When
I was in college, my friend Bill Davis and I spent nearly half a day one
Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at a local movie theatre for a ten-hour
marathon. The lineup included Sergio
Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,”
“For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly,” capped with Clint Eastwood’s American Western, “Hang ‘Em High,”
an attempt to replicate the Italian filmmaker’s violent, gritty style. It was the equivalent of binge-watching in
those long-ago days, before home video and streaming services made it easy to
access older films. To revisit favourite
movies in that Neolithic age, you had to hope they would return for second- or
third runs on the big screen, or wait until they resurfaced on TV in visually
degraded, ad-infested prints. The fact
that the Leone movies were still pulling in healthy ticket sales on rerun, four
years after their initial U.S. release, attests to their popularity. Aside from special events like the periodic
return of “Ben-Hur” or “The Ten Commandments,” the only other pictures with the
same level of second-run durability at the time were the first five James Bond
features with Sean Connery.
The
initial success and ongoing appeal of the Leone trilogy prompted Hollywood to
import other Spaghetti Westerns in hopes of matching (or at least approaching)
the same level of commercial success. The era ran from 1968 to the mid-1970s, surviving even the U.S.
box-office disaster of Leone’s fourth Western, “Once Upon a Time in the
West.” The operatic epic starring
Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, and Jason Robards was lamely marketed here as a
conventional Western, baffling fans of John Wayne and “Gunsmoke.” Adding insult to injury, it suffered
wholesale cuts that rendered entire sections of the story incoherent. On smaller investments, more modest
imitations in the mode of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” fared better. One such picture was Giuseppe Colizzi’s
Western, I quattro dell'Ave Maria, a tremendous hit in
Europe. The Italian title cryptically
translates to “The Four of the Hail Mary,” which sounds more like a farce about
comedic nuns than a Western. Paramount
Pictures (the same studio that, ironically, mishandled “Once Upon a Time in the
West”) wisely retitled the production “Ace High” for U.S. release.
In
Colizzi’s film, bounty hunters Cat Stevens (Terence Hill) and Hutch Bessy (Bud
Spencer) ride into El Paso with $300,000 in stolen money recovered from train
robber Bill San Antonio. They intend to
turn in the money and claim a hefty reward. The Bill San Antonio back story referred to Colizzi’s previous Western
with Hill and Spencer, “God Forgives . . . I Don’t!” (1967; U.S. release,
1969), but you needn’t have seen the predecessor to get up to speed. Cat and Hutch discover that the bank
president in El Paso was Bill San Antonio’s partner, not his victim, and
instead of settling for the reward, they demand the entire $300,000, else
they’ll expose the banker’s secret. In
turn, the banker approaches an outlaw, Cacopoulos (Eli Wallach), who sits in
jail waiting to be hanged the next morning. He offers to free Caco (as the scruffy felon is called) if he’ll kill
Cat and Hutch.
This
being a Spaghetti Western, a genre that reveres double-crosses like no other,
thanks to the template set by Leone, Caco correctly guesses that the banker
plans to do away with him too, as soon as the bounty hunters are out of the
way. Grabbing the $300,000, he flees
town on his own quest for vengeance. The
money will finance his long-delayed pursuit of two former friends, Paco and
Drake, who left him to take the fall for a heist years before. Cat and Hutch follow after him to reclaim the
$300,000. Caco finds Paco south of the
Border, presiding over the summary execution of rebellious peons, and Drake
(Kevin McCarthy, in hardly more than a brief guest appearance) as the owner of
a lavish gambling house on the Mississippi. Drake is still a crook who swindles his rich patrons with a rigged
roulette wheel. Along the way, Caco and
the bounty hunters befriend a Black high-wire artist, Thomas (Brock Peters),
whose talent is pivotal for the bounty hunters’ scheme to break into the
impregnable casino to take control of the wheel and clean Drake out. Italian viewers probably realized that Caco,
Cat, Hutch, and Thomas were “the four of the Hail Mary” in Colizzi’s original
title, planning their break-in as Caco fingers his rosary. Following Sergio Leone’s lead, the Italian
Westerns loved to tweak Catholic piety.
Colizzi
also dutifully copies other elements of the Leone playbook, especially those
featured in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Alliances are made to be broken, greed and expediency always overrule
loyalty, and the sins of thieves and hired killers are dwarfed by the inherent
corruption and callousness of society as a whole. But Colizzi’s cynicism seems superficial
compared with Leone’s, and his violence toned down. In the Leone movies, showdowns are “hideous
fantasies of sudden death,” to quote the late film critic Bosley Crowther, in
which the losers literally line up in groups to be gunned down. When my friend Bill and I watched the Leone
marathon all those years ago, we counted a hundred casualties even before we
were well into the third feature, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” In one gunfight in “Ace High,” Hutch, Cat,
and Thomas simply shoot the hats off their opponents’ heads, the kind of
slapstick more likely to appear in a comedy Western with Bob Hope or Don
Knotts. The final shootout with Drake
and his henchman is a parody of Leone’s showdowns, which invariably were
choreographed to Ennio Morricone’s dramatic music. Caco has dreamed for years that his reckoning
with his traitorous partner would be accompanied by “slow, sweet” music, and so
Cat and Hutch order Drake’s house orchestra to play a waltz as the “Four of the
Hail Mary” square off against Drake and his henchmen. On one hand it’s a clever idea for viewers
who recognise the joke, but on the other, it trivialises the revenge motif in a
way Leone never would have.
In
another connective thread with “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” Eli Wallach’s
scruffy character is virtually a clone of his bandit “Tuco” from the Leone
epic, even to a nearly identical name. But Leone shrewdly counter-balanced Wallach’s manic performance with
Eastwood’s laconic presence and Lee Van Cleef’s steely menace. In “Ace High,” Colizzi already has two
mismatched characters who play off each other—Terence Hill’s terse, handsome
Cat and Bud Spencer’s burly, grouchy Hutch. Wallach is mostly left to his own Actors Studio devices of grins, tics,
and swagger, which is good for fans who couldn’t get enough Tuco but not so
good for others who just want the story to move on. Tied up by villagers who intend to torture
him to learn the location of his stolen $300,000, Caco relates a long,
soporific account of his childhood. The
scene serves a dramatic purpose, since Caco is trying to lull a drowsy guard to
sleep, but it goes on and on. You’re
likely to nod off before the sentry does.
“Ace High” is
available in a fine Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, offering
Colizzi’s film at the correct 2.35:1 ratio in a rich Technicolor transfer. Films like this always looked good on the big
screen, but most casual fans probably remember them instead from lousy,
pan-and-scan TV prints in the old days. The Blu-ray includes the original trailer, plus trailers for several
other Spaghetti Westerns released by KL. The company’s go-to expert on the genre, Alex Cox, contributes a new
audio commentary. Cox has always been
forthright in his dour opinion of directors like Giuseppe Colizzi, Gianfranco
(Frank Kramer) Parolini, and Giuliano (Anthony Ascott) Carnimeo, who turned the
Italian Western in the direction of burlesque in the late 1960s, and away from
the gritty style of Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, and Sergio Sollima. But his comments on “Ace High” are
even-handed, informative, and entertaining.
“Tales
of Adventure Collection 2,” a special edition, Blu-ray box set from
Australia’s Imprint Films, gathers five movies from the 1940s and ‘50s with
“wild and dangerous” jungle settings. To
the best of my memory, I don’t recall seeing any of them among the scores of
jungle pictures I enjoyed as a kid in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, either on the
big screen or on local TV morning movie matinees. Of the five diverse selections in the Imprint
box set, three are Republic Pictures productions, the fourth is a Paramount
release, and the fifth bears the Columbia Pictures logo. All five feature superior transfers (the
three Republic entries are transfers from 4K scans of the original negatives)
and captions for the deaf and hard of hearing, and four of them come with
excellent audio commentaries. Younger
viewers be aware, the films tend to reflect attitudes about race and
conservation that were commonplace seventy years ago, but frowned upon today;
you won’t see anything remotely like Black Panther’s democratic technocracy of
Wakanda here.
The
older two Republic releases, both in black-and-white and paired here on one
disc, underscore the studio’s reputation as a purveyor of lowbrow entertainment
with stingy production values. “Angel on
the Amazon” (1948) begins with Christine Ridgeway (Vera Hruba Ralston) trekking
through the Amazon jungle with safari hat and rifle, stalking panthers. It promises (or threatens, if you’re a
conservationist) to become a film about big-game hunting, where wild animals
exist to be turned into trophy heads. But
then Christine’s station wagon breaks down, and she radios for help. Pilot Jim Warburton (George Brent) flies in
with the needed carburetor part, just in time for the party to escape from
“headhunters.” This may be the only
jungle movie in history where rescue depends on a delivery from Auto Zone. Jim is enchanted by Christine, but she has
something to hide and refuses to warm up to his advances. Later, meeting Jim again in Rio de Janeiro,
she becomes frightened when an elderly, apparently harmless man watches her
from a distance. As film historian
Philippa Berry notes on the informative audio commentary for the Blu-ray, the
answer to the mystery revolves around the then-popular theme of physical
effects from psychological trauma, here given a mystical and somewhat absurd
twist. The studio-bound sets and back
projection that waft the characters from the Amazon to Rio and then to
Pasadena, California, are charmingly phoney. George Brent and two other fading co-stars from the 1930s, the
aristocratic Brian Aherne and Constance Bennett, stoutly maintain straight
faces in the backlot rain forest.
“Daughter
of the Jungle” (1949) is even more formulaic, as a young blonde woman raised in
the jungle comes to the aid of pilot Paul Cooper (James Cardwell), a policeman,
and two gangsters in the lawman’s custody when their plane crashes somewhere in
Africa. Called Ticoora by the local
tribe, she is actually Irene Walker, who was stranded with her millionaire
father in their own plane crash twelve years before. As film historian Gary Gerani notes in his
audio commentary track, Ticoora is one of a long line of virginal jungle sirens
in movies that range from the ridiculously sublime, like 1959’s “Green
Mansions,” to the sublimely ridiculous, like 1983’s “Sheena, Queen of the
Jungle.” She can summon elephants with a
Tarzan-like yodel that recalls Carol Burnett’s parodies on her old TV
show. As Ticoora leads the party to
safety, the oily head gangster, Kraik, schemes a way to claim her inheritance,
which awaits in New York. Some viewers
will see Kraik, played by the great Sheldon Leonard with a constant volley of
“dese, dose, and dem” insults, as the only reason to stay with the movie’s plod
through lions, gorillas, crocodiles, and indigenous Africans played by white
actors in greasepaint. Others (I plead
guilty) tend to view unassuming, ramshackle pictures like this one more
leniently, providing we can accept if not endorse their racial attitudes as a
product of their times. Consistent with
Republic’s nickel-and-diming on its B-feature releases, especially those made
in the late ‘40s, the more spectacular long shots of Ticoora swinging from
vines in her above-the-knee jungle skirt were recycled from one of the studio’s
earlier releases. In those scenes, it’s
actually Francis Gifford’s stunt doubles in the same outfit from the 1941
serial “Jungle Girl,” not Lois Hall who plays Ticoora in the new footage. Gary Gerani’s audio commentary provides lots
of information about the cast, including the two obscure leads, Lois Hall and
James Cardwell. Gerani points out that
the Blu-ray print, from the original negative, presents the movie’s full
80-minute version for the first time ever. The 69-minute theatrical release in 1949 omitted some B-roll filler and
some scenes where Paul woos Irene. More
action, less kissy, was crucial for encouraging positive playground
word-of-mouth from sixth graders in the audience—the pint-sized forerunners of
today’s Tik-Tok influencers.
The
third movie retrieved from Republic’s vaults, “Fair Wind to Java” (1953), was
one of the studio’s intermittent efforts to offer more expensive productions in
living Trucolor, with a rousing Victor Young musical score, to compete with
major postwar costume epics from the MGM and Paramount powerhouses. Ironically, Paramount now owns the rights to
Republic’s home video library. In 1883
Indonesia, New England sea captain Boll (Fred MacMurray) picks up the trail of
lost diamonds also sought by a pirate chief, Pulo Besar (Robert Douglas). Obstacles include the pirates, some scurvy
knaves in Boll’s own crew, Dutch colonial authorities, and the fact that the
only person who can direct Boll to the treasure is dancing girl Kim Kim (Vera
Hruba Ralston), who has only an imperfect memory of the route from her
childhood. Substitute Indiana Jones for
Captain Boll, and you’d hardly notice the switch. It turns out that the gems are hidden in a
temple on Fire Island—unfortunately for the captain, not the friendly enclave
of Fire Island, N.Y., but the volcanic peak of Krakatoa. Will Krakatoa blow up just as the rival
treasure hunters make landfall there? Are you kidding? The script doesn’t disappoint, and neither do the FX by
Republic’s in-house technical team, Howard and Theodore Lydecker. A former ice skating star who escaped
Czechoslovakia ahead of the Nazis, Ralston was the wife of Republic studio head
Herbert J. Yates and widely derided as a beneficiary of nepotism who couldn’t
act her way out of an audition. She was
still a punch line for comics in the 1960s, long after most people had
forgotten the point of the joke. In
reality, both here and in “Angel on the Amazon,” she is an appealing performer,
no more deserving of ridicule than other actresses of her time with careers
mainly in escapist pictures. The sultry
but vulnerable Kim Kim was the kind of role that Hedy Lamarr might have played
under other circumstances. Ralston’s
performance is at least as engaging, and she looks mighty nice in brunette
makeup and sarong.
If
you first met Fred MacMurray as the star of “My Three Sons,” as I did as a kid,
it may take some adjustment to see him in action-hero mode. It’’s no big deal when Dwayne Johnson or
Jason Statham slings a bandolier over his shoulder or has his shirt torn off in
a brawl with a pugnacious sailor . . . but Fred MacMurray? When Boll ponders whether or not to trust his
shifty first mate Flint (John Russell), it’s a little like MacMurray’s suburban
dad asking Uncle Charlie if he should trust Robbie and Chip with the family
car. John Wayne was originally
envisioned for the role, following his starring credit in a similar Republic
production, “Wake of the Red Witch,” but MacMurray wasn’t completely out of his
element, having played lawmen and gunslingers in several Westerns before his
sitcom days. Frankly, it’s fun to see
the normally buttoned-down actor shooting it out with the pirates and racing a
tsunami. Imprint includes another
excellent commentary, this one by historian Samm Deighan. As she notes, colourfully mounted and briskly
scripted movies like this were designed to attract the whole family in those
days before Hollywood marketing fractured along lines of audience gender, age,
and race. As she observes, Junior might
not recognise the sado-sexual elements of the scene where Pulo Besar’s burly
torturer (played by Buddy Baer!) strips Kim Kim and plies his whip across her
bare back. All in a day’s work in the
dungeon. But dad likely would have sat
up and paid close attention.
Only
a year later (1954), Paramount’s “Elephant Walk” furthered Hollywood’s trend of
filming exteriors for its more prestigious movies in actual overseas locations
rather than relying on studio mockups, as “Fair Wind to Java” did. Ruth Wiley (Elizabeth Taylor at her most
luminous) travels to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with her new husband John (Peter
Finch), the charming and prosperous owner of a tea plantation. Initially, Ruth is enraptured by the lush
countryside and John’s bungalow, Elephant Walk, actually a mansion almost as
large as Grand Central Station and a lot more lavish. But trouble portends as Ruth realizes that
the memory of John’s imperious father Tom, reverently called “the Governor” by
John and the other British residents, still pervades and controls the
household. The elderly head steward,
Appuhamy (Abraham Sofaer), is quietly hostile when Ruth questions the need to
continue running the house exactly as it was run in the Governor’s day. In trying to communicate with the other
indigenous servants and workers, she runs into the barriers of language and
culture. The estate itself, complete
with Old Tom’s mausoleum in the backyard, is built across an ancestral path the
native elephants still try to use as a short cut to their watering holes. Hence its name. Wiley keeps the peripatetic pachyderms out
with a wall. His plantation manager
(Dana Andrews) is more sympathetic to Ruth, and the two fall in love as the
increasingly surly John lapses back into old habits of drinking all night with
rowdy fellow expatriates who camp out in the sprawling mansion. Andrews’ character is named “Dick Carver,”
the kind of name you’re not likely to see on credits anymore outside
Pornhub. I wonder if some moviegoers in
1954 found it funny too?
If
the combination of shaky marriage, illicit affair, and luxurious colonial life on a jungle plantation sounds
familiar, you may be thinking of “Out of Africa” (1985) or the less
romanticised “White Mischief” (1987), the latest examples of this particular
jungle sub-genre of domestic drama in the tropics. As Gary Gerani points out in his audio
commentary, enthusiasts of melodrama will also cry “Rebecca!” in the subplot
about the shadow that “the Governor’s” pernicious, posthumous influence casts
over the married couple. The movie’s
lush Technicolor palate, William Dieterle’s sleek direction, the special FX of
an elephant stampede, Edith Head’s ensembles for Liz, and Franz Waxman’s
symphonic score have an old-fashioned Hollywood polish, shown to good effect on
the Blu-ray. But as Gerani notes, the
script by John Lee Mahin, based on a 1948 novel, offers an implicit political
commentary too. As viewers of “The
Crown” know, British rule was already crumbling in the Third World in the early
1950s and would soon fall, just like Wylie’s wall faces a renewed assault by
drought-stricken elephants in the final half hour of the movie. Thanks to the capable cast, glossy production
values, and a script that takes interesting, unexpected turns, I liked
“Elephant Walk” more than I thought I would.
Terence
Young’s “Safari” (1956) from Columbia Pictures begins with a jaunty title song
to a percussive beat that wouldn’t be out of place in “The Lion King”—“We’re on
safari, beat that drum, / We’re on safari to kingdom come”—leading you to think
that the picture will be a romp like “Call Me Bwana” (1963), “Clarence the
Cross-Eyed Lion” (1965), or the last gasp of jungle comedies so far, “George of
the Jungle” (1997). But the story takes
a grim turn almost immediately. An
American guide and hunter in Kenya, Ken Duffield (Victor Mature), is called
back from a safari to find his 10-year-old son murdered and his home burned by
Mau Mau terrorists. He determines to
find and kill the murderer, Jeroge (Earl Cameron), a formerly trusted servant
who, unknown to Duffield, had “taken the Mau Mau oath.” The British authorities revoke Duffield’s
license to keep him from interfering with their attempts to apprehend Jeroge
and the other culprits, but then they hand it back under pressure from Sir
Vincent Brampton (Roland Culver), who comes to Africa to kill a notorious lion
called “Hatari.” “You know what ‘Hatari’
means, don’t you?” Duffield asks. “It
means danger”—the very tagline used for Howard Hawks’ movie of the same name a
few years later. Coincidence? Brampton is a wealthy, borderline sociopathic
bully who makes life miserable for his finance Linda (Janet Leigh) and
assistant Brian (John Justin), and Duffield doesn’t much care for him
either. But the millionaire insists on
hiring Duffield as the best in the business, and the hunter uses the safari as
a pretext for pursuing Jeroge into the bush. The script juxtaposes Duffield’s chase after Jeroge with Brampton’s
determination to bag Hatari, but the millionaire is such an unpleasant
character (well played by Culver) that most of us will hope the lion wins.
This
was one of the last “big bwana” movies where no one thinks twice about killing
wild animals for sport, and viewers sensitive about the subject may not share
Sir Vincent’s enthusiasm for Ken Duffield’s talents, or the production’s
matter-of-fact scenes of animals collapsing from gunshots. The political material about the Mau Maus is
a little dicey too; the Mau Mau insurrection of 1952-60 was more complicated
than the script suggests. Poster art for
the movie, reproduced on the Blu-ray sleeve, depicts a fearsomely painted
African. Actually, it isn’t a Mau Mau
but a friendly Massai tribesman; Linda makes the same mistake in the movie
before learning that the Massai have agreed to help Duffield track Jeroge. Squirm-worthy dialogue occurs as well, when
Duffield and Brampton alike refer to the hunter’s African bearers and camp
personnel as “boys.” But Terence Young’s
brisk, muscular direction on outdoor locations in Kenya is exemplary, and the
CinemaScope vistas of Kenya in Technicolor are sumptuous. This was one of Young’s four projects behind
the camera for Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli’s Warwick Films, preceding
Broccoli’s later partnership with Harry Saltzman when the producers engaged
Young to direct the inaugural James Bond entries. For 007 fans, it may be heresy to suggest
that his work on “Safari” equals that on his best Bond picture, “From Russia
With Love,” but so be it. The Imprint
Blu-ray doesn’t contain an audio commentary or other special features, but the
hi-def transfer at the 2.55:1 widescreen aspect ratio is perfect.
“Tales
of Adventure Collection 2” contains the four region-free Blu-ray Discs in a sturdy
hardbox, illustrated with a collage from the poster art for the five movies in
the set. Limited to a special edition of
1,500 copies, it can be ordered HERE. (Note: prices are in Australian dollars. Use currency converter for non-Australian orders.)
The first time that I heard of the name Nat Segaloff was in
1990 when I purchased his new book at the time, Hurricane Billy: The Stormy
Life and Films of William Friedkin. I eagerly read through it in no time as
The French Connection, Mr. Friedkin’s Oscar-winning film for Best
Picture and Best Director among others, is my favorite film. It was his fifth
feature as a director, and it put Mr. Friedkin on the map following the
disappointing box office performance of his first four films. However, the
critical praise and box office success of this real-life-inspired police drama
which contains two of cinema’s greatest action set pieces would not truly
prepare audiences for his follow-up film.
Mr. Friedkin’s The Exorcist, a film adaptation of the
best-selling 1971 William Peter Blatty novel of the same name, opened
theatrically on Wednesday, December 26, 1973 on no less than twenty seven
theater screens, one of which was the Cinema 57 which was part of the Sack Theatre
chain in Boston, MA. Mr. Segaloff was a publicist and was tasked with playing
door guard to a top-secret pre-arranged screening of the film on Christmas
morning to a handful of critics who were there to get their reviews in their
respective papers earlier than usual. This incident is recounted in his preface
to his latest book, The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear, the title of
which brings to the forefront the shocking revelation of just how many years
have transpired since Regan MacNeil’s head spun around. The film is something
that I had heard about for years prior to becoming a fan of scary cinema and I
was unsure how much of it was rumor or fact. I recall purchasing The
Exorcist on VHS in February 1986 seven months before I saw The French Connection.
It was in the oversized clamshell box by Warner Home Video and while I was
impressed with it, it did not scare me in the slightest. However, I have spoken
to other people who saw the film in their teenage years and refused to view it
ever again. A September 1996 viewing of the film to a sold-out screening at
Radio City Music Hall, introduced by both lead actress Ellen Burstyn and the
director in-person, solidified the film’s stature as a masterpiece in my mind.
The release of the film on DVD in a 25th anniversary edition whetted
the appetite of those who would see the film theatrically two years later when The
Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen was released which would include
changes and additional footage. The Blu-ray of the film in 2010
in the extended director’s cut was by no means the final word, as in 2013 a 40th anniversary
Blu-ray added a nice documentary and extended interviews with the author. Just
in time for the 50th anniversary, the film is now bowing in 4K UHD.
Following a foreword by John A. Russo of Night of the
Living Dead fame, Mr. Segaloff begins his book, which is comprised of
sixteen chapters and lasting just over three hundred pages in length, from the
correct presumption that the film is a misunderstood classic. He agrees with
the assessment by both Mr. Blatty and Mr. Friedkin that the film is many things
except the horror film that it is widely revered as since the time of its
release, though audiences have other opinions. We are treated to many interesting
tidbits: the hilarious story of how Mr. Friedkin met Mr. Blatty and how the
former’s honesty solidified a working relationship and lifelong friendship with
the latter, with Mr. Friedkin being the sole director that Mr. Blatty wanted
from the get-go; Warner Brothers’ initial reluctance to hire Mr. Friedkin until
the release of his brilliant The French Connection in 1971 garnered
sudden critical and financial success and changed the game completely; the
original 1949 real-life case of a young possessed Maryland boy; Mr. Blatty’s
writing of the novel; the making of the film; a multitude of issues that beset
the film’s production giving way to the supposed “curse” on the set; the
controversy surrounding the release of the film; in-depth looks at the much-maligned
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and the superior The Exorcist III
(1990), the latter both written and directed by Blatty; the prequels and
television series, and the little-known The Ninth Configuration. If
you’re even just a passing fan of the film, the book is a must read.
Mr. Segaloff was gracious enough to speak with me from his
home in Los Angeles by phone regarding the book. Unfortunately, the day I
contacted him about the interview was the same day that Mr. Friedkin had passed
away, a fact that I was unaware of until an hour later. Mr. Segaloff wanted to
press on with the interview, however, which amazed me as he knew Mr. Friedkin
for nearly fifty years.
Todd Garbarini: Where are you from originally?
Nat Segaloff: I was born in Washington, D.C., and
raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is a good long way from Cottage City,
Maryland, where that little boy was possessed in 1949. We were not possessed in
Silver Spring. Silver Spring was a very strange place. It was the nation’s
largest unincorporated city, about one hundred thousand people, and nobody
taking out the garbage.
I was able to leave and go to school in Boston, and there, I
not only ran the major movie program on campus, I also insinuated myself into
both the city’s professional film scene and the then-burgeoning underground
film scene. Of course, we’re talking the 1960’s.
When I graduated from college, I started doing publicity for
the film companies in town and, after a while, moved to New York to do it
there, then moved back to Boston and became a critic. All of that served as
fodder for the books I’ve written and for the people I’ve met because I’m a
kind of a demimonde. A lot of people remembered me from when I was a publicist,
but then when I became a reporter, they thought I was still a publicist, and
they trusted me. It’s a very odd combination, and I sometimes had to tell
people, “You know, I’m a reporter now.” I was able to keep close to a lot of
people that I’d met doing publicity, like Robert Altman, James Bridges, Paul Mazursky,
and John Milius.
TG: A lot of people I’ve spoken with who
work in the film industry didn’t go to the movies or even see films on
television until they were much older. Did you do the same thing, or did you
get into them later?
NS: Back when I was a pod, the only way to
see an old movie was on late-night television. I stayed up till one-thirty in
the morning to view The Jazz Singer on Washington television because
there was no way I was otherwise going to see it. There was no video, and you
couldn’t even rent a 16-millimeter print of it. Later, there were revival
theaters in Washington where I attended occasionally, but you still had to wait
for something to appear. Only when I went away to school and ran the film
program was I seeing movies every weekend, because I had to make sure people
weren’t smoking in the theater. That was my job. I was managing the campus
theater. I saw a lot of movies in class and in theaters, and it was wonderful.
Between that and being a critic, I must have spent thirty years watching a
couple of movies a week, and then I just burned out completely.
TG: As much as I love watching movies, I
don’t know that I would be able to do that! Do you have an all-time favorite
movie?
NS: The easy answer is Citizen Kane.
It certainly is the source of so much inspiration and technique for everybody
who makes movies. I don’t think it’s possible to cite one particular film.
Whatever pleases you at the time that you’re open to, it’s a film that becomes
your favorite. I also like His Girl Friday. No connection between those,
except they’re both about newspapers.
TG: Are you drawn to movies about reporters
and publicists?
NS: It turns out that I am drawn to
movies about reporters. Certainly, Sam Fuller’s Park Row is a movie that
makes me cry, not because it’s sad, but because it reminds me of the days when
I was writing for real newspapers. No, I don’t find myself glomming onto any
particular kind of film, be it science fiction, horror, drama, musical, or
anything else. I just like a good movie.
TG: So, you don’t consider yourself partial
to certain genres?
NS: I think that so many genres,
particularly horror or suspense films, seem to have a playbook, and I don’t
like films that go where you know they’re going to go. I remember something
Jonathan Demme said about the script for his film Something Wild. He
said you literally didn’t know from one page to the next what was going to
happen. I like to see that on the screen. I like films that have what I call an
“Oh, shit!” moment. The first one I remember was, of course, 2001: A Space
Odyssey, just before the intermission, when we realized that HAL was
reading the astronauts’ lips, and that was the moment where the whole audience sort
of exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” [laughs]. There are also other movies like A
Beautiful Mind with that kind of moment, or a movie that very few people
remember that Stephen Fears made called Dirty Pretty Things.
TG: Yes, that’s with Audrey Tautou from Amelie.
NS: Yes. I was watching it in a small
theater, and not only did we all say, “Oh, shit,” but we all stayed through the
credits and then stood up and congratulated each other after the movie for
seeing that film.
TG: You’ve written and published a good
number of books on The Towering Inferno, the Scarface films, the
Hollywood Code, John Milius, William Friedkin and Harlan Ellison. Your latest
book, The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear, is quite an accomplishment.
It begins on Christmas Day in 1973. You were working for the Sack Cinema 57 on
Stuart Street in Boston.
NS: Yes. I was their publicity director in
1973 when The Exorcist was scheduled to be released on Wednesday,
December 26th. One of our critics, Stuart Byron, who knew the
industry really well, was able to inveigle William Friedkin to permit a
day-before screening so that the weekly papers, which catered to the young
audience, would be able to meet their deadlines. So, I hosted this greeting of The
Exorcist on Christmas morning.
For some reason, the critics had no problem leaving the
bosom of their families to come and see a movie about a little girl whose head
spins around. I didn’t see the movie that day. I was standing in the lobby
guarding the door so the people who weren’t invited couldn’t get in. Nobody got
sick. We didn’t know we were supposed to throw up. Of course, the Technicolor
yawns began the very next day.
TG: Did you have any inkling what that film
was like? Based upon the lobby cards, the marketing of the film by Warner
Brothers, did you have any idea what was going on behind those doors?
NS: I had no idea what was going to be
going on, “on this street in that house in a little girl’s bedroom.” [laughs]
I had read the book, of course. The only glimpse we had was a teaser trailer
that went 30 seconds with the narration I just did for you. It was simply a
shot of the poster of Max von Sydow standing outside of the house. That’s all
anybody knew. There were no pictures, nothing. In fact, there was an embargo on
anything from the film. I think it was either Time or Newsweek
who ended up sued by Warner Brothers because somebody sneaked into the theater
and got a picture of Regan in makeup and ran it. That was considered a breach
of copyright, a very secret thing. The audiences, as you know, would file out
ashen. The audiences waiting to get in would know that something weird was
going on in there, and it became an emotional rollercoaster for them.
TG: Now, I of course, didn’t live through
this. Was this a similar reaction like when Psycho came out? Psycho
had been a novel first, and then the film was released and it was all
hush-hush, “don’t give away the ending.”
NS: I wasn’t old enough to see Psycho
when it came out. I do know, of course, that Hitchcock specified that nobody be
allowed in once the film had started. That made a certain groundswell of public
opinion. The film that was closest to The Exorcist when I was that age
was Night of the Living Dead, which had a reputation for being gross,
scary, and horrifying. The fact that it was shown at midnight to a bunch of
kids who were probably high made additional impressions on people. A black and
white film with blurry pictures from an indie source in Pittsburgh was not the
same thing as a beautifully photographed color film from Warner Brothers.
Incidentally, John Russo, who co-wrote Night of the Living Dead, wrote
the forward to The Exorcist Legacy.
TG: What was your introduction to William
Friedkin’s work? Had you seen any of his previous films?
NS: I had seen The Birthday Party.
It was on a sneak preview where Walter
Reade’s Continental Releasing was trying to get a booking for it, and I
saw it in Boston. That wasn’t the film that I was there to see. The Birthday
Party was just stunning. Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, I mean, just a
beautifully contained job. I’d also seen The Night They Raided Minsky’s,
and thought it was lovely, but I didn’t really realize it was a William
Friedkin film. I had missed Good Times with Sonny and Cher, which I’ve
seen since then. Then of course, The French Connection came out. I was
late seeing The Boys in the Band because I was in school at the time
when it played in theaters. I caught it later. The French Connection
naturally was the one that galvanized everybody. In fact, at the theater that
showed it in Boston, which is where I was working at the time, people would
come in early when they knew that the car chase was going to start, and they’d
see the chase and stay through to watch the film all through again so they
could get in and see the chase twice. We had to clear the theater. It was
remarkable with that on a huge screen. The vertigo was just phenomenal. It was
just a staggering effect because I don’t think anybody had ever mounted a
camera on the bumper of a car before Billy did it.
TG: That’s what blows me away about his
cinema. He did things that we had never seen before.
NS: Yes, including racing through the
streets of New York without permits. Randy Jurgensen will tell you one thing.
Sonny Grosso would tell another. Billy Friedkin would tell you something else. There’s
no agreement. From what I understand, and I trust Randy, is that they simply
ran the car. They didn’t have any siren on the car to warn people because, as
Randy said, if you put a siren on the car, people look at the car and they don’t
want people looking at the car. Billy sat in the back, Bill Hickman drove, and
they just tore ass through Brooklyn. If anybody stopped them, Randy said he’d
just flash his badge saying, “Fellow officer, let us go.” You could do that
then. You could get away with it.
TG: So much of what you could get away
with, you can’t do now because of small security cameras and the Internet.
NS: Yes. We’re living, as John Milius said,
under the booted foot of the lifeguard state.
TG: How did this book about The Exorcist
Legacy come about? When did you start thinking about it? Had it been
something gestating in your mind for some years? Had you started writing it a
long time ago in anticipation of the 50th anniversary?
NS: I could tell you my publicity line,
which is that I’ve been possessed by The Exorcist for 50 years, but in
fact, I’d acquired a wonderful new agent, Lee Sobel, at the end of 2020. We
were thinking what kind of books we could possibly sell. Anniversary books
seemed to work well. What film was having a 25th, a 40th, or a 50th
anniversary? We figured, well, with a year and a half or two of lead time, that
makes it 2023. I said, “The Exorcist is going to be 50.” Bang, he sold
it in a matter of days.
TG: Did you approach John Russo
specifically to do the forward?
NS: John Russo was approached by my editor,
James Abbate, who knows him and has worked with him. He very graciously did the
forward to the book.
TG: Yes, John is very nice. I go to horror
conventions that they have and most of the cast of my favorite horror films
come and speak about them. Night of the Living Dead was one of them. I
got to meet John there and talk with him at length about the films and all. I
just love the behind-the-scenes stories that you haven’t read and haven’t been
published. It gives you a real look into the film, a new appreciation, of the
movie, whatever that movie may be.
NS: There are some very good people out
there. The great thing about writers is that we tend to help each other.
Whenever I need an author’s query or information, it’s always the writers who
come through first, like yourself.
TG: As far as TheExorcist Legacy
is concerned, who was the first person you spoke to? Did you go straight to
Billy?
NS: I didn’t go to Billy at all for The
Exorcist Legacy. There was a reason for that, which is that I had all the
answers I needed back in 1988 to 1990 when I wrote his biography. In those
days, The Exorcist was merely a hit. It wasn’t a classic yet. The
stories, I believe, were closer to the source. I also had the good fortune to
speak to Ellen Burstyn, whom I adore, and who I believe is our finest American
actress of our generation.
TG: I agree, she’s phenomenal.
NS: She’s amazing. I had spoken to William
Peter Blatty at great length. We’d been friends and kept in touch over the
years. A lot of his material in the book is material that I could not publish
while he was alive. He was very frank about his relationship with film studios.
As he hand-wrote on the side of a transcript that I sent him for approval, as
you do, he said, “Nat, don’t print this. I’ve got enough problems.” He was a
warm, funny, and wonderful man.I’ve become friends with his oldest son,
Mike, since the book came out. In fact, I saw him at a signing the other day.
He happened to be in town. I’m very happy to keep up my connection with the
Blatty family.
TG: Oh, sure. Whom did you speak to at
great length for the book?
NS: I did it two years ago and it was with
Terry Donnelly, who was the first assistant director and unit manager. I had
worked on a film with Terry years ago. We picked up where we left off and he
was able to tell me about the behind-the-scenes facets. I spoke to Craig McKay,
who is a film editor. He cut TheSilence of the Lambs among other
films. He’s very good. He was a kid when he was starting out on The Exorcist,
there to pick up pieces. He had some wonderful stories. I did speak to Jeremy
Slater, who was the showrunner for the Exorcist television series, and
of course, David Gordon Green, who has a new Exorcist film coming out. I
had a lot of the material from when I wrote Hurricane Billy (Billy’s
biography). I was able to use that. What can I say, covering all these films,
two sequels, two prequels, and each of them was recut? It was a lot to write
about.
TG: How do you keep track in your head just
of all these different versions of these movies? As much as I love films, I
really find it so hard to be able to keep track of the director’s cut, or the
original cut, and this one runs this number of minutes, etc. I’ve always
admired Tim Lucas’s review of movies in Video Watchdog for that reason
because it’s encyclopedic, the amount of information that he has on all these
films and how he would do all the video comparisons. How did you find doing
that? Was that something that came easily to you because you had seen the film
so many times in different versions?
NS: Tim Lucas is one of the people in the
book, as is Mark Kermode. We’ve known each other for so many years that we don’t
even think about it. With the different versions of The Exorcist, which
I’m not very happy with, I guess, three of them, or maybe four, depending on if
you count one of them twice, I think the original is the best version, except
for a couple of scenes that are put in “The Version You’ve Never Seen,” so it’s
very hard. I would like to do my own fan edit, but I think I’ve watched The
Exorcist enough by now.
TG: Was there anybody you wanted to
interview for this book whom you weren’t able to interview because they either passed
away or you were unable to contact?
NS: Linda Blair.
TG: What was the first Billy Friedkin film
that you were on the set of?
NS: The Brink’s Job
in the summer of 1978. I was there for Evening Magazine, which was the
version of PM Magazine that was run on the stations that were owned by
Westinghouse.
TG: Oh, I remember PM Magazine. That’s
where I first saw Matt Lauer.
NS: Billy allowed our cameras on the set,
which is funny because he just kicked the publicity cameras for Paramount and Universal
off the set, and he let us on. We had wonderful footage of Peter Falk and the
cast. Dean Tavoularis had done a reconstruction of the Brink’s system as it was
in 1951 when the robbery took place. It was a magnificent set. There was an
incident where some local tough guys broke into the editing offices, took
footage, and wanted to hold it for ransom to shake down the production. As it
happened, I had the only footage of Brink’s and I was with a TV station, but I
couldn’t get my TV station to run their own footage because we had shot
non-union. That was Westinghouse. That’s why they’re not around anymore. Westinghouse
was the Pazuzu of television. I was also on the set of one of Billy’s films in
Montreal when I was writing the book (the 1988 TV-movie C.A.T. Squad: Python
Wolf). You don’t learn a whole lot on a set. William Goldman is right. The
most exciting day of your life is your first day on a movie set, and the most
boring day of your life is your second day on a movie set.
TG: I’ve seen a handful of films being shot.
It’s fairly boring, I must say.
NS: I will correct you on one thing. Billy
Friedkin didn’t allow chairs on his sets. You stand around.
TG: Christopher Nolan is like that. He
doesn’t allow them either.
NS: He’s right! James Cameron has a nail
gun (like in No Country for Old Men), and if anybody’s cell phone rings,
he nails it to a prop.
TG: Holy Jeez! Is there anything that I
haven’t covered that you wanted to say about the book?
NS: The book goes into not just the
original Exorcist, but the sequels and prequels. That’s something that
people don’t consider because nobody ever intended The Exorcist to be a
franchise. It became a franchise when Morgan Creek bought the rights from Bill
Blatty, and they are now trying to revive it, of course, with the October
release of The Exorcist:Believer.
TG: Have you seen that?
NS: No, I haven’t seen it yet. I’m looking
forward to it. I do know that I really like David Gordon Green, who was very
kind to me. He probably shouldn’t have been talking about the film. He did
because I had a year and a half lead time for the book, and it’s in there. I
was disappointed in the prequel, both Dominion, which was Paul Schrader’s
version, and Exorcist: The Beginning, which was Renny Harlin’s. Although
I think there’s a lot in Paul Schrader’s version, I’ve been saying the
difference between them is that Paul Schrader made a film where Renny Harlan
made a movie. I think that both films had trouble because people expect an
exorcism Exorcist movie and what they got was CGI. That’s not the same
thing. CGI is not the real thing. That’s what distinguishes The Exorcist;
what made The Exorcist work was that it was real. The things that
happened in front of the camera actually happened. Linda Blair really floated,
the bed really shook, doors really cracked, things really fell over. Curtains
really blew on closed windows. They didn’t happen because anybody was
possessed. They happened because Dick Smith created brilliant makeup and Marcel
Vercoutere had incredibly complicated mechanical effects, but they all happened
in front of the camera so that it looked real. That’s the documentary nature of
Billy’s filmmaking and why he believes in reality. That, I believe, will be his
ultimate legacy on film, which is that he made the movies look real. Of course,
now most of the movies look like fantasy. We’ve lost that.
TG: Yes. Steven Spielberg would agree with
that statement. He likes to see everything real in front of the camera. He does
realize that in today’s day and age, you do have to use computer graphics, and
that’s really came to fruition with Jurassic Park. Before that, he wondered
how they were going to make the dinosaurs run.
NS: It’s true. He tried stop motion, but he
didn’t want to make Jurassic Park until he could do it right. Not
everybody has that. They’ll say, “Well, the audience won’t know.” No, no, they know.
The audience doesn’t know what’s called the uncanny valley, but it is the
uncanny valley.
TG: I want to thank you very, very much for
taking the time to speak with me about the book.
NS: Thank you so much. I do want to say something about
Billy who, as you know, died just twenty-two days shy of his 88th birthday. He
was a friend for fifty years and an inspiration, not just for his films, but
for his personality: he didn’t cotton to bullshit which, of course, is the coin
of the realm in Hollywood. Billy was a very brave man because I can’t think of
many other directors, except maybe Brian De Palma, who let somebody write a
book about them while they were still working. He did that for me and launched
my career as a writer. I love him and I miss him. And thank you, Todd and
Cinema Retro, for giving me the chance to say that on the record.
We film collectors are a spoiled lot: and, yes, I include
myself in that assessment.When Australian
video label Imprint first announced their seminal Silver Screams Cinema collection in 2021, I was ecstatic.Though the now defunct U.S. based Olive Films
had already given us Blu-rays of three titles soon-to-be featured on the
Imprint set (Return of the Ape Man
(Monogram, 1944) She Devil (1957) and
The Vampire’s Ghost (Republic, 1945),
it was the Aussie’s inclusion of several long-neglected films from the vault of
Republic Pictures - Valley of the Zombies
(1946), The Phantom Speaks (1945) and
The Lady and the Monster (1944) -
that compelled one to pre-order.
The Imprint set contained almost every title a fan of
Republic’s horror-mystery offerings might desire… with one notable
exception.Where was Lesley Selander’s The Catman of Paris (1946)? It was the
one Republic horror flick I had been wishing on the longest.Decades ago I gave up hope of ever seeing any
sort of legitimate home video issue. So I sought out the serviceable – if scratchy
and hazy - gray-market bootleg long making the rounds on the collector’s market.So the exclusion of The Catman of Paris from Imprint’s otherwise magnificent Silver Screams set was a bit
frustrating.
So it was with great anticipation when Imprint’s
single-disc Blu-ray of The Catman of
Paris recently arrived.I’m pleased
to report that the release not only looks great but also arrives with a couple
of bonus features.But while this film’s
arrival on Blu-ray brings with it a satisfying sense of closure, I think it’s best
to acknowledge that The Catman of Paris
is by no means a riveting lost classic of horror cinema.Though the film holds a certain charm in my personal
nostalgia bank, The Catman of Paris often
plods along for most of its hour or so running time.But I’m still a fan.
Republic Pictures was, of course - unfairly, in my mind –
deemed a Hollywood “Poverty Row” studio.But the production values of the studio were often of high-caliber
despite meager budgets, the studio producing more than a thousand features and
serials from its inception in 1935.Though associated with Monogram Pictures – a purveyor of a number of
1940s low-rent horror and mystery pictures (which often featured the likes of
genre stars Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Lionel Atwill and John Carradine),
Republic was late in getting on the exploitative horror-film train.I suppose it can be argued that they nearly missed
the train entirely.The studio only really
began to test the horror-picture market when public interest in such fare was clearly
on the wane.
But the studio’s first horror pic The Lady and the Monster (1944), featuring Erich von Stroheim as a cold
and humorless mad scientist, did well enough for the studio to greenlight a
double-dose of new horror in 1945:The Vampire’s Ghost and The Phantom Speaks – two films which
we’ll get to in a moment.Generally
speaking, the Republic horrors were of similar construct to Monogram’s.But unlike the Monogram films – which have
been mostly available over the years on home video due to their public domain
status – the Republic horror pics have been, until recently, almost entirely commercially
inaccessible to students of the genre.
It’s possible the Republic horror pics have been glossed
over due to the fact that, unlike the studio’s western film counterparts – which
featured such star-spangled stars as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and John Wayne –
their horror pics offered no similar
marquee attraction.Perhaps if the
Republic horror and mysteries features offered such boogeymen as Lugosi or Boris
Karloff there might have been more of a commercial interest in getting these
out to fans and collectors.But
Paramount Pictures, the company that ultimately absorbed the Republic catalog,
seemed mostly disinterested in making available that studio’s horror film efforts.
To be fair, Republic wasn’t Universal: there actually wasn’t
a great deal of true “horrors” to choose from.In 1999, film historian Tom Weaver examined some of the Republic titles
in his tome Poverty Row Horrors!:
Monogram, PRC, and Republic Horror Films of the Forties (MacFarland).A decade- and -a -half later author Brian McFadden
published his Republic Horrors: The
Serial Studio’s Chillers.Both books
were welcome additions to the film scholar’s personal libraries.But while McFadden’s effort seemed to promise
a deeper-dive into the Republic’s long-neglected horror catalog, it mostly reminded
readers that the studio actually released very few true horror pictures during the Golden Age of the 1940s.Of the ten films chosen for examination by McFadden,
only five could justify being classified as genuine “horrors.”The remaining five titles selected were simply
mysteries with woven eerie elements.
But if Universal’s reign as the preeminent horror-movie
studio was beginning to wind down by the mid-1940s, Republic’s was just
beginning to rev up.In early May of
1945, the Los Angeles Times reported
that executives at Republic Pictures, “encouraged by the current success of The Vampire’s Ghost and The Phantom Speaks,” were already planning
a pair of thrillers of similar design.Under the watchful eye of producer William O’ Sullivan, Republic’s
newest horror pics, titled The Catman of
Paris and The Valley of the Zombies,
was to “be sold to exhibitors as a pair.”
Associate producer Marek M. Libkov told the Hollywood Reporter that their newest, The Catman of Paris, would have a
provisional start date of September 20, 1945 with casting to “start
immediately.”In fact, most of the
principal casting was already in
place by early September, though casting notices for small roles were still being
announced as late as October 5.It was also
later reported that the film’s start date would be pushed to September 22.The film’s presumed co-feature – Phil Ford’s Valley of the Zombies – was already just
shy of two weeks into production with production on The Catman of Paris set to follow immediately on its heels.But even the revised start date of September
22 is in doubt.On September 24, 1945,
the Los Angeles Times noted
production on Lesley Selander’s The
Catman of Paris was, at long last, to start “today at Republic.”
It’s of some interest that the two primary cast members
of The Catman of Paris, Carl Esmond
and Lenore Aubert, were both born in Vienna, Austria.Though neither had ever appeared in a horror
film, both already would share near-miss flirtations with real-life
horrors.Esmond left for the U.S. as
early as 1938 at the behest of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer.The actor had been performing with a touring
company in London when Nazi troops swept into Austria in March of 1938.Esmond reflected to Hollywood scribe Maxine
Garrison that Mayer dangled an MGM contract before him, warning ‘You would be
foolish not to come [to America].Europe
will be lost in war before long.”Esmond
admitted, “I had not thought of it that way, but he was right.”
Aubert too left Vienna, choosing travel to Paris.But with German troops already occupying the
City of Light, the actress also made the decision to immigrate to America.(Ironically, Aubert’s first screen credit was
for a performance as a villainous Nazi spy for Samuel Goldwyn’s They Got Me Covered (1943), an early Bob
Hope and Dorothy Lamour comedy).Though
not a household name to most cinephiles, the darkly beautiful Aubert is likely
best remembered for her performance as the sinister Dr. Mornay in the
time-tested Universal classic Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
The Hollywood trades were reporting a lot of activity on
the Republic Studios lot that first week of October of 1945… but most interest
was fixed on producer-director Frank Borsage’s ambitious and expensive Technicolor
effort Concerto.But a wandering journalist noted that only
“two stages away,” Republic’s dual monochrome horror pics, The Catman of Paris and Valley
of the Zombies, were being shot concurrently for a provisional
double-feature release.“On both sets,
the visitor must have nerves of steel,” it was reported, “to withstand sudden
appearances of perambulating cat people and corpses.”
By Thursday, October 11, 1945, the Hollywood Reporter noted that production on The Catman of Paris had wrapped on the night previous, when
“final exterior scenes were filmed on the studio’s back lot.” The report also indicated
that co-feature Valley of the Zombies
had finished shooting a mere “one day before Republic started rolling Selander’s
picture.”If true, the earlier reportage
of dual-picture sightings of “perambulating cat people and corpses” was little
more than promotional ballyhoo.
So who was this sinister cinematic Catman of Paris? Parisian police detectives are of the belief
that it’s none other than the best-selling, dashingly handsome French novelist
Charles Regnier (Carl Esmond).The
popular-selling author has recently returned to Paris following two years of
international travel – including a possibly fateful visit to the tropics.Not everyone has enjoyed his most recent
book.Regnier’s fiction-novel Fraudulent Justice has come to the
attention – and annoyance – of the French government.It seems Regnier’s narrative appears to have
been based on a true-life crime and trial: the details of which were never brought
to public scrutiny and the judicial outcome now thought a travesty of
justice.So how was it that Regnier
could accurately account so much about a secretive government trial?
Regnier has also returned to Paris to wrestle other demons.The writer suffers headaches which bring
about unexplainable subsequent episodes of amnesia.During such sessions Regnier is visited by
images of violent weather disturbances and of a mysterious black cat.Regnier’s moneyed patron, Henri Borchard
(Douglas Dumbrille), suggests Regnier’s fragile mental state is due to his having
contracted some sort of fever when visiting the tropics.There’s also a measure of astrological hokum
in the scripting mix as well.
Both Bouchard and Regnier’s publisher Paul Audet (Francis
Pierlot) are concerned that following two gruesome murders of which Regnier is
at least tangentially involved, the author’s book sales might plummet and
bankrupt the publishing house.And circumstantial
evidence of Regnier’s involvement in the murders continues to mount.The Catman’s most recent victim - Regnier’s
high-society fiancé Marguerite Duvall (Adele Mara), was recently jilted so the
author might enjoy a new romance with publisher’s daughter Marie (Lenore
Aubert).Having completely fallen for
the dashing author, Marie Audet is completely convinced of Regnier’s innocence…
until she herself is chased through a misty evening garden by a cloak and
top-hatted Catman on the prowl for her blood.
Though the film would eventually pair with Valley of the Zombies, The Catman of Paris was initially paired
on release with John English’s somewhat better-received ice-skating
musical-mystery Murder in the Music Hall.The first wave of reviews of The Catman of Paris were generally fair -
if mostly unfavorable.The Hollywood Reporter ignobly described the
film as an “absurdity,” a career embarrassments to all involved.The lugubrious screenplay of Republic scenarist
Sherman L. Lowe was decried as far too “wordy… every character uttering
editorials instead of dialog.”
There were complaints – also not unfair - that the film
displayed a curious lack of “physical action.”Variety was a bit more forgiving in its assessment,
calling the Valentine’s Day preview of The
Catman of Paris “a cross between a garden-variety whodunit and a
Jekyll-Hyde horror-meller […] that taxes belief to the breaking point.”The Christian
Science Monitor dismissed the film outright as a “routine horror story
based on far-fetched thrills.”
Despite the lukewarm reviews of both Murder in the Music Hall and The
Catman of Paris, the package managed a successful earning of $35,000 in its
first week.Which, at the very least, guaranteed
a second week of booking.Republic, presumptively
optimistic and encouraged by strong initial returns, inked producer Libkov to a
contract of three additional pictures. Though there was the inevitable revenue
fall-off in the second week of release, the trades were reporting box office
tallies in and around Los Angeles remained “good” if not showing signs of
sustained momentum. But by week three,
the box office receipts were down to disappointing four figure earnings.As the Catman
creeped regionally across the U.S. through autumn of 1946, local reviewers and small-town
theater managers found the film a mild mystery offering at best.Subsequently, four-figure weekly returns were
now the norm.
Richard
Loncraine’s The Haunting of Julia (aka Full Circle, 1977) is a chilling,
emotionally charged ghost story shot in London in 1976 with Canadian funding
which fell into a legal limbo and was destined to remain largely forgotten
until film historian and writer Simon Fitzjohn began researching the film for a
magazine article in 2016. The rabbit hole grew deeper and he became a man on a
mission to bring the film back to the public. The years of struggle paid off
and the film has now been restored and released around the world on Blu-ray and
UHD, so Cinema Retro sat down with him to find out how it all happened.
Cinema
Retro – How does it feel to finally be at the end
of this epic journey?
Simon
Fitzjohn - We had a screening at the BFI in London
recently which was a massive thrill. There was a good audience and we got quite
a few of the crew along as well as Richard Loncraine, the director. It was a
bit of a party, to be perfectly honest with you, a fantastic experience.
CR
– So how did this all start?
SF
- I read a BFI article at Halloween in 2016 called ‘Forgotten British Horror
Films of the 1970s,’ and I thought, “Right, okay, I'm pretty sure I'm just
going to tick everything off this list.” So I went through them all and it was
Pete Walker's Frightmare, things like that. And then there was Full Circle,
or The Haunting of Julia and this picture of Mia Farrow with her arms
out. I thought “I don't think I've seen that one.” I took it as a bit of an
affront really that I hadn't seen it. That was when I then found out that it
wasn't available commercially at all, no DVD release, however, there was a
version of it on YouTube as they'd shown it on the Sony Movie Channel in 2011.
So I watched it and I was floored by it. You know, I remember when it ended and
I just sat there in silence for about 15 minutes trying to sort of process it
and thinking, ‘Oh, my God, this is just such a sad film. How has this film been
allowed to disappear?” You know, why is this not heralded as an amazing British
horror film?
CR
– You would think it would be better known, particularly because it starred Mia
Farrow.
SF
- Originally my idea was just to write about it, so the first person I reached
out to was Peter Fetterman, who was the producer on it, and he said, “Well, I'm
still friends with Richard Loncraine, I'll give him your number.” So I had a
call with Richard, who was quite bewildered, as he always is. When anybody says
they love the film, he hates it! He seems flabbergasted, because he doesn't
think it's a good film. I think a lot of that was down to all the pressures
from the external people when they were making it, certainly the Canadian side
of it, who wanted this Omen-style bloodbath, whereas Richard wanted this
more ambiguous, psychological film. Then he put me in touch with Peter Hannon,
who was the director of cinematography on it, and then we found out that Technicolor
had found the negative, so Richard and I thought, “Right, here we go!” We needed
to get that negative, get it restored and get it rereleased.
CR
- Were there rights issues? Is that one of the reasons why it had fallen out of
circulation?
SF
- Yes. It wasn't that the negative was missing. The last known owner of it was
a guy called Julian Mills who was the exec producer on the film. Technicolor
had documents for Full Circle with Julian Melzack at Albian Films, and he
obviously didn't care about the film because he never bothered to release it
himself, and then he died in early 2016. So we had to somehow jump through all
these hoops to prove that he hadn't passed the film on to anybody else before
he passed away, so that we could prove an ownership chain. It was about six
years of working with Technicolor, Companies House, solicitors, Julian Melzack's
daughter, all these people going round and round trying to find paperwork. It
was just exasperating, to be perfectly honest with you, and there were numerous
times where we just thought it wasn’t going to happen because we would answer a
question and then they would give us another obstacle and we would jump over
that, and then they'd give us another obstacle. There were times when I
flagged, but then I would get people messaging me on the Twitter account I had
(@full_julia), saying, “Keep going, keep going!” Eventually we were able to do
it.
CR
– Who funded the restoration?
SF
- It was Shout! Factory, but there were numerous people that worked together on
this. Shout! Factory sorted the restoration, but the BFI now keep the negative,
that was the deal. It was done at Silver Salt in London. Richard Loncraine was
involved in that as well.
CR
- You've also been heavily involved in the release, with a commentary track
(with the director) and some of the extra features for the BFI release.
SF
- It was great, because I'd always said right from the start that the key for
me was that the film was going to be back out there. It deserves to be talked about,
it deserves to be celebrated. But it was still really nice when the BFI came to
me straight away and said we want you front and centre on this because Richard
said, "Look, if you don't involve Simon, I'm not getting involved.” I was
able to help as well because I was in touch with so many people, so Tom Conti
was interviewed as was Samantha Gates, who plays Olivia in the film. I've been
reading some very positive comments about it in reviews. It was fun, it was a
great thrill.
CR
– There are rumours that something is missing from the film, specifically a
graphic tracheotomy scene, which of course is the tragic event at the beginning
of the film [Julia’s daughter is choking to death, and in a last desperate
attempt to save her she attempts a tracheotomy which fails and the daughter
dies]. What do you know about this?
SF
- There was this guy and he would constantly
message me on Twitter to ask, “Have you found the tracheotomy scene?” And he
was the one that apparently somehow added it to IMDb that this was missing, but
nobody has it because it doesn't exist. Why would they randomly have had this
blood- spurting tracheotomy? That was never the intention for the film. I've
read the BBFC censors report when they classified the film, and they referenced
the fact that there was no blood in it. They gave it an AA certificate because
it was so tame. So there was never anything filmed, but when they were filming
that scene Alfred Pariser, who was the Canadian producer on it, he wanted it to
be bloody so he had a cup of stage blood. When Mia stabbed Sophie Ward with the
knife, he threw the cup of blood over them. Mia Farrow just got up and ran out
screaming because she thought she had cut Sophie Ward's throat! But they
obviously didn't use that footage. They weren't interested in having anything
like that.
CR
– Fantastic. And your commentary track with Richard Loncraine is packed with
stories like that. Congratulations on what must feel like such a tremendous
achievement.
SF
– Thank you. And I ended up somehow randomly getting a Rondo Award too!
The
Haunting of Julia/ Full Circle is
available on Blu-ray and UHD in the States from Shout! Factory, in Australia
from Imprint, and on Blu-ray and UHD in the UK from the BFI. Each edition
shares some bonus features whilst also having some which are unique. The
Imprint release comes in a beautiful hardbox with a lenticular cover, a book
discussing the adaptation from Peter Straub’s novel Julia, and best of
all a CD with the full remastered Colin Towns soundtrack including some tracks
which were never used or included on the original vinyl release.
I reviewed the Universal print-on-demand DVD of “The
Mississippi Gambler” (1953) for Cinema Retro eight years ago. I didn’t give the
film, starring Tyrone Power, Julia Adams, and Piper Laurie, very high marks.
Now Kino Lorber has released it anew on Blu-Ray. Aside from an audio commentary
by film historian Toby Roan, and better color because it’s Blu-Ray, it’s
basically the same experience. I can’t think of much new to say about it, so
here’s some of what I wrote back when, along with some final thoughts on the
current state of the home video market.
Here’s the original review I wrote 8 years ago:
I watched The Mississippi Gambler (1953) DVD from Universal
while recovering from a root canal, hoping a good rousing Tyrone Power flick
and three fingers of Kentucky bourbon, would cure my pain. Boy, was I wrong.
Watching this slow, soap opera-ish movie, with a cast of characters that belong
in an old Carol Burnett Show sketch, was like having the root canal all over
again. Admittedly, the Technicolor was good, and Julie Adams was great (which
she always was) but the script by Seton Miller was a complete turnoff with one
of the worst endings I've ever seen. The characters were mostly boring and
despicable. The plot was ham-fisted melodrama served with a mint julep.
Direction by Rudolph Mate’ was lethargic and unimaginative.
Basically, it's one of those stories about four people
all in love with the wrong person. But Miller added some very weird touches to
the familiar story line. Piper Laurie plays Angelique Dureau, a snooty,
neurotic iceberg who is way too close to her brother Laurent (John Baer) for
comfort. She uses him as a shield against intimacy with any other man, as
Tyrone Power, playing the titular gambler Mark Fallon, explains to her. For no
comprehensible reason at all, other than the plot demands it, Fallon falls
madly in love with her. Why? She's a pouty, petulant, porcelain imitation of a
woman.
Her brother, Laurent, is a miserable weasel, a man with
no honor and thus a perfect foil for the upright and honorable Fallon, who is
not only good with a deck of cards, he's also the son of one of New York's
finest fencing masters. (Zorro rides again!). The three of them meet on a
Mississippi riverboat named The Sultana. Pardon a digression while I note that
this was the same paddle boat on which Yancy Derringer, a few years later,
would ply his poker skills in the CBS television series starring Jock Mahoney.
Fallon's goal is to run an honest gambling table and
eventually open his own casino. He teams up with Kansas John Polly (John
McIntyre), a seasoned veteran of many a three card Monty game. In a game of
poker, Laurent loses his sister's diamond necklace to Fallon. Fallon tries to
give it back to her later, but she pretends she told her brother to wager it.
In the next scene she confronts the weasel and cries, "How could you do it
without asking me?" This obviously gets the star-crossed- lovers off on the
wrong foot. Fallon wins big that night but he and Polly barely escape being
killed by a gang of crooked gamblers and have to jump off the boat when the
captain gets near the riverbank. They walk to New Orleans, after losing all
their winnings in the river. But they have a good laugh about it.
At about the second act mark,enter Julie Adams (billed
here as "Julia Adams") as Ann Conant. She's the member of another
weird brother/sister duo. Her brother, Julian (Dennis Weaver, believe it or
not, with a sort of New York high society accent) sits down to play with
Fallon, saying he heard he played an honest game. He quickly loses every cent
he brought with him, then goes out on deck and shoots himself. The Captain and
Fallon discover he has a sister on board, and Fallon feels responsible and
wants to help her. She says he must have gambled away the money his company
gave him to take to New Orleans. Fallon, noble fellow that he is, lies and says
no he gave that money to the captain for safe keeping. He takes Ann to New
Orleans where and sets her up in a hotel. It complicates his plans to romance
Angelique but what's a story without complications.?
Meantime in New Orleans he runs into fencing expert
Edmund Dureau (Paul Cavanaugh) and guess what? He turns out to be Angelique and
Laurent's father! Of course, he invites Fallon to his home where he meets them
again. In one of the lamest scenes in the whole film, when they have a moment
alone, he tells her that he knows he and she are in love with each other and
always will be. "I could have you thrown out of this house for speaking to
me like that,” she exhorts. He replies, "You don't have to run me out. I'm
leaving tomorrow." And he adds: "You’re not ready for marriage. And
you won't be until the day you come to me." She calls him an egotistical
cad. And here's the punchline. "Yes", Fallon says, "I suppose it
sounds that way. But it's the only way a woman can be truly happy with a
man".
What? Did women in the 50’s really buy this tripe? Can
you imagine George Clooney trying that line on Catherine Zeta-Jones, or
Catherine Heigel? He'd get his ass kicked. I won't go on with any more of the
plot, but you can be sure it involves some fencing and a duel with pistols at
the Dueling Oaks. Funny thing about Power's fencing scene with Paul Cavanaugh.
Both men wore fencing masks through the entire scene, which makes me wonder if
either one did any of the fancy sword work, even though Power was in reality a
very good fencer. In another fight scene between Fallon and Laurent on the riverboat,
it is so obviously two badly matched stuntmen carrying the action. Power was
only 39 when he filmed “The Mississippi Gambler,” but he looked older and a bit
tired. Maybe he wanted to take it easy. He'd made many great films by then but
would only live five more years. He'd make seven more films in that time, all
better than “The Mississippi Gambler,” including “The Sun Also Rises,” and
“King of the Khyber Rifles.”
Nevertheless “The Mississippi Gambler” was a big
financial success. Lucky for Power, because his wife, Linda Christian divorced
him after losing out to Piper Laurie for the part of Angelique. She never
forgave Power for not getting her the part, and also, allegedly, for having an
affair with Anita Ekberg, who played an uncredited part as a maid of honor at
Angelique's wedding to another of her suitors.
. . . So that’s the review I wrote 8 years ago. The new
Blu-ray release, as noted earlier, contains nothing new except a commentary by
Toby Roan. Frankly, even Roan’s commentary doesn’t warrant spending the money
for the new edition. His comments merely consist of providing biographical info
on each and every actor, no matter how insignificant his role. Oh, look, here’s
John McIntyre. He was a regular on the Naked City TV series. There’s Paul Cavanaugh,
he was in a Tarzan movie. And that’s Guy Williams who played Zorro on TV. And
on and on and on. I turned the commentary off after half an hour.
The home video market is disappearing before our eyes.
Streaming has become the consumer’s first choice for watching movies at home.
Go into Target or Best Buy and what used to be row after row of DVDs for sale
has shrunk down to a few shelves, hidden behind the flat screen TV display
area. If companies like Kino Lorber hope to stay in business they have to
provide extras that aren’t available through the streaming platforms to make it
worth their while. So any of these commentary tracks are very welcome, even if
this one falls short.
When it comes to Kino Lorber’s “The Mississippi Gambler,”
as I said in the original write up, I'd rather put on a Yancy Derringer DVD and
watch him at the poker table with Pahoo Ka Te Wah standing behind him with his
shotgun hidden under his poncho, ready for action as the Sultana winds its way
down the Big Muddy. Rollin’ down the river.
The
1957 romantic comedy, The Prince and the Showgirl has likely received
more press about what went on behind the scenes and the notorious animosity
that existed between the two stars, Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier. The
latter was also producer and director of the picture, although the production
company was the first title made by the newly-formed Marilyn Monroe
Productions. The 2011 picture (was it that long ago?), My Week with Marilyn,
featuring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh, depicted the stormy relationship
between Monroe and Olivier and how Monroe behaved rather, well, erratically and
irrationally toward her director/co-star, other actors, the cinematographer,
the costumer, and nearly everyone else on the set. The actress even brought
something of a “support coach” with her every day in the form of Paula
Strasberg, who, with her husband Lee, ran the Actors Studio.
Unless
one had actually seen the real movie, The Prince and the Showgirl,
one came away from My Week with Marilyn with the impression that Monroe
was a mess, that Olivier hated her guts, and that the movie they made was a
disaster.
The
Prince and the Showgirl is actually a charming, well-acted, funny, and
touching piece of work. This reviewer is happy to say that Marilyn Monroe is marvelous
in the role of Elsie Marina, a chorus line showgirl of a musical playing in
London’s West End in 1911, when the picture takes place. Monroe displays impressive
comic timing and wit, does a pratfall or two with aplomb, and categorially
holds her own against the likes of renowned thespian Olivier. He, too, is quite
winning, even though his accent as a “Carpathian” prince regent (from the
Balkans) sometimes causes one’s eyebrows to rise. But make no mistake—this
movie belongs to Monroe, and this reviewer would easily cite her performance
here ranked in her top five.
Funny
how the bad rep of a movie and its making clouds what one really sees on the
screen.
Granted,
The Prince and the Showgirl was received with lukewarm praise upon its
release. The BAFTAs honored it with several nominations, including Actor,
“Foreign” Actress, Screenplay, and British Film. It received no Academy Award
nominations. The film did very well in the UK, likely due to Olivier’s presence.
Perhaps the picture’s indifferent reception in the USA was due to its rather
slow pace, length (a few minutes under two hours), and the fact that the story
takes place mostly in static one-room sequences of the Carpathian Embassy.
That’s not surprising, because the movie is based on a stage play, The
Sleeping Prince, by Terrence Rattigan, who also penned the screenplay.
Perhaps Rattigan adhered too closely to the conventions of the stage. All of
these things are indeed flaws in the motion picture.
Still…
this is a worthwhile romantic comedy on the strength of the two leads,
especially Monroe’s luminous performance. Not only does she look fantastic, as
always, but she truly does light up the screen with charisma, warmth, and
delight. Other standouts in the cast would include Richard Wattis, who nearly
steals the movie as the frustrated foreign office suit who is charged with
keeping the prince happy during his stay in London, Sybil Thorndike as the
prince’s dowdy but often frank mother-in-law, and Jeremy Spenser as the
prince’s son, King Nicolas, who to this reviewer resembles what Quentin
Tarantino might have looked like at the age of sixteen.
The
Warner Archive has released a region-free, beautifully rendered, restored presentation of
the feature film in high definition. That 1950s-era Technicolor pops out, and
the costumes are undeniably gorgeous. Unfortunately, the only supplement on the
disk is the theatrical trailer.
The
Prince and the Showgirl is enthusiastically recommended for fans of Marilyn
Monroe. Fans of Olivier, who does what he can when someone so appealing is
sharing the screen with him, will find it interesting. For this reviewer’s
money, The Prince and the Showgirl is far more enjoyable than My Week
with Marilyn, which now seems to be a rather sordid coda to this romantic
comedy bauble.
Click hereto order from the Cinema Retro Movie Store.
In
“Secret of the Incas,” a 1954 release from Paramount Pictures, Harry Steele
(Charlton Heston) and Ed Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) are rival opportunists in
Cuzco, Peru.Both are searching for the
Sunburst, a fabled Incan artefact said to be hidden in the “lost city” of Machu
Picchu.“Not too many people go to Machu
Picchu,” Harry says.Today, when
tourists descend on the ancient Incan capital in droves, you would have to
wonder if he’d ever heard of Expedia.But the observation was true enough in the early 1950s when the ruins were
far off the beaten path.In those days,
most small-town Americans would have regarded a visit to New York or Miami as
an exotic excursion, never mind finding the time, money, or inspiration to fly
to the Andes.
Harry
has the edge in the quest for the Incan treasure, having appropriated a broken
chunk from an idol.The fragment
contains part of a pictograph which, when fitted to the rest of the carving on
the remainder of the statue, reveals the method for finding the hiding place of
the Sunburst.Putting the two together
isn’t a problem, requiring Harry only to follow a tourist group into the museum
where the fractured statue sits on display.But getting over the Andes to Machu Picchu to claim the Sunburst, “a
hunk of gold with 119 pure diamonds and 243 other precious stones,” is another
matter.This challenge is solved when
Elena (Nicole Maurey) arrives in Cuzco, a refugee from communist Romania.Elena is as grasping as Harry, whom she views
as her meal ticket to the U.S., while Harry uses her as bait to steal a small
private plane from the Romanian counsel, who flies into Cuzco to arrest
her.In Machu Picchu, Stanley Moorehead
(Robert Young), an archeologist directing a dig for the tomb of the last Incan
king, falls in love with Elena.Harry is
more amused than put out.His real
concern is Ed, who has followed by pack train and carries a gun.
The
Indians in the surrounding villages regard the Sunburst with spiritual awe,
believing that when it is found, the discovery will mark the rebirth of the
Inca nation.But Harry and his rival
only care about the fortune they can realize when they pry the jewels off the
relic and melt the gold into ingots.“We’ll
sit around and pluck it over like a roasted chicken, piece by piece,” Ed
gloats.The two agree on a fifty-fifty
split for the Sunburst, but given their mercenary natures, it’s about as
tenuous a deal as a division of spoils between competing bounty hunters in a
Spaghetti Western.Cast against type if
you remember them strictly for their signature roles, Heston and Mitchell are
excellent.Peruvian singer Yma Sumac, as
one of Machu Picchu’s Indian caretakers, has a sly screen presence and three
vocal numbers, which may be three too many for those who only want to get on
with the story.But Sumac was a
marketing draw comparable to having a performance by Lady Gaga or Adele in a
2023 movie.Largely forgotten today, she
was a star in the early 1950s “exotic music” genre pioneered by Les Baxter and
Martin Denny, with performances at Carnegie Hall and best-selling LPs on the
Billboard charts.Heston appears in some
exterior scenes of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, having participated in a month-long,
pre-production location shoot, but he, Mitchell, Young, Mourey, Sumac, and the
supporting Hollywood cast are missing (or represented by stand-ins at a
distance) from scenes where crowds of actual Peruvian Indians congregate at
Machu Picchu.Eagle-eyed viewers are
likely to notice the seams, but for most of us, it’s part of the fun to watch
old-school escapist pictures like this and tease out the real locations from
the studio sets.
“Secret
of the Incas” was absent from official U.S. home video release for
decades—neglectfully so, according to critics who have cited it as an influence
on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and a precursor to the James Bond franchise in the
double entendres that Harry trades with an appreciative housewife of means from
Michigan, Mrs. Winston, played by the great Glenda Farrell.When Mrs. Winston greets the strapping Harry
by commenting, “My, you’re a big one,” and looks forward to his “services” as a
tour guide, you know she has more in mind than a dinner reminder to her tourist
group.“I’ll be right outside your
door,” he assures her.
A
new Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics makes up for the film’s
long absence with a remastered print licensed from Paramount, from a 4K scan of
original negative elements.The rich
colours of the Indians’ shawls and serapes are eye-popping in restored
Technicolor.Maybe the movie’s omission
from prior video formats, especially the inferior VHS process, and more
especially the even worse VHS/EP/SLP budget format in which Paramount briefly
released a handful of its archival titles in 1992, wasn’t such a loss after
all.
The special features
on the Blu-ray include an informative audio commentary by Toby Roan, previews
of related KL titles, and sharp SDH captioning.
In the autumn of 1963 the Macmillan Co. published Rohan
O’ Grady’s third suspense novel Let’s
Kill Uncle.The book’s appearance
was certain to command some critical and public notice: the dust jacket and
title page was adorned with the idiosyncratic illustrations of Edward Gorey.The cover blurb offered a small glimpse of
what awaited readers:“In an idyllic, peaceful island setting two
charming children on summer holiday conspire to execute the perfect murder –
and get away with it.”Though a
macabre premise, the book was well-received, the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe,
Pittsburgh Press, New York Newsday and Chicago Tribune singing its praises.Toronto’s Globe
and Mail crowed Let’s Kill Uncle was
“the jolliest thriller of any year.”
One fan of the novel was the producer-director William
Castle, the undisputed grifting King of Ballyhoo.Castle optioned the property shortly after its
appearance with no immediate plans for production set.After scoring handsomely with his 1959 indie House on Haunted Hill with Vincent
Price, Castle had signed on with Columbia Pictures for a four-film deal in
March of 1959 (later extended beyond the original four pics). Between 1959 and
1964 Castle delivered such popcorn-munching guilty-pleasures as The Tingler, 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus,
and Strait-Jacket, amongst others.Then, in October 1963, Universal Picture’s
Vice-President of Production, Edward Muhl, signed Castle to a three-picture
deal for a series of “cost-control” films.
Castle’s trio of films for Uni were less celebrated and
money-spinning than his earlier efforts.His second and most recent effort for the studio, I Saw What You Did (1965) did little to buffer his reputation as a
filmmaker nor cash-cow guarantor.As one
critic from the Los AngelesTimes sulked, “I Saw What You Did,
William Castle, and as usual I am not impressed.”Castle’s final film in his three-pic contract
would be Let’s Kill Uncle.By all indicators, the production of Let’s Kill Uncle would be a rushed
affair.One Hollywood correspondent –
having already visited director Brian G. Hutton rehearsing his cast on the set of
The Pad – chose to drop by the
adjourning soundstage where first-day shooting of Let’s Kill Uncle was in process.The columnist was quick to note the film’s “rough edges” were already
showing.The writer noted the fast and frugal
Castle had already shot more film during his brief visit than Hutton would
shoot in an entire day.
Castle had reason to work quickly.In October of 1965, Variety reported the director/producer was soon to again jump ship,
having just inked a multi-picture deal with Paramount.That contract called for Castle to report to
his new bosses on New Year’s Day 1966.Though
Castle was scheduled to begin work on Let’s
Kill Uncle on December 10, 1965, actual production evidently would not
commence until December 20.The clock
was ticking.
One reason for the delay was Castle’s decision to wait on
the availability of “moppet Mary Badham,” the child actress cast as “Chrissie”
in the film.The thirteen-year old was
not yet finished completing work on Sydney Pollack’s drama This Property is Condemned with Natalie Wood, Robert Redford and
Charles Bronson.Another
thirteen-year-old, Pat Cardi, was to join the cast as Barnaby Harrison, the
principal target of his black-hearted Uncle, Major Kevin Harrison (Nigel
Green).Though Cardi’s name was a mostly
unfamiliar one, his face certainly was.The child actor was frequently seen on television screens in a cavalcade
of small roles.Linda Lawson, cast to
play Chrissie’s aunt Justine, was a virtual novice looking for a break.Castle had met Lawson four years earlier when
she delivered mail to him at his Columbia Pictures office.
It’s unclear if Nigel Green was originally sought out by
Castle to play the “Uncle” role.There
were reports as late as December that Leslie Nielsen “had worked out his
shooting schedule on Beau Geste so he
can accept a role in Uncle.”If indeed Nelson was Castle’s first choice to
play the Major, the resulting film - as it stands - might have benefited from the actor’s gift for light-comedy.Whatever the case, Green – just recently seen
as another “Major” in the Len Deighton/Sidney J. Furie production of the
spy-thriller The Ipcress File (1965) –
was brought on.Green’s comedic skills
were not his strong suit, and it wasn’t the best bit of casting.But then everything about Let’s Kill Uncle seems a bit askew.
The shortcomings of this film weighed heavily on the scripting.Castle’s schedule 1963-1965 was a
particularly busy one, so it’s not surprising his optioning of Let’s Kill Uncle was not exercised immediately.In April of 1965 things started moving, Variety reporting the playwright Robert
L. Joseph had been conscripted to adapt O’ Grady’s book as a film treatment, with
tentative plans to start production sometime “next summer.”Whatever the circumstances, Joseph’s
treatment – if submitted at all – was found not up-to-snuff.The responsibility of delivering a workable
adaptation fell to Mark Rodgers, a writer almost exclusively known for his work
on television.
It was, to be fair, a tough work to adapt, as the grim
humor and dark whimsy of O’ Grady’s novel was seamlessly embroidered into a
textual tapestry – a bit of psychological chess-game plotting not easy to
convey visually.Castle chose to dispense
and/or modify many of the novels’ original elements.The setting of the novel is an island off of
the Canadian Pacific coast, there are Mounties trooping about, the treacherous
Uncle” is named “Sylvester,” and there’s even a “soliloquizing” talking cougar
named “One-Eye.”The filmmakers of Let’s Kill Uncle chose to move the
action to an un-named sub-tropical location of palm trees and bananas, there’s
no Mounties or (worse yet!) a talking cougar.The killer Uncle’s moniker was changed from Sylvester to “Kevin
Harrison.” (As has “Chrissie’s.”She’s “Christie”
in the novel).
While these small name changes don’t really figure in or
matter to the final product, the absence of “One-Eye” is unforgivable.As is the lack of suspense one might have expected.The only good thing about moving the locale
from the Canadian coast to the tropics is the welcome – if brief - appearance
of Nestor Paiva as the Steward of the steamer bringing Barnaby and Chrissie to
their new island homes.Paiva, one might
recall, was the captain of the Rita,
the ship slow-trolling the wilds of the Amazon in search of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.It’s Nestor who informs young Barnaby that the
island is cursed, which isn’t too far off the mark, at least for him.
The film never really catches fire.I was hoping to glean Castle’s thoughts on Let’s Kill Uncle in his memoir Step Right Up!I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America,
but the director/producer makes no mention of the film’s production nor
reception in the book.The slight filmography
in his book’s back pages gives Let’s Kill
Uncle only the briefest of notice: “Technicolor
murder movie starring kids and Nigel Green.”(It should be noted Director of Photography
Harold Lipstein delivers a film of eye-popping color saturation, the film’s
singular saving grace).
The film was mostly dismissed by critics upon its release
– but there were a few actually enjoyed it.One critic from Box Office
mulled the film’s failure was due to the “scene-chewing and downright brattish
character traits” of Cardi and Badham, that the “homicidal plans” of Uncle
Kevin might have proved “a blessing in disguise” had they been carried out.I generally like William Castle’s shoestring
1960’s psycho-horrors as much as the next guy (assuming that “next guy” also
has lowbrow tastes in cinema), but I found the ninety-two minutes of Let’s Kill Uncle a slow torture.Castle’s fans will at least enjoy the bonus featurette
Mr. Castle and Me: An Interview with
Actor Pat Cardi, which offer a small peek behind the curtain.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of Let’s Kill Uncle is presented in 1920 x 1080p,
with a ratio of 1.85:1, dts sound, and removable English sub-titles.The film looks absolutely brilliant, Kino
having struck the print from a “Brand New 2K Master.”The set rounds off with two theatrical
trailers of the film as well as the commentaries of film historians Kat
Ellinger (Diabolique magazine) and the
(now sadly recently deceased) author of Teen
Movie Hell, Mike McPadden.
There
are two types of people in the world, and I don’t refer to young and old, rich
and poor, or me and everybody else.The
divide I have in mind is wider and deeper.On one side are those who would rather chew broken glass than watch Hollywood’s
old costume dramas about noble knights, evil viziers, and beautiful Tahitian
princesses.On the other side are those
like me who enjoy such fare in the same way we gravitate to Mac ’n Cheese and
other comfort food.It’s a soothing
callback to our childhoods when we devoured such movies on TV and the big
screen, in less strident and less cynical times—at least, they were less
strident and less cynical if you were ten years old.In the 1940s, two of the reigning luminaries
of the genre were Maria Montez and Jon Hall, who starred together in six
Technicolor productions for Universal Pictures, 1942-45.Three of the films have been released by Kino
Lorber Studio Classics on one disc, the “Maria Montez and Jon Hall Collection.”If you haven’t had occasion to discover what
movie escapism looked like in the era before today’s Middle Earth, planet
Tatooine, and Wakanda, the Montez/Hall triple feature provides a good
introduction.
In
“White Savage” (1943) directed by Arthur Lubin from an early script by future
Academy Award winning writer-director Richard Brooks, commercial fisherman
Kaloe (Hall) wants to harvest sharks off mysterious Temple Island.Health enthusiasts will pay well for shark
liver, “a great source of Vitamin A,” he says, sounding like today’s late-nite
pitchmen for dubious dietary supplements.After a meet-cute scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a 2022 romantic
comedy, the island’s ruler, Princess Tahia (Montez), falls for the handsome
adventurer and grants him access to the waters, only to turn against him later
when she’s duped by Sam Miller (Thomas Gomez), the sleazy owner of a gambling
den in nearby Port Coral.Miller has
learned that the titular temple on Temple Island includes a golden pool inlaid
with jewels.To plunder the treasure, he
first has to get Kaloe out of the way.Given Kaloe’s name, we assume that the shark hunter is Polynesian (Hall,
born Charles Felix Locher, was said to have had a Tahitian mother in real
life), but he wears a generic charter-captain outfit and skipper’s cap, not a
sarong.Montez, born Maria Gracia Vidal in a well to do Colombian family,
doesn’t look any more Polynesian than Hall.But old movies like this are more notable for oddball charm than
authenticity.This becomes even more
apparent when you think about a golden, gem-encrusted pool in the South Seas.Where did the gold and the jewels come
from?It’s further underlined when
Kaloe, framed by Miller for murder, is imprisoned on a platform guarded below
by African lions.Why not polar
bears?Not that audiences in 1943 would have
cared, as long as dad could ogle Maria Montez in vivid Technicolor, mom could
dream about Jon Hall, and the kids could identify with third-billed Sabu as
Kaloe’s mischievous younger sidekick, Orano.
“Gypsy
Wildcat” (1944) shifts locale to medieval Europe, exactly the kind of setting
and story parodied by Rob Reiner’s beloved 1987 comedy “The Princess Bride,” minus
Billy Crystal and Andre the Giant.When
a traveler is murdered near the castle of ruthless Baron Tovar (Douglas
Dumbrille), Tovar imprisons a band of Gypsies camped nearby.The Gypsies harbor another stranger, Michael
(Hall), who witnessed the murder and holds an important item of evidence sought
by the baron.The caravan’s dancing
girl, Carla (Montez), an orphan who was adopted by the Gypsies at infancy,
falls in love with Michael, to the displeasure of the Gypsy chief’s son, Tonio
(Peter Coe), who had hoped to marry her.Tovar, in turn, is smitten with Carla, who looks uncannily like a woman
in an old portrait that hangs in his private quarters.Well toward the end of the movie, the
characters in the story find out why; you’ll probably put two and two together
long before then.Of the three movies on
the Blu-ray disc, “Gypsy Wildcat” may be the purest example of Universal’s
genius in recycling and repurposing its contract actors, directors, and sets
from one film to the next across different genres in its movie-factory
heyday.The director, Roy William Neill,
was borrowed from the studio’s popular Sherlock Holmes series, as were Nigel
Bruce and Gale Sondergaard.Bruce plays
Tovar’s bumbling lackey in much the same spirit as he portrayed Dr. Watson to
Basil Rathbone’s Holmes.Sondergaard,
here the wife of the Gypsy king, is better remembered as “The Spider Woman” in
Neill’s 1943 Holmes mystery of the same name.Neill and producer George Waggner were also associated with Universal’s
iconic Wolf Man horror series, and the wagons driven by the Gypsies were
probably the same ones used for Maria Ouspenskaya’s Gypsy caravan in “The Wolf
Man.”Leo Carrillo, from Universal’s
B-Westerns, plays Anube, the Gypsy chief; he, Sondergaard, Coe, and the rest of
the troupe reflect producers’ venerable tradition of choosing ethnic-looking
but non-Romani actors to play Gypsies.The script was written by James M. Cain, a surprise if you know Cain
strictly as a giant of classic noir fiction with “The Postman Always Rings
Twice” and “Double Indemnity.”However,
it isn’t so startling when you remember that Cain was one of many celebrated
novelists who made good money on the side, writing or doctoring Hollywood
scripts.I met the late James M. Cain in
passing in the early 1970s, when he was guest speaker one night at a public
library in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, near where he lived in retirement at
the time.At eighty-one, he was
formidably tall, burly, bushy-haired, and bespectacled.When he amiably chatted with members of the
audience, he answered several questions I asked about his career—none of which
dealt with “Gypsy Wildcat,” I should note.
“Sudan”
(1945), Montez’s and Hall’s final film together, is set in ancient Egypt, where
the benevolent king of Khemis is murdered.The crime appears to be the work of an elusive rebel leader, Herua, who
has eluded all attempts to catch him through the usual means.The grieving Princess Naila (Montez) has a
better (or worse) idea.She will
disguise herself as a commoner, find Herua at a fair in Sudan where he
customarily buys horses for his band, and have him arrested.Here, Sudan is a colourful whirl of dancing
girls and camels, not the grim wasteland of starving children we now see on the
TV news.Naila doesn’t realise that her
grand vizier, Horadef, who schemes to seize power, was the actual
murderer.That fact is disclosed ten
minutes into the story, although most of us will already have caught on, given
that a) grand viziers in movies like this are always secretly masterminding
palace coups, and b) Horadef is played by the great George Zucco, who filled
similar roles in Universal’s horror series about the Mummy.Horadef pays slavers to kidnap Naila when she
goes undercover.Two horse thieves,
Merat and Nebka, come to her rescue.Merat is played by Hall, and Nebka by Andy Devine.Devine provides the same nasal-voiced comedy
relief that he did in countless Westerns, only wearing robes this time instead
of suspenders.When a handsome stranger
shows up (Turhan Bey), he and Naila fall in love with each other, before the
princess discovers that the stranger is Herua.Ably written by Edmund L. Hartmann and directed by John Rawlins, the
film could almost serve as a G-rated modern sequel to “Disney’s Aladdin,” except
for a scene where Naila is branded on the arm by the slavers, and another where
she and Herua retire to his tent for a night of passion.The Egyptian sets were ported over from two
earlier Middle Eastern fantasies starring Montez and Hall, “Arabian Nights” (1942)
and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944).It hardly mattered that the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Baghdad of Ali
Baba were two separate historical periods a thousand years apart, since
audiences’ apathy to such details “made little practical difference where the
story was set,” as critic Ian Cameron noted in his 1973 book, Adventure in
the Movies.1945 was a pivotal
moment in Universal Pictures’ history as the year it dropped the Montez and
Hall series, along with its B-horror films and Sherlock Holmes pictures.When the studio returned to the genre in the
early 1950s as Universal-International, it did so with a new generation of young
contract players like Rock Hudson and Yvonne de Carlo.Montez appeared in a few more pictures and
died in 1951 at 39.Hall had a long
career of Westerns, period adventures, and TV guest appearances through the
early 1960s, including baby-boomer fame as television’s “Ramar of the Jungle” in
the ‘50s.
Although
the Montez and Hall movies ran widely on TV during the same era as “Ramar of
the Jungle,” they were broadcast in grainy black-and-white, robbing them of
their lustrous big screen Technicolor.The
Kino Lorber Blu-ray restores their original sharpness and rich palette,
supplemented by engaging audio commentary from Phillipa Berry for “White Savage”
and “Sudan,” and David Del Valle for “Gypsy Wildcat.”Theatrical trailers and subtitles for the deaf
and hearing-impaired are also included.
“Maria
Montez and Jon Hall Collection” can be ordered from Amazon HERE.
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
“A hilarious and morose invocation of a lost world.
Anyone who has ever been movie-mad will relish this irrepressibly digressive,
surprise-filled, exquisitely written memoir (sort of). I certainly did.”
—Phillip Lopate Novelist
Todd McEwen grew up in a sleepy suburb just thirteen
miles from Hollywood, and at a young age he became obsessed with the big
screen. In this collection of essays—part memoir, part film criticism—McEwen
spins lush, technicolor memories. He recalls early mornings watching Laurel and
Hardy, matinées of Chinatown, and of course, his site of worship: his hometown
movie theater.
Cary Grant’s Suit is at once a love letter to old
Hollywood, a portrait of McEwen’s postwar, sunbelt neighborhood, and a sharp
analysis of a particular moment in American cultural history. The suburban
cul-de-sacs of McEwen’s childhood serve as the stage where the fears and
obsessions of the era are acted out: the neighborhood kids play “war” in the
pool and reenact The Wizard of Ozon the sidewalk. In this environment, McEwen
develops a keen eye for the desires and domestic dynamics, the technological
optimism and looming anxiety of the era. He uses this sensitivity to produce
shrewd (and often hilarious) readings of the films of his youth.
Grant in Hitchcock's "North by Northwest": Stylish even when running for his life.
(Photo: Cinema Retro Archive)
This collection includes essays on: Casablanca (in which
McEwen humorously catalogs the many drinks and cigarettes that appear
throughout the film), Laurel and Hardy (and its resonances with the domestic
and technological anxieties of the 1950s), The 39 Steps(and a trip to Scotland
to retrace the hero’s path), Chinatown(as an object of obsession), White
Christmas(as a “treatise on the textures of the Fifties”), not to mention the
titular essay on North by Northwest (arguing that “[it] isn’t about what
happens to Cary Grant, it’s about what happens to his suit”),and many, many
more.
Todd McEwen was born in Southern California in the 1950s.
As a child he was interested in comedy and the undersea realm and was terrified
by Bambi. In high school he had his own radio show, interviewing folk singers
and puzzle inventors. At college he read Victorian and medieval English
literature. He worked in radio, theatre, and the rare books trade before
arriving in Scotland in the 1980s. After a spell at Granta, he has often worked
as an editor and teacher. His novels include Fisher’s Hornpipe, McX: A Romance
of the Dour, Who Sleeps with Katz, and The Five Simple Machines.
Quite often in Marty,
from 1955, there are long takes (some multiple minutes long) that calmly
observe the anodyne activities and interactions of the little people that the
film takes as its subject matter. It might be tempting to think of such shots
as theatrical – although the film adapts a teleplay (by Paddy Chayevsky,
a key writer in what is often thought of as television’s Golden Age of live
drama) and not a piece of theatre per se. Yet while some of the shots of the
film are static, none approximate the perspective of an imagined audience at
the theater and many are about characters moving quietly through space as the
camera glides along with them. This is a resonant form of cinematic
storytelling in its own right.
In an historical moment
where Hollywood was turning often to splashy and spectacular films (what the
self-congratulatory musical Silk Stockings extolls as “Glorious
Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope and Stereophonic Sound”) to challenge the
easy domesticity of television viewership, Marty took a different path:
it tried to rival the small-screen by showing that Hollywood could make little
pictures (little in narrative ambition, that is, and unassuming visual style) that
might outdo television at its own game by re-making television’s own offerings.
Marty tells
of a Queens butcher (Borgnine) who is desperate for love but blocked by
insecurity, low self-regard around his looks and bodily frame (he’s quite
stocky), and by his own internalization of the macho codes of the dead-end guys
he hangs out with. When he meets plain schoolteacher Clara (Betsy Blair) at a
dance hall, the two seeming losers at life find they share a soft suffering at
love’s misfortunes and they hit it off through an evening of walking and
talking and furtively reaching out to each other. Ironically, the friends and
family who have encouraged Marty to find the right woman and get married
realize that his new-found romance could actually take him away from them, and
they try to paint the worst possible picture of Clara. The last section of the
film revolves around Marty’s torment as he is tempted to give in to the
pressures of the locals he’s known so long (his mom, his buddies at the bar)
but also realizes that loving Clara may be his only real shot at happiness, self-respect,
and emotional growth.
Marty was
only one of set of films that cinematically opened up a prior teleplay for the
big screen but it became the most acclaimed, winning the first ever Palme d’Or
at the Cannes Film Festival and then the Oscar for Best Picture (along with
Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, the latter in a moment where
there wasn’t a distinction between Original and Adapted so that Chayefsky could
win for a reworking of his teleplay). It is perhaps worth noting that the Oscar
for Best Picture the following year went to the big-cast, multiple
location epic Around the World in Eighty Days – Hollywood thereby
returning to business as usual. But Marty helped legitimate a tradition
of intimate dramas that, as entertainment journalists Bryan Reesman and Max
Evry note in their well-researched and wide-ranging commentary track for the
Blu-ray of Marty, led to the low-budget indie tales of recent decades.
(The commentators are particularly good at noting Marty’s direct
influence on the Baltimore working class narratives of Barry Levinson.)
Reesman and Evry make
continued reference to the celebrated TV version of Marty from 1953
where the key roles were played by Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand, and it’s too
bad this Blu-ray edition of the film couldn’t have included the earlier
teleplay. (Maybe there were licensing issues?) The only added Marty features
in fact are a trailer for the film (along with other of the intimate films made
from teleplays) and the commentary track. The latter is quite rich in insights
– about similar small dramas of the time, about European influences on working
class Hollywood realism, about the writer and director and the actors, and so
on. At times perhaps, the very capaciousness of the commentary means that the
film itself can get left behind. But Marty is itself emotionally
resonant enough to stand on its own as one watches this very key film of the
1950s.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount Home Video:
Newly
restored in 4K Ultra HD, Elvis Presley’s beloved 1961 classic BLUE HAWAII
arrives as part of the collectible Paramount Presents line on both 4K Ultra HD
and Blu-ray™ for the first time ever November 15, 2022!
Enjoy
this rollicking Technicolor musical in ultra-crisp 4K Ultra HD with Dolby
Vision™ and HDR-10. Fully restored from the original 35mm camera negative,
BLUE HAWAIIlooks more spectacular than ever with every colorful costume and
vivid Hawaiian background brought to life. The first of three films that Elvis shot in Hawaii, BLUE
HAWAII celebrated the brand-new exotic state and features the massive hit
song “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” which was certified platinum.
For the restoration, the
original negative was scanned in 4K/16bit, however the opening title sequence
was very grainy because it originally used duped film. That sequence was
completely rebuilt using the original film elements from the Paramount
library. Brand new text overlays were created for a truly spectacular
opening sequence befitting this delightful film.
The Paramount Presents BLUE
HAWAII release includes the film on both 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc™ and on
Blu-ray, as well as access to a digital copy of the film. The Blu-ray
additionally includes the original theatrical trailer and the following new
bonus content:
·Commentary
by historian James L. Neibaur
·Blue
Hawaii Photo Scrapbook—contains
high-res images from the Paramount archives, including behind-the-scenes shots
On the eve of the November 1963 release of TWICE TOLD
TALES, the British actor Sebastian Cabot would tell a reporter from the Copley
News Service, “They’ve been after me to do more of the horror pictures with
Vincent Price.I wouldn’t mind that a
bit, though I must say I wouldn’t want to do them exclusively.”He intimated that he and his co-star had
discussed a possible future pairing in “a light comedy” motion-picture.Alas, it was not to be; the two actors would
not work together again.Cabot, of
course, would soldier on and enjoy success as both a television personality and
a recognizable voice-over actor.Following
the passing of Boris Karloff in 1969, Vincent Price would reign as the big-screen’s
uncontested “King of Horror.” Cabot’s estimation of Price as an actor
“extremely adept” at light-comedy was incisive.Throughout his long and fabled career, Vincent Price’s on-screen
ghoulishness would nearly always be mitigated with a wry smile and twinkle in
the eye.
TWICE TOLD TALES is the second of two quickie vehicles in
which Price starred for Robert E. Kent’s Admiral Pictures, Inc. (1962-1963).For their first pairing, DIARY OF A MADMAN
(released in March 1963 and distributed through United Artists), Kent mined the
imagination of the great French short-story writer Henri-René-Albert-Guy de
Maupassant.That film’s ballyhoo
proclaimed it “The Most Terrifying Motion Picture Ever Created!” It most
certainly wasn’t, but the film still managed to be a worthwhile psychological
thriller - though one that didn’t particularly resonate at the box-office.In what was obviously an attempt to
capitalize on the low-budget but big commercial success of Roger Corman’s Edgar
Allan Poe adaptations for A.I.P, Kent quickly changed course and ambitiously turned
to the short stories and novels of Nathanial Hawthorne for material.
Though a descendant of John Hathorne, the unrepentant
magistrate who presided over the fate of several innocents during Salem,
Massachusetts’s celebrated witch trials, Nathanial Hawthorne was a
romanticist:he was not prominently a
writer of mysteries or of fantastic fiction.Having said that, Hawthorne was not averse to penning a good ghost story
or two and his talent had won him the praise of contemporaries.One such fan was Edgar Allan Poe himself.In his review of Hawthorne’s two volume
collection of short stories TWICE TOLD TALES for Graham’s Magazine in May of
1842, Poe unabashedly pronounced the New Englander as “a man of truest genius…
As Americans, we feel proud of this book.”
Of course Hollywood producers have always somehow managed
to take great creative liberties with the acknowledged classics.Stories of cigar-chomping producers passing
on tracts of classic literature so their stable of writers might “give ‘em a
polish” are legion.Though Roger
Corman’s series of Poe films both successfully and artistically mined the great
man’s work for their tortured characters, grim atmosphere and elements of plot,
Corman himself rarely offered filmgoers a straight-forward re-telling of any of
the doomed author’s fabled tales.
Producer-writer, Robert E. Kent seems to have taken a
similar, albeit far less successful, approach with his production of TWICE TOLD
TALES.Only segment two of this trilogy
film, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” closely resembles Hawthorne’s original story, and
even that diverges when at odds with cinematic expectations.In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” a sinister
love-triangle between Dr. Carl Heidegger (the corpulent Sebastian Cabot), Alex
Medbourne (Price) and the recently revived but still exquisite corpse of Sylvia
Ward (Marie Blanchard) is re-engineered as to feature an original - if
salacious - back-story.This “Virgin
Spring” elixir-of-eternal-youth morality-fable plays out with little fidelity to
the original tale.
Such creative-license is stretched to the breaking point
with the film’s final episode, “The House of the Seven Gables.”This segment bears little resemblance to Hawthorne’s
celebrated novel, but it has borrowed elements from the better known – and far
more lavish – 1940 Universal film of the same title.The Universal film, perhaps not
coincidentally, also featured Vincent Price in a starring role, though this
tale too strayed far from Hawthorne’s original.Though I recall no physical blood-letting in the Hawthorne novel, in TWICE
TOLD TALES the sanguine red fluid pours freely– and mostly unconvincingly, it
must be said - from ceilings, walls, portraits, and lockets.The Pyncheon’s family’s metaphorical skeleton-in-the-closet
becomes all too real in this rather uninspired re-working.
Part of the film’s original marketing stratagem was the
offer of “FREE COFFEE in the lobby to settle your nerves!”One might suggest, with a measure of
cynicism, that such brew was a necessary component in helping to keep audiences
awake.TWICE TOLD TALES is, to be
generous, a very good ninety-minute film.The problem is that the filmmakers stretched this ninety-minute film to an
interminable two-hour running time.
This is a “sitting room” or “parlor” film; most of the
action (as it is) takes place in mildly claustrophobic confines of small home
settings with long stretches of unbroken dialogue.There are very few provocative set-pieces employed
over the course of three segments and the most ambitious of these, the deadly
and poisonous garden of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini (Price), is only experienced in sun-soaked
broad daylight.This supposedly lethal
garden is both terribly over-lit and ill-disguised in its construction (the
seams of the faux-grass mats are clearly visible).As such this potentially visual and cinematic
garden of death portends little of its intended menace.If only love-struck suitor Giovanni Guasconti
(Brett Halsey) could have encountered the beautiful but lethal Beatrice
Rappaccini (Joyce Taylor) in a blue-swathed moonlight setting, the garden’s mysterious
atmosphere would have been instantly heightened.
Kent’s too-wordy screenplay suffers occasional patches of
purple prose, but it’s serviceable.There are a couple of great moments:Cabot’s toast of the glass prior to his experimental drinking of a fluid
that may or may not kill him (“To eternal youth, or just eternity?”).In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” we’re not sure, at
first, of who is a prisoner to whom.Is
it the estranged daughter to the father, or the father to the daughter?When all is made clear, we can better understand
the poisoned daughter’s bitter complaint, “The only difference from being dead
is that this house is bigger than a grave.”
TWICE TOLD TALES is no classic, but it’s not unworthy of
one’s time.Vincent Price is, as always,
brilliant in all three of the villainous roles he inhabits.The supporting cast is mostly great as well,
and Kent, unashamedly, brings aboard several of the familiar players who earlier
worked with Corman on the Poe series.Director
Sidney Salkow was, sadly, no auteur.Though he had been directing and writing films – and bringing them in
under or on budget -for both
independent and major studios as early as 1936, it’s clear he was most
interested in producing a satisfying checkmark in the company’s profit ledger and
not terribly concerned with film-as-art. Though Salkow’s films are never less than
competent, they’re generally pedestrian and not particularly memorable.As helmsman, Salkow simply possessed none of
Corman’s visual-style or displayed any ability to stage an impressive production
on a shoestring budget.
To be fair, Corman had advantages.His gothic films were European in design: his settings were of torch-lit gloomy and
brooding castles, of misty streets of cobblestone and black twisted tree-limbs.Two of the TWICE TOLD TALES, on the other
hand, are set in the non-atmospheric repose of 19th-century small-town
America.With the small exception of a creepy
sequence in which a thunder and lightning-storm disturbs a tomb that had been
sealed for thirty-eight years (and sits, inexplicably, just to the rear of Dr.
Heidegger’s back-door), the dressing that surrounds TWICE TOLD TALES demonstrates little
of the macabre ingredients necessary for mounting a successful horror film.
This 2022 release from
Kino-Lorber Studio Classics supplants their original 2015 Blu-ray issue of
TWICE TOLD TALES.As with its first
incarnation, the film is presented in Technicolor and in its original 1.66:1
ratio and in 1920x1080p with removable English subtitles.This new issue looks great… but no greater
than their 2015 release, quite frankly.This edition doesn’t necessarily offer a significant upgrade, if at
all.Bonus features ported over from the
first issue includes a commentary from film scholars Richard Harland Smith and
Perry Martin as well as a brief “Trailers from Hell” segment courtesy of Mick
Garris.
It seems this Kino
“Special Edition” differs only in small ways from their earlier effort.First, a “collectible” slipcover (featuring a
pair of color photographs on the reverse sleeve), replaces the two
black-and-white shots featured on the case of the original issue.The original edition featured only three
trailers in total – this new issue balloons to a generous baker’s dozen of
trailers from other Poe/Price/AIP titles offered on the Kino Studio Classics
line.On the minus side, this new
edition, somewhat oddly, offers no chapter selections – a strange omission for
a portmanteau film.An essential
purchase, I suppose – but only for those who missed out on the original 2015
pressing.
Just as the school holidays were about
to start, way back in the December of 1982, ITV began previewing their upcoming
festive slate. In amongst the sleigh-bell soundtracked shots of Morecambe &
Wise, Ted Rogers and Mike Yarwood et al, Richard Kiel grabbed a thick metal
cable and bit into it with his silver dentures. This little tit-bit was all any
of us kids could talk about in school the next day. ‘Did you see it? Moonraker’s
going to be on TV on Boxing Day!’
I can’t remember anything else about
that Christmas, only the desperate excitement in the run-up to watching the
biggest, best James Bond film ever made! And back then, it was both of those
things because we were, y’know, kids.
Moonraker was (and remains) the entry-level
kids’ Bond movie. Once you realise that the concept of a space shuttle full of
American marines armed with laser guns being fired into space is as
intelligence-insultingly absurd as the idea of a double-taking pigeon, the
lustre wears off rapidly.
And so it came to pass that over the
years, the most successful Bond movie yet released saw its reputation take an
almighty plummet, hovering at the bottom of most Bond popularity charts; an
overblown, camp nadir that even Cubby Broccoli recognised as ‘a bit too much’ (by
contrast, the next Bond adventure, For Your Eyes Only was a pointedly
earth-bound gadget-free caper based on the retrieval of what looked like a ZX
Spectrum keyboard).
Admitting that Moonraker was
one of your favourite Bond movies in the company of cineastes was a faux pas
akin to suggesting that the best Star Trek movie was the fifth one, or
that Robert De Niro never did it for you as an actor until he started making
those hilarious Meet The Parents movies.
The Daniel Craig years - in which Bond
was transformed from a smooth, quip-spouting, all-action Lothario into a
tortured, reluctant assassin, as bruised and broken on the inside as he is on
the surface - made the comic nonsense of Moonraker seem even more
ludicrous, unforgivably so.
Yet all of a sudden, Bond’s misbegotten
Star Wars cash-in has recently started to find voices of support piping
up in its defence. Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary could have chosen from
hundreds of thousands of other movies to launch their new Video Archives
podcast, but for episode 1, out of every movie ever made they went for Moonraker.
Of the two film-makers, Avary is the
one pleading the case forthe
defence.In time-honoured tradition, he
considered it beneath his contempt when it was first released in 1979. “I was
absolutely dubious of it. I hated it.
“I’ve noticed that when I see films
that I dismissed quickly back in the day; I sometimes look at them now and I am
seeing things and appreciating things that I just wasn’t prepared for back
then.” Among those things that Avary now appreciated were Ken Adams’s beautiful
sets, John Barry’s lush score, the still-impressive special effects, Michael
Lonsdale’s cold dismissive performance, and the opening skydiving stunt, which
Avary & Tarantino both cite as one of their favourite pre-titles sequence
in the series: ‘Real people are doing this!’
Avary continued, ‘It’s a spy film, it’s
an action movie, it’s a romance, it’s a travelogue, it’s a sci-fi…it’s also a
horror film. It switches its tone constantly. It becomes whatever it needs to be
in the moment. It’s a comedy, it’s even a western at one point.’ He even
confesses to crying at the end when Jaws finally speaks.
Tarantino’s enjoyment is more
circumspect. He has little enthusiasm for Lewis Gilbert’s handling of action
scenes, especially the gondola chase. At one point he bellows, ‘Any movie that
cuts to a reaction shot of animals doing comic double-takes can never be taken
seriously under any circumstances!’
The Video Archives Moonraker reevaluation
followed on the heels of its surprise appearance in the 2021 Marvel movie Black
Widow, in which Scarlett Johansson’s superhero assassin enjoys some
much-needed downtime by watching Moonraker - a film she’s seen so often
she can recite the dialogue from memory.
Moonraker was, to Johansson’s character, what
it is to so many of us: a comfort watch (it also serves as a witty foretaste of
the rest of Black Widow; a film that ends up set aboard a colossal
airborne sky-station which our hero destroys in mid-flight).
It has also taken on an unlikely
contemporary resonance, thanks to the intergalactic antics of a new breed of
super-billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and - especially - Elon
Musk, who have recently been playing with their little rocket ships and all,
like Drax, clearly obsessed by the conquest of space.
Watching these space-fixated moguls,
all of them rich beyond the wealth of nations, seemingly sharing Drax’s casual
disdain for the trite pauper-concerns of mere earthlings, Moonraker’s
plot suddenly becomes targeted future-satire from the least-likely source.
Then again, it could just be something
far simpler. This new warmth towards Moonraker might well have stemmed
from the loss of Roger Moore, who became the first Bond to head to the great
casino in the sky in 2017. There has rarely been a more beloved actor, and the
shock of suddenly not having him around any more may have led many to
reconsider the legacy of someone we have now lost forever.
Moore’s Bond movies - built around his
unique presentation of the character - were unabashed entertainment. They were
designed at an eye-wateringly huge cost by some of the most talented and
dedicated artists in the industry for one simple, noble purpose: to give family
audiences a thrill ride and make them happy.
Produced for a then-staggering
$34million, Moonraker was released at a time of economic stagnation,
constant strikes, international unrest and unremitting gloom. No wonder
audiences rushed into cinemas to bask in its technicolor glamour, warm humour
and impossible silliness. No wonder its charms seem so suddenly appealing once
again.
John Sturges’ “Last Train from Gun Hill” was released in 1959 as one ofseveral
high-profile Westerns of its era, designed to lure audiences away from
their television sets and back to their neighborhood movie theatres.Against
TV’s advantage of free programming that you could enjoy from the
leisure of your easy chair, films like “Last Train from Gun Hill,”
“Warlock,” “The Horse Soldiers,” and “The Hanging Tree” countered with
A-list stars, widescreen CinemaScope and VistaVision, Technicolor, and
sweeping outdoor locations.The
studios wagered, correctly, that viewers would welcome a change from
the predictable characters, cheap backlot sets, and drab black-and-white
photography of “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train,” and “Cheyenne.”The
approach was successful, sporadically continuing through the next
decade with expensive epics like “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Custer
of the West” (1967), and “MacKenna’s Gold” (1968) before it collapsed
from dwindling returns, scaled-back studio budgets, and changing popular
tastes at the end of the 1960s.
As Sturges’ movie opens, two loutish cowboys chase down, rape, and murder a young Indian woman.Although the rape and murder occur offscreen, the lead-up is viscerally terrifying.In a bizarrely poor choice of words, Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times referred to the murderers as “scallywags.” At least in my lexicon, scallywags aremischievous kids who make prank phone calls, not perpetrators of a horrendous sexual assault.When the pair flee in panic after realizing what they’ve done, they inadvertently leave behind a horse and saddle.The
murdered woman’s husband is Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas), the marshal of
the nearby town of Pawley, who immediately identifies the letters “CB”
branded on the saddle.They’re
the initials of Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), a powerful rancher who
controls Gun Hill, a community further down the railroad line.One
of the murderers was Belden’s hired hand Lee (played by Brian Hutton,
later the director of “Where Eagles Dare” and “Kelly’s Heroes”), and the
other was Belden’s son Rick (Earl Holliman).When
Morgan arrives in Gun Hill with arrest warrants, Belden first tries to
convince him to go easy by reminding him that he and Craig were once
good friends. After that doesn’t work, he resorts to intimidation.The
cowardly local marshal refuses to help Morgan, unashamedly admitting
that he fears the boss man’s wrath more than he respects the rule of
law.(I’ll leave it to you to decide if you see a similarity to recent political controversies.)The
other townspeople are chilly if not hostile, and when Morgan finally
subdues Rick and handcuffs him in a hotel room, waiting for the arrival
of the train back to Pawley, Belden surrounds the building with hisarmy of hired guns.
The only person sympathetic to Morgan is Belden’s battered girlfriend Linda (Carolyn Jones).Even she believes the determined marshal faces overwhelming odds:
“You remind me of Jimmy, a fella I used to know,” she remarks. “Stubborn as a mule.”
“Next time you see Jimmy, say hello,” Morgan answers dryly.“We seem to have a lot in common.”
“More than you know.He’s dead.”
“Last
Train from Gun Hill” originated with a story treatment by writer Les
Crutchfield, expanded by James W. Poe with an uncredited assist from
Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas brought in to sharpen the dialogue.The exchanges between the characters, like the one quoted above, crackle with Trumbo’s signature style.Crutchfield
contributed scripts regularly to “Gunsmoke,” and “Last Train from Gun
Hill” unfolds like a traditional episode of the long-running series,
dressed up with a little more complexity, a rape-murder that would never
have passed network censorship, and a striking climactic scene that
also would have run afoul of the censors.Standing up, Morgan drives a wagon slowly down main street to meet the arriving train.Rick
stands beside him, handcuffed, with the muzzle of Morgan’s borrowed
shotgun pressed up under his chin to keep Belden and his gunmen at bay. When
Dell Comics adapted the movie as a comic book at the time of the film’s
release, it chose that scene as the cover photograph.As
far as I know, the graphic come-on of imminent shotgun mayhem didn’t
raise the ire of parents, educators, child psychologists, or media
pundits in that distant year of 1959.Back then, of course, pervasive gun violence wasn’t the social catastrophe that it is today.In 2022, the comic book would surely raise a firestorm of controversy on social media and cable news.
“Last
Train from Gun Hill” falls just short of a true classic, since the plot
mostly relies on ingredients that we’ve seen many times before in other
Westerns—the incorruptible lawman, the overbearing cattle baron, his
bullying but weak-willed son, the old friends now at cross-purposes, the
unfriendly town, the tense wait for a train—but Douglas, Quinn, and
supporting actors Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brian Hutton, and Brad
Dexter are at the top of their form, and Sturges’ no-nonsense direction
keeps the action moving at a tense pace.The
Blu-ray edition of the film from Paramount Pictures’ specialty label,
“Paramount Presents,” contains a sharp, remastered transfer, an
appreciative video feature with Leonard Maltin, and theatrical trailers.Even
though “Last Train from Gun Hill” ran frequently on local TV channels
in the 1970s and ‘80s, its visual quality there was seriously
compromised by the broadcast format.Worse, endless commercial breaks disrupted Sturges’ masterful mood of mounting tension.Revisiting
the production in its original, intended form, we may better appreciate
its merits as classic Hollywood professionalism at its finest.Highly recommended.
Were
it not for the beloved nature of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz
(1939), itself a financial failure upon its original release but finally making
a profit decades later, there is a good bet that many fantasy films would never
have seen the light of day. I get the feeling that director Jean Yarbrough’s Jack and
the Beanstalk (1952), which opened at the Warner in New York in April 1952
and was the first color outing by the late great comedy team of Abbott and
Costello, falls into that camp. The inspiration for the film reportedly came
from Mr. Costello’s daughter, Christine, who asked him to read her the
fairytale one night before bed, and he was so taken with the story that he
decided that it would be a good vehicle for him and his partner, Bud Abbott, to
make in the hopes of reaching young children in the audience.
From
the opening sepia-toned “real-life” scenes to the colorful fantasy sequences, Jack
and the Beanstalk may be delightful for children but is an uneven comedy
for all but perhaps the comedy duo’s most fervent admirers. While it is indeed
whimsical, it lacks the re-watch factor found in Gus Meins and Charley Rogers’s
wonderful comedy/musical March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) starring
another great comedy team, Laurel and Hardy, a film that I grew up on and can
still watch today.
Donald
Larkin (child actor David Stollery), a self-described problem child, is a
precocious nine-year-old whose older sister, Eloise (Shaye Cogan), wants to
attend the rehearsal of a play with her fiancé Arthur (James Alexander),
however a babysitter for Donald is nowhere in sight. Through a mishap, Lou
Costello and Bud Abbott end up taking on the boy through the Cosman Employment
Agency while they are looking for work. Lou and Bud make their way to Donald’s
house and Lou banters with Donald. Lou attempts to read Donald “Jack and the
Beanstalk”, but the wording proves too much for him. In a reversal of roles,
Donald becomes the reader, but Lou falls asleep, and we are taken into the
fairy tale in color. In Lou’s dream, Jack (as portrayed by Lou) finds himself
face to face with a giant (Buddy Baer) who gives him a run for his money. Jack
has a cow named Henry and ends up selling Henry for some magic beans. Just as
in the fairy tale, the magic beans are planted and, in a quick but charming
animated sequence, the magic beanstalk grows high into the sky. Jack marvels at
its height and, along with the village butcher Mr. Dinklepuss (Bud in a
supporting role), climbs into the giant’s abode and finds a wealth of treasures
that he took from the villagers, including a hen that lays golden eggs and a
large harp with a truly maniacal-looking face fashioned on the end of it. I can
imagine many a child in the audience being frightened by this image. A
kidnapped prince (James Alexander) and princess (Shaye Coggan) become the
objects that Jack attempts to extricate from the giant’s clutches.
It’s
disarming to see the Warner Brothers logo before the film given that the team
made nearly twenty films for Universal Pictures. While it’s certainly not one
of the duo’s best films – much of the acting is wooden and their antics and
jokes seem a little forced. However the slapstick would no doubt be appreciated
by youngsters and the film actually improves during the musical numbers. Mr. Costello sings the film’s best tune, “I
Fear Nothing”, which you’ll be singing for days after viewing the film, and
there is a funny dance routine that is lifted from Hold That Ghost
(1941).
While
this film has been available on home video many times before (on DVD in 1999, 2000,
2001, and 2012 and in 2020 on Blu-ray), if you’re a true Abbott and Costello
completist the new 70th anniversary 2022 Blu-ray from ClassicFlix.com is the way to go as it
contains a 4K restoration of the film in color as well as a whole host of
extras not found anywhere else.
Bonus
Features:
Newly
recorded feature introduction by Lou’s youngest daughter, Chris Costello. This is in high definition and runs 1:12 and
you have the option of watching it or not.
Commentary
by Abbott and Costello expert Ron Palumbo, with recollections from Jack and
the Beanstalk co-star David Stollery. The information that Mr. Palumbo
knows about this duo is unreal. His rapid-fire discussion of the onscreen
antics and the behind-the-scenes history of the images are well researched and
encyclopedic. He informs us that the sepia-toned opening was filmed after the
color sequences, and that the film was shot between July 9th and
August 2nd in 1951. A real pleasure to listen to.
Who's
On First? on December 2,
1940 – this is very cool: Abbott and Costello performing for military troops
and is presented in high definition and runs 4:05.
Imperfect
Spectrum: A Brief History of Cinecolor by Jack Theakston – in high definition and running 13:21.
This is a fascinating piece that explains both the history of and the workings
of Cinecolor. I wish that someone would do a full-blown documentary on this and
Technicolor.
Climbing
the Scales: The Music of Jack and the Beanstalk – in high definition and running 9:18,
this piece gives us a look at the creation of the musical score and the songs
in the film.
Cutting
Down the Beanstalk – in
high definition and running 18:30, this piece recreates the 26 minutes of
footage that was excised prior to the film’s release. Ron Palumbo provides the
running commentary.
Abbott
and Costello Meet the Creature
– in high definition and running 15:00, this piece is from February 1954 and
shows Bud and Lou looking through some props from their past movies. Glenn
Strange appears as Frankenstein's Monster, recreating his famous bits from Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Rudy
Vallee Radio Sketch – in
high definition and running 6:16, this piece is a radio bit set to images.
Restoration
Demo – in high definition and running 3:10,
this piece shows how the film looked before and after the restoration.
Image
Gallery
Behind
the Scenes photo gallery by Chip Ordway with 1952 children's recording – in high definition and running 7:02,
this includes a wealth of images taken on the set with Bud and Lou telling the
story of Jack and the Beanstalk (at 2:31, it sounds as though Lou is saying
“godammit”, which I cannot believe, but then it sounds like “there Abbott!”)
Publicity
Materials photo gallery by Chip Ordway
– in high definition and running 12:15, this is exactly what the description indicates.
Trailers:
Abbott
and Costello Trailer Rarities
– in high definition and running 41:04, this features 18 original "Coming
Attractions" previews, including Jack and the Beanstalk. The
condition of some of them vary from poor to excellent.
Fireman
Save My Child – in
high definition and running 2:10, this features two commentary tracks: one by
Mike Ballew (3-D aficionado) and the other with Ron Palumbo.
ClassicFlix
Trailers: There are several trailers here for other titles by ClassicFlix,
among them the Marx Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca (1946) which
actually begins the disc when you start it up. It runs 2:17. The only way to skip
the trailer is to fast forward through it. Also included are Abbott and
Costello’s TV show, The Little Rascals, Merrily We Live, and Zenobia.
Quentin Tarantino has said he thinks the worst American
movies were made in the 50s and the 80s. He dislikes 50s movies because of
their blatant censorship and 80s movies because the central character always
had to be likeable. On the Joe Rogan Experience he pointed out the difference
between a Bill Murray movie and a Chevy Chase movie made in the 80s. Bill
Murray’s characters always started out as assholes but became likeable by the
end of the film. “Chevy Chase movies don't play that shit,” Tarantino said. “Chevy
Chase is the same supercilious asshole at the end of the movie that he is at
the beginning.” He also decried
the way movies in the 50s hardly ever cast Native Americans in Westerns.
All this is to say I’d bet Tarantino most likely would
hate Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release of
Universal International’s “Foxfire” (1955), starring Jeff Chandler and Jane
Russell. Chandler was a hunky heart throb who rose to fame and fortune playing
Cochise opposite Jimmy Stewart in “Broken Arrow” (1950), and again with Rock
Hudson in “Taza, Son of Cochise.” Chandler was Jewish, but the public bought
him as a Native American and even as half-Native American, which he plays in
“Foxfire.” His character, Jonathan Dartland, is a mining engineering working in
a copper mine in Lodestone, Ariz., who is ashamed of the fact that while his
father was white his mother is an Apache. He hasn’t spoken to her in years even
though she lives in a nearby Apache Reservation, where she conducts guided
tours.
One day a tall brunette bombshell named Amanda Lawrence
arrives in Lodestone from New York and gets picked up by Dartland and his alcoholic
doctor friend Dr. Hugh Slater (Dan Duryea) when her car has a flat out in the
desert. Despite the fact that Russell was 34 years of age when the movie was
made, and you’d think would have more sense than a 17-year old, Amanda falls
head-over-heels gaga in love at first site with Dartland. Which is hard to
understand, since he’s such surly, morose guy who doesn’t interact well with
others, especially if they get nosey about his Apache background. But Amanda
will have her way and the day after a night of dancing and who knows what else,
SHE proposes to HIM!. At first he tells her it couldn’t possibly work but next
thing you know they’ve gotten hitched. Everybody’s there at the wedding, except
of course his Apache Mama.
I guess they had to go through with it, even though is
seems unbelievable that these two crazy kids would tie the knot so suddenly,
but Universal International had been promoting the movie with the tag line: “JANE’S
GOT JEFF!”. Which I suppose was a 50s version of the tag line that was used
when Clark Gable came back to the movies after serving in WW II to star in
“Adventure” (1945): “Gable’s back, and Garson’s Got Him!” With that line, “JANE’S
GOT JEFF!”, there had to be a wedding, and of course all the plot that would
come after it
One of the most bizarre twists in the plot comes when
Amanda decides to take the bus tour out to the Apache village to meet
Jonathan’s mother. She finds her with a group of tourists, giving them the
historical lowdown on Apache customs. She speaks in a beautiful voice that has
a nice Viennese accent! Saba, the Apache Princess, is played by Celia Lovsky,
the Austrian actress whom you may best remember as T’Pau, the Vulcan matriarch
in the famous Star Trek episode “Amok Time.”
“Foxfire” was directed by Joseph Pevney, who directed 14
episodes of “Star Trek,’ including the “Amok Time” episode. I guess Lovsky’s
performance as Saba years earlier in 1955 made a lasting impression on the
director, or maybe they were just good friends.
Also in “Foxfire” are Mara Corday, as Dr. Slater’s
jealous nurse, who has a crush on Dartland; Robert Simon as Ernest Tyson, the
man who owns the copper mine Dartland works in; Barton MacClane as Dartland’s
foreman, and Frieda Inescort as Amanda’s mother. Dan Duryea give his standard
booze-gobbling performance as the alcoholic doctor, who vies for Amanda’s
attention.
Other than the love story, “Foxfire’s” secondary
storyline concerns Dartland’s belief that the copper mine they’re working on
has a shaft that could lead to a hidden Apache gold mine. Amanda helps Dartland
convince Tyson to come up with the money for the exploratory work, which leads
the film to one of those predictable mine cave-in disasters.
“Foxfire” has a couple of interesting factoids associated
with it. First, it was the last film to be shot on three-strip Technicolor
film, and the photography out in the Arizona desert by William H. Daniels is
well transferred to Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray disc. Second, although Frank Skinner
composed the score for “Foxfire” the main theme played during the title credits
was written by Henry Mancini, with lyrics written and sung by Chandler. And in
case you want to know, “Foxfire” is what they call the phosphorescent glow that
rise up at night from the rotting timbers in the mine shaft.
The disc comes with a theatrical trailer, and an audio
commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger. It’s not a bad film. It has its
flaws, but if you’re not as finicky as Tarantino, it’s always interesting to
see these artifacts from a different era. “JANE’S GOT JEFF!”
Having starred in the popular sitcom series The
Munsters from 1964 -1966, Herman (Fred Gwynne), Lily (Yvonne De Carlo), Grandpa
(Al Lewis), Eddie (Butch Patrick) and Marilyn (Debbie Watson) hit the big
screen in Munster, Go Home (1966).
Produced and co-written by series creators
Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher (Leave It to Beaver), this satire of American
suburban life features British comedians Terry-Thomas and Hermione Gingold,
legendary horror star John Carradine and future Family Feud host Richard Dawson,
who was then appearing on Hogan’s Heroes.
The Munsters achieved higher Nielsen ratings
than the similarly macabre family of the time The Addams Family. In 1965 it was
nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series but lost to The
Rogues starring David Niven which was cancelled after one season.
After 70 episodes, The Munsters was also
cancelled after ratings dropped due to competition from the Batman TV Series.
The film was produced immediately after the television series completed filming.
It starred the original cast (Fred
Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick) apart from Marilyn, who was
played by Debbie Watson, replacing Pat Priest from the series.
The movie was released in Technicolor,
whereas the TV series was telecast in black & white. The hope was that the
film would introduce the series to the world in advance of negotiating future
syndication rights. The film was released in the United Kingdom at the end of
December 1966 as support for the Norman Wisdom movie Press for Time (1966). The
instrumental theme song, titled The Munsters' Theme, was composed by
composer/arranger Jack Marshall and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1965.
The story sees Herman becoming Lord Munster
after he inherits an estate from an English uncle. With Spot guarding 1313
Mockingbird Lane, Herman leaves his job at Gateman, Goodbury & Graves
Morticians for Munster Hall in England. Whilst there, he uncovers a counterfeiting
ring and upholds the family honour by driving his Drag-u-la special in the
annual road race.
The move from the TV screen to the cinema
screen is often a gamble. The transition is tricky, with the chief obstacle finding
a story interesting enough to fill a 90-minute slot while at the same time
sustaining the audience’s attention can be tough. However, the central problem
with Munster, Go Home! is that it just really isn’t that funny. The shifting
dimensions between TV and cinema so often adjust the overall dynamics. The
absence and familiarity of a laughter track almost leaves a cold, empty feel to
the movie. Whilst The Munsters (shot at Universal City) was never filmed in
front of a live studio audience, it was overdubbed with ‘canned laughter’ or a
laughter track, an element that at least helped cue up or support a punchline
or a comedic line of dialogue. As a result, something just seems to be lost in
the movie version. Even the support from Terry-Thomas as English ancestor
Freddie Munster is really over-the-top and at times borders on embarrassing. At just 96- minutes, it’s all really hard
work.
Nevertheless, it’s not all bad. On the
technical side, the production values work very well. Creepy dungeons, gothic
mansions et al – create the perfect setting and atmosphere to satisfy every
horror kid’s dream. The film is also presented in its original theatrical
1.85:1 ratio. But the real winner here
is the Technicolor photography; the process simply elevates everything on
display. It’s a distinctly ‘groovy’ 60’s colour pallet with all of its vibrant
lime greens, luminous pinks and rich reds’ really igniting the screen and it
comes through as the film’s overall saving grace.
Considering the film (and the series it was
based upon) was so culturally significant, the Blu-ray’s extras are decidedly
thin, consisting of just a lone theatrical trailer. It’s a real pity that some
film or horror historian couldn’t be found to sit in and provide some sort of
commentary – especially as the whole franchise had loose connections and is
distantly related to the whole Universal Horror cycle…
Munster, Go Home! is released on July 25th
2022 as a Region 2 Blu-ray and is available from www.fabulousfilms.com
(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro)
Once upon a time (or more
specifically 1952) the amazing Cinerama film process premiered with “This is
Cinerama”, and for the next ten years moviegoers lined up to hurl down a
rollercoaster, cling tight on a runaway train, make a dangerous flyover at a
volcano, even sit and watch an opera, in the comfort of roadshow seats. Three cameras filming in
synchronization and mounted on a shell the size of a refrigerator captured a
panorama of wonders from around the world. This undertaking was legitimized
when three projectors, along with a fourth reel just for the multi-track sound,
spread these vistas across a curved screen and across the country. Cinerama was
a technical marvel…and not a small response to television!
Finally, after a decade of impressive
travelogues, Cinerama joined forces with MGM. The objective: begin to produce
films with actual stories using this immersive presentation. In June 1961, the
popular LIFE Magazine series “How the West Was Won” began its transition to a
giant of a western film; an all-star cast with three directors attached. A
month later, George Pal began production on “The Wonderful World of the
Brothers Grimm” and it would also employ more than one director. Henry Levin
would handle the real-life dramatics, while Pal lent his gentle hand to the
three fairy tales that would surround the story.
“Brothers Grimm” actually opened
before “How the West Was Won” and got its share of kind but not outstanding
reviews. The three fairy tales presented are not as dynamic as a Snow White or
Cinderella, but of course those stories have been strongly “Disneyfied”, so it
certainly made more sense to use less familiar subjects. What played between
the tales could be another issue: the mixture of drama (including Wilhelm Grimm
being deathly ill in the last half hour) sandwiched with “The Dancing Princess”
or “The Singing Bone” seems a tough grind for an audience full of kids. But Russ Tamblyn is a major
contributor to the fun aspects of the film, with terrific comedy, dancing and a
few dangerous stunts.
With “Brothers Grimm” and "How the West Was Won",
three strip Cinerama went out with positive memories, but it did go out.
Audiences enjoyed it but directors and actors didn’t. A decent close up was out
of the question, actors had to look past their subjects to make it appear
normal for the camera, and cinematographers tried using several inventive ways
to hide the join lines.(Trees and doorways were popular.) The rest of roadshow
Cinerama would originate from various 70mm formats with an image squeeze to wrap
around the curved screen. It was not quite the same, of course, but it brought
success to epics like “Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “2001: A Space
Odyssey”. (Viewing the Cinerama version of “2001”, one fell into space, a
feeling not achieved with any regular 70mm version.)
Time had not been kind to “Brothers
Grimm”. For many years, home video used a print down version (merging the three
panels into a single strip) with less-than-stellar results. Indeed, it was
tough to judge the merits of the film because (to use the words of the late
Cinerama expert John Harvey) it became “The Grim World of the Brothers
Wonderful”. A last hurrah occurred at a Cinerama Dome festival several years
ago when a surviving three panel version played to grateful widescreen fans.
Note: with both “Mad World” and the previously lost “The Golden Head” on the
schedule, a few called the weekend “The Buddy Hackett Film Fest"! And Russ
Tamblyn came to the rescue again when the film broke down for a few minutes and
the movie’s wonderful woodsman filled the time with some behind-the-scenes
stories.
That night, those who were not around for “Brothers
Grimm”s initial Cinerama run discovered the glory previously hidden by its
video version. The surviving print had rough spots but no matter; when the
walk-out music began the Dome audience applauded with the attitude of “We’ve
finally seen this film the way we were supposed to.”
And that, we all thought, was
that.
Photo: Dave Strohmaier
Over the years, producer, editor
(and showmanship expert) Dave Strohmaier has gathered the best technicians in
film and video to transfer the original Cinerama films, including “How the West
Was Won” for the Blu-Ray format. The results are nothing short of remarkable,
and all those titles belong in a film fan’s library. In fact, “How the West Was
Won” has become the standard Blu-Ray for setup according to many home theater
buffs. But while that film’s elements were in excellent shape, some of “Brothers
Grimm” was not. Determining that a photochemical
restoration would be cost prohibitive, if not impossible, Dave Strohmaier, Tom
March and an army of experts set out to create a new digital presentation of
this abandoned work of widescreen art. The result is the best way to see George
Pal’s 1962 effort since, well, 1962.
Like the Warner Archive's Blu-Ray of “How the West Was Won”, “Brothers
Grimm” is a two disc set containing a “Letterboxed” presentation and a “Smilebox”
version, that replicates the experience of seeing the film in its curved screen
Cinerama glory. Choices like this are again another reason to appreciate the
disc medium.
Most may agree that “Brothers Grimm”
is one of George Pal’s most ambitious projects. But is it his greatest
achievement? Probably not. Justin Humphreys, curator of the estate of George
Pal, reflects that the film misses classic status, yet it does accomplish what
Pal, Levin, MGM and Cinema set out to make: a colorful, lively, musical, family
friendly event at the cinema. The money is up on the screen and the European
locations are major attractions.
So the greatness is found,
perhaps not in the film itself but certainly in this Blu-Ray presentation; many
home theater enthusiasts consider “Brothers Grimm” the home video release of
the year, and I agree. From the clarity of Leigh Harline’s Oscar-nominated
score to Paul Vogel’s cinematography, the film sounds and looks like it was
produced today. In fact, due to the richness of Technicolor, dare we say it
looks better than much of what we see in theaters today.
Special features are spread over
both discs; radio interviews, trailers, photo slideshows, a salute to William
R. Forman, promotional artwork, a delightful mini-doc “The Wonderful Career of
George Pal”. But the headliner is surely the 40-minute “Rescuing a Fantasy
Classic” documentary, an in-depth look at the massive digital restoration.
Thanks to the Warner Archive, Dave
Strohmaier, Tom March and the team involved, “The Wonderful World of the
Brothers Grimm” has been given another opportunity to entertain and to live on…happily ever after.
Every career starts somewhere.In 1948, Rock Hudson’s began
under contract at Universal International Pictures with bit roles like “second
lieutenant” and “detective.”By
1953, thanks to his good looks, ambition, an influential agent, and shrewd
beefcake publicity, he progressed to star billing in the studio’s assembly line
of budget-conscious but colorful Westerns and costume adventures.By and large those productions
are little remembered today, but they served two immediate purposes as they
were designed to do.For
Universal International, they made modest profits in movie theatres where weary
working-class families flocked on weekends for splashy Technicolor
entertainment. For
Hudson, a novice actor, they provided valuable on-the-job training and popular
visibility—prerequisites for better paying, more prestigious film credits to
come.
Three of those
journeyman films were “Seminole,” “The Golden Blade,” and “Bengal Brigade,”
available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, in a boxed set as a
“Rock Hudson Collection.”If
you’re a younger viewer who wonders what Grandma and Grandad did for movie
escapism before Marvel Comics and Tom Cruise, these will give you a good idea.Viewers with the time and
stamina may decide to watch the entire set in one binge sitting of 255 minutes.If so, one thing will become
apparent.Even spread
across three genres, the storylines and casts don’t differ much.In the studio system of the
early Eisenhower years, Universal International could make its B-movies quickly
and cheaply by rushing its contract players like Hudson from one backlot set to
another in formulaic scripts.
In “Seminole” (1953),
the actor stars as Second Lt. Lance Caldwell, an Army officer who hopes to
avert a war with the Seminole Indians of 1835 Florida.But his superior officer,
Major Degan (Richard Carlson, effectively cast against type as a bristly
martinet), has other ideas.When
Degan and Caldwell lead an expedition into the swamp to confront the Indians,
the troop is ambushed.Captured,
Lance finds that the Seminoles have their own split between pacifists and
war-mongers.Lance’s
friend, Chief Osceola (Anthony Quinn), wants to sign a treaty even if it means
uprooting the tribe.An
influential warrior, Kajeck (Hugh O’Brian), won’t settle for anything less than
armed victory over Degan and his troops.With the Army routed, the
territory’s white settlers will clear out fast.
Like most 1950s
Westerns, the plot is generic.Except
for the Everglades setting, the Seminole might as well be Apache, Cheyenne, or
Sioux, played by white actors in body paint.Indian wars are the fault of
hot-heads on both sides, not the result of orchestrated land-grabs by the U.S.
government as was usually the case in real life.The swamps are a combination
of on-location footage in the Everglades and a backlot set where Hudson
dutifully slogs through bogs and creeks with supporting players James Best,
Russell Johnson, and another actor who started small and ended big, Lee Marvin.Those scenes give director
Budd Boetticher and his cast a chance to flex some macho muscle, even though
the studio swamp looks about as sweltering and nasty as a Magic Kingdom theme
park.Hudson and
Boetticher would go on to better Westerns, Hudson with Robert Aldrich’s “The
Last Sunset” and Boetticher in five iconic pictures with Randolph Scott.
“The Golden Blade”
(1953) puts Hudson in familiar Arabian Nights
surroundings as
Haroun, a merchant’s son from Basra who travels to Baghdad to avenge his
father’s death in an attack by bandits.In fact, the “bandits” were
assassins secretly dispatched by Jafar (George Macready), the caliph’s scheming
vizier, to provoke a war between the two cities.This is part of a scheme by
Jafar that also includes promoting a marriage between his loutish son Haji
(Gene Evans), the captain of the palace guard, and Princess Khairuzan (Piper
Laurie).Once Haji
becomes regent, agents from “Basra” will murder the caliph and the princess,
and Haji will inherit the throne as Jafar’s puppet.Haroun is under-matched
against Haji, the greatest swordsman in Baghdad, until he finds a magic sword
in the medieval Baghdad equivalent of a Goodwill thrift shop.
Given that Piper
Laurie had recently made two almost identical films with Tony Curtis, “The
Prince Who Was a Thief” (1951) and “Son of Ali Baba” (1952), “The Golden Blade”
was already familiar material by 1953.Some scenes were lifted from an even earlier Universal production,
1944’s “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” a common cost-saving tactic by the
studio in the early 1950s.Minus
the sword fights, there isn’t a lot of difference, either, between “The Golden
Blade” and your eight-year-old's favourite, “Disney’s Aladdin”; even the
villainous viziers in both movies are named Jafar.It’s easy to make fun of
old-fashioned B-level swashbucklers like this, but the director, Nathan Juran,
mounts the action scenes well, and the Technicolor reds, greens, purples, and
blues are sumptuous in their hi-def clarity.Casting Gene Evans as the
secondary bad guy may seem like an odd call, since most of us fondly remember
the veteran character actor for scores of Westerns and war dramas, but Evans’
bullish persona gives the character a knowingly humorous edge.When Piper Laurie’s spirited
princess complains, “Men are able to roam freely, while we women are trapped in
the harem,” the harried housewives of 1953 probably agreed.
Hudson landed the
starring role in “Bengal Brigade” (1954) after Tyrone Power turned down the
part; Power had already played a similar character in 20th Century Fox’s “King of
the Khyber Rifles.”At a
siege of a rebellious native fort in 1856 India, British Captain Jeffrey
Claybourne disobeys an order by Colonel Morrow (Torin Thatcher) to retreat
under heavy fire, attacking instead.Claybourne’s company of native Indian soldiers had walked into an
ambush, and the captain’s action saves their lives at the cost of his military
career and his engagement to the colonel’s daughter (Arlene Dahl).Claybourne resigns and knocks
around India as a big-game hunter (on a jungle set likely repurposed from the
swamp in “Seminole”), when he’s approached by a devious Indian rajah (Arnold
Moss).The rajah is
gathering a private army for an uprising against the British, and he offers the
disillusioned Claybourne a well-paid commission to train his recruits.
Although British rule
in India ended in 1947, the movies continued to celebrate the “sun never sets”
colonial tradition into the 1950s and even beyond.If you expect that “Bengal
Brigade” will cue the opening notes of “Rule Britannia” from the studio’s stock
library of music, you’ll be right on the money, and you won’t have to wait
long.Given today’s wide
availability of Indian actors, the old practice of hiring whites to play native
Indians seems outdated and demeaning, but you’d have come up empty in 1953 to
find a Priyanka Chopra or Irrfan Khan in central casting.The only exceptions here are
performers Sujata and Asoka Rubener in a brief, non-speaking dance routine.At that, Arnold Moss as the
rajah and Michael Ansara as Claybourne’s native sergeant offer more nuanced
performances than the Rule Britannia music might suggest.Anyway, before you attack old
Hollywood for its insular ways, just remember that even today, few Steven
Spielberg fans wince at the unvarnished chauvinism of “Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom.”
The “Rock Hudson
Collection” includes theatrical trailers for all three films and fine audio
commentary on two of them by Nick Pinkerton (“Seminole”) and Phillipa Berry
(“The Golden Blade”).
"His decades-long career, which spanned the silent
era, Hollywood’s golden age and the New Hollywood renaissance of the 1960s and
’70s, was emblematic of a creative spirit that persisted despite changing fashions,
industry upheavals and discriminatory practices. He revolutionized the way
films communicated visually, developing new techniques that could convey
feelings without the need for words or even performers — like the
expressionistic use of wide-angle and fish-eye lenses in John Frankenheimer’s
body-swapping science-fiction drama, Seconds (1966); or one of the earliest
aerial shots in the final moments of Joshua Logan’s Technicolor romantic comedy
Picnic (1955)."
“Son of Samson,” an Italian
production from the wave of sword-and-toga or “peplum” movies in the early
1960s, has been released by Kino Lorber Studio Classics in aBlu-ray edition. When you hit “play,” don’t be
alarmed when a different title,“Maciste
nella Valle de Re,” appears instead.It’s the same picture.“Maciste
nella valle de Re” or “Maciste in the Valley of the Kings” was the original
title in Italy, where director Carlo Campogalliani’s production opened on Nov.
24, 1960.There,
“Maciste” had a nostalgic fan base among older filmgoers who fondly remembered
the super-strong defender of justice and freedom from an iconic series of
silent movies (1914-1927).The
75-year-old Campogalliani had directed three of the original Maciste pictures,
and rebooting the character had long been his pet project.The recent success of Steve
Reeves’ first muscleman epics, “Hercules” (1958) and “Hercules Unchained”
(1959), finally provided the go-ahead.
Since
“Maciste” carried no brand-name value here, “Son of Samson” became the title
for the dubbed, slightly edited version that opened in New York on June 2,
1962.The new title
shrewdly reminded ticket-buyers of Cecil B. DeMille’s popular “Samson and
Delilah” (1950), from which the script lifted a couple of incidental
situations.Also, with
its biblical connotation, “Son of Samson” was designed to placate moralist
watchdogs in conservative small towns.It was okay to ogle a sexy leading lady in skimpy, navel-baring harem
outfits and an oiled-up, nearly naked hero, as long as the Good Book somehow
fit into the scenario. DeMille
had virtually pioneered the same tactic.Never mind that “Son of
Samson” had no narrative connection to the DeMille picture.For that matter, it really had
no religious elements at all.With
its second-unit visuals of the pyramids and other desert monuments, It might
just as easily have been retitled “Samson Meets Cleopatra” to exploit current
publicity around Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “Cleopatra,” which was still a year
away from release.The
“new” Maciste was so popular in Italy that more films followed, in which Mark
Forest was followed in the role by Kirk Morris and Gordon Scott, among others.Later, several of the pictures
were packaged with other peplums for syndicated TV broadcast in America as
“Sons of Hercules” and “Gladiator Theatre.”
In
Campogalliani’s movie, Maciste (Mark Forest) wanders through Egypt in the 5th
Century B.C. looking for good deeds to perform.When he’s attacked by lions,
he kills one with his bare hands (like Victor Mature’s Samson in the DeMille
picture) and is saved from the other by an archer who turns out to be Kenamun,
the Pharaoh’s son.Kenamun
and his father Armiteo try to keep their cruel Persian vizier from oppressing
the common folk, but Armiteo’s trophy wife Smedes (Chelo Alonso) secretly
throws in with the vizier.They
murder the Pharaoh, put Kenamun under a spell, and dispatch their troops to
round up unoffending peasants for brutal slave labor.Maciste steps in to rescue the
villagers, including pretty sisters Tekaet and Nofret, and break Smedes’ spell
over Kenamun.Unlike the
heroes in today’s movie franchises, Maciste doesn’t brood over a tortuous
back-story involving daddy issues, murdered parents, or remorse over past
misdeeds.Asked why he
spends his time helping poor people for no personal gain, he simply answers,
“It is my destiny.”In
that more innocent era of movie entertainment, no further explanation was
required.When Maciste
and Smedes meet in the palace, she tries to seduce him with a slinky belly
dance, and we visit an ingenious execution chamber known as “The Cell of
Death.”There, if you
somehow escape being crushed between two closeable walls, you’ll fall into
a pool of crocodiles.The
script by prolific screenwriters Oreste Biancoli and Ennio De Concini
faithfully observes Chekhov’s famous dictum.If a Cell of Death appears in
the story, someone must perish there before the final credits roll.
The print
of “Son of Samson” presented by Kino Lorber is the Italian version with a
dubbed English voice track.It
includes a fleeting glimpse of a woman’s bare breasts (full disclosure, in case
you’re curious . . . not Chelo Alonso’s) that was censored out of the American
print.Even here, it
speeds by so fast it seems to be optically blurred.Older fans will be glad to see
hunky Mark Forest and super-hot Chelo Alonso again in peak trim, although the
simplistic plot is a reminder that the Italian sword-and-toga movies (even a
better-budgeted one like this, seen in proper Totalscope and Technicolor
presentation after years of abysmal “Gladiator Theatre” prints) tend not to
live up to our youthful memories when we revisit them many years later. The Marvel Studios generation
may squirm at the old-fashioned pace of the script, and wonder why the laconic
hero doesn’t brush off various perils with a stream of clever quips.
Nevertheless,
if you can get your 12-year-old kid brother, son, nephew, or grandson to sit
still long enough, he’ll learn that the basics for luring audiences to the
ticket booth haven’t changed all that much since 1960, whether the buffed-up
guy in the poster is Mark Forest, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Dwayne “The Rock”
Johnson. Millennial
sword-and-toga dramas like the “300” movies (2006 and 2014) and cable’s
“Spartacus” series (2010-13) have more nudity and graphic carnage, but still,
at the end of the day, it’s all about the abs.
The Kino Lorber
release includes captioning and an excellent, insightful, spirited audio
commentary from movie guys David Del Valle and Michael Varrati.
We’re told the expression “Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold” had origin in
seventeenth-century France.I’ve no idea
if this is accurate, nor convinced it matters.What is unquestionable is that in life, literature and art, the subject
of revenge remains constant.Interestingly,
the avenging of injustices, real and perceived, is common to both heroes and their
adversaries.Sometimes motivations
combine so the separation between heroism and evil becomes muddied.As the iconic and deranged fiend Dr. Anton
Phibes, the great Vincent Price adroitly manages to move his audience to cheer as
his character carries out a series of brutal and theatrical murders.
Price appears as the titular Dr. Phibes in two of what
are, inarguably, the actor’s three best recalled films of the 1970s.The cycle was kicked off by Robert Fuest’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972), with
Douglas Hickox’s Theater of Blood
(1973) – a similar film in style to the two-pic Phibes’ franchise – serving as
an unofficial third act.Truth be told,
only Vincent Price could manage to successfully pull off such sadistic and dark
malarkey as presented above.Price’s
reputation for playing gloomy, sinister characters with a sense of self-parodying
gallows-humor whimsy made him a perfect cast.
The early to mid-1970s may not have completely signaled
the end of old-school horror films, but it was the end of an era for those
players still carrying the torch.It was
primarily the British who kept the familiar tropes alive through the bloody, and
often Gothic, productions of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon and late-to-the game Tyburn.Though Hammer was reviled in the 1960s for
allowing Technicolor on-screen bloodletting, such crimson exploitation was
nothing to what was to follow.American
independents had already pushed the envelope to the extreme with such disturbing
drive-in fare as Wes Craven’s Last House
on the Left (1972) and Tobe Hooper’s The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).
Overnight, the performances and films of such polished, academy
trained actors as Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were made antiquated
and unhip.Empty-headed teenagers were
the new principal players, and with the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), old-school horror was
relegated to the annals of film studies as a flood of imitations flooded movie
screens.While Vincent Price didn’t
disappear from movie-house screens, he was seen less often.You were more likely to catch Price on
television in a TV-movie, drama, situation comedy or as a guest on Hollywood Squares.Or, perhaps, you might have been fortunate
enough to catch the veteran actor trotting the boards in a traveling theatrical
production.
Price was, understandably, not a great fan of the
so-called “slasher” film genre.Such
disgruntlement was, no doubt, partly the result of a loss of big screen offers
and opportunities.Price considered the slasher
film “with all their blood and violence […] a different genre from the
wonderful Edgar Allan Poe films we used to make for Roger Corman.”In interviews from that period Price insisted
the recent trend on splashing explicit real-life violence onto the big screen
was a worrying trend.“When you have the
chain saw at the very beginning of the picture that knocks off about fifteen
people, where have you got to go?, he sighed to one journalist.“There’s no humor,” he continued.“They’ve just become too violent for me.”
There’s certainly no absence of humor – dark as it may be
- present in The Abominable Dr. Phibes
and Dr. Phibes Rises Again!.Price is directly responsible for innumerable
murders, most often in devilishly amusing methods.I feel that, in some manner of speaking, the
Phibes films had a measure of stylized influence on the slasher film
genre.The body counts left in the wake
of the subsequent slashers are, generally speaking, no greater nor less than
those in the Phibes or Theater of Blood
exercises.
In terms of thin plotting the Phibes and early slashers
are similar in construction.Both
substitute logic and a compelling storyline for a fast flowing series of voyeuristic
grim executions.The raison d’etre of both enterprises was to
deliver an entertaining, sadistic mix of idiosyncratic killings both inventive
and amusing.The big difference is that
a slate of seasoned actors are summarily dispatched in the Phibes films.In the slashers we tend to cheer on the fates
of the teenage-victims due to their visibly painful absence of acting skills.
In the Phibes films Vincent Price isn’t breaking new
ground.He’s merely diligently following
the established vengeful tradition of preceding movie ghouls.In the nineteen thirties and forties, Boris
Karloff and Bela Lugosi carried out all sorts of vendettas, nearly all the
result of some professional slight.Their targets, deserving or not, were always getting trapped behind
locked doors and no-escape rooms.This
was usually due to their tormentors having had their scientific research
purloined or reputations sullied.
There is one key difference between the old-school and
new-school horrors.Karloff and Lugosi
were crossed men with personalities - as anti-social and vengeful as those
personalities might be.Too many of the
slasher films, in my view anyway, featured successions of masked killers who killed
in cold, robotic-fashion.Often motivations
were not explained (or explained without satisfaction) until a movies’
end.The impersonality of such killings,
arguably, might have contributed to the mystery – as in a, “Why is this
happening?”But such detachment allowed for
too many of the best-remembered slashers to serve as little more than an assembly-line
cinematic abattoir.Which brings us back
to Dr. Phibes.
In The Abominable
Dr. Phibes, the titular character is not a medical doctor at all.A once-celebrated organist, Dr. Anton Phibes
(Vincent Price) holds a curious combination of PhDs in Musicology and
Theology.He uses his knowledge of the
latter to unleash a series of murders fashioned from ancient biblical curses.He unleashes his wrath on the medical team he
holds responsible for the April 1921 death of his wife Victoria Regina Phibes
(Caroline Munro, more or less).Drawing
the final curtains on those of he holds responsible, Phibes – with the
assistance of the mysterious and beautiful Vulnavia (Virginia North) -
methodically executes a series of Old Testament plagues as outlined in the Book
of Exodus.He grimly works his way to
his most loathed and final target, Chief of Surgeons Dr. Vesalius (Joseph
Cotton). Having planned the biblical killing of Vesalius’s son, the firstborn, Phibes
and Vesalius clash over the boy’s gurney in a tense, feverish confrontation at an
extravagant manor house on London’s Maldine Square.
While the casting of The
Abominable Dr. Phibes is perfect, it was an odd gamble that Price, the
film’s star player, was essentially given no interactive dialogue:the actor’s voice is only heard as a
filtered, somewhat robotic, voiceover throughout and even then only sparingly.Actress North, Phibes accessory-in-crime,
admitted to frustration when she read the script and learned her role too was
an unspeaking one. In July of 1971, North,
a former model, sighed to an Associated Press journalist, “I don’t know why
they don’t let me speak.” But she conceded “Not speaking is more sinister I
suppose.”It certainly was in Phibes
case, allowing Price’s disdain for his victims to be projected through his
sneering countenance.
One would have thought it we saw the last of The Abominable Dr. Phibes at that film’s
conclusion.But since American International
had raked in a not inconsiderable profit on investment, a Phibes resurrection
was quickly arranged.The first Phibes
film was often paired in cinema’s with A.I.P.’s Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), a modern-day spin on the old legend.Count
Yorga was very successful in in own right, spawning a sequel of its
own.That series success led to rumors
that A.I.P. might be grooming Yorga
star Robert Quarry as a potential horror film successor to the aging
Price.
What is obvious is that A.I.P. was interested in bringing
to the screen a collaboration of Price and Quarry.This was made plain in December of 1971 when
Louis M. “Deke” Heyward, A.I.P.’s Head of European Production, told reporters, “Bringing
the ‘abominable’ Phibes and the ‘insidious’ Yorga together was something that
just had to happen.The chemistry was too good to miss.”Heyward’s remarks were recorded as shooting
was getting underway at Elstree, the producer crowing, “It’s no secret that
when we were making the first ‘Phibes’ we were so sure we had a hit on our
hands that we took the trouble to shoot the opening scenes of the sequel that
was bound to come.”
Dr.
Phibes Rises Again! reunites several members of the original,
though North was out: Valli Kemp now filled the role of Price’s murderous
assistant.Peter Jeffrey is back as the
frustrated Scotland Yard detective who invariably arrives on the scene too late
to save anyone from their gruesome, if amusing, fates. Another horror icon, Peter Cushing, also appears in the film. As the U.S. and Western Europe was in the
throes of King Tut fever due to public interest in the touring display of
ancient Egyptian artifacts, co-screenwriters Fuest and Robert Blees moved the action
and ensuing mayhem from London to Egypt.
If not as satisfying as its predecessor, Dr. Phibes Rises Again!, is still great
fun.Yes, the sequel simply delivers
more of the same, but this is not necessarily a bad strategy as formula films
go.If anything, the film might be even
lighter in tone than the original, Price camping up the villainy to
preposterous proportions.Though teased
that a third film would follow – a script was commissioned – alas, the
cinematic run of Dr. Phibes was (excuse me) “Phinished.”
This two disc Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu ray issue
of The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! offers both films
in 1.85:1 widescreen and with 1920 x 1080p resolution and DTS-audio.The set offers no fewer than four isolated
audio commentary tracks.The primary
commentary comes directly from director Robert Fuest who shares his production
memories of The Abominable Dr. Phibes.Secondary commentaries on both The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! come courtesy of
film historian Justin Humphreys, the author of The Dr. Phibes Companion (Bear Manor Media, 2018), the definitive
work on all things Phibesian.Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas also shares thoughts
on Dr. Phibes Rises Again!. The set
rounds out with a collection of radio and television spots and theatrical
trailers.There’s also a colorful
slipcover for collectors and Phibes wonks, like myself, to fawn over.
Although released in February
1942, Warner Brothers’ wartime drama “Captains of the Clouds” was filmed
several months earlier, when America’s official stance toward the crisis in
Europe, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, remained one of isolationism.As the thinking went, the
United States was better off conserving its own human and industrial resources
as it continued to stagger back from the Great Depression.Let the combatants overseas
fight it out between themselves.
Aware of
the movies’ enormous power to sway public opinion, watchdogs in Congress — and
in the industry itself — threatened severe action should any studio question
the prevailing wisdom.Of
a different mind and appalled by Nazi fascism, Harry and Jack Warner produced
several movies that shrewdly challenged the restrictions by circumventing them.Thus the villains in Warners’
“Confessions of a Nazi Spy” (1939) were Nazi agents subverting freedom not in
faraway Europe, but right here on American soil, where they could be exposed
and thwarted by a vigilant FBI.“The
Fighting 69th” (1940) and “Sergeant York” (1941) reminded audiences that
America had crushed Germany’s war machine in World War I.Not only could we do so again,
we should do so again as a spiritual and moral duty, they implied.In “Captains of the Clouds,”
directed by Michael Curtiz, the surrogates for American intercession are five
veteran Canadian bush pilots who join the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940 to
defend England against the Luftwaffe.
The first
part of the picture establishes one of the aviators, Brian MacLean, as a cocky,
unscrupulous loner who consistently undercuts his rivals Jimmy (Dennis Morgan),
Tiny (Alan Hale), Blimp (George Tobias), and Scrounger (Reginald Gardiner) in
their business of flying passengers and cargo from one remote outpost to
another in the Ontario back country.James Cagney portrays Brian in fine Cagney style.Nominally, MacLean is the
protagonist of the story, but he’s only marginally more sympathetic than
Cagney’s ruthless gangsters in “The Public Enemy” and “White Heat.”I suspect that many moviegoers
who had barely survived the worst of the Depression secretly envied Cagney’s
characters in their determination to stay one jump ahead of everybody else,
whatever it took.MacLean
gives Dennis Morgan’s earnest Jimmy one more reason to resent him when he puts
the moves on Jimmy’s restless sweetheart Emily (Brenda Marshall), and she
throws the good boy aside for the bad boy.
Then the
war comes into play when the pilots hear Churchill’s inspirational “we shall
fight them on the beaches” speech on the radio after the evacuation at Dunkirk.“Now there’s a man who knows
how to word an invitation,” Brian marvels.The fliers join up to see
active service overseas, not knowing they’re all above the ceiling age of 26
for combat pilots.Instead,
disappointed but game, they’re commissioned as flight instructors at Canada’s
training bases.Fans of
WWII aviation movies may be equally disappointed since the development severely
limits the opportunity for dogfights.The picture’s aerial combat is confined to a tense sequence in the final
ten minutes, as the pilots become sitting ducks for a Messerschmitt’s machine
guns while on emergency assignment to transport Lockheed bombers from Canada to
England.
On the
other hand, aside from the occasional use of models and back projection, the
flight scenes in Canada are the real deal in vivid Technicolor.And thanks to the cooperation
of the RCAF, the episodes at Canada’s real-life training fields have a
convincing documentarian feel, including an appearance by Air Marshal Billy
Bishop, still revered in 1942 for his exploits as a flying ace in World War I.Bishop plays himself in a
low-key but ingratiating way as he awards wings to the cadets at their
graduation ceremony.Fans
may also be comforted that the latter half of the film satisfies the formula
they’ve come to expect from a hundred war movies up to and beyond “Top Gun,”
dogfights or no.The
self-centered hero butts heads with military discipline, suffers a fall from
grace with tragic consequences due to his impulsive nature, and then
unexpectedly rallies with a final act of redemption.
A new
Blu-ray edition of “Captains of the Clouds” from the Warner Archive Collection
does full justice to the movie’s Technicolor palette, especially in several
outdoor scenes in Canada’s spectacular North Bay wilderness.To simulate a night out at the
movies in 1942, special features include a newsreel, a short, two cartoons, and
the theatrical trailer.SDH
captions are provided for those of us not old enough to remember World War II
but well-served by subtitles anyway.Coincidentally, the Blu-ray was released as leaders from the U.S. and
its NATO partners continued to debate and tune their response to Putin’s
ongoing attack on Ukraine.The
parallels with 1942 aren’t exact — for one thing, Hitler didn’t have a nuclear
option in his back pocket — but it’s a reminder anyway that the worst facets of
history have an unfortunate tendency to repeat themselves.
A
Star is Born has
been made many times—as four Hollywood feature films, one television movie, and
one Bollywood picture. The 1937 original, produced by David O. Selznick,
directed by William A. Wellman, is often forgotten amongst the more recent
versions, such as the celebrated 2018 remake starring Lady Gaga and Bradley
Cooper.
For
this reviewer’s money, the 1937 A Star is Born is superior to them all.
Granted, it is obviously dated and one must place oneself within the context of
the period in which the movie was released. It is also not a musical, as all
the others are. The first version also deals exclusively with the motion
picture industry. The second one, released in 1954 and starring Judy Garland
and James Mason, did as well… but following adaptations went more into the
music professions of the characters and incorporated Grammy Awards rather than
Oscars. If you want A Star is Born without musical numbers, and there is
ample support that the piece works more realistically without them, then the
1937 version is for you.
The
Oscar winning story, by William A. Wellman and Robert Carson, was the basis of
all the remakes, but here it was the origin, turned into a screenplay by Carson,
Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell. The tale is by now familiar ground—a young
woman becomes a star overnight while simultaneously her husband experiences ruin.
A rise and a fall, all in lovely Technicolor!
Esther
Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) is an innocent but bright-eyed farmgirl who is intent
on making her way to Hollywood to become an actress. Against her father and
aunt’s wishes, but encouraged by her grandmother, Esther leaves the nest and
goes to Tinsel Town. She quickly learns that things are not so easy. With the
help of a neighbor, Danny (Andy Devine), who happens to be an assistant
director, she is placed in positions where she can “meet” people. Sure enough, she
encounters a big star, Norman Maine (Fredric March). Unfortunately, Norman’s
glory days seem to be behind him as the bottle has dictated a gradual descent in
popularity. Nevertheless, Norman is struck by Esther and finagles a screen test
for her with his producer, Oliver Niles (Adolphe Menjou). Oliver immediately
sees Esther’s potential, gives her the more marketable name of “Vicki Lester,” and
she is off and running. Promising to quit drinking, Norman asks Esther to marry
him, and she accepts. But as Esther/Vicki becomes more successful, Norman falls
off the wagon and their relationship goes off the rails.
There
is one scene that exists in all the versions of A Star is Born, and that
is when the husband embarrasses his wife during her moment of triumph at an
awards ceremony—here the event is the Oscars, as it is in the 1954 edition. The
moment is powerful and excruciating, and it is one of the reasons both Gaynor
and March were nominated for Best Actor and Actress for the film.
Producer
Selznick was known for overseeing lavish, gorgeous productions, and A Star
is Born fits the bill. Beautifully photographed in that distinctive, vivid
1930s Technicolor by W. Howard Greene (who received an Honorary Oscar for his
achievement), the picture displays the glitz and glamour of that bygone,
mythical Hollywood era. Director Wellman was nominated for his efforts, and the
movie was up for Best Picture (the category was called Best Production then).
Gaynor
is especially good, and March is always brilliant. The supporting cast—Menjou,
Devine, May Robson, Lionel Stander, and Edgar Kennedy—is stellar.
The
picture, while assuredly a drama that takes a hard look at the alcoholism
destroying Maine, is also striking for the amount of humor it contains. There
are many Hollywood in-jokes, such as when Gaynor impersonates several leading
actresses of the day when she is waitressing at a star-studded party. Stander,
Devine, and Kennedy, known for their comedic turns, also provide much of the
levity.
The
Warner Archive Blu-ray is a new, meticulous 4K restoration from the original
nitrate Technicolor camera negative, and it looks absolutely fantastic. In
keeping with Warner disks that employ “A Night at the Movies” supplements, this
one contains a treasure trove of extras. The 1938 cartoon, “A Star is Hatched,”
is one of those Looney Tunes that features Hollywood star caricatures, and it’s
hilarious. A 1937 comic short featuring Joe Palooka and Shemp Howard, “Taking
the Count,” is amusing, and two other vintage shorts—“Mal Hallett and His
Orchestra” and “Alibi Mark”—are also entertaining and indicative of the type of
fare one would see at the theater in those days. The disk also incudes two
different Lux Radio Theater broadcasts of the story—one from 1937 featuring
Janet Gaynor and Robert Montgomery, and one from 1952 starring Judy Garland and
Walter Pidgeon. The theatrical trailer rounds out the package.
This
new region-free Blu-ray edition from Warner Archive is a must for fans of any version
of A Star is Born. The 1937 original, though, is and will always be
grand entertainment. Highly recommended.
The
1964 action-adventure picture, The 7th Dawn, is a solid piece of work that
features an exotic location (it was filmed in Malaysia), a couple of big stars
(William Holden, Capucine), a fairly “new†one (Susannah York), and, for the
year it was released and its budget limitations, moderately spectacular action
sequences.
However,
today, the movie might be memorable because of its links to James Bond films. It
was directed by Lewis Gilbert (who helmed You Only Live Twice, The
Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker), it co-stars TetsurÅ
Tamba (“Tiger Tanaka†in You Only Live Twice), is photographed by
Freddie Young (credited here are Frederick Young, DP of You Only Live Twice),
the main titles are by Maurice Binder (veteran of the 007 films for three
decades), it was released by United Artists, and the movie is produced by
Charles K. Feldman (responsible for the non-EON 1967 Casino Royale)!
The
7th Dawn is
based on the 1960 novel, The Durian Tree by Michael Keon, and was
adapted to film by Karl Tunberg. It’s the story of the path to Malayan
independence from British rule after World War II, especially during the
chaotic and violent years of the early 1950s.
Three
close friends—American Ferris (William Holden), Malayan/French Dhana (French actress
Capucine), and Malayan Ng (Japanese actor TetsurÅ Tamba) fight with
the Malayan army against the Japanese during World War II. Both men are sweet
on Dhana, but at the end of the war, Ng graciously retreats and allows Ferris
and Dhana to live together while he goes off to Russia to further his education.
Cut to 1953, when Malayan guerrillas—led by Ng—are attacking both the British
forces and Malayans in terrorist acts to force the British to leave. Ferris,
who simply wants to live in peace on his rubber plantation, is persuaded by the
British leader, Trumpey (Michael Goodliffe), to find Ng and convince the man
that the British eventually do want to grant the Malayans independence. Dhana
leaves Ferris to join Ng’s guerrillas, making room for Trumpey’s daughter,
Candace (Susannah York), to set sights on the American. When Dhana is arrested,
tried for terrorist acts, and sentenced to death, Candace is kidnapped by Ng’s
forces. Ferris then has seven days to find Ng and Candace in the back country before
Dhana is hanged.
It’s
all fairly exciting stuff, and it’s a colorful display of mid-1960s Hollywood
production values depicting warfare in a jungle setting. Holden is fine as the
stalwart and stubborn former mercenary turned businessman. Capucine, although
lacking Asian heritage, is convincing enough as being half Malayan (her skin
color appears to have been artificially darkened), and Tamba exhibits why
director Gilbert likely chose him to play Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live
Twice. York is also a screen presence who, being the only blonde in sight, attracts
audience attention. She had just come off her appearance in the award-winning Tom
Jones, so her star was quickly rising.
The
musical score by Riz Ortolani is of note with lush melodies and sweeping
strings. The theme song, sung by The Lettermen, became a hit standard in the
decade.
Kino
Lorber’s high def transfer is acceptable; it certainly shows off that
distinctive look of 1960s film stock, and Freddie Jones’ cinematography
captures panoramic vistas of Malaysia and its jungles. There are no other supplements
other than a theatrical trailer and optional English subtitles for the hearing
impaired.
The
7th Dawn is
fine fare for fans of any of the cast members, action-adventure in exotic
landscapes, and 1960s Hollywood sensibility in widescreen Technicolor.
James
Jones is mostly known for his debut novel, From Here to Eternity. His
second novel, published in 1958, was Some Came Running, a 1,200-page
potboiler that blows the lid off small town America. It was a more adult Peyton
Place, if that was possible for the time. Colorful, sometimes sordid,
characters populate the book, and it didn’t do as well as that classic first publication.
Nevertheless, MGM immediately scooped it up and managed to turn it into a
motion picture by the end of the same year.
Frank
Sinatra found the material appealing, and he saw himself as the story’s lead,
Dave Hirsh, a prodigal son of sorts from fictional Parkman, Indiana. Discharged
from the army, Hirsh arrives in town with a hangover and a party girl he picked
up in Chicago, Ginny Moorehead (Shirley MacLaine). His brother, Frank (Arthur
Kennedy) is a big shot in Parkman. Frank owns a jewelry business and is on the
board of one of the two rival banks. Dave and Frank have been estranged for
years, especially since Frank put younger Dave in a boarding school when their
parents died, instead of having Dave come live with him and his wife, Agnes
(Leora Dana). Dave once fancied himself a writer and had published two books.
While deep down he hopes to write again, his cynicism for just about everything
keeps him from doing so. Dave meets Bama Dillert (Dean Martin) in the town bar,
and they hit it off. Bama is an alcoholic, but he’s an amusing companion who,
like Dave, likes to play poker games. Dave eventually meets and falls in love
with the creative writing teacher at the school, Gwen French (Martha Hyer)—but
Ginny, who has stayed in town to be near Dave, is a constant obstacle to that
match. Other disreputable goings-on complicate the plot, such as Frank’s
daughter (and Dave’s niece), Dawn (Betty Lou Keim), catching her father parked
in the “lover’s lane†with the jewelry shop secretary, Edith (Nancy Gates).
Will Dave find the love he wants and needs? Will the gangster from Chicago, who
is in town to cause trouble for Ginny and Dave, resort to serious violence?
Will Bama ever take off his hat, which he insists on wearing all the time, even
in bed? You’ll have to see the film to find out.
That
plot summary might sound like the outline of a soap opera, but never mind that—Some
Came Running is a fascinating, searing, well-acted, and beautifully-directed
drama. The director, Vincente Minnelli, was on a roll in 1958—he won the
Academy Award for Director for Gigi (it won Best Picture, too), also
directed The Reluctant Debutante, and ended the year with Some Came
Running. For this reviewer’s money, Minnelli got the Oscar for the wrong
film. Yes, Running is that
good.
For
one thing, Frank Sinatra has never been better, his Oscar-winning turn in From
Here to Eternity notwithstanding. It’s shocking that, after receiving a
nomination for his performance as a drug addict in The Man with the Golden
Arm (1955), he was not up for Best Actor for Running. He commands
every frame of film he’s in. Secondly, Dean Martin is terrific in one of his
early “Dean Martin Persona†roles he fashioned for himself after the cinematic
partnership with Jerry Lewis splintered. Finally, Shirley MacLaine is a delight
as the not-so-bright, trampy, but good-natured Ginny—and she received her first
Best Actress Oscar nomination for the performance. Kennedy and Hyer also both respectively
received Supporting Actor and Actress Oscar nominations.
The
movie is an insightful character study of lost souls reaching for a place
called “happiness†by pretending that they’re already there. In many ways, the
small town is a character, too, for it has the façade of Americana at its
finest, and yet there are those pockets that exist in every town of skid row
neighborhoods, seedy bars, loose women, and crime. It’s in the latter locations
where Dave finds himself, no matter how much he aspires to be in the
“respectable†parts of town life. Nevertheless, he knows, and the audience
eventually learns, that there is one class of people in town who may be
prosperous but are really phonies, and a lower class that is sleazy and yet
sincere. What you see is what you get.
Some
may find the dialogue and attitudes toward women—especially from Martin’s
character, who calls all women “pigsâ€â€”to be sexist and even misogynistic. This,
however, is part of the James Jones milieu, as well as a major aspect of the locale,
the class structure, and the era in which the picture takes place. What the
movie really has to say about women is far more significant and auspicious.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray release looks gorgeous in its vivid widescreen Technicolor.
There’s not a blemish in sight. Supplements include an informative 20-minute
documentary on the film’s history and making, and the theatrical trailer.
Some
Came Running
is an underrated, overlooked gem that should be re-evaluated. For fans of Sinatra,
MacLaine, Martin, Minnelli, and James Jones. Highly recommended.
The
Warner Archive has released a new edition of Corvette Summer and the movie,
while not a major hit, looks great on this Blu-ray disc.
Mark
Hamill, fresh from the incredible success of 1977’s Star Wars, stars as a
Southern California high school senior who is quite the auto mechanic and
restoration expert. He plays Kenny, a teenage car aficionado with a special
place in his heart for Corvettes. His passions lead him to fix up a 1973
Corvette Stingray in his auto shop class with the help of his classmates, and
together they create one spectacular ride. Candy apple red and featuring
incredible modifications including the steering wheel being moved to the right
side, it is a sweet ride. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before the
car is stolen, so Kenny, distraught over losing the only thing in the world
that meant something to him, puts out all his efforts in getting the vehicle
back. A tip leads him to Las Vegas, where he connects up with a fledgling
hooker, Vanessa, who helps him track down the Stingray before it gets away for
good.
The
plot is paper-thin and none of the characters are able to maintain any
consistent qualities.The real star is
that very cherry Corvette that endures two paint jobs, rough handling on the
road and a general lack of respect by the thieves.
If
you watch carefully during Mark Hamill’s close-ups it is possible to see
evidence of his January 1977 near-fatal car accident.As a result, he suffered a fractured
cheekbone and a broken nose while crossing several lanes of traffic in his
BMW.Doctors were able to correct the
damage by removing cartilage from his ear to repair his nose.Despite the surgeons’ best efforts, Hamill
was left with some minor scarring.Make-up hid most of the effects of the crash, but you are able to see
evidence of it in brightly lit scenes.The next year, while filming The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas
explained the scars by adding Luke Skywalker’s encounter with the Wampa monster
in the ice cave on Planet Hoth.
Corvette
Summer includes the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold played by a young
Annie Potts in her first movie role.She
is the most likeable member of the cast.Potts actually attempts several jobs along the way including fast food
worker, casino dealer and soft-core porn actress.None of these scenes are too graphic as this
is a PG-rated film.At one point a
scantly dressed Vanessa asks Kenny to spend the night in her trailer.After learning he is a virgin, she lays back
on the waterbed and tells him “Forget kissing, let’s screw.â€That line would certainly not pass muster
with the PG rating today. Before PG-13 came along in 1984, the old PG
classification allowed for some fairly strong violence, language and adult
themes.I remember seeing the comedy
Silver Streak at the theater back in 1976.While traveling on a train, Gene Wilder and Jill Clayburgh share a love
scene in their coach and included was a fairly racy shot implying Wilder
enjoying a bit of oral sex.There was a
young mother with her family sitting in the row directly behind me.Her little boy loudly asked “What’s she doing
now, Mommy?â€The quick thinking parent
answered back “She’s just tickling his tummy.â€Nearby audience members just roared as it was the funniest line we heard
all evening.
A
plethora of terrific character actors make appearances including Dick Miller,
Danny Bonaduce, Philip Bruns, Eugene Roche, Wendie Jo Sperber, T.K. Carter and
Brion James.James is best remembered as
the nasty replicant, Leon, who kills the first test administrator in Blade
Runner.Dick Miller is his usual
memorable self as a lucky gambler who helps Hamill out of a jam.Eugene Roche plays the kind of high school
teacher who always looks out for his students.There is a plot twist involving Roche near the end, though, that you
don’t see coming.
Corvette
Summer was scripted by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, who also wrote or
directed popular films such as Dragonslayer, Warning Sign, MacArthur,
*batteries not included and The Sugarland Express.Corvette Summer doesn’t offer much backstory
or motivation for Hamill or Potts.There
is more needed in the way of plot developments and better characterizations.It’s basically boy restores car, boy loses
car and boy attempts to get car back.
The
sharp Technicolor cinematography was the work of Frank Stanley and his efforts
are especially apparent during the scenes in Las Vegas.This was the older Strip from the 70s and the
bold neon signs looked spectacular.I
was reminded of the Vegas shots from the 007 film Diamonds Are Forever.
Craig
Safan, a lesser known but very talented film composer, provided a spirited
score that added energy to the stunt driving scenes.This film was prior to his best known work in
The Last Starfighter and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
The
fights and car chase sequences were staged by veteran stunt coordinator Buddy
Joe Hooker who also served as second unit director.He took care to make sure the Corvette was
not damaged during shooting.
I
always find it interesting that no one seems to drive on the Interstate in road
or chase movies.No matter how fast they
need to travel, the characters in these films always take the two-lane
secondary roads. Some directors find ways to rationalize this aspect of a film.
In Rain Man, for example, director Barry
Levinson explains this by revealing Raymond Babbitt’s (Dustin Hoffman) fear of
large highways.The reason for smaller
roads is most likely the difficulty in shutting down major expressways for
filming.
Corvette
Summer enjoyed moderate success for MGM during the summer of 1978 as it played
in most of the finer drive-ins and second-run houses across the country.It served as a stepping stone for director
Robbins, screenwriter Barwood and actress Potts as they all enjoyed successful
careers in Hollywood.
The
Blu-ray from Warner Archive features the usual excellent video quality, crisp
mono sound and clean, clear dialogue.There is moderate grain, typical for the era that, for me at least, aids
in the focus of my outdoor video projector.Subtitles and a theatrical trailer are the only extras, but one should
be grateful that distributers are willing to restore and release lesser-known
films in such beautiful editions.Corvette Summer is a great little film for a rainy day when one is
nostalgic for 70s car movies.
By the mid-1950s Burt Lancaster was one of the biggest stars in the world. He used his clout to form his own production company so that he would not be chained to exclusive contracts with specific studios as so many of his peers were. Lancaster could pick and choose his own projects and how they were brought to the screen. He harbored dreams of becoming a full-time director and stated publicly that he intended to retire from acting in order to fulfill this fantasy. So far, so good. However, Lancaster, who was never lacking in confidence or ego, managed to alienate seemingly everyone in his orbit by making disparaging remarks about directors and their profession in general. This didn't sit well with those he offended and Lancaster was denied entry into the Director's Guild of America when it came to helming his first film, an adaptation of Felix Holt's frontier novel "The Gabriel Horn", which he was bringing to the big screen in Technicolor and CinemaScope under the title "The Kentuckian". Lancaster had lined up some top-rate talent for the production, which was the first of a multi-picture distribution deal with United Artists. Acclaimed Western novelist A.B. Guthrie Jr. was the screenwriter, the esteemed Laszlo Kovacs was the cinematographer and Bernard Herrmann was the composer. This was a fairly big-budget production that eschewed Hollywood's penchant for studio-bound sets and stock photography in favor of actually filming on location in rural Kentucky.
The story opens with Elias Wakefield (Lancaster), a widowed backwoodsman and his young son Little Eli (Donald MacDonald) as they gleefully march through remote wooded areas in Kentucky heading toward a far-away river where they intend to ride an elegant steam ship to a new life in Texas. The promise of vast land and unlimited potential is too much for Elias to resist and he's scrimped and saved up $200 for the passenger fare aboard the boat. He also wants to put some distance between him and Little Eli and two members of a clan that have been carrying on a long feud with the Wakefields and who are intent on tracking down and killing Elias. Things go awry when they reach a town where the locals are anything but friendly. Elias is framed for a crime and jailed. The corrupt locals intend to allow him to be killed by the would-be assassins who have arrived in town. Elias is saved by Hannah (Dianne Foster), a lovely young woman who is suffering as an indentured servant to a cruel owner of a tavern. She frees Elias and joins him and his son as they flee towards the freedom Texas offers. Along the way, they are captured by lawmen and Elias has to use his life savings to buy Hannah's "contract" out with her employer. Although Elias treats Hannah with sisterly respect, it's clear she has romantic designs on him that she keeps subdued. Upon arriving in another town to visit Elias's brother Zack (John McInintire) and his wife Sophie (Una Merkel), the trio finds the new locale not much friendlier than their last encounter with civilization. Although they are warmly greeted by Zack and Sophie, the rest of the local population mocks them as unsophisticated hicks. Because they are destitute, Elias has to go into Zack's career as a tobacco seller where he finds unexpected success. Hannah, however, finds herself back in servitude with yet another cruel tavern owner, Bodine (Walter Matthau in his big screen debut). Elias enrolls his son in school for the first time and manages to fall for his teacher, Susie (Diana Lynn), who returns the sentiment. As their love affair grows, Elias alienates his own son, who accuses his father of dashing their plans to move to Texas. Also alienated is Hannah, who suffers in silence while the man she loves romances another woman. Things come to a head when Elias has a knock-down brawl with Bodine, whose penchant for wielding a bullwhip exacts a terrible toll on him. Then the killers from the rival clan show up and lay in wait to assassinate Elias.
"The Kentuckian" was not the great success Burt Lancaster had hoped for. Critics were anemic if not downright cynical about the film with Bosley Crowther of the New York Times mocking it mercilessly. When the movie under-performed, Lancaster uncharacteristically went public with his frustrations at the magnitude of work it took to both star in and direct the film. He ate considerable crow and said he underestimated how much talent it took to direct a movie, thereby winning him favor with a profession he had previously offended. (Lancaster's only other directing credit is as co-director of the 1974 crime thriller "The Midnight Man". ) Although "The Kentuckian" has plenty of corny and predictable elements to it, the film is reasonably good entertainment. Lancaster, who was always among the most charismatic of leading men, delivers a solid performance and he is aided by an able cast of leading ladies and fine character actors. Young Donald MacDonald gives an impressive performance as his son and Matthau, who would later denounce the role he played as ludicrous, is nevertheless a suitable villain in the Snidley Whiplash mode. The cinematography is very good, though the movie does feature some of the worst "day for night" effects imaginable. Scenes that are set in the dead of night are presented in bright sunshine. Bernard Herrmann's score is appropriately rousing and the film features some good action sequences. Perhaps the most under-valued aspect of the movie is its intelligent screenplay which presents the characters with engaging back stories and dilemmas. Lancaster chose to stress the human side of the story instead of spectacle and violence.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks great and contains the trailer along with a welcome gallery of other trailers pertaining to Lancaster movies.
Michael Curtiz’s Doctor
X is a more technically extravagant version of the original stage
production of playwrights Howard Warren Comstock and Allen C. Miller.The play was first tested at the Fox Theater
in Great Neck, Long Island, for a single night’s performance on January 10,
1931.It was immediately followed by a
brief run at Brandt’s Carlton Theatre in Jamaica, Queens, where newspaper adverts
suggested theatergoers “Bring Your Shock Absorber†along.The production then moved to Brandt’s Boulevard
Theatre in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, for several performances, only to
be followed by a week-long preview and fine-tuning at Brandt’s Flatbush Theater
in Brooklyn beginning January 26.
The three-act “mystery melodrama†would finally make its Broadway
debut at the Hudson Theater, off W. 44th Street, on February 9,
1931.The stage play featured actor Howard
Lang in the role of the sinister Dr. Xavier, but the mystery wouldn’t enjoy a
terribly long run on the Great White Way.The Hudson would eventually shutter the doors on the production in
mid-April 1931.
It’s no coincidence that four Brandt-owned theatres were successively
engaged to showcase the early previews of Doctor
X.The play had been intentionally co-produced
for the stage by the theatre owners William and Harry Brandt.Billboard
would note in December of 1930 that the two brothers had chosen to enter the
field of theatrical production as a potential remedy to offset the “slack
business conditions on the subway circuit.â€
The early reviews of the Brandt’s showcase were mainly
positive, especially when considering the decidedly grim fare offered.The critic from Brooklyn’s Times-Union thought Doctor X a “swell show.†The paper reported that the gruesome
goings-on of Jackson Height’s preview had not only caused a woman in the
balcony to scream in fright but that other patrons nervously called “for the
lights to be turned on†midway through the program.Whether such outbursts of fright were genuine
or simply publicity ballyhoo stunts may never be known.But likely more of the latter than the
former.
Not everyone was impressed. Brooklyn’s Standard-Union newspaper took a
contrarian view of the stage show’s ability to curdle the blood of attendees.In the paper’s review of February 10, 1931,
their critic would grieve that Doctor X
was a mostly undistinguished effort, “Freighted with all the dismal baggage of
those lamentable pastimes known as mystery thrillers.â€â€œEven though the authors, no pikers, have
arranged almost an endless procession of synthetic horrors,†the review
mercilessly continued, “spectators are no longer hoodwinked by such drowsy
tidbits.No longer can an actor with an
anaemic makeup or panels that slide open terrify theatergoers into submission.â€
Nonetheless, and though the play opened to mixed reviews,
some of the New York dailies were impressed.There were enough good notices to allow the Brandt’s to run
advertisements suggesting Doctor X as
“New York’s Only Mystery Hit: Electrifies Press and Public Alike!†The critic of the New York Herald Tribune thought it a grand affair, trumpeting, “’Doctor X’ holds the best claim for some
time to the grand heritage of such creepy works as ‘The Bat,’ ‘The Cat and the
Canary’ and ‘The Spider.’â€These
references to past and successful mystery-melodramas of the stage were not only
interesting but prescient: all three of these theatrical properties were
subsequently licensed by Hollywood studios to be brought to neighborhood movie
screens. Such transitioning of
properties from Broadway to Hollywood was, as referenced by the above review,
not unusual.
Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood’s The Bat had made its Broadway debut at
the Morosco Theatre on August 22, 1921.That play would be belatedly adapted for the screen as a vehicle for
Vincent Price in 1959.John Willard’s The Cat and the Canary would debut on
the boards of the Majestic Theatre on June 14, 1937, and enjoy no fewer than three
film treatments: there was Paul Leni’s celebrated silent film version of 1927,
a popular Bob Hope mystery-comedy of 1939, and a late-arriving 1978 British
production featuring Honor Blackman, Michael Callan and Edward Fox.Fulton Oursler and Lowell Brentano’s The Spider would make two appearances on
Broadway with an initial staging at Chanin’s 46th Street Theater in
March of 1927 and, again, at the Century Theater in February of 1928.That play would be brought to the big screen
twice, first in 1931 as a straightforward murder mystery, then reconfigured in
1945 as a film noir-style mystery picture.
Interestingly, Lionel Atwill was working on a different
Broadway stage at the same time Doctor X
was concurrently running at the Hudson.Atwill was working one block north at Broadway’s Morosco Theatre, the
featured player in Lee Shubert’s production of The Silent Witness (opening date 3/23/31).The
Silent Witness too was quickly picked up by Fox and following that show’s
Broadway run, Atwill traveled out to Hollywood to star in the play’s film
version, co-directed by Marcel Varnel and R.L. Hough.Though there were reports that Lionel Atwill
was to return to the New York stage directly following that film’s wrap, in early
March 1932 newssheets reported that Warner Bros. had asked him to remain in
Hollywood for a spell.He had been
offered the title role in their recently optioned property Doctor X.
There’s a lot to like about this film.With the release of Doctor X, Warner Bros. was most likely hoping to siphon off some of
the public interest and box office that Universal was enjoying with such
macabre fare as Dracula and Frankenstein.Though the studio fell short of producing an
iconic film, they nevertheless produced a pretty decent B-picture that offered
a modicum of thrills and chills.One of
the true highlight’s of the film version of Doctor
X, is the art deco “mad scientist†laboratory sets of designer Anton
Grot.The sets were so elaborate and
grand that the New York Herald Tribune
would run a fifteen paragraph long - and impressively detailed - tribute on
Grot and his designs.That article, “Built-in Menace Hangs Over All in Anton
Grot’s House of Doomâ€), includes an unusual for the period in-depth
interview with the designer.The article
also notes that no fewer than “192 sketches and blueprints†of imaginative and
elaborate design had been drafted in preparation for shooting.
The
Warner Archive has done itself proud with their new release of MGM’s splendid
1951 production of Showboat.This
Technicolor spectacular is actually the third film version of the Jerome
Kern/Oscar Hammerstein classic, which is based on a novel by Edna Ferber.The Freed unit at MGM pulled out all the
stops for this effort and cast Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ava Gardner, Joe
E. Brown, Agnes Moorehead, Marge and Gower Champion and William Warfield in
this turn- of -the last century story set in the deep South.
Cap’n
Andy and his wife Parthy use their paddle Wheeler, the Cotton Blossom, to put
on shows up and down the Mississippi River.Their daughter, Magnolia, dreams of playing a part but is discouraged by
her strict mother.One day a charming,
but down and out gambler named Gaylord comes looking for work as an actor.He and Magnolia immediately fall in love.
At
first there is no work, but a spurned lover turns in leading lady Julie, who
has been passing as white, on a miscegenation charge.She and leading man Steve, her husband, are
forced to leave the show.And now, in
the type of plot twist that can only happen in musicals, Gaylord and Magnolia
become lovers both on and off stage.As
Joe maintains the Cotton Blossom, we are treated to a plot of money won and
lost, the birth of a child, the effects of alcoholism and the heartbreak of
loss and redemption.
Under
the guidance of veteran director George Sidney, working from a script by John
Lee Mahin, this version of Showboat concentrates on the love story and glosses
over many of the racial undertones of the previous films.
In
1936 Universal produced a black and white version of Showboat that adhered more
closely to the stage play.Directed by
James Whale and produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr. and starring Irene Dunne, Helen
Morgan, Paul Robeson, Allan Jones and Hattie McDaniel, this earlier film presented
more of the harsh reality of the racial divides of that era.At one point Ms. Dunne, as Magnolia, performed
Gallavantin’ Around in blackface as part of the onboard show.
George
Sidney’s Showboat, true to the MGM musical formula, celebrates the Kern/Hammerstein
songs and the extravagant production numbers choreographed by Robert Alton.Several of these dances featured future
choreographer and director Gower Champion and his very talented wife
Marge.Life Upon the Wicked Stage is an
especially impressive effort by these two.
With
the exception of a few riverfront scenes staged near Nacthez, MS, all filming
took place at the studios and backlots of MGM.A working paddle wheeler was constructed and launched into the lake that
was once used for the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies.Built on top of a barge, the boat was towed
by underwater cables allowing it to stop on a mark for the dance numbers.
The
costumes, production numbers and sets burst forth with all of the brightness
that Technicolor consultant Henri Jaffa would allow.The sharpness of the Blu-ray edition brings
out amazing detail in the texture of the clothing and backgrounds.The eyes of the actors sparkle in a fashion
we have not seen prior to this release.The happiness and optimism of Kathryn Grayson as Magnolia, the world-weary
look of Ava Garner’s Julie and the seen-it-all soulfulness of William Warfield
as Joe are apparent in their faces and their eyes.
The
sound is clear and full ranged during the musical numbers with all dialogue and
singing mixed loud enough to hear even at lower volumes. Although not indicated on the Blu-ray sleeve,
this edition of Showboat has two sound options.The original mono track as heard in the original theatrical release, and
there is a second 2.0 stereo mix, as
well.As noted on the Rhino/TCM release
of the CD soundtrack, several microphones were employed for the orchestra
during the recording sessions and discrete channels were produced from
each.These separate tracks were mixed
to create a wrap around stereo effect for the orchestral score and
accompaniments for the songs.
William
Warfield noted in his autobiography, My Music & My Life, that for the
recordings the orchestra was not set up in traditional concert formation.Instruments were placed in small groups
around mics to best achieve a proper balance for the soundtrack.He also commented on the process of filming
with pre-recorded music on set.“To
lip-synch convincingly onscreen, you have to show the same physical strain –
the same veins, the same tendons, the same air pressure in the cheeks, the same
flair of the nostrils – as you’d see with a singer really singing the
song.â€This was very apparent in his
rendition of the classic song Ol’ Man River as the last verse is presented with
a very slow tracking shot closing in on his face.
I
found it interesting that playback for all musical numbers during filming was
accomplished by the use of 78 rpm records.
Another
aspect of lip-synching was filming a music selection sung by someone other than
the actor.Ava Gardner pre-recorded her
song Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine, but at the last minute the producers
switched her voice for Annette Warren’s.While the reason wasn’t clear, it made filming a challenge for Ms.
Gardner as she had speaking lines within the song and had to adjust
accordingly.Curiously, the MGM soundtrack
album for Showboat utilized Ms. Gardner’s version of this song and her other
number, Bill.
In “Wings of the Hawk†(1953), Van Heflin stars as Irish
Gallagher, an American mining for gold down in Mexico. He and his partner Marco
(Mario Siletti) are ripped off by local military ruler Coronel Paco Ruiz
(George Dolenz), who takes over the mine and kills Marco. Irish barely manages
to escape on horseback and is rescued by insurrectionists led by Raquel Noriega
(Julia Adams), who gets a bullet in the shoulder for her trouble. Irish patches
her up in exchange for his freedom and romance rears its ugly head. Jealousy also
flares when revolutionary leader Arturo Torres (Rudolpho Acosta), who had been
her lover, sees what’s going on. Enter Pascual Orozco (Noah Beery, Jr.) who
asks for Arturo’s help in taking Ciudad Juarez. They’ll need $5,000 to buy 200
rifles but the revolutionaries have no money. However, they come up with a
brainstorm. They’ll steal $5,000 in gold from Irish’s mine, which is now under
Coronel Ruiz’s control. Irish must be gaga over Raquel because he agrees to go
along with it, “as long as I get my money back later.†There’s a lot of
shooting after that, chases on horseback, and a firing squad kills some
villagers.
It’s all crammed in to a fast-paced 81 minutes, leaving
little time for reflection or character development for that matter. Julia
Adams, most famous as Kay, the beauty who lures the Creature out of the Black
Lagoon, is always a delight to see on screen, but her performance as Raquel
goes no deeper than the Mexican makeup painted on her face and the black hair
pieces tacked on her head. Heflin gives his usual solidly rugged performance as
the Irish miner-turned-revolutionary, and George Dolenz (father of Monkee Micky
Dolenz) is sufficiently snide as the local gendarme, but there is little heat
generated by any of them in the on- screen proceedings.
This is not to say that “Wings of the Hawk†should be
dismissed as just another run-of-the-mill fifties western. Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray is noteworthy for
several reasons. First of all, historically, it was only the second feature
film to be released by Universal International in 3-D, and the first to adopt
the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, which became the standard for all non-Cinemascope
films made since then. It’s also one of the first “Mexican Westerns,†that is,
a western about an American cowboy caught in the midst of the Mexican
Revolution. Other such include “Vera Cruz,†“Viva Villa,â€, “The Professionalsâ€
and the most notable of them all, “The Wild Bunch.†It was also the last of
nine films that Cult Director Budd Boetticher did under contract for Universal
between 1952 and 1953. Boetticher achieved his cult status for a series of seven
westerns he did later for Columbia shortly after that, between 1956 and 1960.
Known as the “Ranown Cycle†of films, because they starred Randolph Scott and
were produced by Joe Brown. “Seven Men from Nowâ€(1956), “Ride Lonesome†(1959),
“The Tall T†(1957), and “Comanche Station†(1960), among others, are some of
the greatest cinematic achievements of this or any other time. Not just films,
they are truly works of a certain kind of art.
In “Wings of the Hawk,†Boetticher did not really develop
the conflict between Irish, Ruiz and Arturo as fully as he would with the
antagonists in the later films, but elements of it are there, if you look close
enough. It’s interesting to see the embryonic Boetticher at work.
Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray contains both 2-D and 3-D versions
of the movie from 2K Scans of the left and Right Eye Interpositive. The picture
is generally good, but some scenes are too dark, and others a bit too grainy.
Color is by Technicolor and the transfer goes a good job preserving the
original look of the film. Clifford Stine’s 3-D cinematography is rather
stunning in the way it emphasized picture depth over the gimmicky hurling of
stones, and bodies at the 3-D audience. Many action shots feature deep focus of
riders on horseback coming toward the camera from a great distance, while actors
and stunt men move about at various distances in between riders and camera.
Another impressive shot has a knife being lowered slowly on a rope from a
skylight. Even at 2-D the knife almost seems to float out from the screen.
Frank Skinner’s soundtrack has a lot of Mexican flare,
and is presented on the disc in what is described by KL as “High Dynamic Range
Theatrical Mix plus 5.1 Surround Sound.†Bonus features include the audio
commentary by Jeremy Arnold (which I can’t recommend highly enough, for all the
detailed information he imparts), and a 3-D Woody Woodpecker cartoon. “Wings of
the Hawk,†is another important film restoration by Kino Lorber of a bygone era
of filmmaking, the likes of which we’ll never see again.
During
the 1970s, small distribution companies such as Sunn Classic Pictures, began to
carve out a niche in the film industry by concentrating on low budget family-oriented
movies.With the MPAA rating system
firmly in place, moms and dads needed to search for G-rated titles they knew
would be suitable for younger audiences.Aside from Disney features, it was often difficult to find such films.
Documentaries
with educationally sound titles such as Cougar Country, In Search of Noah’s Ark
and The Outer Space Connection played matinees at theaters across the
country.Usually shot in 16mm and
sometimes a tad boring, these movies were a safe destination for parents
looking to drop the kids off for a couple of hours.
If
any of these children happened to be unloaded at a local cinema playing The
Legend of Boggy Creek, they were in for quite a surprise.Initially, it may have looked safe with a G
rating and a storyline concerning a Bigfoot type of creature.Little did these kids realize they were in
for a scary trip through the Arkansas wetlands where there had been stories of
a large, two-legged monster over the past two decades.Farmers and ranchers had reported mutilated
or missing livestock along with sightings of the creature.
Charles
B. Pierce of Louisiana, a local television personality and creator of
commercials, made his directorial debut with 1972’s The Legend of Boggy Creek,
a quasi-documentary.The film chronicled
the search for a seven-foot tall Bigfoot like creature that dwelled in the
swamps near the town of Fouke, AR.Pierce allowed local residents to relate their experiences with what
became known as the Fouke Monster.Dramatic recreations of sightings and confrontations with the creature
were also filmed with local actors playing the roles of real life witnesses.
Adhering
to the idea of “less is more,†Pierce never showed a close-up or an otherwise
clear shot of the monster and there is no graphic violence or gore.He felt that what you didn’t see was more frightening
than a man in a hairy suit.This style
of storytelling would serve Steven Spielberg well in 1975 with his epic
thriller Jaws.
While
the production budget was about $160,000, which Pierce borrowed from a local
trucking company, the director achieved an incredibly effective film by
shooting in 35mm Techniscope.The
photography in the creeks and marshes near Fouke is gorgeous and there are many
shots of indigenous creatures and birds.The soundtrack of forest sounds lends a creepy atmosphere to the movie
especially in the night scenes outside of local cabins.
The
script by Earl E. Smith opens with several eyewitness accounts and some very
distant shots of the monster that only define it as a large shape.Then there are depictions of actual contact
with the beast where the residents in cabins attempt to kill it with shotguns
and rifles.It is in these scenes that
we hear the ferocious roar of the animal as it slips back into the darkness.Special mention needs to be made of the
excellent narration by Vern Stierman.His news-anchor like professionalism adds an air of authenticity to the
docu-drama style of the film.
A
serviceable music score is provided by Jamie Mendoza-Nava, which includes a
folksong type ballad sung by the filmmaker Charles Pierce.The director also served as his own photographer,
using an older camera to which he made several modifications for this
film.Pierce is very adept at setting up
several jump scares where the creature is suddenly in the frame, often shown
from the back.The 2.35 widescreen ratio
is vital to these shots and they are quite effective.Another startling scene involves the creature
being spotted as it suddenly crosses the road.This is filmed through a car windshield as the occupants are fleeing the
scene.
I
found the most impressive parts of the
film are the two extended scenes where residents in a cabin and a mobile home
are threatened by the monster.The whole
“something is out there†scenario is well-played as the actors react to the
danger in a realistic fashion.No randy
teenagers doing drugs in the woods, just parents protecting their families by
any means necessary.
Without
giving away too much information about the conclusion, I’ll just say that the
story has a possible open ending. Multiple sightings of the Fouke Monster were
reported by more than 250 individuals over a period of 20 years until the
making of this film.I wouldn’t be
surprised to learn that people in the area continue to see the monster.There were two sequels, one authorized and
one not.Charles Pierce made Boggy Creek
II:And the Legend Continues in 1984,
but by his own admission it was not a very successful effort.
In
1976 director Pierce worked with Samuel Z. Arkoff and American International
Pictures in creating his best-known work, The Town That Dreaded Sundown.This film pre-dated the slasher film craze of
the 1980s with the true story of a masked killer terrorizing the town of
Texarkana, TX.The cast included Ben Johnson,
Andrew Prine, Dawn Wells and, once again, narrator Vern Stierman.
I recently communicated by e-mail with Pamula
Pierce Barecelou, daughter of Charles Pierce, and asked about the re-mastering
of the film.She replied that one of the
challenges was locating a quality print.“After gaining permission from Mr. Ledwell (the film’s financier) to
pursue the restoration in 2014, I had to find a good print to work from and
that hunt took four years.One was
finally found at the British Film Institute of all places!â€
Ms.
Pierce went on to describe the actual process.“I was able to connect with the venerable George Eastman Museum and
Audio Mechanics to have to the work performed.I trusted their expertise.â€
At the opening of “Taza, Son of Cochise,†(1954), it’s
1875 and the great Apache Chief Cochise (Jeff Chandler) is dying. At his side
are his two sons, Taza (Rock Hudson) and Naiche (Rex Reason, billed here as
Bart Roberts). He asks them to continue the peace he made with the White Eyes
after his death. Naturally, if the two sons were in agreement the movie would
have ended right there. But in fact, they don’t agree. Taza wants to do as his
father said. But Naiche hates the white man and intends to side up with Grey
Eagle (Morris Ankrum) and Geronimo (Ian MacDonald) and start the war up again.
If that isn’t enough complication to make a movie out of, writers George Drayson
Adams and George Zuckerman add in a rivalry between the two brothers over the
affections of Oona (Barbara Rush), Grey Eagle’s beautiful daughter.
It’s a good set-up for a story and Universal
International intended the film as another of the westerns being produced at
that time with the purpose of showing Native Americans in a favorable light.
“Taza†is in fact a follow-up to “Broken Arrow,†which featured Chandler as
Cochise, another movie about “good†Apaches who’d rather get along with the
white man than lift his scalp . Yet, despite the studio’s noble intentions, as
you probably already noticed, there is a total lack of any Native Americans in
any of the lead roles. That’s how it was in 1954. In that era, Hollywood did
not hire many Native Americans for big movie parts. Jay Silverheels, who played
Tonto in The Lone Ranger TV series, was a rare exception. As a result, you had
some really hard-to-swallow casting of Native American characters back then.
Rock Hudson’s Taza is one example, although not as bad as blonde and blue-eyed
Chuck Connors in “Geronimo†or Burt Lancaster in “Apache.†Victor Mature played
the title character in “Chief Crazy Horse,†and his high cheek bones and
Italian good looks almost let him get away with it, except, well, you know, it
was big hammy old Victor Mature.
Watching these films today it’s pretty hard to maintain
your “suspension of disbelief†at the sight of these Hollywood hunks running
around on the warpath with tomahawks and bows and arrows. Hudson himself was
more than aware of the problem and said later, according to commentary provided
on a separate audio track, he considered this to be his worst film. I wouldn’t
go that far. At over six feet tall, with his dark hair and brown eyes, he maintained
a certain amount of gravitas in the role and at least had the physical presence
to convincingly vault onto his Indian pony’s back with ease and he handled
himself pretty well in action scenes involving knives and rifles.
“Taza†was one of the last of the movies made during the
“golden age of 3-D.†Between 1952 and 1954, 48 films were shot that way. The 3-D
process, which was used to lure movie goers away from their television sets,
faded quickly because of the many technical problems encountered both in
shooting the films and in projecting them in theaters. In “Taza,†however, cinematographer
Russell Metty put it to good use, capturing the mountain and desert scenery
around Arches National Park in Utah, where the movie was filmed. It also, of
course, features the obligatory 3-D scenes with actors and stunt doubles
hurling rocks, firing arrows, hurling spears, and men falling directly into the
audience’s lap.
I hate to admit
it, but I’m old enough to have seen “Taza†in a theater as a kid, and frankly back
then I didn’t care about who played what. I didn’t know Rock Hudson from Chief
Red Cloud or how historically accurate any of it was. Did Taza actually lead
his band to attack Geronimo and kill other Apache warriors in order to save
Cavalry Captain Burnett (Gregg Palmer) from certain death? Sounds far-fetched,
but maybe they did. I don’t know. And who cares? I had a good time watching
“Taza, Son of Cochise†back then and, if you’re willing to make allowances for the
time in which it was made, you probably will too. it’s worth catching if only
as an authentic artifact of the film making of its time.
Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray presents “Taza, Son of Cochise†in
both 2-D and 3-D in its correct theatrical aspect ratio of 2.00:1 from a 2K
Master. The picture is very good, with a soft Technicolor pallet accurately
capturing the reddish hues of the mountainous desert country. Frank Skinner’s
score sounds good, a typical Universal soundtrack of the fifties with tom-toms
added. Bonus features include commentaries on separate audio tracks by film
historians David Del Valle author C. Courtney Joiner, and 3-D expert Mike
Ballew. Also included is the original theatrical trailer, and English
subtitles.
Danny
Kaye was not only a brilliant triple-threat (actor/singer/dancer), but he was a
stand-up comic, an expert chef, a writer, a pilot, a baseball enthusiast (and,
for a short time, co-owner of a team—the Seattle Mariners), a notable
philanthropist, a UNICEF ambassador, and an honorary member of the American
College of Surgeons and American Academy of Pediatrics (!). His decades-long
career on stage, in film, and on television speaks for itself, but one of his
most beloved screen vehicles was The Court Jester, a 1956 picture that
was shockingly ignored at the Oscars that year (Kaye, who never won an Academy
Award, was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance).
Even
more disturbing is the fact that it was allegedly the most expensive comedy
film ever produced up to that time and was a box office failure (perhaps that’s
the reason there was no Oscar love). Nevertheless, time has been extremely kind
to the movie through revivals and television broadcasts. Now it’s perhaps the
movie one thinks of when considering Danny Kaye starring vehicles.
The
Court Jester was
written, produced, and directed by the team of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama,
who carved out a comedy-niche in Hollywood beginning in the 1940s by penning
some of Bob Hope’s early classics together. Their White Christmas (1954,
directed by Michael Curtiz) was a massive hit, and it paired Danny Kaye with
Bing Crosby. They had directed Kaye that same year in Knock on Wood… so
they were a good match for the actor on a musical-comedy send-up of The
Adventures of Robin Hood.
Hubert
Hawkins (Kaye) is the affablebut non-heroic member of a band of Merry
Men-like rebels led by Robin Hood-like “The Black Fox†(Edward Ashley). King
Roderick (Cecil Parker) has usurped the throne from its rightful heir—the only
survivor of the royal family, a baby with a peculiar birthmark of a “purple
pimpernel†on his tuchus. The Black Fox’s band of brigands are keeping
the child safe from the king’s men, led by chief antagonist Lord Ravenhurst
(Basil Rathbone). Hawkins is in love with Maid Jean (Glynis Johns), a “captainâ€
in the group, and she reluctantly admits she has affection for him as well.
When the opportunity arises to plant a mole inside the castle to steal keys to
an underground passage that will allow the Black Fox and his men to take
control of the palace and restore the land to its true monarch, Hawkins is
apparently the right man for the job—to impersonate Giacomo the Jester (John
Carradine), who is on his way from Italy to receive employment. Once Hawkins is
ensconced in the castle, the king’s daughter, Gwendolyn (Angela Lansbury) is
told by her confidante and “witch,†Griselda (Mildred Natwick) that “Giacomoâ€
is to be her true beloved and not the king’s ally Sir Griswold (Robert
Middleton). Needless to say, complications arise.
Yes,
it’s a twisty-turny plot with many instances of mistaken identity and
characters intentionally posing as people they are not. There’s romance,
slapstick, clever wordplay, swashbuckling swordplay and action sequences—and
there are song-and-dance musical numbers written by Sammy Cahn and Sylvia Fine
(Kaye’s wife).
The
dialogue is especially witty and fun—what movie buffs have not attempted
to memorize the classic tongue-twister, “The pellet with the poison’s in the
vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true�
(Or the follow-up which replaces the chalice from the palace with the “flagon
with the dragonâ€).
Kaye
is marvelous throughout the picture, of course, and his supporting cast are all
splendid, too. Rathbone, at this point in his mid-60s, still manages to swashbuckle
with skill. Johns and Lansbury, as the dual love interests, are both fetching
and charismatic.
The
new ParamountMovies/Paramount Presents Blu-ray release beautifully shows off the
VistaVision widescreen Technicolor cinematography by Ray June. The images are
absolutely gorgeous. For this alone, the new release is worth the upgrade from
the older DVD edition. The only supplements are a short featurette of critic
Leonard Maltin talking a bit about the movie’s history and influence and the
theatrical trailer.
The
Court Jester is
still funny, still thrilling, and still entertaining today. Is it one of the
best comedies of the 1950s? The answer to that is a resounding YES.
During
the pre-video/broadcast television era of the mid-seventies, college campuses
were teeming with movie offerings on a weekly basis.It was the only way to see older theatrical
titles in their uncensored form.My own
experience at the University of Illinois provided 8 to 10 films per weekend
with recent Hollywood hits, classic revivals and the occasional porn flick
being the usual choices.Lecture halls,
auditoriums and even church sanctuaries were converted to temporary cinemas
that offered a cornucopia in 16mm. These
were quality exhibitions with twin projectors, external speakers for clear
dialogue and anamorphic lenses when needed.It seemed a little odd that one could view a somewhat racy movie in the
same space that would be used for worship the next morning.I would often take in several titles on
Friday and Saturday nights for the bargain price of $1.00.
Agatha
Christie’s Death on the Nile was one such movie that I chose to see on a snowy
evening in January as it played right in the lobby of my dorm.John Guillermin’s star-studded whodunit was
the follow up to the hugely successful Murder on the Orient Express from
1974.Once again we find Belgian
detective Hercule Poirot, played this time by the wonderful Peter Ustinov,
matching wits with a collection of suspects in the killing of heiress Linnet
Ridgeway.A running gag throughout the
film concerns Poirot having to remind everyone that his is not French.
The
setting this time is 1937 onboard a luxury steamer, the Karnack, navigating the
Nile where Poirot is on an Egyptian holiday before being drawn into the case of
the murdered newlywed.Linnet’s husband,
Simon, had recently ended an engagement with Jackie, former best friend of the
victim.Jackie has been stalking the
couple as she was still in love with Simon.
Poirot,
with the assistance of his good friend Colonel Race, begins to investigate the
murder and soon discovers that everyone on board the Karnack has a motive for
Linnet’s murder and Jackie appears to have an airtight alibi.We have Linnet’s maid, an American lawyer, a
romance novelist and her daughter, a jewel thief, a medical doctor and a
communist agitator whom all have ties to Linnet and her money.
The
tale becomes more twisted as the detective interviews all of the passengers
during the voyage hoping to ferret out the guilty party before the steamer
arrives at the final destination.Poirot
is able to create scenarios where everyone had access to the victim and could
have been the perpetrator.Soon,
however, several of the suspects are themselves murdered adding a sense of
urgency to the case.
Following
the usual format of Ms. Christie’s famous novels, Poirot assembles the
remaining passengers in the onboard saloon and, one by one, eliminates suspects
while revealing the identity of the killer.
Director
John Guillerman, an experienced, gentlemanly director, was experienced at
handling ensemble casts made up of international stars.His previous efforts included Skyjacked, The
Towering Inferno, The Bridge at Remagen and The Blue Max.His cast in Death on the Nile featured Bette
Davis, Maggie Smith, Angela Landsbury, David Niven, Jack Warden, George
Kennedy, Mia Farrow, Olivia Hussey, Jane Birkin, Simon MacCorkindale and future
Bond girl Lois Chiles.Cameo appearances
were provided by Harry Andrews and L.S. Johan.
The
star-studded cast was a 1970s marketing gimmick that began with disaster epics
such as Airport and Earthquake and then spilled over to whodunits and
television mini-series.Print ads and
trailers would play up the star attractions without revealing much about the
plots.Television anthology series made
a success comeback as well with the likes of Fantasy Island, The Love Boat and
Night Gallery. The “stars†featured in
these programs were often second tier, but still recognizable to viewers.
Director
Guillerman, along with producers John Bradbourne and Richard Goodwin, also
assembled a stellar crew behind the scenes starting with a script by Sleuth
author Anthony Shaffer.Aside from some
witty dialogue, Shaffer makes clever and veiled references to Maggie Smith’s
maid character being a lesbian as she seems to express total disdain to the
idea of a man and woman united in marriage.
Director
of Photography Jack Cardiff gave a bright, open and colorful look to the warm
weather cruise, which was the opposite of the dark, confined setting of Murder
on the Orient Express.An especially
beautiful scene is set at the Great Pyramids near Cairo as Linnet and her
husband climb to the top of one of the epic structures.It seems surprising that the production crew
would have access to this site as it was devoid of tourists at the time of
filming.
Kino-Lorber
has released a Blu-Ray edition of the 1959 musical comedy, Never Steal Anything
Small starring James Cagney, Shirley Jones, Roger Smith and Cara Williams.If it doesn’t sound all that familiar it’s
because this movie is a very odd duck.A
musical without songs and dances, and a Damon Runyon type plot with characters
that get a little nasty at times.
James
Cagney, in his final musical performance, plays Jake MacIllaney, a crooked dockworker
and steward for the local stevedore’s union in New York City.He cheats, he schemes and he occasionally
embezzles funds, but he is somehow still a lovable chap who is well liked by
the rank and file.He dreams of becoming
the union president and hires a straight-laced lawyer, Dan Cabot (Roger Smith),
to help him keep one step ahead of the law.Dan is married to the lovely Linda Cabot (Shirley Jones) whom Jake
covets badly enough to enlist the aid of his sometimes girlfriend, Winnipeg
Simmons, a gorgeous redhead played by Cara Williams.Why Jake isn’t satisfied with Winnipeg is a
mystery, but he manages to convince her to seduce Roger away from his wife so
Jake can move in.
Meanwhile,
Jake is also plotting with his fellow longshoremen to remove the current union
boss, Pinelli (Nehemiah Persoff), and his stooge Sleep-Out Charlie Barnes (Jack
Albertson).Jake wheels and deals his
way through the union election and always manages to stay out of harm’s way from
the cops, Pinelli’s thugs, his lawyer and the two women in his life.He borrows freely from the chapter’s treasury
and manipulates both friend and foe to achieve his dream position with the
union.
Jake
is likeable simply because James Cagney is so charming at playing the
small-time crook with a heart of gold.He prances and hoofs his way through scenes even though there is no
dance music.In current movies this type
of character would be considered a total cad.Cagney, however, cons and bamboozles his underlings and has everyone
convinced that he is their best friend.He demonstrates his musical prowess in the wonderful number I’m Sorry, I
Want a Ferrari sung with Winnepeg.In
this tune, composed by Allie Wrubel and playwright Maxwell Anderson, he
convinces Winnipeg to put the make on Dan in return for a new car.
Shirley
Jones, looking terrific as a blonde bombshell, gives a spirited performance
despite not having much to work with in this script.Jones had established her place in Hollywood
with leading roles in the film versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma
and Carousel.Elmer Gantry and The Music
Man were yet to come for this multi-talented actress.She is allowed only one chance to showcase
her wonderful voice in this film with the cute number I Haven’t Got a Thing to
Wear.
Cara
Williams began her career at age 16 at 20th Century Fox and
eventually worked her way into feisty leading roles in films such as Born
Yesterday, The Girl Next Door and The Defiant Ones.Her beautiful red hair is a delight in the
restored Technicolor print used for this Blu-Ray release. Also look for the
great character actors Nehemiah Persoff, Royal Dano and Jack Albertson in
small, but memorable roles as union stewards and enemies of Jake.
Based
upon a play by Maxwell Anderson, the direction by Charles Lederer of his own
script is crisp and funny with more than a passing nod to the stories and
characters of Damon Runyon.There is,
however, a bit of ugliness included when, for example, Jake and Linda have acid
thrown at them by two of Pinelli’s hoodlums.Also, the whole idea of Jake pimping out his girlfriend to help him
steal the wife of his young attorney is a plot line that will not go down well
with modern audiences.
At
some point director Lederer must have planned for this to be a Guys and Dolls
type musical.Why hire noted
choreographer Hermes Pan if there wasn’t going to be some spectacular dancing
sequences?The finished product,
however, is instead a comic drama with two songs and a bit of a male chorus
number to bookend the story.There
doesn’t seem to be any clues in the script where other songs and dances may
have been featured.
The
Cinemascope photography by Harold Lipstein and William H. Daniels is gorgeous,
and the color is heavily saturated with skin tones just a bit on the orange
side.The colorful costumes and set
designs fill the wide screen image beautifully.Since this film has only been seen during infrequent television
broadcasts and a 1980s pan and scan VHS release, this is probably the first chance
we have to see the full 2.35 aspect ratio since the original theatrical
screenings.Movies should never be
judged unless they are viewed in the proper screen width.
Kino
Lorber’s Blu-Ray boasts a clean, unscratched film source with the usual
Technicolor softness.The mono sound is
cold and crisp, and voices are presented at the proper volume.Extras on the disc include a theatrical
trailer and audio commentary from film historian Daniel Kremer and author Lee
Gambin.Both are knowledgeable and
amiable while providing extensive backgrounds on both performers and crew.
If
you are expecting a song and dance film like The Seven Little Foys or Yankee
Doodle Dandy you will be most disappointed.But an opportunity to see a charming James Cagney film that might be
unfamiliar is worth the purchase price, especially when presented in such a
handsome edition.
In 1965, maverick British producer and writer
Harry Alan Towers (The Bloody Judge) scored a hit with The Face of Fu Manchu, a
thrilling revival of Sax Rohmer’s super-villain imperiously portrayed by
Christopher Lee. Powerhouse/Indicator have lovingly brought together all five
films in the series and in the process produced a rather spectacular
collection.
Christopher Lee was of course no stranger to
playing maniacal, Asian characters. He had already played Chung King, leader of
the Red Dragon Tong's in Hammer’s movie The Terror of the Tongs (1961) directed
by Anthony Bushell. Tall, dark and menacing in his stature, Lee was perfect
casting for novelist Sax Rohmer’s notorious Chinese criminal mastermind.
Produced by Harry Alan Towers and Oliver A. Unger, The Face of Fu Manchu was a
British / West German co-production. Behind the camera was Australian-born
British film director Don Sharp, a man who had made some fine film’s for Hammer
including The Kiss of the Vampire (1961) and The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) also
starring Christopher Lee.
The film sets out in rather unusual style
with the apparent beheading of Fu Manchu. Where do we go from here one might
ask? Back in London, his nemesis Nayland Smith (superbly played by Nigel Green),
becomes increasingly concerned that Dr. Fu Manchu is not only still alive – but
also back and operating in London. The kidnapping of Professor Muller (German
actor Walter Rilla) unravels a plot involving a potentially lethal solution created
from the seeds of a rare Tibetan flower: the Blackhill poppy. Fu Manchu learns
that the poppy seed's poison can be used as a weapon and that just a pint of
this solution is powerful enough to kill every person and animal in London. And
so begins the classic encounter between good and evil.
It is naturally a perfect example of pulp
fiction in its purist form. Producer Towers (as writer Peter Welbeck) seems to
relish in his comic book approach, and in fairness, it all works incredibly
well and to great effect. One has to remember that these films were made as
family-orientated adventures, although some minor cuts were made in order to
retain its ‘U’ certificate which obviously made good business sense. Unlike the
‘X’ certified Terror of the Tongs which contained much darker, adult themes, Fu
Manchu, in its context is more like a Bulldog Drummond mystery or perhaps a
Charlie Chan adventure from the forties or fifties. It succeeds in creating a
perfect balance of dramatic excitement and a sense of innocent, harmless fun –
all of which is indicative of its period.
Powerhouse/Indicator has produced a wonderful
presentation of the film. Restored from a 4K scan of the original negative, the
Techniscope frame and Technicolor print has never looked so good, revealing sharp
detail and a rich, vibrant colour palette. Blacks are deep and solid and work
especially well in contrast to the silky fabrics of Lee’s costuming. The audio (its
original mono) is also clear and clean without any evidence of hiss or pops.
It’s clear that these films have been worked upon with a great degree of love
and care. Powerhouse has also offered a choice of two versions of the film. It
was revealed at the time of production, reel 3 of the original negative
contained a degree of damage to the left side of frame.This was dealt with at the time by zooming in
on certain shots for the cinema prints and thereby eliminating the damage from
view. Subsequent prints (for TV and other media formats) have always used the
same ‘fixed’ theatrical version. However, for the first time, Powerhouse has
offered the option to view the original print in its uncorrected version.
Whilst the damage is of course still evident, it does however provide the
opportunity of viewing the film without the use of panning or the
post-production corrective fix. It’s a nice little touch on the part of
Powerhouse and one which is bound to please the purists.
The wealth of bonus material is also very
impressive. Firstly, there’s an enjoyable, fact-filled audio commentary with
genre-film experts, critics and authors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman recorded
in 2020. Other bonus extras include an archival Interview with Don Sharp – Part
One: From Hobart to Hammer (1993, 96 mins) made as part of the British
Entertainment History Project, featuring Sharp in conversation with Teddy
Darvas and Alan Lawson; the BEHP Interview with Ernest Steward – Part One: The
BIP Years (1990, 96 mins): archival audio recording of an interview with the
respected cinematographer, also made as part of the British Entertainment
History Project. There’s a b/w archival interview with Christopher Lee (1965, 4
mins); an extract from the Irish television programme Newsbeat, filmed during
location shooting in Dublin. Vic Pratt Introduces ‘The Face of Fu Manchu’
(2020, 7 mins), an appreciation by the BFI curator. Underneath the Skin (2020,
49 mins) in which broadcaster,
educationalist and author of The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & The Rise of
Chinaphobia, the wonderful Sir Christopher Frayling examines the origin,
history and reputation of Sax Rohmer’s works. There are also a few alternative
titles and credits sequences. For those of a certain age, there are Super 8mm
versions: cut-down home cinema presentations which provide a nostalgic trip
down memory lane. Original UK, German and French theatrical trailers and a
generous image gallery featuring promotional posters, photos and publicity
material round off this impressive world premiere on Blu-ray.
Due to the success of The Face of Fu Manchu –
especially in America- producer Harry Alan Towers wasted very little time by
setting the wheels in motion for a hasty sequel. Hoping to achieve the same
success, Towers again pulled in West Germany’s Constantin Films along with his
own Hallam Productions to co-finance the next project, The Brides of Fu Manchu
(1966). Regardless of a very busy 1966, (a year that also included Hammer’s
‘back-to-back’ productions of Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin, the Mad
Monk), Towers nevertheless managed to secure his leading man Christopher Lee.
He was also fortunate enough to have original director Don Sharp sign again on
the dotted line.
The story once again revolves around world
domination, this time through the use radio waves which can carry destructive
blast frequencies. In order to carry out his plan, Fu Manchu has kidnapped the
daughters of prominent scientists whom he blackmails into helping him create
his deadly transmitter. It was a simple enough narrative, written again in
easy, comic book style by Harry Alan Towers. The great loss to this particular
film is that of Nigel Green as Nayland Smith. Smith is this time played by Douglas
Wilmer, an actor that had just played Sherlock Holmes in the TV series of 1965.
Wilmer fits the role perfectly well and proves he can handle himself when it
comes to the obligatory fist fight with the dacoits. However, he doesn’t quite possess
the same regimented and commanding drive displayed by that of Nigel Green. As
with his later portrayals of Dracula, Lee also has far less demanding role in
The Brides of Fu Manchu. His presence is still dominating but he has far less
to do. Here he seems more comfortable behind a control or instrument panel. In
fact, it’s his depraved daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) who this time takes a far
more active role alongside lead henchman Feng (played wonderful by Burt Kwouk)
who almost steals the show. Everything here though is all sufficiently menacing
and a great deal of fun.
Powerhouse has again delivered where it
counts. Creating a newly restored transfer from a 4K scan of the original
negative, the film looks beautiful and includes the original BBFC theatrical card.
Director Don Sharp this time opted to drop the Techniscope process (probably
due to Towers ever tightening of the budget) and instead chose to use a
standard 1.85:1 lens – but thankfully this never distracts or lessons the
overall viewing pleasure or impact. The rich greens, golds and pinks of the
costuming again appear so rich. The restoration also reveals a much greater
depth, particularly those cantered in the subterranean chamber; another
beautifully lit set which looks far greater on screen than in probably was in
reality. Every element of these scenes is greatly enhanced and benefit hugely
from the new restoration. Powerhouse has also satisfied the purists by sensibly
utilizing the cleaned original mono audio.
The disc’s bonus material is also impressive
and contains a full audio commentary, this time provided by film historians
Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby (2020). Then there is a continuation ofthe BEHP Interview with Don Sharp – Part Two:
A Director of Substance (1993, 95 mins) and Part 2 of the BEHP Interview with
Ernest Steward: From Teddington to ‘Carry On’ (1990, 93 mins). Then there’s a
real treat in the shape of The Guardian interview with Christopher Lee (1994,
87 mins): a wide-ranging onstage interview with the legendary actor, conducted
by the film critic David Robinson. Lee was renowned as a great talker, and this
is no exception. The iconic actor delves deep and concise providing the
audience with a rare insight of the business and a feast of industry stories. BFI
curator Vic Pratt provides another unique and newly filmed introduction to The
Brides of Fu Manchu (2020, 7 mins). Pages of Peril (2020, 21 mins): has genre-film
expert, critic and author Kim Newman discuss Sax Rohmer and the Fu Manchu
novels.The film’s original theatrical
trailer, a b/w TV spot and an Image gallery containing production photos,
promotional and publicity material round off the world premiere Blu-ray very
nicely.
Kino
Lorber Studio Classics has released “Against All Flags,†a 1952 pirate movie
from Universal-International, in a new Blu-ray edition.In the opening scene, British naval Lt. Brian
Hawke (Errol Flynn) endures a shipboard flogging in front of a stern-faced
audience of enlisted men and fellow officers.It isn’t clear what crime he’s charged with.Cowardice?Disobeying orders?Breaking into
the admiral’s rum supply?Not that it
matters, because as we quickly learn, the whipping is only a cover story.Publicly, Hawke is a disgraced man.Privately, he’s assigned to infiltrate a
troublesome pirate stronghold on Madagascar.There, posing as disgruntled turncoats, he and two loyal subordinates
will covertly locate and disable the camouflaged batteries of cannon that
protect the island.This will clear the
way for a British warship to safely swoop in and get rid of the
miscreants.One of Hawke’s assistants is
played by busy 1950s character actor John “Basher†Alderson.You may be excused if you mistake Alderson
for the equally prolific Bruce Glover from “Diamonds Are Forever†(1971) and
“Chinatown†(1974).The two actors
looked remarkably alike.
On
Madagascar, Hawke insinuates himself into the pirate brotherhood even though
one of the senior captains, Roc Brasiliano (Anthony Quinn), continues to
question his motives.Roc’s distrust of
the newcomer is further fueled by jealousy.Red-haired lady pirate Spitfire Stevens (Maureen O’ Hara) has resisted
the buccaneer’s heavy-handed advances, but she’s reluctantly attracted to
Hawke, and the chemistry is mutual.Then
Spitfire’s temper flares when the lieutenant takes an interest in a young
princess (Alice Kelley) captured during a raid on a treasure ship.Hawke tries to keep the situation platonic --
he watches over the girl to make sure she isn’t abused by the pirates --but Spitfire interprets his motives as
sexual.The sheltered Princess Patma
wishes they were, dreamily insisting “Again,†after she coaxes a kiss from
Hawke.The lieutenant’s dilemma is
played for laughs, with an obvious wink-wink-nudge-nudge for viewers aware of
Errol Flynn’s offscreen reputation in the bedroom.In 1952, that would have been everybody in
the movie theater.Hollywood is a lot
more skittish about such things today, justifiably so.Hawke enlists the aid of the princess’ tutor
(Mildred Natwick) to hide Patma’s identity, lest the pirates use her as a royal
hostage.Thus, the lieutenant has to
juggle several tricky tasks at once as Spitfire fumes and Roc watches for an
excuse to tie Hawke to a stake at low tide to be eaten by crabs.(Did Ian Fleming take notes for “Doctor
No�)
The
Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of “Against All Flags†restores the
movie’s ravishing Technicolor in a notable upgrade over previous home-video
releases, not to mention decades of inferior TV prints.As film historian Stephen Vagg notes in his
audio commentary, Technicolor and the A-list casting of Flynn, O’Hara, and
Quinn are the production’s distinguishing virtues.Otherwise, at the standard screen aspect of
1.37:1 and a thrifty running time of 84 minutes, it doesn’t particularly stand
out from the dozens of other pirate adventures that emerged from
Universal-International, Columbia, 20th Century Fox, and RKO in the late 1940s
and early 1950s.At that, O’Hara’s flaming
tresses had already been on Technicolor display in “The Black Swan†(1942) and
“The Spanish Main†(1945).Vagg’s
engaging commentary covers a wide range of topics, including the careers of the
three stars, the history of pirate movies, and the real-life buccaneers
represented in the picture, including a Black pirate captain portrayed by
Emmett Smith.A Black character as a
peer among white equals would be unremarkable casting now, but it was a
progressive statement on racial equality for its time.Fans will be pleased that Vagg gives a shout-out
to “Swordsmen of the Screen,†Jeffrey Richards’ rousing 1977 study of
swashbuckling cinema.The Kino Lorber
release also includes the movie’s theatrical trailer.
I’m
a sucker for black and white horror films and thrillers. Hold That Ghost!
(1941) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) are the closest
I ever got to an actual horror film when I was a child. The latter actually
frightened me and gave me more than a handful of nightmares while in kindergarten.
As I got older, I thrilled to the suspense-filled Psycho (1960) by
Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), and George A.
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) on network television viewings.
I picked up a VHS copy of John Llewelyn Moxey’s masterful The City of the
Dead under the insipid title of Horror Hotel and discovered a
classic that I love to this day. There is an overall spookiness that I
associate with black and white that I wish contemporary horror film directors
would go back to. It’s not all blood and guts – mood and atmosphere go a very long
way.
Following
my discovery of Dario Argento’s work after a theatrical screening of Creepers
in 1985, I began to read about Mario Bava’s work and how it influenced Signor
Argento’s style. Black Sunday, alternately known as The Mask of Satan
and Revenge of the Vampire, is a highly stylized gothic horror film that
is considered to be Mario Bava’s directorial debut despite him having come in
at the eleventh hour to finish up several films in the late 1950’s credited to
other directors: I Vampiri (1957), The Day the Sky Exploded (1958),
Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959) and The Giant of Marathon
(1959). Shot in 1960 and released on Thursday, March 9, 1961 in New York City, Black
Sunday is a creepy tale starring the luminous Barbara Steele in dual roles
as both a condemned witch in 17th Century Moldavia named Asa Vajda
and as a melancholic townswoman named Katja Vajda some 200 years later – quite
a coincidence! Asa condemns her persecutors to death for her fate which finds
her body placed into a mausoleum and found by chance two centuries later by a
doctor (Andrea Checci) and his assistant (John Richardson) who are enroot to a convention
and accidentally free Asa from her eternal sleep, giving her the opportunity to
enact evil upon the heads of those unlucky enough to be related to those
responsible for her death. While the plot is similar in theme to Mr. Moxey’s
classic The City of the Dead – I could hear the immortal words of the
villagers “Bring me Elizabeth Selwyn†in that film as I watched Black Sunday
– the time and place is much different and the film benefits enormously from
Signor Bava’s experience as a cinematographer even from the film’s opening
frames. The imagery that permeates much of Black Sunday are the stuff of
childhood nightmares: cobwebs, creepy cemeteries, eerie sounds in the
night…there is even a scene wherein a character fights off a vampire bat in a
fashion that obviously provided the inspiration for Jessica Harper’s Suzy Bannion
to do the same in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977), albeit in dazzling
Technicolor.
Universal released The Groundstar Conspiracy starring George Peppard in 1972 and it died
a swift death at the box-office. It is based on the 1968 novel The Alien by L. P. Davies, a British
author whose novels were known for merging the various genres of horror,
science fiction, mystery, adventure and fantasy. The Alien combines mystery and science fiction for an intriguing
plot that takes place in England fifty years in the future and involves
unidentified flying objects, an amnesiac patient who may be from another planet,
espionage, murder and regenerative surgery. The
Groundstar Conspiracy retains the basic premise of the novel but changes
virtually everything else. The screenplay by Mathew Howard (a pseudonym for
Douglas Heyes) transfers the setting to 1972 California, focuses primarily on
the espionage storyline and eliminates the novel’s plot of a possible invasion
from another planet. (In the novel, the UFO landing and alien visitors are
eventually revealed to be fraudulent.)
The film begins with a series of explosions
at Groundstar, a top-secret research government laboratory. Six people are
killed but one man survives, though his face is burned beyond recognition. Despite
his suffering, the severely wounded man finds his way to a nearby cottage
occupied by Nicole Devon who immediately calls authorities. The man’s security
card identifies him as computer technician John Welles. Additional material in
his possession indicates that he set the explosions to conceal his theft of classified
documents. Further investigation reveals that his credentials were forged and
his identity fabricated. All evidence implicates Welles as a saboteur and
murderer. However, he will require medical treatment including extensive
plastic surgery before he can be interrogated.
The
Groundstar Conspiracy
is an ingenious thriller with surprising twists and turns. Due to the film’s
intricate narrative, what appears to be obvious may not be what is actual. Also,
Tuxan may be more deceitful than the suspects that he interrogates. Furthermore,
the abuse that John Welles suffers may be the result of his own actions, of
which he may be totally unaware. If this sounds byzantine, it is intended to
be. The film contains an extremely convoluted plot that is quite clever as well
as challenging. It also raises some troubling questions, including the
recurrent one of whether the good guys have to be more unscrupulous than the
bad guys to achieve victory. In view of Tuxan’s accomplishment, this movie
suggests that the answer is a definite affirmative. However, one of the movie’s
many assets is that the exposure of the principal traitor is only a prelude to
the solution of the story’s central mystery, which is the identity of the man
known as John Welles.
One indisputable fact is that Tuxan is a ruthless
piece of work. He is tenacious about his mission and uses any means, legal or
illegal, to preserve national security. He treats all personnel connected to Groundstar
as suspects, including scientists, military personnel and politicians. He manipulates
people like puppets on a string and equates Welles with cheese used to trap
rats. He torments Welles physically and mentally regardless of his possible innocence.
He believes that the end justifies the means and the end for him is the disclosure
of the spy ring. The fact that he does uncover the traitors validates for him
his brutal treatment of the innocent people that had the misfortune to fall
under his suspicion. Yes, he is a genuine bastard but the key to his
personality is that he is quite proud of this designation.
Lamont Johnson’s confident direction
alternates the swift pace of the action and interrogation scenes with the more
serene interludes of the developing relationship between Welles and Nicole. Johnson
exercises restraint in the torture scenes and doesn’t exploit the grisly
activities. In contrast, he accentuates the suffering of both Welles and Nicole
which suggests sympathy for the lovers. Johnson filmed the entire movie in the
vicinity of Vancouver, British Columbia. With the aid of Michael Reed’s
splendid Panavision and Technicolor cinematography, he highlights British
Columbia’s marvelous coastal locations that substitute for California’s Pacific
Coast; the modernist Groundstar complex is actually Simon Fraser University. Johnson
only directed a dozen theatrical films during his 45-year career and worked
mostly in television, for which he received several Emmy and DGA (Directors
Guild of America) nominations and awards. But this film, along with 1970’s The Mackenzie Break clearly shows that
he excelled in both arenas, especially when he worked with skillful actors.
George Peppard’s forceful performance as
Tuxan is particularly impressive because he doesn’t try to make his character
even faintly likeable. Due to Tuxan’s consistent nastiness and persistence,
Peppard must necessarily give a one-note portrayal. But he does it with admirable
proficiency. His interpretation of Tuxan doesn’t convey a trace of suppressed
softness beneath his merciless surface. He doesn’t suggest even a smidgen of compassion
for the amnesiac which makes his character especially loathsome in view of the
climactic revelation. Even more despicable, the actor suggests a hint of satisfaction
during the torture sequences because of the message his action is sending to
the enemy, whomever they may be. At the finale, when Tuxan is flushed with
success, Peppard still doesn’t allow his character to display any warmth toward
his primary victim. Indeed, he proudly exhibits additional egotism. It is an
audacious performance because it is designed to deliberately alienate audiences.
Nevertheless, Peppard’s innate appeal
makes Tuxan fascinating and persuades those same audiences that people like him
are necessary.
Thanks
to cable and digital TV channels, Yvonne de Carlo (1922-2007) is probably best
known today, even and maybe especially among youngsters, from endless reruns of
“The Munsters.â€As Lily Munster, it’s a
safe bet that de Carlo will outlive all the rest of us for decades to come, if
not centuries.But long before Lily, de
Carlo was a sultry, exotic leading lady in dozens of costume epics, film noirs,
and Westerns from the late 1940s through the 1950s.One such vehicle, the 1950
Universal-International picture “Buccaneer’s Girl,†is now available on Blu-ray
from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.De
Carlo plays Deborah McCoy, a singer and dancer who stows away in boy’s clothing
on a ship out of Boston, owned by a wealthy New Orleans businessman, Narbonne
(Robert Douglas).Narbonne’s archenemy
is the pirate Baptiste (Philip Friend), whom she meets when the buccaneer
attacks and seizes the ship.Debbie
presently slips away from the pirates and makes her way to New Orleans, where
she’s given room, board, and job leads at a “School for Genteel Young Ladiesâ€
run by Madam Brizar (Elsa Lancaster).Entertaining at a soiree, Debbie again encounters Baptiste, this time in
his respectable secret identity as the dashing Captain Robert Kingston, who has
been commissioned to capture Baptiste.It’s been a long chase.“He’s
always one step ahead of me,†Kingston says wryly.“Maybe you should try standing still,†Debbie
rejoins.As Baptiste, Kingston’s motives
are pure in the honored tradition of Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel.To avenge his late father, who was bankrupted
by Narbonne, he preys only on Narbonne’s ships.The stolen booty is laundered into a fund to support unemployed mariners
who were forced out of their jobs by the ruthless businessman when he bought
their ships and installed his own crews.Thanks to his weaselly spy Patout (Norman Lloyd), Narbonne secures
evidence to identify and arrest Kingston as Baptiste.In the meantime, Debbie’s fledgling romance
with the pirate metaphorically hits rough waters when she learns that Kingston
is engaged to the socially prominent and snooty Arlene (Andrea King), the
governor’s daughter.
Directed
by Frederick de Cordova, who later became Johnny Carson’s longtime confidant
and producer, “Buccaneer’s Girl†is the sort of harmless, old-time escapism
that Johnny and his Mighty Carson Art Players would eventually lampoon on the
“Tonight Show.â€Today, in a similar
set-up, you’d wait to see when or if the woman, once discovered, will avoid
rape.But Debby is befriended by
Baptiste’s salty crew much like the new kid on the block who wanders over to
the playground and gets accepted into the other 10-year-olds’ softball
team.The leader of the crew is first
mate Jared- no relation to Kushner-played by Jay C. Flippen, who’s given to exclamations like “Well, lower me
jib!â€Jared’s last name might be but
probably isn’t Kushner.The movie is so
family-friendly that nobody is killed in the brawls and sword fights, and Madam
Brizar’s business seems to be a combination finishing school and talent agency
for real, and not a euphemism for . . . well, you know . . . as we might expect
in our more cynical era.As film
historian Lee Gambin remarks on his audio commentary for the KL Studio Classics
Blu-ray, de Carlo invests her role with “great gusto and flair.â€She’s equally adept at taking pratfalls,
romancing Kingston, bopping bad guys on the head, and exercising her claws in a
catfight when Debbie finally puts up with enough from Arlene.Action fans may wish her three musical
numbers had been reduced to one to make more room for pirate-type stuff,
especially since the old-school FX for the battles between Baptiste’s ship and
Narbonne’s are nicely done, but then again, the movie is designed as a showcase
for de Carlo, and the title is ‘Buccaneer’s Girl†and not “Buccaneer.â€As Baptiste, Philip Friend engagingly looks
and sounds a lot like Rex Harrison at a fraction of Harrison’s going rate, even
in 1950.
The Kino Lorber
Studio Classics disc frames the movie at its proper 1.37:1 aspect ratio and
delivers Russell Metty’s Technicolor cinematography with gorgeous clarity and
richness.Besides Lee Gambin’s
informative commentary, extras include a theatrical trailer and clear SDH
subtitles.
“Son
of Ali Baba,†a 1952 Arabian Nights programmer from Universal-International
Pictures, is available in a Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio
Classics.The 1080p
MPEG-4 AVC encoded
transfer displays the film’s beautiful Technicolor photography to impressive
effect.In the story, the title
character, Kashma (Tony Curtis), is enrolled as a cadet at the Imperial
Military Academy in medieval Persia.Life at the academy combines the glamor of West Point, Animal House, and
the 1970s Playboy Mansion.After a day
of practicing cavalry maneuvers, the cadets retire to Kashma’s lavish villa to
get drunk and fool around with beautiful girls.The Caliph’s son, Hussein, crashes the party without an invitation, gets
into a fight with Kashma, and winds up in young Baba’s ornamental pool.He doesn’t take the humiliation
lightly.Already on the outs with
Kashma, he swears to get even.Hussein
is played by Hugh O’Brian, who was cast as bad guys as often as good guys in
this early stage of his career, before becoming TV’s Wyatt Earp.In the meantime, the equally malicious Caliph
(Victor Jory) hates Ali Baba (Morris Ankrum) as vehemently as his son despises
Kashma.Envying Ali Baba’s fortune, he
schemes to discredit the venerable hero and seize his wealth for himself.The chance comes when a mysterious young
woman (Piper Laurie) sneaks into Kashma’s villa and identifies herself as Kiki,
a runaway slave girl.When that story
comes into question, she admits that she’s actually a royal, Princess Azura of
Fez.Either way, she claims to be a
fugitive from the Caliph’s harem.Kashma
helps her get away and takes her to Dad’s estate.“There is my father’s palace, and yonder lies
the Valley of the Sun,†he says as they approach their destination, a line
immortalized if widely misquoted as, “Yondah lies the castle of my fadduh, the
king.â€
Unknown
to Kashma, the situation plays into the Caliph’s plans for a hostile takeover
of Ali Baba’s riches.As the Caliph
hatches a scheme that puts Ali and Kashma at odds with the all-powerful Shah of
Persia, the lines of allegiance are drawn.On one side are the bad guys -- the Caliph, Hussein, and their private
army; on the other are the good guys, who wouldn’t be out of place on a modern
teen-oriented TV series like “Stargirl†or “Riverdaleâ€-- Kashma, his best buddy Mustapha (William
Reynolds), and his childhood friend Tala (Susan Cabot), an expert with the bow
and arrow.Thanks to the need to fill
out 75 minutes of running time, it isn’t clear which side Princess Azura is
actually on.Once Tala appears, we’re
led to wonder (although not too strenuously) which beauty will end up in
Kashma’s arms, Azura or Tala.
At
the high tide of the Hollywood studio system in the early 1950s, pictures like
“Son of Ali Baba†were produced by the score with two goals in mind.One purpose was to provide moviegoers with an
evening’s worth of light entertainment unlikely to tax anyone’s intellectual
capacity.Names like Ali Baba, Sinbad,
Monte Cristo, and Robin Hood on the theater marquee promised escape from
worries about bills, mortgages, and the Bomb, at least for 90 minutes or
so.The second goal was to showcase
young actors like Tony Curtis whose fan clubs could be counted on to fill
theater seats.Since Curtis was
essentially hired help at U-I as a contract player, the studio stood to benefit
as much as the actor, if not more so, by courting that segment of the
population.And so at the outset, Gerald
Drayson Adams’ script for “Son of Ali Baba†mostly serves up scenes in which
the exuberant Curtis flirts with, charms, embraces, and kisses various young
actresses in harem costumes.A slide
show of publicity photos could have served the same purpose, at least for the
actor’s most devoted female fans of the high-school persuasion (and maybe, in
closeted Eisenhower-era small towns, not a few male ticket-buyers as
well).
Once
the plot picks up momentum about half an hour in, “Son of Ali Baba†becomes a
pleasant enough Arabian Nights adventure.As Hussein and his gang burn down Ali Baba’s country estate and haul him
off to the Caliph’s dungeon, Kashma evolves from a carefree, privileged playboy
to inspirational avenger.If that
strikes you as a corny conceit that wouldn’t fly with today’s jaded audiences,
you must not have seen any of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man movies over the past
decade.At this juncture, too, director
Kurt Neumann begins to show some interest in his dramatis personae,
particularly when Tala enters the story.Neumann (1908-58), a German emigre mostly relegated to B-movies in
Hollywood, seemed fascinated by disruptive, unpredictable, and often doomed
characters.Since her heart is in the
right place, Susan Cabot’s steely Tala isn’t quite as unsettling as Neumann’s
crowning example of the type, Mari Blanchard’s ruthless Kyra Zelas in “She
Devil†(1957), but she gives the story a welcome edge anyway when she shows
up.The picture’s most visceral scenes
of violence result from Tala’s archery and not Kashma’s sword fights.Even Kashma’s airheaded groupies Calu (Alice
Kelley) and Theda (Barbara Knudson) -- inseparable from the other eye candy in
the early scenes -- come to life with some amusing business toward the
end.Despondent because all the cadets
have been confined to barracks during Kashma’s uprising against the Caliph,
they’re overjoyed when the troop is released to help the hero.Hurrying over to the academy, they try to
catch the cadets‘ attention as the guys rush past with more pressing business
at hand.“Boys, boys, here we are!†they
call hopefully, like contestants today on “Love Island†and “The Bachelor.â€Even kids of the Tik Tok generation are
likely to experience an amused shock of recognition, whatever their interest in
the Arabian Nights or lack thereof.
Special
features on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray include the original theatrical trailer
(“Not even Aladdin’s Lamp could deliver entertainment as spectacular as . . .
‘SON OF ALI BABA’!â€) and perceptive audio commentary by Lee Gambin that points
up, among other observations, the sleek studio production values that
unsympathetic critics usually overlook in unassuming pictures like “Son of Ali
Baba.â€
Criterion has
released a Blu-ray edition of one of the best science fiction films from the
1950s or any other decade for that matter. George Pal’s version of War of
the Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin, landed in theaters in 1953 and has become
an iconic symbol of alien invasion stories.
H.G. Wells’
novel had already been made famous by Orson Welles’ landmark CBS radio drama in
1938. The Martian invasion played out as news bulletins concerning an
attack on the East Coast by enemy tripod machines armed with a terrifying heat
ray and poisonous gas. With Americans nervous about a possible war in
Europe at the time, audiences listening that night were especially vulnerable
hearing the fabricated reports of destruction and carnage. One has to wonder
why many of the people glued to their radios didn’t turn to another station for
confirmation.
With Alfred
Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille linked to film adaptations of Wells’ novel at
different times, it was producer George Pal who finally brought the story to
the screen in 1953. Pal, an Academy Award winning animator, had already
thrilled moviegoers with Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide, both of
which were box office successes. His Puppetoon short from 1942,
Tulips Shall Grow, depicted the Nazi invasion of Holland and provided a
template for the attack sequences in War of the Worlds.
Featuring a relatively
hefty budget of $2 million, Pal funneled most of his resources into the famed
special effects depicting the deadly Martian war machines destroying Los Angeles.
An in-house team at Paramount, led by Gordon Jennings and art director Albert
Nozaki, designed and built the futuristic swan-like vehicles armed with
ferocious heat rays and skeleton beams that lay waste to all military weapons
that stood in their way. Striking miniature work and beautiful paintings
by astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell completed the look of this Technicolor
masterpiece.
The cast
included future Bat Masterson star Gene Barry, beautiful newcomer Ann Robinson
and radio actor Les Tremayne. The script was fashioned by Barre Lyndon who
transferred the story from Victorian England to modern day California. The
three-strip Technicolor photography was supervised by George Barnes and the
pulsating music score was composed by Leith Stevens. The unsung heroes of War
of the Worlds were the sound effects teams led by Paramount regulars Gene
Garvin and Harry Lindgren. All manner of new sound cues were created for
this film and many of these effects are still in use today.
Criterion’s
Blu-ray features the 2018 4K restoration produced by Paramount Pictures, and
the results are truly spectacular with amazing color saturation and crisp,
clear sound. Errors in registration of the Technicolor strips have been
cleaned up and an alternate 5.1 soundtrack has been realized by Star Wars
sound designer Ben Burtt. Purists will be happy to know that the original
mono track has been included as an option.
War of the
Worlds was filmed in the 1.37 aspect ratio although some theaters were
exhibiting it in a matted 1.66 version. After adjusting my monitor to
view this cropped presentation, I found the picture to look cramped and noticed
that important information was occasionally lost. The original stereo
tracks are now lost but, according to Ben Burtt, they only provided exaggerated
sound effects to the additional speakers.
As a 9 year-old
watching War of the Worlds on its’ NBC television premier in 1967, I was
terrified and hooked at the same time. Much like experiencing an E-ticket ride
at Disneyland, I enjoyed being
scared. I
found the narration by Sir Cedric Hardwicke to be gripping as he described the
“rout of civilization" during a montage of destruction. Through the
years I continued to enjoy this film on network and local television broadcasts
and at college screenings. Eventually I owned home video copies in the
VHS, CED disc, DVD and now Blu-ray formats. To say War of the Worlds
is my favorite film is an extreme understatement.
Was
this really a movie sub-genre? Colorful “Middle Easternâ€
action-comedy-adventures loosely derived from The Book of One Thousand and
One Nights? Full of harem girls, saber-wielding swashbucklers, epic set
pieces with beautifully designed sets and “Arabian†costumes, camels and horses
and tigers, and… comedians?
The
answer is, ahem, yes. During the war years of the early 1940s, Universal
Pictures made several of these “exotic adventure†pictures that capitalized on
the success of Britain’s Thief of Bagdad (1940). Hollywood quickly got
into this act, but like the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope “Road to…†pictures, these
movies set in the world of ancient Arabia were filmed on sound stages in
southern California… and it shows.
The
films were hugely popular at the time, but they have not aged well. We shall
examine two of the more successful entries of this short-lived movement—Arabian
Nights from 1942, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from 1944. Each
picture shared some actors and a cinematographer (W. Howard Greene). Nights was
nominated for no less than four Academy Awards in the categories of
Cinematography and Art Direction (both richly deserved), Sound Recording, and
Score (by Frank Skinner). Ali Baba did not chart at awards season, but
it is, in truth, the better picture.
The
good: These are gloriously produced old Technicolor extravaganzas that show off
the artistry and imagination that only Hollywood can concoct. The films are
truly gorgeous, and the new high definition restorations bring out the colors with
intensity (of the two, Arabian Nights looks the best, but both are
visually exquisite). Secondly, the films provide some excellently choreographed
action sequences such as battles between Arabs and Mongols. It’s as if the
pirate film genre had migrated to the Islamic Golden Age.
But
therein lies the bad. These films have almost nothing to do with the real Book
of One Thousand and One Nights. They are full of stereotypes and likely
blasphemous depictions of Islam. Arabic characters are played by white
Hollywood actors with darkened skin makeup. If all that weren’t bad enough, way
too much of each movie is played for laughs. Blatantly comic actors are cast in
major roles and they stand out like broccoli in a fruit basket. Consider this: Shemp
Howard plays “Sinbad†in Arabian Nights, and he acts exactly like…
Shemp Howard, complete with New York accent, mugging facial expressions, and squeaky
vocalizations when he’s frightened. Loud, sneezy Billy Gilbert also has a
sizable role in the picture. Ali Baba is graced with the presence of
none other than… Andy Devine in a supporting role as one of the Forty
Thieves. Andy Devine as an Arab? He even speaks like Andy Devine in his
whiny drawl, “Aw, Ali, you don’t want to marry the princess! A thousand gold coins
can get you a girl in the marketplace who’s just as purdy!â€
Jon
Hall stars in both movies as our hero. In Arabian Nights, he’s
Haroun-Al-Raschid, the brother of the caliph. He has the title role in Ali
Baba. Sultry Maria Montez is also in both pictures as the love interest. In
the first, she is the famous dancer, Scheherazade (although in the credits and
promotional materials, this is spelled Sherazade, but the characters pronounce
her name the proper way). In Ali Baba, she is Amara, the prince’s daughter.
Turkish-Czech actor Turhan Bey also appears in both movies in supporting roles.
The popular Indian actor Sabu is a featured performer in Arabian Nights,
having emigrated to Hollywood after the success of Thief of Bagdad.
Arabian
Nights is
the tale of two rival brothers, Haroun and Kamar (Leif Erickson, credited as
Leif Erikson), their pursuit of Scheherazade, and their quest to gain power in
Arabia.
Ali
Baba and the Forty Thieves is the tale of Ali, the true caliph who is in exile
because Bagdad is overrun by the Mongols. He wants to reunite with his
childhood sweetheart, Amara, run the Mongols out of town, and reclaim the city
for the Arabs.
The
eye-rolling aspects aside, one must consider the films within the context of
when they were made and released. Yes, they’re silly and loads of rubbish, but in
their own way they are fun and entertaining. If one can get past Shemp Howard
and Andy Devine, one might have a few laughs and appreciate the scenic beauty
on display in these admittedly superb presentations.
Both
films come with interesting audio commentaries by film historian Phillipa
Berry. The theatrical trailers for each title and others from Kino Lorber are
on both disks as well.
Arabian
Nights and
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, available separately from Kino Lorber,
are prime examples of the Exotic Technicolor Adventure movement that Hollywood
once pushed. So, grab your magic lamp, rub it a few times, sit back, and watch
these vibrant burlesques with your favorite genie.
Kino Lorber Studio Classics has
released “Mary, Queen of Scots†(1971) in a new Blu-ray edition.A Hal B. Wallis production starring Vanessa
Redgrave in the title role and Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth I, the picture
opened on a limited basis in Los Angeles on December 22, 1971, in order to
qualify for the 1972 Academy Awards.General release in the U.S. followed on February 2, 1972.The filmmakers’ hopes were high, since a
previous Wallis production about the 16th Century British monarchy, “Anne of
the Thousand Days,†had been a critical and commercial success two years
earlier, with the same screenwriter (John Hale) and director (Charles
Jarrott).As if more cred were needed, a
weighty biography by Antonia Fraser, “Mary Queen of Scots†(no comma), had been
a best-seller in 1969.Since Mary was a
historical figure in the public domain, the filmmakers could capitalize on the
popularity of Lady Antonia’s book without having to pay for screen rights.Perhaps adding a comma in the movie’s title
was a further safeguard.Despite this
promising run-up, “Mary, Queen of Scots†didn’t quite meet expectations.Reviews were lukewarm, and the picture had
the unfortunate timing to open nationally while a number of highly publicized
hits released during the Christmas-New Year’s week were still selling tickets
in theaters.Apparently, younger
moviegoers preferred the ultra-violence of “A Clockwork Orange,†“Dirty Harry,â€
and “Straw Dogs†to Wallis’ historical pageantry, and the return of Sean
Connery as James Bond in “Diamonds Are Forever†to the teaming of Redgrave and
Jackson in prominent starring roles as Royals Behaving Badly.Older fans of big-budget epics had already
been served by Franklin J. Schaffner’s “Nicholas and Alexandra,†which had
gotten an early start in December.In
England, Jackson had already played Elizabeth in “Elizabeth R,†a six-part
series that garnered critical acclaim on the BBC in 1971.The series debuted Stateside on PBS‘
“Masterpiece Theater†on February 13, 1972.If you could see Jackson for free on TV, why pay $4 for a date night at
the cinema?
John Hale’s screenplay compresses
and simplifies Mary’s ill-fated life without violating historical accuracy too
seriously.Some political intricacies
necessarily remained, but they shouldn’t bother today’s viewers who enjoyed
sorting out all the make-believe queens and dukes with fey names in “Game of
Thrones.â€It opens in 1560, as a pretty
but foreboding tune, “Vivre
et Mourir†(“To Live and to Dieâ€), plays
over the credits.(Redgrave herself sang
the French lyrics in a fine, haunting alto.)Mary -- the queen of Scotland by birth, and moreover a potential
claimant to the English throne as the niece of Henry VIII -- enjoys wedded
bliss with her husband, King Francis II of France.Then Francis dies, and his mother exiles the
childless Mary to clear the throne for Francis’ brother.Mary returns to the land of her birth,
prepared to assume her duties there on the Scottish throne, but her decision
threatens two powerful rivals.Her
cousin Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, fears that Mary, a Catholic, will
become a rallying point next door for England’s rebellious Catholic
subjects.In Scotland, Mary’s brother
James Stuart (Patrick McGoohan in great, icy form) schemes with his fellow
Protestant nobles to neutralize Mary, relegating her to figurehead status as he
becomes the actual hand on the strings.Both of her enemies are dangerous, Elizabeth perhaps more so as the more
subtly devious of the two.
Here’s
an interesting lesson in filmmaking. Students of the art might learn something
by watching the two different cuts of this motion picture to see what happens
when a movie is edited down—especially when the original was made by bona fide artists
as opposed to a slick Hollywood producer who, albeit successful, might not
know everything.
David
O. Selznick was a powerhouse producer and head of his own personal studio (he
had, after all, produced Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound,
and many other Hollywood classics). “The Archers†were a unique British directing/writing/producing
team and production company that consisted of the brilliant Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger, who, for a solid decade, delivered some of the most
engaging and beautifully-rendered works of cinematic art in the 20th Century.
It is true that Powell and Pressburger were perhaps not as appreciated during
their time as they should have been, but their work has been re-evaluated and
newly appraised (by the likes of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, among
others). Nevertheless, today there is no debating that The Archers made a
handful of masterpieces between 1941 and 1951, including The Life and Death
of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus,
and The Red Shoes.
In
1950, Powell and Pressburger teamed up with American producer Selznick to make Gone
to Earth, which was based on the 1917 novel by Mary Webb. The story takes
place in the country-lands between England and Wales in the late 1800s, thereby
automatically opening it up to scenic beauty and a cinematographer’s dream. Gone
to Earth stars Selznick’s then-wife, Jennifer Jones, as Hazel, a
free-spirited, unsophisticated and superstitious “nature girl†who has an
affinity with all animals (except, significantly, dogs) and especially a wild
young fox, “Foxy,†that she keeps as a pet.
Edward
Marston (Cyril Cusack) is a Baptist minister new to the nearby village, and he
immediately becomes smitten with Hazel. She reluctantly agrees to marry him,
even though she has already met and is intrigued by the arrogant, handsome, and
wealthy squire Jack Reddin (David Farrar), who lives in quite the palace-like
manor, complete with a feisty servant (Hugh Griffith). Oddly, it’s implied that
Edward does not consummate the marriage with Hazel. It isn’t long before she
runs off to engage in (again, it’s implied) carnal passion with Jack. As
expected, things don’t turn out well for Hazel.
The
plot of Gone to Earth might remind viewers of David Lean’s Ryan’s
Daughter, which was released twenty years later. What the earlier film has
going for it is Jones, who is splendid—despite being slightly miscast, in this
reviewer’s opinion—and the gorgeous Technicolor photography by Christopher
Challis. This is a “mood picture,†in that it’s really all about the setting,
the period, and the attitudes of the characters rather than the story.
Enter
Selznick. He did to Gone to Earth what he did to Vittorio De Sica’s Terminal
Station three years later. This Italian production, directed by the great
Neo-Realist filmmaker and produced by Selznick, also starred Jennifer Jones
(see the Cinema Retro review here). Selznick didn’t like
the original film, but he had the right to recut it for the American release,
which he did, turning the picture into Indiscretion of an American Wife
against De Sica’s wishes.
With
Gone to Earth, Selznick also infuriated the original filmmakers by deleting
nearly a half hour from the 110-minute running time, adding “Overture†and
“Exit Music†title cards and music, and even having shot a couple of new scenes
(directed by uncredited Rouben Mamoulian). Selznick released the new version as
The Wild Heart in the USA in 1952.
Neither
version did very well financially or critically in their respective releases at
the time, although Powell and Pressburger’s original Gone to Earth, like
all The Archers’ movies,has received considerable reassessment and
acclaim.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition presents both pictures in glorious,
colorful restorations, with The Wild Heart as its main feature, and Gone
to Earth as a supplemental attraction. The former exhibits the better
transfer, with clear, sharp imagery. The latter is almost as good, but it is
obvious that it came from different source material. There are English
subtitles for the hearing impaired. Each film sports an audio commentary—The
Wild Heart by film historian Troy Howarth and Gone to Earth by film
historian Samm Deighan. Other trailers featuring actress Jones round out the
package.
Gone
to Earth was
the second-to-last production by Powell and Pressburger working together. It’s
not in the top tier of their pictures, to be sure, but it’s still a worthwhile
and fascinating pastoral meditation on life in Britain in those days. The
Wild Heart serves as another example of Hollywood meddling, but an
interesting study piece for filmmakers and editors.
Nowadays,
for those of us in comfortable circumstances, traveling to remote, exotic
shores is no big deal.All you need are
a credit card and a reservation at Sandals.If you’re especially eager to shed the daily grind, you’ll even take the
chance of sitting in planes and terminals for hours among scores of strangers,
any of whom may be carrying the COVID-19 virus.(Rest assured, they’ll be equally wary of you.)If you prefer to ride out the pandemic,
Tahiti and Waikiki will still be waiting.In the 1930s and early ‘40s, such luxury was beyond the reach of the
average wage-earner.They had to make do
with a night at the local movie house, where they could vicariously spend time
in Polynesia -- or at least Hollywood’s version, sometimes in Technicolor --
for the price of admission.Usually,
these films were built around stories on the pulp-fiction level of beautiful
Island princesses in sarongs, tribal revolts, volcanic eruptions, and seafaring
heroes, but a few sneaked in more subversive, troubling themes of tropical
paradises despoiled by western greed and disease.One such was Paramount Pictures‘ 1937
production, “Ebb Tide,â€based on a novel
by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson, Lloyd Osborne.Never released by Paramount on home video,
“Ebb Tide†used to appear occasionally on local TV stations before Late Shows
were edged out by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, and their successors, but it’s been
largely missing in action in the decades since then. Most people now will identify “Ebb
Tide,†if at all, with the dramatic ballad of the same name, best-remembered
from the 1965 recording by the Righteous Brothers.Ironically, the song was written in 1953 and
has nothing to do with the movie.
In
the Paramount film, Herrick (Ray Milland), Therbecke (Oscar Homolka), and Huish
(Barry Fitzgerald) are three jailbirds in 1890s Tahiti.Herrick is cultured but chronically down on
his luck, Therbecke a disgraced ship’s captain, and Huish a jovial but devious
alcoholic.Stevenson modeled the
characters on real-life drifters and outcasts whom he encountered in the
Pacific islands in the final, far-traveled years of his life.The trio’s aimless existence is disrupted
when a schooner comes into port from San Francisco, bound for Australia with a
cargo of champagne.The captain and the
first mate have died from smallpox, leaving the ship stranded.The authorities try to recruit a captain to
deliver the vessel to its ultimate destination, but fearing that the ship
remains infected, the reputable skippers in town decline to sign on.As a last resort, Therbecke is offered the
job and accepts, appointing Herrick as first mate and Huish as ship’s
steward.Neither man has any maritime
experience, but that doesn’t matter to Therbecke, who doesn’t intend to
complete the assignment anyway.Given an
unexpected opportunity to profit from others’ misfortune, he plans to divert
the ship to Peru, sell its cargo, and pocket the money.
Once
at sea, he makes two unwelcome discoveries.The first is the late captain’s daughter, Faith (Francis Farmer), who
comes out of hiding and insists that Herbecke fulfill her late father’s
obligation.The second discovery is that
the cargo is much less valuable than it appeared to be.Most of the champagne bottles are filled with
water.The late captain, as unscrupulous
as Herbecke, had secretly planned to sink the schooner at sea and collect the
insurance on the invoiced cases of “champagne.â€After a storm blows the ship off course, the three partners come across
an island controlled by an American expatriate, Attwater (Lloyd Nolan), who
lives in an elegant bungalow.In short
course, they discover that Attwater is a soft-spoken but trigger-happy
religious zealot who used slave labor to illegally harvest pearls, which now
fill his storehouse.The theme of
epidemic disease reenters, one with its own resonance today.Smallpox has swept through the island and
most of the native laborers have died, leaving only Attwater and three
household servants.“That’s why the
house is empty and the graveyard is full,†he says matter-of-factly.Herrick’s conscience reawakens, and he wants
to get Faith off the island and home to safety.Herbecke and Huish meanwhile conspire to dispose of Attwater and steal
his pearls.Homolka, Nolan, and
especially Fitzgerald are excellent in dark roles that cast all three veteran
actors against type.
The
screenplay makes one concession to formula by adding a new, pivotal character
to Stevenson’s original, all-male story, Francis Farmer’s Faith.Faith provides a conventional love interest
(and eventually, redemption) for Ray Milland’s Herrick.Otherwise, the script follows the bleak novel
almost scene for scene and line for line.This alone should encourage fans of classic fiction and literate scripts
to give “Ebb Tide†a respectful look, not to mention film noir enthusiasts who
will embrace the movie’s morally bankrupt characters, inescapable reversals of
fortune, and pervasive deceptions and betrayals.Unfortunately, mainstream critics and
prospective audiences are unlikely to check out the film since a good, officially
authorized edition doesn’t exist on home video, Netflix, or Amazon.The chances of Paramount stepping up seem
remote to none, given the studio’s apparent indifference to releasing or
licensing the bulk of its older catalog on DVD and Blu-ray.For that matter, has the studio even preserved
the needed elements from which a hi-def print could be digitized, restoring the
“breath-taking Technicolor†promised in Paramount’s 1937 ads and press
book?In the meantime, for the curious,
copies are available on the collector’s market and You Tube.
Apparently
several generations removed from the original prints, they’re watchable but
less than optimal.But they’re what we
have.The YouTube print is posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk6icHLkzl0.
(Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)
Without question, this brand new Blu-ray edition of
director Michael Curtiz’s The Mystery of
the Wax Museum will be heralded as one of the Crown Jewels of Warner Bros. Archive
Collection series.This creaky but historically
significant 1933 classic – once believed to be a “lost film†– has been
painstakingly restored to its original two-color Technicolor glory.Such restoration was made possible through
the financial resources of the George Lucas Family Foundation and the combined
technical and artistic interventions of the UCLA Film & Television Archive
and Warner Bros. entertainment.
The
Mystery of the Wax Museum was not the studio’s first foray into
what is now revered as the Golden Age of horror films.One year earlier, Warner Bros. had released Dr. X (1932), another atmospheric horror
vehicle co-starring the villainous Lionel Atwill and 1930’s Scream Queen Fay
Wray.Like its predecessor, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was
green-lit by studio brass to syphon off at least some of the box-office energy
of several contemporary blockbusters: Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein
and Paramount’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
(all three having been released in 1931). Indeed, Glenda Farrell’s character in
Wax Museum makes a no-so-oblique
comparative reference to the competition when she describes the mysterious
caped and scarred figure in Wax Museum
as a fiend that makes “Frankenstein look like a lily.â€It was, perhaps, the first popular culture
reference to confuse the monster with the monster’s maker.
For several decades the original Curtiz cut of The Mystery of the Wax Museum, the first
horror film to feature the revolutionary, but only briefly in vogue, two-color
Technicolor treatment, was believed lost.In his authoritative tome “Classics of the Horror Film†(Citadel Press,
1974), cinema historian William K. Everson suggested that a damaged and
deteriorating print of Wax Museum was
still making the rounds of cinemas in war-torn London of the 1940s.In any event, with the exception of a few
surviving dupey and tattered black and white television prints, the original
film as envisioned by Curtiz was considered lost.
The situation may have remained that way had it not been
for the success of the studio’s celebrated 3D remake of the original, House of Wax.This more familiar version, directed by Andre
DeToth and famously featuring Vincent Price as the mad and scarred wax-figure
artisan, would prove to be one of the biggest blockbuster scores of 1953.The film’s popularity would summarily – at
least among horror aficionados and film historians – reignite interest in the
1933 version.Indeed, as in the case of
many “lost†films, the reputation of the original – stoked by the hazy memories
of those who had actually had the opportunity to see the film two decades
earlier – was, perhaps, slightly over-praised and over-cherished.
It hardly mattered as the original Curtiz version would remain
a stubbornly elusive treasure.It wasn’t
until the late 1960s that a serviceable, though far from perfect, copy of a
nitrate original – apparently cobbled together from several different prints –
was found in the collection of studio boss Jack Warner’s personal library.It’s from this print that the reconstruction
team could use as their primary source in the film’s restoration.A secondary source was an inferior and later
surfacing French work print that helped fill-in the gaps where frames or lines
of dialogue from the Warner print were determined to be missing or damaged
beyond repair.
