BY TODD GARBARINI

Having been a film fanatic my entire life I was thrilled when, in June 1982, a new magazine burst onto the scene and quickly caught my attention. Devoted exclusively to new and upcoming motion picture releases, Coming Attractions cost $2.50 per issue and was published on a bi-monthly basis. It didn’t last long, unfortunately, but I recall that a bit of an uproar occurred over the cover of the March/April 1983 issue which featured a half-naked Valerie Kaprisky in a promo for the Breathless remake. Seriously, back in the day who complained about a beautiful naked woman on a magazine cover??

In one of the earlier issues, there was an article published about an upcoming horror film entitled Trick or Treats starring David Carradine. I don’t recall the film ever opening in my area and wondered whatever happened to it until I saw it on the shelf as a VHS rental a few years later in a local video store. Trick or Treats is not to be confused with the 1986 Dino De Laurentiis film Trick or Treat, directed by Charles Martin Smith, or the 2007 Michael Dougherty-directed vignette film Trick r Treat. It’s a strange concoction that cannot seem to make up its mind as to what it wants to be. My guess is that it’s attempting to be serious but fails miserably at it. It’s a mixture of horror and absurdist elements that almost play like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Filmed mostly in Neil Young’s house that his then-girlfriend, actress Carrie Snodgress, lived in at the time on South Irving Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA, the film opens in 1978 and Malcolm O'Keefe (Peter Jason) just wants to read the morning paper, but his wife Joan (Carrie Snodgress) has other plans. Out of nowhere, she has two burly men fight to get Malcolm into a strait jacket while affording no explanation. Their antics are humorous and silly, and we have no idea why it’s even happening. Apparently, he’s being carted off to a mental institution where he stays until 1982 and plans his escape. None of this is even remotely believable as it raises too many questions – is he really insane? How did his wife arrange this? Why would anyone go along with it? Do the doctors know? As he’s planning his escape, Joan is now with Richard (David Carradine, the star of the film, who has less than ten minutes of screen time) and has an eight-year-old son, Christopher (is he Malcolm’s son or Richard’s son from a previous marriage? None of this is explained). Christopher (Christopher O’Keefe) is a practical jokester, an aspiring magician and aficionado of Harry Houdini. Joan and Richard decide to head to Vegas for a Halloween party and call their babysitter, Linda (Jacqueline Giroux), requesting her services to watch him and dole out candy to trick or treaters. Linda is an actress and is torn between seeing her boyfriend Bret (Steve Railsback) in his acting debut in Othello (I swear, I’m not making this up) or making the extra money. She chooses the latter despite Bret’s insistence on her presence at the play. The boyfriend doth protest too much. Richard tries to put the moves on Linda but is stopped by Joan. Despite this, they leave for the Playground of the World, and this gives Christopher all the time he needs to torture Linda by playing jokes on her that she continually falls for: sticking his head into a fake guillotine (remember this for the ending!), using a buzzer while shaking hands, pretending to cut off his finger and even feigning drowning in the family swimming pool. After so many instances of this, one must wonder how dim-witted Linda really is.

Things get really ridiculous when Malcolm escapes by donning a nurse’s outfit – and everyone he meets treats him as though he’s female. He’s a guy with a guy’s face and a guy’s voice! He makes his way back to the house and hides in the attic. Another subplot featuring two additional young women working on a film that Linda appears in comes out of nowhere. One of the women, Andrea (the late Jillian Kesner), goes to the house and spends a lot of time looking around very slowly just to pad out the running time until the final showdown with Malcolm…

If you’re looking for a serious horror film, this one’s going to be a disappointment. The credits even list Orson Welles as a “magical consultant”. I can definitely see the influence of Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958) on this flick. Yikes! Mr. Welles put his “magical consulting” to better use two years later in the pilot episode of NBC-TV’s short-lived Scene of the Crime series which aired on Sunday, September 30, 1984. In the second story of the pilot, called “The Babysitter” and penned by Jeffrey Boam, the title character is left in charge of a prepubescent girl whom she antagonizes while the girl’s parents go out for the night. The girl gets her revenge in a very cool ending by making a wish to a magician topper that appeared on her birthday cake. That episode was better than this film. Mr. Welles should have put his full “magical” powers to work and made Trick or Treats disappear. The film would have worked better as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, which ran from September 1984 to July 1988 in syndication, and without the camp. Christopher constantly annoying Linda gets tiresome, though I give the film props for the scene wherein Christopher sorts through his LP record collection which consist of the soundtracks to Maniac (1980), The Howling (1981), and the BBC Sound Effects No. 13 - Death & Horror album from 1977 that my friend and I used to play in the early 1980s.

Trick or Treats debuted on DVD in November 2013 and has now been released in high definition on Blu-ray by Code Red (probably the same transfer, though this time it’s more colorful and clearer due to the high definition afforded in the Blu-ray format) with the same audio commentary which runs the entire length of the film and contains five people: Jackie Giroux, Peter Jason, Chris Graver and Cameraman R. Michael Stringer, moderated by Sean Graver. The big problem with the commentary is the audio quality – it’s poorly miked and begins with no introductions at all. It’s also too low. I loved listening to it, but at times I didn’t even know who was speaking. Commentaries as an extra are something that I love on any disc, but if it sounds as though the people who are speaking are on the other side of the room…hey, great title for an Orson Welles movie!

There is an audio interview with actor Steve Railsback that adds little value to the package.

There is something called “Katarina’s Bucketlist” mode wherein the hostess talks about the cast and does an Elvira, Mistress of the Dark-inspired schtick.

There are no trailers, interestingly.

The bottom line: I love a campy horror film, but if you’re going to be silly, make sure that you market it that way. Don’t sell it as something in the same vein (no pun intended, naturally) as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Otherwise, you might feel like Charlie Brown did on Halloween…you go out for candy, but all you end up with is a rock.

For a limited time, Universal is offering free streaming of the 1980 horror flick "The Awakening" starring Charlton Heston and Susannah York. 

Together with his assistant Jane, the British archaeologist Matthew Corbeck discovers the intact grave of the Egyptian Queen Kara. The pharaoh ruled as a cruel ruler 3,800 years ago. One prophecy says that whoever finds her grave is doomed. And indeed: Queen Kara returns from the realm of the dead.

BY HANK REINEKE

In the early spring of 1961, shortly following the completion of his work on A.I.P.’s Master of the World - and following a series of lectures regarding “The Enjoyment of Great Art” – Renaissance man Vincent Price was to jet off mid-April for two acting assignments in Rome, Italy. The two productions he had signed onto for producer-writer Ottavio Poggi were Gordon, il Pirata Nero (Gordon, the Black Pirate) and Nefertiti, Regina Del Nile (Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile). The former film – arguably the better of the two - was belatedly released in the U.S. in June 1963 under the title Rage of the Buccaneers. The film was distributed regionally in the U.S. with neither fanfare nor critical attention.

Rage of the Buccaneers would first appear on the drive-in circuit as the odd undercard to such films as Broccoli and Saltzman’s Bob Hope/Anita Ekberg comedy Call Me Bwana. Rage was later paired, a bit more sensibly, with The Playgirls and the Vampire, an Italian-horror production mostly recalled by old-school monster movie fans and admirers of voluptuous continental on-screen beauties. The weak-tea newspaper campaign in the U.S. for Rage of the Buccaneers could have hardly been helpful in exciting foot traffic into neighborhood cinemas. Though the posters for the U.S. release promised Furious Action! Passionate Love!, the accompanying newspaper adverts offered the far less sensational promise of Excitement plus… Emotional Turbulence. Emotional Turbulence? Meh.

In truth, Rage of the Buccaneers would be dimly recalled, if at all, by U.S. movie fans due to it popping up on television as 1964 drew to a close. In early November of 1964 it was announced - with some degree of ballyhoo - that the NBC network had acquired no fewer than eight post-1960 “first-run” films for television distribution. But even the network’s big newspaper announcement was late out of the starting block. Rage of the Buccaneers had already been televised by several NBC affiliates as early as September 1964.

Several essays and film books would note that Price’s latter ill-fated Italian film, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile would not actually see a theatrical release in the U.S. market. This is actually untrue. The film had the briefest of runs – as a second feature in support of the Buddy Ebsen comedy Mail Order Bride - at a drive-in theater outside of Phoenix, AZ in March 1964. The film then seemingly disappeared from movie screens - both big and small - until it was picked up as a late-night television programmer in 1966. Shortly thereafter, Nefertiti too fell pretty much off the face of the planet, at least as far as U.S. audiences were concerned.

Then, in 1985, with the home video boom in the ascendant, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile was briefly resurrected as a “big box” VHS cassette release in the U.S. on the Force Video label. In the UK, there were at least two video cassette releases of Gordon, il Pirata Nero, first as The Black Pirate (Apex Video) and later as Gordon, The Black Pirate (Midas Video). As far as I’m aware, these are the only three editions of these two obscure Vincent Price films to be officially released on the English-speaking home video market, though there are bootlegs circulating of both films. I only dredge up this old history in the, perhaps, overly optimistic hope that Kino Lorber might make note of these glaring deficiencies in their own burgeoning catalog of Vincent Price home video offerings.

In any case, Price’s second professional visit to Italy would prove to be more successful. In January of 1963, Hollywood scene gossip columnists reported that Price would celebrate the New Year by preparing a return to Italy for a “Halloween release of his next horror movie, The Last Man on Earth.” The film was to be based on the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Matheson’s novel, the author’s first, was published in August of 1954 by Fawcett Gold Medal books. It was a slim paperback of one-hundred and sixty pages, but Matheson was no amateur writer, having previously published a score of science-fiction-based short stories in magazines and anthologies.

Matheson’s novel was optioned by Britain’s Hammer Films in 1957, that studio even commissioning the author to write a screenplay for a proposed production. The problem was that the British censor board found Matheson’s screenplay unrelentingly grim and violent, warning should any production be mounted, there was little chance that the film would pass code. So a wary Anthony Hinds at Hammer chose to sell the rights of Matheson’s screenplay to American producer and cinema theater chain owner Robert L. Lippert (Curse of the Fly). Lippert subsequently engaged Price to star in the project, traveling to Rome in late summer of 1962 to arrange crew and casting of the film’s Italian supporting players.

Matheson’s I am Legend recounts the final years of Robert Neville, one of the few survivors of a pandemic turned plague that killed off most of the earth’s population. The rub is that while those afflicted remained technically dead, they retained mobility. Neville goes to great lengths to investigate why the “undead” have transformed into bacillus vampires of a sort: they drink blood and avoid the rays of the sun much as did the Gothic and folkloric vampires of yore did. But otherwise they remained mostly human in appearance save for a decided graveyard pallor.

Neville (renamed Robert Morgan in the film) is a reluctant, modern day, post-apocalyptic Van Helsing. He has chosen to actively seek out and confront the vampire hordes. He really has no other choice as, much to his disdain, he’s under near-constant assault by them. Matheson’s book is an undeniably grim one with an equally fatalistic ending, but his slim volume would go on to influence countless filmmakers and aspiring science-fiction writers in years following publication. In manner of tone and presentation, it’s reasonable to say that George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was highly and undeniably influenced by The Last Man on Earth.

Price wasn’t terribly excited to travel to Italy in the grim winter season of 1963, but the offer to visit Rome would give the actor the opportunity to canvas galleries and antique stores in search of artworks. In June of 1962 it was announced that Price had entered into his semi-famous partnership with the Sears, Roebuck & Co. to search out art that could be consigned and sold as lithographs through the department store chain. This interest in art was a lifelong passion of the actor’s and he had already been collecting artworks for Sears a month prior to the official press release of their collaboration. The actor told columnist Bob Thomas that his searching out the Vincent Price Collection for Sears had already resulted in a “whirl” of activity, and that he’d already “bought 1,700 paintings and etchings: I’ve got to have 2,500 before the sale starts.”

By Mid-January of 1963 Price was already in Europe, first visiting Paris before traveling on to Rome to begin filming. In the space of three days and visits to the galleries and artist studios of the City of Lights, Price offered that he had already purchased one hundred and fifty paintings that he thought Sears could sell for $300 or less back in the U.S. Columnist Doris Sanders noted that Price had already admitted dropping four thousand U.S. dollars on the very first day of his Parisian shopping spree. It was also noted that the artists Price approached were appreciably happy as the actor – funded by his corporate sponsor - always chose to pay cash up-front.

Cinema Retro celebrated the 50th anniversary of this classic film in issue #50 with Todd Garbarini's exclusive interview with director William Friedkin, actor Tony LoBianco and technical advisor and actor Randy Jurgensen. The film won the Best Picture Oscar, Best Actor for Gene Hackman and Best Director for Friedkin. Time has been kind to the film...in fact it plays as effectively now as it did back in '71. 

BY HANK REINEKE

There’s a telling moment at the dénouement of Thomas Hamilton’s and Ron MacCloskey’s affectionate documentary Boris Karloff: The Man behind the Monster. Sara Karloff, the now eighty-two year old daughter of the beloved actor, opines that her father’s lasting cinematic legacy is due, in part, to the tenaciousness of his devoted fan base. It’s a demographic that we soon discover consists of a number of amazingly creative people: folks whose loyalty to and enthusiasm for Karloff’s work has not wavered over the decades. Sara’s contention is inarguably true. As this ninety-nine minute Voltage Films/Abramorama documentary (presented by Shout! Studios) unspools – crisply narrated by Paul Ryan and featuring commentary by preeminent Karloff scholar and “Biographical Consultant” Stephen Jacobs - we discover the actor’s admirer’s bridge several generations of fans and filmmakers.

The first generation to discover Karloff in the decades following his big splash as the Frankenstein monster in 1931, include directors Roger Corman and Peter Bogdanovich. Both men would have the opportunity and honor to work with the actor in his twilight years. The second generation of admirers were those introduced to Karloff via neighborhood cinema screenings or through television broadcasts of Shock Theater in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

These filmmakers, profoundly influenced by Karloff’s art, would go on to create a few cinematic gems of their own: John Landis, Joe Dante, and Guillermo Del Toro, to name a few. The latter gentleman is particularly effusive in his praise, describing Karloff’s performance as the vampiric Wurdalak in Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath as a “tremendous” example of the great actor’s “physical presence, his majesty, his demonic power.”

If the documentary is chock-full of talented filmmakers offering tributes, the film is also supported by the erudite commentaries of film scholars David J. Skal (The Monster Show: a Cultural History of Horror), Gregory W. Mank (Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: the Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration), Donald F. Glut (The Frankenstein Legend: a tribute to Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff), Sir Christopher Frayling (Frankenstein: the first Two Hundred Years), and critic Leonard Maltin.

There are also short tributes and reminisces by several actors – three now gone - who had worked with Karloff at some point in their career: Dick Miller (The Terror), Christopher Plummer (The Lark, Even the Weariest River), Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers), and Orson Bean (Arsenic and Old Lace). Karloff’s tells part of his own story through audio recordings made available to the filmmakers courtesy of the British cinema historian/author Kevin Brownlow (The Parades Gone By…) and the Pacifica Radio Archive.

It has long annoyed me that when one searches out the term “Boris Karloff” in the ever-expanding IMDB, the resulting prompt identifies the actor’s signature film as The Grinch that Stole Christmas (1966). My daughters would remind me that my personal agitation of this result is, by definition, a “first world” problem, one hardly worthy of condemnation. But as cinema’s preeminent boogeyman for four decades, seeing Karloff’s storied career reduced to a role featuring only his disembodied voice as the Grinch… Well, let’s just say that I still find it somewhat misleading and inappropriate.

Be that as it may, Hamilton’s film reminds Karloff himself might disagree with my wariness of the Grinch being bandied as the cinematic crown jewel of the actor’s legacy. Sara Karloff recalls receiving a phone call from her father immediately following his recording of the narration for that beloved Dr. Seuss vehicle. The actor we learn was profoundly happy with his work on the now-famous animated holiday classic, telling his daughter proudly, “I’ve done something which I think is pretty good.”

Karloff would pass away a couple of years following the first broadcast of The Grinch that Stole Christmas, but he worked to the very end of his days, appearing in a number of memorable – and a few less-than-memorable – films, several of which would see release in years following his passing. His last films were little more than cameo-length appearances shot on a Hollywood sound stage. It was director Jack Hill’s idea to take the Karloff footage from these shoots and blend the results into a series of Mexican horror films. Karloff, rightly and proudly, would choose to refer to his spell-binding turn as the semi-autobiographical aging horror film actor Byron Orlok in Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) as his feature film swan song. Technically, it wasn’t. But the brief appearances in that post- Target series of Hollywood-Mexico co-production mash-ups were mostly an excuse for an old pro to continue to ply his trade and keep busy. But working oxygen-tank dependent and wheelchair bound on the Jack Hill-directed sequences, Karloff was prevented from doing much of anything with the already somewhat cut-and-paste material given to him.

Karloff, of course, was not the only “horror film” star of the genre’s celebrated Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s. Karloff, we learn, was actually not happy with the designation “horror movie”, much preferring his films to be termed as “thrillers.” His contemporary competitor as grand ghoul of the horror film - one whose own legacy would burn bright into the next century - was Bela Lugosi. Although Lugosi had too often played second-fiddle to Karloff in matters of employment and billing, the Hungarian’s post-mortem fame may have eclipsed his friend’s over the last several decades.

For starters, Lugosi’s sad and lurid dependency on morphine and alcohol in his final years made him the subject of tabloid fodder, and gossip then – and now – still rules. Lugosi’s slow demise coupled with his appearances in several of Edward J. Wood’s revered cult films brought him a big degree of post-mortem fame. A brand new generation would discover the actor through Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning turn as Lugosi in Tim Burton’s semi-biographical drama Ed Wood.

To be fair, Lugosi’s string of mad performances in Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Glen or Glenda (1953) are, in many ways, were no less better or worse or more undistinguished than Karloff’s walk-ons in the creaky Jack Hill/Mexi-horror films of spring 1968. Though both sets of films are passably entertaining in their own uneven, cult-ish ways, both actor’s cinematic exits were ignoble ends to these two great men who famously made audiences shiver in 1931.

James Whale’s Frankenstein would ultimately transform Karloff into a full-fledged movie star, but it had been a long road to achieving such fame. The actor had been working on various Hollywood backlots since the silent era. In the course of his earliest silent film efforts – beginning with such titles as The Lightning Raider (1919) and His Majesty, the American (1919) – he worked as little more than an extra. His subsequent fame would cause a score of budding film historians to carefully survey battered old prints of Karloff’s earliest filmography in the often futile hope of catching a glimpse as he passed by the camera.

In truth, his decade-long career as a silent film actor was mostly non consequential. He would appear in approximately sixty or so silent films between 1919 and 1929. He would, on occasion, be gifted a role of some heft, most notably as that of “The Mesmerist” in The Bells (1926) opposite Lionel Barrymore, but he was most often cast in adventure-orientated serials as a heavy, or as a Hindu, Mexican or an Arab, a mystic or a general ne’er-do-well.

It was his casting as the sadistic “Galloway” in Howard Hawk’s sound prison drama The Criminal Code (1930) that brought him to the attention of Universal executives looking to cast a suitably cadaverous-appearing actor as the Frankenstein monster. Following Lugosi’s rejection of the part due to the absence of dialogue afforded, Bela’s pass on the role was fortuitous for Karloff. He was still hungry and looking for that big break. Although the role of the monster would forever typecast him, the actor remained forever grateful for having taking the role in Frankenstein, once describing the career door-opening creature as “the best friend I ever had.”

It’s not hard to see why Karloff’s portrayal of the monster remains the preeminent of the Universal series. He was, after all, the only actor to have been given the opportunity to actually act and emote, to bring a sense of pathos to the role. He was abetted, of course, by Jack Pierce’s iconic make-up which, rather than masking, cannily sculpted and made highlight of Karloff’s facial features and sunken cheeks. This gave the monster, according to one of the participants in the documentary, a “full expression range.” The trio of actors who would subsequently portray the monster in the Universal series simply weren’t given the opportunity to apply any emotive effect of their own. Even by Son of Frankenstein (1939), the third film in the series, the screenwriters had already reduced the monster into little more than a hulking, lumbering menace and henchman.

It is discouraging to learn that when Frankenstein had its gala premiere in the autumn of 1931, Karloff was not even invited to attend. He was already forty-four years of age when he assumed the role, a no-name celebrity and hardly a handsome matinee idol of any recognition. The unexpected phenomenal success of Frankenstein would change all that, and Universal was quick to capitalize on the actor’s sudden notoriety as Hollywood’s most beloved boogeyman. Karloff’s natural proclivity for taking on roles of menacing villainous characters with icy stares would allow his casting into a string of Golden Age horror classics – not only for Universal but for other studios as well, including memorable turn in MGM’s The Mask of Fu Manchu. The latter remains a great, entertaining film… if undeniably one of the most politically-incorrect lavish big studio productions of the 1930s.

When the market for horror films softened in the mid-1940s – thanks, in part, due to the horror genre’s continuing perceived transgressions of the Hays Code - Karloff easily transitioned to character roles, where, according to his daughter, her father’s natural “dark coloring,” permitted him to slip easily into “ethnic roles.” As one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild, he was able to exercise his freelance status by working for, amongst others, RKO, Columbia, Monogram, and Warner Bros.

Another avenue of opportunity had presented itself around this same time. In 1941 Karloff was lured, against his better judgement according to this film, to take on the Broadway role of the villainous Jonathan Brewster in Joseph L. Kesselring’s stage play Arsenic and Old Lace. It was to his life-long disappointment that a clause in his theatrical stage contract prevented his returning to Hollywood – as did several fellow members of the original Broadway cast – to reprise the role for the much beloved Frank Capra film adaptation of 1944.

Though initially frightened to work in theatre before a live audience, the success of Arsenic emboldened Karloff to accept several other roles in such Broadway productions as The Lark (with Julie Harris), The Linden Tree, The Shop at Sly Corner, and even in a memorable turn as Captain Hook in a 1950 production of Peter Pan. Fortunately, we of a certain age who missed out still can get a small taste of what we missed since kinescopes survive from early Hallmark Hall of Fame broadcasts of the original production of The Lark and a 1961 re-staging of Arsenic and Old Lace.

Though Karloff’s work in radio is mostly ignored in this documentary, the film does take pains to point out that he was among the first movie stars of his generation to fully embrace television. Though he would often appear in serious television dramas for such programs as Texaco Star Theater or Playhouse 90, he was not above spoofing his own curious fame as Hollywood’s grandest ghoul on any number of variety programs hosted by the likes of Red Skelton or Dinah Shore.

In the 1960s, he would famously host (and occasionally act) in episodes of the television program Thriller, or appear in drag as “Mother Muffin” in an episode of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E – or with former U.N.C.L.E. agent Robert Vaughn in the spy-film The Venetian Affair (1966). Joe Dante also references the series of wonderful long-playing albums Karloff would record over the years, his unmistakable, lisping voice introducing children to a wonderful selection of folk tales, ghost stories, Washington Irving classics, and time-worn fables.

Karloff's late career guest star appearance in "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E." as Mother Muffin, opposite Stefanie Powers and Robert Vaughn.

Boris Karloff: the Man behind the Monster reminds us that the actor (1887-1969) accomplished a lot in his eighty-one-years, a large percentage of which would encompass appearances on screen, on stage, on air, on record, and on television. To their credit, the filmmakers share what they can in the constraint of the film’ ninety-nine minute running time, and the film certainly succeeds as an excellent primer. Karloff wonks like myself might hold out hope that a multi-part, Ken Burns-style series might someday be put into the works, but I imagine that’s unlikely. One hundred and thirty four years have passed since Karloff’s birth. The fact that contemporary audiences remain completely entranced by his filmography in 2021 is testament enough to the worthiness of this loving tribute painting him as one of Hollywood’s greatest.

For details about how to view the film, click here.

“The Evil Dead” by Lloyd Haynes

Devil’s Advocate series

Auteur, an imprint of Liverpool University Press

ISBN: 9781800859357

113 pages

Paperback

RRP £19.99

The Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi) is one of those film titles that can still conjure up images of forbidden horrors, liable to corrupt and deprave anyone who dares to take a peek at the screen. Its inclusion on the original “Video Nasties” list by the UK’s Director of Public Prosecution back in the early 1980s brought it an undeserved infamy and reputation which, despite winning its day in court, it retains to this day. However, if you are brave enough to watch The Evil Dead, instead of developing homicidal urges, what you will actually find is an imaginative, breathlessly entertaining ‘Cabin in the Woods’ horror film with deliberately over-the-top performances, stylised camerawork, comedic timing and bravura special effects, all washed down with gallons of fake blood.

Much has been written about The Evil Dead since its release forty years ago, most of which focuses on the stories around its production or the furore caused by its release on an unsuspecting public. In this piece of writing, film journalist Lloyd Haynes gathers the best stories and weaves them together with his own analysis of the film. He connects it to gothic literature through the theory of the ‘Bad Place’ motif, offering insight into its broader cultural significance, and also discusses the way in which the film’s hero, played by Bruce Campbell, conforms to the now familiar tropes of the ‘Final Girl’, although surprisingly he fails to note the significance of the character’s gender-neutral name Ashley in subtly underlining his suitability to be the only survivor.

This book also takes a look at the film’s two official sequels, the authorised reboot in 2013 and the hugely entertaining TV series Ash vs Evil Dead (2015-2018), and considers films inspired by both the original film and the franchise as a whole.

If you are looking for a quick yet in-depth dive into the world of The Evil Dead, this latest volume in the Devil’s Advocate series is the perfect place to start.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON UK

“EVER DONE ANY BOONDOGGLING?”

By Raymond Benson

Continuing the examination of Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray releases of the W. C. Fields catalog of classic comedies, we now look at The Bank Dick, easily one of the actor/comedian’s greatest works.

Released in 1940 (titled The Bank Detective in the U.K.), Fields was starting to wind down, whether he knew it or not. Alcoholism was taking its toll, and it wouldn’t be long before his amazing run in cinema since the silent era would soon come to an end. He still had some surprises in his pockets, though, and The Bank Dick was one of them.

“Ever done in any boondoggling?” Fields, as Egbert Sousé, submits to another character in the film. In a way, he’s asking that of the audience, too. For The Bank Dick is nothing but a load of boondoggling, and funny stuff it is.

Sousé is the shame of his family. Most folks mispronounce his name, calling him what he is—a souse. His shrew of a wife, Agatha (Cora Witherspoon), his demon of a mother-in-law, Hermisillo (Jessie Ralph), his mortified daughter, Myrtle (Una Merkel), and youngest daughter, Elsie Mae (Evelyn Del Rio), all make poor Egbert’s life miserable. All he wants to do is spend time at the Black Pussy Cat Café, a saloon run by his pal Joe (Shemp Howard). (“Was I in here last night and did I spend a twenty dollar bill?” he asks Joe, who replies affirmatively. Egbert is relieved. “Oh boy, what a load that is off my mind! I thought I’d lost it!”) However, Egbert’s luck changes one day when the director of a film really gets soused and can’t work. The A.D. grabs Egbert and offers him the job to step in. Then, during a lunch break on the set, Egbert unwittingly foils a bank robbery. As a result of his “heroism,” he’s offered a job as a “bank dick.” It so happens that Myrtle’s boyfriend, Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton) works at the same bank. When auditor J. Pinkerton Snoopington (Franklin Pangborn) arrives to work the books, Og is afraid the man will discover financial juggling that he and his future father-in-law have committed. Hilarity ensues.

Written by Fields (as Mahatma Kane Jeeves—“my hat, my cane, Jeeves!”), the picture contains an abundance of the actor’s funniest lines and comebacks. He is also surrounded by numerous other wacky character actors, creating a theatre of the absurd that culminates in one of the craziest car chases put on film. Director Edward Cline was no slouch when it came to comedy—he had collaborated with Buster Keaton in the 1920s, as well as with Fields, most recently on the Fields/Mae West co-starrer, My Little Chickadee. Cline’s control of the action and the anything-can-happen antics of his star is impressive. It’s no wonder that Cline and Fields were a good team.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks appropriately grainy but with a sheen that previous DVD releases were without. The feature comes with an audio commentary by the knowledgeable film historian Michael Schlesinger, who always gives good gab. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino Lorber titles, completes the presentation.

The Bank Dick is priceless comedy. It’s one of the two or three titles that belong in a time capsule sporting the identifying label: “This was W. C. Fields.” Highly recommended.

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Relish these U.S. movie presentation promos from CBS TV and its affiliates from the 1970s and 1980s, presented appropriately in grainy VHS transfers!

We admit we're geeks when it comes to old film advertisements such as these New York print ads for "Let It Be" (1969) and a 1970s quadruple feature of all four Fab Four feature films released by United Artists.

CELEBRATE NINE DECADES OF YOUR FAVORITE MONSTERS ON 4K FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN COLLECTIBLE PACKAGING

AVAILABLE ON 4K, BLU-RAYâ„¢ AND DIGITAL ON OCTOBER 5, 2021

FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT

SYNOPSIS: From the era of silent movies through present day, Universal Pictures has been regarded as the home of the monsters. Universal Classic Monsters Icons of Horror Collection showcases four of the most iconic monsters in motion picture history including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man. Starring Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr. and Claude Rains in the roles that they made famous, these original films set the standard for a new horror genre with revolutionary makeup, mood-altering cinematography and groundbreaking special effects.

CLASSIC MONSTER FILMS INCLUDED:

• Dracula (90th Anniversary)

• Frankenstein (90th Anniversary)

• The Invisible Man

• The Wolf Man (80th Anniversary)

HOURS OF BONUS CONTENT, INCLUDING:

• The Road to Dracula

• The Frankenstein Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster

• Karloff: The Gentle Monster
  

• Monster by Moonlight

• The Wolf Man: From Ancient Curse to Modern Myth
• Now Your See Him: The Invisible Man Revealed

Universal Classic Monsters Icons of Horror Collection will be available on 4K, Blu-rayâ„¢ and Digital.

• 4K Ultra HD is the ultimate movie watching experience. 4K Ultra HD features the combination of 4K resolution for four times sharper picture than HD, the color brilliance of High Dynamic Range (HDR) with immersive audio delivering a multidimensional sound experience.
• Blu-ray^â„¢ unleashes the power of your HDTV and is the best way to watch movies at home, featuring 6X the picture resolution of DVD, exclusive extras and theater-quality surround sound.
• Digital lets fans watch movies anywhere on their favorite devices. Users can instantly stream or download.
• The Movies Anywhere Digital App simplifies and enhances the digital movie collection and viewing experience by allowing consumers to access their favorite digital movies in one place when purchased or redeemed through participating digital retailers. Consumers can also redeem digital copy codes found in eligible Blu-ray^TM and DVD disc packages from participating studios and stream or download them through Movies Anywhere.  Movies Anywhere is available only in the United States.

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Twitter: @UniAllAccess

Tiktok: @universalallaccess

DRACULA FILMMAKERS:

Actors: Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), David Manners (John Harker), Edward an Sloan (Prof. Abraham Van Helsing), Helen Chandler (Mina Harker), Dwight Frye (Renfield), Frances Dade (Lucy Weston)

Director: Tod Browning

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr., Tod Browning

Screenplay: Garrett Fort

Based on the Work(s) of: Bram Stoker, Hamilton Deane, John L. Balderston

FRANKENSTEIN FILMMAKERS:

Actors: Boris Karloff (The Monster), Colin Clive (Dr. Henry Frankenstein), John Boles (Victor Moritz), Mae Clarke (Elizabeth), Edward Van Sloan (Dr. Waldman), Dwight Frye (Fritz), Frederic Kerr (Baron Frankenstein)

Director: James Whale

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Screenplay: Garrett Fort, Francis Edwards Faragoh

Based on the Work(s) of: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Peggy Webling, John L. Balderston

THE INVISIBLE MAN FILMMAKERS:

Actors: Claude Rains (Jack Griffin / The Invisible Man), Gloria Stuart (Flora Cranley), William Harrigan (Dr. Arthur Kemp), Dudley Digges (Chief Detective), Una O’Connor (Jenny Hall), Henry Travers (Dr. Cranley), Forrester Harvey (Herbert Hall)

Director: James Whale

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Screenplay: R.C. Sherriff

Based on the Work(s) of: H.G. Wells

THE WOLF MAN FILMMAKERS:

Actors: Lon Chaney, Jr. (The Wolf Man / Larry Talbot), Bela Lugosi (Bela), Claude Rains (Sir John Talbot), Warren William (Dr. Lloyd), Ralph Bellamy (Col. Montford), Patric Knowles (Frank Andrews), Maria Ouspenskaya (Maleva), Evelyn Ankers (Gwen Conliffe)

Director: George Waggner

Producer: George Waggner

Screenplay: Curt Siodmak

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Send-ups of classic horror films are nothing new. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello starred in the granddaddy of horror comedies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in 1948 after the original working script The Brain of Frankenstein had its title changed. They later took on the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Boris Karloff himself. Mel Brooks danced his way into the cinema history books by making his own comic version of the fabled Mary Shelley classic of a deranged scientist fabricating a man made from body parts and even had the guts to shoot the film in black and white on the original soundstages that James Whale used just over forty years earlier: Young Frankenstein (1974) was the result. The lesser-known Texas-lensed Student Bodies (1981) from Woody Allen collaborator Mickey Rose did an admirable job of poking fun at the slasher movie subgenre that plagued American movie theaters through most of the early to mid-1980’s and is still humorous today, even after the Scary Movie franchise.

I was introduced to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in September 1982 in Fangoria Magazine (issue #22) from their “Horror-Host Series” by Dan Farren. Having begun as a horror hostess in September 1981 on Southern California’s KHJ-TV’s Movie Macabre weekend show, Elvira (in reality red-haired actress Cassandra Peterson) slowly made her way into syndicated television markets and became a huge sensation, turning verbally ragging on silly horror and science fiction B movies into an art form. The schtick-laden show ran 137 episodes over five years. Well-endowed with impossible-to-not-see cleavage, a huge mane of dark hair and deep red lipstick, Elvira eventually starred in her own film, the 1988 outing Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. While many other Elvira outings occurred in the form of short films and TV-movies, Ms. Petersen reprised her role in Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2002), a loving parody of the Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe/Roger Corman thrillers of the 1960’s that she and the filmmakers saw in their youth.

It is the year 1851 and the setting is the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Elvira and her maid Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith) are forced out of their room by an innkeeper who does his best Jack Torrance impression from The Shining to rid the premises of these freeloaders. On their way to a can-can show they are due to perform in Paris, they encounter Dr. Bradley Bradley (Scott Atkinson) – no relation to Humbert Humbert – who invites them into his coach to stay the night at Castle Hellsubus. Upon arrival, they meet Lady Emma Hellsubus (Mary Scheer), Count Vladimere Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien) and Lady Roxana (Heather Hopper), Lady Emma and Count Vladimere’s daughter. It turns out that Elvira bears more than a striking resemblance to Count Vladimere Hellsubus’s deceased wife, Elura (not to be confused with the capromorelin oral solution indicated for the management of weight loss in cats with chronic kidney disease of the same name. Whew!)

While investigating the castle, Elvira stumbles into the room of Adrian (Gabi Andronache in a role originally intended for Fabio who declined), a deliberately poorly dubbed hunk with mismatched lips and dialog in a direct nod to Italian horror films. Elvira gives the folks an example of her can-can show and later Count Vladimere thinks Elura is alive after seeing her in the hallway and blames it on a hallucination.

There are several laugh out-loud moments, one involving an empty knight suit, a throw-away line about the Village People, a visual zoom a la Jaws (1975), and other modern-day film references. Even the Academy Awards aren’t off-limits. The ageless Ms. Peterson is endearing in her Elvira get-up and obviously the title is a comic play on her famous, always-on-display assets. This is a film played for laughs and it is amusing and fun. The real stars, however, are the beautiful and opulent sets fashioned by the Romanian crew modeled primarily after The Pit and The Pendulum (1961) and The Haunted Palace (1963). I was even reminded of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s The House That Screamed (1969). The beautiful lighting is also reminiscent of cinematographer Luciano Tovoli’s colorful work on Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and Romano Albani’s lighting schemes in Suspiria’s follow-up, Inferno (1980).

Elvira does a fun song number and Richard O’Brien at times looks like Reggie Nalder as Mr. Barlow in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot (1979).

Elvira’s Haunted Hills was originally released on DVD in October 2002 and again in October 2011 in a “Specially Enhanced Edition”. The bonus features are all ported over from the previous DVD incarnations:

The Blu-ray consists of a restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative and it looks stunning in 1080p. The original DVDs did not grasp the image so well and were often murky and dark. This transfer is bright, colorful and clear and the sets look amazing.

There is an introduction by Elvira, Mistress of The Dark which is comical and runs 4:40.

There is an audio commentary with Cassandra Peterson, Mary Scheer, Mary Jo Smith and Scott Atkinson, and Director Sam Irvin who all have terrific fun commenting on the action and memories of filming on a shoestring.

Transylvania or Bust Featurette – this cutely-titled High Definition piece from 2011 runs just over 28 minutes and includes Mary Jo Smith, Mary Scheer, Scott Atkinson and others discussing their experiences not just making the film, but the misadventures entailed in getting to the locations, which were more scary than what ends up in onscreen!

The Making of Elvira’s Haunted Hills is Standard Definition, runs 22 minutes and features interviews with much of the cast and crew, but best of all it contains behind-the-scenes footage shot during principal photography.

Elvira in Romania Featurette – this is a cute Standard Definition interview with a Romanian television crew and Elvira and runs about 46 minutes. There are also test shots and Elvira mingling with locals.

Interview with Co-Star Richard O’Brien runs 6:08 and is an onscreen interview that was shot during filming.

Trailers – two trailers for Elvira’s Haunted Hills

Outtakes – this runs 54 seconds and my only complaint is I would have liked to have seen more of it.

Photo Gallery

Newly commissioned cover artwork

Highly recommended for Elvira completists.

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“STREET SCENES”

By Raymond Benson

Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay burst onto the scene in the late 1990s with the striking independent picture, Ratcatcher, which may or may not have been somewhat of an autobiographical meditation on being a young child in early 1970s Glasgow.

Ratcatcher brought Ramsay the Carl Foreman Award for Newcomer in British Film at the BAFTA Awards, as well as other prizes from various film festivals. It is indeed an art film of high quality that is filled with haunting imagery, melancholic moods, and wonderful performances by a host of young child actors (as well as adults).

The year is 1973 or thereabouts, and ghetto-like sections of Glasgow, Scotland, are on track to be demolished. The residents have been promised new housing in more modern structures that are being built. Life on these tenement-like streets is harsh. Often there are no utilities, a stagnant and dangerous canal runs along the street, and currently there is a garbage strike. Trash is piled on the sidewalks, creating a massive health hazard and an attractive gathering spot for rats. The children run around and play in this environment. Our protagonist, James (William Eadie), is a rather lonely, unhappy kid with few real friends. He is the middle child with two sisters (one older and one younger). James is often the target of bullies (a gang of slightly older boys who roam the streets causing trouble). His father (Tommy Flanagan) is a drunk and wife-beater, and his well-meaning mother (Mandy Matthews) does what she can to keep the family together and fed. After accidentally causing the unwitnessed drowning of one of his only friends in the canal, James buries the guilt and lives with it as he navigates the horrid conditions of his life. At one point, James befriends a slightly older girl, Margaret Anne (Leanne Mullen), who is unwillingly the community tart for the boy-gang. Ultimately, James must come to terms with what accounts for his existence, such as it is, while the family waits to be called to their new home.

The film is a slice of life, a combination of street scenes and life in tiny, decrepit flats. The squalor is tangible, and one can almost smell the stench. Director Ramsay has presented a visceral and yet poetic, impressionistic look at poverty. Her approach might remind one of the works of Terrence Malick, as there is much more visual storytelling than dialogue (and, in fact, one of the pieces of music heard in the film is what Malick used as the main title song for his Badlands, the Orff-Keetman piece Gassenhauer).

The dialogue is heavy Scottish, which may be unintelligible to North American audiences. When Ratcatcher was released in cinemas in the U.S., English subtitles accompanied the film. It is highly recommended to those outside of the U.K. to turn on the subtitle function of this superb Blu-ray disk produced by The Criterion Collection.

Upgraded from an earlier Criterion DVD edition, Ratcatcher comes in a new 4K digital restoration, supervised by Ramsay and cinematographer Alwin Küchler (Ramsay and Küchler attended film school together). The movie is in 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio.

Supplements on the original DVD are ported over: a 2002 interview with Ramsay, and three of her early shorts (Small Deaths, Kill the Day, and Gasman), and the trailer. New to the Blu-ray supplements are an updated 2021 interview with Ramsay, and a 2020 audio interview with Küchler. The booklet comes with essays by film critic Girish Shambu and filmmaker Barry Jenkins.

Ratcatcher is for fans of international cinema, modern Scottish culture and history, and independent filmmaking.

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BY MARK CERULLI

For a few glorious weeks, every time a James Bond film is released, for those fans of a certain age, it becomes Christmas 1965 when a plethora of Bond-related tie-ins once again flood the market. In 1965 it was a Thunderball merchandise tsunami with toys, clothing, diving equipment and men’s jewelry… In 2021 it’s No Time to Die’s turn. In keeping with the film’s many nods to 007’s cinematic past, Bond is back drinking his beverage of choice from Dr. No – Smirnoff Vodka, an historic brand dating back to 1863 and one of the world’s most popular vodkas.

As a serious Bond collector, I’ve seen many a corporate 007 gift – from model vehicles (BMW and Caterpillar) and leather satchels (MGM) to all manner of 007-branded clothing… but nothing beats the stunning Martini-maker briefcase Smirnoff created.

The custom case (embossed with the Smirnoff and NTTD logos) contains everything a thirsty secret-agent (or Bond fan) could want – a crystal martini glass, measuring jigger, olive spears, a lemon shaver and, of course, a bottle of Smirnoff, all elegantly encased in red velvet. If there is a more lavish piece of Bond promotion, I’d love to see it. Kudos to Smirnoff’s marketing agency for this brilliant promotional tool.

Always a fashion icon, whatever Bond wears is now carefully studied and snapped up by trendy consumers and fans. Recently the fabled American bootmaker Danner joined in by supplying pairs of their Tanicus all-weather boots to the production – in Bond black, of course.

(Photo: MGM/Danjaq)

On September 16^th, they put the boot on sale via their website. The result was a digital stampede. So many orders came in that their website froze and they had to add additional servers. I know because I was caught up in the footwear frenzy. Did I need an exotic new pair of boots in sunny Southern California? No. Do I do any mountaineering or exploring at all? Um… no, but the boots looked rugged, were priced right ($180 a pair) and came in a custom No Time to Die box as cool as the boots themselves. I managed to grab a pair – which also included a unique 007 leather keychain, but it was as nail-biting as buying Rolling Stones seats during an online ticket drop. Danner’s entire stock sold out in under 20 minutes. “This was a record-breaking launch for us,” said a member of their online team. For more on Danner’s line of footwear go to: www.Danner.com

Are there more Bond tie-in products out there? Of course. Anyone know somebody at Heineken?

BY TODD GARBARINI

During the years that I spent in elementary school, watching movies on television was an exciting prospect. Considering that for me there was no other way to see films other than theatrically, viewing movies on television was something that I looked forward to regardless of the film being shown. In 1979, my best friend at the time was one of only a handful of people I knew who had cable television, in his case HBO. He told me about a great many films that I was not even aware of: Don Coscarelli’s Kenny & Company (1976), Frank Simon’s The Chicken Chronicles (1977), Sidney J. Furie’s The Boys in Company C (1978), and Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (1978). I always hoped that some of these films would make their way to television. Some did, some did not. His recollection and explanation to me of what he saw in these films made me regard him as quite the raconteur. These films seemed to make a big impression on him and listening to his enthusiasm for them made a big impression on me.

The Inglorious Bastards also made an impression on film director Quentin Tarantino, who worked at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA for a number of years while in his twenties during the VHS and Beta home video viewing boom. He saw the film on television several times while living in Los Angeles and later the film, to my surprise, was released on home video under the titles of Deadly Mission and, unbelievably, G.I. Bro. He was hired by the video store’s owner as he was already a scholar of cinema and could discuss and recommend movies to the paying customers. His enthusiasm for this film led him to adopt the title to his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, a two-and-a-half-hour World War II film that he spent at least six years thinking about and writing. It’s his sixth film as a director and he is still in command of his powers.

Inglourious Basterds, a brilliantly entertaining revisionist view of how we wish the war in Europe ended, is separated into five chapters. Chapter One, subtitled “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France”, is one of the most intense sequences that I have ever seen in a film. At just over 20 minutes, it is a lesson in bravura filmmaking. In 1941, a farmer, Perrier La Padite (Denis Menochet), is cutting wood and his wife is hanging up the family clothing when her mood changes – she hears the distant sound of a motorcycle. She knows that it can only be Germans. As the family prepares for the inevitable interrogation, we know from their body language that something is amiss. Although several German soldiers arrive only one of them, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in an Oscar-winning performance), approaches. He is complimentary and ingratiating towards Perrier and plays a verbal game with him to ascertain if his family is hiding Jews, an assumption that he already knows to be true. How the director handles this scene cinematically illustrates why he is one of cinema’s best filmmakers. The tension that he builds and the measured sentences that Landa uses to get the information that he wants is first-rate dialog. When the massacre of the hidden Jews in the floorboards occurs, one girl, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), survives and runs off under Landa’s laughter and admiration.

Chapter Two, “The Inglourious Basterds”, takes place in 1944 and concerns Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, and his name is a play on actor Aldo Ray, who appeared in many war films) who oversees a group of men who capture and scalp Nazis. Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), aka “The Bear Jew”, is part of this group designed to turn the tables and instill fear in the Germans. This sequence is a joy to watch as it gives the Nazis a taste of their own medicine.

In Chapter Three, “A German Night in Paris”, we are reacquainted with Shosanna under the assumed name of Emmanuelle Mimieux. She now owns a cinema and is harassed by Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) who is smitten with her and, like other Germans, won’t take no for an answer. Later, Zoller attempts to interest Mimieux and is again rebuffed. At a restaurant gathering with Joseph Goebbels, Mimieux is strong-armed to permit a Nazi propaganda film, Nation’s Pride, to be shown with all head Nazis in attendance including, amazingly, Adolf Hitler. Sure enough, Landa comes into the picture, and Mimieux does her best to answer his persistent questions about her theatre, trying to gauge if Landa knows her real identity. This sequence, like Chapter One, is extraordinary as the dialog is constantly masking what is going on beneath the surface, and the audience is never sure what might happen next. Unpredictability is just one of Mr. Tarantino’s many talents.

Chapter Four, “Operation Kino”, is similar to Chapters One and Three in that much is going on, however the probability of things going very badly is always imminent. A mixture of undercover agents and Germans ends the scene in a bloodbath that sets the stage for the film’s finale.

Chapter Five, “Revenge of the Giant Face”, is an extraordinary ending to the Nazi’s evil and their ultimate comeuppance as the cinema is packed with Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich and many of the architects of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The Giant Face alluded to belongs to Shosanna who, along with her lover and theater co-worker Marcel, carry out the plan to kill the Nazis by locking the escape routes and igniting a pile of combustible nitrate film stock located behind the screen. The cinema comes crashing down in a conflagration that causes deaths of the Nazis. The Basterds get their machine gun kicks by shooting as many enemies as possible. The ending is surprising, but ultimately satisfying.

Mr. Tarantino burst onto the film scene in 1992 with his debut film Reservoir Dogs. I saw it in New York, and I knew that I was in the hands of a truly gifted storyteller. His follow-up, Pulp Fiction, took the 1994 Cannes Film Festival by storm and won the Palme D’Or, and he snagged an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (and again in 2013 for Django Unchained). His subsequent films have not disappointed, and the dialog is often just a vehicle for something more tension-filled or sinister. Other times, it’s completely innocuous. The back-and-forth storytelling, jumping ahead at times, makes the action at hand that much more interesting. Inglourious Basterds is a linear narrative and despite there being a myriad of characters, the three major ones are Raine, Landa, and Dreyfus/Mimieux and the film pretty much revolves around them and their motives: Raine wants to kill Nazis, Landa wants to be evil, and Dreyfus/Mimieux wants to be invisible. His salute to war movies and cinema in general is everywhere – just setting a good portion of the action in a theatre is a labor of love. Eli Roth’s character is named Antonio Margheriti, named after the late filmmaker from Italy. So, the references are everywhere. At 2½ hours, the film is fascinating and flies by. He even throws in the obligatory “Wilhelm Scream” for good measure.

The film is now available in a new Universal 2-disc release which comes with a standard 1080p Blu-ray, a 4K Ultra High Definition Blu-ray, and a digital copy. If you have a 4K player and 4K TV, that is the one to go for as the picture is glorious, no pun intended. The extras are plentiful, though I would have loved a commentary track, and they include:

Extended & Alternate Scenes (HD, 11:31) – This section has three scenes: Lunch with Goebbels, extended version in one take; La Louisiane Card Game, extended version, and Nation’s Pride Begins, alternate version.

Roundtable Discussion with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Film Critic Elvis Mitchell (HD, 30:45) – This is a funny and informative interview, with the surprising revelation that Brad Pitt received the script and shot the film six weeks later.

The New York Times Talks (HD, 1:08:07) – This is a just-shy-of 70-minute dialog between the director and New York Times Magazine Editor-at-Large Lynn Hirschberg. As usual, the director is enthusiastic about all-things cinema and speaks with a great deal of energy about the film and his desire to make films without regard to the morality of his characters.

Nation’s Pride: Full Feature (HD, 6:10) – This is the film that the Nazi’s watch in the cinema, and The Making of Nation’s Pride (HD, 4:00) is self-explanatory. It’s very cool to see Bo Svenson appear in Nation’s Pride since he was in the 1978 version of The Inglorious Bastards. It would have been great if a restored version of that film had been included as well!

The Original Inglorious Bastards (HD, 7:38) – This is a look at the director of the original film, Enzo G. Castellari, and his cameo in the Tarantino film.

A Conversation with Rod Taylor (HD, 6:43) and Rod Taylor On Victoria Bitter (HD, 3:19) – The late actor Rod Taylor, whom many will recall from the The Time Machine (1960) and The Birds (1963), is virtually unrecognizable in these mini interviews. He talks about the director’s enthusiasm for film, and a funny story about Victoria Bitter, the Australian beer.

Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel (HD, 2:41) – This is a humorous collection of slate shots and the funny on-set comments in between takes.

Hi Sallys (HD, 2:09) – This is a bittersweet piece as it pays homage to Mr. Tarantino’s longtime editor, Sally Menke, who tragically passed away at the age of 56 in 2010 due to dehydration while hiking in hot weather conditions.

Film Poster Gallery Tour with Elvis Mitchell (HD, 10:59) – This is very interesting as Mr. Mitchell talks about the history and meaning behind the beautiful posters that can been seen in the cinema in the film.

Inglorious Basterds Poster Gallery (HD)

Trailers (HD, 7:34) – Teaser, Domestic, International, and Japanese trailers for the film.

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“W. C. FIELDS IS BACK… TO BACK!”

By Raymond Benson

The year 1934 was a good one for comic actor W. C. Fields (whose real name was William Claude Dukenfield). Fields made six pictures in 1934, and by the time that It’s a Gift appeared in November, he had made sixteen sound movies (and he had been making silents prior to the sound era).

Kino Lorber has begun releasing new Blu-ray restorations of many of Fields’ better films from the 1930s, which was the decade in which he prospered the most. Today, Cinema Retro looks at two key new releases, with likely more reviews to come as we receive them.

It’s a Gift, directed by Norman McLeod (who was also responsible for the Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business and Horse Feathers in 1931 and 1932, respectively), is easily one of W. C. Fields’ most beloved and acclaimed pictures. It showcases Fields at his best and before alcoholism began to derail his career. In fact, Fields is in shape and rather slim here and in the other title from 1934 that we’re examining, The Old Fashioned Way. Remarkably, he was already 54 when these two films were released by Paramount Pictures, the studio that often pushed the envelope when it came to comedy.

In Gift, Fields (Harold Bissonette) is a grocer married to the forever-nagging Amelia (Kathleen Howard). She insists that Harold pretentiously pronounce their last name as “Bisso-nay.” They have two children, an older daughter and a bratty pre-teen (Jean Rouverol and Tommy Bupp, respectively). Harold has dreams of buying an orange grove in California and moving from their cramped and squalid housing in whatever state they’re in. Neighbors in the same building include the Dunk family, a member of which is Baby Elwood (Baby LeRoy, in his third and final appearance with Fields). When Howard finally buys his orange grove, the family does move—only to find that the track of land is a barren plot. Amelia and the kids threaten to leave him until a stroke of luck intervenes.

True, there isn’t much of a plot here, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a Gift is a gem for its series of gags, sketches, and routines that Fields perfected over the years in vaudeville, and they are on full display here. One extended sequence involves Howard attempting to take an afternoon nap on his front porch swing—but he is constantly disturbed by noises from the various neighbors, visitors from the street, and other external stimuli. The results are hilarious. All the set-pieces, such as when Howard must deal with a blind man in the grocery store, are equally funny, and they emphasize why W. C. Fields is remembered today as one of the great genius comics of his day.

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The Old Fashioned Way, directed by William Beaudine, was released four months earlier than It’s a Gift. It is lesser Fields, but it still has its moments of fun. Of particular interest is Fields’ juggling demonstration, a rare moment of the man showing off this talent on film. Back in the vaudeville days, Fields was not only a comedian and vocalist, but also an accomplished juggler. His act here with balls and cigar boxes is simply amazing, and funny, too.

Fields plays “The Great McGonigle,” a theatrical troupe impresario and actor in the 1890s who is constantly in trouble for not paying his bills. He leads his company out of every town before the law catches up with him. His troupe includes his daughter, Betty (Judith Allen), as well as familiar Fields co-star and foil, Mr. Gump (Tammany Young). Baby LeRoy makes his second appearance in a Fields movie as the child of the rich society woman, Cleopatra Pepperday (Jan Duggan). Pepperday desperately wants to join the McGonigle troupe and perform, even though she is terribly untalented—but McGonigle is not averse to promising her a role in exchange for funding. A romantic subplot involving Betty and actor/singer Wally (Joe Morrison) and Wally’s father (Oscar Apfel) intermingles with McGonigle’s conning of boarding house proprietors, theater managers, and sheriffs.

Both Kino Lorber titles, available separately, look quite good in their high definition restorations, and each come with optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired. Audio commentaries by film historian James L. Neibaur, author of The W. C. Fields Films, accompany both features, along with the theatrical trailers for these and other Kino Fields releases.

For fans of W. C. Fields, classic cinema comedy, and old Hollywood, It’s a Gift and The Old Fashioned Way serve up grand entertainment.

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Here's another very fine Western from the 1960's: director Henry Hathaway's "5 Card Stud" which offers Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Inger Stevens, Roddy McDowall and Yaphet Kotto. The film is unusual for the genre in that it is primarily a mystery involving the hunt for a serial killer. The film is available on DVD (click here to order from Amazon) but it deserves a Blu-ray  release. C'mon, Paramount!

Shout! Factory presents the very first episode of "Danger Man" starring Patrick McGoohan. The show ran between 1960-1962 as a half-hour series before  being revived in 1964 as one-hour episodes. It ran until 1968. CBS in America retitled the show "Secret Agent", spawning a smash hit opening theme song sung by Johnny Rivers. However, non-U.S. viewers never got to experience the song because the show had retained the title of "Danger Man" in the UK market and was also known as "Destination Danger" and "John Drake" in certain other territories. The show's popularity endures today.  (Trivia note: portions of this episode were filmed in the village of Portmeirion, Wales, which McGoohan would later use as the main filming location for his classic TV series "The Prisoner".)

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Catlow is a fun MGM Western from 1971 with broad comedic overtones in addition to some fairly brutal violence. The film was directed by Sam Wanamaker and produced by Euan Lloyd, an old hand at bringing good action movies to the big screen (i.e. Shalako, The Wild Geese). The film is based on the novel by Louis L'Amour. Yul Brynner plays the titular hero, a charismatic, free spirit who travels with an entourage of vagabond cowboys and sex-crazed hot number, Rosita, played by Daliah Lavi, who is cast against type as a wild, unsophisticated character. The somewhat meandering plot has Catlow accused, perhaps erroneously, of stealing cattle. He is pursued half-heartedly by Marshall Cowan (Richard Crenna), an old army buddy who spends more time socializing with Catlow than making any real attempt to bring him back to a kangaroo trial. The scenes of the two men engaging in endless attempts to outwit each other are quite amusing. Leonard Nimoy's bounty hunter Miller poses a more realistic threat, relentlessly hunting Catlow and his men down to the wilds of Mexico where everyone ends up facing both the army and Apaches.

There are some solid, suspenseful action sequences such as when Cowan finds himself wounded and surrounded by Indians. There is also a neat double cross that results in Catlow and his men having their guns stolen just as they are about to face off with the Apaches. The inspired supporting cast includes Jeff Corey as the requisite sidekick that was played by Walter Brennan and Gabby Hayes in earlier Westerns. Jo Ann Pflug provides some glamour as a sexy upper class seniorita. The chemistry between Brynner and Crenna is the main pleasure of the film but Nimoy scores well in his limited role as a ruthless villain- and the site of him bare-assed fighting with Brynner beside a bathtub is one for the books.

The Warner Archive region-free DVD includes the original trailer.

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BY HANK REINEKE

As a promotional vehicle, the trailer for director Roger Corman’s The Raven was clearly deceptive in its construction. Cinemagoers were promised that AIP’s newest Poe film would offer three of the “Screen’s Titans of Terror,” the trailer flashing short, moody scenes of torch-lit chambers, menacing stares, and the odd clutching hand. Intertitle cards and a voice-over narration promised “A tempest of thrilling horror,” The Raven to allow brave moviegoers to go “Careening through the darkest of dangers into the ominous mystery of a master magician’s evil castle… witnessing the mysterious powers of black magic.”

On the eve of the film’s release, the newspaper promotionals – entirely gleaned from the studio’s own duplicitous pressbook - promised much of the same, “a thrilling mixture of the most powerful terror ingredients ever assembled.” There was a reason for the filmmakers to cautiously hold the actual cards they were playing close to their chests. Producers James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff were aware that through their series of Edgar Allan Poe pictures they were holding a true tiger by the tail. It was certainly helpful to the notoriously frugal producers that Poe’s work had long fallen into public domain status and was therefore royalty-free in use. The box office returns on the first of their four Poe films were pleasing, and expectations were high that The Raven would do as well if not better.

So it was only mildly surprising when, in March 1963, the producers announced that no fewer than ten more Poe pictures would be slated for production by AIP. The next one planned, The Masque of the Red Death, was announced to begin shooting in April of ’63… although a springtime shooting wouldn’t actually commence as proclaimed. Other titles announced were to include, The Haunted Palace, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Gold Bug, A Descent into the Maelstrom, Ligeia, The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade, The Angel of the Odd, The Four Beast in One, and The City by the Sea. It was an ambitious plan, but with the exception of Masque (with a delayed November ’63 start) only four of the other projected titles would actually see production.

Such breakneck speed mining of Poe’s Gothic horror materials might be considered market over-saturation by contemporary standards, but upon its release in January of 1963, The Raven was the fifth Poe film released by AIP in a span of two years. In September of 1962, Samuel Z. Arkoff sat down for an interesting chinwag with Stanley Eichelbaum, the theater and film critic of the San Francisco Examiner. That interview touched briefly on AIP’s shoe-string beginnings: the days when such efforts as The Day the World Ended, The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, and I Was a Teenage Age Werewolf – not to mention the sixty or so films featuring Hot Rods and monsters in “Indian-rubber” masks - were knocked out quickly and cheaply by the indie.

It was true that AIP had certainly come a long way since its incorporation in 1955. And while the producers continued to hold tight to the company’s purse strings, Arkoff acknowledged that they were presently allowing for budgets as high as $500,000 a picture on many of their recent color Panavision releases. This was a notable mention since such budgets were five times the amount AIP had put up to fund their teen-market pictures of the late 1950s.

The Poe films were bringing in more than a teenager audience into the cinemas, and the producers recognized the trend. Since monster and horror films had played such an important role in the AIP’s success, it was surprising to hear Arkoff sum up part of the audience who loved macabre cinematic fare in less than charitable terms. “The horror crowd falls into three groups,” he told Eichelbaum, “the young people; the adult morons; and the intelligent adults. It’s pretty difficult to cater to all of them in one movie. But that’s what we try to do.”

The company had certainly achieved an enviable level of success since incorporation. As their production budgets grew more generous, Arkoff and Nicholson were able to bring into the fold some horror picture veterans who still held sway with fans of the genre. Since the first Poe film House of Usher (1960), the producers managed to secure the talents of such luminaries as Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Peter Lorre, Barbara Steele, Vincent Price, Ray Milland and Hazel Court, with Lon Chaney Jr. waiting in the wings for his second act.

In his usual blunt manner, Arkoff partly attributed the actors’ willingness to work with AIP on the series due to the fact, “Actors like Poe. He has snob appeal.” That may have been a consideration of the talent conscripted, but it’s also true that it was a welcome payday for these (mostly) aging and typecast thespians. Many gathered had heydays dating back to Hollywood of the 1930s and 40s. It’s also true that due to the “Monster Boom” of the late 1950s and early 1960s, these actors were thought highly and fondly of by a generation who knew them primarily through Shock package TV screenings and such horror-film fan magazines as Famous Monsters of Filmland, Shock Monsters, and Fantastic Monsters of the Films.

Of course, should anyone have misgivings that Arkoff was more interested in the bottom line than in art, such suspicion would soon be confirmed. The producer was, of course, certainly correct in his assessment that “picture-making has to be a business.” He insisted that the business of filmmaking was simply “not a cheap individual art, like painting or sculpting.” Fair enough. But Arkoff, then a forty-three year old former lawyer, went further, suggesting he didn’t care whether a film was good or bad following release. He was only interested if it clicked at the box office. He also wasn’t concerned if the films produced by AIP would stand the test of time or be held in high regard in the distant future. “We can’t let a movie sit on a vine for thirty years waiting for recognition. If we can’t get a return, where will we get the money for the next one?”

Co-producer James H. Nicholson was somewhat more prosaic in assessing the popularity of the horror pictures that AIP churned out with regularity over the past seven years. He offered the move-going public’s dimming fascination with horror films was curiously reignited following World War II. Choosing to take the historical long-view, Nicholson offered there had always been a market for scary stories, noting “Greek myths were horror subjects” in style and content. When questioned by a UPI correspondent if the 1960s horror film craze was just that – a passing fad – the producer insisted mythological stories were as popular in 1964 as they had been during ancient times. “There are only three emotions,” Nicholson opined. “Deep sorrow, laughter and just plain thrills, and our movies are filled with the last.”

Way back in issue #21 of Cinema Retro, Malcolm McDowell granted us an exclusive interview in which he candidly discussed making Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". McDowell has been weighing in on the subject again lately due to the fact that it's been fifty years since the film's original release. To read his recollections about the challenges in making the movie, see the interview by Rosie Fletcher on the Den of Geek web site by clicking here. 

“SMALL HERO, BIG PICTURE”

By Raymond Benson

The decade of the 1950s is the Golden Age of science fiction movies. Prior to that, the genre was mostly ignored on film in favor of horror. Of course, the two genres often overlapped, especially in the 50s, when audiences were worried about nuclear war, UFOs, alien invasions, and the dangers of radioactivity. We got pictures with giant bugs, flying saucers, amphibious creatures, Martian invaders, and mole people. With few exceptions, most of the science fiction fare from the period is godawful but usually fun for a drive-in movie experience or late-night “creature feature” material on television.

The exceptions have proven to stand the test of time and are considered classics today—The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Forbidden Planet (1956), among others.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of these gems. Conceived and written by the great Richard Matheson, the movie was brought to the screen by Jack Arnold, one of the more under-appreciated filmmakers of his day. While Arnold specialized in “creature features” in the fifties (he brought us The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954 and Tarantula in ’55, for example), he went on to be a successful hard-working craftsman for dozens of popular television shows in the 60s and 70s.

Matheson wrote the initial story and simultaneously penned a novel (The Shrinking Man) published in 1956. He sold the rights to Universal on the condition that he be hired to write the screenplay. Matheson’s script followed the structure of his novel, which used flashbacks to tell Scott Carey’s story. Arnold and the studio preferred that the story be told linearly, so Richard Alan Simmons got the job to re-write the screenplay as such. Both Matheson and Simmons share screenplay credit, while Matheson receives story credit.

The tale is well-known. Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is in a loving marriage with Louise (Randy Stuart). One day they are out on a boat. While Louise is below deck, a strange mist envelops Scott. As time passes, Scott notices that his clothes no longer fit him—he’s becoming smaller. Doctors are befuddled. Scott shrinks some more. Eventually this affects the marriage and Scott questions his manhood. He becomes a media curiosity, and he continues to diminish in size. Ultimately, he is alone in his house and must first battle the family cat, and later, in a climactic sequence, a tarantula. And still, he continues to grow smaller…

The Incredible Shrinking Man is one of the most thoughtful, mind-bending, and existential science fiction films ever made—and it was certainly a milestone of the period. Its cosmic ending, which studio executives wanted to change to a happier one, was kept intact by director Arnold—and this is what elevates Shrinking Man to a BIG picture.

The visual effects, while crude by today’s standards, were cleverly done in 1956-57. Arnold utilized split screens, rear screen projections, oversized sets and furniture, and trick photography to achieve the illusion of Scott’s condition against an enlarging hostile world around him. As Arnold states in a wonderful vintage 1983 interview that is a supplement accompanying the film, the secret to this and all the director’s work was “preparation.” He was a believer in storyboards, and he created these to fully imagine the picture prior to shooting a frame of film. Much like the outline some authors pen prior to drafting a novel, Arnold’s storyboards allowed him to try out different ideas and erase them if they didn’t work.

The Criterion Collection presents an outstanding package for Shrinking Man. The film is a 4K digital restoration that looks amazingly fresh. It comes with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. There is an optional and informative audio commentary by genre-film historian Tom Weaver and horror-music expert David Schecter.

Supplements abound. A new featurette on the film’s visual effects hosted by FX experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt is a lot of fun. A very entertaining conversation about the film between filmmaker Joe Dante and comedian/writer Dana Gould is fabulous. A remembrance on the film with Richard Christian Matheson (Richard Matheson’s son) is also superb. Of particular interest to film buffs might be the previously mentioned footage from 1983 of Jack Arnold interviewed about the film. Also of great significance is a “director’s cut” of a 2021 documentary about Arnold, Auteur on the Campus: Jack Arnold at Universal. And if all that weren’t enough, we get two 8mm home video short presentations of the film that circulated in the 1960s, a feature on missing musical cues, a vintage teaser narrated by none other than Orson Welles, and the theatrical trailer. The booklet contains an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is a must-have, buy-today, excellent release from Criterion. For fans of 1950s science fiction, Richard Matheson, Jack Arnold, and giant spiders. Sublime!

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Mark Cerulli with Jerry Juroe at the "Bond in Motion" exhibition in London, 2018. (Photo: Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)

BY MARK CERULLI

While not a marquee name like Broccoli, Connery or Moore, Charles “Jerry” Juroe was an integral part of the James Bond movie phenomenon for three decades. On September 30^th, he passed away quietly at his home in Southern Spain with his daughter Kim by his side. Jerry was 98.

A publicity man through and through, Jerry started out at Paramount Pictures in the 1940s, but his new career was interrupted by World War II. As a graduate of the Castle Hill Military Academy in Tennessee, he was immediately called up and was part of the D-Day Invasion -service that, 75 years later, would earn him France’s prestigious Legion d’Honneur, presented by President Emmanuel Macron, no less. Jerry also saw action in Germany and Czechoslovakia before transferring to the Army’s Office of Special Services. There he escorted movie stars on USO appearances while also arranging entertainment for the troops. Although he held positions in Hollywood and was the publicist for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Jerry loved Europe and preferred to live there – especially after meeting lovely British actress Lynn Tracy, who became his wife of 42 years until her death in 2001. During his stint as a publicist for Arthur P. Jacobs, Jerry handled press for The Prince and the Showgirl, working with the mercurial Marilyn Monroe. Running European publicity for United Artists, Jerry worked with The Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night and Help. The job also put him in the orbit of a rising young producer named Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. At UA, Jerry handled publicity chores on Dr. No, accompanying Sean Connery on his first press tour. He worked on all of Connery’s films through the 1967 epic, You Only Live Twice. He left UA for several years but was invited back into Bondage by Cubby himself for The Man with The Golden Gun, joining the EON fold permanently from Moonraker through Licence to Kill. (Jerry came back briefly for the 1994 announcement of Pierce Brosnan as the new 007.)

I was fortunate enough to know Jerry for 40 years, meeting him as a college student spending a semester in London. I wrote a gushing letter to EON, which Jerry answered then invited me out to Pinewood. That was the start of a beautiful friendship. He also was fond of my wife, a fellow marketing exec, pulling me aside to say, “You got the best part of that deal.” Pure Jerry.

Jerry Juroe (far left) on the "Moonraker" publicity tour, 1979. (Photo courtesy of Jerry Juroe estate.)

He was fond of cruise ships and came to New York to take one of the last “crossings” of the QE2. While there, he handed me the manuscript of his autobiography which Ian Fleming Foundation co-founder and close friend Doug Redenius and I were able to get published in 2018 as Bond, The Beatles and My Year With Marilyn (McFarland Books). EON graciously invited us to lunch then sponsored a book-signing at the London Bond in Motion exhibit. A number of 00 alumni came for one of Jerry’s last hurrahs – John Glen, Gitte Lee (Sir Christopher’s widow), Jenny Hanley, Valerie Leon, Peter Lamont, Deborah Moore, Carole Ashby, Margaret Nolan, Steven Saltzman, Anthony Waye, former EON publicity & marketing honchos Anne Bennett and John Parkinson, EON Chief Archivist Meg Simmonds and many more. Also on hand were authors Ajay Chowdhury and Matthew Field, CR’s Dave Worrall, From Sweden with Love’s Anders Frejdh, bullet-catcher Mark O’Connell, French Bond expert Laurent Perriot – even Titanic star Billy Zane. Speeches were made, glasses were raised and warm embraces were exchanged. It was a beautiful night.

Jerry’s passing severs one of the very last connections to Hollywood’s Golden Age and his contribution to Bond’s success can’t be understated. As 5x Bond director John Glen put it, “Jerry was very much a part of the James Bond phenomenon. He took great care of all aspects of publicity, particularly looking after the actors which could be a trying task at times.”

“Sad indeed, but a full life well lived and lived well,” said actress Jenny Hanley (OHMSS).

My last conversation with Jerry was just days ago. I asked how he was feeling and he answered with a weary, “I’m still here.” Indeed he was and he always will be.

Thank you, Jerry.

If you want to read more about Jerry Juroe's remarkable life and career, order his autobiography.

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Los Angeles

BY TODD GARBARINI

Director William Friedkin’s The French Connection, which won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing at the 1972 Academy Awards ceremony, celebrates its 50^th Anniversary today as it opened in New York City on Thursday, October 7, 1971. On Saturday, October 7, 1961, exactly ten years earlier to the day, both New York Detective First Grade Edward Egan and his partner, then Detective Second Grade Salvatore Grosso, unwittingly stumbled upon what is described in author Robin Moore’s 1969 account of the case as one that would “obsess them night and day for the next four-and-a-half months and would not end for a year-and-a-half.”

New York

Gene Hackman portrayed Mr. Egan and Roy Scheider co-starred as Mr. Grosso, referring to each other by the sobriquets “Popeye” and “Cloudy”, respectively. Acclaimed by critics and audiences alike for its gritty realism, its cat-and-mouse chase between Popeye and the mastermind behind the imported heroin (played by Fernando Rey), the film is best-known for its gripping and inexorable chase between a 1971 Pontiac LeMans and a subway train.

The film later opened in Los Angeles on November 3^rd in Los Angeles and on November 17^th in Central Jersey.

New Jersey

Issue #50 of Cinema Retro features this writer’s interviews with William Friedkin, actor Tony Lo Bianco, and former New York Police Detective Randy Jurgensen who worked on the actual case. Copies are available at CinemaRetro.com.

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

BY LEE PFEIFFER

One of the few remaining Steve McQueen films not available on home video finally comes to DVD with Warner Archive's release of the 1961 military comedy The Honeymoon Machine. Sadly, the film can only be recommended to McQueen fans who feel obliged to buy the DVD in order to keep their collections complete. The movie is an embarrassing fiasco that might have been excusable had it been produced by a low-rent film studio. However, MGM backed this turkey and it must have seemed pretty stale even during its release back in the JFK administration. It's worth contemplating that America's obsession at the time with showing respect for any aspect of the military extended to many films that was neutered for fear of offending Pentagon brass. Sure, screenwriters could denote some highschool-like upstarts in the Army or Navy, and the top brass might be seen as  humorless stiffs, but studios rarely wanted to tweak the  powers-that-be, lest they not get cooperation from the military for their war movies. In fact, it wasn't until The Americanization of Emily in 1964 that the glass ceiling was truly broken and the U.S. military could be the object of outright satire and cynicism. From there, the floodgate opened and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, films like Kelly's Heroes and M*A*S*H went to the opposite extreme and portrayed the American military as primarily comprised of dolts.

The Honeymoon Machine was made during the era when servicemen were portrayed as overgrown  kids whose most dangerous exploits were acting like the kind of towel-snapping wiseguys you encounter in locker rooms. In this ill-advised opus, McQueen- in one of his first starring roles- is a Navy lieutenant who teams with civilian scientist Jim Hutton to come up with a scientific method of predicting how roulette wheels can be manipulated. When the fleet pulls into Venice, the theory is tested at the local casino, where McQueen and Hutton break the bank. Unfortunately, through a convoluted sub-plot, their shenanighans are mistaken for espionage activities and a Cold War crisis ensues.

Beatles fans have been frustrated for decades that their final feature film, the 1969 production of "Let It Be", has never received an official home video release since the days of VHS and laser disc. The film chronicled the Fab Four's creation of their classic album and contained their legendary last concert, performed on a recording studio rooftop in London. Director Peter Jackson has been working diligently with the blessings of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono, to assemble a new, definitive version of the film constructed from countless hours of outtake footage. Jackson's film, title "Get Back",  is said to address certain myths, such as the inaccurate perception that the group was barely on speaking terms during these sessions. The three-part documentary will premiere on the Disney+ streaming network November 25-27. For the full story behind the production, click here.

“THERE AIN’T NO SANITY CLAUSE!”

By Raymond Benson

At long last, the Warner Archive has blessed Marx Brothers fans with a high definition Blu-ray release of one of the comedy team’s most beloved pictures, A Night at the Opera (1935).

Many film historians and critics cite A Night at the Opera (directed by Sam Wood) as the brothers’ “finest” movie, and it has even been named by Groucho Marx as such. While it is certainly one of their best, this reviewer quibbles with that pronouncement. The film’s reputation is a result of the success it had at the box office and with the public’s perception upon release. It was a “reboot” of sorts for the Marx Brothers, as they had moved to a new studio (the prestigious MGM) and were overseen by the young genius studio maverick, Irving Thalberg. Under Thalberg’s guidance, the brothers’ films became more commercial. His goal had been to make their pictures play as well in Middle America as they had in New York or Los Angeles.

The Marx Brothers’ film career can easily be divided into two distinct periods. The first chapter consists of the five excellent pre-Code entries made at Paramount. Most aficionados of the brothers hold these anarchic, surreal, and zany comedies (they include Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup) in the highest regard. Unfortunately, 1933’s Duck Soup was not a box office hit because the comedy had become too political for the times (although its stock grew tremendously as the decades went on, and today Soup is generally considered, certainly by this reviewer, as the team’s “finest”—or certainly “favorite”). The team found themselves without a studio. Zeppo, the team’s “straight man,” dropped out of the act, and he would be replaced by a succession of Zeppo-types to serve his function. This left only Groucho, Harpo, and Chico in place.

Enter Thalberg. Over a poker game with Chico, Thalberg discussed bringing the Marx Brothers to MGM. He envisioned making their comedy more “friendly” and emphasizing more story. The result found the three (instead of four) Marx Brothers becoming lovable—but crazily funny—matchmakers to two young lovers (in this case, played by Allan Jones, this movie’s Zeppo clone, and Kitty Carlisle), despite obstacles by defined bad guys.

This formula was a success, and it continued in 1937’s A Day at the Races (the brothers’ most profitable film) and three more at MGM, which grew progressively weaker in quality. By 1941, the blueprint had played itself out and MGM dropped the team. (The brothers made two more inferior films in the late 1940s for different studios, a time which could be considered a forgettable third period in their cinematic journey.)

All that said, A Night at the Opera is easily the most successful and funniest of the MGM pictures. Groucho is “Otis B. Driftwood,” a theatrical manager of sorts, who wants to invest Mrs. Claypool’s money (she is played, of course, by the wonderful Margaret Dumont) in the New York opera scene, which is run by pompous Herman Gottlieb (Sig Ruman). Chico is “Fiorello,” another manager of sorts, who represents his friend Ricardo (Jones), who happens to be an extremely talented singer. Ricardo is in love with Rosa (Carlisle), also an opera singer. She is set to co-star with sleazy Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), who is cruel to his personal assistant, Tomasso (Harpo). Thus, the plot involves subverting Lassparri and Gottlieb, and installing Ricardo and Rosa in the opera. It takes the three Marx Brothers to make this happen.

The script was written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who had worked with the brothers several times in the past. Even though Groucho and Chico were known to improvise dialogue, the film contains many of their best bits. For example, the “contract scene,” in which Driftwood and Fiorello hash out the terms to sign Ricardo to the opera, is classic stuff. When they don’t agree on a specific clause in the contract, they simply physically tear it off the paper. When Fiorello gets down to the bottom, the clause which states that if either party is “not in sound mind,” then the contract is void. “That’s the sanity clause,” Driftwood explains. Fiorello isn’t having it. “Oh no, you can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!” And then there is the brilliant ocean liner stateroom scene, the cinematic equivalent of stuffing the most people possible into a phone booth. 

Groucho and Chico do seem to have all the best stuff. Harpo is always splendid, but here too much of his physical comedy is dependent on outrageous stunts (performed by doubles and stuntmen, or visual photographic effects), such as climbing up a vertical theatrical backdrop like a lizard. Harpo Marx’s antics should never be performed by stuntmen or faked with technical trickery. This is probably this reviewer’s biggest complaint about A Night at the Opera, and the one thing that prevents it from overtaking the likes of Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers, and Monkey Business as the quintessential Marx Brothers movie. At least Opera features two superb musical solos by Chico (on piano) and Harpo (on harp), as well as a couple of lavish, MGM-style musical numbers by Jones, Carlisle, and a multitude of extras.

Warner Archive’s new high-definition transfer is a vast improvement over the previous DVD release. The few splices/missing frames in the film are still evident (nothing to be done about those), but the picture quality is superb. All the supplements are ported over from the DVD release, including the audio commentary by film critic Leonard Maltin, as well as an entertaining documentary on the brothers (featuring the likes of Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Dom DeLuise, and others), a 1961 television excerpt of Groucho being interviewed by Hy Gardner, and two vintage 1930s MGM shorts (Robert Benchley’s “How to Sleep” and the musical documentary “Sunday Night at the Trocadero”). A third vintage short, “Los Angeles: Wonder City of the West” is new to this Blu-ray release. The theatrical trailer rounds out the package.

A Night at the Opera is a welcome addition to the home video collection of any Marx Brothers fan. Despite the minor quibbles, this is classic, side-splitting, Hollywood comedy.

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“TROUBLE IN FANTASYLAND”

By Raymond Benson

The excellent boutique label Arrow Video has issued a superb 2-disk Limited Edition Blu-ray package of Ridley Scott’s 1985 film, Legend (released in the U.S. in 1986).

Like another recent terrific Arrow Video release, David Lynch’s Dune, Scott’s Legend was a troubled production that experienced studio interference and a problematic worldwide release, received mixed to negative reviews from critics and audiences alike, and was relegated to the barrel of “expensive Hollywood failures” for decades—and yet it has a cult following of devoted fans.

Perhaps the most notorious reputation Legend has is that it existed in different cuts. Scott’s original cut was roughly 125 minutes, but the studio felt the picture needed shortening. It was trimmed to 113 minutes, which was ultimately Scott’s preferred cut. The picture’s music was composed and conducted by the great Jerry Goldsmith, who had overlain the fantasy with a classically orchestral score. The studio still felt that the movie ran too long, so further cuts were demanded, much to Scott’s chagrin. This “European cut,” at around 95 minutes, was released in the UK in late 1985. Reception wasn’t great, so the studio delayed the North American release to make a drastic change. Over Scott’s objections, they replaced Goldsmith’s score with a newly-commissioned one by the progressive electronic band, Tangerine Dream. A few minutes more were cut, and the U.S. release, at roughly 90 minutes, was released in spring 1986 with the new score. This time the reception was even worse.

Ridley Scott always maintained that his original cut of the film—with Goldsmith’s score—was the way Legend should be seen. Thus, in 2002, Legend received a re-release of Scott’s Director’s Cut of 113 minutes with Goldsmith’s score restored. This version was re-appraised and earned a more positive rating from critics and viewers. Interestingly, Scott has more Director’s Cuts of his films that are different from their theatrical releases than any other filmmaker, as pointed out in one of the disk’s supplements!

Legend is hard-fantasy, but it owes more to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Disney’s Fantasia than it does to, say, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Yes, there are fairies, goblins, elves, and dwarves in both visions of a fantasyland, but Legend has a more classical, old-myth feel. While Scott’s Director’s Cut is indeed a vast improvement over the shorter versions (European and U.S.), the picture still has flaws that prevent it from being the masterwork that Scott perhaps hoped it would be. That said, there is much to admire in Legend.

Visually, Legend is scrumptious, gorgeous, and fascinating. The production designs by Assheton Gordon and especially the makeup designs by Rob Bottin are extraordinary. The pastoral atmosphere and the moods evoked by the picture are effective and magical.

The acting? A young Tom Cruise plays Jack, a sort of Jack-in-the-Green fellow who is at one with the forest and its creatures. He fancies Princess Lili (Mia Sara), who is precocious and sets all the conflict of the story in motion by a careless act. (Oddly, all references to Lili being a princess are deleted from the U.S. theatrical release.) Tim Curry is magnificent behind all the makeup as the Prince of Darkness, a truly delicious villain. David Bennent (of The Tin Drum fame) is believable as an elf named Gump, although his voice is dubbed by Alice Playton.

The story is straightforward. Darkness wants to eliminate all light in the world by destroying the two unicorns in the forest, so he sends a troupe of goblins out to do the dirty deed, just as Jack is introducing the animals to Lili. One unicorn horn is hacked off and stolen, and the world is plunged into a deep freeze. Lili is eventually captured by Darkness (he has the hots for her, too), so it’s up to Jack, the elves, and a pair of dwarves to rescue her, retrieve the unicorn horn, and stop Darkness from accomplishing his goal.

It all works well enough, although the voices used for the goblins are ridiculously comical and are a detriment to the action. Once the action moves to Darkness’ realm, the picture picks up and becomes quite suspenseful. In the end, though, Legend just doesn’t reach the lofty target to which it aspired. One of the problems is that is seemed not to know what audience for whom it was aimed. Children? Adults? Teenagers? The studio arbitrarily decided it was the latter, which was one of the reasons the Tangerine Dream score replaced Goldsmith’s.

And what of the scores? The Tangerine Dream score is actually quite good—the band had already done several movie scores and were quite adept at it. It works with the theatrical version well enough. Nevertheless, the Jerry Goldsmith is far superior and fits the movie much better. This is classical fantasy, so a classical score is more appropriate.

The new Arrow Video Limited Edition 2-Disk package contains the U.S. theatrical release (with the Tangerine Dream score) and Scott’s Director’s Cut (with Jerry Goldsmith’s score), both beautifully restored in 2K. They both have DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround audio, and optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired. The theatrical cut has an audio commentary by Paul M. Sammon (author of Ridley Scott: The Making of His Movies). The Director’s Cut features an audio commentary by Scott himself. There are isolated music and effects tracks for the theatrical release.

Supplements abound. New featurettes include a documentary on the film featuring interviews with several key crew members and cast member Annabelle Lanyon (who plays Oona the sprite); an excellent two-part documentary on the two scores; a featurette examining the various versions of the film; and a two-part featurette on the movie’s creatures. Vintage supplements include a 2003 documentary on Ridley Scott; a 2002 documentary on the making of the film; original promotional featurettes; deleted scenes; alternate scenes; storyboard galleries; two drafts of the screenplay (!) by William Hjortsberg; alternate footage from the overseas release; trailers, TV spots, and image galleries. The package also contains a wonderfully illustrated booklet with writing on the film by Nicholas Clement, Kat Ellinger, and Simon Ward, plus archive materials and more. There’s a two-sided poster with new artwork by Neil Davies and the original by John Alvin, a pack of glossy full-color photographs by Annie Leibovitz, and double-sided postcards that are lobby card reproductions. The jewel case comes with a reversible sleeve of both artworks.

Legend is likely of interest to fans of Ridley Scott, Tom Cruise, and the fantasy genre, but it is especially informative and revelatory in terms of Hollywood history and how studios and artists often clash in the realization of a marketable vision. Hats off to Arrow Video!

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By Lee Pfeiffer

It's hard to imagine in this age of digital media and instant gratification for movie lovers, there was a time when viewers would be excited when a favorite film was shown on broadcast television. In America, a top ratings draw was NBC's "Saturday Night at the Movies", which showed popular films including relatively recent titles. As YouTuber Fredflix points out in this entertaining and informative video, audiences had to make due with commercial breaks, edited content and "pan-and-scan" techniques that marginalized the splendor of widescreen film productions. Nevertheless, in the pre-home video age, once a film went to television, it was all but certain you wouldn't see it again in movie theaters unless it was a classic or cult title that might be shown in a big city art house venue. Today, you can get DVD editions for pocket change and very affordable upscale Blu-rays, not to mention the endless options for streaming. We can relish seeing films in their original content without edits or interruptions, which only makes it all the more amazing that there are still movie lovers who indulge in watching deplorable cable TV showings of classic movies on networks that present movies in the manner of days of old.

BY TODD GARBARINI

Film director Jonathan Mostow began his career in film shortly after graduating college in the mid-1980’s as a television writer and director for segments on Fright Show in 1985, Beverly Hills Body Snatchers in 1989, and the TV-movie Flight of Black Angel in 1991. While working as the executive producer of the Michael Douglas suspenser The Game (1997), Mr. Mostow was also looking to adapt Stephen King’s short story “Trucks” into a film. Although it had already been shot in late 1985 by Mr. King (in a directing capacity) as Maximum Overdrive (1986), there was interest to do another film version of it – until all involved were told that they could not use Stephen King’s name with the project. This proved to be fortuitous as most of the locations had not only been scouted but also secured for filming, although there was no film to be shot. Mr. Mostow took the locations and fashioned a story about a couple driving across the country to start a new life when unexpectedly their life takes a huge wrong turn. The result is Breakdown, a nail-biting suspense thriller that is Mr. Mostow’s feature film debut as a director, which is now available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment. I spoke with Mr. Mostow recently about the film and the new Blu-ray.

Todd Garbarini: Thank you for having gotten Breakdown made. I can safely say that this is the most intense motion picture that I have ever seen. I initially did not want to see it based on the theatrical trailer because it looked “run-of-the-mill”, however I found myself at the Glendale 9 Drive-In in June 1997 while in Arizona on business, and Breakdown was the only title, aside from Jim Carrey’s Liar, Liar, that appealed to me. I love Kurt Russell and the film completely blew me away. I was not prepared for the movie at all, and I don't know how you made it the way you did, but I'm grateful because I think it's extraordinary. It's a film that possesses a level of emotional tension that I have rarely, if ever, experienced in a feature film and it also has one of the best movie scores I’ve ever heard. Would it be fair to say that Steven Spielberg's Duel was an influence on the film?

Jonathan Mostow: I'm sure that it was. First off, thank you for the super kind words. I'm going to guess that since you saw this at a drive-in, you heard the audio from inside a car? 

TG: No, actually I was sitting on the hood of the car, and the movie was so full of tension and suspense that I honestly thought that my sweaty palms would pull the paint off the car! The audio was actually very, very good. The drive-in no longer had those small, tinny speakers. The audio instead was pumped through the FM radio band, and there were many cars all around me that were doing that. I didn't even have to listen through my Ford Taurus station wagon rental car (laughs), and I heard all the music and dialogue perfectly.

JM: Oh that’s good, because I'm really a stickler about good sound.

TG: I am, too.

JM: I want to cringe when I hear about drive-ins because I thought it probably would have sounded terrible! I want to address something that you said earlier when we began speaking, and that's how you pretty much didn't want to see Breakdown as a result of the trailer. I will never forget when I was a young filmmaker at the time because it was my first studio film and we had just had a test screening that had gone really well. The way that it works is that they have a test screening and afterwards they ask questions of the audience. So, the whole audience was still inside the theater, filling out the questionnaire, and in the lobby a group of the senior executives from the studio were milling around and asking each other how they were going to market the movie. I happened to overhear them, and they sort of intimated that this would be a good movie for the drive-in crowd, so-to-speak. Especially in the South, they felt that the South would somehow like it more. Since I was a young filmmaker at the time, I didn't feel that it was really my place to walk up to the top people of the studio and tell them their business, but I really wanted to tell them that this is not the crowd that this film was designed for. I saw the film as really a nightmare for yuppies. This is a nightmare for the metrosexual, educated, polo-shirt wearing, white collar middle-aged Everyman. That's who this is a nightmare for and that's who you should be selling this to. The marketing campaign, in a way, I believe sent a different message to the audience than what I was intending about the film and the result was what you said earlier about not wanting to see it initially, and how the film ultimately surprised you and you came to like the film a lot more than you initially thought you would.

TG: I must admit, that doesn’t happen to me often.

JM: I have heard that reaction from so many people, and Kurt (Russell) heard that from so many people. The question was, “Why didn't you think you would enjoy it?”, and the answer was, “The way that it was originally sold was that the ad campaign set up certain expectations that were not the expectations that I would have set up had I been designing the ad campaign.” I have to say that the studio (Paramount) did a fantastic job with this brand-new Blu-ray transfer. It looks gorgeous. For so many years, people have been asking me why they couldn't find this movie on Blu-ray.

TG: Yes, I was one of those…

JM: And I would have to explain to them that it wasn't available on Blu-ray. I was thrilled when the studio got in touch with me last year and they told me that they were going to do this movie right, that they would do a whole new transfer. I went in and sort of supervised it and signed off on what they did. I was just thrilled with it. Now, to answer your question about Duel, I'm a little older than you, and I grew up watching TV movies. Duel was originally a made-for-TV movie, and it did receive a theatrical release later on. But there were lots of these TV movies at the time, where a couple is driving somewhere, they're pulled over for a speeding ticket, or there is a corrupt cop who ends up imprisoning them and embezzling them for money, or the wife disappears, etc.

TG: Yes, Dying Room Only with Dabney Coleman and Cloris Leachman was one of the more famous films of that ilk.

JM: Right, and all these horrible things happen. I don't even remember the names of most of these movies, but I'm thinking of an aggregate of that, plus the types of themes that you would see in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, they were all kind of rattling around in my brain. So, when I had an idea for this, even though this is a quote-unquote “original idea”, and arguably no ideas are original because everything's been pretty much done in cinema, because we are all creatures of the culture that we grew up in, I thought it should be a road movie.

TG: The climax of the film looked like a real nightmare to shoot. Did it take a long time to shoot that?

JM: Yeah, we actually spent a couple of weeks on that. That was one of the few things that we shot that was in the Los Angeles area. The rest of the film was shot in Utah, Nevada, and all over the place.

TG: I couldn't help but notice that Gabby Petito, the woman who tragically disappeared and who has been in the news with her fiancé Brian Laundrie,were stopped by police just outside of the entrance to Arches National Park, which is in Moab, Utah. This location is featured prominently at the film's start, particularly the general store where Jeffrey Taylor has words with the pickup truck’s driver played by M.C. Gainey.

JM: We shot everything for real in this movie. Nowadays, if you're going to shoot a car chase, most of it is digital. I have always been a believer in the idea that even though you can do things digitally, and back then the digital technology was still sort of in its infancy, it was kind of cost-prohibitive, too – to make something visceral, you should really go out of the way and do it for real. The only thing that was truly digital was in certain cases during the climax when the Peterbilt cab is going over the bridge and dangling, that was a real truck. But naturally, it was suspended by construction cranes and we had to digitally remove all of them, the wiring holding up the cab, etc. If you scratch beneath the surface, of any movie, what you have is a director who's basically a child playing with a big electric train set.  It's never easy of course, but it was also super fun.

TG: I became a fan of Basil Poledouris after I heard his magnificent score to John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian which I saw it when it opened in May 1982. Was he your first choice to score this phone?

JM: Well, Basil had been suggested to me and we had ended up bringing in a composer I had worked with previously, Richard Marvin, and he did some of the music as well, and the net result of what we ended up with was a score that neither one of them would have done on their own. In a lot of cases, where we recorded a big score with a large orchestra, I went up just taking out the orchestra completely and leaving in just a kind of percussion track or something. Scoring the movie itself was an unusual process and everybody was happy with it at the end. However, the initial issue that I was having with Basil’s score was that he was capturing the emotion but not capturing enough of the suspense. That being said, I don't believe that it was a score that anybody would have devised on the outside.

TG: I think that the score works perfectly. Especially towards the climax, the end of the film, you have Jeffrey struggling to get to his wife, and the intercutting between Jeffrey and the kidnappers, that whole sequence is just incredible. The tension that you built during that sequence was magnificent.

JM: Well, you should appreciate this story. One night, we were working very late in Basil’s studio which was in Venice (California). This was a very dangerous area back then. It was about two in the morning, and he tells me that he has to go down the street and get some cigarettes. He asked me if I wanted anything from the corner store. On the one hand I told him no thank you, but on the other hand, in my head, I'm thinking, “Are you crazy?! You're going to go to a corner store at two in the morning?” I wouldn't walk out in that neighborhood at two in the morning even if I had armed escorts. It was at that moment that I realized that Basil had no personal fear. He was the sort of the opposite of me. I’m a fairly anxious person and that's how I was throughout most of the making of this movie, dealing with my own anxiety. What I realized at that moment was that Basil was connecting with the sadness. Kurt's character, Jeffrey Taylor, had this feeling of having lost his wife and didn’t know where she was or even how to find her. He was also facing potentially losing his wife forever. Basil was capturing that beautifully, but the problem was I wasn't feeling the anxiety. So that's why I brought in Richard so he could just nail the anxiety that I really needed for the movie. In the end, the score ended up being what I really needed, which was a hybrid between the sadness and the anxiety. That's why I think the score worked so well for the film. If these composers had done the scores on their own, I don't think that they would have achieved the effect that I was looking for. It just had to be a partnership.

TG: Do you have an all-time favorite movie?

JM: No, because it varies. There are movies that you love tremendously when you are young, and I'm sure that you have probably experienced this yourself, and then you look at them maybe 15 or 20 years later and they just don't hold up for you anymore. I remember watching Barbra Streisand getting a Lifetime Achievement Award, and she said something that has always stuck with me. She said that it was great to get these awards, it's great to be recognized for your work, but the real test is if 30 years from now, which of these films will stand up? Which of these films will still work? And that's what's amazing to me when I go back and I look at certain films that were made, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, and they hold up, that's always, to me, the miracle. Some films hold up and some films simply don't.

TG: I agree. In 1979, I saw two films that I loved very much: Moonraker and The Black Hole. Both films have really wonderful film scores by the late great John Barry. But the former is James Bond in outer space and the latter was really beautiful to look at, but had very little in the way of action. I really loved both films when I first saw them, but watching them many years later, I found the former to be puerile and insipid and the latter to be plodding and boring. And it killed me that I felt that way. One film from that era that stands the test of time for me is George Miller's The Road Warrior which was, is, and I think always will be, the best action film that I've ever seen. I never tire of that film. There are some problems with it, when they overcrank or undercrank the action and it just looks like a Mack Sennett comedy for a few seconds, I don't agree with that, they should have left it alone. The Shining is another one. That film terrified me when I first saw it and it's still the most beautiful horror film that I've ever seen. What are some of the other films that you've seen that have influenced your career?

JM: When I was a child, my father took me to see Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. We saw it at this old repertory movie theater near where we lived, and this film plays a little bit like sort of a light comedy. But to an eight-year-old kid like me, I found the film to be totally gripping. The idea in that film is that this woman suddenly disappears 10 minutes into the movie. And the audience is wondering where the hell did she go? I believe that that notion stayed in my subconscious all these years and in a way, Breakdown was my way of exercising that out of my subconscious. So, Breakdown is the film that kind of launched my career. Even though that is one of Hitchcock's lesser works, for me personally, it had a great influence. That's also a hard question to answer, because truthfully, I didn't see a great many movies growing up. By the time I had gotten to college, I don't believe I had seen more than 15 or 20 movies.

TG: What films did you initially not like, then you watched them again later on and had a different experience and ended up really liking them?

JM: I have to be honest, there are very few films that I've seen multiple times. Once I've seen a film, that's it. I've seen it. I remember seeing an interview one time with a filmmaker, and it came out in the interview that once he was done with the film he never sees it again. And I hadn't directed any movie prior to seeing that interview. And I remember thinking how crazy that was! I thought to myself if I'd directed a movie, I would watch it every week! Sure enough, I found that once I finished the film, I've never gone back to watch it again. Ever! Breakdown, of course, is the exception because I watched it with Kurt Russell while we did the commentary for it. You see it more than once when you're traveling around the world, doing press screenings and that sort of thing. But psychologically for me, I'm just done. And I move on. I have seen Goodfellas a few times. That's one that comes to mind. Other movies that I've seen before, I might catch a few scenes of it here or there on television. But I generally don't watch it again all the way through. I tend to not be a big repeat viewer. 

In closing, I just really appreciate that Paramount is releasing this movie on Blu-ray with our commentary track and all the extras. There are some really interesting interviews on it. We're actually including the alternate opening to the film on this disc. This is something that has never been shown to the public before.

TG: For me, that is worth the price of admission alone. Thank you very much for speaking with me, it’s been a pleasure.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

In Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown (1997), Jeffrey and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) seem like a normal and nice middle-aged couple moving from New England to San Diego to hopefully start a new life from a past we are not privy to, though it’s one fraught with financial issues. On the way, Jeffrey nearly sideswipes a dirty brown Ford F150 while reaching for his thermos and suffers invective from the driver (M.C. Gainey). A minor confrontation ensues later when both men refuel at the same gas station. Words are exchanged. Upon leaving, the Taylor’s new Grand Cherokee soon malfunctions, and they are temporarily stranded as the F150 blows past them. Fortunately, an 18-wheeler soon stops to help. The truck’s driver, Red Barr (the fine character actor J.T. Walsh in his penultimate screen performance), gives Amy a ride to Belle’s Diner to call for help – except that she never makes it.

If you recall Steven Spielberg’s 1971 television film Duel, Dennis Weaver portrayed David Mann, an Everyman traveling to a sales account when his life suddenly changes after passing a huge oil truck. Incensed by this perceived breach of road etiquette, the truck driver chases and taunts Mann throughout the rest of the film. Duel is arguably the granddaddy of road rage movies, making riveting cinema out of a cat-and-mouse game that holds the audience’s attention the entire time. Likewise, Breakdown holds the equivalent mantle as it pertains to missing persons thrillers. As a horror film fan of forty years, there is little that I have seen that gets under my skin, George Sluizer’s icy 1988 Dutch/French character study Spoorloos, known in the States as The Vanishing, being a notable exception. Mr. Russell and Mr. 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). Here they pair up again in a frightening game that begins when, following unsuccessful attempts to glean info from the patrons and owner of Belle’s Diner (a terrific turn by character actor Jack McGee), Jeffrey catches sight of Red’s truck and pulls him over to the side of the road. Jeffrey’s interrogation of Red regarding his wife’s whereabouts is met by a perplexing display of gaslighting when Red claims he doesn’t even know what Jeff is talking about. For a moment, we feel that perhaps this is even Red’s twin and that there has been a complete mix-up. Following a search of Red’s vehicle aided by a passing sheriff (Rex Linn), Jeffrey is, like Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) as described by Cliff Robertson in the 1973 documentary on Mr. Hitchcock, “a man alone – innocent, defenseless…” He realizes that it’s up to him to find Amy – and he has no idea who to trust or even where to begin. What follows is the most intense nail-biting thriller I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to oversell the film, but I will anyway. Jeffrey moves mountains to locate his wife and when he does, the tension and anxiety could not be more powerful. One thing I noticed: Red has white wings in his hair like the Paulie Walnuts character on The Sopranos.

The ending of Breakdown has been shrugged off by some critics as being unworthy of what comes before, and even “ludicrous”. I must respectfully disagree. By the end of the film, what we are looking for is a massive payoff, and I believe that we get it in spades. The “ludicrous” ending is, instead, tension-filled and satisfying. Detractors never seem to offer an alternative. I am personally thankful to Dino DeLaurentiis for making a go of it and letting Jonathan Mostow direct this film. Everyone has to start somewhere, and this directorial debut is remarkable.

In the days of VHS and laserdisc prior to large-screen televisions, Breakdown is a film that I owned on the latter format in a letterboxed edition. In 1998, the film suffered the indignity of a rather lackluster transfer on DVD when it was window-boxed and lacked 16 x 9 anamorphic enhancement, rendering the DVD nearly unwatchable. The new Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment is part of “Paramount Presents” which is described as a line of Blu-ray releases for collectors and fans showcasing movies that have generally not made it to Blu-ray before. Breakdown is number 26 in the list of titles of films showcased on Blu-ray in these new special editions. The new transfer is a revelation.

In addition to the new transfer, the Blu-ray contains the following extras:

A feature-length audio commentary with the director and Kurt Russell. If you have ever heard any of the previous commentaries that Mr. Russell has been involved with, specifically with director John Carpenter on Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982), you know that he is one of the most entertaining people to listen to. He also has a phenomenal laugh and chuckles through most of the film, even making fun of Jeffrey! Hilarious. They speak about Dino DeLaurentiis; having gotten cinematographer Doug Milsom who worked on four films with Stanley Kubrick; Mr. Russell imitating Dennis Weaver in Duel (“You can’t catch me on the grade!”); the director discussing how he wrote a role for Morgan Freeman as a character whose wife was kidnapped and teams up with Jeffrey, the idea later wisely written out of the script; Roger Ebert criticized the bank scene, but the commentary states that they were rushed to get it done on the location but I think it works just fine. Overall, a truly fun and entertaining listen and easily the best extra.

Newly commissioned alternative artwork.

The musical score is isolated on one of the audio tracks, a great feature that I wish more companies would provide.

Filmmaker Focus - Jonathan Mostow (10:45) – This piece is a spotlight on the director that highlights much of what was said during the commentary.

Victory is Hers: Kathleen Quinlan on Breakdown (4:22) – I was so happy to see Kathleen Quinlan included in this edition and she discusses some of her experiences making the film.

A Brilliant Partnership: Martha De Laurentiis on Breakdown (8:18) – This is a piece dedicated to one of the producers of the film. Mrs. De Laurentiis worked with her late husband, Dino, on the film and this is a look at their partnership.

Alternate Opening with optional Jonathan Mostow commentary (11:00) – Along with the film’s commentary, this is a very cool piece to see, as its inclusion changes the whole mood of the film. The credits run slowly over the opening and the sequence establishes Jeffrey as all-thumbs – lightyears removed from the Snake Plissken Mr. Russell played fifteen years earlier. It was the correct decision to remove this footage, though I feel badly for the other actors in the scene to have been excised from such a terrific film!

Rounding out the extras are trailers for Breakdown, Kiss the Girls, and Hard Rain.

There are two Blu-rays of this film available, one from the Australian company Via Vision’s Imprint line and the Paramount Presents disc. Both Blu-rays are worth owning for die-hard fans of the film as they each contain completely different extras, but if you have to choose just one, I recommend the Paramount disc as it contains the director/actor commentary and the excised alternate opening.

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