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The Holdovers (2023)
Not A Through Movie
Director Alexander Payne is passive/aggressive when it comes to his previous SIDEWAYS star Paul Giamatti's character Paul Hunham, a stuffy, curmudgeon-like professor of a high-end yet aged-old/antique boys-only prep-school, who in one scene angrily lectures his students while glibly handing-out failing grades, and the next idealistically defends the institution's grieving African-American cook from one of a small-handful of HOLDOVER teens, unable to go home for Christmas and having to spend a melancholy "detention" (like THE BREAKFAST CLUB meets DEAD POET'S SOCIETY meets 1972's CHILD'S PLAY) stuck in an otherwise vacant campus...
Ironically, that particular scolded brat winds up getting a last-minute Christmas vacation reprieve... a shame since he had the kind of antagonistic attitude that would inevitably transition by the end: But here the sole youngster is Dominic Sessa as Angus Tully, one of those semi-complicated blunt/sassy meets dull/depressed loner types, and who's almost impossible to either root for or relate with...
And sadly, with uneven ingredients stuffed into a bland counter-culture-era drama (probably set in 1970 so the kids aren't glued to cell-phones), NEBRASKA and ABOUT SCHMIDT indie-auteur Payne... usually prone to road-movies with a fresh twist around every corner... drives a tired vehicle down a tediously overlong and ultimately dead-end street.
Planet of the Apes: Up Above the World So High (1974)
Farewell To The Planet of the Apes
The final episode, and perhaps, as we see Virdon, Burke and Galen heading off on a raft towards (perhaps) another land in the last frame, this serves as a decent farewell - although the show was cancelled... So for the PLANET OF THE APES television series, there's no actual conclusion.
Pasted Together TV-Movie
Plot centers on a rogue human (slightly resembling Soupy Sales) who created a hang glider - that works, somewhat...
Astronauts Virdon and Burke, knowing a thing or two about flight and a lot about altitude, teach him how to make a better pair of wings - but the inventor gets captured, and must be freed before a lady ape scientist tricks him, and a love-struck Galen, into turning the flying machine into a primitive B1 Bomber...
And all pretty much good stuff, especially the aerial scenes - seeing an ape on a hang-glider is what made our youth dreamlike and cool-weird...
But alas, it's a sad and literal farewell to a creative series, and one of two episodes (beginning with TOMORROW'S TIDE, a personal favorite i.e. "the one with the shark") compiled into a so-called TV-movie mixing this episode in circa 1980, titled FAREWELL TO THE PLANET OF THE APES. But both UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH and/or FAREWELL has no closure since the series was cancelled after season one. Like so many other great cult shows, it lived on in our imagination. They're out there still. Finding their way...
Planet of the Apes: The Liberator (1974)
The One That Got Away (With Reason)
The one episode never aired, and perhaps that's a good thing because it's a subpar outing, resembling a lesser STAR TREK episode with campy costumes and, like several other episodes, a lack of apes.
Centering almost completely on a group of villagers who punish their own by execution, we follow an Arian blonde fella and his dark haired girlfriend falling in love against the will of the village leader who won't let go of the past. Pretty boring, especially since our mainstays Virdon, Burke, and Galen serve very little in the dull proceedings. Seems like a failed attempt at some kind of spinoff that would have not lasted half a season.
Planet of the Apes: The Cure (1974)
Lovely Locke
An episode about a village of humans dying of Malaria would seem a drag, and many shows after, like LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, would have very searing episodes on the subject of disease wiping out towns, but this is surprisingly one of the best episodes...
The ape doctor doesn't believe Virdon and Burke, who know a thing or two about this "unknown" disease called Malaria.
Sondra Locke, a few years shy of being Clint Eastwood's girlfriend/co-star in projects ranging from BRONCO BILLY and SUDDEN IMPACT, plays a pretty village lass smitten with Virdon, who had shared their background as astronauts - and when she comes down with the illness, under delusion she tells all to the Ape doctor, putting the trio at risk and making this a race double-edged race against time: our heroes need to gather tree bark for a possible cure and escape before the apes find out their true identities.
Planet of the Apes: The Interrogation (1974)
Lovely Lynn Benisch Deserved Better
The worst episode yet has Burke (James Naughton) getting captured, and a masochistic female ape (Beverly Garland) putting him through the ringer...
Including a spinning wheel/rack and hypnosis, all the while strangely seducing him while the most annoying sounds, like clocks from hell, tick and chime in the background: All this is supposed to make Burke go stark raving mad, and then some, but this primal torture chamber winds up torturing the audience as well.
On the peripheral, Virdon and Galen are trying to locate their friend by visiting Galen's house, where mother is helpful but human-loathing senate seat father takes a while to come around. Meanwhile, the only good/decent and/or worthwhile/entertaining scene involves Burke hallucinating beautiful blonde Lynn Benisch (who appeared in many TV shows during the 1970's but never looked so pretty) in place of Garland's ape under hypnosis. But she doesn't last long enough. Making her image alone a red rose in a garbage bucket.
Planet of the Apes: The Tyrant (1974)
James Daughton, Animal House
Turns out General Urko really isn't so bad - like comparing Stalin to Hitler during WWII. The episode starts out great - setting up two human characters that seem a mainstay...
Michael Conrad as a farmer and his rambunctious ape-hating son, James Daughton ("Greg," head of the Deltas from ANIMAL HOUSE, in his second episode). Daughton joins with our hero-trio Virdon, Burke and Galen in battling a band of apes led by the titular villain, Aboro, ruling the town with an iron fist...
And unlike Urko, not adhering to any rules or laws. But the episode wanes when, after a tragedy, Galen is sent to Aboro's tent undercover (as Zaius's aid), tricking him into a personal battle with Urko. Despite being dialog-laden, there's a con - kind of a Planet of the Apes version of THE STING - that's somewhat involving. Although for the most part, it's like watching a bland stage play.
Planet of the Apes: The Horse Race (1974)
Back to Action
They called in action director Jack Starrett... who directed a bevy of biker flicks, SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIPOFF, and later RACE WITH THE DEVIL and played the helicopter riding redneck cop in FIRST BLOOD... for this episode about an important horse race that could free a disgruntled prefect, and a blacksmith's human son, the latter who illegally rode a horse to save Galen from a scorpion bite.
And it's up to Virdon to ride against Urko's best rider - and his life's at risk since Urko has his henchman ready to gun him down before he wins or after he loses...
With the exception of Morgan Woodward as the blacksmith, some overacting occurs between the gorillas and Woodward's son, who seems like a cameo player in a CHIPS episode and isn't as effective as an intrepid youngster played by ANIMAL HOUSE villain, MALIBU BEACH hero and the guy who competes with Fonzie when he jumped the shark on HAPPY DAYS, James Daughton, but the race's climactic action pulls it all through.
Planet of the Apes: The Deception (1974)
Great Literary Episode
Involving a blind female ape who hates humans for (supposedly) killing her father, and her uncle who heads up a KKK type group who kills humans with masks at the dead of night. For the record, this episode became the best read of the PLANET OF THE APES novelizations...
Herein, Galen and the astronauts have to trick the girl into thinking they are all apes for shelter, and along the way, she falls for Burke. Some intense moments between Galen and Burke and with a suspenseful template throughout - tightening the inevitable anticipation of when the girl will discover she's being duped. Melodrama and suspense ensues, and it's all very well executed.
Planet of the Apes: The Surgeon (1974)
Jacqueline Scott and David Naughton As Apes
The one thing Galen's missing is a girlfriend or wife, especially since we all know McDowall's Cornelius character as being matched with Kim Hunter's Zera in the original films... and here a ladyfriend is introduced - well actually, she and Galen are former lovers, and Kira's a surgeon who holds the skills, along with a discovered forbidden book on human surgery tactics, to save Virdon: who's been shot by Gorillas.
But first, the one thing he needs before the operation is the transfusion from a put-upon teenager, whose father thinks she's cursed: and he'll do everything to stop the surgery...
Has that time-is-running-out intensity throughout, and is thus as aggravating as suspenseful, but a cool episode giving Galen more depth than usual. And last but not least, CHARLEY VARRICK actress Jacqueline Scott (quoted at the end of this article from an interview) plays the surgeon aka the Galen's ex, and is wearing Kim Hunter's (from the first three films) same mask. And behind another ape mask is James Naughton's brother, David Naughton, who would be a (Dr.) Pepper before starring in the John Landis classic AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.
Planet of the Apes: Tomorrow's Tide (1974)
A Shark's Tale
An episode that centers on a village of exploited humans used as fisherman - they venture into the shark-saturated ocean with spears, risking their lives for a catch that benefits the ape foreman, Roscoe Lee Brown...
And soon become one of... or, two of them - having to pass dangerous initiations, including swimming under fire, dodging sharks and landing a catch on the spear. Pre-JAWS, this forebodes the shark scare craze that would strike a year later, and has terrific moments and is one of the better episodes: getting down to bare-knuckle action. Galen, in trying to con Browne, has some fun. Even Virdon points out: "I didn't know he was that much of a ham." Character actor John McLiam co-stars as the McGuffin, but it's those sharks that, although obviously stock footage, make things work.
Planet of the Apes: The Legacy (1974)
Zina Bethune & Jackie Earle Haley
The fugitive three discover a computer, resembling a candy machine, that tells the history of humans, and might serve more answers - but it turns off, and when the Gorillas raid soon after, they capture Virdon..
Thus placing a street urchin, played by a pre-BAD NEWS BEARS Jackie Earle Haley, as a spy to learn the whereabouts of Burke and Galen, who are elsewhere planning to free their friend whom the gorillas are using as a plant to snare the entire trio.
An entertaining episode with some nice twists - and Ron Harper's character is front stage as we get to know him from the inside/out. Meanwhile, the artistic-looking, real life dancer Zena Bethune, Harvey Keitel's girlfriend from Martin Scorsese's first theatrical yet still very low-budget film WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR and who, years later in real life, died tragically while trying to save an injured possum on the freeway, guest stars along with Haley.
Planet of the Apes: The Good Seeds (1974)
Made A Great Novelization
Galen is shot, so Burke and Virdon take him to a farm where a family can nurse him to health. The old-fashioned ape clan doesn't trust the humans, especially the oldest son, who, to become an actual farmer, must have his pregnant cow give birth to a bull.
Thinking the humans have cursed this, he's the one thing that might put our heroes in jeopardy, and this character gets fitfully annoying - to the astronauts and audience both. Good episode, kind of a LITTLE APE ON THE PRAIRIE with Lonny Chapman and Jacqueline Scott as the farmer mother and father, while Bobby Porter, who portrayed Caesar's son in BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, is the youngest son. The best scenes involve Virdon, a farmer in his "past life," teaching Chapman the real ways of planting soil... for actual results.
Planet of the Apes: The Trap (1974)
Meet General Urkel
Here we get to know the villainous General Urko as a real... um... person.
He and Burke, during a fight in the demolished San Francisco when an earthquake breaks out, fall into a hole and wind up underground where a subway existed, including a poster advertising a zoo...
Where children are feeding a banana to a caged gorilla. Burke talks the furious Urko into helping him escape instead of killing him, providing the best moments. All the while Burke hopes the general doesn't see that poster, which proves the very thing all Gorillas' don't want to face: that humans preceded them. Tautly suspenseful (in the Irwin Allen fashion) with terrific dialogue between human and ape - one of the best episodes, perhaps even the best of the series.
Planet of the Apes: The Gladiators (1974)
William Smith, Finally A Good Guy
Like after any pilot episode, the budget here on episode two is noticeably sparse and we're cut down to a more centered storyline with less Apes and more humans... After all, it's much easier to throw rags on people than to dress up those gorillas...
In this sort of old school gladiator style episode without fancy armor, Burke and Virdon must go up against a human brawler who fights other humans for the ape's enjoyment.
Muscle-bound character actor William Smith is the formidable badass and his son, who's learning the ropes, is played by Marc Singer. The last half, as Singer and Galen compare the "virtues" of warriors and pacifists, drags despite the awesome premise. But the scene where Burke's pitted against Smith makes the episode shine - although the turnout is pretty unrealistic.
Planet of the Apes: Escape from Tomorrow (1974)
Big Things Have Great Beginnings
Pilot episode of the television series based on the franchise of motion pictures involving two astronauts: older blond-haired Ron Harper and cool young dark-haired James Naughton aka Virdon and Burke, who land on a planet ruled by... you got it... talking apes. The beleaguered astronauts meet Roddy McDowall as Galen, a friendly chimp (Cornelius with a new name...
Galen was actually an assistant chimp in the original movie) helping them dodge gun-totting militaristic Gorillas while a local, Royal Dano, provides shelter and exposition about their situation. The suspenseful plot involves straight-line survival, setting up the series' template: Virdon, Burke and Galen are known fugitives who must be caught and it's General Urko, played by a fitfully hammy Mark Lenard, who heads up the chase - although it's the scientific orangutan, Zaius, who wants them alive: but for scientific reasons, which would lead to the same lethal conclusion.
Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975)
Stylized Minimalized Animation
With RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES, they finally faithfully covered the titular planet created by source novel author Pierre Boulle, whose evolved apes had everything modern-day humans enjoy (that couldn't be afforded on the big screen): from airplanes to full-fledged military weapons/transports to cities that don't look out of the stone age...
The animation is of the cost-cutting low-budget Hanna-Barbara-style 1970's, but is also coolly stylized and visually intriguing, including establishing still-shots of the sun or lightning or various character expressions, seeming more like frequently moving matte-paintings than an animated cartoon catered to Saturday morning children...
Which RETURN hardly is, actually, with a lot of either frantic violence or threats of such... and the first episode has three astronauts... one woman and two men, a black (voiced by BATTLE actor Austin Stoker) and a white... in a more realistic space-cruiser being an actual NASA capsule, eventually making a sudden dead-drop RETURN to this initially barren planet, as happened during the first thirty-minutes of the Charlton Heston classic with his own two astronaut cohorts...
One of the twists here is that... learned in a giant Roman-like courtroom full of apes ranging from the usual military gorillas to scientific chimps to intellectual orangutans, humans (other than the three about to land from space) have acquired the new ability of speaking, which the villainous General Urko, voiced by the second Fred Flintstone Harry Corden, wants stopped...
Providing plenty of tension and race-against-time action/adventure in the pilot-episode FLAMES OF DOOM, referring to the enigmatic Forbidden Zone where the best scenes occur during the rudimentary stranded search...
Eventually leading to an old Robinson Caruso type survivor alongside that sexy cave-girl Nova... and he's former astronaut Brent, who was played by Heston-wannabe James Franciscus in the horrendous second feature BENEATH, which this cartoon -- while never taken seriously by diehard APES franchise fans -- is far superior and with adapted novelizations (written by William Arrow) providing the best page-turning prose since Pierre Boulle's original.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Back to Basics (Underrated Finale)
Like RETURN OF THE JEDI would a decade later, ending the original STAR WARS franchise with a more accessible forest location along with big-budget science-fiction style lighted-corridors throughout dark steely fortresses, so the original ape series concluded with BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES costing the least amount of money... only you wouldn't know since the new exterior locale (where both apes and humans can speak) takes place in what seems like something from a sparsely affordable Robinson Caruso production...
Yet not entirely since at the end of the previous film, CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, there was an unseen and, herein, narrated-about (by John Huston) nuclear war after Roddy McDowall's Caesar took over... so the wilderness setting has a built-in explanation of the world going back to scratch... but there's also an underground compound of the previous formidable city after the holocaust: where the slain governor's main interrogator Severn Darden, with eerie post-nuke fallout garb, is now the main baddie...
But that's only on the humanoid side since there's Claude Akins as the gorilla antagonist, who's more part of the central story at the central village, posing the biggest threat while forgetting about what McDowall's Caesar had done to make apes rule the now secondary, semi-enslaved humans: his goal is for gorillas to lord over the now passive, domesticated chimps, including Natalie Trundy and Bobby Porter as Caesar's treehouse-dwelling wife and son...
And not since Maurice Evans' know-it-all Zaius, preferring ancient religion over science, had there been an integral intellectual orangutan... only here, Paul Williams is Caeasar's affable sidekick, spouting time-travel exposition alongside CONQUEST black actor Hari Rhodes's relative Austin Stoker: all three ultimately doing BATTLE against the monstrous nuclear-effected humans with the unpredictable gorillas in what's an otherwise imperfect conclusion that's never boring, and always with an intriguing and suspenseful, adventurous hurdle to climb.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Roddy Deserved A Nomination
Taking place twenty-years after the previous/third film of the franchise, ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, which was set in the then-modern/groovy 1970's and hardly resembled a science-fiction film except the two talking chimps, Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter as scientist couple Cornelius and Kira, dying violently at the end but, in a surprise twist, their talking baby chimp was saved by traveling circus owner Ricardo Montalban as Armando...
Who for some reason, as CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES begins, makes a rather idiotic decision to visit the primary police-state location shot at the University of Irvine in California, resembling a sparse, steely fortress/city ruled by a firm futuristic hand of the law, casting a daunting shadow over its inhabitants...
Especially any kind of simian because, as we learn from Armando talking to Roddy McDowall's Milo, soon to become the revolution-leading Caesar... because of the astronauts from the previous film, all dogs and cats had died, making humans lean on simians both as pets and low-paid workers, from hairdressers to waiters...
The best scenes occur in the middle as McDowall's Caesar (with girlfriend Natalie Trundy as a more outright alluring girl-ape version of Kim Hunter) goes undercover in plain site... like his father Cornelius, he hides his power of speech and is put through what's called Ape Processing, a boot camp meets concentration camp... before being hired to work for the main antagonist in a sinister governor played by the usually lightweight stock-handsome Don Murray, so drastically over-the-top it's more logical to center on his sympathetic black assistant Hari Rhodes...
Meanwhile nefarious henchman/interrogator Severn Darden (looking almost like an ape himself) will head the villains in the next and last venture, BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, that occurs after a gorilla uprising and impending nuclear war: the latter that we never actually witness but, despite the budgets dropping with each vehicle (many night scenes are hard to distinguish characters clearly), the truly remarkable action's saved for the climactic titular CONQUEST....
In particular one suspenseful scene where a horde of torch-carrying apes approach slowly from a distant vanishing point: overall filmed in a tight and flowing, violently brisk fashion by J. Lee Thompson as Roddy McDowall's final takeover speech could have easily led to an Oscar nomination -- if only these kind of films were taken seriously beyond the immense box-office combination of both cult and mainstream audiences.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
Best of the Bunch
The title ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES hardly fits the actual original third APES franchise vehicle since we begin with them having already landed in the current earth's 1973 ocean/beach, so there's no actual literal escape except what's explained later... and really, what this is an escape from is Charlton Heston's demand decision to - in the second feature BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES not worthy enough to even be reviewed - have the world blow up from a worshiped nuclear warhead, mounted by a cult of zombie-like humans while the b-story above involves warring gorillas as the chimpanzees remain neutral...
Well actually, they were also pretty busy since franchise stars Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter as Cornelius and Zira with even smarter scientist Milo played by Sal Mineo had rebuilt Heston as Taylor's original spaceship, thus explaining how they arrived to present-day Earth... a brilliant idea to restart the entire franchise from scratch as ESCAPE is the original classic in reverse...
Instead of a lone human in a world where apes reign and, most importantly, verbally communicate in the English language while primitive humans cannot, the first act has the astronaut trio - having met human heroes Bradford Dillman and Natalie Trundy as passive/friendly veterinarian psychologists - become what poor Taylor never amounted to, since the ape world of the first movie was basically a prehistoric future, lacking the means that turn these talking chimps... soon only McDowall and Hunter... into beloved celebrities, from televised meetings to worldwide television news...
The best scenes have Cornelius and Zira adapting into the human world where it's both outwardly comedic and underline suspenseful... the latter because of a truly formidable villain in the White House's science-chief Eric Braeden as Dr. Otto Hasslein...
His cool manner and professional interplay with the chimps begins somewhat politely, winding up into an exploitation style showdown at an abandoned shipyard... yet his previous scenes, like a standout moment debating his president employer William Windom on the difference between outright murder and political euthanasia, provides a similar brand of cerebral philosophy from the original, only without a preachy message involved...
While Francis J. Schaffner's groundbreaking PLANET OF THE APES is still (and always will remain) the greatest of the APES franchise, ESCAPE... directed in a brisk, economical pace by former NAKED CITY actor Don Taylor... is the BEST since its primary goal - beyond igniting the further adventures leading to the inevitable simian uprising - is to simply, and quite brilliantly, entertain.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Action & Message
With a built-in spoiler title such as PLANET OF THE APES, the fact the apes don't appear, riding like lethal humans on horseback, until 32-minutes in isn't because the first act's created to simply lead into that important moment... instead, the three American astronauts Taylor, Landon and Dodge played by Charlton Heston, Robert Gunner and Jeff Burton, have their very own seemingly separate short film/prologue...
Crash landing on a mysterious planet from an outer-space mission, they search throughout initially lifeless scorched terrain where the characters are economically fleshed-out, particularly Heston's Taylor, poking fun at (or as black astronaut Dodge says, "riding") Landon for still being patriotic... so basically, the shocking and violent ape-hunting-party's more of an interruption of the astronauts rudimentary journey than their own first act predictably leading to the inevitable reverse-evolution reality...
But soon it's only main star Charlton Heston, caged with gorgeous Linda Harrison's Nova and subjected to a prehistoric-style town's hospital/experimental lab, and, having been injured in the throat, he can't speak... which strategically he shouldn't since humans on this planet can't... so his plight becomes both a physical and mental game...
Making much of the original PLANET OF THE APES a social commentary on the separation of church and state where classy yet close-minded orangutan leader Dr. Zaius, portrayed by British veteran actor Maurice Evans, wants to keep the astronaut discovery a kind of buried (and perhaps even castrated) secret...
Meanwhile logical scientist Chimpanzee couple Cornelius and Zira, played brilliantly by future franchise stars Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter... with groundbreaking makeup and mask-work that punctuates every single expression... will do anything to protect Heston and the truth: the latter that still needs proving...
Overall a balance of science-fiction philosophy and ragged mainstream action directed sublimely by America's own David Lean-inspired epic auteur Franklin J. Schaffner, so even when this original PLANET gets overly thematic, symbolic and preachy, the tense anticipation of how things might turn out (other than Ron Serling's well-known TWILIGHT ZONE-style twist ending) keeps the characters and audience always guessing.
The Nickel Ride (1974)
Jason Miller Deserved Better
In THE NICKEL RIDE, wherein a convoluted set-up is experienced through random wandering conversations with blue collar workers, building managers, street dwellers, and a boxer asked to take a fall, the main actor, an ever-intense Jason Miller, who played the buried lead in THE EXORCIST, is in some big trouble, and there's a feeling of walking into a movie after missing the first twenty minutes...
Throughout this dialogue-driven Neo Neor with a fantastic title in THE NICKEL RIDE, be careful when reading the plot summary... An intriguing tale about a criminal wearing a skeleton key around his neck, controlling what's called "The Block," a literal boulevard of warehouses where mobsters keep their, you know, goods...
One particular new client is hesitant to join-in and Miller's ultra-serious boss, played by a 70's eclectic character-actor (in CHINATOWN the same year) who would gain fame a decade later as Tom Selleck's uppity caretaker, Higgins, on MAGNUM P. I., John Hillerman has, for mysterious reasons, no logical reason not to trust the likable neighborhood chief, Miller's Cooper...
At least not the person we got to know thus far, showing absolutely no flaws whilst completely beloved by the neighborhood... and that's exactly what we seemed to have missed, including the important aspect of how this man's calculating job works in the first place, taking us through a rushed introduction with a continuing score sounding like surreal nightmare carnival music (composer Dave Grusin fared a lot better with the similar-in-plot neo-noir THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE)...
And with a gorgeous, future ROLLING THUNDER ingenue Linda Haynes as Sarah, stubbornly hanging around to our put-upon hero's chagrin; like Charles Bronson in that same year's more entertaining and action-packed MR. MAJESTYK, the two leads venture to a hidden woodsy cabin (albeit for much different reasons), unsuccessfully hiding away from one of the most intentionally annoying hit-men in cinema history...
That being the otherwise superb Bo Hopkins as a talkative yet subtle hillbilly assassin, a cross between MIDNIGHT COWBOY and COLUMBO, whose best scene occurs during a dream, which really works in how Miller wakes up from it -- eerie and edgy in one of director Robert Mulligan's best shot scenes...
And, after escaping from Hopkins following a semi-suspenseful yet overlong exterior melodrama, Hillerman, in the midst of a noisy big-wig city party crashed by his mellow yet extremely perturbed and vengeful employee, explains the situation (as best he can but not enough to clear up the convoluted plot-line) to Cooper: and of course that snarky albatross, Hopkins, still needs to be taken out, for eternity...
So, overall, with such an incredible cast on board (including a potentially good but ultimately wasted Victor French), THE NICKEL RIDE is a real shame since Jason Miller, a swarthy "student" of the James Dean meets Marlon Brando style of brooding Method Actor spontaneity... and who brought a uniquely urban intensity, reaching beyond the horror genre in William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST... is stuck here without a coherent plot to attempt displaying what he has (or could have had) to offer audiences after his previous years' big demonic break.
13 Rue Madeleine (1947)
The FIRST HALF is the best
James Cagney went to war... not literally, like, say, James Stewart, but at forty-years old and already an iconic movie star, once WW2 began, he put away his gangster garb and did only patriotic features...
And that's unfortunate, because the soldiers overseas would probably rather cheer Cagney on in another ROARING TWENTIES-style vehicle to simply get their minds off the war... but perhaps Cagney making war or patriotic pictures for those like him back home to remember the soldiers, risking their lives overseas...
Which continued even after the war, and in the case of his best wartime movie, 13 RUE MADELEINE, he fared much better in what's more a crime thriller in military garb, starting out a kind of propaganda documentary before the story unfolds...
And contrary to popular opinion, the best moments are actually in the first half, involving Richard Conte as a secret traitor/German spy bunked with good American boy Frank Latimore in an officer training headquarters, which is like a post-graduate boot-camp for O. S. S. Agents...
Conte's always good, whether playing good or bad, or in-between, like here... where the audience is unaware of his nefarious status until about twenty-minutes in when he learn along with Cagney, who basically oversees the young soldiers the way Lloyd Nolan and Robert Armstrong did his training to become one of the G-MEN ten-years prior...
Herein, the best scene is also the deadliest, and involves Conte and Latimore about to parachute out of an airplane into France... what happens will leave a chill down your spine as it's not over-scored or melodramatic... but realistic and bone-chilling...
Afterwards, Cagney becomes the star of the picture, traipsing around France, meeting up with resistance members, or the town's mayor (Sam Jaffe)...
Sadly, this is the point when Conte takes backseat, only appearing sporadically after being built-up as a buried lead while the urgency and suspense is cut in half... because it should have been more his picture all the way through...
He'd have made a great villain against Cagney but they hardly share any more screen-time at all.
R.P.M. (1970)
Gary Lockwood's revenge of computers
A year after Gary Lockwood was slightly too old to play a hapless hippie about to go to Vietnam, cruising around L. A. with nothing to do but get stoned in MODEL SHOP, he played an even younger hippie and is completely miscast... especially since he's also balding... but this rebel at least has a cause...
Leader of a student group taking over a university's computer center, Lockwood... along with another thirty-something student Paul Winfield... have demands they give to a liberal professor they once really liked...
That's where star Anthony Quinn, hired as a kind of emergency dean/president, comes in: spending most of the picture either having long discussions with comparably stuffy and conservative university profs or hanging out with young girlfriend Ann-Margret, who, like Lockwood, has little to do here but spout smug counter-culture platitudes in what feels more like a progressive TV-movie than a watered-down big-screen expose on college revolutionaries, hence the R. P. M. Title standing for Revolutions Per Minute...
But there's only one revolution here, and it drags, despite Lockwood having a few good monologues opening up to Quinn... yet the audience can never fully get into his shared plight/agenda since otherwise sympathetic left-wing director and scriptwriter Stanley Kramer and Erich Segal never properly flesh-out the characters to grow past clichés - on either side of the aisle.
Hawaii Five-O: School for Assassins (1980)
Gary Lockwood on Hawaii 5-0
After playing second-fiddle in Stanley Kubrick's highly-successful (and forever legendary) 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Gary Lockwood never had much of a followup career on the big screen...
He starred in three b-movies: the Spanish-import heist-noir THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS; the Frenchman-directed French New Wave via Los Angeles counter-culture indie MODEL SHOP; and the more mainstream counter-culture melodrama R. P. M. (REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE)...
But he remained busy the next twenty-years doing almost every television show imaginable, and usually as a villain... like in the HAWAII FIVE-O final season's SCHOOL FOR ASSASSINS where, as the episode begins, Lockwood's character Kelsey makes like a cinematic spy, going through a highly-secured building and then, gun drawn, pounces into Lloyd Bochner's office with gun drawn... but instead of pulling the trigger, he's told that he just passed the test...
Lockwood's mission's to kill a visiting oil sheik connected to affable billionaire Monte Markham... with most of the episode dealing with Markham's would-be romance with Pamela Susan Shoop, who could be setting him up...
Lockwood's character turns up now and again while Jack Lord's new sidekick William Smith does some side investigation along with Moe Keeale's native Hawaiian (and fan-favorite) Truck Kealoha...
And, overall, Gary Lockwood... who looked twenty-years instead of ten-years past his prime at this point... was still able to leap onto a rooftop (his career began with stunt-work): but he should have had a much bigger part in SCHOOL FOR ASSASSINS after initially graduating with top honors... until winding-up serving off-screen detention.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Anatomy of an Epic Masterpiece
The greatest cinema epics (from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA before to GOODFELLAS after) have various sequences that feel like their own separate short films that ultimately connect as a whole...
And in that, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is a perfectly multi-tiered vehicle, showcasing both the advanced pioneering of space exploration through orbital technology with the formidable perils of its mere existence...
By the time William Sylvester's top secret NASA scientist leader Dr. Heywood Floyd is having an initially reluctant, abstruse conversation (as the camera gets strategically closer after each time the dialogue's information/importance heightens) with a group of fellow scientists on a moon shuttle, the DAWN OF MAN intro with evolving apes figuring out survival through weaponry had just ended...
And both Sylvester's Floyd and future BARRY LYNDON actor Rossiter have, coincidentally or otherwise, simian-like features within their otherwise modern and progressed, highly-educated countenance...
It's the final chapter filling the entire last half where the most evolved humans are revealed... in the perfect-looking pair of astronauts, Keir Dullea as Dave Bowman and Gary Lockwood as Gary Poole...
It's almost two-years later, and they're headed beyond the moon to Jupiter, on another secret mission: only known to one of the most creatively sinister antagonists ever filmed -- turning 2001 into a bonafide sci-fi thriller...
The computer, HAL 9000, voiced by stage-actor Douglas Rain, a smooth vocal hybrid of yawning monotone, robotic programming and vulnerable, melancholy reflection, ends up taking over the vessel... before which Gary Lockwood's tightly-muscular Poole is the most grounded and human character yet...
While otherwise reserved, patient and methodical, he's also somewhat glib, aloof, even condescending to HAL unlike Dullea's Bowman... who eventually shifts from a metronomic, concentrating professional into a vengefully-driven, intensely determined hero...
Eventually taking the literal last trip through a colorful "Star Gate" that, in 1968, while the most amazing visually is also perhaps the most dated in its obvious nod to then-current counter-culture psychedelia...
Leading to an epilogue that's confused audiences for decades (and will for decades longer) where Bowman seems to hear... before actually observing... his own self within a Gothic alien enclosure, aging until his fantastical transition into...
Well to attempt explaining the inner-meanings of those enigmatic closing twenty-minutes is futile... while the most intriguing sequences had already occurred during the classical music bridge from prehistoric savagery into outer-space special effects that, while later pepped-up in George Lucas's STAR WARS, still has yet to be equaled...
And is where William Sylvester's cool, surreptitious manner equals the inevitably intense realism of those two astronauts, who ultimately take us home -- after having left it far, far behind.