Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

FRISCO JENNY (1932):
This is an interesting case of a pre-code talkie w/ some serious problems that nevertheless ends up overcoming its shortcomings and working. It opens with what seems like the beginning of what might be a very impressive tracking shot - a Keystone Cop pauses outside the swinging doors of a San Francisco saloon, then enters and walks to the bar for a stiff drink while the (enormous) camera rig follows. Are we in for a very early version of the kind of complex dolly shot that Welles could choreograph and get in the can in four hours and Noah Baumbach is able to choreograph and get in the can in five or six weeks? Nope - instead we cut to two short pieces of what looks like a longer opening tracking shot, showing us unrelated action of different minor patrons! Ah well - at least director William A. Wellman, uh - tried before giving up?

I can't pound on Wellman too much, though - because following about fifteen minutes of exposition about the romantic intrigue of the titular character (Ruth Chatterton), Wellman shakes up the plot literally by staging a truly impressive sequence of a 1906 earthquake destroying the bar and everything around it. Yeah, it's only a couple of minutes of practical FX, but by 1932 standards it's pretty darn cool! How can Wellman follow that up?  I guess with... absolutely no more SFX whatsoever, one brief shooting, and mostly a lot of utterly contrived melodrama. 

FRISCO JENNY isn't exactly an Idiot Plot, but it does assume some very, shall we say, primitive assumptions about 20th century morality, such as the perverse old chestnut about women with shady pasts being willing to suffer no end of indignity and even march to their deaths before admitting the kind of thing that absolutely no one would ever think twice about concealing today. FRISCO JENNY's plot simply makes no sense in 2026, yet it works, mostly because its title martyr is played by the incredible Ruth Chatterton, star of the following year's corker satire FEMALE. Chatterton is a tart wit in the early stretch and then segues effortlessly into earnest tragedy in the second half. I have to give Wellman some credit, too, for marshalling a supporting cast of people who (Louis Calhern notwithstanding) I have no recollection of seeing previously, yet they mostly come off as credible. In the case of the two most important supplemental characters - Chatterton's estranged adult son and her lifelong aide-de-camp - the acting almost approaches Chatterton's admirable understatement and verity. This is a movie that should just be laughable, but by the end it almost goes over.

3/5    I guess they were still trying to figure out what kinds of plots would fly with sound/dialogue in '32. (Then again the particular outre conceit here persisted into the era of Douglas Sirk 25+ years later and then fortunately drifted into obscurity.)

[FatFreddysCat]

"Splatter University" (1984)

A new instructor at a small private college is targeted by the same psycho killer who murdered her predecessor. Yes, that's the whole plot.
Extremely cheap slasher junk with a couple of decently gory kills but not much else. Distributed by Troma and directed by the guy who would go on to do "Class of Nuke'Em High," to give you an idea of the level of filmmaking we're dealing with.
In other words ... AVOID.

[M.10rda]

I really like the original CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH  though I agree that SPLATTER UNIVERSITY is quite bad. (CON'EH is co-directed by Lloyd Kaufman, and SU isn't.) I'm sorry - I even like CON'EH more than I liked

HOUSE OF BAMBOO (1955):
...Directed by Sam Fuller, who I know I should admire and revere more than I admire and revere Kaufman,  and I keep trying w/ his films. A mortally wounded ex-GI in post-war Japan is implicated in a violent train heist, and on his deathbed he confesses that *CHOKE* he was secretly married to an Asian broad!                

So undercover dick Robert Stack insinuates himself into the life of the guy's missus, ostensibly to investigate the white gang that's pulling crimes in Japan. Of course Stack gets romantically involved w/ the widow, and of course that plot takes up about twice as much screen time as the crime plot.  I acknowledge that this was progressive - possibly even shocking - for 1955, but (as I often seem to write lately) From A 2026 Perspective........ yeah, meh.

Watching a young Stack doing that Robert Stack thing is rather illuminating: he's almost absurdly chiseled and lantern-jawed and hard boiled, but that's what fifties noirs required and that's what got him his "Unsolved Mysteries" retirement gig, I guess. Robert Ryan, a great actor, has next to nothing to work with as the bad guy - several reviews I've read make great hay of Ryan saving Stack's life at one point, then rhetorically asking Stack and the rest of the gang why he saved Stack's life, and no one including Ryan seems to have much of an idea... which kind of says it all about the screenplay. Cameron Mitchell is fourth-billed as another gang member but you can barely tell as he's only ever shot in wide shots w/ other similar-looking actors playing identical bad guys. Come to think of it, Ryan himself never gets a close-up, only some medium wides and two-shots, and I don't even recall if Stack ever gets a legit close-up. It's that kinda' chilly, impersonal affair.

There is a cool running-from-a-heist scene that might've influenced RESERVOIR DOGS (besides a dozen other films) and the very peculiar finale is a gunfight staged on a diagonal rooftop ferris wheel, where dozens of characters fire countless rounds at each other for several minutes and barely anyone gets hit. 

3/5    A curiosity. DeForest Kelley is uncredited yet has a speaking role but I couldn't spot him, but then I could barely spot fourth-billed Mitchell who is onscreen frequently. Fuller himself also supposedly appears as a Japanese patrolman  so just as well he's unspottable...