Tuesday's Overlooked Film and/or Other A/V: a couple more links yet

Possibly a few more to come...thanks as always to all contributors and readers!


Bill Crider: Heartbreak Hotel (clip)

Brian Arnold: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Dan Stumpf: The Westland Case; The Whip Hand

Evan Lewis: The Lady in the Morgue

Iba Dawson: Boomerang (1947)

Ivan G. Shreve: "Double Time" (The Joey Bishop Show)

Jaime Weinman: the "revised" Porgy and Bess

James Reasoner: "T is for Toga!"; The Late Show

Jerry House: The Golem (1920, with fragments of the 1915 version)

Juri Nummelin: Weeds (1987)

Kate Laity: Newgrange

Marty McKee: Trancers

Michael Shonk: Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

Patti Abbott: Blackmail (1929; silent)

Pearce Duncan: The Hole; Drive-In Delirium

Priscilla Peterson: Tender Mercies

Randy Johnson: Django Strikes Again

Ron Scheer: The Hired Hand

Scott Cupp: The Last Wave

Stacia Jones: Big Trouble (1986)

Steve Lewis: Rogues' Regiment; La bandera (aka Escape from Yesterday)

Todd Mason: "Munro" (and Little Murders)(see below)

Walter Albert: Tall, Dark and Handsome

Yvette Banek: One Potato, Two Potato



Related matters:

Brent McKee: TV series/season debuts

Ed Gorman: Boardwalk Empire and The Office

Iba Dawson: Posters v. Movies

Jake Hinkson: Higher Ground

Stephen Gallagher, on tv writing in the UK


MUNRO...a cartoon by Jules Feiffer

I'm always impressed by what others have managed to miss altogether (and what I have, as well), particularly when it's been a part of my cultural surround for decades (and theirs)...so, since I'm currently reading Jules Feiffer's memoir Backing into Forward, I thought I'd mention this short film, which was based on his first long-form comics work which wasn't a story for The Spirit (as the young Feiffer was a scripter as well as jack of all trades in the Will Eisner studios for several years before being drafted during the Korean War; "Munro" was also his first major artistic response to his draftee service).

The short animated version, which is very faithful to Feiffer's graphic short story (rather than graphic novel), won an Oscar, and Howard Morris certain does a good job with his voices. (Feiffer found "Munro" essentially impossible to sell, so it didn't see print till after his "Sick, Sick, Sick" strip started appearing in The Village Voice, in the collection of graphic short stories, Passionella and Other Stories (1959), was animated and released in '60 and was Oscar'd in '61. (Doubleclick on these YT windows to get the less-encumbered image.)



Of course, such later Feiffer plays as Little Murders and Carnal Knowledge were later to make an even bigger cinematic splash, but I'm not sure they're superior, even as much as I've enjoyed them (and the absurdly vicious Little Murders is in some ways more enjoyable than the petty uglinesses of Carnal Knowledge).

(For its part, Little Murders is apparently out of print on dvd, and has some ridiculous asking prices up on the obvious sites...so here's an in-pieces YT posting:)


Carnal Knowledge is much more readily available. But, if you haven't yet, try "Munro" and perhaps one of the several collections of Feiffer cartoons, or his The Great Comic Book Heroes, that Fantagraphics has out (I recommended Explainers some time back)...and the memoir is pretty interesting, as well...

--Todd Mason