Memory is a peculiar thing. I could have sworn I was a littler kid when I first saw Watership Down in the theaters, because I remember being frightened and disturbed by its violence. It turns out, however, that I was closer to 14 when the film came out in November 1978 and had already seen the arguably more discomfiting films Coma, Dawn of the Dead, Damien: Omen II, and Eyes of Laura Mars*  earlier that year -- at adult prices, I might add -- with The Deer Hunter and Invasion of the Body Snatchers just around the corner.**

Not until I saw the film on the Criterion Collection list did I even consider watching it again on account of the bloody bunnies and everything, but no, I thought, it's on the list for a reason.*** My biggest fear was that Watership Down wouldn't be upsetting at all. Happily, it was, but not terribly and not in a way that would keep me from letting my own nearly-14-year-old see it (with adequate preparation; he's sensitive).

The film begins with the rabbits' cave-painting-like origin myth, in which their god, Frith (the sun), makes all the animals and gives them grass to eat. They live together in peace until the rabbits reproduce so much that there is no longer enough grass for everybody. Frith tells the prince of rabbits to knock it off, but he doesn't, so the god decides to differentiate the creatures by making some animals eat other animals instead of grass. Rabbits get to be most hunted, but they will be faster and smarter: "All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you...but first they must catch you." When a rabbit dies, his spirit is taken by the Black Rabbit of Inle.

Keep that in mind.

Watership Down follows a group of displaced wild rabbits on their quest to find a safe place to start a new warren after theirs is destroyed by humans. The hero, Hazel (John Hurt) is an ordinary rabbit with an extraordinary brother, Fiver (Richard Briers, whom I miss dearly) the runt of their litter. Fiver can see the future and it is he who predicts the coming destruction of the warren. Hazel tries to warn the leader, but he and the Owsla (bunny cops) think he and his weird little brother are nuts and send them away.

The brothers and few others escape only to be joined later be a couple of former Owsla after the warren is indeed destroyed. Eight rabbits in all -- er, seven, after a hawk immediately makes off with the only female -- wind up on the quest to find a new home, also predicted by Fiver, in what will eventually be Watership Down, an actual hill in Hampshire County. 

Along the way, they meet up with a lost Russian seagull named Kehaar (Zero Mostel), a bunch of mean rabbits, some different meaner rabbits, dogs, humans, and other obstacles. Hazel proves to be a capable leader, but the adventurers run into a lot of realistic dangers and not all of them fare well. It ends well... just not for everybody.

Watership Down is a beautifully animated picture featuring great performances from the likes of Roy Kinnear, Nigel Hawthorne, and Michael Graham Cox. Be advised that the soundtrack is a little Spielbergian at times (feel THIS way, now THIS way), but it isn't always thus and there are some poignant, well-placed moments of silence. I believe it's permissible in 2015 to turn the sound all the way down during Art Garfunkel's solo hit "Bright Eyes," but don't miss the scene it scores.

If you do plan to watch this movie with kids, be prepared to answer questions about why people lay traps and why dogs kills things the way they do. I understand now why I thought I was younger the first time I saw it: watching an animal get hurt or killed in a film can make you feel emotionally vulnerable in a way that zombies, hellspawn, and serial killers can't. Even a child knows that the less realistic something is, the more entertaining it is to destroy -- and when all the world's its enemy, even an animated rabbit seems awfully real.

This post is one of my contributions to the Criterion Blogathon, hosted by Criterion Blues, Speakeasy, and Silver Screenings.

There are so many excellent entries and themes in this ginormous blogathon. Please take a day or two to read and enjoy!

Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) is an ambitious reporter preparing to infiltrate an insane asylum so that he can solve the murder of one of its inmates. He has been training under a reputable psychiatrist for months to learn the kinds of believable things to say that will get himself committed. This involves pretending that his stripper girlfriend, Cathy (Constance Towers), is really his sister and that Barrett has developed incestuous fantasies about her. Cathy wants nothing to do with this, thinking (rightly) that Barrett is only in it for the glory and that it's both a creepy and risky scheme.* 

Barrett's hard work and bullying pay off and he gets himself thrown in the loony bin, with Cathy reluctantly playing along. Once in the asylum, he goes about making friends with three witnesses to the murder. Each of these inmates is able to suspend his disorder long enough to explain lucidly and exactly what drove him to his current state, only to relapse after giving Barrett one teeny piece of the puzzle.

The first witness is a southerner named Stuart (James Best) who joined the army during the Koren War to escape the bigotry of his upbringing only to get captured and brainwashed by communists. After a dishonorable discharge and public shaming, he became delusional and now thinks he is Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart. Obviously. He goes around singing Dixie rather too emphatically and sweats a lot.

Trent (Hari Rhodes) also saw the murder. His improbable psychosis involves the stealing of pillowcases to dress as a Klansman, preach against integration, and incite violence against black inmates, even though Trent himself is black. He went off the deep-end under the pressure of being the only African American at an all-white southern college and was so traumatized by the experience that now he can only spew white-supremacist hate. Because that happens.

Then there's this guy, ​Boden (Gene Evans), a prominent nuclear physicist, who has reverted to a childlike state to escape the horror of the atomic age, which he and the science helped bring about. His problem made the most sense to me.

By the time we get to Boden and his important clue, Johnny Barrett has been through a riot, an accidental trip to the Nympho Ward** where he is nearly (literally) devoured, and some gratuitous electro-shock therapy. He starts to think that Cathy truly is his sister and begins pulling away from her when she visits. He's also getting a little wild in the eyes and has begun repeating himself. Eventually, he exposes the murderer in a shocking bit of violence, writes his prize-winning story, then loses his mind. After a spectacular psychotic break involving indoor rain and a waterfall from a completely different film (in color), Johnny Barrett falls into a catatonic state.

The end.

Now I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm pretty sure that if a schizophrenic person sneezes on you one day, you don't wake up hearing voices the next. The patients in Shock Corridor read like pages out of an edition of the DSM the Flintstones might have used. Not just for the wildly primitive notions about mental illness, but because the crazy depicted here has only ever worked successfully in cartoons. Same with the treatment. Think you're a rabbit? Repeat after me: "I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht." Because that kind of therapy even works on an actual rabbit.

I didn't have huge expectations of subtlety from a Sam Fuller film set in a mental institution, but there isn't one restful moment in Shock Corridor. It's a strain on one's ears, eyes, and credulity. Maybe Fuller was deliberately creating a discomfiting assault on the nerves to situate his audience in a world of madness to expose the insanity of the modern experience, but maybe he just wanted to see how long and how hard a person could roll her eyes in one sitting.

And the screaming. There is a lot of screaming. Someone must have told Sam Fuller that madness is extra loud. This could explain the overwrought, angry banging of the score, which was surely composed in whatever the musical equivalent is of all caps.

Characters, plot, score, and sledgehammering, simplistic social commentary notwithstanding, Stanley Cortez's cinematography is terrific and may make the picture worth seeing. 

Don't say I didn't warn you.

​This post is one of my contributions to the Criterion Blogathon, hosted by Criterion Blues, Speakeasy, and Silver Screenings.

There are so many excellent entries and themes in this ginormous blogathon. Please take a day or two to read and enjoy!

Andre-Louis Moreau (Ramon Novarro), a young law student of uncertain parentage, is in love with Aline (Alice Terry), the niece of country gentleman, Quintin de Kercadiou (​Lloyd Ingraham), in whose home he was raised. Aline loves Andre, but her uncle is pushing her into the arms of the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr (​Lewis Stone), a high-ranking nobleman and a first-class jerk.

The Marquis is the kind of guy who kills poor people for poaching, gets girls in trouble, and makes duel-able mountains out of molehills with other gentry. In other words, just your average late 18th-century French aristocrat. All of these virtues are revealed in a beautifully crafted early scene in Rex Ingram's production: the corpse of some poor schmo is carried into a village barn, a victim of the Marquis's harsh poaching policies. A young divinity student, Andre's great friend, Philippe, prays over the body, outraged at the injustice. Just as he gets to the part about how greedy and immoral de la Tour is, the Marquis himself walks in and challenges the kid to a duel. On his way to kill Philippe (which he does, promptly), the Marquis stops to flirt with a pretty girl who looks familiar. She recognizes him too, bouncing her newborn baby up a little higher for him to see. (Lack of) Character established.

After witnessing the death of his friend, Andre vows to pick up where the pre-Revolutionary left off: seeking justice and equality for all. He tries the proper channels at first by petitioning the king's representative to prosecute Philippe's murderer, but once the magistrate learns the murderer is a nobleman, he calls for Andre's arrest.

This further injustice only deepens Andre's commitment to the cause. Well, that, and the milling thousands of angry non-noble French people gathered outside to listen to revolutionary speeches until one of the speakers is shot dead. Andre leaps up to address the crowd in his place. Riot ensues and Andre is officially on the lam.

Aline, ignorant of all the rotten things the Marquis has been up to, has decided to let him court and eventually marry her. She still loves Andre, but now that he's gone all Political and is on the run from the cops, she figures he's no longer much of a prospect.

Meanwhile, Andre (literally) falls in with a mediocre traveling theater company run by Challefau Binet and his hot daughter, Climene. Andre becomes part of the troupe and even helps elevate their status by writing plays and performing as the clown, Scaramouche. After a year, the company is playing Paris, where Aline happens to be staying with her friend, the Countess de Plougastel. Eventually, the Marquis, Aline, and Andre run into each other at a performance. Aline is engaged to the Marquis; Andre is engaged to Climene; the Marquis and Climene engage in some hanky panky on the sly. It comes to no good.

Meanwhile (again), in the National Assembly, the People are having their Paris Beaux handed to them by the Nobility and it isn't going well. The Marquis and his pals have started picking fights with the revolutionary representatives so that they can kill them off in legal duels, thereby chipping away at the opposition. When it is discovered that Andre is a master swordsman, he becomes the Assembly's best fighter and the tide turns.

Eventually, Andre and the Marquis get to fight it out, the outcome and consequences of which I will not spoil. Since the French Revolution is no secret, that happens, but there is a lot going on with our main characters in the midst of the upheaval that is better to see for yourselves.

Scaramouche  (1923) is a pretty terrific historical drama. It's less swashbuckley and Freudian than its 1952 remake, but the costumes, set design, and cinematography are outstanding. The villagers are properly filthy, the mob scenes are terrifying, and the contrast between the classes starkly drawn.  Ramon Novarro, Lewis Stone, and Alice Terry are compelling, natural actors -- you really want things to work out.

If you've seen the Technicolor Scaramouche, be advised that this version is a tonal 180. The French Revolution was no picnic, and Rex Ingram got the memo.

This post is my contribution to the Swashathon! A blogathon of swashbuckling adventure, hosted by Movies Silently.

The reason I love Warner Bros. cartoons above all others -- apart from the writing, direction, acting, and score -- is their attitude toward cats. They like cats. Even when Tweetie is clobbering Sylvester or that obnoxious puppy is scaring the pants off Claude, Warner Bros. animators use actual cat qualities (skittishness, spectacular attack failures, and highly conditional love) to make us care; in other words, they clobber with love.

Unlike Disney, who demonstrably hates cats (and mothers, whatever that's about), Warner Bros. operates from the position that there are reasons to love cats, even if you aren't the type. Like if you're a ferocious bulldog, for instance. In Feed the Kitty, Marc Anthony (Mel Blanc) is one such dog: fierce, snarling, and looking for a fight. At the cartoon's open, Marc Anthony spies a wee kitten in an alley and charges in, teeth bared, with intent to scare the little thing blind. Unfazed by this display, the kitten mews a greeting, crawls up the dog through his open jaws, plucks out a bed on his brawny back, and falls fast asleep.

Marc Anthony is in love.

He is also far from the rough street dog he pretends to be. Still carrying the sleeping kitten on his back, Marc Anthony walks into his suburban home just in time to get a lecture from his frustrated owner (Bea Benaderet), who is standing in the living room in a sea of chewed up dog toys. She forbids him to bring one more thing into the house: Not ONE MORE THING. The rest of the cartoon, therefore, is how one spoiled dog tries to keep his curious kitten a secret from his owner through some of the best cartoon choreography you'll ever see.

After disguising the cat as a windup toy and a powder puff, Marc Anthony is forced to hide it in the flour bin just as his owner is getting ready to bake cookies. Thinking the kitten is in the batter (it's not), a distraught Marc Anthony watches from exile outside as the dough is mixed, rolled, cut, and baked. When he's allowed back in the house, grief-stricken and wracked with guilt, Marc Anthony accepts a cat-shaped cookie from his consoling owner, shaking in ironic misery. It's a genius performance, tear-inducingly funny and unforgettable. So unforgettable in fact, that Pixar paid loving tribute to the scene by recreating it in Monsters, Inc., when Sully feared Boo had been mangled in a trash compacter. A fitting homage well done. 

I am not one of those people who wax hagiographic about Chuck Jones as a director -- I'm more of a Clampett/McKimson girl -- but it's hard to argue with Feed the Kitty as one of the most deftly composed and executed shorts going.

​Written by Michael Maltese, directed by Charles M. Jones (my favorite Jones), Feed the Kitty is seven minutes you'll never forget or regret. Watch it now:

This post is my contribution to the ONE of My All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blogathon, hosted by Movie Movie Blog Blog.

​Everyone should read everything right now.

Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
Mama Bear, 1944

Little Red Riding Rabbit
​Little Red Riding Hood, 1944

A Hare Grows in Manhattan
Lola Beverly, 1947

​Nov 2015

Dec 2015

Ear-Way In-nay the UNNY-May 
​(Gold Diggers of 1933)​

​Mr. Smith Goes to Washington​ (1939)

Dr. Strangelove (1964) & Fail Safe ​(1965)

The women behind the senate in the 1930s

Washington's underground tunnels