Monsters are Alive and Well..

...and coming to a movie theater near you! Our Home Fry-ed Movie for August/September is The Killer Shrews, a silly, little creature feature from 1959. Monster movies were in abundance in the 1950s and 60s -- deadly creatures from outer space, atomic mutations, ancient monsters awakened from their graves. Monsters are still popular in the movies, only they are embedded in much more complex storylines than the movie monsters of the past.

Let's look at some of the "monster" movies from 2012:

There are monsters in Prometheus, although they're really just new species the scientists discover as they explore a distant planet. The movie works primarily as a sci fi action thriller, with some scares along the way. 

The main character in Chronicle eventually becomes a "monster," but not until the end of the movie. For most of the film, he's just an angst-ridden teenager with a crummy dad, a sick mom, low self-esteem and some special powers. (Okay, an angst-ridden teenager does sound scary, no matter what the circumstances are.) 

The Cabin in the Woods is chocked-full of monsters of all kinds, but its unique structure, starting out as a stereotypical slasher film, mixing in some Lovecraft and some science fiction, and ultimately becoming a parody of itself, makes the movie difficult to classify.

Perhaps the best monsters of this year weren't monsters at all, but the pack of wolves that chase Liam Neeson and his companions through the icy north in The Grey.

Monsters? They're everywhere, with no sign of disappearing. (Unless, of course, they're invisible, i.e., Predators.) 

Taking a Drive on the Film Noir Highway

January's Home Fry-ed Movie is Detour (1945), and even though it's a low budget film with some actors you've probably never heard of and some continuity problems, it's still considered one of the best examples of that style of Hollywood movies from the 1940s and 50s known as film noir. Film noir is distinguished by its use of low-key lighting, shadowy backgrounds, and distorted angles. The movies are dark in appearance (as implied by the word "noir," French for black), as are the stories. The characters are often morally compromised, with a male lead that's right on the edge of doing something wrong, and a female character (the "femme fatale") who's there to push him over the edge.

To understand what film noir is, you just need to watch a few. In addition to Detour, there's also D.O.A. (1950), another Home Fry-ed Movie. This one is about a man that's been poisoned. He has only a few hours to live and spends the time trying find out who his murderer is.

Here's some required viewing when it comes to film noirs (or is it films noir?):

Double Indemnity (1944) - Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) plans to murder the husband of his lover Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) and collect the insurance money, but can he really trust her?

Laura (1944) - A police detective investigating the murder of a beautiful actress falls in love with her portrait.

The Big Sleep (1946) - Detective Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) finds himself pulled deeper and deeper into a complex scandal. At least Vivian (Lauren Bacall) is there to make it seem worthwhile.

Out of the Past (1947) - Unable to escape his past, a former private detective must face the rich man who hired him to find his runaway girl years earlier.

Sunset Blvd. (1950) - On the run from creditors, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter takes refuge in the mansion of a washed-up silent movie star, who wants him all to herself.

There are dozens more but those are just some of my favorites.

Heroes, Villains and Society

The Home Fry-ed Movie for July/August 2011 is Angel and the Badman starring John Wayne, rather unconventional western from 1947. The western is Hollywood's most venerable genre, and even though we don't see many of them being made today, the characters and themes developed in the Hollywood western show up in today's action, crime and science fiction films.

During the show I present a pared-down version of Will Wright's classical western plot from his book Six Guns and Society. I thought this might be a good place to give you the whole structure as Wright presented it. First of all, you need to know that classic westerns were all about the interaction between the hero, the villains and society.

(1) The hero enters a social group.
(2) The hero is unknown to the society.
(3) The hero is revealed to have an exceptional ability.
(4) The society recognizes a difference between themselves and the hero; the hero is given a special status.
(5) The society does not completely accept the hero.
(6) There is a conflict of interests between the villains and the society.
(7) The villains are stronger than the society; the society is weak.
(8) There is a strong friendship or respect between the hero and a villain.
(9) The villains threaten the society.
(10) The hero avoids involvement in the conflict.
(11) The villains endanger a friend of the hero.
(12) The hero fights the villains.
(13) The hero defeats the villains.
(14) The society is safe.
(15) The society accepts the hero.
(16) The hero loses or gives up his special status.

The movie that most closely follows Wright's classical plot is Shane, although Shane rides away in the end, bleeding and half-dead, rather than lose his special status.

Other plots described by Wright include these:

The vengeance variation -- The hero is a member of society, but he has harm done to him by the villains, so must go outside society to defeat the villains. (Stagecoach is an example.)

The professional plot -- A group of heroes work together as professionals to defeat the villains. (Rio Bravo)

The transition theme -- Society becomes the ultimate villain to the hero. (High Noon)

To demonstrate how these plots linger in modern movies, think about The Matrix in terms of the classical plot, in which Neo is the hero, Morpheus and his rebels are society and the Agents are the villains. For the vengeance variation, what about Spider-Man, and the professional plot, The X-Men?

Westerns endure!

No "Love" at the Oscars

The Academy Awards came and went this year, and one of my favorite films of 2010, True Grit, got no love at the Oscars, despite receiving 10 nominations! While The King's Speech won best picture, it tied with Inception for the most number of wins--four. (All of the wins for Inception were much deserved technical awards.) Otherwise, the winners were evenly distributed--The Social Network won three awards, while The Fighter, Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland each won two. Black Swan received one win, as did The Wolfman (for make-up, which was the only thing in that movie that was worth even mentioning). Despite all that sharing of Oscar gold, Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Arkansan Charles Portis' beloved novel didn't make the cut.

Our Home Fry-ed Movie for March also got no love on Oscar night, even though it received six nominations including best picture. Love Affair, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, didn't have a chance. It was bested in four of its nominated categories by Gone With the Wind, that went on to receive a record-setting ten Academy Awards. In the other two categories, it was beat out by Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Wizard of Oz. If you're going to get beaten, this is good company!

Like True Grit, 1939's Love Affair is a great movie and well worth seeing, even though both got the snub on Oscar night. The first showings of Love Affair are Friday, March 25 at 8 p.m., Saturday, March 26 at midnight and Sunday, March 27 at 11 a.m. on UALR University Television (Channel 61 on Little Rock Comcast and 99 on U-Verse). You can also catch it at various times in April.

And Then There Was... The Devil?

I recently watched the 2010 movie Devil, produced by M. Night Shyamalan. It's the first film in a trilogy he's producing based on some "Twilight Zone" type stories that he comes up with and then passes on to other writers and directors to complete. I was interested to find out that part of Night's inspiration for Devil came from Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which was adapted to the screen in 1945 and featured on Home Fry-ed Movies in February.

Devil is about five people that get trapped on an elevator in a high-rise office building. One by one, they get murdered, and we discover that one of them may be the devil in disguise. As we get to know each of the characters, we discover that they all have some guilt from their past.

And Then There Were None was about 10 people trapped on an island, who get killed off one by one. Like the characters in Devil, they all have committed some crime (or at least look like they have), and one of them is the murderer (although he or she is probably not the devil).

Hollywood is heavily into recycling, especially when it comes to stories.

Home Fry-ed Oscars

The Oscars are this Sunday night (Feb. 27) and we’ll all be gathered around the big screen TV in the Home Fry-ed Diner to see who the winners are. I’m torn between True Grit and The King’s Speech, both very good and both very different. I’d be happy if either one took home Best Picture. However, I’m afraid it might be The Social Network, also a good movie, but not as good as those two, in my opinion.

The Home Fry-ed Movie for February/March is And Then There Were None, which didn’t get any Academy Award nominations back in 1945 but has a cast and crew full of Oscar nominees and winners. Barry Fitzgerald had one Oscar win and one additional nomination. Walter Huston had one win plus three nominations. Judith Anderson, Roland Young and Mischa Auer each had a nomination. Screenwriter Dudley Nichols had one win and three additional Academy Award nominations. Art director Ernst Fegte had a win plus three nominations and set decorator Edward Boyle had a staggering six nominations plus a win.

So which Home Fry-ed Movie was the most honored by the Academy? A Star is Born (1937), our Home Fry-ed Movie for August 2010. It received an Oscar for best original screenplay and an honorary award for its color photography, plus six additional nominations, including Best Picture. The only other Home Fry-ed Movie to get recognition was our September 2010 pick, The Stranger (1947), which received a nomination for best original screenplay. The rest of our Home Fry-ed Movies have been snubbed by the Academy. They’ll just have to settle for receiving the Honorary Fries (or is it Fry-es?) in our Home Fry-ed Diner.

The Road to Public Domain

This month's Home Fry-ed Movie is Road to Bali with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, the sixth of the seven Road pictures the two stars would make. It is, however, the only one of these films in the public domain. Why? The answer is quite simple. Somebody make a mistake.

(BTW, if you haven't figured it out yet, Home Fry-ed Movies presents only films that are in the public domain, meaning we can show the movies without paying licensing fees. Our budget is pretty thin, and the cost to show films, even really old ones, on cable can be prohibitive. So we mine through the extensive list of movies in public domain and show some of the best--and worst--movies we can.)

Road to Bali received a copyright registration on Jan. 1, 1953. However, the entry says the registration was in notice in 1952, so that year becomes the actual copyright date. Under current law, a movie from that time period must have its renewal made in the 28th calendar year of its original term. Whoever filed the paperwork to renew Road to Bali's copyright counted from 1953 instead of 1952, and submitted the renewal a year late.

Clerical errors like that put a lot of movies in the public domain. Those of us here at Home Fry-ed Movies would like to thank all those people that are a day late and a dollar short for giving us a wide variety of movies from which to choose!