LOVING VINCENT

What the team behind Loving Vincent achieves is a mixed blessing. The movie is meticulously handpainted by a 100 or so artists, so the roiling skies and swirling suns depicted by Vincent Van Gogh seem to undulate before our eyes. The living actors are "animated," though animation is too cheap a word for the technique going on here. Their faces undulate, too. Almost to the point of distraction.

Van Gogh not only defined modern art, but set in motion the decades long cliche of the "crazy artist," made concrete by Kirk Douglas' scenery chewing performance in Lust For Life (1956). For many years the lasting image we had of Van Gogh was of Douglas holding his hand over a candle and gritting his teeth, or using a straight razor to slice off his ear. That is, until the 1990s when Tim Roth played the artist in Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo, an underplayed performance which said much about the way the culture had changed since Douglas' day. Douglas looked like he might detonate at many moment;  Roth was more insipid, wimpy.  I was curious to see how Van Gogh would be depicted in 2017, an era choking on its own political correctness. 

I admit that I  wanted to see an actor, not a an animated figure, as Vincent. What it all amounted to was something resembling the painstakingly crafted "rotoscope" cartoons developed by the Fleischer studios back in the days of Betty Boop. I also thought of Disney's Snow White, with her delicate gestures and dainty feet. Loving Vincent, of course, is more artful, and more realistic looking, but a cartoon is a cartoon. In a key scene, Vincent stares out at us from the screen; I saw neither madness nor brilliance, only the lifeless eyes of a drawn figure.

I could go on and on about the techniques used to illustrate this movie,  but I suggest you see it rather than let me try to explain how Van Gogh's bright stars and angry crows seem to come to life. It was a damn nifty trick, and there was a lot of thought involved, say, in casting the right actors to resemble characters in Van Gogh's paintings.  The  care that went into the production is admirable - artists on three continents worked on this thing - and will almost make you forget that the movie itself is so thin. Even the announcement at the film's start, which alerts us to the incredible amount of work that went into the creation of Loving Vincent, seems like a bulletproof vest wrapped around the movie. Don't you dare say anything bad about us, it implies, because we all worked so damned hard.  In the end, it is a work that seems both magical and rudimentary.

The story centers around Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth), the son of Van Gogh's postman, delivering a letter from Van Gogh to his brother, Theo. Vincent has been dead for a year, and the circumstances around his death are mysterious. Roulin, in the manner of Philip Marlowe questioning suspects in The Big Sleep, starts digging around the old neighborhood, trying to learn what he can about this strange painter who committed suicide at 37. Van Gogh's last months are revealed to us in flashback sequences. The painter (Robert Gulaczyk) is seen shambling around, from his rooming house to the wheat fields, occasionally hunched over a canvas, huffing and puffing. He was sometimes seen in the company of rowdy drunks, or fruitlessly trying to chat up women.

He was diligent about his work, though. There's a bit where kids spot him painting in a field and start throwing rocks at him; he simply picks up his easel and canvas and shuffles away, less because of the flying debris, and more because he wants to get on with his art. He painted outdoors even in violent rainstorms. It was as if he knew his time here would be short, and he was trying to get all of his work done before he imploded. We see him writing letters to his brother, asking for money. We see him playing with a little girl, teaching her to draw a chicken. Most people recall him as a clumsy loner, a "tramp." At least one person describes him as "evil," but most think of him as a local eccentric, sort of likeable. Meanwhile, Roulin chases around for witnesses, gets in a few fist fights, argues about the plight of the artist.

As Roulin tries to assemble the pieces of the  puzzle, he's baffled. Why would a man touched by genius want to take his life? After all, things were going fairly well for  Van Gogh once he left the asylum at Saint Remy. And though he wasn't selling his work, he certainly had his admirers. Then again, he had plenty of bitter rivals who were jealous of his talent, and things had grown stressful with Theo. Like characters in an Agatha Christie novel, everyone Roulin speaks to has a theory behind Van Gogh's death. Not everyone thinks Vincent committed suicide. Some think he was shot in the gut by a local roughneck. The movie wants to leave us wondering.

Ultimately, I liked Gulakzyk's portrayal of Van Gogh, visible even through the animation technique. He doesn't chew the landscape like Douglas, and he's not simpering like Roth. He's a rough, awkward man trying to prove that he's worth something. He had mental problems that could probably be tempered now with lithium, or some other drug. At the time, he was mercurial, prone to deep melancholy and hysteria, balanced by fits of lucidity and energy. This movie, though, is less about Van Gogh and more about the way people saw him, which is fitting for our era of gawkers, voyeurs, and gossip. It puts Van Gogh in a brightly colored fishbowl so we can look on and tell ourselves that we'd be kind to him, suggest he find a good therapist; maybe we'd  try to find him a wife on OKCupid. This, I suppose, is the current way we look at madness, as something we can take care of with hugs.  Loving Vincent, so full of anachronisms like "nutcase" and "How is that working out for ya?" is Van Gogh's story retold for the Oprah generation.

There is one sublime moment, however, and it is Van Gogh's death scene. He's in bed, bleeding, a country doctor at his side, when the room suddenly washes over in tones of dark blue and grey. There was something in the tableau that recalled Ingres' deathbed scene of Leonardo Da Vinci, where the revered artist is shown dying in the arms of the French king, but with Da Vinci's grandeur and stately bed replaced by Van Gogh's simple room. Unfortunately, the atmosphere was nearly ruined by a version of Don McLean's "Vincent" that plays over the closing credits,  a cloying song that doesn't quite reflect a man who saw stars bursting in the night, and skulls smoking cigarettes.

         

MY FRIEND DAHMER....

How to portray the development of a serial killer? Directors usually show them being abused, or under the influence of an older, sadistic relative, but for the most part the disturbed youngster  is shown staring off into space with vacant eyes, being awkward around women,  perhaps torturing an animal. We sit there waiting for the moment when he realizes how liberating it can be to take someone into the woods and cut their throat.

Rarely does a film present these killers as remotely human. It only happens when a filmmaker is bold enough to suggest these murderers grew up in ways most of us will recognize. Monster (2004) had some of this, where Charlize Theron played Eileen Wuornos as a deranged highway prostitute who, when she wasn't shooting men in the head, simply wanted to be loved like anyone else. Marc Meyers' My Friend Dahmer has this, too, in that America's favorite gay cannibal is shown in a high school environment that looks more or less like an episode of Freaks and Geeks.

Dahmer's madness is difficult to understand because it can't be easily labeled. Serial killers are all superficially similar - they work out their violent fantasies by murdering over and over again - but there are enough differences between say, Dahmer and Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, to keep them from being packaged together. Perhaps, like artists, serial murderers each express something unique.

Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the most baffling of serial killers. His psychosis was so personal that psychologists end up as puzzled as cartographers who have found an ancient map with unexplained landmasses near  Australia. My Friend Dahmer doesn't attempt a diagnosis. It simply examines the fact that Dahmer, who raped and murdered 17 young men and preserved their bones in his Milwaukee apartment,  had been a typical teenage misfit. He didn't kill because he enjoyed it, he killed because it was a means to an end. Even the usual serial killer trait of killing animals was of no interest to him; instead, he picked up roadkill and brought it home to study. How do you study the bodies of young men? They don't turn up on the road like flattened raccoons. You have to kill them.

Meyers' approach in My Friend Dahmer is very basic, but effective. He simply shows us what people do, lets us hear what they say. He  is most concerned with presenting Dahmer as a kid who played trumpet in the high school band and, for a while, had some notoriety as the class clown, a boy who would get laughs by bleating like a sheep or pretending to throw epileptic fits. If you didn't know Dahmer's story, you might watch this movie and think you're seeing the origin of a punk rock singer, or a belligerent stand up comic. Sure, he brought home some dead possums, but if you heard the same about Iggy Pop you'd probably accept it as sort of weird but cool. As played by Ross Lynch, young Dahmer is shy and clumsy, trapped in a perpetual slouch, but smart enough to keep his dark side hidden.

The movie takes place inside and around the dulling middle class world of mid-seventies suburban Ohio, where Dahmer's parents play out the ritual of a failing marriage. Dahmer's mother (Anne Heche) is a pill popping, self-absorbed neurotic who has been in and out of mental health clinics, while his father ( Dallas Roberts ) is a stammering chemist who fears his son will grow up to be an unhealthy nerd. Dahmer seems oblivious to his parents, too consumed with spying on the handsome fellow next door. Dahmer even hides in the woods with a baseball bat, waiting to clobber the guy and do who knows what with him. It never happens, though. Dahmer's not yet ready for murder.

There is a sense that Dahmer understands how people are supposed to behave in society. Watch the scene where he asks a freshman girl to the prom. He's downright charming. He knows she doesn't care about him,  but he convinces her to go because it will be good for her to be seen there, even with the class oddball. We can imagine him years later luring victims back to his apartment with the same logic and easy smile he used on this girl. Not all charming men are serial killers, but it's a rare serial killer who isn't charming.

Dahmer's murders were such a direct expression of his tangled psyche - a morbid interest in skeletons dovetailing with a teenager's homosexual anxieties  - that one  almost understands his eventual need to possess his victims utterly. He was the rare serial killer who didn't blame his actions on Satan, or pornography, or voices in his head. His overriding compulsion to know what we look like on the inside is captured in a strangely compelling scene where Dahmer and his buddies go fishing. When he's supposed to release his catch back into the pond, he kneels down and frantically hacks it apart with a knife. When he's done, he is neither excited nor satisfied. It's as if he's still searching for something, some elusive hidden treasure that exists between bones and guts.

The details of Dahmer's young life are here. The early addiction to alcohol. The isolation. The first victim, a teen hitchhiker named Steve Hicks. My Friend Dahmer is a small masterpiece mostly because Myers takes the most unlikely approach: he gives Dahmer a break, and treats him as a human. He achieves this partly by surrounding him with stuff we recognize. The kids in Dahmer's high school are familiar to me. They are  types I knew, smart but not insightful. For a while, Dahmer walked among them, called a few of them friends, and made them laugh.

THE LAST ELVIS...(2012)

Here's a movie that doesn't say much. It doesn't really have a plot, and when we think we're starting to see one take shape, it quickly vanishes. Yet, Armando Bo's The Last Elvis has moments of such beauty and inspiration that I can't stop thinking about it. I'm not sure if I can recommend it, or if you'd like it, and yet there is something in me that wants to hail it as a unique little masterpiece. 

The main character is Carlos Gutierrez  (John McInerny), a factory worker in Buenos Aires, Argentina. By day he works his dreary job, but at night he sings in seedy restaurants and wedding receptions as an Elvis impersonator. It's more than a side job, though. It's an obsession. He refers to himself as "Elvis," and calls his estranged wife "Priscilla." Naturally, their daughter is named "Lisa Marie," which is also stenciled on the side of his old Ford LTD. One wonders what came first, the car or the girl.

He lives alone in a rundown little house, surrounded by Elvis memorabilia. At one point a female visitor (possibly a hooker) offers him a blow job. He can't be bothered, because he's entranced by an old Elvis interview on TV. We sense his marriage ended because he wasn't a reliable father. He was too busy, as his wife says, "singing his silly songs." He practices his Elvis act diligently, but is constantly struggling to get paid. Some of the best scenes in the movie involve him visiting the talent agency's office, where various other showbiz lookalikes mill about while waiting for their paychecks. Apparently, Buenos Aires is chock-full of Barbra Streisands, John Lennons, Mick Jaggers, and Kiss wannabes.

But Gutierrez is more than a lookalike, and you wouldn't dare tell him otherwise. For one thing, he can actually sing. He doesn't look much like Elvis, but he embodies something about him, the easy swagger, the cool vibe. He may look like a white whale when he squeezes into his jumpsuit, but Gutierrez has more panache than a dozen Las Vegas Presleys. Trying to gain weight to play the late period Elvis, he even stuffs himself with peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Eventually, his wife is injured in a car accident, which means Gutierrez has to look after his daughter. He feeds her banana sandwiches, and serenades her with Elvis songs before she goes to sleep. Father and daughter grow close, and we imagine the movie may move in this direction, where the little girl supports her dad's strange dream of being Elvis. Instead, the mother snaps out of her coma and this part of the story line ends. (We do, however, notice his wife trying to cover a tattoo on her arm; later we see that it says, "Love Me Tender.")

Serious Elvis fans may pick up clues of how the movie will play out. For instance, Gutierrez makes a big deal of rehearsing "Unchained Melody," which he eventually performs - beautifully, I might add - for an audience of old ladies at a bingo hall. This song appeared on Elvis' final studio album, and was often performed during his final tour in 1977. It was perhaps his final great performance, a vocal high-wire act. Gutierrez, getting fatter and fatter, and focusing on Presely's late period music, appears to be tracing Elvis' steps in the months before he died. I'll say no more, but McInerny, who hasn't appeared in many movies, is tremendous as Gutierrez. I loved how he sings "You Were Always on My Mind" at a senior citizens' home, and his version of "The Hawaiian Wedding Song," sung to his daughter, is spellbinding. I'm familiar with  Elvis' music because my mother owned his albums, so I know McInerny is nailing every last nuance. There's power to this guy. He may be a slow moving train, but he's a train, nonetheless.

The movie isn't overburdened by dialog. Bo is best known as the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Birdman, another film where a man's alter-ego overwhelms him. But in that one, people talked too much. In The Last Elvis, Gutierrez is a simple man, not given to grand pronouncements. "God gave me a gift," he says. "I just accepted it." He's crazy, too. He sings well and seems like a decent chap, but there's a screw loose. The movie made me wonder why so many people want to be someone else. It also made me wonder why, whether you're dressed as Elvis or Britney Spears, and whether you're insane or not, you still have to stand in line to get a paycheck. And sometimes you don't get one.


***

This movie is available on DVD, and on the Fandor movie app.

IT'S ALL TOO EASY FOR LOMACHENKO

 Whether it was punk rock, pop art, disco, or hip-hop, Manhattan has always embraced the new and the novel. In boxing terms, the newest and most novel is Ukraine's Vasyl Lomachenko, a fighter who trains by catching quarters in mid air and holding his breath for three and four minutes at a time, and whose footwork combines the fleetness of Willie Pep with the rhythms of Ukrainian folk dancers. Inside The Theater at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, Lomachenko took on the highly regarded Guillermo Rigondeaux and showed that his unique, frenetic style creates hell for even the best fighters. Rigondeaux, undefeated since 2003, shocked the crowd of 5,102 by quitting after the sixth round.

Don't misunderstand: it's not as if Rigondeaux took a brutal beating. He was, at age 37,  with two Olympic gold medals to his credit and an undefeated professional record, savvy enough to survive by clinching and fouling. Ultimately, though, he chose to follow the template of Lomachenko's three previous opponents and retire on his stool.

When Lomachenko, who has won 10 of 11 pro bouts (with nearly 400 amateur wins and two of his own gold medals) started unloading in the third - he astonished observers with a triple right uppercut - it seemed as if Rigondeaux  might get an opportunity to lure the Ukrainian into one of his own stunning left hand shots. But rather than patiently wait for Lomachenko to get cocky and walk into something, Rigondeaux came unglued. He began to behave like a frustrated rookie, holding and stalling. Lomachenko, meanwhile, looked like a young country boy enjoying his first barn dance, at one point grabbing Rigondeaux by the neck and pirouetting around him. After Rigondeaux had landed one too many cheap shots, Lomechenko answered with a stiff right to the jaw, long after the bell ending round five. Even if you cheat, he seemed to say, I've got your number. 

"I lost, no excuses," Rigondeaux said after the bout. Then he gave an excuse. "I injured the top of my left hand in the second round." Though he'd come up a weight class for the bout, he didn't blame the loss on being smaller than Lomachenko. "The weight was not a factor in this fight. It was the injury to my hand."

Not many were buying Rigondeaux' story. He was jeered by the crowd, and also by several hyperventilating television commentators, as if he'd done something akin to treason. Perhaps it's easier to speak badly of a fighter for quitting than it is to praise a fighter like Lomachenko, whose greatness is difficult to measure by any existing yardstick. There were moments in the bout when Rigondeaux looked like a homeless man stumbling through bad weather, wondering how life could've left him in such circumstances. He had no answers for the merry trickster in front of him, and the hopelessness in his eyes was poignant, particularly in the sixth when referee Steve Willis penalized him one point for a foul. At that moment, the fight slipping away beyond his reach, Rigondeaux looked like the loneliest man in New York. Faced with an opponent whose feet move quicker than the average man can think, Rigondeaux decided that jettisoning his undefeated record was better than taking any more of Lomachenko's strange abuse, which must feel like being poked by a circus clown long after the joke has worn off. 

Rigondeaux' back may not have hit the canvas, but his spirit was certainly knocked out.

It would've been interesting to see how Lomachenko responded to one of Rigondeaux' powerhouse lefts, for Rigondeaux is a certified jawbreaker. But anytime Rigondeaux tried to land something, Lomachenko would suddenly be behind him, or at his side, or peppering him with punches, or nimbly shifting around, giving Rigoneaux angles not usually seen in a boxing ring. Lomachenko is boxing's equivalent of the knuckleball, never where you expect him to be. Keep in mind, we once spoke of Roy Jones Jr. this way, and he turned out to be painfully mortal. For now, Lomachenko is bright and new, and at age 29 he's in prime form. He also understands that beating an older, smaller fighter will not exactly punch his ticket to Valhalla.

"This is not his weight, so it's not a big win for me," Lomachenko said. "But he's a good fighter. He's got great skills. I adjusted to his style, low blows and all."

If Lomachenko was humble, promoter Bob Arum didn't hesitate to put some extra shine on the moment. "You are all seeing something special," Arum said, comparing Lomachenko to the greats of the past, including Muhammad Ali and Ray Leonard, plus contemporary icons like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Lomachenko, Arum crowed, is "the most unbeatable fighter I've ever had."

Hype aside, Lomachenko is a young man with an impressive style, and a dedication to being perfect in the ring. For now it's fun for him. He's like a brilliant teenage chess prodigy who casually beats masters twice his age and acts as if it's all easy, a joke that only he understands.

But Lomachenko wasn't the only one smiling. After the bout was stopped and Rigondeaux announced his hand was bothering him, Lomachenko's father and trainer, Anatoly, started removing his son's gloves. "Is this OK?" the older man said, setting up his own punchline. "How is your hand?" Father and son shared a laugh.

How great it must be, and how novel, to have figured out the secret of invincibility.

- Don Stradley

BOOKS: BLACK DAHLIA, RED ROSE

As far as unsolved murders go, the  killing of Elizabeth Short in 1947 has a special place in the pantheon. She was a 22-year-old woman living on the fringes of Los Angeles, allegedly making a few bucks as a nude model for a cut-rate porn ring. One morning her body was found in a vacant lot, severed in half, drained of blood. When acquaintances mentioned her habit of wearing a black flower in her hair, Short was fitted with a nickname that would live for decades: "The Black Dahlia." A few years of garish headlines followed, with  hundreds of weirdos coming forward to offer phony confessions. Theories were plentiful. Some speculated that the killer had been a crazy lesbian, or an insane surgeon. Even folk singer Woody Guthrie was a suspect after sending a series of sexually suggestive letters to a friend's sister. The Dahlia case gave L.A. a mystery to rival the crimes of Jack the Ripper.

The circumstances around this grisly homicide - the poor woman's body was not only bisected, but mutilated in many strange ways, as was her face - and the peculiar behavior of the Los Angeles police, are thoroughly examined in Piu Eatwell's Black Dahlia, Red Rose. Eatwell had access to rare files, and even interviewed the few living relations of various people involved in the investigation. If her writing style is a bit reserved, her commitment borders on the heroic . I've read a lot about Elizabeth Short, but this is the closest I've come to understanding what may have actually happened.
 
Short was actually a Massachusetts girl, from a suburb north of Boston, transplanted to L.A. with hopes of becoming a movie star. She ended up nearly destitute, living in rooming houses and relying on a string of "boyfriends" to keep her in nice dresses and fancy shoes. As one news editor described her, she wasn't good or bad, she was just lost, trying to find her way out of the hole she'd dug for herself. It wasn't long before she was in the company of some shady types, of which there was no shortage in 1940s LA.

Among the shadiest was an unemployed bellhop named Leslie Dillon. By all accounts he was "an insignificant, sloop shouldered man in glasses," with a penchant for dying his hair different colors. He was also a small-time pimp with an interest in psycho-sexual crimes. Many months after the murder, he began a correspondence with Dr. Paul De River, a psychologist working on the case. Perhaps, Dillon wrote, Elizabeth Short had "mocked" someone and, out of revenge, the killer had, in the process of annihilating her, "experienced a new sensation by accident..." During the remainder of the correspondence and an eventual meeting, Dillon revealed details that only Short's murderer could've known. He was, as the cops say, a live suspect.

Dillon did everything but provide an outright confession. He drew pictures; he gave details; and when he agreed to meet with Dr. De River in Las Vegas, he packed a suitcase full of razor blades, women's shoes, and a bloody dog leash, as if to say, This is how the well-dressed psychotic travels in late '40s America. Put simply, he was a strange cat, a sex-fiend, and he was quite likely the one who killed Elizabeth Short and cut her in half. But with the type of cunning usually reserved for super villains in a Thomas Harris novel, Dillon slipped out from the investigators' grip. It seems he had enough dirt on the LAPD, probably from his days pimping, that he was virtually untouchable. This was a time, after all, when the LAPD was at its most corrupt, freely mingling with gangsters; Dillon, Eatwell guesses, knew where the bodies were buried. He walked, and was never heard from again. Whether he killed anyone else is unknown, but Eatwell suggests the possibility. Cheekily, Dillon later married and named his daughter "Elizabeth."

Eatwell has worked as a producer and researcher for various BBC documentaries and has a passion for dark crimes and sinister characters. With the Dahlia case, she's knee deep in depravity and cover ups. It's unfortunate that Dillon vanished into the night, for he's certainly the most intriguing suspect. There was, recalled one investigator, something about Dillon "that raises a man's animal instincts, makes the hair on the back of your neck bristle up." From  admitting that he liked to knock women out with drugs, to his knowledge of what was done with the Dahlia's pubic hair, Dillon convinced Dr. De River that he was "either guilty of the Dahlia murder, or heavily implicated in it."

Killing a woman in such a manner is a big job, and there's plenty of evidence suggesting that Dillon didn't work alone. Eatwell's theory is that a runty nightclub owner named Mark Hansen had approached Short  to work for him as a prostitute, or perhaps to be his lover. When she refused, he hired Dillon to knock her off. Dillon, a lover of true crime tales and sadistic fiction, went about killing her with, shall we say, too much enthusiasm. Yet, he was so pleased with his work that he couldn't help but taunt the police and De River.

Dillon may have vanished, but the story of the Dahlia never goes away. It's been turned into a few forgettable movies (including one starring Lucy Arnaz!) and has inspired a cottage industry of books, including a couple where authors accuse their own fathers of being the killer. There's even one where the killer is said to have been Orson Welles. The result is that the books and films are interesting to a point, and then fall apart in vague accusations and hearsay.

Eatwell does better than most who have tried. By focusing on Dillon, who is usually a footnote in the investigation, and having fun with the film noir aspects of the story - she names each chapter after a movie of the period, ie. The Lodger, Panic in the Streets, The Glass Alibi etc - Eatwell turns in a taught, thought provoking crime story. Especially effective is her depiction of the Aster Motel, "a place of secrets, where men in dark suits paid cash to closet themselves in cabins with nameless associates and women in red lipstick and high heels."

The day after Short's body was found, a cabin at the Aster was reportedly covered in blood and feces. Witnesses claimed to have seen a man there resembling Dillon, and a woman resembling Short.

Eatwell's style is elegant and understated, a long cry from the hyperventilating spin used by most so-called Dahlia experts. At first you may be underwhelmed by the low key tone of Black Dahlia, Red Rose, but it works. You'll also be introduced to some great characters, like Aggie Underwood, the city editor at the Los Angeles Evening Herald & Express, who worked doggedly to cover the case, and the "Gangster Squad," a  crew of veteran L.A. detectives who came very close to cracking the Dahlia mystery.

She doesn't quite pinpoint why the LAPD seemed so determined to forget the case, but alludes to key members of the department being friendly with Hansen, who had probably set up more than a few cops with women, possibly procured by pimp wannabe Dillon. The cover up of a murdered girl was easy in an era noted for the "cozy relationship played out in downtown bars between police and mobsters, the wads of dough traded at the doors of the gambling dens and whorehouses as a price for being left alone."

Newspaper editors effected the case, too, if only because of their handling of the Dahlia's image, taking her from a mysterious beauty to a kind of sleazy loser. Were they under orders to portray her as a whore, to cool the public's interest?

My own experience with a Dahlia-type of murder was back in the 1990s, when I lived in a shabby studio behind a Pizzeria Uno's outside of Boston. One Sunday morning I  saw several police cars parked in the Uno's lot. The commotion was because of what someone had seen in the Uno's trash dumpster: a pair of female legs. I don't recall the torso being found, and I'm pretty sure the case, like Elizabeth Short's, was never solved. It didn't get a glamorous name like "The Black Dahlia," and after a few days no one gave a damn about it. Many murder cases go this route, especially when the victims are women, especially when the victims aren't rich. The horror isn't that these things happen, the horror is that the killers can just about get away with it.

The killers of Elizabeth Short got away with it, but Piu Eatwell presents compelling evidence involving some players lurking at the outskirts of the story. She's onto something.

MIGUEL COTTO'S NEW YORK

The news that Miguel Cotto will retire after this weekend's New York bout against Sadam Ali is bringing back memories. They're all good, I must say. There was the time Freddie Prinze Jr chatted with me about how Cotto could probably run for governor of Puerto Rico and win. I also remember the time Jose Torres, the great Puerto Rican champion of the 1960s, confessed that he admired Cotto even more than another recent star from the island, Felix Trinidad. "I don't know what it is," Torres said to me as his eyes moistened, "but I love this kid."

Perhaps the most unique take on Cotto came from a New York cab driver. I'd rushed out of Madison Square Garden after one of Cotto's bouts, skipping the post fight presser because nothing useful ever happens at those things, and jumped into a taxi back to the hotel. The driver, a young Puerto Rican male, looked at me in the rear view mirror and asked if I'd seen the fight. I gave him a brief rundown. He shrugged, satisfied. "Cotto is good for the city," the driver said, as if the fight itself didn't matter. "It's party time. And I'll make extra money taking these people home."

Cotto's promoter in those days, Bob Arum, usually booked him in New York on the weekend of the annual Puerto Rican Day parade. If you've never seen it, it's a colorful rolling festival that takes place one Sunday in June and sets Manhattan aglow with music and dancing. Pity the person who has to drive in the city that day, because for miles the streets are jammed. I viewed the spectacle from the sidewalk a few times; it was impressive, joyous. Cotto was grand marshal at least once or twice.

Watching Cotto at Madison Square Garden was always special. The crowd sounded different on those nights. When he made his entrance, an incredible noise erupted across the highest points of the arena, like restless, dangerous winds coming in from the Atlantic. It swirled around the building, reminding me of the old movie theaters that were fitted with cinema shaking "Sensurround" systems. It was unforgettable.

Cotto may or may not be the best fighter to come from Puerto Rico. He was damned good, though. Serious as a brick, and nearly as hard. He did some major damage in New York.

Paulie Malignaggi stood up to Cotto's best shots at the Garden, but when that bout was over, the entire ring was spattered with red blotches the size of quarters: Paulie's blood. I'd gone into the Garden that night not sure about Cotto, but came out a believer.

There was also the night Cotto beat up Zab Judah. That was possibly the best Cotto we'd ever see, fast and mean and strong. The replay on TV did no justice to the power of Cotto's punches. When he hit Judah, it sounded like a hammer on a pumpkin.

He had many good nights in New York. He beat Shane Mosley at the Garden, and on a humid June night in 2010, he beat Yuri Foreman at Yankee Stadium. It wasn't quite like the stadium bouts of boxing's golden era, but it was a tasty appetizer for the Sunday festivities. And the festival atmosphere, as my taxi driver explained, was what it was really all about.

"Let me tell you about Cotto's fans," the driver said. "Puerto Rican people wait all year for something like this. They will go without groceries or food for a month. They'll save up all their money for the ticket, just so they can be there. They love it. They don't care what it costs, or who the opponent is. They're going to represent."

They certainly did, even on nights when Cotto wasn't at his best, like the time he suffered a nasty cut in a Garden bout with Joshua Clottey. Clottey was an awkward fighter with a forehead shaped like a gourd. After a head clash, Cotto started bleeding buckets. He struggled for the rest of the bout, but rallied to win a split decision. Not his best work, but his fans whistled and the parade rolled along on schedule the next morning.

In Las Vegas, Cotto suffered a punishing loss to Antonio Margarito. It was later revealed that Margarito was likely fighting with something extra in his gloves. A rematch was demanded, and there was no better place for it than Madison Square Garden in New York. In front of  a sellout crowd of 21,239, a vengeful Cotto handed out the sort of prolonged beating usually seen in mafia movies, making sure Margarito tasted every punch.

From there, Cotto began losing more often - he even lost one in New York, to Austin Trout - and we realized his best days were behind him. Yet, he could still find magic in Manhattan, like the night in 2014 when he whipped Sergio Martinez. Nearly 15 years had passed since Cotto made his New York debut, winning a four rounder at the Hammerstein Ballroom, but still vibrant was the love affair between Cotto and the city. His fans were still saving their money, filling the seats, representing.

He's 37 now. He'd be smart to retire after this weekend's bout. He's one of the few fighters of recent times who was never boring in the ring, never coasted, never mailed one in. We'll all look back on Cotto and agree that boxing benefited from his presence.

Cotto fights Ali on Saturday at Madison Square Garden. It's the perfect place to end Cotto's story. His unbreakable spirit was best displayed in the city of New York, where Puerto Rican fans filled the air with unforgettable sounds, where blood colored the ring, where cabbies raked in the extra fares, where a long retired champ was nearly brought to tears by his love for the kid, and the victory celebration almost always included a parade.

New York was Cotto's town and always will be.


- Don Stradley

LUCKY...

It's sad to realize Harry Dean Stanton is gone. He died in September at 91. His heyday was in the 1970s and '80s, in movies like Dillinger, Alien, Wise Blood, and Repo Man. He found his best role in 1984 when he played a drifter in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas. Stanton, who began his career as a bit player in the 1950s, was a lanky guy with a hangdog face and soft, brown eyes. He was the closest thing Hollywood had to a human coyote. He was once offered his own TV series but turned it down; he didn't want the success of the show to rest on his shoulders. Stanton was better suited to the fringes of the movie business, small parts, in and out, fast, almost unnoticed. A coyote. In recent years he became a kind of fetish figure for the same types who dig gnarly old survivors like Keith Richards and Johnny Cash. Lucky, though it's as lightweight as a greeting card, certainly won't hurt his reputation. Like the leather cowboy boots he wears in the movie, the Stanton vibe was made to last.

The movie has won awards and accolades from critics, but it's a fluff piece. First time screenwriters Drago Sumonja and Logan Sparks give us a flimsy story about a codger named Lucky (Stanton) who is starting to feel the terrors of old age. He's healthy enough  - only a pair of idiot writers would create a 90-year-old character who smokes a pack of cigs per day and have a doctor tell him his lungs are fine - but after an episode where he falls down in his kitchen, he acknowledges that there is a lot more life behind him than ahead of him. The method here is all quirky, indy self-consciousness: Lucky's refrigerator contains only three quarts of milk; his ashtray always has exactly three butts; the local bar, the local diner, the local store, are all too cute. We constantly hear "Red River Valley" played on a harmonica (by Stanton), until we're ready to cry uncle. Meanwhile, Lucky is brimming with ersatz wisdom. "There's a difference between lonely and being alone," he says. If that strikes you as deeply profound, maybe Lucky is the movie for you.

Director John Carroll Lynch, however, is tasteful, and he puts veteran cinematographer Tim Suhrstedt to good use, especially when Lucky is out in the desert, going on one of his many solitary walks among the cacti. And I liked David Lynch as Lucky's eccentric friend, Howard, all shook up because his pet tortoise ran away. Some will think Lucky is a nice meditation about those who quietly rage against the dying of the light, and some will be overly impressed by the way Stanton puts his scrawny old body on display. Yes, there was no vanity in the guy, and there's something admirable about an elderly actor who, as Stanton does here, appears in a movie either semi-nude or in his underwear. On the other hand, I got pretty tired of looking at Stanton's balls and armpits.

Stanton gives Lucky what he always gave to movies: his presence. He was never one who knocked the walls down with his acting. But it was always great to see him. When he popped up in a movie it was like recognizing an old friend in a crowd. This was a guy who could play an understanding father in John Hughes' Pretty in Pink, or appear in an episode of Laverne & Shirley as a seedy lounge singer named Johnny Velvet. He was believable every time, and he's certainly believable in Lucky. But it would be misleading to say he carries the movie on his own narrow shoulders, or makes it worth seeing. Lucky is just too pleased with itself, and we can almost feel the writers patting themselves on the back when they come up with a line of crap dialog like, "Realism is a thing." Ironically, they did come up with something good in Lynch's character, who pines for his lost tortoise, wants to leave all of his money to it, and solemnly promises to be there when the animal returns. Lynch has the best scene in the movie when he talks about how his tortoise, named "President Roosevelt," must have carefully planned his escape because it had something important to do. "That tortoise affected me," he says. For a moment we can see the movie that should've been made.

JIM & ANDY: The Great Beyond...(on Netflix)

In 1999 Jim Carrey starred in Man on the Moon, a screen biography of the late Andy Kaufman. It was smart casting, because Kaufman was on the brink of being entirely forgotten, and Carrey was just about the biggest comic actor on the planet. It also turned out that Carrey was a devoted Kaufman fan, even willing to audition for director Milos Foreman by videotaping himself doing some of Kaufman's old bits. Once the role was his, Carrey dove in with such commitment that he demanded everyone on the set refer to him as "Andy," and, just as Kaufman often did in his heyday, Carrey remained "in character" for the duration of the production. Carrey also hired his own crew to shoot behind the scenes footage, which he'd hoped to use as part of the original film's DVD release. Universal objected, fearing the footage made Carrey look "like an asshole." As we can now watch the previously unseen footage on Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, the studio had a point.

Of course, Carrey is the best type of asshole. But how do we respond when he suggests that he was channeling Kaufman's spirit? "It was," Carrey says, "as if Andy came back to make his movie, and he turned the world upside down." When filming scenes with the original cast of Taxi, the ABC sitcom where Kaufman starred as the lovable Latka Gravas, Carrey is relentless, irritating his co-stars until the discomfort is visible in their eyes. "I'd feel guilty," Carrey says, "wondering if I'd gone too far. Then I'd wonder what Andy would do. And Andy would take things even further." Foreman is exasperated, and we feel for him, but Carrey is fascinating, like fireworks that unexpectedly spell out obscene words.

People will no doubt discuss the "meta" quality of the movie, for it's a documentary about a movie within a movie, and it'll set your head spinning. It also comes with a big dollop of Carrey's "None of us really exist" hokum, which has been his stance of late. Yet, as he now sits behind a bushy beard, his eyes smaller and more piercing than I remember, he tells the tale of his life and this movie like a melancholy guru. He reached the top of his profession, and found it lacking; now he's gone existential on us. Whether or not I share his views on how the universe works, I could listen to him for hours.

The documentary reminds us of how incredibly famous Carrey was in the 1990s (which is likely the reason he got away with so much crap), and his gargantuan reserves of silliness, but also of how great Kaufman was in his 1970s heyday. It's worth seeing just for Carrey's impeccable version of Kaufman's alter-ego, the nasty lounge singer Tony Clifton. The gag Carrey plays at the Playboy Mansion is priceless; Kaufman would've approved.

Some wonder if Carrey's recent philosophical musings are merely a new unleashing of  his Kaufmanesque side, as if he's testing us, putting us on, but I don't think so. Not only do I think he believes in what he's saying, but I think he may be done with entertaining us. When he's done, he's done. Even when he shed the Kaufman costume, he wouldn't put it on again, not even when R.E.M. wanted him to appear as Kaufman in a music video.

As I watched Jim & Andy, I wondered what Kaufman would've done with Carrey's monstrous success. And I wondered if Carrey might've been happier if he'd been a cult figure, like Kaufman, rather than a world renowned movie star. And I wondered if Carrey really thought he had brought Kaufman back to life, somehow, for the filming of Man on the Moon. And I wondered why there was such an all-pervading sense of gloom around Jim & Andy. Is it because Kaufman died young? Is it because Carrey already seems like part of our past?

What is amazing is how Carrey got so many members of the crew to go along with him. Hairdressers, actors, and members of Kaufman's family appear to genuinely embrace him as Kaufman. Carrey gets teary-eyed when he talks about meeting Kaufman's daughter, and again when he talks about his own father, a budding sax player who gave up his dreams in order to support his family.  Such heartfelt moments are unexpected, but they work. It's one of the damnedest documentaries ever made.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES

 

Late in Battle of the Sexes, we see real photos of Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, black and white shots from their 1970s period. King looks pugnacious, energetic, vibrant. Riggs, posing as he did for a mock Playgirl centerfold, is grotesque. In fact, an older lady in the audience seated near me let out a shriek when she saw the image of Riggs. It was as if his obnoxious presence still perturbs women 40 years after the ultimate "male chauvinist pig" challenged King, one of the top players in women's tennis, to a match. The event became a pop cultural phenomenon and aired on ABC on a Thursday night in September of 1973  (probably preempting Kung Fu and The Streets of San Francisco), even though Riggs was  55 years-old and King was in her athletic prime. In 2001, ABC presented When Billie Beat Bobby, an entertaining piece starring Holly Hunter and Ron Silver. I kept thinking of that one, even as Emma Stone and Steve Carrell did their best to present the story again. Stone and Carrell are major talents, but too cute, like Barbie and Ken dolls cast as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammet.

Carrell, for the most part, is a reasonable choice to play Riggs. He may seem a little too burly for an over-the-hill tennis legend who was spending his retirement years hustling his pals at the local gentleman's club, but Carrell's got the devil-may-care silliness and the "Why should I give a fuck what you think?" attitude (his speech at a gambler's anonymous meeting, where he tells people their real problem is that they're just shitty gamblers, is the highlight of the movie). Stone, though, is too far from the  cloth from which King was cut. (Hunter played King as a muscled up warrior, worn down by outside pressure, not battle.) Stone is too delicate boned to play King, more like a JV cheerleader than a tennis beast, and when she speaks with confidence that she'll whip some opponent, we don't believe her. Even when she decides to embrace her lesbian feelings and have a fling with her hair stylist, it's as if she's a nervous teen going on a first date with her best friend's father.

It's nice to see a few familiar faces from the past, including Elisabeth Shue as Rigg's long suffering wife, and Bill Pullman as Jack Kramer, the arrogant tennis promoter who doesn't want to pay the women as much as the men. Neither gets a chance to do much in the movie, but they show how not to overact, which Sarah Silverman can't avoid doing as the agent of the women's team, holding her cig like Bette Davis, complete with bride of Frankenstein lightning stripes in her hair. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Feris demonstrate none of the finesse or ingenuity that made their debut feature, Little Miss Sunshine (2006) so watchable. It's as if they were baffled by the sheer scope of the King-Riggs match, and with "women's lib" sounding like a fad from the seventies, they decided to be more fashionable and make a heartfelt coming of age story for lesbians.

I'm not sure what to say  about Simon Beaufoy's screenplay. Beaufoy, an Oscar winner, has written some highly regarded films, including The Full Monty (1997) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Battle of the Sexes has elements of those movies in that it's about people having to perform on a grand stage while putting their personal lives on the line, but he's not up to the task of jamming a year's worth of history into a comfy 2-hour format. Some of it feels too coincidental, too pat. With the ladies' flamboyant wardrobe designer (Alan Cumming) popping up every few minutes like a one man Greek chorus, offering glib one-liners, or giving Billie Jean a comforting hug at the right moment, it's as if Beaufoy felt tennis wasn't so interesting, so he padded the story with gays and camp humor. And because the focus is mostly on King while Riggs is just a comic foil, the message is skewed.

So Battle of The Sexes, intending itself as an inspirational pageant for the LGTBQ community, bends itself to accommodate everyone in its target audience. For fans of King and her considerable achievements, she's portrayed as a serious but vulnerable athlete trying to change things for women's tennis. For fans of Emma Stone, her love scenes with Andrea Riseborough are downright cuddly, though "Crimson and Clover" on the soundtrack was used to better effect when Christina Ricci and Charlize Theron fell for each other in Monster (2004). For those who dislike heterosexual men, they are all portrayed here as flabby creeps. That is, except for King's husband, who gently applies ice to his wife's knees even as he realizes her heart belongs to another woman. As played by Austin Stowell, he's the dream man for sexually confused females everywhere: the handsome, non-judgemental doormat.

THE DINNER...(new on Netflix)

Movies taking place around a dinner table generally bog down into long monologues where the characters argue about one thing and then another. You know that every character seated at the table will get a chance to blab, and before the movie is over each will get a moment where they stand up, show some anger, reveal their secrets. It's a genre, usually indulged in by young playwrights who are trying their own version of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, without having the life experiences or emotional facility to draw from. Oren Moverman's The Dinner, based on a novel by Herman Koch, isn't exempt from the worst of the dinner drama cliches but, because of a few good performances and the gorgeous camera work of cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, rises above the predictable mess it could've been. I can't quite recommend the movie. I can't say it's bad, either. Like all of Moverman's movies, it's not necessarily there for your enjoyment. His characters aren't meant to reflect your own phony image of yourself.

In The Dinner, Richard Gere plays Stan Lohman, a budding congressman whose son and nephew have committed a horrible crime: they set fire to a sleeping homeless woman, recording her death throes on their smart phones as they laughed. Stan's brother Paul (Steve Coogan) is the father of the more vicious of the boys. Stan arranges a dinner date at an exclusive restaurant so he and Paul, plus their wives, can discuss what to do about their sons, who haven't been caught. The story rolls out gradually with many subplots, the main one being  Paul's deteriorating mental health, and his grudge against Stan, the more glamorous politician brother. Stan wants the boys to pay for their crime. Paul's wife (Laura Linney) fears what might happen to them in jail. Meanwhile, Stan's wife (Rebecca Hall) doesn't want anything to interfere with her husband's run for congress. She put a lot of time into this guy, after all. Around and 'round they go.

Meanwhile, as the family argues and hisses, a series of entrees are brought out to their table and described in detail by the maître d'. It's not clear whether this is meant to be a satire on the eating habits of the affluent, but the courses look ridiculous. One looks like asparagus tips served on a bonsai tree. The Lohamns fight, eat, and fight some more. Meanwhile, in flashback scenes, we see the boys killing the homeless woman. The kids in the movie are pure shits, heartless and arrogant, though Paul's wife insists they are "good boys" who simply made a mistake. Paul, who hasn't been taking his medication, can't focus on the situation. He amuses himself by insulting the waiters. Stan, in turn, is distracted because his assistant keeps interrupting the dinner with phone calls, the important ones that politicians always get at dinnertime. 

The Dinner isn't Moverman's best, though it's tempting to say it's worth watching becaue of Coogan's portrayal of Paul, the edgy loon of the Lohman family. To say this, however, isn't quite true. The Dinner has too many storylines, too many flashbacks, and eventually falls into the same routine as all dinner movies, where each character gets a turn to be dramatic. Moverman wants all of the characters to state their cases, but their arguments are frail.  One can imagine a movie being made that focuses solely on Paul, and how this damaged character navigates a family tragedy. Coogan, who gets better as he matures, could've carried it. He's very fine here, all sharp edges and frayed wires, and even though Gere is watchable as always, it's Coogan who steals every scene, playing the kind of unpredictable character John Cassavettes used to play. Moverman tends to draw good performances from actors, or maybe he simply gives them a chance to do things they don't ordinarily do, as he did in Time Out Of Mind (2014) where Gere played a homeless man, and Rampart (2011), where Woody Harrelson played an unhinged L.A. cop. Moverman's movies may be hard to like, but I haven't disliked any of them.

Gerald's Game...1922...on Netflix

Stephen King still qualifies as a brand name -- he's like McDonald's, or the WWE, the sort of company where you know what you're getting, and you have only yourself to blame if you aren't happy with the product. This is, after all the guy who writes about haunted cars and vampires for fuck's sake -- and carries enough clout that Netflix has invested in two original features this month based on his writing. The movies are based on two of his shorter works, which is where his best stuff is usually found. King's writing went all bloated and wobbly when his love of cocaine dovetailed with the advent of the word processor, because when you give a guy with his galloping imagination and love of words  a machine that makes writing easier, coupled with a coke habit, you get novels that are twice as long as they need to be. Fortunately, he could still stick the landing when he wasn't all hell bent on writing an epic. Unfortunately, whether he was writing long or short, King's storytelling  can be baffling for filmmakers. 

This is evident in Gerald's Game, which is about a middle-aged couple who try to spice up the old love life by engaging in some bedroom role playing. Hubby's idea is to handcuff his wife to the bed so he can act out his rape fantasies. Ironically, he has a heart attack and dies in the middle of playing bad boy, which leaves his angry wife cuffed and helpless. The novel, written by King in the early 90s, was a quick and dirty metaphor for rotten marriages everywhere, especially when a starving dog sneaks into the house and starts snacking on the dead husband's arm. It was nasty stuff, and King exhibited strong insight into the way our adult relationships allow us to rehash templates set in our past. We're shackled to our spouses, we're shackled to beds, we're shackled to our childhood. He nailed it. King is often at his best when writing about, not the horrors of the undead, but the horrors of something far more sinister and mysterious: marriage.

The movie, though, is too slick, too pristine. I remember the couple in the novel being rather average, perhaps unattractive; the movie features a pair of performers who have obviously spent months getting into shape because they knew they were going to be shown in bed, semi-nude. The husband (Bruce Greenwood) looks like one of those fellows in a Viagra commercial, grey at the temples but buff. The wife (Carla Gugino) has biceps like a pole vaulter, all the more noticeable when she's cuffed to the bedposts. The result is that they seem less like a real couple, and more like generic Hollywood types. The script, co-adapted by director  Mike Flanagan, can't improve on the worst of King's instincts; in King's world, successful men attend board meetings and tell dirty jokes at Christmas parties. Their wives suffer silently, harboring dreadful secrets. At his best, King creates wonders. At his worst, he's as hokey as Danielle Steel. At least Carel Struycken has a good turn as a gigantic serial killer known as "The Moonlight Man." He's the best thing in the movie.

I'd had higher hopes for 1922, which stars Thomas Jane as a farmer who murders his wife.  And while it is better than Gerald's Game, it stumbles a bit. Jane looks appropriately rugged and sunburned, but every time he opens his mouth we see a set of perfect Hollywood choppers, circa 2017.  Worse, Jane's acting consists of speaking like he has lockjaw, and spitting a lot. I'm not sure what he was spitting; it wasn't chewing tobacco, not with teeth that white. He's also not very convincing as a man who has committed a heinous crime. This, perhaps, is the fault of director Zak Hilditch, who should've gone for an Edgar Allan Poe type of paranoia, but opts for a tone that is like watered down Tales From the Crypt. Still, even if Jane never seems sufficiently spooked, 1922 manages to be more compelling than Gerald's Game. For King's stories to work best, the viewer must be put in the position of a child with an unpredictable parent. In both of these Netflix originals, the tone is sleepy, not nightmarish. Each movie has an unsettling moment or two, and there are plenty of rats, and knives and disfigured faces, but neither Hilditch nor Flanagan understands what scares us, or what makes marriage such a minefield, or why poor farmers of a century ago didn't have teeth like Tom Cruise.

HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR

 High School Caesar - now streaming on The Film Detective's classic movie app as part of our "Juvie Jungle" collection - came at the tail end of Hollywood's fascination with juvenile delinquents. The JD trend was strong from 1955-1960; one could hardly enter a theater or drive-in without seeing a bunch of young hoods slouching around on the screen like cut rate James Deans. Though very few of the titles could be regarded as classic cinema, they certainly had a recognizable style and charm. But before we go into High School Caesar, a bit of retro movie history might be in order.
                        
Within weeks of the release of Rebel Without A Cause (1955), schlockmeister "Jungle Sam" Katzman charged into the teen market with an energetic little flick called Teenage Crime Wave. Katzman always had an uncanny sense for picking trends, and other low budget movie producers usually followed his lead. Thus, with an encouraging nod from Katzman, a floodgate was opened for teen gangs, teen werewolves, teen cavemen, teen psychopaths, and teenage gun girls.                            

Many of the JD films were released by American International Pictures, the veritable chop shop of moviedom founded by lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff and theater manager James H. Nicholson, but Allied Artists and Howco International were in the game, too. The titles were often better than the actual films. A few samples: Juvenile Jungle (1958); The Cool and the Crazy (1958); Reform School Girl (1957); Teenage Wolf-Pack (1957); The Cry-Baby Killer (1958); Teenage Thunder (1957); and the wonderfully named Lost, Lonely, and Vicious (1958). Who could resist?

The formula was simple. There would be plenty of dancing, a few fist fights, a drag race or two, and  some ersatz rock 'n roll. No big stars were needed, because the trend was the star.

Still, the most obvious influence on the JD genre was the old Warner Bros. crime movie, as our tough delinquents usually came to a bad end and learned, as their gangster predecessors had learned, that crime doesn't pay. High School Caesar (1960) was an obvious callback to the Edward G. Robinson 1931 crime classic, Little Caesar. You can almost imagine the filmmaker's thought process: Let's remake Little Caesar but cast it with teenagers!

John Ashley stars as Matt Stevens, a rich brat who takes over his high school by employing some goons to intimidate his classmates. Matt doesn't throw many punches; he likes to be the brain behind the muscle. As the adverts shouted, he had "more rackets than Al Capone," everything from shaking kids down for protection money, to supplying test answers for a fee. 

All goes well for Matt as he bullies his way to becoming class president. But when the other kids realize he ran a rival off the road and didn't take the blame for the boy's death, his little kingdom begins to crumble.

Ashley is fascinating as Matt. His hair is greased back and immaculate, a brilliantined cross between James Dean and Dracula. His speaking voice is just short of an Elvis Presley drawl, but he has the cocksure self-awareness of a Ford salesman. He wears clothes and jewelry like a fashion plate, and can dance at the local hangout like he's auditioning for American Bandstand. He's the whole package, the teen embodiment of Eisenhower-era swank served up for the drive-in crowd.

The unique twist is that Matt comes from a wealthy family. He's not some street hood; he has a maid and a butler, and a hot new car. He's a sensitive soul, too. When he fears his parents have forgotten him while they vacation in Europe, he falls on his bed and weeps. Even the coin he's constantly flipping, like a gangster, was a special coin that belonged to his dad, another symbol of the poor little rich boy who is alienated from his parents.

Compared to a lot of JD film villains, Matt gets off easy; instead of being shot by cops or dying in a highway crash, he's simply abandoned by his once loyal followers. Of course, when he's face to face with one of the good kids, he can't do much to defend himself. He takes a few punches to the mouth, and ends up crying alone in an empty parking lot. For a while, though, Matt seemed cunning enough to get away with murder.

Ashley (1934 -1997) went on to have a steady career in beach party movies and on television, and even served as an executive producer on such cult titles as The Big Doll House (1972) and Black Mama, White Mama (1973). As he matured he grew less interested in acting and began working behind the scenes, most notably as a producer of The A-Team, where his voice was often heard as the show's narrator.

In real life, Ashley was an Oklahoma boy who found his way into the movie business while vacationing in California. A buddy from Oklahoma State University brought him onto the set of a John Wayne movie, and it was Wayne who steered Ashley to a job in television. From his earliest days as an actor, Ashley leaned towards schlock. He once said, "This is a terrible thing to admit but maybe the key to my success with exploitation films is that I always LIKED those movies, and I never had any real reason to turn them down. I just enjoyed doing them." 

His acting ledger wasn't entirely lowbrow; he gave a commendable performance in Martin Ritt's highly acclaimed Hud (1963), holding his own in a cast that included Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, and Patricia Neal.

High School Caesar was the second of three features by O. Dale Ireland, an independent filmmaker who also gave us Date Bait (1958) and Drag Strip Riot (1960). Ireland filmed it in his old home town of Chillicothe, Missouri during the spring of '59. It was quite an event when it premiered at Chillicothe's Bent Bolt Theater that September, setting a one day attendance record for that venue. The cast included a mixture of beginners and semi-professionals - many were local Chillicothe kids - but the real standout aside from Ashley is Daria Massey as Lita, Matt's long suffering female accomplice.

With her dark hair and eyes, plus a figure that seemed designed by rocket engineers, Massey could steal any scene she was in. Though the credits say "introducing Daria Massey", she'd been working as an actress and model for a decade, including a featured role in Sabu and the Magic Ring (1957) and was nearly at the end of her career by the time of High School Caesar. She'd pack it in after playing a sexy island babe on an episode of McHale's Navy in 1963.

High School Caesar also benefits from a rockin' soundtrack. The title song is performed by Reggie Perkins in a hiccuping rockabilly style, while Reggie Olson and Johnny Faire offer up tunes that are surprisingly cool, considering these were simply songs dreamed up for a quickie soundtrack.

By the way, the High School Caesar music score by Nicholas Carras, a boppin' hybrid of rock and jazz, can be heard on a fabulous 2-CD set called Juvenile Jive, put out by the Monstrous Music CD label in 2010. Carras' score for Date Bait is also included, as is Gerald Fried's jazzy score for High School Big Shot. Carras was a sort of low budget movie maestro, scoring dozens of drive-in gems, including Frankenstein's Daughter (1958) and The Astro Zombies (1968). Carras was given a producer's credit for High School Caesar, and had a much longer career than most of the cast; he worked up until 1991 when, at age 76, he scored Mission: Killfast for cult director Ted V. Mikels.

As for the J.D. movie genre, the trend was doomed to die of overexposure. Jerry Lewis was quick to parody the style in The Delicate Delinquent (1957), and by 1961, when delinquents were singing and dancing in West Side Story, it was evident to all that teen punks had lost their edge. But it sure was fun while it lasted.

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Get a glimpse of the JD jungle by watching High School Caesar on thefilmdetective.tv. Our classic movie app is available on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, iOS, and Apple TV. We're also showing such teen gems as Girl Gang, Anatomy of a Psycho, and Teenage Strangler.

BOOKS: SOUL SURVIVOR

AL GREEN DON'T NEED NOBODY

New bio explores the strange life of '70s soul stirrer, grits and all.

by Don Stradley

Al Green's career defies the usual pop star trajectory familiar to baby boomers. There was no defining moment, no appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, no star turn at Woodstock,  nothing where fans can say they remember where they were when they first saw him. Granted, there may be some out there who recall the first time he appeared on Soul Train, and apparently every  child born in 1972 was conceived while "Lets Stay Together" was playing on the car radio, or on the Sansui 8-track, but Green's life story seems so unlikely, so damned peculiar, that a long biography of him never quite gains traction, and not just because he dumped his career as a soul singer to become a preacher and record gospel tunes.

Jimmy McDonough's Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green is bursting with details, as well as an insightful  reappraisal of Green's recorded output, but Green is a troublesome subject. Reader beware: Green is neither likeable, nor especially interesting. At the most, he's slightly eccentric, but no more so than the average overpaid celebrity. He talks about himself in third person, is dumb about money, is mean to people, and has had a string of bad marriages. We could say the same about almost anyone in the NBA or the NFL. 

Al Green (as he calls himself, as in "Al Green has got to please Al Green,") was slightly weird from the start, a strangely effeminate boy who was once kicked off his high school football team for being too rough. The Green family landed in Grand Rapids, Michigan by way of an Arkansas backwater; they were unsophisticated and prone to believe in voodoo spells, but the brood was musical, specializing in religious hymns and gospel harmonies. Like a young Michael Jackson did in his own family, little Al Green absorbed what his older brothers were doing and was soon blowing them away with his silky, soaring vocal style.

The family gospel group performed in such such faraway locations as New York and Canada. Al was electric, belting out gospel songs and stealing the spotlight every night, though he remained, in his own words, "the kid under a tree by himself." Al's father, Robert Green, was capable of extreme cruelty - he once shot Al's pet goat and served it for dinner as a joke  - and Al's brothers never knew what to make of their "different" younger sibling. He was the meal ticket, though, and he knew that he was the most gifted member of his mediocre family. He also started to dig the sound of secular singers, namely Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and Elvis Presley.

He left home at 16 and slept in the guest rooms of various musicians, older cats who knew Al had some talent but needed protection. He was soon fronting a group called The Fabulous Creations, honing his stagecraft in one city after another. He heard Otis Redding sing at Chicago's Regal Theater and it was a revelation. "It was like God or something," Green said, "slipping out of heaven."  There were also prostitutes, transvestite nightclubs, and rumors that Al tried his hand at pimping, a trade his brother Walter had mastered. Al recorded a modestly successful single, "Back Up Train," but when it failed to turn him into a star, he grew desperate. Broke, with little to show for his first few years on the road, he jump-started his career by teaming with music producer Willie Mitchell, the production guru behind a little known Memphis outfit called HI Records. Together, they recorded the string of mesmerizing soul hits that made Green a phenomenon of the 1970s. You might say Mitchell made Green, or vice versa. Neither would ever be as good without the other.

McDonough, author of first rate biographies of Tammy Wynette, Neil Young, and Russ Meyer, has plenty of mysteries to unravel with Green. Here was a man given to violent mood swings, yet capable of singing in a high, romantic falsetto designed to make women crazy. Here was a man who carried weapons, and physically attacked people, yet was thought by many in his circle to be not just gay, but downright feminine. He was capable of great generosity, but those who worked for him recall Green as a stingy jerk, the sort who stifled most confrontations by saying, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Al Green!" 

And, of course, there was the tragic death of Mary Woodson, a mentally fragile woman who had left her husband to be with Green, only to commit suicide in Green's home. One night she purportedly threw a pan of scalding hot grits at the singer's bare back, and then shot herself in the head with his .38. At least that's what we're supposed to believe. McDonough raises enough questions about the incident that one doesn't know what to think. It was shortly thereafter that Green began preaching at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, though he'll always remind you that he'd found God a year earlier, at Disneyland. 

In the ensuing years he became a ghostly presence in the world of pop and R & B. His music has been sampled endlessly by hip hop artists, he has appeared on award shows to sing alongside Justin Timberlake and others, and a recent Green album was produced by Questlove. Green has won numerous Grammy awards for his gospel work, and even appeared on Broadway, disastrously, opposite Patti LaBelle in a show called Your Arms Too Short to Box With God. In 1995 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he stumbled through a duet with Aretha Franklin.

McDonough tells us all of this, plus stuff about drugs and guns and domestic violence, but he's too much of a music buff to go full-blown Albert Goldman. He treats Green as a kind of distressed genius, fawning over his talents with something close to blind adoration, describing Green's falsetto at the end of "Aint No Fun For Me" as feeling "like a little balloon escaping into the night sky." Then, seeking gravitas where there isn't any, compares another Green recording to "an ancient screed chiseled on tablets excavated deep within some pyramid."

Somehow, the reverence starts to sound like plain old ass kissing.

McDonough, as if trying to dilute his hero worship, occasionally declares that not all of Green's music appeals to him. Love is Reality, he writes, "gets my vote for the worst Al Green album of all time," adding, "I drove around in my car blasting this thing trying to like it." McDonough is a middle-aged man, but within him beats the heart of a truculent fanboy. A little of this is amusing, but sometimes his puckish asides are like finding a hair in your soup. When he writes that an album sounds "like 1979 on a bad day," you know he can do better.

He's more successful when writing about obscure songs and session players. I like how he describes Bulldog Grimes, a drummer who could "lay down a beat that sounds like King Kong doing a two-step in a metal grass skirt." McDonough's affection for Green's band members is palpable, as is the sense that the world of soul music was a world where men, not women, were the sex symbols. Women listened to Green, and other singers like him, and turned utterly irrational. They'd break into Green's home or church, storm the stage to give him their panties, anything to get close to "the black Elvis." One woman, completely undone by her favorite soul man's sweet vocals, dropped to her knees and begged Green to let her sniff his crotch.

If the book has a shortcoming, it's Green. Despite McDonough's depiction of the singer as a haunted loner, Green is too murky to be compelling. Plus, McDonough bales out of the Mary Woodson chapter too quickly. The book could've used 10 more pages of the Woodson scandal, and maybe 10 fewer pages about the history of Hi Records.

My aunts were all music lovers back in the day, and though their tastes ran towards the Bee Gees and Chicago, each of them had a copy of Al Green's Greatest Hits. I once asked my uncle what the deal was with this Al Green character, who to me looked like a skinny James Brown. My uncle, who never said three words when two would do, simply grunted: "He's for the broads." That was good enough for me. Yet, I've never forgotten the way my aunts talked about Al Green, the way they'd break into exaggerated giggles at the mention of his name. Al Green meant parties and good times and things I probably couldn't fathom in those days. 

I fathom those things a little better now, thanks partly to McDonough. He gets in his own way sometimes, but this exhaustive biography works pretty well.