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.  

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The 1937 short story "Noon Wine" by Katherine Anne Porter was instrumental in salvaging director Sam Peckinpah's career in the mid-1960s after he alienated studio brass with his over-budgeted western "Major Dundee". Peckinpah's spirited defense of his preferred cut of the film ended badly. Columbia Pictures butchered the movie and had Peckinpah virtually blacklisted from feature films. He found salvation by winning acclaim for his 1966 TV adaptation of "Noon Wine" starring Jason Robards. In 1985, the PBS series "American Playhouse" telecast a new adaptation of Porter's work, this time starring Fred Ward. The little-remembered production has been released on DVD by Kino Lorber.

The story opens on a farm in Texas in the 1890s. Here, Royal Earl Thompson (Fred Ward) endures a backbreaking amount of daily work to provide for his wife Ellie (Lise Hilboldt) and their two young sons. Royal is a good man with an admirable work ethic. He loves his wife and children but, like so many farmers of the era, nature and fate seem destined to keep him from being successful. Ellie suffers from undefined bouts of ill health and seems frustrated with her lot in life. She is devoted to Royal, as he is to her, but she is clearly the intellectual superior in the relationship. One day, a stranger stops by the farm. He's a hulking Swedish immigrant named Olaf Helton (Stellan Skargard) and he clearly is an odd duck. Helton seeks work and Royal hires him, though he has some understandable misgivings. Helton is almost robotic. He never smiles and speaks only when necessary and even then in only a few words. Nevertheless, he proves to be an outstanding worker and the family comes to regard him as one of their own, even if his lack of reciprocal emotion remains bizarre. He has no vices aside from monotonously playing the same tune on a harmonica. The story shifts to nine years later. Everything is going well for the Thompsons. With Helton's invaluable assistance, Royal has made the farm a success and for the first time his family has some trappings of luxury. However, fate is about to intervene again with the arrival of another mysterious stranger. This time it's Homer T. Hatch (Pat Hingle), a gregarious, overly chatty man who turns out to be a bounty hunter looking for Helton. He informs Royal that Helton is actually an escaped murderer and tells him fantastic details relating to his alleged criminal past. Royal is left with a clear dilemma. What if Hatch is lying or exaggerating? Should he send his trusted friend off to a possibly terrible fate? What if Hatch is telling the truth? Is he allowing his wife and now teenage sons to coexist with a mentally ill man who at any moment might be tempted to do them harm? The situation results in a dramatic event that will have profound consequences for all involved. 

This adaptation of "Noon Wine" was the first film directed by Michael Fields, who has gone on to a very successful career as a TV director. The talent was evident in this teleplay, as Fields handles the unusual story and talented cast with the precision of a very experienced filmmaker. The cast is uniformly outstanding, with even the small roles played with precision. (Young Jon Cryer appears as one of the teenage boys.) However, this production is defined by Fred Ward's truly remarkable performance that was Emmy worthy. In watching Ward on screen, I became aware of the fact that his talents have never been fully utilized in television or films. He should be a much bigger star.

The Kino Lorber DVD has a transfer that is adequate but nothing to rave about. There is a most welcome commentary track by director Michael Fields in which he provides interesting anecdotes about the production, which was executive produced by the estimable team of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. The film's rather shocking climax may not appeal to all viewers and they may ponder (as I did) the relevance of the title's meaning. However, anyone will relish the merits of this excellent achievement by one and all associated with it.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

We at Cinema Retro are always delighted to find that a previously unavailable movie has been made accessible on home video. Such is the case with the low-radar 1971 MGM crime flick "Clay Pigeon", which Mvd Visual has just released on DVD. The film was the brainchild of Tom Stern, a character actor who appeared in small roles in many films before branching out and acting and directing biker movies in the late 1960s. Stern decided to create a star-making crime film for himself and raised the funding for "Clay Pigeon" independently. He then struck a deal with MGM to distribute the movie and pay for the marketing campaign in return for a slice of the grosses. The studio was bleeding red ink at the time and needed product to remain viable. "Clay Pigeon" fit the bill, with MGM having to make a relatively minor investment. The movie was released in many markets as the top feature in a double-fill with another soft-boiled crime movie, "Chandler" starring Warren Oates. It's clear that Stern felt this film would finally elevate him to leading man status. He not only plays the hero but he also co-produced andco-directed the film with Lane Slate, who at some point during production was either fired or left the film, leaving Stern to assume the direction alone."Clay Pigeon" was not a hit, however, and quickly faded from view.

The unique aspect of the movie is that it was a rare film to address the Vietnam War while the conflict was still raging. John Wayne's "The Green Berets", released in 1968 and financially backed by a reluctant Jack Warner, may have been a major hit but it set off protests in front of some of the theaters that were showing it. Hollywood wanted no part of the controversy and it wouldn't be until after the war that films such as "Coming Home", "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now" would be viable to studios and audiences. "Clay Pigeon" opens in Vietnam with our protagonist, Joe Ryan (Stern) on patrol. An ambush ensues and Ryan heroically throws his body on a live grenade to shield his fellow soldiers. Fortunately, the grenade doesn't explode and Ryan is awarded the Silver Star. The action then moves to contemporary Los Angeles where Joe is trying to forget the war by living the lifestyle of a hippie, though we are told at some point that he is now an ex-cop (one of numerous script deficiencies that see key points left unexplained.) Joe is living a threadbare but happy life, boozing, smoking weed and getting it on with numerous young women who seem to always be in the mood. Meanwhile, a parallel story line follows Redford (Telly Savalas), a rogue government agent of undefined background who we witness murder a crime suspect. (As rogue cops go, Redford isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, as he assassinates the man by shooting him multiple times in broad daylight on a dock in full view of anyone near the river.) We find out that Redford has been relentlessly tracking a key drug kingpin, Neilsen (Robert Vaughn), for years. Cutting to the chase, Redford ends up asking Joe to act as a conduit to try to find his quarry. When Joe refuses, Redford frames him and forces him into acting as part of the sting operation.As the corrupt cop, Savalas plays his typical hard-boiled character, beating up suspects and giving orders to one and all.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Although often erroneously attributed to legendary producer William Castle, the 1965 chiller Two on a Guillotine certainly has all the hallmarks of one of his productions: a modestly-budgeted scarefest backed by an intense, sensational marketing campaign. In fact, the film was, perhaps improbably, produced and directed by William Conrad- that's right, the same character actor who originated the role of Matt Dillon on the Gunsmoke radio program and who would enjoy leading man status in the 1970s as the star of the popular Cannon detective series on TV. The off-beat story begins in the 1940s and finds Cesar Romero as 'Duke' Duquesne, the world's greatest magician and illusionist. Everyone is enamored of him except his wife Melinda (Connie Stevens), who is tired of being a beautiful prop in his act. On the eve of presenting his most ambitious stunt, which involves faking Melinda's beheading on a guillotine, she mysteriously vanishes. Obsessed with grief, Duke sends their two-year old daughter Cassie to be raised by an aunt. Cut to twenty years later. Duke has passed away and Cassie attends her estranged father's funeral. (Look for young Richard Kiel at the grave site.)  A showman even in death, his will is read to her by his attorney on stage at the Hollywood Bowl (an extraordinary sequence that shows the place completely deserted.) In order to inherit his mansion, Cassie has to spend seven consecutive nights there. You don't have to be a super sleuth to realize that, from minute one, strange things occur in the cavernous home- making Cassie suspect her father might be capable of fulfilling his deathbed promise to return from the grave. Her only support comes from Duke's long-time agent and her former nanny (both well-played by Parley Baer and Virginia Gregg), but since they stand to benefit from her losing her inheritance, she instead turns to an affable young man named Val (Dean Jones), who is seemingly on the scene to protect her but, in reality, is a reporter looking for a exploitation story to sell newspapers.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has released the highly enjoyable 1975 caper film Inside Out and it should appeal to fans of both The Italian Job (the good version from '69!) and Kelly's Heroes. The wisecracking cast of old pros is topped by Telly Savalas, Robert Culp and James Mason. The latter plays the commandant of a German POW camp in which Savalas was interred. He tracks Savalas down thirty years later and finds him as a high-living con-man in London whose luck has run out. He entices him to participate in an audacious scheme to infiltrate a maximum security prison in Berlin to locate its sole inhabitant: a former high ranking Nazi who has knowledge of where a stolen shipment of German army gold has been hidden for decades. The elaborate plan involves drugging the prisoner, smuggling him out of jail, convincing him he is back in WWII (complete with Hitler impersonator!), getting the necessary information and then smuggling him back inside the jail.

Obviously, if logic matters tremendously to you, this isn't your kind of movie. However, if you're able to suspend belief for a few scenes, you'll find this a highly rewarding and very entertaining film. Ironically, the central absurdity- that the Allies would have an entire heavily guarded prison simply to watch over one inmate- is based on fact, as this was precisely the case with Hitler top henchman Rudolf Hess, who was the only inmate of Spandau prison. The three leads are all in top form, as is Aldo Ray, who seems to be in virtually every movie released by the Warner Archive. Director Peter Duffell gets maximum impact from locations in London, Amsterdam and Berlin. The movie moves along at breakneck pace and has some genuinely suspenseful sequences, not to mention some very amusing dialogue. A good bet for all true retro movie lovers. (The DVD is region-free). 

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

It's generally accepted that the blockbuster business generated by the release of "Airport" in 1970 inspired the disaster movie craze of the decade. However, the year before, Cinerama's "Krakatoa: East of Java" was a forerunner. The fact that the film was a critical and financial flop results in it often being overlooked in discussions of the disaster movie genre. The making of the film was covered in detail by Dave Worrall in Cinema Retro issue #22, but suffice it say, the entire production proved to be problematic both in terms of bringing it to the screen and also in regard to its marketing. The screenplay Clifford Newton Gould and Bernard Gordon uses the 1883 eruption of the titular island as the basis for an adventure epic, although what emerged was somewhat less than epic. Overlooking the fact that the historical record of the eruption, which had effect on nations worldwide, is presented in a simplistic, fictional manner, the production's dramatic qualities are also lacking, squeezing in a number of sub-plots that don't pay off in a satisfying manner.

Maximilian Schell plays Chris Hanson, captain of the steamer ship the Batavia, stationed in Java. When the story opens, he's loading passengers and cargo on to the vessel when he's told by government officials that he must take aboard 30 convicts who are in chains in order to drop them off with authorities on another island. Hanson resists but is legally bound to accept his unwanted passengers, who he is told to keep in the sweltering hold. Also on board is an unexpected former flame, Laura Travis (Diane Baker), with whom he had a torrid affair. She informs him that her abusive husband found out about the affair and has left for parts unknown, taking her beloved young son Peter with him. She has now returned to Hanson to find solace and try to cope with the blame she puts on herself for losing her son. Other troubled passengers include John Leyton as Douglas Rigby, an entrepreneur who has brought aboard a diving bell with which he intends to search for a sunken ship said to contain a fortune in pearls that belonged to Laura's father. (One of several absurd plot "coincidences"). He has in tow Connerly (Brian Keith), a gruff professional diver who is on his last legs in terms of health and finances. He and Captain Hanson will share in the loot if the pearls are located. Also along as part of the side mission to find the treasure is Giovanni Borghesi (Rossano Brazzi) and his son Leoncavello (Sal Mineo), who will utilize a hot air balloon to search for the wreck once they get near Krakatoa, where the sunken ship is said to be located. A superfluous character is Charley (Barbara Werle), a saloon girl with a heart of gold who is Connerly's lover and who shares his dream that the pearls will give them a new lease on life. The first half of the film is talky and not very exciting but is punctuated by ominous rumblings and explosions on Krakatoa that serve as a teaser for what is about to occur. This is couple dwith other warning signs including strange behavior by flocks of birds and smoky clouds that envelope the ship. 

The pace of the second half of the film picks up considerably with a diving bell mishap that proves almost fatal. Once the wreck is located, the balloon goes astray, thus serving as a typical Cinerama production excuse to show Super Panavision 70 widescreen point-of-view shots of spectacular island valleys and mountains. By the time the wreck is searched, Krakatoa is exploding in increasingly spectacular fashion, thus leaving the passengers and crew of the Batavia in fear of their lives. The film pretends to be a Hollywood spectacular but it comes across as what it is: a European production with a sprinkling of respected international stars. (The movie was shot in Spain and in Italy). The finale is rather exciting though the effects must be judged by the crude technology of the era, as virtually every image of the distressed vessel is achieved through the use of very obvious miniatures and models. If you're  retro movie lover, however, you'll appreciate the achievement of SFX master Eugene Lourie and his team. In fact, the quaint look of these scenes adds to the movie's appeal even if we see "Krakatoa" explode completely in one frame, only to be reconstituted in the next.

By Hank Reineke

One of the more fascinating aspects of the Spanish horror film is that the country’s most famous exports were produced during the near forty year dictatorial regime of Falangist leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In interviews conducted following the passing of the repressive dictator in 1975, actor Paul Naschy (the so-called “Lon Chaney of Spanish horror”) often expressed bemusement regarding the restrictions imposed by Spanish censors on his films. Naschy’s horror films were (arguably, I suppose) of either very modest or completely non-political in their design - if not their subtext.

Paul Naschy (aka Jacinto Molina Alvarez) was greatly influenced by the celebrated cycle of gothic horror and mystery films produced by Universal Studios in the 1930s and 1940s. The primary difference between these monochrome films and those Naschy would lens beginning 1968 is unmistakable: most of his films, including the colorful Count Dracula’s Great Love (1971), owed more to the more contemporary themes and style of Britain’s Hammer Studios. Spanish implementation of less discreet on-screen sexuality and a seemingly limitless supply of blood plasma packets pushed even Hammer’s edgiest offerings to the tame, more modest borders of exploitation cinema.

Nevertheless, the horror films released in this otherwise repressive environment were neither produced under the tightest of restriction nor designed in an effort to avoid offending the sensibilities of right-wing prudes. As anyone who has ever enjoyed a Paul Naschy or Jess Franco film can attest, Spanish horror offerings of the 1960s and 1970s are suffused with gory imagery, eroticism, savagery, envelope-pushing scenarios… and generous dollops of female nudity.

Unlike most censorship boards, the Spaniards didn’t seem terribly concerned with flashpoints involving on-screen immoralities or scenes of sickening violence. Their primary concern was simply that film characters demonstrating unwholesome peccadilloes or otherwise satanic non-Christian traits not be identified as being of wholesome Spanish heritage. So a werewolf bearing the Eastern-European the Slavic surname of Daninsky was permitted, as were godless Hungarian vampires and Prussian hunchbacks. Those in the Spanish film industry were more than happy to ring international box-office cash registers with their appropriations; the atheistic commies of Eastern Europe were welcome to the authorship of the malevolent creatures spawned from their decadent folklore.

Javier Aguirre’s Count Dracula’s Great Love (original title El Gran Amor Del Conde Dracula) was Paul Naschy’s only on screen appearance as Brom Stoker’s legendary vampire Count Dracula. The actor would in his long career assume the roles of practically every vanguard monster of the “classic horror” pantheon. In a lengthy series of Spanish-European co-productions, Naschy would don the makeup and costumes of vampires, mummies, hunchbacks, werewolves… he even tackled the dual role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Well regarded by filmmakers and contemporaries as a hard-working, earnest actor-writer-director, he was also remembered as a humble, modest man. His greatest pride was when horror fans whispered his name with the same reverence reserved for the greatest icons of the genre: Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, and Price.

Count Dracula’s Great Love opens, more or less, as nearly every other Dracula film. Following a violent breakdown of the horse-carriage somewhere near Hungary’s mountainous Borgo Pass, a group of five travelers - one gentleman and four buxom beauties - seek temporary help at the supposedly derelict sanitarium of Dr. Kargos. The good doctor is nowhere to be found – at least, not yet – but the castle’s new tenant, the soft-spoken, candelabra carrying Dr. Wendell Marlow (Paul Naschy) soon answers the door of what’s rumored to be the ancestral home of the Vlad (“The Impaler”) Tepes, the bloody historical Prince of Wallachia.

At first sight Marlowe is no cruel Vlad Tepes. Naschy’s Marlowe is a supposed Austrian aristocrat and an apparent softie: he’s a thoughtful and gracious sort, self-effacing, and unrelentingly polite. In fact, when the stranded travelers are brought into the anteroom, they’re not only immediately welcomed with courtesy but offered accommodation and meals for the week. This is necessary, he explains, as there are no hotels in the area; he owns no transportation modes and his forthcoming order of supplies are seven days away.

The four blond girls at first don’t seem terribly grateful for the Dr.’s generous hospitality. One whispers a complaint almost immediately, moaning her displeasure that the castle is a dreary, gloomy sort of a place. If director Aguirre wanted to convey a palatial sense of doom and menace to match that description, he was clearly let down by his art department. The castle interiors are generally bright and immaculately clean save for the odd cobweb or two drooping forlornly from lighting fixtures. The castle’s cellar, where the delivery of a wooden crate of human-length proportion arrives at the film’s beginning, is a bit more atmospheric: here we find the stony labyrinth passageways, the moss covered walls, the rat-infested rooms we might expect.

One of the stranded travelers finds the genial Dr. Marlowe a physically attractive specimen. That said, she’s reminded by a friend that her tastes in men are her own. The friend prefers a man “slimmer and taller.” (Naschy was hardly a cadaverous Count, a muscular man of stocky build and approximately only 5’ 8” in height). With little alternative the girls choose to make themselves at home, now resigned to their unplanned stay at the castle. By day two they’re making the most of it and immodestly sunning their naked bodies in the estate’s opaque pool. Though the castle grounds are in disrepair and in serious need of some landscaping, they discover the wooded acreage is nonetheless conducive to long negligee-garbed walks in the moonlight.