Rustler's Rhapsody (1985)

Rustler's Rhapsody (1985) - (Tom Berenger)

Sela Ward with her horse "Wildfire"

Rustler's Rhapsody is a hypothetical movie about a silver screen cowboy. It is a movie the narrator (also Rex O'Herlihan's sidekick) imagines as a 1985 update of the old 1940s cowboy matinee films. The narrator believes if those films were still being made they would be more realistic. He tells us that in a modern film the bad guys wouldn't be such cowards, and Rex wouldn't be so damned perfect all the time! Of course the film is in color, not black and white, and in this more realistic scenario, the hero Rex knows he is playing out a script. Because of that, he knows what will happen! None of the other characters knows, because they're just people in a movie and they don't travel all over the West the way Rex does. When Rex travels from town to town, he rides his wonder horse Wildfire, and he also has a mule with him for hauling his wardrobe wagon. This wagon has a finely crafted cabinet inside with places for four guitars, about 10 different shirts, a stack of spare hats and a drawer for his knives, which he uses to cut pieces from some kind of intoxicating root he always takes along. When Rex arrives in Oakwood Estates, as always when he arrives in a western town he immediately gets into a conflict with the local bad guys. However, the evil power-mad cattle baron (Andy Griffith as colonel Ticonderoga) realizes he is operating under a set of silver screen cowboy rules, one of which is that the bad guys can never win. To solve this problem, he decides to find another good guy (who also rides around in the desert with a wardrobe wagon) to fight Rex. That is where the jaded and confident Rex encounters a first: Something that has never happened before! What will happen when he has to fight another good guy?

As Rustler's Rhapsody begins, Rex sings his theme song "I Ride Alone" to his horse Wildfire and mule as they stand listening beside his wardrobe wagon.

Patrick Wayne and Tom Berenger face off as the two good guys in Rustler's Rhapsody. They know the good guy always wins in B westerns, but which one? They agree that the "most-good good guy" will win. Then Patrick Wayne (as Bob Barber) explains to Berenger (as Rex O'Herlihan the singing cowboy) that one of the requirements for being a good guy is that he has to be a confident heterosexual. From Rex's expression Bob realizes Rex is a virgin and says "well don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just gonna shoot the guns out of your hands." Rex says "I'd rather you shoot me in the heart!" Bob replies "You know I can't do that!" Rex then says "I can't fight you today," leaves and is met immediately in the street by a disgusted crowd throwing things at him and calling him a coward and a pervert.

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Gypsy Furry (Singoalla), 1951

Gypsy Fury (1951) - (Viveca Lindfors)

This is a poster for the 1951 Christian-Jacque film Gypsy Fury, a remake of his 1949 French film Singoalla. The film is about a tragedy in 14th century Sweden involving a lord who gives up his worldly possessions when he falls in love with a gypsy named Singoalla (played by Viveca Lindfors). I would like to see this film, especially the French version, which is supposed to be better, but I have not yet been able to find a DVD or VHS for any version of it.

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2016: Obama's America

I finally got hold of the poster for this film. Speaking in the first person, Dinesh D'Sousa writes in his book that is the basis for the film: "I'm a Third World guy who has embraced America. Obama is an American who has embraced a Third World ideology." For the moment at least this poster does not come up often on eBay and when it does it goes for very good prices.

Two 1947 Antisemitism Films

Crossfire (1947) - (Robert Young)

Gentleman's Agreement (1947) - (Gregory Peck)

Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire was an adaption from a novel by Richard Brooks which was originally about the murder of a soldier by fellow soldiers because he was gay. The gay issue was not acceptable to the film industry in that year, so in the screeenplay the murdered solder was made to be a Jew instead. The social machinations of antisemitism are not carefully explored for various reasons, but primarily because this was mostly a low-budget murder mystery.

Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement got the Academy Award for best picture that year. It was deliberately written in the original novel by Laura Z. Hobson as a story about antisemitism in which Gregory Peck as a journalist takes on the assignment of writing about the subject and tells his story with insights he gained by posing as a Jew himself. Many facets of the insidious phenomenon of antisemitism in American society are illustrated in this film. The "gentleman's agreement" was apparently some kind of tacit understanding that Jews would be kept out of certain areas of American life. Dean Stockwell does a great job here at age eleven as Tommy Green, the son of Peck's character Philip Schuyler Green.

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Simba Mark of Mau Mau 1955

Simba 1955 Dirk Bogarde directed by Brian Desmond Hurst

Simba is Swahili for lion and was apparently a word left in blood by the Mau Mau as a signature after they did crimes of murder and arson against British settlers and their indigenous supporters in 1950s Kenya.

The film opens with a black man in shirt, slacks and sandals riding on a bicycle to an injured white man lying on the ground, and hacking him to death with a machete.

Then comes an airport scene with mixed races in business attire followed by a romantic conversation between Alan Howard (Dirk Bogarde) and Mary Crawford (Virginia McKenna) in a covertible sports car riding in sunny weather on smooth roads across the African plain as they return to Crawford's farm. When they reach the farm they find police on the scene and learn that Alan Howard's brother David has been killed. David was the one hacked to death in the opening scene.

This film is a dramatization of the early 1950s Kenya Mau Mau revolt against the British settlers, based on a novel by Anthony Perry. The main characters are slmost all white representatives of the British community in khaki suits, berets and bush hats, with the obligatory subplot of the Bogarde-McKenna love story; the Mau Mau revolt, a very nasty disturbance with macabre overtones, was a rude and vicious intrusion into this quaint colonial setting.

I have read that the images on these two posters are thought to be racist and derogatory, and I believe that also applies to the film itself. Another film from the same year, the 1955 Elwood Price documentary (narrated by Chet Huntley) about the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya, does not show Kenyans in this kind of scant attire running around with skulls on stick ends, so it would probably be fair to say both the images on the posters and in this Brian Desmond Hurst film are sensationalist. However the kind of Kikiyu tribe behavior documented in those years as Mau Mau activity might be seen by some people as racist and derogatory even if described with clinical accuracy: the outlaw Kikuyu were acting out a derogatory caricature of themselves. A film dramatization with promotional material that exaggerates primitive appearances is not nearly as bad as the original crimes were, even if one believes it was a crime to make a sensationalized commercial docudrama (nominated for four film awards) about this.

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OHMSS Japanese 2-panel

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) - (George Lazenby) Japanese STB two-panel (20" x 57")

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Vanishing Point 1971 Japanese

Vanishing Point (1971) - (Barry Newman) Japanese STB two-panel poster (20" x 57.25")

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