Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re somehow halfway through the winter season at this point, meaning airing shows have now produced a meal-worthy chunk of episodes, which suits my modern viewing habits much better than weekly releases. That means I’ll probably be checking out The Fire Hunter soon enough, but in the meantime, I’ve been following up my rewarding journey through Mobile Suit Gundam with a dive into Tomino’s followup, Space Runaway Ideon. I’ve repeatedly heard that Ideon is an essential pre-Evangelion production, but to be honest, the first dozen or so episodes were fairly underwhelming. Ideon’s conflict and characters remained static for quite some time, but the show’s fortunately been gaining momentum in its middle stretch, so I’m looking forward to a more positive report next week. Tomino aside, the movie screenings continued as always, with this week’s viewings spanning westerns, sea dramas, and one of the most improbable revenge films I’ve ever seen. Let’s get to it!
Our first feature this week was Fort Apache, a John Ford film starring Henry Fonda as the disagreeable new commander of a frontier outpost, Shirley Temple as his daughter, and John Wayne as the well-liked local captain who attempts to reason with Fonda. I’d never seen Fonda play a villain before, but he attacks this role with relish, pissing off literally everyone around him with his mix of preening military propriety, egotistical lust for glory, and utter disregard for the needs or basic humanity of the fort’s adjacent native populations. That he does all this while remaining eminently human and in possession of an unerring moral constitution is a credit to both the script and Fonda’s performance; his character’s self-image is such a clear delusion that it fosters a burning fuse across the picture, as both cast and audience wait for his inevitable overstepping and well-earned downfall.
Fonda aside, Fort Apache is excellent in all the ways Ford films tend to be excellent, with a few unique strengths of its own. The film mixes personal drama and ensemble comedy to powerful effect, such that the audience actually comes to know the fort’s overall community, and is thus securely attached when they’re put in harm’s way. The action setpieces at this film’s midpoint and conclusion are dazzling; it is hard to believe the theatrics these actors pull off on horseback, and Fonda’s final charge possesses all the tragic, hopeless grandeur of a Hemmingway battle. Additionally, the film is fully sympathetic to its Native American characters. Fonda and his lust for glory are the antagonist here, while the film otherwise takes care to emphasize how the reservation system was explicitly designed to offer a slow death to its inhabitants. An altogether terrific film.
Next up was Eega, a truly unique revenge film written and directed by S. S. Rajamouli (the director of RRR). The film stars Ghanta Naveen Babu as Nani, a young man overflowing with love for his neighbor Bindu (Samantha Ruth Prahbu). The two seem destined for happiness, until wealthy business magnate Sudeep (Sudeep Sanjeev) decides to make Bindu his own. Driven into a fit of rage by Bindu’s affection for Nani, Sudeep ends up killing our young hero – only for that hero to be reincarnated as a common housefly. What follows are two hours of the most preposterous and oddly satisfying vengeance imaginable, as fly-Nani does everything in his power to torment and eventually destroy Sudeep.
Yep, it’s a romantic action-comedy about a fly with a grudge against a human man. And if you think that wouldn’t work as film drama, you’re clearly not familiar with Rajamouli. Even at this earlier stage in his career, his comedic and action staging skills are quite refined, along with that ineffable understanding of “what would an audience truly want to see, if they let go of their preconceptions about plausible cinematic drama.” Where his other films see men flung thousands of feet only to burst out of barrels in attack formation, or attempt to sell a tiger as a projectile weapon, Eega delights in the absurd possibilities offered by a committed fly with a willing co-conspirator (a brilliant touch: Bindu’s micro-art hobby being given new purpose in providing micro-weaponry for Nani).
The film is fast-paced, hilarious, and somehow even a touch romantic, and it’s all sold by Sanjeev’s magnificent performance as a man whose empire is undone by a goddamn fly. With revenge films, loving to hate the revengee is always a crucial part of the equation, and Sanjeev easily threads that needle of being utterly unsympathetic while still very fun to watch. Like all of Rajamouli’s films, Eega is a treasure trove of audacious delights, and comes highly recommended.
We next watched The Sea Wolf, a 1941 adaptation of a Jack London novel directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Alexander Knox as the talented novelist Humphrey Van Weyden, and Edward G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen, tyrannical captain of the seal-hunting ship Ghost. When a harbor collision sends Van Weyden and escaped convict Ruth Webster into the bay, they are rescued by the Ghost, and forced to survive the brutal conditions of life under the watch of Wolf Larsen.
The Sea Wolf offers a salt-crusted, hard-hearted portrait of seaborne life, with Larsen’s style of leadership falling somewhere between Moby Dick’s Ahab and the Bounty’s William Bligh. But the trick to this movie, what makes it special, is that Larsen would actually appreciate both those references. Outside the scum and degradation of his captainship, safely ensconced within his private quarters, Larsen enjoys reading his Milton and Nietzsche. Though born into poverty, he has made a renaissance man of himself; and yet for all that, he still looks at humanity and finds nothing worth liking.
The philosophical clashes of Larsen and Van Weyden form the true core of this film, with Robison’s performance of Larsen ably bringing the man’s wounded, self-denied humanity to life. It doesn’t take long for Van Weyden to pin down the hurt at the core of Larsen, the frustration that led him to embrace Lucifer’s preference for reigning in hell over serving in heaven. Forever barred from high society, Larsen has built a kingdom where callousness rules, and men embrace their allegedly true instincts. And yet, being cruel to those who have only ever known cruelty (as Van Weyden puts it) brings him little satisfaction – the true prize, one only achievable with Van Weyden’s assistance, is in bringing a proper intellectual, allegedly “moral” man down to the depravity of his kingdom. And so the two do righteous battle across the film, Van Weyden attempting to restore humanity to Larsen, Larsen attempting to prove that humanity is nothing but a beast in fine clothing.
Robinson’s performance as Larsen is captivating, but the film is also well furnished with a diverse collection of side characters, from the ship’s once-proud doctor to its mutinous conscripted convicts. The love story between Ruth and fellow escapee George Leech provides the human texture for Larsen and Van Weyden’s intellectual contest, and the film wrings effective tragedy out of how Larsen’s fatalism poisons the lives of everyone around him. The prolific Curtiz brings the Ghost’s world to life such that we quickly forget the security of the camera frame, all leading up to a thrilling final bout between Larsen and Van Weyden, one that perfectly resolves their character journeys while leaving the “victor” up to the audience. Basically just a perfect film, one that’s equally successful as moral drama and spectacle.
Last up for the week was A Bay of Blood, another horror feature by the reliable Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace, Black Sabbath, like a million other essential films). I’d call the film a proto-slasher, given it precedes the genre’s proper emergence by about a decade, but there’s really nothing slasher-like that the film is actively missing. Alongside Black Christmas, it stands as one of those films that perfected the genre before the genre even fully existed.
The film is centered on a bay owned by an elderly woman who dies under mysterious circumstances. While her relatives conduct a bloody succession battle over who will inherit the bay, a group of happy-go-lucky young folks also stop by, and proceed to host a disco party within one of the bay’s disused houses. I’m sure you can guess how that plays out for all parties involved.
A Bay of Blood’s offers such a sturdy slasher shell that it feels almost retroactively familiar, with all of its originally novel choices (the cast balance, the red herrings, the plentiful on-screen kills) now reading as obvious genre staples. Basically all the ways this film foretells the emergence of the slasher are things it was initially condemned for; it’s certainly true that the film lacks Blood and Black Lace’s sense of restraint, but the glee it takes in its messy business is the essence of a different kind of entertainment, wherein explorations of genuine humanity are foregone in favor of gleefully lurid spectacles, and human bodies become a part of the canvas. Bava’s cinematography and the red paint of violence draw intermittently stark beauty from this excess, bridging the distance between Suspiria and Friday the 13th. The giddy stupidity of man, the inexorable fall of the hatchet, and the solemn, complicit camera’s eye: Bava’s skill built the house of slasher to last.
