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Mencken59
Reviews
Wild Honey (2017)
A Reality Romcom
This movie kind of snuck up on me. The title just popped up on TubiTV and I said, "What the heck", and clicked it.
This is a romantic comedy that The Hallmark Channel WOULDN'T DARE make. It was VERY funny at times - but about the only character here that MIGHT make it into a typical Hollywood production is the "successful" sister (who turns out to be not-quite-as-successful-as-she-appears). The cast is solid overall, but Rusty Schwimmer is the standout in the starring role of the frumpy, middle-aged woman with an... interesting... job, who is ready to bite at the first shiny lure that dangles before her.
I was reminded of some earlier films, like "Harry & Tonto", "Manhattan", and the films of Henry Jaglom - though this film comes off a bit more like cinéma vérité than any of those. The characters are more like those people you DON'T WANT to admit that you know in real life, but... you do. (At least, SOME of them.) Life's losers, through some fault of their own. (At least, a bit.)
And... I don't agree with the assessment of some of the reviewers here that the ending was a let-down. The ending was just as true-to-life as the rest of the film: not "happy" - but not tragic, either. Just... "a work in progress", like the lives of all the characters therein.
Bravo.
Possession (1981)
Another Playing-Out of The Last Days
Sam Neill - apparently an espionage agent - returns from a long and distant assignment to find that his wife (Isabelle Adjani) has drifted ever still further away from him and their son. While the son is consoled by a school teacher who is a doppelganger for his mom (but not so flaky), the father tries to draw the reasons for all the odd behavior from the real mom, but she is frustratingly closed mouthed. When he finally learns the source of her distraction - another man, of course - he confronts the lover - only to learn that she has fallen away from him as well.
Eventually we find that Adjani is under the thrall ("possession") of an other-worldly lover that, while still in the process of metamorphosing, has already impregnated her with what she seems to know is TWO life-forms ("Faith" and "Chance") - and she seems to rationalize this as a GOOD thing. But, a little bit further on, she miscarries ("loses Faith") in an underground station, and is left with "still a Chance". The husband follows her back to a hotel where he finds her in flagrante delicto with the now half-human, half-tentacled thing. (Clearly, IT's reproduction process requires multiple "inseminations" to complete the process, as she spots her husband watching them and attempts to reassure him, repeating, "Almost...")
Having seen this drives Neill "over the top", and he lashes out violently against the men of the agency for which he worked, and he is wounded in the process. He tries to get back to his wife but stumbles ascending a very long staircase - only to find his wife and his now-completed duplicate just a bit behind him, attempting to catch up. When they do, the "real Neill" unexpectedly shoots HER - whereupon the police, who have just arrived, riddle them all with bullets. (Which seem to have no effect on the duplicate.) The wife, now apparently broken out of her "spell of possession", pulls her dying body atop that of her husband, and brings the gun around her back to see to it that the life she still carries within her does not survive.
The Neill clone does not seem too terribly disappointed with all this. His next stop is the home of the now-deceased husband and wife, where he rings the bell and lurks on the other side of the frosted glass door. Knowingly, the little boy repeatedly tells his mom-guardian-angel, "Don't open" - while running upstairs to plunge face down in a tub full of water. As the electric lights flicker and the sounds of cacaphony and apocalypse escalate outside the apartment door, she stands in mounting terror in the foyer, suddenly beginning to comprehend what the child apparently already knew...
7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)
A Great Film, A Great Story: Both for It's Time, and Ours
The film was loosely based on the novel, "The Circus of Dr. Lao", which was written (or, more accurately, completed) by Charles G. Finney in 1935. It was dark in tone, and in it Dr. Lao had MANY more exhibits than just the "7" that the film decided upon. George Pal was a very positive individual, and his body of work reflected this philosophy; thus the great disparity between the book and movie..
George Pal had worked with Charles Beaumont on the script for "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" in the late 1950's (around the time that Beaumont had become one of the core writers of "The Twilight Zone", along with Rod Serling, Richard Matheson, and Earl Hamner Jr. ["The Waltons"]). Pal had a penchant for pressing his writers for had any pet projects they'd been unable to sell. Beamont showed him the treatment he'd written of Finney's book. Pal was so fond of it, he made it his next project.
The story about Peter Sellers' interest in playing Dr. Lao is true. Pal had worked with him previously in "tom thumb", had approached him with the nearly-finalized script, and Sellers was excited at the prospect of biting into SO many characters. (The Pal/Beaumont concept was that each of the "7 Faces" was actually Dr. Lao himself, and so would be played by ONE ACTOR.) While the official story has it that MGM said "no" to the idea of casting Sellers, Gail Morgan Hickman's book, "The Films of George Pal", says that Sellers told Pal that he was "on a picture now". That "picture" was likely "Dr. Strangelove" - and Stanley Kubrick may not have wanted his star's attention divided and urged the studio to tell him "no".
The concept of the film's story is that all 7 "faces" are, in actuality, Dr. Lao himself - and only ONE of these faces can appear at any given time. (There is a fun little moment when Lao emerges from the Apollonius exhibit - having just adopted that "face" and told Mrs. Cassin her "ugly" future - and encounters Angela, speaking to her briefly and directing her to the "exhibit around corner". He then produces the Pan flute from his tunic, smiles mischievously, and ducks into the back of THAT exhibit.) The film's publicity stated that all 7 faces are played by Tony Randall, but the reality is that he only played 5 of the 7: according to author Hickman (in the book noted above), Pal's son Peter stood-in under the heavy fur suit as "The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas", and "The Giant Serpent" was alternately a hand puppet and an animation (with Randall only providing the voice). We see each of these alter-egos (with the exception of the "Abominable Snowman") administer a lesson to one of the townspeople of Abalone.
Frankly, this application of modern-day sensibilities to older films - that says a white actor CANNOT portray non-white characters - is ludicrous. Should Daniel Day-Lewis have passed on the role of Christy Brown - and insisted that it go to an actor who ACTUALLY had cerebral palsy, and control of only one extremity? Or Eric Stoltz the role of Rocky Dennis? Should Jeremy Irons have turned down "Dead Ringers" in favor of twin actors? The last time I checked, Tom Hanks had an IQ over 75... so I guess "Forrest Gump" is out, huh? And no living actor could portray Dracula or Lestat... (Hell, in the Greek theatre, WOMEN weren't even ALLOWED to act!) IF an Asian actor had indeed played "the 7 faces", he'd have had to be "Merlin" too, so I guess he'd have to be part-British? And Apollonius, so... part-Greek? And "Medusa", so... you know what? Just FORGET IT: the movie's off the slate...
I was only 5-years-old when "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" was released to theaters in the summer of 1964 - but I DO remember 1982. I remember that once "E. T." and "Poltergeist" took off at the box office that summer, they sucked all the air out of the market. No one took much notice of the other releases that season - films that were later to become classics, like Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", and John Carpenter's "The Thing"... "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" had the misfortune to be released within weeks of Disney's "Mary Poppins". And that was all she wrote. Jim Danforth's special effects were nominated for an Oscar - but there was no chance against THAT juggernaut!
Nonetheless, Pal's film endures with fans because it stands out in many ways. One that has always stood out in my mind is that fact that the "bad guy" - Clinton Stark, as played by Arthur O'Connell - is given much more dimension in the script than bad guys are traditionally given. Stark is a "villain" at odds with himself, who requires just that "nudge" that Lao's circus gives him to ultimately recognize his erroneous ways and accept his shot at redemption. It's rare in movies that we see this kind of redemption of the erstwhile villain.
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1944)
Pal Deserves Better DVD Representation
Unfortunately, the only place this classic, Academy-Award-nominated short can be seen at all is that it is excerpted - in short snippets - in the "In Search of Dr. Seuss" video.
While Arnold Leibovit's excellent "The Puppetoon Movie" has many of Pal's greatest Puppetoon/"Madcap Models" shorts - and the extended version DVD has a dozen additional shorts(!) - the Dr. Seuss shorts are sadly lacking. I, and indeed many animation aficionados, would LOVE to eventually see "The Complete Puppetoons" in a DVD collection. (The auspices of a "complete" collection might be the only way to get many of the "Jasper" shorts out there as they tend to be controversial - though if Disney can present complete collections as part of their "Disney Treasures" and apologize for potentially offensive material with a little disclaimer from Leonard Maltin, I'm sure the same could be done on George Pal's behalf.)