A young, freshly minted lawyer in the USSR in 1937 discovers that dissidents are being tortured by a corrupt NKVD, and seeks to use the ostensible rule of law to right an injustice. Knowing he can’t trust the local police, he journeys off to Moscow to file a direct report with the senior branch office.

If Only Stalin Knew: The Movie

We don’t get enough Russian cinema, alas, but what we do get we generally like because, while it looks Western, it really is just very, very odd stuff.

The broody opening sequence of this film has a prisoner/dissident being locked in a room, only to be freed when he has finally burnt all the mail they’ve thrown at them—every single one a complaint about being unduly tortured. One catches the prisoner’s eye, being written on I-don’t-know-what, but inked with the prisoner’s own blood.

This letter gets saved and somehow gets to the prosecutor (one of two in this movie) and starts the wheels in motion.

Dysfunction, parnaoia, terror—all the qualities one comes to expect in a Russian film (only marginally less so for recent films)—abound as Kornev, what the Russians might call a debil (moron) decides that he’s going to do the job he thinks he was assigned using the laws that he thinks he’s supposed to follow as a shield.

You can see where this is going, right? I could see it from Kornev’s first appearance, and the film’s denouement is exactly what you’d expect when the young lawyer throws his weight around and forces the prison warden to let him see the criminal in question—a criminal which the mere act of listening to is essentiall a death sentence.

Fun stuff.

Despite a complete lack of surprise and a steady, deliberaetly slowed pace, this film is enjoyable and really manages to communicate the bureaucracy, the weirdness of the totalitarian state, and the peril of having even the slightest shred of integrity during a purge.

Well-acted, well-shot, well-paced, all presenting a picture of something that looks like civilization—but isn’t.

Of course, sitting there watching this in the USA in 2026, I’m reminded of how many people think this whole arrangement was good idea.

That’ll take some of the fun out of it for ya.

Halloween: 3, Moviegoers: 0

I kid the third entry in the Halloween series. Because it’s awful. But as it’s one of Darcy The Mail Girl’s favorite movies, and she got to program Friday night for The Drive-In Jamboree, we all watched it together with director Tommy Lee Wallace and stars Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin on stage. Allowing for a little too dim a projection—the Jamboree had a lot of technical difficulties—it was basically the best possible circumstance to watch Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

Rather amusingly, Drive-In Producer Austin Jennings had prepared a supercut of all the times Joe Bob had trashed this movie, which was fun with everyone there and a pro-H3 audience. Did I say “all”? Apparently, it was a mere fraction of the times he had done it.

Because, again, it’s just not a very good movie. If we’re being honest, the crowd was still just barely over 50/50 thumbs-up/thumbs-down, and that’s with a strongly pro-Tommy Lee, pro-Tom Atkins, pro-Stacy Nelkin, pro-Darcy audience.

But let’s go over the whole thing to see if we can’t appreciate the whole thing, what works and what doesn’t. There is a whole lot of good here, admittedly, and it’s worth watching just for the good and fun parts. I don’t think it makes up for the bad because the bad is pretty fundamental. For example, this is not, for the most part, a scary movie, not a spooky movie, not a very Halloween feeling movie. And that’s hard to overcome when you’re calling yourself Halloween 3.

First, the best thing about Halloween 3 is the meta-premise: Rather than making the same movie over and over again, let’s use the franchise to tell a new story every time. (“American Horror Story” uses this premise for its show and it sucks, but the premise of theming each season differently is something good about it. Heck, you could argue that Chris Guest’s mockumentaries are along similar lines: Same kind of humor, same repertory company, different theme each time, and that works really well.)

Second, the premise itself is…I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s certainly bold. The idea that the world’s children are imperiled? You’re playing with fire; people don’t want to see kids get hurt in their dumb Halloween movie. (Horror movies where children are injured or killed tend to be more “serious” and not very fun.) That said, Wallace does a really good job here. The harm to the children is obscured, implicitly horrifying without showing a lot of suffering.

Third, it’s all very competently executed. Dan O’Herlilhy is a standout as the big bad, but Atkins and Nelkin are charming and have good chemistry (which is ironic given how their first scene together was the sex scene, and they had not met prior). The camerawork, although reminiscent of a TV cop show, has some very nice moments. The effects are effective!

The movies from this era seem shockingly energetic and lively compared to most of what we get today.

The bad stuff. Joe Bob delights in pointing out the many bizarre plot holes in this movie, but I maintain that, as egregious as they are, he (and all of us) would gloss over them if the rest of the movie worked. (And indeed, it works for Darcy, so she doesn’t care about the plot holes.)

But they are egregious. Days before Halloween a giant stone from Stonehenge is stolen. Somehow this turns up at a California mask factory to make their magic computer chips that go into the masks…except of course days before Halloween, no masks from a factory are going to ever make it to stores on time. Tom Atkins manages to stop this (well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad) by making a phone call.

“Put me through to television!”

When Tommy Lee Wallace defended the movie to Joe Bob, he says something to the effect of “you gotta get into that Halloween spirit! It’s magic!” Obviously, for its fans, that’s not hard to do. But the movie doesn’t help you much. It’s actually pretty hyper-real, or perhaps more precisely, it hews pretty tightly to a detective drama, like a Dirty Harry or a Mike Hammer. Down to every single woman in the movie throwing herself at Tom Atkins.

One of whom is his wife-at-the-time, which is kind of cute.

The mixture of magic with contemporary technology—especially computer technology—is a difficult one. Where you mostly see it is in things like “there’s a ghost in your cell phone! oooo!” and it’s spotty. Halloween 3 wants to combine magic with computers and mass production, and you have to take the “wizard did it” explanation to some far extremes, like all the TV stations in the country showing the same commercial at the exact same time with everyone watching at the same time.

Interestingly, I think Halloween works in part because it hews closely to reality, and when it starts to break that, it builds the atmosphere and unreality up so that we go from a traditional “maniac slasher” story to a “demonic force” story.

It would be interesting to read the original Nigel Kneale screenplay, though it may not have worked either, even if Wallace hadn’t changed it. Or it might’ve worked the way The Wicker Man works, which would be as good as a failure in the US market.

Joe Bob caved and gave it three stars, though he backtracked quickly the next night.

I have to say, I enjoyed watching it—I mean, I had just arrived in Nashville for the Jamboree, so of course I would. And if they showed it on “The Last Drive-In”, I certainly would watch it again. I might watch it again just to try to study what about it does and doesn’t work. This was certainly the most fun I’d had viewing the movie, including later in 2025, when we would watch it again for the all-night “Spooktacular” in Dallas.

For me, it doesn’t really come together the way it should.

(This review was largely written in July of 2022. I’m a bit behind.)

Orson Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane is the touching, tragic tale of an American family that rose to riches and prominence in the 19th century—only to lose it all in the wake of the burgeoning automobile industry.

Well, sort of. A funny thing happened on the way to the bijou (and there is an actual theater called “The Bijou” in this movie): War broke out. And not just any war, but World War II. More about that in a moment. (Stay tuned! for breaking World War II news!)

The second book of Booth Tarkington’s trilogy, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, had been filmed previously, as a 70 minute 1925 silent picture which was chopped down to 33 minutes.

Orson Welles recorded a version of this story as an hourlong radio special featuring his Mercury Players. But he wanted to give it proper cinematic treatment. The Tarkingtons were family friends, and the character of Eugene (Joseph Cotton) Welles claimed was based on his own father, also an inventor, who died when Welles was 15.

The movie goes like this: We get an opening narration with a fashion montage. This shows Joseph Cotton going through the fashions of the years in comical form, with stovepipe hats giving way to big derbies giving way to little derbies, and culminating with the tradition of serenading, as the the young Eugene Morgan (Cotton) goes to woo Isabel Amber (Dolores Costello) and, perhaps because he’s had a bit of liquid courage, trips in her front yard, smashing his bass and fleeing in failure.

Because of this, Isabel marries Wilbur Minafer and (according to town gossip) can now be expected to spoil her children, because she doesn’t really love Wilbur like she loved Eugene.

Enter George Minafer, Isabel’s only son, who is a complete terror. After a childhood vignette, he goes off to college, and comes back more or less as awful as when he went, though at least somewhat more dignified.

When he returns, he meets Lucy Morgan, the only daughter of Eugene, a recent widower. And what is very clear is that Isabel and Eugene love each other just as they did twenty years ago. There’s no impropriety. They simply dance together as George finds himself captivated by Lucy.

The first act ends with the death of Wilbur, revealing that the family wealth is gone, and Eugene and Isabel are in love—something which is somehow scandalous in 1905 Indianapolis, and which provides the contentious bone for the tragedy which unfolds.

It’s a great movie, often considered one of the best ever made, and that’s with an hour of critical dramatic moments cut, and certain scenes re-shot to make them less dramatic and brightly lit—all done while Welles was filming a wartime propaganda documentary in Brazil which never got finished because the main subject, one “Mr. Alligator”, apparently a great fisherman and legendary swimmer, drowned as Welles was filming him. (Well, that’s one story. The other one is that Welles offered him a year’s salary to go out against his better judgment and he was swept overboard and later found in the belly of a shark.)

Wells’ passion for Tarkington’s story extended back to his radio days and, unfortunately, came to fruition right as war broke out. RKO decided to do an advance screening in Pomona (“But will it play in Pomona?”) for a bunch of teenagers who were there to see The Fleet’s In, a 90-minute frothy, forgettable screwball musical comedy featuring Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, William Holden and teen heartthrob (?) Tommy Dorsey. The idea of putting a broody, 150 minute, noir-drama in front of them after this was dumb, and dumb things resulted.

People laughed and hooted and walked out and derided RKO for showing it. “People don’t want to see things like this!” Well, look, RKO’s got a bottom line and a lot of trouble, so they need to hack things up and brighten them and make them all cheery and definitely not noir and also burn all the other footage so Welles can never recreate it. (This reminds me a bit of Playtime. I get why you’d have to repossess “Tatitown” but not why you wouldn’t preserve it and rent it out to make money back as opposed to bulldozing it.)

But, here’s the thing: Even being butchered, the elements of this film are so outstanding it towers over the average release (and not just today, which is almost too low a bar to measure, but going back decades). Like my recent re-viewing of Doctor Zhivago, the blending of technology and aesthetics makes a cineaste weep for art that will never be.

Unlike today, where the camera is compulsively swooshed around like Michael Bay’s hands during a pitch meeting, the thoughtfulness of each sequence, each shot, communicates something about the story, the characters, the characters’ inter-relationships, and so on.

Roger Corman had a rule: find legitimate, motivated excuses for moving the camera but always look for ways to move it. He said this was because you had to engage the eyeball to get the viewer engaged. Other low-budget film directors didn’t move the camera because they weren’t able to do so quickly, they didn’t have the money, or they were lazy or untalented. Setting the camera down for lengthy periods signals “no budget” or possibly “Kevin Smith”. Now, however, camera motion is like a bunch of presets that are used, rather carelessly but for much the same reason: The filmmakers want to look like they have a bigger aesthetic budget than they actually do. If you start noticing how clichéd modern movie tropes are—just in terms of the visual language—you might never enjoy another new film again.

Ambersons is Citizen Kane without the showiness and gimmickry, and in the service of a much more relatable story with great characters.

George is superficially awful, and his obsession with propriety drives much of the misery in the story, but the same attitude that causes him to expect to be treated deferentially and to prefer “being” over “doing” also makes it impossible for him to abandon his Aunt Fanny in her hour of need—literally at his own physical peril. Tim Holt plays the role that would’ve been Orson’s (but Welles was mistakenly trying to get America to recognize him as a director, not an actor—his biggest mistake, he would later claim). Perhaps Welles would’ve been better, but Holt pulls off this difficult role quite easily.

Aunt Fanny. What a character. Neurotic, sure. At times, evil, I think, though we could certainly debate the point, as she seems genuinely regretful that she inflames George to drive a wedge between Isabel and Eugene, depriving them of a happiness they longed for over decades. (She even claims she didn’t know she was doing it. That is left as an exercise for the viewer.) Fanny is played by Agnes Moorehead, who became an icon as the mother-in-law-from-Hell on “Bewitched,” and in this role—leading to her first of four Oscar nominations—she is an utter powerhouse.

Seriously, when she’s on-screen, it’s hard to watch anything else, as she seethes with jealousy, anger, grief—all because her prettier sister-in-law has captured Eugene’s eye, and he preferred to leave town rather than live without her. (Fanny hoped and hopes, he will choose her by default.) The archetypal spinster aunt, Orson had Moorehead go through Fanny’s breakdown scene for a solid day before shooting the scene that was so intense Moorehead herself nearly had a breakdown. But when people asked her later if she felt Welles was cruel, she said she found it exhilarating, and was unable to sleep for a week after. This was the scene that was ultimately chopped up because it was too intense, per RKO chief George Schafer.

Speaking of sacrificing yourself for art, this role was one of Dolores Costello’s last, as the beautiful and charismatic Isabel, whose love for George is nearly oedipal. Costello was a silent movie actress, Lou Costello (of “Abbot and”) named himself after her, and she was the grandmother of Drew Barrymore. But the makeup used in the silent era was very caustic, and by 1942, her skin was falling apart. At 39, she manages to pull of virginal teen, besotted MILF, and sickly, broken-hearted elder woman.

Cotton, as Eugene, has what I would consider one of the easiest roles, but he does an excellent job. In particular, as one of the inventors of the automobile, he handles George’s extremely rude rant about the evil of automobiles and how they shouldn’t have been invented, by agreeing with him. He sees the potential for trouble and he may live to regret his choice to contribute. This whole section of the film is astoundingly topical.

Anne Baxter is radiant. Cotton had seen her in the stage version of “Philadelphia Story” before Hepburn kicked her out, and liked her so much he hired her to be beautiful here. But she’s also really good, because almost never quite know exactly what’s going on beneath the surface. She has to be in love with George while recognizing what a jerk she is, and she has a tremendous scene where she has to pretend to not care about him.

At 90 minutes, I genuinely thought it could be an hour longer without wearing out its welcome, but I’m not a teenager in 1942 watching as part of a double-feature with “The Fleet’s In”.

Welles’ original screenplay is still available, and Alfonse Arau attempted to shoot in 2001 with Madeline Stowe, Bruce Greenwood, John Rhys Meyers, Jennifer Tilly and Gretchen Mol. It went about as well as you’d imagine.

Not a huge hit, obviously, but RKO got a LOT of mileage out of the sets for YEARS, and the Amberson Mansion classed up a lot of cheapies like “Cat People”, and is probably most famous for being the old Granville House in “It’s A Wonderful Life”.

Welles, of course, never really recovered and spent the rest of his life chasing funds and failing to complete projects, and still managed to leave behind some of the greatest movies ever made, and some of the greatest Hollywood stories.