Anthony Balducci's Journal: Tidbits for July 2024

The other day, I saw Alex and The Gypsy, a 1976 romantic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Geneviève Bujold.

It is a long-forgotten film that I had never seen before. Alex (Lemmon), a bail bondsman, gets a phone call from an old girlfriend, Maritza (Bujold). She is in jail for stabbing her husband and begs him to post her bail. Alex was devastated when Maritza left him and is not sure that he wants to help her. The couple has a colorful and stormy history, as we see in flashbacks. I must admit that the two lead characters aren't likable most of the time. This makes the film hard to take.

An IMDb reviewer, moonspinner55, wrote, "It takes a real hack to make a nuisance of Lemmon and Bujold." Still, I am a huge Jack Lemmon fan. It was great to come upon this lost film.

Eddie Murphy's movies have made lots of money in the last forty years. The comedian has received great support from his loyal fan base. Many of his fans are willing to see even his lesser films. The much derided Vampire in Brooklyn actually made money. It simply did not do Beverly Hills Cop numbers. The comedian has had four flops in forty years: The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), Meet Dave (2008), A Thousand Words (2012) and Mr. Church (2016). That's a great track record.

Peter Yates, the director of Bullitt (1968), added a car chase scene to Bullitt during production. He had directed a similar car chase scene the year before in a British crime thriller called Robbery (1967).

Alfred Hitchcock sent a fan letter to Billy Wilder.

Don Knotts' Grave Stone

Chester Clute and Ernest Truex are a fine double act in Dance, Girl, Dance (1940).

Dana Andrews interrogates Gene Tierney in Laura (1944).

This may be the only funny moment in Days of Wine and Roses (1962).

Here's a vintage Laurel and Hardy bank.

Michael J. Fox and Jimmy Cagney

John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) features many beautifully composed shots.

The Three Stooges were still fully committed to clowning in 1969.

dog mommies

Safe In Hell (1931)

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Far and Away (1992)

Trial and Error (1997)

Croisieres Siderales (1942)

Harlan Ellison called Back to the Future (1985) "a piece of shit." He said of the popular film, "It is a rip-off, a steal from Bob Heinlein's [1973 novel] Time Enough for Love to begin with. It is absolutely mindless, empty-headed, manipulative and it’s a sitcom." Only one small part of Time Enough for Love is shared with Back to the Future. A man who travels back in time finds himself in a romantic entanglement with his own mother. But, otherwise, the properties are entirely different.

Precursors exist for many famous properties. The premise of Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel "Planet of the Apes" was not original.

L. Sprague de Camp's 1939 short story "Living Fossil" takes place in a distant future on Earth. By this time, mankind has regressed to primitive animals and has been replaced as the dominant species by the capuchin monkey. Two capuchin monkeys working as timber scouts wander into a territory ruled by a tribe of savage humans. The story details the monkeys effort to escape the humans and get back home safely.

Mr. de Camp expanded on this idea with his 1950 novel 'Genus Homo." This is the summary provided by Wikipedia:

A bus is trapped in the cave-in of a tunnel and its passengers are preserved for millennia in a state of suspended animation. When their vehicle is ultimately uncovered, they awaken to a future in which humankind has vanished from the face of the earth, and gorillas have evolved to intelligence and become a dominant species. The preserved humans must now adjust to a world in which they have become obsolete.

The first gorillas that the humans see are using a monstrously large and ugly wild boar to pull a wagon. At first, the boar draws their attention more than the gorillas. But they become more interested in the gorillas when they realize the gorillas can talk. The man who serves as the story’s narrator writes:

The apes talked among themselves in high, penetrating voices that sounded odd coming from those immense black chests. It was obviously an intelligent language, full of throaty consonants rather like coughing or retching sounds.

He describes the gorillas as having “bright little eyes."

The gorillas are fairly peaceful. Wikipedia notes:

[The gorillas] migrated to North America to escape the aggressive chimps (G'thong-smith), warlike baboons (Pfenmll) and mercenary orangutans (Toof K'thll). . . As in the 1968 Planet of the Apes film, the gorillas have a peculiar mix of primitive and advanced technology.

The truth is that, prior to Planet of the Apes, many science fiction writers explored the idea of a future Earth where evolution's twists and turns upset mankind's dominance in the animal kingdom.

I planned to make a video on the ten highest rated comedy films on the Internet Movie Database. I was surprised to find that the highest rated comedy film was a 1931 German film called The Soaring Maiden (1931).

The film starred S. Z. Sakall, who would later become a leading character actor in Hollywood. I have never seen this film. It is an obscure film that is not available in the United States. A DVD can be purchased from a German supplier on eBay, but the DVD is without English subtitles. I'm sure that it is a charming film. It was based on a popular stage play that was revived a number of times. But the funniest film of all time? I doubt it. This is a scene from a 1974 television adaptation.

This is from a 1988 television adaption.

The audience is obviously enjoying it, but the lack of subtitles makes it impossible for me to judge its merits. I decided at this point that the IMDb rating system was not reliable and abandoned the project.

According to Internet Movie Database, Eric Roberts has appeared in 735 films. He acted in 52 films so far this year. Realize that the year won't be over for another five and a half months. These are extremely low-budget exploitation films. Why Is Roberts doing this? He must have paid for Emma's braces decades ago. He told The Hollywood Reporter:

The way I look at it is that I'm one of the luckiest guys in Hollywood. We get anywhere from eight to 30 offers every single day from all over the world. It's just so much fun to have all these offers and get to play such an extreme range of characters. . . It gets me out of bed in the morning. I'm an older guy now, so all my bosses are much younger than I am. They’re just kids, but this generation is so technically adept. And they like me enough to call me, so I appreciate them enough to show up.

I could only find production stills for eight of the 52 films that Roberts made this year.

Amityville Bigfoot