"Retro-Active: From the Cinema Retro Archives"

By Lee Pfeiffer

Seven years after his blockbuster success producing the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, Irwin Allen revisited the same story for a sequel, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. The 1979 film represents all the reasons that sequels to most hit films are generally disdained. Yes, there was The Godfather trilogy to buck the trend, but there were also those God-awful sequels to Jaws. Beyond the Poseidon Adventure opens the morning after the capsizing of the cruise ship. Michael Caine is Mike Turner, the financially destitute captain of a small vessel who is facing bankruptcy after losing his cargo in the same violent storm that destroyed the Poseidon. On board his boat are his first mate Wilbur (Karl Malden) and Celeste Whitman (Sally Field), a perky but klutzy young drifter the men have befriended. They stumble upon the capsized wreck of the Poseidon and Turner immediately smells financial opportunity in the tragedy. If he can make his way through the hull and down to the purser's office, he can raid the safe and abscond with the riches that are inevitably stored there. This is the first of any number of absurdities in the script. With the Poseidon the worst maritime disaster since the Titanic, Turner and his crew discover that, with the exception of one French copter that is conveniently leaving the scene upon their arrival, there is literally no other sign of the international  rescue forces that would be omnipresent at the scene. Instead,  after rescuing the few people who managed to make it onto the hull in the preceding film, those forces are in no hurry to get additional manpower to the scene in order to search for additional survivors before the ship sinks the bottom of the ocean. Inexplicably, while the rescue forces can't make a timely arrival at the scene, a small craft under the command of Captain Stefan Svevo (Telly Savalas) does. Svevo claims he is a doctor who is there with his crew to enter the ship and search for any survivors. (Absurdity #2: Svevo is about to undertake this arduous, grimy and potentially deadly task while attired in a snow white designer suit!). Turner buys his story and forms and uneasy alliance with Svevo and his team, who are also clad all in white and resemble some of those bands of henchmen from the old Batman TV series.

Once inside the ship, movie magic takes over and the group finds every chamber to be brightly lit, thus making it possible to move about freely. True, there is the hazardous task of finding your way around an upside down vessel, but that problem is solved when they conveniently find a map that lays out precisely where everything is located. Soon, Turner discovers what even the most naive viewer has already realized: that Svevo is actually a villain with his own agenda. In the third major absurdity, we learn that the Poseidon was transporting plutonium that Svevo wants to acquire for nefarious purposes relating to bomb- building. As if that isn't enough, it turns out the ship was also transporting a huge shipment of assault weapons and stockpiles of ammunition. It's a wonder there was any room for those joyous conga lines to dance around on that fatal New Years Eve.

Since a hallmark of any Irwin Allen film is the presence of respected actors peppered throughout the production, it isn't long before familiar faces start popping up in every room, like those celebrities who used to stick their heads of windows and make wise-cracks on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Slim Pickens, in full scenery-chewing hayseed mode, comes stumbling out of nowhere, drunk and protecting a precious bottle of wine. He pretends to be a Texas tycoon but it turns out he was the ship's wine steward and regards the bottle of expensive vino as a symbol of his life long dream to acquire the lifestyle that has always eluded him. Then there is Shirley Jones, who emerges and announces that she is a registered nurse, which is certainly more practical to the group than if she were a butcher by trade. Angela Cartwright is a young woman who was on the cruise with her father, a bull-headed Archie Bunker type played by an unusually over-the-top and embarrassing Peter Boyle. Every Allen film needs a sympathetic older couple to wring a few tears from from the audience so this time we have Shirley Knight and Jack Warden substituting for the previous film's Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson. Allen throws in the kitchen sink by making Warden play a blind man. Not to be politically incorrect, but the sequences of Warden stumbling around the upside down wreck of the Poseidon with a cane and wearing sunglasses begins to resemble a Monty Python sketch. Then there is Veronica Hamel as the prerequisite "bad girl" who slinks around in a drenched evening gown showing ample cleavage- oh, and Mark Harmon has a major role as a young hunk who finds love with Angela Cartwright in the bowels of the sinking ship. If that isn't enough, we learn that lovable ol' Karl Malden's character is terminally ill and the symptoms manifest themselves while he's holed up in the upside down ship. (Somehow Allen showed restraint by not introducing killer sharks to the mix.)  

Irwin Allen had the good sense to have seasoned directors Ronald Neame and John Guillerman direct his two biggest blockbusters, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno and they remain enormously entertaining films. However, he became convinced that he could save a few bucks by doing the job himself. Thus, the man known for making disaster movies became better known for the man who made disastrous movies. The first slip was The Swarm, a 1978 flapadoodle that we always refer to as the worst "Bee" movie of all time. The movie was a bomb but that didn't teach star Michael Caine and co-star Slim Pickens a darn thing, since they re-teamed with Allen right away for  Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. (Many years later, Caine said he was ashamed of this period of his career when he took virtually any job in order to earn an easy pay check.) With Allen back in the director's chair, Beyond was destined to be another camp classic and it has the look and feel of a TV movie. Caine looks understandably embarrassed, Field is in Flying Nun cutesy mode and Savalas channels his inner Blofeld as the villain. Allen packs in everything from an ax murder (!) to a full blown shoot-out in which every day people turn out to be as adept at handling machine guns as Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.  There are some reasonably impressive sets on view but many of the special effects are sub-par. The most hilarious are found in the opening frames in which we see Caine at the helm of his storm-tossed boat in the midst of a hurricane. The sequence was apparently filmed with the ship on rockers and the violent rainstorm was simulated apparently by having some guy off camera spray garden hoses. It's quite possibly the cheesiest effect I've ever seen in a modern, major studio production.

The Warner Archive has released Beyond the Poseidon Adventure only on DVD. With the film itself a dud, there is at least the saving grace of an interesting bonus extra: a vintage 22 minute TV special about the making of the film. It affords some excellent behind the scenes views of the production and makes it clear that a lot of talented people put a great deal of work into creating films that often turn out badly. There are also some nice trailers for the main feature, The Swarm, Twister and The Perfect Storm. Even bad movies need some love, so how about a Blu-ray release of "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure"?

Here is the original 1969 U.S. trailer for director Brian G. Hutton's WWII classic "Where Eagles Dare" starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. 

Click here to order Cinema Retro's "Where Eagles Dare" 116-page tribute issue.

By Darren Allison, Cinema Retro Soundtracks Editor

It was back in 2005 that I last reviewed Guido and Maurizio De Angelis’s Piedone a Hong Kong (1975). A multi layered and hugely enjoyable score to the Bud Spencer poliziotteschi-comedy film directed by Stefano Vanzina (aka Steno). Piedone a Hong Kong was the second of four "Flatfoot" films, all of which featured Spencer as the Naples Police Inspector "Flatfoot" Rizzo. In 2005 it was the new Digitmovies CD, which in itself was a nicely produced album consisting of 70 minutes of music.

Some eighteen years on, Chris’ Soundtrack Corner decided to dig a little deeper and as a result, produced a super two-CD version of Piedone a Hong Kong (CSC 035), the label’s first two-disc release. Rizzo's signature theme composed for the first film embodied the De Angelis' penchant for flavourful, catchy melodies. The theme was carried over into all four movies and naturally became the primary motif heard in Piedone a Hong Kong. This time, it was aided by an exotic electric guitar that works well to identify the luxurious Hong Kong landscape as well as accommodating Rizzo's cheerful, uninhibited nature, just as it would later in the detective's adventures in Africa and Egypt. Reprising their infectious main theme from the first Piedone movie, brothers Guido & Maurizio De Angelis weave their way through Piedone a Hong Kong with a delightful array of tuneful themes etched with a degree of ethnic Asian music which energise Rizzo's journey, all of which treats the film's humour and dramatic action with an equal degree of light-hearted fun and exciting suspense music. It’s a blend that might seem a little awkward on paper, but it works tremendously well as a listening experience.

Chris' Soundtrack Corner’s new extended two-CD edition now consists of 101 minutes of music, incorporating the complete film score. Disc one (the score) includes a great deal of previously unreleased cues, while the second disc provides an impressive collection (19 tracks) of alternative versions, different mixes and the A and B sides of the original Italian 7” single release (CAM AMP 153) from 1975.

There has obviously been a great deal of thought behind this release, and Chris' Soundtrack Corner have made sure this is not just another standard re-issue. There’s an entirely new, fresh vibrancy about this edition, not only in its content and audio quality (excellently produced by Christian Riedrich and mastered by Manmade Mastering), but in its packaging too. A 16-page, full colour illustrated booklet designed by Tobias Kohlhaas accompanies the CD’s and features detailed, exclusive notes by Randall D. Larson, who explores the making of the film as well as the score in fine detail. A super release which deserved of much praise.

It's probably fair to say that Le ultime ore di una vergine (1972) (CSC 040) wasn’t widely seen outside of it’s native Italy. The film was also known by various other titles such as The last hours of a virgin, Un Doppio A Meta and Double by half for its limited American release. However, you’d still be excused had it passed you by. As so often is the case, it is the music to such obscure titles that often lives on beyond that of the film itself - and Daniele Patucchi's Le ultime ore di una vergine is no exception to that rule.

In the 1970s, the genre of Italian melodramas found fresh and innovative ways to discuss heavy topics against the backdrop of romantic stories. Until abortion was made legal in 1978, Italian filmmakers shot dramas cantering around the issue with varying degrees of good taste. Le ultime ore di una vergine is one of the more constructively made examples of these ‘abortion’ dramas. The film was co-written and directed by Gianfranco Piccioli and features a relatively small cast, including Massimo Farinelli (his last movie) as Enrico, a photographer. Laura, his pregnant girlfriend, is played by the American-born actress Sydne Rome, perhaps best known as the fetish-geared archaeologist hypnotised by Donald Pleasence in the rather dreadful The Pumaman (1980). Enrico's deceitful journalist friend Roberto is played by Don Backy. But through all of the unfolding drama of Le ultime ore di una vergine, there's only one winning aspect of the movie, and that's Daniele Patucchi’s score.

Whilst the Turin born composer has scored over 50 films, his work has never tended to fall into the realms of mainstream consciousness, which is a genuine pity as he really deserves much more attention. The score's central theme is introduced in "Titoli" and is written for the female character which curiously enough Patucchi titled "Sydne's Theme," basing it after the actress rather than her character's name. There are also brilliant recurring motives for other aspects of the story. "I mendicanti" collects several cues that use the same propulsive energy for a montage highlighting the various swindles all captured with a POV style of camera. The score also provides a few suspense cues. In what is arguably the film's strangest moments, Enrico attends a magic show prompting the composer to provide a seemingly self-contained cue for one of the story's visually most interesting sequences. There are also some wonderful, almost improvised, electronic forms of scat vocals peppered throughout the score where the singer improvises melodies and rhythms rather than words. Delicate, haunting whispers also fluctuate through certain cues - all of which work particularly well and really add to the score’s unique footprint.

This is a world premiere release of the film's soundtrack – although certain tracks have made their way on various library compilations of Daniele Patucchi's music in the past. As mentioned above, this has been fairly typical of Patucchi's recognition, and the full score as a complete package, is far more beneficial in respects of Patucchi’s talents as a composer. The CD has two bonus sections, opening with the record versions of certain cues, which includes the unused version of "Tema per Sydne," which was originally to appear on the soundtrack but was actually removed from the film. The second half of the bonus section includes all the source music heard in the movie including the vocal track "I Love You More Than Life" with lyrics by Norman Newell.

The audio, again produced by Christian Riedrich and mastered by Manmade Mastering, is clean and sharp throughout. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page illustrated booklet featuring detailed notes by Gergely Hubai. An excellent job for what could have easily become a forgotten score. Kudos to Chris' Soundtrack Corner for rescuing it from potential obscurity.

Piero Piccioni’s ...Dopo Di Che, Uccide Il Maschio E Lo Divora (1971) (CSC 041) has, in terms of its soundtrack history, had a somewhat varied life. As a composer, Piccioni’s work is still highly regarded. Despite that, ...Dopo Di Che, Uccide Il Maschio E Lo Divora remained a score that perhaps has not been fully recognised in the past – despite a couple of incarnations. The standard 11 tracks did make their way onto a 2001 Piccioni CD (Screentrax CDST 335) where it was paired up alongside music from Due Maschi Per Alexa (1971) and La Volpe Dalla Coda Di Velluto (1971). In later years, it appeared in 2019 under its American title Marta as a limited edition (300 copies) pressed on white vinyl and released by Quartet Records (QRLP10) of Spain. Yet, despite of all its bells and whistles, and in respects of its content, this only contained 12 tracks.

To set the scene, the film is a dramatic thriller about a wealthy landowner (Miguel) haunted by the spectre of his dead mother. When Miguel has an affair with a beautiful fugitive who bears a striking resemblance to his missing wife (who has possibly run away or may have been murdered) things turn decidedly awkward. Based on a play by Juan José Alonso Millán, who also co-wrote the screenplay, the film was directed by Spanish filmmaker José Antonio Nieves Conde. His influence for the story was not so much the Giallo atmosphere of Dario Argento, as perhaps some might suspect from its wordy Italian title, but more from the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Featuring a psychopath linked to a mother and whose hobby is collecting insects instead of taxidermy, plus a notorious weakness of spying on beautiful women from hidden holes in the walls, the influences were pretty hard to ignore. Miguel was played by Irish actor Stephen Boyd (Ben-Hur, Fantastic Voyage) with Austrian actress Marisa Mell playing both Marta and the missing wife, Pilar. Mell became very popular in Europe - especially in Italy, where she co-starred in Danger: Diabolik and many other genre movies. At the time of filming, Boyd was in a real relationship with Mell, so their charged, on-screen sexuality extended further beyond their mere dedication to the acting profession.

Piero Piccioni's score is an interesting and engaging mélange of original cues along with a large variety of library music or cues tracked in from other films. The repetition of motifs, textures, and full-on themes throughout the score assertively integrates the music with the drama playing out on screen. Even with a variety of individual tracks and musical sequences, Piccioni ties most of them together by recognisable instrumental patterns and designs that characterise the uncertain and potentially dangerous liaison between Marta, Pilar, and Miguel. Chris' Soundtrack Corner have certainly taken up the challenge of ...Dopo Di Che, Uccide Il Maschio E Lo Divora and its previous shortcomings. For their presentation, they have opened this expanded release with Piccioni's original 11 album tracks followed by a further 19 tracks featuring the film versions, 17 of which are previously unreleased. There is also another alternate version of the vocal track "Right or Wrong" sung by the golden voiced American songstress, Shawn Robinson. As a result, the soundtrack now has a more rounded feel to it and makes for a ‘fully grown’ listening experience and deserved of a ‘Mission Accomplished’ sticker.

As with their other releases, the score is beautifully produced by Christian Riedrich and mastered by Manmade Mastering. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page illustrated booklet featuring detailed notes by Randall D. Larson. Overall, an excellent trilogy of releases that continue to see the label grow in both style and stature.

To order: http://www.soundtrackcorner.de/index.htm

(Read Darren Allison's soundtrack column in every issue of Cinema Retro.)

Here is the acclaimed scene between Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's 1954 Oscar winner, "On the Waterfront". The landmark scene shows what great screen acting is all about. 

By Lee Pfeiffer

Colin Quinn's latest one-man comedy show, "Small Talk" has arrived at the historic Greenwich Theatre in the heart of Greenwich Village. Quinn, a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, has acquired a loyal following, as evidenced by the fact that this is his seventh such stage production, two of which were directed by Jerry Seinfeld. (This one is directed by James Fauvell). Not having seen any of these previous shows, I accepted the invitation to review this production with an open mind and no particular expectations. Quinn is quite the raconteur, weighing in on many aspects of modern life. In this case, as the show's title indicates, he spends much of his time on the subject of small talk and bemoaning his conclusion that this form of societal intercourse is going the way of the dodo bird and leisure suits. Quinn's thesis is that throughout history, it is the seemingly benign art of making inconsequential conversation that has kept humanity from engaging in complete anarchy because it often forces people with adversarial points of view to engage in at least the basics of civil behavior. Quinn cites the culprits who caused the breakdown of small talk and their names aren't legion, but rather Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Quinn postures that their achievement in making personal computers accessible to the average person has led to diminishing social skills, a dilemma that has only intensified with rapidly expanding technology. It's hard to argue with his logic in an age in which people seem to favor virtual friends over the company of living, breathing human beings. A recent study shows that a shocking percentage of young adult males are losing interest in sex because they prefer on-line relationships to real-life lovers, although considering the cost of going on a date in today's world, maybe they aren't quite as crazy as they appear. Quinn ridicules people who spend too much of their life posting their thoughts on social media and decrees that anyone who posts more than five times a day should seek psychiatric care. He has grappled with his own human weaknesses from the terror of having narrowly survived a heart attack to his successful battle against alcoholism. (In a recent interview, he admits to having been banned from the famed New York watering hole, McSorley's Old Ale House, a seemingly impossible feat if you've frequented the venue.)

Quinn starts off the show with a barrage of comedic observations delivered with the rapidity of a blazing machine gun. There's no warming up in the bullpen because he's got a lot to say and only a self-imposed 70-minute timeline in which to say it. I don't like citing specific jokes when covering comedy acts because it's akin to giving away spoilers in a movie review. Besides, it's possible that many of Quinn's quips might come across as flat as a pancake in print. You have to be in the room with him for the full impact and the Greenwich House Theatre provides an intimate setting that is the perfect venue. Everyone is close enough to the stage to arrive at the belief that Quinn is addressing them personally. It takes only seconds for the laughs to begin, as he weighs in on the most uncomfortable setting in which people have to make small talk: an elevator. He observes that one's choice of words to a total stranger can seem vacuous at best or downright creepy at worst. Like a grumpy but amusing bar patron, Quinn moves beyond small talk through his personal list of people and things that he finds annoying. He vents against the public's embracing of fast food chains, postulating that in the distant future, archaeologists will believe that McDonald's signature "Golden Arches" will indicate places of worship. He says that people's social media profiles indicate who they think they are but their browser histories reveal who they really are, which is an uncomfortable but indisputably true observation.

While Quinn doesn't work "clean", as his colleague Jim Gaffigan does, he doesn't engage in profanity for the sheer sake of shock value, as is the norm with many prominent standup comedians. He has the combined traits of the classic New Yawk comedian, with elements of Lenny Bruce combined with social observations akin to those of Jackie Mason, Woody Allen and Mort Sahl. His political targets are surprisingly few and are balanced. He decries the far left for being politically correct hypocrites who are in a constant state of making cringe-inducing apologies for injustices that they had nothing to do with creating. As for the far right, he dismisses them as being simply stupid. The only positive comments he makes are in tribute to his friend and fellow "SNL" cast member, the late Norm MacDonald, who he clearly misses and admires greatly. 

The audience roared with laughter throughout the show. I may have missed Quinn's six previous stage productions but I won't miss the next. This is stand-up comedy at it's best.

"Colin Quinn: Small" talk runs through May 6. Click here for tickets and information.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Way back in 1971 when I was in high school, there seemed to be a tidal wave of soft-core porn flicks, mostly imported from Europe and dubbed rather crudely into English. I never sought to spend the paltry contents of my wallet on these tame sex movies movies because I lived directly across the river from Times Square and that offered my friends and I the real forbidden fruit in sleazy, grind house movie theaters. Age was no barrier as long as you were willing to pay the then tidy sum of $5. However, the softcore Euro imports did find enthusiastic audiences in places where there weren't many alternatives to finding cinematic "adult entertainment". The films were generally rated "X" but were pretty tame, stressing humor to overcome objections from local killjoys who thought the idea of seeing some naked people on screen would condemn their entire community to eternal damnation. One of the most profitable of these films was the 1969 release, "The Stewardesses", which was so tame that it could be shown on Disney+ today. Nevertheless, these films afforded women to get a few cheap thrills without having to suffer the stigma of being seen entering a theater showing hardcore fare. Thus, plenty of couples enjoyed the opportunity to share in date nights that somewhat pushed the envelope in terms of general standards. The films were generally bestowed with memorable titles, which is why I remember the newspaper ads for "Dagmar's Hot Pants" and similar fare such as "The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried". The good news is that some of these films have been lovingly presented on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, in collaboration with Code Red. When a screener arrived of "Dagmar's Hot Pants", I took an immediate interest, remembering hot pants as one of those short-lived fashion trends of the 1970s. For those readers who were not around way back then, the gimmick with hot pants was a simple one: they were very short and very tight and left little to the imagination. Although my high school had a very liberal dress code (jeans and T shirts were the norm), I do recall one of my female classmates pushing the envelope by wearing hot pants to class. That was a bridge too far and she was summarily sent home to change into something less offensive, much to the consternation of her male classmates. At least hot pants were provocative and sensible, as opposed to the male fashions of the era such as the leisure suit and safari jacket, the latter of which was a dress/casual abomination that looked as though it was designed to allow a man to hunt elephants in the morning and then attend a swank cocktail party in the evening without changing attire.

I looked forward to viewing "Dagmar's Hot Pants" simply to see an abundance of this long-forgotten fashion trend glorified on screen. Alas, I was snookered, as was anyone back in the day who paid to see the film. You see, there are no hot pants in "Dagmar's Hot Pants". They are neither shown nor discussed. It was simply a case of a shamelessly deceptive marketing campaign to capitalize on a recent fashion trend. Oh, well.The film itself presents lovely Diana Kjaer in the title role, playing a fabulously successful young woman who has emerged as one of Copenhagen's most in-demand hookers. Dagmar's daily schedule of meeting with clients from around the globe is frantic and she sometimes has to call on the services of fellow prostitutes to assist her in meeting some of the more unusual demands of her customers. The film takes a humorous view of all this, as we see Dagmar patiently keeping a straight face while interacting with oddball clients ranging from two goofy Japanese businessmen who want an orgy to horny local businessmen of some esteem, including a doctor who pays Dagmar to initiate his teenage son in the ways of the world. The only "normal" client Dagmar services is a member of Copenagen's Vice Squad, who ensures she doesn't get busted in return for sexual favors. One of her adoring clients is a gruff, but rich American businessman played by Robert Strauss...yes, that Robert Strauss who had earned an Oscar nomination for Billy Wilder's "Stalag 13". It's a bit uncomfortable seeing the sixty-something actor engaging in a sexual dalliance with Dagmar but presumably the lure of a quick paycheck and a trip to Copenhagen made for an offer Strauss couldn't refuse. If Robert Strauss has always figured into your fantasies, then your ship has come in. Throughout the story, Dagmar is keeping a big secret as she arranges to leave her lucrative business for a top secret venture. "That's it!", I thought- she's going into the hot pants manufacturing business, but alas, the answer is somewhat more mundane and disappointing. There are a couple of minor efforts to introduce some dramatic scenes into the slapstick. Dagmar lends her desperate brother money so that his girlfriend can get an abortion. There is also a tense scene with her quasi-pimp, a scary fellow who threatens her if she doesn't obey his wishes. In this sense, the film differs from similar movies of this type by at least acknowledging that the life of a call girl isn't all fun and games. 

As is usual with these films, there are some interludes showing the star walking through the lovely streets of Copenhagen in an obvious attempt to add an exotic appeal to the production. Diana Kjaer manages to keep her clothes on occasionally but for the most part she is seen showering or chatting on the phone sans any cumbersome garments. I must say the dubbing in this film is a bit better than most and Code Red and Kino Lorber have provided a good looking transfer from a 2K master. You have to admire companies that take such efforts to preserve and present even minor films such as this.

The only bonus extra is an English language trailer that continues the sin of false advertising by saying "Dagmar's Hot Pants" is the name the title character has given to her prostitution network. In fact, there is never any mention of Dagmar's Hot Pants anywhere in the film. However, if these tame sex comedies from the distant past appeal to you, this is one of the better in this genre. I now hopefully await a Blu-ray release of "The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried"!.

Click here to order from Amazon

By Lee Pfeiffer

Lewis Gilbert's 1964 film The 7th Dawn is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Longtime readers will remember that Gilbert discussed the movie in an exclusive interview with Matthew Field in Cinema Retro issue #18. The movie had previously only been available in the U.S. as a burn-to-order MGM DVD. This is a thoroughly engrossing, adult drama with an unusual setting and story background. The movie begins on the final day of WWII and centers on three disparate friends: an American named Ferris (William Holden), a French woman, Dhana (Capucine) and a Malayan, Ng (Tetsuro Tamba) who have led guerilla forces against the Japanese occupation in Malaya. The three close friends are jubilant in victory, after having suffered from fighting in the jungle for extended periods. At the end of the war, Ng goes off to Moscow to pursue communist political training. The apolitical Ferris stays behind, with Malayasia now under British occupation. He thrives as a local rubber plantation owner, and Dhana is his lover, despite her frustration with Ferris' womanizing. The story advances to 1953, with Malayans now impatient for independence from England, which is easing toward granting their demands, but at a snail's pace. Ng returns to Malaya to try to instigate communist-inspired violent uprisings. To his sympathizers, he is a freedom fighter. To the British, he is a terrorist and the most wanted man in the nation.

Ferris is shaken from his cynical desire to remain removed from the political situation when Dhana is framed and charged by the British for assisting the terrorists. She has a choice: lead the authorities to Ng's hideout in the jungle or be sentenced to death. Dhana, who has always been as attracted to Ng as she has to Ferris, refuses to give him up. Ferris is faced with the ultimate dilemma: betray his best friend by capturing him and turning him into the British, or face the prospect of his lover being executed. Adding to the complications is the presence of Candace (Susannah York), the comely young daughter of the British governor who is also in love with Ferris and who concocts a scheme that might save Dhana, despite the fact that it places her own life in danger.

The 7th Dawn is a superb movie on every level, although it was not particularly successful on its initial release. Unlike most of the simplistic, special-effects driven action films of today, this movie deals with basic human dilemmas such as the meaning of friendships and the price of loyalties. The four leads are outstanding and Holden, in particular, gives one of the most impressive performances of his career. York and Capucine give touching performances, as well, and Tamba (who would go on to star as 'Tiger' Tanaka in Lewis Gilbert's 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice) is particularly impressive as a man who is torn between political ideology and his affection for his friends. The political drama is played out in an engrossing manner, as one witnesses the bumbling, if sincere attempts by the British bureaucrats to try to win the hearts and minds of the locals through tragically misguided methods. The film builds to a harrowing conclusion as Ferris and Candace venture into the jungle in an attempt to capture Ng before the death sentence can be carried out against Dhana. The last half hour of the movie is especially riveting and packed with suspense and Gilbert's direction is truly impressive. The film benefits from the lush landscapes photographed by Freddie Young and a beautiful musical score by Riz Ortolani.

Put this one on your "must see" list.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray boasts an impressive transfer, though bonus materials are relegated to a trailer gallery. It would have been a good idea to include a commentary track, but considering the Blu-ray is a big step up from the previous DVD release, we won't complain. 

Click here to order from Amazon.

By Fred Blosser

In “Secret of the Incas,” a 1954 release from Paramount Pictures, Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) and Ed Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) are rival opportunists in Cuzco, Peru. Both are searching for the Sunburst, a fabled Incan artefact said to be hidden in the “lost city” of Machu Picchu. “Not too many people go to Machu Picchu,” Harry says. Today, when tourists descend on the ancient Incan capital in droves, you would have to wonder if he’d ever heard of Expedia. But the observation was true enough in the early 1950s when the ruins were far off the beaten path. In those days, most small-town Americans would have regarded a visit to New York or Miami as an exotic excursion, never mind finding the time, money, or inspiration to fly to the Andes.

Harry has the edge in the quest for the Incan treasure, having appropriated a broken chunk from an idol. The fragment contains part of a pictograph which, when fitted to the rest of the carving on the remainder of the statue, reveals the method for finding the hiding place of the Sunburst. Putting the two together isn’t a problem, requiring Harry only to follow a tourist group into the museum where the fractured statue sits on display. But getting over the Andes to Machu Picchu to claim the Sunburst, “a hunk of gold with 119 pure diamonds and 243 other precious stones,” is another matter. This challenge is solved when Elena (Nicole Maurey) arrives in Cuzco, a refugee from communist Romania. Elena is as grasping as Harry, whom she views as her meal ticket to the U.S., while Harry uses her as bait to steal a small private plane from the Romanian counsel, who flies into Cuzco to arrest her. In Machu Picchu, Stanley Moorehead (Robert Young), an archeologist directing a dig for the tomb of the last Incan king, falls in love with Elena. Harry is more amused than put out. His real concern is Ed, who has followed by pack train and carries a gun.

The Indians in the surrounding villages regard the Sunburst with spiritual awe, believing that when it is found, the discovery will mark the rebirth of the Inca nation. But Harry and his rival only care about the fortune they can realize when they pry the jewels off the relic and melt the gold into ingots. “We’ll sit around and pluck it over like a roasted chicken, piece by piece,” Ed gloats. The two agree on a fifty-fifty split for the Sunburst, but given their mercenary natures, it’s about as tenuous a deal as a division of spoils between competing bounty hunters in a Spaghetti Western. Cast against type if you remember them strictly for their signature roles, Heston and Mitchell are excellent. Peruvian singer Yma Sumac, as one of Machu Picchu’s Indian caretakers, has a sly screen presence and three vocal numbers, which may be three too many for those who only want to get on with the story. But Sumac was a marketing draw comparable to having a performance by Lady Gaga or Adele in a 2023 movie. Largely forgotten today, she was a star in the early 1950s “exotic music” genre pioneered by Les Baxter and Martin Denny, with performances at Carnegie Hall and best-selling LPs on the Billboard charts. Heston appears in some exterior scenes of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, having participated in a month-long, pre-production location shoot, but he, Mitchell, Young, Mourey, Sumac, and the supporting Hollywood cast are missing (or represented by stand-ins at a distance) from scenes where crowds of actual Peruvian Indians congregate at Machu Picchu. Eagle-eyed viewers are likely to notice the seams, but for most of us, it’s part of the fun to watch old-school escapist pictures like this and tease out the real locations from the studio sets.

“Secret of the Incas” was absent from official U.S. home video release for decades—neglectfully so, according to critics who have cited it as an influence on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and a precursor to the James Bond franchise in the double entendres that Harry trades with an appreciative housewife of means from Michigan, Mrs. Winston, played by the great Glenda Farrell. When Mrs. Winston greets the strapping Harry by commenting, “My, you’re a big one,” and looks forward to his “services” as a tour guide, you know she has more in mind than a dinner reminder to her tourist group. “I’ll be right outside your door,” he assures her.

A new Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics makes up for the film’s long absence with a remastered print licensed from Paramount, from a 4K scan of original negative elements. The rich colours of the Indians’ shawls and serapes are eye-popping in restored Technicolor. Maybe the movie’s omission from prior video formats, especially the inferior VHS process, and more especially the even worse VHS/EP/SLP budget format in which Paramount briefly released a handful of its archival titles in 1992, wasn’t such a loss after all.

The special features on the Blu-ray include an informative audio commentary by Toby Roan, previews of related KL titles, and sharp SDH captioning.

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

(Photo: Radiance Films)

Fran Simeoni has been a well-known name in the world of classic and cult film releasing for a long time thanks to his years at Arrow Video, but in 2022 he set out on his own with a new label called Radiance Films (https://www.radiancefilms.co.uk/). Cinema Retro caught up with him to talk about his reasons for starting Radiance and their future plans.

Cinema Retro - Can you tell us why you started Radiance?

Fran – I worked for Arrow for 12 years. That's where I really learned the business side, but I got to the point where I wanted to do things that were more in line with my own interests. It was also about change of pace and a change of scenery as much as anything, really. What I wanted to do with Radiance was to have my cake and eat it, essentially, so I left Arrow on a Friday and started working again on Monday. I had a big list, because you're constantly looking for titles. There are always things that I'd like to see that I had previously looked into. These things are always kind of going round and round, so I had loads I could draw on. Radiance came out of the gates really, really quick, a little bit faster than I anticipated.

Cinema Retro - Considering you've been going for less than a year, you've already got quite an big number of releases either out or announced.

Fran - I wasn't starting from scratch. I had a lot of things that I knew I could do and was drawing on relationships that I've had for years and years, so it was it was not difficult for me to get titles. The challenge for me is doing everything that's involved in getting them out. It's all the restoration work, the authoring, creating the extras and stuff. That's what is time consuming.

Cinema Retro – Let's talk about the Japanese film Big Time Gambling Boss (1968): Could you just talk me through the process of identifying the title, finding out where the rights are, the restoration, all that kind of thing?

Fran - Before I started at Arrow I would basically just find out about films by reading about them. So that really is the basis for finding lots of things even in a professional capacity. And I think what happens is it's very easy when you're sort of indoctrinated into the industry, is to do things by just talking to people who sell films and do it that way. So in a way, you're kind of working from their agenda in that they have restored something, and they want to push that. They're showing at a festival or they've got a screening. If they haven't got an agenda for a film, and Big Time Gambling Boss was on nobody's agenda, then it's really difficult to find a film like that. So that and many of the films do really come from my agenda and that is my reading about them. Big Time Gambling Boss goes back probably about ten years to when I first read about it when I was working on the Arrow boxset Battles Against Honour and Humanity. It came up because we reprinted an article about the Yakuza films and it's mentioned in there and it went to the back of my mind. I never did anything about it because it was really difficult to see. Eventually I did find a way to see it and I knew it was owned by Toei so I just went there and asked, “Have you got this film? Is it in HD when you restored it?” etc. And from there it's easy.

Cinema Retro - And then how do you persuade the consumer at the other end that this is a film that they're going to want to buy?

Fran - Yeah, that's the big challenge. I want to be as distinctive as possible because the boutique label market is an incredibly knowledgeable crowd. We’re at a point now where the market is so mature that you can take bigger risks. We've got all the classics, so then we're always adding new great directors. I think if people are already fans with one thing and then you explain it in terms that they can have a leaping off point: “So this is a Yakuza film.” You've got things to cling on to. I think if you have those access points, people are going to go for it. The trick, of course, is to not overplay your hand. You don't want to go out and say this is a masterpiece and then people watch it and think “It’s okay!” I do have some Japanese films coming out which aren't masterpieces, but they're a hell of a good time.

Cinema Retro - The phrase ‘Big Time Gambling Boss’ could be on your business card.

Fran - Yeah, it does feel like that sometimes.

Cinema Retro – Another example is something like Walking the Edge (1985), where you've partnered up with Fun City Editions. That's kind of a different approach to doing the whole thing from scratch.

Fran - I began to license Married to the Mob (1988) and Cutter’s Way (1981) and I ended up speaking to Fun City because I knew they were doing them and I said, “There's no point me doing everything you've done. What's the point in me doing the same extras as you, with just a slightly different cover?” I like their stuff and I think they're great films. I explained this to Fun City, and some of the other labels and said, “Why don't we just partner? I can be your conduit and you can do what you're doing in more than one territory.” It's been well-received so far. It's still early days, but that's the idea. We're up to five labels now. I mean, it just remains to be seen how it's going to go but the signs are good.

Cinema Retro - One of the things that you've announced that you've got coming up soon is the ‘Cosa Nostra’ box set, the collection of three Damiano Damiani films. Was that one of your projects from the beginning?

Fran - Yes, that's one of mine. That kind of political filmmaking is really fascinating to me. I love that era of Italian filmmaking.

Cinema Retro - So what was it about those films that that made you want to create your first box set?

Fran - I had acquired a few Damiani films and these three, as I was working on them and researching them, it just occurred to me that they have this thematic link of the Mafia and I just thought that was so fascinating because Damiani went back to this sort of theme over and over again. When you have them side by side, they become more interesting. Damiani was somebody who's never really been given his due. No one has looked at Damiani and said, “What a stylish director.” He didn't do avant-garde, he didn't do arthouse, he was sort of squarely in the middle, and I think that's what didn't allow anyone to come around and say this guy should be celebrated. When you look at all his films, particularly when you have them side by side, you do get a very strong sense of him being an auteur and his visual sense becomes much more apparent the more you look at it. His whole inner ethos behind his films, civic investigation essentially, is really fascinating. The way in which he does some of those things is as good as someone like Francesco Rosi or Elio Petri. You had Rosi at the much more political end and then Petri becomes slightly more baroque, and then Damiani came after that going more towards genre. And then after Damiani you have all the poliziotteschi that everyone's familiar with. So that kind of trajectory is fascinating in itself, I think.

Cinema Retro - And of course, Franco Nero! It helps that you can have him on the box cover because he's very marketable to cult film fans.

Fran - Yeah, absolutely. He is a great asset, obviously. My worry always with everything that I do, because of where my interests lie, is that I don't want to get stuck in the cracks, because sometimes some of the films I focus on are too arthouse for genre fans and too genre for arthouse fans, and these films are a bit like that. They become increasingly genre as you progress through the set, and Franco Nero is brilliant in it, particularly in The Case is Closed: Forget It (1971) in which his performance is one of his best. We have a profile of him in the book and he's had an amazing career.

Cinema Retro – What have you got coming up for Radiance?

Fran - We've got The Bride Wore Black (1968), the François Truffaut film, which is a lot of fun.

Cinema Retro – That's interesting as, like you said, it’s got that arthouse versus genre idea, because when people think Truffaut, they think French New Wave, but then at the same time, it's got the crime thing going on.

Fran - It’s François Truffaut's Kill Bill (2003). It's a lot of fun as a film and it's not a film he was very fond of. He basically made it because he needed to do something commercial but if you look at the biggest hits of the New Wave, they were very crime influenced or genre influenced. Just look at À bout de souffle (1960), with its meditation on Bogart and crime films and so on. So this for me is just an extension of that, essentially, but it's very much its own thing. It's as close to Hollywood movies as you get from that period in France. And it's a lot of fun! Jeanne Moreau is good in it, it's got a great cast and inexplicably it’s never been out on Blu-ray in the U.K. I had a lot of fun putting together the extras. And then we have Yakuza Graveyard (1976), which is one of Kinji Fukasaku's best films, I think. This is an interesting counterpoint to Big Time Gambling Boss, because that is a much more traditional, more reserved Yakuza film and then Yakuza Graveyard is the complete opposite! It's frenetic, it's completely bombastic, and its violence and visuals are just a lot of fun. I do feel like I'm doing a lot of crime films. I don't actually want to only do crime films! But I do have a passion for crime films and this is a great one. It's basically about a corrupt ex-cop and his dealings with the Yakuza and he falls in love with the Yakuza wife, played by Meiko Kaji. It was really fascinating to dig into this film because there is a theme going on with Japanese films of the time and their treatment of Koreans and treatment of Koreans in the films themselves. It's difficult to understand as an outsider but we were able to dig into that in the booklet, which is really fascinating. I love the kind of educational aspect of this work and it's there if people want it as an extra. I think some people just watch the film and move on, but it is fascinating when you have this throughline between all the films. I think the tight curation that we have really helps us. I think if you're constantly going back to Radiance releases, you’d be watching The Sunday Woman (1975) from us next month. You’d think “Oh, I really like that actor, he's quite cool,” and then you'll get the ‘Cosa Nostra’ box set and the same actor pops up in a completely different role. And then you sort of start to get a sense of these character actors that you might not really know so that's a lot of fun as well.

Cinema Retro - Boutique label collectors and fans are probably the most educated of all the film fans because so much is targeted at them. There are all these books and obviously all the releases now have booklets and extras and commentary tracks, and people can become so invested and know absolutely everything.

Fran - Fans know more than you do and point things out that you've got wrong. I mean, the fans always know more than me for sure, because it's me versus 3000 people away. The fans are always going to win out and that does create pressure in the job. You do have to be really thorough! The way I manage that is by always trying to hire the absolute best people for the booklets and the commentary tracks. That can be a challenge at times if it’s a film no one has ever seen before, but it's a fun one.

Thank you to Fran Simeoni at Radiance Films. You can find out about all their current and future releases at https://www.radiancefilms.co.uk/

By Todd Garbarini

Dragonslayer was one of the many films that I looked forward to seeing as part of Hollywood’s roster of movies during the glorious summer of 1981 that was owned by Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. I distinctly remember seeing trailers for Peter Hyams’s Outland, Desmond Davis’s Clash of the Titans, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, and Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery and wanting to see them all, though I was only halfway successful. The 3-D gimmick resurgence from the 1950s kicked off with the R-rated Comin’ at Ya by Ferdinando Baldi and would continue for another few years. In those days, I subscribed to the notion that I had to have the tie-in paperback novelization of the film that I wanted to see. I am reminded of Woody Allen’s Isaac Davis in his 1979 film Manhattan bemoaning novelizations of movies as being another contemporary American phenomenon that is truly moronic. I disagree. Novelizations are often based upon the earliest drafts of a film’s screenplay and can therefore differ enormously from a finished film upon which it is based, making the novelization an interesting companion to a beloved film. I had the novelization of Dragonslayer. I read it forty-two years ago and while I barely remember it, I recall there being differences.

I saw Dragonslayer on Thursday, July 9, 1981 with my father and my best friend at the time. Bruce Springsteen was playing at the then-Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey that night and I recall hearing the disc jockey talking about it on the radio after we saw the film. The film that I saw was an adventurous tale that takes place in the center of England in the Sixth Century A.D. An enormous 400-year-old dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative, is holding the kingdom of Urland in a grip of deadly fear. In continuing efforts to assuage the dragon’s wrath and leave the villagers alone, King Casiodorus (Peter Eyre) holds a lottery twice a year containing the names of young female virgins who are sacrificed to Vermithrax in exchange for peace in Urland. This scenario does not sit well with Urland. An elderly sorcerer, Ulrich of Cragganmore (Sir Ralph Richardson), possesses a magical amulet and is visited by a young man named Valerian (Caitlin Clarke) who implores him for help to destroy the dragon. Tyrian (John Hallam), the Captain of the King’s Royal Guard, challenges and kills Ulrich, placing Ulrich’s apprentice Galen Bradwarden (Peter MacNicol in his first film role) as the one to defeat the dragon. Hesitant, Galen is convinced to make the trek to Urland after Ulrich’s amulet selects him as his successor. During a brief respite, he joins Valerian in the lake while swimming, much to the latter’s consternation who, it turns out in a brief but explicit revelation of very obviously non-male anatomy, is exposed as a female traveling incognito to avoid the lottery. Once in Urland, Galen takes action that causes him to believe that he has sealed off the entrance to the dragon’s lair, however the King believes otherwise and imprisons Galen while confiscating his amulet. Galen has a brief conversation with Princess Elspeth (Chloe Salaman) and tells her that the lottery has been fixed and her name deliberately withheld from the commonfolk. Shocked by this revelation, the Princess fixes the lottery so that only her name is included, sealing her fate to being tossed into the dragon’s lair. Even in Medieval times, money talks. This leads to much conflict in the kingdom and a showdown between our intrepid hero and the feared dragon at the hands of the titular spear.

There was a slew of sword and sorcery films in the early 1980’s, among them Albert Pyun’s The Sword and the Sorcerer, John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian (1982), Don Coscarelli’s The Beastmaster (1982), Jack Hill’s Sorceress (1982), Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, all in 1982, with Peter Yates’s Krull (the film that Columbia invested in while passing on Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial) and Giacomo’s Battiato’s Hearts and Armour coming out the following year. Dragonslayer, filmed on location in England, Scotland, and Wales, was released on Friday, June 26, 1981, two months after John Boorman’s Excalibur and two weeks after Desmond Davis’s Clash of the Titans. It has so much going for it that even author George R.R. Martin, the author of the novels upon which HBO’s Game of Thrones is based, proclaimed that Vermithrax is the best dragon ever seen in a film. This is a view shared by film director Guillermo del Toro, whose enthusiasm for the film compelled him to enlist Dragonslayer director Matthew Robbins writing talents on four films. There is much to admire here. Mr. MacNicol is wonderful in his first major screen role as a reluctant apprentice who becomes the kingdom’s only hope to defeat the dragon, with shades of Luke Skywalker going head-to-head with the Empire’s almighty Death Star in George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). Ian McDiarmid, best known as Palpatine in the Star Wars saga, appears briefly as Brother Jacopus, and the late Caitlin Clarke does an admirable job of appearing like a male (to avoid being placed in the lottery) at the film’s start. Composer Alex North provides a sinister score, much of it culled together from the original music that he wrote for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) but was rejected by Mr. Kubrick in favor of the classical music he used as temp tracks. However, the real star here is the dragon as brought to life by the magicians of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), brought to glorious life by members of the team responsible for Star Wars. After forty- two years, the film is finally being represented properly on home video in both standard Blu-ray and 4K Ultra High Definition and the results make previous home video representations of the film pale in comparison.

The film comes with a wonderful audio commentary with director Robbins and film director Guillermo Del Toro who enthusiastically waxes nostalgic and extolls the virtues of the film, in particular the intercutting of the Go Motion technology that introduces blur into stop-motion action to create realism to match the shots of the mechanical dragon. Mr. Del Toro is a huge admirer of this film and rightly lauds the effects team for creating the de facto standard by which all future films of this ilk are measured. In addition to the commentary, the following extras round out the set:

The Slayer of All Dragons is the overall title of five smaller high-definition-lensed pieces that can be watched consecutively for a total documentary viewing of 63:24 in total which contains brand new interviews with those involved in the film’s special effects, in particular Phil Tippet, Dennis Muren, and Brian Johnson. First up is Welcome to Cragganmore (11:08) which takes a look at the effects work done for Star Wars in the parking lot of the Van Nuys, CA warehouse where ILM originally began, in addition to the creation of Dragonslayer from screenplay to screen. A Long Way to Urland (9:21) is a look at the film’s cinematography, production design, and ornate costumes as the principal photography began in the summer of 1980 in England. Vermithrax Pejorative (17:48) is the name of both the dragon and this piece that looks at the star of the film and the incredible amount of blood, sweat and toil that went into creating this creature. Truly impressive and feels like the issue of Cinefex Magazine #6 from October 1981 come to life. Into the Lake of Fire (13:34) illustrates how issues encountered during production required quick thinking and problem solving in order for production to continue. The Final Battle (13:45) is about just that – the final battle between the dragon and Ulrich, all accomplished in front of a blue screen.

An interesting section of screen tests (15:42) illustrates why Ms. Clarke and Sir Ralph were the correct choices. The requisite original theatrical trailer (1:58) is also included.

I am so thrilled and thankful to Paramount for restoring and making this gorgeous package available and for the wonderful memories I have of initially seeing the film.

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(For Todd Garbarini's exclusive interview with director Matthew Robbins, click here.)

By Steve Matteo

Mark Rozzo’s first book, Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles (Ecco Press/Harper Collins), is about Hopper and Hayward and the Los Angeles art, film and music scene in the 1960s. The paperback edition will be published on April 18. The dean of non-fiction Gay Talese said of the book: “Mark Rozzo, an electric and virtuoso storyteller, resurrects the relationship between icons Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward to dissect their marriage and its fallout, and takes many fabulous detours along the way with the artists and stars who crossed paths with Hopper and Hayward.”

Rozzo is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, was also an editor with Town & Country and teaches non-fiction writing at Columbia University. His writing credentials are extensive, with bylines in the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Esquire, Vogue, the Wall Street Journal and the Oxford American. As if that was not enough, he has been a musician with several prominent rock groups, including America and Bambi Kino. Bambi Kino is known for playing Hamburg-era music that the Beatles performed during their German wood-shedding days. Along with Mark, who fronts the band, the group consists of members of Nada Surf, Guided by Voices and Cat Power. His book features an often-overlooked aspect of how the Los Angeles movie scene of the 1960s intersected with art and music and reflects how Hopper and Hayward were at its vortex.

The following is a condensed version of an interview with the author conducted earlier this year.

Steve Matteo: You're primarily a New Yorker. What is it about Los Angeles that so intrigues you?

Mark Rozzo: I knew I wanted to do a cultural history of LA someday, and I knew that it would be set in the 1960s. What made Los Angeles during that decade so dynamic and unique was the concurrent revolutionary ferment in contemporary art, popular music, and Hollywood: like a revolution in triplicate. I gradually found that Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward, more than anyone else, seemed to connect those three realms. They knew all the artists, they went to the rock shows, and they were so immersed in Hollywood.

SM: Did you ever have a chance to meet Dennis Hopper?

MR: Dennis died in 2010 and I never got a chance to meet him. But I was the first writer—and I believe still only—given access to his personal archives, along with his photographic archive, the Hopper Art Trust. I was also fortunate in that the Jean Stein Papers at the New York Public Library opened in the fall of 2019, a critical point in my research time line. Jean had been interviewing Dennis since the early 1970s and hers were the best interviews I’d ever read with him. Since they were old pals, and on the same page culturally in so many ways, he opened up to her more than he ever did to anyone assigned to write about him at, say, a film magazine.

SM: How hard was it getting Brooke Hayward to cooperate on your initial story? Were you ambivalent about her participation at any point? Did you feel her cooperation would in any way possibly make the story less objective.
MR: With Brooke, I had to go up and talk to her at her house in Connecticut. The first time was with her and Dennis’s daughter, Marin Hopper, and Marin’s husband. They were the wingmen. We were there to convince Brooke to let me write about her for Vanity Fair. I knew from talking to Marin, whom I’d befriended several years before, that her parents were the way in to the story I wanted to tell about LA and that a big piece for Vanity Fair would be a crucial first step. Brooke was hesitant at first (she’s very good at playing hard to get) but as we talked and as we asked her questions—"What about the party you guys threw for Warhol and buying the first Campbell’s soup-can painting? What about hanging out with Oldenburg? What about going to see the Byrds on the Sunset Strip? What about Joan Didion? What about starring in The Twilight Zone?”—she started to understand that what I was after was a cultural history with her and her husband at the center of it, not another retelling of marital trauma and woe. I never felt beholden to her point of view or restricted in any way. She and the family opened every door and gave me free rein to tell the story.

SM: Motherhood and supporting Dennis seemed to derail her acting career. Do you think if she hadn't met Dennis, she would have had a more fulsome film career?

MR: It’s so hard to know. Brooke had obviously inherited talent from her mother, Margaret Sullivan, and had been granted admission to the Actors Studio. Her career was taking off in the early 60s, whereas Dennis’s had tanked. That was probably why Dennis was jealous of her and freaked out in 1964, asking her to stop, which she did. But Brooke had always felt ambivalent about Hollywood and knew that someday she’d get back to doing what she loved as a kid, which was writing. And she did. Her book Haywire came out in 1977 and was a huge bestseller. It’s probably the greatest Hollywood memoir of all time.

SM: Your book reflects how the post-war years, particularly beginning in the late 50s and early 60s, so an emergence of the co-mingling of high art and pop art. Hopper and Hayward seemed to be at the center of this explosion.

MR: They really were. And it became their focus during that time, more than acting. And for this, they stood out in Hollywood. They were different. Their tastes were unusual. There were only two people working in Hollywood who regularly showed up for Ferus Gallery openings: Brooke and Dennis. As Irving Blum, the Ferus impresario, told me, “They were virtually unique. There was nobody else doing it in the way that they were doing it.” And they bought stuff, offering crucial early support to such artists as Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein… it goes on and on. Their house, 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, was as avant garde as any museum or gallery in the world at that time. And since people like the Fondas, Ike and Tina Turner, Terry Southern, Joan Didion, Miles Davis, even Hells Angels were coming through the house, that new art—mostly Pop Art—was exposed to an ever-larger circle. I should maybe note that their collection today would be valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Not bad for two semi-employed actors!

(Photo: Jonathan Becker)

SM: What do you feel is his most significant contribution to film?

MR: As Dennis would have said, it came down to a handful of projects over a very long career: Rebel without a Cause, Giant, Cool Hand Luke, Easy Rider (of course), The Last Movie, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet. Those would be the biggies, more or less. I do think he was a very special, one-of-a-kind actor who came out of the Shakespearean tradition, had his mind blown by the Method, and created his own thing. He never won an acting Oscar yet perhaps he accomplished something more than that. As the critic Jenny Diski once put it, “As charm is to Cary Grant, awkwardness to Jerry Lewis, vulnerability to Montgomery Clift, so malevolence is to Dennis Hopper.” And then too was his stance in Hollywood—rebel, maverick, artist, survivor. There’s never been anyone quite like him in the history of American moviemaking.

SM: How significant is Easy Rider to the evolution of American film and how influential was it on American film in the 70s, which seems like a golden era?

MR: It’s massively significant. It was the movie that propelled what we call the New Hollywood—that era of ambitious, artful American filmmaking—into the 1970s, the decade of Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, and Spielberg. It’s a movie that’s been picked apart, dissected, and subjected to near-exegetical analysis and interpretation. And yet also, in some quarters, it’s been dismissed as a period artifact. It’s certainly the film that turned Dennis into an icon, even an icon that transcended Hollywood—at least for a while. And it proved for the first time that a movie could be made about the counterculture and still make a ton of money. It represented a whole new kind of Hollywood math: a movie shot for well under $500,000 hauls in something like $60 million. Beyond that, it’s forever a part of our collective memory of the summer of 1969, along with the Apollo moon landing, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road, the Manson murders, and Woodstock. It’s an enduring cultural touchstone. And it has an amazing soundtrack!

SM: He and Peter Fonda had an interesting relationship to The Byrds. It has been said, that for Easy Rider, Fonda borrowed a little from Roger McGuinn and Hopper borrowed a lot from David Crosby.

MR: That was certainly corroborated by my research, including conversations with Roger McGuinn. Roger loved the movie so much that he said to Peter Fonda something like, “I wish I’d been in it!” Peter replied, “But you were!” He explained to Roger that he and Dennis had developed their characters based on him and his irascible bandmate in the Byrds, a band that represented a lot of the cultural change in LA in the 1960s.

SM: The Last Movie was a film that gestated for years, but then became one of the key films of the 70s American film renaissance, but also signaled how the end of the 70s would be a time of excess and the end of that kind of creative film-making.

MR: Yes, The Last Movie. That project became Dennis’s Waterloo after the outsize success of Easy Rider. He had initially been trying to make that film in 1965 and 1966. But, after causing excitement throughout Hollywood, it came to nothing. Dennis was distraught; if he’d have made The Last Movie then, it would probably have been considered the first New Hollywood film, coming before Bonnie and Clyde. But the project fell apart. Executives didn’t want to pay Dennis Hopper, of all people, to direct a movie. Brooke said that if Dennis had been able to make that movie then, he wouldn’t “have fallen into the abyss.” Dennis’s alcoholism really started to accelerate after that.

SM: What would Dennis make of the world of movies today?

MR: That’s a stumper! I think he’d either have been totally appalled at the Marvelization of Hollywood… or he’d find it to be the greatest Pop Art happening ever. Dennis was always so engaged in his time, whether it was the 1960s or the 1980s or the 2000s. He would have found a way in. He always did.

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(Steve Matteo is the author of the books "Act Naturally: The Beatles on Film", to be published on May 15, 2023, "Let It Be" and "Dylan". He has contributed to the collection "The Beatles in Context" and has written for such publications as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York, Time Out New York, Rolling Stone, Elle, and Salon. @MatteoMedia)

By Lee Pfeiffer

In the estimation of many film scholars the 1970s was the most adventurous and liberating period in the history of the medium. The new freedoms in regard to sex, violence and adult themes that had exploded in the mid-1960s became even more pronounced in the '70s. Among the most daring studios to take advantage of this trend was United Artists. The studio had been conceived by iconic actors in the silent era with the intent of affording artists as much creative control over their productions as possible. UA had continued to fulfill that promise, producing a jaw-dropping number of box-office hits and successful film franchises. The studio also disdained censorship and pushed the envelope with high profile movie productions. The daring decision to fund the X-rated "Midnight Cowboy" paid off handsomely. The 1969 production had not only been a commercial success but also won the Best Picture Oscar. A few years later UA went even further out on a limb by distributing "Last Tango in Paris". UA fully capitalized on the worldwide sensation the movie had made and the many attempts to restrict it from being shown at all in certain areas of the globe. Like "Midnight Cowboy", "Tango" was an important film by an important director that used graphic images of sexual activity for dramatic intensity. Unfortunately, not every filmmaker who was inspired by these new freedoms succeeded in the attempt to mainstream X-rated fare during those years that the rating wasn't only synonymous with low-budget porno productions. Case in point: screenwriter John Byrum, who made his directorial debut with "Inserts", a bizarre film that UA released in 1975 that became a legendary bomb. The movie was released some years ago on Blu-ray as a limited edition by the now sadly defunct Twilight Time label. To my knowledge, it isn't available in that format today, although it is streaming on Screenpix, the subscription-based service that can be accessed through Amazon Prime, Roku, YouTube and Apple TV.

The claustrophobic tale resembles a filmed stage production. It is set primarily in one large living room in a decaying Hollywood mansion. The time period is the 1930s, shortly after the introduction of sound to the movie industry resulted in the collapse of silent pictures (Charlie Chaplin being the notable exception.) The central character, played by Richard Dreyfuss, is not named but is referred to as "The Boy Wonder". From our first glimpse of him we know we are seeing a man in trouble. He is unkempt, dressed in a bathrobe and swizzling booze directly from the bottle. We will soon learn that he was once a respected mainstream director of major studio films and was revered by Hollywood royalty. Now he is a has-been who has resorted to making porn movies in 16mm in his own home. (Yes, Virginia, people liked to watch dirty movies even way back then.) He is entertaining a visitor, Harlene (Veronica Cartwright), a perpetually cheery,  bubble-headed young woman who was once a respected actress but who, like Boy Wonder, has fallen on hard times. She is now a heroin addict who earns a living by "starring" in Boy Wonder's porn productions. They make small talk and some names from the current movie business are bandied about. Harlene tells Boy Wonder that a rising star named Clark Gable is said to be an admirer of his and wants to meet him. Instead of responding favorably to this news, Boy Wonder seems unnerved by it. The implication is that he is locked in a self-imposed downward spiral and lacks the self-confidence to attempt a real comeback. Harlene also needles him about his sexual prowess. It turns out that the king of porn films has long been impotent for reasons never explained.  As they prepare to film some scenes Harlene's male "co-star" (Stephen Davies) arrives. He is nicknamed Rex, The Wonder Dog, which seems to bother him especially when the Wonder Boy uses it to intentionally disparage him. Like Harlene, Rex is short on brains but is physically attractive. Boy Wonder seems to have a real resentment towards him, perhaps because Rex is a powerhouse in bed while he can't get anything going despite directing naked people in sex scenes. It becomes clear that Boy Wonder and Rex don't like each other. Boy Wonder ridicules Rex for performing sex acts on male studio executives who he naively believes will help him become a star. However, their relationship looks downright friendly compared to the interaction between Harlene and Rex. When Rex is a little slow in becoming physically aroused, Harlene mocks him mercilessly. This results in him essentially subjecting her to a violent rape which thrills Boy Wonder, who captures it all on film. Harlene doesn't appear to be any worse for the wear, however, and blithely says she's going off to a bedroom to rest.

The household is next visited by mobster Big Mac (Bob Hoskins), the man who finances Boy Wonder's film productions. He is accompanied by his financee Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper), a pretty young woman who seems to have a particular interest in the forbidden world of pornography. Big Mac and Boy Wonder also hate each other. Big Mac berates Boy Wonder for making his porn flicks too esoteric and artistic for their intended audiences who just want a cheap thrill. However, for Boy Wonder the porn films represent the last opportunity he has to demonstrate the cinematic style and camera angles that once impressed critics and the public. In the midst of their arguing, it is discovered that a tragedy has occurred: Harlene has died from a heroin overdose. Everyone seems nonplussed by the news and Big Mac's only concern is to ditch the body somewhere quickly. Turns out Rex has a part time job in a funeral parlor and can arrange for a gruesome plan in which they dump her body inside a grave that is being prepared for another person's funeral the next day. The plan is to dig a bit deeper, bury Harlene, then place a layer of dirt over her and have the "new" body placed on top of hers. As Big Mac and Rex leave to "undertake" this sordid task, Boy Wonder finds himself alone with Cathy Cake. She wants to use the time to have Boy Wonder film her in her own personal porn movie since Big Mac would never let his "fiancee" do so with his knowledge. She finds the idea of sex on film to be a stimulant but Boy Wonder won't have any of it. He knows that Big Mac's volatile temper and ever-present bodyguard could result in him being the next corpse in the house. Cathy Cake tries another tactic and feigns interest in Boy Wonder. He lets his guard down and gradually is seduced by her. She even manages to cure his impotence but the tryst turns ugly when she learns he has not filmed it. Boy Wonder soon discovers that his renewed pride and self-respect is to be short-lived when it becomes clear that Cathy Cake actually loathes him and was only using him in order to fulfill her porn movie fantasy. The ploy works to a degree- her attention to Boy Wonder reawakens his sexual prowess but when she learns the camera wasn't rolling, she cruelly tells him that she only used him for selfish purposes. With this, Big Mac and Rex return from their horrendous errand and catch Boy Wonder in bed with Cathy Cake. The situation becomes dangerous with Big Mac threatening to kill Boy Wonder and things only deteriorate from there. 

Richard Dreyfuss was said to have had a personal obsession with this film. He was very involved in all aspects of its production and remained defensive about the movie after its harsh reception from critics. The movie's complete rejection by reviewers and the public might have hurt his career but Dreyfuss already had "American Graffiti" and "Jaws" under his belt. Soon he would also star in another blockbuster, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" followed by his Oscar-winning performance in "The Goodbye Girl". The fact that so few people ever saw "Interiors" actually worked to his advantage. However, whatever motivated him to become involved in this bizarre project remains a mystery. It's an ugly tale about ugly people doing ugly things to each other. If there is a message here, I didn't receive it. There isn't a single character you can identify with or sympathize with. They are all self-obsessed cynics with no redeeming traits. That leaves us with whatever values the performances afford us and it's a mixed bag. Dreyfuss is miscast. He was twenty nine years-old when he made the film and, despite his sordid appearance which ages him considerably, he is still far too young to portray a once-great movie director who has fallen on hard times. John Byrum's direction of Dreyfuss is unsteady. At times he encourages him to underplay scenes while at other times he has Dreyfuss chew the scenery mercilessly. Similarly, Stephen Davies plays the brain-dead hunk Rex with flamboyantly gay characteristics one minute then suddenly transforms into a heterosexual stud the next. Bob Hoskins is squarely in what would become his trademark tough-guy gangster mode but gives a solid performance. The best acting comes from the two female leads, with Veronica Cartwright especially good as the ill-fated Harlene. Jessica Harper also does well in her thankless role. Both women seem at ease in doffing their clothes and playing much of their scenes in a provocative state. Cartwright even goes full frontal for the violent sex scene with Rex while Harper spends almost the entire last act of the film being photographed topless. Curiously, the willingness to appear nude onscreen was considered the epitome of female emancipation in films during the 1970s but the practice  has largely become frowned upon in more recent years. In fact the days are long gone when virtually every major actress had to appear naked on screen. Today, female emancipation is the ability to play erotic scenes on screen without having to be completely compromised.  

If John Byrum's debut as a director is problematic, so, too, is his script. There is a lot of name-dropping about the great figures in the movie industry who once socialized with the Boy Wonder but it all seems pretentious and unconvincing right down to the constant attempts by Boy Wonder to avoid meeting the unseen Clark Gable. In fact, aside from some fleeting references the "Flapper Look" styles worn by the women, the film could have been set in the 1970s. Byrum has the characters indulge in  vernacular that is far too contemporary for the 1930s. The only wit that is apparent concerns Big Mac's plans to build roadside restaurants that would all look the same and serve identical fast food. ("Big Mac"- get it?) Beyond that, there are few attempts at humor and most of those pertain to unspeakably cruel behavior and mutual humiliation. There seems to be no purpose for the film's existence beyond the desire of the participants to be in a porn movie. Given their status in the industry that was obviously not going to happen so they banded together for a quasi-porn movie and shrouded it in the protective layer of intellectualism. This gave them all the cover of being artistes and Richard Dreyfuss the opportunity to nibble on Jessica Harper's nipples while pretending there was some greater purpose to it all. In reality the film's most cringe-inducing scene has Dreyfuss and Harper having an extended conversation about her private parts, which are referred to repeatedly (almost to an absurd degree) in gutter language as those the actors were pre-teenagers using naughty words for the first time. 

Here's a chance to watch  director Andrew V. Mclaglen's highly enjoyable 1979 adventure "ffolkes" starring Roger Moore as a grumpy but courageous leader of a private commando team. He's quite the opposite of his 007 persona: he loathes female companionship and loves cats. The film has a marvelous supporting cast including James Mason, Anthony Perkins and Moore's ol' pal David Hedison. (To watch in full screen mode, click on "Watch on YouTube.)
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The Australian video company Imprint has released "The Gidget Film Collection". Here are the details:

The original beach party movie ‘Gidget’ plus three sequels on Blu-ray for the first time worldwide!

Gidget (1959)

The original surfer girl/beach bum movie, adapted from the novel by Frederick Kohner, Gidget (1959) stars Sandra Dee as determined little Frances Lawrence, who falls in love both with surfing and with the characters who populate the local Southern California beach hangout. Of particular interest are the young Moondoggie (James Darren) and the more mature Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson), a Korean War vet who is the idol of every surfer on the coast for his life of apparently unfettered freedom.

Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961)

In this sequel to the hit 1959 film “Gidget,” Francie “Gidget” Lawrence (Deborah Walley) is once again involved with her boyfriend, Jeff “Moondoggie” Matthews (James Darren). However, they have a lovers’ spat, and Gidget goes to sulk in Hawaii with her parents. In the islands, she meets TV dancer Eddie Horner (Michael Callan). Seeing how miserable she’s become, Gidget’s wise dad (Carl Reiner) sends for Moondoggie, and the couple reunite just as Gidget gets romantic with Eddie.

Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)

Gidget, in Rome for a holiday, misinterprets attention she receives from a famous journalist. Discovering he is “chaperoning” her at Dad’s request she resumes interest in her boyfriend. Based upon characters created by Frederick Kohner.

Gidget Gets Married (1972)

Newly married Gidget makes waves in her husband’s company by taking a stand against the social caste system.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• “Gidget Gets Married” – the 1972 Television Movie
• “Gidget” Theatrical Trailer

Keep in mind that prices are quoted in Australian dollars. Use a currency converter to see what the price is in your national currency.

By Lee Pfeiffer

In days of old before every movie released was designed to be a record-breaking blockbuster, studios routinely produced modestly-budgeted fare designed for a quick playoff and modest profit. A perfect example of this is "Quick, Before It Melts!", a softball sex comedy from 1964 that must have been considered to be a bit risque in its day. Although George Maharis, then a current heart throb gets first billing, the real star is Robert Morse. He plays Oliver Cromwell Cannon, an aspiring reporter who is routinely abused by his boss, publishing magnate Harvey T. Sweigert (Howard St. John), who considers Oliver to be so inconsequential that he has to be reminded that he is engaged to his daughter Sharon (Yvonne Craig). Oliver's career is on the fast track to nowhere until Sweigert affords him an opportunity to prove himself. He is being assigned as the first staff reporter at the South Pole and will be stationed at a U.S. Navy weather installation there. Sweigert is to the political right of Sen. Joe McCarthy and sees Soviet expansion everywhere, even in the remote frozen tundras. Sweigert gives Oliver the seemingly impossible task of digging up some sort of scoop that would embarrass the Soviets. Accompanying Oliver is Peter Santelli (George Maharis), an ace photographer who is also a renowned ladies man.

Prior to leaving, Oliver visits Sharon and does his best to seduce her. She's a virgin on the verge but insists on waiting until their wedding night, much to Oliver's frustration. En route to the South Pole, Oliver and Peter have an extended stopover in New Zealand. Here they befriend two lovely young ladies- Tiara (Anjanette Comer in her big screen debut), an exotic beauty and her equally sexy friend Diana (Janine Gray). Both of the women are the polar opposite (pardon the pun) of Sharon, and they have liberated attitudes towards sex. Peter falls for Diana and Oliver is immediately smitten by Tiara. A running gag in the film is Oliver's inability to get her to tell him if they slept together during one particularly wild night in which he became so drunk he developed amnesia. Soon Oliver is a conflicted man. He wants to remain loyal to Sharon but boys will be boys and his hormones are raging. Fate intervenes when Sweigert insists they leave immediately for the South Pole. Upon arriving at the naval station, Oliver and Peter are hit with the stark reality of how unpleasant life is about to become. Enclosed in the small confines of the base with 50 below zero temperatures outside, they find themselves subjected to hazing rituals by the longtime staffers. The base is manned by Navy personnel as well as a contingent of scientists that includes Mikhail Drozhensky, a Soviet representative of a joint scientific research project.  As the days turn to weeks, boredom becomes a problem and Sweigert is getting impatient for Oliver to file some type of scoop. With everyone on the base suffering from sexual frustration, Oliver and Peter con a visiting admiral (James Gregory) to get some good press by inviting down a contingent of everyday women to visit the base. Naturally, they arrange for Tiara and Diana to be among them. Upon arrival, Oliver's hormones win out and he starts to seduce the willing Tiara in a snowmobile (talk about sexual frigidity!). This leads to another running gag that must have been old in Shakespeare's day: every time they come close to consummating the deal, some distraction interrupts them. Naturally, the women become stranded at the base due to weather and the sexual high jinks continue. Peter isn't having any problem with Diana but fate prevents Oliver from sealing the deal with Tiara. The conclusion of the story has Oliver trying to file a career-saving scoop about the Soviet scientist defecting before his arch rival reporter (Norman Fell) can beat him to it. 

"Quick, Before It Melts" is the kind of mid-range movie that defines mediocrity. It has a good cast but most of them are encouraged to overact by director Delbert Mann, who once directed such estimable fare as "Marty" and "Separate Tables". What led him to become involved in this drivel remains a mystery. Even more bizarre is that the screenplay was written by Dale Wasserman. Yes, that Dale Wasserman- the acclaimed writer of "Man of La Mancha" and the stage version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The film has some amusing gags including composer David Rose finding a way to insert his signature song "The Stripper" into the action. Morse is an energetic leading man but his character inexplicably morphs from Jerry Lewis nerd mode into a sophisticated Sinatra type by the end of the film. Anjanette Comer does make for a stunningly beautiful leading lady and  the equally lovely Yvonne Craig gives her usual perky performance.  Popular character actor Bernard Fox, who generally epitomizes every old fashioned cliche about the British, is bizarrely cast as a U.S. naval officer. Go figure. The film is marred by some poor rear screen projection work. The long shots were filmed by a second unit near the Bering Sea but anyone above the age of five will recognize that the closest the cast members got to something cold was an ice cream sundae at the studio commissary. 

"Quick, Before It Melts" has been released as a Warner Archive title. The transfer is excellent. There are no bonus extras but the disc is region free.

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Sean Connery didn't always share his sense of humor during interviews but in this appearance on "The Tonight Show" from 1983 (presented in two parts), Connery seems in a fun mood, bantering quips with Carson as he promotes what would be his final James Bond movie, "Never Say Never Again".

By Hank Reineke

It’s best to start this review by noting that Kino’s Blu ray release of Claude Chabrol’s Bluebeard is not a retelling of the centuries old French folk tale. The first published appearance of the grim fairy tale was penned by Charles Perrault in 1697, but the oral folk tale actually dates ages older. The Bluebeard of fable is a wealthy nobleman who has savagely murdered and hidden the bodies of his six previous wives in a subterranean chamber beneath his castle. But just as George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) would introduce the psychological manipulation of “gas lighting” into our modern vernacular, Webster’s defines a “bluebeard” as a “man who first marries and then murders one wife after another.” Which is not exactly the case in Chabrol’s film of 1963. Though this bluebeard’s wife is involved in the imbroglio, she is not targeted by her murdering husband. But otherwise the description is close enough.

In fact, the French title of this French-language production - based on a gruesome but series of true crimes - was not Bluebeard but simply Landru. The titular character referenced is Henri Désiré Landru (1869-1922), a bald and thick-bearded Parisian dealer of antique furniture. The problem with Landru is that he’s chosen to supplement his income by murdering a succession of wealthy dowagers, spinsters and widows in the years of French involvement in World War I. Collecting the names of moneyed lonely hearts from personal ads sent privately to a postal box, Landru’s modus operandi was to charm and romance his intended victims, offering all a respite from Paris at his countryside Villa rental near Gambais.

Once separated from their bank accounts and antiquities, Landru coldly murdered the women, disposing of their bodies – and all evidence of his crime - in a coal-fired kitchen stove. Landru was found out and arrested in the spring of 1919, charged with the murder of eleven women – though authorities believed he was likely involved in many other unsolved disappearances. The macabre and sensational circumstances surrounding the Landru case brought with it attendant international press coverage and a circus atmosphere to the courtroom proceedings. Landru was ultimately found guilty of his crimes, despite the absence of bodies. He was executed by guillotine in the early winter of 1922.

Such notoriety would bring Landru lasting infamy as one of the modern world’s most legendary serial killers. Both the fairy tale of Bluebeard and the real-life terror wrought by Landru would figure into a number of film and television productions. Sinister waxen images of Landru’s bluebeard would be cinematically present in practically every wax museum’s rogue gallery of horror: House of Wax (1953), the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “The New Exhibit,” and Terror in the Wax Museum (1973) to name only a few. Charlie Chaplin, of all people, would even revisit the Landru affair in his thinly-veiled dark comedy Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

So it was only proper that a French director and French writer should assume ownership of the legend of Landru in this French-Italian co-production. In late February of 1962, Parisian cinema correspondents reported that Italian film producer Carlo Ponti and Frenchman Georges De Beauregard, the latter president of Rome-Paris Films and a champion of France’s “New Wave” cinema, were planning an Eastman color production of Landru. The film was to be directed by Claude Chabrol – already feted for such films as Le Beau Serge (1958), The Cousins (1959) and Les Bonnes Femmes (1960). The screenplay for Landru was to written by the popular French novelist Francoise Sagan. Though this was to be Sagan’s first effort at screenwriting, four of her novels had already been adapted for the screen by French film studios. Earliest expectations were that Sagan’s script was to be one serious in tone and unlike Charlie Chaplin’s comic-take of the serial killer’s spree.

Then, one month later, it was reported that Chabrol and Sagan were in fact both crafting elements of the screenplay, oddly semi-independent of one another: Chabrol was developing the film’s male characters, Sagan charged to concentrate on the murderer’s female victims. Reports also noted that Chabrol himself might play the role of Henri Désiré Landru should a suitable actor for the primary role not be found. A more than suitable actor was found in the person of Charles Denner, an actor mostly unfamiliar-to-the-public at large. It’s Denner who really carries the film with a masterful, emotionally casual performance.

In late March, Rome-Paris announced that a worldwide distribution deal was in the works with United Artists, the studio having agreed to “put up most of the coin” of production. Following their work together on Landru, Chabrol was promising to tackle a film version of Sagan’s 1960 play Château en Suède. (That film would actually be lensed and released in 1964 as a television production sans Chabrol’s involvement). In any event, by mid-summer of 1962, the deal with United Artists seems to have fallen through. It was announced that Joseph E. Levine’s Embassy Pictures had secured distribution rights; the deal was reportedly struck when Levine was made privy to the preview rushes of the still unfinished film. Lux Films was to handle domestic distribution in France. With financing and casting and a script in place, principal photography on Landru would wrap in September of 1962.

The film would enjoy – fittingly -a premiere in the city of Paris in February of 1963. Though somewhat charmed by the film, a Variety critic attending a 5 February screening floated the possibility that the production may not enjoy wide appeal being an “unusual offbeater” and an “spirited if uneven pic.” There was also an acknowledgment that Sagan’s script was curiously both “deft” and “repetitive” in its construction. These were fair criticisms, but by April’s end, Landru had already drawn 306,767 paid admissions in France – not a bad box office total for an edgy filmmaker of the “New Wave” school.

The film would be given a domestic publicity boost courtesy of Mme. Fernande Segret. Segret, now age seventy and a mistress of the real-life Landru, attempted to “enjoin” the film’s release, concerned that the film sullied her reputation. Taking her case before the Tribunal of the Seine, the French court dismissed Segret’s complaint, citing her relationship - as a twenty-four-year-old - with the murderous Landru was already a “matter of historical record” of which Sagan’s screenplay took no particular liberties. Segret appealed, but as late as 1967, her continuing attempt to bring suit against the filmmakers was again dismissed.

With Chabrol’s Landru racking up decent reviews and box office returns in France, an opportunistic distributor chose this moment to reissue the director’s previously moribund effort Ophelia, an “updating of the Shakespeare opus.” In the meantime, a U.S. premiere of the French-language, English subtitled Landru was set for April 9, 1963, at Manhattan’s arthouse Cinema I/Cinema II Studio on Broadway near Lincoln Center. It was announced that Francoise Sagan would be in attendance.

Following that U.S. debut Box Office was impressed, acknowledging Landru held “several exploitative angles to attract art house regulars” as well as devotees of “the bizarre and macabre.” But not every critic was as enamored with the film’s promise. The New York Times suggested that Chabrol’s employ of genuine transcript excerpts from the Landru trial were “more entertaining than those Mlle. Sagan found for him.” The famously venomous stage and screen critic John Simon, wrote witheringly that Sagan’s attempt to “compete with Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux takes a good deal of arrogance, but in that area both Chabrol and Sagan are amply endowed.”

In an interview with New York City’s Film Journal, Chabrol confessed that many of his films examined matters of criminality, morality, and the often misused scales of justice, from different angles. “In Landru the problem was to be faithful to the legend and to be funny with it.” Which was an odd angle to tell the story of a serial murderer whose crimes were heinous.

The French actress Michele Morgan, who played Landru’s victim Célestine Buisson, advised prior to the film’s release that Chabrol’s picture was to be “ironic and comic, with each victim ending as a puff of smoke from the chimney.” Chabrol borrowed this smoke billowing visual image from Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, but unfortunately uses this device to the point of near-ridiculous repetition. Despite this being a film being centered on one of the 20^th century’s most notorious figures there’s virtually no on-screen violence – only the suggestion of such.

It was a curious decision. Not allowing audiences to actually see Landru committing his terrible crimes, Chabrol allows the character as written to retain a semblance of evasive humor and an anti-hero aura. Perhaps more tiresome than Chabrol’s multiple cuts to the numerous chimney immolations are the appending comic bits where Landru’s neighbors wilt from the odors of flesh incineration. The only images tying Landru to the brutal murders are brief passing shots of the Villa’s fiery stove, coal bins and a butcher block table with attached meat grinder.

Though a great fan of American films and the work of Alfred Hitchcock – even co-authoring (with Erich Rohmer) an early book-length study Hitchcock (Editions Universitaires, Paris, 1957) – Chabrol’s filmography and interests were more varied than that of his hero. It was also, perhaps, the reason Chabrol’s mystery thrillers are less suspenseful in their construction. Hitchcock once famously wrote, “The mass [film] audience has had no education in technique of cinema, as they frequently have in art and music, from their school days. They think only of story.”

Chabrol approach to film is different. It would be unfair to suggest that Chabrol was a visual artist first, a storyteller second. But it’s clear that Chabrol’s work differs from that of Hitchcock, the latter choosing to work with diligence from prepared story boards and fully formed scripts. Chabrol’s film seems more freewheeling in construction, less plotted. I suppose Landru might have been partly influenced by the mixing of black comedy with the macabre as seen in Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955).

For my taste, the Chabrol film goes on too long – the running time lasts a single tick under two hours but seems much longer. Choosing to lens the tale of Landru as a darkly sardonic, serio-comic drama was not new – Chaplin already had fun tweaking the public’s morbid interest in the case – but too often the murders and subsequent courtroom drama seem to unspool in real time. With the romancing, the murders, the winking comedy, the inter-cutting of grim black and white WWI newsreel footage, the courtroom proceedings… the layering all becomes too much.

Similarly to Chaplin, Chabrol tries to weave an undercurrent of politically-motivated shenanigans behind the prurient international interest of Landru’s celebrity notoriety. Though involved in negotiating the Treaty of Versailles - which formally brought the WW I to its end - French Prime Minister George Clemenceau was despairing of its outcome – as were the French public who would vote him out of office in 1920. As imagined by self-described communist Chabrol, Clemenceau’s ploy was an attempt to redirect the discontent of the French public by shepherding the press to devote their efforts on the concurrent - and far more titillating - murder trial of Henri Désiré Landru. He may very well have been right about that.

This Kino Lorber Studio Classic edition of Bluebeard offers a stunning and color saturated 4K restoration from the original camera negative. The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 in 1920x1080p and DTS audio. The release comes with its original French language soundtrack and removable English sub-titles. There is an audio commentary courtesy of film historian Kat Ellinger, the editor of Diabolique magazine and self-described Instagram “loudmouthed hysterical feminist.”

Ellinger provides an excellent commentary throughout, describing Landru as the “strangest and most frustrating” films of Chabrol’s 1960s oeuvre. She also notes the politically left director also staged Landru as a cynical commentary of the mores of the petite bourgeoisie class – an element that’s insufferably present throughout.

There are no alternate scenes included on this set. But while there is only the briefest flash of topless nudity present in his finished cut, Chabrol later intimated that producer Ponti insisted he also photograph a number of “undressed” scenes, presumably for European distribution. If indeed there is a continental version of Landru floating about, I have not seen it. The set also includes five trailers, including Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders, as well as such French productions as Le Doulos, Alphaville, Diabolically Yours and Max and the Junkman.

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In the Golden Age of film criticism, Vincent Canby of the New York Times was one of the most revered (and feared) reviewers. But his tastes weren't only for art house import films and those of Oscar-worthy prestige. Canby could relate to populist entertainment as well. One of the mysteries of the universe is how he came to the conclusion that "Goldfinger" and "Moonraker" represented the best of the James Bond films, which is like saying Laurence Olivier and Jerry Lewis were the finest actors of their era. Nevertheless, with the June, 1981 release of "For Your Eyes Only", Canby was unimpressed with some elements of the film, but was open to providing back-handed compliments to other aspects. In the aggregate, you could say his review was net positive. Read for yourself....

Cinema Retro is proud to announce that once again our publication has been nominated for a Rondo Award in the category of Best Magazine. The Rondo Awards are named in honor of the legendary character actor Rondo Hatton. The awards allow film fans across the globe to honor their favorite achievements in video releases and film-related journalism.The most recent nominations reflect achievements for the year 2022.

Also, Cinema Retro contributor Mark Mawston, who recently brought CR readers a rare, exclusive interview with actor John Leyton, has been singled out for a nomination in the category of Best Interview. This time, the subject of his work is the life and career of noted writer, film, and film music historian, Steve Vertlieb, who reflects on his interactions with a “Who’s Who” of film legends from over the decades. The superb 12-page interview appeared in issue #31 of the popular British horror magazine “We Belong Dead”. Mark is known professionally as "The Rock and Roll Photographer To The Stars" (having photographed such music luminaries at Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Eric Clapton, Yoko Ono, and Brian Wilson).

Please click here for the Awards web site. While perusing the many nominees in other categories, vote for your favorites!

To vote, send an E mail (include your name) to: David Colton at taraco@aol.com  by midnight, Sunday on April 23. 

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

“Dyin’ ain’t much of a living, boy.” – Josey Wales

Sideshow has expanded their popular Clint Eastwood Legacy Collection with the addition of the Josey Wales 1/6 Scale Figure. This officially licensed collectible figure has been meticulously designed in celebration of the actor’s extensive career in film and is approved by Eastwood himself. Go behind the scenes of this incredible collaboration with Sideshow's Inside Look Video.

The 1976 revisionist Western film The Outlaw Josey Wales follows the fugitive farmer’s harsh and unforgiving ride across the postwar country, evading bounty hunters and Union soldiers.

Based on Clint Eastwood’s appearance in this iconic film, the Josey Wales 1/6 Scale Figure features a carefully crafted and incredibly accurate portrait set in the actor’s signature scowl, detailed with facial hair and complete with a sculpted hat. Josey Wales wears an intricately tailored fabric costume, meticulously layered with a blue undershirt, brown pants, a dark brown vest with braided cords and faux-leather attachments, a belt with two holsters, a red neckerchief, and a removable shoulder holster. The figure’s sculpted boots also boast silver riding spurs on the heels, making this a comprehensive head-to-toe recreation of the character’s on-screen appearance.

The Josey Wales 1/6 Scale Figure is articulated to allow for numerous display options. This rugged outlaw comes with three revolvers as well as a range of hands so you can recreate your favorite moments with dramatic and dynamic poses.

You don’t need to be a bounty hunter to bring home the Josey Wales 1/6 Scale Figure by Sideshow. Pre-order it now from Sideshow.com.

By Darren Allison, Cinema Retro Soundtracks Editor

Silva Screen Records have added to their excellent Barry Gray series of soundtracks with the first ever vinyl release of The Secret service (1968) (SILLP1681). The origins of the series The Secret Service began in 1968. Whilst working at Pinewood Studios, Gerry Anderson bumped into a familiar face of stage and screen: comic actor Stanley Unwin. With his whimsical charm and hilarious gibberish double talk (playfully christened ‘Unwinese’) Unwin had earned great popularity throughout the 50s and 60s and the Anderson's immediately knew that they had found someone to base their next puppet series on. For several years the Century 21 team had toyed with directly basing a puppet character on a real-life actor, now the time had come to make it a reality. Duly, the Andersons developed a premise around Unwin, returning to their ‘unlikely spy’ scenario which had worked so well with Joe 90. They created ‘Father’ Unwin, a kindly priest who, despite outwardly disappearing into whimsy, doubles as a determined agent for British Intelligence. In the serie,s the lines would be blurred even further between the miniature Supermarionation world and reality, as live action footage of Stanley Unwin would also be used in the series.

To appropriately reflect The Secret Service’s premise and compliment the gentle title sequence created to introduce the series, Barry Gray decided to step completely away from his usual attention-grabbing themes and write a three-part fugue in the style of the Baroque composer Bach. To perform the vocals, the Mike Sammes Singers were hired, the vocal group who Gray had used on the Supercar theme back in 1961. Once coupled with soft organ and minimalist percussion, a truly unique piece of inventive music was born to bookend Father Unwin's adventures, which perfectly captured the off-beat nature of the series.

Silva Screen have delivered another excellent package which perfectly supports their previous entries. The sound quality is exceptionally good and the packaging comes in the form of a high gloss gatefold sleeve with the LP pressed in an appropriate Grass Green Vinyl. 14 tracks of cherished childhood memories round off this collection with informative liner notes included within. We love it!

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From the pages of the New York Times, here's only a few of the great choices Gotham movie-goers had on the random date of March 16, 1966. Among them: "The Silencers", "The Chase", "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines", "The Heroes of Telemark","Viva Maria!" and "Battle of the Bulge". And you wonder why Cinema Retro loves the Sixties so much?

Many retro movie fans associate director Nicholas Ray with producer Samuel Bronston's epics "King of Kings" and "55 Days at Peking". But those films were not really representative of the films he made. In this vintage tribute from Turner Classic Movie, Dennis Hopper pays homage to Ray, who gave him his first break in feature films by casting him opposite James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause". As Hopper poignantly observes, Ray excelled at making small, intimate films that dealt with troubled interpersonal relationships. Ray never quite got his due during his lifetime, but actors and filmmakers today consider him to be one of the greats.

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

Celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the thrilling disaster epic DEEP IMPACT, arriving for the first time on 4K Ultra HD May 2, 2023 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Originally released on May 8, 1998, DEEP IMPACT grossed nearly $350 million worldwide on an $80 million budget.   A unique and dynamic fusion of large-scale excitement with touching personal storylines, the film depicts humanity’s response as a comet hurtles through space on a collision course with Earth.

Fully remastered and boasting Dolby Vision and HDR-10, DEEP IMPACT is a must-have action-adventure for your collection.  Directed by Mimi Leder and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the film features an all-star cast including Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Leelee Sobieski, Blair Underwood, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan Freeman.

The DEEP IMPACT 4K Ultra HD release includes the film on both 4K Ultra HD and on Blu-ray™, access to a Digital copy of the film, and legacy bonus content including commentary and fascinating featurettes delving into the making of this 90s classic.  Bonus content is detailed below:

· Commentary by director Mimi Leder and visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar

· Preparing For The End                                                                                          

· Making An Impact                                                                                                  

· Creating The Perfect Traffic Jam                                                                                                      

· Parting Thoughts                                                                                                    

· Photo Gallery and Trailers     

Click here to pre-order from Amazon