cinema history class: the thing from another world (1951)

The session: The Cold Can Kill Ya!
With plummeting temperatures, Keith shows us four movies with achingly cold settings

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: The Thing from Another World (1951)
Directed by Christian Nyby

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I knew of this movies existence, since Keith showed us the remake a year ago.

Plot:
A group of Air Force personnel and scientists at an Arctic base uncover a crashed spacecraft frozen in the ice. They soon realize the wreck carried a hostile alien life-form that feeds on blood and begins stalking the isolated outpost. As tensions rise between scientific curiosity and military caution, the group bands together to stop the creature before it can escape into the world.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
My watching The Thing from Another World and grading it was unfair to it, and I’ll own that up front. I had seen the remake (titled simply The Thing) at Keith’s about a year ago, and that made it hard not to spend this entire screening waiting for things that simply weren’t going to happen. The two films tell very different stories: the 1951 version is essentially “there is a big, scary alien loose, stalking the base and we need to stop it,” while the remake leans into a far more paranoid idea—an alien that imitates whatever it comes into contact with. As I watched, I kept expecting shape-shifting paranoia and molecular body horror, even finding myself wondering if the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Aquiel," was inspired by the later film. Ironically, my understanding is that the remake is actually closer to the original short story than this movie is.

That mismatch probably cost the film a few points in my mental scorecard, because I did like it—just not as much as the remake. I want to believe that’s mostly about plot: the later version simply gives me more to chew on. But I also have to admit that I’m a product of my time, and early-1980s movie sensibilities feel more natural to me than early-1950s ones. Bobbo, being older and much more steeped in ’50s sci-fi, was clearly more in the movie’s wavelength than I was, which is exactly how these things tend to shake out.

A lot of the movie really works. The pacing is solid, the atmosphere is tense, and the setting does a lot of heavy lifting. That said, the human-looking vegetable alien—kept mostly in shadow for understandable reasons—was, at moments, a little hard not to chuckle at. There’s also a scene where the alien runs out of the base while on fire, and I genuinely found myself wondering whether this image somehow planted a seed that later bloomed into Flaming Carrot. I’m not saying it did. I’m just saying my brain went there.

One area where the movie really impressed me was in a couple of its quieter science-fiction ideas. The fact that shooting the vegetable creature doesn’t immediately kill it actually makes perfect sense: plants don’t have vital organs the way humans do, so bullets aren’t automatically fatal. If I went out to my front yard and fired a cannon at my oak tree, it would be damaged, sure, but not “dead” in any meaningful sense — whereas if the oak tree somehow returned fire, I would be extremely dead. Even creepier (and wonderfully so) is the scene where the scientist calmly shows off the tray of plants he's been growing. He explains that he started with little bits of the alien that fell off in one of the scuffles, and he’s feeding them human blood. That moment lands like proper science fiction: unsettling, logical in its own warped way, and far more disturbing than anything that jumps out from the shadows.

One thing that deserves real credit is how believable the human characters are. People argue, make bad decisions, push their own agendas, and react in ways that feel recognizably human rather than purely “movie logic.” That grounded behavior goes a long way toward selling the danger and gives the film a seriousness that still holds up.

And Joe wasn’t there. Had he been, he would have confidently declared this a ten, immediately, without hesitation, and then spent the next five minutes explaining why any objections were missing the point entirely. Because some tens are tennier than others. Or maybe not, since Bobbo gave it a ten, it would be hard to argue that Joe shouldn't.

cinema history class: dig your grave friend... sabata's coming

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild west

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: Dig Your Grave Friend... Sabata is Coming (1971)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I know I've seen this before -- there were a couple scenes that I recognized. But I have no idea when or under what circumstances.

Plot:
A civil war soldier returns to his father's home, only to find the old man dead. Seeking revenge, he finds himself partnered with an unlikely ally and at odds with a beautiful and brilliant woman who doesn't quite know whom to trust. Together they navigate corrupt officials, hired guns, and shifting loyalties as old scores are settled and new ones are created.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

Let’s get this out of the way first: Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata’s Coming is a Sabata film in name only.

There is a character named Sabata in the movie, but he’s a tertiary figure and about as far from the iconic Lee Van Cleef version as you can get. This Sabata is just a run-of-the-mill hired gun. Unlike Sabata, he’s a bad guy. Unlike Sabata, he has no clever gadgets or gimmicks. And unlike Sabata, he dies.

Joe said what we were all thinking: it’s obvious this movie was not developed as a Sabata film at all. The name was slapped onto it later to capitalize on the popularity of the character. Maybe they could have given Richard Harrison’s character, Steve, the Sabata name instead—that might have made it fit a little better structurally. But even then, it still wouldn’t really feel like a Sabata movie.

So rather than judge this as a failed or bogus entry in the Sabata saga, it makes more sense to look at it simply as a spaghetti western on its own terms.

And on those terms, it’s entertaining. Good in some ways. But not great by any means.

One thing the movie does surprisingly well is function as a kind of buddy film. Steve ends up paired with Leon, an unintended sidekick who helps him navigate an increasingly complicated situation. (It’s hard not to notice that Leon looks a lot like Ron Jeremy, once that thought enters your head.) The buddy dynamic works better than expected—Steve and Leon play off each other nicely, and their interactions give the movie a bit of momentum it might otherwise lack.

In fact, that relationship is probably the main reason the film works as well as it does. When it’s leaning on the interplay between those two characters, the movie feels lighter on its feet and more engaging.

Where it starts to falter is in its reliance on humor. Several of the barroom fight scenes tip over into outright slapstick, drifting into Three Stooges territory. It’s not that humor has no place in a spaghetti western—but here it’s sometimes pushed too far, undercutting any tension the scene might otherwise have had.

On the other hand, the film does occasionally tap into the kind of nastiness that spaghetti westerns are known for. There are moments of cruelty and grit that remind you this genre can still bite when it wants to. Those moments help keep the movie from becoming entirely frivolous.

This isn’t a deep film, and it doesn’t really offer anything new. But it is fun. As long as you’re not expecting Sabata—despite what the title insists—you can get some enjoyment out of it.

After thoroughly discussing what was wrong with the movie, Joe gave it a ten. But he acknowledged that, within the realm of tens, it’s an eight. Because some tens aren’t as tenny as others.

struggle was always the default

I’ve seen a lot of social media posts lately lamenting what’s presented as one of life’s great injustices: most people work for decades, often until around age 65, and only then—if they’re lucky—get to stop working and “enjoy life.” Some retire earlier, some later. Some never really retire at all, continuing to work well past traditional retirement age because they have no choice. This reality is often described not just as unfortunate, but as fundamentally wrong.

And increasingly, the blame is laid at the feet of “civilization.”

The argument seems to go something like this: modern society has imposed an unnatural burden on people, forcing them into decades of toil that humans were never meant to endure. I’ve even seen claims that humans are the only animals saddled with this bizarre notion of “work,” as if the very concept is an invention of spreadsheets, office parks, and capitalism.

But this strikes me as getting things almost exactly backwards.

Modern civilization—especially the specialization of labor that comes with it—has been one of the greatest improvements in human quality of life. Other animals don’t go to jobs in the way we do, but they absolutely still work. For animals in the wild, life is a constant, unrelenting struggle for survival. Food must be hunted or foraged. Shelter must be found or built. Predators must be avoided. Injuries can be fatal. Aging doesn’t come with a gold watch and a pension plan. There is no retirement in the wild.

The same was true for humans before civilization, and for much of early civilization as well. People gathered food. They hunted. They planted. They defended themselves. They worked simply to stay alive. Civilization didn’t invent work; it gradually made survival less brutal. The progress hasn’t been perfectly smooth or monotonic, but the long-term trend is unmistakable. Life today—certainly in America, and broadly across the developed world—is vastly better than life anywhere a hundred years ago, let alone a thousand or ten thousand years ago. We enjoy comforts our ancestors couldn’t have imagined.

The uncomfortable truth is that humans are animals, and our natural condition involves effort. Food does not arrive at the table without work. Shelter does not magically appear. Clothing, transportation, medicine, and infrastructure all require human labor somewhere along the chain. One of the great achievements of advanced civilization is that we now get more of these things with less total human effort than ever before—not that effort has disappeared entirely.

Some of the confusion may be fueled by science fiction. Franchises often portray futures in which humans have transcended mundane labor, freed at last to pursue self-actualization without economic necessity. It’s an appealing vision. But it’s also a fantasy—at least for now.

There are people who believe that artificial intelligence, advancing exponentially and perhaps even designing future versions of itself, will finally deliver that utopia. A world where all material needs are met and no one has to do work they don’t enjoy. I’m skeptical. Human nature hasn’t been repealed, and neither have scarcity, incentives, or power. But it’s an open question. We’ll see.

the reunion we need. the reunion we deserve.

TV keeps rebooting the wrong shows. Enough already. What we actually need is a BJ and the Bear reunion movie.

Picture this: BJ McKay rolls back into Orly County for Sheriff Lobo’s funeral. The man was a pain, a bully, and—let’s be honest—a legend. The town turns out. There are speeches about “law and order” that somehow leave out the part where he terrorized long-haul truckers for sport.

BJ reconnects with Deputy Hawkins, who—miraculously—has aged into exactly what he always was: a straight-arrow, by-the-book lawman who still thinks the system works if you just follow the rules hard enough. Hawkins is genuinely happy to see BJ. Less happy to see Bear riding shotgun, because some things never change.

Enter the problem: Sheriff Lobo’s son. He’s running for sheriff himself, fueled entirely by resentment. He grew up hearing bedtime stories about “that drifter trucker and his damn monkey” humiliating his father on a weekly basis. He bears a grudge. (Yes. Bears. I regret nothing.)

At first it’s petty harassment—traffic stops, inspections, old ordinances dusted off for no reason. But it escalates when BJ realizes Orly County has been “cleaned up” in the worst possible way: small operators pushed out, corruption repackaged as respectability, and Lobo Jr. using his father’s legacy as a cudgel. Hawkins is stuck in the middle, trying to do the right thing while pretending this isn’t personal.

And Bear? Bear sees through everything. The chimp knows the score immediately. He becomes the moral center of the story, which feels right.

By the end, BJ isn’t just passing through anymore. He’s forced to decide whether some towns are worth fighting for—even when the fight looks suspiciously like the same old one. Also there’s a truck chase, at least one courtroom scene that makes no legal sense, and Bear absolutely steals a set of keys at a crucial moment.

Tell me this wouldn’t work. Tell me this wouldn’t be better than the ninth reboot of something nobody asked for. And Joe will give it a ten!

on tipping -- and why I still do it

I'm posting this because I have seen a bunch of social media posts (on a bunch of platforms) about the subject of tipping. I know that, the algorithm being what it is, most people aren't seeing what I'm seeing. I also realize that no one asked for my opinion. Too bad.

I don’t like the current tipping system. If I were designing things from scratch, I’d much prefer a system where tips are not expected — or better yet, not allowed at all. In that world, servers would be paid a proper, predictable wage, menu prices would be higher to reflect that reality, and everyone would know what they’re paying for upfront. No math at the table, no moral arithmetic afterward.

But that isn’t the system we have.

In the system we do have, servers rely on tips. And just as importantly, the prices I see on the menu are built around that fact. They’re lower precisely because the restaurant is not paying full wages and is instead shifting part of that responsibility onto the customer. So if I were to refuse to tip on principle, I wouldn’t be staging a protest — I’d simply be taking advantage of artificially low pricing while someone else absorbs the cost.

That doesn’t sit right with me.

I can dislike the system and still acknowledge the reality I’m participating in. Until the rules change, choosing not to tip doesn’t punish “the system”; it punishes the person who brought the food to my table. And simply saying that "it's the restaurant's job to pay them better" doesn't address the fact that I'm getting a lower menu prices because the restaurant isn't paying them better. 

That said, I do notice that expectations have shifted. When I was growing up, 15% was considered a solid tip for decent service. You tipped more for exceptional service, less if things went badly, but 15% was the baseline. Now the default seems closer to 20%, with suggested amounts sometimes climbing higher than that. Whether that reflects rising costs of living, social pressure, or tip creep driven by point-of-sale screens, I’m not entirely sure — but it has changed.

So I find myself in an uncomfortable middle ground: disliking the system, recognizing its flaws, noticing its evolution, and still tipping — because opting out unilaterally isn’t reform, it’s just imbalance.

I’d happily support a different model. I’d even pay higher menu prices for it. But until that model actually exists, I tip — not because I love the system, but because I live in it.

cinema history class: return of sabata (1971)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: Return of Sabata (1971)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I may have heard of it. Maybe. I dunno. I certainly didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
Master gunman Sabata comes out of hiding to expose and dismantle a powerful gold-smuggling conspiracy run by corrupt officials and bankers, outwitting rivals with gadgets, disguises, and razor-sharp strategy.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Before getting into the movie itself, a small sidenote about something that annoyed me more than it should have: there’s a character named McIntock who is very frequently referred to as “McClintock.” I realize this is not a major sin, or even a particularly interesting one. But once I noticed it, I couldn’t not notice it, and it became one of those tiny irritations that just sat there, tapping me on the shoulder for the whole movie.

Stepping back for a moment, Sabata Returns also marks the end of the official Sabata trilogy, and Keith deserves thanks for guiding us through all three films. I found that they form a neat little case study in how quickly a character can drift into self-parody, depending on tone, direction, and how much the filmmakers trust the audience versus how much they feel the need to mug for it. I acknowledge that that wasn't Keith's intention. He (and most of the others in the room) like Sabata more than I do. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

This time out, Lee Van Cleef is back after sitting out the second film, where he was replaced by Yul Brynner. One might think this was a in for me, but I realized after the second Sabata film, I prefer Brynner's serious interpretation of the character. This movie leans hard into broad comedy—much more than the first two—and for me that’s the single biggest reason it didn’t work. I’m increasingly realizing that I prefer Van Cleef when he plays it straight: not necessarily as a villain, but as a controlled, intimidating presence. He’s terrific in For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Death Rides a Horse—all performances built on stillness, menace, and restraint. Here, he’s asked to be a comedian far too often, and it just doesn’t suit him.

The opening scene didn’t help. The whole dinner-theater-meets-circus setup felt less like a western and more like a particularly campy episode of Batman, complete with winking theatrics and exaggerated villainy. That tone more or less sets the agenda for what follows.

Once again, the film relies heavily on familiar faces in familiar roles, giving the whole thing the feel of a repertory theater company endlessly remixing the same parts. Some people seemed to enjoy that sense of continuity. I didn’t. Maybe if there had been more here that I genuinely liked, I would have found it comforting instead of repetitive.

Gimmicks also return in force: more acrobatics, and now an elaborately deployed foot-operated slingshot, just in case you were worried the movie might go five minutes without reminding you how clever it is. We also get, yet again, the slimy Mexican character and the untrustworthy associate who’s only in it for the money—familiar beats, hit once more.

Add to that a score I found actively annoying, and a runtime that felt far longer than it needed to be, and I spent a good chunk of the film thinking, Jesus Christ—when will this end?

And, of course, Joe gave it a ten -- no surprise there. But at least this time he limited his review to a movie that actually exists.

cinema history class: adios, sabata (1970)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Adios, Sabata (1970)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I'd heard of it, but didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
An enigmatic gunslinger arrives in a corrupt frontier town where a stolen gold shipment has entangled politicians, businessmen, and outlaws alike. Playing rival factions against each other with wit, gadgets, and lethal precision, he uncovers the conspiracy behind the theft and ensures that justice—on his own terms—is served.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
One of the more interesting bits of trivia surrounding Adiós, Sabata is its casting sleight-of-hand. Lee Van Cleef—who originated the role of Sabata—was unavailable, having been contracted to star in The Magnificent Seven Ride! as Chris Adams, a role famously played by Yul Brynner in the original The Magnificent Seven. So Brynner, in a bit of cinematic role-swapping irony, stepped into Van Cleef’s boots and became Sabata.

I’ll admit I’m in the minority here, but I actually preferred Brynner’s take on the character. His Sabata has more gravitas—less of a wink, more of a stare. The humor is still present, but it’s dialed back in favor of poise and authority, with Brynner striking deliberate poses that feel almost mythic. Most of the room leaned toward Van Cleef’s version precisely because of its playful, ironic edge; I liked that this Sabata took himself (and the stakes) more seriously.

In fact, Adiós, Sabata often feels less like a sequel than a careful remake, following much of the same structural DNA as the first film. The character Ballantine is essentially a stand-in for Banjo: the same greedy, slippery ally you can’t quite trust, but who sticks around as long as the arrangement benefits him. Like Banjo before him, Ballantine ultimately tries to make off with the gold—only to be outplayed by Sabata in almost the same fashion.

Even the action escalation feels familiar. When straightforward gunplay wasn’t enough in the first film, Sabata introduced dynamite as a recurring visual flourish. Here, that role is filled by nitroglycerin, with explosions punctuating shootouts in much the same way. Likewise, the flashy physical gimmicks have simply been swapped out: the coin-tossing and acrobatics of the original are replaced by a character who can hurl a metal ball with his feet at terrifying speed and accuracy. One improbable trick retires; another clocks in.

One thing that did grate on me, though, was seeing actors from the first film reappear in very similar roles—but as entirely different characters. I know this is a common spaghetti-western practice, but it chips away at the internal logic of the world. For me, it breaks the illusion of continuity and makes the whole thing feel more like repertory theater than a shared cinematic universe.

Still, despite all the repetition, I ended up rating Adiós, Sabata higher than its predecessor. The familiar framework works better for me when it’s treated with a straighter face, and Brynner’s more solemn interpretation elevates material that might otherwise feel like a retread.

And then there’s Joe, who gave it a ten—because in this universe, Yul Brynner plays Sabata seriously, and that’s a ten—while confidently insisting that the nonexistent alternate-universe version starring Lee Van Cleef doing it more humorously would also be a ten, which is impressive given that he apparently now reviews movies that were never made.

a's or athletics -- what a trademark dispute reveals, and why it matters to me

I’ve long been interested in sports franchise movement and name changes, particularly in Major League Baseball. So when I learned that the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics had been denied trademarks for “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics,” but approved for “Las Vegas A’s,” it immediately caught my attention.

On its face, this looks like a narrow legal story. But it touches on something much older and more fundamental: what baseball teams are actually called, who decides that, and how those decisions have changed over time.

What I called them — and what the record says

Growing up, I thought of the team simply as the A’s. I knew that was short for “Athletics,” just as I knew the Mets were short for “Metropolitans” and the Yankees for "Yankee-ee-ees." But in conversation, on uniforms, and on baseball cards, they were the A’s.

That impression was reinforced by my father. When we talked baseball, he talked about the A’s. Not the Athletics.

At some point much later, when I started doing more systematic historical work, I needed a single, consistent source of truth for team identities. For me, that source is Baseball-Reference. It’s not perfect, but it is transparent, consistent, and careful about continuity.

Baseball-Reference lists the franchise’s nickname as “Athletics” continuously from 1901 to the present. No alternation. No official back-and-forth. Just Athletics.

That surprised me at first — but I accepted it, because when you decide on a source of truth, you have to live with it.

A childhood lesson in “correctness”

The distinction mattered to me even as a kid.

I remember wanting to show off for my grandpa Ed by reciting all the major league teams in alphabetical order. There were only twenty-four teams then — sometime between 1969 and 1976 — but that detail matters only because I had memorized the list by sorting my baseball cards by team.

I knew there was one potential snag. Did I say A’s or Athletics? It mattered, because it determined whether the team came before or after the Astros.

So I asked my grandfather which was right.

Without hesitation, he said, “Athletics, of course.”

That caught me off guard. I was used to saying the A’s. My father said the A’s. But my grandfather’s answer carried a different kind of authority — as though, whatever fans said informally, there was still a sense that the proper name existed underneath.

I didn’t articulate it that way at the time, but the lesson stuck.

When team names weren’t “official” yet

Part of the confusion here comes from the fact that baseball team names did not begin as formal, declared brands.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, nicknames were often:

• informal,
• media-driven,
• situational,
• and sometimes accidental.

Teams could have multiple nicknames at once, and newspapers freely experimented. The Cincinnati Kelly’s Killers, the Chicago Orphans, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms — these weren’t the result of branding exercises. They were labels that caught on because writers used them and readers understood them.

There was no trademark strategy. No naming committee. No press conference unveiling a logo.

From informal tradition to formal branding

Over time, that looseness disappeared.

As franchises became long-lived commercial entities, names hardened into official identities. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, naming (and renaming) a team became a major corporate exercise, often accompanied by fan outreach, surveys, and carefully managed rollouts.

A clear example is the Cleveland franchise’s transition to the Cleveland Guardians, a process that explicitly solicited public input and emphasized deliberateness. Expansion franchises, in particular, often lean heavily on fan suggestions when selecting names, precisely because the name is now understood as a long-term asset.

In other words, the sport moved from organic, informal naming to formal, legally protected branding — and that evolution sets the stage for the current trademark dispute.

Why the trademark office cares

Trademark law has little patience for ambiguity.

“Athletics” is an extremely old name, one that predates modern trademark norms and was used by multiple teams in different cities over the decades. It is also descriptively weak: the word does not inherently distinguish one specific commercial source.

“A’s,” by contrast, is distinctive. It is visually iconic, closely associated with a specific logo, and has decades of consistent use on uniforms and merchandise. From a trademark perspective, it cleanly identifies this franchise.

Seen that way, it is not especially surprising that “Las Vegas A’s” cleared a hurdle that “Las Vegas Athletics” did not.

Why I find this funny

Here’s where this circles back to my own work — and why the situation genuinely amuses me.

For years, in my ongoing tracking project (“Stoopidstats,” which I really should trademark), I have listed this franchise as the Athletics, even though I personally thought of them as the A’s. I did that because Baseball-Reference is my source of truth, and consistency matters.

This isn’t cosmetic. I track cumulative wins — and games over .500 — by nickname.

A friend recently noticed this and thought it odd. He was sure that the team’s official name must have alternated over time between A’s and Athletics, and was surprised to learn that, according to my source, it never did.

Which makes the current situation deliciously ironic: after decades of thinking of them as the A’s but listing them as the Athletics, the franchise may now be forced, by trademark reality, to become the A’s.

What this means for my stoopidstats

From a purely statistical standpoint, this makes things interesting.

Adding Las Vegas (or Vegas, or Nevada) as a location already complicates franchise tracking. Adding Nevada as a state does too. And adding “A’s” as a distinct nickname would create something entirely new.

Right now, “Athletics” ranks third all-time in wins by nickname, with 10,302, behind only “Giants” and “Reds.” Fourth place belongs to the “Pirates,” with 10,263 wins. That 39-win margin between them will, of course change over the next few years, but when the "Athletics" name goes away (if it goes away) it is likely to still be third and "Pirates" is likely to still be fourth. But from that point on, "Athletics" will sink, and "Pirates" will likely be the first to pass it. And, of course, I’ll get to watch a new entry (A's) start with zero wins and slowly climb the rankings, passing such memorable but defunct names as "Mansfields," Tip-Tops" and "Quicksteps."

That’s not a tragedy. It’s a reminder.

Names, memory, and authority

This whole episode highlights the tension between:

• how fans remember teams,
• how historians catalog them,
• and how the law insists they be defined.

I grew up saying the A’s. My father said the A’s. My grandfather insisted on Athletics. Baseball-Reference sided with my grandfather. Trademark law may ultimately side with my childhood self. And I still think "Phillies" is a lazy name, but that's a subject for a different post.

cinema history class: sabata (1969)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: Sabata (1969)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I'd heard of it, but didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
A stylish, enigmatic gunman rides into a corrupt frontier town and uncovers a criminal conspiracy by local power brokers. Using deadly marksmanship, clever gadgets, and sharp wit, Sabata turns the conspirators against one another and dismantles their plot.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
I’ll start by admitting that Sabata just wasn’t for me. For reasons I can’t entirely pin down, I found it oddly hard to follow—specifically the web of interrelationships and shifting loyalties among the various bad guys. That confusion probably fed into my other big issue: the movie felt long. There were multiple moments where I was sure we were heading into the wrap-up, only for the plot to wind itself up again and keep going. The ongoing gunfights just got tedious -- admittedly, though, they tried to keep those interesting via dynamite. On its own, the tedium wouldn’t have bothered me much—but combined with the narrative murkiness, it wore me down.

Ironically, the character I found most engaging wasn’t Sabata himself. William Berger’s Banjo is genuinely interesting and unpredictable, bouncing between alliances and situations in a way that kept me guessing what kind of man he really was. I had a hard time deciding how I felt about him, which is usually a good thing. By comparison, Sabata felt flatter—cool, stylish, and hyper-competent, yes, but not especially complex.

Late in the film, there’s what should have been a real OMG moment: we’re led to believe Sabata has been killed, only to learn that his death was an elaborate ruse. In theory, that’s a great beat. In practice, it didn’t land for me—partly because I already knew there were sequels, which makes it hard to buy into the idea that he’s really gone. That’s not entirely fair to the film, of course; someone seeing it in a theater in 1969 wouldn’t have had that foreknowledge.

The movie also borrows very heavily from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, especially in the dynamic between Sabata and Banjo. By the time we got to the ending, the parallels were so strong that I could practically hear a writers’ room conversation along the lines of, “How do we make this feel like that ending?” followed by enthusiastic nodding.

Some of the stylistic gimmicks didn’t help. Sabata’s magical control over tossed coins struck me as more silly than impressive—less iconic gunslinger, more Wild West Fonzie. And while Keith warned us in advance that this would lean more toward humor than the classic spaghetti westerns I love, I still think it would have benefited from dialing that back a notch. It mostly avoids going full Up the MacGreggors! thankfully, but then there’s that awful “boing” sound effect whenever Sabata outsmarts someone. Everyone else seemed amused; I just cringed.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved the the theme song. That surf-music twang was unexpected, catchy, and easily my favorite part of the experience. At least Sabata left me with a tune in my head (which I then downloaded from Youtube.

cinema history class: the funhouse (1981)

The session: Work-Aways

Four Movies with horrible horrible characters who remind Keith of some of our craziest work-away stories

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: The Funhouse (1981)
Directed by Tobe Hooper

My Level of Prior Knowledge
Never heard of it.

Plot:
A group of teenagers sneak into a traveling carnival’s funhouse after hours, hoping for a night of thrills. Instead, they become trapped, and are stalked by a grotesque masked killer hiding among the carnival attractions. As the night unfolds, the funhouse turns into a deadly maze where escape becomes increasingly desperate.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
After watching The Funhouse, I’m comfortable saying this: it’s not a work of art, but it absolutely delivers on what it promises. Between the acting, the camera work, and especially the makeup, it does a terrific job of creating a deeply creepy carnival atmosphere—even before you fully register that the people running the place are inbred freaks. That mood of unease is there almost immediately, which matters, because the movie is otherwise pretty formula-driven and stuffed with familiar horror tropes (seriously, does anyone in real life ever climb down a trellis?).

What really surprised me was how much it stirred up childhood memories. Once or twice as a kid I got to see a traveling carnival roll into Honesdale, PA, and this movie brought those memories back—then smeared them with grime, menace, and dread. That’s probably the film’s biggest success: it takes something already a little uncanny and just keeps nudging it further into nightmare territory.

There are things that don’t quite sit right, though. I assume the parents are so odd-looking because it helped set the tone, but did it really have to be that on-the-nose? And the opening scene—an obvious Psycho homage—does a great job setting the tone, but it’s also genuinely unsettling in an unintended way: a kid exposing his big sister’s breasts while she barely reacts? That’s less “homage” and more “why did no one flag this?”

Still, the central idea—a traveling carnival run by inbred freaks—is actually kind of interesting, and it carries the movie a long way. Elizabeth Berridge, in particular, is really good here, which makes me wonder why she didn’t become a bigger scream-queen name. Bad timing? Market saturation? Just one of those horror-career mysteries.

The biggest problem, though, is that no one is likable. At all. Which makes it hard to care when they start getting picked off, because you’re not rooting for anyone so much as waiting for the next kill. But even with that flaw, The Funhouse succeeds where it counts: it creates unease early, sustains it effectively, and leaves you feeling like you’ve wandered into a place you definitely shouldn’t have—and stayed too long.

Joe gave it a 10, but stop me if you've heard that one before.