Remember when movies used to be fun and an obsessive escape from all the goings on around you. You know… a place you could go for a couple of hours and forget about things for a while? Although Hollywood has put out a couple of noteworthy and fun films like ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ here and there in the last couple of years, it’s still a rarity thanks to a woke fueled agenda that seems to have become mandatory in anything Hollywood releases. The good news is that the fans are not buying into it anymore, are bored, and are turning elsewhere or even to the past to find their entertainment. With abysmal sales at the box office and a distaste for formulaic sequels and an identity politics agenda that demonizes a majority of their fanbase, Hollywood is pushing their fans to turn to a time when going to the movies was all about the escape and not a reminder of what was going on right outside their doors. The past is where I found one such diamond in the rough called ‘Undertow’ from 1949. A classic film noir murder mystery, filled with a magical film watching experience lost on a lot of film makers today. Film makers, that care more about checking off boxes and not offending everyone, than just making quality entertainment.
‘Undertow’ is an Example of What’s Missing in Hollywood Today
Long gone are the days of the 1980’s when you were almost guaranteed a quality popcorn flick at every release, or maybe a great cop movie from the 1970’s like any Dirty Harry movie, ‘The French Connection’, or ‘The Seven-Ups’, campy beach romps from the 1960’s like ‘Beach Blanket Bingo’ and ‘Clambake’, awesome monster and sci-if flicks from the 1950’s like the ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ or ‘War of the Worlds’, or the grandeur of film noir from greats like ‘Casablanca’ or ‘Laura’. These days, new releases are boringly formulaic, preach to us, or both, and that has been a turn off for fans. Hollywood, unfortunately, has gone the way the comic book industry has for example, where a political preachy agenda supersedes story, forcing core fans to buy comic books from the past where story was king, and a political agenda was unheard of. So goes the same for our movie choices. I find myself more and more going to my media collections to escape for a couple of hours, or watching long forgotten or hidden gems that are now in the public domain, and have been largely forgotten for their importance to film making and storytelling. One such hidden gem, which I found by accident on YouTube, was called ‘Undertow’. Like many movies of its genre, ‘Undertow’ was like finding a diamond in a coal mine. It had murder, it had mystery and suspense, it had action, and it had romance. Was it a perfect movie? Not at all…but it was pure unadulterated fun and it was refreshing. ‘Undertow’ is just another example among many, of how Hollywood used to produce movies that focused on character and storytelling, rather than quantity and agenda.
Related: Johnny O’Clock
‘Undertow’ is Pure Escapism at it’s Best
’Undertow’ is a 1949 film noir directed by William Castle(House on Haunted Hill, Lady from Shanghai, Rosemary’s Baby), written by Arthur T. Horman(Buck Privates, Conflict), and starring Scott Brady(He Walked by Night, The Model and the Marriage Broker)and the beautiful Peggy Dow(Harvey, You Can Never Tell), and is exactly one of these hidden gems that I never knew existed. Is it one of the best movies of the film noir genre ever made? No. But it has a character and determination to compare itself to the greats of that genre. It delivers the same grit as ‘Johnny O’Clock’(if you haven’t seen I highly recommend), and the “gotcha” flair of a ‘Laura’. It was beautifully shot, with some great cinematography from Irving Glassberg(The Bend of the River, The Tarnished Angels) that I would compare to ‘The Third Man’ or maybe even ‘Fallen Idol’. It’s a movie worth seeing, if not for anything else, but to escape into a world of movie making untouched by the woke agenda of todays Hollywood.
Hollywood Has Made Movies Un-Fun
‘Undertow’ reminded me, while I was watching it, of what once was, and even what could be possible today if Hollywood would just open their eyes. Movies made in all the decades I listed above didn’t necessarily have all the glitz, glamour, and digital obsession that todays Hollywood movies offer. Movies from decades past, had to rely on their story and literal practical effects to bring the audiences in. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is a perfect example of story and practical effects that drew fans in to a world outside their own and were mesmerized, and that movie was made in 1968! I can remember my dad telling me how him and his friends left the theater after seeing ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, and not being able to comprehend what they just saw, but were sucked in regardless. 1982’s ‘Blade Runner’, 1948’s ‘Leave Her to Heaven’, 1954’s ‘Rear Window’, 1966’s ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’, and 1975’s ‘Jaws’, are all great examples of epic storytelling…among many of their respective decades, and movies that any of todays directors and writers should make mandatory viewing. Point being, is that Hollywood needs to stop pointing the finger at fans for their failures, and stop preaching at us through their movies on how we need to do better. ‘Undertow’, at least to me, was a reminder of what we still have and can escape to, and also what is possible if Hollywood would just let go and have some fun again.
