cult film freak: cliff robertson

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Written by James M. Tate / 5/12/2022 / No comments / action , burt reynolds , cliff robertson , cynthia gibb , dennis burkley , eighties , kenneth mcmillan , scott wilson , thriller , tracey walter

BURT REYNOLDS 'MALONE' WITH CYNTHIA GIBB & SCOTT WILSON

<p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_njxAYVXAOPsaOzQKNio_anYFcXFqntWpKvBDsikHTMUgkAA2MgD4T-cO7IiqYA767ugNNTZkD1B1Ywe0edHkrNDIXHi6ypHSSTwDJyfKdAX0gGyBVNoFI6afOhjZdvN2Cw5QHRCEighxHJzQELNjOjpHc9LHHzH2nIwT3IoFzTQmLisPi9UIsh2oUSvk/s774/Screen%20Shot%202024-09-01%20at%206.06.28%20AM.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="774" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_njxAYVXAOPsaOzQKNio_anYFcXFqntWpKvBDsikHTMUgkAA2MgD4T-cO7IiqYA767ugNNTZkD1B1Ywe0edHkrNDIXHi6ypHSSTwDJyfKdAX0gGyBVNoFI6afOhjZdvN2Cw5QHRCEighxHJzQELNjOjpHc9LHHzH2nIwT3IoFzTQmLisPi9UIsh2oUSvk/s16000/Screen%20Shot%202024-09-01%20at%206.06.28%20AM.jpeg"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Burt Reynolds in MALONE Year: 1987 Rating: ****</u></td></tr></tbody></table><p>For Burt Reynolds, compared to his bombs of the early to mid 1980's, MALONE is a nice, tight production that's basically a remake of a classic 1950's Western. "Let's be honest," Reynolds once stated. "The film is SHANE."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The ongoing lustful flirtation by young, cute-as-a-button, girl-next-door ingenue Cynthia Gibb is a little out of place, although while he might've been too old for the part (Christopher Lambert was originally considered), she's not at all miscast...<br>
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action, burt reynolds, cliff robertson, cynthia gibb, dennis burkley, eighties, kenneth mcmillan, scott wilson, thriller, tracey walter

BURT REYNOLDS 'MALONE' WITH CYNTHIA GIBB & SCOTT WILSON

Burt Reynolds in MALONE Year: 1987 Rating: **** For Burt Reynolds, compared to his bombs of the early to mid 1980's, MALONE is a nice, t...

RICHARD RUST STEALING SAMUEL FULLER'S 'UNDERWORLD U.S.A.'

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggEYs_duyG-0vhsNYkQ5jZq5pIAOJwLUj3I1PdRGqnW0eUMg5NofG7im2fhdaq0oHmQuHFRi44Gz3t43nkrfyevmE4us6PyQqqPmfzp-o49Hpw4wxd_hSk96yB1_v6bMQiXq6kP5ckIERC/s400/26848426df427dbd4b7b9188d78cd58f-1.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="365" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggEYs_duyG-0vhsNYkQ5jZq5pIAOJwLUj3I1PdRGqnW0eUMg5NofG7im2fhdaq0oHmQuHFRi44Gz3t43nkrfyevmE4us6PyQqqPmfzp-o49Hpw4wxd_hSk96yB1_v6bMQiXq6kP5ckIERC/w365-h400/26848426df427dbd4b7b9188d78cd58f-1.jpeg" width="365"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Rust & Robertson in the USA Year: 1961 Rates: ***1/2</u></td></tr></tbody></table><p>This gritty Samuel Fuller <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/search/label/neo%20noir">Post-Noir</a> has a teenage hood trained by his hoodlum father while raised by a bar-owning lush with a heart of gold, setting up your basic revenge tale since the kid witnessed his old man beaten and killed in a shadow-filled alley by four men — but he only actually <i>sees</i> one of them...</p><p>And the perfectly cast David Kent grows into contentedly crooked Cliff Robertson, whose Tolly Devlin, serving time, finds <i>that one</i> recognized killer dying in jail, but not before naming names so that, when Tully gets out, the body count vengeance trail begins... </p><p>Sadly, this intriguing set-up gets distracted by the UNDERWORLD crime-bosses and especially, on the other side of the fence, the District Attorney: What should have remained tighter to Robertson's dogged perspective loses steam and lacks focus... </p><p>Yet is sporadically made up for NOT by <i>his</i> character, dealing with melodramatic ingenue Dolores Dorn, looked-after by that experienced surrogate-mother Beatrice Kay (aptly channeling Thelma Ritter from Fuller's <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2017/08/big-red-microfilm.html">PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET</a>), whose creepy doll collection adds to the director's surreal 1960's arthouse-aesthetic that'd continue with SHOCK THERAPY and THE NAKED KISS... But the scene-stealer is a coldly handsome thug/shooter played by Richard Rust as Gus, chain-smoking while killing left and right (even deliberately running over a kid on a bicycle): narrowing-down what would have been a far less effective crime-thriller without him — a reminder to the audience of what's the unapologetic <i>heartless</i> of the matter.  </p><p><span></span></p>

beatrice kay, body count, cliff robertson, crime, david kent, dolores dorn, neo noir, revenge, richard rust, robert emhardt, samuel fuller, sixties

RICHARD RUST STEALING SAMUEL FULLER'S 'UNDERWORLD U.S.A.'

Rust & Robertson in the USA Year: 1961 Rates: ***1/2 This gritty Samuel Fuller Post-Noir has a teenage hood trained by his hoodlum fath...

WILLIAM HOLDEN & KIM NOVAK STAR IN A CAMPY 'PICNIC'

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<u>Year of Release: 1955</u></div>
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"At a PICNIC, everybody disappears." This line from one of the creepiest-of-schlock, unintentionally strange and eerie motion pictures ever, proving that, in many cases, Film Noir or Science-Fiction are the purest, safest forms of cinema when delving into the 1950's...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Camp Value: **1/2</u></td></tr>
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Starring William Holden, ten years too old for the part of a grownup-kid-type, about a decade out of college visiting the small town where old pal Cliff Robertson romances local beauty Kim Novak, whose little sister, played by future PSYCH-OUT starlet Susan Strasberg, innocently flirts with Holden's mysterious gentleman nomad who's been around the block more than anyone in the conservative setting: where the titular PICNIC is the centerpiece including Novak being worshiped in a swan boat while the town sings a dirge-paced "Ain't She Sweet" along with a barber shop quartet lined across, before and beyond a storybook bridge...<br>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtyAe6ZfzngcCvDSmgqdGpCeIyhxw5PcdU_W7poJVFFP0cCEIeNZi2bFSzPdeAq8Rvq1pPdyr5CXtN2n6pOzlBWrL7ooJ9Nx_rpsC-xbZGUlavMdv6-TOOZULaVVYDsCK7JietO93GLQ9/s1600/71sz7nLcaAL._SY550_.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="326" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtyAe6ZfzngcCvDSmgqdGpCeIyhxw5PcdU_W7poJVFFP0cCEIeNZi2bFSzPdeAq8Rvq1pPdyr5CXtN2n6pOzlBWrL7ooJ9Nx_rpsC-xbZGUlavMdv6-TOOZULaVVYDsCK7JietO93GLQ9/s400/71sz7nLcaAL._SY550_.jpg" width="265"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><u>Regular Movie Score/Value: *1/2</u></td></tr>
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The stagey (clumsily based on a play) dialogue is godawful, including a description of dusk being clouds having one last "scrap" in the sky, or when Holden — after his (as seen in every poster) shirt's torn to partially display his famously muscular SUNSET BLVD bod (itself looking decades younger than his handsomely devilish, timeworn mug) — says, "She saw through me like an X-Ray machine," or, to Novak, about to wait beneath her window till the promise of a technicolor dawn, "You make me feel important... No! You make me feel... Patient!"<br>
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And right beforehand: "I'm getting tired of... just being told I'm... pretty," complains Novak as she's deliberately driven off from the PICNIC by Holden's primal beast, resembling more of an insurance salesman on a lost weekend than an ex-convict back on the run from the law, and this time from  kissing the prettiest girl in town in front of his rich buddy/her pseudo boyfriend, Robertson, whose incessant whine, along with Holden's monotone delivery when he's not feigning drunken youth in an awkward, goofy fashion, makes mincemeat of two otherwise great actors. "Let me go, you bum," Robertson shouts to his rougher/tougher ex-crony: "You no good... hobo!" All to the sound of that decade's type of fiercely melodramatic score locked inside of haunting reverberation. That is, until an occasional waist-up-lustful samba-beat ensues as the dames become sporadically mesmerized by Holden's boisterous yet enigmatic persona like daft, dizzy schoolgirls to a flashing image on a picture show screen. Which could be the intention all along. The characters are both the performers and audience.
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cliff robertson, fifties, kim novak, romance, susan strasberg, william holden