The Night of the Iguana

The Night of the Iguana.
1964 Seven Arts Productions and MGM/Turner Entertainment.
Starring: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon, James Ward, Grayson Hall, Cyril Delevanti
Director: John Huston
Available from Amazon as a single DVD, or part of the Tennessee Williams Film Collection.

Richard Burton and Ava Gardner star in this low budget horror film about giant mutant iguanas terrorizing a small village in Mexico, and...

No, that's not right.

Richard Burton and Ava Gardner star in an excellent film adaptation of the 1961 play of the same title by Tennessee Williams. The film won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1964, and Grayson Hall received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Two years after his nervous breakdown following his role in an inappropriate relationship with a "very young Sunday school teacher", the former Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Burton) now works for a cheap Texas tour company called Blake Tours as a tour guide. He's along for the ride as a large group of Baptist School teachers led by Miss Judith Fellowes (Hall) take a trip down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Miss Judith's 17-year-old niece LolitaCharlotte (Lyon) attempts to seduce Shannon. After a fight with Judith, Shannon sabotages the bus and strands the group at a cheap Costa Verde Hotel in Mismaloya. This facility is run by the widow of one of Shannon's old friends named Fred, the widow Maxine Faulk (Gardner). Maxine's interests turn to Shannon from her two cabana boys.

Shannon also meets Hannah Jelkes (Kerr), a painter from Nantucket along with her elderly poet granddad Nonno (Delevanti). They're both broke, and Shannon convinces Maxine to let them stay. Still, over a long night, Charlotte continues to make advances to Shannon, and the stress of everything else in addition to that triggers another breakdown. The cabana boys tie Shannon up in a hammock, and Hannah tries to talk him down, using poppy-seed tea and blunt spiritual talk.

From there, Nonno finally finishes his last poem before dying, while Shannon and Maxine reconcile and decide to run the hotel together.

Highly recommended movie.

The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon.
1941 Warner Bros. Pictures & Turner Entertainment.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Barton MacLane
Director: John Huston
Available from Amazon as a three-disc special edition, which is also part of the second Humphrey Bogart Signature Collection.

This will be a special "Warner Night at the Movies" edition, which is an option available on the DVD. Had you gone to see The Maltese Falcon back in '41, this all would've awaited you at the theater:

* A trailer for Sergeant York.
* A very brief Newsreel.
* The Gay Parisian (short), directed by Jean Negulesco. Basically, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dance to the music of Jacques Offenbach. It's in Technicolor, so it looks great, but it really doesn't go anywhere. Pass on it, even if it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject.
* Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt, directed by Friz Freleng, 1941. Bugs Bunny is hunted by a pint-sized Hiawatha in between trying to read Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. One of the earliest cartoons starring Bugs, and the first directed by Freleng.
* Meet John Doughboy, directed by Robert Clampett, 1941. Porky Pig hosts a parody of a newsreel with an armed forces theme, complete with caricatures of Jack Benny and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. This one is also available on the sixth and final Looney Tunes Golden Collection.
* And of course, the main feature...

John Huston's directorial debut is a screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, and it received three Academy Award nominations. It also helped turned Humphrey Bogart into a major star.

Bogart, as everyone knows, is detective Sam Spade, a man with his own personal code of honor. One day, a Miss Ruth Wonderly (Astor) breezes into the office Spade shares with his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), and offers them a healthy incentive to protect her from someone named Floyd Thursby. Archer takes the offer, simply because he saw the woman first. Later that evening, he and Thursby are shot to death. After some confusion about Spade's possible involvement in the murders (a motive that he might be attracted to Archer's wife Iva, played by Gladys George), the detective meets Wonderly again, but she's now calling herself Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Brigid explains that Thursby was her partner, and he may have shot Archer, but she doesn't know who offed Thursby.

Spade also meets the effeminate Joel Cairo (Lorre), and a criminal named Kasper Gutman (Greenstreet), and everyone involved is looking for a 12 inch high, jewel-encrusted statuette in the shape of a falcon. Spade is offered small fortunes by Cairo and Gutman to find the treasure, but they are not above committing violent crimes to attain the bird themselves. As usual, many things are not what they seem, or appear to be.

Highly, highly recommended movie.

Wise Blood

Wise Blood (Criterion #470).
1979 New Line Cinema (distributors) & Janus Films.
Starring: Brad Dourif, John Huston, Dan Shor, Harry Dean Stanton, Amy Wright, Mary Nell Santacrose, Ned Beatty, William Hickey
Director: John Huston
Buy Wise Blood from Amazon.

John Huston directed this adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's 1952 novel of the same name. Brad Dourif is Hazel Moses, a returning veteran discharged due to an embarrassing injury that he'd rather not discuss. Moses plans to settle down in a new town to experience things that he's missed out on before. Once he arrives in an unspecified mid-sized community called Taulkinham, various strange characters begin to congregate around him, including a young man named Enoch Emory (Shor), who is evidentally desperate for Hazel's approval, claiming to have "wise blood" flowing in his veins.

Hazel's grandfather (Huston) was a pretty hardcore fundamentalist preacher, we learn in flashbacks, and Moses grew up as an angry young man who refused to believe in a higher power. Even though Hazel grew up to despise preachers, he finds himself transforming into a zealous street preacher promoting his so-called "Church of Truth Without Jesus Christ", where a member has to save himself because "sure as hell the Lord won't save you". Moses also runs across a fellow preacher named Asa Hawks (Stanton) who feigns having blinded himself in the name of Jesus, as well as his daughter Sabbath Lily (Wright), who isn't as innocent as she seems.

The Church Without Christ never truly takes off, despite the efforts of Sabbath Lily, Hawks, Enoch, and a huckster known as Onnie Jay Holy (Beatty), who steals Hazel's message and attracts the following that Moses was unable to attain. Things start to spiral out of control for Moses, and a routine traffic stop is the catalyst that sends him over the edge.

Highly recommended, but this is still a weird movie.

The Mackintosh Man

The Mackintosh Man. 1973 Warner Bros. Pictures.
Starring: Paul Newman, Dominique Sanda, Ian Bannen, James Mason, Michael Horden, Harry Andrews, Nigel Patrick
Director: John Huston
Available from Amazon only as part of the Paul Newman Collection.

In his review for this movie, Roger Ebert suggested that this was the first "anti-spy" movie, made by a group of people with no real understanding for spy films.

Paul Newman is Joseph Rearden, an agent of British Intelligence who is assigned by Mackintosh (Andrews) and Mrs. Smith (Sanda) to impersonate a jewel thief who transports his stolen goods through the mail to avoid attention. Rearden does this successfully after punching out a postman and taking the diamonds, but is still arrested and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. After being sent to prison, Rearden starts asking about a former British spy, Slade (Bannen). Slade is kept in high security because he was exposed as a mole for the KGB, but not much information is known about him.

A few weeks later, Rearden participates in a planned escape with another inmate (who turns out to be Slade) engineered by a secret organization in exchange for a large cut of the stolen diamonds. The two escapees are drugged and taken into Ireland, where they're told that's where they'll stay for a week until the manhunt is called off.

Rearden's incarceration turns out to be a planned sting operation intended to expose the secret organization, which is headed by suspected communist spy Sir George Wheeler (Mason), who is posing as a staunchly patriotic right-winger. Wheeler discovers he's being pursued, and he arranges Mackintosh's death. Rearden has to keep undercover while pursuing Wheeler, who has also abducted Slade, but his earlier arrest for the faked diamond robbery may make this task more difficult than it really should be.

Despite the presense of Newman and director John Huston, as well as some decent British character actors, this movie never really gets going. Slightly recommended, mainly for Paul Newman fans, or if there isn't anything better on to watch.

Across the Pacific

Across the Pacific.
1942 Warner Bros. Pictures & Turner Entertainment.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Charles Halton, Victor Sen Yung
Directors: John Huston & Vincent Sherman
Currently available only as part of the Humphrey Bogart Signature Collection, Volume II box set from Amazon.

A reunion of the principal stars of The Maltese Falcon, including director John Huston, who had to turn the production of the film over to Vincent Sherman after he was summoned to report to the Department of Special Services after three weeks' of filming. The screenplay's locality was changed at the last minute from Pearl Harbor to the Panama Canal, but still retained the title of Across the Pacific.

Bogie plays Rick Leland, a disgraced ex-military man kicked out after he was caught stealing. The Canadian military doesn't want him either, so Leland boards a Japanese ship called the Genoa Maru in Halifax, intending to make his way to China to fight under Chiang Kai-shek. He meets a small town girl named Alberta Marlow (Astor), a small town chick claiming to be on her way to Los Angeles, the sociology professor Dr. Lorenz (Greenstreet) who openly admires the Japanese, and Joe Totsuiko (Sen Yung), the cheerful second generation Japanese American wanting to see Japan. While stopping in New York City, Leland talks to undercover intelligence officer Colonel Hart (Paul Stanton) to prove he is still a loyal American. It's revealed that Lorenz is an enemy spy, but Marlow? Still pretty uncertain about her.

The ship is prohibited from entering the Panama Canal, which means a long trip around Cape Horn. The main characters simply disembark to wait for another ship while several crates are unloaded, and they're addressed to a Dan Morton at a plantation. Lorenz asks Leland for up-to-date schedules for the American fighters patrolling the area in the skies, which he receives after talking A.V. Smith (Halton) into providing them. Leland is knocked out for his troubles after haggling with Lorenz over payment, and after he comes to, he notifies Smith to warn him about changing the patrol schedule before heading for the plantation. He's taken hostage by Lorenz and Totsuiko, and Marlow is present, but she is only there to watch over her father Dan Morton (Monte Blue), who owns the plantation. Lorenz reveals that he and Joe had Smith killed before the schedule could be changed, and they're planning to bomb the Panama Canal Locks. It's up to Leland to foil these plans and save America.

Recommended movie.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 1947 Warner Bros. Pictures/Turner Entertainment.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett
Director: John Huston
Available at Amazon.

This film is the source of the "stinkin' badges" line that you've probably heard used in a bazillion other movies, TV shows, or stand-up comedy routines (More info here). Aforementioned line is #36 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Movie Quotes" list.

Fred C. Dobbs (Bogart) is down and out in Tampico, Mexico, and finding himself asking other citizens if they can help an American with a meal. He uses the last of the money he has to buy a lottery ticket, which brings him an unexpected windfall later on. He and Bob Curtain (Holt) find themselves meeting and being entertained by Howard (W. Huston), who has stories about prospecting for gold. Fred and Bob collect their pay from their shifty boss rather violently, and pool it with Fred's lottery winnings to buy equipment for a prospecting expedition with Howard. Dobbs pledges that anything they find will be split three ways, which Howard doesn't believe for a minute.

The three of them do strike gold, and Fred starts growing distrustful of his partners, eventually wanting all of the treasure for himself. Some bandits, who the trio had encountered earlier, appear dressed as Federales, and they are driven off by the genuine authorities after a gun battle. After Howard leaves temporarily to help some local villagers, Dobbs and Curtain have a showdown, which Dobbs wins, leaving his friend shot and bleeding. Fred meets his end in the desert thanks to some surviving bandits, who unknowingly scatter the gold to the winds, losing it forever. Curtain is found and taken to Howard's village, where he recovers, but they soon learn that the gold is gone.

Recommended movie.