Making Prime Work Part VII

I’m dropping the note, because this is becoming more of a regular feature on this blog than I had anticipated. Probably because I’m wasting more time watching old movies.

Part One: A Caper Movie with Just the Caper In It

Oh, I say there’s just the caper, but there are little side stories in “Escape from Alcatraz.”
But I do mean little.

Doc’s story – which isn’t so little at the end. The tale of Litmus. And the inevitable, at least from a prison movie perspective, story of the homosexual bully who does not succeed. And there’s English. Only guilty man in . . . wait, that’s another prison movie.



But truly, this 1979 film starring Clint Eastwood is a caper movie of just the caper.

There are things you wonder if they’d work.

Would that welding technique – filing down a dime to get bits of metal to melt and weld two other bits of metal together – would that work?

And what happened to Litmus’ pet mouse, which Eastwood’s character Morris puts in his pocked right before the escape. Does he remove said mouse from the pocket when he jumps into San Francisco Bay, or does the mouse drown in his pants? That’s a hole in the movie I’d like to see filled.
Some of these actors may have been more familiar to audiences at the time, but the only big star (at least to me) is Eastwood. Though the film does feature this familiar face.

Lord Morley!

I like getting character actors for caper films rather than more well-known actors. Because with well-known actors, you fall into certain traps and expectations (see Morgan Freeman, The Shawshank Redemption). With character actors, you never know what you’re going to get. And Roberts Blossom’s portrayal of Doc – wow. With him in this film, it’s all in the eyes. You can see when the warden takes away his painting material, right in his eyes, that painting really is all Doc has.
No surprises this is also Blossom:

(C’mon, the crazy famer, “Stop and Be Friendly” whistler in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Nor any surprises here:)

Part Two: Another Caper Movie with Just the Caper In It

I'll admit it was hard watching Hercule Poirot interpreted by someone other than David Suchet. And I will admit there were times Albert Finney's Belgian accent in the 1974 iteration of the film was incomprehensible enough I had to rewatch parts, or just satisfy myself that I had almost understood what was said.

I will also admit that, with this being my first introduction to the entire Orient Express story, I'm happy it happened with this movie.

A big cast of big stars. Anthony Perkins was a standout, with his nervous twitches that probably got him a lot of parts. And it was fun watching Lauren Bacall in her babbling best.

I've never read any of Agatha Christie's books, nor had I seen any film adaptations. This film is a stunner.



And can I just say I'm so glad we've advanced as much as we have in movie trailer technology.