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Reviews
On the Beach (1959)
This film explained (didn't teach) to my dad why I love Science Fiction!
(RE: "On The Beach") -- My father was a career US Army officer and he thought I was "wasting my life" on "science fiction".
At the age of about 10-15, I tried to explain that THIS was science fiction, while he was arguing that it was "potentially" factual-actual.
I could never get him to distinguish the difference, even until his death, and we were never friends for years because I was "wasting my time" on "skiffy", while I devoted my life to seeing to it that it didn't happen. (He didn't like "Dr. Strangelove" at all and consoled my little brother and me that "Fail-Safe" was pure fiction and couldn't happen, either -- the former being farce and the latter impossible ...)
Now I write and illustrate SF for a living. "Wasting my life" indeed!
This is the purest -- and scariest -- science fiction novel (and movie!) I have ever experienced! "ALIEN" was cool -- THIS is scary s*h*i*t, kids, because it's 17 minutes into your potential future! (As is Fail-Safe)
Don't let it happen because our parents' world hated everyone else in the world who didn't agree with their point of view. There are really *bad* people out there -- but as some clever wag pointed out, we are opposing parties standing in a room full of gasoline up to our knees. One has four matches, the other has five. (Now there may be three or four who have one or two as well.) If only one scratches a match, who wins?
My little brother retired as a full-fledged USAF pilot, I respect and admire his service (and my dad's and all military vets), but they preserved my right to speak against policies I disagree with. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) should not be ANY nation's foreign policy.
Not all Americans are blind to what happened on Nov. 22, 1963! Even at age 10, I understood -- something changed in the USA that day, and it wasn't for the better.
William R. Warren, Jr,
WarrenPiece.com
Custer of the West (1967)
A Massacre of Film and History
SPOILER: Sorry, that should read *MINUS SEVERAL STARS* but they don't give me that option.
I detest Custer and all he did post-Civil War. I'll start with that. I've been to the Custer Battlefield near Garryowen at least twice and feel that it is Holy Ground ... but not owing to the 7th Cavalry. Here ended the career of the man who would have been President, had his ambitions come to fruition. He would have also been remembered as the American Hitler.
I've read historical accounts and military histories of the battle, National Geographic articles on the fascinating forensic examination archaeologists were able to make of the battlefield after grass fires swept away much of the overgrowth. And I've always been fond of saying that I can't watch him die on film enough times.
((When he finally sent for Benteen and Reno, he had already charged into the trap: his message was (in part) "Bring rounds! P.S. BRING ROUNDS!" They were similarly ensnared in well-planned traps and could do little to help, however, not sitting on their hands protesting their sobriety in the shade of pleasant riverbank trees, let alone to each other: they were not together.))
Well, I just checked this stinker out from the local library, and I take my fond saying back. I've just seen him die one too many times. Or more accurately, I've seen *somebody* flog himself around on screen and *claim* to be Custer. I have no idea where he's flogging around, it certainly doesn't look like the Custer Battlefield -- not even remotely.
Benteen is played in one of the worst performances I've ever seen from late and talented Jeffrey Hunter as a simultaneously wooden and spineless gopher; Reno as an incompetent and insubordinate drunken lout. The families of these competent (but overwhelmed) heroic officers should have legal recourse to sue director Siodmak for their portrayals in this travesty.
Historically, geographically, politically, this movie crosses the line from "creative interpretation" to blatant twisting and reversal of anything resembling facts. Even Custer's portrayal in the wonderful farce, "Little Big Man", came much closer to the truth, and the California terrain that stood in for the Little Big Horn region in an old B&W "Twilight Zone" time-travel episode was more accurate than this.
The whole film seems to have been concocted to give the Cinerama audiences a few roller-coaster moments (a runaway wagon ride, a log flume ride, there were a few forgettable others) and even these went on *long* after they'd already proved their point.
A truly awful film. I'm taking it back to the library tomorrow first thing: it's drawing too many flies. I also want my 2 hours and 21 minutes back.