You REALLY gotta see this: Wagon Master (1950)

I don't mean to go spending your money, but if you haven't ordered your copy of Wagon Master, you need to get to it. Here, I'll save you all the looking — get it here.

It's a beautiful DVD. First class. And, of course, it's one of John Ford's best.

All the DVD reviews out there cover how simple, light and unpretentious it is, playing almost like a Western fairy tale and looking very much like the silent Westerns Ford had made (he'd return to this stripped-down "silent" look for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

What's weird to me is that the badguys, the Cleggs, rarely get a mention. I saw this thing a thousand times growing up (like yesterday's Hellfire), and I always thought the Cleggs were evil incarnate — an Old West version of the freak family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

They scared me. Bad. And as a result, I don't usually agree with a lot of the analysis of this great film. Masterpiece? Without doubt. Unpretentious? Sure. Beautiful? Absolutely. But those Cleggs, they throw bright and cheery right out the window — and dump in a big bucket of Menace.

You gotta see this: Hellfire (1949).

Republic's Hellfire (1949) — a family favorite I've seen a million times — is pitifully hard to find, though it used to show up on The Westerns Channel every once in a while.

It's a terrific movie — in wonderful, weird-looking Trucolor — with gambler Bill Elliott trying to fulfill a promise to build a church — without resorting to the violence he's accustomed to. He decides to do a little bounty hunting to raise the money, and runs into a number of unsavory characters along the way.

Paul Fix: For a Bible-toter, you're pretty handy with a six-shooter.

Bill Elliott: It kinda bothers me, too. Seems like the only kind of sermon I can make folks listen to.

It also stars my all-time favorite actress: Marie Windsor. You may know her from Kubrick's The Killing (1956), The Narrow Margin (1952), Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy (1955), Bounty Hunter (1954) with Randolph Scott, a few John Wayne movies and other great stuff. She always said Hellfire was one of her personal favorites, which is good enough for me.

Interesting weird little note: H.B. Warner plays the old preacher, Brother Joseph, whose death sends Elliott on his quest to build the church. Back in 1927, Warner was Jesus in The King Of Kings. He's also one of the bridge-playing Hollywood fossils in Sunset Boulevard (1950).

The bird is the word!

Just got this from Sundazed Music:

Beloved midwest garage-rock kings and Sundazed recording artists the Trashmen will perform their FIRST-EVER New York-area shows, on October 23 at Southpaw in Brooklyn and October 24 at Maxwell's in Hoboken.

The seminal foursome—original members Tony Andreason, Dal Winslow and Bob Reed, with Tony's brother Mark Andreason taking over for the late Steve Wahrer on drums—will deliver such immortal Trashmen classics as "A-Bone," "Tube City," "King Of The Surf," "My Woodie" and the bigger-than-life anthem "Surfin' Bird."

Hard as it may be to believe, these shows mark the first time that the Trashmen have played in the New York City area. According to Dal Winslow, "In the early '60s, we played a club in New Jersey and around the Finger Lakes region, but we never hit New York City. It's been a long tome coming, like 40 years, and we're really looking forward to it!"

As a bonus these shows coincide with the WFMU Record Fair at the Manhattan Pavillion, where the Sundazed booth will, as always, be supplying smashing sounds to satisfied shoppers!

Don't miss the opportunity to see the Trashmen live at these venues!:

Friday Oct. 23rd Southpaw 125 5th Ave., Brooklyn, NY

Sat. Oct. 24th Maxwell's 1039 Washington St.,. Hoboken, NJ

Go ahead, make my movie.

Here's a couple pictures of Clint Eastwood at work. First up, Dirty Harry (1971). Seems to be the quarry scene at the end. Is that the great Don Siegel behind the camera in the floppy hat?

Next is High Plains Drifter (1973), which Clint both starred in and directed. This film seems to be going through a bit of a reappraisal lately, which it deserves. Throughout, you can really see the influences of Eastwood's key directors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. Who needs film school when you can watch those guys at work? And why hasn't Dee Barton's score ever been released?

(Both images were found somewhere on the Internet, a long time ago.)

A very good, but sorta weird, night at the movies.

I never woulda thought of these as a double feature.

Evidently, Paramount did.

Wouldn't you like to head to Reno in a camper with Kim Novak?

One of the best Fifties crime films, and one of my all-time favorite movies, is coming on DVD — 5 Against The House (1955).

Directed by Phil Karlson — an absolute master of this sort of gritty, nasty stuff — it stars Brian Keith, Kim Novak and Guy Madison. It's all about some Korean War vets who rent a camper trailer and head to Reno for a big casino heist.

It's one of the films in the upcoming DVD set Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Vol. 1. The other pictures are The Big Heat (directed by Fritz Lang), The Lineup (from Don Siegel), Murder By Contract and The Sniper.

You can't go wrong with this thing, people.

Crappy-looking video of one of the greatest things ever.

Here's The Byrds on Playboy After Dark back in September of 1968. They do "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "This Wheel's On Fire."

By this point, Roger McGuinn was the only original member. Here, he's backed up by Clarence White on guitar, Gene Parsons on drums and John York on bass.

Watch and listen to Clarence giving his B-bender Telecaster a workout. Amazing stuff.

Wanna see Charles Bronson get his face burned off with a blowtorch?

All through my years of film geekery, there's been a handful of movies I desperately wanted to see but never could track down. One by one, I've been finding 'em — and in almost every case, what I've seen has been worth the wait.

7 Men From Now — one of the greatest Westerns I've ever seen.

Gun Crazy — for once, all the books of snobby scholarly film noir analysis didn't screw up my enjoyment of a terrific B crime picture.

Another example, which I saw last night here, is 1955's Big House, USA (located by my web-surfing wife Jennifer — another reason I love her so much).

It's a tough, gritty B crime film, directed by Howard W. Koch and boasting one of the greatest casts I've ever come across: Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker (the same year he did Kiss Me Deadly), Reed Hadley, William Talman, Lon Chaney (Jr.) and Charles Bronson. I knew it'd be good. Gordon Avil's camerawork is impressive, too.

This is nowhere near the movie those other two are. But as a nasty 83 minutes of Fifties cinema, it's hard to beat. Let's see. A kid is chucked off a cliff. A guy is trapped inside a giant boiler — and promptly steamed like a lobster tail. And as previously mentioned, Bronson has his face and fingertips seared off to conceal his identity.

Y'all can have Wizard Of Oz and Sophie's Choice. Give me more like this.

So go watch it. (You can spare 83 minutes, can't you?) You'll thank me.

A few hot rod pics.

Things like this get drug to my desktop every so often. There, now I've done something with them.

Little Deuce Coupe

Bitchin' article in The New York Times.

Masterpiece.

"Old Fisherman" by Jeppa.

A tribute to the Old Master, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.