A KILLER IN THE FAMILY (TV MOVIE)

Year: 1983 Cast: Robert Mitchum, James Spader, Lance Kerwin, Eric Stoltz rates: **

Google a picture of the real life sons after they were arrested... Look at their hard, calloused faces, edgy, mean, deadly... Then watch as little-dipper eyed Lance Kerwin and docile Eric Stolz play the whining, kindhearted, manipulated, vulnerable, blue-eyed sons of the father they broke out of the jail... A father who kills an entire family including a small child...

Anyhow, if KILLER IN THE FAMILY were meaner and colder, like the real life Tison family, who were rampaging white trash serial killers throughout Arizona, unlike especially the law student son played by James Spader, supposedly wanting to kill his father while on the road, then it'd be more realistic and more an exploitation piece instead of a TV-movie that's not sure who exactly the bad guys are... 

Much of the blame is laid on the dad's convict friend. Sadly, this road movie could have been really good, but Robert Mitchum was far too old to play a man with sons that could be his grandchildren... With a melting face, he has one of those ballooned stomachs that looks hard as steel from drinking and he can hardly move his old bones... Miscast, to say the least... Again, Google the real Gary Tison and see the empty shell of a human being, around forty-years old and dead to life, dead to the world...

The lawyers of his sons/crime-spree partners must have made this TV-movie to keep them from spending too much time there, despite winding up on Death Row (before given life sentences instead, because of their age). They never seem to have anything to do with the murders or anything else, pretty much, short of the opening breakout, which seemed more daring than anything else. 

Either way, while not terrible and sometimes entertaining, this was a missed opportunity... Reminds one of the horrible Death of a Centerfold TV-movie, that was soon trumped by the incredible theatrical Star 80... Too bad nothing came out to straighten out this crooked mess... There's a Straight-to-Video job starring Robert Patrick from 2017, but... The best thing to come out of this was the Warner Archives DVD with the original blue outlined cover; a collector's edition but, sadly, what's inside there is merely a forgotten curio, for good reason.

OUT OF THE PAST

year: 1947
rating: **

Jacques Tourneur is a personal favorite director, but not because of OUT OF THE PAST, considered his very best work for those who didn't pay close attention to the unique, intricate details of CAT PEOPLE, THE LEOPARD MAN, CANYON PASSAGE or CURSE OF THE DEMON...

Those movies had tiers to climb, and obstacles to cross. This movie, like Robert Mitchum's character, sleepwalks from scene to scene where everything is just too easy: Find the pretty girl who stole Kirk Douglas's money. No problem. She's in Mexico and in a matter of scenes she's found, and quickly swept off her feet. After all, Mitchum is handsome and Jane Greer's really pretty. But this is a hollow, mannequin romance, and there have been more intriguing, risque affairs on daytime soaps. Not even Tourneur's direction rises above the dull script, so full of contrived, forced-quotable one-liners, there's hardly a complete sentence uttered: it's a random collection of snapshots that aren't even postcards.

GOING HOME

title: GOING HOME

year: 1971

cast: Robert Mitchum, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Kirkland

rating: ***

This film centering on a war hero, Robert Mitchum, who violently murders his wife witnessed by his four-year-old son, who's now grown-up in the form of brooding rebel Jan-Michael Vincent, is passably entertaining fare. Mitchum lives with young trailertrash girlfriend Brenda Vaccaro, attempting to steal every scene while Jan-Michael, having just returned home, seems either bent on revenge or forgiveness for his aged yet still tough pop as they hang out bowling and drinking: making up for lost time. The best moments involve jarring situations that seem vividly real but aren't really happening (seen in Vincent's mind) (one being Mitchum destroying a pick-up-truck with a tire iron) or flashbacks viewed in present-time locations ala IN COLD BLOOD. It's an easy-to-watch character-study without much character-development, neither Mitchum or Vincent becoming fully realized or their past fitfully resolved, but it's nice seeing the two steely mavericks together either way.

THE WRATH OF GOD

title: THE WRATH OF GOD

year: 1972

cast: Robert Mitchum, Ken Hutchison, Victor Buono, John Colicos, Frank Langella, Rita Hayworth, Paula Pritchett

director: Ralph Nelson

rating: ***

This Sam Peckinpah meets Sergio Leone in this 1920s-era anti-Western with a confident young Irish rogue (STRAW DOGS's Ken Hutchison) smuggling alcohol that turns out to be guns in the badlands of Mexico. He's then forced to join with a boozy priest (Robert Mitchum, old yet still handsome, not having reached his praying mantis stage) and the con-man who set him up (Victor Buono) to kill the dictator of a small town. The mini-adventures leading to the prolonged final act: consisting of car chases, shootouts, and a near-death experience with a firing squad make a solid action/adventure with some humor thrown in (although constant reminders of Mitchum's priest being not-so-holy gets old). When the trio reach their destination, and plot to kill target-at-hand Frank Langella, it's a sluggish trail with way too much dialog. Although things pick up again in a WILD BUNCH style climax via machine-guns and slow-motion deaths. Noteworthy as Rita Hayworth's final performance as Langella's passive mother.