99 and 44/100% Dead (1974)

Lack of good storyline.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Too bad one of those good things wasn't this movie, my thoughts, as Richard Harris spoke the above line, and my anxiousness for the end growing as the film dragged on. This mob spoof overstays its welcome, although the opening shot of the Hudson River graveyard is an interesting (and absurdly comical) shot of cement shoed statues, their ghostly torsos clad with Medusa like wild hair, some decomposing, a few others fish food. As for the plot, basically a mob war that nobody can win, it is so oddly presented that you have to wonder if this is what director John Frankenheimer ("The Manchurian Candidate", "Seven Days in May") thought of as comedy.Black comedy works best when it deals in irony, but this view of entirely unlikable people in ugly situations results in utter disgust towards the proceedings, not ironic whimsy. The film's most amusing scene (barely so) is the handicapped hit-man Chuck Connors' briefcase of arm attachments, some crude, some comical. Veteran actor Edmund O'Brien offers a minor touch of class as the big boss, with Constance Ford (coming back to films after a decade on daytime soaps, most notably as the tough but loving matriarch on "Another World") playing a stereotypically hard-boiled madame predictably named Dolly. As for leading lady Ann Turkel, the less said the better.

99 and 44/100ths Percent Dead is the story of a mob war between two rival bosses, Edmond O'Brien and Bradford Dillman and the two hit men working for them, Richard Harris and Chuck Connors. The film is enjoyable but it can't seem to make up its mind whether it's a spoof of the genre or a straight out action film. Richard Harris is hired by O'Brien to help him in his war with Dillman over the Los Angeles territory. O'Brien needs Harris bad especially since Dillman has Connors on retainer. Harris and Connors have some history with Harris leaving Chuck with a permanent reminder.Which is in the form of a handy/dandy claw which has various attachments for whatever need you have at the moment. When I saw this in the theater back in the Seventies it was that claw I remembered. Connors who first started in films playing villains like Buck Hannessy in The Big Country went to television and became a hero in The Rifleman and Branded. Personally I always thought Connors was better as a bad guy.Bradford Dillman though I had forgotten, his was an incredibly hammy performance as the rival gang boss. It would have been appropriate and would have succeeded if the satire that might have been intended had come off.The film while not memorable in his career did furnish Richard Harris with a wife. Tall and leggy Ann Turkel made her second film and was billed as being 'introduced' here. The old adage about having no attachments is certainly true as the bad guys can get to Harris through Turkel and nearly succeed.Sadly this was the farewell film for Edmond O'Brien who was another victim of Alzheimer's Disease and spent the last ten years of his life losing his career and memories thereof to that terrible curse. He could have probably done something better, but at least it was no Cuban Rebel Girl that terrible film Errol Flynn capped his career with.99 and 44/100ths Percent Dead is still enjoyable, but could have been done a lot better by director John Frankenheimer.

Excellent close-ups, lots of black humor, great music, classical gangster scenario. A movie one can review a lot of times. Harris is one of my favorite actors. Others also show great acting. Very good in showing America in 1970's Even murder scenes appear to be somehow "easy-watching", which is rare, especially in recent times. Scenes showing mafia appear to be a little bit funny, but at the same time resembling some movies like Godfather. Excellent nervous scene when Harris is disarming the chair bomb at school. Spooky but also somewhat funny episodes showing underwater cemetery. Connors hook-hand is very amusing, especially when he mounts some "flowers-kit" on it. Real classic!

Robert Dillon's script was considered by producer Joe Wizan to be a black comedy along the lines of Dillon's earlier one for "Prime Cut" (1972: d. Michael Ritchie). Director Frankenheimer, on returning to the USA after much time in France, was faced with a situation wherein years of bad reviews of his films were taking their toll. He accepted this project, and wanted Robert Mitchum for the main role, but the producers wanted Richard Harris, fresh from the hit film "A Man Called Horse".Critically however, the released film was felt to be a total fiasco, many reviewers holding that it represented the director's career at rock bottom. The film's dark, bleak humour and use of caricature were considered testimony to a certain sadism on Frankenheimer's part, and evidence of his growing contempt. In later years, even the great director plays down this most unusual gangster satire.It concerns a hitman trapped between rival gangs, and takes place in a vaguely futuristic city, which seems spatially to constantly re-define itself. It is filmed obliquely, so one is never on sure footing as to how to react. What is most interesting about this peculiarity, are the number of bizarre, surrealistic pop-culture set-pieces in a world of futile violence and rampant egos. Only despair and nihilism at the absurdity of it all enables the characters to hold on to whatever shreds of honour they can maintain although they all succumb to personal pride at the expense of everything else.Frankenheimer directs with a stylistic over-kill at times which sits uneasily with a certain lethargic quality, although it probably guarantees the film a cult audience in the future. Perhaps the film is best seen as a failed, but intriguing attempt to reconcile the director's frequent recourse to stylization with genre-based social satire. Still, the film seems uncertain of its aims, and tends to flounder in its often considerable visual panache. The remarkable opening sequence however, is amongst the oddest ever put to film, and typifies the film's sense of comic despair. A curio.