Rats! Rats! Rats! You’ve Got a Friend in Willard and Ben

RATS! RATS! RATS! YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND IN WILLARD AND BEN
It makes sense that a sequel to the 1971 hit Willard appeared within the next year.

It makes sense that this sequel focused on the rat Ben and would be called Ben, given the previous film’s rather downbeat ending.

It also makes sense that Phil Karlson directed Ben, since Karlson directed such gritty films as Kansas City Confidential, 99 River Street, and The Phenix City Story, all involving characters who might be considered dirty rats.

Karlson never directed any character badder and meaner than Ben, though. Not any of the tough guys played by John Payne, Preston Foster, Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, and Jack Elam in Kansas City Confidential. Ben don’t need no stinking mask, for one. Ben also has an infinitely larger gang anyway and they’re real hungry as demonstrated throughout Ben. Nor Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser from Walking Tall, which Karlson made right after Ben. Joe Don Baker must have come as quite a relief after Ben, who quickly became a has been after his two film roles and multiple songs about him. Ben must have wanted even more dough to return for a third film. That dirty rat!

Ben also won a PATSY Award for his performance in Ben, which undoubtedly contributed to his ego problem.

Anyway, I didn’t much care for Ben, because it quickly established a dread pattern after the obligatory flashback to the events that ended Willard. Here’s that pattern: Rat attack. Cutesy poo musical number. Rat attack. Cutesy poo musical number. Rat attack. Cutesy poo musical number. Rat attack. Cutesy poo musical number. Rat attack. Cutesy poo musical number.

Sounds like a real winner, right? Yeah, if you like a bunch of bad ideas bouncing off each other for 90 minutes.

You can also throw in some police chatter, a journalist character who’s seemingly working on just this one story (though it’s hard to blame him, I mean it’s not everyday that millions of street rats terrorize a city), and a little boy named Danny and his sister (played by Meredith Baxter before her marriage and hyphenated name, before her TV mother fame, before her Lifetime movie career, before her coming out) and his mother who all seem like refugees from a Disney live-action project.

Oh yeah, like Willard before him, the little boy possesses the ability to communicate with rats, especially Ben. Oh yeah, once again, the lonely little boy has a heart condition.

Danny proves responsible for the musical numbers scattered throughout Ben and he even gives Ben a puppet show. Wow, just wow.

A 13-year-old Michael Jackson sings “Ben’s Song” over the end credits and “Ben” competed against songs from The Poseidon Adventure, The Little Ark, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and The Stepmother for Best Original Song at the 1973 Academy Awards. “Ben” lost to “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure, believe it or not, and having heard both songs, I don’t believe it since “The Morning After” defines godawful. Unfortunately so does most of the movie Ben.

I’ll give Karlson and animal trainer Moe Di Sesso their due for amplifying the rat count to 4,000 for Ben. Eight times the rats as Willard, but that’s the only area in which Ben triumphs over its older brother. Granted, one human year translates to approximately 30 in rat years, so maybe that’s why Ben’s motion picture career stopped after two films in two years.

Rating: One star.

— What else can I say other than I liked Willard and I would not be surprised if I found out that it played as one-half of a double bill with fellow 1971 cult film Harold and Maude.

Both are weird little items with a delightfully morbid sense of humor and I only say delightfully because I like both films, and they have offbeat lead characters who push the patience of every adult.

Bruce Davison stars as Willard Stiles, who must contend with a harridan mother (Elsa Lanchester) and a bully for a boss (Ernest Borgnine). Willard develops a close relationship with Ben and Socrates, who unfortunately for Willard are rats. See, Willard finds out that he can communicate directly with rats and that he enjoys their company more than his fellow human beings, especially his overbearing mother and all her overbearing friends and his asshole boss. His mother wants Willard to get rid of them damn rats and his boss, well, he develops genuine distaste for Rattus norvegicus after Willard’s rats crash his party one night.

Willard also begins a tentative, very tentative relationship with his lovely temporary co-worker Joan (Sondra Locke). In the end, Willard should have pursued Joan more than Socrates and Ben. No doubt that our lad Willard would have lived a whole lot longer.

As interesting as it was to watch Davison and Locke early in their careers and Lanchester (The Bride from The Bride of Frankenstein) late in her career, Borgnine proved to be the key component in the success of Willard. For a picture like Willard to work any whatsoever, we need a character that we love to hate and Borgnine’s Al Martin suitably fills that need. For us to fully anticipate and then relish his inevitable death, Borgnine needed to work us into a frenzy every time he’s onscreen. Borgnine does that and then some, especially when he seizes upon Socrates and kills him with delight. We know then, more than ever before, that Martin will meet a spectacular demise.

Borgnine won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1956 for his extremely likable performance as the title character in Marty, directed by Delbert Mann. Sixteen years later, in a picture directed by Daniel Mann, Borghine mined the opposite end of the character spectrum for Martin.

For sure, Borghine might be the first, last, and thus far only Academy Award-winning actor to be annihilated by rats.

That alone is worth the price of admission.

Rating: Three stars.

What’s Good for the Goose May Not Be Good for the Gander

WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE MAY NOT BE GOOD FOR THE GANDER: JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL & MILLION DOLLAR DUCK

Jonathan Livingston Seagull felt like the cinematic equivalent of a bird pooping on you for 99 long, long, long minutes. How long? It felt twice as long as watching Shoah.

By the way, what did that bird spray on its way? A whole load of New Age gobbledygook that gobsmacked me right in the kisser. I’ll stand with the flock of seagulls in this case, thank you very much, and put Jonathan Livingston Seagull on blast for being one festering piece of poo.

The nature photography and some level of admiration for exactly how they filmed it earn Jonathan Livingston Seagull one star, and that’s definitely more than our next specimen. However, I hate Neil Diamond’s songs and the birds’ outer-inner monologues, and I desperately wish Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a silent movie. Maybe I should have watched it muted. My bad.

For example, there’s six-and-a-half minutes of a Diamond concoction named “Be.” Maybe just maybe it will replace “Sweet Caroline” as the Great American Sing-a-Long. This sports writer can only hope after 10 years of hearing “Sweet Caroline” at every single baseball game. I’ll have endless admiration for a crowd that could make something timeless from lyrics the likes of “Be / As a page that aches for words / Which speaks on a theme that’s timeless / While the Sun God will make for your day / Sing / As a song in search of a voice that is silent / And the one God will make for your way.”

Early on in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, it tricked me into thinking I might be stumbling into a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds. Oh, how I wish it were true. Guess I can wish in one hand and have bird shit in the other.

Now, we come to Million Dollar Duck, a Walt Disney Studios production from 1971 that must have created a commotion back then, namely the sound of Uncle Walt rolling over in his grave at the abysmal quality of what might quite possibly be “one of the most profoundly stupid movies I’ve ever seen.” Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel agreed, because I quoted Ebert and now I will mention that Siskel walked out on Million Dollar Duck.

For the record, I endured about one hour and I stopped watching Million Dollar Duck right around the point when they brought out a photo of Richard Nixon and the stereotype of a Japanese diplomat carried over from World War II propaganda. At that point, I told Million Dollar Duck to go straight to The Devil and Max Devlin.

Sandy Duncan’s Katie Dooley has a beat on being the single dumbest character in cinematic history, and yes, that’s including any dumb character played by Pauly Shore or Adam Sandler and Lloyd and Harry from Dumb and Dumber, for crying out loud. You wonder how Katie Dooley and her brilliant husband Professor Albert Dooley (Dean Jones) ever created a child, let alone one of those precious, er, precocious Disney brood, er, children that could kill Damien with kindness.

The other dumb characters are not far behind, who are all dumber than the title character who earns the title, you guessed it, by laying golden eggs. Million Dollar Duck certainly laid an egg, all right, definitely not golden.

Once upon a time, my Grandma told me the story of how a bird found my Grandpa’s bald head in their back yard one day and how the bird started pecking away on that bald head. Actually, she told me that story a few times over the years and I must admit that I thought about it and pictured my poor Grandpa being pecked by that bird during both Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Million Dollar Duck. Finally, though, I cannot hate Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Million Dollar Baby too much because they helped me think about my grandparents and I have settled on the thought that one day I will tell my grandchildren about that one fateful night I watched Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Million Dollar Duck back-to-back and how I lived to tell the tale.

Shaft (1971)

SHAFT

SHAFT (1971) Three-and-a-half stars

A whole new generation of fans discovered Isaac Hayes (1942-2008) through his work for Trey Parker and Matt Stone on “South Park.”

I’m talking about Chef, Hayes’ animated alter ego, his songs like “Chocolate Salty Balls” and “Love Gravy,” his lines “Hello there, children” and “Damn, woman, I just gave you sweet loving five minutes ago” (oh, for just one game of South Park pinball right about now), and his overall cool until everything went all screwy there at the end between Mr. Hayes and the boys.

I went back in time and delved through Hayes’ previous work.

At some point in the late 20th or early 21st century, I watched Gordon Parks’ SHAFT for the first time, roughly the same time as I watched the John Singleton remake, er, sequel starring Samuel Jackson and featuring Christian Bale, Toni Collette, and Jeffrey Wright. It would have been nice if the suburban multiplex paired the ‘71 and ‘00 pictures together, but, no, of course not, and my ears still feel like they’re ringing from the 110-minute action spectacular. Nigel Tufner must have been the projectionist that day, because it was cranked up to 11 x 11.

(For crying out loud, why do we need three movies simply titled SHAFT? This is just as bad as HALLOWEEN.)

I vastly prefer the ‘71 SHAFT over any of the later SHAFT films (I, of course, have not seen the 2019 one) and there’s not one scene in either ‘70s sequel, BIG SCORE and GOES TO AFRICA, or the 2000 sequel or the rest of the first picture itself that even approaches the opening five minutes. Talk about iconic.

It all starts with the multifaceted sounds of the modern day big city rumble, then it moves on to the sights. Burt Lancaster and Telly Savalas in THE SCALPHUNTERS and George Peppard and Dean Martin in ROUGH NIGHT IN JERICHO. Robert Redford, Michael Pollard, and Lauren Hutton in LITTLE FAUSS … never mind, the first 42nd Street showing of HE AND SHE and second big hit THE ANIMAL. There’s more hype, then the first notes of Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” hit us.

Nearly 45 seconds into the movie, we’re given our introduction to the title character with a close-up of the man coming out from the subway and we’re already interested. He walks across six lanes of traffic and flashes an obscene gesture and shouts “Up yours!” at somebody who had the audacity to honk their horn. We’re interested some more, as we observe what must be just another day in the life of this angry black man.

We see more commercialization and Shaft walks through a crowd of picketers. One sign: “I GOT MY JOB THROUGH THE New York Times.” Another: “WANT YOUR SEX LIFE PUBLISHED?” One more: “I LOST MY JOB THRU Fidelifacts.” Just before making his way through picketers, Shaft flashes his badge at a street peddler, who promptly skedaddles to somewhere else. “Theme from Shaft” has been playing this whole time and picking up momentum as the opening credits scroll and our title character strolls.

It’s been about 150 seconds into the number before Hayes matter-of-factly asks “Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?” Backing vocalists Pat Lewis, Rose Williams, Mitchell Butler, and Telma Hopkins answer “Shaft” and Hayes replies “Damn right.” We are hooked, that’s damn right for sure.

“Theme from Shaft” won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Song, and it’s a stone cold classic especially in its single form. We can file the opening scene in SHAFT under “Great Opening Scenes.”

Hayes wrote the lyrics, handled lead vocals, made the arrangements, and played the keyboards. Lester Snell (electric piano), David Becker (viola), Charles Pitts (guitar), Michael Toles (guitar), Marc “Dr. Love” Davis (guitar solo), James Alexander (bass guitar), Richard “Johnny” Davis (trumpet), John Fonville (flute), Gary Jones (congas), and Willie Hall (drums) all played their parts masterfully.

Despite the fact that none of the remaining 90 or so minutes can measure up against the opening five, SHAFT affords one additional pleasures. That should be of little surprise, since this material puts a black spin on James Bond and Mike Hammer.

White author Ernest Tidyman (1928-84) adapted his own 1970 novel for the screen and Tidyman became a household name in Hollywood with SHAFT and THE FRENCH CONNECTION both major hits in 1971. Tidyman won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for THE FRENCH CONNECTION, a Best Picture winner.

Tidyman, who FRENCH CONNECTION producer Philip D’Antoni thought would be black, did not like the SHAFT rewrite by John D.F. Black, a writer hired by Parks. Despite his displeasure, Tidyman returned to write the sequel also directed by Parks (1912-2006). The former newspaperman wrote more Shaft novels, “Shaft Among the Jews” (1972), “Shaft’s Big Score” (1972), “Shaft Has a Ball” (1973), “Goodbye, Mr. Shaft” (1973), “Shaft’s Carnival of Killers” (1974), and “The Last Shaft” (1975). Tidyman also wrote HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and the early Chuck Norris pic A FORCE OF ONE.

Former model turned actor Richard Roundtree makes such a strong impression as Shaft that he’s been called the first black action hero. Not a bad screen debut. Hayes’ opening number greatly assists Roundtree, his character, and us audience members because it paints a portrait of Shaft’s basic personality and makes him a bit larger-than-life. We like this character a great deal already within the film’s first five minutes. We applaud him, especially when he sticks it to the man. Every now and then, all of us wish that we could stick it to the man, just like John Shaft.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

WILLY WONKA

WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) Three-and-a-half stars

Over the years, many individual performers have walked away with a movie and made it their own. For example, Gene Wilder in WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.

Wilder provides one of the great movie entrances at about the 45-minute mark of the picture and it’s about darn time because it’s a bit of a slog before we reach the chocolate factory. Our expectations are very high by this point in the picture and Wilder’s Willy Wonka meets and even surpasses them. It was Wilder himself who insisted that he make such an entrance.

“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp,” Wilder said. “After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”

This entrance establishes Wonka’s unpredictability right from the start.

Wilder magnificently expresses all the sides of Willy Wonka’s personality. It turns on a dime from joy and wonder to malevolent anger at the selfish children who found their golden ticket in a Wonka bar. Their golden tickets earned the children a pass to Wonka’s factory. The five children are Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, Mike Teavee, and Charlie Bucket and they are each joined by one parent or grandparent in the case of final ticket winner Charlie Bucket. The bad children are punished in unspeakable, horrifying ways for their indiscretions. That’ll show ‘em and serves ‘em right, greedy little bastards.

When the beloved Wilder died in 2016 at the age of 83, I thought immediately of his performance as Willy Wonka and his spotlight song “Pure Imagination,” a number written by the British duo of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. “If you want to view paradise / Simply look around and view it / Anything you want to do it / Wanna change the world / There’s nothing to it / There is no life I know / To compare with pure imagination / Living there you’ll be free / If you truly wish to be.” At its very, very best, WILLY WONKA approaches THE WIZARD OF OZ and Wilder’s on par with Margaret Hamilton and Frank Morgan and gang. They all share a certain joy of performance that’s wonderful to behold.

Like THE WIZARD OF OZ, WILLY WONKA undoubtedly introduced multitudes of children to scary movies. The Haunted Forest, the Wicked Witch of the West, flying monkeys, et cetera, in the 1939 film and the Oompa-Loompas and the boat ride in WILLY WONKA.

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” author Roald Dahl (1916-90) absolutely hated the 1971 screen adaptation. Dahl received credit for writing the screenplay, but it was the uncredited David Seltzer who came in and made script changes that raised Dahl’s ire.

What did Mr. Dahl hate about the picture? The shift in focus from Charlie to Willy Wonka. Check. The musical numbers. Check. Casting Gene Wilder rather than Spike Milligan, Dahl’s stated preference. Check. Guess the question should be changed to what didn’t Mr. Dahl hate about WILLY WONKA. This whole situation reminds one that Stephen King hates Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING.

I saw WILLY WONKA for the first time in fifth grade (1990) and read Dahl’s novel the next school year. I loved Dahl’s novel, but I have not read it since completing it during sixth grade, roughly the same age as the precocious golden ticket winners. Meanwhile, I have seen the 1971 version several times since that first encounter nearly three decades ago, on cable TV (Teavee), VHS, and DVD. I do think of the film more often than I do the book, and I believe that it has almost everything to do with the Wilder performance.

I have skipped Tim Burton’s 2005 adaptation CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY & I just remember being appalled from the start by still photographs of Johnny Depp’s take on Willy Wonka. Remember that scene in ANIMAL HOUSE when the older members of Delta Tau Chi pelt that picture of pledge Flounder with beer cans? That’s about how I feel every time I see a picture of Depp as Wonka. (Generally speaking, I have no problem with Burton and Depp movies. I love ED WOOD and like SLEEPY HOLLOW and SWEENEY TODD a lot.)

In a 2013 interview with Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne (1932-2017), Wilder shared his true feelings on the 2005 version.

“I think it’s an insult,” he said. “Johnny Depp, I think, is a good actor, but I don’t care for that director [Tim Burton]. He’s a talented man, but I don’t care for him doing stuff like he did.”

Duel (1971)

duel

DUEL (1971) Three-and-a-half stars

24-year-old Steven Spielberg’s first feature film premiered November 13, 1971 on ABC.

Richard Matheson (1926-2013) wrote the script, based on his nightmarish experience on November 22, 1963 (the date of JFK’s assassination). A trucker tailgated Matheson on his return home following a golf match against friend and fellow writer Jerry Sohl. Matheson turned his experience into a short story that originally ran in Playboy.

Spielberg directed on a $450,000 budget and production ran 13 days, three days over schedule, and it played as the “ABC Movie of the Week” lasting 74 minutes. A later theatrical release covered nearly 90 minutes.

Spielberg wanted and got character actor Dennis Weaver (1924-2006). Of course, most of us know the Joplin-born actor for his work on TV series “Gunsmoke” and “McCloud,” but Spielberg admired Weaver for his work in Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL and in DUEL, Weaver’s character repeats a bit of verbal business from TOUCH OF EVIL. You got another think coming, indeed.

It’s a very basic premise at the center of DUEL: An unnamed truck driver stalks our protagonist David Mann (Weaver), a middle-aged salesman returning home from a business trip.

Mann passes the truck early on and that begins his 90-minute nightmare.

Oh sure, I bet you believe that driver sure as hell gets bent over being passed.

You might even say to yourself that it’s preposterous, but then again, in this day and rage, you might not.

I definitely believe that it’s not and I recall my own bizarre experience from November 2016.

“Driving home from work last night/this morning around 2 a.m., this car began following me from about the Highway 43/96 roundabout. It would creep up, then fall back and never pass despite multiple opportunities. There was no tailgating or attempt to run me off the road. A couple times, I looked back and the car swerved all over the place. At some point, I figured out it was definitely not a cop. That some point had already been reached when I turned on to Highway H toward Jasper, a destination 11 miles from Highway 43. I took a real slow, hesitant turn with a stop at the end and the creeper car behind me matched that slow, hesitant turn with a stop at the end. OK, it’s a creeper. We’re about halfway to Jasper when I turn into a random driveway. I sit in my car for a couple minutes, debating my next move. The car following me backs up a little bit and leaves me room to reverse and turn around. I see that it’s a dude driving the car. He’s alone. I back out, turn around, drive toward him, and engage him in what turned out to be one of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever known. But just like a character said to Inspector Harry Callahan in DIRTY HARRY, ‘I gots to know.’

“Anyway, I now know for sure what it’s like to have a conversation with someone orbiting Planet X. I could only understand bits and pieces of his stammered mutterings, something ‘bout him being from Wichita and then wanting to know if I wanted to make a contribution. No, sorry, I gave at the office.

“The Creepy Crawler: Thought we could talk for 10 minutes.

“Me: No, and we’ve already talked for 5.

“TCC: No, we haven’t.

“Me: It’s late and I just want to get home from working all night.

“(voice tails off quickly)

“TCC: So you don’t want to have a conversation?

“[I drive off into the sunset. No, wait, it’s 2 a.m. There’s no sunset. The sun rises in the opposite direction. Ah, hell, we’re not getting anywhere with this digression into stage direction.]

“Back on the road and that holy quest to make it home safe, I drove about 85 over those crazy little hills of Highway H until I reached Highway 43. No creeper. Very little active human life of any kind. Very few lights. I felt like saying, ‘It’s 30 miles to Arcadia, I’ve got a three-quarters full tank of gas, half a reporter’s notebook, it’s dark out and I am wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.’”

Watching it for the first time in full the other day, DUEL brought on a flashback to that 2016 incident and I certainly felt all the sympathy in the world for the plight of David Mann.

DUEL represented a test run for JAWS, Spielberg’s third feature. Both productions often masterfully exploit our fear of the unknown, but I’ll say that DUEL scares me more than JAWS because I drive a whole helluva lot more than I swim in the ocean.

The Big Boss (1971)

day 50, the big boss

THE BIG BOSS (1971) Two stars
Glad that I didn’t watch THE BIG BOSS (a.k.a. FISTS OF FURY) first among Bruce Lee films; ENTER THE DRAGON, RETURN OF THE DRAGON, and FIST OF FURY (a.k.a. THE CHINESE CONNECTION) each came before and that’s a groovy thing because I could definitely understand what the furor over Lee is about.

First time I watched THE BIG BOSS, I did not know what quite to make of it, other than I didn’t like it very much. I thought, let me get this straight, this is Lee’s first martial arts feature and his character has sworn an oath of nonviolence. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I know, I know, they wanted a dramatic build-up to the inevitable moment when that nonviolence goes straight out the damn window and Hell (in the form of Lee) breaks loose. That’s just not how it works, though, for me and I have always found the moments leading up to the later fight scenes a genuine snoozer. Cue to the good parts, please. I’ve watched it several times and I’ve never been able to connect with it like many others have.

Lee’s character taking a pledge to nonviolence, why that’s about the equivalent of strapping a piano on Fred Astaire’s back during one of his musicals or it’s like making a great singer play a mute character for half the movie. This is not quite as frustrating as the script for JAWS 2 that delayed the inevitable for Sheriff Brody to go and kill the damn shark with some truly idiotic plot gyrations … but it’s close, real close. How many characters have to die before it’s set right?

No offense to Lee, but he was no Gandhi or Martin Luther King.

I don’t care what anybody says, but we go to a Lee movie for the fight scenes and there’s just not enough of them in THE BIG BOSS (nearly 120 minutes in length) for it to qualify as one of Lee’s better efforts. It’s a grade above GAME OF DEATH or at least the bastardized posthumous version conjured up by Robert Clouse of what could have been Lee’s masterpiece had the man been able to complete it.

There’s still moments, though, in THE BIG BOSS when you realize what’s so special about Lee. He’s truly one of a kind, even in dreck. This flick made Lee famous throughout Asia, and it became the highest-grossing film of all-time in Hong Kong in 1971, beating out THE SOUND OF MUSIC and TORA! TORA! TORA! That’s all because of Lee, who commands the screen like only a select few have in motion picture history.

Like GAME OF DEATH and its fight scenes late in that movie, viewers have to wade through a lot of crap just to get to the high points; we’re knee deep. There’s a 4-5 minute fight sequence in the ice factory in THE BIG BOSS that gets at the heart of Lee’s appeal, though Lee memorably made his own criticism of his own movies in ENTER THE DRAGON, “Why doesn’t somebody pull out a .45 and, bang, settle it?”

Of course, that would not be within the basic spirit of a martial arts picture. The genre exists as an alternative to the Western and it’s based on a lot of the same themes, such as integrity and honor, as what was once the quintessential American movie genre. Martial artists, though, use their fists and feet rather than guns.

The graphic violence, though, in THE BIG BOSS belongs more to a Spaghetti Western than anything directed by John Ford or Anthony Mann.

THE BIG BOSS is a poorly made exploitation film that features one great aspect (two if you count that poster; all Lee’s films have incredible posters) and reportedly director Lo Wei (1918-96) was more interested in the racetracks than the film. Wei’s known for launching both Lee and Jackie Chan, directing Lee in THE BIG BOSS and FIST OF FURY and Chan in NEW FIST OF FURY. Wei can be seen in FIST OF FURY as the police inspector Lo.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)

DAY 6, GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER

GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (1971) Three-and-a-half stars
Greg Kihn’s “The Breakup Song” posited that they don’t write ’em like that anymore.

Well, they don’t make movies like GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (Toho Company title and version in 1971) or GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER (American International title and version in 1972) or, for that matter, movies like INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS and INFRA-MAN anymore. Where do you start with movies like that? Where do you end?

GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER must be seen to be or not to be believed. It’s ridiculous, absolutely and sublimely ridiculous, in ways that only a truly great “bad” movie can be.

Honestly, though, I don’t think it’s bad at all and it’s definitely infinitely better than the 1998 American GODZILLA starring Matthew Broderick. I mean, come on, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, you create a pair of characters based on Siskel & Ebert after their negative reviews of your previous movies and then you don’t have the testicular fortitude to kill them off. Wusses!

This is the 11th GODZILLA movie in the series and it honestly features just a little bit of everything.

No, seriously.

The IMDb plot summary: “From Earth’s pollution a new monster is spawned. Hedorah, the smog monster, destroys Japan and fights Godzilla while spewing his poisonous gas to further the damage.”

That only barely scratches the surface of GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER. Even if the movie only revolved around that plot summary, I would be interested, but this flick goes the extra mile to entertain us.

Just yesterday I wrote about how I love it when a horror movie takes on more than just being a horror movie and gives us more.

That applies to Godzilla movies or any genre for that matter.

In this 11th Godzilla movie, we have a pro-environmental message replete with a song titled “Save the Earth,” we have a psychedelic freakout in a club with a tripping dude conjuring up partiers adorned with fish heads, we have weird animated interludes, we have little scientific lessons on nebulas and the like, we have a smog monster who looks more like a shit monster, and, last but definitely not least, a flying Godzilla, yes, a flying Godzilla using his atomic breath for jet propulsion. Was the similar scene in ROBOCOP 3 a tribute?

Those are simply the highlights.

Thankfully, the Save-the-Earth message doesn’t get too preachy or smug (it’s not ripe to be mocked by “South Park”) because of everything else surrounding it.

It’s a dark movie overall and genuinely scary in a few parts, because, let’s face it, none of us want to be killed by a shit monster.

Godzilla and Hedorah go 15 rounds in a heavyweight fight.

Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster could have been paired with Ali vs. Frazier, a creature feature before or after the boxing match.

The geniuses at American International ran GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER together with FROGS. What a pair! Best pair since Marilyn Monroe, right?

I’ve long been fascinated by what movies are titled in country from country. We’ve already covered a pair of titles for the 11th Godzilla movie and here’s four more. How about HEDORAH, LA BURBUJA TOXICA (Spain) or HEDORAH, THE TOXIC BUBBLE.

GODZILLA CONTRA MONSTRUOS DEL SMOG (Mexico) or GODZILLA AGAINST MONSTERS OF SMOG.

FRANKENSTEIN’S BATTLE AGAINST THE DEVIL’S MONSTER or FRANKSTEINS KAMPF GEGEN DIE TEUFELMONSTER in German.

GODZILLA CONTRE LE MONSTRE DU BROUILLARD (French) or GODZILLA AGAINST THE MONSTER OF FOG.

That’s just a brief international title sampler.