On Joe Dante's "Trailers from Hell" web site, John Landis analyzes the merits (or demerits) of the 1977 cheapo Universal horror flick "The Car", a "so-bad-it's-good" favorite of many film buffs.

And, as always, find more greatness at http://www.trailersfromhell.com

BY LEE PFEIFFER

There's an old Hollywood adage about the young starlet who was naive enough to think she could get to the top by sleeping with a writer. Indeed, writers are the primary reasons movies get made. Without a viable script, there would be nothing to shoot. Yet, screenwriters have routinely griped about how they feel they are left at the altar once filming begins. In fact, unless there is a specific need to have the writer on the set, most producers and directors would prefer that they remain removed from the filming process, probably because they might object to spontaneous changes made to the script. In "Sweet Liberty", Alan Alda's 1986 comedy that he starred in as well as wrote and directed, he plays a writer who finds himself in this dilemma. He plays Michael Burgess, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a historical account of important events that transpired in a North Carolina community during the American Revolution. He's delighted when a Hollywood studio buys the rights to his book (titled "Sweet Liberty") and plans to adapt it into a major film with big stars. Burgess's enthusiasm is short-lived, however, once the army of actors and technicians arrive to set up headquarters in the small town. The locals are understandably thrilled but when Burgess meets with the screenwriter, Stanley Gould (Bob Hoskins), he finds him to be a crude and unsophisticated character who would be right at home in a Scorsese crime movie. Burgess is appalled to find that Stanley has taken many historical liberties with "Sweet Liberty" at the behest of the studio bosses, who are only interested in morphing dramatic real-life events into a romantic comedy with plenty of T&A. Burgess's  gripes are dismissed by the director (Saul Rubinek), who also views the production as just a pay check. He appeals to the film's star, matinee idol Elliott James (Michael Caine), but finds him to be a towel-snapping prankster with no regard for the historical accuracy of the character he is playing. Ultimately, he has a breakthrough with the more thoughtful leading lady, Faith Healy (Michelle Pfeiffer), who seems to understand the importance of bringing her character to the screen in a realistic and accurate way. This leads to some romantic encounters between Burgess and Faith, a situation that poses problems for his relationship with steady girlfriend Gretchen Carlsen (Lisa Hilboldt), who exacts her own form of revenge. 

Alda's marvelous screenplay keeps in his usual pattern of writing comedies that avoid shooting for big belly laughs and concentrate on being mildly amusing throughout. As good as Alda is as an actor, he's equally impressive as a director and screenwriter, despite the fact that his "triple-threat" film ventures only resulted in a couple of boxoffice hits. Here he has assembled a wonderful cast and he gets the best of out every actor, including legendary Lillian Gish, the silent era film star who was still going strong in 1986. She appears in an admittedly superfluous subplot that seems written to simply squeeze her into the movie, but it's a joy to see her on screen this late in her career. Michelle Pfeiffer is well-cast as the seemingly vacuous diva who Burgess might be able to reach on an emotional level and Bob Hoskins is delightfully funny as the rough-around-the-edges but affable screenwriter who seems to have been chosen for the job simply because he's a reliable hack. I was also highly impressed by the performance of Lisa Hilboldt as Burgess's long-time girlfriend. Hilboldt has a terrific comedic timing and lights up the screen in her every appearance. It's surprising she never achieved major stardom. The key scene-stealer is Michael Caine, who plays a variation of Peter O'Toole's immortal Alan Swan character from "My Favorite Year". As Elliott James, he makes local women swoon and he uses this skill to seduce a local rich southern belle (Lois Chiles, in a rare comedic role) as well as any other woman who crosses his path. Elliott is reckless, self-centered and egotistical but he's also an irresistible charmer. A highlight of the film finds Elliott and Burgess engaged in an amusing fencing match that must have taken eons for both Caine and Alda to learn to perform. 

"Sweet Liberty" is low-key comedy but a thoroughly amusing one. The Kino Lorber release has a typically impressive transfer. There is also a commentary track by film industry veterans and historians Daniel Kremer and Nat Segaloff that is very interesting and engaging, as they dispense informative facts about the production as well as Hollywood lore in general. There is also the theatrical trailer and a gallery of trailers for other KL releases. Highly recommended.

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Actor Gavin MacLeod has passed away at age 90 following a lengthy illness. MacLeod entered the acting profession in the 1950s with small roles in films such as "I Want to Live!", "Pork Chop Hill" and "Operation Petticoat". He also appeared in many hit TV series of the era before landing a regular part as a member of "McHale's Navy". In 1971, he graduated to stardom with a key role in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", which showcased his superb talents as a comedic actor. Major stardom followed later when he had the lead role in the long-running hit TV series "The Love Boat". His other feature films include "Kelly's Heroes" and "The Sand Pebbles". For more about his life and career, click here.

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Scorpion, the video label that specializes in first-class releases of often second-rate films, does it again with Point of Terror, an obscure thriller from 1971. The film was the brainchild of star/writer/producer Peter Carpenter (Blood Mania). Never heard of him? Neither had I until this screener copy arrived. A bit of research reveals that Carpenter was a wanna-be star with grand ambition and modest talents - much like the character he plays in the film, which was directed by Alex Nicol. Sadly, Carpenter's reed-thin list of movie credits is due to the fact that he died young- in fact, shortly after this film was released. Carpenter, who personifies "beefcake", plays a lounge singer with a loyal following. However, he's frustrated that his fame is limited to a local restaurant. Although he has his pick of the female groupies, he's convinced he's destined for fame and fortune. He meets Andrea (Dyanne Thorne of Ilse, She Wolf of the S.S. fame), an uppercrust cougar who helps her impotent wheelchair-bound hubby operate his record empire. Before you can say "Wayne Newton", the pair is tossing and turning all night under the covers. Both characters are manipulative and unsympathetic, which makes it hard to empathize with either one. Andrea is using Tony as her boy toy, while he is using her clout to advance his record career. Soon, both are enmeshed in dastardly deeds including infidelity and murder.

The film has overtones of Play Misty for Me (i.e, sexual obsession taken to a lethal stage) but Clint Eastwood probably didn't lose any sleep worrying that the impact of his film would be diminished by this one. Carpenter himself is a strangely perplexing personality. At times, he resonates legitimate charisma, but at other times, his acting is grade school level. Additionally, the film's opening credits are set to a scene of Tony performing his lounge act- clad in bright red buckskins! It's doubtful this looked hunky even in 1971 and the sequence is unintentionally hilarious, reminding one of those scenes in which women faint in passion at the sight of Austin Powers prancing about in his underwear. Thorne gives a slightly more accomplished performance and gets to doff her top in a swimming pool to display her trademark assets. (This was the 70s, remember, and such sequences were all but obligatory for B level actresses.) The movie plods at times and the action is rather clunkily directed, but the film is generally engrossing. Scorpion has provided the usual bevy of extras including an interview with actress Leslie Simms, who has a role in the film. She also served as Carpenter's acting coach and reminisces with affection about her friendship with him. Thorne is also heard via a phone interview done for this release. As with Simms, she speaks highly of Carpenter. The DVD release also includes a trailer and the original poster art on the packaging, which deceitfully implies this is a horror film. Another nice job by Scorpion for a film that would otherwise be lost to the ages.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

At some point in The Fastest Guitar Alive, a friend tells the character played by rock legend Roy Orbison that he should stick to guitar playing because he doesn't have much of a future as a gunslinger. The same advice appears to have been given to Orbison about his future as an actor, as this proved to be his big screen debut and farewell as a leading man. The 1967 movie was the brainchild of producer Sam Katzman, who was forever associated with schlock that often top-lined popular singers. Often these poorly-made productions proved to be hits with the youth audience and it was that philosophy that obviously led Katzman to think that Orbison could be box-office gold. Katzman had previously brought several Elvis Presley and Herman's Hermits films to the screen with success, but his instincts were off track with The Fastest Guitar Alive. Even by Katzman standards, the 1967 MGM Western comedy is a dud on all levels. The fact that the Warner Archive has released the movie will nevertheless be welcome news to Orbison fans, who will treat this an anomaly in an otherwise distinguished career that saw him write and perform some of the best known songs of his era.

In this dreary vehicle, Orbison plays Johnny, a gentle singer of ballads who is partners with Steve (Sammy Jackson). Together, the men travel through small towns selling snake oil medicine and performing in saloons with a bevy of showgirls who accompany them (though all seem curiously virginal). In reality, Johnny and Steve are spies working for the Confederacy. They use their cover as troubadours to successfully initiate the robbery of a Union gold shipment in San Francisco with the hopes of bringing the loot to the fading Southern cause in Texas. The slight plot is simply a necessary device to frame the numerous ballads that Orbison gets to warble. It becomes clear that this was a film designed to support a soundtrack album, not the other way around. To make Johnny live up to the movie's title, he is given a guitar that must have been designed by a frontier version of Q Branch: it has a recoiling rifle that extends when a button is pressed. He uses this to comic effect on an Indian tribe, the degrading depiction of which must have been the primary cause for the emergence of Native American activist groups. 

The story ambles from one anemic comic setup to the next without generating any evidence of wit on the part of the screenwriters. Although some of Orbison's tunes are fairly good, every time he begins to sing he is joined by an invisible chorus and full band, all hallmarks of Katzman productions. The result is absurd, as Orbison is supposedly plucking away love songs in intimate situations when the soundtrack clearly has him lip-synching to records made in a state-of-the-art studio. These unintentional laughs are the only guffaws in the entire movie. The biggest flaw in the film is Orbison's performance. He looks nervous and uncomfortable and delivers his lines like a frightened 8th grader making his stage debut in the school annual play. With every line he utters, I was reminded of that classic episode of The Honeymooners in which Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden has a panic attack when filming a live commercial as the Chef of the Future. He gets scant help from the supporting cast, although old time Western character actors John Doucette and James Westerfield bring a modicum of dignity to the production. There is one curious aspect to the movie's legacy: it's the only vehicle that ever allowed Iron Eyes Cody to co-star with Sam the Sham, the lead singer of the 60s rock group The Pharaohs.

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Here's a rarity: original 1969 behind-the-scenes production featurette for "Paint Your Wagon". The quality is pretty lousy but it's still fun to watch and hear comments from the stars. Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg starred in the mega-budget musical that went down in flames at the boxoffice, but there's still plenty to like in the film including production designer John Truscott's amazing sets and Marvin's unexpectedly effective warbling of "Wanderin' Star".

BY TODD GARBARINI

Kurt Russell and the late great character actor J.T. Walsh have shared the screen multiples times together, specifically in Robert Towne’s Tequila Sunrise (1989), Ron Howard’s Backdraft (1991), and Stuart Baird’s Executive Decision (1994). In the Spring of 1997, I saw the trailer for a new film called Breakdown, also featuring these two fine actors. I groaned - it looked like just another run-of-the-mill, headache-inducing, over-the-top testosterone action fest with very little basis in reality. Foolishly, I avoided it until I found myself at the Glendale 9, an Arizona multiplex drive-in while in Phoenix on a business trip. Breakdown was just about the only movie on the marquee that looked remotely interesting, though I still had serious doubts. Reluctantly, I paid the admission, fearing the worst. For the first time in a long time, I was wrong. Completely wrong. My initial reservations about Breakdown were totally erased halfway through the story. Years of suffering through uninteresting action films with empty, amusement park-like “thrills” almost prevented me from seeing one of the best films of the 1990s and a movie that easily lends itself to repeat viewings. I watched Breakdown while reclining on the hood of my rental car. To say that I was absolutely riveted would be a huge understatement. I thought the paint would permanently adhere to my sweaty palms.

For me, Breakdown is a near masterpiece. To disclose the plot would destroy what I found to be an utterly nail-biting motion picture experience, which is something I do not think I have ever truly experienced. There are some spoilers ahead, so non-viewers please tread lightly. There is such an overwhelming sense of menace and peril in Breakdown that it almost becomes a cruel experiment in fear. For a first-time directing job by Jonathan Mostow, who previously scripted the Michael Douglas/David Fincher film The Game (1997), Breakdown is awe-inspiring. The opening credits sequence alone is imaginative and appropriate to the story, utilizing animation to simultaneously represent a mesh of cartographic interstates and what could also be construed as cerebral arteries. The film’s title is a double meaning. Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan are Jeff and Amy Taylor, a forty-something married couple moving from New England to San Diego in a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo SUV. On their way driving through the empty plains of the Midwest, Jeff is momentarily distracted reaching for his thermos and just misses crashing into a mud caked Ford F150 pick-up driven by a large man who shouts obscenities. An unfortunate encounter ensues later when the man castigates Jeff while refueling. Speeding away, the new Jeep suffers an electrical difficulty and Jeff and Amy find themselves stranded in a place befitting of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. The Ford truck speeds by, cheerfully acknowledging the couple’s plight with a long horn blow leading to a brief and tense stand-off which is alleviated by the arrival of Red Barr, a truck driver (the late great J.T. Walsh) who offers to give Amy a ride to Belle’s Diner some miles down the road to call road service (his CB blew a fuse earlier and is non-functioning). When she accepts, Jeff waits…and waits…and discovers an unplugged wire in the Jeep’s undercarriage.

Normally, I would call out Amy’s foolishness for accepting such a ride as a woman her age should know the dangers of hitch-hiking, however New Englanders routinely give rides to one another and this plot point helps explain her action. Jeff makes his way to the diner and all the patrons and owner (a terrific turn by character actor Jack McGee) do not recall seeing her, except for a mildly slow co-worker in the parking lot. This puts into motion a high level of suspense as Jeff’s cell phone fails to get decent service while he rushes to find his wife. It turns out that Jeff and Amy have been pegged for financial embezzlement by Red, Earl (M.C. Gainey as the Ford driver), Billy (Jack Noseworthy, the “slow” diner worker), and Al (the late Rich Brinkley), a husky accomplice. Rex Linn of TV’s Better Call Saul is also on hand as a police officer who offers Jeff some recourse.

Breakdown, which opened on Friday, May 2, 1997, might appear to be an action film, but it is more of a thriller with some action sequences. It has been a longtime indeed since this level of suspense has seen the light of day on the silver screen. It is so good, in fact, that it feels like a Seventies film made in the Nineties. It is amazing that it was not the blockbuster that it deserved to be. Poor marketing perhaps?

Shooting in the 2.35:1 Panavision ratio, Mr. Mostow has created a plausible scenario replete with four of the most frightening villains seen of late. They certainly give Bill McKinney and Herbert "Cowboy" Coward, the mountain men in Deliverance (1972), a run for their money. J. T. Walsh, who unfortunately passed away not too long after this film was released (his death is a real loss to the film world), appears in one of the best performances of his sterling and memorable career: a purely evil man who doubles as an everyday Joe who loves his wife and son (Moira Harris and Vincent Berry, respectively) but commits terrible acts for money. You get the feeling that these monsters have been doing what they do for a long time, although there were moments wherein I thought a double-cross would transpire among them. They all appear to be loyal to one another, making me wonder how these guys ended up together in the first place. The supporting cast all do a phenomenal job as well.

Breakdown’s plot is by no means original. This type of story depicting a person who goes missing has been told over many decades: Robert Fuest's And Soon the Darkness (1970), Philip Leacock's television film Dying Room Only (1973), and, in particular, George Sluizer’s icy 1988 Dutch/French character study Spoorloos, known in the States as The Vanishing. Breakdown succeeds for the same reason that Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971) does (though Duel is more cinematic): it takes two ordinary human beings and thrusts them into a horrendous situation they would never have any reason to suspect they would ever be a part of. That is not to say that the film does not have a few convenient plot devices, but even when it does, they can be forgiven.

BY HANK REINEKE

All evidence suggests that Mark Robson was producer Val Lewton’s “go to” director. Or, at the very least, for his celebrated series of psychological horror and mystery films released by RKO Radio Pictures 1943-1946. Of the six thrillers produced, Robson would helm no fewer than four (The Seventh Victim (1943), Ghost Ship (1943), Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946). The latter two are perhaps the best remembered of the four as both would feature free-agent boogeyman Boris Karloff in a starring role. Though the first of the Lewton horrors, The Cat People (1942, directed by Jacques Tourneur) is likely the best celebrated of the six films overall, I’ve always held a special fondness for Isle of the Dead. Now, revisiting the film with this stunning Blu ray transfer, I’m as impressed as ever with Robson’s claustrophobic direction, the thoughtful scripting of Ardel Wray and Josef Mischel and the film’s gloomy atmospherics.

The grim tone is in evidence from the film’s first scene. The setting is the first Balkan War of 1912-1913. In a tented military station, the stoic and emotionless General Nikolas Pherides (Boris Karloff) coldly and wordlessly motions to “Vitus,” a non-victorious-in-battle army officer to take his own life. Judging only by Pherides’ coldly flat and dissociative emotional countenance, this suggested honorable suicide is the only dignified manner in which Vitus can repent for the troop losses suffered under his command. Karloff’s uncompromising and single-minded General Pherides has earned the appellation of “The Watchdog.” We can well understand why since few who come in contact with him will escape his suspicious gaze.

Karloff chooses to take a brief sabbatical from the frontline. He’s not looking to enjoy a brief respite far from the battlefield. He wants to visit the grave of his wife who is buried on a gloomy remote island not far where the frontline of the war rages. Pherides’ is understandably angered when he discovers his wife’s body is missing from her crypt. When a siren voice is heard singing somewhere off in the gloom, Pherides is certain that the sonorous voice heard is that of the “Despoiler of Graves.” A war correspondent from the Boston Star newspaper, Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer), has tagged along on this trip to the island. He isn’t as certain that the woman heard singing was a grave robber. But he’s well aware that General Pherides is uncompromising in judgment once his stubborn belief system is fixed.

The two men soon discover the gloomy island is not uninhabited as they were led to believe. The cottage on the isle is currently being occupied by an archeologist and several guests. The General obviously had not visited his wife’s grave site for some time. He learns from archeologist Albrecht (Jason Robards Sr.) that the graves had been rummaged through almost fifteen years prior, the unfortunate result of peasants searching for valuable artifacts and antiquities. The cottage is presently filled with living and breathing guests as Pherides arrives, but this is a situation that will soon change. Several begin to drop off almost immediately, and the most reasonable explanation for the deaths is that a deadly virus is blowing in from the mainland. Pherides initially seems to agree an infectious virus is the culprit as he recalls the 6^th Division of his army was recently brought down by some sort of plague. “The horseman on the pale horse is pestilence,” he gravely intones, in the chilling manner that Karloff always excels.

Isle of the Dead is a psychological-horror film of the first order. Karloff’s Pherides may appear, at first, as a man of confident action and an unflinching patriot on a mission. But whether it was the savagery of war or the insidious inhalation of the virus – of perhaps due to the desecration of his wife’s tomb – Pherides’ mental state crumbles as the film spools on. As we have witnessed in the film’s opening scene, the General is hardly a man of mercy. The cold manner in which he would goad the “honorable” suicide of one of his own officers is without emotion. He is hardly less empathetic in his treatment of fellow countrymen. He informs that he once destroyed a village and all of its inhabitants due to their refusal to pay taxes. “He who is against the Greeks,” is not Greek,” he icily seethes.

As the cottage’s guests and residents begin to fall ill – and pass away – from the mysterious illness that’s sweeping through the island, the increasingly mentally anguished General begins to believe the paranoid nattering of a superstitious housekeeper, Madame Kyra (Helene Thimig). Earlier described in the film as a mere “odd, but harmless” woman, the dour and suspicious Kyra doesn’t believe in such things as science or infectious viruses. She believes the evil that has suddenly befallen on the island is actually the result of a vorvolaka. The vorvolaka is essentially, a creature of Greek folklore akin to the vampire legends of neighboring Slavic countries.

Kyra is certain that young Thea (Ellen Drew), the “siren” in the graveyard and the beautiful nursemaid of the unfortunately catatonia-prone Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery), is actually a life-draining vorvolaka who should be eliminated. Mrs. Aubyn’s husband (Alan Napier) is among the first to die from the infectious virus, and the widow is absolutely terrified of being pronounced dead and prematurely interred due to her catatonic propensity. Her fear is reasonable. Things being as unsettled as they are on the Isle of the Dead, Mrs. Aubyn has good reason to be fearful of the possibility.

There have been four big screen versions of the classic musical/tragic romance "A Star is Born"...and they have all been very good. The 1976 version starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson was not beloved by critics, but audiences embraced it and made it a major hit. Here is the original trailer.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

"One of the most brutal and unforgettable crime films ever made, "Cry of a Prostitute" is now presented in its degenerate glory uncut in HD for the very first time!"

So reads the blurb on the Blu-ray sleeve of Code Red's new release of the Italian crime thriller "Cry of a Prostitute", a 1974 "B" movie directed by Andrew Bianchi. Although I was ignorant of the film until the screener arrived, apparently it has built a reputation over the decades because, even by Italian crime movie standards of the era, it was considered to be outrageously violent, tasteless and shocking. Obviously, I couldn't resist indulging...The film certainly lives up (or down) to the Code Red blurb and is representative of Italian movie-goers' obsession with violent crime movies during this period. The movie follows in the tradition of throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the screenplay: spectacular shoot-outs, a stone-faced anti-hero who is just as vile as the villains, a Morricone-inspired score and plenty of nudity and sexual abuse. This "something for everyone" scenario also includes the Italian cinematic tradition of blatantly cribbing plot devices from older films. It can be said that if you ever desired to see Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" incorporated with Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", your ship has finally come in.

As with many Italian films, an American leading man was imported to give the movie some additional luster and boxoffice appeal in the USA. In this case, it's Henry Silva, who plays Tony Aniante, a grim, unsmiling assassin who is brought to Sicily by a mob boss who hires him to neutralize a rival Mafia don. It seems the other gang is involved in a particularly insipid practice of using the bodies of deceased children to secrete the movement of illegal drugs. It's pretty hard to find any humor in such a scenario but when you see the corpse of one of the children displayed on a roadway after an accident, it makes it painfully obvious that it is a dummy used in CPR training courses. Such are the glorious absurdities of "B" Italian crime movies. As in "A Fistful of Dollars", Silva ends up dividing his loyalties to between the crime families for his own personal gain. He also gets involved with Margie (Barbara Bouchet), the wife of one of the dons who saunters around the house half-naked and has a penchant for suggestively eating bananas at the dinner table. The only sympathetic characters in the film are a young couple from rival families who are in a forbidden love affair, hence the Shakespearean connection. The film is packed with trademarks of the Italian crime genre: over-the-top fight scenes and sound effects, bright red paint substituted for blood, confusing plot devices and a "hero" with a particular eccentricity: in this case, he whistles loudly and ominously before appearing out of nowhere to kill his rivals. In fact, the movie blatantly lifts several plot schemes from "For a Few Dollars More", including flashbacks of a murder and the notion that when a tune stops, someone dies. (In "For a Few Dollars More", the music came from a locket.) The most memorable aspects of the movie are the grotesque scenes of violence. There is a decapitation, a corpse cut up by a buzz saw, the squashing of bodies by a steamroller and the serial abuse of Margie, who is beaten to a pulp with a belt and then raped by Tony, who previously had raped her while shoving her face into the hanging open carcass of a pig. As in most films of this type, the abused and beaten woman is sexually stimulated by her mistreatment and doesn't hold a grudge. It's enough to make "Last Tango in Paris" seem like "Brief Encounter".

The title "Cry of a Prostitute" is a bit absurd because there are no prostitutes in the film, although we learn that Margie had been one some years before her marriage. The U.S. distributor simply wanted a commercial title and so, voila!

The Code Red release is derived from "the 2017 HD scan from the original negatives with major extensive color correction done here in America". In general, it looks sensational, although on a few occasions there are still some glaring artifacts remaining.The print used for the transfer is the English-language version which features the requisite hilarious dubbing found in such movies of the era. (Even American Henry Silva is dubbed.) While it is generally best to view foreign films in their native language with English sub-titles, in a case like this, we have to be grateful for what we have. The only extras are separately viewed main titles for the U.S. release, a U.S. TV spot and an abundance of trailers for similarly-themed films.

All told, kudos to Code Red for continuing the good fight to salvage and present movies that would otherwise be lost to time. This one is definitely an acquired taste so we don't recommend it for suggested viewing on a first date.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

We moviegoers are a caring, law-abiding community, or at least we’re assumed to be, but regardless of how timid or tender-hearted we are, producers know that we’re usually pushovers for movies about Big Heists. As long as the crime is perpetrated against an institution like a bank, a multinational corporation, or a casino, and no person is threatened or injured, the protagonists’ antisocial behavior becomes an abstraction. We’re free, vicariously, to admire their ingenuity and tenacity as they carry out their complicated scheme. But what if the story is based on a big payout that directly endangers an innocent person? Then it becomes harder to sell the concept as escapist entertainment, as journeyman filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Hubert Cornfield discovered in the mid-1950s, when they both became interested, independently, in a 1953 novel by Lionel White.

“The Snatchers” revolved around a kidnapping, an acceptable premise for White’s paperback readership at the time but anathema in Hollywood under the rigid Production Code that governed movie content then. Given the unlikelihood of studio backing, Kubrick turned his attention to another White novel, this one about a racetrack heist, “Clean Break,” which became the basis for “The Killing” (1956). Cornfield continued to eye “The Snatchers,” developing a screenplay that he eventually proposed to producer Elliott Kastner, his former agent. By then, the studios had become less squeamish about the subject matter. Kastner and his executive producer Jerry Gershwin attracted A-list talent for the starring roles. Written and directed by Cornfield, “The Night of the Following Day” opened on February 19, 1969.

In the movie, now available in a Kino Lorber Blu-ray special edition, a pretty, well-dressed 18-year-old (Pamela Franklin) lands at Orly Airport in Paris. There she’s met by a chauffeur. As she soon learns, the fake driver, Bud (Marlon Brando), is a career criminal who has teamed with three others to kidnap her for ransom from her wealthy father. The girl recognizes Vi (Rita Moreno), Bud’s lover, as a friendly attendant whom she had seen on the flight into Orly. Vi’s brother Wally (Jess Hahn) is Bud’s friend and the one who devised the scheme. The fourth kidnapper, Leer (Richard Boone), has an intimidating demeanor. Initially he seems to be calm and reasonable, but the girl remains frightened, and we can hardly blame her. Was any actor then or now more intimidating than Richard Boone? The kidnappers hide the girl in a beachside cottage on the Normandy coast and contact her father with a complex procedure for delivering the ransom money.

Fractures begin to open in the crooks‘ partnership in short order, endangering the orderly completion of the crime according to plan -- a staple of the Big Heist formula. The unstable Vi has a history of drug addiction, and Leer is a sadistic pedophile who begins terrorizing their hostage. Bud and Wally feel their control slipping. Vi sneaks into the bathroom to snort coke. She gets high and fails to carry out an important assignment. Leer’s behavior becomes more aggressive, and in a quick trip to Paris to nail down the gang’s planned escape by air, he secretly sabotages the arrangement and institutes one for himself that will leave his associates in the lurch, or worse. Al Lettieri has a brief appearance in that sequence, credited as “Alfredo Lettieri,” under which name he was also an associate producer of the picture. Back on the beach, Vi happens to meet a friendly fisherman who turns out to be the local gendarme. Wally says not to worry, the policeman is a “hick local cop” who can be kept in the dark for the two days needed to collect the ransom, but Bud isn’t so sure. His growing anxiety leads to a near-meltdown and a memorable line, delivered with inimitable Brando intensity: “Do you know what they do in this country? They cut off your head, Wally. They cut off your head!”

On its release, “The Night of the Following Day” was a critical and commercial disappointment. “Dull, stilted, and pointless,” Howard Thompson said in The New York Times. Roger Ebert said it “works . . . as a well-made melodrama” but asked, “Should Brando be wasting his time on this sort of movie?” It was a question that critics usually asked in that era, whenever a new Brando film opened. Instead of examining the intrinsic merits or shortcomings of the picture at hand, the critical notices became referendums on the controversial star. Not that Brando seemed to care.

Reviewers and audiences were also confused if not offended by the ending of the thriller, which seemed to undercut the neo-noir storyline that they had taken at face value. Some viewers wondered whether the final scene had been slapped on, post-production, to add a surprise departing punch at the expense of maintaining the audience’s goodwill. In a commentary recorded for a 2004 DVD release, before his death in 2008, Cornfield addressed the question. He said that he had written the movie that way all along, inspired by the conclusion of a classic British picture from two decades before. I like his subversive twist, but your mileage may vary.

Cornfield’s 2004 commentary, included as a feature on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray, also revisits the director’s troubled interactions with Brando. Cornfield says he was elated when Kastner reported that Brando had signed on to star, but the two soon began to butt heads, and the relationship became untenable. We don’t have Brando’s side of the story, at least not in so many words, but maybe it’s expressed in a scene that Cornfield implies he didn’t direct. As he sees the ransom scheme unraveling, Bud (Brando’s own childhood nickname) vents at Wally: “I want out of this thing!” Wally calmly insists that everything will work out, mostly because he wants it to. That only raises Bud’s temperature even higher. “You’re crazy, you son of a bitch!” he storms. Against the backdrop of today’s bland movie landscape populated by blander actors, Brando’s sustained ferocity in the long, largely improvised sequence is electrifying. Cornfield said that the star changed some of the elements of the script considerably, such as the relationships between Bud and Vi, and Bud and Pamela Franklin’s character. Cornfield claimed that Brando’s changes damaged the picture, but in the actor’s defense, the final result seems dramatically better than the stuff that went out the window, based on Cornfield’s synopsis.

In addition to Cornfield’s track, the Kino Lorber edition also includes a new Tim Lucas audio commentary that casts a wide net over Brando’s erratic 1960s career, his longtime relationship with Rita Moreno, a comparison of the screenplay with Lionel White’s source novel, and other aspects of the film. Other features include the original theatrical trailer, a “Trailers from Hell” commentary by Joe Dante, and SDH captions.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

The Warner Archive has released the crime drama "Seven Miles from Alcatraz" on DVD.

It’s 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. The nation is nervous about the possibility of another bombing raid by the Japanese, and nobody is more nervous about that possibility than Champ Larkin (James Craig) and his pal Jimbo (Frank Jenks), two convicts doing time on Alcatraz. Champ’s a pretty self-centered guy. He isn’t at all concerned about the war. It’s none of his business. “If they want to fight, let ‘em fight.” he says. “Theres a law says they can’t draft convicts. We’ll sit this one out.” (Jimbo’s a little more thoughtful. “I don’t know, Champ,” he says. “Anybody pulls a sneak trick like that is a rat and a rat means trouble here and there.”)

When they see some Zeros coming in over the Pacific to do a flyover of San Francisco, Champ decides it’s time to evacuate. As he says in his voice-over narration, “It ain’t easy breaking out of Alcatraz, and we can’t tell you how we did it because it’s a professional secret. But we had two things going for us. A blackout and a heavy fog.”

They try to swim to San Francisco in the dark but don’t get far before the cops start shooting at them from a patrol boat. Luckily there is a wooden crate floating in San Francisco Bay that night and they hide inside it. The crate, by the way, and by sheer chance, has the name H. Schlom stamped on it, which is some kind of inside joke, since Herman Schlom from 1940-52 was producer of second features for RKO, and was producer of “Seven Miles from Alcatraz.” They elude the cops but drift out under the Golden Gate Bridge and land at a lighthouse seven miles from the prison.

Living in the lighthouse are the lighthouse keeper, Captain Porter (George Cleveland), his daughter Anne (Bonita Granville), a comic relief guy named Stormy (Cliff Edwards, the voice of Jiminy Cricket), and radio man Paul Brenner (Erford Gage). Champ and Jimbo take over the lighthouse and hold the inhabitants prisoner. At first Champ, who hasn’t seen a woman in five years, seems more interested in getting to know Anne better than continuing with his escape. But, in the meantime, Brenner, the radio man, is receiving coded message that he pretends he can’t understand. It turns out he’s working with a small cell of German spies (Tala Birell, John Banner, [otherwise known as Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes], and Otto Reichow), who are hiding in San Francisco, and are awaiting Brenner’s arrival by boat to ferry them out to the lighthouse, which they’re going to use as a landing point for a U-boat coming in through the Bay. Whew, I need to get my breath after that line.

When there’s another blackout, Champ decides it’s time to split. He and Jimbo want to take the lighthouse keeper’s boat and take off, but the lights come back on before they can get away. Things get further complicated when the Nazis get another boat and arrive at the lighthouse. At first it looks bad for the good guys, but Champ, being the self-centered cad that he is, strikes a bargain with the Germans that will allow Jimbo and him to get out of the country on the sub. Of course things go awry, and when Anne is placed in danger, good old Champ, who’s quickly grown rather fond of the old girl, shows his true colors and decides he won’t stay out of the fight after all. He springs into action against the spy trio and sends the coordinates of the sub’s location to the coast guard.

Well, it’s all pretty silly, but it’s entertaining in a quaint sort of way, if you don’t mind the preposterous plot. The only really noteworthy thing about it is that it was the first feature film Edward Dmytryk directed for RKO Radio Pictures. You gotta start somewhere, right?

“Seven Miles from Alcatraz” is a low budget World War II propaganda film released by the Warner Archive Collection in a bare-bones, no-extras DVD. Picture and sound are okay, but nothing remarkable, which pretty much sums it all up. If you’re a big fan of James Craig (and who isn’t) or Bonita Granville (there may be a few still alive), an Edward Dmytryk completist, or you just like lighthouses, this one’s for you.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon)

Relive this moment from the 1965 Oscar ceremonies in which Sidney Poitier presents the Best Actress award to Julie Andrews for "Mary Poppins". Her co-star Dick Van Dyke is on hand to cheer for her. This was also the era in which brevity and grace were the trademarks of acceptance speeches!

“THE FUTURE ISN’T HISTORY, IT’S NOW”

By Raymond Benson

As related by Ian Christie, author of Gilliam on Gilliam, the filmmaker Terry Gilliam has forever had an uneasy relationship with Hollywood studios. He is “difficult” or “problematic” or whatever, because sometimes he runs over budget or the films don’t make back the cost, or whatever.

This is unfortunately true, no matter how hard Gilliam tries to “play the Hollywood game.” That said, any afficionado of cinema can appreciate that Terry Gilliam is always interesting. Even when his pictures tend to jump the shark, they’re always worth seeing. And when he’s good, he’s often great.

Such is the case with the 1995 science fiction oddity, 12 Monkeys. It’s one of the great ones. It is arguably one of Gilliam’s most accomplished achievements, along with Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), and, with some reservations, Time Bandits (1981).

When Gilliam, the only American member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, entered the 1990s, he was coming off the “disaster” that was The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), which, while admired by many, was a money loser and troubled production. It sealed his reputation in Hollywood as the aforementioned “problematic” director. He set out to make The Fisher King under the strict Hollywood guidelines and succeeded, and then proceeded to do the same with 12 Monkeys—and he triumphed with that, too. The studio (Universal), however, attributed the film’s success to the cast, especially the presence of Brad Pitt, and not to Gilliam’s imaginative vision. What a shortsighted bunch of bureaucrats!

12 Monkeys is a time-travel/apocalyptic tale about James Cole (Bruce Willis), a man from the future who is sent back in time to gather evidence and perhaps the tools needed to prevent the outbreak of a deadly virus that wiped out much of humanity in the year 1996. At first, he is mistakenly dropped into 1990, where he is perceived by all, including psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), as insane. In a mental institution, he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a total wacko with environmentalist/activist leanings. He is the leader of an underground, possibly terrorist, group called the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Goines’ father, Leland (Christopher Plummer), is the biologist who ends up creating the virus. The scientists in the future realize their mistake, bring Cole back to their present, and then send him back to the correct year, with the brief hiccup of him landing on a battlefield during World War I. Once again, he connects with Dr. Railly, but this time she begins to believe his story. With his third journey back to correct the mistakes he’s made, Cole and Railly work together to prevent the release of the virus—and fall in love, too.

The movie is a twisty-turny mind-boggler written by David and Janet Peoples, based on a short film, La Jetée (1962), by Chris Marker (which Gilliam claimed to have not seen until after he completed 12 Monkeys). The intelligent script, along with the superb performances by the main cast and the inspired direction by Gilliam, combine to make 12 Monkeys one of the highlights of the 1990s decade in cinema.

Brad Pitt, especially, shines in the film, playing against type as a crazed, hyper-energetic weirdo (wearing brown contact lenses, and one eye that manages to operate independently of the other). He was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar and won a Golden Globe for his performance, and this reviewer is hard pressed to pinpoint a better turn through the rest of Pitt’s career to date. Willis, too, plays up his “sensitive” side—something new for audiences then—and comes across extremely well.

Most significantly, 12 Monkeys plays today as ironically potent, given what the world has been going through since the spring of 2020. It’s a film dealing with a deadly global pandemic that was made 25 years earlier. The tag line at the time was “The future is history.” Today, we could say, “The future isn’t history, it’s now!”

Arrow Video’s exquisite Blu-ray edition was released in 2018. Cinema Retro received the new Limited Edition Steelbook for review, and it’s a gorgeous package. The disk is the same as the 2018 release, it’s just encased in the keepsake steelbook with newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin and a booklet containing a piece on the film by Nathan Rabin and an excerpt from Gilliam on Gilliam. The feature is presented in High Definition with both DTS 5.1 Master Audio and 2.0 stereo soundtracks, plus optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired. There is an entertaining and informative audio commentary by Gilliam and producer Charles Roven. Supplements include a feature-length documentary on the making of the film, a vintage interview with Gilliam by film critic Jonathan Romney, and a superlative “appreciation” of the picture by author Ian Christie. There is also a collection of archive material and the theatrical trailer.

While 12 Monkeys is worth the trip just for Brad Pitt’s out of the box performance, it is also Terry Gilliam at the height of his powers. Don’t miss it.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Charles Grodin,  the actor and prolific writer who made droll comedy his trademark, has died at age 86. His first big break on the silver screen came with a dramatic role in Roman Polanski's 1968 classic "Rosemary's Baby", after Grodin failed to land the lead in "The Graduate". He shot to stardom in 1972 with his leading role in the comedy "The Heartbreak Kid" and from then on he became known for often playing charismatic cads. He also scored with memorable roles in the 1978 remake of  "Heaven Can Wait" and opposite Robert De Niro in the 1988 crime comedy "Midnight Run". He also played the harried father in the "Beethoven" family comedies. One of his most impressive late career roles was in the little-seen and critically disparaged "An Imperfect Murder" in which he excelled in a brief appearance as a man trying to cope with the onset of dementia. Click here for more about his life and career.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from MPI Media Group:

In 1958 a young Charles Bronson came to ABC-Television in the fast-paced action drama “Man With A Camera” which was loosely based on the popular radio series “Casey, Crime Photographer” starring Staats Cottsworth and the earlier TV series “Crime Photographer” starring Darren McGavin. Bronson played Mike Kovac, a former WWII combat photographer now freelancing in New York City, who specialized in getting the photographs that other lensmen couldn’t. His assignments came from newspapers, insurance agencies, the police and private individuals, all of whom wanted a filmed record of an event. His cases always lead to danger, usually involving a good-looking damsel in distress. Kovac’s police liaison was Lieutenant Donovan, well played by James Flavin, who looked to the freelance cameraman for help with the cases the cops couldn’t handle. To the viewer’s delight, Kovac employed the latest photographic technology to solve a case, including a Minox III mini-camera fastened to his belt; fisheye and telephoto lenses; and various other cutting-edge technologies; even converting the trunk of his car into a portable darkroom where he could develop his negatives on the spot. Character actor Ludwig Stossel starred as Kovac’s immigrant father Anton, to whom Kovac frequently came for advice.

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Enjoy the original trailer for Mel Brooks' homage to Universal horror film classics, "Young Frankenstein" (1975). 

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In this memorable segment from a 1976 broadcast of "The Tonight Show", Johnny Carson hosts Frank Sinatra, who makes a rare appearance on the show.Things are going well until Don Rickles makes a surprise appearance. Nothing more needs to be said....

BY LEE PFEIFFER

As I've written in previous reviews, comedy is the most subjective type of movie genre. Two people view the same film and one finds it hilarious while the other sits stone-faced. Which brings us to the segment above from director Joe Dante's addictive "Trailers from Hell" web site. Here, filmmaker Larry Karaszewski weighs in on director Blake Edwards' 1966 madcap WWII comedy "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?". Karaszewski finds the movie amusing enough to recommend, while I sat with the aforementioned stone face through most of it. Edwards was a highly successful writer/producer/director and was also capable of making memorable dramatic movies such as "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Experiment in Terror". His direction of "Breakfast at Tiffanys" ensured it would become a timeless classic and his collaborations with Peter Sellers on the Pink Panther films became the stuff of Hollywood legend. Yet, I've found that while I still find some laughs and value in most of Edwards' comedies, with the exception of "Tiffanys'", "The Pink Panther" and "A Shot in the Dark", many of his movies seemed far funnier back in the day than they do now. I had never seen "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?" and looked forward to finally catching it as a streaming title on Amazon. It seemed to be a "can't miss" type of scenario: Edwards at the peak of his powers aided by an impressive cast headed by James Coburn (finally a leading man following recent success of "Our Man Flint"), Dick Shawn and some top-rung second bananas: Harry Morgan, Carroll O'Connor, Aldo Ray, Vito Scotti and Leon Askin. Additionally, he had the services of screenwriter William Peter Blatty, who had written the script for "A Shot in the Dark" a decade before he became a sensation with the publication of his novel "The Exorcist". Add to the mix a score by Edwards' frequent collaborator, the great Henry Mancini. It all looked promising but the end result fizzles in nearly every aspect.

The film opens with a traditional battle scene of American troops invading Sicily in 1943. General Bolt (Carroll O'Connor playing the type of commanding officer role he would recreate over the next couple of years in "The Devil's Brigade" and "Kelly's Heroes") informs his straight-laced humorless aide Captain Lionel Cash (Dick Shawn) that he needs to loosen up and get some battlefield experience and assigns him to lead a company of men to seize a German controlled local village that is deemed important to the U.S. advance. Cash has zero people skills and goes strictly by the book. He's shocked to find he's inherited a company of misfits and party animals who are temporarily under the command of Lt. Christian (James Coburn), who only encourages his men's undisciplined behavior.  When Cash and the troops arrive at the village, they are shocked to find the Germans have abandoned it and their Italian allies are all too willing to surrender immediately as long as Cash agrees to allow them to hold their sacred annual wine festival. Cash concedes to avoid bloodshed and a wild, drunken evening ensues. The men enjoy their time in the village, making use of the wine and prostitutes. They also have a charismatic anti-Nazi Italian officer to interpret for them, Capt. Oppo (Sergio Fantoni), who also eschews military discipline in favor of the good life. Things are going swimmingly until General Bolt asks how the advance is going. Cash and Christian try to cover up their escapades by telling him they have encountered strong resistance and a battle for control of the town is raging. They reinforce this by filming phony battles scenes and sending them to HQ. Bolt is impressed and sets off with reinforcements, unbeknownst to Christian and  Cash, who is quickly adopting the slovenly habits of his men.

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Latest Addition to the Paramount Presents Line Debuts June 15, 2021

Classic John Sturges Western Starring Kirk Douglas Makes Its Blu-ray^â„¢ Debut

Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn headline the suspenseful classic LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL, arriving for the first time on Blu-ray in the Paramount Presents line June 15, 2021 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

A gripping Western from director John Sturges—one of the greatest filmmakers of the genre—LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL has been remastered from a 6K film transfer of the original VistaVision negative for exceptional picture quality.  The limited-edition Blu-ray Discâ„¢ includes a new Filmmaker Focus with film historian Leonard Maltin, access to a digital copy of the film, as well as original theatrical trailers for Last Train from Gun Hill, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Furies, and The Black Orchid.  The Blu-ray comes in collectible packaging featuring a foldout image of the film’s theatrical poster and an interior spread with key movie moments.

Synopsis

LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL follows U.S. Marshal Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas) on the trail of his wife’s killer.  Adding a dark twist to the tale, the suspect's father is Morgan's longtime friend, cattle baron Craig Beldon (Anthony Quinn).  Morgan is determined to capture the killer and take him away by the 9:00 train, against all odds. 

About Paramount Presents

This collectible line spans celebrated classics to film-lover favorites, each from the studio’s renowned library.  Every Paramount Presents release features never-before-seen bonus content and exclusive collectible packaging.  Additional titles available in the Paramount Presents collection on Blu-ray include: Fatal Attraction, King Creole, To Catch a Thief, Flashdance, Days of Thunder, Pretty In Pink, Airplane!, Ghost, Roman Holiday, The Haunting, The Golden Child, Trading Places, The Court Jester, Love Story, Elizabethtown, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Mommie Dearest.

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Here's a highly watchable 1995 documentary about Sir Roger Moore (before he had earned the "Sir" title). Moore participated in the program, which traces his professional achievements as well as his extensive work on behalf of UNICEF.

Chances are that if you are a Cinema Retro reader, you're already familiar with Patrick McGoohan's 1960s TV series "The Prisoner", a true classic. It lasted only one season because McGoohan didn't feel he could extend the premise credibly beyond that point. It's esoteric, weird and completely compelling. What does it all mean? It's up to the individual viewer to form their own opinion. Here, Shout! Factory presents the uncut first episode of this landmark series, "Arrival".

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Charles Cohen, the founder of the Cohen Film Collection, not only finances and distributes acclaimed independent films, but he also controls the rights to an impressive number of largely forgotten British films. Instead of letting them languish, Cohen has invested in bringing some of these titles to Blu-ray with stunning new transfers. The latest release is a Blu-ray double feature consisting of two modestly-budgeted murder-themed sagas. First- and most impressive- is "Cast a Dark Shadow", a 1955 noirish production with up-and-comer Dirk Bogarde in the lead role. He plays Edward Bare, a handsome and charismatic young man who, when we first meet him, is improbably newly wed to Monica (Mona Washbourne), an elderly woman with a sizable fortune who Edward dotes over and manipulates. Monica's lawyer Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemyng) smells a rat but Monica is too delusional to believe Edward is manipulating her. When she turns up dead by "accidentally" inhaling gas fumes, Edward thinks her fortune will automatically go to him, but a legal snafu prevents it. He then sets his sights on a new victim: Freda Jefferies (Margaret Lockwood), a younger woman of means who is far more savvy in the ways of the world. Edward wines and dines her and they quickly wed but she makes it clear that her trust for her new husband doesn't extend to making him her beneficiary. When the couple has a chance encounter with Charlotte Young (Kay Walsh), a new resident in the region, Edward puts a new scheme in place- one that will involve deceiving both women in a deadly plot to enrich himself.

Under Lewis Gilbert's assured direction, Bogarde gives a terrific performance but he is more than matched by the two leading ladies, with Lockwood sensational in a BAFTA-nomiated performance as  the tough-as-nails, streetwise new bride who has been marked for murder. Kathleen Harrison adds immeasurably to the merits of the film as Edward's timid, elderly maid. As with many low-budget British productions from this era, "Cast a Dark Shadow" demonstrates how the director and crew had to use necessity as the mother of invention. Gilbert manages to do a lot with very little, despite the minimum of exterior shots. John Cresswell's screenplay, based on Janet Green's modestly-successful West End production of "Murder Mistaken", presents a wealth of suspenseful moments and a good plot twist at the end. Bogarde, who was gay in real life, plays a character whose homosexuality is barely hidden. He peruses a "muscle man" magazine and suggests to newly wed Freda, for no apparent reason, that he should have a separate bedroom. Incredulous, she snaps, "I didn't get married for companionship!" Somewhat bemused, Edward resigns himself with having to rise to the occasion, even if his heart isn't in it. The film bristles with witty banter and great performances and the film is a "must see" for lovers of British cinema from this era.

The second feature, also based in London, "Wanted for Murder", is a bit more pedantic. As with "Cast a Dark Shadow", it isn't a mystery, as we know from the start who the villain is. In this case, he's Victor James Colebrook (Eric Portman), a snooty chap with a superiority complex that masks the fact that he still lives at home with his doting mother. His young girlfriend Dulcie (Anne Fielding) is enamored of him until she is swept off her feet by a younger, more dynamic man. Victor, who has been moonlighting a serial killer of young women, intends to make Dulcie his next victim as punishment for breaking off their relationship, though the script never tells us why the vibrant Dulcie would have been attracted to a ill-tempered sourpuss to begin with. There is a race against time as Scotland Yard inspector (the always-reliable Roland Culver) attempts to prove that Victor is the killer and save Dulcie in the process. Directed by Lawrence Huntington, the film moves at a brisk pace and is highly enjoyable despite some Poverty Row-type rear screen projection scenes. Performances are good and there is an impressive score by Mischa Spoliansky. As with the "Cast a Dark Shadow", the transfer is first-rate.

Bonus extras are limited to newly-created trailers for both films done in conjunction with the British Film Institute.

Highly recommended.

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Dateline: 1966. Stars John Wayne and Robert Mitchum host their moms, who visited them on the set of Howard Hawks' "El Dorado". The mind boggles at the amount of booze ingested on the set of this film, but we're willing to bet that Hollywood tough guys Wayne and Mitchum behaved themselves out of fear their moms would ground them!

Rare photo of John Ford visiting the set and being greeted by fellow iconic director Howard Hawks and actress Michele Carey. 

BY FRED BLOSSER

“Hercules and the Captive Women” (1963), a sword-and-toga epic directed by Vittorio Cottafavi, has been released in a Blu-ray special edition by The Film Detective. In the movie, a strange and seemingly supernatural force from across the sea threatens ancient Greece. Troubled, the rival kings of the Greek city-states gather to confront the problem. They do so in the same way that our modern leaders take the stage to debate COVID relief, climate change, gun violence, and other crises. They posture, jeer at each other, and dither. It’s left to King Androcles of Thebes to set sail and figure out what’s going on. He seeks the help of his friend Hercules (Reg Park), but the fabled strongman has promised his wife that he’ll stay home and give up adventuring. Androcles can’t even get the backing of his own advisors -- “the soothsayers, the senators, the commanders of the army” -- so he’s left with a second-string crew of debtors and jailbirds. Fortunately for the success of his mission, Hercules comes along after all, although not of his own choosing. With the help of Hercules‘ son, Illos, the king has drugged and shanghaied his friend. Not that the jovial Hercules seems to mind when he wakes up after the ship is well out to sea. The decision was out of his hands, and his friend needs his support. Anyway, gorgeous wife back home or not, the legendary hero seems happy to get out of the house.

Presently, it’s revealed that the aggressor behind the weird phenomena is Antinea (Fay Spain), the ruthless queen of Atlantis, who schemes to conquer the world. First, she needs to find the right consort and grow her army of invincible warriors to large enough numbers. Androcles fails her test for a suitably pitiless mate. He becomes an amnesiac phantom who wanders her palace with a blank stare. She next approaches Hercules, but the strongman is already committed to his wife, and besides, he wants nothing to do with her scheme. Elsewhere on the island, having rescued Antinea’s teenaged daughter Ismene from sacrifice, Illos discovers a quarry where scores of starved and disfigured men are imprisoned. Meanwhile, Hercules learns that Atlantis harbors a stone with infernal properties. The stone formed from a drop of blood shed by the god Uranus. Young boys are confiscated from their families by Antinea and exposed to the stone’s power. Those who succumb to the radiation become supermen who join the expanding ranks of the queen’s army. Those who resist it become miserable scarecrows and are thrown into the pit with their predecessors. It’s up to Hercules in the usual formula of such movies, from Steve Reeves’ “Hercules” in 1959 to Dwayne Johnson’s incarnation in 2014, to administer justice and thwart Antinea’s tyrannical plot.

“Hercules and the Captive Women” debuted in Italy in 1961 as “Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide,” at the height of the sword-and-sandal or “peplum” genre. Released in the U.K. as “Hercules Conquers Atlantis,” it impressed British critic Ian Cameron with the “strength and economy” of Cottafavi’s direction. By the time it reached the U.S. in 1963 -- edited, dubbed, minus six minutes of footage, and retitled by two B-movie entrepreneurs, Bernard and Lawrence Woolner -- toga epics were already on the wane. I remember seeing the movie ad in the local newspaper in July 1963. I was interested, as what thirteen-year-old wouldn’t be? The ad showed a scantily clad blonde cowering between a guy’s bare legs. She seems to be staring up under the bottom of his tunic. A chalice dangles and drips suggestively from one of the guy’s hands. “Could she subdue this GIANT OF A MAN with her SORCERY?’ the ad teased. I had other (if not necessarily better) things to do that summer, so I never made it to the movie theater. If I had, I probably would have been duly entertained, notwithstanding that the ad art was something of a bait-and-switch tactic. There isn’t anything in the story that wouldn’t be PG-rated today, nor any “captive women” aside from the winsome Ismene. Still, I would have been entertained by the fantasy elements of the story, including Hercules’ fight with a shape-shifting god, Proteus, who looks like an elderly man one minute, and then a lion, a vulture, a flame, and a horned monster the next. As a kid, I had been disappointed that some of the Italian-made Hercules, Goliath, and Samson sagas turned out to be quasi-historical movies with no supernatural content, so I would have welcomed the comic-book vibe of “Hercules and the Captive Women.” I wasn’t familiar with Reg Park, who had been Mr. Universe in 1951 and 1959, and later would become Arnold Schwarzenegger’s friend and mentor in competitive bodybuilding, but I did know the gorgeous Fay Spain. Fay guest-starred in nearly every Western and Private Eye TV show in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, sometimes playing a good girl, sometimes a bad one. As in “Hercules and the Captive Women,” she was memorably sultry in bad-girl roles. I definitely would not have name-checked Gian Maria Volantè, nor probably would have any other casual filmgoer in 1963. As the king of Sparta in the scene where the monarchs assemble to argue the Atlantis problem, he has seventeenth billing in the cast list. He swaggers and sneers through his two minutes of screen time as flamboyantly as Sir Laurence Olivier playing royalty from Shakespeare. Maybe the classically trained Italian actor was hoping the role, even if a minor one, would be a step up to bigger things. But his breakout part, as the central villain in “A Fistful of Dollars,” was still three years away.

The Film Detective’s Blu-ray special edition offers “Hercules and the Captive Women” in the sort of dressed-to-the-nines package usually reserved for more prestigious films. The print is a 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative. If not as sharp as a transfer from today’s digital prints of FX spectacles like “Wonder Woman 1984,” it’s nevertheless a vast improvement over the way the film used to show up dismally on TV and VHS. The always-informative Tim Lucas provides audio commentary, and a new mini-documentary, “Hercules and the Conquest of Cinema,” nicely summarizes the history of the peplum genre. There’s also an illustrated booklet by C. Courtney Joyner, and, almost like the second feature on a double-bill, the complete episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” from 1992 that made fun of the movie. Predictably, Tom Servo, Gypsy, and Crow are ready with a joke whenever Hercules and Antinea mention “Uranus.” At least “Uranus” is always good for a laugh. After thirty years, the other wisecracks involving “Bonanza,” Bob Dylan, “A Chorus Line,” and other pop-culture relics will be as inscrutable to younger viewers as the ancient inscriptions on the Parthenon.

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

"RETRO-ACTIVE: REVIEWS FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES"

BY LEE PFEIFFER

One retro movie that has not shown up on television is the 1972 screen adaptation of Philip Roth's notorious 1969 bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. The book was the subject of worldwide debate, praise and derision. The plot tells of a Jewish New Yorker's confessions to his analyst regarding his inner most fears, sexual fantasies and embarrassments. The book's content was truly shocking for its day, largely due to its unabashed depiction of young Portnoy's sexual obsessions that results in his having an erotic encounter with a piece of liver that later serves as the entree in the family dinner. The book traces Portnoy's "progression" into a series of failed relationships with women as he battles unrealistic sexual expectations, impotence and a constant sense of guilt due to his relationship with his overbearing, dominating mother. He seems to strike gold when he meets Mary Jane, a vivacious, if empty-headed young woman who is nick-named The Monkey because of her ability to carry out seemingly impossible sexual positions. Portnoy feels he has found the perfect woman: someone who lives for sex and who eschews traditional relationships. However, even this scenario turns sour when Mary Jane begins to pressure him to marry her, a quest that leads to unexpected tragedy. Roth's novel was praised universally by critics who found his ability to blend social and ethnic satire into what is essentially a penetrating look at the modern sexual psyche. Suddenly, women were being defined by their permissiveness and men were supposed to be supermen in the sack. Most of the controversy, however, stemmed from Roth's scathing dissection of how Portnoy's Jewish background becomes a virtual anchor around his neck, always haunting him with feelings of guilt despite the fact that he outrages his parents by proclaiming his atheism.  

The film version of Portnoy's was met with universal scorn by both critics and the public. The main complaint about Complaint was that the brilliant screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who adapted the novel and made his directorial debut with this production, fell flat in conveying the wit of Roth's printed words onto the silver screen. It's a valid observation. Even today, Portnoy just seems like a smarmy dirty joke that goes on for an hour and a half, devoid of any real laughs or social observations. The scenes of Portnoy's obsession with masturbation as a teenager are cringe-inducing, as his family is subjected to his moans of pleasure from behind the bathroom door. (The notorious liver sequence is, fortunately, only described, not depicted.) Also, the scene in which an easy neighborhood girl's sexual encounter with young Portnoy results in his being blinded through emission of bodily fluids, is also rendered somewhat tame. However, these are about the only occasions when Lehman uses good taste. The rest of the film is a mish mosh of foul language, abusive relationships and awkwardly filmed fantasy sequences in which Portnoy is called to account by God. The film's modest storyline did not stop Warner Brothers from providing a sizable budget with locations filmed in Greece, Italy and Israel (in the latter sequence, Portnoy has a disastrous encounter with a free-spirited Israeli woman.) Curiously, the high budget didn't preclude some of the worst rear screen projection sequences seen in this era. Despite its many flaws, however, the movie has some aspects that can be recommended. Richard Benjamin has the unenviable task of playing the unlikable protagonist and he does a fine job. His ability to alternate between comedy and pathos was always his most enviable talent and the film's failures can't be laid at his doorstep. Similarly, Karen Black as Mary Jane gives one of the best performances of her career as the rough-around-the-edges woman of loose morals who pays tragically for her desire to want a fulfilling, loving relationship. The most distasteful sequences are those of Portnoy in the company of his aging, whining parents. Jack Somack is convincing as the grumpy dad whose daily battle with constipation has turned him into an ogre. However, Lee Grant is woefully miscast as the stereotypical Jewish mother. As Roger Ebert observed in his review of the film, the part cried out for Shelley Winters. Young Jill Clayburgh makes an impression as the Israeli object of Portnoy's perverted desire. Michel Legrand provides a typically lush, romantic score that seems oddly out of place in this most unromantic of movies, but there are some grace-saving scenes of Gotham in the early '70s that provide some entertaining distractions. 

The Warner Archive has released Portnoy's Complaint as a burn to order title. Quality is very good on all counts, though there are no extras. The movie is the kind of curiosity that retro movie lovers will want to examine if for no other reason than to see one of the most groundbreaking films in terms of permissiveness of sexual situations and language. 

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“THE ORIGINAL MONEY PIT”

By Raymond Benson

Remember the 1986 comedy The Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long? The official credits of that film do not mention the excellent writing team of Frank Panama and Melvin Frank, who adapted Eric Hodgins’ 1946 biographical comic novel Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House into the popular 1948 “disaster comedy” starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The Money Pit is, in reality, an under-the-table remake of Blandings. It’s a pity that the original was not acknowledged, for, frankly, Blandings is much more realistic (and clever).

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was indeed a popular film and yet during its initial run was deemed to have lost money—just like the hapless Mr. Blandings does while attempting to move out of New York City to Connecticut. The movie is funny enough, for sure, but perhaps in 1948 audiences were wary of a motion picture that shed a dark—albeit comic—shade on what many Americans were doing at that time—moving out of the big cities and into the suburbs!

The Blandings (Grant and Loy) and their two teen daughters live in a pretty nice three-bedroom (or is it two?—it’s unclear) apartment in Manhattan… although like all apartments in Manhattan, it is simply not big enough for the family of four. They all share one bathroom, and the closet spaces are hazard zones. Blandings is an advertising executive who is under pressure to create a winning slogan for a brand of ham called “Wham.” Against the advice of his best friend and lawyer, Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas), Blandings buys a decrepit Revolutionary era place in Connecticut. Before he can remodel it, though, every surveyor and inspector tell him it’s best to tear it down and start building a new house afresh. That’s where the trouble starts. Everything becomes more expensive than was first imagined, and the venture indeed becomes a money pit.

The picture is a collection of often amusing set pieces that feature Grant doing his frustrated slow burn act, with Loy somewhat nonchalantly enjoying the havoc the house is wreaking on the family. Yes, the movie has some laughs, but ultimately there is something amiss when Melvyn Douglas surprisingly steals it away from the likes of Cary Grant. Douglas plays the narrator/friend role with a detached, delightful cynicism, and without a doubt he has all the best lines. Without his presence, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House might truly have been a disaster.

The script, however, is witty. The writing team of Panama and Frank worked with Bob Hope on many of his better pictures, and they also wrote the hilarious The Court Jester with Danny Kaye. Perhaps with better direction (H. C. Potter has only a handful of titles on his CV, although he directed Loretta Young to a Best Actress Oscar in The Farmer’s Wife), Blandings might have soared.

The Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray is an upgrade on a previous DVD release—it looks and sounds sharp with its DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono soundtrack. There are English subtitles for the hearing impaired. Supplements include two different radio broadcasts of the piece. One is the Lux Radio Theater from 1949 starring Grant and Irene Dunne, and the other is the Screen Directors Playhouse from 1950 starring Grant and Betsy Drake. A vintage Tex Avery cartoon, “The House of Tomorrow,” is shockingly sexist and near-misogynistic, but reflects the times in which it appeared. The re-issue trailer rounds out the package.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is worth a date-movie evening and still might serve as a cautionary tale before one does a deep dive into erecting a home. Buyer beware!

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“A LIKABLE CAD”

By Raymond Benson

Robert Young had a career of playing mostly trustworthy nice guys—after all, one could say he was born to play Marcus Welby, M.D. on television. But in 1947, he took the chance of portraying an all-around heel, a no-good philanderer who married for money and looks for every opportunity to score with someone new. And yet, Young’s admirable qualities are still there, making his character of Larry Ballentine in the film noir drama, They Won’t Believe Me, a likable cad. He pulls it off, too.

Audiences didn’t take to the change, though, and the picture was a box office dud. However, the lack of profits when a movie is released is never a true indication of its quality. They Won’t Believe Me is an artfully crafted, well-acted, twisty tale about lies, fate, and luck.

The original screenplay was written by Jonathan Latimer, creator of the William Crane crime novels as well as other mysteries and thrillers of the 30s through the 50s. He was also a prolific screenwriter; his work includes The Glass Key (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). The director, Irving Pichel, was primarily an actor, but he often sat behind the camera for two decades; one of his later pictures was Destination Moon (1950)! Hollywood stalwart Harry J. Wild served as cinematographer, and he already had his film noir chops down with such fare as Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Johnny Angel (1945).

The cast is excellent. Besides Young, who is in every scene of the movie, there is the luminous Susan Hayward, an extremely talented and beautiful actress who left us far too soon. Supporting them are Jane Greer (of Out of the Past fame), Rita Johnson, and Tom Powers (who played Barbara Stanwyck’s doomed husband in Double Indemnity).

Larry (Young) is on trial for murdering Verna (Hayward). His defense lawyer puts him on the stand to tell his story; thus, the film is told in flashback, with the courtroom sequences functioning as a framing device. Larry admits he was not a good husband to wealthy Gretta (Johnson) and that he married her for her money. Gretta was also aware of this and she tolerated his infidelities because she knew he would never leave. After an almost-tryst with Janice (Greer), he meets Verna at his lucrative new office job that Gretta had arranged for him. Verna is likely going to marry the boss, Trenton (Powers), but she honestly reveals to Larry that she’s a gold-digger and, frankly, what we call a “party girl.” She has no qualms with having an affair with Larry. But they actually fall in love, so Larry makes sincere plans to leave Gretta and run away with Verna. Unfortunately, twists of fate interfere with their plans. We know Verna dies from the beginning of the movie, and how this occurs is one of the surprises in the plot. When Gretta meets a similar fate, then Larry sweats it out until he is ultimately arrested. At 95-minutes, They Won’t Believe Me is the celluloid equivalent of a page-turner, and how it all plays out is always unpredictable.

The Warner Archive has released an astonishingly gorgeous high-definition restoration in glorious black and white that looks as if the print is brand new. It comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono soundtrack and English subtitles for the hearing impaired. Unfortunately, there are no supplements on the disk.

You won’t believe how compelling They Won’t Believe Me is until you see it. Check it out.

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Original British quad poster

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM CINEMA RETRO'S ARCHIVES

Singer Johnny Horton's Sink the Bismarck was a major hit when released in 1960. What many people don't realize is that the song was commissioned as the theme song for the film of the same name that was released the same year. It's pretty obvious why it wasn't used in the final cut of the movie: Horton specialized in catchy novelty songs with a country western theme. The film, directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Kenneth More, was notable for its ultra-realistic take on the British pursuit of the infamous German battleship. As good as Horton's theme was, it would have been completely out of place in the film. Interestingly, if you have the DVD of the movie, check out the bonus trailer - it features snippets of Horton's song, indicating that the decision to cut it was made at the last minute.

“GEEK LOVE”

By Raymond Benson

One of the more unique entries in the film noir movement of the 1940s and 50s is the 1947 melodrama, Nightmare Alley. Based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the picture was made only because Tyrone Power expressed the desire to star in it after reading the grim tale of a carnival barker who rises to the top of the charlatan world, only to ultimately fall hard to rock bottom.

While classified as film noir, the picture has little of the usual trappings of the movement. There is no central crime in the story, there are no cynical detectives, and one can argue that there are no femmes fatale. It is only in the visual presentation that one can consider Nightmare Alley an item of film noir—the high contrast black and white photography (by the great Lee Garmes, who had photographed several of the early 30s Josef von Sternberg pictures starring Marlene Dietrich), the heavy light and shadows, and the dark, pessimistic themes in the story. Interestingly, the author of the screenplay is John Furthman, who also worked with von Sternberg and penned such titles as Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus—but he also wrote or co-wrote such fare as the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty, Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not, and The Big Sleep. Director Edmund Goulding had a long career starting in the silent era. He helmed Grand Hotel, The Dawn Patrol, Dark Victory, and The Razor’s Edge, to name a few of his classics.

Add the casting of Power and Joan Blondell as the top-billed stars, plus the charismatic Coleen Gray and Helen Walker, and you have a smorgasbord of talent involved in the production. It was indeed a different kind of role for Tyrone Power, who shed his matinee idol persona to play a flawed character. The result? Nightmare Alley is an intelligent, seriously played, and strikingly original B-movie that deals with the sleazy underbelly of the carnival circuit, mediums and hocus pocus (the “spook racket”), and con artists. It’s no wonder that a big-budget remake by Guillermo Del Toro is due for a December 2021 release starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, and Toni Collette.

Stanton Carlisle (Power) works as a barker in a traveling carnival and is fascinated by the “Geek” attraction, which is billed as a “missing link” between man and beast. The Geek is really a down-on-his-luck alcoholic bum who willingly degrades himself to bite the heads off live chickens in exchange for a little pay and a bottle of booze. Stan is sweet on Molly (Gray), the young and attractive girl-of-all-trades in the sideshow, but she is attached to Bruno the strongman (Mike Mazurki). Stan then makes a play for Zeena (Blondell), the mentalist who is married to another alcoholic, Pete (Ian Keith). Zeena still loves Pete, although she sees the opportunity to better her situation with Stan. She teaches Stan her tricks so that he can take over Pete’s part in the act. After Stan unwittingly causes Pete’s death, the dynamics between the characters shift. Stan and Molly are forced into marriage after a behind-the-scenes tryst, and then they run away to become a big act in Chicago using Zeena and Pete’s methods. But their fortunes turn, of course, especially after Stan meets beautiful psychiatrist Lilith (Walker). To reveal more would be unfair, but it is not a spoiler to say that the Geek plays a bigger role in the yarn than we first thought.

While Nightmare Alley is a terrific character study of an overly ambitious man, it is really a cautionary picture about alcoholism. The Lost Weekend had been a critical and popular success only two years earlier, so the producer (George Jessel) and the studio must have thought Nightmare Alley would fly—but it proved to be much too bleak, even for film noir. It was a box office flop, despite some good reviews and the admirable quality of the filmmaking. However, the movie gained a following over the decades and earned a reputation as a dark classic that was little seen until home video and runs on TCM.

The Criterion Collection has now issued a superb Blu-ray presentation of Nightmare Alley, an upgrade from Fox’s previous DVD release. The new 4K digital restoration looks sharp and glorious, and it comes with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. There is an audio commentary from 2005 by film historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. The supplements include an informative interview about the film by critic Imogen Sara Smith; a truly excellent interview about the history of the carny life by sideshow performer and historian Todd Robbins; an interview from 2007 with actress Coleen Gray; an audio excerpt from a 1971 interview with filmmaker Henry King, who discusses Tyrone Power; and the theatrical trailer. The booklet contains an essay by film writer and screenwriter Kim Morgan. Bonus!—there are a handful of nifty tie-in Tarot cards to play with!

Nightmare Alley is a fascinating gem from the darker side of film noir, which was already pretty dark to begin with! Highly recommended.

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In 1966, with Batmania sweeping the world, everyone was trying to get a piece of the action. Columbia Pictures came up with a novel idea. The studio rereleased the 1943 Batman and Robin serials collectively under the title An Evening with Batman and Robin. Naturally, this was more than twenty years before Adam West and Burt Ward slid down the Batpoles for the first time. The gimmick turned a tidy profit, though some of the more naive fans may have been stunned to see the Dynamic Duo in black and white and attired in costumes that looked like they came in last place in the local school Halloween contest. This rare trade ad extols the regional grosses the film event was scoring across America. Did you know that Lewis Wilson, who played Batman in these serials, was the father of James Bond producer Michael G. Wilson?

Olympia Dukakis, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her scene-stealing role in "Moonstruck" (1987), has passed away after a long illness. She was 89 years old. Dukakis blossomed relatively late in her career. She was 56 years-old when she appeared in "Moonstruck". The Oscar win boosted her career and she had a prominent role among the all-star female cast in the 1990 hit "Steel Magnolias". She later appeared in the three hit big screen "Look Who's Talking" comedies.  Dukakis had gravitated from New York theater (where she had won an Obie for her off-Broadway work) and in 1962 made her TV debut in an episode of "Dr. Kildare". She later landed small roles in major films such as "John and Mary", "Made for Each Other" and "Death Wish". Over the course of her career, she would be nominated for BAFTA, Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Click here for more.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Despite changing social tastes and values, America's love affair with Bob Hope ensured he continued his successful movie career throughout the 1960s, albeit with diminishing results. Perhaps the nadir of Hope's work on the big screen during this period is the 1965 production "I'll Take Sweden", yet another sex-themed comedy of the era that can only be described as flaccid. Hope plays Bob Holcomb, a successful business executive and widower who is trying to provide a moral upbringing for his teenage daughter Jojo (Tuesday Weld.) However, Bob's viewpoints on the sexual revolution border on Puritanical. The most important mission in his life is preserving his daughter's virginity until she marries. When the film opens, Jojo and her ne're do well boyfriend Kenny Klinger (Frankie Avalon) announce to him that the intend to wed very soon, a prospect that sends Bob into a state of panic. Jojo isn't employed and Kenny's "occupation" is as an occasional rock 'n roll singer. The couple intends to live off the grand sum of a $1200 inheritance that Kenny was bequeathed by a relative. Unable to convince Jojo to change her mind, he makes the drastic decision to accept a company transfer to Sweden to ensure she and Kenny can no longer maintain a relationship, a reminder of what life was in the pre-internet era. Upon arriving in Stockholm, Bob finds his own love life improving, as he begins dating co-worker Karin Granstedt (Dina Merrill). However, another employee, Erik Carlson (Jeremy Slate), a handsome young man, is immediately smitten by Jojo- and his intentions aren't pure. Things heat up when Bob plans a short vacation with Karin and tells Jojo he is going away on a business trip. Jojo uses the opportunity to give in to Erik's request that they plan a romantic getaway. As you might imagine, both father and daughter and their respective dates end up at the same resort. Adding to the absurdities is the arrival of Kenny, who just happened to be working a gig-  in Sweden! This all leads to one of those bedroom farce-style finales in which everyone runs from room to room either trying to catch or hide from each other.

"I'll Take Sweden" plays out like an extended episode of a sitcom from the era. It has cheesy production values and uses poor stock footage and rear screen projection techniques to represent "Sweden". The film is yet another example of how Hollywood studios tried to capitalize on the blossoming youth movement in popular culture. However, as usual, the task was assigned to older people who didn't have a clue as to what was actually going on with the demographic they hoped to sell the film to, although they are sensible enough to include the requisite beach party scenes in order to show off the latest bikini styles. The representations of a wild youth party are so tame, you almost expect June Cleaver to walk in with a tray of milk and cookies. Even more ridiculous is Hope's paranoia about any aspect of premarital sex involving his daughter, who looks a bit mature to be doted over in such a manner. (Perhaps that's because Tuesday Weld was already 22 years-old when the film was made.) Directed by sitcom veteran Frederic De Cordova and scripted in part by Arthur Marx (Groucho's son), the film must have been embarrassing to experience even in 1965. Frankie Avalon gets to croon one of the worst title songs in the history of cinema and the only saving grace is Hope's ability to toss off one of his trademark wisecracks. Occasionally they land on target and provide a few seconds of respite from this dud that is a comedy in name only.

Bob Hope fans and masochists can view the film on Amazon Prime (free, if you are a subscriber.)

The film can also be ordered on Blu-ray from Amazon by clicking here.

We all know the cautionary tale: "Be careful what you wish for- you just might get it!" That certainly applies to those who seek fame and fortune in show business. Child stars are particularly vulnerable to the down side of the industry. One day they are lauded as major stars, the next they can be seen as washed-up has-beens. In many cases, they die young through tragic circumstances, many of which are self-imposed. The web site Ranker takes on a sobering journey through the lives of 30 child stars who died long before their time. Click here to view.