The Periphery Project (2012)

This is an interesting idea for a film, and it's also a very good film, made without a studio or a big budget.

The idea: Show a bunch of short films, with an overarching narrative that ties them together. The short films are all fantasy/horror/sci-fi stories, and the whole movie plays like an especially strong episode of the 1970s Night Gallery, only each vignette is introduced by a cable access conspiracy freak instead of Rod Serling walking through a darkened museum.

So there's a conspiracy theory here, but The Periphery Project is from the pre-Trump era, an ancient time when conspiracists might seem semi-coherent, even intelligent, and might make you say, Hmmm. This is not QAnon bullshit.

Four of the five shorts, all made by different directors and casts, are quite good, the fifth is even better. The cable TV show that weaves around 'em is thoughtful and interesting enough that I'd like to see more episodes.

"We're watching because they are watching. Thank you for being awake."

The host is convinced that the government is running something called The Periphery Project, keeping a list of troublesome filmmakers who make movies the jackbooted thugs would rather you never saw. What the authorities might do to the filmmakers on the list is never specified, but it won't involve crumpets and tea.

Verdict: BIG YES.

Since the shorts are all separate projects, I'll also rate them individually:

All the Time in the World (2010) — YES
Bottles (2011) — YES
Noirville (2010) — YES
The Unnatural (2010) — YES
Voodoo (2010), which is based on a short story by Fredric Brown — BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Air Force One (1997)

I'll bet Columbia Pictures spent twice as much on the opening logo for Air Force One than the entire budget for The Periphery Project.

Tough guy President of the United Stated (Harrison Ford) single-handedly fights off a terrorist attack on the Presidential 747.

The set-up is something about dratted Russkies, and Gary Oldman plays a Russian operative who's obviously trouble from the git-go — everyone watching the movie can see it, but the Secret Service can't.

This was my family's get-together movie last month, because with the family we vote. I would've chosen something else, or more accurately, anything else. Not a single thread of Air Force One holds up to common sense, but if you unplug most of your IQ or roll your eyes at the nonsense, it's a good time.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mad Max Fury Road (2015)

Now that Mel Gibson's not so marketable, Max has been wisely recast for this recent sequel. He's Tom Hardy, and there's no difference, because it's not about acting — it's about action.

This has lots, and a recurring habit of meddling with the camera speed to suggest even more action. That's a trick I've never found anything but annoying, and it's annoying here.

The endless screaming and screeching and blowing stuff up almost never stops for even a moment, which is tiresome — unless you're in an action-movie frame of mind, which it so happens I was when I watched this.

You wouldn't want popcorn and ice cream for dinner, but sometimes that's exactly what you want, and when you want it, this is it. Boom!

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place (2011)

Once upon a time, writer and LSD explorer Ken Kesey wanted to take a cross-country trip on the highway, and so many of his friends wanted to ride along that Kesey decided to buy a 1939 International Harvester school bus, name it Further, and invite them all.

They brought lots of drugs, a change of clothes, and a Super-8 camera to make a movie of their adventures. Almost fifty years later, the footage has been spliced to feature length, a rock'n'roll soundtrack added, and a few people who'd been on the bus but weren't yet dead have something to say.

There were so many people on the bus — some for a short while, some for longer — that the movie can't really let you know most of them. Kesey and beat icon Neal Cassady come across clearly, but the rest of the crowd is a blur. Special guests include Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Barry Goldwater, and the Grateful Dead.

Tom Wolfe wrote about the bus ride in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but he never set foot on the bus, so he's absent here.

It was 1964, and with Cassady's presence you could plausibly argue that this was when and where the beatnik era begat the time of hippies.

"Kesey lit the fuse for the explosion of the '60s," the film says, and their road trip is presented as the psychological equivalent of Lewis and Clark's expedition. There's even a scene caught on film where a few of the passengers accidentally invent a tie-dyed t-shirt.

Everywhere these merry pranksters went, nobody'd seen anything like them before. The bus was routinely pulled over by police, but the word 'hippie' hadn't been coined yet so the cops didn't know enough to hate them.

Kesey, of course, used and advocated acid, but nobody much outside the bus knew what that was, so he was jailed instead for possession of marijuana.

"You make these forays, you write these books and you perform this music; but the big juggernaut of civilization continues, and you get kind of brushed to the side. But, I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead, knowing that society's not going to understand it. Not even caring, 'cause they're having a good time."

[Kesey hated the movie](../Pathetic Life/PL-04#is-ken-kesey-cuckoo) of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so it seems unfair and unkind that when he reads a passage from that book, the film illustrates it with clips from the movie.

Other than that, I have no complaints about Magic Trip. Some of the movie's a blast and some is boring, probably like the bus ride. Maybe that's why so few people rode all the way.

If you missed the bus and wish you hadn't, this is the next best thing.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Murders in the Zoo (1933)

"You'll never kiss another man's wife again," says brilliant but deranged zoologist Eric Gorman (Lionel Atwill) while he's sewing his wife's lover's lips shut forever. Then he rides off on an elephant, and leaves the now-silenced man as dinner for the lions.

Gorman is jealous of any man who notices his lovely but rather promiscuous wife, so he kills them one after another if they do, but he stages the crimes so it looks like his victims have been killed by the wild animals at the zoo.

The movie is pre-code, and thus impressively gruesome. Charlie Ruggles adds some laughs, and there's even Randolph Scott (Randolph Scott!).

"Surely you’re not suggesting that I kept an eight-foot-long snake in my trousers during dinner."

This is a very enjoyable murder-comedy. I wish there were a few more murders and a few less laughs, but the movie is fun, and it deserves to be more widely-known than it is.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

This is an average 1950s monster movie, with no big stars and minimal effects. There's a human-shaped fish-thing that can come out of the water and hates humans, perhaps because it's been tortured by its human captors at a Sea World-type hellhole.

The monster's suit is pleasantly scaly, and the leading lady hits the high notes when she screams.

If you've never seen a '50s monster movie you really ought to, but this one's probably not the one.

Watch closely and you'll catch Clint Eastwood's first on-screen role.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

...Tick... Tick... Tick... (1970)

George Kennedy is the sheriff, but he's lost his run for re-election, and the new sheriff is Jim Brown. Brown is black, and the movie is set in the South, so there's your drama.

It's not blaxploitation — there's no ass-whupping' here, it's a serious drama. The Southern racism is a bit soft-pedaled — Brown would be in lots more danger than he is here, especially in 1970 — but for a movie from back then, it's ferocious.

"If they let me, I'm gonna be a good sheriff."

Brown and Kennedy are both terrific, though the very earnest script gives neither man much backstory. It's a political movie, the likes of which are rarely made any more — a film with good intentions and something to say, and it's well worth watching. The story's resolution seems overly optimistic to me, but you'll wish it was true.

Odd musical choices — "Gentle on my Mind" as background music for a chase scene?

Written by James Lee Barrett (Shenandoah, Smokey and the Bandit). Directed by Ralph Nelson (Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Wilby Conspiracy). Fredric March gets one of his last roles, as the town's mayor.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Life moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller deduced, so I've increased my decision-making speed on shitty movies. Here are a few of those BIG NO snap decisions — movies so instantly, obviously hopeless that I turned them off within the first ten minutes:

The Wizard of Speed and Time (1988)
The Woman in Red (1978)

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming attractions:

Beer League (2006)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie (2010)
The Silent Partner (1978)
Something Evil (1972)
V for Vendetta (2006)
The Wizard of Mars (1965)
3/6/2023

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:

Alter
Cineverse
Criterion
CultCinema Classics
DocsVille
Dust
Fandor
Films for Action
Hoopla
IHaveNoTV
IndieFlix
Internet Archive
Kanopy
KinoCult
Kino Lorber
Korean Classic Film
Christopher R Mihm
Mosfilm
Mubi
National Film Board of Canada
New Yorker Screening Room
Damon Packard
Mark Pirro
PizzaFlix
PopcornFlix
Public Domain Movies
RareFilmm
Scarecrow Video
Shudder
ThoughtMaybe
Timeless Classic Movies
VoleFlix
WatchDocumentaries
or your local library.
Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.
— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free. Click any image to enlarge. [Arguments & recommendations are welcome,](mailto:[email protected]?subject=Comments for Mostly Words) but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.