Happy Friday, everyone!
I thought I’d “reward” Amazon for keeping the schlock and B-movie content of Prime so well stocked. I think they’re very smart to be plumbing this niche, which is not well served by any of the other pay streaming services. That sort of thing should be encouraged, so I might do this weekly or biweekly. Not next weekend, though, as the Bergmans and I will be in Pittsburgh.
I should note that it’s not impossible that some of these (the appropriate ones) will eventually show up at a Watch Party. And, of course, things can leave Prime quite quickly and sans much notice, so if anything listed below sounds interesting to you I’d try to watch it in the near future.
Authentic Classic
ANATOMY OF A MURDER
This is a great film. I consider it the best courtroom drama, hands down.* It also contains what I consider the greatest performance by America’s greatest movie star, Jimmy Stewart. Only George Bailey rivals his performance as crafty, likable but somewhat amoral attorney Paul Biegler. “Immoral” would probably be overstating it, but Biegler certainly cuts corners and there’s quite a bit of doubt over whether his client, the wife-beating Ben Gazzara, is innocent of the murder he’s on trial for. But then, Beigler isn’t Perry Mason, and he’s not there to break down the real killer on the stand.
(I will allow that the top two films on AFI’s Top Ten Courtroom Dramas list, To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men, are not ludicrous replacements, although they are to my mind more earnest social dramas than courtroom dramas. And the rest of the nominees that beat Anatomy of a Murder’s 7th place (!) include such titles as Kramer vs Kramer (again, it’s not really a courtroom drama), The Verdict with Paul Newman (it’s fine, but no), A Few Good Men (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and Witness for the Prosecution (surely entertaining, but not better than Anatomy of a Murder).
The remaining films were In Cold Blood (which follows a trial but I’m not sure is a courtroom movie, really), A Cry in the Dark (no) and the typically plodding Stanley Kramer film Judgment at Nuremberg. Personally, I don’t think that’s even the best Stanley Kramer courtroom drama, which to my mind is the flawed by still impressive Inherit the Wind. Judgement at Nuremberg remains powerful, but it’s powerful in the same manner as Schindler’s List; i.e., it’s basically powerful by default due to its subject matter. Anyway, either film is a creditable choice for Kramer’s best film, although I must admit I’m not a huge fan of his work. It’s certainly better than stuff like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, though, which was basically dated by the time it came out.)
The supporting cast of Anatomy of a Murder is terrific, including a stellar turn by George C. Scott in an early role, Eve Arden as a (surprise) drolly sarcastic secretary, Arthur O’Connell, Murray Hamilton and Orson Bean, with Lee Remick perfectly cast as Gazzara’s slatternly wife. Duke Ellington composed and performed the score, Saul Bass did the classic opening credit sequence, and Otto Preminger, to my mind, never made a better film. AoaM offsets such disasters as Skidoo and Hurry Sundown.
Nominated for six Oscars, Anatomy of a Murder failed to win a one of them, losing Best Picture and Best Actor to the unstoppable freight train that was Ben-Hur. Preminger wasn’t even nominated, which is a gyp on his part. As for Best Actor, it’s no insult to Charlton Heston to say that Stewart should have taken home the statuette. I will allow that Heston’s Ben Hur remains entirely more iconic though. It’s easy to deride a film like that but people still watch it every year around Easter.
Anatomy of a Murder is an “adult” film in the best sense of the word, full of complexity and ambiguity and other big words. For what it’s worth, this is probably on my 20 favorite films of all time list; if it’s not, it’s pretty close. It does run 160 minutes, so make sure to set some time aside if you watch it. As you’d expect, I’d strongly suggest you watch it in a dark room to get the most out of the gorgeous black and white cinematography.
It Came from the Pages of Jabootu
ROCKY IV. I think all the Rocky films are on Prime right now, but certainly the first four are. Rocky IV is certainly the funniest of them, with Stallone pumping up the Reagan-era “USA! USA! BOO COMMIES!” spirit—which obviously I have no problem with—before suddenly turning on a dime right at the end to give a schmaltzy “can’t we all just get along” ending. Hopefully this is a director’s cut and we can finally see Paulie having sex with that robot he’s clearly sleeping with.
B-Movie Classic
It seems facetious to write even a blurb about DESTROY ALL MONSTERS. It’s one of those classics that we’ve all seen and presumably seen many times. Even so, for some of us at least, I’d wager, it’s something that hasn’t been watched in a while. So here’s a perfect chance to give it another watch, even if you don’t own it on DVD or Blu Ray.
Toho’s magnum opus, meant to end the series on a high note, DAM features nearly every monster to grace a Toho film to that point. (Although a few are confined to brief cameos because their suits were falling apart, like the barely glimpsed Varan. Also, they didn’t have the rights to King Kong at this point, so he’s a no show.) It’s got conniving aliens and mysterious flying saucers and humans who actually do stuff and ends with a big set-to involving all the monsters getting together to bully Ghidrah. It’s the one time I actually felt sorry for the guy.
The film, again meant to be the last and greatest (if not best) Toho monster mash, reunited Inoshira Honda, Akira Ifukube and Eiji Tsuburaya for an amazing and quite satisfying extravaganza. And hey, any movie where Godzilla destroys the United Nation Building with his atomic breath is aces in my book.
TV Show
Ninja vs Samurai is a YouTube channel that has released several amazing period Japanese action shows with subtitles. The most prominent is those is Zatoichi. In case the 26 Zatoichi movies left you hungry for more, most of the four season’s 100 episodes have now been downloaded, and the rest are forthcoming.
That’s YouTube, not Amazon, of course. Luckily, NvS has provided a couple of shows over on Prime as well. First there’s LONE WOLF AND CUB, again for those left wanting more than the films provided. (Fun fact, the guy who played disgraced samurai Ogami Ittō in the Lone Wolf movies, Tomisaburo Wakayama, was the brother of the guy who played Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu.
So that’s a suggestion right there, but the show I actually started watching was THE LETHAL THREE, a show about three wanderers (an upright ronin, a more hot-headed and roguish ronin, and a comic relief merchant / maybe ninja). The three always end up meeting in a town where some great injustice is occurring. It’s not the greatest thing ever, but it’s pretty damn fun. It’s no classic, but it’s good, solid entertaining television.
Warning: There is a horrifyingly gross scene in the first episode where shots of some naked young Japanese women in a bathhouse are framed in such a way so as to exploit them to serve the male gaze. I was so outraged and flustered by this that I kept accidentally hitting the freeze frame button on my remote instead of the fast forward button as intended. Indeed, I was so aghast that it was several hours and a new pair of batteries before I could bring myself to resume the show past those inadvertent freeze frames. I searched assiduously to make sure that no such antics occurred in later episodes, and to my vast disappointment relief, they did not.
I will note, though, that I think there is some dicier content in some of the Lone Wolf and Cub episodes. I think, it was many years ago when I saw some of the episodes.
Take a Flier
ISLAND CLAWS is one of the way too sparse number of Giant Killer Crab movies. It’s not great by any means, but at the end they feature a giant honkin’ fiberglass crab prop they built. You know I loves me some practical effects and props, so I’ll give this a thumbs up just for that. Just don’t expect to by mesmerized by this one. I mean, it’s OK. I guess you could just fast forward to the big crab at that end…if you’re some kind of pathetic baby loser.
Have a good weekend, everyone. Watch something stupid.
