Bad Day at Black Rock
I have taken to renting old movies from Netflix, the commercials on regular TV have rendered them unwatchable. (Are there more commercials, or am I just getting spoiled?)
Last night we saw “Bad Day at Black Rock”, a postwar western drama, featuring Spencer Tracy as a man who seeks to present a military award to the father of the man who died saving our hero’s life in WWII. (I’m not giving anything away, it says all this in the movie trailer.)
Black Rock is a town that can only exist as a movie set. The only work or economic activity I observed was when the stranger rented a room at the hotel (against the innkeeper’s will), and when the requisite hellfire spitcat woman rents her jeep to him. There is a service station in town, but no one seems to run it; The aforementioned woman drops by and seems to do some paperwork in the office, but later a man pumps gas but there is no one around to pay, and the pumps don’t seem to indicate how much gas you pumped anyway.
The other characters probably work part time. The telegraph operator takes telegrams but does not transmit them; The doctor is also the undertaker, and is annoyed when he has to do any doctorin’ – perhaps undertaking is more profitable. I suspect he went on to lead a major health insurance organization.
The town cannot sustain itself; there is only one girl, and while she is extremely easy on the eyes, none of the men seem the least bit interested; I seem to recall one of them saying that she is “as dumb as a bag of rocks”. It doesn’t matter then when she gets lead poisoning and dies. Even her brother is only mildly upset by this, and everyone seems relieved that they won’t have to endure her next PMS.
The movie turns from taut drama (we can tell it’s a “taut drama” by the annoying background music) into a classic western toward the end, not the kind where the hero gets the girl, only justice.
I cannot recommend this movie, as it requires too much suspension of disbelief; If they had included some terrified townfolk, or at least implied them by having some kid around to take the money for the gas, it would have been much more engrossing. I would have liked to see Alfred Hitchcock direct something like this.
Last night we saw “Bad Day at Black Rock”, a postwar western drama, featuring Spencer Tracy as a man who seeks to present a military award to the father of the man who died saving our hero’s life in WWII. (I’m not giving anything away, it says all this in the movie trailer.)
Black Rock is a town that can only exist as a movie set. The only work or economic activity I observed was when the stranger rented a room at the hotel (against the innkeeper’s will), and when the requisite hellfire spitcat woman rents her jeep to him. There is a service station in town, but no one seems to run it; The aforementioned woman drops by and seems to do some paperwork in the office, but later a man pumps gas but there is no one around to pay, and the pumps don’t seem to indicate how much gas you pumped anyway.
The other characters probably work part time. The telegraph operator takes telegrams but does not transmit them; The doctor is also the undertaker, and is annoyed when he has to do any doctorin’ – perhaps undertaking is more profitable. I suspect he went on to lead a major health insurance organization.
The town cannot sustain itself; there is only one girl, and while she is extremely easy on the eyes, none of the men seem the least bit interested; I seem to recall one of them saying that she is “as dumb as a bag of rocks”. It doesn’t matter then when she gets lead poisoning and dies. Even her brother is only mildly upset by this, and everyone seems relieved that they won’t have to endure her next PMS.
The movie turns from taut drama (we can tell it’s a “taut drama” by the annoying background music) into a classic western toward the end, not the kind where the hero gets the girl, only justice.
I cannot recommend this movie, as it requires too much suspension of disbelief; If they had included some terrified townfolk, or at least implied them by having some kid around to take the money for the gas, it would have been much more engrossing. I would have liked to see Alfred Hitchcock direct something like this.
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