RIP, Paul Sorvino.

Paul Anthony Sorvino
(April 13, 1939 – July 25, 2022)

Paul Sorvino has passed away 83. He was a terrific actor, widely known for Goodfellas (1990) and Law And Order.

He was wonderful in William Friedkin’s The Brink’s Job (1978, that’s him with Peter Falk), one of the most criminally-overlooked films of the 70s, as I see it. He shined in an ensemble cast that included Peter Falk, Warren Oates, Gena Rowlands, Peter Boyle and Allen Garfield.

But he was always good. Take a look at The Gambler (1974) with James Caan, Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) and The Rocketeer (1991). And he was a hoot as Lips in Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990).

Blu-Ray News #389: Cockfighter (1974).

Directed by Monte Hellman
Starring Warren Oates, Richard B. Shull, Harry Dean Stanton, Laurie Bird, Ed Begley Jr.

Shout Factory is bringing Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter (1974) to Blu-Ray, which is very good news indeed.

Hellman didn’t make many movies, which is a real shame. This is one of his best. It’s got a great cast — Warren Oates, Richard B. Shull and Harry Dean Stanton are some of my favorite character actors ever, and Laurie Bird is, well, Laurie Bird.

Cockfighter had a hard time with distribution, complete with titles changes (Born To Kill, Wild Drifter, etc.) and all kinds of oddball ad campaigns. It obviously was a tough sell. But it’s a terrific picture full of outstanding performances. Highly, highly recommended.

RIP, Monte Hellman.

Monte Hellman (Monte Jay Himmelman)
(July 12, 1929 – April 20, 2021)

When I was a kid, my gear-head cousin used to talk about this movie about a ’55 Chevy and a GTO racing cross-country for pinks. It was called Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), and he thought it was the coolest thing ever. It was several years later before I finally saw it, but he was right — it’s about the coolest thing ever.

Monte Hellman directed that movie, and he has passed away at 91.

Hellman certainly had a weird career. He was one of the Roger Corman kids, who learned by doing, making Roger’s cheap movies. Of course, that’s probably the best way to learn anything. There were a few of those. He directed a couple of terrific Westerns with Jack Nicholson in 1966, Ride The Whirlwind and The Shooting. They’re called things like Acid Westerns, Revisionist Westerns and Weird Westerns. Call ’em what you want, but they’re just Westerns — different, sure, and very good.

Then came Two-Lane Blacktop. It absolutely nails the car culture — which is why folks like my cousin hold it in such high esteem — and contains one of the greatest film performances you’ll ever see, from Mr. Warren Oates. In the photo up top, there’s (L-R) Hellman, Warren Oates and James Taylor on location.

One of the picture’s final scenes was shot on near the North Carolina-Tennessee line. I pay homage every time I pass by.

There were other movies — some he directed (Cockfighter is incredible), others he worked on (often without credit) as a director/editor/fixer. I wish he’d made more movies because he sure knew what he was doing, and he put his stamp on everything he touched. And it was one helluva stamp.

Blu-Ray Review: The Shooting And Ride In The Whirlwind (Both 1966).

This was a post I really wanted to get right. There were two previous attempts, which I hated and discarded (to say too much about these movies, in a way, takes away from them). Hope the third time’s the charm.

The backstory. Monte Hellman and Jack Nicholson did a couple of pictures in the Philippines for Roger Corman (Back Door To Hell and Flight To Fury, both 1964). When there was talk of doing something else, Corman asked them to make a Western. That became two Westerns to be shot back-to-back — similar to their Filipino arrangement. The budgets were $75,000 apiece, with  three weeks scheduled for each.

Nicholson wrote Ride In The Whirlwind and The Shooting came from Carole Eastman (as Adrian Joyce). Both films were shot in Utah by Gregory Sandor, with Nicholson serving as producer. They share the same tiny crew and Nicholson and Millie Perkins in the casts. The Shooting was done first, with a period of about a week before Ride In The Whirlwind started. The finished films played a few festivals (Montreal, Cannes) and some foreign bookings, but were sold straight to TV in the States (though Variety reviewed Ride In The Whirlwind back in ’66).

There were plenty of ugly VHS releases before VCI brought them to DVD. That was a great day indeed, and these terrific little Westerns started to find an audience. They’ve been given the red-carpet treatment by The Criterion Collection, with an incredible batch of extras. It took quite a while, but they’re finally getting their due.

The Shooting
Directed by Monte Hellman
Written by Adrian Joyce (Carole Eastman)
Director Of Photography: Gregory Sandor

Cast: Warren Oates (Willett Gashade), Will Hutchins (Coley), Millie Perkins (The Woman), Jack Nicholson (Billy Spear)

The Shooting was shot first (and I saw it first), so we’ll begin with it. Warren Oates returns to his mining camp to learn that his brother killed a boy in town and fled. Then a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins) appears and pays Oates to lead her to the town of Kingsley, for reasons she won’t share. They begin their trip through the desert, trailed by a lone gunman dressed in black (Nicholson).

Ride In The Whirlwind
Directed by Monte Hellman
Written by Jack Nicholson
Director Of Photography: Gregory Sandor

Cast: Cameron Mitchell (Vern), Millie Perkins (Abigail), Jack Nicholson (Wes), Harry Dean Stanton (Blind Dick), Katherine Squire (Catherine), George Mitchell (Evan), Rupert Crosse (Indian Joe), Tom Filer (Otis)

A group of cowboys (Cameron Mitchell, Jack Nicholson and Tom Filer) stumble upon a cabin where Blind Dick (Harry Dean Stanton) and his gang invite them in. The next morning, the cabin’s surrounded by a posse — and the three innocents are instantly wanted men.

The idea in The Shooting of the gunman after someone, we don’t know who, is the backbone of Jack Arnold’s No Name On The Bullet (1959) with Audie Murphy. When it comes to Ride In The Whirlwind, there are plenty of innocent men on the run movies. There’s a fatalist, noir-ish feel to some of both films’ dialogue, but that comparison falls apart, too. These were unlike any Western that came before them — or after them, for that matter.

While most of Roger Corman’s young directors showed promise under his leadership, then went on to do great things, Monte Hellman managed to make two great films while still in the Corman camp. These seem to share the same basic approach as his Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) — a deceptively simple, and purposefully vague, situation is established, and for the rest of the picture, we watch the characters react to that situation. In The Shooting, like Oates, we don’t know what the hell is going on, but we’re pretty sure it’s not going to be good. Ride In The Whirlwind lets us share the desperation of Mitchell and Nicholson. And we don’t get to know the characters of Two-Lane Blacktop because there really isn’t anything to know — they just keep going.

There have been complaints over the years that some of the performances in these Westerns are wooden. The leads seem pitch-perfect to me. Millie Perkins and Jack Nicholson are fine in both. Cameron Mitchell was always dependable, no matter what kind of junk he was in. Will Hutchins is terrific. And Warren Oates was simply one of the best film actors ever, incapable of being less than stellar (and Hellman seemed to draw his best work out of him).

The camerawork from Gregory Sandor is stunning. There was no time or money or crew for lights, so everything was done with natural light. The frame of Oates with the coffee cup, above, from a long take in the first few minutes of The Shooting, sums up these movies for me. The lighting seems real, not Hollywood, and the oddball composition is perfectly imperfect. For some reason, that image has stuck with me for over 20 years.

The new 4K masters done for the Criterion release are some of the best I’ve ever seen, for any movie. Both The Shooting and Ride In The Whirlwind really look like film here, and the color seems rich even though everything is brown and dusty. Just as there was no time or money for lights, there wasn’t much for makeup, either. Millie Perkins didn’t feel she was presented very well in either film, though I disagree. She looks exactly how she ought to look.

While the merits of every film on video should hinge on the film itself, Criterion put together a series of extras that really add to your appreciation of these gems. The commentaries by Monte Hellman, Blake Lucas and Bill Krohn are some of the best I’ve ever heard. They cover everything you’d ever want to know about how these pictures came to be. Even if the films were terrible, their combined production history would be fascinating stuff. The fact that they’re absolutely brilliant makes it all the more special. Adding the package are interviews and short documentaries.

Back when these Westerns looked awful on VHS, they were something to be tracked down and studied, especially for those with a thing for Monte Hellman. This Criterion set, presenting both in stunning quality and with a serious stack of extras, is nothing short of essential. My highest recommendation.

A big thanks to Blake Lucas.

Blu-Ray News #230: The Brink’s Job (1978).

Directed by William Friedkin
Starring Peter Falk, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield, Warren Oates, Gena Rowlands, Paul Sorvino

After the box-office failure of his masterpiece Sorcerer (1977), William Friedkin turned out a gem of a heist picture, The Brink’s Job (1978).

It’s a shamefully overlooked movie — from a script by Walon Green who wrote Sorcerer and The Wild Bunch (1969), and I’m so happy to hear it’s getting a Blu-Ray release from Kino Lorber. Can’t wait.

Blu-Ray News #121: The Devil’s Rain (1975).

Directed by Robert Fuest
Starring Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, William Shatner, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt

I was watching The Wild, Wild West one afternoon when the trailer for The Devil’s Rain (1975) came on. As with The Legend Of Hell House (1973) a couple years before, these commercials left me really wigged out. Pretty creepy stuff.

Severin has announced an upcoming Blu-Ray release for The Devil’s Rain. So now I can pull off a perfect hi-def movie night: this and Race With The Devil (1975, available from Shout Factory) with Peter Fonda and Warren Oates. Oh man, I can’t wait.

Blu-Ray News #22: 1941 (1979).

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring (in more or less the order I could remember them) Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, Elisha Cook, Jr., Dub Taylor, Dan Aykroyd, Robert Stack, Ned Beatty, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eddie Deezen, Nancy Allen, John Belushi, Lorraine Gary, Dick Miller, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Toshiro Mifune, Susan Backlinie, Lionel Stander, Sam Fuller, Bobby Di Cicco, Perry Lang, John Landis, Penny Marshall, Treat Williams, Wendie Jo Sperber, Lucille Bensen, James Caan

Is there a movie you like more because everyone else seems to hate it? For me, that’s Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), a movie I dearly love and will lift up till the day I die. But saying that, I also understand, and even agree with, many of the complaints about it. Sure it’s big, it’s loud, it’s stupid, it’s disrespectful — and those are all completely positive things in my book.

It’s also coming to Blu-ray in May as a stand-alone disc (it was already part of a snazzy Spielberg set) — with both the two-hour theatrical cut and the longer, expanded thing. I’ve always preferred the theatrical version — I feel it has a better rhythm to it, even though it offers less Slim Pickens, Dick Miller, etc. Speaking of those guys, how could a movie that boasts Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, Elisha Cook, Jr., Dub Taylor, Dick Miller, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee and Toshiro Mifune not be a treasure?

1941 is also the movie that made me really realize there was some guy named John Milius that I needed to learn more about.

Dialogue Of The Day: Two-Lane Blacktop (1971).

The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson): “You’d have yourself a real street-sweeper here if you put a little work into it.”

G.T.O. (Warren Oates): “I go fast enough.”

The Driver (James Taylor): “You can never go fast enough.”