And now a look back at a time when Hollywood fought for America and liberty, not against it. There are notable exceptions today, but sadly the word “exception” does apply.

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Much more below the fold…

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Lee Marvin was wounded in Saipan.

Charles Bronson was a tailgunner.

Julie Child was a spy.

Charles Durning was a U.S. Army Ranger at Normandy

One-eyed peter Falk memorized the eye chart so he could become a Marine.

Carroll O’Connor was in the Merchant Marines.

Jack Palance was in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Walter Matthau, Robert Stack, Rock Hudson, Jeff Chandler, David Niven, Steve McQueen, Tyrone Power, George Kennedy, Rod Serling, Eddie Albert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., William Holden, Paul Newman, Ernest Borgnine, Brian Keith, and so many more…

It’s hard to pin down exactly what films qualify for this category – one list of doomsday movies includes dozens of very different films, with plots ranging from the world blowing up to society suddenly changing dramatically into something unfamiliar, dystopian, and creepy.  A documentary about the last two-and-a-half years would qualify as the latter.

From the Cold War nuke paranoia of Fail Safe (1964) to the “Oh s***, it’s a comet” catastrophes envisioned by flicks like Deep Impact (1998), they run the gamut.  Sometimes society is teetering – think California – and sometimes it has fallen completely into the abyss – think Detroit.

But at their best, these movies show us something about ourselves and about enduring truths, challenging our intellects and asking vital questions about the nature of man.  But mostly they’re just cool and fun to watch.

And sometimes they are Zardoz (1974).  This is an utterly insane 70’s freakshow starring Sean Connery that can best be described as what it must be like to party with Anthony Weiner and Eric Massa in Thailand with an endless supply of bad Woodstock acid and a substantial NEA performance art grant.  Gotta respect any movie that offers the straight-faced line, “The gun is good, the penis is evil.”  

Now, here is my list of the Top 10.  I accept that haters are gonna hate – and nit-pick about the cosmic question of “what IS an apocalypse film? – so, like it or lump it, these are mine in descending order.  They aren’t all great – they are all worth a watch on some Sunday afternoon after the Democrats have yakked about their ruinous policy preferences on the Sunday morning shows and gotten you thinking about disasters:

10. Soylent Green (1973):  In the late 60s and 70s, Charlton Heston was the Hollywood honey badger, in that he just didn’t care what crazy movies he made, and as a result he was pretty badass.  He made several end-of-the-world flicks, including The Omega Man (1971) and another one that promises to appear later on this list.  If you were a kid in the 70s, back when the broadcast networks showed movies, you’d be up watching Heston because he was always in something that kicked ass.

Here, the world hasn’t fully ended but it’s pretty screwed up.  The environment is wrecked and people are living packed together like sweaty sardines because of over-population.  There’s also a small cadre of the super-wealthy living the high life – sort of like Al Gore’s life would be if he still lived like a Persian emperor as he does now but if he wasn’t full of shit about global warming.

Just remember – Soylent Green is people!

9. Escape From New York (1979):   Call me Snake.  Here, New York City has become a giant prison and Snake Plissken has to go in and rescue the kidnapped President.  The President in the film is a snooty, dissembling tool with delusions of competence.  You may fill in your own comment here: _____________________.

Yeah, EFNY is probably technically not an apocalypse film, but you’re technically not paying me for my opinions so you’ll take what’s given to you and like it.  This is a cool flick, made on a shoestring yet looking like a million bucks.  Check out the edgy electronic score too – director John Carpenter composed it himself.  There’s also a lump in the throat moment – the twin towers of the World Trade Center play a key role.

Oh, and yeah – there’s a heapin’ helpin’ of Borgnine!

8.  The Last Man on Earth (1964):  This is a Vincent Price movie, filmed in Italy for like $25 and change, that is everything the Will Smith, big-budget crap-fest remake I Am Legend (2007) was not – like “good” and “interesting” and “not stupid.”

You can see the inspiration for the zombie films that would follow as Price, a still-human survivor of a terrible plague, battles hordes of shambling vampires.  The black-and-white cinematography makes the whole world alien and creepy.  It’s pretty disturbing.  Check out this hard-to-find cult classic.

7.  28 Days Later (2003) and 28 Weeks Later (2007):  A couple of zombie/disease hybrids, these are quite different films.  The first is small in scale and personal, the second large scale and much more big-picture.  Both involve horrifically violent beasts terrorizing the normal people of England, and as such are difficult to distinguish from the news.

Both suffer from a weird anti-military bias.  The first has the survivors stumbling on a bunch of soldiers who go nuts and lose all discipline in about 30 days.  That seems a bit quick.  The second has the protagonists, through gross stupidity, ignore the military’s strict and, frankly, smart rules and thereby cause the infection to break out again.  When the military moves to, you know, kill the mad, blood-crazed zombies, we’re supposed to feel bad for the protagonists WHO CAUSED IT TO HAPPEN IN THE FIRST PLACE BY BEING IDIOTS.  Yeah, like our liberal overlords, the filmmakers blame the competent.

But these flaws are exceeded by haunting imagery of an empty England and by the total lack of sentimentality by the filmmakers.  Also, the first film’s scenes of the survivors trying to fight off hordes of zombies with rakes and bats is a powerful reminder the importance of the Second Amendment.  They’ll take my gun when they pry it out of my cold, living dead hand.

6. Logan’s Run (1976):  This one is loads of fun.  Hot girls, cool guns, a bright color palette for the space-age fashions the characters model – yeah, what more could a real man want?  Well, a coherent story and special effects that weren’t developed in a garage would be nice, but no matter – Logan’s Run is a great ride.

The post-apocalyptic world is kept at bay by giant domes built long before by the long-forgotten ancestors of the pleasure-seeking, hedonistic and crypto-fascist young people.  They not only don’t trust anyone over 30, they either get the oldsters to perform what seems to be a fatal anti-gravity interpretive dance or shoot them for defying the government.  No one works; everything is provided for them.  It’s a city of parasites under absolute control.  It sounds like a liberal fantasy; you expect Al Gore to waddle out and berate everyone else for selfishly whining about having to die at one score and ten and then heading off to his 60^thbirthday party.

The highlight is when Michael York tells what is apparently Will Ferrell in his earliest role to “Run, runner!”  The remake will be released in 2014, which is awesome because remakes are always better than the original…

5.  Panic in the Year Zero (1962):  This little-known flick focuses on a family on vacation in the country when a nuclear war breaks out.  It’s awesome not because of special effects or a big budget but because of its small scale – the family and a few outsiders are the majority of the focus.  Things get brutal quickly, and our heroes do too.  It’s a nice reminder about why every citizen should take full advantage of the Founder’s wisdom in enacting our Second Amendment.  You better be ready to protect yourself or you will be supplying goods and services – all kinds of services, as this surprisingly frank for its day film shows – to the savages.  The survivors will be those who aren’t burdened by a distorted liberal view of morality that requires them to crawl defenseless before others.

Ray Milland is the father – it’s somewhat jarring to see a guy as the hero who looks like a regular adult instead of the kind of manscaped, metrosexual TV man-children we usually see on-screen today.  This one actually should be remade (watch it and tell me you couldn’t see Big Hollywood’s own Adam Baldwin as the father), but sadly its tough-minded moral message would fly totally over the heads of today’s Hollywood executive doofus contingent.

4. A Boy and His Dog (1975):  Sold as “a rather kinky tale of survival,” this hot mess of a movie – it has a pre-Crockett Don Johnson and nary a Tubbs in sight – is, like many of these, truly a ’70s artifact.

It’s just weird, with freaky survivors, a psychic talking terrier, and other strange stuff.  The highlight is the last scene where Don keeps his pimp hand strong.  I suggest drinking before watching it.  And during.  And after.

3.  Dawn of the Dead (1978) and (2004):  Similar and far superior to the 28 films, the original and the remake are definitive zombie and definitive apocalypse movies.  Interestingly, both also track the media and its response to the world-wide zombie meltdown – those are some of the most interesting and scariest scenes.  You see the world falling apart, and that’s almost as frightening as the monsters themselves.

Visually, the 2004 remake is as smooth as the 1978 original was ragged.  I have aesthetic objections to running zombies, and the jarring editing is annoying, but the remake is very, very creepy and very, very bleak.  But the original is an amazing document of the 1970s.  People who did not live through that decade think of it as disco music and leisure suits.  It was, as we see here, really a time of linoleum, fluorescent lights, and JC Penney stores.  There is no sparkle to the Pittsburgh suburbs where this was filmed – and no sparkle to the places where 99.999% of Americans lived in the 70s.  No movie feels to me more like those years than DotD.

George Romero was always a terrible filmmaker.  He lucked into a classic with Night of the Living Dead and with this one too – just look at the total pieces of crap his subsequent films all were.  Here, though, his education movie background is perfect for this story.  It’s shot like a film you might see in your science class in junior high in 1977.  And it totally works.

As a story, though, it really is genius.  Put aside all the nonsense, post-release interpretation by shiftless university assistant professors about how this movie is really a powerful critique of consumerism.  What a load of revisionist crap.  Romero clearly thought, “It’d be pretty cool for some survivors to hole-up in a mall with M16s and blast some zombies and maybe some bikers too!”  And it is.

2. The Planet of the Apes (1968):  Forget the silly sequels and the remakes, reboots, and retreads of recent years – the original is where it’s at.  Heston is back, and as if being the head of the NRA wasn’t enough to solidify as America’s greatest hero after Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan, then he nails it with this incredibly cheesy, utterly unforgettable classic.

Featuring one of the Top Ten twist endings of all time, this Rod Serling-penned flick is one of the most entertaining movies ever made.  I dare you to start watching and try to stop – you can’t.  You’ll just sit there, mouthing the great lines along with the movie.  Now get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty liberals!

1. Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior (1982):

While the exact pole position of the other films might be subject to some small amount of debate, this one is not.  The Road Warrior is not only one of the greatest apocalyptic films ever but one of the best movies ever, period.  Let’s start with the amazing – and scarily relevant – opening narration:

Their leaders talked and talked and talked but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled the cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear.

Gee, sound like any Western civilizations you know?  Totally unrelated – my short-term investment advice is to buy ammo.

Mad Max, the first of the series, takes place at the tail end of the disintegration of society; there are still some remnants of order left, mostly in the form of an incredibly young and incredibly non-psychotic Mel Gibson. It’s hard to watch Mel of three decades ago with the knowledge of his recent decline – you keep expecting him to turn to the camera and blame society’s collapse on “the Jews” and his uppity girlfriend.

Its wild chases and Aussie B-movie vibe made it a drive-in favorite back when, well, there were still drive-ins.  But its sequel The Road Warrior took it to a whole new level of action and Campbellian archetypal awesomeness.  Certainly, it has one of the great movie openings of all time as the camera backs out of the V8 Interceptor’s roaring supercharger intake.

What makes these movies great (I’m going to ignore the Thunderdome sequel) is not just the world they imagine, or the bizarre characters (freaky Wez, the creepy Humungous, the dentally challenged Gyro Captain), or even the unparalleled action scenes – the chase at the end of Road Warrior is probably the most consistently exciting half-hour in movies.  Like all these movies, they are at their best when they reveal and critique our society’s own assumptions – especially stupid liberal ones.

These are intensely conservative films.  In Mad Max, Max is a force for order – even when all order collapses and he takes matters into his own hands.  In The Road Warrior, Max is totally burned out until he realizes that civilization is worth defending.  But not all the survivors feel that way – despite their leader Papagallo’s speech about the need to defend themselves and their future from the barbarian horde, a fair chunk of the band wants to surrender, preferring the lies of the Humungous over the reality of defending themselves.  It’s always astonishing how some people are so eager to submit to tyrants.

As the Humungous explains to the less cunning Wez, “Fear is our ally.”  He relies on cowardice and moral weakness among the defenders of civilization to bring them down – as do our enemies today, with the eager assistance of their fellow travelers.  It is no coincidence that The Road Warrior came out during the height of the Soviet-blessed disarmament movement of the early 80s, where gutless, half-witted “peace” activists would have turned us over to history’s greatest murderers if not for the courage of Reagan, Thatcher and the millions of regular Americans and others who believed in peace through strength, not peace through surrender.

The Road Warrior shows us that civilization is worth defending, and that it can only be defended with force, not cowardice-masking bumpersticker pieties about coexisting and violence-never-solving-anything.  The sacrifice of Papagallo and (almost) Max – which mirror those of our real-life warriors of the past and present – show that courage and honor are our most powerful weapons.  Note that I use the word “our” deliberately – The Road Warrior is about Western Civilization in the face of barbarity, and its lessons are as vital today – and as lost on weak-willed, pacifist losers – as they were nearly 30 years ago.

Post-apocalyptic films show us a great deal about our society by showing us what happens when critical components of it are removed.  Sadly, some of these films today look less like science fiction and more like documentaries.  But the ones listed here are all worth checking out – even Zardoz, which has the advantage of freaking you out without showing up on drug tests.

And I again repeat my short-term investment advice for dealing when the Humungous and Co. show up – buy ammo.  No one in human history has ever complained about having too much ammo when it hit the fan.

Contrast that to the soul-crushing dismay when you realize that what you hoped would be a great couple of hours is instead going to be a dreary death-march of clichés, lazy writing and bad music broken only occasionally when you glance longingly at your watch and wish you could have your $11.50 and two hours back. 

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You know a great opening when you see it; if fact, you feel it.  My definition of “opening” is rather loose.  An opening can go up to, or past the credits, or it may just be the credit sequence itself.  Some openings are rather long, 10-15 minutes.  Some are just a couple of minutes.  There is no one formula for a great opening – the ten listed here as my personal favorites are as different from each other as Democratic Party governance is from competent leadership.  But there are some common threads.  A great opening tells you something about the story you will see.  It might be in words of formal narration, or a sequence that takes you into the story, or in some cases it’s just a few images.  There may be prominent music, or little or none.  But when the opening is over, you are ready – you understand enough to begin the journey.  And, more importantly, you are eager to go. 

It’s easy – and serves an important purpose – to point out where Hollywood fails.  But it’s a special pleasure to point out where it got it just perfect.  Here are my Top 10 favorite movie openings: 

1. The Guns of Navarone (1961) 

This is one of the great “men on a mission” WWII movies of the Sixties, a rousing story of a band of commandos led by Gregory Peck trying to destroy the titular cannons on a German-occupied Greek island.  This 5 ½ minute opening sequence is an example of narration and music in action.  Over beautiful shots of Greek ruins intercut with newsreel footage, James Robertson Justice provides a detailed prologue setting up the story (though, sadly, the narration track is not on YouTube) while Dimitri Tiomkin’s Oscar nominates score plays quietly. 

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It’s one of the screen’s great orchestral themes, and as the narration ends and the opening credits begin it sweeps up into its full glory – rousing, majestic and stirring.  You watch the Cyrillic-style star credits flash by – Greg Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn – as that score plays and you know you’re about to watch one of Hollywood’s adventures.  

2. Alien (1979) 

Ridley Scott’s extraterrestrial terrorfest is one of only two movies that every really, truly scared me.  In contrast to the crowded, familiar outer space of Star Wars (see below), Scott’s universe is silent and cold, at once claustrophobic and massive. 

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With the terrible emptiness of space as the background, the opening credits leisurely form the title “Alien” as Jerry Goldsmith’s superbly creepy and jarring score sets you on edge.  Audiences had never seen or heard anything like it, and it set exactly the right tone of dread and disorientation that would permeate one of the greatest movies ever made.  

3. The Wild Bunch (1969) 

A band of cavalry troopers led by the heroic William Holden slowly ride into a dusty western town – they’re clearly the good guys, right?  Director Sam Peckinpah takes it nice and slow while dropping hints – a bunch of kids torment some scorpions, and when the credits come on screen Peckinpah photo-reverses Holden’s image, like Holden is the opposite of what he appears to be. 

Holden escorts an elderly lady across the street.  Ernest Borgnine even offers to carry her boxes – how nice of him!  Then they enter the bank and draw guns as Holden throws a civilian to the floor and orders his men, “If they move – kill ‘em!”  And then they shoot their way out of town in a bloody gun battle that leaves criminals, bounty hunters and a score of innocent civilians strewn across the streets. 

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Can you say “Anti-heroes?”  Well, you don’t have to – after that amazing opening, you knew that you were watching something entirely new.  And you knew that it wasn’t going to have a happy ending. Just an awesome one. 

4. Se7en (1995)

Here, director David Fincher wants to take us into the mind of a serial killer, but not in the same way a thousand hack directors had.  Se7en’s opening credits, set to Trent Reznor’s “Closer,” are displayed over a series of icky, freaky images – many of which, in retrospect, turn out to relate to the story to come (Look for the shot of the book discussing pregnancy!).  You know you’re on you’re way to crazyland, and you know you have no idea what’s going to happen next. 

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The credits are not a particularly delightful experience, and neither is the film.  But, undeniably, there is nothing else like it, and Fincher created an opening that was worthy of it. 

5. Goldfinger (1964)

There had to be a James Bond film on this list, and the most James Bond film of all James Bond film is Goldfinger.  The third of the series (you can read much more about it in Lawrence Meyer’s Big Hollywood series), it set in concrete many of the Bond traditions that would follow through five decades of  Bonds up through today. 

A Bond opening has three parts.  The first is the MGM lion roaring and the dancing dot that becomes the barrel of a gun aimed right at 007, who pivots at the last second and fires, followed by the animated sheet of blood pouring down the screen as the dot finds a corner and expands into the cold open action sequence. 

The opening sequence rarely has anything to do with the plot (though the recent ones are going in a different direction).  Here, Bond infiltrates an enemy facility disguised with a duck on his head.  Yeah, unfortunately there’s a bit of silliness in some of these, but it fades into a nice fight in a hotel room (where the amoral Bond uses a femme fatale’s head as a shield) and gives us one of the earliest hero quips: “Shocking, absolutely shocking,” he remarks about the baddie he just electrocuted. 

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Now, the third part of a Bond opening is the main titles, and these – with the legendary Shirley Bassey singing the best of the Bond themes – are just great.  Scenes of the film play out on the golden skin of a naked model as the credits play.  That pretty much sums up our James Bond.  Pretty girl, beware of this heart of gold! 

6. Star Wars (1977) 

In nerdspeak, it’s Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  But since I saw it in the theater, and I don’t put up with geek nonsense, this was, is and ever shall be known only as Star Wars.  And seeing it in the theater – as well as being around for the incredibly revolutionary effect Star Wars had on the movies – makes this legendary opening all the more memorable.  

We sat in the theater, the lights go down, the 20^th Century Fox intro played followed by the sky blue titles on a black field reading “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”  Then BLAM!  John Williams’s unforgettable score hits you.  The iconic Star Wars graphic appears on the screen followed by the written explanation of the nonsensical plot.  Then the camera falls, a musical freefall supported by the score, and BLAM!   We are in a space battle with starships the likes we had never seen before that day in 1977.  

Maybe you had to be there…. 

7. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Another terrific Sixties WWII “men on a mission” movie, but it could not be more different from Guns of Navarone in story, tone or opening.  It opens cold as a hearse enters a military prison.  The inmates are rioting as a condemned prisoner is being led to his doom.  On the gallows stands Lee Marvin as Major Reisman, who watches the proceedings with grim detachment, pausing only to glance at the priest’s Bible with a raised eyebrow.  The sentence completed, he departs.  A title card announces we are in London in 1944.  Reisman then gets his mission from our old pal, General Ernest Borgnine, in a great scene, snappy scene.  The jousting among the characters is marvelous – we learn just what kind of man Reisman is not just from dialogue describing him but from his actions.  He then returns to the prison to meet his team of convicts.  Only then, about 10 minutes in, do the credits play as the sergeant introduces each one with character name, crime and sentence. 

In one economical, fluid opening, we meet and understand the hero, learn about his challenge and get thoroughly introduced to each of the Dozen.  Now that’s how a movie is made! 

8. Gone With the Wind (1939)

Just a title card, credits and the lush, amazing score of composer Max Steiner provide a worthy opening to what many consider the greatest American film ever made.  GWTW was a huge event when released, and in those days they felt they had to make a film worthy of the hype.  It was also better than three hours long.  Sure, critics today have problems with it – they probably feel it lacks alienated hipster characters whining about their feelings, and they astonishingly expect a 70+ year old movie to share the same lockstep vision of political correctness that characterizes the Hollywood of today (conveniently forgetting the fact that GWTW was revolutionary in the dignity it bestowed on many black characters, a dignity you will not find in the average gangster rap video or Martin Lawrence “funny black guy in a fat suit” sequel.) 

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The opening is amazing.  Steiner’s music begins with a flourish that evokes the Old South with a hint of “Dixie” then turns into the sweeping, grand “Tara’s Theme” as a title card sets the stage and then the credits roll over an idealized backdrop of a life soon to be swept away.  As a son of the Union whose family’s home town of Chambersburg was burned by Confederates (and whose great-great grandfather preceded me as a U.S. Army cavalryman by 125 years), I have no illusions about where the pretty life the characters live early in the movie came from, but the opening still perfectly captures the sense of these characters whose way of life would be “gone with the wind” of history during the course of this magnificent film. 

9. Magnum Force (1973)

Yeah, this one tells you all you need to know about the next two and a half hours of awesome, prime Eastwood mayhem.  

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A disembodied hand raises up and holds a Smith & Wesson .44 magnum revolver over a red background for a couple minutes as the credits run and Lalo Schifrin’s awesome, swingin’ n’ jazzy theme plays.  That’s it.  That’s all. 

Then the thumb pulls back the hammer, the looming barrel swings toward the audience, and Clint intones his famous “Do you feel lucky?” line from the original Dirty Harry.  Wait a beat.  BLAM! 

Rad.  Well, a man’s got to know his limitations.  And if you don’t dig that opening, it’s your manhood that’s limited. 

10. The Road Warrior (1981) 

Wind.  “My life fades.  My vision dims.  All that remains…. are memories.  I remember a time of chaos.  Ruined dreams, this wasted land.  But most of all, I remember the Road Warrior”  

With these words, uttered by the now elderly Feral Kid, one of the best action films ever made begins.  You don’t need to have seen the original Mad Max – the narration and footage bring you up to speed on the scenario, and on Max, and on why he went out to the desert…. 

But the narration isn’tall.  No, it’s just the beginning, because as the narration ends and director George Miller’s camera swoops down onto the endless road, the white lines shooting past, into darkness as a roar overtakes you.  And the roar gets louder and louder, and then the camera pulls back out of a tunnel, but it’s not a tunnel at all – it’s the yawning mouth of the supercharger on Max’s car, “the last of the V8 Interceptors.”  And we are right in the midst of Max’s latest asphalt battle for his life. 

Okay Hollywood, that’s how it’s done.

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Mark Levin features the Big Hollywood article discussing recent calls to keep Ernest Borgnine from winning a SAG Award because of comments he made about the film “Brokeback Mountain”.

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You know, sometimes you just want to go, have a drink or two, or three, or ten, and then sit in a movie theater and tune out the seemingly endless parades of nimrods, pinkos and sanctimonious deadbeats who make up so much of our society today.  You just want some guys to come on the screen and to do and say some funny stuff.  Maybe you want an explosion or two, perhaps a gratuitous shower scene – strike that, as shower scenes are never gratuitous.  Unless it’s a dude.  Or Kathy Bates.

The point is the last thing you want after a Dos XX prep and handing over $11.75 each for yourself and your life partner/designated driver is for a bunch of Hollywood half-wits to stop the fun to give you a PowerPoint briefing on their insights into modern politics – without even the PowerPoint.  And it appears that this is exactly what The Other Guys intends to do.

Look.  Will Ferrell is an intermittently amusing guy with a bizarre sense of humor and an ability to be oddly compelling in his usual role as an utterly unself-aware buffoon.  However, I’d put my level of eagerness to drop $23.50 for the privilege of hearing out his political views at somewhere between passing a kidney stone made of broken glass and helping Ernest Borgnine with his bi-monthly Brazilian wax.

Someone out there might be interested in seeing Ferrell’s phallocentric George Bush play – they pimped the stupid thing on HBO enough – but I’m not one of them.  I have plenty of geniuses providing me the full benefit of their lefty echo-chamber reinforced clichés on Twitter every day.  I don’t need to pay for them – there are countless dumbasses out there who give it away for free.

The problem isn’t that Will Ferrell wants to talk about politics on stage or on the screen.  It’s that I don’t want to see it in The Other Guys.  Let’s leave out the fact that the message itself appears to be a confused mishmash of pseudo-populist ire and hazily understood recent history.  I just don’t want to deal with it in a Will Ferrell comedy.   Hell, I’m not being unreasonable here.  I’m willing to tolerate having that Marky Mark guy in the movie – that’s a major concession for a straight man.

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So, now I and I’m guessing a significant number of other conservative folks are going to have to sit this one out.  Will the filmakers even notice?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  But the consequences of alienating at least half your audience with some free-form pinko propagandizing will only grow more consequential over time.

Now, not so many years ago – before sites like Big Hollywood, as here, let the cat out of the bag on lefty sucker-punchery – our number would have been small.  No one would think to warn us, mostly because to the extent that most mainstream critics would notice these politics they would probably find them not nearly leftist enough.  Even now, the Rolling Stone review – yeah, Rolling Stone is still a thing, if you can believe it – does not even mention The Other Guys’ politics.  Hacky puff-pieces whitewash it.  But then, “Hollywood journalism” is a contradiction in terms – like the phrases “Democratic fiscal responsibility” and “Lady Gaga’s talent.”

If it weren’t for the alternative media, we’d have walked into the theaters, sat down, quietly popped the tops on our beers – everyone does that, right? – and stared wide-eyed and smiling until … WHAM!  The liberal sucker punch would have landed.  And we never saw it coming.

Well, we see it coming now, and there are quite a few of us who are a bit reluctant to walk right into a left cross.  The point is not that Hollywood should not make left-wing movies – though it shouldn’t, considering leftism’s unbroken track record of total failure and human misery.  The point is that it should not cater to the delusions of the pampered stars and producers who think that years of toiling in detergent commercials and taking roles as “Second Delivery Man” before hitting it big have provided them with unique, valuable insights that simply must be shared with their unwilling, unsuspecting audience.

You want to make a left-wing film?  Make it, but be honest about it.  Let people know.  Spread the word.  Sit there during one of those insipid Access Hollywood pseudo-interviews, tent your fingers, lean your enormous movie star head into the camera and say, “In this movie, I don’t hold back my poorly articulated thoughts about how the ownership of the means of production should reside in the hands of the proletariat.  Plus, I do some really hilarious bits involving farting nuns.”

If I want preaching, I’ll go to church.  When I go to a Will Ferrell movie, I want to laugh.  I want to drink my beer, not feel like I need to huck it at the screen.  And, while you’re at it, no subtitles or “Fin” freeze-frames either.

You’ve probably experienced the Basterds publicity blitz.  Brad Pitt looks like he stepped out of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. Folks I know who have been around him say he really is a pleasant and laid-back guy, and these are hardly the characteristics of a beady-eyed killer.  Creepy Eli Roth, taking some time off from directing his degenerate torture movies, is just a leering clown – he looks like he should be squatting in the back of his Ford panel van offering Tootsie Rolls to passing tweens.  And B.J. Novak?  The guy is a hilarious writer and is really funny in The Office , but I’m not buying this cat as the scourge of the Third Reich.

In contrast, Lee Marvin’s tough guy legacy lives on despite the fact that his body rests with thousands of other heroes in Arlington National Cemetery. He earned that right when he was wounded fighting the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific as a Marine private. His Purple Heart is 100% USDA certified proof positive of his prime badassary. Who is the Hollywood tough guy of today who can dare step up to the Lee Marvin plate and take a swing?

Nobody.

Marvin got discharged from the Corps, came home and started doing crummy odd jobs to support himself – his willingness to work instead of freeloading off of others is itself an anachronism in today’s entitlement culture. He found acting and appeared in various supporting roles until he starred in a hit television series (M Squad) and moved on to bigger roles. He even won an Oscar for Cat Ballou.  Serving his country, working hard, honing his craft and winning the recognition of his peers – Lee Marvin’s career had a lot in common with that of fellow all-American badass Ernest Borgnine.   

How tough was the on-screen Marvin? He brawled with the Duke in Donovan’s Reef and stalked Chuck Bronson as a Mountie (!) in Death Hunt. His classic performance as the grizzled First Infantry Division squad leader in The Big Red One has inspired legions of American sergeants.

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Check him out in 1967’s Point Blank. As Walker, a single-minded human tsunami of violence, he smashes through the psychedelic Sixties’ Summer of Love with his .357 and mantra of “I want my money!” This flick works for me on several levels. As a soldier, I respect his character’s fearsome firepower choices; as an attorney, I find his character’s single-minded focus on getting paid inspiring.

Remade in 1999 as the tepid Payback, Point Blank was harder-core than any of the watered-down, focus-tested, suit-neutered, glorified filmstrips that limp out of the studios today and pretend to be edgy.  

For sheer cinematic awesomeness, his performance in The Dirty Dozen as Major Reisman, leader of the cutthroat band of condemned convicts on a mission to solve the Nazi overpopulation crisis, is never going to be matched. It’s actually unfair to even use it as a standard against which to measure subsequent action films. In the teachable moment regarding action movies that accompanies the release of The Inglorious Basterds, The Dirty Dozen would be Sgt. Crowley’s Full Moon beer while Little Quentin’s movie would be the President’s Bud Light.

Marvin was totally fearless, including when he should have been afraid. He did a terrifying musical, Paint Your Wagon, and even had something of a hit song – Wanderin’ Star. Sadly, that little ditty sounds like a duet between Tom Waits and a drunken leaf blower, but it did lead to Marvin being paid homage to by The Simpsons – another great honor he shares with Ernest Borgnine. 

In his personal life, his shacking up with his girlfriend led to a lawsuit that led to the creation of the legal concept of “palimony,” empowering a new generation of golddiggers. And politically, according to the always accurate Wikipedia, he was a liberal Democrat – hey, nobody’s perfect. But if you get shot fighting for this country, dude, for all I care you can vote for a transsexual Marxist cocker spaniel that buys into global warming.

Hollywood needs to look harder for its tough guys because the new ones just can’t cut it. All the fake blood and stylized mayhem in the world are no substitute for the hard edge of real life experience that WWII vets like Lee Marvin and Jimmy Stewart – I should say, Brigadier General James Stewart – brought to their roles.  Today, the critics’ favorite director sends boy toys, torture pornographers and comedians to battle the SS. Yawn.

If Tarantino really wanted to kill Nazis, he could just bore them to death with his endless, pseudo-academic dissertations on so-bad-they-are-just-plain-bad B-movies. Too bad Eisenhower didn’t have a videotape of QT sounding off at Cannes about his personal artistic vision to use to soften up Omaha Beach. But fortunately for us, he had men like Lee Marvin.

Look at his life. Borgnine was born to Italian immigrant parents in 1917, spent 10 years in the Navy, including all of World War II, then bummed around as a second string character actor for another decade before snagging an Oscar in his first major role. The closest thing to life experience one of today’s stars has is a three week stint at $5,000-a-day rehab resort getting seaweed facials and talking about how his daddy never told him he loved him during group therapy while secretly gobbling the vicodins he smuggled in inside the liner of his Louis Vuitton cosmetics case.

You want retro cool? Forget posers like George Clooney and his pathetic attempts to relive the Old School dream with his Ocean movies, skinny ties and succession of cocktail waitress girlfriends. Ernest Borgnine is a 33rd Scottish Rite Mason, was in From Here to Eternity with Frank Sinatra, and was married to Ethel Merman. He married Ethel Merman! Try and top that for retro cool, George. Borgnine not only founded the Old School but is a Professor Emeritus.

What are his politics? Who knows? While his most recent political contribution was to George W. Bush in 2004, Borgnine comes from a time when actors concentrated on acting. He is very active in supporting Navy veterans, but you won’t hear him spouting off about his specific views. He’s a generic patriot – there’s probably a yellow ribbon on the back of his Caddy (you just know he drives a Cadillac) and anyone he sees messing with the flag can probably expect to feel one of those meaty Borgnine paws hard across his pie hole.

But can he act? Hell yes. There is that aforementioned Academy Award for 1955’s Marty. Marty is the heartbreaking story of a homely 30-ish meat cutter and his delicate romance with a plain-Jane schoolteacher. Borgnine is fearless as Marty, lashing out at his own looks and his inability to connect with women in a way no modern star ever could or would. It is a brave performance in a way you simply do not see today, and a performance that is a credit to both Borgnine’s talent and lack of ego.

Marty is about real people and real love, but if it were remade today – and lacking either vampires or a graphic novel pedigree it never would be – you can just imagine the Hollywood weasels’ notes:

Instead of this lonely butcher thing, which is a downer, how about making Marty a swinging TV reporter looking for The One?…And can we rename him Gavin? And let’s make the girl a model – is Kate Hudson busy? We’ll need a non-threatening gay friend for her. And let’s get Gerard Butler as Marty, I mean Gavin. Awesome. I think these changes are really going to test well.

Borgnine’s ten minute supporting role as the general who gives Lee Marvin his suicide mission at the beginning of The Dirty Dozen is like a master’s class in acting. In just a few minutes, he shifts from deadly serious to comic and back while holding his own against arguably the toughest guy ever on screen. Watch his face and his expressions and reactions, then compare his technique to that of today’s actors, whose “performances” seem to consist largely of them standing there staring vacuously and radiating their unnatural beauty. No contest.

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Ernest Borgnine has been in classic Westerns like The Wild Bunch and Bad Day at Black Rock, got capsized in the original Poseidon Adventure and even showed up on SpongeBob SquarePants. Sometimes he was a maybe bit too versatile – this Italian-American portrayed “Ragnar” in The Vikings. Still, he epitomizes the concept of the working actor, with roles ranging from big budget films to parts in what only one grading on a generous curve would label as B movies. He’s had several TV series and a ton of guest shots, including a part in the finale of ER and a memorable appearance in a classic episode of The Simpsons. And if you check out his IMDB site, you’ll find over 200 entries and see that he has three more movies coming out. The dude is 92!

You can have the soulless, polished Berluti loafers that are the stars of today – I’ll take the scuffed character of the old bowling shoes reeking of spilled Budweiser and the feet of a hundred guys with names like Sal and Bob that is Ernest Borgnine.

This is one of my favorite genres, especially when it comes to the smaller, lesser known – or better yet – less respected members of this family. Sure, there’s “Star Trek II,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” “The Sting,” “Man on Fire,” and both “Kill Bill” films – love ‘em all, and so do you, but here are five you may have missed that are even more satisfying than their better known cousins.

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1. Death Wish II (1982) – Michael Winner’s first “Death Wish” (1974) is often mistaken as a revenge film when it’s really a vigilante film. For we purists that distinction matters. The original may show up on all kinds of Top 10 Revenge Film lists but at no time does Bronson’s Paul Kersey look for the thugs who murdered his wife and raped his daughter. What he does do is take it to the streets as an avenging angel to overcome his own sense of helplessness. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great because punks get blown away and liberal critics howl, but a revenger it is not.

Winner’s follow-up, however, is an epic of revenge, one of the most exploitive, manipulative and satisfying movies ever made. Bronson was 60 at the time and at the height of human achievement in pure badassery. Watching The Mighty One, dressed in black from top to bottom, stalk the seedy streets of Los Angeles hunting the punks who raped and murdered his daughter as Jimmy Page’s howling score skews the tone into something surreal is as good as it gets.

The cherry on top? Well, that would be the subtextual viewing pleasure of knowing how much critics hate it.

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2. Act of Violence (1948) – In “The Searchers,” John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards describes his own determination with this famous quote:

Seems like he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter that’ll just keep comin’ on. So we’ll find ‘em in the end, I promise you. We’ll find ‘em. Just as sure as the turnin’ of the earth.

Post-war Los Angeles — when California was still known as “Sunny California,” — and war hero Van Heflin’s done quite well for himself: Nice home, thriving business, cute little son, and best of all, his wife looks exactly like Janet Leigh. Unfortunately, there’s this…

Scrape … scrape … scrape … scrape…

That sound has relentlessly haunted Heflin over an ocean and across America, and now it’s knocking on the front door in the form of Robert Ryan who will have his revenge on Heflin … just as sure as the turnin’ of the earth.

Fred Zinneman directs this splendidly shot, tightly plotted piece of noir that’s deserving of a revival and finally available on DVD. I won’t spoil a drop of story, but the performances are as good as it gets, especially Oscar-winner Mary Astor in a late-career supporting role, and the wrap-up is hugely satisfying on every level. Well worth a Netflix, to say the least.

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3. Coffy (1973) – A masterpiece of blaxploitation thanks to Pam Grier’s ridiculously sexy and determined presence as a nurse out to get The Man who fed her sister contaminated heroin. Every scene reaches for “cool” and delivers. Sure, the acting’s stiff and the action’s over-rehearsed, but with dialogue like this…

Vitroni: Crawl, ni**er!
Coffy: [pulls gun] You want me to crawl, white motherf**ker?
Vitroni: What’re you doing? Put that down.
Coffy: You want to spit on me and make me crawl? I’m gonna piss on your grave tomorrow.

… if you catch me on the right day I’ll tell you “Coffy” is the greatest movie ever made. There’s just something distinctive and sublime about a genre film that aims for a target and hits the bullseye.

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4. Chato’s Land (1972) – Two years before kicking off the “Death Wish” franchise, director Michael Winner and Charles Bronson teamed up for the first time to give the revenge genre a test-drive with this  satisfying and violent Western about a half-breed Apache (Bronson) hunted by a posse after he kills a sheriff in self-defense.

You don’t need me to tell you that some tables find themselves turned and thanks to a splendid supporting cast consisting of Jack Palance, James Whitmore, Ralph Waite, Richard Jordan and  Victor French, there is all kinds of pleasure to be had in that table turn as the posse degenerates into lawlessness and in-fighting.

Imposing over every frame is the stoic and fearsome Bronson whose transformation from a quiet, peaceable man wanting to get home to his family, into a relentless revenging angel with a righteous cause is something few actors could pull off believably.

Acting’s in the eyes, not the affectations … and Bronson made you believe.

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5. Hannie Caulder (1971) – Raquel Welch starred in three outstanding Westerns between 1968 and 1971 — this, “Bandolero!” (1968) and “100 Rifles” (1969). Beyond her stunning physical appearance, Welch is progressively better in each of them and with “Hannie Caulder” impressively carries the film mostly on her own. There to help her is Robert Culp (one of my favorite unheralded actors in one of his best film roles) as a slightly offbeat bounty hunter, but Raquel adds some real brawn to her beauty as a woman determined to learn the way of the gun in order to have her revenge on the three men who raped her and killed her husband.

Burt Kennedy directs and adapted the screenplay, so it’s sure to be a lean, satisfying 85 minutes. Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, Jack Elam and Christopher Lee fill out an excellent supporting cast and a surprisingly (for director Kennedy, anyway) odd sense of humor pervades everything.

An unconventional  film, but more than worthy.