BRENDA STARR (1976)
Article 4402 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-25-2013
Directed by Mel Stuart
Featuring Jill St. John, Tabi Cooper, Sorrell Booke
Country: USA
What it is: Failed series pilot

Star reporter Brenda Starr investigates a voodoo cult that is extorting money from billionaires.

A series about a reporter looking into supernatural occurrences? Given the fact that I’m a big fan of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, I’m in no position to fault the basic premise here, and, truth be told, I don’t know if this series would have taken supernatural subjects on a regular basis or whether it was just the pilot that would have dealt with them. But one thing I will say – the Kolchak TV series and movies had sharp, crackling dialogue and interesting, well-defined characters. All this pilot really has going for it is the fact that Jill St. John is sexy as hell (which explains the gratuitous bath and bikini scenes) and that Victor Buono plays memorable characters with incredible ease; unfortunately, he wouldn’t have ended up a regular character in the series. The story does have an interesting twist or two (as well as some bad ones), there’s at least one memorable image in the series, but the direction is uninspired and the dialogue is weak and cliche-ridden. It’s seems pretty obvious to me why this wasn’t picked up as a series.

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978)
Article 4401 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-24-2013
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Featuring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Nazi thriller

An elderly Nazi hunter is contacted by a younger one concerning a Nazi plot in Paraguay. The older man dismisses it as a joke until the younger man is killed trying to pass on details of the plot. The Nazi hunter swings into action, trying to figure out why Dr. Josef Mengele is plotting to have 64 middle-aged men from around the world assassinated.

Practically every guide that discusses this movie gives away the fantastic content, and I’m willing to bet that you already know what it is. Nevertheless, for the sake of those who don’t already know, I’m not going to discuss it here. Why? Because the movie is structured like a mystery, and the nature of the fantastic content is one of the crowning revelations of that mystery. The movie is probably a lot more enjoyable if that plot element takes you by surprise at the appropriate moment in the story; I know that my foreknowledge of the revelation made the movie somewhat less fun. Of course, it’s not the fault of the movie that I knew one of the spoilers from the beginning. However, it does have a few other problems as well. The more I think about, the more far-fetched the plot appears, and in some ways, the characters played by both Oliver and Peck come across as stereotypes. Still, I admire the way that Olivier manages to overcome that problem by finding ways to make his character’s humanity shine through; Peck unfortunately succumbs to the stereotype, and ends up chewing the scenery, but I feel that he was grossly miscast here. There are bits of dialogue that are quite bad, and the child actor who plays multiple roles here is never convincing. On the plus side, parts of the mystery still do seem quite intriguing, and certain individual scenes work very well indeed. The cast also features other well-known actors, including a cameo by Michael Gough as one of the targets of the plot. And I take my hat off to John Dehner; he’s one of those actors I can usually spot immediately, but here, I didn’t even know which character was him until the end credits.

BLUE THUNDER (1983)
Article 4400 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-23-2013
Directed by John Badham
Featuring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark
Country: USA
What it is: Action thriller

A policeman who specializes in air surveillance is pegged to test a new experimental helicopter with the latest technology and capable of firing weapons. He stumbles across a conspiracy surrounding the helicopter, and finds he must stay alive long enough to provide proof of it.

The opening message in the movie claims that the technology on display in the movie already exists, which made me wonder why this movie would qualify as genre. However, there are two factors to consider: 1) the technology may exist for each specific aspect of the helicopter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have been combined in this form, and 2) movies don’t always tell the truth. So let’s assume the movie is indeed genre, and proceed from there.

I first encountered this movie via a trailer I saw in a movie theater. It showed the helicopter in question appearing over the horizon and then letting its weaponry loose on a bus filled with dummies, all of which are violently destroyed. I do have to admit that the trailer was quite effective, though it probably had for me the opposite effect that was intended; because I tend to dislike movies that so baldly exploit paranoid mind-sets, I had no desire to see the movie after seeing the trailer. Though I did eventually see the movie, I was surprised that the sequence from the trailer did not appear in the movie, though there is an equivalent sequence where the helicopter is demonstrated on a fake town full of cardboard people. Yet the thing that surprised me most from this watching was that within the movie, the helicopter is never used to threaten the general populace, as almost all the scenes involving it have it being flown by the hero of the story.

With this current viewing, I found myself once again thinking about this curious aspect of the story, and an interesting thought occurred to me. The story itself could have reduced the super-helicopter to a Gizmo Maguffin, as the main thrust of the plot involves a conspiracy surrounding the helicopter, and, with some shuffling of the plot elements, the whole movie could have been written without ever using the helicopter at all. Instead, the helicopter becomes the instrument by which the plot is uncovered and brought to light, which is certainly an unusual use for a Maguffin. This offbeat use of a Maguffin manages to alleviate a little some of my problems with the movie, which is sometimes slow, has some action sequences which are a little silly (especially having the hero’s girlfriend take a dangerous u-turn in traffic and going the wrong way down a one-way street for no better reason than she missed a turn-off), and has a story that makes use of an astonishing set of coincidences. Apparently, the original script had the hero flipping out and terrorizing people with the copter, and I suspect that the Vietnam subplot came from the original conception. All in all, I found the movie sporadically effective. The movie was dedicated to Warren Oates; this was his last movie.

BLOOD TIDE (1982)
Article 4394 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-17-2013
Directed by Richard Jefferies
Featuring James Earl Jones, Jose Ferrer, Lila Kedrova
Country: UK / Greece
What it is: Monster movie

A treasure hunter releases an ancient evil from an underground cavern on a Greek island.

This movie doesn’t have much of a reputation, yet I didn’t quite dislike it as much as some others do. The direction is indifferent, the script is rather muddled at times, and the level of monster action is low for its intended audience. However, I am partial to the Greek atmosphere of the movie, and there’s always something satisfying about hearing James Earl Jones’ voice in any context, even if having him quote from “Othello” constantly is too cute. I also like Jose Ferrer’s solid, underplayed performance as the mayor of the island. Still, there is something disappointing in a monster movie that can’t seem to find more than a fleeting glimpse of the monster, and it would have been better if they had saved the glimpse for the end of the movie rather than in the middle. The movie also has quite a few dead spots. Nevertheless, I did find a little to enjoy in the movie, and even though it does owe a little bit to JAWS, it’s hardly a clone of that movie.