Ape Watch: Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

It's been about 24 hours since I finished watching Every Which Way But Loose (1978), and I'm glad that I didn't have time nor energy to write much about it immediately after turning off the TV.  I don't want to give the movie too much credit, but as the credits rolled, I was left thinking what an odd product of its time the movie really was.  And the more I thought about it, the odder the movie seemed.

It's action star Clint Eastwood, well established in everything from the Spaghetti Westerns he'd conquer to the Dirty Harry movies to Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes.  And then he goes off and makes a movie where it seems the biggest draw is the inexplicable inclusion of an orangutan that doesn't seem to really drive the plot.

Eastwood plays Philo Beddoe, a tow-truck driver who seems to know his only real skill is with his fists.  So good is he, he both never backs down from a fight and he earns no small amount of side-money in illegal bare-knuckle matches in parking lots and on factory floors.  He's distinctly blue-collar, as is the movie (something that would fade within 10 years), all of the characters scraping by and living outside of polite society.  Philo meets a lovely young country star, Lynn, and for once he seems interested in something beyond the next moment.

Lynn seems to be in some trouble with an ex, and departs somewhat abruptly.  Philo grabs his Orangutan and decides to follow her.

Along the way, Philo and his buddy (his brother?  I wasn't clear) Orville stumble across the same ridiculous biker gang over and over, the biker gang losing bikes and fights along the way.  And Philo accidentally draws the attention of a cop who would just as soon throw his career away to find Philo for the humiliating beating he takes in a bar.

Deep down, I think this movie was trying to be something a bit more than a movie about a guy, an ape and punching out dopey bikers and cops.  And it sort of succeeds.  There's a certain lovely pointlessness to the movie, a sort of open-ended road-trip mentality that wants to embrace absurdity that never quite ever realizes that usually there's a sort of point to the pointlessness.  Yeah, we get that Philo relates better to the silent ape than people and it's through Clyde that he works out that he's even having feelings, but, I dunno.  There's just not a whole lot of payoff that seems so close to occurring.

I'm not sure the kids are aware that as big of a deal as disco may have been in the 70's, country music was a sort of omnipresent force as well. Hee-Haw was a thing which people happily watched. The movie does have some nice cameos, and does have a pretty good theme song:

Happy Birthday to Ms. Lynda Carter (she's a wonder!)

Today is the 64th Birthday of Lynda Carter, perhaps most famous for her role as Wonder Woman in the 1970's TV series.

We're big fans of Ms. Carter here at League HQ, and we hope she's twirling herself into a fantastic birthday.

In addition to still appearing on TV and in movies, of late, Lynda Carter has been lending her voice to a series of video games called The Elder Scrolls and has been singing in various venues across the country.

Shark Watch: Sharknado 3

I don't know how you people are wasting your life, but here's how I'm wasting mine:

Thursday evening saw the broadcast of Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, the third installment in the Sharknado franchise which seems like it started a million years ago, but, no, apparently began in 2013.

The first Sharknado movie I caught on the 10:00 PM rebroadcast after twitter blew up and piqued my curiosity.  I hadn't initially tuned in, as the matching of the SyFy Network, slumming actors and sharks was absolutely nothing new.  For good or ill, I can't tell you how many shark-related Asylum films I've seen on the network, but it's been way, way more than I should really be talking about if I want to retain any credibility, anywhere.

In the end, the combo of clearly-not-quite-recovered actress Tara Reid, world's best sport Ian Ziering, veteran actor John Heard, and a water spout full of sharks making its way across LA was, indeed, chicken soup for the soul.

Signal Watch Reads: Flashfire (a Parker Novel)

As much as the folks write the introductions in these books want to say otherwise, when Stark came back to Parker after decades of being away, it's pretty clear his worldview had changed a bit, what he could and wanted to do in a heist book had altered.  But, you know, you're talking about the 15th or so book of the Parker series, and, if you include the 4 Grofield novels, this is the 19th written under the nom de plume of Richard Stark rather than Donald Westlake.

It's an oddly silly Parker novel, a pretty far cry from The Seventh or The Sour Lemon Score, and after however many years of writing Dortmunder novels, I have to assume it all bleeds together for the writer.  Also, as in the return novels, a lot relies on coincidence and hoping the reader isn't thinking too hard about possible holes in the plot.

Marvel Watch: Ant-Man (2015)

I was never skeptical of an Ant-Man movie.  For folks who have long followed my ramblings, you know I have a very simple rule for why I'll give anything a go when it comes to sci-fi and superheroes:  there is no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution.  Frankly, when people were predicting doom for Guardians of the Galaxy because (oh my goodness!) it wasn't a known quantity!  and it had a raccoon and tree-man! I was left scratching my head and saying: well, those aren't actually problems for a movie.   Those are just new or odd things.

Re: Ant-Man comics:  I have a pretty huge gap in my comics' knowledge regarding Hank Pym as Ant-Man from the classic Marvel U, and I was just left confused by Mark Millar's take on Pym in The Ultimates, that I sort of believe has taken Pym off the playing board for Marvel forever.  I'm totally unfamiliar with anything about Scott Lang other than that - he exists in the comics, I guess?  It seems like I saw him in a Marvel role-playing game supplement.  At some point I read one issue of something called Irredeemable Ant-Man, which didn't really work for me.

So, there you go.  I basically can't tell you anything about Ant-Man as a comics figure beyond the period in the 1980's when Hank Pym was adventuring with no mask and just growing and shrinking things and using the heroic name "Hank Pym" as part of West Coast Avengers.  But check in with me if you have questions about Super Turtle.  I have wisdom.

As per the movie?

Noir Watch: 99 River Street (1953)

As part of TCM's Summer of Darkness, this evening Eddie Muller showed 99 River Street (1953), a noir I'd somehow started once but never quite finished.  Given the issues we had with our last DVR, I believe that it just got pushed off the DVR when we accidentally recorded an all-day Archer marathon or something.

I'm not surprised Muller showed this one, but am, perhaps, surprised it took him this long.  I've heard him speak about Evelyn Keyes, a woman he met before her passing, and he spoke with tremendous admiration, and this movie fits as neatly in with the more rough and tumble noir as anything.  I've seen Keyes in a few movies, and she's a surprising talent.  Maybe more striking than beautiful, but with a certain calculating intelligence she brings to her roles that I like.

Comedy Subterfuge Watch: Spies Like Us (1985) and Top Secret! (1984)

I dunno.  Do I really have to talk about these movies?  I'm tired.

Yeah.  I'm not going to write about these movies.  I like Top Secret! much, much more than Spies Like Us.  How's that?

Ape Watch: Tarzan The Ape Man (1932)

As you may recall, I recently read Tarzan of the Apes.   I don't tend to believe the cosmos is telling me anything, but I also try not to ignore coincidence.  Because, hey, serendipity counts for something.

TCM featured "Ape Day", I believe, the other day, with all sorts of simian cinema, with everything from King Kong to Planet of the Apes to Every Which Way But Loose, and, of course, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), the first Johnny Weissmuller/ Maureen O'Sullivan Tarzan movie.

I have seen this movie in bits and pieces, but I don't think I'd seen it straight through until now.  And, people, it's pretty amazing.  In fact, we're going to roll out our new feature... the Stefon.  So you'll know when:

Happy Birthday to Barbara Stanwyck (b. 1907)

It's funny how the mass audience only remembers a few actors from says gone by. I am sure most people know the name Barbara Stanwyck, but as time marches on, I'm not sure how many folks know her by site or have seen her films. I haven't seen that many, and I tend to give a movie a chance if I know she's in the credits.

She's an amazingly versatile actress from an era when that wasn't always appreciated so much as playing yourself in different costumes and time periods (see: Judy Garland).  But here's just a few highlights.

Clash by Night

Bloom County Returns

Kids today will never understand a world with 3 TV networks, 1 or 2 newspapers and you all kind of know what's going on with those media outlets at all times.  Up to and including newspaper comic strips.

I was a kid who got up every morning to make enough extra time to read the funnies in their entirety.  I followed Mary Worth for years and will never understand any appeal to that strip that wasn't entirely ironic, but read it every day in order to not miss the one or two days per year where something actually happened.*  Like every other kid of the early 1980's, I liked Garfield first, and spread out to the rest of the comics page thanks to, first, stuff like Peanuts and Tumbleweeds, and later The Far Side and, of course, Calvin and Hobbes.

Back then, syndicated comic strips were big, big business.  Because strips appeared in the paper, you bought collections, the cartoonists would sell dolls, t-shirts, etc...  Maybe even cartoons, like Peanuts.  But if you did well, you could become a household name.

I don't remember exactly when I first noticed Bloom County, but I do remember my brother purchasing the first collection somewhere along the line.  He kept reading, bursting into laughter, then showing me the strip, so we wound up sitting on the floor reading it together, laughing so hard we cried.