Million Dollar Mystery

Fleischer's Last Stand (I Stan for Fleischer)

The final film by Richard Fleischer, Million Dollar Mystery [1987], places the emphasis on "mystery." To elaborate: a passage from the film's Wiki page: "Million Dollar Mystery (also known as Money Mania) is a 1987 American film released with a promotional tie-in for Glad-Lock brand [garbage/rubbish] bags. This was the final feature-length film directed by Richard Fleischer and shot by Jack Cardiff. [...] During the closing credits, Bob informs the audience that there is one million dollars somewhere in the US and if they follow the clues in specially marked Glad-Lock bags, they have the chance to win $1 million. [...] Million Dollar Mystery was a box office flop grossing $989,033 against a $10 million budget.

"The film received negative critical reviews. The film holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 6 reviews."

It's not that bad, as far as crass 1980s wind-down stoner ensemble comedies go. I probably caught it on late-night HBO or Cinemax back in the decade — where Rich Hall led, I tended to follow. My dad told how when he was a child, the only (not ten-, not fifteen-) thirteen-cent matinée he walked out of midway through was Richard Fleischer's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, — the octopus tentacles scared the shit out of him and he booked to the exit. It's too bad he hasn't seen Million Dollar Mystery, as he'd really be shaken by the scenes with Kevin Pollak, wherein the movie screeches to a halt as Pollak riffs throughout a menagerie of impersonations, the most ridiculous of which involves Columbo and Pollak-Falk's eyeballs rolling every which way loosely. Maybe he got shook up in a car chase: these moments are the highlight of the film, pure unleaded action-poetry. •

Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Richard Fleischer:

Million Dollar Mystery [1987]

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Blue Skies

On the Fritz

Stuart Heisler's rather tame 1946 Technicolor-musical Irving Berlin revue is well worth seeing — this does come, after all, from the director of the mighty Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman of the following year. No shattered tumblers in Blue Skies though. What Heisler delivers are discrete moments of beauty (see the "Blue Skies" scene alone — a sublime moment) that make for one of the oddest paces in any film I can think of. (See the terrific one-man drag sketch at the dinner club.) Fred Astaire (Jed, here a Renaissance man broadcaster, dancer, singer, director for stage) vies with Bing Crosby (Johnny) for the heart of nightclub showgirl Joan Caulfield (Mary). 'Only one man will succeed' — there's no equivocating by film-end as to whether or not Johnny or Jed can proclaim victory. Joan's a bit of a dud; Crosby kept her on the picture following the death of scheduled director Mark Sandrich at the start of production, which is when Heisler took over the enterprise. Bing, you see, was banging Joan... That aside, among the female cast members Nita (Olga San Juan) truly stands out — she with the superhuman midriff, with the facial expressions of a seasoned pro — something fallen from the blue skies: but no, with the duo of Jed (surgically modified teeth) and Johnny (aux perles naturelles) all Mary, Mary, Mary. Maybe only Heisler had the sense good enough  to put Olga to worthy use, then to secret his daily rushes from Bing. In one notable number, Olga/Nita sports a white feathery headdress that brings to mind a celebratory blast of ectoplasm erupting from her skull. 

The weakness of Blue Skies lies largely in the flatness of its scenes, and, up to a point (say, the famous mirrored-Astaire performance of "Puttin' on the Ritz"), the uninventiveness of the production design. (Every mansion soirée in American movies of the 1940s and 50s requires a room off the main hall used as a library chamber or drawing-room, where lovers are able sneak off to trade confidentialities over Scotch and soda and chamomile. There's no 'charge' to the sets — a cardinal mistake in any concerted attempt to work the mise-en-scène. One must have a mind of winter beneath deceptive blue skies... •

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A quick note: Friday afternoon saw me at the dump AMC near my house, where I watched Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis: A Fable. Still processing the experience, a roundabout beeline to the soul, if one will. All told, maybe the finest epic of America's endgame 21st century since the Malick/Criterion cut of The Tree of Life. Watch this space for more on FFC's fabulous artistic gambit. •

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Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Stuart Heisler:

Blue Skies [1946]

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Dance Party, USA

This Is Serious Early 'Mumblecore'

Dance Party, USA [2006], the debut from Aaron Katz, depicts an early-20-something/late-teens house party, and all the house parties out there, all the Americas within the United States. As such Katz's film's title hits all the spots. (I don't remember this program at all though I had to have seen some of it: "Dance Party USA is an American dance television show that aired daily on cable's USA Network from April 12, 1986, to June 27, 1992.") The film — and could Katz have known at the time of creation? — addresses the 'mumblecore' predilection for house parties: easy to shoot, full inventory of extras, all props drinkable.

Serial fuck-wizard Gus (Cole Pensinger) confesses to his best friend Bill (Ryan White) that he might have raped a 14-year-old named Kate at a party some months back. At one point, Gus pays an afternoon visit to the girl in an attempt to glean clues from the party and somewhat quieten his conscience. Gus almost 'wins our sympathy' in his avoidance of coming on to the would-be-Kate, who all but lays it out for him to take in her parents' house's basement rec room; it's painful to watch as it becomes clear that the girl has no recollection of Gus being at the party, let alone taking the role of her rapist, let alone having any idea whatsoever who this veritable stranger might be who has showed up on her doorstep.

The shame of male insecurities. Less fraught would be the thread involving Jessica (Anna Kavan) which — at a house party — coincides with Gus's. Any scene involving her involves beauty and calm, a slow rhythm. Before Jessica and Gus run into one another at a Portland fair, the latter wanders the exhibitions, with a crimson "S" emblazoned on the back of his t-shirt. Reputation-Gus unknowingly sports a scarlet letter. •

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Other writings in Cinemasparagus on the films of Aaron Katz:

Dance Party, USA [2006]

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De Sade

Barbs Were Traded

Cy Endfield grew up in Wilkes-Barre, PA, about twenty minutes from my hometown, Scranton. (Wilkes-Barre: the hometown too of Dan Sallitt.) De Sade, exhibited by Roger Corman's American International Pictures, is the filmmaker's 1969 follow-up to the 1964 epic Zulu. 

There's a gossamer pattern in the marquis's spacious chamber/theatre-space, a lattice of cobweb evoking draped semen strings. It goes without saying that even this Marquis de Sade version X has nothing on the novels in terms of an urgency to the rapacious libertinage. Yet unlike most fiction cinema, the deeply red-filtered orgy scenes of De Sade give one time to think (as opposed to whatever TV allows its audience — time to drift). De Sade (portrayed by Keir Dullea) enters into marriage contract with a physically sensational woman who upon the marquis's signature being laid to document, vanishes — or rather is replaced (as though nothing should be more normal) by a meek-jawed Briton, pretty in her own way but certainly of a different make... More metamorphoses involving buxom service-girls still as the movie progresses...

Simple découpage: ordering successive shots across space (location) and time (duration) like in most mainstream narrative films; here, normalcy that absorbs not just consideration of a scene's space-time allowance but also the cut that leads into the next scene's action. Examine time and space as an axiom of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. — another film wherein love and death / eros and thanatos create their dance, no matter how 'actually (and perversely) abstract.' Released a year prior to De Sade, time and aging will decisively conclude the Kubrick film.

Sade sheds psychic skins, shimmers like a boor-ealis... •

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