Movie review - "Return Engagement" (1983) ***

 Alan Rudolph's documentary is one of his least personal but most interesting film because it's about two nutters - Timothy Lear, pro drug advocate, and lunatic G Gordon Liddy.

Liddy's wife appears with black eyes. 

Janet Leigh Top Ten

 1) Psycho (1960) - famous scene but also a genuinely nuanced performance as a frustrated woman who makes a bad decision - Vera Miles doesn't have what Leigh had

2) Touch of Evil (1958) - passive (kidnapped) but she has an inner steel

3) Living It Up (1954) - really fun Martin and Lewis movie and Leigh matches well with Dean 

4) Scaramouche (1952) - honestly her character is a ninny and not in Eleanor Parker's league I just love this flm 

5) Little Women (1949) - the most nothing role in the story but she's ideal - she fitted in well at MGM

6) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) a sex positive woman chasing after Frank, from Leigh's hot streak of classic movies

7) The Fog (1980) - she's fine rather than great I just love the movie

8) The Vikings (1958) - lovely and warm in a movie that needs it

9) Houdini (1953) - perhaps the best film she made with Tony Curtis, very winning

10) Harper (1966) - one of many stars.

Movie review - "Endangered Species" (1982) **1/2

 Alan Rudolph tries again to go commercial in this conspiracy/government film about cattle mutilations. Robert Urich is amiable but miscast as a burnt out cop with a grown daughter - Rudolph's choice of Bob Mitchum would've been better. Jo Beth Williams is lovely as the local cop in a small town where cattle are being killed. Hoyt Axton is a local rancher. Peter Coyote is military with an absurd moustache.

The film clearly has beats it should hit - paranoia, conspiracy etc. Rudolph who specialises in light hearted mood and sexiness isn't really suitable.  The music sting is dumb. The ending is unsatisfactory.

Like Roadie this doesn't hit the exploitation beats it needs to - scares, violence, thrills.  You never believe Urich and that kid are related. Still the movie has a sort of charm - its laid back nature does help sell the story. It feels like it's in the country. 

It's not bad. It's just underwhelming.

Movie review - "The Stalking Moon" (1969) **

 Made by classy people - Alan Pakula, Robert Mulligan, Gregory Peck, Alvin Sergeant, Eva Marie Saint - but it doesn't work. The music score is silly and the story dragged out too much. It should be simple and terrifying from the get go. Gregory Peck and the soldiers rescue Eva Marie Saint and the others too easily. There's too many people around. The film should have kept going right after all the people at the stage coach post are slaughtered - there's this gap where the stagecoach appears and Peck takes them to his farm. The people making this know acting and that stuff but not how to create suspense.

Robert Forster is in the movie to die, so is Russell Thorson. The little kid is stakes - there's little exploration of the fact he wants to go back to his dad.

Not very good. 

Movie review - "Roadie" (1980) **

 Alan Rudolph was in director gaol after Remember My Name so took a studio gig though it was still New Hollywood - anarchic rock and roll film about mechanic/roadie Travis based on an alter ego of a Texan writer.

It's clear what this should be - a romance between Travis and a groupie. Only he looks old and she's meant to be a sixteen year old virgin so that's yuck, even for 1980. And I get why Meatloaf was cast and he's got energy but he doesn't have warmth and the center to play the lead - maybe John Belushi could have pulled it off. And Kiki Hunter isn't right. Meatloaf's family are haw haw caricatures with OTT acting. There's no heart. The movie needed to be made by Alan Arkush or someone. It also needed more 1980 nudity to be freank.

I was disliking this film intensely but it does get better when Debbie Harry and Alice Cooper appear. They are natural and play themselves. But the two leads have no chemistry and both feel miscast.

Movie review - "Terror Circus" (1974) **

 Alan Rudolph's second feature had him called in to re-shoot a movie that had been started by other fands. It's about three girls traveling in the desert who meet a mystery man (Andrew Prine, a familiar face) who kidnaps them. He's got all these other women captured and he does weird stuff.

Solid basic idea, probably needed some more gore and exploitation. Starts well and ends well with the reveal of a monster scarred by atomic testing.  The middle is a slog - needed a subplot or two. 

Prine gives a strong performance, the girls are pretty. I enjoyed it more than some of Rudolph's other movies.

Movie review - "Ray Meets Helen" (2019) *1/2

 I'm glad Alan Rudolph got the chance to make a movie and that Keith Carradine and Sondra Locke played lead roles and it's about a romance between older people. Also fun to see Samntha Mathis, Keith Davis and Jennifer Tilly have something to do. Carradine has some raffish charm and I enjoyed him playing the piano.  

But it's not very good. It's slow. Locke is clearly unwell and isn't great.  The fantastic elements - Locke continuously seeing a dead Mathis and so on - don't work. The movie feels cheap.