Tag: drive-in

‘Monster on the Campus’ in ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’

On By Ben YagodaIn Movie somewhere else, Movies in movies1 Comment

Like a lot of people, I guess, I’ve been able over the last nine months or so to catch up with some (not enough) movies I somehow never got around to seeing. A few weeks ago, I watched Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and enjoyed it quite a bit, including learning that the title is a quote from the 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope.

The movie has an ingenious premise and plot, which gradually reveals itself, so I’ll try to resist any spoilers, only say that in this scene, some ragtag scientists (played by Mark Rufalo, Tom Wilkinson and Kirsten Dunst) have hooked Joel (Jim Carrey) up to a machine that extracts memories, and thus the movie-in-movie scene is a flashback. Joel and Clementine (Kate Winslet) are at a drive-in — actually outside a drive-in — where for some reason the feature is a 1958 exploitation flick, Monster on the Campus. (IMDB plot summary: “The blood of a primitive fish exposed to gamma rays causes a benign research professor to regress to an ape-like, bloodthirsty prehistoric hominid.”)

Here’s a clip (you can ignore the opening seconds, where a tiny Carrey is submerged in a sink):

One notable thing about the scene is that, as Carrey improvises some Mystery Science Theater 3000-type dialogue to the absurd happenings on the screen, it’s the only moment in the film (as I recall) that he exercises his considerable comedy skills. Another is that, surprisingly enough, Monster on the Campus was never actually featured on MST3K–although, according to one fan of the show, it should have been.

‘Vertigo’ in ‘Stuart Little 2’

On By Ben YagodaIn Movie on TV set, Movies in moviesLeave a comment

stuart
Stuart offers Margalo some popcorn.

We’ve encountered the 1958 Hitchcock classic Vertigo as a movie-in-movie before, in Twelve Monkeys. The Films in Films website reports that it’s been used at least four other times: in L.A. Without a Map, A Kiss Before Dying, Man in the Chair, and Rob Minkoff’s 2002 animated/live-action Stuart Little 2. 

As anyone who has read E.B. White’s novel (or has had it read to them) knows, Stuart (voiced by Michael J. Fox) is a mouse who has inexplicably been born to human parents in New York City. As Stuart Little 2 (a sequel to the original adaptation, from 1999) opens, as Stuart is driving in his roadster, an injured canary named Margalo (Melanie Griffith) falls into the car. And Stuart falls for her, as he nurses her back to health.

The clever movie-in-movie scene takes place on their first date. Stuart has rigged up a sort of personal drive-in on the roof of the Littles’ apartment building. At one point, he tells Margalo that he’s repaired her most prized possession, a stickpin belonging to her mother, which was damaged in the fall. As he explains how he fixed it, Hitchcock’s Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) has a meaningful moment on the California coast with the enigmatic Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak).

The scene actually directly follows the one seen in Twelve Monkeys, probably not intentional on Minkoff’s part.

Vertigo is a funny choice for Stuart Little 2 — both funny unexpected and funny amusing. While Stuart seems to view the Hitchock movie as dreamily romantic, in fact it’s a dark vision of obsession, delusion, and the male gaze. But it was also an appropriate choice for Minkoff and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin. Both Vertigo and Stuart Little 2 warn us that people — especially ladies — aren’t always who they appear to be.

 

 

‘Task Force’ in ‘White Heat’

On By Ben YagodaIn Actual, Movies in movies2 Comments

cody
Verna, Ma, and Cody at the drive-in

The heyday of the American gangster movie lasted eighteen years. It started in 1931 with Little Caesar, starring Edward G. Robinson, and The Public Enemy, starring James Cagney, and ended in 1949 with Cagney’s White Heat, directed by Raoul Walsh. (All three are Warner Brothers productions and are on the American Film Institute’s list of the top ten gangster movies of all time. Chronologically, the one after White Heat is Bonnie and Clyde, released in 1967, also by Warners.)

White Heat pointed the way forward in a number of ways. It had the kind of gritty semi-documentary style scene in crime films of the late ’40s and ’50s like Naked City, The Asphalt Jungle, and The Killing. It had the dark psychological themes of the emerging film noir genre, especially in the portrait of Cagney’s character, sadistic gangster Cody Jarrett. Cody suffers debilitating headaches, comforted only by the Oedipal ministrations of his Ma (Margaret Wycherly), who massages his neck and invites him to sit in her lap.

And it had a modern movie-in-movie scene. It occurs early on, when Cody, Ma, and his girlfriend, Verna (Virginia Mayo), are being chased by the cops. Needless to say, Ma is sitting next to Cody, Verna riding shotgun. He pulls in to the San Val Drive In theater in Burbank (the country’s second drive-in, opened in 1938), as the police cars speed past, sirens blaring. Taking his money, the ticket-taker says, “It happens every night. Ruins the movie.”

The movie is Warner Brothers Task Force, which was still a few weeks from release at the time of White Heat‘s premiere. (And therein lies a goof. A sharp-eyed poster to a website about movie theaters points out that the marquee announces two different 1949 movies, the western South of St. Louis and the exotic fantasy Siren of Atlantis.) I haven’t seen Task Force, but according to the IMDB description, it’s apparently a history of aircraft carriers seen through the eyes of a fictional admiral played by Gary Cooper. In any case, all the explosions and mayhem are too much for Cody, possibly because he feels a headache coming on. After an attendant puts a speaker inside the car (I just barely remember that technology), he orders Verna, “Kill that.”

 

After Verna’s sarcastic comment about the second feature, Cody outlines his plans for escape. Just before he bolts the car, he kisses both ladies goodbye–lingering just a little more on Ma than on Verna.

 

‘The Shining’ in ‘Twister’

On By Ben YagodaIn Actual, Movies in movies3 Comments

Jan de Bont’s Twister (1996) is informed, start to finish, by The Wizard of Oz, but the principal movie that’s actually shown in it is The Shining. The Kubrick classic is on a NIGHT OF HORRORS double bill, along with Psycho, at a drive-in an Oklahoma town where tornado hunters Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are staying.

The twister arrives in a hurry and transfixes Hunt, who has a Dorothy-like history: Twister opens with a flashback scene in which, as a little girl, she watches as her father is literally blown away. Now, in a nice touch, you can’t tell if her face is illuminated by lightning or by the movie on the big screen. Whatever, she fortunately snaps out of it just in time. Then we see some deft synchronicity: Just at the moment in The Shining when Jack Nicholson has axed his wife’s door to bits, the twister blows the drive-in to bits.

Meanwhile the main characters think they’ve found shelter in a mechanic’s garage, but nuh-uh. In some slightly heavy-handed symbolism, cans of film and then the marquee itself blow through the space, wreaking more havoc and mayhem. You just can’t trust the movies.