In Other Words

By ROBERT NOTT

The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low- Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love edited by David Sterritt and John Anderson, Da Capo Press, 240 pages

There was a time when B movies weren’t respected. Now we celebrate them at every turn, probably because A movies so often disappoint us. As critic Stephanie Zacharek notes in her review of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 exploitation film Grindhouse, which is reprinted in The B List, “Contemporary audiences have become spoiled by movies that make sense, have great acting, and feature nudity only when absolutely necessary: no wonder hardly anyone goes to the movies anymore.” Zacharek is one of 34 critics who contribute to this entertaining compilation of essays edited by David Sterritt and John Anderson.

I love B movies. Of the roughly 60 covered here, I’m proud to say I’ve seen about 45 of them, including personal favorites like The Son of Kong (1933), The Well (1951), and Red Planet Mars (1952). The book breaks the B’s into genres: noir, science fiction, horror, road films, Westerns, and so on. I’m disappointed not to see a section on comedies, however.

It reads very well, particularly when the

writers are having fun and even when some of their comments don’t quite add up. Here’s J. Hoberman on Edgar G. Ulmer, the director of the ultra-low-budget noir classic Detour: “He never tires of giving being to nothingness. Who was this guy trying to impress? Detour’s surplus of effect is not unlike discovering a Rembrandt drawing wrapped around a wad of bubble gum.” I couldn’t care less if this makes sense or not; I dig this kind of prose.

What makes so many of these films worth writing about? “It is typical of the best B-picture filmmaking that subtexts are elided,” Richard Schickel notes in his lively write-up on Andre

de Toth’s Crime Wave (1954). “In de Toth’s world, backstories are for sissies.” That attitude works for me. When I ask, “What’s on the menu?” I’m not looking for a lengthy, heart-wrenching preamble about how the cook’s day went.

The essayists vary in their approach: some cover the historical background of the film, some analyze the politics of filmmaking, and a few pay tribute to the actors in these little gems, like John Anderson does in his probing look at the career — or lack of one — of The Last Seduction’s Linda Fiorentino. Some contributors compose love

letters to the directors of these pics, people like Budd Boetticher, Jack Arnold, and Irving Lerner.

The book includes a political-picture section, which spotlights Santa Fe resident Ted Flicker’s brilliant satire The President’s Analyst (1967) and William A. Wellman’s sociopolitical open sore of a film Heroes for Sale (1933), which, essayist Jay Carr observes, “covers all the Depression-era bases. Perhaps even a few too many.”

Other highlights: Carrie Rickey’s bouncy piece on Frank Tashlin’s rock ‘n’ roll spoof The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), which features Jayne Mansfield as a gangster’s moll vying for stardom in the pop- music industry (though Rickey erroneously credits Phil Silvers as the milkman whose bottles erupt when he sees Mansfield sashaying down the street; that was Richard Collier); and Richard T. Jameson’s concise treatise on the terse Western Seven Men From Now (1956): “Savor every syllable of the laconic dialogue, what people say, what they don’t quite say. And what they think they understand about one another’s motives, except that the understanding keeps getting rearranged.”

There are just a few films I’ve never heard of, including the horror pic May (2002) and the porn film Mona: The Virgin Nymph (1970), but based

on the write-ups (by Roger Ebert and Richard Corliss, respectively), I would go see them today.

I question the inclusion of Francis Ford Coppola’s A pic The Conversation (1974), though essayist Peter Keough explains his logic for its presence, and I take issue with the decision to include Jonathan Rosenbaum’s piece focusing on two Anthony Mann films — The Naked Spur (1953) and Man of the West (1958) — for the Chicago Reader in 2002. Both those Mann films were solid A<200A>‘<200A>s, featuring top stars Jimmy Stewart (Naked Spur) and Gary Cooper (Man of the West).

The defining essay in the book may be Ebert’s take on John Huston’s Beat the Devil (an odd A/B hybrid) as he writes of the film’s ability to make us love it, despite its flaws. “Now that movies have become fearsome engines designed to hammer us with entertainment, it’s nice to recall those that simply wanted to be witty company,” Ebert notes. These contributors seem content to achieve the same goal with this book.

(c) 2008 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.