12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead / directed by Gary Fleder (1995, VHS). Andy Garcia, Christopher Lloyd, William Forsythe, Bill Nunn, Treat Williams, Jack Warden, Steve Buscemi, Fairuza Balk, Gabrielle Anwar, Christopher Walken, Don Cheadle. "Give it a name." Made right on the heels of Pulp Fiction, it is difficult not to draw comparisons. One wonders how much influence Tarantino had on Fleder. This dark tale had many elements that should've combined to create a great motion picture. Strong cast, vibrant visuals, lots of action, terrific soundtrack. Standout performances by Treat "I am Godzilla! You are Japan!" Williams and Steve Buscemi-- and the others weren't too shabby either. But the great motion picture didn't happen. Instead we got sort of a hokey and less imaginative version of a Tarantino movie. The hoke arrived in a trio of fatal scripting mistakes. First, the normally wonderful character actor Jack Warden was assigned the task of being the narrator, filling the story holes for the audience as he sits in a diner. The story doesn't tell us the story, instead he tells us the story. No. No. It doesn't work. Second, the characters are speaking in a slang that does not exist in real life. It is special to them. And it is really corny. It has a clumsy and artificial sound to it. Clockwork Orange this isn't. And finally, the characters are all cartoony, and I strongly suspect they are not meant to be. How bad is this film? Not real terrible but it is awful enough that I can watch it only in short increments.

To Have and Have Not / directed by Howard Hawks (1944, VHS). Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael, Walter Sande, Dan Seymour, Marcel Dalio. No reference to whistling will be mentioned in this review. This movie is an earthier version of Casablanca. William Faulkner co-wrote the screenplay to this adaptation of a Hemingway novel. Contrary to Casablanca, Bogart gets the girl, both on screen and in real life. The Bogart/Bacall chemistry is powerful and undeniable. And we get a front row seat. Like Casablanca, Bogie is an expatriot (named Steve!) who does not want to get involved in that little international dispute between the French and Germans. But this time it takes place in Martinique-- and there's even a popular gin joint with a piano player. This film has a couple supporting familiar faces from Casablanca, making the scenario more familiar. Where the former movie was nobly romantic, this one is sexually charged. I defy you to find another place in cinema where cigarette lighting has been consistently developed into such an art form. You can't. Why? This movie had true love fueling the scenes. Although director Hawks was jealous, he knew spark when he saw it and stepped back to let it happen on screen. And for that, we thank him. Walter "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" Brennan is the sidekick, the alcoholic as comic relief (complete with humor music) and Bogie enables him something fierce. Some Hollywood bigwig decided Bacall should sing in her cinema debut, and that was a major mistake-- but really, in the end, who cares? We want to cut her some slack since she shines in every other way. Seymour is really sliiiiimy as the local gestapo chief. Unlike Major Strasser of Casablanca, Seymour's character appears to be a Frenchman who turned against his people. *Shiver* Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime. He's really good at it too. There is a quiet moment in the film where Bogart has a conversation with "another crazy dame," the spouse (Dolores Moran) of a freedom fighter. During this small sliver of the story, Bogart's acting transcended his era. He hated method actors, but I swear as I watched him listening to the dreams and fears of Moran's character he stepped out of time and wasn't being Bogart of the 1940s. For an amazing few minutes he is captured on film acting as if he is acting, and not being Humphrey Bogart. In the 1950s (my favorite Bogart era) he took risks like this, so maybe this few feet of film was a precursor to his later artistry.

Watergate Plus 30 : Shadow of History / directed by Foster Wiley (2003, VHS off-air). Alexander Butterfield, Jeb Stuart Magruder, Hugh Sloan, John Dean, Egil "Bud" Krogh, Richard Reeves, Leonard Garment, Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Carl Bernstein, Howard Baker, Samuel Dash, Fred Thompson, Lowell Weicker. A nice, basic explanation of the Watergate scandal as told by some of the surviving players three decades later. Not a bad introduction for anyone who did not live through the political affair that paralyzed, mesmerized and polarized Americans for over two years. Interviewees includes Nixon's own staff, reporters, and Ervin Committee members. Up front I'll tell you I was a McGovern volunteer in 1972 and I see the term "McGovernite" as a good thing. I'm proud I worked for George. If there ever was a choice between good and evil in any Presidential election, 1972 was it. And America overwhelmingly chose evil. It was funny how Nixon won 49 states yet by 1974 you couldn't find anyone who admitted voting for him. So that's my bias and you can measure my following summation accordingly. This documentary points out what I have always suspected, there is no way the Watergate would've been broken into if J. Edgar Hoover had been alive. Even a nut like Hoover knew this plan was too crazy. But Jedgar died shortly before, and that gave Nixon and company the green light. Yes, I said Nixon. According to Magruder in this video, Nixon had prior knowledge and approval of the break-in. And there was another tidbit that was new. It dawned on me after hearing Kissinger on the tapes egg Nixon on about closing the Pentagon Papers leaks, that Henry bears some responsibility for the creation of the "Plumbers" which in turn led to Watergate. I always felt Kissinger belonged in prison anyway, and this only confirms my view. There are several conspiracy theories related to why the Watergate was really broken into, but this documentary does not address this, although Baker and Thompson do pose some open questions on the motives of Nixon counsel John Dean and his willingness to spill the beans. Strange to see memories presented as old history. The Ervin hearings, the fear of McGovern as if he actually had a chance of winning (What? Even we knew he didn't have chance!), the infamous Nixonian paranoia, Haldeman's cold-blooded stare at the hearings. I was in DC when Butterfield revealed the existence of the tapes in 1973 and let me tell you, that town went apeshit! I have never seen anything like it. Everyone knew Nixon was finished by that point. He was done. Yet we had to endure another year of him. Still, in hindsight we have to give Tricky Dick his due. He opened China, he went to the Soviet Union-- two decisions that a Democrat couldn't have made without charges of being soft on Communism. Leave it to George W. Bush to, and I never thought I would ever say this, make Nixon look like a statesman. In Century 21 we now have the same kind of sleaze but without the foreign policy smarts. Several of those interviewed here expressed the view that nothing has been learned from Watergate except, "Don't get caught." Personally, I think putting a live penguin in the Oval Office would be a good thing, because, as Sarah says, "It keeps a man honest when a penguin is watching." How many times have we heard that sage advice, and how many times have we ignored it at our peril?

X / directed by Roger Corman (1963, VHS off-air). Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold J. Stone, Don Rickles. What can you say about a movie that starts off with a long shot of a severed eyeball, followed by that eyeball floating a steaming beaker and then concluding the story in a revival tent meeting filled with nutcases? It's Roger Corman! The master of low budget cinema. Lurid color, spirals, Theremin soundtrack, cheap camera effects-- but it all works. Corman was an artist and very resourceful at what he did, i.e., direct entertaining films with basically no money in the 1950s-60s. In this tale of hubris, Dr. Xavier (get it, X=Xavier?) gives himself the power of x-ray vision. His optometrist pal tries to dissuade him at the start of the story, but the die is cast: Optometrist- "My dear friend, only the gods see everything." Xavier - "My dear doctor, I'm closing in on the gods." This was filmed during Corman's Vincent Price/Poe cycle, 1960-1964. But unlike Vinnie, Milland does not court the audience. We never really connect with him. The whole x-ray thing was a great concept and this story screamed out for 3-D glasses-- that might've helped in making us care about Milland's character-- or maybe not. Don Rickles must've been granted permission to ad-lib or the role was written for him, as he doles out the insults as only he can. He's pretty good in the character of the sleazebag hustler. There's a swinger party scene that cannot be missed where Milland does a dance much like the twist and he can see everyone through their clothes. In one car scene where we can see the stock footage background through the rear windshield, there is no car newer than 1956, which was sort of weird for a 1963 movie. It is very odd to watch a Corman film from this era that does not end with a giant fire. Specifically, the same giant fire stock footage he used over and over in several stories. I could make a corneacopia of eye puns, but I'll put a lid on it. No need to lash out at me. Suffice to say just be a good pupil and learn from Dr. Xavier's mistakes.

Sabotage / directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1936, DVD). Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder, William Dewhurst. I'm a little nervous about reviewing this one. It's too good, and it speaks just as much for Century 21 as it did for 1936. The only negative thing I can say about this film is no reflection on Hitchcock, but rather the technology that brought it to me. The print I have has terrible audio. Fortunately, thanks to the fact Hitch had his start in silent films, he knew how to tell a story by showing rather than telling, so I could still follow the plot. This movie was based on Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent (a story I had to read in college), which was a much darker and more cynical tale than the one Hitchcock presented to us. In both stories, an innocent child named Stevie(!?!?!) is sent out to deliver a bomb in an act of terror in London. In the movie, the child is not expected to die, but as he carries the bomb he goes on a vision quest much like Billy from the Family Circus when he covers a multitude of stopping points between point A and point B, and the time delay results in the kid's death when the bomb explodes. On a crowded bus. And a puppy dies too. They killed Billy! And Barfy! When Conrad wrote the original story in 1907, he was thinking of anarchists. In 1936, Hitchcock made the villain be from some unspoken continental European country as in, er, Germany. In Century 21 we would first assume this villain was either a homegrown killer-of-children right-wing anti-government sociopath like Timothy McVeigh or part of some plot by the truly evil religious fanatic Bin Laden (actually, not much different than McVeigh). So. This movie will hit some buttons. We see the human ripple effects of terrorism. Captive animals are used as a metaphor-- birds, fish, a dog. The Bombmaker, who is a comic figure, is also a pet shop owner. The link between comedy and tragedy, where the root of all comedy is tragedy becomes clear. In a movie within a movie, some of the most important action takes place behind the screen of a motion picture house where the central characters live real lives, dysfunctional though they may be. What is showing on the screen acts as a foil to what is taking place in real life. The masses drink up the pleasant fiction while the non-fiction machinations take place behind the movie screen. During one very tragic sequence, a funny cartoon is being played. Alfred Hitchcock was one twisted guy. What a macabre sense of humor. The part of this story that was really chilling was how Hitch was able to anticipate the peculiar flavor of the psychopathic disease of the Nazis. The villain in this film is banal, a nothing, a loser, not unlike Hitler's chief of genocide, Heinrich Himmler. At the end of this version, everything is blown to Hell. But out of the ashes a new life can be found. This conclusion, as I recall, wasn't the case in the Conrad story. It would've been interesting to see Alfred Hitchcock's interpretation of the world situation today. Somehow I think it would be too horrifying for him. Things he thought were shocking (he died in 1980) we now take for granted as normal. The world, sad to say, has caught up to Alfred Hitchcock.

Bubba Ho-tep / directed by Don Coscarelli (2002, VHS). Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce, Bob Ivy. "It's time for A-C-T-I-O-N!" Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. The King lives! And it's up to Elvis (with the help of JFK) to stop an ancient Eyptian soul-sucking mummy from killing all the residents of a rundown nursing home in east Texas. The mark of a really well made low budget film is having the audience be unaware that they are watching a low budget film-- and this is a well made low budget film. It is carried by wonderful acting, smart dialogue, creative lighting, nice camera tricks, and a subtle soundtrack. The story has just the right blend of humor and horror. The scarab fight scene alone is worth it. Excellent writing and sensitivity to the challenges of turning invisible to society as one ages (Elvis: "Get old, you can't even cuss someone and have it bother 'em. Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing.") Bruce Campbell is amazing as The decaying King of Rock and Roll, and hooking up with Ossie Davis as President Kennedy (no kidding) creates an unlikely buddy picture with a crazy chemistry that works. Also one of the few movies using narration where that device is effective. When the real Elvis was alive, I regarded him as a cardboard cutout. Campbell's Elvis softened my opinion, with self observations the King himself might not ever have realized: "Here I was complainin' about loss of pride and how life had treated me, and now I realized-- I never had any pride. And much of how life had treated me had been good. The bulk of the bad was my own damn fault. Should've fired Colonel Parker by the time I got in the pictures. Old fart had been a shark and a fool, and I was even a bigger fool for following him. If only I'd treated Priscilla right. If I could've told my daughter I loved her. Always the questions. Never the answers. Always the hopes. Never the fulfillments." I love this movie.

"The Deadly Assassin" (Doctor Who) / directed by David Maloney (1976, VHS off-air). Tom Baker, Bernard Horsfall, Peter Pratt, George Pravda, Hugh Walters. I am not a Dr. Who devotee, but I know enough to recognize an offbeat episode when I see one. First off, the Doctor is without companion. He is operating totally alone. Secondly, we get a few more clues concerning his mysterious past as he finds himself on his native planet of Gallifrey, home of his fellow Time Lords. Here's what I don't get about this place which is supposedly so advanced: they have a strict hierarchy with corny rituals, stupid titles and impractical uniforms. They use torture and capital punishment. There are apparently no women around. Media manipulation is standard. All the Gallifrey action takes place in a studio, making it a claustrophobic place. The chief law enforcement guy has a Czech accent while everyone is oh so very English. We also meet The Master in a new incarnation. "Who is The Master?" The Doctor answers, "He's my sworn arch-enemy. A fiend who glories in chaos and destruction." The Master in this episode is hidden under a hideous costume, so to make up for the lack of facial expression we get delightfully hammy intonations in the spoken lines even through that rubber mask. Most enjoyable. I guess a "hammy Master" can be abbreviated to "hamster." Ohhh, I am soooo scared. There are several cheesy and choppy zooms to bulging eyes. The electronic keyboard soundtrack is as dramatic as a piano at a silent film melotrauma. Thirdly, there is a "Matrix" sequence where the Doctor enters the Jungian collective memory of the Time Lords. This part is on film rather than video, and it is shot out of doors. In a rock quarry in fact, a traditional Dr. Who all-purpose location. The "Matrix" segment showed up at a point in the episode where I usually find myself losing interest in the normal tediousness of these stories, but this was weird enough to keep me absorbed. It was like combining Un chien andalou with The Naked Prey (did you know both Dali and Cornel Wilde died in 1989? It's a fact). A better than usual Dr. Who story, but I still found myself thinking all those actors were old enough to get real jobs so I guess my mind still wandered a bit. Oh, I almost forgot, we learn the Doctor is an accomplished cartoonist as we look over his shoulder when he is on trial.

"The Germans" (Fawlty Towers) / directed by John Howard Davies (1975, VHS). John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs, Louis Mahoney. Quite possibly the most famous of the dozen episodes in this series, chiefly due to Cleese performing a Pythonesque silly walk as he imitates Hitler and the incredibly goofy Nazi goosestep. Most popular or not, this one is among the more uneven stories in the FT canon. It took awhile for the victors to laugh about our own nervousness concerning the Germans and WWII. Movies like One, Two, Three (1961), The Producers (1968) and television shows such as Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971) were early efforts. By 1975, writers Cleese and Booth were able to update this fear by connecting it with jokes making fun of racists and sexists. Basil seems more vicious than usual here, but then he receives a head injury and is without any social check. Unleashed, he is a monster. The fire drill scene is painful to watch, and Andrew Sachs was seriously burned in the course of performing. The Manuel, Major and moosehead bit is very good.

KCTS : the Black and White Years (1994, VHS off-air). Greg Palmer, Norman Boulanger, Jack Norman, Robin Brumett, Bob Newman (Gertrude!!), Bob Flick, Lew West, Hoge Sullivan, Leon Lishner, Dick Kinsman, John McShane, Jean Walkinshaw, Barbara Fowler, Norm Jensen, Richie Meyer. A 40th anniversary tribute to the early pioneers of KCTS (K=Community Television Service) covering the time period when we Puget Sound Boomers were first exposed to educational television. It was all in black and white, it was live, it was local. Olympia's TCTV and stations like it have picked up where KCTS left off after they started running national programs. Some of the early programs included Face to Face, Linden Mander's University Conversation, and Opera with Stanley Chapple. In 1973 a decision to run the Senate Watergate hearings unedited cranked up the viewership, and the arrival of Back East hustle man Richie Meyer brought the station into modern times and running nationally syndicated programs, ending an era of charming and amateurish black and white production. I guess we couldn't stay tucked up here in our own little isolated corner forever without the outside world bursting in eventually. KCTS was originally associated with the UW but was released as a state agency by the 1980s, the first such case in Washington State history (The second such case was WLN, a bibliographic utility that was released in 1990, and my employer at the time). I never noticed KCTS was only available in black and white in those days since most everyone I knew had only black and white sets. Color TV was still an unusual thing for the normal working families. Greg Palmer, who I always enjoy watching and is now a unique Puget Sound TV figure himself, was the right choice for hosting this program.

Kids in the Hall. Season 1, episode 6 (1989, DVD). Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson. 30 Helens agree, Lackadaisical homeowner robbed by listless robber, Running faggot (only Scott Thompson could do this and get away with it), 29 Helens agree, Flogging business executives, The trucker, Can I keep Mr. Stevenson? (McCulloch was always great at playing annoying little boys). The Kids are really fascinated with the business world in this one, from corporate CEOs to small business entrepreneurs. Very top heavy with Foley and McDonald this time. McKinney has a brief gem in his trucker character monologue-- truly brilliant. Comedy is supposed to have a short shelflife, but after two decades this stuff remains very funny. KITH approach comedy, in some ways, as if it was poetry-- stripping everything down to the essentials and using kind of a shorthand.

"A Scandal in Bohemia" (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) / directed by Paul Annett (1984, DVD). Jeremy Brett, David Burke, Gayle Hunnicutt, Wolf Kahler. An important chapter of the BBC Holmes series on several levels. To begin with, it was the debut of Brett in a role that had belonged to Basil Rathbone for many decades. But in one mere program, that was erased. Today, there is no other Holmes than Jeremy Brett's version. We see him playing the violin, using disguises, there are references to his use of morphine and cocaine, and his enormous ego is on display. Always called "my friend and colleague," this Dr. Watson is not the bumbling Nigel Bruce fool we associated as Rathbone's sidekick. Jeez, the guy was a doctor after all, he couldn't have been that dumb. This Watson is sort of our human connection, providing us with a front row seat to this otherworldly being known as Sherlock Holmes. We also see that right from the very start the producers of this series employed great care in successfully giving us a sense of time and place. The impressive production values never faltered during the entire run. But there are some features of this episode that turn out to be anomalies in hindsight. First, no cops. This is one of the few stories where we do not see the Great Detective interacting with law enforcement, having to defend his unique line of work as consulting detective. Second, his prey is more sympathetic than his client. He is working for an Old World member of the royalty and going after a New World woman, Irene Adler of New Jersey, in a supposed blackmail case. But Holmes has to adjust his low opinion of the female gender with Adler. "To Sherlock Holmes," Watson tells us, "She was always 'The Woman.'" A rare example of Sherlock being outsmarted, although the result could be called a draw. He would keep a photo of her in his desk drawer forever after, and in later stories we got a peek at it now and then when other treasures were deposited there. And last, we see Holmes laughing here more than any subsequent story. Granted, some of the laughter is in the form of a cynical chuckle, but it is still a laugh. He also gloats more than we are accustomed to seeing later. A long time ago, when the Washington Center for the Performing Arts was still the Olympic Theater and the BBC had not started the Holmes series yet, there was a Rathbone Holmes movie showing down there. I went to it, and was startled to see a small army of moviegoers turn up with deerstalker hats and other traditional Holmes attire. I can see how the stories could inspire people to acts of homage like this. I'm sure sometime in the future another actor will interpret Holmes in way that will speak to the generation of that time, but for now Jeremy Brett's interpretation remains definitive to me. Nobody likes a smartypants, but we love this guy anyway. Rest in peace, Jeremy.

Rage at Dawn / directed by Tim Whelan (1955, VHS). Randolph Scott, Forrest Tucker, Mala Powers, J. Carrol Naish, Edgar Buchanan, Denver Pyle, Ray Teal, Chubby Johnson. This is a surreal Western in many ways. It is also basically a bad movie that is hard to sit through. It is loosely based on the real life of the Reno brothers, a dysfunctional family of train robbers who were active in Indiana right after the Civil War. Yes. I said Indiana. Somehow the Hoosier State in 1866 had cowboys, sagebrush, cactus, pine trees and hills. Aside from having a few ancestors plant themselves there in the pioneer days on their trek West, here is my experience with Indiana: It was 1979 and I was enjoying a few beers with some of my newfound train pals as we took Amtrack through the northern part of Indiana at night. We were in the open area between cars. The train was rumbling along very slow and we went alongside the outside wall of the Crayola Color Crayon factory. I mean right up close. We could've easily thrown things through their open windows. I suspect Crayola supplied the color for this movie. Inside we saw the workers handling giant blocks of primary colored wax or whatever. We yelled, "Hi Mr. Color Crayon! Hi Mrs. Color Crayon!" OK, I did mention alcohol was involved? Anyway, that is all I know about Indiana. Well, that, Dan Quayle, and this movie. Sad, isn't it? Anyway. This film starts with a bank robbery that is ambushed, and seems like a rough draft of the Wild Bunch intro. Forrest Tucker is effective as the growling leader of the Renos, and might be the best actor in this movie. The Renos, like other early American clans, including my own family, had their own code of justice and administered it accordingly. Of course, what goes around comes around. The local judge, sheriff, and prosecutor have all been bought by the Renos, and when a local citizen sees these scumbags walking down the street he observes, "Nobody to blame but ourselves. We voted them in." How refreshing to hear a voter take responsibility. So, how many of you who voted for the current "Decider" are willing to say the same? Randolph Scott, the star and hero here, was a figure from the days of my parents. Western fans speak of him with great reverence. To me, he's just a guy who is crowding 60 by 1955. Speaking of which, it is too weird to see a film that was released when I was alive looking like something from the 1930s.