Month: August 2021

This movie is bizarre in a way that only seemed possible in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Six damaged characters interacting on an Army post in the south, the choice to have the entire film shot through a gold filter just adds to the feeling of oppressive sultriness that I associate with the South. The ending is completely whack-a-doodle, but may be worth watching the entire film just to experience its conclusion. The cast is quite stacked with Marlon Brandon, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, Brian Keith, and Robert Forrester playing five of the main characters and directed by the incredible John Huston.

Production on The Thief of Bagdad was put on hold to make this piece, so it was included on the Criterion DVD for that film. Overt propaganda films are fascinating to me and I have a hard time believing that they are capable of inspiring or changing minds, but I could be wrong. More than half of this film is spent with a narrator who goes through the history of the rise of Hitler to the early days of World War II, including all the reasons why there is no other possible conclusion than Britain winning big time. There is an additional fictional story involving RAF pilots and their families to moisten some of the dryness of the rest of the narrative.

I do enjoy a good creepy horror film, versus the outright scary ones, especially if they include Bette Davis (see my childhood love for Watcher in the Woods). Even though I don’t quite understand the popularity of Karen Black in the 70s, I still gave this one a try. A mysterious house is a predictable setting for such a story, as are the eccentric owners, but sadly in this case, it was too predictable and the results weren’t quite creepy enough for me. It does have some nice touches reminiscent of The Shining and the aforementioned Watcher, but they aren’t enough..

The only thing I knew about Selena going into this movie is that she was singer who was murdered at a relatively young age. I appreciate that her father as producer was willing to portray himself in not the most positive of light, but other than that, this is a pretty by-the-book music biopic. I also think it was a good decision to focus much more on her life instead of her death, with very little time spent on Selena’s relationship with her murderer. I don’t have many opinions on Jennifer Lopez’s acting in general, but there were times in this movie where she completely transformed into Selena.