By  Lee Pfeiffer

When movie fans think about films related to the battle of the Alamo, the most obvious reference that comes to mind is John Wayne's epic 1960 production, "The Alamo". There are two others from the modern era of filmmaking that are largely forgotten to all but Alamo history buffs: the 1955 film "The Last Command" and the ill-fated, but underrated 2004 production, also titled simply "The Alamo". Less obvious is the 1987 NBC-TV presentation of "The Alamo- Thirteen Days to Glory" based on Lon Tinkle's book of the same name. Tinkle presented a historically accurate depiction of the legendary battle, at least in terms of what was accepted by historians at the time. However, facts about the battle continue to be fluid and hotly debated among historians. The TV production has not been widely seen since its initial airing. It was released on VHS tape and research has shown an obscure DVD release as part of a double feature with "High Noon II: The Return of Will Kane". However, the movie is now being streamed on Amazon Prime. Not having seen it since its broadcast in 1987, I felt it was time revisit the production, which was widely panned by fans who obsess over all things relating to the Alamo. Their main complaint was the casting of the pivotal roles of Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, who were played by popular TV stars James Arness and Brian Keith, both of whom were not only long-in-the-tooth but were sporting tusks. The role of Crockett was particularly a thankless one to play. Fess Parker had become an American phenomenon when he played the role in Walt Disney's telecasts. Disney only made a handful of episodes and even he was shocked when the show generated a massive fan movement and became the most successful film/TV tie-in  up to that time. Parker knew he was on to something so in the mid-1960s, free of Disney's edicts, he simply put on a new buckskin jacket and raccoon hat and starred in a hit TV series, "Daniel Boone". When John Wayne was negotiating with United Artists to produce and direct the big screen version of "The Alamo", he had to be forced to play Crockett as the studio's insistence. They wanted his name upfront to draw in his legions of fans. Wayne acquitted himself well enough, but the shadow of Parker loomed over his performance. The choice of Brian Keith was a bizarre one. He was 66-years old at the time and nothing about his appearance suggests the popular image of Crockett (he doesn't even wear the signature cap.) I'm second-to-none in my admiration of Keith's talents and recently praised his portrayal of Theodore Roosevelt in "The Wind and the Lion" on the forthcoming Imprint Blu-ray, but this was a rare case of his judgment in roles being off-course. Arness was also too old to play Bowie, but since the popular conception of the historic figure wasn't ingrained in modern society the way Crockett was, Arness's performance proved to be a bit more tolerable. The only agreement seemed to center on young up-and-coming Alec Baldwin, who delivers a fine and believable performance as Col. Travis, though it's a less interesting one than presented by Laurence Harvey in Wayne's film. Lorne Greene makes a very brief cameo as Sam Houston, showing frustration at his inability to raise an army in time to save the defenders of the Alamo. Greene is generally a commanding screen presence, but his role is so limited he can't make an emotional impact, as Richard Boone did in the role in the Wayne production.

In favor of the TV production, it was filmed on location in Brackettville, Texas, where the massive and convincing sets from Wayne's movie still stood. Behind the scenes, the film benefited from a seasoned pro in the director's chair, Burt Kennedy, an old hand at making good Westerns ("Support Your Local Sheriff", "The War Wagon"). I'm not an expert on the history of the battle, but it's been pointed out that the TV production gets certain things more accurately than the feature films but certain other factors are clearly the invention of the screenwriters. In attempt to appeal to younger viewers, the screenplay provides a completely superfluous subplot about a young Mexican girl in love with one of the Caucasian defenders of the Alamo. It's pretty dreadfully presented, with the young lovers looking like they'd be more suitable for "The Breakfast Club" gang than the besieged Texas mission. Faring a bit better are Kathleen York and Jon Lindstrom in the key roles of Captain Dickinson and his wife, who was one of the few inhabitants of the Alamo to survive. There are some familiar faces among the defenders, but most of them don't register strongly because their roles are under-written. (John Wayne's son Ethan has a minor role.) This version of the Alamo saga differs from Wayne's by presenting Santa Ana as a major character, whereas in the Wayne film he is only a minor presence. As played by Raul Julia, the legendary historic figure is presented as Snidley Whiplash-type, leering at young women and devoid of any human qualities. Julia brings some gusto to the role but a more nuanced characterization is called for. There is also the distracting presence of David Ogden Stiers as a Mexican army officer, which is justified by having him described as an adviser from the British army. If such individuals did exist, it's news to me but in any event, Stiers' presence seems more like a casting gimmick than an attempt to portray an obscure historical fact.

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Things are fairly turgid through much of the film but as the battle scenes finally arrive they are well-handled with impressive stuntwork on display. The problem is that the spectacular climax of Wayne's big-budget production looms over the relatively skimpy assets that director Burt Kennedy has as his disposal. The TV battle attempts to add some spectacle by cribbing battle footage from Wayne's film. Much of it is set to Peter Bernstein's serviceable score, though at various times during the production, he shamelessly copies the work of another Bernstein (Elmer), with similar music to that found in the latter's classic score from "The Magnificent Seven".

In summary, "The Alamo-Thirteen Days to Glory" is undeniably flawed, but it has enough positive aspects to merit viewing, if only for comparison to other films that depict the battle and the events leading up to it. The source material used by Amazon leaves a lot to be desired, but it's still a positive development to see the production get some exposure. It deserves a Blu-ray release with a commentary track by Alamo historians, who could decipher its truths and fabrications far better than this writer can.

By Lee Pfeiffer

In the mid 1960s Amicus Productions emerged as a Hammer Films wanna-be. The studio aped the Hammer horror films and even occasionally encroached on Hammer by "stealing" their two biggest stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The first Amicus hit was "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors", released in 1965 and top-lining Lee and Cushing. The format of various horror tales linked by an anthology format proved to be so successful that Amicus would repeat the formula over the next decade in films such as "Tales from the Crypt", "Vault of Horror" and "The House That Dripped Blood". The studio cranked out plenty of other horror flicks and by the mid-to-late 1970s Amicus was producing better fare than Hammer, which had made the mistake of increasingly concentrating on blood and gore and tits and ass to the detriment of the overall productions. Occasionally-indeed, very rarely- Amicus would branch out from the horror genre and produce other fare. (i.e. the Bond-inspired "Danger Route" and the social drama "Thank You All Very Much") but the studio was out of its element when it came to producing non-horror flicks.  A particularly inspired offbeat entry in the Amicus canon was the 1970 production "The Mind of Mr. Soames", based on a novel by Charles Eric Maine. The intriguing premise finds John Soames (Terence Stamp) a 30 year-old man who has been in a coma since birth. He has been studiously tended to by the staff at a medical institution in the British countryside where a round-the-clock team sees to it that he is properly nourished and that his limbs are exercised to prevent atrophy. Soames apparently is an orphan with no living relatives so he is in complete custody of the medical community, which realizes he represents a potentially important opportunity for scientific study- if he can be awakened. That possibility comes to pass when an American, Dr. Bergen (Robert Vaughn) arrives at the clinic possessing what he feels is a successful method of performing an operation that will bring Soames "to life". The operation is surprisingly simple and bares fruit when, hours later, Soames begins to open his eyes and make sounds.The staff realize this is a medical first: Soames will come into the world as a grown man but with the mind and instincts of a baby. 

Soames' primary care in the post-operation period is left to Dr. Maitland (Nigel Davenport), who has constructed a rigid schedule to advance Soames' intellect and maturity as quickly as possible. Initially, Maitland's plans pay off and Soames responds favorably to the new world he is discovering. However, over time, as his intellect reaches that of a small child, he begins to harbor resentment towards Maitland for his "all stick and no carrot" approach to learning. Dr. Bergen tries to impress on Maitland the importance of allowing Soames to have some levity in his life and the opportunity to learn at his own pace. Ultimately, Bergen allows Soames outside to enjoy the fresh air and observe nature first hand on the clinic's lush grounds.  Soames is ecstatic but his joy is short-lived when an outraged Dr. Maitland has him forcibly taken back into the institute. Soames ultimately rebels and makes a violent escape into a world he is ill-equipped to understand. He has the maturity and knowledge of a five or six year old boy but knows that he prefers freedom to incarceration. As a massive manhunt for Soames goes into overdrive, the film traces his abilities to elude his pursuers as he manages to travel considerable distance with the help of well-intentioned strangers who don't realize who he is. Soames is ultimately struck by a car driven by a couple on a remote country road. Because the lout of a husband was drunk at the time, they choose to nurse him back to health in their own home. The wife soon realizes who he is and takes pity on him- but when Soames hear's approaching police cars he bolts, thus setting in motion a suspenseful and emotionally wrenching climax.

"The Mind of Mr. Soames" is unlike any other Amicus feature. It isn't a horror film nor a science fiction story and the plot device of a man having been in a coma for his entire life is presented as a totally viable medical possibility. Although there are moments of tension and suspense, this is basically a mature, psychological drama thanks to the intelligent screenplay John Hale and Edward Simpson and the equally impressive, low-key direction of Alan Cooke, who refrains from overplaying the more sensational aspects of the story. Stamp is outstanding in what may have been the most challenging role of his career and he receives excellent support from Robert Vaughn (sporting the beard he grew for his next film, the remake of "Julius Caesar") and Nigel Davenport. Refreshingly, there are no villains in the film. Both doctors have vastly different theories and approaches to treating Soames but they both want what is best for him. The only unsympathetic character is a hipster TV producer and host played by Christian Roberts who seeks to exploit the situation by filming and telecasting Soames' progress as though it were a daily soap opera.

Amicus had a potential winner with this movie but it punted when it came to the advertising campaign by implying it was a horror film. "The mind of a baby, the strength of a madman!" shouted the trailers and the print ads screamed "CAN THIS BABY KILL?" alongside an absurd image of  Stamp locked inside an infant's crib. In fact, Soames does pose a danger to others and himself simply because he doesn't realize the implications of his own strength- but he is presented sympathetically in much the same way as the monster in the original "Frankenstein".  Perhaps because of the botched marketing campaign, the film came and went quickly. In some major U.S. cities it was relegated to a few art houses before it disappeared. In fact the art house circuit was where it belonged but the ad campaign isolated upper crust viewers who favored films by Bergman and Fellini but balked when the saw the over-the-top elements of the ads.

"The Mind of Mr. Soames" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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(The following press release pertains to the U.K. release)

STUDIOCANAL have announced the brand new 4K restoration of John Guillermin’s (Blazing Inferno, Death on the Nile) Academy Award® Winning remake of iconic Hollywood classic, KING KONG (1976). Starring Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski, Crazy Heart, True Grit) and Jessica Lange (Tootsie, American Horror Story), and produced by Hollywood legend Dino de Laurentiis (Flash Gordon, Nights of Cabiria, Barbarella), this retelling of the classic monster adventure film went on to jointly win the Academy Award® for Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Glen Robinson and Frank Van der Veer), as well as receiving Academy Award® nominations for Best Cinematography (Richard H. Kline) and Best Sound (Harry W. Tetrick, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin and Jack Solomon). Jessica Lange was also honoured as Best new Actress for her role at the Golden Globes that same year.

Now restored in 4K for the first time, STUDIOCANAL will re-release the film across 4K UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital as well as a 4K UHD Steelbook from December 5.

New artworks have been created for the Home Entertainment releases by graphic designer Sophie Bland, and for the 4K UHD Steelbook release by Francesco Francavilla. The 4K UHD will include a limited-edition poster of Sophie Bland’s artwork.

SYNOPSIS

Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), an employee of a large American oil company, has been charged with a mission to find new oil wells. With a chartered boat, he sets off on a journey to an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. On board is also a stowaway: the palaeontologist Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) has smuggled himself onto the ship, as he hopes to examine a rare species of monkey on this island. On the way, after a violent storm, the expedition also takes on board the shipwrecked Dawn (Jessica Lange), who is floating in a lifeboat at sea. When the ship anchors off the island, however, it turns out not to be as uninhabited as everyone once thought. The natives of the island perform a strange ritual to worship a larger-than-life ape named "Kong".   As soon as they catch sight of the blonde Dawn, they decide they have found their perfect offering.

ABOUT THE RESTORATION

This 2022 restoration is presented by STUDIOCANAL and Paramount Pictures. The 35mm original negative was scanned in 4K and colour graded by Paramount. The restoration and mastering was then carried out at L'Immagine Ritrovata, under the supervision of STUDIOCANAL. The purpose of this restoration was to give a new lease of life to the film for audiences to enjoy on the big screen, and eventually on the smaller screen. A 4K DCP was created, as well as a UHD HDR Dolby Vision master, to enhance the sharpness and brightness in cinemas which is not usually possible with a standard HD master. In addition there is a new, improved and cleaned up 5.1 audio.

STUDIOCANAL owns one of the largest film libraries in the world, boasting nearly 7000 titles from 60 countries. Spanning 100 years of film history. 20 million euros has been invested into the restoration of 700 classic films over the past 5 years.

SPECIAL FEATURES

·    Extended TV broadcast cut (unrestored)

·    Audio commentary with film historian Ray Morton

·    Audio commentary with actor and makeup artist Rick Baker

·    Interview with Barry Nolan

·    Interview with Bill Kronick

·    Interview with Scott Thaler and Jeffrey Chernov

·    Interview with David McGiffert and Brian E. Frankish

·    Interview with Jack O'Halloran

·    Interview with Steve Varner

·    Deleted Scenes     

·    Original Trailer

By Lee Pfeiffer

The 1970 film adaptation John Le Carre's 1965 Cold War novel The Looking Glass War is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime. The movie has been largely forgotten and relatively unseen since its release, which is odd given the consistent interest in all things Le Carre. Christopher Jones plays Leiser, a twenty-something Polish illegal immigrant in London who has the goal of being able to live there with his pregnant girlfriend, Susan (Susan George.) Although prone to bad habits and unpredictable behavior, Leiser is intent on taking his future role as a father seriously. He is arrested for immigration violations, however, and an MI6 boss LeClerc (Ralph Richardson) concocts an audacious plan to manipulate Leiser into spying for the West. Using a legal immigration status as a carrot, LeClerc gets Leiser to reluctantly agree to the scheme. The young man is given a crash course in spying by another MI6 agent, Avery (Anthony Hopkins). He proves an adept enough student when it comes to handling the physical requirements of the job. (The film's best sequence finds the two men engaged in a knock-down, extended brawl when a training exercise gets out of hand when their personal animosities take over.) However, Leiser sneaks away for a brief romantic interlude with Susan but he is emotionally distraught when she tells him she has aborted their baby. Although having lost the main goal of his life- fatherhood- Leiser agrees to go on a secret mission into East Germany to search for evidence of a deadly new class of missiles that MI6 feels could tilt the Cold War in the direction of the Soviets.

Director/screenwriter Frank Pierson took considerable liberties with the source novel, but it still retains LeCarre's trademarks: a highly complex plot peppered with all sorts of extraneous characters who epitomize the author's cynical view that, when it came to espionage, there was little moral difference between East and West. Still, the film is far less confusing than the over-rated 2011 big screen version of LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which won international acclaim although seemingly no one I have discussed the film with can begin to explain what it's all about. One of the main problems is that Leiser is an unsympathetic protagonist. As played by Jones, fully in his James Dean/Marlon Brando mumbling mode, he is a fairly unlikable character, routinely lying, breaking his word and abusing those around him, including Susan, who he physically assaults. It's pretty hard to consider him one of the good guys. Nevertheless, Jones, who was always underrated as a screen presence, uses his good looks and charisma to full advantage so you can't help but hope he survives his seemingly suicidal mission in the most intrusive and paranoid society the world has ever seen. The film does pick  up steam once Leiser makes it under a barbed wire fence and is forced to reluctantly kill an East German border guard. The scene is quite suspenseful, as is another fine sequence in which the desperate and wounded Leiser accepts a ride from a predatory farmer who unexpectedly tries to goad him into performing a homosexual sex act- with tragic results. Leiser also picks up a hitchhiker himself, but- this being a 1960s spy movie- she's a drop-dead gorgeous blonde (played by flash-in-the-pan starlet Pia Degermark), who later reemerges in the story in a not-too-convincing plot twist that is designed to provide an obligatory sex scene. The first coincidental meeting between them takes place on a country road where she is traveling with a young boy who she introduces as her friend. Their relationship is never explained and the kid is never seen again when she has an ridiculously improbable reunion with Leiser in a nightclub. There's also a humdinger of ludicrous plot point in the first scene of the movie. Here, an MI6 agent in a foreign country obtains a roll of secret film that has proof positive of the missile system. He is handed the film by his contact. The agent gripes that his departmental budget is so small that they didn't give him cab fare. Thus, after obtaining this all-important evidence, he is left to trudge along a desolate road in the dead of night in the freezing cold. He is struck by a car and the film is lost. MI6 calculates this as murder and assume the Reds now have the film, which Leiser must retrieve. Really? We're all for financial restraint but the idea that the lack of taxi fare would endanger such important evidence is beyond crazy. It's just one of the improbable elements of Pierson's screenplay.

The film boasts a hip jazz score by Wally Stott, that nevertheless seems out of place in this dark espionage tale and the cinematography by Austin Dempster finds beauty in the East German countryside that contrasts with the "Show your papers" demands made by the secret police he encounters along the way. The performances among the supporting actors are all first rate, with Hopkins particularly impressive in an early screen role. The Looking Glass War is by no means the best of the LeCarre film adaptations (nothing has really equaled The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. ) However, it is an intelligent thriller (a few absurdities aside) with exotic locations and an impressive cast. Retro spy movie lovers will certainly enjoy it.

Joe Dante's "Trailers from Hell" presents this 2013 tribute to director Richard Brooks' 1966 classic "The Professionals", which is now streaming on Netflix. Don't miss it even if you've seen it fifty times! Subscribe to the "Trailers from Hell" YouTube channel to see plenty more.

Check out the "Trailers from Hell" web site.

By Dana Polan

Quite often in Marty, from 1955, there are long takes (some multiple minutes long) that calmly observe the anodyne activities and interactions of the little people that the film takes as its subject matter. It might be tempting to think of such shots as theatrical – although the film adapts a teleplay (by Paddy Chayevsky, a key writer in what is often thought of as television’s Golden Age of live drama) and not a piece of theatre per se. Yet while some of the shots of the film are static, none approximate the perspective of an imagined audience at the theater and many are about characters moving quietly through space as the camera glides along with them. This is a resonant form of cinematic storytelling in its own right.

In an historical moment where Hollywood was turning often to splashy and spectacular films (what the self-congratulatory musical Silk Stockings extolls as “Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope and Stereophonic Sound”) to challenge the easy domesticity of television viewership, Marty took a different path: it tried to rival the small-screen by showing that Hollywood could make little pictures (little in narrative ambition, that is, and unassuming visual style) that might outdo television at its own game by re-making television’s own offerings.

Marty tells of a Queens butcher (Borgnine) who is desperate for love but blocked by insecurity, low self-regard around his looks and bodily frame (he’s quite stocky), and by his own internalization of the macho codes of the dead-end guys he hangs out with. When he meets plain schoolteacher Clara (Betsy Blair) at a dance hall, the two seeming losers at life find they share a soft suffering at love’s misfortunes and they hit it off through an evening of walking and talking and furtively reaching out to each other. Ironically, the friends and family who have encouraged Marty to find the right woman and get married realize that his new-found romance could actually take him away from them, and they try to paint the worst possible picture of Clara. The last section of the film revolves around Marty’s torment as he is tempted to give in to the pressures of the locals he’s known so long (his mom, his buddies at the bar) but also realizes that loving Clara may be his only real shot at happiness, self-respect, and emotional growth.

Marty was only one of set of films that cinematically opened up a prior teleplay for the big screen but it became the most acclaimed, winning the first ever Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and then the Oscar for Best Picture (along with Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, the latter in a moment where there wasn’t a distinction between Original and Adapted so that Chayefsky could win for a reworking of his teleplay). It is perhaps worth noting that the Oscar for Best Picture the following year went to the big-cast, multiple location epic Around the World in Eighty Days – Hollywood thereby returning to business as usual. But Marty helped legitimate a tradition of intimate dramas that, as entertainment journalists Bryan Reesman and Max Evry note in their well-researched and wide-ranging commentary track for the Blu-ray of Marty, led to the low-budget indie tales of recent decades. (The commentators are particularly good at noting Marty’s direct influence on the Baltimore working class narratives of Barry Levinson.)

Reesman and Evry make continued reference to the celebrated TV version of Marty from 1953 where the key roles were played by Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand, and it’s too bad this Blu-ray edition of the film couldn’t have included the earlier teleplay. (Maybe there were licensing issues?) The only added Marty features in fact are a trailer for the film (along with other of the intimate films made from teleplays) and the commentary track. The latter is quite rich in insights – about similar small dramas of the time, about European influences on working class Hollywood realism, about the writer and director and the actors, and so on. At times perhaps, the very capaciousness of the commentary means that the film itself can get left behind. But Marty is itself emotionally resonant enough to stand on its own as one watches this very key film of the 1950s.

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(Dana Polan is the author of "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture". Click here to order from Amazon

By John M. Whalen

"A JOB OF WORK”

“Wagon Master” (1950), a Blu-Ray release from the Warner Archive, is director John Ford’s film about the first wagon train of Mormons to cross miles of treacherous desert and mountain terrain in order to settle in Utah’s San Juan Valley. It opens, however, with a short, almost incongruous prelude, in which an outlaw family known as the Cleggs robs a bank. They kill a bank employee and, after family patriarch Uncle Shiloh (Charles Kemper) takes a bullet in the shoulder, they run off into the desert with the money. They are pursued by the sheriff and his posse but we don’t see much of them again for another 40 minutes. But you know they’re out there.

Ward Bond, one of Ford’s “stock company” players, is Elder Wiggins, the Mormon leader, who started out for San Juan without exactly knowing how to get there. He runs into a couple of wandering cowboys, Travis Blue (Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey, Jr.), who’ve just come from the San Juan River area. At first they resist his offer of a job, until Sandy meets Prudence Perkins (Kathleen O’Malley), daughter of Adam Perkins (Russell Simpson) one of the Mormon Elders. He convinces Travis to accept the job as Wagon Master.

The next half hour shows us the hardships they had to endure during the desert crossing, while Sandy and Prudence start a romance, and the laconic Travis whittles a stick and plays with his lariat. On the way, however, they encounter a broken down medicine show wagon belonging to Doctor A. Locksley Hall (Alan Mowbray), who is accompanied by two showgirls, Denver (Joanne Dru) and Fleuretty Phyffe (Ruth Clifford). Mowbray plays almost the same character he played in Ford’s “My Darling Clementine” and Denver is one of Ford’s typical Shady Ladies, similar to Dallas (Claire Trevor) in “Stagecoach” (1939). Travis falls for her.

The wagon train starts to run out of water at one point but they make it to a river and that night everybody’s happy and they do what all John Ford pioneer do in that situation. They have a hoe down—in the middle of which, who should show up, looking like a pack of mangy coyotes? You guessed it. The Cleggs. They come in out of the night carrying rifles and have the Mormons at their mercy. The Cleggs must have been close relatives of the Hammonds, the subhuman gold miners who would show up some 12 years later in Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” (1962). Surely Peckinpah was “inspired” by Hank Worden’s imbecilic Luke Clegg when he cast Warren Oates as the degenerate Henry Hammond, who never took baths and wanted to share his brother Billy’s new bride on their wedding night. The whole Hammond clan look, talk, and act exactly like the Cleggs. But that’s a topic for another discussion.

At any rate, they force Doc Hall to take the bullet out of Uncle Shiloh’s shoulder and decide to stick with the Mormons until such time as they can be sure the sheriff and his posse have stopped looking for them. Next some Navajos show up. But they are friendly, because, while they don’t like white men “because they’re thieves,” they do like Mormons because they are only “little thieves.” But when one of the Cleggs molests a Navajo woman, Wiggins is forced to order the offending Clegg tied to a wagon wheel and whipped. When Uncle Shiloh protests, Wiggins tells him a whipping is better than a scalping. But the incident creates resentment in Uncle Shiloh that will result in a final showdown later on.

“Wagon Master” is classic John Ford, filmed on location in Monument Valley and Moab, Utah, with Ford’s iconic imagery and the usual thematic statements about the indomitability of the human spirit, and the development of a community in an unfriendly wilderness. But it differs from most of his other films in two ways. First of all, although it was filmed on Ford’s favorite location, it was shot by cinematographer Bert Glendon in black and white instead of color. He eschewed the gorgeous hues of Monument Valley, and instead created a backdrop that seems more fitting the grim life and death struggle of the Mormons trying to reach the Promised Land. Second, unlike the other films he shot there, whether in color or black and white, there is no larger- than- life hero, no John Wayne, or Henry Fonda, to take on the heavies and save the day. In “Wagon Master” the main characters are all average people. Travis and Sandy are simply drifters. Elder Wiggins is a man of strong character, but neither he, nor Sandy or Travis are gunmen. They admit to themselves and each other they’re scared of the Cleggs, but Wiggins says he’ll never let them know it. Nor will he let his people know it. Without the Duke, the little people have to stand up for themselves.

The Warner Archive has provided a clear, sharp 1080p high definition transfer of the film to disc, as well as a terrific audio commentary track, featuring director Peter Bogdanovich and cast member Harry Carey, Jr. talking about the film as they watch it. Carey tells what it was like, and how he felt, working with Ford. His comments are priceless. In one scene where Ford tilted his hat to one side, Carey gripes to Bogdanovich: “Why did he have me wear my hat that way? I look like a village idiot!”

Bogdanovich and Carey’s commentary is interspersed with audio clips of Bogdanovich’s 1966 interview with Ford himself, in which he presents his own view of his work. He tells Bogdanovich he never thought of his films in terms of them being art. “I am a hard-nosed director,” he says. “I’m not carrying any messages. I have no personal feelings about the pictures. If I liked the script, I shot it. It was nothing earth-shaking. It was a job of work.”

It may have been just a job as far as Ford was concerned, but it was a job he did extremely well and sometimes a job of work can be a work of art. Highly recommended.

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

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The first major "biker movie" was the 1953 production of "The Wild One", which elevated Marlon Brando from being a hot Hollywood commodity to that of a pop culture icon. Posters of him in his leather jacket and biker's cap still adorn walls today. Given the success of the film, it's surprising that it took until 1966 for the biker film to emerge as a genre. That occurred with the release of Roger Corman's "The Wild Angels". The film- like all Corman productions- was shot on a modest budget but was efficiently made, starred a host of young talents and made a boatload of money (spawning two soundtrack albums in the process.) "The Wild Angels" begat "The Born Losers", which pitted Tom Laughlin's Billy Jack against savage bikers and that begat a host of other lower-grade biker flicks of varying merits. Of course, the genre would hit its peak with Dennis Hopper's 1969 pop culture classic "Easy Rider". At the bottom of the biker barrel was "The Rebel Rousers", a 1967 crudely-made production that was deemed unworthy of a theatrical release. The film did afford prominent roles to up-and-comers Bruce Dern, Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nicholson and after the latter was vaulted to stardom with his Oscar-nominated turn in "Easy Rider", someone dusted off "The Rebel Rousers" and promoted it as a Nicholson flick. The film is the creation of Martin B. Cohen, who co-wrote the screenplay and kind of directed it. (Many of the scenes between the bikers appear to have been improvised.) 

The movie's top-billed star is Cameron Mitchell, who plays Paul Collier, a free-spirited type who arrives in a tiny desert town in search of his lover, Karen (Diane Ladd, the real-life wife of Bruce Dern and another member of "The Wild Angels" cast.) When he finally locates her in a motel, their reunion is less-than-sentimental. She explains that she learned she was pregnant with Paul's child and, fearing he would insist that she undergo an illegal abortion, she fled for parts unknown with little money and even fewer resources. (In reality, Ladd was pregnant with future Oscar winner Laura Dern.) Paul accepts the responsibility for her dilemma and insists on marrying her, but Karen declines on the basis that she fears Paul's life as a rolling stone type would only lead him to abandon her at some point. As the two debate their plans for the future, a secondary plot takes hold in which the Rebel Rousers biker gang rides into town and takes over the local saloon, wreaking havoc, accosting women and causing the town's sheriff (John 'Bud'Cardos) to courageously force them out of town. The gang obliges, but refuse to leave the immediate area, causing headaches for the locals and the sheriff. A chance encounter between Paul and Karen and gang members seems certain to lead to tragedy, as the bikers torment their victims. However, the leader of the gang, J.J. Weston (Dern) turns out to be an old high school acquaintance of Paul's. He "invites" them to join the gang for some festivities on a nearby beach, leaving them no alternative but to comply. Things get out of hand quickly, however, when Bunny (Nicholson), one of the most brutal members of the gang, decides he wants to force himself on Karen. Paul is beaten to a pulp but J.J., showing a smattering of human compassion, challenges Bunny to some motorcycle stunt games on the beach. If Bunny wins, he can claim Karen as his prize. If not, she goes free. The film lumbers to a clunky conclusion in which Paul fails to rally any of the cowardly townspeople to help him rescue Karen (shade of "High Noon"!) and it falls to a previously unseen character (Robert Dix) to unconvincingly take on the mantel of hero.   

The film is so sloppily constructed that even Martin Cohen would publicly disown it. The cinematography by the soon-to-be esteemed Laszlo Kovacs and Glen Smith is rather amateurish and there is little evidence of the future star power pertaining to its stars. Only Cameron Mitchell and Diane Ladd provide performances that resonate in any way. There is some minor suspense when the gang kidnap Paul and Karen but much screen time is taken up and padded out with Dern and Nicholson performing some boring biker competitions on the beach. "The Rebel Rousers" has been released on DVD by the indie label Liberty Hall. The print, as you might suspect, has not undergone any restoration efforts and is therefore mediocre, but that's a bit better than I suspected it would be.

The DVD is billed as a "Biker Triple Feature" because it contains two other wildly diverse bonus films. The first, "The Wild Ride", is a micro-budget 1960 production that runs only 61 minutes. It has nothing to do with bikers or biking but does feature Jack Nicholson in an early leading role. He plays the narcissistic and cruel leader of a group of high school students who have formed a cult of personality around him. He routinely insults and abuses them and drops one of his girlfriends, telling her "You're too old." Nicholson, was actually 23 years-old at the time, gives a rather one-note performance under the direction of Harvey Berman, who probably would have tried harder if he knew he had a future cinema icon in his film. The titular wild ride refers to an incident in which Nicholson's speeding car is pursued by a police officer on a motorcycle. The cop crashes and dies and Nicholson faces consequences for his actions. The movie is briskly paced and is entertaining but one can only wonder why Nicholson's character continues to receive unquestioned loyalty, given his rude, crude and cruel ways. On the other hand, we're living in a time in which rude, crude and cruel authoritarian figures are all the rage among vast numbers of the world population, so perhaps the scenario isn't irrational. The print quality is passable, if a bit grainy, though it has been restored by one Johnny Legend in 2009, as evidenced in the credits.

The second bonus feature is titled "Biker Babylon" (aka "It's a Revolution Mother!" (sic), a 1969 feature length documentary directed by Harry Kerwin and a team of fellow future filmmakers of "B" horror flicks. The film's opening credits say we'll see over 5,000 people attending an anti-Vietnam War peach march. Apparently, the team didn't watch their own footage, as the November, 1969 march attracted over a half-million people. The footage of the peace marchers is awkwardly and weirdly juxtaposed with separate segments that follow the exploits of a biker gang known as The Aliens over a particular weekend in which they play to the camera by engaging in outrageous behavior including having a Wesson Oil party that, as you might imagine, involves plenty of naked female flesh. We're told that the role of young women in the gang is to be owned by either a particular member or be regarded as common property for the men to have sex with on a whim. Things then move to a Florida Woodstock-like music festival where bikers and rock fans mingle without much to show for it. For whatever reason, the filmmakers don't show us the rock acts but instead just concentrate on thousands of hot, sweaty young people milling about in a muddy terrain.

The most interesting aspect of the set is this documentary, however, largely because it does crudely capture the anti-Vietnam War movement at its peak. It provides an interesting time capsule as everyday citizens  march with celebrity activists such as Dr. Spock and Dick Gregory, with Gregory demanding that the Nixon administration end the war. (Gregory refers to Vice-President Agnew as Washington D.C.'s version of "Rosemary's Baby". ) What is lacking is context. Nixon squeaked into the presidency in 1968, winning a razor-thin contest against Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, largely on running a campaign that promised he had a "secret plan" to end the war that would only be revealed after he took office. The plan turned out to be an escalation of the conflict that would drift into Cambodia. His "law-and-order" administration saw Agnew resign in disgrace after being caught accepting bribes, a practice he had carried over from his tenure as governor of Maryland. Of course, Nixon himself would be caught having covered up for the Watergate break-in and he, too, would resign from office under threat of impeachment from prominent fellow Republicans. Dozens of members of his administration would would be convicted of or plead guilty to crimes. It would have been worth the effort for someone to provide a commentary track reviewing the documentary in a modern context and providing insights into historical events. Instead we get an unintentionally hilarious narrator who peppers his every sentence with perceived hippie jargon in an attempt to appear cool. Instead, he sounds like Jack Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday in one of those "Dragnet" episodes in which he lectures teens about drugs using their own lingo.

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Photo: Montclair Film.

By Lee Pfeiffer 

Brendan Fraser started as most actors do, trying to land supporting roles in high profile films. He landed the leading role in low-brow 1992 comedy "Encino Man" in which he played a caveman in the modern era. Over the next few years, he worked steadily- if unevenly- in a range of films that failed to score at the boxoffice. That changed in 1997 when he played the role of George of the Jungle, a big screen adaptation of a 1960s cartoon series. With his hunky good looks, athletic physique and ability to perform difficult stunts, Fraser was in demand when the film proved to be a hit. More successes followed with "The Mummy" and its sequel. Fraser excelled in playing genial, if fallible action heroes and romantic leads, but he also proved he had the talent to portray dramatic characters as well, as evidenced by his acclaimed performances in "Gods and Monsters" and "The Quiet American". He also won plaudits for his performance as Brick in a 2001 stage production of Tennessee Williams' classic "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Then things slowed down. A few modest hits aside, Fraser appeared mostly in forgettable films and in supporting roles in TV productions. A volatile divorce, medical consequences from the many stunts her performed earlier in his career and other personal challenges led to him virtually dropping out of sight a few years ago. Fans who had grown up on his work in the 1990s speculated that he might soon fit into the "Whatever happened to?" category. His much-anticipated role as a villain in the "Batgirl" feature film was a casualty of Warner Brothers' decision to cancel the unfinished film. But Fraser has had plenty to be happy about recently. He landed a major role in Martin Scorsese's currently-filming "Killers of the Flower Moon" and has recently generated Oscar buzz for his leading role in director Darren Aronofsky's dramatic film "The Whale", which premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival to a six-minute standing ovation.

I joined my fellow ink-stained wretches of the press for a screening of the film last Sunday at The Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey. Fraser was on hand to be interviewed by Stephen Colbert, who resides in Montclair and who, along with his wife Evelyn, have been major players in the creation of the film festival, which holds screenings in two local historic theaters, the one-time Cinerama showcase The Claridge and the Wellmont, a grand old venue where this event took place. The cavernous Wellmont had a packed house and the crowd was made up of true cinephiles, as evidenced by their rapt attention to the film and the interview that followed. Nobody was texting, talking or otherwise distracting from the proceedings, despite the fact that there were three bars on site dispensing plenty of adult beverages. This was my first time attending the festival and I was impressed by the atmosphere and choice of venues.

As for "The Whale", like many critics, I found myself with mixed feelings. The primary reason to see the film is because of Fraser's justifiably acclaimed performance. It has been noted that the actor is now more beefy than beefcake but don't confuse Fraser with Charlie, the character he plays in the film, who is a 600-pound man confined to his apartment. Fraser required a rather amazing prosthetic "fat suit" as well as some convincing CGI effects to convincingly play a person this morbidly obese. The film opens on a jarring note. Charlie is slouched in his couch masturbating to a gay porn video, and his aroused state almost causes his death. In fact, virtually every movement is a challenge for Charlie, a kindhearted man whose only regular connection to society is his job teaching an online college course in literature via Zoom. Because he is ashamed of his appearance, he tells his students that his camera is broken. He can see them, but they can't see him, which unintentionally allows him to create an air of mystery about his persona. Charlie is obsessed with Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", and the analogy between the great white whale and his own physical state is obvious. Charlie receives a visit from a young evangelist, Thomas (Ty Simpkins) who ostensibly is there to spread the word from the Good Book but who ends up assisting and befriending Charlie, while keeping a secret about his own background. Next in line to visit is Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie's estranged teenage daughter who lugs a pretty good number of plot devices in the door with her. Seems Charlie was once married but left Sadie and her mother when she was very young when he came out of the closet and lived with his lover, who is now deceased and whose memory leaves Charlie in a constant state of despair. This first plot contrivance doesn't hold up for the simple reason that Charlie and his wife and daughter all still live in the same town, so it seems unlikely they would have had no social interaction until now. Next up among the visitors is Liz (Hong Chau), a saucy, no-nonsense nurse who happens to be a personal friend of Charlie. In between looking after his endless medical needs, she lectures him about his health to little avail. Rounding out the parade of eccentric troubadours dropping in on this mini Grand Central Station is Charlie's ex-wife Mary (Samantha Morton), who discusses their mutual concerns about Ellie's rebellious nature and self-destructive tendencies, all of which are squarely blamed on Charlie's negligence toward her.

"The Whale" is based on Samuel D. Hunter's stage play and film looks very much like a filmed stage production. There are precious few exterior shots and the murky interior cinematography by Matthew Libatique, combined with Ron Simonsen's eerie score, results in the mood of a horror film being prevalent. Hunter's screenplay and Aronofsky's direction tip off all but the most gullible viewer that their emotions are being exploited in a naked and shameless manner. Nothing wrong with that. Chaplin did the same with the final scene of "City Lights", as the Little Tramp unveils his identity to his once-blind paramour in a scene that may be the most touching in screen history. But "The Whale" is loaded up with a lot of contrived crises. Charlie is a sympathetic figure throughout but Ellie is painted as the Cruella DeVil of the high school set, a  one-note character that you try in vain to find redeeming qualities in. She even charges her own father money in order to spend time with her. Director Aronofsky has Sadie Sink go for the rafters in terms of her cruelty but we know from minute one that at some point she'll fall for young Thomas in another improbable plot twist. The actors can't be faulted. They're just following orders. The only believable character aside from Charlie is Liz the nurse and Hong Chau registers strongly in the role. The most affecting scenes are those centering on Charlie as an individual, as we watch seemingly mundane actions such as attempting to stand up evolve into "Mission: Impossible"-like scenarios. It's painful to watch Fraser, but that's the point. Regardless of the film's flaws, his performance is flawless. "The Whale" isn't the first film to portray morbidly obese people in a sympathetic fashion. Director Anne Bancroft's 1979 film "Fatso" did so through a serio-comedic lens. "The Whale", however, provides precious few reasons to smile.   

Following the screening, Brendan Fraser and Stephen Colbert took to the stage to Fraser's latest standing ovation. He appeared genuinely moved and in discussion with Colbert, it became clear how grateful he is to have been cast as Charlie. The chat reinforced Fraser's image as a Mister Nice Guy and to Colbert's credit, he suppressed his comedic side and did nothing to overshadow Fraser in any way. The interview was enjoyable and insightful.  

"The Whale" is a flawed film but no so flawed that it can't be recommended for those who seek a moving, if manipulative drama, as well as the performance of a lifetime by Brendan Fraser.

The film will open on December 9.

By Fred Blosser

If you fear losing your energy and creativity (among other things) as soon as you enter your sixth decade, just consider John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Henry Hathaway, and take heart. Ford worked until age 71 (his last Western was “Cheyenne Autumn, 1964, and his final film, “7 Women,” 1966), Hawks until 75 (“Rio Lobo,” 1971), and Hathaway until 76. Hathaway’s final Western was “Shoot Out,” which opened on October 13, 1971, when he was 73. In the movie, Clay Lomax (Gregory Peck) is released from prison after serving a seven-year sentence for bank robbery. Lomax’s eyes have a steely, distant glare as he buckles on his six-shooter. “You hate me, but there’s someone out there you hate more,” the warden guesses. “Someone” is Lomax’s former partner, Sam Foley (James Gregory), who betrayed Clay and shot him in the back as the pair fled with their stolen money. Clay was captured and Sam got away. Lomax intends to find Foley, who now lives comfortably on their loot, passing himself off as a retired businessman. In turn, learning that Lomax is a free man again, Foley hires three loutish gunmen to trail his

former friend. The leader of the trio, Bobby Jay (Robert E. Lyons), offers to kill Clay, but Foley says no; just keep an eye on him and let me know if he comes this way. Does Foley hope that Clay will just go away? Will he try to make amends if Lomax pays a visit? Or will he use the pistol hidden in his desk drawer? It isn’t exactly clear, and maybe Sam himself doesn’t know.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt about Lomax’s lust for revenge. But first, leaving the penitentiary, he has to stop at the railroad depot in nearby Weed City, where he has arranged to meet a former girlfriend, a prostitute, who holds a sum of money in safekeeping for him. The money arrives but not the girlfriend, who died on her way from Kansas City. Instead, the woman’s now-orphaned daughter, six-year-old Decky (Dawn Lyn), steps off the train. To claim his money, Clay has to take Decky too. The stymied ex-convict tries to hand the little girl off to a succession of people, without any luck. Orphaned, abandoned children are about as welcome in the fictitious Weed City as they are in real life.

Clay doesn’t know where to find Foley, but a mutual acquaintance, Trooper (Jeff Corey), does. The crusty, wheelchair-bound saloon owner agrees to divulge Sam’s current location—for $200. Bobby Jay and his friends also show up Trooper’s establishment, keeping tabs on Clay. You’d think they’d try to draw as little attention to themselves as possible, but they’re as stupid as they are malicious. When they provoke a fight with Lomax, he cleans the floor with all three. The louts later tangle with Trooper after they damage his property and refuse to pay the abused saloon girl they spent the night with, Alma (Susan Tyrell). They murder Trooper, but the saloon-keeper manages to disclose Foley’s whereabouts before he dies. Lomax heads out to find his quarry, several days’ ride away in Gun Hill, with Decky in tow. Along the way, having bonded after a gruff start, they find shelter from a rainstorm at a ranch owned by a lonely widow, Juliana (Pat Quinn). Juliana’s ranch hands are away in town for the night, giving her and Clay a chance to strike up a romance. But the isolation also puts Juliana, her young son, Lomax, and Decky in danger when the volatile Bobby Jay and his friends turn up and invade her house.

“Shoot Out” was produced by Hal B. Wallis and written by Marguerite Roberts. Both had collaborated with Hathaway on the wildly popular “True Grit” two years before. The three hoped to repeat that success with a similar story about a growing attachment between a flinty old gunfighter and a spunky girl, even costuming Dawn Lyn’s Decky in a smaller replica of Kim Darby’s outfit from “True Grit.” But the strategy backfired when critics measured “Shoot Out” against the 1969 Western and found it wanting. They might have been kinder if they had known that well-written, briskly directed, unpretentious Westerns like “Shoot Out” were approaching the end of their shelf life in the 1970s. Ford and Hawks had become favorites of younger critics like Peter Bogdanovich and Robin Wood, but appreciation for Hathaway’s considerable talents lagged, and still does.

Marguerite Roberts had worked in Hollywood for nearly as long as Hathaway. He started in the prop department in 1919 and directed his first feature, a Zane Grey Western, in 1932. She began as a studio secretary in 1927 and sold her first screenplay in 1934, beginning a long career as a screenwriter that was interrupted from 1952 to 1962. During those ten years, she was blacklisted for refusing to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. A scene in “Shoot Out” suggests that Roberts retained painful emotions from the experience. Having burst into Juliana’s house, the unhinged Bobby Jay terrorizes his hostages when he proposes to display his marksmanship by shooting a cup off of the widow’s son’s head. Juliana argues the gunman out of putting her son in danger, but doesn’t resist when he orders her to move the cup to Decky’s head instead. The credits for “Shoot Out” cite Will James’ 1926 memoir, “Lone Cowboy: My Life Story,” as the source for Roberts’ screenplay, but the real inspiration seems to be George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” The sentimental 1861 novel was once the bane of 15-year-olds for whom it was required reading in high school English classes, before it was replaced by more contemporary fare like “Catcher in the Rye.”

A new Blu-ray edition of “Shoot Out” from Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents the film in a sharp hi-def transfer that looks equally attractive in its sunny outdoor scenes, filmed in New Mexico, and in the rich, masculine red and green lampshades and upholstery in Sam Foley’s private office. In a fine audio commentary, critic Nick Pinkerton notes that the production punches up its standard revenge story with the violent, sexually frank revisionist elements common in the Westerns of the early 1970s, a trend that Hathaway himself helped pioneer with “Nevada Smith” in 1966. Gone is the old B-Western

pretense that saloon hostesses did no more than serve drinks and dance the can-can. Trooper’s four prostitutes are sad, alcoholic women with impoverished pasts, who suffer physical and verbal mistreatment from the men they solicit. If the fate of Decky’s mother is any indication, their life expectancy from illness, alcoholism, and exploitation will be short. The train conductor who delivers Decky to Clay’s care (played by Paul Fix, one of several Western old-timers in the supporting cast) asks Clay how old her mother was. “Thirty,” he responds. “She looked fifty,” the conductor says. “Shoot Out” was rated “GP” (the short-lived precursor of “PG”), classifying it as suitable for general audiences, but advising “parental guidance.” The newly instituted MPAA ratings system was tricky to figure out. I wonder how many parents interpreted GP to mean “bring the kids,” on the assumption that a movie with Gregory Peck and a little girl couldn’t be any saltier than the watered-down TV Westerns of the era.

Pinkerton calls the subplot about the embittered gunman and the orphaned child “cloying,” but it’s a matter of opinion. Dawn Lyn’s role is crafted and performed with a nice balance of feistiness and vulnerability, and she and Peck play off well against each other. Is Lomax the biological father of Decky, as we infer from her mother placing her in his care . . . or not? The question becomes academic once each develops a soft spot for the other. In addition to the Nick Pinkerton commentary, the Blu-ray also includes the theatrical trailer and previews of other 1970s Westerns from KL Studio Classics.

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

By Dana Polan

Railroaded, Detour, Caught, I Wake Up Screaming, Private Hell 36. . . Raw Deal, and so on and so on: the titles of film noir often offer harsh tales of dismal entrapment and victimization, and it is tempting to wonder what audiences made of these harrowing, even unpleasurable, thrillers of inevitable male degradation. Did these sometimes nasty films put the lie to the golden glow of films that celebrated the American dream? Or did they confirm the seeming possibility of that dream by allowing viewers to feel superior to the doomed characters in these films? Placed on the double bill with generally respectable and even uplifting “A” pictures, these programmers or downright “B”-films speak with a cynicism and despair that might perhaps have stood in complex relation to the positive yearnings of the Hollywood dream factory. At a tight 79-minutes, Raw Deal is the tautest of the taut – a sharp exercise in futility and fatalism. It excels through the sharp cinematography of the great noir cameraman John Alton: deep focus scenes composed around diagonals from way in the back to looming objects or bodies or faces in the foreground; low angles; and above all, what film historian Jeremy Arnold in his rich commentary for this Bu-ray edition of Raw Deal terms “tons of darkness with little pools of light” (sometimes, in fact, not even pools but just a gleam or glitter furtively trying to stick out in the inky black). Raw Deal stands apart moreover by employment of a female voice-over (deadpan, often present-tense, bleakness from the criminal protagonist’s world-weary moll, Pat, played by Claire Trevor), rare in films noirs of the times. Pat’s narration shows her to be jaded yet devoted to loser anti-hero Joe (Dennis O’Keefe) who breaks out of the pen to get money owed him by the most evil of evil gangsters (a so-menacing Raymond Burr). But Joe falls for the innocent Ann (Marsha Hunt), his lawyer’s assistant whom he takes hostage, and by the film’s set of final confrontations, both action-oriented, and romantic, all bets are off as to what moral position will win out and who indeed will survive between venality and redemption. Pushing violence to an extreme (especially, a fire thrown into a female face, years before the coffee-to-the-kisser shock in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat), Raw Deal packs a series of dramatic and emotional wallops as overpowering as the punches in a darkened room fight that comes virtually mid-way through the film.

In addition to the aforementioned commentary track by Jeremy Arnold, very insightful about the film’s employment of expressive techniques and noir visual style to convey a narrative of inevitable entrapment, this new Classicflix Blu-ray edition of Raw Deal includes short featurettes on the film’s making and on actor Dennis O’Keefe that are not very deep in historical exploration but are short enough to be consumed easily quickly as one gives greater attention to richer materials on the Blu-ray : that commentary track (which manages to cram in lots of facts about the stars and extras even as it tells us so much about visual – and also musical – style) and a nice booklet by Mann scholar Max Alvarez. There’s an image gallery which perhaps devotes a little too much time to images from the film itself (which, after all, is what most purchasers of the Blu-ray will attend to, rather than just stills) although it nicely includes some of the various poster and color ads that promoted Raw Deal.

Like so many other films, though, and especially in the case of this one, where one might wonder what the Hays Office might have made of the movie’s severe level of violence and corporeal threat (as in an antler on an stuffed animal that one criminal tries to impale another’s eye on), it is easy to lament that the extras didn’t include Production Code files or other production documents. Jeremy Arnold and Max Alvarez do provide valuable background in their scholarly contributions, though, and confirm just how much Raw Deal merits close study and just how much the downbeat world of noir overall commands our emotional and intellectual attention as an striking and critical mode of American popular culture.

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(Dana Polan is the author of "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture". Click here to order from Amazon

BY LEE PFEIFFER

When they say "They don't make 'em like that anymore" it could well be in reference to "The Honey Pot", a delightful 1967 concoction.The film is the kind of star-studded comedy/mystery that has recently made a comeback through the "Knives Out" movies. However, this film barely registers in the minds of most movie-goers and was not successful when it was first released. (The studio even reissued it under a new title, "It Comes Up Murder".) The project was cursed from the beginning. The original cinematographer, Gianni Di Venanzo, died before production was completed. When the film was released in select engagements, the running time was 150 minutes, which was deemed to be far too long for this modest enterprise that is confined largely to interiors. For general release, 18 minutes were cut, although some of those scenes still appeared in lobby cards advertising the movie. One well-known character actor, Herschel Bernardi, had his entire role eliminated. Additionally, the film's producer Charles K. Feldman was under a great deal of stress, as he was simultaneously overseeing production on his bloated, out-of-control spoof version of the James Bond novel "Casino Royale". Yet, what emerges somehow managed to end up being quite entertaining, thanks in no small part to the larger-than-life Rex Harrison having a field day playing an equally larger-than-life rich cad. Essentially, he's playing Henry Higgins from "My Fair Lady" once again- only this time with a more devious streak. Both characters are filthy rich. Both are erudite and sophisticated snobs who devise cruel games involving innocents in return for his own self-amusement. Harrison is a wicked but lovable character. You can't help cheering him on despite his lack of ethical convictions.

The film, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is cobbled together from Frederick Knotts' play "Mr. Fox of Venice" and Thomas Sterling's novel "The Evil of the Day" with a healthy dose of Ben Johnson's play "Volpone" tossed in. In fact the film opens with Harrison as the pretentiously-named Cecil Sheridan Fox enjoying a performance of "Volpone" at a magnificent Venetian theater. The camera pans back to show that this is a private performance for Fox alone. He stops the play before the finale, thanks the cast members for a spirited production and leaves the scene. Yes, he's that rich. We soon learn that he is using elements of "Volpone" to orchestrate an elaborate and expensive practical joke. The first step comes when he hires an unemployed American actor, William McFly (Cliff Robertson) to be his hired hand. He informs McFly that he must pose as Fox's long-time major domo in his elaborate mansion house, which is impressively located right on one of the canals. Fox explains to McFly that he has written to three former lovers and told them he is terminally ill. None of the women know that the others have been informed. He reasons that they will all make a bee-line directly to him, ostensibly to care for him, but in reality in hopes of inheriting his fortune. First on his list is Lone Star Crockett (Susan Hayward), who Fox wooed when she was a wild teenager. In the course of their affair, he put her on the road to a life of luxury and pleasure. Then there is Princess Dominique (Capucine), an exotic beauty who is in a troubled marriage and Merle McGill (Edie Adams), a famous but fading movie star. On the surface, all three of these women are independently wealthy and shouldn't need his fortune. But he suspects that, in reality, all are in some degree of financial distress and he wants to see if they will compete with each other to earn his favor. Sure enough, each of the ladies arrive at his home and are surprised to see they have two female competitors. Lone Star is now a cranky hypochondriac who requires constant pampering from her ever-present companion, a spinster named Sarah Watkins (Maggie Smith). Dominique tries to put on an air of self-assurance and Merle is a wise-cracking cynic. All of them individually express their sympathies to Fox and there is even the occasional attempt at seduction. Fox puts on a show that he is desperately ill and even sits in bed affixed to an oxygen tank. In private, however, he blasts classical music and dances around the room, delighted that his perceptions of human behavior are proving to be true. The plot takes several major swings in due course, however, when one of the women ends up dead, ostensibly from an overdose of sleeping pills. However, McFly and Sarah suspect murder is afoot. The film then becomes one of those time-honored drawing room mysteries with upper crust characters matching wits with the local inspector (Adolfo Celi, marvelous in a rare comedic role.) 

To describe the plot in any further detail would necessitate providing some spoilers. Suffice it to say there are plenty of red herrings and a complex plot that will demand your constant attention or you will be hopelessly lost.  

The performances are all first rate, though Capucine (never one who mastered the light touch that these sorts of comedies require) is a bit stiff. However, Hayward and Adams pick up the slack with very funny characterizations. The scene stealer among the women, however, is Maggie Smith, who is more streetwise than any of the others suspect. As for Harrison, he seems to be having a genuine ball, chewing the scenery and dispensing bon mots that are consistently amusing. The sequence in which he dances around his bed chamber is one for the ages. 

"The Honey Pot" deserved a better fate than it received when it was released theatrically. Hopefully it will get a more appreciative audience through streaming and a Kino Lorber Blu-ray that is available.

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BY JOHN LEMAY

Though this author has seen many Italian Westerns, for years I had avoided watching Navajo Joe because I had wrongly assumed it was an American Western due to its star: Burt Reynolds. Happily, I discovered that Navajo Joe is a solidly entertaining film. Reynolds stars as the title character, out for revenge after a gang of cutthroats massacres his tribe and scalps his wife. The rest of the film shows Reynolds hunting down the bandits and killing them one by one. Naturally, as this is a Spaghetti Western, Joe has a few anti-hero traits. When the same outlaw gang begins terrorizing the town of Esperanza, Joe dupes the townspeople into paying him to kill the gang, thus managing to profit from an act he was intending to carry out anyway (hence the film's Italian title A Dollar a Head). Though a solid film produced by Dino de Laurentiis, directed by Sergio Corbucci (Django) and scored by Ennio Morricone, Burt Reynolds often puts the movie down, stating that it could only be shown in prisons and on airplanes to truly captive audiences that couldn't escape. Supposedly the bad blood began when Reynolds misunderstood that he was to be working with Sergio Leone rather than Sergio Corbucci, and vice versa Corbucci initially hoped to cast Marlon Brando. Due to the mutual disappointment the director and his star didn't get along terribly well. The film was shot between two of Corbucci's other westerns, Johnny Oro (1966) and Hellbenders (1967). The camera work and direction for the action scenes are top notch and Reynolds himself was said to have done his own stunts, in addition to overseeing the stunt work on the entire film. Ennio Morricone (under the alias of Leo Nichols) composes another good score, with the main theme being the most memorable.

The picture quality on the Blu-ray, though not flawless, is good overall. Included in the special features is a commentary track by the Kino Lorber Senior Vice President of Theatrical Releasing, Gary Palmucci. In addition to the usual cast and crew backgrounds, Palmucci also offers up some interesting insights into running a company such as Kino Lorber and how they acquire their various titles. The Blu-ray also comes with a trailer for Navajo Joe and other Reynolds MGM/UA action films White Lightning, Gator and Malone.

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John LeMay is the author of several western non-fiction titles, among them Tall Tales and Half Truths of Billy the Kid. Click here to order from Amazon.

By Lee Pfeiffer

If you are a subscriber to Amazon Prime, you already know that the service is a goldmine of retro movies and TV shows that are included in the annual subscription fee. You have probably also noticed that there are independent movie screening services that you can subscribe to for separate fees and these can be played conveniently through the Amazon Prime app. These separate streaming services are usually built around a niche such as horror films, westerns, foreign films, etc. One of the apps I recently discovered is Screenpix and for a paltry $2.99 a month, you can access a wide range of retro movies that are not included in Amazon Prime's catalog. The service gives you a 7-day free trial and is also available through Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV and Playstation. Here are just some of the titles I glimpsed in browsing through the service:

• "Shout at the Devil"
• "The Professionals"
• "Fail Safe"
• "The Innocents"
• "Red River"
• "Marooned"
• "Bus Stop"
• "To Catch a Thief"
• "The Blob" (original)
• "Rollerball" (original)
• "To Catch a Thief"
• "Stagecoach" (original)
• "Born Losers"
• "The African Queen"
• "Return of Sabata"
• "Attack on the Iron Coast"
• "The Wild Angels"
• "Billion Dollar Brain"
• "Where's Papa?"
• "Witchfinder General" (aka "The Conqueror Worm")
• "Attack!"
• "The 1,000 Plane Raid"
• "Woman of Straw"
• "House of Usher"
• "The Longest Day"
  

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

Newly restored in 4K Ultra HD, Elvis Presley’s beloved 1961 classic BLUE HAWAII arrives as part of the collectible Paramount Presents line on both 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray™ for the first time ever November 15, 2022!

Enjoy this rollicking Technicolor musical in ultra-crisp 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision™ and HDR-10.  Fully restored from the original 35mm camera negative, BLUE HAWAII looks more spectacular than ever with every colorful costume and vivid Hawaiian background brought to life.  The first of three films that Elvis shot in Hawaii, BLUE HAWAII celebrated the brand-new exotic state and features the massive hit song “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” which was certified platinum.

For the restoration, the original negative was scanned in 4K/16bit, however the opening title sequence was very grainy because it originally used duped film.  That sequence was completely rebuilt using the original film elements from the Paramount library.  Brand new text overlays were created for a truly spectacular opening sequence befitting this delightful film.

The Paramount Presents BLUE HAWAII release includes the film on both 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc™ and on Blu-ray, as well as access to a digital copy of the film.  The Blu-ray additionally includes the original theatrical trailer and the following new bonus content:

· Commentary by historian James L. Neibaur

· Blue Hawaii Photo Scrapbook—contains high-res images from the Paramount archives, including behind-the-scenes shots

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The year 1967 marked the high point of Sidney Poitier's screen career. He starred in three highly acclaimed box office hits: "To Sir, With Love", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "In the Heat of the Night".  The fact that Poitier did not score a Best Actor Oscar nomination that year had less to do with societal prejudices (he had already won an Oscar) than the fact that he was competing with himself and split the voter's choices for his best performance. "In the Heat of the Night" did win the Best Picture Oscar and immortalized Poitier's performance as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia detective who finds himself assigned to assist a redneck sheriff (Rod Steiger, who did win the Oscar that year for his performance in this film) in a town in the deep south that has experienced a grisly unsolved murder. When Steiger's character, resentful for having to work with a black man, refers to Tibbs as "boy" and asks what they call him back in Philadelphia, he replies "They call me Mister Tibbs!", thereby uttering what would become one of the cinema's most iconic lines of dialogue. In the film, Poitier plays Tibbs as a man of mystery. Little is unveiled about his personal life, which adds immeasurably to his mystique. He proves to be highly intelligent, logical and courageous, though refreshingly, not immune from making mistakes and misjudgments. The reaction to the movie was so good that, Hollywood being Hollywood, United Artists became convinced that Tibbs could be brought back to star in a "tentpole" series of crime thrillers. These have previously been released as individual Blu-ray titles by Kino Lorber and they are now available as a double feature set.

First up is the 1970 release, "The Call me MISTER Tibbs!" Aside from Poitier's commanding presence as the same character, there is virtually no connection between this Virgil Tibbs and the one seen in the previous film. The screenplay by Alan Trustman, who wrote the winners "The Thomas Crown Affair" and "Bullitt", softens the Tibbs character to the point that he resembles one of those unthreatening TV gumshoes. When we first see him, he is now in the San Francisco Police Department, though Trustman doesn't provide even a single line of dialogue to explain how he got there. He's apparently been there for some time, too, because Tibbs has suddenly acquired a wife (Barbara McNair) and a young son and daughter. The movie opens with the brutal murder of a call girl who lived in a pricey apartment. Evidence points to Tibbs' old friend Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau), a firebrand street preacher and activist who enjoys a wide following and who is galvanizing the community to vote in a politically controversial referendum. Sharpe professes his innocence and Tibbs sets out to acquit him and find the real killer. The trail quickly leads to a confusing mix of motley characters and red herrings, among them Anthony Zerbe and Ed Asner. Poitier is never less than impressive even when playing a watered-down version of a once gritty character. However, his impact is diminished by the sappy screenplay which allocates an abundance of time showing Tibbs dealing with day-to-day family living. He flirts with his wife and offers life lessons to his son that border on the extremes of political incorrectness. When he catches the lad smoking, Tibbs decides to teach the pre-teen a lesson by inviting him to join him in smoking Churchill cigars and drinking some scotch. (Most of our dads would probably have employed methods that were slightly more "conventional".) This domestic gibberish reduces the character of Tibbs to a big screen version of Brian Keith's Uncle Bill from the "Family Affair" TV series. Director Gordon Douglas, normally very underrated, handles the pedantic script in a pedantic manner, tossing in a few impressive action scenes including one in which Poitier chases Zerbe on foot seemingly through half of San Francisco in the movie's best sequence. The scenes between Poitier and Landau bristle with fine acting but they only share a limited amount of screen time. Quincy Jones provides a lively, funky jazz score but the film never rises above the level of mediocrity.

Poitier returned to the screen for the last time as Virgil Tibbs in 1971 in "The Organization". Compared to the previous outing, this one is superior on most levels. The script by James R. Webb is just as confusing but there is a grittiness to the production and the character of Tibbs is toughened up a bit. Thankfully, the scenes of his home life with wife and kids are kept to a minimum. The film, well directed by Don Medford (his final production), begins with an inspired caper in which a group of masked men stage an audacious and elaborate infiltration of an office building owned by some shady mob characters. They abscond with millions in cocaine. Tibbs is assigned to the case and is shocked when the culprits secretly approach him and admit they stole the drugs. Turns out they are community activists who wanted to prevent the cocaine from hitting the streets. However, they want Tibbs to know that they did not commit a murder that occurred on the premises of the office. They claim someone else did the dirty deed and is trying to pin it on them. Tibbs believes their story and goes against department protocols by keeping the information secret from his superiors while he works with the activists to crack the case. At some point the plot became so tangled that I gave up trying to figure out who was who and just sat back to enjoy the mayhem. Tibbs' withholding of information from the police department backfires on him and he ends up being suspended from the force. Predictably, he goes rogue in order to take on organized crime figures who are trying to get the drugs back. "The Organization" is fairly good Seventies cop fare capped off by a lengthy action sequence imaginatively set in a subway tunnel that is under construction. The supporting cast is impressive and includes reliable Sheree North, scruffy Allen Garfield and up-and-comers Raul Julia, Ron O'Neal and a very brief appearances by Max Gail and Damon Wilson. Barbara McNair returns as Mrs. Tibbs but her sole function is to provide attractive window dressing. Gil Melle provides a hip jazz score.

Both films boast fine transfers but the only bonus features are the original trailers.

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By Hank Reineke

On the eve of the November 1963 release of TWICE TOLD TALES, the British actor Sebastian Cabot would tell a reporter from the Copley News Service, “They’ve been after me to do more of the horror pictures with Vincent Price. I wouldn’t mind that a bit, though I must say I wouldn’t want to do them exclusively.” He intimated that he and his co-star had discussed a possible future pairing in “a light comedy” motion-picture. Alas, it was not to be; the two actors would not work together again. Cabot, of course, would soldier on and enjoy success as both a television personality and a recognizable voice-over actor. Following the passing of Boris Karloff in 1969, Vincent Price would reign as the big-screen’s uncontested “King of Horror.” Cabot’s estimation of Price as an actor “extremely adept” at light-comedy was incisive. Throughout his long and fabled career, Vincent Price’s on-screen ghoulishness would nearly always be mitigated with a wry smile and twinkle in the eye.

TWICE TOLD TALES is the second of two quickie vehicles in which Price starred for Robert E. Kent’s Admiral Pictures, Inc. (1962-1963). For their first pairing, DIARY OF A MADMAN (released in March 1963 and distributed through United Artists), Kent mined the imagination of the great French short-story writer Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant. That film’s ballyhoo proclaimed it “The Most Terrifying Motion Picture Ever Created!” It most certainly wasn’t, but the film still managed to be a worthwhile psychological thriller - though one that didn’t particularly resonate at the box-office. In what was obviously an attempt to capitalize on the low-budget but big commercial success of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for A.I.P, Kent quickly changed course and ambitiously turned to the short stories and novels of Nathanial Hawthorne for material.

Though a descendant of John Hathorne, the unrepentant magistrate who presided over the fate of several innocents during Salem, Massachusetts’s celebrated witch trials, Nathanial Hawthorne was a romanticist: he was not prominently a writer of mysteries or of fantastic fiction. Having said that, Hawthorne was not averse to penning a good ghost story or two and his talent had won him the praise of contemporaries. One such fan was Edgar Allan Poe himself. In his review of Hawthorne’s two volume collection of short stories TWICE TOLD TALES for Graham’s Magazine in May of 1842, Poe unabashedly pronounced the New Englander as “a man of truest genius… As Americans, we feel proud of this book.”

Of course Hollywood producers have always somehow managed to take great creative liberties with the acknowledged classics. Stories of cigar-chomping producers passing on tracts of classic literature so their stable of writers might “give ‘em a polish” are legion. Though Roger Corman’s series of Poe films both successfully and artistically mined the great man’s work for their tortured characters, grim atmosphere and elements of plot, Corman himself rarely offered filmgoers a straight-forward re-telling of any of the doomed author’s fabled tales.

Producer-writer, Robert E. Kent seems to have taken a similar, albeit far less successful, approach with his production of TWICE TOLD TALES. Only segment two of this trilogy film, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” closely resembles Hawthorne’s original story, and even that diverges when at odds with cinematic expectations. In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” a sinister love-triangle between Dr. Carl Heidegger (the corpulent Sebastian Cabot), Alex Medbourne (Price) and the recently revived but still exquisite corpse of Sylvia Ward (Marie Blanchard) is re-engineered as to feature an original - if salacious - back-story. This “Virgin Spring” elixir-of-eternal-youth morality-fable plays out with little fidelity to the original tale.

Such creative-license is stretched to the breaking point with the film’s final episode, “The House of the Seven Gables.” This segment bears little resemblance to Hawthorne’s celebrated novel, but it has borrowed elements from the better known – and far more lavish – 1940 Universal film of the same title. The Universal film, perhaps not coincidentally, also featured Vincent Price in a starring role, though this tale too strayed far from Hawthorne’s original. Though I recall no physical blood-letting in the Hawthorne novel, in TWICE TOLD TALES the sanguine red fluid pours freely– and mostly unconvincingly, it must be said - from ceilings, walls, portraits, and lockets. The Pyncheon’s family’s metaphorical skeleton-in-the-closet becomes all too real in this rather uninspired re-working.

Part of the film’s original marketing stratagem was the offer of “FREE COFFEE in the lobby to settle your nerves!” One might suggest, with a measure of cynicism, that such brew was a necessary component in helping to keep audiences awake. TWICE TOLD TALES is, to be generous, a very good ninety-minute film. The problem is that the filmmakers stretched this ninety-minute film to an interminable two-hour running time.

This is a “sitting room” or “parlor” film; most of the action (as it is) takes place in mildly claustrophobic confines of small home settings with long stretches of unbroken dialogue. There are very few provocative set-pieces employed over the course of three segments and the most ambitious of these, the deadly and poisonous garden of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini (Price), is only experienced in sun-soaked broad daylight. This supposedly lethal garden is both terribly over-lit and ill-disguised in its construction (the seams of the faux-grass mats are clearly visible). As such this potentially visual and cinematic garden of death portends little of its intended menace. If only love-struck suitor Giovanni Guasconti (Brett Halsey) could have encountered the beautiful but lethal Beatrice Rappaccini (Joyce Taylor) in a blue-swathed moonlight setting, the garden’s mysterious atmosphere would have been instantly heightened.

Kent’s too-wordy screenplay suffers occasional patches of purple prose, but it’s serviceable. There are a couple of great moments: Cabot’s toast of the glass prior to his experimental drinking of a fluid that may or may not kill him (“To eternal youth, or just eternity?”). In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” we’re not sure, at first, of who is a prisoner to whom. Is it the estranged daughter to the father, or the father to the daughter? When all is made clear, we can better understand the poisoned daughter’s bitter complaint, “The only difference from being dead is that this house is bigger than a grave.”

TWICE TOLD TALES is no classic, but it’s not unworthy of one’s time. Vincent Price is, as always, brilliant in all three of the villainous roles he inhabits. The supporting cast is mostly great as well, and Kent, unashamedly, brings aboard several of the familiar players who earlier worked with Corman on the Poe series. Director Sidney Salkow was, sadly, no auteur. Though he had been directing and writing films – and bringing them in under or on budget - for both independent and major studios as early as 1936, it’s clear he was most interested in producing a satisfying checkmark in the company’s profit ledger and not terribly concerned with film-as-art. Though Salkow’s films are never less than competent, they’re generally pedestrian and not particularly memorable. As helmsman, Salkow simply possessed none of Corman’s visual-style or displayed any ability to stage an impressive production on a shoestring budget.

To be fair, Corman had advantages. His gothic films were European in design: his settings were of torch-lit gloomy and brooding castles, of misty streets of cobblestone and black twisted tree-limbs. Two of the TWICE TOLD TALES, on the other hand, are set in the non-atmospheric repose of 19^th-century small-town America. With the small exception of a creepy sequence in which a thunder and lightning-storm disturbs a tomb that had been sealed for thirty-eight years (and sits, inexplicably, just to the rear of Dr. Heidegger’s back-door), the dressing that surrounds TWICE TOLD TALES demonstrates little of the macabre ingredients necessary for mounting a successful horror film.

This 2022 release from Kino-Lorber Studio Classics supplants their original 2015 Blu-ray issue of TWICE TOLD TALES. As with its first incarnation, the film is presented in Technicolor and in its original 1.66:1 ratio and in 1920x1080p with removable English subtitles. This new issue looks great… but no greater than their 2015 release, quite frankly. This edition doesn’t necessarily offer a significant upgrade, if at all. Bonus features ported over from the first issue includes a commentary from film scholars Richard Harland Smith and Perry Martin as well as a brief “Trailers from Hell” segment courtesy of Mick Garris.

It seems this Kino “Special Edition” differs only in small ways from their earlier effort. First, a “collectible” slipcover (featuring a pair of color photographs on the reverse sleeve), replaces the two black-and-white shots featured on the case of the original issue. The original edition featured only three trailers in total – this new issue balloons to a generous baker’s dozen of trailers from other Poe/Price/AIP titles offered on the Kino Studio Classics line. On the minus side, this new edition, somewhat oddly, offers no chapter selections – a strange omission for a portmanteau film. An essential purchase, I suppose – but only for those who missed out on the original 2015 pressing.

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By Hank Reineke

In his collection of 1997, Who the Devil Made It?: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors, Peter Bogdanovich, trumpeted that no one in the film industry, “had ever made good pictures faster or for less money than Edgar Ulmer. What he could do with nothing (occasionally in the script department as well) remains an object lesson for those directors, myself included, who complain about tight budgets and schedules.” Bogdanovich, who befriended Ulmer when the latter was in his seventies, reminded readers the director of such gems as Detour (1945) and The Black Cat (1934) was rarely given more than six-days to shoot any of his features.

Ulmer was an interesting character, an oft-cited ego-centric with high aspirations and boundless energy. Indie Hollywood producers found Ulmer a dependable craftsman who made the most of what he was given – which too often was a pittance. He occasionally made great films. To his credit, he never delivered anything less than an efficient film. In a 2014 study, Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins, biographer Noah Isenberg, conceded his on-set mission of seeking “clear-cut answers” was futile: Ulmer’s personal and professional life was nothing if not a bewildering “straddle [of] truth and fiction.”

Though Isenberg exhumed every interview with the director he could find, he acknowledged one couldn’t “accept without qualification what Ulmer himself presented as the truth when he was still alive.” According to film historian Gary D. Rhodes, Robert Clarke, the actor/producer of Beyond the Time Barrier – one of a trio films included here on Kino’s new Blu ray issue of the Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-Fi Collection - considered the writer-director “something of a genius, but also a troubled, difficult person.”

Ulmer was, inarguably, partly responsible for some of his travails. Working at Universal as an art director and set designer in the early ‘30s, Ulmer was given the opportunity to direct the studio’s art-deco atmospheric horror The Black Cat with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. But opportunities to helm future pictures for up-market Hollywood studios were derailed. Though married, Ulmer entered into a scandalous affair with a studio script supervisor – one already married to the nephew of Universal’s c0-founder, Carl Laemmle. The retribution for Ulmer’s affair-of-the-heart was his blacklisting from working at any Hollywood major. But as a filmmaker Ulmer was nothing if not resilient. He worked for the next thirty-odd years as a director-for-hire by independent producers and poverty-row studios.

As Bogdanovich noted, Ulmer was an able craftsman. He was a utilitarian director, successfully cranking out films in nearly every popular-market genre: westerns, gangster films, mysteries, adventure yarns - even the occasional comedy. Though the film noir classic Detour might be his greatest achievement, he is also beloved by fans of classic horror and sci-fi for a string of engaging pictures. He never approached films in the horror genre as toss-a-ways, stories unworthy of his talent. Though none of his subsequent horror pictures would ever match the iconic status anointed to The Black Cat, his occasional dabbles in “fantastic films” were solid efforts.

Some films were better than others. One especially well done was Bluebeard (1944, featuring John Carradine). Sometimes the films were simply off-the-charts exploitation fare as was Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957 with John Agar). His films tended to be, whatever their budgetary shortcomings, memorable. This new set from Kino offers fans a trio of his best sci-fi efforts: a well-regarded effort and two of the last films directed before his departure from the film business.

The “pick” of the set is, arguably, Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X (1951), a very early entry into the Silver-Age sci-fi film sweepstakes. It’s September 1950 and astronomers are puzzled by the sudden surfacing of “a strange astronomical phenomenon” which they describe as “Planet X.” The problem with Planet X is that its trajectory suggests it might be on a collision course with earth. The space craft lands somewhere in the gloomy, foggy moors of Scotland, not too far from the ancient, spooky watchtower where scientists Dr. Elliot and Dr. Mears (Raymond Bond and William Schallert, respectively) and journalist Jack Lawrence (Robert Clarke) just happen to be tracking Planet X’s path. Dr. Elliot’s daughter Enid (Margaret Field) is the unlucky first one to come face-to-face with the Man from Planet X, describing the alien as having a “ghastly caricature” of a human face. But now that he’s arrived on earth the question is why he’s here – and whether he’s friend or foe.

The Man from Planet X received a modicum of press interest in the last months of 1950. There were reports writer-producers Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen’s modest Mid-Century production company was taking on a David vs. Goliath challenge. They were, after all, competing against a Hollywood big dog studio with their modest upstart picture. One month prior to the start of the filming of Planet X at Culver City’s Hal Roach Studio, Howard Hawk’s production of the iconic ‘50s sci-fi thriller The Thing was already in mid-production at RKO. Though tackling the same sort of space-invader subject matter, Planet X was scheduled to be shot – Ulmer-style – in six scant days with a budget of less than $50,000. As one Los Angeles daily noted the threadbare budget allotted “wouldn’t rate you a thing at RKO or any other film factory.” Perhaps not, but the hasty shooting schedule ensured The Man from Planet X would hit cinema screens long before than The Thing.

The producers of Planet X didn’t deny they had proceeded with budgetary economic caution since - they were two of the film’s principal investors and had a lot to lose. “As writers,” Wisberg defended to the L.A.’s Daily News, “we recognized and anticipated the time and budget limitations in our script in advance and are now able to cut corners on the set.” One such frugal measure was their re-using the “standing scenery” left erected of Ingrid Bergman’s Joan of Arc (1948) featuring Ingrid Bergman. (Much of the background scenery and effects in the film are comprised of impressionistic matte paintings and miniatures).

Following the film’s release, Pollexfen conceded while the film’s script was laden with a lot of scientific jargon, there was probably more fiction than science embroidered within. For starters, there was never a mention of exactly how far the visitor from Planet X had traveled to get his spaceship to earth. “We did it on purpose, he admitted. “If we had mentioned the distance some 12-year old with a slide rule would prove we were bums.” With its tight, seventy-one minute running time, The Man from Planet X proves to be a very serviceable thriller.

The scenario of the second film of this collection, Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) exploitatively springboards off the popularity of George Pal’s version of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine. The film was scripted by Arthur C. Pierce who brought us such other 50s and 60s low-budget sci-fi fare as The Cosmic Man (1959), Invasion of the Animal People (1959) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966). I really wasn’t expecting much from this film, but was surprised that, all things considered, it was actually a pretty decent futuristic adventure.

On March 5, 1960 Major William Allison (Robert Clarke), a research test pilot for the USAF, sets off on a jet that will straddle the border of earth’s atmosphere and outer space. The craft accidentally strafes the speed of light, catapulting Allison through the time barrier to the Citadel, a fortress protecting the inhabitants from a mutant population. The non-mutant population of the Citadel are all deaf and dumb – with the exception of the grandfatherly supreme leader (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his belligerent Captain (Boyd Morgan). Most of communication of the residents of the Citadel is done telepathically – a bit of bad luck for the bewildered test pilot trying to plot an escape.

Allison learns the year is now (gasp!) 2024. The residents are survivors of a plague brought on by cosmic radiation from too many nuclear explosions on earth. They are also part of a dying race. There have been no newborns in the Citadel in twenty-years since the plague left all of the men sterile. Among the last born were the supreme leader’s granddaughter Trirene (Darlene Tompkins), a nicely-formed ingénue. There’s a sort of cockeyed plan for Trirene to mate with Allison to promulgate the species. But that idea goes bust when double-crosses and carnage follow in the wake of the scheming scientists and rampaging mutants. There’s also a bit of a Twilight Zone twist to keep things interesting in the end. Despite the film’s low budget, Ulmer’s talents in art direction allows the film’s futuristic sets – all triangles, diamond-shapes and inverted pyramids – to give the film a glossy, moneyed appearance.

Clocking in a little more than 58 minutes, the final film of the set, The Amazing Transparent Man (1960), ties things up in perfunctory fashion – the running time adequate, I suppose, to tell its slim story. In 1959 the film’s screenwriter, Jack Lewis – whose previous scripting work was mostly of adventures and westerns – decided to try his hand at writing a science-fiction tale. His script, originally titled Search for a Shadow, was initially picked–up by indie Pacific International Pictures. Ulmer was tapped to direct the film – this time involving a master safe-cracker who is “sprung from prison by a ring of international spies.”

The spies are seeking copious amounts of atomic material X-13 so they can develop a ray that will transform an army invisible for the purpose of military supremacy. To that end Major Paul Krenner (James Griffith) and Laura Matson (Marguerite Chapman) orchestrate the escape of safe-cracker Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy) to – under the cloak of invisibility - break into the government’s highly protected stores of fissionable material. Krenner is an unlikeable sort, manipulative and cold. It’s not clear whether he’s acting on behalf of a secretive U.S. agency or as a double-agent for a foreign power.

He’s assisted, under duress, by Dr. Peter Ulof (Ivan Triesault), an “eminent nuclear scientist” and developer of the special X-ray machine that turns both guinea pigs and escaped convicts invisible. Ulof is acutely aware of Krenner’s dark intentions, but is unable to do anything about it: his reasons for dutifully assisting in the Major’s schemes becomes evident as the film unspools. In the meantime, Faust incurs Krenner’s ill-will by enjoying an unsanctioned - but predictable – return to bank robbery – a side-benefit of his now being invisible. There are a few hand-to-hand combat tussles but little suspense as the tale unfolds. The story hastily wraps with Ulof’s breaking of the “third wall” with an earnest morality plea/request.

Lewis’s conjured invisible man/spy-ring scenario was intriguing but not without precedent. Curt Siodmak had already written a more successful variant of the idea for Universal during WWII. That film, Edwin L. Marin’s Invisible Agent (1942), didn’t cheat on the special effects as would The Amazing Transparent Man. Universal’s especial effects team (including the illustrious John P. Fulton) earned an Academy Award nomination for their work on this earlier project. The invisibility tricks as provided by special effects supervisor Roger George in Transparent Man are passable but not breathtaking.

To be fair, the script would undergo numerous tweaks. Ulmer and producers John Miller and Robert L. Madden liked the premise, but were not enamored with the script’s original title. Lewis reportedly offered them no fewer than twenty-three alternate titles, the filmmakers initially settling on The Invisible Invader. But this title too was tossed when Edward L. Cahn’s Invisible Invaders (1959, with John Agar and John Carradine) beat them to market. Other titles were bandied about (“The Invisible Thief,” “The Invisible Gangster”) until the whole “invisible” campaign was dropped in favor of The Amazing Transparent Man. Lewis’s script called for Faust’s character to - intriguingly - cast no shadow even when not in his invisible state. The screenwriter contended this element was quickly – and sadly - dropped when the filmmakers ordered him to “Take out the shadow part. The budget won’t stand all that special effects work.”

This new Kino Lorber Blu-ray set will obviously be of great interest to fans of Ulmer and 1950s/early 1960s vintage sci-fi. If you are a fan or collector of commentaries in particular then this release provides you with a bonanza of them. There are no hoary hack commentators present, these are folks who know what they’re talking about. The Man from Planet X features no fewer than three separate commentaries featuring the likes of Tom Weaver, David Schecter, Dr. Robert J. Kiss, Joe Dante, Gary D. Rhodes, Richard Harland Smith and Ulmer’s Daughter Arianne Ulmer Cipes. Weaver, Schecter and Rhodes do double-duty on Beyond the Time Barrier, with David Del Valle going it alone on The Amazing Transparent Man.

All three films are presented in their original black-and-white in 1920 x 1080p with DTS audio, Planet X in 1.37:1 and Time Barrier and Transparent Man in 1.85:1. The set also features the theatrical trailers for all three of the films and an option for removable English sub-titles. The films generally all look great, The Amazing Transparent Man looking a bit soft-focused in parts, but still better than anything we’ve seen so far of this title. Totally recommended.

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"OH, THOSE NAUGHTY SWEDES!"

In a recent book review about Swedish exploitation films, Cinema Retro columnist Adrian Smith points out that in the 1960s and 1970s Sweden became "the sexy film capital of Europe." As cinematic censorship eased around the world, filmmakers were quick to capitalize on the new screen freedoms, churning out countless low-budget sexploitation films that were softcore in content but far more erotic than any previous films that had been widely shown. Pity the horny person who lived in a rural area without access to theaters that showed such fare, and were thus not part of the action. As comedian George Gobel once quipped to Johnny Carson, "I feel like the world is a tuxedo and I'm a pair of brown shoes." The profit margins on these films were impressive, as they generally cast no-name actors and filmed in locations that were both accessible and economic. Many of these films cited Sweden in the title. Why Sweden was singled out among the other Nordic countries to be a particular haven for sexual permissiveness is still a mystery but this much is certain: the public equated the Swedes with being among the most sexually liberated people on earth. Was it true that they were having more fun than most of us? I guess you'd have to consult Swedes who came of age during that era, but to quote the famous line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Swedish sexploitation films presented many new female "stars", but most of them faded quickly. One exception was Christina Lindberg (aka Kristina Lindberg), who still has a devoted subculture of fans based on her work in sexploitation films of the 1970s. Small in stature, Lindberg nevertheless was the very definition of voluptuous. While still a teenager, she appeared in prominent photo spreads for both Playboy and Penthouse when both magazines were at the height of their influence. Lindberg quickly attracted film producers and she began appearing in erotic films. She landed her first starring role in "Maid in Sweden", released in 1971. It is a Swedish film shot in English language and top-lining Lindberg as a major new star on the exploitation film circuit, a point that was emphasized by marketing materials that thoughtfully provided her measurements: 42-21-36. The film has been jointly released on Blu-ray through Kino Lorber and Code Red, though it has been in circulation for many years on other labels.  

Lindberg plays Inga, a 16 year-old high school student who lives with her parents in a rural area. She is quiet, studious and well-behaved but yearns for a bit of excitement. The opportunity comes when she receives an invitation from her older sister Greta (Monica Ekman) to stay a few days with her in Stockholm, where she works and rents an apartment. Inga makes the train journey to the big city and is greeted by her sister. However, things get uncomfortable when she finds that Greta has a live-in lover, her boyfriend Casten (Crista Ekman, Monica's real-life husband.) Inga is nervous and uncomfortable sharing such small quarters with a man she's never met before. She becomes even more uncomfortable when she witnesses the uninhibited lifestyle of Greta and Casten. They walk about in various stages of undress and think nothing of noisily making love without making much of an effort to be discreet. When Inga secretly observes them, it fuels her own sexual awakening, though not in a pleasant way. She has a nightmare in which she is being gang-raped and is saved by an older women who tries to seduce her. These scenes are extraneous to the story and are inserted simply to provide some additional kinky visuals. Feeling Inga could use some male companionship, Greta and Casten set her up for a date with a friend, Bjorn, who is 21 years-old and seems like a polite, considerate person. That changes when he gets Inga to his apartment. When she spurs his advances, he violently rapes her. In true celluloid fantasy fashion, she puts aside this crime as though her attacker made a simple social flub. She becomes infatuated with him and the two form a romantic bond. Then there is a turn for the worse when Casten tries to seduce her, thus leading to a domestic crisis that endangers her relationship with her sister. By the time Inga must return home, she has lived the equivalent of years of sexual experience all in a matter of days.

"Maid in Sweden" is by any definition a sexploitation film. It exists only to showcase varying degrees of female nudity. Christina Lindberg willingly obliges, doffing her top at every opportunity and occasionally walking about starkers. However, she doesn't bring much personality to the role, playing the part in a grim, unsmiling Wednesday Addams-like mode. The sex scenes are softcore, but push the boundaries. The film, directed by Floch Johnson, is a cut above most other sex movies of the era in that the actors are competent and there is a good deal of footage devoted to showing aspects of Stockholm. There is also a soundtrack comprised mostly of original rock songs. Lindberg would go on to make other exploitation/sexploitation films, most notably the controversial rape revenge movie "Thriller" (aka "They Call Her One-Eye"). Ultimately, she would return to school and veered away from acting to become an animal activist and environmentalist.

Code Red and Kino Lorber have provided a very good 2K transfer which probably means this is the best video version of the movie to be made available. The only bonus extras are the original trailer and a slew of other sexploitation film trailers.

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"Torah! Torah! Torah!" 

By Lee Pfeiffer

"The Frisco Kid" is a gentle buddy comedy Western made in 1979 when star Gene Wilder was riding high and post-"Star Wars" Harrison Ford was a rising star. The script was not a hot property, as it had plenty of people's fingerprints on it by the time Wilder signed on to the film. Ford was a major fan of Wilder's and was eager to co-star. Seasoned veteran Robert Aldrich, best known for his macho action movies such as "The Dirty Dozen", "Flight of the Phoenix", "Ulzana's Raid" and "The Longest Yard", was signed as director. It was seemingly an odd fit but Aldrich had directed the 1963 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin Western comedy "4 for Texas". The film finds Wilder well-cast as Avram, a somewhat bumbling rabbinical student in Poland who is chosen to travel to San Francisco to serve as the rabbi for a new order. As a reward, he is shown a photograph of the beautiful young daughter of the religious leader in the area who will become Avram's bride. The trip from Poland to California would be arduous enough in the days of the old West under any circumstance but things go particularly wrong for Avram. Upon arriving on the east coast of America, he's told the ship he had booked passage on has been significantly delayed. He befriends three men with a wagon who say they are going to San Francisco. He opts to join them but along the way they rob him and leave him penniless in the desert. A group of Mormons save him and give him money to continue his now seemingly impossible journey across a hellish landscape of deserts and other natural barriers, as well as dangerous Indian tribes. He has a chance encounter with Tommy (Harrison Ford), a low-key friendly young guy who occasionally robs banks. The two men make for an "Odd Couple" scenario as they bond in friendship. Tommy feels sorry for the hapless Avram and agrees to escort him to San Francisco. The film chronicles their adventures and misadventures along the way, some comical, others frightening. 

Today's film comedies are largely defined by an abundance of cynicism, cruelty and gross-out jokes, so one is hesitant to be harsh to the bygone era of  family-friendly big screen yucks that "The Frisco Kid" epitomizes. There are some genuine giggles in the film, particularly due to Wilder's fish-out-of-water reaction to American traditions and the chemistry between Wilder and Ford is genuine and enjoyable. At other times, the film is sentimental and occasionally touching, as in the scenes in which our hero rabbi risks his life to save the sacred Torah he must deliver to his synagogue. However, the script by Michael Elias and Frank Shaw is meandering and has quite a few slow spots. There is a completely extraneous sequence in which our heroes are captured by hostile Indians that employs the age-old joke of having the tribal chief actually be a sophisticated, seemingly educated man. The scene drags on forever and goes nowhere. At 2 hours, the movie is about a half-hour too long. At times it seems endless and one can only wonder if a 90 minute version wouldn't have been more enjoyable. Sometimes less is more."The Frisco Kid" isn't a bad film, but it is bloated and Robert Aldrich's direction is workman-like and uninspired. It will primarily be of interest to Harrison Ford fans as an example of the eclectic types of films he appeared in after the original "Star Wars".

The region-free Warner Archive Blu-ray looks very good indeed. The only extra is the original trailer.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1965 comedy Strange Bedfellows, which existed primarily to reunite Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida, who had a box-office hit with Come September several years before. Like most of the romantic comedies of the era, there is little to separate this from a standard sitcom episode aside from the running time. Hudson plays a London-based executive on the rise who spontaneously marries a tempestuous Italian bombshell artist played by Lollobrigida. The newlyweds find their mutually insatiable sex drives are the only thing they have in common. Politically conservative Hudson is constantly at odds with his wife's liberal activism. They soon separate but after seven years, Hudson has a reason to stall the divorce proceedings he has put in place. Seems his even more conservative boss wants to promote him to be his right hand man- on the proviso that he is happily married. The contrived plot finds Hudson trying to swallow his pride and woo his wife back- despite the fact that she already has a British lover, Edward Judd.

The film ambles from one predictable, over-played scene to another, though there are some genuine laughs along the way. Hudson and Lollbrigida do have genuine chemistry on-screen and there is a very amusing supporting cast that includes Gig Young, Terry-Thomas, Arthur Haynes, Nancy Kulp, Bernard Fox and and the late, great Cinema Retro contributor Joe Sirola, who offers a very funny turn as a perverted sculptor. The most amusing aspect of the film is rather unintentional- the now laughably cliched presentation of life in England. In one scene, people can't get home because London is covered in a pea-soup like fog, an enduring legend that stemmed from the Victorian era when the city was often shrouded in pollution, not fog. Taxi drivers all speak with Cockney accents and call everyone 'guv. Ironically, only a small bit of second unit footage was even filmed in Old Blighty. The only on location footage featuring the stars is confined to a shot or two of Edward Judd and an opening scene of Rock Hudson walking along the Thames. One might ask why no additional footage of Hudson was shot on location. The answer was probably moolah. It would have cost Universal a tidy sum to deal with the logistics of shooting in the midst of a major city. So the studio reverted back to an economic model and "London" was recreated very unconvincingly on the Universal back lot. One sequence that was played for laughs has a more subtle aspect of humor to it when viewed today: Hudson reluctantly sharing a bed with Judd. (Hudson shared similar scene when he bedded down with Tony Randall in Send Me No Flowers, leading one to believe that he was probably in on the joke in the days when he was still very much in the closet.)  Like most of these types of comedies, the finale features the entire cast coming together in a big chaotic scene. This time, it's Lollobrigida's scheme to scandalize London by riding through town as Lady Godvia. It's a mark of the movie's prudishness, however, that she is clad in neck-to-toe flesh colored body suit. Some scandal. The film's uninspired direction by Melvin Frank doesn't completely negate the fun of watching two genuine screen legends at the peak of their careers.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray features a pin-sharp transfer that only makes it more obvious how much of the film relies on shoddy rear-screen projection.  The disc features an informative commentary track by film historian Eddy Von Mueller and it's admirable that Kino Lorber continues to provide these tracks on movies that are routine at best. Even films that are artistic failures often have many interesting tales relevant to their production and Strange Bedfellows is no exception. There is also the original trailer and gallery of other trailers from KL featuring the two legendary stars.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

"A Tattered Web" is yet another 1970s American made-for-TV movie that has found new life on Amazon Prime's streaming service. The 70s were a golden age of TV movies, then a relatively innovative concept. Popular actors and talented writers and directors would bring to the small screen countless productions, many of which have long been forgotten. However, that doesn't diminish their worth. "A Tattered Web" is an engrossing crime thriller that I either forgot existed or never knew it did. In any event, it's a compelling and unconventional crime flick. Lloyd Bridges plays Sgt. Ed Stagg, a 25 year veteran of the L.A. Police Department. Stagg has a reputation as a top-notch detective and he's by-the-book in every respect. At home, however, his life is a lot messier. Stagg's wife abandoned him and their young daughter Tina (Sallie Shockley) who he has raised to adulthood on his own. She's now married to Steve Butler (Frank Converse) a hunky blue collar worker in the oil industry. Trouble is they are living in Stagg's house and the situation is tense. Butler resents Stagg's authoritarian rules and things get worse when Stagg discovers that Steve has been having an affair with goodtime girl Louise Campbell (Anne Helm). Stagg has played the role of overprotective father to Tina since her mother left them. In doing so, he has also gone overboard, treating her as a child who can't cope with bad news or pressures. When Steve refuses to agree to Stagg's demands that he end the affair, Stagg takes it on himself to pay Louise a visit at her apartment.Things go badly. Louise isn't bothered by the fact she is endangering another woman's marriage and she seems quite content to continue to play the role of mistress to Steve. The argument becomes physical and Stagg pushes her, with Louise striking her head on a piece of furniture and dying from her wound. Stunned and frightened, Stagg does his best to remove any traces of his being in the apartment. 

The next day, the LAPD receives news that a cleaning woman has found Louise's body. Ironically, Stagg and his partner, Sgt. Joe Marcus (Murray Hamilton) are assigned to the case. Stagg does his best to appear unaware of the circumstances of Louise's death but neighbors report she had been seeing a man regularly in her apartment. An artist's sketch makes the front pages and Marcus is all-too-aware the sketch is identical to Steve. Adding to Stagg's worries is the realization that he neglected to dispose of a drinking glass at Louise's apartment that has his fingers prints on it. Stagg finds himself trying to put out quite a few fires, all the while keeping Tina in the dark about the events. With the police closing in on Steve as a suspect, Stagg finds the opportunity to get him off the hook. A local alcoholic hobo (Broderick Crawford) has already confessed to murdering someone and has been sentenced to the death penalty. Stagg begins trying to convince him to confess to Louise's murder, as well. Stagg justifies the deception by rationalizing that if the drunk is going to die for one murder, what difference does it make if he also admits to another homicide?

Lloyd Bridges is exceptionally good as the man trying to juggle many different levels of this crisis simultaneously. He's not a villain in the traditional sense, but he is covering up his own responsibility for manslaughter and trying to frame another man for the death. The supporting cast is first-rate, with Frank Converse a standout as the much-put-upon son-in-law who becomes the prime suspect in the murder. Murray Hamilton is also very good as Stagg's partner who becomes increasingly suspicious that Stagg is covering up a crime.  Broderick Crawford is truly impressive and he makes the most of his couple of brief scenes as the alcoholic whose memory is so bad that Stagg might convince him he committed a murder he is innocent of. As with most TV movies of the era, the tight 74-minute running time ensures the story moves quickly and there isn't any extraneous dialogue. "A Tattered Web" is an above average crime thriller. 

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Time Life:

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The first African-American to direct a major film for a majorHollywood studio was Gordon Parks, whose feature film debut "The Learning Tree" was released in 1969. Parks may have shattered the glass ceiling but there wasn't a tidal wave of opportunities that immediately opened for other minority filmmakers, in part because there were so few with any formal training in the art. One beneficiary of Parks' achievement was Ossie Davis, who was internationally respected as a well-rounded artist. He was a triple threat: actor, director and writer but his directing skills had been relegated to the stage. In 1970 Davis co-wrote the screenplay for and directed "Cotton Comes to Harlem", a major production for United Artists. The film was based on a novel by African-American writer Chester Himes and proved to be pivotal in ushering in what became known as the Blaxploitation genre. In reality, it's debatable whether "Cotton" really is a Blaxploitation film. While most of the major roles are played by black actors, the term "Blaxploitation" has largely come to symbolize the kinds of goofy, low-budget films that are fondly remembered as guilty pleasures. However, "Cotton"- like Gordon Parks's "Shaft" films that would follow-  boasts first class production values and top talent both in front of and behind the cameras. Regardless, the movie had sufficient impact at the boxoffice to inspire a seemingly endless barrage of Black-oriented American films that were all the rage from the early to mid-1970s. The Blaxploitation fever burned briefly but shone brightly and opened many doors for minority actors. 

The film was shot when New York City was in the midst of a precipitous decline in terms of quality of life. Crime was soaring, the infrastructure was aging and the city itself would be on the verge of bankruptcy a few years later. Harlem was among the hardest hit areas in terms of the economy. The once dazzling jewel of a neighborhood had boasted popular nightclubs, theaters and restaurants that attracted affluent white patrons. By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, that had changed radically. Street crimes, organized gangs and the drug culture spread rapidly, making Harlem a very dangerous place to be. It was foreboding enough if you were black but it was considered a "Forbidden Zone" for most white people, who spent their money elsewhere, thus exacerbating the decline of the neighborhoods. "Cotton Comes to Harlem" serves as an interesting time capsule of what life was like in the area, having been shot during this period of decline. Director Davis was considered royalty in Harlem. Despite his success in show business, he and his equally acclaimed wife, actress Ruby Dee, never "went Hollywood". They stayed in the community and worked hard to improve the environment. Thus, Davis was perfectly suited to capture the action on the streets in a manner that played authentically on screen. Similarly, he had a real feel for the local population. As with any major urban area, Harlem undoubtedly had its share of amusing eccentrics and Davis populates the movie with plenty of such characters. 

The film opens with a major rally held by Rev. Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart), a local guy who made good and who is idolized by the population of Harlem. O'Malley is a smooth-talking, charismatic con man in the mode of the notorious Reverend Ike who uses religion as a facade to rip off gullible followers. This time, O'Malley has launched a "Back to Africa" campaign for which he is soliciting funds. It's based on the absurd premise that he will be able to finance disgruntled Harlem residents back to the land of their ancestry. The hard-working, semi-impoverished locals end up donating $87,000 in cash but the rally is interrupted by a daring daytime robbery. An armored car filled with masked men armed with heavy weaponry descend upon the goings-on, loot the cash box and take off. They are pursued by two street-wise local cops, "Grave Digger" Jones (Godfrey Cambridge)  and his partner "Coffin" Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques). Davis provides an exciting and colorful car chase through the streets of Harlem, as the cops fail to snag the robbers. They also discover that O'Malley has gone missing, leading them to believe that he orchestrated the heist himself so he could keep the proceeds raised at the rally. The plot becomes rather convoluted, as Jones and Johnson learn that a bale of cotton has arrived in Harlem and its somehow connected to the crime. They assume that the stolen money has been stashed in said cotton bale, which quickly changes hands among the most unsavory characters in the community. Getting in on the action is a white mob boss and his goons who are also trying to recover the cotton bale. The cotton itself is resented in Harlem because of its historical links to slavery and by the end of the film, the bale ends up in a stage show at the famed Apollo Theater where it is used as a prop in a bizarre production that involves historical observations about the black experience intermingled with a striptease act! Through it all, Jones and Johnson doggedly chase any number of people through the streets, engage in shoot-outs and car chases and come in and out of contact with Rev. O'Malley, who professes his innocence about being involved in the robbery. The Rev isn't so innocent when it comes to other unscrupulous activities such as chronically cheating on his long-suffering girlfriend Iris (Judy Pace) and manipulating other women in a variety of ways. 

The most delightful aspect of the film is the showcasing of some very diverse talents of the era. Godfrey Cambridge (who made it big as a stand-up comic) and Raymond St. Jacques enjoy considerable on-screen chemistry even if the script deprives them of the kind of witty dialogue that would have enhanced their scenes together. They make wisecracks all the time and harass some less-than-savory characters but the screenplay never truly capitalizes on Cambridge's comedic potential. The film's most impressive performance comes from Calvin Lockhart, who perfectly captures the traits of phony, larger-than-life "preachers". He's all flashy good looks, gaudy outfits and narcissistic behavior. Lockhart seems to be having a ball playing this character and the screen ignites every time he appears. There are some nice turns by other good character actors including pre-"Sanford and Son" Redd Foxx, who figures in the film's amusing "sting-in-the-tail" ending, John Anderson as the exasperated white captain of a Harlem police station that is constantly on the verge of being besieged by local activists, Lou Jacobi as a junk dealer, Cleavon Little as a local eccentric, J.D. Canon as a mob hit man and Dick Sabol as a goofy white cop who suffers humiliation from virtually everyone (which is sort of a payback for the decades in which black characters were routinely used as comic foils).  The film has a surprisingly contemporary feel about it, save for a few garish fashions from the 1970s. It's also rather nostalgic to hear genuine soul music peppered through the soundtrack in this pre-rap era. Happily, life has not imitated art in the years since the film was released. Harlem has been undergoing the kind of Renaissance that would have seemed unimaginable in 1970. The old glory has come back strong and the center of the neighorhood, 125th Street, is vibrant and thriving once again. These societal perspectives make watching "Cotton Comes to Harlem" enjoyable on an entirely different level than simply an amusing crime comedy.

(The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)

Australia-based ViaVision's Imprint video line is taking pre-orders for a limited edition (1500) Blu-ray release of "The Avengers: The Emma Peel Collection".The set will be released on 30 November.

This set is Region-Free, which is good news for fans worldwide.

Here is the relevant information:

Number of Blu-ray Discs	16
Rating	PG
Release Date	30 November 2022
Runtime (in minutes)	2255
Product Code	IMP3065

Mrs. Peel… We’re needed!

Extraordinary crimes against the people and the state have to be avenged by agents extraordinary. Two such people are John Steed, top professional, and his partner, Emma Peel, talented amateur. Otherwise known as The Avengers. With lethal bowler hat and umbrella, killer fashion and kung fu, the secret agents investigate bizarre and colourful adventures with nonchalant efficiency, sophistication and charm.

Whilst every era of the long-running, enduringly popular and trend-setting British series has its own unique style, charm and wit, it is the Emma Peel years that have become the programme’s most iconic and recognisable, with Diana Rigg’s portrayal of Mrs. Emma Peel ushering in a new era of excitement, fashion and iconology, coupled with Patrick Macnee’s continuing depiction of the urbane and sublime John Steed.

Now, this 16-disc Blu Ray set brings together every episode from the Emma Peel era in stunning high-definition encompassing the complete Series 4 and 5, plus a copious collection of vintage and new Special Features celebrating this peak era of The Avengers.

Special Features and Technical Specs: 

• 1080p high-definition presentation from the original 35mm elements
• Collectable double-sided Hardbox packaging LIMITED to 1500 copies
• 120-page booklet featuring essay by Dick Fiddy of the British Film Institute and Story Information for every episode taken from the original studio files
• Original ‘as broadcast’ mono audio tracks (LPCM)
• Original ‘as broadcast’ “The Avengers in Color” opening slate on Series 5 episodes
• Audio Commentary on “The Town of No Return” by producer / writer Brian Clemens and director Roy Ward Baker
• Audio Commentary on “The Master Minds” by writer Robert Banks Stewart
• Audio Commentary on “Dial A Deadly Number” by writer Roger Marshall
• Audio Commentary on “The Hour That Never Was” by director Gerry O’Hara
• Audio Commentary on “The House That Jack Built” by director Don Leaver
• Audio Commentary on “The Winged Avenger” by writer Richard Harris
• Audio Commentary on “Epic” by guest actor Peter Wyngarde
• NEW Audio Commentary on “The Joker” by filmmakers Sam Clemens and George Clemens (sons of writer/producer Brian Clemens) (2022)
• Audio Commentary on “Return of The Cybernauts” by Diana Rigg’s stunt-double Cyd Child
• Audio Commentary on “Murdersville” by producer / writer Brian Clemens
• Filmed introductions to eight Series 5 episodes by producer / writer Brian Clemens
• Filmed introduction to “The ?50,000 Breakfast” by guest actress Anneke Wills
• Brief audio recollection from guest actor Francis Matthews on filming “The Thirteenth Hole”
• “THE AVENGERS AT 50” – Footage captured from the 50^th anniversary celebration of the series, held at Chichester University in 2011. Includes: video message from Patrick Macnee, interviews with producer / writer Brian Clemens, director Don Leaver (never before released), director Gerry O’Hara (never before released), stunt co-ordinator Raymond Austin, guest actress Carol Cleveland, guest actress Anneke Wills, writer Roger Marshall, and Patrick Macnee’s biographer Marie Cameron
• “Dame Diana Rigg at the BFI” – 2015 on-stage interview and Q&A held at the British Film Institute in London to celebrate 50 years of Emma Peel
• “The Series Of No Return” – audio interview with actress Elizabeth Shepherd, who was originally cast as Emma Peel
• Granada Plus Points featuring actor Patrick Macnee, composer Laurie Johnson, writer Roger Marshall and stunt-double Cyd Child
• Bonus Series 6 episode “The Forget-Me-Knot” – Emma Peel’s final story and the introduction of Tara King
• “K Is For Kill” – excerpt from The New Avengers episode featuring appearances by Emma Peel

ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

• Armchair Theatre episode “The Hothouse” starring Diana Rigg (the performance that led to Rigg’s casting as Emma Peel in The Avengers
• Chessboard Opening Title sequence used on US broadcasts for Series 4
• German and French title sequences
• Series 4 UK Commercial Break Bumper slates
• Alternative titles / credits / end tag of select Series 4 episodes
• Series 4 Commercial Break Bumpers
• Production trims from select Series 5 episodes
• “The Strange Case Of The Missing Corpse” – Series 5 teaser film
• German television interview with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg by Joachim Fuchsberger
• Colourisation test footage for “Death At Bargain Prices” and “A Touch Of Brimstone”
• Reconstructed John Stamp Series 4 trailer
• “They’re Back” Trailers, Series 5 Trailer and Series 5 German Cinema Trailer
• Extensive Photo Galleries from the studio archives
• 1973 Interview with Diana Rigg discussing her US sitcom Diana, and leaving The Avengers
• Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1, b&w / colour
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono
• English subtitles for the Hard of Hearing (Series 4 & 5 episodes only)

BONUS DISC 1: ADDITIONAL SPECIAL FEATURES

• More interviews from “THE AVENGERS AT 50” including composer Laurie Johnson, writer and guest actor Jeremy Burnham, stunt-double Cyd Child, and a screenwriters’ panel discussion featuring Brian Clemens, Richard Harris, Richard Bates and Terrance Dicks
• “Brian Clemens In Conversation” – on-stage interview at the British Film Institute in London discussing his early writing career
• Diana Rigg German Super8 films: “Das Diadem”, “Minikillers”, “Der Goldene Schlüssell”
• Extensive Photo Gallery from The Avengers Fashion Show
• Diana Rigg Photo Gallery

BONUS DISC 2: THE ORIGINAL EPISODES FILE

• Featuring the 4 original episodes from the Cathy Gale era of the series which were remade in Series 5: “Death Of A Great Dane”, “Don’t Look Behind You”, “Dressed To Kill” and “The Charmers” (Standard Definition)
• Audio Commentary by writer Roger Marshall on “Death Of A Great Dane”
• Audio Commentary by actress Honor Blackman and UK presenter Paul O’Grady on “Don’t Look Behind You”
• Filmed introduction by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman to “Don’t Look Behind You”
• “Tunnel Of Fear” – a full-length, previously lost episode from Series 1, recovered in 2016
• “THE AVENGERS AT 50” – interview with Honor Blackman by Paul O’Grady

BY LEE PFEIFFER

"Kill a Dragon", a 1967 action-adventure production from United Artists, is the perfect example of kind of film I've praised many times before. Namely, it's a low-budget flick designed for a fast playoff (perhaps as the second feature on double bills) and a modest profit. Often, as in this case, they were marketed with terrific movie posters that often promised more sex and violence than the films delivered. Studios thrived on such mid-range fare which inevitably employed actors in leading roles who would generally be playing supporting parts in more prestigious productions. They still enjoyed enough respect and name recognition to market the films successfully internationally. "Kill a Dragon" is based in an around Hong Kong and stars Jack Palance as Rick Masters (now there's a cinematic name for a hero), who is an American jack-of-all-trades who enjoys a laid-back lifestyle with his mistress, nightclub "hostess", Alizia Gur (who memorably squared off against Martine Beswick in the gypsy catfight in "From Russia with Love".) In the umpteenth Hollywood attempt to crib from the scripts of "Seven Samurai"/"The Magnificent Seven", Masters, who specializes in maritime salvage operations, is approached by peasants from an impoverished village. They inform him that recently a ship was grounded on their island and the crew deserted it because of its cargo: a gigantic load of highly volatile nitroglycerine. The peasants offer Masters a 50/50 split of the profits if he can smuggle the goods into Hong Kong and sell it on the black market. There is a catch, however. The nitro shipment is the property of Nico Patrai (Fernando Lamas), a local crime kingpin who warns the peasants to turn over the goods or have their village destroyed. Masters accepts the assignment and contacts his frequent collaborators: Vigo (Aldo Ray), who is now relegated to hosting bus excursions for tourists, Jimmy (Hans Lee), a local aspiring boxer and martial arts expert and his British manager, Ian (Don Knight). They are outnumbered and outgunned so they must use their instincts to outwit Patrai.

"Kill a Dragon" is the kind of goofy action flick that never takes itself very seriously. It opens with what is possibly the worst title song in the history of film and presents  Latin heartthrob Fernando Lamas as a Hong Kong crime lord without a word of explanation as to how he managed to arrange this. The film is laden with Bond-style quips and the fight scenes are pretty limp under the direction of Michael Moore. (Obviously, not that Michael Moore.) But there is a great deal of fun to be found in the film. The Hong Kong locations adds an exotic element and cinematographer Emmanuel L. Rojas makes the most of it, capturing the hustle and bustle of the city center and the serenity of the surrounding areas very effectively. Palance gives a low-key performance (for him, at least) and minimizes his tendencies to ham it up. Lamas is a villain in the Bondian style and its a pleasure to see him and Palance in the requisite scenes in which they banter with witticisms and civility even though they have marked each other for death. An unusual and pleasurable aspect of the movie is that all of the Asian characters are played by Asian actors, a rarity in 1967 and they are presented in a dignified manner.

I don't want to overstate the merits of "Kill a Dragon", as it's the epitome of a "B" movie and nothing more. However, if one approaches it with those expectations, you may well find it as enjoyable as I did.

Kino Lorber has released the film on Blu-ray, a significant upgrade to MGM's previous burn-to-order DVD. Quality is very good and the original trailer is included along with a gallery of other action films from KL.

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By John M. Whalen

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD . . . (actually from the late 50s to the late 80s) there was a famous screenwriter who was something of a living legend. His name was Stirling Silliphant. He’s all but forgotten now but he was once one of Tinseltown’s most prolific, highest paid writers, having turned out 47 produced screenplays (including the Oscar winning “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), literally hundreds of hours of primetime TV episodes (including “Route 66” and “Naked City”), and several novels (“Steel Tiger”). He drove around L. A. in a Rolls Royce, sailed the world in a yacht, was friends with and a student of Bruce Lee, had an office on the Warners lot and was married four times—his last to Du Thi Thanh Nga, a Vietnamese actress better known as Tiana Alexandra, who was also a Bruce Lee student and 38 years Silliphant’s junior.

Silliphant took an active interest in advancing his wife’s acting career. Between 1974, when they were married, and 1987, he wrote parts for her in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite” (1975), several TV dramas (“Pearl” (1978), “Fly Away Home” (1981),” and he created a starring role for her in “Catch the Heat” (1987), an action movie designed to show off her acting and martial arts skills. (The film has also been marketed as "Feel the Heat"). Silliphant produced the picture and action director Joel Silberg (“Breakin” (1984), and “Rappin” (1985), directed. Moshe Diamant’s Trans World Entertainment which had produced a host of action movies with stars like Sho Kishogi, and Jean Claude VanDamme, released the film.

“Catch the Heat” features Tiana as San Francisco cop Checkers Goldberg, who goes to Buenos Aires undercover, posing as Chinese singer/dancer named Cinderella Pu to investigate Jason Hannibal (Rod Steiger). He’s a talent agent who is actually a drug kingpin from Thailand who is somehow smuggling drugs into the U.S. Checkers’ partner, Detective Waldo Tarr (David Dukes) is already in Buenos Aires, ready to slap the cuffs on Hannibal as soon as Checkers can come up with some drug-smuggling evidence. Waldo also just happens to be in love with Checkers.

There is plenty of action in “Catch the Heat,” as Checkers kicks, punches, and thigh-crushes a host of 80s action movie villains including Professor Toru Tanaka (Subzero in “The Running Man” (1987), Brian Thompson (Night Slasher in “Cobra” (1986), John Hancock (“Dead Aim” (1987), and others. Tiana’s karate moves are authentic and she doesn’t stop moving throughout the entire film, even in scenes that don’t require any action, such as when she finds out Hannibal’s fiendish method for smuggling heroin into the U.S., she becomes so infuriated, she goes to Waldo’s hotel room and instead of knocking or turning the door knob, she kicks the door off the hinges, raging about what she’d like to do to him. “He’s not a talent agent,” she shouts. “He’s a monster.” Probably a line she may have uttered in real life more than once.

“Catch the Heat” may not be the greatest action movie to come out of the 80s, but it’s certainly not the worst either, and probably should be better known than it is, especially among martial arts movie fans. Silliphant’s script is more of a send-up of the genre, even to the point of having Checkers wear a “Suzie Wong” dress and wig and talk in a sing-song Chinese cutie accent when she’s on screen as Cinderella Pu. The satiric elements seemed to have been lost on Silberg, who probably saw the film as just another chop socky day at the office.

Unfortunately, it would be Tiana’s one and only starring role in a feature film. In Nat Segaloff’s biography, “Silliphant: The Fingers of God,” Tiana explains that despite Bruce Lee’s success, studios were still reluctant to cast Asians, especially females, in leading roles. Silliphant said it was racism that prompted one Warners executive to tell Lee, when he was being considered for the Kung Fu TV series, that Americans would be offended by having a Chinese man in the living rooms every week. Lee had to leave the country to find success. According to Tiana, she was an even tougher sell. Producers and studio executives disliked having the wife of a writer/producer pushed on them. When Silliphant proposed making Dirty Harry’s female partner in “The Enforcer” (1976) an Asian, Tiana said, “They were not amused.”

In 1988, a year after “Catch the Heat” flopped, Silliphant, at the age of 70, moved lock, stock and barrel out of the “eel pit” that he called Hollywood and expatriated to Thailand, where he said he felt he had lived in a previous life. He and Tiana remained married for 22 years, but the last several years of their relationship found them apart more than together. Silliphant was busily involved in the Bangkok film industry, and managed to pen at least one decent script, an adaptation of Truman Capote’s “The Grass Harp” – miles away from the likes of “The Swarm” or even “Catch the Heat.” He died of prostate cancer in 1996.

Tiana went back to her birthplace despite the U.S. Trade Embargo that was in place at that time to film “From Hollywood to Hanoi ”, a documentary, which won critical accolades, and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. She has since partnered with writer Christopher Hampton on several significant projects including serving as associate producer for “A Dangerous Method (2011).”

Her mini-bio on the Internet Movie Database says that she is working on a documentary on General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander of the North Vietnamese Army during both the French and the American wars, called “The General and Me,” to be released in 2025. From late 2020 to 2021 she traveled the United States collecting stories and characters for a new series entitled “Detour 66.” The project follows in the tracks of her late husband’s TV series, “Route 66” (1960), and “chronicles the dramas and cultural zeitgeist unfolding across the Divided States of America.”

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release, presented in collaboration with Scorpion, presents “Catch the Heat” in its 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The transfer to disc is a major league improvement over the previous MGM video of 2003, which was full-screen. The only extras are the theatrical trailer, the VHS Preview Trailer, and trailers for half a dozen other Kino Lorber action flicks from the 80s. It’s really too bad there wasn’t at least an audio commentary from a martial arts film authority included as a bonus feature to provide some background and context for “Catch the Heat.” Now that it’s out on Blu-ray, maybe it’ll finally get some recognition as an undiscovered ‘80s cult classic.

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

By Dana Polan

There are two fleeting moments in Love Story, based on author Eric Siegel’s bestselling novel that became a publishing phenomenon, where the major social and political issue of the day – the war in Vietnam – intrudes into a film notorious for deflecting or displacing larger concerns of the day into seemingly private questions of love and family. Of course, it was a common assertion in the Sixties and Seventies that the “personal is the political,” and Love Story could well be said to be politically “relevant” (to use another catchphrase of the times) around questions of class and generation as they play out in two families. But it’s certainly the case that one would be hard-pressed in the many scenes set outdoors on college campuses (Harvard and Radcliffe) to see any signs of antiwar protest or leafletting or whatever: instead, outside provides a site for a couple to frolic in the snow or toss a football back and forth in an empty stadium that thereby becomes their own private playground.

All the more surprising, then, that the first allusion, to militarism, comes in a very privatized inner sanctum, a members’-only club where Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) comes to spar verbally with his millionaire snob father (Ray Milland) over young Oliver’s desire to marry a girl from across the tracks, Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw). As they begin their conversation, Barrett Senior asks his son about what a classmate will be doing after graduation and learns the kid is joining Army Officer’s Training. Good, says the imperious father, to which his son replies “Bad.” One shouldn’t perhaps make too much of this but it is a moment that raises the question of the good or bad of fighting for one’s country, especially when it can be so deadly. Later, in another indoors scene, young Barrett, now a budding lawyer, tells a pal at their gym, that he's turned down a request by his law firm to go defend a journalist beaten up by cops “in Chicago” (he doesn’t tell his friend that he needs to stay home with Jenny, who’s got a fatal illness). Again, the moment passes quickly but it was likely impossible for most viewers in 1970 not to understand the reference as code for police brutality against protestors and their journalistic advocates.

The critics generally hated Love Story for what they imagined as its refusal to address the times. Fans loved it, often, for that very refusal: it allowed them to cry about something other than the real death and dying (both overseas and in the streets of the cities back home). But even though the American Film Institute lists it as number 9 amongst all romances, we should note that this film is ultimately, like what one could read in the papers or see in many other movies, about life abruptly cut short.. Maybe it’s not brutal death, à la other films of the moment like, say, The Wild Bunch or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but just as these films are saying something about the violence of the times even as they look to other times for their specific subject matter, Love Story is marked by a fatalism that actually could be saying something resonant about fragility of live in that historical moment. Love Story perhaps is due for critical reconsideration, and Paramount’s careful remastering of the film in striking Blu-ray might well help in that project.

The careful digitalization allows the viewer to focus on visual accomplishment as much as the saccharine story. For example, there are some impressive long-takes often with a complex choreography between character and camera. Most noteworthy is the Blu-ray’s careful capture of the color design for the film: a washed out look for scenes of Cambridge and New York in winter matched to oppressive dark but oh-so-masculine colors (browns and blacks) in the interior scenes of Oliver’s confrontations with his father, both leavened by touches of red, from a single lamp in the brown wood of Barrett Senior’s imperial home office to the scarlet dresses or miniskirts that Jenny sports and that bring vitality into a story of staid convention and oppressive rule-boundedness across class and generational lines.

The Blu-ray combines several new special features with ones that were available earlier in DVD editions. New are a short discussion of the film by critic Leonard Maltin and a very brief introduction by Ben Mankiewicz to an airing of the film on TCM. Both tend to repeat commonplaces about the film -- sometimes the same ones, such as that the film resonated with audiences who needed sweet emotion in a complicated historical moment – and both go over well-known production facts, such as that Ali MacGraw was in large part cast because she was Paramount boss Robert Evans’s girlfriend at the time.

Carried over from the DVD are a 14-minute documentary “Love Story: A Classic Remembered,” which goes over much of the same ground as Maltin and Mankiewicz, and a commentary track by director Arthur Hiller. Hiller’s narration is curious, caught between light anecdotes (for example, Ray Milland agreeing to not wear his beloved toupee for this film) and some sparse but useful technical discussion (for example, how some of those impressive meandering long takes were engineered) and, fairly unbearably, fatuous thematic commentary about how Hiller wants to make films that say something (in this case, something about the triumph of human spirit).

Nonetheless, whatever one thinks of it, Love Story at the very beginning of the 1970s is a key film in American cinema history, and it is so important to have this carefully crafted Blu-ray to commemorate it.

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(Dana Polan is the author of "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture". Click here to order from Amazon

BY FRED BLOSSER

John Sturges’ “Last Train from Gun Hill” was released in 1959 as one of several high-profile Westerns of its era, designed to lure audiences away from their television sets and back to their neighborhood movie theatres. Against TV’s advantage of free programming that you could enjoy from the leisure of your easy chair, films like “Last Train from Gun Hill,” “Warlock,” “The Horse Soldiers,” and “The Hanging Tree” countered with A-list stars, widescreen CinemaScope and VistaVision, Technicolor, and sweeping outdoor locations. The studios wagered, correctly, that viewers would welcome a change from the predictable characters, cheap backlot sets, and drab black-and-white photography of “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train,” and “Cheyenne.” The approach was successful, sporadically continuing through the next decade with expensive epics like “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Custer of the West” (1967), and “MacKenna’s Gold” (1968) before it collapsed from dwindling returns, scaled-back studio budgets, and changing popular tastes at the end of the 1960s.

As Sturges’ movie opens, two loutish cowboys chase down, rape, and murder a young Indian woman. Although the rape and murder occur offscreen, the lead-up is viscerally terrifying. In a bizarrely poor choice of words, Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times referred to the murderers as “scallywags.” At least in my lexicon, scallywags are mischievous kids who make prank phone calls, not perpetrators of a horrendous sexual assault. When the pair flee in panic after realizing what they’ve done, they inadvertently leave behind a horse and saddle. The murdered woman’s husband is Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas), the marshal of the nearby town of Pawley, who immediately identifies the letters “CB” branded on the saddle. They’re the initials of Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), a powerful rancher who controls Gun Hill, a community further down the railroad line. One of the murderers was Belden’s hired hand Lee (played by Brian Hutton, later the director of “Where Eagles Dare” and “Kelly’s Heroes”), and the other was Belden’s son Rick (Earl Holliman). When Morgan arrives in Gun Hill with arrest warrants, Belden first tries to convince him to go easy by reminding him that he and Craig were once good friends. After that doesn’t work, he resorts to intimidation. The cowardly local marshal refuses to help Morgan, unashamedly admitting that he fears the boss man’s wrath more than he respects the rule of law. (I’ll leave it to you to decide if you see a similarity to recent political controversies.) The other townspeople are chilly if not hostile, and when Morgan finally subdues Rick and handcuffs him in a hotel room, waiting for the arrival of the train back to Pawley, Belden surrounds the building with his army of hired guns.

The only person sympathetic to Morgan is Belden’s battered girlfriend Linda (Carolyn Jones). Even she believes the determined marshal faces overwhelming odds:

“You remind me of Jimmy, a fella I used to know,” she remarks. “Stubborn as a mule.”

“Next time you see Jimmy, say hello,” Morgan answers dryly. “We seem to have a lot in common.”

“More than you know. He’s dead.”

“Last Train from Gun Hill” originated with a story treatment by writer Les Crutchfield, expanded by James W. Poe with an uncredited assist from Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas brought in to sharpen the dialogue. The exchanges between the characters, like the one quoted above, crackle with Trumbo’s signature style. Crutchfield contributed scripts regularly to “Gunsmoke,” and “Last Train from Gun Hill” unfolds like a traditional episode of the long-running series, dressed up with a little more complexity, a rape-murder that would never have passed network censorship, and a striking climactic scene that also would have run afoul of the censors. Standing up, Morgan drives a wagon slowly down main street to meet the arriving train. Rick stands beside him, handcuffed, with the muzzle of Morgan’s borrowed shotgun pressed up under his chin to keep Belden and his gunmen at bay.  When Dell Comics adapted the movie as a comic book at the time of the film’s release, it chose that scene as the cover photograph. As far as I know, the graphic come-on of imminent shotgun mayhem didn’t raise the ire of parents, educators, child psychologists, or media pundits in that distant year of 1959. Back then, of course, pervasive gun violence wasn’t the social catastrophe that it is today. In 2022, the comic book would surely raise a firestorm of controversy on social media and cable news.

“Last Train from Gun Hill” falls just short of a true classic, since the plot mostly relies on ingredients that we’ve seen many times before in other Westerns—the incorruptible lawman, the overbearing cattle baron, his bullying but weak-willed son, the old friends now at cross-purposes, the unfriendly town, the tense wait for a train—but Douglas, Quinn, and supporting actors Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brian Hutton, and Brad Dexter are at the top of their form, and Sturges’ no-nonsense direction keeps the action moving at a tense pace. The Blu-ray edition of the film from Paramount Pictures’ specialty label, “Paramount Presents,” contains a sharp, remastered transfer, an appreciative video feature with Leonard Maltin, and theatrical trailers. Even though “Last Train from Gun Hill” ran frequently on local TV channels in the 1970s and ‘80s, its visual quality there was seriously compromised by the broadcast format. Worse, endless commercial breaks disrupted Sturges’ masterful mood of mounting tension. Revisiting the production in its original, intended form, we may better appreciate its merits as classic Hollywood professionalism at its finest. Highly recommended.

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By Giacomo Selloni

“Hello, Bookstore” chronicles the heart-warming story of how the community of Lenox, Massachusetts rallied around their local bookshop to save it from bankruptcy during COVID-19. Viewers are treated to an amazing storyteller, Matthew Tannenbaum, owner of The Bookstore since 1976. It's not your typical documentary. There's no narrative here. It is not linear. What we are treated to is a raconteur of the first level musing about his life and raison d'être, The Bookstore on Housatonic Street. The film is best described as being stream of consciousness musings attached to a metronome of time.

Director A.B.Zax, the sole cameraman of the film, started filming in the fall of 2019. "It was an amazing journey, starting in fall 2019 and early winter, 2020. Then COVID hit, and I came back from L.A., where we were living at the time. I was upset at first, this isn’t The Bookstore I want to show, it wasn’t that magical world anymore. Once I accepted that this is the time we had to do this, what an interesting microcosm to explore, these shifts in our communities, this humble little bookstore. We stayed and bought a small house in West Stockbridge," Zax (who is married to a high school friend of Tannenbaum's daughter, Shawnee) said.

Tannenbaum has owned this shop since 1976. He's hosted many a book reading there and raised a glass with his customers at the in-store/next door wine bar Get Lit. 

Matt Tannenbaum behind his Get Lit wine bar.

(Photo: Heather Bellow.)

He's been in debt since he signed the papers and borrowed money to buy the store 46 years ago. But he's been doing what he loves ever since: “I’m just that guy who likes to do what I do, to sit upfront, do the work, and handle books. The film captures me doing that,” he said in a post-film interview.

In April of 2020, while the shop would not let browsers in, books were sold either curbside, asked for through the front door or via the internet. Customers would read off their credit card numbers and books from inside were placed on a stool right outside the front door.We meet many regular customers during the course of the film as well as his two daughters, the previously mentioned Shawnee and Sophie, who gave birth to a child during the filming. Matt has a great rapport with his customers and a never-ending font of stories. In his early days in Manhattan he worked at the famous Gotham Book Mart. He eventually wrote a short (36 page) memoir: My Years at The Gotham Book Mart with Frances Steloff, Proprietor. The idea for the documentary came to Zax when he asked Tannenbaum if he planned to write more stories and Tannenbaum said he didn't. Thus, it was decided to film the stories as they were related by him to the camera. And occasional customer.

In August of 2020 he was selling in one week less than what he would sell in a day. Bills mounted up. In desperation he started a Go-Fund me page hoping to raise $60,000 to save the store. He reached it in 23 hours. Eventually, it topped out at $120,000.The Bookstore, a fixture in Lenox for well over four decades, got its start in Stockbridge, “in the living room of a small rented house behind an alley that housed a then little-known café that later came to be known as Alice’s Restaurant.”

In a photograph taken in the mid-1990s, Matt Tannenbaum with Alice Brock of Alice’s Restaurant and Arlo Guthrie. Brock had just illustrated Arlo’s new book, Mooses Come Walking.

The move to Lenox took place sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. And the baton pass from the previous owner, David Silverstein, to Matt Tannenbaum took place on April Fool’s Day, 1976. Due to the community's generosity, The Bookstore still operates to this day. “Hello, Bookstore” is available on DVD from Kino Lorber/Greenwich Video (Click here to order from Amazon). It can also be rented for streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple. For those interested, the film's website has a video of Neil Gaiman's introduction to the movie that was shown while running at Manhattan's Film Forum. https://www.hello-bookstore.com/

For further reading you may be interested in reading these newspaper articles:

https://theberkshireedge.com/matt-tannenbaums-bookstore-lenox-40-years-serving-writers-readers/

https://theberkshireedge.com/business-monday-the-bookstore-in-lenox/

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/central_berkshires/matthew-tannenbaum-hello-bookstore-film-lenox/article_d4f29782-c4cf-11ec-9ebd-779f12000d16.html

The Power of the Social-Problem Programmer

By Dana Polan

Film historians like to connect Jack Arnold’s Man in the Shadow (1957) to Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil from the same year, produced both at Universal-International by Albert Zugsmith. Each revolves around a murder somewhere in the South or Southwest that ensues when a rich and prejudiced gringo capitalist tries to prevent a romance between his daughter and a Mexican man. Each involves an intrepid squared-jawed he-man law enforcement figure investigating that murder and fightin the obstructions of a racist megalomaniac played in both cases by Welles.

But the differences are instructive. For instance, in Touch of Evil, the Welles figure is, like the hero, a lawman, but in this case corrupt yet often getting the job done even as he bends the law to do so. In Man in the Shadow, in contrast, Welles’s character Renchler is an imperious cattleman (Virgil Renchler) whose ranch was the site of a killing he oversaw. He’s unremittingly corrupt from beginning to end. Touch of Evil then is about moral ambiguity – Welles’s Hank Quinlan is good cop and bad cop rolled up into one. Man in the Shadow is more certain of its morality: if, at the film’s beginning, Sherriff Ben Sadler (Jeff Chandler) has a somewhat jaded attitude to his job (he clearly couldn’t care a whit about the presumed killing of a Mexican bracero), he nonetheless pushes on in his inquiry and stands finally for ethical uprightness against the unambiguous immorality of Renchler. If Jeff Chandler once played Native Americans (Cochise in three films), thus crossing or confusing racial and ethnic lines, here he is the all-American, initially disdainful of the lowly Mexican workers but coming ultimately to defend their rights against fascistic Anglo over-reachers. Conversely, in Touch of Evil, the good cop, played by sculpted macho man Charlton Heston, is himself Mexican, a casting decision that has never made sense even as it adds to the weird fun of Welles’s film. And indeed Touch of Evil is weird in so many ways – curious acting, baroque editing, overwrought compositions, convoluted plot, and on and on.

Man in the Shadow in contrast is a straightforward 80 minute programmer shot in a generally sober style: after an initial act of excessive violence (the murder of the bracero in the shadows), the film settles down to offer a taut and tight morality tale played often in daylight (until a final battle that is dark in look but clear in moral stance) and in long takes that, instead of meandering like the ones in Touch of Evil often do, frequently remain implacably fixed on the action in order to take in the verbal sparring of Sadler and everyone who wants to prevent him from getting at the truth.

In this pared-down narrative of one intrepid man against the world, Man in the Shadow is in a lineage of other such films that came out the complex context of the 1950s. For instance, Sadler’s casting off of his badge when virtually no one in the town comes to his defense seems inspired by High Noon while the paranoid atmosphere of a modern Western town where deadly realities of racial violence are being hidden away by the villagers reminds one of John Sturges’s man-against-conspiratorial-community-nightmare, Bad Day at Black Rock. Yet, when an Italian barber announces his allegiance to Sherriff Sadler and explains that over in Italy, they tried to install a dictator in the 1920s and that’s why he prefers America, we can readily see that Man in the Shadow is going in a different direction than the paranoid narratives of the hunted hero alone against corrupt society. The barber is the first crack in the mindless devotion to fascistic conformity. Like, say, the Frank Sinatra Western Johnny Concho from the year before, Man in the Shadow ultimately shows itself devoted to the cause of liberalism as the townsfolk convert in their convictions and come to Sadler’s defense. This liberalism against a conspiratorial conformity takes on new relevance and resonance in today’s fraught political context as we see the townsfolk initially disdaining the Mexican workers as undocumented and othering them through xenophobic stereotypes while imagining whiteness as a fundamental decency. That the white commonfolk can evolve ideologically and overcome prejudice might well link the progressivism of Man in the Shadow to a key earlier film by director Jack Arnold, It Came from Outer Space, another liberal intervention into Cold War Culture that, similarly, is all about turning fear of the other into inter-cultural tolerance.

Filmed in CinemaScope black-and-white (like some other programmers just around this time), Man in the Shadow looks great on Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray edition. The only special features are the original trailer (which, interestingly, pinpoints Sherriff Sadler and not Orson Welles’s seemingly respectable but fundamentally corrupt capitalist as the “man in the shadow”) and a breathless commentary track from movie critic Troy Howarth. To my mind, Howarth is a bit too enamored of character actors’ filmographies, enumerating at length the career and date of death for virtually anyone from within the film’s secondary cast, but he does offer helpful insights about the film’s genre affiliations: for example, Horwath’s perception that violence around a seemingly alien otherness insinuating itself into arid small towns is common to a number of Jack Arnold films enables us to see the xenophobia at issue in both Arnold’s Westerns and science-fiction.

Long unavailable (or available only in pan-and-scan), Man in the Shadow in Kino Lorber’s fine Blu-Ray edition offers anew a strikingly suspenseful social-problem film that offers a trenchant glimpse of the politics of its time.

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(Dana Polan is the author of "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture". Click here to order from Amazon

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Cinema of the 1970s is primarily remembered for being a bold era in which groundbreaking films were released and the emergence of titanic new talents both on screen and behind the camera. It was an era in which sex, crime and violence were often exploited to take advantage of the new freedoms in the industry. Yet, there still remained a market for family comedies. While Disney and other major studio family fare could still prove to be profitable, there was also a subculture of low-budget films of this genre that were made by independent production companies. Some of these films were never even released in big cities but they proved popular with rural audiences, thus there were an abundance of rural themes in many of them. A good example of this is the 1978 comedy "They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way" starring Tim Conway and Chuck McCann, working from a screenplay by Conway. I've always had sentiment towards both of these comedy stars, having grown up in the 1960s watching Conway on "McHale's Navy" and McCann hosting a kid's show. Conway was a major factor in driving the success of "McHale's Navy" and in the 1970s he would be an integral part of "The Carol Burnett Show"'s popularity. His skits with straight man Harvey Korman were often hilarious as Korman would gamely try (unsuccessfully) to prevent himself from cracking up at Conway's often improvised antics. In the 1970s, Conway also found success in Disney feature films, sometimes co-starring with another TV icon, Don Knotts.

In "That-A-Way", Conway and co-directors Stuart E. McGowan and Edward J. Montagne provide a prison comedy that introduces us to small town deputies Dewey (Conway) and Wallace (McCann). Do we have to inform you that they are totally inept? Every decision they make turns into a disaster, yet they are secretly appointed by the governor to pose as inmates at a prison camp in order to find out what happened to some stolen loot that one of the prisoners has stashed away. Their mission is to win his confidence and use the information to recover the money. The scenario is ripe for big laughs, but Conway and McCann so blatantly attempt to emulate their idols, Laurel and  Hardy, that it only serves to remind us that they were inimitable in their comedic brilliance. At one point, Conway resorts to dusting off his classic sketch as an inept dentist that ran on "The Carol Burnett Show". However, without a live audience and Harvey Korman as his hapless foil who can't stop laughing, the skit falls flat as a pancake. There are a few chuckles in the scenarios of the inept duo trying to cope with living among hardened criminals, among them Lenny Montana and Richard Kiel. In fact, it's quite funny to see Montana, who played the much-feared Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" as Kiel's intimidated "yes man". There are numerous other supporting players who are fun to watch: the always-marvelous Dub Taylor as the prison warden (named Warden Warden), Reni Santoni as the inept deputy who is carrying on with his sexpot wife and the ageless Hank Worden as the con with the stash of cash. Our inept heroes stumble upon the hidden loot but they soon learn that the governor has died without informing anyone he has assigned two lawmen to pose as inmates. Thus, they are facing years in prison. They decide to break out and head to the new governor's residence where he is hosting a swanky luncheon for the Japanese ambassador (!). This gives Conway the opportunity to pose as a  fellow Japanese  and McCann as a geisha in one of those painful comedy bits that is cringe-inducing by today's sensibilities. The film races to a finale that manages to be chaotic without being even slightly funny.

The fact that the film was credited to two directors indicates some kind of problem or tension on the set. My guess is that Edward Montagne's contributions were minimal and I put forward as evidence that he brought several Don Knotts feature films to the screen as producer and sometimes writer and director. They have all stood the test of time and remain very funny. In any event, Montagne would not direct another feature film and he passed away in 2003. I admire Tim Conway but I've found that his comedic persona has not always aged well. As a kid, I thought his bumbling Ensign Parker on "McHale's Navy" was hilarious. I still find the show amusing but it's now in spite of Conway, not because of him. Conway's character, much like the one he plays in "That-A-Way", is not just comically inept. Rather, he seems like a man-child, someone who suffers from a mental deficiency- a four year-old boy trapped in a man's body. I have the same opinion when I watch the characters played by Jerry Lewis in his early films with Dean Martin. There is nothing remotely believable about them and they seem more pathetic than funny.

It gives me no pleasure to knock an attempt to provide wholesome family entertainment such as this. Still, a comedy isn't worth much if it isn't funny, and "That-A-Way"'s few modest pleasures don't merit a recommendation. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks good and provides only some TV spots and a trailer as extras.

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By Lee Pfeiffer 

The year 1979 was a good one for vampires, cinematically speaking. John Badham's version of "Dracula" premiered starring Frank Langella in the film version of his Broadway hit, George Hamilton had a surprise success with the spoof "Love At First Bite" and German director Werner Herzog unveiled his remake of the classic German silent horror movie "Nosferatu: The Vampyre". The original version by director F.W. Murnau is still regarded by many as the greatest horror movie ever made. Indeed, the mere sight of the film's star Max Schreck (who was as eerie in real life as he was on screen) is enough to give you nightmares. Herzog's version was not only the best of the vampire films released in 1979, it is a fitting homage to the Murnau classic. Working with a relatively extravagant budget, Herzog produced a film that is eerie and unsettling. He refrains from going for quick shocks, relying instead on the overall unnerving atmosphere that resonates throughout the production. Perhaps the most iconic aspect of the film is Klaus Kinski's remarkable resemblance to the character played in the original by Schreck, who embodied what is perhaps the most unnerving movie monster of all time.  Kinski's appearance mirrors that of Schreck but the actor brings his own persona to the role.

The film, based on Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, opens with Jonathan Harker  (Bruno Ganz) leading an idyllic life with his beautiful young wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani). His boss, Renfield (Roland Topor), induces him to make an arduous journey to Transylvania to visit the eccentric but rich Count Dracula, who has expressed interest in buying a house in Harker's town. Harker is enthused about the mission because of the financial rewards but Lucy has a premonition that the journey will have disastrous consequences. She pleads with him not to go but to no avail. Harker sets off over mountain roads that lead through deep forests. The nearer he gets to the Count's castle the more unnerved the local peasants are. They blatantly warn him to turn back, citing eerie disappearances and deaths associated with Dracula. Harker dismisses their concerns as the superstitions of unsophisticated people. However, upon arrival at Dracula's castle he immediately has second thoughts. The Count is a corpse-like, sinewy figure with almost impossibly long fingernails who talks in a whispery voice that is more menacing than comforting. In the cold dank castle, Dracula serves Harker a meal then becomes obsessed with sucking the blood from a small cut Harker has suffered from a kitchen knife. The Count assures him that's all just a homespun way of treating the wound. Harker, increasingly unnerved, realizes he has made a mistake in visiting the castle but it's too late to escape. Dracula notices a locket with Lucy's photograph in it and makes inquiries about her, much to Harker's distress. In the morning, Harker awakens to find he has been imprisoned in the castle- and worse, he has been the victim of a vampire. Having arranged the sale of the house to Dracula, he realizes he is in a race against time to return to his village before the Count arrives there. He is desperately ill, however, and fails in his quest. Meanwhile, Dracula has stowed away inside a coffin on board a cargo ship headed towards the town of his destination. Along the way, crew members begin to die mysteriously. By the time the vessel arrives in port, it is a ghost ship, devoid of any human life with only the captain's log hinting at the horror he has witnessed. Accompanying Dracula on board the ship were thousands of rats who now run amok in the town, spreading the plague. Harker is returned to Lucy by some kindly peasants, but he is very ill and in a zombie-like condition. Lucy is then threatened by the appearance of Dracula in her own bedroom and she realizes that the town is being victimized by a vampire, though no one believes her. As the plague takes its toll on the citizenry, the town falls into chaos- and Lucy becomes determined to kill Dracula even if she must do so by herself.

Herzog, who also wrote the screenplay, has fashioned a film that oozes menace to the extent that even before the appearance of Dracula, the movie has a sense of foreboding. It is a rather cold and emotionless film, more visually interesting than moving. Herzog seems to intentionally present his protagonists in a dispassionate manner. He provides cursory details of their lives but seems to be far more interested in making almost every frame a work of art. To a great degree he succeeded. There are images in Nosferatu that will haunt the viewer, but there's no getting around the fact that there isn't anyone the audience can truly relate to. Neither Harker or Lucy are ever seen as anything more than one dimensional characters. The silly eccentric Renfield is largely wasted in the latter part of the story. He does become a servant of Dracula but this plot device is disposed of rather quickly. Prof. Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast), who is generally presented as the hero in Dracula films, is shown here to be a half-senile old fool who realizes too late that a vampire may be running amok. Herzog provides plenty of memorable moments, among which are scenes of the town's rapid decay into death and disaster because of the plague.  As Lucy walks through the town square, she witnesses doomed people acting out their final fantasies, whether it is indulging in a last sumptuous feast, dancing wildly or illogically stealing furniture from vacant stores. Composer Popul Vuh provides an appropriately eerie score throughout.  

Herzog's Nosferatu is a poetic experience in many ways. It's leisurely pace and low-key tone make it one of the more unusual horror films you'll ever see. However, it can be deemed a success by virtue of the fact that he and Kinski brought relevancy to this remake of what many people believe is the greatest German film ever made.

The excellent Shout! Factory Blu-ray features both the German and English language versions of the film and  a commentary track by Herzog, whose soothing, rather monotonous tone becomes somewhat mesmerizing. He provides interesting insights into the making of the film and this is complimented by the inclusion of a vintage "making of" production short that shows fascinating footage of Herzog and Kinski during production, including Kinski's rather arduous daily makeup sessions. Also included is a photo gallery showing great behind the scenes shots of Herzog at work. There are also a selection of superbly designed original trailers that truly convey the menace of the titular character.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Kino Lorber has releaseda Blu-ray edition of  "The Secret War of Harry Frigg", a long overlooked and largely forgotten 1968 WWII comedy starring Paul Newman. The film''s release was sandwiched in Newman's career during a particularly productive time following the releases of "Cool Hand Luke" (which gained him an Oscar nomination), the critically acclaimed western "Hombre", his directorial debut with "Rachel, Rachel" (4 Oscar nominations) and his mega-hit "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". "Frigg" is a completely lightweight affair done on the cheap with California locations substituting for Italy. The film casts Newman in his trademark role as an anti-Establishment wiseguy. When we first see him, he's a lowly private serving in Italy at the height of the Allied invasion. Frigg is a malcontent whose rebellious nature results in him spending most of his time in the brig. He's gained a reputation as an escape artist but never succeeds in staying free for very long. Frigg is summoned to meet General Homer Prentiss (James Gregory), who offers him an audacious deal. Seems that five Allied generals were captured by Italian troops in a Turkish bath. The Allies can't afford them to be interrogated for long and Prentiss wants Frigg to parachute behind enemy lines posing as a general in the hopes that he, too, will be captured. The scheme is to have Frigg imprisoned with the other generals and then develop an escape plan for all of them. Frigg agrees after working out some perks he will get from carrying out the high-risk plot. Upon landing in Italy, he is summarily captured as planned. He is taken to a lavish country villa where the other generals are being held. Frigg is pleasantly surprised to find that the Italian officer who serves as a warden, Col. Ferrucci (Vito Scotti), is a likeable, charming man who treats his prisoners as honored guests and lavishes them with amenities. Still, the real generals impose upon Frigg, who they think is their superior officer, to orchestrate an escape plan. However, Frigg becomes accustomed to Ferrucci's constant supply of gourmet food, fine wine and expensive cigars. He is even more enamored when he meets the owner of the villa, a beautiful countess named Francesca (Sylva Koscina). Frigg discovers a secret passageway that leads outside the compound but which also conveniently goes into Francesca's bedroom. Before long, he's also enjoying plenty of sexual perks. By the time Frigg is motivated to actually plan an escape, it's too late. A German officer (Werner Peters) arrives at the villa to announce that Italy has just surrendered and that German troops will now occupy positions formally held by Italian troops. He summarily takes charge of the prisoners and also arrests the hapless Ferrucci, who ironically had just been promoted to the rank of general. The group is taken from luxurious surroundings to a harsh prison camp where they are monitored constantly and deterred from escape by an electrified fence and a mine field. Nevertheless, Frigg is unfazed and sets about planning his most ambitious escape. 

"The Secret War of Harry Frigg" was directed by Jack Smight, a competent if workman-like director whose best film was the 1966 crime flick "Harper" which starred Paul Newman in one of his signature roles. Alas, their reunion doesn't present the same kind of payoff the first movie did. Aside from a weak screenplay, much of the blame for the film's failure to work lies with Newman himself. Instead of playing Frigg as a sophisticated con man, Newman portrays him as a blue collar simpleton from New Jersey whose only talents are conning the military brass and seducing women. The role of a virtual idiot does not suit Newman well. He was able to play a rough-around-the-edges  protagonist as boxer Rocky Graziano in the 1956 film "Somebody Up There Likes Me" because the character wasn't cartoonish. By 1968, however, Newman was an iconic screen presence and it was simply impossible to accept him as a lovable moron. The first half of the movie is pretty tepid but the second chapter improves significantly when Frigg and his companions are imprisoned by the Germans. With Newman giving a rare dud performance, the supporting cast carries the show and fortunately it includes some first rate second bananas: Charles Gray, John Williams, Tom Bosley and Andrew Duggan among them. The scene stealers are Vito Scotti and Werner Peters, both of whom deliver deft comedic performances. Sylva Koscina, one of the most charming Italian imports to Hollywood during this period, is largely used as window dressing and her character's reunion with Frigg at the film's finale seems as forced as it is absurd. "Frigg" is not without its modest pleasures but it never reaches the genuine laughter level found in the average episode of the similarly-themed "Hogan's Heroes". 

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray is a vast improvement over Universal's previous bare bones DVD release. It includes a fun commentary track by film historians by Nat Segaloff and Daniel Kremer as well as the original trailer.

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BY LEE PEIFFER

"The Rounders", the contemporary 1965 Western comedy, is available on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive. The film is primarily notable for the teaming of Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda, two estimable Hollywood stars who could be relied upon to play convincingly in both dark, somber dramas and frolicking comedies. "The Rounders" was directed and written by Burt Kennedy, who adapted a novel from by Max Evans. Kennedy was a veteran of big studio productions who worked his way from screenwriter to director. If he never made any indisputable classics, it can be said that he made a good many films that were top-notch entertainment. Among them: "Support Your Local Sheriff", "The War Wagon", "Hannie Caulder" and "The Train Robbers". While Westerns were Kennedy's specialty, he did have a prestigious achievement with his screenplay for Clint Eastwood's woefully under-praised 1990 film "White Hunter, Black Heart". It's not an insult to state that most of Kennedy's directorial efforts could be considered lightweight. They were not concerned with social issues and generally had a Hawksian emphasis on heroes who engaged in good-natured bantering ("The War Wagon" is the best example of this.) Those elements are in full display in "The Rounders" but the film never rises above the status of resembling an extended episode of a TV sitcom from the era. That isn't meant as a knock, considering how many good TV sitcoms were on the airwaves in 1965, but there is a rather lazy element to the production and one would suspect that an old pro like Kennedy probably knocked off the script over a long lunch. 

The film, set in contemporary Arizona, finds Ford and Fonda playing Ben Jones and "Howdy" Lewis (his real name is Marion, but he's too ashamed to admit it, which is a nice inside joke aimed at Fonda's old pal John Wayne, whose real name was Marion Morrison.) The two are middle-aged wranglers  who make ends meet by "breaking" and taming wild horses. It's a rough-and-tumble profession that inevitably results in them being tossed around like rag dolls as they ride atop bucking broncos. However, Ben and "Howdy" are still the best in their profession, although their meager wages have left them with no tangible assets beyond a beaten-up pickup truck. Local land baron Jim Ed Love (Chill Wills) hires them to spend the winter in a dilapidated cabin in the mountains in order to round up stray horses and keep them safe until spring. The assignment means enduring harsh weather and complete isolation, but the pair need the money so they accept. Since Fonda and Ford are the stars, there's no chance of this evolving into a "Brokeback Mountain" scenario and the two spend time gazing at a poster that depicts a ridiculously sanitized hula girl, a symbol of Ben's long-time dream of moving to a tropical island. Much of the script centers on their trials and tribulations in attempting to break a particularly rebellious roan horse that defies conforming to their commands. It gets personal with Ben, who decides that at the end of winter, he will buy the horse from Love for the simple pleasure of taking him to a soap factory. The two men survive the winter and head off (with roan horse in tow) to the big rodeo, a stop they make every year in order to supplement their income by winning bucking bronco riding contests. Along they way they have a chance encounter with two sisters who happen to be exotic dancers (Sue Ane Langdon and Hope Holiday). They are amiable bubbleheads but after the men have been in the mountains sans female companionship for many months, they can't resist attempting to woo them. The family-friendly  screenplay is quite timid when it comes to depicting adult sexual behavior. Ben and "Howdy" are understandably enticed by the vivacious sisters but they seem satiated by inducing them to join them in a moonlight skinny-dipping session, which is interrupted by a police raid. The climax finds the two partners attempting to use the unbreakable roan horse as a gimmick to lure local wranglers and riders to bet money they can best him. There's a bit of a con in their scheme, but as one might suspect, their plans go awry and they don't benefit from any ill-gotten gains. As you might also suspect, the roan horse earns Ben's respect and never makes it to that dreaded soap factory. 

That's pretty much the entire plot of "The Rounders", which is lightweight enough to resemble a celluloid wisp of smoke. If it's never boring, it's also never very engaging, as we keep expecting the script to provide some kind of creative or engaging plot device that never arrives. Still, it has its pleasures and Fonda and Ford exude real chemistry that elevates the proceedings substantially. There is also the wonder of the magnificent Arizona locations, a jaunty musical score by Jeff Alexander and a marvelous cast of reliable and familiar character actors that, in addition to the incomparable Chill Wills, includes Edgar Buchanan, Kathleen Freeman, Barton MacLane, Doodles Weaver and Denver Pyle. 

When the film was released, even MGM felt the production was rather lacking in commercial appeal. Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris, who gave the film some faint praise, justifiably took issue with the fact that the studio had buried "The Rounders" by placing it at the bottom of a double-feature with a forgettable teeny bopper musical, "Get Yourself a College Girl".  He said it must have been depressing for all involved to have a film headlining Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda play second fiddle to a movie that starred Mary Ann Mobley and Nancy Sinatra. He also praised Burt Kennedy, acknowledging that his often estimable contributions to the film business were generally overlooked. Unexpectedly, however, "The Rounders" proved to be a hit in its own right. It drew devoted fans in rural areas and on the drive-in circuit and ended up overshadowing the top-of-the-bill feature. It would even later be made into a television series starring Patrick Wayne, Ron Hayes and Chill Wills, reprising his role from the film. 

The Warner Archive Blu-ray does justice to Paul Vogel's impressive cinematography by providing a truly impressive and all-around gorgeous Blu-ray transfer. The release also includes the original trailer.  

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

By the late 1960s, Jacqueline Bisset was clearly one of the "It" girls among a bevy of starlets who crossed over from flash-in-the-pan status to becoming a genuine star in their own right. Her breakthrough role opposite Steve McQueen in the 1968 blockbuster "Bullitt" helped catapult the British beauty to the top ranks of actresses who were deemed to have international boxoffice appeal. Among her major Hollywood successes: "The Detective", "Airport" and "The Deep". In between, however, Bisset was open to appearing in off-beat films that were most suited for the art house circuit.  One of the more unusual productions was "Secret World", a 1969 French film that was the antithesis of the commercial successes she was enjoying. The film was directed by Robert Freeman, a famed photographer who is credited with shooting many of the classic album covers for The Beatles. (Some sources credit Paul Feyder as co-director but the film does not give him this status in the main titles or on the poster.)The  film is a moody, slow-moving tale about troubled people in troubled relationships. It's nevertheless oddly compelling and retains the viewer's interest because of the unveiling of key information about the characters and their motives on a drip...drip...drip basis. 

The film opens with scenes of Francois (Jean-Francois Vlerick, billed here as Jean-Francois Maurin), an 11 year-old boy who is rather morose and somber. He is living in a French country manor house that, like the family that inhabits it, has seen better days. Francois is under the care of his Aunt Florence (Giselle Pascal) and Uncle  Phillippe (Pierre Zimmer), a forty-something couple whose marriage is strained. They go through the motions of keeping their relationship civil, but it's clear the passion is long gone. We see Francois finding some degree of enjoyment in solitude when he retreats to his tree house where he peruses a small box of "treasures", which are various household oddities that he has secreted in his domain. Florence and Phillippe receive an unexpected visit from their son Olivier (Marc Porel), a handsome but irresponsible young man who lives off his parent's money. Like the relationship between his parents, Olivier's dealings with them are similarly strained. Francois observes all of this somberly, rarely speaking unless spoken to.

Phillippe announces that they are to have a visitor arriving soon from London: Wendy (Jacqueline Bisset, quite becoming as a blonde), the daughter of an old war buddy who once saved his life. When she shows up, her presence has an immediate impact on everyone in the house. Wendy is polite, out-going, generous and stunningly beautiful. Immediately, Olivier decides to postpone his departure in the hopes of wooing and seducing her. Phillippe seems similarly smitten and Florence is clearly threatened by the arrival of the attractive young woman. As the days pass, Wendy also builds a relationship with Francois, who becomes obsessed with her. He steals a bottle of her perfume so he can have a constant reminder of her presence. She, in turn, plays a combination role of big sister and mother, taking Francois under her wing and spending quality time with him. She later learns that he was been adopted by his aunt and uncle after his parents died in a terrible car crash. Worse, Francois suffered the trauma of being trapped under his mother's body for hours. With Wendy able to reach him in a way that no one else can, Francois's mood begins to lighten. Before long, he is bragging to his small circle of friends that she is his girlfriend, although it is never clear whether his fascination with her is based on his budding sexual instincts or simply because she has fulfilled a nurturing role that has been absent from his life since the death of his mother. As the story progresses, we also learn that Phillippe and Wendy are actually long-time lovers and that her visit from London has been arranged simply so they can spend time together. Before long, Phillippe finds himself in competition with Olivier for her attention. Florence clearly suspects that her husband's interest in Wendy is more than platonic. In a rather cringe-inducing scene, she is mocked by the male members of her household when she decides to have her hair dyed blonde in an obvious attempt to compete with the younger woman. The relationships between the principals continue to deteriorate even as Wendy and Francois become closer. An off-hand remark made by her in jest is taken seriously by the young boy who believes that they are to run away together and live in England, which leads to the inevitable heartbreaking conclusion. 

There are no dramatic fireworks or show-stopping moments built into the script but the film is extremely well acted and at some points, you feel as though you are eavesdropping on a real family. Bisset ignites the screen in this early starring role as a woman who is the unintended catalyst for a lot of anxiety for the males in her life. Director Freeman handles the proceedings with sensitivity and he gets significant assistance from the fine cinematography of Peter Biziou.  The  U.S. marketing campaign for the film was somewhat misleading with its implication that it centered on an illicit sexual relationship between a young woman and an under-age boy. In fact, the sexual element is completely one-sided from standpoint of Francois and there aren't any erotic sequences in the film at all- just an abundance of good actors working with a believable and engrossing script. Recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

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

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

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

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

By Lee Pfeiffer

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

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

(The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)

By Fred Blosser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY LEE PFEIFFER

In his review of "Jack of Diamonds", New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther dismissed it as "strictly low-grade "Topkapi". The 1967 crime caper stars George Hamilton as handsome and inanimate as a mannequin found in the window of a posh 5th Avenue department store. At least no one can ever accuse him of putting the "ham" in "Hamilton". Hamilton plays Jeff Hill, the world's most notorious cat burglar. When we first see him, he's using a rope and pulley to enter the penthouse apartment of Zsa Zsa Gabor (!), who plays herself. While Zsa is sleeping, Hill manages to abscond with her valuable jewels- but, ever the gentleman, he leaves her a message telling her how much he enjoys her films (which means Hill has immaculate taste in jewels but not-so-great taste when it comes to the cinema.) Ms. Gabor is one of several real-life celebs who play themselves in the film. The others are Carroll Baker and Lili Palmer, each of who are victimized by the elegant, gentlemanly thief. The cameos are  a pretty transparent gimmick to add a little more glamour to the production, which was produced by a West German film company and released theatrically in the USA by MGM. 

Hill lives a Hefner-like lifestyle in a lavish mansion replete with all the trappings including a gymnasium complete with a trapeze that he uses to stay in shape so he can utilize his signature style of entering high buildings using the tactics of a human fly. We soon learn he has a mentor who goes by the name of "Ace" (Joseph Cotten), as he was once the world's greatest jewel thief and was known as "The Ace of Diamonds". He still acts as a wise sage for Hill, advising him on the dos and don'ts of certain potential capers. Hill soon finds that he has a competitor for some of the same jewels. Turns out it is a female cat burglar, Olga (Marie Laforet), who has her own mentor, Nicolai (Maurice Evans), a dapper dandy who also was once a famed jewel thief. Nicolai has concocted a plan for the ultimate theft and wants Olga and Hill to join forces to carry it out with he and Ace acting as advisers. This gives Hill plenty of time to make time with his new sexy partner but there is virtually no chemistry between Hamilton and Laforet, partly because her character is largely window dressing and is not fleshed out in the slightest in terms of being given a background. Nicolai's plan requires stealing some famed jewels from a seemingly impenetrable museum but just to learn their precise location it will require the cat burglars to break into a safe located in the headquarters of the Paris police. Achieving this daring goal, the foursome then turn to the main event: the robbery of the jewels. They are racing against time against an international police organization (presumably based on INTERPOL) that is doggedly trying to track them down and stop future robberies. The organization's point man is Von Schenk (Wolfgang Preiss), a charismatic German who pursues them with the zeal of Inspector Javert. 

"Jack of Diamonds" is yet another film from the Sixties that looked anemic in its day but probably plays better now. The film tries to present some glamorous European locales but much of it is achieved through the over-used stock footage that MGM had in its vaults at the time. (A scene supposedly shot atop the Pan Am building in New York features what may be the worst rear screen projection effect I've ever seen.) Still, the offbeat feel of the film is somewhat enjoyable and the script allows a Bondian air in which the pursuer and the pursued match wits while enjoying each other's company and sharing fine cigars. George Hamilton makes for a strikingly handsome leading man even if he's a bit short in the charisma department. The real fun is watching old pros Cotten, Evans and Preiss trade barbs and witticisms. It's the kind of dialogue that is rare in contemporary thrillers. The caper aspects of the production are carried out adequately by director (and former actor) Don Taylor and if the entire enterprise stacks up as "Hitchcock Lite", it's an enjoyable romp throughout with nary a dull moment and a bizarre but infectious score by Bob Harris and Peter Thomas (bizarre because it is the only time you will ever seen a filmed ski chase that combines jazz music and yodeling.) 

The Warner Archive has released the film as a region-free DVD title. There are some inconsistencies with the color quality but overall it's an acceptable print, though I suspect it may not be presented in its original aspect ratio. This version seems to be matted but I could be wrong. The DVD contains the original theatrical trailer.  

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By Doug Oswald

The final days of World War II in the Pacific are brought to life in “Apocalypse ’45,” the latest documentary from the makers of “The Cold Blue” released by Kino Lorber. Like its predecessor, “Apocalypse ‘45” (released in 2019) uses rarely seen color movies filmed during the war to create a narrative, in this case the final months of World War II. Watching this movie took my breath away and benefits from the narration by the men who were there. The color film makes the war come alive and is more real than in any of the scores of black and white documentary movies about World War II.

The movie tells parallel stories, one with the striking color film and the other with the insightful narration. Both the color film and the narration are blended into an alloy creating a new story of the last year of World War II in the Pacific. As America got closer to the Japanese homeland, the soldiers and civilians became more desperate. The soldiers were ordered to fight to the death while Japanese propaganda ensured the civilians would choose suicide to surrender. Graphic color footage of Japanese soldiers burning to death and civilians jumping to their deaths from cliffs are seen for the first time in decades in color because they were deemed too graphic for wartime and post-war American audiences. 1945 was also the year of the Kamikaze. The Japanese pilots received just enough training to fly their explosive-filled aircraft into American ships.

While the format of using the recorded recollections of WWII military veteransi s not unique to this movie, each face and voice is unique and a testament to the horrors of war. Many veterans of this era are now in their 90s and time has mellowed their perceptions of war and their former enemy. One of the voices is a Japanese civilian, just a boy when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He provides his first person account of that day and the aftermath which is juxtaposed with then censored color footage of the bomb’s devastation. Everyone, military veteran and civilian alike, are survivors of an apocalypse.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific and this release is the extended director’s cut which clocks in at 104 minutes. Released to theaters in August 2020, Erick Nelson and his team did a remarkable job restoring the color film which has not been seen for over half a century. Special mention must be made regarding the score by Mark Leggett who provides an additional dramatic element to the film. The disc contains nearly 90 minutes of supplements including the trailers for this film and “The Cold Blue,” a restoration comparison and three documentaries; “Ford at Pearl” which is a new featurette using John Ford’s 1942 color footage filmed at Pearl Harbor, “To the Shores of Iwo Jima” and “The Last Bomb” from 1945. “Apocalypse ‘45” is highly recommended viewing along with its companion, “The Cold Blue.”

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By Lee Pfeiffer 

Director Franklin J. Schaffner was fresh off his Best Director Oscar triumph for Patton when he teamed with legendary producer Sam Spiegel for the historical epic Nicholas and Alexandra. The film was an adaptation of a best-selling book by Robert K. Massie that traced the tragic events leading to the assassination of Russia's last czar, along with his entire family. With a screenplay by the esteemed James Goldman (The Lion in Winter), the film had the potential to be another Spiegel classic. After all, Spiegel had teamed with director David Lean to produce two of the great cinematic masterpieces: The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. Despite their mutual triumphs, Lean (like most people in the film industry) came to loathe the gruff Spiegel, whose mercurial temper knew no bounds. He would chastise gaffers and esteemed directors alike and Lean had had enough. When he began production on his 1965 blockbuster Doctor Zhivago, Spiegel's ego was bruised because Lean had teamed this time with producer Carlo Ponti. If Lean had made a boxoffice smash out of the Russian Revolution, Spiegel would prove he could do the same thing. Thus, Nicholas and Alexandra was borne more out of revenge than inspiration. In addition to hiring Schaffner for the project, Spiegel conspicuously brought two key members of the Zhivago team with him: production designer John Box and cinematographer Freddie Young. However, Spiegel's finances were not adequate to afford the big name stars he had hoped to cast in the lead roles. Thus, he was forced to cast relative unknowns from the British stage: Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman. To give the film some boxoffice allure, he cast a "Who's Who" of British acting royalty in supporting roles, comprised of legendary established stars and up-and-comers. They included Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Brian Cox, Ian Holm, Jack Hawkins (whose part was dubbed due to the actor's recent throat surgery), Harry Andrews, Tom Baker, John Wood, Roy Dotrice, Alexander Knox, Eric Porter and Timothy West. 

The story, steeped in historical accuracy, finds Nicholas ill-prepared to serve as czar over a troubled Russia beset by devastating economic conditions. With the majority of his people facing starvation and a daily struggle to survive, Nicholas resides in palatial splendor in Petersburg with his headstrong wife, Alexandra. Nicholas is a good man in his own way. He cares about the peasants but lives in a bubble that prevents him from relating to their day-to-lives. Born of privilege, he knows no other life. The Romanovs have ruled Russia for three hundred consecutive years and he sees no reason for the tradition to stop with his dynasty. He is delighted when Alexandra presents him with a male heir to the throne, but the boy is sickly and suffers from life-threatening hemophilia. Still, it's a happy family with Nicholas doting over his daughters and young son. He seems oblivious that there is great resentment towards his wife, who manipulates his every move and keeps him cut off from personal friends. He ignores warnings from his ministers that he must tone down Alexandra's lavish spending habits, especially during the poor economic climate. A protest by peasants in 1905 builds tension further when a mishap causes the army to fire on the people, slaughtering hundreds of them. The seeds of revolution continue to grow with the agitator Lenin leading the charge in hopes of establishing a Bolshevik ruling party and deposing the czar. Nicholas' ill-fated decision to enter WWI against Germany brings about catastrophic results. Not only are his armies no match against the Kaiser's but Alexandra is of German heritage, which further builds public resentment against her. As Russian forces face devastating defeats on the battlefields, revolution spreads quickly through the country. Lenin's popularity grows, especially when he promises to make immediate peace with Germany if he is given power. Before long, the czar finds himself essentially powerless. He and his family are arrested but he still believes they will live an idyllic and peaceful life in exile. Instead, they are shunted between distant locations and housed in barely-livable conditions as the new order debates their fate. As we all know, it is a tragic one with Nicholas and his family abruptly shot to death by an assassination squad.

These dramatic developments play out slowly but in an interesting manner throughout the film's 183-minute running time. The performances are all first rate, with Jayston especially good as the sympathetic (if clueless) czar. Suzman is every bit his match as the egotistical Alexandra and each member of the supporting cast provides a gem of a performance, with Olivier and Harry Andrews especially impressive and Tom Baker stealing the entire movie with his mesmerizing performance as Rasputin, the crazed monk who had a Svengali-like influence over Alexandra, much to her husband's disgust. Yet, despite those attributes and a rich production design, the film never emotionally moves the viewer as much as one would expect. The characters remain somewhat opaque and the great historical events that affect them are only given marginal background and explanation. Schaffner clearly wanted to emphasize personal relationships over visual splendor and by and large he succeeded. However, there is some emotional component missing here. He crafted an impressive movie on many levels but one that perhaps did not fulfill its ultimate potential. The movie was greeted with the customary (some would say obligatory) Oscar nominations generally accorded historical epics. It was nominated for 6 awards  (including nods for  Best Picture and Actress) and won in two technical categories. Nevertheless, overall critical response was mixed and the film was considered a boxoffice disappointment. Schaffner would go on to make three more impressive films (Papillon, Islands in the Stream and The Boys From Brazil) and several flops before passing away in 1989 at age 69. Spiegel never regained the mojo he once enjoyed in the industry. He would only make two more relatively low-key films (The Last Tycoon, Betrayal) before he died in 1985 at age 84.

Nicholas and Alexandra may not be the classic Spiegel and Schaffner had envisioned, but in this age of dumbed-down action movies, it plays much better than it did upon its initial release in 1971. It's a film that educates even as it entertains.

(The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)

By Nicholas Anez

In 1981, United Artists released True Confessions, a Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler production directed by Ulu Grosbard. Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall star in the movie. It is about faith, hope, repentance and salvation. It is also about greed, corruption, pornography and murder.

The setting is Los Angeles of 1948. This is the City of Angels as conceived by John Gregory Dunne in his superb 1977 novel of the same title. Dunne was an accomplished novelist as well as a literary critic and a notable writer of non-fiction; his 1998 book, Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, is an invaluable account of the trials and tribulations of writing a screenplay in Hollywood. True Confessions is certainly his best novel and, together with Joan Didion (aka Mrs. Dunne), he adapted it to the screen. Didion was an equally fine novelist and was also known for her acerbic essays on California culture; in 1972, Didion and Dunne wrote the screenplay for Didion’s acclaimed 1970 novel Play It as It Lays. The screenplay for True Confessions naturally condenses the novel, which was 341 pages in its first edition, and eliminates many incidents as well as characters. Nevertheless, the movie still fully captures the essence of the novel. Actually, the screenplay improves upon the novel in one respect, possibly due to Didion’s involvement. Dunne seems to have written the novel in part as a form of therapy regarding his Irish-Catholic upbringing; by the novel’s midpoint, many of the characters seem to blend together as hopeless, cynical sinners. The movie is less critical of its main characters without softening the impact of the narrative. Significantly, the movie still captures Dunne’s insightful portrait of post-war Los Angeles. This is a city in which moral and spiritual decay flourish. And it is a city in which the excessively brutal murder of a young woman symbolizes the depravity that permeates every facet of its superficially glittering façade.

The film, like the novel, uses the factual Black Dahlia murder case of 1947 as a catalyst for the plot but it is primarily the story of the two Spellacy brothers and how their relationship becomes entwined with the murder of the woman whom the press calls “the virgin tramp.” Monsignor Desmond Spellacy (Robert De Niro) is an ambitious priest in the Catholic Church who hopes to rise someday to the position of cardinal even if it means neglecting his sacred vows. Detective Sergeant Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall) is an embittered detective in the Los Angeles Police Department who is disgusted by the pervasive corruption and by the fact that he was once a part of it. Both Des and Tom are dealing with guilt which accounts in part for their strained relationship. Des has perhaps been repressing his guilt but as the story progresses it will come to the surface and he will have to confront it. Tom has lived with his guilt since he was a young vice cop and now sees an opportunity to expiate it. When the dissected body of Lois Fazenda is found in a vacant lot, it sets into motion a series of events that will involve both Tom and Des. Tom is in charge of investigating the murder while Des has a peripheral connection to the victim. Neither Tom nor Des initially realize it but the murder will propel them on a collision course.

This is a complex film and, as the story unfolds, it expands to include the compromises that individuals in the Los Angeles Police Department and in the Catholic Church must make to exist in a morally corrupt environment. Representative of this corruption is Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), a wealthy construction magnate and a respected member of the Catholic populace. Amsterdam also has a disreputable past of which both Tom and Des are aware. Nevertheless, Des has a history of awarding contracts for building projects within the diocese to Amsterdam in return for financial savings for the Church. It infuriates Tom that Des disregards Amsterdam’s unsavory past because of his wealth. However, Tom doesn’t know that Des is on the verge of terminating the Church’s association with Amsterdam. Des hopes to soften the jolt by awarding Amsterdam with a ceremony honoring him as Catholic Layman of the Year. Meanwhile, Tom’s investigation takes a surprising turn when Amsterdam’s name appears among the victim’s acquaintances. This increases his determination to solve the crime, regardless of how it may involve his brother.

Ulu Grosbard initially achieved fame as a Broadway theater director. He received two Tony nominations for Best Direction, in 1965 for Frank Gilroy’s The Subject Was Roses and in 1977 for David Mamet’s American Buffalo. Regarding his film career, some critics accused him of lacking an individual style as well as an artistic approach to the medium of film that would distinguish his movies. This may be due in part to the fact that, though his film career spanned three decades, he only directed seven movies (compared to eight Broadway plays), all of which are different in style and genre. He began his Hollywood career as an assistant director in the early 1960s. His first directorial credit was the film version of The Subject Was Roses (1968), which proved that he was equally adept with film as he was with the stage. He followed this with an interesting but pretentious misfire, Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971). However, his third film, Straight Time (1978), is another underrated gem. True Confessions followed and is undoubtedly his best film. He followed this with a modest romantic drama, Falling in Love (1984), also with De Niro.

Grosbard distinctly demonstrates cinematic expertise with True Confessions. He imbues the movie with a neo-noir atmosphere, though this may not be initially apparent from the film’s beginning. The movie opens in 1962 as the elderly Spellacy brothers reunite in a dilapidated church in the desert in Palm Springs. This will lead to the flashback to 1948 and the main narrative which begins with a wedding in an opulent church in Los Angeles. The stark difference between the rundown church in the desert and the multi-million dollar cathedral is readily apparent. Equally apparent is the difference between the humble appearance of the elderly desert priest and the luxuriously attired young city ecclesiastic, especially since they are the same person. The reason for this transformation, which the public and the press labeled his disgraceful downfall, is the heart of the story that follows.

Grosbard directs the film in a restrained manner, excluding any flamboyance which might distract from his emphasis on the characterizations of Des and Tom Spellacy. His direction includes several memorable sequences. The restaurant scene begins with Tom’s amusing response to an uppity maitre’d and ends with his angry confrontation with Amsterdam in front of an embarrassed Des. The Catholic Layman Award ceremony simmers with suppressed tension and climaxes with an even more violent altercation between Tom and Amsterdam. The confessional scene in which both Amsterdam and Tom furiously and unjustly lash out at Des instead of one another bristles with unbounded rage while eliciting sympathy for the beleaguered monsignor. And there are some quieter scenes which are notable for their sensitivity to the characters. The diner scene in which Desmond tries to express to Tom his regret for the course of his life reveals the latent tenderness between the brothers, an emotion which both are unable to express. The abandoned military base in which Tom discovers the sight of the murder is shocking in its underlying anguish for the savagely-murdered victim. Even more sorrowful is the scene in which Tom tries to console Lois Fazenda’s parents as they remember her innocent childhood full of hopes and dreams. Through scenes such as these, Grosbard gradually builds the emotional content of the story as well as the tension until the explosive penultimate scene outside the courthouse. The director received some criticism for the brevity of this scene, for not showing Amsterdam’s comeuppance and for not filming a more dynamic solution to the murder. But this would have distracted from his main theme which is why he returns to the desert church for the highly poignant finale.

By Lee Pfeiffer

If you haven't caught up with Michael Caine as Harry Brown yet, the fact that it is now streaming on Amazon Prime may will allow you to do so. It's time well- spent. At an age where most thespians were comfortably retired, Caine was not only still a viable leading man when the film was made, but a viable leading man in action films. Harry Brown was released in 2009 and generated decent reviews and business in the UK, but it received a blink-and-you'll-miss-it run in the USA.  The film consciously (some might say pretentiously) strives to bring Caine back to the turf of one of his greatest films: the gritty 1971 crime classic Get Carter.  This film isn't of that caliber, but it represented Caine's strongest role in years. He plays a quiet pensioner eaking out an existence in a London housing estate that is beset with violence and terrorized by omnipresent street gangs. In the early part of the film, Harry's beloved wife of many years dies from an illness. Then his best friend is murdered by the thugs. You don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict what happens next. Caine takes it upon himself to avenge his friend's death and utilizes his training as a Royal Marine (he fought in Korea) to reawaken his savage instincts. Slowly and methodically, he hunts down the main culprits and dispenses his own brand of justice.

If this sounds like a geriatric Death Wish, it most certainly is. However, the film is very moving on certain levels, as we watch this likeable man of peace's world crumble around him. His trail of vengeance is presented logically and he doesn't become a superman in the process. The film is ably directed by Daniel Barber, who makes the most of the locations at London's notoriously dreary Heygate Estate, which has since been demolished. Caine is aided by a fine supporting cast, with Emily Mortner especially good as a detective who is assigned to stop the vigilante killings. She suspects Caine is the killer, but can't help sympathizing with him. 

It's rare that the film industry affords an older actor a plumb role in an action film. Harry Brown may not be a classic, but it's good enough to rise above most contemporary action movies.

By Darren Allison

Having starred in the popular sitcom series The Munsters from 1964 -1966, Herman (Fred Gwynne), Lily (Yvonne De Carlo), Grandpa (Al Lewis), Eddie (Butch Patrick) and Marilyn (Debbie Watson) hit the big screen in Munster, Go Home (1966).

Produced and co-written by series creators Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher (Leave It to Beaver), this satire of American suburban life features British comedians Terry-Thomas and Hermione Gingold, legendary horror star John Carradine and future Family Feud host Richard Dawson, who was then appearing on Hogan’s Heroes.

The Munsters achieved higher Nielsen ratings than the similarly macabre family of the time The Addams Family. In 1965 it was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series but lost to The Rogues starring David Niven which was cancelled after one season.

After 70 episodes, The Munsters was also cancelled after ratings dropped due to competition from the Batman TV Series. The film was produced immediately after the television series completed filming. It starred the original cast (Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick) apart from Marilyn, who was played by Debbie Watson, replacing Pat Priest from the series.

The movie was released in Technicolor, whereas the TV series was telecast in black & white. The hope was that the film would introduce the series to the world in advance of negotiating future syndication rights. The film was released in the United Kingdom at the end of December 1966 as support for the Norman Wisdom movie Press for Time (1966). The instrumental theme song, titled The Munsters' Theme, was composed by composer/arranger Jack Marshall and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1965.

The story sees Herman becoming Lord Munster after he inherits an estate from an English uncle. With Spot guarding 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Herman leaves his job at Gateman, Goodbury & Graves Morticians for Munster Hall in England. Whilst there, he uncovers a counterfeiting ring and upholds the family honour by driving his Drag-u-la special in the annual road race.

The move from the TV screen to the cinema screen is often a gamble. The transition is tricky, with the chief obstacle finding a story interesting enough to fill a 90-minute slot while at the same time sustaining the audience’s attention can be tough. However, the central problem with Munster, Go Home! is that it just really isn’t that funny. The shifting dimensions between TV and cinema so often adjust the overall dynamics. The absence and familiarity of a laughter track almost leaves a cold, empty feel to the movie. Whilst The Munsters (shot at Universal City) was never filmed in front of a live studio audience, it was overdubbed with ‘canned laughter’ or a laughter track, an element that at least helped cue up or support a punchline or a comedic line of dialogue. As a result, something just seems to be lost in the movie version. Even the support from Terry-Thomas as English ancestor Freddie Munster is really over-the-top and at times borders on embarrassing. At just 96- minutes, it’s all really hard work.

Nevertheless, it’s not all bad. On the technical side, the production values work very well. Creepy dungeons, gothic mansions et al – create the perfect setting and atmosphere to satisfy every horror kid’s dream. The film is also presented in its original theatrical 1.85:1 ratio. But the real winner here is the Technicolor photography; the process simply elevates everything on display. It’s a distinctly ‘groovy’ 60’s colour pallet with all of its vibrant lime greens, luminous pinks and rich reds’ really igniting the screen and it comes through as the film’s overall saving grace.

Considering the film (and the series it was based upon) was so culturally significant, the Blu-ray’s extras are decidedly thin, consisting of just a lone theatrical trailer. It’s a real pity that some film or horror historian couldn’t be found to sit in and provide some sort of commentary – especially as the whole franchise had loose connections and is distantly related to the whole Universal Horror cycle…

Munster, Go Home! is released on July 25th 2022 as a Region 2 Blu-ray and is available from www.fabulousfilms.com

(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro)

BY PAUL SCRABO

Once upon a time (or more specifically 1952) the amazing Cinerama film process premiered with “This is Cinerama”, and for the next ten years moviegoers lined up to hurl down a rollercoaster, cling tight on a runaway train, make a dangerous flyover at a volcano, even sit and watch an opera, in the comfort of roadshow seats. Three cameras filming in synchronization and mounted on a shell the size of a refrigerator captured a panorama of wonders from around the world. This undertaking was legitimized when three projectors, along with a fourth reel just for the multi-track sound, spread these vistas across a curved screen and across the country. Cinerama was a technical marvel…and not a small response to television!

Finally, after a decade of impressive travelogues, Cinerama joined forces with MGM. The objective: begin to produce films with actual stories using this immersive presentation. In June 1961, the popular LIFE Magazine series “How the West Was Won” began its transition to a giant of a western film; an all-star cast with three directors attached. A month later, George Pal began production on “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” and it would also employ more than one director. Henry Levin would handle the real-life dramatics, while Pal lent his gentle hand to the three fairy tales that would surround the story.

“Brothers Grimm” actually opened before “How the West Was Won” and got its share of kind but not outstanding reviews. The three fairy tales presented are not as dynamic as a Snow White or Cinderella, but of course those stories have been strongly “Disneyfied”, so it certainly made more sense to use less familiar subjects. What played between the tales could be another issue: the mixture of drama (including Wilhelm Grimm being deathly ill in the last half hour) sandwiched with “The Dancing Princess” or “The Singing Bone” seems a tough grind for an audience full of kids. But Russ Tamblyn is a major contributor to the fun aspects of the film, with terrific comedy, dancing and a few dangerous stunts.

With “Brothers Grimm” and "How the West Was Won", three strip Cinerama went out with positive memories, but it did go out. Audiences enjoyed it but directors and actors didn’t. A decent close up was out of the question, actors had to look past their subjects to make it appear normal for the camera, and cinematographers tried using several inventive ways to hide the join lines.(Trees and doorways were popular.) The rest of roadshow Cinerama would originate from various 70mm formats with an image squeeze to wrap around the curved screen. It was not quite the same, of course, but it brought success to epics like “Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. (Viewing the Cinerama version of “2001”, one fell into space, a feeling not achieved with any regular 70mm version.)

Time had not been kind to “Brothers Grimm”. For many years, home video used a print down version (merging the three panels into a single strip) with less-than-stellar results. Indeed, it was tough to judge the merits of the film because (to use the words of the late Cinerama expert John Harvey) it became “The Grim World of the Brothers Wonderful”. A last hurrah occurred at a Cinerama Dome festival several years ago when a surviving three panel version played to grateful widescreen fans. Note: with both “Mad World” and the previously lost “The Golden Head” on the schedule, a few called the weekend “The Buddy Hackett Film Fest"! And Russ Tamblyn came to the rescue again when the film broke down for a few minutes and the movie’s wonderful woodsman filled the time with some behind-the-scenes stories.

That night, those who were not around for “Brothers Grimm”s initial Cinerama run discovered the glory previously hidden by its video version. The surviving print had rough spots but no matter; when the walk-out music began the Dome audience applauded with the attitude of “We’ve finally seen this film the way we were supposed to.”

And that, we all thought, was that.

Photo: Dave Strohmaier

Over the years, producer, editor (and showmanship expert) Dave Strohmaier has gathered the best technicians in film and video to transfer the original Cinerama films, including “How the West Was Won” for the Blu-Ray format. The results are nothing short of remarkable, and all those titles belong in a film fan’s library. In fact, “How the West Was Won” has become the standard Blu-Ray for setup according to many home theater buffs. But while that film’s elements were in excellent shape, some of “Brothers Grimm” was not. Determining that a photochemical restoration would be cost prohibitive, if not impossible, Dave Strohmaier, Tom March and an army of experts set out to create a new digital presentation of this abandoned work of widescreen art. The result is the best way to see George Pal’s 1962 effort since, well, 1962.

Like the Warner Archive's Blu-Ray of “How the West Was Won”, “Brothers Grimm” is a two disc set containing a “Letterboxed” presentation and a “Smilebox” version, that replicates the experience of seeing the film in its curved screen Cinerama glory. Choices like this are again another reason to appreciate the disc medium.

Most may agree that “Brothers Grimm” is one of George Pal’s most ambitious projects. But is it his greatest achievement? Probably not. Justin Humphreys, curator of the estate of George Pal, reflects that the film misses classic status, yet it does accomplish what Pal, Levin, MGM and Cinema set out to make: a colorful, lively, musical, family friendly event at the cinema. The money is up on the screen and the European locations are major attractions.

So the greatness is found, perhaps not in the film itself but certainly in this Blu-Ray presentation; many home theater enthusiasts consider “Brothers Grimm” the home video release of the year, and I agree. From the clarity of Leigh Harline’s Oscar-nominated score to Paul Vogel’s cinematography, the film sounds and looks like it was produced today. In fact, due to the richness of Technicolor, dare we say it looks better than much of what we see in theaters today.

Special features are spread over both discs; radio interviews, trailers, photo slideshows, a salute to William R. Forman, promotional artwork, a delightful mini-doc “The Wonderful Career of George Pal”. But the headliner is surely the 40-minute “Rescuing a Fantasy Classic” documentary, an in-depth look at the massive digital restoration.

Thanks to the Warner Archive, Dave Strohmaier, Tom March and the team involved, “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” has been given another opportunity to entertain and to live on…happily ever after.

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By Darren Allison

The Film Detective release the B movie classic, The Brain from Planet Arous on Blu-ray. The company continues to impress with their stable of underground, cult classics. Teenage monsters, juvenile gangs and deceitful femme fatales have all made it into their catalogue and have provided an excellent, wide range of pure entertainment. The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) is no exception.

Nathan Juran’s wonderful piece of science fiction hokum remains a firm favourite among B movie buffs. With a cast headed by John Agar and Joyce Meadows, the story finds Professor Steve March (Agar) in his laboratory with his assistant Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller). Both men are troubled by some unusual readings and bursts of radiation coming from the desert, specifically, the wonderfully named Mystery Mountain. Both are eager to head out there and inspect the situation as quickly as possible. Steve's fiancée, the domestic goddess Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows) is fully behind the boys, but refuses to let them leave on empty stomachs, especially after preparing the perfect barbecue in the garden - what a gal!

Steve, Dan and a bellies full of hamburgers arrive in the desert to discover a newly-formed cave. As they begin to explore inside they are met by a large, telepathic, floating brain. The alien lifeform kills Dan and proceeds to enter the body of Steve. A week later, Steve returns home, concocting a story about Dan taking a break and taking off to Las Vegas. It soon becomes apparent that Steve is not acting in a normal manner , in fact, he’s become something of a horny sex pest, especially towards Sally, who he practically tries to rape at any given opportunity.

Steve has obviously become possessed by the alien brain (called Gor) (and is incidentally voiced by the film’s associate producer Dale Tate). The possessed Steve has become a power-mad tyrant who gleefully blows passenger planes from the sky or deights in destroying entire towns with his newly- found powers and abilities.

It’s all wonderful material and a complete joy to absorb. Agar really seems to be enjoying this role. After so often portraying the clean-cut, all-American hero, he appears to relish the opportunity in playing the bad guy.

The Film Detective has provided a beautiful 4K restoration and the film looks incredible. There are two options to view it, either in a theatrical widescreen (1.85:1) ratio, or a straight-forward full frame (1.33:1) format. I would actually recommend the latter. After watching both versions, the full frame version seems to retain a greater element of fine detail, but of course this is down to individual choice. The contrast and depth offered in the black and white photography really shines through, as does the lovely clean audio track.

Extras on this special edition are also very enjoyable, and this is where I believe The Film Detective really notches up the fun factor. Their presentations always carry a firm tongue-in-cheek element. These films were never going to be multi-Oscar winners, and The Film Detective recognises that - but never without a lack of respect. There is a terrific commentary track featuring the always enthusiastic and knowledgeable film historian Tom Weaver, Monstrous Movie Music’s David Schecter (who released a great re-recording of the score and whose CD I still recommend) and the lovely Joyce Meadows joins in with the memories of making the movie. In fact, Joyce Meadows also has her own featurette / introduction on the disc, ‘Not the same Brain’,which finds her recreating her role as Sally, visiting locations and basically having a great deal of fun with it all. There are also a couple more featurettes, ‘The Man before the Brain: Director Nathan Juran’ and ‘The Man Behind the Brain: The World of Nathan Juran’. Both are original Ballyhoo productions, and despite some overlapping information between them both, they are nevertheless insightful and enjoyable. Also inside there is an excellent 10- page booklet featuring an essay by Tom Weaver, ‘The Brains Behind the Brain: The Sci-Fi Career of Producer Jacques Marquette’.

The Film Detective are on a fine roll of releases of late, and I only hope they continue on the same path. They have captured a format that really works in both their choices of titles and their presentation.

(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro. Read his column in every issue.)

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