DVD Review: REAP THE WILD WIND (Paramount, 1942)

Mix together the historical ambience and romantic histrionics of Gone with the Wind, the maritime perils of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, and the bizarre sight of Ray Milland performing "dog ventriloquism" and decking John Wayne with one punch in the same movie, and you wind up with the fizzing, fuming, infuriating, yet endearingly watchable bowl of "flip" that is Reap the Wild Wind. Cecil B. DeMille's second color film was a big hit upon its release in early 1942, at a moment when a nation recently rocked by Pearl Harbor and gearing up for total war was particularly amenable to a slice of pure escapism. The movie, despite garnering comparisons with GWTW at the time, hasn't sustained much of a reputation, and not simply because the giant squid that horns in on the final action sequence (and helped the movie win an Oscar for Special Effects) now looks so transparently phony. Several of the actors are either miscast or allowed to get away with two-dimensional portrayals of their roles, the dialogue veers from serviceable to (charitably) hokey, and there are numerous incidents of racial stereotyping that seem rather gratuitous, even for the era. If you stick with the film past its sketchy first half-hour or so, however, you'll find yourself becoming involved in the story almost despite yourself -- and the climactic events beneath the waves of the Caribbean are legitimately exciting, the sight of the pseudo-squid notwithstanding.

Set against a background of cutthroat salvage operations in the Florida Keys circa 1840, Reap the Wild Wind centers around a classic love triangle, with two-fisted sea captain Jack Stuart (Wayne) and well-coiffed, lapdog-canoodling Charleston maritime lawyer Stephen Tolliver (Milland) locking horns over feisty salvage-company president Loxi Claiborne (Paulette Goddard as an odd sort of cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Rebecca Cunningham). Having fallen for Stuart following the latter's wreck at the hands of the unscrupulous salvage-pirate King Cutler (Raymond Massey), Loxi plays up to Tolliver during a jaunt to Charleston, hoping to help Stuart get a gig as captain of a steamship belonging to Tolliver's company. Loxi does her job too well, causing Tolliver to fall for her, and the obligatory "complications" ensue. (To make matters worse, or at least more complicated, Loxi's Cousin Drusilla [Susan Hayward] has fallen for King Cutler's brother Dan [Robert Preston], the slimy King's partner in crime.) Stuart, convinced that Tolliver is actually trying to keep him from getting his new command, agrees to cooperate with the King in staging another wreck, but the treacherous deed has deadly consequences, with the result being that Tolliver and Stuart must both dive to the wreck to recover evidence needed in a trial. Cue the squid, which breaks up the love triangle for good but also ties up all the other plot threads to boot (you see, sometimes it helps to have eight arms).

Admittedly, there are a lot of things in this movie that will make the viewer uneasy, not the least of which are that (1) we are asked to buy John Wayne as a bad guy -- or a sort-of-good guy gone bad -- and (2) we are asked to believe that Tolliver can stand toe to toe with Wayne and fight him to a draw. DeMille reportedly had to do some serious lobbying to convince Wayne, whose breakthrough moment in Stagecoach (1939) was still recent enough to allow for some fears of backsliding, to play the role of Milland's foil. Massey is a solid villain, but so clearly a villain that it's a wonder he wasn't taken into custody long ago, much less taken out and keelhauled in such a wide-open milieu as the antebellum Keys. The character parts range from funny and enjoyable (Lynne Overman as a colorful "Yankee cracker-barrel Skipper" type who is Loxi's right-hand man in the salvage biz) to squirm-inducing (Louise Beavers as the Claibornes' maid, a likable enough version of a "Mammy" who nonetheless is afraid of the dark, references voodoo, and is made a fool of by Stuart's pet monkey). As for the dialogue, Stuart's patter contains about 50 too many strained sea-related metaphors, Milland's pathetic attempts to wring humor out of manipulating a dog's jaws are usually painful (and not just for the dog), and the romantic-clinch exchanges are at best banal. Given the technical limitations of the time, however, the scenes at sea are good, even the ones that obviously feature models in tubs, and the crowd scenes (on the docks, in a proper Charleston drawing room, and in a courtroom) are, as always in DeMille movies, first-rate. Even the squid would have worked had it not been for the sight of the creature's eyes, which look and move like the eyes on one of those "goo-goo" dolls.

The DVD version of Reap is the cut-rate variety, with extras limited to still menus describing cast and crew, plus the original theatrical trailer (introduced and narrated, of course, by DeMille himself). Perhaps, at some point in the future, an upgraded edition can be issued with commentary by someone like Scott Eyman, additional details on the technical aspects of the production, etc. Reap isn't a great movie, but it is interesting enough to merit a slightly more elaborate video treatment.

Finally, for those of you who refuse to believe that Ray Milland could EVER be passed off as a "he-man"...

Ripping Me a New/Old One

I had surgery Wednesday morning to repair my umbilical hernia, so I'm in a fair bit of pain at the moment. Not enough to require the use of heavy-duty pain medication, but enough to make getting up from a sitting or lying position something of a chore. The stitches are right over my belly button (or what is left of it), and if I'm not careful getting up, it can feel as though my abdomen is tearing open. Nicky is staying close to minister to my needs, but hopefully the worst of the pain will subside by this weekend. A follow-up visit is slated for the 22nd.

Book Review: BLOODY CRIMES: THE CHASE FOR JEFFERSON DAVIS AND THE DEATH PAGEANT FOR LINCOLN'S CORPSE by James L. Swanson (William Morrow, 2010)

Swanson's sequel-of-sorts to the enjoyable MANHUNT intertwines two stories: Confederate President Jefferson Davis' flight from the doomed capital of Richmond and his eventual capture by Federal troops, and the organization and progress of the funeral ceremonies for Abraham Lincoln, climaxing with the legendary train journey that took Lincoln back to Springfield for burial. Of necessity, Davis gets the lion's share of the back of the book, as Swanson also tells the story of his imprisonment, release, and gradual semi-rehabilitation (at least in the South). In death, Davis even got a funeral journey to match Lincoln's own, though that trip is much less celebrated. The "Meanwhile..." problems inherent in switching back and forth between two narratives are a bit more acute here than in MANHUNT, in part because the stories really do have relatively little to connect them (apart from the North's brief "certainty" that the fleeing Davis must have been involved in Lincoln's assassination -- a theory that was quashed relatively quickly, though Davis lingered in stir for several years while the government tried to decide what to do with him). There is also a fair amount of repetition from MANHUNT early in the book regarding the circumstances of Lincoln's death. You don't have to read both books, but I found following up MANHUNT with BLOODY CRIMES to be a pretty seamless reading experience. Another excellent effort from Swanson.

"Reimagining" RICHIE RICH... Is "Imaging" Everything, or Nothing?

Thanks to Mark Arnold for alerting us to Ape Entertainment's announcement of plans to publish a comics title starring what the independent company terms a "reimagined" version of Richie Rich. Or perhaps Ape's mixing up its buzzwords a bit; one of the press releases that I saw online described the planned version of Richie as "a new incarnation imaged (sic) for modern audiences." Actually, Ape may be splitting semantic hairs over nothing. Despite the anime-flavored look of the redesigned characters -- a makeover not unlike those given to Casper, Wendy, and Hot Stuff in Ardden Entertainment's CASPER AND THE SPECTRALS title -- the much-trumpeted thematic changes to the character and his world do not represent a drastic departure from what has gone before. Provided that you are aware of what has gone before, of course.


Here's a portion of Ape's press release about the retrofitted Richie:

Part James Bond, Jr., and part Indiana Jones with Donald Trump's bank account, Richie Rich is an altruistic adventurer who travels the world helping the less fortunate. With his close-knit team of friends, including an updated iRona (sic) and a butt-kicking Cadbury, Richie is a hero for a new generation, acting as the voice for the underprivileged while putting his wallet and exceptional character to good use, spending some, but helping many.

Er... "spending some" of his character? Money? Wallet collection? Proofreaders to the front of the store! But I digress. Aside from the overtly "socially conscious" tone suggested here -- which could be effective if handled correctly, but, especially in the wake of the financial crisis and recession, could just be an excuse for crude capitalist-bashing of one sort or another -- the notion of Richie as a globe-trotting adventurer is certainly nothing new. Thanks to my long-running RICHVILLE RUMINATIONS column in THE HARVEYVILLE FUN TIMES!, I suppose that I have written more about Richie for public consumption than just about anyone in existence. My first series of RUMINATIONS columns for THFT!, back in the early- to mid-90s, covered the many, many ways in which Richie led an adventurous existence in the Harvey Comics of the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. The sight of the (bulked-up) Cadbury packing heat on the cover of Ape's first RICHIE release doesn't faze me; Richie himself was known to handle firearms to good effect on many different occasions. As for faceless minions ganging up on Richie's gang, we have seen that too, thanks to such "classic" adversaries as The Condor and Dr. N-R-Gee. Those baddies don't really qualify as "hip," "cool," or "cutting-edge," though, which is probably not going to be an issue here (despite the reported contributions of old Harvey hands Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon to an early Ape issue). The question is, will political correctness trump the simple desire to tell a good, rousing adventure tale?

The appearances of the characters aside, the cast also reflects treatments seen in past RICHIE stories. Cadbury was always a remarkable athlete and "Renaissance man" -- heck, Dos Equis' spokesman could have taken a few lessons from the Riches' butler -- so the acquisition of a lantern jaw and a few more layers of muscle (along with, strangely, a pair of Mickey Mouse-style gloves?) won't be too much of a stretch to imagine. I gather than iRona (I hope that that name doesn't get Ape in copyright trouble) is simply a sleeker version of the Riches' robot maid, with up-to-date computer technology added to augment her already superhuman strength (and, if the Hanna-Barbera cartoon version of RICHIE RICH is to be believed, Transformers-style body-modification abilities that predated the original TV version of Transformers itself). iRona bears a certain unsettling resemblance to the tit(t)ular star of a Phil Foglio XXXENOPHILE story, "I Swing the Body Electric," but I am confident that Ape won't go THAT far in the course of its "reimagining" activities. Richie's girlfriend Gloria's role isn't described above, but "tomboyish ass-kicker" is a pretty good guess as to her personality -- and, wouldn't you know, even that idea has some precedent (cf. the Gloria of the live-action Richie Rich movie from 1994 starring Macaulay Culkin). As for Dollar the dog, well, as long as Ape can stay an arm's length (or ten) away from the Frank Welker-voiced "comic relief" character of H-B days... To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a dog should just be a dog.

The previous observations should serve to convince you that Ape's new version of the RICHIE RICH "universe" is built on a sturdier foundation that you might guess. What is yet to be determined is the attitude that the creators, and particularly the writers, will take. A lot of comics fans have admitted to disliking the Harvey Comics version of Richie because of the (mistaken) perception that the flaunting and/or abuse of vast wealth was all that Richie brought to the table. In its zeal to attract a "new generation," will Ape go too far in the other direction and turn Richie into a smug, preachy character who pays obeisance to all the appropriate secular "gods"? (Dr. N-R-Gee and The Iceman in a global warming story, anyone?) I really do hope that Ape does this project right. Richie is too enjoyable a character to simply be left on the "diamond heap" of comics history.

Book Review: MANHUNT: THE 12-DAY CHASE FOR LINCOLN'S KILLER by James L. Swanson (William Morrow, 2006)

With MANHUNT, Swanson -- whose follow-up production, BLOODY CRIMES, is also on my bedside table at the moment -- provides a romanticized account of the most notoriously "romantic" of American Presidential assassinations and its aftermath. Part of the intrigue surrounding John Wilkes Booth's dramatic killing of Abraham Lincoln stems from the fact that, barring some bad luck and misjudgments, Booth might very easily have gotten away with his crime. In tracing Booth's long, painful journey from the floorboards of Ford's Theatre to Garrett's Tobacco Barn, where the assassin was cornered and shot, Swanson demonstrates why he did not. Swanson does take sides regarding some of the latest historical research (e.g., he portrays Dr. Samuel Mudd, the man who set Booth's broken leg, as being far more of a knowledgeable accomplice of Booth's than the old historical and pop-culture consensus would have it), but, in most particulars, he approaches the project as a simple story-teller, rather than as an academician with a point to prove. The manuscript could have done with one final proofread -- tenses are sometimes mixed up, and the same telegram is quoted twice in two separate places in the narrative -- and a few more detailed maps of Booth's escape route would have been appreciated. Still, this is an excellent and, at times, hair-raising read.

Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #398 (December 2010, Boom! Kids)

Well, it took three issues, but the current "we're-pretending-it's-a-story-arc-to-justify-a-paperback-collection-but-it-really-ain't-so," "Messes Become Successes," finally lives down to its name (the first part of it, at least) with this issue's lead (and leaden) tale, "The Belt of Time." This Brazilian story was originally published in 1993 -- a bit late in the game to be entering this particular field of play -- and, despite the fact that only a what Scrooge would term a "wee handful" of DT epics were ever produced in Brazil, its sheer tiredness is more appropriate for the tail-end of the Egmont or Disney Studio DT output. Wearing Gyro Gearloose's time-traveling "century belt," Launchpad bips and bops out of several scenes as counterpoint to Scrooge and HD&L racing Flintheart Glomgold to the Andes to claim the rights to a "frozen super-ape" trapped in an ice cave. Anyone who has seen the Darkwing Duck episode "Extinct Possibility" and can guess the climactic twist is hereby excused. Actually, it's not the plot, blah as it is, that truly fails here (thanks to the ever-energetic contributions of David Gerstein and Jonathan Gray); rather, it's Haroldo Guimaraes' artwork, which would have been much better suited to one of the four-page "quickie" stories that ran in the old DUCKTALES activity magazine. Given the high quality of some of the recently-published, previously-unseen DT tales, I find it difficult to believe that "The Belt of Time" was the best of the leftover lot. This may be an indication that the upcoming 400th issue of $CROOGE, with its promised turn in a more "classical" direction, may be arriving none too soon.

Speaking of "classics," who's the talented fellow who provided the backup story for this issue? Carl Banks? No, he played football for the Giants. Karl Marx? Nope, the guest star is a capitalist who, while irritating at times, is not evil. Could it be... why, yes, indeed, it's The Old Duck Man himself, Carl Barks, bearing a "Christmas present" (so trumpeted by Boom! -- though they probably shouldn't have encouraged the simultaneous enjoyment of "a nice glass of eggnog," given the number of youngsters that may be reading this) in the form of the ten-pager "Christmas Cheers" (WDC&S #268, January 1963). Even a relatively minor Barks Christmas story is an occasion for rejoicing -- not to mention a nice foreshadowing of some of the "vintage treats" that Boom! has in store for us in 2011. This is one of those cleverly-woven Barks tales in which multiple individuals/entities want very different things -- Scrooge a gold mine, HD&L a "science set," Donald a dump truck (a real one, not a toy one -- don't be silly!), and the City of Duckburg a badly-overdue street-paving job -- and the plot-dominoes topple in such a way that everyone gets what they want, but not necessarily in the manner in which they want it. We also get what some (and I don't want to know who, thank you) might term "fan service" in the form of several panels' worth of the naked Nephews toweling off in a tub. Great fun, and a much-appreciated gift to the long-term fans.