the groundhog day project

I decided on my titles for writing about The Villain on day one. For this one, I was going to, with tongue somewhat in cheek, talk about how this film portrays women, or wom a n. No, wom e n. There is, beside Charming, also the old woman that Handsome helps across the street. And, while Charming is rather idiotic in choosing to help her (with a bit of force) across the street simply because she's standing nearby, she is presented as a bit shrill. Handsome deserves her ire, but I can't help but point out that her ire is still presented as an overreaction. And, Charming--both oversexualized and cartoonishly demure. (It occurred to me last night, by the way, that when Cactus Jack asks Nervous Elk what he does with the white women after he captures them, it feels a little like maybe Cactus Jack doesn't know what men do with women any more than Handsome does. And, I'll return to that conversation later.) The film sends up the usual and has Charming be the one who want...

You probably haven't seen The Villain . It was apparently a box office bomb in 1979 (though I cannot find specific figures-- box office mojo starts having clear figures in 1982-- Alt Film Guide cites its failure in a piece about Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand failing at the box office back in 2013. For whatever reason, we had it on one of our VHS tapes. It's a western by way of (and very much so) a Road Runner cartoon. Cactus Jack Slade (Kirk Douglas) is the black hat out to rob and ravish Charming Jones (Ann Margret) who is being escorted by Handsome Stranger (Schwarzenegger). It starts like a typical western film. Shots of Monument Valley, a lone cowboy (Cactus Jack) on horseback, an almost cliched score. Then, Slade tries to jump onto the top of a passing train and misses, and it becomes immediately clear that this is not really a western as such. Also, Cactus Jack's horse Whiskey might actually be smarter than he is. Cactus Jack is Wile E. Coyote in the equati...