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Betrayed by Innocence (1986)
One Of A Kind
I saw this film when it first was released on television. I thought it was going to be another sensationalist film that blamed the problems of all teenage girls younger than 18 years old on older men and brainwashed the public into believing that all sex crimes against teenage female minors are committed by older men. However, this movie really surprised me in a sense that it distanced itself from any of such tactics. As a matter of fact, this movie even appears to question the fairness of the age of consent laws throughout the United States of America. It was 1986 that this movie was released, which was only a few years after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded and pedophile panic politics was beginning to become wired into the cultural fabric of American society. Yet this movie stood tall in keeping itself free from any such misleading influences. It was about real people like you and me with real problems. It has been years since I've seen this movie. From what I recall, Barry Botswick plays a 40-something-year-old movie director in Southern California who is married (wife played by Lee Purcell) and has an 18-year-old daughter in college. He has everything to be happy about in life, but his marriage is less than perfect. He meets a young girl (played by Cristen Kauffman), believing that she is over the age of 18. He and this girl eventually become intimate with one another. Unbeknownst to him, this girl is only 16 years old and her father is a cop (played by Paul Sorvino). Her father eventually finds out about the liaison and zeroes in on Barry Botswick, and, boy, does he make a melodramatic entrance upon confronting the 40-something-old man who had bedded his underage daughter and arresting him on charges of statutory rape. It is no secret that the father wants to really put the shaft to the man who messed around with his 16-year-old daughter and send him up the river for a long, long time. Probably most people would think that the father was so immersed in his own rage that he becomes insensitive to his daughter's feelings and her wishes for him to let the matter go, because, after all, nobody put a gun to her head to have sex with this older man despite that she was 2 years shy of the legal age of consent and she shows her maturity upon admitting so. However, you cannot really feel any resentment towards the young girl's father, because you can always see that he just wants to protect his daughter from the ills of the world and defend her honor. At the same time, you know that the 40-something-year-old man who had an affair with the cop's daughter is not a bad person and doesn't even come close to being another Joey Buttafuoco. When the statutory rape trial proceeds, it's like a no- win situation for everyone who is involved. I must admit that despite that this movie was supposed to be about a serious subject, I found myself laughing at a scene in which Barry Botswick goes to the young girl's house after he is released from jail on bond, and he speaks to Paul Sorvino. He says to him, "I know you want to punch me out, but I really need to talk to you." Paul Sorvino then makes a facial expression as though Barry Botswick has just read his mind. If you get the chance to see this movie, do not waste your time on "News At Eleven" starring Martin Sheen, which also came out in 1986 and was also a film with a "statutory rape" scenario. "News At Eleven" makes too much of an effort to put good tags and bad tags on each character. "Betrayed By Innocence" shows both the good points and bad points of each character, including the father of the 16-year-old girl, which is how a movie should be.
Sudden Impact (1983)
A Romantic Side of Dirty Harry
This film "Sudden Impact" goes above and beyond in that we see a romantic side of Dirty Harry for a change. However, do not be fooled. This film still holds on to its integrity as an action-packed crime drama just like previous "Dirty Harry" films. Jennifer Spencer (played by Sandra Locke) is a 30-something-year-old woman who continues to suffer from the horrendous memories of a gang rape to which she and her teenage sister fell victim at the hands of local hooligans in a California town north of San Francisco. The rape gang that attacked her and her teenage sister 10 years earlier consisted of mostly men and one woman. A major flaw can be found in humanity rather than in the movie itself when a flashback is shown where Jennifer Spencer allows herself to be talked into taking her teenage sister to a gathering below the boardwalk at a noisy amusement park. The woman-rapist who invites her to this gathering acts so touchy and pushy with her when Jennifer Spencer almost declines the invitation that the audience questions why anyone would be naive enough even to show up to such a gathering when God only knows what kind of people will be there. Jennifer Spencer is in public when this woman-rapist extends this invitation. When anybody sees this scene, everybody probably wonders why anyone in their right mind would even entertain the idea of bringing their teenage sister to a gathering of strangers who are probably just as creepy as the woman-rapist who extended the invitation. Most of us would just not show up after promising to do so, right? Well, so we tell ourselves. Nobody is perfect and most of us have been caught in a moment of weakness in one way or another no matter how aggressive we may believe ourselves to be in dealing with all the bullies of the world. Whenever we fall into trying situations, we all hate the unwelcome remarks later on from others who have never been in such situations, telling us what we could have done differently to prevent the situation from ever coming about, because reality has it that one never knows what it is like to be a victim of any kind of atrocity unless one has been a victim of one. Moreover, if Jennifer Spencer had not shown up with her teenage sister at the gathering, there would have been no movie. Anyhow, after seeing the graphic gang rape in Jennifer Spencer's flashback, most of us come to the realization that rudeness is sometimes the best defense we have against low-lifes who deserve no courtesy whatsoever regardless of how we have been brought up.
What makes this movie interesting is the psychology it promotes that both rapists and former rapists who live by the misguided faith that revenge has a statute of limitations of some kind and that violent sexual assaults become things of the past after so many years are actually living in a fool's paradise for believing so. This movie shows the reality that most rape victims do not forgive nor forget such violations upon them even after the passage of one or several decades no matter how reformed their attackers may become in the future. The anger only builds up through the years to be released at a much greater magnitude than if the revenge had occurred immediately. We all sense that rage coming from Jennifer Spencer as we see her bump off her and her sister's former attackers one by one, especially when she violently blows the woman-rapist's breasts off with a shower of bullets after the woman-rapist asks her how her "slut sister" is doing. Even that comment alone that the woman-rapist makes about Jennifer Spencer's sister causes the audience to feel that the woman-rapist is getting exactly what she deserves and that she is just another mole being wiped off of the backside of society.
The story becomes interesting when Dirty Harry and Jennifer Spencer finally meet and hook up with one another. You can't help but to sense the chemistry that exists between both of them in the form of their similar outlook on the cruel and crime-ridden world. You always get a strong feeling that Dirty Harry will be on Jennifer Spencer's side throughout her entire ordeal no matter how her situation turns out for her and no matter which side of the law she ends up on in her vendetta against the men and the one woman who had gang raped her and her sister 10 years earlier. As in previous films, Dirty Harry fears no evil no matter how sinister and diabolical of people he must confront. Every time he says, "Go ahead. Make my day," you really hope that the scumbag at the other end of his gun will do something to give him a perfectly legitimate reason to shoot them into the ground.
Kotch (1971)
A So-So Movie
I saw this movie when I was a teenager. From what I remember of it, it was a waste of good talent. Walter Matthau did his best acting and Jack Lemmon did his best directing. However, somehow the script just didn't do justice for either one of these two celebrities. I've seen Deborah Winters in other movies and back then it seemed as though she gravitated towards controversial roles such as a 16-year old drug addict or pregnant teenager. I absolutely hate that song "Life Is What You Make It," because they played it throughout this entire movie over and over again; and seeing the pregnant teenage Deborah Winters and hearing Walter Matthau's New York accent as this unusually compassionate older man somehow reminded me constantly of how much I absolutely hate deadbeat teen fathers. I always got the feeling throughout the film that I just wanted a scene in which the teen father of this girl's baby got the tar knocked out of him for being such a jerk. I vaguely recall one scene in which he actually spoke with Deborah Winters after he had gotten her pregnant, but he was more annoying than anything. The kind of teen father that would create a precedent in our court system to make justifiable patricide perfectly legal for all youngsters who have the indignity of having someone like him for a biological father. By the way, I disagree with the title of that stupid song, "Life Is What You Make It." I can't believe that song even won an award. It's crass and callous in its lyrics, because some people are born more privileged than others in the real world and the lyrics of that song just don't own up to that same reality of life. If you have nothing better to do with your time, you may want to give this movie a peek. However, if you have limited time like me, it's probably not worth watching.
Trust (2010)
A Horribly Specious Movie
I'm with Goodfella218 on this movie. I just watched it last night on YouTube, and I can frankly say that I was not at all impressed. What, at first, seemed like an honest attempt to show a story about a teenage girl falling victim to an online predator quickly changed into a political campaign aimed at vilifying every adult man who has ever had an extra-platonic interest in an adolescent girl since the beginning of time. The ulterior motives of this movie were exactly what Dr. Judith Levine warned Americans about when she was promoting her book titled "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex" back in 2002. The storyline plays too much like a soap opera and it almost mirrors the 1981 Luke and Laura vehicle used on "General Hospital" in which Luke raped Laura and then married her. There is even a tacky scene in it in which they show the inside of the female protagonist's genitalia while she is being examined at the hospital.
If you want to see a real movie about online predation, then see "Strangeland" instead. The girl in that movie is a year older than the female protagonist in "Trust," but she actually goes through the horrors of being kidnapped and raped, whereas in "Trust," the young girl named Annie has multiple opportunities to walk away from her situation. Also, at the same time, "Strangeland" strongly questions the Puritanical establishment's position on teenage girls straying outside their own age circles in search of romance, which makes it even more interesting. Although it becomes blatantly clear that European societies embrace the idea of girls in their early-to-mid teens having older suitors more readily than Americans do so when you compare American films like "Trust" and "Hard Candy" with European films like "Beau Pere" and "Ginger and Cinammon," the argument over whether or not an adult man who takes an attraction to an adolescent girl is a pedophile continues to be a heated debate among experts to this very day here in the U.S.
Even though David Schwimmer did a splendid job at playing the protagonist in "Duane Hopwood," his role as a movie director in "Trust" leaves so very much to be desired. Another major flaw in this movie is that there is a scene in which Annie's father implied that all would have been well if the "Charlie" character who hooked up with his daughter online had been a 15-year old boy instead of a 30-something-year-old man. Not necessarily so. I once saw a story on the news about a 15-year old boy out in California who threatened to kill his 14-year old girlfriend with a knife if she didn't have his baby. After he was caught and arrested, he was sentenced to go to some luxury summer camp. I've seen David Schwimmer interviewed on the subject of how our nation's age of consent laws are written, and he comes across as a my-way-or-the-highway type of person on the subject matter in that he supports higher ages of consent in every state and tougher prison sentences for violating those ages of consent. He refuses to see the entire broad picture and this film is proof on its face of this idiosyncrasy of his. The idea that Annie in this movie would be as submissive as she was with the older man who had sex with her is so unrealistic, because most adolescent girls even as young as 12 years old have gotten their rejection skills down to a fine art.
David Schwimmer manipulated the plot of the story to depict the characters in it the way he wanted his audience to perceive them rather than how they would be in the real world. For example, did you notice that despite the fact that the villain in this film, CHARLIE, also had liaisons with other girls Annie's age just like he did with Annie, somehow Annie and these other girls miraculously never got pregnant? It's like David Schwimmer devised this movie's plot in this manner so that his efforts to portray these teenage girls as gullible and easily manipulated innocents wouldn't be inadvertently undermined. When I was 16 years old, I caught this one 15-year old girl I knew in a parking lot acting real cozy with a 30-something-year-old man and, believe me, she was no victim of grooming. I know this for a fact, because this same girl sexually harassed me for three years when I was in high school. If her parents had prosecuted this older man on charges of statutory rape, I would have testified as a witness for the defense in a heartbeat. "Trust" is a sensationalistic piece of commercial tripe to be avoided at all costs. It's just another cheap effort to urge legislators to raise the age of consent to 21 nationwide here in the U.S. David Schwimmer needs to go back to acting. Obviously, his activism in rape awareness has gone to his head, and this movie reflects such fanaticism of his. And, yes, I do realize that online predators are a serious problem in our nation and throughout the world, but I don't think a movie about this subject matter is an appropriate arena for a movie producer to be promoting his pedophile panic propaganda. This is not exclusively an age-related crime. As a matter of fact, not too long ago I heard a story about a 13-year old girl who posed as a 13-year old boy in an online chat room to trick a 12-year old girl into having a lesbian relationship with her. This 13-year old girl arranged to meet with the 12-year old girl, and she dressed up like a boy to fool the 12-year old girl into having sex with her. When the truth came out, the 12-year old girl was devastated. Fortunately, criminal charges were brought against the 13-year old girl. Why couldn't David Schwimmer have done a film about a story like that instead?
Boardwalk (1979)
This Story Hits Home
The first, last, and only time that I ever saw "Boardwalk" was on cable back in 1990 when I was staying in a hotel in Santa Monica, California, looking for a new place to live after I had received my transfer orders from my employer to relocate from New York City to California. I was able to relate to this movie, because I had gone through some of the horrendous experiences during the 4 years I had lived in New York City that the elderly people did in this movie. What was so noteworthy about this film is that it did not sensationalize on urban violence the way that other movies set in the Big Apple had done in recent years. It told the God's honest truth about living in a neighborhood in New York City that once was nice and was now gradually going to Hell in a handbag; as in here is New York, either take it or leave it and leave New York. In watching this movie, I found it admirable that no matter how rough things got, Lee Strasberg and Ruth Gordon stood up to the local thugs and refused to leave their Brooklyn neighborhood and everything else that they had worked so hard for behind. I also liked seeing Ruth Gordon play a good person for a change after having seen her play a creepy, sinister role in "Rosemary's Baby" back in 1968. I was a naive Southern boy from Virginia when I moved to New York City back in 1986, only 7 years after this movie was released, and I never realized back then how much of a shock I was in for. Therefore, I would recommend anyone who is contemplating moving to New York City and has never lived in a big city before to see this movie. Don't get me wrong. New York City had its rewarding moments for me when I lived there, but I wish I had been a lot more streetwise than I was before I moved there. People who think that New York City is this flashy, exciting place where one finds overnight success and grandeur to the extent that they wish to move there will have a much different outlook on it once they have seen this movie. By no standards was this movie politically incorrect about minorities. In fact, there was even a scene in it in which Lee Strasberg defends an African-American married couple next door against his daughter's racist remarks, because even though this married couple had recently moved from the ghetto into Lee Strasberg's neighborhood, they had already showed themselves to be decent, honest, law-abiding citizens who were willing to play by the rules to better themselves socially and economically. They even go as far as providing first aid to Lee Strasberg after he gets into a violent confrontation with local thugs who are terrorizing the community. This movie is a must-see.
The Illustrated Man (1969)
Definite breakaway from the mainstream
Science-fiction films in the 1950s and 1960s more often than not were clichés of one another. Any one of us who watched "Creature Feature" on Saturday nights in the Washington, D.C. area back in 1970's and 1980's ought to know. Some of you out there may have picked up a similar program that featured horror and science-fiction movies. "The Illustrated Man" broke away from that overly trite mainstream of science-fiction movies that Gene Roddenberry shoved down the throats of many sci-fi buffs in the 1960's and 1970's. You were always being taken off guard by the next scene. You were not tortured with any egg-headed aliens or men with leprechaun ears or ray guns like on "Star Trek". Not that "Star Trek" was a bad show. It's just been over-plagiarized by movie producers of other science-fiction yarns. Rod Steiger gave this film his all, because although he was obnoxious as the illustrated man himself, he was like this either very charming, very intelligent, very family-oriented, or very caring individual in the stories that came alive whenever the young man drifter observed his body illustrations. Seeing so many different personalities played by one actor shows real talent in my opinion. I first saw "The Illustrated Man" on some local channel on a small black and white TV set my sister gave me for Christmas when I was living out in Los Angeles back in the 1990's. I saw it once again on a big-screen color TV set on the Sci-Fi Channel after I moved back to Northern Virginia and liked it both times I saw it. Nowadays and even in recent years past the sci-fi movie and television entertainment scene has either become inundated with virtual reality in the form of "Spiderman" or "Lost" or systematically sterile scripts in the form of "The X-files" or "Millenium". "The Illustrated Man" had unique qualities that set it apart from all the others. That to me is true science-fiction. Not imitating what the next movie director is doing.
Summer of '42 (1971)
Forbidden Love
I've seen this film several times and liked it because of the atmosphere it sets. At the same time, I see this film as a sister film to both "Lolita" movies, because it takes the same vehicle of forbidden love and switches the gender roles. That is, both "Lolita" films project a grown man's belated adolescent fantasy coming true from a man's point of view, whereas "Summer of '42" projects a grown woman's belated adolescent fantasy coming true from a woman's point of view. That is not to say that the creator of "Summer of '42" plagiarized "Lolita" in any way. Both stories have their own unique plots, but the vehicles used in both films themselves are identical inasmuch as they hit upon stories of forbidden love that we typically hear about on afternoon talk shows or evening news programs. What I find interesting about one of the other comments on this website is that like the Humbert Humbert character in "Lolita" having a clear pathway of opportunity to Dolores Hayes, the character that Jennifer O'Neill plays in "Summer of '42" has a clear pathway of opportunity to the teenage boy in that movie whom she has her designs upon. In the 1997 version of "Lolita", no teenage boys ever seem to be around except in conversations between Humbert Humbert and Dolores Hayes. In the 1962 version of "Lolita", I only remember one teenage boy making an appearance in that film and he did not have much of a role. In "Summer of 42", as stated in that other comment, the teenage girls who the teenage male protagonist and his two buddies date are unpleasant and pose no obstacle to the character Jennifer O'Neill plays as for her intentions to cross the forbidden age line of love with the male teenage protagonist. Get my point? Authors and creators of these types of stories know how to protect their own plots without their audiences even realizing what has hit them. British author Beryl Bainbridge even whitewashed the presence of any teenage boys from her book titled "Harriet Said" short of a brief mention of a 19-year old boy the co-protagonist Harriet had met before returning to the village where she and the protagonist both resided. "Summer of '42" is a genuine work of art. However, I still must say that the producer of this film and the producer of original "Lolita" were wise to have released these films long before the Pedophile Panic that came about probably around 1984. Too much censorship going on now and too much power being given to the Puritanical establishment.
The Exorcist (1973)
Excellent movie with no virtual reality
Horror films have been reduced to virtual reality images representing demons, monsters, or other evil entities. "The Exorcist" did not use any of this bogus technology that we see in these genre of films nowadays, which makes "The Exorcist" a genuine cinematographic masterpiece in this genre of movies. However, I understand that the author of the book upon which this movie is based got his idea for this story in 1950 and spent many years trying to get his book published without running into censorship. In any event, breakthrough books and movies are usually the ones that do the best. My mother told me that she was quite intrigued when she read the book to "Rosemary's Baby" in the early 1960s, because she had never come across any book like it back during that time period. I don't know what exact year the book to "The Exorcist" was published. I haven't had the occasion to read the book to this movie, but I have heard only good comments about it. However, I can say that whatever the book to this movie is like, if it strongly resembles the movie, it has to be a far cry from the conventional vampire or other scary books that may have been on the shelf at the time of its publication. As for the movie "The Exorcist", by 1973, people were ready for something different than Christopher Lee in vampire makeup or Vincent Price terrorizing his house guests in a creepy dark castle, and "The Exorcist" gave horror fans something new to digest. Hilariously enough, some people I know who saw "The Exorcist" said that they thought that it was a sincere account of a parent dealing with pre-teen hell with their daughter, who can be more terrifying than Linda Blair was in "The Exorcist." Oh, well. It was a good movie in either event.