Movies I Watched in December, Part 2

And, we're back!
I’ve been slowly working my way (backwards, for some reason) through the excellent quartet of Rudy Ray Moore Blu-rays released by the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome. This 1979 film, his last “major” movie, is both his most mainstream (the plot actually aims for some sort of social message, and Mr. Moore plays an unabashed good guy) and one of his strangest (oh, those angel dust hallucination sequences). A mix of musical, comedy, message picture and (of course) action flick, “Disco Godfather” stars Moore as Tucker Williams, an ex-cop who’s now the DJ/Owner of the popular disco, Blueberry Hill. But when his basketball star nephew gets hooked on PCP, Tucker takes to the streets and declares he’s going to “attack the wack!” (Everyone in the movie declares this, in fact – repeatedly.) Like all Rudy Ray Moore movies, it’s a charming mix of heart, incompetence and jaw-dropping moments. My favorite of the latter is the finale, when Tucker himself succumbs to PCP and has some genuinely unnerving hallucinations. But the entire movie is wildly entertaining, from the crazed, homemade-looking disco scenes to Tucker’s over-the-top reaction to his nephew’s overdose: “Tell them what he has HAY-AD!” (I wrote about the movie’s opening credits, of all things, in this post.)

Great, smart, funny action comedy from the mind of Shane Black and starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. As the rule goes, the chubbier Russell Crowe is, the better the movie, and he’s plenty plump here. And though I have yet to see “La La Land,” I can’t imagine Gosling turning in a better performance in that film than he does in “Nice Guys,” especially since he delivers a dead-on Lou Costello imitation in “Nice Guys.” In fact, this movie is so good, it made my best of 2016 list.
I first heard of the forgotten 1941 movie “Cracked Nuts” in an old issue of my personal movie bible, Psychotronic Video magazine. It sounded amazing – a crazy robot, old-timey humor, crazy plot twists – and Shemp Howard! But it had never been released on video, then or now, and I, like the rest of the world, promptly forgot about it. That is, until author and pop culture maven Kliph Nesteroff (who wrote the highly recommended book “The Comedians”) posted a link on his Tumblr account (also highly recommended) to a You Tube version of “Cracked Nuts.” Running just over an hour and made on what was a pretty modest budget (though there is a car chase at the end), it’s a somewhat amusing, completely fascinating look at what comedy was in the early 1940s. A little innuendo, a complicated plot, some decent sight gags and that amazing robot – which isn’t really a robot after all. Oh, and, of course, a little vintage racism revolving around the (pretty funny) performances of Mantan Moreland and Hattie Noel. Curious? You can watch the whole thing right here.

Watched this again, of course, on Christmas Eve, of course. Allie’s become fascinated with it, and hell, I don’t mind – it’s a pretty good little movie. Nice performances, solid jokes, a convincing recreation of the era (though my wife, Amy, always complains about Melinda Dillon’s anachronistic hairdo) and a genuine sense of love and kindness, despite the chaos. I’m always impressed by the parents, played by Dillon and the late, great Darrin McGavin. It would be easy to reduce them to grumpy, out-of-touch clichés (like, say, in ever John Hughes movie ever made), but both mom and dad are good people who obviously love their kids – mom keeps the secret about Ralphie’s fight and, in the end, dad is the one who really knew what Ralphie wanted for Christmas. Unlike my daughter, I feel no great desire to revisit this in, say, July, but I’ll be more than happy to rewatch it next December 24th.


My aforementioned loving wife got me this excellent W.C.Fields DVD set, which crams a whopping 18 (!) movies onto a mere five DVDs. I couldn’t resist checking out this, my favorite Fields flick, and it was just as funny as ever. I love the ramshackle, slapped-together feeling of the screenplay (by Mahatma Kane Jeeves – Fields hiding behind a punny pseudonym). Fields, playing Egbert Souse (“accent grave over the ‘e’”) goes from helping a chauffeur fix a car (and destroying it) to meeting a Hollywood type at the (ahem) Black Pussy Café to directing a scene in a movie to foiling a bank robbery to working as the titular “bank dick” to embezzling money to invest in a “beefstake mine” to foiling another robbery to living like a king, all in a mere 72 minutes. Like I said, it’s one of my favorite movies – I wrote a lot more about it here.

Up next: The December wrap-up wraps up with Star Wars, Chuck Heston and two very different movies brought to you by the letter 'S'