Hell Comes to Frogtown

Hell Comes to Frogtown: the title alone tells you whether you’re in or you’re out.  Me?  I’m in.

Rowdy Roddy Piper stars as Sam Hell, the only potent man left in post apocalyptic Ventura County.  Sandahl Bergman is the woman charged with leading him on a raid of Frogtown, where mutant amphibians hold a harem of fertile young women hostage.  If you’re still around, you’re in for an hour and a half of cheesy gags, skimpy costumes, bad acting, and poorly done action.  You also get Rory Calhoun as an old prospector, excellent mutant frog costumes, and a climactic fight on the famed Star Trek Cliffs.  What more could you want from a movie called Hell Comes to Frogtown?

Marty

I like Ernest Borgnine.  This guy looked in a mirror one day and didn’t see a short, fat, ugly-lookin’ dude who’d probably go nowhere in the entertainment industry.  He saw an actor, a guy who could make it, and he took his shot.  His first film credit dates from 1951, 6 years after he helped save the world by serving as a Gunner’s Mate (1^st Class) in WWII, and he’s been working ever since.  Most recently (at age 93), he had a key supporting role in last summer’s RED, the movie about how great Helen Mirren looks in a slinky white dress.  Ernest Borgnine is a hero.

Marty, which won Best Picture for 1955 and for which Borgnine took home a Best Actor award, shows us why the man succeeded, and continues to succeed, in his chosen profession.  The film is the story of a man who learns to stop seeing the world through the eyes of others and start seeing for himself.  It’s standard coming of age material, but Borgnine sells it with sincerity and goodwill.  When Marty agonizes over whether to buy a butcher shop, we want him to succeed.  When Marty rescues a sobbing woman who’s just been ditched at a local ballroom, we wish we could show that kind of class in a tough situation.  When Marty tries to balance the demands of his family, his friends, his profession, and his heart, we know something’s going to drop; and we care a lot about what does and what doesn’t.

This isn’t to say that Marty is perfect.  The film, written by Paddy Chayefsky, can veer into the kind of writerliness that may feel right onstage but that, onscreen, feels stilted.  Further, its ending took me by surprise: the credits rolled just as I was settling in for a third act.  Yes, this may be a movie about Marty’s choices, but I wanted to see the results of those choices, the complications they’d cause, and Marty’s way of resolving them.  I wanted a sharper climax, one that would give me a greater sense of closure. 

Nevertheless, I’ll look back on Marty with fondness.  The film allowed me to spend an hour and a half in the company of a guy who wasn’t the handsomest fellow on the block, who wasn’t the smoothest talker, who wasn’t the center of attention.  It allowed me to spend an hour and a half with the best, most decent guy around.  It allowed me to spend an hour and a half with Ernest Borgnine. 

That’s time well spent.

PS  There’s a whole other storyine here about Betsy Blair, the actress who played Clara, the love interest.  The Black List had effectively ended her career when her husband, Gene Kelly, threatened to make no more films for MGM if she didn’t get the part that would eventually land her a Best Supporting Actress nomination.  Her Wikipedia page, linked here (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0086198/bio), provides some details of a life lived with principle and passion.

Toy Story 3

They made Toy Story 3 for kids, right?

They animated it with pretty colors and they used established characters from the first two Toy Story films, which definitely felt like kid-friendly fare.  They set much of the action in a day care center, and they used a fuzzy purple teddy bear for a villain – how much more kid-friendly could they get?

A lot more.  In fact, I rate Toy Story 3 as the most terrifying kids’ movie since Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (You remember Chitty: the Andrews / Van Dyke Disney romp that featured a child abductor who haunted preadolescents’ dreams for years).  The themes center on loss and betrayal and the slow, mortal march of time.  The day care center becomes a chamber of horrors that will make a generation of children scream in dismay at the prospect of spending time anywhere similar.  The visuals include a creepy baby-doll who looks like something out of a Romero film, a gelatinous octopus that’d make Lovecraft shriek, and a Daliesque animated tortilla with Potato Head features that weaves and lurches in sickening contortions.  Don’t even get me started on the aforementioned villain, an evil good ol’ boy of a bear (brilliantly voiced by Ned Beatty) who represents everything wrong with authority and everything to fear in those who promise to look after you.

Here’s the deal: the first films’ Andy’s all grown up and ready to head off to college, and his toys find themselves in a box dropped off at the local day care.  Things seem lovely at first, but it isn’t long before the true nature of the facility reveals itself.  Can our heroes escape?  With Andy leaving them behind, to what do they have to escape?  Why bother?

We’re talking about some dark stuff.  Combine it with some of the film’s unnerving visuals and scary sequences, and I can’t imagine showing it to anyone under the age of ten.  Hell, just writing about Toy Story 3 creeps me out all over again.  If this is a kids’ movie, I’d hate to see what Pixar can put together for adults.