We all need to survive

THE STEEL HELMET (1951)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The toughest, bravest, riskiest director of the 40's and 50's and beyond was Samuel Fuller, the equivalent of Martin Scorsese of a different era. From "Pickup on South Street" to "I Shot Jesse James," Fuller has always featured angry emotions exploding into violent fireworks. "The Steel Helmet" is one of the best war pictures ever made, an assured tale of the madness of war, using a more anti-American approach that was unusual in its day (by anti-American, I mean that heroism is not an issue in the film). I think only "Paths of Glory" could compare to what Fuller achieved during the 50's.

The famous opening shot establishes tension and surprise immediately. The opening credits are superimposed over a steel helmet with a bullet hole. At first, we assume it is another casualty of the Korean War. As it turns out, it is Sergeant Zack (Gene Evans), who is revealed to be alive as he climbs over a hill, still tied up and with a wounded leg. A supposed enemy arrives, barefoot and carrying a rifle. Zack pretends to be dead but he fails and, to our surprise, the enemy is a young South Korean kid (William Chun) with no intention to harm. The kid cuts Zack's hands free but all Zack can do is incorrectly call him a "gook" and gives him a nickname, Short Round (that's right Indiana Jones fans - this is where the name came from). Zack is not the apologetic kind but he lets the kid tag along as they look for a Buddhist temple that serves as the infantry's observation post.

Eventually, they come across a black medic, Cpl. Thompson (James Edwards, whom you may recognize from Kubrick's "The Killing"), whose own unit had been killed, and a wandering infantry unit headed by Lt. Driscoll (Steve Brodie). Zack hates Driscoll, mostly because Driscoll has no real field experience - Zack has Normandy experience where he saw real blood and guts. Nevertheless, they all head to the Buddhist Temple, ready to fight the Reds who had tortured and killed many American soldiers. Unfortunately, a sniper may be hiding in the temple. And it will take a lot for Zack to protect Short Round, whom he always commands to "eat rice" anytime an enemy combatant is near. Despite Zack's insolence and cynicism, Short Round places a Buddhist prayer on Zack's back shirt - the kid will do anything for the man. The soldiers are not as hesitant to protect the angry Zack but they all come to learn the value of human life. It takes longer for Zack who can't fathom why one soldier carries an organ along given to him by a priest. But his moment of cynicism arrives when a dead American soldier is seen by him as another corpse whom no one will care about. Chilling statement.

Parts of "The Steel Helmet" may sound like a sentimental war picture but it is far from it. This is a gutsy, humane film that places equal importance on every character regardless of race, religion or creed. Let's not forget that one member of this infantry is Japanese, Sgt. "Buddhahead" Tanaka (Richard Loo), who was once in those internment camps in World War II. There is of course the black medic Thompson, who is not above barking orders at Zack, and the fact that Zack does not react violently shows how far ahead Fuller was in his time - he dared to show racial tension without making it explicit. There is one honest scene where a captured Red questions Thompson about his race and the problems of equality in America, namely having to sit in the back of the bus. In war, Thompson may be treated equally amongst other soldiers, but the real war to fight was back home. Scenes like this were barely common in movies of the 50's, and the fact that Fuller was willing to detail the hypocrisies of America in a war film is remarkable.

For pure action and moments of true terror, no one could do it better than Samuel Fuller. The film was a low-budget flick from Lipperton studios, and one can see that studio shooting with foggy landscapes and a set with the statue of Buddha overseeing all was primary in getting the film on-budget (location shooting was expensive). But the film's roughness and crudeness adds a lot to the film, depicting the raw nature of war and the fragility of command when the enemy was so near. Not one of these soldiers ever appears to be truly heroic or stand for anything - even Thompson admits that he better get paid for his services. But it is the subtle emotional relationship between Zack and Short Round that provides the heart for "The Steel Helmet." The message seems to be that no matter who you are or where you came from, a war is still a war and we all need to survive.

A Deliberate "Slice" of Life

UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(On Jerry's List of Greatest Films of all Time)

Luis Bunuel's shockingly audacious triumph, "Un Chien Andalou," is one of the first Surrealist films - it is full of disturbing images, odd juxtapositions, and enough dream-like imagery to give Sigmund Freud many sleepless nights. It is the very definition of Surrealism and it put Bunuel on the map as one of our greatest film directors.

Dream-like imagery is putting it mildly - the whole film is a nightmare where connections do not exist and nothing makes literal sense. Bunuel's film (co-created by Salvador Dali) may seem like it is taking place in our dreams or in some other planet, but we can easily deduce that it takes place on planet Earth. There are recognizable visual elements: the moon, the Parisian streets, pianos, donkeys, bicycles, etc. There are also physical actions and acts of human savagery that could possibly happen, such as an attempted rape, the slitting of an eyeball with a razor (the most famous image from the film), a severed hand being poked by passerby, two corpses in a beach and dead donkeys. But then it is the juxtaposition of such recognizable elements that can cause confusion such as a woman's armpit hair replacing a man's mouth, a cloud slicing its way across the moon, ants crawling out of a man's hand (a Dali invention), a piano being dragged with two priests and the aforementioned donkeys - you get the picture. Or maybe you don't.

Luis Bunuel's tantalizing, striking film is not meant to make sense and it never will. The entire running time is 17 minutes and, in that short amount of time, Bunuel and Dali manage to create a world filled with tragedy, oblique humor, apathy and a slight sense of compassion. The woman we see in the opening shot who has her eye slit open (Simone Mareuil), reappears in the next shot, disturbed by someone's death and laying the clothes he had on her bed. The Young Man dressed in a nun's habit (Pierre Batcheff) suddenly falls and perhaps dies (the same Young Man that causes the woman's shock), reappearing later on as a sexually aggressive man who delights in witnessing the death of a woman on the street struck by a car. There is also a shot of breasts reimagined as someone's anus, and the repeated shot of a striped box (perhaps as famous as that mysterious box in Bunuel's masterpiece, "Belle De Jour").

I first saw "Un Chien Andalou" at the Biograph in New York in 1983 - it was a retrospective in honor of Bunuel who died that year. Every other time I've seen the film in a theater, the opening scene of the sliced eyeball caused the same reaction in the audience - a collective "ugh" moment and certainly completely unexpected by first-time viewers. I do not want to sound pretentious but "Un Chien Andalou" may in fact be the first Surreal film made about resurrection, perhaps tinged with hope. When all is said and done, if it is all a nightmare inside people's heads and about our unconscious mind, we will wake up and experience reality when it is over. Or maybe not. Maybe the film has no real purpose other than to wake us up from our doldrums - to feel free to imagine beyond our conscious mind. Or maybe not.  

Absurdist Counter-Cultural 60's satire

GREETINGS (1968)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Brian De Palma's "Greetings" is a very loose, informal, occasionally slow-paced, erratic piece of nonsense. I am not sure I have it all figured it out and maybe I am not supposed to but it is intermittently enjoyable and fascinating, despite being a little uneven.

Three chums are trying to work out their resistance to fighting in the Vietnam War. In scenes that drag on for far too long, Paul, Jon and Lloyd act out the dialogue they will use to avoid the draft. They restlessly rehearse their act, and I could not take much more of it after ten minutes. Eventually, the trio go their separate ways and explore their own disillusionment in an era where young people tried to fit into society somehow. Jon Rubin (Robert De Niro) is curious about sex books and pornography and attempts to make a porn with an eager shoplifter (Rutanya Alda) who has tried to steal books (Jon pays for the books, amazed by her thievery). The talkative Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) works at the bookstore and believes there was a conspiracy in the murder of John F. Kennedy. He is so obsessed that he has his sleepy, naked girlfriend wear a shirt with marked entry and exiting bullet holes and explains, to us, how he is breaking the case wide open. Meanwhile, a demure Paul (Jonathan Warden) joins a computer dating service where he hopes to have sex on a string of first dates, and he just barely accomplishes that goal.

"Greetings" is not half as good as the amazingly powerful and richly humorous sequel, "Hi, Mom!" (also directed by De Palma) nor does it hit its satirical targets as deftly as say Robert Downey's "Putney Swope." Still, there are plenty of humorous gags (I love the composition of the woman in the apartment window as Jon explains to the shoplifter how he wants her to perform a striptease act in a window for a supposed art show), the various computer dates, and an early performance by De Niro who is frequently hilarious especially when he chooses to emulate a Republican and fight the good fight in Vietnam. "Greetings" is essential viewing as a very 1960's counter-cultural satire and it is a shame that De Palma, with the exception of "Hi, Mom!," never explored such political issues with potent humor and absurdity again. 

A 50's melodrama and superhero hodgepodge

RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (1966)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

In what is clearly an even funnier title than Ray Dennis Steckler's most infamous film, "The Incredible Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies," "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" has got to be the most ridiculous piece of trash ever recorded on celluloid. It is so amateurishly and shoddily made that you would swear it was a parody, but the director has insisted that that was not the case from the get go.

The first few scenes have a 50's cheap melodrama vibe where we witness an anonymous woman being pursued by three thieves out for a thrill. One of the thieves carries a chain, another carries a hammer, and another gives a wicked, nonstop laugh. They kill the girl, take her purse, and that is about it. So far, it is silly but it has some measure of momentum (though the perky musical score doesn't help matters). Then we are shown what looks like documentary footage of a rock singer named Lonnie Lord's (Vin Saxon) who signs autographs and carries a guitar with him wherever he goes, in the hopes of playing for anybody, anywhere, at anytime. This includes barbecues where the chef wears an Oscar Myer apron! And on the beach where a full band seems to perform when he sings, yet nobody is around for the instrumentation we hear on the soundtrack (the whole film was post-dubbed and it shows).

Moving along to the bare minimum of a story, Lonnie's girlfriend CB Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt) is being harassed on the phone by someone who calls three times, asks for her name, and then hangs up. Who is it? It turns out it is one of those hooligans from the opening sequence who is looking for a thrill and searches her name randomly in a phone book! In the next scene, she is kidnapped by those hooligans! They hopefully had a stop in between at the Korova Milkbar.

Before things can get any worse, Lonnie and his girlfriend's gardener partner team up and dress up in costume as Rat Phink and Boo Boo, a carbon copy of Batman and Robin! I am serious! Apparently, director Steckler didn't like the first 40 minutes of footage he shot, which was supposed to be a gritty crime film, so he chose to make it into a superhero film! Ouch! And we also get a Harold Lloyd lookalike and a gorilla named Kogar played by Kogar! We also hear songs like "You Is a Rat Fink" (my favorite) "Runnin' Wild," "I Stand Alone," and "Go Go Party," which are the the only semi-dazzling highlights.

It isn't that the film is bad as much as it has nothing to offer. At least Steckler's first film, "The Incredible Strange Creatures, etc." had a nervous energy and real style. This film looks to have been made by eight-year-olds in their own backyard! Maybe that was the point but there are funnier bad movies than this one.

Random shootings in San Francisco

THE SNIPER (1952)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Aside from two murders committed by a mentally unbalanced man with a handy rifle, "The Sniper" is largely a white bread thriller - meaning that it is soft and fluffy and it tries to be a polemic but fails to ignite or cause much of a stir.

Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz) is a loner, living in a San Francisco boarding house and working as a cleaner delivery man. He is trying to work through his murderous impulses which includes unpacking an army rifle with a scope and aiming at pedestrians from his bedroom window. His homicidal urges are brought on by loose women who sing in bars or appear to be prostituting themselves, that is making themselves available to any man after being dumped. It is implied, through some ludicrously histrionic acting, that he rejects such women so he has to kill them (he turns away in disgust when seeing a kissing couple on a bench). Marie Windsor is a bar pianist who likes Miller because he delivers her clean dresses and will make last-minute deliveries for her - however, she has no romantic interest in him which obviously anger him.

50 percent of "The Sniper" centers on Miller rejected, bullied and scolded by society - he can't even make young kids playing ball happy when he tosses the ball back to them. This is a man who can't catch a break and can't make time with his vacationing therapist. Miller is a ball of fury and hate and takes it out on women, not men or children. One particularly effective scene has Miller throwing a baseball at a circus performer where she falls in a small pool if he hits his target - after he keeps hitting the target, he starts throwing the baseball at the net with such uncontrollable fury that you will recoil. If only the movie had more moments like that.

But the film veers off course to provide insight into why Miller kills - big mistake. "The Sniper" was released in 1952 and so we are still dealing with Hays Code implemented pictures where random acts of violence must be explicated by a serviceable police psychiatrist (Richard Kiley) and an older police detective, Lt. Kafka (Adolphe Menjou), who wants to solve this case or else he will be back on the beat. So much time is devoted to these characters that you feel you are watching a high-profile episode of "Dragnet."

After all is said and done, "The Sniper" lacks grit and purpose. Arthur Franz may overdo the psychotic trauma of this ex-soldier so much that you wonder why nobody suspects him from the start (his crying fits strike the wrong chord of sympathy). It is a pristine B picture, often well-mounted by director Edward Dmytryk ("The Caine Mutiny"), but the screenplay loses focus, aiming for preachiness rather than an amoral lurid melodrama that would have given it a pulpy punch. I wanted to learn more about Miller's impulses, his behavior towards women - in the end, we are told that the police thinks the sniper might be a registered sex offender. Seems like Miller has bigger issues beyond sex.

Groucho Marx reading from cue cards

SKIDOO (1968)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When you have a top-notch director like Otto Preminger and a great, able comic cast that includes Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx and Carol Channing, you should expect fireworks. You expect at least a good comedy with a few laughs. You don't expect a haphazard effrontery to the comedy genre like "Skidoo," which seems to be two different movies running at once. It is a train wreck, and just as unwatchable.

The movie begins with a shot of a TV set where two different channels being switched back and forth - one is some live courtroom trial and the other is some John Wayne movie. Jackie Gleason is a retired mobster (do they get to retire?) and Carol Channing is the peroxide, free-loving wife, and they keep switching channels with their remotes. And this scene goes on for an eternity. And there is the flower-child daughter who is dating a hippie. And we get a cliched body-painting scene (though it is far more egregious in "The Swinger"). Finally, we are back to the flimsy plot which has Gleason going to Alcatraz so he can bump off his best friend, also a mobster and a snitch (Mickey Rooney).

Added to this strange amalgam of genres is Groucho Marx as a mob boss named "God"; Frankie Avalon as a mobster who runs into these hippies; Frank Gorshin as some inmate at Alcatraz; a makeshift hot-air balloon; and nothing short of three psychedelic LSD montages (one in slow-motion), including the Green Bay Packers playing football with their bare asses showing!

"Skidoo" is so flatly directed and staged that it becomes unbearable to sit through, no matter how absurd is the notion of hippies and gangsters in the same movie. Still, even if it doesn't gel, the very absurdity of it all could have wrung some laughs. Aside from the opening title theme song sung by Channing at the end, there are no laughs and not one moment that made me remotely chuckle. The late director Preminger claimed that since he had done LSD, he could make the movie. Well, he made something that can be called anything but a movie. It is a monumental disaster. You know it is a bad movie when Groucho Marx seems to be reading from cue cards.

Hiding Out in Welles' masks

MR. ARKADIN (1955)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Orson Welles had never been lucky when it came to making films. After "Ctizen Kane," Welles had his films taken away from him, usually resulting in drastic re-editing and destroyed footage. "Magnificent Ambersons" is certainly proof of this, and so is "Mr. Arkadin," a film project that took four years to make. When it was finally released, it barely resembled the original product.

The story deals with a certain Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles), a wealthy tycoon who is suffering from amnesia. He is found by a Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), a con-man hired by Arkadin to do a confidential report. The report is to be on Arkadin, who has no memory of what has happened to him in the last twenty years since establishing his fortune. Van Stratten has been looking for Arkadin since hearing his name and his association with fortune from a dying man's last breath (his partner in crime, Mily played by Patricia Medina). He finds Arkadin through his daughter, Raina (Paola Mori), and they fall in love ever so briefly until he meets Arkadin at a masquerade. Once Van Stratten begins his search for Arkadin's secrets, he finds a past involving a white girl slavery ring, a former Professor who has a flea circus, and a Jakob Zouk (Akim Tamiroff) who knows more than he lets on aware that his knowledge of Arkadin puts him in harm's way. In a desperate search for truth to possibly blackmail the millionaire, Van Stratten travels from Paris to Spain and at every stop, Arkadin miraculously appears along with his personal secretaries and his spy network. Is Arkadin only pretending he has amnesia or is he trying to clear his name for his daughter's sake and for the undergoing intelligence check by the United States Army?

"Mr. Arkadin" bears all the trademarks of Welles's style. We have the shadowy, low-angle shots, the frenetic editing giving way to moments where time slows down, the overlapping of sounds and so on. Unfortunately, the English version I have seen of "Mr. Arkadin" (reportedly, four different versions exist) has been butchered badly - clear evidence of tampering and lack of the necessary budget to complete the film. Some shots are bleached out and others have asynchronous sound which is quite distracting. Supposedly Welles had wanted the film to be structured as flashbacks with Van Stratten telling his story of Arkadin to Jacob Zouk, but that version was abandoned in favor of something more linear (similar film butchery occurred with "Touch of Evil"). This version, however, makes little sense and sometimes the sound is so inaudible that it is difficult to grasp what is happening.

Robert Arden's performance has been criticized as lacking any wit or style but I do not think he was meant to be shown as more clever or charismatic than he is. Arden finds the right tone of disgruntled allure - a man every bit as corrupt as Arkadin (he even lets his girlfriend, Mily, meet with Arkadin alone!) It is Mori (Welles''s wife at the time) who is a complete bore to watch - there is little grace or mystery in the character which one can attribute to the script. Welles himself uses grandiloquent speech patterns to hide the true self from Arkadin, but there is little or no trace of humanity in the character. Welles looks great and does a fine job of showing how he covers up his past indiscretions and deceits by literally wearing masks. Still, it is not enough to disguise the fact that the character is a cipher, and some of Welles's mannered gestures and body language might seem more appropriate in a play, not a film. Some films work even when dealing with a cipher, a man with no past (like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name from those spaghetti westerns) but some degree of an intriguing personality or behavioral aspects are needed to make up for it. Welles does a bang-up makeup job, and that is about it.

"Mr. Arkadin" succeeds as a curio, and for Welles's fans, it is worthwhile viewing. To the rest of us, it is one of those losses, post-"Citizen Kane," that gives scant evidence of Welles's genius behind and in front of the camera.