An update from a previously enjoyed RadishFlix: Three of the dragon boat scenes from The Vikings (Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis) were filmed here in Freising, along the banks of the Isar. Nobody is certain exactly where. No permission or police services were requested from the city (the studio chose Freising “to save money”), no photos were published in the local paper, and any landmarks in the footage are obscured by machine-generated fog.
But I read it in the Bavarian Pravda, so it must be a true story.
Candlelight in Algeria (1944)
Netflix, original English
Inspirational wartime spy-and-romance story; mostly interesting for historical purposes. You know what really stuck out? The two leads, feeling peckish in the middle of the night, pull a whole roasted chicken out of the icebox and start eating chunks off it while they fight about what to do next.
Is this really a thing people did in the 1940s, outside of Tom and Jerry cartoons? Who the hell has a whole cold roasted chicken just laying around? (People in Vichy French colonies harboring British spies, Radish, obviously.)
Gremlins (1984)
Cable, original English
There is nothing like a Christmas comedy when it’s 93°F outside.
I saw it in German television a couple of Christmases ago, and all the funny death scenes had been edited out for German television standards. Full frontal and non-consensual sexual penetration are OK, but a puppet in a blender offends the delicate sensibilities of the Old Country…anyway, I was pleased this was the full version.
It’s another from the Movies All the Other Kids Were Allowed to Watch Collection that I first saw as an adult, but it’s a become a go-to favorite. I am also increasingly distracted by the packaging of food and household products in American movies of the 1980s. I do not want to analyze this.
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Cable, Deutsch
We have a horror-movie channel I almost never watch, because 1) there’s no subtitles, and 2) they show mostly modern horror, and I have a low gore threshold. But sometimes they surprise me with classic horror. I feel like I was forced to read the short story at some point, so none of it was a surprise, it was just fun to watch and now I have to track down more young Joel McCrea.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Cable, original English
Not a Christmas movie, and not as good of a story as the first one, but it starts with an authentic Chuck Jones Bugs-and-Daffy clip, then piles pop-culture reference on top of sight-gags without stopping for 105 minutes.
Notable screen sightings: El Chupacabra from The X-Files; Judge Harold T. Stone’s dad, Buddy; Kuni from UHF… Hulk Hogan. Dick Butkus. Pat. Grampa Munster. Dracula.
I can’t remember if I saw this when it was new, but it’s made the See It Once A Year collection.
Daddy’s Home 2 (2017)
Netflix, original English
Another Christmas movie! I thought it was funnier than the first one, even though the worst Christmas song ever written features prominently in the plot and the audience is forced to hear an amateur version of it over and over and over and over…
(Don’t you be judging me. I like John Lithgow, and I can’t always be a Serious Scholar of Highly Acclaimed European Art Films.)
Solino (2002)
Netflix, original Deutsch
Lola made me line up all the Moritz Bleibtreu movies into my queue. Even the Highly Acclaimed European Art Films.
A movie tangentially about making movies, but generally about an Italian family who immigrated Duisberg in the “Economic Miracle” of the 1950s. Dissatisfied with the life they found–the labor in the coal mines is as awful as the food–they open Duisberg’s first pizzeria (Germany’s first pizzeria is in Würzburg). They serve a lot of meals to an Italian filmmaker, making a WWII picture, and in this time the younger of their two sons decides he wants to make films when he grows up. As an aspiring artist, he wins some local acclaim.
Ultimately the family is torn apart, as the brothers both fall in love with the same (German) woman and their mother is diagnosed with leukemia and decides to move back to her home village. The brothers become seriously estranged.
Good pic, sad, still not sure what I think of the ending.
The Fastest Gun Alive (1956)
Cable, original English
Unconventional western. I didn’t recognize Jeanne Crain as a blonde. Nice ending.
Lili Marleen (1981)
arte Mediathek, original Deutsch
Speaking of Highly Acclaimed European Art Films…Rainer Werner Fassbinder is one of those directors highly prized by film students of this century, even though he didn’t get many awards between his first film and his suicide. I didn’t hate his The Marriage of Maria Braun when I rented the DVD about ten years ago, so I gave this picture, also starring Hanna Schygulla, a try. “Lili Marleen” is not a character, but a song–a sad song about lovers being separated by WWI. It was played on “German radio for soldiers” around the various theaters in WWII and became a big hit among both sides.
Marlene Dietrich recorded a version for the US armed forces radio.
Anyway, Schygulla plays the German nightclub singer “Willie”, who lives in Switzerland and is in love with a Jewish man from a “good family” (read: they do not want their son to marry a nightclub singer). While helping him deliver some forged documents to Germany to help Jews escape, she is denied re-entry to Switzerland. She finds work singing for a German nightclub, attracts the attention of a Nazi official who pays for her to cut a record, and accidentally becomes a popular entertainer among the regime.
I’m not sure why the Nazis didn’t shoot her when they discovered her aiding the Polish resistance, but other than that it was a fairly enjoyable movie. Nice ending.
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
BR, Deutsch
Among all the disadvantages of watching dubbed movies is a small advantage: I don’t realize I’ve heard the over-parodied cliché lines until the movie is over. I’m following the story and the characters instead of remembering the copies of the copies.
It was interesting, I enjoyed it, but I don’t understand Holden’s character.
The Great Race (1965)
Cable, original English
There are a number of plot holes, but it’s basically a Warner Bros’ live action cartoon with Jack Lemmon as Daffy and Tony Curtis as Bugs. When you realize this, you can just turn off the part of your brain that knows facts about things and enjoy the slapstick.
Natalie Wood plays a young women’s libber who inserts herself into a story because she wants to be thought of as a journalist, but ends up being the love interest…
The Assassination Bureau (1969)
arte Mediathek, Deutsch
Diana Rigg plays a young women’s libber who inserts herself into a story because she wants to be thought of as a journalist, but ends up being the love interest…interesting that two slapstick movies portraying approximately the same era featured the same female character.
Enjoyed it.
3 Comments on “Sommerloch: The August Movie Post”