By
Ed Garea
THE
B-HIVE
May
is a wonderful month for B-movie lovers, especially those who like
movie series. TCM is airing various movie series during the month. a
run down of them follows:
May
1: 8 pm - 3 am: Blondie.
4:15 am Mexican Spitfire.
May
2: 6:45 am - 1:30 pm: Mexican
Spitfire. 2:45 pm - 6:30 pm: Four
Daughters and sequels. 8 pm through the
night: Maisie.
May
3: 6:45 am - 10:15 am: Maisie.
Noon - 6:45 pm. Fibber McGee and
Molly; Great
Gildersleeve.
May
8: 8 pm through the night: Tarzan.
May
9: 6 am - 6:30 pm Tarzan.
8 pm - 2 am: Jungle Jim.
3:30 am: Bomba.
May
10: 6:15am - 6:45 pm: Bomba.
May
15: 8 pm through the night: The
Hardy Family.
TAKUMI
FURUKAWA - MAY 6
A
double feature from noted Japanese director Takumi Furukawa begins at
2 am with his 1964 opus, Cruel Gun
Story (Kenju zankoku monogatari). this is
a moody and atmospheric noir with another good
performance from famed Japanese tough guy Jo Shishido as Togawa who,
after recently getting out of jail, is hired by a mob boss to
assemble a small group of men for the biggest cash heist in Japan's
history. The job requires much planning and each man has their role
to fill but, of course, nothing seems to go right once the plan goes
into action. Betrayal, violence and revenge are the main themes and
it’s an enjoyable noir with a rather dim ending.
Following
at 3:45 am is his A
Colt is My Passport (Koruto wa ore no
pasupōto). this 1967 film is hard-boiled noir at
its best. it once again stars Jo Shishido as a crafty hitman, who
with his longtime sidekick (Jerry Fujido) has carried out a hit
of an opposing gang boss. though they make a quick getaway, they are
captured by the boss’ henchmen. Later, after managing a narrow
escape, the pair makes their way to a cheap hotel outside of
Yokohama. Looking to catch a boat for foreign shores, Shishido and
Fujido become locked into an explosive gun battle with the henchmen,
who are out for violent revenge.
Furukawa
is one of my favorite action directors. His films and their style
have influenced directors who came afterward, such as Ringo Lam and
John Woo. Anyone who like noir and action will love
these films.
JAPANESE
DOUBLE FEATURE - MAY 11
Two
extraordinary films from Japanese directors will be shown beginning
at 2 am The first is from director Toshio Matsumoto: his 1969
film, Funeral Parade of Roses. This
is one weird, wild – and strangely enjoyable – film. Both Eddie
(Pita) and the transvestite Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) have sexual
designs on bar manager and drug dealer Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya). Gonda
is afraid Leda will dime him out to the cops if he doesn’t give in
to his/her sexual yearnings. Leda ultimately feels he has no real
choice and commits suicide, This leaves Eddie and Gonda free to
engage in their homosexual yearnings for each other. But when Gonda
discovers he is actually Eddie's father, he kills himself with a
knife. Eddie, extremely distraught, then uses the same knife to cut
his own eyes out. Think of it as a gonzo version of Oedipus
Rex, and don’t kid yourself - the ending is really violent.
Following
at 4 am is Crazed Fruit (Kurutta
Kajitsu, 1956). It’s probability the first JD film in Japan,
though these films are referred to there as “taiyozoku,” or “sun
tribe,” a term coined to describe the rich, bored, and
mean-spirited youth that were often the subjects of popular novelist
Shintaro Ishihara, who wrote the best-selling Seasons of the
Sun and other books along the same theme. Crazed
Fruit is a powerful drama, though not without the occasional
comic undertone. Privileged teenage brothers Natsuhisa and Haruki
Takishima (Yujiro Ishihara and Masahiko Tsugawa) take advantage of
lack of guidance from their absentee parents and are spending their
summer holiday along the Zushi coast (just outside Tokyo) pursuing
such hedonistic activities as drinking, gambling hanging out with
Natsuhisa's narcissistic and bored teen friends, led by the arrogant
rich Eurasian leader Frank (Masumi Okada). “Boredom is our credo.”
Their
activities are interrupted by the arrival of Eri (Mie Kitahara), a
beautiful young woman. Haruki, the younger brother (and a virgin)
becomes infatuated with Eri, but his older brother is also attracted
to her, and learns she’s married to an American businessman. But
instead of this ending everything, Natsuhisa initiates a triangle by
seeking Eri’s favors as well.
Nakahima’s
first film, it signaled a shift in Japanese cinema and captured the
zeitgeist of the time – how postwar Japan was changing from its
traditional roots and how Western influences and a more comfortable
standard of living created an idle class of youth who lacked respect
their elders, questioned traditional values, and defy convention in
favor of such pursuits as gambling, lying around by the sea, and
pursuing the opposite sex. These shirkers aren't really rebelling for
change. They're complaining because they can. Though the message
of Crazed Fruit has long been forgotten, it is
essential for understanding the sea change in Japanese culture during
the ‘50s and the effect it had on Japanese society.
ANDRZEJ
WAJDA - MAY 13
A
double feature from Polish director Andrzej Wajda begins at 2 am with
his 1982 feature, Danton,
with Gerard Depardieu starring as the French Revolutionary. The film
is set in November 1793. Danton is returning to Paris from voluntary
exile at his country retreat after learning that the Committee for
Public Safety, under the incitement of his fellow revolutionary and
rival, Maximillian Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak) has begun a series
of massive executions, known as The Terror. Confident in the peoples'
support, Danton clashes with his former ally, but the clever and
calculating Robespierre rounds up Danton and his followers for trial
before a revolutionary tribunal. As expected, they are found guilty
and dispatched to the guillotine. Wajda made the film as an
allegorical commentary upon the then current events in Poland that
pitted Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement against the puppet Soviet
Communist regime of the Polish government headed by General
Jaruzelski. For Wajda, Danton represents the muddled Western world
while Robespierre represents the Stalinist totalitarianism in the
East. This is a Wajda film I haven’t yet seen and I heard it’s
far more talky than action filled, but from everything I heard and
read, Depardieu makes for a great Danton, and Wajda is an excellent
director.
Following
at 4:30 am is his 1955 film, A
Generation (Pokolenie). A Generation
is the first of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's "underground
trilogy" and also Wajda's first-ever feature film. Originally
titled Pokolenie, the film dissects the impact that World War II had
on the youth of Poland. Stacy (Tadevsz Lomnicki) is an impressionable
young Warsaw resident who falls in love with resistance leader
Dorotea (Ursula Modrzinska). Wanja shows how the passion they feel
towards their cause is entwined with their passion towards one
another. There are several moments where the director contradicts the
“official” version of events in the Polish Uprising to show the
actual facts, many of which were experienced by Wajda himself. Done
partly as a way of showing the disillusionment so many young Poles
went through after the war, the film and director found themselves
subject to close scrutiny and an abundance of government interference
when it was first released. Sharp-eyed viewers will be able to spot a
young Roman Polanski in the underground scenes.
OVERLOOKED
CLASSICS
May
7: At 8 pm Robert Donat, Margaret Leighton and Sir Cedric
Hardwicke star in The Winslow
Boy (1948). A film adaptation of Terence
Rattigan's play, it concerns a young boy, Ronnie Winslow (Neil
North), who is accused of a petty theft and expelled from naval
school. Convinced of his innocence, the boy's father (Cedric
Hardwicke) and sister (Margaret Leighton) want to see justice done,
and, along with lawyer, Sir Robert Morton (Robert Donat), they
initiate a series of courtroom battles to clear Ronnie's name
creating a political fire storm along the way. It’s a brilliantly
acted film, with crisp direction from Anthony Asquith. If it sounds
like a David Mamet play, be advised that Mamet write the
screenplay for the excellent 1999 remake, starring Rebecca Pidgeon,
Jeremy Northam and Nigel Hawthorne.
May
13: Barbara Stanwyck turns on the suds machine full blast in
the classic 1937 soaper, Stella
Dallas, at 10 pm.
PRE-CODE
May
6: The MGM all-star extravaganza, Grand
Hotel, airs at 6 am, followed by Clark Gable and
Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra’s classic, It
Happened One Night.
May
13: Stanwyck is an orphaned girl who becomes a schoolteacher
in the midst of a farming community and raises her son (Dickie
Moore/Hardie Albright) to aspire to big things in the 1932 original
version of So Big.
Bette Davis also appears in the film. It would be remade in 1953 with
Jane Wyman in the lead.
PSYCHOTRONICA
May
1: Steve Reeves is the Son of Spartacus, the only man who
can put an end to the tyranny of Caesar Grassus (Claudio Gora) in the
1963 sword and sandal epic The
Slave, airing at 6:15 pm.
May
4: At 2:15 am, it’s Anatomy
of a Psycho. The unstable young brother of a criminal
sentenced to the gas chamber has made a list of the people who sent
him there and prepares to exact his revenge. Watch for Ronnie Burns,
son of George and Gracie, as the boyfriend of the protagonist’s
sister. Following at 3:45 am is William Castle’s tale of greed and
murder, Homicidal.
May
5: Tarzan
and the Amazons,
from 1945, airs at 10 am.
May 11: A morning and afternoon of director Tod Browning’s films begins at 6:30 am with the 1925 silent The Unholy Three and ends at 6:45 pm with the underrated drama Miracles for Sale from 1939.
SILENTS
PLEASE
May
6: Clara Bow shot to stadium as a spunky shop girl who has
designs on the handsome playboy owner of her department store in It,
airing at 12:15 am. Look for an unbilled Gary Cooper.
May
8: Robert Flaherty examiners the harsh life of an Eskimo
family in the groundbreaking documentary, Nanook
of the North (1922), showing at 8:30 am.
MOVIES,
BAD MOVIES
May
15: Even though it’s being shown at the early hour of 6
am, White Comanche (1968)
is a must. William Shatner plays twin Indians: Notah Moon, a
peyote-addicted, bare-chested bad ass half-breed in war paint who
kills white men and rapes their women, and his innocent brother,
Johnny Moon, who is always being mistaken for his brother and almost
lynched. Shatner can’t even handle one role, let alone two.
Combined with a bad script and almost nonexistent direction, it makes
for total entertainment. Joseph Cotten was slumming in this as the
sheriff. Watch for the knife fight between Notah’s squaw, White
Fawn (Perla Cristal) and a Comanche warrior, plus the showdown where
the twin Shatners face off. Not to be missed.
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