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I wasn't raised a Catholic, so guilt never played much of a role in my life. We Methodists don't worry about guilt all that much.
In terms of cinema, however, guilt has always been very important. In film school, we studied all the classicssilents, German expressionism, Russian montage, Italian neorealism, you know the litany. I realized right away that with a few exceptions I didn't really enjoy or love any of the classic films. I mean, how can you really love Greed? Even the cutdown version is hard to take.
So let's talk about flops and trash. The Poor, The Awful, The Stupid-movies I dearly love and would much rather watch than classics. As a kid, I knew a lot of the movies I saw were hideous, but I didn't care. I loved them anyway. I forgave everything.
Now when I see these same films, I still love and forgive. It's a case of arrested development. Only now I suppose there's more guilt associated with this love of trash because somehow I must know better. Well, I don't. As you will see.
The Green Berets (1968, directed by John Wayne and Ray Kellogg). John Wayne's epic Vietnam war movie. Amazing extreme-right fantasy. Great siege on a firebase. Vietcong toasted on concertina wire like marshmallows. Wayne and the Green Berets sneak into a mansion, capture Vietcong big shot and his concubine. Ricky-tick chop-suey score. John Wayne, David Janssen, Aldo Ray, Bruce Cabot, Jim Hutton, and the worst Asian child actor ever cast in a motion picture. Greatest final line in any film-Wayne to orphaned Vietnamese boy: "Son, you're what this war is all about." A must-see.
The Unconquered (1947, Cecil B. DeMille). It's the French and Indian War in glorious three-strip Technicolor, and it's like watching a very expensive stage play. Paulette Goddard is a bond slave from England. Gary Cooper is an Indian fighter. DeMille is a director with a leaden, wooden-fisted style. The extras deliver expository dialogue. Boris Karloff plays an Indian chief. Cooper rescues Goddard with a compass, escapes in a canoe, hangs on a branch under a waterfall. Cooper also rescues Fort Detroit. All the overacting is so much fun. Awesome.
The Giant Claw (1957, Fred F. Sears). Every monster movie lover's...