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Phoebe Stogstill's Profile
Customer Reviews: 128
New Reviewer Rank: 9,003
Classic Reviewer Rank: 226,368
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Reviews Written by
Phoebe Stogstill (by the shores of Gitchee Goomie)
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Hell's House
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| DVD ~ Bette Davis |
| Price: $7.98 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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"Remove The Double Toothpicks, Re-Instate the 'L's", September 12, 2009
This early Bette Davis movie is about graft and corruption in a boys reformatory. This fictional piece probably described many such places of the time and could have been an attempt of passive agressive exposure by the author. Pat O'Brien plays a slick bootlegger with a quirky sense of humor. He also is a master of some very lame magic tricks, is a braggart and name dropper. He does not know any of the people whose names he drops. He is a sharp dresser and afficianado of one liners. When he gets a bit fresh with Bette, he quips, "I just washed my hands and can't do a thing with them!" He suckers a poor recently orphaned 15 year old boy who worships him and needs a job into becoming a part of his bootlegging operation with the promise of big bucks. The catch is that he must not tell anyone of their association or name any names if there is any trouble. The kid, played by Jr. Durkin has no idea he is involved in anything illegal, he is that naive. He is then apprehended and sent to the reformatory, divulging nothing. He had the chance to go free if he would name names and refuses, convinced that the bootlegger will find a way to spring him quickly. Instead, he spends three years in the place in almost unbearable conditions and worse, he witnesses horrible cruelty perpetrated against the friends he has made there. A newspaper man knows of the corruption but can't prove it. He tells the warden to come clean, to save the lives of young men, but he won't. Meanwhile the young man escapes in a food barrel for the sole reason of getting medical help for a dying friend in the reformatory. Ms. Davis has offered her friendship to the boy before so he winds up on her doorstep with his sad tale. She is determined to make things right, so she coerces her bootlegger beau to spill his guts to the newspaper editor. He can't without implicating himself. The editor uses emotional blackmail to get him to finally take the fall and the young boy does not have to return to the reformatory. The editor blows the lid off the reformatory conditions and the ensuing headlines cause investigations. Ms. Davis, very young, very beautiful and kinda blonde has a very minor role, but she steals the show. Her fur- trimmed outfit is to die for. Jr. Durkin is great as is his charming little friend, "Shorty."
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Mars Attacks!
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| DVD ~ Christina Applegate |
| Price: $9.98 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
MARTIAN TO A DIFFERENT BEAT, September 8, 2009
What impressed me, in a way, was the overall TOTALLY MEDIOCRE acting done by this bunch of real pros. Then I got to thinking. They were probably doing that on purpose to mirror 50s versions of with actors of similar subject matter. (So bad it is good, theory) The main exception to this "bad acting" is Jack Nicholson's final Presidential rant. It is over the top. But the acting is not a problem with me as the Martians and other special effects are the STARS. They are unbelievably cool and seamless in integration. They are what I waited eagerly to see and what had my total attention. The Martian language of gutteral spurts is so funny, their mannerisms, their unreasonable cruelty. The one Martian disguised as a bombshell blonde--such great work by the designers. It is also a shot of hilarity that while in J-Men Forever, Rock and Roll blasted from the moon is supposed to kill Earthlings, in this movie "The Indian Love Call" and other 30s Era music is the death potion for the Martians, whose brains explode in intolerance. Sylvia Sidney is great in this--she is in practically everything she does. Although it was released in 96 it seems that it came out only yesterday, and many of the cast members are now gone or their health is compromised. Many of them had been in earlier Sci-Fi flicks and it was a sort of Sci-Fi mini reunion. The Martians and the special effects get five stars from this ol' girl.
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The Letter
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| DVD ~ Bette Davis |
| Price: $5.79 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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"My Baby, She Wrote Me a Letter. . ." The Boxtops, August 4, 2009
We see the dramatic noir scenes of Bette descending the staircase of the plantation house. When we finally get a close-up, I realize the year the movie was probably made. My mother wore that exact hairstyle in the years 39-41, as is evidenced by many family photographs. I am in love with the exotic cinematography of this film. Again there are blades of light coming through louvres and casting upon faces and mysterious forms. I am also delighted by the tinkling of wind chimes and the moody soundtrack, sometimes big band-y and sometimes oriental in theme. Our "totally innocent Bette" has surprises laying beneath the surface and she releases these gradually, dramatically and beautifully. "What charge would that be?" She asks her attorney casually. He drops the bomb: "Murder." It would have all turned out okay if she had not found it necessary to empty the entire gun. That would tend to raise some questions about self-defense vs. anger and jealosy as a motive. The answer to all the puzzles is in "the letter." Gale Sondergaard is perfect as the wronged woman. Even though she is the wronged one, she personifies evil so well onscreen. What other gems has she done this in? (I believe Homicidal was one but there are many more) As sad as it is, and as desperate as she is for revenge, she has the where-with-all to get the money, too. She sees to it that Miss Priss will not interfere in another marriage. There have been many adaptations of Wm. Somerset Maugham's great story, "The Letter," but this is probably the best. As for the lace? "A stitch in time, saves nine."
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Wind
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| DVD ~ Matthew Modine |
| Price: $11.99 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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"I Come Like Water and Like Wind I Go" fr "The Rubiat", August 4, 2009
As I grow older I notice that I am concentrating on watching the acting more than the story in movies. It was thus in viewing this movie. Matthew Modine is great in everything he does (What the Deaf Man Heard is my favorite). This movie is about the rather sweet love story between a young man and a young woman and his desire to be with her almost constantly. He has been chosen to be second on a yachting crew by and eccentric millionaire(Cliff Robertson) who will command the ship. They are after the Americas' Cup. Since he is second in command, the young man, puts the girl on the crew, where their affection for one another irritates a crew member and she is axed from the team. She leaves to go on with her life, frustrated by all the obsessions connected with running the perfect race. What the team members do not understand is that she brought special design knowledge to the project. She has made a study of aerodynamics in aircraft design and has been applying them to watercraft as a side interest. The team loses the Americas' Cup to Austrailia and the captain disolves the crew. Matthew Modine's character becomes convinced he can build a better yacht and captain it himself for the next competition to take the trophy from the Aussies. He searches out his long gone girlfriend for her design help and gets together financing for his project. Since he is captain of the crew, he then puts his female friend on it. When the race is on and disasters keep happening one after another, she is able to figure out the next moves where no one else can. The standout of this movie are the overhead shots during all of the races, the fluid beauty of the neck and neck racing shots. Nothing like it has ever been accomplished before. Matthew Modine is great, and very young looking in this movie. Exciting edge of your seat yacht racing.
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Woman Wanted
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| DVD ~ Holly Hunter |
| Availability: Currently unavailable |
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You Just Can't Find Good Help Anymore, August 4, 2009
I have missed Michael Moriority on film. He has been absent due to personal problems, but ever since his performance in "Bang the Drum Slowly," I have been hooked. In Woman Wanted, we again see the ability of this man to get into the depth and soul of his character. In this movie a young woman answers an ad to work in the home of an "over fifty" man who is a bit stodgy, and who also has a grown son who is a "train wreck" living in the home. Unable to "find himself" the son has returned to the nest. Kiefer Southerland plays the emotionally distraught son and he also directs the film. The son is very bitter about the death of his mother whom the father had committed to an institution where she died barely a month later. The father has had a weekend lover on the side for years, due to his lack of emotional nourishment from the mother. The mother's break from reality was realized when she appeared in her husband's college classroom (where he was giving a lecture) barefooted, hair in curlers and it a bathrobe. With brightly painted toenails she launches a diatribe filled with profanaties. She had to be physically removed by an ambulance crew. Holly Hunter gives an outstanding performance as the live-in who has been hired to "bring order" to the household, and bring order, she does. She is a fantastic cook, housekeeper and has a knack at managing the dramas in the household caused by the mental conflict between father and son. They both fall in love with her, which causes more jealousy and conflict. Michael Moriority, Holly Hunter and Keifer Southerland. Who thought we would ever see THESE THREE in a movie together? They seem so unlikely together. But if you see the movie you will realize that they fit and fit beautifully. I have done this kind of work myself as a home health provider and you learn quickly that while you may be skilled at nursing and homemaking, your main job is psychiatrist/psychologist and there are many family dramas that you must manage or all the caregiving in the world will not make a difference. The acting is superb all round, but I take my hat off to Michael Morioity who IS his character, a character I have seen many times in real life.
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J-Men Forever!
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| DVD ~ Peter Bergman |
| Price: $13.49 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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Loads and Loads of Loquatious Lingo, August 3, 2009
If I could have been involved in the making of a movie, right after GWTW, this would be next. The facetious premise is that Rock and Roll is evil, and it is so evil and deadly, that by blasting Smaltzy Music with large doses of Rock and Roll from the moon, Smaltzy Music, along with others on earth will be destroyed, or at least driven crazy. Commando Cody fights the moon men who are trying to destroy him with a ray gun. When I was a kid it was my good fortune to see many Republic Cliffhanger serials before the main feature at the town cinema. J-Men forever is made of clips from these serials and new words have been overdubbed into the rather convoluted, but wonderful story. Sometimes the voices are appropriate for the faces they are coming out of and sometimes they are not. This adds to the hilarity. J-Men is chock full of gay banter, rapid reparte, gifted gabbiness, heartfelt harangues, and zesty zingers. It is a gold mine of trite expressions, double entendres, euphemisms and non sequiturs. A boon to the complicated overdubbing is the fact that the speaking players often have their backs to the camera, have on bulky masks, or are shot from a distant camera range. What really "sends me" is the plethora of special effects these old serials had including, space ships, deadly ray guns and robots. Some of the dialogue includes, "you send me, the caped mad man had a statue made to honor himself against his will," and my favorite, "wait in the damn hall!" Who of us has not had to deal with an obnoxious person that we would like to simply tell with authority to "wait in the damn hall!" This movie is about creativity and I have deepest admiration to the crew that masterminded and produced this wonderful flick. Contrary to popular opinion, you would not have to be stoned to enjoy it--you just have to be an artiste.
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Detour
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| DVD ~ Tom Neal |
| Price: $7.98 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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Six Day Wonder, July 22, 2009
What modern day film makers could learn from this one: it was made in only six days with no budget and tells a heck of a deliciously diabolical story in only 67 minutes. I have a very bad copy of this movie on VHS, it is not for everyone, I am sure, but it is for people like me and I give it five stars for what they were able to accomplish with nothing--nothing but a single great storyline, great acting by relative unknowns and great NOIR-y camera angles and deep tones. A poor unmarried couple, played by Tom Neal and Claudia Drake, are struggling to get by. She craves stardom and has a beautiful voice. He plays piano in the (isn't this precious) Break O'Dawn Club. She decides to leave for Hollywood where she is determined to get discovered as a singer. His heart is ripped out as he continues to take his frustrations out on the piano keys, getting a huge tip, BTW. He can take it no more, he must hitchhike to California to be with his sweetie, Sue. He is finally picked up by a mysterious man. "I never know what to say to strangers driving cars," he quips to himself for our benefit. The driver lets him in on the fact that a previous hitchhiker, female has scratched him up badly, so he kicked her to the curb. The driver then strangely dies in the night as our friend Al is driving. He realizes he may be blamed with the guy's death so he ditches the body and continues on, the next day he picks up a female hitchhiker. It soon dawns on him that this is "the scratcher," played so brilliantly by Ann Savage. She is a true psycho and her rants are only a couple of notches down from the possessed Regan in The Exorcist. In an aside he tells us, she has "a beauty that is almost homely because it is so real." Psycho-Vixen begins spinning her web of blackmail. She knows the owner of the car is dead and all she has to do is turn Al over to the police, if he doesn't obey her every command. When they get to LA she demands they get a motel room where she tries in vain to seduce him. She then goes on a drunken binge hurling more epithets at him. He confides to us, "My goose was cooked." Each time he thinks he has figured out a way to be rid of her, she plots another nefarious scheme. "That's life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you." As they both duke it out verbally and physically, the parasitic woman is accidently killed. I will not spoil the ending. This is no GWTW, but it is a little masterpiece in noir films. The background score is beautiful, but comical in that setting. It is very much like other such films and their scores, and I cannot imagine any event in history not having this music playing in the background, a quirk of my own. The camera work is splendid and there is one scene in particular where Sue is singing behind her microphone stand and in the backgroud are not real orchestra members, but black silhouettes, shadows of them on the wall at a slant, great stuff.
The dialogue in this movie is to die for, if you are a true afficionado.
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The Unkindest Cut of All, July 21, 2009
It is too bad that RKO cut this work of genius Orson Welles. We are perhaps able to imagine what could have been viewed if allowed to be released in its original form. The second unkindest cut of all is that it is not available in U.S. format at this writing, on DVD. There are possibly two generations of Americans who have not seen it. Those lucky foreigners who DO have the movie. It is a great and bittersweet story of a family at the turn of the century, their relationship dramas and the trauma of going from a pioneer society to an industrialized one--one that we are similarly going through now because of the techno-revolution. Products become outdated as soon as they are manufactured, fortunes are lost, new fortunes are gained, the "haves" trade places with the "have-nots" and back again several times over. The acting is superb with a special thank you to Agnes Moorehead, a real pro. The thing that gets you in this movie, is the camera work.
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"Burt-EE, Phone Home!", July 20, 2009
We realize early on that Barbara Stanwyck's character is a "little off," that she is playing her invalidcy to the hilt. What kind of a marital relationship is this? We have all seen this strange kind of co-dependency in which the invalid uses emotional blackmail on the people encompased by the small sphere around them, and those encompassed love/hate catering to them. It starts subtly, then turns literally into a "man-eating monster," wanting more, more, more attention, creating more, more, more drama to get it. The premise of the totally helpless person having to use a telephone as her only way of communicating with the outside world, or for entertainment, as there were not televisions all about then for that purpose, is a stroke of genius for the writer. It is humorous now when we have become a society, quite pitiful indeed that has cell phones glued to ears. What does that say about us? Can we not go for a 24 hour period with out phone drama in our lives? Very sad. Both Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster seem miscast. She usually plays tough, strong and often ruthless women. Burt usually plays highly macho men. In this production they play opposite roles, she is weak and helpless and pitiable, he seems to be a "kept man" by her father's pharmaceutical millions. Yet they do these roles so well, it is absolute proof of their abilities as actors. A great and sometimes mob-i-licious movie.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
"Doing the Spiro-Gyra", July 20, 2009
When I first saw this movie on PBS in a salute to classics years ago, I was kept on the edge of my sofa. The atmosphere in the New England creepy house is captured beautifully and in the expertly filmed overhead shots of the spiral staircase, we can actually feel ourselves being pulled downward into the maelstrom. Between more pleasant scenes of old movie theaters, the wonderful architecture of the interiors and the character development are scenes of unbearable tension for Helen, the mute servant girl played by Dorothy Maguire, as she realizes the mad killer who murders women with physical afflictions is coming after her next. The murderer who is closer than she ever imagined possible is about to pounce and she has no way to scream for help. Ethyl Barrymore is great, as always, playing Helen's unsympathetic employer. A great movie, a great house, if not so permeated with evil, and great acting.
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(by the shores of Gitchee Goomie)
