Unsung Performer: John Glover, 52 PICK-UP

I just finally caught up with John Frankenheimer's sleazy 1986 Cannon actioner 52 Pick-Up., based on Elmore Leonard's novel (2 years earlier filmed by Cannon as the Robert Mitchum vehicle The Ambassador).  I'm a big Roy Scheider fan as longtime readers of this site likely know, but it was John Glover as central villain Alan Raimy who blew me away in terms of performance and overall impact.  A native of Salisbury, Maryland, Glover ingeniously utilizes the Baltimore dialect, or "Balmorese," which makes his smart, twisted, and funny crook all the more memorable and unique in the cinematic pantheon of criminal masterminds.  A close relative of the Philadelphia dialect, Balmorese, like the Philly variation, is rarely heard on film or television, probably because it's much more difficult for outsiders to approximate than the New York dialect, for instance.

In the Rocky films, for example, all of the primary characters are lifelong Philadelphians, as far as the script tells us, yet are voiced with New York dialects.  On The Wire, McNulty, a died in the wool blue- collar Baltimorean, is played by Dominic West, he of a posh British background, who does not even attempt Balmorese, but rather speaks in that terribly boring "non-accent" that so many Brits playing Americans resort to.  Love the show, but its verisimilitude is severely compromised, in my estimation, by not casting someone actually from the area.  It's not quite the same as casting whites as Native Americans or Latinos, as was so often the practice in studio-era Hollywood, but for a show that was so much about the place and what it meant to grow up and live there, it's still a head-scratcher to me as to why you would cast the ostensible central part with an upper class Briton.

Anyway, back to Glover and 52 Pick-Up...he's such an interesting performer and the character so intrinsically theatrical that his use of the accent--too often an over-abused, actorly tool--is justified and it elevates the performance into a strata of over-the-topness that is completely appropriate for the material.  It also overshadows Scheider in the lead role.  I'm not sure if this could have been avoided even if Scheider had brought his usual intensity to the role or if the part were better written.  As it stands, Scheider seems a little detached and routine here and his character's transformation from a philandering white-collar factory owner to a tough, underworld-savvy avenger isn't very convincing.

In addition to Scheider's limpness here, composer Gary Chang's synth-based score is sometimes effective, though it repeatedly sounds like a cheaper copy of Arthur B. Rubinstein's Blue Thunder music (probably what the filmmakers used as the temp track) and when it's bad and ineffective, it's very bad and wildly inappropriate, as is the case with the dopily cheerful end credit music.  This ill-fitting track plays in the aftermath of a violent climax, which will be quite familiar to viewers of Michael Winner's The Mechanic, where said ending is much less telegraphed than it is here.  Additionally, Winner's 1972 film plays without any music over its credits, a choice which says a lot about the differences between American films of the late '60s to mid-'70s, even mainstream genre pieces such as The Mechanic, and the slicker, more homogenized product that had taken hold by the mid-'80s.  Frankenheimer's film is far from happy at the end, calling for something a little downbeat in terms of music; instead we get this slab of horribly-aged synth cheese (please excuse the bad pun, but I think you'll agree):

The real joy here is watching Glover chew up the scenery in silk bathrobes and black bikini underwear, cackling as he puts a gun to Scheider's head and forces him to view blackmail video footage of his extra-marital dalliances with a younger woman (Kelly Preston) or when he later shoots up Scheider's wife (Ann-Margret) with dope.

Glover, as they say, kills it in 52 Pick-Up, and Clarence Williams III, as one of his cohorts, is right behind him, as a lethal man of few words, but revealing glances.  Robert Trebor, as the other member of this criminal troika, has had a long and distinguished stage career, as has Glover, but his annoying, sweaty theatrical flourishes just serve to underscore that he is an actor playing at being a low-life strip club owner and amateur extortionist.  So, the film provides a sort of acting workshop in action, wherein we see the low-key, less-is-more approach working extremely well (Williams) and not so well (Scheider) and the larger-than-life, big performance failing (Trebor) and succeeding (Glover). 

Ebert likes, Siskel doesn't:

In the what-might-have-been category, Glover was almost or originally cast as Kreese in The Karate Kid, which you can witness in this video, part of a fascinating collection of rehearsal tapes that John Avildsen has uploaded to his YouTube account.  The below video comes from a cast read through at producer Jerry Weintraub's home.  Whether Glover was just meant to stand in before a final performer (Martin Kove) was found, or whether he quit or was fired is not clear.  Avildsen is cheeky in the comments section when asked who the actor playing Kreese is, but it sure looks and sounds like Glover, who surely would have brought a different brand of cartoon performance (which the character demands) than did the stone-faced Kove:

Not So Obscure Trailer, but still MIA on DVD: Mean Dog Blues (1978, Mel Stuart)

Mel Stuart's Mean Dog Blues is a well-paced, enjoyably pulpy prison picture that provides consummate character player Gregg Henry (already balding) with a rare starring role and surrounds him with an able cast of veterans including George Kennedy, Kay Lenz, Scatman Crothers, James Wainwright, Gregory Sierra, Felton Perry, William Windom, and Tina Louise.  It's something of a throwback to Warner Bros. prison films of the '30s and '40s updated with some '70s-appriopriate levels of sadism and language.  This might not sound like such a strong endorsement, but, indeed, I found the film to be constantly engaging--downright riveting at times--even as it explores well-trodden cinematic territory. 

Henry, so often seen in villainous roles, is refreshingly cast here in a sympathetic part as Paul Ramsey, an aspiring country singer-songwriter jailed for a crime (drunk driving) he didn't commit.  Hitching a ride, on his way to a meeting in Nashville, with the rich and politically connected Laceys (Windom & Louise), Henry takes the fall when a fall down drunk Windom runs down a little girl on a rural road. 

Lenz is Henry's dedicated wife; it's not dissimilar to her role in White Line Fever in which she played the loyal wife of frequently and unjustly victimized Jan-Michael Vincent.  Lenz and Henry had acted together a year earlier in the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man Book II. 

No stranger to playing bullies, on either side of the law, Kennedy is in familiar territory as the prison warden with an unhealthy attachment to his attack dog, something you can see in the effective trailer linked above.  That said, Kennedy is in excellent form and he has two of the film's best moments, both involving his dog Rattler.  Wainwright, best known as the young Hoover in Larry Cohen's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, is quite good as Kennedy's second-in-command, a man even more cruel and sadistic than his boss.  Crothers makes a brief appearance as Kennedy's unfortunately dubbed "dog n***er," the prisoner entrusted with running from the guard dogs for training purposes.  It's a job Henry will inherit from Crothers and use to his advantage...

The film never really achieves any kind of verisimilitude in its depiction of a prison work camp and it often feels something like an R-rated television film, owing to its episodic structure, rudimentary cinematography and mise-en-scene, and its meager production design.  Even so, Henry's good guy proves to be a more unpredictable and interesting character than one initially assumes him to be, as the script imbues him with some chutzpah, toughness, and a smart-ass sense of humor, which neophyte actor Henry convincingly pulls off.  Henry and Lenz share the film's most tender and moving moment during a conjugal visit, in which they are happy just to hold each rather than do the obvious.  It might sound stale on paper, but it works onscreen, and it's scenes like this that make Mean Dog Blues a little bit of a hidden gem and one that really deserves to be more widely seen. 

Being a film score aficionado, I should also point out Fred Karlin's jangly original music, which reminds--in a good way--of David Shire's Straight Time...these are the kinds of memorable and hummable, small-scale scores that we never hear anymore in Hollywood product. 

D.P. Robert Hauser mostly shot for television, but he did sprinkle in a few interesting features onto his resume, in addition to this one, including: Le Mans and Willard.  Stuart is probably best known for Wattstax and Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Mean Dog Blues is an MGM property now, by way of their purchase of the Filmways / AIP library, and I'm guessing we may eventually see it as an MGM MOD disc unless one of the enterprising independent labels such as Shout Factory! is able to snag it.

Films Within Films: Roy Scheider

Jaws, co-starring Roy Scheider, appears in Marathon Man, co-starring Roy Scheider, by way of a movie marquee.  The theater is the long-gone Rivoli.

Striking Locations: Cranberry & Columbia Heights

For a film location enthusiast (read: nerd) like myself, living in a metropolis such as New York means I am often thrilled by the simple fact of seeing a familiar location on screen.  It's especially enlightening when said film is from a past era and when, by viewing that film, one can get a sense of how much or how little a particular spot has changed in the intervening years.

Take Hal Ashby's The Landlord, for instance, filmed primarily in a pre-gentrified, very different Park Slope, Brooklyn.  In the 40+ years since the film was made, it's gone from a low-income, African-American neighborhood to a wealthy, stroller and health food store-laden enclave.  One of the major visual differences--aside from the dilapidated condition of the buildings--which is easily spotted when watching the film is the lack of trees in 1970 Park Slope as compared to now.  The impact of a tree-lined block versus a barren one is more dramatic than I had realized.  I have lived near Park Slope for many years and spent a lot of time there and it is nearly unrecognizable to me in the film.

All that said, the shot I've got for you here is the from the final moment in the film and takes place outside of Elgar's (Beau Bridges) girlfriend's (Marki Bey) apartment, which is located on the corner of Cranberry and Columbia Heights in picturesque Brooklyn Heights, just across the street from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.  As much as Park Slope was transformed since The Landlord was made, this intersection appears to have been fairly similar in 1970, at least from this vantage point.  Although, Beau Bridges could no longer half-haphazardly leave his car running on the sidewalk due to the barriers now running the length of the road (probably installed post-9/11).

Movie Tie-In: Eyewitness

Discovered that the movie tie-in / novelization section is still intact at Montclair Book Center.  My find for the day:

I like that the cover features completely different artwork than what was ultimately used to promote the film.  The face appears to be based on William Hurt's features.  I suspect this artwork was one of several designs that was intended to promote the film itself, but was bypassed in favor of this now-familiar campaign:

Now that I have the book in my hand, I notice the billing on the poster advising viewers to look out for the "Avon Paperback."

VHS Gems at Rupert Pupkin Speaks!

Rupe was kind enough to offer me a spot in his "VHS Gems" series.  I tried to keep my list to a reasonable number...you can check it out here.

TV Spot on the DVD: Sitting Target (1972, Douglas Hickox)

Warner Archive has unleashed a bounty of hard-boiled '70s films this week.  The most anticipated--by me, anyway--of this bunch is Douglas Hickox' Sitting Target starring the late and much-lamented (by those who didn't have to work with him) Oliver Reed.  I previously wrote about this unjustly under-seen film here.  The film has famous fans in Tarantino and Wright, which I mentioned in the previous piece, with Tarantino naming Michael Fassbender's character in Inglourious Basterds after director Hickox.

This U.S. television spot is pretty effective, not just for the bluntness of the copy, but for the forceful delivery of said copy, which sounds to be laden with a touch of Boston English.  "Sitting Tah-get.  Rated R."

EDIT: I'm told by the Warner Archive folks, via Twitter, that this television spot will appear on the DVD in lieu of a theatrical trailer, as the latter could not be located.

"Cause we got the streets, suckas!"

Somehow I missed this additional bit of Warriors-inspired graffiti, which is on the other side of the building where I found this.  That wall has since been painted over white, which has subsequently been tagged repeatedly.  For some reason, however, Cyrus hasn't been "silenced" yet.

Scum / Bad Boys

I think anyone familiar with Alan Clarke's Scum who then watches Rick Rosenthal's Bad Boys will notice some striking similarities between the two films, in narrative, thematic, and visual terms.  To me, there are enough parallels that Rosenthal and Bad Boys screenwriter Richard Di Lello (author of The Longest Cocktail Party) probably should have given some direct acknowledgment to Clarke and writer Roy Minton's film (as well as the earlier Scum teleplay that proved to be too much for the BBC).   

Bad Boys is a pretty rough film, particularly for a mainstream American product intended largely for teen audiences.  Scum, however, makes its American cousin look like a preschool picnic and is a much stronger film for it.  Where Bad Boys injects a love story into its narrative, an inspiring, incessant Bill Conti score, a Rocky-like final fight, and a theme of redemption, Scum doesn't attempt any of these softening, conventional touches.

What the American film hints at or suggests, such as male-on-male rape, Scum pulls no punches with and rubs the viewer's nose in.  There are mostly sympathetic guards and administrators in the juvenile prison where Bad Boys star Sean Penn does time; the men who run the borstal in Scum range from cold and unfeeling to unrepentant sadists.

In Bad Boys, the prison is shown to be flawed, but the film still makes it a force which turns bad boy Penn into a better man.  The borstal in Scum is a brutal, inhumane place and the film offers no hope for those inside or for some kind of reform to the system.  A few years after Scum was released, the borstal system was abandoned in the U.K.  Whether the film influenced this in any way and how truthful the film is to the actual borstal experience, I'm not certain.

I illustrate some of the parallels and contrasts of the two films in this video essay.

EDIT: I just found out about a French-Canadian remake of Scum, entitled Dog Pound, via this most informative Scum Wiki page.

Based Upon a Novel By...

Some recent finds from my longtime favorite bookstore...

Basis for the film of the same name.  The works of William P. McGivern were often mined by Hollywood.  Films based on McGivern stories include Rogue Cop, The Big Heat, and Odds Against Tomorrow.

Basis for the film of the same name.  Evan Hunter is but one nom de plume for one Salvatore Albert Lombino also known as Ed McBain.

Basis for the film Fast-Walking (aka The Joint).