“HOLMES & WATSON??”

By Raymond Benson

In one of the quirkier movies released in the early 1970s, George C. Scott moves through the streets of New York City with his eyes alight with fire, wonder, and confidence as Joanne Woodward follows him into every don’t-do-that situation like a lovesick schoolgirl.

The thing is—Scott plays a judge who has gone, well, a little funny in the head and thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. Woodward is a psychiatrist who desperately wants to treat him, and her name just happens to be Dr. Watson.

Directed by Anthony Harvey, the movie is based on a play by James Goldman, who also penned the screenplay. Harvey’s previous film was the superb The Lion in Winter (1968), which garnered him an Oscar nomination for directing, along with a Best Picture nod and a trophy for Katharine Hepburn (for Best Actress). Perhaps more significant is that Harvey was Stanley Kubrick’s editor for both Lolita (1962) and Dr. Strangelove (1964). They Might Be Giants indeed contains subtle dark comedy that one might call “Kubrickian.”

Judge Justin Playfair seems to have lost it when his wife died, and his brother, Blevins (Lester Rawlins) is intent on having the man committed so that he can get Justin’s money. Playfair, in complete Holmes getup (deerstalker hat, Meerschaum pipe, tweed suit and shoulder-cape), won’t have anything to do with the psychiatrist until she reveals that her name is Watson—suddenly, he is interested in “collaborating” with her in his quest to find his nemesis, Moriarty. Thus begins a very wacky adventure through the city as “Holmes” and Watson follow “clues,” encounter even more eccentric characters, and ultimately fall in love with each other. That’s it in a nutshell, but there’s much more packed into this bewildering joy of a movie. Needless to say, you’ve probably never seen anything like it before or since.

Both Scott and Woodward appear to be having a ball in the picture, and Scott is particularly charismatic. Besides the keen supporting performances by the likes of Jack Gilford, Al Lewis, and Rue McClanahan, watch for small roles played by other great, very young-looking character actors who will make bigger splashes over the next few decades—F. Murray Abraham, M. Emmet Walsh, Paul Benedict, and Eugene Roche.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray looks fine and sounds great, and it comes with an audio commentary featuring director Harvey and film archivist Robert A. Harris. Supplements include a short vintage promotional featurette and theatrical trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases.

Apparently, there is some discrepancy regarding the running time of the feature. According to the packaging, Kino Lorber’s presentation (91 minutes) is an “expanded version with additional footage not seen in the original theatrical release.” However, IMDb claims that the theatrical release was 98 minutes. Is there seven minutes missing? Maybe, and maybe not. The picture has a history of being broadcast or previously released on home video with a variety of running times between 87 and 97 minutes. IMDb says that a climactic scene in a grocery store is absent from the shorter versions, but that sequence is visible here in Kino’s release. Perhaps this is a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

For a vintage look at early 70s New York, two fine performances by Scott and Woodward, and a head-scratching kind of good time at the movies, settle in and have some fun with They Might Be Giants.

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Let's take a trip in the Cinema Retro time machine to August of 1970. Here were the big films that were playing in London at the time. Among the titles playing: "Paint Your Wagon", "The Lion in Winter" (in its 78th week!), "Airport", "Battle of Britain", "Patton" (under the UK title "Patton: Lust for Glory"), "M*A*S*H", the star-studded remake of "Julius Caesar", "Woodstock", "Hello Dolly" and John Wayne as "Chisum". Best of all, you could go on a date to a first rate theater in those days without applying for a second mortgage.  (Data from Kine Weekly film trade magazine).

“THE RULER OF AMBROSIA”

By Raymond Benson

Director John Schlesinger emerged from the so-called British New Wave, or “Free Cinema Movement,” of the late 1950s/early 60s, that was typified by pictures made by maverick filmmakers working with low budgets and concentrating on working-class heroes in often bleak settings of smaller towns around Britain.

Billy Liar, based on the novel by Keith Waterhouse and the stage play by Waterhouse and Willis Hall (with a screenplay by Waterhouse and Hall), was Schlesinger’s second film, and it is an exhilarating demonstration of the director’s confidence and talent. Schlesinger would go on to direct such classics as Darling (1965) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).

Filmed in widescreen black and white, the tale focuses on Billy Fisher (played by the brilliant Tom Courtenay, who is in every scene of the movie) a young man who still lives with his stodgy parents and a grandmother in a Yorkshire town. He juggles three girlfriends and a job at a mortuary that he hates, but he also has fantasies that unfortunately consume his life. He constantly daydreams scenarios in which he is the ruler of an imaginary country called Ambrosia, and the film abruptly moves in and out of these often-comic illusions in which Billy is the star. In reality, though, Billy simply lies—all the time—to everyone: his parents (Mona Washbourne and Wilfred Pickles), his grandmother (Ethel Griffies), his boss (Leonard Rossiter), his friends, and his girlfriends. In fact, he has become engaged to two of his girlfriends (Helen Fraser and Gwendolyn Watts) without the other knowing, somehow managing to use the same single ring. Both are seriously working-class girls for whom Billy honestly has no affection.

The third girlfriend, though, Liz (played by the luminescent Julie Christie in her breakthrough role in cinema), is a free spirit, someone who has traveled out of their little hometown, has become more worldly, and resignedly accepts Billy’s penchant for lying with a sigh and a smile.

Will Billy Liar, as he is nicknamed by all who sees through his deceptions, “grow up” and face reality? Will he finally turn his back on his family and community and flee to the big city of London to follow his dreams as a “scriptwriter”? Or is he doomed to spend the rest of his life in the dull, dreary existence that he sees as the lot of the generation above him?

With Courtenay’s performance, Christie in a small but winning supporting role, and Schlesinger’s direction, Billy Liar is indeed a winner.

Kino Lorber’s new high definition restoration looks and sounds terrific, and it comes with an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger. The only supplements are theatrical trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases.

Full of humor as well as pathos, Billy Liar is grand entertainment and today still holds a high place in the list of most admired titles in British cinema.

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To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant.

Click here to read a complete list of Hitchcock cameo film appearances as well as the opportunity to view them. 

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

Today on Coronavirus Playhouse, as we remained locked down in our houses watching DVDs and Blu-Rays, we have an interesting, if a bit unsettling, feature from Universal Studios, called “Canyon Passage” (1946). Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, and Susan Hayward star in a movie about mid-nineteenth-century life in a small community on the western frontier. Director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walk with a Zombie, Out of the Past) does the opposite of what John Ford did with this kind of film. Ford’s westerns showed a community that clung together and fought against the dangers of the wilderness and the hostile elements it contained. Tourneur, always a subversive filmmaker, shows us that a community can not only be warped by the environment in which it exists, it can collapse just as easily from within as without.

The film has a complicated plot for a western. The central dilemma involves two men in love with the same woman. One of the men, Logan Stuart (Dana Andrews), is a straight up sort of guy trying to run a freight company between the gold-mining town of Jacksonville and Portland, Oregon. He’s partners with George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), a likable guy who’s in charge of keeping the miner’s gold pokes locked in a safe, but who unfortunately, has a gambling addiction problem. He’s been stealing the miners’ gold dust to gamble. George is engaged to be married to Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward), but it’s apparent early on that she may think Logan is the better catch. Both men are aware of the problem, but both know Logan is too honorable a guy to make a play for Lucy.

The romantic triangle plays out against the background of a community that’s also a bit out of kilter. Screenwriter Ernest Pascal, who adapted the screenplay from an Ernest Haycock novel, sets the scene early on, when Logan visits Portland’s assayer’s office and trades some gold dust for specie. The assayer comments on the danger of carrying around that much gold. “Gold is only yellow gravel, Cornelius,” Logan tells him. To which Cornelius replies: “But the yellow color makes all the difference.” Logan observes that “a man can choose his own gods. What are your gods?”

Logan’s next stop is the hotel where he finds Lucy Overmire, George’s fiancé. George was supposed to take her back to Jacksonville, but had to go somewhere else on business and asked Logan to bring her. Logan tells her to be ready early for their long ride to Jacksonville. Logan goes to his room and is awakened in the middle of the night by an intruder who tries to steal his saddlebag full of gold coin. Logan manages to fight him off with the intruder crashing through the hotel window and escaping into the rainy night. Logan suspects the robber was a man named Honey Bragg (Ward Bond), a hulking bully, whom Logan believes earlier killed two miners for their gold. When he reveals his suspicions to Lucy, she asks why he doesn’t press murder charges, and he replies that he didn’t see him do it, and wouldn’t want to make a mistake like that. “Things have to be dead even with you.” she says. “Is that it, Logan?”

“A WHOLE LOT OF SHIRLEY GOING ON”

By Raymond Benson

Joseph E. Levine, head of Embassy Pictures, was at one time a formidable producer and studio head who brought us some outstanding pictures in the 1960s and 70s (The Graduate, The Producers and The Lion in Winter come to mind). In 1967, he managed to persuade the great Italian director Vittorio De Sica (Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, Marriage—Italian Style, etc.) to do a picture in English with big Hollywood stars. De Sica had just previously done an English-language flick, After the Fox (1966). So, in 1967, he made a comic anthology movie called Woman Times Seven, starring Shirley MacLaine in seven different roles opposite seven different leading men (and others).

Anthology movies are often a mixed bag. In almost every case, there are two or three stories that are good, and two or three that are less so. Here, we have seven tales of a woman’s relationship with a man (or men) with a distinctly European slant (especially in its attitudes toward adultery and divorce), as well as a potent “swinging sixties” 1967 vibe that recalls movies like Casino Royale (the one with Peter Sellers, who also starred in After the Fox). The entire movie was shot in Paris, and this Franco-Italian sensibility shines through.

MacLaine is quite winning throughout the picture, playing sexpots, innocent housewives, and society ladies, and in fact she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress for her performance. Her leading men in the tales include the likes of Peter Sellers, Alan Arkin, Michael Caine, Vittorio Gassman, and Rossano Brazzi.

Again, the vignettes here are hit and miss. The opening story, “Funeral Procession,” teams MacLaine up with Sellers in an entry about the family doctor putting the moves on a widow at her husband’s funeral. “Amateur Night” finds our star seeking revenge against a cheating husband (Brazzi) by find camaraderie with the Parisian streetwalkers. “Two Against One” finds MacLaine as a liberal corporate translator whose roommate is away (he’s depicted as none other than Marlon Brando in a photograph!) but entertains two men (Gassman and Scotsman Clinton Greyn) in her apartment—in the nude—but insisting that they can’t touch her. “At the Opera” features the actress as a fashion model who wants to get revenge on a rival. “Suicides” teams MacLaine up with Arkin as lovers who have decided to kill themselves to get away from their respective unhappy marriages and the cold, cruel world in general—but Arkin’s character finds exceptions with the various methods to try, every step of the way. The final episode, “Snow,” finds wealthy MacLaine leading on a would-be stalker (Caine) for the excitement of it, except that the man is really working for her jealous husband (Philippe Noiret).

BY TODD GARBARINI

One of the most frustrating things that I find true of lackluster movies is that following the passage of time, usually several decades, a film that was initially, and often rightfully, considered a stinker is then later touted as “the original classic!” Generally, these accolades are tied-in with advertising to promote and ultimately sell product and give the uninitiated and the curious a reason to buy the film sight-unseen. Efren C. Piñon’s Blind Rage (1976) isn’t necessarily a bad film, it just isn’t a particularly good one. Despite its 82-minute running time, the film feels twice as long and that’s never a good sign.

Blind Rage is a good example of an interesting premise executed in a fashion that can best be described as pedestrian. A product of 1970’s “chopsocky” cinema, the opening credits play over the vocals of Helen Gamboa singing the title track, “The System”, the film’s original title when it was released in the Philippines in October 1976. The song sounds like a cross between the instrumental strains of The Bermuda Depths’s (1978) title song “Jennie” and the vocals of Shirley Bassey’s tune for the James Bond film Moonraker (1979). Johnny Duran (Charlie Davao, a Philippine actor with just over 250 titles to his credit) of the Oriental Bank makes his way over the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, CA and meets with several officials representing the U.S. Treasury Department and chairman of the project Southeast Asia, the Dept. of Foreign Affairs, the Secret Service, and a member of the CIA who looks like the "Dodgson! Dodgson! We've got Dodgson here!" guy in Jurassic Park (1993) with his tourist hat. They discuss the transfer of $15M earmarked by the federal government to prevent countries surrounding Vietnam from falling the way that South Vietnam did to the North. Unfortunately for them, some bad guys are looking to get their hands on the loot and before you can say “The International House of Pancakes”, Duran is followed and approached by Lew Simpson (B.T. Anderson in his only screen credit if you believe the IMDB) with $250K in cash in a briefcase. It’s Simpson’s hope that Duran will agree to help him commandeer the $15M for he and his bosses. It isn’t long before Duran phones Simpson the next day to accept the offer. They meet at the foot of 62nd Street in front of the Bay Yacht Club which is less than five miles from the Palace Theatre in Long Beach, CA where this film opened on Wednesday, March 7, 1979 for a brief engagement under its alternate and better known American title.

Duran senses a catch and his intuition proves right: he must recruit and train four blind men to pull off the bank heist! These men have all suffered a terrible fate that has led to their lack of sight, which the viewers get to see in all its glory: Willie Black (D'Urville Martin), a former mobster blinded by the Syndicate after foolishly cheating them out of money; Lin Wang (Leo Fong), a “liquidator” for a gang and double-crossed hoodlums on an opium deal; Hector Lopez (Darnell Garcia), a matador who was gored in the eyes by a bull (I kid you not); and Amazing Anderson (Dick Adair), a magician who was born blind (I cannot even fathom how that works). A fifth blind man (Ben Guevara) is included to disable the bank’s alarm system. Sally (Leila Hermosa, whose last name in Spanish means “beautiful,” a fitting adjective) is recruited to train the blind men and takes them through a mock robbery, putting them through the right number of paces and utilizing their acute hearing to guide them through the whole affair in a makeshift “bank” complete with the exact layout of the real one with “dummies” to sit in for tellers. Their sense of smell is heightened as well. Sally’s perfume is noticed by one of the men who tries to have his way with her one night while another comes to her rescue, calling the brute a “sex-hungry bastard.” It’s this sort of ludicrous dialog and bad dubbing that usually makes such films a riot to watch. When the bank robbery goes down for real, it’s quite something to see until the action goes south and a walking stick is left behind, behooving the police to catch them. With ten minutes left in the film, Fred Williamson finally shows up to snarl the bad guys!

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Once upon a time in Hollywood, studios weren't obsessed with "tent pole" series, mega-budget blockbusters and remakes of films (some of which probably shouldn't have been made in the first place.) To be sure, these aspects of the film industry were always embraced to a certain degree but there was also a concentration on developing mid-range budgeted films designed to make mid-ranged profits. Case in point: the little-remembered 1993 movie "Aspen Extreme", the brainchild of director and screenwriter Patrick Hasburgh, who had found success on television by co-creating the series "Hardcastle and McCormick" and "21 Jump Street" with Stephen J. Cannell. Hasburgh's achievements on the big screen were non-existent, however. Yet, he convinced Disney's Hollywood Pictures division to finance "Aspen Extreme", a youth-oriented drama that centers on two lifelong friends: T.J. Burke (Paul Gross) and Dexter Rutecki (Peter Berg). The film opens in Detroit with the twenty-something duo becoming fed up with their careers as blue collar workers. The spontaneously quit their jobs, pile into their dilapidated old van and head out to Aspen, Colorado, playground of the rich and famous, to establish themselves as ski instructors. The pair is dead broke and end up having to convert a caboose train car into a bachelor pad. T.J., the more intelligent and charismatic of the two, is also the better skier and immediately lands a job as an instructor. The slow-witted and uncouth T.J. (he attends upscale cocktail parties clad in a plaid shirt and red baseball cap) is lucky that T.J. coerces his boss to employ him in the children's ski program, where he actually thrives. Life is initially good for the men: they finally have decent salaries and the future looks bright. T.J. catches the eye of many of the local rich women, in particular, gorgeous Bryce Kellogg (Finola Hughes), who is a cross between Joan Collins and Cruella de Vil. Before long, T.J. becomes the latest acquisition in a string of boy toys who are invited to share her opulent lifestyle and endless sex sessions, only to be discarded for the next in line. (For all the emphasis on sex in this movie, the depiction of it is straight out of a TV production with discreet fade-outs before the action gets too hot.)  

In reality, "Aspen Extreme" is a soap opera aimed at men. It unwinds over a running time of nearly two hours, as we watch T.J. fall in love with good girl Robin (Teri Polo), a local radio newscast host, only to have this meaningful relationship jeopardized by being lured back for a one-night stand with Bryce. Meanwhile, Dexter is feeling inconsequential. His crude ways alienate him from women and when he finally attracts a girl, it turns out she is using him to run illegal drug deals. T.J. and Dexter end up feuding and the reason is, well, cherchez la femme. The film presents a spider's web of female sexual manipulation, coercion and impatience. #MeToo wasn't even on the horizon. If you can past that, the movie is reasonably engrossing and well-acted by a talented cast of young people who were anything but known boxoffice attractions. Director Hasburgh excels at the exciting skiing scenes but the script tosses in many sub-plots that give the production an "everything but the kitchen sink" feel. One amusing aspect is seeing how hip young guys behaved in the era just before the introduction of cell phones and internet. Yes, folks, people actually spoke to one another while making eye contact. Ultimately, "Aspen Extreme" was a critical and boxoffice failure, recouping only about half of its modest $14 million production cost. Yet, aside from being a bit long-winded, it provides enough entertainment value to merit being recommended viewing.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks great and the skiing scenes practically jump off the screen. The original trailer is also included.

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“PIPE DREAMS”

By Raymond Benson

Back in 1973, producer Ely Landau and his wife Edie launched a daring and unprecedented cinema series that played in the U.S. for two “seasons,” with a total of fourteen titles (but only thirteen were shown), all renowned works—classic and modern—originally produced on the stage. It was called the American Film Theatre. (A review of a DVD box set of the entire series appeared on Cinema Retro previously. Click here to read.)

The concept tried something different. The directive was to take a great stage play, not change a word, and in most cases, use the actual play script as the screenplay. The next step was to hire an accomplished film director to interpret the text for the film medium but stay faithful to the play. Sometimes the director was the same person who helmed the original stage production. A further step was to persuade the original casts from the Broadway or London productions of those plays to star in the film; or, when that wasn’t possible, to cast big-name Hollywood or British actors. Thus, the result was indeed a filmed play—but you as an audience member wouldn’t be watching it from the middle of the orchestra or from the side or from the first balcony; instead you were up close and personal in a realistically-presented world (on studio sets and/or real interior or exterior locations)—just like in “regular” movies. You had the best seat in the house, so to speak, but there’s no proscenium arch. It’s a movie. But it’s a play.

Kino Lorber has slowly been re-releasing the movies from the American Film Theatre in individual packages, upgraded to high definition Blu-ray. One recent title is the picture that opened the series, and it’s one of the best. The Iceman Cometh, from the play by Eugene O’Neill, is directed by the formidable John Frankenheimer (the script was adapted by Thomas Quinn Curtiss), and is a remarkably faithful rendition of this lengthy powerhouse of a stage drama. While the filmmakers indeed made some cuts to the text, the picture still runs just a minute or two less than four hours, and that’s not including two built-in intermissions! (Have you ever seen a film in a theater with two intermissions? It’s not unusual for the theatre, though!)

This is drama with a capital “D.” You get to spend the four hours with a bunch of hopeless alcoholics in a dark, decrepit Irish bar in the big city and listen to their tales of woe and “pipe dreams”—the theme running through the piece that highlights the hopes and wasted lives of men and women on the fringe. The play originally premiered in the mid-1940s, about a decade after AA became a thing. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun? Stop! It’s true that the tale is terribly depressing, but Iceman is such a masterwork in writing and acting that you come out enlightened and, yes, changed.

An amazing cast dominates the production. Lee Marvin stars in the showy role of Hickey, a traveling salesman who has gone on the wagon and is usually the life of the party when he comes into town—but now he’s preaching abstinence to the motley crew who doesn’t want to hear it. Fredric March, in his last screen appearance, plays Harry Hope, the owner of the bar, but he’s just as damaged and forlorn as the rest of his clientele. Robert Ryan (who co-starred with Marvin in the classics Bad Day at Black Rock and The Professionals), also in his last film role, steals the movie in an amazing performance as Larry Slade, a bitter anarchist and journalist who is really the protagonist of the story and through whose eyes we navigate this precarious jungle of fog and booze. A very young Jeff Bridges, only a couple of years after his big splash in The Last Picture Show, plays Don Parritt, the son of Larry’s girlfriend—a woman who has been arrested for her political activities.

Those are the main four genius thespians on display here, but a supporting cast consists of the likes of Bradford Dillman, Moses Gunn, Sorrell Brooke, Clifton James, Tom Pedi, and Martyn Green, plus the three streetwalking ladies who congregate and cavort with the men, played by Evans Evans, Hildy Brooks, and Nancy Juno Dawson.

“REVOLUTION À LA RENOIR”

By Raymond Benson

French filmmaker Jean Renoir, son of the famous Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, is often cited as not only France’s greatest director of all time, but he also frequently appears on lists of most important international names as well. This reputation is well deserved, especially for his work in the 1930s, which included Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939).

One of his lesser-known pieces from this period, La Marseillaise, has been restored and released in high definition by Kino Classics, and it is a cause to re-evaluate this benchmark picture.

La Marseillaise is an epic period costume drama (but with plenty of comic vignettes) about the beginnings of the French Revolution, and it sports a broad canvas of many characters and locations. Coming off of the success of Grand Illusion, the picture had a fairly large budget and no less than five cinematographers. The movie runs 132 minutes, but it feels longer due to Renoir’s sometimes episodic and lengthy takes. That doesn’t mean the movie is boring. It just takes a bit of work on the viewer’s part to get through it, for which there is just reward.

The story moves across various settings, from King Louis XVI’s palace (he is played with great vigor by Renoir’s older brother, Pierre Renoir), where Louis and Marie-Antoinette (Lise Delamare de la Comédie Français) cavort in all the bourgeois trappings that eventually got them executed. Most of the tale, though, focuses on the peasants, the countrymen, and the revolutionaries who brought about one of the most significant events in human history. If there are any protagonists of the picture, they are the ordinary citizens-turned-adventurers who drive the plot.

Of course, the song, “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, originated during these times and figures prominently in a key scene during a march to battle. This is a masterful sequence that illustrates Renoir’s gifts of dramatically using history, patriotism, and politics to make a point.

Kino Classics’ restoration is remarkably good, given the age and rarity of the movie. It comes with an audio commentary by film critic Nick Pinkerton. A short archival interview with Renoir from the 1960s about the film is a welcome supplement, but of particular interest is the excellent essay by Yale film scholar Dudley Andrew in the enclosed booklet.

For fans of Jean Renoir, European history, and 1930s international filmmaking, La Marseillaise is a grand soufflé.

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Gene Autry from Rovin' Tumbleweeds (1939) (c) Autry Qualified Interest Trust and The Autry Foundation

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Shout! Factory:

Los Angeles – April 20, 2020 – Back in the saddle again! America’s favorite singing cowboy Gene Autry heads to streaming for the first time ever with the launch of the Gene Autry film and television library on Shout! Factory TV May 1. The streaming service will release its first collection from Gene Autry’s personal archive, with the streaming debut of fully restored feature films South of the Border, Gaucho Serenade, Melody Ranch, The Strawberry Roan and Blue Canadian Rockies.

He was the silver screen’s first singing cowboy and is credited with creating the genre of the musical Western. As the star of 89 feature films and a television series, Autry brings music, comedy and action to each of his roles from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Now available to stream for the first time, Gene Autry’s rollicking big-screen adventures and unforgettable tunes are presented in these Western classics, fully restored and uncut from Autry’s personal film archives.

Shout! Factory TV has worked closely with Gene Autry Entertainment to curate monthly releases of Autry content. Coming June 1 will be Public Cowboy No. 1, In Old Monterey, Rovin’ Tumbleweeds, Ridin’ on a Rainbow, and Sioux City Sue.

The Gene Autry film and TV archive will be available for streaming on demand across Shout! Factory TV platforms, on ShoutFactoryTV.com; Shout! Factory TV’s Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Android apps; and on various Shout! Factory TV branded channels including Tubi, Amazon Prime Video Direct, Amazon Channels, and the Roku Channel.

Additionally, on the last Wednesday of every month, Gene Autry films will stream on Shout! Factory TV’s linear channel. The stream can be viewed on ShoutFactoryTV.com; Shout! Factory TV’s Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Android apps; and the following digital streaming platforms: Twitch, Redbox, Samsung TV Plus, Comcast Xfinity, XUMO, and STIRR.

One of the most influential performers in American pop culture, Gene Autry is the only entertainer with all five stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, one each for Radio, Recording, Motion Pictures, Television and Live Performance. In a career that spanned more than three decades, Autry built a media empire, thanks to his box-office smash musical Westerns, cross-country rodeo tours and a diverse music career that included the million-selling hit Christmas classic ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’

Those were the days! This entertainment section from the Dallas Morning News of May 3, 1964, shows a wealth of great movies in theaters that week- along with a stage appearance by cast members of The Beverly Hilllibillies! Among the movies you could check out this week were Tom Jones, Lilies of the Field, Move Over, Darling, Seven Days in May, The Silence and The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. (Courtesy of Jim Kroeper collection)

“YEAH”

By Raymond Benson

It’s the most-heard response from Jack Nicholson’s character, Charley Partanna: “Yeah.” Does he swear a blood oath to Don Corrado Prizzi (William Hickey) for life? “Yeah.” Does he want to “do it” on the Oriental [rug] with Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston)? “Yeah.” Does he want to get married to Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner), an assassin who may or may not be working against his own family? “Yeah.”

Is Prizzi’s Honor an amazing, acerbic black comedy that surprises you at every turn? “YEAH!”

It was director John Huston’s swan song, his last film to be released while he was alive (Huston’s final movie, The Dead, was released a few months after his death in 1987). Prizzi picked up Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor (Nicholson), Supporting Actor (Hickey), Adapted Screenplay (by Richard Condon, adapted from his novel, with Janet Roach), Costumes, and Editing. The picture won none of those, but Anjelica Huston snatched the award for Supporting Actress for her role. Allegedly she had to fight to get the part, even with her father directing and her boyfriend (Nicholson, at the time) starring.

Prizzi’s Honor is a gangster film with black comedy at its heart. While it’s an engrossing crime picture with colorful and eccentric mobster characters, it is Nicholson’s performance, the absurdity of the “family” life, and the screwball comedy sensibility of the plot that bring an unusual hilarity to the proceedings.

Nicholson plays Charley as a stereotypical Italian New Yorker who, in speech, sounds as if he’s missing a cannoli or two—but don’t let his manner fool you. This guy is smart like a fox, and as deadly as a viper. It’s why he’s the Partanna family’s number one hitman. Nicholson’s characterization is brilliant; it is surely one of his most memorable screen appearances. Irene Walker, who is assuredly not Italian, is also shrewd and dangerous. Turner is also excellent in the part, and she was robbed of a nomination that year. Theirs is a match made, well, certainly not in heaven.

Don Prizzi, now a really old man who also retains a canny mind, controls the family business through his two sons, Eduardo (Robert Loggia) and Dominic (Lee Richardson), and close advisor Angelo Partanna (John Randolph), Charley’s “pop.” Maerose is Dominic’s daughter, and she was once involved with Charley. Unfortunately, she left him from some schmuck, embarrassed the family, and was disowned. Now she’s trying to get back in good graces with the Prizzis, and at the same time snare Charley away from his new-found love, Irene.

Throw in some contract killings and kidnappings with the love story, and you have a mobster movie like no other. Huston’s work is masterful as he handles the violence and comedy with a confidence we hadn’t seen from the filmmaker in some time. When repetitive shots of a passenger airplane traveling west, then east, west, and east again elicit laughter, then you know you’re in the right hands.

Kino Lorber’s new high definition restoration looks fine, but Andrzej Bartkowiak’s cinematography is soft and warm, coming across here a bit grainy. There are English subtitles for the hearing impaired, and an optional audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson. Unfortunately, there are no supplements other than theatrical trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases.

Easily one of the audience favorites of the 1980s, Prizzi’s Honor made Anjelica Huston’s career, kept Jack Nicholson in top star status, and gave John Huston a final bow with magnificent acclaim.

Highly recommended? Yeah.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

The Evil Of Frankenstein [Collector's Edition] comes to Blu-ray™ on May 19 from Scream Factory. Customers ordering from ShoutFactory.com will receive an exclusive 18" X 24" rolled poster featuring our brand new artwork, available while supplies last. Horror great Peter Cushing stars in this fantastic tale as the monster's creator, Baron von Frankenstein, determined to bring the creature back to life. Long thought destroyed, Dr. Frankenstein's creation is discovered frozen alive and resurrected in his laboratory. Unfortunately, the creature's mind is dormant and, much to the Baron's horror, he finds that only a hypnotist can order the creature to do his unfathomable bidding now. The Evil Of Frankenstein [Collector's Edition] Special Features: NEW 4K scan of the interpositive NEW Audio Commentary with filmmaker/film historian Constantine Nasr NEW The Men Who Made Hammer: Freddie Francis NEW an interview with assistant director William P. Cartlidge NEW an interview with actress Katy Wild TV version of THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (from the best available 16mm print) The Making of THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN – Narrated by Edward de Souza and featuring interviews with Wayne Kinsey, Caron Gardner, Hugh Harlow, Pauline Harlow, Peter Cushing and Don Mingay A moment with actress Caron Gardner TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN TV Pilot Theatrical Trailer Still Gallery

BY GIACOMO SELLONI

The United States of America brought to the world many amazing things. To this reviewer the top three are baseball, jazz and comic books, although I must admit I prefer comic books to jazz. Let's face facts here, whether you love, despise, or are just 'eh' about comic books they are among the very first things that children read. I loved them before I could read. Consider that a disclaimer for the review about to follow.

Anthony Desiato is a life-long (so far) comic book fan, podcaster and documentary filmmaker from Westchester County in New York. His company is called Flat Squirrel Productions. In 2017, through Kickstarter, he reached his goal of $15,000 to make the film he promised "will take you behind the scenes and capture the business, culture, and fandom of the local comic book store on a national level." He succeeded with the release of "My Comic Shop Country". This film is a wonderfully interesting look at the strange and familial world the industry has created, and now, is possibly destroying. It hit home with me on a number of levels but more about that later. For now, some history.

Comic books have traveled a rough road from their beginnings. In 1933, Eastern Publications published what is regarded as the first newsstand comic book in the format we know today, "Famous Funnies a Carnival of Comics" which was basically combined newspaper strip reprints with some original material. It started the industry. Eastern, and later Dell, began to publish these on a regular (bi-monthly basis). Ron Goulart (comic book historian and terrific novelist in his own right - read his Groucho Marx mysteries series) called this publication: "the cornerstone for one of the most lucrative branches of magazine publishing."

Five years later, two young men in Cleveland, Ohio created (based somewhat upon Edgar Rice Burroughs' “John Carter, Man of Mars”) a character that would change not only the industry but the world. Of course, most of you know I mean Superman. Arguably the second most famous fictional character in world history behind only Sherlock Holmes. The following year saw the introduction of Batman. Timely Comics (which would eventually become Marvel) also first appeared in 1939.

The comic book industry flourished. Romance, Westerns, horror, anthropomorphic animals. Nothing was left out. For more than fifteen years the industry grew not only in size but in pushing boundaries. Realizing that most of their readers were teen-aged boys, comics started to feed their adolescent...

well you know what I mean. Scantily clad women appeared everywhere. From femme fatales to heroines, supporting characters to characters who didn't wear support garments, pubescent fantasies were fulfilled. According to a wacko psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, who in 1954 published the book "Seduction of the Innocent," claimed "that comic books were responsible for an increase in juvenile delinquency, as well as potential influence on a child's sexuality and morals." That led to the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency to investigate comics. Like parents throughout eternity, Senators didn't have any idea what their children were reading (well, maybe a dad or two did) and in an effort to hold off a government response that would censor their industry, the Comic Code Authority was formed and all comics had to pass through a censorship inspection. The Code lasted into the 70s and was abolished formally in 2011.

"And now... back to our film"

Now that the Comic Book Ignorant (further referred to as the CBI) have been brought up to speed on comic book history let me enlighten you about the film.

Obviously, a labor of both love and regret for Desiato, “My Comic Shop Country” stands out as an indictment against greed, monopolization and poor manners. He was a regular customer, loiterer and sometime employee of a comic shop called Alternate Realities in Scarsdale, NY. He later became a podcaster. His shows discuss the comic book industry and life in Westchester. A previous documentary, "My Comic Shop Documentary," made in 2011, was all about Alternate Realities and its owner, Steve Oto. For this new film, Desiato visited twenty comic shops in nine states across the US and built relationships with the owners.

The first dedicated comic book shop opened in the late 60s in Southern California. The direct market industry started to grow as the dedicated comic shop industry grew. By the 90s there were over 12,000 in the United States.

If the CBI don't know, there is a difference between direct market distribution and the traditional newsstand distribution that those of us of a certain age grew up with. The direct market in the 70s and 80s allowed for independent comic book companies to distribute more adult fare. But as things grew with more independent publishers such as First Comics, Capital Comics, Pacific Comics, The Guild, Image Comics, etc., they began to flood the market distributing the books themselves. But they also paid the creators fair wages as opposed to the work-for-hire system that had existed for generations. Famous comic book artists such as Jack Kirby, Frank Brunner, Howard Chaykin, Neal Adams began to create content for these companies where the creators retained licensing rights for their characters. Glut became an operative word. Too much of a mediocre thing. As the smaller of these small companies died out, so did the distribution channels. Eventually, distribution would become a monopolistic ouroboros - the snake that eats itself.

In today's industry, direct shops must order books from Diamond Comics Distributors' (the monopoly) Previews catalogue two months in advance of shipping. In the 90s, Previews was published not by a monopoly but by a company intent on spreading the word, thank Rao, (CBI, please web search) and the catalogue was magazine thickness. Today, run by the existent monopoly, its size is somewhere between a Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalogue and a pre-cellphone Yellow Pages. And, unlike in newsstand, bookstore, luncheonette, etc. distribution, the excess books cannot be returned. When I collected comics as a child all the newsstand, et. al., had to do was return the torn corner of the cover that held the price to receive a refund on the unsold books that sold at the time for 12 cents. The store then sold them for a few pennies. I have some books in my collection that are thusly marred. Direct market shops have to eat the leftovers. Hence, the very large back-issue sections.

“My Comic Shop Country” is filled with colorful characters. From the denizens who haunt the shops to some of the creators themselves, Desaito discusses the state of the industry with all. It was a great pleasure to meet these fellow geeks. Then again, everyone is a geek of some order. Jocks are sports geeks, no?

Paul Levitz, former President and Publisher of DC comics: "85% to 90% of the shops are mom and pop stores. Brick and mortar is not at a great time in America today." "If you own a bake shop the quality of the shop is up to you. If you run a comic shop the quality of the shop is up to other people."

Sarah Titus, co-owner, The Comic Book Shop (Wilmington, DE): "How do you have a million dollar comic book shop? You start with two million dollars…When someone calls us a Comic Book Store, I say, "No, a STORE is where you go to get, like, toilet paper. A SHOP is where you go to look at all the cool things, and compare, and check, and take it all in." Has there ever been a clearer dictionary definition between the two?

We're not sure how many readers might still find movies dealing with the destruction of mankind by biological agents to be entertaining, but if you're in the mood, check out this complete version of "The Last Man on Earth", a 1964 Italian adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend". The film stars Vincent Price and, despite its obvious budget limitations, it's an effective chiller- and truer to the novel than the two other screen versions, "The Omega Man" starring Charlton Heston and "I Am Legend" starring Will Smith. Both of those films were boxoffice hits but that doesn't diminish the value of Price's lesser-known contribution to the Matheson canon. (Watch Joe Dante analyze the trailer on the Trailers from Hell site.)

Dennehy in the 2018 screen version of "The Seagull" from Sony Classics.

Brian Dennehy, the popular and acclaimed actor of stage, screen and television, has passed away from natural causes at age 81. Dennehy was born in Connecticut and continued to reside there until his death. Dennehy had a rather late entry into an acting career. He first appeared on screen in 1977 in "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" in a bit part. Later that year, he made an impression as a hulking football player in the comedy "Semi-Tough". His considerable physical presence often found him playing tough guy roles, though he was equally adept at playing light comedy. He was constantly in demand, mostly as a character actor, but he occasionally found acclaim in leading roles. He won multiple Tony awards for playing Willy Loman in two Broadway runs of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman". He was also nominated for five Emmy awards. Among Dennehy's other prominent feature films were "Cocoon", "First Blood", "Silverado", "Tommy Boy", "10" and "Presumed Innocent". He also appeared in a wealth of popular television shows. For more, click here. 

“I AM GOD”

By Raymond Benson

It’s a line uttered by Dr. Jed Hill (chillingly played by a young Alec Baldwin), during a deposition in which he defends his surgical skill and knowledge as the things people in chapels really pray to when a loved one is under the knife in the operating room. “I am God,” he says with the kind of arrogance that only an actor like Baldwin can deliver.

Malice, the 1993 thriller directed by Harold Becker (whose previous film was the terrific Sea of Love), was adapted from a story by Aaron Sorkin and Jonas McCord, with a screenplay by Sorkin and Scott Frank. That’s powerhouse writing authorship, and the twisty-turny tale that unfolds on the screen is solid evidence the fact. Despite the rather improbable premise behind the con job that is at the heart of Malice, the picture indeed holds your interest and keeps you guessing.

Although he received third billing, Bill Pullman’s character, Andy Safian, is the protagonist of the piece. Andy is a dean at a local college in New England, newly wed to Tracy (Nicole Kidman). There’s a serial killer running around loose on the campus and targeting coeds, but that turns out to be a befuddling subplot, prompting this reviewer to wonder if perhaps there had been more to it in the early stages of the writing. Nevertheless, it serves as a red herring to the main tale, involving the Safians’ relationship with Dr. Hill, a new tenant in their house. He’s handsome, slick, sexy, and projects trouble from the get-go.

Things get complicated when Tracy must have emergency surgery on her ovaries, and it’s Dr. Hill who is called into the operating room. For the first time in his career, Hill screws up, and Tracy is left infertile. Lawsuits fly, and Tracy also leaves Andy because he gave Hill the go-ahead to perform the operation during a life-and-death time limit. To reveal anything else about the story would involve major spoilers.

Malice is surprisingly enjoyable as a guilty pleasure. The three leads are very good, but there is also fine work from Bebe Neuwirth as the local cop, Peter Gallagher as Tracy’s attorney, Anne Bancroft and George C. Scott in cameos as Tracy’s mother and Dr. Hill’s mentor, respectively, and a very young Gwyneth Paltrow as one of Andy’s college students. Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting-lullaby score augments the proceedings.

Acceptable graininess aside, Kino Lorber’s high definition restoration looks good enough, especially since the cinematography is by the formidable Gordon Willis. It comes with English subtitles for the hearing impaired, but alas, no other supplements except a couple of trailers.

Malice may not be a corker, but the picture exhibits solid mid-level Hollywood filmmaking with up-and-coming talent that would go on to bigger and better things. Worth a look.

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Here are some blasts from the past, circa 1964, one of which is an American souvenir magazine based on A Hard Day's Night. Unlike most movie programs, this was sold on newstands, not in theaters. The other magazine, also tapping into the British Invasion mania that swept America, is dedicated entirely to the craze for Beatle haircuts. Talk about niche marketing! (No truth to the rumor that Moe Howard filed a copyright infringement suit over the concept.)

To visit the Beatles collectibles site click here

“DE SICA VS. SELZNICK = 2 MOVIES IN 1”

By Raymond Benson

Here’s an interesting lesson in filmmaking. Students of the art might learn something by watching the two different cuts of this motion picture to see what happens when a movie is edited down—especially when the original was made by a bona fide artist as opposed to a slick Hollywood producer who, albeit successful, might not know everything.

David O. Selznick was a powerhouse producer and head of his own personal studio (he had, after all, produced Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound, and many other Hollywood classics). Vittorio De Sica was the purveyor of Italian Neo-realism (along with Roberto Rossellini) and was responsible for such art house masterpieces as Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves (aka The Bicycle Thief). They teamed up in the early 1950s to make a movie together. Selznick would produce—and the film would star his then-wife, Jennifer Jones—and De Sica would direct.

It did not go well. Reportedly, Selznick and De Sica constantly clashed during production. Jones’ co-star, Montgomery Clift, allegedly called it one of the worst experiences of his career.

Terminal Station, the original De Sica film, was first released in 1953 in Italy (as Stazione Termini) in Italian with Jones and Clift dubbed. Another English version with the two actors’ real voices was also made, and all the Italians were dubbed in English. This cut of the film is around 90 minutes in length and has circulated internationally. Based on a short story by Cesare Zavattini, the script was adapted by Luigi Chiarini and Giorgio Prosperi—but Selznick brought in a couple of Hollywood writers for the English dialogue, including Truman Capote, who got screen credit with the two Italians.

When Selznick saw the completed Terminal Station, he hated it. Against De Sica’s wishes, Selznick re-cut the film—throwing out nearly 25 minutes—and adding a silly 8-minute prologue “short” to round out the feature length from 64 minutes to 72. Retitled Indiscretion of an American Wife, the picture was released in America in 1954, and in England as Indiscretion. Selznick’s name does not appear anywhere in the credits (except in the tiny copyright line beneath the title card).

The general contemporary consensus from U.S. critics and audiences alike was that Indiscretion of an American Wife was terrible. It quickly disappeared, despite an Oscar nomination for Best Costumes (black and white) and the creation of a couple of standard songs in the prologue (“Autumn in Rome” and “Indiscretion,” both sung by newcomer Patti Page, making her debut appearance in a movie).

HOWEVER—Vittorio De Sica’s original Terminal Station is absolutely wonderful! It is a heart-wrenching, emotional, and yet simple tale of a married American woman, Mary (Jones) who has just arrived at Rome’s famous Stazioni Termini to catch a train to go back to Paris and then to America. She had been visiting her sister’s family in the city, but she had fallen in love and had an affair with an Italian American, Giovanni (Clift). Guilt-ridden, but also convinced she is in a loveless marriage back home and has finally found her “beau ideal,” Mary is conflicted about returning to her husband and daughter. The entire story takes place in real time as Giovanni attempts to persuade Mary to stay before the inevitable train departure.

BY FRED BLOSSER

During the stress of the COVID-19 outbreak, people are hungry for vicarious escape, any escape, from isolation, financial uncertainty, and worries about contagion. Even so, Bob Hope’s lightweight 1958 comedy “Paris Holiday” is likely to appeal mostly to fans in their sixties and older who remember the star as a ubiquitous presence on TV decades ago. Jokes based on references to Sputnik and My Sin perfume will fly past everyone else. Hope produced and starred in the movie (now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber) with an additional “from an idea by . . .” credit. His character, Bob Hunter, a famous American comedian who might as well be named Bob Hope, ventures over to Paris on the 1950s luxury liner, the Ile de France. He has an appointment to meet a celebrated French playwright whose latest work he hopes to secure as his next screenplay. On board the ship, he meets and chases an attractive State Department employee, Ann McCall (Martha Hyer), and is pursued in turn by Zara, a mysterious femme fatale (Anita Ekberg). Also on the liner is a celebrated French comedian, Fernydel (Fernandel), whose introduction to his American counterpart produces an amusing exchange. “Ferny” strokes Hunter’s ski-slope nose and marvels, “Formidable!” Not to be outdone, Bob riffs on his rival’s toothy, hangdog countenance: “Straight from the horse’s mouth!” This and other early scenes suggest that the script will be anchored by an edgy if amiable competition between the two characters. But Hope’s ego collided with Fernandel’s in real life, and so eventually, the French comedian is relegated to a secondary role once the ship docks. From there, the story becomes a standard Bob Hope farcical thriller in the style of “My Favorite Blonde” (1942) and “My Favorite Brunette” (1947). The playwright’s new opus is a drama rather than a comedy as Hunter expected, based on an exposé of wartime counterfeiters who have since moved into “positions of power” in the French government. The conspirators murder the playwright to protect their secrets, and try to do the same to Hunter. When those attempts fail, their associate Zara checks the comic into a mental institution from which Hyer’s and Fernandel’s characters must rescue him.

The script by longtime Hope associate Edmund Beloin, joined by Dean Reisner (now best remembered for his work on “Coogan’s Bluff” and “Dirty Harry”), never makes a lot of sense, serving mostly as a tent pole for Hope’s mile-a-minute wisecracks. Hope’s timing remains marvelous, and even younger viewers may be impressed, but the conceit of Hyer’s younger foreign service officer tolerating and even welcoming the uninvited advances of Hope’s older character sits uneasily with today’s social attitudes. The credits claim that the picture was shot entirely on location in Paris, but if that’s true, they could have saved their money. The interiors are obviously sets on a sound stage, and when Bob Hunter tools around the city in a sporty Citroen, it’s Hope in front of rear-projected scenery. Today’s computerized effects may be equally phony, but at least they look more authentic. The impostures are particularly apparent in the sharp, bright image provided by the Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber, reproducing the film’s Technicolor palette and widescreen Technirama aspect. The only supplements on the disc are a still-shot of a 1958 cigarette ad publicizing Anita Ekberg “as featured” in “Paris Holiday,” and trailers for other KL releases.

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Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon

“CLINICAL EXPLOITATION”

By Raymond Benson

There have always been what have been termed in the motion picture industry “exploitation films,” even back in the silent days. The late 1930s and much of the 1940s, however, saw a deluge of cheap, not-even-“B” pictures made, usually independently of Hollywood and marketed in guerilla fashion as “educational” adult fare. You know the type. Reefer Madness. Child Bride. Marihuana.

In the 40s, especially in the wake of World War II, the Baby Boomer phenomenon was just beginning, and there was a need for sexual hygiene education for young people—at least, that’s what the makers of these tawdry movies told the public. There most certainly was a necessity for Sex Ed in schools—and some legitimate companies stepped up to the plate to create “clinical” material shown to gender-segregated classrooms dealing with the facts of life, menstruation, and venereal disease. I can remember being in fifth or sixth grade in the early 1960s… all the girls were ushered out of class for an hour for a special screening of some cryptic film that all the boys were curious about, but of course had no idea what it could possibly be. Whenever we asked any of the girls what they had seen, we were met with an emphatic, “I’m not telling you!” This just made the event even more of a mystery.

In the 1940s, a producer who was really nothing more than a snake oil salesman—but a very successful one—named Kroger Babb specialized in making, at the time, sexually frank and sometimes explicit but so-called educational films that were really nothing more than exploitative and an attempt to attract an audience with prurient inquisitiveness. Mom and Dad, first seen in 1945, might be the most successful of any of these pictures. In fact, it was one of the biggest box office hits of the entire decade and beyond, as it was exhibited up until the 1970s.

Babb and his team would come to town, rent a theater for a week or two, and distribute promotional materials and place ads in local papers that hawked the film’s “moral” and educational aspects, and that it was something every young adult must see (no children allowed). There was, of course, push back from churches, public officials, and the law. In some territories the film was banned (the New York State Supreme Court finally allowed it to be shown in their state after years of being unseen). All this served to boost audience interest! And if there wasn’t much of a protest, then Babb intentionally created and distributed his own fake outrage in flyers and such to drum up the enthusiasm!

Screenings also featured a lecture during intermission by a “medical specialist” named Elliot Forbes—who was really a hired actor. This interlude also served as a chance to sell sexual hygiene literature produced as tie-ins to the film. Interestingly, in African American communities, the Elliot Forbes role was taken by none other than Olympic star Jesse Owens (who was most likely handsomely paid).

Author Steven Bingen's book "Easy Rider: 50 Years Searching for America", written with Alan Dunn, was published last year to commemorate the film's 50th anniversary. In case you haven't already indulged in the book, here is an extended excerpt from it. 

BY STEVEN BINGEN

The road to Easy Rider began, of all places. In a dark, pot-infused motel room in Toronto, Canada.

It was November 27, 1967. We know this because Peter Fonda, then a young actor of unfulfilled promise, remembered it for the rest of his life as it as the date his world would change.

Fonda, the actor son of screen legend Henry Fonda, was in Toronto to promote his latest picture, The Trip (1967), a low-budget counterculture circus, ring-led by low-budget counterculture ringleader Roger Corman, The Trip had been scripted by another unlucky actor, Jack Nicholson, and co-starred a third underachiever named Dennis Hopper.

One of Fonda’s duties in town was to attend a motion picture exhibitors conference that day. He remembers that Jack Valenti, the keynote speaker, had just been elected president of the Motion Picture Association of America. Peter Fonda also remembers vividly part of the speech Valenti delivered that day.

“My Friends, and you are my friends,” Valenti began, “It is time we stopped making movies about motorcycles, sex, and drugs!” Fonda, who was involved and invested in all three of those deadly sins at the time, remembers thinking that Valenti sounded just like a television evangelist. He had a booming, pipe-organ voice, even sported a rather cornpone southern accent (like several future participants in our story, Jack Valenti hailed from Texas), and as if he knew how Fonda felt, Valenti continually, throughout his long talk, seemed to be staring right at, right into, the actor.

After that endless, uncomfortable conference, Fonda walked back to the Hillcrest Motel, where the notoriously spendthrift Corman was putting him up. Bored and lonely, and admittedly paranoid from the dressing down he felt he had gotten from Valenti up there on his makeshift pulpit, Fonda lit a roach and proceeded to get stoned in that motel room.

Amidst the pot smoke, Peter Fonda found himself inexplicably mesmerized by an old publicity still from a previous Peter Fonda film, The Wild Angels (1966), which for some reason had been included with The Trip’s press kit; probably for him to autograph for some Canadian exhibiter’s teenage daughter. The still depicted himself and actor Bruce Dern with a motorcycle near Venice Beach, California.

Oddly, perhaps because of his enhanced state, Fonda found himself looking at that photograph through the marijuana smoke and thinking that the picture looked like something from, well, from a Hollywood western. Perhaps it was because the two of them, Fonda and Dern, were silhouetted, or almost, and how the bike, also nearly silhouetted, seemed to be standing in for a horse. The still had been taken on an asphalt road, but it had been reprinted so many times by Corman’s cut-rate photo lab that much of the definition had bled away, and so this indistinct copy of a copy looked like it had been taken in an earlier era on a western street in Tombstone Arizona, or Deadwood, South Dakota, rather than near the Venice boardwalk. And he and Dern looked, for all the world, to him, like two lonely Texas cowboys.

Right there, in that smoke-filed room, amidst the stacked room service trays and dirty towels, Peter Fonda decided to produce and costar in a western himself. A western with motorcycles. He later pitched the story just as he first envisioned it, as “a modern Western with two hip guys on bikes instead of old movie stars on horses,

“OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR?”

By Raymond Benson

Filmmaker John Boorman was between the ages of six and twelve during World War II, and in 1987 he released a fictional “memoir” of a film based on his childhood recollections of what life was like on the home front in Britain while the conflict raged. By most of the media and promotional materials, Hope and Glory was billed as a “comedy”—in fact, it won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (and it was also nominated for the Oscar Best Picture and Director).

Whether it truly is a comedy or not is up for debate. There are indeed humorous moments as we follow the days through the eyes of young Billy Rowan (played with empathy and intelligence by child actor Sebastian Rice-Edwards) as he navigates the bombed-out neighborhood where he and his family live, runs around with the unruly gang of young lads who terrorize the locality by collecting shrapnel, undetonated bombs and bullets, and rebel against schoolmasters and teachers who are attempting to enforce discipline and order in chaotic times. The film also displays some of the horrors—people losing their homes after a blitz, the economic downturn and rationing, the vacancy of a father who has gone off to fight, and the overall pandemonium inflicted on the people.

Nevertheless, Hope and Glory is an uplifting, positive statement that almost resembles the type of propaganda documentaries that Britain produced at the time (e.g. London Can Take It). The film seems to say, “we can get through this, no matter how long it lasts,”—and as this Blu-ray edition is being reviewed at the beginning of April 2020, when the world is under the thumb of a global pandemic, the picture is a welcome message of encouragement.

As an ensemble piece, the movie illustrates what the suburban middle-class home in Britain was like. Clive, the father (David Hayman), pops in whenever he gets a brief furlough, and leaves the household to be run by his wife Grace (Sarah Miles), who does the best she can. The oldest daughter, Dawn (Sammi Davis), is a handful—fifteen, stubborn, and insubordinate, she has eyes for the men, especially a Canadian soldier who manages to get her pregnant. Young Billy has a younger sister as well, and there are aunts around them with husbands who may or may not be around, such as Uncle Mac (Derrick O’Connor), who was apparently once attached to Grace before she married Clive. Grandpa George (Ian Bannen) is cantankerous and bitter, but he is well off enough to host the family at his home in the country when the Rowans’ house burns to the ground.

In many ways, Hope and Glory resembles Woody Allen’s Radio Days, which was released the same year. Both pictures highlight two perspectives on opposite sides of the Atlantic, although the latter is decidedly played for laughs and the former delivers moments of solemnity.

Olive Films’ new high definition restoration looks absolutely beautiful—crystal clear, sharp, and colorful. There are optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired, but otherwise no supplements.

Hope and Glory may not be a cure for what ails us now, but it is certainly a feel-good dose of medicine in these troubled times. Highly recommended.

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Paramount Home Video has released a new Blu-ray special edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s epic “The Ten Commandments”. The set includes both the director’s original silent film version as well as his 1956 blockbuster remake starring Charlton Heston as Moses. To commemorate the release of the video, Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer caught up with filmmaker Fraser C. Heston to discuss the impact of the movie on his father’s career. (An interesting footnote: Fraser Heston is seen in the film as baby Moses, thus, both father and son played the same character.)

Cinema Retro: Your father first worked for Cecil B. DeMille on The Greatest Show on Earth. Would you say he is the singular most important person responsible for your father’s rise to fame?

Fraser C. Heston: Absolutely. My father was on the Paramount lot and he waved at Mr. DeMille. He had been on the lot for some other audition and he saw Mr. DeMille by the gate and said, “Hello, Mr. DeMille” before driving off the lot. Mr. DeMille asked his secretary, “Who was that guy?” She said, “Oh, that’s Charlton Heston. I think you met him before and you didn’t think much of him.” But DeMille said, “Well, I think he’s an interesting guy. Why don’t you have him over and I’ll meet with him?” He ends up offering him the part of the circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth and it ends up winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Then he tells him to come back for another meeting- he doesn’t even tell him what the part is- and says, “I’m going to make The Ten Commandments.” He shows him models and paintings all afternoon and gets him all excited but he doesn’t offer him a part. He just says, “I’ll bring you back in a week or two.” He ended up asking him, “How would you like to play Moses?” The rest is history, as they say.

CR: Was your father intimidated by playing such an historic character?

FH: No, I think he embraced the challenge. He obviously didn’t have to play him from a baby, as that was my job! But he did have to play him as a young man right up through when he had that white beard at the end of the movie, however old Moses was at that point. He also had the challenge of going from an Egyptian prince to a slave to the leader of his people- and to do it in a way that perhaps wasn’t as stylized as some of the DeMille epics. That film, I think, stands the test of time. The reason for that, I think, is the fantastic cast. Look at Yul Brynner’s performance, for example. I can’t imagine anyone else playing Ramses.

CR: I’m trying to remember if your father and Brynner ever worked together again…

FH: They did on The Buccaneer, which was produced by DeMille and directed by his son-in-law, Anthony Quinn. Not as good a film, obviously, but still a classic. Some interesting trivia- if I live long enough, since I was the youngest actor on the set of The Ten Commandments, I will be the last actor in Hollywood who worked with Cecil B. DeMille.

(Photo copyright Fraser C. Heston, 2019.) 

CR: I was recently revisiting your father’s wonderful book “The Actor’s Life”, which consists of the daily diary entries he kept when shooting films and discovered that, unfortunately, he began this habit only after The Ten Commandments has wrapped, though he does discuss post-production work on the movie. But he does write, “If you can’t make a career out of two DeMille pictures, you’d better turn in your suit.” He also writes, “Our son Fraser was born while we were shooting The Ten Commandments. He played the infant Moses at the age of three months and immediately retired, displaying an acute judgment of the acting profession.”

FH: (Laughing) Well, I think I felt a little pressure from my dad not to follow in his footsteps.

CR: Well, many offspring of iconic actors have followed in their footsteps with varying degrees of success. Were you ever tempted to do so?

FH: I think I was but I was discouraged by my mom and dad. I mean Michael Douglas pulled it off and a couple of other father-and-son acting teams pulled it off but I think my parents knew how tough it would be to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I started out in a different aspects of films. I started out as a writer and discovered I liked writing screenplays. I got a couple of things made and from there I started producing and then directing. So I came at filmmaking more from the storyteller’s point-of-view. I consider myself, even if I’m directing, to be a storyteller. That’s a director’s job.

CR: When was the first time you remember seeing The Ten Commandments?

FH: I was probably about five and it was pretty terrifying, you know between the Burning Bush and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army when the Red Sea collapses…and oh, my God…

CR: …and let’s not forget the presence of the great Vincent Price…

FH: Yes, the evil Vincent Price and Yvonne De Carlo and Yul Brynner and everybody. It was just fantastic. How could you have seen that as a young person and not been blown away by it all and be terribly impressed? I think everyone had that experience the first time they saw it. People in our generation were young when it came out and that was their first experience with an epic film. I think you have to place the film in a larger pool of epics associated with my father along with Ben-Hur, El Cid and to a certain degree, Planet of the Apes that culminated in films like Gladiator. You can even go so far as The Avengers series, which are giant modern epics. I think DeMille started it all. When you think of spectacle, you think of C.B. DeMille. When you think of C.B. DeMille, you think of The Ten Commandments, right?

CR: I’ve always said that if you didn’t like the way he directed actors, you had to admire the way he directed traffic in films that large…

FH: (Laughs) So true!

CR: I recall you once telling me that in the Heston household, DeMille was a revered name.

FH: He was. My dad always called him Mr. DeMille, never C.B. We still have the telegram he sent my mom and when I was born saying, “Congratulations, he’s got the part.” I’m looking at a picture on my wall right now. It’s a photo of me at age four or five being held in my dad’s arms and reaching out and tweaking Mr. DeMille’s nose.

“A VERY PRECIOUS NATALIE”

By Raymond Benson

The familiar old standard, “A Very Precious Love” (by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster) has been covered by such crooners as the Ames Brothers, Doris Day, Jack Jones, and others, but it was Gene Kelly who introduced it in the 1958 film adaptation of Herman Wouk’s 1955 novel, Marjorie Morningstar, which was directed by Irving Rapper. The song, played incessantly in instrumental form throughout the picture (and sung twice by Kelly), certainly sticks with you—and it received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song that year.

It was the only nomination the film received, however. Despite the good intentions of the filmmakers, the solid performances by Kelly and protagonist Marjorie (played by the luminescent Natalie Wood), and an excellent supporting cast that includes Ed Wynn, Claire Trevor, Carolyn Jones, Everett Sloan, Martin Milner, Martin Balsam, Jesse White, and George Tobias, the picture doesn’t quite reach the heights to which it aspires. This is probably due to a) running a little long, and b) keeping one foot firmly in the old Production Code while itching to break out and be a little more frank in its exploration of sexual mores. Still, it’s an enjoyable, worthwhile romantic drama with some extra added value in musical and dance numbers that are ingredients of the storyline.

Of particular note is that this is a Hollywood movie in the 1950s that portrays Jewish middle-class family life, complete with scenes of religious rituals and holidays (a bar mitzvah in a synagogue, a seder meal at Passover). Has there been such a film prior to it besides, perhaps, The Jazz Singer in 1927? This reviewer cannot think of any. Interestingly, Wouk’s novel takes place in the 1930s—the motion picture brings the setting up to the late 50s. This was a good call, for it allows the filmmakers to explore the sexual yearnings of young Marjorie and her several male admirers in an era when teen rebellion was at a boiling point. Marjorie, though, is a “good Jewish girl,” who doesn’t “give out free samples” while looking for the right man to marry (as her friend Marsha apparently does).

This was considered Natalie Wood’s first adult role, although the character begins the story at age eighteen and ends it in her early twenties. She is quite effective as the innocent and precious young woman who refuses to abide by her parents’ traditions and wishes for her to find a man with a respectable income (a doctor, lawyer). Instead, she pursues an older bohemian (played by Kelly) in the arts because she wants to be an actress (oh, the horror!). Along the way, she fends off other suitors, such as a successful playwright (Milner), and a doctor (Balsam). Kelly’s Noel Airman, though, is a bit of a cad, non-religious, and destined to live a life on the fringe. Is it a doomed love affair? Will Marjorie eventually “grow up” and realize that this is not the path for her? Ultimately, these themes of maturity, customs, destiny, and choices are what Marjorie Morningstar is all about.

Kelly is also very good in his role, for once playing a sometimes-unlikeable character. Ed Wynn has some scene-stealing comic moments, and Carolyn Jones, as Marsha, is wonderfully liberal and spunky in her efforts to steer Marjorie to take a walk on the wild side for a change.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray restoration is quite good, despite the two or three brief flashes of color unsaturation. Otherwise, this is a decent transfer that captures that late fifties look of “WarnerColor” film stock. There are English subtitles for the hearing impaired, but, alas, no other supplements except for theatrical trailers for this and other Kino Lorber titles.

Marjorie Morningstar is a good date movie, especially for the Boomer crowd (and older) that can recall these simpler times. There’s also a good chance you won’t be able to get that song out of your head after a viewing.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

Long before the coronavirus and social distancing became a reality, before TV became mainly a source of information about the current pandemic, there used to be a thing called the “made-for-TV” movie. They’re pretty much an artifact of the past now, new ones showing up mainly on the Lifetime and Hallmark cable channels. But beginning in the 1960s up to the late 90s, there were tons of made-for-TV movies churned out on all the networks. Some of the more famous ones, like “The Burning Bed” with Farrah Fawcett, and “The Day After” with Jason Robards, achieved a level of quality that earned them Golden Globes and Emmys. But for the most part the TV movie was known mainly for low budgets, hackneyed direction, mediocre acting and half-baked scripts.

While the Aaron Spelling-produced “Wild Women” (1970), starring Hugh O'Brian and five femme fatales, was not Emmy winning material, it wasn’t the worst TV movie ever made either. A comedy western directed by Don Taylor, “Wild Women” tells the tale of five female prisoners in a Union army stockade given the chance to earn their freedom by volunteering for a dangerous mission. If that sounds like a femme version of “The Dirty Dozen,” you’d be right. Except this is a low budget movie, so we get only five volunteers instead of a dozen.

We get our first glimpse of the ladies inside the stockade shouting and screaming at two of their number scratching and clawing each other in a raucous catfight. Riding in from the desert, is Army scout Killian (Hugh O’Brian). Killian (no first name) is given orders by Col. Donahue (Robert Simon), to lead an “expedition” down to the Mexican border for the purpose of finding and mapping a shorter trail than the one that currently takes three weeks. The U.S. is about to annex Texas from Mexico and war with our southern neighbor is imminent. The “expedition” will be an undercover operation with five soldiers posing as harmless settlers and five female prisoners posing as their wives. Cannon and rifles will be hidden inside the covered wagons they’ll be riding in.

If that idea doesn’t sound crazy enough, the teleplay by Richard Carr and Lou Morheim, based on a novel by Vincent Fotre, gives us a cast of characters that is, for lack of a better word ,incongruous at best. The women who are selected for the mission include the blonde and beautiful Jean Marshek (Anne Francis), the sexy southern belle Nancy Belacourt (Sherry Jackson), the alluring half-Apache Mit-O-Ne (Cynthia Hull), the grey haired, lead-slinging card dealer Lotte Clampett (Marie Windsor) and former madam Maude Webber (Marilyn Maxwell). The soldiers who will go on the expedition are not exactly what you would expect either. Instead of trained cavalrymen or expert sharpshooters, the men are all topographical engineers who wouldn’t know a Winchester from a Howitzer. You have to admit, these aren’t the kinds of characters who typically populate a movie like this, and that’s one of the things I liked about it.

Of course, there’s got to be a love interest somewhere in the story, and naturally, Jean and Killian have a past. She was a card dealer in a casino a few years ago who ripped him off to the tune of $80 but only after she had fallen in love with him. However, she discovered he was about to skip out on her. Naturally, that all turns out to be a misunderstanding.

The expedition starts out for their immediate destination, a deserted town where four Texas Rangers will be waiting for them to escort them the rest of the way. Along the journey, the geeky soldiers and the wild women begin to grow on each other. After a night of drinking and dancing, one of the soldiers nearly empties the expedition’s water barrel. On a search for more water, aided by the half-apache Mit-O-Ne, they find a water hole but a band of Mescaleros shows up and forbids them to drink from it. “Only Apache, may drink,” Chief Cadete (Michael Keep) tells them.

There’s only one way to settle this. Killian takes his shirt off and challenges him to a fight. You know how Hugh O’Brian liked to show off that hairy chest. The chief wants to fight in the water with knives. Killian in a kind of chickenshit move suggests just using fists. Astonishingly, Cadete agrees. What kind of a Mescalero is he, anyway? I guess the writers were out on a coffee break when they shot that scene.

After the waterhole scene they make it to the deserted town only to find out the Texas Rangers who were supposed to meet them are all dead, killed by Mexican soldiers, some of whom the expedition had run into earlier. Killian knows the Mexicans will descend on them before long, so they have to make a stand. In an even stranger twist, the wild women take the men aside and teach them how to shoot the rifles and canon they brought with them. These gals have been around.

Kino Lorber did a nice job transferring “The Wild Women” to a 1920x1080p Blu-Ray in standard 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Image and color are good. The soundtrack is mono and the music score by Fred Steiner, supervised by George Duning, is well recorded. This is one of those flicks were the entire score is basically multiple versions of the same tune played at different tempos and moods. In this case the theme is based on the old folk song, “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” It grows on you.

Included as an extra is an interesting and informative audio Commentary by film historian Lee Gambin, who notes the similarities between “Wild Women” and “The Guns of Fort Petticoat.” However, he mistakenly identifies Gene Autry as the star of “Petticoat,” when in actual fact it was Audie Murphy. Nobody’s perfect. The disc also includes trailers for a number of Kino Lorber Blu-rays.

Since you’re now a prisoner quarantined in your own home, you could do worse than turn Wolf Blitzer off for 74 minutes and give this Kino-Lorber Blu-Ray a spin.

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

REVIEW: “THE FINGER POINTS” (1931), STARRING RICHARD BARTHELMESS, FAY WRAY, AND CLARK GABLE; WARNER ARCHIVE COLLECTION DVD by Fred Blosser

HONOR BLACKMAN, ICONIC FEMALE STAR OF "GOLDFINGER" AND "THE AVENGERS", DEAD AT AGE 94

REVIEW: "RECORD CITY" (1977); BLU-RAY RELEASE FROM SCORPION