By Hank Reineke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BY HANK REINEKE

All evidence suggests that Mark Robson was producer Val Lewton’s “go to” director. Or, at the very least, for his celebrated series of psychological horror and mystery films released by RKO Radio Pictures 1943-1946. Of the six thrillers produced, Robson would helm no fewer than four (The Seventh Victim (1943), Ghost Ship (1943), Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946). The latter two are perhaps the best remembered of the four as both would feature free-agent boogeyman Boris Karloff in a starring role. Though the first of the Lewton horrors, The Cat People (1942, directed by Jacques Tourneur) is likely the best celebrated of the six films overall, I’ve always held a special fondness for Isle of the Dead. Now, revisiting the film with this stunning Blu ray transfer, I’m as impressed as ever with Robson’s claustrophobic direction, the thoughtful scripting of Ardel Wray and Josef Mischel and the film’s gloomy atmospherics.

The grim tone is in evidence from the film’s first scene. The setting is the first Balkan War of 1912-1913. In a tented military station, the stoic and emotionless General Nikolas Pherides (Boris Karloff) coldly and wordlessly motions to “Vitus,” a non-victorious-in-battle army officer to take his own life. Judging only by Pherides’ coldly flat and dissociative emotional countenance, this suggested honorable suicide is the only dignified manner in which Vitus can repent for the troop losses suffered under his command. Karloff’s uncompromising and single-minded General Pherides has earned the appellation of “The Watchdog.” We can well understand why since few who come in contact with him will escape his suspicious gaze.

Karloff chooses to take a brief sabbatical from the frontline. He’s not looking to enjoy a brief respite far from the battlefield. He wants to visit the grave of his wife who is buried on a gloomy remote island not far where the frontline of the war rages. Pherides’ is understandably angered when he discovers his wife’s body is missing from her crypt. When a siren voice is heard singing somewhere off in the gloom, Pherides is certain that the sonorous voice heard is that of the “Despoiler of Graves.” A war correspondent from the Boston Star newspaper, Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer), has tagged along on this trip to the island. He isn’t as certain that the woman heard singing was a grave robber. But he’s well aware that General Pherides is uncompromising in judgment once his stubborn belief system is fixed.

The two men soon discover the gloomy island is not uninhabited as they were led to believe. The cottage on the isle is currently being occupied by an archeologist and several guests. The General obviously had not visited his wife’s grave site for some time. He learns from archeologist Albrecht (Jason Robards Sr.) that the graves had been rummaged through almost fifteen years prior, the unfortunate result of peasants searching for valuable artifacts and antiquities. The cottage is presently filled with living and breathing guests as Pherides arrives, but this is a situation that will soon change. Several begin to drop off almost immediately, and the most reasonable explanation for the deaths is that a deadly virus is blowing in from the mainland. Pherides initially seems to agree an infectious virus is the culprit as he recalls the 6^th Division of his army was recently brought down by some sort of plague. “The horseman on the pale horse is pestilence,” he gravely intones, in the chilling manner that Karloff always excels.

Isle of the Dead is a psychological-horror film of the first order. Karloff’s Pherides may appear, at first, as a man of confident action and an unflinching patriot on a mission. But whether it was the savagery of war or the insidious inhalation of the virus – of perhaps due to the desecration of his wife’s tomb – Pherides’ mental state crumbles as the film spools on. As we have witnessed in the film’s opening scene, the General is hardly a man of mercy. The cold manner in which he would goad the “honorable” suicide of one of his own officers is without emotion. He is hardly less empathetic in his treatment of fellow countrymen. He informs that he once destroyed a village and all of its inhabitants due to their refusal to pay taxes. “He who is against the Greeks,” is not Greek,” he icily seethes.

As the cottage’s guests and residents begin to fall ill – and pass away – from the mysterious illness that’s sweeping through the island, the increasingly mentally anguished General begins to believe the paranoid nattering of a superstitious housekeeper, Madame Kyra (Helene Thimig). Earlier described in the film as a mere “odd, but harmless” woman, the dour and suspicious Kyra doesn’t believe in such things as science or infectious viruses. She believes the evil that has suddenly befallen on the island is actually the result of a vorvolaka. The vorvolaka is essentially, a creature of Greek folklore akin to the vampire legends of neighboring Slavic countries.

Kyra is certain that young Thea (Ellen Drew), the “siren” in the graveyard and the beautiful nursemaid of the unfortunately catatonia-prone Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery), is actually a life-draining vorvolaka who should be eliminated. Mrs. Aubyn’s husband (Alan Napier) is among the first to die from the infectious virus, and the widow is absolutely terrified of being pronounced dead and prematurely interred due to her catatonic propensity. Her fear is reasonable. Things being as unsettled as they are on the Isle of the Dead, Mrs. Aubyn has good reason to be fearful of the possibility.

BY TIM GREAVES

The first of only three films for which Peter Fonda took up residence in the director's chair – the others being Idaho Transfer (1973) and Wanda Nevada (1979) – unconventional western The Hired Hand (1971)is the jewel of the triad. A couple of fleeting outbursts of violence aside, it's heavy on gentle drama and light on shoot-'em-up action, as such more a thinking man’s western than one whose white hats and blackguards are clearly defined from the outset and proceed to serve up a profusion of rapid-fire gunfights with bounteous squirts of ketchup.

Following an upsetting incident which prompts him to reflect on his life choices, drifter Harry Collings (Peter Fonda) informs his travelling companions Arch Harris (Warren Oates) and Dan Griffen (Robert Pratt) that he's decided to return home to the wife and daughter he deserted six years earlier. Before they can part ways Dan is shot by a man who claims he assaulted his wife, which alters Arch’s plans; instead of riding out to the coast he accompanies Harry back to his homestead where, unsurprisingly, they're met with some disdain by his wife Hannah (Verna Bloom). She softens a little, however, and agrees to take on the pair as hired hands. As time passes and the bonds of Harry and Hannah's relationship strengthen, Arch begins to feel like a third wheel and announces his intention to hit the trail, whereafter Harry finds himself faced with a deadly situation that will test his loyalties to the zenith.

An unequivocal critical success when it was released in 1971, it's a little perplexing to learn that The Hired Hand passed broadly unacknowledged on the awards circuit, not so much in respect of wins – there were none – but more in that it received only 2 nominations; both were derived from critics' awards ceremonies and both were for Warren Oates as ‘Best Supporting Actor’. In any event, deserved as those nominations were, even though he was technically playing second fiddle to Fonda, to pigeonhole Oates as the movie’s supporting actor wasn’t exactly fair; he enjoys easily as much screen time as his co-star and, due in part to Alan Sharp's elegant script, I'd suggest as characterisation goes Arch Harris is far more interesting than his phlegmatic comrade and Oates gets to overshadow Fonda in every respect. High Plains Drifter's Verna Bloom also gives a memorable performance as the slightly dowdy yet subtly sensual Hannah Collings, outwardly toughened by circumstance but warm and caring beneath. Meanwhile Severn Darden, perhaps best remembered as Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’ baddie Kolp (a role he reprised in Battle for...), makes for a splendid if underused malefactor; he’s so deliciously venomous that one hankers to see more of him. 

The picture was beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond (later Oscar-winner for his cinematography on Close Encounters of the Third Kind), with a profusion of freeze-frame transition dissolves and exquisite chocolate-box sunsets that are joyous to behold. Folk musician Bruce Langhorne's debut film score is evocative of the very essence of western movies and his banjo-driven opener is nothing if not a triumphant earworm. 

Following his success as star and co-writer on Easy Rider, Peter Fonda was in a position to do whatever he wanted; that his directorial debut should birth The Hired Hand – a film so accomplished, with such genuine depth of emotion and richness of character – shows the measure of the man’s talent and one might lament that opportunities to expand on it were to subsequently prove so scant. The aforementioned deficit of action means it probably won't be to everyone's taste, especially those seeking a more traditional western. But those who enjoy a thoughtful, leisurely-paced tale of the Unforgiven ilk are likely to feel well rewarded.

Admirers of The Hired Hand should be thoroughly delighted by Arrow Academy's dual format Blu-Ray/DVD package. The movie is presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio with 1.0 mono sound and certainly looks better than it ever has. Peter Fonda provides a feature accompanying commentary and the plentiful supplements comprise a 59-minute in-depth documentary from 2003 (which includes interviews with Fonda, Verna Bloom, Vilmos Zsigmond and Bruce Langhorne), a second documentary from 1978 (which runs 52-minutes and focuses on a trio of Scottish screenwriters, the pertinent one being Alan Sharp), a 2-minute to-camera piece in which Martin Scorsese enthuses about the film, five deleted scenes (presented 4:3, with a combined runtime of around 20-minutes, one of which features Larry Hagman and places a different slant on Arch’s reasons for upping sticks and departing the Collings ranch), an alternate edit of the finale, a 1971 audio recording of Fonda and Warren Oates at the NFT, a generous selection of trailers, radio and TV spots, and a stills gallery. The release also benefits from the now standard (for Arrow’s releases) reversible sleeve art and souvenir booklet.

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Boorman in conversation at the Irish Film Institute. (Photo copyright John Exshaw. All rights reserved.)

By John Exshaw

While the Irish Film Institute’s recently concluded French Film Festival (18-28 November) provided a number of interesting divertissements for those seeking a respite, if not deliverance, from the seemingly endless catalogue of corruption, cronyism, clerical criminality, and chronic incompetence that has engulfed the country in recent times, the highlight of the programme for the discerning cinéaste was undoubtedly the joint appearance on Sunday 21^st. of director John Boorman and eminent French film critic, Michel Ciment, for a Q&A session following the screening of Phillipe Pilard’s 2009 documentary, John Boorman: Portrait.

Boorman, of course, is that relatively rara avis, a British auteur, one whose body of work (or oeuvre, as they like to say in France) has tended, as is often the way, to command greater respect abroad than at home. Ciment has long been an influential supporter, collaborating with the director on the book ‘John Boorman’ (Faber & Faber, 1985), originally published in France as ‘Boorman: un visionnaire en son temps’, and also conducting the interview which comprises Pilard’s 52-minute film.

Now 77, and looking dapper in suede jacket, blue shirt, and rust corduroys, Boorman opened proceedings by remarking, “I haven’t seen it [the documentary] before, and I have to say I was very embarrassed at how inarticulate I am. It reminded me – you know, Michel wrote a book about my films, a wonderful book, and the basis of it was an interview I did with him after each film, and he then translated my stumbling, inarticulate words into good French. Later, the book was published in English, and Gilbert Adair, who’s a very stylish writer, translated it from the French back to English. So between Michel’s very fine writing and Gilbert Adair’s stylish writing I was astonished how witty and articulate and clever I turned out to be. It was rather like James Thurber – once, you know, a woman came up to him who was very proud of her French and she said, “Oh, I read your book in French and I have to tell you it was hilarious in French.” And Thurber said, “Yes, it loses something in the original.” In the case of Michel’s book, on the other hand, it actually gained an enormous amount in English. . . .”

By Adrian Smith

Odeon Entertainment are continuing their quest to bring a mixture of sought after and totally obscure titles to DVD with generous extras here in the UK.

Goodbye Gemini (1970) stars Martin Potter and Judy Geeson as twins in a complicated and suspiciously incestuous relationship. They are 20 years old but they roam and play in their large Chelsea townhouse like children, and what begins as childish pranks escalate into something seriously disturbed. At that time Potter was fresh from his success in Fellini’s Satyricon (1969) whilst Geeson had made a big impression as a promiscuous schoolgirl in To Sir With Love (1967), and in Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968), espousing free love whilst skinny-dipping in a lake. Goodbye Gemini was directed by Alan Gibson shortly before he made two Dracula films for Hammer. With his name attached, along with a supporting cast including former Frankenstein’s monster Freddie Jones one might expect the film to be a horror, but it’s not as easy to pigeonhole as that. The film could more accurately be described as a psychological thriller, set in the tail-end of the 1960s where post-Altamont and Charles Manson, the hippy dream has well and truly gone sour. It’s a fascinating and terrifying film that crosses sexual boundaries and pushes relationships over the edge. When we spoke to Martin Potter he remembered the film well: “As an actor I was trained to tell truth. In Goodbye Gemini there was this awful scene where I was about to gas myself, having done something truly awful. There was Hammer horror, where as an audience you didn’t expect Christopher Lee or anyone else to explain what they were doing. It was just a genre of film. But I do recall with Goodbye Gemini trying, probably incredibly naively, to explain what this person was doing. I took it all terribly seriously. I was trying to make it real for me. Whereas the director was doing the film to pay off his mortgage!”

Goodbye Gemini is based on the 1964 novel Ask Agamemnon and features a great period soundtrack by first time composer Christopher Gunning, who would go on to score dozens of TV series and films, including the recent Oscar-winning La Vie En Rose (2007). There would appear to be very little commercial appeal in this story of a brother and sister who love and kill together, but thankfully this was a time of risk-taking and experimentation in the British industry. They were even able to bring Sir Michael Redgrave on board in a significant role as a politician who spends his evenings attending the wrong kind of parties.

Basehart in Fellini's masterpiece La Strada. (Photo: Cinema Retro archives)

Cinema Retro columnist Herbert Shadrak recently spoke to Stephanie Kellerman, a friend of the Basehart family and webmaster of The Talented Richard Basehart shrine at www.richardbasehart.com

Cinema Retro: Was Richard Basehart an actor’s actor? Was his enormous talent only truly appreciated by other actors? 

Stephanie Kellerman: Several actors commented that he was an actor's actor because they did appreciate his talent, but you would find an argument from his fans saying that his talent was only appreciated by other actors. As for me... I appreciated other actors because I liked the characters they played, but I really didn't have an interest in the actors themselves. With Richard, I watched him because I was interested in him and how he seemed to make each role his own. To me, when others acted, they seemed to play the same character in all their movies, different variations of themselves. They just had different names. Richard was one of the few actors who could make the roles he played so believable and the different characters came to life with their own personalities.

CR: Why was this great actor so unappreciated during his lifetime – and perhaps even now, 25 years after his death?

SK: I think that happened because of two reasons. One, he moved to Italy for a decade and was out of the public's eye in the USA. And two, he accepted the role of Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, with which he will be forever identified.  If he had stayed in the U.S., I believe he would have become a greater star here. He is considered a much greater star in Europe. Also, I have received several comments over the years from people who emailed me at my Richard Basehart tribute site that they had no idea he had such range as an actor because they only knew him as Admiral Nelson, and were astonished when they went back and watched some of his old movies, which by now most everyone has forgotten about.

Incidentally, we wouldn't have had Richard as Admiral Nelson if he hadn't needed money to pay off Valentina Cortese after their divorce. She agreed to one last payoff and Voyage was his chance to get out of making any more payments to her. That means if he didn't have that expense, he wouldn't have taken the role and the roles he would have taken otherwise would probably more closely reflect what he had done in the past.

Cinema Retro's David Savage recently spoke to the cast of Sleepwalking, a new independent film starring and produced by Charlize Theron, also with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb and Dennis Hopper.

In Sleepwalking (opening March 14^th in the US) Charlize Theron again demonstrates why her Oscar for Monster (2003) was no fluke. She repeatedly earns it back with every new film, disappearing into characters that we as a society find unlovable, unredeemable and worthy of every hard knock they earn, and instead creates genuine empathy for them. She finds what propels them forward (“hope” she says), what has nearly killed them and then makes them wholly credible, crude and compelling.

In Sleepwalking, Theron plays Jolene, a working class single mother who leaves her 11-year-old daughter Tara (played brilliantly by AnnaSophia Robb) with her brother James (Nick Stahl) a timid, loner 30-year-old who is himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After become his niece’s guardian and father-by-default, he takes off with his niece in search of a new life, but all roads lead home, as more than one movie has revealed. In James’ case it’s the family ranch, which his mean, abusive father (played in almost gleeful menace by Dennis Hopper) still runs. What was supposed to be a healing homecoming instead turns into a fatal confrontation with the man who is responsible for his broken soul.

Far from typical Hollywood star-vehicle product, the film is almost unrelieved in its bleakness, and unfolds against the grim, winter landscapes of small industrial towns in the northern Plains states -- cheap motels, diners on the interstate, and farms fallen on hard times. It’s the kind of environment where hope and self-actualization would seem only like nice theories. As a consequence, most likely it will not find a large audience to appreciate its best merits: strong performances from the principals and a storyline that champions the primacy of family and personal responsibility. As Theron puts it: “Just because we have the same blood flowing in our veins, we don’t have to make the same mistakes.” As Jolene, Theron is to be commended for taking on such unglamorous fare. She served as the film’s main producer, and was responsible for hiring on the other talent that got it off the ground.

The climax at the end, between James and his father (Stahl and Hopper, respectively) feels too late in the game to pack the emotional wallop the filmmakers had hoped for, but nonetheless, for a sophomore effort screenplay (Zac Stafford, of The Chumscrubber) and a first directorial effort (William Maher), it’s nice to see an independent film built on ideas and backed up by strong, hard-hitting performances.

I asked Theron if she might have an affinity for playing women with tough backgrounds, based on her roles in Monster and North Country, as well as her own hard background as a child growing up poor in South Africa. “I think the connection between these women is resilience. They have faced tough lives and had to make tough decisions and what keeps them going is hope. It’s the only thing that fuels their lives,” she said, adding that she doesn’t, on the other hand, want to pigeonhole herself into such roles, lest they dry up as fast as they have appeared.

As a native South African, how does she create women who are such specific American types, recognizable to us by accent, gesture and demeanor, but surely not so easily to a transplant such as herself? “I am a keen student of human psychology. I study people all the time. Human behavior fascinates me. In any walk of life, these types of women are pretty much the same. Jolene is a passionate woman, but she’s also reckless. I wanted to show this quality in her, the humanity of it, but also the carelessness of her.”

Also turning in a remarkable performance in her first “adult” film is 14-year-old Annasophia Robb, who recalls Jodie Foster at the same age: precocious, wounded and possessed of an adult’s perspective too soon in life. In her scenes with a very scary Dennis Hopper, she is able to carry her own as an actress of stunning depth and in full possession of her character. It’s the kind of performance that will surely earn her larger roles very soon, if not award mentions at the end of this year. -David Savage

British correspondent Steve Saragossi pays tribute to one of the unsung superstars of the 1970s.

The Seventies cinema was many things, the decade of the blockbuster, the disaster movie, the conspiracy thriller, and it was also the decade of the Superstar - with a capital “S”. Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson – you couldn’t pick up a movie magazine without seeing that word prefixed before their names.

The word guaranteed a lot of things, certainly a green light on any film they signed their names to, as well as generally assured big box office. One thing it didn’t automatically mean was believability in a given role, a certain honesty that penetrated from screen to audience, and an acting style that easily accommodated drama, comedy, sci fi, westerns, musicals, blockbusters and stark intense character studies. One Superstar however, did manage this, and his name is James Caan.

The polyphonically, unfairly talented and fiendishly busy actress Karen Black (who’s also my good friend and upcoming interviewee in the print edition of Cinema Retro) recently premiered her own one-woman show, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Sing the Song” in Washington, DC, to rave reviews. She received three standing ovations and by her own admission, “I almost couldn’t stand there and accept that much acknowledgment!” In the show Karen recounts her life through musical interludes and anecdotes, beginning as a struggling actress in New York in the early 60s (where she famously said “no thanks” to Lee Strasberg after he invited her to join The Actors Studio), through her move to hippie-era Hollywood and her steady rise to fame as one of the leading actresses of the 70s. Karen treats the audience to absorbing first-hand accounts of her work on such legendary films as Easy Rider (1969), her Oscar-nominated performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Day of the Locust (1975), Nashville (1975), Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) and more.

If you’re surprised to learn Karen Black is also a singer, don’t be. She can absolutely floor you with her voice. If you remember the scene in Nashville, in which she plays country star Connie White, the song she performs in front of the Grand Ole Opry she not only composed herself but made it sound like a viable country hit from that period. Karen grew up in a musical family in suburban Chicago and her grandfather was the esteemed classical musician Arthur Ziegler, who was the first violinist for the Chicago Symphony. Another film in which she sings is Henry Jaglom’s quirky comedy Can She Bake A Cherry Pie? (1983) and the more recent Firecracker (2004) in which she plays a carnival chanteuse and really shows off her range. Henry Jaglom, Karen’s long-time friend from Actors Studio days back in New York, cast Karen in his runaway indie hit Hollywood Dreams (2006) as a vainglorious actress of a certain age who is having a secret tryst with an A-list “gay” actor with a secret: he’s straight. Between rendez-vous with Karen’s character Luna, he toys with the idea of “coming out” against the advice of his managers.

She also appears in Jaglom’s upcoming Irene in Time (2007) and this year’s Suffering Man’s Charity (2007), directed by Alan Cumming. I’m eager for everyone to read the interview with Karen in the next issue. Her career is a revelation to those who pigeonhole her as a fixture of 70s disaster or horror flicks, even if she did important work in both of those genres as well.