By Hank Reineke

Though the Bert I. Gordon’s and William Castle’s of 1950s-1960s Hollywood were successful in grinding out a string of their own low-budget suspense films, it’s clear they both aspired for recognition as auteurs of psychological-thrillers in the Hitchcock tradition. Producer/Director Bert I. Gordon would throw his hat into that particular ring with the redoubtable Picture Mommy Dead. The screenplay for Gordon’s picture was written by Robert Sherman, a television writer with no feature film credits. This was to be Gordon’s second film for Joseph Levine’s Embassy Pictures, his first being the outrageous exploitation/sci-fi flick Village of the Giants (1965) (“Teen-agers Zoom to Supersize and Terrorize a Town!”).

Casting for Picture Mommy Dead began as early as November of 1965, the trades reporting Levine had hopes of reuniting Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews (of Otto Preminger’s classic noir Laura (1944) for Color Mommy Dead (the provisional title of the film). Though Tierney appeared to be interested – she had been working before the camera only intermittently in the mid-60s – on January 12, Gordon announced her part was instead given to actress Martha Hyer, since “the role developed more into a Martha Hyer type of beauty than a Gene Tierney type beauty.”

If Dana Andrews was on Levine’s wish list to take on the role of Edward Shelley in the film, the actor was either already working on another project or simply not interested. The part would go to Don Ameche whose recent roles were also occasional and on television. In a classic example of Hollywood nepotism, actress Susan Gordon – Bert’s daughter – would beat out eighty actresses auditioning for the role of the troubled Susan Shelley. “I solved the second femme lead,” the producer explained, “by giving it to my 16-year-old daughter, Susan, but I’ve got to find still another lady before we start shooting at Paramount on January 24.”

That “lady” still to be cast as the filthy-rich Jessica Flagmore Shelley was the sultry screen-legend Hedy Lamarr. On January 18, a mere six days before that character’s first scheduled shoot was to take place at Beverly Hills Doheny Estate, it was announced the notoriously reclusive and eccentric Lamarr had accepted the role. It was reported her acceptance was mostly due to the coaxing of Marvin Paige, a talent agent and occasional on-the-town paramour of the aging glamour queen.

But if the film’s casting appeared settled, events would soon take a dramatic turn. In the interim of winning this “comeback” gig Lamarr, the Garbo-like fifty-one year-old actress, found herself behind bars at the Sybil Brand Institution for Women. The actress had been caught shoplifting eighty-six dollars’ worth of merchandise from a Wilshire Boulevard department store. Following the posting of a $550 release bond, Lamarr told a throng of reporters the shoplifting accusation was the result of a “misunderstanding.”

It was an odd turn of events but on January 28, 1966, the very same day Lamarr was to be arraigned, Gordon promised the actresses’ casting was safe. “This unfortunate happening will make no difference in our plans,” the director/producer told the press. “I’m behind her 100%.” But in the days between her brief incarceration and her first scheduled on-set date, it was obvious things might not work out. Picture Mommy Dead was already ten-days into its shooting schedule, with another three weeks of work to go. Lamarr, who had yet been called before the cameras, was considered integral to those next three-weeks.

Hollywood gossip maven Dorothy Manners reported Gordon’s optimistic suggestion that “the concentration her role demands” would offer Lamarr a welcome distraction from her recent petty theft indiscretions. But Manners chose to stir the pot further, making a passing reference to Lamarr’s prima donna declaration that she’d work only “between the hours of twelve noon and five in the afternoon.” It was Lamarr’s contention that “Any actress who steps before a camera before noon is indecent.”

The resulting press was making everyone invested in the film a little uneasy. Embassy was quick to remind Gordon the budget of Picture Mommy Dead was a cool one million. The film’s backers were, not surprisingly, concerned over Lamarr’s eccentric behavior and public statements. Though some conceded in Hollywood even bad or sordid publicity might prove beneficial in the long run, Gordon was told if he “couldn’t guarantee” Lamarr’s physical and mental commitment to the project, the actress would need to be replaced.

Gordon chose to ignore the warning signs, determined to push forward with his original plan. On Wednesday morning, February 2, a limousine was sent to pick up the embattled actress at her home. The driver was given instructions to deliver Lamarr to the grounds of the Doheny Estate where her first scenes were to be filmed. But there was a new twist. When the driver arrived as scheduled Lamarr was nowhere to be found: a maid explained the actress wasn’t in residence. She told the driver the actress had been admitted to Westwood hospital only hours earlier.

The maid’s explanation was countenanced by both Lamarr’s doctor and attorney. They offered their client was suffering from “nervous exhaustion,” but would be prepared to go before the cameras two day’s hence on Friday the 4^th. This of course was problematic as a crew was already awaiting her arrival on location. The filmmakers decided to check on the Lamarr’s physical and mental well-being themselves. But when they arrived at the hospital they learned there was no record of the actress having ever been admitted. This news was enough for Embassy to pull the plug on Lamarr’s return to the big screen. A spokesman explained to the press, “We have too much involved in production costs to chance any delay.” Embassy then announced that actress Zsa Zsa Gabor had already been offered and accepted the role of Jessica Flagmore Shelley.

Though Lamarr threatened a legal challenge, her lawyers would not ultimately pursue the case. “Gordon made it clear,” an Embassy spokesman offered, “that his decision was in no way predicated upon Miss Lamarr’s recent arrest on shoplifting charges.” Calling a press conference in the backyard of her home on the very day of her losing her role in the film, Lamarr contested all she really needed “was a good night’s sleep,” defiantly vowing to “never act again.” She held true to her promise. The 1958 noir The Female Animal would remain her final appearance in a feature film.

The firing put Gordon in an awkward position. He tried his best to smooth things over before getting back to his work on the film. “I cannot afford to gamble on anyone’s health, but I do have tremendous respect and admiration for Miss Lamarr as an actress as a woman. And whenever she feels she’s able to work I have a story in which I would star her.”

In truth, the role Lamarr was ousted from likely wouldn’t have brought her anything but the briefest return to glory. As the dearly departed Jessica Flagmore Shelley, Zsa Zsa Gabor really doesn’t have all that much to do. She’s seen in a few brief silent sequences in the first half of the film, later enjoying a slightly more expanded role near the film’s climactic end. The crux of Picture Mommy Dead is the mysterious circumstances surrounding mommy’s death. Was it an unfortunate accident? Or was it murder?

The film offers red herrings aplenty. Shelley’s daughter Susan (Susan Gordon) is convinced she’s solely responsible for her mother’s fiery demise. Such thoughts clouding her “fragile mind” would cause her to spend three years convalescing at a convent. Susan’s father Edward (Don Ameche) arrives at the convent to bring his daughter back home to the estate, bringing along his new wife Francine (Martha Hyer), Susan’s scheming former governess. The kindly nun (Signe Hasso) who has been caring for Susan since Jessica’s death warns the couple the young girl is still not in a good place, traumatized by “phantoms of the past” and “vivid, horrid nightmares.”

Bringing Susan home to the Shelley estate was, to put it mildly, probably not the best of father’s decisions. For starters, there’s plenty of Peyton Place-style intrigue at play in and around the palatial grounds: infidelities, back stabbings and duplicitous folks scheming to get their paws on the sizable inheritance due Susan. The screenplay’s riddling mystery is who – or whom – are behind the cruel plan to drive Susan out of her mind so they can steal away the Shelley fortune.

The film as written is an uneasy pairing of those old-fashioned mansion-dagger-inheritance mysteries of the 1930s made fresh with a dollop of psychological mumbo-jumbo. I’m guessing Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) served as a partial template for Sherman’s scripting. In fact, I kept thinking of Tippi Hedren’s character of Marnie throughout the entirety of Picture Mommy Dead since Martha Hyer’s hairstyle is near-identical. To be fair, the difference ends there. Hedren’s Marnie was simply a troubled gal, Hyer’s Francine is simply trouble.

Though there are a couple of interesting plot twists here and there – and a falconry scene involving Susan running in terror for safety is mildly suspenseful – Picture Mommy Dead is, at best, a workmanlike feature. Neither a great film nor a poor one, it’s a semi-suspenseful time-waster which attempts to hitch a formulaic murder mystery with Jungian psychoanalysis. Not so successfully, in my opinion.

This is no slight on director-producer Bert I. Gordon. We “monster kids” of a certain generation revere the filmmaker for his work on such cult classics as Beginning of the End (giant grasshoppers), The Amazing Colossal Man (giant nuclear blast survivor), The Cyclops (giant mutation), The Spider (giant spider) Food of the Gods (giant rodents) and Empire of the Ants (giant ants) etc. etc. But with Picture Mommy Dead, Gordon found himself deep in the shadow of a cinematic giant of another sort, one more difficult to triumph over: Alfred Hitchcock.

This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of Picture Mommy Dead is presented in 1920 x 1080p, with a ratio of 1.85:1, dts sound and removable English sub-titles. The film looks brilliant, Kino engineering this new issue from a new 4K restoration. The set rounds off with five theatrical trailers that support other Kino product as well as an audio commentary courtesy of writer-producer-directors Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson.

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By Doug Oswald

Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford and Edward Fox lead “Force 10 from Navarone,” available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Based on the 1968 Alistair MacLean novel of the same name, it was initially announced a movie was to follow. After the huge success of “The Guns of Navarone,” a sequel was a no-brainer. The classic “The Guns of Navarone” is among the greatest adventure movies ever made and serves as the template for every “Men on an Impossible Mission” movie that followed. There were other similar movies that preceded it, but MacLean nailed the formula with a mix of action, adventure, suspense with a dash of spy thriller tossed in for good measure. However, the sequel would wait nearly two decades until its release in 1978.

The plot of the sequel, like the previous movie, involves sabotage behind enemy lines with Mallory, Robert Shaw replacing Gregory Peck, Edward Fox covering for David Niven as Miller and joined by fresh-faced Harrison Ford as Barnsby, who is presumably the stand in for Anthony Quinn’s Andrea Stavrou. Ford leads Force 10 on a mission to Yugoslavia to meet up with local partisans in order to locate a traitor from Navarone. This being a movie based on an Alistair MacLean novel, the story also involves double crosses, blowing up a dam and uncovering a traitor.

As I alluded to earlier, the sequel was going to be made in 1967 with Carl Foreman, MacLean and the three leads from the previous film (Peck, Niven and Quinn) reprising their roles. MacLean completed a screenplay which he adapted into the novel, “Force 10 From Navarone” which was released in 1968. MacLean would do the same thing with “Where Eagles Dare” writing the screenplay and then adapting it as a novel before the movie. Readers of the novel “Force 10 From Navarone” will note this movie has little resemblance to the 1968 novel or the original screenplay written in 1967. This change and the long wait for the sequel probably contributed to a less-than-thrilling box office take.

“Force 10 from Navarone” isn’t a bad film, but it was misguided in the approach taken to bring it to the big screen. While the movie has aged rather well, in hindsight it would have been better had the filmmakers stuck with the original treatment including all the original characters. I remember seeing “Force 10 from Navarone” in the theater on its original release with great anticipation, and while it’s not quite up to the classic status of “The Guns of Navarone,” it was a pretty good effort. The movie opens with some of the climactic footage from “The Guns of Navarone” as a pre-credits scene, but it just reminds viewers of the missed opportunity if the movie would have been made back in 1967.

The film adds great production value with location shooting in Yugoslavia and the bevy of great supporting players. The movie was directed by James Bond veteran veteran Guy Hamilton and boasts a bit of a 007 past and future cast and crew reunion. Shaw, as I’m sure readers recall, was Red Grant in “From Russia with Love.” The film also includes “The Spy Who Loved Me” alumni Barbara Bach and Richard Kiel as partisans, and Edward Fox, who would play “M” in “Never Say Never Again.” The movie also features Carl Weathers as Weaver, an American soldier who joins the Force 10 team, Franco Nero as the leader of the partisans, Philip Latham as Jenson (replacing James Robertson Justice), and Alan Badel as Petrovich. Sharp-eyed viewers will catch Wolf Kahler and Michael Byrne as Nazis a few years prior to appearing again as Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” respectively. “Star Wars” fans should also watch for several actors who appeared in one or more of the original trilogy films, and of course Harrison Ford was Han Solo and Indiana Jones. There’s a great party game here ala, “Spot the connections to Bond, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.”

The movie clocks in at 126 minutes and looks and sounds terrific on this Blu-ray release by Kino Lorber. The music by Ron Goodwin is good, if a bit too jolly at times. The extras include an outstanding audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin as well as the trailers for this and other Alistair MacLean releases. There is also reversible sleeve artwork. I highly recommend this Blu-ray release.

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RETRO-ACTIVE: FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Tony Curtis, like most aspiring screen stars, slogged through bit parts in unmemorable films when he first broke into the industry in the late 1940s. By the mid-1950s, however, he was a major star, even if the films he top-lined were relatively undistinguished. With his boyish good looks and New York wise guy persona, Curtis excelled at playing charismatic rogues and, perhaps improbably for a guy born in the Bronx, cowboys, knights and other exotic men of action. But Curtis was more than just a pretty face and by the late 1950s he was getting challenging roles that allowed him to show off his dramatic acting skills. He was brilliant in "Sweet Smell of Success" and "The Defiant Ones" and gave one of the great comedic performances of all time in Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot". By the late 1960s, however, his star power was fading. He still had enough clout to get the male leads in lightweight comedies like "Sex and the Single Girl" and "Don't Make Waves", but the bloom was off the rose. Ironically, he won fine reviews for his convincing performance in the 1968 film "The Boston Strangler", but most of the good roles would continue to elude him. Like many fading American stars, he turned toward European productions, starring in "Those Daring Young Men in the Jaunty Jalopies" and "You Can't Win 'Em All", the latter with fellow U.S. import Charles Bronson who found major stardom in Europe long before he became a big name in America. One of the least prestigious films that Curtis appeared was titled "On the Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who...", a 1967 sex comedy filmed in Italy and which would not be released in the USA until 1969, when it had limited distribution. Perhaps because theater owners in the UK and USA had pity on the poor souls who had to stand on ladders and put film titles on theater marquees letter-by-letter, the English language version of the film was shortened to the more provocative "The Chastity Belt". Curtis wasn't the only English-speaking actor in the otherwise all-Italian production, as Hugh Griffith and John Richardson were co-starred.

The film opens with Curtis playing against type as Guerrando de Montone, a sniveling, cowardly and bumbling opportunist who finally is granted his wish to be made a knight. As his reward, he is entitled to claim a vast tract of land as his own. Guerrando is quick to abuse his power over the peasants, especially when he discovers that the local game warden and his voluptuous daughter, Boccadoro (Monica Vitti) live on his land. Although Boccadoro is initially attracted to him, Guerrando's misogynistic ways quickly alienate her. Guerrando informs her that he is her lord and master and will use her for sexual pleasure whenever he pleases. Most of the fun in the script, which was co-written by the esteemed Larry Gelbart, centers on the buxom beauty's strategies to avoid going to bed with Guerrando, who becomes increasingly frustrated. To solve the problem, he forces her to marry him but she delays the consummation of the marriage by invoking a rare, ancient ritual that commits them both to spending three days in constant prayer. When that obstacle is removed, Guerrando is ready to make his move only to find that he has been summoned to join the Crusades and leave Italy for a period of years. To ensure that Boccadoro remains chaste, he has her fitted with a chastity belt which causes her to swear vengeance. The film meanders through the couple's misadventures with Boccadoro intent on finding her husband and murdering him. She poses as a knight in armor and infiltrates his camp but both are kidnapped by an evil, horny sultan (Hugh Griffith) who forces Guerrando to convert to Islam while he makes plans to open the chastity belt and have his way with Boccadoro.The whole thing ends in a madcap chase with heroes and villains chasing each other about a castle.

Italian cinema-goers were very enamored of sex farces during this period. "The Chasity Belt" is one of the tamest, as there is no nudity and the most provocative aspects are plentiful shots of Ms. Vitti's ample bosom bouncing around during the many chase scenes. Like most films of the genre, there are plenty of moments of slapstick and narrow escapes. What impresses most about this modest production is director Pasquale Festa Campanile's light touch and the ability to move the action at such a rapid pace that you don't ponder how predictable it all is. While it's still a bit of a shock to see someone of Curtis's stature in this "B" level comedy, he is in good form and provides plenty of laughs by not even attempting to disguise his New Yawk accent. He is matched by the very likable Vitti and Hugh Griffith, who recycles his lovable rascal shtick from "Ben-Hur". What is stands out most are the rather spectacular locations. Most of the action is shot outdoors in ancient ruins and castles that add a good deal of atmosphere to the goings on.

"The Chasity Belt" is the kind of film that Curtis probably did very reluctantly. He would later try his hand in television co-starring with Roger Moore in the sensational action series "The Persuaders", but it lasted only 24 episodes. A later series, "McCoy" lasted only a single season. Curtis would still turn up in a few major films like "The Mirror Crack'd" and "The Last Tycoon" but only in supporting roles. Nevertheless, he remained enjoyable to watch and always gave his best effort. Perhaps for that reason, "The Chastity Belt" is a lot more worthwhile than you might imagine.

The Warner Archive DVD is generally very good with a few blotches and grainy frames, but one suspects there aren't too many archival prints of this long-forgotten film floating around out there. There are no bonus extras.

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By Hank Reineke

The Cinerama Releasing Co. was in its seventh year of film distribution in 1973. The distributor had earned a reputation in the industry for working successfully with producers to distribute independent films. Such business partnerships had proven beneficial to both parties. In 1973 Cinerama scored big with two modest-budget indie hits: Michael Campus’s Blaxploitation pic The Mack (1973) and Phil Karlson’s Walking Tall (1973). Since the horror film genre was a (mostly) dependable box office gamble for low-budget film productions, Cinerama scored handsomely in 1972 with the domestically produced Willard rat-fest and the decidedly more up-scale and colorfully creepy Amicus-import Tales from the Crypt.

Hoping to continue to capitalize on this successful trend, Cinerama was preparing to distribute a slate of new horrors in 1973: the British Amicus production And Now the Screaming Starts, the U.S. produced mystery-horror Terror in the Wax Museum, and indie Freedom Art’s Doctor Death. Box Office reported in September of 1973, that Cinerama had only recently acquired the rights to Doctor Death. It promised the film would showcase “optical effects unseen before on screen... the illusion of souls passing from one body to another.” That was they called ballyhoo. We’d actually seen it all before, as the effects offered in Doctor Death had been present as early as the silent film era. Doctor Death, whose full title is actually Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls, was the brainchild of producer/director Eddie Saeta and associate producer/screenwriter Sal Ponti. It was the latter’s first (and only) produced screenplay. Ponti worked mostly – if infrequently - as a film actor and occasional songwriter. In contrast, director Saeta had a long-running career in Hollywood, working on studio lots and behind the camera from 1937 on. He was second generation Hollywood. Saeta’s dad had worked in the electrical department for Columbia Pictures from the late 1920s on.

It was through his father’s connections that Eddie Saeta worked as a messenger for Columbia studio chief Harry Cohn. He worked his way through the ranks, ultimately serving as an assistant or 2^nd unit director for such studios as Columbia and Monogram. He mostly assisted in churning out such low-budget fares as westerns, East Side Kids films and even The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962). (That latter film explains the curious and brief walk through of septuagenarian Moe Howard in Doctor Death). In his later years, Saeta also worked extensively as an AD on television. Eagle-eyed James Bond fans might also recognize Saeta’s name from his front end credit as co-Location Manager for 1971’s Diamonds are Forever.

Ponti’s original script wasn’t uninteresting in concept. Distraught over the loss of his wife in a deadly automobile accident he blames on himself, Dr. Fred Saunders (Barry Coe) goes to great lengths to see her revived by supernatural means. He visits her corpse daily where she lies in state in a conveniently unlocked crypt. Though his friend Greg (Stewart Moss) presses, “For God sake, let Laura rest in peace!” Fred is unable to do so. He visits any number of charlatans who profess revivification but who are unable to deliver on their promises.

Things change when Fred meets Tana (Florence Marley) who professes the greatness of an ex-magician known as “Doctor Death” (John Considine). She describes the not-so-good Doctor as, “The genius of all ages, the man who has conquered death.” The problem with Doctor Death is that while he’s actually pretty good in his practice of “selective reincarnation,” he also displays many characteristics you’d prefer your resurrectionist to not have: he’s a pompous, selfish, sadistic, pervert with a necrophilic bent.

He’s also a vampire… of a sort. We learn Doctor Death is more than a thousand year’s old. He sustains himself not on the feeding of blood of his victims, but by the absorption of their souls. Dracula, of course, is Dracula. He too may be a thousand or so years old, but he manages to retain his original physical appearance through the centuries. As someone who absorbs the souls of others, Doctor Death conversely takes on the physical appearance of whomever his latest victim might be. Through his soul absorptions, the doctor has appeared over centuries in any number of multi-racial, multi-ethic and transgender forms. The problem facing the grieving Fred is that Doctor Death, the heralded “genius of all ages,” has been unable to rustle up a suitable fresh corpse to transpose its soul to that of the still very dead Linda. Which was sort of the point of Fred’s hiring him.

Doctor Death was released in November of 1973, the film unflatteringly described by one critic as, “one of a handful of year end grotesqueries being dumped into theaters like a movie distributor’s version of a clearance table.” The reviews of Doctor Death were, in fact, mostly poor to middling. A Pittsburgh Press critic offered, the picture looked “like a grainy blow-up of a 16mm film and with the sort of flat soundtrack that usually accompanies porno films, this would-be horror item is horrible in ways not intended.” But I’d say such criticism is a bit unfair. Though the film’s Colorlab visuals are dark and gritty, this is after all an early 1970s production. Some of the film’s exterior’s sequences were photographed in and around Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard. It was intended to appear a bit seedy.

I’d argue the cinematography of Emil Oster and Kent Wakeford – both pros - was at least on par with such contemporary L.A. based horror-themed productions as The Night Stalker, the Count Yorga and Blacula films, and TV’s Night Gallery. In any case, if one’s nostalgic for the 1970s, this film is for you. The first-half of the decade is duly represented by telltale flashes of ‘70s hairstyles and clothing, of gaudy apartment furnishings and oversize gas-guzzling automobiles.

Doctor Death is occasionally defended as a misunderstood horror-comedy. That’s a bit of a stretch though it’s clear that Ponti’s script did try to lace his tale with a sprinkling of graveyard humor. The problem is that the satire, as written, is just too subtle (or perhaps so poorly played throughout) that many critics missed this angle. Variety thought the film too melodramatic and this, they reckoned, is what invoked “unconscious laughs” by those attending. But perhaps some of those chuckles were intentional. The Louisville Courier-Journal, on the other hand, saw no humor in the film at all. They lambasted, “A new horror has been released from the creaky medieval dungeons, and to tell the honest truth, [it] should have stayed there.”

Well, I disagree. Doctor Death, while no classic, does manage to offer ninety-minutes of dark entertainment and a smile or two. The Los Angeles Times was one of the few newspapers to recognize the film’s lighter aspects, describing Doctor Death as a “silly but kinda cute and ultimately entertaining spoof” of the horror-pic biz - with Considine playing the role of an “ersatz John Carradine.” The San Francisco Examiner also noted Doctor Death was, in essence, “a gruesome horror film that tries unsuccessfully to equate merriment with slaughter.” “The film sustains a certain amount of suspense,” its critic conceded. “But its unpleasant theme is quite repellant, especially in sequences that suggest Considine’s necrophilic [sic] persuasion.”

New York’s Independent Film Journal thought Considine’s performance, “rampantly theatrical, and that’s not a help because he isn’t rampantly hammy as well. And it would take an actor as overblown as Vincent Price to get some good fun into the good doctor.” This is a pretty prescient observation. Throughout Doctor Death, I also reflected on how Considine’s cool portrayal of the loathsome magician-turned-resurrectionist was simply off. He was OK when the role tasked him to be manipulative and sinister, but the absence of black-comedy winks are also painfully in evidence. It would have taken someone of Vincent Price’s caliber to pull it off. Price had, managed to successfully mix horror and humor a decade earlier in such earlier productions as Roger Corman’s The Raven (1963) and Jacques Tourneur’s The Comedy of Terrors (1963). And, of course, in the more recent and devilishly tongue-in-cheek horror classic Theatre of Blood.

It’s of some interest to note that Price was about to play a character named “Dr. Death” in the forthcoming Amicus/A.I.P. co- production of Madhouse (1974). It’s likely had Saeta’s flick not beaten Madhouse to the gate, the Price film might even have been released under it’s working title: The Revenge of Dr. Death. It’s almost certain the poor box-office reception of Cinerama’s Doctor Death was part of the decision of the Madhouse team’s intent to re-title and separate their new Vincent Price/Peter Cushing vehicle far from Saeta’s bargain basement production.

It’s also worth noting that even Cinerama and theater-owners thought Doctor Death not strong enough to stand alone. The film wasn’t playing on many upscale first-run screens, the picture almost completely relegated to grindhouses and west-coast drive-ins. Depending on the market, Doctor Death was part of a double or triple feature bill. These combo-bills mixed newish pics (Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973) and The Legend of Hell House (1973), with psychological thrillers and mysteries (Scream, Baby, Scream (1969), The Butcher (1970), Bluebeard (1972), The Other (1972) and A Name for Evil (1973). The film was also paired with an assortment of horror pictures on their second and third runs: (Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), Countess Dracula (1971), Lady Frankenstein (1971), The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and Asylum (1972). There were even a few golden oldies sprinkled into the bills when prints were available: (The Pit and the Pendulum (1964) and the incongruous A Long Ride from Hell (1968), a spaghetti western with Steve (Hercules) Reeves.

Even with such support, the box-office of Doctor Death was mostly weak. In its first week of screenings in San Francisco, the film pulled in a mere $4,500. When the film rolled out regionally, it pulled in only $2,500 on its first week Pittsburgh, but did slightly better in Detroit with a take of $4,000. But as Christmas week approached, even the Detroit sank to $2,500. The film did some surprising first week receipts in Chicago with a gross of $30,000. It might have been helpful that in Chicago the film had been paired as a double with the old school mystery Terror in the Wax Museum: a film featuring familiar faces (Ray Milland, Elsa Lanchester, John Carradine and Broderick Crawford). Regardless, the combo’s take in the Windy City dropped to $16,500 on week two and (as per Variety) a “tepid” $10,000 of earnings on week three. Though the film seemed destined to play New York City’s “Deuce” strip on its initial run, by mid-January of 1974, Doctor Death would only made it to screens near the upper regions of New York State before disappearing completely from sight.

In any event, the folks at Scorpion Releasing are making sure that Doctor Death doesn’t disappear from your home video screen. This release, taken from a 2015 High-Definition master from the Original Camera Negative is as good as it likely will ever look. The special features include both an audio commentary and separate interview with actor John Considine, as well the reminiscences of director Eddie’s son, Steve. The set arounds out with the film’s trailer and a “new” light-hearted introduction courtesy of Doctor Death himself. I suggest fans of 1970s fringy horror make their appointment with doctor.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount Home Video:

Called “an absolute spectacle of filmmaking from start to finish” (Lauren Huff, Entertainment Weekly) and “extravagant, decadent…phenomenal” (Jazz Tangcay, Variety), writer/director Damien Chazelle’s glittering tale of Hollywood glamour and excess BABYLON arrives for fans to watch at home on Premium Video-On-Demand and to purchase on Digital January 31, 2023 from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

Nominated for three Academy Awards®, including Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design, BABYLON is a must-see spectacle featuring outstanding work from a world-class cast and filmmaking team.  Fans who buy the film on Digital will have access to over 40 minutes of behind-the-scenes interviews and deleted scenes to further illuminate how the cinematic tour-de-force was brought to life.  Bonus content is detailed below:

• A Panoramic Canvas Called Babylon— The cast and crew discuss the inspiration and motivation behind the original story and development of this epic, 15 years in the making.• The Costumes of Babylon— Discover how costume design was fundamental to character development and the challenges that went into creating over 7,000 costumes for the film.• Scoring Babylon— Take a peek into Justin Hurwitz's musical process to understand the artistry behind composing an iconic score that further elevates the film.• Deleted & Extended Scenes

BABYLON follows an ambitious cast of characters -- The Silent Film Superstar (Brad Pitt), the Young Starlet (Margot Robbie), the Production Executive (Diego Calva), the Musical Sensation (Jovan Adepo) and the Alluring Powerhouse Performer (Li Jun Li) -- who are striving to stay on top of the raucous, 1920s Hollywood scene and maintain their relevance at a time when the industry is moving on to the next best thing.

The film will arrive on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, DVD, and in a Limited-Edition 4K Ultra HD SteelBook® March 21, 2023.

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Click here to pre-order 4K Ultra HD  with digital code from Amazon

Click here to order limited edition Steelbook 4K Ultra HD from Amazon

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

By Lee Pfeiffer

MGM has made available a region-free DVD of the Oakmont-produced British WWII films from the late 1960s-early 1970s. These modestly-budgeted films were not designed as Oscar-bait. In fact, they seem to be specifically created to fill out the bottom of double bills as the era of that great cinema staple was rapidly coming to a close. Hell Boats was shot in 1970 and bares all the ingredients of an Oakmont production: it's intelligently written, well-acted and directed (by Paul Wendkos) and features some exotic locations, in this case Malta. As with some other Oakmont titles (The Last Escape, Attack on the Iron Coast, The Thousand Plane Raid), this rather unconvincingly shoehorns an American leading man into what is clearly an all-British story line, presumably to give the film some broader boxoffice appeal. In this case, James Franciscus (in full, Chuck Heston clone mode) is Jeffords, the new commander of a British torpedo boat unit. There is a brief explanation as to how an American got a job as Commander in the Royal Navy- something to do with having been born in the UK. With that sore point quickly dispensed of, we get to the main plot line. Jeffords is assigned to blow up a seemingly impregnable German gun bastion carved into a mountainside in Malta. The mission appears suicidal but Jeffords concocts a daring plan that involves scuba divers, commandos and the torpedo boats. He does have other distractions: he and his superior officer, Ashurst (Ronald Allen) despise each other. Ashurst wants to prove himself in combat, but is stuck behind a desk. He envies Jefford's courage and is further emasculated by his knowledge that Jeffords is bedding his frustrated wife Alison (Elizabeth Shepherd), who fortunately has an aversion to clothing. The soap opera elements are actually intelligently woven into the story line, creating genuine tension between the two men. Franciscus is all grit-teethed masculinity, but he makes a rather bland hero. He is humorless and all business, all the time. (He even makes his sexual dalliances look about as desirable as changing a tire.) Allen's character is far more interesting and the dissolution of his marriage before his eyes adds an interesting subplot to the military sequences. 

Like most Oakmont productions, Hell Boats does a lot with very little in terms of budget. The photography is excellent and so are the production values, save for the sea battle sequences that betray the very obvious use of miniatures. Nevertheless, this is a highly entertaining adventure movie throughout- and it refreshingly sidesteps what I thought was going to be a predictable plot device leading to a somewhat unexpected conclusion. 

If MGM is listening, the only Oakmont title not available on DVD is The Last Escape starring Stuart Whitman. C'mon guys, keep up the good work and get this one out there. 

Click here to order from Amazon (The film is currently streaming on Screenpix and Paramount +)

During World War II, Nazi officer Max Radl (Robert Duvall) devises a plan to kidnap or kill the British prime minister. Approved by German Cmdr. Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence), the scheme moves forward with Col. Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine) leading the mission, aided by Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland), an Irishman with a deep hatred of England. As the plan unfolds, it seems to be going well — until certain events threaten the group’s shot at success.

Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall lead a star-studded cast in this World War II classic based on Jack Higgins’ best-selling novel. Directed by John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape).

Starring Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Jenny Agutter, and Treat Williams.

Limited Edition 2 Disc Hardbox edition. 1500 copies only.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

Disc One – Original Theatrical Version

• 1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray
• NEW Audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin
• NEW Film historian Kim Newman on The Eagle Has Landed
• NEW A Magnificent Cinema – A discussion on John Sturges with film historians Daniel Kremer, Michael Schlesinger and Nat Segaloff
• NEW The Making of The Eagle Has Landed: Actors and Action – featurette
• NEW The Making of The Eagle Has Landed: The Sets and the Props – featurette
• Theatrical Trailer
• Original Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono
• Optional English HOH subtitles

Disc Two – Extended Version

• 1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray
• NEW Audio commentary by author/screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner, television writer/producer Phoef Sutton, and actor Treat Williams
• The Eagle Has Landed Revisited – featurette
• Tom Mankiewicz: Looking Back – interview
• ATV Today on Location – vintage featurette
• Film Night – Location Report
• On Location in Norfolk
• On Location Interviews
• Photo Galleries
• Original Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono
• Optional English HOH subtitles

By Lee Pfeiffer

Screenpix is currently streaming the hard-to-find (in America, at least) 1957 version of "Robbery Under Arms", based on the famous novel by Rolf Boldrewood. Written in the late 19th century, the book inspired some early film versions in 1907, 1911 and 1920. The Australian tale was later remade in 1985. The 1957 film is set in 1865 and was filmed in remote areas of Flinders Range and Wilpena Pound in South Australia. The tale follows the exploits of the charismatic, but notorious outlaw known as Captain Starlight (Peter Finch), whose band of henchmen include brothers Dick and Jim Marston (Ronald Lewis and David McCallum), as well as their crusty father Ben (Laurence Naismith). They've just rustled a thousand head of cattle and sell them quickly before the pursuing police can catch them. However, with their new-found riches the men become reckless and begin spending lavishly. Dick and Jim, delighted to be freed of their hardscrabble struggle to survive in the unforgiving Outback, decide to take a cruise to Melbourne. On board they meet teenage sisters Kate and Jean Swanson (Maureen Swanson and Jill Ireland) who are traveling with their elderly aunt. Sparks fly, especially when they find out the girls also reside in an area accessible to where they live. Kate is especially captivated and she and Dick promise to reunite. The men are as good as their word and  promise to give up a life of crime, especially when they learn that Captain Starlight had been arrested as a consequence of his drawing attention to his sudden wealth. However, Starlight bribes his captors. He is freed and tracks down his former gang members and forces them to participate in a stagecoach robbery that nets everyone a good deal of loot. Jim and Dick are now wanted men and hide in the hills in gold-mining country. These use the stolen funds to finance their own operation and find success with it.

The script takes an improbable turn when Dick and Jim unexpectedly encounter Kate and Jean, who they had to spurn when they went into hiding. Both young women are now saloon girls in the raucous boom town. Jim and Jean ultimately marry and it isn't long after that they learn a baby is on the way. Dick, however, doesn't prove to be as reliable as Jim. He meets a local girl he falls for and betrays Jean's trust in him. When Starling and his gang turn up in town and execute a bank robbery that goes terribly wrong, the authorities are in hot pursuit, but also come across Jim, who is accused of being complicit in the murder of an innocent bystander despite the fact he wasn't present at the scene. The climax of the film finds Dick reuniting with Starlight and his remaining gang members as it becomes apparent to them that their only way to survive is to engage the police in a gunfight- even as Jim faces the prospect of being hanged. .The shootout in the final scenes is well-handled and exciting.

The film is very much identical to an American Western with the exception of seeing the odd kangaroo and the fact that the native people are from Aborigine tribes. Jack Lee provides the excellent direction, although he later called the film a disappointment because the script wasn't up to par and that he felt it was too slow and talky. I beg to differ. I found the film to be thoroughly engrossing and benefiting from the impressive cinematography of Harry Waxman. The opening titles claim it is "A British Film" and indeed it is, at least technically. The producers were British, as were most of the cast members and interiors were shot at Pinewood Studios near London. However, this isn't a cheapjack production that incorporates a few minutes of second unit photography to represent Australia. The country's own film industry had yet to really blossom so any films made there during this period are of special interest. The performances as all excellent with David McCallum especially impressive as the more mature and sensitive of the Martson brothers. (He developed a real life romance with Jill Ireland and the two would marry shortly thereafter.) The Screenpix source material is okay but is a bit soft to do justice to the fine camerawork. The film has only been released in the USA on a public domain video label, as far as I can tell. Here's hoping a Blu-ray might appear in the future.

(Screenpix is available for $2.99 extra a month for subscribers to Amazon Prime, Roku and Apple TV.)

Click here to order DVD from Amazon

By Fred Blosser

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan first appeared in the October 1912 issue of the pulp fiction magazine “All-Story.”  This inaugural novel, “Tarzan of the Apes,” introduced the character as a British peer, Lord Greystoke, who was reared by great apes in Africa as an orphaned infant, and then assimilated into European society in adulthood as a sophisticated adventurer and conservationist.  Burroughs was ingenious in working out the details of the premise (for example, how Tarzan taught himself to read and write), which bordered on science-fiction even by the standards of 1912.   

The story was immediately popular, and a hardcover edition followed in 1914.  It’s important to term the character “Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan,” as he was typically labelled in media credits, because the author shrewdly trademarked the name.  That way, he could control all uses of his creation, reap the profits, and legally stop any attempts by others to hijack it.  As Burroughs realized, the birth of the motion picture industry and the growth of newspaper syndication in the early 1900s offered access to unlimited audiences.  Many middle-class people in small towns might never buy a magazine or a book, but they were sure to be movie-goers and newspaper readers.  Securing Tarzan as his Intellectual Property allowed Burroughs to exploit those opportunities and ensure they didn’t fall into the hands of others.  He incorporated himself as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., and wrote twenty-two more Tarzan novels over the next thirty-five years, along with many other science-fiction and adventure series.  Burroughs—and then after his death in 1950, his heirs—licensed Tarzan to numerous other media platforms, including movies, radio, a newspaper comic strip, comic books, toys, and television.  If podcasts, Twitter, YouTube, virtual reality, video games, and streaming video had existed back then, we can be certain he would have utilised them too.  Today, when we think of creators who wisely kept a tight commercial grip on their creations, Walt Disney and George Lucas are likely to come to mind, but Burroughs led the way. 

Over the years, movies’ portrayals of Tarzan have varied from the wily, masculine, powerful, articulate, principled character of Burroughs’ original vision to a muscular but asexual simpleton with the verbal skills of a two-year-old.  The latter version was popularised for one generation by MGM’s Johnny Weissmuller movies in the 1940s, and reinforced for the next by years of reruns on television.  The Weissmuller films began promisingly with the violent, sexy “Tarzan the Ape Man” in 1932 and “Tarzan and His Mate” in 1934, but over time at MGM (and then at RKO, where the series moved in 1943), they became increasingly simplistic.  Under the fierce censorship of Hollywood’s Production Code, MGM tightened down on the semi-nudity and mayhem of the first two films, aiming instead for a juvenile demographic.  The studio reasoned that kids were an easier audience who would laugh at the antics of Tarzan’s chimpanzee and not wonder why Weissmuller’s Tarzan never had intimate relations with Jane.  

The last seven decades have seen a variety of Tarzans.  Some producers adhered to the Weissmuller model, beginning with five features from RKO starring Lex Barker, who inherited the role after Weissmuller retired his loincloth.  Others redesigned the concept to meet changing trends in society.  In the James Bond era of the 1960s, a character closer to the Burroughs prototype appeared in two features starring Jock Mahoney and three with Mike Henry.  This peer of the jungle realm was a suave, jet-setting trouble shooter.  The image of an articulate ape man carried over to a 1966-68 NBC-TV series with Ron Ely in the role.  Where Mahoney’s and Henry’s character travelled to India, Thailand, Mexico, and South America to solve jungle crises, Ely’s remained in Africa, in one episode coming to the aid of three nuns from America played by Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Cindy Birdsong, better known as the Supremes.  Even with those attempts to appeal to a more contemporary audience, popular interest waned.  In part, this was because the Weissmuller image was the one that stuck in the popular memory, lampooned by television comics.  What can you do with a hero once your audience laughs at him?  Even more to the point, enormous cultural changes around racial issues occurred with the advancements of the Civil Rights era.  Many critics now saw Tarzan as a worrisome symbol of white entitlement, despite the prominent casting of Black actors and a more nuanced portrayal of African tribal societies in the Ron Ely series. 

Nevertheless, with a brand name that older viewers still recognised at least, the character continued to appear sporadically.  If you gathered around the VCR with your family as a kid in the Reagan years, the Tarzan you may remember best was Christopher Lambert’s portrayal in 1984’s “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.”  “Greystoke” had the good fortune to appear as VCRs became standard fixtures in American television rooms; on home video, the movie enjoyed a long life as a VHS rental.  Adapted by Robert Towne from “Tarzan of the Apes” and directed by Hugh Hudson, the film was promoted as a return to Burroughs’ concept of a feral but innately intelligent man who attempts to blend back into polite society.  Some Burroughs fans, primed to embrace a virile Tarzan close to the commanding pulp-fiction character, were disappointed.  In trying to rectify the prevailing Weissmuller image from decades past, Towne and Hudson may have overbalanced in the opposite direction.  Burroughs’ Tarzan dominated whatever environment he chose to be in; Lambert’s was a sad figure, overwhelmed and lost,once he left the jungle.  Nevertheless, lavishly produced, the movie was popular with critics and general audiences.  There were Academy Award nominations for Towne’s screenplay and for Rick Baker’s costuming effects for Tarzan’s adopted ape family.  Another live action movie (“Tarzan and the Lost City,” 1998), two short-lived, syndicated TV series, and Disney’s animated “Tarzan” (1999) were released through the 1990s.  

The latest iteration as a live-action feature, “The Legend of Tarzan” (2016), drew tepid reviews and disappointing box-office.  Although the producers cast Samuel L. Jackson in a prominent role alongside Alexander Skarsgard’s Tarzan above the title, the strategy probably did little to attract younger, hipper, and more diverse ticket-buyers as it was intended to.  Jackson’s American envoy remained little more than a sidekick to Tarzan in an 1885 period setting.  If you hoped to see Jackson’s character shove Tarzan aside to get medieval on somebody’s ass, you were disappointed.  In contrast, Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther,” with a modern Black jungle hero, a largely Black supporting cast and production team, and James Bond-style action situations, emerged two years later with a whopping $1.3 billion in ticket sales and a place on many critics’ Top Ten lists.  The 2022 sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” performed nearly as well with an $838.1 million return. On a $50 million budget, another 2022 Hollywood production with a prestigious Black cast and exotic action in the Burroughs style, “The Woman King,” nearly doubled its investment with $94.3 million in revenue.

In late 2022, Sony Pictures acquired the latest screen rights to Tarzan and promised a “total reinvention” of the character. What the studio has in mind, and whether it will actually follow through, appears to be up in the air right now. Would anybody be surprised to see Tarzan “reinvented” as a role for a Black actor the next time out, if there is a next time?  Popular culture is already there. Vintage movies (“A League of Their Own”) and TV series (“SWAT”) once cast primarily with white actors are remade now, routinely, with Black stars or all-Black casts. On the hit Netflix series “Bridgerton,” actors of color portray British aristocrats in Jane Austen’s Regency-era England, in reality one of the whitest of white societies ever.   

As we wait to see what the next Tarzan, if any, will look like, The Film Detective has released “The Tarzan Vault Collection,” a three-disc Blu-ray set that includes the first Tarzan movie, “Tarzan of the Apes” (1918); “Adventures of Tarzan” (1921), a re-edited feature version of a 10-chapter serial; and “The New Adventures of Tarzan” (1935), a 12-chapter serial presented in its entirety.  The first two pictures starred Elmo Lincoln, a stocky actor who had appeared in several of D.W. Griffith’s milestone silent films, including the ambitious “Intolerance” (1916) as a Biblical strongman, “the Mighty Man of Valor.”  Although it’s said Burroughs wasn’t particularly fond of Lincoln’s casting after another actor was chosen but had to bow out, the films were relatively faithful to the source novels.   Outdoor filming locations in Louisiana for “Tarzan of the Apes” stand in acceptably for equatorial Africa, at least to the satisfaction of moviegoers in 1918 who had no idea what Africa really looked like, and certainly better than the studio backlots used in the Weissmuller films.  Actors in shaggy anthropoid costumes portrayed Tarzan’s ape friends.  Although primitive in comparison with the modern CGI in “The Legend of Tarzan,” the makeup effects aren’t bad for that early era of cinema. 

“Adventures of Tarzan,” based on Burroughs’ “The Return of Tarzan” (1913), finds Tarzan in pursuit of a villain named Rokoff, who has kidnapped Jane in a plot to find the treasure vaults of the lost city of Opar (an idea later reiterated in “The Legend of Tarzan”).  In “The Return of Tarzan” and subsequent novels, Tarzan blithely removes gold and jewels from Burroughs’ imaginary Opar to help support his African estate, reasoning that otherwise the treasure would just lie there.  In the books, the underground vaults are vast, cavernous, and sinister.  In the movie, where the 1921 budget was too low to keep up with Burroughs’ staggering imagination, they look more like somebody’s root cellar.  Good try anyway.  As an hour-long feature truncated from a much longer serial version, “Adventures of Tarzan” is a succession of chases, rescues, and fights from the final chapters of the serial.  A title card at the beginning brings the viewer up to speed on the action already in progress, much as the “Star Wars” movies do now.   

It may be confusing to watch an old serial after most of its continuity has been removed, but the third movie in the Film Detective set, “The New Adventures of Tarzan,” represents the other side of the coin as a serial presented in its original, multi-chapter format.  The serials were designed to be taken one chapter at a time each week.  That remains the best way to experience one.  Otherwise, watched in a binge, repetition becomes a problem.  It’s difficult to work up much concern when Tarzan falls into a crocodile-infested river in Chapter Seven, if, an hour earlier, he’d already escaped the same danger in Chapter Three.  Still, taken piecemeal or in one long sitting, fans will be happy for the chance to see this original version of “The New Adventures of Tarzan,” which is better known in its truncated feature version, “Tarzan and the Green Goddess,” a one-time television staple.  Co-produced by Burroughs, it introduced Herman Brix, a 1928 Olympics finalist, as the title hero.  Trimly muscular, Brix was offered as an alternative to Johnny Weissmuller’s monosyllabic Tarzan; his version, endorsed by Burroughs, spoke in whole, commanding sentences and looked equally comfortable in a loincloth or a dinner jacket.  The serial was set and filmed on location in Guatemala, where Tarzan and his friends race against the bad guys to find a Mayan statue with a valuable secret.  Fans often rank Brix with Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry as their favourite Tarzan.  He later changed his screen name to Bruce Bennett for a long career in Westerns and crime dramas.  Humphrey Bogart fans will remember him as Cody, the drifter who tries to steal Fred C. Dobbs’ gold mine claim in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre.”  

The back story of the serial is more intriguing than the plot about the Mayan statue.  Burroughs fell in love with the wife of his co-producer, Ashton Dearholt, eventually marrying her after she divorced Dearholt and Burroughs divorced his first wife.  In turn, Dearholt had carried on an extramarital affair with Ula Holt, the lead actress in the serial, and they married after Dearholt’s divorce.  It’s the kind of Hollywood story that TMZ.com would love today. 

"Jerome Miller Lives!"

By John M. Whalen

In 1975 film director Sam Peckinpah was at loose ends. His last film, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” while an artistic triumph of a certain kind, was a box office failure. He had a script for a movie called “The Insurance Company,” but couldn’t get any backing for it. When United Artists offered him a chance to direct a movie based on Robert Rostand’s novel, “Monkey in the Middle,” he took it. The book was a thriller about security expert Mike Locken, hired to protect an African diplomat traveling through London. He takes the job because one of three elite assassins hired to kill the diplomat was a former colleague who had shot him up on his last job and left him for dead. The new assignment was a way to get revenge.

Peckinpah saw some elements in the story that he felt he could work with. But when UA offered the Mike Locken role to James Caan, he said he didn’t want to work in Europe, where he’d been working the last several years. He’d do it, if they changed the location to the U.S. Marc Norman rewrote the script that Reginald Rose had written based on the novel, but UA and Peckinpah hated it. Top notch screenwriter, Oscar winner Stirling Silliphant (“In the Heat of the Night”) was hired to do a new script. Silliphant, only married a year to Tiana, his 33-years younger Vietnamese actress wife, said he’d do the script but only if they agreed to put her in the picture as Locken’s love interest. Peckinpah tested her and gave the part.

Tiana and Silliphant were both former students of Bruce Lee and Silliphant had always had an interest in Asian culture and philosophy. So he set the story in San Francisco, using Chinatown, the Golden Gate Bridge and other locations, and brought aboard kung fu and martial arts experts like the legendary Tai Chi master Kuo Lien Ying to play some of the background characters. He created a fictitious security agency named ComTeg, and changed the character of the African diplomat to a Taiwanese politician named Chung (Mako), who was traveling with his daughter Tommy (Tiana). Robert Duvall was brought on board to play George Hansen, Locken’s best buddy, who in the movie’s first act, succumbed to a better offer from the opposition on a previous assignment, and shot Locken in the knee and elbow, “retiring” him from active service. The first 40 minutes of “The Killer Elite” consists mostly of Hansen’s betrayal and Locken’s rehabilitation, rendered in excruciating detail. He learns to use a metal elbow brace and wooden cane as martial arts weapons.

Locken’s bosses at ComTeg, Cap Collis (Arthur Hill), and Lawrence Weybourne (Gig Young), tell him he has to retire with disability. “Let’s face it,” Collis says. “That knee of yours will never be anything but a wet noodle.” When the CIA contracts ComTeg to provide security for Chung and his daughter while they’re in the U.S., they’re not interested until they learn that Hansen is heading up a team to eliminate Chung. Collis and Weybourne offer Locken his old job back—the chance for revenge that Mike has been waiting for.

Locken gets in touch with two members of his old team for two or three days of work. “I don’t think anyone could handle more of what we got.” He meets up with Jerome Miller (Bo Hopkins) on a hillside overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, where he’s practicing his skeet shooting, which is probably not something that happens there every day. Miller tells him he doesn’t think his company would hire him. “They’ve got me classified as a psycho.” Locken tells him: “You’re not a psycho, Jerome. You’re the patron poet of the manic depressives.” A typical Silliphant line.

Next up is Mac (Burt Young), his old driver, who now runs a garage, where he just happens to have a bullet proof taxi available that would be just perfect for the job Locken has in mind. Mac’s wife calls Locken Mr. Davis. When Locken asks why, Mac says: “When you’re around, she calls everybody Mr. Davis.” They don’t know it, but while everybody’s getting reacquainted, a mechanic has attached a bomb to the exhaust manifold.

The trio drive to San Francisco’s Chinatown to pick up Chung and his daughter. Naturally there’s a gun battle with Hansen and another gunman perched on the roof of the building across the street from the place where Chung is staying. They manage to shoot their way out, but Mac hears something rattling under the taxi. It’s bomb disposal time. They pull over on an overpass and get some assistance from a dim-witted motorcycle cop— another scene that is as unrealistic and impossible as the scene with Jerome skeet shooting out in the open by the Golden Gate Bridge.

At this point you begin to suspect there’s something weird going on. This is not your typical action thriller being played out here. As the story moves on absurdity piles on absurdity, all of which culminates in an unlikely battle between assassins equipped with automatic weapons and a team of ghost-like ninjas armed with swords, aboard the deck of an abandoned battleship, part of the Navy’s Mothball Fleet anchored in Suisan Bay. Got all that?

Critic Pauline Kael in a 1976 review for The New Yorker described Peckinpah’s career as a constant battle with studio bosses who consistently tried to take the movies he made away from him, demanding changes more in line with their thinking rather than his. As a result he kept making movies that are more about that battle than any melodramatic plot that may be involved. “There’s no way to make sense of what has been going on in Peckinpah’s recent films,” she wrote, “if one looks only at their surface stories. Whether consciously or, as I think, part unconsciously, he’s been destroying the surface content.” According to Kael, “He’s crowing in The Killer Elite, saying, ‘No matter what you do to me, look at the way I can make a movie.’”

She attributes most of the film’s weirdness to Peckinpah, but it might also be instructive to look at the career of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant for some clues about the subtext both he and Peckinpah present in The Killer Elite. Like Peckinpah, Silliphant started out working in television. Peckinpah wrote episodes of “Gunsmoke,” and created “The Rifleman” and “The Westerner” series. Silliphant wrote for just about every TV series on the air in the mid-fifties, eventually writing 70 hour-long episodes of the classic Route 66 series, before moving to the movies. He left television because of the same problem Peckinpah faced in filmmaking—loss of creative control. He went on to achieve great success in films but when he wrote the script for The Killer Elite, it was a year after having penned The Towering Inferno. It was a successful, well-written movie but he probably realized he had sold out his artistic independence when the hopped on the Irwin Allen Disaster Movie bandwagon, which he began with The Poseidon Adventure. It would be only a few years after “The Killer Elite” that he would nearly destroy his career turning out the script for Allen’s “The Swarm.”

For relief between projects, he would take Tiana aboard his yacht, the Tiana 2, and sail to exotic ports in the South Pacific. It’s no coincidence, I think, that “The Killer Elite” ends with Locken turning down a job offer and a promotion from his old boss Weybourne, and sails away on a sailboat with his pal Mac (Miller is killed in the gunfight on the Mothball Fleet). When Silliphant saw no future for him if he remained in what he publicly called “the eel pit” that was Hollywood he sold everything and moved to Thailand.

Peckinpah held similar sentiments about the Hollywood establishment. He said in a 1972 Playboy interview: “The woods are full of killers, all sizes, all colors. … A director has to deal with a whole world absolutely teeming with mediocrities, jackals, hangers-on, and just plain killers. The attrition is terrific. It can kill you. The saying is that they can kill you but not eat you. That’s nonsense. I’ve had them eating on me while I was still walking around.” I think he identified with Silliphant’s image of a hero sailing away from it all if he could.

Imprint’s two-disc box set is a must have for any Peckinpah fan or anyone who digs action thrillers, Silliphant, martial arts, or the poetry of manic depression. The first disc presents the “original” theatrical version in a 1080p high definition transfer from MGM that runs 2 hours and 3 minutes, and includes a ton of bonus features, most notable of which is a fabulous audio commentary by Peckinpah expert Mike Siegel. He provides some terrific revelations about the film and its production and shows a real appreciation of Peckinpah’s work. Siegel indicates that Sam, at Bo Hopkins’ suggestion, filmed an alternate “absurdist” ending in which Locken and Mac find Miller alive and well aboard the sailboat, after having been seen getting shot to pieces. In an interview with Siegel, Hopkins confirms that bit of info, and even shows some footage of the scene that was finally excised by the bosses at United Artists, who just didn’t get it. In a separate commentary ported over from a previous Twilight Time release, Garner Simmons and Paul Seydor, two film historians whom I lovingly refer to as the Peckinpah Peckerwoods, and the late Nick Redman, make the assertion that the complete film, with the Jerome Miller “resurrection” scene had one showing in Northern California and has never been seen again.

Well, I beg to differ with that statement. Fellow Cinema Retro reviewer Fred Blosser and I saw The Killer Elite the night it opened in December 19, 1975 at a local theater in northern Virginia. The scene in question was definitely included. Fred states that he has also seen it in the occasional TV broadcast of the film. So, despite statements made to the contrary, there probably is at least one copy of the unexpurgated “The Killer Elite” out there somewhere. JEROME MILLER LIVES!

Other extras included in the Imprint release include an alternate, shorter version of the film that mainly cuts scenes from Locken’s painful looking rehab; documentaries taken from Siegel’s The Passion and the Poetry Project on the works of Sam Peckinpah; interviews Siegel conducted with Bo Hopkins, Ernest Borgnine, LQ Jones and others. There is so much here to enjoy. The bad news is that Imprint has sold out of the 1500 copies it made. I obtained one the last two copies Grindhouse Video had left, but now they are sold out. Good luck trying to find a copy. Check your usual sources. (Note: as of this writing, there are still a few copies left at Amazon USA. Although it is listed as a Region 2 set, it is actually region-free. Click here to order. Good luck!)