The Fish Bite Back

It's hard to overstate the importance of teamwork. Just ask the title creatures of 1978's Piranha. In this Jaws knock-off, director Joe Dante conducts a delicate symphony of stupidity. His satire is so deadpan it's not hard to see why some people didn't get it. Part of the issue is that it's not postmodernist--the people in the film are organically dumb, not dumb simply as a comment on how people are dumb in other films, and the film takes its absurd threat seriously.

The two attractive protagonist strut their exquisite stupidity centre stage. Maggie (Heather Menzies) has been hired to track down the teenagers who went missing because they decided to go skinny dipping in what looked like a septic tank in the film's first scene. Maggie's boss praises her skills even as she immediately loses her plane ticket.

Meanwhile, out in the woods, Paul (Bradford Dillman) accepts a shipment of hard liquor with which he'll keep his canteen filled throughout the film. One of the funniest shots is near the end when his little daughter anxiously approaches the injured Paul where he lies on a stretcher, the canteen gripped in her hands like a magic potion.

Paul and Maggie team up to investigate the massive, strange experimental water facility which they decide to drain into the river in order to look for the bodies of the teenagers. Kevin McCarthy suddenly appears and tries to stop them but the two savagely beat him until he's unconscious and proceed with draining the tank into the river.

Later, when the four of them are on a Huckleberry Finn style log raft going down river, McCarthy laughs bitterly when Maggie blames him for the experimental piranhas she set loose. The genius move on Dante's part is that you can see no trace of any sense of guilt in Maggie or Paul. They see no issue with blaming the government and its scientists for the kids who're about to get devoured.

Barbara Steele and Dick Miller both have excellent roles, Steele as an army science officer and Miller as the proprietor of a water park, the grand opening of which depends on everyone not getting eaten by piranha. He will receive some bad news at a crucial part of the film.

Piranha is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1693

Decrepit cocoanuts remember fights.
And down the trunk a tree forgets its roots.
In space, a hero stitches ragged tights.
The bold savants acquire floppy boots.
A spinning rabbit chose a wolf to kiss.
The bumping clouds consume the shaded hall.
Obscured, the door began to spark and hiss.
A golden house contained a certain wall.
Together, hungry fish can make the bones.
A sinking flask concludes the drunken day.
With thoughts of sharks we greet the ringing phones.
The callers swam apart about the bay.
On ghostly feet, the dancer coaxed the moon.
On silver light, there fell a pallid boon.

The Elusive Tom Baker

To-day I noticed the official Doctor Who YouTube channel has a few condensed versions of Tom Baker serials. They squeezed the four episodes of Masque of Mandragara into just thirty minutes:

It's fine for about fifteen minutes and then it stops making sense. Characters appear who seem to know the Doctor and Sarah without having been introduced them. Tim Piggot-Smith is chained up in a dungeon in one scene and then happily enjoying a party a few scenes later without explanation. Roman soldiers creep up and capture the Doctor and Sarah while they're talking and then, moments later, the Doctor is alone wandering the temple with a sword. It was kind of fun to watch as someone who's seen the full serial but I can't imagine first time viewers having a fulfilling experience.

Now and then, I doodle Tom Baker on the chalkboard at the Japanese junior high school where I work. Like this:

If a student asks who it is, I write next to the picture "Tom Baker, Doctor Who". Of course, no-one actually knows who it is but some of the kids seem compelled to stare at the face a while. I did a search for "Tom Baker Doctor Who" on YouTube to-day to see what they might find and that's how I came upon The Masque of Mandragara. Some of the other clips on the Doctor Who channel are mostly simple enough English this hypothetical student may even be able to enjoy it.

A Doctor Who broadcast wiki called BroaDWcast has a pretty comprehensive history of Doctor Who in Japan. I was surprised to see some Tom Baker stories were released at all in the country. The only sign of Doctor Who I've personally seen has been a solitary Dalek vinyl record at the Tower Records in Shibuya.

The Bars of Wealth are Locked!

One of the risks of locking yourself in a cage is you might not be able to get out when you want to. Duh. Olivia de Havilland makes this seemingly elementary mistake in the 1964 hagsploitation/delinquent exploitation film Lady in a Cage. The plot is strenuously ridiculous and everyone overacts, especially the director, but its gaudiness has a campy charm.

A wealthy. elderly poetess called Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland) lives in an enormous, decadently decorated house with her grown son, Malcolm (William Swan). He leaves early in the film and we never see him again. This is so she can be all alone in the house when the massive cage elevator she has installed to take her up to the second floor breaks down due to a power outage.

She only has this thing temporarily because she's recovering from a broken hip. By now you may be wondering--where the hell are her servants? I think we're meant to believe she and her son take care of the place all alone. Even Walter Neff had a cleaning woman come in once a week to his apartment in Double Indemnity. None of the delinquents who wind up busting into Cornelia's house even seem to worry for a moment that a maid or a groundskeeper might show up at some point.

Leading the bunch is none other than James Caan in his first major role. He and his two young cohorts bicker cartoonishly, assuring the viewer that these kids are just as devoid of compassion or morality as anyone reading the newspapers gathers about youths these days in the early '60s.

Caan and de Havilland both give good performances, though they're both dialed up to eleven for the duration. De Havilland very quickly descends into mental breakdown and is hallucinating before the end. There's a message about how she might be partially responsible for her son's possible suicide because she coddled him too much. In a scathing letter, he accuses her of adding another room to the house every time he thinks about moving out, in the process making it seem more incredible she has no housekeeping staff.

The influence of Psycho is clear from the Saul Bass-ish opening titles with animated lines and rapid tempo score. None of Hitchcock's subtlety or psychological insight is present but by the end I couldn't help smiling at the film's heights of absurdity amid its heavy-handed political allegory. When de Havilland stabs Caan in the eyes in an update on Oedipus I was kind of delighted.

Back Down the Spiral

I've been without Internet for two days because I was uploading a video to YouTube. It's an update and expansion on my 2008 analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, you can see it here:

This wi-fi I have doesn't seem to like me uploading large files. It slows to a crawl whenever I upload a YouTube video and I'm unable to use the Internet for anything else while it's uploading.

It was in preparation for the video that I read Laura Mulvey's essay again. I'd read it back in 2008, too, and both times I expected to refer to it and never did. It's just not very good and has nothing particularly interesting to contribute to the conversation on Vertigo or anything else, it just creates some new jargon for already established concepts.

This afternoon, I spent a few hours in the art club where I teach. There's a really nice new crop of first year students who are all eager to spend that time drawing. It felt like heaven to-day.

Twitter Sonnet #1692

An even joint has split the arm to three.
A knowing cloud mistook the sea for ground.
A mind of wasps absorbed a lonesome bee.
Abruptly woods consumed a frantic sound.
The final card portrayed a lady's face.
Exact bananas cut tarant'la's U.
With expert care, the clinic grew apace.
A rainy day became distracting blue.
The waiting spiral held the cage in air.
A broken disk arrived at home to break.
Mistaken feet were glued to ev'ry stair.
And now a worthy tongue will speak for steak.
The spinning day concludes but hours late.
Magnetic sand debased the villain's slate.

How the Fallen have Fallen

One of the most relentlessly comedic films is John Ford's 1941 tragedy Tobacco Road. The story of a family of rigorously stupid hillbillies heavily piles absurdist jokes on top of a plainly grim reality. There's a kind of cynicism to how relentlessly it portrays the foolishness and moral decrepitude of its characters. Sometimes it's really funny and there's some surprisingly great stuntwork. But there's ultimately a kind of hollowness to the film I found unsatisfying.

Lester (Charley Grapewin) is the patriarch of a hillbilly family living in a shack so badly constructed it seems composed of angles from a German Expressionist film.

He's really the star but mostly Gene Tierney is centrally promoted, though her role is very small. She plays his beautiful daughter, Ellie May, whom he tries to marry off to Ward Bond's character. Bond's married to another of Lester's daughters, an unseen character named Pearl, but she's run off so no-one sees any problem with Bond marrying again.

Every scene sets up a problem and ends by surprising you by how stupidly Lester handles it. He needs a hundred dollars to pay rent on his land, as he's informed by a man from the bank. So he goes to the bank for a loan and laughs at his own foolishness when he finds the same man waiting for him there.

Lester couldn't be bothered to plough his land for seven years but prays to God, telling the All Mighty that if he doesn't receive help, he'll have to take matters into his own hands.

The end of the movie makes it clear there is no hope for these people often portrayed as comically selfish. Amid the mouldering ruins of a once powerful southern aristocracy, there may be some subliminal attempt to garner sympathy for these folks. If so, it's really subtle. Gene Tierney looks sensational in the movie, though.

Dr. Maybe

I'm not a James Bond fan but I kind of want to be a James Bond fan. I really like Sean Connery and, in this world of psy-ops and algorithms, it seems potentially comforting to know there's a guy who sees this treacherous world as an endless forest of beautiful women to sleep with. So I watched Dr. No again recently. I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

Dr. No mainly just feels like a pleasant vacation for a profoundly lonely man. No-one he meets can be trusted, especially not the women, except Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), who's sexy but hardly has any chemistry with him. She seems so dim, it's hard to imagine them having a real conversation.

I wonder if Ursula Andress took lessons to suck in her gut like that all the time.

Connery never needed to do that. I imagine if he had a gut he'd probably just let it hang out. That is one of the pleasures of watching him, just seeing how extraordinarily at ease with himself he is, and how his eyebrows transmit every tiny nuance of his ease.

I know part of the fun of the James Bond movies is supposed to be how ridiculous they are, how far from reality they are. But I want to get a sense of real danger. I guess that's why From Russia with Love is the only one I can really enjoy. But I still think I'm better off watching Notorious, To Catch a Thief, or North by Northwest.

I Welcome You, Kroll

The Power of Kroll is generally considered a weak serial from the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who but I found myself in the mood for it. I think it's mainly just weaker by default, since all the other serials in that season are terrific.

Its writer, Robert Holmes, was apparently dissatisfied with the gigantic swamp squid monster. Sometimes I wonder if it's a character defect that the special effects in old Doctor Who serials don't bother me but I complain about weak cgi in new MCU movies. Maybe the old effects have a nostalgic charm, maybe I can appreciate the effort that went into them instead of the cost-cutting, generic and rushed cgi in Quantumania. Though actually what I was thinking of was Avatar while I was watching Kroll.

The Power of Kroll is an excellent thing to watch after Avatar, or just about any simple-minded, ham-fisted, preachy environmentalist film. The set-up is there--colonising humans there to exploit the planet's resources and an indigenous people they regard with indifference whose religion is tied to that lucrative swamp.

But these natives spend most of their time trying to sacrifice the Doctor and Romana or arguing about whether or not their god, Kroll, is real. And then Kroll shows up like Cthulhu or Moby Dick to indiscriminately kill everybody. Kroll doesn't give a damn that he's a wobbly optical effect. Thank you, Kroll.

Tom Baker is in particularly fine form in this serial, too. I love his tweed frock coat with the ducks on the lapels.

Classic Doctor Who is available on Britbox in the U.S.

Twitter Sonnet #1691

Betwixt the blood and bone a woman lived.
We find her trace in tiny coats and shoes.
This samples drawn with little ladles give.
The find was heard on sev'ral planets' news.
A yellow button jams the flow of blood.
Her lemon pie was cool beside the door.
Her home's aglow, the tube was playing Hud.
She dreamed the eyes of Newman watched her more.
Beyond the porch, a face's sphere enlarged.
The woman piled chairs before the hut.
Her eyes beheld the skull begin to charge.
Its rapid lashes wooden planks would cut.
A spinach crawls across the blighted land.
She grabs a fork and makes a hungry stand.

Lifelong Party Girl

It seems I wasn't the only one who preferred to see more of Sophie Marceau because 1982's La Boum 2 focuses almost entirely on her character, Vic. Without the weird need to prop up Claude Brasseur (who's still in the film in a reduced role) the story becomes mostly an easy-going treat.

Vic is now looking very much like a young woman as her mother observes when watching her in a dance studio. She imagines Vic as Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain and then as Cyd Charisse and we can see the skinny girl from La Boum is, in La Boum 2, able to match Charisse toe to tip.

The film becomes a sequence of mildly amusing episodes in which Vic agonises about parties and the boys she has to choose from to break her cherry. Only one scene really recalls the tedium of the first film, when Vic loses a bet at a party and has to dress as a streetwalker and stand on the curb for three minutes. Of course, her father immediately just happens to find her.

But mostly this is a sweet showcase for Marceau who was fortunate to grow up beautifully.

Her Party in the Shadow of Her Dad

An enchanting teenage girl tries to lead a fun life while her parents undergo dull relationship dramas in 1980's La Boum. Sophie Marceau, in her first role, stars as 13 year old Vic and she is lovely. Sadly, the film gets bogged down too much in a plot around her unremarkable parents that's transparently calculated to flatter her father, played by Claude Brasseur.

When he cheats on his wife (Brigitte Fossey), he can't help but finally confess to her because he loves her so much. She retaliates by smashing all the merchandise in his mistress' perfume shop. And Vic's mother insists they separate.

Vic's mother, Francoise, starts dating Vic's handsome German teacher (Bernard Giraudeau). Vic's father, Francois, sees Francoise and the German teacher together one night. Following the German teacher in his car, Francois witnesses a group of thugs mugging the German teacher. Francois beats off the thugs single-handedly and when the German teacher thanks him he punches him once and tells him to stay away from his wife.

Meanwhile, I just kept wondering what Sophie Marceau was up to. She mopes about complaining how she can't go to parties and how her parents ruin anything. But Marceau is so darned cute it works.

In one big scene at a roller rink, Vic wants to make her boyfriend, who's been dancing with another girl, jealous. So when Vic's father enters the room, she kisses him full on the lips, pretending he's her lover. Because of course she does. Meanwhile, the kid sister of Vic's best friend marvels at how sexy Francois is. I don't know what Claude Brasseur did to get such a kiss-ass role but the film that started out as a charming story about a pretty teenage girl became really tedious after the first twenty minutes. It never recovered.

Iron Time

I found myself watching Iron Man 2 recently. I guess I'm slowly working my way back through the MCU's heyday now that Disney micromanagement daily seems to drive nails into its coffin. Iron Man 2 was once considered one of the weaker MCU films but it sure looks good now.

The villain-of-the-week quality to Mickey Rourke's character feels a bit like a standard pre-MCU superhero film but I still dig Rourke's understated performance. In a genre in which villains typically deliver histrionics (sometimes entertainingly) it was cool watching him just let silence settle to have a menacing effect.

Scarlett Johansson's pretty great in her first appearance as Black Widow, too. She's at her best in this movie and in Winter Soldier, in those days when she was still allowed to be sexy and playful. Even so, she always felt like a different person in every movie.

I love the lingering shot on Robert Downey Jr. when he's looking at her and drinking from his water bottle. The energy between the two challenges the viewer to wonder what they're seeing; "Is it funny? Is it sexy? Is he ridiculous or attractive to her? Is he put off balance by her beauty or is this a pose?" Stark's cockiness always had this nice ambiguity. You were never really sure how irresponsible he was or how irresponsible he was pretending to be. Downey Jr.'s performance kept that ambiguity anchored and natural instead of confusing and sloppy.

Iron Man 2 is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1690

To mind the hare a watch was broken first.
A pirate plan was bootless placed abroad.
The foiled throat was choked by sand to thirst.
A wagging tongue was dragged beneath the sod.
Resurfaced saucer sacks the absinthe cube.
A single set asserts the ancient ship.
A bulb was broken down a Jefferies tube.
The wire necklace took a lightning dip.
But here's a fire like to wire sparks.
Above the balding heads it runs for life.
It burns the tender feet of careless larks.
It swaps the hornet's sting with Bowie knife.
Belief in ghosts resides within a watch.
Informed, the gears absorb a glass of Scotch.

Bad, Bad Borg

Last night's finale of Picard was an effective action spectacle, touched here and there with effective sentiment, an unabashed exhibition of fan-service, and an all-in ploy for a conservative audience. I did enjoy it. Though, after the Mandalorian finale also focused on the importance of family and working together, I think it's high time we get some more stories about how it can be rewarding to work alone.

Behind the spectacle and the nostalgia, the real theme at work here is bad-collective-thinking versus good-collective-thinking. Last week's abruptly established plot point was about all the ships being linked together in a somehow, vaguely sinister way turned out to be the work of the Borg. When Riker wondered how the Federation could court such a dangerous technology, I could only say, "What technology?" Surely the computers could always talk to each other?

Picard and Crusher's son Jack turns out to be an integral part of the Borg plan somehow but in the big climactic moment, Picard establishes that his family connexion with Jack is stronger than the Borg's infiltration of his DNA, a point that might have been stronger if Picard had known Jack for longer than just this season. It also, unfortunately, reminded me of a disappointing episode of Doctor Who ("Closing Time") in which human family love somehow outperforms Cyberman zombification. Since the Borg were originally copied from the Cybermen, I suppose this is at least fitting.

In terms of the show's courting of a conservative audience, I was reminded of reading what Quentin Tarantino wrote about Dirty Harry in his new book, a film that also boldly courted conservatives at a time when movies were relentlessly dominated by progressive messaging. Top Gun Maverick seems to have taught Paramount there's a big audience for this and it was a little distracting how calculated it seemed at times. Even little moments like when Data said he was going to trust his "gut" reminded me of how George W. Bush was once widely derided by the left for saying the same thing.

But I did appreciate the nostalgia, the action scenes were well put together, and the show actually had a breakout star in Todd Stashwick as Liam Shaw. His last moment in the final episode with Seven of Nine was more emotionally effective than even the best deployed nostalgia bait.

I had to admit I found it kind of funny, though, that in the midst of all this messaging about family, the show seemed to have totally forgotten Picard's Romulan lover back at his vineyard.

Star Trek: Picard is available on Paramount+.

The Mando that Goes Up Must Come Down

The third season of The Mandalorian concluded true to this year's established form--with weak writing and some nice action sequences. This time, I have a stronger feeling that the problems may not have been entirely Jon Favreau's fault, despite the fact that he has sole writing credit. There are a few instances of very obviously looped dialogue I think may well have been added by meddlers at Disney.

The previous episode ended with Din getting cut off from the other Mandalorians as well as Grogu on the secret Imperial base. This episode begins with one of the Mandalorians flying straight up into the sky. Over the comm, Bo-Katan fills him in about what we've seen and instructs him to get reinforcements from the fleet in orbit. Meanwhile, I'm wondering, why was this guy flying straight up into the sky in the first place?

I suspect an early version of this opening scene featured no dialogue at all. We saw some Mandalorians moving through corridors and another one flying towards the fleet. Explanations wouldn't have been necessary if we can remember things established in previous episodes--comms can't get through Mandalore's atmosphere and the folks planetside are in hot water. When this guy gets to the bridge of the capital ship and asks for aid, all would have made sense. Someone at Disney saw this and thought everything had to be spelled out for the two-year-olds in the audience. Since the Mandalorians are all wearing helmets, it's easy dub over dialogue so they had Bo-Katan give her instructions while the guy was in flight. But ironically, this makes things much more confusing because we're left asking--why the hell was this guy flying straight up at the sky to begin with?

This is almost immediately followed by a scene where Gideon is watching Din and Grogu rendered as dots on a schematic and he remarks from off-camera, "The Mandalorian has escaped." I laughed out loud at that one. Wouldn't the nearby Dark Trooper feel compelled to ask, "Uh, which one, Sir?" Gideon could've replied, "Who do you think? The star of this show!" That was probably the thinking of whoever dubbed that line in. I bet they were thinking, "The kids at home know him best as the Mandalorian." Again, trying to make things absurdly clear has rendered them ridiculous and confusing.

There are some other things I don't think can be blamed on looped dialogue, like Bo-Katan suddenly swooping in to fight Moff Gideon. I was really digging the grand jet pack melee and how dizzying it was. How Bo-Katan alone spotted what was going on down below I don't know. A shot establishing a connexion between the two locations would have been nice. Many of the problems could be attributable to director Rick Famuyiwa who directed three of the episodes this season despite being one of the weakest directors from previous seasons.

I did enjoy most of the fight, it was well choreographed. Though Gideon destroying the Dark Sabre after demanding that Bo-Katan relinquish it struck another blow to the clarity of Gideon's motives. Also, after establishing how cool the Dark Sabre is and how cool Bo-Katan is with it, destroying it now feels pretty lame. Maybe it'll be repaired.

Grogu was cute in the episode but once again his story made little sense. I thought Din had already adopted him so I don't know why he needed to again here. Grogu's inability to talk doesn't seem like it should be an issue if they could give him a device that speaks "Yes" and "No" when he presses corresponding buttons. I thought he would have his first words by the end of this season. So much for that. It seems Grogu may be the Maggie Simpson of the Star Wars universe, though even Maggie had that episode where Elizabeth Taylor voiced her. Who could they bring in for Grogu? I nominate Faye Dunaway.

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

Murder and Little Tokyo

A stripper is murdered and the painting in her dressing room is destroyed. So begins 1959's The Crimson Kimono, Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, it's also a story about Japanese Americans in L.A. Ahead of its time in totally avoiding any white actors playing people of Japanese decent, I was also surprised at how authentic it was to Japanese culture in other respects. The heart of the story is a little thin but Fuller's instinct for editing and attention to detail are always terrific.

Joe (James Shigeta) and Charlie (Glenn Corbett) are two detectives who also served together in the Korean War. They also live together so it seems to be a fast friendship. However, in the course of investigating the murder, they end up falling in love with the same woman, a painter named Christine (Victoria Shaw).

The affection between her and Joe is established a bit abruptly at the end of the second act. None of it feels quite organic, which is unfortunate as the story primarily hangs on Joe misinterpreting Charlie's jealousy as racism. One critic of the film said that it portrays all victims of racism as just imagining it, which of course it doesn't. But Fuller might have been wise to include instances where Joe or other characters were subjected to real racism. This would help to make Joe's fears seem more reasonable and make the film more complex overall.

The Buddhist temple depicted in the film looks much like ones I've visited in Japan. The kendo tournament in which we see Joe and Charlie participating looked much like the kendo practice I've witnessed here in Japan. Even the song Joe plays on his piano, "Akatombo", is a song I've frequently heard here in Japan.

The third film Fuller made prominently featuring Japan--after Hell and High Water and House of Bamboo--it's not the best (Hell and High Water is) but it's not bad at all.

Twitter Sonnet #1689

A submarine for cigarettes emerged.
The captain carted spam across the decks.
The submarine for pretty girls submerged.
A tale commenced of lonely pirate wrecks.
A lonely shore sufficed the watching lass.
Her socks were hanging under rainy skies.
She watched as schooners, scows, and frigates passed.
The hour's shades disperse when patience dies.
The heavy whale absorbed a book of fish.
Repeated clouds create a darkened day.
With shiny scales they broke the ocean dish.
Ideas were left to dry along the way.
Electic reds portray a dancing street.
The metal can consumes a pickled beet.

Reset no Yaiba

The third season of Kimetsu no Yaiba began last week, beginning the "Sword Village" arc from the manga. This season looks to be hewing closer to the manga after season two disappointed audiences with excessive padding. Though it's a little strange, after the bloodbath of the last season finale, to have Tanjiro and his friends totally recovered and up to their usual antics. Tanjiro had two of his fingers broken and Inosuke was skewered through the chest in what looked like a mortal wound. Nezuko went further into demonaic transformations than she ever had before and now she's back to the cute little lady who rides in a box without anyone commenting on it. Even her little bamboo bit has been replaced without comment. It was clearly destroyed last season.

It sadly contributes more to the feeling established last season that, however dire and bloody things get, there's always a reset button somewhere, ready to restore everyone to season one status.

This season has taken at least one step in the right direction, though, by splitting up the group, as sad as I am to bid a temporary farewell to Inosuke. Now Tanjiro and Nezuko are teamed with two of the "Hashira", the high ranking demon slayers who harness a particular element. Joining the Kameda siblings are the Mist Hashira, Muichiro Tokito, and the Love Hashira, Mitsuri Kanroji.

If nothing else this season, we can all enjoy Mitsuri's cleavage. Except Tanjiro, who amusingly begs her to cover up when he sees her running down some stairs.

Kimetsu no Yaiba is available on Netflix in Japan.

From Prison to the Open Road

Oh, for the days when a parole officer could date his beautiful murderess parolee. 1949's Shockproof was directed by Douglas Sirk from a screenplay originally by Samuel Fuller. This odd combination produces a sometimes engagingly romantic crime drama.

The film is hampered by two dull stars, Cornel Wilde as the parole officer, Griff, and Patricia Knight--Wilde's real life spouse--as the parolee, Jenny. It's always amazed me that Wilde was a star, though I do appreciate the lengths he went to for artistic credibility later in his career. Knight never did become a star in her own right and it's easy to see why from this picture. She seems like a stand-in for Rita Hayworth with a fourth of Hayworth's personality.

The first two thirds of the movie are the best. I liked scenes where it seemed Jenny was being won over by Griff followed by scenes where we see she wasn't taken in at all--by the police psychiatrist or by Griff taking her home to meet his kid brother and blind mother. Fuller was apparently angry that the end of his screenplay was substantially rewritten and I don't blame him.

Deciding to break the rules and get married, Griff and Jenny go on the run and, of course, every hamburger stand they stop at has a radio broadcasting information about them, every newspaper has their picture on the front. But this isn't as silly as the sappy finale.

Shockproof is available on YouTube.

Twitter Sonnet #1688

Evolving arms were hid beneath a coat.
Advancing mice provoked a grinning cat.
The hardened sugar lumps abandoned boat.
Above, so high, there shone a twink'ling bat.
The ruin time began with kindness forced.
A heavy frosting crushed a normal cake.
And through the brain a phantom honey coursed.
A dream emerged to split the lines of fake.
A moving image 'scaped the reach of eyes.
With flowing streams, we pass the only mall.
An echo rises brief and bright but dies.
If only brains could carry hearts at all.
Parole attains a mythic force at home.
The curtains reign when window panes would roam.