Ten Days of Terror!: White Dog

Film: White Dog
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

I admit that I am someone who puts a lot of stock into verisimilitude in movies. I need to be able to see that something could happen in the world that is shown to us for me to be involved in the story. I can accept magic, and spaceships, and laser guns. I can even accept all of those in the same movie if I’m given a consistent world. When a film breaks with that, when it breaks the rules of the world that it presents, it tends to lose me a little bit. Samuel Fuller’s White Dog, a film so notorious that it was not officially fully released for more than two-and-a-half decades, is a rare exception to this. In this case, the message is more important than the fact that the people involved act in ways that don’t specifically make sense.

The notorious nature of White Dog is enough that it makes sense for me to offer a trigger warning on it: this is a movie that is directly about racism. This is not sanitized “racism is bad” like Driving Miss Daisy or even the “racism infects everything” of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. This is vicious and brutal, and while the film isn’t remotely pro-racism, it is shocking and unflinching and brutal. So, this being the case, you’ve been warned. Click on the link to continue reading if you’re up for it. If you’re not, no shame.

Keep Your Hands to Yourself

Film: Pickup on South Street
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

What happens to film noir when the primary focus of the world is the Cold War? What happens is that the directors and screenwriters creating the genre incorporate the situation of the wider world into their films. Sometimes, this results in a film that turns goofy like Kiss Me Deadly. Another possibility is Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, a film that follows most of the standard film noir conventions but puts a little Cold War twist on it by making the score everyone wants not a statue or a bank vault but a slender strip of microfilm.

We start film noir-y enough with crime. On a train, Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) plies his trade as a skillful pickpocket just released from prison. Skip is a three-time loser, and another pinch will put him away for good. Still, it’s the only trade he knows and he’s as good as anyone at it. What he doesn’t count on is that in the purse of one of his victims he gets not cash but that strip of microfilm mentioned above. The courier, Candy (Jean Peters) is a patsy for her ex-boyfriend Joey (Richard Kiley) and doesn’t know what she’s carrying.

It Only Sounds Like Porn

Film: The Big Red One
Format: DVD from personal collection on itty bitty bedroom television.

I have no idea why I watched The Big Red One the first time other than the fact that it was a war movie, and when I was a kid, war movies were my favorite genre of film. I don’t think I knew then that the official museum of the First Division was almost literally in my backyard, or at least within a 15-minute drive. All I knew was that it was a war movie and that guys shot at stuff and got shot at, and bad guys died, and that was enough for me.

The film opens in the days at the tail end of World War I. An unnamed man (later referred to only as the Sergeant and played by Lee Marvin) is wandering the battlefield when he is attacked by a crazed horse. The horse destroys his rifle. The man then encounters a German soldier who tells him the war is over. Not believing the German, the man kills the German with a knife, only to discover later that he’d been told the truth, making what he did not killing an enemy, but murder, at least in his own mind.

We flash forward then to World War II, with a group of new soldiers heading for North Africa under the command of the Sergeant. Of this group and the Sergeant’s rifle squad, we are concerned really with four men: Zab (Robert Carradine), who is an aspiring novelist and also our narrator through the film; Griff (Mark Hamill), a semi-pacifist and sharpshooter; Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco); and Johnson (Kelly Ward). The other soldiers in the rifle squad come and go, but these four remain, fighting through North Africa, Sicily, D-Day, and across Europe until the end of the fighting.

And that is really all that happens here. There is no major overarching plot to keep us glued to our seats. While several of the characters—particularly Griff—experience some changes between our opening frames and the credits, this film is different from most World War II films and most war films in that there is not a particular mission or event that concerns the bulk of the action. Instead, the plot is the survival of these men in the squad—can they make it to the other side of the war with not only their bodies but their minds still intact?

There are a number of particular events that occur through the film, of course, to show us in the audience the true horrors of battle and of warfare. We see the men dig into foxholes at Kasserine, we see them fight German panzer divisions on Sicily. We see a vicious firefight in an insane asylum. All of this culminates in the liberation of a concentration camp and the realization of what has been going on far behind the German lines.

While both war and anti-war films have been made almost since films started rolling more than 100 years ago, The Big Red One is different from both in many respects. It’s almost neutral on the idea of whether we should fight in wars or not. War is treated not as something to seek for and find glory and honor. It’s also not treated as the greatest evil of Mankind and something that should be avoided at all costs. Instead, war simply exists, and men go to fight and die in it, and some of them live to see the end while others are killed along the way. In essence, war here isn’t objectively good or bad—that judgment is up to each of us individually.

Certainly war isn’t glorified here. The men are simply men—tough in many cases (Lee Marvin couldn’t possibly be something other than tough), dedicated, good soldiers, and even willing to fight for their country, but there is no tickertape parade or swelling musical strains here. At the same time, the theme of killing in war versus murder is played out multiple times, and Fuller’s conclusion seems to be that these two things are not synonymous—that there exists a very real difference between murder and death in war. Again, war simply exists, and the rules for it exist, and there is no objective judgment. What we learn by the end is that war exists sometimes because it has to.

In many ways, it feels like American war movies grew up some with the creation and release of The Big Red One. Instead of nationalistic chest thumping, propaganda, or pacifism, we get instead something that attempts to approach simple reality.

All well and good, but how is the movie? It’s a keeper. There’s enough going on here to keep a dedicated action fan watching. There’s enough “us good, them bad” for even the staunchest military hawk to clap hands and cheer. There’s enough “war is hell” for the doves. And despite this, it doesn’t feel scattered or difficult to follow.

I can’t say it’s my favorite war movie, but it was an important step in moving the film industry toward more realism in such films. That it does so without obvious moral judgment is even more impressive.

Why to watch The Big Red One: American war movies grown up.
Why not to watch: War is never pretty.

Nucking Futs

Films: Shock Corridor, The Snake Pit
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player (Shock); streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Snake).

When it comes to filming the dirtier side of life, sex is what the people want to see. There are undoubtedly more films that showcase sex—not even getting into the pornographic side of the world—than anything else. Tune into Cinemax some night after about 10:30 and see how many bad cop movies/slasher movies/etc. take place in strip clubs, for instance. Of almost as much interest to the average person is insanity, and plenty of films explore this as well. Many of these are pretty bad, just like most sex films are pretty bad. But some of them are also pretty good, even beyond the shock appeal and the thrill of watching something that feels like should be going on behind closed doors.

Shock Corridor is such a film. Looking to expose a killer in the local mental institution, ace reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) undergoes a year of training to pose as a mental patient. He has his girlfriend, singer and stripper Cathy (Constance Towers), claim that Johnny is her brother, and that he’s attempted to force an incestuous relationship with her. The doctors at the hospital agree to put him under observation, and get Johnny declared legally insane, committing him to the ward.

As Johnny undergoes treatment, he locates the three men who were the witness to the crime committed as well as other inmates like Pagliacci (Larry Tucker), a grossly overweight man who believes himself an opera singer. The first witness Johnny speaks to is Stuart (James Best). Stuart was captured by the communists in Korea and brainwashed, and now believes himself to be General J.E.B. Stuart, and replays Confederate battles in his head. In a moment of lucidity (something that happens with each witness), Stuart reveals that the killer wore white pants, and is thus either an attendant or a doctor.

Witness number two is Trent (Hari Rhodes), an African-American who was the only non-white at a prominent university. Eventually, the constant abuse broke him down, and he spends his days split between his old personality and one in which he is a racist and a founder of the KKK. From Trent, Johnny learns that the killer was not a doctor, but an attendant.

Third on the list is Dr. Boden (Gene Evans), a man who worked on the Manhattan Project, and has regressed to a childlike state, a regression that he admits to having done willingly during his moment of lucidity. He reveals the name of the real killer to Johnny, closing the case.

The problem is, and this is the reason to watch the film, of course, is that his time spent in the institution is starting to have a real effect on poor Johnny’s mind. Initially, he has terrible dreams about what might happen to the attractive Cathy while he is in stir. After all, he thinks, Cathy is attractive and talented, and works in a strip show—there’s no telling what one of the customers might get up to. Eventually, though, he starts to believe in the story he invented to get thrown into the ward in the first place.

There are plenty of lurid moments. At one point, while trying to get on Stuart’s good side, for instance, Johnny is trapped in the nymphomaniac ward, and nearly torn to shreds by women desperate for any man. While this might sound like the sort of scene Russ Meyer might film, it’s actually pretty terrifying. There’s nothing sexy about this scene, and quite a bit that is horrible, and Johnny comes out of the ordeal bandaged.

In his attempt to win over Trent, Johnny helps Trent go on a race-fueled explosion, which earns Johnny a trip to electroshock therapy—again lurid and again frightening and terrible. This episode creates a further indication of Johnny’s deteriorating mental state: frequently his ability to speak gives out and he’s unable to communicate.

There’s no doubt that Shock Corridor was made with the lurid in mind, and it seeks to shock the viewer at every turn. One of the most effective moments of this comes with a full-blown hallucination on the part of Johnny, featuring rain in the middle of the ward and some sudden color photography. Once this happens, it’s evident that like the other patients, Johnny is having moments of insanity and lucidity. The question is which will come out on top.

Despite the lurid nature of the topic and the story, this is a great film. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a worthy one, and this is a film I will definitely revisit once I’ve completed the entire list.

An earlier film about the insane asylum is The Snake Pit. This is a far less lurid tale, perhaps because of its age, and perhaps because it attempts to paint a realistic picture of schizophrenia instead of the amped-up version presented in Shock Corridor. Certainly there are a number of Hollywood touches to this film, but this is a harrowing account of the illness of Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) and the attempts to get to the root of her particular mental state.

We start in the hospital, called Juniper Hill (and if you’ve ever read Stephen King’s It, now you know where he got the name of his mental institution from), and Virginia’s awakening. She has no idea where she is or how she got there. We learn briefly in a flashback from her husband Robert (Mark Stevens) that the two of them met in Chicago, and that she ran out quickly one night when they had plans. He eventually found her again after he had moved to New York, and while she seemed both desperate and unable to believe that he truly loved her, they were married. Shortly thereafter, she broke with reality completely, and was institutionalized.

We learn what has happened to Virginia as her doctor, Mark Kik (short for Chrzanowski, and played by Leo Genn) learns of her troubled past. Virginia is convinced that it is impossible for a man to love her, or so we think at first. What we come to understand is not that she finds herself unlovable, but that she seems to be plagued with a curse—men who care about her don’t fare too well when Virginia isn’t happy with them or wants a break from them. A few terrible coincidences lead to schizophrenia, and to shock treatments and hydrotherapy.

What’s interesting here is that this film caused a huge reaction in the country at large—mental institutions were revamped because of this film. This is despite the fact that this film is in no way an expose of institutions. If anything, the wrath of the reformers must have centered on such places because of the character of Miss Davis (Helen Craig), who appears to be a sort of template for Nurse Ratched, although with far less malice and power.

While The Snake Pit succumbs to the Hollywood ending, this in no way diminishes its power, or the incredible force of de Havilland’s portrayal. She gives here one of the great acting performances ever recorded, and I’ll say it here—the woman was robbed at the Oscars.

The Snake Pit is too clinical at times, and fast forwards past many aspects of treatment. However, few things resonate so completely as Virginia’s first moments in what she calls the snake pit—it’s a moment of despair and realization brilliantly filmed, and one that still resonates as powerfully now as 60 years ago.

Why to watch Shock Corridor: It doesn’t spare the lurid details.
Why not to watch: It’s hard on the psyche.

Why to watch The Snake Pit: One of the greatest acting jobs ever committed to film.
Why not to watch: Olivia de Havilland far less glamorous than you’re used to.