Movie review - "The Big Heat" (1953) ****

 Everything clicked for Fritz Lang - Glenn Ford in a great performance, a strong story, very good script from Sydney Boehm. Simple story - Ford investigates murder of cop - has punch from the all to believable depiction of corruption in society particularly the higher up cos who are always encouraging people to give up.

Ford's wife is sappy and the kid an annoying boomer but the wife's death has real kic and the minor parts are superb - the slimy bar owner, the mob boss, the sad hooker. Most of all there is Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame - who I was surprised to see don't really appear much til the last act. 

But the relationship between Grahame and Ford is powerful and I loved how Ford's army veteran mates helped. 

Movie review - "I Walk the Line" (1970) **

 One of that trilogy of Tuesday Weld films she made when she turned down Bonnie and Clyde etc.

This should be good. Greg Peck as a sheriff in the south tempted by hot little Tuesday Weld, whose family are moonshiners. But it doesn't quite work. There's no sex. Weld's got plenty but not Peck - he's too solid. It needs to be about the temptation and corruption of a man. Needs more sleaze and crime.

Ralph Meeker brings it, as her dad. Ditto Charles Durning. But Estelle Parsons is too white trash as the wife - the only contrast is she's old and less attractive, when it really needed to be she was lady like.

The film really needed to be made in the late 1950s when it would've been properly sleazy.  Also Peck needed to have his life destroyed more at the end - to die, or go to prison or something. The movie pulls its punches.

Weld is good but she'd been playing these roles for too long and was getting older. The film could've been more rejigged for their ages and personas. 

Book review - "Roddy McDowall" by Samuel Bernstein

 Bernstein does another very good biography of an underrated queer actor Roddy McDowall, on top of the one he did for Caesar Romero. The two actors had many things in common - foreigners who flourised in Hollywood, seem like genuinely nice people, hugely long careers, Batman villains. McDowall had more long term romances and possibly better luck with movies - every decade he managed to appear in a classic. How Green Was My Valley, Compulsion, Camelot, Cleopatra, Planet of the Apes, The Poseidon Adventure. It's incredible. 

Worthy book for a person who deserved it. 

Book review - "Cesar Romero: The Joker Is Wild" by Sam Bernstein

 Loving look at a man who sounds like a genuinely terrific person - underrated actor, handsome, polite, hard working. Never seems to have been linked to a romantic relationship, although something may have happened with Tyrone Power. Well researched, fun - half the book is the filmography!

Movie review - "A Private's Affair" (1959) **

 I didn't realise Mardi Gras went so well that 20th Century Fox decided to do another three-boys film about chaps in the army. This is set up to be a musical - the three men are enlisted to appear in a show - and would've seemed a natural for Pat Boone, Elvis, Fabian, Tommy Sands. But instead they've got Sal Mineo, Gary Crosby and Barry Coe. The women are Christine Carere, Barbara Eden and Terry Moore. Raoul Walsh directed.

The plot has politician Jessie Royce Landis marry Coe under anasthetic so she can adopt a Dutch girl for surgery. WTF.  This is the core issue. That's not a bad story if Landis is a genuine romantic threat - but they don't play that. Terry Moore could've played this. Or Barbara Eden. Play out a lovel triangle.

Do proper songs. Cast singers.

Not rocket science.

Fun to see Mineo in this. Coe isn't bad. 

Why did they make it? 

Movie review - "The Amusement Park" (1975) **

 "Lost" Romero movie - an industrial film about elder abuse. A lot of imaginative flair. Interesting. But it's an industrial film. Only 50 mins. For completionists.

Movie review - "Play It As It Lays" (1972) **

 One of those movies that you watch and go "the novel on which is based is probably quite good". I haven't read the book but since Joan Didion co wrote the script with her husband whose brother producer it's probably faithful. Tuesday Weld is outstanding in the role as is Tony Perkins. Confusing. Smart. I didn't get into it at all.