Give Charlie a hand

Several years ago, it was all the rage for movie stars -- Ben Affleck, Jennifer Tilly and Jon Favreau, for three -- to profess a love of card playing. But if these actors couldn’t ostentatiously show off their card sharping on such television programs as CELEBRITY POKER SHOWDOWN, would they have even cared?

Late screen tough guy Charles Bronson, on the other hand, seemed to ante up for more genuine reasons: to bond with working-class, below-the-line crew members on his film productions. (He was much less concerned about fraternizing with fellow thespians.)

“Charles Bronson never spoke to any of us,” actor Jay Sayer told film journalist Tom Weaver in a recent interview. “He played cards with the stuntmen, with the extras. Because he had much more in common with them than he did with the actors.”

Sayer wasn't the only actor brushed off by Bronson.

“He ran a little nickel-and-dime poker game with the make-up girls and the hair girls,” echoes later Bronson co-star Robert Axelrod. “I walked in once and said, ‘How do I get a seat?’ He turns up to me and said, ‘You don’t.’”

Sayer appeared with Bronson in 1958’s MACHINE-GUN KELLY, and Axelrod was a supporting player in four of the star’s ‘80s vehicles. So it’s very likely that Bronson kept up these games during his heyday of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

And if the actor dealt, drew and discarded only out of an authentic love for his crew members and for card games, it would make perfect sense. After all, Charles Bronson was likely the most authentic tough guy the big screen will ever see.

NEWMAN'S LAW -- a less obvious SERPICO

"The life of a cop is not healthy," is a line of cautionary wisdom uttered in the tough (and tough-to-find) 1974 cop film NEWMAN'S LAW. And while it may not be healthy, the life of a certain Los Angeles narc played by George Peppard is certainly interesting enough for a little bit of the ol' reviewin'.

First, the genre. There are, basically speaking, two types of cop pictures from the 1970s: plot driven and character driven. (Yeah, yeah -- I know this dichotomy applies to more than just policiers [and is a little obvious to boot], but it serves our discussion okay.)

Plot driven. The first type includes such films as THE STONE KILLER, THE SEVEN-UPS, and the original FRENCH CONNECTION. These films feature cops exposing complex, sometimes international crime rackets. Each movie has a large cast of characters -- cops, prosecutors, mobsters, hoods -- and the number of names and faces is overwhelming in an initial viewing. The many plot developments (which break only for an extended car chase) come at the expense of showing the complex motivations of the central cop figures.

Character driven. The second variety includes such films as DIRTY HARRY and, ironically, THE FRENCH CONNECTION II. And these movies are almost exclusively concerned with the personality of the lead cop. Plot is secondary, as these films feature simple stories (catching a rooftop killer, in the case of HARRY) that don’t infringe much on characterization.

NEWMAN’S LAW would, at first, seem to be of the complex former type, plot driven. It centers around an American/European drug operation, has copious plot developments (Newman is suspended from the force, then on probation, then fired outright), and boasts a large number of characters (cops, former cops, the D.A.’s office, Lo Falcone’s mob, the Dellanzia family).

But closer inspection of NEWMAN'S LAW reveals that the film’s real interest lies in the character of Vince Newman, not the plot.

So what's so interesting about Newman? The answer has surprisingly little to do with nailing the European drug lord (the plot), but with whether an honest cop can survive on the force (the subplots). All the film's money-related secondary stories add up to offer a more interesting side of the cop than just the "hellbent to bust the villain" protagonist. See, Newman can’t afford to keep his father in a nursing facility, and yet he doesn’t take dirty money or “go private,” as do many of the film's other cops. NEWMAN’S LAW works best as a tale of a good cop surrounded by police corruption.

NEWMAN'S LAW may sound a bit like SERPICO, but the viewer really has to look for the connection. Both the writing and Peppard’s subtle, understated performance keep the subplots from drawing attention to themselves. But if you think about the film (as your humble narrator obviously has -- though not to the exclusion of a social life), these are the story's best moments.

But even though it's of less interest than Newman's personal story, let's take a look at the criminal plot. (In other words: I watched the film multiple times and took careful notes, so you should feel obligated to read the below synopsis.)

While searching a drug house, narcotics cop Vince Newman (Peppard) answers a ringing telephone only to hear the voice of never-convicted gangster Frank Lo Falcone (Louis Zorich) on the other end. Not realizing that Newman is listening, Lo Falcone takes credit for the shipment of 75 kilos. of hashish in the house, and the cop knows he has enough evidence for a conviction.

Lo Falcone is extradited from Naples, Italy, but before Newman can testify against the drug kingpin, the honest cop is discredited and suspended from the force when planted narcotics are discovered in his apartment. Charges are dropped against Lo Falcone, and it begins to look as if the gangster had planned his extradition all along to guarantee legal entry to the United States.

(spoiler city below!)

Furious, and now acting as a private citizen, Newman buys a rifle and fills Lo Falcone’s fancy home full of holes. A retaliatory attempt on the ex-cop’s life only manages to kill Newman’s former partner (Roger Robinson).

Resolved to a suicide mission, Newman infiltrates the gangster’s stronghold, where he kills Lo Falcone and a corrupt cop -- Newman’s former chief -- before being killed himself.

A downbeat ending is typical of the '70s. What's atypical -- and what makes Vince Newman's cop tale worth tracking down -- is the fact that all the scenes that make it so great don't even show up in a typical plot synopsis.

My weird thing about DONATO AND DAUGHTER

I just found the Netherlands disc of the 1993 Charles Bronson television movie DONATO AND DAUGHTER online, and after a few clicks (and shipping days later), I had added it to my "official" DVD collection. For those who've never had the privilege, that part of my collection is what I keep out on display, neatly shelved and alphabetized. These are the films that are supposed to, ahem, "say something about Mike Malloy."

But why DONATO & D.? Am I really so desperate for new additions to my official collection, now that I've acquired such holy grails as the Canadian release of 1979's THE HARD WAY, the German dvd of 1978's RITUALS, or the Swedish disc of 1973's THE STONE KILLER? Should my ultra-cool DVD collection be watered down with a tepid made-for-TV cop film starring a tired Charlie Bronson?

Here's my justification.

DONATO AND DAUGHTER was broadcast on CBS-TV in 1993, and it was the very first new bit of Bronson to debut after my teenaged self had become a rabid mega-fan of Charlie's '60s/'70s glory period (films like RIDER ON THE RAIN and HARD TIMES). That alone -- the fact that I was discovering this new Bronson film along with the rest of the world, and for once, not after the fact -- was enough to give it a special spot in my heart (and now, my DVD collection).

I taped it during its original airing and watched it a number of times that year. Even then, I knew it was no great shakes. The material was sanitized for television. The identity of the serial killer (Xander Berkeley) is revealed way too early. The plotting is improbable ("All the victims look just like you, Dena!"). Some of the music (I'm looking at you, synth-and-muted-trumpet schmaltz) became instantly dated.

But some of the score is decent cop tension music. Further, there are some good supporting performances, and tough-guy film fans will find some interesting connections: Actress Kim Weeks would later become Bronson's real-life wife. Michael Cavanaugh had been a regular supporting player in the films of Bronson's big '70s competitor, Clint Eastwood. And Berkeley would go on to pay homage to Lee Van Cleef in SHANGHAI NOON as the character of, well, Marshal Van Cleef.

And then there's Bronson. I won't go as far as to say this is his last great performance, because it's not a great performance. I do however think that his last great moments -- however brief and isolated -- appear in this movie. There's a fiery little gleam in his eye when he tells off the head nun at the Catholic school. Stuff like that.

But between this '93 television airing and my recent purchase of the dvd, there was more.

In the mid-90s, while your humble narrator was in college, DONATO AND DAUGHTER started popping up again.

First, I found it for rent at my neighborhood mom-and-pop vid shop, under the vhs title DEAD TO RIGHTS. I wasn't planning on renting it (I had taped it off the telly, remember), but then I noticed that the MPAA had slapped an R-rating on this version. "Oh, the film must have had an alternate cut full of gore and nudity for home video and European theatrical release," I thought and happily took it home.

I shoved DEAD TO RIGHTS into my vcr. It was the exact same cut as the TV version of DONATO AND DAUGHTER, leading me to believe the MPAA didn't even watch it. They probably had a standing rule at the time to rubber stamp all Bronson cop films with an R (based off his 1980s schlock for Cannon like KINJITE and 10 TO MIDNIGHT). Fact is, neither DONATO AND DAUGHTER nor DEAD TO RIGHTS had anything worse than a severed finger (which wasn't even shown in close-up) and one utterance of the B-word.

Then, Bronson did his next TV cop film, the uber-bland FAMILY OF COPS (1995). I remember reading an interview with Charlie at the time (in TV GUIDE, I think) where he asserted that FAMILY OF COPS was the first time he had played a father of grown, adult children. What an oversight! That statement neglected his recent role in DONATO AND DAUGHTER (which friggin' mentions his grown daughter in the title, no less!) and his best work of the whole decade, the Sean Penn-directed indie THE INDIAN RUNNER (1991).

(Coincidentally, DONATO AND DAUGHTER is itself about a "family of cops," as Bronson plays an L.A. detective whose daughter is -- and dead son was -- also a cop.)

But although FAMILY OF COPS, which somehow spawned two sequels, became the big success story of Bronson's TV-movie work in the 1990s, it was DONATO AND DAUGHTER which was his best in that category for the decade.

And now, a dvd sits in my official collection to prove I feel that way.

The '30s in the '70s

Harris Yulin in Melvin Purvis: G-Man (left) and Shelley Winters in Bloody Mama (right)

The latest big-screen John Dillinger treatment -- Michael Mann's Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger -- took in a respectable $25M this past weekend, and cable telly was rife with related programming. These TV tie-ins included a History Channel documentary entitled Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem (which concerned Dillinger and contemporaries like Baby Face Nelson and Clyde Barrow) and a re-broadcast of the 1974 telefilm Melvin Purvis: G-Man (an awfully loose-with-the-facts account of the apprehension of Machine Gun Kelly).

But even with all this attention currently re-directed to the Depression-era bank robbers, we'd have to manically crank out a giant fistful of Public Enemies cash-ins if we wanted to approach the all-out mania over '30s bank-robbers that the 1970s experienced.

Warren Oates in a publicity shot for 1973's Dillinger

Yeah, between '70-'79, there were nearly a dozen films made about bank robbing during the Great Depression. Was this just a decade's worth of imitators of the influential 1967 movie Bonnie & Clyde? Or was there something about social conditions of the day (the 1973 Oil Crisis, etc) that made the 1930s seem particularly relevant? I'd guess both, as the '70s produced all sorts of Depression-era movies that had zilch-o to do with bank robbing: Hard Times, The Sting, Book of Numbers, Lucky Lady, Inserts (and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? if we grandfather in the year 1969!).

But this is all just a long-winded way of introducing the below -- my attempt to make a definitive list of the 1970s films about 1930s bank robbers:



Bloody Mama (1970)
With Shelley Winters as Kate ‘Ma’ Barker, American International Pictures







A Bullet for Pretty Boy (1970)
With Fabian as Charles Arthur Floyd, American International Pictures














Dillinger (1973)
With Warren Oates as John Dillinger, Ben Johnson as Melvin Purvis, Richard Dreyfus as Baby Face Nelson, and Steve Kanaly as Pretty Boy Floyd, American International Pictures










Bad Charleston Charlie (1973)
With Ross Hagen and Hoke Howell as fictional characters, International Cinema












Big Bad Mama (1974)
With Angie Dickinson, Tom Skeritt and William Shatner as fictional characters, New World Pictures










Melvin Purvis, G-Man (1974)
aka The Legend of Machine Gun Kelly
With Dale Robertson as Melvin Purvis and Harris Yulin as George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, TV Movie













The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd (1974)
With Martin Sheen as Charles Arthur Floyd, TV Movie










The F.B.I. Story: The FBI Versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One (1974)
aka Alvin Karpis: Public Enemy No. 1
aka The FBI Story - Alvin Karpis
With Robert Foxworth as Alvin Karpis, Eileen Heckart as Ma Barker and Harris Yulin as J. Edgar Hoover, TV Movie












The Kansas City Massacre (1975)
With Dale Robertson as Melvin Purvis, Bo Hopkins as Charles Arthur 'Pretty Boy' Floyd, William Jordan as John Dillinger, and Elliot Street as 'Baby Face' Nelson, TV Movie












The Lady in Red (1979)

With Robert Conrad as John Dillinger and Alan Vint as Melvin Purvis, New World Pictures.















As should be evident, this cinematic explosion would not have happened if not for the studios with which Roger Corman was associated (AIP, New World) and if not for TV movies. Since neither are strong forces in today's cinema, I guess we'll have to see if Asylum (the ripoff-meisters responsible Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train) want to jump on the Dillinger bandwagon. (Haw.)

And as a completist, I should mention that the 1970s European cinema got into the '30s crime movement too -- with such films as Borsalino, Even Angels Eat Beans and Pete, Pearl and the Pole -- but they were usually about gangsterism in general and not necessarily bank robbery in particular.

Yin and Yang: Remembering *Both* David Carradines

David Carradine didn’t have to depart in a blaze of scandal and tragedy in Thailand; the actor was still racking up plenty of notoriety. One of Carradine’s final headline-making actions was a March appearance at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica for a screening of Bound for Glory – the 1976 film that earned him a Golden Globe nomination – which turned ugly. By all reports (and from the audio file floating around on the internet), Carradine ended up verbally brawling with the film’s cinematographer, Haskell Wexler, and members of the audience. Apparently at one point he threw a microphone that struck American Cinematheque publicist Margot Gerber.

And while this may seem like an unfortunate or embarrassing incident to some, it instead should be viewed as a late entry in Carradine’s legacy as a lovable Hollywood hellraiser. The actor’s 1995 memoir, Endless Highway, has him doing similar trouble-making in previous decades – running down streets naked and bleeding while hopped up on peyote, licking a dancer’s cleavage at a strip club and escaping from cops after wrecking his Ferrari 330GTS.

But will this bad-boy image (to say nothing of his schlockier film choices) forever overshadow and re-write the history of Carradine’s gentler side? After all, this was an actor who began working in Hollywood during the flower-powered late ‘60s and fathered a son named “Free” with his then-soulmate Barbara Seagull (that's Ms. Hershey, currently, to you).

And let us not forget – I literally mean that! – the beautiful films he directed in the 1970s. See, you can argue whether Carradine’s dramatic acting work for Scorcese and Bergman was more important to him than his action performances for Corman and Tarantino, but if you really want to get a feel for the guy, watch the pictures he directed! You and Me (produced in 1972 and never released in the U.S.) is about as sweet as a film can get and still be called a Biker Movie. And Americana (produced in 1973 and released in 1981) is the simple tale of a Vietnam vet who renovates a rusty carousel in a small town – not a karate chop in sight!

Carradine rehabbing a carousel in Americana and
being a (relatively) nice-guy biker in You and Me.

But why am I beating a drum for Carradine’s thoughtful side when even he seemed to want to suppress this? In a 1973 cover story for Esquire, Carradine boasted about reading only car and girlie mags (Oui and Penthouse are cited amongst his favorites), and the actor said he doesn’t give a crap about the Eastern mysticism practiced by his Kung Fu character, Kwai Chang Caine.

Nonetheless, he certainly possessed a sensitive creativity, and I hope he felt appreciated for it. Around the time of Kill Bill, The Man himself invited me over for a nice, long personal interview. I remember, upon my leaving, saying something like, “Mr. Carradine, I really do appreciate your artistry.” Although corny, it was a true statement, as I really had found an individual voice in his little-seen directorial efforts and his country-rock compositions (check out his song “Paint” from the film Sonny Boy).

But for some reason, my praise caused him to narrow his eyes and look at me suspiciously – as if I were putting him on. Sadly, I can only guess that after years of appearing in low-budget affairs (roughly his Evil Toons [1992] to Down’n’ Dirty [2000] period), he was unaccustomed to the word “artistry” being used in conjunction with his career. Sad.

But whatever his capabilities as an artist, the hell-raising outlaw image suited him. And he did it so well, with such cool.

I remember covering a celebrity autograph convention circa 2003 at which Carradine was scheduled to attend. Fashionably late, Carradine kicked the double doors open (or at least that’s how his entrance plays in my romanticized memory) and strode in with a large shaggy dog by his side. I was surprised they allowed pets in the room, but Carradine was much less concerned. The actor let his furry bull-in-a-china-shop run free through the convention hall, and the overzealously friendly beast jumped on someone’s video tripod, knocking an expensive camera to the floor. Did Carradine give a damn? Nah. He just sauntered over to his table, where he probably busied himself with his usual convention behavior: working a crossword puzzle until some pesky fan came by and bothered him for an autograph.

That was David Carradine. At least one of them.

One from Mickey's 'missing' period: This BULLET doesn't need dodging

I just read a so-so Mickey Rourke career profile -- and career prediction -- over on Yahoo ("Rourke is Back, But for How Long?"), and the article basically tri-sected Rourke's career into his first wave of stardom ('80s), his period outside Hollywood favor ('90s), and his comeback (now).

The piece described his middle period as a time during which he "was scraping by acting in dreck like Dennis Rodman vehicle DOUBLE TEAM" -- implying that Rourke was slumming big-time. That's okay as an oversimplification, maybe, but it does little justice to his surprisingly excellent mid-90s tough-and-gritty crime film, BULLET.

Maybe BULLET is easily overlooked because inadequate thesp Tupac features so prominently in the campaign for the film, when in fact Rourke is the lead -- and future Oscar winner Adrien Brody has the next largest role (to say nothing of Ted "Buffalo Bill" Levine as another one of his memorable big-screen weirdos). I'm sure most people who spy the DVD cover artwork never bother with the movie itself; I'm guessing Yahoo's Rourke essayist sure didn't (and come to think of it, I'm not sure why I first watched it either -- unless it was because I had learned that the best '90s crime films are sometimes the biggest box-office failures; Barbet Schroeder's KISS OF DEATH remake is an excellent slice of underworld and would probably have been re-discovered by now, if not for David Caruso's current state of self-parody on CSI MIAMI).

So what makes BULLET such a great low-budget crimer?

Besides having great production values and performances (especially for what basically ended up being a direct-to-video product), and some shocking violence (switchblade through the eye socket, anyone?), the film has a nice urban (and druggy) grittiness, thanks to director Julien Temple, who's primarily known for music videos.

Some, ahem, eye-opening violence.

More intererstingly, the film has some unique variations on the typical street-level crime-movie characters: Rourke's badass Bullet character happens to be sexually impotent, his right-hand man is a repressed homosexual of the CheesyMacho variety and one of his brothers has been rendered both a expert killer and a dirty-underweared social misfit by his traumatic time in the service.

But these realistically quirky characters never strain to be "movie quirky" -- unlike the giant wave of poor PULP FICTION imitators (2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY, THINGS TO DO IN DENVER...) being made during the mid-90s. (This crappy subgenre, which also contains THURSDAY and the criminally overrated gimmick movie THE USUAL SUSPECTS, sadly accounts for the bulk of American crime cinema in the '90s.)

Also interesting about BULLET is its glimpse into the lives of Jewish hoodlums; cinema has fixated so unswervingly on Italian-American crime that when a BULLET or a PLOT AGAINST HARRY comes along, it gives these films some real identity (Roruke co-wrote the screenplay -- pseudonymously as "Sir Eddie Cook" -- with a Bruce Rubenstein).

Any guess as to Bullet's cultural background?

In addition to his acting and writing contributions to the film, Rourke also handled music supervision, and the multiple uses of the Barry White song "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up" also lends the film some individual personality. I'm not sure why more movies with a popular-music soundtrack don't do this: use a song repeatedly until it becomes the movie's unofficial theme. Excellent stuff.

Question: Former lightweight fighter Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini has a small role in BULLET as a cop (Mancini has had a slight-but-steady acting career since his days in the ring). Did he and Rourke know each other from the boxing world? Dunno. Anyone?