LE MAGNIFIQUE (1973)

"He was devoured by a shark in a phone booth."

Super-spy Bob St. Clair makes James Bond look like a pussy! He can shoot a single bullet into a tree and kill 5 soldiers, he can fight his way out of evil villains lair without even breaking a sweat and, of course, he always gets the girl. Unfortunately, Bob St. Clair is just a figment of novelist Francois Merlin's imagination. Merlin's real life is nowhere near as perfect. He has no money, his apartment is a dump and he's divorced. He has very little control over the things that happen in his real life, so when somebody pisses him off...he throws that person into his story and lets St. Clair shoot him to pieces! The same goes for the good things in his life like his sexy upstairs neighbor, who just happens to be St. Clair's current love interest.

But things turn out to not always be perfect in St. Clair's world either, especially when Merlin gets mad at him and turns him into a bumbling idiot and then finally a limp-wristed homosexual who runs off with the villain on a two-seater bicycle!

Everybody in this movie does a great job, especially the three main actors who all play duel roles, but I think the main praise should go to director/co-writer Philippe de Broca who does an excellent job of blending the two worlds so seamlessly that the story never lets up for even a moment. I was happy and smiling from beginning to end. Not many films can do that.

Favorite moments: when St. Clair's cyanide tablet falls out of his hollow tooth and kills all the tourist in the swimming pool; when a clumsy St. Clair gets mad at his robe; when St. Clair pours the hot water on his infected finger and all of the moments with Jacqueline Bisset.  She is absolutely radiant in this movie.

Highly recommended.

THEODORA GOES WILD (1936)

How much you like this film will probably depend on how much you're a fan of Irene Dunne and/or Melvyn Douglas. Myself, I'm not the world's biggest Douglas fan. I've seen a number of his films and he does nothing for me. All I can ever think about when I see him is how somebody else would have done such a better job in his role. On the other hand Irene is pretty good considering she's working with a boring script.

Let's talk about the story. There's a huge fuss going all over the country about this new steaming sex novel called "The Sinner". It's a nationwide bestseller, but nowhere is the fuss bigger than in the small hamlet of Lynnfield. The local newspaper published the first chapter and it caused the righteous old ladies to go berserk and raise such a stink that the newspaper agreed to stop printing the story. In the midst of all this crazy behavior is Irene Dunne, a quiet woman who lives with her three cunts, I mean, aunts. She's also secretly the author of "The Sinner". She had no idea her story would cause such an uproar and she'll do anything to keep her secret.

Enter the annoying Melvyn Douglas who finds out her secret and is now using his knowledge to blackmail Dunne into employing him as a gardener in the hopes of...well I'm not really sure what he's hoping for. Things happen (I'm not going to give it all away) and soon Dunne turns the tables on him and is now blackmailing him! That sounds like it could be funny and when I rented it I was hoping that it would be, but instead I just got a few chuckles and that's it. I would have loved to see what Preston Sturges could have done with that story idea instead. Skip it.

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (1976)

[Update 05/17/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

For years I've thought that this was a hardcore horror movie so when I started it up I was quite shocked when the opening theme song was some pathetic 70's folk guitar ballad horseshit. Then the characters show up and they're a bunch of pussies! What the hell is going on here...this is a goddamn drama movie!!! Once I settled into my disappointment I realized that the film wasn't half bad. In fact it's pretty much a HEATHERS of the 70's.

David's new to Central High. He meets different students (each representing a different political group or ideal) and the four bullies who keep order in the school with an iron fist (I guess they represent Communism). David instantly gets on the bad side of the bullies and tries to get the other students to revolt. They decline and the bullies break David's leg. He returns to school and assassinates three of the bullies. With no bullies, the students go wild and tear the shit out of everything and start fighting over who's going to be the new boss. David doesn't like how things are turning out so he starts a fresh wave of assassinations.

The gore level is zero and I used the term "assassination" for a reason, he isn't murdering people in standard slasher fashion, but actually assassinating them like in a political action film...bombings, sabotaging vehicles, etc . This movie is not a slasher. It's more like a high school retelling of Orwell's "Animal Farm" with more violence and weird 70's fashions. Only a half-hearted recommendation.

TOO MANY HUSBANDS (1940)

[Update 07/25/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Released two months before MY FAVORITE WIFE this movie is pretty much the same story, but it's the husband instead of the wife getting shipwrecked. Also, the timeline is different and, ahh, who cares? Anyway, Fred MacMurray is the unfortunate shipwreck victim who comes home a year later to find that his wife has married his best friend, Melvyn Douglas. Instead of just saying "Deuces!" and finding the closest divorce lawyer, both husbands whimper and fuss like little children and beg Jean Arthur to pick him as her rightful husband.

As pathetic as that is it's kinda amusing and I was shocked at how much sexual innuendo made it past the censors. I swear to Satan at one point Jean Arthur was saying she wanted some double penetration!!! I'm serious!  MacMurray and Douglas bicker constantly and do stuff like jump over chairs to impress Arthur. It's all just crazy yelling, with no real substance.

Comparing it to other screwball comedies of the day, it's just OK and I really can't recommend it. Unless you're a Arthur and/or MacMurray fan, who I think both did very well considering the script was a mess.