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To wit: the Heights Theatre is giving everyone another opportunity to check out Christopher R. Mihm’s local B-Movie homage Monster of Phantom Lake. This time, the film will be even better than it was back in early March, only because we’re going to have the great early summer weather that these frightfests deserve. I use ‘fright’ loosely: Monster is a barrel of fun but hardly scary, which is just as it should be. And it is well served by stopping next door at the DQ for a malted with your bobby-sock sporting girlfriend or your duck-tailed boyfriend, if you’ve got either… or if you can convince your spouse to don that get-up, which I can’t, and we’re still arguing about that.

Ahem. Once again, I lament the fact that our theaters are filled with Poseidon and Mission Impossible and the forthcoming Da Vinci Code but not this little gem. If there’s anyplace that should feature The Monster of Phantom Lake, it’s one of our endangered drive-in theaters, where you could groove to “A-Rockin’, A-Rollin’, All the Way A-Ramblin’”, which sounds pleasingly as if it were being broadcast from the local AM station between sounds of thunder.

Check it out tonight only at The Heights. Or, you could purchase this thing on DVD and project it onto your garage one warm summer evening, and let the kids fall sleep in their backyard tents and dream of bug-eyed lake monsters.

My original review is here, and contains adult language (the review, not the film, which is good for all ages).

Le Proces (The Trial), 1962. Written and directed by Orson Welles. Starring Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Madeleine Robinson, Anoldo Foa and Billy Kearns as the inspectors, Suzanne Flon, Carl Studer, the lovely character actor (and Welles stalwart) Akim Tamiroff, the madman William Chappell, and Orson Welles himself, as the magistrate.

Where did I find myself when I first saw The Trial? Frankly, I can’t remember, except to say that I was in some dilapidated movie house, and I think that there was even the sound of water dripping from behind the screen, it was that bad. Lots of steel beams and dust, I remember that much. You know I’m mad for Welles, how could I refuse? In fact, I barely remember who told me about this show, it seemed as if it was given to me in a whisper, in a cat-nap, by a young girl who frightened me.

But this was Orson Welles, a The Trial is a minor film of his, a disaster according to some. Dry and sexless and ‘classic’–it would, if all went well, move me like his films always do, intellectually, leaving me amazed at what he could do with a camera. I had difficulty finding the place, it was showing in the basement of some run down train station. I couldn’t find it now if I wanted to.

An attractive woman tore my ticket in half, at the same time pursing her lips as if that act was either quite pleasurable or a difficulty, I’m not sure. She was dressed in black and white and her hair was black, her skin a perfect white, so that she appears, in my memory, as if in monochrome. Her eyebrows were sharp curves over heavily made up eyes, eyes that were also gray, and she never smiled, but grinned as if in on a little secret. She escaped later to run the projector, and I could see her shadow in the glass of the projection booth. I swear she watched me the whole time.

Troublesome. The Trial is–was, no, still is–troublesome. Shot in wasted cities, no, shot in Paris, in an abandoned train station and in Turkey–I knew it’s story, it was the same as all the rest. Fat old Welles, barely able to get financing, all the etc. of any late project. I was ready for the menace of an impersonal government, the accused trying desperately to get to the bottom of his so-called crime. Kafkaesque, perhaps even a bit Orwellian. But as it is quickly revealed, the picture is mired in… what? It’s not Freudian, I think… No, The Trial is not so easily reduced into a horror show of the past, a damning look at a long-ago beaurocricy. That would be easy to digest. But it’s about women. It’s sexuality. You don’t know this right away, but slowly, slowly, the terror creeps up on you, as it does on Josef K.

In Josef’s apartment:

INSPECTOR 1: What’s this thing?
JOSEF: That’s my pornograph… er, my phonograph.
INSPECTOR 2: What’s this?
JOSEF: What’s what?
INSPECTOR 2: A circular line with four holes.
INSPECTOR 1: (Writing) Circular…
INSPECTOR 2: It’s not really circular, it’s more ovular.
JOSEF: Don’t write that down, for heaven’s sake!
INSPECTOR 1: Ovular. Why not?
JOSEF: (sarcastically) Ovular?
INSPECTOR 1: We can’t not write it down just because you say we shouldn’t.
JOSEF: Ovular isn’t even a word.
INSPECTOR 2: You deny there’s an ovular shape concealed under this rug?
INSPECTOR 1: He denies everything.

Ovular. Ovular. What was it about ‘ovular’ that kept after me as I watched The Trial? And when Jeanne Moreau walks in, smoking, tired from a night of servicing men, and she lounges on the bed and her garter belt peeks out at us, it slowly dawns on you that this movie is not about Josef K. fighting with the state. Josef K. is wrestling with is his own sexuality.

Nothing like that has any meaning in my life, I told myself, sinking down into my seat, which seemed more than willing to swallow me with a creaky groan. Turning, I saw there was no one in the cinema, just myself and the monochrome woman, staring out at me from her porthole, smoking, gesturning ever so slightly for me to turn and watch the film.

HILDA: Look at my stockings. I’ll come back soon and then I’ll go with you wherever you want and you can do with me whatever you want.

The Trial whispers its dialogue, whispers its allegations. Hilda shows off her stockings and then is carried away by a leather-clad thug who also works for the state. And while Hilda is a prize peach, while your heart thumps with anticipation, there is a palpable sense of dread. Josef cannot do anything other than barely kiss these women. I remind myself that Anthony Perkins was a gay man, that perhaps Welles found in Perkins the perfect actor to play this role, and all his films are somewhat autobiographical.

But I know this is not true. Someone is pointing an accusing finger at me.

Impotent men hide in shadows, fearful of Josef and the women who pursue him. Detectives who bothered him are later stripped to the waist, mouths taped, beaten and submissive. Why is it that the court archivist is the beautiful Paola Mori seen only briefly, enough to whet one’s appetite, but streaking your heart with fear?

LENI: Will you spend the night with me?
JOSEF: Your eggs are burning.

Her eggs are burning, indeed.

Dirty pictures spring out of the massive tomes in courtrooms, while Leni, the aide to the magistrate, with a sexy deformity of webbed fingers, tries to seduce our hero on a stack of legal documents. Josef is rarely pursued by the state, which seems fairly impotent in the face of these daunting females. Later, Josef tries to get assistance from William Chappell’s insane painter, and is pursued by a terrifying gaggle of young girls.

As The Trial arrives at its climax, the women have vanished, like all dream women do. I don’t recall leaving the theater, don’t recall coming home, but I do recall seeing the monochrome woman again, in the lobby, smoking her cigarette and grinning at me. I wanted to talk with her and I wanted to flee. I fled. Later, feverishly, I read Kafka’s Trial, hoping to find something of what I’d seen in the book. But it was not there. Not that I could see.

The Americanization of Emily, 1964. Directed by the hack Arthur Hiller, written by the decidedly unhackneyed Paddy Chayefsky. Starring James Garner, Julie Andrews, James Coburn, Melvyn Douglas, Joyce Grenfell and one of the great character actors, Keenan Wynn (most famous as Major Bat Guano in Dr. Strangelove).

When Paddy Chayefsky died in 1981 of cancer (he was young, just 58), the world lost one of its greatest screenwriters, and certainly Hollywood’s foremost satirist. Chayefsky’s career was fascinating, moving from such chest-pounding dramas as Marty (a piece that works both as the searing television drama and the somewhat saccharine film version) to some mind-blowing comedies that skewer some of America’s favorite sacred cows: the military in Americanization, the medical establishment in The Hospital, and television news in Network. That last sentence is a horrible summary of that trinity, for The Americanization of Emily is not just about tripping up the stuffed shirts of the Navy–Chayefsky pokes fun at war widows, at the noble dead, at subjects that no one has been willing to touch since then. That The Americanization of Emily is a severly flawed and poorly cast film doesn’t take away from the fact that we live in an age that needs a Chayefsky… though I’m not sure we’re equipped to understand his films anymore. All we can do is laugh.

The facts: James Garner plays Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison, a ‘dog-runner’ for Admiral William ‘Jessie’ Jessup (played with gusto by now-underrated actor Melvyn Douglas). These ‘dog-runners’ procure all varieties of contraband for their leaders. In war-torn London, a city beseiged by Germans and the harshness of rationing, Charlie Madison has a hotel room filled with Hershey bars, fine liquor, dresses of silk and nylon, and avocados, among much, much more. To get what he needs, he’ll take on an Alabama accent, bribe officials with whiskey, and threaten others with deportment to the Antarctic if they fail to deliver, say, dry-aged steaks for Adm. Jessup.

The film takes place in the month before D-Day, and Adm. Jessup is slowly going mad from the pressure and gets it into his mind to make a film about the Navy’s role in D-Day. Even better, he wants the first casualty of the invasion to be a Navy man, and in Washington they’ll erect a tomb of the Unknown sailor.

Charlie doesn’t give a rip about any of this. A self-proclaimed coward, he works alongside Bus Cummings, securing food and drinks and girls for the brass. Bus is played with manic intensity by James Coburn, and he’s easily the best thing in this picture. Coburn is incredible, jumping around, trying to screw every English girl he can lay his hands on, and then veering wildly into patriotic fanaticism with the drop of a hat, and totally convincing. Charlie, on the other hand, slowly falls in love with Emily, played by Julie Andrews and doing her usual ice-queen schtick.

Emily is a real casualty of war: her brother, father, and husband all died in World War II. She is priggish and unable to enjoy much of the bounty Charlie tries to deliver, but eventually they do fall in love. And along the way, Charlie gets wrapped up in making Jessup’s mad film about D-Day–an act that will eventually have serious repercussions for everyone.

The Americanization of Emily was a turning point for Chayefsky, who, along with Charlie Kaufman, is the only screenwriter in Hollywood history whose work consistently overshadows the director. With Emily we can see the transition from a guy with a somewhat ham-fisted view of relationships–the courtship between Garner and Andrews veers on embarrassing–and into the edgy dialogue that would later typefy his work… although it took until The Hospital for Chayefsky to incorporate his barbs into a working script, as there are numerous speeches that bring Emily to a grinding halt, even if they are thought-provoking (such as the suggestion that cowardice is better for humanity than bravery). There’s also scene after scene of free-swingin’ early 60s humor, such as daffy girls who stand at attention buck-naked while Garner and Coburn yak on. It’s a man’s picture, certainly, offensive to intelligent women like so many of that era’s pictures.

The Americanization of Emily, along with Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero, are two films that I think everyone could stand to watch today, as they were brave commentaries on our response to soldiers and war, and our tendency to hero-worship (though if you had to choose one, definitely go with Hail, thus far tragically unavailable on DVD). These movies would also make lovely remakes–if you could find a decent screenwriter unwilling to yank their teeth. Though Emily ends on a soft note–Chayefsky wouldn’t pull out all the stops until a few years later–there is still enough barbed wire to leave an audience bloodied with humor we could stand to hear today.

But I wonder: would we even care? Would we be shocked, alarmed? When Chayefsky wrote Emily, and The Hospital and Network, he did so to entertain, to make people laugh, to make them think. I believe it was David Thomson who argued that films in the 70s were cynical because we were still somewhat innocent. We could see Network and the Parallax View and still have some faith that our system would work, and our values prevail. In an era where we get The Onion each week, where “The Daily Show” is seen as a legitimate alternative to news, would a new Americanization of Emily move us? Or would it just be another comedy, a night at the suburban stadium theater, or a self-congratulatory evening at at the Lagoon? If we don’t get mad as hell anymore, what good is satire?