Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Cinema Cycle - Naked City: A Case Study Of Two Savages


CINEMA CYCLE
(Cardio Workout And Reviewing Movies At The Same Time)

NakedCity.jpg


DATE REVIEWED: 11/06/2017


FORMAT: DVD

TIME RIDDEN / FILM LENGTH: 51 minutes

DISTANCE RIDDEN WHILE VIEWING: 15.8 miles

TOTAL CINEMA MILES LOGGED: 7903.9 miles

SYNOPSIS: (from Wikipedia)

Guest stars: Rip Torn as Ansel Boake, Tuesday Weld as Ora Mae Youngham, Audra Lindley as Mrs. Youngham, William Cottrell as Lab Technician, Russell Hardie as Sheriff Fulcher, Rosetta Bain as Mrs. Arcaro, Joseph Beruh as Joe Arcaro, Pat Malone as Riley, Charles Dierkop as Junkyard Worker.

In an episode inspired by Charles Starkweather's 1959 killing spree (which is mentioned in the episode), a backwoods couple leave a trail of murders behind when they arrive in Manhattan and shoot Sgt. Arcaro.

CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER: A very gritty and violent television drama from the early 1960s.

PROS AND CONS:  When I was growing up in the 1960s, this series was considered taboo, 1) because it had the word ‘naked’ in it and 2) it dealt with things that good young American boys weren’t supposed to know about .  No bother, we didn’t have network coverage where we lived in the midwest, so it was never viewable anyway.

Fast forward 50 years and this is amazing stuff to watch.  Never mind a very young Rip Torn and Tuesday Weld, or the location shooting in New York City, this is really gritty stuff, even by today’s standards.  

What shocked me about this episode, was the amount of violence and murder that was extremely graphic for the time.  In the final bank robbery scene, Ansel Boake (Rip Torn) is shot by no less than eight cops in a mass shooting inside the bank lobby.  This stuff could have really messed up my mind as a kid.

To read an overview of this project, check out this status posting.  

This film is a part of my LaserDisc Collection.

Clicking on the title will take you to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for this film. 

This film was viewed while exercising on my recumbent cycle.  A summary of my time spent working out on my journey through movie-land can be found on Strava.com.

No comments:

Post a Comment