The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)

A friend and I went to this in 1982. There were only a few people in the theater. As we were leaving, a local TV weatherman was coming in with his popcorn and drink and asked how it was. We indicated that we didn't really like it but didn't explain. I don't know if we poisoned his mind against it or if we lowered his expectations thus enhancing his enjoyment of the film. 

Now that I think about it, that guy was going to the movie alone. He was a local celebrity, but his life might not have been as glamorous as I would have imagined. It's entirely possible he had some obsessed fans himself. I knew a guy around that time who had his house burned down by a crazy woman because she thought a local newscaster lived there.

The movie is still a little hard to watch. 

Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard as delusional fans of Johnny Carson-like talk show host Jerry Langsford (Jerry Lewis). De Niro wants to start career in stand-up, but he's already 34. He doesn't have time to climb the ladder of success and decides to start at the top. He can't keep his fantasy relationship with Jerry separate from reality.

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

A little disturbing seeing The Beatles act like simpletons. Paul has to explain to George that people have two grandfathers. You wouldn't have guessed that both John and Ringo were married men.

I thought my mother might like it. It was pleasant enough. They seemed happy, smiling as they ran through the streets chased by fans. Lovely black & white photography. I had to keep telling her who was who and which ones are still living. She remembered seeing them on TV in the '60's. She thought their haircuts looked awful at the time, and I kind of agree. George's hair looked especially bad. The lack of a strong storyline bothered her.

"They're having a hard day before performing that night," I said. 

With Wilfred Brambell, then 52, as Paul's grandfather. I don't know how I feel about them calling someone younger than me a "little old man".  

Available on the Criterion channel.

My Halloween plea

Be nice. Don't try to shame or embarrass teenage trick-or-treaters.

For one thing, we have better nutrition now and that big hulking ape at your door could be eleven-years-old. 

I am deeply ashamed of the time I was at my sister's house and she was rude to some nice young men who were the only trick-or-treaters they had that year. Why would anyone do that?

I wrote last year:

...I've had older or older-looking kids come to the door. The teenagers seem kind of embarrassed and will daintily take only one. You have to encourage them....

I had a friend who trick-or-treated at sixteen because he needed the food. He was malnourished. He was arrested one night when he was thirteen while searching for food in a dumpster. He thought they would feed him in juvenile detention but it was too late. Dinner was over. He thought he'd at least get to eat in the morning, but his otherwise negligent mother rushed down before breakfast to get him out.

There used to be an old woman in town who would write an annual letter to the editor denouncing trick-or-treating as extortion. It's a common complaint along with Halloween being Satanic. When these people are rude to a teenager politely hoping for candy, I guess they think they're bravely standing up to a Satanic extortion attempt.

As it happens, my old friend later spent several years in the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His mental health hadn't yet declined when he was in high school, but when a teenager says "trick or treat", he could really mean it.

Now that I think about it, he said he had been out throwing eggs on Halloween, so lack of food wasn't his primary problem.

Force Four (1975)

I kind of liked this. A karate movie. Mostly Black cast. In the credits they list the actors and their belt rankings. A few were fifth degree black belts. I hope the one with only a first degree black belt didn't feel bad. One stunt man had a white belt.

I don't think there was any explanation for everyone knowing karate and no one shooting anybody. 

The fight scenes weren't dramatic, but there were no camera or editing tricks. In the '80's, when martial arts movies staged a comeback, that's how my friends and I judged them. We didn't like heavily edited fight scenes.

Made six years before the karate movie, Force: Five.

Four martial artists set out to retrieve a stolen African artifact.

Free on Tubi.

Frankenstein, 1931

Fairly short, around 70 minutes. The monster was more pitiful than I remembered, but it killed a child which I don't think you'd see in a movie today. More gruesome and disturbing to me now than it used to be. Young Frankenstein couldn't completely ruin it.

Reportedly, they were worried that six-year-old child actor Marilyn Harris would be frightened of Boris Karloff in full make-up, but she responded to him the way her character did in the movie. She went right to him and asked to ride with him to the location.

Spacey beats Rapp

He certainly LOOKS guilty.

Anthony Rapp lost his $40 million sexual battery lawsuit against Kevin Spacey. Reportedly, the layout of Spacey's apartment did the trick. Spacey blubbing on the witness stand didn't hurt anything, either.

Rapp claimed that when he was fourteen, he was invited to a party at Spacey's apartment. He realized all the other guests were grown-ups so he wandered off to a bedroom and watched TV until Spacey came in and tried to play his dirty numbers on him. Turns out that Spacey lived in a studio apartment. It was all one room.

I don't know what explanation Rapp's side offered for this. Spacey's defense was hurt by the fact that he publicly apologized when the accusation was first made. He said he was talked into it by his publicist. 

I guess I'm neutral now. Spacey apologized but said at the time that he didn't remember it and Rapp didn't quite remember it, either, but he's 50 talking about something when he was fourteen.

We'll see how the other cases go.

 

The Chicken Heart

Bill Cosby did a routine long ago. I heard it on one of his records a half century ago. About being terrified listening to a radio show about "the chicken heart".

Turns out this was a real thing---a real radio show at least. It's short, eight minutes.

Bill Cosby's thing is on YouTube, as well:

https://youtu.be/fE0hHEtkkQA

He even named the show, Lights Out.