The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Whip It (2009)
Directed by Drew Barrymore
Screenplay by Shauna Cross, based on her novel Derby Girl
Produced by Barry Mendel, Drew Barrymore
111 minutes

Whip It is like a Burt Reynolds redneck comedy spiked with female empowerment. In terms of consistency, it’s a brew that falls somewhere between The Longest Yard and Hooper, capturing the essence of Burt in the outtakes over the end credits and the realization that the people who made the movie had way more fun than the audience did watching it. A co-founder of the Los Angeles based Derby Dolls, screenwriter Shauna Cross amassed so much material that fellow scribe Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith compelled her to write about it. Cross pitched both a young adult book titled Derby Girl and a screenplay, which were optioned by Drew Barrymore and Nancy Juvonen of Flower Films. Cross’s script nudged Barrymore into making her directorial debut. With Academy Award nominee Ellen Page attached to star, Mandate Pictures agreed to finance Whip It to the tune of $10 million.

Retaining the services of producer Barry Mendel, director of photography Robert Yeoman and editor Dylan Tichenor, Barrymore seems to have had the whimsy of Wes Anderson in her sights, but aiming for too many targets — sports comedy, high school comedy, mother/daughter comedy — she ends up hitting none. The compositions and set design are magnificent, but when it comes to writing about the misadventures of outcast teenage girls, Shauna Cross never gets around Diablo Cody’s Juno, which for better or worse, stood out from the pack, something Whip It never really manages. The consolation package includes the most talented cast any first time director could hope for. Set in the Lone Star State, proud Texans may be snake bit to realize that the picture was shot almost entirely in Michigan for tax breaks. In the end, setting the film in the 1970s might have given Whip It the glue it needed.

In the Texas Hill Country town of “Bodeen”, 18-year-old Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) takes the stage for a beauty pageant with radical blue highlights that her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) helped spike her hair with. The stunt upsets Bliss’s mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden), a former beauty queen pushing her daughter to excel. While on a mother-daughter shopping trip in Austin, Bliss encounters three babes on wheels handing out flyers to an exhibition roller derby game. Bliss convinces Pash to sneak out with her to see the show. Her friend returns the favor by shoving Bliss into the arms of a young punk rock musician named Oliver (Landon Pigg). Once the show starts, Bliss finds new heroes in the tattooed, surly Hurl Scouts: Maggie Mayhem (Kristin Wiig), Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell), Rosa Sparks (Eve) and Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore).

Speaking to Maggie after the show, Bliss is invited to do more than worship the Hurl Scouts by trying out for the team. Digging her old Barbie roller skates out of the attic, she begins training and on tryout day, impresses the team’s coach Razor (Andrew Wilson) with her speed. Adopting the name Babe Ruthless, Bliss discovers that bad attitudes are encouraged among her teammates but as a result, they’re consistently on the losing end of matches against the Holy Rollers and their sadistic captain Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis). Bliss refuses to change her can-do attitude and helps her team actually win a game. She keeps her roller derby activities secret from her mother and father (Daniel Stern) but as the Hurl Scouts head for the championship game, Bliss faces a dilemma when the beauty pageant that means so much to her mother falls on the same day.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 18,991 users: 73% for Whip It

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 68 for Whip It

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Roman Polanski, based on the novel by Ira Levin
Produced by William Castle
136 minutes

Crafted with elegance and wit so assured that its style is nearly invisible, Rosemary’s Baby has earned its spot in discussions of the scariest film ever made. Ira Levin — whose debut novel A Kiss Before Dying was published to acclaim in 1953 — found inspiration in his wife’s pregnancy for a second novel in 1967. Film rights were obtained by William Castle, the director whose in-theater gimmicks for movies like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler involved rubber skeletons flying over the audience or electrified seats. Unable to raise financing for Rosemary’s Baby, Castle partnered with Paramount Pictures, whose production chief Robert Evans agreed to split the profits with Castle, but refused to let the shlockmeister direct. Castle accepted the role of producer as Evans convinced Roman Polanski to adapt and direct Rosemary’s Baby.

One of Polanski’s few revisions to the novel was a brilliant one: embracing psychological horror and leaving it to the viewer decide whether Rosemary was the victim of witchcraft or her own prenatal paranoia. Richly designed by Richard Sylbert, the film was shot in 14 weeks: two weeks in New York for exterior shooting around the Dakota Hotel were followed by 12 weeks of interiors on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. Urban legends supported by Castle that the picture was cursed neglect how gripping Rosemary’s Baby ultimately is without using elaborate special effects to generate unease. The dream sequences are effective because like the film, they unlock irrational fears we keep locked in our subconscious. Skillfully adapted and wonderfully cast, the ending ranks among the most gloriously black of all time.

Looking for an apartment to rent, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) follow a leasing agent (Elisha Cook) up to a 7^th floor unit of the “Bramford Building” in New York. The couple ignores the stories their erudite friend “Hutch” (Maurice Evans) shares about the building’s “unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century”, including tenants whose preoccupation with witchcraft earned it the name “Black Bramford”. Rosemary and Guy hear their new neighbors — bickering through the thin partition wall — before they see them. In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets reformed junkie Terry Gionoffrio  (Angela Dorian) who was taken in by Rosemary’s neighbors and given a new lease on life. Not long after, Terry is found on the sidewalk, dead from an apparent suicide.

Rosemary finally meets her elderly neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) when the couple invite her and Guy to dinner. While her husband is quickly won over by the magnetic Castevets, Rosemary is suspicious of the strange potables and desserts Minnie pushes on her. Good fortune finds Guy when another actor suddenly goes blind, landing him the leading role in a play. With his career taking off, he suggests they have a baby. The night they conceive, Rosemary feels faint and experiences a strange dream. At the urging of the Castevets, she leaves her obstetrician for one the Castevets recommend, Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy). Alarmed by her weight loss and abdominal pain, Hutch delivers Rosemary a book that leads her to suspect those closest to her belong to a coven of witches who are keenly interested in her baby.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 26,945 users: 83% for Rosemary’s Baby

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Polanski.

Tess (1979)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Gérard Brach & Roman Polanski and John Brownjohn, based on the novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Produced by Claude Berri
172 minutes

As a sum of its dialogue, casting, photography, editing and music, Roman Polanski’s screen version of the 1891 novel by Thomas Hardy tantalizes with how thrift of imperfection it seems. Once a passion of producer David O. Selznick — who wanted wife Jennifer Jones to play Tess — actress Sharon Tate handed the book to her husband two decades later. Dedicating the finished film to his slain wife, Polanski adapted the novel with Gérard Brach and tasked John Brownjohn to translate their script from French to English, tuning an ear to the Dorset dialect. In this expensive co-production between France’s Renn Productions and England’s Burrill Productions, Polanski cast in the title role 17-year-old Nastassia Kinski, the West German ingénue who Francis Coppola would call “the most beautiful woman in films today” when he cast her in One From the Heart a few years later.

Tess is worth viewing as a visual feast alone. Shot extensively during the “magic hour” of dusk by Geoffrey Unsworth (who died during production to be relieved by Ghislain Cloquet), the splendor of the landscape and the way sunlight reveals character is present in every frame. Much of the film’s success lies in the casting of Nastassia Kinski, who is on-screen much of the running time and exhibits an unusual power mostly foreign to actresses her age. What’s striking about Tess is the tender loving care Polanski takes to let scenes breathe, neither overwhelming the audience in period detail or racing through the events of the book. A whole world materializes in which an outsider struggles to find her place. Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, the playful yet majestic musical score by Philippe Sarde is a standout.

In rural Dorset of the late 19^th century, local girls assemble for their May dance. John Durbeyfield (John Collin) crosses paths with a new parson, who notifies the peasant that his research into local genealogy indicates the Durbeyfields descend from an old family, the d’Urbervilles. Though his ancestors have died off without any wealth, Durbeyfield and his wife (Rosemary Martin) dispatch their teenage daughter Tess (Nastassia Kinski) to call on a wealthy widow in the town of Trantridge who goes by the name d’Urberville. The farm girl encounters the widow’s playboy son Alec (Leigh Lawson) who takes a shine to Tess. Accepting a job on the property, she discovers the “d’Ubervilles” are not blood relatives at all but merely bought the name. Ultimately giving in to Alec’s salacious advances, she returns home bearing his illegitimate child.

When her child succumbs to illness and dies, Tess leaves home to take a job as a milkmaid. Just as her co-workers Izz (Suzanna Hamilton), Marian (Carolyn Pickles) and Retty (Caroline Embling) have, Tess falls in love with a young apprentice farmer named Angel Clare (Peter Firth). The son of a reverend, Angel is attracted to Tess’ earthy wisdom and announces to his family that he plans to marry the penniless girl. On their honeymoon, Tess reveals that she surrendered her maidenhood to a cousin and bore his child. Ruining her husband’s image of her, Tess is sent back to her destitute family while Angel leaves for Brazil to seek his fortune. Tess reunites with Izz to work on a farm owned by Alec d’Urberville. He offers to provide for Tess if she returns to him, but clinging to her pride, she chooses poverty instead. For a while.

Jeremy Richey’s ardor for Nastassja Kinski inspired him to name his blog Moon In the Gutter and in June 2009, he turned his attention to Tess.

This terrific behind the scenes article by Harlan Kennedy on the making of Tess appeared in the October 1979 issue of American Film.

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Manhattan (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman
Produced by Charles H. Joffe
96 minutes

Of the 39 feature films he’s directed and written so far, neither the Oscar winning Best Picture Annie Hall nor the handful of other treasures in the Woody Allen vault have the timeless magnificence of Manhattan. Allen discussed the idea of shooting a movie in anamorphic widescreen with cinematographer Gordon Willis on the set of Interiors in 1977. Their ambition was to make a movie that captured an intimacy typically blown away by epic framing and since the story would take place in New York, use black & white film stock to express the vibe of the city. Allen — who grew up in Brooklyn and was introduced to Manhattan via Hollywood movies – began coming up with scenes as he listened to Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of George Gershwin. He then wrote a script with Marshall Brickman.

Manhattan is a valentine for the other 364 days on the calendar. Allen’s intent was to make a picture more serious than Annie Hall but funnier than Interiors, “a serious picture that had laughs in it”. Manhattan fits that bill better than just about any movie you could name. Allen’s one-liners aren’t the knee slappers they may have once been, but the film’s visual and symphonic splendor are as enthralling as they ever were. Expressing the resplendence of a city as it existed mostly in his own dreams, Manhattan volleys between Allen’s contention that we’re being too tough on ourselves, while in the moments that matter most, not being nearly tough enough. Diane Keaton and Mariel Hemingway — far sexier in other roles — have never seemed more beautiful than they are here, while Woody gives his most nuanced performance.

Four friends gather for supper at Elaine’s. Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is a 42-year-old writer working on a book set in the city he adores. His 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) has more intelligence and maturity than Isaac’s ego will give her credit for. His best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but leaving the restaurant, reveals to Isaac that he’s become involved with another woman. Isaac is unable to offer much relationship advice as his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has taken up with a woman and is publishing a tell-all memoir about their marriage, or as she calls it, “an honest account of our breakup.” While Tracy asserts that she’s in love with Isaac, he advises the teenager to view their relationship as little more than “a detour on the highway of life.”

Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Isaac and Tracy run into Yale and his mistress: journalist and neurotic dingbat Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton). She offends Isaac by disparaging all of his cultural heroes — from Heinrich Boll to Ingmar Bergman — in under a minute. Nervous about his future once he quits a job writing for a hip sketch TV show, Isaac bumps into Mary at a benefit for the Museum of Modern Art and ends up wandering Manhattan with her until sunrise. Yale develops a guilty conscience after breaking off his affair and when Isaac maintains that he’s not serious about Tracy, compels his friend to give Mary a call. Isaac and Mary leap right into a relationship, which ends up being undermined when Mary confesses she still has feelings for Yale. Realizing he made a mistake by dumping Tracy, Isaac sets out to make things right.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 16,781 users: 92% for Manhattan

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Hud (1963)
Directed by Martin Ritt
Screenplay by Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr., based on the novel Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry
Produced by Irving Ravetch, Martin Ritt
112 minutes

More of a chamber piece than a symphonic event, Martin Ritt’s lush adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s debut 1961 novel Horseman, Pass By is a finely tuned frontier opera, pitched against character, environment and morality rather than the stale conventions of the western genre. Screenwriter-producer Irving Ravetch adapted The Long, Hot Summer and The Sound and the Fury with his wife Harriet Frank Jr. and pulled McMurtry’s novel off an airport paperback rack during a layover in Dallas. Along with Ritt and Paul Newman — his partners in Salem Productions — Ravetch sold Paramount on the project. Riffing off alternate titles suggested by McMurtry, the filmmakers selected Hud. Two weeks of location shooting would commence July 1962 in Amarillo, Texas while interiors and rear projection were shot on the Paramount lot in Hollywood over four weeks.

The remarkable thing about Hud is how grounded it is. The action is limited to a bar brawl, livestock quarantine and one character passing away. While changes were made to McMurtry’s novel — the role of the housekeeper was expanded and sexual tension heightened between her and Hud — the story feels natural as opposed to being hopped up with froth. It’s given an edge by Newman’s dedication to playing one of the screen’s great bad boys, an irredeemable bastard who starts out no-good and ends that way, without lessons or hugs. Elmer Bernstein’s musical score is sparse but powerful, relying on little more than a Spanish guitar, while nearly everyone else in the production received Academy Award nominations. Taking home richly deserved Oscars were Patricia Neal (Best Actress), Melvyn Douglas (Best Supporting Actor) and James Wong Howe (Best Cinematography).

As the sun rises in the Texas Panhandle, 17-year-old Lonnie Bannon (Brandon de Wilde) hitchhikes into town in search of his hell raising uncle Hud. Locating his uncle’s pink Cadillac parked outside the abode of a married woman, Lonnie rousts Hud Bannon (Paul Newman) with news that his grandfather needs to see him. Escaping just as the woman’s husband makes it home, Hud and Lonnie return to the family ranch, where live-in housekeeper Alma Brown (Patricia Neal) cares for the men. Hud’s father Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas) takes the boys out to inspect a heifer that’s been found dead. Homer is barely able to conceal contempt for his only surviving son — who’s more focused on his nightlife than the condition of their livestock — and remains watchful when young Lonnie starts spending more time with Hud.

Homer calls in a government vet to inspect the dead heifer and is instructed to start gathering his herd; if tests come back positive for foot and mouth disease, every animal on the ranch will have to be liquidated, even if it means a catastrophic financial loss for the Bannons. Hud suggests selling the herd before the results come back, but his father’s principles prevent him from even considering such a thing. Feeling embittered, Hud starts looking for legal means to wrest control of the ranch out from under the old man. He also turns his charm on Alma, a self-sufficient divorcee who hasn’t responded to Hud’s flirtations, but hasn’t exactly dissuaded them either. Waiting for the vet to decide on the fate of the ranch, Homer’s health declines, Hud and Alma draw closer to a confrontation and Lonnie struggles to become his own man.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,934 users: 86% for Hud

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Directed by Nunnally Johnson
Screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the book by Corbett H. Thigpen M.D. & Hervey M. Cleckley M.D.
Produced by Nunnally Johnson
91 minutes

The Three Faces of Eve is so ridiculous that it begs for a spot on Mystery Science Theater. That may be a warning to ignore this, or an invitation to watch it, depending on your taste. The film is based on a case of multiple personality documented in a woman in Georgia known only at that time as “Eve”. Writer-producer Nunnally Johnson — who adapted The Grapes of Wrath and How To Marry A Millionaire — read the manuscript in galleys and sold Fox on purchasing the screen rights before the book’s publication in 1957. Johnson’s first choice to play Eve was Jennifer Jones, who demurred. Marilyn Monroe was considered, then Judy Garland. Joanne Woodward was a TV veteran under contract to Fox and despite having only two screen credits at that time, won the part. Woodward’s performance then won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the one and only Oscar nomination of her career.

Earnestly narrated by Alistair Cooke — who in a dash of retro style actually appears on camera to deliver an introduction for everyone in the cheap seats — the drama is thinly sketched, the psychology is poorly rationalized and the production is cheaply shot on the Fox lot, albeit in wide angle proscenium “CinemaScope” by director of photography Stanley Cortez. If given a sense of humor, the script might have been more appropriate for the Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle playing Eve. That said, the saving grace of The Three Faces of Eve is Joanne Woodward, the kooky hipster chick and wife of Paul Newman who seemed to blaze a trail in independent film 30 years before Sundance or Miramax existed (her contemporary might be Toni Collette). In what would barely qualify as a movie by today’s standards, Mrs. Woodward is nothing short of beguiling.

In an on camera introduction by “Distinguished Journalist and Commentator” Alistair Cooke, we the audience are assured that the events of the movie we’re about to see are based on an account of “multiple personality” that is a matter of psychiatric record. On August 20, 1951 somewhere in Georgia, dreary housewife Eve White (Joanne Woodward) and her husband Ralph (David Wayne) are referred to a psychiatrist named Dr. Charles Luther (Lee J. Cobb), Eve reports suffering from splitting headaches followed by spells in which she blacks out. Her health improves for few months until Ralph discovers $218 in clothes and shoes in their bedroom. Despite her signature on the receipt, Eve denies having purchased the items. Leaving his wife alone with their daughter Bonnie, Eve next tries to strangle the girl when she refuses to be quiet.

Confiding to Dr. Luther that she hears voices, Eve suffers a spell in her psychiatrist’s office and a new personality emerges. Giving the name “Eve Black”, this side of Eve is a party girl who expresses contempt toward Ralph. Dr. Luther’s colleague Dr. Day (Edwin Jerome) is prepared to pronounce her a faker, but when the spells continue, Eve is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Feeling Eve Black is no threat to her other personality, Eve White is released, but her husband struggles to accept his wife’s illness. When Eve Black reasserts herself and goes out on the town, Ralph hits her. Placed under therapy, Eve reveals a third personality. Giving the name “Jane”, this side of Eve balances her disparate poles and even begins dating a new beau (Ken Scott). Searching for answers, Dr. Luther places Jane under hypnosis and digs into her past.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 70 users: 91% for The Three Faces of Eve

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Haunting (1963)
Directed by Robert Wise
Screenplay by Nelson Gidding, based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Produced by Robert Wise
112 minutes

While The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers both inspired remakes that dragged great sci-fi concepts out into the deep end of the pool, Robert Wise’s The Haunting has always occupied those waters, lurking in an elegant cool that’s unique among cinema’s ghost stories. Wise came upon a book review of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House in 1957 and was apparently so spooked reading a copy on the MGM lot that screenwriter Nelson Gidding made the director jump when he burst into Wise’s office. Put in turnaround by United Artists, Wise was able to interest MGM in the property, but was offered a budget short of the amount he needed. Discovering that MGM-British Studios was willing to financing the film to the tune of $1.1 million– roughly $6.7 million in today money — Wise shot The Haunting outside London on soundstages at Borehamwood.

The Haunting is a reminder of a time when movies couldn’t count on gore, much less the color red, to scare an audience. Tension is achieved through performance and atmosphere. Julie Harris plays one of the all-time great nutters, a woman who’s been poked with so much psychic trauma that spirits in the mansion seem friendly by comparison. Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson and Russ Tamblyn roll through the delicious dialogue while managing to approach the material seriously. Collaborating with director of photography Davis Boulton, Robert Wise shot the film — his last in black & white — with anamorphic lenses by Panavision that seem to peek around corners. Without the money to showcase ghosts, the filmmakers embrace psychological horror and leave it to the audience to decide what’s real and what’s not, giving The Haunting mystique while tightening up its suspense.

Seeking a site to pursue his life’s work in the study of psychic phenomena, Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) arrives on Hill House, a remote New England manor built 90 odd years previous by Hugh Crain as a home for his wife and daughter, both of whom would die there under unusual circumstances. Sharing their fate would be Crain’s second wife, as well as a caretaker, who hung herself from a spiral staircase in the library. Warning him that no one who’s visited Hill House has stayed for more than a few days, its current deed holder Mrs. Sanderson (Fay Compton) is intrigued by whether life truly exists after death. She agrees to lease the house to Dr. Markway for his experiment on the condition that her foppish nephew Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) — next in line to inherit the mansion — be included.

Dr. Markway’s research team consists of the tightly wound Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris) and the cosmopolitan Theodora (Claire Bloom). Eleanor experienced paranormal activity as a child, while Theo is a skilled psychic. Luke has no truck with the supernatural and jokes about turning the house into a nightclub. Left alone by the husband-wife caretakers (Valentine Dyall, Rosalie Crutchley) who refuse to enter the house after dark, Eleanor and Theo are terrorized by banging outside their room. Dr. Markway and Luke report hearing no such noises. The next morning, “Welcome home Eleanor” is found scrawled in chalk above the stairwell. Eleanor becomes obsessed with staying in the house and when Dr. Markway’s wife Grace (Lois Maxwell) joins the ghost hunters, her jealousy tips her over into madness.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 254 users: 86% for The Haunting (1963)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Tightrope (1984)
Directed by Richard Tuggle*
Written by Richard Tuggle
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Fritz Manes
114 minutes

Like a quarter shining in the gutter, Tightrope could stand a polish, but if you catch it on a rainy afternoon or late at night, this unabashed B-movie offers spills and thrills aplenty. Escape From Alcatraz scribe Richard Tuggle took his cue from a series of unsolved rapes in the Bay Area. His research resulted in a cop thriller sold to Clint Eastwood under the condition the screenwriter be allowed to make his directorial debut. Tuggle’s struggles on the set threatened his job security on day 1, but DGA guidelines — amended after Eastwood replaced Philip Kaufman as director of The Outlaw Josey Wales with himself — mandated that Tuggle remain on and receive a credit for directing. Whether you believe Eastwood collaborated with Tuggle from there or it was more likely the other way around, whoever directed Tightrope managed a good film that occasionally flirts with being a very good one.

Tightrope could either be considered a Cannon Films styled cop thriller like Cobra or Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects made with a real script and much better actors, or it could be considered just another Cannon Films styled cop thriller. The business of a serial killing rapist on the loose in a Red Light District is routine, repetitive and almost completely indistinguishable for a hundred other bad movies and TV shows. Where the picture shows life are its domestic scenes — where Eastwood’s chemistry with his 11-year-old daughter Alison glows — and the cop’s relationship with a rape counselor played by Geneviève Bujold. Eastwood relocated the script from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the offbeat French Canadian actress proves as alluring as the city itself. The killer is given no substance, but since the family he menaces is something we care about, at the very least, Tightrope provides a riveting ride to the finish.

In New Orleans, divorced police captain Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) cancels plans to watch the Saints game with his two young daughters (Alison Eastwood, Jennifer Beck) when a prostitute is found strangled to death in her home. When another working girl turns up drowned in a bathhouse, rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold) presses Block to involve her office in the investigation. Prowling the brothels of The Big Easy to interview prostitutes, Block finds the time to indulge his dark side with a popsicle sucking tart (Rebecca Perle) and a nurse (Margaret Howell) among others moonlighting in the sex trade. Personal items Block leaves at his nocturnal activities — handcuffs, a necktie — begin to turn up alongside the bodies of the prostitutes he’s frequented.

Once she complains to City Hall about his lack of cooperation, Beryl Thibodeaux receives a visit from Block at the non-profit rape center she runs. The cop later seeks Beryl out at her gym and over an oyster lunch on the Mississippi, bluntly shares his attraction for her. She accepts his invitation to go trick or treating with his girls in the French Quarter and receives their approval to continue dating their dad. Meanwhile, Block and his partner (Dan Hedaya) trace glass fragments at the murder scenes to a local beer bottling plant. The killer responds by visiting Block’s daughters, killing their nanny and almost strangling Block. The cop narrows his manhunt onto one suspect in particular, but while he’s staking out the man’s apartment, the killer goes hunting for Beryl.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11 users: 82% for Tightrope

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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The Gauntlet (1977)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Michael Butler & Dennis Shryack
Produced by Robert Daley
109 minutes

Whether The Gauntlet is one of the lousiest action movies ever made or a wickedly funny satire of lousy action movies, it certainly ranks as one of the more bizarre Clint Eastwood ever made. The most expensive Malpaso production up to that point in time with a budget of $5 million, it boasted top notch stuntwork and two over-the-moon sequences in which a house and a bus were each wired to explode with 250,000 squibs. Somehow, it all manages to look and feel like a low down dirty B-movie, as if made by a film company traveling around on a bus, making things up as they went along. Taking a story as old as It Happened One Night and refreshed as recently as Midnight Run, the plot proceeds in such a wildly idiotic manner that scenes practically beg for the Looney Toons logo and fanfare to precede them.

The Gauntlet can be excused as a drive-in movie, with moments of high intensity followed by stretches where you can go for popcorn, wander around and then return to your car when it looks like something is about to get blowed up real good. None of the banter between Eastwood and Sondra Locke (taking a role the studio pursued Barbra Streisand to fill) has any thought put into it at all. Even when the couple elicits moments of genuine affection for each other, it barely makes sense within the wacky mechanics of the plot, which builds toward one of the most ridiculous action sequences ever conceived. Frank Franzetta illustrated a fantastic poster that offers a hint into how seriously this picture was taking itself, but judging by what made it on screen, it’s hard to tell whether the filmmakers were in on the joke.

As the sun rises in Phoenix, disheveled metro cop Ben Shockley (Clint Eastwood) reports for work and is ribbed for looking so sloppy by his former partner Maynard Josephson (Pat Hingle) who’s been promoted to a desk job. Summoned before new police commissioner Blakelock (William Prince), Shockley is dispatched to Las Vegas to pick up someone named Gus Mally, who the commissioner maintains is a nobody witness for a nothing trial. Shockley discovers that “Gus” is actually Augustina Mally (Sondra Locke), a feisty hooker who claims that not only is someone looking to kill her, but that bookies in town have actually put a betting line on them never making it to Phoenix. As dumb as he looks, Shockley discovers there is indeed a horse named “Mally No Show” with 50-1 odds that are getting steeper all the time.

Shockley sneaks Mally out of jail in an ambulance but comes under attack before they can reach the airport. The couple seeks refuge at Mally’s workplace, but when Shockley calls the commissioner to request an escort, the entire Las Vegas Police Department shows up and blows the house to bits. Escaping in a storm drain, Shockley and Mally hijack a constable (Bill McKinney) who gets them to the Arizona border before he’s riddled with bullets. Stranded overnight in the desert, Mally reveals that she’s to testify against a sadistic john that sounds a lot like the Phoenix police commissioner. Realizing he’s been played for a stooge by his superiors, Shockley commandeers a charter bus, reinforces it with steel and shares his route with the commissioner, who prepare a reception for the couple’s bus in Phoenix.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 16 users: 81% for The Gauntlet

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Heartbreak Ridge (1986)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by James Carabatsos and Dennis Hackin (uncredited) and Joseph Stinson (uncredited)
Produced by Clint Eastwood
130 minutes

Firing locker room trash talk with the repetition and accuracy of a machine gun, Heartbreak Ridge is loaded with more R-rated one-liners than the careers of all the male action stars you could name combined. James Carabatsos wrote a first draft, which was doctored by the authors of the goofiest film Eastwood ever made (Bronco Billy) and the one with the greatest line of dialogue in action movie history (Sudden Impact), Dennis Hackin and Joseph Stinson, respectively. Greeted with dissent by some army veterans who maintained that the Marines never engaged Heartbreak Ridge and by a Marine Corps which did not square with the film’s language or Gunny Highway’s training techniques, Heartbreak Ridge may be trying to fit a size 12 foot into a shoe two sizes too small, but reality aside, it’s one of the more entertaining movies Clint Eastwood ever made.

The combat sequences — which utilize the U.S. military intervention in Grenada that the United Nations later voted illegal — are on auto-pilot, reflecting neither the terror of combat or hinting at any real consequences for the combatants. Heartbreak Ridge was the last in a line of war movies going back to John Wayne fighting Injuns in Fort Apache where the enemy was evil and when shot, went down like a bowling pin. For those able to cotton to the film’s outdated approach, its macho bluster is hard to resist. With an opening line of “I been pumping pussy since Christ was a corporal” the script never apologizes for being about a crusty Marine gunny and never lets up. Underneath lies a character that fits Eastwood’s screen persona like a glove, a man whose distaste for authority is matched by a loyalty to the ideals of that authority. Showing real signs of age, Eastwood gave what feels like the richest performance up to that point in his career.

In 1983, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway (Clint Eastwood) is allowed to walk away from drunk and disorderly charges — including urinating on a police car — due to his distinguished service in both Korea and Vietnam. Despite his contempt for authority and loose tongue, Highway is so gung ho about being a Marine that he earns a transfer back to his old unit: 2nd Recon Battalion, 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Reuniting with a sergeant major (Arlen Dean Snyder) he survived a battle with at the so-called Heartbreak Ridge in Korea when they were army corpsmen, Highway runs afoul with Annapolis football hero Major Malcolm A. Powers (Evertt McGill) who’s displeased as much with Highway’s age and his record of insubordination, commenting, “Well I ask for Marines, the division sends me relics.”

The sloppy recon platoon Gunny Highway is assigned — “The Marines are looking for a few good men. Unfortunately, you ain’t it” — regrets the day they met him. This includes Corporal “Stitch” Jones (Mario Van Peebles), a loudmouth who ripped Highway off on the bus ride to Lejeune. Accustomed to serving as target practice for 1^st Platoon, Recon is whipped into combat shape by Highway. He has less success rebuilding a relationship with his ex-wife Aggie (Marsha Mason), a barmaid who tired of waiting at home for Highway to return from whatever war zone he volunteered for. Termed an “0-0-1” by Powers — 0 wins, 1 tie for Korea, 1 loss for Vietnam — Highway gets a shot at redemption when the Marines are deployed to Grenada to free American medical students stranded by a Communist coup d’état on that Caribbean island.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 12 users: 83% for Heartbreak Ridge

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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