The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Murder on the Orient Express (1974), directed by Sidney Lumet

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Train Kept A Rollin'' by Aerosmith

       If Mary Shelley could be said to be a pioneer of genre fiction, then Agatha Christie is certainly an innovator. By the time Christie entered the game the core premise of mystery fiction and the detective novel had already been established by writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, but Christie was able to take that formula and put her own spin on it, to great success. Well, ‘great’ success is an understatement-- She’s one of the most popular novelists in the entirety of the English language with adaptations of her work being made to this day, the most recent being the overproduced but otherwise decent retellings by Kenneth Branagh. And because she’s been dead for years, she has no way to have controversial opinions on twitter that will piss off her fanbase. That’s true power right there.

       So plenty of Christie adaptations to choose from, and while it would make sense to do a modern take on it like the Branagh films, there’s just not that much room on this blog for movies that weren’t made in the 70s or the 90s. Luckily there happens to have been a pretty famous adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels made right smack dab in the middle of the 1970s, so that’s the one we’re going to be covering today. What are the odds, am I right?

       Released in 1974, Murder on the Orient Express was written by Paul Dehn, directed by Sidney Lumet and produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin through G.W. Films Limited, based on the novel of the same name by Agatha Christie. The year is 1935, and a colorful cast of characters have gathered in Istanbul in order to take a ride on the Orient Express, that most famous of transcontinental railways. There are American businessmen, Russian aristocrats, Hungarian ambassadors, and most importantly to our story, a Belgian private detective by the name of Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney). Things progress in the way things must do when traveling in a cramped series of hallways with a bunch of bougie snobs, until one day one of the passengers, a Mr. Ratchett is found dead in his room, stabbed 12 times in the chest. With the fear of scandal in his mind and the train temporarily stalled by a snow drift,  the train’s director, Bianchi (Martin Balsam), begs Poirot to crack the case, which he accepts. His first major discovery: Ratchett’s name wasn’t actually Ratchett, it was Cosetti -- the same Cosetti behind the kidnapping and murder of a little girl named Daisy Armstrong 5 years prior. As good a motive for murder as any, but untangling the mystery of whose motive it was will prove to be a true test of Poirot’s deductive powers. Who is responsible for the murder on the Orient Express?

       The 1970s were famous for heroin, disco music, and ensemble cast films. In the case of the latter this was most often expressed in disaster films like Airport 77 and Backdraft, but period pieces like Murder on the Orient Express here weren’t immune to its sweet allure. We have Albert Finney and Martin Balsam as I wrote, as well as Anthony Perkins, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery, ol’ D'Artagnan himself Michael York, and a few others you might recognize. Occasionally this conflux of stars can end up coming together like oil and water and debilitating the film, but I never felt that with Murder on the Orient Express. Everyone feels ‘at ease’ in a manner of speaking, which I assume is down to everyone getting low impact roles with a decent amount of screentime and character work. Probably a fun shoot, all things considered.

       Speaking of casting, I think it is in the casting of Poirot that sets Lumet’s adaptation of Christie above the modern versions, and I’m talking specifically about Death on the Nile here as that is the one that I’ve watched. Branagh has the mustache and he can do the accent, but his interpretation of the detective is far too tragic, far too heroic for my tastes. Poirot is not meant to be likable, Christie herself said that she hated the character, and I believe that Albert Finney grasps that more so than Branagh. Not that Finney’s Poirot is a total prick or anything, he’s still charismatic enough to carry a film, but the pomposity and the vanity that defined the character comes through. It also helps to add a bit of levity to the film (especially when Finney is paired with Martin Balsam), keeping things from getting too ground down by dour feelings. Which isn’t saying that there aren’t strong emotions here, but it’s a mystery story not sturm und drang.

       To further the comparison, while both films work within the lavish, art deco style that dominated the pre-WWII world, Lumet’s production is simpler and more preferable than Branagh’s attempt. Lumet needs a boat sailing from a port he films it, Lumet needs a visual indicator of the melting pot that is Istanbul he shows it, and of course when in need of a train he has one handy. While I appreciate the technicolor feel of Branagh’s film at times, there’s so much CGI in Death on the Nile that just about every scene that takes place outside looks like it was pulled from a video game. Now of course Sidney Lumet didn’t even have the option to have CGI in his film, and Branagh’s interpretation of Orient Express might be different from his Nile, but the point I’m trying to make is what a director needs to show in order to convey the narrative of the film. Lumet feels restrained even for the time and yet still manages to establish the setting so the audience never has doubts, while Branagh feels overly excessive. Doesn’t really inspire me to go and check out his Orient Express either.

       If there’s one point of contention I have with the film, it’s with the score by Richard Rodney Bennett. Not that it’s bad, I think it perfectly fits the period of the film, but it feels like it has exactly one emotional tone that it keeps throughout the thing. Even at times when you’d want something more dramatic or serious there’s still this bracing score going. I’d hardly call it a serious flaw though, just a little dissonant with the visual content.

       Murder on the Orient Express gets an easy recommendation. No muss, no fuss, just a simple little mystery story to pass the time, expertly filmed and excellently performed. Those readers who are interested in exploring Christie’s body of work cinematically will find this a good stepping stone, and everyone else will find a fun detective story. Give it a shot.

Massacre Mafia Style (1974), directed by Duke Mitchell

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Mambo Italiano" by Dean Martin

       One of the stranger episodes in the saga of Hollywood is the 1952 movie Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. A genre film in the vein of the Abbott and Costello horror crossovers such as Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, the film starred Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, two young comedians who bore a striking resemblance to the duo of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. So much so that Lewis and his manager threatened to sue the ass off of everyone involved with the project, there was even talk selling the negatives so that they could be destroyed, thereby wiping the film from existence. Ultimately though that deal fell through and Brooklyn Gorilla would go on to a life of poor reviews and general obscurity, to the delight of losers like me who talk about weird movies all the time.

       Unfortunately when your debut film is a blatant ripoff of one of the most popular acts in the country at the time it doesn’t bode well for your career, and indeed that was the case for Mitchell and Petrillo, who were hounded by Lewis’ people and essentially blacklisted from the industry up until the dissolution of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’s partnership in ‘56. Patrillo went into film production with a minor in porn while Mitchell had a couple bit parts in a few movies no one remembers before settling into the club circuit in Palm Springs and typically that would be the end of the story, except for the fact that in the mid 70s, over a decade after his last film appearance, Mitchell pulled a Cassavetes and decided to try his hand at making movies independently. He would end up making two films before his death in 1981, Massacre Mafia Style and Gone with the Pope (which had only gotten as far as the workprint stage), and it would be another couple of decades before these films were rediscovered in his son Jeffrey’s garage and given a formal release on home media. Gonzo exploitation films made by a former Dean Martin impersonator sounds right up my reviewing alley, and it just so happens that while I was in the process of uploading Hellraiser 2 I happened to stumble across one of those films while browsing my local streaming service. That’s the kind of opportunity that this blog was built on, so let’s give it a try.

       Released in 1974. Massacre Mafia Style was written, directed and produced by Duke Mitchell, with additional production help by Joseph R. Juliano and Spartan Films. Duke Mitchell stars as Mimi Miceli, son of Don Miceli, the former head of organized crime in America before he was deported back to Sicily. Mimi is tired of living in his father’s shadow however, and he decides to move to Los Angeles to break into the business with his family friend Jolly Rizzo (Vic Caesar). Which they do in the classic fashion, kidnapping some schmuck and mailing his body parts to family members. Crime today is not the same as they were in Pappy Miceli’s time however -- the former lieutenants are now trying to pass themselves off as legit businessmen, and the seedier aspects of the business have been taken over by *gasp* minorities. The respect for tradition, for family, that once supposedly defined the Cosa Nostra, that Mimi learned of at his daddy’s knee. Well fuck that, Mimi wants the cash and he wants the power, and he’s going to show all these guys what it means to be a mobster. Even if he has to massacre them, mafia style.

      With national morale at an all time low, it’s no wonder that the 70’s saw the explosive revival of the crime film. Loose cannon cops, pimps, street punks, con artists, these were who the youth were flocking to rather than John Wayne or Andy Griffith. Of course that classical archetype of criminal syndicates, the Mob, also got a new generation of eyes on it with Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 magnum opus The Godfather. Massacre Mafia Style takes some cues from Godfather obviously, going so far as to say that Coppola’s film is based on the life of Don Miceli, but this is certainly not a sweeping drama. This is an exploitation film, which means that the focus is on the more visceral aspects of gangster life, meaning extreme violence, gratuitous tits, and plenty of naughty language. The kinds of things you don’t want on the screen when your mom walks in the room.

        Of those three, the most screen time is devoted to violence. The first five to ten minutes of the film is literally like a scene from Postal 2 or some forgotten Tarantino picture, walking up to people and blasting them to hell before moving on to the met room. Nothing especially gorey, except for one scene (you’ll know it when you see it), but then this film was made for 12,000, so they worked with what they had, which was a lot of fake blood and prop guns. Quantity over quality, the calling card of grindhouse films, and this film is a prime example of that.

       That lack of quality shines through when you get to the acting, which ranges from decent to more wooden than a lumber mill. Duke himself is one of the better ones, which you’d hope for considering he made the damn thing, but he often suffers from a monotonal cadence which limits his emotional range. It’s good enough in short one-liners but when the dialogue drags on, like the several speeches Duke likes to give he ends up suffering for it. Still this isn’t quite a Tommy Wiseau situation, Mitchell knows how filmmaking works and the acting, while hit or miss, still has a logic behind it that makes sense. Scenes play out as you expect, characters act as you’d expect them to act, et cetera. While it may be a vanity project, there was some care put into its creation.

       I also think it’s prudent to write a little on the film’s approach to race relations here. Now you can say that this was a more loose period, and that these are bad people who do and say bad things, but there comes a point where it goes beyond establishing a character and starts getting uncomfortable. There’s one scene where Jolly is ranting for what feels for several minutes, and it feels like half the words out of his mouth begin with the letter ‘n’ while the other characters in the scene sit in silence. Again maybe if the Black characters gave it as good as they got, or there was some sort of repercussions then there’d at least be a purpose, but there are exactly two Black people in this movie (one of whom is even named a racial epithet) and they only exist to show off how macho the mafia is supposed to be, and nothing that ends up happening to any of these characters is a result of these scenes. And it’s really only Black people who get it too in spite of this multiethnic cast, I think there might be one Japanese guy who gets a slur thrown at them, but considering that particular word hasn’t seen major use since 1945 it doesn’t have quite the same impact. Mitchell was the sole creative voice on this film, so there’s no one else you can raise the eyebrow at. Just really awkward atmosphere in this dumb gangster picture. 

       Oh yeah, and there are naked breasts. Whatever.

       Massacre Mafia Style is a film that wants to be a hard boiled noir but ends up closer to your run-of-the-mill video nasty. It’s violent and occasionally absurd, but I never felt connected to the story so it amounted to nothing. The story felt disjointed as well, with events suddenly popping in with little preamble and plot points that make little sense, all leading up to an ending that I’m sure Mitchell felt was very profound when he was writing the script. Massacre Mafia Style is definitely a cult film -- in the sense that every low budget movie from the 70s and 80s with a little gore and some tits has some kind of following, but calling it a ‘cult classic’ would be going a step too far. The novelty of watching a grindhouse exploitation flick made by the big band equivalent of an Elvis impersonator might be enough to earn a watch for the exceptionally curious, but I can’t give it the recommendation. Gone with the Pope sounds like it might be fun though, maybe one day I’ll get around to it.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: 11 Harrowhouse (1974), directed by Aram Avakian

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Diamonds and Rust", by Joan Baez

       Sometimes it feels as if there is something of a square-rectangle situation when it comes to heist films. After all a heist film is just a subgenre of the crime film, and all a crime film needs to be considered so is to be centered around the nebulous field of crime. Either they are about criminals themselves or about those trying to catch criminals, and there are myriad possibilities when it comes  to the subject matter. Bank robberies, con artists, organized crime, even serial killers, as long as the film's central narrative deals with activities outside the law of its setting, then it can be considered a ‘crime film’. Just as a science fiction film ideally deals with some concept explained of theorized by science or a sword and sandals needs at least one sword and a pair of sandals, so too must a crime film have crime.

       A heist movie is more than just a crime movie though. Having the goal placed before you, seeing the characters build a plan from the ground up and seeing them execute it with clockwork precision (or not, as the case may be), there’s a methodology and artistry to it that’s fascinating to see in motion. Well it can be fascinating at the very least, I think a lot more people were invested in Ocean’s Eleven than they were Ocean’s Thirteen, and I don’t know if anyone knew The Sting even had a sequel. Still, if you’re looking for an easy way to build some suspense, have some folks steal something valuable from people who don’t want it stolen. Preferably people who are huge assholes so you don’t feel bad about them losing their valuable shit.  

       A British production but directed by an American, 11 Harrowhouse stars Charles Grodin (who also adapted the screenplay) as H.R. Chesser, a salesman whose job revolves around buying diamonds from London’s prestigious diamond supplier, located at 11 Harrowhouse, in order to sell them in New York. Chesser thinks himself as something of a schmuck, and it’s not hard to see where he’s coming from; He’s basically a glorified middleman, the men at Harrowhouse dislike him which means he gets stiffed when he tries to do business with them, and when you’re traveling to London six times a year that deficit is just going to increase. It’s the kind of situation that makes you jump at any deal you can get, and when industrialist Clive Massey offers him a million bucks to get a diamond for him, Chesser jumps. A million dollar diamond which is then promptly stolen, without any insurance or identification to say that the diamond had ever existed at all, and the finger of suspicion is pointed towards ‘the system’ taking back what was theirs. Yet another roadblock in the life of H.R. Chesser it seems, but Clive Massey offers a potential solution: Just rob 11 Harrowhouse. They’ve got 12 billion dollars worth of diamonds locked away in their vault, steal them and a million dollar debt will vanish like dust in the wind. So easy a child could do it, right? Also starring Candice Bergen as Chesser’s rich girlfriend Maren and James Mason as Watts.

       11 Harrowhouse is an odd duck of a movie. On the one hand, it has elements that I might attribute to noir films: the down-on-his-luck protagonist narrating to us throughout the course of the film, a morally ambiguous cast, and of course it doesn’t shy away from death. Yet at the same time there’s this relaxed atmosphere permeating the film that reminds one of those breezy European sex comedies of the period, Bruno Mattei and the like, and taking a brief dip towards the absurd for a while in the climax. I’ve seen it described as a spoof, which I suppose might be an adequate definition, but to be honest if it were intended to be a comedy then it was far too mild to be a good one. That could be a regional thing of course, raised on the films of Mel Brooks as I was my taste for spoofs may steer towards the broad, but I never thought of 11 Harrowhouse as a comedy once while I was watching it. Silly at times, but far too grounded to be a comedy.

       The crux of that issue lies with 11 Harrowhouse’s lead actor, Charles Grodin. I’m not familiar with Mr. Grodin’s acting work, but in this film he seems to have chosen one facial expression and kept it up through the entire film. Even his voiceover, which is more expressive than just about anything he does on screen sounds like he’s mumbling it himself on the subway. Now it could be argued that this milquetoast portrayal is intentional, juxtaposing the fact that he’s this mild-mannered guy, nebbish guy despite selling diamonds for a living, having an heiress as a girlfriend for the purposes of comedy, and masterminding a 12 billion dollar diamond heist, and I can certainly see that being the case. That being said, if he’s meant to be Woody Allen in Clint Eastwood’s body, I would have preferred they lean into that more, because as it is he feels like such a non-entity that occasionally I barely notice him on screen. The rest of the cast is fine, I like James Mason, Candice Bergen is good despite existing in this weird dimension of being a driving force of the film and a side character at the same time, it’s just Charles Grodin the human tranq dart that’s the odd man out.

       Despite that, I actually liked 11 Harrowhouse. A decent heist film with an imagination, it’s a film very of its time; From the smooth, smooth lounge music in the score down to how characters are shot talking in cars, it all points to a film that could have only been made in the early 70s. Since I happen to be into that style, shout out to my boy Lupin the 3rd, I don’t have a problem giving it the recommendation. I don’t think it’s going to be blowing anyone’s mind, but get yourself a glass of wine, maybe an 800,000 dollar diamond or two and have yourself a nice evening.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Black Christmas (1974), directed by Bob Clark

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Carol of the Bells", by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

     If there was one thing that really came into its own in the 1970s, it was serial killers. When people weren’t rocking out to the latest Emerson, Lake and Palmer record or protesting the Vietnam War, they were being thrown into a frenzy over the psychopathic murderers that seemed to spring up every couple months in the late 60s and 70s. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, the Zodiac Killer, the Son of Sam, the Manson Family, at some point it feels more like we’re looking at Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery than people who actually existed in real life. Of course Batman villains kill and rape way more people than that, but then you have to find some way to entertain the kids.

     Therein lies the heart of the matter though: people have been killing each other since the dawn of time, and chances are at least a few of them were mentally ill enough to do it in some fucked up way. The thing that’s changed is how the public learns about it. Every moment since the Industrial Age the way we receive new and information has expanded exponentially, and the larger the scope of news becomes and the larger the amount of information we are bombarded with becomes, the more detached we become with the truth and the more interested we become with basic emotional and ideological judgments. Jack the Ripper had to make do with the evening edition of the London Times, but the Manson Family got TV, newspapers, radio, books, a full blown media circus. What started out as a horrific murder of a up-and-coming actress morphs into a nail-biting thriller involving mind-control cults and that devilish rock ‘n’ roll music. The case becomes ‘The End of Flower Power’ and ‘The Death of the American Dream’, Charles Manson becomes this larger-than life figure who shows up in South Park episodes and TV series, rather than just this weirdo who convinced some folks to murder Sharon Tate. But admitting that wouldn't make for good television, I guess.

     As serial killers were making waves on the evening news, it’s only natural that Hollywood would jump on it to make some cash. Known as ‘slasher’ movies, this now infamous subgenre of horror featured the titular slasher, occasionally disfigured, generally insane, who would cut a path of bloody destruction through his unfortunate victims, who were traditionally either a group of horny teenagers or your typical white family who decided to vacation in an abandoned mine shaft or something for the summer. The ‘realness’ of the plots (just think of all the abandoned mine shafts you pass by on the way to work), combined with what was then shocking violence, ended up becoming a huge success, and many of the slasher pioneers ended up graduating into full fledged horror icons (or at least franchises). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, Friday the 13th, all movies that were big enough to driven into the ground. However, there is one slasher film that never quite reached the heights of marketability that its peers did, despite coming out the same year as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not only that, but it was also directed by the same man who directed A Christmas Story (one of the most beloved holiday films of all time) and Porky’s (one of the most beloved cheesy 80s sex comedies of all time). This time we’re featuring a little film known as Black Christmas, and no, Shaft unfortunately does not make an appearance.

     It’s Christmas time at the Pi Sigma Epsilon sorority, and all the girls are getting into the holiday spirit in their own special way. Some are making plans with their significant others and/or family, some are getting shitfaced drunk (Lois Lane was a bit of a party girl before she moved to Metropolis), and some are dealing with serious real life stuff. Unfortunately, a series of obscene phone calls by a rather uncouth pervert have put a damper on what should be a joyous time of year. Which would be bad enough, but then one of the girls go missing. According to the police, college girls just go missing for days on end all the time and it’s no big deal, but we know the real score. There’s a serial killer on the loose, and he’s targeting the residents of PSE. Will the girls manage to make it to the new year alive, or are they destined for one Unholy Night of hell? Well, it is a horror movie after all.

     Having dropped before the formula could be properly established, Black Christmas doesn’t quite have the same feel as the slasher films that were to follow. For one, we never actually see the murderer throughout the entire film, aside from one heavily shadowed shot near the end of the movie. Everything we know about the killer and his activities we learn through POV shots, ‘monster stalker’ scenes I guess you could call them, which were eventually recreated to great effect by Friday the 13th and Evil Dead years later. It’s actually a bit refreshing actually to have a slasher movie where the killer is almost completely anonymous, considering the almost comic-bookish way that colorful killers and movie monsters and placed in the spotlight these days. Makes it a more chilling.

     Also worth noting that Black Christmas is really a female-centric movie, and I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s the women who are getting murdered. The main characters are women, and they are treated like human beings rather than stereotypes. No screaming damsels, no women who are punished for having sex (who knew horror movies were so fundamentalist), just regular characters with their own quirks and flaws. They still end up dead in excruciatingly painful ways, but at least you end up caring for their well-being more than any male character in the film, even Nightmare on Elm Street/Enter the Dragon star John Saxon, who is probably the biggest name in this film aside from Margot Kidder. In fact the old boozehound lady of the house is hands down the best and funniest character in this movie. Every time she’s on screen you remember that this is the same guy who dressed Ralphie up in pink bunny pajamas.

     In a world where the slasher movie has been done to death, Black Christmas shows how entertaining it was at the outset. You’ve got a bit of humour, you’ve got the violent deaths and the chilling suspense, and it manages to tell its story and wrap things up at around 90 minutes. Old school attitude when it comes to storytelling, new school attitude when it comes to content and behavior, it’s the best of both worlds. If you’re a fan of Freddy and Jason and all those guys, do yourself a service and try out Black Christmas this Halloween, get a little learning on the Founding Fathers of Slashers. If you’ve been good, maybe Santa won’t stab you to death in your sleep this year.