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Billy the Kid Week 2010: Review of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews on August 11, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to day 3 of Billy the Kid Week 2010. I’ll be reviewing Billy the Kid movies all week. Day 1 I reviewed Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw starring Jane Russell. Day 2 I reviewed The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman. Today I look back at a classic Billy the Kid western from the early ’70s directed by one of the last great directors of the genre, Sam Peckinpah, who also directed the wonderful The Wild Bunch. The movie is 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Directed by legendary director Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) and starring James Coburn as Pat Garrett and Kris Kristofferson as Billy the Kid. This movie also contains the motion picture debut of Bob Dylan in the small role of Alias. Dylan would also score the soundtrack (his first music score) and created “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” for this movie. This particular movie is legendary for the “behind the scenes” battles between Peckinpah and MGM studio head James Aubrey. Aubrey did everything he could to undermine Peckinpah who, to be fair, was battling a severe bout of alcoholism which would plague him for the rest of his life.

Aubrey constantly questioned Peckinpah’s camera setups, time to shoot scenes and would continually tell Peckinpah to remove certain scenes he felt were unnecessary. Peckinpah convinced the cast and crew to work covertly on lunch breaks and weekends to complete all the scenes he wanted shot. When principal photography was finished, the picture was 21 days late and over $1 million over budget. Peckinpah’s final cut of the film was 124 minutes. However, the studio was so unhappy they took the film away from him and re-cut it to 102 minutes and released it. The film was a box office failure. Peckinpah’s 124 minute director’s cut was restored in the early ’80s on home video and laserdisc. Eventually public opinion on the movie was turned and people began considering the movie to be an overlooked masterpiece, on par with The Wild Bunch.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid DVD

Before a few days ago, I’d never watched this movie. I was aware of it, I planned on watching it many years ago during my Billy the Kid movie marathons, but I just never got around to it. I was glad that I now had the chance to see it. Honestly, this movie is better than the previous two movies I reviewed, but it’s still not one of my favorites.

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Billy the Kid Week 2010: Review of The Left Handed Gun (1958)

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews on August 10, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to Day 2 of Billy the Kid Week 2010. I’ll be reviewing Billy the Kid movies all week. Yesterday I reviewed the 1943 Howard Hughes movie, The Outlaw starring Jane Russell. Today, I’m reviewing The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman.

In 1955 Gore Vidal wrote a teleplay for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse called The Death of Billy the Kid. It starred Paul Newman as Billy the Kid. Several years later Vidal’s teleplay would be used as the basis for Leslie Stevens’ screenplay for The Left Handed Gun. Originally, James Dean was cast to play Billy the Kid for this movie but he died in 1955 and the studio cast Paul Newman as Dean’s replacement.

Many critics of this movie believe star Paul Newman was miscast. Newman, at the time, was 33 years old and seen as too old to play the teenage Billy the Kid.

I originally watched this movie back in the late ’90s when I was trying to watch as many movies that had Billy the Kid in it as I could find. I thought, “Paul Newman as Billy? This should be pretty good.” However, I was wrong. You can tell that this screenplay was written for a younger actor. Dean probably would have been able to pull off the “troubled teenager” bit a little more convincingly than the mid-30 year old Newman. But even with a more convincing lead, this movie is just boring. Newman’s Billy seems like a petulant child and the events transpiring barely registered in my consciousness. By the time the movie was over (what felt like 6 hours later) I had forgotten most of the story. Plus, Billy’s “love interest” shows up half way through the movie and all of sudden they are in love. It’s weird. She’s played by Lita Milan, and she’s pretty, but she has a very distracting haircut; the infamous femme-mullet. The whole movie feels like a jumbled collection of boring scenes capped off with a very unsatisfying ending.

Per the movie’s title, for many years Billy the Kid was believed to be left handed. The mistake occurred because the one known/verified photograph of Billy the Kid (above) was a ferrotype (or, tintype) which portrays a mirrored image of the subject. Unfortunately, publishers over the years reproduced this photo in numerous books “as is” and didn’t document the fact that we are looking at the mirror image of Billy the Kid. This led to the mistaken belief by many people that Billy was left handed (as that’s where his gun is holstered in the photo). Extensive expert photo analysis has concluded that Billy wasn’t left handed and this image is in fact reversed.

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Billy the Kid Week 2010: Review of Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw (1943)

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, nostalgia, pop culture reviews on August 9, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to the beginning of Billy the Kid week where I will watch and review a bunch of movies featuring the historical character Billy the Kid. This started with the 20th birthday of Young Guns II on Aug 1. It will continue throughout this week and will include a review of Young Guns which turns 22 years old on Thursday, Aug 12.

The first movie I’ll review for Billy the Kid Week will be Howard Hughes’ infamous The Outlaw from 1943.

This movie introduced audiences to the gorgeous Jane Russell. The movie became highly controversial and extremely famous for the battle Hughes had in trying to release it. At the time, movie makers followed what was called the Hays Code which was a set of strict guidelines that movie makers had to follow when portraying women, their clothing and sex. In making this movie, Hughes completely ignored this code. Howard Hughes produced this movie (even co-directing it with Howard Hawks) and used it to push the boundaries of what a movie could show…sex-wise. Hughes picked Russell because of her looks and even designed a brand new bra to contain Russell’s breasts (however she refused to wear it).

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Review of the new Karate Kid

Posted in movies, reviews with tags movies, reviews on June 18, 2010 by Paxton

Okay, last week I watched the entire Karate Kid collection in preparation for the new movie. Now I’ve seen the new movie. How is it?

Let’s look at what I liked and disliked.

I’m not sure if this is a like or dislike, but it’s surprising how much this new movie lifts from the original movie. I mean the situations, the scenes and the dialogue are oftentimes directly lifted from the original Karate Kid. I’m not surprised since, like I said last week, the original Karate Kid was a nearly perfect movie with nary a scene or line of dialogue wasted. I’m probably 50-50 on whether this movie worked. It was entertaining, but again, it really added nothing new as the story and much of the dialogue is exactly the same, so I have to ask, why bother?

Secondly, Jackie Chan as Mr Han makes this movie. Totally worth seeing it for him. Unfortunately he really only gets one fight scene, but that’s not what his character is about anyway. His one fight scene is the scene where he fights off the bullies. It’s amazing. At first you wonder, how is this going to look with Han beating up a bunch of 12 year olds? But it comes off great. Han doesn’t actually throw any punches, he uses all defensive moves then uses the punches and kicks of the bullies against themselves. It’s seriously amazing and Chan, as usual is awesome.

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Watching the EncoreHD Karate Kid marathon

Posted in 80s, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags movies, pop culture, reviews on June 15, 2010 by Paxton

EncoreHD showed a marathon of all four Karate Kid movies this past weekend. In preparation for the new movie, I sat down and watched the entire series. From Crane kick to the new chick I endured the entirety of this series in one fell sweep (of the leg).

I originally saw the the first three movies in the theater. I didn’t see Next Karate Kid until several years after it hit video mainly because it looked terrible and secondly, I’m a misogynist. I remember loving the original, liking Part II but thinking it was a bit boring and really enjoying Part III. When I watched Part IV on video, I thought it was as bad as I expected it to be. Let’s see if my thoughts on these movies have changed over the years.

The Karate Kid (1984) – This is a nearly perfect movie. I enjoyed every moment of every scene. Despite being just over 2 hours, the movie felt slim and trim. It starts off with several good action scenes then it begins a slow burn with Daniel’s training finally finishing in a whirlwind set of scenes at the All-Valley Karate Championships. Macchio is great as Daniel and Elizabeth Shue is cute and fun as Ali. The best people in the movie, however, are Pat Morita as Miyagi, William Zabka as Johnny and Martin Kove as Kreese. Morita is wonderfully subtle and humorous as Miyagi. You always enjoy watching him on screen. And his fighting scene where he kicks the Cobra Kai’s asses is perfectly done. Zabka totally owns as the rich douche Johnny Lawrence. As with his other “bully” roles (Just One of the Guys and Back to School) you almost feel like he enjoys terrorizing and harassing other kids. And the collection of teens he hangs out with are just as good in their supporting roles. In this, Zabka is sneeringly wonderful. And what’s to say about the despicable John Kreese? He sulks his way through this movie spouting macho platitudes about no fear and no pain and generally getting the audience to hate him. And he does it well. This movie most definitely still holds up and I can wholeheartedly recommend this movie even today. I hope the new movie is as charming and funny as the original (a tall order, I know).

The Karate Kid Part II (1986) – Okay, like I said, when I originally saw this in the theater I thought it was only okay and a tad boring. The first ten minutes which picks up immediately after the karate tournament is fantastic and may have set the bar a little high. In that first ten minutes we see John Kreese and the Cobra Kais (yes, all five of the boys return in what is essentially a cameo) arguing about Johnny’s second place. Kreese starts beating them up then Miyagi steps in and finishes it. Totally awesome and pretty much better than the rest of the movie. Anyway, after this, Daniel tags along, uninvited mind you, with Miyagi to visit Okinawa to see his dying father. While there we meet Sato, Miyagi’s former best friend who now wants to kill him and that best friend’s mean and douchey nephew Chozen. Sato and Chozen are kind of setup as John Kreese and Johnny Lawrence characters in that they terrorize Miyagi and the village. This movie reveals an interesting fact about Miyagi’s karate; he enjoys punching people in the crotch. There’s a scene in this movie where Miyagi teaches Daniel a move where you drop a rag (or something) on the floor and and when you pick it up you use your lower position to punch your opponent in the balls. Daniel even uses this maneuver on Chozen later on in the movie. If you remember in the first movie, when Miyagi is beating up the Cobra Kais he totally kicks Dutch in the nuts. So, essentially, a “shot to the pills” is an official move in Miyagi-Do karate. That’s good to know; if you ever fight someone taught by Miyagi then protect your loins. Anyway, everything comes to a head during a hurricane, Sato switches over to the good guys and at the final festival, Daniel has to fight Chozen in a “death match” (why it’s Daniel’s job to fight in this death match, I have no idea). The fight is slightly better choreography-wise than the first movie, but again it’s straining my own personal believability that Daniel would be able to beat Chozen. I do like that Daniel actually tries to Crane kick Chozen and it gets blocked. Makes sense because Chozen was taught by Sato who was taught by Miyagi’s dad, so that technique would be familiar to him. But the “new” Crane kick, the drum maneuver, is dumb. And I hate the nose “honk” at the end. HATE IT. So, I still think this movie is a bit boring. I don’t honestly care a lot about the story, it’s not as personal to me as the first movie. And I have trouble understanding why it’s Daniel’s responsibility to fight Chozen to the death. Daniel has nothing to do with it. For me, except for the first 10 minutes, this movie was mildly entertaining at best and boring at worst.