By Hank Reineke

Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body would enjoy a very brief run – under a new title - on U.S. theatre screens in late summer of 1965. By spring of ‘66 the film was already popping up as a late-night programmer on U.S. television. I was belatedly introduced to the film via a Chiller Theatre telecast on New York’s WPIX-TV, circa 1971/72. I can no longer recall if I was impressed by this atmospheric, mostly monster-less mystery on that first viewing. I was only ten or eleven years of age. My hazy memories are further obscured by it having been broadcast under its U.S. theatrical re-title as What.

The name of now-legendary director Mario Bava wouldn’t have meant very much to me either at young age. Even if I had been familiar with Bava’s oeuvre – which I most certainly wasn’t at age ten – the directorial credit of What had been anglicized, ascribed to one “John M. Old.” The directorial fake wouldn’t have mattered much to me, really. All I knew was Christopher Lee was one of the film’s star players, and I was already a big fan of the actor’s horror pictures.

Regardless of the film title in which you accustomed - The Whip and the Body/ Night is the Phantom/What/The Whip and the Flesh/La frusta e il Corpo etc. etc. - this was the second of two Bava films to feature Christopher Lee. The first was Ercole al centro della terra (1961, aka Hercules in the Haunted World), an Italian peplum. That film pitted the heroic Hercules (Reg Park) against Lee’s villainous Lichas (or Lyco or Lico, depending on the release). Lichas is variously described as “Lord of the Hades Underworld” or “King of the Dead.”

The actor’s typecasting made sense, all things considered. Lee had once enjoyed playing a diverse number of character roles since his 1947 entry into the film business. But following the runaway success of Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (1958), the actor somewhat frustratingly found himself mostly employed as a heavy in an on-going string of horror films, fog-shrouded mysteries, and psychological-thrillers.

Lee would later generously deem Bava as “one of Italy’s greatest cameramen” and, true to form, both Hercules in the Haunted World and The Whip and the Body, are awash in the eerily brilliant and fluorescent colors for which the director is acclaimed. Technically, the cinematographer for the latter film is Ubaldo Terzano, but much of the photography is accepted as Bava’s own, albeit uncredited. Bava’s greatness partly lies in his painter’s eye for style: he combines color, shadows and shadings to create atmosphere and great imagery.

As director, Bava also employs innovative lighting and lots of blue-tinting to create his striking, imaginative visuals. On his wonderful commentary track, author Tim Lucas describes such eerie colorization as Bava’s moonlit “Blue of Night.” Throughout The Whip and the Body, Bava’s visual stylings perfectly reflect the film’s moody and atmospheric aura. His use of purposeful slow tracking shots and pan photography – abetted by composer Carlo Rustichelli’s evocative, mysterious score – masterfully evokes a sense of tangible, shadowy foreboding: who (or what?) lurks behind that candle-lit curtain or door?

The Whip and the Body concerns the unwelcome return of Kurt Menliff (Lee) to his ancestral home, a castle nestled on lonesome cliff side overlooking the sea. His own father, Count Vladimir (Jacques Herlin) is not pleased to see him nor is Giorgia (Harriet White), the Count’s servant. Years earlier, we learn, Kurt had seduced Giorgia’s daughter. His subsequent cruel rejection of the girl is believed to be the cause of her suicide. Although Kurt’s bother Christian (Tony Kendall) is welcoming of his brother’s return, he too will come to regret such forgiveness. His own wife Nevenka (Israeli actress Daliah Lavi) falls prey to Kurt’s Svengali-like attraction – who, true to form, abuses and degrades her with a fetishistic, sadomasochistic whipping. I can’t say much more than that plot-wise without risking spoilers. So I’ll just say that following Kurt’s attack on Nevenka, the film moves from straight-on melodrama to a mostly satisfying scenario combining elements of ghost story and mystery whodunit.

Budgeted at approx. $66, 500, The Whip and the Body began production in July of 1960. The film was slated for a seven-week schedule. Principal photography wrapped in six-weeks, the seventh to begin post-production work. The film was an Italian/French collaboration, a production of Cosmopolis Films and Les Films Marbeuf. Both companies had been involved in the exploitation of the then very-much-in-vogue “sword and sandal” pictures: strongman adventures loosely tethered to tales sourced from Greek and Roman mythologies. On his commentary track, Lucas describes the scenario of The Whip and the Body as essentially akin to “a Greek Tragedy” in its construction.

The film’s screenplay is credited to Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra and Luciano Martino, with the film produced (without credit) to Federico Magnaghi. Upon the film’s release in English-speaking markets the writing credits for the original Italian trio were anglicized as “Julian Berry, Robert Hugo and Martin Hardy.” Bava too did not escape such name-change ignominy, his directorial credit ascribed to “John M. Old,” a pseudonym used on several of his films. The time-period and country in which this Gothic mystery is set is indeterminate. This was, according to scenarist Gastaldi, entirely intentional. Though the seaside locations were filmed in Italy near Anzio, the main characters are given Eastern European-sounding names and the set dressing peculiarly mixes period styles and time-dates.

A prolific screenwriter of horror, pirate and peplum films, Ernesto Gastaldi had already written scripts for such Italian melodramas as The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961), and The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962). Following production on The Whip and the Body, producer Magnaghi would team with writers Guerra and Martino (in addition to writer-director Brunello Rondi) to bring Daliah Lavi back in the obscure but sultry exorcism flick II Demonio (1963).

(Photo: Cinema Retro Archive)

The Whip and the Body was not a huge success. Lucas describes the film as Bava’s “biggest box-office flop,” the picture’s final tally generating back only half of its investment. Upon the film’s release, critics gave any number of reasons why the film’s box-office was disappointing. Variety was mildly impressed, describing the film as genuinely suspenseful if best suited for “sophisticated audiences.” But the trade also thought the film flawed in execution: “The Gothic-novel atmosphere and trappings of secret passages, muddy footprints from the crypt and ghost lover, probably will draw more laughs than gasps.”

London’s Monthly Film Bulletin was far more withering in its assessment of Night is the Phantom (the film’s British re-title). Their critic described it as “Another of Italy’s prankish simulations of a British horror movie, the film is slow, repetitive, verging on parody. Censor or distributor cuts have rendered much of the plot incomprehensible, though one doubts if it ever made sense entirely.” In fairness, the same critic conceded the film’s “weird and doom-laden claustrophobia” was, in retrospect, “unfailingly compulsive, mainly because of the redolent Freudian associations.”

The more uncomfortable Freudian moments of Menliff’s fetishistic abuse of Nevenka were cut from the film’s continental version. Christopher Lee only reminisced that he and Lavi shared “some very torrid love scenes” in the making of the film, but left it at that. Most of those scenes would not be made privy to either continental or western cinemagoers. Upon the film’s initial release in Italy, that country’s censors would come down hard on it, deeming several sequences obscene due to “degenerations and anomalies of sexual life.” There were demands that these moments be cut from the film. Though the filmmakers complied in making such trims, producer Magnaghi still found himself standing before a Rome court. He was subsequently acquitted of obscenity charges in January of 1964.

Though Lucas does bring up the censorship issues surrounding The Whip and the Body, he does not make the issue a centerpiece of his commentary. He does points out in his very informative analysis that the film was very much influenced by the earliest of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe productions for American-International. Which, in turn, had been very much styled after such continental productions as Bava’s Black Sunday (1960).

Though A.I.P. had distributed earlier works of Bava’s in the U.S., they balked on The Whip and the Body – likely due to the film’s sadomasochistic salaciousness. Though mild by today’s standards, the film was thought unsuitable for young and impressionable theatergoers. The film was eventually picked up for U.S. distribution in 1965 by Richard G. Yates’ Futuramic Releasing. The film, now curiously re-titled as What, was doomed to play the U.S. drive-in circuit in the summer of 1965. Accompanied by a rather gray and cheapish exploitation campaign, What was top-bill to a second Futuramic import from the continent, Isidore M. Ferry’s Face of Terror (Spain, 1964) (original title La cara del terror).

One needn’t be a particularly avid fan of Christopher Lee (or any of the others on screen) to notice that all dialogue is dubbed throughout. As with many of Bava’s films, his work was intended for wide international release. To that end, many of his films were shot sans sync-sound, with foreign-language market dubbing scheduled long after the original cast had moved on. Upon viewing The Whip and the Body, Lee was left aghast by his character’s misplaced American-affected voice-over dub. He would insist afterward that all of his foreign-language film contracts included the proviso he handle any necessary dubbing himself.

This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray issue of The Whip and the Body is the company’s second issue of this title, the first being released in 2013. The set features a 2023 4K scan and a 2K restoration by 88 Films from an HD master from an original 35mm print. The set includes both the original Italian and English dubs as audio options as well as optional English subtitles and the film’s theatrical trailer as well as trailers from other Bava films. As referenced above, Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog fame and author of the exhaustive one-thousand plus page tome Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark delivers a masterful commentary – though one familiar as it has been ported over from Kino’s 2013 Blu-ray release via VCI’s DVD issue of 2007. The new release is also fitted with the now inevitable cardboard sleeve protector, which apparently are prized by some collectors.. Without question, essential viewing for fans of Bava and Christopher Lee.

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Published by Headpress

Publication date: March 2024

596 pages

450 B&W photos

ISBN: 978-1-909394-95-7

Paperback RRP: £25.99

Hardback RRP: £35.99

Review by Adrian Smith

We first had a VHS machine in our house in 1985. It was an exciting day, and to celebrate, my parents rented a cartoon for us all to enjoy. It turned out to be Watership Down (1978). I was nine years old, and its jarring combination of cute rabbits and graphic violence was a suitably scary introduction to the dangerous world of home video. Within a few months both horror films and illegally distributed pornography would be playing in my living room alongside the episodes of ThunderCats (1985-1989) I was taping on Saturday mornings. The video recorder really did change the landscape of the 1980s, and although I was not really old enough to fully appreciate what was going on, I did occasionally get glimpses of things that were not meant for me; whether it was seeing a man getting lowered into a mincing machine from behind the sofa at a babysitter’s house (a classic moment from The Exterminator (1980)), or being egged on to play one of my dad’s dodgy tapes by my mates when we were the only ones home (which very quickly caused a horrified reaction and a mad scramble for the eject button). So, although VHS had made a personal impact, I was unaware that my mind and soul had become a battleground for moral campaigners obsessed with the wild, wild world of unregulated videos in the early 1980s.

Davids Kerekes and Slater, who’s Cannibal Error is an updating of their in-depth study of the ‘video nasty’ panic See No Evil (2000), were the right age to be smack in the middle of the furore, where independent distributors were trying to make quick money selling imported horror films from Europe and the USA and collectors were suddenly turned into potential criminals thanks to the efforts of campaigners like Mary Whitehouse and Tory MP Graham Bright who managed to get the right-wing press whipped up into a frenzy which helped rush through the Video Recordings Act, granting legal powers to the British Board of Film Classification, amidst claims that children were in danger from films like SS Experiment Camp (1976), The Driller Killer (1979) and Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979). The press frequently connected real life crimes with films as if to suggest that access to violent videos were encouraging copycat behaviour, which came to a pinnacle in 1987 when Michael Ryan shot and killed sixteen people in Hungerford, Wiltshire, and the press tried to pin this on his being obsessed with the character of Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone in two films by then (1982 & 1985). It was never proved that he’d even seen the films, but that did not stop the press continuing to blame films for real-life tragedies such as this and many others.

(Cannibal Error teaser trailer from Headpress on Vimeo.)

The authors present a huge amount of research here into what was going on during the 1980s and into the 1990s, both from the legislative side to the effect it was having on film collectors. There are fascinating interviews with people whose homes were raided by police or Customs and Excise because they were suspected of owning pornography or copies of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), and the impact it made on their lives. Being collectors themselves, Cannibal Error is not a balanced, dispassionate view of the ‘video nasties’ debates and those concerned. This is worth bearing in mind when reading. Personally, having been a child exposed to things I shouldn’t have seen back in the 1980s, I have some sympathy with Mary Whitehouse and her fellow campaigners. I think there was merit in trying to ensure that films were not easily available to those who were underage, and that home video ought to be regulated and controlled in much the same way as films were for cinemas. However, as this book makes clear, things went much too far and so much police time was wasted rummaging through teenagers' bedrooms looking for third-generation copies of I Spit on Your Grave (1978). The great irony now is that many of these long-considered-dangerous films are now available restored and uncut with BBFC certificates on Blu-ray and UHD, and the whole idea of films being dangerous seems rather quaint.

This new expanded edition of their earlier work features a detailed examination and review of each film that was considered illegal according to the UK government, known as the DPP39, alongside lengthy interviews with film collectors and BBFC examiners, the latter providing some balance to the discussion. Covering European horror, pornography, film collecting, censorship, moral panics and the intersection between cinema and politics, Cannibal Error is an important contribution to our understanding of the ‘video nasty’ debacle.

Cannibal Error can be ordered direct from Headpress: https://headpress.com/product/cannibal-error/

“THE ALTAR OF IGNORANCE”

By Raymond Benson

The Pre-Code days of Hollywood (prior to July 1, 1934) sported numerous studio productions that raised eyebrows and caused consternation among the more Puritan segments of America’s population. This eventually led to the Hays Office overseeing Tinsel Town’s self-implemented Production Code that policed content in the motion picture business until the mid-1960s.

Before the Code—and after—there were also low-budget non-studio independent productions that went even further in exploiting (the key word here) sex, drugs, and violence under the guise of being “educational films.” They were often marketed guerilla style, as if the circus was coming to town, in which distributors would book a theater for a week, bombard the press with “adults only” advertisements, make a killing at the box office, and then move on to the next town. This scheme worked because, after all, prurient subject matter sells.

The Road to Ruin is one such exploitation film but it’s a bit different. In a way it’s a hybrid of the Hollywood B-movie and an independent production of dubious quality. In contrast to other pictures of its ilk, Road is a step above. There are aspects here that are admirable and worth a look, even if it’s a view backwards into a time and place that today is quaint, sensationalist, and laughable, which is why we enjoy these gems from the past. Therein lies the charm of these movies that have recently been restored and released on Blu-ray as a series called “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture,” from Kino Lorber Classics in association with Something Weird Video.

There are two versions of the film. First there was the 1928 silent production, directed by Norton S. Parker, written by Willis Kent, and starring a young, pretty blonde named Helen Foster, who had been working in numerous Hollywood silent pictures at the time and developed a name for herself through, at least, the 1930s. The Road to Ruin was a popular hit, so much so that a few years later, it was remade as a talkie in 1934, written and directed by “Mrs. Wallace Reid,” the credited name of Dorothy Davenport. Davenport had indeed been married to the actor Wallace Reid, who had died in 1923 from complications due to drug addiction. Interestingly, the 1934 talkie also stars Helen Foster in the same lead role of the innocent high school girl who becomes corrupted by (in this order) alcohol, drugs, and sex. In the 1928 silent version she is “Sally Canfield”; in the 1934 talkie she is “Ann Dixon.” Foster is quite believable as a 17-year-old in the silent picture… not so much in the talkie (she was 27 when that was made). Nevertheless, Foster’s performances in both versions are the main reason why both movies are notable. She is quite charismatic and not without talent.

The story in both movies is exactly the same (Davenport based the later screenplay on Willis Kent’s 1928 version). Sally/Ann is friends with Eve, another high school teen who is wilder mainly because her divorcing parents are wealthy and are too busy throwing parties and serving illegal booze (it was the Prohibition era at the time). Sally/Ann and Eve go out with some schoolboys who introduce Sally/Ann to alcohol… and one thing leads to another. Then, one night, dashing older man Don/Ralph spots Sally/Ann in a club and makes his move. Sally/Ann begins seeing him, and of course Don/Ralph offers the drugs and gets her pregnant. The sordid tale then goes into the dangers of unlawful abortion and the catastrophic results. As the tagline of the 1934 picture reads, it’s a movie about “modern youth burned at the altar of ignorance.”

The movies were meant to be cautionary tales to parents, imploring them to instruct their children in sex education and the ways of the world. Never mind that there are scenes of strip poker in the silent movie and strip dice in the talkie. It’s educational! That said, as opposed to other exploitation movies of the time such as Narcotic (1933) or Marihuana (1936), there is a tonal sincerity of intent by the filmmakers. They likely truly believed that The Road to Ruin, both versions, were not exploitation movies. This is why they might be viewed as a cut above others of the genre.

The new Kino Blu-ray presents a 4K restoration of the 1934 version and it looks quite good. It comes with an audio commentary by Eric Shaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films. The 1928 version does not have the 4K restoration but it still looks marvelous for its age, and it comes with an audio commentary by film historian Anthony Slide and a new musical score by Andrew Earle Simpson.

The Road to Ruin is for fans of Hollywood history, Pre-Code sensibilities, exploitation films, and the time capsule aspects of American family life in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Just don’t do anything we wouldn’t.

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Classic Film “Raiders of the Lost Ark”Special Event May 17 in Omaha

TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz attending to celebrate 50^th screening of classic films.

Omaha, NE – April 24, 2024 – Celebrate the magic of cinema with Omaha film historian Bruce Crawford as he presents his 50th tribute to classic films. The milestone event will showcase the legendary blockbuster, "Raiders of the Lost Ark", on Friday, May 17, 2024, at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

This special screening commemorates the adventurous spirit and cultural impact of the 1981 classic. Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford as the iconic Indiana Jones, the film invites audiences to rediscover the exhilaration of the chase for the Ark of the Covenant against the backdrop of a world on the brink of war.

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS:

SPECIAL APPEARANCE:
Ben Mankiewicz, the esteemed host of Turner Classic Movies, will enrich the evening with an exclusive on-stage discussion about the film's enduring legacy and its significance in American pop culture. Fans will also have the unique opportunity to engage with Mankiewicz during a post-show meet-and-greet session.

In its initial release, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" dominated box offices worldwide and was later enshrined in the National Film Registry for its historical, cultural, and aesthetic significance. As the latest in a series of beloved classic film screenings, Crawford has hosted events featuring epic narratives such as "Ben Hur," "Gone with the Wind," and "The Godfather," with guest appearances by Hollywood royalty.

The 50th classic film event promises to be a night of nostalgia and excitement. All proceeds will benefit the Omaha Christian Academy. Don't miss this extraordinary tribute to the timeless adventure that continues to capture the hearts of moviegoers.

Tickets are on sale now and can be obtained by calling (402) 399-9565 or visiting https://omahachristianacademy.org/movie/

James Bond fans may have seen still photos of this event from July, 1966 when football stars visited Pinewood Studios and met some big name celebs who were filming there at the time including rocker Cliff Richard, legendary character actor Robert Morley, Sean Connery who was filming his fifth James Bond movie, "You Only Live Twice" and Yul Brynner who was making his own spy flick, "The Double Man"  Unfortunately, these brief newsreel clips don't have the soundtrack so we can all just surmise what might have been said. Here is the description from the YouTube channel that posted the footage:

"Footage of the stars of the England Football team visiting the Pinewood Studios set of the latest James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice". They met the star of the film series Sean Connery and a number of other celebrities including film actor Yul Bryner, Englsih pop singer Cliff Richard, English comedy actor Norman Wisdom and the actor Robert Morley. The visiting players, on a break from the ongoing FIFA World Cup tournament, included the captain Bobby Moore, striker Bobby Charlton, defender Jackie Charlton, goalkeeper Gordon Banks and striker Jimmy Greaves. Manager Alf Ramsay was also present. Source: Reuters News Archive."

If you haven't obtained this yet, do so. Here are the official details from Kino Lorber. 

Discover the Irreverent, Uproarious, and Astonishing Films of

Cinema's First Nasty Women

A Four-Disc Collection of 99 Specially Curated, Rarely-Seen Silent Films That Paved the Way for Feminist Comedy and Gender Activism in Movies Today.

**Award Winner at the 2023 Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards**

A mind-expanding endeavor, the set features 99 mostly comic rarities produced from 1898 to 1926, gleaned from archives and libraries across the globe. It is a triumph of scholarship.” — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

"Cinema’s First Nasty Women is a game-changer for teaching film history."

-- Catherine Russell, Cineaste Magazine

"As an entertainment, it’s a hoot. So much fun! As a look back at the film industry before women creators were reined in, it’s an historical resource. For anyone who is interested in early cinema, this disc set is a real treat!"

-- Audrey Kupferberg, WAMC Northeast Public Radio

"An abundance of low-down female slapstick anarchy....It's old-school film history turned inside out." -- Michael Atkinson, Sight and Sound

"We need to celebrate this amazing, labor of love, four Blu-ray package - also hoping for future editions! It has our strongest recommendation."

-- Gary Tooze, DVDBeaver

Fresh off its win at the Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards, Cinema's First Nasty Women -- a four-disc set showcasing more than fourteen hours of rarely-seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play -- has continued to garner critical praise and inspire innovative repertory programming. This collection is a celebration of the unknown but indelible women whose rebellious energy and creative labor helped establish the international silent film industry. Their work deserves to be enjoyed and remembered today.

Eat your heart out Barbenheimer! With recent discussions about the power of popular media to challenge gender norms, subvert lazy stereotypes, and incite riotous experimentation, now is the perfect time to rediscover these irreverent, uproarious, and astonishing works from more than a century ago. The performers in these films paved the way for feminist comedy and gender activism today. Their wild antics offer uncanny images for navigating the unresolvable crises and unrealized potentials of our own times. Feast your eyes on Cinema's First Nasty Women!

These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints.

The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller, and spotlight performers and characters like Bertha Regustus, Minnie Devereaux (Cheyenne and Arapaho), Lillian St. Cyr (Ho-Chunk), Léontine, Little Chrysia, and Edna “Billy” Foster.

Cinema’s First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet by leading scholars and artists, including Shelley Stamp, Jane Gaines, Jennifer Bean, Mariann Lewinsky, Susan Stryker, Arigon Starr (Kickapoo), Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Yiman Wang, and Liza Black (Cherokee).

Curated by Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, and produced for video by Bret Wood, Cinema’s First Nasty Women is a partnership of Kino Lorber, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Women Film Pioneers Project, Eye Filmmuseum, FIC-Silente, and Carleton University.

CINEMA'S FIRST NASTY WOMEN

Four-Disc Collection (1898-1926)

Region Free

Directors: various

Cast: Florence Turner, Little Chrysia, Texas Guinan, Fay Tincher,

Gene Gauntier, Mabel Taliaferro, Bertha Regustus, Sarah Duhamel,

Evelyn Greeley, Laura Bayley, Edna "Billy" Foster, Tsuru Aoki, Léontine

Total Running Time: 875 minutes

Countries: Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, U.K., U.S.

Genres: Comedy, Action, Drama, Melodrama, Silent, Slapstick, Western

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By  Fred Blosser

In “Man-Eater of Kumaon,” a 1948 feature now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Dr. John Collins (Wendell Corey) undertakes an ill-fated big-game hunt in the distant land of the movie’s title—an actual region of India in the Himalayan foothills, not a fantasy world orbiting somewhere between planets Coruscant and Dune as the exotic name might suggest nowadays. Stalking a tiger in the underbrush, Collins inflicts an agonizing but not fatal injury as his bullet severs one of the tiger’s toes. His Indian guides warn that the wounded tiger will begin attacking and killing humans, and they urge him to finish what he started. But the American doesn’t feel particularly responsible for the villagers now at the mercy of the carnivore. In his case, it’s less a matter of Western chauvinism than a general lack of empathy for other people whatever their ethnicity, a shortcoming that cost him his marriage back in the States.

After recovering from an onset of malaria, Collins plans to try his luck in Sumatra next. But the tiger has already begun its depredations, and on his way to Delhi, the hunter encounters a little boy, Panwah, orphaned by the big cat. Collins conveys the child to a nearby village, where he is taken in by a young couple, Narain (Sabu) and Lali (Joanne Page), whom the American befriends. In part, we infer, he becomes close to the loving couple because they remind him of what he lost back home when his wife divorced him. Still, he resists the idea that, having turned the tiger into a killer of humans, it’s up to him to restore peace and security by finishing the job—until the attacks become personal when Lali is badly mauled while saving Panwah.

“Man-Eater of Kumaon” was loosely based on a best-selling memoir by big-game hunter Jim Corbett, who in real life was neither an American nor a disenchanted physician. This wasn’t the first or last instance of filmmakers purchasing a popular book, keeping the title for name recognition, and throwing out most everything else. Unlike many books and films that have glorified big-game hunting as a macho rite of passage, the dilemma facing John Collins is a crisis of conscience, not a challenge to his ability to secure a trophy head. Still, animal-rights advocates and conservationists are likely to be disturbed by scenes of the hunter pointing his rifle at the tiger whatever the context. Now, laws would require that the cat be tranquillised as the first resort and relocated to another habitat away from humans, not killed. Aside from Sabu, all the Indians in the story are portrayed by non-Indian actors, a practice that wouldn’t begin to change for another ten years, when Kamala Devi and I.S Johar appeared in prominent supporting roles in another movie about ferocious felines, “Harry Black and the Tiger” (1958). Arguing that studios should have been more inclusive in the 1940s is a little like contending that Ford’s Theatre should have had metal detectors in 1865. Nevertheless, it’s still a hurdle for many viewers today, accustomed as we’ve become to the routine presence of Indian and Indian-American actors in contemporary TV shows and movies, although critically beloved classics like “Gunga Din” and “Black Narcissus” often seem to get a pass in this regard.

Well acted by the always dependable Wendell Corey and capably directed by Byron Haskin (better known to Sci-Fi enthusiasts for 1953’s “The War of the Worlds” and six episodes of “The Outer Limits” in 1963-64), “Man-Eater of Kumaon” shows to good advantage in the new Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. The movie was filmed in black and white by acclaimed cinematographer William C. Mellor, a choice that may have been necessitated by the budgetary logistics of incorporating old B&W stock footage into new shots of a tiger prowling through a backlot jungle set, but it serves a dramatic purpose too. Mellor’s glistening daytime shots and hi-def, misty nocturnal compositions underscore a Film Noir quality in the plot, as fate manoeuvres John Collins into an initially reluctant, then fiercely resigned showdown with the hostile force of nature represented by the rogue tiger. Special features on the Blu-ray include several trailers for other jungle movies and Wendell Corey pictures available from Kino Lorber, a spirited audio commentary by David Del Valle and Dan Marino and reversible sleeve artwork.

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

From Joe Dante's "Trailers from Hell":

Although Charles Bronson had been making movies for nearly 25 years and was quite popular in Europe, this international smash hit made him a superstar for the rest of his career. Michael Winner's provocative saga of a grieving father's vigilante vengeance became a Nixon-era touchstone that engendered four increasingly exploitative sequels over the next two decades. Hard to imagine what originally slated director Sidney Lumet would have made of this with Jack Lemmon in the lead.

As always, you can find more commentaries, more reviews, more podcasts, and more deep-dives into the films you don't know you love yet over on the Trailers From Hell mothership: http://www.trailersfromhell.com

TCM – Thursday, March 7, 2024 - Turner Classic Movies (TCM) today announced a new limited series, Two for One, that will feature 12 nights of double features curated by some of the most celebrated filmmakers in Hollywood beginning April 6. TCM Primetime Host Ben Mankiewicz will be joined by each director, including Steven Spielberg, Patty Jenkins, and Spike Lee, to introduce the two films they chose. They will offer commentary on the double feature’s cultural significance, its influence on other films, behind-the-scenes stories, and their own personal reflections.

“This was such an eclectic group of filmmakers to sit down with, which was invigorating, from Martin Scorsese talking about a Robert Mitchum western, to Spike Lee discussing Elia Kazan, to Olivia Wilde’s breakdown of Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame,” said Ben Mankiewicz. “In these double features, these 12 directors lead us on an insider’s journey through cinematic history.” 

Two for One which airs every Saturday night, premieres April 6 at 8PM (ET).

Two Films. One Filmmaker. Countless Perspectives.
Below is the complete film schedule: 

• Saturday, April 6 | Martin Scorsese - Blood on the Moon (1948) & One Touch of Venus (1948)
• Saturday, April 13 | Olivia Wilde - Auntie Mame (1958) & Grey Gardens (1976)
• Saturday, April 20 | Paul Thomas Anderson - The Bad News Bears (1976) & Bugsy Malone (1976)
• Saturday, April 27 | Rian Johnson - Trouble in Paradise (1932) & Jewel Robbery (1932)
• Saturday, May 4 | Spike Lee - A Face in the Crowd (1957) & Ace in the Hole (1951)
• Saturday, May 11 | Patty Jenkins - The Fisher King (1991) & Synecdoche, New York (2008) 
• Saturday, May 18 | Steven Spielberg - Jailhouse Rock (1957) & Forty Guns (1957)
• Saturday, June 1 | Ethan Hawke - The Gunfighter (1950) & Gun Crazy (1950)

• Saturday, June 8 | David Byrne - A Matter of Life and Death (1946) & Wings of Desire (1987) 
• Saturday, June 15 | Gina Prince-Blythewood - Central Station (1998) & Fruitvale Station (2013)
• Saturday, June 2 | Todd Haynes - The Go-Between (1971) & Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) 
• Saturday, June 29 | Nicole Holofcener - Coming Home (1978) & The Last Detail (1973)

Here's a fine documentary examining the life and career of Robert Mitchum from The Hollywood Collection.

"For nearly a century, Hollywood has captivated and influenced generation after generation of moviegoers. Its magic has left an indelible imprint on every culture with a movie projector. Originally broadcast on PBS, HBO/Cinemax, TNT, A&E, Lifetime, and Bravo, this is one of the most comprehensive collections of biographies and cinema retrospectives ever compiled, a spectacular treasury of 32 revealing biographies of Hollywood’s most beloved stars. These biographies, some narrated by the stars themselves, include interviews with friends, family members and colleagues, as well as clips from their most memorable films, and in some cases, rare home movies. “Over 350 actors, writers, directors, producers, make-up people, publicists, agents, and family members all gave of themselves to help make these shows possible. This was the way it was in Hollywood in its classic era and these were the stars that captured us.” – Gene Feldman, producer/director of The Hollywood Collection."

(To watch in full screen mode, click on "Watch on YouTube".)

Acclaimed films from Todd Haynes, Yorgos Lanthimos, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Christian Petzold, Lina Wertmuller, Ken Loach, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jafar Panahi, Taika Waititi, Oscar Micheaux, Susan Sontag, Jean-Luc Godard, Bruno Dumont, Jia Zhangke,  Bernardo Bertolucci, Fritz Lang and more arrive on streaming, some for the first time. 

Kino Lorber’s recent acclaimed films Chile ‘76, Close to Vermeer, and new 4K restorations of The Conformist and Millennium Mambo arrive on streaming for the first time.

Kino Lorber, a leading name in independent film distribution for over 45 years, has launched KINO FILM COLLECTION, a new streaming service available in the U.S. on the Amazon Service via Prime Video Channels for $5.99 per month. The Collection will feature new Kino releases fresh from theaters, along with hundreds of films from its expansive library of more than 4,000 titles, many now streaming for the first time.

Films available at launch include award-winning theatrical releases and critically acclaimed hits and classics from around the globe including new 4K restorations of THE CONFORMIST (Bernardo Bertolucci) and key works by notable directors such as DOGTOOTH (Yorgos Lanthimos), TAXI (Jafar Panahi), POISON (Todd Haynes), GANJA & HESS (Bill Gunn), THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA (Tran Anh Hung), A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (Ana Lily Amirpour), COMPUTER CHESS (Andrew Bujalski), PORTRAIT OF JASON (Shirley Clarke), and A TOUCH OF SIN (Jia Zhangke). Joining them are entries from the long-revered Kino canon such as METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang), NOSFERATU (F.W. Murnau), THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (Robert Wiene), BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei Eisenstein), BIRTHRIGHT (Oscar Micheaux) and THE SACRIFICE (Andrei Tarkovsky), all presented in the best versions available anywhere. Rounding out the collection are popular and acclaimed documentaries like BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY (Alexandra Dean), Academy Award®-nominated FIRE AT SEA (Gianfranco Rosi), GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI (Sophie Fiennes), and BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK (Richard Press).

The Kino Film Collection will be updated monthly with regular streaming premieres of acclaimed films directly from theaters including CHILE ‘76 (Manuela Martelli), FRAMING AGNES (Chase Joynt), BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER (Nina Menkes), THE SUPER 8 YEARS (Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot), COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON (Mounia Akl) and THE WORST ONES (Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret), alongside curated treasures from the Kino library and cult film selections from the Kino vault to satisfy genre fans.

December streaming premieres will include a new 4K restoration of MILLENNIUM MAMBO (Hou Hsiao-Hsien), SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME (Chloe Zhao), CLOSE TO VERMEER (Suzanne Raes), FINAL CUT (Michel Hazanavicius), BACURAU (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles), TOKYO POP (Fran Rubel Kuzui), TWO SMALL BODIES (Beth B), and more. 

Richard Lorber, President and CEO of Kino Lorber, said "I'm excited about Kino Film Collection as a destination for our newest films fresh from festivals and theaters, as well as newly launched restorations of classics and curated selections from our vast library, many streaming for the first time. Over the last 45 years, we've introduced electrifying new films from directors at the vanguard around the world to American audiences, and built a library and brand synonymous with cinematic innovation, distinguished curation, and enduring quality. The Kino Film Collection will be the place to go to find the classics of tomorrow and the best of cinema past."

Lisa Schwartz, Chief Revenue Officer for Kino Lorber, who will oversee the service, said, “The creation of Kino Film Collection is the latest example of our continued commitment to independent film and to ensuring our incredible collection remains available for audiences nationwide. Many streaming services are currently undergoing a shift in their content focus and consequently many titles are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Therefore, we felt it was a business imperative to create a dedicated home where our films would be consistently available to film lovers.  This curated collection allows us to highlight our successful new theatrical releases as well as repertory films and beautifully restored library classics.”

Visit KINOFILMCOLLECTION.COM to sign up for a 7-Day Free Trial.

“A SCHOOL FOR TELEVISION REPAIRMEN”

By Raymond Benson

The seventh and last entry in the Road to… motion picture series is often cited as the weakest of the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope musical romps, but it’s actually perhaps somewhere more in the middle. This reviewer found many of the comic bits and one-liners to be quite funny, and despite their aging personas (especially Crosby), the duo are in good form.

The series began in 1940 with Road to Singapore and continued through the forties. They were huge successes for Paramount Pictures. The single title made in the fifties (and the only one shot in color), Road to Bali (1952), seemed to be the swan song. It wasn’t until the early sixties that Crosby and Hope decided to do another, this time for United Artists and shot in the UK. Interestingly, fans of the James Bond film series will spot familiar faces and names either on camera or in the credits behind the scenes (Walter Gotell, Syd Cain, Bob Simmons, Maurice Binder, Wally Veevers).

More significant is that The Road to Hong Kong, directed by Norman Panama, features a spy adventure plot that is not unlike the early 007 pictures, and its release preceded the premiere of Dr. No by a little less than seven months! There is a SPECTRE-like villainous organization (the “Third Echelon”) and a caper involving nuclear weapons and space travel (shades of Dr. No and You Only Live Twice). The villains even operate from an underwater laboratory and control room that resembles that of Dr. No's. (When Bob Hope’s character sees all the men and women in lab coats sitting at terminals and monitors, he quips, “Oh, look, a school for television repairmen!”)

As usual, Crosby and Hope are conmen, Harry Turner and Chester Babcock, who unwittingly become involved in a MacGuffin plot to steal plans for Russian rocket fuel so that the Third Echelon and their leader (Robert Morley) can launch nuclear missiles at earth from the moon. Echelon agent Diane (Joan Collins) at first works with the villains, but of course the wacky pair of Harry and Chester win her over to their side.

Oddly, longtime costar Dorothy Lamour is relegated to helping the boys in a small sequence and musical number near the end of the film. It’s a shocking example of how Hollywood viewed aging female stars. A much younger Collins was cast as the lead this time, with Lamour pushed into what amounts to a glorified cameo. Never mind that both Crosby and Hope are much older than Collins and are Lamour’s contemporaries!

It's almost impossible in this day and age not to view the film through the lens of cultural misappropriation. Despite the movie mostly taking place in British Hong Kong, there are very few Asian actors to be seen (and they are mostly extras). Too many white men and women are costumed and made up to be “Asian” (and even Harry participates thusly as part of a disguise). This kind of thing occurred in every Road to… picture, from Singapore to Morocco to Bali. But, as classic film aficionados know, one must approach older films within the context of when they were made and released. In 1962, this sort of thing was commonplace.

An old-school audience will certainly enjoy The Road to Hong Kong. The singing and dancing, the slapstick hijinks, the snappy and silly dialogue, and the references to the previous Roads are enough to delight. Another fun aspect are the many cameos from the likes of Peter Sellers, David Niven, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Colonna, and others.

Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents a sharp-looking Blu-ray restoration in glorious black and white (this one surely would have benefited from color). An insightful audio commentary by film historian/filmmaker Michael Schlesinger and archivist/historian Stan Taffel accompanies the feature. Rounding out the disk are theatrical trailers from this movie, other Road titles, and other Kino releases.

The Road to Hong Kong is for fans of the series, of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and for vintage Hollywood and British films of the early 1960s. Fun stuff.

Click here to order from Amazon

Here is a wonderful documentary about Walter Matthau from The Hollywood Collection:

"Walter Matthau was barely three when his father deserted the family. Subscribe for more Hollywood biographies and stories! http://bit.ly/HollywoodCollectionSub Poverty and New York street smarts produced a self-deprecating humor that never left. The G.I. Bill let him study acting and by 1951 he earned a New York Drama Critics Award. Television dramas followed and then came Hollywood. When director Billy Wilder cast him opposite Jack Lemmon, a classic partnership was created. In Lemmon, Matthau found an enduring friend and frequent co-star. Matthau’s real-life combination of cynicism and gruff sentimentality was reflected in the performances that brought him to major stardom. Two-time Academy Award winner, Matthau’s fifty years of show business have earned him the love of millions and the admiration of fellow professionals. Clips used include: A Face in the Crowd, Charade, The Fortune Cookie, The Odd Couple, Cactus Flower, The Sunshine Boys, Hopscotch, Grumpy Old Men and I’m Not Rappaport. In addition to Walter Matthau himself, on-screen interviewees include actors Jack Lemmon, Julie Harris, Ozzie Davis and Roddy McDowell, directors Herbert Ross, Edward Dmytryk, writer Neil Simon and Walter’s son, director Charles Matthau."

(To watch in full screen mode, click on "Watch on YouTube".)

By Hank Reineke

As a monster-movie loving kid growing up in the shadow of Manhattan, most of my Saturday night plans in the late 1960s and early 1970s were solidly set. That night was reserved for watching old horror and sci-fi flicks on New York City’s Chiller (WPIX-TV) or Creature Features (WNEW-TV). I don’t recall the latter program surviving past 1980 – and even then there had been an interruption of some six years in the scheduling of Creature Features. Though the program would return to the airwaves in 1979, the 8 PM broadcasts were now a thing of the past. The revived telecasts had moved to midnight and well into the early hours of Sunday morning. It hardly mattered, really. I no longer watched Creature Features with the same fervor of 1969 through 1973. I was age nineteen in 1979 and found other (if not necessarily better) things to do on Saturday nights.

This absence from Creature Features caused me to miss out on a number of obscure, aging films broadcast 1979-1980. Among this mix of occasional cinematic gems with near-misses was a mostly forgotten mystery programmer of 1944 titled The Man in Half Moon Street. I was particularly sorry to have missed this one: if my research is correct, I believe the film was broadcast only once – just shy of 2 A.M. - on March 29, 1980. Though one New York area newspaper listing dismissed the film as little more than a “Moody and marginally interesting tale of eternal youth through murder,” such lukewarm praise actually piqued my interest. This seemed my kind of movie. And for some forty-three years I’ve lamented having missing that broadcast.

It has been a tough film to get ahold of: though I’m guessing gray-market copies could have been found at conventions or through those “specialty” dealers of vintage VHS tapes from the ‘80s onward. But as far as I can tell (and, please, feel free correct me if you know better), The Man in Half Moon Street has never been officially available on any home video format: not Laser Disc, VHS, DVD or Blu Ray. Well, that is until now, as we near the eightieth year of the film’s original cinematic release. We have Australia’s Imprint Films to thank for finally issuing this superlative, region-free coded Blu-ray release.

As in the case of many Hollywood pictures of the day, The Man in Half Moon Street was not an original invention of the filmmakers: the scenario was actually based on the British stage drama of playwright Barré Lyndon. Lyndon’s play, published in 1939 by London’s Hamish Hamilton Publishing House, had first toured Bournemouth, Oxford, Manchester and Brighton on a two-week testing-sortie in February of ’39. The play would formally open at the New Theatre in London’s West End on 22 March 1939.

Lyndon’s main antagonist in the stage drama, chemist John Thackeray (Leslie Banks), is a ninety-year old man. One wouldn’t notice the dotage as Thackeray appears decades younger. This is due to the chemist having discovered that by combining radium and periodically replacing his aging super-renal glands with fresh specimens he can retain both youth and immortality. Of course the collection of fresh glands requires innocent others to lose their lives to Thackeray’s ghoulish harvesting.

Over a fifty-year period eight bank cashiers – those with access to large sums of money - have fallen prey to Thackeray’s criminal doings. Dissolving their bodies in acid baths, the chemist then steals the cash reserves his victims had been minding in their bank-telling guardianship. Thackeray requires the large sums so he can pay a confidant: in this case an ethically-challenged surgeon friend, to perform the necessary life-sustaining gland grafts. But Scotland Yard takes up the case just as the chemist readies to take the life of a targeted ninth victim for his evil ends.

Interestingly, playwright Lyndon would go on to write screenplays for Hollywood studios by the mid-1940s, including such moody mystery-noirs as John Brahm’s The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945). But in late January of 1940, it was announced that Don Hartman, a dependable scenarist for Paramount, was scheduled to begin work on adapting Lyndon’s stage play to the big screen. Hartman was, at present, in New York, trying to finish up his co-write (with Clifford Goldsmith) of The Further Adventures of Henry Aldrich.

That May of 1940, Paramount optimistically announced there would be no production delays on their twenty-five million dollar film schedule budget for the upcoming year. This declaration was made “despite war conditions in Europe which continue to threaten returns” in both national and international film markets. One of the films on the Paramount schedule was The Man in Half Moon Street. Early reports suggested that Basil Rathbone was to take on the leading role. The actor was available to assume the role of Thackeray as he had only recently completed work on Paramount’s A Date with Destiny (soon retitled The Mad Doctor).

Rathbone had played the villainous role in The Mad Doctor which, despite the intriguing title, was not a horror film, but a mystery crime-drama. The Los Angeles Citizen-News would report in June of 1940 that while Half Moon too was not of “bogeyman classification,” it on the “fantastic side” with its lurid sci-fi angle. In any case, the film project fell temporarily to the wayside, first due to scripting issues and afterward to the cranking out of patriotic films necessitated by America’s entry into WWII following the attack at Pearl Harbor.

But by early winter of 1943, the long dormant Half Moon project was showing signs of revival. On March 2, 1943 it was announced in the Hollywood trades that Lester Fuller, recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York, had been offered the director’s chair for The Man in Half Moon Street. In spring of 1943, Albert Dekker, a Hollywood “heavie” who recently scared audiences as Universal’s Dr. Cyclops (1940), was announced to assume the leading role.

But on June 15, 1943, Variety reported that Fuller was out of the Half Moon project. Ralph Murphy was now chosen to direct. Technically, the pair’s previously assigned directorial spots were merely traded-off. Murphy had initially been chosen to helm Paramount’s production of Marseilles, but former stage director Fuller was now tasked to assume responsibility on that particular film. Murphy was to move over to direct Fuller’s Half Moon project.

Murphy’s first assignment was a formidable one: he was “to order a complete rewrite job on the script.” There was also a report that such rewriting would likely require a recasting of principal characters. Though Swedish film star Nils Asther had been the latest actor announced to assume the film’s leading role, his participation in the project was now suggested as being “off” - for the time being, at least. The film’s producer Walter MacEwan wanted to weigh casting options “until further developments” in the scripting of Half Moon were resolved.

The re-writing of Half Moon would eventually fall to scenarists Charles Kenyon and Garrett Fort. The final screenplay credit would ultimately go to Kenyon alone who, like Fort, was a veteran of old Hollywood: their work in the industry could be traced to silent cinema’s earliest days. Fort’s resume for this sort of film was particularly impressive: he had written or co-written such totemic pre-code Golden Age Horrors for Universal as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula’s Daughter (1936). But Fort’s credit on Half Moon only noted his role in adapting Lyndon’s play for the screen.

The final screenplay drafted would, peculiarly, expunge most of the ghoulish and murderous elements of Lyndon’s stage play – perhaps America’s real-life wartime experiences were horrific enough. There are no murders of bankers. The Thackeray character (renamed Dr. Julian Karell in the film) appears to be already a man of means, an accomplished portrait artist and scientist. He attends black-tie, high society, posh parties and conducts his experiments at an upscale London row house. The film curiously offers no scenes of on (or off) screen physical violence.

There are no gruesome acid baths in which the bodies of victims are disposed. The film’s lone “action” scene captures a moment when Karell “rescues” a despondent medical student (Morton Lowry) from a watery suicide attempt near the Thames Embankment. Most scenes of this dialogue-heavy script are set in parlors and sitting rooms – which, to be honest, really proves a drag on the film’s ninety-two minute running time. One begins to welcome even the briefest scenes when Karell ventures out into the shrouded night and pea-soup fog of the London Streets. Not that much happens during these interludes, but such moments provide a measure of moodiness to this otherwise slowly paced non-mystery.

Truth be told, The Man in Half Moon Street is no detective nor mystery film; we know almost from the beginning what’s going on. We learn the handsome and youthful Karell is actually more than one hundred years old in age. But through a century of experimentation – and with the assistance of the aging Dr. Kurt Van Bruecken, the “world’s greatest living surgeon and necrologist” (Reinhold Schünzel), Karell has managed to stay young through his drinking of a luminous serum and periodically undergoing fresh glandular transplants at ten year intervals.

There are problems ahead. Following a stroke, the shaky hands of the elderly Van Bruecken are no longer trustworthy to perform the necessary surgeries. Besides, Van Bruecken has undergone a change of heart: he fears that Karell is no longer working in the interest of science and humanity in staving off the aging process. He fears (rightfully) Karell is now consumed only by his burning desire for the lovely Eve Brandon (Helen Walker) and selfish self-interest in maintaining a “fraudulent youth.”

“No man can break the law of God,” Van Bruecken cautions, but Karell is confident if anyone can do it, he can. Even if that means farming the glands of the suicidal medical student he’s imprisoned upstairs. The other more pressing problem facing Karell is that his mysterious activities have finally brought him to the attention of an ethical surgeon (Paul Cavanagh), a cabal of fine art appraisers and Scotland Yard.

With Paramount now holding what they believed an acceptable – and mostly non-horrific - script in place, the casting of the film proceeded in earnest. In May of 1943 it was suggested that young actress Susan Hayward would play a “featured role” in Half Moon, though the report cautioned Paramount was still “having a time of it procuring someone to play the sinister male lead.” The earlier front-running names of Rathbone and Dekker were both out, and rumors of Alan Ladd’s casting were squelched when the actor chose instead to sign up for military service.

That same month producer MacEwan confirmed Nils Asther would in fact play the role of Dr. Julian Karell as earlier rumored. The trades suggested that it was Asther who, in fact, first suggested that Paramount pick up the rights to Lyndon’s play and cast him in the lead role. There was some mild press controversy regarding Asther’s casting. Some Hollywood gossips dismissed the actor as “Yesterday’s Star” (born in 1897, Asther had appeared in silent films with Greta Garbo). Though his character was scripted as someone thirty-five years of age, Asther was in reality 46 years old at the time of production. Still, there was an acknowledgement that the dashingly tall, slender, handsome (and rumored bi-sexual) actor “still has a big following.”

Though the actor was to star opposite the sultry Hayward, the role of Karell’s paramour Eve Brandon was ultimately given to Helen Walker. There would be some delay before she could join the production: the actress, currently on a wartime U.S.O. tour, was expected to report to the set near September’s end. Truthfully, Walker doesn’t have a lot to do in the film. She certainly photographs well as Karell’s doting and perhaps too protective and morally-blind girlfriend. Even though Karell’s work is secretive – so much so that it causes him to disappear for weeks or months at a time – Eve chooses to accept her lover’s “general mysteriousness” as a byproduct of his genius. I personally found Brandon less likable and sympathetic as the film progresses. When it’s finally revealed to her that Karell’s experimentations have brought harm to innocents, she’s so in love with him she dismisses his guilt, choosing instead to reflexively defend the “grandeur” of his ambitions.

If the main characters in this picture aren’t always likable, there’s still a lot to admire about the film. Miklos Rozsa’s moody musical score is certainly worthy of praise. Henry Sharp’s fog-bound “exterior” photography is similarly moody, but unfortunately not up on the screen much. In the final minutes of the film when Karell dramatically reverts to his actual age, long-time make-up man Wally Westmore – of Hollywood’s make-up family dynasty – does his best on the effects. But the camera cheats the audience of a full on-screen transformation ala Westmore’s make-up on Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) – which remains the “gold standard” of Golden Age horror transformations. Ralph Murphy’s direction is competent but workmanlike in execution. He creates very little visual tension until the film’s final scenes and, by then, it’s simply too late. Following the completion of Half Moon, Murphy was planning to move back to New York City to direct the Broadway stage production of Sleep It Off.

Of course World War II was still on-going, interrupting, ruining and/or ending the lives of countless innocents globally. In such an atmosphere Hollywood was not immune to war-time production delays and release date restrictions. Paramount alone had accumulated an unprecedented backlog of thirty-one completed films awaiting release in early summer of 1944. There was some confidence that the tide was turning in favor of the Allies, studios cooperating in the war effort by rolling out whatever patriotic war films they were sitting on. There was a consensus it was time to empty the vault of such films. It was believed that movie audiences would weary of war films following the cessation of fighting overseas.

There was, at long last, a belated screening of The Man in Half Moon Street held at a Hollywood tradeshow on October 16, 1944. Variety thought the script was a “compact and interesting,” the Kenyon/Fort scenario displaying a “few new twists from the formularized style of long-life mystery tales to keep interest at consistent level.” But the reviewer acknowledged, not unreasonably, that the film would best serve as “strong support” to a superior attraction. Other critics likewise suggested Half Moon was too weak to see top-billing on a double-attraction.

Indeed, The Man in Half Moon Street (already in U.S. regional release as early as December 1944 although the film’s copyright is listed as 1945 on the sleeve of the snap case) was featured as the undercard of a double-bill. (On his commentary, Tim Lucas reveals the film actually had its world-wide premiere in Australia in early November of 1944). On its U.S. run, the film was usually topped by director Fritz Lang’s cinematic take of novelist Graham Greene’s Nazi espionage tale Ministry of Fear. This double feature actually did reasonably well, the trades citing solid - if not necessarily boffo - returns as the package was rolled out across U.S. markets and into 1945. Newspaper columnists tended to give the Lang film the lion’s share of its critical attention, though both films were generally branded as little more than decent programmers of primary interest only to devotees of suspense and mystery films.

By Hank Reineke

I wouldn’t have fared well in Puritan America of 1642. A title overlay inscription on the front end of Robert G. Vignola’s The Scarlet Letter (1934) offers, “Though to us, the customs seem grim and the punishments hard, they were necessary in the formation of the U.S. destiny.” With the benefit of hindsight, I might argue this opinion otherwise, but it is what it is… or, rather, was what it was. Puritan America seemed a bit too inhospitable to my taste: everybody at one time or another was being publically humiliated or punished for terribly mild transgressions.

In 1642 you could find yourself in the stock for laughing on the Sabbath, or publically gagged and propped for gossiping, or aggressively poked with a long stick if caught dozing off during a long and ponderous sermon. And that’s not to mention having the Towne Crier ordering you to extinguish your lights for a pre-ordained bedtime set by the whims of a council of elders. Of course all of this, I suppose, is all still far preferable to being trussed to a pole and stoned by your “righteous” and “pious” neighbors for accusations of adultery and other crimes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of 1850, The Scarlet Letter, is widely regarded as a masterwork of early American literature. The novel’s storyline is set in Puritan American of 1642, beleaguered seamstress Hester Prynne forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her clothing, a mark identifying her as an adulteress. With her physician husband missing from the village for two years and presumed lost at sea, Prynne gives out-of-wedlock birth to a daughter, Pearl. Though castigated and ostracized by the community, Prynne refuses to name the father of the child, thereby preserving his unsoiled reputation. Despite the travails, Prynne manages to live her life with a sense of dignity and compassion – and a measure of moral clarity not exemplified by the religious zealots who continue to harass and condemn both mother and child.

There had been several film adaptations of The Scarlet Letter, preceding this 1934 effort directed by Vignola, though all previous were released as silents. The first adaptation was a 1908 adaptation directed by Sydney Olcott, a film short now presumed lost. Interestingly, Olcott was still alive and kicking when the Vignola film went into production. In June of 1934, the Los Angeles Post-Record reported, “One visitor to the set was Sydney Olcott who directed the one-reel 1908 version of The Scarlet Letter in one day. Olcott was still proud of his effort, telling actor Henry B. Walthall, “We didn’t do so bad in 1908, Henry. We didn’t have cranes, microphones and we didn’t use big crowds. We had a solitary cameraman and he helped with the props […] Them was the days.”

Olcott’s film may have been the first cinematic adaptation, but certainly not last. Between 1911 and 1926, the film was re-made as at least on five occasions. Some of these versions – varying as one to nine reelers in their release – are also presumed lost or suffer missing reels. The most famous of these silent era cinematic adaptations have survived: Victor Seastrom’s 1926 version for Metro Goldwin Mayer featuring Lillian Gish and Henry B. Walthall.

But producer Larry Darmour, the founder and president of Majestic Pictures, was determined to bring The Scarlet Letter to the big screen for the title’s first sound version. A wartime cameraman and newsreel editor, Darmour was interested in creating Hollywood productions, ultimately scoring his earliest success with a series of Mickey Rooney Mickey McGuire comedy shorts. Then - riding on the coattails of Universal’s successful Dracula and Frankenstein pictures – Darmour served as an uncredited executive producer for Frank R. Strayer’s The Vampire Bat (1933), a fine Golden Age chiller featuring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray.

It was gossip columnist Louella Parsons who broke the big news in March of 1934: “The Scarlet Letter, the picture that MGM would just as soon forget, is to be brought back to life. But this time it will be made without the airy, fairy Lillian Gish and in a different mood. I don’t know how it can be made different, but Larry Darmour […] says they will bring a little humor into it. Hope Nathaniel Hawthorne won’t turn in his grave if they put too much humor into his famous novel.” Parsons would also report that Leonard Fields and David Silverstein had been hired to script from Hawthorne’s novel.

It is true that Darmour made the odd decision to bring in episodes of light-comedy relief to this otherwise somber and dramatic enterprise. Actors Alan Hale (“Bartholomew Hockings”) and William Kent (“Sampson Goodfellow”) are written into the storyline – neither character appears in the original novel – and the pair’s misadventures as offered are completely irrelevant to the film’s storyline and disturb the scenario’s sense of dramatic tension. Variety certainly noted this scripting failure in their review of September 25, 1934, noting this “venerated classic [goes] wrecked on the rocks of comedy relief. Hawthorne’s tense plot is lightened with a John Alden-Miles Standish development that recurs with mathematical precision about every so often to spoil whatever tension the players have been able to create.”

The role of beleaguered Hester Prynne was given to the acclaimed silent-film actress Colleen Moore, just coming off her early sound role as “Sarah” in J. Walter Ruben’s gun-less and pretty pedestrian crime-drama Success at any Price (1934). In the words of an overly critical journalist from the Evening Vanguard (Venice, CA), Moore’s assumption of the Prynne role might “atone somewhat” for the failures of Success. Moore was already disillusioned with Hollywood’s new way of doing things, this ingénue of the silent screen uncomfortable with both microphones and sound recording. Moore’s appearance in The Scarlet Letter would in fact prove to be her final big screen credit.

The actor Henry B. Walthall more easily made the transition to sound pictures. He had been knocking around movie sets since 1908 and would continue working until his death in 1936. Walthall was cast to reprise his role as Prynne’s surprisingly-retuned-from-sea husband Roger Chillingworth: who now lives only to bitterly exact revenge on the unnamed father of young Pearl and bring public “dishonor” upon Hester as a “faithless woman.” Hardie Albright rounds out the cast’s major players, taking on the role of preacher “Arthur Dimmesdale,” a fallen Man-of-God tortured by a secret that has eaten away at his soul.

In May of 1934, the Los Angeles Times reported this first sound version of The Scarlet Letter was to go before cameras on or about May 23^rd. The film was shot primarily at Culver City’s Pathe Studios and at RKO’s forty-acre desert Pathe Ranch location. The latter area suffered no shortage of rattlesnakes crawling about. Film producer-distributor Sam Sherman suggests on a commentary that a cruel joke played on snake-fearing actress Moore by members of the film crew actually led to the actresses’ hospitalization for a nervous breakdown.

There were some journalist-train spotters who seemed dismissive of the project from its onset, carping on the smallest of details of Majestic’s economically-budgeted feature. Again, from an on-set report in June of 1934 courtesy of the Evening Vanguard: “An anachronistic note occurs in the churchyard. The dates on the tombstones are of the nineteenth century. On a major lot, such a state of affairs would not be tolerated for a moment.” The filmmakers protested such eagle-eyed nonsense, noting – accurately – that such graves would only be seen “from a distance” in the final print.

By 2 July 1934, production was already completed, Variety reporting that Darmour was in process of producing no fewer than thirteen features for Majestic, with The Scarlet Letter and Ralph Cedar’s She Had to Choose (with Buster Crabbe and Isabel Jewell) already in the can. There was a preview screening of The Scarlet Letter held at Pasadena’s Colorado Theatre held in July of 1934. Billboard allowed the film was a “sincere effort, singling out Moore’s performance as “the only redeeming thing about the whole business, [but] the balance of the cast are mere shadows.” The review also thought the film demonstrated a “slow development and uneven tempo.” The critic mused the script might have benefited with modern dialogue, as the cast was (…) “to speak the silly lither of year’s gone past.”

The critic from Variety was in agreement that Moore’s performance was “informed by gentle humility which gives the part dignity and appeal.” And though the scenarists were given credit for a mostly “well done” script, the writers were chided for not digging “below the surface” to reflect the “real soul-tragedy” of this man/woman relationship, choosing instead to only amplify the “community’s cruelty to the transgressor.” Though the Boston Globe thought the film a worthwhile effort, this critic too made plain The Scarlet Letter was not a “first-rank picture.” Post-dated tombstones aside, it was the reviewer’s belief the film offered, “Too much attention to realism of detail, and not enough of virtue of emotion in drama.”

But ultimately the harshest critic of Vignola’s The Scarlet Letter was the powerful Archbishop John T. McNicholas of The Catholic League of Decency who found the age-old subject matter of adultery and babies born out of wedlock to be contemporaneously dangerous and abhorrent. The League put the film on its banned list as a “Class C” film, a rating deeming such films as “indecent and immoral and unfit for public entertainment." This was problematic for the producer Darmour as many Americans accepted the judgement of the clergy as holy writ to be wholeheartedly obeyed.

Hoping to change the mind of the “Decency” League ruling – while arguing for the right of free expression in America – Darmour would telegram McNicholas in September of 1934. The ruling, he protested, was unfair. After all, the producer argued, 95% of U.S. schools offered Hawthorne’s book as “compulsory reading” in their curriculum of American literature studies. Darmour also sent a copy of his telegram to newspapers. It read:

We were moved to produce The Scarlet Letter because of its widespread use in schools, logically feeling that a faithful screen adaptation should be acceptable to educators. We have adhered faithfully to the basic theme related in Hawthorne’s great work.

If the campaign you are waging for decency is carried to its logical end, why, then, are not attempts made to bar the book in schools and public libraries? Since the film version is a faithful adaptation of the book, your ban on the film appears as agitation against one medium and not another. One is forced to admit this is discrimination and wholly undemocratic.”

Sadly, it appears as though this telegram, with minor changes in the particulars, could be sent to administrators of certain U.S. States in 2023. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Columbia Pictures with a spotlight on their incredible film legacy beginning Wednesday, January 3. Join TCM host Ben Mankiewicz in the month-long celebration showcasing the breadth of the studio’s films with a different decade every Wednesday, from the 1920s and 1930s with “It Happened One Night” all the way through to 2000s “Marie Antoinette.” The celebration will kick off Wednesday, January 3 at 8pm ET, ahead of Columbia Pictures 100th Anniversary on January 10. 

The following is a complete schedule for TCM’s January Spotlight:

TCM January Spotlight: Columbia Pictures 100th Anniversary
(All Times Eastern) 

Wednesday, January 3
Night One – the 1920s and 1930s 

8:00 PM – It Happened One Night (1934) 

10:00 PM – Woman Haters (1934) (Three Stooges Short) 

10:30 PM – The Awful Truth (1937) 

12:15 AM – You Can’t Take it With You (1938)  

2:30 AM – Man’s Castle (1933)  

4:00 AM – The Belle of Broadway (1926)  

Wednesday, January 10
Night Two – the 1940s and 1950s 

 8:00 PM – Gilda (1946)  

10:00 PM – Born Yesterday (1950)  

12:00 AM – You Natzy Spy (1940) (Three Stooges Short) 

12:30 AM – On the Waterfront (1954)  

2:30 AM – Ride Lonesome (1959)  

4:00 AM – The Caine Mutiny (1954) 

Wednesday, January 17
Night Three – the 1960s and 1970s 

8:00 PM – Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 

12:00 AM – Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)  

2:30 AM – Taxi Driver (1976)  

4:30 AM – Funny Girl (1968) 

7:00 AM – The China Syndrome (1979) 

Wednesday, January 24
Night Four – the 1980s and 1990s 

8:00 PM – Gandhi (1982)  

11:30 PM – Philadelphia (1993) – (TriStar film) 

2:00 AM – One False Move (1992)  

4:00 AM – The Last Emperor (1987)  

Wednesday, January 31
Night Five – the 2000s and 2010s 

8:00 PM – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – (Sony Pictures Classics)

10:15 PM – Something’s Gotta Give (2003)

12:30 AM – Punch Drunk Love (2002)  

 2:15 AM – Whiplash (2014)  – (Sony Pictures Classics) 

 4:15 AM – Marie Antoinette (2006)

By Ernie Magnotta

Due to the financial success of the highly enjoyable 1985 martial arts/actioner American Ninja, a sequel was quickly put into production which would feature the return of stars Michael Dudikoff and Steve James as well as director Sam Firstenberg.

Written by James Booth and Gary Conway (from a story by Conway), American Ninja 2: The Confrontation finds our heroes—US Army Rangers Sergeant Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) and Sergeant Curtis Jackson (James)—travelling to the Caribbean in order to search for a group of Marines that have gone missing. Once there, they find that an evil drug lord known as the Lion (Gary Conway) has been brainwashing and genetically enhancing soldiers, transforming them into superhuman Ninja killers. Are the Ninjitsu skills of Armstrong and Jackson enough to stop the Lion from turning the missing Marines into deadly Super Ninjas?

Filmed in South Africa and released by Cannon Films on May 1, 1987, American Ninja 2: The Confrontation, while not as solid or as successful as its predecessor, is still a very fun, 80s adventure. It’s no surprise that veteran action director Firstenberg expertly handles the film’s many exciting action sequences, and the cast, led by the talented Dudikoff and James, is a joy to watch. The film clocks in at a brief 90 minutes and features familiar faces such as Conway, Jeff Weston and karate champion Mike Stone; not to mention legendary actor/stuntman Kane Hodder (Jason from the Friday the 13^th franchise) in a brief role as a thug. If, like me, you’re a fan of super fun 80s action flicks, Dudikoff, James, or all three, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here.

American Ninja 2: The Confrontation has been released on a region one Blu-ray by Kino Lorber and is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. As with the KLedition of the 1985 film, the sequel looks and sounds fantastic. The special features include two informative audio commentaries: one by director Firstenberg (moderated by filmmaker/editor Elijah Drenner) and another by Firstenberg and Stunt Coordinator BJ Davis. There is also the featurette: An American Ninja in Cape Town: The Making of American Ninja 2 as well as the original theatrical trailer. The Blu-ray also comes with an eye-catching slipcover.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Shout! Factory.

For the honor of the crown and the destiny of a country, four heroes must reassemble for one last epic battle in the cult film classic, THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. Directed by Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers, Pearl Harbor), Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon) leads a phenomenal cast, including Jeremy Irons (Red Sparrow), John Malkovich (Bullet Head), Gérard Depardieu (To the Ends of the Earth), and Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary) in this thrilling tale of majesty and Musketeers. On December 26, 2023, Shout! Select will release THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK Collector’s Edition in 4K UHD™+ Blu-ray™. This must-have home entertainment release features new 4K transfer from the original negative in Dolby Vision, and special bonus content. Movie collectors and fans can now preorder THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK Collector’s Edition 4K UHD™+ Blu-ray™ at ShoutFactory.com.

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Movie synopsis

Louis XIII, King of France, had a son, Louis, who succeeded his father to the throne. But, known to very few, the heir had a twin brother, Philippe, hidden away after birth and forced to languish in prison, his identity unknown behind an iron mask. His brother, now grown and King Louis XIV, proved to be both corrupt and a tyrant. Louis sends Athos’ son, Raoul off to certain death in war, so that he could have his woman for himself. Athos, together with two of the other Musketeers, Porthos and Aramis, swear revenge. Only D’Artagnan remains loyal to the crown, but will he join his former compatriots to free Philippe from prison, kill the king, and put Philippe on the throne in his place?

UNITED ARTISTS Presents A RANDALL WALLACE Film LEONARDO DiCAPRIO JEREMY IRONS

JOHN MALKOVICH GÉRARD DEPARDIEU GABRIEL BYRNE “THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK”

ANNE PARILLAUD JUDITH GODRÈCHE A UNITED ARTISTS CORPORATION LTD. Production

Music by NICK GLENNIE-SMITH Costume Designer JAMES ACHESON Edited by WILLIAM HOY

Production Designed by ANTHONY PRATT Director of Photography PETER SUSCHITZKY

Based upon the novel by ALEXANDRE DUMAS Co-Producer PAUL HITCHCOCK Executive Producer ALAN LADD, JR.

Produced by RANDALL WALLACE RUSSELL SMITH Written for the Screen and Directed by RANDALL WALLACE

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK Collector’s Edition

Bonus Features for UHD/Blu-ray

DISC ONE (4K UHD):

· NEW 4K Transfer From the Original Camera Negative

· Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, 2.0

· In Dolby Vision (HDR-10 Compatible)

· Audio Commentary With Writer/Director Randall Wallace

DISC TWO (BLU-RAY):

· NEW 4K Transfer From The Original Camera Negative

· Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, 2.0

· Audio Commentary with Randall Wallace

· Interview With Producer Paul Hitchcock

· Interview With Production Designer Anthony Pratt

· “Myth And The Musketeers” Featurette

· “Director’s Take” Featurette

· “Alternate Mask Prototypes” Featurette

· Original Behind-The-Scenes Featurette

· Theatrical Trailer

By Todd Garbarini

If Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), Sir Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Simon Wincer’s D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), and the television show Small Wonder (1985 – 1989) are all about anything that we can be absolutely sure of, they are about prescience and the coming of “Artificial Intelligence.” Following Stanford University professor John McCarthy’s 1955 Dartmouth workshop and his introduction of the term “Artificial Intelligence,” or “AI” as it is generally referred to now, AI means many things to many different people today. When these outings reached audiences, they were merely regarded as science fiction, though today there is an argument to be made that they should be reappraised as science fact. AI was not a term used when those films were released and has only come into universal parlance with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022. One wonders how Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon, the four men all regarded as the “founding fathers” of Artificial Intelligence in the early 1950s, would have regarded these stories and if they were in line with their notions of AI.

Richard Colla’s The Questor Tapes is a made-for-TV movie that was largely ignored by audiences despite its interesting premise of a scientist named Emil Vaslovik (Lew Ayres) and his desire to build a superhuman android named Questor, expertly portrayed by veteran actor Robert Foxworth. Filmed in 1973 and intended to be the pilot for a projected NBC series, Questor was the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry, a television screenwriter and producer who is best known for both being confused with author Ray Bradbury as well as being the creator of the initially unsuccessful but later wildly popular sci-fi television series Star Trek. Broadcast on Wednesday, January 23, 1974, Questor begins with a team of scientific and electronic experts who, following the disappearance of Vaslovik, attempt to bring his vision to fruition despite being unable to decode the programming tape while also accidentally erasing most of the tape’s contents – a nod to the Watergate scandal of the time?

Geoffrey Darrow (John Vernon) is the new head of the project, and he butts heads with Vaslovik’s assistant, Jerry Robinson (Mike Farrell), who interrupts the data transfer and insists that the programming should be done with the partially erased tapes. When the android fails to respond, the “experts” leave the facility, dejected. While alone, Questor, bald and naked, whirrs to life and, in a positively ridiculous sequence, begins to transform itself from an “it” to a “him” (wait until you see how it adds hair to its chrome dome), managing to dress itself in clothing that perfectly fits. Questor sets off on a journey to search for Vaslovik and hopes to understand his purpose while attempting to fill in the blank spots due to the erased portions of his memory tapes. To do this, he enlists the help of a reluctant Robinson. Questor begins by talking the way that a robot would be perceived to speak, but through his travels with Robinson he begins to sound more and more human. There is a humorous sequence after the duo make their way to London and need to obtain more money. Questor solves this issue by using programmed intelligence to gain the upper hand in a casino sequence that would be later used by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Barry Levinson’s Rain Man (1988) and by Jessica Alba in the “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” episode from October 2000 of the James Cameron-created series Dark Angel.

They make their way to a wealthy Lady Helena Trimble (Dana Wynter) who worked with Vaslovik and he gleans more info from her as to his creator’s whereabouts, though he is shot in a park by a soldier and is summarily returned to the laboratory. Following his repair, Questor sets off to Mount Ararat, allegedly the location of Noah’s Ark, and locates Vaslovik in a cave thanks to some nifty matte work by the late great Oscar-winning artist Albert Whitlock. Vaslovik, as it turns out, is also an android – shades of Blade Runner? Who can forget the revelatory stuttering of Felix Flankin at the end of Jules Bass’s 1967 outing Mad Monster Party? I will leave it up to you, the reader, to have a look at the film to explain the rather involved denouement but suffice it to say Mr. Roddenberry had a knack for creating projects that initially went nowhere, then revisiting them and turning them into hits. While Questor was initially conceived of as a series, with the movie intended as the series pilot, creative differences between Mr. Roddenberry and NBC forced it to be nixed and promoted as a one-off movie-of-the-week (known in the industry as an MOW) which, I feel, explains the film’s abrupt ending. Many of the ideas touched upon, including the notion of automatons and androids, made their way into the highly successful Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 – 1994).

Questor explores themes common to other films of a similar ilk: What gives us our identity and what constitutes humanity? How do we, as humans, quench our thirst for knowledge and curiosity? Both Mr. Foxworth and Mr. Farrell possess good chemistry and it would have been nice to see where the series went.

The laboratory portions of the film were shot at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. While the technology of 1973 was considered to be “state-of-the-art” and then destined to become “soon-to-be-obsolete” as all technology inevitably does (at least according to Moore’s Law), it’s a kick to see how the experts reach their conclusions as to how Questor will react to the environment. The special effects are, as you can well imagine, dated, however the ideas are just as thought-provoking and visionary and never more topical than when viewed now in an era when robots are poised to man 18-wheelers, serve customers at fast food joints, and perform minimum wage tasks deemed repetitive and boring.

Kino Lorber has released the film on Blu-ray, and it looks great. There is an informative and spirited commentary track by film historian and screenwriter Gary Gerani. Extraordinarily knowledgeable and enjoyable to listen to, I will seek out other films that he speaks on. His commentary encompasses brief but thorough bios of the leading performers and makes comments on much of the onscreen action, how the sequences were accomplished, while also delving into matters of the plot and how they relate to the here-and-now. A first-rate commentary that easily lends itself to repeated playback.

Rounding out the extras are trailers for the film, as well as for Fear No Evil (1969), Scream, Pretty Peggy (1973), Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (1979), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), The Black Marble (1980), and Fuzz (1972).

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By Fred Blosser

Life goes from bad to worse for Confederate soldier John Warner (George Hilton) in the opening half hour of “A Bullet for Sandoval,” a 1970 Spaghetti Western now available on Blu-ray in a Special Edition from VCI Entertainment. On the eve of battle in Texas, Warner learns that his sweetheart Rosa has just given birth to their son in plague-ridden Los Cedros, and now is dying from cholera. Denied authorisation to leave camp, Warner rides off anyway, incurring a death sentence for desertion. Arriving in Los Cedros with hopes of marrying Rosa before she dies, he finds no sympathy there either. Rosa has passed away, and her father Don Pedro Sandoval (Ernest Borgnine), a powerful grandee who loathes “gringos” in general and Warner in particular, is infuriated that the soldier has returned. He disowns the baby and drives Warner and the newborn out of his palatial hacienda.

Fleeing Los Cedros with his son, Warner is rebuffed at one way-station and then a second when he begs for milk for the infant. The people at both places are fearful of being infected when they learn that he has just come from Los Cedros. The weakened, feverish baby dies, and Warner becomes a vengeful outlaw, assembling a gang of henchmen to raid the settlements that drove him away when he needed their aid to keep his child alive. Three of the men—Sam, Lucky, and Priest—are trustworthy. The other three—Morton, One-Eye (“a sex maniac convicted of raping two little girls”), and Guadalupano—not so much. Warner comes to enjoy the riches and women that accrue from his new career as a bandit, but his ultimate target remains Sandoval. In the meantime, Don Pedro and his fellow cattle barons on the Border convince the Confederate army to help them pursue and eradicate Warner and his band.

Like most Spaghetti Westerns, “A Bullet for Sandoval” was an international production with Italian studio backing, a cast of actors from several countries, outdoor locations in the Spanish desert, and in this case, a Spanish director (Julio Buchs), and Spanish writers. In the starring role, George Hilton (born Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara) was an accomplished, darkly handsome Uruguayan actor who had a thriving career in Italian genre movies but was largely unknown to U.S. moviegoers. For marquee value in the States, the producers paired him with Ernest Borgnine as the imperious Don Pedro. Who didn’t know Ernest Borgnine from “The Wild Bunch,” “Ice Station Zebra,” a hundred other movies, and “McHale’s Navy”?

With Borgnine’s name prominently displayed on ads, “A Bullet for Sandoval” was one of several Spaghetti Westerns that opened in the U.S. in 1970, after the surprise success of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Derided by most critics as violent trash, they were usually relegated to drive-ins and second-run movie houses. There, they filled a void on double-bills left by the death of traditional, American-made B-Westerns like those made a decade before with aging stars like Dana Andrews, Glenn Ford, and Robert Taylor. Sometimes, ironically, they were paired with the homegrown Spaghetti imitations that Hollywood studios had begun to produce, like “Two Mules for Sister Sara,” “Barquero,” “Macho Callahan,” and “El Condor.”

The critics may have dismissed the genre, but their opinions were immaterial for the U.S. target audience of young guys in their teens and early twenties, who welcomed pictures like “A Bullet for Sandoval” on all-night movie marathons at local drive-ins. At one o’clock in the morning, in a pleasant stupor of fatigue and beer, few would question the accuracy or plausibility of a Civil War in which Confederate officers pause their military campaign to help ranchers chase outlaws. As far as fans were concerned, such fine points could be argued by history professors, as long as they could rely on filmmakers like Buchs to deliver a gritty succession of gunfights, chases, and gorgeous European starlets—in the case of “A Bullet for Sandoval,” Annabella Incontrera, Mary Paz Pondal, and Paquita Torres—in low-cut peasant blouses.

VCI Entertainment’s new Special Edition of “A Bullet for Sandoval” presents the film in a remastered, 4K version from the original negative, adding the English-dubbed voice track and diligently restoring ten minutes of footage edited out of the U.S. print in 1970 and consequently, out of previous American home video releases. As director and enthusiast Alex Cox suggests in his informative audio commentary for the disc, the movie is better than its synopsis implies. The script and direction give the story an epic scope despite a limited budget, culminating in a briskly staged showdown in a bullfighting arena, and Hilton and Borgnine offer heartfelt performances as the two antagonists. Relatively rare for a Spaghetti Western, both Warner and Don Pedro are emotionally damaged characters instead of the cool-cat bounty hunter and deranged bandido who usually anchor such films.

Cox notes that the grim scenes of Warner and his friends Lucky and Priest trying to keep Warner’s baby alive in the desert owe an obvious debt to “Three Godfathers,” John Ford’s 1948 parable of the Nativity story with horses and six-shooters. Ford was ever the optimist, and the infant in “Three Godfathers” survives, delivered safely to a Western town called Jerusalem by outlaw Bob Hightower, played by the indomitable John Wayne. Warner’s newborn isn’t as fortunate in a world bereft of Christian charity, reflecting the grim philosophy of the Spaghetti genre where the innocent are as likely to suffer as the corrupt and the guilty, and often, more likely.

In addition to Alex Cox’s commentary track, the VCI Special Edition includes the title sequence from the original Spanish version, titled “Los Desperados,” and the U.S. theatrical trailer. It is an admirably respectful package for a movie that few would have regarded as anything other than disposable entertainment five decades ago.

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“POWELL’S BIG BANG”

By Raymond Benson

The British production, The Edge of the World, was acclaimed director Michael Powell’s first important feature film. Released in 1937, it was well-received in the U.K. and it also made something of a splash in the USA among the more discerning critics and audiences who appreciated non-Hollywood fare.

Powell had been working in cinema in various capacities since the silent days as a still photographer, scriptwriter, and director of short films. Through most of the 1930s, he helmed over twenty pictures that had diverse levels of success, but it wasn’t until 1936-37 that he had the chance to make a truly personal film. This was the “big bang” breakthrough in his movie career.

The Edge of the World is based on a newspaper article Powell had read that documented how a remote island, St. Kilda in the Scottish Outer Hebrides, was losing its population due to the land’s inability to support the people, and because younger generations were fleeing to Scotland and England for better opportunities. Powell wrote an original script involving two families on such an island and how dramatic circumstances change their lives.

Unable to film on St. Kilda, Powell chose the northern island of Foula in the Shetland Islands group. It was suitably similar in both the landscape and the people’s geo-political issues. With a handful of known actors and by casting many characters from the locals, Powell and cinematographers Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer, and Powell himself, captured (even in black and white) the beauty and awesome grandeur of the cliffs-dominated island.

Two dominant families on the fictional island of Hirta, the Mansons and the Grays, are united by an upcoming marriage between Andrew Gray (Niall MacGinnis) and Ruth Manson (Belle Chrystall). Ruth’s brother, Robbie (Eric Berry) is Andrew’s best friend. Conflict arises when Robbie announces that he’s leaving the island to go “see the world” because there’s nothing left on Hirta for him. Losing someone like Robbie hurts the economy because there aren’t that many strapping young men to do the fishing and crofting. Andrew attempts to convince Robbie to stay, but Robbie will have none of it. Andrew’s father (Finlay Currie) is somewhat sympathetic to Robbie and believes that the islanders’ way of life is indeed diminishing and that they should all evacuate for the good of their children’s children. Robbie’s father (John Laurie) disagrees and is determined to stay, despite his son’s wishes. Andrew and Robbie challenge each other to an age-old tradition of racing up one of the cliffs to determine if Robbie should stay or not. The results of the contest are tragic… and this deeply affects the futures of the two families and the rest of the story.

Michael Powell appears at the beginning of the film as a yachtsman escorting Andrew Gray back to the island for reminiscing (the rest of the movie is a flashback).

Short and tight (at 75 minutes), The Edge of the World is a slice of life to which few of us today can relate, but it is a well-made, touching depiction of the story that Powell wanted to tell. Perhaps more important than the movie itself is the fact that the picture’s reception enabled Powell to go on to bigger and better projects, such as Thief of Bagdad (1940) and the eventual brilliant partnership with co-director Emeric Pressburger.

In fact, the making of The Edge of the World meant so much to Powell that he returned to Foula in 1978 with a camera crew and some of the surviving actors to make a short documentary, Return to the Edge of the World. This half hour program is in full color and is a warm reunion between the filmmakers and the people who still reside on the island.

Milestone Film and Video presents a beautifully restored high definition of the feature film (distributed by Kino Lorber) with an audio commentary by Powell’s widow, Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, film historian Ian Christie, and Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis reading from Powell’s book on the making of the film (200,000 Feet on Foula).

Supplements include alternate scenes; the original trailer; the documentary Return to the Edge of the World; Powell’s short 1941 film, An Airman’s Letter to His Mother; and Powell’s home movies shot on Foula, narrated by Schoonmaker.

The Edge of the World is recommended for fans of Michael Powell, Scotland history, and early British cinema.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Everybody cut, everybody cut…

Everybody cut FOOTLOOSE!

Celebrating its 40^th anniversary in 2024, the beloved classic FOOTLOOSE arrives for the first time ever on 4K Ultra HD^™ February 13, 2024 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Originally released on February 17, 1984, FOOTLOOSE thrilled audiences with its spirited dancing, electrifying soundtrack, and inspiring story.  Kevin Bacon gives a star-making performance as a city boy whose rebellious love for music and dancing shakes up a small town. 

Directed by Herbert Ross and written by composer and writer Dean Pitchford, FOOTLOOSE was a massive success, earning $80 million at the domestic box office.  The film features an exceptional supporting cast, including Lori Singer, Dianne Wiest, John Lithgow, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chris Penn, along with a sensational soundtrack featuring Kenny Loggins, Shalamar, Deniece Williams, Bonnie Tyler, Quiet Riot, John Mellencamp, Foreigner, and more.  Both “Footloose” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” were nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Music, Original Song.

Newly remastered, FOOTLOOSE will be available in a two-disc 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray^™ set or a collectible SteelBook™ with artwork designed to look like an 80s Walkman.  Both sets include access to a digital copy of the film and the Blu-ray includes the legacy bonus content detailed below:

· Commentary by Craig Zadan and Dean Pitchford

· Commentary by Kevin Bacon      

· Let's Dance! Kevin Bacon on Footloose

· From Bomont to the Big Apple: An Interview with Sarah Jessica Parker

· Remembering Willard

· Kevin Bacon's Screen Test

· Kevin Bacon Costume Montage

· Footloose: A Modern Musical - Part 1

· Footloose: A Modern Musical - Part 2

· Footloose: Songs That Tell A Story

· Theatrical Trailer

Synopsis

City-boy Ren McCormick (Kevin Bacon) is new to an uptight small town where dancing has been banned. Ren quickly makes a new best friend in Willard (Chris Penn) and falls fast for the minister's daughter (Lori Singer), but his love for music and dancing gets him into hot water equally as fast.??

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By Doug Oswald

Humphry Bogart and Eleanor Parker feature in the aviation romance drama, “Chain Lightning,” available on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive Collection. Bogart is hot-shot test pilot Matt Brennan flying for an aircraft manufacturer contracted to produce a supersonic jet for the newly formed United States Air Force. The movie soon flashes back to 1943 in WWII England where we see the origins of the relationship between Bogart and Parker. Parker is Joan “Jo” Holloway, an American Red Cross nurse stationed in England where Lieutenant Colonel Matt Brennan is an experienced B-17 pilot. Richard Whorf is Carl Troxell, an engineer working for a B-17 aircraft manufacturer sent to research the reason for aircraft failures. Matt tells Carl exactly the issue which is obvious to those flying the bombing missions, the air war and the lack of long-range air cover support. While on a mission, they encounter a German Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, a rocket powered interceptor that moves faster than anything in the allied arsenal.

Matt gets word he’s being rotated stateside to sell war bonds after surviving so many bombing missions over Europe. He’s faced with a complicated choice because he has to leave Jo in England. We hope he fulfills his promise to her, but this is Bogart and I think we know what will happen. We meet up with Matt again after the war working as a pilot trainer until he has a chance meeting with Leland Willis, the head of Willis Aviation, that leads to a job as test pilot working on developing jets for the Defense Department. Willis is played by Raymond Massey as the semi-villain of the film. Carl is working for Willis and is also now involved with Jo. The Matt, Jo, Carl love triangle is resolved, but tension arrives in the rivalry between Matt and Carl as they each work on projects to create a safe, fast jet.

Bogart is good playing Bogart and this role is no exception. He does have genuine chemistry with Eleanor Parker playing the girl who never fell out of love with him. While this is by no means a Bogart classic, it is certainly a small gem in his film career. Massey is good as the businessman who is willing to risk lives in order to succeed and Whorf is a bit too predictable as the third part of the love triangle and works hard to be the opposite of Bogart.

The movie is chockfull of WWII aviation footage which is integrated well into the story,including the crash landing in the early part of the movie. There is also pretty good model work later as we see Bogart piloting the jets and he’s seen at the controls in a studio cockpit and models used for the new jet attempting to break a cross- continent flight record.

The film was directed by Stuart Heisler, who had a career working on mostly B-movie dramas and thrillers, though he had a few stand-outs like “The Biscuit Eater” in 1940, “The Glass Key” in 1942, “Storm Warning” in 1950 and “Tokyo Joe” from 1949, the first of two movies with Bogart. Bogart’s filmography is filled with classics, duds and those in between like “Chain Lightning.” Eleanor Parker appeared in many movies, sometimes as the lead, throughout the 50s and early 60s. Raymond Massey was great at playing heavies and semi-villainous roles with occasional heroic figures such as Abraham Lincoln. Richard Whorf is a bit of an enigma for me, featuring in mostly B-movies and never quite reaching leading man status.

Released in 1950 with a flight time of 95 minutes, the movie looks and sounds terrific on this region-free Blu-ray upgrade from the previous DVD release. Extras on the disc include the animated “Bear Feat,” the Joe McDoakes comedy short film “So You Want to Be an Actor” and the trailer for the film. The movie is recommended for Bogart fans and aviation movie enthusiasts.

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BRING HOME ALL OF YOUR FAVORITE HILARIOUS CHRISTMAS EPISODES

IN ONE BRAND NEW JOLLY COLLECTION

THE OFFICE:

COMPLETE CHRISTMAS COLLECTION

FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY^TM & DVD

SYNOPSIS: Come join Dunder Mifflin for a holiday celebration like no other with The Office: Complete Christmas Collection! Developed by Primetime Emmy Award winner Greg Daniels, relive all 7 of the wackiest workplace holiday episodes in TV history.  Featuring “Christmas Party”, “A Benihana Christmas”, “Moroccan Christmas”, “Secret Santa”, “Classy Christmas”, “Christmas Wishes” and “Dwight Christmas”, ‘tis the season for non-stop laughs.

SYNOPSIS: Come join Dunder Mifflin for a holiday celebration like no other with The Office: Complete Christmas Collection! Developed by Primetime Emmy Award winner Greg Daniels, relive all 7 of the wackiest workplace holiday episodes in TV history.  Featuring “Christmas Party”, “A Benihana Christmas”, “Moroccan Christmas”, “Secret Santa”, “Classy Christmas”, “Christmas Wishes” and “Dwight Christmas”, ‘tis the season for non-stop laughs.

EPISODES:

Christmas Party – Holiday cheer is in short supply when Michael insists on doing a last-minute swap of Secret Santa gifts, and Jim becomes alarmed that his sweet and sentimental gift for Pam will end up in Dwight’s hands.

A Benihana Christmas – It’s a time for joy and goodwill toward others, but the staff is feeling none of it as Michael deals with a broken heart and Angela and Pam create rival Christmas parties.

Moroccan Christmas – It’s time for the annual Christmas party and a drunken Meredith gets into the holiday spirit by setting her hair on fire.

Secret Santa – Michael is outraged when Jim allows Phyllis to be Santa at the Christmas party, where holiday spirits are dampened by the company’s troubles. Meanwhile, Andy’s Secret Santa gifts to Erin backfire and Oscar has a secret crush.

Classy Christmas – Toby takes a leave of absence and corporate sends Holly to cover for him; Michael forces Pam to hold a second Christmas party on the day Holly arrives; Dwight challenges Jim to a snowball fight.

Christmas Wishes – Andy tries to make this year’s Christmas the best ever by granting each person’s holiday wishes; Robert California tries to drown his sorrows at the office party.

Dwight Christmas – When the party planning committee drops the ball on the annual Christmas party, Dwight gets everyone to celebrate with a traditional Schrute German Christmas.

BONUS FEATURES:

Audio Commentaries

“Christmas Party” Commentary with Jenna Fischer, B.J. Novak, Kate Flannery, David Denman, Editor Dave Rogers, Writer Mike Schur and Executive Producer Greg Daniels

“Moroccan Christmas” Commentary with Kate Flannery, Angela Kinsey, and Brian Baumgartner

“Secret Santa” Commentary with Mindy Kaling, Ellie Kemper, and Claire Scanlon

Deleted Scenes

“Secret Santa” Producer’s Extended Cut

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By Ernie Magnotta

The late, great Rutger Hauer was an amazingly talented actor. Named the Best Dutch Actor of the Century by the Dutch public, the Saturn Award nominated thespian had an extremely entertaining career where he memorably played both heroes and villains in classic films such as Nighthawks, The Hitcher, Blade Runner, Ladyhawke, Wanted: Dead or Alive, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Just to name a few. Recently, Hauer’s wonderful turn as Nick Parker in 1990’s action-packed film Blind Fury was released to Blu-ray.

Written by Charles Robert Carner and directed by Phillip Noyce, Blind Fury deals with Nick Parker (Hauer), a soldier who was blinded in Vietnam, but developed his remaining senses and, through intense training, becoming an expert with a samurai sword before returning to the States. When Parker’s best friend and fellow soldier, Frank Deveraux (Terry O’Quinn), is kidnapped by ruthless criminals, Parker decides to take Frank’s young son, Billy, (Brandon Call) to Nevada in order to find and rescue his dad. However, the deadly thugs want Billy so that they can use him to convince Frank to make their illegal drugs. With the help of Frank’s girlfriend, Annie (Lisa Blount), Nick does everything he can to protect young Billy from the homicidal hoods and save Frank before it’s too late.

Filmed around the Midwestern United States and released by Tri-Star Pictures in March of 1990, Blind Fury, which was produced by Daniel Grodnick and actor/director Tim Matheson, is a highly enjoyable action adventure/martial arts film with well-drawn characters and just the right amount of comic relief and heart. Based on the Japanese character Zatoichi—a blind swordsman who was created by Kan Shimozawa in 1948 and appeared in 26 films—Blind Fury is basically a loving remake of the seventeenth Zatoichi film Zatoichi Challenged (1967).

Clocking in at a brief 86 minutes, Blind Fury moves along pretty quickly and not only features excellent direction by Phillip Noyce, but also a well-known, veteran cast who do a terrific job. Naturally, Rutger Hauer is excellent in the role of Nick Parker. Trained by blind judo champion and Paralympic silver medal winner Lynn Manning, Hauer has said that playing a blind swordsman was one of the most difficult jobs he’s ever had to do.

Besides the super talented Call, O’Quinn and Blount, the exciting film also features wonderful performances from Noble Willingham, Nick Cassavetes, former pro boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb, comedian Rick Overton, the immortal Sho Kosugi, the lovely Meg Foster, former professional wrestler Tiger Chung Lee and former pro football player Jay Pennison.

Blind Fury has been released on a region one, two and three Blu-ray, and is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The entertaining film looks excellent and sounds just as great. Special features include a very informative audio commentary by screenwriter Charles Robert Carner (moderated by filmmaker Douglas Hosdale) as well as the original theatrical trailer. The Blu-ray also comes with a slipcover which contains some fun-looking artwork of Nick Parker in action. If you’re a fan of old school action/martial arts cinema; Rutger Hauer; samurai films or all of the above, then definitely check this one out.

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By Ernie Magnotta

The 1980s were chock full of amazing action franchises and action stars. The stars were legendary: Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, etc. The franchises were just as legendary: Death Wish, Dirty Harry, Rambo, Terminator, Missing in Action, Lethal Weapon, etc. Not to mention the beloved James Bond series which produced five blockbuster movies throughout the 80s, three starring Roger Moore and two starring Timothy Dalton. Then, there were the great one-shot action films of which there are way too many to list here. Of course, martial arts/action; especially those featuring ninjas, were just as popular with cinemagoers. Yes, it was an exciting decade.

In 1985, Cannon Films, led by immortal producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, decided to start a new action movie/martial arts franchise titled American Ninja. Cannon, who were responsible for the popular Missing in Action and Death Wish series of films as well as several well-loved ninja movies which starred the fantastic Sho Kosugi and partly started the ninja craze, wanted Chuck Norris to play the lead role of Private Joe Armstrong. However, Norris declined. Cannon then went on a worldwide search and, after auditioning over 400 candidates, they chose up and coming actor Michael Dudikoff. The well-made movie would go on to spawn four sequels, two of which (parts 2 and 4) would see Dudikoff return as the silent, but deadly Armstrong. Thanks to our friends at Kino Lorber, the original film has now been released on Blu-ray.

Written by Paul De Mielche (from a story by Gideon Amir and Avi Kleinberger) and directed by action veteran Sam Firstenberg, American Ninja tells the story of Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff), a US Army private who uses his Ninjitsu skills when a supply convoy is ambushed by rebels led by a Black Ninja Warrior (Tadashi Yamashita). Now marked for revenge by the Black Star Ninjas, Joe, with the help of his friend, Corporal Curtis Jackson (played by the late, great Steve James), must do everything in his power to rescue the kidnapped Patricia Hickock (Judie Aronson)—daughter of Joe’s commanding officer—and take down the Black Star Ninjas for good.

Made for one million dollars, American Ninja (aka American Warrior and American Fighter) is a solid and entertaining 80s action film with an engrossing enough story, a terrific cast, and exciting action sequences which are more than competently handled by director Firstenberg (who already had some Ninja experience directing the Sho Kosugi martial arts/action classics Return of the Ninja and Ninja III: The Domination for Cannon). The fun, 95-minute movie also features John Fujioka, Don Stewart and Richard Norton.

Trained by 10^th degree black belt and martial arts champion Mike Stone, American Ninja instantly made Michael Dudikoff an action movie star. Over the next two decades, Dudikoff would appear in a plethora of action films. He would also reunite with Steve James two more times in American Ninja 2: The Confrontation and Avenging Force; both directed by Firstenberg. James, who I believe would have become a major action star if not for his untimely death, went on to reprise his role as Curtis Jackson a third time in American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt.

American Ninja has been released on a region one Blu-ray. It is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and the film looks and sounds incredible. The special features include an informative audio commentary by director Sam Firstenberg (moderated by filmmaker/editor Elijah Drenner) as well as a second commentary with Firstenberg and Stunt Coordinator Steven Lambert. We are also treated to Rumble in the Jungle: The Making of American Ninja, the original theatrical trailer and TV spot, and a very cool-looking slipcover. This is pure 80s goodness. Don’t miss it.

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“TO BE OR NOT TO BE… A FASCIST”

By Raymond Benson

The film classic that put director Bernardo Bertolucci on the map outside of Italy was 1970’s The Conformist, hailed by the arthouse cinema circuit as one of the masterpieces of international filmmaking in that decade.

An Italian-French-West German co-production, The Conformist was filmed in Italy and France and stars celebrated French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, who made several pictures in Italy along with the many in his native country. Although Trintignant could speak Italian, he was almost always dubbed by an Italian actor in these pictures; in fact, all Italian movies of the era were usually dubbed in post-production. Luckily, the dubbing here is quite good because at least Trintignant is mouthing the correct Italian language dialogue.

This is a gorgeous-looking movie, often cited as a groundbreaker in cinematography. Vittorio Storaro made his name with the picture, just as Bertolucci did. Francis Ford Coppola allegedly used The Conformist as the “look” he was going for when he made The Godfather. Storaro is one of only three people who have won the Best Cinematography Oscar three times (he won for Apocalypse Now, Reds, and The Last Emperor, another Bertolucci title).

This is reason alone to view the film today. The content is perhaps a little too attached to the time period in which it was made, in that the editing and narrative flow of the movie is somewhat experimental with its use of flashbacks and time-jumping that filmmakers liked to play with in those days. As a result, the first half of The Conformist takes some getting used to (and is, at first, difficult to follow), but the second half is riveting. The subject matter is also extremely political in that it is a psychological character study of a man torn between the desire to fit in and to do what is right within the context of the socio-political climate of his time.

It’s 1930s Italy, during Mussolini’s reign. Trintignant is Marcello, a wannabe social climber… but to do so, he must during those years be a member of Mussolini’s party and, well, a fascist. Most of his friends are members of the party, as is his closest pal, a blind man named Italo (José Quaglio). In 1938, Marcello accepts the assignment to assassinate his former college professor, Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), a staunch anti-fascist living in Paris with his wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda). Marcello marries Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), a pretty girl who is naïve and rather common, in an attempt to be “more like ‘normal’ people.” Marcello disguises his true purpose on the trip to Paris by bringing along Giulia, and he is shadowed by his handler, Agent Manganiello (Gastone Moschin, recognizable to Western audiences as Don Fanucci from The Godfather Part II). Once in Paris, Marcello and Giulia enjoy social gatherings with the Quadris, and there is some eyebrow-raising hanky-panky that occurs between Anna and not only Marcello, but also Giulia! (The seductive dance between Anna and Giulia at a party is a highlight of the movie, and stills from the sequence dominated its marketing.) In the meantime, Marcello is struggling with his assignment. Thrown into his head torment is the trauma he suffered back in 1917, when as a boy he was molested by a young man.

There is a lot going on within the characters’ psyches in The Conformist. It is a rich, deeply layered motion picture that asks many questions and provides few answers. Some sequences were shocking in 1970 and are still disturbing today. This is potent cinema, providing the early evidence that Bertolucci was a formidable artist who would push the envelope.

The RARO Cinema Art Blu-ray edition (from RAROvideousa.com, distributed by Kino Lorber) is a 2-disk set. The first disk contains a new stunning 4K restoration from the original camera negative. This is accompanied by an audio commentary by film critic Bilge Ebiri. The second disk is the 2011 HD restoration that both Bertolucci and Storaro worked on. The inclusion of the second disk feature is curious since the new restoration is far, far superior and should be the go-to viewing. It appears that the second, older version is simply there for comparison.

Supplements spread over the two disks include an interview with Valentina Ricciardelli, the president of the Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation; an hour-long documentary, “In the Shade of The Conformist”; and trailers of the film from 1970, 2014, and 2023.

The Conformist is for fans of Bernardo Bertolucci, Vittorio Storaro, Jean-Louis Trintignant, international cinema, and political films.

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By Hank Reineke

Nicholas Anez’s Science Fiction Thrills… Horror Chills is the fourth installment of the author’s “Celluloid Adventures” series, all published by Baltimore’s Midnight Marquee Press. Although I’m not familiar with Anez’s original triad, I can reliably muse - based solely on the strength of his newest effort - the preceding trio are as well-researched, informative and against-the-grain-in-opinion as is this new volume.

In his introduction to Science Fiction Thrills, Anez – full disclosure, a contributing writer to Cinema Retro magazine - informs readers that his intent in the writing of this current book is to “hopefully create interest” in fourteen –mostly dismissed upon original release – sci-fi and horror films. These were films that, in one way or another, failed to find an appreciative audience despite creative merit. Being a guy from New Jersey, I can appreciate Anez’s fighting up from the mat for recognition of these underdog efforts, championing under-performing films he posits as overlooked cinematic treasures.

The fourteen films that go under Anez’s microscope are: Son of Dracula (1943), Alias Nick Beal (1949), The Maze (1953), Donovan’s Brain (1953), 1984 (1956), The Mind Benders (1963), Crack in the World (1965), The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), The Power (1968), Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), Who? (1974), The Medusa Touch (1978) and Capricorn One (1978). The latter title, Peter Hyman’s “space mission” conspiracy film Capricorn One is, of course, an odd man out in this study. Though not critically praised on its release, the film actually performed reasonably well at the box office.

Each of Anez’s contributing essays are formulaic in presentation: an introductory paragraph or two; a multi-page synopsis of the film’s storyline; a discussion of the movie’s production history (including full cast and crew credits); a review of a film’s critical reception and subsequent box office performance. The book is filled with a score of illustrations – both photographs and promotional memorabilia - all well-reproduced in balanced black-and-white saturations. The book additionally closes with an eight-page Appendix where the author lists his favorite sci-fi and horror flicks - as well what he considers the greatest performances by an actor or actress in both genres. Suffice to say, I share many of the author’s cinematic enthusiasms.

To his credit, Anez doesn’t argue that any of the films under examination - in an extremely readable and cogent two-hundred and fifteen page paperback - is necessarily a “lost classic.” But Anez does suggest that each film studied here offers challenging ideas and (mostly) cerebral storylines. Some of the films, he argues, were critically maligned or were proven box office disappointments for economic reasons: that is, a shortfall of money. Too often the production budgets allotted were simply too modest to mount and support the project’s ambitions. Having said that, Anez also notes the paucity of money wasn’t always the reason a particular film did not light up the big screen as hoped. The author opines some of the films perhaps simply fell to the wayside due to the carping of critics (i.e. the alleged miscasting of Edmond O’Brien as “Winston Smith” or of Michael Andersons’ “unobstructive” direction of George Orwell’s novel 1984).

Other films, such as Basil Dearden’s The Mind Benders, might not have met expectations due to the filmmakers having chose to mix multiple genre devices into their storylines. Anez gives examples: The Mind Benders is described as being “as much a domestic drama as a thriller.” He offers John Farrow’s Alias Nick Beal as “a supernatural horror story,” but one that “also fits in the category of film noir.” The author also contends that Robert Siodmak’s Son of Dracula (a personal favorite of mine, featuring an arguably miscast corn-fed Lon Chaney Jr.) remains “a vastly underrated horror movie that is also a romantic tragedy.”

It soon becomes apparent that Anez’s argument that certain films failed at the box office - or with film critics – was not due to the quality of the films themselves. Instead many were perhaps doomed by visionary “outside-of-the-box” productions that were tough to commercially pigeonhole. Perhaps these films didn’t achieve nor enjoy a measure of acclaim due to the schematics of the filmmakers. It’s suggested such creative teams, at their own expense, had gambled on their film’s commercial potentials – perhaps accidentally, perhaps purposefully. Ultimately, they chose not to cater to clichés or to rigid formulas or to the expectations of their target audience.

In the book’s afterword, Anez notes he chose to focus on “an era in which science-fiction movies depended on ideas and not special effects,” a time when horror films conjured chills “upon the power of suggestion and not graphic gore.” Reading through these essays it becomes obvious that Anez is a strong champion of scenarios that feature solid writing and cerebral storytelling. It’s of interest that of the fourteen films examined here, no fewer than eight had been adapted from pre-existing science-fiction novels or other literary sources published from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Anez acknowledges that some of these films under his microscope might now appear dated - even open to some ridicule by contemporary standards - for their dopey, unsophisticated poor-science-based projections. He muses other films might have been doomed at the box office by their gloomy, paranoid prognostications of a dreary, dystopic future. (Certainly none of the films Anez examines here can be thought of as “feel good” movies – quite the opposite, in fact). Such dystopic melancholia is reflected in Anez’s own opinions. He writes of his fear that contemporary exercises of political correctness and encroaching Orwellian cancel culture movements might yet alter - even expunge – aging artistic works and forms of “popular culture from the past.” “In today’s Hollywood,” Anez sighs, “nothing is implied anymore; everything is explicit.”

I’m probably not as fatalistic as Anez on some of the points he makes, though one can certainly understand – and even sympathize with – some of the arguments he makes. But by my reckoning, home video has - from inception - assured that a majority of cultural artifacts will survive in their original forms for some time well into the future. Certainly books and films and music reflective of the aggrieved historical period in which they were created will survive in their original state. How could they not? There’s too many of us who have carefully collected and curated these artworks to see them suddenly made unavailable. But it is also true that many of these works might – might - need to co-exist alongside a bowdlerized version for generations to come.

The real question is whether or not our shared histories – good, bad, tragic, celebratory or indifferent - can be erased easily? The jury is out on that point, and the debate on the historical revisionism of culture, I imagine, will be argued long into the future. It’s of interest that many of the future-looking films that Anez studies in Science Fiction Thrills… Horror Chills cautions and forewarns against the censorship of free ideas - be those ideas well-meaning, ignorant, brilliant or otherwise. I was going to end this review with Shakespeare’s famously reflective and internal ponder on the duality of intentions, “Ay, there’s the rub.” But I admit I almost didn’t, perhaps employing a bit of guarded self-censorship. After all, Shakespeare, the “immortal bard” of Avon, might not prove so immortal after all. He too is now a target of cancel culture.

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“THE EDGE OF THE WORLD”

By Raymond Benson

One of the more under-seen and underrated films from 1985 is John Boorman’s impressive The Emerald Forest, which gave us an ecological message long before that was much in the public consciousness.

Of a more cinematic significance, this picture is a grand adventure full of action and spectacle, much like Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) or Excalibur (1981) before it. The production values also indicate that this was no easy feat of a movie to make.

The Emerald Forest was shot in and near São Paolo, Brazil, right smack by the Amazon River and in the rain forest. Native extras populated much of the movie, which possibly for the first time provided to audiences of a mainstream motion picture depictions of how indigenous tribes in the jungle live. The result is fascinating, and the National Geographic lesson is enhanced by an exciting tale of kidnapping, exploration, survival, and human trafficking!

Powers Boothe is Bill, a high-ranking engineer with a corporation that is building a large hydro-electric dam on the edge of the rain forest. He’s moved his family of a wife and two young children—a boy and a girl—to the city. One day while overseeing the work of clearing the area of trees, Bill and his family have a picnic at the edge of the jungle. Little does he know that the “Invisible People,” a tribe that has not had contact with civilization, has dared to get close to what they refer to as “the edge of the world.” When Tommy wanders off, he is kidnapped by the tribe. Bill thus embarks on a long process to search for his son, but to no avail.

Ten years later, Tommy (Charley Boorman) has assimilated into the tribe and become one of the Invisible People. His “father” of the tribe (Rui Polanah) loves him like a son, and Tommy loves him back, although he has dreams of “Daddy.” Now Tommy is ready to take a mate, and he chooses young and beautiful Kachiri (Dira Paes). Meanwhile Bill and a photographer embark deep into the jungle to look for Tommy again. They encounter the hostile “Fierce People,” who force Bill to become prey in a hunt through the jungle. Tommy ends up saving Bill, and the real father and son reunite. Tommy, however, refuses to accompany Bill back to his first home. And then the human traffickers enter the story. To say more would spoil the tale!

There is a lot of “Tarzan movie” aspects to this picture, but without the unintentional racism. There is also a lot of nudity of all the indigenous people on display, which received some criticism when the picture was released (Dira Paes was only fifteen years old). However, this was not exploitation. Boorman and his team took great pains to be accurate and truthful in the depiction of the tribes’ customs and ways. Yes, the Fierce People are portrayed as the villains and the Invisible People are ultimately shown to be good at heart (even though they kidnapped a young white boy). There is indeed some idealism and moral ambiguity going on in The Emerald Forest, especially when it comes to the film’s climactic raid on a human trafficking center in the jungle. Finally, there is the message that indigenous people are being wiped out by the actions of white people who are cutting down rain forests.

Powers Boothe does an admirable job here, but it is Charley Boorman (son of the director) who steals the movie. He was around eighteen when the picture was made, and he manages to speak the indigenous language, perform jungle stunts, and carry on with his native costars as if he were one of them. Boorman’s direction is notable, too, given the locale and the cast with whom he had to work. Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography is also quite commendable.

Kino Studio Classics’ new Blu-ray release is a welcome one, and its 1920x1080p presentation is colorful and rich. There is an audio commentary by filmmaker Edgar Pablos and film historian Nathaniel Thompson that sheds light on the production. Supplements include the theatrical trailer and other Kino trailers. There is also reversible sleeve artwork.

The Emerald Forest is for fans of director John Boorman and of jungle exploration adventures. Recommended.

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“THE BUSTER KEATON COLLECTION, VOLUME 5”

(Three Ages: 1923; Directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)

(Our Hospitality: 1923; Directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone)

(Cohen Film Collection)

“KEATON CLASSICS DOUBLE FEATURE”

By Raymond Benson

The availability of Buster Keaton on Blu-ray can be a head-scratcher. Kino Lorber seems to have the monopoly on Keaton’s features and shorts, but the puzzlement comes with more than one release of certain titles in Kino’s catalog of disks for sale. Add to this befuddlement is the Cohen Media Group and their Cohen Film Collection’s ownership of Keaton’s library. Cohen has also released Keaton Blu-ray disks—and they’re distributed by Kino Lorber! (And still others are released by Eureka Entertainment, licensed by Cohen!) Which editions are we supposed to get?

A new Cohen Film Collection release, available from Kino Lorber, is The Buster Keaton Collection, Volume 5, which includes a double bill of the master filmmaker’s 1923 features—Three Ages and Our Hospitality. (Also available from Cohen Film Collection are Volumes 1 – 4, which likewise contain double bills of Keaton’s features from the 1920s.)

Here on the Cinema Retro site, I reviewed the Kino Lorber release of Our Hospitality in 2019. Apparently the Kino versions are different restorations from the Cohen’s restorations. The latter are performed by Cineteca di Bologna as part of Cohen’s “Keaton Project.” Long ago, Cohen Media Group acquired the rights from the Keaton estate, even though other companies have had access to them. I won’t even attempt to sort out the rights issues here. Just know that the Kino Our Hospitality disk had bonus features, whereas the Cohen Film Collection double bill discussed here does not contain any supplements aside from Cohen’s own trailer of Our Hospitality release and other Cohen releases.

That said, the Cohen restorations by the Keaton Project are likely the best to come about. They look marvelous. Bonus features? Who needs supplements when the feature films are the best quality available?

Three Ages was Buster Keaton’s first feature film (not counting The Saphead, 1920, in which he only starred). Co-directed with Eddie Cline, Keaton presents the “story of love,” i.e., courtship, in three different time periods—the stone age, the Roman age, and modern times (the 1920s, of course). The same cast portrays the same character types in each story, and the film narrative jumps back and forth between these time periods throughout the run of the picture. Keaton stars as the “lesser” man when compared to his more attractive, manly, and wealthier rival played by Wallace Beery. The woman who is the object of both men’s affection is played by Margaret Leahy (the actress made only one film, and this is it). Beery’s character is a bully, and Keaton must overcome the man’s physical strength and social standing with cunning and trickery. There is certainly amusement and clever bits here, but Three Ages could be called baby steps for Keaton as a feature filmmaker when compared to later works. Three Ages was perhaps the Keaton film most in need for preservation, as there are many instances—a few seconds here and there—in which visual elements are deteriorated. The restoration folks have done the best they could, and this is probably the finest you will ever see Three Ages. The lively score for this release is composed and conducted by Rodney Sauer.

Of more importance and interest is Our Hospitality, considered one of Keaton’s greatest works, and it was only his second feature (it is co-directed by John G. Blystone). The story takes place in the early 1800s and draws upon a rural family feud like the Hatfields and McCoys—in this case the McKays and Canfields. When patriarch John McKay is killed by James Canfield (and vice versa), Mrs. McKay flees with little baby Willie McKay (played by Buster’s real-life infant son, Buster Keaton Jr.). Twenty years later, Willie inherits the old family estate in the south and returns to claim it, only vaguely aware of the feud that has existed for decades. On the way he meets Virginia (played by Keaton’s wife at the time, Natalie Talmadge), who happens to be a Canfield. Upon arrival at home, Willie continues to court Virginia, but her brothers won’t have it. The rest of the picture is a cats-and-mouse game of Willie avoiding being killed and at the same time wooing the woman he wants to marry.

There are many striking aspects about the picture. Keaton’s paid great attention to detail in the design and location shooting. Apparently, he took great pains to create realistic locomotives and tracks that depicted early train development in America (although he played with time period accuracy for the sake of more interesting visuals). The final act contains some spectacular and hair-raising stunt work by the star, including an incident of falling into rapids and almost drowning on camera. Mostly, though, the story is well-constructed, the characters have more depth than in the other silent comedies of the day, and, in the end, Our Hospitality is one of Keaton’s most satisfying movies.

Interestingly, it’s the only Keaton film to feature three generations of Keatons—Buster himself, his previously-mentioned son, and his father, Joe Keaton, as a train engineer.

The Cohen presentation here is gorgeous and near perfect. Carl Davis supplied the wonderful musical score that accompanies it.

For Buster Keaton fans, you can’t go wrong with this double bill release (nor with the Cohen Film Collection’s other four volumes). Highly recommended.

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“WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?”

By Raymond Benson

The celebrated filmmaker Elia Kazan’s last picture, The Last Tycoon, was adapted from celebrated writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel (published unfinished in 1941). Released in 1976, the film features a stellar cast, Oscar-nominated Art Direction, and a respectful, intelligent screenplay by playwright Harold Pinter.

And yet, The Last Tycoon is a noble and interesting failure. That is not to say it’s not worth seeing. There is a lot to admire in the movie, especially for audiences interested in Hollywood history.

Robert De Niro plays Monroe Stahr, the production chief and creative head of one of the biggest studios in 1930s Hollywood. Anyone who knows anything about this era of Tinsel Town will realize instantly that the character of Monroe is inspired by Irving Thalberg, the genius producer who held the same jobs at MGM during its golden age. He’s young, handsome, smart, and has some health problems… but he has a way dealing with talent and executives.

Robert Mitchum is the head of the studio, Pat Brady, perhaps something of the Louis B. Mayer of the story. His daughter, Cecilia (the radiant Theresa Russell in her first film) would like nothing more than to be with Monroe, but the moody and melancholic Monroe, a widower, has his eyes and heart set on the enigmatic Kathleen (Ingrid Boulting in her first film), a woman of beauty and mystery who is not part of the Hollywood scene.

Throw in a supporting cast—the likes of Tony Curtis, Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau, Ray Milland, Donald Pleasence, Dana Andrews, Peter Strauss, Jeff Corey, John Carradine, and even a young Anjelica Huston in a small role—and you’ve got classic Hollywood on the screen.

So what’s the problem? Pinter’s script does a splendid job of emphasizing the themes of the novel and Kazan manages to present a gorgeous-looking canvas of star power and fine acting… but the movie ends up being, well, flat. There’s something missing.

Guess what… the missing element is the source material. Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel is about dreams and ambitions left “unfinished.” Monroe’s “lonely at the top” persona is because his life and work is unfulfilled, just like the house he’s building on the beach—it’s unfinished. It’s not even clear that he wants to finish it.

The main love story thrust of the movie—that of Monroe pursuing Kathleen—is ultimately unsatisfying, even if what does occur is what naturally should. Once again, the issue is that we are left with threads that are vague, uncertain, and unsettled.

In a wonderful bit in which a famous novelist played by Donald Pleasence is having difficulty adapting his style of excessive dialogue to the movies, Monroe improvises a scene without characters speaking by describing what a character “sees,” and in turn, what the audience sees. When Monroe stops without completing the scene, Pleasence asks, “What happens next?” And Monroe has made his point that the pictures are a visual medium.

What happens next? Exactly.

Unfinished.

There is an intriguing subplot tease involving the possible formation of a writers union (in which one of those “commie” organizers from New York, played by Nicholson, attempts to come to terms with Monroe), but this, too, is never resolved. The sequence is doubly ironic in that Kazan himself was embroiled in the HUAC Red Scare witch hunts in Hollywood in the 1950s, and there was a large faction in that town who had knives out for the director in later years for his cooperation with the government.

It was an honorable attempt to bring Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon to the screen, though. Revisiting the picture after nearly fifty years, seeing these actors again when they were young and vibrant, and delving into the myths and ambiguities of the Golden Age of Hollywood is still very much worth the time.

Kino Classics’ Blu-ray release features a handsome 1920x1080 restoration that shows off Victor J. Kemper’s cinematography and the lush production design by Gene Callahan, Jack T. Collis, and Jerry Wunderlich. There is an audio commentary by film historian Joseph McBride, who shines light on the darkness of this strange piece of cinema. Trailers of other Kino Lorber titles round out the supplements.

The Last Tycoon is for fans of classic Hollywood, Robert De Niro, Elia Kazan, Harold Pinter, and any of the other actors featured in this unusual presentation.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

On November 28th, Arrow Video brings director Roger Vadim’s Barbarella to 4K UHD and Blu-ray with a brand new, eye-popping 4K restoration from the original negative. The film is based on the scandalous international comic book and stars Jane Fonda as a beautiful and intrepid cosmic adventurer. The story follows space vixen, Barbarella, as she engages in sexy, interplanetary romps while trying to stop the evil Durand Durand (Milo O'Shea) from using the ultimate weapon of mass destruction he’s created. Featuring actors John Phillip Law, Marcel Marceau, David Hemmings, Claude Dauphin, and Anita Pallenberg, and an out-of-this-world ‘60s pop visual style, Barbarella is a feast for the eyes in 4K UHD.

The two-disc 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray limited edition bonus content includes a reversible sleeve and a fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tula Lotay; six double-sided collector’s postcards; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anne Billson, Paul Gravett, Véronique Bergen and Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén, and select archival material.

Both discs are loaded with bonus content, including audio commentaries, featurettes, interviews, trailers, image galleries and more. 

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RETRO-ACTIVE: MEMORABLE ARTICLES FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

By Hank Reineke

In September of 2021 I attended Manhattan’s Quad Cinema screening of Thomas Hamilton’s affectionate documentary Boris Karloff: the Man Behind the Monster. As a life-long fan of the actor - and the owner of dozens of books examining the actor’s career in film, stage and radio - this was the sort of career-spanning appraisal I was hoping to someday see. Then, only a few weeks following that theatrical screening, Cinema Retro was provided a stream of the doc for critical review. This enabled me to watch the film a second time, revisiting bits of commentary I had missed or recalled only hazily. At the time the stream was provided to Cinema Retro, it was still uncertain if Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster would be offered on physical media. That question was answered in October 2022 when the film became available as a two-disc combo Blu ray/DVD set from Voltage Films/Abramorama.

In the sixteen-page booklet that’s included in the set, director Hamilton advises both he and scripter Ronald MacCloskey originally envisioned their Karloff doc as a bold “4-hour, 2-part film or a 6 part miniseries.” They certainly had enough material to do so, with a reported 60+ hours of interviews involving no fewer than fifty-five subjects. And, that sixty hours of recorded interviews, of course, didn’t include the footage gleaned from Karloff’s fabled filmography.

While you’re not going to find some sixty-odd hours of extras on this release, the set does suggest that it offers an expanded director’s cut (titled on packaging - but not on the film itself - as Boris Karloff: The Rest of the Story). This is a bit curious. The version screened theatrically at the Quad ran 103 minutes – at least as per its billing at the cinema. The Rest of the Story disc runs one hour and forty-three minutes. Which, if my math skills haven’t failed, equals the same 103 minutes of running time.

Of course the new set does feature two additional bonus selections. The first, Meeting Boris Karloff, is, truthfully, not a terribly essential addition, but not uninteresting. It’s an offering of fourteen minutes of interview/commentary by three figures a bit tangential to Karloff’s legend. Of the trio, author and film historian Kevin Brownlow shares his reminisce of his November 1964 interview with Karloff. He recalls Karloff as an interesting interviewee – one who wasn’t remiss to take issue or correct erroneous information found in the press clippings Brownlow had collected. But he noted Karloff always challenged misinformation in a gentlemanly manner.

Andrew Pratt, described as a “great nephew” of the actor, then shyly recounts his one and only meeting with his great uncle. He credits that meeting as inspiration to pursue a career in film art direction – a career that would earn him a number of nominations and awards from the Academy, BAFTA, and the Art Directors Guild. The last subject interviewed was Anthony Bilbow, a television host of BBC-2’s Late Night Line-Up. His only real connection to Karloff was when the actor was a guest on the program, September of 1968. He recalls Karloff as a gentleman kind and warm, modest and self-effacing – but not in a “counterfeit” sort of way.

The final bonus feature of the set is a three-minute interview with the co-scriptwriter of Boris Karloff: the Man Behind the Monster, Ron MacCloskey. This New Jersey-based writer and comedian fell under Karloff’s spell at age seven, having caught Frankenstein on a late night TV telecast. A collector of Frankenstein memorabilia, MacCloskey’s interest in Karloff’s work proved lifelong and ultimately led to his teaming with director Thomas Hamilton to start shooting this documentary in 2018.

If the doc itself is truly an expanded version of the original, it doesn’t really change or radically alter anything presented in the theatrical cut. I’m more than willing to stand corrected if indeed, the doc is offered here in an expanded form. My frame-by-frame memories of those 2021 screenings are all a bit hazy now, so I can’t say with any certainty if extra footage/commentary was included. But, if you missed it the first time, I’ll tack on my original “streaming” review of October of 2021. I very much enjoyed the doc on its original run and my opinion of its merit has not changed at all. Read on, should you wish:

There’s a telling moment at the dénouement of Thomas Hamilton’s and Ron MacCloskey’s affectionate documentary Boris Karloff: The Man behind the Monster. Sara Karloff, the now eighty-two year old daughter of the beloved actor, opines that her father’s lasting cinematic legacy is due, in part, to the tenaciousness of his devoted fan base. It’s a demographic that we soon discover consists of a number of amazingly creative people: folks whose loyalty to and enthusiasm for Karloff’s work has not wavered over the decades. Sara’s contention is inarguably true. As this ninety-nine minute Voltage Films/Abramorama documentary unspools – crisply narrated by Paul Ryan and featuring commentary by preeminent Karloff scholar and “Biographical Consultant” Stephen Jacobs - we discover the actor’s admirer’s bridge several generations of fans and filmmakers.

The first generation to discover Karloff in the decades following his big splash as the Frankenstein monster in 1931, include directors Roger Corman and Peter Bogdanovich. Both men would have the opportunity and honor to work with the actor in his twilight years. The second generation of admirers were those introduced to Karloff via neighborhood cinema screenings or through television broadcasts of Shock Theater in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

These filmmakers, profoundly influenced by Karloff’s art, would go on to create a few cinematic gems of their own: John Landis, Joe Dante, and Guillermo Del Toro, to name a few. The latter gentleman is particularly effusive in his praise, describing Karloff’s performance as the vampiric Wurdalak in Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath as a “tremendous” example of the great actor’s “physical presence, his majesty, his demonic power.”

If the documentary is chock-full of talented filmmakers offering tributes, the film is also supported by the erudite commentaries of film scholars David J. Skal (The Monster Show: a Cultural History of Horror), Gregory W. Mank (Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: the Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration), Donald F. Glut (The Frankenstein Legend: a tribute to Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff), Sir Christopher Frayling (Frankenstein: the first Two Hundred Years), and critic Leonard Maltin.

There are also short tributes and reminisces by several actors – three now gone - who had worked with Karloff at some point in their career: Dick Miller (The Terror), Christopher Plummer (The Lark, Even the Weariest River), Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers), and Orson Bean (Arsenic and Old Lace). Karloff’s tells part of his own story through audio recordings made available to the filmmakers courtesy of the British cinema historian/author Kevin Brownlow (The Parades Gone By…) and the Pacifica Radio Archive.

It has long annoyed me that when one searches out the term “Boris Karloff” in the ever-expanding IMDB, the resulting prompt identifies the actor’s signature film as The Grinch that Stole Christmas (1966). My daughters would remind me that my personal agitation of this result is, by definition, a “first world” problem, one hardly worthy of condemnation. But as cinema’s preeminent boogeyman for four decades, seeing Karloff’s storied career reduced to a role featuring only his disembodied voice as the Grinch… Well, let’s just say that I still find it somewhat misleading and inappropriate.

Be that as it may, Hamilton’s film reminds Karloff himself might disagree with my wariness of the Grinch being bandied as the cinematic crown jewel of the actor’s legacy. Sara Karloff recalls receiving a phone call from her father immediately following his recording of the narration for that beloved Dr. Seuss vehicle. The actor we learn was profoundly happy with his work on the now-famous animated holiday classic, telling his daughter proudly, “I’ve done something which I think is pretty good.”

Karloff would pass away a couple of years following the first broadcast of The Grinch that Stole Christmas, but he worked to the very end of his days, appearing in a number of memorable – and a few less-than-memorable – films, several of which would see release in years following his passing. His last films were little more than cameo-length appearances shot on a Hollywood sound stage. It was director Jack Hill’s idea to take the Karloff footage from these shoots and blend the results into a series of Mexican horror films.

Karloff, rightly and proudly, would choose to refer to his spell-binding turn as the semi-autobiographical aging horror film actor Byron Orlok in Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) as his feature film swan song. Technically, it wasn’t. But the brief appearances in that post- Target series of Hollywood-Mexico co-production mash-ups were mostly an excuse for an old pro to continue to ply his trade and keep busy. But working oxygen-tank dependent and wheelchair bound on the Jack Hill-directed sequences, Karloff was prevented from doing much of anything with the already somewhat cut-and-paste material given to him.

Karloff, of course, was not the only “horror film” star of the genre’s celebrated Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s. Karloff, we learn, was actually not happy with the designation “horror movie”, much preferring his films to be termed as “thrillers” or “shock” pictures. His contemporary competitor as grand ghoul of the horror film - one whose own legacy would burn bright into the next century - was Bela Lugosi. Although Lugosi had too often played second-fiddle to Karloff in matters of employment and billing, the Hungarian’s post-mortem fame may have eclipsed his friend’s star over the last few decades.

For starters, Lugosi’s sad and lurid dependency on morphine and alcohol in his final years made him the subject of tabloid fodder, and gossip then – and now – still rules. Lugosi’s slow demise coupled with his appearances in several of Edward J. Wood’s revered cult films brought him a big degree of post-mortem fame. A brand new generation would discover the actor through Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning turn as Lugosi in Tim Burton’s semi-biographical drama Ed Wood.

To be fair, Lugosi’s string of mad performances in Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Glen or Glenda (1953) are, in many ways, were no less better or worse or more undistinguished than Karloff’s walk-ons in the creaky Jack Hill/Mexi-horror films of spring 1968. Though both sets of films are passably entertaining in their own uneven, cult-ish ways, both actor’s cinematic exits were ignoble ends to these two great men who famously made audiences shiver in 1931.

James Whale’s Frankenstein would ultimately transform Karloff into a full-fledged movie star, but it had been a long road to achieving such fame. The actor had been working on various Hollywood backlots since the silent era. In the course of his earliest silent film efforts – beginning with such titles as The Lightning Raider (1919) and His Majesty, the American (1919) – he worked as little more than an extra. His subsequent fame would cause a score of budding film historians to carefully survey battered old prints of Karloff’s earliest filmography in the often futile hope of catching a glimpse as he passed by the camera.

In truth, his decade-long career as a silent film actor was mostly non consequential. He would appear in approximately sixty or so silent films between 1919 and 1929. He would, on occasion, be gifted a role of some heft, most notably as that of “The Mesmerist” in The Bells (1926) opposite Lionel Barrymore, but he was most often cast in adventure-orientated serials as a heavy, or as a Hindu, Mexican or an Arab, a mystic or a general ne’er-do-well.

It was his casting as the sadistic “Galloway” in Howard Hawk’s sound prison drama The Criminal Code (1930) that brought him to the attention of Universal executives looking to cast a suitably cadaverous-appearing actor as the Frankenstein monster. Following Lugosi’s rejection of the part due to the absence of dialogue afforded, Bela’s pass on the role was fortuitous for Karloff. He was still hungry and looking for that big break. Although the role of the monster would forever typecast him, the actor remained forever grateful for having taking the role in Frankenstein, once describing the career door-opening creature as “the best friend I ever had.”

It’s not hard to see why Karloff’s portrayal of the monster remains the preeminent of the Universal series. He was, after all, the only actor to have been given the opportunity to actually act and emote, to bring a sense of pathos to the role. He was abetted, of course, by Jack Pierce’s iconic make-up which, rather than masking, cannily sculpted and made highlight of Karloff’s facial features and sunken cheeks. This gave the monster, according to one of the participants in the documentary, a “full expression range.” The trio of actors who would subsequently portray the monster in the Universal series simply weren’t given the opportunity to apply any emotive effect of their own. Even by Son of Frankenstein (1939), the third film in the series, the screenwriters had already reduced the monster into little more than a hulking, lumbering menace and henchman.

It is discouraging to learn that when Frankenstein had its gala premiere in the autumn of 1931, Karloff was not even invited to attend. He was already forty-four years of age when he assumed the role, a no-name celebrity and hardly a handsome matinee idol of any recognition. The unexpected phenomenal success of Frankenstein would change all that, and Universal was quick to capitalize on the actor’s sudden notoriety as Hollywood’s most beloved boogeyman. Karloff’s natural proclivity for taking on roles of menacing villainous characters with icy stares would allow his casting into a string of Golden Age horror classics – not only for Universal but for other studios as well, including memorable turn in MGM’s The Mask of Fu Manchu. The latter remains a great, entertaining film… if undeniably one of the most politically-incorrect lavish big studio productions of the 1930s.

When the market for horror films softened in the mid-1940s – thanks, in part, due to the horror genre’s continuing perceived transgressions of the Hays Code - Karloff easily transitioned to character roles, where, according to his daughter, her father’s natural “dark coloring,” permitted him to slip easily into “ethnic roles.” As one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild, he was able to exercise his freelance status by working for, amongst others, RKO, Columbia, Monogram, and Warner Bros.

Another avenue of opportunity had presented itself around this same time. In 1941 Karloff was lured, against his better judgement according to this film, to take on the Broadway role of the villainous Jonathan Brewster in Joseph L. Kesselring’s stage play Arsenic and Old Lace. It was to his life-long disappointment that a clause in his theatrical stage contract prevented his returning to Hollywood – as did several fellow members of the original Broadway cast – to reprise the role for the much beloved Frank Capra film adaptation of 1944.

Though initially frightened to work in theatre before a live audience, the success of Arsenic emboldened Karloff to accept several other roles in such Broadway productions as The Lark (with Julie Harris), The Linden Tree, The Shop at Sly Corner, and even in a memorable turn as Captain Hook in a 1950 production of Peter Pan. Fortunately, we of a certain age who missed out still can get a small taste of what we missed since kinescopes survive from early Hallmark Hall of Fame broadcasts of the original production of The Lark and a 1961 re-staging of Arsenic and Old Lace.

Though Karloff’s work in radio is mostly ignored in this documentary, the film does take pains to point out that he was among the first movie stars of his generation to fully embrace television. Though he would often appear in serious televisions drams for such programs as Texaco Star Theater or Playhouse 90, he was not above spoofing his own curious fame as Hollywood’s grandest ghoul on any number of variety programs hosted by the likes of Red Skelton or Dinah Shore.

(Stefanie Powers and Robert Vaughn with Karloff in "The Mother Muffin Affair" on "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E." (Photo: Cinema Retro Archives)

In the 1960s, he would famously host (and occasionally act) in episodes of the television program Thriller, or appear in drag as “Mother Muffin” in an episode of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E – or with former U.N.C.L.E. agent Robert Vaughn in the spy-film The Venetian Affair (1966). Joe Dante also references the series of wonderful long-playing albums Karloff would record over the years, his unmistakable, lisping voice introducing children to a wonderful selection of folk tales, ghost stories, Washington Irving classics, and time-worn fables.

Boris Karloff: the Man behind the Monster reminds us that the actor (1887-1969) accomplished a lot in his eighty-one-years, a large percentage of which would encompass appearances on screen, on stage, on air, on record, and on television. To their credit, the filmmakers share what they can in the constraint of the film’ ninety-nine minute running time, and the film certainly succeeds as an excellent primer. Karloff wonks like myself might hold out hope that a multi-part, Ken Burns-style series might someday be put into the works, but I imagine that’s unlikely. One hundred and thirty four years have passed since Karloff’s birth. The fact that contemporary audiences remain completely entranced by his filmography in 2021 is testament enough to the worthiness of this loving tribute painting him as one of Hollywood’s greatest.

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By Chris Bainbridge & Cai Ross

We basically became friends because we both loved The Prisoner. They were showing the series on Channel 4 for its 25th anniversary; we were both hooked and stayed hooked, too. As with a lot of people, the tedium and restrictions of lockdown led us to consider the idea of a podcast. There were a few Prisoner podcasts already out there, but they were either a bit dry and professorial or strangely dismissive. One frustrating aspect was the apocryphal information that had cemented itself as part of Prisoner lore, we really wanted to set the record straight where we could.

The ‘Free For All’ podcast was an absolute hoot to make, and it brought us into contact with loads of Prisoner devotees from around the world. We’d expected a bit of pushback from a certain type of social media gatekeeper, but there was absolutely none. Plus, we got to interview Prisoner stars Derren Nesbitt and Jane Merrow, which was a thrill.

The problem with making a podcast about something as finite as a 17-episode TV series is that once it’s done, it’s done. We’ve made some specials (a Columbo episode and a look at Danger Man aka Secret Agent) and have more in the works, but ultimately, we were Prisoner-ed out.

We thought that what we’d recorded had the makings of an entertaining book. It had to be more than just a transcription of what we’d said in the podcast, but we did incorporate some of that element into the text to give it a conversational feel. With the book, as well as the podcast, we wanted readers to feel that they were hanging out with like-minded friends. This was also an opportunity to create an entry point for new viewers by injecting contemporary connections and a lot of humour, making it accessible to everyone.

We also felt that we’d uncovered things about The Prisoner that didn’t seem to be covered in any of the literature or ongoing discussions. We have some theories about the controversial final episode ‘Fall Out’, that we think, are quite unique and stand up to scrutiny better than many of the tired 1960s drug culture theories. As much as the book is a deliberately fun and entertaining read (even if your memory of The Prisoner is a bit rusty), it holds its own as critical analysis of a much-discussed series.

(L to R: Authors Chris Bainbridge & Cai Ross.)

There were a few obstacles to overcome, mainly in the form of rights issues. Necessity being the mother of invention, we created a Prisoner-ish original, with the invaluable help of Alan Hayes, the book’s designer, Prisoner expert Rick Davy and talented graphic artist Jemima Duncalf, who illustrated it.

I hope that it will sit snugly on the shelf in amongst the grand tomes that make up The Prisoner library. It’s a testament to the enduring fascination of Patrick McGoohan’s extraordinary series that the number of books written about it is still growing nearly sixty years after it first appeared.

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Publisher: Headpress

Paperback
Street Date: October 5, 2023
Size: 229mm x 152mm

Pages: 434
Illos: 64 B&W stills and ads

ISBN: 978-1-915316-09-7

RRP: UK £22.99

Review by Adrian Smith

One of the most important and influential television writers of the twentieth century, Nigel Kneale has enjoyed something of a resurgence in popularity of late. Headpress published the biography Into the Unknown by Andy Murray (not the tennis player) a few years ago, Electric Dreamhouse published a lavish collection of essays on his legacy called We Are the Martians, Comma Press reissued his collection of short stories Tomato Cain last year, and now Headpress again brings us this dense, information-packed study of his 1970s folk horror-inflected (before the term ‘folk horror’ had been invented) anthology show Beasts. This attention is well deserved: Nigel Kneale wrote the screenplay for the groundbreaking 1954 BBC production of 1984 before creating The Quatermass Experiment, a show that was so popular that pubs across the country would empty as people ran home to watch it. Quickly followed by Quatermass II and what was arguably the best of the three, Quatermass and the Pit, these shows were hugely important in the early history of television, and Nigel Kneale’s name was forever associated with science fiction and horror. The sixties proved to be a bit more difficult for him after some issues he had with the BBC, but there was still some amazing work, such as The Year of the Sex Olympics, which effectively predicted the rise of Big Brother and Survival-type reality shows.

In the mid-1970s he was commissioned by ATV, one of the independent commercial stations that formed part of the ITV network, to write a show loosely connected by a single theme. There were many such shows in the 1970s, often hung on one writer’s work and with a horror focus, such as Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected or Brian Clemens’ Thriller. The six episodes of Beasts, plus pilot episode ‘Murrain,’ had some form of animalistic connection and explored strange and unexplained phenomena; a couple besieged by rats, a ghostly dolphin, an actor becoming obsessed with the monster he plays in a film, a pet shop owner conducting werewolf experiments, a shopgirl whose telekinesis manifests as a destructive rodent, and a family who discover a mummified animal in the walls of their new home. These were unique, disturbing and memorable television dramas that undoubtedly made for memorable viewing experiences, and they have remained influential to this day.

Screen’s new book on Beasts is a well-researched piece of work. The author has had access to production records, scripts and other ephemera, and he also covers the wider social and historical context around the subject of each episode as well as the critical and public response. It’s an incredibly deep dive and one which will keep fans of the show, and of strange 1970s British television in general, thoroughly engrossed. It is not a book to read if you have yet to see Beasts however, so do seek out the DVD collection, enjoy its equal levels of nostalgia and creeping dread, and then dig into The Book of Beasts to discover everything you could ever want to know about this series and its impact on popular culture.

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By Ernie Magnotta

Horror films featuring either attached, murderous hands with minds of their own or just a homicidal, disembodied hand on the loose have been around since the early days of cinema. Classic films like The Hands of Orlac (1924), it’s 1935 remake, Mad Love, as well as The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) are just a few that immediately come to mind.

After the phenomenal success of 1973’s The Exorcist, a plethora of demonic possession films flooded theater screens, creating a popular cycle of movies which consisted of, amongst other things, satanic possession and the power of good (usually in the form of a Catholic priest) to stop it. Titles such as Beyond the Door (1974), Abby (1974) and The Omen (1976) quickly followed, with the first two, although thoroughly entertaining, aping The Exorcist quite a bit. Unfortunately, there were also many films that were merely unenjoyable and stale Exorcist cash-ins. However, in 1981, a low-budget filmmaker smartly combined the homicidal hand idea with satanic possession and created a fun, little cult film called Demonoid.

While in Mexico, Mark Baines (Chinatown’s Roy Jenson) unwittingly unleashes an ancient evil in the form of a severed hand. The hand immediately possesses Mark and wreaks havoc until the poor man is killed and the demonic hand is separated from his dead body. Once free, the hand continues to possess anyone it comes across, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. With the help of benevolent Irish priest, Father Cunningham (Stuart Whitman from Eaten Alive), Mark’s wife, Jennifer (The Brood’ s Samantha Eggar), does everything in her power to try and stop the evil hand before more innocent blood is spilled.

The fun film features two Academy Award nominees: Samantha Eggar (for 1965’s The Collector) and Stuart Whitman (for 1961’s The Mark). Needless to say, Eggar and Whitman are both convincing due to taking their roles and the premise of the film seriously. This only helps the audience to believe in it as well, therefore making the film even more enjoyable. Fans of 60s/70s cinema and television will also be happy to spot highly recognizable character actor (and sometime stuntman) Roy Jenson from Our Man Flint, The Getaway, The Gauntlet, Kung Fu and Star Trek, just to name a few. Last, but not least, actor/stuntman Ted White (Starman), who is best known to genre fans for playing our favorite hockey-masked slasher-killer, Jason Voorhees in 1984’s Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter, shows up as an unfortunate victim of the hand’s deadly rampage.

Filmmaker Alfredo Zacarias’ idea for Demonoid sprang from a desire to make a film about the good and evil that dwells within every person. Combining the disembodied hand idea with demonic possession/Exorcist-like themes, Zacarias fashioned a somewhat original and enjoyably cheesy drive-in film that grindhouse fans like me find extremely pleasurable. The movie may be a bit silly in spots (certain scenes of the hand moving around as well as the actors pretending that their left hands have a mind of their own are unintentionally hilarious and quite charming; not to mention the fact that Stuart Whitman goes in and out of an Irish accent whenever he feels like it), but it’s still an interesting and entertaining enough horror-thriller with a solid, likeable cast and a fun monster in the form of the disembodied hand.

Demonoid has been released as a Blu-ray/DVD combo from the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome. The film, which has been restored from the original 35mm camera negative and scanned in 2K, is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and, with the exception of a little grain here and there, the transfer looks beautiful. Special features include the theatrical trailer, TV spot, an artwork gallery, and an interesting and informative video interview with writer/director/producer Alfredo Zacarias. The disc also contains the international version of Demonoid titled Macabra, which runs ten minutes longer than the US version and features a different soundtrack (the US version uses music taken from the 1977 sci-fi classic The Incredible Melting Man). We are also treated to a Macabra trailer and TV spot. The eye-catching, original poster artwork for Demonoid can be seen on the Blu-ray sleeve and the Blu-ray disc itself while the striking artwork for Macabra shows up on the DVD disc as well as on the reversible sleeve. All in all, a very well put together collection of a not very well-known, but extremely fun film.

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By Doug Oswald

William Holden, Grace Kelly and Mickey Rooney star in James A. Michener’s Korean War drama, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Holden is Lieutenant Harry Brubaker, a lawyer and Naval Reservist called to active duty during the Korean War. The film opens in November 1952 where we meet Brubaker returning to the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Savo Island off the coast of Korea. He ends up ditching his plane in the ocean after running out of fuel and is rescued from the icy waters. Mickey Rooney gives a memorable performance as Chief Petty Officer Mike Forney, the helicopter pilot who rescues Brubaker from the ocean. Forney wears an unauthorized addition to his uniform, a green top hat and matching scarf, when flying. He also likes to brawl while on shore leave due to girlfriend problems. Earl Holliman plays Nestor Gamidge, the rescue man who assists in getting the pilots into the helicopter and brawling with Mike.

Brubaker is a good pilot and WWII veteran who’s resentful because his civilian life was disrupted by the recall for the Korean War. He starts to question his abilities as a pilot after ditching his plane and is nervous about an upcoming bombing mission. Grace Kelly plays his wife, Nancy Brubaker, who surprises her husband by visiting Japan with their children which casts additional doubts on Brubaker’s ability to carry out dangerous missions.

Headquartered on the USS Savo Island, the naval task force commander is Rear Admiral George Tarrant and is played by Fredric March. Tarrant lost his sons during WWII and is filled with many regrets in life but tries to change Brubaker’s mind about his career as a naval aviator. Rounding out the cast is Charles McGraw as Commander Wayne Lee, the fighter wing commander, who leads the climactic assault on the bridges. Robert Strauss is Lieutenant “Beer Barrel,” and Willis Bouchey as Captain Evans. There’s also an uncredited bit role by Dennis Weaver as the mission briefing officer.

The movie is divided into three parts. We meet the members of the carrier crew in part one. The middle section features shore leave in Japan where we meet Mrs. Brubaker and the Brubaker’s two young daughters. There’s also some shore leave drama involving Forney and Nestor which shows Brubaker’s dedication to these men. The final part of the movie involves the bombing mission at Toko-Ri which pays off beautifully.

The movie features great use of United States Navy resources as the bulk of the film takes place on the deck of the carrier USS Essex with extensive use of the F9F Panther and shots of the carrier task force. The use of actual United States Navy ships and aircraft rather than models is an essential part of the authenticity of this movie. Michener himself spent time on board the USS Essex gathering research for what would become the short novel, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” which was released in 1953. That experience by Michener was made into the MGM release, “Men of the Fighting Lady,” with Michener played by Louis Calhern. That movie was released in May 1954, a few months prior to the premier of “Toko-Ri.”

Holden gives one of his typical cynical performances which he was great at doing, especially in such films as “Sunset Blvd,” “Stalag 17” and later in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “The Horse Soldiers.” He’s not quite so cynical in this film and gives a great performance as Brubaker. Grace Kelly isn’t given much to do other than looking beautiful as the dutiful wife with kids in tow, but she’s important in sealing her husband’s’ doubts. All her scenes were filmed on studio sets in Hollywood with someone doubling for her in long shots in the location scenes. I think Rooney gives the standout performance as Mike Forney with the green top hat and scarf. Earl Holliman is also good as Mike’s best friend and sidekick with Fredric March and Charles McGraw good as the stoic and capable father figures. I wish Robert Strauss’ comedic skills were put to greater use in the film, especially considering he is fondly remembered in “Stalag 17” with Holden. There’s a side story set up at the start and end of shore leave involving a set of golf clubs carried by Beer Barrel that’s never explained.

The movie is directed by Mark Robson with a screenplay by Valentine Davies. While Robson is not a name that rings bells, you certainly know his movies which include “Peyton Place,” “The Prize,” “Von Ryan’s Express,” “Valley of the Dolls” and “Earthquake” to name a few of his most well-known movies. Robson started his career working uncredited as an assistant editor for Orson Welles and eventually worked his way up to editor and director culminating in several high-profile big budget movies. He died of a heart attack in 1978 shortly after the completion of “Avalanche Express” which was released the following year.

The score by Lyn Murray is serviceable and the on-location shipboard filming adds great production value to the movie. The model work depicting the crash landing scenes are very done as well. The film was released theatrically in December 1954 by Paramount. This Kino Lorber release looks and sounds better than ever. The movie clocks in at 102 minutes and is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio which resembles VistaVision, even though it isn’t, as the movie went into production during the transition period when the process was still being perfected. The Blu-ray release includes an outstanding audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Steven J. Rubin as well as trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases. The movie is highly recommended for fans of Holden, Kelly, Rooney and military drama.

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By Todd Garbarini

Paramount Home Video has released a set of five horror films in 4K UHD format. Here is a breakdown of the films included in the set.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

I was in the minority of those left unimpressed by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), based upon the 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. I never saw what the fuss was about and could not find it even remotely scary when I originally saw it in the 1980s on VHS. I rewatched the film when the Criterion Collection released it on the now-out-of-print Blu-ray in October 2012 (if you have that version, hold on to it) and I realized that I had an incorrect reading of it. I believe that the terror that oozes from the screen is directly attributed to Rosemary Woodhouse’s (Mia Farrow) new life in the enormous Dakota Apartments (made famous by Mark David Chapman following his murder of John Lennon in December 1980) which is surrounded by people who initially make her feel safe and welcomed, but slowly begin to reveal their true natures which are malevolent and evil. Her husband Guy (maverick independent film director and actor John Cassavetes) is a struggling actor who understudies for a Broadway play and is suddenly fast-tracked to the lead role by the inexplicable blindness that befalls the play’s lead actor (portrayed by an off-screen Tony Curtis over the phone) following a discussion with two nosy neighbors (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon as Roman and Minnie Castavet, respectively) who ingratiate themselves into their lives. Coincidence? Guy is often short-tempered with his wife, but midway through the film he suddenly has a burst of fatherhood when he suggests to her that they have a baby. Overwhelmingly happy, Rosemary soon becomes suspicious of the people around her during her pregnancy. They are revealed to be a coven of witches, and Rosemary is carrying Satan’s child during a disturbing sequence of supernatural impregnation that she believes was just a dream.

Rosemary’s Baby is the ultimate gaslighting movie. It is also a movie that, I would imagine, would work to great effect on the psyche of female audience members for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is due to knowing what the outcome of Rosemary’s pregnancy is, and knowing that no one, not even the doctor (Charles Grodin) she has foolishly and naïvely confiding in regarding her suspicions regarding the coven, can or is even willing to help her. The film is set against a backdrop of complete normalcy, and when that normalcy is slowly eroded by the Devil’s minions in sheep’s clothing, it’s too much for us and Rosemary to bear. It’s also a film about betrayal, and it’s shocking to see how Guy willingly confesses to her that he had no problem selling her out to this life inorder to make an easy life for themselves, something he sees as a bonus. Her reaction to him and to the (offscreen) face of her baby is complete disbelief, and Ms. Farrow is more than capable of carrying the film. Rosemary’s horrifically contorted face when she sees her baby for the first time, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (sorry, Walt…), is all that the audience needs to know that the evil has come full circle.

Rosemary’s Baby turns 55 this year. Filmed in the final four months of 1967 and released on Wednesday, June 12, 1968, it takes place in 1965 and 1966. Ruth Gordon won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror films of all time, and it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. The film spawned a TV-movie follow-up in 1976 with Patty Duke.

(Photo: Cinema Retro Archive)

The new package contains the film in 4K UHD on one disc, and the film on a standard Blu-ray, the latter boasting the following extras:

Rosemary's Baby – A Retrospective – this piece, originally shot in 2000 for the DVD, runs just under 17 minutes and includes comments from the late film producer Robert Evans, the late production designer Richard Sylbert, and Roman Polanski.

Mia and Roman – this piece runs roughly 23 minutes and contains a lot of nice behind-the-scenes shots taken during filming on location in New York City, with input from actress Mia Farrow and director Roman Polanski.

Theatrical Trailer

50th Anniversary "Redband" Trailer

This is a nice upgrade to 4K that will make you feel as though you’re watching it in a cinema again, though the lack of a feature-length commentary by film historians is disappointing given the film’s stature in the genre, making one wonder if the director is just against this sort of thing. Steven Spielberg and David Lynch do not offer commentaries on their works, sadly.

NOTE: It has come to Paramount’s attention that there is an error on this pressing, and they are going to correct it with a disc replacement program. Apparently there is a line of dialog missing from the film! When you purchase this box set, click on this link to request the replacement discs which should become available in the next several months.

Pet Sematary (1989)

Stephen King published two frightening and best-selling novels in 1983: Christine and Pet Sematary. Attempting to sandwich these massive tales into films that ran less than two hours is a near impossible task and neither film, the former directed by John Carpenter and the latter by Mary Lambert, is completely successful in this regard. Lensed between August and November 1988 and released on Friday, April 21, 1989, Pet Sematary begins with a familiar nod to Dan Curtis’s creepy Burnt Offerings (1976) as Dr. Louis Creed and his wife Rachel (Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby) leave the Windy City and arrive at their new Ludlow, Main home with their young daughter Ellie (Blasé Berdahl) and even younger son Gage (Miko Hughes). The house is located right in front of a major road that trucks whiz by at a high rate of speed, setting up the roadway as the imminent threat. Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), the family neighbor, takes them to the Pet Sematary and explains how children bury their pets there. This proves convenient when the family, sans Louis, visit Rachel’s parents for Thanksgiving, and Ellie’s cat Winston Churchill (“Church” for short) is killed by a truck. Jud takes Louis to a location beyond the Pet Sematary called the Micmac Burying Ground dating back to ancient Native American days. Buried pets have come back to life, though their personalities are different, and this is no exception with Church. The idea is to save Ellie the grief of losing him.

Following Ellie’s displeasure of the now-reanimated Church’s smell, Gage finds himself in the path of a truck and, following his death, Louis digs up his corpse and heads for the Micmac Burying Ground despite verbal warnings from Jud. Unfortunately, Gage comes back as a meanie, killing those around him until a final showdown with his father.

Despite being written by author King, the screenplay never really manages to get above the level of a gross-out horror film. The subject of grief is best left to serious dramas (think Ingmar Bergman) as director Mary Lambert can only give us what’s on the written page as a truncation of an oversized novel, is fairly schematic at best. Whereas the novel is more of a deep-rooted mediation on the nature of the overwhelming emotion of grief over the death of a child, the film focuses more on the horrific aspects of the deaths at hand. It does seem to be enough, however, to satisfy genre fans.

Bonus Content (on both 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray Disc):

Feature-length commentary by director Mary Lambert

Pet Sematary: Fear and Remembrance – this piece is in high definition and runs about 7 minutes. Select members of the film’s cast and crew look back on the film and its reception.

Pet Sematary: Revisitation – this piece is in high definition and runs about 10 minutes. The director discusses the film’s production, how she came to direct the movie, and restoring the film.

Still Galleries – this is in high definition and consists of a large selection of photos separated into four sections.

Storyboards Introduction by Mary Lambert – this intro runs 1 minute in length. She explains how they derived the new transfer from the original camera negative and how the storyboards came to be.

Storyboards – this feature is extensive and recalls the image galleries of the laserdisc days. By using the left and right buttons on the remote control, you can navigate what is essentially a visual representation of the film. Very cool!

Behind the Scenes – this is a stills gallery that, like the storyboards, can be navigated in a similar fashion, showing images on the set of shooting during the summer of 1988.

Marketing – nice section of stills containing the marketing of the film for both theatrical and home video exhibition.

The following extras are only on the standard Blu-ray, though I will never understand why they do not replicate all extras on both discs as there is more than enough room to do so:

Stephen King Territory – this is a nice piece from 2006 that is shot in standard definition for the then-DVD release and runs about 13 minutes. It discusses the autobiographical genesis for the story, which really happened to Mr. King’s family and daughter.

The Characters – also from 2006 and shot in standard definition, this runs 13 minutes and looks at the motivations behind the characters and the cats used on the set. They had an ingenious method of making the cat’s eyes glow maniacally with an attachment to the Panavision cameras.

Filming the Horror – running 10 minutes, Mary Lambert discusses how the script came to her and while she read Stephen King’s novels, she did not consider herself to be a horror film director. Miko Hughes, who was two-and-a-half-years old when he played Gage, appears to have had a fun time on the set!

Smile (2022)

David Sandberg’s 2013 short film Lights Out is a brilliantly frightening, just-under-three-minute film about a woman seeing a strange creature in her kitchen and bedroom. It is widely available on Youtube and is one of the scariest movies I have seen in my 42 years of watching horror films and thrillers. It provided the basis for an unnecessary, feature-length film of the same name three years later, also directed by the same person, who has gone on to direct Annabelle: Creation (2017), as well as other projects. Likewise, Parker Finn is a director who made a short film called Laura Hasn’t Slept (2020), starring Caitlin Stasey and Lew Temple as her somnologist. It’s the second short he made after his impressive and creepy The Hidebehind (2018), a nearly ten-minute now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t bit of computer trickery that will make you think twice about trekking solo in a forest. In Laura Hasn’t Slept, which is just under twelve minutes, Laura tells her therapist that she has a recurring nightmare wherein a frightening man is constantly smiling at her. While I appreciated the effort of this film and experienced no difficulty in determining the ending, the prospect of sitting through the theatrical version entitled Smile simply did not sit well with me. My disappointment with Lights Out nearly made me pass on Smile, and I am glad that I reconsidered.

Unlike most of the horror films marketed today, Smile is every bit as terrifying as its marketing campaign has professed. Like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Smile feels like the sort of film that would emotionally bifurcate the audience into those who love it and those who hate it. In terms of genre tropes, the film’s most obvious cinematic antecedent is David Robert Mitchell’s superb It Follows (2014), and a nod to the film’s title can be further traced back to the malevolent chauffeur, played with icy stillness by the late Anthony James in Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings (1976). While it is true that familiarity can often breed contempt, this does not make Smile any less frightening. There is credence to the notion that although the film might offer up a less-than-compassionate view of mental illness and handle the subject flippantly, the movie should ultimately be judged for what it sets out to do: scare you. It may not be completely original, but it is no less frightening.

Sosie Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, gives a bravura performance as recently engaged Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who meets a new patient, Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey, the actress from the short film), who fails to convince Rose that she is being chased by a demon that possesses people by smiling at them. Rose’s training misinterprets this as an episode of some sort of psychosis until Laura screams and reacts violently to something in the examination room invisible to Rose. Laura’s terror suddenly turns inexplicably serene wherein she effortlessly cuts her own throat with a broken plant’s pot while smiling maniacally at Rose, who reacts with complete terror. Unbeknownst to Rose, a terrible curse that plagued Laura has now been transferred to her. It takes Rose a while to make this realization. In the interim, she blames what she experiences on overworking, reluctantly taking a week off at the urging of her manager. Her fiancée (Jesse T. Usher) wants to help her but feels powerless. Rose begins to have hallucinations, and as the audience we see what she sees. Her mother’s painful death becomes a force that she needs to reckon with and is a major reason why she works as hard as she does. The hallucinations become more and more unnerving. With the aid of her ex-boyfriend cop Joel (Kyle Gallner), she begins looking into murder cases wherein people having died by suicide that they committed in front of another person, and they themselves have also witnessed a suicide. A turning point occurs when Robert Talley (Rob Morgan of Netflix’s Stranger Things, in a small but powerful role), a murderer currently in prison, managed to escape the clutches of the entity. With Joel’s help, Rose goes to the prison to see him. He tells Rose that the entity feeds on other people’s trauma. Apparently, the only way to relieve oneself of this curse is to murder someone else in front of a witness to thereby transfer the trauma on to them (again, similarly like in It Follows). Rose attempts to do this, yet it turns out to be another hallucination. By the end of the film, Rose confronts her childhood trauma at her now-abandoned childhood home in an unsatisfactory ending that paves the way for a sequel.

Thematically similar to Rosemary’s Baby in that the protagonist knows the truth and cannot seem to convince anyone around them that they are not crazy, Smile, while certainly not original, manages to take a familiar horror genre trope and seriously make it its own, packing a powerful emotional punch with several genuine jump scares nearly on a par with Gary Sherman’s Death Line (1972) and William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist III: Legion (1990). In order for a film like this to work, the performances need to be believable and they are all spot-on.

Bonus Content (on 4K Ultra HD Disc):

Audio Commentary by director Parker Finn – this is a feature-length discussion by the film’s director who speaks about the movie scene by scene regarding what he wanted in the scenes and what he got. I normally shy away from such commentaries as I am not interested in a blow-by-blow description of the film, but the director speaks so intelligently about it that he is a constant pleasure to listen to.

Something's Wrong with Rose: Making Smile (HD) – at just under 30 minutes, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make the film in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flies on the Wall: Inside the Score (HD) – Smile has one of the creepiest scores that I have ever heard, and it was composed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer. In under nine minutes, we are treated to his vast studio and his methods of creating ungodly sounds for the film.

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by director Parker Finn – there are two scenes provided here with an optional commentary and add depth to Rose’s character. These run just under 12 minutes. I would have loved to have had these scenes added as an optional cut of the film viewable through seamless branching.

Laura Hasn't Slept – Original Short with Introduction by director Parker Finn – this is the short film that Paramount scouts saw at South By Southwest in Austin, TX that paved the way for Smile. It runs about 11 minutes.

By Nicholas Anez

The incentive for this 4^th volume in my Celluloid Adventures series was a dismissive review in a reference book of the 1956 film version of George Orwell’s novel, 1984, calling it “a great disappointment and a lackluster adaptation of the briliant novel.” This derogatory opinion remains the general consensus among many critics. I disagree with this assessment, in part

because the movie remained in my memory long after I first saw it. Furthermore, I had read the novel so I knew that, though the adaptation was definitely a loose one, it was actually faithful to Orwell’s ideas. So I wanted to redress this negative opinion of the movie and proceeded to write about it. This led to my considering other movies in the science fiction and horror genres that, I believe, are also underrated. Thus was born the concept for Celluloid Adventures 4: Science Fiction Thrills….Horror Chills.

I should state at this point that I became a fan of science fiction and horror movies in my adolescence. I also loved Westerns (Shane is my all-time favorite movie) and it has always upset me when a good movie, particularly in my favorite genres, fails at the box-office. Thus, my objective in the first three volumes was to bring overdue attention to some of these movies. In these books, I discuss films within several genres while I devote individual chapters to science fiction and/or horror movies. For this fourth book, I decided to focus only on science fiction and horror because the ascendancy of these genres that began with Star Wars (1977) and The Exorcist (1973) relegated to relative obscurity many fine movies that preceded this dominance along with a few that followed. And it is some of these films that I wanted to retrieve from anonymity for this book. (Not coincidentally, my devotion to the genres more or less ended in the late 70s, coinciding with this ascendancy, but that’s another story.)

It was very rewarding for me to research the movies in Celluloid Adventures 4 because I discovered numerous interesting details about their development and production that I hope will make this book equally interesting. For instance, here are just a few of the many intriguing facts that I learned:

The director of one movie fired his own brother who had written the screenplay.

One movie is based upon a legend of the birth of a deformed monster.

One movie was made by a married couple that later engaged in an acrimonious divorce.

One movie failed upon its original release but played to enthusiastic audiences in New York

and Los Angeles 65 years later.

The screenplay for one movie is based upon actual inhumane experiments conducted in

prestigious universities.

The producer of one movie was forced to cast the actor who starred in it.

The director of one movie considers it among his worst.

One serious movie suffered because its studio promoted it as an exploitation movie.

The 14 movies that I highlight cover a period of three and one-half decades, from 1943 to 1978, and I would speculate that the average moviegoer today has not heard of most of them. With one exception, they were financial failures or disappointments, a fact that contributes to their obscurity. However, I believe that they still deserve the recognition and praise that they did not receive upon their original release. In my estimation, these are all excellent films but yet most of them did not attract wide audiences.

These movies include a wide variety of subjects. In Son of Dracula (1943), the main character is a woman who is not only eager to die but is also willing to kill the man that loves her. In Alias Nick Beal (1949), Lucifer is determined to condemn an innocent man him to eternal suffering. Both The Power (1968) and The Medusa Touch (1978) portray men with superior brains that have the capability to either save or destroy the entire world. One of them will choose destruction because he hates humanity with a passion.

Very few people have heard of the movie, Who? (1974), and those who have heard of it were probably confused by the title. And yet it is a poignant story of an altruistic man who is victimized by futuristic technology. The protagonist of The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) also endures tremendous suffering from another type of futuristic technology. The future of the aforementioned 1984 (1956) is extremely frightening because it depicts a world in which a sweet-looking child will betray her own father to be tortured and perhaps killed.

I am hoping that this book will encourage people, including some of you who are reading this, to view these movies. They are all entertaining and, in some respects, provocative. For instance, after seeing The Maze (1953), you might actually sympathize with a monstrous amphibian. If you believe that a brain is lifeless once it is removed from its body, Donovan’s Brain (1953) may change your mind. You might also discover how fragile our brains are after viewing The Mind Benders (1963), a story about the cruelty of pitiless scientists. If you view Crack in the World (1965), you will witness how the earth is almost destroyed by a scientist with abundant hubris. Upon viewing Journey to the far Side of the Sun (1969), you will witness a benevolent scientist lose his sanity because of his extraordinary discovery.

There are moments of pure excitement and suspense as well as pure terror in these movies. Viewers of Capricorn One (1977) will inevitably break out in ecstatic applause at the sight of a rickety biplane suddenly appearing on an isolated desert road. This is the only movie among the 14 in this book that was a success – with the public if not the critics. In contrast, The Mummy’s Shroud (1967) played the bottom-of-the-bill of double features and was unnoticed upon its release. But I believe it deserves some kind of awareness.

So I hope that I have piqued your curiosity enough to encourage you to read about the making of these movies. But even if you choose not to buy the book, for your own safety, I implore you to please heed this warning: Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet!

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By Ernie Magnotta

Nick Martin (Joey Travolta, Hollywood Vice Squad, Normal People Scare Me), the leader of a gang called the Nightcrawlers, dreams of moving his girlfriend, mother and two brothers out of Sunnyside, Queens, but becomes involved in a violent war against a rival gang called the Warlocks.

Beautifully directed by Night Gallery’s Timothy Galfas (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff King from a story by King and Robert Schaffel), and released by American International Pictures, Sunnyside is an engaging and entertaining drama/love story that carries an important message. Although it never reached the popularity of other gang films like Walter Hill’s The Warriors, Sunnyside is still an extremely well-done movie that I not only feel is underrated, but that should definitely be seen.

Besides Travolta’s solid and likeable performance, the movie also features an amazingly talented cast of actors such as John Lansing (More American Graffiti), Stacey Pickren (Runaway Train), Andrew Rubin (Police Academy), Michael Tucci (Grease), Talia Balsam (The Kindred), Chris Mulkey (The Hidden), Joan Darling (The Troublemaker), Jonathan Gries (The Monster Squad), Peter Kwong (Big Trouble in Little China), Eric Laneuville (A Force of One), John Megna (To Kill a Mockingbird), Thomas Rosales, Jr. (The Hunter), Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump), John Alderson (Against All Flags), Grand Bush (Colors), Billy Jacoby (Bloody Birthday) and Robert Dryer (Savage Streets).

Sunnyside has been released on a Region 1 Blu-ray and is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The film looks great and the audio is also superb. Special features include a terrific interview with actor Chris Mulkey, the original theatrical trailer as well as trailers for Dirty O’Neil; Checkered Flag or Crash, and Walk Proud.

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By Fred Blosser

“The Hands of Orlac,” a 1960 U.K.-French co-production, was the third movie version of “Les Mains d’Orlac,” a sensational 1920 novel by French writer Maurice Renard. Like many of the other horror pictures released in 1960, it was filmed in black-and-white. The director, Edmond T. Gréville, was a veteran French-born filmmaker who had worked in both France and England. His previous picture, “Beat Girl” (1960), had featured Christopher Lee as a strip club impresario in an exploitative story about beatniks, aspiring rockers, and strippers. Lee and other British actors filled most of the major supporting roles in “The Hands of Orlac.” Exterior scenes were filmed on the French Riviera, interiors at Britain’s Shepperton Studios. An American actor, Mel Ferrer, was cast in the lead. Ferrer was a reliably familiar leading man for the all-important U.S. market. His name lent box-office appeal in those days when foreign movies were suspect in small-town America, as it did for another offbeat horror production in which he also starred that same year, Roger Vadim’s “Blood and Roses,” a French and Italian co-production. But U.S. distributors apparently saw no pressing need to slip Gréville’s film into American theaters, since it didn’t open here until 1964. By that time, a promotional still from the movie had appeared in the October 1963 issue of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine, in a preview of upcoming horror and fantasy releases.

In the story, a celebrated concert pianist and composer, Stephen Orlac (Ferrer), flies from London to France to visit his fiancee, Louise (Lucile Saint Simon). His small plane wrecks in a fog, and Orlac’s hands are “burnt to the bone” in the crash. After his ambulance passes through a police checkpoint where a condemned murderer, Vasseur, is being transported to the guillotine, Louise prevails on a famous surgeon, Dr. Volchett (Donald Wolfit), to operate in an effort to save her lover’s badly injured hands. Coming out of the anaesthetic, Orlac finds his hands encased in huge, unsightly plaster casts. Worse, he sees the front page of a newspaper that juxtaposes a report about Vasseur’s execution with one about his own injuries. To his groggy eyes, the stories gradually merge into one under the headline, “Stephen Orlac Receives the Hands of Vasseur, the Murderer.” Lifting the grotesque casts, Orlac flies into hysterics. This was the publicity still that intrigued us young readers of “Famous Monsters” in 1963. It was also the centerpiece of the movie’s lobby-poster art.

Did the newspaper actually display the stories that Orlac read, more or less as he interpreted them? Was he hallucinating? Was there even a newspaper at all? No matter, the high-strung pianist becomes convinced that the surgeon found his hands irreparably damaged, amputated them, and replaced them with Vasseur’s, especially since, as he mourns, “They feel as if they no longer belong to me!” After the casts come off, he can’t get his fingers to strike the right notes on the keyboard.

The obsession grows stronger when Orlac and Louise make love. His fingers unconsciously tighten around her throat, and she begins to choke. That incident and others convince the pianist that Vasseur’s hands have a violent will of their own, and his fiancee’s life is in danger as long as they’re together. He checks into a sketchy Marseilles hotel under an assumed name, where he encounters a small-time stage magician named Nero (Christopher Lee, returning from “Beat Girl” as an even sleazier character). Nero senses an opportunity for blackmail; obviously, “Mr. Stephen” is a well-off guy who wouldn’t be holed up in a dump unless he had something to hide. Nero pimps out his pouty assistant and mistress, Li-Lang (Dany Carrel), to cozy up to Orlac and get him to talk.

Orlac’s self-imposed exile doesn’t last long. After Louise tracks him down, he decides to straighten up, return to England, marry Louise, and resume his career. But he continues to brood over his persuasion that his hands are no longer his own. Discovering “Mr. Stephen’s” true identity, Nero and Li-Lang follow. Nero sets about to feed Orlac’s paranoia, reasoning that the unhinged pianist will kill someone sooner or later, opening himself to big-time extortion.

To the extent that film enthusiasts take notice of “The Hands of Orlac” at all, they mostly judge it seriously inferior to the previous movie versions of Renard’s novel. Robert Wiene’s “Orlacs Hände” (1924), also called “The Hands of Orlac” in English-language prints, was a classic of German silent cinema, with Conrad Veidt as the title character amid feverish Expressionist sets. Following in 1935 from MGM, Karl Freund’s “Mad Love” with Colin Clive as Orlac draped the story in sadism and sexual perversion, to the extent Freund could do so under the vigilant eyes of the Hays Code censors.

Gréville’s remake dialed back on Wiene’s and Freund’s extravagance, accounting for some of its lacklustre press from critics who like to see the gothic thriller envelope pushed further than Gréville pushed it, at least in their opinion. It’s very much a product of 1960, emphasising the psychological aspect of Orlac’s dilemma and stepping into film noir territory once the intimidating Nero and Li-Lang enter the plot. It even evokes the emerging New Wave of French cinema with its documentarian exterior shots on the Riviera. Claude Bolling’s musical score includes light jazz for a scene in which Orlac tools around in a vintage sports car, and rinky-tink cabaret music for Li-Lang’s sultry song-and-slink routine following Nero’s magic act, juxtaposed with Beethoven and Liszt in the concert scenes that open and close the movie. Mel Ferrer lacks Conrad Veidt’s eye-popping hysteria and Colin Clive’s furrowed anxiety, his Orlac repurposed for 1960 as a sophisticate in shades, pullover sweater, and tailored slacks for casual wear, and an expensive suit for business occasions. If you’re a retro-fan of JFK-era men’s fashions, you probably won’t mind. You may even prefer Ferrer’s interpretation over his predecessors’. Like other British horror films of the time, such as “Jack the Ripper” (1959) and “The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll” (1960), “The Hands of Orlac” promises plenty of sex appeal courtesy of Lucile Saint Simon’s filmy negligees and Dany Carrel’s showgirl outfits. In truth, this stuff is pretty tame by 2023 standards, but it was a draw for male filmgoers at a time when even the centrefolds in “Playboy” were often modestly posed.

For most of the picture, we don’t know whether Orlac’s obsession has a basis in reality, since we don’t actually see the operation itself. Were the killer’s hands really grafted onto his wrists, or is the pianist suffering from a morbid neurosis? An explanation is made toward the end that for may find satisfying or frustrating, depending on your tastes. It doesn’t help that Orlac is surrounded by oddball characters who only compound his unease. Nero is the only one who is overtly menacing, but others are unsettling in their own ways. In his few minutes on screen, Donald Wolfit’s Dr. Volchett is brusque and possibly alcoholic; his decision to save (or replace) Stephen’s damaged hands seems more a whim than a humanitarian impulse. His unnamed assistant (Anita Sharp Bolster) is a starchy spinster who wears rimless glasses with impenetrably thick lenses, like Albert Dekker’s in 1940’s “Dr. Cyclops.” When Orlac tries to call Dr. Volchett to either confirm or relieve his suspicions, the assistant tells him the surgeon is on professional travel—to Moscow!—and unreachable in that era before cellphones and Zoom. She brightens up as she enjoys a chance to extol her boss, but her comments only deepen Orlac’s fears: “Dr. Volchett is a magician,” she declares. “Your case was his greatest triumph.” In a small but bravura appearance, Donald Pleasence plays Coates, a sculptor who wants to use Orlac’s hands as the model for those of Lazarus in a biblical tableau of Lazarus raised from the dead. “All we see of Lazarus is his hands—your hands, Orlac!”, he exclaims, seizing the pianist’s wrists. Given Stephen’s state of mind, the sculptor’s fervor is more invasive than flattering, like the irritating stranger who latches on to you at a party and won’t let go. As he makes his pitch with growing enthusiasm, Orlac stares at his hands (poised exactly as he had scrutinized his grotesque casts earlier in the story), and runs off in panic.

“The Hands of Orlac” isn’t the best horror thriller of 1960. That would be Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” with “Blood and Roses” and Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face” as close seconds. But it’s better than its obscurity would imply. In the U.S., “Eyes Without a Face” was dumped onto double bills as “The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus” and generally ignored by critics, much as “The Hands of Orlac” was. Now, it’s widely regarded as a classic. It’s surprising that Gréville’s picture hasn’t received similar reappraisal, given the renewed interest in neglected horror films in the home video era, and the movie’s value as an early showcase for Christopher Lee and Donald Pleasence. The problem may lie with the fact that an official DVD or Blu-ray edition for fair evaluation doesn’t exist in the U.S., the U.K., or anywhere else as far as I can tell. DVD-R versions are sold on the collector’s market, with caveats about their visual quality.

We discovered this presentation of the film on YouTube, apparently sourced from tape, perhaps one of two competing VHS releases in the 1990s, or a videotape from a long-ago television broadcast. The image is better than you might expect, if inferior to the hi-def transfers we’ve come to expect nowadays. It’s also the easiest way to find the movie, at least until we can hope to see original elements unearthed, if they still exist, and a better print prepared for Blu-ray or one of the major streaming platforms.

(To watch in full screen format, click on "Watch on YouTube".)

By Doug Gerbino

Flicker Alley’s recent Blu-Ray release of “Laurel & Hardy Year One-The Newly Restoed 1927 Silents” is the start of a ground-breaking project which is a joy for all film fan,s especially Laurel & Hardy aficionados. Produced by film historians and restoration specialists Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange in conjunction with Lobster Films, Blackhawk Films and The Library of Congress, this 2-disc set contains the first 15 extant films that feature Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in the casts. A number of the films can just boast having Laurel & Hardy in the same film-not yet a team.

Many of these films are being seen in their most complete versions thus far due to the collaboration of various film archives and collectors. This is the seminal period of the teaming of Laurel & Hardy. They are not quite a team in the earliest films in this collection. This set gives us the opportunity to study their evolving partnership.

In typical Flicker Alley fashion the set is chock full of wonderful bonus materials. Each film has newly recorded audio commentary by Laurel & Hardy scholar Randy Skretvedt. There are three documentaries: Restoring Laurel & Hardy, Laurel & Hardy on Location & Hats Off!-a slide show presentation of the only completely lost Laurel and Hardy film. There are Multiple Image Galleries, additional music scores for three of the shorts and a very informative 35-page booklet.

If you have seen any previous Flicker Alley releases, you know the image quality is superb. This initial release is an exciting start to a multiple year project. Year Two (1928) is next. We will have the opportunity to watch the teaming of one of the greatest comedy teams mature into legends. Very much recommended.

Films included in the set:

Lucky Dog (1921)

45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926)

-1927-

Duck Soup

Slipping Wives!

Love ‘Em and Weep

Why Girls Love Sailors

With Love and Hisses

Sailors, Beware!

Do Detectives Think?

Flying Elephants

Sugar Daddies

The Second 100 Years

Call of the Cuckoo

Putting Pants on Phillip

The Battle of the Century

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Titanic the Musical

Music and Lyrics by Maury Weston

Book by Peter Stone

Theatrical Production by Thom Southerland

Film Production by Austin Shaw

By Giacomo Selloni

The Titanic's sinking occurred over 111 years ago and yet it still holds a special place in not only history, but popular culture as well. If you are reading this you probably know its history already. It crashed into an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. One thousand, five hundred and twenty two men, women, and children perished in the freezing water. Whether from James Cameron's Oscar- winning film, multiple documentaries throughout the years, or the smash hit stage musical being reviewed here (the filmed version), people have been drawn to its tragic story.

The musical first opened on Broadway April 23, 1997 and ran for 804 performances. It

won all five Tony Awards it was nominated for, Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score, along with Best Orchestrations and Scenic Design, and successfully toured both the US and Europe for years. In its current "revival" Fathom Events, along with By Experience, are bringing the production of the recent UK tour to the silver screen.I did not see the original production. I feel it puts me in a better position to review this filmed version as I have no preconceived notions or memories about the show.

Twenty five actors perform in this filmed version as opposed to forty three in the Broadway production. From what I read about the Broadway version, the set was so expensive (it tried to encompass all three classes of passengers along with the ship's bridge), there were no out-of-town tryouts. In this filmed version, since it was a tour, the producers made a similar, if smaller set for the show, but whether it was or not a recreation, it is, once getting past slight distractions, a very good set.

(Photo: Pamela Raith)

The cast is terrific. Standouts are Martin Allanson as J. Bruce Ismay, director of the White Star line, the "Villain" of the show, cast with a Snidely Whiplash moustache is, if not "evil incarnate," than at least "evil a-boat-ate." Graham Bickley as the put-upon by Ismay ship's Captain Edward Smith, is one of the most sympathetic characters, Alice Beane, as portrayed by Bree Smith is the social climbing, selfish wife who sneaks into First Class to hobnob with the hoi polloi who puts her marriage at risk. Adam Filipe as Stoker Frederick Barrett is an experienced stoker, who becomes engaged to be married through the wireless while at sea. He knows the voyage is at risk due to Ismay's machinations to increase the ship's speed to set the Atlantic crossing speed record.

To list all the wonderful performances and numbers would take too much time and effort, as I am not being paid by the word.

This filmed version will be available to see at over 700 U.S. theaters country-wide on November 4th and 8th. At approximately $20/a seat, it is a whale of a bargain to see this multi-award winning show.

For tickets, click here.

By Hank Reineke

Roger Corman had, over a relatively short period of time, directed and/or produced more than a half-dozen pictures since his entry into the movie industry in 1955. His first efforts were modest successes, but the filmmaker firmly broke into a dependably bankable stride within two years’ time. Though already having helmed two low budget science-fiction pictures with some success (Day the World Ended (1955) and It Conquered the World (1956) his reputation in Hollywood - as a budget-minded money-spinner - was properly recognized following the box office counting of his 1957 chiller combo: Attack of the Crab Monsters/Not of This Earth. Variety noted the package – each film made on a “slenderized bankroll of $85, 000,” had brought in an impressive domestic gross of $800,000. By early November of ’57, that package, distributed through Allied Artists, had earned back the entirety of its production and marketing costs within twelve weeks of its release.

Through the remainder of the 1950s and well into the early 1960s, Corman continued to grind out a dizzying array of feature films, not all of the horror and sci-fi variety: there were plenty of exploitative teenage rock n’ roll pictures and crime dramas offered as well. But from 1960 through 1964, Corman worked primarily – though not exclusively – producing and directing an impressive slate of upscale horror classics. He had already given fans such soon-to-be low-budget cult favorites as Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960). But in 1960 he more famously scored with House of Usher, the first of his iconic and moody cycle of Poe and H.P. Lovecraft adaptations - many featuring Vincent Price in roles as both tormentor and tormented.

One of Corman’s most important collaborators in his early years was screenwriter Charles B. Griffith. Griffith would receive screenwriting credit – or co-credit – on no fewer than eight of Corman’s earliest films 1956-59. The writer would later recall for Beast from Haunted Cave he had been commissioned by Corman to essentially rework the storyline of an earlier film they had crafted together – Naked Paradise (1957) aka Thunder Over Hawaii. Naked Paradise, of which Griffith was brought on late to the project for a re-write, was essentially a South Seas crime-drama set in a pineapple plantation under the umbrella of a glistening sun.

Since that film had done well enough, Corman wanted to revisit the scenario of Naked Paradise for the reimagined crime drama titled Beast from Haunted Cave. There would be a new twist: the new scenario was to take place in and around a gold mining community nestled in the dead winter snow of South Dakota’s Black Hills. Oh, and Corman advised Griffith that he also wanted a genuine cave-dwelling monster thrown in for good measure - that sort of thing was still selling. That was essentially all the background material given to Griffith to get started on the project.

Despite its menacing title Beast from Haunted Cave appears more a crime-drama than horror flick in the course of its 65-minute running time. The story revolves around the criminal doings of a circle of bandits: chain-smoking mastermind Alexander Ward (Frank Wolff), his two minions Marty Jones (Richard Sinatra) and Byron Smith (Wally Campo) and Ward’s oft- inebriated “secretary” Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Carol). The thieves have gathered in the snow-capped mountain winter of the pioneer town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Their plan is to plant an explosive in an abandoned cave in the early hours of a quiet Sunday morning. The explosion is set merely as a strategic ploy to distract authorities for a time, enabling the thieves’ free reign to steal gold bars from an unattended payroll office of a local gold-mining company.

Unfortunately, their plans don’t run smoothly. Ward’s dissatisfied and affection-starved lover-secretary, Gypsy, has a bit of a drinking problem. She complicates matters when she falls hard for ski instructor and trail guide Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), a swarthy, dark-haired gentleman of gentle temperament. (As an aside, I occasionally had a bit of trouble understanding actress Sheila Carol’s dialogue in this film: her diction seemed a perplexing amalgam of drunken slurred words and a faux Katherine Hepburn accent). The cold Ward takes notice of his woman’s wandering eye but is unworried. He has plans to kill Jackson once the skier - unwittingly - guides this gaggle of crooks on a cross-country trail run to a remote location.

Ward had plans to rendezvous with a waiting plane to ferry his gang - and their misbegotten treasure - off to safe sanctuary in Canada. But this plan too is scuttled by an unwelcome blizzard passing through the mountains. (As a second aside, Ward’s cross-country ski scheme is surely the most ineffectual escape route ever mapped by criminals carrying weighted gold bars in rucksacks. They really would have done better just hightailing it out of town in their rented car). To complicate matters further – and this is where the horror finally comes in - their explosive mine charge has awakened the titular beast, sort of an upright walking, giant spider that collects his victims by webbing them against cave walls and drinking their blood at his leisure. Let’s just say the moral of the story is a familiar one: essentially, crime doesn’t pay.

In Corman’s attempt to make their chilly time in the Black Hills more productive and worthwhile (i.e. profitable), the filming of Beast was to be produced back-to-back on location in Deadwood with yet another Charles B. Griffith script, Ski Troop Attack. This second film was to be a somewhat more ambitious project, a snow-bound WWII action-adventure pitting American ski-troopers against their wintry Nazi counterparts. The Corman team would use the same primary on-and off screen talents featured in the cast and credits of Beast for Ski Troop Attack.

The scenario of Ski Troop Attack referentially takes place in the snow-capped mountains of Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, circa December 1944. A small American band of ski-troopers are the only remaining Allied force active in this Nazi-controlled region, hiding themselves behind enemy lines so they can spy and report on SS ski-troop movements. The level-head Lieutenant Factor (Forest), a graduate of the Army’s Officer Candidate School, wishes to stay clear of engaging in active combat with the enemy. As the only team of Allied forces positioned inside the Nazi-controlled German-Belgian border, it is Forest’s belief his outfit should purposely avoid direct contact. He instead wants to concentrate his efforts on secret reconnaissance missions. By acting as the covert eyes of the good guys behind enemy lines, his outfit would be able to transmit vital information on Nazi troop movements back to HQ.

But Factor is at loggerheads with tough-talking Sergeant Potter (a mustache-less Wolff, again cast in a “heavy” role). Potter is described by Factor as an old school “regular army guy,” a man of pure fighting spirit but someone strategically short-sighted. Potter desperately wants to engage the Nazi ski-troopers in active combat and is mostly dismissive of the Factor’s civilian background and wartime decision-making capabilities. Potter does get a number of chances to engage in hand-to-hand combat. The film actually offers no shortage of brutal on screen violence with competing ski-troops ambushing and beating one another with fisticuffs, rifles butts, bayonets, knives and machine-gun fire.

Ultimately, the American’s decide to blow up a strategic railroad bridge that Allied air powers are unable to access and target. But while attempting to get to the base of the bridge to set off their detonators, they must first successfully climb an ice-covered vertical cliff side. If this isn’t problematic or dangerous enough, they must also fend off a team of six pursuing Nazi ski-troopers hot on their trail. The German skiing contingent, incidentally, is led by the badly-dubbed Roger Corman himself. The film’s climactic ending is, somewhat surprisingly for this type of adventure, more bleak than celebratory.

Griffith’s screenplay is actually far more nuanced than it is given credit for in the film’s original round of reviews. The sensitively written dialogue is mature – the scene where soldier Grammelsbacher (Sinatra) sits around a campfire musing if somewhere out there there’s still “a bullet with my name on it” – is particularly gripping. The better written dialogue also brings out better acting performances of all involved – including Shelia Carol who appears midway through the film as a spiteful German captive of the Americans.

The film does plod a bit. There’s a lot of wartime newsreel footage interlaced throughout, and no matter how beautiful the mountain settings are photographed, there’s far too many time-filling shots of ski-troopers silently trudging cross-country style through the tundra. Having said that that, there’s also some well-executed ski chase scenes captured on screen, such action-footage surprising for a film shot on a threadbare budget. The soundtrack of the film is riddled with the sound of machine-gun fire and a decent score courtesy of composer Fred Katz – though fans of Corman’s earliest films will surely recognize a good number of Katz’s recycled musical motifs are in play.

As both projects were to be shot on tight schedules, Roger’s brother, Gene, stepped in as the de facto producer of Beast. Once a Hollywood agent, Gene Corman was co-founder (with Roger) of their company Filmgroup, Inc. Gene’s earliest entries as producer would include a number of exploitative sci-fi efforts such as Night of the Blood Beast (1958) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). With Roger set to both produce and direct Ski Troop Attack, the directorial duties of Beast were given to first-timer Monte Hellman - whose only previous film experience was having worked as an apprentice editor at ABC-TV.

In his entertaining memoir, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (Random House, 1990), Roger Corman recalled the wintertime location shooting in and around snowbound Deadwood as “unbearable” and “a very tough challenge.” When shooting was to commence on the peak of Mount Terry, Corman recorded temperatures of a frigid thirty-eight degrees below zero. In the recollection of script supervisor Kinta Zertuche, her primary job was simply “to find ways to keep the film warm enough so it wouldn’t get brittle and crack.” She was also deigned to find ways of keeping the production cameras from freezing – not always successfully.

Production assistant Paul Rapp recalled he had been tasked to drive the parsimonious Corman – and an automobile-filled cache of film props - from Los Angeles to Deadwood, so the director “could save on airfare and have an extra car on location.” When filming one downhill ski sequence, Corman accidentally set off a small avalanche by shouting “Action!” too loudly through a bullhorn. Rapp recalled while the incident scared him half-to-death, Corman quickly realized the potential visual impact of what the camera was capturing. So the team was commanded to continue to roll film, Corman exhorting via bullhorn that his terrified skiers try their best to “Stay Ahead of the Avalanche!”

In March of 1959, there was a trade announcement that “Corman’s distributing outfit, The Filmgroup,” was planning to release Beast from Haunted Cave nationally (paired with The Wasp Woman) as early as June 1, with Ski Troop Attack (to be paired with Task Force 38) a little more than a month later, July 13. But neither of those prospective release dates would actually roll out as planned, even though the films themselves were ready to roll. Beast would come closest to realizing its projected release date, appearing on some screens in July 1959.

As early as February of 1960, Variety reported that the steamroller that was Filmgroup was optimistically planning to roll out eight feature films a month between March and June of 1960. Ski Troop Attack was to see release on the very tail end of that schedule. The Hollywood Reporter suggested Filmgroup’s plan as more ambitious than even originally announced: the company was planning on issuing no less than twenty-four features over a year’s period, with eleven of those titles already in the can and ready to go.

The company was also interested in testing international markets. It was reported that the usually closed-to-outsiders Soviet film market was interested in importing four Corman titles – including Beast and Ski – assuming whether or not Irving Allen, president of Canada’s Astral Films, could finalize a deal while visiting London. Later in May of 1960, it was reported Filmgroup had sealed another deal to distribute eight films – again, including Beast and Ski - throughout the Philippine islands. Finally, in August of 1960, Continental Distributors would obtain rights of Filmgroup product for European markets.

But the U.S. market was of most concern to the filmmakers. On March 16, 1960, there was a very belated press screening of the Beast and Wasp combo at the Hollywood Theatre. Variety was generally impressed with Hellman’s Beast, but suggested the film’s scenario was completely illogical. The critic also pondered that perhaps interest in horror films was generally on the wane. He opined, audiences were growing “inured to monsters and hardly blink when this one guzzles its customary quota of blood.” The review of Wasp was likewise middling in praise. The trade noted, while the film was certainly an “exploitable” passable entertainment, “it’s pretty slow and not very frightening.”

The “official” premiere of Beast from Haunted Cave was to take place at dual locations in South Dakota: Rapid City’s State Theatre and the Hile-Hi Drive-in outside of Deadwood: the latter venue was to enjoy a four day night run of Beast beginning August 2, 1959. This was obviously a nod of acknowledgment to the folks living in the area of the Black Mountain Hills who hosted and assisted the film’s production. But no matter how well-intentioned the “premiere” honor, Beast from Haunted Cave and The Wasp Woman had already been projected on screens in the mid and southwestern U.S. as early as July of ’59.

Earlier that spring, director Gene Corman had written Allan “Birdie” Arnold of Deadwood’s Chamber of Commerce City Council, a champion of the film shoot. “We saw a rough cut of our picture, it is very good and I’m sure everyone who helped, especially you, will be proud and pleased,” Gene wrote, adding, “I plan to make it a full length picture and hope to release it in the summer.” For their assistance, both Arnold and Mayor Ed Keene of Lead, South Dakota, were given “Technical Advisor” credits on Beast.

Bloomsbury Academic

April 2023

Paperback

Illustrations: 26 BW images

ISBN: 9781350265127

RRP: £28.99

Review by Adrian Smith

The 1980s was a fun time to be a child. The monster kids of the 1950s and 1960s may have had Forrest J. Ackerman and his Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, but we had full-blown horror content in films ostensibly made for a young audience, from the melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark or the terrifying library apparition in Ghostbusters, to a melting Stripe in Joe Dante’s equally hilarious and scary Gremlins. In this new book dedicated to horror films aimed at children, Catherine Lester begins by drawing on early examples such as Frankenstein’s murder of the little girl by its titular monster, along with other pre-code horrors that primarily drew a young crowd, through to its modern, reanimated version, Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. The book then takes a deeper look at the ‘horrific’ childlike gremlins who both commit violent acts and then have violence acted upon them (along with the aforementioned Stripe, who can forget the gremlin in the microwave?). What happens to the representation of children in the horror film when children are the audience? Did the children in the audience take sympathy with the gremlins, who let’s not forget, just happily sit watching Disney films with childlike wonder when the adult world just leaves them alone? The violence combined with the Looney Tunes tone of Gremlins caused some issues for the MPAA, something which the book also goes into. Ultimately it led to the introduction of the PG-13, apparently suggested by Steven Spielberg, the film’s producer, who described the new rating as “PG with a little hot sauce on top.”

Lester also draws on another eighties staple, The Monster Squad, a sort of The Goonies meets The Lost Boys via Universal’s horror canon. By introducing the concept of the ‘Crazyspace’, a space in which child characters are able to be the prime agents in dispatching evil forces in the complete absence of adult supervision, the book explores the way in which many films present children as autonomous and often superior to even the most masculinised models of authority; in this case the kids defeat Dracula and his fellow monsters before the US Army arrive, something which would have been very different in the 1950s monster and science fiction movies, where it was usually the army who saved the day.

Bringing the discussion into the 21^st Century, Lester also looks at the animated children’s horrors ParaNorman (one of this reviewer’s favourites), Coraline and Monster House, along with Joe Dante’s return to the children’s horror genre with 2009’s live action The Hole. By covering almost a century of children's horror films, this book makes for an insightful and entertaining examination of the horrific child and the cathartic nature of the genre. For this reviewer, as a child horror was an escape from the terrors of the real world, and as such it is a rewarding experience to be able to read this major contribution to the study of these strange and wonderful films. Horror Films for Children is highly recommended, both the book and the films themselves!

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By Todd Garbarini

I hated William Friedkin’s 1985 police thriller, To Live and Die in L.A., when I first saw it. The mixture of Eighties-style pop music by Wang Chung and the disreputable characters were, I felt, meretricious and off-putting. Even the car chase seemed lackluster. I also hated Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972), James Toback’s Fingers (1978) and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) during my first viewings. Revisiting these titles soon afterwards made me realize that I failed to fully appreciate or understand them. My ignorance of film was evident!

To Live and Die in L.A., which opened nationwide on Friday, November 1, 1985 to lukewarm notices and underwhelming box office despite being championed by a four-star review by Roger Ebert, is a highly stylized, dark, and uncompromising crime thriller that boasts a then-unknown cast with a story and a pace that feels more suited to the 1970s. It also contains what I consider to be the greatest car chase ever filmed and edited for a major motion picture, which took no less than five weeks to plan and shoot.

Having seen Mr. Friedkin’s brilliant Oscar-winning East Coast police thriller The French Connection (1971), this West Coast-based yarn centers on a Secret Service agent, Richard Chance (William Petersen), whose best friend and partner Jim Hart (Michael Greene) has been murdered in cold blood by artist/currency counterfeiter Rick Masters (Willem Dafoe) just days prior to his retirement. This plot device occurred before it became a familiar film trope, and this is easily one of the best films of the 1980s. Chance has one goal: to put Masters away for life with no regard for how he has to do it. Truthfully, he would prefer to kill him. This causes many issues for his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) whose familial lineage of law enforcement officers and his “by the book” methodology conflicts with Chance’s no-bullshit headstrong attitude. Vukovich’s unwillingness to go outside the boundaries of acceptability is tested when: Chance surreptitiously removes crucial evidence from a crime scene in order to get to Masters; Chance, without Vukovich’s knowledge, springs a prisoner friend (John Turturro) of Masters to get him to testify; and most notably forces Vukovich to go along with a plan to obtain cash needed to get closer to Masters while nearly dying in what is arguably cinema’s most exciting getaway car chase sequence. What makes the chase work so well is that it’s physical, it’s possible (though highly improbable), and it’s not done in a Fast and the Furious, over-the-top sort of way. Nor is it perfunctory as it comes as a result of an important plot point, nearly besting the director’s own French Connection subway/car chase with a headlong ride straight up the 710 Long Beach Freeway while driving in the wrong direction against traffic.

Chance also beds a willing parolee (Darlanne Fluegel) who gives him information on current convicts in return for money to provide for herself and her son Christopher. Like the inexorable Popeye Doyle in The French Connection who will stop at nothing to put drug dealers and users away, Chance, like his surname, will stop at nothing to capture and punish Masters. The difference between the two films is that the former paints Brooklyn and New York City as gritty and almost despairing cities whereas the latter bathes the frame in a Los Angeles that we have not seen before or since. While also gritty, grimy and dark, this is a Lotus Land that is also highly glossy and enticing, with beautiful people who are about as real as the counterfeit bills that Masters manufactures. The overall theme and central conceit of To Live and Die in L.A. is fraudulence. People use each other for their own personal gains. Masters is an artist but hates what he paints and burns his work in frustration. Since he cannot find joy or satisfaction in his own originality, he resorts to copying others, in this case $20, $50, and $100 bills in a procedure that is painstaking, difficult, and now archaic.

Like The French Connection, To Live and Die in LA is also based on a book of the same name, this one a novel written by former Secret Service Agent Gerald Petievich. What makes the film remarkable is the opening sequence which features a martyr who shouts “Allahu Akbar” just before blowing himself up on the roof of a hotel where then-President Reagan is giving a speech. This scene made little sense to me upon my maiden viewing but is eerily prescient of the religious extremism that has made its way to America’s shores.

The performances are excellent all around. William Petersen, whose film debut was as a bar bouncer in Michael Mann’s Thief (1981), is terrific as Chance and plays him as a daredevil whose cowboy nature seals his fate and makes him a dangerous person to be around. This is established in an early sequence wherein Chance bungee jumps off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, CA. In addition to the martyr sequence, this could also be one of the earliest instances of this now highly popular activity’s depiction in a film. John Pankow is also quite good as Chance’s conflicted partner. The stand-out is Willem Dafoe as Masters, fresh from Walter Hill’s 1984 outing Streets of Fire. His icy expressions and demeanor can change on a moment’s notice without warning. Darlanne Fluegel, who heartbreakingly left us far too soon following an early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, is mysterious as Chance’s muse. I first saw her in Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Debra Feuer is striking as Masters’ girlfriend and confidante. The late Dean Stockwell is great as Masters’ lawyer - you can almost see him prepping himself for the role of Ben in David Lynch’s aforementioned and masterful Blue Velvet the following year. Steve James is an actor I always liked ever since I first saw him in the “Night Vigil” episode of T.J. Hooker in 1984. He started in the industry as a stunt man in films as diverse as The Wiz (1978), The Wanderers (1979), The Warriors (1979), Dressed to Kill (1980), and He Knows You’re Alone (1980) prior to onscreen acting. Here he plays Jeff, one of Masters’ clients and his performance, though small, shines. He also appeared in the William Friedkin TV-movie C.A.T. Squad in 1986, which was also written by Mr. Petievich. His premature death in 1993 from what is rumored to be the medical treatment that he received after a cancer diagnosis is a tremendous loss to the entertainment industry.

To Live and Die in L.A. has been released on home video many times in the United States and is now available on 4K UHD Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The extras, which are ported over from the 2016 SHOUT! Factory Special Edition Blu-ray and the 2003 MGM/UA Home Video DVD, are all included and are as follows:

Disc One:

- 4K UHD Blu-ray remastered from the original camera negative.

- Audio Commentary by Director William Friedkin from 2003 – this runs the full length of the film and is the only bonus to be included on both the 4K UHD disc and the standard 1080p Blu-ray.

Disc Two:

- Standard 1080p Blu-ray down-converted from a 4K remastering from the original camera negative.

- Audio Commentary by Director William Friedkin from 2003.

- Taking a Chance: Interview with Actor William Petersen (20:42, in high definition, from 2016) – Gary Sinise read for the role of Richard Chance with the casting director, but the role instead went to William Petersen after he read for it at William Friedkin’s New York City apartment. A second reading with actor friend John Pankow solidified their roles.

- Renaissance Woman in L.A. Interview with Actress Debra Feuer (14:56, in high definition, from 2016) – Ms. Feuer reminisces about how wonderful the experience was for her. Despite the sexual angle of the film which made her uncomfortable, the cast and crew made her receptive and accepted on the set. Her role is small but important and I would love to see her in more films.

- Doctor for a Day: Interview with Actor Dwier Brown (08:53, in high definition, from 2016) – Dwier Brown talks about his excitement over reading for the film. He would later go on to appear as Phil Sterling in Mr. Friedkin’s 1989 druid-horror film The Guardian, and humorously recalls how the director forgot that he was in To Live and Die in L.A.

- So in Phase - Scoring To Live and Die in L.A. Interview with Composers Wang Chung (12:44, in high definition, from 2016) – It’s amazing that Mr. Friedkin heard Wang Chung’s 1984 album Points on the Curve, in particular the song “Wait,” and explained that that was the vibe that he wanted from the album for the film score. While there is a soundtrack album available for this film, it’s incomplete, and I hope that one day a full soundtrack album, remastered from the original master tracks, will be issued. Wang Chung recalls some interesting anecdotes in this onscreen interview.

- Wrong Way - The Stunts of To Live and Die in L.A. Interview with Stunt Coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker (35:39, in high definition, from 2016) – The famous stunt man discusses the intricacies and challenges of filming one of the most dangerous car chases ever mounted for a film. The director was all about disorienting the audience, and that notion comes into play here in how the chase was staged and ultimately executed.

- Counterfeit World - The Making of To Live and Die in L.A. Documentary (29:52, in standard definition, from 2003) – This is a fun look behind the scenes with mini interviews from many of the cast and crew involved, with discussions regarding the characterizations as portrayed by the actors and actresses to filming the famed car chase.

- Deleted Scene and Alternate Ending with Introductions (13:07) – this is the ridiculous ending that the director shot to please the studio executives and thankfully was never used. You won’t believe it when you see it.

- Radio Spot (01:04)

- Trailer (2:08)

All in all, a great package of a great movie.

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By Fred Blosser

As a kid, I watched “Bourbon Street Beat” (1959-60), a Warner Brothers TV series starring Richard Long and Andrew Duggan as two private detectives in New Orleans, Rex and Cal. Even in those days of generally undemanding audiences, most grown-up viewers probably realized something I didn’t as a nine-year-old. “Bourbon Street Beat” was produced on nickels and dimes like every other Warner Brothers PI and Western series of the day, and authentic New Orleans backdrops were limited to a fleeting street shot of the French Quarter, taken from stock footage. Everything else was filmed on the Warners backlot in Burbank, including a partial exterior set representing the Absinthe House at 240 Bourbon Street where the two private eyes supposedly held down their office. With a quick switch, the detectives’ window looking out on the Vieux Carre could be transformed into a window looking out on Waikiki, once this week’s episode wrapped and filming began tomorrow for “Hawaiian Eye.” The most authentic element of the show may have been Arlene Howell, a gorgeous model and former Miss Louisiana who played Rex and Cal’s secretary, Melody Lee. Certainly, she was a better reason to tune in than the archival footage.

Fast-forward to 1986 and “The Big Easy,” a crime drama with on-location street scenes and Crescent City atmosphere in abundance. Budgets and audience expectations had come a long way since “Bourbon Street Beat.” The movie, directed by Jim McBride, is available from Kino Lorber Studio Classics on Blu-ray. It opens with Detective-Lieutenant Remy McSwain (Dennis Quaid) investigating the murder of a hit man that he and his fellow officers in the New Orleans Police Department quickly attribute to a war between rival organized crime gangs, one commanded by an aging mafia capo (Marc Lawrence) and the other by a Black kingpin, Daddy Manton (Solomon Burke). The theory begins to unravel when Assistant District Attorney Anne Osborne (Ellen Barkin) looks into the case and calls McSwain’s conclusion premature. She is as strait-laced as the half-Irish, half-Cajun McSwain is uninhibited, and offended by his offhand acceptance of free meals at restaurants and other gratuities as perks that go with his badge. So naturally, in the usual Hollywood formula prizing sexual chemistry over logic, the two quickly get a thing going. But duty intrudes. Remy is caught in an Internal Affairs sting operation, and Anne faces him in court as the chief prosecutor. Meanwhile, additional mob gunmen are murdered. McSwain examines new clues with a more critical eye as they begin to pile up, and he comes to agree with Anne. A gang war isn’t as air-tight an explanation as he’d first thought.

Well-cast with Ned Beatty, John Goodman, and Charles Ludlam in supporting roles, “The Big Easy” was a respectable hit, even launching a 1996-97 TV series executive-produced by Daniel Petrie Jr., who wrote the script for the movie. Quaid and Barkin, both rising talents, were a big draw, as were McBride’s plentiful scenes of zydeco parties, crawfish boils, dinner at Antoine’s, and other exotic rituals in those days before the Mardi Gras Week marathons on the Travel Channel and the Food Channel. For fans of detective films who want scripts to cut to the chase, though, there may be too much of Remy’s toothy flirting with Anne and too much jambalaya in the first half of the movie, which begins to drag. But the pace picks up in the second half with clever plot twists and a couple of crisply directed action scenes, in which Quaid appears to do his less dangerous physical stunts. Full disclosure, I have three degrees of separation from Dennis Quaid, through someone who knows members of the Quaid family, but fuller disclosure, I’ve never met the actor and I’m sure, never will.

The Kino Lorber release of “The Big Easy” presents a rich image at the 1.85:1 aspect and informative audio commentary from Jim McBride, moderated by filmmaker Douglas Hosdale. McBride offers interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes, including an explanation of how the great R&B singer Solomon Burke was cast as Daddy Manton. Burke is one of two surprise faces in the cast. The other is former New Orleans district attorney and Kennedy conspiracy theorist Jim Garrison, who held a Louisiana state appeals court judgeship from 1978 until his death in 1992. Garrison plays Judge Jim Garrison, who presides over Remy McSwain’s bribery trial, much as the Beatles, Nicholas Cage, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Alan Freed, John Malkovich, and others have played “themselves” on the screen.

The Blu-ray edition of “The Big Easy” also includes trailers for several other Kino Lorber crime movies and SDH captions for those of us old enough to remember who Jim Garrison was.

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

By Ernie Magnotta

In 1984, James Cameron’s immortal classic The Terminator—a film about an almost unstoppable killer cyborg—was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public and it quickly became a critical and commercial success. Three years later, Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop—which told the story of a seriously wounded police officer being put back together with robotic parts and brought back to active duty—flooded theater screens and, just like The Terminator, became a phenomenal success. That same year saw the release of a low budget, sci-fi actioner titled Programmed to Kill which not only borrowed heavily from both films, but also pre-dated 1992’s Universal Soldier; a movie with a similar plot.

Written by Robert Short and directed by Allan Holzman, Programmed to Kill tells the tale of ruthless Middle Eastern terrorist Samira (Sandahl Bergman) who, after completing a horrible mass shooting at a marketplace in Greece, is stopped and seriously injured by former CIA agent Eric Matthews (Robert Ginty). Samira is then taken to the United States where she is transformed into an obedient cyborg killing machine. Programmed to wipe out her elite team, she is then sent back to the Middle East. However, after completing her mission, Samira regains her memory and begins violently assassinating her CIA enemies. Is there anyone who can stop her out-of-control bionic rampage?

Also known as The Retaliator, Programmed to Kill is a fun, low-budget 80s action film with a gripping, if derivative, story; a solid cast and exciting action sequences (well-handled by director Holzman). At a brief 91minutes, the movie never overstays its welcome. If, like me, you’re a fan of 80s action flicks, Robert Ginty, Sandahl Bergman or all three, you won’t be disappointed.

Programmed to Kill has been released on a Region One Blu-ray and is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The film’s brand new HD master from a 2K scan of the 35MM interpositive looks fantastic. The special features include an informative audio commentary by director Allan Holzman (moderated by filmmaker Douglas Hosdale); an interview with screenwriter Robert Short; an alternate opening credit, and the theatrical trailer. The Blu-ray also comes with a very cool-looking slipcover, and reversible artwork featuring the movie’s alternate title The Retaliator. Fun stuff. Check it out.

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