#12:  The Night Stalker (1972)

Don’t look now, baby, but Kolchak’s coming back in style.

38 years ago, on the evening of January 11th, 1972, wearing his signature porkpie hat and seersucker suit, an immortal (and bow-legged) television character strode onto the ABC network and captured more viewers than any television movie had up to that date.  A sequel would quickly follow along with a short-lived series. But thanks to a beautifully crafted script by sci-fi legend Richard Matheson and The Mighty Darren McGavin’s incredible characterization, the immortal Carl Kolchak — newspaper man/monster hunter — had arrived in all his bull-headed, tenacious, intuitive and somewhat arrogant glory.

You see, Carl Kolchak used to be somebody. Once upon a time he soared with the eagles high above most every big city in America soaked in the ink-stained eminence of his beloved profession. Unfortunately, because Carl Kolchak is usually always all about Carl Kolchak, he was also fired from each and every one of those jobs (ten and counting) and today finds himself biding his time for the break that will take him back to the top at a small-time Las Vegas newspaper.

Called back only a couple days into his first vacation in years, Kolchak’s assigned to what looks like the nothing murder of a young woman. The only thing out of the ordinary is that she’s been drained of blood and the only difficulty Kolchak faces in reporting a fairly rote story comes in dealing with all the public officials he’s managed to antagonize over the years — people who would like to see the abrasive reporter run out of town, including the Sheriff (Claude Akins), the District Attorney, and at times, even his own editor, the forever put upon and short-fused Anthony Vincenzo (a perfectly cast Simon Oakland). (more…)

Besides pure heart-warming entertainment value and some of the biggest laughs of any Christmas film, what makes A Christmas Story exceptional is that never before or since has there been another film like it. The offbeat, nostalgic, just shy of plumb story of Ralphie (a brilliant Peter Billingsly), a young boy determined to prevail in his Christmas quest for a BB gun, is a stand alone original. Others have tried, including a ill-conceived sequel, but none comes close. A Christmas Story is lightening in a bottle. A nostalgic look back at childhood perfectly pitched ten-degrees off center that manages to be, at the same time, all things wistful, absurd, abstract, and unforgettable.

Jean Shepard, the film’s warm wonderful narrator, is also responsible for the collection of short stories upon which the movie’s based.  In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash is a series of anecdotes told from the perspective of an adult Ralphie going back to his hometown and reminiscing with people he hasn’t seen in decades. The cobbling together of a script from these stories to create the solid narrative of the film is quite a feat in itself, but it’s Shepard’s unique voice that drives the book and it was director Bob Clark’s genius to capture that voice both literally and figuratively on film.

It’s all about tone, and A Christmas Story is perfectly tuned. (more…)

It always impresses me when an aged actor manages a comeback that is authentic, one based on more than mere nostalgia, one appealing to an entirely new generation of moviegoers. Jackie Gleason spent most of the 1970s appearing in pale television retreads of his 1950s heyday, and for most of that time he was absent from the big screen entirely. A revered comedic master, yes — but nevertheless his career as an innovator and taste-maker seemed long over. Then came Smokey and the Bandit, a fitting capstone to a long career of memorable portrayals and endless belly-laughs.

Born in 1916 in Brooklyn, Gleason was no stranger to tragedy. His sickly brother died when he was three, and his mother died when he was nineteen. But it was his father vanishing that gouged the biggest hole in his soul. “I was about nine when one day my pop didn’t come home,” Gleason said in later years. “A few days before, my mom and he had a violent argument and he took every picture out of the house that had him in it. That should have been the tip-off, but I was too young to know.” (more…)

These days, big-city philistines posing as cultural elites call it “flyover country.” From the comfort of a private jet, it looks like a vast ocean of emptiness. And yet, every election day, media newsrooms find themselves grudgingly painting that part of the map red — blood red.

To them, the American hinterland is part Deliverance, part Raising Arizona. Toothless gas-station attendants. Frumpy diner waitresses. Motor-home brothels hedging the highways. In the Heat of the Night racist police officers on the prowl, yee-haw! Ignorant picnicking churchgoers spewing toxic barbecue fumes into the pristine blue sky. Country-music lovin’ high school students destined to grow up into unwashed, uncouth, uneducated truckers.

Coast-bound libs fancy the South as kinda like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but with Wal-Marts. Flyover country. A nightmare realm.

Well, back in the summer of 1977, flyover country was pissed. The nation they loved was being run into the ground by the jet-setters. Skyrocketing inflation. Rampant unemployment. Plummeting GDP. Crushing misery index. Multiple oil crises. Vanishing trade surpluses. A wretched President. Ordinary people were scared and angry, looking for — what’s the word? — oh yeah, “change.” Spare or otherwise. (more…)