Skip It 3/7/2010

Tobacco Road (1941)
Directed by: John Ford
Written by: Erskine Caldwell; Jack Kirkland; Nunnally Johnson
Starring: Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson, Dana Andrews, Slim Summerville, Ward Bond
A family of backwood idiots in South Carolina are evicted from their property by the bank, and do very little to help themselves. Soon the moronic son is married to the local religious zealot and they buy a car and drive around reeking havoc, crashing into almost everything and abusing the car like it's a toy. The patriarch of the family wants to get a loan from the bank so he can plant some crops again, but he's too lazy and shiftless to actually do anything. There's a bunch of weird slapstick and overacting that could put post-Scarface Pacino to shame, mixed with awful maudlin scenes of desperation. This kind of film is typical of that era in American history, where rich, 'enlightened' people gathered to laugh at those less fortunate, be it blacks, latinos or hicks, in movies filled with stereotypes and cruelty. It's a dated dud that is better off forgotten. D



Possessed (1947)
Directed by: Curtis Bernhardt
Written by: Rita Weiman; Silvia Richards + Ranald MacDougall
Starring: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks, Stanley Ridges
Joan Crawford falls in love and gets rejected, so she tries to do everything she can to win the object of her affection's love. At some point someone drowns or something and Crawford winds up in a hospital, but I think there was more to it than that. To be honest I had the hardest time paying attention to this one. I typically like Joan Crawford movies, but this melodrama just seemed stagnant. Her acting is good as usual, but she'd definitely done better work than this. C



Blood Beach (1980)
Directed by: Jeffrey Bloom
Written by: Jeffrey Bloom
Starring: David Huffman, Marianna Hill, Burt Young, Otis Young, Lena Pousette, John Saxon, Darrell Fetty
'Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, you can't get to it.' The film's tagline is probably the most memorable thing about this movie. An unseen monster is sucking people under the sand of a California beach, and a bunch of cops try their best to find it and kill it. The story could have made for a good monster movie, but the execution here is abysmal. There are entire scenes that seem (badly) improvised, such as a scene were the wife of a victim spends what seems like an eternity describing to the police what her husband was wearing when he disappeared. The scene is endless, and pointless, just like the rest of the movie. F



Dick Tracy (1990)
Directed by: Warren Beatty
Written by: Chester Gould; Jack Epps Jr. + Jim Cash
Starring: Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Charlie Korsmo, Glenne Headly, Madonna, Dustin Hoffman, William Forsythe, Seymour Cassel, Charles Durning, Mandy Patinkin, Paul Sorvino, Dick Van Dyke, James Caan, Kathy Bates, Catherine O'Hara, Mary Woronov
When the various crime families are forced to consolidate, detective Dick Tracy must do his best to bring the big boss down. Also hanging around are a homeless kid who Dick takes under his wing, a nice girl who wants to marry Dick, and the bad girl lounge singer who knows more than she's letting on. The problem with this movie is the story, which fails to hold the various more successful elements together. Everything else is pretty exceptional, from the over-the-top comic book performances, colorful sets, a lively score, bizarre make-up and some original songs by composer Stephen Sondheim. But the story is pretty routine and fails to really hold everything together, and by the last half hour things get really tiresome. C+



The Forbidden Dance (1990)
Directed by: Greydon Clark
Written by: Roy Langsdon + John Platt
Starring: Laura Harring, Jeff James, Barbra Brighton, Miranda Garrison, Sid Haig, Angela Moya, Richard Lynch, Shannon Farnon
An Indian princess from the Amazon must convince a corporation to stop the destruction of her jungle, so she and a witch-doctor hop on a plane and fly to Los Angeles. Soon she's someone's maid, and she goes out dancing with her bosses spoiled lay-about son. They dance the 'forbidden dance,' aka The Lambada!, one of the most ridiculous dances I've ever seen. Soon the lay-abouts bigoted ex-girlfriend and the evil corporation's hit-man team up to get rid of the sexy dancing thorn in their sides while our hero couple prepares for a televised dance competition. This is one of those movies that has to be seen to be believed, where every scene is just so aggressively awful that you question the direction of our society as a whole. F (A+ for camp value)