Review: BOYS BEWARE / Sid Davis (1961)
February 25th, 2010 by Scott Marks
Another “Mayberry” moment up in flames.
Boys Beware (1961)
Produced by Sid Davis & the Inglewood, California Police Department and the Inglewood Unified School District
Starring: Sid Davis as Man at the public restroom and no one else of any consequence
Running Time: 10 min.
Rating: 
Sid Davis forged a career built on child exploitation. He was the Nancy Grace of his day, a man personally troubled over the well publicized 1949 rape and murder of a six-year-old girl. The incident hit close to home: Davis’ daughter had just turned six at the time and he was shocked to see how his own flesh and blood failed to heed warnings about getting in cars with Mr. Stranger Danger.
If it’s true that most great filmmakers spend their careers repeatedly making variations of the same movie, Davis’ blue plate boiler plate entry made its debut first film out of the gate. The 6’ 4” Davis worked as John Wayne’s stand-in from 1941 – 1952. Once the inspiration had germinated, Davis borrowed a grand from his old buddy The Duke to bankroll “The Dangerous Stranger” (1950), an episodic instructional short that follows the lives (and in some cases deaths) of numerous kidnapped children.
Davis peddled 16mm prints to schools, churches and police organizations and wound up taking home a whopping $250,000 for his effort! For the next ten years the prolific Mr. Davis gifted his audience, composed mainly of high school students and churchgoers, with dozens of filmed lessons, none shorter than ten minutes and none exceeding a half-hour. Each educational nugget was based on cautionary teenage adages: Don’t Take Drugs!, Don’t be a Gang Member!, Drive Safely! and Young Girls Shouldn’t Put Out! are just a few of the many topics Davis peddled.
Titles in his shorts catalog include “Skipper Learns a Lesson,” “Gang Boy” “What Makes Sammy Speed” and “Say No to Strangers” as well as his feature-length opus, “V.D.” (aka: “Damaged Goods”).
While it sounds like the title of a Three Stooges short, “Boys Beware” is a cautionary tale of rampant homophobia. Lacking the resources to afford the luxury of synchronous sound, Davis doled out information and infused his vision via wall-to-wall music and a narration track.
All of the background scores in these instructional shorts sound identical. Was there a sub-PRC recording studio that exclusively rented space to composers and orchestrators of music for educational films? The music doesn’t merely drive the narrative, it is the narrative! Listen to the playful flute and xylophone as they purposely mislead us for dramatic effect until the ominous violins take over and a child is violated.
Ralph!
Lt. Williams, working the day watch out of juvenile, acts as our on-screen POV, host and narrator. Much of what he says can be used as a guidebook for budding child molesters. Who knew that the quickest way to a young boy’s heart was hitchhiking? Let’s examine the case study of young Jimmy Barns. Too lazy to walk home after working up a sweat by participating in an all-boy sporting event, JB accepts a ride home from the balding, but virile Ralph. It was love at first sight. Notice Jimmy’s erect positioning in the passenger’s seat the first time Ralph gives him a lift and later stalks the lad to fill his head with smutty stories.
Continue reading Review: BOYS BEWARE / Sid Davis (1961)
Tags: boys beware, educational short, homosexual short, homosexuality, instructional film, Movie Review, short film, sid davisReview: SHUTTER ISLAND / Martin Scorsese (2010)
February 20th, 2010 by Scott Marks
Shutter Island (2010)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Laeta Kalogridis from a novel by Dennis Lehane
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Ma von Sydow
Photographed by Robert Richardson in
Running Time: 138 min.
Rating: 
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Most directors start their career with genre pictures as Marty did with the ultra-low budget, Roger Corman-school “Boxcar Bertha.” After screening the picture for mentor John Cassavetes, the Hollywood maverick looked into Marty’s soul, told him that he just wasted a year of his life and asked, “Don’t you have something of your own that you want to do?”
That something became “Mean Streets.” For nearly three decades, Scorsese has followed Cassavetes’ advice to the letter, give or take “Cape Fear” and a certain Oscar winner. During the press junket for “Gangs of New York” Scorsese announced, “I’ve made all the pictures that I originally set out to make.” Over the years, Marty has told numerous interviewers that he wanted to be a Hollywood genre director, but his temperament led him down a road less followed.
After “Gangs” he has finally gotten around to giving us his take on traditional genre pictures. “The Aviator” is an efficient, straight-forward Hollywood biopic that utilizes new technology to tell an old story. “The Departed” is an old fashioned Sidney Lumet cop picture/Academy guilt trip. Even better than both of them combined, “Shutter Island” is Marty’s Hitchcock thriller with equal doses of Sam Fuller and Val Lewton thrown in to fill out a satisfying Sunday matinee.
The idea had been growing in Marty’s head for quite some time. During the preparation of “Shutter Island” Scorsese produced and narrated “Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows” a documentary about the revered 1940’s ‘B’ noir horror producer. “Bedlam,” the last picture in his nine noir cycle at RKO, takes place in London’s legendary insane asylum. The original title of Scorsese’s film (“Ashecliffe”) indicated that it might be patterned after the Lewton classic.
With its cramped, dankly lit interiors much of the look of Scorsese’s fever dream can be traced back to Lewton. At its thematic core the film owes more to Hitchcock’s deeply personal self-portrait” Vertigo” and Sam Fuller’s “Shock Corridor.” (In the latter a newspaper reporter checks into a mental hospital to solve a story and winds up more insane than any of its inhabitants.)
There is nothing quite so much fun as the act of being fooled. Marty hoodwinked me 110% of the way. I should have caught on the second I saw the digital recreations of 50s matte shots during Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule’s (Mark Ruffalo) boat trip to the island. The stylistic application of intentional artifice should have been an instant tip off that what we were looking at wasn’t meant to be believed. There was also something not right about Chuck’s over-familiar use of “boss” each time he addressed his new partner. And after the tenth time, Teddy’s forceful boasts that he’s a U.S. Marshal begin to sound like he was trying to convince himself of the fact.
Teddy hits shore already agitated and feeling overly aggressive. He came to the right place. “Shutter Island” houses an elite group of America’s most dangerous and damaged patients perfectly distilled in a 1954 microcosm that also reflects current societal fears.
All of the film’s establishing shots are perfectly balanced and composed, but the music signals that this will soon change. An aerial shot on the island, a skillful homage to “Night of the Hunter,” immediately pulls us into the action. Teddy and Chuck are there to investigate the disappearance of a female patient Rachel 1 (Emily Mortimer) who murdered her three children. As the crime drama unfolds we are treated to a series of flashbacks revealing Teddy’s backstory concerning his late wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) and his military experience liberating Dachau.
Continue reading Review: SHUTTER ISLAND / Martin Scorsese (2010)
Tags: dennis lehane, Film Review, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorcese, Martin Scorsese, Movie Review, shutter islandFiled Under Rants
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