tiwannae

Now first-off, let me tell you that I am a HUGE fan of Bud Cort, and as probably his biggest fan, I try to get my hands on any of his performances I can find to put in my video collection. This film was one of them and what I surprise I got...

God help the principals of this misguided screen venture!! It hurts when you see really good actors in films that make little to no use of their talents!! Not all the cast were on the same page in this film.

There are a lot of bad, over-the-top, and stiff performances, and of the 3 main characters played by Bud Cort (the lead) and his co-stars Peter Cushing and Leo Gordon, I think they did the best they could as professionals and were the most enjoyable to watch. But they couldn't save the film.

Mr. Cort, as Willi Hitler, Hitler's innocent and illiterate son, and Mr. Cushing and Mr. Gordon in their respective roles as one of Hitler's right-hand men and his assistant on a quest to find Hitler's son, were old-fashioned troopers throughout the film, but I had a strong feeling that Mr. Cort, as the film neared its end, had a hard time containing his disappointment with being in it.

I saw an interview Mr. Cort did where he spoke of having had great hopes for the film and that all those hopes turned to dust because of his troubles with the interference by the producers of the film who kept making changes to the script during filming.

Every actor has a role or two he'd like to bury and have it be forgotten. I sympathize with Mr. Cort, who, when once asked about this film, called it a "booger".

This is one of the most interesting films I have ever seen! I own a copy on VHS and had the pleasure of seeing it 4 times at the Film Forum in New York City a couple of years ago.

After having seen Robert Altman's "M*A*S*H," his next film about the story of a young man who is building a winged contraption in the basement of the Houston Astrodome intrigued me. I had to see how the cast came together in their varied segments in this film and I wasn't too disappointed.

Robert Altman saw something in Bud Cort after seeing him in a NYC comedy revue, and then gave him a role in "M*A*S*H*, and was so impressed with him in the scenes he had in that film that he gave him is first leading film role. Altman couldn't have found a better actor to portray the lead in this film! I am a huge fan of Bud Cort's, and he kept me interested throughout in what was happening to the quiet and introverted Brewster, who dreams of flying away in a marvelously-made, flying machine. He lives a sheltered, and somewhat lonely life, other than the company of his lovesick friend Hope, who brings him food, and Louise, a strange woman who is like a mother-figure to him. Brewster doesn't say much in the film, but after a certain door is opened in his life, he becomes very talkative, and that talkativeness leads to a situation that jeopardizes his flight plans.

I thought the opening with Margaret Hamilton was funny, as well as the scenes Bud Cort had with Stacy Keach, made up as old man Abraham Wright, Brewster's former racist and mean-spirited employer.

I loved Sally Kellerman as Brewster's enigmatic and protective mother-figure, Louise, and Michael Murphy as the 'Bullit-esque' Frank Shaft, in Houston, via San Francisco, to help the police solve some suspicious bird-related murders.

The rest of the cast is fine, with the Altman touch of fine ensemble acting from the likes of John Schuck, G. Wood, and Corey Fischer. However, I found Shelly Duvall, who I've liked in other films, very annoying in this one, her film debut. She plays Suzanne, a girl who works at the Astrodome and becomes Brewster's love interest. I had rather seen Brewster become involved with Hope (Jennifer Salt), than the shallow and chirpy Suzanne. I find that most of her scenes, except for the one where she seduces Brewster, slow down the film.

Look for a delightfully strange comic turn by Rene Auberjonois, as the "Narrator" of the film.

I am usually not a fan of war films or war-themed films, but this one was reely (I meant the spelling) good. It was a fine character study of opposites, with Darren McGavin and Jan-Michael Vincent in stand-out performances. One day I have to try the meditation tricks that Vincent's character uses to mentally take himself away from the unpleasantries he had to deal with at the boot camp.

On the note of the cast, can someone tell me where is Bud Cort in this film? He's listed as a 'draftee nerd,' but I don't see him. I am wondering if he has been mistaken for Danny Goldman, who was in a lot of Bud's early films ("M*A*S*H" and "The Strawberry Statement" come to mind), and if you didn't look well enough, could have been mistaken for him. (I made that mistake regarding one dramatic scene that takes place in the men's room at the barracks. I had to watch it twice to correct myself that it wasn't Bud Cort).

Made up of a good story line and cast, I was so happy to find a copy of this film. Also, I am researching the career of Bud Cort, and I knew that there was more to him as an actor than what I saw in "Harold and Maude". He speaks in an adorable southern accent, playing an dedicated but somewhat disillusioned mortician, Jimmy Croft. As one of his best films giving him one of his best supporting roles, I would highly recommend this film. I hope that it ends up on DVD someday.

Interestingly, regarding Bud Cort, I noticed that Stacy Keach, and in a smaller role, Charles Tyner, played in other films with Bud: "Brewster McCloud" (Keach, as 'Abraham Wright') and "Harold and Maude" (Tyner, as 'Uncle Victor').

First off, a correction regarding Alice Copeland Brown's review of this film. She was commenting on the 1944 film with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman and NOT the one, in this listing, with Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, from 1940. I got to see the Walbrook and Wynyard version this past Saturday night on my local PBS station, after they showed the Boyer and Bergman version.

I do, though, agree with Alice about this film being a good tool for showing domestic, not just spousal, abuse.

There are aspects of each film that I liked more than the other, such as how the husband uses the staff of the house, especially the haughty and saucy parlor maid Nancy, to heighten his wife's paranoia. You sense an affair between the two in the 1944 version, but a romantic relationship is shown in the 1940 version. As far as performances go, I have to say that the Boyer and Bergman version was a much better film, being much better acted and much better photographed. However, I would say that Walbrook's performance rivaled that of Boyer's. Both men were the embodiment of evil seething under the skin of a calm and controlled exterior; marrying their wives, not for love, but for the pursuit of a prize worth driving someone mad, or maybe, even killing them for. It is tortuous to watch these horrible men showing their cruelty and their disdain for the fragile, but kind and gentle personas of their wives, with Walbrook's frightening portrayal seeming more prone to being violent than Boyer's. Bergman was a better, and more believable, long-suffering heroine than the very stagy Wynyard was.

Of the other characters in this version, I found the supporting cast very weak and stagy as well, with the exception of Robert Newton as Wynyard's cousin, who opposed the marriage from the start. Cathleen Cordell as Nancy, wasn't as good as Angela Lansbury in the same role, but her character was allowed to be more important to the plot than was shown in the 1944 version. The part of the former police inspector, played by Frank Pettingell, the equivalent of Joseph Cotton's role, though humorous, seemed very tedious to watch and made the plot drag.

With the exception of Anton Walbrook's performance, definitely the 1944 version is the better of the two.

I found this sweet little film to be a very enjoyable and highly recommended experience!

Bud Cort gives one of his finest performances as the naïve, lonely, sensitive, and oh-so-out-of-place Max Brown, a city fellow from Ottawa trying to make a life as a poorly compensated teacher in the very rural town of Willowgreen in western Canada during the Great Depression. It's comic how he has to deal with adjusting to the town, the townspeople, and their children as his students; and is especially very poignant and sad watching his doomed romance with the very married and just as lonely and frustrated Alice Field, played by Samantha Eggar.

As his 'Harold and Maude' was poorly served when it came out on DVD, how I wish that 'Why Shoot the Teacher?' would find its way onto DVD, having such special features as outtakes, deleted scenes, and especially, interviews with Bud Cort and the remaining cast and crew of the film. It's sad to see this one overlooked and, instead, to find such films of lesser quality in Bud's oeuvre, like 'Hysterical,' getting the DVD treatment. I hope that this oversight will someday be rectified for this gem in the career of Bud Cort.

TD says that it was "painful" to watch `Ted and Venus'. That's just what Bud Cort meant to do with this film, as I see it. I own the film and have viewed it many times, and what I like about it is that Bud was very brave to bring what is basically a sad and creepy story, based on a true sad and creepy story of a poet who became manically obsessed with a social worker. It's not a pretty story about `perfect' people; it's not supposed to be. Each character in this film has flaws, though not as serious as Ted Whitley's. That, to me, is more real than a lot of films that I have seen come out of Hollywood recently-be they independent, or mainstream-made. I hope that he gets the chance to direct again.

I liked that Bud took the true story this film was based on and went one step further, and instead of the `happy' ending of the girl moving away and changing her name, and the poet's getting some much needed therapy and moving on with his life, you get a possible, if not probable, extreme ending: something that could happen if such a man as Ted crossed the line with such an obsession as his. It's basically a tale of sexual harassment, and what can happen to someone who refuses to take someone's `no' for an answer.

What I also like about it, as well, is that it's one of the few films that I have seen, which, even for it's subject matter, shows that there can be humor in such a situation. The `courtship' scenes with Kim Adams are quite funny, as are Bud's scenes with James Brolin, Carol Kane and Martin Mull, all giving fine performances.

Bud once had a friend that went through a similar experience, and after much coaxing to see it, told him, upon finally seeing the film, that there were moments she recalled which were very surreal, even comic at times! She told him that the film was a very cathartic experience for her. As in real life, there are moments that happen to us all which are comic, even though we may more often see them that way in hindsight, rather than while we are actually experiencing it.

Even though there are comic moments, the mistake that most people make about "Ted and Venus" is that just because it's a Bud Cort film, it's not supposed have any drama in it.

I say, `Bravo, Bud'!!

Aka "Hallucinating Strip" or "Hallucination Strip" (English title). Being a huge Bud Cort fan, I was able to track down a copy of this film on VHS. To my surprise it was dubbed in Italian--with no subtitles, but, as a fan of silent films, where you can learn a lot about a story by watching how the actors react to one another, I think I have a fair understanding of the plot of the film to tell you about it.

The story is about a youth named Massimo Monaldi, who, living in Rome, is a part-time college student who has some involvement in the protests that occur at his university. Massimo is also involved with drugs and he sometimes steals to make a living and support his habit (the theft of a tobacco box is very important to the story). Among his associates are his girlfriend, Cinzia, who comes from a wealthy family, and he has a wealthy male friend named Rudy who is very naive as well as strangely pampered by his overly-doting mother. Both families don't approve of their relationship with Massimo.

After the theft of the tobacco box from Cinzia's home (she's an accomplice), and after encountering a certain man, a mafioso-type wanted by the police, Massimo soon finds himself in trouble with the police. The man, who has some dealings in the drug trade, befriends Massimo, but this association brings about Massimo's downfall; first leading to a crisis regarding his girlfriend and his best friend, when they attend a drug party with him; then finding himself on the wrong end of his association with the mobster. Who, at the end of the film, will get to Massimo first: the police or the mobster?

I found this film to be very weird and the plot a little disjointed, but interesting, especially as it's so obscure, and is very '70's-ish in the way it was filmed. It was a side of Roman youth culture I had never seen before. However, I felt that the director, Lucio Marcaccini, who it seems, fell off the face of the earth after this film, was a lousy director and didn't fully take advantage of the talent that he was working with. Maybe he was on something himself when he was making this film, as I began to feel that I would have done better directing this film myself! I also take to task the theme song, "We Got A Lord," which was also used in a love scene and at the closing credits. Its use in the film made absolutely no sense to me.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed Bud Cort as Massimo Monaldi, which I thought was a welcome change from the "crazy, demented youth" roles he had been given around the time he did "Harold and Maude". I have read that he took off a few years from acting after that film because of the typecasting he was going through. I am sure that this is the first film he did when he returned from his acting hiatus.

In "Roma Drogata" he was allowed to be more versatile as a leading man: he was sometimes romantic; sometimes cool and crafty; sometimes naive; sometimes sweet and romantic; or sexy and intense in the role. I wish that he had been given a chance to do more roles like this one! I also enjoyed Marcel Bozzuffi, best known in this country as the hit man, Pierre Nicoli in "The French Connection," who played the police inspector.

This movie, I have read, originally began as a documentary about Vaslav Nijinsky, as seen through the eyes of his daughter, Kyra. Kyra, at the start of the film, was living, frugally, in a small apartment in San Francisco and was a reclusive lay nun, devoted to her religious convictions. She, it seems, was an enfant terrible, making the project as a straight documentary very straining. But in the process, director Robert Dornhelm decided to shift gears and take some of the footage he shot of his interviews with Kyra to turn it into a quasi-docudrama, with Bud Cort in the role of "the Director".

With this turn, the film focuses on Kyra's life, along with Kyra's memories of life with her famous father and mother, Romola. Kyra, as a subject, remains difficult to work with, as she is very independent-minded, and goes off on tangents, and stresses-out Cort's character as he tries to humor her to follow the lead of his directing. To try and do this, he employs the help of a young ballerina to evoke Kyra's true memories of her childhood, which we see, was very dysfunctional: dealing with her father's growing mental illness, of which we see, through her eccentric nature, she may have somewhat inherited, as well as her mother's moodiness and dominance of him. Her relationship with her mother was strained from childhood, as Kyra wanted to be a dancer. But to Romola, there could NOT be two Nijinsky's in the home, as she would never be as great as her father was. Much of the frustrated and thwarted dancer seems to have been a great part of her personality, as she takes advantage of as many opportunities to show off her skills as she can--even though she was a very overweight woman in her late 60's!

To enhance the film, Patrick Dupond dances Nijinsky's famous roles, and Max von Sydow reads from Nijinsky's diary.

I found this to be an interesting, and artsy, film-within-a-film. The dancing is very evocative of the great Nijinsky, and it is interesting to watch how Kyra instructs Dupond's movements in "Spectre de la Rose". The classical music selections are wonderful! Kyra, although frustrating to watch, is a worthy subject for the film; Dornhelm's direction is fine, and Bud Cort is enjoyable to watch, especially his interaction with the ballerina who plays the young Kyra, and with a very nice voice, he gets to sing the closing theme of the film.