BY LEE PEIFFER

Actor John Saxon, who specialized in playing celluloid tough guys, has died from pneumonia at age 83. Saxon grew up on the (then) mean streets of his native Brooklyn and became a model at age 17. He segued into feature films and television, winning acclaim for his performances. Saxon had the ability to use his charisma and good looks to portray both heroes and villains on screen, and did both convincingly. Major stardom never materialized for him but he had a long career as a popular supporting actor. Among his more notable films: "The Reluctant Debutante", "War Hunt", "The Electric Horseman", "The Unforgiven", "Joe Kidd", the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" and two sequels, "From Dusk Till Dawn", "Black Christmas", "Wrong is Right", "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" and "Battle Beyond the Stars". One of his most popular films was "Enter the Dragon", the final movie of Bruce Lee. Saxon also starred in numerous action film in Italian cinema. For his performance opposite Marlon Brando in the 1966 Western "The Appaloosa", he received a Golden Globe nomination. That year, he won a Golden Globe as "Most Promising Newcomer" even though he had been making films for almost a decade. He also had recurring roles in two popular TV series, "Dynasty" and "Falcon Crest". For more, click here.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Actress and two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland has died in Paris from natural causes at age 104. Ms. de Havilland was one of the last remaining symbols of Hollywood's Golden Age and the last living star of the 1939 classic "Gone With the Wind". Ms. De Havilland was a role model for women's rights in show business, having courageously stood up to studio bosses, beginning with Warner Brothers in the 1940s and extending to her recent legal action against the FX cable network for what she felt was an inaccurate and unfavorable portrayal of her in their TV movie "Feud: Bette and Joan", which depicted the antagonistic relationship between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. She won her first Best Actress Oscar for the 1946 film "To Each His Own". She also won for the 1949 production of "The Heiress". She was also nominated the prior year for "The Snake Pit".  De Havilland and her sister, fellow Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, had engaged in a lifelong feud that became the stuff of Hollywood legend. They were rarely on speaking terms, although De Havilland did say they had mended their relationship shortly before Fontaine's death in 2013 at age 96. De Havilland starred with some of the most legendary leading men in Hollywood history, including Errol Flynn and Clark Gable.

Perhaps her most beloved character was that of Melanie, the tender, forgiving wife of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), the man who Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) openly craves despite being married to Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). The self-centered Scarlett resents and envies Melanie, even when the latter passes away because she enjoys the respect of family and friends in a way Scarlett never will. Some De Havilland's other memorable films include "The Adventures of Robin Hood", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte", "My Cousin Rachel", "They Died with Their Boots On" and "Lady in a Cage". De Havilland resided for many years in Paris, rarely granting interviews and almost never courting the press. Her dignified private life only added to her stature as a Hollywood legend. For more, click here.

“NEXT STOP… HIJACK!”

By Raymond Benson

There were many motion pictures made in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s that depict New York City as a less than desirable place to be. A hell on earth full of crime, grime, sin, debauchery, drugs, gangs, and corruption. You know the titles—The Out of Towners, Midnight Cowboy, Joe, Taxi Driver…

While the portrayal may very well have been true, to a certain extent, this reviewer lived in Manhattan over a decade during the relevant years and found it to be the most exciting, vibrant, culturally potent, and beautifully stimulating environment. Not only that, the #6 IRT train (the “Pelham 1:23,” hence the title) is one this reviewer rode almost daily, so the stops, the milieu, and the atmosphere were dead-on familiarities. As some of us like to say today in the age when 42nd Street and Times Square have been “Disney-ized,” we miss the old days when New York had “character,” and we’re not talking about Elmos and Iron Men hawking photos with tourists.

One must add to the above list of New York films the marvelous thriller, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, from 1974. Director Joseph Sargent delivered a gritty and accurate nail-biter that displayed Manhattan in its visceral authenticity, especially regarding the underground subway system, where most of the movie takes place. New York’s Transit Authority (MTA) cooperated with the filmmakers, however there is a disclaimer that they didn’t advise or take part in the story details or provide information on how the trains worked. The one condition the MTA made to allow filming in the subway was that no graffiti could be seen in the movie. At the time, graffiti was everywhere, and subway trains and stations were primary targets for the artists. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the MTA was at war with graffiti artists—it was a never-ending battle to keep the cars clean. Thus, the unmarked subway cars seen in the film are the only thing about it that could be called unrealistic.

Pelham is terrific. One unexpected element that makes it so good is the humor exhibited in the dialogue and by the superb performances of the actors, especially those playing the Transit Police and the MTA employees. The likes of Walter Matthau, Dick O’Neill, Jerry Stiller, and Tom Pedi keep the proceedings lively and entertaining.

Four armed men (Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Earl Hindman) in similar disguises (hats, overcoats, mustaches) board the #6 Downtown train, each using the pseudonym of a color (Mr. Green, Mr. Blue, etc.—nearly twenty years before Reservoir Dogs, and it is acknowledged by Quentin Tarantino that Pelham was an influence). At around 28th Street, they hijack the train, separate the front car from the rest, and park it between stations in the dark of the tunnel. They hold seventeen passengers and a conductor hostage and demand $1 million in cash from the city within one hour. Lt. Garber (Matthau) of the transit police oversees the negotiations and getting things moving. A mayor downtrodden with the flu (Lee Wallace, who uncannily resembles future New York mayor Ed Koch, although Koch was not mayor at the time the picture was made) must approve the payout, the bank must gather the dough, and the police need to deliver the bundle to the hijackers on time before they start executing hostages.

It’s the perfect example of a “ticking clock” thriller, and director Sargent, screenwriter Peter Stone (adapting from John Godey’s novel), and the actors pull it off with finesse. Another major component to the film’s success is the funky, brassy score by David Shire.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray restoration looks and sounds great, and it comes with an audio commentary by actor/filmmaker Pat Healy and film programmer/historian Jim Healy. Supplements include a recent interview with actor Elizondo, who provides several amusing stories about the making of the film and the other actors involved; a recent interview with composer Shire; and one with editor Jerry Greenberg. A “Trailers from Hell” episode with Josh Olson, an animated montage of stills and posters, and the original theatrical trailer round out the package.

In short, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a seminal “New York Movie,” a quintessential “1970s picture,” and one of the better thrillers ever made. Note: It was remade in 1998 as a TV movie and in 2009 as a theatrical film, but neither of these comes close to the power and ingenuity of the original.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Despite Sylvester Stallone’s status as a movie icon, his boxoffice success outside of the Rocky and Rambo franchises has always been spotty. There have been some hits with films such as Cliffhanger and The Expendables series, but Stallone has managed to remain relevant simply by working non-stop. A few of his failures seemed promising on paper and were ambitious in execution, such as “F.I.S.T.” and “Paradise Alley”, while others were just done for a quick pay check (though I will concede that “Over the Top” is the “Citizen Kane” of arm-wrestling movies.) Some of his films have even gone direct-to-video but he always manages to bounce back. However, his attempts to conquer the comedy genre have generally fallen flat. (When was the last time you had a craving to watch “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” or “Rhinestone”?). Thus, when, on a whim, I plucked out Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray screener of Stallone’s 1991 comedy “Oscar” from a pile of golden oldies, I pondered whether I was experiencing a momentary episode of self-flagellation in the manner of religious pilgrims who take satisfaction from the experience of whipping themselves for some greater cause. In my case, the greater cause would be to warn unsuspecting readers to avoid yet another Stallone comedy. But fate played a strange trick. From its opening moments, I found myself smitten by “Oscar”, perhaps because it was directed by John Landis, a man who knows a thing or two about directing first rate comedies. (His credits include “National Lampoon’s Animal House”, “Trading Places” and “The Blues Brothers.”) Landis had long wanted to remake a 1967 French film farce that, in turn, had been based on 1950s stage production. When it finally came to fruition, he moved the setting from contemporary to the 1930s.

The film opens with a very amusing scene in which Chicago gangster Angelo "Snaps" Provolone sits by the bedside of his dying father (a very amusing Kirk Douglas in a cameo) and promises him that he will give up his criminal ways and live on the straight-and-narrow. For his empathy, his old man slaps him across the face and then dies. Still, Snaps is determined to keep his vow. He presides over a palatial mansion house with his glamorous wife Sofia (Ornella Muti) and his rebellious, sexually frustrated daughter Lisa (Marisa Tomei). The script by Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland (who plays the titular character who is much-discussed but seen only at the very end of the film) is spot-on and keeps the action flowing at a fever pitch, as is appropriate for a farce. The less said about the plot, the better. It moves at lightning speed and Landis capitalizes on the constant devices of mistaken identities, assumed identities and a packed house of amusing characters straight out of a Damon Runyon story with a side dish of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks comedies. Spats has to deal with double-crosses, temptations to return to crime and deal with a daughter who may or may not be pregnant and may or may not be marrying his personal accountant. Stallone is very good indeed, deftly spitting out wisecracks and showing frustration at the rapidly changing series of events. Director Landis wisely keeps virtually all of the action in and around the mansion, thus keeping the story's origins as a stage production intact. The film features a potpourri of marvelous supporting performances from the likes of Tim Curry, Peter Riegert, Harry Shearer, Chazz Palminteri, Kurtwood Smith, Vincent Spano, Martin Ferrero and Ken Howard. There are also welcome guest appearances by veterans Yvonne DeCarlo (her last film), Don Ameche and Eddie Bracken, who is particularly funny as hyper street informant. 

"Oscar" was a box office flop and critics attacked it across the board. However, it has aged very well and I found it to be a delight throughout. Give it chance, will ya?

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray features an amusing interview with John Landis, who recounts how the film was able to use the still-standing street sets on the Universal lot that had been constructed for "The Sting"- until a disastrous fire destroyed them all along with priceless vintage wardrobe. He describes the Herculean tasks of salvaging the film. He also relates a very amusing story about casting Kirk Douglas without realizing he and Stallone had been feuding for ten years ever since Douglas walked off co-starring in "First Blood" because Stallone wouldn't concede to killing off the Rambo character.

Other bonus features are the original trailer and a gallery of other KL trailers.

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(In our new column, Author Insights, Cinema Retro periodically invites authors of film-related books to provide our readers with the background story relating to their latest publication.)

BY JIM NEMETH

It Came From … The Stories and Novels Behind Classic Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction Films (Midnight Marquee Press) came about when I and my co-author, Bob Madison, started discussing the many movie classics that find their origins in genre fiction. Both of us grew up loving science fiction, fantasy and horror films. Like many genre movie buffs, we frequently sought out the books and stories that influenced our favorite movies, often surprised (if not amazed) at the differences. Though born in different states and a few, scant years apart, our boyhoods were remarkably similar. Spending our youth on such Saturday night television fare as Creature Features and Thriller Theater, we made imaginative quests into worlds very different from our own. Where I gravitated toward supernatural fiction, Bob dug deeply into literary science fiction. Both of us became devoted readers of genre fiction and then, later on, the history of it. The love for movies, though, never wavered.

Over the years, when considering cinema reference books, particularly those covering films within the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres adapted from other mediums, we found scant attention paid to the literary sources. It’s frustrating to pore through a reference book and find little more concerning the inspiration behind such films than the credit one finds in the film: “Based on the novel XXXXX, by so-and-so.”

And so, It Came From… was born.

The book consists of 21 essays covering everything from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to Planet of the Apes to, of course, Psycho. In the essays we shine a deserved spotlight on the authors and screenwriters, detail the many challenges found in adaptation, and outline why some films do it better than others. For clarity’s sake, we break the films into three categories—horror, fantasy, science fiction—and then simply list them chronologically. Each chapter is the sole work of one of the authors, with the ringer being special chapters devoted to Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, where we both delve into not just one, but several of the best, worst, and most popular of their cinematic incarnations.

The initial dream for this volume was a comprehensive history that traced and compared films adapted from other material back to its origins. But such was not to be! The number of science fiction, fantasy and horror films that are adaptations from other media are so varied and repetitive that the challenge was confining ourselves to just a handful of favorite films. And even here, we deliberately excluded—with a handful of exceptions—high-profile obvious choices such as The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey, in favor of films that are underserved in genre criticism. But, as should be obvious to any fan of cinema—sequels happen. Perhaps one day in the future we will tackle our remaining favorites.

Meanwhile, we hope readers will sit back, dim the lights a bit and enjoy. And just ignore those pesky moans coming from under your bed and the scratching sounds you hear from inside the walls…

BOO!

— Jim Nemeth (Member, Horror Writers Association)

— Bob Madison (author of American Horror Writers (2000), and Dracula: The First Hundred Years (1997; ed.)

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BY FRED BLOSSER

Universal Pictures released three horror films about Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman, as it attempted to refresh its aging portfolio of monster series in the early 1940s. “Captive Wild Woman” debuted in 1943, followed by two sequels, “Jungle Woman” (1944) and “Jungle Captive” (1945). Paula Dupree never made a lasting impact on popular culture as other Universal horror characters did, coming too late in the studio’s 15-year horror run to gain much traction. By 1945, when “Jungle Captive” was dumped onto a double-bill with “The Frozen Ghost,” the cycle was on its last gasp. There was never an Aurora scale-model kit for the Ape Woman in the mid-1960s as there were for the studio’s more famous monsters, and nary a word about Paula when Universal started making noises a few years ago about reviving its trademarked monsters for a new “Dark Universe” film franchise. The “Dark Universe” concept has since tanked. Maybe they should have thought about the Ape Woman. At any rate, even if Paula never made much of a stir in the public imagination at large, she was seriously creepy and unforgettable for us impressionable kids who saw the trilogy on late-night “Shock Watch” TV packages in 1961. Now, Scream Factory has released the Ape Woman series in a new Blu-ray set, “Universal Horror Collection: Volume 5,” its fifth licensed compilation of vintage Universal horror and thriller films. “The Monster and the Girl,” also in the package, is an unrelated 1941 Columbia Pictures melodrama that shares the theme of a killer ape with vengeful human emotions in a noirish 1940s setting. It’s an unexpected fit with the other three pictures, but a good one.

“Captive Wild Woman,” directed by Edward Dmytryk, introduces Paula. Big-game trapper Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) returns from Africa with new lions for the John Whipple Circus. His prize find, though, is a friendly female gorilla, Cheela. A demented but outwardly urbane medical scientist, Dr. Sigmund Walters (the inimitable John Carradine), meets Fred and Cheela through Fred’s fiancee, Beth (Evelyn Ankers), whose sister he is treating for a hormonal disorder in his isolated clinic, the Crestview Sanitarium. Fred proposes to become Cheela’s personal trainer, but the gorilla mysteriously disappears -- stolen by Dr. Walters, who sees unusual potential in the ape’s high level of intelligence. Using hormones from Beth’s sister Dorothy (Martha MacVicar, who later changed her screen name to Martha Vickers) and human brain tissue from another unwilling donor, Dr. Walters secretly transforms Cheela from gorilla into human as a beautiful brunette, whom he calls Paula Dupree (Acquanetta). When Paula saves Fred from an attacking lion by giving the lion her Cheela stare, Fred decides that her uncanny ability would be an asset in his act, having no clue that Paula was once Cheela. It doesn’t hurt her chances in show biz, either, that she looks gorgeous in a sparkly, short-skirted circus outfit. But Paula remembers Cheela’s fondness for Fred, and when she becomes jealous of Beth, her anthropoid tendencies return and she reverts partway to gorilla form.

Undiscriminating audiences in 1943 may not have thought much about the film’s ping-pong between the John Whipple Circus and Crestview Sanitarium. B-movie escapism was B-movie escapism. Nor would they have been bothered by Fred Mason’s lion-taming techniques, which would now fall within PETA’s definition of animal cruelty. As a cost-saving measure, those scenes were recycled from “The Big Cage,” a 1932 Universal production starring Clyde Beatty. For the new footage of Fred in close-up, Milburn Stone’s hair was styled to make him look, not very convincingly, like Beatty. It takes an awfully long time before the Ape Woman actually appears, 45 minutes into the picture’s thrifty 61-minute running time. When she does, it’s in an effective time-lapse scene, Mr. Hyde or Wolf Man style, in which the beautiful Paula grows fangs, develops leathery skin, and finds her hairdo stiffening into a gorilla bouffant. The wonderful Jack P. Pierce makeup almost redeems the delay in bringing the character on stage. The Ape Woman immediately claims a victim in a nighttime home-invasion and murder, reminiscent of the linchpin horror scene featuring Erik the Ape in Universal’s 1932 Bela Lugosi thriller, “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The aftermath of the killing sets up the crowning scene of the film for John Carradine, when Dr. Walters berates the monster for her indiscretion: “They’ll put you on trial, throw question after question at you,” the great Carradine storms. “You won’t know what anyone’s saying.” The actor delivers the lines with all the sincerity and intensity of a soliloquy from “Macbeth.” Since Paula is still in full Ape Woman mode, the disconnect between what Walters is saying and who he’s saying it to is sublimely surreal. You may not even have to be a fan with warm, half-century-old memories of “Shock Watch” to enjoy “Captive Wild Woman” on those terms.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

It may be hard to believe in our era of sweeping worldwide populist movements, but there was a time when movie-goers adored fairy tale-like comedies centered on the impossibly rich. The genre made it possible for an entire generation of British actors and actresses to shine and few had shone so brightly as Rex Harrison, who was seemingly born with a crystal wine goblet in his hand. Harrison and his wife at the time, acclaimed comedy star Kay Kendall, top-line director Vincente Minnelli's 1958 film adaption of playwright William Douglas Home's hit Broadway farce "The Reluctant Debutante", retaining Home's services to write the screenplay. The film is veddy, veddy British in tone and style to the extent that non-Brits may find some of the dialogue, delivered with machine gun rapidity, hard to decipher. Ironically, this most British of stories was shot in Paris due to Harrison's status at the time as a tax exile. Reviewing the film in the New York Times, A.H. Weiler described it as "thin and boneless but nonetheless giddy and diverting." That description remains apt, though the movie is dated in style and content.

Harrison and Kendall play Jim and Sheila Broadbent, better known as Lord and Lady Broadbent, who are nervously awaiting the arrival from America of 17 year-old Jane (Sandra Dee), Jim's daughter from a previous marriage, who is making her first trip to London to meet her new stepmother. Jane has been invited by Sheila to arrive in "The Season", a term used by the lifted pinky crowd to describe the time of year when young women are formally introduced to society through an elaborate Cinderella-like ball that each family must hold. Jane, whose American background and upbringing is at odds with such pretentious spectacles, is a reluctant participant but she gets on with Sheila so well that she goes through the motions of being enthused about fitting in with the snobs who are now surrounding her. Sheila wants to match her with David Fenner (an amusing Peter Myers), who holds a revered position as a member of the Queen's Horse Guards. The fact that he's an obnoxious lecher doesn't matter because he's well-connected. However, Jane rebuffs his crude advances and finds herself falling for another American, David Parkson (John Saxon), who is a humble drummer in an orchestra that performs at some of the balls. Sheila is appalled that she has eyes for a commoner but her father is more accepting, as he finds he likes the young man's unpretentious nature. In such fables, there's little doubt who Jane will end up with, but there are some amusing moments as the film gravitates towards the inevitable.

Director Minnelli has kept true to the production's origins as a play, eschewing any exteriors except for some brief second unit footage over the opening credits. This strategy tends to wear thin, however, as it becomes a bit monotonous watching the same characters saunter through the same rooms, opening bottles of wine and champagne, surreptitiously snooping on young lovers or bickering about love and marriage. The saving grace is the fine cast with Harrison and Kendall in top form, the former always cool and collected and the latter in a constant state of panic. (Tragically, Kendall would pass away the following year from cancer.) Angela Lansbury pops up briefly in an amusing role as a nosy, intrusive matchmaker. In films of this type, everyone seems older on screen than they were  in real life, partly because of the styles and social customs of the era. Kay Kendall was only 32 at the time of filming and Sandra Dee, astonishingly, was going on 15 years-old. Although the movie was probably a bit edgy for a comedy in 1958 because of its watered-down references to premarital sex, it's rather disturbing to realize that a young woman's character was primarily defined by her ability to remain a virgin while young men were given free rein to "play the field".

The movie isn't quite a top notch comedy but it's consistently pleasurable enough to merit viewing, even if the protagonists engage in the kind of elitist behavior that inspired the peasants to storm the Bastille. The Warner Archive region-free Blu-ray looks terrific and does justice to the opulent production values that are presented during the grand ball scenes. The original trailer is also included.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The life and career of Burt Lancaster are covered in the 1996 documentary "Burt Lancaster: Daring to Reach", which originally aired on the American TV network A&E. Lancaster had died in 1994 so the show was a timely look at the man and his career while his passing was still fresh in the minds of moviegoers. The  program consists of interviews with some of the screen legend's co-stars and colleagues including actresses Rhonda Fleming, Terry Moore and Virginia Mayo, James Hill, who partnered with Lancaster and Harold Hecht in their initially successful production company, directors Sydney Pollack and Ted Post and actors Earl Holliman and Peter Riegert. There are also insights from biographer Gary Fishgall. Directed by Gene Feldman and Suzette Winter, the documentary is a no-frills affair consisting mostly of talking heads and film clips, mostly comprised of well-worn footage from public domain trailers, though some apparently licensed film snippets also appear. The show also presents occasional audio excerpts from a late-in-life interview with Lancaster, who is refreshingly humorous about his human frailties, admitting that he was headstrong and bossy to the point of directing his directors. The 50-minute running time allows ample opportunity for the participants to present the basics of Lancaster's humble New York upbringing to his early life as a performer in the circus, his lifelong friendship with boyhood pal and fellow trapeze artist Nick Cravat (discussed by Cravat's daughter Tina) and the formation of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, the production company that allowed Lancaster to call his own shots in terms of his career. The company also produced the Oscar-winner "Marty" before going broke in 1959 after funding a number of fine films that nonetheless failed to gel with the public. While Lancaster's colleagues lavish praise on his professionalism and acting ability, as well as his willingness to appear in worthy non-commercial films, they also acknowledge his could be difficult to work with due to his stubborn personality. Earl Holliman recalls working on "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" with Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and noticed how the two old friends and frequent co-stars bickered endlessly as well as tried to instruct each other about acting techniques.

Posed publicity photo for From Here to Eternity (1953).

The documentary reinforces the fact that Lancaster had an extremely interesting career that allowed him to play a widely diverse assortment of characters. Even in his later years, he made his age an attribute, delivering marvelous performances in "Atlantic City", "Local Hero" and "Field of Dreams". His work continues to resonate today. Lancaster fans will find this documentary an interesting and rewarding experience.

(Available for streaming on Amazon Prime. Subscribers can view it for free but it is also available for streaming rental or purchase.)

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Kino Classics:

New York, NY -- July 9, 2020 -- Kino Classics is proud to announce the Blu-ray and DVD releases of two pioneering films in the history of Queer cinema: Reinhold Schünzel's dazzling romantic musical Victor and Victoria (1933), and Leontine Sagan's landmark of lesbian cinema Mädchen in Uniform (1931). Both films have been restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung.

Kino Lorber released both of these important films (along with Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1924 silent classic Michael) as part of the "Pioneers of Queer Cinema" virtual cinema program on Kino Marquee for Pride Month.

Victoria and Victoria (1933) is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. The Blu-ray and DVD feature audio commentary by film historian Gaylyn Studlar.

In this dazzling musical romance, a young woman (Renate Müller), unable to find work as a music hall singer, partners with a down-and-out thespian (Hermann Thimig) to revamp her act. Pretending to be a man performing in drag, Victoria becomes the toast of the international stage. But she soon finds that her playful bending of genders enmeshes her personal and professional life in a tangle of unexpected complications. Produced in the final days of the Weimar Republic, Victor and Victoria received limited exposure in the United States, and is today best known by Blake Edwards’s 1982 remake and the 1995 Broadway production. Viewers will be delighted to discover that the original is every bit as charming and outrageous, reminiscent of the sly sex comedies of Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.

Directed by Reinhold Schünzel

Starring: Renate Müller, Hermann Thimig, Friedel Pisetta, Fritz Odemar, Aribert Wäscher, Adolf Wohlbrück

Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: Now Available

1933 | Germany | B&W | 99 Min. | Not Rated | 1920x1080p (1.20:1) | German with English subtitles

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Mädchen in Uniform (1931) will be available on Blu-ray and DVD July 14, 2020, and includes audio commentary by film historian Jenni Olson.

As a new student at an all-girls boarding school, Manuela falls in love with the compassionate teacher Fräulein von Bernburg, and her feelings are requited. Experiencing her first love, lonely Manuela also discovers the complexities that come with an illicit romance. This artfully composed landmark of lesbian cinema – and an important anti-fascist film – was the first of just three films directed by Leontine Sagan.

Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: July 14, 2020

Starring Hertha Thiele, Dorothea Wieck, Emilia Unda, Erika Mann, Hedy Krilla

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

From the mid-to-late 1970s, American football was the subject of quite a few high profile Hollywood studio productions. Burt Reynolds starred in two: "The Longest Yard" and "Semi-Tough". There was also "North Dallas Forty" and two similarly-themed thrillers set at the Super Bowl: "Two-Minute Warning" and "Black Sunday". Even Warren Beatty's "Heaven Can Wait" had a tie-in to the sport. The aforementioned "Semi-Tough" has been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. The 1977 production has a lineup of top talent including a script by the estimable Walter Bernstein ("Fail Safe", "The Front"), who adapted Dan Jenkins' bestselling novel. The director was Michael Ritchie, who saw a meteoric rise in stature after once being fired as a director on "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." after arguing over the artistic merits of a single episode. Ritchie was coming off a string of eclectic films including "Downhill Racer", "Prime Cut", "Smile" and "The  Bad News Bears". His acclaimed 1972 satire "The Candidate" is back in the news, as it seems prescient today with its tale of an unqualified aspirant to high political office who succeeds largely because he learned how to be media-savvy. "Semi-Tough", which was a boxoffice hit, boasted three leading actors at the peaks of their careers: Burt Reynolds was arguably the top male movie star in the world, Kris Kristofferson was riding high from the success of "A Star is Born" and Jilly Clayburgh was very much a hot property, having appeared in numerous high profile films.

The plot can be written on the head of pine: Billy Clyde Puckett (Reynolds) and "Shake" Tiller (Kristofferson) are best buds and NFL stars on a (fictitious) Miami team. They live together with Barbara Jane Bookman (Clayburgh), daughter of the team's mercurial owner Big Ed Bookman (Robert Preston). Strangely, while the trio consistently flirt and make sexual references, they live a platonic lilfestyle, largely because Barbara has suffered a string of bad relationships and broken marriages that she is not eager to repeat. Things are going swimmingly until one night, on a drunken impulse, Shake and Barbara break the rules and have sex. The next day they announce their engagement. Although Billy Clyde tries to put on a poker face, he's fighting depression because he realizes he has loved Barbara all along and should have made the first overture to her. Tensions only rise when Shake and Barbara begin to have second thoughts, leaving Billy Clyde tempted to intervene for selfish purposes. The movie has plenty of yucks and presents Reynolds at his best and in full towel-snapping, wise ass mode. He enjoys genuine chemistry with Kristofferson and Clayburgh and there are a wealth of amusing contributions from the fine supporting cast that includes Brian Dennehy in his first noticeable role as a numbskull NFL star who at one points memorably dangles a woman by the ankles from the roof of a hotel. There's also a priceless interlude between Reynolds and Lotte Lenya (in full Rosa Klebb mode) as a sadistic chiropractor.)Refreshingly, this is one 1970s film that doesn't demand nude scenes from its leading lady. Instead, director Ritchie finds numerous excuses for his male leads to doff their tops.

Burt Reynolds and Lotte Lenya.

For all the talent involved, however, "Semi-Tough" never amounts to much and seems rather dated today. The concept of a menage-a-trois was already old hat in 1977 and at times the movie begins to resemble "Paint Your Wagon" with some shoulder pads tossed in. Director Ritchie and screenwriter Bernstein almost salvage the proceedings with a sub-plot that satirizes the craze for wacky self-help movements that swept America in the late 1970s. Bert Convy is very funny as  the deadpanned dictator-like leader of a spiritual cleansing movement clearly modeled on EST. The three main characters end up attending a meeting and it's quite amusing to see art imitate life as dozens of well-heeled but naive souls pay money to be insulted and made to listen to pompous lectures, followed by ridiculous physical exercises. However, things go askew in the final scene which finds a chaotic wedding descending into slapstick. The movie never finds a consistent theme. Is it a sex comedy? Is it a social satire? Is it a poignant statement about the shallowness of relationships in the modern era? However, it is fun to spend time with the three leads, who were at top of their game. Sadly, over the next few years, their big screen careers would nosedive as Reynolds and Clayburgh chose unsatisfying films to star in and Kristofferson would find his career among the wreckage of the "Heaven's Gate" financial debacle.

The Kino Lorber presents a fine transfer. Bonus features are limited to a stills gallery and a variety of trailers. Kudos to Kino for retaining the marvelous and politically incorrect poster art by the great Robert McGinnis.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Sean Connery fans will be delighted that his 1957 film "Action of the Tiger" finally gets an official video release in America through the new Warner Archive Blu-ray. Although Connery only makes a few fleeting appearances in the movie, it did allow him to work with director Terence Young. The two men would be reunited in 1962 for the first James Bond film, "Dr. No". Young initially opposed the choice of Connery for the role Bond, feeling he was too inexperienced and unsophisticated. However, the two men worked well together and Connery would later credit Young for acting as a mentor and giving him personal instructions about how to properly dress and dine. There's no indication of Connery's future star power in "Action of the Tiger", largely due to his limited screen time, but the film itself is an above-average "B" movie starring Van Johnson, who made the movie under the auspices of his own production company. Johnson, who specialized in playing urbane romantic leads, was obviously trying to toughen up his screen image by taking on the role of Carson, an independent sea captain and adventurer who sails in European waters with his first mate Mike (Sean Connery). Carson is approached by a fetching blonde, Tracy Malvoise (Martine Carol), who offers him a great deal of money to induce him to take her on a dangerous mission: enter Communist Albania to rescue her brother, a political dissident who is being held captive. Initially reluctant, Carson finally agrees, as Carol assures him she has contacts in Albania who will help effect the escape. Mike drops them off on the coast and receives instructions to pick them up again when he sees Carson flash a signal from the shore in a couple of day's time. Things go awry quickly. When they meet Tracy's brother, they discover he has gone blind. Through various plot devices, Carson not only has to guide him back to the ship, but finds he is also taking a group of desperate refugee children. They are being pursued by a brutal security officer played by Anthony Dawson, who would also go on to appear in "Dr. No" as the Spectre agent Professor Dent. Along the way, they are saved by Trifon (Herbert Lom), the larger-than-life leader of a tribe of bandits. However, the price of his benevolence is that Tracy must stay on as his wife.

"Action of the Tiger" is a Cold War thriller based on the novel by James Wellard. The film is consistently entertaining and benefits from some exotic location scenery, mostly filmed in Spain. The film is nicely photographed in CinemaScope by Desmond Dickinson. Terence Young's direction is assured and he handles the action sequences especially well. If there is a weak link in the movie, ironically, it is Van Johnson as the leading man. He's adequate in the role, but he is essentially miscast in a part that would have suited the likes of Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum very well. You can see Johnson straining to emulate the tough guys seen in similarly-themed films and he doesn't entirely pull it off, as I still kept imagining him more comfortable in a designer suit, sipping cocktails at the Waldorf. Martine Carol is quite good as the feisty, courageous catalyst of the adventure, though she is made up to look like a clone of Lana Turner and somehow manages to keep perfectly coiffed even while hiking across deserts and mountains. The scene-stealer is Herbert Lom as the tribal leader. He gives a delightful performance as a likable rogue. Sean Connery's appearances bookend the film and his only notable scene occurs when he tries to drunkenly assault Carol.

The region-free Warner Archive Blu-ray is up to the company's usual high standards, with an outstanding transfer. The release also includes the original trailer, which is amusingly in line with others of the era in that it boasts bombastic graphics and narration. Recommended.

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“A MATTER OF MISCOMMUNICATION”

By Raymond Benson

The late Carl Reiner received top billing in this magnificent comedy that was released in the middle of the 1960s, when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were tentative at best. Détente was at play, but there wasn’t much trust between the two countries. Two years after Kubrick’s Cold War black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, Norman Jewison tried his hand at a picture with a similar theme, only it was one that was much lighter in tone.

Reiner shares the movie with Alan Arkin, who made his feature film debut with his portrayal of a Russian submarine political officer, along with a marvelous supporting cast of character actors who all have comedic turns. Penned by Oscar-nominated William Rose (who had written or co-written The Ladykillers and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and would win the Oscar the following year for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming focuses on the conflict between a group of misplaced Soviet submariners and the panicky townsfolk of a New England island off the coast of Massachusetts after the summer tourists have left. What it’s really about, though, is communication, or rather, the lack of it, and how a series of incidents that are lost in translation might lead to misunderstandings. Director Jewison delivers that message to the audience wrapped neatly in a barrel of laughs.

Reiner is Walt Whittaker, a playwright who has spent the summer on the island with his wife (Eva Marie Saint) and two children, and the family is ready to depart. His rented house on the coast happens to be near where the Russians’ submarine accidentally runs aground. The captain (Theodore Bikel) sends Lt. Rozanov (Arkin), officer Alexei Kolchin (John Phillip Law), and seven other men to go find a boat, commandeer it, and bring it back so they can tow the sub away from the island. Things begin promisingly, and then all hell breaks loose as one mishap after another foils the Russians’ scheme. Police Chief Mattocks (Brian Keith), his deputy Norman Jonas (Jonathan Winters), and, ultimately, war veteran and head of the citizens militia, Hawkins (Paul Ford), receive conflicting reports of the “invasion” and set about investigating it in their own misguided ways (although Mattocks is indeed the sensible one). Throw in a sudden romantic attraction between Alexei and the Whittaker’s babysitter, Alison (Andrea Dromm), the antics of phone operator Alice (the splendid Tessie O’Shea), and a drunk “Paul Revere” who spends the entire film trying to catch his horse (Ben Blue), and you’ve got a recipe for a comedy classic. The climax, however, is surprisingly suspenseful when the Russians and Americans finally reach a standoff at the harbor—until an unrelated crisis occurs that shakes everyone out of the mob mentality.

The straight man role was something Carl Reiner could do well; he always brought a heightened intensity to his parts that was simultaneously boisterous and believable, and yet amusing, too. Arkin, whose dialogue is 85% authentic Russian throughout the picture, immediately proved to the world what an amazing actor he is (he received an Oscar nomination for his performance and won a Golden Globe). Winters and Ford both provide much of the insane humor. O’Shea is hilarious, especially in the scene in which she and Reiner are gagged and tied together and attempt to escape. Law, a newcomer at the time, is a striking and likeable presence, and he masters the Russian language and the accented English with aplomb.

It’s all great stuff, punctuated by Johnny Mandel’s score of American patriotic music mixed with Russian folk songs. Along with Arkin’s nomination, The Russians are Coming… was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (Rose), and Best Editing (Hal Ashby was co-editor).

Kino Lorber’s high definition restoration looks good enough, despite some washing out of color in some places, as well as blemishes and artifacts that can be seen in some of the images. The only supplements are an informative and entertaining “making of” featurette with an interview with Jewison, and the theatrical trailer.

In short, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming is grand fun, and it’s a fitting showcase for the late, great Carl Reiner.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

There’s an old axiom often quoted by writers that once you find a winning formula for putting stories together, stick with it. That certainly must have been the case back in the 1940s when the films collected together by Kino Lorber for its “Western Classics I” three disc box set were made. “When the Daltons Rode” (1940), “The Virginian” (1946), and “Whispering Smith” (1948) are all different movies, made by different writers and directors, with different settings, characters and plots, but when all is said and done they all basically tell the same story. Two guys who are pals have their friendship strained when they both fall in love with the same woman. It’s obviously a formula that worked.

In “When the Dalton’s Rode,” Tod Jackson (Randolph Scott) is a lawyer who comes west to set up his practice in Oklahoma, but finds he’s needed more in Kansas where his old friends, the Daltons, live. The Dalton family is having the kind of trouble that homesteaders usually have in these flicks—land grabbers. Tod decides to stay in Kansas and help them out. He and Bob Dalton (Broderick Crawford), especially, were good friends in their younger days, and the romantic triangle in this movie arises from the fact that Bob is engaged now to Julie King (Kay Francis). But when Tod meets her, it’s love at first sight. Tod’s inner conflict between loyalty to Bob and his attraction to Julie is played out against the background story of the Dalton’s fight with the Kansas Land Development Company. Bob, Emmett (Frank Albertson,) Ben (Stuart Erwin), and Grat Dalton (Brian Donleavy) are a wild bunch, and probably responsible for all that grey hair in their Ma’s (Mary Gordon) head. So it’s no surprise when one of the men working for the Land Development Company is accidentally killed in a fight with the Dalton boys and Ben is charged with murder. When they bring him into court for a speedy trial, the movie which had been pretty tame up to now, goes into high gear.

The second half of the film’s 82-minute length is one action sequence after another executed by a team of veteran stuntmen including Eddie Parker and Bob Reeves. There’s a breakout from the courthouse, an attempted lynching, a rescue of Emmett Dalton by Tod on buckboard, and a sequence of the four Daltons stealing a stagecoach, pursued by a posse of about 20 men. The Daltons jump off the front of the coach, unharness the horses pulling the stage and lead the posse on a merry chase. This is followed by several more high action scenes, including the Daltons leaping off a mountainside onto a passing train and later jumping their horses off the moving train. Yakima Canutt shows up in archival footage jumping a horse off a cliff into a river.

Director George Marshall and screenwriter Harold Shumate used Emmett Dalton’s biographical novel as the basis for the film—a book that was considered a complete whitewash of the Daltons—to create what is basically an entertaining B-western that has as very little to do with the actual Dalton gang. Do Randy and Kay find happiness? What do you think?

The Blu-Ray disc bonus features include audio commentary by film historian Toby Roan and the theatrical trailer for the movie. Picture and sound are good. While it’s not a restoration, the black and white photography of Hal Mohr looks clean and textured.

In “The Virginian,” the title character (Joel McCrea), who apparently does not have a real name and Steve Andrews (Sonny Tufts) are best buds, working as cowhands on a cattle ranch in Medicine Bow, Wyo. They’re having a fine old time until Molly Wood (Barbara Britton) arrives by train. She’s the new school teacher and when she sees the Virginian herding some cows off the train tracks, she likes what she sees. But Steve wastes no time moving in and offers to take her luggage to the hotel. While Steve is lugging suitcases. Molly is startled by a Brahma bull, and the Virginian rides to her “rescue.” The two cowboys spend the rest of the movie trying to outmaneuver each other.

In “When the Daltons Rode,” the main complication was the battle between the Daltons and the Land Development Company. Here instead of land grabbing, the problem is cattle rustling. Cattle have been disappearing off the ranches around Medicine Bow and the Virginian suspects a man named Trampas (Brian Donleavy) is the one behind it all. Well, why wouldn’t he? He not only wears a black hat, he dresses in black from head to foot. The Virginian’s also a bit suspicious of his friend Steve who lately seems a bit too friendly with the man in black. The plot draws these lines of tension to a final confrontation when The Virginian must choose between friendship and adherence to the Code of the West and possibly losing Molly’s affections. The penalty for rustling is hanging.

This is the movie where Trampas calls the Virginian a name and the Virginian draws his gun and tells him “Smile when you call me that.” To which Trampas replies: “With a gun against my belly, I always smile.” Personally I thought it sounded better when Gary Cooper said it to Walter Huston in the 1929 version made by Victor Fleming, but McCrea and Donleavy aren’t bad. “The Virginian” has been filmed at least five times, going all the way back to a silent version in 1914 by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Dustin Farnum. Based on a classic western novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was made into a TV series in the 1960s, which is still running today on cable.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray of “The Virginian” is very good in terms of picture and sound, with colors bright and details sharp and clear. An audio commentary by author/film historian Lee Gambin and actress/film historian Rutanya Alda is provided on a separate soundtrack. The theatrical trailer is also provided.

By Hank Reineke

There are times I wish my failing memory could serve me better, and here’s one example. I have a vague memory of staying up one night – circa 1980, I guess - to catch Roger Moore on one of those late night talk-shows. I was a huge James Bond fan and, as such, always desperate to mine any news, no matter how trivial, on any upcoming oo7 adventure. This was, of course, in the pre-internet era when insider information was relatively scarce outside of a morsel or two shared in fanzine or with a subscription to Variety. (As an aside, today I often wish there was less information available when a film is still in still production). In any event, don’t recall if Moore shared any information that night on the next scheduled Bond opus For Your Eyes Only (1981). I do clearly recall him discussing Andrew V. McLaglen’s ffolkes (better known in the United Kingdom, where the film was originally released, as North Sea Hijack).

In this new suspense-thriller Moore shared he would co-star with actors James Mason and Anthony Perkins. That night Moore attempted a small joke, first noting – factually - that the film was based on a Jack Davies novel titled Esther, Ruth and Jennifer. He explained that Universal had – perhaps understandably - balked on putting the film out under that title. This original title was, to be fair, a film publicist’s nightmare. The former Saint reasoned (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Could anyone imagine the promotional posters and newspaper advertisements: “Roger Moore, James Mason and Anthony Perkins in Esther, Ruth and Jennifer?” Well, Moore’s joke got a laugh that night, anyway. Decades later Moore would recall in his memoir that Universal actually balked as they thought the original Davies title sounded “too biblical.” Moore, never one to waste a punchline, would recall in his memoir, “I’ve yet to come across a Jennifer in the Bible.”

Whether you prefer the title ffolkes or North Sea Hijack, the story was, as discussed, based on the Davies’ novel Esther, Ruth and Jennifer (W.H. Allen, 1979, UK). Davies was actually somewhat new to novel writing, though his earlier novel involving terrorism, Paper Tiger (W.H. Allen, 1974, UK) was subsequently turned into a film in 1975 film starring David Niven and Toshiro Mifune. Davies seems to have turned to the craft of writing novels in the latter years of his life, though he had been steadily employed as a writer during most of his 80 years. He had churned out dozens upon dozens of screenplays from the mid-1930s through the very end of the 1960s and even a bit beyond that. As a child I was already familiar with two of the slapstick comedies he co-penned, though I certainly wasn’t aware of his contributions at the time. But we of a certain age will certainly recall with fondness Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965) (for which Davies and co-writer Ken Annakin would receive Academy Award nominations) and Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies (1969).

Brought onto the project to direct the ffolkes project was Andrew V. McLaglen who too boasted an impressive resume of directorial duties (having already steered a dizzying amount of television westerns and contributing to such touchstone dramas as Perry Mason). He had grown up immersed in the ways of Hollywood’s film industry. His father, Victor McLaglen, was a celebrated feature film actor, having long been a favorite casting choice for the great John Ford. Indeed, McLaglen, the elder, would go on to win the “Best Actor in a Leading Role” Oscar for Ford’s 1935 film The Informer. McLaglen, the son, would learn nearly every aspect of the trade from an early age, starting out as an actor but finding himself more comfortable on the other side of the camera - often working as a director’s assistant or principal director. Though he had been especially involved in television work in the 1950s through 1965, he decided to try his hand at feature filmmaking. He did so for a decade or more with mostly modest to mixed success.

He returned to television work in the mid-1970s until 1977 when he signed on to direct a number of internationally financed features which would include the three films for which he is probably best remembered, at least among devotees of action films: The Wild Geese (1978), ffolkes (1980) and The Sea Wolves (1980). This trio of old-school filmmaking would, not coincidentally, feature a number of aging Hollywood stars. These were the actors who were no longer the hottest of commodities at the box office but were still well-respected and loved by generations of filmgoers: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Stewart Granger, James Mason, Anthony Perkins, and Gregory Peck to name a few. The connecting thread to all three of these films was, of course, Roger Moore whose big-screen career had re-blossomed since the 1972 announcement of his being cast as the new James Bond.

Moore’s Rufus Excalibur ffolkes was the antithesis to the womanizing character he was usually tasked to play. An ex-Navy man, the often pompous – and bearded - ffolkes resided in a small castle just off the coast of Scotland, (Ireland, in reality). It was there he would exhaustively train a small hand-chosen band of elite commandos – dubbed “ffolkes fusiliers” – in the art of counter-terrorism. The hard scotch whiskey-drinking ffolkes professed a distinct chauvinistic distaste for woman (there’s an offhanded reference such animosity was the result of a failed marriage). He only expressed warmth, kindness and tenderness to his pet cats to whom he was doting and devoted. He also puzzled several colleagues – as it’s so out of character – when he would, on occasion, pull out a needlework canvas that he allowed he’d been working on for some “seventeen years.” When questioned about his unusual hobby, he coldly responded in his usual misanthropic manner, “It helps me to think… providing people don’t talk to me.”

His services are reluctantly activated when the British government are informed that a band of terrorists, disguised as members of the international press, have taken control of the Esther, a Norwegian supply ship charged with ferrying parts to two deep-sea ports-of-call: the drilling rig Ruth, and the production platform Jennifer, the latter platform of which sits in the North Sea and produces 300,000 barrels of oil for the UK per year. When the Esther reaches its destinations, the terrorists subsequently send in a stealth scuba team to plant limpet mines on the bases of both Ruth and Jennifer. The group’s unhinged leader, Lou Kramer, played with convincing, unpredictable mania by Anthony Perkins, is demanding the government pay him – within twenty-four hours - a ransom of 25 million GBP in five different currencies to not go through with the detonation. The terrorist has assessed that such destruction would bring the economy to the brink of ruin, cause an environmental catastrophe, and in doing so take the lives of some seven hundred men working on the platforms.

“A GORGEOUS NICE MESS”

By Raymond Benson and Doug Gerbino

Nobody wants the legacy of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy to disappear. Young people may have heard of the comic duo, but few have seen them these days. This is understandably disturbing to cinephiles or those of us of an older generation who have admired since childhood the genius on display when the pair performed in front of the camera. While RHI Entertainment issued a fabulous DVD set in 2011 (10 disks in the U.S.) that contained most of Laurel and Hardy’s output for Hal Roach after sound kicked in, a new Blu-ray treasure chest has just been released by MVDvisual that contains stunning restorations in high definition of a respectable number of titles.

Laurel and Hardy—The Definitive Restorations could be a holy grail for members of Sons of the Desert, the International Laurel and Hardy Society that is devoted to keeping the lives and works of Stan and Ollie before the public “and have a good time doing it.” It is also a must for anyone who has even a passing interest in the history of film comedy or film in general.

The four-disk set contains two of the duo’s most revered feature films—Sons of the Desert (1933) and Way Out West (1937) along with seventeen classic shorts released between 1927 and 1933. Two of the shorts, Berth Marks (1929) and Brats (1930) are presented twice, each with two different soundtracks—one with the original Vitaphone track and the other with the re-issued 1936 version.

Sons of the Desert might be the definitive Laurel and Hardy movie. In it, both boys must deceive their suspicious wives about attending the Shriners-like “Sons of the Desert” convention in Chicago. Of course, one lie turns into a hundred and they keep digging their holes deeper. Way Out West is a western, naturally, with the boys attempting to deliver a gold mine deed to the rightful owner, only to be hoodwinked by the villains. The picture contains the celebrated dance routine Stan and Ollie performs while the Avalon Boys sing “At the Ball, That’s All.”

All of the shorts are marvelous. The Oscar-winning The Music Box (1932) is there, plus favorites such as the two with different soundtracks, and Hog Wild (1930), Come Clean (1931), County Hospital (1932), and Busy Bodies (1933). But the shining star of the set is the long “lost” but recently found silent gem, The Battle of the Century (1927), which contains the pie fight to end all pie fights. This is a seminal work in the Laurel and Hardy canon, and it had seemed that since 1957 only three minutes of footage of the approximately twenty-minute film was thought to exist. In 1980, Leonard Maltin found the bulk of reel one in the archive of the Museum of Modern Art (what, they didn’t know they had it?). In 2015, film historian John Mirsalis discovered the complete reel two. There are still two to three minutes missing—the new set makes up for it by including stills and intertitles—but with The Definitive Restorations we now have an almost complete version on home video. The film comes with a new music track by Donald Sosin. Look for a young Lou Costello as an extra in the crowd ringside during the early boxing match sequence! In short, the inclusion of The Battle of the Century is worth the price of admission.

The restorations by Jeff Joseph/SabuCat in conjunction with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Library of Congress are simply beautiful. The contributions by film historians, archivists, and Laurel and Hardy scholars Randy Skretvedt and Richard W. Bann can’t be understated. Bann commented to the reviewers, “I saved the nitrate film from being disposed of and gave it to UCLA. We did our own commercial restoration and preservation for the Eastern hemisphere (though 35mm fine grains were provided at cost to the Western Hemisphere copyright proprietor, which generated what you see on TCM and in the Essential Laurel and Hardy DVD box set). Once I steered the nitrate to UCLA, Jeff Joseph donated money and oversaw the institutional restoration and preservation, as well as the digital upgrade, something we did not do for Munich originally, owing to time and cost considerations, as well as because the technology was less advanced during the 1985-2002 period. I supplied the still photos for the extras, except for those which came from Oliver Hardy’s collection. I consulted on the matter of rights clearances. I loaned studio documents, pressbooks, etc., to be scanned for inclusion with the extras, and I loaned the Kodachrome print of The Tree in a Test Tube.”

The nearly nine hours of supplements are just as spectacular as the films themselves. Skretvedt and Bann share the commentary duties (Bann is on The Battle of the Century and The Music Box, while Skretvedt does the rest). The combined knowledge of these two film aficionados about the history of Laurel and Hardy and Hal Roach Studios makes the set a must-have for devotees of the boys. In addition, there are 2,500 rare photos, posters, and studio files; film and audio interviews with many of the duo’s co-workers and Sons of the Desert society attendants of the 60s; a 50s-era interview with Hardy aboard the ship sailing from England during the period depicted in the recent biopic, Stan and Ollie (and it’s amazing how much the aging Hardy resembles the made-up John C. Reilly!); a restoration from 16mm Kodachrome of the rare 1942 color short produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Tree in a Test Tube; and trailers. The interviews, mostly conducted by Skretvedt in the early 1980s, are of varying audio and visual quality. Unfortunately, when asked what the chances are of locating a print of the ultra-rare lost 1927 silent film, Hat’s Off, Bann answered, “In the words of Oliver Hardy, ‘Null and void!’ We will cover all bets for finding Hat’s Off giving 100 to 1 odds.”

This isn’t just “another nice mess” they’ve got you into, it’s a gorgeous nice mess. Laurel and Hardy—the Definitive Restorations is highly and most enthusiastically recommended.

For information about the Sons of the Desert, visit www.sonsofthedesertinfo.com. The society was founded in 1965 by John McCabe, who wrote the first true biography of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in 1961. McCabe wanted to start an organization dedicated to the love of the duo along the lines of The Baker Street Irregulars (honoring Sherlock Holmes). McCabe had Laurel’s blessing, as long as no one referred to the society as a “fan club.” “Fan” is short for “fanatic,” and he didn’t want that. The society has been going strong with worldwide chapters—called “tents”—ever since.

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BY DARREN ALLISON

“Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations” [DeLuxe Edition]: [Colour Interior] by S.M. Guariento. Publisher: Independently published. Softback: 480 pages, ISBN-10: 1687489084 ISBN-13: 978-1687489081, Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 2.8 x 25.4 cm, price £39.99

As most film fans would concur, the humble film ‘tie-in’ paperback, or if you would prefer, novelisation – was pretty much an essential element for movie lovers. Perhaps ‘tie-in’ is a somewhat dated term these days, but it still relates to the same thing - a book whose jacket, packaging, contents, or promotion relates to a feature film or a television show. Back in the day, the paperback novelisation had a magnetic effect, usually because it contained the wonderful film artwork or an iconic photo of its star in a scene from the movie. They proved quite irresistible and the newsagent’s rotary stands were often the place to find many treasurers. However, it was also a little piece of collecting history that hadn’t really been examined to any great depth – until now.

S.M. Guariento’s book is an excellent examination of 50 such books. The London-born author provides a detailed case study of various genres. In his research, Guariento doesn’t skip or avoid and leaves no stone unturned. He examines the evolution of the softback, particularly from its 1950s explosion where the paperback began being a preference over that of the hardback equivalent. It’s an excellent historical journey and it’s a great education in how it all evolved. However, there is no escaping the overriding appeal of their presentation and the genuine pulling power of their lush and varied cover art.

Guariento provides some glorious memories with the turn of each page, delving into TV titles such as Target’s Doctor Who, Bantam’s Star Trek and Futura’s Space 1999 – all of which contained heart racing cover imagery.

The book’s subtitle ‘50 Film Novelizations’ can perhaps be easily misinterpreted and arguably underrates this book’s mammoth amount of content. In terms of subject genres, Guariento hits the sweet spot every single time. In his chapter selections he has chosen very wisely, covering Eastwood, Bond, Planet of the Apes, Horror, Sci-fi, Hammer, Crime, Spy – in fact, everything that is both engaging and appealing to a key audience. Other chapters focus more specifically, such as cult filmmakers (including David Cronenberg and John Carpenter) and the adaptations of their various films. Most importantly, do not be misled into thinking that 50 film novelisations simply equates to 50 cover illustrations. The book also serves as a spectacular pictorial treasury with hundreds of covers featured - either related within the context of a chapter or shown as different or alternative editions of certain titles. Guariento certainly has this covered. This book is practically a dream.

Despite the glowing praise I’m happy to bestow upon this book, readers should also take note - and it’s a very important note: Guariento’s book does come in two very different versions. The version submitted for the purposes of this review is, in fact, the deluxe edition, meaning simply that all images contained within its pages are presented in stunning colour.

However, the book is also available in a Midnight Edition, which is identical in terms of content except that its pages consist of monochrome (b/w) images. I also know I can speak for a great number of similar minded colleagues and friends who will find this somewhat disappointing. For me, it practically punctured the heart of the book and its overall enjoyment. For people who grew up with these books, seeing them reproduced in black and white simply diminishes the retrospective element of its joy. Of course, it does provide a more affordable (£14.99) alternative. Nevertheless, given the books’ subject, it does slightly contradict what the book originally sets out to celebrate.

There’s very little doubt about it, ‘Light into Ink’ is an exceptionally detailed, well produced and yes, a beautifully illustrated book. But just be aware; make sure you know exactly which edition you are ordering should you choose to indulge further. If it’s entirely possible, make every effort towards the deluxe colour edition, I can promise you – you’ll be very glad you went the extra yard.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has released MGM's 1954 costume drama "Beau Brummell" on Blu-ray. The film had previously been made in 1924 starring John Barrymore as the real life 18th century British dandy whose name would go on to become synonymous with charismatic ladies men. The origins of both film versions had been the 1890 play by Clyde Fitch, which proved to be a popular production for actor Richard Mansfield. MGM had announced the film would be made in 1939 starring Robert Donat, but the onset of WWII put the project on hiatus. Plans to revive the film for Donat a few years later also fell through. Meanwhile, Kirk Douglas announced he would play Brummell in a movie titled "Beau" but this never came to fruition, either. Perhaps MGM could have viewed these aborted plans to bring the character back to the big screen as cautionary warnings, but instead the studio spent a bundle on the lavish color production which was filmed entirely in England at a variety of historic locations.

Stewart Granger plays the titular character and provides a delightful performance as a man who is driven by a passion to live a life of luxury and to be the toast of the town, so to speak. Through his charm, sarcastic wit and willingness to take on authoritative figures, he becomes the 18th century version of a pop culture sensation. When we first meet him, he is a respected officer in the British army on his way to an illustrious career. However, he dares to insult the Prince of Wales (Peter Ustinov), a vain, weak and childlike man who retaliates by stripping Brummell of his commission. Now destitute, Brummell and his loyal manservant Mortimer (James Hayter) continue to lives of privilege, even as the debts mount and the creditors threaten. Brummell's social status improves when the Prince unexpectedly reaches out to him and forms a close friendship. From Brummell's standpoint, it is an opportunistic way of making the weak heir-to-the-throne become reliant on his advice and counsel. Through the prince, Brummell becomes enamored of Lady Patricia (Elizabeth Taylor), who is alternately repulsed by his arrogance but also smitten by his self-assured demeanor. Brummell is determined to become her lover, despite the fact that she is engaged to Lord Edwin Mercer (James Donald), who is part of his social circle. Much of the film follows the "will she or won't she?" scenario regarding which man will ultimately prevail: the larger-than-life cad Brummell or the bland but noble-minded Mercer. Ultimately, when the Prince's father, King George III (Robert Morley) is removed from the throne because of mental disabilities, the Prince becomes king. However, a snarky remark by Brummell offends the new sovereign and results in a fracture to their friendship. Excluded from the royal court, Brummell is once again destitute and moves to France where he is stricken by a severe illness. In his final days, he is visited unexpectedly by the king and the two men share a sentimental reconciliation, thus allowing Brummell to die in peace.

"Beau Brummell" was promoted as an epic film by MGM, but aside from some occasionally impressive locations, most of the action unfolds on studio sets. The film was criticized for adhering too stringently to its origins as a stage production. It has also been slighted for being dull, as there are literally no action scenes at all. However, the film does possess plenty of sparkling dialogue, as Brummell dispenses bon mots and double entendres with equal abandon. Yet, it wasn't enough to salvage the production from a dire fate. Even a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth backfired when Her Majesty told her intimates that she didn't like the movie and, in fact, wrote to Winston Churchill that she resented seeing her ancestors depicted in such a clownish manner. Audiences were disappointed, too. Stewart Granger had found recent success as a man of action on screen in swashbucklers like "Scaramouche" and "The Prisoner of Zenda". Although he cuts a dashing figure as Beau Brummell, his fans didn't want to see him in drawing rooms matching wits with other snobby characters. Elizabeth Taylor, though stunningly beautiful, is largely wasted in an underwritten role and it falls to Peter Ustinov to steal the scenes through his marvelous performance as the manchild ruler of England. The movie has a pedestrian pace and at times it appears it exists to simply showcase the exquisite costumes and production design. It was also mocked for the sentimental ending that allowed for a tearjerker scenario to play out for what much of the story really is- a love story between two men. In fact, Brummell did die in poverty in France but the king never visited him there to reconcile their relationship for the simple fact that he predeceased Brummell by a decade. Despite all these flaws, I found the film to be consistently entertaining.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has released the 1965 film adaptation of Agatha Christie's oft-filmed Ten Little Indians.  It's hard to imagine that the scenario of a disparate group of exotic strangers being summoned to a chateau by a mysterious host once seemed like a fresh concept. Certainly, the concept already had moss on it when this film was made. However, there is something timeless and intriguing about such a story line, primarily because it generally affords a star-studded cast to interact. There are no superstars in this European version of the story, but the movie is packed with wonderful actors. This time around, the individuals are invited to an opulent chalet atop a snow-covered mountain top, accessible only by cable car. (The location is never specified, but the exteriors were filmed in Austria and the interiors were shot in Ireland.) The victims-to-be include square-jawed American hero Hugh O'Brian, sexy Brit Shirley Eaton, fresh from making a sensation in Goldfinger, exotic Israeli actress Daliah Lavi, one-time teen idol Fabian, Swiss actor Mario Adorf, German actress Marianne Hoppe and a wonderful array of great British character actors: Wilfred Hyde-White, Leo Genn, Dennis Price and Stanley Holloway. Each of these people has a secret they are hiding and all are accused of being responsible for the death of an innocent person by their unseen "host" Mr. Owen (the voice of an uncredited Christopher Lee). The crisply-photographed B&W production evolves predictably under the competent, if unexciting direction of George Pollock, who had helmed the hit Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. The film is more serious in tone than those popular mysteries, but there is still a good deal of witty byplay as the diverse people try to find out what secrets their companions are shamefully hiding. The gimmick of murdering them off one by one revolves around the old Ten Little Indians children's rhyme. There are also some decorative figurines of Indian braves that adorn the dining hall and one of them vanishes each time a person is killed. In the time-worn tradition of such thrillers, as the group is reduced in size, they vow to all stay together in the same room. This logical solution to thwarting the murderer among them is dispensed with regularly, as the women saunter off into dark basements and up ominous staircases to investigate strange noises. 

The film is curiously lacking in any genuine suspense, but it's glorious to revel in the sight of some legendary British actors trying to upstage and outwit each other in this deadly cat-and- mouse game. The story is consistently entertaining and the star power is more impressive today than it was back in the day. The climax of the film is surprising, if a bit of a stretch. It's all accompanied by a hip jazz score by Malcolm Lockyer that sometimes seems a too jaunty and upbeat for a tale revolving around serial murders. For sex appeal, O'Brian gets to walk around shirtless while Eaton has two (count 'em, two) opportunities to strip down to her bra and panties, reminding us why her early retirement from the film industry deprived young men of countless unrealized fantasies. 

The Warner Archive region-free DVD is a crisp, clean transfer with only a few minor artifacts evident. There are some nice bonus features including a "Who-dunnit" gimmick that was obviously inserted into some prints of the film before the real murderer is revealed. The angle is worthy of an old William Castle horror flick as bombastic graphics and film clips are used to remind viewers of who was murdered and how they met their demise. The clip challenges them to take this 60 second slot to discuss with other audience members who they feel the culprit is. It's a hokey, but wonderful touch. There are also trailers for this movie and the Miss Marple films, as well. In all, an irresistible treat.  

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Although Great Britain had emerged as victors in WWII, the aftereffects of the war had an immediate and substantial impact on British society. In addition to massive damage to cities and infrastructure, the necessities of life were in short supply, resulting in an extended period of rationing. Although the population was eager to flock to cinemas as a distraction from the harshness of reality, the British film industry suffered as well. Consequently, the post-war years were largely characterized by low-budget movies often shot in haste with minimal production values. However, necessity proved to be the mother of invention, as some of these Poverty Row productions provided a fertile training ground for estimable talents both in front of and behind the cameras. Kino Lorber has released a much-welcomed second set of such films titled "British Noir II", containing five modestly-budgeted gems.

The films included in the set are:

"The Interrupted Journey" (1949) Directed by Daniel Birt. This micro-budget production opens with John North (Richard Todd) and his mistress Susan Wilding (Christine Nordern), who is also in a strained marriage, sneaking away to take a nighttime train in order to start a new life together. John's wife Valerie (Carol North) has been pushing him to give up his career as a failed writer and to take more conventional employment. Susan is married to Jerves Wilding (Alexander Gauge), an ogre of a man. On board the train, however, John begins to have second thoughts about deserting his loving and loyal wife. When Christine falls asleep, he pulls the train's emergency brake and jumps off near his house. Minutes after returning home, there is a terrible disaster when the train he had been aboard is hit by an oncoming locomotive on the same track. Blaming himself for the resulting carnage and many deaths, John has to keep a poker face even as he and Valerie help tend to victims of the crash. The next morning, an investigator for the railroad (Tom Walls) appears to inform John that he has been linked to Susan, who died in the crash. Shockingly, he informs John that she had been murdered by a gunshot prior to the accident and John's name was mentioned numerous times in her diary. Valerie put two and two together and confronts John about his affair. Meanwhile, he appears to be the prime suspect in Susan's murder. Despite the low production values, this intelligent mystery/thriller works well for most of its running time, thanks to the fine performances. Director Daniel Birt ratchets up the suspense but he is almost undone by a late, bizarre plot twist that is gimmicky and not very believable. When the story gets back on track, John confronts Susan's husband, who he suspects might be behind her murder. As played like a poor man's Sidney Greenstreet, Alexander Gauge overdoes the obnoxious, obese drunk to the point that you expect to reach over and put a lampshade on his head. Despite these flaws, the movie is impressive because of the more intriguing aspects of the script. 

"Time is My Enemy" (1954) Directed by Don Chaffey. Based on the play "Second Chance", the film opens with Barbara Everton (Renee Asherton) living a content life as wife and mother. She was widowed when her scheming, ne're do well husband Martin Radley (Dennis Price), was reported to be killed during the war, though his body was never found. She is now living a life of comfort with her successful husband John (Patrick Barr), as they both dote on their young son. Barbara's dream world turns into a nightmare with the shocking appearance at her house by Martin, who admits to having feigned his death and assumed a new identity. He's now the leader of a band of robbers who are wanted by the police for a bank job that has gone awry, resulting in the death of a security guard. Dennis demands that Barbara give him the sum of 4,000 pounds (ludicrous by today's standards, but a large amount in 1954) so that he can flee the country. If she refuses, he will make it known that he is still alive and that Barbara's marriage to John is invalid, thus making her a tainted woman and afflicting her young son as the product of an unmarried couple. The plot has plenty of surprising twists including another murder and Barbara's frantic attempts to raise the money without divulging the dilemma to her husband. Well-directed by Don Chaffey, who would go on to direct "Jason and the Argonauts", the movie is most compelling when Dennis Price is on screen. He's in the grand tradition of erudite villains who remain polite even as they are threatening someone's life.

"The Vicious Circle"  (aka "The Circle") (1957) Directed by Gerald Thomas. One of the best titles in this collection stars John Mills as Dr. Howard Latimer, a successful physician with an upscale lifestyle who is engaged to beautiful Laura James (Noelle Middleton). However, his life is disrupted when he becomes the key suspect in the murders of two women, both of whom he barely knew. The fine script by Francis Durbridge uses the tried-and-true Hitchcock formula of making the protagonist an innocent swept up into a fantastic and deadly plot that becomes increasingly bizarre as he tries to find out who is framing him and why. It all leads to any number of suspects, false identities and deadly situations. The budget for this film was adequate enough to allow for on location filming in London and director Gerald Thomas takes full advantage of shooting at such sites as the Thames, Cleopatra's Needle and the Embankment, thus giving the production a glossier look than many other "B" movies of the era. John Mills is in excellent form throughout and there are marvelous supporting performances by Ronald Culver as as the dapper, dry-witted police inspector who is closing in on our hero and Wilfred Hyde-White, in full lovable, tweedy character mode as a man of mystery. The film is thoroughly engaging throughout.

"Time Lock" with young Sean Connery (right) in an early role.

"Time Lock" (1957) Directed by Gerald Thomas. Another gem from director Gerald Thomas, this time collaborating with producer Peter Rogers, with whom he would go on to make the classic "Carry On" comedies. "Time Lock" is a tense, believable thriller based on a Canadian TV production written by Arthur Hailey ("Airport"). The film retains the Canadian setting, though it was shot entirely in the UK. Another microbudget production, "Timelock" is arguably the best title in this British film noir collection, even if this particular movie hardly merits being included in the noir genre.The plot is simple: a young couple and their six-year old son are inside a bank where the father works. The young boy wanders into the bank vault and is accidentally locked in. The vault cannot be opened until the timing mechanism is enacted automatically 48 hours from the time of incident. Knowing the boy will suffocate by then, the police, bank manager and a local welding company all work frantically to try to bore through the seemingly impregnable wall, with time slipping quickly away. Ultimately, only one man is deemed to be able to save the day: bank vault security expert Pete Dawson (Robert Beatty), but he is in a remote region on holiday and can't be reached. Director Thomas builds the suspense slowly until it reaches a full boil. The performances are all believable and the film's supporting cast includes young Sean Connery as a welder on the rescue team.

"Cosh Boy" (1953) Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Although virtually unknown in the United States where the film was ridiculously titled "The Slasher" (no one is slashed in the film), this early directorial effort by Lewis Gilbert has won considerable appreciation from UK film critics over the years. It's another claustrophobic production this time dealing with juvenile delinquency. In an outstanding performance, James Kenny plays Roy,  a 16 year-old punk who reigns as a gang leader in a working class neighborhood. He's being raised by a single mom, who he can manipulate at will and turn into an enabler for his abhorrent behavior. Only is grandmother is wise to the fact that behind the innocent demeanor is a sociopath. The film explores how Roy holds sway through bribes and intimidation to ensure that his mates remain his unquestioning servants. He puts on the persona of a gentleman to woo his classmate, Rene (Joan Collins) into dating him but she learns quickly enough that she will pay a terrible price for what she mistook to be a loving relationship. "Cosh Boy" is expertly made, never melodramatic and paints a picture of working class boys in the aftermath of WWII who grew up fatherless due to the war. Director Lewis Gilbert would go on to far more prestigious productions but the seeds were sown in modest films such as this- and his talent is quite evident. (Kino Lorber has released a stand along Blu-ray edition of the film under the title "The Slasher". Click here for review.)

The quality of the prints used for the transfers are all over the place. Most are satisfactory though "The Interrupted Journey" shows a good deal of wear. Of course these were films that were largely neglected over the decades and one must assume that Kino Lorber used the best elements available. The only bonus extras as some trailers. However, one would hope that a Blu-ray upgrade might be on the horizon. If so, it would be appropriate to have commentary tracks accompanying these films primarily to discuss the wealth of young talent that emerged in titles such as these.

"British Noir II" is highly recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Ennio Morricone, the Oscar-winning and prolific film composer, has died in Rome at age 91 from complications resulting from a fall that had left him with a fractured hip. In the course of his career, Morricone rose from composing music for little-seen Italian films to becoming an icon of the movie industry. He worked virtually non-stop, turning out a head-spinning number of film scores. However, it was his collaborations with director Sergio Leone that brought him to international attention. When United Artists head of production David V. Picker saw Leone's A Fistful of Dollars  and For a Few Dollars More, both of which had been sensations at the European boxoffice, he purchased the distribution rights for the movies for English language territories. He also agreed to finance the third and final film in the series, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The films proved to be sensations worldwide and audiences responded enthusiastically to Morricone's quirky scores. His music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly remains one of the most iconic main film themes ever composed, rivaled only, perhaps, by the James Bond Theme. Morricone's work was highly original, and for the Italian westerns often included full choirs singing intentionally unintelligible words. Ironically, in the United States, Morricone's main theme for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" became a major hit on the radio, but it was a cover version performed by Hugo Montenegro and his orchestra. Even after the success of the Leone Western trilogy, Morricone continued to compose scores for low-grade Italian films. One of the most amusing was "O.K. Connery", the title song for the 1967 James Bond spoof "Operation Kid Brother" which starred Sean Connery's brother Neil. The film (currently streaming on Amazon Prime) was dreadful but you might find yourself humming Morricone's catchy opening song. Morricone teamed again with Sergio Leone for another western masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in the West", as his star rose internationally and he became increasingly revered by film enthusiasts worldwide.

Over the course of decades, Morricone retained his status as a workaholic composer. In 2006, he received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievements. It was  presented to him, appropriately enough, by Clint Eastwood, star of the Leone "Dollars" trilogy. Morricone continued to compose non-film scores that were acclaimed in their own right and often performed by him in live concerts that were always hot ticket events. However, it was the movies that cemented his legendary status. He had been nominated for numerous Oscars before winning in for his score for Quentin Tarantino's 2015 film "The Hateful Eight". His influence continues today. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" theme is currently heard in a TV commercial, as is his magnificent composition from that film, "The Ecstasy of Gold", which is the signature theme for Modelo beer commercials.

For more about Morricone's career, click here to read obituary by Jon Burlingame of Variety.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The 1960 British crime film, "The Criminal", has been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Despite being burdened with a bland and unimaginative title (it was released as "The Concrete Jungle" in America), the production has many merits, not the least of which is an inspired cast of up-and-coming actors. Directed by Joseph Losey, the film opens in a dank prison where we find Johnny Bannion (Stanley Baker) about to be released on parole after doing a stretch in stir. Johnny is top dog in his cell block and his disarming personality is backed up by brute force when he is challenged. Upon arriving home, he finds his apartment filled with drunken men and willing women, all there to celebrate his return. Johnny doesn't waste any time planning his next caper: an easy robbery of a racetrack. He approaches his well-connected friend Mike Carter (Sam Wanamaker) to use his connections to get backing for the ambitious plan which will be carried out by Johnny and his loyal band of followers who hope to snare a jackpot of 40,000 pounds. He also has to contend with a messy romantic life. Maggie (Jill Bennett), the girlfriend he ditched, is determined to win him back but she is outmaneuvered by the seductive Suzanne (Margit Saad), a continental beauty who has already worked her way under the sheets. Johnny initially resists. He doesn't want any distractions from planning his new caper, but his resistance quickly fades. The robbery itself goes well but in the immediate aftermath there are betrayals and double-crosses as some of Johnny's partners attempt to relieve him of the proceeds. Johnny manages to bury the loot in an open field before he is re-arrested and sent back to the same prison. This time, he finds a hotter reception, with corrupt guards and a crime kingpin threatening his and Maggie's lives if he doesn't disclose where the money is hidden. Johnny makes a deal: in order to have his escaped arranged, he will dig up the money and hand the entire amount over to the kingpin's men, while at the same time taking revenge on those who double-crossed him. 

"The Criminal" is by no means a classic. There are some elements that don't quite jell, for example, the indication that Jill Bennett's character will play a vital role in the film, only to disappear early on. Additionally, the carrying out of the racetrack caper is done in a rather perfunctory manner with virtually no suspense. Also, Johnny makes a seemingly daft decision to bury his suitcase with the proceeds in a vast open field just off a roadway where any passersby could see him. He also never marks the precise spot where it is buried, thus making it rather difficult to ever locate it again. Nevertheless, the real value of the movie is in presenting a gritty, mature look at career criminals and the women who are attracted to them. The film offers some excellent performances led by Stanley Baker and Sam Wanamaker, but there are also impressive turns by Margit Saad's odd-but-fascinating "bad girl"; Patrick Magee as a corrupt prison guard and Gregoire Aslan as the crime lord who still rules his empire from prison. Other soon-to-be-familiar faces include Rupert Davies, Patrick Wymark, Nigel Green, Edward Judd, Murray Melvin, Laurence Naismith and Paul Stassino, who would go on to play an ill-fated Spectre agent in "Thunderball". Director Losey keeps the action moving at a brisk clip and is especially good at building tension between the disparate characters. The screenplay by Alun Owen (who would go on to win an Oscar for writing "A Hard Day's Night") rings true throughout with these British "goodfellas" socializing and backslapping with each other, even as they plan to deceive or kill their comrades.The jazz score by Johnny Dankworth and a sad song crooned throughout by Cleo Laine add immeasurably to the atmosphere. The film also presents a more mature depiction of sex than American movies of the era. Johnny's bedroom is adorned with a painting of a nude woman and his seduction by a naked Suzanne leaves little to the imagination, which was daring, given the restraints of censorship in British films during this period.

Kino Lorber offers an excellent Blu-ray edition that presents the film's B&W cinematography by Robert Krasker in a glorious manner. The release also features an excellent commentary track by film historian Kat Ellinger, who provides interesting background on Losey and Wannamaker, both of whom were Americans living in exile in England due to having been blacklisted. She also emphasizes that the film was made for today's equivalent of only $165,000, which was peanuts even in 1960, and how production designer Richard MacDonald worked wonders building the prison set and employing mirrors to make it look even larger. The release also includes the original trailer and trailers for similarly-themed KL titles.

"The Criminal" is another forgotten British gem that is now available in America. Recommended.

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BY DOUG OSWALD

William Holden commands a newly formed commando group in “The Devil’s Brigade,” available by Kino Lorber on Blu-ray. On the heels of the successful “The Dirty Dozen” from the previous year, “The Devil’s Brigade” is based on the 1966 book by Robert H. Adleman and Colonel George Walton. It chronicles the true events of the 1st Special Service, a joint American and Canadian commando unit assigned to the United States Fifth Army. Inspired by true events, the movie follows the standard tropes of this type of action adventure men- at -war movie. A rag-tag group of soldiers are brought together for a mission, they initially mistrust each other, get into a fight, train together, get into another fight this time working together against another group, graduate from their training and then deploy on their mission to fight the enemy (usually Germans, Italians or Japanese). I recall seeing this for the first time on American broadcast television with commercials advertising “The American misfits and the proud Canadians…” The commando group starts training at an American base where the two groups learn to work as a single unit. The action switches to German occupied Italy in the second half as they battle the Germans in close combat action sequences.

The movie features a “Hollywood Who’s Who” cast of leading men and character actors: William Holden as Lt. Colonel Robert T. Frederick, the commander of the unit. Cliff Robertson as the Canadian commander, Major Alan Crown. Vince Edwards as the American commander, Major Cliff Bricker. The supporting cast gets even better with the American misfits and proud Canadians portrayed by: Claude Akins as Private Rocky Rockman, Richard Jaeckel as Private Omar Creco, Andrew Prine as Private Theodore Ransom, Richard Dawson as Private Hugh MacDonald, Luke Askew as Private Hubert Hixon, Tom Troup as Private Al Manella, Jeremy Slate as Sergeant Pat O’Neill, Jack Watson as Corporal Peacock, Harry Carey Jr. as Captain Rose, Michael Rennie as Lt. General Mark Clark, Carroll O’Connor as Major General Maxwell Hunter, Dana Andrews as Brig. General Walter Naylor, Michael Rennie as Lt. General Mark Clark, stunt man and future director Hal Needham as a sergeant. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Karl-Otto Alberty as the German officer interrogating Claude Akins. Fans of retro classics will remember him as the German tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the German officer who captures Richard Attenborough in “The Great Escape” and orders, “Hands UP!”

Holden give a stoic, yet one-dimensional, performance as the commander. This is a year prior to his iconic performance as Pike in Sam Peckinpah’s classic “The Wild Bunch” in 1969. While “The Devil’s Brigade” is not as highly regarded as that movie, or even “The Dirty Dozen,” it stands on its own as a minor classic in the genre. Richard Jaeckel steals every scene he appears in. Cliff Robertson is terrific as the Canadian commander, just a year away from his Academy Award-winning performance in “Charly.”  Vince Edwards was transitioning back to the big screen following his run on television in “Ben Casey” which was a very popular series in the first half of the 1960s. However, the abundant cast makes it difficult for anyone to really stand out as the face behind this movie, as Lee Marvin did in “The Dirty Dozen.”

Director Andrew V. McLaglen and William Holden on location in Utah. (Cinema Retro archives.)

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, a veteran director of many popular movies, the film looks and sounds terrific and clocks in at 130 minutes. Released in May 1968 by United Artists, it was filmed in widescreen Panavision on location in Utah. The Utah location doubles for the training base during the first half of the film and some of the action when the brigade get to Italy in the second half. From the appearance of the buildings, it appears to have been filmed on an active military base in Utah. The buildings look live in and may have been left standing from the WWII period, which was not uncommon. Much of the second half was filmed on location in Italy in actual WWII battle locations, using much of the same armaments used in countless other WWII-themed movies filmed in the 60s and 70s. The production value in the location filming really elevates this movie. Look through the windows in the interior scenes during the first half of the movie and you’ll notice that McLaglen ensures there is stuff going on outside, making the location come alive.

Unfortunately, the movie was not a major hit during its initial release. Subsequent broadcast television, cable TV and home video releases have elevated its status over the years as a solid action adventure movie. The film is often compared to “The Dirty Dozen” which came out the previous year. There are definite similarities and this may have been part of the movie’s shortfall a the boxoffice. Also, the Vietnam War was raging and military movies were falling out of favor. It’s hard to know for certain, as movie audiences can be fickle. However, the “men on an impossible mission” genre remains popular to this day.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray comes with an audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin. The commentary is an entertaining trivia and  Mitchell and Rubin know their stuff when it comes to military movies. Rubin is an expert on the various armaments used in the film and has a knack for identifying Hollywood military weapon sound effects and the differences between the studio libraries. The audio commentary is compelling enough to justify watching the Blu-ray twice. The other extras are the trailer for this and other Kino Lorber Blu-ray titles.

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(For extensive coverage of "The Devil's Brigade", see Cinema Retro's Movie Classics Films of WWII special issue.)

“A LOVE STORY… NOT!”

By Raymond Benson

There’s no question that the 1966 film adaptation of Edward Albee’s 1962 Tony-winning play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is one of the most important and influential motion pictures of the 1960s. It not only showcased four superlative acting performances, a jaw-dropping impressive directorial debut (by Mike Nichols), brilliant black and white cinematography and editing, but it also changed the Hollywood movie industry.

By the mid-60s, the archaic Production Code, which had been in force since July 1934, was in its death throes. When Otto Preminger began releasing titles in the 1950s without the Production Code Seal of Approval (The Moon is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder), he proved to the powers-that-be that the Code was not infallible. Then along came such fare as Psycho, Lolita, and The Pawnbroker in the early 60s, and it was clear that the American public wanted to see more “adult” pictures. The times-they-were-a-changing. By 1966, the Code was all but demolished, and Jack Valenti was appointed the head of the MPAA. As Valenti states in one of the documentary supplements on the Warner Archive Blu-ray release of Virginia Woolf, he had already begun thinking about implementing the movie ratings system (which would launch in late 1968) because he, too, felt that America could handle subjects for mature audiences.

Albee’s Broadway play was shocking for its language—curse words galore—and its frank sexual implications. Its portrayal of a failed marriage perhaps mirrored many such unions across middle-class USA, and this alone made the material controversial. Jack Warner, in a canny move, must have seen the way of the future and bought the film rights early on. It was another four years before the picture was made, but he allowed it to be adapted faithfully, with most of the dialogue intact, and with top-notch talent involved in every aspect of the production.

The great Ernest Lehman was hired to adapt the play, but he made it a condition of his employment that he also be made producer. Warner agreed. Lehman wanted Elizabeth Taylor to play Martha, and this casting choice raised eyebrows. Taylor was 20 years too young and had so far not shown anything near the dramatic chops required to play the demanding role. Taylor, in turn, insisted that her husband at the time, Richard Burton, portray George. The two supporting roles of Nick and Honey were filled out by George Segal and Sandy Dennis (her second film appearance), and this quartet has proven to be one of the most successful casting coups in cinema history.

George and Martha are in their fifties—he an associate professor at a New England college and she the daughter of the college president. Perhaps their marriage was one of convenience and career-making years earlier, but now it is bitter, cruel, and spiteful. One late night after a faculty party, they return home, drunk, and Martha reveals she has invited another couple, Nick and Honey—he a young and handsome professor at the college and she an introverted housewife—to stop by for more drinks. Once the quartet is together, the games begin. These are psychological battles of emotional will which begin between George and Martha, but soon envelope Nick and Honey. Secrets emerge. Lives are shattered. The dark underbelly of love and marriage is upended and revealed for all to see.

It doesn’t sound like a good time at the movies, does it? Forget it! This is riveting stuff. The acting alone is so astonishingly good that you will hang on to every line of dialogue. Haskell Wexler’s Oscar-winning black and white cinematography (the last year this category was utilized) brings the audience up close and personal in such a way that the film version may very well be more effective than the stage play. Virginia Woolf ended up being nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and in every category for which it was eligible, including Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, and all four actors received nods in their respective slots. Taylor and Dennis won in their categories (Actress and Supporting Actress). The crime, however, is that Richard Burton did not win. While Paul Scofield was brilliant in A Man for All Seasons, Burton’s performance is generally considered by many critics to be the actor’s career-best (all of the talking heads in the supplemental documentaries are of this opinion, including Albee, critic Richard Schickel, and Wexler.)

The Warner Archive Blu-ray is a port-over from the “Special Edition” 2-disk anniversary DVD that came out four years ago. The high definition remastering looks gorgeous, and it comes with two audio commentaries: one with DP Wexler, and the other with Nichols and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. The extensive supplements (not in high definition) include an hour long TV special from 1975 about Elizabeth Taylor’s career; a vintage interview with Nichols; Sandy Dennis’ screen tests; two featurettes on the making of the film and its impact on the industry; and the theatrical trailer.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a powerful punch to the gut. It may be a rough ride, but it’s a thoroughly engrossing one, and you’ll come out on the other side enlightened. Highly recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

You can't judge a book by its cover and you can't judge a movie by its poster. Case in point: "Blood on the Moon", a 1948 western that was marketed with a poster depicting star Robert Mitchum in a ten-gallon hat along with an image of Barbara Bel Geddes wielding a rifle and a tag line that read "A Woman's Bullet Kills as Quick as a Man's!" At first glance, one would be forgiven for assuming the movie was yet another of the "Poverty Row" one-day wonders that flooded theaters in the 1930s. Indeed, the image of Mitchum has him somewhat resembling good ol' Hopalong Cassidy. However, looks can be deceiving and "Blood on the Moon" is actually a superior western, thanks in part to its director, Robert Wise, who had recently transcended from being a highly-acclaimed film editor to the director's chair.

"Blood on the Moon" is an adaptation of a serialized story by Luke Short that ran in the Saturday Evening Post. Robert Mitchum is cast as Jim Garry, a mysterious drifter who is invited to meet with an old friend, Tate Riling (Robert Preston). Riling informs Tate that he needs his abilities with a gun to aid him in a scheme. He has partnered with a corrupt local federal agent, Jake Pindalest (Frank Faylen)  who oversees an Indian reservation to ensure they can get the impressive cattle herd of rancher John Lufton (Tom Tully) at cut-rate prices. This they contrive to accomplish by having Pindalest terminate the long-standing contract by which Lufton sells his beef to the U.S. government, which in turn, uses the meat to feed the Native American population on the reservation. A side-swindle is that Riling wants to intimidate farmers to vacate land that they and Lufton occupy so that he can own the enormous acreage. Garry is not your typical white-hat cowboy hero, despite the fact that he favors wearing one. At first he accepts coming in as a partner on the scam and using his skills with a gun to drive off the farmers. However, when he witnesses the brutality Riling is using to further his goals, he changes his mind and ends up siding with Lufton. He's also come to the realization that Riling has been wooing one of Lufton's daughters, Carol (Phyllis Thaxter) as a way to wear down Lufton's resistance. Garry thinks this is particularly egregious. He also has a tense introduction to Lufton's other daughter, Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes), who is a sharp-shooting tom girl who tries to intimidate him by showing off her skills with a gun. As in all films in which the leading male and female characters start off with an acrimonious relationship, they ultimately fall in love. Garry's switching to the other side causes a rift with Riling and leads to a sensational knock-down, drag-out fight between that is a highlight of the film. (Mitchum and Preston choreographed the scene themselves and performed most of their own stunts.) Ultimately, the two old friends must square off in a final shootout that finds Garry, Amy and a local farmer, Kris (Walter Brennan), trapped in a cabin and surrounded by Lufton and his goons during an extended shoot-out that allows Amy to demonstrate her courage and skills with a rifle.

"Blood on the Moon" is a conventional western in some ways but what allows it to rise above the pack is the direction of Robert Wise, who gives the production a moody, film noir-like atmosphere, which is unusual for this genre. The film benefits from the creative B&W cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca, who makes nondescript shots of Garry riding in the moonlight look like frame-by-frame works of art. Mitchum is well cast as the protagonist, a complex man who is a bit of a scoundrel. Preston makes an excellent villain and Bel Geddes and Thaxter thrive in unusual roles for women in this era of filmmaking in that they are more than window dressing and are quite capable of humiliating the male characters. Walter Brennan also delivers a fine performance, cast in a role of a tragic farmer that is devoid of his usual amusing mannerisms. 

The Warner Archive region-free Blu-ray presents an excellent transfer and the original trailer. Recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Carl Reiner has passed away at age 98. The New York native who served in WWII and then went on to become a comedy icon, had a varied career and many achievements that were often behind the cameras. He gained fame as a member of Sid Caesar's ensemble on his legendary 1950s TV series "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour". Reiner was usually happy to play the straight man in skits that help revolutionize the world of comedy. With his good friend Mel Brooks, who wrote for Caesar's shows, he created the concept of the 2,000 Year-Old Man, which found Reiner interviewing the elderly Jewish guy, played by Brooks. The concept started informally when the duo would improvise acts at social gatherings, but when they finally released the 2,000 Year-Old Man as a comedy album, it sold over a million copies and institutionalized Jewish humor for a generation of American comedians. In the 1960s, Reiner turned the concept for a failed TV sitcom in which he starred into a major hit as "The Dick Van Dyke Show". The series made Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore beloved TV icons. The show ran from 1961 to 1966 and was still a top-ratings earner when Van Dyke chose to quit in order to pursue a career in feature films.

Reiner began to find success as a movie director, a career he began in 1967 with his semi-autobiographical film "Enter Laughing". His 1969 film "The Comic" about the rise and fall of an obnoxious silent screen icon starred Dick Van Dyke. The ambitious film has built a cult following but was a flop upon its release because of its downbeat premise. His 1970 comedy "Where's Poppa?" was controversial because of its cynical content but  "Oh, God!" starring George Burns was a major hit, as was "The Jerk", a concept of producer David V. Picker's that launched Steve Martin's career as a leading man.

Reiner had a rare leading man role in a feature film with the smash hit "The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!" in 1966 but, in general, he was satisfied playing supporting roles in movies and TV programs. He played key roles in the "Oceans Eleven" films starring George Clooney, which were derived from the original 1960 Rat Pack classic.

Reiner, the father of acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner, was married for 65 years to his wife Estelle Lebost, who passed away in 2008. He remained close friends with fellow comedy icons Mel Brooks and Norman Lear.

CLICK HERE TO READ WASHINGTON POST OBITUARY

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Way back in the 1970s while in college, I took a course dedicated to classic films. The teacher was Herbert J. Leder, an affable, if eccentric, professor who also had the distinction of having directed some films for major studios. They were all "B" movies, but they did get wide release. One of them was titled "The Frozen Dead", a 1967 Hammer horror wanna be with Dana Andrews as a mad Nazi doctor who plans to use cloning to revive the Third Reich in modern day England. As a joke, Herb showed the film one day in his "Classics of the Cinema" class. It was mildly diverting fare, no better or worse than much of what Hammer itself was releasing during this time period. A couple of years later, Fox released "The Boys From Brazil", a major adaptation of Ira Levin's bestselling thriller. The plot centered on a mad Nazi doctor who was using cloning to revive the Third Reich in modern society. I was rather shocked at the similarity of the story lines and discussed it with Herb Leder, who was dismissive of pursuing any possibility that Levin's novel might have been influenced by his "B" movie. Today, of course, the mindset would probably be different and a lawsuit, frivolous or not, would probably have been brought against all parties concerned with "The Boys From Brazil". The film version of Levin's novel was greeted with mixed reviews. I recall arguing the movie's merits (or lack thereof) with my mentor, Playboy film critic Bruce Williamson. I found the movie to be highly enjoyable and I was particularly impressed by Gregory Peck's refreshing change of pace, playing an outright villain, the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Williamson said he felt that Peck reminded him of a drunk at a party who puts a lampshade on his head in an attempt to bring attention to himself. Nevertheless, upon seeing the film again through the Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory, my admiration for the movie remains undiminished.  

The film begins with a series of suspenseful sequences in which a determined young American, Barry Kohler, (Steve Guttenberg) in South America doggedly and surreptitiously tracks and photographs the activities of suspected former Nazis.He becomes increasingly audacious and manages to bug one of their meetings. He is shocked to learn that they have launched a plan to revive the Third Reich through the efforts of the world's most wanted man, the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who oversaw barbaric "medical experiments" at Auschwitz. Kohler makes contact with the legendary Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), who runs a drastically underfunded operation with his sister (Lili Palmer) that attempts to bring war criminals to justice. Lieberman is sarcastic to the young man and dismisses his information- until he suspects that he has been murdered. Lieberman then launches his own investigation, traveling internationally to interview parties who might shed light on the conspiracy. He finds that the ex-Nazis have ordered the murder of 94 civil servants around the globe who are all in their mid-60s. As the investigation continues, he suspects that Mengele has cloned DNA from Adolf Hitler and that there are now teenage boys coming of age as sons of the men who have been marked for murder. Mengele needs to replicate the exact occurrences in the life of Hitler, including the death of his father when he was a teenager. By doing so, he hopes that at least one of the 94 boys will become a leader for the revived Reich.

The premise of the plot is an unlikely one to involve the talents of Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Mason, who plays another ex-Nazi who pulls the plug on Mengele's plans, thus forcing the arch villain to act independently to see his scheme through to fruition.  Indeed, there are times the film seems like a dusted off vehicle for old time character actor George Zucco, who reveled in playing mad doctors. However, under the direction of Franklin J. Schaffner, the pace is brisk, the story involving and the performances are compelling. Add to all this a superb musical score by Jerry Goldsmith and it's hard to resist the movie, despite its abundance of guilty pleasures. The finale is a bizarre doozy in which  Mengele and Lieberman (who is obviously supposed to be real life Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal) end up in a wrestling match in the presence of bloodthirsty hounds! Olivier overdoes the feeble old Jewish guy routine (a performance he would recreate practically verbatim as Neil Diamond's cantor father in "The Jazz Singer" a couple of years later). Nevertheless, he's fun to watch. An irony is that, although Gregory Peck gives the superior performance, it was Olivier who got a Best Actor nomination. Adding to the irony, Olivier had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor two years before for playing a thinly-veiled Mengele in "Marathon Man". There are plenty of fine supporting performances including Anne Meara in a rare dramatic role, Bond baddie Walter Gotell, John Dehner, Rosemary Harris, Uta Hagen, Denholm Elliott, Bruno Ganz and Linda Hayden. Young Jeremy Black is especially creepy as the teenage boy who doesn't realize he is carrying Hitler's DNA. 

The Shout! Factory Blu-ray does justice to this opulent production that is dripping in atmosphere. An original trailer is also included.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

In “My Gun Is Quick” (1957), Mickey Spillane’s famous private detective Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) meets a sad young hooker named “Red” (Patricia Donahue) in a greasy spoon and rescues her from a goon trying to put the muscle on her. Hammer slaps him around and kicks him out the door and gives her bus fare plus change to go back home and start over. He’s a hardnose but he’s got a tender spot somewhere under that tough exterior. He writes down his name and number on a slip of paper and tell her to call him to let him know she made it okay. Before they part he notices a very ornate ring on the third finger of her right hand. Hammer has been up for 52 hours and just wants to go home and get some sleep, but police detective Pat Chambers’ (Booth Colman) sends a patrolman to bring him downtown. The sad young hooker was found dead—broken neck from a hit and run “accident”—with Hammer’s name in her purse.

Hammer explodes in anger. “She was a nice kid,” he tells Chambers, who pours out the contents of the girl’s purse on his desk. “Where’s the ring?” Hammer asks. He describes it to Chambers, the silver letter “V” in a black antique setting. Chambers pulls a file out of a drawer and shows him pictures of some jewelry. “It’s the Venacci Collection,” Chambers says. The jewelry was stolen in Italy during the war by a Colonel Holloway, who was caught and served 10 years in prison. The jewels were never found, but Holloway was just released. Hammer says he doesn’t give a damn about the jewels, he just wants to find the girl’s killer. He goes back to the diner and slaps around the ex-con who works behind the counter until he coughs up a lead on the girl. He tells Mike to check out the Blue Bell Strip Club and ask for Maria (Gina Core), one of the dancers there. She and Red were pals.

What follows next is a very long stretch of film showing Hammer tailing a goon from LA to Long Beach. You might find such a sequence kind of dull, despite the jazzy music on the soundtrack. But I found it fascinating. Seeing the freeway as it was in 1957, with that Fairlane 500 cruising down the highway with the oil derricks on the left side of the road and the beach rolling in on the right. Seeing the cars moving so freely, with lots of space for everybody, the houses along the way with plenty of room between them, well, it was fascinating. It gave me a nostalgic feeling, a memory of a time when the air was still clean and there weren’t any killer viruses taking people out by the thousands. I almost hoped the ride wouldn’t end. But it does end- albeit, not before Hammer gets involved with another sensuous dame, Nancy Williams (Whitney Blake) and some exotic heavies. I won’t reveal any more of the plot. It doesn’t matter anyway. Plots are not what private eye stories are all about. They’re about the confrontations between one incorruptible man and a world of complicity.

The actors do a fairly good job in their roles. Bray fills up the scenery adequately with his size and broad shoulders, although there isn’t much fire in his performance. Mike Hammer in the novels is a primal force. He galvanizes the books with his anger and hatred for punks, rats, and commies. Bray and Whitney Blake (best remembered for playing the Mom on the “Hazel” TV series), just seem to coast through the film on roller skates. Still there’s enough tension in the plot to hold your interest and co-directors Victor Saville as Phil Victor) and George White make good use of the LA locales. Harry Newman’s noir photography makes the movie visually interesting, especially the climax filmed at night on the docks at Long Beach.

Kino Lorber has done a nice job transferring “My Gun Is Quick” to Blu-ray in a brand new 2K transfer with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Picture and mono sound are excellent. One of the surprising treats is checking out the jazz background score provided by Marlin Skiles, which features a combo of unnamed west coast players. They do a little tune called “The Blue Bells,” which is played during Gina Core’s strip number and reprised in several other scenes. It’s a dumb little tune, but once you hear it, you can’t get it out of your head. Kino has included the trailer for “My Gun Is Quick” on the disc. It shows a six-foot model of the paperback version of the book that opens, then has Whitney, Gina, and a couple of the other good-looking babes from the movie come crashing out through the pages. There are a half-dozen trailers for other crime films in KL’s vaults as well.

To sum it up “My Gun Is Quick” is not the best Mike Hammer film ever made (that would obviously be Robert Aldrich’s “Kiss Me Deadly”) but it’s cool watching Hammer driving that Fairlane on the mean streets of LA. Recommended.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "Tragon of Ramura". Click here to order from Amazon.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Virgil Films concerning the outstanding documentary 40 YEARS OF ROCKY: THE BIRTH OF A CLASSIC

From Virgil Films & Entertainment comes Director Derek Wayne Johnson’s new documentary film 40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic. The film – narrated by ‘Rocky’ star and creator Sylvester Stallone, who shares insights from his battle to get the story of a down-on-his-luck boxer greenlit and onto the big screen – will premiere on digital HD June 9^th.

In 1976, a low budget movie written by an unknown actor was released, inspiring audiences around the world to go the distance. Rocky became the ultimate underdog film. Over forty years later, Sylvester Stallone recounts the making of the beloved classic through rare home movies provided by Director John G. Avildsen and Production Manager Lloyd Kaufman.

Sylvester Stallone pitched the idea of this film to director Derek Wayne Johnson and producer Chris May after a private screening of their documentary ‘John G. Avildsen: King of the Underdogs,’ in which Stallone is also featured. This new documentary features behind-the-scenes footage that Oscar-winning director John G. Avildsen shot as well as footage never-before-seen found in ‘Rocky’ Production Manager and Troma Entertainment President Lloyd Kaufman’s basement nearly forty years after it was filmed.

(The film is now available for streaming. Click here to access streaming options.)

About Virgil Films – Virgil Films & Entertainment is an independent distribution company that was founded in 2003 by Joe Amodei to acquire, market and distribute feature films and episodic television programming into the digital, TV and DVD/Blu-ray market on a worldwide basis. Over the years the company has enjoyed relationships with Sundance Channel Home Entertainment, National Geographic Cinema Ventures, Pure Flix Entertainment, Sight & Sound Theatres, Network Entertainment, PCH Films, Warrior Poets and other high-profile entertainment companies. Releases from Virgil Films include the Oscar-nominated documentary Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me and the critically acclaimed, timeless, best-selling Forks Over Knives. They have also released the award-winning documentary Miss Representation; the critically acclaimed, timeless, best-selling Forks Over Knives; and the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo,its sequel Korengal, I Am Chris Farley and the recent We Are Columbine. Follow them on twitter: @virgilfilms www.VirgilFilms.com

BY FRED BLOSSER

Nowadays, for those of us in comfortable circumstances, traveling to remote, exotic shores is no big deal. All you need are a credit card and a reservation at Sandals. If you’re especially eager to shed the daily grind, you’ll even take the chance of sitting in planes and terminals for hours among scores of strangers, any of whom may be carrying the COVID-19 virus. (Rest assured, they’ll be equally wary of you.) If you prefer to ride out the pandemic, Tahiti and Waikiki will still be waiting. In the 1930s and early ‘40s, such luxury was beyond the reach of the average wage-earner. They had to make do with a night at the local movie house, where they could vicariously spend time in Polynesia -- or at least Hollywood’s version, sometimes in Technicolor -- for the price of admission. Usually, these films were built around stories on the pulp-fiction level of beautiful Island princesses in sarongs, tribal revolts, volcanic eruptions, and seafaring heroes, but a few sneaked in more subversive, troubling themes of tropical paradises despoiled by western greed and disease. One such was Paramount Pictures‘ 1937 production, “Ebb Tide,” based on a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson, Lloyd Osborne. Never released by Paramount on home video, “Ebb Tide” used to appear occasionally on local TV stations before Late Shows were edged out by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, and their successors, but it’s been largely missing in action in the decades since then. Most people now will identify “Ebb Tide,” if at all, with the dramatic ballad of the same name, best-remembered from the 1965 recording by the Righteous Brothers. Ironically, the song was written in 1953 and has nothing to do with the movie.

In the Paramount film, Herrick (Ray Milland), Therbecke (Oscar Homolka), and Huish (Barry Fitzgerald) are three jailbirds in 1890s Tahiti. Herrick is cultured but chronically down on his luck, Therbecke a disgraced ship’s captain, and Huish a jovial but devious alcoholic. Stevenson modeled the characters on real-life drifters and outcasts whom he encountered in the Pacific islands in the final, far-traveled years of his life. The trio’s aimless existence is disrupted when a schooner comes into port from San Francisco, bound for Australia with a cargo of champagne. The captain and the first mate have died from smallpox, leaving the ship stranded. The authorities try to recruit a captain to deliver the vessel to its ultimate destination, but fearing that the ship remains infected, the reputable skippers in town decline to sign on. As a last resort, Therbecke is offered the job and accepts, appointing Herrick as first mate and Huish as ship’s steward. Neither man has any maritime experience, but that doesn’t matter to Therbecke, who doesn’t intend to complete the assignment anyway. Given an unexpected opportunity to profit from others’ misfortune, he plans to divert the ship to Peru, sell its cargo, and pocket the money.

Once at sea, he makes two unwelcome discoveries. The first is the late captain’s daughter, Faith (Francis Farmer), who comes out of hiding and insists that Herbecke fulfill her late father’s obligation. The second discovery is that the cargo is much less valuable than it appeared to be. Most of the champagne bottles are filled with water. The late captain, as unscrupulous as Herbecke, had secretly planned to sink the schooner at sea and collect the insurance on the invoiced cases of “champagne.” After a storm blows the ship off course, the three partners come across an island controlled by an American expatriate, Attwater (Lloyd Nolan), who lives in an elegant bungalow. In short course, they discover that Attwater is a soft-spoken but trigger-happy religious zealot who used slave labor to illegally harvest pearls, which now fill his storehouse. The theme of epidemic disease reenters, one with its own resonance today. Smallpox has swept through the island and most of the native laborers have died, leaving only Attwater and three household servants. “That’s why the house is empty and the graveyard is full,” he says matter-of-factly. Herrick’s conscience reawakens, and he wants to get Faith off the island and home to safety. Herbecke and Huish meanwhile conspire to dispose of Attwater and steal his pearls. Homolka, Nolan, and especially Fitzgerald are excellent in dark roles that cast all three veteran actors against type.

The screenplay makes one concession to formula by adding a new, pivotal character to Stevenson’s original, all-male story, Francis Farmer’s Faith. Faith provides a conventional love interest (and eventually, redemption) for Ray Milland’s Herrick. Otherwise, the script follows the bleak novel almost scene for scene and line for line. This alone should encourage fans of classic fiction and literate scripts to give “Ebb Tide” a respectful look, not to mention film noir enthusiasts who will embrace the movie’s morally bankrupt characters, inescapable reversals of fortune, and pervasive deceptions and betrayals. Unfortunately, mainstream critics and prospective audiences are unlikely to check out the film since a good, officially authorized edition doesn’t exist on home video, Netflix, or Amazon. The chances of Paramount stepping up seem remote to none, given the studio’s apparent indifference to releasing or licensing the bulk of its older catalog on DVD and Blu-ray. For that matter, has the studio even preserved the needed elements from which a hi-def print could be digitized, restoring the “breath-taking Technicolor” promised in Paramount’s 1937 ads and press book? In the meantime, for the curious, copies are available on the collector’s market and You Tube.

Apparently several generations removed from the original prints, they’re watchable but less than optimal. But they’re what we have. The YouTube print is posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk6icHLkzl0.

(Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)

The Mary Millington Movie Collection Limited Edition Blu-Ray Box-Set  (UK, Region 2 release).

An interview with historian and documentary filmmaker Simon Sheridan

BY ADRIAN SMITH

In June 2020 Screenbound are releasing a limited edition Blu-ray box set in the U.K. dedicated to the films of one of Britain’s most celebrated and tragic erotic film stars, Mary Millington. Historian Simon Sheridan has spent years researching her life (his book Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington was published in 1999) and has overseen this new collection.

Cinema Retro: How did you begin this lifelong quest to tell Mary Millington’s story? When did you first discover her?

Simon Sheridan: I’m not sure I can tell you this story! I was a curious schoolboy. I happened upon some porn mags when I was a young boy. It wasn’t in a bush, but someone I knew had these porn mags. I’m not going to reveal who! She was in copies of Playbirds and Whitehouse throughout the 1980s so I saw this beautiful woman, but they were talking about her in the past tense, and the articles next to these very explicit photographs said she had died at the age of 33. These kind of things just stayed with me throughout my life, that this woman who posed in the post explicit manner and was prepared to pretty much do anything on camera had died so young. She has always fascinated me, and the more I research and learn about her life, I just think, “What a great human being she was.” She really fought for people’s rights to enjoy pornography. People ask me what Mary was like: she was this 4’11" ex-veterinary nurse from Surrey who took on the force of the Establishment at a time when society was not mature enough to believe that people could be happy and work in the sex industry. What a brave woman she was. She was a pioneer, there was nobody like her at the time. When I went to university I wrote my dissertation on her, and then I wrote my book, then I worked on her film releases, then made my movie, and now this box set. So this was how I came upon Mary, so to speak.

CR: Could you tell us more about what the boxed set features? Is it every film she ever appeared in?

SS: It is all the films she made for publisher David Sullivan. When Come Play with Me came out in April 1977 it was promoted as Mary Millington’s first film, but of course it wasn’t her first. She had made quite a few before she went on to become a big star through Come Play with Me (1977). The other films are The Playbirds (1978), Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair (1979), Queen of the Blues (1979), Mary Millington’s True Blue Confessions (1980) and Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza (1981), along with my feature documentary Respectable: The Mary Millington Story (2015).

CR: True Blue Confessions is such an interesting and unusual film.

SS: I’ve known David Sullivan for over twenty years, and when I first met him one of the films I really wanted to talk about was True Blue Confessions. I was astonished when I first saw it. It’s so visceral. It’s so brutal. In 1980 you didn’t really know what went on in celebrities’ lives. When Mary died it was in the newspapers, but all the stuff about drugs and prostitution wasn’t really reported, but it’s all in True Blue Confessions. It’s a very honest look at her life, quite unlike anything else that had been made in this country, or anything to do with the porn world. It probably shocked a lot of people, but it was a huge hit. It played for weeks and weeks. People were fascinated to see what the truth was behind Mary, although of course most of that film isn’t true! There’s a lot of elaboration, but at the heart of it there is some truth to her story. It’s always fascinated me. I’ve probably watched that one more than any of her other films. David will argue until the end of time that that was not an exploitation film. It was not there to make money. When Mary died it was completely sudden, the general public had no idea this was going to happen. She was the sex superstar who was going to go on and on. David was inundated with tens of thousands of letters. She was like the pornographic Princess Diana. Fans were just bereft and couldn’t believe it, so he brought out these tribute magazines which had her autobiography in it. She wrote an autobiography in 1978 that is half true, half faked, which was written with her probation officer, and those tribute magazines sold by the shedload. I think David did about thirteen or fourteen different ones. They kept being reprinted, so David felt compelled to also do something for the cinema about her life. He always says he was trying to make Mary more famous in death than when she was alive.

CR: How has it been possible for these films to be restored? Where were the original elements all these years?

SS: I had been nagging David for ages about where the original film negatives and reels were, and he had a warehouse in Barking, where he stored all the products for his U.K. sex shops. I went there with him and it was filled with racks of magazines and boxes of sex toys. There in the corner of this warehouse were these wooden pallets piled high with these huge tin reels with scrappy labels. They were rusting on these pallets. It was very exciting for me to see them. I said he should have them stored somewhere better, instead of in the corner of a warehouse full of rubber sex toys. These were worth preserving. He said, “Are they really, Simon?” Yes they are! A deal was done with the BFI and they took them and stored them in their archive in Berkhamsted, where they were frozen at a certain temperature. They’ve been there for about ten years. They were used to make DVDs, and it’s now taken a long time to make the Blu-rays. Initially, I was told British sex films would not sell on Blu-ray, but then a couple of years ago Screenbound told me they wanted to bring the Mary Millington films out on Blu-ray. I was beside myself with joy! This was the dream project. We got them restored in London by Final Frame. Come Play with Me and The Playbirds were not shot on the best film stock. These were David’s first films, and they were using little scraps of films, offcuts, to shoot these things. The later films were shot on much better quality film. But I’ve seen them now and they do look really good.

“THE FINE ART OF SEDUCTION?”

By Raymond Benson

The winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival was a thoroughly “mod,” Swinging London-set comedy directed by rising star filmmaker Richard Lester, who was just coming off the huge success of helming the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night.

The Knack is directed in the same style as Hard Day’s, which borrowed heavily from the signature traits of the French New Wave—radical editing and jump cuts, handheld camerawork, on the street cinema verité, breaking the fourth wall, intentionally arty shots, and a relatively low budget… plus Lester’s trademark absurdist humor, surrealism, and a wacky British sensibility that he had exhibited ever since working with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan on such fare as The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film (1959).

Adapted by Charles Wood from a stage play by Ann Jellicoe, The Knack is a loosely-constructed stream of consciousness tale of Colin (Michael Crawford), a shy young man who is inexperienced with women and greatly desires “the knack” of seducing them the way his friend Tolen (Ray Brooks) can. Tolen is a handsome drummer and seems to have women (who all look like the type of model in the Twiggy years—mid-60s hip, mod, sexy) all around him. He’s a bit of a cad, though, and not a particularly nice guy. Colin and Tolen live with Tom (Donal Donnelly) in a London flat that serves as a grand central station for all these women. Meanwhile, Nancy (Rita Tushingham), an innocent newcomer to London, meets the trio. Colin sets his sights on her, but Tolen muscles in and attempts to exercise his alpha male prowess. What happens next is a cockeyed treatise on relationships in the context of this swinging lifestyle, all examined through the gaze of an op art lens. There is a combination of slapstick, pratfalls, wordplay, titillation, and, toward the end, a disturbing sequence (for today, that is) in which Nancy falsely—but symbolically—accuses Tolen of rape.

It’s a strange piece of work, something that is decidedly dated, but it’s important to judge cinema within the context of when it was released. At the time, The Knack was edgy, out of the box moviemaking. One will have to decide whether it works for today’s audience or not.

The one thing that does work—spectacularly—is John Barry’s jazzy score, one of his landmark 1960s efforts. There are a few dreamy pieces with strings and vibraphone that foreshadow his underwater scenes music in Thunderball, which was due to be released at the end of ’65.

And look for the faces of Charlotte Rampling, Jacqueline Bisset, and Jane Birkin among the extras of beautiful “birds,” as the English lads called them back in the day.

Kino Lorber’s new high definition restoration looks and sounds fine in all its widescreen, black and white glory (and this is a picture that is filmed in stark contrasting black and white!). Supplements include two “Trailers from Hell”—one on the film with Allan Arkush, and one on Lester’s 1969 picture, The Bed Sitting Room analyzed by fellow director John Landis, plus theatrical trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases.

The Knack…and How to Get It is a relic of its time, a snapshot of a pop culture in flux during a significant period of innovation and experimentation.

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BY HANK REINEKE

Without question, this brand new Blu-ray edition of director Michael Curtiz’s The Mystery of the Wax Museum will be heralded as one of the Crown Jewels of Warner Bros. Archive Collection series. This creaky but historically significant 1933 classic – once believed to be a “lost film” – has been painstakingly restored to its original two-color Technicolor glory. Such restoration was made possible through the financial resources of the George Lucas Family Foundation and the combined technical and artistic interventions of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Warner Bros. entertainment.

The Mystery of the Wax Museum was not the studio’s first foray into what is now revered as the Golden Age of horror films. One year earlier, Warner Bros. had released Dr. X (1932), another atmospheric horror vehicle co-starring the villainous Lionel Atwill and 1930’s Scream Queen Fay Wray. Like its predecessor, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was green-lit by studio brass to syphon off at least some of the box-office energy of several contemporary blockbusters: Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein and Paramount’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (all three having been released in 1931). Indeed, Glenda Farrell’s character in Wax Museum makes a no-so-oblique comparative reference to the competition when she describes the mysterious caped and scarred figure in Wax Museum as a fiend that makes “Frankenstein look like a lily.” It was, perhaps, the first popular culture reference to confuse the monster with the monster’s maker.

For several decades the original Curtiz cut of The Mystery of the Wax Museum, the first horror film to feature the revolutionary, but only briefly in vogue, two-color Technicolor treatment, was believed lost. In his authoritative tome “Classics of the Horror Film” (Citadel Press, 1974), cinema historian William K. Everson suggested that a damaged and deteriorating print of Wax Museum was still making the rounds of cinemas in war-torn London of the 1940s. In any event, with the exception of a few surviving dupey and tattered black and white television prints, the original film as envisioned by Curtiz was considered lost.

The situation may have remained that way had it not been for the success of the studio’s celebrated 3D remake of the original, House of Wax. This more familiar version, directed by Andre DeToth and famously featuring Vincent Price as the mad and scarred wax-figure artisan, would prove to be one of the biggest blockbuster scores of 1953. The film’s popularity would summarily – at least among horror aficionados and film historians – reignite interest in the 1933 version. Indeed, as in the case of many “lost” films, the reputation of the original – stoked by the hazy memories of those who had actually had the opportunity to see the film two decades earlier – was, perhaps, slightly over-praised and over-cherished.

It hardly mattered as the original Curtiz version would remain a stubbornly elusive treasure. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that a serviceable, though far from perfect, copy of a nitrate original – apparently cobbled together from several different prints – was found in the collection of studio boss Jack Warner’s personal library. It’s from this print that the reconstruction team could use as their primary source in the film’s restoration. A secondary source was an inferior and later surfacing French work print that helped fill-in the gaps where frames or lines of dialogue from the Warner print were determined to be missing or damaged beyond repair.

“LONESOME COWBOY”

By Raymond Benson

The late actor Kirk Douglas has often cited that one of his favorite pictures he ever made was Lonely are the Brave, a “western” set in its contemporary year of release (1962).

Based on Edward Abbey’s 1956 novel, The Brave Cowboy, the picture was shot on location in New Mexico and directed by David Miller, a craftsman who worked with a variety of genres and subjects (he gave us the 1952 film noir Sudden Fear and the 1941 Billy the Kid). Most significantly, the screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas “rescued” from blacklist hell two years earlier by giving the writer screen credit for his work on Spartacus (and effectively ending the blacklist). It is indeed Trumbo’s script—and Douglas’ fine performance—that makes Lonely are the Brave a quality movie.

Jack Burns is a cowboy, a loner, a drifter, a man without a real home or job—it seems his only possessions are the clothes he wears and the horse he rides. He grabs cowhand work where and when he can get it. He hates having to deal with the modern world, automobiles, fences, borders, the law, and bureaucracy. One day he returns to a small border town to visit his best friend, Paul (Michael Kane) and learns that Paul is in jail for assisting illegal immigrants. Paul’s wife, Jerry (Gena Rowlands, in one of her early screen appearances) obviously has some affection for Jack and hosts him and his horse. Jack finally decides he’s going to do something about Paul being in jail, and the only way to do it is to get himself arrested in order to break Paul out from the inside. The sheriff (Walter Matthau) and his sadistic deputy (George Kennedy) set out to pursue Jack before he rides across the border to safety. And then there’s a truck driver (Carroll O’Connor) innocently driving along, to whom the movie cuts periodically throughout the story—and we wonder why… until we do know.

That’s it in a nutshell, but the power of the movie comes in its melancholy that exudes from Jack’s character and the widescreen western vistas (albeit in glorious black and white) that are as much a supporting role as the living actors. Jerry Goldsmith’s wistful score also contributes a great deal to the success of the film. This is all good stuff, making Lonely are the Brave indeed one of Kirk Douglas’ more memorable appearances.

Kino Lorber’s new high definition restoration looks terrific and comes with an audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Steve Mitchell. Supplements include a tribute to the film featuring interviews with Douglas, Rowlands, Michael Douglas, and Steven Spielberg, and a featurette on Jerry Goldsmith’s score. The theatrical trailer for this and other Kino Lorber releases round out the package.

Lonely are the Brave is too-often overlooked gem from the early 1960s.

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(For Steven J. Rubin's exclusive interview with Kirk Douglas about "Lonely are the Brave", see Cinema Retro issue #40.)