Bob Barker RIP

I first saw Bob Barker hosting Truth or Consequences, a game show of sorts. They had a woman assemble a car under the supervision of a mechanic and, if it started, she would win a car, presumably not the one she built herself. In another episode, they were going to make children think they had shattered glass with their voices, but the kids spotted the mouse trap-like mechanisms that would break the glass objects they arranged on stage. They had some men compete to see who could find the best Raquel Welch look-alike. One went to Hollywood and found the woman who acted as her stand-in in the movies. He didn't win. Barker hosted that show until 1975.

It took me years to get used to him hosting The Price is Right. Now I find it strange that I ever watched either of those shows.

He was an animal rights activist, urged viewers to spay or neuter their pets. He took karate lessons from Chuck Norris and was glad he got to show off what he learned beating up Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.

Bob Barker died today at age 99.

The Wooden Gun (2002)

I bought a copy of The Wooden Gun because I read something about it being terribly cheap. According to the internet, it cost $7,000, and they did pretty well for the money. Had horses, costumes, props and they filmed in a western town movie set. I don't know if the star spoke in a natural Scottish accent. It even had a couple of nude scenes.

Two murderers, one smart, one dumb, escape from the posse bring them in. One uses an elaborately carved wooden gun to disarm the guy guarding them then it turns violent. The sheriff survives and gets a new posse.

It was pretty good. Far better than the other very low budget westerns I've seen. Had a coherent plot. Pretty violent but they weren't brutal about it.

I couldn't find it on streaming video, but it could be there somewhere.

Starring Jon Jacobs and Michael Kastenbaum. They also directed. 

With Dawn Kapatos, Haley Gilbert Fisher, Stephen Polk and Randala.

Black & white.

Coverage of the writers strike by entertainment magazines

From an article by Shealeigh Voitl. Read the whole thing here.

...Trade publications zeroed in on workers immediately, minimizing their demands and rarely focusing on the major studios’ inaction. After Snoop Dogg canceled two Hollywood Bowl shows in solidarity with WGA and SAG-AFTRA, Rolling Stone tweeted that the strikes were “completely unrelated to what he does as a musician.” Rolling Stone later deleted the post. A May Variety headline villainized a writer for a tongue-in-cheek picket sign, referencing Jenna Ortega’s comments about having “chang[ed] lines” on her show Wednesday. Deadline published an article in July, quoting an executive who said, “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”

A pattern in trade publications’ coverage of the strike soon emerged: Writers against viewers; writers against actors; and finally, writers against each other, where forging ahead might mean losing everything. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) immediately called out the “union-busting” Deadline article as “studio propaganda.” Comedian, actor, and writer Jenny Yang told Yahoo! News, “As a former labor organizer, this article reeks of a desperate attempt by these corporate insiders to break our morale and scare us.”

...

Writers and actors expect to earn a living wage, especially for projects that make a killing for multibillion-dollar studios. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently told CNBC that the writers’ and actors’ expectations are just not “realistic” and that he finds the strikes “disturbing,” but that’s coming from someone who makes “535 times a Disney employee’s median pay.” It doesn’t get more disturbing than that.

The Bushwhackers (1952)

See? I'm wrong all the time. I thought this thing where every western starts with a family being massacred in their farmhouse was a recent development. That's how this movie starts. Only the child and his dog survive.

In Shane (1953), the father grabs a rifle, hides behind a rock and threatens Alan Ladd when he approaches his farm. In Bad Company (1972), the farmers are more dangerous than the kids trying to rob them. In this movie, like cheap 21st century westerns, they just stand there and get murdered.

The Bushwhackers wasn't very good. One of the women was as bloodthirsty as the men but wasn't very good at it. She misses when she takes a shot at John Ireland. When the schoolmarm comes home and finds Ireland sleeping in her bed, she just waves a gun around and steps out of the room while he puts his pants on. The ladies don't kill anyone and the hero doesn't kill any women although he should.

Wealthy landowner (Lon Chaney, Jr) wants to keep homesteaders off what he thinks is his land because he knows the railroad will pay him a fortune for it. His henchmen and his horrible daughter carry out his orders. 

A former Confederate soldier comes to town. He's moved out west which wasn't a smart move since he's become a strict pacifist and refuses to carry a gun.

Free on Tubi.

Christopher Knight on Mannix

We only saw the beginning of the episode. Filmed on a fake movie studio city street. My brother-in-law noticed that one of the businesses was called "Chinese Laundry".  A man came out of a building with a boy.

"That's Peter Brady," I said simply.

"It is Peter Brady," my sister said, which surprised me. I didn't know she ever watched The Brady Bunch.

I had the sound turned down. I don't know what they talked about, but Joe Mannix put his hand on top of Christopher Knight's head. Didn't actually tousle his hair but made a slight tousling motion I guess so the footage would match, so he wouldn't go from tousled hair in the close-up back to neatly coiffed hair in the medium long shot.

Later, Mannix runs into the street and saves the little fellow from getting run over by a truck.

I don't know what channel it was on. I couldn't pick what season or episode to watch, so it was stuck in the first season. I wanted them to see the later opening credits which had some stunt driving. 

Mannix wasn't part of the Brady Bunch universe, but Robert Reed (Mike Brady) appeared in 22 episodes as a police lieutenant and they kept using the Brady Bunch living room set. I guess they didn't think anyone would notice. How many people watched both Mannix and The Brady Bunch?

Cul-de-sac (Roman Polanski, 1966)

After all the crap I've been watching, all the cheap westerns that start the same way, with an isolated house being massacred by a roving criminal band, I watched Roman Polanski's Cul-de-sac for the first time in years. Donald Pleasence and his wife, Francoise Dorleac, live in an old castle on the British coast. They're separated from the mainland every evening when the  tide comes in. A home invasion story. Two injured criminals (Lionel Stander and Jack MacGowran) come there after a botched job.

In an opening scene, we see Stander sitting in their disabled car on the side of the road. He pulls his foot away from an insect that comes crawling up to him. Then he spits at it. Later, he refuses to kill and cook a chicken.

Later still, he urges Dorleac to "Smack him good!" when she catches a child messing with her phonograph.

He's violent, but he's not a monster.

The movie's been compared to Waiting for Godot or the work of Harold Pinter. I never made it very far into anything by Beckett, but I can see the Harold Pinter comparison. 

Polanski is a great director, but I wonder how much of this was a fluke. According to IMDb, it was such a difficult movie to make between the weather, the setting and the cast, that he said he was ready to quit film, but he was very pleased with the end result. During the filming, Donald Pleasence was given the task of leading the actors to tell Polanski to stop acting like an egomaniac.

"It had to be done," Pleasence said. "Polanski was the only prima donna on that film."

Free on Tubi. 

6 Bullets to Hell (2016)

The filmmakers set out to recreate a 1960's Spaghetti Western. They had the semi-animated-looking opening credits and they even dubbed the dialogue. It starts with a gang of outlaws robbing a church and killing the minister. If it were a real spaghetti western, it would have been Catholic or more obviously Catholic.

But the story gets going a short time after this. A husband goes off to town. While he's gone, the criminals come to the house, find the wife alone. 

This is how every one of these cheap westerns starts now. Some guys come to an isolated house. They first try to seem non-threatening, then they kill everybody. Just one person in this case.

Her husband, naturally, goes after them. It was rather grim.

It had Spaghetti Westerny music, but nearly all Italian westerns were made by members of the Italian Communist Party. I didn't notice any Marxist undertones.

It was even filmed in Spain.

Free on Tubi.

The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953) Yves Montand, Charles Vanel

A huge hit in France at the time.

There were two remakes of The Wages of Fear that I know of. One was Sorcerer (1977), directed by William Friedkin who died August 7th at age 87. The other was an episode of Little House on the Prairie (season 2, episode 18) where Michael Landon gets a job transporting a wagon load of nitroglycerin after the crops fail.

A U.S. oil company in South America will pay four men $2,000 each (over $20,000 today) to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerin over 300 miles of bad road to put out a burning oil well.

Filmed in the South of France. If they named the country it was set in, I missed it. Much of it took place in an impoverished village where the oil company is the main employer. Foreign workers are trapped, unable to make money to pay their way home.

The driving part didn't seem as nightmarish as I thought it would. Some guys were more careful than others.

The movie looked beautiful, in black and white. I was surprised by some shots of the men in their trucks in front of a rear screen projection.

Saw the restored, two a half hour version on the Criterion channel. They got to the truck driving part about an hour into it. Reportedly, there's a 2 hour 11 minute version.

Five Guns West (Roger Corman, 1955)

I was disappointed that Roger Corman's directorial debut was a pro-Confederate western, a dirty dozen type thing where the Confederates pardon some condemned criminals and send them to abduct a Southern intelligence officer defecting to the North.

I knew his first movie was a western, but I assumed it was Gunslinger, which would make sense since Five Guns West was much better-made.

Most of it took place in one location. The traitorous Confederates wait for the stage coach carrying the guy and some Confederate gold to show up.

Had a couple of Corman semi-regulars, Joanathan Haze and Mike "Touch" Conners.

With James Sikking, Dorothy Malone, John Lund and Jack Ingram. 

John Lund had been posing as a fellow criminal, but later starts proclaiming himself a "Confederate officer", like this made him a paragon of virtue. And, I'm not sure if this was a surprise twist---if it was, it wasn't a very good one---he was Dorothy Malone's ex-boyfriend.

It had an Apache dressed like an Indian from an old Thanksgiving decoration.

Zachery Ty Bryan lurking the streets again

This is local news for me, although I know little about it. I have nothing against the Zachery Ty Bryan except for the domestic battery.

Bryan is out of jail.

Reportedly, he has been trying to get in touch with his erstwhile TV father, Tim Allen.   

"He wants to tell Tim to keep his big trap shut," said a source.

The OTHER Barbie movie: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) sounded like it must have been in terrible taste after the poor girl died from anorexia in 1983. About her rise to stardom, her illness and her brother's drug addiction, performed entirely by Barbie and Ken dolls. I saw it in 1988 at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Made by Todd Haynes when he was an MFA student.

According to IMDb, it wasn't pulled from distribution until 1990 after a cease & desist order over unauthorized use of The Carpenters' music. I don't know if Mattel would have gone after them.

I thought it was a sad movie once you got past the apparent tastelessness. I found it more emotional than the made-for-TV Karen Carpenter Story.

Here's a link to Superstar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLx9IQ8Z7rQ

And the made-for-TV movie:

https://youtu.be/ITNCM1RAq-M

Dirty Little Billy (1972)

I was only nine or ten then, but I remember seeing the poster for Dirty Little Billy at a theater and I'm pretty sure I saw a trailer for it with the announcer stating that "Billy the Kid was a punk."

Now, just fifty years later, I've finally seen the movie. I bought the DVD and I think I'll resell it. I'm not going to watch it again.  

It didn't have much plot. The picture was very dark most of the time but I don't know if it was just my TV, and it had little to do with the actual Billy the Kid who, if Wikipedia is to be believed, was probably okay at least compared to those other guys, like Jesse James. In real life, he was an orphan. His mother died and his stepfather abandoned him and his brother. The first time he was arrested, it was for stealing food.

Michael Pollard plays Billy the Kid in his early days. He was in his 30's but was a more plausible teenager than a lot of them. He mostly hangs around in a shack they call a saloon. Two women get in a knife fight and there was a perfectly nice flurry of gun violence at the end.

Lots and lots of mud.

Stars Michael J. Pollard, Richard Evans and Lee Percell.

With a young Gary Busey and Nick Nolte who was uncredited.

With Dick Van Patten in a surprising role. 

Directed by Albanian-American Stan Dragoti, perhaps best known for Mr Mom and She's Out of Control.

Zachery Ty Bryan arrested again in Eugene, Oregon

Poor devil. Arrested for 4th degree assault and 3rd degree burglary. Has he been living here all this time? When he was arrested in 2020, I assumed he came here to flee the pandemic which was hitting Los Angeles much harder than it was here. 

This time he's being held without bail just a few miles from me. I could go hold a vigil for him outside the jail.

 

Last time, if I remember correctly, he strangled his girlfriend because he couldn't find his phone charger.

 

If it weren't for the domestic violence, he could be doing pretty well. There are local TV and radio commercials. It seems like there are always people making zero-budget movies.  I'm sure they'd love having a recognizable star. He could be Eugene's biggest fish.

He's forty-one. And he has seven children. He's not setting much of an example.