"M*A*S*H" MEDICINAL

          You'd never know it to watch the film, but Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould went behind the director's back and tried to get him fired because they thought he was crazy, and they didn't want this crazy man to ruin their film careers.
          The director with the supposedly questionable mental health was Robert Altman. What made the stars think the director was crazy was the totally innovative way that he filmed his outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, hilarious anti-authoritarian masterpiece, M*A*S*H (1970).
          Writer Ring Lardner, Jr., rightly recognized the quality of the book by Richard Hooker. From his interest, and his screenplay, the project came into the hands of Altman, who then proceeded to film an improvisation of that screenplay. Which infuriated Lardner. It's this improv-style which was so original that cast members literally feared for Altman's sanity, and mostly for their careers.
          But the end result proved that Altman's method was totally right. Everyone knew their characters so well from the script that they were able to discard it and give a freer, more natural expression with no one ever knowing exactly what Altman was filming or keeping. People talk over each other. There's a general murmur of background noise. The result is a non-linear counterculture victory, a slam-dunk against blind conformity for the ages.
          The time, 1951. The place, Korea. (Set in Korea, yes, but the subtext at times was the military action taking place in Vietnam.) At the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, two indispensable military surgeons retain their sanity, in the midst of so much opposite, with a stringent regimen of martinis, nurses, golf, bathrobes, Hawaiian shirts and poker. The surgeons are captains Hawkeye Pierce (Sutherland) and "Trapper" John McIntyre (Gould). When they're not sewing up kids sent back from the front line, they're taking apart a couple of majors who take themselves too seriously.
          Because theirs is a corrupting influence, the brilliant surgeons relentlessly ride the village idiot, Frank Burns (Duvall), who unforgivably reads aloud from the Bible right in front of decent people trying to get loaded.
          Burns' attractive yet hopelessly square fraulein friend Margaret Houlihan (Kellerman) sees beady eye-to beady eye with him at all times mid-goosestep, which is just the sort of thing to put Hawkeye right off his dinner. Bummer, too, because he otherwise would have invited her back to his tent, and she "might possibly have come."
          Twentieth Century Fox studio heads had zero idea the hit on their hands. No awareness at all. They were ready to scrap it. Until, that is, they saw the reaction from a preview audience. The audience didn't just love it, they went totally crazy for it! So then the studio scrambled to start taking credit.
          The film, which launched several acting careers and spawned into one of the best shows ever on TV, even won an Academy Award. And the Oscar went to...Ring Lardner, Jr.
          For the script they eventually didn't even use.



M*A*S*H
Starring Donald Sutherland,
Elliott Gould,
Sally Kellerman,
Robert Duvall,
Tom Skerrit,
Gary Burghoff,
Roger Bowen,
Jo Ann Pflug
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Ring Lardner, Jr.
Based on the book by Richard Hooker
Runtime 116 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT

ORIGINAL "VILLAGE" DAMNED GOOD

                    One fine day in a rural English village, without any warning, all the animals and people suddenly collapse. The farmer in his tractor, slumped over the wheel, spins in slow wide circles till the tractor hits a tree. And even then he doesn't budge. No one does. Not even George Sanders, who had starred in a string of B-grade amateur detective flicks a generation earlier before passing the baton to his younger brother.
          After a couple hours of utter insensibility, Sanders manages to haul his genteel carcass up from the floor, rather as though he'd just been sleeping one off curled up with the dog. "What an extraordinary thing to do," he says, trying to cover up to his wife who caught him fair and square.
          Soon, however, the whole village learns that everyone there went lights out at the same time and stayed that way for a few hours. What an extraordinary thing indeed. Gradually, they also learn something further: all the women of child-bearing age have now become pregnant. Some of whom, presumably just like George Sanders' wife, have never had sex in their lives.
          All the babies gestate at an accelerated rate, each one a marvel of development. When they are born, all have blonde hair, arresting eyes, and are uniformly in possession of remarkable intelligence. Intellectual powers so vast, these kids can make people do things without ever saying a word.
          Whenever someone tries to hurt them, they know it in advance. They don't have to say a thing. Those who would try to hurt them cannot help but stop. And receive a stringent lesson in the only thing that matters to Midwich's most gifted young minds: the only thing they want is to be left alone.
          Village of the Damned (1960) is a gem of a picture with a story which may seem familiar even to those who've never seen it. Rod Serling sure did. One of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, "It's a Good Life," stars Billy Mumy as a creepy kid who can read people's minds and do anything he wants.
          Serling's take focuses on the problems of an "overly permissive" society allowing children to run rampant. But the original film from which he was so permissively allowed to directly lift comes from a different place entirely. The director, Wolf Rilla, was born in Berlin. When Adolf Hitler was suckering Germany, Rilla's father, who was Jewish, moved the family to England. So the real problem in the story isn't young people on the brink of peace, love, and rock n' roll. The real problem is blonde inhuman aliens who think that they're superior.
          Re-made not as well in 1995 by John Carpenter, and re-made even more not as well as a television series in 2017, Village of the Damned inexorably demands to be seen, heard, and obeyed.



VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED
Starring George Sanders,
Barbara Shelley,
Michael Gwynn,
Laurence Naismith,
Martin Stephens
Directed by Wolf Rilla
Written by Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla, Ronald Kinnoch
Based on the novel by John Wyndham



Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT