Reeling Backward: "Flynn" (1993)

Errol Flynn was one of Hollywood's most colorful personalities, a man whose off-camera life was at least as vivid as the one we saw dancing across the screen, usually with the dashing, mustachioed actor waving a rapier or a pistol.

His autobiography, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways," published shortly after his death, was a smash hit that has never been out of print in nearly 60 years. He and ghostwriter Earl Conrad put together the book over the course of a few months in Jamaica, during which it was rare that one or the other wasn't off somewhere drunk and/or chasing women.

It's a great read, especially the parts detailing Flynn's international adventures in the South Pacific before discovering acting, although at least half of what's written is probably baldfaced lies. If true, by his early 20s he had already had more adventures than Indiana Jones.

I suspect that Flynn, best known for his rapscallion swashbucklers, was simply playing up his faded Hollywood image rather than relating personal history.

Shortly after reading the book I became aware of the movie "Flynn," starring Guy Pearce as Flynn from about ages 17 to 23 and focusing on his pre-acting days. There have been any number of screen portrayals of Flynn, generally centering on his latter debauched days, including portrayals by Kevin Kline in "The Last of Robin Hood" and Peter O'Toole as a barely disguised spoof of Flynn in "My Favorite Year."

But this was a portrait of the actor, drawn from his own words, about his formative years stumbling about the globe. (There was a forgettable 1985 TV movie sharing the title of the autobiography.)

I knew I had to see it, but "Flynn" is not an easy film to track down on video. A friend finally loaned me his DVD copy, which seems to be the version of the movie that played on Australian TV.

(Broadcast standards being different just about everywhere else than the U.S., my first impression was admiration that they managed to squeeze in two bare-breasted sex scenes within the first five minutes.)

I'm still smiling at the friend's response to my question if the movie was any good. "By no means," he messaged. I can't disagree, though it's not nearly the rolling catastrophe most people regard it as. Pearce himself has called it the worst film he ever made, and professed not to know what its final title is.

The progeny of the movie is nearly as contorted as Flynn's rambling words about his young life. It was shot in 1989 with Brian Kavanagh directing from a script by Frank Howson and Alister Webb. It was shown at the 1990 Cannes festival and bought by distribution company with the proviso that some scenes be reshot. Howson stepped in his director, several key actors were replaced with others, and they ended up reshooting about half the footage.

It played against at Cannes in 1993, this time under the title "My Forgotten Man," perhaps to fool the festival programmers into the playing the same movie a second time. It was set to get a theatrical release, but was pulled seven days before it hit screens over a copyright dispute. It was eventually released on video around 1996, and has been sold to various international markets, usually under the title "Flynn."

Pearce, who was in his early 20s when they initially shot the movie, bears little resemblance to Flynn other than an astonishing handsomeness. We can see how women, and not a few men, were dazzled by him. His attempt to grown the signature Flynn pencil mustache goes a short way in furthering the likeness.

Though not a strict adaptation of the autobiography, it follows the generally accepted biographical lines. Son of a famous biologist, kicked out of a fancy predatory school for sleeping with the laundress, he knocked around as a mercantile clerk before being fired for stealing. Flynn has a stint of homelessness before falling in with Penelope (Rebecca Rig), daughter of a rich businessman.

Eschewing the opportunity to wed into money and obtain a lucrative job from his father-in-law, Flynn departs for New Guinea to pursue the tales of massive gold finds. There he becomes embroiled in a running escapade of drinking, panning rivers for nuggets, being robbed and being the robber, bedding a native chieftain's daughter, battling malaria and being accused and convicted of murder.

John Savage plays Joe Stromberg, an American photographer who takes some early footage of Flynn parading through the jungle that gets sent off to Hollywood. Though we never hear anything more about it. Flynn actually gets his big break by doing a little do-si-do with another, getting him drunk and taking his place on a production of "Mutiny on the Bounty."

Steven Berkoff is a memorable presence as the conniving, bespectacled German Klaus Reicher, who befriends Flynn while grifting from him freely. They save each other's necks and then double-cross one another, repeatedly. He is purported to be a spy, but claims he's a wanted man on the run from the police.

The production values on "Flynn" aren't that bad, though the movie looks like it was edited with a Cuisinart. Scenes go on and on, such as men racing through the jungle, and then other parts will abruptly jump to somewhere else. In one confusing bit, Flynn shoots one of the natives trying to kill him, runs to the edge of a river, stand there looking at the water, and then suddenly wakes up in a hospital, recovering from malaria and with a murder charge hover over his head.

Even though it's not a very good movie, I'm glad I finally caught up with "Flynn." Pearce is a breezy, assured presence playing a man who knows for certain he's destined for greatness, but has no idea how to get there.

It was often said that Errol Flynn was a man who got by on confidence, looks and a little bit of talent. But people often forget that the first two make up a great deal of the latter in showbiz.

Reeling Backward: "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963)

Take away the then-groundbreaking special effects courtesy of Ray Harryhausen, and "Jason and the Argonauts" is a pretty darn hammy, silly fantasy film. Actually, it's pretty silly and hammy even with them, as the stop-motion creature creations haven't aged particularly well.

They've become certifiably iconic -- which is another way of saying that even though everyone agrees they represent a watershed moment in cinema, the effects look pretty antediluvian today.

Produced outside the traditional studio system, it's a cornucopia of stiff acting, nonsensical plotting and mythological bits 'n' pieces. A "B" picture by progeny but with a healthy budget of $3 million, it nonetheless got some "A" bookings in theaters at the time. Harryhausen considered it his finest work, and frequent musical score collaborator Bernard Hermann delivered a rousing, brass-heavy fanfare.

The most famous scene is the fight at the end between Jason, a couple of his men and a dozen or so skeleton warriors. It remains a rousing sequence, with the human actors blended pretty believably against the stop-motion undead. Fifty-five years after first delighting audiences, the skeletons gave my boys, ages 4 and 7, quite a thrill.

But the precursor to the fight is an utter credulity-twister. It actually wraps up the strengths and weaknesses of the film rather well: great eye candy spoiled by nigh-incompetent storytelling.

The setup: Jason and his crew have just stolen the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes of Colchis (Jack Gwillim), killing the hydra that was guarding it, and are fleeing back to their ship. Joining them is Medea (Nancy Kovack), the king's high priestess, who betrayed him because Jason was all hunky and stuff.

Aeëtes harvested the teeth of the hydra, and after catching up with Jason's group proceeds to spread the teeth around in an elaborate ritual that must take three or four minutes for the skeletons to spawn. Jason sends Medea and most of his crew on to the ship, while he and two of his men just... stand there, waiting for the spell to be completed.

"Hecate, Queen of Darkness, revenge yourself against the Thessalians. Deliver to me the children of the hydra's teeth, the children of the night!" the king thunders.

And... he goes on.

"Rise up, you dead, slain of the hydra. Rise from your graves and avenge us. Those who steal the Golden Fleece must die!"

Still, Jason stands there, mouth agape.

I don't know about you, but if I've just ripped off an angry monarch of his most coveted treasure and he starts a foul incantation, saying he's going to summon some unkillable warriors, I'm not going to just wait for him to finish. It's skedaddlin' time.

If you think it's unmanly for a cinematic hero to run from a fight: that's exactly what he does anyway. After his fellows have been slain, Jason simply jumps off the cliff and swims to his ship, the Argo, begging the question of why they couldn't have done that right away and saved some living flesh.

(By the way, if you look closely the emblems on the shields of the skeletons are representations of previous Harryhausen creations.)

Jason is played by Todd Armstrong, who's a rather thin figure, both metaphorically and literally, for a legendary warrior out of Greek mythology. His most persistent expression is one of puzzlement/astonishment, eyebrows knitted as he reacts to Harryhausen's latest invention. He stubbornly keeps his spindly arms and chest covered even as the Argonauts toil shirtless for most of the movie. Even his voice is not his own: Armstrong's entire vocal performance was reportedly dubbed over by Tim Turner. This Jason is the pencil-necked counterpoint to Steve Reeves' Hercules of the same era.

Speaking of: the ultra-strong hero is part of Jason's team, played by Nigel Green -- a decidedly thick-waisted, back-slapping iteration of Hercules. He abandons the voyage about halfway there, overcome with grief over the disappearance of Hylas (John Cairney), the intellectual member of the crew, while battling the gigantic statue of Talos on the Isle of Bronze.

The two had awakened the titan by stealing from his treasure. Jason defeats Talos by removing the nail from his heel, causing the magical ichor that sustains him to leak out. Hylas was smushed by the falling behemoth, though Hercules doesn't know that.

If your Greek mythology is a little rusty, Jason was the son of the deposed king of Thessaly, who is foretold by Zeus to avenge himself upon his father's usurper, Pelias (Douglas Wilmer). In order to restore glory to the kingdom and claim his rightful place, Jason is tasked with retrieving the Golden Fleece, the magical hide and skull of a golden ram, from the ends of the earth.

He holds a series of games, a progenitor of the Olympics, to select the finest heroes to man the princely ship that Argus (Laurence Naismith), the wise old shipbuilder, constructs for the trip. In addition to the aforementioned crew is Acastus (Gary Raymond), conniving son of Pelias, sent along to undermine the mission. Despite using his real name, nobody seems to recognize the offspring of Jason's hated enemy.

The weakest of the Harryhausen spectacles is the battle with the harpies, who plague the oracle Phineas (Patrick Troughton), blinded by the gods for his arrogance. (He was once the king of his land, though this is not stated in the movie.) The harpies are crude-looking and nonthreatening, appearing as if they were sculpted out of Play-Doh.

Jason gets occasional help from Hera (Honor Blackman), queen of the Greek gods, who has declared Jason her champion in a battle of wits with Zeus (Niall MacGinnis), her honored but often opposed husband.  Her latest protest against Zeus, aside from his wide-ranging and morphologically diverse philandering, was that her temple was profaned when Jason's family was killed.

Hera drops hints about his quest, bestow gifts, etc. Other gods make occasional appearances, including Hermes (Michael Gwynn), who doubles as an impressively coiffed earthly priest, and Triton (William Gudgeon), who holds open the Clashing Rocks so the Argo can pass through.

This is one of those movies where the gods are depicted as white-robed sentinels parading about a cloudy Olympus realm, pushing men and monsters around like pieces on a mystical chess board. It was quite a common storytelling device through the 1950s and '60s, straight up through "Clash of the Titans" in 1981.

Nowadays, though, gods are the flawed doers in movies rather than just the beneficent (or not) observers/manipulators.

Directed by journeyman filmmaker Don Chaffey, who bounced around between TV and film for 40 years, from a script by Beverly Cross and Jan Read, "Jason and the Argonauts" exists now mostly as a fine piece of nostalgia. Viewed clearly, it's a poorly-made collection of fantastical tropes. Through rose-colored glasses, though, it's a vibrant, colorful masterpiece of cheese.

Reeling Backward: "The Day of the Jackal" (1973)

"The Day of the Jackal" was my father's favorite film. Or I should say it is his favorite film. I'm not sure what the proper term to use is when the person is no longer with us but the movie endures.

I'd like to think that love survives death, whether for another person or a work of art, so we'll choose the present tense.

The film has just been released in a gorgeous Blu-ray special edition out Sept. 25 that includes plenty of nifty bonus material.

I saw it with him first on HBO when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and my lifelong love of cinema was already in full bloom. I remember sitting together in our living room, him on his recliner in the corner and me lying on the ground directly in front of the TV with my head propped against a triangular pillow, my usual spot. Several other viewings took place together over the years.

He, and I, adore the absolute leanness of the narrative. Even at 142 minutes, there is not an ounce of fat in this spy thriller about a British assassin hired by French insurgents to kill President Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963. It's essentially a crime procedural, but instead of following the investigators as they look into a deed already committed, it's a parallel race as we track the titular killer striving to finish his contract while an international cadre of law enforcement types scrambles to prevent it.

Many movies would go on to copy this style, including 1993's "In the Line of Fire." Although there is a cast of hundreds, the story very much focuses on two figures just like the Clint Eastwood film, the assassin and the man leading the hunt. Though here there's no ongoing taunting between hero and villain as they engage in their intricate dance, only meeting at the very end.

Indeed, the film has such an incredible sense of verisimilitude, weaving actual events and locations in with fictional ones, that I had long assumed it was based on a genuine assassination attempt. In fact, the inspiration comes from the 1971 fictional novel by Frederick Forsyth, adapted for the screen by Kenneth Ross and directed by the great Fred Zinneman ("High Noon," "From Here to Eternity").

This is perhaps the signature role of Edward Fox's career, displaying an icy charm as the Jackal, aka Charles Calthrop, known as the best hit man in England, and perhaps the world. He's a chameleon-like figure, putting on and taking off identities like changes of his well-tailored suits. A compact man with a lean, boyish figure and feathered blond hair, the Jackal is as suave as anyone who's played James Bond.

The strength of "Jackal" is that we find ourselves rooting for the Jackal and his nemesis, Deputy Police Commissioner Claude Lebel (Michel Lonsdale). Like the Jackal, Lebel displays a single-minded commitment in his pursuit of his goal, literally sleeping in his office for weeks on end, assisted only by his loyal number two (Derek Jacobi).

Both men also have a tendency to be curt and impatient with those who stand in the way of his goals. The difference being that the Jackal simply kills anyone who opposes him, while Lebel hunkers down and burrows into the weak spots of the bureaucracy.

No doubt my dad's favorite moment of the film comes late when Lebel reveals the leak within the cabinet of French ministers who have been sworn to secrecy on the affair. One of them had been seduced by an insurgent spy, and Lebel plays a recording of her feeding information from his phone. Confessing his weakness, the guilty man leaves the meeting abruptly (and later commits suicide).

The ministers are pleased, having been generally dismissive of Lebel, seeing him as a low-level flunky -- not a government official but a gumshoe cop. As the meeting is breaking up, the haughty chief minister (Alan Badel) asks him how he knew which of their personal phone lines to tap. Not even bothering to look up from his papers, Lebel states that he couldn't know which of them was the source of the leak, so he tapped all of their phones.

Zinnemann holds this moment for the briefest of seconds, just long enough to register the shocked faces of the high and mighty. In our shared viewings, this was always followed by my father's high-pitched cackle of glee.

I won't bother with a detailed plot synopsis. Suffice it to say, members of the OAS -- a real splinter group of French military enraged by de Gaulle's decision to grant Algeria independence -- hire the Jackal after their own assassination attempts fail and they are forced into hiding in Rome.

He's a one-man show, doing all the planning and scouting personally. His only help is a weapons expert who creates the nifty collapsible rifle that can be disguised as a pair of crutches, and a pornographer who makes false ID's on the side. The latter tries to bribe the Jackal out of an extra £1,000, and finds himself stuffed into a locker for his trouble.

As he executes his intricate plan, the Jackal moves from England to Italy to France, swapping out vehicles and passports as needed. He even displays a pan-sexual mercenary attitude, seducing both a wealthy married woman (Delphine Seyrig) and a young gay businessman (Anton Rodgers) when he finds the need to hide out from the authorities. In the movie's historically accurate depiction of 1963, the only way authorities had to track tourists' movements was through hotel guest cards, picked up manually by motorcycle police.

"The Day of the Jackal" is not a character study, but the film does find ways to penetrate the interiors of its chief two characters. The Jackal's cover is blown early in the execution of the plan, yet he stubbornly continues with the attempt, even knowing he's a single man arrayed against thousands of Europe's best law enforcement officers.

Why? Partly it's personal arrogance, of course, but we also sense a large helping of professional ambition. In his initial meeting with the OAS leaders, the Jackal demanded a payment of $500,000 (just over $4 million in today's dollars) with the justification that whoever pulls off the job "can never work again." In other words, whether de Gaulle lives or dies the Jackal knows that his career as an international assassin is over -- and he's rather go out with a win.

Taut, supremely entertaining and with never a dull moment, "The Day of the Jackal" may not be one of my all-time favorite films. But I can't disagree with my dad -- it deserves its place as one of the best thriller ever made.

Reeling Backward: "Big Jake" (1971)

This is the second of my first-ever Reeling Backward "double feature," looking at a pair of back-to-back Westerns John Wayne made during his declining years. You can read the column on "Rio Lobo" by clicking here. The two films have been paired together in a nice Blu-ray release that's now available.

Thematically and stylistically, "Rio Lobo" and "Big Jake" share a lot of space. Wayne plays essentially the same role: a cussedly good-natured cowboy who's on the downside of his long run in the saddle, still throwing his weight around to protect his reputation but also do some good if he can.

He plays Jake McCandles, the estranged patriarch of a wealthy ranching family along the Texas-Mexico border in 1909. It's never explained why he's out riding the lonesome range with his dog, whom he addresses simply as "Dog," rather than overseeing the ranch with his wife, Martha (Maureen O'Hara, still a stunner at 51), his three sons and the grandson he's never met.

Based on his antagonistic interactions with Martha and the boys, and the classic John Wayne archetype, it's a combination of ill feelings and Jake's inbred desire to roam free and clear.

Shot in vivid widescreen Technicolor by director George Sherman, "Big Jake" nonetheless very much has a television feel to it, as did "Lobo." There's a spare economy of storytelling and characterizations, as if all that exists of these people and this land is bookended within the film's 109 minutes.

In a good movie, we should always feel as if the characters have wandered in from other things they were doing and places they were going, which they'll return to after the credits roll.

(Assuming they survive, this being a rootin', tootin', shootin' Western.)

Like "Lobo," Wayne provided another send-off to a director making his last feature film. Obviously Sherman doesn't have the reputation or gallery of awards of Howard Hawks, but the journeyman directed or produced a number of notable films from the 1930s through the '70s, including several with Wayne like "The Commancheros."

I remain flabbergasted how "Rio Lobo" received a "G" rating from the nascent MPAA. "Big Jake" contains about the same amount of violence and blood -- still very orange-y -- but lacks the semi-nudity and sexual innuendo. Yet it received the harsher "GP" rating (later changed to PG).

The story of "Big Jake" is quite simple: a group of bandits led by John Fain (well-creased frequent villain Richard Boone) rides up to the McCandles ranch one day, shoots a bunch of people dead and kidnaps Martha's grandson, "Little Jake," played by Wayne's real-life son, Ethan. In the process Little Jake's son, played by singer Bobby Vinton, is badly shot up, though his two younger brothers remained safe, away with the herd.

Fain's Gang leaves a note demanding $1 million in ransom in $20 bills, with the bearer to proceed along a trail on a map provided until they are met. Martha must decide between sending the U.S. Army or Texas Rangers to carry the ransom, but also sends word to Big Jake, who ends up taking on the assignment personally.

How anyone knew where to find him is left a mystery -- another example of the poor internal logic often associated with TV writing. The script was by the Fink screenwriting couple, Harry Julian and Rita M., best known for the "Have Gun -- Will Travel" Western series and the "Dirty Harry" movies.

Much is made in the movie of the split between the Old West and the more civilized East, with a long narrated intro contrasting the high society developments in New York or whatnot with the life on the still-young frontier remaining very much under the boot heel of hard men with guns.

The Rangers travel by automobile these days, and there's a big Keystone Cops-style scene where Fain's Gang shoots the clankety machines to pieces, leaving the lawmen stranded. They hadn't even thought to bring enough water to drink. Jake catches up with his train of spare horses, allowing his other two sons, who had gone with the Rangers, to join up.

The elder McCandles son, hothead James, is played by another of Wayne's real-life offspring, Patrick. The younger, cooler Michael, who favors a motorcycle until it's smashed up, is again played by Christopher Mitchum (son of Robert), who also appeared in "Rio Lobo."

James is constantly antagonizing Jake, calling him "Daddy" when he wants to annoy him, and repeatedly blaming him for running out on the family. Michael is more polite and obedient, though he occasionally pisses off the man he calls "Father," too. Jake lays down several rounds of smack on the both of them.

Also tagging along is Sam Sharpnose, an old Apache tracker played by Bruce Cabot (who looks about as Native American as me). There's a nice scene where the two old gunmen privately share their newfound affinity for Greener shotguns, as they've grown mostly blind at distance.

Other nods to modernity are the weapons used in the film. Jake relies on his scattergun and six-shooter, but Michael favors a bolt-action rifle with a scope, and has to duel with an adversary using a similar weapon. Michael also produces a pistol he calls a "1911," an early semiautomatic that is shown firing at high (nearly uncontrollable) speed. He later hands this over to James, who uses it to take out several bandits.

(The 1911 reference is confusing, as the famous M1911 wasn't issued until that year.  The Internet Movie Firearm Database lists the weapon used in the movie as a Walther P-38 dressed up to look like a Bergmann 1896.)

Fain's Gang is a colorful mix of crusty characters. Interestingly, the villains are actually introduced at the very start of the film, with each man getting a little mini-bio from the narrator, while Wayne doesn't even show up till the 20-minute mark.

The two gang members who make the biggest impressions are Harry Carey Jr. as Pop Dawson, the wily old coot of the bunch, and John Goodfellow (Greg Palmer), a grizzly mountain of a man who favors finishing off his victims with a machete, slashing them repeatedly with an orgiastic fervor we'd later see in the forthcoming slasher film genre.

I feel much about "Big Jake" as I do about "'Rio Lobo." Neither deserves a high place in the John Wayne canon, though they're decent, fast-paced Westerns with a lot of entertainment value.

I was surprised again how much Wayne smiles throughout the movie, despite playing a character whose orneriness is supposed to be his defining trait. The old cowboy actor couldn't hide his joy at doing what he did best.

Reeling Backward: "Rio Lobo" (1970)

Even in 1970, "Rio Lobo" was something of an outdated relic.

It was the final film directed by Howard Hawks, made during John Wayne's post-"True Grit" period of diminishing returns, with only his final film, 1976's "The Shootist," really standing out in his filmography. (What, you don't recall "McQ" from '74?)

The following year he would make "Big Jake," another "last" picture for its director, George Sherman, which also featured a revenge/payback theme. That's actually a throughline in Wayne's final decade of films, as his characters generally react to the wrongdoing of others, rather than seeking out trouble like his younger cowboys would.

("Jake" and "Lobo" have been released together as a Blu-ray set, so I'll be featuring them next to each other in this series.)

Hawks and Wayne had of course paired up together before, for "Rio Bravo" in 1959, which was a deliberate cinematic retort to "High Noon" with a very similar plot, and for "El Dorado" in 1966, which was essentially a remake of the same formula with some of the actors around Wayne swapped out.

"Rio Lobo" has been called the third remake/response to "High Noon," which would seem to show the depth of how miffed Hawks and Wayne were at it. I don't really think that description holds water, though, as this is a light-hearted adventure story about former Civil War enemies teaming up to overthrow a corrupt sheriff and his rich landowner boss.

In this telling, Wayne and his fellows are the dangerous interlopers riding into the eponymous town -- and nobody's fretting about their coming.

The story is straight as an arrow: while seeking out the traitors who sold information to the Rebs during the war, former Union Col. Cord McNally (Wayne) follows the clues to the fictional Texas town, where everyone lives in fear for their lives of the brutal sheriff and his crew -- though not enough, apparently, for anyone to leave.

Of course, it turns out one of the deputies and the land baron were the traitors, so McNally gets to play the hero while getting his payback. His allies are Pierre Cordon, a French/Mexican Confederate captain played by Jorge Rivero, and Cordon's wily sergeant, Tuscarora Phillips (Christopher Mitchum, son of Robert).

The trio tangled at the tail end of the war, and it was actually the Rebs who killed McNally's beloved lieutenant while stealing a shipment of gold. But the good colonel figures those were acts of war performed in the line of duty, and they're soon sharing drinks and good cheer. He wants the pair who sold them the information about the shipments. The former Confederate soldiers know only the faces but not the names.

They also pick up Shasta Delaney (Jennifer O'Neill) along the way, who's a much more self-assured female than we're used to seeing in Westerns. She bosses McNally and Cordon around, not merely accepting the latter's romantic interest but actually directing it according to her whims.

Shasta gets a nice speech about what it's like to be a woman living on the frontier, constantly being pawed by men who think they have rights to her body. I kept thinking about how we never would have heard this sort of thing in a Hollywood movie even 10 years earlier. It plays as a prescient #MeToo moment by today's lights.

Her husband was killed -- he was a lout; she wasn't exactly sad about it -- and after some saloon work, Shasta hooked up with a traveling snake oil salesman, a kindly older gent who treated her like a father. But then they wandered into Rio Lobo, he was killed and she found herself being pursued by Deputy Whitey Carter (Robert Donner), an albino who is one of the aforementioned gropers.

Once they get to Rio Lobo, they find the sheriff, "Blue Tom" Hendricks (stalwart footballer-turned-actor Mike Henry), has a veritable army tracking everyone's moves within the town. They soon learn that Ketcham (Victor French) is the money behind the stink, forcing people to sell their land at a fraction of its value. He was formerly known as Sgt. Ike Gorman, when he was selling information to the Rebs.

Meanwhile, Tuscarora is taken captive by the sheriff, so McNally and his team head over to his father's place to recruit help. Played by famously googly-eyed character actor Jack Elam, the senior Phillips is a rootin', tootin' old hellion whose standard policy is to fire off his scattergun at strangers and ask questions later.

Soon the forces converge for the reckoning, which will involve a lot of shooting and taunts.

It's a good-looking, entertaining but rather disposable film. It does stand out for me in a few ways:

• It's one of the most purely plot-driven movies I've ever seen. There's literally no fat in the story, written by Burton Wohl and the legendary Leigh Brackett. Every scene, line of dialogue and character advances the plot in some way. The characters lack any sort of depth outside of their role in the unfolding story. Example: what does McNally do when he's not a Union colonel or hunting traitors? We have no idea.

• The women are surprisingly sexually frisky. In addition to Cordon's romance with Shasta, he also barges in on sweet young thing Amelita, finding her half-dressed while he's on the run from the deputies. She doesn't seem put out by this, and indeed appears ready to bed the stranger right then and there. Later, she gets her face cut up for assisting McNally & Co. Amelita is played by Sherry Lansing, a math teacher-turned-model who was trying her hand at acting. Lansing only made one other movie and, dissatisfied with her own skills as an actor, learned the business from the ground up and became arguably the most successful female producer in Hollywood history.

• The film is rather tawdry and violent for its G rating from the relatively new MPAA, which started labeling movies two years earlier. In addition to the partial nudity and innuendo mentioned above, a number of people are shot, with the DayGlo orange blood that was favored during that era spilling generously. One person even has his rifle explode on him, ripping his face and hands to bloody shreds. Today it would surely receive a PG-13 rating. Obviously, the concept of what constituted a "general audience" was still rather nebulous in 1970.

• This is as relaxed a role you'll ever see John Wayne in. He's constantly smiling and allowing himself to be the butt of the jokes, as when Shasta chooses to snuggle up to him instead of Cordon when the bed down on the trail because he's old and sexually nonthreatening. McNally even starts joshingly referring to himself as "comfortable," borrowing her phrase. Even when he's engaged in a shootout with the bad guys, he never seems particularly perturbed about it. For an actor whose roles were often defined by rage, it's a breath of fresh air.

In his early 60s when they shot the film, Wayne still cuts an impressive figure. As in all of his later roles, he constantly wears a jacket or leather vest to try to hide his belly, and the longer toupee he adopted in the 1960s sits lankly on his head like a dead gopher. But Wayne still has that twinkle in his eye, the rapscallion smile, the stern voice that made many an ornery assailant take a step back all on its own.

John Wayne had one of the most remarkable film careers, a star for 40 years without ever experiencing a dramatic dip in his popularity. Sure, his last few rides around the trail were more nostalgia tours than anything else. But he deserved those last laps, and "Rio Lobo" is a decent send-off for one of the great directors.

Reeling Backward: "Dirty Dancing" (1987)

"Dirty Dancing" may just be one of the most seminal garbage movies ever. But, garbage it is.

Somehow I missed seeing this film, a smash success when it came out in August 1987. The omission is perhaps not surprising: I had just gone off to college, and it looked to be a sappy romance dressed up against the backdrop of dancing, something in which I have never had an iota of ability or interest. (No surprise that "Footloose" and other dance flicks of the era also escaped my contemporaneous notice.)

It's about a sweet Jewish teen girl in the early 1960s who falls for the bad boy dance instructor at Kellerman Hotel, the posh Catskill Mountain resort where her family is turning "summer" into a verb. He teaches her to dance, and to stand up for herself, and she teaches him that nice Jewish girls make good lays if you have feathered '80s hair in a story set in 1963.

I kid, I kid... but not by much.

The movie, directed by Emile Ardolinio ("Sister Act") from a script by Eleanor Bergstein, gleefully mashes up pop culture references between the two decades -- not so much an homage as a reconfiguring of the past to make it more palatable to modern audiences.

That's best encapsulated by the film's theme song, "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," to which the main characters dance in the big scene at the end, brazenly showing off their forbidden love to the world. It sounds very much like a 1987 pop song, not even attempting to mimic the rhythms and instrumentals of the era. It wound up a chart-topping hit, and won prizes at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Grammys.

Speaking of the Big Dance: the scene where Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) strides up to the table of Frances "Baby" Houseman's (Jennifer Grey) family and announces to her dad (Jerry Orbach), "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," has become a certified Iconic Cinematic Moment.® It's been endlessly referenced and parodied, and even today people toss it around as a phrase of empowerment.

Coming so very late to the game, I have two observations:

• The moment makes no sense. Baby is sitting against a wall on the side of Kellerman's ball room, not in a corner. She's next to a stone column that sticks out about 8 inches, but it's not like she's deeply ensconced in shame and shadows. And her dad didn't order her to sit there; she's sitting next to her mom (Kelly Bishop). Presumably, she chose the spot herself, leaving the seat closest to the stage for her sister, Lisa (Jane Brucker), who was part of the summer-ending show.
• When Baby's father (Jerry Orbach) briefly stands up to object, there's an awkward do-si-do where Johnny takes Baby's hand, negotiates her around dad and they stride off together to the stage. Orbach, a tall Broadway actor, towers over the much shorter Swayze in a way not favored for screen protagonists. In other scenes where the two men confront each other they're eye-to-eye, so I suspect the old reliable "apple box trick" was employed.

The film was a breakthrough for Swayze, Grey and Orbach, who each saw their acting careers launched to previously unknown heights. Orbach, the stage veteran, suddenly found himself an in-demand presence for film and TV roles in his 50s and 60s. He became so popular playing cops and heavies, mostly notably as Lennie Brisco on "Law & Order," that later on audiences were baffled to discover he was a song-and-dance man with great pipes, as he showed off playing Lumiere in "Beauty and the Beast."

Grey, who previously had small roles in "Red Dawn" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," soon saw her star fading, largely resigned to television movie roles amid a pair of botched nose jobs that (in)famously left her unrecognizable. It was an odd choice to make: Her petite, slightly hooked schnoz is the very feature that made her stand out from other actresses of the day, giving her an authentic, relatable look. But she was hardly the first starlet to be undone by ill-advised visits to the plastic surgeon.

(Though I use "starlet" in the most generous sense. As is Hollywood custom, Grey was a decade or so older than her teenage character.)

Swayze went on to become one of the top leading men of the late 1980s and '90s, ping-ponging back and forth between romance pictures ("Ghost") and ridiculous action flicks -- "Road House" and "Point Break," two more movies that have gone on to cult status despite having charms that elude me.

A trained dancer via the Joffrey Ballet, Swayze won the part of Johnny over the much-younger Billy Zane, who apparently couldn't dance a lick. He and Grey butted heads on the set of "Red Dawn," but they dance beautifully together. And while their dancing montages are loaded with schmaltz -- Johnny playing air guitar to her feline stalking representing the zenith -- it's hard to deny the onscreen heat between them.

The choreography (by Kenny Ortega) plays pretty well to these untrained eyes. The story is set in motion when Johnny's usual dance partner, Penny (Cynthia Rhodes), is felled by a botched abortion, and Baby offers to sub in. Johnny teaches her the ins and outs of the mambo and other conventional steps shown off at Kellerman's, as well as the more "dirty" dancing that the resort workers engage in at private parties.

This seems to consist entirely of the two dancers stepping between each other's overlapping legs, so they can grind their crotch against the other's thigh. Ah, l'amore.

Interestingly, Baby does not turn into a spectacular dancer overnight. She learns enough in a few days of cramming to perform a passable mambo for a gig at another resort, though she makes a few mistakes and is too afraid to execute the dramatic lift. Saving that for the last scene, I suppose.

There really isn't much plot other than I've outlined here. There are some jealousies and intrigues that pass via secondary characters, notably Robbie (Max Cantor), the snotty medical student who knocked up Penny, and Neil Kellerman (Lonny Price), the also snotty son of the resort owner (Jack Weston) who's in training to take over the business and has eyes for Baby.

Baby's dad is a hardworking, upstanding doctor who is beloved by Baby. When she asks him to treat Penny in secret, he does so but comes away with the assumption that it was Johnny who impregnated her. Displaying classic "wrong side of the tracks" pride, Johnny allows this to pass, used to being looked down upon. When and Baby begin their secret affair, their biggest challenge is she won't stand up for him, or herself.

Well, that and his side gig as a male prostitute.

While it's never overtly depicted, it seems that Johnny's true role at the resort is not just to teach middle-aged Jewish ladies to dance, but to have sex with them for money. Sometimes this is done discreetly, but in at least one case, it's actually the husband paying off the dance stud to bed his wife and keep her out of his hair so he can play cards. This is the sort of scenario that has only ever existed in a Hollywood movie.

It's curious that Baby never seems bothered by Johnny's side hustle as a hustler. (Or the danger of STDs... a curious thing for a physician's daughter.) At one point in the movie Johnny announces to Baby that he's giving up sleeping with those other women for cash, and it's laughably depicted as a poignant moment.

One other thing struck me about the movie: the lack of commentary on the schism between the Jewish clientele vs. the gentile staff at the resort. The cultural references are not exactly hidden -- Catskill Mountains, the emphasis on girls marrying lawyers or doctors, the surfeit of "-man" surnames -- yet it's never brought up explicitly as another reason to drive these star-crossed hoofers apart.

As you've probably detected from the tone of this essay, I don't have a lot of respect for "Dirty Dancing." Nobody expected it to be anything other than a low-budget romantic musical featuring some nostalgic pop tunes and some slightly sweaty, PG-13-rated naughtiness.

It became something far more, and our popular culture is lesser for it.

Reeling Backward: "The Kentuckian" (1955)

Usually when a movie star gets big enough to be in charge of their own films, the resulting pictures tend to be vehicles for them to portray larger-than-life heroes who bestride the globe like a colossus.

So it's interesting that in "The Kentuckian," the first of only two movies he ever directed, Burt Lancaster plays an unsophisticated common man who frequently finds himself the brunt of ridicule and misfortune -- losing the skin off his back, both figuratively and quite literally.

He plays "Big Elias" Wakefield, a rustic son of the Kentucky hills who is on the run -- though he eschews those words -- with his son of about 10 years, Little Eli (Donald MacDonald, who had a short run as a child actor with just three years of credited roles). It seems the Wakefields and the Fromes are the Hatfield and McCoys of the Bluegrass State, carrying on a war of dark deeds so long and bloody, the enmity has engendered its own bit of well-known verse.

Though it's never directly stated, it appears Elias killed a Frome in some sort of dispute, and lit out for Texas to escape his troubles and find some elbow room. An apparent widow (again, we're left to surmise), Elias is an expert hunter and tracker who has little ken when it comes to city life -- which, in 1820s Kentucky, means any collection of shanties where more than a dozen people congregate.

His true home is in the woods, his faithful hunting dog Pharaoh chasing after foxes, their meals whatever game they can catch or shoot, and their bed made by shuffling together a pile of leaves. Lancaster's wide face beams with smiling pride in the outdoor scenes, while a stoic frown overtakes him when they must go into town for supplies or whatnot.

Elias carries the Gideon Horn -- which is also the title of the novel by Felix Holt upon which A.B. Guthrie Jr. based the script -- a massive bone hunting horn that he uses to call Pharaoh back from the chase. Little Eli often bears the horn for him, a totem of their untamed heritage, and tries unsuccessfully to blow out a note himself. When he's finally able to, that means he's become a man, Elias says.

Troubles befall them in myriad form. Elias has the princely sum of $235 saved for their trip, mostly to pay for the ferry ride down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and the ship to Texas. But in town he runs afoul of the local sheriff, who sicced his dog on Pharaoh and didn't like when it lost the fight.

Thrown in jail for resisting when the constable made to shoot his dog, Elias is helped escape by Hannah (Dianne Foster), a local "bought" woman -- aka an indentured servant -- who works for the pub owner in virtual slavery. Little Eli insists she come along with them to Texas, and it seems a nice little domestic group has formed.

But the sheriff and bartender catch up with them (too much sleeping in the leaves, I guess) and demand all their money in bribe to let them go.

Elias had hoped to stop off to visit his older brother, Zack (John McIntire) and his wife, Sophie (Una Merkel), in the riverside village of Humility. But the lack of funds forces them to hole up there for a few months so they can work up a grubstake. Zack's stated intention is to tame Elias and turn him into a businessman like himself, running a trade depot that deals in tobacco, furs, etc.

Sophie takes an instant dislike to Hannah, seeing the lines of affection forming between her and Elias, deeming a "bought girl" as socially unfit to join the family. Hannah takes up working at the local bar run by Stan Bodine, the resident dandy/bully played by Walter Matthau. He has his eyes set on the schoolmarm, Susie Spann (Diana Lynn), so when she takes a shine to Elias that sets up the inevitable conflict between the two men.

Things do not go well for big and little Eli in Humility. The latter can't abide being cooped up inside a schoolhouse all day long when there's sunshine, trees and a great river to enjoy. Elias even lets Aunt Sophie tie up Pharaoh, which breaks both the boy's heart and the dog's spirit.

Elias is mocked by the townsfolk for his buckskin clothes and quaint ways. The derision grows to a fever pitch when he finds a huge pearl while harvesting river oysters. He consults a traveling salesman, Ziby Fletcher (John Carradine), impressed by the man's eloquent speechifyin'. Elias is cagey enough to know the (almost literal) snake oil shyster is a fraud, but figures someone that learned can clue him in where to get a good price on the pearl. Little does he know freshwater pearls are worthless compared to the saltwater kind.

Seeing a chance to secure his place in town by kowtowing to Bodine, Fletcher makes up a story about former President James Monroe being the biggest collector of river pearls in the land. Elias writes a letter to the ex0president, paying four bits in postage. The ruse sprung, the menfolk all enjoy a good laugh at Elias, while little Eli endures taunts by schoolchildren: "Your pa is President Pearl!"

Undoubtedly the most famous scene in the movie is the showdown between Elias and Bodine. It's initiated when Bodine sends his son to pick a fight with little Eli -- much the same way that sheriff sent his dog after Elias' -- and the boy is bloodied by a makeshift whip of rope. The boys are separated and the fathers take up their places, with Bodine wielding a real whip against the unarmed Elias, who is soon cut to pieces. He finally prevails, but only when Hannah surreptitiously intervenes to trap Bodine's whip under her wagon wheel.

I also enjoyed a jaunty little gambling scene aboard the steamboat Gordon C. Greene -- the same one used in "Gone With the Wind." Elias makes a show of his big bag of gold (actually Zack's money) to pass himself off as a rube, conning the con men by placing some smaller bets in conjunction with the experienced gambler demonstrating the game of roulette.

The idea is to lure in the sucker by showing him how easy it is to win, but Elias knows the game is rigged and he will win as long as he mirrors the other man's bets. After winning $280, he, little Eli and Pharaoh are then chased around the ship by the gamblers, who instruct the pilot not to stop at Humility, so they're forced to jump for it and swim to shore.

The proprietor of the steamboat -- though not involved with the gamblers -- is Pleasant Tuesday Babson (John Litel), a colorful figure who's recruiting pioneers to help settle Texas. He takes an instant liking to Elias, seeing him as the perfect specimen for wide open lands. However, by this time Zack and Susie have gotten their claws into him, and Elias is determined to stay.

The story wraps, not entirely convincingly, with the arrival of two Fromes brothers to claim their revenge. Played without credit by Paul Wexler and Douglas Spencer, these are twin, grim specters, so lean and hollow-eyed they appear to have set aside all nutrition in their crusade. After the obligatory shoot-out, in which both Bodine and Babson are collateral casualties and Hannah against saves Elias' bacon, Hannah, Elias and Eli resolve on the spot to unite into a family.

It brings the film to an abrupt end, without even so much as a final pull-out shot of the trio riding the steamboat south toward their fate.
 
As a director, Lancaster gets lively, authentic performances out of his cast. He seems to have largely left the camera work to veteran cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, resulting in some picturesque scenes of the countryside and river. The film was shot almost entirely on location in Kentucky, and it shows.

"The Kentuckian" is a very atypical adventure story for its time. Elias Wakefield is an ordinary man who carries a rifle, but never even fires it once in the course of the picture. He largely looks to avoid conflict, and when he does resort to battles of fists or wits, he always comes up on the losing side -- or would, if it weren't for help from Hannah.
 
It would be interesting to see this film remade from her point of view. She's actually the one who makes everything good happen for Elias, and in that sense Hannah is the truest Kentuckian.

Reeling Backward: "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" (1972)

I've often cited "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" as evidence of the breadth of my cinematic tastes. I grew up on pop culture movies, and cheesy horror was a particular favorite. This movie, which I probably first encountered on TV in the early '80s, is the cheesiest of the cheese.

One of the things I hate most is when people become very snooty in their film preferences -- lauding period costume dramas, for example, but denigrating scary movies. Folks should be able to love both "Lawrence of Arabia" and "CSPWDT," I'll say.

And I do love this movie. In fact, I'm not at all ashamed to say it's one of my favorite films.

Like a bit of Gouda left to mold at the back of the fridge, it's absorbed the flavors of other things over the years, leaving it as an odd but compelling totem for its time.

It's both extremely derivative and groundbreaking, stealing liberally from George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" while also introducing an element of comedy that would come to be intertwined with the roots of modern horror flicks.

Despite current misconceptions, "Night of the Living Dead" did not set off a sudden spate of zombie flicks. "CSPWDT," arriving in 1972, was pretty much the first American film to occupy the same space in the subgenre after Romero's breakthrough in 1968. Things really took off in 1973 and thereafter, and soon zombies were munching up screens everywhere.

The film was directed by Bob Clark, who surely must go down as the owner of one of the most eclectic filmographies in Hollywood history. Best known for the tart nostalgia of "A Christmas Story," he also made the soft-core "Porky's," the wellspring of all teen sex comedies, and its decidedly tamer sequel, which came out the same year as Ralphie and his iconic Red Ryder BB gun.

Clark actually got his start in horror, and often mixed existential or political themes into his early films. He followed up "CSPWDT," his first feature, with another zombie story, "Dead Dream," about a soldier who comes back from Vietnam as the living dead.

He scored a major commercial success with the 1974 slasher film "Black Christmas," then came the Mafia action/revenge story "Breaking Point," and then he went high-toned: a Sherlock Holmes adaptation starring Christopher Plummer, "Murder By Decree," followed by "Tribute," a screen version of the Bernard Slade play starring Jack Lemmon.

After "A Christmas Story," Clark became something of a mercenary director-for-hire, piloting mainstream comedies ("It Runs in the Family," "Loose Cannons") and genre films of often dubious merit: "Rhinestone," "From the Hip" (a legal comedy that marked Peak Judd Nelson), "Baby Geniuses" and its sequel. He also made the underappreciated "Turk 182!" in 1985, starring Timothy Hutton as a vigilante graffiti artist battling a corrupt mayor.

Both Clark and his son were tragically killed in a car accident in 2007, robbing us of what I'm sure would have been an interesting final act to his career.

"CSPWDT" was shot over a fortnight on a budget of $50,000, starring many of Clark's real-life college chums, often using their real first names. Despite its amateur-hour production values, the movie is bursting with mood and merriment, laughs often giving way to moments of pure blood-soaked terror and vice-versa.

At a brisk 86 minutes, the zombies don't even come alive until after the one-hour mark. The backdrop is a theatrical troupe from Miami traipsing into an island cemetery for the unwanted deceased to dabble in a little Satan-worship. The gleefully tyrannical leader, Alan, who holds everyone else's employment in his clutches, forces them to go through with a ritualistic summoning, which appears to be a total flop, until they insult the dark lord and the dead rise up to munch everybody.

If for no other reason, the film is amusing for its fashions. Alan, played by Alan Ormsby (who co-wrote the script with Clark), wears a neon orange shirt, patriotically striped tight pants, a frisky cravat and electric blue wizard's robes. The women all wear variations on brightly-colored peasant blouses popular during that era, while the men favor tight-fitting T-shirts, including one by the girthy Jeff (Jeff Gillen) that's white with pink flowers.

Alan is flamboyant and corrupted, always striving to bring out the worst in everyone else. He badgers and belittles, and responds to every suggestion that raising the dead isn't a good idea with the threat of firing. Alan projects mightily, always questioning the artistic talent and commitment of his fellows, when it's clear he's the true hack of the bunch.

Valerie Mamches plays Val, the matriarch of the troupe, and the only one to stand up to Alan's bullying. Paul Cronin is Paul, the handsome leading man who makes macho displays at resistance, but always backs down. Terry (Jane Daly) is his girlfriend, fretting and frowning. Anya (Anya Ormsby, Alan's real-life wife), is the timid waif who loses her shit about halfway through.

Roy Engleman and Robert Philip round out the group as Roy and Emerson, a pair of gay outliers tasked by Alan with dressing up as zombies to scare the others. They're among the first to get devoured, spraying stereotypical sibilant s's the whole way down.

Also notable is Seth Sklarey, in his only credited screen role, as the "boss" zombie, Orville Dunworth. The first to be exhumed, he has the perfect look for a ghoul: tall, curly widow's peak hair, gaunt face, impossibly long fingers. He even has what appears to be a bullet hole in his forehead, suggesting the method of his (original) death.

Alan continually insults and defiles the corpse, even dressing Orville up in a bride's veil and mock-marrying himself to it, so we know how his demise will go. At one point they lie in bed together alone, the others finally creeped out enough to leave the pair to their ersatz honeymoon.

"You're a great teacher, Orville. And a wonderful friend. And I think, in time, we may get even closer," Alan says, foretelling his own fate.

Watching "CSPWDT" for the first time in awhile, I was struck how little violence there is in it. There's a brief scene at the beginning of the grave caretaker being attacked by creatures, but this turns out to be our two fey thespians taking him hostage. There's not a ton of blood and guts, with Ormsby and a few others providing the special effects makeup.

Overall, the zombies aren't terribly convincing, looking like regular folks dressed up in ratty clothes and bluish-grey makeup slathered over their faces. Compared to an average episode of "The Walking Dead," it's positively primitive. But the effect is still creepy enough for 1972.

Carl Zittrer provides the largely melody-free musical score, an assortment of atonal tones, moans and whispers of the wind. He would go on to work with Clark on most of his films over the next decade.

For true zombie movie devotees, "CSPWDT" offers some interesting perspective on the two important spectrums that often define the debate: speed and intelligence. While starting out quite slow and shambling after first clawing their way out of the ground, the zombies display bursts of speed that can overwhelm the humans.

They also appear to be quite cunning in their assault, backing off when it becomes clear they can't penetrate the doors or walls of the cabin in which the troupe has retreated. The zombies also employ sneak attacks and tactical retreats, snatching Terry away to the forest to be messily devoured.

Most interesting, the final shot that plays over the credits is of the zombies boarding the sailboat the actors arrived in, and successfully launching it toward the shores of Miami to continue the carnage. It seems that, at least in the Clark/Ormsby iteration, the living dead retain at least some of their human intelligence and knowledge.

I think what makes zombies stories so compelling is the dread sense of inevitability. Individual dead may not be very quick or powerful, but together they form a wave that rolls over any resistance, absorbing and adding to the horde. They operate very much as a multifaceted organism, a disease that infects all it touches.

"Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" is silly, cheap, deplorable and inexpressibly fun.

Reeling Backward: "Libeled Lady" (1936)

A classic screwball comedy featuring a rare love quadrangle, "Libeled Lady" isn't so much about newspapers as presenting a fast-paced, amusing farce for Depression-era audiences.

I sought out this film thinking it was set against the backdrop of frenetic newsrooms a la "His Girl Friday." But the truth is the journalism angle is just a jumping-off point for a whole lot of verbal sparring and pitching of woo. Still, I didn't come away disappointed.

It was the fifth of 14 screen pairings between Myrna Loy and William Powell, most famously for the "Thin Man" films. It was also Powell's second appearance with Jean Harlow, who was his real-life lady love at the time. The following year was a tragic one for the couple, as Harlow died unexpectedly at just 26, while Powell was diagnosed with cancer which, along with his grief for Harlow, resulted in a one-year absence from filmmaking.

His and costar Spencer Tracy's characters quite literally swap wives during the movie, and something like that occurred behind the scenes, too. Harlow wanted to play Powell's romantic counterpart so she could canoodle onscreen with her beau. But the studio, eager for another popular Powell/Loy match, overruled Harlow and stuck her with Tracy who, if rumors are true, was romancing Loy throughout the shoot.

Coupled with the serpentine plot of "Libeled Lady," you practically need a navigation table to plot all the real and fictional love lines.

If there was a sure-fire formula to please Depression audiences, it was movies about rich people falling in and out of love. Loy plays the titular character, Connie Allenbury, international playgirl daughter of tycoon James Allenbury (Walter Connolly). The story opens with The New York Evening Star, edited by Warren Haggerty (Tracy), accidentally running an item accusing Connie of being a husband-stealer.

They retract the story immediately but a few errant newspapers make it to the street, leading Connie to launch a vindictive $5 million slam-dunk libel lawsuit that will surely doom the rag and leave its 500 employees jobless. Among them Warren, who puts off his marriage to Gladys Benton (Harlow) to deal with the blowback. This is not the first time Warren has run from the altar, placing the paper above romance, and Gladys has had her fill.

If you're thinking this is one of those quintessential tales where newspapermen and -women courageously fight for truth and justice -- that's some other movie. Here Warren and his crew immediately launch a scheme to entrap Connie in an actual affair with a married man, splash it across the front page and make her drop the suit.

(That wouldn't actually change the fact the Star libeled Connie, but the rat-a-tat-tat screenplay -- by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George Oppenheimer -- never thinks more than a step or two ahead.)

Warren enlists Bill Chandler (Powell), a ladies' man who used to work for him, to pull off the ruse. To make it legal, Bill gets a quickie marriage to Gladys, much to the latter's consternation, and they set themselves up in the honeymoon suite of a swank hotel. Soon enough, Gladys realizes that Bill is much more charming and attentive than Warren, and thinks about trading in her wayward fiance for her fake husband.

For his part, Bill extracts a contract for $50,000 -- almost $900k in today's dollars -- to save Warren's neck. Did I mention that most of the characters in this story are thoroughly unlikable? Strangely enough, between the foursome's plotting, back-stabbing and pettiness, it's actually Old Man Allenbury who comes off looking the most pure-hearted of the lot.

At first, Connie is thoroughly resistant to Bill's charm, as they sail on the Queen Anne from London to New York. She sees him as just another upjumped suitor looking for a payday from a famously rich family. Bill later tries to ingratiate himself with her father by studying up on his favorite pastime, angling for trout, leading to some amusing physical comedy at a stream.

After a late-night swim and some sharing of personal stories, Connie does fall for Bill, and vice-versa. He tries to convince her to drop the lawsuit without having to resort to Warren's plan to humiliate her. Meanwhile, Gladys' (repeatedly foiled) plan to barge in as the scorned wife takes on all-too-real note as she finds herself genuinely jealous.

Both Tracy Powell cut sharp figures in the double-breasted suits popular in 1930s big cities. Neither actor is what you'd call classically handsome, with Powell coming across as a weak-chinned dandy and Tracy as a striving peasant type.

For that matter, I admit I've never grasped the physical appeal of Harlow or Loy, the blonde and brunette yin and yang of the movie, with the former as the cheap, pushy broad and the latter playing the snooty heiress. Both had bob haircuts and those ferociously plucked eyebrows of the era that rendered them looking perpetually astonished.

(I freely admit I prefer the more hirsute screen damsels of the '40s. Thank God for Rita Hayworth's girly hair flips and Lauren Bacall's brooding brows.)

Directed by journeyman Jack Conway, who made pictures from the 1910s to the late '40s, "Libeled Lady" is a straightforward comedy that isn't about anything or than having a little fun. It's a refreshing piece of pure entertainment from a time when people very much needed such things.

Reeling Backward: "Quigley Down Under" (1990)

"Quigley Down Under" is the classic example of a terrific concept for a film, horribly executed. The end result is a complete garbage movie, a neo-Western that takes its hero so far out west, he gets turned around to the east.

It's a terrible-looking movie shot without subtlety or style, featuring awful costumes, atrocious acting, an insipid musical score (courtesy of Basil Poledouris) that feels compelled to squawk into every scene with its syrupy strings, stiff dialogue and no coherent directorial aesthetic other than "let's shoot stuff up."

Really the only redeeming thing about it is Alan Rickman as the sniveling bad guy, a bridge villain for the vivacious actor to chew on between Hans Gruber of "Die Hard" and the sheriff in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" the following year.

The project was initially launched in the 1970s based on a script by John Hill, and actually went into production in 1980 with Steve McQueen starring as Matthew Quigley. He's an American sharpshooter who heads to Australia in the 1860s in answer to an advertisement, and ends up in a war with the rancher who wants him to kill Aborigines. But McQueen fell ill on the way to an early demise, and production shut down.

The concept languished until it was revived a decade later with Tom Selleck in the lead, with Simon Wincer directing fresh off the success of "Lonesome Dove" the previous year. Though the script went through many revisions with other writers, Hill retains sole credit.

Both Selleck and Wincer are/were very successful men in the medium of television, which is where they should have stuck. Other than the wide-screen aspect ratio, everything about the look and feel of "Quigley" screams "TV." The characters do not seem to exist outside of their time on the screen, and events roll forward with the sort of fungible logic necessary to point the story in the direction desired.

Example: Quigley undertakes a three-month journey from Wyoming to southwestern Australia based simply on a newspaper ad for the world's best marksman and the promise of $50 in gold upon arrival, without every learning what the actual job entails. When he finds out it's to kill Aborigiones, he promptly punches out the murderous rancher, Elliott Marston (Rickman), and initiates a conflict that will surely end with a heaping helping o' death.

First of all: I bet it cost him more than $50 just to make the trip. Who the hell undertakes such a mammoth voyage on spec, without even bothering to investigate the particulars of the job? We never learn anything about Quigley's life prior to coming to Australia, so he remains an amiable enigma. Any competent screenplay would give him something to run away from.

Second: If you're selling your skills as the world's best long-range rifleman, what exactly do you think is the market for those talents? People don't pay top dollar to shoot coyotes. Assassination seems pretty much the only viable high-return vocation available to him.

Things go along a predictable path, as Quigley tangles with Marston's henchmen right off the boat, and bumps into Crazy Cora (Laura San Giacomo), an unstable Texas woman being coerced into prostitution. She seems deliberately addled for most of the movie, insistently referring to Quigley as "Roy," which we subsequently find out is the name of her husband.

Cora is gifted with a tragic backstory, in which she smothered her own baby in fear of marauding (or not) Indians. But despite Giacomo's talents, the character is presented as more daffy than pitiable. She's the comic relief, instead of the emotional backbone of the piece.

The movie never gets anywhere near the bullseye of Cora's center.

The Aborigines lend them help at various times, and have it returned, but they're never presented as anything more than sanctified noble savages. And silent ones, too: none is given so much as a single line of dialogue.

Marston is a big believer in the quick-draw game, waxing poetic about the new Colt six-shooter, with which he practices daily. Take a wild guess what the final showdown entails.

Quigley, on the other hand, eschews sidearms in favor of a single weapon: the legendary Sharps, a breech-loading single-shot rifle first introduced in 1848, capable of accurate fire up to 1,000 yards in an era when most firefights happened at 50 feet or less. When offered a revolver on several occasion, Quigley refuses, saying he doesn't have much use for them, preferring to swing his Sharps as a cudgel for close combat.

(This is the same arm used by Burt Lancaster in "Valdez Is Coming," which was my entrée into this movie.)

Given Selleck's real-life association with the NRA, the scenes where he coos lovingly about his rifle take on a sinister air. His Sharps is modified to take .45-110 ammo -- which Quigley reloads personally, of course -- with four extra inches of barrel and a Vernier gunsite that allows him to adjust for the wind and such. It also has a double trigger, with the heavier touch setting the lighter one, for minimal movement when firing.

As a single shot weapon, the Sharps represents a bit of a logistical knot when it comes to cinematic storytelling. Because Quigley has to literally open the breech, manually insert a round and cock the lever each time to fire one bullet, that means he can't quickly down multiple targets. So director Wincer has to come up with some pretty cockamamie scenarios to justify his screwy tactics.

When opposed by a knot of men on several occasions, I kept waiting for one of them to shout, "He can only fire one bullet at a time. Rush him!!" But it never happens.

Again, with no backstory provided for Quigley, it's never explained why has this totemic fetish for only using the Sharps. A true weapons master would keep something else handy for close-up work. He's like a knight-errant who thinks he can fight an entire war employing only his lance.

Though, as we will see, when circumstances are forced upon him he's capable (if not enthusiastically willing) of making the swap.

Not surprisingly, "Quigley Down Under" has become a favorite amongst military personnel and long-range gun enthusiasts. Supposedly, the act of lining up two enemies so they can be taken out with a single bullet is colloquially known to U.S. military snipers as "a Quigley." There's even an annual shooting competition held in Montana that bears Quigley's name.

That's more of a legacy than other, better Westerns can boast.

Reeling Backward: "Jamaica Inn" (1939)

Though it's largely a forgotten film, "Jamaica Inn" is notable for a number of reasons. It was a huge commercial (thought not critical) hit, marking the heyday of star and producer Charles Laughton, who gives a daffy, twinkly performance as an off-kilter nobleman/crime lord.

It was also the first major screen role for Maureen O'Hara, who was discovered by Laughton and signed to an exclusive contract that defined the early part of her career. She'd already made a big splash as a teenage stage star, and they would next go on to star together in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," making O'Hara an international sensation. She and Laughton enjoyed a convivial father/daughter relationship that lasted until his death in 1962.

The film was the last British production for director Alfred Hitchcock, who chafed under Laughton's lordly yoke, including demands for many retakes and closeups, and departed for Hollywood thereafter.

"Jamaica Inn" essentially marks the last time Hitch worked as a hired gun instead of the shot-caller. He reportedly deplored the final film, and many Hitchcock observers consider it his worst.

It was also the first of three times Hitchcock adapted a novel by Daphne du Maurier, the other two being "Rebecca" and "The Birds," two of his biggest successes. Though du Maurier was reportedly irked by the many changes the movie made to the book, including transforming the villain from a clergyman to a justice of the peace.

(Though that was owing to the British censors, who deemed no man of the cloth could be depicted as evil.)

Despite its low reputation, I largely enjoyed the picture. It's hauntingly beautiful, replete with gorgeous black-and-white compositions by cinematographers Bernard Knowles and Harry Stradling, including lots of slanted light and shadows that shows the influence of German Expressionism.

What to say of Laughton's performance as Sir Humphrey Pengallan? It's like a ride on a motorcycle lashed to a runaway rocket: you either strap in and go along for the trip, or you don't.

Sir Humphrey is a high-living squire in the remote Cornish coast who's also the local justice of the peace, i.e. something like a cross between an Old West sheriff and judge. What nobody knows is that Sir Humphrey is also running a gang of cutthroats operating out of the titular establishment, who deliberately douse the beacon lights on the ocean cliff to lure merchant ships into crashing, making off with the cargo and murdering all the seamen.

With his mincing walk -- Laughton played waltzes in his head to get the flow just right -- juggernaut pomposity and fake caterpillar eyebrows wandering a full two inches above his real ones, Laughton's Sir Humphrey comes across as a psychedelic combination of Baron Harkonnen from "Dune" and Hannibal Lecter's swishier cousin.

Laughton himself reportedly envisioned the role as an extension of his Oscar-winning one from "The Private Life of Henry VIII" a few years earlier. As producer, he was in a position to make that vision real.

Sir Humphrey's house is an immense Versailles-like palace, with lavish banquets and a parade of noble guests. His extravagant outfits are a miracle of rotund ostentatiousness, a cornucopia of shiny buttons, double-breasted vests and dickeys, topped off in later scenes by a leering black tophat.

Sir Humphrey's schemes start to go awry with the arrival of O'Hara's Mary, a young orphan girl just arrived from Ireland. Her aunt, Patience (Marie Ney), lives at the Jamaica Inn with her brutish husband Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks), the ringleader of the "land pirates" wrecking the ships. He's secretly beholden to Sir Humphrey, who provides information about the richest passing ships from his position and social engagements.

Joss is portrayed as drunken lout, but the utterly devoted Patience has loads of... well, you get it. She sticks to him until the end (which is also her own)

Joss would like to throw Marie out on her head right away, or possibly rape her, but there are other matters to attend to. Marie witnesses Joss and his gang attempt to hang a mouthy new recruit, Jem Trehearne (Robert Newton). She cuts him down and rescues him, and then they're both on the lam.

Turns out Trehearne is really an undercover officer of the court sent to investigate the spate of shipwrecks. He and Marie take refuge at Sir Humphrey's, unaware of his involvement, leading to an inevitable showdown in which Sir Humphrey double-crosses... pretty much everybody.

Growing increasingly kooky, Sir Humphrey tries to make a getaway to France with Mary as his captive and intended sex slave. Things end with him plummeting to his death after a deliberate leap from the topmost rigging of a ship -- the high man finally brought low, aboard the same type of conveyance he targeted to fill his insatiable greed.

The only other cast member who makes any kind of deep impression is Emlyn Williams as Harry the Pedlar, Joss' suspicious number two. Young, thin as a whippet and dressed like a downmarket dandy -- always wearing a cockeyed tophat of his own -- Harry has a terrifying penchant for whistling to let his intended victims know of their fate.

In many ways, he's like a shrunk-down, funhouse mirror reflection of Sir Humphrey.

You'd definitely have to rank "Jamaica Inn" as a minor work in the Hitchcock oeuvre. But it's not nearly as bad many have regarded it, and stands as a waypoint for many important careers.

Reeling Backward: "Sorcerer" (1977)

"Sorcerer" sure is an odd duck of a movie. The best thing you can say about it is it's not like anything else.

The title implies some sort of fantasy/science fiction element, of which there is none. It's based on a 1950 French novel by Georges Arnaud, "The Wages of Fear," and was made into a well-regarded 1953 French-Italian movie of the same name (unseen by me). The story is four desperate men driving trucks loaded with volatile dynamite through the South American jungle, so the movie is closer thematically to "Convoy" than "Wizards," both roughly contemporaneous films.

It's the personal project director William Friedkin chose to make after the runaway successes of "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist," and its soaring costs and box office demise -- buried under the release of "Star Wars" -- more or less ended his career as an A-list director.

The title actually refers to the name given to one of the trucks by the drivers, the other being Lazaro. Friedkin came up with them himself, and in a subsequent interview said it referred to "the evil wizard of fate." It's a pick he came to regret, though it still beats his first choice, "Ballbreaker." More than anything else, the movie's mysterious name helped doom its prospects, as audiences expecting another supernatural thriller in the mold of "The Exorcist" walked out in droves.

Still, Friedkin counts it among his personal favorites. And the moody musical score by Tangerine Dream, their first, launched a decade-long romance between movies and electronic music that I, for one, deeply cherish and that still influences modern film composers like Hans Zimmer. Friedkin personally oversaw a digital restoration of "Sorcerer" released in 2013, and the film is hailed in some critical circles as an overlooked masterpiece.

But not here.

"Sorcerer" has been compared to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," both films that contemplate the randomness of fate, man's capacity for violence and the way a suffocating environment can seep into their souls.

I can see what Friedkin was aiming for, and certainly appreciated the movie's refusal to sentimentalize its characters or shoehorn them into strict hero/villain categories. Everyone we meet has degrees of nobility and rottenness.

But the stark truth is watching the movie is an often tedious affair, unless you are thrilled by countless close-ups of truck wheels striving against mud, crumbling rock or other terrain while accompanied by the grumbling of engines straining in low gear.

At just a hair over two hours, "Sorcerer" would be much better at a half-hour shorter.

The high point of the film is surely the arduous crossing of a rickety wooden suspension bridge over a swollen river -- a 12-minute sequence that took literally months and millions of dollars to shoot. It really does look like the trucks are teetering at a precarious angle on this ridiculously undersized suspension -- like a rhino trying to balance on a tightrope -- and indeed the vehicles actually reportedly did fall over into the drink several times during production.

The story is quite straightforward, screenplay adaptation by Walon Green, who also penned "The Wild Bunch" and went on to a busy career in television production that continues today. Four international vignettes introduce the men, who each had to leave their home country due to criminal acts. They find themselves stuck in Porvenir, a tiny Latin American village of inexact location, where an American oil company dominates the economy.

When the oil well explodes, the local manager (Ramon Bieri) is given a tight timeline to get the blaze capped and production restarted. The only way to do that is with explosives, and apparently the only dynamite available was stored 200 miles away, rotting away in a jungle shack for a year. Because the nitroglycerine has leaked, any sudden motion would cause it to explode. 

So the four best drivers are recruited to make the arduous journey, with a huge payday balanced against the high likelihood of some of them not making it back.

Now, think about that for a minute. Literally the ONLY dynamite readily available is these dripping, exploding sticks o' doom?!? It strains credulity far past the breaking point to believe the oil honchos, who have their own helicopters, couldn't fly somewhere within a few hundred mile radius to buy some other dynamite. 

Heck, in the week or so time frame it takes the drivers to build two serviceable trucks out of scrap parts and make the trip there and back, they could have flown in several airplanes filled with virgin dynamite fresh out of the factory. As plot holes go, this one's an ocean maelstrom, sucking the film's believability down to the briny depths.

Speaking of the trucks: they're pretty visually interesting, practically characters unto themselves. They're both based on GMC M211 military trucks from the Korean war area, heavily modified to look distinctive.

Sorcerer has a reddish hood, white teeth-like grill bars with ad-hoc headlights mounted above, which gives it the look of an angry crimson insect. Lazaro, the one piloted by star Roy Scheider, resembles a battered elderly man, and is most notable for having its exhaust pipes routed out under the front bumper, so the old fellow is perpetually smoking.

Scheider's character is Jackie Scanlon, a low-level Irish mob crook whose gang knocks over the collections at a local church, with Jackie's hot-headed partner shooting the priest in the process. Turns out it's the personal church of a rival mafia chief, so Jackie is forced to flee the country. He goes by the name Juan Dominguez down south.

It's not your typical role for Roy Scheider, playing a guy who's rather passive and not particularly outspoken. We're so used to seeing him in charge onscreen, and here's a rather miserable lump of a man.

Bruno Cremer plays Victor Manzon, aka Serrano, a French businessman who embezzled a bunch of money along with his brother-in-law. When his father-in-law refuses to repay the debt and they're threatened with ruin and jail, he runs away while the son kills himself.

The last two members of the team are ever shadier. Nilo (Francisco Rabal) is a Mexican assassin who finds himself low on cash and in need of a way out of Porvenir. Amidou plays Kassem, aka Martinez, a Palestinian terrorist whose cell sets off a bomb in one of the opening vignettes, killing a bunch of innocent Israelis.

The fourth member of the team is actually mean to be Marquez (Karl John), another pseudonym for the German who is obviously an officer of the Third Reich hiding out in South America. Nilo kills him and takes his place, bringing about the enmity of the others -- though he eventually earns his place.

I won't bother detailing the driving portion of the movie, other than it's the expected mix of setbacks, crossed directions and conflict within the group. As you could guess, some of the crew do not make it back alive.

I truly wanted to like "Sorcerer" more than I did. I've been trying to see the film for a couple of years, and finally had to settle for a pan-and-scan DVD that did not do the movie's visuals justice.

There's a glorious, grimy saga somewhere inside this film that, like its ill-conceived name, keeps getting misdirected the wrong way.