Ordinary People (1980)

I watched Ordinary People for the first time in four years. My reaction to it was different from last time. I had less sympathy for the rich people in it, not because they were rich but because the parents encouraged their sons to engage in dangerous but expensive hobbies, like sailing in a tiny sailboat. Even when one son dies in a boating accident, it didn't occur to them that it was a bad idea.

The surviving son blames himself for his brother's death and goes to a psychologist played by Judd Hirsch. The psychologist might have pointed out that his parents bought them the boat and didn't seem to have bothered with life jackets. 

In the Italian movie Son's Room (2001), an Italian psychologist's son dies in an accident. The father blames his patient. He was going to go jogging with his son that day but instead had to help a patient overcome his stagefright before a public speaking event. Since he wasn't going jogging, the son goes scuba diving with predictable results. 

This is what happens when rich people have "active lifestyles". 

I've written about this more than once, but I had a great uncle born in the 1880's. He was half Indian and had an uncanny ability to walk through the woods and find his way in total darkness. The trick is to look up at the stars. You can see where the trees are that way. But he had a terrible fear of going into the woods alone. 

One of his sons was about 6o when he got a degree in anthropology. I was at his graduation party and he was talking with guests about Indian lore, like what parts of a human body are left after being eaten by a bear. Nature is horrible. Horrible. But you have these rich people who go out there like they own the place, oblivious to the dangers.

I don't like being anywhere that I can't get an ambulance.

Claude Jarman, Jr, (1934 - 2025)

I missed the news that Claude Jarman died January 12th at age 90.  When he was ten, a director visited his school in Nashville looking for a kid to star in The Yearling, spotted Claude in the hallway hanging drawings if I remember correctly, and POW! Instant movie star! It shows the advantage of being a child actor. You're competing with other children who have no more experience than you do. It's why I'm pro-child acting. He received a special Oscar for that performance. His last acting role was in the mini-series Centennial in 1978. I remember him among past Oscar winners in the 2003 Academy Awards.

Jarman later became executive director of the San Francisco Film Festival and was executive producer of rock concert documentary Fillmore (1972) and was manager of the San Francisco Opera House.

The Woodchipper Massacre (1988)

I was surprised to see this on Tubi. I had rented it somewhere long ago. Made for $400, but that was in 1988 so it was more like $1,000 today. It may have cost more than El Mariachi if you subtract the cost of film and processing for the that movie and adjust for inflation.

Shot on S-VHS.

Jim McBride's first movie. 

A father goes out of town and leaves his three children with an aged babysitter. The kids are 13 to 22. They accidentally kill the babysitter and dispose of her body in a woodchipper. Then her violent ex-convict son comes looking for her. Not much of a "massacre" really.

Picture quality isn't good. Sounds like they used the camcorder's built-in mic. The actors bellow out their lines. Maybe they were used to appearing on stage.

You know how the old PXL-2000 camcorders are coveted by artists and hipsters? I don't know why I find the S-VHS aesthetic so much less appealing.

Not much blood and no gore which is fine with me.

Tubi also has Cannibal Campout (1988) and Feeders (1996) both the normal and the Rifftrax version, from the same auteur.

See how Jaws distorted everything?

Remember the trailer for Jaws? Richard Dreyfuss says, "That's a twenty footer."

Robert Shaw says "Twenty-five."

Well, now they're reporting that they've caught a massive, record-breaking gigantic great white shark, the largest ever caught tagged and released in the Atlantic ocean. I thought maybe it was thirty or forty feet. No. It was fourteen feet. Fourteen lousy feet. 

I knew the shark in Jaws was unusually large. I didn't know it was absurdly large.

Fright (UK, 1971) Susan George, Honor Blackman

Honor Blackman's going out for the evening with her husband. College girl Susan George, walking from the bus stop through the woods around their mansion, comes to babysit their two-year-old. Susan George's boyfriend comes over and they make out. At the restaurant, Honor Blackman learns that her son's dangerously deranged biological father has escaped from the mental hospital. The parents try to rush home but are delayed. Their friend goes to the cops but it takes them a while to see what the problem is. British police don't really shoot people so even when they show up their options are limited. 

It was well-made. Honor Blackman is strangely nervous about leaving the child with a sitter, like she was afraid this would happen.

Believed to be the premiere babysitter vs psychotic killer movie.  

Honor Blackman said she was worried about the toddler being traumatized by the filming of the violent scenes, but it was the director's son and he was willing to risk it.

Free on Tubi.

Rough Night in Jericho (1967)

Hollywood western, violent but didn't seem to be influenced by spaghetti westerns or Samurai movies. The interiors were too brightly lit. Dean Martin as a lawman gone bad. He and his gang rule over the town of Jericho with an iron fist, claiming 51% ownership of all the businesses. He's trying to get control of the stagecoach line owned by widow Jean Simmons. George Peppard, an itinerate gambler, decides to help her.

Slim Pickens attacks George Peppard with a bullwhip. There's one lynching and Dean Martin keeps talking about hanging people. Just not that good. 

Trump

Well, that thing I wrote about Trump, how it wouldn't be so hard, how we could sweat it out the next four years, was wrong, obviously. The Zionists did stop bombing Gaza, but the same thing happened when Obama took office. Israel was in the middle of a bombing campaign which killed thousands. Because it stopped just before he was inaugurated, Obama could pretend it never happened. 

I don't think anything's going to change in Ukraine. Everything will get worse and worse in the U.S. Trump will speed up the collapse of the American Empire which is okay with me. The U.S. is now an existential threat to Canada and Denmark. He says he wants to turn Gaza into the Riviera of the middle east----why doesn't he just demand that France hand over the actual Riviera?

There was a Vietnamese writer who said that anti-imperialists living in imperialist countries got the best of both worlds. They got the benefits of imperialism but also got to be self-righteous about it. He was right to a point, but I don't think moral superiority does you any good. Now half the country, everyone who didn't vote for Trump, can experience it. It doesn't make up for anything.

Ricky Schroder: Saying stupid things

For some reason, I was thinking back to the time forty years ago that I saw Ricky Schroder on the Merv Griffin Show. He must have been 10 or 11. [Turns out he was 14 or 15.] Bea Arthur was there. 

Schroder told an embarrassing anecdote. He had been in Japan to promote a movie. He was introduced to a Japanese official. Trying to make conversation, the man asked the little fellow what his favorite movie was. Without thinking, Schroder answered "Attack on Pearl Harbor". 

I assume he meant Tora! Tora! Tora! If he did it was actually a pretty good answer. That movie was a U.S.-Japanese co-production, an example of cooperation and friendship between our nations. It showed he had no hard feelings and the movie was a huge hit in Japan which must be a little disturbing to some people. 

Schroder now calls himself "Rick Schroder". He's some sort of violent alt-right nut. He's been arrested twice for domestic violence but not charged and he put up $150 thousand to bail out murderous fellow German Kyle Rittenhouse. Millionaire Schroder posted a video of himself harassing Costco employees because the store required masks during the pandemic.

Just watched a video about the video. He's not aging well, poor wretch. The great big glasses aren't doing him any favors. There's video of him apologizing for the Costco video, but, in it, he laments the end of the white supremacist regime in Rhodesia. 

Soapbox Derby (UK, 1958)

A gang of boys called the Battersea Bats are in competition with the Victoria Victors who are trying to steal their plans for a soap box derby racer. Produced by the Children's Film Foundation. The children probably shouldn't have been playing in a rail depot, but when a member of the rival gang falls into the sea during a gang fight, they rush to rescue him. Children in the audience learn an important lesson about not committing manslaughter. In another scene, they explain why children who wear glasses are called "four eyes". A little girl gets hit by a truck and is taken away in a weird-looking British ambulance. 

Michael Crawford's first movie. His grandfather in the film drives a tiny BMW Isetta. It has only a slightly longer wheelbase than the soap box racers.

I thought soap box derby racers just rolled downhill propelled only by gravity, but England is pretty flat. The things these kids build were pedal-driven. 

I had never heard of the movie before, but it was reportedly shown on the CBS Children's Film Festival on Saturday morning TV.

Free on Movieland.Tv or the Classic Comedy Channel or with a subscription on BFIplayer Classics.

Only 64 minutes, but it has a lot of plot.

The Love God? (Don Knotts, 1969)

Covers some of the same territory as The Seven Minutes. There's a short obscenity trial.

Don Knotts stars as Abner Audubon Peacock IV who publishes a failing birdwatching magazine. It is saved from bankruptcy by a pornographic magazine publisher (Edmond O'Brien) who wants it for its 4th Class Mailing Permit.

Abner becomes known as a pornographer. He's shunned by his community. He had been a scout leader. Now parents shield their children from him. He is about to commit suicide when a couple guys from an ACLU-like organization offer to defend him in court from obscenity charges.

My older brother and sister wanted to go to this in 1969, but our parents wouldn't let them because it was rated PG. In fairness to my parents, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was made the same year, was rated PG and had a nude scene and a teacher molesting a student. When Gone with the Wind was re-released in the '60s it got a G-rating and it was a bloody war movie with implied nudity, implied marital rape, slavery, prostitution, the horrible death of a horse, a man having his leg amputated without anesthesia and a dead body dragged across the floor leaving a long bloody smear, all in technicolor. Ratings had entirely different meanings back then.

According to Wikipedia, The Love God? is now rated PG-13.

Now that I've seen the movie, I can tell you my parents were right. I don't know why I found it so disturbing.

Don Knotts isn't the blowhard he is in his other movies. The Mafia has taken control of the magazine and he's forced to become a bizarre Hugh Hefner-like figurehead for the publication. He goes back to his old girlfriend waiting for him in their small town. Before they can marry, her father, a pastor, insists that he call a press conference and tell the world the truth, that he is a virgin. Knotts is horrified but sees no way out. 

It was a failed attempt to put Don Knotts in a comedy aimed at adults. Sadly, the public didn't go for it. If it had, Knotts might have been the poor man's Woody Allen. 

Free on Movieland.Tv and Amazon Prime.