The Professionals, The Harder They Come, & The Night of the Iguana

The Professionals is the Wild Bunch before the Wild Bunch, but without the genre breaking aspects of it. Still very enjoyable, even if I think the version I saw was edited. There was a random black blurry thing in the bottom corner covering Claudia Cardinale's breasts. I wouldn't point it out, except that it seemed really out of place. Because they cut away for the reaction shot and then cut back and her shirt was back up and the bar was gone, but the shot was exactly the same. Stupid censorship. It's not like the movie wasn't insanely violent and full of women with huge breasts and immense cleavage. Why is the nipple so dangerous to kids? And continuing that logic, why are the penis and vagina so dangerous as well? Well, anyway, it's pretty good, and Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster and Woody Strode and Robert Ryan were all very good, Claudia was nice eye candy, but Jack Palance as the Mexican revolutionary turned outlaw was the typically horrible Hollywood makeup and bad accent job. Man, just get someone who's actually Latino to play him, rather than a guy who can just speak Spanish. Stupid Hollywood.

The Harder They Come is notable mostly for the most excellent soundtrack. (What? I just watched Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) Very good soundtrack, movie is just typical outlaw stuff, only worth watching for that soundtrack. I think I can mention the soundtrack in every sentence of this here blurb. The soundtrack made up for the fact that it was frequently very difficult to understand their thick Jamaican accents. You could get about the same enjoyment in a shorter time by listening to the soundtrack while occasionally flipping through pictures of nudity and violence.

The Night of the Iguana probably would have been better as a film made in the 70s. Unfortunately, the original is probably considered as a classic, and so remaking it would be heresy. But I just kept thinking that scenes would have been better had they just allowed for a little more freedom in being explicit. They came so close to bringing up the L word and having the two Mexican boys there just for sex. But it just kept coming up short of attacking the real issues here. Which is that a priest, a baptist, and a nympho walk into a hotel... Heh. Oh, Richard Burton was suitably tortured, and the women were ok, but I wanted so much more. Tennessee Williams probably worked a lot better back in the 50s on the stage when he wasn't censored, and the subjects he goes on about were actually taboo. Now, they just seem quaint and repressed at best, and horribly naive and insulting at worst. This falls on the quaint and repressed aspect of the spectrum.