Strike (1925)

Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Writers: Proletkult under the direction of Valerian Pletnev
Stars: First Workers’ Theatre of Proletkult

Index: That's a Wrap!

As propositions go, the series of seven silent Soviet Union propaganda films called Towards Dictatorship of the Proletariat isn’t very high on my priority list. However, only one was made and it was the debut of Sergei Eisenstein, who came out seriously swinging.

After a quote from Lenin about the strength of the working class being organisation, part one of six promises us that “All is calm at the factory”. So far, so boring. However, then the cinematography leaps into action.

There’s a great characterful close up, a tasty dissolve, a delightfully choreographed shot of a busy hallway and a gorgeous high dolly shot through a factory floor. That’s the first twenty seconds. No, I’m not kidding.

Deadly Intentions (1985)

Director: Noel Black
Writer: Andrew Peter Marin, based on the book by William Randolph Stevens
Stars: Michael Biehn, Madolyn Smith, Morgana King, Jack Kruschen, Kevin McCarthy, Cliff DeYoung and Cloris Leachman

Index: Make It a Double.

Deadly Intentions wasn’t a feature film nor a straight to video slasher, as you might expect from the poster. It was a three and a half hour TV movie that unfolded over two nights, 19th and 20th May, 1985 on ABC. It was based, as so many such things seem to be, on a true story.

In real life, in 1977, a airport clerk in Tucson triggers a major investigation when he sees A. Donald Vester in a weird disguise. It turns out that he’s Dr. Patrick Henry, a dermatologist at a Baltimore hospital, in Dallas for a conference but on an incognito side trip to Tucson to kill his wife, Christina Bellios. However, he didn’t do it, for some reason, and so he’s tried not for murder but for attempted murder, given how far he’d gone to do it and how close he’d come.

The prosecutor was the chief prosecutor for Pima County, William Randolph Stevens, who received an Edgar Award nomination for Best Fact Crime for his 1982 book about the case. In 1985, that became this two part TV movie.

Born Innocent (1974)

Director: Donald Wyre
Writer: Gerald Di Pego, based on the book by Creighton Brown Burnham
Stars: Linda Blair, Joanna Miles, Allyn Ann McLerie, Mary Murphy, Janit Baldwin, Nora Heflin, Tina Andrews, Sandra Ego, Mitch Vogel, Richard Jaeckel and Kim Hunter

Index: Make It a Double.

Linda Blair didn’t start her screen career in The Exorcist but it launched her to stardom in a way few fourteen year olds ever experience. It speaks volumes for her attitude that she took up this tough TV movie next and continued to accept tough roles in TV movies like Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Sweet Hostage and Victory at Entebbe. She took the harder road.

Born Innocent aired on 10th September, 1974 as an NBC World Premiere Movie and became the highest rated TV movie of that year. It looks at mental and physical abuse, pushing the edges of what network television was willing to do. Its notorious lesbian rape scene was removed from reruns, even though it’s key to the story.

And that story revolves around Chris Parker as she follows a brutal story arc. Arguably the most powerful scene isn’t the rape at all but a closing shot of the face of a counsellor as she realises she’s lost another one because of the system. What we see is how she entered it and how she gets lost within it.

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

Director: Jack Smight Writers: John Gay, based on the novel by William Goldman
Stars: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick and George Segal

Index: 2025 Centennials.

I love plucking films I’ve never heard of out of filmographies entirely due to research. Rod Steiger was a giant of American cinema, which means that there’s no shortage of films I could have chosen to celebrate his centennial.

This is one I’d never even heard of before, but he’s both the lead and the villain, he was at the height of his powers a year after In the Heat of the Night and he plays a character who plays other characters to strangle women and taunt the police. The fact that it’s based on a William Goldman novel was just a bonus.

As the film starts, he’s Fr. Kevin McDowell, an Irish priest with red hair whistling his way down the road to visit Mrs. Molloy, widow and lapsed Catholic, so that he can drink her port, tickle her mercilessly and then strangle her to death. It’s clearly all to do with his mother.

The Wizard of Oz (1925)

Director: Larry Semon
Writers: L. Frank Baum, Jr. Leon Lee and Larry Semon, based on the story by L. Frank Baum
Stars: Dorothy Dwan, Oliver Hardy, Curtis McHenry and Larry Semon

Index: That's a Wrap!

While the production values of this take on L. Frank Baum’s classic story don’t come close to the famous 1939 version, there’s a lot here that might surprise. And hey, they’re a heck of a step up from The Patchwork Girl of Oz in 1914, a film written and released by Baum himself!

He died in 1919 so didn’t have a hand in this but his son, credited as L. Frank Baum Jr. even though his name was Frank Joslyn Baum, did. However, it’s hardly faithful in its adaptation, even by the low standards of other versions, including 1939, which changed a lot more than the colour of Dorothy’s slippers. After all, the Wicked Witch of the West only got 26 pages in the original book!

She isn’t in this version at all and I wish that Dorothy wasn’t either. It’s not that namesake Dorothy Dwan isn’t a capable actress; it’s that the character has no substance. When we first set foot in Kansas, a clearly aged Aunt Em and a stunningly rotund Uncle Henry are working their fingers to the bone, while Dorothy has no interest in helping. She isn’t even dressed to help! She flits around gathering flowers and looking precious, as if that’s all the world ever wants. I wanted her to break a nail and pout in the corner, so I could get on with the movie.

That Man Bolt (1973)

Directors: Henry Levin and David Lowell Rich
Writers: Charles Eric Johnson and Ranald MacDougall
Stars: Fred Williamson, Byron Webster, Miko Mayama, Satoshi Nakamura, John Orchard and Teresa Graves

Index: Make It a Double.

Fred Williamson’s second Make It a Double choice is a couple of years older than Bucktown but he was already established, especially with blaxploitation staples like Black Caesar and its sequel, Hell Up in Harlem. What surprised me is that this isn’t another of them.

In fact, it rather relishes how it keeps us on the hop as to what it actually is. Sure, there’s a blaxploitation feel at points, but there’s much more James Bond, much more kung fu movie and much more general seventies thriller, the colour of the lead the most unusual aspect.

That Man Bolt is Jefferson Bolt, who’s trying to be Jim Kelly when we first see him, stripped to the waist and working through a kata even though he’s locked up in a Macao jail. He’s not Jim Kelly but he looks good anyway. And then in comes an Aussie to cut him loose and ferry him over to Hong Kong. That’s Carter.

Bucktown (1975)

Director: Arthur Marks
Writer: Bob Ellison
Stars: Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Thalmus Rasulala, Tony King, Bernie Hamilton, Art Lund and Tierre Turner

Index: Make It a Double.

I’ve reviewed Bucktown for Pam Grier’s First Thirty but it was also one of Fred Williamson’s two Make It a Double picks. While it came at a crucial time for her, it’s definitely a better film for him, giving him a good introduction then building him far more than I expected.

It initially feels like an episode of a TV show. Everything kicks right in: the opening credits, the funky music and the action. The very first scene is cops lusting after a hooker, but they rush off to beat up a black guy at the station as a train pulls in.

Getting off that train is Duke Johnson, who’s in Bucktown to bury his brother. And that’s the Hammer, who sees the cops but doesn’t do anything, just gets a cab to the Club Alabama. “Do you believe in God?” the cabbie asks him. “Then you’re in the wrong place.”