Mr. Beaks Has Big Warner Archive News! Find Out Which '70s Cult Classic Is Available At Last! Also, 10 Free Discs Up For Grabs!

Before I get into my write-ups for two of the Warner Archive's most noteworthy April titles, a couple of things: 1) We've got five copies each of Ray Enright's THE RETURN OF THE BAD MEN and George Sidney's THOUSANDS CHEER to give away. The former title is a western starring Randolph Scott and Robert Ryan, while the latter is an all-star musical headed up by Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson (and featuring the likes of Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Lena Horne, Mickey Rooney and Red Skelton). If you'd like to win a copy of either, please fire off an email with the subject header "Warner Archive Contest" to mrbeaks@aintitcool.com. Feel free to state a preference, and I'll do my best to accommodate. The deadline for entries is Monday, May 4th at Noon Pacific. 2) Last week, I mentioned that a long-unavailable film was about to be set free from the Warner Archive. I have received permission to reveal the title of this 1970s cult classic. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alan Arkin and James Caan in Richard Rush's magnificently wrong FREEBIE AND THE BEAN.



I haven't seen FREEBIE AND THE BEAN since I was a kid, so I have no idea how well it holds up. However, I do know that, for a variety of reasons (most of them having to do with political correctness), it would be impossible to make this movie today. And this is a tragedy. I'll have the rest of the May titles (which should be up on the Warner Archive site this Friday May 5th) when I celebrate FREEBIE AND THE BEAN next week. And now some thoughts on THE RETURN OF THE BAD MEN and THOUSANDS CHEER...

Whenever the good ol' days of Hollywood filmmaking are fondly recalled as a way of running down today's glut of uninspired studio pictures, someone will eventually counter that the hit-to-miss ratio hasn't changed, sagely noting that there are more "classics" from the '30s, '40s and '50s because there were just more movies period. This is nonsense. Truly. Yes, the studios churned out scads of mediocre musicals, romantic comedies and westerns during this "golden age", but what was "mediocre" back then has a tendency to look stunningly well-crafted today - at least compared to, say, 20th Century Fox's output throughout the Tom Rothman era. Doubt this? Spend a week watching Roy Rogers westerns or Andy Hardy comedies (even the ones without Judy Garland), and you won't find anything that approaches the combined oeuvre of Adam Shankman, Brian Robbins and Evil Shawn Levy (as opposed to Saintly Shawn Levy) in terms of sheer technical incompetence. At the very worst, you'll be bored. At best, you might be pleasantly surprised. This is largely because studios weren't in the habit of letting their top talent work with directors incapable of delivering watchable movies. For the most part, they favored unfussy professionals who knew where to put a camera and make days; now, you're the next Howard Hawks if you can make days and shoot enough usable footage for the trailer. Movies today just have to seem entertaining; they don't have to actually be good or make sense. This is why a slightly above-average film from a slightly above-average director like Ray Enright can feel like a revelation sixty years down the line. And this is the danger of subsisting on a junk movie diet: you forget that there was once a time when audiences could expect to see dozens of well-crafted programmers throughout the course of a year. Look, there is a reason why Enright's RETURN OF THE BAD MEN couldn't get a commercial DVD release until the Warner Archive materialized: it isn't distinctive enough visually, narratively or thematically to be termed "influential"; moreover, I doubt it made much of an impression on any of the great American baby boomer directors who might be tempted to contribute to a making-of featurette (e.g. Peter Bogdanovich, John Milius or John Carpenter). It's just good and satisfying and professionally done. That said, if it were made today by an unheralded TV director, and populated with a load of dependable character actors like Bill Paxton, Fred Ward, Stephen Lang and Maria Bello, I imagine it would be celebrated as a unexpected throwback and probably round out a number of Top Ten lists as a show of respect for a bygone era when proficiency was the norm, not the exception. Written by Charles O'Neal, Jack Natteford and Luci Ward, Enright's meat-and-potatos western centers on reluctant U.S. Marshal Vance Cordell's efforts to corral a band of outlaws terrorizing a just-getting-settled Oklahoma during late 1800s. The obvious attractions here are Randolph Scott doing his white-hat act as Cordell, George "Gabby" Hayes as a cranky-but-loveable bank owner, and Robert Ryan killing in cold, cold blood as The Sundance Kid. Cordell's arc has to do with rounding up the outlaws in a timely manner so he can knock off to California and marry his fiancee, Madge (Jacqueline White), but the plot is largely powered by our desire to see the lawman square off with the vicious Sundance (who killed Cordell's kind-hearted Native American ranch hand, Grey Eagle). The interesting narrative flourishes involve Cordell's reforming of Cheyenne (Anne Jeffreys), a fetching bad girl who runs with Sundance and the Younger gang. Cordell tends to her after she's been wounded in a gunfight, and his kindness - as well as the threat of a good spanking* - ultimately sets her on the straight-and-narrow. Cheyenne also falls for Cordell, but there's never any danger of the upright marshal cheating on his beloved Madge (who's got the makings of an ace cuckold). The only wild card in the deck is Sundance, who, as written, would just be another blandly evil villain were it not for the laid-back brutality of Robert Ryan. Still one of the most under-appreciated actors of his time, Ryan imbues every moment with the possibility of casual violence. While most of his fellow outlaws seem motivated by the idea of ill-gotten fortune, Ryan's Sundance is only in it for the death. He's a long, long way from William Goldman's iteration of the outlaw, and the movie stays interesting partly because of his chaotic presence in it. But much credit is due Enright, who distinguishes himself as a fine director of set pieces. Particularly impressive is the film's climactic nighttime showdown, which is lit with a surprising expressionistic flair (thereby amplifying the tension as Cordell stalks Sundance in an eerily quiet saloon). It's at this moment that you wonder why Enright - who made his bones first as an assistant to Mack Sennett, then as a director of musicals (he handled the dramatic sequences in Busby Berkeley's DAMES) - never got a shot at better than middling material. Why was this able craftsman reduced to hacking out, as film historian David Thomson put it, "routine products, sure of their own limits"? And then you remember that the studio system needed unpretentious workmen like Enright to simply show up and make sure everyone colored within the lines. They weren't making art; they just had a basic responsibility to paying audiences, who deserved, if nothing else, ninety minutes of sturdy, visually appealing entertainment. And while I doubt Enright arrived to set every day thinking about his debt to the public, there was at least professional pride. Prior to THE RETURN OF THE BAD MEN, the only other Enright western I'd watched was his 1942 version of THE SPOILERS with Scott, John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich. Unlike BAD MEN, that film is almost undone by expectations (thanks to the presence of Wayne and Dietrich), but it's still quite good. I've heard that TRAIL STREET (which is also available from the Warner Archive) may be his best work. Anyone care to vouch for that? The Archive also sent along George Sidney's patriotic, all-star World War II musical THOUSANDS CHEER. Like many films of this type, it's at at its best when letting the big names take center stage to warble a tune or indulge in a comedy routine. Unfortunately, most of that is saved for the third act, which means you have to contend with soldier Gene Kelly's half-hearted romancing of Kathryn Grayson, who costars as the daughter of Kelly's commanding officer (John Boles). Kelly works hard to get us through the perfunctory plot, but it's still an awfully long sit. That said, the film is interesting from a historical perspective (performance movies like this would have to be shot in IMAX to entice a modern audience); also, it's hard to hate a movie that features Judy Garland and Lena Horne belting out standards. This is a classic case of "your mileage may vary". I'll be back next week with FREEBIE AND THE BEAN. (And remember, you can only order these titles through the official Warner Archive site!) Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks

*Evidently, the writers had spanking on the mind when they slapped this one together: e.g. in the film's most unsettling moment, Hayes threatens to take White over his knee. Thank god for the Production Code.