Madcap Screencaps #31
Can you guess what movie or TV show we’re watching? We’ve turned on subtitles (when available) not to give you a clue, but to enhance that WTF effect! Leave your best guess in the comments to prove your true Flick Attackosity!
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
Four movies in, most series start to show signs of wear and tear, and the Thin Man series was no exception. It’s only partly the fault of Nick and Nora’s kid. He was all right in After the Thin Man, but he poses a bit of a problem in Shadow, as love and chemistry have been replaced with precociousness. That can be annoying, but fortunately, Nick Jr. doesn’t have a lot of screen time. Yay again for nannies! (On the other hand, boo for racially stereotypical ones: “Yas’m, Mrs. Charles! Mr. Charles knew you was makin’ that drink! He must have telegraphy!”)
On the other other hand, Junior does provide one of Shadow’s best bits when he refuses to drink his milk unless Daddy drinks some, too. That horrifies Nick Sr., who’s already on his 12th martini of the day. It’s funny, but it also brings up the real problem with having the tot around. Nick’s alcoholism was amusing before he had a son, but it’s frickin’ uncomfortable to watch him take the boy on a merry-go-round while needing to lean against a horse just to stand upright.
The mystery’s not particularly inspired, either. It has to do with organized crime and betting on sporting events. I yawned just typing that. Nick gets involved because a buddy of his is the prime suspect when someone turns up dead. Barry Nelson, the original James Bond, plays the friend, so that’s cool. And a very young Donna Reed plays Barry’s girlfriend.
Although things are starting to look tired, there are still plenty of laughs to be had. As usual, Nora gets in some great lines and even pitches in on the detective work more than she has before. There’s obviously still life in the series, but — like Nick’s drink — it needs some freshening. With two films left in the franchise, I hope it got some. —Michael May
Hero and the Terror (1988)
If you should see Hero and the Terror — and I’m certainly not suggesting you do — pay close attention to the scene in which Chuck Norris works out at the gym. As he’s lifting weights, all these other muscle-bound guys gather ’round to watch him push it real good. Chuck grunts as he does so. Now, close your eyes during this part and tell me it doesn’t sound like gay porn. You can’t, because it totally does.
Pointless experiment over. Anyway, Norris stars as half of the title, and you get one guess as to which half. He’s Danny O’Brien, a cop, who once upon a time, took down the other half of the title, the serial killer of women Simon Moon (Jack O’Halloran). Danny still has bad dreams of wandering into Moon’s dead hooker depository, which doesn’t exactly bode well for the good guy — now reduced to a minimum-wage worker on a Mexican food truck — when Moon escapes and starts killing them bitches all over again.
We’re to believe, of course, that Chuck Norris could defeat Jack O’Halloran, but c’mon! We’ve all seen Superman II. Besides, Moon busts out of prison simply by bending the bars, because, after all, he is General Zod’s sidekick Non, period.
There’s a subplot about Danny inseminating his girlfriend (Brynn Thayer of TV’s Matlock). I distinctly remember that when Chuck was making the promotional rounds for this so-so, by-the-numbers effort, he appeared on The Tonight Show with the clip of him passing out at the hospital on the impending birth of their bastard child. The audience cracked up, because, as Norman Mailer once wrote, tough guys don’t faint! Or something like that. —Rod Lott
Visiting Hours (1982)
I am not a fan of hospitals. I can’t take three steps into one without being overcome with a wave of anxious nausea, keenly aware that somewhere in that building — far closer than I’d like — someone is drawing his or her last breath. Ironically, it’s that same anxiety that draws me to hospital-set and medical-themed horror movies, since they allow me to face my fear without risk or consequence. Having seen a lot of them, I can comfortably say that the 1982 Canadian-made Visiting Hours ranks near the top of the list.
While it admittedly never exploits its setting as effectively as Boaz Davidson’s Hospital Massacre, it manages to avoid descending into the ridiculous camp that mars that otherwise interesting effort and, more importantly, creates sympathetic characters we want to see live, rather than die — the hallmark of every successful horror movie.
The film stars Michael Ironside as a misogynist maniac on a mission to kill the popular female broadcaster (Lee Grant) who has taken on the cause of a battered woman unjustly convicted of murdering her abusive husband. When his initial attack on her is thwarted, he returns to the hospital to finish the job, but only manages to kill a bunch of other people before she is able to use his own knife to end his deadly spree.
Directed with style and tension by Jean-Claude Lord, Visiting Hours succeeds thanks to effective performances from its talented cast, which also includes William Shatner as Grant’s producer, and Linda Purl as the young, single mom/nurse who finds herself also stalked by Ironside after she witnesses him leaving the scene of one of his crimes. —Allan Mott