Columnists
Entries from August 2021
“A
BEAUTIFUL MESSâ€
By
Raymond Benson
Filmmaker
Stanley Donen had substantial success with his comedy-thriller, Charade
(1963), which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It was hyped and critiqued
as “Hitchcockian†in tone and style, especially the light-hearted and glitzy To
Catch a Thief (1955). (There are many who mistakenly believe that Charade
is a Hitchcock film.)
The
studio then wanted to repeat that success with a similar picture, Arabesque,
also with Cary Grant in the lead role with Donen directing again. However,
Grant felt that the script was “terrible†and passed. Donen allegedly wasn’t
too thrilled with the script, either, and he wasn’t too keen on making the
picture without Grant.
Then
Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren expressed interest in the movie, so Donen
acquiesced. Sounds like a fairy tale scenario for the greenlighting of a
Hollywood movie, right? The two Oscar-winning stars were cast, and the script
was rewritten… and rewritten… (it is credited to Julian Mitchell, Stanley
Price, and Pierre Marton; however, Marton is a pseudonym for Peter Stone, who
had written Charade!).
Released
in 1966, Arabesque has all the hallmarks of a hit movie. It is
beautifully photographed by Christopher Challis, with colorful usage of mirrors
and prisms and glass throughout the picture. These visuals provide the film
with its spectacular glossy eye candy. Ms. Loren’s costumes (by Christian Dior)
are psychedelic/exotic/1960s fabulous. Henry Mancini’s musical score is fun and
lively—except for the examples cited below. Maurice Binder’s main titles design
hints at something leaning toward a James Bond or Derek Flint film.
These
are the only admirable aspects of the picture.
Both
Charade and Arabesque, when one examines them closely, are really
screwball comedies set in a spy/thriller milieu. The success of a screwball
comedy depends on the comic timing and charisma of the two “mismatched†leads—this
is the core ingredient of the sub-genre. Cary Grant can do these kinds of roles
in his sleep. And this is where the problem lies.
Gregory
Peck is a wonderful actor, but unfortunately here he is terribly miscast. It’s obvious
that he’s trying to “do†Cary Grant (without the accent), and it simply
does not work. The dialogue—meant to be witty banter in the Cary Grant
mold—does not flow elegantly from Peck. Sophia Loren, while looking gorgeous
and mysterious throughout the story, fares little better with what the poor
script has her do.
And
the script? It makes no sense. Peck is David Pollock, an American professor at
Oxford who knows something about Hieroglyphics. He’s “hired†by sleazy Arabic
shipping magnate Beshraavi (Alan Badel) to decipher a code in Hieroglyphics
that he has stolen from a murdered spy. The prime minister of an unnamed Middle
Eastern country, Jena (Carl Duering), also wants the code deciphered, because
“there will be no peace in the world without it.†What? It’s unclear what
conflict we’re talking about or what the situation really is. Pollock meets
Beshraavi’s mistress, Yasmin Azir (Loren), who is working for another group of
spies—maybe—or maybe she’s working for Jena—it’s not really clear—in fact, we
don’t know what Yasmin’s motivation is for any of her actions in the film.
Suddenly, Pollock is on the run as several factions of Arabs and others are out
to kill him. Sometimes Yasmin helps him, sometimes she doesn’t. But, of course,
they fall in love, and they prevent a political assassination in the meantime.
Okay,
it’s a beautiful mess, but it’s still a mess. Even the misplaced slapstick
sequences are dumb—and Mancini’s comic music that underscores some of these scenes
is cringe-worthy (one example—when a drugged Pollock is standing in the road of
a crowded freeway and playing “matador†to oncoming vehicles).
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks quite gorgeous, showing off the colorful
glitz that is the primary asset of Arabesque. It comes with an audio
commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel
Thompson, who all seem to enjoy the picture more than this reviewer did and yet
point out all the same faults. A lovely half-hour featurette on Mancini is a
welcome supplement. There is also a poster gallery (note the cover/poster art
by the great Robert McGinnis), TV spots, the theatrical trailer and teaser, and
trailers for other Kino Lorber releases.
Arabesque
is a
product of its mid-1960s origin, for sure, as it wants to be both Charade and
a James Bond film. It is neither, but it might be a curiosity for fans of 1960s
Hollywood spy movies and pristine cinematography.
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BY ADRIAN SMITH
When
film fans hear the name of Italian director Lucio Fulci, it almost inevitably
brings to mind his oft-quoted moniker as the “Godfather of Gore,†thanks to the
films made towards the end of his career that caused so much trouble with the
British film censors; Zombie Flesh Eaters
(1980), The Beyond (1981) New York Ripper (1983) being some of the
most notorious. To view him as such
however is to miss out on what was an extraordinarily prolific career which
also included musicals, comedies, westerns, historical dramas, fantasy films,
science fiction and thrillers. This new Blu-ray and digital release of The Psychic, out now in a 2K restoration
from Shameless Films, is an opportunity to reassess one of his less well known
films, which is only now being released in the UK for the first time.
The Psychic tells the
tale of a woman who has visions of murder and death. These visions cause her to
break through a wall in her rich new husband’s old farmhouse, where she
discovers the skeleton of a woman murdered four years earlier. Naturally her
husband is under suspicion, and with the help of a doctor friend with an
interest in parapsychology she tries to replay the memories of these visons in
her head over and over again, looking for clues that might prove her husband’s
innocence. As pieces of the puzzle fail to add up however, she begins to
realise that some of what she has seen may in fact be a premonition of murders
yet to come, possibly her own.
The
original Italian title was Sette note in
nero, or “Seven Black Notes.†The seven notes in question refer to the tune
that is played each hour on a watch worn by our heroine, gifted to her by the
husband’s sister. This sister has dozens of lovers who give her gifts, and the
watch apparently came from someone in the Vatican. This is just a sly hint
towards illicit goings on in the Catholic Church. In some of Fulci’s other
films, such as Don’t Torture a Duckling
(1972), the criticism would be far more overt.
With
its amateur detective attempting to solve a crime by constantly revisiting
distorted memories, The Psychic sits
squarely within the tradition of the giallo,
the sub-genre of Italian thrillers that often featured bizarre murders,
unreliable witnesses, amateur detectives and red herrings galore. Described as
an “elegantly constructed murder mystery†by historian Stephen Thrower (who
wrote the definitive book on Fulci’s career), this is an entertaining thriller
that leads the audience down dark paths and blind alleys before finally
delivering an exhilarating ending straight out of Edgar Allan Poe.
This
new Shameless Blu-ray edition includes both the original Italian and English
dubs, and a wealth of new interviews. Sadly, Fulci himself is no longer with
us, but his daughter Antonella Fulci appears in two separate interviews, one
focused on the film and the other on her father. Put together, she speaks in
these interviews for almost an hour, and it is fascinating to get insight into
both her personal relationship with her father as well as her own analysis of
his career. Also appearing on the disc is the writer Dardano Sacchetti, who
also speaks for around an hour, and with almost a hundred different credits, he
has had a rich and diverse career and is full of great stories. The final
interview is with the film’s composer Fabio Frizzi, who discusses how he got
started in composing for film as well as his relationship with Lucio Fulci.
Frizzi was a frequent collaborator with Lucio Fulci, and several years ago went
on tour performing music from these films around the world (something this
writer was lucky enough to see one Halloween). And if you are wondering why The Psychic score sounds familiar, that’s
because it is yet another Italian score pinched by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill!
The
Shameless Films Blu-ray, in a distinctive yellow case, comes with a collectible
O-ring featuring the iconic American poster art, and also includes a reversible
sleeve which uses the original Italian artwork which made the Edgar Allan Poe
connection even more explicit.
The Psychic deserves
to become better known as a fine example of the 1970s European thriller, and
this new restoration is the perfect way to see it.
(Note: this release is currently available in Region 2 UK format only.)
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"WHEN SHERMAN MET FRANKENSTEIN"
BY MARK CERULLI
To celebrate the release of producer Sam Sherman’s memoir, When Dracula Met Frankenstein (Murania Press) Cinema Retro presents
this exclusive interview with the man himself. In our two-hour conversation,
the filmmaker demonstrated a virtual photographic memory when discussing his
remarkable 60 plus year career. Our
interview was a time capsule of the drive-in era where creative marketing,
distribution and production exemplified the true spirit of independent
filmmaking.
Sam Sherman grew up a horror and western film fan. The first horror film Sam ever saw was
Universal’s classic monster comedy, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
(1948) which captivated his imagination at a very young age. Following his dream, he attended City College
of New York to study filmmaking. Like
most CR readers, he was also an avid collector – in his case, horror stills,
which one imagines were almost given away in the 1950s. Those black and white photos, picked up in
the small memorabilia stores that used to dot Manhattan, led to a career – “In
1958, I wrote to Famous Monsters and to my surprise, got a call back from Jim
Warren and asked if they’d be interested in renting my stills,†Sherman
recalled.
“I produced ads for Captain Company (FM’s merchandising
division) and I also acquired product for them.†(As one who spent a lot of hard-earned
teenage cash on Captain Co products - including a Dr. No movie poster
for all of $4.99 - that was a part of Sam’s long career I could instantly
relate to.)
While ghostwriting articles for FM and working on other
Warren publications like Spacemen, Screen Thrills Illustrated and Wildest
Westerns, Sherman frequently found his enthusiasm for horror looked down upon
by Help! magazine art director, Terry Gilliam. Years later, Gilliam took an
obvious jab (and inspiration) from Sherman’s climactic battle of the monsters
in Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971) with his own comedic dismemberment scene
in Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975). “I made it a point never to see anything
he’s done,†Sam adds.
In the 1950s and 60s, New York was the center of the film
universe and Sherman found himself making the rounds of small distributors
trying to find films to license for his own fledgling company, Signature
Films. Sam later got in with an independent
film company called Hemisphere Pictures which specialized in movies shot in the
Philippines, including the Blood Island horror cult classics directed by
Eddie Romero. Sherman honed his
exploitation skills by creating the theatrical, television, radio and print ad
campaigns which established Hemisphere as The House of Horror with
unforgettable gimmicks and marketing promotions like “The Oath of Green Bloodâ€
for the first audience participation film, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island
(1969).
Sam’s book is full of photos from that era – from
snapshots of early visits to LA, to on-set stills and “ballyhoo†photos of
theater displays, lurid posters and marquees. One image that jumps out is of a young Sam standing behind the iconic Boris
Karloff on A.I.P.’s The Raven set. “Forry Ackerman (Famous Monsters’
longtime editor) took me to the last day of shooting and we spent the whole day
with Peter Lorre and Vincent Price, which was wonderful. I had a nice chat with
Karloff. He finished up for the day and (director) Roger Corman took him away
to do The Terror, which was non-union, somewhere else.†Talk about maximizing your star!
In 1968, Sherman and several partners – including longtime
friend, filmmaker Al Adamson, formed Independent-International Pictures Corp. (a riff off the very successful American
International Pictures). “Al just wanted
to make movies, he left it to me to figure out how to market them and make
money,†Sam recalls.
Their first production for the new company was a raw biker
film, Satan’s Sadists starring Russ Tamblyn of West Side Story
fame and directed by Adamson. The film tapped into the national shockwaves
reverberating from biker gang violence as well as LA’s horrific Manson
murders. The female lead was a
statuesque California blonde, Regina Carrol, who became Adamson’s girlfriend,
later his wife and star of his films. Wanting to give her a little extra
exposure, Sherman labeled her “The Freak-Out Girlâ€. As the film contained nudity, the then-new
movie ratings board wanted to slap an X on Satan’s Sadists. Sam went to the mat to contest it, even
advising the theatre circuits to rate the film themselves based on regional
tastes vs the Motion Picture Board’s inconsistent classifications for
independent films.
Sam’s book is full of similar throw out the rulebook tales
– like licensing an odd Filipino caveman film named Tagani which was
shot in black & white. To modernize it, Adamson shot some new scenes with
veteran horror star John Carradine but the film still didn’t look right, so Sam
suggested using various tints (“Like they did in silent moviesâ€). He wrote MORE
new scenes (including computer sex!), added an eye-catching title - Horror
of the Blood Monsters and they now had a releasable film!
At Independent-International, Sam and Al shrugged off the
industry’s notoriously unforgiving deadlines: “We released an imported German
picture called Women for Sale which had been a big hit and I said ‘We
can’t find anything like it to follow up with, so let’s make a picture like
this’, it’ll be called Girls for Rent…†Sam hired an industry friend to write it, months went by without a
script. “We’re getting closer to the key
summer playdates, and we were really in a jam†Sam recalled. “I got another
writer and we knocked the picture out fast, doing the campaign fast, ordered
prints and got it into release by the end of the summer. Sixty days, I couldn’t
believe we could do it but we did and it was a pretty good film!â€
Of course, there’s a chapter on Independent-International’s
biggest picture – Dracula vs Frankenstein, which actually started out as
Blood Freaks (aka Blood Seekers). “The script was not much of anything but I was working on it… we wanted
a name actor so Al went to agent Jerry Rosen who said ‘You can have Lon Chaney,
Jr. and J. Carrol Naish for a week for $6K.’†They booked them sight unseen – and when they reported for work, both
were in ill health. “Naish had a bad eye and Chaney had throat cancer. (Dracula
vs Frankenstein would be his final horror film.) “Ya gotta meet the people,†Sam adds
knowingly. Diminutive Angelo Rossitto rounded
out the cast as the carnival barker Grazbo. The resulting film was so bad,
backers recommended it just be shelved. Sam lives by the motto “Waste not, want not†and since he was an editor
himself, he went to work watching the film repeatedly until he found a line of
dialogue he could use to expand the storyline to include the last surviving
Frankenstein… and the monster. “And once I thought that I said, ‘Let’s bring in
Dracula for good measure.’†Scraping
together $50K for reshoots they hired a tall, dark-haired record store
employee, Rafael Engel (named “Zandor Vorkov†by Forry) to play the Count and
7’4†accountant, John Bloom, to play the monster. “I left it to Al to make the picture, but as
the president of Independent International, I made the final decisions,†Sam
adds. Sam also tapped Famous Monsters’ Forry Ackerman who not only acted in the
film, but also secured the electrical equipment and props of special effects
wizard Kenneth Strickfaden for the production. Strickfaden’s crackling
electrical contraptions were originally used in Universal’s Frankenstein
film 40 years earlier. Against the
odds, Dracula vs Frankenstein was a monster hit! Ahead of his time, Sam even released the film
on TV AND in theaters/drive-ins “day-and-date†at the same time. “Nobody caredâ€, Sam says, chuckling, “I did what
I wanted to do.â€
Naturally, Sam devotes a chapter to his creative partner
and “the brother I never hadâ€, Al Adamson, who was tragically murdered by a
contractor renovating his desert house in 1995. Incredibly Sam still had a connection with him because one night after Al
had been declared “missingâ€, Sam silently asked his friend to give him a sign
of where he was… the word “Cement†popped into his mind. He communicated that to police and sure
enough, when they investigated, Al’s body was discovered underneath a cement floor. The contractor was apprehended in Florida and
is now serving decades in prison but the pain of Sam’s loss is palpable. He still keeps Adamson’s name alive with
drive-in screenings and special DVD and Blu-ray releases of their work.
Now 81, Sam feels the time is ripe for his story to be
told. His oversize book is full of
industry lore and life lessons. “I hope
readers get that if they want to be in the picture business, they can… and people
who aren’t filmmakers but want to know the history of Al and myself, the whole
story is there – how we did it, why we did it and what really happened.†Summing up, Sam says, “We did what we had to
do.â€
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BY TODD GARBARINI
High
school friends Enid Coleslaw (Thora Birch) and Rebecca Doppelmeyer (Scarlett
Johansson) absolutely cannot wait to be free of the prison of school, defiantly
flipping the bird and squashing their mortarboards following their graduation.
Enid isn’t off the hook just yet: her “diploma†is instead a note informing her
that she must “take some stupid art class†(her words) if she hopes to graduate.
Their fellow classmates are caricatures of everyone we all knew during our
adolescence. Melora (Debra Azar) is inhumanly happy all the time and oblivious
to Enid and Rebecca’s sense of ennui and contempt. Todd (T.J. Thyne) is
ultra-nervous to talk with the insouciant Rebecca at the punchbowl. Another bespectacled
student sits off by himself. Enid and Rebecca are at both an intellectual and
emotional crossroads. They want to share an apartment; however, they seem unaware
of the amount of money they will have to come up with for such a
venture. Instead of finding jobs, their post-graduation afternoons are spent
meandering through life while frowning upon society, following strange people
home, bothering their mutual friend Josh (Brad Renfro) and admiring the Weird
Al wannabe waiter at the new 50’s-themed diner which plays contemporary music.
Seemingly without a care in the world, the women have no plans to attend
college, preferring instead to prank an unsuspecting nebbish named Seymour (Steve
Buscemi) who has placed a personal ad in an attempt to communicate with a
striking blonde he noticed, with Enid feigning said blonde on Seymour’s
answering machine. Rebecca is a dour and solemn counterpoint to Enid’s aloof
yet occasionally jovial demeanor. If
Holden Caulfield had a girlfriend, she might be someone just like Enid,
sneering at the losers and phonies in her midst. Searching out Seymour, they
approach him and his roommate at a garage sale where he is unloading old
records for next to nothing. His affection for collecting 78 rpms begins to
endear him to Enid, who confides in Rebecca that she likes him despite their
25-year age difference. They have some truly funny moments together such as
attending a “party†for guys who talk techno mumbo-jumbo, riding in the car
together as Seymour screams at people walking through an intersection, and a
humorous romp through an adult video and novelty store.
Rebecca grows tired of hearing about Seymour,
and presses Enid to get a job but she only succeeds in getting fired repeatedly,
even from her position at the concession stand at a Pacific Theatre cinema when
she ribs the customers over their choice of movie and their willingness to eat
popcorn with “chemical sludge†poured on it. The tone of the film shifts from
one of comedic commentary on the world to one of disillusionment as Enid begins
to feel her world slowly begin to crumble around her. Her friendship with
Rebecca, an anchor in her life for years, is ending and like so many of us at
that age, she has no idea where her life is going or what she needs to be doing
when she isn’t changing her hair color or her now-famous blue Raptor t-shirt or
donning punk rock garb as a sartorial statement. Her summer art teacher
(Illeana Douglas) shows her students her personal thesis film Mirror, Father, Mirror which itself is a
parody of the pretentious student films submitted to professors. She pushes
Enid to create interesting and powerful art when Enid is only interested in
drawing the people she knows and Don Knotts. In short, nothing seems to be
going well for her. The only person she can rely on is Norman, the well-dressed
man who sits on a bench at a bus stop that stopped service a long time ago and
holds the key to the film’s long-debated denouement. Enid is almost like an
older version of Jane Burnham, the character portrayed by Ms. Birch in American Beauty (1999). In that film,
she barely reacted to her father (Kevin Spacey) and here her contempt for her
father (Bob Balaban) and his girlfriend Maxine (Teri Garr) is even more
perceptible.
Director Terry Zwigoff takes the source
material created by artist and writer Daniel Clowes and fashions one of the
most brilliantly entertaining and poignant ruminations on adolescence the
silver screen has ever seen. Ghost World
also boasts excellent use of music, much of it pre-existing, although the main
theme by David Kitay is an elegiac
piano theme that recalls David Shire’s theme to The Conversation (1974). The film starts with a bang to the
seemingly non-diegetic tune of the Mohammed Rafi hit “Jaan Pehechaan Ho†from
the 1965 Hindi film Gumnaam, the
scenes of which are intercut with images of the apartment complex’s
inhabitants. As the camera tracks from the exterior windows of these
grotesqueries, it settles upon Enid’s bedroom where the night before graduation
she dances to the aforementioned tune which we now see is being played back on a
bootleg VHS tape. The beat is frenetic and infectious. Enid, for the first of
only a handful of times in the entire film, appears to be in a state of joy as
she mimics the moves of the dancers. If only she could always feel this way! With this singular sequence, Mr. Zwigoff
achieves something reserved for only the greatest and rarest of filmmakers – re-identifying
a popular musical piece with his movie. I can’t hear “The Blue Danube†without
thinking of spaceships spinning throughout the galaxy.
Ghost World opened on Friday, July 20, 2001 in
limited release in New York and Los Angeles and garnered immediate critical
acclaim. Filmed in 2000, the film is a product of a simpler and more innocent
time. Before the brutal wake-up call of the September 11th attacks, there is a
complete lack of cell phone usage in the film. It makes a great companion to
2001’s other minor masterpiece of adolescent angst, the cult favorite Donnie Darko.
Continue reading "REVIEW: "GHOST WORLD" (2001); CRITERION BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION"
BY TODD GARBARINI
My love of horror films
dates back forty years. In the fall of 1986, I accidentally stumbled across an
aficionado’s bonanza – a local video store had hundreds of video posters in the
cabinets underneath the movies it was renting. One of the posters was for Mortuary
(1983), a horror film from the Vestron Video label that I knew of from another
video store but had not seen. I liked the poster art but knew nothing of the
film. To my recollection, it never played at area theaters, not even the
2-screen indoor/drive-in three miles from me that showed just about anything
that was low-budget and esoteric.
Mortuary
opened on Friday, September 2, 1983 in Los Angeles and is not a great movie,
but it is not terrible, either. It does, however, move at a snail’s pace, so be
forewarned if you have not seen it. It is one of the longest 93-minute
movies I have ever seen. Director Howard Avedis, who has also gone by the
tongue-twisters Hikmat Labib, Hekmat Aghanikyan, and (whew!) Hikmet L. Avedis,
also directed the 1976 Connie Stevens outing Scorchy; Texas Detour
(1978); and They’re Playing with Fire (1984) with Sybil Danning. Here he
enlists Mary Beth McDonough of The Waltons fame as Christie Parson (the
name taken from the characters of Christie Burns and Brooke Parsons in 1983’s Curtains,
or just a coincidence?), a young woman who lives with her parents in their
beautiful and unhumble abode and shows up just in time to see her father
floating in the family pool after getting walloped with a baseball bat on the
balcony. But who would want him dead?!
Her boyfriend Greg (David
Wallace) and a co-worker go to collect tires from a warehouse owned by a
funeral home, and he stumbles upon what appears to be some sort of weird
cult/devil worship shenanigans in another room with all the figures wearing
black cloaks, headed up by mortician Hank Andrews (Christopher George who sadly
passed away two months after the film’s release). Even 2019’s Black
Christmas featured a bunch of crazies running around in cloaks some 35
years later! Greg’s friend is stabbed and killed with a huge pole used for
embalming by one of the members. Christie gets involved and decides to play
sleuth and attempts to get to the bottom of her father’s murder – she refuses
to believe that he “drownedâ€. Her mother Eve Parson, played by Lynda Day
George, wife of actor Christopher George, wants to play everything off as
though nothing is happening. Meanwhile, Hank’s son Paul (Bill Paxton of all
people) is infatuated with Christie and does his best to win her affections,
even serving her flowers in a cemetery in front of her boyfriend – what a guy!
Mortuary is
one of those funeral home-based films that proliferated in the early 1980s and
out of all of them, my personal favorite has always been Tom McLoughlin’s One
Dark Night (1983), the spooky PG-rated Meg Tilly outing as a high schooler
who attempts to sleep overnight among crypts as part of an initiation. Michael
Dugan’s Mausoleum (1983), which starred a fetching Bobbie Bresee as a
possessed woman who had the misfortune of being married to Marjoe Gortner, is
terrible but great fun. Who could forget William Fruet’s 1980 film Funeral
Home with Lesleh Donaldson? That film has yet to be released on Blu-ray. Like
most horror films made since John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), they all
pretty much follow a cookie cutter pattern which starts with something terrible
that happens as either a flashback or as an event that is flashed back to later
on. Mortuary is one of a handful of horror films that were shot in one
year and released in another, specifically between April and July of 1981, but
released two years later more than likely due to budgetary constraints.
The granddaddy of funeral
home films is surely Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979), wildly imaginable
and one of the scariest and most original horror films ever made, though it is
made up of supernatural elements. Mortuary is more of a murder mystery,
but anyone who is a die-hard horror film fan will see the ending coming from a
mile away. It’s almost a mashup of Jacques Lacerte’s Love Me Deadly
(1972), Tom DeSimone’s Hell Night (1981) and J. Lee Thompson’s Happy
Birthday to Me (1981).
Mortuary
uses location filming to great effect as well. If the sprawling Parson mansion
looks familiar, it’s the former Gulls Way Estate at 26800 Pacific Coast Highway
in Malibu, CA which was used on many other films and television series episodes.
The living room itself is opulent, and a humorous sex scene between Christie
and Greg takes place here. The mansion was purchased in 2002 by Dick Clark and
the beautiful pool that Christie’s father died in was filled in with dirt.
Mortuary
has been released on Blu-ray from the MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD
Visual, in an upgraded video transfer attributed to Scorpion Releasing. I like
the concept of this release as it contains a slipcover featuring the old Mortuary
artwork as though it was a beat-up VHS rental return. Unfortunately, if you are
a big fan of this film, you will be disappointed with the overall release as it
contains only a fifteen-minute onscreen interview with John Cacavas who provided
the inspired musical score. The only other extra is a trailers section
comprised of The House on Sorority Row (1982), Dahmer (2002), Mikey
(1992), One Dark Night (1983), and Mortuary (2005). One of the
strangest things about this film is the television trailer, and why it is
missing is a mystery. It is comprised of a single scene featuring Michael
Berryman(!) digging a grave and being pulled into it, but the scene is nowhere
to be found in the movie! Nor is Michael Berryman in the film! I wish that I
had seen this trailer as a teenager, but no such luck. Think of the original
teaser trailer for Alien (1979) with the little egg and the piercing
shriek on the soundtrack.
This Blu-ray falls very
short of being considered a “special edition†despite the inclusion of a
fold-out poster of the cover art. I would have loved an audio commentary and I wonder
why this release is so sparse.
One thing is certain –
you’ll never experience Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik†the same way after
seeing the ending of Mortuary.
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Amberley
Books
RRP
£15.99
ISBN:
9781398101319
96
pages
140
colour images
15
Aug 2021
REVIEW BY ADRIAN SMITH
Collector
and historian John Buss is back again with another fascinating glimpse into the
world of 1960s adventure television series collectibles. Having already brought
us books on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and
The Avengers and New Avengers, this time we get to see items that fans of Danger Man (known in the U.S. as Secret Agent) and The Prisoner (both starring Patrick McGoohan) could beg their
parents for every Christmas.
Given
Danger Man’s more grounded, often
serious nature, there were not all that many toys or games, but there were
still many different items available, thanks to the show being a major hit
ultimately running to over eighty episodes since it began in 1960. There were
several novels released based on the show, which were translated and available
in several countries including Spain, Portugal, France and Germany. As well as
paperbacks, annuals were also available, and a comic strip was published in the
“TV Crimebusters Annual†in 1962, which also featured stories from The Avengers, Charlie Chan and Dixon of
Dock Green, the latter not the first show you would suggest turning into a
comic strip. Some actual full comics were published as well, firstly in America
and then in Spain, Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands. Only one full issue was
published in the UK. In this book you will find dozens of photos of every
publication that John Buss has been able to track down, also including TV
listings magazines featuring John Drake on the cover.
There
was also a Danger Man board game
issued in 1961, where some players committed acts of sabotage whilst another
player took on the role of John Drake. Fabulous stuff, and just one of the many
items in this book that will have you heading straight to eBay to see if you
can get one for yourself. The book even covers the many different soundtrack
releases on vinyl that have featured one of the versions of the Danger Man theme, including the
unexpected revelation that Bruce Willis recorded one in 1987.
The Prisoner was a
much bigger, glossier, high-concept show than Danger Man, and the available collectibles reflects that. As a result,
one might have expected a vast swathe of toys and other tie-ins. Perhaps its
more esoteric, nay confusing nature and its appeal towards a more grown-up
audience may be the reason that, aside from one Dinky toy car (of the Mini Moke
too, not even Number Six’s own car), what we mainly have here are novelisations
and comics. The Prisoner had its own
strips in TV Tornado and Smash, but no comic of its own. The Prisoner also featured in a set of
collectible trading cards, but that was about it during its original run. Only
years later when the show had firmly secured cult credentials would far more
items be created: one only has to visit the gift shop in Portmerion to see the
difference between The Prisoner’s
commercial potential now and in 1967.
Once
again, John Buss has created a fascinating publication that will appeal to
collectors and fans of 1960s television alike, and provides more evidence that
the author needs to be given the opportunity to curate his own museum.
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“BURLESQUE
LIVESâ€
By
Raymond Benson
Kino
Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present
“Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture†with Volume 12—the
double bill of Peek-A-Boo and “B†Girl Rhapsody, two
documentations of burlesque revues from the 1950s.
The
delicious and suitably sleazy pictures in the “Forbidden Fruit†series were
made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system. They were distributed
independently in the manner of a circus sideshow, often by renting a movie
theater for a few nights, advertising in the local papers, and promoting the
scandalous title as “educational.†It’s certain, however, that in this case
both features in Volume 12 were not educational in any way except to provide the
experience of burlesque shows to audiences who were unable to view them in
person.
This
reviewer, who usually welcomes and enthusiastically supports all the volumes in
the “Forbidden Fruit†series, found these two pictures sadly unwatchable, with
the caveat that Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ audio commentary on one of the
titles might well be worth the price of admission.
Burlesque
has a long history in the United States, and the entertainment form goes way
back nearly two hundred years. It was closely associated with vaudeville, but
at the beginning of the 20th Century burlesque broke off and became its own
thing—something a bit more ribald and forbidden. There were still musical
numbers of song and dance, and sketches by comedians who told groaner jokes—but
burlesque added the striptease act.
The
phenomenon flourished in the early half of the century, and especially in the ten
or so years after World War II it enjoyed popularity in the big cities. Burlesque
probably peaked in the early fifties, when these two documentaries—for that’s
really what they are—were filmed. Once we got into the 1960s, burlesque became
even more sleazy and was relegated to the more questionable and red light areas
of “downtown†until it faded away for good.
One
of the unsung impresarios of burlesque in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s was
Lillian Hunt, who managed burlesque performers, produced and directed stage
productions, and documented her work on film to be distributed independently.
Hunt was a former burlesque artist in her younger years, and the fact that she
directed ten feature films (albeit of this ilk) in a decade in which there were
very few women behind the camera is something that can’t be brushed aside.
Both
“B†Girl Rhapsody (1952) and Peek-A-Boo (1953) were staged in the
old Burbank Theater in L.A., renamed the “New Follies Theater†for these
burlesque productions. They were filmed mostly in long shot with a stationary
camera in the front row of the theater so that the full proscenium stage is in
the frame. It’s as if the viewer is in the audience watching the entire show. Sometimes
the camera cuts to a medium shot, at best, but there are never close-ups. As a
result, this does not make for very interesting viewing. The striptease acts
aside, the musical numbers and comedian sketches are, well, pretty bad. As both
audio commentators remark, the actor/comedians were so jaded from repeatedly
doing the routines night after night that the deliveries became rather
uninspired.
The
stripteases? Sure, the lovely ladies of a variety of shapes and sizes range from
being somewhat amateurish to quite accomplished dancers. Unfortunately, these
two titles feature none of the big name stars of the era like Lili St. Cyr,
Tempest Storm, or Blaze Starr. Note: there is never total nudity.
The
two features on Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray disk are surprisingly well preserved and
pristine. The audio commentary for Peek-A-Boo is by Eric Schaefer,
author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films,
and curator of the “Forbidden Fruit†series. He is always knowledgeable about
these subjects.
The
audio commentary for “B†Girl Rhapsody is by the previously-mentioned
and always entertaining Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, whose wit and insight into these
titles and exploitation films in general will make you laugh and appreciate
more fully what you are experiencing.
Theatrical
trailers round out the package.
While
Volume 12 of the “Forbidden Fruit†series is not quite up to par with the
preceding entries, these films of Old Burlesque might find their way into the
hearts of some viewers who are interested in the history of this unique
American art form.
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“YOU
CANNOT FOOL EVERYONE ALL THE TIMEâ€
By
Raymond Benson
Abraham
Lincoln once famously said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and
some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the
time.†That utterance is evoked in the course of Billy Wilder’s 1966 acerbic
comedy, The Fortune Cookie and it certainly applies to the legal goings-on as
instigated by “Whiplash Willie†Gingrich (Walter Matthau), an unscrupulous
lawyer who sets out to commit fraud against an insurance company for big bucks.
While
it’s arguable that the great Billy Wilder continued to make good films into the
1970s, The Fortune Cookie might be his last superb one. It’s no Some Like it
Hot or The Apartment, but the picture manages to evoke many laughs and also
exhibits what is perhaps the quintessential performance by Matthau.
Jack
Lemmon is sports news cameraman Harry Hinkle. During a Cleveland Browns game,
player “Boom Boom†Jackson (Ron Rich) accidentally runs—hard—into Hinkle and
knocks him for a loop. The stunned Hinkle is taken to the hospital, and Jackson
feels badly. Hinkle’s brother-in-law is Gingrich, who cooks up a scheme to make
a million dollars in a lawsuit against the Browns, Cleveland, and anyone else
that could be a target. He convinces the unwilling Hinkle to play along and
behave much more injured than he really is (he’s actually just fine). Hinkle’s
ex-wife, Sandy (Judi West), with whom Hinkle is still in love, joins in on the
charade because she believes she’ll get a big payoff. The opposing law firm
sends out investigator Clifford Purkey (Cliff Osmond) to spy on Hinkle to gain
evidence that the whole thing is a sham. Meanwhile, poor Jackson is so
distraught about the accident that his ability on the football field declines
until he must consider resigning. Then things get crazier.
Written
by Wilder and his authoring partner since 1957, I. A. L. Diamond, Cookie is a
tour-de-force vehicle for Walter Matthau, who deservedly won the Oscar for Best
Supporting Actor for his performance. The script and the character emphasize
every strength the actor has, from his blustering vocal delivery to his hound
dog facial expressions. He is very funny. Lemmon, who received top billing, is also
good—Hinkle is a stereotypical “Jack Lemmon roleâ€â€”but this is a movie that
belongs to Matthau.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray looks marvelous in its widescreen, glorious black and
white (yes, Hollywood still made black and white pictures in the mid-60s). It
comes with a new audio commentary by film historian Joseph McBride and optional
English subtitles. Supplements include two short clips introduced by filmmaker
Volker Schlöndorff from a filmed tribute to I. A. L. Diamond—a speech by Wilder
about his friend and collaborator, and a scene written by Diamond during his
school years, performed by Lemmon and Matthau and “directed†by Wilder. There
is also a short clip from Lemmon that was a call for extras to show up at the
Cleveland Browns’ stadium for a chance to be “in†the movie. Finally, there is
a Trailers From Hell analysis of the trailer with Chris Wilkinson and
theatrical trailers from other Kino Lorber titles.
By
the way, the “I. A. L.†of Diamond’s name stood for “Interscholastic Algebra
League†(his real name was Itzek)!
The
Fortune Cookie is for fans of Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, Jack Lemmon,
and especially Walter Matthau. Fun stuff.
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