of a specific time and place. Watch this one as much for the vibe of the city as for the story.

(And if the the hijackers' colorful codenames sound familiar, it's because they were later used by Quentin Tarantino in "Reservoir Dogs.")

Best Bit:
That last ironic shot, and the look on Matthau's face.

Side Note:
The New York Transit Authority was so paranoid about copycat crimes that they wouldn't let the film be shot on location unless the studio purchased anti-hijacking insurance. It turned out not to be needed, but they neglected to take the same precautions later with the very-derivative "Money Train" (1995), which did spawn an imitative subway hijacking.

Companion Viewing:
"The French Connection" (1971).

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:
The trailer (dig that yellow tie on Matthau!):

The Doom Generation (1995).

The Scoop:
This middle film of Gregg Araki's nihilistic teen alienation trilogy -- sandwiched between "Totally Fucked Up" and "Nowhere" -- features plenty of sex, violence, humor, cool images and the ultra-hot Rose McGowan.

The plot follows three disaffected kids -- conveniently named Xavier Red (Jonathan Schaech), Jordan White (James Duval) and Amy Blue (McGowan) -- who go on an aimless sex and murder spree before meeting their own inevitable end. The supporting cast is filled with plenty of familiar faces from the world of indie cinema (Parker Posey, Margaret Cho), '70s television (Lauren Tewes, Christopher Knight) and alternative music (Perry Farrell, Skinny Puppy). There's even a cameo by Heidi Fleiss.

Araki bills "The Doom Generation" as his "heterosexual movie," although there's plenty of homoerotic subtext (and not-so-subtext) between Red and White to keep everyone happy. It's disenfranchised-teens-on-the-road theme fits it squarely in the tradition of "Bonnie and Clyde" (1969), "Badlands" (1973) and "Natural Born Killers" (1994). But what sets it apart from those others is its unrelenting darkness. The violence and desperation serve no greater purpose and aren't tools to send a larger artisitic message about our modern society. Instead, they are an end in themselves, a last cry in the urban wilderness before total annihilation. Even the humor is nihilistic.

It's kind of rough around the edges, but this is still great, powerful, psychotic moviemaking -- but only for those with stomachs strong enough to handle the violence, the sex and the bleakness.

Best Line:
"You're like a life support system for a cock!"

Side Note:
Jordan Ladd was originally cast to play McGowan's character, but withdrew at the last minute when her mother, Cheryl Ladd, decided she didn't like the script. The end credits conclude with, "No thanks to Cheryl Ladd." Jordan, however, defied her mom and went on to star in "Nowhere."

Companion Viewing:
"Totally Fucked Up" (1993) and "Nowhere (1997).

Links:
IMDb.
dOOMED.the doom generation fanlisting.

Take a Look:
The trailer...


Here's the first five minutes...


"Like a chicken head!"

Wizards (1977).

The Scoop:
The friend who turned me on to this obscure little film years ago admitted to me that it scared her -- quite a feat for an animated feature. But Ralph Bakshi is a very talented animator, and he pulls out all the stops for this futuristic political fable of warring wizard brothers whose escalating conflict pushes their world over the edge.

He also pulls no punches -- the fantasy fairyland setting is a backdrop for a fairly brutal indictment of facism and violence. This is definitely one cartoon that is not for the kiddies. Bakshi executes the artwork with his usual flair -- a far cry from both Disney and Japanese anime -- and ably incorporates photographs and newsreel footage. The buffoonery of the good wizard character dilutes the power of the message, though, but this is still a noble effort. And certainly the sort of issues-oriented experimentation you're not likely to see made today.

Best Line:
"Fritz! Get up for God's sake, get up! They've killed Fritz, they've killed Fritz! Those lousy stinking yellow fairies, those horrible atrocity filled vermin, those despicable animal warmongers, they've killed Fritz! Take that, take that, take that you green slime! You black hairy short bowlegged..."

Side Note:
Bakshi wrote the "They've killed Fritz" scene as a protest against R. Crumb killing off Fritz the Cat in his comics. Crumb's Fritz-killing, in turn, was prompted by what he was as the bastardization of his work in the "Fritz the Cat" film made by Bakshi.

Companion Viewing:
"The Hobbitt" (1978).

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:
The trailer:

Werewolf of London (1935).

The Scoop:
Strangely enough, although filmmakers frequently turned to horror themes in the silent era, it took Hollywood until 1935 to make its first film about the werewolf legend. But the movie Universal produced here still holds up as one of the best.

An English botanist (Henry Hull) returns from Tibet with a rare flower and a case of lycanthrophy. Pretty soon, bodies start turning up around London and the hunt is on.

The gothic creepiness is top-notch, the characters are more fleshed out than many other horror films of the period, and the story still gives the legend a fresher twist than later movies. Even the makeup by Jack Pierce (also the creator of Boris Karloff's legendary makeup for "Frankenstein") is first rate. This makes a much better companion piece to Universal's other '30s monster movies than the much more popular, but inferior, "Wolf Man" (1941).

Best Line:
"Imagine bringing a beastly thing like that into Christian England!"

Side Note:
Universal loved Karl Hajos' score so much that they reused it in several later feature films, as well as the "Flash Gordon" serials.

Companion Viewing:
"Dracula" (1931), "Frankenstein" (1931) and "The Mummy" (1932).

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:
Except for a Windows-only pay-per-view on MovieLink and some comedy clips on YouTube, there isn't anything to be had online, which is a shame. So, here's this instead. (You knew it was coming, didn't you? There's no way I could make it through a review without using this reference):

Forgotten Silver (1995).

The Scoop:
Between making "Heavenly Creatures" and "The Frighteners," Peter Jackson teamed up with buddy Costa Botes to make a detour with this project, a mockumentary made for New Zealand television about a fictional pioneer filmmaker.

With loads of wry, bone-dry humor, Jackson and Botes tell the story of native New Zealander Colin MacKenzie, who during the silent era was the real inventor of a whole slew of cinematic tricks, including tracking shots, close-ups, color photography and even sound. After the completion of his troubled epic "Salome" (which Jackson and Botes "restore"), MacKenzie disappears into obscurity and is killed in the Spanish Civil War, only to have his forgotten work discovered decomposing in the shed belonging to a neighbor of Jackson's mother.

Celebrity interviewees like Leonard Maltin, Harvey Weinstein and Sam Neill are in on the joke as well, although most of the viewing public apparently was not. After the film was revealed to be fictional following its successful premiere on TVNZ, a huge public outcry ensued (all of which is carefully detailed in the "Behind the Bull" featurette on the DVD).

Jackson and Botes went to great lengths to make the historic footage look authentic, and it pays off as an intelligent, loving ode to the filmmaking of the period.

Best Bit:
The sordid story behind MacKenzie's experiments in making color film.

Side Note:
The vintage photographs of MacKenzie and his brother Brook are actually doctored versions of photos from the Botes family album, specifically Botes' grandfather and great uncle.

Companion Viewing:
"Zelig" (1983).

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:
Just a brief snippet detailing the end of MacKenzie's collaboration with silent comedian "Stan the Man," in which Stan gets his comeuppance for years of terrorizing innocent passers-by with his Borat-style ambush humor:

Rollerball (1975).

The Scoop:
In the future, everyone will still be stuck in the '70s.

That's the real lesson learned from watching this horribly dated movie, which purports to make a serious statement about the growing commercialization and corporatization of sports and world culture. While the film has some important points to make -- which are even more valid today than when it was made -- they are all lost in the torrent of garish production design (check out the font on those uniforms!) and bad acting.

In the far distant year 2018, multinational corporations have replaced countries and all world conflict has been channeled into the ultraviolent sport of rollerball. James Caan is a superstar rollerball player who rebels when he is forced to retire by his corporation. Director Norman Jewison tries to class up the proceedings with appearances by John Houseman and Sir Ralph Richardson, and even achieves a few good moments. But mostly it's short on character, long on roller skating and polyester.

Best Line:
"They have muscles! They bash in faces!"

Side Note:
John Box won a British Academy Award for his horrible, dated art direction.

Companion Viewing:
Complete your marathon of cheesy, dated '70s "futuristic" sci-fi with viewings of "Logan's Run" (1976) and "Zardoz" (1973).

Links:
IMDb.
Scoopy's Movie House.

Take a Look:
A trailer:

Queen Kelly (1929).

The Scoop:
Produced by star Gloria Swanson and her paramour Joseph Kennedy, this film really belongs to the extravagant director Erich von Stroheim, who imbued this routine romantic melodrama with his usual opulent and perverse excesses. The result is another of von Stroheim's unfinished masterpieces -- truncated, yet with just enough of his genius intact to tantalize the viewer with what might have been.

Swanson plays the title character, a poor waif whose love affair with a dallying prince (Walter Byron) earns her the wrath of the princess (Seena Owen, who, in the most famous scene, whips Kelly before throwing her out of the palace) and personal struggles in the African jungle. The story is strictly formula for the period, and the only reason to watch it today is for von Stroheim's signature direction.

Unhappy with his work and far overbudget, Swanson fired von Stroheim before the film was finished and, although it was finished later by famed cinematographer Gregg Toland, it was not released in the U.S. until the 1950s. It was such an expensive boondoggle that it effectively ended both Swanson's and von Stroheim's careers in Hollywood (not that the director needed any further help with that by this point).

Best Bit:
The S&M fire of the whipping scene.

Side Note:
Years later, Swanson made her comeback in "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) as a vain former silent movie star and was able to convince director Billy Wilder to cast von Stroheim in the role of her character's former director turned chauffeur. As if those real-life parallels for the two weren't enough, clips of "Queen Kelly" are used as one of the films the characters had made together.

Companion Viewing:
"The Merry Widow" (1925).

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:
There's a lengthy (but frustratingly unembeddable) clip here, which includes the whipping scene.

Batman: The Movie (1966).

[Holy hiatus! Desuko is back! Look for regular twice-weekly updates from here on in.]

The Scoop:
This feature length spinoff of the great '60s TV show hits all the right notes, capitalizing on what the series did so well -- enthusiastic performances, farcical humor and healthy doses of convention-tweaking.

The action-packed story has the dynamic duo (Adam West and Burt Ward) tangling with the United Underworld, which boasts the combined forces of Catwoman (Lee Meriwether), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), the Joker (Cesar Romero) and the Riddler (Frank Gorshin). The foursome hatch a plot to take over the world by using a stolen dehydrator to kidnap the United World Security Council. Leslie Martinson's well-paced direction keeps up with Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s breakneck script to keep the gags, fisticuffs and ridiculous situations flying.

The performances are uniformly energetic, too. West does his usual poor-man's-Shatner bit here, but it's used well. Of particular note, though, are Meriwether's slinky turn as Catwoman and Gorshin's definitive take on the Riddler (sufficiently manic without being annoying).

There's great fun to be had here, miles away from the dark brooding that has become the standard mode for the character since Tim Burton's 1989 revival.

Best Bit:
Batman's call to the Pentagon to inquire about war surplus submarines. ("We haven't done anything foolish, have we?")

Side Note:
This was originally planned to be the pilot for the TV series, but when the production was rescheduled to take place between the first and second seasons, original Catwoman Julie Newmar found herself committed to another project, which allowed Lee Meriwether to get the role.

Companion Viewing:
The TV series, of course, but also "Batman" (1989) which provides an instructive contrast.

Links:
IMDb.
Official site of the DVD release.
Hollywood Teen Movies.
An exhaustive fan site.

Take a Look:
First, the trailer. "Holy superlatives, Batman!"


"Hand me down the Shark Repellant Bat Spray!"


"It's a joke! In the form of a riddle!"


"Some days, you can't get rid of a bomb!"