SCREAMING SERVICE

Check out my short review of Baz Luhrmann's EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

The weekend's other big theatrical release, Scream 7...

...was not screened for critics before release, at least not in the Phoenix area. Make of that what you will. In lieu of a review, therefore, here are seven great movie screams [spoilers throughout!]:

I'm aware, of course, that any or all of these screams may have been partially or entirely the work of a clever sound designer; the first two listed below certainly are. But that's the magic of the movies, right? The point is, they're effective.

7. The Wilhelm Scream--Originally created for a scene of Sheb Wooley being attacked by an alligator in the 1951 Florida-set period adventure Distant Drums, this scream earned its moniker when it was looped, rather unconvincingly, as the scream of a "Private Wilhelm" in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. The shriek of shock and dismay has been used dozens if not hundreds of times thereafter, in movies ranging from the original Star Wars to Toy Story. It's particularly effective with characters falling from high places.

6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)--Like the Wilhelm Scream, this one is also studio-generated, but unlike the Wilhelm Scream, it's not even of human origin. It's the screech of revulsion let out by a soulless pod person when they recognize, and point out to their pod brethren, an unsnatched human. Legendary sound designer Ben Burtt, a popularizer of the Wilhelm Scream, created the effect for Philip Kaufman's classic '70s-era remake of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, using the squeal of a pig. It chillingly distills the sense of being identified, and publicly denounced, for being out of sync with the masses.

5. Them!--Few who have seen the 1954 sci-fi masterpiece by Gordon Douglas about giant ants are likely to forget the moment: The catatonic little girl (Sandy Descher) found wandering in the New Mexico desert gets her memory jogged by a whiff of formic acid, and lets out a cry of horror followed by repeated screams of "Them! Them! Them!"

4. The Godfather (1972)--The scream to which I'm referring in this one comes when John Marley gets Marlon Brando's famous offer he can't refuse, waking up to the severed head of his beloved horse in bed with him. It was Marley's iconic moment onscreen; his wails somehow get across not only terror but a palpable despair, at the evil with which he's confronted, and his powerlessness against it.

3. Psycho (1960) (1)--In the shower scene of Hitchcock's 1960 classic, Janet Leigh begins the family tradition which her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis would carry on 1978's Halloween and other films: a full-throated, full-screen scream of the highest order. But...

2.  Psycho (1960) (2)--...I would argue that the scream that Vera Miles lets out near the end of the same movie, when she at last meets Mrs. Bates face to face, is at least as good. Both are greatly abetted, of course, by the musical shrieks of Bernard Hermann's strings.

1. King Kong (1933)--Can there really be any question of first place? The very name "Fay Wray" evokes the gold standard in "scream." Not only did Wray scream the best, she probably screamed the most, from her first meeting with the title simian to his Waterloo atop of the Empire State Building.

Of course I realize that this is far from a definitive list; these are just seven that occurred to me. What obvious candidates have I forgotten? Feel free to scream at me.

PLAY IT YET AGAIN

Check out my short column, online at Phoenix Magazine, on Casablanca...

...one of my all-time favorites, which is showing tonight at 6:45 p.m. at the Majestic Chandler, as part of their "Curated Cinema" series.

DAYS OF OUR WIVES

Phoenix-area folks looking for some counterprogramming to the Super Bowl and/or the Olympics might consider Southwest Shakespeare Company's The Merry Wives of Windsor...

...this afternoon at Mesa Arts Center; it plays there through February 22. Your Humble Narrator has the honor to share the stage, in the small role of Falstaff's drunken sidekick Bardolph, with a very talented cast. Directed by Keath Hall--of last year's Klingon Hamlet--the production places the farce in an Arizona trailer park in the 1990s, a setting to which it quite readily adapts.

Also on the subject of Shakespeare: In case you missed it, check out the great Ian McKellen on Stephen Colbert's show last week, performing a magnificent speech apparently by Shakespeare from the play Sir Thomas More, unproduced in Shakespeare's time and first performed by McKellen in the mid-1960s. It's More, then "shrieve" (sheriff), shaming an anti-immigrant mob in London, and it's as witheringly appropriate to our time as it ever was.

Back in 1995, I got to interview a pre-Gandalf McKellen (by phone) for Phoenix New Times in connection with Richard Loncraine's pre-WWII-era Richard III movie, in which he played the title role. I asked him about Sir Thomas More and his status as the only living actor to create a new Shakespearean lead. There was a long pause on the line, and then he said, "Can you have seen it?"

No, Sir Ian, I'm just a nerd.

But to hear this beautiful piece of writing blisteringly performed by this absolute freaking master, on national television no less, is a privilege.

ELWES & FOREVER

Check out my short column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about "The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes"...

...tonight at Mesa Arts Center.

ONE SADDLE AFTER ANOTHER

Last week Your Humble Narrator had the huge honor to introduce a showing of one of my very favorite movies, the Mel Brooks classic Blazing Saddles...

...at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, and to lead the post-movie discussion. I'm delighted to say it seemed to go over great; the surprisingly large audience that turned out on a Thursday afternoon to watch a movie from 1974 laughed hard and left happy. Admittedly, a large majority of the crowd, based on a show of hands, had already seen it.

Here are the notes I prepared for my intro:

The danger in discussing Blazing Saddles with people who have never seen it is that of overselling it. It doesn't need to be taken as anything but a very silly, strange and surreal low-comedy send-up of Western movies, especially of the "socially conscious" 50s-era sort like Broken Arrow and Johnny Guitar, with dashes of other classics like Destry Rides Again. The jokes are TV sketch comedy in style, heavy-handed and brash, at times almost childlike. Even the potty-mouth profanities and obscenities, scandalous at the time, and the racial epithets--far more scandalous nowadays--have the quality of adolescent showing off.

But I love the film, because of its heart. It's not as confident and well-made a piece cinema as the next Brooks film, Young Frankenstein, which came out later that same year. But great as Young Frankenstein is, i think the more ragged Blazing Saddles is funnier, and more moving, because it engages with racial conflicts that are painfully perennial in American society. These jokes were as relevant in 1974 as they would have been in 1874, and they're still infuriatingly relevant to our time. The freewheeling use of epithets can be hard on the contemporary ear, and today's audiences may also squirm at the gay stereotypes near the end. But while I'm not remotely comparing the stature of Blazing Saddles to that of Huckleberry Finn, the two works have this much in common: they never use those words for any reason other than to make racists look idiotic.

Finally I would like to mention that the film is full of wonderful acting. Brooks has said that Cleavon Little wasn't his first choice the hero Bart; he wanted Richard Pryor, who worked on the screenplay. But great as Pryor would likely have been, Little's warmth and openhearted cheeriness is irresistible. The supporting players, from Harvey Korman's sneering villain Hedley Lamarr to Brooks himself as the befuddled Governor to Alex Karras as the eloquent Mongo to Slim Pickens with his hilariously aggrieved line readings to the great David Huddleston, who memorably enacts the exact moment when a lifelong bigot finally gets tired and gives up on racism.

But two members of the cast are transcendent: Gene Wilder gives one of the most relaxed and lovable expressions of his persona, that peerless combination of gentleness and strangled volatility. And Madeleine Khan is angelic as the Dietrich-esque chanteuse Lilli von Schtupp; her marvelous number "I'm Tired" may be the high-water mark of her career. And now that I've thoroughly oversold it, here, from Warner Brothers in 1974, is Blazing Saddles.

I would also note that a middle-aged guy in the audience, alluding to my mention of the uncomfortable--though obviously affectionate--gay stereotypes in the film, dismissed the concern with "Nah, I'm gay and I love them."

THE HOLE STORY

As January gives way to February, check out the January/February issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...

It features a story showcasing "Hole-in-the-Wall Wonders"; small, lesser-known Valley eateries. I was proud to be one of the authors; see if you can guess which five entries are the work of Your Humble Narrator.

Also, here's my booklist for 2025:

Typee by Herman Melville

The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March

Live All You Can: Alexander Joy Cartwright and the Invention of Modern Baseball by Jay Martin

Robert B. Parker's Buried Secrets by Christopher Farnsworth

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Embarrassingly short this year, all because of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. I had started that book more than 30 years ago, when I lived in Washington D.C., but I lost it before I was a quarter of the way through and never got another copy. Last May, on impulse, I bought a copy (of a different translation) at a bookstore in California. It took me more than half a year to drag my dull-witted mind through Dostoyevsky's terrible vision. Exasperating, exhausting, harrowing, beautiful.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of A Private Life...

...a new psychological thriller starring Jodie Foster.