Today's topic is not The Kinks' You Really Got Me but - as this blogger watches The Damned Don't Cry on TCM'S Noir Alley - movies that, via incendiary brilliance or indelible imagery, left a powerful impact on the individual and collective psyche. Most were genuinely good films, others influential strictly as a result of having been run over and over and over on television in early childhood days, the late 1950's and early 1960's.
A few movies and/or cartoons turned out to be both frequently shown and fantastic. First and foremost, there would be Buster Keaton, getting chased by what appeared to be the entire L.A.P.D. in Cops, the movie that made this correspondent a classic film buff for life.
This tour-de-force for Keaton (as director, actor and death-defying acrobat) propelled this correspondent on his merry way to the universes of silent films and film collecting.
Another silent film that really got me - and got me laughing - was the Charley Chase comedy Limousine Love, first brought to my attention in one of the Robert Youngson silent comedy compilation features.
In this 1928 classic, which has been reviewed on the Magnolia's Musings website, Charley ends up unknowingly driving to his wedding with a nude woman in the back of his car. (Note: frame grabs from Limousine Love are courtesy of Dave Lord Heath's website, Another Nice Mess: The Films Of Laurel & Hardy)
Charley's car is out of gas, and while he walks to and from the gas station, the nubile Mrs. Glanders, having fallen in a massive mud puddle, ducks in his car to change clothes. While Mrs. Glanders' clothes - all of them - are outside the car, Charley jumps in and drives off, totally unaware she's in the back seat.
How the storyline resolves this very tricky situation adds up to ingenious comedy. Co-starring Hal Roach Studio stalwarts Edgar Kennedy, Edna Marion and Viola Richard, this is brilliant, sophisticated, funny and a harbinger of the pre-code era that was just a couple of years down the road.
Charley would continue to make great comedy short subjects, frequently teamed with comedienne Thelma Todd, well into the talkies, but Limousine Love would never be topped.
Stop-motion animation invariably packs quite the emotional wallop and is imbued with an emotional immediacy rarely found in 21st century CGI. This may be due to the uncanny ability of such innovative animators as Willis O'Brien to breathe life into their creations.
As far as visual and emotional wallop goes, the entomologist turned stop-motion filmmaker Ladislas Starevitch (Wadislaw Starewicz) had multiple haymakers.
Noting O'Brien's blazing genius in King Kong, the hydra and the indefatigable "swordfightin' skeletons" produced by his protégé, Ray Harryhausen (by far the most celebrated of stop-motion marvels) and the way-out whimsy of Charley Bowers, it's Wadislaw Starewicz that repeatedly gets this animation fan in a most profound way.
THE MASCOT may be the most wonderfully harrowing of the dreamlands from Starewicz' five decades in filmmaking - and a vividly surrealistic piece that invariably gets audiences riveted to the screen. The Starewicz adventures, in silents and talkies, are the stuff fever dreams are made of.
Way back when stop-motion animation (and animation in general) was still considered the kiddie department and looked down upon, saw one of Preston Sturges' Paramount features, Sullivan's Travels, in a college film history course. Found it devastatingly great.
While there are numerous clever lines, including many regarding "Ants In Your Pants Of 1939," throughout Sullivans Travels, the sudden shifts from comedy to road picture to stark drama absolutely floored this film buff - and led to a mission to see every film Preston Sturges ever was involved in. Was not disappointed!
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog still love Citizen Kane, as fashionable as it is nowadays to not profess love for Orson Welles' 1941 "let's show 'em how to make movies" opus, but found his 1965 film Chimes At Midnight a stunner. This dyed-in-the-wool moviegoer was blown away and sitting silently in the theatre seat 15 minutes after the lights went on.
Orson inhabits the character of Falstaff and demonstrates astonishing filmmaking creativity from start-to-finish.
While Chimes At Midnight is available on Blu-ray in a beautiful transfer - if you must watch it at home, get the most massive and sharp big screen TV possible - this expansive and ambitious epic is best seen in a movie theatre, on the big screen with an audience.
In this writer's opinion, even Welles' lesser efforts demonstrate incredible imagination, originality and ingenuity. Like Ernie Kovacs, Mr. Welles was always 15 years ahead of everyone else.
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