We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Dolly Parton and a demon hunter.
9 TO 5 (1980)
The world lost a legend this week, as "Queen of Country" Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80. It feels like we lost her way too soon, as she should have been around forever – but in a way, it sort of feels like she had already been around forever. Parton’s career as a singer/songwriter started more than a decade before I was born, and when I was around three-to-four years old, she had a primetime variety show on ABC called Dolly. The show only lasted 22 episodes, but I probably saw most of them, because watching that show with my maternal grandmother is one of the memories that have stuck with me since childhood. Dolly Parton was a major presence in the world when I was a little kid, and has remained so throughout my entire life.
Although Parton released her debut album in 1967 and regularly performed on TV on The Porter Wagoner Show, it took her a while to get around to giving acting a try – but it’s no surprise that the project she chose to make her feature film acting debut in turned out to be a classic. Sure, she went on to make some less-than-classics in her acting career, but she got things started just right.
Parton’s first movie was the comedy 9 to 5, directed by Colin Higgins from a script he crafted with Patricia Resnick. Parton plays Doralee Rhodes, secretary to Franklin M. Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman), a Vice President of Consolidated Companies. Hart is a top-to-bottom creep who flirts with and sexually harasses Doralee, and that’s only one of the many repugnant things about him.
Doralee, senior supervisor Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin) – who would have gotten a major promotion if not for the sexism in the office – and new hire Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda, who also produced the film and pitched the initial idea) are all pushed to their limits and fed up with Hart’s behavior... which leads to some wild comedic circumstances. Like the sequence in which Violet mistakenly believes she has accidentally put rat poison in Hart’s coffee, a misunderstanding that goes so far out of control that she even steals a corpse from the hospital, thinking it’s Hart. When Hart learns about that whole mess, the women end up tying him up and keeping him prisoner in his own home while they try to dig up dirt on the illegal deals he has been making.
More than forty years after its release, 9 to 5 still holds up as a fun, amusing workplace comedy. The xerox machine jokes may be outdated, but most of the story and the jokes remain relevant. Parton, Tomlin, and Fonda are all great in their roles, and so is Coleman, who manages to be really funny while also being really unlikeable. For me, some of the funniest moments in the film come from Coleman’s performance – and usually involve him yelling “Goddammit” about something.
Dolly Parton will be greatly missed, but in some ways she’ll never really be gone, either. She left behind a lot of entertainment for us to continue to enjoy as the years go on. 9 to 5 has endured for decades already, and will continue to do so.
TARYN BARKER: DEMON HUNTER (2016)
Director Zoe Kavanagh had a bumpy ride through production on her feature directorial debut, an independent action horror film called Taryn Barker: Demon Hunter. After crafting a script with Tony Flynn, scouting locations, and putting together storyboards, Kavanagh found the actress she wanted to play the title character and started filming... And then, when about half of the movie had been completed, she lost her Taryn Barker. The actress dropped out of the project. So Kavanagh found a replacement, with Niamh Hogan taking on the role, and started over from the beginning. That, along with other challenges that go along with independent productions, is part of why it took several years for Kavanagh to bring Taryn Barker: Demon Hunter out into the world. But she did secure international distribution deals and get her movie released, so – mission accomplished.
Promotional materials described Demon Hunter as a combination of elements from Underworld, The Evil Dead, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a TV series that was produced by Dolly Parton), and that’s a fitting description. As the movie begins, we’re introduced to a Taryn Barker who’s 24 years old and already a seasoned demon hunter, getting things started by decapitating a demon (in human disguise) with her antique katana. Then, the movie throws a curveball at us and has Taryn get arrested for the man’s murder within the first 4 minutes. She has already been captured by the time the title sequence kicks in!
Taryn spends almost half the movie in police custody, and in that time we’re given her back story. When she was a teenager, she was too preoccupied to walk home from school with her 12-year-old sister Annabelle, and her sister never made it home. The girl was abducted and killed. As Taryn grieves her sister and hopes for vengeance, she’s contacted by a mystical fellow named Falstaff (Michael Parle), who promises to give her the chance to lay waste to the forces of evil – but then turns out to be evil himself. He has been dabbling in the dark practices since the 1600s, and he has plans for Taryn that she’s not into.
She does get some back-up from a demon-hunting team that is able to see that, even though she has a demon on her back herself, there’s something pure and bright inside her. As the story goes on – and Taryn gets out of jail so she can start down the path to the climactic confrontation with Falstaff – another character, a troubled detective who often sounds drunk and is played by Alan Talbot, is also pulled into the situation.
Those promotional materials said Taryn Barker: Demon Hunter was “frenetic slice 'n dice” that “keeps on the gas until the credits roll.” The budget was a bit too small for that to feel accurate. There’s a lot of chit-chat and the fight choreography doesn’t look quite as impressive as it was probably meant to be... but it’s an interesting, reasonably entertaining movie, even if the story occasionally feels convoluted. This was a cool, promising start for Kavanagh’s directing career.
THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS (1982)
After working together on her feature acting debut 9 to 5, director Colin Higgins and singer/actress Dolly Parton reunited for her second movie, and this one was a much more obvious choice for Parton than 9 to 5 was: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, a country fried comedy that also happens to be a musical.
Based on a stage musical that debuted in 1978, the film (written by Higgins and the show’s creators Larry L. King and Peter Masterson) is set in Lanville County, Texas, where a brothel called the Chicken Ranch has been operating since 1910. Local sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (Burt Reynolds) is well aware of what’s going on out at the Chicken Ranch – in fact, he’s so aware that he’s in a long-term relationship with the brothel’s madam, Miss Mona Stangley (Parton). The people in Lanville County don’t mind at all that there’s a brothel in operation there, and Mona is a good citizen known for making charity donations.
Trouble enters the picture when oddball television personality Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) finds out about the Chicken Ranch and spills the beans to the outside world, stirring up outrage. The issue not only disrupts Ed Earl and Mona’s relationship, but ends up becoming a fight over whether the Chicken Ranch should continue to exist – a question that’s taken all the way up to the indecisive Governor of Texas (Charles Durning), who won’t deal with anything until he sees the results of opinion polls.
9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas both feel like they’re a bit longer than they really needed to be (they’re 110 and 114 minutes, respectively), but this is another fun Higgins-Parton collaboration. I can’t say I found many of the songs to be particularly memorable, but "Texas Has a Whorehouse in It" did get stuck in my head and I felt that Charles Durning almost stole the whole show with his number, "The Sidestep." Parton sings a bit of her classic "I Will Always Love You" toward the end.
Parton and Reynolds make for a good pairing... and if someone has never had a crush on Parton, it may be because they haven’t seen The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas yet. I’m not sure how someone could see this movie and not crush on her at least a little.
I wouldn’t call this a great movie, but it’s a good time, and I’m glad I finally got around to watching it. I regret that it took Parton passing away to finally get me to push Play on this one.
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