BY HANK REINEKE

Though Vincent Price would eventually garner a well-deserved reputation as Hollywood’s preeminent bogeyman, it was only really with André De Toth’s House of Wax (1953) that the actor would become associated with all things sinister. In some sense the playful, nervously elegant Price was an odd successor to the horror film-maestro throne: he was a somewhat aristocratic psychotic who shared neither Boris Karloff’s cold and malevolent scowl nor Bela Lugosi’s distinctly unhinged madness or old-world exoticism.

His early film career started in a less pigeonholed manner: as a budding movie actor with a seven year contract for Universal Studios in the 1940s, the tall, elegant Price would appear in a number of semi-distinguished if modestly-budgeted romantic comedies and dramas. His contract with Universal was apparently non-exclusive, and his most memorable roles for the studio were his earliest. In a harbinger of things to come, Price would register his first genre credit with Universal’s The Invisible Man Returns (1940), a curiously belated semi-sequel to the James Whale 1933 classic. Though a satisfying B-movie vehicle, Price’s star turn as the mostly transparent Geoffrey Radcliffe would be difficult work; it’s an imposing task to make an impression when you’re only physically present for less than half of a film.

More rewarding and noteworthy was his role as the vengeful Clifford Pyncheon in Universal’s free adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s brooding thriller The House of the Seven Gables (1940). That same year Price took a second memorable turn as the effete, wine-imbibing Duke of Clarence in Rowland V. Lee’s Tower of London. Purportedly a historical drama, Universal couldn’t help but play up the horror-melodrama elements of Richard III’s grisly ascent to the British throne. The scene when the Duke of Clarence meets an ironic fate at the hands of the conniving, merciless and bloodthirsty tag-team of Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff is, without doubt, one of cinema’s great exits.

Though the actor would tackle all types of roles for his next employer, 20th Century Fox, he had begun his transition from leading man once-removed to a roguish sort of character actor, one short of neither charm nor avarice. In 1953 the actor’s career would be forever changed when he accepted the role of the mad Professor Henry Jarrod in House of Wax, Warner Bros.’ colorful 3-D remake of Michael Curtiz’s The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). The success of the sinister House of Wax inspired that film’s freelance producer, Bryan Foy, to – essentially – remake the same film for Columbia Pictures within a year’s time. Unlike Universal or Warner Bros., Columbia seemed less eager to embrace and invest long-term in 3-D technologies, and The Mad Magician was one of the studio’s final rolls of the dice in that format.

Bryan Foy had began his show business career in vaudeville so it was only natural that both House of Wax and The Mad Magician share the greasepaint, steamer trunks, velvet curtains and theatrical back stories of the producer’s youthful experience. As he had with House of Wax, Foy again tapped the talent of his favorite scribe, Crane Wilbur, to write what was essentially a House of Wax pastiche. Wilbur was a seasoned pro who could knock out a quick copy that still had integrity; both of the Victorian-era horror films he would craft for Foy stylishly unraveled in thrilling fashion with neat twists and memorable dialogue. In a wise move, the German born John Brahm, an undeniably brilliant director of moody, atmospheric thrillers and melodramas – mostly for 20th Century Fox - was brought on to direct.

The most notable returnee was, of course, Vincent Price, now typecast and expected to again menacingly wield his distinct brand of on-screen villainy. With his stagey, Shakespearean acting style having been honed early in his career, Price’s performances occasionally teetered between outright flamboyance and devilishly morose… perhaps even a bit hammy. That said, the actor’s refined mannerisms and theatrical gesturing was refreshingly different from the common brutishness of the usual cinematic heavies. His characters tended to be tortured souls as well; his villains were conflicted but not unsympathetic individuals driven to madness by life’s travails and treacheries.

In House of Wax and The Mad Magician, the actor similarly plays the part of a maligned artist. In both films, his protagonists hide behind a series life-masks created solely for the purpose of deception. As sculptor Henry Jarrod in the former film, the devoted artist sees his beloved wax figures go up in flames due to the actions of an unscrupulous business partner; Jarrod’s scheming, unsentimental associate is not at all interested in the artist’s creations. He’s only interested in the swift collection of ill-gotten monies from his insurance fraud scheme. In The Mad Magician Price similarly portrays Don Gallico, a low wage, belittled designer of magic tricks and illusions. Gallico is the creative energy behind successful owner Russ Orman’s (Donald Randolph) respected theatrical magic factory Illusions, Inc. Tired of seeing his boss farm out his very personal creations to more celebrated, famous magicians – most notably the egotistical and scheming Great Rinaldi (John Emery) – Gallico optimistically and dreamingly pines of someday being recognized as a great stage magician himself.

Gallico is certain that day is not far off. In an attempt to attract attention to his own talent, the magician tests a self-produced illusionist show in a cozy theater in Hoboken, New Jersey. This engagement is merely a step stone to his ultimate dream of securing a coveted booking on Broadway and 44th Street. While his most recent and exciting illusion, “The Lady and the Buzz Saw,” pushes the envelope of high tension to an anxious extreme, Gallico is certain his work in progress – an escape-artist illusion involving a gas-fueled 3500 degree inferno dubbed “The Crematorium” will be the vehicle to bring him stardom at last. But Gallico’s dreams are soon dashed when the well-heeled Orman, who years earlier had unsentimentally stolen away the illusionist’s gold-digging wife (Eva Gabor), informs him to carefully read the fine print of their business contract. In a nutshell, Orman owns all of Gallico’s intellectual properties: contractually his inventions are not his own. Needless to say, this soul crushing, career-ending turn of events does not bode well for the briefly self-satisfied Orman… and others.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1973 Euro Western "The Man Called Noon", based on the novel by Louis L'Amour. The film was produced by Euan Lloyd, who had previously brought L'Amour's novel "Shalako" to the screen in 1968 starring Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot and an impressive supporting cast. "Noon" is no "Shalako". It's more in line with Lloyd's filmed production of L'Amour's "Catlow", which was released in 1971 (i.e instantly forgettable). Like so many Westerns of the era, it's a strange hybrid production top-lining well-known American stars with a supporting cast of European actors. The result is a reasonably entertaining but completely unremarkable horse opera that plays out with a familiarity akin to that of the well-trod shooting locations in and around Almeria, Spain. Richard Crenna, in a rare top-billed role in an action flick, plays the titular character, Rubal Noon, a notorious gunslinger. In the film's opening minutes he narrowly escapes an assassination attempt but is wounded in the process and, in that tried and true movie cliche, loses his memory. He doesn't remember who he is or why anyone tried to kill him. He is befriended by a shady saddle tramp, Rimes (Stephen Boyd), who informs him that he's wanted by the law and a virtual army of killers is after him. Rimes takes Noon to a ranch that serves as an outlaw hideout. It's owned by Fan Davidge (Rosanna Schiaffano), who has been kept captive on the ranch by the outlaws and forced to serve as their leader's mistress. Within seconds of meeting, Noon and Fan begin making goo-goo eyes at each other and we know that can only lead to trouble. It's at this point that the screenplay by Scot Finch becomes overly convoluted almost to the point of parody. A long series of facts and clues are presented to Noon that gradually help him discover his motivations and why so many people are after him. The jumbled explanations have something to do with avenging the deaths of loved ones and having knowledge of a secret cache of buried gold.  However, by the time all of this is explained, there is no "A-ha!" moment of revelation. Instead, one just sits and ponders the long string of characters, names and confusing plot developments. On several occasions I backtracked on the Blu-ray disc, thinking I overlooked some obvious information but it still seemed like a confusing mess so I just gave up, sat back and enjoyed the frequent action sequences. Crenna does well enough in an undemanding, completely humorless role. The few moments of levity are provided by Boyd, who plays a character of dubious allegiance. Farley Granger shows up as a bad guy and Schiaffano is as lovely as ever, but the characters are poorly defined and the most impressive aspect of the movie are the well-staged stunts courtesy of  legendary arranger Bob Simmons, who devised some of the best fight scenes in the James Bond series. Luis Bacalov provides the sometimes impressive requisite Morricone-like score. The finale of the movie finds the heroes holed up in a burning cabin surrounded by an army of antagonists. The scenario is similar to that in John Huston's "The Unforgiven" but with far less credibility. (Noon's method of terminating Granger's character is downright absurd.) The film was directed by Peter Collinson, who had shown great innovation and skill with his 1969 version of "The Italian Job". Not many of those skills are on view in "The Man Called Noon", which Collinson directed in a manner best described as workmanlike. Sadly, the young director never fulfilled his potential and ended up directing mid-range and mediocre fare before passing away in 1980 at only 44 years of age. 

The Blu-ray from Kino Lorber has a crisp, clean transfer. There is a bonus trailer gallery that includes other Westerns available from the company including "Duel at Diablo", "Billy Two Hats", "Barquero", "The Spikes Gang" and "Navajo Joe".  

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By Sara Reineke

First things first; it’s obvious from 1966 through 1972 the seemingly idyllic small islands dotting the UK were no place to summer vacation. In 1966 poor Peter Cushing lost his left hand to a rampaging horde of flesh-eating silicates on the isle of Petrie (aka the Island of Terror), a few miles east off of Ireland’s coastline. In 1973, Hammer Horror icon turned Celtic pagan Christopher Lee sacrificed an investigating Christian martyr to the flames on the bonny banks of Summerisle in Robin Hardy’s 1973 grim thriller-mystery, The Wicker Man. One year before The Wicker Man would have its theatrical debut, Tigon-British Film Productions would release the environmental-thriller Doomwatch (1972). Set on the isle of Balfe (actually Cornwall), Doomwatch tells the tale of still another plagued and isolated island off the English coast. This time the inhabitants are desperately trying to hide a seemingly monstrous secret from the prying eyes of outsiders. It goes without saying that the production of these three films was likely not bankrolled by anyone from the British Tourist Board.

Director Peter Sasdy’s 1972 sci-fi mystery, Doomwatch recounts the story of Dr. Del Shaw (Scottish actor Ian Bannen), who teams up with the island’s imported schoolteacher Victoria Brown (Judy Geeson) to unravel the mystery behind the closeted deformities of the island’s native inhabitants. Dr. Shaw, who works for a government-funded anti-pollution campaign, somewhat pessimistically coded Doomwatch, soon finds out that British navy - through an unscrupulous intermediary - had used the bay surrounding the island of Balfe to secretly and illegally dump sealed canisters of radioactive waste. Time and the sea have since caused these seals to give way, with the resulting leakage infecting the village’s fishing industry. As seafood is the primary diet of the islanders, the exposure to toxins and unnatural growth hormones has unleashed an outbreak of acromegaly. This disfiguring disease is not an invention of screenwriter Clive Exton. As any scholar of classic horror can tell you, this is the all-to-real growth-hormone aberration was suffered (and tastelessly exploited) by Universal Studios in their casting of horror actor Rondo Hatton as The Creeper. Though this pituitary gland disease is a result of radioactive elements contaminating the island’s fish supply, the natives are unaware of the Navy’s polluting of their waters. The insular and deeply religious community believes the island’s plague is simply God’s punishment for their immorality and inbreeding. It’s this deep-seated shame that has long prevented them from getting help from the mainland.

Sasdy’s film was loosely based off a BBC television series of the same name (1970-1972) which featured a team of activist-scientists fighting new, mysterious environmental and health threats in the post-Atomic age. These television threats would include such plights as enlarged radioactive rats, plastic-eating viruses, and chemical toxins that could destroy all of Earth’s plant life. This fear of manmade and unchecked environmental calamity was carried on in Doomwatch the film; the storyline centers on the dangers of radioactive elements and the consequences of improper storage and disposal methods of such harmful toxins. These issues were of course, not uncommon during the time, as in the early 1970s environmental issues were at the forefront of global public consciousness. Not coincidentally, in 1972, the year the film was first released, the United States would pass the Clean Water Act with the aim of eliminating toxic waste from global waters.

Though Bannen and Geeson are the film’s principal players, the film sports a strong supporting cast of familiar faces. Geoffrey Keen, who plays Sir Henry, the man responsible for the illegal radioactive dumping, will be recognizable to filmgoers for his tenure as the Minister of Defence in six James Bond films (beginning with Roger Moore’s The Spy Who Loved Me through Timothy Dalton’s The Living Daylights). Another recognizable face is that of George Sanders, who enjoyed a legendary long career in film and television and pop-culture (he portrayed Leslie Charteris’ The Saint in no fewer than five films (1939-1941) and even as the chilling Mister Freeze in TV’s Batman series of 1966.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-Ray release of Doomwatch is of definitely interest to film enthusiasts. Special features include an “On Camera Interview” with actress Judy Geeson, audio commentary and introduction to the film courtesy of director Peter Sasdy, and a gallery of film trailers for other recent Blu-Ray releases of Kino-Lorber.

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BY TIM GREAVES

I should say upfront that with a couple of notable exceptions I'm not a big fan of John Carpenter's work. I wish I was, I really do (and I'll never give up on him), but I'm just not. It strikes me that for every exceptional film he made – Halloween, Escape from New York, The Thing – there’s a handful of distinctly underwhelming offerings: They Live, Ghosts of Mars, The Fog, Prince of Darkness, Village of the Damned, Body Bags, Escape from L.A., Vampires, In the Mouth of Madness…the list goes on. I concede that many of these films are widely revered, so would stress again that these are titles that have left me personally feeling unfulfilled and I readily acknowledge that my opinions are those of a minority.  Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which as with many of his films, Carpenter wrote and scored as well as directed, was his second theatrical feature following Dark Star two years earlier, and for me it resides upstream of the mid-water between the few titles I greatly admire and the regrettable majority that I deem to be disappointments.

In the aftermath of the slaying of some of their pack by the police, the formidable Street Thunder gang swear a "Cholo" – a blood oath of vengeance – decreeing that they'll bring war to the streets of Los Angeles. Meanwhile Special Officer Starker (Charles Cyphers) is transporting three prisoners between penitentiaries when one of them falls seriously ill. Starker decides to locate a police station to get the trio into confinement whilst he summons a doctor. Unfortunately, the nearest is in the process of being decommissioned and relocated to a new site and is thusly staffed by bare bones personnel, but the officer overseeing the closure, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker), nevertheless agrees to let Starker use the holding cells. Then Lawson (Martin West) – the father of a little girl murdered by the gang (and who subsequently pursued the perpetrators, shooting one of the head honchos dead) – stumbles in to Anderson in shock and seeking refuge. Armed to the teeth, dozens of gang members converge on the premises to make Lawson pay for killing one of their own.

Assault on Precinct 13 was fashioned by Carpenter as a modern day western and with traces of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo coursing through its veins it's very much that. Yet it's also impossible to ignore the aroma of George Romero's seminal The Night of the Living Dead in its structure: a gathering of disparate characters, the most intuitively improvisational of whom is portrayed by a black actor, are holed up in an isolated location with little hope of help and where, despite internal disputes, they're forced to put aside their differences and work together to defend themselves from a relentless army of hostiles whose merciless intent is to see them all dead.

Following a few mildly engaging scenes which serve to establish the panoply of characters, Carpenter reaches out and grabs his audience by the throat with a suspenseful and shocking sequence revolving around a little girl who realises she's been served the wrong flavour of ice cream. Thereafter the director incrementally stokes the tension with the aid of time stamps that appear at regular intervals in the corner of the screen and not only lend the proceedings a documentary feel but ratchet up audience apprehension as the titular assault gets ever closer.

Once things kick off and the first wave of defenders has been taken out in a spray of carnage it's pretty much high octane action through to the (slightly anticlimactic) finish line. There are, however, some quieter moments punctuating the mayhem and it's during these that Carpenter's excellent characterisations are given room to breathe. Particularly enjoyable is the chemistry and burgeoning mutual respect between lawman Bishop and felon Napoleon Wilson (an impeccable Darwin Joston); come the end you can't help wishing these guys could have taken off together on a new adventure. Also memorable in this respect is Laurie Zimmer as an Anderson secretary who Wilson takes a shine to and, once again, one is left wistfully musing that the relationship between them might have been explored further.

One particular standout scene during these welcome moments of quietude plays on the innate human instinct for self-preservation; a character suggests that they hand over Lawson to the gang in order to save their own skins, but Bishop nobly refuses to be party to such an egregious undertaking.

Those already mentioned aside, there are fine performances too from Tony Burton, Charles Cyphers and Nancy Loomis (the latter two would be reunited as father and daughter in the director's next big screen release, Halloween).

Supported by a typically infectious Carpenter score – particularly its thrumming core synth theme – Assault on Precinct 13 is a raw and intense low-budgeter, the creativity of which obscures its budgetary constraints, and which has not only improved with age but in 2005 spawned a starry (and unexpectedly decent) reimagining.

Incidentally, the film was shot as The Siege, its title changed at the behest of the distributor in favour of something punchier. Although Assault on Precinct 13 is arguably a better choice it's also a bit of a misnomer, since nowhere in the film itself is there a "Precinct 13", let alone one that comes under assault.

The movie has been available on Blu-ray and DVD before, but its recent UK 40th anniversary incarnation from Second Sight makes for an irresistibly double-dip-worthy proposition. Aside from a pristine 2.35:1 ratio hi-def transfer from a newly restored print the release includes some exceptional bonus goodies. On both the individually available Blu-Ray and DVD, along with a terrific assembly of interview material – Director John Carpenter, actors Austin Stoker and Nancy Loomis, Art Director Tommy Lee Wallace (who also handled sound effects duties), and Executive Producer Joseph Kaufman – there are two commentaries (from Carpenter and Wallace), a trailer and some radio spots. Exclusive to the Blu-Ray box set release are "Captain Voyeur" (a comical short black & white student film written and directed by Carpenter in 1969), and a partially-subtitled 2003 documentary entitled "Do You Remember Laurie Zimmer?"; chronicling the extensive efforts by a French film crew to locate the actress who retired from the business many years ago. It certainly has “will they or won't they find her?” appeal, but rambles a little and would have benefited from being pared down to half its 53-minute runtime. Also exclusive to the box set are a selection of art cards and a CD pressing of Carpenter's soundtrack.

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BY TIM GREAVES

Produced by Anthony Bushell, who also co-directed (with Reginald Beck) and appears on screen as a courtroom attorney, 1951's The Long Dark Hall opens with two brutal, night-shrouded murders in rapid succession, priming the audience for what promises to be a tasty serving of Brit-noir. Regrettably, with the identity of the murderer openly revealed in the first scene and the wrong man hastily arrested for the crime, it tailspins into a mediocre courtroom drama with a crushingly dissatisfying denouement. Seldom has a film been quite so severely undermined by such an incredulously vapid wrap-up, one so abrupt in fact that you have to wonder if they misplaced the last dozen pages of the script, forcing them to hastily improvise!

A shadowy figure who considers himself ‘an instrument of justice’ and whose name we never learn (Anthony Dawson) is stalking the streets of London murdering showgirls. When Rose Mallory (Patricia Wayne) is found dead, the finger of suspicion points to Arthur Groome (Rex Harrison), a respectable married man who was having a troubled affair with her. Standing trial with only circumstantial evidence to convict him, Groome's efforts to play down his relationship with Rose make him look ever more guilty. Convinced of his innocence and prepared to overlook his infidelity, Groome's wife Mary (Lilli Palmer) remains stoically at his side throughout. But the murderer has another agenda and, finagling a meeting with Mary outside the court one afternoon, he begins to worm his way into her trust.

The Long Dark Hall was scripted by Nunnally Johnson and W.E. Fairchild from an Edgar Lustgarten novel, "A Case to Answer", its story relayed through extended flashbacks as a writer researches material for his new book. Structured as such, one could take issue with several blatant plot anomalies born thereof, but the real problem is that in laying all its cards on the table from the get go and failing to keep an ace up its sleeve, beyond the question of how – or if – Groome will escape his predicament, in terms of suspense the movie has nowhere to go. Which is a bit of a shame because there are some very fine, committed performances on the show here. Rex Harrison imbues the beleaguered Groome with sufficient enough self-reproach over the whole sorry business that in spite of his flawed judgement one can't help but root for him; this was an era when the crime of murder carried the death sentence, yet he blithely continues to play economical with the truth. As good as Harrison is though, it's Anthony Dawson who snares the most memorable scene in the film. Arriving at the Groome residence in the midst of a thunderstorm and welcomed in by Mary, his charming facade slips away and he makes unwelcome advances on her. Wreathed in menace, the whole sequence is lit and shot to perfection. Dawson, whose best films in a long career were those in which he portrayed shifty and despicable rogues (Dr. No, Dial M for Murder, Curse of the Werewolf), was never more intimidating on screen than he is in this scene. The ever-dependable Raymond Huntley is on excellent form as the investigating officer and there are fairly brief but memorable appearances by a boyish Michael Medwin and dear old Ballard Berkeley (in another of his policeman turns, promoted this time round to Superintendent). Also showcased here is the film debut of Jill Bennett, who gets but a single line of dialogue before falling victim to Dawson's knife.

In spite of its deficiencies, if one can forgive the painfully weak ending, The Long Dark Hall makes for entertaining and undemanding enough post-Sunday-luncheon fare. And if nothing else there's curiosity value to be found in the fact the film represents one of the cruellest examples of art imitating life: When it was being made Harrison and Palmer were husband and wife and no doubt still recovering from the strain placed on their marriage by his fling a couple of years earlier with actress Carol Landis, who’d committed suicide when the relationship hit the rocks. Palmer supported Harrison throughout that whole ordeal. One imagines it wasn't too difficult for Harrison to conjure up the desperately forlorn and contrite expression on Groome's face as he stands in the dock.

The film has been released on DVD in the UK as part of Network Distributing's ongoing 'The British Film' collection. Presented in 1.37:1 ratio, it's a nice transfer from the original film elements. The sole supplement is a short gallery of international poster art and lobby cards.

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BY TIM GREAVES

Adapted fairly faithfully from Shaun Hutson's celebrated novel of the same name, upon its release in 1988 director J.P. Simon’s Slugs slunk comfortably into the subgenre of "nature gone crazy" frighteners which over the years had found mankind besieged by worms, spiders, rats, ants, frogs, bees and, er, rabbits (no, really!). And, just as the best of them had it, Slugs’ beasties weren't of the common or garden kind, they were of the supersized, extra squishy variety...with teeth…oh, and a taste for human flesh.

The inhabitants of a small American town – the site of a former dumping ground for toxic waste – fall victim to a nightmarish contagion of slugs and it's up to Council Health Inspector Mike Brady (Michael Garfield) to sort it out. He quickly learns that not only are they deadly but that they've contaminated the fresh water system. With the mutilated dead bodies of townsfolk piling up and the authorities dismissing Brady's outlandish theories, he turns to scientist John Foley (Santiago Alvarez) for help. Foley concocts an efficacious amalgam of chemicals he believes will destroy them and the two men set off to locate the slugs' breeding ground in the sewers.

J.P. Simon is better known to connoisseurs of terror cinema as Spaniard Juan Piquer Simón, whose most notorious celluloid offering was crazed 1982 slasher Pieces. Slugs sacrifices the inherent sleaze factor of that film and doesn’t even attempt to match its infamous ultra-gory effects. But what the two do share in common is that the performances of the participants are uniformly risible and both films are hampered by truly wretched dialogue, the mostly stilted delivery of which only accentuates just how awful it is.

And yet, again as with Pieces, these frailties – if, when attributed to a film with such a dubious pedigree as Slugs, they can even be called frailties – add a welcome vein of unintentional humour.

Take, for example, this early dialogue exchange between Brady and his wife when she draws his attention to some slugs in the flowerbeds –

Him: Jesus Christ, those things are big!

Her: I told you they were big.

Him: Big? They're gigantic!!

He reaches down to touch one and recoils.

Him: Damned thing bit me!

Her: What kind of a slug bites someone?

Him: I don't know, but he's living in your garden!!

Slugs’ functionality as a "horror film" is understandably subjective, being directly proportionate to one's feelings about the titular gastropods. Let's face it, they aren't scary, or even intimidating for that matter; never mind run, you could stroll away from them. However, what most people do probably deem them to be is pretty repulsive. And on that score Simón employs his cast of thousands to admirably flesh-crawling effect. 

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

I want to start this review by saying right out that if you have a particular interest in the Cinemascope movies of the mid-1950’s, and if you are a film soundtrack fan, especially the music of composer Bernard Herrmann, you want the new Blu-Ray of “Garden of Evil” (1954) from Twilight Time. I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time watching a film and going through the special features provided on this disc.

It’s not that “Garden of Evil” is such a great flick. It’s not. It tries to be a profound examination of men’s lust for gold and a beautiful woman, but ends up at best being a melodramatic potboiler that’s long on talk and short on action. “If the world were made of gold, I guess men would die for a handful of dirt,” Gary Cooper says at the end of the film. It’s a great line. It sounds like something Bogart could have said at the end of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” But the script by Frank Fenton (based on a story by Fred Frieberger and William Tunberg) lacks the depth of the John Huston classic. Nevertheless, “Garden of Evil” is still a highly enjoyable viewing experience.

Cooper plays Hooker, an American adventurer stranded in Puerto Miguel, Mexico when the boat that was taking him to the California gold fields develops engine trouble. Stranded along with him are fellow passengers Richard Widmark, who plays Fiske, a card sharp, and Cameron Mitchell as Luke Daly, a young hot head, who thinks he’s tough and good with a gun. The three Americans are basically stuck with each other in Puerto Miguel as they try to figure out what they’re going to do in Mexico while waiting six weeks for the boat’s engine to be repaired.

That question is quickly answered in a cantina when Fiske starts to tell Daly’s fortune using a deck of cards and holds up a red queen. Who should walk in at that particular moment? None other than the red-headed queen of Fox’s 1950s Cinemascope productions herself—Susan Hayward as Leah Fuller. She storms into the place (as Hayward was often prone to do), saying she’ll pay $2,000 in gold to any man who will come with her up into the mountains to rescue her husband, who is trapped in a gold mine. Only one of the Mexican’s in the bar, Vicente (Victor Manuel Mendoza) takes her up on her offer. The others are too afraid of the Apaches up there. But our three intrepid Americanos can’t resist the $2,000 and the fiery redhead who’s offering it and agree to go along too.

The journey is long and arduous. Hayward takes them up a dizzying mountain trail that has a cliff with a drop of a thousand feet, give or take a mile or two. Art directors Edward Fitzgerald and Lyle Wheeler came up with some fantastic matte paintings for these scenes. The vistas that spread out on the vast Cinemascope screen are breathtaking and add a weird touch of fantasy to the film. I couldn’t help thinking of the scenes from the old Tarzan movies, when the ape-man and his companions were climbing the Mutia Escarpment. The use of the matte paintings to enhance the natural scenery of the Guanajuato, Mexico location, I suspect was deliberate, to establish a demarcation between the everyday world of Puerto Miguel and the mysterious Garden of Evil, where the mine is located. The place was given its name by an old priest who, I presume, knew about things like good and evil.

They arrive at the mine after several days’ journey and find Leah’s husband, John Fuller (Hugh Marlowe), still alive. They dig him out and set his broken leg in a splint. You’d think he’d be grateful, but it turns out he’s a jealous insecure man, suspicious of the guys who came to his aid. He thinks they want his gold and his wife. He’s partly right about that. Luke Daly has already made unwanted advances and had to be knocked into submission by Hooker. And neither Fiske nor Hooker have failed to notice Leah’s stunning beauty, although they are more gentlemanly about it. Widmark as Fiske plays it cynical, but in the end, he shows he’s not the cad he pretends to be and makes a noble gesture on her behalf.

Cooper as Hooker, of course, is the upright man of honor as always. At age 54 he was in a peak period of his career. He seemed to get better as he got older. In films of that period such as “Vera Cruz,” “High Noon,” and “Man of the West,” he gave some of his best performances, showing that unusual combination of seasoned leather toughness and vulnerability. He could do more with a squint or a twitch of the mouth than most other actors could do with a page of dialogue. He dominates scene after scene just with his mere presence, despite the star power of his co-stars.

Once the characters are finally all together at the mine, the potboiler plot kicks in and the film gets a bit tedious, until smoke signal appear on the rim and the Apaches move in. The rest of the story concerns itself with the escape back through the mountains with Apaches in pursuit. Who will make it? Who will die? And who ends up with Susan Hayward?

Watching Hayward, Widmark, and Cooper play against each other is the kind of movie-going experience that cannot be equaled today. Veteran director Henry Hathaway made good use of the wide Cinemascope lenses, shooting many long takes with a stationary camera, filming the actors as though it was a stage production. As film historian Nick Redman says in the Blu-ray’s commentary track, by this time the studio had started using four-track magnetic tape to record sound and there are moments that almost seem as if the actors are there live.

BY TIM GREAVES

Not the most beloved entry in Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic oeuvre – by either audiences in general or the director himself – 1939's Jamaica Inn (based on a Daphne du Maurier novel first published three years earlier) is nevertheless a serviceable enough piece of drama, which perhaps finds its most ideal place nowadays as an undemanding rainy Sunday afternoon programmer.

Following the death of her mother, Mary Yellen (Maureen O'Hara) travels from Ireland to England intending to take up residence with her relatives at their Cornish hostelry the Jamaica Inn. After an unexpected detour, which on face value proves beneficial when she makes the acquaintance of local squire and magistrate Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton), Mary arrives at her destination to find her browbeaten Aunt Patience (Maria Ney) living in fear of a tyrannical husband, the brutish Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks). It also transpires that the Inn is the refuge of a gang of cutthroats â€“ of which Merlyn is ringleader â€“ who orchestrate shipwrecks along the perilous coastline, murdering in cold blood any surviving crew and plundering the cargo. When the gang set about lynching one of their own, James 'Jem' Trehearne (Robert Newton), who's been lining his own pockets with the spoils, Mary saves his life and together they flee into the night, eventually turning to Pengallan for help. But Mary soon discovers neither Trehearne nor Pengallan are what they first appear…

Extremist spoilerphobes who've not seen Jamaica Inn needn't get too riled by the revelation that Pengallan is the film's principal malefactor, since it's a card Hitchcock lays face up on the table very early in the proceedings. Some might suggest too early, but the fun derived from this stratagem is the discomfort that escalates as we the audience, knowing he's a bad egg, watch our hero and heroine mistake him for a paragon of virtue, erroneously placing their trust in the very man they’re trying to bring down.

Its screenplay having been penned by Sidney Gilliat and co-credited to Hitchcock’s secretary Joan Harrison, author Daphne du Maurier was reputedly dissatisfied with the changes made to her novel, and indeed the resulting picture as a whole. And in many respects Jamaica Inn doesn't really feel like "An Alfred Hitchcock Film" at all, not only because it was rare for him to tackle period drama but also due to the fact the performances are so atypically theatrical, certainly more so than in any other of his pictures that I can think of. The ripest ham of the bunch is unquestionably Charles Laughton, who also co-produced and so held considerable sway over the production â€“ for example, he drafted in J.B. Priestley to finesse his dialogue â€“ and for my money the actor pitched his performance completely wrong. What the story cries out for but desperately lacks is a strong arch-villain and, where Pengallan ought to be a festering pool of corruption and depravity, the conceited air, sly sideways glances, snide smirking and ludicrously fashioned eyebrows that garnish Laughton's portrayal, he's more pantomime rascal than anything even remotely threatening. Which isn't to say there's nothing to enjoy about his performance. He rapaciously chews on the scenery, shamelessly thieving one's attention every time he's on screen – even when he's background in a shot – and his lascivious designs on Mary are queasily unsettling. It's merely that, in the context of this particular story, I consider the campy approach was misjudged.

Continuing with the subject of villainy, after the initial, impressively discomfiting scenes in which it looks as if Merlyn is going to be a despicable force to be reckoned with, the character is revealed to be Pengallan's puppet and regrettably loses some of his edge; later on there are even attempts to turn him into a figure of pity. Perhaps the most interesting of the cutthroats is Emlyn Williams as Harry the Peddler, whose soft whistling as he goes about his felonious work imbues him with quiet menace, though he's sadly a tad underused.

On the plus side though, Maureen O'Hara is spirited and ravishing as the heroine of the piece; one can hardly blame Pengallan for wanting to truss her up and take her home! And those most familiar with Robert Newton in his legendary performance as the bewhiskered Long John Silver in Byron Haskin's 1950 take on Treasure Island may be as taken aback as I at the youthful and slightly effeminate good looks the actor exhibits here, however his performance is admirable.

Having stated that Jamaica Inn doesn't feel like a Hitchcock film, there are still some nice ‘Hitchcockian’ flourishes in evidence. Notable is a sequence in which Mary wakes beside a sleeping Jem and, espying a savage blade lodged in the sand within reach of his hand, tries to slip away without rousing him. All the same, the scenario isn't milked to its full potential, at least not in the same way similar moments are so nail-bitingly structured in the director's other works.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray edition of director Vincente Minnelli's classic 1950 comedy "Father of the Bride". The movie's delights haven't faded a bit with the passing of the years and its premise is as timely as ever- namely, that planning a wedding is a major pain in the butt for everyone involved. In this case Spencer Tracy is the long-suffering dad, Stanley T. Banks, who lives an uppercrust lifestyle complete with live-in maid. Still, he isn't so wealthy that he can spend with wild abandon. When his teenage daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) announces she is engaged to heartthrob Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor), everyone's lives are turned topsy-turvy. Predictably, Stanley feels Buckley isn't quite worthy of having his daughter as his wife, a common prejudice experienced by about 90% of fathers worldwide who find themselves in the same situation. However, his wife Ellie (Joan Bennett) is enthusiastic about the wedding and goes all-out in assisting her starry-eyed daughter in ensuring that the big day is all she dreams it will be. Before long Stanley finds his leisure time is a thing of the past as a rapidly escalating number of chores (and expenses) relating to the wedding begin to snowball. The witty, Oscar-nominated screenplay, based on the novel by Edward Streeter, allows Stanley to narrate his own tale of woe, wallowing in self-pity all along the way and portraying himself as the ultimate victim: he's pressed to spend a king's ransom on the wedding even while his own opinions are consistently dismissed by those around him. Tracy, also Oscar-nominated, plays the part to the hilt with a slow-burn temper occasionally rising to the level of a full-blown tantrum. Before long the old adage is proven out that if a family can survive planning the wedding then the union may actually succeed. Liz Taylor radiates almost surrealistic beauty as the bride-to-be and the supporting cast is top notch with old pros Billie Burke and Leo G. Carroll joining in the fun. The only weak link is Don Taylor as the groom. The character is so ridiculously polite and wimpy that it defies belief that Stanley would view him as a threat to his daughter in any way. Under the direction of Vincente Minnelli, "Father of the Bride" remains an extremely funny film that doesn't strive for belly laughs but, rather, concentrates on a consistent string of low-key, highly amusing situations that will ring true to all viewers. The film's popularity resulted in a successful sequel, "Father's Little Dividend" and also inspired a very good remake (and sequel) starring Steve Martin in the 1990s. 

The Blu-ray edition looks great and  includes the original trailer and vintage newsreel footage of Elizabeth Taylor's real-life wedding as well as a visit to the set by President Harry S. Truman. 

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“The Second Time Around” is a 1960 comedy-western starring the late, great Debbie Reynolds as a city widow with two children who decides to follow her and her late husband’s dream of living out West. A friend of her deceased husband tells her to come with the kids out to Arizona Territory where she can work in his general store. She goes out alone at first only to find that by the time she gets there the friend who owned the store has been killed. The sheriff (Ken Scott) seems more interested in picking Debbie up literally at the train station and carrying her off to the saloon than catching the killer. He tells her that the store owner was killed by a man with a tattoo of a dagger on his arm. Dum de dum dum. Remember that.

Debbie tries to find work in town but ends up working out on Thelma Ritter’s ranch. You remember Thelm-a she was in dozens of films back in the fifties/sixties playing the role of the good friend/landlady/confidante who always befriends the female lead. We also meet Steve Forrest as a slick gambler; Andy Griffith, as the bashful 35 year old son of a lady ranch owner (he’s more like Gomer than Andy in this one); and Juliet Prowse as Steve Forrest’s girlfriend.

It’s a nice cast and director Vincent Sherman does a pretty good job keeping the lightweight story based on a Richard Emery Roberts novel moving. (Screenplay is credited to Oscar Saul and Cecil Dan Hansen—a pseudonym for Clair Huffaker). There are two main conflicts in the plot. The first is a romantic triangle between Debbie, Andy, and Steve. Sharpster Steve keeps getting the best of poor Andy all through the story, but Andy keeps plugging along. At one point Steve salts a river with gold nuggets and gets Debbie to go out there with him and prospect for gold. His main intention is to get her to fall in the water so she’ll have to take all her clothes off to dry. Forced to spend the night wrapped in a blanket, Debbie sort of melts to Steve’s charm but of course not all the way. It’s 1961, after all.

Nevertheless, an irate Andy rides out there in the morning and socks Steve on the jaw, and when Debbie finds out that Steve salted the river she slaps both of them in the face and walks off in a huff. Of course you know what happens next. Steve socks Andy and he falls in the river. It’s that kind of comedy, folks.

The second conflict is between Debbie and crooked sheriff Ken Scott. She starts a recall petition to force him to run for re-election. She’s convinced he knows more than he’s saying about her dead husband’s dead friend. Scott calls in reinforcements to help him stop her, one of whom turns out to be a guy with a tattoo of a dagger on his arm. Dum-de-dum-dum. And somehow it is very satisfying to see that this particular baddie is played by none other than the great Timothy Carey. Carey was an actor whose weird looks and hulking size made him a villain extraordinaire in such films as “One Eyed Jacks,” “Revolt in the Big House,” “The Killing,” and dozens more. He’s just as scary in this film. In cahoots with the sheriff he and two other no goods rob a bank and steal the $200 Debbie just borrowed.

Fighting mad (that was basically Debbie’s thing, wasn’t it?) she gets people to sign the recall petition and runs for sheriff herself. Guess what? This inexperienced, tenderfoot female, who had never fired a gun before, and could barely lift feed sacks into a wagon when she first got there, wins the election. You just couldn’t keep Debbie down back in the sixties.

As ridiculous as it sounds this is actually an entertaining 99 minutes. It’s almost a time capsule of movies from that era—the kind of movie housewives and mothers would go with their kids to watch at a summer afternoon matinee. You could learn more about what the Sixties were really like from watching this movie than you could watching 20 episodes of “Mad Men.”

It’s a 20^th Century Fox Cinemascope presentation, and the sound was recorded using Fox’s then state-of-the-art stereophonic sound system. I don’t know the technical aspects of how they recorded movie sound back then, but in some ways it was a much better system than the current, digital high def soundtracks in vogue today. It almost seems like they only used right, left and center microphones to pick up all the sound. Hence the soundstage on my Bose Cinemate II Home Theater was incredibly lifelike—much like watching a play on stage. You could actually hear the dialog. Even more vibrant, without being intrusive, was Gerald Fried’s music score.

Incidentally the movie gets its title from the song that Bing Crosby sung in Fox’s “High Time” which was released the same year. Henry Mancini did the scoring for “High Time” but the producers wanted a tune for Bing to croon and hired Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen to write it. Nobody sings it this time around—it just swells up suddenly for the first time in the middle of the movie during a love scene between Debbie and Steve. I guess Fox wanted its money’s worth from the song.

This DVD from 20^th’s burn on demand Cinema Archive division has good picture quality along with superb sound, but no special bonus features. But that’s okay, seeing Tim Carey in a comedy was bonus enough.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon)

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Lionsgate:

Relive the imaginative and compelling cult classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth, when the Limited Collector’s Edition arrives on Blu-ray Combo Pack (plus Digital HD) January 24 from Lionsgate. International icon David Bowie stars in his unforgettable debut role as an alien who has ventured to Earth on a mission to save his planet from a catastrophic drought. In honor of David Bowie’s legacy, the limited collector’s edition Blu-ray Combo Pack includes never-before-seen interviews, brand new artwork, a 72-page bound book, press booklet, four art cards and a mini poster. Hailed as “the most intellectually provocative genre film of the 1970s” by Time Out, the remastered The Man Who Fell to Earth Limited Collector’s Edition Blu-ray Combo Pack will be available for the suggested retail price of $34.99.

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS 

Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth from a distant planet on a mission to take water back to his home planet.

BLU-RAY/DVD/DIGITAL HD SPECIAL FEATURES

·       David Bowie Interview – French TV 1977

·       New Interview with Costume Designer May Routh Featuring Original Costume Sketches

·       New Interview with Stills Photographer David James Featuring Behind-the-Scenes Stills

·       New Interview with fan Sam Taylor-Johnson

·       New Interview with Producer Michael Deeley

·       New “The Lost Soundtracks” Featurette, Featuring Interviews with Paul Buckmaster and Author Chris Campion

·       Interview with Candy Clark

·       Interview with Writer Paul Mayersberg

·       Interview with Cinematographer Tony Richmond

·       Interview with Director Nicolas Roeg

CAST

David Bowie               Basquiat, Labyrinth, The Hunger

Buck Henry                The Graduate, Catch-22

Candy Clark               American Graffiti, Zodiac

Rip Torn                     Men in Black, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

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By Hank Reineke

On the evening of Saturday, November 29, 2003, my wife and I had the blessing of sitting front row at Carnegie Hall’s SRO “Tribute to Harold Leventhal.” On the bill that evening were a host of the impresario’s clients: Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Leon Bibb, Theodore Bikel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and a score of others. Sitting near us in Carnegie’s red plush seats I spied such colleagues and clients of Leventhal’s as Judy Collins, the actor Alan Arkin, Paul Robeson Jr. and what seemed the entirety of Woody Guthrie’s east coast extended family. This was going to be a night of true celebration.

For the non-cognoscenti, Harold Leventhal was, at various times in his eighty-six years, a song-plugger for Irving Berlin, a Broadway and off-Broadway producer, a concert promoter of domestic and international musical acts, a film producer, a radical, and the manager and publisher of some of America’s most noted folk music artists. The tribute was an amazing, unforgettable evening and near the finale of the two-hour long program, Nora Guthrie, the daughter of legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie, brought out a reluctant Leventhal to say a few words.

Leventhal, short and stocky, bespectacled and balding, was brief and humble in his remarks. In a predictably characteristic attempt to swing the spotlight away from his own considerable accomplishments, Leventhal remarked in his Bronx-inflected speaking voice that he most treasured working alongside the people that “America should be proud of,” those rare artists of “complete integrity” who represented the best attributes of our country’s ideals: The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Lead Belly. In the program book given to patrons that night, there was a beautiful resurrected quote courtesy of Pete Seeger. Having been blacklisted and pilloried by enemies for more than a half a century, Seeger – with Leventhal’s empathizing guidance - managed to not only to endure the brickbats but handily outlast all his detractors. “He has done something extraordinary for The Weavers,” Seeger said of his old friend. “He risked his own head and believed in us when nobody else did. You might say he believed in America.”

Woody Guthrie, the famed dust bowl balladeer and composer of America’s unofficial national anthem, “This Land is Your Land,” was not a client of Leventhal’s in the manner that Seeger was. Guthrie was not a stage performer in any traditional sense; he was a writer – and a very prolific one – who would often appear on radio, on stage, at union rallies, and hootenannies. But he was just as likely to be found playing his guitar on the street, in derelict saloons, on New York City’s subway system, or to fellow sailors of the merchant marine. Guthrie’s first novel, the occasionally self-mythologizing pre-Beat era autobiography Bound for Glory, was published by E.P. Dutton and Co. in 1943.

That book would inadvertently inspire a new generation of folk music artists, not the least of whom was a nineteen year old fledgling folksinger named Bob Dylan. Dylan, by his own admission, became a “Woody Guthrie jukebox” after reading through a friend’s copy of the book. He immediately abandoned the coffeehouses of Minneapolis to visit Guthrie at Greystone Hospital in Morris Plains, New Jersey, where the dying singer was institutionalized. Dylan’s first major concert engagement following his signing with Columbia Records in the late autumn of 1961 was at Manhattan’s Town Hall in April of 1963. That concert was, of course, fittingly produced by Harold Leventhal.

Harold Leventhal had been familiar with Woody Guthrie’s words and music since the 1940s; he had seen the displaced Okie singer-guitarist perform at various left-wing functions and hootenannies during this time. He had also been familiar with Guthrie’s humorous “Woody Sez” columns that had appeared sporadically in the Communist Daily Worker newspaper. But it was only after agreeing to manage Pete Seeger’s new quartet The Weavers on the eve of the McCarthy-era in 1950 that Leventhal would become a personal friend of Guthrie, who was already beginning to demonstrate signs of Huntington’s disease.

In the early winter of 1956, with Guthrie’s health continuing to deteriorate, Leventhal helped found The Guthrie Children’s Trust Fund, organized to get Woody’s anarchic business affairs in some semblance of order. It was their ambition that Guthrie’s children might benefit from the small stream of publishing and record sale royalties that were, at long last, beginning to trickle in. It was Leventhal who commissioned Millard Lampell, a blacklisted writer and colleague of Guthrie’s, to skillfully weave together a program of Guthrie’s prose and songs into a program titled From California to the New York Island. Many of the spoken-word recitations from this early stage play had been cribbed from Guthrie’s novel Bound for Glory.

The idea of bringing an adaptation of Guthrie’s Bound for Glory to the stage had long been in the making. In the late autumn of 1961, the folk music magazine Sing Out! made a passing mention of Leventhal’s recent acquisition of "the musical drama rights” to the book. This was exciting news, with such folk music world luminaries as musicologist Alan Lomax and promoter Israel G. Young aggressively promoting the casting of Guthrie protégé Ramblin Jack Elliott in the role of America’s premier ballad-maker. It was not surprising that Leventhal first saw Bound for Glory as a stage production; he had already served as producer of several off-Broadway offerings as Will Geer’s From Mark Twain to Lynn Riggs (1952-53) and Rabindranath Tagore’s King of the Dark Chamber.

It’s not entirely clear why a stage production of Bound for Glory was not realized. The folk-pop music craze of 1963-1964 provided a fertile atmosphere in which such a project could be fulfilled. Woody Guthrie, now mostly out of sight due to the devastating effects of the incurable neurological disease Huntington’s Chorea was – perhaps for the first time in his life - no longer simply a singer of the fringe. He was now and incontestably America’s most iconic folk music hero. Guthrie would finally succumb to the malady in October 1967.

Ed Robbin, an editor of the west coast Communist newspaper People’s World, first met Woody Guthrie in Los Angeles in 1938, during the time the folksinger had a fifteen minute a day radio program on the politically-liberal station KFVD. Guthrie’s program was one of the station’s most popular: he quickly cultivated an appreciative audience of dispossessed and homesick Okies and Arkies. These were Woody’s people, the poor folk who had fled their dirt ravaged homes and farms in the dust bowl for the promised “Garden of Eden” that was California. It was Robbin’s suggestion that Guthrie contribute folksy, humorous Will Rogers-style commentaries to the otherwise staid People’s World. In 1975 when Bound for Glory was to finally commence production as an ambitious film project for United Artists, Robbin reminisced that Harold Leventhal had long “been trying to put together a story of Woody's life that would work for a movie script. Three different scripts were written over a period of seven years."

Having long been an amateur scholar and collector of all things Woody Guthrie, seven years ago I was fortunate enough to acquire an antiquarian copy of one of the two ultimately unproduced Bound for Glory screenplays. The one hundred and thirty-six page screenplay I found, Bound for Glory: the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie, had been written by William Kronick and Oliver Hailey. Kronick was principally known as a writer-director of documentary films, Hailey a playwright and television scribe who would contribute scripts to such 1970s shows as McMillan & Wife and Bracken’s World. With only the slightest information to go on, I tried my best to research exactly when this unproduced screenplay was first commissioned. Happily, a visit to the newspaper archive at the New York Public Library was successful.

In the April 23, 1968 issue of the Los Angeles Times I uncovered the briefest of mentions, that Hollywood producer "Harold Hecht has signed playwright Oliver Hailey to write the screenplay for Bound for Glory, film biography of folk singer- composer Woody Guthrie."  This bit of news was later confirmed by the actor David Carradine, who would eventually – if only by default - land the role of Woody Guthrie. In a 1976 interview with the New York Times, the eccentric, self-satisfied star of television’s Kung Fu series recalled, “About eight years ago this producer, Harold Hecht, was going to make Bound for Glory, based on Woody’s autobiography, and my agent sent me to see him.” Carradine admitted this meeting at Hecht’s “palatial mansion in Stone Canyon” didn’t go particularly well. There was a clash of personalities with neither man having much use for the other.

In any event the proposed Hecht/Hailey/Kronick film project was soon abandoned. Robert Getchell (scripter of Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), would be the lone screenwriter to eventually deliver a workable storyline. Robert F. Blumofe, who would co-produce Bound for Glory with Leventhal, offered that Getchell was hired because "early scripts, written by friends of Guthrie, were too broad, too close to the man.”  "You can't tell all of Woody's life," Blumofe told the Los Angeles Times, who suggested the process to bring Bound for Glory to the big screen took nearly four years.  This remembrance corresponds to Harold Leventhal's own assessment. Leventhal conceded there were serious and ultimately fatal issues with the pre-Getchell screenplay drafts under consideration: "Our trouble was that we were trying to cover too much ground...  When we finally decided to center our story on the two or three key years of Woody's development, around 1938, then the whole thing came together." 

In April of 1975 Arthur Krim of United Artists gave director Hal Ashby (Shampoo, The Last Detail, Harold and Maude) the green light to get Bound for Glory into production.  This gesture was a display of great confidence in Ashby as helmsman, since the role of Woody Guthrie had not yet been cast. The original casting process was an interesting one, rife with unrealized possibilities. Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson were reportedly both offered the role. The former balked due to his inability to play the guitar in even the most rudimentary manner, the latter choosing instead to star opposite a hero, Marlon Brando, in The Missouri Breaks.

By Lee Pfeiffer

"Jorgensen went abroad and came back a broad!" The joke is indicative of the type of humor, sarcasm and outright condemnation that greeted the world's most legendary individual to have undergone a gender transformation. Jorgensen's name has largely been lost to obscurity in recent years but if you grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, she was a household name. She was born a male, George Jorgensen, in 1926 and had a fairly normal childhood- except for the fact that from a very early age George was haunted by the feeling that he should have been born female. We're not talking about homosexual behavior or tendencies, rather, a deep-seated belief that only becoming an actual female through a surgical procedure could bring him happiness. Jorgensen got his wish when he underwent the procedure in Denmark and returned home as a "she". Predictably the media went into a frenzy and Jorgensen decided that if she couldn't live in obscurity, she would capitalize on her new-found fame. She wrote a best-selling autobiography and transformed her experiences into a campy night club routine before passing away from cancer in 1989.

Jorgensen's book became the basis for The Christine Jorgensen Story, a sincere low-budget film made in 1970 and released by United Artists, which curiously kept its logo confined to the very last roll of the credits as though there was something shameful about a major studio releasing the movie. Jorgensen herself acted as technical adviser on the movie which makes it all the more puzzling as to why there are so many apparent embellishments and lapses from the truth. For one, Jorgensen was not the first person to undergo sex change surgery, as the film implies, although she was certainly the most prominent. The movie also tosses in quite a few plot devices and characters that appear to be wholly created for purposes of artistic license. The movie's melodramatic aspects have become grist for the mill in terms of its reputation as a camp classic. Indeed, there are plenty of unintentional laughs and some over-the-top moments by leading man John Hansen, a blonde haired pretty boy whose career went precisely nowhere after his bold decision to play the title role. Hollywood's glass ceiling on actors affiliated with gay behavior was firmly in place at the time.