The Best Movies You May Have Never Seen (January 2016)

Recommended and reviewed by Gary Cahall, MovieFanFare

Murder, He Says (1945).  This playfully macabre dark comedy is packed with homicidal hillbillies, a hidden fortune and, maybe, an NPR theme song. A sleepy Ozarks community panics over news that Bonnie Fleagle–part of a notorious local outlaw clan–has escaped prison. Picking that moment to pedal into town is Pete Marshall (Fred MacMurray), a bike-riding polling company survey-taker looking for a missing co-worker. Pete’s backwoods search lands him in the clutches of the aforementioned Fleagles: short-tempered, bullwhip-wielding matriarch Mamie (Marjorie Main, Fred's future The Egg and I co-star); her dim-witted twins Bert and Mert (Peter Whitney) and addled daughter Elany (Jean Heather); and Mamie’s latest husband, toxins expert Mr. Johnson (Porter Hall, the twitchy Macy’s psychologist in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street).

Twins Bert and Mert (far left and right) were played by Peter Whitney.

The oddball brood's final member, bed-ridden Grandma Fleagle (Mabel Paige), is being slowly poisoned--with a substance that makes her glow in the dark--because she knows where Bonnie and her bank-robber pa stashed $70,000 before being caught. Mamie and company coerce Pete into posing as Bonnie’s boyfriend so that Grandma might confide in him before dying. She gives him a sampler whose stitched musical notes (“To them what doesn’t know the tune, sounds like the ravin’s of a loon”) offer a clue. A hitch arises when the fugitive Bonnie (Helen Walker) arrives...sort of. "Bonnie" is really the daughter of a banker wrongly convicted of aiding the Fleagles. Can she and Pete decipher the nonsensical-sounding lyrics (“Honors flysis, Income beezis, Onches nobis, Inob keesis”) Elany sings to the sampler’s melody?

Like 1940's The Ghost Breakers (which this movie mentions in one scene; both were directed by George Marshall for Paramount), Murder, He Says briskly delivers heapin' helpin's of laughs and chills. Along with a dinner which a Lazy Susan-style table and a poisoned dish turn a gastronomic Russian Roulette game, there are chases through secret passages and a climactic barnyard battle with a hay-bailing machine. The bone-riddled decor of the Fleagles’ run-down abode predates the Texas Chain Saw Massacre house, and a luminous dog–one of Hall’s test animals–running through the woods could have come from The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Helen Walker and Fred MacMurray.

The ever-versatile MacMurray easily goes from befuddled to fearful to heroic without skipping a beat. Leading lady Walker, whose career and personal life never recovered after a 1946 car crash, is a suitably spunky heroine. Main mixes Ma Kettle with Ma Barker as the conniving “poor old lady” who can kill a fly in mid-air with her whip, while shifty-eyed Hall continuously pops up from hidden doorways or tunnels. Best, though, is the hulking Whitney's dual turn as Mert/Bert (the trick photography is convincing, even by today’s standards). When MacMurray asks how you tell them apart, Main explains that Bert has “a crick in his back,” then demonstrates by slapping Whitney’s back…instantly dropping him to his knees in a contorted, immobilized heap.

Oh, and the NPR theme? Listen to Elany sing Gramdma’s song. Doesn’t it sound like the opening notes to “All Things Considered?”
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Recommended and reviewed by Silver Screenings

Scott of the Antarctic (1948).  Have you ever wanted to go on an adventure that tests you so thoroughly you don't know if you'll come through it intact?

If so, you might be interested in the 1948 British adventure flick, Scott of the Antarctic, a grim re-enactment of Robert Falcon Scott's 1911-12 expedition to the South Pole. Scott, a former naval officer, is consumed with being the first person to reach the South Pole.

As you might imagine, Scott and his team are up against it on all sides. Not only must they contend with the weather and inhospitable landscape, they're racing against another team, led by famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Amundsen is never shown in the film, but he is an ever-present monkey on Scott's back.

Much of the movie was filmed in the desolate snow of Norway. The actors pull heavy sleds through deep snow and pour tea inside cramped tents. No scenes shot in front of a green screen here; this filmmaking is about authentic as it gets.

It’s not a movie that spares you the savage realities of travelling through the Antarctic. Prior to embarking on his expedition, Scott is advised not to bring motorized sleds. Dogs are much more useful, he is told, because once "a dog is finished, he is still useful to the other dogs."

Man vs. the harsh elements.

Yikes! Now that we've almost frightened you away, let us point out that the acting in the movie is pitch-perfect. Expedition leader Scott is portrayed by the great John Mills who, as it turns out, has a passing resemblance to the real Scott.

Then there's James Robertson Justice, who plays injured team member Evans. In one scene, there is a close-up of Justice against the bitter white snow: his face reveals his determination despite his physical pain; then the realization that he is unable keep up with the others; and, finally, the knowledge that he's going to die, here, at the bottom of the world.

The legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff has captured amazing images: penguins squirting out of the water and onto the ice; stark white icebergs resting in the ocean; sled dogs breaking out of drifts of snow after a night's sleep.

Scott of the Antarctic is a haunting movie that was the #4 box-office draw in Britain in 1948. It is arguably one of the best adventure movies made.

The Best Movies You May Have Never Seen (Dec 2015)

Recommended and reviewed by Lady Eve's Reel Life

German filmmaker Max Ophuls.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). Max Ophuls, the legendary German-born director most well-known for the films he made in France-- La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1952), The Earrings of Madame de… (1953), and Lola Montès (1955)--also directed four films in America during the post-war era. The jewel among these, and a film equal to his best French work, is Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948).

A romantic drama based on a novella by Stefan Zweig, Letter From an Unknown Woman charts the course of an ill-starred love affair. Such a narrative may seem sheer melodrama, but this film is a genuinely transporting experience. Credit this to Ophuls’ famed mastery of the mobile camera (moving here with the grace of a Viennese waltz) and staging, a polished script by Howard Koch (Casablanca) and strong lead performances by Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan.

Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan.

Letter From an Unknown Woman opens in elegant turn-of-the-century Vienna during the wee hours of a wet night. A well-dressed man (Jourdan) steps down from a carriage and, saying goodnight to his companions, jokes about the duel at dawn to which he has been challenged. Entering his well-appointed flat alone he tells his manservant that he will be departing again very shortly, "Honor is a luxury only gentlemen can afford," he remarks. The mute servant indicates a letter awaiting him and he opens the envelope and begins to read as he makes preparations to flee:

"By the time you read this letter, I may be dead," it says. The voice of a woman, the letter writer, begins to speak the words she has written, “I have so much to tell you and, perhaps, so little time…” As the man intently reads on, her tale unfolds in flashback.

The woman, Lisa Berndle (Fontaine), recalls how, as a girl, she became enthralled with up-and-coming concert pianist Stefan Brand, the recipient of her letter. Though the suave virtuoso had been completely unaware of her, Lisa privately harbored a deeply held fantasy that their destinies were entwined. And they are, but not in the way she imagined; the brief encounters they do share exact an incredible cost.

Lisa’s letter has come as a surprise and a shock to Stefan and he only finishes reading it as the dawn is breaking.

As the film circles from present to past to present again, it appears that both Lisa and Stefan have been the victims of their own misspent passions; she risking everything for an unattainable ideal, and he wasting himself on a string of shallow affairs. John, Stefan's mute valet, perhaps mirroring the director’s own viewpoint, observes the all-too-human folly around him and serves as a silent, compassionate witness.
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Recommended and reviewed by Richard Finch, co-founder of the Foreign Film Classics Facebook Group 

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Paulette Goddard.

The Young in Heart (1938). This Selznick production is a charming comedy about the Carletons, a family of con artists exiled from the French Riviera by the authorities. On the train to London, they are befriended by a gullible and lonely rich old lady named Miss Fortune (!) who has no living relatives, and they quickly concoct a plan to fleece her. She essentially adopts this family of scoundrels, who then set to work subtly persuading her to leave them her money in her will.

Roland Young as "Sahib."

To make themselves more credible, when they reach London they temporarily assume the appearance of conventionality and even get jobs. The more fond they grow of Miss Fortune, the more they unexpectedly find their new lives of respectability growing on them, and she becomes a sort of moral fairy godmother, granting the family not riches but ethics. The movie, released the same year as You Can't Take It with You, is in a sense a Capra comedy turned on its head, with a family of eccentrics finding happiness by forgoing their nonconformist ways and becoming conventional.

The Flying Wombat.

The Carletons are expertly played by Roland Young as the father, a blustering former actor who pretends to be a British colonel retired from colonial India and is called Sahib by his family; Billie Burke as the dithering, scatter-brained mother; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as the son; and winsome Janet Gaynor as the sweet-natured and intelligent daughter. The stage actress Minnie Dupree plays the childlike Miss Fortune, and lovely Paulette Goddard is Fairbanks's love interest. The movie also includes an incredible futuristic automobile called a Flying Wombat (actually a 1938 Phantom Corsair) that at several points plays an important part in the film. The typically high Selznick production values (including an elaborately staged train wreck), appealing cast, and plot that balances the roguery of the Carletons with the guilelessness of Miss Fortune, and humor with sentiment, results in one of the more unusual comedies of the 1930's and a very entertaining viewing experience.

The Best Movies You May Have Never Seen (Oct 2015)

Never Take Candy from a Stranger (1960)  (reviewed by Toto from the Classic Film & TV Cafe)

In the opening scene, two little girls are playing on a swing in the woods, laughing and enjoying a lovely afternoon. Then we see they are being watched by an old man with binoculars in a nearby isolated house. One little girl tells the other that she knows where they can go to get candy. As the two girls skip off together in the left side of the screen, we see that the abandoned swing dominates the foreground on the right side--a sign of leaving childhood behind.

Jean (Janina Faye) and Lucille (Frances Green) leave childhood behind.

That night, Jean Carter, one of the girls, tells her parents about her day and innocently reveals that she and her friend danced without their clothes on for the old man. Her horrified parents mask their emotions and the mother questions her daughter. The parents conclude that she wasn't molested, but they know that some kind of action must be taken.

Janina Faye as nine-year-old Jean.

There are two prevailing themes in Never Take Candy from a Stranger. The first is the threat of losing childhood innocence, which is symbolically represented in the film by the empty swing, an abandoned bicycle, and a stuffed animal. The second theme is societal isolation. Early in the film, we learn that the Carter family has moved from England to a small industrial Canadian town so Peter Carter can become the principal of a school. The town's residents refer to the Carters as foreigners more than once. Initially it seems to be in jest, but it quickly becomes clear that there are some townspeople who resent the "trouble" caused by "the outsiders."

Niall MacGinnis questions the witness.

It doesn't help that the prosperity of the town centers around a mill owned by the Olderberry family. The retired family patriarch turns out to be the old man that the Carters accuse of improper conduct toward their daughter. The eventual trial places young Jean on the witness stand, with the Olderberry's attorney (effectively played by Niall MacGinnis) questioning her aggressively, his face jutting toward her on one side of the screen and then the other.

With a first-rate cast, a literate script, and excellent direction from Cyril Frankel, Never Take Candy from a Stranger should have garnered stellar notices. Instead, it was panned by critics and ignored at the boxoffice. Undoubtedly, the title didn't help (neither does the original British title Never Take Sweets from a Stranger). I also suspect that moviegoers expected a more conventional tale of horror from Hammer Films, the home of Dracula and Frankenstein.

This one includes a truly horrifying scene near the climax as the two girls are chased in the woods and find a rowboat. They climb into it, thinking they are leaving danger behind...when they realize the boat is still tethered to the dock. Their pursuer then grabs the rope and begins to pull them in.

Without ever showing violence, Never Take Candy from a Stranger ranks as one of Hammer's most frightening films, right down to its somber conclusion.

“X” The Man With The X-Ray Eyes   (reviewed by Grand Old Movies)

Roger Corman’s unsung 1963 masterpiece, “X” The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, is a film examining cinema’s very essence—the act of seeing. As movies capture the world in visual terms, we thus experience movies as visual objects, viewed through our faculty of sight. Corman thrusts that notion right at us from his film’s first shot, a giant eyeball staring at us as we in turn stare back at it. This is how we understand what’s before us, the film seems to be saying, through our own fleshy orbs—the only pair each of us has, as one character notes. Eyes are our primary organ for taking in the world around us, and we’d better be damn careful how we use them.

Except that the film’s protagonist, Dr. James Xavier, has lost all caution in regards to his own. A medical researcher experimenting with increasing the range of vision, he’s developed a drug to expand the eyes’ ability to see light, and becomes his own guinea pig. A colleague warns him that “only the gods see everything”; “I’m closing in on the gods,” Xavier replies, and indeed he does. From seeing through paper, clothes, and then walls, he then sees through flesh (including his eyelids) and bone, into interior organs, able to diagnose disease and even impending death. But Xavier gets hooked on his drug and applies it more and more; the result, far from achieving heaven, plunges him into hell. He no longer recognizes a human being, but only “a perfect breathing dissection”; an urban metropolis appears “dissolved in an acid of light—a city of the dead.” The more Xavier sees, the more the world loses substance, evaporating into particles and atoms, into wavering light itself. He now gropes like a blind man, longing for only one thing—to again “have the dark.”

As with Xavier’s vision, Corman’s film looks beneath its low-budget, sci-fi surface, and finds mythic resonances in its anti-hero’s quest. Is Xavier a doomed Prometheus, enduring torture to bring fire to humanity, or a disobedient Adam, defying divine law in seeking knowledge? But in its hallucinatory effects and theme of expanded vision, the film also anticipates how the Sixties generation pursued mystical experience via drugs and esoteric religions. While working as a sideshow attraction Xavier masks himself with a bandanna decorated with a large, open Eye, a reference to the “third eye” that signals inner perception, beyond mere physical sight. Xavier’s irony, however, is that the more he sees, the less he knows; people, places, the world itself, have slipped away from him, leaving him in a spiritual abyss.

Yet the film’s overarching viewpoint is seemingly Biblical, especially in the famous final scene, in which Xavier staggers into a revival meeting and hears the preacher exhorting his flock to repent. Instead, Xavier proclaims his own apocalyptic vision: beyond “there are great darknesses,” he cries, but at the center he can see “the Eye that sees us all.” Has Xavier’s sight finally reached God? No answer is given; rather, the appalled reverend responds with Matthew’s advice to the lagging sinner: “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out!” And so Xavier does, raising two bloodied sockets to our own appalled gazes. The screen swiftly goes black; then light gradually returns—or rather, waves and lines of light, through which skeletal impressions of buildings and landscapes bleed through, as if the camera now participates in Xavier’s torment, its mechanical eye imprinted with his human ones. It’s a vision of unending horror: of knowledge that can’t be unlearned, and of eyes that can’t be closed.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)   (reviewed by Rick from the Classic Film & TV Cafe)

Sharon Tate as Sarah.

Whether intentional or not, The Fearless Vampire Killers comes across as a perfect parody of Hammer Films’ fangs-and-damsels formula. One’s affection for the film will depend, in part, upon familiarity with the Hammer approach. All the expected ingredients are present: attractive women in low-cut attire, a Transylvanian setting, an eerie castle, garlic hanging from the ceiling of a beer haus, a hint of eroticism, and a well-prepared vampire hunter. To this mix, Polanski adds a dash of the unexpected: a bumbling lovestruck assistant, a Jewish vampire, a gay vampire, and a darkly humorous ending.

The vampire killers of the title are Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran, looking like Albert Einstein with a big red nose) and his assistant Alfred (Polanski). Shortly after their arrival at a snowy Bavarian inn, a young maiden named Sarah (Sharon Tate) is kidnapped by Count Von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne). The girl’s father sets out after his daughter, but later turns up dead—the blood drained from his body. Knowing now that vampires are at work, the Professor and Alfred head toward Von Krolock’s castle to destroy the bloodsuckers.

Polanski, who had not yet directed Rosemary’s Baby, shows a genuine flair for the horror genre. There’s a masterful scene in which Sarah is taking a bath, while Von Krolock watches her through a skylight. Snow begins to float into the bath water. As Sarah looks up, the vampire crashes through the glass and bites her neck. Bath water splashes against the door suggestively and then stops. Later in the film, Polanksi stages a ghoulish scene in which vampires emerge from graves in a cemetery, still wearing their rotting clothes, as they make their way to the Midnight Ball.

Alfred tries to destroy a vampire!

As an actor, Polanksi proves himself to be a skilled comedian. He and Tate share a funny scene in which she talks about the joys of taking a bath which he misconstrues as a proposition (“Do you mind if I have a quick one?” she asks). The supporting cast has its share of comic highlights, too, especially Alfie Bass as a new vampire who wants to keep his coffin in the Krolocks’ vault (and not in the drafty barn!).

Originally, Polanski planned to cast Jill St. John as Sarah, but a producer friend introduced him to the stunning, red-haired Tate. The two were married soon after The Fearless Vampire Killers. Tate’s career was on the rise (she co-starred in the trashy but popular Valley of the Dolls) when Charles Manson and his cult murdered her in 1969.

Released as Dance of the Vampires in Britain, The Fearless Vampire Killers was trimmed nine minutes for its U.S. release. The video version is the full 107-minute film. The famous subtitle Or, Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck never actually appears in the film credits. (For a more in-depth review of this film by Cafe contributor Sark, click here.)

The Best Movies You May Have Never Seen (Sept 2015)

Have you ever finished watching a movie and found yourself wondering why it wasn't better known? Over the coming months, we want to highlight some of these "hidden gems" of classic cinema as part of a regular feature called The Best Movies You May Have Never Seen. To help us with this endeavor, we will ask some of our favorite fellow film bloggers to review one of their favorite lesser-known films. This month, our guest bloggers are Caftan Woman, Yvette from in so many words..., and John Greco from Twenty Four Frames.

Out of the Blue (1947)   (reviewed by Caftan Woman)

The story of 1947's Out of the Blue by Laura author Vera Caspary concerns a group of Greenwich Village apartment neighbours, bedeviled by the heat and frightened by the news of a serial killer at large. A put-upon husband steps out on his nagging wife and finds himself the prime suspect in a murder and with a body to hide. Prime noir territory, wouldn't you say? This story, however, is played for laughs and the director, Leigh Jason, was noted for such comedy-mystery stories as exemplified by The Mad Miss Manton (Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda), Wise Girl (Miriam Hopkins, Ray Milland) and Dangerous Blondes (Evelyn Keyes, Allyn Joslyn).

Nothing that happens in the apartment complex goes unnoticed by a couple of maiden ladies played by Elizabeth Patterson (Intruder in the Dust) and Julia Dean (The Curse of the Cat People).  From the vantage point of their terrace, they can focus all their attention on the goings-on on the terraces of the 10th floor. One is occupied by a Bohemian playboy artist David Gelleo played by Turhan Bey (Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves) and his prize-winning German Shepherd, Rabelais, played by Flame.  His next door neighbours are Arthur and Mae Earthleigh.  The hapless Arthur is completely under the thumb of the domineering Mae.  Heartthrob George Brent (My Reputation) plays Arthur and glamourous Carole Landis (I Wake Up Screaming) is the unpleasant spouse.

Two more of Hollywood's glamourous leading ladies are thrown into the mix when debutante Deborah Tyler played by Virginia Mayo (White Heat) proposes to our artist friend that his Rabelais would be a perfect match for her own prize-winning Shepherd. Her proposition gives David other ideas, more human in nature. David is not the only one with romance on his mind. Mae Earthleigh is out of town for the weekend and Arthur is on the loose and ready to howl. At a local tavern, he meets professional interior decorator and amateur souse Olive Jensen played by Ann Dvorak (Three on a Match). Arthur flirts with Olive. Arthur is not very good at flirting, but Olive thinks he's cute and happily returns to his abode where disapproving pictures of Mae squelch any starry-eyed notions.

George Brent and Carole Landis.

The sorts of mishaps that only happen in screwball comedies start happening to Arthur Earthleigh. He thinks he has gotten rid of Olive, but she is passed out in the guest room. Olive had told Arthur about her bad ticker and her propensity for "popping off", but Arthur does not realize the truth of her statement.  An unconscious Olive appears to Arthur to be a dead Olive. He places the body on David's terrace, more in fear of Mae than of any official condemnation. Arthur's action compounds an ongoing feud with David over Rabelais. In the midst of his burgeoning romance with Deborah, David uses Olive in a scheme to get even with Arthur. Olive is quite amenable to David's plans, after all, she gave Arthur the best years of her life!

By now you have the idea that our leading actors are playing characters well removed from their usual fare and carrying it off beautifully: Turhan Bey a sophisticate, Carole Landis a nag and Virginia Mayo the society gal. Mayo, who played her fair share of molls and dames is absolutely adorable in a scene where her dainty deb pretends to be a crook. George Brent is a riot as a man buffeted by fate. He takes one step forward in ill-conceived shenanigans and always winds up two steps back. Ann Dvorak takes the comedy crown as Olive Jenson.  Olive has no impulse control whatsoever and her stream-of-consciousness ramblings are the highlight of a very funny screenplay.

The comedy-mystery is a difficult sub-genre to pull off and this early Eagle-Lion release has everything it needs to be as memorable a screwball classic as any big name studio product with its very funny script and top-notch performances.

A New Leaf (1971)   (reviewed by in so many words...)

A New Leaf is a film of the 70s, but one of my favorites of any era--a romantic comedy featuring a splendid cast of the sort you just can’t find anymore. Henry Graham is a spoiled dilettante, obnoxious, pompous and an egocentric snob of the worst sort--in the role, Walter Matthau is perfection. He plays a man who cares for nothing but his own comfort. Fastidious to the nth degree, every whim attended to by his butler/valet, Henry lives a sybaritic lifestyle in a luxurious Manhattan apartment--until the day he is informed that he no longer has any money. Not heeding his banker’s advice, Henry has been living on the capital and not on the interest, and you know how that goes.

Elaine May and Walter Matthau.

Henry must then figure out a way to get his hands on a fortune so he can continue to live in the style to which he has become accustomed. Since, perish the thought, he can hardly be expected to get a job, another way must be found to replenish the coffers. For the misogynistic Henry, marriage offers little attraction, so marriage to an heiress or wealthy widow seems the only answer to his predicament. After several hilarious failed attempts to plunge into the 70s dating game, Henry meets Henrietta Lowell--played to equal perfection by Elaine May (who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film), a fabulously wealthy klutz and professor of botany (hence the film’s title). Henrietta is a hapless social disaster, blithefully unaware of her own inadequacies, concerned only with her botanical research. She lives alone in a huge mansion ignored by a staff of corrupt servants who barely bother with their duties and hold their mistress in contempt.

After a whirlwind courtship, Henry and Henrietta marry, while he plots to arrange for a convenient accident to befall his bride on their honeymoon.

This is a very special movie with a weird charm all its own. I’ve never forgotten it or the wonderful ending. Walter Matthau is superb; I would almost say he was born to play Henry. And Elaine May holds her own opposite Matthau, not an easy task. I’ve always wished there had been some sort of sequel.

Blue Collar (1978)   (reviewed by Twenty Four Frames)

With 1978’s Blue Collar, Paul Schrader made his directorial debut. It was based on a screenplay he co-wrote with his brother, Leonard. The result was one of the bleakest, pessimistic films to come out of Hollywood since Taxi Driver, also penned by Schrader. Fatalistic, noirish, reflecting a working class trapped, kept down in its place with no escape.

It’s the story of three Detroit auto workers, close friends Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto. Always in debt, never able to get ahead, they hatch a plan to rob the safe of corrupt union officials. It turned out to only contain $600. However, they also find a book filled with transactions on shady illegal deals. With the book in their possession, the three men take their plan one step further--to blackmail the union. The union leaders don't scare easy. For them, it time to crush these men, their friendship and their lives.

Blue Collar is the story of the have and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless. Corrupt unions doing whatever possible to keep the working man in their place. A system beating you down, destroying your hopes, dreams and even your decency. In the freeze frame ending with Pryor and Keitel ready to tear into each other, we hear in voiceover Yaphet Kotto say: "They pit the lifers against the new boys, the young against the old, the black against the white, everything they do is to keep us in our place."

Richard Pryor as Zeke.

With Jack Nitzsche's bluesy song, "Hard Workin' Man" contributing to the down and out atmosphere, we see the auto plant as a hellish furnace, allegorically, a dead end. The workers are robotic, jumping at every command; move faster, tighten this piece up, straighten that piece, get it right this time. The only one with the guts to complain is Richard Pryor’s Zeke. In the end though, Zeke sells out to the man. They make him a union representative. One would have expected it to be Keitel’s Jerry, as he’s the weakest. Yaphet Kotto’s Smokey is the brains of the threesome and the most threatening to the union leaders. Subsequently, Smokey has to be eliminated. With Zeke selling out and Smokey dead, it leaves Jerry out in the cold.  Zeke offers him a buy in with a position in the union. He refuses. Jerry knows they cannot and will not leave him alone. He’s trapped.

The union corruption theme is reminiscent of Kazan's On the Waterfront. It reflects how little has changed in the twenty-five years or so between the two films. Vincent Canby in his review called Blue Collar "a poor man's On the Waterfront...a movie that often simply--sometimes primitively--describes corruption in a Detroit auto workers' local without ever making the corruption a matter of conscience. Corruption is there. It exists. It's part of the system."  Schrader makes it all seem so inevitable that you want to scream "power to the people!"