At the peak of its popularity in 1966, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." was a genuine international phenomenon, as evidenced by this widely-seen advertisement for a pop poster of David McCallum, who was a heart throb for teenage girls. Curiously, the original ads did not give fans of Robert Vaughn the same option, unless one could view the microscopic print at the bottom of the coupon that promoted his poster almost as an afterthought. Vaughn's fans must have griped because a second version of the ad prominently depicted both stars equally. It's great to know that McCallum is still at the top of his game on the hit TV series "NCIS".

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Midnight Marquee Press.

When Sir Christopher Lee passed away at the age of 93 in 2015, it was truly the end of an era. He was the last of the great horror stars. This book is a comprehensive overview of Lee's work in the horror genre, including movies, books, audio recordings and video games. As well as providing in-depth production histories and critical analysis, new interviews have been conducted with Lee's co-workers (some of them speaking here for the first time), which shed fresh light upon the man and his work. Few actors spanned the generations with more lasting appeal than Christopher Lee. From his ventures with Hammer-whose swift gradation of flesh and blood into a staid 1950s cinema broke new ground-to his work, in the next century, on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and numerous interactive formats, Lee was constantly abreast of advancements in his industry. Consequently, this book can be read not only as an alternative history of the Horror Film, but also of the myriad developments within cinema itself.

Click here to order 

BY TODD GARBARINI

Were it not for the beloved nature of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939), itself a financial failure upon its original release but finally making a profit decades later, there is a good bet that many fantasy films would never have seen the light of day. I get the feeling that director Jean Yarbrough’s Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), which opened at the Warner in New York in April 1952 and was the first color outing by the late great comedy team of Abbott and Costello, falls into that camp. The inspiration for the film reportedly came from Mr. Costello’s daughter, Christine, who asked him to read her the fairytale one night before bed, and he was so taken with the story that he decided that it would be a good vehicle for him and his partner, Bud Abbott, to make in the hopes of reaching young children in the audience.

From the opening sepia-toned “real-life” scenes to the colorful fantasy sequences, Jack and the Beanstalk may be delightful for children but is an uneven comedy for all but perhaps the comedy duo’s most fervent admirers. While it is indeed whimsical, it lacks the re-watch factor found in Gus Meins and Charley Rogers’s wonderful comedy/musical March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) starring another great comedy team, Laurel and Hardy, a film that I grew up on and can still watch today.

Donald Larkin (child actor David Stollery), a self-described problem child, is a precocious nine-year-old whose older sister, Eloise (Shaye Cogan), wants to attend the rehearsal of a play with her fiancé Arthur (James Alexander), however a babysitter for Donald is nowhere in sight. Through a mishap, Lou Costello and Bud Abbott end up taking on the boy through the Cosman Employment Agency while they are looking for work. Lou and Bud make their way to Donald’s house and Lou banters with Donald. Lou attempts to read Donald “Jack and the Beanstalk”, but the wording proves too much for him. In a reversal of roles, Donald becomes the reader, but Lou falls asleep, and we are taken into the fairy tale in color. In Lou’s dream, Jack (as portrayed by Lou) finds himself face to face with a giant (Buddy Baer) who gives him a run for his money. Jack has a cow named Henry and ends up selling Henry for some magic beans. Just as in the fairy tale, the magic beans are planted and, in a quick but charming animated sequence, the magic beanstalk grows high into the sky. Jack marvels at its height and, along with the village butcher Mr. Dinklepuss (Bud in a supporting role), climbs into the giant’s abode and finds a wealth of treasures that he took from the villagers, including a hen that lays golden eggs and a large harp with a truly maniacal-looking face fashioned on the end of it. I can imagine many a child in the audience being frightened by this image. A kidnapped prince (James Alexander) and princess (Shaye Coggan) become the objects that Jack attempts to extricate from the giant’s clutches.

It’s disarming to see the Warner Brothers logo before the film given that the team made nearly twenty films for Universal Pictures. While it’s certainly not one of the duo’s best films – much of the acting is wooden and their antics and jokes seem a little forced. However the slapstick would no doubt be appreciated by youngsters and the film actually improves during the musical numbers. Mr. Costello sings the film’s best tune, “I Fear Nothing”, which you’ll be singing for days after viewing the film, and there is a funny dance routine that is lifted from Hold That Ghost (1941).

While this film has been available on home video many times before (on DVD in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2012 and in 2020 on Blu-ray), if you’re a true Abbott and Costello completist the new 70th anniversary 2022 Blu-ray from ClassicFlix.com is the way to go as it contains a 4K restoration of the film in color as well as a whole host of extras not found anywhere else.

Bonus Features:

Newly recorded feature introduction by Lou’s youngest daughter, Chris Costello. This is in high definition and runs 1:12 and you have the option of watching it or not.

Commentary by Abbott and Costello expert Ron Palumbo, with recollections from Jack and the Beanstalk co-star David Stollery. The information that Mr. Palumbo knows about this duo is unreal. His rapid-fire discussion of the onscreen antics and the behind-the-scenes history of the images are well researched and encyclopedic. He informs us that the sepia-toned opening was filmed after the color sequences, and that the film was shot between July 9^th and August 2^nd in 1951. A real pleasure to listen to.

Who's On First? on December 2, 1940 – this is very cool: Abbott and Costello performing for military troops and is presented in high definition and runs 4:05.

Imperfect Spectrum: A Brief History of Cinecolor by Jack Theakston – in high definition and running 13:21. This is a fascinating piece that explains both the history of and the workings of Cinecolor. I wish that someone would do a full-blown documentary on this and Technicolor.

Climbing the Scales: The Music of Jack and the Beanstalk – in high definition and running 9:18, this piece gives us a look at the creation of the musical score and the songs in the film.

Cutting Down the Beanstalk – in high definition and running 18:30, this piece recreates the 26 minutes of footage that was excised prior to the film’s release. Ron Palumbo provides the running commentary.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Creature – in high definition and running 15:00, this piece is from February 1954 and shows Bud and Lou looking through some props from their past movies. Glenn Strange appears as Frankenstein's Monster, recreating his famous bits from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Rudy Vallee Radio Sketch – in high definition and running 6:16, this piece is a radio bit set to images.

Restoration Demo – in high definition and running 3:10, this piece shows how the film looked before and after the restoration.

Image Gallery

Behind the Scenes photo gallery by Chip Ordway with 1952 children's recording – in high definition and running 7:02, this includes a wealth of images taken on the set with Bud and Lou telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk (at 2:31, it sounds as though Lou is saying “godammit”, which I cannot believe, but then it sounds like “there Abbott!”)

Publicity Materials photo gallery by Chip Ordway – in high definition and running 12:15, this is exactly what the description indicates.

Trailers:

Abbott and Costello Trailer Rarities – in high definition and running 41:04, this features 18 original "Coming Attractions" previews, including Jack and the Beanstalk. The condition of some of them vary from poor to excellent.

Fireman Save My Child – in high definition and running 2:10, this features two commentary tracks: one by Mike Ballew (3-D aficionado) and the other with Ron Palumbo.

ClassicFlix Trailers: There are several trailers here for other titles by ClassicFlix, among them the Marx Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca (1946) which actually begins the disc when you start it up. It runs 2:17. The only way to skip the trailer is to fast forward through it. Also included are Abbott and Costello’s TV show, The Little Rascals, Merrily We Live, and Zenobia.

In summary, a highly impressive release.

Click here to order from Amazon

The James Bond web site MI6-HQ.com provides full coverage of last weekend's "60 Years of Bond" event held at Pinewood Studios. The sold-out event was planned and hosted by Cinema Retro's own Gareth Owen of Bondstars.com and featured many dignitaries from the Bond series. CR's Dave Worrall led a tour of the studio grounds and contributing writer Matthew Field provides this detailed report.

We know for a fact that at least some of our readers of a certain age still have this record album in their collections. It was released in the mid-1960s at the peak of the spy boom that dominated films and television series. This particular album by a variety of jazz artists features themes from popular movies and TV series as well as some original compositions inspired by the spy guys. Click the play button below to hear the entire album.

These British TV adverts from the 1970s are a lot of fun, even if the video quality is lacking. Of note: Joan Collins appears in one advert and another (around the 1:21 mark) is a clever Cabury's ad that plays out as an obvious tribute to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". 

Director John Landis looks back fondly on one of Jerry Lewis's biggest hits: the  Paramount comedy "The Errand Boy", which appeals to Landis because he worked his way up from the bottom rungs of the studio system.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

By 1966, playwright Neil Simon was already the toast of Broadway and had several hit shows running simultaneously. Simon was eager to expand his talents into screenwriting and had envisioned creating a spoof of some of the more pretentious European art house movies. Before long, a diverse number of impressive talents were involved with the project, now titled "After the Fox". It would be an Italian crime caper and would star Peter Sellers. As Sellers had the most clout, he reached out to esteemed Italian director Vittorio De Sica and convinced him to direct. De Sica, however, insisted that in order to capture the true feel of Italy, an Italian screenwriter- Cesare Zavattini- needed to collaborate on the screenplay with Simon. That was the first obstacle, as neither man could speak the other's language and they had to rely on translators to communicate. This was a true challenge when writing a comedy because jokes and gags that worked in English didn't play out in Italian and vice-versa. Then Sellers insisted that his wife, Britt Ekland, should play the pivotal role of his character's younger sister. By all accounts, the blonde-haired Nordic Ekland was hardly suited for the role, especially since there were so many Italian actresses with name recognition who would have been more appropriate. Things deteriorated once filming began. De Sica and Sellers didn't get along and Sellers wanted the famed director fired.  Sellers was producing the film with his partner John Bryan, who insisted that you don't fire a director of De Sica's stature. Thus, the shared dream of Sellers and Bryan producing future movies never happened, a result of the hard feelings on the set. As if these didn't represent enough challenges, Sellers's well-documented psychological problems, phobias and mood swings often resulted in major domestic rows between him and his future ex-wife Ekland.

The film opens in the desert outside of Cairo, where a shipment of gold bars is hijacked as part of a plan devised by criminal mastermind Okra (Akim Tamiroff). The caper succeeds but he now has to find a way to smuggle the imposing number of bars safely into Europe. For this, he approaches the esteemed Italian thief and con man, Aldo Vanucci (Peter Sellers), who is currently imprisoned. It becomes clear, however, that Vanucci can make good on his promise to leave the prison any time he wants to, as he's treated as a celebrity and enjoys most of the perks of the outside world. True to his word, Vanucci escapes with the help of his two klutzy henchmen and sets about plotting an audacious plan to smuggle the gold into Italy- right under the noses of the police detectives who are searching for him. He adopts the guise of a fictitious Italian director, who he convinces the locals is the nation's most esteemed filmmaker, and sets up a faux movie production titled "The Gold of Cairo", ostensibly a film that will exploit the recent high profile theft. In reality, the phony film production will allow Vanucci and his team to openly smuggle the real gold into Italy because everyone assumes the gold bars are simply props. Vanucci must also contend with looking out for his 16 year-old sister, Gina (Britt Ekland), who is obsessed with movies and film stars to the extent that she adorns her bedroom walls with posters of Marlon Brando, William Holden, Sean Connery and even a "Pink Panther" poster that mentions star Peter Sellers. Vanucci is obsessed with ensuring Gina maintains her virginity and to keep her safe from an endless stream of gigolos. To keep her nearby, he casts her as the female lead in the movie. To give his scheme more credibility, he also convinces aging American heartthrob Tony Powell (Victor Mature) to play the male lead, thus causing a media sensation. He appeals to the local's weakness for celebrity culture by fawning over them and casting the local police chief in the film. When production gets under way, neither Vanucci or his henchmen even know how to handle the cameras.

 "After the Fox" was a critical and commercial disappointment when first released but like so many other cinematic failures, it has built an appreciative following over the decades. It's a film that eluded me all those years until I recently discovered it is streaming on Amazon Prime. Although the madcap pace of the movie gets a bit out of hand during the finale, I found it to be inspired lunacy. Peter Sellers may have been  a nightmare to work with (he would soon be fired from "Casino Royale" in mid-production), but at his best he is a comic genius- and here he is at his best. The script is far better than the language logistics might have indicated and it provides a deft satire of the film industry, as well as a social commentary on celebrity worship and the desire for fame. Even De Sica is in on the joke, appearing as himself directing a ludicrous biblical spectacle with pyramids existing in the shadows of some apartment complexes. There are some marvelous supporting turns by everyone involved and the dubbing of the Italian cast into English is expertly done. Victor Mature, never known for his comedic abilities, was lured out of retirement for this film and he's sensational. Playing a hunky, idiotic screen idol, he manages to even upstage Sellers in the laughs department. Martin Balsam is also very amusing as his exasperated manager. Even the opening credits (remember what opening credits are?) turn about to be amusing with a Pink Panther-like theme designed by the great Maurice Binder, accompanied by the Hollies and Peter Sellers providing the infectious title song created by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The talent even extended to the film poster design by the legendary Frank Frazetta.

"After the Fox" isn't a comic masterpiece but it is genuinely funny and deserved a far better fate back in 1966. Still, it's never too late to gain appreciation for an underrated gem.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Actors and directors have a long tradition of trying to pass off exotic vacations as legitimate film making. Sometimes the cynical gambit pays unexpected dividends such as the Rat Pack's decision to shoot Oceans Eleven in between their nightly gigs on stage in the Sands hotel and casino in Las Vegas. They somehow turned out a good movie in between all the drinking, screwing and gambling. John Ford rounded up his stock company and headed to Hawaii for Donovan's Reef, but even with John Wayne on board, Paramount balked at the reed-thin script and old Pappy ended up having to front some of the production costs himself. In 1990, director Michael Winner teamed two of the wittiest and most likable stars- Michael Caine and Roger Moore- for what would appear to be a "no lose" proposition: casting them in an espionage comedy. Winner was well past his sell date as a director by then and ended up reinventing himself as a grouchy political pundit and much-feared restaurant critic. Still, how could he lose by teaming Harry Palmer and James Bond? It's a rhetorical question because the resulting film, Bullseye, was considered almost unreleasable. It's one of the least-seen movies of Caine and Moore's careers and with good reason. The ridiculous plot finds the two charismatic actors cast as two low-grade London con men who become embroiled in a plot to impersonate two renegade nuclear scientists who plan to sell top secrets to dangerous foreign powers. The silliest aspect of the film is that the scientists just happen to be physically identical to the con men. Moore and Caine are subjected to a series of increasingly weird scenarios that see them running about like the Keystone Cops as any shred of sensibility in the script is tossed out the window. They are joined by B movie mainstay of the era Sally Kirkland and Moore's daughter Deborah (billed here as "Deborah Barrymore") but not even the resurrection of Marilyn Monroe's sex appeal could salvage this cinematic train wreck. Winner seems to be directing as an afterthought as he indulges in some gorgeous locations in Scotland where the on-screen antics become so confusing that you literally have no idea whether you are observing the con men or the scientists. Winner films the final scene in an exotic island location which is quite obviously an indication of his ability to actually fly everyone there simply to shoot a few seconds of inconsequential footage. Winner wrote the non-screenplay with another otherwise talented person, the great lyricist and songwriter Leslie Bricusse. The only consolation they must have had is that they had a hell of a time on location and no one saw the movie anyway.

Personal observation: In 2017, following the death of Sir Roger Moore, a suitably opulent memorial service was held for him at Pinewood Studios, arranged by his friend, personal assistant and frequent co-author, Cinema Retro's own Gareth Owen. The service reflected the man himself: it was sentimental and funny as hell. Following the memorial, there was a champagne reception in the fabled gardens area. I found myself sipping bubbly next to Sir Michael Caine. In the parlance of the Brits, he and Roger had been best mates for decades. I mentioned to him that it was a shame that the only time they had teamed on screen was for "Bullseye". Sir Michael grinned and said he and Roger referred to the film as "Our "Ishtar", a reference to the notorious flop comedy from 1987. He said they had figured out very quickly that Michael Winner wasn't interested in the film. That was evidenced by the fact that every night he would whisk his stars away for dinner at another opulent restaurant and bill the entire meal to the studio. A great time was had by all. Consequently, he said that he and Roger agreed on two things: "Bullseye" was the worst film of their careers and, paradoxically, it was the most fun they ever had on a film set. 

(The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)

By Fred Blosser

In the 1960s, Hollywood studios were ingenious in retooling foreign B-movies for American drive-ins and double-feature bills. For a perfect case study in their techniques, you would have to look no further than “Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World,” which American-International Pictures released here in 1962. The original Italian version was called “Maciste alla corte del Gran Khan,” or “Maciste in the Court of the Great Khan” (1961), directed by Riccardo Freda. To some extent, it was already made-to-order for small-town U.S. ticket-buyers. The star, Gordon Scott, was well known from his iconic role as Tarzan in five popular films from 1955 to 1960. His co-star, the French-born Japanese actress Yoko Tani, had recently been top-billed in “The Savage Innocents” (1960), “First Spaceship on Venus” (1961), and “Marco Polo” (1962). Moreover, although critically scorned, strongman epics like this one had a reliable market among eleven-year-olds and undemanding adults. On the other hand, although beloved in Italy, the character “Maciste” had no brand-name value on these shores, and at 98 minutes, the film was too long to fit into its designated position as half of a thrifty double-feature. No problem. As it had done in acquiring an earlier Maciste production, known here as “Son of Samson,” AIP substituted “Samson” for “Maciste,” and replaced the original title with one more likely to resonate on drive-in marquees. Twenty-two minutes of footage were removed, eliminating some colorful but tedious back story, and a pulpy, dramatic lobby poster was commissioned. The graphics were classic. As a muscular, loin-clothed Gordon Scott pushes over a pillar, a winsome beauty in a harem costume watches. The girl looks only vaguely Asian and not at all like Yoko Tani.

In the film, Samson turns up in medieval China where the Mongols have taken over the royal court. The young Chinese prince Tai Sung is emperor in name only, and his sister Lei-ling has been banished to a Buddhist convent. The real power behind the throne is Garak, the tyrannical Great Khan of the Mongols, who rules as regent, with ruthlessly astute guidance from his mistress Liu Tai. When rebellious Chinese peasants mount a feeble resistance, Garak decides it’s time to up his game. Tai Sung will “accidentally” die during a tiger hunt, and Mongol soldiers masquerading as rebels will attack the Buddhist convent and kill the princess. Enter Samson to rescue the prince from the tiger (as Scott gamely wrestles with an actual, drugged tiger in some shots, and with a life-sized, stuffed replica in others), while Lei-ling escapes the massacre at the convent and finds refuge with the freedom fighters. If this sounds like the usual playbook for the Samson, Hercules, and Goliath epics of the 1960s, it could also describe any of the “Star Wars” movies. Ditch the tiger, insert a Wampa or a Rancor instead. George Lucas’ original trilogies and their sequels from Disney may be more to the tastes of modern audiences but they’re just as simplistic at heart, when you come right down to it.

A new Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents the movie in both its original, 98-minute Italian version and its 76-minute AIP edit, both in the widescreen 2.35:1 format. One caveat: purists may be disappointed by the soundtrack for the Italian version. It’s an intermediate English-language track where the hero is still called “Maciste,” perhaps from the 1964 U.K. release, and not the original Italian voice track. Opening and closing credits for the AIP edit are inserted from what appears to be an old VHS or television print. In either version, attention should be paid to Hélène Chanel as the Khan’s mistress Liu Tai. We may commend the Italians for casting Yoko Tani as the captive princess Lei-ling at a time when it was rare to find Asian characters actually played by Asian actors in prominent roles, but Chanel has the more dynamic female role, and she makes the most of it with her slinky costumes and icy beauty. The AIP edit features audio commentary from Tim Lucas, who unpacks a bounty of information about the film in both iterations. Helpfully for those of us who might be hard-pressed to identify any of the miracles promised by American-International, he lists all seven.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray also features captions for the deaf and hearing impaired, several trailers (although oddly, none for “Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World” itself), and a reversible sleeve. The wonderful AIP poster art appears on one side, and alternative art from the Italian poster on the other.

Click here to order from Amazon

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

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

Writer/director/producer Russell Rouse may not be a household name, but his credits are pretty impressive. For instance, he co-wrote the 1949 film noir classic D.O.A. (and the 1988 remake). Russell also co-wrote and directed the 1956 western The Fastest Gun Alive which starred Glenn Ford. He was nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the 1951 drama The Well, and in 1959 Rouse finally won the Oscar for co-writing the Pillow Talk screenplay. Recently, the 1967 heist film The Caper of the Golden Bulls, which was directed by Rouse, has been released on Blu-ray.

The Caper of the Golden Bulls concerns former bank robber Peter Churchman (Stephen Boyd) who is blackmailed by an old flame (Giovanna Ralli) into stealing priceless jewels from a bank in Spain. Along with his girlfriend (Yvette Mimieux) and his old crew, Churchman attempts to pull off the dangerous heist during the annual “Running of the Bulls” festival.

Filmed on location in Spain, The Caper of the Golden Bulls is an entertaining and well-done caper film which features fun performances from Boyd, Mimieux and Ralli as well as from many other talented and familiar faces (who all seem to be having a good time) such as Vito Scotti, Walter Slezak, Clifton James, Jay Novello, Henry Beckman, Leon Askin, J.G. Devlin, Arnold Moss and Noah Keen.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It’s a very watchable caper flick with a strong cast, an involving story, solid direction and beautiful locations. The cute film also benefits from a terrific musical score by the great Vic Mizzy and lovely cinematography by Academy Award nominee Harold E. Stine. I definitely recommend checking it out.

The Caper of the Golden Bulls has been released on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. The film is presented in its original 1:85:1 aspect ratio, the 4K transfer looks great and the audio is clear. Special Features include an audio commentary by film historian Phillipa Berry and trailers for the films Topkapi, The Brink’s Job, Loophole, The Real McCoy, The Mercenary and The Neptune Factor.

Click here to order from Amazon

By Darren Allison

It’s always good to see one of our leading European labels continue to bring us some exciting scores from the 1970s.

José María Forqué's La Donna Della Calda Terra (CSC 037) (aka La Mujer De La Tierra Caliente or Fury, as it is sometimes referred to in English territories) was made in 1978. The movie was a product of the erotic cinema cycle which was still popular throughout the remaining years of the decade. The genre was popularised by films such as Emmanuelle (1974) and would lead to many spin- offs and sequels. La Donna Della Calda Terra starred Laura Gemser who was perhaps best known for her role in Black Emanuelle (1975). As so often with these budgeted European movies, a one-time Hollywood star (who had seen their better days) was hired for a week or two - providing them not only with a pay cheque, but also an all-expenses paid vacation abroad, and in this instance it was Stuart Whitman who took full advantage. The film tells the story of two unnamed characters (Gemser and Whitman) who, despite very different backgrounds, come together. She is a village girl with ambitions; he is a man whose wife has recently died. The two of them converse and get to know one another, and so a journey of discovery begins. Despite their different social backgrounds and a considerable age difference, the couple eventually begin an intimate relationship.

The music score for La Donna Della Calda Terra was composed by Carlo Savina, a composer whose filmography covers almost every genre of Italian cinema - from the 1950s through to the 1980s. His music here has an unusual distinction in that the score was heavily rethought during the editing and eventually the first half hour is left without music, except for the opening titles. Thus, Savina's score begins when the film changes up the narrative structure and instead of telling the stories on two parallel storylines, they start to intercut them more frequently in order to draw stronger parallels between both central characters. Whilst the general focus is more tailored towards Gemser's storyline, the switch to a hunting trip in the man's storyline helps to reframe the girl's next chapter in the film’s narrative. There’s a really nice mix of styles in Savina’s music. Yes, there is the obligatory funky disco beat that peppered a great deal of these productions from this era, but there is also a great deal more. There are some gentle, romantic cues provided by acoustic guitar, some slightly more suspenseful, atmospheric pieces that reflect the tension brought upon by the relationship and even some traditional Mexicana. But overall, La Donna Della Calda Terra is light, breezy and distinctly European in its flavour. Moreover, the score is elevated to an entirely higher level with the inclusion of some wonderful wordless vocals by Edda Dell'Orso both on the main titles and several other cues. Uniquely identifiable, she remains the ultimate, signature voice of European film scoring.

Chris' Soundtrack Corner has made this score available for essentially the first time. With literally half the score going unused in the beginning of the film, this soundtrack album offers the first opportunity to enjoy the composer's playful variations of catchy thematic material, sensual tropical exotica, and even some highly melodramatic mini masterpieces - all of which is presented in a beautifully produced package. The album benefits from a first class production by Christian Riedrich and mastering by Manmade Mastering. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page illustrated booklet designed by Tobias Kohlhaas and features exclusive (and exceptionally detailed) notes by Gergely Hubai, who explores both the making of the film and its score. Euro score fans will soak this up like a sponge.

Click here to order. 

CSC’s second offering is the soundtrack to I Gabbiani Volano Basso (CSC 034) (aka Seagulls Fly Low), another film from 1978 and directed by Giorgio Cristallini (under the Americanised pseudonym of George Warner).

The movie was influenced by the number of Vietnam Vet dramas coming out of the United States in 1978 such as The Deer Hunter and Coming Home, and the Italian cinema didn't waste much time in capitalising on the commercial potential of these films.

Starring Italian actor Maurizio Merli, who was often typecast in tough cop roles, I Gabbiani Volano Basso tells the story of a Vietnam war veteran (Merli) who finds his post-war career in the private assassination business. After succeeding in a hit in Rome, using various aliases, the war vet gets into an altercation that leads to a wild chase involving the police, other killers, and a third shady business partner who wants to get the whole company for himself. While on the run, Merli's character hooks up with Isabelle (Nathalie Delon), the lonely owner of a Roman boutique shop who helps with his escape. But with the two other killers in tow, our hero must make an important decision between getting away safely while leaving Isabelle behind in danger, or making the ultimate sacrifice for the only woman who helped him selflessly.

The music for I Gabbiani Volano Basso was written by Roberto Pregadio, one of the few Italian Silver Age composers who also made a career as a television personality. In most of his film scoring collaborations, it was Pregadio's job to flesh out or transcribe the musical ideas of his co-composers who usually didn't have the necessary musical training to do so. Such was the case with I Gabbiani Volano Basso, where Pregadio is actually credited together with two members of the director's family, Paola and Carlo Cristallini, though only the latter is given credit. Besides the music that's in the film, the soundtrack also includes some major discoveries including music cues that were not originally heard in the finished film.

This release from Chris' Soundtrack Corner marks the premiere presentation of any of the music from I Gabbiani Volano Basso. Certain aspects of the recording indicate that the original production was prepared for the release of an eventual soundtrack album but the project did not materialise. One of these clues is that certain cues were recorded in shorter film versions as well as extended versions that would be more at home on a soundtrack or exploited on a later library LP, but neither saw the light of day. Among the differences preserved on the CD is "Title – versione disco", the record version of the opening music. This version is not only half a minute longer in comparison to the film version, but it's actually a different mix with a more prominent focus on the keyboard and the pop percussion, both of which appear in a lighter fashion in the movie. A great many of the tracks do follow an upbeat disco rhythm and electronic keyboard riffs, which provide an instant indicator of the film’s period setting. But it’s certainly not confined to a pulsating funk-filled timepiece, there are also a fair amount of more gentle, dreamlike moments that succeed in softening its harder edges and provide a welcome sense of calm and restfulness - so it’s a score that is nicely balanced. Its bonus tracks also include ‘Ricordi angoscianti’ - a traumatic and hectic cue which appears during a Vietnam flashback sequence shortly after Merli has completed his first hit in Rome. The album is superbly produced by Christian Riedrich and mastered by Manmade Mastering. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page illustrated booklet designed by Tobias Kohlhaas and featuring detailed, exclusive notes on the film and its score by Gergely Hubai.

Chris' Soundtrack Corner have managed to weave their magic again by taking two relatively obscure and seldom seen films by presenting their soundtracks with a new found sense of importance and respect. We can only be grateful that CSC is prepared and willing to take up the challenge in their quest for film music preservation.

Click here to order

(Darren Allilson is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro.)

Advanced trade magazine advertisement.

BY CHRIS MILTON

Sandwiched between the unfortunate Topaz (1969), which Hitchcock described as an ‘ordeal,’ and his final film, the trifling Family Plot (197), about which many have been altogether too kind, Frenzy (1972) was the final efflorescence of Hitchcock’s diabolic, virtuoso talent. He hadn’t had a box office hit since The Birds, and hadn’t deserved one. Frenzy was both a critical and commercial success. In the intervening fifty years since its release its critical stock hasn’t declined, yet is still the least known and least written about of Hitchcock’s handful of masterworks. This is perhaps because it wasn’t a star vehicle, though it did feature the leading British theatrical talent of the time, perhaps because it is the most misanthropic, if not nihilistic of his films, with an overarching air of grubbiness.

The failure of Hitchcock’s post-Birds films has generally been discussed in terms of age and artistic decline, but these films were farragoes due to factors beyond the director’s control, and in any case Hitchcock’s career was from the start one of peaks and troughs, of films such as Stage Fright (1950), Lifeboat (1944) and Rope (1948), that didn’t come near the delirious aesthetic heights of Vertigo (1958), Frenzy, Psycho (1960) or The Birds (1963). Frenzy was just another artistic crest and was the last simply because he didn’t have enough time on earth left for another.

If Frenzy hasn’t aged one whit it is because although ostensibly set in 70s London, with a significant part of it shot on location in Covent Garden, it is actually set in a purely cinematic, Hitchcockian, time-transcending London. Hitchcock and his writer, Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, The Wicker Man) had the film’s characters speak a slightly archaic diction, to evoke the London of Jack the Ripper, Crippen, Christie and that of Hitchcock’s first film, The Lodger (1927), like Frenzy, the story of a woman-murderer at large, and a man on the run falsely accused of his crimes.

Frenzy is hardly the ‘love letter’ to the London Hitchcock was born and grew up in some have lazily taken it to be purely because he returned there towards the end of his life. Rarely has the city looked so unlovely on screen, squalid even, with an excremental brown dominating the film’s palette. The city, which he left for good in 1939, is the setting for themes of the failure of love and friendship, of humans bestially devouring each other, a seamy setting for debased and degenerate crime. Much is made of the Covent Garden setting (Covent Garden was set for demolition in 1974, and it is fascinating to see the area as a working market), but this is more to do with the motifs of food, eating and waste running through the film, rather than fond memories – after all the killer is given the same trade as Hitchcock’s father – a Covent Garden Greengrocer.

The film opens with a piece of mordant irony: the camera swoops over and down the Thames, through Tower Bridge to soaring, majestic, even pompous orchestral music that might soundtrack a tourist information film. It alights riverside on the steps of City Hall where an MP is giving a flatulent speech, promising to clean up the polluted river. Amongst the clapping, animated crowd stands a motionless, expressionless, black-clad Hitchcock, glaring balefully head. No whimsy here, in this cameo he is Death. Someone in the crowd spots a woman’s naked corpse, face-down, bum-up, floating in the Thames, with the necktie that strangled her still around her neck. From soaring celebratory grandeur to the utmost sordor of an abused human body become mere waste, part of the estuarial muck, shat out by death.

And cut to Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) doing up is tie at the mirror. There’s a killer on the loose again, an old London story. But it isn’t Blaney. He’s on his uppers, working as live-in barman, and about to be sacked for helping himself to the brandy. He’s suspected of being the killer when his estranged wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) becomes one of the victims after he’s seen leaving the matrimonial agency she runs just before her dead body is discovered, the real killer having locked her office door behind him. He goes on the run and his girlfriend, Babs (Anna Massey) becomes the next victim. Blaney is caught, sentenced, imprisoned and escapes, intent on the revenge murder of the real killer. Not as improbable, plot-wise, as it sounds, because the real killer is Blaney’s friend Rusk (Barry Foster, who would soon hit pay dirt as TV cop Van der Valk), a becoiffed and dandified Jack-the-Lad and Mummy’s Boy, and a regular at the pub where both Blaney and Babs work. We know he’s the killer less than fifteen minutes into the film, creating unease in every scene in which he appears. He’s, likeable, helpful, everyone’s obliging friend, though he lets slip his nihilistic cynicism and misogyny several times in his banter.

It is hard to sympathise with Blaney, a sullen, sponging, fractious, bitter and rude malcontent: Hitchcock wanted to portray him as a perennial loser. In Hitchcock’s other innocent-man-accused films we root for the characters not just because of their innocence but because of their charm. Even in Hitchcock’s most dour film, The Wrong Man (1956), a film of almost Bressonian austerity, the protagonist, played by Henry Fonda, is decent, and a loving husband.

Hitchcock had recently seen Jon Finch as the intense lead in Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), still the best Shakespeare on film. But he didn’t like him. Or at least he pretended not to: his constant cold-shouldering of the actor on set seriously affected Finch’s mood during filming, and made his performance edgier, moodier, more frustrated.

Blaney is unaware that Rusk is one of his wife’s would-be-clients: Rusk wants her to find him a woman with ‘certain peculiarities,’ by which we’re meant to understand a taste for masochism. She refuses to help him. He rapes and murders her in his office after pleading is case. The scene lasts for a gruelling twelve minutes. Stylistically it was departure for Hitchcock in his depiction of murder, lacking all legerdemain, filmed in real time, without music, without ostentatious cuts. It is in no way, thrilling, is entirely anerotic. It is disgusting. Increasingly menacing dialogue presages the violence; a queasy apprehension of fear, predatoriness and impending savagery is achieved with dolly zooms. The increased freedoms from censorship allowed Hitchcock to depict violence towards women in its repellent, pathetic squalor, to become not a pseudo-pornographer but a severe, despairing moralist. Rusk picks up Brenda ‘s half-eaten apple after he has killed her and casually takes a bite, his dessert. (Rusk eats after both murders in the film and is constantly seen snacking and handling food.) The scene is Ackermanesque – if it had been shot by a woman it would have been hailed as proto-feminist.

Original Japanese poster.

The final shot of this sobering scene, Branda Blaney’s goggle-eyed death stare, and swollen, grossly protruding tongue, has been described as ‘cartoonish’, but in fact is a highly realistic depiction of the face of a strangled-to-death human. Hitchcock was a connoisseur of corpses and the grotesque attitudes of death. In 1945 he was recruited to oversee the editing and appointed Supervising Director of a documentary made from footage of the Nazi concentration camps shot by Allied and Soviet troops called German Concentration Camps: Factual Survey (it was not shown until 1984, released under the title Memory of the Camps, with a later version that included an omitted sixth reel released in 2014). Hitchcock sat through four hours of some of the most distressing images ever filmed and was traumatised by it, staying away from the studio for a week and refusing to watch any of it a second time.

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

As we all know, Fred Astaire’s amazing, God-given dancing talent made him a Golden Age movie star. As a matter of fact, numerous times, he has been called the greatest dancer in film history. Although Astaire was also an accomplished actor, singer and choreographer, he will forever be remembered as a top-notch, innovative dancer. He made 31 musical features; some of his best being Holiday Inn, Easter Parade, The Band Wagon, Funny Face and, of course, the many films he made with the lovely and equally talented Ginger Rogers. (The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Swing Time, Shall We Dance, etc.) If you’re a fan of this legendary Hollywood icon, you will be happy to know that, although not a musical, Midas Run, a film Fred Astaire made near the end of his long and illustrious career, has been released on Blu-ray.

Written by Ronald Austin, James Buchanan and Berne Giler, and directed by Alf Kjellin, Midas Run tells the entertaining story of a retired secret service agent named Pedley (Fred Astaire) who hires writer Mike Warden (Richard Crenna) and Mike’s girlfriend Sylvia Giroux (Anne Heywood) to help him steal $15,000,000 in gold. However, the clever Pedley may have something even bigger planned.

Made for only $1.1 million, Midas Run was shot in London, Venice, Milan, Tuscany and Rome and was released in April of 1969. The lighthearted production not only contains fun performances from Crenna, Heywood and Astaire, but also features several highly talented and recognizable faces from classic cinema such as Sir Ralph Richardson, Cesar Romero, Adolfo Celi, Jacques Sernas and Roddy McDowall. Midas Run also benefits from a wonderful musical score by immortal composer Elmer Bernstein and a title song written by Don Black and sung by Anne Heywood.

It may not ever appear on a “best of” Fred Astaire film list, but Midas Run is still an extremely well-made, engaging and fun movie that is sure to make you smile.

Midas Run has been released on Blu-ray by the fine folks at Kino Lorber. The film, which looks terrific, is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The disc contains a very informative audio commentary by film historians Lee Gambin and Emma Westwood as well as the original theatrical trailer. There are also trailers for Robbery, The High Commissioner, Cop-out and Street People.

Click here to order from Amazon

BY TODD GARBARINI

Film Director Paul W.S. Anderson cut his teeth in the industry by directing the 1995 Christopher Lambert film Mortal Kombat, a cinematic adaptation of the video game franchise of the same name. This gave him the clout to tackle the sci-fi horror film Event Horizon, a colorful pastiche of genre influences ranging from Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) to Gary Nelson’s The Black Hole (1979) to Peter Hyams’ Outland (1981) to Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985) and to James Cameron’s Aliens (1986).

The term “event horizon”, as defined by Wikipedia, refers to “a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer.” Physicist Wolfgang Rindler founded this term in 1956 and this phenomenon is mentioned by Dr. Hans Reinhardt (played by Maximillian Schell) in Walt Disney’s The Black Hole. In Mr. Anderson’s film, Event Horizon is the name of a starship that mysteriously vanished on its way to Proxima Centauri in 2040. Proxima Centauri is roughly 25 trillion miles from Earth and would take 6300-man years to get to it with present day technology, but the film has much better transportation methods in mind. It reappears seven years later with little explanation regarding its current state. A distress signal is picked up by the rescue vessel, Lewis and Clark, and the Event Horizon is now orbiting Neptune. The inhabitants of the Lewis and Clark, who come out of hyper sleep like the crew of the Nostromo in Alien, consist of Laurence Fishburne (of 1979’s Apocalypse Now) as Commanding Officer Miller, Sam Neill (of 1993’s Jurassic Park) as Dr. William Weir, Kathleen Quinlan (of 1997’s Breakdown) as Peters, Joely Richardson as Starck, Richard T. Jones as Cooper, Jack Noseworthy (of 1997’s Breakdown) as Justin, Jason Isaacs (of 2006’s Brotherhood, Showtime’s best series) as D.J., and Sean Pertwee as Smith. This motley crew is on edge, dropping not-so-subtle hints about their reluctance to engage in this mission to see if there are any survivors aboard the starship. Dr. Weir reminds me of Ash, the aloof and sinister science officer in Alien. He designed the Event Horizon and tries to explain to the crew how the ship was built with the capability of generating manmade black holes to connect space and time for the purpose of enabling lightning-fast travel – at least that’s what I got out of his rant.

Even in space, the ultimate enemy is man (anyone remember that tag line?), and there are many pissing contests in space to be had in the testosterone-bathed environment that the crew is forced to work in. Snide remarks and insults abound, much to the consternation of Miller who realizes that the ship itself has a life of its own and causes the crew to hallucinate when it taps into their psyches, exposing unresolved fears and grief from their past that only each individual can see. This is a nice change of pace for the genre. Sending the crew to their demise at the hands of yet another onboard alien would truly have been an unnecessary and unwarranted retread of Sir Ridley Scott’s and James Cameron’s aforementioned masterworks, no matter how good the intentions may have been. Event Horizon may be the ultimate “face your fears” film. The premise results in some truly shocking imagery that, according to director Anderson, appears in the form of one to three quick frames to give the audience a glimpse of what the crew is facing/experiencing. If the imagery does appear to be very fast, it’s also due to the fact that much more had actually been filmed but ultimately cut as it was deemed to be too gruesome.

Interestingly, Event Horizon was both a critical and commercial failure following its release on Friday, August 15, 1997 and if the film seems confusing at times, it should – the original desired 130-minute cut assembled by director Anderson was truncated by 34 minutes by the studio against his wishes. It also didn’t help in that the film was rushed through both principal photography and postproduction and was released just a mere five months after the production wrapped. Through no fault of the director, the 96-minute running time feels too little for a film like this. What makes Alien and Aliens the masterpieces they are is even after many viewings is that they spend time on character development and exposition and never feel rushed.

A similar fate infamously befell Michael Mann’s doomed 1983 film version of F. Paul Wilson’s novel The Keep when he was forced to reduce the original running time of 210 minutes down to 120 minutes, and Paramount reduced it by yet another 23 minutes to a nearly incomprehensible 97 minutes, giving audiences only a hint at what greatness may have lay on the cutting room floor. While fans of Event Horizon would love to see the longer cut (even Paramount reached out to the director following the film’s excellent rental and purchasing history on DVD following its box office failure), this footage is, unfortunately, deemed to be lost.

Event Horizon was previously released on DVD in a movie-only edition in 1998, then again in a special edition with extras in 2006. It made its way to Blu-ray with the same extras in 2008, 2013, 2017, and most notably in 2021 with a special edition from Scream Factory boasting eleven new extras exclusive to that edition. The new 4K Ultra High Definition Paramount Blu-ray easily contains the film’s best-looking transfer to date, along with a Blu-ray and a Digital Code. The ported over extras consist of:

A feature-length audio commentary with director Anderson and the film’s producer Jeremy Bolt, partners who met early in their careers and founded Impact Pictures in 1992. The track was recorded for the 2006 DVD release, and it covers the requisite history of how the film came to be, the difficulties in the execution of the film’s effects, the design of the starship, their working relationship with the actors and actresses, the film’s marketing, to name a few.

The Making of Event Horizon – This is a five-part making-of documentary from 2006 that has the “Play All” feature available as an option. It runs one hour and forty-three minutes. It’s a fascinating look at the origins of the film, with a lot of intercutting among the cast and crew speaking eloquently and complimentary about the production. There are some funny and humorous anecdotes here, which is refreshing to see when you’re dealing with such horrific subject matter. Director Anderson also speaks about the difficulties of rushing to get the film answer printed and locked for test screenings.

The Point of No Return: The Filming of Event Horizon – Just over eight minutes, this is a four-part encapsulation of the revolving tunnel, the 360-degree camerawork, zero gravity, and one of the character’s descents into madness.

Secrets – At ten minutes, this piece consists of three deleted scenes that were cut from the film. Most of it contains the more unsavory elements that were excised from the final cut, such as a truly creepy scene of one of the characters in an Exorcist-inspired “spider walk” scene.

The Unseen Event Horizon – At three minutes, this piece illustrates conceptual art done for the film, most of which was not filmed.

Rounding out the extras are a theatrical trailer and a video trailer.

If you’re a fan of the film, the new transfer is a must-have.

Click here to order from Amazon

(For Todd Garbarini's exclusive interview with director Paul W.S. Anderson, click here.)

Writer Alan Spencer narrates the trailer for the 1980 "Get Smart" feature film, "The Nude Bomb" starring Don Adams. Spencer idolized Adams and when the film ran into some snags, he donated his talents and provided some gags. Spencer acknowledges the missteps in the production, namely the refusal to include Barbara Feldon's essential Agent "99" and a less-than-family friendly modern approach that seemed tasteless at times. Nevertheless, he assures us the film was profitable. He also fills us in on the scuttled plans to bring a "Get Smart" film to the screen as far back as 1965. 

(Photo: Paramount)

By Todd Garbarini

Film director Paul W.S. Anderson, not to be confused with film directors Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, hails from Wallsend, North Tyneside, England and, like so many of his contemporaries, began shooting movies on Super-8mm in his youth. In his mid-twenties, he enjoyed professional success as a writer on the British series El C.I.D. Following the end of the show, he and producer Jeremy Bolt founded their own company, Impact Pictures and, after much toil, financed Shopping, which was released in the United Kingdom in 1994 and in the States in 1996. This put them on the map and brought him Mortal Kombat in 1995, a film based upon the popular video game of the same name. This led to the sci-fi/horror film Event Horizon, which is now available on 4K UHD Blu-ray, and it’s this film that I discussed with Mr. Anderson recently while he was promoting the release.

Todd Garbarini: I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me and thank you also for the Resident Evil films. I enjoy those very much.

Paul W.S. Anderson: Me, too!

TG: How did you first see Ridley Scott’s Alien and what was the effect that it had on you?

PWSA: I saw [Sir] Ridley’s Alien when I was at school, and I saw it when I was far too young, and it terrified the living daylights out of me. I also had a real crush on Sigourney Weaver. So, it was a big, big impact. I had never seen a movie like it. I mean it was amazing, and the look of the alien and the alien spaceship, which I later realized was the work of [Swiss artist H.R.] Giger, was just spectacular. It was really like nothing I’d ever seen in cinemas before.

TG: I feel the exact same way. I was ten and-a-half years-old when Alien was released here in the States, two years to the day that Star Wars was released here…in fact, the financial success of Star Wars bankrolled Alien…and I was shocked to see that it was restricted to just adults! My parents would not take me to see it. Kenner had produced toys, games and puzzles in the stores based on the film. It took me another four years to see it on home video, but the power of that movie came through tremendously, even on a six-year-old 13” Sylvania television.

PWSA: I didn’t see it with my parents either. Like you, I had loved Star Wars and I thought, Wow, another space movie! Boy, was I wrong! (laughs)

TG: Was there one particular film that, or filmmaker who, compelled you to become a director?

PWSA: I can tell you that certain filmmakers have had a huge influence on me. Ridley Scott and Tony Scott in particular because I love their movies. I love the look of their movies and what their movies are about and how they are put together. They came from the same part of the Northeast of England as I did. I never knew anyone in the film industry, and no one made movies in the North of England. So, wanting to be a film director when I was growing up seemed like an impossible dream. But there were these two brothers who somehow managed to do it and they were very inspiring to me because of that. They didn’t know anyone in the film industry either. They built themselves from the ground up. I felt like I could do it as well.

TG: You derived inspiration from them.

PWSA: Exactly. Now, in terms of wanting to become a filmmaker, I used to watch a lot of westerns when I was a little kid. They used to have these things called “Saturday morning pictures” wherein your parents would drop you off at a cinema that was full of about 350 kids without any parental supervision. This would never happen today, and you would be there for about four hours to basically run riot while your parents went and did some shopping or went and had sex or did whatever they did on a Saturday afternoon without the kids around. Most of the kids were running around throwing popcorn at one another and beating each other up. I think I was one of the few kids who just sat and watched the movies. They showed a couple of Laurel and Hardy shorts because they were cheap and then some old westerns. I must have seen every John Ford western. John Wayne was my favorite actor because I watched all these westerns with him in them. I recall at the end of either The Searchers or Rio Bravo, I saw his name in the credits as they rolled and I suddenly made the link that he wasn’t a real cowboy, but rather an actor pretending to be a cowboy. Once I realized that movies were not reality and just recorded by a cameraman, that they were artifice, they were awesome and that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea how I was going to achieve that. I just knew that that’s what I wanted to do after seeing those amazing images on the big screen. That was the inception of me wanting to make movies.

TG: Do you consider yourself to be a genre director?

PWSA: Yes, I have worked almost exclusively in the sci-fi/horror genre. But like every director in the world, I want to direct a western. No studio wants to make a western, unfortunately, because they are just so uncommercial nowadays. I’m about to make a movie called In the Lost Lands based on a story by author George R.R. Martin [of Game of Thrones fame]. At its heart, it’s very much a western as it has all the iconography that one would associate with a western. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic land, so on the surface it’s not a western, but at its heart it is most definitely a western. It deals with a lot of western tropes and storytelling and imagery, so I am very excited to be doing that.

TG: I interviewed John Carpenter in 2010 and he is a big fan of westerns like yourself. When he came out of film school in the early 1970s, he really wanted to make one, but nobody was doing them in this country at the time. So, needless to say, he was very disappointed.

PWSA: Yes, but if you take a look at Assault on Precinct 13, the obvious influence of westerns is in that film.

TG: Yes, absolutely. I love how that film was edited by “John T. Chance” [the name of the sheriff that John Wayne plays in Rio Bravo]!

PWSG: Exactly! (laughs) And also people like Walter Hill, who was a big influence on me. I absolutely loved, loved The Driver and 48 Hours. But specifically, what I really liked about Walter Hill was when he was basically redoing the kind of Jean-Pierre Melville vibe of those French gangster movies. So, they had imported the American movies, and they did the French twist on them making them very existential, and then Walter Hill kind of reimported them back into America and didn’t bother giving the characters any names, which I absolutely love. So, for me Walter Hill is somebody who pretty much, with every movie he makes, is a western. Ironically, the films that work the least are actual westerns, but the ones that tend to work the best are these urban movies that are really westerns in disguise. So, I’m sort of hoping that it’s a “lightning strikes” moment for me when I do In the Lost Lands. It’s basically my western, but nobody will realize it!

TG: Event Horizon pits a lot of terrific actors in an ensemble piece, among them Sam Neill, Lawrence Fishburne, Jason Isaacs, and Kathleen Quinlan. Were they your first choices for their respective roles?

PWSA: Yes, it was a movie where I was very lucky that the studio was kind of willing to go with my personal choices. They never insisted that we absolutely had to have somebody who was a movie star who carried very big movies before. They were on board for doing the ensemble casting. I was very, very happy about it. It allowed me to get some really terrific actors together, playing roles that they didn’t traditionally play as well. Sam Neill at that point was very much in the minds of audiences as the heroic guy who saved the children from the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. He was up there with Tom Hanks as probably the actor whom the audience could trust the most.

TG: Yes. I recall seeing Michael Mann’s Collateral wherein Tom Cruise completely plays against type.

PWSA: Exactly. Sam Neill was still sort of the guy who could look after your kids. So, the idea that he would be the one who goes insane and tears his own eyes out, at that point in time it’s probably the type of role that you would have expected Laurence Fishburne to play. And then Fishburne playing sort of the heroic Captain as well, that was not really a role that he had played before. So, both of them are amazing performances but both of them were kind of stretching, but in a good way.

TG: Have you ever seen Sam Neill in a film by Andrzej Zulawski called Possession?

PWSG: No, I haven’t.

TG: It was shot in the summer of 1980 in Germany and was released the following year internationally. It made its way here to the States in a highly butchered version in 1983, but it’s one of the most bizarre, cinematic experiences that I’ve ever seen. You should catch up with it if you can. The uncut version is readily available now.

PWSA: I will!

TG: What are some of the challenges that you encountered in making Event Horizon that you hadn’t foreseen?

PWSA: It was just the compacted time that we had to actually make the film. That was a big challenge. You know, I was young, and I hadn’t made many movies so I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was up for a challenge at the time, but nowadays I would probably say, “Hey, wait a second, I don’t know if that’s really a good idea.” I had another movie to make right after Event Horizon and it was with Kurt Russell [Soldier (1998)] with Warner Brothers, so I had to finish Event Horizon on a certain date, so we had to start shooting early. So, for such an elaborate movie with so many big builds, and really complicated things, like the third containment being a real spinning, gyroscope that was thirty-five feet high, I mean, this was really complicated stuff to do in the time frame allotted. Then the production got even more compressed when Titanic fell out of the summer and Paramount announced that Event Horizon would be taking its place, and then suddenly I had only three to four weeks to actually do my first cut of the movie before we started testing it. Those were the logistical challenges. The actual making of the movie was just a delight. I loved being with those actors on those sets. I didn’t even mind the challenges, to be honest. Like I said, now I would think twice about doing certain things in the movie, but back then I was just up for it.

TG: Thank you for your time and best of luck to you with In the Lost Lands!

PWSA: Thank you!

(Thanks to Deborah Annakin Peters for her help in arranging this interview.)

Singer/actress Olivia Newton-John has passed away peacefully at her home at age 73, according to a statement from her family. Newton-John was British by birth but her family moved to Australia when she was five years old and rose to international fame there. Her talents were noticed when she performed in high school and she would go on to become an iconic international pop singer. In 1978, she made her screen debut opposite John Travolta in the blockbuster big screen adaptation of the stage musical "Grease". Other film roles would follow, but it was her singing career that never waned. Over the decades, she would sell over 100 million albums. In 1992, Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer. She became a symbol of hope by going public with her struggle and raising many millions of dollars to combat the disease. The cancer would reoccur two more times over the years. For more about her life and career, click here.

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

I’ve always been a fan of the heist/caper film; a genre which details the planning, execution and aftermath of a huge robbery. It’s an extremely fun and involving formula in which we oftentimes sympathize with the thieves and want them to reach their goal. Some notable heist/caper films are The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Ocean’s 11, Bonnie and Clyde, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian Job, The Getaway, The Sting, Dog Day Afternoon, Thief, A Fish Called Wanda, Reservoir Dogs, Heat and The Usual Suspects. Just to name a few. Add to the list the comedy caper film A Man, a Woman, and a Bank available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

Solidly directed by Noel Black from a humorous screenplay by Raynold Gideon, Bruce A. Evans and actor Stuart Margolin, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank tells the tale of friends Reese (Donald Sutherland) and Norman (Paul Mazursky), who devise an elaborate plan to rob a bank in Vancouver. Things get a bit complicated, however, when Reese falls in love with a pretty photographer (Brooke Adams).

Released by Avco Embassy Pictures in September of 1979, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank is listed as the first and only film to be made by McNichol, a production company said to have been created by actress Kristy McNichol and her mother Carollyne. However, some believe this to be false and state that McNichol is actually Donald Sutherland’s company. Whatever the case may be, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank is an extremely enjoyable, well-directed, written and acted feature that definitely deserves to be seen. The engaging story contains very interesting and likeable three-dimensional characters. Reese is intelligent, confident, romantic and also a good friend. The great Donald Sutherland effortlessly gets all this across and makes his character totally believable. Five-time Academy Award nominee Paul Mazursky is hilarious and extremely convincing as henpecked hypochondriac Norman, and the lovely, talented and always welcome Brooke Adams (reuniting here with her Invasion of the Body Snatchers co-star, Sutherland) shines as adorable photographer Stacey.

The fun feature also benefits from some wonderful cinematography by the legendary Jack Cardiff and a terrific musical score by Academy Award winning composer Bill Conti. All in all, it’s an extremely solid and fun comedic crime film that audiences are sure to enjoy.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray presents the movie in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The transfer looks beautiful and the disc also contains quite a few worthy special features. There’s the original theatrical trailer as well as two very interesting and informative audio commentaries; one by director Noel Black and producer Peter Samuelson from 2002, and another by film historians Dean Brandum and Andrew Nette. The Blu-ray also has trailers for four other films featuring Donald Sutherland: The Great Train Robbery, Ordeal by Innocence, The Rosary Murders and The Puppet Masters.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

Watch the first episode of Gerry Anderson's classic "Thunderbirds", courtesy of Shout! Factory. 

(For an option to view the episode in a larger format, go to the YouTube page.)

Bloomsbury

Global Exploitation Cinemas imprint

Published December 2021

222 pages

10 bw images

ISBN: 9781501333019

Hardback

RRP: £86 (a more reasonably-priced paperback will be available soon)

Review by Adrian Smith

In a world where every possible sexual proclivity and desire can be sated at the click of a mouse button, the idea of pornography only being available at an illicit party in a hired hall, where the gathered men watch black and white amateur footage projected onto a wall whilst half-expecting to be raided by local law enforcement, seems difficult to imagine. Yet according to this fascinating study by historian Dan Erdman, this was indeed the situation for decades, from the early days of cinema through to the 1950s when home projector ownership finally meant that people could receive illegal pornography through the mail and watch it in the privacy of their own homes. As things began to change in the 1960s, individual film-viewing booths became available, where for a dime a customer could get access to a few minutes of hardcore pornography. Ultimately by the 1970s hardcore went mainstream and husbands and wives could go to the cinema together for screenings of Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door and the stag film fell out of fashion.

But just what is a stag film, I hear you cry innocently? Erdman, drawing on his own research as well as the writing of others, explains that they were short films, often made by amateurs and usually shot on 8mm or 16mm film, in which hardcore sex acts took place, they were anonymously made and presented, and undated. One would have no idea whether the film you were watching was made last year or thirty years ago. They were effectively “orphaned films”, in that no records were kept, and no information was provided about who was in the films, who directed and produced them, and who was even making all the prints. They were screened at private parties, or “smokers” as they were sometimes described, which would often be accompanied by live performances, but those in attendance were constantly in fear of a police bust. As home projection became more commercially available thousands of copies of stag films criss-crossed America in the postal service, with enterprising distributors using carefully compiled mailing lists and anonymous return addresses to target customers whilst avoiding both the police and the FBI.

Here, in this US-focused book, Dan Erdman attempts to chart the origins of the stag film, its growth in popularity, the people behind the production and distribution, and the many legal attempts to shut it all down. Given that the production, distribution and screening of these short pornographic films was illegal, and the films were generally considered ephemeral with no historical or cultural value, it’s no surprise to learn that the people involved in this underground world were not really keeping records or even copies of the films. The Kinsey Institute appears to be the main archive currently available for seeing copies of stag films but given that even if a film did have credits the names would inevitably be fake, the job of trying to piece together a history is a difficult one.

It is a surprise to discover that the other main archive is the FBI, who kept thousands of seized films and attempted to keep records of names, dates, and places, but sadly, again given that the films had no perceived historical value, the films were all destroyed long ago to save archival space. Luckily the written records remain, and through drawing on these records, alongside the Kinsey Institute, the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (funded in the late 1960s in an attempt to provide legislation, which ultimately concluded that the constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech trumped charges of obscenity and paved the way for porn’s golden age), private archives and newspaper reports, Erdman has managed to piece together what is surely the definitive history of this elusive subject. He also provides an excellent case study in how one can attempt to write a history of a subject when access to both primary and secondary sources is severely limited, and as such it should be compulsory reading for any serious historian researching in the margins of popular culture.

This book gives fascinating and non-judgemental insight into the secret world of the twentieth century American male (the audience was always male) and may also provide some nostalgia for a simpler time before pornography became a global billion-dollar business, and modern mainstream culture became increasingly pornified.

Click here to order from Amazon USA

Click here to order from Amazon UK

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

Quentin Tarantino has said he thinks the worst American movies were made in the 50s and the 80s. He dislikes 50s movies because of their blatant censorship and 80s movies because the central character always had to be likeable. On the Joe Rogan Experience he pointed out the difference between a Bill Murray movie and a Chevy Chase movie made in the 80s. Bill Murray’s characters always started out as assholes but became likeable by the end of the film. “Chevy Chase movies don't play that shit,” Tarantino said. “Chevy Chase is the same supercilious asshole at the end of the movie that he is at the beginning.” He also decried the way movies in the 50s hardly ever cast Native Americans in Westerns.

All this is to say I’d bet Tarantino most likely would hate Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release of Universal International’s “Foxfire” (1955), starring Jeff Chandler and Jane Russell. Chandler was a hunky heart throb who rose to fame and fortune playing Cochise opposite Jimmy Stewart in “Broken Arrow” (1950), and again with Rock Hudson in “Taza, Son of Cochise.” Chandler was Jewish, but the public bought him as a Native American and even as half-Native American, which he plays in “Foxfire.” His character, Jonathan Dartland, is a mining engineering working in a copper mine in Lodestone, Ariz., who is ashamed of the fact that while his father was white his mother is an Apache. He hasn’t spoken to her in years even though she lives in a nearby Apache Reservation, where she conducts guided tours.

One day a tall brunette bombshell named Amanda Lawrence arrives in Lodestone from New York and gets picked up by Dartland and his alcoholic doctor friend Dr. Hugh Slater (Dan Duryea) when her car has a flat out in the desert. Despite the fact that Russell was 34 years of age when the movie was made, and you’d think would have more sense than a 17-year old, Amanda falls head-over-heels gaga in love at first site with Dartland. Which is hard to understand, since he’s such surly, morose guy who doesn’t interact well with others, especially if they get nosey about his Apache background. But Amanda will have her way and the day after a night of dancing and who knows what else, SHE proposes to HIM!. At first he tells her it couldn’t possibly work but next thing you know they’ve gotten hitched. Everybody’s there at the wedding, except of course his Apache Mama.

I guess they had to go through with it, even though is seems unbelievable that these two crazy kids would tie the knot so suddenly, but Universal International had been promoting the movie with the tag line: “JANE’S GOT JEFF!”. Which I suppose was a 50s version of the tag line that was used when Clark Gable came back to the movies after serving in WW II to star in “Adventure” (1945): “Gable’s back, and Garson’s Got Him!” With that line, “JANE’S GOT JEFF!”, there had to be a wedding, and of course all the plot that would come after it

One of the most bizarre twists in the plot comes when Amanda decides to take the bus tour out to the Apache village to meet Jonathan’s mother. She finds her with a group of tourists, giving them the historical lowdown on Apache customs. She speaks in a beautiful voice that has a nice Viennese accent! Saba, the Apache Princess, is played by Celia Lovsky, the Austrian actress whom you may best remember as T’Pau, the Vulcan matriarch in the famous Star Trek episode “Amok Time.”

“Foxfire” was directed by Joseph Pevney, who directed 14 episodes of “Star Trek,’ including the “Amok Time” episode. I guess Lovsky’s performance as Saba years earlier in 1955 made a lasting impression on the director, or maybe they were just good friends.

Also in “Foxfire” are Mara Corday, as Dr. Slater’s jealous nurse, who has a crush on Dartland; Robert Simon as Ernest Tyson, the man who owns the copper mine Dartland works in; Barton MacClane as Dartland’s foreman, and Frieda Inescort as Amanda’s mother. Dan Duryea give his standard booze-gobbling performance as the alcoholic doctor, who vies for Amanda’s attention.

Other than the love story, “Foxfire’s” secondary storyline concerns Dartland’s belief that the copper mine they’re working on has a shaft that could lead to a hidden Apache gold mine. Amanda helps Dartland convince Tyson to come up with the money for the exploratory work, which leads the film to one of those predictable mine cave-in disasters.

“Foxfire” has a couple of interesting factoids associated with it. First, it was the last film to be shot on three-strip Technicolor film, and the photography out in the Arizona desert by William H. Daniels is well transferred to Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray disc. Second, although Frank Skinner composed the score for “Foxfire” the main theme played during the title credits was written by Henry Mancini, with lyrics written and sung by Chandler. And in case you want to know, “Foxfire” is what they call the phosphorescent glow that rise up at night from the rotting timbers in the mine shaft.

The disc comes with a theatrical trailer, and an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger. It’s not a bad film. It has its flaws, but if you’re not as finicky as Tarantino, it’s always interesting to see these artifacts from a different era. “JANE’S GOT JEFF!”

Click here to order from Amazon

John M. Whalen is the author of "Tragon and the Scorpion Woman...and Other Tales". Click  here to order from Amazon

BY LEE PFEIFFER

If you follow current movie industry news then you know that the big bombshell this week was the decision by Warner Bros. to pull the plug on the much-anticipated "Batgirl" feature film. Even more shocking was the announcement that the studio would never show the film in any format. The film was mostly completed but directors Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi were still putting finishing touches on the production. Making matters worse, WB allegedly never informed anyone associated with the movie that it was being shelved until the New York Post broke the story. The movie is chockablock with talent: Leslie Grace, who plays the title role was prepping for a major career boost. The supporting cast includes Oscar winners J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon and Michael Keaton, returning in the role of Batman for the first time in decades. Brendan Fraser, who plays the villain Firefly, was promoting the movie at a fan convention on stage when the news broke. Everyone associated with the movie is understandably stunned and outraged despite the fact that WB issued a statement saying that the decision in no way reflects on the creative team.

"Holy Ouch, Batman!" What caused this to happen?

Apparently, WB is on a cost-cutting mission and a rough cut of "Batgirl" had been test screened with poor results. (It allegedly averaged in the "30s" in terms of audience satisfaction.) WB says the film will cost $90 million but press reports say the cost could be $100 million. That's still a relatively modest sum for a modern superhero flick but WB obviously feels it should cut its losses, as today's major films cost tens of millions to publicize and market. Fans have pondered why the studio doesn't directly release it to streaming and home video. It's because there is a clause that says if a studio wants the benefit of a tax break covering the total production costs, it can't show the film anywhere or profit from it under any circumstances.

If history is any guide, "Batgirl" will eventually surface in some version on bootleg videos. However, that's a poor way to experience whatever vision the creators had in mind. A film isn't complete until its director (or directors) proclaim it as such. The studio is grappling with the public relations disaster and there will obviously be plenty of breaking news to come. In the meantime, we'll have to satiate ourselves with Yvonne Craig's charming portrayal of Batgirl in the classic TV series from the 1960s.

(The New York Post has run some behind the scenes photos from the production. Click here to view. For additional coverage, click here.)

There will be an official James Bond concert held at the Royal Albert Hall on 4 October. Here is the  press statement:

Celebrate 60 years of the James Bond film franchise with a charity concert that will showcase the iconic music of Bond, headlined by the legendary Dame Shirley Bassey.

Curated by five-time Bond composer David Arnold and produced by EON Productions, the concert will feature Bond soundtrack artists including Garbage, as well as special guests including Celeste, putting their own interpretation on classic theme songs, backed by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Dodd.

The date marks the anniversary of the world premiere of the first 007 film, Dr. No held on 5 October 1962.

More special guests to be announced

Click here for tickets.

Author and film historian Dana Polan has recently written a book titled Dreams of Flight: ‘The Great Escape’ in American Film and Culture that analyzes director John Sturges’ WWII classic. Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer conducted this interview with Polan regarding his book.

Q: Tell us about your book overall:

Dana Polan: Combining unique archival research, close analysis, and first-person accounts by viewers, Dreams of Flight traces multiple histories around the 1963 POW classic The Great Escape: production history of the film itself but also the history of the original event (an actual breakout in 1944 that led to the successful escape of three men, recapture of seventy-three with fifty of those summarily executed on Hitler’s orders), as well as the trajectory of POW Paul Brickhill’s written account as it evolved into the bestselling page-turner book The Great Escape. I also chronicle my own viewing history of the film, starting as a Sixties adolescent, along with accounts by other viewers who also saw the film around then and found that its blend of the buoyant and the downbeat stayed with them over the years. I had long wanted to revisit the film, ever since first seeing and being so strongly impacted by it. I feel so lucky to have been given the chance to engage with the film in a book-length study that could go into much detail about the film and its reception history.

Q: When and where did you first see the film?

DP: I wish I could be more precise about the exact date but I started researching and writing the book during Covid quarantine and that limited a wee bit of my research. I know I saw it at my town’s one drive-in and it was likely about 1965 since that is when we moved to the area. If so, I would have been 13 years old or so, and it would have been a re-release. I’d have loved to track down microfilm copies of the local newspaper to see the dates the film was playing and also to determine if it was on a double-bill or not. The Great Escape is a long film but our drive-in generally showed two films and I imagine would only have had one presentation per night of the double-bill. Although The Great Escape was not road-showed in its original release in 1963 — no symphonic overture over a static opening title, no intermission, and so on — I persist in thinking there was a break half-way through so viewers could be encouraged to go to the concession stand. In fact, the film has a logical place for a pause just at the halfway mark — when the first character we care about gets killed and the hitherto individualist Hilts (Steve McQueen) declares his commitment to the collective cause of escape. There’s a consequential fade-out and then fade-in as the POWs resolutely return to their cause. If indeed the drive-in showed The Great Escape on a double-bill, that would have made for a long evening, and the intermission might have been essential for concession-stand sales.

An amusing anecdotal detail: I was away for the weekend when the film opened at the drive-in and my mom and stepdad went without me on Saturday evening to see it. I had desperately been wanting to see it as, as I’ll explain in a moment, it seemed to promise exactly that sort of action entertainment I loved as a kid. When I got home by Sunday, I was so distraught that they hadn’t waited that my stepdad ended up having to take me that evening and sat through this long epic a second time in two days. He dozed off here or there while I was enthralled by every moment of the film even as I ultimately found it very disturbing.

Q: What impressed you most about it?

DP: Like, I imagine, many young American boys of the time, I went to the film for the gungho promise of its canonic poster, “The great adventure, the great entertainment, the great escape.” Instead, I was blown away by a narrative that seemed to me to be a deflation of adventure — a transformation of rousing entertainment into something questioning and quite bleak.

The Great Escape’s downbeat turn from a fun romp into fatalism left a lasting impression on me. As I write in Dreams of Flight, this unexpected narrative turn was a theme I began to notice in other films of that historical moment — one that is telling of American culture in the 1960s.

I have always imagined that my experience of movies is not mine alone but is likely representative of my demographic currents (gungho adolescent boy, in this case) and may be shared strongly by others in the same demographic. At the time, as I say, I was a pre-teen American boy who especially liked “manly” action cinema and expected from the trailers and that iconic poster that The Great Escape fit that mold. I know from other fan accounts that I tracked down for the book that I was not alone in feeling something disturbing and consequential was going on instead — in the film and in the times themselves. In my research for Dreams of Flight, I reached out to other viewers who first saw The Great Escape in the 1960s and found many had comparable reactions.

(Photo: Courtesy of the author.)

Q: Where does it stand in relation to Sturges' other films?

DP: John Sturges made over 40 films in a career that started with B-movies with a graduation to A-films in the 1950s, some of which combined strong narrative drive with a degree of artistic ambition — on the one hand, an entrapment drama like Bad Day at Black Rock (Sturges’s one nomination for Best Director) where thematic resonance (the topic of racial prejudice) is overlaid with taut suspense and moments of explosive action; on the other hand, the pretention of literary adaptation with, for example, the barebones Hemingwayesque allegory of The Old Man and the Sea. Even though he was thought of most as a manly man’s director, Sturges even did so-called women’s films, melodramas of love and emotional turmoil, such as A Girl Named Tamiko or By Love Possessed. But his forte was films of masculine fortitude and he found apt embodiment, literally so, for the trials and travails of men under pressure in a visual fascination with strong, sometimes stocky guys filmed as upright or coiled up bundles of vitality just itching to burst out. For example, the first time we see James Garner in The Great Escape (as Hendley, the forger), he’s filmed, perhaps curiously, from a distance that not only cuts off his feet but his neck and head as well so that the emphasis is on his torso, taut and tough as he confronts the fact of incarceration. Throughout the film, there are long pauses to paint a pent-up male energy that then passes over into scenes of vibrant action. I suggest in my book that The Great Escape not merely divides into three parts — planning of the escape, enactment of the escape, the outcome (as noted, a generally bleak one with most of the men rounded up and summarily executed) — but finds an overall distinct visual style for each of these: from coiled up men constrained by the fences that surround the camp and by the very confinement of the barracks they are walled up in, to the open expanses of seeming freedom beyond the camp, and back again to the camp for those POWs who are rounded up but escape execution (with the last shots showing even greater confinement for Hilts, who once again merits his moniker, “The Cooler King”).

For me, The Great Escape shows Sturges at the pinnacle of his dramatic form, although some fans prefer the tighter professionalism of The Magnificent Seven. Later Sturges films have their moments but the pauses get longer (and more talky as in the very sodden The Satan Bug) and the professionalism turns into long scenes of planning for action that actually defer that action (for example, the slowly unfolding Marooned and the overblown Ice Station Zebra which keeps delaying a violent confrontation that actually never comes for symphonically scored scenes of the submarine crashing through the ice and men pushing buttons and yelling orders). I find perfection to the pacing of The Great Escape: men talk out their plans at length but the suspense never lets up and, as I argue in the book, Sturges films dialogue scenes in a variety of forms (classic shot/reverse shot, wide-screen confrontation between men, long takes with a moving camera, and so on) that keep everything moving forward in thrilling fashion.

In this excerpt from the American Public Broadcasting System's acclaimed series "Pioneers of Television", Peter Graves discusses his long career from "B" sci-fi movies to his massive success in "Mission: Impossible". He also talks about the equal success of his brother, fellow TV icon James Arness.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Actress Nichelle Nichols has passed away at age 89. She is best-remembered professionally for her role as Lt. Uhura on the "Star Trek" television series which began on NBC in 1966. The character was groundbreaking. It was the first time an African-American woman had been presented as a powerful character who was essential to the plot lines. In 1968, she shared a screen kiss with William Shatner's Captain Kirk and the moment was a momentous one for American television: the first romantic interracial kiss seen on a television show. Nichols would later relate that she became bored with the character and was considering quitting the series. She was talked out of it by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , who impressed upon her that her character and presence on the show was an inspiration to young Black people as well as an important symbol of racial harmony. Nichols would go on to appear in the "Star Trek" feature films that derived from the original series. She was also a regular presence at fan conventions, where she related anecdotes about the series to appreciative admirers.

For more about her life and career, click here.