Forgotten movies

Cafe Society
41

After the Fox was a 1960’s Italian comedy that starred Peter Sellers who played an Italian criminal mastermind that faked making a movie in an Italian town and used the film making as cover to conduct a heist. The townspeople were so enamored of the idea of a film starring a famous American actor being made in their town, that by the end of ‘filming’ they (unknowingly) participate in the heist itself.

Sellers made his breakthrough, of course, playing Inspector Clouseau, and this forgotten film is eclipsed by his other achievements.

42

I liked ffolkes in the '80s on cable, and I liked it. I saw it again a decade or two ago. I still liked it, but not as much as the first time. Oil rigs remind me of Breaking The Waves. I’m not sure my wife would like it, but I want to watch it again every time I think of it. I’ll have to find the DVD.

43

How about Folks, the 1992 movie with Tom Selleck? It was apparently panned, but my family saw it on VHS before widespread opinions were known and we thought it was pretty good.

Don Ameche plays a man suffering from end-phase dementia. It’s a comedy, mainly.

44

As a kid I would see What Did You Do in the War, Daddy in the afternoon on off channels some times. I figure it’s pretty much forgotten. Blake Edward directed starring James Coburn and Dick Shawn. Great supporting roles by Carroll O’Connor and Harry Morgan. Morgan was not yet known for comedy but turns it up to 11. Apparently Norman Lear was convinced O’Connor could play Archie Bunker after watching this.

Fandango is mostly forgotten. It’s Kevin Costner’s first real starring role. Both funny and bittersweet with an eclectic soundtrack with both contemporary classic rock from the time and music from Pat Metheny.

45

Hercules and Hercules Unchained: spaghetti epics, both starring Steve Reeves as the beefcake, and both released in 1959. I thought they were great fun when I was a kid.

46

MST3K kept this going for quite awhile.

47

I saw these as a kid, then asked my parents what happened to the movie Hercules Chained.

Really.

48

And your questioning mind landed you on the Dope.

49

We went to see the movie The Longest Day about D-Day. During the film, my father told me he had been there, on Normandy Beach, during the war (but well after D-Day, I learned later).

Impressed, I asked, “So who is playing you?”

50

As a kid who grew up with the musical. I was an nearly an adult before I found out about the original…and then it was a trivia bit about early Jack Nicholson…and I was a monster kid and into old movies. The average person and the average musical fan think about the musical first.

51

“McDonald’s!”

52

‘… without thinking of the original.’

53

The Bed Sitting Room

54

Make that two votes. Loved it when it first ran, recently acquired it on DVD (obvious copy from VHS) and it’s held up very well. Harry Morgan in a supporting role steals every scene he’s in.

55

Some movies of the past forty-odd years have become “lost” by not making the move along with each new home viewing format. Some stuff that was on VHS never made it to DVD, and some of the ones that did never got a BluRay release. With streaming, one would hope that everything surfaces eventually (if Prime and Tubi can have eleventy-thousand backyard-shot horror flicks from this decade alone…) but there’s plenty that’s slipped through the cracks. Some of it is also rights issues: occasionally the ownership of a movie comes down to one guy (the Stones’ concert movie C#&$Sucker Blues), or it’s owned by a corporation that goes under or doesn’t give a crap (Spinal Tap was owned by a cosmetics conglomerate for a long time, if memory serves).

From my time practically living at the Cinema de Paris in Montreal, I saw a handful of movies that never, to the best of my searching, made it onto home video. There’s a decent thriller set in India called Immaculate Conception that I saw once and then it vanished. It starred a very pre-fame Melissa Leo, so I’m kinda surprised it hasn’t resurfaced. David Byrne released a concert film called Between The Teeth, which is basically half Talking Heads material and half solo stuff from his Brazilian years. It’s not quite as good as Stop Making Sense, obviously, but the groove is tremendous and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Speaking of concert movies, has anyone been able to see The Cure in Orange in decades, and not on a bootleg? Terminal City Ricochet is a classic Canadian punk movie with a soundtrack that did quite well but is virtually impossible to track down. I loved Roadside Prophets, starring John Doe and Adam Horowitz, but that’s in the wind these days, as is Motorama, which was written by Joseph Minion of After Hours fame, and has a solid indie cast (Garrett Morris, Mary Woronov, Robert Picardo, Jack Nance, cameo by Drew Barrymore in her wilderness years).

As well, a lot of Miramax’s 1990s/2000s output is in limbo because of Harvey Weinstein’s legal troubles. Kevin Smith wasn’t able to do any kind of 20th anniversay rerelease or reissue of Dogma in 2019 because the rights are tied up and Harvey’s, well, busy. I’ve seen that BluRay used for ridiculous sums, glad I already had a copy. Not that anyone’s clamboring for a spiffy remastering of Bounce, but still…

Now I’m thinking back to the years I attended the L.A. Independent Film Festival, and except for Dead Man (I met Iggy Pop at the afterparty, that guy’s just a wiry ball of gristle), virtually nothing I saw there even got a token release: Joe Mantegna’s directorial debut Lakeboat, an absolutely heartbreaking LGBTQ+ movie called Big Eden, a quirky family comedy called A Texas Funeral, about a clan raising camels down south (Martin Sheen, Chris Noth, Robert Patrick, Grace Zabriskie, Isaiah Washington). I sat in front of Jeremy Piven and pre-Sopranos Edie Falco at a screening of Layin’ Low, and ran into Adrienne Shelley (R.I.P.) as we were both going into the premiere of her movie I’ll Take You There. Find 'em if you can.

56

The Grey Fox (1982)
Canadian Western that had been long forgotten until a long delayed re-release on DVD a year or three ago. Richard Farnsworth in the role that should have won him an Oscar for Best Actor. One of my top ten favorite movies. Based on a true story. I can’t recommend this film strongly enough.

Hell In The Pacific (1968)
Another of my top ten. During WW2 a US Navy pilot and a Japanese Navy pilot find themselves stranded together on an otherwise uninhabited Pacific island. Only two actors in the entire film: Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, both of whom coincidentally were veterans of the war in the Pacific.
The special edition DVD has subtitles in English AND Japanese; earlier home releases had only Marvin’s speech captioned. Since the original theater release had no subtitles, we (English speakers) could only guess at what Mifune’s character was saying. I’ve always assumed the movie was released the same way in Japan, without subtitles, leaving Japanese audiences wondering what Marvin was saying.
A magnificent little anti-war film.

57

High Road to China: early 80s film with Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong. (I do believe I got to see Ms Armstrong’s bare bottom.)

58

Selleck: “Are you hungry, Dad?”

Ameche: (short pause) “Yes!”

59

I have a DVD with the original LSoH from an odd source. At first I was thinking it came in a box of cereal, but then remembered it came with an issue of InsideDVD magazine.

60

I’ve seen it on TV more than once. At least once on a cable channel and at least once on an ota “point” channel (like MeTV on 4.2, or similar). What I have tried hard to find viewable online (and failed to find) is an original Japanese version.