Christmas Dress (2016) – It’s based on a true story about a comfortably well-off father and son who went out of their way to make sure that Christmas reached a destitute family during the Depression. Everyone involved wanted to make a fine, uplifting short film (27 minutes) for the LDS audience. However, the script is pretty artless and the actors, while adequate, aren’t good enough to compensate for the script. Also, the main set, a tiny cabin that’s actually a maintained historical building at the This Is The Place Monument, is far too clean and glossy to be the cramped living space of a family of six with no money. (And the titular dress is really an ancillary detail, and seems to be artificially inflated in importance because everyone involved knew that “The Christmas Noun” is good marketing, especially if the noun is wearable.)
The Green Berets (1968) – John Wayne starred in and co-directed (in other words, single-handedly caused to be made) the only pro-military film about the Vietnam War during the course of that war (and one of very few made ever). This isn’t surreptitious propaganda: The opening scenes spell out very clearly that the U.S. presence in Vietnam is to be lauded, and those who oppose it by comparing our military to Nazis are to be taught the error of their ways. A lot of commentators have dismissed this movie as an updated Western, but if it is, it’s a good updated Western, full of rousing action and men acting from valor and honor (although the Indians in old Westerns were rarely shown as completely despicable as the Viet Cong are here).
My biggest complaint about the film isn’t the politics (which caused some reviewers, then and now, to give out zero-star F grades because of ideological disagreement); it’s the fact that half an hour from the end, the initial plot having been completed, we get an entirely separate story which shifts from “military camp defending itself” to “secret mission behind enemy lines.” A little bewildering, really.
Mars Need Women (1967) – This is why writer-director Larry Buchanan is legendary, and not in a good way. Here’s a premise that would be a natural for a campy, fun treatment… and it’s played absolutely straight. Leaden, plodding and straight. Not smart, mind; the script is as dumb as a bag of hammers. You’d think with a cast like past-his-prime squeaky-clean teen Tommy Kirk and Yvone “Batgirl” Craig, we could get some winking fun in there, but no. It’s not a movie to be watched, or even responded to; it can only be endured. And I’ll admit, I turned it off with a half-hour left to go.
Abandoned movies: Full Metal Yakuza (1997), My Name is Nobody (1973), Vampyr (1932)