In the autumn of 1963 the Macmillan Co. published Rohan
O’ Grady’s third suspense novel Let’s
Kill Uncle.The book’s appearance
was certain to command some critical and public notice: the dust jacket and
title page was adorned with the idiosyncratic illustrations of Edward Gorey.The cover blurb offered a small glimpse of
what awaited readers:“In an idyllic, peaceful island setting two
charming children on summer holiday conspire to execute the perfect murder –
and get away with it.”Though a
macabre premise, the book was well-received, the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe,
Pittsburgh Press, New York Newsday and Chicago Tribune singing its praises.Toronto’s Globe
and Mail crowed Let’s Kill Uncle was
“the jolliest thriller of any year.”
One fan of the novel was the producer-director William
Castle, the undisputed grifting King of Ballyhoo.Castle optioned the property shortly after its
appearance with no immediate plans for production set.After scoring handsomely with his 1959 indie House on Haunted Hill with Vincent
Price, Castle had signed on with Columbia Pictures for a four-film deal in
March of 1959 (later extended beyond the original four pics). Between 1959 and
1964 Castle delivered such popcorn-munching guilty-pleasures as The Tingler, 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus,
and Strait-Jacket, amongst others.Then, in October 1963, Universal Picture’s
Vice-President of Production, Edward Muhl, signed Castle to a three-picture
deal for a series of “cost-control” films.
Castle’s trio of films for Uni were less celebrated and
money-spinning than his earlier efforts.His second and most recent effort for the studio, I Saw What You Did (1965) did little to buffer his reputation as a
filmmaker nor cash-cow guarantor.As one
critic from the Los AngelesTimes sulked, “I Saw What You Did,
William Castle, and as usual I am not impressed.”Castle’s final film in his three-pic contract
would be Let’s Kill Uncle.By all indicators, the production of Let’s Kill Uncle would be a rushed
affair.One Hollywood correspondent –
having already visited director Brian G. Hutton rehearsing his cast on the set of
The Pad – chose to drop by the
adjourning soundstage where first-day shooting of Let’s Kill Uncle was in process.The columnist was quick to note the film’s “rough edges” were already
showing.The writer noted the fast and frugal
Castle had already shot more film during his brief visit than Hutton would
shoot in an entire day.
Castle had reason to work quickly.In October of 1965, Variety reported the director/producer was soon to again jump ship,
having just inked a multi-picture deal with Paramount.That contract called for Castle to report to
his new bosses on New Year’s Day 1966.Though
Castle was scheduled to begin work on Let’s
Kill Uncle on December 10, 1965, actual production evidently would not
commence until December 20.The clock
was ticking.
One reason for the delay was Castle’s decision to wait on
the availability of “moppet Mary Badham,” the child actress cast as “Chrissie”
in the film.The thirteen-year old was
not yet finished completing work on Sydney Pollack’s drama This Property is Condemned with Natalie Wood, Robert Redford and
Charles Bronson.Another
thirteen-year-old, Pat Cardi, was to join the cast as Barnaby Harrison, the
principal target of his black-hearted Uncle, Major Kevin Harrison (Nigel
Green).Though Cardi’s name was a mostly
unfamiliar one, his face certainly was.The child actor was frequently seen on television screens in a cavalcade
of small roles.Linda Lawson, cast to
play Chrissie’s aunt Justine, was a virtual novice looking for a break.Castle had met Lawson four years earlier when
she delivered mail to him at his Columbia Pictures office.
It’s unclear if Nigel Green was originally sought out by
Castle to play the “Uncle” role.There
were reports as late as December that Leslie Nielsen “had worked out his
shooting schedule on Beau Geste so he
can accept a role in Uncle.”If indeed Nelson was Castle’s first choice to
play the Major, the resulting film - as it stands - might have benefited from the actor’s gift for light-comedy.Whatever the case, Green – just recently seen
as another “Major” in the Len Deighton/Sidney J. Furie production of the
spy-thriller The Ipcress File (1965) –
was brought on.Green’s comedic skills
were not his strong suit, and it wasn’t the best bit of casting.But then everything about Let’s Kill Uncle seems a bit askew.
The shortcomings of this film weighed heavily on the scripting.Castle’s schedule 1963-1965 was a
particularly busy one, so it’s not surprising his optioning of Let’s Kill Uncle was not exercised immediately.In April of 1965 things started moving, Variety reporting the playwright Robert
L. Joseph had been conscripted to adapt O’ Grady’s book as a film treatment, with
tentative plans to start production sometime “next summer.”Whatever the circumstances, Joseph’s
treatment – if submitted at all – was found not up-to-snuff.The responsibility of delivering a workable
adaptation fell to Mark Rodgers, a writer almost exclusively known for his work
on television.
It was, to be fair, a tough work to adapt, as the grim
humor and dark whimsy of O’ Grady’s novel was seamlessly embroidered into a
textual tapestry – a bit of psychological chess-game plotting not easy to
convey visually.Castle chose to dispense
and/or modify many of the novels’ original elements.The setting of the novel is an island off of
the Canadian Pacific coast, there are Mounties trooping about, the treacherous
Uncle” is named “Sylvester,” and there’s even a “soliloquizing” talking cougar
named “One-Eye.”The filmmakers of Let’s Kill Uncle chose to move the
action to an un-named sub-tropical location of palm trees and bananas, there’s
no Mounties or (worse yet!) a talking cougar.The killer Uncle’s moniker was changed from Sylvester to “Kevin
Harrison.” (As has “Chrissie’s.”She’s “Christie”
in the novel).
While these small name changes don’t really figure in or
matter to the final product, the absence of “One-Eye” is unforgivable.As is the lack of suspense one might have expected.The only good thing about moving the locale
from the Canadian coast to the tropics is the welcome – if brief - appearance
of Nestor Paiva as the Steward of the steamer bringing Barnaby and Chrissie to
their new island homes.Paiva, one might
recall, was the captain of the Rita,
the ship slow-trolling the wilds of the Amazon in search of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.It’s Nestor who informs young Barnaby that the
island is cursed, which isn’t too far off the mark, at least for him.
The film never really catches fire.I was hoping to glean Castle’s thoughts on Let’s Kill Uncle in his memoir Step Right Up!I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America,
but the director/producer makes no mention of the film’s production nor
reception in the book.The slight filmography
in his book’s back pages gives Let’s Kill
Uncle only the briefest of notice: “Technicolor
murder movie starring kids and Nigel Green.”(It should be noted Director of Photography
Harold Lipstein delivers a film of eye-popping color saturation, the film’s
singular saving grace).
The film was mostly dismissed by critics upon its release
– but there were a few actually enjoyed it.One critic from Box Office
mulled the film’s failure was due to the “scene-chewing and downright brattish
character traits” of Cardi and Badham, that the “homicidal plans” of Uncle
Kevin might have proved “a blessing in disguise” had they been carried out.I generally like William Castle’s shoestring
1960’s psycho-horrors as much as the next guy (assuming that “next guy” also
has lowbrow tastes in cinema), but I found the ninety-two minutes of Let’s Kill Uncle a slow torture.Castle’s fans will at least enjoy the bonus featurette
Mr. Castle and Me: An Interview with
Actor Pat Cardi, which offer a small peek behind the curtain.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of Let’s Kill Uncle is presented in 1920 x 1080p,
with a ratio of 1.85:1, dts sound, and removable English sub-titles.The film looks absolutely brilliant, Kino
having struck the print from a “Brand New 2K Master.”The set rounds off with two theatrical
trailers of the film as well as the commentaries of film historians Kat
Ellinger (Diabolique magazine) and the
(now sadly recently deceased) author of Teen
Movie Hell, Mike McPadden.
Quite a few years ago, my Cinema Retro publishing partner Dave Worrall, a fellow enthusiast of 1960s spy flicks, warned me to avoid "Danger Route", a 1967 espionage concoction that he deemed to be "awful". Worrall had seen a TV broadcast of the film on British TV. Complying with his advice wasn't a problem since the film has never been released on home video in America. However, I noticed it was streaming through the Screenpix app, which is available through Amazon Prime, Roku and Apple TV for a paltry $2.99 additional charge per month. I decided to ignore my esteemed colleague's advice and take the plunge largely because of the impressive cast in "Danger Route": Richard Johnson, Carol Lynley, Harry Andrews, Sylvia Sims, Diana Dors, Sam Wanamaker, Gordon Jackson and the "go-to" girl for low-budget Sixties spy movies, Barbara Bouchet.
The film was a rare non-horror production for Amicus, the company that was the main rival to the legendary Hammer Films. The movie was based on Andrew York's well-received novel "The Eliminator" and adapted for the screen by Meade Roberts, who had some estimable credits before and after this film. There were two types of spy movies during this period: those that spoofed or imitated the James Bond films and those that sought to provide a more realistic depiction of espionage work, seemingly inspired by the success of director Martin Ritt's brilliant screen version of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". "Danger Route" is squarely in the latter camp. Richard Johnson plays Jonas Wilde, a top assassin for British Intelligence, who dispenses his victims through a couple of well-placed karate chops. He is partnered with fellow agent Brian Stern (Gordon Jackson) and the two travel widely through Europe to carry out missions on the guise of being yachtsmen. When we first meet Jonas, he's exhausted from having carried out a recent mission on the continent. He comes back to his girlfriend Jocelyn (Carol Lynley in a small but pivotal role that bookends the story). She's a hipster who associates with the mod crowd, clearly to Jonas's dismay. He tells her that even though he is only 37 years-old, he wants to retire and get out of the spy game. They make plans to travel the world living off their wits and working odd jobs. However, reality comes calling when Jonas's boss Canning (Harry Andrews) browbeats him into accepting one more mission- and we all know what happens when the protagonist decides to take on one more mission. Canning informs Jonas that the Americans have a Soviet scientist in their possession who has defected. MI6 thinks he's a Soviet double agent but the Americans don't agree. Thus, they want Jonas to kill him before he is transported to the U.S. It's at this point that the main plot becomes almost incidental, as quirky characters of dubious allegiances interact with our hero, all to the detriment of of a coherent story.
Richard Johnson told this writer that he took himself out of the running to be the screen's first James Bond because he didn't see the potential in the series. Ironically, like every other working actor of the 1960s, he would find himself playing the role of Bond imitators in several low-budget espionage flicks. Johnson gives a very fine performance and makes Jonas an interesting and complex character: a man with a conscience working as a paid assassin. He's a also a vulnerable hero. Though quick on his feet to extract himself from jams without the aid of gadgets, he makes miscalculations in terms of who to trust, with important consequences. Jonas has another vulnerability: he's a borderline alcoholic who is always pouring from a bottle. He finds himself in bizarre situations and death traps, captured by enemy agents and even the C.I.A. There is an extended scene played for some comical effect in which Jonas uses a ditzy, sex-starved housekeeper as a pawn to gain entrance into a mansion house where the bad guys convene. The object of his deceit is winningly played by Diana Dors and she affords the film the few brief moments of humor seen onscreen. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when Canning disappears, Jonas teams for a while with his glamorous wife played by Sylvia Sims.
The film is ably directed by Seth Holt, but he is guilty of bungling a couple of shots. In one scene, Jonas has his hands bound behind his back by heavy rope. He gains access to a small razor and - presto!- he is free in a matter of seconds, when, in fact, such a feat would take hours to accomplish even if it were possible. In a climactic scene aboard a yacht that is in the midst of a dangerous pea soup-like fog near some dangerous reefs, Jonas simply dives overboard with no explanation as to how he survived and made it back to some finely-tailored clothing. A bit more judicious editing would have helped in these scenes.
The plot of "Danger Route" becomes almost incomprehensible and the film, which was largely shot at Shepperton Studios, didn't ignite much interest and was a casualty of the spy movie tidal wave of the era. Thus, a planned sequel never materialized. However, with all due respect to Dave Worrall, I found the film to be enjoyable fun largely due to the inspired cast, especially since I can't resist any movie featuring Harry Andrews.
There
are two types of people in the world, and I don’t refer to young and old, rich
and poor, or me and everybody else.The
divide I have in mind is wider and deeper.On one side are those who would rather chew broken glass than watch Hollywood’s
old costume dramas about noble knights, evil viziers, and beautiful Tahitian
princesses.On the other side are those
like me who enjoy such fare in the same way we gravitate to Mac ’n Cheese and
other comfort food.It’s a soothing
callback to our childhoods when we devoured such movies on TV and the big
screen, in less strident and less cynical times—at least, they were less
strident and less cynical if you were ten years old.In the 1940s, two of the reigning luminaries
of the genre were Maria Montez and Jon Hall, who starred together in six
Technicolor productions for Universal Pictures, 1942-45.Three of the films have been released by Kino
Lorber Studio Classics on one disc, the “Maria Montez and Jon Hall Collection.”If you haven’t had occasion to discover what
movie escapism looked like in the era before today’s Middle Earth, planet
Tatooine, and Wakanda, the Montez/Hall triple feature provides a good
introduction.
In
“White Savage” (1943) directed by Arthur Lubin from an early script by future
Academy Award winning writer-director Richard Brooks, commercial fisherman
Kaloe (Hall) wants to harvest sharks off mysterious Temple Island.Health enthusiasts will pay well for shark
liver, “a great source of Vitamin A,” he says, sounding like today’s late-nite
pitchmen for dubious dietary supplements.After a meet-cute scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a 2022 romantic
comedy, the island’s ruler, Princess Tahia (Montez), falls for the handsome
adventurer and grants him access to the waters, only to turn against him later
when she’s duped by Sam Miller (Thomas Gomez), the sleazy owner of a gambling
den in nearby Port Coral.Miller has
learned that the titular temple on Temple Island includes a golden pool inlaid
with jewels.To plunder the treasure, he
first has to get Kaloe out of the way.Given Kaloe’s name, we assume that the shark hunter is Polynesian (Hall,
born Charles Felix Locher, was said to have had a Tahitian mother in real
life), but he wears a generic charter-captain outfit and skipper’s cap, not a
sarong.Montez, born Maria Gracia Vidal in a well to do Colombian family,
doesn’t look any more Polynesian than Hall.But old movies like this are more notable for oddball charm than
authenticity.This becomes even more
apparent when you think about a golden, gem-encrusted pool in the South Seas.Where did the gold and the jewels come
from?It’s further underlined when
Kaloe, framed by Miller for murder, is imprisoned on a platform guarded below
by African lions.Why not polar
bears?Not that audiences in 1943 would have
cared, as long as dad could ogle Maria Montez in vivid Technicolor, mom could
dream about Jon Hall, and the kids could identify with third-billed Sabu as
Kaloe’s mischievous younger sidekick, Orano.
“Gypsy
Wildcat” (1944) shifts locale to medieval Europe, exactly the kind of setting
and story parodied by Rob Reiner’s beloved 1987 comedy “The Princess Bride,” minus
Billy Crystal and Andre the Giant.When
a traveler is murdered near the castle of ruthless Baron Tovar (Douglas
Dumbrille), Tovar imprisons a band of Gypsies camped nearby.The Gypsies harbor another stranger, Michael
(Hall), who witnessed the murder and holds an important item of evidence sought
by the baron.The caravan’s dancing
girl, Carla (Montez), an orphan who was adopted by the Gypsies at infancy,
falls in love with Michael, to the displeasure of the Gypsy chief’s son, Tonio
(Peter Coe), who had hoped to marry her.Tovar, in turn, is smitten with Carla, who looks uncannily like a woman
in an old portrait that hangs in his private quarters.Well toward the end of the movie, the
characters in the story find out why; you’ll probably put two and two together
long before then.Of the three movies on
the Blu-ray disc, “Gypsy Wildcat” may be the purest example of Universal’s
genius in recycling and repurposing its contract actors, directors, and sets
from one film to the next across different genres in its movie-factory
heyday.The director, Roy William Neill,
was borrowed from the studio’s popular Sherlock Holmes series, as were Nigel
Bruce and Gale Sondergaard.Bruce plays
Tovar’s bumbling lackey in much the same spirit as he portrayed Dr. Watson to
Basil Rathbone’s Holmes.Sondergaard,
here the wife of the Gypsy king, is better remembered as “The Spider Woman” in
Neill’s 1943 Holmes mystery of the same name.Neill and producer George Waggner were also associated with Universal’s
iconic Wolf Man horror series, and the wagons driven by the Gypsies were
probably the same ones used for Maria Ouspenskaya’s Gypsy caravan in “The Wolf
Man.”Leo Carrillo, from Universal’s
B-Westerns, plays Anube, the Gypsy chief; he, Sondergaard, Coe, and the rest of
the troupe reflect producers’ venerable tradition of choosing ethnic-looking
but non-Romani actors to play Gypsies.The script was written by James M. Cain, a surprise if you know Cain
strictly as a giant of classic noir fiction with “The Postman Always Rings
Twice” and “Double Indemnity.”However,
it isn’t so startling when you remember that Cain was one of many celebrated
novelists who made good money on the side, writing or doctoring Hollywood
scripts.I met the late James M. Cain in
passing in the early 1970s, when he was guest speaker one night at a public
library in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, near where he lived in retirement at
the time.At eighty-one, he was
formidably tall, burly, bushy-haired, and bespectacled.When he amiably chatted with members of the
audience, he answered several questions I asked about his career—none of which
dealt with “Gypsy Wildcat,” I should note.
“Sudan”
(1945), Montez’s and Hall’s final film together, is set in ancient Egypt, where
the benevolent king of Khemis is murdered.The crime appears to be the work of an elusive rebel leader, Herua, who
has eluded all attempts to catch him through the usual means.The grieving Princess Naila (Montez) has a
better (or worse) idea.She will
disguise herself as a commoner, find Herua at a fair in Sudan where he
customarily buys horses for his band, and have him arrested.Here, Sudan is a colourful whirl of dancing
girls and camels, not the grim wasteland of starving children we now see on the
TV news.Naila doesn’t realise that her
grand vizier, Horadef, who schemes to seize power, was the actual
murderer.That fact is disclosed ten
minutes into the story, although most of us will already have caught on, given
that a) grand viziers in movies like this are always secretly masterminding
palace coups, and b) Horadef is played by the great George Zucco, who filled
similar roles in Universal’s horror series about the Mummy.Horadef pays slavers to kidnap Naila when she
goes undercover.Two horse thieves,
Merat and Nebka, come to her rescue.Merat is played by Hall, and Nebka by Andy Devine.Devine provides the same nasal-voiced comedy
relief that he did in countless Westerns, only wearing robes this time instead
of suspenders.When a handsome stranger
shows up (Turhan Bey), he and Naila fall in love with each other, before the
princess discovers that the stranger is Herua.Ably written by Edmund L. Hartmann and directed by John Rawlins, the
film could almost serve as a G-rated modern sequel to “Disney’s Aladdin,” except
for a scene where Naila is branded on the arm by the slavers, and another where
she and Herua retire to his tent for a night of passion.The Egyptian sets were ported over from two
earlier Middle Eastern fantasies starring Montez and Hall, “Arabian Nights” (1942)
and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944).It hardly mattered that the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Baghdad of Ali
Baba were two separate historical periods a thousand years apart, since
audiences’ apathy to such details “made little practical difference where the
story was set,” as critic Ian Cameron noted in his 1973 book, Adventure in
the Movies.1945 was a pivotal
moment in Universal Pictures’ history as the year it dropped the Montez and
Hall series, along with its B-horror films and Sherlock Holmes pictures.When the studio returned to the genre in the
early 1950s as Universal-International, it did so with a new generation of young
contract players like Rock Hudson and Yvonne de Carlo.Montez appeared in a few more pictures and
died in 1951 at 39.Hall had a long
career of Westerns, period adventures, and TV guest appearances through the
early 1960s, including baby-boomer fame as television’s “Ramar of the Jungle” in
the ‘50s.
Although
the Montez and Hall movies ran widely on TV during the same era as “Ramar of
the Jungle,” they were broadcast in grainy black-and-white, robbing them of
their lustrous big screen Technicolor.The
Kino Lorber Blu-ray restores their original sharpness and rich palette,
supplemented by engaging audio commentary from Phillipa Berry for “White Savage”
and “Sudan,” and David Del Valle for “Gypsy Wildcat.”Theatrical trailers and subtitles for the deaf
and hearing-impaired are also included.
“Maria
Montez and Jon Hall Collection” can be ordered from Amazon HERE.
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)
"RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES"
BY LEE PFEIFFER
Olive Films has released a Blu-ray edition of the little-remembered and rarely seen 1979 film "The Outsider", a powerful drama directed by Tony Luraschi , who seemingly had a bright career but who, instead seems to have fallen into obscurity. This seems to be one of only two films he was ever credited with. The reasons for this remain unclear, given the fact that "The Outsider" is a powerful film that has retained its bite over the decades. One can only wonder why a work of such passion could not have inspired its director to continue to direct movies, although perhaps fate prevented him from doing so. (If any readers has any information to share about this, please let us know.) The film is set in Northern Ireland during the height of "The Troubles", that seemingly endless period of time when nation was torn apart by state of virtual civil was. The IRA routinely battled British forces on the streets of major cities, turning urban centers into war zones at times. There were also loyalist paramilitary groups that did not want independence for Northern Ireland and who wanted to stay loyal to the Crown. The end result was a series of bombings, gun battles and kidnappings that ultimately took thousands of lives and left the civilian population in grave danger. The Good Friday peace agreement, brokered by Prime Minister Tony Blair with enthusiastic backing of President Bill Clinton, finally brought about an end to most of the violence but this didn't take place until 1998 and until then, the bloody legacy of Irish fighting Irish forever seared the nation's history.
In "The Outsider", Craig Wasson plays Michael Flaherty, a disillusioned Vietnam War veteran of Irish descent who grew up under the spell of his grandfather (Sterling Hayden), who continues to relate stories about his glory days serving in the IRA and carrying out dangerous missions against the British. Michael decides to make his grandfather proud by leaving the family home in Detroit to join up with the IRA. He manages to make the proper contacts and when he gets to Ireland, he is promptly met by members of an IRA group located in the Catholic dominated Republic of Ireland. Here his new comrades greet him politely but warily and with good reason: traitors are not uncommon in the movement and there is suspicion Michael might be a British plant. Finally convinced he is sincere, they move him from safe house to safe house, much to his frustration. Michael is eager to see action against the British but all he gets are delays. After griping that he feels he is wasting his time, the IRA commander sends him and another agent on a mission that requires them to cross the border into Northern Ireland, the geographical area where most of the acts of violence are carried out in the quest to have both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland reunited as one country, independent of British rule. When Michael arrives in Belfast, he finds the city resembling a war zone with bombed-out buildings and an occupying force of machine gun-carrying British forces on seemingly every corner. While he awaits his orders for the mission, he meets and strikes up a romantic relationship with Siobahn (Patricia Quinn), a firebrand of a young woman who hates the British for killing her younger brother. Although she is not officially with the IRA, she is trusted by them and provides cover for their actions. As Michael impatiently awaits making himself useful, a cruel deception is under way. The local IRA commander has come to the conclusion that Michael could be more valuable dead than alive. He theorizes that if the IRA murders him and frames the British, the result will outrage Irish American sympathizers in the USA who would then increase their monetary donations to the group. Simultaneously, the local British commander (Geoffrey Palmer) has had Michael under surveillance and has also concluded that he could be quite valuable dead- especially if the blame could be placed on his IRA comrades. Meanwhile, Michael is oblivious to all this and is finally given orders to proceed on a mission- but it's one that is intended to be his last. The film ends with a shocking revelation relating to Michael's family that sets up an emotional last scene.
"The Outsider" is a highly accomplished work and is superbly directed by the aforementioned Tony Luraschi. It's a pity that, for whatever reason, he never chose or perhaps had the opportunity to continue making films. The movie is also outstanding in terms of casting with even minor roles played so convincingly that at times you would be forgiven for thinking you were watching a documentary. The story does manage to deftly tip-toe through the tulips when it comes to passing judgment on the political implications of the events depicted. Both the British military and the IRA members are presented in an unflattering light. How you react to the film probably depends on your personal view of the politics involved. After all, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. If there is a criticism of the film, it's related to the script, which is unrelentingly downbeat. Surely even IRA members managed to have a laugh and a joke occasionally in a pub but in "The Outsider", everyone is downbeat, depressed and paranoid. Still, the Olive Films Blu-ray is most welcome and very highly recommended. There is only one disappointment: the presentation is bare bones. With a film associated with this much controversy, there should have been a commentary track with scholars who can discuss Ireland's infamous "Troubles" so that the script can be discussed in context. Highly Recommended.
I’m
going to begin this review by cribbing a couple of sentences from my review of
Blue Underground’s double-feature Blu-ray of The Blood of Fu Manchu and The
Castle of Fu Manchu:Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels were wildly popular
pulps but unapologetically racist in construction, reflective of many western
attitudes of the day. His Fu Manchu series, the first novel having been
published in 1912, were written as blowback in the decade following the long
simmering anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-Christian, and decidedly
anti-British Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901. OK, just needed to get that out
of the way before moving on… but we’ll return to examine this subject a bit
later.
I
suppose it’s fitting the fireworks of the Boxer Rebellion serve as the starting
point of Paramount’s The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929). The film
flashes with scenes of Chinese fighters in Peking battling colonizing Brits
(and other western allies) in dramatic style. To make the uprising more
authentic in its stage dressing, the trades reported (March 16, 1929) the
filmmakers were planning to comb LA’s Chinatown in search of as many as “500
oriental actors and extras.” They apparently fell short of this ambitious goal.
Reporting four days later, the Los Angeles Evening Express derided, “Los
Angeles’s Chinatown has fallen down on the job,” causing the studio to widen
their search to “surrounding cities for reinforcements.”
It
was only a few weeks earlier (March 3, 1929) that Paramount announced Rowland
V. Lee was chosen to direct The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (the true title
of Rohmer’s first novel featuring the fiendish villain). The film’s title was
soon amended to the easier-to-market The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, with
“rehearsals” set to commence immediately on the first week of March. Lee, who
would go on to more famously direct such Universal features as Son of
Frankenstein and Tower of London (both 1939), was short-listed
having recently helmed two pictures for Paramount in 1929: Wolf of Wall
Street and The Women Who Needed Killing. Even as the Boxer Rebellion
battle scenes were being staged, it appears full casting for the film was still
not finalized: several of film’s players were not brought on until mid-April
1929. The film was given a tight shooting schedule, one wag noting “all night
sessions will be the order of things.”
There
were other hurdles to surmount. Hollywood was still making its earliest steps
in their exploration of sound-filmmaking. In April of 1929, the Los Angeles
dailies made note of the challenges of writing for the screen in this new
“sound era.” Filmmakers now needed to pointedly write and cast to address the
vagaries of “foreign” speech patterns and regional dialects. This challenge fell
particularly heavy on the screenwriters. “The dialogue voiced by Fu Manchu and
the other Chinese characters had to be “couched in this peculiar, flowery
oriental style,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “To once digress
from it would have been to possibly ruin the effect of the entire production.”
There
were other issues. There’s more than a bit of stilted over-acting present in The
Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu: lots of theatrical over-emoting throughout,
several actor’s - understandably - not yet conversant with the new realities of
sound-recording. This is most obvious in the performance of actress Jean Arthur
cast as the beleaguered Lia Eltham, the mink-lined imprisoned daughter of the
man Fu Manchu holds responsible for the death of his wife and child. Arthur is
a great actress – she enjoyed a long career lasting from the early 1920s
through the mid-1960s – but her exaggerated silent-era gesturing and doleful
sways present in this first Fu film are a noticeable throwback to days passed.
I suppose Warner Oland’s Fu Manchu fares better than most as his character is
of course, written as inscrutable: reserved, reticent, cunning and
seemingly less susceptible to theatrical outbursts.
As
the title character, Orland of course stands dead center of the ensuing mayhem.
The actor, soon to command greater fame as the Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan in
the Monogram series, was – famously (or perhaps infamously) - not of Asian
descent. He was Swedish. Of course neither the previous of succeeding Fu
Manchus were of Chinese heritage. Oland’s predecessor Harry Agar Lyons (in a
series of silent-era shorts (1923-1924) was British as were two of Oland’s
successors, Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. It’s fair to say Orland was the
most convincing non-Asian actor to play the role. Having worked in silent films
from 1912 through 1926, Oland’s “exotic” (by early Hollywood standards)
appearance allowed him to play an assortment of characters of physical
non-western heritage.
Oland
wasn’t bothered with such typecasting. The amount of work offered was
profitable and playing outside his own culture allowed him the chance to test
his abilities. “I like to play the Chinese roles because most of them give me
the opportunity to do some real acting,” he told the Scripps New Service. “In fact,
I like all the roles that give me a chance for difficult characterizations. I
believe character actors are the real backbone of most pictures. They are the
ones who give the production its atmosphere. And, incidentally, the character
actors are the ones who live the longest in the business.”
Obviously,
one can’t look at these Fu Manchu movies in this 21st Century
without groaning at the stereotypes, the insensitive dialogue, and – of course
- the casting of a non-Asian in the title role. To be fair, Caucasians are
damned and thrown under the bus as well. “The white men are kind and generous,”
Fu Manchu soothes his frightened daughter as he finds his home in the crossfire
between British snipers and Boxer rebels. But his opinion soon changes when his
wife and daughter find themselves collateral damage of Britain’s superior
firepower. Now, with the “white men” having failed in their promise to protect
his family and home, Fu has an awakening. “I’ve been blind,” Fu Manchu rages.
“These whites are barbarians, devils, fiends!” Which sets him off to
exact revenge on the offspring of the westerners he holds responsible.
That’s
essentially the plot device of both films in this new set from Kino Lorber. The
two film’s play out much as movie serials of the 1940s do. Lots of villainy,
lots of episodic action, a distressed gal, and a heroic paramour (in this case,
the handsome Neil Hamilton, “Commissioner Gordon” of TV’s Batman (1966).
It’s not great art, but it was – in its time, no doubt – a suspenseful and fun
thrill-ride. Paramount offered previews of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu
in late spring/early summer of ’29 at the Westlake Theatre. Initial critical
reaction was muted: the earliest previews of the original cut ran the gamut
from “overlong” to “somewhat sketchy.” Regardless, upon national release, the
film did well enough that by late January of 1930, the trades announced both
director Lee and Oland (and indeed the entire primary cast of the original)
were to return for a rousing sequel The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu.
In
his promotion of this second coming, Lee – again, tapped to direct - pointed
out the sinister Fu Manchu was intriguing as he was no ordinary gangster. He
was a super-villain, a worthy adversary to Inspector Nayland Smith (O.P.
Heggie). Their rivalry and brinksmanship was much in the tradition of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes vs. Moriarty. “Dangerous criminals make fascinating
prey,” Lee contended. “Such a man is the fictitious Dr. Fu Manchu. His
mentality, although diverted into wrong channels, is as keen as that of those
who pursue him. He knows what to expect.”
Oland’s
Fu is far more loquacious than inscrutable in this second film. There’s a lot
of bantering dialogue and threats tossed. Perhaps too many. As one critic noted
in his review of The Return of Fu Manchu, “Where is this oriental
laconicism they talk about? Dr. Fu is one of the most garrulous individuals on
record.” Though decrying the film’s excessive verbiage, the reviewer conceded
the film did possess “the virtues of movement… events tumbling over each other
in endless succession from start to finish.” Which sounds, more than a little,
of what critics thought of the crazy but entertaining James Bond opus Moonraker
a half-century later. Not great art, again. But great fun… for some.
I
suspect the audience for this particular Fu Manchu set will be split somewhat
evenly between aficionados of early sound-films and Cinema Study students
examining Race and Ethnicity Depictions of Early Hollywood. There’s a lot to
uncomfortableness to mine through here, no shortage of political and cultural
tripwire hazards in this “woke” era. Are the Fu Manchu pulps and films racist?
Well, of course they are. The question is whether or not the films are still
viable. In his intriguing book Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the
Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Professor
Yunte Huang accepts that many will always view Oland’s Chan as a “Yellow Uncle
Tom,” his impersonations akin to that of a blackface minstrel. But he also
notes that upon Oland’s visit to Shanghai in 1933, local audiences celebrated
the actor for “bringing to life the first positive [Chinese] character in
American film.”
So
it’s all complicated. As an amateur historian, I personally think artifacts of
days ancient and not-so-ancient should be preserved for study and education.
Such storytelling shines light on our past and the best (and worst) aspects of
our world and ourselves. In terms of simple film-collecting, perhaps the
appearance of these two rare-ish Fu Manchu films might pique the interest of
fans of Oland’s far better known Charlie Chan series. In 2009 20th
Century Fox issued an essential five box DVD collection of the actor’s Chan
oeuvre, so there’s evidently interest in Oland’s filmography even some ninety-years
on.
It
might be somewhat disappointing to those more knowledgeable collectors that
Kino chose not to (or perhaps were unable?) to include the third and final film
of the Oland Fu Manchu series on this set. In 1931 Paramount released The
Daughter of Fu Manchu, the last (and, arguably, least) of the series, but
one featuring Anna May Wong as the featured character. To my knowledge The
Daughter of Fu Manchu has never been given a proper official release on
home video, though copies of the film have long been found on the grey-market.
(In 1984 the Video Marquee label issued a clamshell VHS edition of the film as
part of their “Joe Franklin’s Collectibles” series – but I’m not certain this
release had any official sanction). In any case, a two-disc Blu-ray set of this
triumvirate would have surely satiated the desires of the sad Completists
amongst us. I’m not complaining, mind you. While some might wish such dated
fare be removed from circulation as not to offend anyone’s sensibilities, I’m
grateful Kino Lorber continues to shine light on such obscure and mostly
forgotten films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
This
Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of The Mysterious Dr. Fu
Manchu/The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu is presented here in 1920x1080p, dts
sound and with an attractive slipcase cover. The film looks very good
considering its age, though neither print is pristine: there are occasional
flashes of white and black emulsion scratches present throughout, and some
shots appear a bit soft. The set rounds off with several theatrical trailers of
period films as well as welcome commentaries courtesy of novelist and critic
Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog fame.
Audie
Murphy plays himself in “To Hell and Back,” available on Blu-ray from Kino
Lorber. When I was a kid, the name Audie Murphy was very familiar to me and my
friends as the most decorated American soldier of WWII. And if that wasn’t
enough to make me an Audie Murphy fan, he was also the star of countless movie
westerns which I watched on repeat airings on TV. When “To Hell and Back” made
the rounds on TV, all other activities stopped so we could watch his Medal of
Honor exploits on the small screen, and then replay them in our minds in the
weeks that followed. We imagined killing Nazis on our way to and from grade
school. Thoughts and countless discussions about driving Jeeps with mounted .50
caliber machine guns, jumping sand dunes ala “The Rat Patrol,” and driving half-tracks
and Sherman tanks while firing rounds on the enemy.
The
film, which was released in 1955, opens with an introduction by retired four-star General Walter Bedell
Smith setting the stage for meeting a young Audie at home in rural northeastern
Texas in 1937. Born in 1925, he was part of a large family, abandoned by their
father and left alone after their mother died, leaving his younger siblings in
foster care. Murphy left school to work and help care for his family at the age
of 12. His skills at hunting and using a gun would aid him during his military
service. Underage after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his older sister helped
falsify his records so he could enlist in the Army. After basic training at Ft.
Lewis, Washington, Murphy shipped to North Africa, but he saw no action as the enemy
had just surrendered. Murphy isn’t thought of too highly at this point in the
story, by his peers or his commanding officers.
The
story shifts to the invasion of Sicily followed by the invasion of Italy and then
combat in France where Murphy distinguishes himself in battle and receives
America’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. The movie moves along at
a brisk pace but we never really get to know his buddies and the bonds they
created, as the focus is oncus on the action set pieces and deaths of his
friends. Murphy is promoted from private to platoon sergeant and then to a field
commission to second lieutenant. The movie depicts the highlights from his real
life exploits including when he singlehandedly takes on an army of advancing
German soldiers by firing the machine gun on a burning Sherman tank and halting
the German advance, thereby saving the lives of many Americans. Murphy was
severely wounded and suffered the rest of his life from what is now commonly
known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Murphy is credited with killing an
estimated 240 German soldiers and wounding and capturing far more. It’s almost
too much to expect so much can be told in a movie with a running time of 106
minutes.
Murphy
released his autobiography, “To Hell and Back,” in 1949 which became the basis
for this film. Murphy declined the offer to attend the Military Academy at West
Point, but remained an Army Reserve officer and served in the Texas National
Guard, retiring with the rank of Major. Murphy did accept the call to Hollywood,
along with fame, fortune and a gambling addiction. His successful movie career
began in 1948, mostly in Westerns, ending in 1969 after featuring in 44 movies.
He also starred in a troubled 1961 TV series “Whispering Smith” which some
deemed too violent for television. Murphy died in a plane crash on 28 May 1971.
He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery and his grave is the second most
visited after President John F. Kennedy.
“To
Hell and Back” was a Universal production filmed at Universal Studios and on
location in California in widescreen CinemaScope. It’s a pity the production
didn’t do actual location filming in Italy and France, but this was uncommon at
the time. The movie was directed by Jesse Hibbs with a screenplay by Gil Dovel
based on Murphy’s best selling biography of the same name. Music was supervised
Joseph Gershenson making use of common Army songs and an otherwise sparse
score. It would be great if Hollywood saw fit to remake this story. The movie
became a huge hit and was Universal’s most successful film until the release of
“Jaws” in 1975.
The
disc features an entertaining audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay
Rubin. It’s worth watching the movie twice, the second time with the commentary
track which is like hanging out with a couple of buddies sharing anecdotes and
facts about the film. Their audio commentaries are always insightful and
entertaining and this one contributes greatly to this Blu-ray release which is
a worthy upgrade from previous DVD versions released over the years. The other
extras are the trailer for this and other Kino Lorber titles. I highly
recommend this disc for Audie Murphy fans and fans of military movies.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
Writer and director Quentin Tarantino delivered one of the most
influential films of the 1990s with the critically acclaimed contemporary
classic PULP FICTION. Now, for the first time ever, fans
can experience the groundbreaking and wildly entertaining tour de force on 4K
Ultra HD™ Digital, 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray™, and in a Limited-Edition Collector’s
SteelBook® December 6, 2022 from Paramount Home Entertainment.
A touchstone of postmodern film, PULP FICTION is a
must-have for every film fan’s collection. Winner of the Palme d’Or at
the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, the film also won the Independent Spirit Award
for Best Feature and the Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay. The
film features a star-studded cast, including John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson,
Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving
Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken and Bruce Willis.
The PULP FICTION 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Limited-Edition
Collector’s SteelBook include the feature film in sparkling 4K Ultra HD, access
to a Digital copy of the film, as well as the following legacy bonus content:
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc
·Not the Usual Mindless Boring
Getting to Know You Chit Chat
·Here are Some Facts on the
Fiction
·Enhanced Trivia Track (subtitle
file)
Blu-ray Disc
·
Not the Usual Mindless
Boring Getting to Know You Chit Chat
·
Here Are Some Facts on the
Fiction
·
Pulp Fiction: The Facts –
Documentary
·
Deleted Scenes
·
Behind the
Scenes Montages
·
Production Design Featurette
·
Siskel & Ebert "At
the Movies"- The Tarantino Generation
·
Independent Spirit Awards
·
Cannes Film Festival – Palme
d'Or Acceptance Speech
·
Charlie Rose Show
·
Marketing
Gallery
·
Still Galleries
·
Enhanced Trivia Track (text
on feature)
·Soundtrack Chapters (index points in
feature)
Synopsis
Critics and audiences worldwide hailed PULP FICTION as
the star-studded movie that redefined cinema in the 20th century.
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino delivers an unforgettable cast of characters—
including a pair of low-rent hit men (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson), a
gangster's wife (Uma Thurman), and a desperate prizefighter (Bruce Willis)—in a
wildly entertaining and exhilarating adventure of violence and redemption.
Click here to order Steelbook Limited Edition from Amazon
Director Stanley Kramer's 1970 comedy "The Secret of Santa Vittoria" is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Until the late, great video company Twilight Time released the film on Blu-ray some years ago, I hadn't seen the movie since it was originally released and only had vague recollections of it. Watching it again, I found it to be an absolute delight thanks to a terrific script by Ben Maddow and William Rose (the latter co-wrote Kramer's "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World") and a sterling cast. The film is set in 1943 in the small Italian village of Santa Vittoria. The story opens with a young university studio, Fabio (Giancarlo Giannini in one of his first major roles) who hurries to his native town to breathtakingly inform the residents that Mussolini has just been deposed. The announcement is met with a collective yawn by the townspeople, who have remained largely immune from the effects of the war and their dictator's fascist police state. However, when the towns folk learn that German soldiers will be occupying Santa Vittoria, there is widespread concern. The town's one claim to fame is its production of popular wines which are exported in massive numbers. Everyone in town depends in some way on the revenues from the wine sales and it becomes apparent that the German army intends to confiscate the town's precious inventory. Through happenstance, a local wine merchant, Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) has been appointed mayor. He is regarded as an idiot by everyone including his long-suffering wife Rosa (Anna Magnani), who has grown weary over the decades of trying to cope with his laziness and regular bouts of wine-fueled excesses. Recognizing that the seizure of the town's stockpile of wine will leave the locals destitute, Bombolini devises a seemingly preposterous plan to leave enough wine on hand to satisfy the Germans that they have secured the lion's share of the inventory. Meanwhile, prior to their arrival, the entire town will participate in a massive effort to hide the bulk of the inventory in a local cave and then have a wall constructed to hide the stash. The plan proves surprisingly effective and Bombolini emerges as an unlikely leader, who rallies the locals in the Herculean effort that involves hundreds of townspeople forming seemingly endless lines in which people painstakingly pass hundreds of thousands of bottles from hand to hand one-by-one.
When the German forces finally arrive, they are under the command of Capt. von Prum (Hardy Kruger). He is a civil, even charming, fellow who nevertheless makes it clear to Bombolini that he is no fool. von Prum has anticipated that substantial wine bottles are hidden somewhere but Bombolini, who puts on a respectable act of being a fawning, spineless civil servant, adamantly denies the charge. The tenuous situation is made more dangerous when von Prum turns his attentions to romancing a local beauty, a cultured woman named Caterina (Virna Lisi), who reluctantly plays along with him because she doesn't want to incur his wrath. Seems she is secretly hiding her real lover, an Italian army deserter, Tufa (Sergio Franchi). It seems Bombolini is winning the war of wills but before the Germans can depart with the stores of wine, the Gestapo arrives with evidence that a cache has indeed been hidden. The frolicking good times seem over for the townspeople when von Prum's methods are overruled in favor of torture.
The Secret of Santa Vittoria is a truly underrated gem with one of those glorious, scenery-chewing performances that only Anthony Quinn could successfully pull off without looking hammy. He's in full Zorba mode here, turning the lowly and discredited town idiot into a figure of courage and nobility. Quinn is more than matched by Anna Magnani as his fiery-tongued wife. They are like an Italian version of Ralph and Alice Kramden, constantly trading barbs and insults in sequences that are genuinely amusing. It's also fun watching the scenes in which the beleaguered Bombolini must also deal with his teenage daughter's (Patrizia Valturri) raging hormones and her quest to lose her virginity to her student lover, Fabio. Director Kramer is at his best and the sequences in which the townspeople join together to hide the wine are almost epic in scope. It's a touching, funny and moving film that is set to a fabulous score by frequent Kramer collaborate Ernest Gold.
If you're a fan of "The Munsters" TV series, then your hearse has come in. MPI Video has released a terrific and fun DVD with the rather awkward title "Marineland Carnival with The Munsters TV Show Cast Members & More Lost Treasures". The centerpiece of the disc is an obscure 1965 TV special that finds the cast of the show (Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick and Pat Priest) paying a visit to the beloved California aquarium/theme park that operated from 1954 until 1987 when it was purchased by (and closed by) the villainous owners of Sea World in San Diego. The special was broadcast in B&W on CBS, the same network that aired the weekly sitcom, which was also in B&W. (The Munsters did appear in color on the big screen in the feature film "Munster, Go Home!" in 1966). The TV special is corny and acts primarily as an extended commercial for the park but it is also quaint and charming compared to the raw comedy that kids today are raised on. In the show, the Munsters remain oblivious to the fact that they stand out from everyday people. They believe a giant tank consisting of sharks and octopi is actually a pet store. Grandpa also takes to flagpole climbing and Butch and Marilyn join the audience for the dolphin show, where Herman joins the act, feeding one of the dolphins that is trained to make high leaps. The New Christy Minstrels, a popular folk singing group of the era, also perform a number of songs.
The release includes a treasure trove of TV rarities relating to the series:
Fred Gwynne making guest appearances in costume for comedy sketches on "The Danny Kaye Show" and "The Red Skelton Hour".
Yvonne De Carlo in a guest appearance from 1968 on Joey Bishop's chat show. She talks extensively and affectionately about the show and her fellow cast members but acknowledges that the two-hour procedure for applying makeup was a grueling ordeal that had to be undertaken five days a week. She also says that the series' run of two seasons was just long enough.
A new interview with Butch Patrick in which he tells some highly interesting and amusing tales about filming the series. He relates that for the pilot, the roles of Eddie and his mother Lily were played by different actors. CBS approved the series but wanted those actors replaced, thus Patrick go the job. He has nothing but good things to say about the experience, noting he was eleven years-old but looked much younger. He recalls being thrilled to be filming at Universal because he was a fan of the studio's classic monster movies and got to see the stages where they were shot. He also liked seeing other films and TV series in production and meeting the makeup people and seeing their creations for horror and sci-fi films. He also recalls the making visits to the studio of George Barris, who created seemingly every legendary TV vehicle including the Munsters' distinctive car.
A rare TV promo for the special as well as generic CBS promos for the regular series.
There is also an abundance of unrelated promotions for other MPI video sets of TV shows and specials from the era starring Bob Cummings, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Donna Reed, and Doris Day that are available from the company.
The DVD begins with a disclaimer acknowledging that the source print for the TV material has imperfections but I thought it stood up remarkably well. I must confess that in the rivalry between fans of "The Munsters" and "The Addams Family", I was firmly on the Addams side of the debate. That show was more daring with its politically incorrect situations, funnier characters and blatant sexual overtones between Gomez and Morticia. But I have to admit that I very much enjoyed this MPI release and relished the admittedly dated and gentle humor. If you like the show, this is a "must-have".
Charles Bronson, the epitome of the screen hero of few words and emotions, is the subject of the French documentary "Charles Bronson: Hollywood's Lone Wolf" from writer/director Jean Lauritano. While the movie's 52-minute running time is hopelessly inadequate for providing much insight into the film legend's life and career, it does benefit from plenty of HD film clips instead of the usual VHS-quality footage culled from public domain movies and well-worn trailers, which is usually the norm in documentaries of this sort. Because the French are generally known as the ultimate cinephiles, the film concentrates primarily on aspects of Bronson's professional career, with only some fleeting insights into his personal life and background. We learn he grew up in a hardscrabble lifestyle in the coal country of western Pennsylvania and seemed destined for a dead end job in the mines. However, after being drafted for service in WWII, he joined a generation of other recently-discharged young men who gravitated toward the acting profession after the war. Like most of his peers, Bronson never dreamed of being an actor and tried out for a play at the suggestion of a friend. He found he had a knack for the profession and soon moved to Hollywood, where he traded his real name- Charles Buchinsky- for Charles Bronson because Senator Joseph McCarthy's "Red Scare" witch hunts were in play and Bronson suspected that a Slavic name would not be beneficial. He found work immediately and was generally cast as ominous tough guys and henchmen largely because he lacked the handsome features of traditional leading men of the era.
In the late 1950s, Bronson landed the lead role in the modestly-successful TV series "Man with a Camera" before director John Sturges cast him as one of "The Magnificent Seven" and in "The Great Escape", both of which afforded Bronson high profile roles. It was during the filming of the latter production that Bronson began wooing actress Jill Ireland, despite the fact that she was married to his co-star and good friend David McCallum. Ultimately, she would divorce McCallum and marry Bronson, but such dramatic developments are dismissed with in a nanosecond in the documentary. Instead, director/writer Lauritano dissects Bronson's achievements on screen, pointing out that he reached leading man status in Europe long before Hollywood recognized his potential as a boxoffice super star. The film presents Bronson as resentful that, while he was starring in films by the likes of Rene Clement and Sergio Leone in Europe, he was still relegated to playing rather nondescript villains in American cinema, despite a high profile role as one of "The Dirty Dozen" and playing a non-violent role opposite Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in "The Sandpiper".
Brosnson's prospects for American stardom rose with the release of two European films that were well received in the States: the Western "Red Sun" and the real-life crime drama "The Valachi Papers", both directed by Terence Young. Soon after, his collaborations with British director Michael Winner on films such as "Chato's Land" and "The Mechanic" finally afforded Bronson name-above-the-title respect in his native country. The highlight of this period was starring in Winner's "Death Wish", the controversial crime thriller that perfectly tapped into the American public's concerns about urban crime waves of the era. It would prove to be one of the most influential films of all time, for better or worse. The documentary is frustrating because it affords us an interesting overview of a cinematic icon who is rarely examined in any meaningful way, yet it needs to have a much longer running time to do him justice. What exists is impressive, however.
The version of the film currently presented on Amazon for streaming rental or purchase and on Freevee for free, but with ads. (Yuck!)
Louis B. Mayer’s MGM was not a preeminent fright-movie
factory in the 1930s.In a 1935
interview with London’s Picturegoer,
C.A. Lejeune, managing director of MGM in Great Britain, boasted the studio
didn’t “specialise in any single type of production,” whether they be “musicals,
or comedies, or horror films.”That
said, following the successes of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein,
and the still-in-production The Bride of
Frankenstein, MGM wisely chose to dip their toe into the horror pool.In doing so, they managed to release a couple
of eerie 1930 classics of their own.In
1935-1936 MGM delivered to the big screen The
Devil Doll with Lionel Barrymore and Mad
Love with Peter Lorre.But the
studio was also interested in capitalizing on Universal’s success of Dracula.So much so they even sought out that film’s director, Tod Browning, to
do so.It was Browning, an earlier collaborator
on multiple silent-film classics starring Lon Chaney, chosen to helm the
production of MGM’s The Vampires of
Prague.
Mayer was not particularly enamored of horror pictures,
but business was business and he recognized Universal was doing good box office
with their string of chillers. MGM did insist writers tapped to scribe The Vampire of Prague should draw upon
an earlier property of theirs:Tod
Browning’s silent feature London after
Midnight (1927).Though only a relatively
few short years separated release dates of London
after Midnight and Mark of the
Vampire (as The Vampires of Prague
would be re-titled), it didn’t seem a large number of critics (circa 1935)
recognized the latter as a re-make of the earlier Lon Chaney film - an effort now
sadly lost for examination and contrast.
So it wasn’t too surprising that MGM brought Tod Browning
on.Though Lon Chaney was dead and gone,
the director had an ace-in-the-hole, an actor holding current high attention.Bela Lugosi had come to Browning’s attention
with his casting in the director’s cinematic adaptation of Bayard Veiller’s 1916
three-act stage mystery of The Thirteenth
Chair (1929).Though Lugosi’s role in
that film was relatively minor – he was only the seventh-billed of the cast – his
subsequent popularity as Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula on stage productions
cemented Browning’s decision to cast the actor in the title role of the iconic
Universal film of 1931.
With this bankable asset in place, Variety reported in December of 1934 that Sam Ornitz and Hy Kraft
had been conscripted to write the screenplay for The Vampires of Prague: but this news was not only late arriving,
but incorrect.When production commence
directly following the New Year (January 12), Guy Endore and Bernard Schubert were
handling screenplay chores. Endore was something of an anomaly among
horror-writers.The author of such works
as The Werewolf of Paris (1933) and Babouk (1934), Endore was a devout
leftist who dressed mysteries with subliminal doses of theoretic Marxism.
That said, the most controversial aspect of Endore’s scenario
was not necessarily political, though its inclusion was completely excised from
the finished film.It’s never explained
why Lugosi’s Count Mora (a virtual mirror-image of his Count Dracula persona) displayed
a visible bullet-hole in his right temple.Actress Carol Borland, playing Mora’s daughter Luna, later reminisced Endore’s
script was envelope-pushing in its construction.In a scene excised from the film, the actress
recounted the original screenplay explained it was an act of incest that caused
Mora to strangle to death his daughter and take his own life with a bullet to
the head.
It was this ghastly act that caused the restless souls of
Mora and Luna to solemnly walk the earth in perpetuity.Endore’s plot device, needless to say,
conjured a scenario far beyond any sort of supernatural hokum: MGM, not without
cause, demanded its exclusion from the finished film.If such a scene was actually filmed, it was
likely excised along with fourteen other minutes reportedly trimmed from the
final cut.In any event, Mark of the Vampire clocks in at a tidy sixty-one
minutes which, all things considered, is probably for the best.
The production was allotted a twenty-four day shooting
schedule and budget of some 305,000 dollars, $3000 of which went to Lugosi for his
(mostly) silent walk-through role.For
those cineastes who complain Lugosi was under-used in Mark of the Vampire – given that the actor’s only speaking lines consisted
of only one or two sentences uttered at the film’s end – such fans should enjoy
the film’s trailer (included here on this new Blu-ray from the Warner
Archive).Lugosi serves as the trailer’s
singular narrator, spookily warning - in his Slavic trademark style, of course
- cinemagoers “Shall be the judges of
this eerie conspiracy!”It was nice
to see the trailer included with the set, however misleading its vampiric content.
In Mark of the
Vampire, Browning and MGM borrow generously from Universal’s established horror
film tropes:cinematographer James Wong
Howe’s photography is atmospheric and moody, particularly in scenes where Luna
stoically skulks the graveyard in her “cemetery clothes.”The film’s exterior setting is a quaint
eastern European village, peopled by superstitious residents who enjoy a bit of
folkloric dancing in the daylight hours - but who wouldn’t dare travel at night
should they encounter such ghouls as Mora and Luna.No string of garlic cloves or wolfs bane are
used to protect the villagers from evil.They prefer a regional botanical they refer to as “Bat’s Thorn.”
In the unlikely scenario someone reading this is not
already conversant with the plot of the film, I don’t want to give too much
away.So I’ll just say elements that
work best and prove memorable are the ghostly mute walk-throughs of Lugosi and
Borland.The latter’s swooping entrance
on a set of animated bat wings during one scene is particularly cinematic.The performances of the cast are all up to
par, though one gets the feeling Lionel Barrymore regards his leading role as unworthy
of his talent.
There are stories of Browning carping on Barrymore’s diffident
performance while the film was in production. Which is surprising as the two were certainly familiar
with each other’s work habits.Though
Browning earned a reputation as a stern taskmaster on set, the director had
worked with Barrymore earlier:on the
Lon Chaney Sr. silent West of Zanzibar
(1928).Though Barrymore is tasked to
play only one-half the character Lon Chaney played in London after Midnight, it is obvious Browning would have preferred
Chaney in the lead role – if only the silent-screen legend had not tragically
already passed in 1930.
Browning’s opinion of Chaney bordered on the
worshipful.In 1928 he enthused the “Man
of a Thousand Faces” famous make-up appliances and grotesqueries were hardly “Chaney’s real secret.He could put the same make-up on the face of
another man and that man would fail on the screen.There is a personality, a something about the
man that grips one.” Even accepting Browning’s
preferences, Barrymore’s performance is not the crux of the problem plaguing Mark of the Vampire. The main weakness of the film is the
implausibility of its red-herring scenario.
Based on Browning’s own short story, The Hypnotist, both London
after Midnight and Mark of the
Vampire are atmospherically disguised as genuine “horror” pictures, but in
truth they’re simply routine mysteries dressed as ghoulish entertainment.While I actually enjoy Mark of the Vampire, I concede the picture might otherwise be regarded
a middling whodunit without the presence of Lugosi and Borland.The actress – who had earlier worked with
Lugosi on a stage production of Dracula,
acknowledged neither she nor Bela were made aware they were merely red
herrings; the final “reveal” page of the script had been withheld until the
final day of production.Universal’s
lawyers tried to get an injunction to stop production of the MGM film,
believing MGM’s use of Lugosi’s Dracula-persona in the film seemed an
uncomfortable infringement of their intellectual properties.But threatened legal action against MGM was dropped
when Universal’s lawyers deemed the case unwinnable.
Universal needn’t have worried: the film doesn’t really
work as a great mystery, much less a gripping vampire tale.One doesn’t need to wait breathlessly until
the closing minutes for the murderer’s reveal.Instead, we’re only given insight into how the perpetrator is entrapped
into confessing.Which doesn’t make for
a particularly exciting climax.The
film’s other weakness is its parlor-room staginess – a plodding element also plaguing
Browning’s otherwise iconic staging of Dracula.
With that said, it wouldn’t be fair to
throw the baby out with the bathwater.Mark of the Vampire is still a classic –
albeit a somewhat minor one – from Hollywood’s Golden Age of Horror.
Previously issued in 2006 on DVD as part of the six-film Hollywood Legends of Horror set, Mark of the Vampire makes its first U.S.
appearance on Blu-ray via this Warner Archive Collection release.Ported over from that earlier set is the
audio commentary supplied by film historian’s Kim Newman and Stephen Jones as
well as the film’s original trailer.“New” to the Blu-ray release are two items of tangential interest to
people interested in circa-1935 cinema: the 8 minute-long The Calico Dragon (a 1935 MGM cartoon) and an episode from MGM’s Crime Does Not Pay series of film shorts
A Thrill for Thelma (1935).
Be warned neither bonus has really anything to do with Mark of the Vampire though there’s a slight connection to the latter bonus.The Crime
Does Not Pay series served as both a long-running film and radio series.On December 12, 1949, Lugosi was a featured
player on the series’ radio broadcast of Gasoline
Cocktail.This arguably might have
been a more interesting audio supplement to include on this archive release,
but interested fans can listen to the Lugosi program easily via You Tube should
they desire.In any event, the release
from Warner Archive looks great: 1080p High Definition 16x9 1.37.1 DTS-HD
Master Audio.This Blu-ray should be on
the shelf of any fan of classic horror film fan or enthusiast of Browning’s
work.
The tagline for the 1971 crime movie The Last Run reads "In the tradition of Bogart and Hemingway..." That would probably seem preposterous to assign to an action film with most of today's soft-boiled leading men, but it seemed perfectly appropriate at the time for a movie starring George C. Scott. The script by Alan Sharp, who also wrote such underrated gems as The Hired Hand, Night Moves and Ulzana's Raid, is perfectly tooled to Scott's persona. With facial features that look like they were chiseled out of granite, the actor, who had just won the Oscar for Patton, is well-suited to the tough-as-nails character of Harry Garmes. Harry has forsaken a life in crime for a seemingly idyllic retirement in a small Portugese fishing village. Happiness, however, does not follow him. Shortly after their young son died, Harry's wife left for Switzerland to have her breasts lifted only to run off with another man. In one of the film's most amusing lines, Harry says he thought she was having them lifted as part of a surgical procedure. He finds that old adage "Be careful what you wish for- you just might get it" has special pertinence to his life abroad. He has succeeded in establishing the low-key, no risk lifestyle he so badly desired. However, he is now bored and feels out of place. He has a friendship with a local fisherman (Aldo Sanbrell) and a middle aged hooker who genuinely likes him (Colleen Dewhurst), but he feels he'll die of boredom. Thus, he decides to take on one more simple crime run, a seemingly low-risk job that involves transporting an escaped convict over the border to France.
The escape is cleverly planned and goes well, but Harry immediately gets a bad vibe from his passenger, a smart-mouthed, often manic career criminal named Paul Rickard (Tony Musante in a truly unnerving performance.) Ignorant of what the caper is actually all about, Harry is soon disturbed to learn he has to pick up Rickard's sexy young girlfriend Claudie (Trish Van Devere) to accompany them. Harry is the kind of man who doesn't like unexpected developments and his instincts prove correct. Before long, he finds himself wrapped up in a complex situation defined by double crosses and deathtraps. To say much more would ruin some of the more surprising elements of Sharp's gritty script, which is punctuated by smart dialogue. Director Richard Fleischer and the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist fully capitalize on the exotic scenery (the film was actually shot in Spain) and eschew studios to shoot even the interiors in actual locations. The decision adds immeasurably to the atmosphere of the movie, which is tense and engrossing throughout.
The film also benefits from a wonderful score by Jerry Goldsmith and fine supporting performances. From a trivia standpoint, the movie afforded Scott to star on-screen with then-present wife Dewhurst and future wife Van Devere.
The Last Run is an atmospheric crime thriller. It may not have looked like a work of art in its day but today it approaches that status, basically because when it comes to stars like George C. Scott, they just don't make 'em like that anymore.
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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from UK-based Fabulous Films.
"Dr Terror’s
House of Horrors is a fascinating and fast paced example of portmanteau
filmmaking with a deadly twist in the tale.... Dr Terror foretells the future…
and five men wish he hadn’t…
This was
Amicus Productions’ first of 16 horror films made between 1965 and 1977, 7 of
which were portmanteau films. The portmanteau style of film helped Amicus
(who’s small budget meant filming was done in 2 weeks) get established actors
in their films, enabling them to compete with the better known horror film
producer - Hammer Film Productions. Hammer film actors such as Peter Cushing
and Christopher Lee were brought in to the cast whilst only needing to be paid
for a fifth of the movie, rather than the full film.
This cult
classic is directed by horror veteran and two time Academy Award winner Freddie
Francis who worked with David Lynch on The Elephant Man (1980), Dune (1984),
and The Straight Story (1999). The film stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee,
Roy Castle and Donald Sutherland. Francis directed Peter Cushing 8 times saying
“I think Peter is absolutely wonderful - there is not an actor in the world who
can speak rubbish like Peter and make it sound real”.
Anyone who
ever watched Record Breakers knows that Roy Castle played the trumpet, but
Castle who plays a jazz musician in the film, mimed his Voodoo track
performance with the Tubby Hayes Quintet in the film. Castle replaced jazz
legend Acker Bilk at the last minute after he had a heart attack. Virtuoso
musician Tubby Hayes’ performance is a highlight of the film as Tubby was at
the peak of his career when the film was released. Castle released "Dr.
Terror's House Of Horrors/Voodoo Girl" as a 7-inch 45 vinyl in 1965 which
is now highly sought after.
Synopsis:
Dr. Terror (Peter Cushing) is a mysterious fortune teller who boards a train to
tell fellow passengers (including Christopher Lee, Roy Castle and Donald
Sutherland) their fortune withtarot cards.
Five possible futures unfold: an architect returns to his ancestral home to
find a werewolf out for revenge; a huge flesh-eating vine takes over a house; a
musician gets involved with voodoo; an art critic is pursued by a disembodied
hand and a doctor discovers his new wife is a vampire. But they all end in the
same result…
Cast: Peter
Cushing, Christopher Lee, Donald Sutherland, Roy Castle, Neil McCallum, Alan
Freeman, Peter Madden, Ann Bell, Ursula Howells.
Extras: All
new interviews with Kenny Lynch, Ann Bell and Jeremy Kemp (Blu-ray only), House
of Cards Documentary, Gallery of Images (courtesy of Stephen Jones), Original
Theatrical Trailer, Double-Sided Foldout Graham Humphreys Artwork Poster, 12
Sided Film Guide Booklet."
Composer Elmer Bernstein's official YouTube page presents his beautiful score for the 1962 classic "To Kill a Mockingbird". Bernstein's creative genius is on display as the main title theme perfectly captures the essence of the beloved and dramatic tale.
This review will bring readers good news and bad news. The good news is that director Barry Rubinow's new documentary, "Banded Together: The Boys from Glen Rock High" is one terrific documentary. It's packed with laughter, sentiment and some great music, as he assembled some of his former classmates from the Glen Rock, New Jersey High School, which they attended in the early 1970s. All of the guys who formed an ad-hoc band went on to bigger and better things in the field of music and they credit their music teacher, Joel Sielski, with their success due to his inspirational methods of teaching. I recently saw the film screened on the final day of the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey where it received a rousing reception. Rubinow was in attendance and hosted the band members, who have continued to perform together occasionally over the decades, on stage for a Q&A session. Most gratifying was that Joe Sielski, who figures prominently in the film, was there to accept the plaudits. The film is one of the best documentaries I've seen in many years but that leads me to divulging the bad news: you can't see it anywhere. That's because Rubinow has not been able to land a distribution deal anywhere and he's hoping the buzz from the festival will help him to do so.
The film presents the musicians (brothers Jimmy Vivino, Floyd Vivino and Jerry Vivino, Lee Shapiro, John Feeney, Frank Pagano, Doug Romoff and Jeff Venho) as they assemble once again to perform some sets and sit for group interviews with Joe Sielski. They talk a great deal about their hometown of Glen Rock, New Jersey, a small suburban town with a population of 12,000 in north Jersey defined by its unique centerpiece in the middle of town: a giant rock that weighs 570 tons and is said to be 15,000 years old. All have fond memories of the place and most still live in town or nearby. You don't have to be from Jersey to appreciate their humorous tales but it helps if you are tuned in to Jersey Guy traditions such as never saying a kind word to your friends and expressing sentiment towards them through ball-busting put-downs. Funniest of all is the most celebrated of the group, Floyd Vivino, who is a Jersey comedy legend who is known as Uncle Floyd. His unabashed old-fashioned shtick is in the tradition of Rodney Dangerfield and Henny Youngman. (In the Q&A, Floyd imitated Don Corleone, saying "I told Sonny to use EZ-Pass!", a reference to the car tag device New Jersey drivers use to breeze through the toll booths without stopping.) The guys relive how fabulous it was to grow up in a period when music was so exciting and inspiring. Some of them went on to play in bands with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, the Ramones, Frankie Valli, Tony Bennett and other exalted names. Conan O'Brien appears in various segments extolling their talents, as Jimmy Vivino was a member of his TV show's band.
"Banded Together" is a fun ride throughout, especially if you came of age in the 1970s. It's also great to see a film in which a teacher is a revered hero. Kudos to Barry Rubinow for turning his labor-of-love into a highly entertaining experience that is truly is a "must-see". Hopefully, there will be a place to actually see it soon. We'll keep readers posted.
Writing on the Digital Bits web site, film historian Michael Coate is always known for presenting interesting and informative articles about the making of classic films and their legacies. However, his tribute to "The Godfather" may well be his most ambitious and best in terms of the amount of data he provides. It ranges from samples of original reviews to an exhaustive list of when and where the film played in U.S. theaters. On page 4 of the article, Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief is interviewed along with other film historians regarding his memories of seeing the film for the first time. Click here to read.
I have to admit I wasn’t sure going in how I was going to
appreciate “A Christmas Story Christmas,” the sequel to “A Christmas Story,
(1983)” the perennial holiday favorite, directed by Bob Clark, based on the
works of writer/humorist Jean Shepherd. The new film finds his children serving as Executive Producers. Shepherd and I go back a long way. Not
that I knew him personally—it just feels like I did.In the 1960s during my high school and
college years I used to listen to him on WOR-AM on my little transistor radio. He
was on for about an hour every night and all he did was talk. But not just
talk. He told stories, stories about growing up in Hammond, Ind., and stories
of his days in the Army Signal Corp in World War II. Or he’d read some haiku
poetry, or render verse about the Yukon by Robert Service, or stories by George
Ade. He was one of a kind, a man who left a deep, if almost relatively unacknowledged,
influence on American popular culture. He’s not mentioned much by comedians and
writers today, but at least Jerry Seinfeld has said he learned comedy from
listening to Shepherd. Marshall McLuhan said Shepherd was writing a new kind of
novel night after night.
Some of the stories he told on the radio went into his
novel, “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash,” which he later adapted into a
script for Bob Clark’s film, “A Christmas Story.” We all know that movie, the
story of Ralphie Parker who wants a Red Ryder .22 shot Range Model Air Rifle for
Christmas. Who can escape it? It runs every Christmas Eve for 24 hours on
cable. Well, here we are in the Streaming Age and HBO Max is streaming a sequel
to the original, and despite a few missteps, as Larry David would say, “It’s
pretty, pretty, pretty good.”
It’s 1973, 33 years after the original film, and Ralphie,
now living in Chicago, has grown up to be something of a loser. He’s being
supported by his wife Julie (Errin Hayes), while he struggles to achieve his
dream of becoming a writer. He’s having a hard time finding any publisher
interested in publishing a 2,000 page science fiction tome entitled “Neptune
Oblivion.” He tells Julie he’ll give himself until the end of the year to sell
his book and if he has no luck, he’ll give up and get a mainstream job. Tragedy
strikes when Ralph gets a call from his mother (Julie Hagerty) back home in
Indiana, informing him the The Old Man (Shepspeak for Ralphie’s father) has
died. Darren McGavin, who passed away in 2006, played The Old Man in the
original film, and his presence is felt all through the movie, via short flash
backs and soundtrack clips. He’s as important a character as any member of the
cast.
The family drives from Chicago to be with Ralph’s mom.
Instead of wallowing in grief, Mom reminds Ralph how his father always made
Christmas something special for the family, and she makes Ralph promise to make
this Christmas as good as the ones his father made. Ralph doesn’t have a clue
how to do that, but he’s going to try. Mom also asks him to write an obituary
for The Old Man for the local newspaper. He balks, saying he doesn’t know how
to write something like that, but she reminds him: “You’re the writer in the
family.”
Part of the charm of “A Christmas Story Christmas” comes
from the scenes in which Ralph goes into town and meets up with some of the
characters from the original film, including Flick (Scott Schwartz), and Schwartz
(R.D. Robb). Even yellow-eyed bully Scut Farkas (Zack Ward) shows up before
it’s all over. One of the funniest scenes in the movie is a reversal of the
scene in the original where Schwartz tricked Flick into sticking his tongue on
a frozen telephone pole. All these years later, Ralphie’s voice-over informs
us, Flick’s been holding a grudge. He maneuvers Schwartz into “Riding the Ramp”—a
triple dog dare that involves riding a sled down a giant sluice left at a
construction site by the Army Corps. of Engineers. “They say revenge is a dish best
served cold,” Ralph says. “This was a frozen dinner.”
Director Clay Kaytis (“Angry Birds” (2016)) directing
only his second live action film, the first being “Christmas Chronicles” (2018),
moves the story at a fairly brisk pace and hits a lot of the right notes. It only
slows down slightly in the middle, where he seems to have set up a list of
highlights from the original film to revisit, including having the Parker
family trek downtown to the Christmas window at Higbee’s Department Store. Ralph
ends up doing all the shopping as wife and mother sit in the lounge, and the
kids climb up the papier mache mountain to tell Santa what they want for
Christmas. Julianna Layne as Julie and River Droche as Mark are very good as
the kids. Julie scores some extra points interrogating Santa to see if he’s the
real deal, including asking him for his Christian name and the coordinates for
his workshop at the North Pole.
Billingsley for the most part does a good job playing the
grown-up Ralphie. He was made up to almost look like Jean Shepherd himself. Occasionally
I thought he played him too soft, almost like John Boy of the Waltons clan.
Shepherd had a sharper edge to his delivery, cynical with a touch of the
sardonic. But as the plot thickens and things heat up, Billingsley comes close
enough.
The script by Nick Schenk and Billingsley is remarkably
good. Schenk, whose previous work includes screenplays for three Clint Eastwood
movies, including “The Mule” and “Cry Macho,” sneaks quite a few inside
references into the screenplay that only Shepherd’s biggest fans would
recognize. For example, a scene where a bunch of kids sled down a steep hill at
breakneck speed features “Bahn Frei, Op. 45,” by Edward Strauss on the
soundtrack—the music that Shepherd played every night at the opening and close
of his WOR radio show.
Overall this is a film better than anything you might
have expected, certainly better than the abominable “A Christmas Story 2”
(2012), and even better than “My Summer Story” (1994), which Shepherd wrote and
Clark directed. Any flaws “A Christmas
Story Christmas” may have are forgiven and forgotten by the ending of the
movie, which, frankly, left me speechless. I can’t reveal what happens but it
puts the movie into a special category very few films achieve.
“A Christmas Story Christmas” has been described as a
tribute to the late Darren McGavin, but it’s also a tribute and homage to
Shepherd, who is given a writing credit in the opening titles. Also listed in
the titles are Randall and Adrian Shepherd, Shepherd’s two children—children
whose existence he reportedly never recognized after divorcing their mother,
the second of his four wives. It’s a sad fact that after he walked out of the
marriage, he never had anything to do with his kids. Yet somehow here they are now
involved in a film based on his work. Perhaps “A Christmas Story Christmas,” is
not only a tribute to McGavin as The Old Man, a father, who in the end, does
make it a Christmas to remember, but also a tribute to and an attempt at reconciliation
with a father who didn’t.
(The film is currently streaming on HBOMax).
John M. Whalen is the author of "Tragon and the Scorpion Woman...and Other Tales". Click here to order from Amazon
The 1970 Western "Cannon for Cordoba" is yet
another film that was written off as "run of the mill" at the time of
its initial release but probably plays far better today when Westerns are scare
commodities. The film is clearly designed to capitalize on movies such as The
Professionals and The Wild Bunch, and while it certainly isn't in the league of
those classics, it's a consistently engrossing and highly entertaining horse opera.
Set in 1916, when the US was embroiled in assisting the Mexican government in
suppressing "revolutionaries" who were really bandits, the plot
centers on a crime kingpin named General Coroba (well played with charm and
menace by Raf Vallone), who launches an audacious raid on American General
Pershing's troops and succeeds in stealing a number of valuable cannons that
will make him almost invulnerable to attack once they have been installed at
his remote mountaintop fortress retreat. George Peppard is Captain Douglas, a
hard-bitten and insolent cavalry officer in Pershing's command who is sent on a
virtual suicide mission to infiltrate Cordoba's compound, blow up the cannons
and kidnap the general. Imagine The Guns of Navarone with sombreros. He takes along
the standard rag-tag team of tough guys which includes Peter Duel and the
always-reliable Don Gordon, seen here in one of the most prominent roles of his
career. That old chestnut of a plot device is introduced: Gordon has sworn to
kill Peppard at the end of the mission for allowing his brother to be tortured
to death by Cordoba.
The group pretends they are American sympathizers to the
revolution and succeed in infiltrating the compound with the help of Leonora
(comely Giovanna Ralli), who intends to seduce the general and then betray him
in revenge for having raped her years before. The film is as gritty as it gets,
and as in the Sergio Leone Westerns, there is a very thin line that separates
the villains from the heroes. Peppard is in full Eastwood mode, chomping on
omnipresent cigars and saying little. He betrays no sentiment and is almost as
cruel as the criminal he seeks to bring to justice.
Director Paul Wendkos keeps the action moving at a fast
clip and there is at least one very surprising plot device that adds
considerable suspense to the story. The action sequences are stunningly staged
and quite spectacular, and it's all set to a very lively and enjoyable score by
Elmer Bernstein. Cannon for Coroba may not be a classic, but it's consistently well-acted
and will keep you entertained throughout.
The film is currently streaming on Screenpix, which is
available for a separate subscription fee of $2.99 a month through Amazon
Prime, Roku, Apple TV and Fire TV.
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When movie fans think about films related to the battle of the Alamo, the most obvious reference that comes to mind is John Wayne's epic 1960 production, "The Alamo". There are two others from the modern era of filmmaking that are largely forgotten to all but Alamo history buffs: the 1955 film "The Last Command" and the ill-fated, but underrated 2004 production, also titled simply "The Alamo". Less obvious is the 1987 NBC-TV presentation of "The Alamo- Thirteen Days to Glory" based on Lon Tinkle's book of the same name. Tinkle presented a historically accurate depiction of the legendary battle, at least in terms of what was accepted by historians at the time. However, facts about the battle continue to be fluid and hotly debated among historians. The TV production has not been widely seen since its initial airing. It was released on VHS tape and research has shown an obscure DVD release as part of a double feature with "High Noon II: The Return of Will Kane". However, the movie is now being streamed on Amazon Prime. Not having seen it since its broadcast in 1987, I felt it was time revisit the production, which was widely panned by fans who obsess over all things relating to the Alamo. Their main complaint was the casting of the pivotal roles of Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, who were played by popular TV stars James Arness and Brian Keith, both of whom were not only long-in-the-tooth but were sporting tusks. The role of Crockett was particularly a thankless one to play. Fess Parker had become an American phenomenon when he played the role in Walt Disney's telecasts. Disney only made a handful of episodes and even he was shocked when the show generated a massive fan movement and became the most successful film/TV tie-in up to that time. Parker knew he was on to something so in the mid-1960s, free of Disney's edicts, he simply put on a new buckskin jacket and raccoon hat and starred in a hit TV series, "Daniel Boone". When John Wayne was negotiating with United Artists to produce and direct the big screen version of "The Alamo", he had to be forced to play Crockett as the studio's insistence. They wanted his name upfront to draw in his legions of fans. Wayne acquitted himself well enough, but the shadow of Parker loomed over his performance. The choice of Brian Keith was a bizarre one. He was 66-years old at the time and nothing about his appearance suggests the popular image of Crockett (he doesn't even wear the signature cap.) I'm second-to-none in my admiration of Keith's talents and recently praised his portrayal of Theodore Roosevelt in "The Wind and the Lion" on the forthcoming Imprint Blu-ray, but this was a rare case of his judgment in roles being off-course. Arness was also too old to play Bowie, but since the popular conception of the historic figure wasn't ingrained in modern society the way Crockett was, Arness's performance proved to be a bit more tolerable. The only agreement seemed to center on young up-and-coming Alec Baldwin, who delivers a fine and believable performance as Col. Travis, though it's a less interesting one than presented by Laurence Harvey in Wayne's film. Lorne Greene makes a very brief cameo as Sam Houston, showing frustration at his inability to raise an army in time to save the defenders of the Alamo. Greene is generally a commanding screen presence, but his role is so limited he can't make an emotional impact, as Richard Boone did in the role in the Wayne production.
In favor of the TV production, it was filmed on location in Brackettville, Texas, where the massive and convincing sets from Wayne's movie still stood. Behind the scenes, the film benefited from a seasoned pro in the director's chair, Burt Kennedy, an old hand at making good Westerns ("Support Your Local Sheriff", "The War Wagon"). I'm not an expert on the history of the battle, but it's been pointed out that the TV production gets certain things more accurately than the feature films but certain other factors are clearly the invention of the screenwriters. In attempt to appeal to younger viewers, the screenplay provides a completely superfluous subplot about a young Mexican girl in love with one of the Caucasian defenders of the Alamo. It's pretty dreadfully presented, with the young lovers looking like they'd be more suitable for "The Breakfast Club" gang than the besieged Texas mission. Faring a bit better are Kathleen York and Jon Lindstrom in the key roles of Captain Dickinson and his wife, who was one of the few inhabitants of the Alamo to survive. There are some familiar faces among the defenders, but most of them don't register strongly because their roles are under-written. (John Wayne's son Ethan has a minor role.) This version of the Alamo saga differs from Wayne's by presenting Santa Ana as a major character, whereas in the Wayne film he is only a minor presence. As played by Raul Julia, the legendary historic figure is presented as Snidley Whiplash-type, leering at young women and devoid of any human qualities. Julia brings some gusto to the role but a more nuanced characterization is called for. There is also the distracting presence of David Ogden Stiers as a Mexican army officer, which is justified by having him described as an adviser from the British army. If such individuals did exist, it's news to me but in any event, Stiers' presence seems more like a casting gimmick than an attempt to portray an obscure historical fact.
Original TV Guide advertisement.
Things are fairly turgid through much of the film but as the battle scenes finally arrive they are well-handled with impressive stuntwork on display. The problem is that the spectacular climax of Wayne's big-budget production looms over the relatively skimpy assets that director Burt Kennedy has as his disposal. The TV battle attempts to add some spectacle by cribbing battle footage from Wayne's film. Much of it is set to Peter Bernstein's serviceable score, though at various times during the production, he shamelessly copies the work of another Bernstein (Elmer), with similar music to that found in the latter's classic score from "The Magnificent Seven".
In summary, "The Alamo-Thirteen Days to Glory" is undeniably flawed, but it has enough positive aspects to merit viewing, if only for comparison to other films that depict the battle and the events leading up to it. The source material used by Amazon leaves a lot to be desired, but it's still a positive development to see the production get some exposure. It deserves a Blu-ray release with a commentary track by Alamo historians, who could decipher its truths and fabrications far better than this writer can.
In the mid 1960s Amicus Productions emerged as a Hammer Films
wanna-be. The studio aped the Hammer horror films and even occasionally
encroached on Hammer by "stealing" their two biggest stars, Christopher
Lee and Peter Cushing. The first Amicus hit was "Dr. Terror's House of
Horrors", released in 1965 and top-lining Lee and Cushing. The format of
various horror tales linked by an anthology format proved to be so
successful that Amicus would repeat the formula over the next decade in
films such as "Tales from the Crypt", "Vault of Horror" and "The House
That Dripped Blood". The studio cranked out plenty of other horror
flicks and by the mid-to-late 1970s Amicus was producing better fare
than Hammer, which had made the mistake of increasingly concentrating on
blood and gore and tits and ass to the detriment of the overall
productions. Occasionally-indeed, very rarely- Amicus would branch out
from the horror genre and produce other fare. (i.e. the Bond-inspired
"Danger Route" and the social drama "Thank You All Very Much") but the
studio was out of its element when it came to producing non-horror
flicks. A particularly inspired offbeat entry in the Amicus canon was
the 1970 production "The Mind of Mr. Soames", based on a novel by
Charles Eric Maine. The intriguing premise finds John Soames (Terence
Stamp) a 30 year-old man who has been in a coma since birth. He has been
studiously tended to by the staff at a medical institution in the
British countryside where a round-the-clock team sees to it that he is
properly nourished and that his limbs are exercised to prevent atrophy.
Soames apparently is an orphan with no living relatives so he is in
complete custody of the medical community, which realizes he represents a
potentially important opportunity for scientific study- if he can be
awakened. That possibility comes to pass when an American, Dr. Bergen
(Robert Vaughn) arrives at the clinic possessing what he feels is a
successful method of performing an operation that will bring Soames "to
life". The operation is surprisingly simple and bares fruit when, hours
later, Soames begins to open his eyes and make sounds.The staff realize
this is a medical first: Soames will come into the world as a grown man
but with the mind and instincts of a baby.
Soames' primary care in the post-operation period is left to Dr.
Maitland (Nigel Davenport), who has constructed a rigid schedule to
advance Soames' intellect and maturity as quickly as possible.
Initially, Maitland's plans pay off and Soames responds favorably to the
new world he is discovering. However, over time, as his intellect
reaches that of a small child, he begins to harbor resentment towards
Maitland for his "all stick and no carrot" approach to learning. Dr.
Bergen tries to impress on Maitland the importance of allowing Soames to
have some levity in his life and the opportunity to learn at his own
pace. Ultimately, Bergen allows Soames outside to enjoy the fresh air
and observe nature first hand on the clinic's lush grounds. Soames is
ecstatic but his joy is short-lived when an outraged Dr. Maitland has
him forcibly taken back into the institute. Soames ultimately rebels and
makes a violent escape into a world he is ill-equipped to understand.
He has the maturity and knowledge of a five or six year old boy but
knows that he prefers freedom to incarceration. As a massive manhunt for
Soames goes into overdrive, the film traces his abilities to elude his
pursuers as he manages to travel considerable distance with the help of
well-intentioned strangers who don't realize who he is. Soames is
ultimately struck by a car driven by a couple on a remote country road.
Because the lout of a husband was drunk at the time, they choose to
nurse him back to health in their own home. The wife soon realizes who
he is and takes pity on him- but when Soames hear's approaching police
cars he bolts, thus setting in motion a suspenseful and emotionally
wrenching climax.
"The Mind of Mr. Soames" is unlike any other Amicus feature. It isn't a
horror film nor a science fiction story and the plot device of a man
having been in a coma for his entire life is presented as a totally
viable medical possibility. Although there are moments of tension and
suspense, this is basically a mature, psychological drama thanks to the
intelligent screenplay John Hale and Edward Simpson and the equally
impressive, low-key direction of Alan Cooke, who refrains from
overplaying the more sensational aspects of the story. Stamp is
outstanding in what may have been the most challenging role of his
career and he receives excellent support from Robert Vaughn (sporting
the beard he grew for his next film, the remake of "Julius Caesar") and
Nigel Davenport. Refreshingly, there are no villains in the film. Both
doctors have vastly different theories and approaches to treating Soames
but they both want what is best for him. The only unsympathetic
character is a hipster TV producer and host played by Christian Roberts
who seeks to exploit the situation by filming and telecasting Soames'
progress as though it were a daily soap opera.
Amicus had a potential winner with this movie but it punted when it
came to the advertising campaign by implying it was a horror film. "The
mind of a baby, the strength of a madman!" shouted the trailers and the
print ads screamed "CAN THIS BABY KILL?" alongside an absurd image of
Stamp locked inside an infant's crib. In fact, Soames does pose a
danger to others and himself simply because he doesn't realize the
implications of his own strength- but he is presented sympathetically in
much the same way as the monster in the original "Frankenstein".
Perhaps because of the botched marketing campaign, the film came and
went quickly. In some major U.S. cities it was relegated to a few art
houses before it disappeared. In fact the art house circuit was where it
belonged but the ad campaign isolated upper crust viewers who favored
films by Bergman and Fellini but balked when the saw the over-the-top
elements of the ads.
"The Mind of Mr. Soames" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER DVD FROM THE CINEMA RETRO MOVIE STORE
(The following press release pertains to the U.K. release)
STUDIOCANAL have announced the brand new 4K restoration of John Guillermin’s (Blazing Inferno, Death on the Nile)
Academy Award® Winning remake of iconic Hollywood classic, KING KONG (1976).
Starring Jeff
Bridges (The
Big Lebowski, Crazy Heart, True Grit) and Jessica Lange (Tootsie, American Horror Story),
and produced by Hollywood legend Dino
de Laurentiis (Flash
Gordon, Nights of Cabiria, Barbarella), this retelling of the
classic monster adventure film went on to jointly win the Academy Award® for
Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Glen Robinson and Frank Van der Veer), as
well as receiving Academy Award® nominations for Best Cinematography (Richard
H. Kline) and Best Sound (Harry W. Tetrick, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin and
Jack Solomon). Jessica Lange was also honoured as Best new Actress for her role
at the Golden Globes that same year.
Now restored in 4K for the first time, STUDIOCANAL will re-release
the film across 4K
UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital as well as a 4K UHD Steelbook from December 5.
New artworks have been created for the Home Entertainment releases
by graphic designer Sophie
Bland, and for the 4K UHD Steelbook release by Francesco Francavilla.
The 4K UHD will include a limited-edition poster of Sophie Bland’s artwork.
SYNOPSIS
Fred Wilson (Charles
Grodin), an employee of a large American oil company, has been
charged with a mission to find new oil wells. With a chartered boat, he sets
off on a journey to an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. On board is
also a stowaway: the palaeontologist Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) has
smuggled himself onto the ship, as he hopes to examine a rare species of monkey
on this island. On the way, after a violent storm, the expedition also takes on
board the shipwrecked Dawn (Jessica
Lange), who is floating in a lifeboat at sea. When the ship
anchors off the island, however, it turns out not to be as uninhabited as
everyone once thought. The natives of the island perform a strange ritual to
worship a larger-than-life ape named "Kong". As soon as they
catch sight of the blonde Dawn, they decide they have found their perfect offering.
ABOUT THE RESTORATION
This 2022 restoration is presented by STUDIOCANAL and Paramount
Pictures. The 35mm original negative was scanned in 4K and colour graded by
Paramount. The restoration and mastering was then carried out at L'Immagine
Ritrovata, under the supervision of STUDIOCANAL. The purpose of this
restoration was to give a new lease of life to the film for audiences to enjoy
on the big screen, and eventually on the smaller screen. A 4K DCP was created,
as well as a UHD HDR Dolby Vision master, to enhance the sharpness and
brightness in cinemas which is not usually possible with a standard HD master.
In addition there is a new, improved and cleaned up 5.1 audio.
STUDIOCANAL owns one of the largest film
libraries in the world, boasting nearly 7000
titles from 60 countries. Spanning 100 years of film history.
20 million euros has been invested into the restoration of 700 classic films
over the past 5 years.
SPECIAL FEATURES
· Extended TV
broadcast cut (unrestored)
· Audio commentary
with film historian Ray Morton
· Audio commentary
with actor and makeup artist Rick Baker
· Interview with
Barry Nolan
· Interview with
Bill Kronick
· Interview with
Scott Thaler and Jeffrey Chernov
· Interview with
David McGiffert and Brian E. Frankish
The 1970 film adaptation John Le Carre's 1965 Cold War novel The Looking Glass War is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime. The movie has been largely forgotten and relatively unseen since its release, which is odd given the consistent interest in all things Le Carre. Christopher Jones plays Leiser, a twenty-something Polish illegal immigrant in London who has the goal of being able to live there with his pregnant girlfriend, Susan (Susan George.) Although prone to bad habits and unpredictable behavior, Leiser is intent on taking his future role as a father seriously. He is arrested for immigration violations, however, and an MI6 boss LeClerc (Ralph Richardson) concocts an audacious plan to manipulate Leiser into spying for the West. Using a legal immigration status as a carrot, LeClerc gets Leiser to reluctantly agree to the scheme. The young man is given a crash course in spying by another MI6 agent, Avery (Anthony Hopkins). He proves an adept enough student when it comes to handling the physical requirements of the job. (The film's best sequence finds the two men engaged in a knock-down, extended brawl when a training exercise gets out of hand when their personal animosities take over.) However, Leiser sneaks away for a brief romantic interlude with Susan but he is emotionally distraught when she tells him she has aborted their baby. Although having lost the main goal of his life- fatherhood- Leiser agrees to go on a secret mission into East Germany to search for evidence of a deadly new class of missiles that MI6 feels could tilt the Cold War in the direction of the Soviets.
Director/screenwriter Frank Pierson took considerable liberties with the source novel, but it still retains LeCarre's trademarks: a highly complex plot peppered with all sorts of extraneous characters who epitomize the author's cynical view that, when it came to espionage, there was little moral difference between East and West. Still, the film is far less confusing than the over-rated 2011 big screen version of LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which won international acclaim although seemingly no one I have discussed the film with can begin to explain what it's all about. One of the main problems is that Leiser is an unsympathetic protagonist. As played by Jones, fully in his James Dean/Marlon Brando mumbling mode, he is a fairly unlikable character, routinely lying, breaking his word and abusing those around him, including Susan, who he physically assaults. It's pretty hard to consider him one of the good guys. Nevertheless, Jones, who was always underrated as a screen presence, uses his good looks and charisma to full advantage so you can't help but hope he survives his seemingly suicidal mission in the most intrusive and paranoid society the world has ever seen. The film does pick up steam once Leiser makes it under a barbed wire fence and is forced to reluctantly kill an East German border guard. The scene is quite suspenseful, as is another fine sequence in which the desperate and wounded Leiser accepts a ride from a predatory farmer who unexpectedly tries to goad him into performing a homosexual sex act- with tragic results. Leiser also picks up a hitchhiker himself, but- this being a 1960s spy movie- she's a drop-dead gorgeous blonde (played by flash-in-the-pan starlet Pia Degermark), who later reemerges in the story in a not-too-convincing plot twist that is designed to provide an obligatory sex scene. The first coincidental meeting between them takes place on a country road where she is traveling with a young boy who she introduces as her friend. Their relationship is never explained and the kid is never seen again when she has an ridiculously improbable reunion with Leiser in a nightclub. There's also a humdinger of ludicrous plot point in the first scene of the movie. Here, an MI6 agent in a foreign country obtains a roll of secret film that has proof positive of the missile system. He is handed the film by his contact. The agent gripes that his departmental budget is so small that they didn't give him cab fare. Thus, after obtaining this all-important evidence, he is left to trudge along a desolate road in the dead of night in the freezing cold. He is struck by a car and the film is lost. MI6 calculates this as murder and assume the Reds now have the film, which Leiser must retrieve. Really? We're all for financial restraint but the idea that the lack of taxi fare would endanger such important evidence is beyond crazy. It's just one of the improbable elements of Pierson's screenplay.
The film boasts a hip jazz score by Wally Stott, that nevertheless seems out of place in this dark espionage tale and the cinematography by Austin Dempster finds beauty in the East German countryside that contrasts with the "Show your papers" demands made by the secret police he encounters along the way. The performances among the supporting actors are all first rate, with Hopkins particularly impressive in an early screen role. The Looking Glass War is by no means the best of the LeCarre film adaptations (nothing has really equaled The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. ) However, it is an intelligent thriller (a few absurdities aside) with exotic locations and an impressive cast. Retro spy movie lovers will certainly enjoy it.
Joe Dante's "Trailers from Hell" presents this 2013 tribute to director Richard Brooks' 1966 classic "The Professionals", which is now streaming on Netflix. Don't miss it even if you've seen it fifty times! Subscribe to the "Trailers from Hell" YouTube channel to see plenty more.
Quite often in Marty,
from 1955, there are long takes (some multiple minutes long) that calmly
observe the anodyne activities and interactions of the little people that the
film takes as its subject matter. It might be tempting to think of such shots
as theatrical – although the film adapts a teleplay (by Paddy Chayevsky,
a key writer in what is often thought of as television’s Golden Age of live
drama) and not a piece of theatre per se. Yet while some of the shots of the
film are static, none approximate the perspective of an imagined audience at
the theater and many are about characters moving quietly through space as the
camera glides along with them. This is a resonant form of cinematic
storytelling in its own right.
In an historical moment
where Hollywood was turning often to splashy and spectacular films (what the
self-congratulatory musical Silk Stockings extolls as “Glorious
Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope and Stereophonic Sound”) to challenge the
easy domesticity of television viewership, Marty took a different path:
it tried to rival the small-screen by showing that Hollywood could make little
pictures (little in narrative ambition, that is, and unassuming visual style) that
might outdo television at its own game by re-making television’s own offerings.
Marty tells
of a Queens butcher (Borgnine) who is desperate for love but blocked by
insecurity, low self-regard around his looks and bodily frame (he’s quite
stocky), and by his own internalization of the macho codes of the dead-end guys
he hangs out with. When he meets plain schoolteacher Clara (Betsy Blair) at a
dance hall, the two seeming losers at life find they share a soft suffering at
love’s misfortunes and they hit it off through an evening of walking and
talking and furtively reaching out to each other. Ironically, the friends and
family who have encouraged Marty to find the right woman and get married
realize that his new-found romance could actually take him away from them, and
they try to paint the worst possible picture of Clara. The last section of the
film revolves around Marty’s torment as he is tempted to give in to the
pressures of the locals he’s known so long (his mom, his buddies at the bar)
but also realizes that loving Clara may be his only real shot at happiness, self-respect,
and emotional growth.
Marty was
only one of set of films that cinematically opened up a prior teleplay for the
big screen but it became the most acclaimed, winning the first ever Palme d’Or
at the Cannes Film Festival and then the Oscar for Best Picture (along with
Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, the latter in a moment where
there wasn’t a distinction between Original and Adapted so that Chayefsky could
win for a reworking of his teleplay). It is perhaps worth noting that the Oscar
for Best Picture the following year went to the big-cast, multiple
location epic Around the World in Eighty Days – Hollywood thereby
returning to business as usual. But Marty helped legitimate a tradition
of intimate dramas that, as entertainment journalists Bryan Reesman and Max
Evry note in their well-researched and wide-ranging commentary track for the
Blu-ray of Marty, led to the low-budget indie tales of recent decades.
(The commentators are particularly good at noting Marty’s direct
influence on the Baltimore working class narratives of Barry Levinson.)
Reesman and Evry make
continued reference to the celebrated TV version of Marty from 1953
where the key roles were played by Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand, and it’s too
bad this Blu-ray edition of the film couldn’t have included the earlier
teleplay. (Maybe there were licensing issues?) The only added Marty features
in fact are a trailer for the film (along with other of the intimate films made
from teleplays) and the commentary track. The latter is quite rich in insights
– about similar small dramas of the time, about European influences on working
class Hollywood realism, about the writer and director and the actors, and so
on. At times perhaps, the very capaciousness of the commentary means that the
film itself can get left behind. But Marty is itself emotionally
resonant enough to stand on its own as one watches this very key film of the
1950s.
“Wagon Master” (1950), a Blu-Ray release from the Warner Archive, is
director John Ford’s film about the first wagon train of Mormons to cross miles
of treacherous desert and mountain terrain in order to settle in Utah’s San
Juan Valley. It opens, however, with a short, almost incongruous prelude, in
which an outlaw family known as the Cleggs robs a bank. They kill a bank
employee and, after family patriarch Uncle Shiloh (Charles Kemper) takes a
bullet in the shoulder, they run off into the desert with the money. They are
pursued by the sheriff and his posse but we don’t see much of them again for
another 40 minutes. But you know they’re out there.
Ward Bond, one of Ford’s “stock company” players, is Elder
Wiggins, the Mormon leader, who started out for San Juan without exactly
knowing how to get there. He runs into a couple of wandering cowboys, Travis
Blue (Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey, Jr.), who’ve just come from the San
Juan River area. At first they resist his offer of a job, until Sandy meets
Prudence Perkins (Kathleen O’Malley), daughter of Adam Perkins (Russell
Simpson) one of the Mormon Elders. He convinces Travis to accept the job as
Wagon Master.
The next half hour shows us the hardships they had to
endure during the desert crossing, while Sandy and Prudence start a romance,
and the laconic Travis whittles a stick and plays with his lariat. On the way,
however, they encounter a broken down medicine show wagon belonging to Doctor
A. Locksley Hall (Alan Mowbray), who is accompanied by two showgirls, Denver
(Joanne Dru) and Fleuretty Phyffe (Ruth Clifford). Mowbray plays almost the
same character he played in Ford’s “My Darling Clementine” and Denver is one of
Ford’s typical Shady Ladies, similar to Dallas (Claire Trevor) in “Stagecoach”
(1939). Travis falls for her.
The wagon train starts to run out of water at one point
but they make it to a river and that night everybody’s happy and they do what
all John Ford pioneer do in that situation. They have a hoe down—in the middle
of which, who should show up, looking like a pack of mangy coyotes? You guessed
it. The Cleggs. They come in out of the night carrying rifles and have the
Mormons at their mercy. The Cleggs must have been close relatives of the
Hammonds, the subhuman gold miners who would show up some 12 years later in Sam
Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” (1962). Surely Peckinpah was “inspired” by
Hank Worden’s imbecilic Luke Clegg when he cast Warren Oates as the degenerate
Henry Hammond, who never took baths and wanted to share his brother Billy’s new
bride on their wedding night. The whole Hammond clan look, talk, and act
exactly like the Cleggs. But that’s a topic for another discussion.
At any rate, they force Doc Hall to take the bullet out
of Uncle Shiloh’s shoulder and decide to stick with the Mormons until such time
as they can be sure the sheriff and his posse have stopped looking for them. Next
some Navajos show up. But they are friendly, because, while they don’t like
white men “because they’re thieves,” they do like Mormons because they are only
“little thieves.” But when one of the Cleggs molests a Navajo woman, Wiggins is
forced to order the offending Clegg tied to a wagon wheel and whipped. When
Uncle Shiloh protests, Wiggins tells him a whipping is better than a scalping.
But the incident creates resentment in Uncle Shiloh that will result in a final
showdown later on.
“Wagon Master” is classic John Ford, filmed on location
in Monument Valley and Moab, Utah, with Ford’s iconic imagery and the usual thematic
statements about the indomitability of the human spirit, and the development of
a community in an unfriendly wilderness. But it differs from most of his other
films in two ways. First of all, although it was filmed on Ford’s favorite
location, it was shot by cinematographer Bert Glendon in black and white
instead of color. He eschewed the gorgeous hues of Monument Valley, and instead
created a backdrop that seems more fitting the grim life and death struggle of
the Mormons trying to reach the Promised Land. Second, unlike the other films he
shot there, whether in color or black and white, there is no larger- than- life
hero, no John Wayne, or Henry Fonda, to take on the heavies and save the day. In
“Wagon Master” the main characters are all average people. Travis and Sandy are
simply drifters. Elder Wiggins is a man of strong character, but neither he,
nor Sandy or Travis are gunmen. They admit to themselves and each other they’re
scared of the Cleggs, but Wiggins says he’ll never let them know it. Nor will
he let his people know it. Without the Duke, the little people have to stand up
for themselves.
The Warner Archive has provided a clear, sharp 1080p high
definition transfer of the film to disc, as well as a terrific audio commentary
track, featuring director Peter Bogdanovich and cast member Harry Carey, Jr.
talking about the film as they watch it. Carey tells what it was like, and how
he felt, working with Ford. His comments are priceless. In one scene where Ford
tilted his hat to one side, Carey gripes to Bogdanovich: “Why did he have me
wear my hat that way? I look like a village idiot!”
Bogdanovich and Carey’s commentary is interspersed with
audio clips of Bogdanovich’s 1966 interview with Ford himself, in which he
presents his own view of his work. He tells Bogdanovich he never thought of his
films in terms of them being art. “I am a hard-nosed director,” he says. “I’m
not carrying any messages. I have no personal feelings about the pictures. If I
liked the script, I shot it. It was nothing earth-shaking. It was a job of
work.”
It may have been just a job as far as Ford was concerned,
but it was a job he did extremely well and sometimes a job of work can be a
work of art. Highly recommended.
The first major "biker movie" was the 1953 production of "The Wild One", which elevated Marlon Brando from being a hot Hollywood commodity to that of a pop culture icon. Posters of him in his leather jacket and biker's cap still adorn walls today. Given the success of the film, it's surprising that it took until 1966 for the biker film to emerge as a genre. That occurred with the release of Roger Corman's "The Wild Angels". The film- like all Corman productions- was shot on a modest budget but was efficiently made, starred a host of young talents and made a boatload of money (spawning two soundtrack albums in the process.) "The Wild Angels" begat "The Born Losers", which pitted Tom Laughlin's Billy Jack against savage bikers and that begat a host of other lower-grade biker flicks of varying merits. Of course, the genre would hit its peak with Dennis Hopper's 1969 pop culture classic "Easy Rider". At the bottom of the biker barrel was "The Rebel Rousers", a 1967 crudely-made production that was deemed unworthy of a theatrical release. The film did afford prominent roles to up-and-comers Bruce Dern, Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nicholson and after the latter was vaulted to stardom with his Oscar-nominated turn in "Easy Rider", someone dusted off "The Rebel Rousers" and promoted it as a Nicholson flick. The film is the creation of Martin B. Cohen, who co-wrote the screenplay and kind of directed it. (Many of the scenes between the bikers appear to have been improvised.)
The movie's top-billed star is Cameron Mitchell, who plays Paul Collier, a free-spirited type who arrives in a tiny desert town in search of his lover, Karen (Diane Ladd, the real-life wife of Bruce Dern and another member of "The Wild Angels" cast.) When he finally locates her in a motel, their reunion is less-than-sentimental. She explains that she learned she was pregnant with Paul's child and, fearing he would insist that she undergo an illegal abortion, she fled for parts unknown with little money and even fewer resources. (In reality, Ladd was pregnant with future Oscar winner Laura Dern.) Paul accepts the responsibility for her dilemma and insists on marrying her, but Karen declines on the basis that she fears Paul's life as a rolling stone type would only lead him to abandon her at some point. As the two debate their plans for the future, a secondary plot takes hold in which the Rebel Rousers biker gang rides into town and takes over the local saloon, wreaking havoc, accosting women and causing the town's sheriff (John 'Bud'Cardos) to courageously force them out of town. The gang obliges, but refuse to leave the immediate area, causing headaches for the locals and the sheriff. A chance encounter between Paul and Karen and gang members seems certain to lead to tragedy, as the bikers torment their victims. However, the leader of the gang, J.J. Weston (Dern) turns out to be an old high school acquaintance of Paul's. He "invites" them to join the gang for some festivities on a nearby beach, leaving them no alternative but to comply. Things get out of hand quickly, however, when Bunny (Nicholson), one of the most brutal members of the gang, decides he wants to force himself on Karen. Paul is beaten to a pulp but J.J., showing a smattering of human compassion, challenges Bunny to some motorcycle stunt games on the beach. If Bunny wins, he can claim Karen as his prize. If not, she goes free. The film lumbers to a clunky conclusion in which Paul fails to rally any of the cowardly townspeople to help him rescue Karen (shade of "High Noon"!) and it falls to a previously unseen character (Robert Dix) to unconvincingly take on the mantel of hero.
The film is so sloppily constructed that even Martin Cohen would publicly disown it. The cinematography by the soon-to-be esteemed Laszlo Kovacs and Glen Smith is rather amateurish and there is little evidence of the future star power pertaining to its stars. Only Cameron Mitchell and Diane Ladd provide performances that resonate in any way. There is some minor suspense when the gang kidnap Paul and Karen but much screen time is taken up and padded out with Dern and Nicholson performing some boring biker competitions on the beach. "The Rebel Rousers" has been released on DVD by the indie label Liberty Hall. The print, as you might suspect, has not undergone any restoration efforts and is therefore mediocre, but that's a bit better than I suspected it would be.
The DVD is billed as a "Biker Triple Feature" because it contains two other wildly diverse bonus films. The first, "The Wild Ride", is a micro-budget 1960 production that runs only 61 minutes. It has nothing to do with bikers or biking but does feature Jack Nicholson in an early leading role. He plays the narcissistic and cruel leader of a group of high school students who have formed a cult of personality around him. He routinely insults and abuses them and drops one of his girlfriends, telling her "You're too old." Nicholson, was actually 23 years-old at the time, gives a rather one-note performance under the direction of Harvey Berman, who probably would have tried harder if he knew he had a future cinema icon in his film. The titular wild ride refers to an incident in which Nicholson's speeding car is pursued by a police officer on a motorcycle. The cop crashes and dies and Nicholson faces consequences for his actions. The movie is briskly paced and is entertaining but one can only wonder why Nicholson's character continues to receive unquestioned loyalty, given his rude, crude and cruel ways. On the other hand, we're living in a time in which rude, crude and cruel authoritarian figures are all the rage among vast numbers of the world population, so perhaps the scenario isn't irrational. The print quality is passable, if a bit grainy, though it has been restored by one Johnny Legend in 2009, as evidenced in the credits.
The second bonus feature is titled "Biker Babylon" (aka "It's a Revolution Mother!" (sic), a 1969 feature length documentary directed by Harry Kerwin and a team of fellow future filmmakers of "B" horror flicks. The film's opening credits say we'll see over 5,000 people attending an anti-Vietnam War peach march. Apparently, the team didn't watch their own footage, as the November, 1969 march attracted over a half-million people. The footage of the peace marchers is awkwardly and weirdly juxtaposed with separate segments that follow the exploits of a biker gang known as The Aliens over a particular weekend in which they play to the camera by engaging in outrageous behavior including having a Wesson Oil party that, as you might imagine, involves plenty of naked female flesh. We're told that the role of young women in the gang is to be owned by either a particular member or be regarded as common property for the men to have sex with on a whim. Things then move to a Florida Woodstock-like music festival where bikers and rock fans mingle without much to show for it. For whatever reason, the filmmakers don't show us the rock acts but instead just concentrate on thousands of hot, sweaty young people milling about in a muddy terrain.
The most interesting aspect of the set is this documentary, however, largely because it does crudely capture the anti-Vietnam War movement at its peak. It provides an interesting time capsule as everyday citizens march with celebrity activists such as Dr. Spock and Dick Gregory, with Gregory demanding that the Nixon administration end the war. (Gregory refers to Vice-President Agnew as Washington D.C.'s version of "Rosemary's Baby". ) What is lacking is context. Nixon squeaked into the presidency in 1968, winning a razor-thin contest against Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, largely on running a campaign that promised he had a "secret plan" to end the war that would only be revealed after he took office. The plan turned out to be an escalation of the conflict that would drift into Cambodia. His "law-and-order" administration saw Agnew resign in disgrace after being caught accepting bribes, a practice he had carried over from his tenure as governor of Maryland. Of course, Nixon himself would be caught having covered up for the Watergate break-in and he, too, would resign from office under threat of impeachment from prominent fellow Republicans. Dozens of members of his administration would would be convicted of or plead guilty to crimes. It would have been worth the effort for someone to provide a commentary track reviewing the documentary in a modern context and providing insights into historical events. Instead we get an unintentionally hilarious narrator who peppers his every sentence with perceived hippie jargon in an attempt to appear cool. Instead, he sounds like Jack Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday in one of those "Dragnet" episodes in which he lectures teens about drugs using their own lingo.
Brendan Fraser started as most actors do, trying to land supporting roles in high profile films. He landed the leading role in low-brow 1992 comedy "Encino Man" in which he played a caveman in the modern era. Over the next few years, he worked steadily- if unevenly- in a range of films that failed to score at the boxoffice. That changed in 1997 when he played the role of George of the Jungle, a big screen adaptation of a 1960s cartoon series. With his hunky good looks, athletic physique and ability to perform difficult stunts, Fraser was in demand when the film proved to be a hit. More successes followed with "The Mummy" and its sequel. Fraser excelled in playing genial, if fallible action heroes and romantic leads, but he also proved he had the talent to portray dramatic characters as well, as evidenced by his acclaimed performances in "Gods and Monsters" and "The Quiet American". He also won plaudits for his performance as Brick in a 2001 stage production of Tennessee Williams' classic "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Then things slowed down. A few modest hits aside, Fraser appeared mostly in forgettable films and in supporting roles in TV productions. A volatile divorce, medical consequences from the many stunts her performed earlier in his career and other personal challenges led to him virtually dropping out of sight a few years ago. Fans who had grown up on his work in the 1990s speculated that he might soon fit into the "Whatever happened to?" category. His much-anticipated role as a villain in the "Batgirl" feature film was a casualty of Warner Brothers' decision to cancel the unfinished film. But Fraser has had plenty to be happy about recently. He landed a major role in Martin Scorsese's currently-filming "Killers of the Flower Moon" and has recently generated Oscar buzz for his leading role in director Darren Aronofsky's dramatic film "The Whale", which premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival to a six-minute standing ovation.
I joined my fellow ink-stained wretches of the press for a screening of the film last Sunday at The Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey. Fraser was on hand to be interviewed by Stephen Colbert, who resides in Montclair and who, along with his wife Evelyn, have been major players in the creation of the film festival, which holds screenings in two local historic theaters, the one-time Cinerama showcase The Claridge and the Wellmont, a grand old venue where this event took place. The cavernous Wellmont had a packed house and the crowd was made up of true cinephiles, as evidenced by their rapt attention to the film and the interview that followed. Nobody was texting, talking or otherwise distracting from the proceedings, despite the fact that there were three bars on site dispensing plenty of adult beverages. This was my first time attending the festival and I was impressed by the atmosphere and choice of venues.
As for "The Whale", like many critics, I found myself with mixed feelings. The primary reason to see the film is because of Fraser's justifiably acclaimed performance. It has been noted that the actor is now more beefy than beefcake but don't confuse Fraser with Charlie, the character he plays in the film, who is a 600-pound man confined to his apartment. Fraser required a rather amazing prosthetic "fat suit" as well as some convincing CGI effects to convincingly play a person this morbidly obese. The film opens on a jarring note. Charlie is slouched in his couch masturbating to a gay porn video, and his aroused state almost causes his death. In fact, virtually every movement is a challenge for Charlie, a kindhearted man whose only regular connection to society is his job teaching an online college course in literature via Zoom. Because he is ashamed of his appearance, he tells his students that his camera is broken. He can see them, but they can't see him, which unintentionally allows him to create an air of mystery about his persona. Charlie is obsessed with Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", and the analogy between the great white whale and his own physical state is obvious. Charlie receives a visit from a young evangelist, Thomas (Ty Simpkins) who ostensibly is there to spread the word from the Good Book but who ends up assisting and befriending Charlie, while keeping a secret about his own background. Next in line to visit is Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie's estranged teenage daughter who lugs a pretty good number of plot devices in the door with her. Seems Charlie was once married but left Sadie and her mother when she was very young when he came out of the closet and lived with his lover, who is now deceased and whose memory leaves Charlie in a constant state of despair. This first plot contrivance doesn't hold up for the simple reason that Charlie and his wife and daughter all still live in the same town, so it seems unlikely they would have had no social interaction until now. Next up among the visitors is Liz (Hong Chau), a saucy, no-nonsense nurse who happens to be a personal friend of Charlie. In between looking after his endless medical needs, she lectures him about his health to little avail. Rounding out the parade of eccentric troubadours dropping in on this mini Grand Central Station is Charlie's ex-wife Mary (Samantha Morton), who discusses their mutual concerns about Ellie's rebellious nature and self-destructive tendencies, all of which are squarely blamed on Charlie's negligence toward her.
"The Whale" is based on Samuel D. Hunter's stage play and film looks very much like a filmed stage production. There are precious few exterior shots and the murky interior cinematography by Matthew Libatique, combined with Ron Simonsen's eerie score, results in the mood of a horror film being prevalent. Hunter's screenplay and Aronofsky's direction tip off all but the most gullible viewer that their emotions are being exploited in a naked and shameless manner. Nothing wrong with that. Chaplin did the same with the final scene of "City Lights", as the Little Tramp unveils his identity to his once-blind paramour in a scene that may be the most touching in screen history. But "The Whale" is loaded up with a lot of contrived crises. Charlie is a sympathetic figure throughout but Ellie is painted as the Cruella DeVil of the high school set, a one-note character that you try in vain to find redeeming qualities in. She even charges her own father money in order to spend time with her. Director Aronofsky has Sadie Sink go for the rafters in terms of her cruelty but we know from minute one that at some point she'll fall for young Thomas in another improbable plot twist. The actors can't be faulted. They're just following orders. The only believable character aside from Charlie is Liz the nurse and Hong Chau registers strongly in the role. The most affecting scenes are those centering on Charlie as an individual, as we watch seemingly mundane actions such as attempting to stand up evolve into "Mission: Impossible"-like scenarios. It's painful to watch Fraser, but that's the point. Regardless of the film's flaws, his performance is flawless. "The Whale" isn't the first film to portray morbidly obese people in a sympathetic fashion. Director Anne Bancroft's 1979 film "Fatso" did so through a serio-comedic lens. "The Whale", however, provides precious few reasons to smile.
Following the screening, Brendan Fraser and Stephen Colbert took to the stage to Fraser's latest standing ovation. He appeared genuinely moved and in discussion with Colbert, it became clear how grateful he is to have been cast as Charlie. The chat reinforced Fraser's image as a Mister Nice Guy and to Colbert's credit, he suppressed his comedic side and did nothing to overshadow Fraser in any way. The interview was enjoyable and insightful.
"The Whale" is a flawed film but no so flawed that it can't be recommended for those who seek a moving, if manipulative drama, as well as the performance of a lifetime by Brendan Fraser.
If
you fear losing your energy and creativity (among other things) as soon as you
enter your sixth decade, just consider John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Henry
Hathaway, and take heart.Ford worked
until age 71 (his last Western was “Cheyenne Autumn, 1964, and his final film,
“7 Women,” 1966), Hawks until 75 (“Rio Lobo,” 1971), and Hathaway until
76.Hathaway’s final Western was “Shoot
Out,” which opened on October 13, 1971, when he was 73.In the movie, Clay Lomax (Gregory Peck) is
released from prison after serving a seven-year sentence for bank robbery.Lomax’s eyes have a steely, distant glare as
he buckles on his six-shooter.“You hate
me, but there’s someone out there you hate more,” the warden guesses.“Someone” is Lomax’s former partner, Sam
Foley (James Gregory), who betrayed Clay and shot him in the back as the pair
fled with their stolen money.Clay was
captured and Sam got away.Lomax intends
to find Foley, who now lives comfortably on their loot, passing himself off as
a retired businessman. In turn, learning
that Lomax is a free man again, Foley hires three loutish gunmen to trail his
former
friend.The leader of the trio, Bobby
Jay (Robert E. Lyons), offers to kill Clay, but Foley says no; just keep an eye
on him and let me know if he comes this way.Does Foley hope that Clay will just go away?Will he try to make amends if Lomax pays a
visit?Or will he use the pistol hidden
in his desk drawer?It isn’t exactly
clear, and maybe Sam himself doesn’t know.
On
the other hand, there’s no doubt about Lomax’s lust for revenge.But first, leaving the penitentiary, he has
to stop at the railroad depot in nearby Weed City, where he has arranged to
meet a former girlfriend, a prostitute, who holds a sum of money in safekeeping
for him.The money arrives but not the
girlfriend, who died on her way from Kansas City.Instead, the woman’s now-orphaned daughter,
six-year-old Decky (Dawn Lyn), steps off the train.To claim his money, Clay has to take Decky
too.The stymied ex-convict tries to hand
the little girl off to a succession of people, without any luck.Orphaned, abandoned children are about as
welcome in the fictitious Weed City as they are in real life.
Clay
doesn’t know where to find Foley, but a mutual acquaintance, Trooper (Jeff Corey),
does.The crusty, wheelchair-bound
saloon owner agrees to divulge Sam’s current location—for $200.Bobby Jay and his friends also show up
Trooper’s establishment, keeping tabs on Clay.You’d think they’d try to draw as little attention to themselves as
possible, but they’re as stupid as they are malicious.When they provoke a fight with Lomax, he
cleans the floor with all three.The
louts later tangle with Trooper after they damage his property and refuse to
pay the abused saloon girl they spent the night with, Alma (Susan Tyrell).They murder Trooper, but the saloon-keeper
manages to disclose Foley’s whereabouts before he dies.Lomax heads out to find his quarry, several
days’ ride away in Gun Hill, with Decky in tow.Along the way, having bonded after a gruff start, they find shelter from
a rainstorm at a ranch owned by a lonely widow, Juliana (Pat Quinn).Juliana’s ranch hands are away in town for
the night, giving her and Clay a chance to strike up a romance.But the isolation also puts Juliana, her
young son, Lomax, and Decky in danger when the volatile Bobby Jay and his
friends turn up and invade her house.
“Shoot
Out” was produced by Hal B. Wallis and written by Marguerite Roberts.Both had collaborated with Hathaway on the
wildly popular “True Grit” two years before.The three hoped to repeat that success with a similar story about a
growing attachment between a flinty old gunfighter and a spunky girl, even
costuming Dawn Lyn’s Decky in a smaller replica of Kim Darby’s outfit from “True
Grit.”But the strategy backfired when
critics measured “Shoot Out” against the 1969 Western and found it
wanting.They might have been kinder if
they had known that well-written, briskly directed, unpretentious Westerns like
“Shoot Out” were approaching the end of their shelf life in the 1970s.Ford and Hawks had become favorites of
younger critics like Peter Bogdanovich and Robin Wood, but appreciation for
Hathaway’s considerable talents lagged, and still does.
Marguerite
Roberts had worked in Hollywood for nearly as long as Hathaway.He started in the prop department in 1919 and
directed his first feature, a Zane Grey Western, in 1932.She began as a studio secretary in 1927 and
sold her first screenplay in 1934, beginning a long career as a screenwriter
that was interrupted from 1952 to 1962.During those ten years, she was blacklisted for refusing to name names
before the House Un-American Activities Committee.A scene in “Shoot Out” suggests that Roberts
retained painful emotions from the experience.Having burst into Juliana’s house, the unhinged Bobby Jay terrorizes his
hostages when he proposes to display his marksmanship by shooting a cup off of
the widow’s son’s head.Juliana argues
the gunman out of putting her son in danger, but doesn’t resist when he orders
her to move the cup to Decky’s head instead.The credits for “Shoot Out” cite Will James’ 1926 memoir, “Lone Cowboy:
My Life Story,” as the source for Roberts’ screenplay, but the real inspiration
seems to be George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.”The sentimental 1861 novel was once the bane of 15-year-olds for whom it
was required reading in high school English classes, before it was replaced by
more contemporary fare like “Catcher in the Rye.”
A
new Blu-ray edition of “Shoot Out” from Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents
the film in a sharp hi-def transfer that looks equally attractive in its sunny
outdoor scenes, filmed in New Mexico, and in the rich, masculine red and green
lampshades and upholstery in Sam Foley’s private office.In a fine audio commentary, critic Nick
Pinkerton notes that the production punches up its standard revenge story with
the violent, sexually frank revisionist elements common in the Westerns of the
early 1970s, a trend that Hathaway himself helped pioneer with “Nevada Smith”
in 1966.Gone is the old B-Western
pretense
that saloon hostesses did no more than serve drinks and dance the can-can.Trooper’s four prostitutes are sad, alcoholic
women with impoverished pasts, who suffer physical and verbal mistreatment from
the men they solicit.If the fate of
Decky’s mother is any indication, their life expectancy from illness,
alcoholism, and exploitation will be short.The train conductor who delivers Decky to Clay’s care (played by Paul
Fix, one of several Western old-timers in the supporting cast) asks Clay how
old her mother was.“Thirty,” he
responds.“She looked fifty,” the
conductor says.“Shoot Out” was rated
“GP” (the short-lived precursor of “PG”), classifying it as suitable for
general audiences, but advising “parental guidance.”The newly instituted MPAA ratings system was
tricky to figure out.I wonder how many
parents interpreted GP to mean “bring the kids,” on the assumption that a movie
with Gregory Peck and a little girl couldn’t be any saltier than the
watered-down TV Westerns of the era.
Pinkerton
calls the subplot about the embittered gunman and the orphaned child “cloying,”
but it’s a matter of opinion.Dawn Lyn’s
role is crafted and performed with a nice balance of feistiness and vulnerability,
and she and Peck play off well against each other.Is Lomax the biological father of Decky, as
we infer from her mother placing her in his care . . . or not?The question becomes academic once each
develops a soft spot for the other.In
addition to the Nick Pinkerton commentary, the Blu-ray also includes the
theatrical trailer and previews of other 1970s Westerns from KL Studio
Classics.
Railroaded, Detour,
Caught, I Wake Up Screaming, Private Hell 36. . . Raw
Deal,and so on and so on: the titles of film noir often offer harsh
tales of dismal entrapment and victimization, and it is tempting to wonder what
audiences made of these harrowing, even unpleasurable, thrillers of inevitable male
degradation. Did these sometimes nasty films put the lie to the golden glow of
films that celebrated the American dream? Or did they confirm the seeming
possibility of that dream by allowing viewers to feel superior to the doomed
characters in these films? Placed on the double bill with generally respectable
and even uplifting “A” pictures, these programmers or downright “B”-films speak
with a cynicism and despair that might perhaps have stood in complex relation
to the positive yearnings of the Hollywood dream factory. At a tight 79-minutes,
Raw Deal is the tautest of the taut – a sharp exercise in futility and
fatalism. It excels through the sharp cinematography of the great noir
cameraman John Alton: deep focus scenes composed around diagonals from way in
the back to looming objects or bodies or faces in the foreground; low angles; and
above all, what film historian Jeremy Arnold in his rich commentary for this
Bu-ray edition of Raw Deal terms “tons of darkness with little pools of
light” (sometimes, in fact, not even pools but just a gleam or glitter
furtively trying to stick out in the inky black). Raw Deal stands apart
moreover by employment of a female voice-over (deadpan, often present-tense,
bleakness from the criminal protagonist’s world-weary moll, Pat, played by
Claire Trevor), rare in films noirs of the times. Pat’s narration shows her to
be jaded yet devoted to loser anti-hero Joe (Dennis O’Keefe) who breaks out of
the pen to get money owed him by the most evil of evil gangsters (a so-menacing
Raymond Burr). But Joe falls for the innocent Ann (Marsha Hunt), his lawyer’s
assistant whom he takes hostage, and by the film’s set of final confrontations,
both action-oriented, and romantic, all bets are off as to what moral position
will win out and who indeed will survive between venality and redemption. Pushing
violence to an extreme (especially, a fire thrown into a female face, years
before the coffee-to-the-kisser shock in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat), Raw
Deal packs a series of dramatic and emotional wallops as overpowering as
the punches in a darkened room fight that comes virtually mid-way through the
film.
In addition to the
aforementioned commentary track by Jeremy Arnold, very insightful about the
film’s employment of expressive techniques and noir visual style to convey a
narrative of inevitable entrapment, this new Classicflix Blu-ray edition of Raw
Deal includes short featurettes on the film’s making and on actor Dennis
O’Keefe that are not very deep in historical exploration but are short enough
to be consumed easily quickly as one gives greater attention to richer
materials on the Blu-ray : that commentary track (which manages to cram in lots
of facts about the stars and extras even as it tells us so much about visual –
and also musical – style) and a nice booklet by Mann scholar Max Alvarez. There’s
an image gallery which perhaps devotes a little too much time to images from
the film itself (which, after all, is what most purchasers of the Blu-ray will
attend to, rather than just stills) although it nicely includes some of the
various poster and color ads that promoted Raw Deal.
Like so many other films,
though, and especially in the case of this one, where one might wonder what the
Hays Office might have made of the movie’s severe level of violence and
corporeal threat (as in an antler on an stuffed animal that one criminal tries
to impale another’s eye on), it is easy to lament that the extras didn’t
include Production Code files or other production documents. Jeremy Arnold and
Max Alvarez do provide valuable background in their scholarly contributions,
though, and confirm just how much Raw Deal merits close study and just
how much the downbeat world of noir overall commands our emotional and
intellectual attention as an striking and critical mode of American popular
culture.
When they say "They don't make 'em like that anymore" it could well
be in reference to "The Honey Pot", a delightful 1967 concoction.The film is the
kind of star-studded comedy/mystery that has recently made a comeback through the "Knives Out" movies.
However, this film barely registers in the minds of most movie-goers and
was not successful when it was first released. (The studio even reissued
it under a new title, "It Comes Up Murder".) The project was cursed
from the beginning. The original cinematographer, Gianni Di Venanzo,
died before production was completed. When the film was released in
select engagements, the running time was 150 minutes, which was deemed
to be far too long for this modest enterprise that is confined largely
to interiors. For general release, 18 minutes were cut, although some of
those scenes still appeared in lobby cards advertising the movie. One
well-known character actor, Herschel Bernardi, had his entire role
eliminated. Additionally, the film's producer Charles K. Feldman was
under a great deal of stress, as he was simultaneously overseeing
production on his bloated, out-of-control spoof version of the James
Bond novel "Casino Royale". Yet, what emerges somehow managed to end up
being quite entertaining, thanks in no small part to the
larger-than-life Rex Harrison having a field day playing an equally
larger-than-life rich cad. Essentially, he's playing Henry Higgins from
"My Fair Lady" once again- only this time with a more devious streak.
Both characters are filthy rich. Both are erudite and sophisticated
snobs who devise cruel games involving innocents in return for his own
self-amusement. Harrison is a wicked but lovable character. You can't
help cheering him on despite his lack of ethical convictions.
The film, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is cobbled
together from Frederick Knotts' play "Mr. Fox of Venice" and Thomas
Sterling's novel "The Evil of the Day" with a healthy dose of Ben
Johnson's play "Volpone" tossed in. In fact the film opens with Harrison
as the pretentiously-named Cecil Sheridan Fox enjoying a performance of
"Volpone" at a magnificent Venetian theater. The camera pans back to
show that this is a private performance for Fox alone. He stops the play
before the finale, thanks the cast members for a spirited production
and leaves the scene. Yes, he's that rich. We soon learn that he
is using elements of "Volpone" to orchestrate an elaborate and expensive
practical joke. The first step comes when he hires an unemployed
American actor, William McFly (Cliff Robertson) to be his hired hand. He
informs McFly that he must pose as Fox's long-time major domo in his
elaborate mansion house, which is impressively located right on one of
the canals. Fox explains to McFly that he has written to three former
lovers and told them he is terminally ill. None of the women know that
the others have been informed. He reasons that they will all make a
bee-line directly to him, ostensibly to care for him, but in reality in
hopes of inheriting his fortune. First on his list is Lone Star Crockett
(Susan Hayward), who Fox wooed when she was a wild teenager. In the
course of their affair, he put her on the road to a life of luxury and
pleasure. Then there is Princess Dominique (Capucine), an exotic beauty
who is in a troubled marriage and Merle McGill (Edie Adams), a famous
but fading movie star. On the surface, all three of these women are
independently wealthy and shouldn't need his fortune. But he suspects
that, in reality, all are in some degree of financial distress and he
wants to see if they will compete with each other to earn his favor.
Sure enough, each of the ladies arrive at his home and are surprised to
see they have two female competitors. Lone Star is now a cranky
hypochondriac who requires constant pampering from her ever-present
companion, a spinster named Sarah Watkins (Maggie Smith). Dominique
tries to put on an air of self-assurance and Merle is a wise-cracking
cynic. All of them individually express their sympathies to Fox and
there is even the occasional attempt at seduction. Fox puts on a show
that he is desperately ill and even sits in bed affixed to an oxygen
tank. In private, however, he blasts classical music and dances around
the room, delighted that his perceptions of human behavior are proving
to be true. The plot takes several major swings in due course, however,
when one of the women ends up dead, ostensibly from an overdose of
sleeping pills. However, McFly and Sarah suspect murder is afoot. The
film then becomes one of those time-honored drawing room mysteries with
upper crust characters matching wits with the local inspector (Adolfo
Celi, marvelous in a rare comedic role.)
To
describe the plot in any further detail would necessitate providing
some spoilers. Suffice it to say there are plenty of red herrings and a
complex plot that will demand your constant attention or you will be
hopelessly lost.
The performances are all first rate, though Capucine (never one who
mastered the light touch that these sorts of comedies require) is a bit
stiff. However, Hayward and Adams pick up the slack with very funny
characterizations. The scene stealer among the women, however, is Maggie
Smith, who is more streetwise than any of the others suspect. As for
Harrison, he seems to be having a genuine ball, chewing the scenery and
dispensing bon mots that are consistently amusing. The sequence in which he dances around his bed chamber is one for the ages.
"The Honey Pot" deserved a better fate than it received when it was
released theatrically. Hopefully it will get a more appreciative
audience through streaming and a Kino Lorber Blu-ray that is available.
Though
this author has seen many Italian Westerns, for years I had avoided watching Navajo Joe because I had wrongly assumed
it was an American Western due to its star: Burt Reynolds. Happily, I
discovered that Navajo Joe is a
solidly entertaining film. Reynolds stars as the title character, out for
revenge after a gang of cutthroats massacres his tribe and scalps his wife. The
rest of the film shows Reynolds hunting down the bandits and killing them one
by one. Naturally, as this is a Spaghetti Western, Joe has a few anti-hero
traits. When the same outlaw gang begins terrorizing the town of Esperanza, Joe
dupes the townspeople into paying him to kill the gang, thus managing to profit
from an act he was intending to carry out anyway (hence the film's Italian
title A Dollar a Head). Though a
solid film produced by Dino de Laurentiis, directed by Sergio Corbucci (Django) and scored by Ennio Morricone,
Burt Reynolds often puts the movie down, stating that it could only be shown in
prisons and on airplanes to truly captive audiences that couldn't escape. Supposedly
the bad blood began when Reynolds misunderstood that he was to be working with
Sergio Leone rather than Sergio Corbucci, and vice versa Corbucci initially hoped
to cast Marlon Brando. Due to the mutual disappointment the director and his
star didn't get along terribly well. The film was shot between two of
Corbucci's other westerns, Johnny Oro
(1966) and Hellbenders (1967). The
camera work and direction for the action scenes are top notch and Reynolds
himself was said to have done his own stunts, in addition to overseeing the stunt
work on the entire film. Ennio Morricone (under the alias of Leo Nichols)
composes another good score, with the main theme being the most memorable.
The
picture quality on the Blu-ray, though not flawless, is good overall. Included
in the special features is a commentary track by the Kino Lorber Senior Vice
President of Theatrical Releasing, Gary Palmucci. In addition to the usual cast
and crew backgrounds, Palmucci also offers up some interesting insights into
running a company such as Kino Lorber and how they acquire their various
titles. The Blu-ray also comes with a trailer for Navajo Joe and other Reynolds MGM/UA action films White Lightning, Gator and Malone.
John LeMay is the author of several western non-fiction titles, among them Tall Tales and Half Truths of Billy the Kid. Click here to order from Amazon.
If you are a subscriber to Amazon Prime, you already know that the service is a goldmine of retro movies and TV shows that are included in the annual subscription fee. You have probably also noticed that there are independent movie screening services that you can subscribe to for separate fees and these can be played conveniently through the Amazon Prime app. These separate streaming services are usually built around a niche such as horror films, westerns, foreign films, etc. One of the apps I recently discovered is Screenpix and for a paltry $2.99 a month, you can access a wide range of retro movies that are not included in Amazon Prime's catalog. The service gives you a 7-day free trial and is also available through Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV and Playstation. Here are just some of the titles I glimpsed in browsing through the service:
"Shout at the Devil"
"The Professionals"
"Fail Safe"
"The Innocents"
"Red River"
"Marooned"
"Bus Stop"
"To Catch a Thief"
"The Blob" (original)
"Rollerball" (original)
"To Catch a Thief"
"Stagecoach" (original)
"Born Losers"
"The African Queen"
"Return of Sabata"
"Attack on the Iron Coast"
"The Wild Angels"
"Billion Dollar Brain"
"Where's Papa?"
"Witchfinder General" (aka "The Conqueror Worm")
"Attack!"
"The 1,000 Plane Raid"
"Woman of Straw"
"House of Usher"
"The Longest Day"
Well, you get the idea. In any event, we can assure you that we have no affiliation with either Amazon, Roku or Screenpix. We pay the subscription fees just like everyone else does.Just making a recommendation to fellow retro-movie buffs about a great resource to find an eclectic catalog of great titles.
Click here to link to a Roku promo page that allows you to view and browse through the available titles.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount Home Video:
Newly
restored in 4K Ultra HD, Elvis Presley’s beloved 1961 classic BLUE HAWAII
arrives as part of the collectible Paramount Presents line on both 4K Ultra HD
and Blu-ray™ for the first time ever November 15, 2022!
Enjoy
this rollicking Technicolor musical in ultra-crisp 4K Ultra HD with Dolby
Vision™ and HDR-10. Fully restored from the original 35mm camera negative,
BLUE HAWAIIlooks more spectacular than ever with every colorful costume and
vivid Hawaiian background brought to life. The first of three films that Elvis shot in Hawaii, BLUE
HAWAII celebrated the brand-new exotic state and features the massive hit
song “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” which was certified platinum.
For the restoration, the
original negative was scanned in 4K/16bit, however the opening title sequence
was very grainy because it originally used duped film. That sequence was
completely rebuilt using the original film elements from the Paramount
library. Brand new text overlays were created for a truly spectacular
opening sequence befitting this delightful film.
The Paramount Presents BLUE
HAWAII release includes the film on both 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc™ and on
Blu-ray, as well as access to a digital copy of the film. The Blu-ray
additionally includes the original theatrical trailer and the following new
bonus content:
·Commentary
by historian James L. Neibaur
·Blue
Hawaii Photo Scrapbook—contains
high-res images from the Paramount archives, including behind-the-scenes shots
The year 1967 marked the high point of Sidney Poitier's screen
career. He starred in three highly acclaimed box office hits: "To Sir,
With Love", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the
Night". The fact that Poitier did not score a Best Actor Oscar
nomination that year had less to do with societal prejudices (he had
already won an Oscar) than the fact that he was competing with himself
and split the voter's choices for his best performance. "In the Heat of
the Night" did win the Best Picture Oscar and immortalized Poitier's
performance as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia detective who finds himself
assigned to assist a redneck sheriff (Rod Steiger, who did win
the Oscar that year for his performance in this film) in a town in the
deep south that has experienced a grisly unsolved murder. When Steiger's
character, resentful for having to work with a black man, refers to
Tibbs as "boy" and asks what they call him back in Philadelphia, he
replies "They call me Mister Tibbs!", thereby uttering
what would become one of the cinema's most iconic lines of dialogue. In
the film, Poitier plays Tibbs as a man of mystery. Little is unveiled
about his personal life, which adds immeasurably to his mystique. He
proves to be highly intelligent, logical and courageous, though
refreshingly, not immune from making mistakes and misjudgments. The
reaction to the movie was so good that, Hollywood being Hollywood,
United Artists became convinced that Tibbs could be brought back to star
in a "tentpole" series of crime thrillers. These have previously been released as individual Blu-ray titles by Kino Lorber and they are now available as a double feature set.
First up is the 1970 release, "The Call me MISTER Tibbs!" Aside from
Poitier's commanding presence as the same character, there is virtually
no connection between this Virgil Tibbs and the one seen in the previous
film. The screenplay by Alan Trustman, who wrote the winners "The
Thomas Crown Affair" and "Bullitt", softens the Tibbs character to the
point that he resembles one of those unthreatening TV gumshoes. When we
first see him, he is now in the San Francisco Police Department, though
Trustman doesn't provide even a single line of dialogue to explain how
he got there. He's apparently been there for some time, too, because
Tibbs has suddenly acquired a wife (Barbara McNair) and a young son and
daughter. The movie opens with the brutal murder of a call girl who
lived in a pricey apartment. Evidence points to Tibbs' old friend Logan
Sharpe (Martin Landau), a firebrand street preacher and activist who
enjoys a wide following and who is galvanizing the community to vote in a
politically controversial referendum. Sharpe professes his innocence
and Tibbs sets out to acquit him and find the real killer. The trail
quickly leads to a confusing mix of motley characters and red herrings,
among them Anthony Zerbe and Ed Asner. Poitier is never less than
impressive even when playing a watered-down version of a once gritty
character. However, his impact is diminished by the sappy screenplay
which allocates an abundance of time showing Tibbs dealing with
day-to-day family living. He flirts with his wife and offers life
lessons to his son that border on the extremes of political
incorrectness. When he catches the lad smoking, Tibbs decides to teach
the pre-teen a lesson by inviting him to join him in smoking Churchill
cigars and drinking some scotch. (Most of our dads would probably have
employed methods that were slightly more "conventional".) This domestic
gibberish reduces the character of Tibbs to a big screen version of
Brian Keith's Uncle Bill from the "Family Affair" TV series. Director
Gordon Douglas, normally very underrated, handles the pedantic script in
a pedantic manner, tossing in a few impressive action scenes including
one in which Poitier chases Zerbe on foot seemingly through half of San
Francisco in the movie's best sequence. The scenes between Poitier and
Landau bristle with fine acting but they only share a limited amount of
screen time. Quincy Jones provides a lively, funky jazz score but the
film never rises above the level of mediocrity.
Poitier returned to the screen for the last time as Virgil Tibbs in 1971
in "The Organization". Compared to the previous outing, this one is
superior on most levels. The script by James R. Webb is just as
confusing but there is a grittiness to the production and the character
of Tibbs is toughened up a bit. Thankfully, the scenes of his home life
with wife and kids are kept to a minimum. The film, well directed by Don
Medford (his final production), begins with an inspired caper in which a
group of masked men stage an audacious and elaborate infiltration of an
office building owned by some shady mob characters. They abscond with
millions in cocaine. Tibbs is assigned to the case and is shocked when
the culprits secretly approach him and admit they stole the drugs. Turns
out they are community activists who wanted to prevent the cocaine from
hitting the streets. However, they want Tibbs to know that they did not
commit a murder that occurred on the premises of the office. They claim
someone else did the dirty deed and is trying to pin it on them. Tibbs
believes their story and goes against department protocols by keeping
the information secret from his superiors while he works with the
activists to crack the case. At some point the plot became so tangled
that I gave up trying to figure out who was who and just sat back to
enjoy the mayhem. Tibbs' withholding of information from the police
department backfires on him and he ends up being suspended from the
force. Predictably, he goes rogue in order to take on organized crime
figures who are trying to get the drugs back. "The Organization" is
fairly good Seventies cop fare capped off by a lengthy action sequence
imaginatively set in a subway tunnel that is under construction. The
supporting cast is impressive and includes reliable Sheree North,
scruffy Allen Garfield and up-and-comers Raul Julia, Ron O'Neal and a
very brief appearances by Max Gail and Damon Wilson. Barbara McNair
returns as Mrs. Tibbs but her sole function is to provide attractive
window dressing. Gil Melle provides a hip jazz score.
Both films boast fine transfers but the only bonus features are the original trailers.
On the eve of the November 1963 release of TWICE TOLD
TALES, the British actor Sebastian Cabot would tell a reporter from the Copley
News Service, “They’ve been after me to do more of the horror pictures with
Vincent Price.I wouldn’t mind that a
bit, though I must say I wouldn’t want to do them exclusively.”He intimated that he and his co-star had
discussed a possible future pairing in “a light comedy” motion-picture.Alas, it was not to be; the two actors would
not work together again.Cabot, of
course, would soldier on and enjoy success as both a television personality and
a recognizable voice-over actor.Following
the passing of Boris Karloff in 1969, Vincent Price would reign as the big-screen’s
uncontested “King of Horror.” Cabot’s estimation of Price as an actor
“extremely adept” at light-comedy was incisive.Throughout his long and fabled career, Vincent Price’s on-screen
ghoulishness would nearly always be mitigated with a wry smile and twinkle in
the eye.
TWICE TOLD TALES is the second of two quickie vehicles in
which Price starred for Robert E. Kent’s Admiral Pictures, Inc. (1962-1963).For their first pairing, DIARY OF A MADMAN
(released in March 1963 and distributed through United Artists), Kent mined the
imagination of the great French short-story writer Henri-René-Albert-Guy de
Maupassant.That film’s ballyhoo
proclaimed it “The Most Terrifying Motion Picture Ever Created!” It most
certainly wasn’t, but the film still managed to be a worthwhile psychological
thriller - though one that didn’t particularly resonate at the box-office.In what was obviously an attempt to
capitalize on the low-budget but big commercial success of Roger Corman’s Edgar
Allan Poe adaptations for A.I.P, Kent quickly changed course and ambitiously turned
to the short stories and novels of Nathanial Hawthorne for material.
Though a descendant of John Hathorne, the unrepentant
magistrate who presided over the fate of several innocents during Salem,
Massachusetts’s celebrated witch trials, Nathanial Hawthorne was a
romanticist:he was not prominently a
writer of mysteries or of fantastic fiction.Having said that, Hawthorne was not averse to penning a good ghost story
or two and his talent had won him the praise of contemporaries.One such fan was Edgar Allan Poe himself.In his review of Hawthorne’s two volume
collection of short stories TWICE TOLD TALES for Graham’s Magazine in May of
1842, Poe unabashedly pronounced the New Englander as “a man of truest genius…
As Americans, we feel proud of this book.”
Of course Hollywood producers have always somehow managed
to take great creative liberties with the acknowledged classics.Stories of cigar-chomping producers passing
on tracts of classic literature so their stable of writers might “give ‘em a
polish” are legion.Though Roger
Corman’s series of Poe films both successfully and artistically mined the great
man’s work for their tortured characters, grim atmosphere and elements of plot,
Corman himself rarely offered filmgoers a straight-forward re-telling of any of
the doomed author’s fabled tales.
Producer-writer, Robert E. Kent seems to have taken a
similar, albeit far less successful, approach with his production of TWICE TOLD
TALES.Only segment two of this trilogy
film, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” closely resembles Hawthorne’s original story, and
even that diverges when at odds with cinematic expectations.In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” a sinister
love-triangle between Dr. Carl Heidegger (the corpulent Sebastian Cabot), Alex
Medbourne (Price) and the recently revived but still exquisite corpse of Sylvia
Ward (Marie Blanchard) is re-engineered as to feature an original - if
salacious - back-story.This “Virgin
Spring” elixir-of-eternal-youth morality-fable plays out with little fidelity to
the original tale.
Such creative-license is stretched to the breaking point
with the film’s final episode, “The House of the Seven Gables.”This segment bears little resemblance to Hawthorne’s
celebrated novel, but it has borrowed elements from the better known – and far
more lavish – 1940 Universal film of the same title.The Universal film, perhaps not
coincidentally, also featured Vincent Price in a starring role, though this
tale too strayed far from Hawthorne’s original.Though I recall no physical blood-letting in the Hawthorne novel, in TWICE
TOLD TALES the sanguine red fluid pours freely– and mostly unconvincingly, it
must be said - from ceilings, walls, portraits, and lockets.The Pyncheon’s family’s metaphorical skeleton-in-the-closet
becomes all too real in this rather uninspired re-working.
Part of the film’s original marketing stratagem was the
offer of “FREE COFFEE in the lobby to settle your nerves!”One might suggest, with a measure of
cynicism, that such brew was a necessary component in helping to keep audiences
awake.TWICE TOLD TALES is, to be
generous, a very good ninety-minute film.The problem is that the filmmakers stretched this ninety-minute film to an
interminable two-hour running time.
This is a “sitting room” or “parlor” film; most of the
action (as it is) takes place in mildly claustrophobic confines of small home
settings with long stretches of unbroken dialogue.There are very few provocative set-pieces employed
over the course of three segments and the most ambitious of these, the deadly
and poisonous garden of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini (Price), is only experienced in sun-soaked
broad daylight.This supposedly lethal
garden is both terribly over-lit and ill-disguised in its construction (the
seams of the faux-grass mats are clearly visible).As such this potentially visual and cinematic
garden of death portends little of its intended menace.If only love-struck suitor Giovanni Guasconti
(Brett Halsey) could have encountered the beautiful but lethal Beatrice
Rappaccini (Joyce Taylor) in a blue-swathed moonlight setting, the garden’s mysterious
atmosphere would have been instantly heightened.
Kent’s too-wordy screenplay suffers occasional patches of
purple prose, but it’s serviceable.There are a couple of great moments:Cabot’s toast of the glass prior to his experimental drinking of a fluid
that may or may not kill him (“To eternal youth, or just eternity?”).In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” we’re not sure, at
first, of who is a prisoner to whom.Is
it the estranged daughter to the father, or the father to the daughter?When all is made clear, we can better understand
the poisoned daughter’s bitter complaint, “The only difference from being dead
is that this house is bigger than a grave.”
TWICE TOLD TALES is no classic, but it’s not unworthy of
one’s time.Vincent Price is, as always,
brilliant in all three of the villainous roles he inhabits.The supporting cast is mostly great as well,
and Kent, unashamedly, brings aboard several of the familiar players who earlier
worked with Corman on the Poe series.Director
Sidney Salkow was, sadly, no auteur.Though he had been directing and writing films – and bringing them in
under or on budget -for both
independent and major studios as early as 1936, it’s clear he was most
interested in producing a satisfying checkmark in the company’s profit ledger and
not terribly concerned with film-as-art. Though Salkow’s films are never less than
competent, they’re generally pedestrian and not particularly memorable.As helmsman, Salkow simply possessed none of
Corman’s visual-style or displayed any ability to stage an impressive production
on a shoestring budget.
To be fair, Corman had advantages.His gothic films were European in design: his settings were of torch-lit gloomy and
brooding castles, of misty streets of cobblestone and black twisted tree-limbs.Two of the TWICE TOLD TALES, on the other
hand, are set in the non-atmospheric repose of 19th-century small-town
America.With the small exception of a creepy
sequence in which a thunder and lightning-storm disturbs a tomb that had been
sealed for thirty-eight years (and sits, inexplicably, just to the rear of Dr.
Heidegger’s back-door), the dressing that surrounds TWICE TOLD TALES demonstrates little
of the macabre ingredients necessary for mounting a successful horror film.
This 2022 release from
Kino-Lorber Studio Classics supplants their original 2015 Blu-ray issue of
TWICE TOLD TALES.As with its first
incarnation, the film is presented in Technicolor and in its original 1.66:1
ratio and in 1920x1080p with removable English subtitles.This new issue looks great… but no greater
than their 2015 release, quite frankly.This edition doesn’t necessarily offer a significant upgrade, if at
all.Bonus features ported over from the
first issue includes a commentary from film scholars Richard Harland Smith and
Perry Martin as well as a brief “Trailers from Hell” segment courtesy of Mick
Garris.
It seems this Kino
“Special Edition” differs only in small ways from their earlier effort.First, a “collectible” slipcover (featuring a
pair of color photographs on the reverse sleeve), replaces the two
black-and-white shots featured on the case of the original issue.The original edition featured only three
trailers in total – this new issue balloons to a generous baker’s dozen of
trailers from other Poe/Price/AIP titles offered on the Kino Studio Classics
line.On the minus side, this new
edition, somewhat oddly, offers no chapter selections – a strange omission for
a portmanteau film.An essential
purchase, I suppose – but only for those who missed out on the original 2015
pressing.
In his collection of 1997, Who the Devil Made It?: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors,
Peter Bogdanovich, trumpeted that no one in the film industry, “had ever made
good pictures faster or for less money than Edgar Ulmer.What he could do with nothing (occasionally
in the script department as well) remains an object lesson for those directors,
myself included, who complain about tight budgets and schedules.”Bogdanovich, who befriended Ulmer when the
latter was in his seventies, reminded readers the director of such gems as Detour (1945) and The Black Cat (1934) was rarely given more than six-days to shoot
any of his features.
Ulmer was an interesting character, an oft-cited ego-centric
with high aspirations and boundless energy.Indie Hollywood producers found Ulmer a dependable craftsman who made
the most of what he was given – which too often was a pittance.He occasionally made great films.To his credit, he never delivered anything
less than an efficient film.In a 2014 study,
Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the
Margins, biographer Noah Isenberg, conceded his on-set mission of seeking
“clear-cut answers” was futile: Ulmer’s personal and professional life was nothing
if not a bewildering “straddle [of] truth and fiction.”
Though Isenberg exhumed every interview with the director
he could find, he acknowledged one couldn’t “accept without qualification what
Ulmer himself presented as the truth when he was still alive.” According to
film historian Gary D. Rhodes, Robert Clarke, the actor/producer of Beyond the Time Barrier – one of a trio
films included here on Kino’s new Blu ray issue of the Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-Fi Collection - considered the writer-director
“something of a genius, but also a troubled, difficult person.”
Ulmer was, inarguably, partly responsible for some of his
travails.Working at Universal as an art
director and set designer in the early ‘30s, Ulmer was given the opportunity to
direct the studio’s art-deco atmospheric horror The Black Cat with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.But opportunities to helm future pictures for
up-market Hollywood studios were derailed.Though married, Ulmer entered into a scandalous affair with a studio script
supervisor – one already married to the nephew of Universal’s c0-founder, Carl
Laemmle.The retribution for Ulmer’s
affair-of-the-heart was his blacklisting from working at any Hollywood major.But as a filmmaker Ulmer was nothing if not
resilient.He worked for the next
thirty-odd years as a director-for-hire by independent producers and
poverty-row studios.
As Bogdanovich noted, Ulmer was an able craftsman.He was a utilitarian director, successfully
cranking out films in nearly every popular-market genre: westerns, gangster
films, mysteries, adventure yarns - even the occasional comedy.Though the film noir classic Detour might be his greatest achievement,
he is also beloved by fans of classic horror and sci-fi for a string of
engaging pictures.He never approached
films in the horror genre as toss-a-ways, stories unworthy of his talent.Though none of his subsequent horror pictures
would ever match the iconic status anointed to The Black Cat, his occasional dabbles in “fantastic films” were solid
efforts.
Some films were better than others.One especially well done was Bluebeard (1944, featuring John
Carradine).Sometimes the films were
simply off-the-charts exploitation fare as was Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957 with John Agar).His films tended to be, whatever their budgetary
shortcomings, memorable.This new set
from Kino offers fans a trio of his best sci-fi efforts: a well-regarded effort
and two of the last films directed before his departure from the film business.
The “pick” of the set is, arguably, Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X (1951), a very
early entry into the Silver-Age sci-fi film sweepstakes. It’s September 1950 and astronomers are
puzzled by the sudden surfacing of “a strange astronomical phenomenon” which
they describe as “Planet X.”The problem
with Planet X is that its trajectory suggests it might be on a collision course
with earth.The space craft lands
somewhere in the gloomy, foggy moors of Scotland, not too far from the ancient,
spooky watchtower where scientists Dr. Elliot and Dr. Mears (Raymond Bond and
William Schallert, respectively) and journalist Jack Lawrence (Robert Clarke) just
happen to be tracking Planet X’s path.Dr. Elliot’s daughter Enid (Margaret Field) is the unlucky first one to
come face-to-face with the Man from Planet X, describing the alien as having a
“ghastly caricature” of a human face. But now that he’s arrived on earth the
question is why he’s here – and whether he’s friend or foe.
The Man
from Planet X received a modicum of press interest in the
last months of 1950.There were reports writer-producers
Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen’s modest Mid-Century production company was
taking on a David vs. Goliath challenge.They were, after all, competing against a Hollywood big dog studio with
their modest upstart picture.One month
prior to the start of the filming of Planet
X at Culver City’s Hal Roach Studio, Howard Hawk’s production of the iconic
‘50s sci-fi thriller The Thing was
already in mid-production at RKO.Though
tackling the same sort of space-invader subject matter, Planet X was scheduled to be shot – Ulmer-style – in six scant days
with a budget of less than $50,000.As
one Los Angeles daily noted the threadbare budget allotted “wouldn’t rate you a
thing at RKO or any other film factory.”Perhaps not, but the hasty shooting schedule ensured The Man from Planet X would hit cinema
screens long before than The Thing.
The producers of Planet
X didn’t deny they had proceeded with budgetary economic caution since -
they were two of the film’s principal investors and had a lot to lose.“As writers,” Wisberg defended to the L.A.’s Daily News, “we recognized and
anticipated the time and budget limitations in our script in advance and are
now able to cut corners on the set.”One
such frugal measure was their re-using the “standing scenery” left erected of
Ingrid Bergman’s Joan of Arc (1948)
featuring Ingrid Bergman. (Much of the background scenery and effects in the
film are comprised of impressionistic matte paintings and miniatures).
Following the film’s release, Pollexfen conceded while
the film’s script was laden with a lot of scientific jargon, there was probably
more fiction than science embroidered within.For starters, there was never a mention of exactly how far the visitor from Planet X had traveled to get his spaceship
to earth.“We did it on purpose, he
admitted.“If we had mentioned the
distance some 12-year old with a slide rule would prove we were bums.”With its tight, seventy-one minute running
time, The Man from Planet X proves to
be a very serviceable thriller.
The scenario of the second film of this collection, Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) exploitatively
springboards off the popularity of George Pal’s version of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine.The film was scripted by Arthur C. Pierce who
brought us such other 50s and 60s low-budget sci-fi fare as The Cosmic Man (1959), Invasion of the Animal People (1959) and
The Navy vs. the Night Monsters
(1966).I really wasn’t expecting much
from this film, but was surprised that, all things considered, it was actually
a pretty decent futuristic adventure.
On March 5, 1960 Major William Allison (Robert Clarke), a
research test pilot for the USAF, sets off on a jet that will straddle the
border of earth’s atmosphere and outer space.The craft accidentally strafes the speed of light, catapulting Allison
through the time barrier to the Citadel, a fortress protecting the inhabitants
from a mutant population.The non-mutant
population of the Citadel are all deaf and dumb – with the exception of the
grandfatherly supreme leader (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his belligerent Captain (Boyd
Morgan).Most of communication of the residents
of the Citadel is done telepathically – a bit of bad luck for the bewildered
test pilot trying to plot an escape.
Allison learns the year is now (gasp!) 2024.The residents are survivors of a plague
brought on by cosmic radiation from too many nuclear explosions on earth.They are also part of a dying race.There have been no newborns in the Citadel in
twenty-years since the plague left all of the men sterile.Among the last born were the supreme leader’s
granddaughter Trirene (Darlene Tompkins), a nicely-formed ingénue.There’s a sort of cockeyed plan for Trirene
to mate with Allison to promulgate the species.But that idea goes bust when double-crosses and carnage follow in the wake
of the scheming scientists and rampaging mutants.There’s also a bit of a Twilight Zone twist to keep things interesting in the end.Despite the film’s low budget, Ulmer’s
talents in art direction allows the film’s futuristic sets – all triangles,
diamond-shapes and inverted pyramids – to give the film a glossy, moneyed
appearance.
Clocking in a little more than 58 minutes, the final film
of the set, The Amazing Transparent Man
(1960), ties things up in perfunctory fashion – the running time adequate, I
suppose, to tell its slim story.In 1959
the film’s screenwriter, Jack Lewis – whose previous scripting work was mostly
of adventures and westerns – decided to try his hand at writing a
science-fiction tale.His script,
originally titled Search for a Shadow, was
initially picked–up by indie Pacific International Pictures.Ulmer was tapped to direct the film – this
time involving a master safe-cracker who is “sprung from prison by a ring of
international spies.”
The spies are seeking copious amounts of atomic material X-13
so they can develop a ray that will transform an army invisible for the purpose
of military supremacy. To that end Major
Paul Krenner (James Griffith) and Laura Matson (Marguerite Chapman) orchestrate
the escape of safe-cracker Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy) to – under the cloak of
invisibility - break into the government’s highly protected stores of
fissionable material.Krenner is an
unlikeable sort, manipulative and cold.It’s not clear whether he’s acting on behalf of a secretive U.S. agency
or as a double-agent for a foreign power.
He’s assisted, under duress, by Dr. Peter Ulof (Ivan
Triesault), an “eminent nuclear scientist” and developer of the special X-ray
machine that turns both guinea pigs and escaped convicts invisible.Ulof is acutely aware of Krenner’s dark intentions,
but is unable to do anything about it: his reasons for dutifully assisting in the
Major’s schemes becomes evident as the film unspools.In the meantime, Faust incurs Krenner’s
ill-will by enjoying an unsanctioned - but predictable – return to bank robbery
– a side-benefit of his now being invisible.There are a few hand-to-hand combat tussles but little suspense as the
tale unfolds.The story hastily wraps
with Ulof’s breaking of the “third wall” with an earnest morality plea/request.
Lewis’s conjured invisible man/spy-ring scenario was
intriguing but not without precedent.Curt
Siodmak had already written a more successful variant of the idea for Universal
during WWII.That film, Edwin L. Marin’s
Invisible Agent (1942), didn’t cheat
on the special effects as would The
Amazing Transparent Man.Universal’s
especial effects team (including the illustrious John P. Fulton) earned an
Academy Award nomination for their work on this earlier project.The invisibility tricks as provided by
special effects supervisor Roger George in Transparent
Man are passable but not breathtaking.
To be fair, the script would undergo numerous
tweaks.Ulmer and producers John Miller
and Robert L. Madden liked the premise, but were not enamored with the script’s
original title.Lewis reportedly offered
them no fewer than twenty-three alternate titles, the filmmakers initially settling
on The Invisible Invader.But this title too was tossed when Edward L.
Cahn’s Invisible Invaders (1959, with
John Agar and John Carradine) beat them to market.Other titles were bandied about (“The
Invisible Thief,” “The Invisible Gangster”) until the whole “invisible”
campaign was dropped in favor of The
Amazing Transparent Man.Lewis’s
script called for Faust’s character to - intriguingly - cast no shadow even
when not in his invisible state.The
screenwriter contended this element was quickly – and sadly - dropped when the
filmmakers ordered him to “Take out the shadow part.The budget won’t stand all that special
effects work.”
This new Kino Lorber Blu-ray set will obviously be of
great interest to fans of Ulmer and 1950s/early 1960s vintage sci-fi.If you are a fan or collector of commentaries
in particular then this release provides you with a bonanza of them.There are no hoary hack commentators present,
these are folks who know what they’re talking about.The Man
from Planet X features no fewer than three separate commentaries featuring
the likes of Tom Weaver, David Schecter, Dr. Robert J. Kiss, Joe Dante, Gary D.
Rhodes, Richard Harland Smith and Ulmer’s Daughter Arianne Ulmer Cipes.Weaver, Schecter and Rhodes do double-duty on
Beyond the Time Barrier, with David
Del Valle going it alone on The Amazing
Transparent Man.
All three films are presented in their original
black-and-white in 1920 x 1080p with DTS audio, Planet X in 1.37:1 and Time
Barrier and Transparent Man in
1.85:1.The set also features the theatrical
trailers for all three of the films and an option for removable English
sub-titles. The films generally all look great, The Amazing Transparent Man looking a bit soft-focused in parts,
but still better than anything we’ve seen so far of this title.Totally recommended.
In a recent book review about Swedish exploitation films, Cinema Retro columnist Adrian Smith points out that in the 1960s and 1970s Sweden became "the sexy film capital of Europe." As cinematic censorship eased around the world, filmmakers were quick to capitalize on the new screen freedoms, churning out countless low-budget sexploitation films that were softcore in content but far more erotic than any previous films that had been widely shown. Pity the horny person who lived in a rural area without access to theaters that showed such fare, and were thus not part of the action. As comedian George Gobel once quipped to Johnny Carson, "I feel like the world is a tuxedo and I'm a pair of brown shoes." The profit margins on these films were impressive, as they generally cast no-name actors and filmed in locations that were both accessible and economic. Many of these films cited Sweden in the title. Why Sweden was singled out among the other Nordic countries to be a particular haven for sexual permissiveness is still a mystery but this much is certain: the public equated the Swedes with being among the most sexually liberated people on earth. Was it true that they were having more fun than most of us? I guess you'd have to consult Swedes who came of age during that era, but to quote the famous line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
Swedish sexploitation films presented many new female "stars", but most of them faded quickly. One exception was Christina Lindberg (aka Kristina Lindberg), who still has a devoted subculture of fans based on her work in sexploitation films of the 1970s. Small in stature, Lindberg nevertheless was the very definition of voluptuous. While still a teenager, she appeared in prominent photo spreads for both Playboy and Penthouse when both magazines were at the height of their influence. Lindberg quickly attracted film producers and she began appearing in erotic films. She landed her first starring role in "Maid in Sweden", released in 1971. It is a Swedish film shot in English language and top-lining Lindberg as a major new star on the exploitation film circuit, a point that was emphasized by marketing materials that thoughtfully provided her measurements: 42-21-36. The film has been jointly released on Blu-ray through Kino Lorber and Code Red, though it has been in circulation for many years on other labels.
Lindberg plays Inga, a 16 year-old high school student who lives with her parents in a rural area. She is quiet, studious and well-behaved but yearns for a bit of excitement. The opportunity comes when she receives an invitation from her older sister Greta (Monica Ekman) to stay a few days with her in Stockholm, where she works and rents an apartment. Inga makes the train journey to the big city and is greeted by her sister. However, things get uncomfortable when she finds that Greta has a live-in lover, her boyfriend Casten (Crista Ekman, Monica's real-life husband.) Inga is nervous and uncomfortable sharing such small quarters with a man she's never met before. She becomes even more uncomfortable when she witnesses the uninhibited lifestyle of Greta and Casten. They walk about in various stages of undress and think nothing of noisily making love without making much of an effort to be discreet. When Inga secretly observes them, it fuels her own sexual awakening, though not in a pleasant way. She has a nightmare in which she is being gang-raped and is saved by an older women who tries to seduce her. These scenes are extraneous to the story and are inserted simply to provide some additional kinky visuals. Feeling Inga could use some male companionship, Greta and Casten set her up for a date with a friend, Bjorn, who is 21 years-old and seems like a polite, considerate person. That changes when he gets Inga to his apartment. When she spurs his advances, he violently rapes her. In true celluloid fantasy fashion, she puts aside this crime as though her attacker made a simple social flub. She becomes infatuated with him and the two form a romantic bond. Then there is a turn for the worse when Casten tries to seduce her, thus leading to a domestic crisis that endangers her relationship with her sister. By the time Inga must return home, she has lived the equivalent of years of sexual experience all in a matter of days.
"Maid in Sweden" is by any definition a sexploitation film. It exists only to showcase varying degrees of female nudity. Christina Lindberg willingly obliges, doffing her top at every opportunity and occasionally walking about starkers. However, she doesn't bring much personality to the role, playing the part in a grim, unsmiling Wednesday Addams-like mode. The sex scenes are softcore, but push the boundaries. The film, directed by Floch Johnson, is a cut above most other sex movies of the era in that the actors are competent and there is a good deal of footage devoted to showing aspects of Stockholm. There is also a soundtrack comprised mostly of original rock songs. Lindberg would go on to make other exploitation/sexploitation films, most notably the controversial rape revenge movie "Thriller" (aka "They Call Her One-Eye"). Ultimately, she would return to school and veered away from acting to become an animal activist and environmentalist.
Code Red and Kino Lorber have provided a very good 2K transfer which probably means this is the best video version of the movie to be made available. The only bonus extras are the original trailer and a slew of other sexploitation film trailers.
"The Frisco Kid" is a gentle buddy comedy Western made in 1979 when star Gene Wilder was riding high and post-"Star Wars" Harrison Ford was a rising star. The script was not a hot property, as it had plenty of people's fingerprints on it by the time Wilder signed on to the film. Ford was a major fan of Wilder's and was eager to co-star. Seasoned veteran Robert Aldrich, best known for his macho action movies such as "The Dirty Dozen", "Flight of the Phoenix", "Ulzana's Raid" and "The Longest Yard", was signed as director. It was seemingly an odd fit but Aldrich had directed the 1963 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin Western comedy "4 for Texas". The film finds Wilder well-cast as Avram, a somewhat bumbling rabbinical student in Poland who is chosen to travel to San Francisco to serve as the rabbi for a new order. As a reward, he is shown a photograph of the beautiful young daughter of the religious leader in the area who will become Avram's bride. The trip from Poland to California would be arduous enough in the days of the old West under any circumstance but things go particularly wrong for Avram. Upon arriving on the east coast of America, he's told the ship he had booked passage on has been significantly delayed. He befriends three men with a wagon who say they are going to San Francisco. He opts to join them but along the way they rob him and leave him penniless in the desert. A group of Mormons save him and give him money to continue his now seemingly impossible journey across a hellish landscape of deserts and other natural barriers, as well as dangerous Indian tribes. He has a chance encounter with Tommy (Harrison Ford), a low-key friendly young guy who occasionally robs banks. The two men make for an "Odd Couple" scenario as they bond in friendship. Tommy feels sorry for the hapless Avram and agrees to escort him to San Francisco. The film chronicles their adventures and misadventures along the way, some comical, others frightening.
Today's film comedies are largely defined by an abundance of cynicism, cruelty and gross-out jokes, so one is hesitant to be harsh to the bygone era of family-friendly big screen yucks that "The Frisco Kid" epitomizes. There are some genuine giggles in the film, particularly due to Wilder's fish-out-of-water reaction to American traditions and the chemistry between Wilder and Ford is genuine and enjoyable. At other times, the film is sentimental and occasionally touching, as in the scenes in which our hero rabbi risks his life to save the sacred Torah he must deliver to his synagogue. However, the script by Michael Elias and Frank Shaw is meandering and has quite a few slow spots. There is a completely extraneous sequence in which our heroes are captured by hostile Indians that employs the age-old joke of having the tribal chief actually be a sophisticated, seemingly educated man. The scene drags on forever and goes nowhere. At 2 hours, the movie is about a half-hour too long. At times it seems endless and one can only wonder if a 90 minute version wouldn't have been more enjoyable. Sometimes less is more."The Frisco Kid" isn't a bad film, but it is bloated and Robert Aldrich's direction is workman-like and uninspired. It will primarily be of interest to Harrison Ford fans as an example of the eclectic types of films he appeared in after the original "Star Wars".
The region-free Warner Archive Blu-ray looks very good indeed. The only extra is the original trailer.
Click here to order from the Cinema Retro Movie Store
Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1965 comedy Strange Bedfellows, which existed primarily to reunite Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida, who had a box-office hit with Come September several years before. Like most of the romantic comedies of the era, there is little to separate this from a standard sitcom episode aside from the running time. Hudson plays a London-based executive on the rise who spontaneously marries a tempestuous Italian bombshell artist played by Lollobrigida. The newlyweds find their mutually insatiable sex drives are the only thing they have in common. Politically conservative Hudson is constantly at odds with his wife's liberal activism. They soon separate but after seven years, Hudson has a reason to stall the divorce proceedings he has put in place. Seems his even more conservative boss wants to promote him to be his right hand man- on the proviso that he is happily married. The contrived plot finds Hudson trying to swallow his pride and woo his wife back- despite the fact that she already has a British lover, Edward Judd.
The film ambles from one predictable, over-played scene to another, though there are some genuine laughs along the way. Hudson and Lollbrigida do have genuine chemistry on-screen and there is a very amusing supporting cast that includes Gig Young, Terry-Thomas, Arthur Haynes, Nancy Kulp, Bernard Fox and and the late, great Cinema Retro contributor Joe Sirola, who offers a very funny turn as a perverted sculptor. The most amusing aspect of the film is rather unintentional- the now laughably cliched presentation of life in England. In one scene, people can't get home because London is covered in a pea-soup like fog, an enduring legend that stemmed from the Victorian era when the city was often shrouded in pollution, not fog. Taxi drivers all speak with Cockney accents and call everyone 'guv. Ironically, only a small bit of second unit footage was even filmed in Old Blighty. The only on location footage featuring the stars is confined to a shot or two of Edward Judd and an opening scene of Rock Hudson walking along the Thames. One might ask why no additional footage of Hudson was shot on location. The answer was probably moolah. It would have cost Universal a tidy sum to deal with the logistics of shooting in the midst of a major city. So the studio reverted back to an economic model and "London" was recreated very unconvincingly on the Universal back lot. One sequence that was played for laughs has a more subtle aspect of humor to it when viewed today: Hudson reluctantly sharing a bed with Judd. (Hudson shared similar scene when he bedded down with Tony Randall in Send Me No Flowers, leading one to believe that he was probably in on the joke in the days when he was still very much in the closet.) Like most of these types of comedies, the finale features the entire cast coming together in a big chaotic scene. This time, it's Lollobrigida's scheme to scandalize London by riding through town as Lady Godvia. It's a mark of the movie's prudishness, however, that she is clad in neck-to-toe flesh colored body suit. Some scandal. The film's uninspired direction by Melvin Frank doesn't completely negate the fun of watching two genuine screen legends at the peak of their careers.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray features a pin-sharp transfer that only makes it more obvious how much of the film relies on shoddy rear-screen projection. The disc features an informative commentary track by film historian Eddy Von Mueller and it's admirable that Kino Lorber continues to provide these tracks on movies that are routine at best. Even films that are artistic failures often have many interesting tales relevant to their production and Strange Bedfellows is no exception. There is also the original trailer and gallery of other trailers from KL featuring the two legendary stars.
"A Tattered Web" is yet another 1970s American made-for-TV movie that has found new life on Amazon Prime's streaming service. The 70s were a golden age of TV movies, then a relatively innovative concept. Popular actors and talented writers and directors would bring to the small screen countless productions, many of which have long been forgotten. However, that doesn't diminish their worth. "A Tattered Web" is an engrossing crime thriller that I either forgot existed or never knew it did. In any event, it's a compelling and unconventional crime flick. Lloyd Bridges plays Sgt. Ed Stagg, a 25 year veteran of the L.A. Police Department. Stagg has a reputation as a top-notch detective and he's by-the-book in every respect. At home, however, his life is a lot messier. Stagg's wife abandoned him and their young daughter Tina (Sallie Shockley) who he has raised to adulthood on his own. She's now married to Steve Butler (Frank Converse) a hunky blue collar worker in the oil industry. Trouble is they are living in Stagg's house and the situation is tense. Butler resents Stagg's authoritarian rules and things get worse when Stagg discovers that Steve has been having an affair with goodtime girl Louise Campbell (Anne Helm). Stagg has played the role of overprotective father to Tina since her mother left them. In doing so, he has also gone overboard, treating her as a child who can't cope with bad news or pressures. When Steve refuses to agree to Stagg's demands that he end the affair, Stagg takes it on himself to pay Louise a visit at her apartment.Things go badly. Louise isn't bothered by the fact she is endangering another woman's marriage and she seems quite content to continue to play the role of mistress to Steve. The argument becomes physical and Stagg pushes her, with Louise striking her head on a piece of furniture and dying from her wound. Stunned and frightened, Stagg does his best to remove any traces of his being in the apartment.
The next day, the LAPD receives news that a cleaning woman has found Louise's body. Ironically, Stagg and his partner, Sgt. Joe Marcus (Murray Hamilton) are assigned to the case. Stagg does his best to appear unaware of the circumstances of Louise's death but neighbors report she had been seeing a man regularly in her apartment. An artist's sketch makes the front pages and Marcus is all-too-aware the sketch is identical to Steve. Adding to Stagg's worries is the realization that he neglected to dispose of a drinking glass at Louise's apartment that has his fingers prints on it. Stagg finds himself trying to put out quite a few fires, all the while keeping Tina in the dark about the events. With the police closing in on Steve as a suspect, Stagg finds the opportunity to get him off the hook. A local alcoholic hobo (Broderick Crawford) has already confessed to murdering someone and has been sentenced to the death penalty. Stagg begins trying to convince him to confess to Louise's murder, as well. Stagg justifies the deception by rationalizing that if the drunk is going to die for one murder, what difference does it make if he also admits to another homicide?
Lloyd Bridges is exceptionally good as the man trying to juggle many different levels of this crisis simultaneously. He's not a villain in the traditional sense, but he is covering up his own responsibility for manslaughter and trying to frame another man for the death. The supporting cast is first-rate, with Frank Converse a standout as the much-put-upon son-in-law who becomes the prime suspect in the murder. Murray Hamilton is also very good as Stagg's partner who becomes increasingly suspicious that Stagg is covering up a crime. Broderick Crawford is truly impressive and he makes the most of his couple of brief scenes as the alcoholic whose memory is so bad that Stagg might convince him he committed a murder he is innocent of. As with most TV movies of the era, the tight 74-minute running time ensures the story moves quickly and there isn't any extraneous dialogue. "A Tattered Web" is an above average crime thriller.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Time Life:
FROM ELVIS PRESLEY TO THE BEATLES AND THE ROLLING STONES, THE
TEMPTATIONS AND THE SUPREMES, THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW BROADCAST THE MUSIC
REVOLUTION INTO LIVING ROOMS
ACROSS AMERICA…
THIS OCTOBER, TIME LIFE PRESENTS A SPECTACULAR DVD COLLECTOR’S
SET FEATURING TWO DECADES OF HISTORIC MUSIC PERFORMANCES FROM THE
LONGEST-RUNNING AND MOST ICONIC PRIME-TIME VARIETY SHOW IN TELEVISION
HISTORY
ED SULLIVAN’S ROCK & ROLL CLASSICS
Street Date: October 11, 2022
SRP: $119.96
This 10-Disc Collector’s Set Features
128 Live, Uncut Performances from
Legendary Artists Including The Band, The Beach Boys, Bee
Gees, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Marvin Gaye, Herman’s Hermits, Buddy
Holly, The Jackson 5, Janis Joplin, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and
ManyMore!
`
This Incredible Collection Also Includes Never-Before-Released
Full Interviews from The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll Documentary Series,
a 36-page Collector’s Book and The All-Star Comedy Special,
a Bonus DVD Which Features Performances from Top Comedians on The
Ed Sullivan Show including George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis
Diller, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Flip Wilson and More!
Fairfax, VA (September 7, 2022) –
From the late ‘50s through the early ’70s -- families across America
gathered around their television every Sunday night to watch The Ed
Sullivan Show. And while the country and its music underwent an
enormous evolution over the course of those years, the show not only kept
up with the times, but it informed them -- evidenced by the wide variety of
acts fortunate enough to perform live on the stage of Studio 50. From
slick-haired snarlers to soulful singing groups to rebellious rockers from
across the Atlantic, Ed Sullivan’s musical guests were a who’s who of the
era’s popular culture. And today, they’re regarded as some of the greatest
artists of all time. The long and winding road of music history is full of
forks, but from the 1950s through the early ’70s, one stop was essential: The
Ed Sullivan Show.
This October, the acclaimed TV DVD archivists at Time Life
invite music lovers and classic TV aficionados to experience the excitement
of these once-in-a-lifetime performances in one spectacular DVD collection:
ED SULLIVAN’S ROCK & ROLL CLASSICS. From rock ‘n’ roll legends
to shimmering soul superstars, The British Invasion to Folk Rock,
psychedelic pop, and so much more, Ed Sullivan showcased them all on his
Sunday Night variety show, week after unforgettable week. This set
brings the very best of these performances together in one memorable
10-disc set, featuring 128 live, uncut performances from the greatest
performers and musical icons of the 20th century including The Beatles, The
Rolling Stones, Elvis, The Supremes and so many more. This special DVD
collection will be available to add to every home entertainment library for
$119.96.
Sullivan filled his weekly showcase with something for
everyone, and he was so successful at it that he became America's most
respected and powerful cultural arbiter. Probably best remembered for
introducing America to Elvis Presley across three appearances in the mid-1950s,
and the Beatles’ earth-shattering appearances less than a decade later,
Sullivan had an uncanny ability to spot top-notch talent and feature them
on his show. The performances on this set include chart-toppers and
all-time classics such as (in alphabetical order):
Bee Gees:
“Words”
Buddy Holly:
“Peggy Sue,” “That’ll Be the Day”
Creedence
Clearwater Revival: “Proud Mary,” “Down on the Corner”
Dusty
Springfield: “Son of a Preacher Man”
Elvis
Presley: “Hound Dog,” “Love Me Tender,” “Too Much,” “Ready Teddy,”
“Don’t Be Cruel”
Gladys
Knight & the Pips: “If I Were Your Woman”
Herman’s
Hermits: “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely
Daughter”
Janis
Joplin: “Maybe,” “Raise Your Hand”
Jerry Lee
Lewis: “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On,” “What I’d Say”
Neil
Diamond: “Sweet Caroline (Good Times Never Seemed So Good)”
Sly &
the Family Stone: “Dance to the Music”
Smokey
Robinson & The Miracles: “I Second That Emotion,” “Doggone Right”
Stevie
Wonder: “Fingertips – Pt. 2,” “For Once in My Life,” “You Met Your
Match”
The Animals:
“Don’t Bring Me Down,” “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” “The House of
the Rising Sun”
The Band:
“Up on Cripple Creek”
The Beach
Boys: “I Get Around,” “Good Vibrations”
The Beatles:
“Help!,” “She Loves You,” “Twist and Shout,” “I Want to Hold Your
Hand”
The Byrds:
“Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season),” “Mr. Tambourine
Man”
The Ike
& Tina Turner Review: “Proud Mary,” “Bold Soul Sister”
The Jackson
5: “I Want You Back,” “The Love You Save”
The Mamas
& The Papas: “Monday, Monday,” “California Dreamin’,” “Dedicated
to the One I Love”
The Rolling
Stones: “Paint it, Black,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “(I Can’t Get No)
Satisfaction,” “Time is on My Side”
The
Supremes: “My World is Empty Without You,” “The Happening,” “Someday
We’ll be Together,” “Love is Like an Itching in My Heart,” “You Can’t
Hurry Love”
The Young
Rascals: “Groovin’,” “Good Lovin’”
Tom Jones: “It’s
Not Unusual,” “Delilah”
And many
more!
Aside from these legendary performances, ED SULLIVAN’S ROCK
& ROLL CLASSICS also features never-before-released full interviews
from The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll documentary series,
including David Crosby, Felix Cavaliere, Gladys Knight, James Brown, Jerry
Lee Lewis, Michelle Phillips, Peter Noone, Roger McGuinn and more, a
collectible, full-color 36-page booklet, packed with archival photos and
fascinating facts, along with The All-Star Comedy Special, a free bonus
DVD which includes performances by the top comedians on The Ed
Sullivan Show including Alan King, Flip Wilson, George Carlin,
Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Rich Little, Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield
and many more.
ED SULLIVAN’S ROCK & ROLL CLASSICS is like taking a ride
in an unforgettable time machine, zapping you back to the past for front
row seats to live performances from a mind-blowing collection of musical
legends in a singular set as only Time Life can assemble!
About Time Life
Time Life is one of the world's pre-eminent creators and
direct marketers of unique music and video/DVD products, specializing in
distinctive multi-media collections that evoke memories of yesterday,
capture the spirit of today, and can be enjoyed for a lifetime. TIME LIFE
and the TIME LIFE logo are registered trademarks of Time Warner Inc. and
affiliated companies used under license by Direct Holdings Americas Inc.,
which is not affiliated with Time Warner Inc. or Time Inc.
About SOFA Entertainment
In 1990, Andrew Solt founded SOFA Entertainment Inc. and
acquired The Ed Sullivan Show from the Sullivan family. In 2020 Josh Solt
left Google to lead SOFA as CEO of the company. The Ed Sullivan Show is the
most revered variety show in American television history. SOFA
Entertainment is the copyright holder of the original Ed Sullivan programs
and over 150 hours of newly created programming.
The first African-American to direct a major film for a majorHollywood
studio was Gordon Parks, whose feature film debut "The Learning Tree"
was released in 1969. Parks may have shattered the glass ceiling but
there wasn't a tidal wave of opportunities that immediately opened for
other minority filmmakers, in part because there were so few with any
formal training in the art. One beneficiary of Parks' achievement was
Ossie Davis, who was internationally respected as a well-rounded artist.
He was a triple threat: actor, director and writer but his directing
skills had been relegated to the stage. In 1970 Davis co-wrote the
screenplay for and directed "Cotton Comes to Harlem", a major production
for United Artists. The film was based on a novel by African-American
writer Chester Himes and proved to be pivotal in ushering in what became
known as the Blaxploitation genre. In reality, it's debatable whether
"Cotton" really is a Blaxploitation film. While most of the major roles
are played by black actors, the term "Blaxploitation" has largely come
to symbolize the kinds of goofy, low-budget films that are fondly
remembered as guilty pleasures. However, "Cotton"- like Gordon Parks's
"Shaft" films that would follow- boasts first class production values
and top talent both in front of and behind the cameras. Regardless, the
movie had sufficient impact at the boxoffice to inspire a seemingly
endless barrage of Black-oriented American films that were all the rage
from the early to mid-1970s. The Blaxploitation fever burned briefly but
shone brightly and opened many doors for minority actors.
The film was shot when New York City was in the midst of a
precipitous decline in terms of quality of life. Crime was soaring, the
infrastructure was aging and the city itself would be on the verge of
bankruptcy a few years later. Harlem was among the hardest hit areas in
terms of the economy. The once dazzling jewel of a neighborhood had
boasted popular nightclubs, theaters and restaurants that attracted
affluent white patrons. By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, that had
changed radically. Street crimes, organized gangs and the drug culture
spread rapidly, making Harlem a very dangerous place to be. It was
foreboding enough if you were black but it was considered a "Forbidden
Zone" for most white people, who spent their money elsewhere, thus
exacerbating the decline of the neighborhoods. "Cotton Comes to Harlem"
serves as an interesting time capsule of what life was like in the area,
having been shot during this period of decline. Director Davis was
considered royalty in Harlem. Despite his success in show business, he
and his equally acclaimed wife, actress Ruby Dee, never "went
Hollywood". They stayed in the community and worked hard to improve the
environment. Thus, Davis was perfectly suited to capture the action on
the streets in a manner that played authentically on screen. Similarly,
he had a real feel for the local population. As with any major urban
area, Harlem undoubtedly had its share of amusing eccentrics and Davis
populates the movie with plenty of such characters.
The film opens with a major rally held by Rev. Deke O'Malley (Calvin
Lockhart), a local guy who made good and who is idolized by the
population of Harlem. O'Malley is a smooth-talking, charismatic con man
in the mode of the notorious Reverend Ike who uses religion as a facade
to rip off gullible followers. This time, O'Malley has launched a "Back
to Africa" campaign for which he is soliciting funds. It's based on the
absurd premise that he will be able to finance disgruntled Harlem
residents back to the land of their ancestry. The hard-working,
semi-impoverished locals end up donating $87,000 in cash but the rally
is interrupted by a daring daytime robbery. An armored car filled with
masked men armed with heavy weaponry descend upon the goings-on, loot
the cash box and take off. They are pursued by two street-wise local
cops, "Grave Digger" Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and his partner "Coffin"
Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques). Davis provides an exciting and
colorful car chase through the streets of Harlem, as the cops fail to
snag the robbers. They also discover that O'Malley has gone missing,
leading them to believe that he orchestrated the heist himself so he
could keep the proceeds raised at the rally. The plot becomes rather
convoluted, as Jones and Johnson learn that a bale of cotton has arrived
in Harlem and its somehow connected to the crime. They assume that the
stolen money has been stashed in said cotton bale, which quickly changes
hands among the most unsavory characters in the community. Getting in
on the action is a white mob boss and his goons who are also trying to
recover the cotton bale. The cotton itself is resented in Harlem because
of its historical links to slavery and by the end of the film, the bale
ends up in a stage show at the famed Apollo Theater where it is used as
a prop in a bizarre production that involves historical observations
about the black experience intermingled with a striptease act! Through
it all, Jones and Johnson doggedly chase any number of people through
the streets, engage in shoot-outs and car chases and come in and out of
contact with Rev. O'Malley, who professes his innocence about being
involved in the robbery. The Rev isn't so innocent when it comes to
other unscrupulous activities such as chronically cheating on his
long-suffering girlfriend Iris (Judy Pace) and manipulating other women
in a variety of ways.
The most delightful aspect of the film is the showcasing of some very
diverse talents of the era. Godfrey Cambridge (who made it big as a
stand-up comic) and Raymond St. Jacques enjoy considerable on-screen
chemistry even if the script deprives them of the kind of witty dialogue
that would have enhanced their scenes together. They make wisecracks
all the time and harass some less-than-savory characters but the
screenplay never truly capitalizes on Cambridge's comedic potential. The
film's most impressive performance comes from Calvin Lockhart, who
perfectly captures the traits of phony, larger-than-life "preachers".
He's all flashy good looks, gaudy outfits and narcissistic
behavior. Lockhart seems
to be having a ball playing this character and the screen ignites every
time he appears. There are some nice turns by other good character
actors including pre-"Sanford and Son" Redd Foxx, who figures in the
film's amusing "sting-in-the-tail" ending, John Anderson as the
exasperated white captain of a Harlem police station that is constantly
on the verge of being besieged by local activists, Lou Jacobi as a junk
dealer, Cleavon Little as a local eccentric, J.D. Canon as a mob hit man
and Dick Sabol as a goofy white cop who suffers humiliation from
virtually everyone (which is sort of a payback for the decades in which
black characters were routinely used as comic foils). The film has a
surprisingly contemporary feel about it, save for a few garish fashions
from the 1970s. It's also rather nostalgic to hear genuine soul music
peppered through the soundtrack in this pre-rap era. Happily, life has
not imitated art in the years since the film was released. Harlem has
been undergoing the kind of Renaissance that would have seemed
unimaginable in 1970. The old glory has come back strong and the center
of the neighorhood, 125th Street, is vibrant and thriving once again.
These societal perspectives make watching "Cotton Comes to Harlem"
enjoyable on an entirely different level than simply an amusing crime
comedy.
(The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)
Australia-based ViaVision's Imprint video line is taking pre-orders for a limited edition (1500) Blu-ray release of "The Avengers: The Emma Peel Collection".The set will be released on 30 November.
This set is Region-Free, which is good news for fans worldwide.
Here is the relevant information:
Number of Blu-ray
Discs
16
Rating
PG
Release Date
30
November 2022
Runtime (in
minutes)
2255
Product Code
IMP3065
Mrs.
Peel… We’re needed!
Extraordinary
crimes against the people and the state have to be avenged by agents
extraordinary. Two such people are John Steed, top professional, and his
partner, Emma Peel, talented amateur. Otherwise known as The Avengers.
With lethal bowler hat and umbrella, killer fashion and kung fu, the secret
agents investigate bizarre and colourful adventures with nonchalant efficiency,
sophistication and charm.
Whilst
every era of the long-running, enduringly popular and trend-setting British
series has its own unique style, charm and wit, it is the Emma Peel years that
have become the programme’s most iconic and recognisable, with Diana Rigg’s
portrayal of Mrs. Emma Peel ushering in a new era of excitement, fashion and
iconology, coupled with Patrick Macnee’s continuing depiction of the urbane and
sublime John Steed.
Now,
this 16-disc Blu Ray set brings together every episode from the Emma Peel era
in stunning high-definition encompassing the complete Series 4 and 5, plus a
copious collection of vintage and new Special Features celebrating this peak
era of The Avengers.
Special
Features and Technical Specs:
1080p
high-definition presentation from the original 35mm elements
Collectable
double-sided Hardbox packaging LIMITED to 1500 copies
120-page booklet
featuring essay by Dick Fiddy of the British Film Institute and Story
Information for every episode taken from the original studio files
Original ‘as
broadcast’ mono audio tracks (LPCM)
Original ‘as
broadcast’ “The Avengers in Color” opening slate on Series 5 episodes
Audio Commentary
on “The Town of No Return” by producer / writer Brian Clemens and director
Roy Ward Baker
Audio Commentary
on “The Master Minds” by writer Robert Banks Stewart
Audio Commentary
on “Dial A Deadly Number” by writer Roger Marshall
Audio Commentary
on “The Hour That Never Was” by director Gerry O’Hara
Audio Commentary
on “The House That Jack Built” by director Don Leaver
Audio Commentary
on “The Winged Avenger” by writer Richard Harris
Audio Commentary
on “Epic” by guest actor Peter Wyngarde
NEW Audio
Commentary on “The Joker” by filmmakers Sam Clemens and George Clemens
(sons of writer/producer Brian Clemens) (2022)
Audio Commentary
on “Return of The Cybernauts” by Diana Rigg’s stunt-double Cyd Child
Audio Commentary
on “Murdersville” by producer / writer Brian Clemens
Filmed
introductions to eight Series 5 episodes by producer / writer Brian
Clemens
Filmed
introduction to “The ?50,000 Breakfast” by guest actress Anneke Wills
Brief audio
recollection from guest actor Francis Matthews on filming “The Thirteenth
Hole”
“THE AVENGERS
AT 50” – Footage captured from the 50th anniversary celebration
of the series, held at Chichester University in 2011. Includes: video
message from Patrick Macnee, interviews with producer / writer Brian
Clemens, director Don Leaver (never before released), director Gerry
O’Hara (never before released), stunt co-ordinator Raymond Austin, guest
actress Carol Cleveland, guest actress Anneke Wills, writer Roger
Marshall, and Patrick Macnee’s biographer Marie Cameron
“Dame Diana Rigg
at the BFI” – 2015 on-stage interview and Q&A held at the British Film
Institute in London to celebrate 50 years of Emma Peel
“The Series Of
No Return” – audio interview with actress Elizabeth Shepherd, who was
originally cast as Emma Peel
Granada Plus
Points featuring actor Patrick Macnee, composer Laurie Johnson, writer
Roger Marshall and stunt-double Cyd Child
Bonus Series 6
episode “The Forget-Me-Knot” – Emma Peel’s final story and the
introduction of Tara King
“K Is For Kill”
– excerpt from The New Avengers episode featuring appearances by
Emma Peel
ARCHIVAL
MATERIAL
Armchair Theatre episode “The
Hothouse” starring Diana Rigg (the performance that led to Rigg’s casting
as Emma Peel in The Avengers
Chessboard
Opening Title sequence used on US broadcasts for Series 4
German and
French title sequences
Series 4 UK
Commercial Break Bumper slates
Alternative
titles / credits / end tag of select Series 4 episodes
Series 4
Commercial Break Bumpers
Production trims
from select Series 5 episodes
“The Strange
Case Of The Missing Corpse” – Series 5 teaser film
German
television interview with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg by Joachim
Fuchsberger
Colourisation
test footage for “Death At Bargain Prices” and “A Touch Of Brimstone”
Reconstructed
John Stamp Series 4 trailer
“They’re Back”
Trailers, Series 5 Trailer and Series 5 German Cinema Trailer
Extensive Photo
Galleries from the studio archives
1973 Interview
with Diana Rigg discussing her US sitcom Diana, and leaving The
Avengers
Original Aspect
Ratio 1.33:1, b&w / colour
Audio English
LPCM 2.0 Mono
English
subtitles for the Hard of Hearing (Series 4 & 5 episodes only)
BONUS
DISC 1: ADDITIONAL SPECIAL FEATURES
More interviews
from “THE AVENGERS AT 50” including composer Laurie Johnson, writer
and guest actor Jeremy Burnham, stunt-double Cyd Child, and a
screenwriters’ panel discussion featuring Brian Clemens, Richard Harris,
Richard Bates and Terrance Dicks
“Brian Clemens
In Conversation” – on-stage interview at the British Film Institute in
London discussing his early writing career
Extensive Photo
Gallery from The Avengers Fashion Show
Diana Rigg Photo
Gallery
BONUS
DISC 2: THE ORIGINAL EPISODES FILE
Featuring the 4
original episodes from the Cathy Gale era of the series which were remade
in Series 5: “Death Of A Great Dane”, “Don’t Look Behind You”, “Dressed To
Kill” and “The Charmers” (Standard Definition)
Audio Commentary
by writer Roger Marshall on “Death Of A Great Dane”
Audio Commentary
by actress Honor Blackman and UK presenter Paul O’Grady on “Don’t Look
Behind You”
Filmed
introduction by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman to “Don’t Look Behind
You”
“Tunnel Of Fear”
– a full-length, previously lost episode from Series 1, recovered in 2016
“THE AVENGERS
AT 50” – interview with Honor Blackman by Paul O’Grady
"Kill a Dragon", a 1967 action-adventure production from United Artists, is the perfect example of kind of film I've praised many times before. Namely, it's a low-budget flick designed for a fast playoff (perhaps as the second feature on double bills) and a modest profit. Often, as in this case, they were marketed with terrific movie posters that often promised more sex and violence than the films delivered. Studios thrived on such mid-range fare which inevitably employed actors in leading roles who would generally be playing supporting parts in more prestigious productions. They still enjoyed enough respect and name recognition to market the films successfully internationally. "Kill a Dragon" is based in an around Hong Kong and stars Jack Palance as Rick Masters (now there's a cinematic name for a hero), who is an American jack-of-all-trades who enjoys a laid-back lifestyle with his mistress, nightclub "hostess", Alizia Gur (who memorably squared off against Martine Beswick in the gypsy catfight in "From Russia with Love".) In the umpteenth Hollywood attempt to crib from the scripts of "Seven Samurai"/"The Magnificent Seven", Masters, who specializes in maritime salvage operations, is approached by peasants from an impoverished village. They inform him that recently a ship was grounded on their island and the crew deserted it because of its cargo: a gigantic load of highly volatile nitroglycerine. The peasants offer Masters a 50/50 split of the profits if he can smuggle the goods into Hong Kong and sell it on the black market. There is a catch, however. The nitro shipment is the property of Nico Patrai (Fernando Lamas), a local crime kingpin who warns the peasants to turn over the goods or have their village destroyed. Masters accepts the assignment and contacts his frequent collaborators: Vigo (Aldo Ray), who is now relegated to hosting bus excursions for tourists, Jimmy (Hans Lee), a local aspiring boxer and martial arts expert and his British manager, Ian (Don Knight). They are outnumbered and outgunned so they must use their instincts to outwit Patrai.
"Kill a Dragon" is the kind of goofy action flick that never takes itself very seriously. It opens with what is possibly the worst title song in the history of film and presents Latin heartthrob Fernando Lamas as a Hong Kong crime lord without a word of explanation as to how he managed to arrange this. The film is laden with Bond-style quips and the fight scenes are pretty limp under the direction of Michael Moore. (Obviously, not that Michael Moore.) But there is a great deal of fun to be found in the film. The Hong Kong locations adds an exotic element and cinematographer Emmanuel L. Rojas makes the most of it, capturing the hustle and bustle of the city center and the serenity of the surrounding areas very effectively. Palance gives a low-key performance (for him, at least) and minimizes his tendencies to ham it up. Lamas is a villain in the Bondian style and its a pleasure to see him and Palance in the requisite scenes in which they banter with witticisms and civility even though they have marked each other for death. An unusual and pleasurable aspect of the movie is that all of the Asian characters are played by Asian actors, a rarity in 1967 and they are presented in a dignified manner.
I don't want to overstate the merits of "Kill a Dragon", as it's the epitome of a "B" movie and nothing more. However, if one approaches it with those expectations, you may well find it as enjoyable as I did.
Kino Lorber has released the film on Blu-ray, a significant upgrade to MGM's previous burn-to-order DVD. Quality is very good and the original trailer is included along with a gallery of other action films from KL.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD . . . (actually from the
late 50s to the late 80s) there was a famous screenwriter who was something of
a living legend. His name was Stirling Silliphant. He’s all but forgotten now
but he was once one of Tinseltown’s most prolific, highest paid writers, having
turned out 47 produced screenplays (including the Oscar winning “In the Heat of
the Night” (1967), literally hundreds of hours of primetime TV episodes
(including “Route 66” and “Naked City”), and several novels (“Steel Tiger”). He
drove around L. A. in a Rolls Royce, sailed the world in a yacht, was friends
with and a student of Bruce Lee, had an office on the Warners lot and was
married four times—his last to Du Thi Thanh Nga, a Vietnamese actress better
known as Tiana Alexandra, who was also a Bruce Lee student and 38 years
Silliphant’s junior.
Silliphant took an active interest in advancing his
wife’s acting career. Between 1974, when they were married, and 1987, he wrote
parts for her in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite” (1975), several TV dramas
(“Pearl” (1978), “Fly Away Home” (1981),” and he created a starring role for
her in “Catch the Heat” (1987), an action movie designed to show off her acting
and martial arts skills. (The film has also been marketed as "Feel the Heat"). Silliphant produced the picture and action director
Joel Silberg (“Breakin” (1984), and “Rappin” (1985), directed. Moshe Diamant’s
Trans World Entertainment which had produced a host of action movies with stars
like Sho Kishogi, and Jean Claude VanDamme, released the film.
“Catch the Heat” features Tiana as San Francisco cop
Checkers Goldberg, who goes to Buenos Aires undercover, posing as Chinese
singer/dancer named Cinderella Pu to investigate Jason Hannibal (Rod Steiger).
He’s a talent agent who is actually a drug kingpin from Thailand who is somehow
smuggling drugs into the U.S. Checkers’ partner, Detective Waldo Tarr (David
Dukes) is already in Buenos Aires, ready to slap the cuffs on Hannibal as soon
as Checkers can come up with some drug-smuggling evidence. Waldo also just
happens to be in love with Checkers.
There is plenty of action in “Catch the Heat,” as
Checkers kicks, punches, and thigh-crushes a host of 80s action movie villains
including Professor Toru Tanaka (Subzero in “The Running Man” (1987), Brian
Thompson (Night Slasher in “Cobra” (1986), John Hancock (“Dead Aim” (1987), and
others. Tiana’s karate moves are authentic and she doesn’t stop moving
throughout the entire film, even in scenes that don’t require any action, such
as when she finds out Hannibal’s fiendish method for smuggling heroin into the
U.S., she becomes so infuriated, she goes to Waldo’s hotel room and instead of
knocking or turning the door knob, she kicks the door off the hinges, raging
about what she’d like to do to him. “He’s not a talent agent,” she shouts.
“He’s a monster.” Probably a line she may have uttered in real life more than
once.
“Catch the Heat” may not be the greatest action movie to
come out of the 80s, but it’s certainly not the worst either, and probably
should be better known than it is, especially among martial arts movie fans.
Silliphant’s script is more of a send-up of the genre, even to the point of
having Checkers wear a “Suzie Wong” dress and wig and talk in a sing-song
Chinese cutie accent when she’s on screen as Cinderella Pu. The satiric
elements seemed to have been lost on Silberg, who probably saw the film as just
another chop socky day at the office.
Unfortunately, it would be Tiana’s one and only starring
role in a feature film. In Nat Segaloff’s biography, “Silliphant: The Fingers
of God,” Tiana explains that despite Bruce Lee’s success, studios were still
reluctant to cast Asians, especially females, in leading roles. Silliphant said
it was racism that prompted one Warners executive to tell Lee, when he was
being considered for the Kung Fu TV series, that Americans would be offended by
having a Chinese man in the living rooms every week. Lee had to leave the
country to find success. According to Tiana, she was an even tougher sell. Producers
and studio executives disliked having the wife of a writer/producer pushed on
them. When Silliphant proposed making Dirty Harry’s female partner in “The
Enforcer” (1976) an Asian, Tiana said, “They were not amused.”
In 1988, a year after “Catch the Heat” flopped,
Silliphant, at the age of 70, moved lock, stock and barrel out of the “eel pit”
that he called Hollywood and expatriated to Thailand, where he said he felt he
had lived in a previous life. He and Tiana remained married for 22 years, but the
last several years of their relationship found them apart more than together.
Silliphant was busily involved in the Bangkok film industry, and managed to pen
at least one decent script, an adaptation of Truman Capote’s “The Grass Harp” –
miles away from the likes of “The Swarm” or even “Catch the Heat.” He died of
prostate cancer in 1996.
Tiana went back to her birthplace despite the U.S. Trade
Embargo that was in place at that time to film “From Hollywood to Hanoi ”, a documentary,
which won critical accolades, and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the
1993 Sundance Film Festival. She has since partnered with writer Christopher
Hampton on several significant projects including serving as associate producer
for “A Dangerous Method (2011).”
Her mini-bio on the Internet
Movie Database says that she is working on a documentary on General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander of the
North Vietnamese Army during both the French and the American wars, called “The
General and Me,” to be released in 2025. From
late 2020 to 2021 she traveled the
United States collecting stories and characters for a new series entitled “Detour
66.” The project follows in the tracks of her late husband’s TV series, “Route
66” (1960), and “chronicles the dramas and cultural zeitgeist unfolding across
the Divided States of America.”
Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release, presented in collaboration with Scorpion, presents “Catch the Heat” in its 1.85:1
theatrical aspect ratio. The transfer to disc is a major league improvement
over the previous MGM video of 2003, which was full-screen. The only extras are
the theatrical trailer, the VHS Preview Trailer, and trailers for half a dozen
other Kino Lorber action flicks from the 80s. It’s really too bad there wasn’t
at least an audio commentary from a martial arts film authority included as a
bonus feature to provide some background and context for “Catch the Heat.” Now
that it’s out on Blu-ray, maybe it’ll finally get some recognition as an
undiscovered ‘80s cult classic.
There are two fleeting
moments in Love Story, based on author Eric Siegel’s bestselling novel
that became a publishing phenomenon,where the major social and
political issue of the day – the war in Vietnam – intrudes into a film
notorious for deflecting or displacing larger concerns of the day into
seemingly private questions of love and family. Of course, it was a common
assertion in the Sixties and Seventies that the “personal is the
political,” and Love Story could well be said to be politically
“relevant” (to use another catchphrase of the times) around questions of class
and generation as they play out in two families. But it’s certainly the case
that one would be hard-pressed in the many scenes set outdoors on college
campuses (Harvard and Radcliffe) to see any signs of antiwar protest or
leafletting or whatever: instead, outside provides a site for a couple to
frolic in the snow or toss a football back and forth in an empty stadium that
thereby becomes their own private playground.
All the more surprising,
then, that the first allusion, to militarism, comes in a very privatized inner
sanctum, a members’-only club where Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) comes to
spar verbally with his millionaire snob father (Ray Milland) over young Oliver’s
desire to marry a girl from across the tracks, Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw).
As they begin their conversation, Barrett Senior asks his son about what a
classmate will be doing after graduation and learns the kid is joining Army
Officer’s Training. Good, says the imperious father, to which his son replies
“Bad.” One shouldn’t perhaps make too much of this but it is a moment that
raises the question of the good or bad of fighting for one’s country,
especially when it can be so deadly. Later, in another indoors scene, young
Barrett, now a budding lawyer, tells a pal at their gym, that he's turned down
a request by his law firm to go defend a journalist beaten up by cops “in
Chicago” (he doesn’t tell his friend that he needs to stay home with Jenny,
who’s got a fatal illness). Again, the moment passes quickly but it was likely
impossible for most viewers in 1970 not to understand the reference as code for
police brutality against protestors and their journalistic advocates.
The critics generally hated Love
Story for what they imagined as its refusal to address the times. Fans
loved it, often, for that very refusal: it allowed them to cry about something
other than the real death and dying (both overseas and in the streets of the
cities back home). But even though the American Film Institute lists it as number
9 amongst all romances, we should note that this film is ultimately, like what
one could read in the papers or see in many other movies, about life abruptly
cut short.. Maybe it’s not brutal death, à la other films of the moment like,
say, The Wild Bunch or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but just
as these films are saying something about the violence of the times even as
they look to other times for their specific subject matter, Love Story is
marked by a fatalism that actually could be saying something resonant about
fragility of live in that historical moment. Love Story perhaps is due
for critical reconsideration, and Paramount’s careful remastering of the film
in striking Blu-ray might well help in that project.
The careful digitalization
allows the viewer to focus on visual accomplishment as much as the saccharine
story. For example, there are some impressive long-takes often with a complex
choreography between character and camera. Most noteworthy is the Blu-ray’s
careful capture of the color design for the film: a washed out look for scenes
of Cambridge and New York in winter matched to oppressive dark but
oh-so-masculine colors (browns and blacks) in the interior scenes of Oliver’s
confrontations with his father, both leavened by touches of red, from a single
lamp in the brown wood of Barrett Senior’s imperial home office to the scarlet
dresses or miniskirts that Jenny sports and that bring vitality into a story of
staid convention and oppressive rule-boundedness across class and generational
lines.
The Blu-ray combines several
new special features with ones that were available earlier in DVD editions. New
are a short discussion of the film by critic Leonard Maltin and a very brief
introduction by Ben Mankiewicz to an airing of the film on TCM. Both tend to
repeat commonplaces about the film -- sometimes the same ones, such as that the
film resonated with audiences who needed sweet emotion in a complicated
historical moment – and both go over well-known production facts, such as that
Ali MacGraw was in large part cast because she was Paramount boss Robert
Evans’s girlfriend at the time.
Carried over from the DVD are
a 14-minute documentary “Love Story: A Classic Remembered,” which goes
over much of the same ground as Maltin and Mankiewicz, and a commentary track
by director Arthur Hiller. Hiller’s narration is curious, caught between light
anecdotes (for example, Ray Milland agreeing to not wear his beloved toupee for
this film) and some sparse but useful technical discussion (for example, how
some of those impressive meandering long takes were engineered) and, fairly
unbearably, fatuous thematic commentary about how Hiller wants to make films
that say something (in this case, something about the triumph of human spirit).
Nonetheless, whatever one
thinks of it, Love Story at the very beginning of the 1970s is a key
film in American cinema history, and it is so important to have this carefully
crafted Blu-ray to commemorate it.
John Sturges’ “Last Train from Gun Hill” was released in 1959 as one ofseveral
high-profile Westerns of its era, designed to lure audiences away from
their television sets and back to their neighborhood movie theatres.Against
TV’s advantage of free programming that you could enjoy from the
leisure of your easy chair, films like “Last Train from Gun Hill,”
“Warlock,” “The Horse Soldiers,” and “The Hanging Tree” countered with
A-list stars, widescreen CinemaScope and VistaVision, Technicolor, and
sweeping outdoor locations.The
studios wagered, correctly, that viewers would welcome a change from
the predictable characters, cheap backlot sets, and drab black-and-white
photography of “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train,” and “Cheyenne.”The
approach was successful, sporadically continuing through the next
decade with expensive epics like “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Custer
of the West” (1967), and “MacKenna’s Gold” (1968) before it collapsed
from dwindling returns, scaled-back studio budgets, and changing popular
tastes at the end of the 1960s.
As Sturges’ movie opens, two loutish cowboys chase down, rape, and murder a young Indian woman.Although the rape and murder occur offscreen, the lead-up is viscerally terrifying.In a bizarrely poor choice of words, Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times referred to the murderers as “scallywags.” At least in my lexicon, scallywags aremischievous kids who make prank phone calls, not perpetrators of a horrendous sexual assault.When the pair flee in panic after realizing what they’ve done, they inadvertently leave behind a horse and saddle.The
murdered woman’s husband is Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas), the marshal of
the nearby town of Pawley, who immediately identifies the letters “CB”
branded on the saddle.They’re
the initials of Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), a powerful rancher who
controls Gun Hill, a community further down the railroad line.One
of the murderers was Belden’s hired hand Lee (played by Brian Hutton,
later the director of “Where Eagles Dare” and “Kelly’s Heroes”), and the
other was Belden’s son Rick (Earl Holliman).When
Morgan arrives in Gun Hill with arrest warrants, Belden first tries to
convince him to go easy by reminding him that he and Craig were once
good friends. After that doesn’t work, he resorts to intimidation.The
cowardly local marshal refuses to help Morgan, unashamedly admitting
that he fears the boss man’s wrath more than he respects the rule of
law.(I’ll leave it to you to decide if you see a similarity to recent political controversies.)The
other townspeople are chilly if not hostile, and when Morgan finally
subdues Rick and handcuffs him in a hotel room, waiting for the arrival
of the train back to Pawley, Belden surrounds the building with hisarmy of hired guns.
The only person sympathetic to Morgan is Belden’s battered girlfriend Linda (Carolyn Jones).Even she believes the determined marshal faces overwhelming odds:
“You remind me of Jimmy, a fella I used to know,” she remarks. “Stubborn as a mule.”
“Next time you see Jimmy, say hello,” Morgan answers dryly.“We seem to have a lot in common.”
“More than you know.He’s dead.”
“Last
Train from Gun Hill” originated with a story treatment by writer Les
Crutchfield, expanded by James W. Poe with an uncredited assist from
Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas brought in to sharpen the dialogue.The exchanges between the characters, like the one quoted above, crackle with Trumbo’s signature style.Crutchfield
contributed scripts regularly to “Gunsmoke,” and “Last Train from Gun
Hill” unfolds like a traditional episode of the long-running series,
dressed up with a little more complexity, a rape-murder that would never
have passed network censorship, and a striking climactic scene that
also would have run afoul of the censors.Standing up, Morgan drives a wagon slowly down main street to meet the arriving train.Rick
stands beside him, handcuffed, with the muzzle of Morgan’s borrowed
shotgun pressed up under his chin to keep Belden and his gunmen at bay. When
Dell Comics adapted the movie as a comic book at the time of the film’s
release, it chose that scene as the cover photograph.As
far as I know, the graphic come-on of imminent shotgun mayhem didn’t
raise the ire of parents, educators, child psychologists, or media
pundits in that distant year of 1959.Back then, of course, pervasive gun violence wasn’t the social catastrophe that it is today.In 2022, the comic book would surely raise a firestorm of controversy on social media and cable news.
“Last
Train from Gun Hill” falls just short of a true classic, since the plot
mostly relies on ingredients that we’ve seen many times before in other
Westerns—the incorruptible lawman, the overbearing cattle baron, his
bullying but weak-willed son, the old friends now at cross-purposes, the
unfriendly town, the tense wait for a train—but Douglas, Quinn, and
supporting actors Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brian Hutton, and Brad
Dexter are at the top of their form, and Sturges’ no-nonsense direction
keeps the action moving at a tense pace.The
Blu-ray edition of the film from Paramount Pictures’ specialty label,
“Paramount Presents,” contains a sharp, remastered transfer, an
appreciative video feature with Leonard Maltin, and theatrical trailers.Even
though “Last Train from Gun Hill” ran frequently on local TV channels
in the 1970s and ‘80s, its visual quality there was seriously
compromised by the broadcast format.Worse, endless commercial breaks disrupted Sturges’ masterful mood of mounting tension.Revisiting
the production in its original, intended form, we may better appreciate
its merits as classic Hollywood professionalism at its finest.Highly recommended.
“Hello,
Bookstore” chronicles the heart-warming story of how the community of Lenox,
Massachusetts rallied
around their local bookshop to save it from bankruptcy during COVID-19. Viewers
are treated to an amazing storyteller, Matthew Tannenbaum, owner of The
Bookstore since 1976. It's not your typical documentary. There's no narrative
here. It is not linear. What we are treated to is a raconteur of the first
level musing about his life and raison d'être, The Bookstore on Housatonic
Street. The film is best described as being stream of consciousness musings
attached to a metronome of time.
Director
A.B.Zax, the sole cameraman of the film, started filming in the fall of 2019.
"It was an amazing journey, starting in fall 2019 and early winter, 2020.
Then COVID hit, and I came back from L.A., where we were living at the time. I
was upset at first, this isn’t The Bookstore I want to show, it wasn’t that
magical world anymore. Once I accepted that this is the time we had to do this,
what an interesting microcosm to explore, these shifts in our communities, this
humble little bookstore. We stayed and bought a small house in West
Stockbridge," Zax (who is married to a high school friend of Tannenbaum's
daughter, Shawnee) said.
Tannenbaum
has owned this shop since 1976. He's hosted many a book reading there and
raised a glass with his customers at the in-store/next door wine bar Get Lit.
Matt Tannenbaum behind his Get Lit wine bar.
(Photo: Heather Bellow.)
He's been in debt since he signed the papers and
borrowed money to buy the store 46 years ago. But he's been doing what he loves
ever since: “I’m just that guy who likes to do what I do, to sit upfront, do the
work, and handle books. The film captures me doing that,” he said in a
post-film interview.
In
April of 2020, while the shop would not let browsers in, books were sold either
curbside, asked for through the front door or via the internet. Customers would
read off their credit card numbers and books from inside were placed on a stool
right outside the front door.We
meet many regular customers during the course of the film as well as his two
daughters, the previously mentioned Shawnee and Sophie, who gave birth to a
child during the filming. Matt has a great rapport with his customers and a
never-ending font of stories. In his early days in Manhattan he worked at the
famous Gotham Book Mart. He eventually wrote a short (36 page) memoir: My Years
at The Gotham Book Mart with Frances Steloff, Proprietor.The idea for the documentary
came to Zax when he asked Tannenbaum if he planned to write more stories and
Tannenbaum said he didn't. Thus, it was decided to film the stories as they
were related by him to the camera. And occasional customer.
In August of 2020 he was selling
in one week less than what he would sell in a day. Bills mounted up. In
desperation he started a Go-Fund me page hoping to raise $60,000 to save the
store. He reached it in 23 hours. Eventually, it topped out at $120,000.The
Bookstore, a fixture in Lenox for well over four decades, got its start in
Stockbridge, “in the living room of a small rented house behind an alley that
housed a then little-known café that later came to be known as Alice’s
Restaurant.”
In a photograph taken in the mid-1990s, Matt Tannenbaum with Alice Brock of Alice’s Restaurant and Arlo Guthrie. Brock had just illustrated Arlo’s new book, Mooses Come Walking.
The move to
Lenox took place sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. And the baton pass from
the previous owner, David Silverstein, to Matt Tannenbaum took place on April
Fool’s Day, 1976. Due to the
community's generosity, The Bookstore still operates to this day. “Hello,
Bookstore” is available on DVD from Kino Lorber/Greenwich Video (Click here to order from Amazon). It can also be rented for streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple.For those interested, the film's website has
a video of Neil Gaiman's introduction to the movie that was shown while running
at Manhattan's Film Forum. https://www.hello-bookstore.com/
For further
reading you may be interested in reading these newspaper articles:
Film historians like to
connect Jack Arnold’s Man in the Shadow (1957) to Orson Welles’s Touch
of Evil from the same year, produced both at Universal-International by
Albert Zugsmith. Each revolves around a murder somewhere in the South or Southwest
that ensues when a rich and prejudiced gringo capitalist tries to prevent a
romance between his daughter and a Mexican man. Each involves an intrepid squared-jawed
he-man law enforcement figure investigating that murder and fightin the
obstructions of a racist megalomaniac played in both cases by Welles.
But the differences are instructive.
For instance, in Touch of Evil, the Welles figure is, like the hero, a
lawman, but in this case corrupt yet often getting the job done even as he
bends the law to do so. In Man in the Shadow, in contrast, Welles’s character
Renchler is an imperious cattleman (Virgil Renchler) whose ranch was the site
of a killing he oversaw. He’s unremittingly corrupt from beginning to end. Touch
of Evil then is about moral ambiguity – Welles’s Hank Quinlan is good cop
and bad cop rolled up into one. Man in the Shadow is more certain of its
morality: if, at the film’s beginning, Sherriff Ben Sadler (Jeff Chandler) has
a somewhat jaded attitude to his job (he clearly couldn’t care a whit about the
presumed killing of a Mexican bracero), he nonetheless pushes on in his inquiry
and stands finally for ethical uprightness against the unambiguous immorality
of Renchler. If Jeff Chandler once played Native Americans (Cochise in three
films), thus crossing or confusing racial and ethnic lines, here he is the
all-American, initially disdainful of the lowly Mexican workers but coming
ultimately to defend their rights against fascistic Anglo over-reachers.
Conversely, in Touch of Evil, the good cop, played by sculpted macho man
Charlton Heston, is himself Mexican, a casting decision that has never made
sense even as it adds to the weird fun of Welles’s film. And indeed Touch of
Evil is weird in so many ways – curious acting, baroque editing,
overwrought compositions, convoluted plot, and on and on.
Man in the Shadow in
contrast is a straightforward 80 minute programmer shot in a generally sober
style: after an initial act of excessive violence (the murder of the bracero in
the shadows), the film settles down to offer a taut and tight morality tale played
often in daylight (until a final battle that is dark in look but clear in moral
stance) and in long takes that, instead of meandering like the ones in Touch
of Evil often do, frequently remain implacably fixed on the action in order
to take in the verbal sparring of Sadler and everyone who wants to prevent him
from getting at the truth.
In this pared-down narrative
of one intrepid man against the world, Man in the Shadow is in a lineage
of other such films that came out the complex context of the 1950s. For
instance, Sadler’s casting off of his badge when virtually no one in the town
comes to his defense seems inspired by High Noon while the paranoid
atmosphere of a modern Western town where deadly realities of racial violence
are being hidden away by the villagers reminds one of John Sturges’s man-against-conspiratorial-community-nightmare,
Bad Day at Black Rock. Yet, when an Italian barber announces his
allegiance to Sherriff Sadler and explains that over in Italy, they tried to
install a dictator in the 1920s and that’s why he prefers America, we can
readily see that Man in the Shadow is going in a different direction
than the paranoid narratives of the hunted hero alone against corrupt society. The
barber is the first crack in the mindless devotion to fascistic conformity. Like,
say, the Frank Sinatra Western Johnny Concho from the year before, Man
in the Shadow ultimately shows itself devoted to the cause of liberalism as
the townsfolk convert in their convictions and come to Sadler’s defense. This
liberalism against a conspiratorial conformity takes on new relevance and
resonance in today’s fraught political context as we see the townsfolk
initially disdaining the Mexican workers as undocumented and othering them
through xenophobic stereotypes while imagining whiteness as a fundamental
decency. That the white commonfolk can evolve ideologically and overcome
prejudice might well link the progressivism of Man in the Shadow to a
key earlier film by director Jack Arnold, It Came from Outer Space,
another liberal intervention into Cold War Culture that, similarly, is all
about turning fear of the other into inter-cultural tolerance.
Filmed in CinemaScope
black-and-white (like some other programmers just around this time), Man in
the Shadow looks great on Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray edition. The only special features
are the original trailer (which, interestingly, pinpoints Sherriff Sadler and
not Orson Welles’s seemingly respectable but fundamentally corrupt capitalist
as the “man in the shadow”) and a breathless commentary track from movie critic
Troy Howarth. To my mind, Howarth is a bit too enamored of character actors’
filmographies, enumerating at length the career and date of death for virtually
anyone from within the film’s secondary cast, but he does offer helpful
insights about the film’s genre affiliations: for example, Horwath’s perception
that violence around a seemingly alien otherness insinuating itself into arid
small towns is common to a number of Jack Arnold films enables us to see the
xenophobia at issue in both Arnold’s Westerns and science-fiction.
Long unavailable (or
available only in pan-and-scan), Man in the Shadow in Kino Lorber’s fine
Blu-Ray edition offers anew a strikingly suspenseful social-problem film that
offers a trenchant glimpse of the politics of its time.
Cinema of the 1970s is primarily remembered for being a bold era in which groundbreaking films were released and the emergence of titanic new talents both on screen and behind the camera. It was an era in which sex, crime and violence were often exploited to take advantage of the new freedoms in the industry. Yet, there still remained a market for family comedies. While Disney and other major studio family fare could still prove to be profitable, there was also a subculture of low-budget films of this genre that were made by independent production companies. Some of these films were never even released in big cities but they proved popular with rural audiences, thus there were an abundance of rural themes in many of them. A good example of this is the 1978 comedy "They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way" starring Tim Conway and Chuck McCann, working from a screenplay by Conway. I've always had sentiment towards both of these comedy stars, having grown up in the 1960s watching Conway on "McHale's Navy" and McCann hosting a kid's show. Conway was a major factor in driving the success of "McHale's Navy" and in the 1970s he would be an integral part of "The Carol Burnett Show"'s popularity. His skits with straight man Harvey Korman were often hilarious as Korman would gamely try (unsuccessfully) to prevent himself from cracking up at Conway's often improvised antics. In the 1970s, Conway also found success in Disney feature films, sometimes co-starring with another TV icon, Don Knotts.
In "That-A-Way", Conway and co-directors Stuart E. McGowan and Edward J. Montagne provide a prison comedy that introduces us to small town deputies Dewey (Conway) and Wallace (McCann). Do we have to inform you that they are totally inept? Every decision they make turns into a disaster, yet they are secretly appointed by the governor to pose as inmates at a prison camp in order to find out what happened to some stolen loot that one of the prisoners has stashed away. Their mission is to win his confidence and use the information to recover the money. The scenario is ripe for big laughs, but Conway and McCann so blatantly attempt to emulate their idols, Laurel and Hardy, that it only serves to remind us that they were inimitable in their comedic brilliance. At one point, Conway resorts to dusting off his classic sketch as an inept dentist that ran on "The Carol Burnett Show". However, without a live audience and Harvey Korman as his hapless foil who can't stop laughing, the skit falls flat as a pancake. There are a few chuckles in the scenarios of the inept duo trying to cope with living among hardened criminals, among them Lenny Montana and Richard Kiel. In fact, it's quite funny to see Montana, who played the much-feared Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" as Kiel's intimidated "yes man". There are numerous other supporting players who are fun to watch: the always-marvelous Dub Taylor as the prison warden (named Warden Warden), Reni Santoni as the inept deputy who is carrying on with his sexpot wife and the ageless Hank Worden as the con with the stash of cash. Our inept heroes stumble upon the hidden loot but they soon learn that the governor has died without informing anyone he has assigned two lawmen to pose as inmates. Thus, they are facing years in prison. They decide to break out and head to the new governor's residence where he is hosting a swanky luncheon for the Japanese ambassador (!). This gives Conway the opportunity to pose as a fellow Japanese and McCann as a geisha in one of those painful comedy bits that is cringe-inducing by today's sensibilities. The film races to a finale that manages to be chaotic without being even slightly funny.
The fact that the film was credited to two directors indicates some kind of problem or tension on the set. My guess is that Edward Montagne's contributions were minimal and I put forward as evidence that he brought several Don Knotts feature films to the screen as producer and sometimes writer and director. They have all stood the test of time and remain very funny. In any event, Montagne would not direct another feature film and he passed away in 2003. I admire Tim Conway but I've found that his comedic persona has not always aged well. As a kid, I thought his bumbling Ensign Parker on "McHale's Navy" was hilarious. I still find the show amusing but it's now in spite of Conway, not because of him. Conway's character, much like the one he plays in "That-A-Way", is not just comically inept. Rather, he seems like a man-child, someone who suffers from a mental deficiency- a four year-old boy trapped in a man's body. I have the same opinion when I watch the characters played by Jerry Lewis in his early films with Dean Martin. There is nothing remotely believable about them and they seem more pathetic than funny.
It gives me no pleasure to knock an attempt to provide wholesome family entertainment such as this. Still, a comedy isn't worth much if it isn't funny, and "That-A-Way"'s few modest pleasures don't merit a recommendation. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks good and provides only some TV spots and a trailer as extras.
