The Weekly Gravy #19

I’m still working six days a week, so I might only be getting 3-4 movies a week instead of the 6-7 I’d like. But I’m forging on, and I’m sticking to the theme of obscurity (no more than 1,000 votes on the IMDb), while trying to cross a few films off my long-standing (and far-reaching) list.

I’m also overdue to watch some really not-good movies, and I scored the first time out, with…

Traxx (1988) – *½ [364]

You have to make allowances for some films, even great and/or beloved ones. Lawrence of Arabia uses brownface. Pulp Fiction uses the n-word too lightly. Fight Club has a toxic fanbase which seriously misreads it. But those films all have great writing, acting, and filmmaking to redeem them. And even lesser films can transcend their shortcomings—Road House has a rather ludicrous premise and drips with the male gaze, but it’s so sheerly entertaining, so gleefully pulpy, that I love it.

But I couldn’t make the necessary allowances for Traxx. I could forgive the dubious morals of the story, the questionable values of the hero, the dodgy logic of the script, or Shadoe Stevens’ lack of actual acting ability…if the film managed to be sufficiently entertaining. Unfortunately, it’s an action-comedy that isn’t very exciting and isn’t very funny, making for a rather dire experience indeed.

Traxx (Stevens) is a maverick policeman who quits the force after being rebuked for his methods (which include tricking suspects into getting themselves shot). He works as a mercenary in Central America for some years, but finally decides to quit and pursue a new dream: baking cookies as good as Famous Amos’. Problem is, he’s a terrible baker with terrible ideas for cookies (many of which seem to include meat), so he decides to put his capacity for violence to work once more.

His goal: clean up the crime-ridden town of Hadleyville, Texas after the beleaguered chief of police (John Hancock) speaks of the need for a “town tamer.” He offers his services to the chief for $10,000, which is scoffed at; he then decides to just go for it and strong-arms the streetwise Deeter (Willard E. Pugh) into being his assistant. He starts raiding brothels, strip clubs, and other dens of iniquity, single-handedly bringing the criminal element of the town to their knees.

Crime boss Aldo Palucci (Robert Davi) wants to take him out, but when his own people can’t, turns to the infamous Guzik brothers, who make their violent way towards Hadleyville. Meanwhile, the mayor of Hadleyville (Priscilla Barnes), initially frustrated by Traxx’ vigilante methods, falls madly in love with him upon meeting him, and decides he’s just what she and the city need.

Traxx started to lose me pretty early on; the deadpan humor in the opening scenes didn’t really land (“I’d like to hear that from the puppy’s family”), and Traxx’ career as a mercenary in Central America doesn’t seem all that admirable when you realize he was probably just doing the CIA’s dirty work so he could shoot people without pesky things like “probable cause” and “civil rights” getting in the way. But then he decides to leave all that behind to make cookies, and his utter ineptitude at that…isn’t all that funny either. There’s plenty of relatable humor to be found in the difficulties of baking, but the film doesn’t find it.

And once Traxx begins his reign as a one-liner-spouting vigilante, he seems to mostly target brothels and…strip clubs? No joke, he shuts down what seems to be a legitimate strip club where nothing worse than some topless dancing is taking place, and “comically” tells everyone as they leave not to return on penalty of death! Now, if the point was that Traxx’ values were a bit muddled and we were supposed to laugh at that, like we were supposed to laugh at his baking cookies with tuna in them, we might have something. But the film seems to want us to think he’s in the right, and instead he comes off like an asshole. Say what you will about Dalton in Road House, but it never felt like he was punching down.

Then you’ve got Traxx forcing Deeter to be his assistant, which again makes him look like a jerk, but the film doesn’t seem to get it. And you’ve got the brutality of Palucci (who orders a gay barber killed because he seemed to be too “familiar”) and the Guziks, who leave a wake of dead bodies behind them wherever they go and torment Palucci’s accountant Tibbs (Raymond O’Connor) mercilessly. It makes for a weirdly nasty viewing experience at times, souring the moments of pure 80s cheese.

Now, I could deal with Traxx’ obnoxiousness if he were a compelling character, or even just an entertaining one. But the film wants him to be cool-funny (like Axel Foley) and goofy-funny (like Frank Drebin) at the same time, and Stevens just doesn’t have anything like the acting ability to pull that off. Sure, he can deliver a flippant one-liner well enough; he’s got a good voice and just enough command of timing that you can see how he was a popular DJ and TV host at the time. But he can’t make a real character out of Traxx, he can’t find the man behind the quips, and he looks like Robert Blake with a mullet. So the film is built upon a dud of a performance by someone who never should’ve been a leading player, at least not in this kind of vehicle.

Some of the people around him do better. Pugh has a few likable moments, and Barnes does the best she can with a rather embarrassing role; when the mayor and Traxx first meet, in a library, she literally throws herself at him and the card catalogs erupt in orgasmic showers of paper. It’s almost funny, because at least Barnes delivers her lines with some comic relish, but it’s also just weird, because there’s no build-up to her infatuation with Traxx. As for Davi, who would play one of the best Bond villains a year later, he’s just a generic mafioso; he dies when, after spitefully farting in response to Traxx’ baking, he lights a cigar, igniting his own methane and blowing sky-high. The film doesn’t even make that funny.

And that’s why it ultimately fails. The less savory elements could be dealt with if there were some really good jokes and/or some well-staged action. But the comedy falls mostly flat (there are a couple of okay bits, but nothing memorable) and the action is generic at best, thanks to the unimaginative direction. It does have an incredibly cheesy score which would make for a good ironic vinyl release, complete with a theme song extolling Traxx’ virtues (“Just relax/here comes Traxx!”; “Get the facts/or deal with Traxx!”). But all told, it’s about as good as Traxx’ cookies.

Score: 34

Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991) – *** [312]

When I first saw Wax, back in 2013, I knew I had watched one of the single weirdest films I’d ever seen. Even allowing for the many varieties of cinematic weirdness, it’s still one of the strangest, though with considerable concentration I found it somewhat easier to parse this time around. Not much, mind you, but enough to where I could confidently say there was an internal logic here; a through-line, however curlicued, upon which it built its singular vision. David Blair is probably the only person who fully understands it, but as far as I can tell, he was able to realize his vision remarkably well.

I’ll do my best to summarize it: Jacob Maker (Blair) lives in Alamogordo with his wife Melissa* (Meg Savlov), where they work for the military; Jacob programs flight simulators for use in the Gulf War (ongoing at the time of the film’s release). He is also a beekeeper, following in the footsteps of his grandfather James (William S. Burroughs), who was a “spiritualist cinematographer,” trying to capture the spirits of the dead on the film. While tending the bees, Jacob begins having strange visions of his childhood home in Kansas, “the Garden of Eden,” which was surrounded by Biblical sculptures including depictions of Cain and Abel, Cain having a mark in the shape of an X on his forehead.

During one of these visions, Jacob apparently has a kind of “television” implanted in his brain by his bees and begins having more and more frequent visions. This leads him to relocate to the area around the Trinity test site, where he goes on lengthy walks in the desert and is seemingly assigned a task: to get vengeance for the dead, a task assigned to him by the bees, who are the souls of the future dead. We also learn more about his ancestors, including James’ half-sister Ella Spiralum and her beekeeping husband, Zoltan Abbasid, who brought a species of especially hardy bees from Basra (a significant site during the Gulf War, the terminus of the “Highway of Death”) in what was then Mesopotamia.

I can’t really make it that much clearer or say much more without trying to give a beat-by-beat analysis of the film (which might be a worthy project, but I’m certainly not going to attempt it). If you’re at all interested in the film, watch it: it was the first full-length film released on the Internet and can be easily found. But if reading that synopsis made your head spin, trust me…Wax isn’t for you.

I could argue Wax isn’t necessarily for anyone except David Blair, though that’s not entirely fair; if you like the works of Peter Greenaway, with their dry humor, pseudo-encyclopedic world-building, and highly stylized visuals, you’ll probably enjoy Wax. Likewise, anyone interested in the development of computer animation will find much to relish, as Blair makes much use of CGI to depict Jacob’s visions and increasingly fragmented perspective.

And the film is certainly full of inventive, unusual, and unsettling imagery. Blair combines stock footage, new footage, and animation quite cleverly, doing some intriguing things with sound as well, from the buzzing of the bees to Jacob’s odd narration (it sounds a bit like it was delivered by a text-to-speech program). And he clearly put a great deal of thought into the story, developing the stories of James Maker, Ella, and Zoltan thoroughly enough (both via narration and visual detail) to where you might just wonder if they were real people.

But for my part, I respect the film a lot more than I actually enjoy watching it. Although I was able to follow the story (more or less) by paying careful attention, the total lack of emotional content (there’s no acting as such) and the incredible density of the story make it more than a bit heavy-going at times. One moment your eyes may widen at Blair’s brazenly imaginative storytelling; the next they might start to wander as we see Jacob traipsing about in his beekeeping suit for the umpteenth time, until the bees and the dead and the Moon and the X all start to blur together. Or maybe I was just a bit tired.

I wouldn’t say every serious film buff needs to see Wax, but I would recommend it for its sheer singularity. Whether you make it all the way to the end or bail before Jacob’s first vision, you should probably get a taste of it. It’s like a PBS documentary from an alternate dimension.

* (A pun I didn’t pick up on the first time around: “Melissa” is Greek for “bee.”)

Score: 74

Matilda (1978) – * [314]

Matilda was doomed no matter what. If it had the best trained genuine kangaroo on Earth, or the most convincing animatronics, or the most seamless body-suit, it would still be ineptly written, limply played, and poorly directed. And if it were smartly written, brightly played, and cleverly directed, it would still have at its core a man in a pathetically unconvincing kangaroo suit, staring at us with nightmarishly dead eyes, making sounds like a chimp being smothered with a pillow.

And were Matilda simply a badly made film with a grotesque abomination in the title role, it would be ironically amusing. But it was made for a solid budget, with a solid cast, directed by a veteran of prestigious films and produced by the producer of possibly the most acclaimed film of the decade. With all that in mind, it goes from being merely a bad film to a stupefying one, and every time you look upon Matilda himself, the feeling deepens.

Down-and-out New York talent agent Bernie Bonnelli (Elliott Gould) is approached by former champion boxer Billy Baker (Clive Revill), who needs his help in rescuing Matilda from the city pound. Matilda, you see, is a boxing kangaroo (a male, at that) whom Billy brought from Australia to America for the sake of Making It Big. Bernie, in need of a break, seizes the opportunity and secures Matilda’s freedom, but in the process arouses the ire of Kathleen Smith (Karen Carlson), an animal-rights activist who thinks Bernie and Billy are exploiting Matilda. Bernie is smitten with her right away.

Matilda soon proves his worth, laying out the heavyweight champion Lee Dockerty (Larry Pennell) with a single punch as part of a carnival challenge. This arouses the ire of Dockerty’s promoter, gangster Uncle Nono (Harry Guardino), and his manager (and Bernie’s brother-in-law) Pinky Schwab (Lionel Stander). But it attracts the attention of sportswriter Duke Pankhurst (Robert Mitchum), who wants to drive Nono out of the sport and sees Matilda as a means of doing so.

As Matilda travels the country with Bernie, Billy, and former taxi driver/colleague of Parkhurst Gordon Baum (Art Metrano), KO-ing challengers with one punch left and right, Nono tries to put a stop to them by criminal means, while Kathleen tries to stop them on moral grounds—and with the help of her brother, the California boxing commissioner. But as she starts falling in love with Bernie, and Nono’s plans keep getting foiled, can anything stop Matilda’s rise to the top?

I’ll leave it to you to find out; it’s available on Tubi, looking fairly nice for a film of its age and obscurity, and certainly good enough that nothing gets in the way of your…appreciating, shall we say, the glory of our title character. Words alone can’t do him justice. Behold:

Just look at that fucking thing. If you know the first thing about kangaroos, it’s a laughably unconvincing suit, with fur that’s too dark, a snout that’s too pointed, and an immobile mouth. But even if you’d never seen a real kangaroo, even in a photograph, you’d still have the eyes to contend with. Not only are they the wrong color for accuracy (real kangaroos’ eyes are darker), but they’re the right color for catching the light and looking utterly horrifying. The phony body language and the off-putting noises he makes are just gravy compared to those horrible eyes.

But like I said, even if Matilda were totally convincing, the movie would still be terrible. And where do I even start explaining how bad it is? Director Daniel Mann was never an auteur, but he directed no less than three Oscar-winning performances for Best Actress (Come Back Little Sheba, The Rose Tattoo, and BUtterfield 8) and was nominated for the DGA award three times (for Little Sheba, Rose Tattoo, and The Teahouse of the August Moon). He knew how to direct. But he can’t do much with this material, with the boxing scenes being neither exciting or funny and the staging throughout being flat and uninspired.

That said, it’s competently if flatly shot (unsurprisingly, cinematographer Jack Woolf worked mainly in TV), and the production was designed by Boris Leven, who did some truly great work in his time (winning an Oscar for West Side Story, and being nominated for The Andromeda Strain and, oh, seven other movies over nearly 50 years). And if anything, that makes the hopping, bopping eyesore at its center all the more baffling to behold; it’s like if The Lord of the Rings had left only one visual effect unfinished…but that was replacing Andy Serkis in a mo-cap suit with Gollum.

I should also mention the crappy theme song, “When I’m With You, I’m Feelin’ Good,” sung by Pat Boone, Debby Boone, and a chorus of backup singers that go “la la la la.” It has nothing to do with the movie, nor is it good, but it is kitschy as hell and very 70s, so you could ironically groove to it, if you’re so inclined.

The acting is pretty bad as well. Gould’s career, after getting an Oscar nomination for Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice and achieving stardom with M*A*S*H, was wildly uneven, and why he did this movie, other than a quick payday (the movie cost $5 million, more than Days of Heaven, Coming Home, Midnight Express, or An Unmarried Woman, and the only reason I can think of is the actors’ salaries), is beyond me. He phones it in here, doing nothing to make Bernie especially charming or compelling, and at times he’s actively annoying. Mitchum is charismatic enough and his role is small enough that he never has to lose face; I also don’t think he ever shares the screen with Matilda, which helps. Guardino is a generic I’m-surrounded-by-idiots mobster. Carlson is grating and her character makes no sense.

The closest thing the film has to a bright spot is Revill, and I’m just guessing Mann focused on him as the one element of the film he could be really enthusiastic about. He’s not all that great, but he brings a charm and a sincerity to Billy that throws the lousiness around him into sharper relief. He can’t overcome how unnecessary the framing device is (most of the film is in flashback), or how pointless Billy’s narration is, but he’s by a mile the best part of the film. So naturally, he doesn’t even get to appear on the poster, but Roy Clark gets on for his cameo as the New York boxing commissioner…who’s a Southern good ol’ boy for some reason, and Gould pretends to be one as well to get a license for Matilda. (It’s not funny.)

But as lacking as the filmmaking and acting are, the script is even worse. Adapted by producer Albert S. Ruddy and Timothy Galfas from a Paul Gallico novel, it’s a total mess, not least because it doesn’t seem to know who the film is for. Given the subject matter and the G rating, you’d think it was a kid’s film, but are kids going to care at all about the politics of boxing or the machinations of organized crime? Are adults going to be diverted by them, as half-assed as they are, in between Matilda’s all-too-sporadic antics? Is anyone going to be satisfied with the ridiculous romantic subplot, which adds nothing and is so choppy it just piles confusion upon disgust?

Disgust, I should note, because of the scene where Bernie confronts Kathleen in her hotel room and ends up kissing her multiple times without consent! And even though she rightly throws him out, the next time she appears she invites him to her room to make amends, and is so doting and sweet-talking that I assumed it was some kind of a set-up. But no, she’s fallen in love with him, and in the end, they live happily ever after. It’s all so absurd and inane that it defies belief.

But so are scenes like the trainwreck of a scene at the city pound, where the clerk seems to think Billy is pranking him despite having a receipt from the police for Matilda, where Kathleen first appears and her intentions in the scene are a total mess, and where despite the looming threat of euthanasia Matilda is released without incident. Or the scene where Nono tries to explain to his henchmen why he wants them to cut off Matilda’s tail, but they’re so stupid and he does it in such a convoluted way that it falls completely flat. Or the scene where, the night before the big fight, Bernie delivers a ridiculous monologue to Matilda that feels like something out of an alternate version of Amadeus in which Salieri is a human, and Mozart is a kangaroo, and they’re boxers, and it also sucks.

I could also mention the rampant product placement for Everlast and McDonald’s (Matilda is fond of their sundaes, apparently), neither of whom, I’m sure, saw an uptick in sales from it. And I could mention how some scenes just peter out, and others seem to have been cut out entirely (Bernie has a meeting with a colleague at one point that’s set up but then never shown). But what can I say that would be more evocative than a last look from our title character?

Score: 20

Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1970) – *** [352]

The title was a popular phrase at the time, but it has relatively little to do with the film, nor do the British (above) or American (here) posters. It all points to the probability that no one involved knew quite how to describe or sell the film, and I face a similar difficulty; it’s a film which never quite seems to settle on its tone or even what point it wants to make, and the end result isn’t really satisfying. But there’s enough good things in it to keep it quite watchable, and in a few respects it remains fairly relevant a half-century after it opened (and flopped).

Somewhere in the South, there’s a small town adjacent to an Army missile base. The leaders of the town regard the soldiers with suspicion and the local sheriff is constantly finding reasons (of varying legitimacy) to arrest them. The commanding officer of the base wants to secure a promotion before his retirement, and assigns a veteran officer to manage relations with the community. But another officer with a taste for drinking, chasing women, and running his mouth gets himself arrested, and his friends decide to take drastic action to break him out of jail…they steal a tank and drive to town, confronting the local militia on the way.

That’s a considerable simplification of the story, but with its wide array of characters and story threads, it was the most practical way to summarize it. And not only do you have a lot of characters, but most of them are played by people you’ve seen elsewhere. Hell, I’ve seen at least three of these people in other movies in just the last few weeks, one of them from the same director as this film!

You’ve got Brian Keith as Nace, the head CRO; Ernest Borgnine as Harve, the local sheriff; Tony Curtis as Gambroni, the fun-lover; Ivan Dixon as Jones, who wants to open a gas station when he leaves the military; Suzanne Pleshette as Ramona, a barmaid Gambroni sets his eyes on; Tom Ewell as the Billy Joe, the local militia leader; Bradford Dillman as Myerson, the straight-laced missile technician; Arthur O’Connell as Kruft, who runs the local bank; Don Ameche as Flanders, CO of the base; and John Fiedler as Purvis, Flanders’ second-in-command.

That’s a lot of people, and there are a lot of tonal shifts depending on who the film is focusing on. Sometimes it’s relatively dramatic (Jones trying to get a bank loan for his gas station, Harve flexing his power), sometimes it’s satirical (Flanders trying to figure out a plan of action whilst playing pool with his officers, Billy Joe yammering about Communist infiltration of the Army), sometimes it’s farcical (the showdown between Billy Joe’s militia and the tank), and sometimes it’s dramatic comedy (Gambroni pursuing Ramona, both knowing the score, a drunken face-off between Nace and Myerson). Sometimes it works quite well. Other times it just doesn’t land.

The best scenes are arguably the ones which just let the characters breathe and explore their humanity with a bit of a cocked eye. Gambroni may be a fun-loving rascal like many a role Curtis played, but the film acknowledges that he’s over the hill and still playing the same tricks, making his scenes with Ramona both likable and quietly poignant; they’ve both got a lot of failed romances in their past, and they both know this is unlikely to last. The face-off between Nace and Myerson begins with them swigging fifths and criticizing each other; Nace thinks Myerson is a snobbish egghead, and Myerson thinks Nace is a brutish dolt. Thoroughly drunk, they race through an obstacle course, with Nace winning, but not necessarily proving anything beyond that. It’s probably my favorite scene in the film, because we get such a good sense of the simultaneous irritation and affection the two men feel for each other; they may be very different in most respects, but when you’re on the same team as someone, you often end up caring about them in spite of yourself.

There are other good scenes in this vein (Flanders trying to get Purvis to swear is a gem), but the film doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with them, leading to the mostly farcical third act. Some parts of it work (in this day and age, its depiction of government-defying militias remains quite relevant), but on the whole it feels like they wanted a slam-bang trailer-friendly finish, and it just doesn’t land. Nor does the anti-climactic ending, which makes a bit of a satirical point about how those in charge will sacrifice those who rock the boat if need be, but otherwise feels like a bit of a cop-out.

Part of the blame must go to director Hy Averback, who does a much better job than he did with the previous year’s dreadful The Great Bank Robbery, but still struggles to figure out just what the film’s tone is. But then again, some of the blame must also go the script, by Hal Captain (who has no other credits—a pseudonym, perhaps?) and Don McGuire (who mostly worked in television and on Martin & Lewis films before getting an Oscar nomination years later for co-writing Tootsie). You wonder just what the aim was, and how much was changed in the hope of making a more marketable film. (Satire may “close on Saturday nights,” but one that sticks to its guns has a better chance of success than one that waters itself down.) Jerry Fielding’s odd, broadly comic score doesn’t help much.

At least the acting is mostly quite good. There aren’t any true standouts, but it’s the type of ensemble that’s filled with old pros who know their business, and you can sit back and enjoy their work. Keith is perfectly cast as the crusty, frustrated Nace; Curtis is spot-on as the overgrown delinquent Gambroni; Dillman is quite amusing as the priggish Myerson; Pleshette is lively and witty as Ramona; Borgnine is genuinely menacing as Harve (a good choice, rather than making him a comic blusterer). On the other hand, Ewell is a bit too broad as Billy Joe.

It’s too muddled and uneven of a film to really succeed, but it does enough right to make it watchable. Its treatment of the conflict between civilians and the military remains relevant, though it doesn’t touch upon the likelihood that the same people who hate the soldiers love the Army for defending “American values” abroad; a similar inconsistency is touched upon but not explored in the similarly scattershot Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Both are recommended for the more forgiving viewer.

Score: 69