Nietzsche's Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence
It Came From Outer Space [Harvard Square]: And now to destroy the serious tone of this column. Channel 5 in New York used to have a show called Crature Features which ran at 8:30 Saturday nights. My parents didn't want me to watch it because they were afraid that horror movies would give me bad dreams. They were right, of course, but I watched them anyway. This movie, with the possible exception of The Blob, was the best bad horror movie they ever showed. Being presented this weekend, along with Creature From The Black Lagoon, in 3-D. It has the quintessential horror plot: The good guys are in a space-ship in outer space when they discover that a monster is on board. No place to run. You can approach this film three ways. You can be a pseudo and jeer out loud at the cheap effects, you can be a silly pseudo and consider the movie to be an allegory for the human condition, or you can make believe that you are an eight-year-old and be really scared. The third alternative is the most fun.
Yojimbo [Coolidge Corner]: Toshiro Mifune, playing John Belushi, rides into town with a samurai sword for hire. He meets clint Eastwood, who plays an American actor who acts in spaghetti westerns based on Japanese classics. Mifune says "This film is better than anything you'll ever do" and Eastwood replies "Yeah, but more people will see my movies and they'll think my plots were original. You'll wind up announcing winners on the Emmy Awards." Mifune sighs in agreement and shows Eastwood how to spin a six-shooter. Eastwood show Mifune how to open a beer can with a samurai sword.
Pixote [Orson Welles]: It is inappropriate to review this movie in the light and breezy manner usually found in this column. Pixote is not entertainment, it is education. Ten minutes of this film tell you more about the lives of the poor of the Third World than would ten courses in the political economy of underdevelopment. This is one of the most stirring movies you'll ever see, due to the graphic depiction of the aspects of poverty that you'd rather not think about. Pixote is a ten-year-old Brazilian who is sent to Reform School in an arbitrary police round-up. By the end of the film he is a murderer, a dope smuggler, a pimp, and only several months older than when we first meet him. We witness with him the brutality, corruption, drug abuse, homosexuality, squalor and general degradation that is his class's lot. Stay away from this film if you are the least bit squeamish; there is an unending stream of unsettling images that give the movie the appearance of a bad acid trip. Why go see a film like this when you can go see "All The Marbles" which is about lady wrestlers? Why go to college?
Halloween II [Pi Alley]: Remember how the psycho disappears at the end of Halloween I after he got killed a couple of times? Well, that wasn't a symbolic depiction of the never-ending fight against evil, it was a loophole that allowed a sequel. Here it is, with the same plot, same characters, same everything. Nietzsche's Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence in action.
The Graduate [Harvard Square]: Yes, this column does mention The Graduate every other week and it won't stop until every last one of you miserable pre-professionals has seen this film, and understands what it's like to be sensitive enough to be alienated from society. And by the way, it's not cool to yell "Plastics" before the character says it.
Also playing the Beantown Flick Circuit this weekend are The Magick Lantern Cycle and Ticket to Heaven at the Orson Welles and Sleeper, Friday on Channel 38.