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#350 Coogan’s Bluff

Watched: August 20 2022

Director: Don Siegel

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee J. Cobb, Susan Clark, Tisha Sterling, Don Stroud, Betty Field, Tom Tully

Year: 1968

Runtime: 1h 33min

Coogan, a sheriff’s deputy in Arizona, is sent to New York City to pick up a prisoner and bring him back for trial. Easy enough you might think. But you’d be wrong. The prisoner, James Ringerman, is not so much in jail as he is in Bellevue after a bad LSD trip. In order to get him back, Coogan has to follow loads of rules, regulations and procedures. Coogan is not a fan of rules and regulations. Or procedures. So he bluffs to get Ringerman out of Bellevue. Hence the title purloined from an actual location in NYC. See what they did there?

Sure, I’m a stoic and sassy bad ass alpha male, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good wordplay. What, a man can’t have layers?

Unfortunately, Ringerman escapes and neither NYPD Lt. McElroy nor Sheriff McCrea is very impressed by Coogan’s shenanigans so they both command him off the case. However, Coogan is not a fan of commands either, so he promptly ignores them and decides to hunt down his escaped prisoner.

You can’t touch this – dun dun-dun-dun dun dun

Along the way, he runs into the weirdest female character – Julie Roth. She’s some sort of psychoanalyst/social worker/parole officer working with young women on probation, and her fetish is being taken advantage of and objectified by men. Perfect for Coogan who is all about the objectification of women. Sometimes fate just intervenes and brings people together.

For the rest of the movie Coogan runs around NYC getting into brawls and beds in his hunt for Ringerman. He quips and sasses, and participates in quite a cool motorcycle chase. But will he catch his prey?

…or will he just catch STDs?

Ok, the action is cool and we loved the swinging 60s party, but the protagonist and the “love story” seem incredibly dated. Coogan, though kind of hilarious at times and undeniably intelligent and charming, is a cocky and chauvinistic asshole with absolutely no regard for anyone else. Which we guess is sort of the point; the conservative (in some ways) country boy vs. the liberal city values. And while it probably works as intended, it’s kind of Toxic Masculinity: The Movie. Also, Julie needs some serious therapy for falling for his crap. Actually, they both need therapy, but she seems more likely to seek it out. He has no reason to, as society keeps rewarding him for his assholey behaviour and talking about your feelings is probably for city sissies anyway.

“I can fix you!”

Coogan’s Bluff is interesting as a double feature with Bullitt; the contrast between the two protagonists (who in many ways are very similar) only underlines what a bitch Coogan is. Still a fun watch though – the bar brawl is legendary. And sure, we get how a young Clint Eastwood might blind a young psychologist to anything but the D, but come on Julie! He is never going to meet your emotional needs. Just bang him and get it out of your system. If you need a strong, silent type with a clear sense of right and wrong who still doesn’t mind breaking a few rules to bring criminals to justice, and who is comfortable being in a relationship with an educated, professional woman, look no further than Lt. Bullitt.

What we learned: Sometimes the hot bastard is just a hot bastard – don’t waste your time searching for that hidden heart of gold and ascribing characteristics to them that they just don’t possess.

Next time: Danger: Diabolik (1968)

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#140 Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Watched: October 5 2017

Director: Don Siegel

Starring: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Larry Gates

Year: 1956

Runtime: 1h 20min

invasion

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Dr Miles Bennell (McCarthy) has had a rough few days, and is trying to convince a psychiatrist that he is not crazy but that his home town really is at the centre of a large scale alien invasion. His story is then told in flashbacks and we see the invasion unfold.

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He has really cultivated that so-not-crazy-right-now-look

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Bennell, a small town doctor, has been out of town and very popular in his absence; half the town has been in to see him, but when he returns they are no longer as keen. He gradually finds that many of his patients seem to suffer from Capgras delusion – they think their loved ones are not themselves or have been replaced by impostors. They also suddenly snap out of their delusions without any treatment…

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The thick plottens when the protagonists find an unconscious man with no distinguishing features hidden in a friend’s basement

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Bennell, together with childhood crush Becky Driscoll (Wynter), starts to investigate and what they find is literally out of this world – a race of alien “pod people” who are taking over the entire town of Santa Mira by replacing its people with unemotional but otherwise perfect replicas.

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“Tired of your neighbour? Grow a new one in a greenhouse! Pod People™ – Replacing Non-Conformist Folks Everywhere”

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers shows a quiet invasion – alien beings who fell from the sky gradually take over friends, relatives and neighbours in their sleep. Those not yet taken grow increasingly paranoid and hysterical, especially since the change is hard to prove – it’s mostly just a feeling and an instinct that something is wrong.

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Until they start chasing you, of course. Then you know.

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This film is remade (or, the novel by Jack Finney is filmed) every other decade or so, sometimes under different titles (such as Body Snatchers or The Invasion), and each time the plot changes slightly based on the general zeitgeist. The original, from the fifties, naturally has clear undertones of McCarthyism and the communist scare.

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Though things have changed a lot since 1956, the tried and tested investigative method of poking stuff with a stick has fortunately survived.

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We’ve mentioned how we love old-timey sci-fi before, and this film is an old favourite which still holds up. We’re really looking forward to Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version now, to see the differences (we haven’t seen it in ages). Also, although the quality of the different productions vary a bit, we think they should just keep remaking the plot every twenty years or so. It’s a good indication of what people’s fears are at any given time, and important documentation for the ages.

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And it gives us shots like this.

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What we learned: If people around you start acting weird, they’re probably pod people and are out to get you.

Next time: The Bad Seed (1956)