The Docks of New York (1928), Fantastic Planet (1973), Hobo with a Shotgun (2011), The Unholy Three (1930)

Someone once commented that it was a shame that sound film arrived when it did because the silents were just starting to get good. It is true that most American silent films of real artistic merit (with the exception of the comedies) where not produced until about 1925-28. Artistically The Docks of New York certainly has a handsome look, gritty, it felt as though the entire production was shoot through a lite film of oil. Even though its director Josef von Sternberg was Austrian born the film never quite crosses over into the preferred Germanic surrealist style of the time. While the sets and look are great the plot and characters are thin, which is pretty consistently the case with silent film. At first I thought the movie might have been a commentary on American moral degeneration in the 1920's, hey the stern preacher of few (title card) words even looked a little like Calvin Coolidge. Later I learned that von Sternberg made a point of never making a 'message pictures', so I guess suicidal girl, horny sailors and bitter murders wife are all just there to be taken as they are, judgmentless? Well the film makes a late concession to happy endings, but to be honest I never really cared for the 1D characters in this film, so it might actually have been more satisfying had things all ended with more misery.

Grade: C-

It's Salvador Dali meets The Yellow Submarine meets the Animated Star Trek. It's "Monty Pyhton meets Pink Floyd's The Wall." Its Luis Bunuel meets The Martian Chronicles. It's Fantastic Planet.

A film festival favorite at the time of its release, the Czechoslovakian made Fantastic Planet is really just your standard slave revolt story. Humans, called Oms, have somehow been transplanted to the home world of the Draags, giant blue people obsessed with meditation (wait till you find out why). Some Oms are kept as pets, while others live in the wild as feuding tribes. Ter is the pet Omn of the Draag prime ministers daughter, Draags age a week for each human year so Ter grows up around this adolescent until he escapes at roughly age twenty. Having garnered much Draag knowledge Ter could be real helpful to his fellow Oms, where it not for religious superstition against such knowledge. When the Draags communistic government orders a "de-Omification" and kill 'the Wizard' among others, Ter leads a group of survivors to an abandoned rocket depot were they construct a ship to take them to the Draags sacred moon, otherwise known as Fantastic plant.

What happens at the Fantastic plant is very odd, and deserving of the descriptions given in the first paragraph. But the part of the film on Draag is surprisingly engaging. Again the stories simple, but very engaging perhaps because of its simplicity and quasi-earnestness. The strange flora and fauna on Draag are truly alien and kind of a joy to watch. Though the animations odd, sometimes the people are almost chalk drawing like, I was won over by the shear differentness of this picture.

Grade: A-

(The) 'Hobo With a Shotgun' first made his appearance as a 'fake trailer' attached to the Canadian release of Grindhouse in 2007. The premise is simple, a poor hobo, who just wants to buy a lawnmower, takes up the cause of vigilante justice with the aid of his trusty shotgun.

The nameless hobo (Rutger Hauer) rides the rails into Hope Town, a crime infested burg where seemingly anything goes (think the alternate Hill Valley in Back to the Future II, only worse). This mayhem is primarily organized by one Drake (Brian Downey, who plays him as a kind of variation on Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth character in Blue Velvet). I guess Drake is a sort of crime lord and along with his two sons (the Uday and Qusay to his Sadam) enjoys imprisoning people in altered sewer caps and ripping there heads off with the aid of rope and automobile, along with general rapping and pillaging.

Even for an exploitation picture I found this movie ultra violent. It's gory, and can be cruel and gross to excess. The hobo befriends a young prostitute (Molly Dunsworth) who he seems to think is a teacher, and in the end they face off in a final battle with Drake, surviving son, the crooked police department and a couple of bounty hunters known as The Plague. You want to like it, you want it to be tongue-in-check, and it is, buts its also disgusting. I couldn't make up my mind about this one.

Grade: C

The 1925 silent version of The Unholy Three had been a success for 'man of a thousand faces' Lon Chaney, so why not make a sound version with the same star five years later. In his final role before his death (released seven weeks prior to his dying of a throat hemorrhage), Chaney is a crime minded ventriloquist. He teams up with the strong man and midget when there carnival is closed down, and with the help of his girl friend (the really attractive Lila Lee) they set up shop with a bird shop.

Of course the bird shop is a cover, it allows them to meet wealthy bird patrons who they might want to rob. To hide there identities they take on the roles of a grandmother (Chaney in drag), her son in law (strong man Ivan Linow in a suite) and a little baby (Harry Earl, two years before his signature role in Freaks), Lee posses as Chaney granddaughter. Lee falls in love with the rather clueless Hector McDonald (Elliott Nugent), who is working as a clerk in the bird store while he goes to night school. A burglary goes wrong, a rich guy dies, Hector is implicated, and Lee begs Chaney to do the right thing.... He does. This was okay, not great but enjoyable, benefits from the a-typical cast.

Grade: C