Show People

Marion Davies

King Vidor's Show People, from 1928, is a winning and affectionate satire of Hollywood, The story was probably old hat even at the time, but provides a good setting for Marion Davies' comic talents. Ms. Davies plays Peggy Pepper, a green wannabe from Georgia who wants to break into movies. Show People opens with Peggy and her Pa driving down Hollywood Boulevard dressed as if they had escaped from a roadshow production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Peggy meets established comic Billy Boone (William Haines) who helps her get a break with his troupe. Peggy is an instant hit and parlays her success by taking on more serious roles under her new stage name, Patricia Pepoire. Success goes to Ms. Pepoire's head, but, don't worry folks, true love wins out in the end.

Ms. Davies' career declined swiftly during the sound era, but performances like this one show why critics years later rehabilitated her reputation as a crackerjack comedian. She certainly could not be accused of taking herself too seriously. That was William Randolph Hearst's assumed duty. Mr. Vidor is also not taking himself very seriously. Vidor gets to poke fun at his own films, The Big Parade and Bardelys the Magnificent, which Billy Boone terms "a punk drama". Show People closely resembles the career of Gloria Swanson who started out working for Mack Sennett. Vidor has great fun mimicking Sennett's manic shorts. A spray bottle is repeatedly utilized as are various pastry. What impressed me the most was Vidor's indulgence of his bit players. Half of Hollywood cameos in the film, but Vidor wrings funny moments from such unheralded players as Polly Moran, Kalla Pasha, and Rolfe Sedan. Light as a feather, Show People is available to stream in a tolerable print on Tubi.

Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut

Isao Natsuyagi is the Samurai Wolf

Hideo Gosha's Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut is the second and best of the two Samurai Wolf features. This 1967 film is the more evocative and intricately structured of the two, though both share many similarities. They run barely over 70 minutes, are in black and white, and are decidedly B budget films in terms of production. Isao Natsuyagi's playing of "Kiba the furious wolf" was only his second film role, an indication that Gosha was watching his pennies when he made the initial Samurai Wolf. Gosha had started in radio, which explains his proficiency using sound effects, and had been directing television shows. Samurai films were an opportunity to make a surefire hit and the 1966 Samurai Wolf delivered, necessitating the sequel.

Most sequels are rote and dull facsimiles of the original. However, some sequels offer filmmakers the opportunity to expand their vision with a bigger budget and inspired variation. That is why I prefer Spider Man 2 over Spider-Man, The Evil Dead 2 over The Evil Dead, The Godfather 2 to The Godfather, For a Few Dollars More to A Fistful of Dollars, and Sanjuro over Yojumbo. The latter two sequels stem from the work of Gosha's acknowledged influences, Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa. In the Samurai Wolf , Isao Natsuyagi borrows a good deal of Toshiro Mifune's feral intensity from his appearances in Kurosawa's films. ...Hell Cut even has the same mountainous locations featured in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress to equally striking effect. Toshiaki Tsushima's scores for both Wolf film tips its sombrero to Morricone's scores for Leone, featuring lengthy plaintiff harmonica solos as horseman ride. 

...Hell Cut opens up Kiba's personality allowing him a tentative friendship and romance. In the first film, Kiba is such a lone wolf that he even spurns the romantic overtures of an elegant blind lady. In Hell Cut, the literal bond formed with his loved one saves his life. Kiba is contrasted with the more mercenary and merciless ronin, Magobe. Fortitude is contrasted with moral weakness, honesty with deceit. Magobe has helped operate an illegal gold mine which is poisoning the waters of local streams, a prescient environmental note. As in Leone, greed warps and corrupts men. Gosha uses more bravura techniques in the sequel than in the original, always to signal a mood or heighten a theme, A track into an obdurate dojo master quickens our anticipation of a duel. Freeze frames express the silence and finality of death.

The multiple flashbacks of Kiba's childhood with his doomed ronin dad fleshes out his saga. The short duration of ...Hell Cat contains a wealth of compressed details and emotional development. There is not a fold of fabric or hair pin out of place. Both Rumiko Fuji and Kiba's handy shears are welcome returns from the first film. The sinister presence of crows points the way to Gosha's later color samurai masterpiece, Goyokin (1969). Another film about greed, specifically, "The Gold of the Shogunate". The poetic touches of Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut are sometimes self-conscious, but they liberate Gosha enough for some exultant genre filmmaking.

Quick Takes, April 2024

Tell Me A Creepy Story

Almost universally derided, I found the horror anthology Tell Me A Creepy Story to be a more vigorous exploration of the horror genre than recent films by more established directors like David Gordon Green (The Exorcist: Believer), Eli Roth (Thanksgiving), and Sofia Coppola (Priscilla aka Dead Elvis). The short films by Samuel Dawe and Felix Dobaire are especially promising. 

Don Roos has morphed into a screenwriter for hire these days, but his 2005 effort Happy Endings made me wish he would return to directing films one day. Happy Endings was a box office dud, I don't think any of Roos' films were hits, and was given mixed reviews by the critics, one scribe described it as "Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia for adolescents." I would describe it an Altmanesque (one of Anderson's heroes) in its use of interconnecting stories, a large ensemble, and a 20th century LA setting. Roos has his own obsessions though, best displayed here and in The Opposite of Sex: chiefly affluence in America, sexual ambiguity and deceit. The plot's hinging on abortion and immigration give it added resonance today. Roos use of hand held cameras, limited to the more volatile scenes, is a model of restraint. Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold, Steve Coogan, Bobby Cannavale, and Laura Dern all have their moments.

Nicholas Ray's Hot Blood is a outlandish Gypsy quasi-musical, from 1956, starring Jane Russell and Cornel Wilde. Russell tricks future Gypsy King Wilde into marriage and for the rest of the flick they circle each other like polecats, brandishing whips and knives. The film shares the same set bound saloon milieu as Ray's other quasi-musical, Party Girl. Ray being Ray, there are more than a few tilted shots and interesting inserts. The view of Romani culture is pure Hollywood balderdash and the ethnic humor is excruciating, but Ray channels Russell and Wilde's physicality well. The picture is well paced and vivid, almost comically so. The film is a Cinemascope and Technicolor eye popper which Tubi is currently streaming in its proper ratio. Not great art or even a good Nicholas Ray film, Hot Blood does have its entertaining and bizarre moments. Featuring Luther Adler, Joseph, Calleia, and Richard Deacon.

Frank Borzage's Strange Cargo, from 1940, is an MGM romantic adventure drama that reteamed Joan Crawford and Clark Gable for the final time. The Christian mystical aspects of the film, with Ian Hunter playing a Jesus figure, jibes with Borzage's tremulous Romanticism, but the action scenes are routine and, like a good deal of MGM productions, the picture feels overstuffed. Crawford plays a "dance hall girl" in French Guiana who somewhat improbably escapes with Gable and five other dangerous inmates. There are the usual jungle perils: quicksand, crocodiles, sharks. and Peter Lorre playing an informer and procurer. There are also unusual elements. Gable debates theology with Hunter! Crawford is shown without full makeup for a quarter of the film! The plot is seamy, there are intimations of prostitution, homosexuality, and rape, and it drew a Condemned rating from the Catholic League of Decency which also criticized the film's "naturalistic concept of religion". Not coherent enough to be a good film, the film boasts sterling performances. Crawford and Gable are relaxed and fun as they duel each other with knives, kisses, and brickbats. Paul Lukas, Albert Dekker, J. Edward Bromberg, Eduardo Ciannelli, and John Arledge make up a memorable rogue's galley. 

Ira Sachs' Passages is an insipid love triangle. Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adele Exarchopoulos, all competent performers, are not given believable characters to inhabit. The impassive results fail to even rise to a soap opera level.

Burt Kennedy's Young Billy Young is an extremely feeble Western from 1969. A rehash of innumerable cliches, not even the presence of Robert Mitchum, Angie Dickinson, Robert Walker Jr., David Carradine, and Jack Kelly can enliven this dud.

Paul Anderson's Mortal Kombat, from 1995, is risible drivel.