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Shorts

SHORT: SOME FOLKS CALL IT A SLING BLADE (1994)

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DIRECTED BY:  George Hickenlooper

FEATURING:  Billy Bob Thornton, J.T. Walsh, , Jefferson Mays, Suzanne Cryer

PLOT: A peek inside an asylum for the criminally insane as a mentally retarded double

murderer chats with a diabolical fellow inmate before being interviewed by a newspaper reporter on the day of his release.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade is a short film with unusual subject matter.  The viewer is treated to a vignette portrait of a murderer in an insane asylum.  There is a glimpse of his twisted companion, and a look at the sorts of confused, eccentric bureaucrats who run the place.  All of this is presented against the backdrop of the controversy of social attitudes about the patients.  The piece is strangely cemented together with the premise of a newspaper reporter trying to get an interview with the murderer on the day his sentence expires.  Odd as the setting and premise are, Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade is really just a demo-clip.  The idea was to get the concept of Billy Bob Thornton’s ability to portray Karl Childers out into the greater film community in order to locate backers and pitch a full-length movie.  It worked, and the mainstream picture Sling Blade was the result.  Most of  Some Folks Call It A Sling Blade is filler, the premise with the reporter being used to make the film longer than a screen test.  As such, the film lacks the substance and quality to be a truly weird movie.

COMMENTS:  In this short film predecessor to Sling Blade we observe a day in the life of a criminal mental patient who is on the verge of social repatriation.  Karl Childers (Thornton) chats with a fellow inmate in an institutional day-room.  Meanwhile, reporter Teresa Tatum (Ringwold) is waiting to interview Childers.

Tatum, who is working on a feature exploring the controversies of releasing criminal patients back into society, pontificates frivolously at long length with a companion (Cryer), then spars with a hesitant and quirky chief hospital administrator (Mays).  Eventually, we are allowed to see Thornton’s skillful performance as Childers when he explains to the reporter the circumstances of his crime.  The interim would be dreadfully uninteresting time filler were it not interspersed with several astounding segments in which J.T. Walsh plays the part of a funny, congenial, but very scary psychotic killer.

The annoying Molly Ringwold, an actress of very modest proportions, puts us to sleep with a Continue reading SHORT: SOME FOLKS CALL IT A SLING BLADE (1994) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

LONG PANTS (1927)

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Long Pants is the film in which that annoying breed known as “slapstick lovers” start their bitching crusade against the “weird” Harry Langdon. Long Pants is also the film that the collaboration between Langdon and Frank Capra came to a crashing halt, due to aesthetic differences which involved the development of Langdon’s character. Langdon and writer Arthur Ripley wanted to take the character into darker territory. Capra vehemently objected and was fired by Langdon, with Langdon anonymously finishing up directorial duties.

Slapstick, as an art form, dates badly and frequently induces more groans than laughs today. Chaplin‘s more ambitious efforts, with (balanced) pathos and dramatic story, telling are of far more interest than his earlier straight-up slapstick efforts for Sennett. Keaton‘s inventiveness and occasional forays into surrealism hold up as his best work and can, up to a point, prove fuel for those arguing for his superiority. Seen today, Langdon was right in his endeavor to make his on-screen characterization darker, more idiosyncratic, more unique, even if naive critics whine that Langdon simply “ceased to be funny” and just “got weird.” It is Langdon’s weirdness that set him apart from the beginning and, while I would probably not, overall, place him in the ranks of a Chaplin or Keaton, I would argue that Langdon etched an influential persona that secures his position as one of the great silent clowns and defies the “forgotten” label often attached to him.

Contemporary audiences, unable to relate to 1927 mores and customs, will certainly find the initial premise of Long Pants unintentionally bizarre in itself. Harry’s father (Alan Roscoe) feels it is time for his boy to grow up and buys him his first pair of long pants, initiating Harry into manhood. Harry’s mother (Gladys Brockwell) is very weepy eyed over the prospect, feeling her little Harry is far too young for long pants and wearing them will only bring trouble. She is correct, as Harry is, psychologically, still a boy. Once Harry loses his short pants (and stockings—an amusingly ‘creepy’ image) and then dons his long pants, he spies a beautiful, exotic woman in a broken down car outside. Mother’s predicted “big trouble” begins its course.

Actually, this is a bad boy habit already formed in Harry, even before his initiation into long Continue reading LONG PANTS (1927) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

THE MIRACLE RIDER (1935)

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The Miracle Rider was the last film of Tom Mix and his horse Tony, Jr. (Tony Sr. had departed this earthly realm). It is a sound serial from Mascot with twice the normal Mascot budget. Mix was 55 when he made this and showing it. Although his voice was deep and suitable for sound, and he was still in good shape, Mix looked his age and was now using a stunt double for complicated stunts. Mix had made several sound films for Universal, but they fared only moderately well. Mix had officially retired and was promoting his Tom Mix circus when he was talked back to the silver screen for one last go round. It is fortunate he did. The Miracle Rider was an astounding success, making both Mix and Mascot over ten times its investment. The serial is one of the better serials of the period, too, and so Mix went out on top, dying five years later in an automobile accident. Even though Mix had been out of the public eye for five years following Miracle Rider, his death caused a large outpouring of grief. Mix’s enigmatic life, career and tragic demise are the stuff of legend.

The Miracle Rider begins with the history of native Americans and how they were treated by white men. Daniel Boone (who looks nothing like Fess Parker) warns white men to leave the Indians alone, to no avail. Later, Davey Crocket (who looks nothing like Fess Parker) warns white men to leave the Indians alone, to no avail. Buffalo Bill does the same, again to no avail. Tom’s on-screen father, a Texas Ranger. is killed by white men as he tries to protect Indian land.  Many years later, the adult Tom Mix, as “Tom,” steps into his father boots as a Texas Ranger himself.

Tom is made an honorary chief of a tribe and is called “the Miracle Rider.” The evil oil baron with the very serial-sounding name of Zaroff (played by Charles Middleton, so memorable a villain in films like Mystery Ranch and Flash Gordon) is not pleased. Zaroff wants the Indians off the land so he can mine something called X-94, which is an explosive that can make kings and queens grovel at his feet. The Ravenhead reservation is rich in X-94 deposits and now, but with Texas Ranger Tom being made an honorary chief, this complicates things.
Still from The Miracle Rider (1935)
The Miracle Rider is another B western that mixes sci fi elements and modern automobiles within the old west. Zaroff receives transmissions from a radio control apparatus, which bleeps a lot. The transmission informs Zaroff that Europe is wanting more orders of X-94. What is an evil madman to do? Well, in addition to henchman Jason Robards (Sr.) Zaroff hooks up with a Judas of an Indian named Longboat, who is a half-breed aspiring to be chief. With Longboat’s help, Zaroff makes the tribe believe they are cursed by the great firebird, courtesy of some x-94 effects. Zoroff’s has an evil scientist assistant, hiding in a secret lab, who makes X-94 bullets and a robot glider, meant to scare the Indians off the land.

Chief Black Wing (Bob Frazer) will not be frightened by the robot glider, so he is dispensed with. Tom goes after Black Wing’s murderers, jumping from Tony, Jr. onto a speeding truck carrying a shipment of X-94.

Black Wing’s daughter Ruth, played by Joan Gale, has the arrow that killed her father and she knows that this is no arrow made by a Ravenhead. But, the arrow is stolen and, in pursuit of the thief, Tom finds himself trapped inside a flying robot glider!

There’s plenty of intrigue and derring-do atop oil rigs, in automobiles driving off cliffs, amidst explosions, and inside secret caves. There seems to always be a hidden telephone inside a rock for henchmen to call Zaroff. Tony, Jr. sees plenty of action too, and the whole serial has the feel of a wild and wacky 20th century wild west show being filtered through primitive sci fi sensibilities.

Zaroff tells Tom, “If it wasn’t for your meddling…”, sounding just like a Scooby Doo villain. Of course, Tom saves the day and lives to ride off into one more sunset.

Surprisingly, Tom is not given a love interest at all. Perhaps a white man hooking up with an Indian girl would have been too much for 1935 audiences, even if she is being played by a white girl. There are no actual Indians in Miracle and, par for Hollywood’s course, the greatest Indian is a white man, ala Dances With Wolves; but unlike the mawkish, overblown Kevin Costner film, this Miracle is fun.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

DISCOVERING CHARLEY BOWERS

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In the documentary Looking for Charlie Bowers, film archaeologist Raymond Borde recollects buying a box of silent film reels marked “Bricolo” from a gypsy.  Borde was unable to identify the films or the filmmaker, but found the films quite unique.  The character in the Bricolo shorts was clearly patterned off of Keaton, but the gags were highly surreal, mixing animation with live action.  The search for the identity of Bricolo took Borde to the Belgium Royal Film Library and the Annecy Animated Film Festival.  Still, no one could identify the films.  Borde searched the exhaustive reviews of “Midi Minuet Fantastique,” which lead to a dead end.  Finally, Borde discovered a 1928 reference to Charley Bowers as Bricolo in a “Meric Cinematographers” ad in Mareilles.  From there Borden contacted Louise Beaudet of the Montreal Film Library.  Beaudet knew Bowers as the animator of the “Mutt and Jeff” series.  Together, Borde and Beudet contacted the Library of Congress and struck gold.  With much material, including press releases and hundreds of photographs, they were able to positively identify Bowers as the Bricolo of the reels.

Bowers life story proves as fascinating as his films and the discovery of his films.  Charley Bowers joined the circus as a tightrope walker at the age of five.  From there he worked as a jockey, cowboy, horse trainer, theatrical performer and caricaturist for newspapers.  In 1916 Bowers took on the role of producer, opened his own studio, and began producing a series of animated shorts with a small, ragtag team of animators.  In 1924, Bowers began producing shorts which mixed live action with animation, casting himself as the lead.  Bowers character was called Bricolo by French critics of the time.  Bizarre animated objects and puppets were part of the animated sequences.

Borden discovered a late 1930s reference to Bowers by Surrealist Andre Breton.  Breton had only seen Bowers’ short “It’s a Bird” as an introduction to a feature film.  Breton was surprised by the film and listed it as an important surrealist film in “The Surrealist Almanac.”  Borden discovered that Breton’s admiration for Bowers was shared by the avant-garde poet Rafael Alberti.

Still from Charley Bowers' "Now You Tell One"Bowers died, destitute and obscure, at the age of 57 in 1946, following a long illness.  Although he made hundreds of animated short films, along with the live action shorts, only fifteen of his films survive.  These were restored and distributed by Lobster Films in France.  This indispensable collection of Bowers films is on the two-disc set Charley Bowers, The Rediscovery of an American Comic Genius.

Like all great surrealism, Bowers film are imaginatively and aesthetically provocative.  Recurring obsessive themes permeate Bowers shorts.  “Egged On” (1926) and “Say Ah-h!” (1928) both feature unbreakable eggs.  In “Egged On” Charley is an inventor and Continue reading DISCOVERING CHARLEY BOWERS →