Tag Archives: John Cassavetes

The Ballad of Hank McCain

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John Cassavetes stars in the title role of MACHINE GUN MCCAIN (1969) aka Gli Intoccabili, an Italian crime drama directed by Giuliano Montaldo.

Lean, mean and paranoid, convict Hank McCain (John Cassavetes) is sprung from prison by West Coast mobster Charlie Adamo (Peter Falk) to rob a Las Vegas casino that is owned by an East Coast Mafia boss in the same syndicate. Adamo’s underhanded attempt to muscle in on his fellow gangster’s territory ignites a gangland war between factions with McCain caught in the middle and running for his life after he successfully pulls off a $2 million dollar heist. Along the way, McCain is double-crossed by his own son, hooks up with Irene (Britt Ekland), a bar hostess, is briefly reunited with his former mistress Rosemary (Gena Rowlands) and goes down fighting in a genuine noir finale. Although it didn’t get any respect from the critics or even much notice from film reviewers at the time, Machine Gun McCain (Italian title: Gli Intoccabili, 1968) is a remarkably taut, fast-paced B-movie crime thriller that is as feral and cagey as its title hero. Cassavetes imbues his role with a pent-up intensity that threatens to explode at any moment and often does. It’s one of his best performances and demonstrates why he was more in-demand as an actor in Hollywood instead of a director.

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Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

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Director John Cassavetes broke all the rules, inventing his own and then discarding them as he went along. He improvised and experimented with everything from the cinematography to the performances to the actual financing of the film. He even mortgaged his own home numerous times to subsidize his movies over the years and took on acting jobs purely for monetary reasons. His directorial debut Shadows (1958), with its jerky, hand-held camerawork, vivid location shooting on New York City streets and edgy subject matter involving an interracial romance, is one of the most influential films to emerge from the independent New York City cinema movement of the 1950s. Yet, it was just a warm-up for Cassavetes’s next film, Faces (1968), which was even more provocative and unconventional. 

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Donald Shebib’s Feature Film Debut

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The Canadian film industry has never experienced a time in their history where their regional cinema ignited an influential movement like the Nouvelle Vague films of France in the late 50s or Australian’s New Wave films of the 70s. Instead they tend to be viewed more as a functioning subsidiary of the U.S. film industry, occasionally providing locations, cast and crew and other services to American productions. Yet, movie lovers often forget that the country’s national treasure, The Film Board of Canada, continues to be one of the most prolific creators of internationally renowned animation and documentary films, which has garnered 12 Oscars and 74 Oscar nominations to date. Canada has also produced a number of artistic and critically acclaimed feature films which have enriched world cinema such as Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988), Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions (2004) and Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (2007). And one film that continues to make Canadian critics’ all-time top ten movie lists is Donald Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road (1970), although it is not as well known among American viewers as the aforementioned titles.    Continue reading →

Abattoir Blues

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“I wanted to do something that reflected the way people in the community would see themselves. Coming from another place, you can see a much larger picture. But when you’re in a well, you can only see the narrow light above. If you’ve been living like that for a long time, it can have an unproductive effect on you in many ways. So it wasn’t my personal conflicts. It was the conflict of the community.” – Director Charles Burnett in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine about his film Killer of Sheep.

After more than 42 years, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977) is now recognized as a seminal film in the indie film movement of the ‘70s even though it didn’t receive a wide release until 2007 via Milestone Films. In fact, Burnett never really intended for the film to have a theatrical release; he made it as his thesis film at UCLA. But retrospective screenings of the film and the resulting critical acclaim culminated in Killer of Sheep winning the Forum of New Cinema prize at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival. Other accolades followed such as being selected by the National Film Registry in 1990 for film preservation and winning a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle in 2007. Not bad for a movie shot on 16mm and made for a rock bottom budget of $10,000 from film grants.   Continue reading →

The President We Deserve

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Timothy Carey (on throne) plays a self-proclaimed messiah who starts his own political party in the underground satire, The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962).

You might not know the name but you know the face. One of the most eccentric character actors in American cinema, he has had the rare distinction of working with everyone from James Dean and Elia Kazan (East of Eden) to Marlon Brando (The Wild One; One-Eyed Jacks) to Stanley Kubrick (The Killing; Paths of Glory) to John Cassavetes (Minnie and Moskowitz; The Killing of a Chinese Bookie) to The Monkees (their feature debut Head) to Mr. T, Bill Maher and Gary Busey in D.C. Cab. Let me add a few more to that already impressive filmography which includes appearing with Clark Gable (Across the Wide Missouri), Francis the Talking Mule (Francis in the Navy) and Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds (What’s the Matter With Helen?) and god knows who else. We’re talking about Timothy Carey and probably his greatest role is the one you’ve never seen – The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962).  Continue reading →

Mimsy Farmer’s Strangest Movie?

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Corpo d'amore (1972)Anyone who is a fan of Italian giallos, European art house fare and off the grid cult films is familiar with actress Mimsy Farmer. She left Hollywood in the late sixties after her “youth exploitation” days with American International Pictures in such films as Hot Rods to Hell and Riot on Sunset Strip. Relocating to Europe, she pursued film roles there for the remainder of her career. As an actress she was rarely drawn to mainstream commercial projects and a sampling of her eclectic filmography includes such diverse titles as Barbet Schroeder’s drug addiction opus, More (1969), George Lautner’s erotic melodrama Road to Salina (1970), Dario Argento’s 1972 murder mystery Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Taviani Brothers’ critically acclaimed Allonsanfan (1974) and Serge Leroy’s survivalist thriller, La Traque (1975). But one of her most obscure and unusual roles is Fabio Carpi’s Corpo d’amore (aka Body of Love, 1972).

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