Ask 411 Movies for 6.02.08: The Column More Magnetic Than a Crystal Skull

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 06.02.2008

Zombie Strippers, Helen Slater, Gretchen Mol, Emma Watson, superhero movies and all of television exists in the mind of an autistic child!

Cinevent was all right. It was a bit older and mellower of a crowd for a film convention than what I'm used to, but that's not a bad thing. However, that also leads to people with more money and some items were a bit pricey. There were a lot of vintage movie posters and 16 mm films. I did buy inserts of Condorman and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 and a half sheet poster for Sunset. I bought what we'll call ‘unofficial' releases of the first two episodes of "Hec Ramsey" and Song of the South. Then from my good buddy Ron Adams of Creepy Classics I got two DVDs of vintage movie trailers and two compilation DVDs of fifties educational films under the titles of "C is for Communist" and "Venereal Disease and You."

My audio review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull can be heard on Ligonierradio.com and the full review can be read at www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/reeltoring. I thought it was fun, but not as fun or as overall entertaining as the other three films. I might mark it just a hare better than Temple of Doom though.

You can also check out on both sites my review of Sex and the City. I took one for the team on that one. I actually paid for a ticket of Indiana Jones again, so the movie didn't get any of my money. I have my pride.

I also watched recently Zombie Strippers. I thought it was too consciously bad to start, but it eventually struck this tone of being consciously bad and consciously too smart. If you get what it's going for, it's pretty funny. It's a movie that appeals to a niche market and I just happen to be part of that. I think if you liked Grindhouse you would probably dig this.



In honor of the new film, from YouTube this week we have Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Swing featuring some of the best swinging moments in movie history. Not that kind of swing though.



Dick Martin, 86, part of the comedy team of Rowan and Martin with Dan Rowan died May 24 of respiratory complications. He's best remembered as host of the television series "Laugh-In." He did appeas in a couple movies and television shows, including variety shows and game shows, and later in life directed episodes of such series as "Family Ties," "Newhart," "The Bob Newhart Show," "Sledgehammer" and "In the Heat of the Night."



Oscar winning director Sydney Pollack, 73, died on May 26 of cancer. He won Oscars for directing and producing Out of Africa. He's also acted in several films, including the now out Made of Honor and last year's Michael Clayton. Other films he's directed are Sabrina, the Firm, Tootsie, Absence of Malice, Three Days of the Condor, Jeremiah Johnson and The Way We Were.



Comedian Harvey Korman, 81, died of complications from an aneurysm last Thursday. Korman is best known for "The Carol Burnett Show" and his work in several Mel Brooks' movies, including Blazing Saddles. He also appeared in the infamous "Star Wars Holiday Special."



Composer Earl Hagan, 88, died last Monday after an extended illness. He wrote the theme songs for several TV shows including "The Andy Griffith Show," "I Spy," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "That Girl" and "Gomer Pyle, USMC."



Television director Joseph Pevney, 96, died May 18 at his home. He helmed several episodes of "Star Trek" including the famous "City on the Edge of Forever." Other series he directed included "Wagon Train," "Fantasy Island," "Trapper John, MD," "The Munsters" and several films including Tammy and the Bachelor and Man of a Thousand Faces with James Cagney as Lon Chaney.



Q: Anyway, as a correction, Steven Furst was the leader of the evil blue team in
Midnight Madness; professional geek Eddie Deezen was leader of the white team.
It is a Misunderstood Masterpiece, after all (as is Once Bitten).
-Will Helm

A: Thanks for the additions Will, now go get me a sandwich.

Q: John Corbett (from Big Fat Greek Wedding) was in Raising Helen with Kate Hudson.
It made $49 million, for a chick flick wouldn't that be considered pretty good?
-Nick

A: The worldwide box office was $49 million. I couldn't find what the budget was, but a film like that usually isn't too much. It probably wasn't over $10 million. In general a film isn't considered officially a hit until it reaches $100 million. According to RottenTomatoes.com it only has a 22% freshness rating. So maybe it did ok financially, but it wasn't a hit.



Q: how about actors who were supposed to be big but never got off the ground like
helen slater or gretchen mol?
-Guy

A: Helen Slater starred in a string of films that fall somewhere in between cult favorites and mild successes in the mid-eighties including Supergirl, The Legend of Billie Jean, Ruthless People and The Secret of My Success. Heading into the nineties about the only significant blip on her resume is City Slickers. During the current decade she's done some TV guest spots, including on "Smallville" as Superman's biological mother.

She is no relation to Christian Slater, but is very good friends with Helen Hunt and founded the Naked Angels theater group with Gina Gershon.



I don't know if we can write Gretchen Mol off yet. She played Christian Bale's wife in last year's 3:10 to Yuma and received rave reviews as the title character in 2005's The Notorious Betty Page. Last year's TV movie "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" also did very well on the small screen. Coming up next she has Boy of Pigs where she has an affair with John F. Kennedy and Tenure opposite Luke Wilson.



I'll give a few more names, some are current and some are long past.

Melissa George: Smoking hot blonde from Australia who was the star of the short lived "Thieves" and appeared in Mullholland Drive The Amityville Horror and Down with Love. She still has plenty of potential to break out, but I don't know why she hasn't already. With exotic blondes such as Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron the hot ticket in Hollywood she should be picking up their leftovers easy.

Montgomery Clift: He and Marlon Brando pioneered method acting for the big screen. Guys like Pacino and De Niro owe him the world. Clift had a strong debut with Red River and The Search in 1948 and while he had some good parts over the years he was never the mega-star he was pegged to be like Brando became. His mental problems and drug dependency had a lot to do with that. Plus, a car accident while making Raintree County with Elizabeth Taylor in 1957 destroyed his face. In fact, Taylor saved his life by pulling his bashed in teeth out of his throat that he was choking on before the ambulance arrived. He died at the age of 46 due to heart failure related to his alcohol and drug use. Pretty much the prototype for that sort of flame out.

Rutger Hauer: If you needed a cold calculating psycho in the early eighties, you called Rutger Hauer. Nighthawks, Blade Runner, The Osterman Weekend, The Hitcher; all films which were made on his chilling performances. He had a great look, could really act and always tried hard. I just think he was pigeonholed and made some poor decisions heading into the nineties. Although, Blind Fury with him as a blind kung fu swordsman is a personal favorite of mine. He pops up in Sin City and Batman Begins of recent big flicks.

Paul Winfield: After the Oscar nomination for Sounder in 1972, critics were hailing him as the second coming of Sidney Poiter. However, he slipped through the cracks and was never really offered anything following it. The mainstream didn't think he was as marketable as Poiter and the blaxsploitation makers at the time viewed him as a bit of an Uncle Tom and knew of his then closet homosexuality. He was a fantastic actor, great voice, great screen presence, could slip into a variety of roles. He was close to James Earl Jones in a lot of ways, but filmmakers never picked up on him like they did with Jones in the late eighties as he transitioned into being an in demand character actor.

C. Thomas Howell: Go back and watch The Outsiders and see who looks like a huge star and who doesn't. Everyone from that movie went on to better stuff than him and he showed the most talent and range. If you look at his filmography, he's always working, yet never in anything you ever heard of. I'm thinking that if either The Hitcher or Tank had been more than cult favorites back in the day and he had avoided mega-turkey Soul Man he might have made out better. A lot of actors fall into the trap of wanting to work and will take anything offered and this looks like the major downfall for him. Currently he's appearing on "Celbebracadbra" on Vh-1 learning to be a magician.

Eric Roberts: I remember when he was the famous one. Then it was all down hill after Best of the Best, which rules by the way. Now I flip around the channels and see him popping up in random music videos. He's a good looking guy, solid screen presence, technically I think he has more skill than Julia. He's had some rough edges and a couple rumors of being difficult to work with, but mostly he seems to be a good guy. You look over his filmography and, much like Howell, he's been working constantly, but not in anything major. Similarly I think he takes whatever comes his way.

Bo Derek: She's been coasting on the success of one film for over 25 years now. Of course, I mean Orca. No, I mean 10. She's not a great actress by any stretch of the imagination, but she had that certain something that you can't put a finger on yet oozes through the screen. Her husband John Derek really hampered her career by putting her in horrible films of his such as the boring and poorly adapted Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, the silly sex comedy Bolero that tried to recapture 10 and the disturbing Ghosts Can't Do It. Derek plays a woman married to a man thirty years old than her who dies and they attempt to put his spirit into a younger body. Consider that Bo herself was 34 and hubby John was 64 at the time of its making.

Mariel and Margaux Hemingway: Both were teen models and got into acting with the horrible Lipstick where they play sisters raped by Chris Sarandon and then seek revenge. Margeaux was the one pegged for stardom, but then Mariel got all the callbacks, including Woody Allen's Manhattan that netted her a best supporting actress nomination. Margeaux fell into drugs and alcohol from beating her head on the glass ceiling of Hollywood and died in 1996 of suicide. Her body wasn't found until days afterward and her last projects were a psychic celebrity hotline and a line of Playboy trading cards. Mariel has held that her sister really died of an epileptic seizure. Her star began to decline after she got breast implants to portray Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten in Star 80 (which also features Eric Roberts). Box office and reviews were lukewarm then follow-ups The Mean Season and Creator flopped. Then came Superman IV and I probably don't have to say much more than that. When her television series "Civil Wars" was under threat of cancellation in 1991 she appeared nude in a highly publicized episode. You didn't miss much and it didn't help any. Both girls just seem to have been manipulated so much.

Robert Englund: Englund failed to capitalize on a prime opportunity to become the master of the macabre. Being labeled a horror actor isn't the greatest label, but if you're the king of horror you will work until the day you die. Simply look at the revered careers of Boris Karloff and Vincent Price. Price had one foot in the grave (pun intended) by 1989 and Englund was firmly established as Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. The buzz was that he was the heir to the throne and would take it with the loose remake of Phantom of the Opera. It seemed fitting to take a classic horror story and give it a modern veneer of gore for his coming out party. Make no mistake, it was pushed on his name upon initial release. However, the studio made the tactical error of releasing it just after Halloween and it was one of the biggest flops of the year. I think if that strikes gold he becomes an A-list horror star instead of a really decent actor in C-grade schlock, like Zombie Strippers.

Q: Richard Belzer has appeared as the character Detective John Munch on 8 different TV shows between 1993 and present day. 6 of those shows were only for special guest appearances, while he was a regular character on Homicide and Law & Order: SVU.
Homicide: Life on the Street- 122 episodes and a TV Movie
X-Files - 1 episode
Law & Order - 4 episodes
The Beat - 1 episode
Law & Order: Trail by Jury - 1 episode
Arrested Development - 1 episode
The Wire - 1 episode
Law & Order: SVU - 202 episodes as of the 2008 season

Has any other actor played the same character on more series than Belzer has with Munch? The only other actor I could think of was Kelsey Grammar who played Dr. Fraiser Crane from 1984-2004 on Cheers and Fraiser, and also appeared on the John Laroquete Show and Wings, but even though Kelsey grammar spent more time and epsidoes as his character Fraiser Crane, John Munch still appeared on more shows.

While I was researching the John Munch character for this question I stumbled across something called the Tommy Westphall universe. Tommy Westhall was an autistic kid on St. Elsewhere who it was revealed in the closing moments of the show he had dreamed up the entire series. This site http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html has researched what other tv shows have connections to St. Elsewhere from characters from other shows appearing on St. elsewhere, and then those same characters appearing on other shows, or sort of like a six degrees of Kevin bacon for TV shows. Which could mean that all these other shows were also a part of Tommy Westphall's imagination, or at least theoretically would exist in the same universe since all the series are connected. So far using St. Elsewhere 9tommy fantana as writer) and Homicide: life on the street (tommy fontana as producer) as the cross hairs of their project they have been able to link together 258 shows ranging as far back at 1951 with I love Lucy all the way to present day with 23 shows currently on the air. Here is a link to the grid showing the connected shows
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers(full).jpg

-Patt Erson

A: I was oddly talking with some people not too long ago about all that.

I am a big fan of "St. Elsewhere." How the show connects with "Homicide: Life on the Street" is that Alfre Woodward played Roxanne Turner on both shows. That gets you to Richard Belzer as Munch. Another favorite connection is that Dr. Craig on "St. Elsewhere" once told his wife a story about serving in the Korean War with BJ Honeycutt, which gets you to "MASH." However, an error I see on their grid is linking "Trapper John, MD" to "MASH" when in fact that series was a spin-off of the movie and not the series, it was more of a sister series. In fact, in one episode of "St. Elsewhere" "Trapper John, MD" is referenced as a television series that Dr. Auschlander wishes St. Elsewhere was more like. Really, you'll go crazy if you think too hard about all that, but it is kind of fascinating.

As for someone who has played the same character the most I'll give you Bob Denver as Gilligan. You have "Gilligan's Island" and several TV movies, the cartoon "Gilligan's Planet" and guest spots on "Alf," "The New Gidget," "Meego," "Baywatch" and the movie Back to the Beach.

The topic gets really slippery if you count people playing themselves on various shows. For example, Dr. Joyce Brothers has appeared as herself as a character on more than 30 shows.

Q: I thought it was called, " Don't look under the bed", but I can't really find any movie that has that title and plot that I remember. Hope you can help. I recall a movie in where a family member dies, either a little boy or little girl, they die in a car accident. They show up under the bed of the brother or sister and haunt them, but I think they end up helping them in the end. This movie scared me like crazy as a child, I would like to revisit it. Thanks for your help.

-Sean

A: Don't Go to Sleep was a television movie from 1982 that starred Dennis Weaver and Valerie Harper. They're older, evil daughter (Kristin Cumming) is killed in a car wreck when her shoelaces are tied together as a prank and she can't run away before the car blows up. She then comes back from the grave and gets her younger sister Mary (Robin Ignico) to help exact revenge on the family. This includes her grandmother (Ruth Gordon), her brother (Oliver Robins) who tied the shoelaces together and a memorable scene where Mary tries to kill their mother with a pizza cutter. The mother has Mary sent away to a mental intuition. She eventually returns seemingly cured, but then the ghost starts haunting the mother. It's available on bootleg tape, but that's it for right now.

Q: Hi Leonard,
Sorry, wrong number was first performed as a radio play and the lead was Agnes Moorehead. You should download it and give it a listen, Agnes Moorehead is brilliant in it.
-Andre

A: Tell me where to download it at and I might. I never promise anything anymore, because not even I trust myself.

The film was adapted from the radio play by Lucille Fletcher. Agnes Moorehead performed the play on radio several times between 1942 and 1960. In 1950 the Lux Radio Theater staged their own version of the radio play with Barabara Stanwyck reprising her role from the film.

The play inspired the writers of "The Twilight Zone" to create "The Invaders" episode for Moorehead where she plays a woman plagued by invaders from another planet (the twist being what planet they're from). The real twist was that Moorhead had no dialogue.

Moorehead actually went to college near where I live at Muskingum College and had a home near there for many years. She donated several personal belongings to the college after she died. Moorehead first rose to fame as part of Orson Welles' Mercury Players with Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. She's probably best remembered as Samantha's mother Endora on "Bewitched."



Q: Hey Leonard,
Long time reader, first time emailing.
A few boring books have been made into relatively good movies, most notably "Moby Dick." The abridged version of that extremely long winded novel has long been implemented into cartoons, TV shows, and even a movie starring Gregory Peck. I honestly think that a modern adaptation (maybe a small screen movie) would be interesting to see. "The Last of the Mohicans" is another good example. The movie with Daniel Day Lewis, though a bit long, is great and entertaining where as the book is completely unreadable. I could go on an on, but I won't.

Now, for a few questions:

In your opinion, what has been the worst movie based on a comic book/graphic novel?

Besides Superman and Batman, does DC really have a chance at successfully introducing more heroes to the big screen the way Marvel has?

What, in your opinion, is the best movie featuring an SNL alumn? The worst?

I know everybody is sick of remakes and reinventions, but are there any movies that need be remade? You know, movies that didn't get a fair shake the first time around? Maybe, instead of remakes, a prequel or sequel? Maybe "History of the World Part II?"

Feel free not to answer all of the questions, but thank you in advance for reading this email and possibly answering some of them. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, I enjoyed googling around for them.
~Josh

A: Thanks for the ideas on boring books that made good movies. Someone in the comments also mentioned the Lord of the Rings. I think boring might be a debatable term.

I did enjoy the pictures, but I'm not going to take time to reproduce them here in the column. However, I do own a poster of the Green Arrow painting by Alex Ross you used.



Green Arrow would be someone I would like to see a movie of and I think the recent Iron Man film shows that you can have a hero without traditional hero traits and powers and make an interesting movie if the character is well written and well acted. How about Ryan Gosling in the lead?

I also agree with your other picture that "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D" television movie from 1998 starring David Hasselhoff was really bad. It's like half the people involved thought it was supposed to be campy like the old "Batman" T.V. show and the other half thought it was supposed to be serious with Hasselhoff not knowing the difference between ‘grizzled and ‘constipated.' Co-star Lisa Rinna as the Contessa should have had a big neon sign over her head reading "Hey, Look, Tits!" with an arrow pointing down at her cleavage because she wasn't good for much else. So, let's look at her tits then.



Do you mean an SNL movie or just someone that was on SNL? The best movie based on a "Saturday Night Live" sketch is easily The Blues Brothers with Wayne's World a pretty close number two. The best film starring someone from SNL I would go with Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. You also can't go wrong with Ghost Busters featuring Murray and Aykroyd or Caddyshack with Murray and Chase. For the worst movie based on an SNL sketch I'll go with It's Pat just edging out Stuart Saves the Family. Worst movie featuring someone who was on SNL has several contenders including The Adventures of Pluto Nash with Eddie Murphy, Judge Dredd with Rob Schneider, Taxi with Jimmy Fallon and just to be equal opportunity I'll throw in Larger Than Life with Murray and Nothing But Trouble with Chase and Aykroyd.

History of the World Part II might be interesting, especially with the new crop of comedic stars out there for Mel Brooks to work with. As for movies that could use a sequel I've been waiting on a Maverick sequel introducing brother Bart from the television series. I've also joked that they should do a Commando sequel just because Alyssa Milano is hot now and can be kidnapped by Benedict's son. I've also been waiting with baited breath for Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires with Bruce Campbell and Paul Giamatti. I would bankroll this movie to get it made, if I had a bankroll that is.

We did a podcast awhile back talking about movies that should be remade and my pick was the obscure western Hannie Caulder. I think it would be a great choice for Quentin Tarantino as director. Just check the plot, the title character (Raquel Welch) has her husband murdered, her house burned down and is raped by three outlaws brothers (Jack Elam, Strother Martin and Ernest Borgnine). She finds bounty hunter Thomas Luther Price (a great Robert Culp) and begs him to teach her how to be a cold-blooded killer so she can exact revenge.

Q: Hi Leonard, I am your old pal from Acapulco (unfortunately I don't live there anymore, I live in Mexico city)anyway, I just wanted to send you some questions:

1.-Over Here the manga series known as Mazinger Z (Tranzor Z in North America) had a huge, and I mean huge impact on my generation it does not matter if you were a boy or a little girl !!We all watched that damn cartoon!!(those born between 1977-1978, yes I am old!) do you think someday they will make this into a movie? nowadays hollywood is into remakes so much.

2.-What movie do you think has the greatest cast ever?? (as in "superstars" and quality actors, cameos and all) my opinion is ocean eleven (the recent version).

3.- what do you think is the Greatest characterization of a superhero??? i think tobey maguire, i mean the guy was BORN to play Peter Parker but i don't know, after Iron Man, i have to take my hat off!! Robert Downey IS Tony Stark. (i think iron man is a very intelligent movie)

4.- I watched midnight cowboy so many many years ago (well only the parts where my parents would not cover my eyes) and for the love of god (JR reference) I never understood what exactly caused the death of Ratso, I mean tuberculosis was not a mortal disease in the sixties, they never said what illness he had (neither does the novel, I read it) am I wrong??

4.-Emma Watson finally turned 18, so I do not have to feel dirty anymore hahahahaha!!!

Hope you are dong fine, reading your column is the way i start my week, ALWAYS

sorry for my bad English

-Armin

A: I get harder to decipher emails from people who claim to be native speakers.



"Mazinger Z," known as "Tranzor Z" in North America was produced between 1972 and 1974. It was not syndicated in the United States until 1985 when many elements were changed or cut out, such as missiles firing out of the breasts of Aphrodite A. The general plot has a super robot formed out of a new super alloy mined from Mt. Fuji. It fights the evil mecha beasts of Dr. Hell with the grandson of its creator as the pilot. While the series was one of the earlier of the big robot genre, it was one of the last to make it to the States and was never very popular here. There are no plans for a movie.

Best overall cast for me has to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World featuring Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Cesar, Jonthan Williams, Edie Adams, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dick Shawn, Terry-Thomas, Phil Silvers, Dorothy Provine, Eddie ‘Rochester' Anderson, Peter Falk, Jimmy Durante, Paul Ford, William Demarest, Jimmy Durante, Jim Backus, Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges, Jack Benny, Don Knotts, Joe E. Brown, Andy Devine, Norman Fell, Stan Freberg, Buster Keaton and Carl Reiner. Not a better comedy cast has ever been assembled and you have one of the greatest actors of all time in Tracy leading them. Even the cameos are hilarious because of who shows up in them.

Another wildly renowned cast is for How the West Was Won that featured Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, Harry Morgan, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, Eli Wallach, Richard Widmark, Walter Brennan, Raymond Massey, Spencer Tracy, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Carolyn Jones and a cameo by the then unknown Harry Dean Stanton.

It might be the flush of the new, but Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal in Iron Man was just amazing as he perfectly captured the human side of Tony Stark and made his character arc believable. He made me buy that Stark was a womanizing drunk and a super genius. I can't really imagine anyone else pulling that off. I would also have to tip the top hat to Christopher Reeve as Superman. I don't think anyone is more identified with a superhero role than him. In fact, during the late seventies and early eighties many Superman artists based their portrayal of the character on Reeve, so the character became a reflection of him in several ways.

It's never officially stated what Ratso had, although tuberculosis or pneumonia is usually what is listed. Even thought both diseases are treatable and not fatal in most cases, they can if left untreated and the infected is continuously exposed to poor conditions, as was the case with Ratso.

I never understood the logic behind the fact that a girl is 17 and off limits and the next day she turns 18 and everything's jake. I try to follow the Harvard gentleman's rule. Never date anyone less than half your age plus five. Don't look at them either. Ok, fine, look if you want to.



Don't die.

"You people are sick, wicked, funky, misanthropic, co-dependent animals! And I won't have my sister, who was once the Queen of the Mardi Gras, sitting at a table with a pickle-shooting train!"