Cinema Retro columnist Mark Cerulli has long championed indie horror films. They generally have one thing in common: the need to use innovative methods to compensate for less-than-extravagant budgets. Cerulli finally decided the best way to experience what it's like making one of these films was to participate in aspects of its creative process. Here is his report.

BY MARK CERULLI

As a writer/producer for HBO, I had been on a number of film sets to do interviews and shoot “B-roll”… tolerated, sometimes even welcomed but never a part of the actual film. As a scriptwriter I had also piled up an impressive number of “passes” (my favorite was from Steven Seagal’s nutritionist!). Then in a Hollywood coincidence I met director Sean Haitz at the premiere of Rob Zombie’s Three from Hell. We discovered that we shared an interest in Area 51, the mysterious military base in the high desert outside Las Vegas and UFOs. We batted ideas around, agreed on a story and I wrote a first draft. Sean came up with a catchy title - AREA 5150 – and revised the script. At age 34, this would be Sean’s 4^th film. (His latest, Cannibal Comedian will be out soon.) He gets things done. Last December, we even took a quick trip to the real Area 51 to shoot some exteriors, all under the watchful eye of “the Cammo Dudes”, the private security force who guard all approaches to the base.

After 10 or 11 drafts, Sean’s very capable Assistant Director, CJ Guerrero, imported our script into studio software where it underwent further changes. My first inkling of that was when Sean cheerfully said, “You might want to wear a cup.”

Oh really?

At the end of February I, along with the cast and a young crew of 15, were in Morongo Valley, a quiet desert community about 30 mins from Palm Springs. Sean had the run of a sprawling vehicle graveyard – cars, buses, construction equipment and the abandoned property next door (“a trap house” as actor D’Shae Beasley called it). Set decorator, prop master and makeup artist Andrea Davoren turned the vacant house into a functional-looking home – albeit without heat, running water or even plumbing. Much mayhem ensued with the walls pierced by hammers, screams and a custom chainsaw. And, of course, splattered with fake blood. (Fun fact: there are two varieties – one for the body, and a minty version for spewing out of your mouth!)

The most surreal event was staging a dinner scene that Sean wanted to do as an homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Since the house had no electricity we had to use an outside generator so the floor was always a forest of cables. (My dropping an axe on one, cutting the power didn’t help!) Since our script had a crazy father role, I asked to play it as I had acted in high school and college and took some classes in NYC before chickening out on pursuing it full time. Even so, I underestimated what was involved in being in front of the camera…

Inside the house, the only source of heat was the old hearth, which production assistants thankfully kept filling with branches from the overgrown property. As it got later and later, the temperature dropped into the 30s. By the time we got ready to shoot dinner – around 2AM - we were all freezing. The others at the table – Aaron Prager (star of Sean’s upcoming Cannibal Comedian), lovely Claire Brauer (a real trooper in a skimpy cutoff t-shirt) and Rob Wight (playing my dimwitted son #2) were all professional actors. Assistant Art Director August Kingsley played my mutant offspring, Timmy, under a custom latex mask. I had foolishly written a speech for my character and suddenly realized I had to deliver it. My first take - sometime after 3 AM - was…um… lackluster. “We’re all tired. You look it and sound it…” the director said from behind the monitor. I took a deep breath and remembered what Bruce Glover (who teaches acting when he’s not trying to kill James Bond) said about “locking up”. I managed a better delivery and we finally wrapped for the night.

For a small film, Sean Haitz managed to get maximum bang for every buck – like getting a helicopter for a key scene. Original landing location dropped out? No problem: he staged a landing on a side road next to a busy highway! Our female lead tried to get away in a car so my (screen) daughter, Ruby Rose (played by our special effects guru, Matthew Lucero) crushed the car and flipped it over with a backhoe! We benefitted from having a great young Director of Photography, Kraig Bryant, who was shooting his first feature after working on music videos. He and cameraman Josh Wagner made full use of every hour of daylight, literally shooting until the sun went down.

Every movie villain deserves a wicked death and mine was a doozy – involving a circular saw and a certain body part. (Hence the cup.) I was wired with tubes running up my pants to a compressor tank filled with a gallon of fake blood. The result was a spectacular Tarantino-ish shower of gore! I drove back to the hotel drenched in drying blood, praying not to get pulled over by a cop.

After 8 long, exhilarating days, over 8 terabytes of data were digitally “in the can”. We had a movie! And I had a new cinematic family – we had all grown close during those days in the desert. That is the part of making Area 5150 I think I cherish the most.

“HATE IS A LOADED GUN”

By Raymond Benson

The years of the 1940s following World War II exhibited a striking change in Hollywood movies. The moods and world outlooks of post-war GIs and the people they had left behind and to whom they returned were more reflective and serious. Awareness of societal ills that had always been with us were now at the forefront… and Hollywood stepped up to address this new American angst in the form of a) what film historians call “social problem films” that tackled issues such as alcoholism, drug addiction, anti-Semitism, racism, government corruption, and other hitherto taboos of motion pictures, and b) film noir, the gritty crime dramas that never sugar-coated anything and portrayed both men and women—the femmes fatale—as hard-boiled, cynical, and paranoid.

Two pictures were released in 1947 that tackled anti-Semitism with frank, hard-hitting realism. One was Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement, a more passive investigation of anti-Semitism in America that won the Oscar for Best Picture. Often overlooked today, however, is the other Best Picture nominee of that year—the film noir crime drama, Crossfire, which examined the subject in a more violent and edgy concoction. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, who would just a year later be under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee and ultimately become one of the infamously blacklisted “Hollywood Ten,” Crossfire could very well be the more substantially shocking movie of the two. It also appeared in theaters three months earlier.

Besides the Best Picture nomination, Dmytryk was nominated for Best Director, the script by John Paxton was up for Adapted Screenplay, and both Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame were nominated for Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively. Crossfire was no throwaway B-movie film noir. It is both a film noir and a social problem film!

Ironically, the story was not supposed to be about anti-Semitism at all. The movie is based on a novel, The Brick Foxhole, by Richard Brooks (yes, the same Richard Brooks who went on to become a formidable screenwriter/director in the 50s, 60s, and 70s). The novel is about the murder of a homosexual—not a Jew! At the time, there was no way the Hays Office (Production Code) would allow a film to be made with this subject matter, so producer Adrian Scott and Dmytryk changed the tale… and yet the film could really be about any “other” against whom racist, bigoted, homophobic, or intolerant people might hate. As police captain Finlay (Robert Young) says in the picture, “Hate is a loaded gun.” The murder victim could have been homosexual, black, Asian, Irish, or whatever—and the movie would have the same potency.

A man named Joseph Samuels is found beaten to death in his apartment. We later learn that the man was Jewish, which was the motivation for his killing. The story unfolds that a group of GIs have been demobilized in Washington DC and are waiting for either further orders or a discharge. They are all disillusioned and restless. Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum) is the world-weary leader of the group, which consists of hot-headed and abrasive Montgomery (Robert Ryan), sensitive and “lost” Mitchell (George Cooper), and hard-up-for-money Bowers (Steve Brodie). Flashbacks reveal that Montgomery, Mitchell, and Bowers met civilian Samuels (Sam Levene) and his girlfriend, Miss Lewis (Marlo Dwyer) in a bar. Samuels empathized with Mitchell’s unhappiness and invited him to come along to dinner with them. They stopped at his apartment first while Miss Lewis went home to change. Montgomery and Bowers followed them, thinking that the party had simply moved locations. Later, once Captain Finlay begins the investigation, Mitchell has disappeared and has become the prime suspect. But all is not what it seems.

This is a tightly-wound, suspenseful picture presented in classic film noir style (expressionistic lighting and photography, brutal characterizations, and plenty of tough talk). The actors are all excellent, especially Young, who handles the proceedings with calm, thoughtful deliberation. Ryan, in this early appearance, established himself as a contender with a showy role that justifies the Oscar nomination. Gloria Grahame, in a small role, portrays a jaded, no-nonsense bar girl whom Mitchell befriends—she, too, displays the hallmarks of many of her onscreen characterizations.

Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray restoration looks terrific in its glorious black and white. It comes with an audio commentary by film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, and there are audio interview excerpts with director Dmytryk. A short featurette on the film’s making and impact is also a welcome supplement.

Crossfire is still relevant today—perhaps even more so than it was in 1947. The only thing dated about it is the 1940s film noir filmmaking style—and what’s wrong with that? Nothing! Highly recommended.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

“BIG TOP SOAP OPERA”

By Raymond Benson

One of the more controversial Best Picture Oscar winners is Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (it won the top prize for the year 1952, as well as a trophy for Best Story—a category that was discontinued four years later). The movie is often cited in pundits’ lists of “Worst Best Picture Oscar Winners,” mainly because many film buffs believe that there were more deserving nominees that year (such as High Noon or The Quiet Man, or even Singin’ in the Rain, which wasn’t even nominated!). The win for Greatest Show was perhaps somewhat of an overdue honor for DeMille, who had been working in Hollywood since the 1910s, was a hugely successful and popular director, and he had never won a Best Picture Academy Award. In this case, then, why didn’t he win Best Director (John Ford did for The Quiet Man)?

Controversy aside, The Greatest Show on Earth is still spectacular entertainment and worth 2-1/2 hours of a viewer’s time, especially with Paramount Present’s new Blu-ray restoration that looks absolutely gorgeous. Steven Spielberg has often pointed to Greatest Show as a landmark for him because he remembers it as the first movie his parents ever took him to see, and he has placed nods to it in some of his own features. It is grand, Hollywood epic-style spectacle, much of which overshadows the rather melodramatic and soap opera plot going on in the story. It must be said that the melodrama is often corny and eye-rolling in its heightened angst. Furthermore, it’s a plot that probably couldn’t be made in today’s social/political climate of #MeToo. But, hey, this is a movie from 1952.

The Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus was indeed known as “the greatest show on earth” during its magnificent heyday decades of the early part of the 20th Century to at least the 1980s, after which the circus began to have PR problems and audience dwindling. Animal rights activists, especially, came down hard on all circuses, and eventually the sensation became something of a past glory of a bygone era.

When DeMille set about making a motion picture about the circus, he made a deal with Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus—then the biggest and best—to be in the movie. Thus, there literally is a cast of thousands in the film—all 1,400 of the circus employees appear in it, along with the select Hollywood actors cast to play important roles. The story follows the day-to-day running of a circus tour in an almost documentary-like fashion, complete with DeMille himself narrating sections of the movie as we see crews assembling the big top tent, loading/unloading equipment, performers rehearsing and dressing, and the breakdown and travel after each stop on the road. This is surely the best aspect of Greatest Show—it is a time capsule of what circus life was really like in those halcyon years.

Brad Braden (Charlton Heston, in an early screen performance) is the manager of the traveling circus, and he is very much a “show must go on” type of guy who takes no guff or excuses from anyone, even his on-again, off-again girlfriend, trapeze artist Holly (Betty Hutton, who receives top billing on the film). In order to keep the circus “in the black” and do a full tour, he is forced by the corporate bosses to hire a big star for the center ring, and this comes in the form of “The Great Sebastian” (Cornel Wilde), a ladies’ man and a fellow known for trouble. Holly is hurt by being kicked out of the center ring to the first ring, so she begins to make a play for Sebastian to make Brad jealous. In the meantime, elephant act performer Angel (Gloria Grahame) also has eyes for Brad, but she is the object of affection of not-so-nice elephant trainer Klaus (Lyle Bettger). Then there is lovable Buttons the Clown (James Stewart, who is in clown makeup through the entire movie and never reveals his clean face!), who we learn is on the run from the law because of a mysterious crime in his past. Added to all this are some gangsters led by “Mr. Henderson” (Lawrence Tierney) who run crooked midway games, and one of his men plans to rob the circus of its takings during a harrowing train holdup.

Thus, there are love triangles and criminal shenanigans going on, but mostly the movie is a visual documentation of the circus-going experience. We see many acts in full, and there are numerous reaction shots of audience members (some of whom are cameo appearances by celebrities like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Danny Thomas, and more).

Perhaps the most impressive thing is that the actors learned how to do much of their characters’ jobs in the circus. For example, Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde really did learn and perform, on camera, the trapeze acts. Whether or not the terribly difficult ones are done by Hutton and Wilde (doubtful), the Hollywood PR machine insisted that they did all their own stunts (unlikely). Nevertheless, that’s really Gloria Grahame being picked up by the mouth of an elephant and carried away as she lounges happily for the audience. James Stewart performs silly slapstick routines with none other than the great Emmett Kelly and Lou Jacobs, two of the greatest clown performers in circus history.

Paramount Presents’ Blu-ray disk is impressive and a treat for the eyes. Unfortunately, the only supplement is a 7-1/2-minute featurette about the movie narrated by Leonard Maltin, which is fine as an “intro” to viewing the picture, but one wishes that more documentary “making-of” material could have been included.

The Greatest Show on Earth may not have been the Greatest Best Picture Oscar Winner, but it is still a fun and colorful spectacle that captures a now long-lost phenomenon.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON (Released on March 30) 

BY TODD GARBARINI

Tsugunobo Kotani is a film director whose name does not roll off the tongue throughout film circles. A handful of titles to his credit consist of Hatsukoi (1975), The Last Dinosaur (1977), The Ivory Ape (1980), and The Bloody Bushido Blade (1981), and there are a good number of Japanese-language titles that appear in his early filmography. An Internet search of “Tom Kotani,” the Americanized variant of Tsugunobo and the director’s name as it appears in some of his movies, yields even less information. While most people may not recognize him, there is a small but significant percentage of film viewers, yours truly included, who have been deeply affected by one of his films in particular: the made-for-television undersea effort The Bermuda Depths. Filmed in the British Overseas Territory of the Bermudas in 1977, The Bermuda Depths is mysterious for several reasons. It is a film that is difficult to categorize as it touches upon several genres: action, fantasy, romance, and science fiction. It attempts to mix several elements of the fantastic (a giant turtle and its relation to a voluptuous young maiden lost at sea) with the realistic (a young man in search of the truth behind his father’s mysterious and untimely death).

Arguably the most memorable film “inspired” by Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), The Bermuda Depths was originally broadcasted on the ABC Friday Night Movie on January 27, 1978 and was repeated on Friday, August 29, 1980. A smattering of repeat broadcasts and a curiously unheralded VHS release followed. It benefits from a touch of myth from Ambroise Paré’s “On Monsters and Marvels” and plays out in a dreamlike fashion. Leigh McCloskey stars as Magnus Dens, a drifter who returns to the scene of his father’s death hoping to find closure. He encounters an old friend, Eric (Carl Weathers), who is completing his master’s degree in Marine Biology while working for the avuncular Dr. Paulus (Burl Ives). The scientists are both interested in abnormalities and gigantism in sea life, technically known as Teratology, and are looking for any sea creatures that live in the deepest depths of the ocean to study them. At the heart of all of this is an enigmatic woman named Jennie Haniver (Connie Sellecca) who may or may not be real. Jennie lives in the ocean and comes ashore when Magnus shouts her name. Jennie and Magnus used to play together as children, and on the beach they found a large turtle upon which they inscribed their initials. Now the turtle has reached enormous physical proportions and lives deep in the ocean, occasionally rising to the surface. The last third of the film concerns Eric’s futile attempts to capture the sea creature and gives the filmmakers the opportunity to put the three men on a boat a la Sam Quint, Matt Hooper, and Chief Martin Brody, with the “Panulirus” sitting in the for the “Orca”.

If The Bermuda Depths is about anything that we can be absolutely sure of, it’s that highly successful films inevitably spurn imitations. This was certainly the case during the mid-1970’s when everyone and his brother was scrambling to re-enact the success of Jaws. The Bermuda Depths takes the unusual step of adding a supernatural love story into the mix and successfully creates a tragic tale of love and doom. Mr. McCloskey was a successful television actor by this point, best known for the Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) mini-series, and sports the natural Southern California good looks that make Magnus appealing to young women. Carl Weathers of Rocky (1976) fame embodies Eric with terrific zeal, although his truncated half-shirt near the film’s ending is a questionable wardrobe choice. Burl Ives is wonderful as the elder who tries his best to get Eric to look at the situation through scientific eyes. Connie Sellecca, in her first film role at age twenty-two, does an exceptional turn as Jennie Haniver. She possesses a magical, ethereal quality and is achingly beautiful. Julie Woodson, Playboy Magazine’s Miss April 1973, is remarkably beautiful and quite good as Eric’s wife Doshan. Ruth Attaway, who played the nurse in The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) to comedic effect, is mysterious and eerie as Delia, the housekeeper and proverbial party pooper who warns Magnus about the Legend of Jennie Haniver, seemingly a believer in the supernatural.

The Rankin Bass team responsible for their wonderful collaborations in the Sixties and Seventies on the Christmas holiday television show specials that millions grew up on, especially Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) which also featured Mr. Ives, produced the film. There is a definite “Rankin Bass” feel to The Bermuda Depths, particularly in the special effects which today look quite amateurish: the helicopter crash sequence near the film’s end looks similar to the finale of the Mad Monster Party? explosion on the island, and close-up shots of the vessel’s propeller and the trawler crashing against the ocean waves in slow-mo look as though they was filmed in a bathtub. The special effects-laden ending almost compromises the intriguing supernatural and romantic mystery that precedes it. This is a case where the film’s style almost outweighs its substance. Despite this, however, the low-budget effects add a certain charm to the film, a reminder of filmmaking from days gone by when less money and more ingenuity was considered an asset.

The film possesses more than its share of derivations: Dr. Paulus’s throwaway line about needing “a bigger boat”; Eric’s decision to pursue the turtle on the Fourth of July of all days; Delia’s unexplained disappearance from the second half of the film; and Magnus’s inquiry into his father’s death mirrors Luke Skywalker asking the same of Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom Dr. Paulus even resembles. Composer Maury Laws provides a beautiful score which I always wished would appear as a soundtrack album. Hopefully, some independent label (i.e. Waxwork Records) will give this score its due.

While the film does appear somewhat corny after more than forty years, it possesses an innocent quality about it that is sadly lacking in most entertainment product of late. The slow and languid images of Magnus and Jennie on the beach and in the cave recall a time in American filmmaking when the audience failed to be bombarded by fast editing and could actually digest the images presented to them. Unquestionably there are those who will complain about the film’s slow pace, but there are plenty of treasures here film to make it one that deserves a new generation of admirers: the eerie day-for-night photography which Mr. Spielberg also employed in the opening of his 1975 masterwork; Maury Laws’ soothing title tune “Jennie” with vocals by Claude Carmichael; and the use of Antonio Vivaldi’s elegiac “Largo” from his “Concerto for Lute (Guitar), Two Violins and Basso Continuo in D Major” as the lovers’ theme.

BY TODD GARBARINI

In the pantheon of great cinematographers there are certain names that immediately come to mind: Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941); Robert Burks (Vertigo, 1958); Owen Roizman (The French Connection, 1971; The Exorcist, 1973); Gordon Willis (The Godfather, 1972; The Godfather Part II, 1974); Vittorio Storaro (The Conformist, 1970; The Last Emperor, 1987); and Sven Nykvist (Persona, 1966; Cries and Whispers, 1973) to name just a few. The late great Carlo Di Palma, who passed away in 2004 after amassing just over 60 screen credits, is one such master and is the subject of the 2016 documentary Water and Sugar: Carlo Di Palma, The Colours of Life, which opened in Manhattan on Friday, July 28, 2017.

The film performs a tightrope act of trying to be both a loving tribute to an artist by director Fariborz Kamkari, who mixes scenes from the films that Signor Di Palma cut his teeth on in the business and also an appreciation by his widow, Adriana Chiesa Di Palma, who appears in much of the film as a gateway to many film industry people who offer up their thoughts on Sig. Di Palma, often interjecting their own feelings and impressions of his work. The film is at its most interesting, however, when looking directly at his career through past interviews and behind-the-scenes stills, beginning in Italian cinema in the early 1940s as a focus puller and camera operator – at the age of fifteen no less! - for notable Neo-Realist director Luchino Visconti (Ossessione, 1943) and later for Vittorio DeSica (The Bicycle Thief, 1948), while graduating to more high-brow and intellectual fare. Specifically, these were the films he shot for the highly acclaimed and award-winning Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni: Red Desert (1964) with its colorful, pollution-drenched cities swallowing up everyday people; Blow-Up (1966) with the message that one must create their own reality; and the Cannes Film Festival Award-Winning Identification of a Woman (1982) with Tomas Milian as a divorced filmmaker trying to understand women.

Sr. Di Palma worked most prolifically with Woody Allen beginning with one of the director’s greatest films, 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters and the period films Radio Days (1987), Shadows and Fog (1992) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). His hand-held work on Husbands and Wives (1992) is also dissected. Ample time is allotted Mr. Allen, who recalls his experiences working with the cinematographer and how they discussed films over lunch and dinner.

The juxtaposing of interview footage with the film’s subject and comments from contemporaries, such as the late great Bernardo Bertolucci who worked with Sig. Di Palma on 1981’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, are insightful and contemplative; there is also the amazing recollection of how a very young Sven Nykvist happened upon Sr. Di Palma, a fact verified decades later; and finally, the explanation for the film’s title.

Alec Baldwin, who appeared in Mr. Allen’s 1990 fantasy film Alice, makes the case that movies like the ones shot by Sr. Di Palma are art. It makes one wonder about the wisdom on the part of the distribution companies that offer up documentaries about cinematographers, generally only presenting them in the standard definition format of DVD. Without taking anything away from Disney and big-screen Marvel Comics epics that rule home video in 4K Ultra High Definition and Dolby Atmos, would it not make sense to showcase the stories of cinema’s finest visual stylists on Blu-ray as well? The scenes offered up in Water and Sugar examples of the beautiful color palettes of Sig. Di Palma’s greatest works which aided in the accolades bestowed upon these films. The Kino Lorber DVD includes the original trailer as the only bonus feature.

Last of all, can someone please correct the indignity of Sig. Di Palma’s profile pic on his IMDB.com page? It erroneously depicts Italian cinematographer Marco Onorato accepting an award at the European Film Awards on December 6, 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark. While no disrespect is meant to Sr. Marco Onorato, who sadly passed away at age 59, the least that the IMDB can do is correct this unfortunate and persistent oversight.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

REVIEW: MEL BROOKS' "THE PRODUCERS" (1967) STARRING ZERO MOSTEL AND GENE WILDER; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION

REVIEW: "JEREMY" (1973) STARRING ROBBY BENSON AND GLYNNIS O'CONNOR; FUN CITY BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION

REVIEW: "KILLDOZER" (1974) STARRING CLINT WALKER; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION

REVIEW: "FILMWORKER" (2017) UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH STANLEY KUBRICK; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY RELEASE