Month: September 2021

I have no idea how, but I started this thinking it was a documentary. Instead, it’s a fictional account of one sex worker’s double shift at a NYC brothel. It’s quite a low budget film and took me a bit to get into the film. The soundtrack is amongst the most jarring I’ve ever heard and the acting is often times stilted to the degree of cheap porn. Unlike porn, the sex scenes are possibly the most unerotic ones ever filmed. The male characters are almost uniformly caricatures, so that the film focuses instead on aspects of 1980s capitalism and how the shrill boss’s control, real and imagined, over her workers is all based on the almighty dollar. I had a hard time throughout ignoring the setting and how there was almost no security or private areas for the staff. I’m by no means an expert in the field, but it all seemed like really poor safety design. It did turn the brothel into a very mundane workplace, complete with petty jealousies and various aggravations.

For better or worse, some people find themselves thrown onto a singular life path that is almost impossible to stray off from. That is what happens to Tyrone Power’s Martin Maher. Upon immigrating to the United States from Ireland, he gets a job at West Point and for the next 50 years, that is where he stays. On one hand, it’s a casual telling of the history of West Point through one man’s experiences, as he watches class after class of cadets graduate and shape world events. On the other, it demonstrates the cyclical of each person’s life and the consequences of the decisions that they may or may not have the free will to make, for better or worse.

My favorite part of this movie was its great intro, following a lone man on his long walk through the twisty halls of a police station. The rest of the film is a passable film noir with quite the convoluted plot though somewhat unique premise. Edmund O’Brien is Frank Bigelow an everyman accountant and notary public who has been poisoned and is determined to use his last few days of life left to figure out who murdered him and why. He also is saddled with the clingiest girlfriend who interrupts his quest to play passive-aggressive mind games with him over the phone.

I have a minor goal to watch all the classic Monster movies. This one is definitely on the low end of the genre. There is no menace to the Wolf Man (his acts of terror are mostly performed hidden behind scenery) and his makeup is on the lamer side. While the acting is pretty good, particularly Claude Rains, the telling of the story itself has a very B movie feeling. Lon Chaney Jr as the titular character is a bit of a stalking creep at the beginning, making the romance elements suspect. There are also indications of people disliking his rich family, but that isn’t fleshed out either. The sets are complete awesomeness though. The eerie forest with the fog rolling through is pure soundstage magic.

I hadn’t meant to watch another Robin Hood film so soon after The Adventures of Robin Hood, but sometimes I am a prisoner to the whims of the library holds system. This isn’t amongst the best Mel Brooks films, but it still has its chuckle-worthy moments. It does feel like a product of its time, more of a simple parody of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves than anything else. The cast is fairly solid. I particularly enjoyed Richard Lewis and Roger Rees playing the baddies.