In short: Mitchell (1975)

Police detective Mitchell (Joe Don Baker) has few fans in his department. It’s not just his schlubby style and his somewhat dubious manners, it’s also his unwillingness to play politics. When influential mafioso Walter Deaney (John Saxon) shoots a Latino housebreaker in cold blood in the back, Mitchell quickly realizes that the man’s story about self-defence is a badly constructed lie. But when he wants to go for it, his boss calls him off, for apparently, there’s a big FBI investigation running (not that we ever get to see even a single FBI agent) for crimes more important than shooting Mexicans. Instead, as something of punishment, Mitchell is to alone conduct a solo twenty-four hour observation of another gangster, one James Arthur Cummings (Martin Balsam). In this case, Mitchell’s job is to annoy the guy so badly, he’ll talk business with the police. Mitchell, being as hard-headed as he is smelly, and not willing to take any murder lightly, swears to somehow arrest Deaney and get Cummings for something, too.

At least he is indeed an expert at annoying people, so there’s that. From here on out the film turns into a series of increasingly bizarre scenes broken up by standard 70s movie action, our man Joe Don having nice chats with Cummings, getting gifted the services of a high class prostitute (Linda Evans) by an unknown friend – content warning: hot Joe Don Baker action – and a plot about a hijacked heroin delivery develops.

Andrew V. McLaglen’s Joe Don Baker vehicle Mitchell was apparently the victim of a Mystery Science Theater episode (I wouldn’t know, I’m not the point and laugh kind of cult movie fan), but honestly, this isn’t a worse film than many a mid-70s crime/action movie. It’s certainly competently enough filmed by veteran McLaglen, with a couple of improbable but neat enough to keep me awake action sequences embedded into a mix of cop movie clichés; and hey, at least this violent movie cop is sticking it to the big guys (well, the kind of big guys like Cummings who apparently can’t afford more than one thug), seeking justice for the kind of victim movie cops – let’s not even talk about too many real ones - usually don’t cry any tears about.

Mostly, one’s liking for this one will depend heavily on one’s love for watching a sweaty Joe Don butt heads with John Saxon and Martin Balsam in often pretty peculiar surroundings. I take to that sort of thing like Joe Don Baker to free prostitution samples or Linda Evans’s character to Joe Don (I’d have to take the film much more seriously than it does itself or than I do to find these plot elements risible), so I had a fine time watching Mitchell.

Past Misdeeds: The Outfit (1973)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

At just about the same time when professional robber Earle Macklin (Robert Duvall) is released from jail, his brother Eddie is murdered by killers working for the Outfit (the artists formerly known as The Syndicate). Turns out a bank Earle, Eddie and their partner Cody (Joe Don Baker) robbed belonged to the Outfit, and when there's one thing you don't do, it's stealing from them, at least if you ask Outfit boss Mailer (Robert Ryan).

Eddie's not the only one Mailer wants to see dead, but hits on Earle and Cody fail. Once he understands what's going on, Earle decides the best way to stay alive is to go on the offense. From now on he, sort of joined by his girlfriend Bett (Karen Black), and a bit later on by Cody, robs every Outfit establishment he can find. They're pretty easy marks, too, for the unspoken "don't touch the Outfit" rule among professional criminals has resulted in rather lax security measures in the organizations' establishments.

Mailer could make his new problem go away peacefully if his organization would only be willing to pay Macklin $250,000, and leave him in peace afterwards. Not surprisingly, that's not a deal he's willing to make; instead he intensifies his attempts killing Earle and Cody, until they see no choice but to come after him. Not that this wasn't their preferred outcome all along, given their actions.

The Outfit is an adaptation of one of Donald E. Westlake's/Richard Stark's Parker novels (one of my favourites in the series to boot), and as always one that does star Parker neither in name nor character. As far as I know, that's because Westlake didn't want the Parker name used unless an actor agreed to an actual series of films, which sounds rather like avoiding finding more readers for one's books to me, but then I'm not the pulp-y paperback writing master here.

Duvall's Macklin is nearly as ruthless as the character he's based on, but clearly still has more regular human feelings than the empathy-less sociopath Parker. Consequently - and wouldn't Parker just love this as proof for his usual thesis that emotions are bad for his business anyhow - Macklin may be nearly as brutal as Parker but does tend to sometimes let his emotions get in the way of his planning abilities. He even has actual feelings for Bett beyond her use as an object to relieve his sex drive with.

Of course, it is much easier for a viewer to relate to Macklin than to a more closely adapted Parker. Emotional shorthand does, after all, work better with characters that do have emotions their audience can relate to; and once we can relate to something on that level, we do tend to excuse little things like mass robberies and a lot of dead bodies much easier. Duvall as an actor is at the height of his powers here, providing just enough glimpses of the emotional intensity and rage working under Macklin's cold and professional surface to breathe life into his character.

I also appreciate how Flynn attempts to provide a somewhat more sympathetic view of women in his film than you'd ever find in a Stark novel, obviously having caught up with the scientific news that women are actual human beings, just like men; early on in the film I even dared hope he'd give Karen Black's Bett just as much room for development as his male characters. That hope, alas, isn't really fulfilled, despite Black's - an actress I love but not for anything that has anything to do with subtlety - surprisingly subtle performance. In the end, The Outfit trades Stark's borderline misogyny for that common cliché of the female character having to die to motivate the male lead to his climactic violent act. However, Flynn does go through these motions at least with a bit more interest in Bett than typical, and really, compared to Stark's treatment of women in the books, he's golden.

It's also difficult for me to mind this flaw much in a film that does nearly everything else right. I love how Flynn's script adapts the novel, leaving most of its set pieces intact while imagining a different, more human character like Macklin (without two novels before as the set-up for certain scenes) going through them. A lot stays as it is in the novel, yet there are little shifts in meaning and emphasis that aren't just caused by the necessity of filmic language; they are also products of a director with a slightly different philosophy than Stark's, replacing cynicism that at least borders on nihilism with the laconic, strangely sympathetic fatalism so typical of US crime movies of the era. In The Outfit and other movies like it, everybody is a sinner and everybody is most probably doomed, but there's still room for small, defiant gestures of humanity, even if these gestures are violent and morally dubious.

This - to my European eyes - very particularly American way of looking at the world of the early 70s takes place before a background of unspectacular ugliness: a brown world of mud, dark bars, motel rooms and houses that look as if they could crash down on the characters any minute now. The Outfit's USA are a place far from small town romance or the supposed sexiness of the big city - not that we ever get to see anything that looks like you'd imagine the Big City (Flynn retools a short dialogue between Parker/Macklin and Handy/Cody about the shittiness of cities quite wonderfully in that regard). Obviously, the American Dream is not impervious to mud.


Flynn is also simply a great director of semi-realistic action sequences. Everybody, their amount of professionalism in the cause of violence notwithstanding, is somewhat awkward in these scenes, and even when clearly used to the violence they are committing, still caught up in the little failures and stumbles that come with the chaos surrounding them. Despite the conscious decision to use awkwardness and the sudden chaos of real-world violence, Flynn also manages to keep the action exciting and tight. This way, whatever else one may look for and find in The Outfit, it's also a great, exciting 70s crime film.

Walking Tall (1973)

To get away from a business where he’s always told what to do, to please his wife Pauline (Elizabeth Hartman), and to provide a steadier home for their children, the delightfully named Buford Pusser (Joe Don Baker) retires from wrestling to the small Southern town where he grew up in and that parts of his family still call home.

The place has changed, though, and not necessarily for the better. It has grown its own little vice district, and while the things going on there look pretty damn harmless to my eyes, Buford seems rather shocked on his first encounter. When he makes a fuss about the local casino cheating one of his old buddies – who clearly isn’t the most intelligent or mentally healthy to boot – the owners of the place react absurdly violent, not just beating Buford to an inch of his life, but also cutting him up with knives and leaving him somewhere by the side of the road to die. Our hero’s made from stern stuff, though, and survives his ordeal. Afterwards he doesn’t just learn the bastards also stole his station wagon but that the local sheriff’s not willing to do a damn thing about the people who nearly murdered him. Consequently, once he has recovered, he makes himself a very big stick and goes out for some vigilante justice, combining brutally beating up his would-be killers with having them pay an invoice for his damages. Him, the Sheriff does arrest, but the ensuing trial sees Buford giving a rousing speech and getting of scot free.

Next step in his project to clean up town is to run for Sheriff himself. Clearly, there’s a demand for an honest man in the role, even if he’s an amateur like Buford. Before and after he becomes Sheriff, Buford has to cope with various attacks on his life, family troubles, and the general corruption of parts of the charming little town.

Walking Tall is the first of the two films at the end of his career veteran director Phil Karlson made with Joe Don Baker, and it is generally considered to be the slightly superior one. Personally, in a cinch, I’d probably go with Framed as the slightly superior film, but that has more to do with that film’s shorter running time, tighter structure and more controlled sentimentality than with anything Walking Tall does terribly wrong. This is just a differently shaped film, telling a story of a greater scope in time and vaguely basing itself on actual events concerning the real Buford Pusser. To which degree, I don’t know, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to.

In theory, this could be one of those films whose too loud love for vigilante justice and dislike for stuff like the actual rule of law or the separation of power between judicative and executive could sour me on it too much to have fun with it. In practice, the film does use these latter bits also to portray the degree of Pusser’s naivety when it comes to the things needed beside a moral compass to do his new job properly.

In other regards, this is just a simple joy to watch: Joe Don does the Joe Don Baker swagger, inhabiting his role in a way which makes questions of “acting” seem pointless, Karlson uses his direct but effective style to the best, and most entertaining effect, and the whole thing has a wonderful sense of place. Of course, that place is a made-up sort of South made of idealisations, clichés and truth in probably equal parts but it feels alive and real on film.

Speaking of the US South, I do find it interesting to point out that both of the Baker/Karlson films feature one major black character as a friend of Joe Don’s respective character who isn’t a caricature, with actual things to do in the plot, and positioned in a way to give the film some opportunity to talk about racism in its specific Southern variety, in scenes that suggest someone involved in the production had some practical experience with these matters beyond the burning crosses and knew how this sort of thing played out in real life in smaller – but not less painful – ways at this time and place. It’s also just pretty cool to have a film showing a guy like Joe Don actively trying not being a racist prick, and even apologizing when parts of his socialisation make him act like a prick.


If you don’t care about that sort of thing and only come to see Joe Don Baker smite evildoers with his big stick, you’re well provided by Walking Tall, too.

In short: Wild Rovers (1971)

Aging cowhand Ross Bodine (William Holden) and his much younger friend Frank Post (Ryan O’Neal) are working on the ranch of patriarchal Walter Buckman (Karl Malden) and his sons John (Tom Skerritt) and Paul (Joe Don Baker), with all the exciting prospects you have in that kind of job gaping before them.

So, Frank out of youthful stupidity and Ross because he’s got nothing to show for his fifty years, the cow hands decide to rob the local bank. The robbery does succeed, even, thanks to a rather ruthless plan, and doesn’t end in any bloodbath whatsoever. As to not leave any bad blood behind, they even leave the money meant for the payroll of their home ranch with the banker. Because the territory line behind which the sheriff (Victor French) has no jurisdiction anymore is so near, Frank and Ross seem to get away scot free despite a few minor troubles.

Unfortunately, the banker and his family embezzle the money, leaving Buckman very angry because of the perceived betrayal (though I’m not too sure his reaction would have been much different otherwise), sending his sons out to go as far beyond the borders as necessary to bring his wayward cowhands back, preferably alive but not necessarily so.

Wild Rovers’ director Blake Edwards is – of course – much better known as a director of comedies but he seems to have made it a point to work in a few different genres in between the comedies. Even though these films generally have their problems they also feel a lot like labours of love to me, Edwards milking his commercial success to get astonishing amounts of money for his dream projects.

The film at hand is a case in point, with its Jerry-Goldsmith-doing-Aaron-Copland score, the lavish photography by Philip Lathrop, and its mostly excellent cast, often looking and sounding like someone’s wet dream of a Western. Unfortunately, it’s at the same time a much too self-indulgent movie for my tastes, the sort of thing where a director seems so in love with parts of his movie he just can’t let them stop, leading to some scenes that barely should be in the film at all going on forever, some ill-advised The Wild Bunch without the punch-style slow motion, and pacing that at times slows to a crawl. Then there’s the musical Overture and Entr’acte (seriously) that has no business at all in a film this slow and long already, something so useless to the film I don’t even know what to say about it.

Less a problem of self-indulgence than one of miscasting is Ryan O’Neal, who isn’t at his worst here, but whose specific kind of blandness and lack of a projected screen personality chafes badly against a William Holden who at this point of his career made things look easy and natural even when they were getting rather theatrical.

On the other hand, Wild Rovers features nearly as many moments of brilliance as it does of self-indulgent bloat, moments when Edwards’s pretensions stop being pretensions and start becoming the real thing, like basically every time Holden opens his mouth, that ill-fated poker game in Benson, or some of the shots of Holden and O’Neal travelling.

As a matter of fact, I found myself enjoying Wild Rovers more often than not, regularly buying into its world building, as well as its attempt at reaching the archetypal by way of the specific, and while I was bored for more than one scene, I can’t help but recommend it for all the parts of it that aren’t boring.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,western,blake edwards,william holden,ryan o'neal,karl malden,joe don baker,tom skerritt

In short: Charley Varrick (1973)

Technically, robbing a tiny small town bank should be a job of easy in, easy out, but a chain of unfortunate circumstances leaves former stunt pilot Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) in quite some trouble. Not only are two of his three partners – one of whom was Charley’s wife – dead but the body count of the robbery also includes a couple or three cops, leading to a rather more enthusiastic hunt for the criminals as Charley had planned on.

Then there’s the fact that Harman (Andrew Robinson), the last surviving partner, is not the most stable of men on his best day, and it certainly isn’t his best day, or week. Even worse, there’s an absurdly large amount of money for such a little bank involved, though most of it doesn’t seem to officially exist, which leads Charley to the conclusion he’s just painted a second target on his back by stealing mafia money.

Charley’s right, too, so soon, not only the police is after him but also sadistic mafia killer Molly (Joe Don Baker). Charley isn’t quite as doomed as you’d assume, though, for his unassuming demeanour hides a pretty effective sociopath with a clever plan to get away with his money, while getting rid of anybody posing a risk to him.

Generally, I’m not the biggest fan of Don Siegel, his films often not quite hitting the spot for me I’d want them to hit. However, there’s really little I could come up with to say against Charley Varrick. Well, there’s one rather embarrassing scene that suggests Walter Matthau to have the sexual magnetism of James Bond, but apart from that peculiar misstep I’ll just write off as a harmless symptom of the director’s inability to cope with female characters (something the rest of the film avoids by not including many women with roles large enough to demand actual characterisation to begin with, of which you can make what you wish), there’s nothing about Charley Varrick that isn’t a lean and decidedly mean crime film.

This film pushes the same buttons of enjoyment that Donald Westlake’s Parker novels did, with a bunch of decidedly unpleasant men fighting it out among another until the least pleasant of them wins in the end, a large part of the pleasure lying exactly in the fact how amoral the whole affair is, with neither Siegel nor Howard Rodman’s and Dean Riesner’s script (based on a novel by John Reese I haven’t read) attempting to make anyone involved look nicer or more heroic than anyone else. Crime, it turns out, is not a game involving the nice.

The film’s plot is pleasant pulpy, containing just the right amount of violence, and is filmed by Siegel in a tight yet laconic manner that isn’t at all interested discussing the ethics or deep psychological reasons of what’s happening on screen, while still finding space to give the characters more dimensions than “is a decidedly unsexy sociopath” or “is a decidedly unsexy psychopath”. The actors are doing the expected fine jobs too, Matthau giving his sociopath bit so well I’m a little disappointed he never got to play Parker, and Joe Don Baker visibly enjoying being the sadistic monster with the mock-polite first impression.

It all comes together quite perfectly, the film setting up a situation that seems ideal for another tale of doomed losers trying to make it big, yet using it instead for a tale about monsters trying to survive in a world filled with other monsters.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,crime,don siegel,walter matthau,joe don baker,andrew robinson

Three Films Make A Post: EVERY SECOND YOUR PULSE POUNDS THEY GROW FOOT BY INCREDIBLE FOOT!

The Pack (1977): By now, I’m quite sure that Robert Clouse’s films and my approval shall never meet beyond Gymkata. This is even the case with what should be a shoe-in as a movie to at least slightly disturb a guy like me who gets pretty nervous around larger dogs (I blame a certain Doberman of my past). Unfortunately, The Pack’s dogs never do end up making me nervous, or feel as threatening as they should, mostly because Clouse isn’t one for mood building in his direction at all. He’s pointing, he’s shooting, he’s keeping things in focus, but beyond that, I always get the impression from his films he just wasn’t that interested in them himself. That’s not much of a problem in a film as insane as Gymkata that isn’t hindered by a lack of directorial vision, but in a tepid little nature strikes back film like this, you really want someone behind the camera who works for his audience’s excitement.

But at least Joe Don Baker is in it playing, of all things, a marine biologist (don’t ask), so there’s that.

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959): This, on the other hand, is quite the thing, as macabre a 50s film as you’ll probably get to see, full of outrageous pulp ideas, and one of Edward L. Cahn’s most energetic directorial efforts.

Sure, the performances are somewhat mediocre, but who needs great thespian efforts in a film that features a most excellent shrunken head based curse and has no problems at all with throwing stuff like post-mortem decapitation, a living dead guy with stitched up lips whose bodily fluids contain more curare than blood, and another gentleman whose body belongs to a dead Amazonian tribesman and whose head is that of a mad anthropologist? This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call art.

A Dirty Carnival (2006): Yoo Ha’s gangster film mixes the traditions of classical US gangster movies made after the fall of the US studio system and of jitsuroku style yakuza films, aiming for its own kind of stylized hyperrealism. It’s a film that knows how many gangster movies its audience has probably already seen, yet somehow still manages to aim for and hit an audience’s emotions instead of the irony glands. Which I think is a particular achievement in a film that counts a director making a gangster movie among its cast, and therefore threatens to become much too meta and self-conscious for comfort. A part of the film does indeed concern itself with truth and fiction echoing one another, but it’s done quite intelligently and with so much care, this approach enriches the film as a tale instead of resulting in the empty poses of ironic distance.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,south korean movies,in short,horror,gangster,robert clouse,joe don baker,edward l. cahn,yoo ha

In short: Felony (1994)

A D.E.A. raid on a supposed drug house in New Orleans goes horribly wrong, and a good dozen of cops is blasted to high heaven by chewing-gum fan Cooper (David Warner) and his well-armed goons. Cooper is a rogue CIA operative who, together with his boss Taft (Lance Henriksen), has gone into the drug business to acquire enough money to free some operatives imprisoned in some unnamed South American country.

Unfortunately for Cooper and Taft, Cooper's rather impolitic slaughter has been filmed by TV reporter Bill Knight (Jeffrey Combs) and his Vietnam vet hippie buddy Robby (Patrick J. Gallagher). Bill, clearly not the brightest bulb in any chandelier, decides to not give the resulting video tape to the cops investigating the affair, Detectives Kincade (Leo Rossi) and Duke (Charles Napier).

This turns out to be something of a mistake, and soon enough the cops, Cooper and Taft and their men, as well as Cowboy spy "mediator" Donovan (Joe Don Baker) are all after Bill, some of them with rather murderous intent, others with more ambiguous ideas. Bill's only help is nurse Laura Bryant (Ashley Laurence), because we really needed at least one female character on our hero's side (otherwise, there's only Taft's evil girlfriend played by Corinna Everson to represent half of the human population), plus hey, it's Ashley Laurence.

But will that be enough for Bill to survive various shoot-outs, car-chases and double-crosses?

Ah, post Action International David A. Prior films are always something of a wonder to behold. Prior, once an utter weirdo director, had at this point in his career learned so much about the art of filmmaking he was perfectly able to just make a straightforward and cheap little action movie of the type that can never completely deny its cheapness but works so hard making the most out of what it's got it's impossible not to be at least a bit charmed by it.

That alone would be enough to recommend Prior's movies of this period (and really, most of his even cheaper Action International work too). However, it doesn't seem to have been enough for Prior himself, so Felony and its brethren not only feature the affordable amount of action but also scripts which are ever so slightly - or sometimes completely - skewed into the direction of the outré and the weird.

The script of Felony is full of Prior's typical curious mixture of just plain silliness (just try to make sense of what happened in Felony once the last act plot twists have made a mockery of sense and sensibility) and ironic self-consciousness that should really result in the sort of self-ironic winking nonsense I can't stand at all. In Prior's weirdness-experienced hands, though, what should be annoying turns charming with many a scene that is just as funny as it is fun.

Of course, given the low budget movie heaven that is Felony's cast, it's not a complete surprise that even the silliest line in the script is delivered either with scenery-chewing relish or just the right amount of self-consciousness. Everyone involved, from Combs over Laurence to Warner and Henriksen, obviously knows that much of the plot is utter nonsense and their characters aren't actually characters, yet still delves into the whole affair with a palpable sense of fun, projecting none of the bored "just cashing a cheque here, buddy" feelings you sometimes encounter in film's of Felony's price class.

As I always like to say about Prior movies: what's not to like?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,thriller,jeffrey combs,ashley laurence,leo rossi,charles napier,david warner,joe don baker,lance henriksen,david a. prior

On Exploder Button: The Outfit (1973)

Can there be a nicer way to return from a short hiatus than with a fine, generally underrated crime movie like John Flynn's The Outfit, with Robert Duvall playing Donald E. Westlake's/Richard Stark's Parker in the olden times when movie Parker wasn't allowed to be called by his name?

I don't think so, so click on over to my column and be convinced to agree with me there.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,john flynn,robert duvall,joe don baker,karen black,crime,other places