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Earthquake (1974)
Don't get on an elevator if you find yourself in an earthquake.
This is an OK disaster flick with the requisite cast of big stars and by-the-numbers second-rate soap opera subplots meant to flesh out the characters and to garner audience sympathy for them as they navigate the Big One That Destroyed L. A. The special effects, acting, and direction all are professionally executed, and the disaster set-pieces are suitably shocking. I did not see this in theaters, so I can't comment on Sensurround. The most memorable, and possibly gruesome, scene occurs when a number of panicked people unwisely board an elevator in a skyscraper in a desperate attempt to escape the cataclysm; Earthquake Survival 101 teaches that avoiding elevators is at the top of the lesson list. The "splatter" special effect accompanying this scene has been justly mocked.
Among the cast, you have Charlton Heston with his inevitable cool-guy shades, Ava Gardner as his pill-popping and nagging wife, Lorne Greene (though only seven years older in real life) as her dad and the Heston character's boss, Geneviève Bujold as Heston's extramarital love interest, George Kennedy (are there any disaster movies from the '70s WITHOUT George Kennedy?) as a disgruntled but noble cop, Marjoe Gortner as a psycho creep with a big gun, Victoria Principal (long before "Dallas") as the Afro-coiffed woman he's stalking, and Richard Roundtree, on loan from the "Shaft" franchise, as an Evel Knievel-type motorcycle daredevil. The standout is Marjoe as a totally hatable piece of slime. As for Bujold, after breaking through as Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's ill-fated second wife, in 1969's "Anne of the Thousand Days," she seemed never to find any significant roles suitable to her talent.
The film isn't bad overall, but on the whole, if I want to watch an earthquake disaster movie, I'd pick 1936's "San Francisco," directed W. S. Van Dyke, and with a great cast: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt, and the superb character actress Jessie Ralph. It depicts the months leading up to and aftermath of the 1906 quake that practically destroyed that city. It's soapy, too, but damned entertaining, and the earthquake effects are top-notch considering it was released 38 years BEFORE this movie.
Suspicion: Four O'Clock (1957)
Hitch proves again how he earned the title "master of suspense."
Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers in the 1950s, and this debut episode of the anthology series "Suspicion" is further evidence of that. How he had time to crank out high-quality feature films at a rate of one about every 8 or 9 months, host his own TV anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (for which he also directed a number of episodes), AND do side projects such as this one, I'll never know.
The story is straightforward: E. G. Marshall (in the same year he appeared as Juror Number 4 in Sidney Lumet's "Twelve Angry Men") portrays Paul Steppe, a nerdy and socially awkward watch repairman who suspects his wife Fran (Nancy Kelly) of cheating on him, so he's decided to kill her and the man Paul believes is her lover. But other circumstances intervene and Paul finds that he is trapped by his own elaborately-planned plot, and the clocks (several of them) tick away mercilessly and relentlessly away as Paul tries desperately to extricate himself. Hitchcock was known as the master of suspense and this episode of "Suspicion" is superb confirmation of that.
Dragnet 1967: The Big Explosion (1967)
The cops confront far-right hatred and domestic terrorism in an episode as relevant now as when it was first broadcast.
Friday and Gannon are detailed to track down a missing cache of dynamite, burglarized from a construction site earlier. After sleuthing, they discover the explosives are in the possession of a hate-filled neo-Nazi planning to blow up an elementary school because it has been recently racially integrated. The fascist creep in their custody won't talk. Will the detectives be able to prevent the miniature Holocaust this scum has planned?
The episode followed immediately on the heels of the "Dragnet" reboot the previous week, when after an eight-year hiatus the series returned to the air with the legendary "Blue Boy" episode (official title: "The LSD Story"), exploring the burgeoning '60s counterculture and its signature drug of choice. It was clear that Jack Webb wasn't going to shy away from hot-topic themes in the new version of "Dragnet."
Given that one U. S. political party has now mainstreamed far-right-wing hatred, lies, demagoguery, and the potential for large-scale violence as acceptable political expression, this episode is as relevant as ever.
The Fugitive: The Other Side of the Mountain (1963)
Sandy Dennis a stand-out as a backwoods mountain girl.
The third episode of the series finds Dr. Kimble washing up in a washed-up hamlet, a coal-mining town where the coal-mining business has died. Local bullies pick a fight with him in the one thriving business in town, the local bar; when the cops arrive, naturally they try to arrest the stranger. They are soon distracted, and Kimble slips away, finding refuge in the ramshackle hovel where a rough-hewn but beautiful young girl (Sandy Dennis) lives with her "grams." Lt. Gerard has tracked Kimble to this God-forsaken place, and, enlisting the local constabulary, begins hunting Kimble through abandoned (and dangerous, because of frequent and sudden mine collapses) mine shafts. The independent-minded young lady decides to help Kimble escape. One of the best scenes comes when she confronts one of the local ne'er-do-wells (played by Frank Sutton, best known as the long-suffering Sgt. Vince Carter on "Gomer Pyle, USMC), who had been deputized by the sheriff to aid in the manhunt for Kimble, and cleverly tells off this slimebag (who is always hitting on her).
Seven Days in May (1964)
FSkillful and still timely second installment in John Frankenheimer's '60s "paranoia trilogy"
This film, scripted by "Twilight Zone" creator/showrunner Rod Sterling from Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey's eponymous 1962 novel, takes place in the then-near future, approximately 1970. Lyman Jordan (Fredric March), the U. S. president, has negotiated a mutual nuclear arms reduction treaty with the U. S. S. R., counting on the nation's war-weariness and fear of nuclear holocaust to ensure its success. Though the treaty has been ratified by the Senate and is due to be implemented in early July, it has triggered a large-scale backlash and predictable accusations of treason and betrayal against Lyman emanating from the "better-dead-than-Red" far right commentariat. Lyman's approval rating has fallen to 29% as unemployment has climbed (a result of layoffs in defense-contractor-related companies) and fears have mounted, fed by right-wing media, that the Soviets are not to be trusted and that the Americans, as one character puts it, are "being played for suckers."
The film was made in the milieu of the widespread paranoia arising from the Cold War between the superpowers, and had real-world bona fides in that much of the elite military brass did not trust civilian politicians to safeguard the security of the nation in the face of the perceived Communist threat. Gen. Edwin Walker, a reactionary ideologue who disseminated literature from the rabidly right-wing John Birch Society to his officers and troops, was a popular figure in many circles, seen by some as a messianic savior against weak-willed politicians who were insufficiently "tough" on
Communism. Walker was eventually forced out of the military after crossing too many lines, but continued to command large audiences receptive to his views. It is said that President Kennedy, concerned about authoritarian tendencies in the top brass at the Pentagon, wanted the movie made, and it was filmed during his administration in 1963, then released in early 1964, less than three months after he was murdered in Dallas. The messianic counterpart to Walker in the film is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James M. Scott (Burt Lancaster), who makes no secret of his disdain for the treaty and his contempt for President Lyman.
After an opening sequence depicting a violent clash between pro- and anti-Lyman demonstrators at the White House gates, the plot unfolds with the taut and deft efficiency characteristic of Frankenheimer's political thrillers. Marine Col. "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas), the director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, who oversees the staff of the Pentagon drawn from all four primary military branches and reports directly to the Gen. Scott, stumbles across massive evidence of a plot for a military coup d'état to take down the President and install Scott in his place, with the conspirators communicating to one another in code (disguised as a Triple Crown racing betting pool). Casey then has to persuade the President and his top aides and confidants, all of them initially highly skeptical, that the plot is afoot and that there are only days to prevent it from succeeding.
A secret military base whose existence has been kept from the president, influential right-wing civilians colluding with the coup plotters, a female Washington socialite (Ava Gardner) who has had her share of affairs with men in sensitive positions of power, and the President's top brain trust (including George MacReady as the Secretary of the Treasury and in-house intellectual, Martin Balsam as the President's chief of staff, and Edmond O'Brien as a booze-soaked Southern senator and close pal of the President) all figure into the plot. John Houseman, already in his 60s but making his (uncredited) film debut here, has a good if brief turn as an untrustworthy admiral, and Colette Jackson, who died in 1969 at the age of only 35, has a highly entertaining if brief role as a boozy good-time girl in a bar in the West Texas desert. O'Brien, a fine actor in so many other movies, unfortunately does not come off well here, his Southern accent and hard-drinking shenanigans sounding and looking more silly than convincing, but the other principles- Lancaster, Douglas, March, Gardner, and the rest, are quite good. Kirk Douglas, as the upright military man who finds himself compelled to act as the turncoat against the chief plotter, a man he has worked under and admired for years, is the best of a very good group. His character absorbs many insults and slights (and one hard slap in the face) from various characters in the film as he goes about doing work he finds dirty and distasteful to stop the plot against the President. At the end, after stoically taking this abuse from various parties for days, he is compelled to speak his mind, and does so, calmly but forcefully, in a way the audience will find cathartic and satisfying.
Given the disgraceful recent history of this nation, and particularly one of the two major political parties' actions to sabotage voting and democratic process, or at least to enable such things (this is being written in summer 2021, little more than six months after the treasonous attempt to sabotage the 2020 presidential election by partisans of the current president's predecessor), this movies is as relevant now as it was when first released 57 1/2 years ago.
The Interpreter (2005)
Implausible political thriller with troubling, if not offensive, White Savior undercurrent.
After watching this on Netflix recently (we both love Kidman, and my wife likes Sean Penn, about whom I have decidedly mixed feelings), I scanned some of the reviews here in IMDB and was surprised (and somewhat dismayed) that even the negative ones did not comment on the outlandish White Savior theme underlying this rather formulaic film.
I won't go into a lot of detail- including skipping discussion of the many absurdly implausible plot-points in this over-long, self-important movie- except to say that Kidman is a UN-based translator and Penn is a US Secret Service agent assigned to protect a visiting sub-Saharan African head of state. Both live in spacious Manhattan apartments generally unavailable to anyone who is not in the socioeconomic top tier, but that's film-artistic license, I guess. As the story progresses, we learn that said visiting head of state, once an idealistic revolutionary, has become a murderous despot whose rule is based on mountains of blood and bones and ethnic genocide. We learn that Kidman's character has more personal interest in the fate of this monster than the average UN interpreter, and that Penn is the classic walking cliché of the cop-carrying-a-torch for a deceased loved one- i.e., two wounded souls who find each other, a trope NEVER explored in second- and third-rate movies before, except for the umpteen million where it HAS been explored.
The truly offensive part is that a leader of the resistance to the Amin-like despot is, of course, a conventionally attractive white character, and that the Black characters in the movie are more or less expendable and interchangeable props in the two main narrative threads- liberation in a Third World country from a despot and love between two wounded souls.
This may have flown in 2005 but it is hard, thank God, to believe this film would have any sort of credibility now.
The Angry Breed (1968)
James MacArthur breaks bad in a silly biker movie.
James MacArthur (classic actress Helen Hayes's adoptive son) worked hard to shed his squeaky-clean Mouseketeer image from his '50s childhood acting days. In 1961 episode "Death for Sale," of "The Untouchables," he plays a clean-cut, preppy, baby-faced college student who is in reality the mastermind of an opioid-smuggling and -selling conspiracy. In the 1967 counterculture-exploitation flick "The Love-Ins," James turns up as an alternative newspaper journalist who becomes disillusioned by the hippie cult he has helped build around a Timothy Leary-like guru to the hippies (Richard Todd). In this trashy film, substandard even by the low bar of the biker-exploitation flick, James is the alpha male of a gang of neo-Nazi bikers, with a sideline in acting as an extra in Hollywood productions. This film has a lot of potential- duplicitous Hollywood film execs, innocent-blonde-in-peril, the menace of LSD, the heroic Vietnam War vet, and the aforementioned bikers, who look completely over-the-top-campy when dressed in costumes for a Halloween party. Veteran comedian Jan Murray turns up as a particularly despicable sleazebag. Yet despite the presence of quality acting talent- Murray, MacArthur, William Windom, Jan Serling, inter alia- it is boring and silly beyond belief. Fortunately, James would go the same year to his long-term TV role as "Dano" Williams, second in command to Steve McGarrett of the eponymous "Hawaii Five-O," and his restrained actor would serve as a welcome counterpoint to Jack Lord's hammy scowling and grimacing.
Horrible Bosses (2011)
How on God's green Earth does anyone think this smirky, sneering stinker is any good?
This movie's popularity may be a barometer of the decline in standards and cinematic intelligence of the current viewing audience. I'll summarize it as quickly as I can: Three guys (all white, privileged, cis-het males) hate their horrible bosses- a sadistic control freak, an incompetent cokehead daddy's boy, and a nymphomaniac dentist- and plan ways to give the bosses their comeuppance.
If you like vulgar, stale gags, clumsily-delivered unfunny dialogue and jokes meant to be funny, gratuitous violence, and pointless mayhem (I don't mind mayhem in movies, but here the jokes go nowhere), this is the movie for you.
Probably the most offensive element of this despicable mess of a movie is the deployment of the het-male ego-fantasy that a good-looking, competent professional woman (in this case, Jennifer Aniston as the dentist) wants nothing more than to get into his pants. And considering the absolute mediocrity, in all ways, of the male dental assistant she keeps attempting to assault sexually, the set-up is ludicrous, except for the beer-guzzling, baseball cap-wearing frat-bro types who fantasize exactly this kind of thing. Blecccch.
The Honeymooners: The Deciding Vote (1955)
Karma is real, and it has a name: Ralph Kramden.
This superb episode epitomizes why this show was, and is, so great, and why the humor has held up two thirds of a century later. Ralph Kramden, ever-dreaming, frequently blowhard everyman, sees his hopes and dreams shattered by his own uncontrollable emotions and resulting rash actions. In this case, his desire for the status and perks of convention manager for the Raccoon Lodge's upcoming convention is threatened by, what else, another fight with his best pal, Ed Norton, resulting from a dust-up over a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately for
Ralph, Ed holds the deciding vote at the lodge's election for convention manager.
As always, Gleason is terrific, the boisterous boy barely grown-up in big boy clothes, acting alternately the ebullient winner, the sulking loser nursing resentment over a perceived betrayal, the enraged man exploding with irrational anger- leading to irrational, and ultimately self-defeating, actions. And Carney is right there with him, as always the perfect foil for Ralph's cascading emotions. And of course, Audrey Meadows is impeccable as Ralph's long-suffering, wise, and stoic wife Alice. Also a nice turn in a bit part by George Petrie, veteran character actor whose 14 appearances in the one-season run of the stand-alone "Honeymooners" sitcom (as opposed to the recurring skits in Gleason's various comedy-variety shows through the years) was the record for any actor besides the core four performers.
The Twilight Zone: Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room (1960)
Perfect role for Joe Mantell, one of the great unheralded character actors.
Joe Mantell (1915-2010) was one of the finest American character actors of the latter half of the 20th century. He played Angie, the title character's sidekick, in both the teleplay (1953) and big-screen (1955) versions of "Marty," a runty but likable guy always looking for his big strapping pals to give him direction and purpose. In a first-season episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," he plays a grocer who, in the midst of a neighborhood missing-person mystery (an abusive husband has gone missing and his wife has shown an uncharacteristic cheerfulness in his absence), comes to realize his own wife has cheated on him.
In this TZ episode, Mantell is two-bit hold-up thug Jackie Rhoades, a man literally scared of his own shadow, or at least his own reflection in a mirror. He gnaws his fingernails the way a pit bull chews a raw bone. When his gangster boss (William D. Gordon) gives him a job to do that will involve murder, Jackie balks, but is too scared to stand up to the smooth, sinister alpha male. What ensues is classic TZ: a man caught between his worse and better selves. As Jackie wrestles with his conscience, in the form of his own self-confident alter ego in the looking glass, the audience gets a full tour of a man whose delusions and fears have led to a life-time of regrets, bad decisions, and, well, grubby four-dollar hotel rooms. While the outcome is somewhat predictable, it is nonetheless gratifying. And Mantell is simply terrific.
Mantell reappeared 3 years later in "Steel," a fifth (final) season episode of the original TZ, as the sidekick of the title character (Lee Marvin, also superb), both down-and-out yet noble, relatable dreamers in a future world where human competitive boxing is banned and robots do the task instead. Mantell also played Walsh, one of J.J. "Jake" Gittes's private eye colleagues, in the neo-noir classic "Chinatown" (1974). As Walsh, Mantell delivers the unforgettable final line of dialogue to the stunned and angry Jake. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen that unmissable movie.
Naked City: Beyond Truth (1959)
Did the wrong man serve time for manslaughter? Halloran confronts a moral dilemma.
A year after his release from prison after serving a term for vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving, Arnold Fleischman (Martin Balsam, one of the finest American character actors of the latter half of the 20th century) has a recurring PTSD-like nightmare in which he yells at his friend, Max (Gerald Price), to look out while Max is apparently driving Arnold's car. Arnold's wife, Betty, is convinced that her husband has been the victim of gross injustice and that it was in fact Max who was at the wheel when a young girl was killed.
Betty, over her husband's objections, will not let it go, and takes her concerns to the NYPD, where Det. Lt. Parker (Horace McMahon) hands the case off to Det. Halloran (James Franciscus), who agrees to re-investigate the case on his own off-time. With the help of his colleague Det. Arcaro (Harry Bellaver), Halloran interviews the bartender (who witnessed the drunken party Arnold and Max attended that night and observed them leaving together), Max's ex-wife, and Max himself, who is in complete denial about his role in the tragedy and insists that the right man went to prison.
After gathering this evidence, Halloran talks to Arnold himself, who gives the young detective an answer that surprises and dismays him. Did Halloran do the right thing? Did Arnold?
Trivia note: Balsam won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1966 (for 1965 films) as the more-responsible elder brother of free spirit Murray Burns (Jason Robards) in the film version of "A Thousand Clowns." Balsam's character was named Arnold Burns.
Woman on the Run (1950)
Something happened to Frank Johnson: he witnessed a murder. Will something worse happen to him before his wife can find him?
This compact, nifty noir was made by an independent (and short-lived) production company with Ann Sheridan, looking to revive her flagging career, in the lead, directed by the versatile and underrated Norman Foster. The set-up is Hitchcockian on steroids: an innocent man, Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott), happens upon a gangland killing while walking his dog one night; the police assigned to the case who are supposed to 'protect' him are far from reassuring; man goes on the lam. Disappearing 10 minutes into the picture, we won't see him again until near the end, as the story reaches its white-knuckle denouement.
The setting and scenery for this film is ambrosia to any San Francisco-phile (including yours truly). We see Market St., North Beach (the Sts. Peter and Paul Church at the north end of Washington Square is clearly visible in one scene in all its Gothic twin-tower glory), Fisherman's Wharf, the Ferry Building, Chinatown, and the Civic Center, to name a few. We follow Eleanor Johnson (Sheridan) as she dodges the police in search of her husband, aided (if that's the word) and intermittently nettled by a tabloid reporter named Dan "Danny Boy" Leggett (Dennis O'Keefe) who offers the cash-strapped Johnsons a hefty sum of money, ostensibly for exclusive rights to the story for his newspaper. As the movie progresses we come to realize that the bluff and gregarious "Danny Boy" may have a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with journalistic professionalism.
The cop in charge of the investigation, Inspector Ferris of the S.F.P.D. (Robert Keith; in naming him after a hair-raising amusement park ride, the screenwriters were not doing so at random), is a piece of work himself. A sunken-eyed, squawk-voiced constabulary martinet, Ferris is ruthless in his tactics, treating both Eleanor and her evanescing husband as if they were criminals. He is harshly insulting toward Eleanor at several points, callously nonchalant about the risk Frank is taking if he testifies against gangland professionals, and engages in tactics designed to coerce the health-compromised Frank out of hiding- tactics that were probably disallowed by actual police departments in 1950, let alone 2020. But the beautiful complexity of the film is such that even Ferris is not a complete monster- he loves dogs, and is affectionate with Eleanor and Frank's canine companion (a charmer himself, a Border collie called Rembrandt- what else).
And the Johnsons? A typical married couple, if by "typical" you mean locked in a relationship of mutual misunderstanding, petty grudges, and failed communication. Frank is an artist and a drifter, stubborn and principled and perpetually broke, and Eleanor is harboring years of resentments. Each wrongly suspects that the other doesn't love or care about him or her. They both come to the realization that they do love and care for each other, but will the realization come too late to save their marriage- and Frank's life?
This barely scratches the surface of all packed into little more than 75 minutes' screen time. There are plenty of colorful characters: dancers in a Chinatown restaurant/night club, a sentimental tavern owner, a flinty retired ferry-boat skipper, Frank's sympathetic doctor (Steven Geray), and Frank's co-worker in a local department store, played by John Qualen, one of the finest character actors in American cinematic history. Eleanor, sometimes dogged by the cops, sometimes with the enigmatic Leggett tagging along, encounters them all as she scours the enchanted city of San Francisco in search of her husband, and learns more and more about him. There is a strategic visit to the vet (why won't Rembrandt eat his dog food?), an offscreen murder of an innocent young woman who casually and unknowingly revealed that she knew too much to a ruthless murderer, and the most terrifying roller coaster ride in cinematic memory near the climax, when Eleanor realizes at last who is after her husband- and that she may be powerless to save him. A must-see.
American Hustle (2013)
Derivative junk from a Scorsese-wannabe and his preening gallery of actors
This dreck is assembled 13-year-old thinks-he's-smart-schoolboy style from an assortment of paint-by-numbers film elements the ambitious but woefully-unoriginal director David Russell has chosen from the collected works of his idols- and betters- especially Martin Scorsese, but also "Chinatown"-era Robert Towne and a number of other '70s once-idolized anti-Hollywood-establishment honchos- Dennis Hopper, Bob Rafelson, Robert Altman, you name it. Have no doubt: Russell wants his name equal in the cinephile-intellectual's mind with these legends. "With-it" period music that may or may not be in synch with the actual narrative? It's here, and stolen straight from Scorsese's 1973 breakthrough feature-length, "Mean Streets." Wise guys with aching hearts and "sympathetic" (but only in the most obvious, simplistic Hollywood-esque ways) character flaws? Ditto. Acting as if in a '70s method class presided over by an increasingly exasperated Harvey Keitel? Here to the gills, provided to us by the likes of Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper, among others.
The story purports to be based on the Abscam sting operation by the Feds in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but is really more an excuse for Russell to show off to us his auteurist "chops" and for the increasingly annoying cast to preen and mewl before us.
The actual Abscam brought down several prominent U.S. members of Congress, including the once-beloved Harrison Williams, Democratic senator of New Jersey, and had one actual hero, former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler, Republican of South Dakota, the first American combat veteran of the Vietnam War to be elected to Congress, and who was captured on tape angrily walking out of a meeting when he thought it was a "legitimate" bribery scheme to influence U.S. legislators' votes on issues of Middle East policy. Not that you'd know any of this from this showy, extremely annoying, derivative, glitzy, full-of-itself waste of time. Pressler, now 77 and long retired, was that rarity- an independent-minded moderate Republican who refused to cave to any political fashion or trend, and least of all the fascist demagoguery that currently sits at the head of his party and has infected it at all levels. In fact, the contrast between the Republicanism of a Larry Pressler and that of Donald Trump and his toadies and enablers would make for a very interesting and absorbing movie in and of itself. Not that David Russell and his equally obtuse collaborators would ever imagine or wish to do anything of that nature- THAT would be too TRULY creative and original for us. So instead they give this flashy-gaudy third-generation-Las-Vegas-casino of a movie. No thanks.
Platinum Blonde (1931)
How can a film have Jean Harlow and be so disappointing?
I give this a 6 largely because of the presence of the never-boring Jean Harlow. Otherwise, I don't see what everyone else seems to see in the scenery-chewing Robert Williams (I'm sorry he died so young, but that has nothing to do with how i feel about his performance or the film itself). As for Loretta Young, she is a pretty piece of fluff with no character development at all. Some have said that Young and Harlow should have been cast in each other's roles; I don't know if that would have helped. At root this is a Frank Capra gig, or "joint" to use the Spike Lee expression, and we know what to expect from a Capra film- right-wing propaganda masquerading as "man of the people" straight-shooting, complete with macho-male posturing (the list of Capra films where his male protagonists sucker-punch anyone and everyone Capra himself doesn't like- liberal newspaper reporters ("Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"), New York literati ("Mr. Deeds Goes To Town"), the turgid film I am currently reviewing, in which the "hero" punches out a high-society swell unprovoked for the sin of existing - is longer than my arm. Capra believed a little fisticuffs (with the recipient unwarned and unprepared), far from being an avatar of his own quasi-fascist political leanings, were simply what a "man's man" did any time anyone ticked him off). I found the supposedly sympathetic journalist pair for whom Capra wants us to root to be thoroughly off-putting- Robert Williams especially. I found myself pulling for the high-society swells- but then I've always had a thing for Jean Harlow, who could make reading the phone book captivating. Kudos also to Louise Closser Hale, who provided so much wit in her small role two years later in "Dinner at Eight" (also featuring Harlow- terrific as always). THAT film sent up New York high society with wit and subtlety. This was ham-handed Capra-corn at its near-worst.
One more word about Robert Williams, the male lead: what, what, is so great about a guy who squawks and yammers for 1 1/2 hours about having to live among the rich, then punches out an unsuspecting man who came to him in good faith? Robert Williams? All you Robert Williams lovers- you can have him. And take Frank Capra and his phony grandstanding with you while you're at it.
Russian Doll (2019)
Forget "Groundhog Day." This is the real deal.
I don't review a lot of TV shows, but this one grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Synopsis: Nadia, a successful, cynical, substance-loving web developer, dies in an accident (this information is NOT a spoiler) during her 36th birthday party and keeps finding herself reborn, replaying the same scene again and again. I know what you're thinking: "Groundhog Day" (a film I love, but with reservations). But that film is mostly played for laughs, and doesn't go nearly as deep into the lead character as "Russian Doll" does. And besides that, Bill Murray's character is, well, a little too Bill Murray-ish (condescending, above-it-all, offhandedly misanthropic).
Nadia Vulvokov (portrayed by Natasha Lyonne, who co-created the series) is no Phil Connors. A seen-it-all New Yorker with serious commitment issues and a deep fondness for drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, she is nonetheless a sympathetic character from the start, much more caring of others than Bill Murray's meteorologist. As the series progresses we learn more about her, especially her dysfunctional childhood in the custody of her psychotic single mom (seen in flashbacks, perfectly portrayed by Chloë Sevigny) and the show goes deeper, delving into the sources of Nadia's pain and anxiety. Further, Nadia is not alone in her tortuous life-and-death loop: she has a fellow sufferer sharing the cycle of existence and mortality, Alan (Charlie Barnett, excellent), an uptight obsessive-compulsive driven to suicidal depression by his cheating girlfriend.
This show will have you laughing one minute and choked up the next. Supporting cast are uniformly good (including veteran actress Elizabeth Ashley as a therapist who's been involved in Nadia's life- and that of her screwed-up mother- since the latter's childhood). No offense to "Groundhog Day," but it looks like a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon compared to this.
Something Wild (1961)
Young woman suffers trauma, ditches her old life, attempts suicide- and then things get REALLY weird.
"Something Wild" (1961; not to be confused with the gaudy 1986 yuppie fantasia of the same title directed by Jonathan Demme) is sui generis: I don't think anyone who sees it will ever see anything quite like it again. Though released as an indie for a short time in late 1961 to unappreciative reviews and box office failure, it has deservedly attained the status of a countercultural, cultic icon across the decades.
Its parentage is certainly sterling: the director was Jack Garfein, a childhood refugee from Nazi-imperiled Czechoslovakia and a leading light of the Actors Studio and other groundbreaking theatrical venues. Garfein cowrote the screenplay with offbeat novelist Alex Karmel, author of the film's source novel, "Mary Ann." Another European refugee, Eugen Schüfftan, who won the Oscar for cinematography the same year for "The Hustler," shot the film in stark black and white. Aaron Copland- yes, THE Aaron Copland- provided the musical soundtrack. And Saul Bass, the legendary film-title maven ("The Man With The Golden Arm," "Vertigo," "Psycho," and scores of others), created the riveting opening-title sequence, a wordless narrative of a day in the life of New York City, from dawn to night-time, that, playing off against Copland's glaring music, is a miniature film masterpiece in itself.
Garfein's then-wife, actress Carroll Baker, who had attained star status in 1956's "Baby Doll," plays the troubled protagonist, Bronx-dwelling college student Mary Ann Robinson, who lives in a quiet white-bread neighborhood with her whiny, self-absorbed mother (Mildred Dunnock) and her benign but oblivious stepfather (Charles Watts, no relation to the Rolling Stones drummer of almost identical name). Gravel-voiced Ralph Meeker ("Kiss Me Deadly," "Paths of Glory") plays the enigmatic auto mechanic Mike, Mary Ann's improbable rescuer. The story begins at the end of the aforementioned title sequence, as a New York subway train disgorges passengers in the Bronx, one of whom is Mary Ann. Walking on a deserted pathway in a park, she becomes victim to a sexual predator. In the aftermath, Mary Ann behaves more like the perpetrator than the victim of a horrible crime, sneaking furtively into her house so as not to disturb her parents, carefully washing herself with laundry soap, destroying stained clothing, and, of course, speaking not a word of what has happened to her parents or the authorities.
Mary Ann makes a brief and ill-fated attempt to resume her "normal" life, commuting to college classes and living with her parents. One day, overwhelmed, she literally walks away from her past, wandering the length of Manhattan and taking a shabby room in a run-down boarding house in the then-down-and-out Lower East Side (the area, gentrified now (2018), sells two bedroom condos to monied new class people at a median price of upwards of $2 million); she also hires on as a shopgirl at a slowly-failing Woolworth's nearby. Her new life is hardly more bearable than the old one she so abruptly abandoned: her leering, penny-pinching landlord (Martin Koslek), her sluttish rooming house neighbor (pre-Edith Bunker Jean Stapleton in a brilliant turn as a vulgar good-time girl), and her bullying coworkers (who don't appreciate her introverted lack of sociability and bonhomie) led by one particular trouble-maker (pre-"Seinfeld"/"Everybody Loves Raymond" Doris Roberts), and her tawdry surroundings all conspire to multiply her misery.
Wandering the streets after a sleepless night, she comes close to throwing herself off the Manhattan Bridge (Schüfftan's superb cinematography makes the points of early-morning sunlight reflecting off the East River look like sharp, deadly spikes), only to be roughly stopped from doing so by the gruff Mike, who spirits her back to his own claustrophobic basement apartment nearby. And here Mary Ann's already-strange journey through the jungle-like labyrinth of New York becomes even weirder. Her savior is also her captor; he won't let her go- literally- he locks her in the apartment when he leaves. He wants her for his wife and she is not, to say the least, open to the idea (at least initially); the conflict leads to confrontation that turns physical in brief moments- to say more would be a spoiler. When Mary Ann finally confronts Mike, asking why he wants her so desperately to stay with him, his reply only compounds the mystery about him: "You're my last chance. I don't want to talk about it."
The resolution of their intense psychological stand-off comes near the conclusion of the movie; it won't be revealed here and has remained highly controversial in the 57 years since initial release. All cast and crew combine, along with the topography of New York City (a costar in itself worthy of Best Supporting Actor accolades)- physical and psychological- to produce a cinematic experience unlike any other you are ever likely to see.
Wait Until Dark (1967)
A myriad of plot holes and implausible details, nonetheless one of the greatest film thrillers ever.
I'll mention my objections, then why I love this movie anyway.
1) New York City, specifically Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan: A van is able to park on a near-deserted street in the middle of the Village- it is used by the three villains in the movie. Nearby, they also have a sedan parked in an equally untrafficked parking lot. In New York City, in one of the most crowded areas of Manhattan.
A girl approaches a man, offering Girl Scout cookies, and the sidewalk is otherwise deserted. Does this Friday night Greenwich Village exist in some alternate universe?
A 12-year-old girl, whose parents have split up and is living with her neglectful mother, is ostensibly precocious and streetwise, as one would expect such a New York City latchkey girl to be. Yet apparently she is unfamiliar with vans (never mind vans' ubiquity as delivery and cab vehicles in the city) and refers to one she sees a "a kind of squatty truck." Really?
2) Stupid behavior by ostensibly smart adults. A blind woman and her husband live in an apartment in the Village- not just an apartment, but a basement (also called a "garden" apartment by savvy real estate agents) apartment, the kind most susceptible to break-ins. Yet they nonchalantly go about their business without locking the door to the apartment. Are we in New York City or Mayberry?
A professional photographer, returning to New York from Canada, agrees to accept a doll from a woman, a perfect stranger, on the basis of a made-up story as both clear customs at JFK International Airport. Savvy, experienced New York City dwellers accept packages for safekeeping from strangers all the time, right?
A pair of ostensibly streetwise veteran con artists wander into previously mentioned unlocked apartment, casually putting their fingerprints everywhere, on the basis of a typed note from previously mentioned doll-woman, who is their former partner in crime and whom they've been led to believe is the rightful tenant of said apartment, taking a full 10 minutes to realize that she has no typing/secretarial skills and that they've laid themselves open to being set up.
3) The blind woman goes back to apartment while the three hoodlums are there, yet doesn't detect their presence.
4) Timeline. Said blind woman was blinded in accident just over a year before the action in the film, yet in that time has met and married previously mentioned photographer, and they've established a pal-around routine as if they'd been together for years and she'd been blind for far longer.
5) Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. To put it mildly, his presence in the film (mercifully brief; confined to a few scenes) is not an asset. He plays a thinly-altered variation of the steely-jawed, high-school-football-coach-spouting-rousing-clichés, all-American hero he played concurrently on the popular TV series "The FBI," a right-wing weekly propaganda outlet for J. Edgar Hoover and his PR department. The scenes between him and Hepburn as his wife are cringe-worthy "you can do it!" kitsch, a stereotype of the crusty-but-heart-of-gold man acting as savior to the ill and/or disabled (but typically still fully photogenic) woman. As always, Zimbalist's emotional and acting range are between A and A. Ugh. This guy's supposed to be a highly-sought-after art and professional photographer in Bohemian Greenwich Village? Ronald Reagan would have been just as convincing.
6) Several murders take place on or offscreen in this neighborhood, yet do not bring the police nearby or arouse any interest of the (apparently invisible or non-existent) neighbors. But then, as I said before, this is one strangely underpopulated, nearly deserted New York City.
OK, now I've gotten all that off my chest, I can discuss why I love this movie anyway. First of all, it is, outside of Hitchcock ("Rope," "Dial M for Murder," "Rear Window," the last of which shared with "Wait Until Dark" the same playwright, Frederick Knott), the best claustrophobic, within-one-small-apartment thriller in cinematic history (I'm referring to films where all or almost all of the action takes place within a tiny confined space). The pacing (aside from aforementioned, exposition-setting cringeworthy Zimbalist/Hepburn scenes) and the slow building of suspense to an unpredictable climax are simply superb.
And the acting is, Zimbalist aside, outstanding. Richard Crenna as a veteran con artist does well stepping out of the nice-guy persona he had created on the TV sitcom "The Real McCoys," and Jack Weston as his oafish partner in crime Carlino is appropriately thuggish but still likable. Julie Herrod, repeating her Broadway performance, does a nice job as bratty-but-sympathetic Gloria, the tween-age girl helping the blind woman. Samantha Jones is skilled in her brief role as a glamorous and beautiful drug mule smuggling heroin across the Canada-U.S. border.
Audrey Hepburn was not really exploring new acting territory (for her) as the frail and vulnerable innocent in danger (she played very similar roles in "Charade," "The Children's Hour," and, to a certain extent, in her lead debut, "Roman Holiday"), but her performance as blind woman Susy Hendrix at the mercy of three desperados is still a standout.
But the biggest kudos has to go to Alan Arkin as chief bad guy Harry Roat, a.k.a. Harry Roat Sr., a.k.a. Harry Roat Jr., a cool, stiletto-toting hipster in shades and a black leather jacket who will scare the bejesus out of you. It is tribute to Arkin's range as a comedic and serious actor when you consider the three roles he played in two years' time: as the sympathetic but humorous executive officer of a Soviet submarine in the Cold War-confrontation comedy "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!" (1966), as the scary but entertaining sociopath Roat in "Wait Until Dark" (1967), and as the sweet, tragic, deaf watchmaker John Singer in "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" (1968).
Love Actually (2003)
Smarmy Yuletide cheer all full of itself and its cleverness
Fortunately my wife doesn't read reviews on the IMDb site, because she loves this movie, and subjects me to it every Christmas season.
This movie is wonderful for all the people who can't get enough of Hugh Grant looking sparkly, complete with glinty smile right out of a Crest commercial, as a newly-minted Kennedyesque British PM, or Keira Knightley beaming and glowing for the cameras as if she were modeling for a spread in a high-end bridal magazine. In perhaps the creepiest story arc of this contrived movie, Knightley plays a newlywed who discovers that her new husband's best friend (and best man at their wedding) has an unrequited crush on her. Instead of shunning him or telling hubby (a perfectly good chap played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), she thinks the man's gestures are sweet.
We also get Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson as a couple whose marriage is on the rocks, Liam Neeson as a man who is struggling with the loss of his wife, the mother of his sensitive 10-year-old stepson (who just happens to be a budding drummer who idolizes Ringo Starr), Colin Furth as a novelist who falls for his sexy young Portuguese housekeeper, and (tying all the plot-lines together) Bill Nighy as a jaded middle-aged rock star who hopes to turn a Christmas-themed cover of The Troggs' 1968 hit "Love Is All Around" into a Yuletime pop hit, and who realizes that the deepest emotional connection he has with any human is with his corpulent, long-suffering manager (Gregor Fisher). Given the sappy soft-rock soundtrack calculated to evoke kitschy emotions in the audience, it is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism for the makers of this movie to mock the kitschy bowdlerization of The Troggs' song.
The whole movie is an exercise in manipulation of the most obvious and meretricious sort. The PM enacted by Grant rejects sexier women to fall, of course, for a rather heavy-set, naive, and awkward (but still highly cinegenic) young woman. The Knightley character reacts to the creep not with "eww" disgust and dismay but rather with sympathy, especially since he feeds her narcissistic self-image. There are happy endings appended to all the story lines in classic canned sitcom fashion, where no problem can't be resolved in 22 minutes, though this movie takes over 2 hours to reach this conclusion. If you like the smarmy self-satisfaction combined with middlebrow intellectual pretension that characterized the romantic comedies of Delia and the late Nora Ephron (I hate them), chances are you'll love this self-infatuated extravaganza. Me, I'll take Alistair Sim as Scrooge for my Christmas watching.
Columbo: The Conspirators (1978)
Interesting conclusion to the series
Columbo goes international and political in this final episode of the original series. Clive Revill is superb as an Irish poet, ostensibly changed from his days as a violent Irish Republican. Aside: In the traditional parlance of the Northern Irish conflict, there were four basic groupings: Loyalists, pledging allegiance to the British crown and not shy about using violence to further their goals; Unionists, more moderate allies of Britain generally shunning violence; Nationalists, in favor of leaving the British union and uniting with the Republic of Ireland but generally shunning violence as well; and Republicans, those also wishing to break with Britain and unite with Ireland but not shy about using violence to achieve their ends. As might be expected, most Loyalists and Unionists were and are Protestants and most Nationalists and Republicans are Catholics, but there was a good deal of variation (some Protestants sympathize with the Irish nationalist cause; some, but fewer, Catholics wish to remain with the British union).
In fact the poet remains a committed IRA operative who murders an arms dealer he suspects of betraying the cause. Columbo is on the case to get to the bottom of it. The sparring between Revill and Falk is superb, as usual, but one can't help but agree with some of the critical comments on this thread. If he is dealing with ruthless IRA operatives, they could have easily disposed of the usually-unarmed Columbo if he proved to be too much of a nuisance.
A larger issue is the portrayal of Irish people via stereotypical behaviors, including the gift of gab (a.k.a., blarney) and the penchant for excessive drinking. And the handling of the touchy Irish Troubles issue may trouble more than a few viewers, and not just ones of Irish heritage. Would the producers and writers have portrayed American Black nationalists, Jews, or Latinos in a similar light given the sensitive political issues of the '70s or even of the present day (I'm Jewish myself and have very strong, but complicated, feelings about the Israel/Palestine issue)?
Adam Had Four Sons (1941)
Hard to love a film where the lovely Fay Wray dies off so soon.
Fay Wray (yes, her, the blonde from the 1933 "King Kong," still the only KK worth watching) plays the materfamilias in this family romance/melodrama. Unfortunately, she dies off from one of those romantic-era illnesses early on, leaving the family involved to the not-so-tender mercies of the scheming Susan Hayworth, who faces off against the virtuous Ingrid Bergman as the new family governess (in what was only Bergman's second U.S. film role). Hayworth is good as the greedy girl who turns the head of one of the sons of the title, and marries him, while carrying on an affair with one of his brothers. Worthwhile film but a bit predictable and corny.
52 Pick-Up (1986)
Sleazebags vs. cold selfish people in implausible, pretentious pseudo-noir
First of all, how plausible is this? In 1986 L.A., the most jaded town in the world, we are asked to believe that a businessman who is not even running for office would be a credible candidate for blackmail because his proto-Hillary-esque wife IS running for office. The sleazeball blackmailers honey-trap him using a love-interest cohort and assume, rightly (this is unbelievable in my opinion), that he will want it covered up to protect his WIFE's political ambitions. Would the average voter in L.A. in 1986 have given a damn about a political candidate's spouse being caught in an extramarital affair? OK, so this piece of nonsense is the MacGuffin to set the plot of this full-of-itself, not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is, self-consciously 'neo-noir' flick in motion.
Next, we get a full-bore tour of the world of L.A. porn (complete with cameos by many porn stars from the era), nudie peepshows, and dive bars, the world the sleazeballs (a smirking white pedophile sociopath, a scowling crackhead black sociopath, and a sweaty, cowardly, fat, gay alcoholic non-sociopath who realizes too late that the two other scumbags are heartless creeps who play for keeps and that he is in too deep) inhabit. Long sections of the movie revel in every gamy, seamy nuance of this tawdry subculture- cheap voyeurism dressed up as "realism."
Finally, we have our protagonists: Harry ("Mitch") Mitchell (a Korean War vet, tough as nails, etc.- so tough he has not one but two nicknames; you can imagine all the other clichés that attach to this character) who we are asked to believe is really a good-hearted, honest businessman who made one mistake, played with by-the-numbers machismo by Roy Scheider, previously so good in "The French Connection," "Jaws," and "All That Jazz." And his wife, who, when Harry finally tells her about the affair (he has to- the blackmailers have upped the ante in a horrible way that implicates him in things far worse than adultery- to say more would be a spoiler), doesn't care about the human cost or potential victims but only about how it may affect her political ambitions. This character is played by Ann-Margret. She too is supposed to be tough as nails, but her early scenes are simply by-the-numbers wronged-wife haranguing and in her later scenes she is a drugged, submissive, moaning victim- a cliché of female subordination rescued by the macho man in her life. Neither character expresses a whit of compassion, empathy, or love toward each other or toward the third-party victims of their actions or those of the blackmailers.
In other words, there are no sympathetic characters in this film, apparently something all the positive reviewers on this thread find commensurate with noir. Maybe they should take another look at classic noir, whether 1946's "The Big Sleep" or 1974's "Chinatown" or 1941's "The Maltese Falcon." All have sleaze and human ignobility galore, but all also have sympathetic protagonists whom we root for in spite of their flaws.
The redeeming features of this film are the performances of John Glover, Clarence Williams III, and Robert Trebor as the three blackmailers. All eventually get their comeuppance. There is also one terrific scene of a car and its occupant being blown to smithereens in a satisfying act of vengeance. But otherwise this movie is an over- long, over-blown, full-of-itself, unpleasant waste of time. If this is indicative of Leonard and his literary and cinematic view of noir, then the genre is degraded and devoid of wit since the days of Chandler and Hammett. But then there are people who think that Stephen King's hyperventilated "horror" is fine art and entertainment, and that Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist and essayist who can actually write. There is no accounting for taste and critical judgment.
Niagara (1953)
Monroe sizzles, Cotten seethes, the Falls enchant
This nifty thriller represented one of Hathaway's few forays into noir (he was largely known for Westerns). It was unusual for noir in being filmed in shimmering Technicolor rather than the pallet of grays, blacks, and whites more commonly associated with the genre, but then, given the resort setting, this was almost inescapable.
The storyline is straightforward: an amiable Midwestern couple, the Cutlers, Polly and Ray (Jean Peters and Max Showalter, billed as Casey Adams) arrive at the Falls to find the cabin they've reserved is occupied by another, more fractious couple: the Loomises. George (Joseph Cotten), the husband of the latter couple, could be nicknamed "Gloomy Loomy" given his downcast and cynical demeanor; we learn that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital for war veterans. His ravishing and none-too-faithful wife, Rose (Marilyn Monroe) provides ample reason for his suspicions. Turns out she's been two-timing George with a man who looks like the textbook illustration of a smooth gigolo (Richard Allan) and she and loverboy are planning something most foul for George.
But Polly, the distaff half of the Cutler twosome, has witnessed some of the hanky- panky, and when Rose and her lover's nefarious plans run into trouble, Polly finds herself caught between a vengeful husband and a scared-out-of-her-wits wife. The suspense arises from Polly-in-peril and her efforts to extricate herself from another couple's troubles.
Monroe is excellent in one of her few villainous roles in a non-comedy, and Cotten is riveting as the troubled, betrayed husband bent on revenge. His voice-over during an insomniac late-night/early-morning walk by the Falls at the start of the film is almost worth the price of admission alone. And the Falls? They never looked more beautiful- or deadly.
Hawaii Five-O: ...And I Want Some Candy and a Gun That Shoots (1971)
A long day for a psycho and for Danno
Disturbed war veteran "Bill" (Michael Burns) buys himself a high-powered rifle and tons of ammo and proceeds to wreak havoc near a busy highway from his perch high on a hill. Danny, the best shot on the Five-O force, must try to stop the mayhem. Burns is easily recognizable to fans of '60s-'70s cop shows as the iconic Benjamin "Benjy" Carver, a.k.a., Blue Boy, in the debut of the late '60s incarnation of "Dragnet," the Johnny Appleseed of acid on the Sunset Strip in "Dragnet 1967's" "The LSD Story." In real life, Burns is a sane, intellectually-inclined non-drug user who went on to a distinguished career as a historian at Mount Holyoke College, with several well- received published history books to his credit. Now retired from teaching (Professor Emeritus), he and his wife breed horses in Kentucky.
The Streets of San Francisco: River of Fear (1975)
"Night of the Hunter" without Charles Laughton's finesse
This is one of the more disappointing "S of S" episodes I have caught in syndication. It is slow-moving and dull and the cast and crew are not up to the level of its obvious source material, the 1955 Gothic-expressionist big-screen thriller "The Night of the Hunter," which was the only major film directed by the distinguished British actor Charles Laughton.
For those unfamiliar with the film, I'll summarize: in Depression-era (1930s) West Virginia, phony self-appointed preacher Harry Powell (based on real-life serial killer Harry Powers, who preyed on and then killed rich widows for their money; portrayed by Robert Mitchum in one of his best performances) does prison time for car theft; his cell mate is condemned bank robber/murderer Ben Harper (Peter Graves of "Mission: Impossible" fame) who hid his ill- gotten gains before his arrest, trial, conviction, and sentencing to be hanged, and left the secret with his young children. When Powell is released from prison, he tracks down and woos Harper's clueless widow Willa (Shelley Winters), hoping to kill her and her young children and live on the loot. He cons Willa and the local townspeople with his preacher/man-of-God act. His problem: only the children know where the money is, and they're not telling; they're not taken in by his pretense. I won't spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it by revealing any more.
This episode of "S of S" is "Night of the Hunter" updated to present-day (i.e., 1970s) San Francisco. Again, there are two cons sharing a cell, ill-gotten money, a man pretending to be something he's not, a clueless and credulous widow who marries the con artist and of course ends up dead, and her children, who, like the kids in "Night of the Hunter," suspect that their supposedly virtuous stepfather is not kosher; there is a long chase involving the orphan children's river-running escape, pursued by the bad guy. There are some minor changes: in this version the older, more suspicious child is the girl and the younger, more trusting child (whom the older one protects) is the boy- it is the reverse in "Night of the Hunter"; the con artist is a fake doctor rather than a fake preacher; the clothes and situations are urban 1970s rather than rural 1930s. And of course there are major differences. The plot moves slowly, even for an hour-long episode, the acting is adequate rather than compelling (Mitchum is irresistible playing one of the most evil guys in American cinematic history; Peter Haskell simply looks like another run-of-the-mill 1970s TV acting journeyman as the heavy here). Overall, not bad, but derivative in an uncreative way and far from one of the best "S and S" episodes.
Route 66: A Month of Sundays (1961)
Superb opener for "Route 66's" second season.
The place is the unglamorous town of Butte, MT, where Todd (Martin Milner) and Buzz (George Maharis) are currently working at a copper-mining operation. A beautiful young local woman, Arline Simms (Anne Francis, luminous and excellent as ever), who some years before shook the dust and copper tailings off and left for the big city to follow her dream to be an actress, has returned to town for mysterious reasons, given that she has succeeded in her profession and is the toast of Broadway. But she has returned to Butte and plans never to leave. Meanwhile, Buzz spots and pursues her and they fall in love. But Todd has learned her secret and why she has returned to her hometown, and fears that his friend Buzz will be hurt. A fine episode with excellent acting. Warning- you may need a box of Kleenex to watch this one.