Do you realise what you’re saying? Why, you’re telling me that I’m dead.

D.O.A.

(1950)

(SPOILERS) D.O.A. has a fantastic premise, albeit an extremely contrived one. You can imagine the pitch; “A man walks into a police station to report a murder; his own!” The studio executives roundly applaud. This sort of gimmicky scenario can only be sustained by movie logic, and Rudolph Maté’s flashback narrative follows suit. The result is a rickety film noir, lacking the polish of the greats. But how many movies give you a hard rolling lead protagonist who also happens to be an accountant?

I first saw D.O.A. as part of the second season of BBC2’s Moviedrome. I’m unsure if this was before or after I caught the Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan remake. In his introduction presenter Alex Cox memorably complained about the bizarre use of a Clangers whistle, which pipes up on the soundtrack every time Edmund O’Brien’s Frank Bigelow sees an attractive woman. It seems to have strayed in from an entirely different movie, the kind of thing you’d expect to accompany Harpo Marx. Perhaps Maté and screenwriting partners Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene intended to contrast O’Brien’s holiday jolly with the ensuing sobering realisation that he has been poisoned. If so, they don’t succeed; the (overlong) introductory passage is hard work. Frank may be a louse for leaving secretary/girlfriend Paula (Pamela Britton) hanging while he goes on totty-hunting jaunt in San Francisco, but Paula is hugely annoying. So much so that his dive into debauchery seems like the only sane course of action open to him. As part of Frank’s walk on the wild side there’s an amusingly over-amped depiction of a jive bar, filled with crazed hepcats.

Frank Bigelow: Do you realise what you’re saying? Why, you’re telling me that I’m dead.

Bigelow awakes from a night of carousing feeling particularly the worse for wear, so rather sensibly goes straight to the nearest doctor. The writers, never ones to repeatedly look a gift gag in the mouth, have a doctor instruct Frank “I don’t think you understand, Bigelow. You’ve been murdered!” To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be able to resist either. Even Frank is at it later. Encountering a moll, he opines, “Sure, I can stand here and talk to you. I can breath and I can move. But I’m not alive”. Even when they’ve milked that one to death there’s time for another final grim chuckle, this time involving the film’s title.

The end credits appear to verify the existence of the substance used to kill Frank (“Luminous toxin is a descriptive term for an actual poison”), just in case you thought the scene where Frank gets a second opinion and the consulting doctor comes in with a glowing test tube, which he proceeds to wave about in the dark, was over-the-top. It’s radioactive you see, and “one of the few poisons of its type for which there is no antidote”. This doesn’t sound like a fun way to go, as it attacks the internal organs and kills in the space of a week. At least the effects appear rather less extreme than those of the polonium used to poison Alexander Litvinenko back in 2006. Indeed, when Frank succumbs it ranks up there amongst the most sudden and inept movie deaths. O’Brien strikes out unconvincingly and collapses behind a desk.

O’Brien essays the transition from skirt-chasing cheese hound to desperate bruiser quite agreeably. He has that disenchanted drollery thing going for him, the sort of act you expect from Bogart. And his encounters (barring an interminable scene where Pamela comes to visit) are generally lively. Frank’s realisation of the important things, just as he is poised to meet his maker, is suitably cynical (come on, we’re not buying that he actually loves Paula; he’s just scared of dying), and the ladies he encounters move accordingly from being positioned as lust objects to obstacles in his path. Particularly amusing is Laurette Luez as a dusky femme fatale, informing Frank “If you were a man, I’d punch your dirty face in”.

The best of his opponents is crazy grinning bug-eyed loon Chester (Neville Brand), henchman and nephew of Majak (Luther Adler). Chester is an unbridled cartoon sadist, referring to himself in the third person and fantasising over the most painful method of terminating Frank (“I think I’ll give it to you in the belly”). When Majak refers to him as “an unfortunate boy”, he’s couching the understatement. Chester’s final scene, in which he embarks on a shooting spree in a pharmacy, rather wonderfully has him lamped by an old geezer with a bottle.

Maté, a former cinematographer, gives the location work a certain amount of zip, but the interiors tend towards the stagey and unimaginative (an exception is the opening sequence). The main problems come from the script, however. If the irony of Frank’s fate is rather forced (“All I did was notarise a bill of sale”) the trail to the perpetrators lacks flair; the mastermind behind it all is fairly obvious, and the plotting required to reach the reveal manages to be both repetitive and convoluted. Still, this is solid B-movie hokum and the irresistible premise brings with it a fair amount of goodwill.

***

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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