I didn't spend much time on Black Wake, a 2018 horror movie dressed up in a pseudo-documentary skin. I turned the speed up to 1.5 and passed this turd in less than an hour. Still time wasted.
Murder By Death is the film adaptation of Neil Simon's play, it was directed by Robert Moore. Robert worked mostly in the theater, he only directed two more films, The Cheap Detective and Chapter Two, both were based on Neil Simon plays. I hadn't seen any of those movies but I do have a recently arrived copy of TCD. Murder By Death has poster art by Charles Addams, the design is also used in the opening and closing credits.
I'm not a big Neil fan, his work is of little interest, I often don't find it funny. I though I would take a chance on Murder By Death when I saw it used for 3 bucks. I am a fan of the characters that are parodied in the film. The story pits 5 pairs of detectives against each other and the guy who set the whole thing up. They are all called to the a mansion by Lionel Twain, there they are challenged to solve a murder that will take place at midnight, there's a million dollar prize for the winner. Truman Capote plays the mysterious Mr Twain, Nancy Walker is the maid, and Alec Guinness is the butler.
Starting at the left it's James Coco as Milo Perrier, behind him is James Cromwell as Milo's driver, Milo is based on Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Then it's Eileen Brennan and Peter Falk as Tess Skeffington and Sam Diamond, he's based on Sam Spade, the hard boiled detective in stories by Dashiell Hammett. He's the only hard boiled detective in the lot, the rest are more cozy detectives.
The two ladies in back are Estelle Winwood and Elsa Lanchester as Miss Withers and Jessica Marbles. Another parody of an Agatha Christie character the elderly Miss Marple. Miss Withers is Jessica's nurse but she's gotten old and Jessica takes care of her. The Withers name might be a reference to Hildegarde Withers, a spinster amateur detective who appeared in several novels and stories by Stuart Palmer. There's a nice 6 film Hildegarde Withers collection on DVD from Warner Archives. I've seen all the films and they are a little more enjoyable than the film I just watched.That's mostly for the interplay between Hildegarde and the irritated police detective played by James Gleason.
Peter Sellers plays Inspector Sidney Wang who is based on Earl Charlie Chan. You can't really seen him but Richard Narita plays Inspector Wang's adopted Japanese son Willie. I know, weak ass wang jokes, Neil you let me down in the smallest ways. On the far right are David Niven and Maggie Smith, they play Dick and Dora Charleston, and they are based on Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man series. Asta becomes Myron.
I found it kind of amusing but hardly a laugh riot. A number of the jokes were very dated and kind of sad. It seems slow on top of that but that could be me. I don't know if I would bother with it again but I have it so I might. I'm still going to take a crack at The Cheap Detective.
Since I had the time I put on The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming. I had just picked it up today, another on used for 3 bucks. I used to have a copy from TV but that tape failed and got tossed out. It's based on a novel of the same name by Nathaniel Benchley, the screenplay is by William Rose, Norman Jewison is the director. The movie came out in 1966 and WOW, what a difference compared to the first two movies.
A Russian submarine runs aground near an island off the New England coast. Some sailors paddle to shore, they want to get a large boat to tow them off the bar. Alan Arkin, in his first movie, plays the head of the shore team. John Phillip Law plays the handsome Russian sailor, Theodore Bikel plays the Captain of the submarine.
The sailor's come across Carl Reiner and his family, Eva Marie Saint plays the wife, they have a couple of kids. The sailors get rumbled right away and take over Carl's vacation home. They cut the phone line and take the car to town, leaving Jude in charge of the two kids and the pretty babysitter. Hardly anything goes right for the poor Russians and it's the middle of the Cold War. They're all worried they'll get shot by the locals.
The town starts hearing about an invasion and goes nuts, especially after being stirred up by Paul Ford. He's a big ol' veteran and the local head of the Legion, sadly, he's lacking any smarts. Police Chief Brian Keith has a hard time keeping things in line, Jonathan Winters is his deputy. There's plenty of frantic running about and occasional gun fire. Luckily, no one get hurt too much. Eventually the chaos builds to a tense stand off after the sub makes it's way to the harbor dock.
There's a short Norman Jewison interview on the DVD and he talks about showing the film in Russia to a bunch of Russian film makers. They didn't care much for the build up to the stand off, the Captain thinks the town has captured the missing shore party, he's ready to shell the town with his cannon, his sailors stand ready with machine guns. The towns people stand ready with their rifles and pistols. When the tension breaks, in a good way, the Russian film makers clapped and cried. I too.
There are such great performances here, a great script. It was a pleasure to watch and it's a bit of an important film in ways you can read about here. I'll watch it again.
Comments