Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

"Any town's a nice little town when you nail a broad." Words to live by, n'est-ce pas?

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is a movie I remember from my childhood—not that I would have gotten to see it, of course, but I remember the ads in the paper, and sensitive child that I was, I found the title vaguely alarming. If only I had known that Larry's craziness is confined almost entirely to his reckless driving, and that Mary isn't really dirty, unless you define dirty as speaking with a dubious American accent. But I guess Dubiously Accented Mary, Unsafe Larry wouldn't have put asses in seats.

What Mary (Susan George) and Larry (Peter Fonda)—along with Deke (Adam Roarke), Larry's mechanic and the brains of the outfit—are is insufferably smug, to an extent that we kind of wanted to see them get caught by the sheriff Vic Morrow. For a hard-driving gang of robbers, they don't really seem to make much progress in getting out of Sheriff Vic's jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the chases, involving the muscliest sort of muscle cars that sound impressive even to non-gearheads like Athens and myself, are kind of exciting. There's even a duel between Larry's charger and a helocopter that's pretty cool. And then, in a cautionary moment befitting Last Clear Chance... well, I don't want to spoil the jaw-dropping ending, but let's just hope what happens led to safer railroad crossings throughout this county.

Bruce Lee: His Last Days, His Last Nights

Did you know that to really understand the death of movie star, martial artist extraordinaire, and philosopher Bruce Lee, you have to know all the dreary details of wannabe actress, gambling addict, and pathological whiner Betty Ting Pei's life? Lee died in Betty's apartment in 1973, and she took a lot of flak for it, apparently, so three years later she decided to set the record straight in the terrible Lei Siu Lung yi ngo, or Bruce Lee and I—with the emphasis really on the "I." Betty tells her story to a sympathetic bartender while a gang of toughs wait for her outside the bar. In her flashbacks Lee is played by Danny Lee, who doesn't really look like Lee and totally lacks his charm and athletic prowess and catlike grace. The fight scenes are incompetently staged, and dim mak isn't even mentioned!

Here are some things Athens and I learned about Bruce Lee from His Last Days:

1. Betty Ting Pei loved movies when she was a girl and always wanted to be an actress.
2. Betty Ting Pei's gambling problem was the only thing that stood in the way of her success.
3. Betty Ting Pei only ever posed in the nude because she was drugged.
4. Bruce Lee regularly made it a point in contract negotiations to get Betty Ting Pei movie roles. (Though wouldn't you know it? She's about to get her big break when he dies on her!)

Somehow I don't imagine His Last Days really did much to rehabilitate Betty's image in Hong Kong, but I could be wrong.

House of Bamboo

Athens and I love it when Robert Ryan plays bad guys! (Cf. The Naked Spur, Crossfire, Act of Violence, Beware, My Lovely, Bad Day at Black Rock...) He's pretty despicable in House of Bamboo as the head of a quasi-military gang of crooks in postwar Tokyo. While you're not sympathetic to him, you always care what's going on inside his head—as when he realizes he's executed as a traitor the wrong crony (Cameron Mitchell, who dies rather spectacularly in his hot tub). Ryan's Sandy also goes out in remarkably vicious style, slinging lead into a crowd of Tokyo carnival-goers with no regard for any innocents who might get caught in the crossfire. A magnificent bastard, just like Athens (without A's lovable side, though...)!