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Reviews
Bluebeard (1972)
BLUEBEARD, looks beautiful but fails to perform.
BLUEBEARD is an oddly beautiful film with beautiful sets, beautiful costumes, beautiful European women, and Richard Burton's beautifully blue beard. The film is a retelling of the "Bluebeard" story that takes place in an "almost" Nazi Germany. The Nazi uniforms are not really Nazi uniforms and the swastika is not really a swastika, but this helps add to the fantasy aspect of the film. The idea of watching a pseudo-erotic, black comedy about real Nazis would be a little tacky even for BLUEBEARD, which is abundant in tackiness.
The movie is about sex and sadism, but never goes far enough with either the sex or the sadism, even by 1972 standards. Baron Von Sepper (Richard Burton) attracts and is attracted to a series of beautiful women, whom he courts and then marries. Once married to the various objects of his obsession, the sticky part of consummating the marriage rears its ugly head (or fails to, more precisely). An Oedipus complex, a plane crash, and some kind of chemical reaction, that has turned Von Sepper's beard blue, have all combined to render the poor Baron impotent. To save himself from embarrassment, Von Sepper must kill off his wives once they discover his inability to perform. This is where the film is remarkably realistic with its examination of the lengths a man will go to hide that he is not a functional man.
I bought Richard Burton as the reserved Nazi baron who is incapable of accepting his shortcomings. He is funny in the scenes where he is trying not to have sex. The many failings of the movie are the fault of the director, Edward Dmytryk. From the incredibly slow pace to the un-dramatic use of flashback right after flashback, the film alternates between the boring and the beautiful. The director also annoys the viewer with an obvious correlation between the sadism of Nazi Germany and the sadism of Bluebeard. Anyone familiar with history knows that the Nazis were sadistic. No one needs this movie to try to drive that point home.
Shallow Grave (1987)
SHALLOW GRAVE starts bad, gets worse, and then surprisingly gets better.
SHALLOW GRAVE begins with either a tribute or a rip off of the shower scene in PSYCHO. (I'm leaning toward rip off.) After that it gets worse and then surprisingly gets better, almost to the point of being original. Bad acting and amateurish directing bog down a fairly interesting little story, but the film already surpasses many in the "Yankee comes down South to get killed by a bunch of rednecks" genre because it is actually shot in the South.
A group of college girls head to Ft. Lauderdale for summer vacation and are waylaid in Georgia by a flat tire after getting off the main road. (Note to Yankees: stay on the highway when you go to Florida.) Sue Ellen (Lisa Stahl) has to pee so she heads into the woods. When she finally finds a good spot to do her business she witnesses the local sheriff (Tony March) strangle his mistress (Merry Rozelle) to death. (Note to Yankees: do not wander off into the woods when in the South; not because you might witness a murder, but you may run across a marijuana plantation.) This is the point where the story, not the movie, actually comes close to being good.
While Tony March will never have to practice his Oscar speech, his Sheriff Dean becomes a creepy facsimile of a normal guy torn by what he has done and what he must do. Tom Law is likable as Deputy Scott and is as authentic a Southern deputy as I've seen since Walton Goggins (Deputy Steve Naish) in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES.
A few scenes in the movie are worth the mention. The girls stop at a BBQ in South Carolina and display their racism when a big black guy checks them out. Sue Ellen runs into a barn to hide behind some hay bales and in a shockingly realistic moment a large snake is hiding in the hay with her.
And in the strangest scene, Sheriff Dean makes like he's about to rape Patty (Carol Cadby) and tells her to take off her clothes. Dean has turned the radio up to drown out the noise of what he's about to do. The preacher on the radio needs to go back and read his Bible. His sermon is about how Jezebel is saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for this preacher's flock. Jezebel was in the Old Testament a few thousand years before Christ was born and by no means is she one of the five people you are going to meet in Heaven.
Bad Georgia Road (1977)
Like moonshine, Bad Georgia Road may be hard to swallow for some, but perfectly fits the tastes of others.
The enigmatically titled BAD GEORGIA ROAD is to film: as rot-gut liquor, liberally laced with a large dose of kerosene, is to alcoholic beverages. The VHS copy I rented was so old and sloppily put together that the label on the cassette was misspelled BAD GEORGIE ROAD. The movie's title is as ill conceived as the rest of the movie: the farm is in Alabama, the only destination mentioned in the film is Birmingham, Alabama, and there is no mention of any road named Georgia Road.
A New York feminist, Molly Golden (Carol Lynley), inherits her uncle's farm in Alabama only to find that it is the site of a moonshine business operated by hillbillies, Leroy Hastings (Gary Lockwood) and Arthur Pennyrich (Royal Dano).
Despite the fact that the movie persists in Southern stereotypes and commits the cardinal sin of using southern California to double for the great state of Alabama, I actually enjoyed the movie. (Note to Yankees: Southerners secretly enjoy the idea that you think we are all inbred, tobacco-chewing morons.) The movie has a subplot about running moonshine, but the story is truly about how Leroy teaches Molly that women cannot find happiness or sexual fulfillment outside the arms of man so blessed by his inbred genes that testosterone oozes from the pores of his Pennzoil stained skin. The climax of their romance ensues after Leroy tires of the platonic nature of their relationship and, in a bad approximation of a Tennessee Williams play, Leroy rapes Molly. Afterwards, Molly aims a shotgun at Leroy with the intent of killing him, but she's just lying to herself and the gun is not loaded anyway; so she decides to have sex instead because deep down she really enjoyed Leroy taking control of their relationship.
Long stretches of boredom are interspersed with brief moments of surprisingly funny scenes. After Molly calls Leroy a male chauvinist pig and then explains the definition of chauvinist to him, Leroy is unable to understand how that can be an insult and then replaces her suntan lotion with motor oil.
While Carol Lynley is functional at best in her role as the Yankee snob taught a lesson in Southern inhospitality, Gary Lockwood is near perfect in his portrayal of the redneck Romeo and Royal Dano is very funny as the religious moon shiner who imbibes in his product too frequently. The inevitable car chase scenes of any moonshine movie are tame to anyone who grew up on DUKES OF HAZZARD, (BAD GEORGIA ROAD's better looking cousin) that actually lives in Georgia (as portrayed by southern California). Like moonshine, BAD GEORGIA ROAD may be hard to swallow for some, but perfectly fits the tastes of others. If you would consider a velvet painting of Elvis a work of art, then BAD GEORGIA ROAD may appeal to you.