Last night's movie was "The Rebel Set"(1959), a Cormanesque crime caper from Gene Fowler Jr., the director of "I Was a Teenage Werewolf". The Chief from "Get Smart" stars as "Mr. Tucker", the shady but brilliant owner of a beatnik coffee house in downtown Los Angeles. Mr. Tucker wears a glued-on hipster beard to blend in with his patrons. He quotes Shakespeare, plays chess, and, for entertainment, he has a pretentious but ultra sincere and self-absorbed poet reading his own material in a Stentorian voice.
Underneath the facade, he's a crook running a stolen watch ring, operated by "Sidney Horner" (Ned Glass), a skinny, bald older guy with a rubber face. Tucker's getting tired of the nickel and dime stuff though, so over a game of chess he lays out to Horner his plan to steal a million dollars. Since everything in the cafe is explained in terms of art, Tucker calls this robbery his "masterpiece". It will take place in Chicago. To carry it out, he hires three beatniks: one actor, one writer, and one rich kid dropout - a spoiled brat who went to military school, providing his only worth as a sniper.
Two of the three show up with Van Dyke beards. one has a brush mustache. Tucker tells them to make themselves more presentable: "Look like you can afford the train tickets," which he will provide, to take them to Chi-town where the Brinks job will be pulled off (it's filmed in the the L.A. mountains, lol; Chicago is flat). The actor, "John Mapes" (Greg Palmer), who looks too "1950s slick" to be a beatnik, has a wife who's tired of living poor. She wants him to give up his dream, but, knowing about the million dollar opportunity, he asks her for one more shot, lying about his reason for leaving town. "I'm going to Chicago for an audition." When she says, "Oh, that's great Honey! I'll come along," complications arise.
The best part of the movie is the heist itself, which is very inventive (and you've gotta love those Chicago canyons). Wait til you see how the robbers break down their disguises, and their vehicle, when it's time to make their getaway. The first twenty minutes is used mostly to project hipster Coffee House atmosphere, and could be trimmed by three to five minutes, and the end, with its too-long foot chase through the Union Station train yards, could stand the same. Of course, once they've got the million bucks, there is competition between the thieves. and it comes down, as it always does, to a process of elimination where two guys are fighting for the dough at the end. But then John Mapes, the actor, does something totally unexpected, something you'd never expect a criminal to do. and the chase through the train yard resumes.
An Allied Artists B-movie, the script puts "The Rebel Set" a cut above average, even with the too-long beginning and end. A trim to 64 minutes instead of 72 would've earned this one Two Huge Thumbs, but even so, its close. Let's give it Two Bigs, then, with a very high recommendation, taking into consideration the context, that's it's a Roger Corman-style late fifties hipster pic, but it also has excellent crime film direction, with suspense, and the Brinks job itself is classic. The picture is very good. ////
The previous night, we had the somewhat mis-titled "The Girl from Scotland Yard" (pron., 1937) , which more appropriately would be called "The Reporter from New York", as intrepid scribe "Derrick Holt" (Robert Baldwin) gets most of the screen time for the first 40 minutes. As the movie opens, another Mabusian Madman, bent on world destruction (which is different than desiring world domination), is sinking British battleships, blowing up bridges, crashing airplanes: the usual, and, as usual, the authorities don't know who he is or how he's doing it. The only thing they're sure of it that it's an indivigible, and not a group or a country.
Scotland Yard (pron.) sends out "Linda Beech" (Karen Morley, whose American accent gets in the way of her English character but who is very good in the role). At the same time, hotshot reporter Holt is sent by his newspaper to England to cover the story. He flies to New York in a Ford Trimotor (my Dad's claim to fame when he was nine years old), then across the Atlantic by ship, on which he meets "Lady Lavering" (Katherine Alexander) a gossipy socialite who pumps him for info about his assignment. Later, we find out she's also from The Yard, and undercover, just playing dumb, when in fact she's anything but. She's working in tandem with Beech, who will reappear later.
When reporter Holt gets to France, he receives a telegram from an old flame (Agnes Anderson) who asks him to look into the disappearance of her husband. Though busy with his assignment, he cant turn her down, and figures the husband's disappearance may be related to all the mayhem and destruction. His search leads him to a wax museum, where he finds hubby shot and dying. He utters one word before expiring: "Exile"
Gendarmes storm the joint and bust Derrick Holt, but while he's clearly being framed for murder, he's got a legit alibi: he was at a party thrown by "Franz Jorg" (Eduardo Cianelli) a wealthy industrialist. All the while, Linda Beech has been working behind the scenes, and it turns out , in the last twenty minutes when the film turns into a Sci-Fi and aerial exhibition, that Jorg is a British expat Mad Scientist, who's developed a Death Ray. He was exiled by England for selling secrets to the enemy in WW1, and has identified with Napoleon Bona (Part One) (but not Part Two) ever since. Now he's a man without a country and wants payback, which is why he's trying to destroy England. The last ten minutes of the movie features a dogfight, ala "Wings", pitting Linda Beech as the pilot (with Holt in the back seat) against Franz Jorg and his Death Ray. In addition to blasting her out of the sky, he's also trying to stop the coronation of King Edward, timely viewing indeed. This movie is notable for other political reasons, as actress Karen Morley (who also starred in "Scarface" w/Paul Muni) was blacklisted. She claimed to have been far left but not a commie (as if there's a difference). Agnes Anderson, who plays Holt's old flame, was married to Budd Schulberg, who wrote "On the Freaking Waterfront", and who - like Elia Kazan - named names. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Girl from Scotland Yard". Like many 30's pictures, there's no soundtrack, which makes for a static production, but otherwise it's well written and carried out. The picture is good, but not great. Regarding HUAC, and artists like Schulberg, Kazan and others, the thing was that there really were commies in Hollywood, in positions of high influence, which could have helped espionage efforts. So while HUAC was evil in some respects, and careers were indeed destroyed, the suspicion was not entirely unfounded of subversive communism at work. Far left and far right are the same thing. ////
Now then: one of the more unusual appearances during The Event of September 1989, was Dennis's "drive-up" at 9032, immediately following The Attack of the Ex-Neighbors, which in itself was, for years, nearly inexplicable (it will be examined at length in the book). Dennis drove up in their wake, in his little brown Toyota, and he had a bag with him, which contained a pair of handcuffs and a starter pistol. I was standing on the corner, after watching my parents get assaulted by the now awesomely deceased Ray Tippo, the father of my first girlfriend. Ray was about 6' 3" and likely 225lbs at least, a very big man and a complete POS. Tough guy, picking on my Mom and Dad. Dennis drove up almost on cue, after Ray and the ex-neighbors were done with their attack, and on a very strange side note, a policewoman drove by not long after, in an LAPD squad car, making sure everyone was "playing nice". She actually said that. My neighbor Roy, who was 87 at the time, also drove by and asked what was going on. Eugene Carpenter, who either already is, or will soon be, burning in the fiery flames along with Ray, told Roy to "mind your own business, old man.". The ex-neighbors ultimately left (after something else went down that is too long to detail here), but within five minutes or less, Dennis drove up. It was like the whole thing was choreographed. He got out of his car with his bag, which was like a small gym or medical bag. He unzipped it, and approached me. I was in a two-week state of shock, in very poor condition, and he said, "Sorry about this, but if I don't do it, they're gonna kill me." Then he described what he "had to do". In another side note, Dennis was the third person to handcuff me thus far in The Event, the first two being the Security Thug at Concord Square, then Jared Rappaoport.
Dennis showed me his gun, which he explained was a starter's pistol, like the kind used in track meets, or on movie sets, which is likely where he got it. He showed it to me and said, "See, it only fires blanks". He then explained what he "had" to do, so that "they" wouldn't "kill" him. "I'm gonna put these cuffs on you, then get down on your knees because I'm supposed to shoot you in the back of the head like I'm killing you. It won't hurt, but you might feel some pressure" (from the air burst). Apparently what he "had to do", was to shoot me in the back of the head (my crown), like an execution-style assassination, and he proceeded to do just that, after putting the cuffs on me. "Just go along with it," he said. I was in a state of shock and had no idea what was happening for the past rwo weeks in my life, so I did as he told me. I knelt, he pointed the gun at the back of my head, it went "bang"! and Dennis was wrong; I felt more than "a little pressure". It hurt. I don't know if there was a wad of paper inside, like with John Eric Hexum or Brandon Lee, but it hurt, and it made my scalp bleed.
The takeaway point here, is that it seemed to be a piece of theater, a "mock execution" of me, and if "they" were gonna "kill" Dennis if he didn't carry it out, then it stands to reason that "they" were watching from somewhere nearby, to make sure he carried out his orders. So, who the hell were "they"? Gary Patterson and company? And if Dennis didn't do as he was told, were "they" literally going to kill him, or would he get mock executed, too? Or, was he supposed to really shoot me with a real gun? But if I didn't die, what good would it do? No, it seemed like theater, and of course there were other elements of The Event that seemed like theater, also. We'll examine those in the book, but the "main events", like the Rappaport kidnapping, were very freaking real.
So why did Dennis do what he did, and who put him up to it? Your guess is as good as mine. He wouldn't have done it if he wasn't scared, so whoever "they" were, they must have threatened him.
In 1997, shortly after I moved in with my Mom, I ran into Dennis and his then-wife Kim at the coffee-cup shaped restaurant on Reseda Bl. I was very determined in those days, and I pulled no punches. Upon seeing Dennis and Kim, I started right in: "Hey Dennis, do you remember the time you pulled up in front of my house in 1989, and you handcuffed me and shot me in the back of the head with a starter pistol? Or the other time, when you drove me up to Gary Patterson's house in the Tujunga hills?"
Dennis's reponse: "Why don't you ask David Friedman?" Then he said, "Let's go, Kim."
In 2006, when I was writing the first edition of "What Happened in Northridge," I ran into Dennis again, by chance, on a CSUN walk. I was coming up past the music building, and there he was, roller blading by the bookstore. I saw him and walked over. After some chitchat, I asked him again, in a less confrontational way. "Y'know, Dennis, I'm writing this book about what happened to me in 1989. I know I've asked you this before, but do you remember a day, it was really crazy, when a some neighbors who used to live on Rathburn, like Ray Tippo and Gene Carpenter, attacked my parents on our front lawn, and then after they left, you drove up. And you put handcuffs on me, and you told me to kneel down and then you shot me in the head with a starter pistol. Do you remember that?"
Dennis wouldn't look at me as I recited this. He kept skating, in a circle, but when I finished my questions, he did respond. Withouut looking up, he said "Seems like a dream."
And with that statement, he became only the third person to even semi-acknowledge that something had happened to us in 1989, with me at the center of it. Lillian was the second to semi-acknowledge, in December 1994, when I spoke to her on the phone and said, "Something really weird is going on, it's like something from the X-Files." She responded by saying, "Yeah, I know what you mean, but you've gotta watch what you say." Kelly was the first. When she and Terry were moving out (as fast as they could pack their stuff) in June 1994, I asked her what was going on, and she said, "You know, Adam, how sometimes, when a situation is bigger than you are, that you just have to blow it off? This is one of those situations. You should blow it off, 'cause you can't do anything about it." As Kelly was not involved in The Event, I've assumed she got her info either from Terry, or (more likely) Dave Small.
But those three statements are the only "semi" acknowledgements (and also my CIA Glomars) that 1989 happened. But what makes Dennis's statement interesting is that it describes the hallucinatory, dreamlike quality of the memories, to those who haven't examined them. In my case, that phenomenon is explained by medically-induced, coma-state amnesia. But what about Dennis? I doubt he spent 10 days getting brainwashed at Northridge Hospital, so why did it "seem like a dream" to him? I believe some, like Lillian, had no amnesia whatsoever. Lilly always knew everything that happened, and was no doubt "talked to" to make sure she said nothing.
I was given the Complete Amnesia Treatment, while others, like Dennis, seem to have been given a "partial" or Quickie Job. They have this "dreamlike" quality to their memories, which indicates some degree of deliberate memory-tampering, and which may have been done at Howard Johnson's, and may have been the purpose for corralling us there that day.
The things can be done with drugs, hypnosis, electronic tones, headphone tapes and other techniques would make your head spin. But let's return to our question: who were "they", and were they really going to kill Dennis if he didn't shoot me with his starter pistol? Let's ponder that for tonight's homework. ////
My blogging music was "Phenomenon" by UFO, and a Swedish Jimi Concert on Youtube. My late night is Handel's Rodilindo Opera. I hope you had a nice Saturday and I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxo :):)
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