It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s Film Guide

Here’s a blatantly sexist book, by unapologetic chauvinists, about men behaving badly. Manly behavior in this instance having to do with the movies boys choose when the missus/little woman/main squeeze is out with the girls, leaving her hunk sprawling on the sofa, flatulent in graying BVDs and munching Stouffer’s microwave meatloaf and Eskimo Pies.

“The Manly Movie Guide” (Boulevard Books, $11) is by David Everitt and Harold Schechter, who, sadly, aren’t men enough to include real bios with their volume. What little we are told is that they are founding members of the Chappaqua Manly Movie Militia and share a fascination for serial killers, testosterone martinis, and every man’s constitutional right to watch movies about other guys who bear arms.

Everett and Schechter--see them as Siskel and Ebert reading sports sections in the john--do admit soft spots for romance movies. Such as “The Strawberry Blonde,” “The African Queen,” “The Quiet Man” and “Heaven Knows Mr. Allison,” because they starred Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, and usually involved two guys slugging it out over a woman.

They deny that their book denigrates the roles of women in films and note that the work is jammed with titles giving top billing to the opposite sex. Such as “Women in Cages,” “Chopper Chicks,” and “Blood Orgy of the She-Devils.”

Here’s their literary rationale: “Thanks to modern technological marvels, like the vacuum cleaner and the steam iron, today’s women are able to enjoy lives of unprecedented leisure. For the average American guy, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. By the time he finishes taking care of business--tearing down and rebuilding the car engine, driving to the Stop ‘n’ Shop for a case of Bud, ordering Saturday night’s ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’ on pay-per-view--there’s almost no time left to relax.

“So if he decides to unwind with a movie, the last thing he needs is to waste a lot of time at the video store trying to figure out what to watch. Or, even worse, getting all confused by titles like ‘The River Wild,’ which he might easily mistake for something that a man would want to see.”

Hence this guide to war, western, chain saw, police, prison, government agent, gangster, mercenary, hooker, horror, private eye, biker and kung-fu flicks, because “in an age when a guy can’t even use the phrase ‘bodacious ta-tas’ without getting dirty looks from every broad at the dinner table, everything is a lot more complicated than it used to be.”

They applaud anything by Cagney, Mitchum, Bogart and Wayne, adding Bo Hopkins, Jack Palance, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal to their manly movie hall of fame. Also Sean Connery for his 007 movies, but not that wooden poseur Roger Moore, whose portrayal of Bond is ranked just above the early work of Shirley Temple.

Everitt and Schechter consider a woman’s movie to be any film in which characters talk about emotions, no killings occur in the first 10 minutes, and there is “funny little writing at the bottom of the screen while the actors speak some foreign language.” A man’s movie subordinates such extraneous elements as plot and dialogue, the lead is a cowboy or a deranged vigilante cabbie, and “a supporting character is played by Warren Oates, Bruce Dern or Strother Martin.”

Almost 500 movies and capsule reviews are recognized, with “The Dirty Dozen” (“die violently or die violently, a man’s idea of an existential choice”), “Raging Bull” (“about middleweight Jake La Motta, a class guy whose combination of sensitivity, refinement and deep family loyalty will forever stand as an inspiration to men everywhere”), “The Wild Bunch” (“when men were men and women were unfeeling sluts who had no compunctions about dumping their boyfriends and running off with the first Mexican general who happened along”) and “The Magnificent Seven” (“with music that helped turn millions of people into addicted consumers of Marlboro cigarettes. What more could a man ask for?”) among the Twelve Manliest Movies Ever Made.

Even “Shane” makes the list for a performance by Alan Ladd, who, as a noble, gunslinging mercenary, “reluctantly shoots down a saloon full of bad guys just to teach an adoring little boy what it means to be a man.”

As a hairy-knuckled male who eats French fries with his fingers and does not use perfumed deodorants, I consider myself a healthy judge of movies featuring gratuitous sex and violence. Oddly, none of my favorites shows up in this book. Not “Twelve O’Clock High,” “Detective Story,” “Fatal Attraction,” “War Lover,” “The Long Good Friday,” “Basic Instinct,” “Unforgiven,” or “Le Mans.”

Such oversights will be considered demeaning, even an insensitive disregard designed to reduce most red-blooded good ol’ boys to objects. With rejection of these standout works by Bob Hoskins, Michael Douglas, Gregory Peck and Steve McQueen, I certainly feel less of a man.