“LOMBARD POSSESSED”

By Raymond Benson

Victor Halperin and his brother Edward were a Hollywood filmmaking team in the early 30s who specialized in low budget schlock, for lack of a better description. Sort of the William Castle of the era. For example, they were responsible for the Bela Lugosi eye-roller, White Zombie (1932).

How they got Carole Lombard to star in this hoot of a pre-code horror film is more of a wonder than the film itself, but here she is in all her blonde beauty, playing a non-comedic, almost villainous, role. Supernatural is exactly the type of movie you might have seen as a kid on the Friday or Saturday late night TV horror presentation hosted by a kitsch spooky host like Elvira or Svengoolie or Count Floyd of “Monster Chiller Horror Theater” (SCTV fans will get that reference). The flick is short, cheap, unintentionally funny, and dumb—but a heck of a lot of fun for its sixty-four-minute runtime.

A murderous black widow-type woman, Ruth Rogen (Vivienne Osborne) is executed for killing three lovers (after an “all night orgy,” we’re told—after all, this is pre-code!), but she had always insisted that a man was responsible for the murders. She apparently had psychic powers, and Dr. Houston (H. B. Warner) believes she will attempt to get revenge from the afterlife. That other man is a charlatan medium, Paul Bavian (Alan Dinehart), who now has his sights set on a wealthy heiress, Roma Courtney (Lombard). Roma has just lost her brother, John, so Bavian attempts to “contact” him in a séance in an effort to trick Roma out of her inheritance. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that Ruth Rogen’s malevolent spirit swoops in and possesses Roma in order to get back at Bavian.

Lombard reportedly didn’t enjoy making the film, but she’s surprisingly effective at being the grieving, innocent, and beautiful Roma who then turns deliciously nasty after Ruth has taken over her body. Dinehart is appropriately campy in his part as the main villain, but poor Randolph Scott, as Roma’s boyfriend, is wasted in a set-dressing part. The visual effects, such as they are, are of the ilk achieved with lighting, shadows, and a few wires.

Kino Lorber’s high definition restoration looks remarkably good, and it comes with English subtitles for the hearing impaired. The only supplement is an audio commentary by the reliable film historian Tim Lucas, along with trailers for this and other recent Kino Lorber releases.

So, turn out the lights, kids, and put on this verrrry scary movie! You’ll have nightmares for days!—or at least a few laughs.

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“A FEMME FATALE IN TECHNICOLOR”

By Raymond Benson

John M. Stahl’s celebrated melodrama from 1945, Leave Her to Heaven, is often cited as a film noir. I argue—vehemently—that it is not. It is a melodrama with elements of a crime in the plot, but it does not contain any of the signature traits of true film noir other than the presence of a femme fatale (and a glorious one at that, in the form of Ellen Berendt, played by the luminous and Oscar-nominated Gene Tierney).

Film noir is exclusively black and white by definition. Leave Her to Heaven is filmed in gorgeous Technicolor. Film noir must contain a crime, which Heaven does, but it is not the essential plot device. The protagonist of Heaven—writer Richard Harland (played by Cornel Wilde)—is not a cynical, hard-boiled character, which is a fundamental ingredient of film noir. In this case he is a victim of a mentally ill woman who is so possessive of him that she destroys everything around him, including her own sister, Ruth (adopted into her family, played by Jeanne Crain). There are no bizarre plot twists of the type usually seen in film noir; no dialogue filled with innuendo; no scenes in shabby bars, motels, or streets; no night scenes; no corrupt law or authority figures (unless Vincent Price’s D.A. counts for being overly jealous of Harland); no camerawork evoking the style of German Expressionism; no thematic emphasis on fate or destiny; no flashbacks or voice-over narration; and, most tellingly, it has a happy ending. (All of the above examples are common attributes of pure film noir.)

No, the most film noir element that Leave Her to Heaven has going for it is the femme fatale character… and she is also perfectly at home in the old-fashioned domestic melodrama, which is what this motion picture certainly is. Granted, she is a bit more twisted than most antagonists in “women’s pictures,” in which director Stahl specialized during the 1930s. That said, as a melodrama, Heaven is quite good. The acclaim it receives for the color photography is well deserved (it won the Oscar for Color Cinematography).

The story in a nutshell—Richard meets Ellen on a train on the way to visit friends in New Mexico. Ellen is engaged to someone else, but within a few days, she breaks off the engagement and talks Richard into marrying her. She then proceeds to dominate Richard’s life, even pushing out his beloved disabled younger brother (which will lead to the tragic, evil, most famous sequence in the picture), and her own family. The term “mental illness” was probably not used much in 1945, but Heaven is a masterful depiction of a woman with that affliction. This is what the movie is about—not the crime that takes place in the story.

It's all very engaging, although the courtroom scene toward the end has flaws of believability. Price’s D.A. character constantly badgers witnesses without a single objection from the opposing lawyer (played by Ray Collins), and the charges against the accused—and subsequent prison sentence for a different person—are so far off base from true legal standing that it’s laughable. (I also find Alfred Newman’s score to be a bit overbearing.)

Still—Leave Her to Heaven is good throwback viewing to the 1940s… and, wow, that Technicolor is something to behold on Criterion’s superb Blu-ray disk! It’s a new 2K digital restoration by Twentieth Century Fox, the Academy Film Archive, and The Film Foundation, and it contains an uncompressed monaural soundtrack.

The only supplement is a thorough, informative interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith. The booklet contains a wonderful essay by crime novelist Megan Abbott.

Criterion’s Leave Her to Heaven package is certainly worth an upgrade if you already own the previously issued DVD.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

To the dismay of his millions of fans, Cary Grant went into self-imposed retirement after the release of his final film "Walk Don't Run" in 1966. He made no statements about his decision, no dramatic appearances on TV programs to make the announcement. He simply and quietly just let it be known in the industry that he was no longer making films. Right up to the evening at which he was to receive his honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement at the 1970 ceremonies, it was expected by many that the award would accepted on his behalf by someone else, as Grant was adverse to speaking publicly.  It was a real thrill when he walked out on stage and, despite having to contend with some bizarre inside jokes from Frank Sinatra, Grant went on to make an extremely gracious speech, sharing his honor with all of the colleagues he had worked with. No wonder the Cary Grant image is still the gold standard when it comes to style and dignity.

Whitman co-starred with John Wayne in the hit 1961 film "The Comancheros".

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Stuart Whitman, the popular leading man of feature films and television, has passed away from natural causes at age 92. Whitman generally showed a tough guy persona in films, and although he usually played a hero, he could also occasionally impress as a villain, as well. Among his more memorable films was "The Mark", a 1961 production that earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination as a child molester who is trying desperately to redeem himself. Other key movies include "The Comancheros" in which he co-starred with John Wayne, "The Longest Day", "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines", "Rio Conchos", "Murder, Inc." and "Ten North Frederick". In 1965, Whitman scored as a killer in the desert adventure film "Sands of the Kalahari". From that point on, however, he was increasingly consigned to roles in "B" movies. However, he did have the leading role in the 1967 TV Western series "Cimmarron Strip". As his film roles declined in quality, Whitman made guest appearances on many top TV series. For more, click here.

Roy Rose and his horrific and historic gas station.

(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)

BY MARK CERULLI

Deep in the heart of Texas there’s a nondescript gas station on the side of a sleepy road… You can’t buy gas there. They don’t sell lottery tickets, and the closest neighbors are a herd of cows. But this gas station has a unique place in horror film history as a key setting of director Tobe Hooper’s iconic 1974 film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The station was in serious disrepair when it caught the eye of Texas Chainsaw Massacre mega-fan Roy Rose who “fell in love with the movie since I was ten years old.” Why? “It’s the most realistic horror movie there is, nothing else is even close,” Roy explains. He then set about living his dream - approaching the station’s original owner to buy it. A few years (and many phone calls later) his persistence paid off – the station was his. “I told my wife and my kids, ‘Let’s go! We’re moving to Texas…’” Roy chuckles.

Tall and bearded, the Ohio businessman shrugs off the two years of hard work it took to bring the station back from its sorry state. He stocked it with a vast array of horror masks and figures, plus rows of licensed Chainsaw-centric t-shirts you can’t find anywhere else. A stickler for details, he tracked down the same outdoor chairs and even the same type of front door seen in the movie, finding them on Craigslist, then shipping them to Texas for a princely sum.

But Roy’s vision included much more than just creating an out-of-the-way horror boutique. First, he added… barbeque from a huge, custom-made smoker. “Oh, we got the best barbeque,” Roy says confidently. This Cinema Retro scribe can truthfully say that the gas station’s smoked brisket was tender and juicy and their sausage was delicious – not too spicy, with a satisfying snap. Roy’s Gas Station Chili also hit the spot, served with plenty of white bread to sop it up with.

Inside the horror emporium.

(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)

Roy also turned the gas station into a tourist destination by building cozy one-room cabins that can be rented for one night or longer. Once a year he screens his favorite film at the compound (“I always pay the licensing fee,” he points out) and holds a horror convention where surviving cast members sign autographs and mingle with fans. “Fans come to the gas station, meet the stars and we also have live music.”

On the day of my visit, original TCM actor Allen Danziger (Jerry, the van’s driver) arrived to discuss his merchandising plans (get ready for “Chainsaw Jerry’s Beef Jerky”). After chowing down on a smoked sausage sandwich, the former Bronx native was ready to talk about making the historic film. “For me it was a lark, I wasn’t an actor,” Allen explained. He just happened to have worked on director Tobe Hooper’s first film, Eggshells (“It was a psychedelic, hippy dippy kind of thing”) so he was a shoo-in for a part in Chainsaw.

CR’s Mark Cerulli with TCM actor Allen Danziger in front of the same model van he drove in the film.

(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)

Fortunately for Allen, he didn’t have to spend much time inside the actual Chainsaw house. “People were puking and getting sick after a take, it was awful,” he recalled. Remember all those dead animals on the walls and dangling from the ceilings? They weren’t rubber props, they were REAL dead animals – roadkill! “Occasionally I would get a whiff of Gunnar (Hansen) and that was enough.” (Hansen was the 6’4” Icelandic-born actor who played the murderous Leatherface in the film.) “Gunnar and I became real good friends,” Allen said, adding, “He was very bright with a good sense of humor…” Sadly, Hansen passed away in 2015 at age 68.

After filming ended, Allen visited the director in the editing room. “Tobe showed me some scenes and asked what he could do to improve them. I jokingly said ‘Have the seats facing away from the screen.’” That did NOT go over well with the prickly filmmaker. “I didn’t see any more rushes.” But once the film was edited and retitled – from Headcheese to the more familiar The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Allen was sold on it.

When asked what he wanted fans to remember about the game-changing movie, Allen said, “That a group of young people gave their all…” He did mention that promised shares in the film’s profits never materialized - but such is showbiz. (TCM grossed over $30 million on a $140K budget.)

Gas station barbeque- "It's the meat!"

After his two Tobe Hooper roles, Allen landed a small part in Willie Nelson’s Honeysuckle Rose and then his acting career hit the skids. “I had a rapid rise and a meteoric fall,” Allen laughs, explaining that he went into social work and had his own entertainment company. Now 77, Danziger credits the film’s intense realism to its long-lasting success. “None of us were known but there was the believability that this all could happen. I mean, it’s Texas.”

Look for Roy’s Cult Classic Convention in Bastrop, Texas in February, 2021, headlining Bill Moseley (Chop Top in TCM 2), Caroline Williams (TCM 2), Camille Keaton (I Spit on Your Grave), Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall) and others TBD. Check Roy’s creepy empire by clicking here. 

HOW TO GET THERE

The Gas Station is located in Bastrop, Texas, about 30 minutes outside Austin. Car Rental or Uber/Lyft are your best options in terms of getting there.  If you opt for a ride sharing service, offer to buy the driver a plate of BBQ while you shop for your Chainsaw treasures as it might be quite a wait to get a ride back into town!  

BY LEE PFEIFFER

What do you do when you despise the person most likely to bring your goals to fruition? We're not talking about the Republican establishment's dilemma with Donald Trump but, rather, the central plot premise faced by  the U.S. Olympic ski team coach (portrayed by Gene Hackman) in director Michael Ritchie's acclaimed 1969 film "Downhill Racer". The protagonist of the movie is one Dave Chappellet (Robert Redford), an almost impossibly handsome young man from the rural town of Idaho Springs, Colorado, who has a single-minded obsession of being America's first gold medal winner for downhill skiing in an era when the sport was dominated by Europeans. With his good looks and superficial charm, Chappellet is used to being a big fish in a small pond. He is virtually penniless and, when not practicing on the slopes of European mountains, is forced to eek out an existence by living with his cold, unemotional father (non-professional actor Walter Stroud in a striking performance.) He has no career plans beyond his single-minded obsession with getting on the Olympic team. His lack of intellectual curiosity or abilities to socialize with others don't seem to phase him. Like any narcissist he savors any small victory as a sign of his superiority over the peasants he must occasionally interact with. Chappellet lacks any self-awareness or introspection. He takes a cocky delight in being able to drive down the main street of his one-horse town, pick up a local old flame and get her to have sex in the back seat of a car. He seems oblivious to the fact that the battered vehicle belongs to his father and that he doesn't even have a place of his own to carry out his carnal activities.  Chappellet gets the big break he is looking for when a top skier on the Olympic team suffers a grievous injury. The team coach, Claire, calls in  Chappellet to replace him. From the start, their relationship is a rocky one. It becomes clear that  Chappellet is not a team player. He skis superbly and Claire recognizes him as the team's potential best hope for victory. However, he is also alarmed by his independent streak and his inability to follow protocols.  Chappellet is in this for personal glory and his teammates are viewed as unnecessary distractions. True, he can go through the rituals of socializing. He's polite to his roommate and occasionally joins the other guys for beers, but Chappellet is clearly a vacuous, self-absorbed figure. The film traces his achievements on the slope and Claire's unsuccessful attempts to turn him into a team player. Chaplette also meets a vivacious business woman in the sports industry, Carole (Camilla Sparv). He's instantly smitten by her exotic good looks and libertarian outlook toward sex. The two begin an affair but it turns sour when Chaplette can't accept the fact that Carole is an emancipated young woman who marches to her own beat. Her unwillingness to dote over him or to treat their relationship as anything but superficial bruises his ego. In Chaplette's world, it is he who treats sex partners like disposable objects, not the other way around. The film concludes with Chaplette and his teammates engaging in the make-or-break competition against top-line European skiers to see who can bring home the gold.

The Best of Frenemies: Redford and Hackman

"Downhill Racer" was a dream project of Robert Redford, who had championed the film, which is based on a screenplay by James Salter. Redford's star had risen appreciably with Paramount following the success of "Barefoot in the Park". The studio wanted to do another film with him and suggested that he play the male lead in the forthcoming screen adaption of "Rosemary's Baby". Redford pushed for "Downhill Racer", a film that the Paramount brass had dismissed as being too non-commercial. (This was before Redford would reach super stardom with the release of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".) Thus began a game of brinksmanship between Redford and the studio. He managed to get Paramount to supply a small budget ($2 million) and creative control over the project to him and Roman Polanski, who was enthused about directing the film. However, the studio made a counter-move and lured Polanski to direct "Rosemary's Baby". Annoyed, Redford had to find a new director and settled on Michael Ritchie, and up-and-coming talent who was eager to make the transition from television into feature films. He and Redford, along with their tiny crew, used their limited budget to travel to international ski competitions in order to film real life action on the slopes that could later be combined into the final cut of their movie. For all their efforts, "Downhill Racer" was a boxoffice disappointment and would be overshadowed by the release of "Butch Cassidy" later in 1969. Yet its a film that Redford is justifiably proud of. There are many admirable aspects of the production, not the least of which is Redford's compelling performance as a protagonist who is not very likable or sympathetic. He's also not very intelligent, either, a character flaw that doesn't seem to bother him much, as he feels he can get by on his looks. The down side of "Downhill Racer" is that when the central character is a total cad the viewer finds it hard to be concerned with his fate, unless there is a major dramatic payoff as in the case of Andy Griffith in "A Face in the Crowd" or Paul Newman in "Hud", two of the most notorious characters in screen history. Where "Downhill Racer" blows it is in the final sequence during the championship ski run. There was an excellent opportunity to end the movie on a poignant note but the movie punts and leads to an emotionally unsatisfying ending. Nevertheless the exotic scenery and fine performances (especially by Hackman, who is under-seen and under-used) compensate for a story that is as chilling as the locations in which it was filmed. 

Criterion has upgraded their previously released DVD special edition to Blu-ray and it looks spectacular. There is a wealth of interesting extras, all ported over from the previous release. These include separate interviews conducted in 2009 with Robert Redford and James Salter. I found them to be most enlightening because I was blaming Salter, as the screenwriter, for being responsible for the film's unsatisfying ending. Lo and behold, Salter expresses the same exasperation. Apparently his original script called for the more dramatic finale that I was envisioning. However, he says that Redford made the change without his permission. It's still apparently a sore spot with him. For his part, Redford is defensive about the decision, saying that he felt the the ending he insisted upon was the correct choice (Note: it wasn't.)  It would be interesting to see Redford and Salter lock horns over this in the same interview at some point. In any event, Redford's enthusiasm for the film is evident even if it seems to exceed that of audiences. To reiterate, it's a fine movie with many qualities but Redford has had superior, under-appreciated gems in his career. Other bonus extras on the Blu-ray include interviews with editor Richard Harris (whose work on the film is most impressive), production executive Walter Coblenz and champion skier Joe Jay Jalbert who was hired as a technical consultant and became indispensable on the production, serving as double and cameraman. The footage he captured skiing at high speed with a hand-held camera is all the more amazing because he was a novice at shooting film.  There is also a vintage production featurette from 1969 and a very interesting one-hour audio interview of director Michael Ritchie at an American Film Institute Q&A session in 1977. The affable Ritchie was there to promote his latest film "Semi-Tough" but goes into great detail about how he became disillusioned with the constraints of working in the television industry where directors at that time were just hired guns whose creative ideas and instincts were constantly being suppressed. Ritchie tells an extended anecdote about shooting an episode of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." during which he came up with a suggestion to improve a key scene in the script. He was told to mind his own business by the producer (who he doesn't name). When series' star Robert Vaughn agreed with him, Ritchie shot an alternate version of the scene that was met with enthusiasm by the network. Instead of being congratulated, he was blackballed from the series henceforth. Ritchie would go on to make some very fine films including "The Candidate" (again with Redford), the wacko-but-mesmerizing crime thriller "Prime Cut", "The Bad News Bears" and others. However he never lived up to his full potential and ended up directing many middling films before his untimely death at age 63 in 2001. The AFI audio included here is a rare opportunity to listen to his views on filmmaking while he was at the height of his career. The Blu-ray set also contains the original trailer and a collectible booklet with essay by Todd McCarthy. 

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“FILMING MEMORIES”

By Raymond Benson

The art-house darling of 2018, like 2019’s Parasite (from South Korea), was a foreign language film from Mexico. Except that it didn’t play in many art houses—it was a streaming Netflix production, and that’s how most people in the U.S. saw it (although the picture did play in cinemas a short time in order to qualify for Academy Awards).

Roma emerged from the memories of its creator, Alfonso Cuarón, who grew up in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. Taking place in 1970-1971, when Cuarón himself was between the ages of eight and ten, Roma is the story of a maid/nanny who lives with an upper middle-class household and is, for all intents and purposes, a member of that family. Apparently Cuarón had been close to his nanny, and the picture is a compilation of fictionalized memories from his childhood.

Cuarón took great pains to recreate the house where he grew up, the neighborhood, and milieu in the city during that period. In fact, the production utilized the house directly across the street from the one in which the Cuarón family lived. The filmmaker also served as his own cinematographer, shooting the picture in widescreen black and white digital—thus creating a completely grainless, “modern” look to a movie taking place in the early seventies. The results are absolutely gorgeous.

Roma is a slow burn that sucks you in at a meticulous pace, but once the characters and the mesmerizing tone of the piece have begun to work their magic, you can’t escape. As with 2019’s The Irishman, also a Netflix streamer, I heard many complaints that Roma was “boring.” I blame that reaction on folks sitting at home, most likely in a living room with the lights on, with distractions galore, looking repeatedly at a phone in hand, and the lack of attention one might alternatively devote if the locale was a movie theater. Roma was anything but boring. It was an intimate study of a family on a broad, impressionistic canvas.

Yes, there’s a story. Cleo, the maid (vulnerably played by Oscar-nominated Yalitza Aparicio), enjoys a pleasant life working for the family of a doctor, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), and his wife Sofía (Oscar-nominated Marina de Tavira). She is close to the four children, but especially one of the boys (Cuarón’s alter-ego). During the course of the picture, Cleo becomes pregnant by a young man who then wants nothing to do with her, Antonio leaves his wife for another woman, and the family unwittingly clashes with political events in the street (the violent El Halconazo of June 1971). This description barely scratches the surface of the tremendous depth of emotion and wonder that Roma evokes, but suffice it to say that the film is more an experience than a movie.

Unlike Parasite, Roma did not win the Best Picture Oscar for which it was nominated, but it did pick up trophies for Director and Cinematography (both for Cuarón) and Foreign Language Film, the first title from Mexico to do so.

The Criterion Collection, thank goodness, released Roma on Blu-ray and DVD (original content from Netflix rarely makes it to home video). The deluxe package is exceptional. The 4K digital master was supervised by Cuarón and contains a Dolby Atmos soundtrack—and it looks and sounds fantastic.

The supplements are plentiful. A feature-length “making-of” documentary, Road to Roma, is a virtual filmmaking lesson from Cuarón as he relates how the movie happened from conception to release, complete with behind-the-scenes footage. Another long piece, Snapshots from the Set, features interviews with producers Gabriela Rodríguez and Nicolás Celis, actors Aparicio and de Tavira, production designer Eugenio Caballero, casting director Luis Rosales, and others. If that weren’t enough, there are documentaries on the movie’s design, sound, and post-production processes, as well as a doc on the film’s release campaign and its social impact in Mexico. There are alternate French subtitles and Spanish SDH. The enclosed, thick booklet contains several essays with beautifully reproduced images from the movie (with notes by Caballero).

Although you can still stream Roma on Netflix, the Criterion edition is a superb collectors’ package with an abundance on material you don’t otherwise get. Highly recommended.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

There is a television series that has attained something of a cult status, even though it hasn’t been seen by anyone since it was first broadcast on the ABC Television Network during the 1971-1972 TV season. The show was “Longstreet,” starring James Franciscus (“Naked City,” “Mr. Novak,” “Valley of the Gwangi”) as a blind insurance investigator based in New Orleans. The show had some interesting features that made it out of the ordinary, including scripts by Oscar Winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, a great performance week after week by Franciscus, and the participation of martial arts legend Bruce Lee in four of the 23 episodes that were produced.

The fact that there were only 23 episodes is why a lot of people may have heard about the show but not many have actually seen it. There were not enough episodes to make “Longstreet” suitable for syndication, so the show remained unaired and unseen for almost 50 years, locked away in the vaults of Paramount Home Video. In 2017, however, CBS TV licensed the series for home viewing to Visual Entertainment Inc., of Toronto. And now the entire series, plus a 90-minute TV pilot film, are available in a box set of four DVDs. Viewing the episodes now, you realize how really good the series was.

The regular characters, appearing week after week, included an assistant named Nikki (Marlyn Mason), who taught Longstreet braille and helped him get around town in a Jeepster Commando convertible. Mike’s boss at the Pacific Northwestern Insurance Company was Duke Page (Peter Mark Richman), a man constantly amazed and aggravated by Mike’s risk taking and ability to solve cases. Mike’s other “assistant” was Pax, a white German Shepherd guide dog. The final member of the cast was Mrs. Kingston (Ann Doran), who cooked and took care of Mike’s home on Chartres St., making sure everything was kept in its proper place.

Longstreet was an unusual character for TV, not the kind you usually find on a crime show. For one thing, he was haunted, still trying to cope with both his blindness and the loss of his wife Ingrid. The incident that caused these tragedies was depicted in the 90- minute TV pilot film—a bomb inside a champagne bottle left on their doorstep by criminals Mike had come up against several years ago. Images of that incident and memories of his wife flash through Mike’s mind constantly as he proceeds with each week’s investigation. He’s also got a chip on his shoulder. Not satisfied with merely coping with his handicap, he wants to prove to the world that he’s still the same man he was before the injury. That particular trait poses some interesting problems as the series goes on.

The show was created by Oscar and Golden Globe winner Stirling Silliphant, who executive produced and wrote four of the episodes. Silliphant based Longstreet very loosely on a character created by Baynard Kendrick in a series of novels written between 1930 and 1950. Silliphant’s character bears little relationship to Kendrick’s Duncan Maclain, who suffered blindness from war injuries. Silliphant’s humanistic style is all over the Longstreet character, with most of the episodes going beyond mere crime solving, instead focusing on Longstreet’s constant battle against fear, grief, and panic, and his need to prove himself.

Perhaps the most famous episode, the one most people have heard about even if they haven’t seen it, is “Way of the Intercepting Fist,” which featured martial arts legend Bruce Lee in a key role. At the time, Silliphant had been taking instruction from Lee in Jeet Kune Do, Lee’s special brand of Kung Fu. They became friends and he had already written him into a part in James Garner’s “Marlowe.” The Longstreet episode begins with Mike attacked in an alley by three goons who warn him to back off his investigation into the theft of pharmaceuticals from a shipping company. But suddenly a whirlwind flies into the darkened alley and the goons don’t know what hit them as a young Chinese cat, Li Tsung (Lee) cleans their clocks. Mike, picking himself up off the ground, asks what he did to them. Li replies: “They did it to themselves.”

BY DOUG OSWALD

James Stewart is a former World War II bomber pilot called back to active duty nearly a decade after the war ended in “Strategic Air Command,” available on Blu-ray from Olive Films. Stewart plays Lt. Colonel Robert “Dutch” Holland, a 3rd baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, who is ordered to report for a 21-month tour of active duty to help oversee the transfer from the B-36 bomber to the new B-47 bomber in the Strategic Air Command, responsible for the United States Air Force bomber aircraft. The news is delivered by an old friend, Major Gen. “Rusty” Castle (James Millican). Dutch and Cardinals Manager Tom Doyle (Jay C. Flippen) are not happy about the recall which puts his baseball career on hold for nearly two years, but he accepts it as part of his patriotic duty. Dutch’s wife, Sally (June Allyson), is excited at the prospect and looks forward to being a military wife.

Dutch is questioned at the gate of Carswell Air Force Base, Texas, when he arrives, orders in hand, but not in uniform. He responds in typical Stewart restrained irritability, explaining he doesn’t have an Air Force uniform or military identification, but is eventually escorted on base by General Castle. Rusty and Dutch meets the SAC commander, General Ennis C. Hawkes (Frank Lovejoy), who arrives at Carswell AFB on a surprise inspection of base security, landing on a civilian airliner which has requested an emergency landing. When the head of security explains why he allowed a group of men to get off the aircraft, Hawkes barks, “Don’t tell me your little problems son. All I’m interested is results!” After getting his Air Force uniform, Dutch meets his new Squadron Commander, Colonel Espy (Bruce Bennett) and his Operations commander, Lt. Colonel “Rocky” Samford (Barry Sullivan). During his flight physical and altitude chamber test, Sally arrives and they eventually set up in their new home in base housing.

On his orientation flight onboard a B-36, Dutch meets the flight engineer, Master Sgt. Bible (Henry Morgan) and flight navigator and fellow recalled pilot, Captain Ike Knowland (Alex Nicol). Dutch has to reflect on his own feelings about being recalled when addressing Ike’s vocal criticism of the USAF recall policy in order to maintain discipline of his crew. Upon getting a tour of the inside of a B-36, Dutch’s early reservations about learning to fly a radically different aircraft than the B-29s he flew during WWII are set aside by the wisdom of Sergant Bible, “Of course, when you boil it all down it’s still an aircraft and a crew working together to get a bomb on a target.”

While the movie is a fictional account, some of the characters have real life counterparts. Stewart’s character Dutch is semi-based on baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who served as a fighter pilot during WWII and was later recalled and served as fighter pilot during the Korean War. General Hawkes is based on General Curtis LeMay, Commander of the Strategic Air Command from 1949-57. LeMay was known for surprise inspections and being tough on SAC airmen by keeping them on a constant war readiness setting.

The movie offers outstanding model work and filmed footage of the real aircraft, both in the air and on the ground, featuring the B-36 and B-47 with glimpses of the soon to arrive B-52. The script does a great job portraying the struggles of military families moving away from familiar surroundings, adjusting to military life and aircrew on long flights and deployments. The main action concerns two long overseas flights, including a crash landing of a B-36 in Greenland during winter. The major problem with the movie, as terrific as it is for a former SAC member like myself, is SAC was always a peacetime deterrent to the Soviet Union and never went to war with the exception of B-52s on conventional bombing missions during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. The motto on the SAC shield, “Peace is Our Profession,” drives home this dilemma. Sergeant Bible sums it up well to Dutch while on a mission, “Everyday in SAC’s a war, Colonel. Pressure’s on all the time. We never know when the other fellow might start something. So we’ve got to be combat ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

SAC was established 21 March 1946 in response to the post WWII Soviet threat known as the Cold War. General Carl Spaatz, the father of the United States Air Force, which was established on 26 September 1947, created SAC with General Curtis LeMay out of the remnants of the Eighth Air Force. SAC remained a major player in the Cold War for 45 years. That all came to an end in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I remember that final year of SAC when three Soviet MiGs and their support aircraft flew in to Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, on a goodwill tour. It was a surreal time to be in SAC. Our mission was to defend against the Soviet threat, not host them for dinner and drinks at the base club.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“The Last Hurrah,” a limited edition Blu-ray release from Twilight Time, opens just as Mayor Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) announces he’s going to run for a fifth term. As played by Tracy, Skeffington is an admittedly corrupt Irish politician who believes you can’t run a city without a little grease on the wheels. But it’s okay because Skeffington is a man with a good heart. He’s for the working man and the poor, and his enemies are the Yankee Blue Blood elites who hate the Catholic Irish immigrants who have taken over the city.

The city, incidentally, is described only as “A New England City,” But the film is based on Edwin O’Connor’s novel of the same title, which was based on the life and career of James Michael Curley, the four-term mayor of Boston between 1920 and 1950. Director John Ford (with the help of screenwriter Frank Nugent, who worked with Ford on “The Searchers,” “The Quiet Man” and other films), took O’Connor’s book, knocked some of the rougher edges off the character and turned it into a sentimental look at a time in American politics so different from today that it might as well have happened on a different planet. “The Last Hurrah” shows us America before the media took it over.

Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter), the mayor’s nephew, is a sports writer working for the newspaper owned by Amos Force (John Carradine), one of Skeffington’s bitterest enemies. The mayor invites Caulfield to cover his campaign for the paper, telling him it’ll be one of the last chances to see how an urban election campaign is run before radio and television change everything. Skeffington knows his kind of politics has had its day, and politicians like him are on their way out.

Skeffington believes in going out to meet people in person, shaking hands and talking to the voters. He invites Caulfield to join him at the wake of a former associate by the name of Knocko, who died nearly friendless and whose widow is now broke and can barely afford funeral expenses. He orders food and flowers and gets a crowd to show up. Caulfield becomes incensed when he realizes that his uncle has basically turned his dead friend’s wake into a political rally. But Skeffington’s closest aide John Gorman (Pat O’Brien) tells him that his uncle gave the widow $1,000, and talked the funeral director into cutting his bill to practically nothing. He also made the widow believe that her unpopular husband actually had a lot of friends. You can’t hold something like that against a guy.

The main conflict in the film is between the mayor, Force, the newspaper publisher, and banker Norman Cass, Sr. (Basil Rathbone). When Cass informs the mayor by letter that his bank will not provide the funds needed for a public housing project for the poor, the mayor marches into the private Plymouth Club, where all the blue bloods hang out, and threatens to go to the newspapers with every dirty little thing he knows about the banker. When that produces little reaction, the mayor cons Cass’s less-than-bright son to accept an appointment as fire commissioner. He takes a ludicrous picture of him dressed in a raincoat and fireman’s hat and calls Cass, Sr. into his office and threating to make his son’s humiliation public unless he comes up with the money for housing. Cass is forced to agree but before he leaves Skeffington’s office he picks up the phone on the mayor’s desk, calls his bank and tells his assistant to deposit $400,000 into a rival campaign.

“The Last Hurrah,” is also a farewell to a world of civility and fair play. Even in 1959 Ford must have sensed the world that was coming. Prejudice and hatred play a large part of the background of the story, with Protestant elites and Irish immigrants at war with each other. Powerful men like Force and Cass still exist today. Substitute Mexicans for Irishmen and you could be talking about the election of 2016.

Finally, “The Last Hurrah,” is a farewell to the way movies used to be made. The cast is made up almost totally of actors who had been part of Ford’s “stock company in the films he made over 50 years. In addition to Pat O’Brien, John Carradine, and others already named, you’ll find Edward Brophy, James Gleason, Jane Darwell, Wallace Ford, and Frank McHugh. Even Ricardo Cortez appears, dropping his Latin Lover façade, playing Jewish lawyer Sam Weinberg. Ken Curtis and Edmund Lowe show up as well.

Twilight Time has given “The Last Hurrah” an excellent 1080p High Definition transfer to a region-free Blu-ray that presents Charles Lawton’s black and white cinematography in rich, highly textured detail. Twilight Time’s Nick Redman, and Julie Kirgo, and screenwriter Lem Dobbs (“The Limey”) provide an informative and interesting commentary on the audio track. Special features include a separate audio track for the soundtrack and the theatrical trailer.

As for the film itself, it’s not one of Ford’s greatest movies. Nugent’s screenplay oversimplifies the story, and seems to intentionally avoid some of the dramatic conflict. Tracy glides through the scenario so lightly you’d hardly know he’s in the political fight of his life. Some of the characters come off as ridiculous caricatures, especially the idiot sons of both Skeffington and Cass. How dumb can grown men be? We’ve seen all the background characters before in Ford’s other movies, but that gathering of so many of them, all crammed into scenes in the funeral parlor and campaign headquarters on election night, makes it special in its own way. After all, it’s a John Ford film, and he never made a bad one.

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

"OH, THOSE DEPLORABLES..."

BY MARK CERULLI

When I first heard of The Hunt, the controversial action movie from Universal’s Blumhouse Studios, I thought it would be a modern riff off one of my favorite films – 1994’s Surviving The Game. I was wrong. While The Hunt IS an action movie set in the woods – it’s one wrapped in biting socio political satire which perfectly echoes today’s conspiracy culture and insane partisan politics.

The film was slated for release last September when America’s sad reality intruded – the tragic mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Studio brass decided to shelve it indefinitely. For a moment, it looked like The Hunt would become a famously “lost” film like Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight. Now, with only a hotly contested election and pandemic fears swirling, the film opens nationwide on Friday.

Like the old Caddyshack tagline, “It’s the snobs against the slobs”, The Hunt’s plot revolves around a bunch of rich elites who decide to hunt “deplorables” on a remote estate – literally kidnapping them from their daily lives and depositing them in the middle of the woods. Most of the prey are straight up stock redneck types who are dispatched fairly quickly (although in jarring, sometimes brutal ways). One, however, isn’t your average hillbilly. Her name is Crystal and she’s got a few tricks up her sleeve. Ably played by Betty Gilpin (The Grudge, Ghost Town), Crystal has a military background and isn’t about to be meekly led to the slaughter. Radiating a quiet inner strength and competence, she takes the fight to the elites, burning her way through the haplessly woke villains until she faces off against their ringleader – the mysterious mega-rich Athena (Oscar-winner Hillary Swank) in a bone-jarring catfight that wouldn’t be out of place in a James Bond movie. (Caution: you may never look at a grilled cheese sandwich the same way again.)

The film’s press materials state that The Hunt’s writers Damon Lindelof (who also produced) and Nick Cuse (who executive produced) were “politically obsessed” and the story came together amidst a stream of internet conspiracy theories and the “unrestrained hostilities between the Left and Right”. The film does take care to point out the absurdities of both sides – including an inspired sequence with movie veteran Amy Madigan (Field of Dreams) and her hubby (Reed Birney) playing kindly old shop owners who happily dispatch their human victims while railing against various stereotypes and sugared soft drinks!

Director Craig Zobel (Compliance, Z for Zachariah) keeps the action fast and unrelenting, with the camera so close, one almost feels the body blows. Although the film’s satire gets heavy handed at times and there are some gruesome death scenes (punji sticks anyone?) the film might be too woke for the 18-34 action movie crowd, sailing over their heads like a blown up body part… then again, in today’s toxic political climate heading into the 2020 election, The Hunt’s timing might just be spot on.

The Hunt, released by Universal Pictures, opens nationwide on March 13^th.

(Von Sydow in Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf", 1968)

BY RAYMOND BENSON

We lost one of the world’s great thespians on March 8, 2020, and it’s sad that so many in the U.S. know him only from such Hollywood-fare franchises such as Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and even James Bond.

In fact, my Facebook and Twitter feeds on March 9 were full of tributes to the late Max von Sydow, but I despaired to see so many Bond fans acknowledge him only for what amounted to a five-minute-ish cameo as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the 1983 non-Eon Productions 007 picture, Never Say Never Again. REALLY? That’s what you remember him for?

Max von Sydow was so, so much more than Blofeld, or Lor San Tekka, or the Three-Eyed Raven, or even Father Merrin (The Exorcist). (Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest that von Sydow was considered to play the title role of Dr. No, which was eventually taken by Joseph Wiseman.)

For me, I knew Max von Sydow through the films of the late Ingmar Bergman. (I wonder how many of those well-meaning Bond fans posting photos of von Sydow as Blofeld have even seen a Bergman film.) For it was in these pictures by the Swedish master where von Sydow truly shined. He delivered the performances of his life in the eleven titles he made with Bergman between 1957 and 1971. Of course, von Sydow starred in many other international art-house movies outside of Hollywood, and it is for all of these that he deserves the acclaim he has been receiving since his death at the age of 90.

I initially became aware of both Max von Sydow and Ingmar Bergman when I saw The Seventh Seal (1957) for the first time as a freshman in the Drama Department at the University of Texas at Austin (Texas). I had become friends with Stuart Howard, who was serving with me on the tech crew of a play in production, and we hit it off—mainly because of our love of movies. One day, Stuart asked me, “The Seventh Seal is playing on campus tonight, have you seen it?” I vaguely knew that it was a foreign language film, but not much more (hey, I was young, and prior to moving to Austin, Texas, I had little to no exposure to international cinema). When I replied that I hadn’t, he said, “We’re going!” And I’m so glad that Stuart pushed me to go with him to see this mesmerizing, deeply moving motion picture that quite frankly was one of those eureka moments in my intellectual and artistic development. To this day, I count The Seventh Seal as one of my favorite films of all time, and, by the way, Stuart is still one of my closest friends.

Seal is really an ensemble picture, but von Sydow is undoubtedly the lead as Antonius Block, a knight returning with his squire from the Crusades to a plague-ridden Sweden. His existential crisis is the center of the film as he challenges Death to an ongoing game of chess throughout the story to delay the inevitable. I was immediately struck by von Sydow’s passion, uniquely thin physical shape, and remarkably clear eyes (which were arresting even in black and white).

Seeing art-house and foreign language films on campus were the only way to catch them in those days. In the coming weeks, I attended more Bergman and von Sydow collaborations… and then he appeared in the Hollywood blockbuster, The Exorcist (1973). Most people around me in the audience had no idea who he was, but I did.

After that, I became aware of von Sydow’s previous Hollywood work, such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), but even up to the time of The Exorcist, von Sydow’s work had mostly been international.

His co-star in the Bergman films after 1968 was often Liv Ullmann. Together, they portrayed husband and wife in a number of titles, the most memorable being Hour of the Wolf and Shame from ‘68. They were also a couple in Jan Troell’s Oscar-nominated The Emigrants (1971) and its sequel, The New Land (1972). These two masterworks could very well be the defining cinematic statements by both von Sydow and Ullmann.

And one must not forget his Best Actor Oscar nomination for Pelle the Conqueror (1987), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film that year. (His second and last Oscar nomination was for Supporting Actor in 2011 for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. It’s a shame he never won a trophy.)

Thus, for me, the loss of von Sydow was much more than the popcorn franchises he began to appear in repeatedly in his later years. Okay, granted, he did bring elements of grace, class, and intelligence to all of those roles, too—and here are just a few of those titles: Three Days of the Condor (1975), Voyage of the Damned (1976), Hurricane (1979), Flash Gordon (1980, as Ming!), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Strange Brew (1983), Dreamscape (1984), Dune (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Awakenings (1990), A Kiss Before Dying (1991), Needful Things (1993), Judge Dredd (1995), What Dreams May Come (1998), Minority Report (2002), and Shutter Island (2010).

Rest in peace, Max. Say hello to Ingmar for me.

Max von Sydow’s Collaborations with Ingmar Bergman:

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Brink of Life (1958)

The Magician (1958)

The Virgin Spring (1960)

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Winter Light (1963)

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Shame (1968)

The Passion of Anna (1969)

The Touch (1971)

MAX VON SYDOW, LEGENDARY ACTOR, DEAD AT AGE 90

DVD REVIEW: "NOON WINE" (1985) STARRING FRED WARD AND STELLAN SKARSGARD

DVD REVIEW: "CLAY PIGEON" (1971) STARRING TELLY SAVALAS, ROBERT VAUGHN AND TOM STERN

THE HUNT FOR LOST BBC TREASURES

Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman in "The Avengers".

Writing on the Mental Floss web site, Jake Rossen bemoans the fact that in decades past, many of the great TV programs aired by the BBC were systematically destroyed or taped over with no regard for their artistic value. Among the lost gems: early episodes of the first season of "The Avengers" and early "Doctor Who" shows. Rossen examines how one woman's decades-long crusade to salvage the programing and find lost prints resulted in at least some of these treasures being located and saved for posterity's sake. Click here to read.

Posted by Cinema Retro in Out of the Past on Saturday, March 7. 2020

HOW THE "WEST" WAS LOST: THE FAILURE OF "WILD,WILD WEST" ON THE BIG SCREEN

IS "SLAP SHOT" THE GREATEST SPORTS MOVIE OF THE 1970S?

REVIEW: "TWO ON A GUILLOTINE" (1965) STARRING CONNIE STEVENS, DEAN JONES AND CESAR ROMERO; WARNER ARCHIVE BLU-RAY RELEASE

DVD REVIEW: "INSIDE OUT" (1975) STARRING TELLY SAVALAS, ROBERT CULP AND JAMES MASON; WARNER ARCHIVE DVD RELEASE

REVIEW: "KRAKATOA: EAST OF JAVA" (1969) STARRING MAXIMILIAN SCHELL, DIANE BAKER & BRIAN KEITH; BLU-RAY RELEASE

REVIEW: "COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE" (1971) STARRING PAUL NASCHY; VINEGAR SYNDROME BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION