Tag: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Venom (1981)

VENOM (1981) ***
I just finished considering Silent Rage, a film that runs Chuck Norris, a Western, Animal House, mad scientists, and a madman killer made indestructible through a cinematic blender.

Thus, I feel safe in saying that Silent Rage prepared me for Venom, a British horror film that has a distinguished multinational cast, kidnapping and hostage negotiation, and only the world’s deadliest snake, the dreaded Black mamba from sub-Saharan Africa. The mamba gets a few closeups, more than Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck, and its own POV. Yeah, we’ll call it the Black Mamba Cam.

That distinguished cast includes kidnappers Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed, Scotland Yard commander and lead negotiator Nicol Williamson, snake expert Sarah Miles, slinky (won’t call her slutty or a snake expert in her own right) nurse Susan George, and lovable crusty old grandfather Sterling Hayden.

Basically, Venom contains three movies within one — the kidnapping inside the house, the hostage negotiation and the behind-the-scenes police maneuvering on the outside, and the deadly snake on the loose. We’ve all seen kidnapping and hostage negotiation plenty before, on TV cop shows and in the movies, but very rarely do the kidnappers have to deal with the world’s deadliest snake. And Lord knows we’ve all seen a bad snake movie or two, like for example the 1972 disaster Stanley, which populated its killer snake scenario with thoroughly unpleasant and despicable characters, a somewhat heavy-handed environmental message, and some of the dopiest music ever heard by man this side of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Venom turned out to be a far more enjoyable motion picture experience than Stanley. For example, the scene in Venom where the boy picks up the mamba by mistake and unknowingly transports the world’s deadliest snake from one side of London to another brought to mind the classic sequence in Sabotage that ends in the death of a young boy named Stevie. The inevitable scenes late in the picture when the mamba strikes Reed and Kinski are both well worth their wait, and the mamba’s strike at George about 30 minutes into the picture lets us know that we’re in for a treat when Reed and Kinski do meet their demise.

Later that day, much later in the day to be precise, though, I watched Murders in the Zoo from 1933 and imagine my delightful little surprise when a mamba figured prominently in that older film’s plot. The gruesome hits in Murders in the Zoo just keep on coming down the home stretch, especially when a boa constrictor consumes the dastardly big-game hunter, bastardly zoologist, and insanely jealous husband played by Lionel Atwill.

Venom and Murders in the Zoo both find perfect ways to deal with snakes in the grass.

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.