Columnists
Entries from April 2008
CINEMA RETRO COLUMNIST DAVID SAVAGE'S COVERAGE OF THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES WITH HIS REVIEW OF THE NEW AUSTRALIAN FILM, NEWCASTLE
Speaking of surf movies (see my fellow Cinema Retro columnist Tom Lisanti's appreciation of Ride
the Wild Wave by clicking here), I have proof that the genre is not a relic of the
past. Newcastle, from indie American director Dan Castle, is an
exhilirating new film making its debut at Tribeca Film Festival that breathes
new life into one of the most formulaic conventions in the movies. Set in the
Australian blue collar beach town of the film's title, up the coast from Sydney,
Newcastle is as anti-idyllic surf movie as you're ever likely to see.
Instead of picturesque sunsets reminiscent of Endless Summer, coal barges
line the ocean horizon of this seaside town. It may be populated by
golden-skinned surf gods and babes, but they are without illusions. Life is hard
and surfing offers the only wave out of this dead-end town.
After placing third in tryouts for the approaching Junior Pro Surf
Championship, a competition that has the power to make or break young surfers'
dreams, Jesse is down but not yet out. He's determined not to end up like his
brother Victor, a promising former surfer who ended his career in injury and now
works on the dry docks with his father, unloading coal. He struggles to cope.
His hormones are raging. His twin brother, Fergus, is likely gay (pale and with
newly purple hair) and the source of constant embarrassment. When the temptation
arises of a weekend away at Stockton Dunes (a remote beach) with his surf
buddies, Jesse leaps at the opportunity, even if it means Fergus has to go
along. Two local girls join them and the weekend holds the promise of nothing
but blissful abandon on the waves and a possible "first time" with one of the
girls. As they move through the weekend trip, Fergus learns to surf and thus
gains acceptance by his mates, but a tragedy unfolds when Victor shows up to
challenge his younger brother on the waves.
Remarkably, the film never hits a false note, even while working squarely
within two classic genres: the surf movie and the teen, coming-of-age film. In
the former category, Castle gives the film a sense of heightened realism by
hiring an ensemble of strong actors as well as seasoned surfers, all of whom
demonstrate an effortless athleticism as they carve and cut out of the waves,
ride crests and "shoot the curl" in take after incredible take. Castle's team of
ocean cameramen are second to none, shooting with fearless energy and great
skill both above and below the waves, using natural light and mostly a handheld
technique so that the viewer feels thrust right out in the action of the
crashing surf. The land-based photography (Richard Michalak, ACS), by contrast,
is dark and claustrophobic, filmed in French New Wave-style handheld and with
little dolly action, underscoring the cramped and volatile nature of Jesse's
home life.
Within the confines of the coming-of-age genre, Castle resists the cliché
typecasting of teen ensemble films, and it's to his credit that he makes each
character seem distinct and fully drawn, even when many of these teen boys are
not fully aware of who they are themselves. There is no gross-out humor, sexual
gags or other pranks typical of teen movies, but there is plenty of content
which rings true to anyone who remembers grappling with the anxieties of
sexuality, peer pressure, ambition and sibling violence at that fragile age.
The adult actors, most prominent among them being the award-winning
Australian actor Barry Otto (Oscar and Lucinda), round out a teen cast
who demonstrate a maturity and dedication to their craft that seems refreshing
when compared with the Ken-doll plasticity of their American counterparts found
on shows like "The O.C.," for example.
I spoke with the director and screenwriter Dan Castle at the festival and he
owned up to weaving a lot of his own life into the script, which took him eight
months to write once he got down to business for real after thinking about the
project for a year. Bizarrely, he hails from another Newcastle: New Castle,
Delaware. But it was a visit in 2001 to the Newcastle Down Under that inspired
the idea for the film, even before he had any characters in mind. "As I drove
through the streets during my first visit to Newcastle in October 2001," Castle
said, " I knew I was in a very special place. The town, the beaches, the seaside
pools, the community of surfers and the nearby Stockton Dunes all resonated with
me."
He too is a surfer ("not a good one," he swears) and he too lost his
virginity in a tent alongside his best friend, who was busy losing his. Even as
he surfed with his buddies as a teen, he realized he was gay. From that aspect
of himself the character of Fergus was born; from other aspects of himself, and
no doubt from other members of his group, other characters were created.
"They were at the peak of their beauty," he remembers, "and yet at the
time don't realize that it's all pretty much downhill from there." The artful
shots of the surfers swimming nude underwater, almost mythical in feel, or the
close ups on golden-downed skin or ocean-blue eyes convey Castle's appreciation,
even reverence, for that fleeting beauty.
Although Dan didn't go to film school (he did go to NYU, but majored in
Business), he started out as an actor and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his
career (he studied at The Actors Studio and with Shelly Winters, whom he met by
chance in a coffee shop on Fairfax). It proved to be too passive, he explained,
as he tired of waiting for someone to tell him "yes." So he instead took a
friend's advice and began concentrating on his writing, which led to directing.
His last film, a short entitled The Visitor (also with Barry Otto),
garnered an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Short Fiction
Film in 2003, and he says he's working on three new projects, one of which is a
comedy entitled Surf Mom. It sounds like Dan might be a new surf movie
auteur with lots of material yet to explore. (Now…where's that
shark.)- David Savage
CINEMA RETRO'S JOHN EXSHAW REPORTS ON A MEMORABLE TRIBUTE TO HAMMER FILMS WRITER/DIRECTOR JIMMY SANGSTER
JIMMY SANGSTER AT THE NATIONAL FILM THEATRE, LONDON
By John Exshaw –
The first time I met Jimmy Sangster, I remarked that he must
have endured a lot of leg-pulling over his surname during his days as Hammer’s
top scriptwriter. Jimmy looked up from his lunch, somewhat startled. “No,†he
said. “Why should that have happened?†“Well,†I replied, feeling I was stating
the obvious, “Sang is the French for blood, and you were writing all
these blood-soaked horror movies . . . Surely someone must’ve made a joke of
it?†Jimmy looked at me like I was the third loony from the left in some Hammer
opus before replying with finality: “No, no one’s ever said that before.â€
And, sad to report, no one mentioned it either at the
National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank on Tuesday 15 April, when Sangster
was guest of honour at an evening devoted to his long and remarkable career.
Billed as “Taste of Fear + Jimmy Sangster in Coversationâ€, the well-attended
event was hosted by Marcus Hearn, co-author of ‘The Hammer Story: The
Authorised History of Hammer Films’, and began with a screening of Sangster’s
first film as scriptwriter for Hammer, the 1955 short, ‘A Man on the Beach’,
directed by Joseph Losey and starring Donald Wolfit, Michael Medwin, and (of
course) Michael Ripper.
Based on a story by Victor Canning, it opens with a rather
Ealingesque casino robbery, in which Medwin does his best Alec Guinness
impersonation as a cross-dressing stick-up artist named Maxie. After deciding
that his partner (Ripper) is now surplus to requirements, Maxie manages to
shove both him and their car over a cliff, though not before sustaining a
gunshot wound himself. Having passed out on the beach, Maxie stumbles across a
gloomy beachcomber’s hut where he encounters a former doctor named Carter
(Wolfit). Self-obsessed and desperate, Maxie determines to kill Carter the next
morning in order to cover his tracks, but finds that the doctor has removed the
bullets from his gun during the night. Soon after, Maxie is apprehended by the
local gendarme on a routine visit. Only then does he learn what he was
too impatient to see before: that Carter is blind and therefore could not have
identified him.
An interesting curiosity, ‘A Man on the Beach’ set the scene
nicely for one of Sangster’s personal favourites, the 1961 chiller, ‘Taste of
Fear’ (known in the U.S. as ‘Scream of Fear’), directed by Seth Holt and
starring Susan Strasberg, Ronald Lewis, Ann Todd, and, as a suitably
sepulchrous red herring, none other than Christopher Lee. Speaking later on,
Sangster recalled, “I’d written five or six Gothics, and one week I remember I
went to see ‘Psycho’ and ‘Les Diaboliques’ . . . And they scared the shit out
of me, they really did! And I thought, hey, I can do that. So I went off and
wrote ‘Taste of Fear’.â€
Sangster, as he is happy to admit, has always preferred his
psychological thrillers (which include such early-Sixties’ titles as ‘Maniac’,
‘Paranoiac’, ‘Nightmare’, and ‘Hysteria’) to the “Gothics†for which he is best
known, although it’s an enthusiasm rarely shared by Hammer aficionados, who
tend to consider the convoluted, twist-in-the-tail plots and black-and-white
photography, however accomplished, to be rather less satisfying than the more
visceral, glorious Technicolor, blood-and-thunder approach which Sangster helped
to pioneer and which became synonymous with the company’s name following the
release of ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ in 1957.
Continue reading "EXCLUSIVE! LONDON TRIBUTE TO HAMMER FILMS LEGEND JIMMY SANGSTER"
57,000 Kilometers Between Us (France)
Among the more experimental entries representing France at Tribeca this year
is video artist and fashion photographer Delphine Kreuter's confident debut
feature 57,000 Kilometers Between Us (57000 km entre nous), a
disturbing and truthful look at how technology is the great atomizer of society.
The characters in this tale, all connected in random ways made possible only on
the internet, mediate their daily lives through the filter of webcams,
multi-character gaming, online chats, blogs and camcorders. They record, stare
and chat, but never connect.
'Nat,' a 14-year-old girl at the center of the story, is struggling to
connect to someone, anyone, given that her mother is caught up in a deeply
dysfunctional new marriage with a man who records every waking second of his
family's life on his camcorder for his blog on marital bliss, but becomes an
uncommunicative zombie once offline. Her real father is a transsexual, who
watches her via remote from her new home, where she is not welcome. Her only two
"friends" consist of a married man online with a baby fetish (he dons diapers
and sucks a baby bottle via webcam) and a teen boy, Adrien, dying of leukemia in
a hospital intensive care ward. It's with this last friend she is able to find
some form of simpatico, as they portray fantasy characters in an
alternate-reality game, acting out thinly veiled games of heroic battle and
rescue. His mother will not visit him even as he lay dying, preferring instead
to hold brief chats with him via webcam. The characters' lives all intersect in
some way that underscores the paradox of connectivity without connection, until
Nat breaks the cycle and decides to act on her feelings for Adrien the only way
she knows how. It's a moving and heartbreaking ending, if enigmatic.
Filmed in a jarring, hand-held style and alternating between digital video
and film, Kreuter creates the look of a distopic future squarely within the
present, which is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the entire film and
which gives it a quasi-documentary feel. It's that rarity of an experimental
film that manages to tell a story with clarity yet remain true to its form.
While it's doubtful this feature will get picked up by an American theatrical
distributor, if it shows up on Netflix, by all means grab it -- it's well worth
the 82 minutes of intensity. -David Savage
RIDE THE WILD SURF (1964) Fabian (Jody Wallis), Shelley Fabares (Brie Matthews), Tab Hunter (Steamer Lane), Barbara Eden (Augie Poole), Peter Brown (Chase Colton), Anthony Hayes (Frank Decker), Susan Hart (Lily), James Mitchum (Eskimo), Catherine McLeod (Mrs. Kilua), Murray Rose (Swag), Roger Davis (Charlie), Robert Kenneally (Russ), Paul Tremaine (Vic), Alan LeBuse (Phil), John Kennell (TV Commentator), David Cadiente (Ally), Yanqui Chang (Mr. Chin).
Ride the Wild Surf stands head and shoulders above all the sixties beach-party movies. This was an earnest and ambitious attempt by Hollywood to capture the surf culture and what attracted young men to the sport. There are no singing surfers or goofy motorcycle gang members in this film as it opens with a narrator explaining why young men from all over the world come to Hawaii to surf. Then the wave action takes over never letting up making Ride the Wild Surf the best Hollywood surf movie of the sixties. Kudos to a excellent cast, stunning photography by Joseph Biroc, and one of the all-time best pop surf songs “Ride the Wild Surf†sung by Jan and Dean over the closing credits. Fabian, Tab Hunter, and Peter Brown play surfers who travel to Hawaii to conquer the big waves at Waimea Bay and in the process take a step to becoming more mature adults. They also find romance with, respectively, Shelley Fabares, Susan Hart, and Barbara Eden. The film makes an honorable effort to portray surfers and the sport of surfing sincerely and to showcase the big waves of the North Shore of Hawaii. Though the story line to drape the incredible surfing action around is thin, the screenplay is peppered with some sharp and hip dialog while all the actors play their roles believably. Peter Brown and Barbara Eden are the most interesting couple as Eden’s perky lovelorn auburn-haired tomboy tries to melt the veneer off of Brown’s uptight college boy. Susan Hart, a local beauty with an overly protective mother, and wannabe pro surfer Tab Hunter make the most handsome duo though a blonde Shelley Fabares as a vacationing coed and the usually shirtless Fabian as a college dropout turned surf bum give them a run for the money. Jim Mitchum, who is the splitting image of his dad Robert Mitchum, makes a quietly menacing heavy. The movie is a smorgasbord of flesh as the boys are all tanned and muscled and the girls are curvaceous and bikini-clad.
Though handsome Fabian, Tab Hunter, and Peter Brown pursue beach babes when not in the water there is also a surprisingly strong “homo-erotic undercurrent†throughout. The scenes of these barechested surfers bonding or comforting each other while tackling the huge waves of Waimea Bay and the gals are nowhere in sight have become gay porn staples.
Ride the Wild Surf really excels showing what it takes to be a top-notch surfer and to challenge the big waves of Hawaii. Joseph Biroc expertly filmed real surfers including Mickey Dora, Greg Noll, and and Butch Van Artsdalen challenging the big waves at Banzai Pipeline, Sunset Beach, and Haleiwa. This footage is spread generously throughout the film climaxing with big wave thrills at the “King of the Mountain†contest at Waimea Bay. It is by far the most exciting and best surfing sequences in any Hollywood surf movie of the sixties. However, some of the scenes of the actors on their boards were filmed in a studio tank where one minute the water is like a sheet of glass and then all of a sudden it cuts to huge swells that come out of nowhere.
The shots around the island of Oahu are stunningly picturesque especially the scenes at Waimea Falls. The movie captures the beauty of the islands spectacularly. Trying to distance itself from the beach-party films there are no musical guest acts only Jan and Dean singing the hit title song over the end credits. Broadcast infrequently, Ride the Wild Surf thankfully is available on DVD. Click here to watch the original trailer Click here to order DVD from the Cinema Retro Amazon Store
Cinema Retro columnist David Savage reports on preliminary screenings of new films leading up to the Tribeca Film Festival. Here, he takes a look at Mister Lonely, which manages to incorporate Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth and Abe Lincoln!
What happens when Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie
Chaplin, the Pope, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, Little Red Riding Hood, Sammy
Davis, Jr., Abe Lincoln and James Dean all find themselves living together in a
castle commune in the Highlands of Scotland? Unfortunately, not much in the
hands of Harmony Korine, whose new film Mister
Lonely, takes this brilliant premise and squanders it for 113 listless,
melancholy minutes. It’s a crying shame, really, as spontaneous eruptions of brilliant! usually followed when fellow
journalists heard the plot synopsis. Instead, loud, irritable sighs were
erupting around the theater as press attendees realized an hour in that nothing
much was going to pay-off the brilliant set-up.
When a struggling Michael Jackson impersonator, played by
Mexican actor Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama
Tambien), meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) on the
streets of Paris, he accepts her invitation to join her at a remote castle
compound in the Scottish Highlands where she lives with her husband, “Charlie
Chaplin†and a motley assortment of aforementioned impersonators in communal
isolation, sort of like the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. There he can find acceptance, she
promises, and join them as they prepare their “greatest show ever†for their
local community.
Meanwhile, in a Catholic mission deep inside the Panamanian
jungle, a group of nuns discover a miracle: One of them has survived a fall
from an airplane flying at several thousand feet and, asking for God’s
protection on her fall back to earth, walks away unscathed. The other nuns
follow suit and become addicted to their new-found, extreme-faith sport. Their
leader is a priest played by Werner Herzog, who appears to be improvising his
lines (The two plot lines never intersect, except for allegorically, but it’s
this latter plot that provides the more interesting of the film’s two stories.)
A goldmine of material, one would think, but Korine gives
his characters little to do and nothing to say. For example, we never hear
anything from the James Dean impersonator, likewise Sammy Davis Jr., nor
Madonna (!) nor the Queen of England. James Fox as The Pope sinks his teeth
into what little script he’s given, and we never learn that he and the Queen
are husband and wife until nearly the end of the film when we see them in bed
together (she lighting a fag and he making small talk). Now there’s a
proposition! But Korine doesn’t explore it, nor does he take much interest in
the fireworks that might result from such a volatile and rich clash of people,
who are themselves imprisoned in personas of their own choosing. I began to
feel sorry for the actors more than the characters, all dressed up and nowhere
to go.
The film is not without its merits. Samantha Morton imbues
her Monroe with
the same sense of tragic fragility as the real-life Marilyn, and Korine manages
to convey the governing idea of “the purity of dreams†in both plot lines. The
mysteries of faith and the willful suspension of disbelief as one “becomesâ€
somebody else might just be two sides of the same coin. – David Savage
Beginning with this column, Cinema Retro's David Savage will be reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. In his first review, he critiques a new film about the cult of Che Guevara - and the irony of how a revolutionary who represented a brutal, totalitarian regime has somehow become a symbol of freedom and independence. TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2008
Strike a Pose: Hasta La Chevolution
No one hates a sourpuss at a party more than me, so I regret to file
my inaugural report from the Tribeca Film Festival (technically a pre-festival
screening) on such a cheerless note and with windless sails. Maybe I chose
poorly from the films on offer before the festival gets underway on April 23rd,
but if what I saw last night, Chevolution, is evidence of what it takes
to get a documentary into one of the most high-profile film festivals in the
world, then all I can say is that the bar has been lowered so far that one need
only step over it.
Piquing my interest was the following synopsis: How did the iconic
image of Che Guevara end up on beer bottles and bikinis? This inquiry into the
ethics and aesthetics of appropriation investigates how the enduring symbol of Cuba's
revolution skyrocketed to fame and was ultimately devoured by its own worst
enemy: capitalism. Great! Sounds provocative and timely. I was all ready to
see a well argued thesis against branding and the banalization of
once-meaningful symbols, and even, I hoped, a useful corrective against the
radical-chic cult of the Marxist assassin and Argentine revolutionary Che
Guevara. No such luck.
What starts out to be a fairly absorbing investigation into the
history one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography -- that
being Cuban photographer Alberto Korda's black and white capture of the young
guerilla warrior at a funeral for the victims of the ship explosion in Havana's
harbor in 1960 -- instead turns into a dreadfully shallow homage to the
guerilla warrior himself, leaving countless stones unturned, a parade of
talking heads unchallenged, and a litany of problematic statements floated over
our heads like methane-filled balloons. Co-director Trisha Ziff even sees fit
to interview herself at one point with this helpful amplification: "He's a
superstar, and a superstar with a message," she explains to her own
camera. What message that is, exactly, she never explains, which serves as a
telling bookend to this entire, pointless film.
On the surface, the directors, Ziff and Luis Lopez, invite our indignation
over how an honest portrait of a communist revolutionary ended up becoming a
global brand at the service of capitalism. Fine. Irony noted. But another layer
of irony left unexplored, like much in this documentary, is how the portrait of
Guevara, Castro's collaborator (and expendable pawn) in creating the most
repressive, blood-soaked, totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere came to
be the symbol of freedom and revolt against oppression. Whom did he set free,
exactly? Care to take that up with the Cuban expatriates in Miami? (They don't, except for one. See
below.)
Continue reading "TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL REPORT: DAVID SAVAGE REVIEWS A NEW DOCUMENTARY ABOUT CHE GUEVARA"
For my second beach movie
review, I picked what I think is the best of the Frankie and Annette
beach-party musicals, Beach Blanket Bingo:
BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965)
Frankie Avalon (Frankie),
Annette Funicello (Dee Dee), Deborah
Walley (Bonnie Graham), Harvey
Lembeck (Eric Von Zipper), John
Ashley (Steve Gordon), Jody McCrea (Bonehead), Donna Loren (Donna), Marta Kristen (Lorelei), Linda Evans (Sugar Kane), Timothy Carey (South Dakota Slim), Don Rickles (Big Drop), Paul Lynde (Bullets), Buster Keaton (Himself), Earl Wilson (Himself), Bobbi Shaw (Bobbi), Donna Michelle (Animal), Mike Nader (Butch), Patti Chandler (Patti), Andy Romano, Alan Fife, Jerry
Brutsche, John Macchia, Bob Harvey, Alberta Nelson, Myrna Ross (Rat Pack), Ed Garner, Guy Hemric, Duane
Ament, Ray Atkinson, Brian Wilson, Mickey Dora, Ned Wynn, Frank Alesia, Phil
Henderson, Johnny Fain, Ronnie Dayton (Beach
Boys), Linda Benson, Mary Hughes, Salli Sachse, Linda Merrill, Luree
Holmes, Laura Nicholson, Linda Bent, Chris Cranston, Mary Sturdevant, Judy
Lescher, Pat Bryton, Pam Colbert, Dessica Giles, Stephanie Nader, Jo Ann Zerfas
(Beach Girls). Guest stars: The Hondells.
In the immortal words of Eric
Von Zipper, Beach Blanket Bingo is
“nifty.†It is the best, the zaniest,
the quirkiest, and most fondly remembered of the Frankie and Annette
fun-in-the-sun teenage epics.
Admittedly, the story centering on Dee Dee proving to Frankie that girls
can sky dive as well as boys while vying for him with a redheaded tease,
Bonehead falling in love with a mermaid, and a beautiful singer kidnapped by
Von Zipper’s biker gang is far-fetched.
But it contains some very funny lines mostly delivered by Don Rickles as
Big Drop and Paul Lynde as an acid-tongued press agent whose verbal sparring
with Avalon is one of the movie’s highlights.
Lots of colorful beach scenes are intermingled with stock sky diving
shots. All your AIP favorite stars are
here, the songs are bouncy and light, an array of guest comics provides some of
the series’ funniest moments, and a bevy of beautiful blondes enhance the
action.
Frankie delivers one of his most
amusing performances but poor Annette who proved she could act in Muscle Beach Party really has nothing
much to do, as her character seems resigned to the fact that her boyfriend has
a roving eye. Deborah Walley, usually
cast as the good girl, surprises as a vixen who uses Frankie to make her
boyfriend John Ashley jealous. Jody
McCrea finally gets to stretch his acting muscle as Bonehead and his scenes
with Marta Kristen (Judy Robinson on Lost
in Space) as a mermaid are touching and bittersweet. Linda Evans is darling as the naïve Sugar
Kane and stands out whenever she dons a bikini.
It is these two sexy blondes along with Playboy Playmate Donna Michelle
as man-hungry Animal and the rest of the bikini-clad beach girls that make Beach Blanket Bingo a winner with girl
watchers. For boy watchers it is the
same old crew but at least shirtless surfer boys Mike Nader and Johnny Fain get
lots more screen time and even raise an eyebrow or two when Nader inserts a
frankfurter into the eager waiting mouth of Fain while Donna Loren sings about
an unrequited love. Scenes like that
make me want to go hmmmmmmmm.
Another big plus for Beach Blanket Bingo is the music
score. The songs are some of the best
from the series beginning with the title song—the grandest opening number of
all the beach-party movies. The up tempo
tune is sung in such a light and bouncy manner by Frankie and Annette that you
can’t but help want to jump to your feet and dance along. They also do well with their second duet, the
popular “I Think, You Think.†Pretty
Donna Loren expertly belts out the heart wrenching “It Only Hurts When I Cry†and
The Hondells rock out on “The Cycle
Set.†Every beach-party movie has one clunker
and in Beach Blanket Bingo it is
“These Are the Good Times†crooned by Avalon as if it were 1950 rather than
1965.
On the down side, as with
most of the beach-party movies, Beach
Blanket Bingo does not do surfers any justice and doesn’t even bother to
insert any stock surfing footage. The
other wrong note in the film is John Ashley.
After playing Frankie’s buddy Johnny in Beach Party, Muscle Beach
Party, and Bikini Beach,
his being cast as Avalon’s jealous rival Steve throws off the continuity of the
series. But despite its minor flaws, Beach Blanket Bingo is the apex of the
beach movie genre. However, little did
anyone know at the time that this would be the last beach pairing of Frankie
and Annette (Frankie only makes a cameo appearance in the next film, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini). Thankfully, Beach Blanket Bingo (as well as all the AIP beach movies) is
available on DVD and turn up frequently on Turner Classic Movies.
For more about me and my
books, visit my web site www.sixtiescinema.com.
- Tom Lisanti CLICK HERE TO ORDER THIS DVD FROM THE CINEMA RETRO AMAZON STORE CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE FRANKIE AND ANNETTE MOVIE COLLECTION DVD SET
Cinema Retro London correspondent Adrian Smith brings us the inside story of the recent reunion of Captain Kronos cast members.
The last
eighteen months has seen an impressive array of Hammer-related film events here
in the UK,
most organised by filmmaker and cult-film champion Don Fearney. Saturday, 29 March saw perhaps the most intriguing and popular event so far occur at the Cine
Lumiere in London.
Captain
Kronos: Vampire Hunter is a long forgotten film which was virtually ignored
at the time of its release, even by Hammer themselves. However it has developed
a strong following since becoming available on home video and DVD, and many see
it as one of the strongest entries in the latter end of the Hammer canon,
falling between weaker efforts such as Twins
of Evil and The Satanic Rites of Dracula.
The film
was created and directed by Brian Clemens, best known for his work on TVs The Avengers, and he had also recently
scripted Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde
for Hammer. He has sadly never been asked to direct a film since which is in no
way a reflection of his abilities!
For the
reunion Don Fearney managed to gather the surviving principle actors, including
a rare visit from the star Horst Janson, who is kept very busy on German
television. Fans were delighted to meet Janson along with Brian Clemens,
Caroline Munro, John Cater, William Hobbs, Lois Dane and Lisa Collings. The
queues for autographs lasted well over two hours and circled the lobby of the
Cine Lumiere. The film was screened to rapturous applause, along with Vampire Circus, another favourite with
fans, and Fearney’s new documentary on the Hammer vampire films.
After the
event, Cinema Retro was lucky enough to catch up with Janson, who is still
incredibly handsome after all these years! How did he feel about being at the
event?
“Well I haven’t
seen the film for a long time. It was great to see the film again on a big
screen. It is great especially to see Brian Clemens again, because he is not
the youngest any more! I enjoyed it very much to see all these people again and
to remember the work. We had great fun you know!â€
Having been
a very busy actor for many years now, Janson was unaware of how popular the
film had become. “It was never released in Germany, so the only thing I saw
was when I was dubbing it into German (for the DVD release). I had no idea how
popular it was over here in Britain.
We can only follow these things on the internet. I know how many people are on
my page and mention Captain Kronos!â€
(Read writer Willliam Gagliani's tribute to Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter in issue #9 of Cinema Retro)
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