A Boy and His Dog (1975)
"This is gonna be a rough week," I told my wife after sitting through the first 30 minutes of L.Q. Jones' A Boy and His Dog and switching it off in disgust. Ugh. From what I can tell the film is about a young man who roams the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic America with his dog looking for young women to rape. Oh, and the dog communicates with the young man telepathically and has a stuffy, Britishy, smarter-than-he-looks-'cause-he-looks-like-a-mangy-mutt accent. Again, ugh. There are also these things called "screamers" which are mutations created by the various nuclear bombs that were dropped hither and thither over the duration of World War IV, but we never get to see them and they don't really scream as much as lethargically moan. And there's boobs. Dammit, eff this movie!
My grade: ---
Peeping Tom (1960)
A psychologically damaged young filmmaker prowls the streets and studio backlots of London stabbing women to death with a blade he has cleverly affixed to a tripod and filming the results for a documentary he is making about a young man stabbing women to death with a knife-tipped tripod. Mark, the homicidal filmmaker, falls in love with his downstairs neighbor, Helen, and slowly lets her into his sick, twisted world. They share a glass of milk, Mark shows Helen some old home movies of his father torturing him with flashlights and lizards, and love blooms. The good times don't last long however, and pretty soon, Mark is setting up the conclusion of his magnum opus: his own death.
My grade: C+
Here's the thing...: I get that Peeping Tom was ahead of its time, but I've seen the films inspired by it first and, therefore, kind of felt lukewarm about the film. The last three minutes though are amazingly creepy. Now that's the way you kill yourself! Suicidals take notice.
So, the week didn't start out great. I was rendered both disappointed and confused by A Boy and His Dog (It really is quite awful!) and entertained, but not terribly impressed, by Peeping Tom (Maybe not enough peeping? There was the suggestion of peeping, I guess.). Then, on Friday, after a night on the town with my wife (i.e. stuffing my fat face at a local Mexican restaurant), I stretched out on the couch and viewed Thieves' Highway, a dark thriller about the dangerous world of produce sales. Yes, Thieves' Highway is a movie about the transportation and sale of Golden Delicious apples. It's also one of the best movies I've seen in, well, at least a week.
Nico "Nick" Garcos returns home from his post-WWII travels with a wallet full of cash and gifts galore. He also returns to a father who has recently become legless. Garcos blames his father's newly legless state on a corrupt produce dealer out of San Francisco named Mike Figlia. Nick teams up with Ed Kinney, another shady dude who eventually becomes both Nick's partner in apples and guardian angel, to deliver a load of Golden Deliciouses to Figlia's market and, as singer-songwriter Beck once put it ever so eloquently, get real paid. Nick's not above getting a little revenge on the crooked fruit merchant either. The story gets deeper and more exciting from there, but I'm going to let you discover this one for yourself, because it is totally worth it. You'll never look at roadside produce stands the same.
My grade: A
I sort of ran out of time to watch King of Kong and Through a Glass Darkly. I had the opportunity this evening, but I chose to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on AMC instead. I'll catch up with Kong during my Summer Viewing Bonus Week and hit Through a Glass Darkly next week. Until next Saturday night, dear readers...
