Polish my Helmut – or, more Cushing for the pushing

Violence -- sexual or otherwise -- has long been cinema's favorite excuse for bare breasts. And these films supply all of the above, plus other pendulous globes! 

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Mad Dog (1977) 

[aka Beast with a Gun, etc.]

Grade: C

Oh, Helmut Berger. A cautionary tale of wasted talent, or an example of someone who got the most out of what was predestined to be a limited shelf life? A charismatic chameleon and a born star, or a passaround boy who lucked into the infatuated gaze of fawning directors?

Well, probably the former (in each case). Berger exudes magnetism and danger, like the proverbial caged tiger, and you can't fake that with clever cinematography. He must have been part of what made Visconti's The Damned so striking, though the present writer mostly remembers the Night of the Long Knives scenes.

Such a shame when bad things happen to...people.

Clearly the makers of Mad Dog -- aka Beast with a Gun, The Human Beast, Mad Dog Killer, or La belva col mitra if you want the original Italian -- knew Berger was their star attraction. So they give him just the kind of role in which he shines, as Nanni Vitali, an absolutely ruthless, sexually voracious criminal who escapes from prison and is hell-bent on revenge.

No doubt they had Berger at "ruthless", his forte.

And they give him plenty of screen time, including a protracted shot of his bare backside if you're into that sort of thing, and pretty much all the best lines. More than once it borders on camp, intentionally or not, as when a detective (seemingly) meets his end in a fiery crash:

"That was a nice sight! A well-done dick."

You don't say, Helmut Berger! You don't say.

That detective, one Commissioner Santini (Richard Harrison), has one thing going for him: dude is absolutely jacked. Unlike a lot of policeman protagonists, you get the feeling that this cop could literally overpower the villain. He's got muscles and brains, so what's not to like?

Well, as opposed to (for example) Dirty Harry, Santini is too much of a straight hero to get the good lines. I suppose you could count his Smash Mouth moment about 12 minutes in -- "Vitali's like a mad dog!" -- but that only works on a meta, presentist level.

Actually a bunch of Santini's dialogue hits very strangely in 2023, in that he'll be saying something fairly routine but finishes off with something that sounds like a low-karma Reddit post. See, for example, when he excoriates Vitali for his cowardice:

"You're a filthy hyena. And you have the courage of one. You're only brave as long as you've got that gun, so you can terrorize helpless females."

Oh, hey, I got a work call and have to go home early but it was great meeting you!

Or how about when he, uh, excoriates Vitali for his cowardice again?

"You're a coward. You think you're a genius but you're just a common killer. There's a whole race of people like you, Vitali!"

That's...that sure is a thing you just said, that was said, by you.

On the other hand, we cracked up when a perfectly reasonable request from his Kim Clijsters-looking hostage, Carla (Marina Giordana), got this nasty reply from Vitali:

"I'm thirsty."

"So have a drink, twat!"

Once again, the bad guy gets all the good lines.

Of course this also betrays the fundamentally mean-spirited attitude of Mad Dog. Sure, modern viewers aren't likely to be bothered by its violence -- a bit of which was trimmed out of the Mill Creek print, though the only significant cut we identified actually improves the movie.

(The guy was face-down in a puddle and looked dead as a doornail, so bringing him back to have him cry out in agony? Not a good idea.)

But the "sexy man rapes woman, kills mate to demonstrate alpha status, and may have induced Stockholm Syndrome with his mighty phallus" angle of the film is uncomfortable. Arguably Mad Dog tries to have its cake and eat it too, though we can't communicate how without spoilers, but it's clear the film wants us to think she was ambivalent.

A subtler and more provocative moment comes in the homoerotic subtext between Vitali and the young criminal he picks up (Alberto Squillante). The way Helmut Berger looks at this Bimbo -- no, really, the character's name is Bimbo -- is tough to pass off as merely a kind of paternal affection.

Perhaps Berger put a bit of his authentic self into the role, since it's hard to imagine "Act like you want to bang the delinquent someday" was in the script.

It's also refreshing that Vitali isn't a Criminal Minds-style genius or master karateka, but someone who gets by strictly on his looks, ruthlessness, and cunning. He fumbles an attempted hit on a witness, keeps getting cornered like a rat, and even fails to perform in one fight scene, when a botched swing has him missing the victim entirely: "Bruno! Punch him!" he shouts.

Playing it off was cheaper than a reshoot, I guess.

Oh, and the print looks good enough, but very occasionally something gets cropped to comic effect, like this entrance:

Anyway, Mad Dog has multiple plot holes -- the one at the beginning, involving an unloaded gun, is comically obvious -- and a nasty streak. Even with lines like "I'll be in town...making hamburger out of the motherfucker!", is Helmut Berger enough to carry this one?

It depends on what you want from your hour-and-a-half of entertainment. It was probably bracing in 1977, but hard to predict people's reaction now. Maybe it's got a bit of the "too much of this, not enough of that" syndrome.

Quentin Tarantino seems to like it, prominently featuring the film in Jackie Brown. As for whatever Berger thought, he seems to have given it his all. Or makes us think he did.

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Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (1973)

[aka The Satanic Rites of Dracula]

Grade: D

Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride relies upon the premise that a bunch of high-ranking British muckety-mucks are in a secret society engaging in unspeakable, depraved acts with vulnerable persons. I mean, how gullible did Jimmy Carreras think we are, to toss a vile notion like that at us?

This wasn't quite Christopher Lee's last appearance as Dracula -- there's a horror comedy (shudder) yet to come -- but it's his last with Hammer. To be honest, the only other time we've seen Lee don the cape was in Jess Franco's Dracula (which we're not reviewing, as we'd have nothing interesting to say), so we don't have lots of context for his work as the Count.

This time around, his charisma is undiminished, his accent silly, and he just doesn't get all that much to do.

Meanwhile Peter Cushing is Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing -- one of the many fictional descendants of that fearless vampire hunter, who take to the job like an orphaned beaver that instinctively builds dams. (And they do!)

No marginal old man, Van Helsing holds his own and plays his part -- despite repeatedly engaging in the vice of announcing what you're about to do instead of just doing it. And he even shows off some pendulous globes!

So why is Drac back? Just to frolic with mid-tier extras whose agents convince them going topless will help their careers?

No, he wants to kill everybody with a new strain of bubonic plague that kills "within seconds". Septicemic plague can take less than a day (once symptoms present), but the modern vampire is in a hurry!

If anything Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride seems to think that evil for its own sake is enough of a motivator. Van Helsing tells us it can be "more addictive and more potent than heroin, I assure you, and the end result is just as fatal". Paging Dinky Hocker.

And we get a speech from one Professor Kelsey to that effect -- someone who was apparently "awarded the Nobel Prize for science and humanity" (er, sure), yet now has thrown his lot in with the infernal:

"Evil rules, you know. It really does. Evil and violence are the only two measures that really hold any power."

As we get older, and see more things happen, the temptation to reply "Well...you're not wrong!" grows stronger.

In any event Dracula has two persecutors, as he's also harried (indirectly) by Inspector Murray (Michael Coles), a specialist from Scotland Yard.

Inspector Murray also has the hots for Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica (Joanna Lumley), for whom we do not have the hots.

Coles has one of those creepy old-young faces (like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones), a big part of which is the way his haircut inspires cognitive dissonance (also like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones).

(Not to mention the guy mentioned in red above: seriously, how could the world not twig Jimmy "Jim'll Fix It" Savile as a creep? That weird-haired burly man-child gave us the jibblies the first time we saw him.)

On the other hand, Coles is very good at projecting that "boxer who just took a hard hit to the end but is going to keep on fighting" thing, which is a lot more convincing than the usual impervious action-hero crap.

...speaking of which, Van Helsing (the elder and handsomer one) gets shot in the head, yet they don't bother to explain his immediate recovery or why he's not dead. Would one line about "Somehow, it ricocheted off my skull" really go amiss?

Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride is pretty phoned-in, more so as it goes on. The first 30 minutes or so are moderately entertaining but before long, the plot and pacing are in danger of falling below "Sega CD FMV game" standards. It relies too heavily on people doing stupid things, and needed more pulchritude to keep its audience too titillated to notice its flaws.

(Our understanding is that we're not missing any significant footage vs. the original release under the Satanic Rites of Dracula title, but we could be wrong. Correct us if we are, since a "Well, actually" comment would at least indicate that someone's reading!)

But is it watchable? Sure, it's watchable: what movie with T and/or A isn't, one might ask? (Some entries hence, you'll get an answer to that, courtesy of Ed Wood.)

And some of those action scenes get pretty funny at 4x speed, which is how you play them back if you're reviewing a movie a couple years after you first watched it. As one does.

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Obviously, we haven't been able to post much lately. That happens sometimes -- but far be it from us to allow 2023 to pass without an entry.

Perhaps this will mark a renaissance at the Umbrellahead Review, as we catch up on our backlog and start going steady again? We look forward to that day!

Gritting and persevering

For our first post of the New Year, we leave the calm waters of Mill Creek and turn our attention to Grit 'n Perseverance, a set of 2 DVD-Rs published in 2011 by Smooth Motion Pictures and/or SG Entertainment, aka Seedsman Group.

We looked at this "4 Movie Marathon" before when we covered our beloved Beartooh [sic], but held off on covering the other three films until we got our discs resurfaced. The flea market stall where we bought Grit 'n Perseverance had a few other copies, but all of them had the same scratching/pitting as ours: a bad batch, we guess?

It's sort of bracing to look online and see that no one else has reviewed this set, or even discussed it. Search for "grit n perseverance", and this blog is one of the few results; add "4 Movie Marathon" and you've got almost nothing but us and Amazon, with no reviews on the latter.

So, here we are, documenting away. And grab a cup of tea, because this is a long one:

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Bloody Che Contra (1969)
[aka El "Che" Guevara]

Grade: C-

It never ceases to amaze how unimaginative and self-oriented some people can be. Take the Amazon reviewer who smugly notes that his copy of Bloody Che Contra "just began and ended without any credits at all. Guess they were really proud of their work."

Well, no, Mr. Slow Loris: "they" didn't do that at all. Two seconds' research will reveal that Bloody Che Contra is a foreign release title for a 1969 film originally titled El "Che" Guevara, directed by Paolo Heusch -- the man behind the mildly amusing Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory and the excruciating The Day the Sky Exploded.

Now, look at that screenshot above, with its Video Toaster-looking font and still shot of a scene from the film. And notice how Bloody Che Contra begins abruptly, with no preamble, as though we were entering mid-scene. Doesn't it occur to you -- how can it not occur to you -- that we're dealing with a hacked-down version of the film, retitled to make it seem more lurid and/or less potentially pro-Guevara?

And can you savvy that those things probably weren't done by the original filmmakers, but by someone downstream trying to make a buck? Hold the phone!

One can't help but notice that, if you've got a bug up your ass about historical accuracy (which this film admittedly lacks), there's a certain irony in not bothering to make sure your own snarky allegations are justified.

But don't worry, bud, you're in good company. Just check the comments on any YouTube upload of this film -- most of them enraged that someone had the audacity to make a film about Che Guevara without a flashing logo onscreen every second that says "CHE IS BAD AND COMMUNISM IS BAD GO TEAM USA".

Not that we're pro-Ernesto -- or anti-Ernesto, for that matter. The venom of his detractors, and the hagiography of his admirers, are more than enough to inspire a rousing chorus of "A plague o' both your houses" on principle alone.

We're not particularly informed and knew only the basic outlines of Guevara's story, though the period depicted in Bloody Che Contra -- his last days and execution in Bolivia -- was the part we knew best. After all, everyone remembers the endings.

You can find a Spanish-language copy of the original El "Che" Guevara on YouTube (here and here). It reveals that the opening was a lengthy panorama of nature and country scenes, with voiceover narration from Guevara's diary, followed by the opening credits.

Meanwhile, the closing credits add a bit of voiceover, followed by a reprise of a revolutionary song (probably titled "El Guerrillero", we're guessing) heard earlier, when Che was captured and hauled into town.

So: yes, Mr. Slow Loris, there were opening and closing credits: about six minutes' worth, by our count. Now, they don't add much, and frankly, even if the YouTube copy didn't sound like complete ass, we couldn't parse the voiceover in Spanish well enough to make sense of it (we caught a phrase here and there -- "mas fatigoso" was one -- and can probably infer the rest).

But they were there.

We'll also note that Bloody Che Contra awkwardly overdubs the scene of Che's capture with standard-issue Andean flute and guitar music, probably because the political content of the song was deemed too inflammatory or leftist.

They did a pretty crappy job of it, though, since the very beginning and ending of "El Guerrillero" are still present -- kind of like the remnants of "We Are Not Alone Here In Space" from Cosmos: War of the Planets.

So how's the film? Eh, about what you'd expect -- though at least it's not trashy in the way a film made 10-15 years later might have been.

At first, it does a decent job of keeping its loyalties in check by including a character like Acacio (Lex Monson). He may be fiercely loyal to Che (Francisco Rabal), but he's also exactly the kind of revolutionary who won't stop once his goals are achieved, because destruction and revenge turn him on too much.

Before long, though, the scales drift out of balance. The revolutionaries meet an attractive, naive young girl (Susanna Martinková) and yet no one puts the moves on her --

-- while the Bolivian soldiers who take over a locanda are boorish and forward, though (to be fair) not cartoonishly so. They're just underpaid and tired of losing.

We're not sure if El "Che" Guevara was originally released in Italian or Spanish. IMDb doesn't say, and with a multilingual cast, it's impossible to guess. We can say, though, that the English dub in Bloody Che Contra is quite good -- too good to have been done by the same people that butchered the film.

Is there a full English-language print of El "Che" Guevara out there that has the opening and closing narrations intact? Will someone rescue this (very) early Guevara biopic from its chop-shop hell, and do a nice transfer from original elements, so we can see Bolivian soldiers fling themselves away from miniscule explosions in high definition?

That'd be cause for celebration -- at least in principle.

OK, our Geoguessr is off by 2400 miles for that joke, but c'mon, the film's off by 6000!

Sardinia makes for a surprisingly plausible Bolivia, though. Just don't try the cheese.

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Savage Journey (1978/1983)
[aka Brigham]

Objective Grade: D-

Yes, We Do Know How to Waltz Bonus: B+

Let's get this out of the way upfront: Savage Journey is definitely, no-doubt-about-it, propaganda. Mormon propaganda. 

Originally released as Brigham in 1978, and then re-edited (supposedly for TV) into the version we've got here, it depicts the church's early history from a perspective that goes well beyond "sympathetic".

The good guys -- all Mormons, of course -- are faithful, brave, and infinitely patient despite endless persecution. The villains are cardboard cutouts, burning with a hatred the film makes no effort to explain. And while the Haun's Mill massacre gets plenty of screen time, don't look to Savage Journey to offer an accounting for, say, the Mountain Meadows Massacre: in this movie's world, it's as if it never happened.

Even some LDS commentators think the film goes too far in its rewriting of history -- and chances are, most of us "Gentiles" will reach for some combination of Wikipedia and that one episode of South Park after watching it.

Now, all that said, this movie was a blast to watch. First off, we have the reason we bought this set in the first place:

Yes, it's none other than Faith Clift, aka Faith Yordan, who made such an impression on us in The Nightmare Never Ends (aka Cataclysm).

Despite having only a minor role in Savage Journey -- yet again, playing a woman named Claire who's married to a militant atheist! -- the apple-cheeked actress gets top billing on the DVD packaging:

In fact several of her Nightmare co-stars return here -- like Maurice Grandmaison, who had a supporting role in Nightmare, but here takes the lead as Brigham Young himself.

Grandmaison has a credible (if stolid) screen presence, but it's been so long since we've seen Nightmare, we didn't recognize him. (Don't worry -- we'll be seeing Nightmare again soon enough. Sort of.)

However, there was no mistaking this old friend:

Yes, under that amazing wig is none other than Richard Moll as Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. He's billed as "Charles Moll", which threw us off the scent for a bit: a brother, maybe? 

But no, it's Night Court's Bull, and the protagonist of The Nightmare Never Ends, in what turns out to have been his very first film role. And man, does he seem miscast.

Maybe that's unfair -- not his fault that we've since come to know him as Harry Anderson's goofy bailiff, right? -- but between his height and vaguely diabolic appearance, he seems more like a Dickensian villain than a beloved prophet.

(One reviewer says he "looks like some creature out of Star Trek", which is 100% on point though we'd be more specific: in some scenes, he's near-Vulcan in appearance. Or maybe Romulan.)

It's fascinating to try to unpack how the same crew of actors went from a (literally) strait-laced Mormon production to exploitative trash like The Nightmare Never Ends. The common link seems to be Philip Yordan, a peripatetic writer and script doctor who's been described as a "chameleon", and was clearly quite a character (to put it politely).

Yordan was also a producer -- and everything Faith Clift was in, Philip Yordan either wrote, produced, or both (including recycled versions of Brigham and The Nightmare Never Ends). What a coincidence!

Oddly enough, Ms. Clift -- or, if you prefer, Mrs. Yordan -- is fairly nondescript here. She turns in an unobjectionable performance in an unremarkable role, though it pays off in a mind-boggling sequence near the very end of the movie.

A more Cliftian performance is offered by Robin Russell as Maryann Angel, Brigham Young's first wife (sort of). Brigham and Savage Journey are her only two credits on IMDb, and since her line readings are about as stiff as starched Viagra, it's easy to see why.

When Joseph Smith decides to institute polygamy in the church, Maryann is initially resistant. Heck, Brigham is too, telling his friends that "I'd sooner be carried off in a coffin than have to take another wife." (Better order 55 coffins.)

But to hear Savage Journey tell it, not only does she come around to the idea, she even sets up a meeting with a prospective wife for the reluctant Brigham. Heck, she practically pushes him into it!

This ultimately sets up the most hilarious sequence in Savage Journey, which comes late in the film, at a social event where the Mormons dance, fiddle, and host a skeptical delegation from Washington.

In preparation for his impassioned defense of polygamy -- "We hold it's better for a woman to become the third wife of a loving husband than the only wife of a bum who beats her" -- the film sticks Brigham Young on a Lazy Susan and spins him around, splicing in a new wife with each rotation (i.e. every time Young's back is turned to the camera), all to the tune of The Blue Danube.

It really has to be seen to be believed.

There are pleasures to be had in Savage Journey that don't come solely from mockery. One reviewer at IMDb rightly notes that the film "has a good eye for the Jacksonian era it portrays", and the sets, costumes, and other details show ample evidence of that. Thanks to a few big agricultural set-pieces and an appropriately epic soundtrack, the film sometimes doesn't feel as cheap and half-assed as it probably was.

(On the other hand, the gorgeous landscapes are occasionally implausible in some pretty darned obvious ways: Gildersleeve Mountain that ain't.)

As with all propaganda, it's hard not to find yourself carried along by Savage Journey after a while. In particular, the Haun's Mill massacre -- which, let's be clear, was an unequivocal and unjustifiable act of mass murder -- is suspenseful and harrowing to watch.

It was also unexpectedly evocative of a few of the Ringwraith scenes in Fellowship of the Ring...kind of freaky, since The Nightmare Never Ends already made us think of those too.

When we sat down to watch Savage Journey, we nearly got derailed when our DVD-R started to act up a few minutes into the film. Before the Internet we'd have been screwed, but instead we hopped onto YouTube, watched a few minutes there to get past the trouble spot, and then resumed.

Only later did we realize that Savage Journey was also on the Drive-In Movie Classics 50-pack -- which meant (1) we could've just watched that, and (2) we were continuing our Mill Creek project without even realizing it.

(The Mill Creek version is very similar, in case you're curious; the sound is a tad brighter but the colors are slightly washed-out. We haven't done a scene-for-scene comparison, though.)

In fact, with the exception of Beartooth, all the movies on Grit 'n Perseverance are stalwarts of public domain collections and can be viewed on YouTube.

However, the full-length version of Brigham -- which supposedly clocked in at 132 minutes, and concluded with "a vicarious temple sealing ordinance" -- is nowhere to be found online.

Alas. Next time we're in Salt Lake, maybe.

As a postscript, Faith Clift/Yordan has apparently led an interesting life, which is to be expected when you're married to a guy like Philip Yordan -- or even afterward. In 2011, in the course of going through her late husband's papers, she unearthed Exorcism, a play by Eugene O'Neill that was believed to have been destroyed.

For O'Neill scholars, it was a bombshell of happiness -- the equivalent of having a complete print of London After Midnight show up on their doorstep. So kudos to her for being alert.

And now, Richard Moll, looking smug in a white suit.

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Gregorio and His Angel (1970)
[aka Gregorio y su ángel]

Grade: D

Remember watching Nic Cage drink himself to death? And watching Elisabeth Shue watching him do it?

Well, this morality play from Mexico is for you, friends: a sort of Leaving Las Pegas. But instead of Peter Loew and a hooker, we've got Broderick Crawford as Gregorio -- a man who almost literally doesn't go a single scene without drinking something --

-- and a little girl, Ines (Connie Carol), who sticks to him like glue, and finds him work while helping him overcome obstacles. (Thanks, Wiktionary.)

Now, Gregorio had a job at a Catholic orphanage, where he was very popular with the kids. They even pray for him and his raging alcoholism.

But when an icon mysteriously vanishes from the church, the nuns are so fed up with his drinking that they blame him without hesitation -- or evidence: "It matters not to me whether you've stolen the image or you have broken it," says the Mother Superior. "It is gone -- and it is more than evident that you are at fault."

Ouch! And so Gregorio gets his walking papers.

If you're remotely attentive to the film's heavy-handed cues, you'll intuit a connection between the disappearance of the icon and the appearance of the sweet little girl -- one might call her an angel -- who suddenly shows up and clings to Gregorio despite his protests.

Of course, for every angel there's a devil, and if there's one thing we know about the devil it's that he wears many guises. Sometimes he's a bartender, gleefully pouring Gregorio drink after drink, on the house.

Sometimes he's a Scottish tourist (with an odd resemblance to Muammar Gaddafi), nimbly hopping over a comatose Gregorio before taking him on as a guide -- and, at every opportunity, slipping him a drink.

Or maybe he's a partying clubgoer with a swastika tattoo (!!!), informing Gregorio that the mariachi he's looking for is in another castle. Sorry, Gregorio.

All these devils and more are played by Germán Valdés aka Tin Tan -- a superstar in Mexico who was completely unknown to us, but gets second billing here behind Crawford. And the film isn't coy about his infernal identity.

He's in almost every scene, leering and simpering like a cartoon character -- which makes sense, since Tin Tan was the Spanish-language voice of a bunch of Disney characters.

We've seen a bunch of reviews that refer to Gregorio and His Angel as a "heartwarming metaphor" (IMDb), a "good film for children to see...and to give anyone who has a problem with drinking" (Amazon), a "charming religious parable" (The Complete Films of Broderick Crawford), and "a Sunday school staple throughout my childhood" (this reviewer).

This, friends, is hard to feature, because Gregorio and His Angel is completely bonkers (as if you couldn't already tell from the devil with the swastika tattoo). Despite the film's feelgood message and inevitable happy ending, the sheer amount of alcohol consumption -- and the random feints at sexuality and Nazism -- pretty much disqualify it from any Sunday school we've ever known.

At times it's downright reminiscent of a Wes Anderson movie, which makes sense since we're firmly in the realm of "magical realism".

It even has a completely unexpected musical number near the end, when an entire busload of passengers sings a song to Gregorio in Spanish, about (we presume) the perils of alcoholism.

This might sound fun and whimsical, but Gregorio and His Angel is so tone-deaf, repetitive, and scattershot that actually watching it borders on torture. The middle third of the film repeatedly fails to advance the narrative in any way, as Gregorio keeps drinking, Tin Tan keeps leering, and Ines keeps working miracles for a man who shows no particular evidence of deserving it.

(One of those miracles, presumably, is doing something about the ungodly smell that must be clinging to Gregorio after endless days of wearing the same outfit.)

Worst of all is when Gregorio is sidetracked by a wild goose chase, taking a package-delivery job for the Devil that defies all plausibility. (He barely remembers to ask who he's supposed to meet, or where he's supposed to go.)

It brings the film to a screeching halt, and is obviously introduced for the sole purpose of getting him out of the way for a while, but that could've been handled much more organically.

Speaking of tone-deafness: not to paint Mexican cinema with a broad brush here, but Gregorio's incessant, cloying use of the Mozart K545 Piano Sonata in C Major can't help but remind us of a certain other movie and "Jingle Bells". It's clearly meant as a leitmotif, but it makes for an oppressive and incongruous soundtrack.

As with Santa Claus, the sheer oddity of Gregorio and His Angel isn't nearly enough to redeem its flaws, but the film does benefit from its two leads. OK, Connie Carol's repeated cries of "Gregorio! Gregorio!" may remind us of the worst parts of a Gamera movie, but she doesn't mug or bat her eyelashes, and her performance as Ines could have been far more sickeningly sweet than it is.

And Broderick Crawford may be slumming it here, but he's still a serious and experienced actor who wisely understands that Gregorio -- who, like most alcoholics, is deeply depressed at heart -- is a part best underplayed. His interactions with Ines and the film's other children seem natural and sincere, even when the kids' own line readings are anything but.

But we won't be showing Gregorio and His Angel to an audience of kids anytime soon -- both to maintain our own personal liberty, and because we don't want to have to start checking their milk for tequila.

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So that's Grit 'n Perseverance! No question what film we liked best (that'd be Beartooth) or which one was hardest to get through (lookin' at you, Gregorio). It'd be interesting to try to figure out the algorithm that put these four films together; we can do it in pairs:

• Rocky Mountains (Beartooth and Savage Journey)
• Retellings of historical events, including extrajudicial executions (Bloody Che Contra and Savage Journey)
• Spanish-speaking countries (Bloody Che Contra and Gregorio and His Angel)
• Christian narratives (Savage Journey and Gregorio and His Angel)
• An old man loyally accompanied by a young female that isn't exactly human (Beartooth and Gregorio and His Angel)
• Protagonists who become ill with respiratory disorders while holed up in the mountains (Beartooth and Bloody Che Contra)

Trying to come up with something for all four, not so much. And if we lean on the set's title, well, Gregorio doesn't so much grit or persevere as "drink until the last possible moment", so that's out. We suppose they all are kind of Western-y in a way.

We know of eight "4 Movie Marathon" sets put out by Seedsman Group, with contents that range from wholesome to unsavory. Six are catalogued here, while Grit 'n Perseverance is the seventh, and a set called Good Guys vs. Bad Guys is the eighth.

Oddly, the spine of our copy of Grit 'n Perseverance lists Shalimar and Scott of the Antarctic instead of Savage Journey and Gregorio and His Angel -- as well as misspelling the name of the set itself. Guess someone fell asleep at their copy of Illustrator.

Shalimar and Scott are on a set called Classic Adventures, but the review here makes the transfers they used sound like a crime against humanity, or at least cinema.

Will we someday seek out those films, from whatever source? We'll see!