Ten World War II Books

Well, ten-ish. Obviously there are hundreds (and hundreds) of WW2 books out there. Mention one and people will mention ten more. As it should be. That's how I ended up with the collection I have, from checking out things I read in interviews or bibliographies. Here's a mix of fiction and nonfiction that I recommend on the topic, in chronological order of publication. 

All non-book-cover-pics from The Atlas of World War Two, Unexplained Mysteries of World War Two, Their War, 1943: The Turning of the Tide, US Naval Institute Calendar 1993,  family archives, and Victory Through Air Power. Here we go.

~

(1947)

I highly recommend James Michener both as an author of engaging reading and as a one-man crash course in any topic he covered. Despite being doggedly of the same political party, his is a different approach to the currently-ascendant Zinn/1619-Project approach re: the ideals and lived reality of these United States. More's the pity for us, but he'll come back around, I'm sure. 

For the moment, is this book better known by musical theater patrons than military history/ war fiction readers? It might be the case. But that just means it can be rediscovered en masses again someday. When that happens, people will find a rather shocking evocation of the war in the South Pacific: the logistics, the personalities, the racism(s), the geography, the jungle, the hardships, the natives, the foreigners *, the hardware, the weather, everything. The non-combat anecdotes, such as island-hopping for booze or the coda with the gravediggers of Guadalcanal, balance the combat sections perfectly. ** 

* I refer here to the Americans. The depictions of the indigenous are colorful but not without the author's biases, something he later wrote on at some length (and with his usual insight).

** If you ever read it, you might want to pick up Michener's Voice of Asia, too, as a sort of immediate-sequel. Not as successful an integration of fiction and nonfiction, but a fascinating look at the war's immediate aftermath throughout Polynesia. 

Even more interesting than this, arguably, are the chapters in Michener's autobiography of his WW2 service. The first chapter concerning the mutiny on the boat and the forged passes should be a movie all on its own. Both books, actually, contain some info I've never seen anywhere else (such as the things NY landlords did during the war, or the added threat of rape from some American servicemen that nurses in the Pacific endured.

~

(1948)

Although Italy was allied with Germany in World War II, the Italian viewpoint on the war often differed sharply from that of the Germans. Malaparte was an eyewitness to the campaigns in Finland, the Ukraine, and Leningrad, and has left behind a moving account of many small incidents in the day-to-day conduct of the war.

D-Day sucks up a lot of air in the room when it comes to most WW2 talk in the West. And the Holocaust. Understandably on both counts, sure, but even beyond D-Day there's often only a handful of events, battles, or personalities that comprise the totality of most people's conception of the conflict. Books like The Volga Rises in Europe broadened my own mind of idea of how (and where) the war was conducted. 

I used to have a huge WW2 wall map that had along the bottom all the flags of the countries that fought in it, and visitors were always surprised to see the blue-and-white swastika for Finland down among the enemy combatants. Yep: they were Hitler's allies, shoring up the northern border of Fortress Europa. They were also not interested in Hitler's aims or Naziism at all; just a means to an end, i.e. reclaiming the territory the Soviets stole from them . (Like 100% of the territories the Soviets invaded in the years prior, during, and after WW2, no one ever made them give it back.) A bit squirrely, all of this, but WW2 forced some strange bedfellows all around.

Everything in this book is interesting reading, from the political dimensions/ between-the-lines stuff, to the logistics of the invasion of the Ukraine. Babi Yar is not mentioned or alluded to, but knowing it is happening gives these sections of people cheerfully laying telegraph and other wire and camp followers and dust and countryside a chilling aspect to be sure. Mazaparte was expelled from the Ukraine before too long for writing the articles included here, regardless. An unfortunate apologist for communism until his death in 1957, he had a varied and interesting life and wrote a few more books that I'd like to read someday.

~

(1952)

Overshadowed by the (excellent) film, here's a gem, not just for the pleasure of well-crafted sentences, dramatic action, or wonderful characterization but for the levels of irony and thematic complexity. The blurb on the back of my copy reads: "Hitherto there has been just one unforgettable picture of a British colonel by a French novelist - Colonel Bramble. He is now joined by Pierre Boulle's Colonel Nicholson." I have not read the Maurois * short story, so can't comment there, but definitely will attest to the iconic status of Boulle's creation. (Also: "A fine ironic novel that is yet another French tribute to British eccentricity.")

* Although I just won an auction of André Maurois books so that will change soon. Huzzah!

"Clipton cursed the Colonel but was forced to yield, (sending) back to work a crowd of limping crimples, walking wounded, and malaria cases still shaking with fever but capable of dragging themselves along. They did not complain. The Colonel had the sort of faith which moves mountains, builds pyramids, cathedrals or even bridges, and makes dying men go to work with a smile on their lips. (...) With this fresh impetus the bridge was soon finished. All that remained now was what the Colonel called the trimmings, which would give the construction that "finished" look in which the practiced eye can at once recognize, in no matter what part of the world, the craftmanship of the European and the Anglo-Saxon sense of perfection."

Boulle's specific experiences before and during the war color most of the detail of Kwai. I'm making my way through all of Boulle's stuff. A great companion read to this is his My Own River Kwai, about his experiences (and capture) during WW2. I wanted to include it on this list because it gives such a fun and detailed account of a theater of the war (Indochina under the joint Vichy French/Japanese occupation) often neglected. But I thought including two Boulles would be too much, and Bridge deserves the honor more. 

~

(1955)

The story of Convoy FR77 to Murmansk – a voyage that pushes men to the limits of human endurance, crippled by enemy attack and the bitter cold of the Arctic.

I've got stacks of paperbacks that are falling apart that I nevertheless cannot throw out. Mostly I use them as side-stacked shelf ballast; they break up my eyelines agreeably. 

A lot of these are Alistair MacLeans. Many are in rough shape. I liked this one (and South by Java Head, which I also could've included here but see above remarks for My Own River Kwai) enough to buy a better copy. 

"Heavy gray clouds, formless and menacing, blotted out the sky from horizon to horizon. They were snow clouds, and please God, the snow would soon fall: that could save them now, that and that alone.

"But the snow did not come - not then. Once more there came instead only the Stukas."

Everything about the Murmansk run - from rendezvous in the middle of the North Atlantic/ lower Arctic to sailing it to loading it to unloading it to flying out and back to bomb it - sounds like it was hell on Earth. The misery of this one is etched forever on my brain. I can remember whole scenes in vivid detail, but one in particular, of the Captain visiting the doomed men below-decks, zombie-eyed, half-submerged in ice water that they must keep from freezing by moving in slow, agonized circles or vital equipment will be destroyed, doomed to die in their frozen tomb, stands out. 

Someone needs to make it into a movie, but it'd be too disappointing to see an inferior realization. I can picture the movie poster, though, of a frigate with its landing deck snarled up like the peeled cover of a sardine can with Arctic spray and gloom and the Luftwaffe approaching. 

~

(1960)

Here’s the story of the USS Wahoo, the most successful submarine in the WW2 Pacific Fleet, told in the rhythm and vernacular of the submarine service of the era. Brutal work; there’s always brutality to spare in WW2 reading, but there's something extra brutal about the sub service in any war. The Battle of the Atlantic gets a lot of the attention, but the most successful American patrols were in the Pacific. Success measured, here, in tonnage sank. The Wahoo sent twenty one ships, sixty thousand tons and untold lives to the bottom of the ocean. It was due to the efforts of ships like the Wahoo (captained by the amazingly named Mush Morton) and the USS Tang (captained by her ontetime first mate of the Wahoo Dick O’Kane) that Japan was largely unable to resupply its armies.

Sterling was the sub’s yeoman, so he was privy to most of the intel going to and from the Wahoo, and he had contact with everyone on the ship, regardless of rank. In one of those random strokes of luck that haunt survivors for the rest of their lives, he transferred off the Wahoo as it was refueling at Midway. The officers and crew threw him a going away party and all agreed to meet up in the year 2000. The sub never returned (it was later found by the Russians, still largely intact from where it was bombed). He died in 2002.

Most of the pages of mine have come unglued in the middle, so rereading it is a delicate affair. Nevertheless I’ve done so four or five times over the years. I love submarine stories, and if this one was not on here I’d include Run Silent, Run Deep or Sunk (the Japanese ss), both worthy inclusions. There’s something special about Sterling’s account, though, so here it is.

The Pacific theater is fertile ground if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor for ghost lore. The Last Battleship by Joseph J. Christiano is a great one of those. There are hundreds, like I say. I didn't want to include any WW2-adjacent works, so to speak, but while we're here.

~

(1970)

I bought this at the late great Bonnett’s Bookstore in Dayton back in the 90s but never read it until five or six years ago. Amazing stuff. A Pacific Theater counterpoint to Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, told mostly from the Japanese POV. One of these days I'll get the whole collection of the History of Naval Operations in World War II and read the whole damn thing start to finish. And if there was a comparable volume for the Imperial Navy, I'd read that too. 

The only glaring deficiency is barely a whisper of the occupation of Korea or many of the other activities in the occupied zone. Ah well. (Maybe the Kempeitai got to Toland.) The only true villain of the entire saga, it seemed to me, was one particular guy, Colonel Tsuji. Even he had a fair point about some things - Asia was undeniably under the racist dominion of the West for centuries, after all. He's a bit like the General Sherman of the Japanese side, perhaps. Not that that excuses a single atrocity he (or anyone, on either side) committed. I was flipping through the endnotes in completion-victory and was intrigued by this:

"To avoid standing trial as a war criminal, Colonel Tsuji went underground in Thailand immediately after the surrender, disguised as a Buddhist priest. He made his way secretly to Japan and in 1952 was elected to the Diet from the first district of Ishikawa Province. He was re-elected in 1956 but resigned 3 years later to run for the House of Councilors, to which he was elected. As he was taking his seat, General Kawaguchi (an old nemesis from Guadalcanal) shouted at him and accused him of lying, as well as charging him with atrocities in Singapore and the Philippines. The two eventually had a face-to-face debate before a capacity audience at Town Hall in Kanazawa. Tsuji denied the accusations but admitted he had erred in calling Kamaguchi a coward.

"In 1961 the Japanese government sent Tsuji to Southeast Asia, where he vanished in Laos. Several months later it was reported he had entered Red China. He was never found, and his mysterious disappearance has resulted in numerous sensational rumors. Mrs. Chitose Tsuji believes her husband is dead, but Shigeru Asaeda - who accompanied him on numerous diplomatic postwar trips - believes he is in a Red Chinese prison."

There were also rumors he advised the North Vietnamese. Sounds like a movie to me! 

~

(1970)

I actually haven’t read this yet. It and Canaris look very imposing on the shelf. Speaking of, somewhere along the way publishers stopped putting so many swastikas on book spines which as a WW2 collector, I appreciate. When I belonged to the Military Book Club there was a three to four months stretch where every other monthly selection was The Illustrated History of the Gestapo or the Tottenkopf. I got them all of course, but it made for some uncomfortable decor. I remember throwing a party once and turning that whole stretch of shelf terrain around lest people got the wrong idea.

This one, a memoir by "Hitler's Architect", was controversial upon release. Was he whitewashing his story? Was a Nazi Inner Party member profiting on his activities during the war? You'll have to answer these questions yourself. For my part, there are only a handful of Nazi Inner Party memoirs even available; that makes them an amazing resource. Of course no one should take any memoir as anything other than the person writing it putting a spin on their life and times. They can't be objective observers; all the more fascinating to read. 

Along those lines, I remember getting a rash of social media crap back in the day when I announced I was reading The Service by Reinhard Gehlen. I didn’t include it here not because I don't recommend it - I do -  only because it’s primarily a book about the post-WW2 years. Gehlen was one of the Nazis spirited out of Germany before the Soviets could grab him. His story, like Speer's or Werner Von Braun's or our or any country's, is not as morally cut-and-dried as perhaps we like. Like I say, all the more reason to read it.

I just realized I should also have included this book. How did I forget that? I'll just mention it for now - amazing read. There's a movie on Heydrich in Prague directed by Fritz Lang, as well - watch it. 

~

(1973)

William Craig’s unforgettable book on the nightmare of Stalingrad. The story writes itself: the city Hitler never meant to capture and that Stalin never meant to defend, the premature minting of coins commemorating German victory, the encirclement and destruction of the Sixth Army, the brutal incompetence of Russian military command vs. the determination of the grunts, the last flight out, the terror of the Russian prison camps in frozen Siberia, the tide finally turning in favor of the Allies.  

The author relays events chronologically with generous recollections from the few survivors and official accounts – Russian, German, and Italian. I hadn't read this when the movie came out, but going to see that in the theater was interesting. Everyone in the audience was a single man - that is, they were there by themselves - and when Bob Hoskins appears on screen as Krushchev, someone in the front row shouted out a bunch of Russian at the screen and then walked out. 

The film has its fans, but I thought it was crap. How do you screw up such an amazing story? I haven't seen the latest version, but the Stalingrad movie from the 80s or 90s, whenever it was, is great. Neither beats reading this book, though. While we're here, I'll recommend the Why We Fight: Battle for Russia program, as well. All of those Why We Fights are amazing. The Russian front took over my imagination in the winter of 2000; I remember watching that thing on the little TV I had back then, in the dark in my little studio apartment in North Providence (with a British and Soviet flag in the window to boot), during some raging snowstorm, hypnotized.

~

(1991)

When Warsaw falls, Maciek escapes with his aunt Tania. Together they endure the war, running, hiding, changing their names, forging documents to secure their temporary lives — as the insistent drum of the Nazi march moves ever closer to them and to their secret wartime lies.

Here's a harrowing read. I mentioned the Murmansk run as hell on Earth. Probably only WW2-era Poland rivaled it for such a distinction. Kosinsky's The Painted Bird - covering similar terrain - had a big effect on me when I read it, but Kosinsky is an unreliable narrator, in more ways than one. Not so with this memoir.

A reader on Goodreads perhaps said it best: 

"This incredibly well-written novel is not the typical - if you'll forgive calling a Holocaust survival story 'typical' - story of a survivor of WWII. The perspective is that of a Jewish boy in Poland who never sees a concentration camp, but lives a different kind of trauma in hiding his Jewish identity throughout the war. The novel addresses many complexities, but for me ultimately raised questions of "honorable" choice: is there more honor in surviving a war, and in this case escaping the worst atrocity, one way versus another? How does the unsentimental practicality inherent in a survivor's generation impact a child? What does it mean to be a survivor on the fringe of a community already on the periphery? Highly recommended - also a quick read."

~

(1991)

This history of obscure Waffen-SS units has all the elements of a war novel: ambushes, glider assaults, rescues, courage, betrayal. Included are Turkic, Hungarian, Serbian, Czech and Russian formations, as well as never-before-seen photos, diagrams, maps and first-hand accounts from diaries and survivors.

Here's another Military Book Club selection from yesteryear. It and another one I picked up at the same time (Gotterdammerung by Russ Schneider) will tell you more about the eastern front of WW2 (from the inside) than many other books. 

I've seen some criticism of this one as being almost pro-Waffen-SS. I did not find it to be that way, only that it did not go out of its way to be anti-Waffen-SS. As loathsome as the Nazis obviously and inarguably were, it's silly to think of every soldier who fought on the Axis side - especially those from captured territories - as the same degree of evil. Working for an evil side, sure, again no arguments. It's just: do we ignore every last soldier's experiences, then, because evil? Seems silly to me. Just as it's silly to think of everyone who fought on the Allied side - especially those from the stockades who were handed a rifle - as morally superior. 

Some of us just want to read about what happened and what it was like without an author's heavy hand in any direction. 'Nuff said. I enjoy reading about things left out of most narratives of WW2, such as basically everything in this volume. 

~

(1992)

This could pretty much be insert-Ambrose-here. You can't really go wrong with anything by him you pick up. You don't need me to tell you anything about this one, I assume, but if you've only ever seen the (excellent) mini-series, you should give the book a read. Especially the endnotes. 

If I have a criticism of the author, it's that he sometimes goes a bit overboard on the heroism and courage descriptors. I certainly prefer it to approaches that attempt to minimize such things, and I've no beef with it in principle. Just there are a few times where he describes otherwise neutral actions with hyperbole. Not quite at Battle Cry by Leon Uris levels, but tilting in such a direction, here and there. 

~

(2008)

With original and controversial insights brought about by meticulous research, Human Smoke re-evaluates the political turning points that led up to war and in so doing challenges some of the treasured myths we hold about how war came about and how atrocities like the Holocaust were able to happen. 

So says a blurb from the official release. I think this book is amazing, but it seems to have garnered a bit of a reputation as historical revisionism. And I don't think fairly. 

What it does is collect quotes from all sides (and some sides you wouldn't think to include in such a book as this, such as Gandhi's) to paint a broader picture of the years leading up to the war and the aims / tactics of the various powers. In so doing it complicates a black-and-white view of FDR, Churchill, Hitler, et al. But that's all it does: complicate hagiography, not revise or alter or reframe the historical record. I see that happening often enough out there, and it worries me deeply. I don't think it's happening in Human Smoke. 

One thing missing from works such as this that should be kept in mind is that while it gives an interesting picture drawn from many angles, it's not a complete panorama. (It says so right in the beginning!) Another book, for example, A Man Called Intrepid , describes actions running concurrently as any described here. More than one thing can be true at any one time and always often are. 

~

(2020)

This came out last year, but I didn't read it until 2021. The press around its release felt like part of an electioneering strategy last year, which was gross. I'm glad I waited, as it was probably much more revealing reading it in the first hundred days of the Biden administration rather than the last hundred days of Trump's. That won't be the case for everyone, though. 

Whatever the case, the story of how a deeply divided nation was transformed into a one-party dictatorship, to the sound of wild cheers and parades, tolerating things it would never have tolerated - indeed was founded not to tolerate - is urgent in any era, any country. When the Nazis were elected, they quickly set about (1) dismantling, absorbing, or ghettoizing any threats to their political hegemony (the Enabling Act), (2) establishing Reich commissars over local states and governments, (3) abolished the trade union (by merging their reason for being with itself, i.e. fascism, corporate-government), (4) legally disenfranchising German Jews as prelude to the horrors to come, (5) defunding police forces (and replacing them with its own), (6) inserting ideological watchdogs in every formally independent strata of society. 

If you know where you want to get to, have the will to pursue it, and hit the ground running, there's an awful lot you can accomplish before anyone even gets their bearings. Be careful who you sweep into power in a pique! I'm not comparing anyone to Hitler. Sincerely - these are lessons evergeeen.

~

Sometime in the future, America and its allies will again face an external threat of equal or greater menace than the Axis. Will we, of whatever political stripe, pull together to face it? May we forever use the example of World War Two to urge us together to face it. 

And Even MORE Films I Watched Recently

After my last post I told myself if I watch ten more movies in 2021 maybe I’ll do another of those What I Watched Recently posts. I pictured that happening in December, if at all. But lo – I hit ten movies watched in just the month or so since then; what the what? * Have I been exposed to the metaphasic radiation from the Briar Patch? Such a pace may not seem too extraordinary to anyone else, but it’s been since Before Kids since my wife and I have watched this many movies. 

* Casablanca wasn't one of them; just liked the picture up there of an old 70s ad for whatever gadget that is. 

Let’s take these in reverse chronology of year released. Beginning with:

(2021)

A mom and dad who usually say no decide to say yes to their kids's wildest requests with a few ground rules on a whirlwind day of fun and adventure.

This one’s a big hit with my kids. It’s cute. Arturo Castro steals the few scenes he’s in. That one guy from Beerfest (and elsewhere of course) gets the magic peddler role. The kids are cute, the adults are good. Kudos to all involved.

About halfway through the film, we have a new contender for Most Unrealistic Party Ever Depicted On Film (the “nerd party”). It doesn’t detract from anything, it’s just kind of funny the idea is put across as something that has ever happened on Planet Earth or ever would.  Movie magic. Hey maybe now it will. There’s a similar sense of unreality around the pop star at the end (you know how these things go – you get the Mom up on stage and sing a song to her daughter). Not the kind of unreality you get from Davy Jones showing up on The Brady Bunch or whatever, but the kind where I thought they invented her for the film. But nope: she’s real. My kids are too young to play the "Duh, Dad" card, bless 'em, but it's coming. 

(I was unimpressed. More power to her and all. Just hey, I’m cigarette-ashtrays-in-McDonalds years-old; I’m not supposed to get teenage girls. If anyone does at any age.) 

(2021)

A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch desk is conflicted when he receives an emergency phone call from a kidnapped woman.

This is an American remake of a Norwegian film. I imagine the Norwegian film is less marinated in less summer 2020 narratives. Maybe it isn't. I'll probably watch it, so I'll let you know.

Jake Gyllensuck is always going to be a hard sell for me. He’s a fine actor, as the saying goes, but if I look at him or listen to him talk too long I want to cast him in the Sledgehammer Movie. (Not literally – that joke - i.e. people who annoy me are cast in a movie where it’s just me and pals hitting them with sledgehammers – could get you in trouble these days.) But actually, the first half of the film, he’s quite good – so’s the movie. As soon as they start literalizing things, though, it goes off the rails in all the predictable ways, with the "This is Joe" mantra nudging you in the ribs when it's not rubbing your face in it. 

Too bad. I was enjoying it and admiring it in equal measure until that point. Once it turns that corner I said aloud all the branches I expected it to hit and was not wrong. Bully for me? 

Extra points for making the title font recall the New York Times. That gave me a chuckle, though probably not what the filmmakers intended.

(2020)

A vacationing couple must discover the mystery behind a strange video that shows one of them killing the other.

Holy moley, this film is terrible. 

(1) The video described above makes no sense. Especially in light of all you learn after. (2) The reaction to it makes no sense. (3) The other characters introduced after that point make no sense. (4) The Wicker Man allusions only serve to remind you that The Wicker Man makes much, much more sense than anything going on here. Even the one with Nic Cage. (5) The characters are very unlikable. (6) One character is stabbing herself, is discovered, then says “RUN!!” as if warning the character who discovered her, and then finishes stabbing herself. Wow, that's something you never see. (7) Another visits Maggie Q in a dream and tells her things that pointedly do not come true, then finishes with “WAKE UP!!” Why do people do these things? You've seen both these things in too many places. They never make sense. It's the kind of fake-shock/fake-twist that plagues the horror genre. One wishes there was a super-cut like there is for the “Are you scared? You will be / not nearly scared enough” trope for these things and heavy taxes levied when filmmakers opt to use them. 

And (7) Not much else works either. 

 

(2013)

A horror comedy with fake news and commercials section that was filmed on old video cameras to make it look like a real VHS recording of a commercial television station's Halloween special from 1987.

Hey now! This movie is terrific. At first I thought oh, this is cute, but how serious is it? And maybe it’s not uber-serious or drenched in anything resembling actual terror or dread. But it’s an overwhelmingly sincere slice of 80s retro done right. 

Likewise I thought the frequent interruption of fake commercials was great fun but perhaps overdone. At first. But as things go along you start to notice some thematic overlap with other bits from the film, and it’s all part of the general spellcasting. Many things claim to recreate an era, but as anyone who lived through the era on display here can attest, they knocked it out of the park with this one.

It’s free – go watch it, you won’t regret it. Then drop the filmmakers a line and thank ‘em.   

(2011)

Kate and Martin escape from personal tragedy to a remote Scottish island where they are the only occupants. Their attempts to recover are shattered when a man is washed ashore, with news of airborne killer disease that is sweeping through Europe.

It’s always interesting to watch a pandemic movie after living through one. I spent most of this movie more or less empathizing with Kate (Thandie Newton’s) stoicism and disbelief and anger. It was (as A Quiet Place was) an interesting metaphorical transference of a world-gone-mad.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the very ending. Seemed kind of shock-twist-y rather than properly resolving the script. For that reason I can only half-recommend this; they really should have re-thought that. To contrast again to A Quiet Place, the ending of that one really worked as a bow around the child-loss/ unfathomable-grief. A glimmer of hope; maybe, after all the loss and tragedy, the human spirit can rise again, that it can want to rise again. Not the case here, alas. Too abrupt, too negative. Next.

(1996)

A twisted take on Little Red Riding Hood, with a teenage juvenile delinquent on the run travelling to her grandmother's house and being hounded by a charming but sadistic serial killer and pedophile.

Remember when you first saw this? It was quite shocking at the time. Mrs. Dog Star Omnibus and I were talking about it and wondering how it held up. We expected it not to, but tiens! It’s still very effective. Very 90s extreeeeeeeeme, but it works. The whole thing is self-aware and cynical as hell, steeped in the 80s trash-TV that preceded it. This is an imaginative fantasy given mythological framing of essentially Jerry Springer/ Morton Downey Jr. elements. 

Three things: (1) Wolfgang Bodison, I like this actor. Lots of credits at his imdb but lots of things I haven't heard of. Someone cast this guy as the lead in something, FFS. And (2) The director Mark Bright. Who is this guy? His imdb is unhelpful, but Forbidden Zone is one of the strangest things I ever watched. I was mega-creeped out by that film. Anyway: I never saw the sequel to Freeway, but if I were him I’d add a few things to pad that bad boy out/ balance out the creepiness. (3) Reese Witherspoon. She should've done great things, so much energy here. Whatever happened to her? (Also, have you ever really thought about her name and said it aloud? WTF kind of name is that?) What an extraordinary debut. So much raw energy in this performance.

Start to finish, very stylish and on-message. It could be just that it's such a pure blast of Generation X sensibilities. I get stuff like this. It's like a sigh of relief. Enough to freak out the "straights" while never losing sight of the style/ sarcasm. I couldn't find a link, but the dream of Grandma's trailer with all the waving lawn ornaments is genius.

(1982)

A new teacher at a troubled inner-city high school soon ends up clashing with the delinquent leader of a punk posse that runs the school.

Here's an old fave since I snuck watching it at my friend Mike’s 10th birthday party in Nieder-Roden in German. (“But I’m not supposed to watch R-rated movies...” “Come on, Bryan, don’t be a nerd.”) Later, the same friend named everyone at our table after one of the bad guys in this movie. (I was Drughouse. Thanks, Mike.) It was kind of a thing for me and my buddies, 4th through 5th grade. 

It’s a very sleazy film. Appropriately sleazy, I guess, but be forewarned. I should’ve done this one for one of those Scenic Route posts; the cars and visuals are all very early 80s. These were my babysitters, folks. 

It’s tempting to read any film like this as being filmed at the stern insistence of Ronald Reagan. It’s amusing to do that and there's room for discussion there, but the violence and out of control-ness of urban youth/ “the kids today” – and the one teacher/ authority figure who’s been pushed too far - is an unfortunately evergreen topic. 

Perry King and Bruce Boxleitner should’ve been brothers in something. Not too late, guys. Timothy Van Patten both went on to do a great many things and had a great many things in the rearview. 

(1981)

While Dr. Loomis hunts for Michael Myers, a traumatized Laurie is rushed to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, and The Shape is not far behind her.

I didn’t expect to watch this one again this Halloween season, as it feels like the missus and I checked it out not too long ago. It’s not exactly a masterpiece – although one can definitely view it as sort of a template for a lot of slasher films that followed – but it has its seasonal and nostalgic appeal.

What makes me include it is a recent episode of The Film Crickets podcast, co-hosted by two of my old buddies Chris and Jay. We never kept in close contact in the years since high school, but I’ve brought up Jay before (here for example) as the “Johnny Metalseed” of my hometown. It's a blast checking in with them each week, and they got me laughing very hard at the scene in this movie where the fake-Michael is killed. 

I mean, look at this thing. First off, Dr. Loomis is out of his mind. He’s running around screaming at kids, scaring everyone (“Hey Doc – can you please, maybe, kind of tone down the ‘We’re All Going to Die’ business? We’re trying to –“ “HE’S INHUMAN! HE’S THE FACE OF EVIL, THE SHAPE OF WHAT’S TO COME!” (Sigh)). Second off, what the frick time is it? Wasn’t it close to midnight at the end of the first film? Everyone in town is up or out and about. Third, Dr. Loomis is firing his gun wildly down the street. But fourth, the kid just ho-hum, huh, that’s weird? What’s going on with that? Let me just saunter across the street, then Fifth, a cop car comes screaming out of the darkness, going faster than any car you’ve ever seen go in a movie before, and totally destroys him. Then Sixth, the whole “IS IT HIM?!” business and that close-up of Loomis as the sheriff asks again. Man! That is incredibly funny. “Is it him?!” “I, uhhh… well, now that you say it, it’s even harder to tell; I mean, frankly, I couldn’t tell from, way down the street when I was, you know, firing off a few shots. But now? I mean, he’s burning and all, inconclusive, sorry.”) And then finally, the other cop shows up and wham, they just leave the damn scene. Does even the cop who killed the kid leave the scene? He might. That clip cuts off just before we might see him do that, I don’t remember. But they should totally have just kept cutting back to the smoldering corpse and car wreck in the middle of the street for the rest of the movie.

I remembered Bryant covering this one fairly comprehensively over at The Truth Inside The Lie. Sure enough, he was already on it:

"In this bit, they're just cruising for a sighting of Michael, and they sort of get one, which leads to one of the most amusingly shite moments in the entire series. This fake Michael Myers turns out to be Ben Tramer, and Laurie should be glad she never hooked up with him, for he is evidently made mostly out of nitroglycerine.

This death is 100% blameable on Dr. Samuel Loomis, who is a prime example of why not everyone is qualified to dispense justice.  Just because a dude wears a modified William Shatner mask, that doesn't inherently mean he is a quasi-supernatural mass murderer and serial killer.  (I'm giving Michael credit for being both, for I believe that is accurate.)  Sometimes, it's just a teenager in a mask, doc!"

Anyway, for a not-so-good movie, there’s plenty of fun to be had here. Directed by Rick Rosenthal, who's been in the game a good long while. (And directed W.A.S.P. videos to boot.)

(1963)

Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt experiences both triumph and tragedy as she attempts to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome.

I just wrapped up a re-listen to Bob Brier’s eternally recommended History of Ancient Egypt and I thought the time was right to fill some gaps in my Egypt collection. This was top of my list. I saw it for the first time only fifteen years ago or so after my first listen to the Brier series. He recommends it as one that got the Egyptology mostly right. And he’s right – take it from… well, him, primarily, much more than me, but take it from someone else, too, who just finished that series: they really get the details right. One thing you’ll notice – and we’ll see it coming up shortly – once you start reading up on Egypt is how certain common errors crop up over and over again. (Slaves didn’t build the pyramids, silver was valued more than gold, only court nobility wore certain headdress, etc.) Not so here.

A tour-de-force performance from Elizabeth Taylor and everyone else, too. They simply don’t make them like they used to. John DeCuir deserves the Sir Ken Adams award - which doesn't exist so far as I know but certainly should - for movie magic in this one. 

(1956)

Moses, an Egyptian Prince, learns of his true heritage as a Hebrew and his divine mission as the deliverer of his people.

Another “they sure don’t make them like they used” movie. 

Was Ramses really the Pharaoh of “Exodus”? Many biblical scholars believe he was. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence for the idea. The death of his first born (Amunherkepshef – "Amun with a strong arm" or something like that) seems to match the timeline of the Hebrews's exit from Egypt, plenty of other intriguing clues like that. “Moses” is of course an Egyptian name (“is born), and much of the later content of Christianity (resurrection, the trinity, “Amen”, even the Virgin Mary) has equally intriguing precedent in Ancient Egyptian theology and thought. 

None of this is in the movie, it’s just fascinating to me. I love this crap. 

Filmmaking-wise, this is a visual delight. Sumptuous sets and costumes, booming declarations delivered with fire and brimstone, the whole none yards and then some. I love that Cecil B. DeMille both introduces and narrates the movie (which he produced and directed.) 

I’ll never forget one afternoon at the coffee shop in 1997 or 1998 listening to NPR recount an archaeological dig in Tunisia for the Ten Commandments set. Not this one, DeMille's first film of that name (from 1923.) There's a good documentary on it (The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille.) 

 

(1955)

A captured architect designs an ingenious plan to ensure the impregnability of the tomb of a self-absorbed Pharaoh, obsessed with the security of his next life.

I first saw a scene from this in Martin Scorsese’s Personal Journey Through American Cinema and was fascinated. I hadn’t seen too many films from Hollywood’s epic era at that point. (That documentary introduced me to a whole heck of a lot of films, which was of course the point of it – thanks, Marty). 

The spectacle of this one is top-notch; its Egyptology, however, is not great. (While ingenious, this, for example, seems to be an invention of the film.) But I doubt anyone’s watching it for that. The soundtrack by Dmitri Tiomkin is amazing. I wish they’d release a new edition of it. The sets and set pieces are all fantastic. James Justice’s voice/ screen presence is as epic as his name. Joan Collins is… a bit miscast? She has the haughtiness of a queen, she's certainly beautiful and is costumed well, but the heavy make-up (bordering on blackface) is distracting.

With and without the blackface. You tell me. 

(1932)

An Egyptian mummy searches Cairo for the girl he thinks is his long-lost princess.

You’d figure the Egyptology with this one would be suspect given its era, but actually there’s a lot of fun stuff in here for the detail-oriented. Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb was only ten years old when this came out; difficult to imagine the impact of that on the world’s imagination, but you can see a bit of it in here.

Such wonderful and otherworldly performances from both Boris Karloff and Zita Johann.

That's it for movies, but here's a bonus section for two miniseries recently watched. It was to be three, but the copy of Hollywood Wives I ordered was lost. So it goes. 

(2021)

In the late 1970s, an accused serial rapist claims multiple personalities control his behavior, setting off a legal odyssey that captivates America.

The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes was a book I checked out of the library many times in the 80s. It, Helter Skelter, and Go Ask Alice really expanded my teenage mind as far as the depravities of hippie-era America. One of the first things I did with the internet (besides order a bunch of heretofore-unavailable William Shatner movies) was look up whatever happened to Billy. At that time: not much, except that there was another book called The Milligan Wars, only available in Japan, that detailed what happened to Billy after his escape from the hospital where he’s been committed at the end of the Keyes book.

This series fills in a lot of the gaps – why, for example, the book was only available in Japan and why the first one’s out of print – and is fascinating. The interviews with psychologists and prosecutors of the original trial are dynamite. (I largely sympathize with the lead prosecutor’s view of the what and how of the case.) Not to mention the rather mind-blowing interviews with Billy’s siblings, bless them both.

Highly recommended for all of that, but be forewarned: it’s kind of slow and has a bit of a creep factor. I had the pre-existing interest in the case, which my wife did not. She fell asleep and lost interest and didn’t watch the last couple. Also: some of the interviews are curiously staged. One of them takes place in an abandoned diner, others in small, narrow cells of unknown relation to anything. And some of them are staged in long or medium shots. A little distracting/ not necessary.

(1988)

During WWII penniless American painter Philip Weber decides to collaborate with the Nazi leaders and help them steal priceless French artwork to keep his room in the chic Ritz Hotel and indulge in the pleasures of Nazi-occupied Paris.

I read the book by AE Hotchner (whose Papa Hemingway was my favorite book for a few years) and have always wanted to see this one. Not so much because the book was great, but just because it existed and I wanted to see it. It’s a very faithful adaptation and imminently watchable, but I drifted in and out over its four episodes. Some of the scenes and dynamics seem a little forced. 

I’d checked the book out of the library when I read it, and someone had scrawled messages to the main character on several pages. (“You coward!” etc.) It was kind of weird. Reading that synopsis up there gives me the same feeling; I think people might be over-emphasizing "collaboration" here. I mean watch the movie/ read the book; Philip is sabotaging their efforts as well as organizing his/ others' escape. FFS, we live in a society where people want to turn in their neighbors for wrongthink, but leaving angry graffiti online and in the margins of book is some bold kind of courage? We live in an age of stupid absolutes that make a point of obliterating the sort of nuance in which works like The Man Who Lived at the Ritz exist. Good news for Nazis; bad news for anyone who thinks maybe the Nazi approach was bad. 

Anyway, the main character was not punished or incensed enough for some readers. It’s likely the film version might provoke the same reaction from some. Perry King is curiously missing from the imdb entry of this. I wonder why? An oversight? By request of the actor, or SAG? 

~

Until next time, neighborinos.

I've Never Seen This...

But I think I've officially found the best - or if not the best, then the 80s-iest, but that seems redundant - poster/concept/tagline of all time.

Incidentally, it works as a bumper sticker - or spiritual or political philosophy - as well.

With Sheriln Fenn and that guy from V, to boot! Why can't that be Sly Stallone, though? 

Kudos, fellas.