I've been nursing this theory in the last couple of months that all really great films are somehow, in some way, about film. Movies from CITIZEN KANE to SINGIN' IN THE RAIN to 8 1/2 to BLAZING SADDLES are all, in some small (or large) way, about their own "movieness." Sam Fuller's thriller PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET is about a bunch of cons, cops, and Commies all fighting for possession of one crucial item: a strip of film.

What is on the film is barely mentioned and inessential; it is the "MacGuffin;" the item that everyone in the picture wants and will do anything to get. As PICKUP begins, Candy (Jean Peters) has it, but not for long; her purse is picked on the subway by a smooth cannon named Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark). Candy was delivering the film on behalf of Joey (Richard Kiley), her cowardly boyfriend who, unbeknownst to her, is passing government secrets to the Communists. The FBI, trailing Candy and waiting for her to hand over the film so they can arrest the Communists, watch the entire act go down. Now Skip is in the eye of a storm, contending with the Communists, the FBI, the cops (who are itching to catch him a fourth time, which would mean an automatic life sentence), and Candy, who is willing to seduce Skip to get the film back.

Though PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET gets grouped in with film noir the categorization isn’t quite right. Fuller’s near-perfect thriller shares noir's seedy settings and characters but not its inherent fatalism. Thematically, it's much closer to pulp: hard-hitting G-men, swooning B-girls, and cowardly Commies battling their way through the underworld with style and wit.

If PICKUP were true noir the fight scenes would be sad and cold, not brutal and blisteringly exciting as Fuller's are. In one scene Joey assaults Candy after she refuses to reveal Skip's address and Kiley brutalizes Peters with an intensity rarely seen in any movie from any period -- impressively it is Peters, not a stunt double, who takes a massive header into a coffee table. In the climax, as Skip and Joey fight in a subway station, you can feel bones break and blood spurt with each punch. When Skip drags Joey down a flight of stairs face first the action is so awkwardly real -- with his head flopping around as it bashes into each step -- that it's equally painful and funny to watch.

The end result is shamelessly entertaining in a way that movies today want to be, but rarely are. Widmark is not terribly famous, and I've often felt it's because his lack of emotional range limits his effectiveness in most roles, but he's absolutely perfect for Skip's sweaty slyness, cooing lines like "Everybody likes everybody when they're kissing." He and Peters have an electric chemistry; even if they're scenes together are physically tame the sparks are really flying between them.

And, of course, it is a film that brings them together.

IF YOU LIKED PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, CHECK OUT:THE BIG COMBO (1955), a genuine noir, and one of the best too, with a cop and a big-time gangster feuding over the rights to a city and a damaged broad they both have their eyes on. COMBO also boasts a terrifically moody score and gorgeous cinematography by John Alton. You watch THE BIG COMBO and realize there are film shot in black and white, and then there are black and white films.

THE BAD

Back in olden times, say before 1965, nudity was only permissible on the big screen in the context of education. Bookers travelled the country promoting these pictures, the first true "exploitation" films, in roadshows. Of course the educational value was ignored; the only people who went to see these pictures were those looking to see naked men or women. CALIGULA, made at the end of the 1970s during the efforts by some to make porn legitimate, has the vibe of one of those older hygiene pictures: salacious material for paying audiences and history lessons for conservatives who try to call it obscene.

With the former goal in mind, CALIGULA is packed to the gills with naked people. Nearly everyone in the enormous cast appears at least once in the buff; even star Malcolm McDowell pees on screen at one point (Thankfully, aging co-star Peter O'Toole's wrinkled flesh remains relatively obscured). But despite a few orgy scenes, most of the nudity comes in the form of background characters in ancient Rome who simply go about their daily lives without clothes on. To my eye CALIGULA offers sexy mundaneness in the form of: naked lounging, naked house chores, naked jogging, naked conversation, naked manual labor, naked deliberating, naked courier service, naked drum playing, and naked war. See that's real poverty: being so poor you can't even afford clothes. And we're not talking expensive designer brands; these guys can't even afford a plain white sheet.

Otherwise serious scenes of conspiratorial intrigue are interspersed with jarring crotch shots. No scene in CALIGULA is too asexual that it can't be spiced up with a quick anatomy lesson. One guard caught drunk on the job gets his weiner hung up in a noose, then forced fed wine, then sliced open with a sword so all the blood and wine pour out of him, and we get to watch it all with the poor actor's wang in full view. I think I have an uncle who died like that.

One early dialogue scene between the incestuous Caligula (McDowell) and Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) offers no close-ups of the two as they speak, choosing instead to zoom in on a shot of Ms. Savoy's vagina as she wags her butt in the air. Well the dialogue (by Gore Vidal) is terrible, but at least the view is nice.

Now that I think of it, over and over again, there are few close-ups of anyone speaking; CALIGULA seems presented entirely in long shots and takes, and scenes play out in front of us as if on a stage, on sets that are richly detailed but visually flat. Everything occurs as if recorded from a camera placed in the audience of a Broadway theater (possibly one on 42nd Street). The end result looks sort of like Masterpiece Porno Theater, an idea that would really boost pledge drive revenues if public television every got really desperate.

This ancient lunacy was devised by Bob Guccione, the creator of Penthouse Magazine. According to a recent Vanity Fair article, Guccione put $17.5 million of his own money into the project and directed several of its scenes after director Tinto Brass quit over creative issues (Perhaps Brass felt it was more important to see Miss Savoy's face than her undercarriage when she spoke). His credit reads "Principal Photography by Tinto Brass;" Vidal's reads "Adapted From A Screenplay by Gore Vidal." Those titles dilute their guilt, but don't disperse it entirely, since none of the photography or story is any good and they surely contributed to both.

CALIGULA isn't sexy enough to work as pornography, nor interesting enough to work has costume drama. It's also nefariously long, and eventually a little too confusing to follow; I watched the entire film but I can't recall a single thing that happened after Caligula's sister dies. CALIGULA is sort of a good example of why porn and non-porn didn't end up mixing well; this sort of movie has a strange uncomfortable tone. It's difficult to be aroused by an incestuous relationship surrounded by scenes of violent torture and decadent weirdness. Maybe that's just me.

Still, I sort of liked the scene where McDowell's Caligula, sick with fever, lies in a bed beside his beloved horse while shouting "He's going to kill me!" I suspect he was talking about his agent.

INSTEAD OF CALIGULA, CHECK OUT: BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR (1972), one of a trio of hard-core skin flicks that, for a brief period, brought porno into the mainstream. Not particularly sexy, to me anyway, and not really a successful blend of pornography and mainstream filmmaking, but the first fifteen minutes are so casually beautiful they look like some lost arthouse gem.

THE UGLY

It's a beautiful sunny day for the annual flower festival. At that moment, an enormous swarm of deadly killer bees is massing in the desert. As you know, bees are attracted to the pollen in flowers.

Talk about bad timing.

THE SWARM is sort of like THE BIRDS only more bloody and less scary. And, of course, bees instead of birds. These are some kind of bees too -- ferocious, and they really hold a grudge. After he’s captured some of the bees Richard Widmark, who plays a tough-as-nails Army General, yells, "When that swarm finds out some of them have been taken captive they will be back?" Do bees know when some of the swarm have been taken captive? And if they do know, can they find out who has them and where? They're bees, not homing pidgeons.

Besides their innate Wolverine-like tracking senses and their vindictiveness, and their petty jealousy, and their anger towards women, the titular swarm is also ferociously aggressive, deeply atheistic (the bees seem almost gleeful in their attacks on symbols of organized religion), and impervious to harm. These bees get inside a nuclear power plant, swarm all over the employees, crawn inside the circuitry, and cause a meltdown and explosion. But even a nuclear holocaust barely slows this swarm down, which also survives brushfires, flamethrowers, and gunshots. And what do these bees want? Is this a desperate cry for attention from their parents? Do they want to annex Arizona from the United States and forming Beetopia, their own autonomous political collective? Or do they just hate Michael Caine that much?

The only explanation we get just serves to fuel THE SWARM's unintentional comedy. It turns out these bees are African, and it is this variety of bee that is, by its nature, angry, violent, and vengeful. If the vaguely racist nature of the bee's unending rage wasn't enough, the script makes it a bit clearer. "Tomorrow there will be no more Africans!" someone late in the film shouts when there is hope of ending the bee menace. These people already live in the suburbs, where else can they hide from this “African” menace?

How do you think these African bees even got here in the first place? I like to think that some evil racist honey farmers went to Africa, stole these bees from their homes and forced them to come to America and work for them. This hypothesis makes it a lot more fun to root for the bees, which I did throughout THE SWARM, actively and wildly. In any event, the film's credits even include a disclaimer informing the viewer that the African bees depicted in the film in no way resemble our beloved and "hard-working" American honey bee, who are no doubt docile, white, and Christian.

The only one who can stop this racist incursion is Caine, playing a anthropologist who doesn't so much defeat the bees as he waits them out. There is a lot of waiting in this movie, since it's two hours long and has exactly one visual idea: that people getting attacked and engulfed by hundreds of bees is a pretty scary sight.

In the funniest scene Henry Fonda, another scientist, tries out a bee venom antidote on himself only to discover that it doesn't work. Fonda, at this point in the very late stages of his career, sweats, groans, grimaces, gasps, and shrieks his way through a lengthy monologue as the venom courses through his veins. He does the work of a dozen actors and all I could do was laugh at how much effort he put into a bee venom freak out.

Do the bees win? Does white America triumph once more over the Africans? Does the flower festival run out of azaleas? I'd tell you, but there's a hive in the tree outside my window and its inhabitants frown on spoilers of any kind.

IF YOU LIKED EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, CHECK OUT: THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974), a more far successful Irwin Allen disaster picture. Paul Newman and Steve McQueen are the forces of cool who team up to stop a raging fire inside the world's tallest building. Melodramatic for certain, but the two leads really keep things interesting.