HARUM SCARUM (1965)

 

Leave your brain at the door for this one.

Finally saw HARUM SCARUM (1965), one of the top contenders for the dubious distinction of being Elvis’s rock-bottom worst film, alongside the equally maligned KISSIN’ COUSINS (1964). While KISSIN’ COUSINS very much played into its era’s trend toward “cornpone” comedy, HARUM SCARUM harks back to the B-movie genre of “exotic” Arabian-set adventure/romances of the 1940’s and 1950’s, with California unconvincingly standing in for Middle Eastern locations. 

Originally released as a double-feature with the classic Toho kaiju flick, GHIDRAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER, 

I swear this actually happened. Talk about tonal whiplash... 

HARUM SCARUM finds Elvis starring as Johnny Tyrone, a nightclub entertainer and movie star on a goodwill tour of the Middle East, who is kidnapped and tasked to use his karate skills to murder the king of an isolationist desert nation that has kept Western influences at bay for two millennia. If he does not murder the king, a league of assassins will kill a troupe of performing thieves and orphans that Elvis has befriended. (Why the league of assassins don’t just dispose of the king themselves is never addressed.)

Elvis as Johnny Tyrone. Rudolph Valentino he ain't.

 There are escapes, double-crosses, mild derring-do, Michael Ansara (I DREAM OF JEANNIE's Blue Djinn and Klingon captain Kang from the original STAR TREK and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE), the always welcome Billy Barty, and romance with the king’s gorgeous daughter, all accented with a steady roster of forgettable musical numbers.

When compared against KISSIN’ COUSINS, I have to say that I find HARUM SCARUMto be the superior film. Yes, it’s incredibly stupid, but it’s as mindlessly entertaining as any of the many faux Arabian exotica flicks that Hollywood had cranked out for the previous twenty years, and Elvis and company all look like they had a blast filming it, unlike the somnambulistic performances in KISSIN’COUSINS. The comedy, though stupid, does not insult one’s intelligence in the way that KISSIN’ COUSINS did, and the songs are all definitely better (though it's an admittedly low bar). However, the one disturbing trend of several Elvis films of the early/mid-1960's that pops up again here is Elvis engaging in a musical number with a pre-pubescent girl that, though intended to be "cute," comes off as douche-chills-inducingly borderline-pedo. (You'll know that scene when you get to it, so have your thumb on your remote's fast forward button.)

Seriously, this sequence made me squirm.

When you add it all up, it's a lot more breezy and fun than KISSIN' COUSINS and I would actually recommend it as a passable waste of 85 minutes. So, for now in my estimation, KISSIN' COUSINS retains the crown as the worst Elvis movie that I have endured. Will I find one of his other works to be somehow even worse? I intend to make my way through all of the King's cinematic oeuvre as the mood strikes me, so STAY TUNED.

Poster for the original theatrical release.

KISSIN' COUSINS (1964)

Twice the Elvis, infinite awfulness.

KISSIN’ COUSINS (1964) was Elvis’s fourteenth film in eight years — he averaged two or three films per year from 1960 through to 1969 — and by this point his movies were virtually interchangeable, distinguishable from one another only by the setting and Elvis’s vocation in the story. This time around he plays a U.S. Army lieutenant who is forced into helping the Army  obtain permission to use an area of Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains as the location of a top secret ICBM missile base. He’s pressed into this task because the area is owned by an ornery hillbilly stereotype who hates outsiders, especially representatives of the government, but Elvis’s character’s family were once native to the area and he’s related to the hillbily’s family because one of his elder relatives married one of the hillbilly’s relatives, so Elvis is kin and therefore not a target for murder upon entering hill country. 

With a small platoon of fellow soldiers and his commanding officer in tow, Elvis attempts to broker the land deal while fending off the hostilities of his blonde lookalike cousin, and also contending with the attentions of two cornpone cuties, one of whom is played by a pre-BATMAN Yvonne Craig, who spends much of the film running around in a yellow bikini. Oh, and the cuties in question are his cousins.

 

 The all-natural, puberty-enflaming wonder that was Yvonne Craig.

 

There’s a time limit on making the deal, and if it does not go as planned, Elvis’s commanding officer is threatened with getting reassigned to Greenland instead of the cushy Pentagon gig that he aspires to, and if he fails he’ll take Elvis down with him.  

 

The old hillbilly proves to be stubborn about relinquishing the land, even for good compensation and a number of accompanying perks, so Elvis has his work cut out for him. And while all of this is going on, there’s romance, assorted hillbilly shenanigans with moonshine and revolting country vittles, terrible musical numbers that Elvis pretty much sleepwalks through, and, my favorite of the film’s many stupid elements, the “threat” of the Kittyhawks, a roving band of hot man-starved nymphomaniacs who roam the mountains in search of men to knock them up so they’ll have boy babies. All these idiotic elements come together at the end, when every problem is solved by a massive drunken party, with the Kittyhawks getting it on with the servicemen.

 

Elvis versus the Kitthawks. The hills are alive with the sound of nymphomania.

Considered by many to be the rock-bottom worst in the lengthy Elvis filmography, and definitely the worst that I have seen thus far. KISSIN’ COUSINS is aggressively brain-dead but is fun to sit through for its we-don’t-gove-a-fuck utter idiocy. Like most other Elvis films of the 1960’s, it runs out of steam about halfway through, but stick with it just to see the ridiculous conclusion.

 

 "You gals ever hear of buggery?"

When I ran the film for Lexi and Ginna (Lexi’s older sister and Bad Movie Night regular), Ginna noted that she, like me, had received her education on the cinema of Elvis via the times when the late, lamented 4:30 MOVIE would do an “Elvis Week” showcase, and though she had seen and enjoyed many an Elvis flick for their sheer mindless entertainment value, she had never seen KISSIN’ COUSINS. When it was over, she remarked that it was likely the worst one she had ever seen, thanks to its stagebound visual cheapness, terrible dialogue and performances, and a roster of unlistenable dreck that passed as songs.

The next Elvis outing that I plan on subjecting the sisters to is HARUM SCARUM (1965), in which Elvis goes to Arabia and engages in Arabian Nights shenanigans. It’s another strong contender for the crown as Elvis’s worst, so I can't wait to endure it.

 

 Poster for the original theatrical release.

HERCULES (2014)

Dwayne Johnson, making for an impressive Hercules.

Finally got around to checking out HERCULES (2014). Taking place after the completion of the famous twelve labors, this gives us a Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) who leads a band of mercenary heroes, including Ian McShane as a skilled spearman who sees visions of his death,  

and the athlete Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), here reimagined as an Amazon archery badass.  

Though widely lauded for his amazing feats and status as a demi-god, Hercules bears the guilt of having killed his wife and children, a state of mind that holds him back from true greatness, but he nonetheless leads his companions when they are hired to lead the army of Thrace against savage marauders. But all is not as it seems, with neither Hercules's culpability for his family's murders nor with the people he and his stalwart crew were hired to rout. And, interestingly, there is question as to whether the mythic hero is actually the son of Zeus, or is he just a figure whose legend grows with each retelling?

Basically a matinee popcorn muncher, I can see why this flopped, as it's little more than a throwback to the seemingly endless Italian mythological muscleman flicks of the 1950's and 1960's peplum wave, only with the production values to make it look quite lavish. It's nothing great, but lovers of ancient world epics and mythic adventure will find it an agreeable way to pass just over ninety minutes. Dwayne Johnson makes an appropriately beefy Hercules, and his band of mercenaries are all a lot of fun. It's the kind of thing I would have absolutely loved if I'd seen it at age nine, and even at my current age of fifty-nine, I was entertained. Recommended as a minor diversion for mythology goons and peplum addicts.

Poster for the theatrical release.

RED ONE (2024)

Who knew I needed to see a slap fight between the Rock and Krampus?

It's just before Christmas Eve and Santa is kidnapped for a scheme that will usurp his annual duties and find all on the naughty list imprisoned forever, thus making the world a nicer place. It's up to Santa's hulking bodyguard and an amoral, world-class cyber-tracker/thief who can find anyone who doesn't want to be found to retrieve Santa and save Christmas while weathering all manner of obstacles, both fantastical and all-too-human, before the world must face a year without Christmas.

Since it was free on Amazon Prime Video, I just watched RED ONE (2024) and it was absolutely NOT what I expected going in. I anticipated a treacly Christmas movie for the kiddies, but what I got was a two-hour mashup of a TAKEN-style kidnapping rescue thriller, mismatched buddy movie, an examination of family dysfunction, monster movie, and PG-13-level violent superhero action flick. It's tonally all over the place and it's definitely not for the little ones, as it can get rather intense for a seasonal item, and that's why I'm going to wager that it will eventually find an audience of tweeners and older on home video. It's an antidote to nauseating Christmas family fare, despite wielding a number of heartwarming elements, and at its heart it's more of an action film than anything else.

I don't have kids but I would bet that at just over two hours, it's likely a tad too long for the endurance of the average moviegoing child, plus some of the concussive action, eerie visuals, and superb creature makeups may be a bit much for the really little ones, so know your kids' ability to handle such material before sitting them down with this.

Chris Evans is a lot of fun, playing a character who's the moral polar opposite of Steve Rogers, and Dwayne Johnson is his usual superhero self as the veteran head of Santa's security. They work well as a mismatched duo, and I enjoyed their dynamic quite a lot. Also, extra points for the diverse crew that populates the North Pole. There are humans (apparently), elves, trolls, and anthropomorphic polar animals, including my favorite, a polar bear security enforcer named Garcia.

 

The depiction of "Santa magic" is arguably the most interesting that this fan of fantastical tales has yet seen onscreen, and the tactical deployment of size-changing/reality-warping tech reminded me of how the Atom fights in the comics.

RED ONE is a flawed piece, but I was entertained because I took it in as a superhero movie about supers who are tied into the mythic lore of Christmas. It's definitely not for those who like their yuletide cinema to be all sentimental and sugary, though it does feature bridge-building to salve inter-familial rifts. Bottom line: At heart, this is a Christmas superhero flick, complete with powerful supernatural supervillain, and as such I say it was better than the past several MCU efforts (an admittedly low bar). Smoke a bowl, down some spiked eggnog, and enjoy it for the weird genre chimera that it is.

Poster for the theatrical release.

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024)

FOLIE A DOO-DOO, more like.

Just made it through JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024). Talk about a slog...

This turd has already been dissected to death on the internet, so all I have to say is that it's a would-be opera that instead ended up as a bad, pretentious catalog of movie musical cliches, or it was intentionally crafted to troll the audience that so lauded the inexplicably overrated first film. It's a musical where the vocal performances should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, the romance between the protagonists depends on the audience more or less taking their love as given without really doing much of anything to sell it (which did not work for me at all), and the damned thing felt as long as BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ. 

I didn't like the original, so whether this sequel fails or not matter not at all to me, as the only reasons I saw this were that it was free, and solely so I could see what the hoopla was about in order to be able to comment on it from an informed point of view. That said, it's a well-crafted disaster across the board. It's pretty and professionally realized, but a gilded turd is still a turd.

THE BRAVE ONE (2007)

Vengeance is mine?

Operating very much within the same territory as the exploitation classic MS .45 (1981), this Neil (THE CRYING GAME) Jordan-helmed vehicle is at first glance another in the long line of “harmed citizen strikes back” flicks, but it’s head and shoulders better than most of its brethren thanks to it having more on its mind than giving its audience the vicarious thrill of seeing the human vermin who infest the streets greet a lead slug head-on.

Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain, an NPR-type radio talk show host who is brutally mugged one evening and survives the assault while her fiancée perishes from his injuries (adding insult to injury, the thugs also steal her dog). Understandably traumatized, she illegally obtains a firearm and sets about cruising the NYC streets, subways and parks in search of deserving prey, all in hope of one day finding the bastards who took away her man. As her body count grows the police follow her trail, and as they draw ever closer Bain enters into a friendship with the head of the investigation, a detective named Mercer (played by IRON MAN’s Terrence Howard). The detective sees her near the site of a double homicide she’s just committed on the subway, recognizes her from her mugging (he’d seen her in the hospital) and is soon revealed to believe firmly in the letter of the law despite the fact that it doesn’t always work for those wronged, a state of reality that frustrates him immensely. As the two start up a dialogue and Bain learns to trust him, the detective sees just how messed up the vigilante talk show host is and starts to suspect she may be the killer he’s after, but does she really deserve incarceration when what she clearly needs is closure and therapy?

Therein lies the real heart of THE BRAVE ONE: the viewer isn’t prompted by the script into the bloodthirsty mania one would have expected from similar features that once populated Times Square during the golden age of grindhouse fodder, and instead we see the fear and paranoia Erica lives with when not safe within her broadcasting booth. Her recovery just is not possible until she puts down her fiancée’s killers, but until then she’s a fucking mess who’s conflicted by her own murderous nocturnal activities and the mostly-positive reception her rampage garners from the Big Apple’s population. Unlike the implacable forty-four caliber juggernauts who preceded her on the big screen, Bain is all-too-human and she’s disturbed that her hands do not shake after she terminates the city’s two-legged predators; all we want to see is her put down her pistol and get the help that she so clearly needs, never once experiencing the frisson of seeing her mete out terminal justice to a bunch of rat-fuck scumbags who really deserve it. (Okay, I admit that I wanted the pair on the subway to die most heinously, but so may you after one of them asks Erica the charming question, “Have you ever been fucked with a knife?”). No surprise, but Jodie Foster once more turns in a terrific performance, and her character’s on-the-edge-of-sanity nervousness fairly radiates from her fragile-looking frame, her haunted eyes conveying volumes of tortured emotion with just a closeup.

Terrence Howard’s Detective Mercer is also notable for being one of the more believable “noble cop” types, and as he starts to figure out that Erica is the vigilante killer, we actually want to see him catch her because he obviously cares about her mental health and perfectly understands her agony. Here is a cop who would do everything within his power to make things right for Bain, but in lieu of that being possible, what’s a guy to do?

A sobering antidote to vigilantism fantasy-fulfillment movies of the MS .45 school, THE BRAVE ONE is highly recommended, but it is in no way a cathartic feel-good date movie. It’s a study of a woman pushed past the limits of what she believes is right, and immersed into a visceral world where only the cold detachment of an urban hunter can write the final chapter in her epic of tragedy, so keep that in mind before renting.

Poster for the theatrical release.

GLADIATOR II (2024)

 

 Director Ridley Scott returns to the sands of the arena.

 

GLADIATOR II (2024) is a decent sequel, filled with all of the elements fans of the ancient world epic genre want, but with one glaring problem: its protagonist is by far the least interesting character in it. The narrative would have been much better served if it focused solely on Pedro Pascal's war-weary Roman general who only wishes to retire and spend time with his wife, but it's made clear by the twin emperors that he is their bitch and must therefore never cease conquering in the name of the empire. Also fun is Denzel Washington as an owner or gladiators who seeks to use the film's hero, the son of the original's Maximus, as his stepping stone to usurping the throne. 

 

But, whatever. 

 

There is enough pageantry, lavish costumes, well-choreographed and realistic fight scenes, cartoonish CGI animals,graphic violence, and flamboyant camp that the genre has provided since the days when Rome's Cineccita studios was cranking out badly-dubbed peplum imports by the dozen seemingly every other week to keep fans of the genre entertained. And extra points for the inclusion of Derek Jacobi, a favorite and an immortal in my eyes for his unforgettable performance in the classic I, CLAUDIUS (1976). 

 

Worth seeing, but better if seen at at cheap matinee or via streaming on a huge flatscreen at home.

 

Poster for the theatrical release.