STREAMLINING MY COLLECTION: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

 

This is my most recent take-to-Goodwill pile. The effort to streamline my collection is an ongoing process. This is a combination of films I picked up as blind buys, some from dollar stores, as well as quite a few films I enjoyed once or twice, but probably would never watch again. I'm giving away the Gunsmoke and Rifleman DVDs because I recently bought both shows in complete collections. My bootleg DVD of Looking For Mr. Goodbar was recently replaced with a Blu-ray edition. So, the collection keeps growing even as I try to streamline. The Pink Panther is a movie I saw when it first came to theaters, and I thought it was hilarious at the age of twelve. Now, I don't find it the least bit funny. I still haven't packed these up yet, so I may change my mind about one or two of them. Or ten or fifteen. Or... Oh, what we fanatics go through!!

(RE)READING JAMES LEO HERLIHY'S MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1965): A PERSONAL REFLECTION

 

I was seventeen when I read this novel for the first time, either late in 1968 or early in 1969. The film adaptation was in progress, so my paperback copy was one of those Soon-to-be-a-Major-Motion-Picture editions. This dark, downbeat story had a profound effect on me, and I was eager to see the film version, which was released in May 1969. When I saw it, I was disappointed. The movie, impressive as it was, didn't bring the novel to life for me. Most importantly, Jon Voight's portrayal of the title character did not ring true for me. He was not Joe Buck. Not for me.

Over the years, I saw the film a few times, eventually owning it on home video. As my memory of, and attachment to the novel gradually faded away, I was able to appreciate and enjoy the film on its own merits, including the performance of Jon Voight. And I thoroughly enjoyed Glenn Frankel's book: Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic, published in 2020 and reviewed on this blog. 

Recently, I've started revisiting favorite books that I read years ago, not only to refresh my memories, but to see how my perceptions may have changed with time. My old copy of Midnight Cowboy disappeared decades ago, so I sent away for another one and read it in two days. There were many details I had forgotten, but I quickly got caught up in the story and started to remember. Now, I don't know if I cried at the end of the book when I was seventeen. At seventy-five, I did. Walking alongside Joe Buck once again, from Texas to New York City, and riding with him on that bus going to Florida, I shared his alienation and loneliness, and it broke my heart all over again.

After finishing the book, I rewatched the film. While I still like the film for so many reasons, my gut feeling is that James Leo Herlihy's novel has yet to be adapted to the screen, as there is so much that has been left out. The novel begins where the film begins, with Joe getting himself ready to say goodbye to his life in Texas and get on that bus to New York City. But then it looks backwards into Joe's past, telling us about his childhood and young adulthood. We learn quite a bit about his life in Albuquerque with his grandmother, Sally Buck, and what kind of woman she was, how she gave him a home and provided for his basic needs. We also learn that she was never really there for Joe emotionally and wasn't terribly interested in his education or his development as a young man. When Joe drifted away from going to school at a very young age, she didn't think it was important enough for her to be bothered with. She gave him no proper guidance, allowing him to spend his days alone just watching television. She would periodically go off with some new boyfriend, leaving young Joe alone to fend for himself. We learn something about his sexual awakening, mainly with a troubled girl named Annie, and how that relationship led to tragedy. In the film, these crucial chapters of Joe's life are only alluded to in brief flashbacks. 

We also learn about Joe being drafted into the Army, his profound reaction to the death of his grandmother, and his decision to start a new life in Houston. This is where Joe meets and befriends a young male hustler named Perry. While Joe is happy to have a friend to talk to, Perry wants something more. When Joe doesn't return Perry's interest, it leads to a dark, violent encounter that changes Joe's life. It is also during this encounter that we find out where Joe got the idea of going to New York to hustle rich, frustrated women, a fact that isn't mentioned in the film. This is where the first half of the book comes to a close.

Joe is described in the novel as a well-built, blonde, boyish young guy with a toothy smile, almost bucktoothed. This vision fits Jon Voight fairly well, I have to admit. Voight is certainly a talented actor with a considerable emotional range, an actor whose feelings show on his face, especially in his eyes. My frustration with the film is not so much about Voight's casting, but rather with how the character of Joe Buck is written and presented on the screen. 

In the novel, Joe moves through the world with a cocky strut and the outward attitude that goes with it, reflections of both his natural self and the image he tries to present. Voight brings this aspect of the character to the screen perfectly. But even though the script allows us to see Joe's sensitive, vulnerable side, there is little attempt to reveal the desperate loneliness and disconnection he has felt throughout his life:

He had gone about always, even in the most familiar places of his life, with a slight frown of uneasiness, his head cocked for some clue to the mystery of the language he heard spoken, but which was clearly not his own, walking softly as if unsure of the very ground of this peculiar planet. And now, thinking it all over carefully but inexpertly, there seemed to him to have been from the very beginning a campaign afoot to make him aware always and always and always of his own alien status. And the awful conclusion he reached was that nearly everyone he knew or had ever know was part of this conspiracy. Even the many persons with whom he had enjoyed a certain sexual popularity--especially these persons--had refused any contact with his other aspects. They took their pleasure and they ran like the wind, no doubt laughing about the earnestness with which he had gone about gratifying them.

...there was an awareness entering him too momentous to acknowledge: he was a nothing person, a person of no time and no place and no worth to anyone at all.

Maybe it would be impossible to express this kind of sadness and alienation in any film. I'm not even sure if screenwriter Waldo Salt and director John Schlesinger wanted to dig this deep into Joe Buck's interior life. Their expansion of the story, which is marvelously creative, made New York City another important character in the film, and it was from this character, this chaotic, overwhelming environment, that Joe felt profound alienation. 

With the introduction of Dustin Hoffman as Rico "Ratso" Rizzo, the streetwise con man who insinuates himself into Joe's life, the film gives us the most colorful character, and, arguably, the dominant character, in the screen adaptation. While Hoffman is older than the Rico in the novel, who is in his early twenties, his portrayal is so incredible, so singular, that I find no fault in it whatsoever. The novel gives us some background of Rico's life, but I'm not sure such exposition would have added anything important to the film. Rico's energetic presence helps to move the film along from one situation to the next while the relationship between these two unlikely co-conspirators grows into friendship. Both novel and film end the same way, with Rico's death, leaving Joe alone on that bus.

I guess my vision for a film version of this novel would be much more fatalistic. Black & White. Very little music. It would have to use as much of the first half of the book as possible, making it a longer film. But, as I said earlier, maybe it couldn't be done. Maybe it shouldn't be done. It's possible that James Leo Herlihy's vision of the tragic Joe Buck would be too much to bear if faithfully adapted for the screen, for the author wasn't just describing the desperate loneliness of one character in a novel. He was trying to make us see the loneliness felt by most men. Perhaps all men:

At first glance these young men may appear to loiter in packs, for often they occupy one table or group around a single parking meter, but chances are they are as unconnected to one another as they are to the prairies and cities and rivers of their homeland. You will find in the eyes and demeanor of these persons a kind of restless sadness that is probably incurable; they seem to be suffering some nameless common loss, as if something of worth had been snatched from them with such shocking irrevocability that they have forgotten even what it was.

HOKUM (2026)

 

Feel like being scared out of your wits? In the mood to go running out of the theater screaming at the top of your lungs? Have a hankering to be so psychologically damaged by a motion picture that you never leave your house again?

Well, keep looking for another movie, because Damian McCarthy's HOKUM isn't going to deliver any of those desired outcomes for you. Still, I have a feeling most horror fans are going to like this one. I saw it yesterday at my local monsterplex after reading a very favorable review, and I'm happy to give it an enthusiastic recommendation. HOKUM is an extremely clever, very original combination of ghost story, folklore horror and also a nice series of jump scares, all packaged in relentless darkness. The creepy factor hits the top of the scale. It was filmed on location in County Cork, Ireland by cinematographer Colm Hogan. There are scenes where the design and use of lighting remind me of David Lynch.

Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, an American writer of fiction, who comes to a remote hotel in the middle of the Irish woods for two reasons. First, he wants to distribute the ashes of his parents who had stayed at the hotel on their honeymoon. Second, he wants to finish a book and needs peace and quiet. The ashes aren't a problem. Peace and quiet? Forget it. He finds himself in an oppressive atmosphere, surrounded by weird people, and, oh yeah, there may be an ancient witch trapped in the bridal suite.

What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. Mystery ensues. As does terror.

We soon learn that Adam is a rather acerbic, unlikeable gentleman who has a terrible secret in his past that eventually connects with the weirdness happening in the hotel. There are so many cool surprises and plot twists in the film and I'm not going to spoil any of them for you. This is one you need to check out for yourself. The movie lasts 107 minutes, not one of them wasted. There is also very little violence other than what's necessary for the story. It's not a slasher and there is no exploitation going on.

The director also made two other horror films: CAVEAT (2020) and ODDITY (2024), neither of which I've seen. But after seeing HOKUM, I want to check out this man's earlier work. I definitely plan to pick up this current film if it comes to home video.

KEY WITNESS (1960)

KEY WITNESS is an uneasy combination of competent thriller, Neo-Noir, social commentary and some unbelievably bad decisions regarding dialogue and musical score. The most important thing it has going for it is a good cast of actors, including a reuniting of Dennis Hopper and Corey Allen who worked together in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955). Interestingly, KEY WITNESS shares one of the plot points from REBEL, that of a group of hoodlums attempting to prevent someone from "squealing" to the police.

Jeffrey Hunter stars as Fred Morrow, a businessman and family man living in Los Angeles. When he stops at a cafe in East L.A. to use the telephone, he witnesses a gang murder. A young thug called William "Cowboy" Tompkins (Dennis Hopper) and his cohorts, Muggles (Joby Baker), Apple (Johnny Nash) and Magician (Corey Allen), surround another young guy, Emelio Sanchez (Eugene Iglesias), who was dancing with Cowboy's girlfriend, Ruby (Susan Harrison). Cowboy pulls out a switchblade and stabs Emelio, and the gang flees the scene. A crowd forms around the injured man, but Fred is the only one who steps forward to try to help him. Emelio names Cowboy as the one who stabbed him and then dies in Fred's arms. When police arrive, Fred is the only eyewitness among many who offers to help identify the killer. Ruby, who didn't flee with Cowboy and the gang, watches Fred giving his statement to the officer, who is on his regular beat and is known to the gang. When the gang learns that Emelio has died, they come up with a plan to assault the officer and steal his logbook to get Fred's name and address. They then proceed to confront Fred, his wife (Pat Morrow) and their two young children, attempting to intimidate Fred into retracting his statement about the murder. 

What follows for the duration of this 82-minute film are the various encounters between the Morrow family and the gang of thugs until (spoiler alert) good wins over evil, justice is served and the appropriate personages have been locked up. The first encounter happens when the Morrows are leaving the grocery store, of all places. The gang follows them out of the parking lot, locks on to the car from the rear, and attempts to push the Morrows into oncoming traffic. When that fails, they harass the family's home, throwing rocks through the windows and slashing their car's tires. As the gang gets more and more unhinged, they attempt to kidnap the Morrow children and accost Mrs. Morrow inside the courthouse. 

A gang in crisis: Johnny Nash, Corey Allen, Dennis Hopper, Joby Baker and Susan Harrison

 The Morrow family is assisted in their plight by Detective Rafael Torno (Frank Silvera), who is assigned to the case, and his superior, Lieutenant Arthur Robbins (Bruce Gordon). Both policemen are grateful that Fred Morrow came forward as a witness when so many others didn't want to take the chance. Cowboy is finally brought into custody after an exciting car chase on a California freeway. For those who are into car chases, this one will not disappoint. After Torno runs Cowboy's car off the highway, the two men are seen running into traffic. A very well-filmed sequence.

There are so many good aspects to this film that it's easy to dismiss the fact that the concept is not all that original. A few other well-made films had already addressed the subject of young thugs committing home invasions or harassing good citizens who cooperate with police: THE NIGHT HOLDS TERROR ((1955), THE SHADOW ON THE WINDOW, which also featured Corey Allen, (1957) and JOY RIDE (1958). KEY WITNESS has the advantage of four intense young actors, Allen, Hunter, Nash and Hopper all bringing their unique personas to the project. The pleasure of watching these talented gentlemen makes up for the glaring embarrassment of Joby Baker. As gangman Muggles, Baker is called upon to overact almost to the point of parody as a possibly braindead hipster who communicates only through ridiculous beatnik-inspired poetry and jingles, accompanied by finger snapping and exaggerated gestures. It's difficult to know if the filmmakers intended Muggles to be dangerously unhinged and scary, but he comes off as simply irritating. Baker was quite active in television and films in the 1960s, usually playing likeable guys in lighthearted settings. If his performance here was intended to display serious acting range, it failed miserably.

Jeffrey Hunter, Corey Allen and Dennis Hopper

Susan Harrison, introduced to the cinema in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957), also proves somewhat detrimental to the film. As Ruby, it is her supposed sexual allure which causes the murder of Emelio and makes her irresistible to Cowboy. Unfortunately, Harrison seems to have taken acting lessons from Joby Baker, as her character often speaks in the same kind of beatnik jargon. She is not an untalented actress, and she has some believable moments, but her performance is uneven. When it comes to these various gang members, one gets the impression that Baker and Harrison are acting in a different movie than Allen, Hopper and Nash, all of whom are assigned straightforward dialogue, delivered in a believable, straightforward manner. To be fair, the writers and the director had to have been responsible for these problems with the film, much more than the actors.

Young love: Susan Harrison and Dennis Hopper

Johnny Nash's character, Apple, is the only Black member of the gang, allowing racial prejudice to figure into the plot. Apple seems to be under the benevolence and protection of Cowboy, while the other three members regard him with either amused tolerance or, in the case of Magician, hostility. When Apple tries to convince Cowboy to stop harassing the Morrow family, Cowboy pushes him away. At the film's climax, Apple is confronted with the racist attitudes of both Fred and Cowboy, who, in a shocking moment, calls him the N-Word.

Johnny Nash and Dennis Hopper

Another glaring flaw in the film is the use of music. At the beginning of the film, as Fred is about to park his car to go into the cafe, he catches sight of hip-swinging Ruby crossing the street. The camera zooms in on Ruby, allowing the viewer to ogle at her seductive movements along with Fred. While this is going on, the soundtrack plays an innocuous, lighthearted instrumental tune that manages to remove any sense of drama or tension. The tune continues to play as Ruby begins dancing with the doomed Emelio, which leads quickly into the murder scene. The tune, composed by Charles Wolcott, is actually called Ruby Duby Du, and is used as a leitmotif later in the film when Ruby enters another scene. Along with the comical pseudo-beatnik jargon, this music creates a jarring break with the otherwise serious nature of the story. The rest of Wolcott's score is comprised of music much more appropriate for a thriller involving murder and revenge. Again, it's difficult to understand why the filmmakers would make such a choice. This song, by the way, became something of a radio hit. reaching #41 on the US Hot 100, even inspiring a few cover versions.

Stylish gang members, uneasy riders: Johnny Nash, Joby Baker, Dennis Hopper and Corey Allen.

Dennis Hopper and Susan Harrison on the set of KEY WITNESS.

I'm a huge fan of Dennis Hopper, and his appearance in KEY WITNESS is, for me, what makes this mixed bag of a movie worth seeing. After an auspicious beginning in films like REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) and GIANT (1956), Hopper fell from Hollywood's grace after a contentious relationship with director Henry Hathaway on the film FROM HELL TO TEXAS (1958). He found himself relegated to doing some excellent work in television and low budget movies, one of which, NIGHT TIDE (1961), is a cult classic. His film career finally got back on track in 1965 with the John Wayne western THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER. In KEY WITNESS, he and his fellow gang members are a little too well-dressed and clean-cut to be considered dangerous rebels. But we do get to see Hopper on a motorcycle, a preview of his iconic character in EASY RIDER at the end of the decade. Jeffrey Hunter had been working in films since 1950 and would make a memorable appearance as the Lord Jesus Christ in Nicholas Ray's KING OF KINGS in 1961. He would also achieve cult status by starring as Captain Pike in the original pilot for the Star Trek television series. Hunter would die tragically in 1969 at the age of 42 after an accident while making another film. The always intense Corey Allen would star in another interesting film in 1960 entitled PRIVATE PROPERTY. Later in the decade, he turned to directing, working mostly in television. Johnny Nash only acted in one other film, TAKE A GIANT STEP in 1959. He was a very successful singer and songwriter, remembered for his 1972 hit song I Can See Clearly Now. Director Phil Karlson was a prolific craftsman whose filmography includes 99 RIVER STREET (1953), THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955), BEN (1972) and WALKING TALL (1973).

Young Dennis Hopper, gifted and rebellious.

Key Witness - Film Trailer - 1960

Ruby Duby Du in Key Witness film (1960)

Jeffrey Hunter having a really bad day.