My 1/2-Ass Movie Blog

  EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE Clint Eastwood, Sandra Locke, Geoffery Lewis, Ruth Gordon. Dir. James Fargo, Warners, 1978 Clint Eastwood's slapstick-happy broad comedy smash from '78 can be understood one of two ways. In one, Clint's Philoe Beddoe, a working class bare knuckle brawler, serves as an almost Quixotic hero, or even a grail-quest knight, attracting followers & foes as he pursues his great loves, C&W hopeful Lynn Halsey Taylor, & defeating Tank Murdoch, the only brawler better than Philoe. If our grail knight ends up bereft of romantic love & his victory in combat, he knows in the end sometimes we take a beating to win our place in the world. The other way makes people who see comedic genius in Vicky Lawrence shriek & whoop with laughter, most of it centered on Ruth Gordon, an inept motorcycle gang, & an orangutan called Clyde. This way is a low, vulgar comedy leavened mainly by Eastwood's stock company, including the late William O...

  THE GAUNTLET Clint Eastwood, Sandra Locke, Pat Hingle, Bill McKinney. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Warners, 1977 Want to make the universe laugh? Tell it your plans. Between you & me, my plan tonight involved a long, impassioned defense of THE GAUNTLET as one of Clint's least understood, best observed takes on the absurdity of heroism and its increasing obsolescence in the lives of women, featuring pull quotes & maybe footnotes. That...is no longer my plan. As a kid, I always caught a TV airing of THE GAUNTLET in time to watch the finale, as over the top as Clint's films had yet gone, but never enough of the rest of it to get the full plot. When I corrected that a few years ago, I thought I'd seen as odd &  actionpacked an Eastwood movie as existed. Is it lost on anyone that the climactic shoot-em-up of an armored charter bus occurs twice before, with Sandra Locke's house & poor Bill McKinney & his car? Having your biggest set piece replicate the two yo...

  Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Mae Mercer. Dir. Don Siegel, Universal, 1971. I want to strap Gov. Ron DeSantis into a theater seat with one of those Clockwork Orange devices and show him Don Siegel's 1971 Civil War-era melodrama, THE BEGUILED. Before it rolls, I want to whisper in his ear, "You're about to watch Clint Eastwood navigate a crisis premised entirely on gender, identity, gender roles & politics, the frightening power of repressed feminine sexuality, & good old lust, a movie so freighted with said saying "gay" will be the least of your issues, from now on." I'm not sure what Siegel & Eastwood told producer Jennings Lang to get this picture greenlit, but the resulting pyschosexual thriller/meditation on sexual roles & mores, framed up as a southern gothic melodrama, cannot possibly have been close. Don Siegel helmed the original ode to '50s paranoia, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and the pro-cop DIRT...

  Nigel Terry, Cherie Lunghi, Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren. Dir. John Boorman, Orion, 1981 Merlin, in two distinct senses, is my first Gandalf. In the larger sense of literary archetype, I began my love of epic fantasy with Arthurian legend. Merlin, that enigmatic, wily enchanter who advised Arthur, formed the template for all such characters I would both love & fear, especially Tolkien's Gandalf. In a more literal way, I spent much of summer 1977 listening to actor Nichol Williamson, who essays a definitive Merlin in Boorman's EXCALIBUR, read & perform an early audiobook of Tolkien's THE HOBBIT, wherein he voiced my first encounter with Gandalf the Grey. Given this, I hope my predisposition toward Williamson's casting in the former can be understood. Since his subsequent performance went on to set the standard by which all subsequent iterations are judged - and found wanting - I don't think I've much to worry me. That Boorman's 1981 sword&sor...

  THE EIGER SANCTION Clint Eastwood, Vonetta McGee, George Kennedy, Jack Cassidy. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Universal, 1975 By '75, Clint Eastwood was fed up with the studio that made him a TV star. Universal execs refused to see him as more than a widescreen Rowdy Yates, whereas Clint liked the darker, less heroic roles he found in Harry Calahan at Warner Brothers, working with mentor Don Siegel. After Universal failed to market PLAY MISTY FOR ME & especially BREEZY, he signed on to make the movies he wanted, as long as they stayed low budget & quick, in exchange for an occasional studio project like a Dirty Harry sequel. Since THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, Eastwood's Malpaso Productions has made a few dozen movies, most of them those Clint finds interesting. In a time of MCU extravagaganzas, a nonagenarian Clint made a modern western about poor people on the SW US border - because his deal at WB required them to. It cost $33M & lost money. ENDGAME cost - what, $300M, inclu...

  BREEZY. William Holden. Kay Lenz. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Universal, 1973 Something social media taught me: everyone has a red line you DO NOT cross. For some, no matter how rapturously describe Clint Eastwood's second directorial effort, BREEZY, soon as they hear it involves the romantic relationship between a 40ish realtor & a 17 year-old hippiechick, that's it. No more to say, no more to hear, please leave my house. I've learned, too, a smaller group exists who say, "Sounds different. Is it on soon?" This writeup is for the second group, though it feels more fair to the former to say I'm not without sympathy, but I'm more interested in judging a story by its whole self, not its CliffNotes. I do know many friends in both Fb & twitter shy away from the older man-younger woman plotline, but I feel badly for them. For all that BREEZY works as a May-December romance or as some kind of aren't-hippiegirls-sexy exploitation picture, it works best...

  PLAY MISTY FOR ME Clint Eastwood, Jessica Harper, Donna Mills. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Universal, 1970 Does the hunter get captured by the game? In a sense, that's Clint's big question in his directorial debut, PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Portraying Dave, a jazz deejay on his way up, it's not impossible to see him as a character hoist on his own petard, however hapless he may appear. Dave Garroway, a successful jazz deejay, and ladies' man, runs across Evelyn, the ultimate - in all senses - fan. Falling back in love with "good girl" Donna Mills, courted by a bigger-market station, Dave has everything going his way. Including cute, gamine, passionate Evelyn, his self-appointed #1 fan, who calls & asks him to "play 'Misty' for me" every night. Needless to say, complications develop. It's difficult, at times, to accept this as Clint's first movie as director. Like Alan Parker's fame, he brings such a sure touch to his material. Like Ro...

  COOGAN'S BLUFF Clint Eastwood, Don Stroud, Susan Clark. Dir. Don Siegel, Universal, 1968 Do you know why self-styled cinephiles like me sigh, "the great Don Siegel," the way others moan, "Orson Welles, O god..."? I admit it's probably annoying, but easily explained. Siegel directed the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. He did the montages for CASABLANCA. He helmed DIRTY HARRY. A director usually saddled with b-picture budgets & second-tier actors had a way of turning in genre pictures, like INVASION, which looked & felt like a Howard Hawks or John Ford picture. Simply, Siegel spent a career transcending crap, often for little reward. As 1968's COOGAN'S BLUFF more than illustrates. Another bare-bones budgeter riffing on the fish out of water trope, with a "modern western" twist for novelty, little in COOGAN'S BLUFF could've looked all that original. Except perhaps Clint. The first of Eastwood & Siegel's ...

  TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacClaine. Dir. Don Sigel, Universal, 1970 Five years ago, my friend Jay, tired of hearing me gripe smoking weed sucked without music, gave me an old 16" TV & a dvd player. I quickly found a wealth of films I wanted/needed to see burdened the shelves of local thrift & dollar stores, so I gave myself standing orders, #2 of which states, "BUY ALL CLINT EASTWOOD TITLES." In the 70s, as a kid, I saw OUTLAW JOSEY WALES alone at 8, & ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ with my dad a few years later. Mom & Dad didn't quite hold with the former TV cowboy, or his later work. Personally, I think they missed what most Eastwood detractors miss: that his archetypal-hero roles all offer wry commentary on the absurdity of one-dimensional heroes. There IS a joke, & Clint's in on it. After two years, I had copies of all but Clint's Universal releases, lensed before his Malpaso Prod. moved to Warners for life. Compri...

  FAME. Irene Cara, LeRoy Jones, Richard Belzer, Linda Allen. Dir. Alan Parker, MGM/UA, 1980 The first thing that must be said of Alan Parker's sleeper hit of summer '77 is that, if you're new to it and expect the TV version's "hey kids let's put on a show" vibe, or the later remake, think instead of Bob Fosse's '79 ALL THAT JAZZ. Parker's FAME, & Fosse's picture, are films-with-music moreso than traditional H'wood productions. If that's at once unappealing, I urge that reader to withhold judgment until I'm done loving it. By 1980, my parents deemed me old enough to see an occasional R-rated movie with them, but not FAME. My folks, half a generation out of a working poor life, saw in me an advertising man, maybe a newpaper editor. But not an actor. I had mentioned a desire to audition for Cincinnati's School for Creative & Performing Arts (SCPA, pron. SKUHPAH) which had gone over badly. Not taking me to see FAME n...