COMIN’ AT YA! (1981) *** Certain movie titles just don’t lie about their contents and intents.
For example, Comin’ at Ya (Bye-bye, exclamation point! You only get one, baby), because it keeps every object and every Spaghetti Western hallmark coming straight at us for 90 minutes. We get the objects because Comin’ at Ya inaugurated the resurgence of 3-D movies, a wave of exploitation that included such followers as Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone and The Man Who Wasn’t There, not to mention Friday the 13th Part III, Jaws 3-D, and Amityville 3-D.
I’ll try and not spoil all the fun by revealing every object thrown at the screen, but I will say that Comin’ at Ya absolutely loves arrows and works in a yo-yo showcase. Trust me on this one, you’ll go bats during Comin’ at Ya.
American actor, writer, producer, and director Tony Anthony, not the British Christian evangelist or the retired professional wrestler better known by his professional name Dirty White Boy, made a living in recycled Spaghetti Westerns like A Stranger in Town, The Stranger Returns, The Silent Stranger, Blindman, and Get Mean before writing the original story and starring in Comin’ at Ya. He certainly knows his way around a cowboy hat and a horse.
Veteran movie viewers will recognize just about every Spaghetti Western standard trotted out by Comin’ at Ya, especially its revenge revenge revenge plot, landscapes derived from Leone, music derived from Morricone, and mannerisms derived from Eastwood. Comin’ at Ya director Ferdinando Baldi and his writing team of Wolfe Lowenthal, Lloyd Battista, Gene Quintano, Anthony, Esteban Cuenca, and Ramon Plana also use clichés older than cinema or even dirt itself, like a dying old man who musters just enough life to give our hero critical informational bits and then dies from his wounds after muttering his remaining life, er, his final word. How many times have we seen that one? No, please, don’t tell me, it’s a rhetorical question.
It’s about time I get around to mentioning Comin’ at Ya shells out big doses of bad dubbing.
Between all the 3-D and Spaghetti Western brandishing and bludgeoning, mostly badly dubbed, one might think that’s more than enough to recommend a single movie. That’s wrong, though, because Comin’ at Ya features one of the most beautiful women in the world, Spanish actress and singer Victoria Abril, early in her career. Abril later starred in four Pedro Almodovar films and played the bisexual housewife in the acclaimed French sex farce French Twist.
I recommend Comin’ at Ya for any true connoisseur of clunky cinematic junk.
THE PRIVATE EYES (1980) *1/2 Eighty years of nostalgia account for the appeal of the comedy mystery THE PRIVATE EYES.
THE PRIVATE EYES spoofs Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who first appeared in the 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle novel “A Study in Scarlet” and made a comeback in the ’70s through such films as THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SMARTER BROTHER, THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION, and MURDER BY DECREE, and it takes on a comedic style made famous by Abbott and Costello in such ’40s films as HOLD THAT GHOST and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.
Meanwhile, here we are more than 40 years out from the release of THE PRIVATE EYES, possibly feeling nostalgic for the comedic duo Don Knotts (1924-2006) and Tim Conway (1933-2019), who appeared together in a trifecta of Disney live-action pictures before THE PRIZE FIGHTER and THE PRIVATE EYES, both major successes for Roger Corman’s New World Productions. They last appeared together in a cameo for the bomb turkey CANNONBALL RUN II.
Knotts definitely carries more nostalgic heft than Conway, since I remember him from ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ ‘Three’s Company,’ PLEASANTVILLE (playing a TV repairman, of course), and even a play in Kansas City when I was in college. Knotts’ Bernard ‘Barney’ Fife worked up my Grandma like no other fictional character and she reveled in his regularly scheduled comeuppance. I fondly remember giving her a hard time about it, saying that Knotts’ Fife made the show and that it went downhill after his departure. Strangely enough, I remember most fondly a TV spot pairing Fife’s antics with Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ Wish that I could find that spot and crack up once again.
So, needless to say, I entered THE PRIVATE EYES with a generosity of good spirit and desire to laugh. I left 90 minutes later defeated by a really, really, really dumb, dumb, dumb mystery comedy and I have no real motivation to seek out the other Knotts and Conway cinematic pairings.
Knotts and Conway portray Inspector Winship and Dr. Tart, two bumbling fumbling stumbling American detectives who have somehow found themselves working for ‘The Yard.’ They bumble fumble stumble from their very first scene together all the way to the end and if you find that bumble fumble stumble worth a funny rumble the first time, you just might find it funny a hundred times. However, I did not find it funny the first or the last time or any darn time in-between.
THE PRIVATE EYES more accurately recalls a Scooby Doo episode. Hey, wouldn’t you know that Knotts appeared in cartoon form in the episodes ‘Guess Who’s Knott Coming to Dinner’ and ‘The Spooky Fog of Juneberry’ and Conway took on the Spirit of Fireball McPhan in ‘The Spirit Spooked Sports Show.’ I vaguely remember watching all three from childhood, but I still have no doubt they are each better than THE PRIVATE EYES.
Ironically, THE PRIVATE EYES has way too much plot for a dumb comedy.
HOLD THAT GHOST works much better than THE PRIVATE EYES because it has flights of fancy that deviate from its mystery plot like Costello’s dance scene with Joan Davis. Since they were all under the imperial offices of Universal Pictures, HOLD THAT GHOST makes room for musical numbers by Ted Lewis and His Orchestra and the Andrews Sisters. THE PRIVATE EYES, meanwhile, offers scenes like a gas station destroyed by Winship and Tart in a way that recalls IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, a very, very, very, very unfunny comedy. Let’s face it, Hollywood made less dumb comedies in 1941 than both 1963 and 1980.
Knotts and Conway remain likable throughout THE PRIVATE EYES, despite very rarely ever being funny. That said, Australian singer and actress Trisha Noble virtually steals the show out from underneath Knotts and Conway every time she appears as the alluring heiress Phyllis Morley. She’s very, ahem, ‘Oh LàLà,’ like a model for that magazine favored by 1955 Biff Tannen. I can honestly say that she alone boosts the overall rating for THE PRIVATE EYES by at least half a star.
My wife came home from work as I finished watching LET THE FIRE BURN and she thought I had came down with a cold.
No, as I later explained to her, I broke down in tears by the end of LET THE FIRE BURN, the archive footage only documentary recounting the decade-long conflict between back-to-nature and black liberation group MOVE and Philadelphia police and city officials that culminated in the police siege and aerial bombing of the MOVE house on May 13, 1985. Firefighters were on scene and let the subsequent fire burn for one hour, resulting in 11 deaths (including MOVE leader John Africa and five children), 61 destroyed homes, and more than 250 homeless people.
Only two people from inside 6221 Osage Avenue survived a day that also included water cannons and tear gas and 500 heavily-armed officers firing 10,000 rounds at the burning house. The lone adult survivor, Ramona Africa, was the only person from that day to serve any prison time, seven years for aggravated assault, riot, and conspiracy. No city officials were ever prosecuted for their actions that day, even after the MOVE Commission took aim at Mayor Wilson Goode, Managing Director Leo Brooks, Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor, and Fire Commissioner Wilson Richmond and held each of them responsible for their part in the “reckless,” “unconscionable” bombing. Sambor and Richmond were singled out for their “hasty, reckless, and irresponsible” decision to use fire as a tactical weapon. A grand jury concluded, “We do not exonerate the men responsible for this disaster. Rather than a vindication of those officials, this report should stand as a record of their morally reprehensible behavior.” Both Africa and Ward won civil cases against the city.
I especially lost it late in the film.
Philadelphia officer James Berghaier testifies before the MOVE Commission about how he rescued lone child survivor Birdie Africa, a.k.a. Michael Moses Ward, from a deep pool behind the incinerated MOVE house, braving water and downed power lines to bring the badly burned boy to safety. A title card then informs us that 17-year veteran Berghaier quit the force only months after his testimony due to post traumatic stress disorder … and that he received “nigger lover” harassment for his actions May 13.
Berghaier said in a October 1986 AP story, “I’m constantly reminded of the way that kid looked at me, but it’s not something other people can understand. It’s destroyed me. It never goes away. In order to survive as a policeman, you have to detach yourself from what you have to do, and I’ve never been able to do that.”
Another title card tells us Michael Moses Ward died at the age of 41 in 2012; Ward drowned in a cruise ship hot tub. He reunited with his biological father Andino, learned a lifestyle radically different from his childhood in the communal MOVE house, and eventually became a long-haul truck driver and a part-time barber in his adult years. Ward lost his mother in the fire.
Jason Osder makes an impressive and unorthodox directorial debut by eschewing traditional documentary form — no contemporaneous interviews, no talking heads, no reenactments, only archival footage with an occasional informational title card. LET THE FIRE BURN cuts between MOVE Commission testimony, news reports (mostly from May 13), Ward’s videotaped deposition, and police surveillance footage. It is a tremendous experience.
LET THE FIRE BURN does not let MOVE off the hook. They’re accused of abusing their child members and their black neighbors had an endless array of complaints against them. That’s why city officials worked on evicting them from 6221 Osage and gave their neighbors advance notice of the May 13 raid. MOVE leader John Africa also had the disconcerting habit of calling people — like the police commissioner — “motherfucker” over a loud speaker, something that will not always play well with others. On a surveillance tape played in LET THE FIRE BURN, one police officer can be heard saying that Africa won’t be calling the police commissioner “motherfucker” anymore.
The fact that Goode — the first black mayor in Philadelphia history — was mayor during the bombing and its aftermath makes the events even more complex and interesting. Renowned tough guy and former police commissioner Frank Rizzo (yes, the inspiration for one of the Jerky Boys) was mayor when strife between MOVE and Philadelphia police began and then exploded in 1978 with a confrontation that led to the death of police officer James Ramp and the beating of John Africa (officers can be seen on video beating Africa). Nine MOVE members were charged and convicted for murdering Ramp and received lengthy prison sentences; Delbert Orr Africa became the first member of the Move 9 to be released but he died at the age of 74 only months after his release in early 2020. All three officers were acquitted in the Africa beating; one of them, Terrence Mulvihill, in fact later played a part in the events of May 13.
Goode served as mayor until 1992, after he narrowly won re-election in 1987 against none other than Republican candidate Frank Rizzo; Rizzo lost the Democratic primary to Goode in 1983 and switched parties for the duration of his life. Goode then held a position in the U.S. Department of Education, became a minister and professor at private Christian university Eastern, and he’s currently the CEO of Amachi, a faith-based program geared toward mentoring the children of incarcerated parents. Goode recently called for the city of Philadelphia to issue a formal apology for the events of May 13, 1985.
I am grateful to have encountered this piece of history that’s come up again in recent months, but good luck finding a copy of a full LET THE FIRE BURN to watch online. I wanted to go back for another viewing and pin down some exact quotes, but alas, I could not find the version I just watched a few days before.
Both ignorance of and blatant disregard for the historical record have bothered me for a real long time (latter definitely more than former), and they seem to be practiced more and more from every conceivable angle.
Just a couple months ago, for example, protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, tore down, decapitated, and threw into a lake the statue of Norwegian-American abolitionist, journalist, anti-slavery activist (listed after abolitionist to push the point across more forcefully), politician, and Union soldier Hans Christian Heg, who died at the age of 33 from wounds he received during the Battle of Chickamauga on Sept. 20, 1863. Them protesters probably had absolutely no idea whatsoever this old dead white guy worked hard to and even died in the struggle to end slavery.
Recently, memes have made the rounds that Democrat Senators held the longest filibuster in history, 75 days, attempting to prevent the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That leaves out the part about the bipartisan effort — yes, both Republicans and Democrats working together, led by Democrats Hubert Humphrey and Mike Mansfield and Republicans Everett Dirksen and Thomas Kuchel — to end the filibuster and pass the bill ending segregation and prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Never mind the fact that a Democrat President (John F. Kennedy) proposed the legislation and his successor (Lyndon B. Johnson) signed it into law on July 2, 1964.
The Senate passed it with a vote of 73-27 (46 Democrats, 27 Republicans; 21 Democrats, 6 Republicans). The vast majority of “Nay” votes came from Southern Democrats — both senators from 10 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia). Texas and West Virginia Democrats Ralph Yarborough and Jennings Randolph both voted for, while Texas Republican John Tower voted against it. West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, a nay vote, filibustered for 14 hours, 13 minutes.
In the final House vote, it passed 289-126 (153 Democrats, 136 Republicans; 91 Democrats, 35 Republicans) with a similar vast majority of “Nay” votes from Southern Democrats — including all eight representatives from Alabama, all four from Arkansas, all five from Mississippi, and all five from South Carolina. It is perhaps no coincidence that predominantly reps and senators from the former confederate states voted against every civil rights legislation that came down the pike for a good century.
For some reason, my brain has found these lyrics from Talking Heads’ “Crosseyed and Painless,” “Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late / Facts all come with points of view / Facts don’t do what I want them to / Facts just twist the truth around / Facts are living turned inside out / Facts are getting the best of them / Facts are nothing on the face of things / Facts don’t stain the furniture / Facts go out and slam the door / Facts are written all over your face / Facts continue to change their shape.” Of course, I’m still waiting. And the world moves on a woman’s hips, it swivels and bops, bounces and hops.
Like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison before and Tupac and Biggie after him, Kurt Cobain became a cottage industry after his death at the age of 27 in 1994. Nothing floods the market like a dead superstar.
Just on the documentary front alone, we’ve had Nick Bloomfield’s 1998 investigative and speculative KURT & COURTNEY, A.J. Schnack’s 2006 KURT COBAIN: ABOUT A SON built around Cobain interviews for Michael Azerrad’s 1993 book “Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana,” and then the 2015 double dose of SOAKED IN BLEACH and COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK, the former centered around private investigator Tom Grant and his digging into Cobain’s suicide and the latter officially approved by Cobain’s widow Courtney Love and their daughter Frances Bean Cobain. They made a real big deal about MONTAGE OF HECK being the first officially approved Cobain / Nirvana documentary, which automatically raises some red flags.
Throw in Gus Van Sant’s fictionalized LAST DAYS from 2005 and between all those cinematic incarnations and the Greatest Hits package (2002), the Journals (first released 2002), the three CD and one DVD box set (2004), the single-disc “Best of the Box” (2005), and various live albums released after his death beginning with MTV UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK (Nov. 1, 1994) nearly six months after Cobain’s suicide, as well as all the celebrities from every walk of life fawning over seemingly every little thing Cobain, it’s easy to see why some of us experience Cobain fatigue or even why old fans sour on Cobain and Nirvana and ponder what they ever saw in their former heroes in the first place. Additionally, there are others who will tell you they hated Cobain and Nirvana during their brief heyday and that Cobain’s best move was blowing his brains out (a former co-worker actually said that during one musical discussion). We have more than enough room for each perspective and then some.
Through it all, though, I remain a Nirvana fan, mainly because I do my best to keep the legend at bay and just listen to the music. I turned 13 years old just three days before the release of Nirvana’s second album, NEVERMIND, so I definitely smelled teen spirit. That album, especially its first half, became so ingrained in my life during my teenage years that eventually I rarely ever played it, especially its first half, for quite some time. Only in the last year or so have I listened again to studio “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “In Bloom,” “Come As You Are,” and “Lithium” on my own accord.
Anyway, that’s a long way of saying I watched MONTAGE OF HECK more than five years after its original release and subsequent hype and backlash. Movies about real people, especially artists, face at least one huge challenge: Do you focus on that person’s darker side or do you focus on the good times or do you try and find a middle ground between dark and light? Matters are compounded when the subject in question committed suicide at the age of 27 and titled songs “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” Cobain’s often dark sense of humor should never be shortchanged and it’s not during MONTAGE OF HECK. We do see the darker side of Cobain throughout, especially in the second half of MONTAGE OF HECK, but the film also helps recall why Nirvana unexpectedly exploded into the stratosphere in late 1991 and early 1992. That said, I still do not and will probably never understand why Cobain became a generational spokesman, because like others before and after him, he did not want that responsibility and because this whole generational spokesman concept strikes me as being profoundly silly. Always remember, though, “It’s not what your celebrity (corporation) can do for you, it’s what you can do for your celebrity (corporation).”
MONTAGE OF HECK calls to mind Jeff Feuerzeig’s 2005 documentary THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON in a multitude of ways, through their deeply troubled protagonists who have a talent for writing songs, playing music, and drawing, their every moment seemingly captured on camera, and their animated interludes. Cobain himself appeared in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON, wearing a “Hi, How Are You?” T-shirt alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and Nirvana trumpeter Flea at the 1992 MTV Music Awards.
MONTAGE OF HECK attempts to avoid the canned talking head format as much as possible — director Brett Morgen said the interviews from Bob Fosse’s Lenny Bruce screen biography LENNY influenced his style for MONTAGE OF HECK.
I AM CHRIS FARLEY, meanwhile, reinforces the idea that excess informed Chris Farley’s life and death at the age of 33 from an overdose in December 1997.
Farley enjoyed an excess of friends and loved ones, because fellow celebrities Christina Applegate, Tom Arnold, Dan Aykroyd, Bo Derek, Jon Lovitz, Lorne Michaels, Jay Mohr, Mike Myers, Bob Odenkirk, Bob Saget, Adam Sandler, and David Spade all share their Farley memories and anecdotes, in addition to excess in both overall lifestyle and comedic style.
I quickly realized once again that it was that very excess at the heart of Farley’s lead roles in TOMMY BOY, BLACK SHEEP, BEVERLY HILLS NINJA, and the posthumously released ALMOST HEROES. I watched BLACK SHEEP and BEVERLY HILLS NINJA and passed on the other two, because I thought BLACK SHEEP and BEVERLY HILLS NINJA relentlessly played one note for a good 90 minutes at a time — we shall call this note “Fat Man Takes a Really, Really Big Fall.” Seeing clips in I AM CHRIS FARLEY just brought it all back home again how much I disliked Farley’s films.
Also, during I AM CHRIS FARLEY, Aykroyd compared the comedic duo of Farley and Spade to Aykroyd and Belushi, Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis. Wow. I mean, I did a double take when I first heard it and I just did another now writing it out. Farley and Spade paired for TOMMY BOY and BLACK SHEEP, while Abbott and Costello began working together in radio in 1935 and continued through radio, film, and TV into the mid-50s, highlighted by their legendary “Who’s on First?” routine. Abbott and Costello’s filmography doubled Farley and Spade in 1941 alone. Martin and Lewis made 16 films together — like Abbott and Costello, they worked in three entertainment mediums — from 1949 to 1956. Farley and Spade compared to Aykroyd and Belushi checks out, because of “Saturday Night Live” and two feature films.
On the other hand, I loved almost every Farley clip from “Saturday Night Live,” especially motivational speaker Matt Foley’s debut on May 8, 1993, because I can handle Farley’s excess better at five-minute sketch intervals than feature-length excess. I laughed at the Matt Foley sketch like I remember laughing at it 27 years earlier when it first aired. Spade and Applegate’s reactions and straining to remain in character when Foley unleashes “From what I understand, you’re not using your paper for writing, but for rolling doobies … you’ll be doing a lot of doobie rolling when you’re living in a van down by the river” make this sketch even funnier. Farley’s defining moment and one of the best on SNL.
By the way, you’ll discover the identity of the real-life Matt Foley during I AM CHRIS FARLEY. That’s one of the low-key highlights.
I AM CHRIS FARLEY balances toward light more than dark, but comments like Odenkirk’s “It’s just rare that a person has that much joy and brings that much happiness to everyone around him, but with Chris, there’s a limit to how wonderful it is to me and that limit is when you kill yourself with drugs and alcohol, you know, because that’s where it stops being so fucking magical” certainly get their point across.
Here’s another way to look at Cobain and Farley, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” In the case of a musician and a comedian who are preserved on record and celluloid, though, we have a chance to step into the light once more any time we so desire our personal favorite Nirvana album or “The Best of Chris Farley.” I believe that’s the best way to remember Cobain and Farley, as well as ourselves in the process.
COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (2015) ****; I AM CHRIS FARLEY (2015) ***1/2
Attack of the Killer Librarian 