The Black Marble [dir. Harold Becker]

Harold Becker's The Black Marble - adapted by author and former LAPD detective Joseph Wambaugh from his own novel - is an odd movie experience in terms of tonal consistency. Sometimes it wants to be a screwball comedy, and at other times it steps into significantly bleaker territory. That said, the film has charms that keep you engaged even through its issues.

Robert Foxworth is AA Valnikov, a Hollywood precinct cop with Russian roots. At the beginning of the film, he staggers drunk into a church service and ends up snapping his cuffs on his own crotch. His previous partner is dead and he has recurring nightmares of a skinned rabbit; clearly, Valnikov is a man with problems.

This being 1980, the police department doesn't believe in recommending him for psychiatric counseling (hey, a burnt out cop with a service firearm - what could go wrong?). Instead they think it'd be a great idea to saddle Valnikov with a new partner, hard-nosed career policewoman Natalie Zimmerman (Paula Prentiss, channeling Margot Kidder's Lois Lane brassiness). Zimmerman's objections are pooh-poohed away with disturbing insensitivity, and even the script treats her as a bit of a joke. Apparently, all Mr. Valniknov needs to get over what's eating him inside is to pow-wow with the new colleague and introduce her to his borscht-serving family, until they inevitably fall in love, courtesy an extended nightcap session. It's a problematic concept for me, although Foxworth's performance and his chemistry with Prentiss are persuasive. He has a nuanced take on Valnikov - even in his frequently drunk state V is always polite, not the renegade asshole Dirty Harry stereotype.

Then we have everyone's favorite character actor Harry Dean Stanton as Skinner (a reference to the rabbit in V's nightmare?). Skinner is a pet store / shelter veterinarian who schemes to kidnap a rich girl's miniature Schnauzer for ransom to pay his massive gambling debts. Only, it turns out his victim Madeline (Barbara Babcock) may not be so rich as he imagines - she just happens to live in a large Hollywood home, and struggles to pay her bills. There's an engaging banter between the two, as Skinner tries to assert a tough guy demeanor he cannot truly embody, and she pleads her financial woes to him. It's funny till the dog loses an ear, and then I couldn't laugh at it anymore (even though the injury is only implied, and we later see the animal unharmed, apart from a bandage covering the ear).

In a meeting where the intimacy certainly crosses the line for a professional interview, softhearted Valnikov vows to find Madeline's dog. Zimmerman's jealousy is aroused by his show of concern, even if she has a steady boyfriend, as she frequently reminds V...and herself. She gives vent to it by rolling her eyes and emitting disparaging remarks to the victim about the fuss raised for a dog. You can tell that sensitivity training wasn't big for the Hollywood PD, at least in 1980.

But if there are significant tonal discrepancies, the film also has some endearing quirks. Stanton's Skinner is a layered character - he's not an evil man, he's just desperate. The climax where Valnikov goes after Skinner is probably one of the more unique action movie showdowns, taking place in the pet shelter. Skinner's comeuppance in a way mirrors Valnikov's  handcuff accident at the start.

A young James Woods has a two-scene appearance as a street musician.

 

A few words on the blu-ray from Kino Lorber:

The transfer comes off a recent 4K restoration and the bulk of it looks very strong, with robust colors and fine grain resolution. Some shots are softer, but it may be a product of the original shoot. The dialog and Maurice Jarre's romantic score have decent presence in the DTS-HDMA 2.0 track, but I still had to use the optional subs to get some of the slang and Foxworth's mumbled dialog. The not quite plentiful extras consist mainly of a director's commentary and the feature trailer.

The Pope's Exorcist [dir. Julius Avery]

After I saw the trailer for The Pope's Exorcist (TPE), I was expecting a campy knockoff of William Friedkin's influential possession shocker The Exorcist - In short, I wasn't in for the scares, I was in for the laughs. This turned out true in most aspects. Star Russel Crowe complements his stocky frame with a heavy Italian accent to play the titular clergyman Gabriele Amorth. The character is based on an actual person, himself a colorful character with such charming opinions as, “Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter”. Amorth was chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, whose Bishop is the Pope himself. As per his own statements, Amorth performed tens of thousands of exorcisms, a claim that has been disputed. I'm thinking it might have been more interesting to see a biopic of the man himself (Friedkin, no less, covered an exorcism by Amorth in 2017, in a documentary called The Devil and Father Amorth, which received very tepid reviews). But TPE takes the same route as The Conjuring series did with Ed and Lorraine Warren, assuming Amorth's claims to be (ha!) gospel truth.

In a hilarious prologue, Amorth draws a demon inside a pig, whose head is then blown off with a shotgun. He is presented as a kind of papal James Bond, traveling across countries on missions (pun unintended): Of course, instead of an Ashton Matin our padre rides a swishy Lambretta and his choice of poison is a doppio espresso, stirred not shaken. Amorth is called in by M...erm, the Pope (Franco 'Django' Nero) to deal with a dangerous new case. This time it's an American family in which the widowed mother (Alex Essoe) with her kids travels to her husband's sole legacy, which is - you can't top this for absurdity - a disused Abbey in Spain.

The kids (Laurel Marsden and Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) are sulky smart-asses to start with, but things get worse when the young son starts to looks funny, talk in other voices and (naughty, naughty) cops a feel of mommy's boobs. Perfunctory visits to neurologists and counselors serve no purpose (they never do in these films). The local priest (Daniel Zovatto), after he is sent crashing out the boy's door, manages to hotline Rome, and Amorth rides in.

The rest of the film is a back and forth between Amorth and the demon (with Zovatto's priest taking the Jason Miller part from The Exorcist). It mixes the standard exorcism circus show with preposterous allusions to how the Spanish Inquisition (which in reality led to the death of thousands of people, and torture/incarceration of scores more) was basically the brainchild of a possessed priest, giving the church a clean chit. Still, the real Amorth professed that Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were the product of demonic possession, so this might be "true to source".

While not as much of a LOL-fest as I had hoped, TPE has sufficient hilariously absurd material to be a decent time-pass watch for a weekend movie night. Crowe seems aware of the camp quotient and his performance reflects the tongue-in-cheek. I did wish Franco Nero had also got in some of the action. Maybe Pope Django could have come in at the climax with a demon-slaying gatling gun quipping at the demon "Go back to Hell!"