Brendan Fraser started as most actors do, trying to land supporting roles in high profile films. He landed the leading role in low-brow 1992 comedy "Encino Man" in which he played a caveman in the modern era. Over the next few years, he worked steadily- if unevenly- in a range of films that failed to score at the boxoffice. That changed in 1997 when he played the role of George of the Jungle, a big screen adaptation of a 1960s cartoon series. With his hunky good looks, athletic physique and ability to perform difficult stunts, Fraser was in demand when the film proved to be a hit. More successes followed with "The Mummy" and its sequel. Fraser excelled in playing genial, if fallible action heroes and romantic leads, but he also proved he had the talent to portray dramatic characters as well, as evidenced by his acclaimed performances in "Gods and Monsters" and "The Quiet American". He also won plaudits for his performance as Brick in a 2001 stage production of Tennessee Williams' classic "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Then things slowed down. A few modest hits aside, Fraser appeared mostly in forgettable films and in supporting roles in TV productions. A volatile divorce, medical consequences from the many stunts her performed earlier in his career and other personal challenges led to him virtually dropping out of sight a few years ago. Fans who had grown up on his work in the 1990s speculated that he might soon fit into the "Whatever happened to?" category. His much-anticipated role as a villain in the "Batgirl" feature film was a casualty of Warner Brothers' decision to cancel the unfinished film. But Fraser has had plenty to be happy about recently. He landed a major role in Martin Scorsese's currently-filming "Killers of the Flower Moon" and has recently generated Oscar buzz for his leading role in director Darren Aronofsky's dramatic film "The Whale", which premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival to a six-minute standing ovation.
I joined my fellow ink-stained wretches of the press for a screening of the film last Sunday at The Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey. Fraser was on hand to be interviewed by Stephen Colbert, who resides in Montclair and who, along with his wife Evelyn, have been major players in the creation of the film festival, which holds screenings in two local historic theaters, the one-time Cinerama showcase The Claridge and the Wellmont, a grand old venue where this event took place. The cavernous Wellmont had a packed house and the crowd was made up of true cinephiles, as evidenced by their rapt attention to the film and the interview that followed. Nobody was texting, talking or otherwise distracting from the proceedings, despite the fact that there were three bars on site dispensing plenty of adult beverages. This was my first time attending the festival and I was impressed by the atmosphere and choice of venues.
As for "The Whale", like many critics, I found myself with mixed feelings. The primary reason to see the film is because of Fraser's justifiably acclaimed performance. It has been noted that the actor is now more beefy than beefcake but don't confuse Fraser with Charlie, the character he plays in the film, who is a 600-pound man confined to his apartment. Fraser required a rather amazing prosthetic "fat suit" as well as some convincing CGI effects to convincingly play a person this morbidly obese. The film opens on a jarring note. Charlie is slouched in his couch masturbating to a gay porn video, and his aroused state almost causes his death. In fact, virtually every movement is a challenge for Charlie, a kindhearted man whose only regular connection to society is his job teaching an online college course in literature via Zoom. Because he is ashamed of his appearance, he tells his students that his camera is broken. He can see them, but they can't see him, which unintentionally allows him to create an air of mystery about his persona. Charlie is obsessed with Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", and the analogy between the great white whale and his own physical state is obvious. Charlie receives a visit from a young evangelist, Thomas (Ty Simpkins) who ostensibly is there to spread the word from the Good Book but who ends up assisting and befriending Charlie, while keeping a secret about his own background. Next in line to visit is Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie's estranged teenage daughter who lugs a pretty good number of plot devices in the door with her. Seems Charlie was once married but left Sadie and her mother when she was very young when he came out of the closet and lived with his lover, who is now deceased and whose memory leaves Charlie in a constant state of despair. This first plot contrivance doesn't hold up for the simple reason that Charlie and his wife and daughter all still live in the same town, so it seems unlikely they would have had no social interaction until now. Next up among the visitors is Liz (Hong Chau), a saucy, no-nonsense nurse who happens to be a personal friend of Charlie. In between looking after his endless medical needs, she lectures him about his health to little avail. Rounding out the parade of eccentric troubadours dropping in on this mini Grand Central Station is Charlie's ex-wife Mary (Samantha Morton), who discusses their mutual concerns about Ellie's rebellious nature and self-destructive tendencies, all of which are squarely blamed on Charlie's negligence toward her.
"The Whale" is based on Samuel D. Hunter's stage play and film looks very much like a filmed stage production. There are precious few exterior shots and the murky interior cinematography by Matthew Libatique, combined with Ron Simonsen's eerie score, results in the mood of a horror film being prevalent. Hunter's screenplay and Aronofsky's direction tip off all but the most gullible viewer that their emotions are being exploited in a naked and shameless manner. Nothing wrong with that. Chaplin did the same with the final scene of "City Lights", as the Little Tramp unveils his identity to his once-blind paramour in a scene that may be the most touching in screen history. But "The Whale" is loaded up with a lot of contrived crises. Charlie is a sympathetic figure throughout but Ellie is painted as the Cruella DeVil of the high school set, a one-note character that you try in vain to find redeeming qualities in. She even charges her own father money in order to spend time with her. Director Aronofsky has Sadie Sink go for the rafters in terms of her cruelty but we know from minute one that at some point she'll fall for young Thomas in another improbable plot twist. The actors can't be faulted. They're just following orders. The only believable character aside from Charlie is Liz the nurse and Hong Chau registers strongly in the role. The most affecting scenes are those centering on Charlie as an individual, as we watch seemingly mundane actions such as attempting to stand up evolve into "Mission: Impossible"-like scenarios. It's painful to watch Fraser, but that's the point. Regardless of the film's flaws, his performance is flawless. "The Whale" isn't the first film to portray morbidly obese people in a sympathetic fashion. Director Anne Bancroft's 1979 film "Fatso" did so through a serio-comedic lens. "The Whale", however, provides precious few reasons to smile.
Following the screening, Brendan Fraser and Stephen Colbert took to the stage to Fraser's latest standing ovation. He appeared genuinely moved and in discussion with Colbert, it became clear how grateful he is to have been cast as Charlie. The chat reinforced Fraser's image as a Mister Nice Guy and to Colbert's credit, he suppressed his comedic side and did nothing to overshadow Fraser in any way. The interview was enjoyable and insightful.
"The Whale" is a flawed film but no so flawed that it can't be recommended for those who seek a moving, if manipulative drama, as well as the performance of a lifetime by Brendan Fraser.
If
you fear losing your energy and creativity (among other things) as soon as you
enter your sixth decade, just consider John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Henry
Hathaway, and take heart.Ford worked
until age 71 (his last Western was “Cheyenne Autumn, 1964, and his final film,
“7 Women,” 1966), Hawks until 75 (“Rio Lobo,” 1971), and Hathaway until
76.Hathaway’s final Western was “Shoot
Out,” which opened on October 13, 1971, when he was 73.In the movie, Clay Lomax (Gregory Peck) is
released from prison after serving a seven-year sentence for bank robbery.Lomax’s eyes have a steely, distant glare as
he buckles on his six-shooter.“You hate
me, but there’s someone out there you hate more,” the warden guesses.“Someone” is Lomax’s former partner, Sam
Foley (James Gregory), who betrayed Clay and shot him in the back as the pair
fled with their stolen money.Clay was
captured and Sam got away.Lomax intends
to find Foley, who now lives comfortably on their loot, passing himself off as
a retired businessman. In turn, learning
that Lomax is a free man again, Foley hires three loutish gunmen to trail his
former
friend.The leader of the trio, Bobby
Jay (Robert E. Lyons), offers to kill Clay, but Foley says no; just keep an eye
on him and let me know if he comes this way.Does Foley hope that Clay will just go away?Will he try to make amends if Lomax pays a
visit?Or will he use the pistol hidden
in his desk drawer?It isn’t exactly
clear, and maybe Sam himself doesn’t know.
On
the other hand, there’s no doubt about Lomax’s lust for revenge.But first, leaving the penitentiary, he has
to stop at the railroad depot in nearby Weed City, where he has arranged to
meet a former girlfriend, a prostitute, who holds a sum of money in safekeeping
for him.The money arrives but not the
girlfriend, who died on her way from Kansas City.Instead, the woman’s now-orphaned daughter,
six-year-old Decky (Dawn Lyn), steps off the train.To claim his money, Clay has to take Decky
too.The stymied ex-convict tries to hand
the little girl off to a succession of people, without any luck.Orphaned, abandoned children are about as
welcome in the fictitious Weed City as they are in real life.
Clay
doesn’t know where to find Foley, but a mutual acquaintance, Trooper (Jeff Corey),
does.The crusty, wheelchair-bound
saloon owner agrees to divulge Sam’s current location—for $200.Bobby Jay and his friends also show up
Trooper’s establishment, keeping tabs on Clay.You’d think they’d try to draw as little attention to themselves as
possible, but they’re as stupid as they are malicious.When they provoke a fight with Lomax, he
cleans the floor with all three.The
louts later tangle with Trooper after they damage his property and refuse to
pay the abused saloon girl they spent the night with, Alma (Susan Tyrell).They murder Trooper, but the saloon-keeper
manages to disclose Foley’s whereabouts before he dies.Lomax heads out to find his quarry, several
days’ ride away in Gun Hill, with Decky in tow.Along the way, having bonded after a gruff start, they find shelter from
a rainstorm at a ranch owned by a lonely widow, Juliana (Pat Quinn).Juliana’s ranch hands are away in town for
the night, giving her and Clay a chance to strike up a romance.But the isolation also puts Juliana, her
young son, Lomax, and Decky in danger when the volatile Bobby Jay and his
friends turn up and invade her house.
“Shoot
Out” was produced by Hal B. Wallis and written by Marguerite Roberts.Both had collaborated with Hathaway on the
wildly popular “True Grit” two years before.The three hoped to repeat that success with a similar story about a
growing attachment between a flinty old gunfighter and a spunky girl, even
costuming Dawn Lyn’s Decky in a smaller replica of Kim Darby’s outfit from “True
Grit.”But the strategy backfired when
critics measured “Shoot Out” against the 1969 Western and found it
wanting.They might have been kinder if
they had known that well-written, briskly directed, unpretentious Westerns like
“Shoot Out” were approaching the end of their shelf life in the 1970s.Ford and Hawks had become favorites of
younger critics like Peter Bogdanovich and Robin Wood, but appreciation for
Hathaway’s considerable talents lagged, and still does.
Marguerite
Roberts had worked in Hollywood for nearly as long as Hathaway.He started in the prop department in 1919 and
directed his first feature, a Zane Grey Western, in 1932.She began as a studio secretary in 1927 and
sold her first screenplay in 1934, beginning a long career as a screenwriter
that was interrupted from 1952 to 1962.During those ten years, she was blacklisted for refusing to name names
before the House Un-American Activities Committee.A scene in “Shoot Out” suggests that Roberts
retained painful emotions from the experience.Having burst into Juliana’s house, the unhinged Bobby Jay terrorizes his
hostages when he proposes to display his marksmanship by shooting a cup off of
the widow’s son’s head.Juliana argues
the gunman out of putting her son in danger, but doesn’t resist when he orders
her to move the cup to Decky’s head instead.The credits for “Shoot Out” cite Will James’ 1926 memoir, “Lone Cowboy:
My Life Story,” as the source for Roberts’ screenplay, but the real inspiration
seems to be George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.”The sentimental 1861 novel was once the bane of 15-year-olds for whom it
was required reading in high school English classes, before it was replaced by
more contemporary fare like “Catcher in the Rye.”
A
new Blu-ray edition of “Shoot Out” from Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents
the film in a sharp hi-def transfer that looks equally attractive in its sunny
outdoor scenes, filmed in New Mexico, and in the rich, masculine red and green
lampshades and upholstery in Sam Foley’s private office.In a fine audio commentary, critic Nick
Pinkerton notes that the production punches up its standard revenge story with
the violent, sexually frank revisionist elements common in the Westerns of the
early 1970s, a trend that Hathaway himself helped pioneer with “Nevada Smith”
in 1966.Gone is the old B-Western
pretense
that saloon hostesses did no more than serve drinks and dance the can-can.Trooper’s four prostitutes are sad, alcoholic
women with impoverished pasts, who suffer physical and verbal mistreatment from
the men they solicit.If the fate of
Decky’s mother is any indication, their life expectancy from illness,
alcoholism, and exploitation will be short.The train conductor who delivers Decky to Clay’s care (played by Paul
Fix, one of several Western old-timers in the supporting cast) asks Clay how
old her mother was.“Thirty,” he
responds.“She looked fifty,” the
conductor says.“Shoot Out” was rated
“GP” (the short-lived precursor of “PG”), classifying it as suitable for
general audiences, but advising “parental guidance.”The newly instituted MPAA ratings system was
tricky to figure out.I wonder how many
parents interpreted GP to mean “bring the kids,” on the assumption that a movie
with Gregory Peck and a little girl couldn’t be any saltier than the
watered-down TV Westerns of the era.
Pinkerton
calls the subplot about the embittered gunman and the orphaned child “cloying,”
but it’s a matter of opinion.Dawn Lyn’s
role is crafted and performed with a nice balance of feistiness and vulnerability,
and she and Peck play off well against each other.Is Lomax the biological father of Decky, as
we infer from her mother placing her in his care . . . or not?The question becomes academic once each
develops a soft spot for the other.In
addition to the Nick Pinkerton commentary, the Blu-ray also includes the
theatrical trailer and previews of other 1970s Westerns from KL Studio
Classics.
Railroaded, Detour,
Caught, I Wake Up Screaming, Private Hell 36. . . Raw
Deal,and so on and so on: the titles of film noir often offer harsh
tales of dismal entrapment and victimization, and it is tempting to wonder what
audiences made of these harrowing, even unpleasurable, thrillers of inevitable male
degradation. Did these sometimes nasty films put the lie to the golden glow of
films that celebrated the American dream? Or did they confirm the seeming
possibility of that dream by allowing viewers to feel superior to the doomed
characters in these films? Placed on the double bill with generally respectable
and even uplifting “A” pictures, these programmers or downright “B”-films speak
with a cynicism and despair that might perhaps have stood in complex relation
to the positive yearnings of the Hollywood dream factory. At a tight 79-minutes,
Raw Deal is the tautest of the taut – a sharp exercise in futility and
fatalism. It excels through the sharp cinematography of the great noir
cameraman John Alton: deep focus scenes composed around diagonals from way in
the back to looming objects or bodies or faces in the foreground; low angles; and
above all, what film historian Jeremy Arnold in his rich commentary for this
Bu-ray edition of Raw Deal terms “tons of darkness with little pools of
light” (sometimes, in fact, not even pools but just a gleam or glitter
furtively trying to stick out in the inky black). Raw Deal stands apart
moreover by employment of a female voice-over (deadpan, often present-tense,
bleakness from the criminal protagonist’s world-weary moll, Pat, played by
Claire Trevor), rare in films noirs of the times. Pat’s narration shows her to
be jaded yet devoted to loser anti-hero Joe (Dennis O’Keefe) who breaks out of
the pen to get money owed him by the most evil of evil gangsters (a so-menacing
Raymond Burr). But Joe falls for the innocent Ann (Marsha Hunt), his lawyer’s
assistant whom he takes hostage, and by the film’s set of final confrontations,
both action-oriented, and romantic, all bets are off as to what moral position
will win out and who indeed will survive between venality and redemption. Pushing
violence to an extreme (especially, a fire thrown into a female face, years
before the coffee-to-the-kisser shock in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat), Raw
Deal packs a series of dramatic and emotional wallops as overpowering as
the punches in a darkened room fight that comes virtually mid-way through the
film.
In addition to the
aforementioned commentary track by Jeremy Arnold, very insightful about the
film’s employment of expressive techniques and noir visual style to convey a
narrative of inevitable entrapment, this new Classicflix Blu-ray edition of Raw
Deal includes short featurettes on the film’s making and on actor Dennis
O’Keefe that are not very deep in historical exploration but are short enough
to be consumed easily quickly as one gives greater attention to richer
materials on the Blu-ray : that commentary track (which manages to cram in lots
of facts about the stars and extras even as it tells us so much about visual –
and also musical – style) and a nice booklet by Mann scholar Max Alvarez. There’s
an image gallery which perhaps devotes a little too much time to images from
the film itself (which, after all, is what most purchasers of the Blu-ray will
attend to, rather than just stills) although it nicely includes some of the
various poster and color ads that promoted Raw Deal.
Like so many other films,
though, and especially in the case of this one, where one might wonder what the
Hays Office might have made of the movie’s severe level of violence and
corporeal threat (as in an antler on an stuffed animal that one criminal tries
to impale another’s eye on), it is easy to lament that the extras didn’t
include Production Code files or other production documents. Jeremy Arnold and
Max Alvarez do provide valuable background in their scholarly contributions,
though, and confirm just how much Raw Deal merits close study and just
how much the downbeat world of noir overall commands our emotional and
intellectual attention as an striking and critical mode of American popular
culture.
When they say "They don't make 'em like that anymore" it could well
be in reference to "The Honey Pot", a delightful 1967 concoction.The film is the
kind of star-studded comedy/mystery that has recently made a comeback through the "Knives Out" movies.
However, this film barely registers in the minds of most movie-goers and
was not successful when it was first released. (The studio even reissued
it under a new title, "It Comes Up Murder".) The project was cursed
from the beginning. The original cinematographer, Gianni Di Venanzo,
died before production was completed. When the film was released in
select engagements, the running time was 150 minutes, which was deemed
to be far too long for this modest enterprise that is confined largely
to interiors. For general release, 18 minutes were cut, although some of
those scenes still appeared in lobby cards advertising the movie. One
well-known character actor, Herschel Bernardi, had his entire role
eliminated. Additionally, the film's producer Charles K. Feldman was
under a great deal of stress, as he was simultaneously overseeing
production on his bloated, out-of-control spoof version of the James
Bond novel "Casino Royale". Yet, what emerges somehow managed to end up
being quite entertaining, thanks in no small part to the
larger-than-life Rex Harrison having a field day playing an equally
larger-than-life rich cad. Essentially, he's playing Henry Higgins from
"My Fair Lady" once again- only this time with a more devious streak.
Both characters are filthy rich. Both are erudite and sophisticated
snobs who devise cruel games involving innocents in return for his own
self-amusement. Harrison is a wicked but lovable character. You can't
help cheering him on despite his lack of ethical convictions.
The film, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is cobbled
together from Frederick Knotts' play "Mr. Fox of Venice" and Thomas
Sterling's novel "The Evil of the Day" with a healthy dose of Ben
Johnson's play "Volpone" tossed in. In fact the film opens with Harrison
as the pretentiously-named Cecil Sheridan Fox enjoying a performance of
"Volpone" at a magnificent Venetian theater. The camera pans back to
show that this is a private performance for Fox alone. He stops the play
before the finale, thanks the cast members for a spirited production
and leaves the scene. Yes, he's that rich. We soon learn that he
is using elements of "Volpone" to orchestrate an elaborate and expensive
practical joke. The first step comes when he hires an unemployed
American actor, William McFly (Cliff Robertson) to be his hired hand. He
informs McFly that he must pose as Fox's long-time major domo in his
elaborate mansion house, which is impressively located right on one of
the canals. Fox explains to McFly that he has written to three former
lovers and told them he is terminally ill. None of the women know that
the others have been informed. He reasons that they will all make a
bee-line directly to him, ostensibly to care for him, but in reality in
hopes of inheriting his fortune. First on his list is Lone Star Crockett
(Susan Hayward), who Fox wooed when she was a wild teenager. In the
course of their affair, he put her on the road to a life of luxury and
pleasure. Then there is Princess Dominique (Capucine), an exotic beauty
who is in a troubled marriage and Merle McGill (Edie Adams), a famous
but fading movie star. On the surface, all three of these women are
independently wealthy and shouldn't need his fortune. But he suspects
that, in reality, all are in some degree of financial distress and he
wants to see if they will compete with each other to earn his favor.
Sure enough, each of the ladies arrive at his home and are surprised to
see they have two female competitors. Lone Star is now a cranky
hypochondriac who requires constant pampering from her ever-present
companion, a spinster named Sarah Watkins (Maggie Smith). Dominique
tries to put on an air of self-assurance and Merle is a wise-cracking
cynic. All of them individually express their sympathies to Fox and
there is even the occasional attempt at seduction. Fox puts on a show
that he is desperately ill and even sits in bed affixed to an oxygen
tank. In private, however, he blasts classical music and dances around
the room, delighted that his perceptions of human behavior are proving
to be true. The plot takes several major swings in due course, however,
when one of the women ends up dead, ostensibly from an overdose of
sleeping pills. However, McFly and Sarah suspect murder is afoot. The
film then becomes one of those time-honored drawing room mysteries with
upper crust characters matching wits with the local inspector (Adolfo
Celi, marvelous in a rare comedic role.)
To
describe the plot in any further detail would necessitate providing
some spoilers. Suffice it to say there are plenty of red herrings and a
complex plot that will demand your constant attention or you will be
hopelessly lost.
The performances are all first rate, though Capucine (never one who
mastered the light touch that these sorts of comedies require) is a bit
stiff. However, Hayward and Adams pick up the slack with very funny
characterizations. The scene stealer among the women, however, is Maggie
Smith, who is more streetwise than any of the others suspect. As for
Harrison, he seems to be having a genuine ball, chewing the scenery and
dispensing bon mots that are consistently amusing. The sequence in which he dances around his bed chamber is one for the ages.
"The Honey Pot" deserved a better fate than it received when it was
released theatrically. Hopefully it will get a more appreciative
audience through streaming and a Kino Lorber Blu-ray that is available.
Though
this author has seen many Italian Westerns, for years I had avoided watching Navajo Joe because I had wrongly assumed
it was an American Western due to its star: Burt Reynolds. Happily, I
discovered that Navajo Joe is a
solidly entertaining film. Reynolds stars as the title character, out for
revenge after a gang of cutthroats massacres his tribe and scalps his wife. The
rest of the film shows Reynolds hunting down the bandits and killing them one
by one. Naturally, as this is a Spaghetti Western, Joe has a few anti-hero
traits. When the same outlaw gang begins terrorizing the town of Esperanza, Joe
dupes the townspeople into paying him to kill the gang, thus managing to profit
from an act he was intending to carry out anyway (hence the film's Italian
title A Dollar a Head). Though a
solid film produced by Dino de Laurentiis, directed by Sergio Corbucci (Django) and scored by Ennio Morricone,
Burt Reynolds often puts the movie down, stating that it could only be shown in
prisons and on airplanes to truly captive audiences that couldn't escape. Supposedly
the bad blood began when Reynolds misunderstood that he was to be working with
Sergio Leone rather than Sergio Corbucci, and vice versa Corbucci initially hoped
to cast Marlon Brando. Due to the mutual disappointment the director and his
star didn't get along terribly well. The film was shot between two of
Corbucci's other westerns, Johnny Oro
(1966) and Hellbenders (1967). The
camera work and direction for the action scenes are top notch and Reynolds
himself was said to have done his own stunts, in addition to overseeing the stunt
work on the entire film. Ennio Morricone (under the alias of Leo Nichols)
composes another good score, with the main theme being the most memorable.
The
picture quality on the Blu-ray, though not flawless, is good overall. Included
in the special features is a commentary track by the Kino Lorber Senior Vice
President of Theatrical Releasing, Gary Palmucci. In addition to the usual cast
and crew backgrounds, Palmucci also offers up some interesting insights into
running a company such as Kino Lorber and how they acquire their various
titles. The Blu-ray also comes with a trailer for Navajo Joe and other Reynolds MGM/UA action films White Lightning, Gator and Malone.
John LeMay is the author of several western non-fiction titles, among them Tall Tales and Half Truths of Billy the Kid. Click here to order from Amazon.
If you are a subscriber to Amazon Prime, you already know that the service is a goldmine of retro movies and TV shows that are included in the annual subscription fee. You have probably also noticed that there are independent movie screening services that you can subscribe to for separate fees and these can be played conveniently through the Amazon Prime app. These separate streaming services are usually built around a niche such as horror films, westerns, foreign films, etc. One of the apps I recently discovered is Screenpix and for a paltry $2.99 a month, you can access a wide range of retro movies that are not included in Amazon Prime's catalog. The service gives you a 7-day free trial and is also available through Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV and Playstation. Here are just some of the titles I glimpsed in browsing through the service:
"Shout at the Devil"
"The Professionals"
"Fail Safe"
"The Innocents"
"Red River"
"Marooned"
"Bus Stop"
"To Catch a Thief"
"The Blob" (original)
"Rollerball" (original)
"To Catch a Thief"
"Stagecoach" (original)
"Born Losers"
"The African Queen"
"Return of Sabata"
"Attack on the Iron Coast"
"The Wild Angels"
"Billion Dollar Brain"
"Where's Papa?"
"Witchfinder General" (aka "The Conqueror Worm")
"Attack!"
"The 1,000 Plane Raid"
"Woman of Straw"
"House of Usher"
"The Longest Day"
Well, you get the idea. In any event, we can assure you that we have no affiliation with either Amazon, Roku or Screenpix. We pay the subscription fees just like everyone else does.Just making a recommendation to fellow retro-movie buffs about a great resource to find an eclectic catalog of great titles.
Click here to link to a Roku promo page that allows you to view and browse through the available titles.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount Home Video:
Newly
restored in 4K Ultra HD, Elvis Presley’s beloved 1961 classic BLUE HAWAII
arrives as part of the collectible Paramount Presents line on both 4K Ultra HD
and Blu-ray™ for the first time ever November 15, 2022!
Enjoy
this rollicking Technicolor musical in ultra-crisp 4K Ultra HD with Dolby
Vision™ and HDR-10. Fully restored from the original 35mm camera negative,
BLUE HAWAIIlooks more spectacular than ever with every colorful costume and
vivid Hawaiian background brought to life. The first of three films that Elvis shot in Hawaii, BLUE
HAWAII celebrated the brand-new exotic state and features the massive hit
song “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” which was certified platinum.
For the restoration, the
original negative was scanned in 4K/16bit, however the opening title sequence
was very grainy because it originally used duped film. That sequence was
completely rebuilt using the original film elements from the Paramount
library. Brand new text overlays were created for a truly spectacular
opening sequence befitting this delightful film.
The Paramount Presents BLUE
HAWAII release includes the film on both 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc™ and on
Blu-ray, as well as access to a digital copy of the film. The Blu-ray
additionally includes the original theatrical trailer and the following new
bonus content:
·Commentary
by historian James L. Neibaur
·Blue
Hawaii Photo Scrapbook—contains
high-res images from the Paramount archives, including behind-the-scenes shots
The year 1967 marked the high point of Sidney Poitier's screen
career. He starred in three highly acclaimed box office hits: "To Sir,
With Love", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the
Night". The fact that Poitier did not score a Best Actor Oscar
nomination that year had less to do with societal prejudices (he had
already won an Oscar) than the fact that he was competing with himself
and split the voter's choices for his best performance. "In the Heat of
the Night" did win the Best Picture Oscar and immortalized Poitier's
performance as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia detective who finds himself
assigned to assist a redneck sheriff (Rod Steiger, who did win
the Oscar that year for his performance in this film) in a town in the
deep south that has experienced a grisly unsolved murder. When Steiger's
character, resentful for having to work with a black man, refers to
Tibbs as "boy" and asks what they call him back in Philadelphia, he
replies "They call me Mister Tibbs!", thereby uttering
what would become one of the cinema's most iconic lines of dialogue. In
the film, Poitier plays Tibbs as a man of mystery. Little is unveiled
about his personal life, which adds immeasurably to his mystique. He
proves to be highly intelligent, logical and courageous, though
refreshingly, not immune from making mistakes and misjudgments. The
reaction to the movie was so good that, Hollywood being Hollywood,
United Artists became convinced that Tibbs could be brought back to star
in a "tentpole" series of crime thrillers. These have previously been released as individual Blu-ray titles by Kino Lorber and they are now available as a double feature set.
First up is the 1970 release, "The Call me MISTER Tibbs!" Aside from
Poitier's commanding presence as the same character, there is virtually
no connection between this Virgil Tibbs and the one seen in the previous
film. The screenplay by Alan Trustman, who wrote the winners "The
Thomas Crown Affair" and "Bullitt", softens the Tibbs character to the
point that he resembles one of those unthreatening TV gumshoes. When we
first see him, he is now in the San Francisco Police Department, though
Trustman doesn't provide even a single line of dialogue to explain how
he got there. He's apparently been there for some time, too, because
Tibbs has suddenly acquired a wife (Barbara McNair) and a young son and
daughter. The movie opens with the brutal murder of a call girl who
lived in a pricey apartment. Evidence points to Tibbs' old friend Logan
Sharpe (Martin Landau), a firebrand street preacher and activist who
enjoys a wide following and who is galvanizing the community to vote in a
politically controversial referendum. Sharpe professes his innocence
and Tibbs sets out to acquit him and find the real killer. The trail
quickly leads to a confusing mix of motley characters and red herrings,
among them Anthony Zerbe and Ed Asner. Poitier is never less than
impressive even when playing a watered-down version of a once gritty
character. However, his impact is diminished by the sappy screenplay
which allocates an abundance of time showing Tibbs dealing with
day-to-day family living. He flirts with his wife and offers life
lessons to his son that border on the extremes of political
incorrectness. When he catches the lad smoking, Tibbs decides to teach
the pre-teen a lesson by inviting him to join him in smoking Churchill
cigars and drinking some scotch. (Most of our dads would probably have
employed methods that were slightly more "conventional".) This domestic
gibberish reduces the character of Tibbs to a big screen version of
Brian Keith's Uncle Bill from the "Family Affair" TV series. Director
Gordon Douglas, normally very underrated, handles the pedantic script in
a pedantic manner, tossing in a few impressive action scenes including
one in which Poitier chases Zerbe on foot seemingly through half of San
Francisco in the movie's best sequence. The scenes between Poitier and
Landau bristle with fine acting but they only share a limited amount of
screen time. Quincy Jones provides a lively, funky jazz score but the
film never rises above the level of mediocrity.
Poitier returned to the screen for the last time as Virgil Tibbs in 1971
in "The Organization". Compared to the previous outing, this one is
superior on most levels. The script by James R. Webb is just as
confusing but there is a grittiness to the production and the character
of Tibbs is toughened up a bit. Thankfully, the scenes of his home life
with wife and kids are kept to a minimum. The film, well directed by Don
Medford (his final production), begins with an inspired caper in which a
group of masked men stage an audacious and elaborate infiltration of an
office building owned by some shady mob characters. They abscond with
millions in cocaine. Tibbs is assigned to the case and is shocked when
the culprits secretly approach him and admit they stole the drugs. Turns
out they are community activists who wanted to prevent the cocaine from
hitting the streets. However, they want Tibbs to know that they did not
commit a murder that occurred on the premises of the office. They claim
someone else did the dirty deed and is trying to pin it on them. Tibbs
believes their story and goes against department protocols by keeping
the information secret from his superiors while he works with the
activists to crack the case. At some point the plot became so tangled
that I gave up trying to figure out who was who and just sat back to
enjoy the mayhem. Tibbs' withholding of information from the police
department backfires on him and he ends up being suspended from the
force. Predictably, he goes rogue in order to take on organized crime
figures who are trying to get the drugs back. "The Organization" is
fairly good Seventies cop fare capped off by a lengthy action sequence
imaginatively set in a subway tunnel that is under construction. The
supporting cast is impressive and includes reliable Sheree North,
scruffy Allen Garfield and up-and-comers Raul Julia, Ron O'Neal and a
very brief appearances by Max Gail and Damon Wilson. Barbara McNair
returns as Mrs. Tibbs but her sole function is to provide attractive
window dressing. Gil Melle provides a hip jazz score.
Both films boast fine transfers but the only bonus features are the original trailers.
On the eve of the November 1963 release of TWICE TOLD
TALES, the British actor Sebastian Cabot would tell a reporter from the Copley
News Service, “They’ve been after me to do more of the horror pictures with
Vincent Price.I wouldn’t mind that a
bit, though I must say I wouldn’t want to do them exclusively.”He intimated that he and his co-star had
discussed a possible future pairing in “a light comedy” motion-picture.Alas, it was not to be; the two actors would
not work together again.Cabot, of
course, would soldier on and enjoy success as both a television personality and
a recognizable voice-over actor.Following
the passing of Boris Karloff in 1969, Vincent Price would reign as the big-screen’s
uncontested “King of Horror.” Cabot’s estimation of Price as an actor
“extremely adept” at light-comedy was incisive.Throughout his long and fabled career, Vincent Price’s on-screen
ghoulishness would nearly always be mitigated with a wry smile and twinkle in
the eye.
TWICE TOLD TALES is the second of two quickie vehicles in
which Price starred for Robert E. Kent’s Admiral Pictures, Inc. (1962-1963).For their first pairing, DIARY OF A MADMAN
(released in March 1963 and distributed through United Artists), Kent mined the
imagination of the great French short-story writer Henri-René-Albert-Guy de
Maupassant.That film’s ballyhoo
proclaimed it “The Most Terrifying Motion Picture Ever Created!” It most
certainly wasn’t, but the film still managed to be a worthwhile psychological
thriller - though one that didn’t particularly resonate at the box-office.In what was obviously an attempt to
capitalize on the low-budget but big commercial success of Roger Corman’s Edgar
Allan Poe adaptations for A.I.P, Kent quickly changed course and ambitiously turned
to the short stories and novels of Nathanial Hawthorne for material.
Though a descendant of John Hathorne, the unrepentant
magistrate who presided over the fate of several innocents during Salem,
Massachusetts’s celebrated witch trials, Nathanial Hawthorne was a
romanticist:he was not prominently a
writer of mysteries or of fantastic fiction.Having said that, Hawthorne was not averse to penning a good ghost story
or two and his talent had won him the praise of contemporaries.One such fan was Edgar Allan Poe himself.In his review of Hawthorne’s two volume
collection of short stories TWICE TOLD TALES for Graham’s Magazine in May of
1842, Poe unabashedly pronounced the New Englander as “a man of truest genius…
As Americans, we feel proud of this book.”
Of course Hollywood producers have always somehow managed
to take great creative liberties with the acknowledged classics.Stories of cigar-chomping producers passing
on tracts of classic literature so their stable of writers might “give ‘em a
polish” are legion.Though Roger
Corman’s series of Poe films both successfully and artistically mined the great
man’s work for their tortured characters, grim atmosphere and elements of plot,
Corman himself rarely offered filmgoers a straight-forward re-telling of any of
the doomed author’s fabled tales.
Producer-writer, Robert E. Kent seems to have taken a
similar, albeit far less successful, approach with his production of TWICE TOLD
TALES.Only segment two of this trilogy
film, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” closely resembles Hawthorne’s original story, and
even that diverges when at odds with cinematic expectations.In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” a sinister
love-triangle between Dr. Carl Heidegger (the corpulent Sebastian Cabot), Alex
Medbourne (Price) and the recently revived but still exquisite corpse of Sylvia
Ward (Marie Blanchard) is re-engineered as to feature an original - if
salacious - back-story.This “Virgin
Spring” elixir-of-eternal-youth morality-fable plays out with little fidelity to
the original tale.
Such creative-license is stretched to the breaking point
with the film’s final episode, “The House of the Seven Gables.”This segment bears little resemblance to Hawthorne’s
celebrated novel, but it has borrowed elements from the better known – and far
more lavish – 1940 Universal film of the same title.The Universal film, perhaps not
coincidentally, also featured Vincent Price in a starring role, though this
tale too strayed far from Hawthorne’s original.Though I recall no physical blood-letting in the Hawthorne novel, in TWICE
TOLD TALES the sanguine red fluid pours freely– and mostly unconvincingly, it
must be said - from ceilings, walls, portraits, and lockets.The Pyncheon’s family’s metaphorical skeleton-in-the-closet
becomes all too real in this rather uninspired re-working.
Part of the film’s original marketing stratagem was the
offer of “FREE COFFEE in the lobby to settle your nerves!”One might suggest, with a measure of
cynicism, that such brew was a necessary component in helping to keep audiences
awake.TWICE TOLD TALES is, to be
generous, a very good ninety-minute film.The problem is that the filmmakers stretched this ninety-minute film to an
interminable two-hour running time.
This is a “sitting room” or “parlor” film; most of the
action (as it is) takes place in mildly claustrophobic confines of small home
settings with long stretches of unbroken dialogue.There are very few provocative set-pieces employed
over the course of three segments and the most ambitious of these, the deadly
and poisonous garden of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini (Price), is only experienced in sun-soaked
broad daylight.This supposedly lethal
garden is both terribly over-lit and ill-disguised in its construction (the
seams of the faux-grass mats are clearly visible).As such this potentially visual and cinematic
garden of death portends little of its intended menace.If only love-struck suitor Giovanni Guasconti
(Brett Halsey) could have encountered the beautiful but lethal Beatrice
Rappaccini (Joyce Taylor) in a blue-swathed moonlight setting, the garden’s mysterious
atmosphere would have been instantly heightened.
Kent’s too-wordy screenplay suffers occasional patches of
purple prose, but it’s serviceable.There are a couple of great moments:Cabot’s toast of the glass prior to his experimental drinking of a fluid
that may or may not kill him (“To eternal youth, or just eternity?”).In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” we’re not sure, at
first, of who is a prisoner to whom.Is
it the estranged daughter to the father, or the father to the daughter?When all is made clear, we can better understand
the poisoned daughter’s bitter complaint, “The only difference from being dead
is that this house is bigger than a grave.”
TWICE TOLD TALES is no classic, but it’s not unworthy of
one’s time.Vincent Price is, as always,
brilliant in all three of the villainous roles he inhabits.The supporting cast is mostly great as well,
and Kent, unashamedly, brings aboard several of the familiar players who earlier
worked with Corman on the Poe series.Director
Sidney Salkow was, sadly, no auteur.Though he had been directing and writing films – and bringing them in
under or on budget -for both
independent and major studios as early as 1936, it’s clear he was most
interested in producing a satisfying checkmark in the company’s profit ledger and
not terribly concerned with film-as-art. Though Salkow’s films are never less than
competent, they’re generally pedestrian and not particularly memorable.As helmsman, Salkow simply possessed none of
Corman’s visual-style or displayed any ability to stage an impressive production
on a shoestring budget.
To be fair, Corman had advantages.His gothic films were European in design: his settings were of torch-lit gloomy and
brooding castles, of misty streets of cobblestone and black twisted tree-limbs.Two of the TWICE TOLD TALES, on the other
hand, are set in the non-atmospheric repose of 19th-century small-town
America.With the small exception of a creepy
sequence in which a thunder and lightning-storm disturbs a tomb that had been
sealed for thirty-eight years (and sits, inexplicably, just to the rear of Dr.
Heidegger’s back-door), the dressing that surrounds TWICE TOLD TALES demonstrates little
of the macabre ingredients necessary for mounting a successful horror film.
This 2022 release from
Kino-Lorber Studio Classics supplants their original 2015 Blu-ray issue of
TWICE TOLD TALES.As with its first
incarnation, the film is presented in Technicolor and in its original 1.66:1
ratio and in 1920x1080p with removable English subtitles.This new issue looks great… but no greater
than their 2015 release, quite frankly.This edition doesn’t necessarily offer a significant upgrade, if at
all.Bonus features ported over from the
first issue includes a commentary from film scholars Richard Harland Smith and
Perry Martin as well as a brief “Trailers from Hell” segment courtesy of Mick
Garris.
It seems this Kino
“Special Edition” differs only in small ways from their earlier effort.First, a “collectible” slipcover (featuring a
pair of color photographs on the reverse sleeve), replaces the two
black-and-white shots featured on the case of the original issue.The original edition featured only three
trailers in total – this new issue balloons to a generous baker’s dozen of
trailers from other Poe/Price/AIP titles offered on the Kino Studio Classics
line.On the minus side, this new
edition, somewhat oddly, offers no chapter selections – a strange omission for
a portmanteau film.An essential
purchase, I suppose – but only for those who missed out on the original 2015
pressing.
In his collection of 1997, Who the Devil Made It?: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors,
Peter Bogdanovich, trumpeted that no one in the film industry, “had ever made
good pictures faster or for less money than Edgar Ulmer.What he could do with nothing (occasionally
in the script department as well) remains an object lesson for those directors,
myself included, who complain about tight budgets and schedules.”Bogdanovich, who befriended Ulmer when the
latter was in his seventies, reminded readers the director of such gems as Detour (1945) and The Black Cat (1934) was rarely given more than six-days to shoot
any of his features.
Ulmer was an interesting character, an oft-cited ego-centric
with high aspirations and boundless energy.Indie Hollywood producers found Ulmer a dependable craftsman who made
the most of what he was given – which too often was a pittance.He occasionally made great films.To his credit, he never delivered anything
less than an efficient film.In a 2014 study,
Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the
Margins, biographer Noah Isenberg, conceded his on-set mission of seeking
“clear-cut answers” was futile: Ulmer’s personal and professional life was nothing
if not a bewildering “straddle [of] truth and fiction.”
Though Isenberg exhumed every interview with the director
he could find, he acknowledged one couldn’t “accept without qualification what
Ulmer himself presented as the truth when he was still alive.” According to
film historian Gary D. Rhodes, Robert Clarke, the actor/producer of Beyond the Time Barrier – one of a trio
films included here on Kino’s new Blu ray issue of the Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-Fi Collection - considered the writer-director
“something of a genius, but also a troubled, difficult person.”
Ulmer was, inarguably, partly responsible for some of his
travails.Working at Universal as an art
director and set designer in the early ‘30s, Ulmer was given the opportunity to
direct the studio’s art-deco atmospheric horror The Black Cat with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.But opportunities to helm future pictures for
up-market Hollywood studios were derailed.Though married, Ulmer entered into a scandalous affair with a studio script
supervisor – one already married to the nephew of Universal’s c0-founder, Carl
Laemmle.The retribution for Ulmer’s
affair-of-the-heart was his blacklisting from working at any Hollywood major.But as a filmmaker Ulmer was nothing if not
resilient.He worked for the next
thirty-odd years as a director-for-hire by independent producers and
poverty-row studios.
As Bogdanovich noted, Ulmer was an able craftsman.He was a utilitarian director, successfully
cranking out films in nearly every popular-market genre: westerns, gangster
films, mysteries, adventure yarns - even the occasional comedy.Though the film noir classic Detour might be his greatest achievement,
he is also beloved by fans of classic horror and sci-fi for a string of
engaging pictures.He never approached
films in the horror genre as toss-a-ways, stories unworthy of his talent.Though none of his subsequent horror pictures
would ever match the iconic status anointed to The Black Cat, his occasional dabbles in “fantastic films” were solid
efforts.
Some films were better than others.One especially well done was Bluebeard (1944, featuring John
Carradine).Sometimes the films were
simply off-the-charts exploitation fare as was Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957 with John Agar).His films tended to be, whatever their budgetary
shortcomings, memorable.This new set
from Kino offers fans a trio of his best sci-fi efforts: a well-regarded effort
and two of the last films directed before his departure from the film business.
The “pick” of the set is, arguably, Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X (1951), a very
early entry into the Silver-Age sci-fi film sweepstakes. It’s September 1950 and astronomers are
puzzled by the sudden surfacing of “a strange astronomical phenomenon” which
they describe as “Planet X.”The problem
with Planet X is that its trajectory suggests it might be on a collision course
with earth.The space craft lands
somewhere in the gloomy, foggy moors of Scotland, not too far from the ancient,
spooky watchtower where scientists Dr. Elliot and Dr. Mears (Raymond Bond and
William Schallert, respectively) and journalist Jack Lawrence (Robert Clarke) just
happen to be tracking Planet X’s path.Dr. Elliot’s daughter Enid (Margaret Field) is the unlucky first one to
come face-to-face with the Man from Planet X, describing the alien as having a
“ghastly caricature” of a human face. But now that he’s arrived on earth the
question is why he’s here – and whether he’s friend or foe.
The Man
from Planet X received a modicum of press interest in the
last months of 1950.There were reports writer-producers
Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen’s modest Mid-Century production company was
taking on a David vs. Goliath challenge.They were, after all, competing against a Hollywood big dog studio with
their modest upstart picture.One month
prior to the start of the filming of Planet
X at Culver City’s Hal Roach Studio, Howard Hawk’s production of the iconic
‘50s sci-fi thriller The Thing was
already in mid-production at RKO.Though
tackling the same sort of space-invader subject matter, Planet X was scheduled to be shot – Ulmer-style – in six scant days
with a budget of less than $50,000.As
one Los Angeles daily noted the threadbare budget allotted “wouldn’t rate you a
thing at RKO or any other film factory.”Perhaps not, but the hasty shooting schedule ensured The Man from Planet X would hit cinema
screens long before than The Thing.
The producers of Planet
X didn’t deny they had proceeded with budgetary economic caution since -
they were two of the film’s principal investors and had a lot to lose.“As writers,” Wisberg defended to the L.A.’s Daily News, “we recognized and
anticipated the time and budget limitations in our script in advance and are
now able to cut corners on the set.”One
such frugal measure was their re-using the “standing scenery” left erected of
Ingrid Bergman’s Joan of Arc (1948)
featuring Ingrid Bergman. (Much of the background scenery and effects in the
film are comprised of impressionistic matte paintings and miniatures).
Following the film’s release, Pollexfen conceded while
the film’s script was laden with a lot of scientific jargon, there was probably
more fiction than science embroidered within.For starters, there was never a mention of exactly how far the visitor from Planet X had traveled to get his spaceship
to earth.“We did it on purpose, he
admitted.“If we had mentioned the
distance some 12-year old with a slide rule would prove we were bums.”With its tight, seventy-one minute running
time, The Man from Planet X proves to
be a very serviceable thriller.
The scenario of the second film of this collection, Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) exploitatively
springboards off the popularity of George Pal’s version of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine.The film was scripted by Arthur C. Pierce who
brought us such other 50s and 60s low-budget sci-fi fare as The Cosmic Man (1959), Invasion of the Animal People (1959) and
The Navy vs. the Night Monsters
(1966).I really wasn’t expecting much
from this film, but was surprised that, all things considered, it was actually
a pretty decent futuristic adventure.
On March 5, 1960 Major William Allison (Robert Clarke), a
research test pilot for the USAF, sets off on a jet that will straddle the
border of earth’s atmosphere and outer space.The craft accidentally strafes the speed of light, catapulting Allison
through the time barrier to the Citadel, a fortress protecting the inhabitants
from a mutant population.The non-mutant
population of the Citadel are all deaf and dumb – with the exception of the
grandfatherly supreme leader (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his belligerent Captain (Boyd
Morgan).Most of communication of the residents
of the Citadel is done telepathically – a bit of bad luck for the bewildered
test pilot trying to plot an escape.
Allison learns the year is now (gasp!) 2024.The residents are survivors of a plague
brought on by cosmic radiation from too many nuclear explosions on earth.They are also part of a dying race.There have been no newborns in the Citadel in
twenty-years since the plague left all of the men sterile.Among the last born were the supreme leader’s
granddaughter Trirene (Darlene Tompkins), a nicely-formed ingénue.There’s a sort of cockeyed plan for Trirene
to mate with Allison to promulgate the species.But that idea goes bust when double-crosses and carnage follow in the wake
of the scheming scientists and rampaging mutants.There’s also a bit of a Twilight Zone twist to keep things interesting in the end.Despite the film’s low budget, Ulmer’s
talents in art direction allows the film’s futuristic sets – all triangles,
diamond-shapes and inverted pyramids – to give the film a glossy, moneyed
appearance.
Clocking in a little more than 58 minutes, the final film
of the set, The Amazing Transparent Man
(1960), ties things up in perfunctory fashion – the running time adequate, I
suppose, to tell its slim story.In 1959
the film’s screenwriter, Jack Lewis – whose previous scripting work was mostly
of adventures and westerns – decided to try his hand at writing a
science-fiction tale.His script,
originally titled Search for a Shadow, was
initially picked–up by indie Pacific International Pictures.Ulmer was tapped to direct the film – this
time involving a master safe-cracker who is “sprung from prison by a ring of
international spies.”
The spies are seeking copious amounts of atomic material X-13
so they can develop a ray that will transform an army invisible for the purpose
of military supremacy. To that end Major
Paul Krenner (James Griffith) and Laura Matson (Marguerite Chapman) orchestrate
the escape of safe-cracker Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy) to – under the cloak of
invisibility - break into the government’s highly protected stores of
fissionable material.Krenner is an
unlikeable sort, manipulative and cold.It’s not clear whether he’s acting on behalf of a secretive U.S. agency
or as a double-agent for a foreign power.
He’s assisted, under duress, by Dr. Peter Ulof (Ivan
Triesault), an “eminent nuclear scientist” and developer of the special X-ray
machine that turns both guinea pigs and escaped convicts invisible.Ulof is acutely aware of Krenner’s dark intentions,
but is unable to do anything about it: his reasons for dutifully assisting in the
Major’s schemes becomes evident as the film unspools.In the meantime, Faust incurs Krenner’s
ill-will by enjoying an unsanctioned - but predictable – return to bank robbery
– a side-benefit of his now being invisible.There are a few hand-to-hand combat tussles but little suspense as the
tale unfolds.The story hastily wraps
with Ulof’s breaking of the “third wall” with an earnest morality plea/request.
Lewis’s conjured invisible man/spy-ring scenario was
intriguing but not without precedent.Curt
Siodmak had already written a more successful variant of the idea for Universal
during WWII.That film, Edwin L. Marin’s
Invisible Agent (1942), didn’t cheat
on the special effects as would The
Amazing Transparent Man.Universal’s
especial effects team (including the illustrious John P. Fulton) earned an
Academy Award nomination for their work on this earlier project.The invisibility tricks as provided by
special effects supervisor Roger George in Transparent
Man are passable but not breathtaking.
To be fair, the script would undergo numerous
tweaks.Ulmer and producers John Miller
and Robert L. Madden liked the premise, but were not enamored with the script’s
original title.Lewis reportedly offered
them no fewer than twenty-three alternate titles, the filmmakers initially settling
on The Invisible Invader.But this title too was tossed when Edward L.
Cahn’s Invisible Invaders (1959, with
John Agar and John Carradine) beat them to market.Other titles were bandied about (“The
Invisible Thief,” “The Invisible Gangster”) until the whole “invisible”
campaign was dropped in favor of The
Amazing Transparent Man.Lewis’s
script called for Faust’s character to - intriguingly - cast no shadow even
when not in his invisible state.The
screenwriter contended this element was quickly – and sadly - dropped when the
filmmakers ordered him to “Take out the shadow part.The budget won’t stand all that special
effects work.”
This new Kino Lorber Blu-ray set will obviously be of
great interest to fans of Ulmer and 1950s/early 1960s vintage sci-fi.If you are a fan or collector of commentaries
in particular then this release provides you with a bonanza of them.There are no hoary hack commentators present,
these are folks who know what they’re talking about.The Man
from Planet X features no fewer than three separate commentaries featuring
the likes of Tom Weaver, David Schecter, Dr. Robert J. Kiss, Joe Dante, Gary D.
Rhodes, Richard Harland Smith and Ulmer’s Daughter Arianne Ulmer Cipes.Weaver, Schecter and Rhodes do double-duty on
Beyond the Time Barrier, with David
Del Valle going it alone on The Amazing
Transparent Man.
All three films are presented in their original
black-and-white in 1920 x 1080p with DTS audio, Planet X in 1.37:1 and Time
Barrier and Transparent Man in
1.85:1.The set also features the theatrical
trailers for all three of the films and an option for removable English
sub-titles. The films generally all look great, The Amazing Transparent Man looking a bit soft-focused in parts,
but still better than anything we’ve seen so far of this title.Totally recommended.
In a recent book review about Swedish exploitation films, Cinema Retro columnist Adrian Smith points out that in the 1960s and 1970s Sweden became "the sexy film capital of Europe." As cinematic censorship eased around the world, filmmakers were quick to capitalize on the new screen freedoms, churning out countless low-budget sexploitation films that were softcore in content but far more erotic than any previous films that had been widely shown. Pity the horny person who lived in a rural area without access to theaters that showed such fare, and were thus not part of the action. As comedian George Gobel once quipped to Johnny Carson, "I feel like the world is a tuxedo and I'm a pair of brown shoes." The profit margins on these films were impressive, as they generally cast no-name actors and filmed in locations that were both accessible and economic. Many of these films cited Sweden in the title. Why Sweden was singled out among the other Nordic countries to be a particular haven for sexual permissiveness is still a mystery but this much is certain: the public equated the Swedes with being among the most sexually liberated people on earth. Was it true that they were having more fun than most of us? I guess you'd have to consult Swedes who came of age during that era, but to quote the famous line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
Swedish sexploitation films presented many new female "stars", but most of them faded quickly. One exception was Christina Lindberg (aka Kristina Lindberg), who still has a devoted subculture of fans based on her work in sexploitation films of the 1970s. Small in stature, Lindberg nevertheless was the very definition of voluptuous. While still a teenager, she appeared in prominent photo spreads for both Playboy and Penthouse when both magazines were at the height of their influence. Lindberg quickly attracted film producers and she began appearing in erotic films. She landed her first starring role in "Maid in Sweden", released in 1971. It is a Swedish film shot in English language and top-lining Lindberg as a major new star on the exploitation film circuit, a point that was emphasized by marketing materials that thoughtfully provided her measurements: 42-21-36. The film has been jointly released on Blu-ray through Kino Lorber and Code Red, though it has been in circulation for many years on other labels.
Lindberg plays Inga, a 16 year-old high school student who lives with her parents in a rural area. She is quiet, studious and well-behaved but yearns for a bit of excitement. The opportunity comes when she receives an invitation from her older sister Greta (Monica Ekman) to stay a few days with her in Stockholm, where she works and rents an apartment. Inga makes the train journey to the big city and is greeted by her sister. However, things get uncomfortable when she finds that Greta has a live-in lover, her boyfriend Casten (Crista Ekman, Monica's real-life husband.) Inga is nervous and uncomfortable sharing such small quarters with a man she's never met before. She becomes even more uncomfortable when she witnesses the uninhibited lifestyle of Greta and Casten. They walk about in various stages of undress and think nothing of noisily making love without making much of an effort to be discreet. When Inga secretly observes them, it fuels her own sexual awakening, though not in a pleasant way. She has a nightmare in which she is being gang-raped and is saved by an older women who tries to seduce her. These scenes are extraneous to the story and are inserted simply to provide some additional kinky visuals. Feeling Inga could use some male companionship, Greta and Casten set her up for a date with a friend, Bjorn, who is 21 years-old and seems like a polite, considerate person. That changes when he gets Inga to his apartment. When she spurs his advances, he violently rapes her. In true celluloid fantasy fashion, she puts aside this crime as though her attacker made a simple social flub. She becomes infatuated with him and the two form a romantic bond. Then there is a turn for the worse when Casten tries to seduce her, thus leading to a domestic crisis that endangers her relationship with her sister. By the time Inga must return home, she has lived the equivalent of years of sexual experience all in a matter of days.
"Maid in Sweden" is by any definition a sexploitation film. It exists only to showcase varying degrees of female nudity. Christina Lindberg willingly obliges, doffing her top at every opportunity and occasionally walking about starkers. However, she doesn't bring much personality to the role, playing the part in a grim, unsmiling Wednesday Addams-like mode. The sex scenes are softcore, but push the boundaries. The film, directed by Floch Johnson, is a cut above most other sex movies of the era in that the actors are competent and there is a good deal of footage devoted to showing aspects of Stockholm. There is also a soundtrack comprised mostly of original rock songs. Lindberg would go on to make other exploitation/sexploitation films, most notably the controversial rape revenge movie "Thriller" (aka "They Call Her One-Eye"). Ultimately, she would return to school and veered away from acting to become an animal activist and environmentalist.
Code Red and Kino Lorber have provided a very good 2K transfer which probably means this is the best video version of the movie to be made available. The only bonus extras are the original trailer and a slew of other sexploitation film trailers.
"The Frisco Kid" is a gentle buddy comedy Western made in 1979 when star Gene Wilder was riding high and post-"Star Wars" Harrison Ford was a rising star. The script was not a hot property, as it had plenty of people's fingerprints on it by the time Wilder signed on to the film. Ford was a major fan of Wilder's and was eager to co-star. Seasoned veteran Robert Aldrich, best known for his macho action movies such as "The Dirty Dozen", "Flight of the Phoenix", "Ulzana's Raid" and "The Longest Yard", was signed as director. It was seemingly an odd fit but Aldrich had directed the 1963 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin Western comedy "4 for Texas". The film finds Wilder well-cast as Avram, a somewhat bumbling rabbinical student in Poland who is chosen to travel to San Francisco to serve as the rabbi for a new order. As a reward, he is shown a photograph of the beautiful young daughter of the religious leader in the area who will become Avram's bride. The trip from Poland to California would be arduous enough in the days of the old West under any circumstance but things go particularly wrong for Avram. Upon arriving on the east coast of America, he's told the ship he had booked passage on has been significantly delayed. He befriends three men with a wagon who say they are going to San Francisco. He opts to join them but along the way they rob him and leave him penniless in the desert. A group of Mormons save him and give him money to continue his now seemingly impossible journey across a hellish landscape of deserts and other natural barriers, as well as dangerous Indian tribes. He has a chance encounter with Tommy (Harrison Ford), a low-key friendly young guy who occasionally robs banks. The two men make for an "Odd Couple" scenario as they bond in friendship. Tommy feels sorry for the hapless Avram and agrees to escort him to San Francisco. The film chronicles their adventures and misadventures along the way, some comical, others frightening.
Today's film comedies are largely defined by an abundance of cynicism, cruelty and gross-out jokes, so one is hesitant to be harsh to the bygone era of family-friendly big screen yucks that "The Frisco Kid" epitomizes. There are some genuine giggles in the film, particularly due to Wilder's fish-out-of-water reaction to American traditions and the chemistry between Wilder and Ford is genuine and enjoyable. At other times, the film is sentimental and occasionally touching, as in the scenes in which our hero rabbi risks his life to save the sacred Torah he must deliver to his synagogue. However, the script by Michael Elias and Frank Shaw is meandering and has quite a few slow spots. There is a completely extraneous sequence in which our heroes are captured by hostile Indians that employs the age-old joke of having the tribal chief actually be a sophisticated, seemingly educated man. The scene drags on forever and goes nowhere. At 2 hours, the movie is about a half-hour too long. At times it seems endless and one can only wonder if a 90 minute version wouldn't have been more enjoyable. Sometimes less is more."The Frisco Kid" isn't a bad film, but it is bloated and Robert Aldrich's direction is workman-like and uninspired. It will primarily be of interest to Harrison Ford fans as an example of the eclectic types of films he appeared in after the original "Star Wars".
The region-free Warner Archive Blu-ray looks very good indeed. The only extra is the original trailer.
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Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1965 comedy Strange Bedfellows, which existed primarily to reunite Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida, who had a box-office hit with Come September several years before. Like most of the romantic comedies of the era, there is little to separate this from a standard sitcom episode aside from the running time. Hudson plays a London-based executive on the rise who spontaneously marries a tempestuous Italian bombshell artist played by Lollobrigida. The newlyweds find their mutually insatiable sex drives are the only thing they have in common. Politically conservative Hudson is constantly at odds with his wife's liberal activism. They soon separate but after seven years, Hudson has a reason to stall the divorce proceedings he has put in place. Seems his even more conservative boss wants to promote him to be his right hand man- on the proviso that he is happily married. The contrived plot finds Hudson trying to swallow his pride and woo his wife back- despite the fact that she already has a British lover, Edward Judd.
The film ambles from one predictable, over-played scene to another, though there are some genuine laughs along the way. Hudson and Lollbrigida do have genuine chemistry on-screen and there is a very amusing supporting cast that includes Gig Young, Terry-Thomas, Arthur Haynes, Nancy Kulp, Bernard Fox and and the late, great Cinema Retro contributor Joe Sirola, who offers a very funny turn as a perverted sculptor. The most amusing aspect of the film is rather unintentional- the now laughably cliched presentation of life in England. In one scene, people can't get home because London is covered in a pea-soup like fog, an enduring legend that stemmed from the Victorian era when the city was often shrouded in pollution, not fog. Taxi drivers all speak with Cockney accents and call everyone 'guv. Ironically, only a small bit of second unit footage was even filmed in Old Blighty. The only on location footage featuring the stars is confined to a shot or two of Edward Judd and an opening scene of Rock Hudson walking along the Thames. One might ask why no additional footage of Hudson was shot on location. The answer was probably moolah. It would have cost Universal a tidy sum to deal with the logistics of shooting in the midst of a major city. So the studio reverted back to an economic model and "London" was recreated very unconvincingly on the Universal back lot. One sequence that was played for laughs has a more subtle aspect of humor to it when viewed today: Hudson reluctantly sharing a bed with Judd. (Hudson shared similar scene when he bedded down with Tony Randall in Send Me No Flowers, leading one to believe that he was probably in on the joke in the days when he was still very much in the closet.) Like most of these types of comedies, the finale features the entire cast coming together in a big chaotic scene. This time, it's Lollobrigida's scheme to scandalize London by riding through town as Lady Godvia. It's a mark of the movie's prudishness, however, that she is clad in neck-to-toe flesh colored body suit. Some scandal. The film's uninspired direction by Melvin Frank doesn't completely negate the fun of watching two genuine screen legends at the peak of their careers.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray features a pin-sharp transfer that only makes it more obvious how much of the film relies on shoddy rear-screen projection. The disc features an informative commentary track by film historian Eddy Von Mueller and it's admirable that Kino Lorber continues to provide these tracks on movies that are routine at best. Even films that are artistic failures often have many interesting tales relevant to their production and Strange Bedfellows is no exception. There is also the original trailer and gallery of other trailers from KL featuring the two legendary stars.