Badmovies.org Forum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4EXBQuTGVY

^note the imposing shadow


This is either a movie about a guy who takes Cortisone and freaks out, a movie about the crumbling of the 1950's american dream, or some combination thereof. For me, it's closer to the former but for the guy on the Criterion collection video thing and it's fans it's alot about the latter. I agree that the guy was victimized by the fact that he couldn't make enough money to go to the doctor or whatever but as far as the milk he drinks being symbolic of like the falsity of american whatever, ehh it was kinda just milk yo.

Hammy, eccentric James Mason ( He played the guy in Lolita ) is a school teacher who also moonlights as a cab dispacher. He is worn out and it affects his health to the point where one day he has an attack of some kind, like a terrible ulcer. I can't remember what it exactly was but in order to stay alive he begins taking Cortisone. He gradually proceeds to go absolutely nuts like he took great handfulls of steroids and coke for breakfast. It's scary, it resembles nothing more than an abusive household, but also kind of comical. It really works up into a thing.

Again, I get the point about how he is struggling to make it being a good little worker bee and yet there are still these obstacles for him mainly in the way of the high cost of living. Now more than ever this is a valid point as its only gotten much worse. At the same time, you have to think someone would have been like "dude that Cortisone is making you freak out haha" I know in the 50's people were more repressed and less likely to speak out to their fathers /husbands but geez. It was a bit much to accept.

4/5 If you can get into stuff like that movie where the lady makes the little kid drown when she's in the rowboat on the lake definately check this out. (edit: leave her to Heaven (1945) sorry for the spoiler but it's a pretty famous scene)

Bigger Than Life is a very good movie but not one I'd care to watch too many times. I find it a bit pedantic. It was based on a magazine article, a true story, and the last time I saw it it played a bit like Cortisone Madness  :wink:. Okay, a joke. I couldn't resist.

James Mason was perfectly cast as the psycho dad. He was a bit dull when normal but when he began to get delusions of grandeur he went nuts in a charismatic and compelling way, was as good as Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. Overall, a solid film, not as nutty/fun as some of director Nick Ray's other 50s outings (Johnny Guitar, Rebel Without a Cause), nor so profound as On Dangerous Ground.

I didn't care much for the ending. The script, decent but uninspired up till then, failed to wrap things up satisfactorily, for me anyway.

in the bonus materials they really piled on the symbolic ness and so forth. I wanna do some cortisone

That's interesting to hear. I don't sweat the symbolism of Bigger Than Life. It's there, I suppose, but you can say that about any film. Basically it's a serious study of accidental drug addiction but for some it's a thinly veiled critique of 50s suburban conformity. Each to his own. Nick Ray could go there, for sure, but I don't think that this is what he was aiming for.