Word: axed
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David Rounds brings plenty of verve to the role of Lucio, the quick-witted, cynical, slanderous libertine who bridges the gap between the aristocracy and the rabble. Wyman Pendleton imbues the aging counselor Escalus with warmth. And Alvah Stanley, with axe, rope and chains, is properly intimidating as the executioner Abhorson--a unique name that Shakespeare fashioned, in the manner of the pivot-word so common in Japanese poetry, by fusing 'abhor' and 'whoreson...
...soon sets out for his old job at a lumber camp. Facing nature alone, unfettered by machinery, he will lead, a romantic spirit would suggest, the rustic existence he is suited for. As he prepares to leave, close-ups of this burly man in a tartan flannel workshirt, his axe once again on his shoulder, alternate with shots of his sturdy wife, Helene Loiselle, ready to run the household by herself for as long as he is away. But Jutra's conception is not romantic -- no more than Walker Evan's photographs of the depression. The two come together with...
...wide stagnation. More elusive, perhaps, was the much wider range of films which merged violence with psychodrama after the model of Hitchcock's Psycho -- formula films where violence was often the only substance, films that Hitchcock wouldn't even deign to sneeze at. Exploiters like Strait-Jacket, the 1964 axe-murder movie, led later to box-office hits like The Boston Strangler (still playing in Boston drive-ins today), and also to superfluous and exploitative violence in films otherwise far removed from the world of sensational crime...
...spreads itself into the story. Camille Bliss (Bernadette Lafont), thoroughly resistable convict, is the subject of a sociology thesis on "Criminal Women." Camille has nothing going for her at all -- ingnorant, vulgar, even hook-nosed--and yet Stanislas (Andre Dussollier) chooses her as subject over, we are told, an axe murderer and a homicidal Pole, for no discernable reason. No matter. From the outset, her insidious charm is clear. And that's half the story -- her complete captivation of Stanislas, the dryest of men, competent and professional but obviously ill-at-ease, even rapped, when placed in a court room...
With so much interest in the show and with all of its marketing possibilities it is hard to believe that NBC cancelled the show, yet it did. A collection of charges and counter charges surrounds the network's decision to axe Star Trek. "When you're working in television," said NBC Vice President Stanley Robertson, "you've got to realize that some shows are going to make it and some aren't. Star Trek was never a hard core success in the ratings, and we would have been justified in cutting the show after the first season...