Movie-A-Day #139: Quadrophenia (1979).
Happy 66th birthday to The Who’s guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend. “Tommy” is usually hailed as his masterpiece, although I’ve always been more partial to the band’s album – and later film – “Quadrophenia.” Set in the Mods vs. Rockers clashes of the early 1960s where the band got its start, the rock opera tells the story of a boy with a four-way personality split – one for each member of the band – who is trying to find his way out of a bleak working class existence. Storywise, it’s kind of thin, like Townshend’s other plots. But the music features The Who at its best. Plus, the cast includes Sting, Ray Winstone and a host of other great British character actors.
Movie-A-Day #138: Dracula (1931).
Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula,” one of the cornerstones of horror literature, was published on May 18, 1897. The king of the vampires has hit the big screen hundreds of times, mostly divorced from Stoker’s original narrative. But of the films that can claim at least some semblance to the book, Universal’s version is the standard. True, it’s a very loose version of the novel, but it made a screen icon out of Bela Lugosi and did as much to establish the traditional trappings of the cinematic vampire as anything Stoker wrote. Also worth watching is Universal’s Spanish language version, which was produced concurrently with the Lugosi version on the same sets, but which produces a quite different effect.
Movie-A-Day #137: Easy Rider (1969).
Today’s birthday boy is the recently departed Dennis Hopper. In 1969 he teamed up with Peter Fonda to make “Easy Rider,” a work of mad genius made by a genius who eventually went a bit mad. It was a work of countercultural rebellion that stuck it to the man, shocked the squares, kick started the first independent film movement and shook up Hollywood. It was the perfect movie at the perfect moment in time, a portrait of America in a state of cultural upheaval. It’s hard to overstate its cultural impact, but even divorced from that, it stands up as a good movie today.
Movie-A-Day #136: Mars Needs Women (1967).
Today is the 74th birthday of the wonderful – and underrated – Yvonne Craig. She may not be a household name to modern audiences, but she was a fixture in teen oriented entertainment in the 1960s. She is best known for her television roles, playing Batgirl in the “Batman” series as well as a guest spot as one of the green Orion slave girls in one of the most iconic episodes of the original “Star Trek.” She was also one of the women that Mars needs in the fun “Mars Needs Women.” She retired from acting in the mid-1970s to become an entrepreneur, leaving behind a string of sweetly sexy roles.
Today is Nylon Stockings Day, marking the anniversary of the sale of the first pair in 1940. A good pair of black nylon stockings are essential to any woman’s wardrobe, whether she wants to be sexy, dangerous, or just plain classic. There’s something very noir about them, which makes a film like “The Girl in Black Stockings” such a given. It’s a steamy, despairing noir film set in, of all places, a Utah motel and featuring Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren and Marie Windsor. So, ladies… make sure you wear your own black stockings today. Just make sure you don’t wind up murdered!
Desuko Movie Spot. 