p e n g u i n d e v i l

A couple of days home with a sick family led to a couple of OnDemand movies, both of which were alright.

Secondly, I watched Bucktown. A blaxploitation film that I hadn’t heard of, but on viewing it I find that rather surprising. No it wasn’t particularly good, but it had a great cast and story. Featuring, of course, Pam Grier and starring Fred Williamson (and also Carl Weathers in a supporting role), this was a wacky story of racial troubles and corruption. “Duke” (Fred) comes to town from the big city to attend the funeral of his brother. There he meets a cold reception from his brother’s ex Aretha (Pam) and an icy reception from the gang of corrupt racist white police who run the town. Though he plans to just head back to the city, he finds out that he is his brothers sole beneficiary, so he inherits his club and his house. When the lawyer tells him that it will take 60 days for him to take legal possession of his brother’s property, some locals convince him to re-open the club. On doing so, he realizes the shakedown that the police demand from all business owners. Duke won’t stand for anything like that! He hooks up with Pam (of course), and calls in his pal from the city (and some muscle) to get rid of these good ol’ boy police and to clean this town up…

The lame police aren’t hard to get rid off, but once his friends see what a good thing that the police had going for themselves in “Bucktown” they decide to just take over and keep things going! Duke, of course, opposes this, and things stay hot as as the two friends begin fighting and then warring over things! Plenty of gun action and dead bodies, crazy racist dialog and machismo fill this movie with great unsavoriness. Not great but certainly a must-see if you appreciate the genre.

We also watched Dolores Claiborne. I hadn’t seen it or read it before, so it was all new to me. As far as King movies go, it wasn’t bad. One of his few non-supernatural tales, it is the story of a woman who may (or may not) have killed her husband years ago and now her boss has died and there is a witness to her being a party to that death. The local police detective, Christopher Plummer, is eager to pin this death on her, as he feels like she got away with murder all those years ago with her husbands death, so he pursues her relentlessly. Dolores is played by Kathy Bates, so there is a good energy of great hostility and edginess on her part, leading one to never be quite sure how capable of murder she might be. There is also a second angle to the story, that of her estranged daughter who has come to town due to her mothers situation. The daughter is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who foists upon us another irritating and phony soundly “fancy” accent to bother us with (not as annoying as her accent in The Hudsucker Proxy, but annoying still). So there is lots of fighting between them, as they try to come to terms with the 20 years of bad blood between them. Though hearing Leigh talk is almost too irritating to take, otherwise the movie isn’t bad. Lots of flashbacks, neat colors of the sky and great scenery of a small town in Maine.