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Showing posts with label lee marvin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lee marvin. Show all posts

Friday, August 12, 2016

The Iceman Cometh (1973)




         Whereas most of the esoteric movies released under the American Film Theatre banner in the early ‘70s were adaptations of then-contemporary plays, this sprawling production puts a 1946 Eugene O’Neill drama onscreen. In some ways, this is a monumental film, because veteran director John Frankenheimer steers an excellent cast comprising several significant Hollywood players. Moreover, while the sets are simple, Frankenheimer shoots scenes as if he’s making a big-budget feature, cleverly employing deep-focus camerawork and shadowy lighting to provide dimensionality and nuance. Excepting the way an unusually long running time makes viewers hyper-conscious that all the action takes place in one location, The Iceman Cometh bears none of the usual signs marking a pennywise stage-to-screen adaptation. However, that running time must dominate any discussion of the picture, since The Iceman Cometh is four hours long, with two intermissions providing respites along the way.
           Amazingly, even this sprawling duration doesn’t include all of O’Neill’s original text, which raises the question of why Frankenheimer and his collaborators didn’t cut even deeper. It’s easy to envision a more condensed version of this same project having even more impact, what with its abundance of fine acting and the innate value of O’Neill’s poetic monologues and tragic themes.
          Set in a New York City bar circa 1912, the story revolves around a gaggle of lost souls who drink themselves into oblivion rather than facing the hopelessness of their everyday lives. On one particular day, the barflies await the arrival of traveling salesman Hickey (Marvin), a bon vivant who enlivens the place with annual visits. Before his entrance, the story introduces several sad characters. Most prominent is Larry (Robert Ryan), an aging political radical now resigned to the inevitable approach of death. Despite his unkempt hair and scraggly whiskers, he comes across as the unsentimental intellectual of the group. Others making their presence known include the bar’s proprietor, Harry (Fredric March), who speaks with a thick Irish brogue; Rocky (Tom Pedi), the rotund bartender who moonlights as a pimp; and Don (Jeff Bridges), a young man whose activist mother was recently thrown in jail, leading him to seek aid from her onetime colleague Larry. By the time Hickey arrives, it’s clear that everyone is mired in some horrific personal crisis. They need the solace of their let-the-good-times-roll friend.
          No such luck.
          Things seem off the minute Hickey walks through the door, and he soon reveals that his wife died. What’s more, he’s adopted a callous new philosophy. In monologue after monologue, Hickey explains that his friends’ “pipe dreams” are merely distractions from the grim reality of life, and should be abandoned. In essence, he’s traded optimism for nihilism and become an evangelist for his new belief system. Revelations ensue, leading to a new tragedy and then, inevitably, to Larry’s painful epiphanies—as the deepest thinker in the group, his reaction to Hickey’s depressing spectacle speaks for the anguish buried inside the hearts of everyone at the bar.
          Setting aside questions of the literary worth—critics and scholars have spent decades debating where The Iceman Cometh belongs in its author’s canon—the film abounds with meritorious elements. Drawing on his experience staging dramas for live television, Frankenheimer uses his camera masterfully, sometimes juxtaposing two characters in tight frames and sometimes defining group dynamics with meticulous tableaux. He also  moves the camera well, especially when he underscores key moments with subtle push-ins.
          The acting is just as skillful. Some performers, including Bridges and March, essay supporting roles with intensity and specificity, providing just the right colors to fill out the painting. Marvin, whom one might expect to be the standout given his flamboyant role and top billing, is good but perhaps not great, playing scenes with exquisite dexterity even though he never quite achieves the desired level of revelation and vulnerability. So it’s Ryan, surprisingly, who provides the soul of the piece. Once maligned as a wooden he-man, he revealed interesting dimensions in his later work, often imbuing villainous roles with cruelty and cynicism. Here, he’s a broken man desperately seeking reasons to put himself back together, then despairing when he can’t find any.

The Iceman Cometh: GROOVY

Thursday, October 23, 2014

1980 Week: The Big Red One



          Maverick B-movie director Samuel Fuller returned from a decade-long hiatus with The Big Red One, a World War II melodrama based upon Fuller’s real-life experiences as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s First Infantry. The picture closely follows a single squad’s experiences as the squad moves from one deployment to the next, spanning D-Day to the end of the war. Episodic, heavy-handed, and meandering, the picture is deeply flawed but nonetheless interesting. Among other things, The Big Red One doesn’t feature any commanding officers—the highest-ranking major character is a sergeant—so it’s very much a grunt’s-eye-view of combat. The soldiers in this movie follow orders without a sense of the overall conflict’s larger political and/or strategic significance, which makes the brutality the soldiers witness (and commit) seem especially gruesome. Additionally, Fuller has a great eye for locations, putting viewers right there in the muck and rubble with physically and spiritually existed Yanks as they plow through seemingly endless waves of enemy combatants. Because Fuller was not a subtle filmmaker, however, the movie’s realistic textures clash with the clunky themes of the storyline.
          For instance, the main emotional hook involves the squad leader, Sgt. Possum (Lee Marvin), who was traumatized years earlier when he unknowingly killed a German soldier moments after the World War I armistice was signed. Forever cognizant of war’s costs, Possum has zero tolerance for cowardice—and zero tolerance for avoidable bloodshed. Fuller pays off this character arc in the least believable way possible, ending the picture on a false note. Similarly, a subplot about Pvt. Griff (Mark Hamill) turns trite as Griff overcomes his initial cowardice during a highly unlikely moment of heroism.
          Despite all of its narrative excesses and shortcomings, The Big Red One has a hell of a climax, because—as Fuller’s squad did in real life—the movie squad liberates a concentration camp. Demonstrating uncharacteristic restraint, Fuller evokes the soul-shattering horror soldiers must have felt upon encountering the depths of human evil. Photographed in rich color by Adam Greenberg and held together by Dana Kaproff’s efficient musical score, The Big Red One is a grand old mess of a personal statement, which might explain why the film has suffered so much at the hands of outside forces. Although Fuller’s original version ran nearly three hours, Warner Bros. cut the picture to 113 minutes for its initial release. Commercial failure and complaints from Fuller about tampering followed. Years later, well after Fuller’s death in 1997, a restored version running 162 minutes was released to much approval by critics.
          In any form, The Big Red One is noteworthy because it’s so clearly a passion piece, and because the best moments ring true. As for Fuller, he remained undaunted by the box-office stillbirth of The Big Red One, directing one more American feature—the relentless race-relations melodrama White Dog (1982)—before transitioning to the small European films that comprise the twilight era of his long and singular career.

The Big Red One: FUNKY

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Prime Cut (1972)



          If appraised solely for its attitude, style, and tone, Prime Cut would easily qualify as one of the best crime films of the ’70s. A Midwestern noir set primarily on a cattle ranch and the surrounding area—think county fairs and wheat fields—the movie boasts crisp low-angle cinematography, offbeat situations, rough violence, and tasty performances by actors including Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin, and Sissy Spacek. It’s hard to think of another action picture that features a hay-bailing machine as a potential murder weapon—or one that features a scene of a mob enforcer getting chopped up and packaged as a tube of sausages. Yet for all the things Prime Cut does well, the movie fails in the most important regard. The script is an absolute mess, with murky characters pursuing unclear goals based upon perplexing motivations.
          The narrative is so poorly constructed, in fact, that it’s often difficult to enjoy the movie’s amazing moment-to-moment texture. One gets the sense that director Michael Ritchie and his collaborators wanted to present a movie so cryptic and hard-boiled that it was devoid of clichés and easy explanations. If that was the goal, they succeeded. Yet the filmmakers sacrificed clarity on the altar of cinematic style. Having said all that, Prime Cut is pretty damn badass whenever it locks into a groove.
          The principal focus of the story is a Midwestern gangster nicknamed “Mary Ann” (Hackman), who has decided to cut ties with his former bosses in the Chicago underworld. Running a dugs-and-prostitution ring out of his cattle ranch, Mary Ann has become a beloved community leader thanks to his largesse and a feared opponent thanks to his cruelty—he’s the proverbial big fish in a small town. After several operatives have failed to rein in Mary Ann’s reckless behavior, Chicago bosses send hired gun Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) to set Mary Ann straight. Immediately upon his arrival at Mary Ann’s place, Nick takes possession of Poppy (Spacek), a teenager whom Mary Ann’s goons have kidnapped and drugged for sale as a sex slave. That’s where the story goes off the rails. Instead of focusing on his mission, Nick spends a lot of time hanging out at his hotel, wining and dining Poppy (even though he seems not to have any sexual interest in her), and articulating vague plans for giving Mary Ann a hard time. Meanwhile, Mary Ann picks off Nick’s men with apparent ease.
          Much of what happens during the movie’s lugubrious middle section is interesting simply because of novelty—for instance, the shootout during a county fair—but the story gets particularly aimless whenever Spacek is on screen. Thus, when the movie finally trundles into a bloody final showdown at Mary Ann’s place, the dramatic stakes have become so dissipated that it’s hard to care what happens.
          Amazingly, the three leads manage to give interesting performances despite the script’s shortcomings. Marvin blends humor and a dash of romanticism into his signature ice-cold persona, so he’s frequently riveting. Hackman essays one of his most monstrous villains, and he’s terrific in small moments like the bit during which he capriciously buys a child’s pet cow and sends the animal to the slaughterhouse. Spacek struggles to figure out what purpose she serves in the movie, because at one moment she’s eye candy (Spacek performs a long sequence wearing a see-through dress), and at the next moment she’s the film’s soul (demonstrating anguish at the abuse of women). Even though all of this is quite perplexing, one is unlikely to find a better-acted or better-looking mess of an action flick.

Prime Cut: FUNKY

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Shout at the Devil (1976)



          While not a great movie—or even, for that matter, a particularly coherent one, given its odd mixture of light comedy and nasty violence—Shout at the Devil is worth investigating for fans of manly-man adventure flicks. Among other things, the picture includes the only screen pairing of Roger Moore, who shot this movie in the early days of his long run as 007, and the inimitable Lee Marvin. The movie’s convoluted narrative and lengthy running time give both actors opportunities to hit many different notes, and Marvin’s rough-and-tumble charisma complements the alternately grim and suave flavors of Moore’s performance. Shout at the Devil also boasts incredible production values.
          Set in German-controlled East Africa circa 1913, the story concerns an amiably disreputable ivory hunter named Colonel Flynn O'Flynn (Marvin). An American expat with a mysterious past, Flynn needs a stooge for his next poaching excursion, so he snookers traveling English aristocrat Sebastian Oldsmith (Moore). The biggest hiccup in Shout at the Devil’s storyline is that Oldsmith doesn't turn himself over to the Germans once he realizes Flynn is a scam artist—but if you can suspend your disbelief on that point, the rest of the movie is quite enjoyable. Without going into laborious detail (there's a lot of story in Shout at the Devil), Oldsmith hangs around with Flynn long enough to get injured, at which point he's nursed back to health by Flynn's beautiful daughter, Rosa (Barbara Parkins). Naturally, Oldsmith and Rosa fall in love. Thereafter, Flynn persuades the Englishman to help rip off the Germans, especially odious regional commander Fleischer (Reinhard Kolldehoff). Once all the narrative pieces fall in place, the movie becomes a covert-mission story about Oldsmith hunting down and sabotaging a strategically important German warship.
          Director Peter Hunt edited several 007 movies before making his helming debut with one of the series' best installments, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), but he never worked on any of Moore's Bond pictures. Instead, the two teamed up for the first time to make the similarly overstuffed action-drama Gold (1974). While Hunt does a great job creating tension within individual scenes, he's not adept at balancing performance styles, so Marvin and Moore sometimes seem as if they're acting in different movies. (Leading lady Parkins, who generally played decorative and/or villainous roles, does some of her best work here, lending elegance and weight to her scenes.) Nonetheless, the best parts of Shout at the Devil are rousing and/or whimsical, if not both.
          The running gag of Flynn inventing reasons why Oldmsith must endanger himself works nicely, and there's a peculiar but fun subplot involving Flynn's mute sidekick, Mohammed (Ian Holm), who mostly communicates with sarcastically raised eyebrows. Some of the action is genuinely thrilling, too, like Oldsmith's incursion (while wearing blackface!) onto the German warship. So while Shout at the Devil is excessive and sloppy, it’s also a lively throwback to the adventure movies of yesteryear, with just a touch of modernized grit. FYI, those with P.C. sensibilities might have a tough time with this picture, since the heroes slaughter elephants for profit, and it’s worth mentioning that Shout at the Devil is widely available both in the original cut (which runs 147 minutes) and a snipped version (which runs 128 minutes). The longer cut is recommended.

Shout at the Devil: GROOVY

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Spikes Gang (1974)



          Taking themes from the John Wayne hit The Cowboys (1972) to an even darker extreme, The Spikes Gang is a terrific Western drama about a group of young farm boys who emulate an outlaw, with deadly results. Gary Grimes, still fresh off the coming-of-age charmer Summer of ’42 (1971), teams with Ron Howard and Charles Martin Smith, who previously costarred in American Graffiti (1973), to play a trio of young, unsophisticated men who discover a wounded outlaw in a forest near their families’ farms. The gunslinger, Harry Spikes (Lee Marvin), asks for their help, so Will (Grimes), Les (Ron Howard), and Tod (Smith) transport Harry to a barn, feed him, and tend to his gunshot wounds. Once Harry recovers, he promises to help the boys if they ever need anything, and then rides off on a horse Will provides. Will’s stern, ultra-religious father discovers his son’s activities and beats Will, which prompts the young man to run away from home.
          Eager for adventure and seduced by Harry’s grandiose stories about his exciting life as a criminal, Les and Tod join Will. They rob a bank, incompetently, and kill a bystander in the process, so they’re quickly indoctrinated into the dark side of the rebel lifestyle. Eventually, the lads get arrested and land in a Mexican jail, but Harry passes through the Mexican town and honors his debt by arranging their release. Flattered by the boys’ idolization, Harry hires the young men as his new gang and attempts a brazen robbery, during which things start going terribly wrong.
          Even with solid production values and uniformly good acting, the movie’s best virtue is a sensitive screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., the Western-cinema veterans who, not coincidentally, wrote the script for The Cowboys. Equally adept at crafting sparse dialogue and indicating characterization through behavior, Ravetch and Frank create a grown-up style of melodrama, so the storyline feels fresh and surprising as it winds toward a sad climax that’s infused with a powerful sense of inevitability.
          Director Richard Fleisher, a journeyman who worked in nearly every imaginable genre, serves the screenplay well by shooting scenes simply; his economical frames allow the actors to express the script’s relatable emotions in an unfussy manner. Playing the film’s leading role, Grimes does fine work, building on the frontier existentialism he explored in The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972). Concurrently, Marvin’s gruff poeticism perfectly suits the role of a self-serving career criminal. Howard and Smith balance the leading players with their complementary shadings of adolescent angst and affable naïveté. It’s true The Spikes Gang traffics in familiar themes, but graceful execution and heartfelt performances help the movie connect on a deeper level than expected. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Spikes Gang: GROOVY

Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Klansman (1974)


          For those who enjoy charting the outer reaches of bad cinema, the title of The Klansman looms larger than that of most ’70s movies. Featuring an inexplicable combination of actors—Richard Burton, Lee Marvin, O.J. Simpson—and a lurid take on incendiary subject matter, the movie promises a feast of jaw-dropping wrongness. And sure enough, The Klansman is both uproariously terrible and consistently distasteful. It’s also, however, quite tedious.
          The story is appropriately florid. In a small southern town populated by poor black folks and foaming-at-the-mouth racist whites (narrative restraint is not the watchword here), a young white woman (Linda Evans) is raped, so the gun-toting townies decide to pin the crime on “uppity” black Garth (Simpson). The town’s sheriff, Track Bascomb (Marvin), improbably a voice of reason and tolerance, tries to protect Garth from a lynch mob, but the fugitive escapes and starts picking off white people with an M-16.
          Meanwhile—there’s always a “meanwhile” in overcooked bad movies—local landowner Breck Stancil (Burton) invokes the ire of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter because he won’t let Klan soldiers search his property for Garth, who may be hiding with Stancil’s predominantly African-American workforce. Soon, the various forces in the story converge in a violent climax. All of this should be trashy fun, but as lifelessly directed by 007 veteran Terence Young, the movie just kind of happens; it feels as if the production team showed up every day and shot the appropriate screenplay pages without any regard for what came before or what might follow.
          Reportedly, one reason for the movie’s flatness is that it’s the faint echo of a potentially more interesting project: Original writer-director Samuel Fuller conceived the piece, using William Bradford Hule’s novel as a foundation, as a full-on KKK story in which the hero would be a Klan member who learns tolerance. Instead, the studio asked for something less provocative, and Fuller walked. The project was further damned by unwise casting: Burton and Marvin were falling-down drunks at this point, and Simpson, whose character is supposed to come across as a justice-dispensing revolutionary, is, to be generous, not an actor.
          Compensating somewhat for the lackluster work by the leads, Character player Cameron Mitchell livens up the picture with his cartoonish villainy as a hateful deputy. Better still, the priceless David Huddleston gives the best performance in the movie (which is admittedly not saying a lot) as the town mayor, who moonlights as the “Exalted Cyclops” of the local Klan chapter. Yet even Huddleston can’t do anything with hopeless dialogue: “Don’t look at me like I’m the heavy. You want to know who the heavy is, I’ll tell you. It’s the system. And we’re all of us caught up in it.”
          Unbelievably, the dialogue gets even worse later. Lola Falana plays a young black woman visiting her mother, one of Stancil’s employees, so the rednecks presume she’s sleeping with Stancil and therefore rape her to make a point. “They think I’m your brown comfort,” she says. “They wanted to foul your nest.” Yet perhaps the most (morbidly) fascinating aspect of this whole disastrous enterprise is Burton’s excruciating performance—he’s exactly this awful in plenty of other movies, but The Klansman features his spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at a Southern accent, which sounds different in almost every scene.
          Given how punishingly bad every frame of this movie is, it’s a wonder no one thought to chop it down to a 90-minute highlight reel, because if The Klansman moved faster, it would at least have the quality of a fever dream. Instead, it lumbers along for 112 bludgeoning minutes, forcing viewers to soak up every nuance of its terribleness. In this case, more is less.

The Klansman: FREAKY

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Monte Walsh (1970)


          A lovingly photographed ode to an aging cowboy trying to make sense of his life in the waning days of the Old West era, Monte Walsh is evocative and humane despite glacial pacing and murky storytelling. One of the few films directed by the venerable cinematographer William A. Fraker, the picture looks fantastic from start to finish, with dusty scenes of hard men battling nature plus glamorously lit romantic vignettes; furthermore, the production design makes every costume and prop feel like a real object that’s been used for tough work. The authenticity continues through to the dialogue, which is effective in an unpretentious sort of way (“I ain’t gonna spit on my whole life,” the title character says when faced with the prospect of becoming a performer in a Wild West sideshow). The big problem with Monte Walsh is that for all of its insight and texture, the picture doesn’t have a particularly strong story.
          Based on a novel by Jack Schaefer, the tale concerns graying cowboys Monte (Lee Marvin) and Chet (Jack Palance), who struggle to find work as employers including straight-shooting rancher Cal (Jim Davis) lose market share to omnivorous conglomerates. Meanwhile, the boys fall into a violent ongoing rivalry with Shorty (Mitch Ryan), a younger man with a bad temper and a buffoonish tendency to show off his riding skills. Monte also has an ongoing quasi-romance with a French prostitute, Martine (Jeanne Moreau), and even though they talk about settling down, she knows Monte will be out riding horses until he dies.
          There’s a somber quality to the whole picture, as if every character knows a gloomy future awaits, and the film uses irony for effective counterpoint (Mama Cass sings a wistful theme song, “The Good Times Are Coming,” which is appears as a sad refrain throughout the movie). Unfortunately, even though many moments are touching, there’s a fundamental lack of psychological clarity, so heavy scenes of characters facing their demons are perplexing. For instance, what is Monte trying to prove during the movie’s biggest action scene, when he breaks a bronco over the course of a wild ride that destroys half a town?
         Despite the handicap of a muddy script, Marvin and Palance give plaintive performances, and the supporting cast is strong. Though Moreau is badly underused in one of her few English-language pictures (Monte Walsh isn’t terribly concerned with the lives of women), Davis, Ryan, Billy “Green” Bush, Matt Clark, and Bo Hopkins all essay vivid frontier types. FYI, Hollywood took another crack at Schafer’s novel when Monte Walsh was remade for television in 2003, this time with Tom Selleck in the title role.

Monte Walsh: FUNKY

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976)


An idiotic farce set in the Old West, this embarrassing misfire stars two of cinema’s great offscreen drunkards, Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed. Yet while Marvin’s role as a frontier schemer is in the vicinity of his Oscar-winning Cat Ballou wheelhouse, Englishman Reed is embarrassingly miscast as an inebriated Indian, mugging his way through a cringe-inducing performance complete with grotesque body makeup. The overstuffed storyline involves con men Sam (Marvin), Joe (Reed), and Billy (Strother Martin) trying to strong-arm money out of their former partner in crime, Jack (Robert Culp), who hid his criminal past to begin a career in politics, but of course Sam, Joe, and Billy are too stupid to properly manipulate their slick confrere. Hardy-har. For no particular reason, Joe kidnaps a bevy of whores from the titular cathouse, including one he names Thursday (Kay Lenz), and for no particular reason, she falls for the decades-older Sam. The lecherous nonsense eventually leads to a protracted chase scene, with the heroes driving a jalopy across the desert while—oh, who cares? This is one of those “madcap” comedies in the vein of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), with incessant slapstick noise thrown at the audience instead of actual jokes; virtually everyone gets punched in the face at least once, even Elizabeth Ashley, who plays Culps wife. So rather than being amusing, The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday provides the painful experience of watching actors who deserve better marking time in drivel. One hopes Marvin and Reed at least had fun imbibing their paychecks. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday: LAME

Monday, March 28, 2011

Pocket Money (1973)


          So leisurely it frequently abandons momentum in favor of easygoing vignettes, this pseudo-Western starring Paul Newman and the incomparable Lee Marvin is notable as the last screenwriting credit Terrence Malick notched before launching his celebrated directing career. Although Malick is not the sole writer on the picture, Pocket Money strongly reflects his observational approach, most notably in the piquant dialogue of everyday American losers. So, for instance, when Newman boasts that “If anybody cheats me, I'm gonna hit him with a Stillson wrench and shove him in a coal hopper,” the line is not only resonant Americana but also an echo of similar wordplay in a previous Malick-scripted picture, Deadhead Miles (1972). As directed by unobtrusive journeyman Stuart Rosenberg, Pocket Money puts the delicate textures of Malick’s writerly voice front and center, albeit to the dismay of viewers who value a strong narrative over local color—even calling this movie “slight” would promise more substance than it actually delivers, although that’s not meant as a derogatory remark.
          Newman and Marvin play contemporary cowboys whose guilelessness makes them easy prey for a sleazy rancher (Strother Martin, naturally), and the picture tracks the misadventures of the cowboys as they try to earn, cajole, and finally coerce money from their resourceful tormentor. The plot is insignificant, however, because what makes this sleepy piece interesting for patient viewers is the way the leads savor the homespun dialogue. Newman pours on the charm he perfected in his many Southern-fried hits of the ’60s, and Marvin displays the same gift for cornpone comedy that won him an Oscar for Cat Ballou (1965). Martin, though operating well within his self-described “prairie scum” comfort zone, complements the stars nicely as the villain, and M*A*S*H guy Wayne Rogers contributes an unexpectedly randy turn. So while Pocket Money generates very little excitement in the sense of traditional narrative, it offers lots of personality.

Pocket Money: FUNKY

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Emperor of the North Pole (1973)


          The opening moments of this Depression-era action story set the disjointed mood. After Marty Robbins sings a corny theme song over a montage of a freight train barreling through the wilderness, the train pulls up to a water tower, and a hobo sneaks aboard one of the junctions between cars. Once the train restarts, a thuggish railroad cop known as Shack (Ernest Borgnine) spots the hobo and slams the poor schmuck in the head with a lead hammer, sending him under the train to become a mutilated corpse. Then composer Frank De Vol’s weirdly upbeat music pops in, like the whole sequence was a comedy vignette. As proven by peerless movies like The Dirty Dozen (1967), director Robert Aldrich knew his way around action sequences. However, he often erred tonally, and Emperor of the North Pole shows off the strengths and weaknesses of his filmmaking. The sequences of danger on the rails are thrilling, but the overlong movie wobbles awkwardly between lighthearted adventure and brutal suspense. After far too much preamble, the main storyline pits Shack against a veteran rail rider called “A No. 1” (Lee Marvin), who sets out to become the first hobo to ride Shack’s train without getting killed. As a result, most of the picture comprises scenes of A. No. 1 and a young cohort, Cigarette (Keith Carradine), hopping on and off the train in between violent skirmishes with Shack.
          Had the movie been whittled down to just 90-ish minutes of exciting mano-a-mano action, the flick would have been killer, but instead, viewers get meandering scenes of A No. 1 hanging out in hobo camps and harassing Baptists. Marvin is his usual cruelly cool self, all grizzled attitude and manly presence, and Carradine complements him with overbearing youthful arrogance, but it’s mostly the bad guy’s show. As played by boisterous bull Borgnine, Shack is memorable monster, defending his train with insane vigor—in one especially vivid throwaway scene, Shack glances at a coworker who just died on the job and growls the epithet “useless bastard” before getting back to his own work. Despite its flaws, Emperor of the North Pole is solid stuff for the intended audience: The Oregon location photography by old Hollywood pro Joseph Biroc is impressive, the actors do a fair number of their own stunts on moving trains, and the final confrontation between Borgnine and Marvin is frightening for its sheer malevolence.

Emperor of the North Pole: FUNKY