Tag Archives: Horror

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October 8, 2025

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The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

I have fallen three weeks behind on a couple of films, and my guilt is finally catching up with me, I need to get these done, so I will start with a pretty simple one. There are nine films in this universe of horror movies, but only three that focus on the Warrens as they try to help families deal with supernatural and evil hauntings. The original “The Conjuring” was one of my favorite films of 2013. I have seen some of the other films, but none of them has kept me as engaged as the original and the follow up . These have been the solid kinds of horror films that I always enjoy. The new and apparently final film in this specific series is for the most part effective and does the things you want a horror film to do.

There has been chatter among the LAMB community, about the slighting of the Smurl Family story in focusing on the Warrens in this film. I completely understand from an individual perspective, but since this is the third film in the direct line, and the Warrens are the tissue that connect the stories, I did not resent this refocus as much as some of my friends did. It is true, that the events in the house in Pennsylvania could have been to focus of the movie, but I have not read the stories and background on all of these cases, so I don’t know how sturdy the framework of the original experience would be in supporting a two hour feature. I also think that Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have been troopers over the last dozen years, and it seems fair to give the characters they have given life to, a bit stronger part as a conclusion to their story.

You will find the requisite number of jump scares, moments of dread and special effects, that make up an accomplished horror film. This is not an indie movie, making due with a limited budget and a far out concept. “Last Rites” is a studio film, done with the resources needed to sell this as a major motion picture, but also directed with enough professional panache to feel like you are getting something that is not just formula. Director Michael Chavez might easily have fallen into that trap, as he did with a couple of the other films in the universe, neither of which has a great reputation. The convoluted story suggests some screen writing patchwork, but Chavez manages to get it to hang together, in spite of the bifurcated story structure.

It is not as if there are big surprises in store for you. This is not a twist based story. This is a character narrative with a haunting as the background. Because the Warrens are portrayed at the start and the ends of their careers as paranormal investigators, they are played by two sets of actors. The flashback cast looks solid enough to pass for younger versions of the leads, so that is a plus. Wilson and Farmiga both seem to relish these roles enough to put in some energy into what they are doing.  All of the other characters are solid but do not get much time to develop personalities that would make them compelling. The dad in the family will be defined by his jump scare moments, and the Warrens daughter will mostly be the puppet of the evil spirit. The young future son-in law has some screen charisma, so that helps as well.

From an audience perspective, this movie delivers what brings people to the theaters. Their sphincters will tighten for long periods, they will be grossed out or shocked a couple of times, and there are two solid jump scares to make you scream. It may not be perfect, or particularly original, but it is extremely competent technically, and the script issues will not matter in the long run. Have fun holding you popcorn and squirming in your seat.

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September 20, 2025

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Him (2025)

I should have known from the trailer that I was not going to be a fan of this film. Everything in the movie is the antitheses of what football fans care about in the game. This film takes the fever dream rantings of a person like Colin Kaepernick, and turns them into an incoherent horror film that lacks any narrative and ignores the majority of the aspects of the game. It attempts to send a message about obsessive devotion to the game, through a vaguely supernatural Faustian myth. Although it succeeded at creating a tense atmosphere for the first half of the film, it undercuts those moments repeatedly by the usual trope of it being a dream sequence or hallucination. When the end of the film comes up, I wanted to laugh at the whole thing, and dismiss the elements of the movie that might have made it worth watching to start with.

So in fairness, let me say that the two stars, Marlon Wayans and Tyriq Withers are excellent. Withers is Cameron Cade, a college quarterback, getting ready to transition to the pros. Early on we see his childish hero worship of the game and it’s leading star, nurtured and mirrored by his father, who has passed on. It is never explicitly stated, but there is an implication that his father was killed in action while serving as a Marine. The background stereotypes of a nurturing mother, passed over brother and clinging agent, would be eyerolling if they were any larger part of the film. Everything outside of the scenario that makes up the main part of the story, is simply filler for the main event. Cam has the talent and skills needed to supplant his hero as the new hope of the Saviors, his favorite team, that is until a moment that could be the set up for a much better movie but is wasted on this.

 Isaiah White is the reigning G.O.A.T. of the football league in the film. White has won the league championship eight times and has a cult of worshippers. Cam could have been one of those fans if he did not have the enthusiasm of his youth and the drive of his father behind him. Marlon Wayans is the quarterback that seems to have recovered from a devastating injury, but at what price?  Isaiah is intense and takes Cam into his home training facility, to help him recover the edge that he seems to have lost from the earlier incident. Wayans plays the intensity with humor at times, and with ferocious antagonism at other points. Is he a mentor, a competitor or a predator? This was a good dramatic performance from an actor who is usually known for his comedic roles. His physique is also a key player in the movie, being pushed in Cam’s face as a standard to measure himself by.

The training field, recovery rooms and therapy locations, all feel real but they are set in a building constructed to look like a vaginal opening to enter, and then a series of fallopian tube hallways to navigate. The house feels like it was hewn from the stone that it sets on rather than being constructed on that isolated location. The lighting in every area except the field is mood lighting with a heavy accent on dark shadows. Earlier in the film, there was a similar sort of lighting on the practice field where Cam encounters the starting point of the strange journey. 

That’s it for the things to recommend the film (with the exception of s spinning football). The story that exists in this world is unfocused and relies on ambiguity to such a degree that you will feel as lost as Cam does on occasion. I have seen plenty of horror films that rely an ambiguity as part of the storytelling. From the 1970s, two films fit that mode perfectly, “Phantasm” and “The Brotherhood of Satan”. Ultimately, the lack of clarity in those films is cleared up by the way the stories play out. “Him” feels no need to clarify what is going on, in fact it doubles down on the murkiness of what is happening with a climax that contains things that would fit easily into the first parts of those old movies. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo about gladiators and earning your spot rather than buying it with a sacrifice that gets you there. Cam is supposed to spend a week with Isaiah, and for some reason, the film is structured with a label for each day. Unfortunately, the labels have nothing to do with what unfolds during the day. It feels like an attempt to dress the events in some profundity that is just not there. 

The last horror film that I laughed at, not for it’s intend humor but for it’s stupidity, was “Us”, a Jordan Peele film. Peele produced this movie, so maybe his sensibilities are occasionally suspect. I loved “Get Out” and “Nope”, but there is a flaw in the reasoning of the producer here.  Zack Akers,Skip Bronkie, and Justin Tipping are the credited screenwriters, so they are to blame for most of the boring story line that builds no tension and tries to let the production design do all the heavy lifting. Tipping is the director so he gets credit for the look of the film but also the blame for it’s lack of energy. Mood itself is not enough to create something interesting. 

I suppose this film might appeal to critics of football as a sport. The violent nature of the game and the risk of injury are lampooned with a sneer that will put off most people who care about the game. The satanic plantation mentality of the writers will also please those who see a game that is so economically successful, that it must be run by the devil. The owner of the team could play Lucifer in a Faustian story if this film were clearer on what it is saying. The closer we got to the end of the movie, the less I cared about the outcome. That is not the sign of a well written script. You will read about this film again on this site when I put together a list of the worst films of the year. There have been plenty of dogs in theaters in 2025, this one may be the biggest in the kennel. 

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September 16, 2025

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Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2003/2004) Robert Rodriguez Presents Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

When it was announced over twenty years ago, that “Kill Bill” would be split into two parts, it was a disappointment to me. I was perfectly fine with a four plus hour epic from Quentin Tarantino. Fortunately, sounder heads were in charge of marketing in the early 2000s and the choice to divide the picture makes perfect sense. There is a clear demarcation point between the two films and audiences were not really as tolerant of long films as I might have been. Tarantino himself suggested that there were various ways that the film could be presented, but he was firm that it was all one big complete story. So to finish off the Paramount Summer Classic Film Series, our local hero Robert Rodriguez, collaborator and friend of Quentin Tarantino, presented the whole bloody saga for us, with a introduction to each film.

The house was packed with 1200 attendees and the crowd was raucous, maybe not “RRR” raucous, but still very lively.

The first volume of “Kill Bill” has the most stylized elements of the story. After the brutal fight in a suburban home, that ends with an invitation to a child to seek vengeance when she gets older, we get more context about why this bloody tale of revenge is being told. There is a significant anime sequence that gives us an origin story of O-Ren, the first on the target list but the second one we see in the movie. First we got the killing of Vernita Green, including a breakfast cereal gunfight. Then we get the Bride’s story of recovery and setting out on the path of revenge. There is a lot of grim humor in the story, which is characteristic of Tarantino, and all the people who insist that he has a foot fetish will find plenty of ammunition for that charge. As usual, Quentin is playing with his time line.

Audiences who had not been regular consumers of Eastern Martial Arts movies were about to get an extended lesson in how to do it. I reject to concept of cultural appropriation, I think everyone is entitled to use artistic styles that they are comfortable with. I am just surprised that there were not more charges of appropriation against Tarantino because he makes himself at home in a crime drama with samurai warriors that feels like it was created in Tokyo or Hong Kong. 

The Chapter labeled “Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves” is one of the most spectacular action sequences you will ever encounter. The colors are vivid, the music is a mix of pop and rock songs filtered through a nightclub vibe that is based in Japanese tropes. The overwhelming number of the “Crazy 88” that fall to the Bride’s sword is preposterous but somehow we can accept it because Uma Thurman sells determination and skill with an amazing physical performance. When she finally faces off against Lucy Liu in the snow covered courtyard, it is an amazing visual conception. 

This second introduction was full of information that I was not aware of before, and it was presented with the same cheerful demeanor that Rodriguez has always shown at these events. 

“Kill Bill Vol. 2” is more grounded than the first film. The stylized sets and musical segments are toned down in favor of a gritty environment. If the first fil was filled with the martial arts fantasies of the 1970s, the second film is set in the grimy styles of 70s grindhouse fare. Michael Madsen is not a glamourous killer looking at his art collection between assignments, he is a guilt ridden alcoholic working as a drone at the sleaziest and most disgusting strip bar imaginable, and living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. Unlike the first film, there is not a lot of variety in the locations in which Beatrice Kiddo gets her revenge on Bud and Elle Driver. Daryl Hannah shows up in Bud’s dilapidated domicile, and the epic sword fight we might have expected gets truncated to a gruesome joke, a little aqueous humor, a nice visual punch.

Along the way we did get a montage of training under the tutelage of Pai Mei, a lesson in pimp business practices by Bill’s surrogate father, and a lecture on comic book personas from Bill himself, all of which are entertaining to some degree or other. 

If you listen to the second introduction, you will get a nice story about the two credit sequences, including a surprise about the song.

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September 2, 2025

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The Outsiders (1983) Alamo Drafthouse Movie Party

In spite of the fact that “The Outsiders” was released in 1983 and was made by one of my favorite directors, it has only just dawned on me that I had never seen it. I have been to NYC twice to see the musical stage adaptation, and I own the Complete Novel Version DVD/Blu-ray of the film, so I thought I’d had this as part of my history, but while watching it, I came to the realization that this was a completely new experience for me. Knowing the story is not the same as seeing actors play out the roles on screen or watching a director make choices to emphasize one visual element over another.

I have been lax this summer in keeping up with my blog and the films that I have seen. Some of this passivity is a result of the large number of retrospective films I have been seeing, but an even bigger influence has been my devotion to the LAMBcast episodes and the videos, which take up a lot of my time and reprioritize my efforts. Which is why this post is both late and not as complete as I had originally intended. in the first few years of this blog, I wrote about the films I saw immediately after seeing the movie. Sometimes I would stay up into the next morning to get my thoughts down completely. That has not been the case for the last couple of years and since I don’t take notes, when a post goes up days or even weeks after a screening, I have forgotten many of the things I wanted to write about while watching the film. That has happened with this movie.

I know there were performance moments that I thought were great, but I cannot recall the images or nuances that struck me at the time. I do know that I thought the church fire scene worked much more effectively in this film than I was expecting. C. Thomas Howell and Ralph Macchio were really strong in the film and this sequence was a standout. 

Francis Ford Coppola and his cinematographer Stephen Buram, captured the golden hue of the evening that matches the poem and the theme for Ponyboy at the end of the movie. In fact, the whole film does a nice job of creating the 60s era without over doing cultural images that give us a shorthand way of seeing the time period.  

The rest of the cast was also great, with Matt Dillon and Rob Lowe the standouts. Tom Cruise is in the edges of the film and his breakout role in “Risky Business” came this same year. Many of the cast members were reunited for “Red Dawn” the John Milius film of 12984, and they all seemed to play off of each other pretty well. 

If I see the film again, I will try to be quicker in writing about it so that you get a more complete picture of my experience. Until them Stay Golden. 

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August 16, 2025

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Weapons (2025)

While I was watching this movie, I was not sure if I liked it or not. There were a number of things about it that were intriguing, but it also seemed to be taking a long while to get to the point. I like a Slow Burn, after all I grew up on the films of the ’70s, where everything was a Slow Burn. Weapons however, seem like every time it got to second gear it downshifted again. The reason for this is the storytelling structure of the film. In the end I’ve come down on the side that this is a terrific way to tell the story and I should get over my occasional sense of impatience.

I don’t think it gives away too much to tell you that the story is told around six distinct characters. Also the narrative path is a little bit like “Memento”, where the previous sequence means more after we’ve seen the follow-up sequence. Stories are interlocking, but they rarely repeat the same Beats. There might be a brief moment or two, that is repeated in each of the sequences, but for the most part they stand alone and give us the kind of context that make the events feel more real and a heck of a lot more interesting.

Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, and Benjamin Wong, are all terrific in their roles as players in this horror scenario. As an unjustly maligned teacher, Garner is sympathetic but she is also not perfect. Her flaws make her a better protagonist. The only character who doesn’t have an obvious flaw is Benjamin Wong, as the school principal Marcus. He is the epitome of an effective principal would be like. That of course makes it particularly disturbing when we see the first truly horrific scene in the film. Up until the part where Marcus loses it, our main horror element was dread. When the turn here takes place, it is fear and revulsion that take over.

There is a major character in the story that I’m not going to talk about, because it feels like it would be a spoiler. Although seen around the edges of two or three of the opening sequences, it is only when this character steps into one of those stories openly, that we start to figure out what the hell is going on with the children who have vanished. 

Director Zach Cregger, who previously made the film “Barbarian”, has interesting ideas and fun Concepts in his stories. And well they are admirable I’m not going to buy into the hype that these films are exceptional. There are still narrative problems, and inconsistencies, but Cregger does have the ability to direct the film well enough to distract us from those flaws , and still deliver something highly entertaining to watch.

For the first two thirds of the film this feels like a melodrama, posing as a horror film. Once we get to the final character story, The Narrative plays itself out straight, and the usual horror elements do appear. The climax of the film does feature several deaths, and disturbing images, and surprisingly a little bit of Hope for some of the characters who are left. I do need to say however that the film starts off telling us a lie, which distracts us from what’s really happening, and then ignores the lie at the end of the film. As long as you don’t mind being Hoodwinked into seeing a film that is not what is advertised in the opening moments, weapons will satisfy your Jones for a summer horror flick. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn great.

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August 7, 2025

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Robert Rodriguez Presents: Double Feature Robocop and Starship Troopers-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

Sunday was a double dose of Paul Verhoeven satire and action. The first movie was the perfection that is “Robocop”. I don’t know if I can count the number of times I have seen this film. I do know that I have seen it at least a half dozen times on the big screen, including a 2023 screening right here at the Paramount Theater. Quentin Tarantino apparently agrees with me that the script is perfect. What is also perfect are the performances from the main actors in the film. Dr. Peter Weller fully commits to the persona of the cyborg, but only after charming us as the eager to please Dad and new partner.

Kirkwood Smith, sneers his way thru the movie as the repulsive Clarence Boddicker, the crime boss of old Detroit. Although they don’t all get as much time to display their horrendous sides to us, the four toadies that make up his crew are equally loathsome, with special emphasis on Paul McCrane as Emil, the one bad guy who gets a deservingly nasty end to his story.  

I have always loved stop motion animation when it is integrated into real life surroundings. Ray Harryhausen was a cinema hero to me. Phil Tippet and his crew do a great job with ED-209, with little touches everywhere that add to the humor and tension of the film.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/2149667739&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true

Richard Kirkham · 2025_08_03_19_02_28

Robert Rodriguez Presented both films and his opening remarks are in the message above.

Starship Troopers came out a decade after “Robocop” but it contained a lot of the same bitter satire that the earlier movie did. The hostility to fascism is clear, but of course it is largely missed because we get engaged in Johnny Rico’s story and we can admire his mentors in spite of their authoritarian tendencies. Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown are terrific as the older generation, trying to mold the youth of this world into soldiers and subsequently citizens.  It also doesn’t help the anti-fascist theme to have Rico’s parents be a couple of mealy mouthed characters that today might be revered to as woke.

The Special Effects in the film were pretty impressive for 1997. The vast numbers of bugs that the Mobile Infantry has to face is intimidating. Anyone who has dealt with an ant infestation will recognize how much we are outnumbered. In this world however, the bugs are not small and you can’t just stomp on them. 

Our host is friends with the star of the film and got him on the phone when it was time to go to the second movie. 

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Richard Kirkham · 2025_08_03_21_11_17

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August 7, 2025

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Psycho (1960) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series-2025

One of the great masterpieces of Cinema played on the Paramount screen last Wednesday, and once again I was there to appreciate it. What I was really flabbergasted by though, was the fact that so many people in the audience were seeing “Psycho” for the first time. Our host, the programmer of the Paramount Classic Summer Film Series, asked for a show of hands for people who had never seen “Psycho”. It was hard to believe that almost a third of the audience in attendance that night raised their hands.

The rest of us, who are seeing “Psycho” for the umpteenth time, waited in glee for the many twists and turns that take place during the story. In the long prologue to the violence, Marion Cranes transaction with the used car dealer got a lot of laughs, but you could also sense a great deal of tension in the audience. In fact the laughter that came from the audience almost certainly was generated by people who had seen the movie before and knew the irony of a particular statement, we’re waiting for the turn that comes very quickly.

Once again I think the best scene in the movie takes place in the parlor as Norman Bates tries to relate to Marion, but marks himself as a strange fellow with every sentence he utters. We can still empathize with Norman at that moment, because of the brilliance of Anthony Perkins performance. We can also see the moment of redemption when Marion decides to face her mistakes and return to Phoenix and try and clear up the horrible decision she had made. This is the moment where the movie turns from being a mere thriller to a tragedy, and the two actors in the scene are both brilliant in the way they play their parts.

It must be nearly impossible in modern culture to be on the outside of the big twist in Psycho. 25 years ago I tried to keep my kids from knowing about Norman Bates and his mother, until they had a chance to see the film for themselves. Social media, YouTube, endless memes, all results in fewer surprises for film audiences. That’s too bad. One of my friends on the Lambcast refuses to watch trailers for films, and I completely understand her perspective. I just wish trailers didn’t give so much away. But I still need to have some sense of what a film is about if I’m going to decide to watch it. I think we could use more trailers like the one above, famous for Alfred Hitchcock walking us through the set of his movie.

Anytime you can watch “Psycho” from beginning to end, you should take advantage of it. Anytime you can see it with an audience in a real theater, the real crime would be skipping it.

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August 7, 2025

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The Shallows (2016)-Revisit

A lot of people when asked what it is the best shark movie after Jaws, might choose Deep Blue Sea. I saw DBS a week or two ago and was once again impressed with how much fun the movie is. Genetically altered sharks, hunting humans, in the middle of a natural disaster, is obviously a lot of fun. The story is filled with mayhem related to the cumulative destruction of the Marine Research Center where the sharks are housed. As entertaining as this film is however, I must say that it pales in comparison in regard to tension, anxiety, and reality, to the shallows.

This is practically a one-woman show, as Blake Lively plays a surfer, confronting a shark in a shallow bay, somewhere on the Mexican Coast. The setup for the film is very strong, there’s a reason that nobody will miss her for a night, and there’s a reason that the shark lingers in the area, which doesn’t require it to have any particular emotional Arc that it is following. Unlike Jaws the Revenge, it’s not really personal it’s instinct.

Our protagonist is Nancy, a medical student who is uncertain that she wants to continue and become a doctor. She’s retracing the steps of her deceased mother, to locate an isolated beach in a bay that was her mother’s favorite place. She caught a ride with a local, while her traveling companion has been rendered incapable of going with her by inebriation and infatuation with man that she met near their hotel. So Nancy is on her own except for a couple of other surfers with whom she shares the secret of the perfect waves in this idyllic location.

The shark who becomes her nemesis, is there feasting on a whale that it has killed and which is floating into the bay. Perhaps even more harrowing than the shark, which is a consistent threat, is the shallow reef and rock formations, which have rendered Nancy injured, bleeding, and trapped on. After an initial attack, Nancy looks for refuge as she tries to figure out how to reach the shore while the shark doggedly pursues her and lingers in the area attracted by both the whale and her blood in the water.

The film builds a lot of tension, as others enter into this scenario, unaware of the danger that faces them as they interact with Nancy from her perch on a rock outcropping. Actually, Nancy has had three locations from which she tries to stay away from the shark. The first is on the floating dead whale, but as that is like seeking sanctuary on a a dinner plate, that location is not secure for long. The high and low tides exposed part of the reef and shallow rock bottom, at least enough to give Nancy a safe spot to contemplate her woes. Her injuries are significant, including a bite wound that threatens to leach the life away from her. It is convenient that as a budding physician, Nancy understands how to apply a tourniquet and create a pressure bandage out of part of her wetsuit. The Third location that she seeks protection on is it nearby buoy,  which becomes her final refuge in the extended confrontation with the shark.

They are desperate attempts to acquire materials that will help her in her fight, some of which work and some of which fail. Her hopes are raised by the arrival of others on the beach, but those hopes are often dashed by the motives of the beachcombers, or by the actions of the shark. As horrifying as a shark bite would be, the moments that caused me physical pain watching the film came from seeing her tumble on the rocks or crawl across the poisonous coral. There’s also a painful interlude with jellyfish, all of which will give you plenty of reason to cringe in your seat.

Most shark movies have some goofy element to them , or a human conflict in the background. “The Shallows” takes an experience that is very serious, and treats it in a way that makes you share the pain and frustration of our protagonist. The only thing that might make this movie feel a little artificial, is the climax and the resolution with the shark. It is dramatically solid, although a little improbable. In the end though none of it matters because we’ve spent two hours living an incident completely through our senses, and hope never to have to share.

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July 31, 2025

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Boogie Nights (1997)-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

I could have sworn I’d written about this film before, but as I looked for any version of a review on the site I came up empty. It must simply be that I’ve talked about it with other people on a regular basis and so I thought I had actually written something about the movie. There are a couple reasons why this feels somewhat personal, but it has nothing to do with my drug use or participation in the adult film industry. Many of the reasons that I identify with this film have to do with the time and setting of the movie, which in some ways do parallel my own life.

The house that Eddie, our main character, lives in with his parents, before he becomes Dirk Diggler, is in Torrance California and it looks exactly like the home of my college debate partner who lived in Torrance. The interior layout and the exterior Frontage might very well have been filmed in his neighborhood. In 1981, which would be in the middle of the time that this film is set, I had a summer job making deliveries of photographic supplies to a variety of businesses, and one of my routes consisted of the San Fernando Valley. Famously, this was the home of the pornography industry at the time, much like it’s depicted in the film. Some of the locations that I made deliveries to were in fact producing magazines that were largely pornographic. So I have a tangential connection to what was going on. The one element of the film however that most closely connects me to the story, is maybe the most compelling scene in the film, the drug deal that goes wrong. One of my closest friends in college took a wrong turn and ended up working as a low-level drug dealer, in the valley. By the time he was doing this I only saw him occasionally for lunch or to talk to on the phone just to check in. I was not immersed in his lifestyle, except that there was one experience when we met for lunch and I drove him to a location where he was making drop off of his supplies. It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I ever had with him. A year later he was murdered by his partners in the drug business. So although the experience is not exactly the same I can certainly share the perspective of how crazy and dangerous the times were.

My personal connections with the story aside, this is an incredibly watchable movie that is propulsive and uses needle drops and inserts to create a sense of verisimilitude. There are some truly great performances in the film, Mark Wahlberg gives us a desperate, insecure character in the last act, for whom you can feel surprising sympathy. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a minor character in the film, but he develops a sense of pity from us that feels quite realistic. Burt Reynolds notoriously disowned the film, but his performance in it, as the father figure / pornographic film director, is one of his career best. Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Robert Ridgely, John C Reilly, and a dozen other players all create characters with big faults that we still find ourselves empathizing with, to our surprise.

I was flying solo at this performance at the Paramount, and I got there a little bit later than I usually do. I had to sit near the back on the orchestra level because the theater was packed for this Thursday night screening. The audience was incredibly receptive, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who is not making his debut with this film but for whom this was my first exposure, impressed me and everybody else with how this movie was put together.

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The Wild Bunch (1969)- Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

It only happens occasionally but this is one of those times, a film will enter my regular blog posts, but also be included in the Strathmore film project. Strother has a minor part in his great 1968 Western directed by Sam Peckinpaugh, a man that Strother had worked with before and would work with again. Any film fan is familiar with the Wild Bunch and it’s significance as part of the new Hollywood.

An elegantin Western sit near the end of the frontier days, the Wild Bunch is about the passing of old ways, and the violence that ensues. The film stars William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, and Warren Oats as a band of Outlaws whose competence is in question, and who is being pursued by a posse of prairie scum led by their former compatriot played by Robert Ryan. As surprising as it might seem there are themes of loyalty in the film, and when considering the nature of these men, loyalty is not one of the characteristics you would expect. In fact there is a clear example of such hypocrisy at the very beginning of the film. In escaping from the town and the trap that had been set for them, they abandoned their youngest member, to be set upon by the citizens after the others have escaped.

There is virtually no one in the film that could be described as an honorable person. Everyone is guilty of some form of murder or theft. However, there are moments when the bandits act with dignity, and a sense of a moral code, that seems so foreign to the way they act to the rest of the time. In addition to the issue of loyalty, the biggest theme seems to be autonomy. No one in the film, from the bandits to the Posse to the Mexican soldiers, wants to be told what to do or how to act. The desire to have command over your own decisions seems to be a strong motivator, especially for Holden and Borgnine.

Robert Ryan as an aging Bandit himself, now trapped into leading a posse against his former partners, is the poster child for the theme of autonomy. His inability to act in the manner that he wants, and the fact that he is forced to work with characters for whom he has disdain, is another driving force in the film. Two of the scum that ride with the Posse are TC and Coffer, played by Buddies lq Jones and Strother Martin. If there is anything close to comic relief in the film by these two losers, who bicker with each other like an old married couple over issues like whose bullet killed a victim in the streets, or which one of them gets to keep the boots of the latest dead man they have found. While Pike Bishop and Dutch Engstrom are hardly models of social nicety, they certainly Tower over the likes of Deke Thornton’s mob of Misfits.

Sam Peckinpaugh  became famous for the stylized violence in his films, often featuring slow motion deaths. This is the film that probably initiated that reputation. The movie is bookended by two over the top shootouts, which feature Mass deaths in slow motion bullet holes and falls. If there is a third theme running through the film, it may be that violence is inevitable and inevitably futile. There is a coda to the film which also includes violence, but after the massacre of the Mexican troops and the Wild Bunch itself, Peck and Paul wisely allows the massacre of the Posse to occur off screen. So anyone who says that Peck and paw shows no restraint must have missed this last scene.

There’s a lot more to the movie than the two big shootouts, but I’ll leave that for another time. I have no doubt that I will return to the Wild Bunch for a separate entry on the Strother Martin film project. For now it’s just a pleasure to have seen the film once again on the big screen, and bathe in the Macho themes and images that dominate this movie.