The poet/philosopher Tupac once opined “a coward dies a thousand deaths… a soldier dies but once.” You know who else only dies but once in The Ghost Of Cypress Swamp? Lonny’s brave dog who got eaten by the evil panther named Weakfoot while the wimpy Lonny stood around doing nothing to save him! Continue reading “The Ghost of Cypress Swamp (1977)”
Category: Drama
Picnic (1955)
As soon as I started watching Picnic, I knew that I was in for another one of these sweaty, desperate epics about how life in a small town is full of hypocrites, nosy old maids, and damp drifters who are drenched in the promise of something better than what the small town was offering up to its population of breathy starlets. Continue reading “Picnic (1955)”
Johnny Tremain (1957)
I always suspected that those snobby British goons who tried to stifle all our basic human rights by laying a big tax on our imported tea were defeated through the interference of some plucky kids.
Since the novel this movie is based on won a Newbery Medal, I have to assume that it’s the God’s honest truth and that the colonists were such great guys that after they stormed the ships in Boston Harbor and dumped all the tea overboard, that they then took time to swab the decks and generally cleaned up the boat when they finished with their consumer protest. Continue reading “Johnny Tremain (1957)”
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
Jane Wyman, looking every bit of her forty-plus years in the role, plays Cary Scott, an upper class dame who had her husband go and croak on her last year. He left her some money, a house, two snotty young adult kids, an empty existence, and a hunky gardener played by Rock Hudson!
Before Rock can start planting his trees in Cary’s yard, the movie shows us the kind of pointless shell of a life that Cary has been living since her husband took the easy way out. She has a friend, the anvil-faced Agnes Moorehead (Endora from Bewitched) and she seems to like Cary as much as anyone, but we soon see that friendship in this little upper crust town is premised on everyone acting like they are supposed to. This means going out to the country club, enduring dull parties with self-important gossips, and dating old guys who have never heard of Viagra. Continue reading “All That Heaven Allows (1955)”
Last Woman on Earth (1960)
It probably shouldn’t come as any surprise to us that the last woman on Earth turns out to be a two-timing hussy, but who could have predicted that the last two men on Earth would end up beating each other up with fish? Truly, this is a world gone mad. Continue reading “Last Woman on Earth (1960)”
Menace on the Mountain (1970)
Menace On The Mountain (another two part Disney show from the 1970s taped together into a TV movie) is as toothless as one of the old coots that hung around town cowering before the villainous Poss Timmerlake.
The story of an ugly red headed kid (Jed) with big pouty lips who constantly whines about how his pa was last seen gutshot at some Civil War battle and that he wished he was man enough to take on this Poss dude, doesn’t generate much interest beyond the questionable thrill you get from watching Jed chase after his pet pig. Continue reading “Menace on the Mountain (1970)”
Lost Horizon (1937)
I might have been able to tolerate Lost Horizon‘s uptoian feel good mumbo jumbo about how everybody is really polite to everyone else and how all the Tibetan natives were forced to learn English (say, this is paradise, isn’t it?) by some pushy Catholic priest, if it all wasn’t just so freaking boring.
Director Frank Capra let that whole “slow down the pace” ideal of his paradise seep into his filmmaking here because this one edges ever so slowly from leisurely to glacial to La Brea Tar Pit paced.
It took him the first half hour alone to establish that the plane carrying star Ronald Coleman and his supporting cast was being hijacked to paradise. (If this place is so great, why do you have to commit an act of air piracy to get people to join up?) Continue reading “Lost Horizon (1937)”