Harold
and Maude,
which was directed by Hal Ashby (his second feature film) and released in 1971,
is one of those initially critically stomped box-office bombs… and yet years
later became a cult hit in revival houses, on television broadcasts, and home
video releases. It’s one of many examples that illustrate how critics don’t
always know everything and how some motion pictures are ahead of their time. Harold
and Maude now resides in the top 50 of the AFI’s list of 100 greatest
comedy films.
Written
by Colin Higgins, who simultaneously turned his original screenplay into a
novel (also published in 1971), the movie was unquestionably a counter-culture,
rebellious black comedy that from the get-go had the potential to offend some
folks. The main character’s fake suicide pranks aside, the theme of a
May-December romance—this time with the woman being the older one in the relationship—was
sure to be off-putting to the moral majority. One often hears the justification
for couples in which one person is much older than the other is that “age is
just a number.†In the case of Harold and Maude, Maude’s number is 79,
while Harold’s is 19. That’s a sixty year difference. Okay, then!
Most
everyone by now knows the story. Harold (Bud Cort) is a cynical young man who
lives with his wealthy, snobbish mother (Vivian Pickles). He is a misfit who is
obsessed with death. He constantly stages gory suicides for shock effect, which
of course upsets his mother as well as any blind dates that she sets up for her
son. Harold also attends funerals for people he doesn’t know, and that’s where
he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon). It turns out that Maude, a concentration camp
survivor, also likes to go to strangers’ funerals, but her outlook on life is
much different than Harold’s. She is wild, happy-go-lucky, and full of life.
She’ll commit misdemeanors like stealing cars for the fun of it. The two develop
a fast friendship, and together they have some misadventures, all set to the
lively music of Cat Stevens. Romance blooms between the two, and Harold
ultimately announces that he will marry Maude. The movie takes a poignant left
turn at this point, and to say more would spoil it for those who have never
seen the picture.
Director
Ashby has always been something of an iconoclast in Hollywood. He started out
as a successful editor who transitioned to directing. He found a niche in the
swinging early 1970s as a helmsman of fringe anti-establishment titles like The
Last Detail (1973) or Shampoo (1975). The failure—and then cult
reputation—of Harold and Maude solidified Ashby’s place as a quirky, but
talented, director. His work here is obviously eccentric, inventive, and
perfect for the material.
Bud
Cort is winning in his role as Harold, but it is of course Ruth Gordon who is
the heart of the movie. Without her screen presence, charisma, and enthusiasm in
the role of Maude, the film would not have worked.
Another
element that elevates the film is the soundtrack full of songs by Cat Stevens.
Most of the tunes were taken from previously-released albums, but two numbers
were composed and recorded specifically for the movie.
Harold
and Maude has
appeared several times in home media, including a now out of print Criterion Collection
edition. A more affordable new release from Paramount Presents is the item on
display here, and the remaster from film transfer looks quite good. It comes
with an entertaining audio commentary by Larry Karaszewski and Cameron Crowe.
The only supplements, though, is a short interview with Yusuf/Cat Stevens and a
couple of theatrical trailers.
For
fans of Hal Ashby, Ruth Gordon, Cat Stevens, and those free-wheeling early cult
films of 1970s Hollywood, Harold and Maude is for you.
(Note:
Portions of this review appeared on Cinema Retro in 2014 for an earlier
Kino Lorber edition.)
Robert
Altman was a very quirky director, sometimes missing the mark, but oftentimes
brilliant. His 1973 take on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye is a case in point. It might take a second viewing
to appreciate what’s really going on in the film. Updating what is essentially
a 1940s film noir character to the
swinging 70s was a risky and challenging prospect—and Altman and his star,
Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe (!), pull it off.
It’s
one of those pictures that critics hated when it was first released; and yet,
by the end of the year, it was being named on several Top Ten lists. I admit
that when I first saw it in 1973, I didn’t much care for it. I still wasn’t
totally in tune with the kinds of movies Altman made—even after M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud (an underrated gem), and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. But I saw it again a few years later on a
college campus and totally dug it. Altman made oddball films, and either you
went with the flow or you would be put off by the improvisational, sometimes
sloppy mise-en-scène that the director used. And the sound—well, Altman is
infamous for his overlapping dialogue (one critic called it “Altman Soupâ€). If
you didn’t “get†what the director was doing with sound, then you would
certainly have a hard time with his pictures.
Yes,
Elliott Gould plays Philip Marlowe. A very different interpretation than
Humphrey Bogart or Dick Powell, obviously. And yet, it works. Gould displays
the right amount of bemused cynicism, as if he had been asleep for twenty years
and suddenly woken up in the 1970s. And that’s exactly how Altman, screenwriter
Leigh Brackett (who co-wrote the 1946 The
Big Sleep), and Gould approached the material. Altman, in a documentary
extra on the making of the film, called the character “Rip Van Marlowe.†He is
an anachronism in a different time. For example, Marlowe can’t help but be
bewildered by the quartet of exhibitionist hippie lesbians that live in his
apartment complex. And he still drives a car from his original era. And therein
lies the point of the picture—this is a comment on the 70s, not the 40s or 50s.
The
plot concerns the possible murder of the wife of Marlowe’s good friend, Terry
(played by baseball pro Jim Boutin), who is indeed a suspect, as well as a
suitcase of missing money belonging to a vicious gangster (extrovertly portrayed
by film director Mark Rydell), an Ernest Hemingway-like writer who has gone
missing (eccentrically performed by Sterling Hayden), and the author’s hot
blonde wife who may know more than she’s telling (honestly played by newcomer
Nina van Pallandt). The story twists, turns, hits some bumps in the road, and
finally circles back to the initial beginning mystery.
It
may not be one of Altman’s best films, but it’s one of the better ones. It’s
certainly one of the more interesting experiments he tried in his most prolific
period of the 70s.
Kino
Lorber already put out a Blu-ray release several years ago, but it didn’t
really improve much on the original DVD release prior to that. The company has
now re-issued the film in a brand new 4K master that is a vast step-up from the
previous release. It looks great. The soft focus cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond
is no longer a hazy gaze but is instead a crystal transfer of that distinctive
1970s film stock imagery. The movie now comes with an informative audio
commentary by film historian Tim Lucas.
Some
of the extras are ported over from the previous Kino Lorber release, such as
the aforementioned “making of†documentary, a short piece on Zsigmond, an
animated reproduction of a vintage American
Cinematographer article, the trailer, and a few radio spots. New to this
edition are featurettes with film historian/critic David Thompson on Altman and
the film, author Tom Williams on Raymond Chandler, and author/historian Maxim
Jakubowski on hard-boiled fiction in general. There is also a “Trailers from
Hell†segment with Josh Olson.
If
you’re an Altman fan and don’t already own the out of print DVD or previous
Blu-ray, you may want to pick up the new, improved The Long Goodbye. It
probably won’t be long before this, too, like Philip Marlowe himself, is a rare
collector’s item.
We all know the old saying that hindsight is 20/20. When it comes
to slasher films from the 1980s, movies that were released during that time
were very often dismissed by critics – and rightfully so. Audiences, on the
other hand, had a great time experiencing arguably the cinematic equivalent of
riding a roller coaster. Following the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween
in 1978 and its most closely related “holiday†second cousin, Sean Cunningham’s
Friday the 13th in 1980, movie studios were
falling over themselves to come up with the next big horror hit in much the
same way that the spate of killer fish and outer space movies followed the
success of Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977, respectively.
Unfortunately, for us, often this resulted in some terribly silly and cookie
cutter films that were nothing more than derivations of superior slasher films
from years past.
The
House on Sorority Row
(1982) is a film that didn’t exactly set the
box-office on fire during its initial release. To be fair, it didn’t receive a
huge theatrical distribution deal. It was shot on a small budget, starring a
cast of relative unknowns at the time. In keeping in slasher film tradition,
the film begins, as so many other films of the day do, with the typical opening
sequence that takes many years prior to the film’s start wherein something
quite awful happens before bringing the viewers to present day. In this case, House
begins with a soft filter which is generally used to imply a flashback. The
trick is remembering this prologue as it will answer the question as to what is
happening for the rest of the film. This is a familiar trope that can be seen
in everything from Paul Lynch’s Prom Night (1980) to his own Humongous
(1982).
Written and directed by Mark Rosen in the summer of 1980 and
released in New York in February 1983, House concerns seven sisters of a sorority – Katey (Kathryn McNeil), Vicki
(Eileen Davidson), Liz (Janis Zido), Jeanie (Robin Meloy), Diane (Harley Jane
Kozak), Morgan (Jodi Draigie), and Stevie (Ellen Dorsher) – whose graduation
celebration is interrupted by their house mother, Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso
Hunt), who throws cold water on their plans for a party. In retaliation, the
leader of the pack, Vicki, devises a prank to play on Mrs. Slater which
involves submerging her cane in the outdoor pool (which is full of muck) and
forcing her to retrieve it at gunpoint! The gun is supposed to be loaded
with blanks but accidentally fires and hits Mrs. Slater, who collapses.
Shocked, there is a mad dash by the sisters to hide her body in the pool and go
through with the party and pretend as though everything is status quo.
The bulk of the film revolves around the party and the sisters
trying to keep up a good-natured charade, though some of them have more
difficulty than the others. None of these characters are especially interesting
and the actresses portraying them do their best to remain interesting enough to
parlay their actions into suspense, however in the hands of another director,
the film could just as easily resemble a comedy, something along the lines of Weekend
at Bernie’s (1989). The ending may have been a bit of a shocker at the
time, however nearly forty years hence it’s old hat and has been echoed in many
better slashers, in particular Michele Soavi’s 1987 directorial debut film Deliria
(StageFright).
House made its home video debut on VHS, Betamax, CED and laserdisc in
1983 (wow – did I really just type that??) and then surfaced on DVD in 2000,
2004, 2010 and 2012(!) in varying special editions. Scorpion Releasing brought
the film to Blu-ray in 2014 and 2018. Now, MVD has reissued the film on Blu-ray
as part of its MVD Rewind Collection in a slipcase edition wherein the
cardboard cover is made to resemble a worn VHS rental that needs to be returned
to a video store. If you don’t own the 2018 Scorpion Releasing version, this
new MVD release contains all the extras from that Blu-ray and is the most
comprehensive release to date.
The first interview is with actress Harley
Jane Kozak (Diane) who went to New York University and was waiting tables while
trying out for the role of Diane. She says that the cast saw the film at the only
theater in New York City that was showing it. She also recalls how Eileen
Davidson (Vicki) wore her gym shorts in the film. Strangely, the house mother
was dubbed! Harley also describes the party scene as “slogging through cementâ€
as they had to dance with no music playing while speaking their lines. This
interview lasts a whopping 42 minutes.
The second interview is called “Kats
Eyes†with Eileen Davidson, who went on to a successful career in soap operas, and
runs just over seven minutes. The third interview is with Kathryn McNeil (Katey)
and runs about 14 minutes. She discusses how she got the audition through
Backstage magazine (the old-fashioned way!). She had no agent; the cast helped the
crew set up the scenes; she was paid $50.00 per day; she was scared by The
Wizard of Oz when she was a child and is amazed how young kids now tend to
see the more violent films (I was always freaked out by the boat ride sequence
in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!).
The
fourth interview is with writer and director Mark Rosman, running about 21
minutes. He had the great opportunity to work on Home Movies by Brian De
Palma as a first assistant director on the campus of Sarah Lawrence!
The
fifth interview is with composer Richard Band and is the most in-depth, running
45 minutes. The score was recorded in London; he grew up in Rome, which I never
would have assumed; he talks about many other aspects of his career and his
website.
The
sixth interview is with composer Igo Kantor and runs 10 minutes.
The
additional extras consist of:
Original
pre-credit sequence – this runs just over two minutes and is bathed in a blue hue.
Alternate
ending storyboards and runs just over seven minutes.
Alternate
monoaural audio version with re-timed pre-credit sequence
There
is a feature-length audio commentary with the director, and a secondary feature-length
audio commentary with the director and Eileen Davidson and Kathryn McNeil.
There
are trailers for this film, Mortuary, Dahmer, Mikey and Mind
Games.
Max is released from Folsom Prison after
completing a six-year incarceration for burglary. Despite being mild-mannered,
we sense that there is something brooding beneath the surface just waiting to
erupt out of control. (Actor Jason Isaacs portrayed Irish mobster Michael
Caffee in the Showtime series Brotherhood from 2006 to 2008 who returns
home following a jail stint with a similar disposition.) Max makes the six-plus-hour
bus ride down to Los Angeles and he gets his first taste of life outside of
prison when he calls and leaves his parole officer Earl Frank (M. Emmet Walsh)
a message that Earl says he didn’t get when Max meets him the following day.
They get off on the wrong foot when he makes the mistake of not going to a
halfway house, rubbing Earl the wrong way. The conditions of his parole are
that he is to discuss all his intentions with Earl first. After getting a room
at the Garland Hotel for the week, he tries out for a typing job at the
Wilshire Agency. Under the eye of Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell), we see that
Max has a problem with rules as he continues typing long after Jenny calls
“time†on the test. Despite this and his revelation of his past, she agrees to
date him. Max looks up a former convict, Willy Darin (Garey Busey just before
his breakout role in the Oscar-winning The Buddy Holly Story), at Willy’s
house in the Echo Park suburb of Los Angeles. Willy’s wife Selma (an
unrecognizable Kathy Bates) is less-than pleased at their reunion and confides
her trepidation to Max who, although visibly hurt, leaves the house. The look
he gives her on his way out is one of a wronged man who doesn’t forget. Yes,
that’s Gary Busey’s real-life son, then-credited as Jacob, playing his onscreen
son Henry. Again, Max abides by his own rules, and it costs him when Willy
shoots up heroin in his room and leaves behind evidence that Earl discovers
when he visits Max unannounced, costing him time back in L.A. County jail for a
week. When Earl springs Max, he asks him the identity of the person who shot up
in his room. Max flips out and steals Earl’s car, leaving him hanging half
naked against a freeway divider fence. Max is now back to his old ways, pulling
petty hold-ups to make ends meet while looking for shotguns and semi-automatic
pistols.
Straight
Time began life as No Beast So Fierce,
an intriguingly titled 1973 novel written by the late paroled and convicted
felon Edward Heward Bunker, who would go on to achieve a modicum of success in
Hollywood by appearing in Steve DeJarnett’s Miracle Mile (1988) and
Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) among other films. Reportedly,
Mr. Hoffman began directing the film himself before handing over the reins to
veteran director Ulu Grosbard whom he worked with previously on Who is Harry
Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? in 1971 so
that he could focus on playing Max. Mr. Bunker appears briefly in the film, and
the plot is bolstered by the always excellent Harry Dean Stanton as Jerry, an
ex-con who, like Willy, is also bored by his legit profession and wants to get
back into the game and do jobs with Max. The trouble with Max is, he’s reckless
and takes unnecessary risks, allowing his temper to get the better of him. He
wants the bigger scores and when he and Jerry rob a prominent bank in broad
daylight, he goes way beyond the time at which he should leave, narrowly escaping.
Things go awry when his hunger for more money gets them into big trouble
following a jewelry store that he scoped out earlier with an unassuming Jenny who
thinks he is buying her an expensive watch.
Straight
Time raises a lot of questions: Why does
Jenny, an attractive woman, get involved with Max? Why do Max and Jerry take
scores with no masks on? Is The System really trying to help ex-convicts assimilate
back into a free society, or is it simply there to give the impression of
attempting to handle ex-convicts as they try to get back on their feet? Do we
sympathize with Max for a life of crime? Is a life of crime better than working
for The Man? Who is responsible for the recidivism rate among paroled convicts?
If the film seems familiar in how it handles the issue of thievery, it might
not come as a surprise that writer and director Michael Mann did some
uncredited work on the screenplay. His films Thief (1981), L.A.
Takedown (1989) and Heat (1995) are all examinations on thieves and
the way they live their lives, especially how the rush of stealing is what they
find exciting. Tom Sizemore said it best in Heat: “For me, the action
is the juice.â€
It
would be another six years before premium cable viewers would have an
opportunity to see the film; four years after that my visit to the new
Blockbuster Video in an adjacent town made me giddy with delight as the aisles
were filled with VHS copies of movies that I knew of yet never saw before. Max
Dembo beckoned me from the cover of the oversized Warner Home Video clamshell
box for Straight Time, his large sad eyes asking me to rent it and give
it a chance, which I did and did not regret in the slightest.
Straight
Time was released on DVD by Warner Home
Video in May 2007 with a much-needed upgrade from the old VHS transfer. It’s
now available on Blu-ray through their Warner Archive line and it looks even
better. I appreciate Warner Archive retaining the original black and red “A
Warner Communications Company†logo from the period. This edition carries over
the audio commentary track featuring director Grosbard and star Hoffman who
both give wonderful anecdotes about the making and history of the film. The
aforementioned trailer is also included. It’s marvelous hearing Mr. Hoffman
talk about this film, as it reminds me of the excellent commentary that Jack
Nicholson provided to Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975),
arguably the actor’s greatest film.
Cinematographer
Owen Roizman, already a veteran of some great New York-lensed films such as
William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971), Joseph Sargent’s The
Taking of Pelham 123 (1974), Sidney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor
(1975) and Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), brings his characteristic
visual genius to the Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard streets of Los Angeles
and makes the city another character, with close-ups of Montgomery Ward and
Woolworths, their signage stylized in long-gone and forgotten fonts.
Composer
David Shire provides a wonderfully catchy minimalist score that I would love to
see released on compact disc (remember those?).
Ironically,
Dustin Hoffman and his roommate, Gene Hackman, were both were voted least
likely to succeed in their Pasadena Playhouse classes when they first started
out. Hilarious.
One
of the great Alfred Hitchcock’s normally derided pictures from his early
British period that the Master of Suspense made prior to gaining that moniker
is the 1932 comic thriller, Number Seventeen. It is a short work,
running only 63 minutes, and its brevity is one of its few strengths.
For
some reason, Hitchcock’s British films, made between 1925 and 1939, have all
turned up on various home video labels in the USA over the years, mostly of
dubious quality ranging from bad to terrible. They often show up on bootleg “bargain
collections†and such. This is despite the fact that none of these movies are
in the public domain, as is commonly thought. Thankfully, certain boutique
DVD/Blu-ray producers have taken the reins to correct this horrid practice.
StudioCanal or the BFI have restored most of the titles and they are slowly
making appearances in America (the UK is way ahead in this regard).
Kino
Lorber has recently released a few of these works, usually port-overs from the
StudioCanal restorations. The new Blu-ray edition of Number Seventeen is
a 4K restoration by the BFI. In this reviewer’s experience, viewing this title
in the past has been an unpleasant endeavor because of poor video and sound
quality on those previously-cited wretched home video releases. Not anymore.
The Kino Lorber edition of Number Seventeen looks and sounds as if the
film is almost brand new.
Alas,
it ranks near the bottom of Hitchcock’s output. The problem—and Hitchcock
himself admits it in an audio interview with François Truffaut—is that
he wanted to make a comedy, or a parody, of a thriller. Unfortunately, it
doesn’t quite work as a comedy or a thriller. The story is mind-bogglingly
confusing, and in the end it’s much ado about nothing. Of particular interest
to Hitchcock aficionados and film buffs, though, is the final twenty minutes,
in which there is indeed an exciting chase involving a train and a bus. This
sequence utilizes miniatures rather than real vehicles, the latter assuredly unaffordable
to the studio and production team. To today’s audience’s eyes, there is no
question that we’re watching many miniatures; it’s as if we’re eye level with a
model train set. In 1932, however, this may very well have been a dazzling
piece of cinematography and visual effects.
The
story? Hmm. The “number seventeen†refers to a house that’s a creepy old place
that appears haunted. A detective, who at first calls himself “Forsythe†(John
Stuart) enters the house and discovers a squatter named Ben (Leon M. Lion). There
is also a dead body, or at least they think it’s a corpse. It turns out, he’s
the very much alive father of Rose Ackroyd (Ann Casson), who is somehow
involved with thieves who are after a diamond necklace. These people arrive,
and one of them is Nora (Anne Grey), supposedly a deaf mute. After much
mistaken identity shenanigans, gun-pulling on each other, and other head-scratching
(for the audience) action, the thieves get away to catch the train to Germany.
The detective, who eventually reveals that he’s really the “Barton†whom
everyone has spoken about throughout the movie, pursues with the aid of Ben,
who is suddenly and surprisingly adept at derring-do.
Since
the whole thing takes up just an hour of one’s time, Number Seventeen is
worth a look to see early studio playfulness by Hitchcock. However, the acting
is nothing to note—Leon M. Lion, especially, chews the scenery with an
outrageous Cockney accent and mugging.
That
said, the Kino Lorber 4K restoration does looks marvelous and is a revelation
to anyone who has seen only inferior quality versions of the movie. The feature
comes with an audio commentary by film historian and critic Peter Tonguette.
Supplements
include an introduction—in French with subtitles—by Noël
Simsolo, which isn’t very enlightening. Of more interest is the
nearly-hour-long documentary—again in French with subtitles (it was made by
StudioCanal in France)—about Hitchcock’s early years. There is also a short
excerpt from the Hitchcock/Truffaut audio interview regarding Number
Seventeen. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers, complete
the package.
Number
Seventeen is
for fans of Alfred Hitchcock, early British cinema, and for anyone who has
always wondered what the movie was really supposed to look and sound like after
seeing it horribly bootlegged.
From
the directorial eye of Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front)
and a script by playwright Clifford Odets (plays Waiting for Lefty and Awake
and Sing!) came the odd and mysterious adventure-spy picture, The
General Died at Dawn. Released in 1936 by Paramount Pictures, the movie
seems out of place for the time. Hollywood output in the thirties, for the most
part, was all about entertainment and lifting an audience out of the doldrums
of the Great Depression. There were some serious dramas from Tinsel Town, to be
sure, but General is decidedly dark, moody, and rather cynical fare.
This
was Odets’ first screenplay (from a story by Charles G. Booth). He would go on
to write None but the Lonely Heart (1944) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957),
which are also rather gloomy and acerbic pictures. Combined with Milestone’s
own flare for peeling back the light and revealing what is, in protagonist O’Hara’s
words, “a dark year and a hard night,†The General Died at Dawn is not feel-good
material.
O’Hara
(Gary Cooper) is an American mercenary in war-ravaged China. The evil warlord,
General Yang (Akim Tamiroff) is overrunning the land and leaving behind
starving (or dead) peasants. O’Hara works for the opposition, and his
assignment is to deliver a beltful of money to Mr. Wu (Dudley Digges) so that
the resistance can buy arms with which to fight Yang’s forces. Another American
expat, Peter Perrie (Porter Hall), is ill and desires to get back to America at
any cost. He’s in cahoots with Yang to stop the resistance from receiving those
funds—for a price. Perrie thus orders his beautiful daughter, Judy (Madeleine
Carroll) to seduce O’Hara and get him to take the train to Shanghai instead of
a plane. It is there that Yang and his soldiers have set a trap for O’Hara. Other
spies, both Chinese and Westerners played by the likes of Philip Ahn, J. M.
Kerrigan, and William Frawley (!), enter the fray with motivations of their
own.
What
happens to the money and to the cast of motley characters provides a little
over ninety minutes of action, adventure, and melodrama that doesn’t totally
gel as one might wish. The plot is overly complex, and it isn’t often clear why
some of the personnel do what they do. Granted, the movie was made in 1936 and
the action takes place mostly within the interiors of train cars. There is
certainly an awful lot of talking going on when at any point General Yang could
have simply pulled out a gun and shot his nemesis or just torn open all the
luggage to find the dough.
That
said, this is Hollywood “exotica†in all its politically incorrect glory. Two
actors—Armenian Tamiroff and Irishman Digges—wear Chinese makeup to play Yang
and Wu (and Tamiroff received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor,
the first year that category was offered). And yet, all the other Chinese
characters are played by Asian actors. One supposes that because Yang and Wu
were indeed supporting roles, then they had to be played by Westerners.
(Sheesh.) But this was Hollywood in the 1930s, after all, and it was par for
the course. For what it’s worth, Tamiroff is very good in the role.
Gary
Cooper spends most of the movie carrying his pet monkey, Sam, who crawls all
over Cooper as if the man was the primate’s long lost mother. It’s endearing,
though, and Sam almost steals the movie. Nevertheless, Cooper exhibits the
requisite hero qualities. He assuredly caused swooning among a certain
selection of audience members. Carroll, who had recently made the move from the
UK to Hollywood, holds her own, but the script unfortunately doesn’t fully
develop her character.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray restoration looks remarkably good, given the picture’s age
and the Oscar-nominated soft focus black and white photography (by Victor
Milner). There is an audio commentary by author/film historian Lee Gambin and
actress/film historian Rutanya Alda that sheds some light on this dark picture.
The only supplement is the theatrical trailer, nestled among other trailers
from Kino.
The
General Died at Dawn is
for fans of 1930s Hollywood, adventure and spy thrillers, and the ever handsome
Gary Cooper.
James
Jones is mostly known for his debut novel, From Here to Eternity. His
second novel, published in 1958, was Some Came Running, a 1,200-page
potboiler that blows the lid off small town America. It was a more adult Peyton
Place, if that was possible for the time. Colorful, sometimes sordid,
characters populate the book, and it didn’t do as well as that classic first publication.
Nevertheless, MGM immediately scooped it up and managed to turn it into a
motion picture by the end of the same year.
Frank
Sinatra found the material appealing, and he saw himself as the story’s lead,
Dave Hirsh, a prodigal son of sorts from fictional Parkman, Indiana. Discharged
from the army, Hirsh arrives in town with a hangover and a party girl he picked
up in Chicago, Ginny Moorehead (Shirley MacLaine). His brother, Frank (Arthur
Kennedy) is a big shot in Parkman. Frank owns a jewelry business and is on the
board of one of the two rival banks. Dave and Frank have been estranged for
years, especially since Frank put younger Dave in a boarding school when their
parents died, instead of having Dave come live with him and his wife, Agnes
(Leora Dana). Dave once fancied himself a writer and had published two books.
While deep down he hopes to write again, his cynicism for just about everything
keeps him from doing so. Dave meets Bama Dillert (Dean Martin) in the town bar,
and they hit it off. Bama is an alcoholic, but he’s an amusing companion who,
like Dave, likes to play poker games. Dave eventually meets and falls in love
with the creative writing teacher at the school, Gwen French (Martha Hyer)—but
Ginny, who has stayed in town to be near Dave, is a constant obstacle to that
match. Other disreputable goings-on complicate the plot, such as Frank’s
daughter (and Dave’s niece), Dawn (Betty Lou Keim), catching her father parked
in the “lover’s lane†with the jewelry shop secretary, Edith (Nancy Gates).
Will Dave find the love he wants and needs? Will the gangster from Chicago, who
is in town to cause trouble for Ginny and Dave, resort to serious violence?
Will Bama ever take off his hat, which he insists on wearing all the time, even
in bed? You’ll have to see the film to find out.
That
plot summary might sound like the outline of a soap opera, but never mind that—Some
Came Running is a fascinating, searing, well-acted, and beautifully-directed
drama. The director, Vincente Minnelli, was on a roll in 1958—he won the
Academy Award for Director for Gigi (it won Best Picture, too), also
directed The Reluctant Debutante, and ended the year with Some Came
Running. For this reviewer’s money, Minnelli got the Oscar for the wrong
film. Yes, Running is that
good.
For
one thing, Frank Sinatra has never been better, his Oscar-winning turn in From
Here to Eternity notwithstanding. It’s shocking that, after receiving a
nomination for his performance as a drug addict in The Man with the Golden
Arm (1955), he was not up for Best Actor for Running. He commands
every frame of film he’s in. Secondly, Dean Martin is terrific in one of his
early “Dean Martin Persona†roles he fashioned for himself after the cinematic
partnership with Jerry Lewis splintered. Finally, Shirley MacLaine is a delight
as the not-so-bright, trampy, but good-natured Ginny—and she received her first
Best Actress Oscar nomination for the performance. Kennedy and Hyer also both respectively
received Supporting Actor and Actress Oscar nominations.
The
movie is an insightful character study of lost souls reaching for a place
called “happiness†by pretending that they’re already there. In many ways, the
small town is a character, too, for it has the façade of Americana at its
finest, and yet there are those pockets that exist in every town of skid row
neighborhoods, seedy bars, loose women, and crime. It’s in the latter locations
where Dave finds himself, no matter how much he aspires to be in the
“respectable†parts of town life. Nevertheless, he knows, and the audience
eventually learns, that there is one class of people in town who may be
prosperous but are really phonies, and a lower class that is sleazy and yet
sincere. What you see is what you get.
Some
may find the dialogue and attitudes toward women—especially from Martin’s
character, who calls all women “pigsâ€â€”to be sexist and even misogynistic. This,
however, is part of the James Jones milieu, as well as a major aspect of the locale,
the class structure, and the era in which the picture takes place. What the
movie really has to say about women is far more significant and auspicious.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray release looks gorgeous in its vivid widescreen Technicolor.
There’s not a blemish in sight. Supplements include an informative 20-minute
documentary on the film’s history and making, and the theatrical trailer.
Some
Came Running
is an underrated, overlooked gem that should be re-evaluated. For fans of Sinatra,
MacLaine, Martin, Minnelli, and James Jones. Highly recommended.
The
genius of Stephen Sondheim is usually reserved for the Broadway stage as the
creator or co-creator of multiple award-winning and classic musicals (West
Side Story, Gypsy, Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in
the Park with George, etc.). The presence of Anthony Perkins is usually earmarked
for screen and stage appearances as an actor (Psycho, Catch-22, Murder
on the Orient Express, etc.). So, who would have thought that these two
would team up to write a murder mystery screenplay—with no musical numbers
within earshot—that would be filmed by director Herbert Ross, and then win an
Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America for the script?
The
Last of Sheila,
released in early summer 1973, seems to be a precursor to the series of Agatha
Christie all-star-cast pictures that launched in the mid-70s (e.g., Murder
on the Orient Express). It’s an original story, though, concocted by
Sondheim and Perkins, allegedly inspired by real “scavenger hunt†party games
that were thrown by their friends in those days. Starring (alphabetically)
Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian
McShane, and Raquel Welch, the cast of seven is not as large as those Christie
extravaganzas, but you get the idea. In a way, it is also an antecedent to the
whodunnit, Knives Out (2019), which has a similar structure.
Movie
producer Clinton (Coburn) is married to Sheila (Yvonne Romain in a cameo), who is
killed by a hit-and-run driver after a late night party in Hollywood. A year
later, Clinton invites six close friends to a week of sailing on his yacht in
the Mediterranean. These include writer Tom (Benjamin), his wife Lee (Hackett),
director Philip (Mason), casting agent Christine (Cannon), actress Alice
(Welch), and her husband/manager Anthony (McShane). Clinton is a lover of
parlor games, and he has concocted an elaborate murder-mystery-game in which
the six contestants must compete as a condition for joining the cruise. Each
player is given a card that reveals a “secret†that may or may not be a true
one. For example, one card reads, “You are a shoplifter,†or “You are an
ex-convict.†Each night at a port of call, the contestants must run around the
village ashore and hunt for the answer to who holds that night’s particular
card. Clinton provides the clues. On the first night, the object is to find out
who holds the “shoplifter†card, and so on. It is revealed later in the picture
that one of the cards reads, “You are a hit-and-run driver,†indicating that
Clinton wants to reveal who killed Sheila.
Thus
begins a game of musical chairs, as Christine puts it, with the tale twisting
and turning and real secrets emerge. Director Ross—and the script—keeps us
guessing, especially when one “solution†turns out not to be correct. The
entire affair is told with a light touch, much like the future Agatha Christie
all-star vehicles, but there is a seriousness underlying the proceedings that
makes for a good caper.
The
cast is excellent. Coburn is especially winning—there is one bit where is
dressed in drag and it’s a shock! Benjamin, Hackett, Cannon, and Mason also
display a command of the screen. A very young Ian McShane is almost
unrecognizable from the man we know today. Welch is gorgeous, as always, and
she competently stands her own with the others.
The
new Warner Archive Blu-ray looks marvelous and comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio
soundtrack in 2.0 mono. An entertaining but somewhat meandering audio
commentary by stars Benjamin, Cannon, and Welch accompanies the feature. The
only supplement is the theatrical trailer.
The
Last of Sheila was
supposed to have been the first of several screenplay collaborations between
Sondheim and Perkins, but this ended up being the only one. It’s a surprisingly
good curio, though, and worth checking out, especially for fans of any of the
cast members, mystery whodunnits, and the lush South of France locations.
Anything
that originated from the mind of celebrated mystery novelist, Cornell Woolrich,
is worth one’s perusal, and the 1948 film adaptation of the author’s 1945 work,
Night Has a Thousand Eyes, mostly measures up.
Directed
with confidence and style by John Farrow, Night is a film noir that
ticks a lot of boxes that define that Hollywood cinematic movement of the late
1940s and early 50s. There’s a cynical and disturbed protagonist who is haunted
by the past, cinematography (by John F. Seitz) that highly contrasts light and
shadows, voiceover narration, flashbacks, and, of course, crimes. It’s short (81
minutes) and it’s intriguing. The picture’s faults might be that it can be
overly melodramatic at times, and there are a couple of weak casting choices
that prevent Night from being a classic. It’s good enough, though.
Robinson
is effective as Triton, although it’s one of his seriously sincere roles (like
in Scarlet Street)in which he wrinkles his brow a lot and seems
to be on the verge of crying. Unfortunately, the two supporting actors, Gail
Russell and John Lund, are both duds. They move through the picture with low
energy, and Lund is especially wooden. Luckily, William Demarest livens things
up when he enters the movie.
The
story is compelling, although it’s not quite clear why Jean wants to commit
suicide at the beginning of the film, the catalyst for the rest of the tale to
unfold.
Kino
Lorber’s new 2K master looks quite good, considering the picture’s relative
obscurity. It comes with an audio commentary by film historian Imogen Sara
Smith. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers, complete the
package.
Night
Has a Thousand Eyes is
for fans of film noir, Edward G. Robinson, Cornell Woolrich, and
mysteries with a supernatural bent.
This
compelling 1949 melodrama—it can’t quite be called film noir due to a
lack of many of the traits associated with that cinematic movement—would have a
field day in the era of #MeToo. It was made during 1948 (released in January
’49) while the Production Code was still in effect. While it was taboo to say
that the protagonist, Dr. Wilma Tuttle (Loretta Young), is “sexually assaultedâ€
by one of her students at the college where she teaches psychology (it’s
obvious that this is what occurs in front of our eyes on the screen), it’s
perfectly fine for the investigating homicide detective, Lt. Dorgan (Wendell
Corey), to make harassing sexual innuendos and sexist remarks about the woman
he suspects of murder, not only to her face but to all the other men in the
room while she’s present. But it was 1948, not that this is an excuse.
That
said, The Accused, directed by William Dietele and produced by the
inimitable Hal B. Wallis for Paramount Pictures, is fairly riveting,
well-acted, and superbly written (by Ketti Frings, based on the novel Be
Still, My Love by June Truesdell). Note that both the novel and the
screenplay are written by women, making The Accused somewhat a rare
feminist statement for the time.
Wilma
(Young) is harassed by student Bill Perry (Douglas Dick), a handsome but
arrogant womanizer who has perhaps already gotten a fellow student (Suzanne
Dalbert) “in trouble.†In the interest of counseling Perry, Wilma agrees to be
given a ride home. Instead, Perry takes her to a secluded cliff in Malibu
overlooking the ocean, where he proceeds to enact an attempted rape. Wilma
clobbers him on the head, killing the young man. Obviously, she was defending
herself. She panics, though, and decides to stage the death by making it appear
that Perry jumped and committed suicide. Later, Perry’s “guardian†and
attorney, Warren Ford (Robert Cummings), appears to settle Perry’s affairs and
becomes embroiled in the police investigation. Ford meets Wilma and falls in
love—and she with him, too. However, Wilma is besieged by guilt and flashbacks
of the “crime,†sometimes inexplicably speaking hints of what she’d done as if
she were talking in her sleep. Lt. Dorgan (Corey) suspects her, but he also
wants to date her, and there is a bit of rivalry with Ford for her hand. As the
story progresses, evidence is uncovered that points to Wilma as Perry’s killer…
will she be arrested? And if so, can she convince a jury that she had acted in
self-defense?
Loretta
Young had just enjoyed great success as the lead in The Farmer’s Daughter (1947).
She was cast in The Accused, replacing Hal Wallis’ intended casting
choice, Barbara Stanwyck (she refused the part). Then, Young won the
Oscar for The Farmer’s Daughter, elevating her stock even higher. Would
she have taken such a potboiler role in The Accused had she known she
would soon be an Oscar-winning actress? Who knows… That said, Young is quite
good in The Accused, although her character seems to wilt in fear and
uncertainty way too often.
Robert
Cummings is fine, but Wendell Corey is a bit too slimy and predatory for
believability. Maybe in 1949 it was realistic for a cop to come on to his
suspect, but now it just feels creepy. Douglas Dick is frightening as the
sociopathic student, and Sam Jaffe is always fun to watch (here he is the
police forensics guy).
The
ending is surprisingly ambiguous as to whether Wilma walks away free from her
trial. No spoilers here, but Lt. Dorgan has a final line that points to how
this is going to go. A message to women everywhere regarding assault and
self-defense? Perhaps. Very bold for 1949.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray looks satisfactory in its restoration. It comes with an
audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller. The only supplement is the
theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers.
The
Accused is
for fans of Loretta Young, melodramatic crime pictures, and Hollywood in the
late 1940s.
Crime
stories about twins are usually compelling, despite the sameness (no pun
intended) about them. Among the Living, a 1941 potboiler from Paramount, is a short (only 69 minutes!) thriller that, with a few cuts, might
have been an episode of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents or similar
anthology television program. It moves quickly, holds interest, and contains a
reasonably dynamic performance from Albert Dekker as twins—one of them
“normal,†and the other insane.
Dekker
had an admirable career in Hollywood for three decades, usually working in
supporting roles. He is perhaps best known as the titular character in Dr.
Cyclops (1940). Landing a dual starring part in Among the Living was
likely a result of his appearance in Cyclops.
The
old Raden home is supposedly haunted, barely looked after by the elderly Black
caretaker, Pompey (Ernest Whitman). Old man Raden, who owned the town textile
factory, a hotel, and other businesses, has died. He was not a popular man. His
son, John (Dekker), arrives for the funeral with his wife Elaine (Frances
Farmer). Family friend Dr. Saunders (Harry Carey) delivers a bombshell to John.
John’s twin brother, Paul, who allegedly died and was buried at the age of ten,
is still alive. Paul (also Dekker), has been kept a prisoner in a room in the
old house, looked after by Saunders and Pompey. Paul is stark, raving mad—but
he is also naïve about the world outside. Paul murders Pompey, escapes, and
runs loose in town, where he rents a room at a boarding house. There, he meets
Millie (Susan Hayward). At first there might be the beginning of a romance, but
Paul’s ignorance about the ways of society are eventual red flags to Millie.
When Paul murders a bar girl because she screamed “like his mother did,†the
manhunt is on. And since innocent John looks exactly like Paul, you know
who gets accused of being the murderer…
Among
the Living isn’t
going to win any awards, but it’s a quick and entertaining flick with some
twists, albeit predictable ones. Dekker is fine in both roles, and his Paul is
effectively played as a child inside a killer’s mind. Hayward, still in her
early rise to stardom in those days, is gorgeous and bubbly as the daughter of
the boarding house landlady. The movie sparkles when she’s on the screen.
It’s
not quite a film noir, but the photography by Theodor Sparkuhl, and the
look of the picture, infuses enough German Expressionism in it to hint toward
what was to come in Hollywood crime pictures. In a way, it owes much more to
its studio’s horror series.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks remarkably good, given the picture’s age and
obscurity. It comes with an audio commentary by professor and film historian
Jason A. Ney. The only supplements are the theatrical trailer and others from
Kino releases.
Among
the Living is
for fans of early Hollywood crime flicks… and Susan Hayward.
A
blind masseur, Zatoichi would wander from village to village in Feudal Japan
hoping for employment to maintain his meagre existence. Hidden within his cane
was a sword which he would frequently be required to use against an assortment
of yakuza, villains, assassins and ronin. Zatoichi was a legendary blind
swordsman whose adventures were charted across an initial run of twenty-six
feature films and a hundred television episodes all starring Shintaro Katsu
between 1962 and 1979, with a return to the character one last time for the
film Zatoichi in 1989. Katsu was
something of a legend in Japan, and he came from a showbusiness family: his
elder brother was TomisaburÅ Wakayama, star of the Lone Wolf and Cub series. This in-depth new book from academic
Jonathan Wroot takes in not only Katsu’s incredible run, but also looks at
other Zatoichi films such as the 2003 reboot directed by and starring Takeshi
Kitano. Known primarily as a comedian and TV presenter in his native Japan
(remember Takeshi’s Castle?),
Kitano’s ZatÅichi won dozens of
awards including the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Another Zatoichi
film was made as recently as 2010, suggesting that this is a character, so
ingrained in Japanese culture, that we have not seen the last of just yet.
Wroot
charts the influence of Zatoichi across other countries as well, with Taiwanese
and Indonesian cinema both producing variations of the blind swordsman back in
the 1970s, whilst Zatoichi himself occasionally crossed over into other
cultures (Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed
Swordsman in 1971 saw him cross paths with one of Hong Kong cinema’s most
popular disabled fighters, played by Jimmy Wang-Yu). In American cinema, Rutger
Hauer played a variation of the character as a blinded Vietnam vet in 1989’s Blind Fury, a remake of 1967’s Zatoichi Challenged, and in the Star Wars film Rogue One (2016), Hong Kong actor Donnie Yen played a blind warrior
skilled with a staff, which, as Wroot points out, is a further connection
between the Star Wars universe and
Japanese cinema (Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958) is often cited as
a key influence). In terms of pop culture, perhaps most significantly, there is
Marvel’s Daredevil, given the Netflix
treatment across three series (2015-2018, plus The Defenders series in 2017), in which a blind lawyer with second
sight fights the criminal underworld using his training in martial arts from
the Samurai-style warrior known as Stick, who was also blind.
Jonathan
Wroot’s has packed The Paths of Zatoichi
with information and analysis of this significant long-running character who goes
across such a huge area of Japanese film history, and the book also has much to
say about franchises, remakes and adaptations within global popular culture.
Highly recommended.
Having been a film fanatic my entire life I was thrilled when, in June
1982, a new magazine burst onto the scene and quickly caught my attention.
Devoted exclusively to new and upcoming motion picture releases, Coming
Attractions cost $2.50 per issue and was published on a bi-monthly basis. It
didn’t last long, unfortunately, but I recall that a bit of an uproar occurred
over the cover of the March/April 1983 issue which featured a half-naked Valerie
Kaprisky in a promo for the Breathless remake. Seriously, back in the
day who complained about a beautiful naked woman on a magazine cover??
In one of the earlier issues, there was an article published
about an upcoming horror film entitled Trick or Treats starring David
Carradine. I don’t recall the film ever opening in my area and wondered whatever
happened to it until I saw it on the shelf as a VHS rental a few years later in
a local video store. Trick or Treats is not to be confused with the 1986
Dino De Laurentiis film Trick or Treat, directed by Charles Martin
Smith, or the 2007 Michael Dougherty-directed vignette film Trick r Treat.
It’s a strange concoction that cannot seem to make up its mind as to what it
wants to be. My guess is that it’s attempting to be serious but fails miserably
at it. It’s a mixture of horror and absurdist elements that almost play like a
Saturday Night Live sketch.
Filmed mostly in Neil Young’s house that his then-girlfriend, actress
Carrie Snodgress, lived in at the time on South Irving Boulevard in Los
Angeles, CA, the film opens in 1978 and Malcolm O'Keefe (Peter Jason) just
wants to read the morning paper, but his wife Joan (Carrie Snodgress) has other
plans. Out of nowhere, she has two burly men fight to get Malcolm into a strait
jacket while affording no explanation. Their antics are humorous and silly, and
we have no idea why it’s even happening. Apparently, he’s being carted off to a
mental institution where he stays until 1982 and plans his escape. None of this
is even remotely believable as it raises too many questions – is he really
insane? How did his wife arrange this? Why would anyone go along with it? Do
the doctors know? As he’s planning his escape, Joan is now with Richard (David
Carradine, the star of the film, who has less than ten minutes of screen time) and
has an eight-year-old son, Christopher (is he Malcolm’s son or Richard’s son
from a previous marriage? None of this is explained). Christopher (Christopher
O’Keefe) is a practical jokester, an aspiring magician and aficionado of Harry
Houdini. Joan and Richard decide to head to Vegas for a Halloween party and
call their babysitter, Linda (Jacqueline Giroux), requesting her services to
watch him and dole out candy to trick or treaters. Linda is an actress and is
torn between seeing her boyfriend Bret (Steve Railsback) in his acting debut in
Othello (I swear, I’m not making this up) or making the extra money. She
chooses the latter despite Bret’s insistence on her presence at the play. The boyfriend
doth protest too much. Richard tries to put the moves on Linda but is stopped
by Joan. Despite this, they leave for the Playground of the World, and this
gives Christopher all the time he needs to torture Linda by playing jokes on
her that she continually falls for: sticking his head into a fake guillotine
(remember this for the ending!), using a buzzer while shaking hands, pretending
to cut off his finger and even feigning drowning in the family swimming pool. After
so many instances of this, one must wonder how dim-witted Linda really is.
Things get really ridiculous when Malcolm escapes by
donning a nurse’s outfit – and everyone he meets treats him as though he’s female.
He’s a guy with a guy’s face and a guy’s voice! He makes
his way back to the house and hides in the attic. Another subplot featuring two
additional young women working on a film that Linda appears in comes out of
nowhere. One of the women, Andrea (the late Jillian Kesner), goes to the house
and spends a lot of time looking around very slowly just to pad out the running
time until the final showdown with Malcolm…
If you’re looking for a serious horror film, this one’s going to
be a disappointment. The credits even list Orson Welles as a “magical
consultantâ€. I can definitely see the influence of Citizen Kane (1941)
and Touch of Evil (1958) on this flick. Yikes! Mr. Welles put his
“magical consulting†to better use two years later in the pilot episode of
NBC-TV’s short-lived Scene of the Crime series which aired on Sunday,
September 30, 1984. In the second story of the pilot, called “The Babysitterâ€
and penned by Jeffrey Boam, the title character is left in charge of a
prepubescent girl whom she antagonizes while the girl’s parents go out for the
night. The girl gets her revenge in a very cool ending by making a wish to a
magician topper that appeared on her birthday cake. That episode was
better than this film. Mr. Welles should have put his full “magical†powers to
work and made Trick or Treats disappear. The film would have worked
better as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, which ran from
September 1984 to July 1988 in syndication, and without the camp. Christopher
constantly annoying Linda gets tiresome, though I give the film props for the
scene wherein Christopher sorts through his LP record collection which consist
of the soundtracks to Maniac (1980), The Howling (1981), and the BBC
Sound Effects No. 13 - Death & Horror album from 1977 that my friend
and I used to play in the early 1980s.
Trick or Treats debuted on DVD in November 2013 and has now been released in high
definition on Blu-ray by Code Red (probably the same transfer, though this time
it’s more colorful and clearer due to the high definition afforded in the Blu-ray
format) with the same audio commentary which runs the entire length of the film
and contains five people: Jackie Giroux, Peter Jason, Chris Graver and
Cameraman R. Michael Stringer, moderated by Sean Graver. The big problem with
the commentary is the audio quality – it’s poorly miked and begins with no
introductions at all. It’s also too low. I loved listening to it, but at times
I didn’t even know who was speaking. Commentaries as an extra are something
that I love on any disc, but if it sounds as though the people who are speaking
are on the other side of the room…hey, great title for an Orson Welles
movie!
There is an audio interview with actor Steve Railsback that adds
little value to the package.
There is something called “Katarina’s Bucketlist†mode wherein the
hostess talks about the cast and does an Elvira, Mistress of the Dark-inspired
schtick.
There are no trailers, interestingly.
The bottom line: I love a campy horror film, but if you’re going
to be silly, make sure that you market it that way. Don’t sell it as
something in the same vein (no pun intended, naturally) as John Carpenter’s Halloween
(1978). Otherwise, you might feel like Charlie Brown did on Halloween…you go
out for candy, but all you end up with is a rock.
The Evil Dead (1981,
Sam Raimi) is one of those film titles that can still conjure up images of
forbidden horrors, liable to corrupt and deprave anyone who dares to take a
peek at the screen. Its inclusion on the original “Video Nasties†list by the UK’s
Director of Public Prosecution back in the early 1980s brought it an undeserved
infamy and reputation which, despite winning its day in court, it retains to
this day. However, if you are brave enough to watch The Evil Dead, instead of developing homicidal urges, what you will
actually find is an imaginative, breathlessly entertaining ‘Cabin in the Woods’
horror film with deliberately over-the-top performances, stylised camerawork,
comedic timing and bravura special effects, all washed down with gallons of
fake blood.
Much
has been written about The Evil Dead since
its release forty years ago, most of which focuses on the stories around its
production or the furore caused by its release on an unsuspecting public. In
this piece of writing, film journalist Lloyd Haynes gathers the best stories
and weaves them together with his own analysis of the film. He connects it to
gothic literature through the theory of the ‘Bad Place’ motif, offering insight
into its broader cultural significance, and also discusses the way in which the
film’s hero, played by Bruce Campbell, conforms to the now familiar tropes of
the ‘Final Girl’, although surprisingly he fails to note the significance of
the character’s gender-neutral name Ashley in subtly underlining his
suitability to be the only survivor.
This
book also takes a look at the film’s two official sequels, the authorised
reboot in 2013 and the hugely entertaining TV series Ash vs Evil Dead (2015-2018), and considers films inspired by both
the original film and the franchise as a whole.
If you are looking for a
quick yet in-depth dive into the world of The
Evil Dead, this latest volume in the Devil’s Advocate series is the perfect
place to start.
Continuing
the examination of Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray releases of the W. C. Fields
catalog of classic comedies, we now look at The Bank Dick, easily one of
the actor/comedian’s greatest works.
Released
in 1940 (titled The Bank Detective in the U.K.), Fields was starting to
wind down, whether he knew it or not. Alcoholism was taking its toll, and it
wouldn’t be long before his amazing run in cinema since the silent era would soon
come to an end. He still had some surprises in his pockets, though, and The
Bank Dick was one of them.
Written by Fields (as Mahatma Kane
Jeeves—“my hat, my cane, Jeeves!â€), the picture contains an abundance of the
actor’s funniest lines and comebacks. He is also surrounded by numerous other
wacky character actors, creating a theatre of the absurd that culminates in one
of the craziest car chases put on film. Director Edward Cline was no slouch
when it came to comedy—he had collaborated with Buster Keaton in the 1920s, as
well as with Fields, most recently on the Fields/Mae West co-starrer, My
Little Chickadee. Cline’s control of the action and the anything-can-happen
antics of his star is impressive. It’s no wonder that Cline and Fields were a
good team.
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks
appropriately grainy but with a sheen that previous DVD releases were without.
The feature comes with an audio commentary by the knowledgeable film historian
Michael Schlesinger, who always gives good gab. The theatrical trailer, along
with other Kino Lorber titles, completes the presentation.
The Bank Dick is priceless comedy. It’s one of the two or three titles
that belong in a time capsule sporting the identifying label: “This was
W. C. Fields.†Highly recommended.
Send-ups
of classic horror films are nothing new. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello starred in
the granddaddy of horror comedies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,
in 1948 after the original working script The Brain of Frankenstein had
its title changed. They later took on the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, and Boris Karloff himself. Mel Brooks danced his way into the cinema history
books by making his own comic version of the fabled Mary Shelley classic of a
deranged scientist fabricating a man made from body parts and even had the guts
to shoot the film in black and white on the original soundstages that James
Whale used just over forty years earlier: Young Frankenstein (1974) was
the result. The lesser-known Texas-lensed Student Bodies (1981) from
Woody Allen collaborator Mickey Rose did an admirable job of poking fun at the
slasher movie subgenre that plagued American movie theaters through most of the
early to mid-1980’s and is still humorous today, even after the Scary Movie
franchise.
I
was introduced to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in September 1982 in Fangoria
Magazine (issue #22) from their “Horror-Host Series†by Dan Farren. Having begun
as a horror hostess in September 1981 on Southern California’s KHJ-TV’s Movie
Macabre weekend show, Elvira (in reality red-haired actress Cassandra
Peterson) slowly made her way into syndicated television markets and became a
huge sensation, turning verbally ragging on silly horror and science fiction B
movies into an art form. The schtick-laden show ran 137 episodes over five
years. Well-endowed with impossible-to-not-see cleavage, a huge mane of dark
hair and deep red lipstick, Elvira eventually starred in her own film, the 1988
outing Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. While many other Elvira outings
occurred in the form of short films and TV-movies, Ms. Petersen reprised her
role in Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2002), a loving parody of the Vincent
Price/Edgar Allan Poe/Roger Corman thrillers of the 1960’s that she and the
filmmakers saw in their youth.
It
is the year 1851 and the setting is the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Elvira
and her maid Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith) are forced out of their room by an
innkeeper who does his best Jack Torrance impression from The Shining to
rid the premises of these freeloaders. On their way to a can-can show they are
due to perform in Paris, they encounter Dr. Bradley Bradley (Scott Atkinson) –
no relation to Humbert Humbert – who invites them into his coach to stay the
night at Castle Hellsubus. Upon arrival, they meet Lady Emma Hellsubus (Mary
Scheer), Count Vladimere Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien) and Lady Roxana (Heather Hopper), Lady Emma and
Count Vladimere’s daughter.
It turns out that Elvira bears more than a striking resemblance to Count
Vladimere Hellsubus’s deceased wife, Elura (not to be confused with the capromorelin
oral solution indicated for the management of weight loss in cats with chronic
kidney disease of the same name. Whew!)
While
investigating the castle, Elvira stumbles into the room of Adrian (Gabi
Andronache in a role originally intended for Fabio who declined), a
deliberately poorly dubbed hunk with mismatched lips and dialog in a direct nod
to Italian horror films. Elvira gives the folks an example of her can-can show
and later Count Vladimere thinks Elura is alive after seeing her in the hallway
and blames it on a hallucination.
There
are several laugh out-loud moments, one involving an empty knight suit, a
throw-away line about the Village People, a visual zoom a la Jaws (1975),
and other modern-day film references. Even the Academy Awards aren’t
off-limits. The ageless Ms. Peterson is endearing in her Elvira get-up and
obviously the title is a comic play on her famous, always-on-display assets.
This is a film played for laughs and it is amusing and fun. The real stars,
however, are the beautiful and opulent sets fashioned by the Romanian crew modeled
primarily after The Pit and The Pendulum (1961) and The Haunted
Palace (1963). I was even reminded of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s The
House That Screamed (1969). The beautiful lighting is also reminiscent of
cinematographer Luciano Tovoli’s colorful work on Dario Argento’s Suspiria
(1977) and Romano Albani’s lighting schemes in Suspiria’s follow-up, Inferno
(1980).
Elvira
does a fun song number and Richard O’Brien at times looks like Reggie Nalder as
Mr. Barlow in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot (1979).
Elvira’s
Haunted Hills was
originally released on DVD in October 2002 and again in October 2011 in a
“Specially Enhanced Editionâ€. The bonus features are all ported over from the
previous DVD incarnations:
The
Blu-ray consists of a restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera
negative and it looks stunning in 1080p. The original DVDs did not grasp the
image so well and were often murky and dark. This transfer is bright, colorful
and clear and the sets look amazing.
There
is an introduction by Elvira, Mistress of The Dark which is comical and runs
4:40.
There
is an audio commentary with Cassandra Peterson, Mary Scheer, Mary Jo Smith and
Scott Atkinson, and Director Sam Irvin who all have terrific fun commenting on
the action and memories of filming on a shoestring.
Transylvania or Bust
Featurette – this cutely-titled High Definition piece from 2011 runs just over
28 minutes and includes Mary Jo Smith, Mary Scheer, Scott Atkinson and others discussing
their experiences not just making the film, but the misadventures entailed in
getting to the locations, which were more scary than what ends up in onscreen!
The Making of Elvira’s Haunted Hills is
Standard Definition, runs 22 minutes and features interviews with much of the
cast and crew, but best of all it contains behind-the-scenes footage shot
during principal photography.
Elvira in Romania
Featurette – this is a cute Standard Definition interview with a Romanian
television crew and Elvira
and runs about 46 minutes. There are also test shots and Elvira mingling with
locals.
Interview
with Co-Star Richard O’Brien
runs 6:08 and is an onscreen interview that was shot during filming.
Trailers – two trailers for Elvira’s Haunted
Hills
Outtakes – this runs 54 seconds and my only
complaint is I would have liked to have seen more of it.
For
a few glorious weeks, every time a James Bond film is released, for those fans
of a certain age, it becomes Christmas 1965 when a plethora of Bond-related tie-ins
once again flood the market.In 1965 it
was a Thunderball merchandise tsunami with toys, clothing, diving
equipment and men’s jewelry…In 2021
it’s No Time to Die’s turn.In
keeping with the film’s many nods to 007’s cinematic past, Bond is back
drinking his beverage of choice from Dr. No – Smirnoff Vodka, an historic
brand dating back to 1863 and one of the world’s most popular vodkas.
As
a serious Bond collector, I’ve seen many a corporate 007 gift – from model
vehicles (BMW and Caterpillar) and leather satchels (MGM) to all manner of
007-branded clothing… but nothing beats
the stunning Martini-maker briefcase Smirnoff created.
The
custom case (embossed with the Smirnoff and NTTD logos) contains everything a
thirsty secret-agent (or Bond fan) could want – a crystal martini glass,
measuring jigger, olive spears, a lemon shaver and, of course, a bottle of
Smirnoff, all elegantly encased in red velvet.If there is a more lavish piece of Bond promotion, I’d love to see
it.Kudos to Smirnoff’s marketing agency
for this brilliant promotional tool.
Always
a fashion icon, whatever Bond wears is now carefully studied and snapped up by
trendy consumers and fans.Recently the
fabled American bootmaker Danner joined in by supplying pairs of their Tanicus
all-weather boots to the production – in Bond black, of course.
(Photo: MGM/Danjaq)
On
September 16th, they put the boot on sale via their website.The result was a digital stampede.So many orders came in that their website froze
and they had to add additional servers.I know because I was caught up in the footwear frenzy.Did I need an exotic new pair of boots in
sunny Southern California?No. Do I
do any mountaineering or exploring at all?Um… no, but the boots looked rugged, were priced right ($180 a pair) and
came in a custom No Time to Die
box as cool as the boots themselves.I
managed to grab a pair – which also included a unique 007 leather keychain, but
it was as nail-biting as buying Rolling Stones seats during an online ticket
drop.Danner’s entire stock sold out in
under 20 minutes.“This was a
record-breaking launch for us,†said a member of their online team.For more on Danner’s line of footwear go
to:www.Danner.com
Are
there more Bond tie-in products out there?Of course.Anyone know somebody
at Heineken?
During
the years that I spent in elementary school, watching movies on television was
an exciting prospect. Considering that for me there was no other way to see
films other than theatrically, viewing movies on television was something that
I looked forward to regardless of the film being shown. In 1979, my best friend
at the time was one of only a handful of people I knew who had cable
television, in his case HBO. He told me about a great many films that I was not
even aware of: Don Coscarelli’s Kenny & Company (1976), Frank
Simon’s The Chicken Chronicles (1977), Sidney J. Furie’s The Boys in
Company C (1978), and Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards
(1978). I always hoped that some of these films would make their way to
television. Some did, some did not. His recollection and explanation to me of
what he saw in these films made me regard him as quite the raconteur. These
films seemed to make a big impression on him and listening to his enthusiasm
for them made a big impression on me.
The Inglorious Bastards
also made an impression on film director Quentin Tarantino, who worked at Video
Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA for a number of years while in his twenties
during the VHS and Beta home video viewing boom. He saw the film on television
several times while living in Los Angeles and later the film, to my surprise,
was released on home video under the titles of Deadly Mission and,
unbelievably, G.I. Bro. He was hired by the video store’s owner as he
was already a scholar of cinema and could discuss and recommend movies to the
paying customers. His enthusiasm for this film led him to adopt the title to
his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, a two-and-a-half-hour World War II
film that he spent at least six years thinking about and writing. It’s his sixth
film as a director and he is still in command of his powers.
Inglourious Basterds,
a brilliantly entertaining revisionist view of how we wish the war in Europe
ended, is separated into five chapters. Chapter One, subtitled “Once Upon a
Time in Nazi-occupied Franceâ€, is one of the most intense sequences that I have
ever seen in a film. At just over 20 minutes, it is a lesson in bravura
filmmaking. In 1941, a farmer, Perrier La Padite (Denis Menochet), is cutting
wood and his wife is hanging up the family clothing when her mood changes – she
hears the distant sound of a motorcycle. She knows that it can only be Germans.
As the family prepares for the inevitable interrogation, we know from their
body language that something is amiss. Although several German soldiers arrive only
one of them, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in an Oscar-winning performance), approaches. He is complimentary
and ingratiating towards Perrier and plays a verbal game with him to ascertain
if his family is hiding Jews, an assumption that he already knows to be true.
How the director handles this scene cinematically illustrates why he is one of
cinema’s best filmmakers. The tension that he builds and the measured sentences
that Landa uses to get the information that he wants is first-rate dialog. When
the massacre of the hidden Jews in the floorboards occurs, one girl, Shosanna Dreyfus
(Melanie Laurent), survives and runs off under Landa’s laughter and admiration.
Chapter Two, “The Inglourious
Basterdsâ€, takes place in 1944 and concerns Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt,
and his name is a play on actor Aldo Ray, who appeared in many war films) who oversees
a group of men who capture and scalp Nazis. Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth),
aka “The Bear Jewâ€, is part of this group designed to turn the tables and
instill fear in the Germans. This sequence is a joy to watch as it gives the
Nazis a taste of their own medicine.
In Chapter Three, “A German Night in
Parisâ€, we are reacquainted with Shosanna under the assumed name of Emmanuelle
Mimieux. She now owns a cinema and is harassed by Fredrick Zoller (Daniel
Bruhl) who is smitten with her and, like other Germans, won’t take no for an
answer. Later, Zoller attempts to interest Mimieux and is again rebuffed. At a
restaurant gathering with Joseph Goebbels, Mimieux is strong-armed to permit a
Nazi propaganda film, Nation’s Pride, to be shown with all head Nazis in
attendance including, amazingly, Adolf Hitler. Sure enough, Landa comes into
the picture, and Mimieux does her best to answer his persistent questions about
her theatre, trying to gauge if Landa knows her real identity. This sequence,
like Chapter One, is extraordinary as the dialog is constantly masking what is
going on beneath the surface, and the audience is never sure what might happen
next. Unpredictability is just one of Mr. Tarantino’s many talents.
Chapter Four, “Operation Kinoâ€, is
similar to Chapters One and Three in that much is going on, however the
probability of things going very badly is always imminent. A mixture of
undercover agents and Germans ends the scene in a bloodbath that sets the stage
for the film’s finale.
Chapter Five, “Revenge of the Giant
Faceâ€, is an extraordinary ending to the Nazi’s evil and their ultimate
comeuppance as the cinema is packed with Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich and many of
the architects of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The Giant Face
alluded to belongs to Shosanna who, along with her lover and theater co-worker
Marcel, carry out the plan to kill the Nazis by locking the escape routes and
igniting a pile of combustible nitrate film stock located behind the screen.
The cinema comes crashing down in a conflagration that causes deaths of the
Nazis. The Basterds get their machine gun kicks by shooting as many enemies as
possible. The ending is surprising, but ultimately satisfying.
Mr. Tarantino burst onto the film scene
in 1992 with his debut film Reservoir Dogs. I saw it in New York, and I
knew that I was in the hands of a truly gifted storyteller. His follow-up, Pulp
Fiction, took the 1994 Cannes Film Festival by storm and won the Palme
D’Or, and he snagged an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (and again in 2013
for Django Unchained). His subsequent films have not disappointed, and the
dialog is often just a vehicle for something more tension-filled or sinister. Other
times, it’s completely innocuous. The back-and-forth storytelling, jumping
ahead at times, makes the action at hand that much more interesting. Inglourious
Basterds is a linear narrative and despite there being a myriad of
characters, the three major ones are Raine, Landa, and Dreyfus/Mimieux and the
film pretty much revolves around them and their motives: Raine wants to kill
Nazis, Landa wants to be evil, and Dreyfus/Mimieux wants to be invisible. His
salute to war movies and cinema in general is everywhere – just setting a good
portion of the action in a theatre is a labor of love. Eli Roth’s character is
named Antonio Margheriti, named after the late filmmaker from Italy. So, the
references are everywhere. At 2½ hours, the film is fascinating and flies by.
He even throws in the obligatory “Wilhelm Scream†for good measure.
The film is now available in a new Universal
2-disc release which comes with a standard 1080p Blu-ray, a 4K Ultra High
Definition Blu-ray, and a digital copy. If you have a 4K player and 4K TV, that
is the one to go for as the picture is glorious, no pun intended. The extras
are plentiful, though I would have loved a commentary track, and they include:
Extended & Alternate Scenes
(HD, 11:31) – This section has three scenes: Lunch with Goebbels,
extended version in one take; La Louisiane Card Game, extended version,
and Nation’s Pride Begins, alternate version.
Roundtable Discussion with Quentin
Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Film Critic Elvis Mitchell
(HD, 30:45) – This is a funny and informative interview, with the surprising
revelation that Brad Pitt received the script and shot the film six weeks
later.
The
New York Times Talks (HD,
1:08:07) – This is a just-shy-of 70-minute dialog between the director and New
York Times Magazine Editor-at-Large Lynn Hirschberg. As usual, the director is
enthusiastic about all-things cinema and speaks with a great deal of energy
about the film and his desire to make films without regard to the morality of
his characters.
Nation’s Pride:
Full Feature (HD, 6:10) – This is the film that the Nazi’s watch in the cinema,
and The Making of Nation’s Pride (HD, 4:00) is self-explanatory. It’s
very cool to see Bo Svenson appear in Nation’s Pride since he was in the 1978
version of The Inglorious Bastards. It would have been great if a
restored version of that film had been included as well!
The
Original Inglorious Bastards(HD,
7:38) – This is a look at the director of the original film, Enzo G.
Castellari, and his cameo in the Tarantino film.
A Conversation with Rod Taylor
(HD, 6:43) and Rod Taylor On Victoria Bitter (HD, 3:19) – The late actor
Rod Taylor, whom many will recall from the The Time Machine (1960) and The
Birds (1963), is virtually unrecognizable in these mini interviews. He
talks about the director’s enthusiasm for film, and a funny story about
Victoria Bitter, the Australian beer.
Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel
(HD, 2:41) – This is a humorous collection of slate shots and the funny on-set
comments in between takes.
Hi Sallys
(HD, 2:09) – This is a bittersweet piece as it pays homage to Mr. Tarantino’s longtime
editor, Sally Menke, who tragically passed away at the age of 56 in 2010 due to
dehydration while hiking in hot weather conditions.
Film Poster Gallery Tour with Elvis
Mitchell (HD, 10:59) – This is very interesting as Mr. Mitchell talks
about the history and meaning behind the beautiful posters that can been seen
in the cinema in the film.
Inglorious Basterds Poster Gallery
(HD)
Trailers
(HD, 7:34) – Teaser, Domestic, International, and Japanese trailers for the
film.
The
year 1934 was a good one for comic actor W. C. Fields (whose real name was
William Claude Dukenfield). Fields made six pictures in 1934, and by the time
that It’s a Gift appeared in November, he had made sixteen sound movies
(and he had been making silents prior to the sound era).
Kino
Lorber has begun releasing new Blu-ray restorations of many of Fields’ better
films from the 1930s, which was the decade in which he prospered the most. Today,
Cinema Retro looks at two key new releases, with likely more reviews to
come as we receive them.
It’s
a Gift,
directed by Norman McLeod (who was also responsible for the Marx Brothers’ Monkey
Business and Horse Feathers in 1931 and 1932, respectively), is
easily one of W. C. Fields’ most beloved and acclaimed pictures. It showcases
Fields at his best and before alcoholism began to derail his career. In fact,
Fields is in shape and rather slim here and in the other title from 1934 that
we’re examining, The Old Fashioned Way. Remarkably, he was already 54
when these two films were released by Paramount Pictures, the studio that often
pushed the envelope when it came to comedy.
In
Gift, Fields (Harold Bissonette) is a grocer married to the
forever-nagging Amelia (Kathleen Howard). She insists that Harold pretentiously
pronounce their last name as “Bisso-nay.†They have two children, an older
daughter and a bratty pre-teen (Jean Rouverol and Tommy Bupp, respectively).
Harold has dreams of buying an orange grove in California and moving from their
cramped and squalid housing in whatever state they’re in. Neighbors in the same
building include the Dunk family, a member of which is Baby Elwood (Baby LeRoy,
in his third and final appearance with Fields). When Howard finally buys his
orange grove, the family does move—only to find that the track of land is a
barren plot. Amelia and the kids threaten to leave him until a stroke of luck
intervenes.
True,
there isn’t much of a plot here, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a Gift is
a gem for its series of gags, sketches, and routines that Fields perfected over
the years in vaudeville, and they are on full display here. One extended
sequence involves Howard attempting to take an afternoon nap on his front porch
swing—but he is constantly disturbed by noises from the various neighbors, visitors
from the street, and other external stimuli. The results are hilarious. All the
set-pieces, such as when Howard must deal with a blind man in the grocery store,
are equally funny, and they emphasize why W. C. Fields is remembered today as
one of the great genius comics of his day.
The
Old Fashioned Way,
directed by William Beaudine, was released four months earlier than It’s a
Gift. It is lesser Fields, but it still has its moments of fun. Of
particular interest is Fields’ juggling demonstration, a rare moment of the man
showing off this talent on film. Back in the vaudeville days, Fields was not
only a comedian and vocalist, but also an accomplished juggler. His act here
with balls and cigar boxes is simply amazing, and funny, too.
Fields
plays “The Great McGonigle,†a theatrical troupe impresario and actor in the
1890s who is constantly in trouble for not paying his bills. He leads his
company out of every town before the law catches up with him. His troupe
includes his daughter, Betty (Judith Allen), as well as familiar Fields co-star
and foil, Mr. Gump (Tammany Young). Baby LeRoy makes his second appearance in a
Fields movie as the child of the rich society woman, Cleopatra Pepperday (Jan
Duggan). Pepperday desperately wants to join the McGonigle troupe and perform,
even though she is terribly untalented—but McGonigle is not averse to promising
her a role in exchange for funding. A romantic subplot involving Betty and
actor/singer Wally (Joe Morrison) and Wally’s father (Oscar Apfel) intermingles
with McGonigle’s conning of boarding house proprietors, theater managers, and
sheriffs.
Both
Kino Lorber titles, available separately, look quite good in their high
definition restorations, and each come with optional English subtitles for the
hearing impaired. Audio commentaries by film historian James L. Neibaur, author
of The W. C. Fields Films, accompany both features, along with the
theatrical trailers for these and other Kino Fields releases.
For
fans of W. C. Fields, classic cinema comedy, and old Hollywood, It’s a Gift and
The Old Fashioned Way serve up grand entertainment.
The
decade of the 1950s is the Golden Age of science fiction movies. Prior to that,
the genre was mostly ignored on film in favor of horror. Of course, the two
genres often overlapped, especially in the 50s, when audiences were worried
about nuclear war, UFOs, alien invasions, and the dangers of radioactivity. We
got pictures with giant bugs, flying saucers, amphibious creatures, Martian
invaders, and mole people. With few exceptions, most of the science fiction
fare from the period is godawful but usually fun for a drive-in movie
experience or late-night “creature feature†material on television.
The
exceptions have proven to stand the test of time and are considered classics
today—The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another
World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (1956), Forbidden Planet (1956), among others.
The
Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of these gems. Conceived and written by the
great Richard Matheson, the movie was brought to the screen by Jack Arnold, one
of the more under-appreciated filmmakers of his day. While Arnold specialized
in “creature features†in the fifties (he brought us The Creature from the
Black Lagoon in 1954 and Tarantula in ’55, for example), he went on
to be a successful hard-working craftsman for dozens of popular television
shows in the 60s and 70s.
Matheson
wrote the initial story and simultaneously penned a novel (The Shrinking Man)
published in 1956. He sold the rights to Universal on the condition that he be
hired to write the screenplay. Matheson’s script followed the structure of his
novel, which used flashbacks to tell Scott Carey’s story. Arnold and the studio
preferred that the story be told linearly, so Richard Alan Simmons got the job
to re-write the screenplay as such. Both Matheson and Simmons share screenplay
credit, while Matheson receives story credit.
The
tale is well-known. Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is in a loving marriage with
Louise (Randy Stuart). One day they are out on a boat. While Louise is below
deck, a strange mist envelops Scott. As time passes, Scott notices that his
clothes no longer fit him—he’s becoming smaller. Doctors are befuddled. Scott
shrinks some more. Eventually this affects the marriage and Scott questions his
manhood. He becomes a media curiosity, and he continues to diminish in size.
Ultimately, he is alone in his house and must first battle the family cat, and
later, in a climactic sequence, a tarantula. And still, he continues to grow
smaller…
The
Incredible Shrinking Man is one of the most thoughtful, mind-bending, and
existential science fiction films ever made—and it was certainly a milestone of
the period. Its cosmic ending, which studio executives wanted to change to a
happier one, was kept intact by director Arnold—and this is what elevates Shrinking
Man to a BIG picture.
The
visual effects, while crude by today’s standards, were cleverly done in
1956-57. Arnold utilized split screens, rear screen projections, oversized sets
and furniture, and trick photography to achieve the illusion of Scott’s
condition against an enlarging hostile world around him. As Arnold states in a
wonderful vintage 1983 interview that is a supplement accompanying the film,
the secret to this and all the director’s work was “preparation.†He was a
believer in storyboards, and he created these to fully imagine the picture
prior to shooting a frame of film. Much like the outline some authors pen prior
to drafting a novel, Arnold’s storyboards allowed him to try out different
ideas and erase them if they didn’t work.
The
Criterion Collection presents an outstanding package for Shrinking Man.
The film is a 4K digital restoration that looks amazingly fresh. It comes with
an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. There is an optional and informative audio
commentary by genre-film historian Tom Weaver and horror-music expert David
Schecter.
Supplements
abound. A new featurette on the film’s visual effects hosted by FX experts
Craig Barron and Ben Burtt is a lot of fun. A very entertaining conversation
about the film between filmmaker Joe Dante and comedian/writer Dana Gould is
fabulous. A remembrance on the film with Richard Christian Matheson (Richard
Matheson’s son) is also superb. Of particular interest to film buffs might be
the previously mentioned footage from 1983 of Jack Arnold interviewed about the
film. Also of great significance is a “director’s cut†of a 2021 documentary
about Arnold, Auteur on the Campus: Jack Arnold at Universal. And if all
that weren’t enough, we get two 8mm home video short presentations of the film that
circulated in the 1960s, a feature on missing musical cues, a vintage teaser
narrated by none other than Orson Welles, and the theatrical trailer. The
booklet contains an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien.
The
Incredible Shrinking Man is a must-have, buy-today, excellent release from
Criterion. For fans of 1950s science fiction, Richard Matheson, Jack Arnold,
and giant spiders. Sublime!
Mark Cerulli with Jerry Juroe at the "Bond in Motion" exhibition in London, 2018.
(Photo: Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)
BY MARK CERULLI
While
not a marquee name like Broccoli, Connery or Moore, Charles “Jerry†Juroe was
an integral part of the James Bond movie phenomenon for three decades.On September 30th, he passed away quietly
at his home in Southern Spain with his daughter Kim by his side. Jerry was 98.
A
publicity man through and through, Jerry started out at Paramount Pictures in
the 1940s, but his new career was interrupted by World War II. As a graduate of
the Castle Hill Military Academy in Tennessee, he was immediately called up and
was part of the D-Day Invasion -service that, 75 years later, would earn him
France’s prestigious Legion d’Honneur, presented by President Emmanuel Macron,
no less.Jerry also saw action in
Germany and Czechoslovakia before transferring to the Army’s Office of Special
Services.There he escorted movie stars
on USO appearances while also arranging entertainment for the troops.Although he held positions in Hollywood and
was the publicist for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Jerry loved Europe and
preferred to live there – especially after meeting lovely British actress Lynn
Tracy, who became his wife of 42 years until her death in 2001.During his stint as a publicist for Arthur P.
Jacobs, Jerry handled press for The Prince and the Showgirl, working
with the mercurial Marilyn Monroe.Running
European publicity for United Artists, Jerry worked with The Beatles on A
Hard Day’s Night and Help.The job also put him in the orbit of a rising young producer named
Albert “Cubby†Broccoli.At UA, Jerry
handled publicity chores on Dr. No, accompanying Sean Connery on his
first press tour.He worked on all of
Connery’s films through the 1967 epic, You Only Live Twice.He left UA for several years but was invited
back into Bondage by Cubby himself for The Man with The Golden Gun, joining
the EON fold permanently from Moonraker through Licence to Kill.(Jerry came back briefly for the 1994
announcement of Pierce Brosnan as the new 007.)
I
was fortunate enough to know Jerry for 40 years, meeting him as a college
student spending a semester in London.I
wrote a gushing letter to EON, which Jerry answered then invited me out to
Pinewood.That was the start of a
beautiful friendship.He also was fond
of my wife, a fellow marketing exec, pulling me aside to say, “You got the best
part of that deal.â€Pure Jerry.
Jerry Juroe (far left) on the "Moonraker" publicity tour, 1979.
(Photo courtesy of Jerry Juroe estate.)
He
was fond of cruise ships and came to New York to take one of the last
“crossings†of the QE2.While there, he
handed me the manuscript of his autobiography which Ian Fleming Foundation
co-founder and close friend Doug Redenius and I were able to get published in
2018 as Bond, The Beatles and My Year With Marilyn (McFarland
Books).EON graciously invited us to
lunch then sponsored a book-signing at the London Bond in Motion exhibit. A
number of 00 alumni came for one of Jerry’s last hurrahs – John Glen, Gitte Lee
(Sir Christopher’s widow), Jenny Hanley, Valerie Leon, Peter Lamont, Deborah
Moore, Carole Ashby, Margaret Nolan, Steven Saltzman, Anthony Waye, former EON
publicity & marketing honchos Anne Bennett and John Parkinson, EON Chief Archivist
Meg Simmonds and many more. Also on hand
were authors Ajay Chowdhury and Matthew Field, CR’s Dave Worrall, From Sweden with
Love’s Anders Frejdh, bullet-catcher Mark O’Connell, French Bond expert Laurent
Perriot – even Titanic star Billy Zane. Speeches were made, glasses were
raised and warm embraces were exchanged. It was a beautiful night.
Jerry’s
passing severs one of the very last connections to Hollywood’s Golden Age and
his contribution to Bond’s success can’t be understated. As 5x Bond director John Glen put it, “Jerry
was very much a part of the James Bond phenomenon. He took great care of all
aspects of publicity, particularly looking after the actors which could be a
trying task at times.â€
“Sad
indeed, but a full life well lived and lived well,†said actress Jenny Hanley
(OHMSS).
My
last conversation with Jerry was just days ago.I asked how he was feeling and he answered with a weary, “I’m still here.â€Indeed he was and he always will be.
Thank
you, Jerry.
If you want to read more about Jerry Juroe's remarkable life and career, order his autobiography.
Director
William Friedkin’s The French Connection, which won Oscars for Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing
at the 1972 Academy Awards ceremony, celebrates its 50th Anniversary
today as it opened in New York City on Thursday, October 7, 1971. On Saturday,
October 7, 1961, exactly ten years earlier to the day, both New York Detective
First Grade Edward Egan and his partner, then Detective Second Grade Salvatore
Grosso, unwittingly stumbled upon what is described in author Robin Moore’s
1969 account of the case as one that would “obsess them night and day for the
next four-and-a-half months and would not end for a year-and-a-half.â€
New York
Gene
Hackman portrayed Mr. Egan and Roy Scheider co-starred as Mr. Grosso, referring
to each other by the sobriquets “Popeye†and “Cloudyâ€, respectively. Acclaimed
by critics and audiences alike for its gritty realism, its cat-and-mouse chase
between Popeye and the mastermind behind the imported heroin (played by
Fernando Rey), the film is best-known for its gripping and inexorable chase
between a 1971 Pontiac LeMans and a subway train.
The
film later opened in Los Angeles on November 3rd in Los Angeles and
on November 17th in Central Jersey.
New Jersey
Issue
#50 of Cinema Retro features this writer’s interviews with William Friedkin,
actor Tony Lo Bianco, and former New York Police Detective Randy Jurgensen who
worked on the actual case. Copies are available at CinemaRetro.com.
At
long last, the Warner Archive has blessed Marx Brothers fans with a high
definition Blu-ray release of one of the comedy team’s most beloved pictures, A
Night at the Opera (1935).
Many
film historians and critics cite A Night at the Opera (directed by Sam Wood) as the brothers’ “finestâ€
movie, and it has even been named by Groucho Marx as such. While it is
certainly one of their best, this reviewer quibbles with that
pronouncement. The film’s reputation is a result of the success it had at the
box office and with the public’s perception upon release. It was a “reboot†of
sorts for the Marx Brothers, as they had moved to a new studio (the prestigious
MGM) and were overseen by the young genius studio maverick, Irving Thalberg.
Under Thalberg’s guidance, the brothers’ films became more commercial. His goal
had been to make their pictures play as well in Middle America as they had in
New York or Los Angeles.
The
Marx Brothers’ film career can easily be divided into two distinct periods. The
first chapter consists of the five excellent pre-Code entries made at
Paramount. Most aficionados of the brothers hold these anarchic, surreal, and
zany comedies (they include Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, and Duck
Soup)in the highest regard. Unfortunately, 1933’s Duck Soup was
not a box office hit because the comedy had become too political for the times
(although its stock grew tremendously as the decades went on, and today Soup
is generally considered, certainly by this reviewer, as the team’s “finestâ€â€”or
certainly “favoriteâ€). The team found themselves without a studio. Zeppo, the
team’s “straight man,†dropped out of the act, and he would be replaced by a
succession of Zeppo-types to serve his function. This left only Groucho, Harpo,
and Chico in place.
Enter
Thalberg. Over a poker game with Chico, Thalberg discussed bringing the Marx
Brothers to MGM. He envisioned making their comedy more “friendly†and
emphasizing more story. The result found the three (instead of four)
Marx Brothers becoming lovable—but crazily funny—matchmakers to two young
lovers (in this case, played by Allan Jones, this movie’s Zeppo clone, and
Kitty Carlisle), despite obstacles by defined bad guys.
This
formula was a success, and it continued in 1937’s A Day at the Races (the
brothers’ most profitable film) and three more at MGM, which grew progressively
weaker in quality. By 1941, the blueprint had played itself out and MGM dropped
the team. (The brothers made two more inferior films in the late 1940s for
different studios, a time which could be considered a forgettable third period
in their cinematic journey.)
All
that said, A Night at the Opera is easily the most successful and
funniest of the MGM pictures. Groucho is “Otis B. Driftwood,†a theatrical
manager of sorts, who wants to invest Mrs. Claypool’s money (she is played, of
course, by the wonderful Margaret Dumont) in the New York opera scene, which is
run by pompous Herman Gottlieb (Sig Ruman). Chico is “Fiorello,†another
manager of sorts, who represents his friend Ricardo (Jones), who happens to be
an extremely talented singer. Ricardo is in love with Rosa (Carlisle), also an
opera singer. She is set to co-star with sleazy Lassparri (Walter Woolf King),
who is cruel to his personal assistant, Tomasso (Harpo). Thus, the plot
involves subverting Lassparri and Gottlieb, and installing Ricardo and Rosa in
the opera. It takes the three Marx Brothers to make this happen.
The
script was written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who had worked with
the brothers several times in the past. Even though Groucho and Chico were
known to improvise dialogue, the film contains many of their best bits. For
example, the “contract scene,†in which Driftwood and Fiorello hash out the
terms to sign Ricardo to the opera, is classic stuff. When they don’t agree on
a specific clause in the contract, they simply physically tear it off the
paper. When Fiorello gets down to the bottom, the clause which states that if
either party is “not in sound mind,†then the contract is void. “That’s the
sanity clause,†Driftwood explains. Fiorello isn’t having it. “Oh no, you can’t
fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!†And
then there is the brilliant ocean liner stateroomscene, the cinematic
equivalent of stuffing the most people possible into a phone booth.
Groucho
and Chico do seem to have all the best stuff. Harpo is always splendid, but
here too much of his physical comedy is dependent on outrageous stunts
(performed by doubles and stuntmen, or visual photographic effects), such as
climbing up a vertical theatrical backdrop like a lizard. Harpo Marx’s
antics should never be performed by stuntmen or faked with technical trickery.
This is probably this reviewer’s biggest complaint about A Night at the
Opera, and the one thing that prevents it from overtaking the likes of Duck
Soup, Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers, and Monkey Business
as the quintessential Marx Brothers movie. At least Opera features two
superb musical solos by Chico (on piano) and Harpo (on harp), as well as a
couple of lavish, MGM-style musical numbers by Jones, Carlisle, and a multitude
of extras.
Warner
Archive’s new high-definition transfer is a vast improvement over the previous
DVD release. The few splices/missing frames in the film are still evident
(nothing to be done about those), but the picture quality is superb. All the supplements
are ported over from the DVD release, including the audio commentary by film
critic Leonard Maltin, as well as an entertaining documentary on the brothers
(featuring the likes of Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Dom DeLuise, and others), a
1961 television excerpt of Groucho being interviewed by Hy Gardner, and two
vintage 1930s MGM shorts (Robert Benchley’s “How to Sleep†and the musical
documentary “Sunday Night at the Trocaderoâ€). A third vintage short, “Los
Angeles: Wonder City of the West†is new to this Blu-ray release. The
theatrical trailer rounds out the package.
A
Night at the Opera is
a welcome addition to the home video collection of any Marx Brothers fan.
Despite the minor quibbles, this is classic, side-splitting, Hollywood comedy.
The
excellent boutique label Arrow Video has issued a superb 2-disk Limited Edition
Blu-ray package of Ridley Scott’s 1985 film, Legend (released in the
U.S. in 1986).
Like
another recent terrific Arrow Video release, David Lynch’s Dune, Scott’s
Legend was a troubled production that experienced studio interference
and a problematic worldwide release, received mixed to negative reviews from
critics and audiences alike, and was relegated to the barrel of “expensive
Hollywood failures†for decades—and yet it has a cult following of devoted fans.
Perhaps
the most notorious reputation Legend has is that it existed in different
cuts. Scott’s original cut was roughly 125 minutes, but the studio felt the
picture needed shortening. It was trimmed to 113 minutes, which was ultimately Scott’s
preferred cut. The picture’s music was composed and conducted by the great
Jerry Goldsmith, who had overlain the fantasy with a classically orchestral
score. The studio still felt that the movie ran too long, so further cuts were
demanded, much to Scott’s chagrin. This “European cut,†at around 95 minutes,
was released in the UK in late 1985. Reception wasn’t great, so the studio
delayed the North American release to make a drastic change. Over Scott’s objections,
they replaced Goldsmith’s score with a newly-commissioned one by the
progressive electronic band, Tangerine Dream. A few minutes more were cut, and
the U.S. release, at roughly 90 minutes, was released in spring 1986 with the
new score. This time the reception was even worse.
Ridley
Scott always maintained that his original cut of the film—with Goldsmith’s
score—was the way Legend should be seen. Thus, in 2002, Legend received
a re-release of Scott’s Director’s Cut of 113 minutes with Goldsmith’s score
restored. This version was re-appraised and earned a more positive rating from
critics and viewers. Interestingly, Scott has more Director’s Cuts of his films
that are different from their theatrical releases than any other filmmaker, as
pointed out in one of the disk’s supplements!
Legend
is
hard-fantasy, but it owes more to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or
Disney’s Fantasia than it does to, say, Tolkien’s The Lord of the
Rings. Yes, there are fairies, goblins, elves, and dwarves in both visions
of a fantasyland, but Legend has a more classical, old-myth feel. While
Scott’s Director’s Cut is indeed a vast improvement over the shorter versions
(European and U.S.), the picture still has flaws that prevent it from being the
masterwork that Scott perhaps hoped it would be. That said, there is much to
admire in Legend.
Visually,
Legend is scrumptious, gorgeous, and fascinating. The production designs
by Assheton Gordon and especially the makeup designs by Rob Bottin are
extraordinary. The pastoral atmosphere and the moods evoked by the picture are
effective and magical.
The
acting? A young Tom Cruise plays Jack, a sort of Jack-in-the-Green fellow who
is at one with the forest and its creatures. He fancies Princess Lili (Mia
Sara), who is precocious and sets all the conflict of the story in motion by a
careless act. (Oddly, all references to Lili being a princess are deleted from
the U.S. theatrical release.) Tim Curry is magnificent behind all the makeup as
the Prince of Darkness, a truly delicious villain. David Bennent (of The Tin
Drum fame) is believable as an elf named Gump, although his voice is dubbed
by Alice Playton.
The
story is straightforward. Darkness wants to eliminate all light in the world by
destroying the two unicorns in the forest, so he sends a troupe of goblins out
to do the dirty deed, just as Jack is introducing the animals to Lili. One
unicorn horn is hacked off and stolen, and the world is plunged into a deep
freeze. Lili is eventually captured by Darkness (he has the hots for her, too),
so it’s up to Jack, the elves, and a pair of dwarves to rescue her, retrieve
the unicorn horn, and stop Darkness from accomplishing his goal.
It
all works well enough, although the voices used for the goblins are
ridiculously comical and are a detriment to the action. Once the action moves
to Darkness’ realm, the picture picks up and becomes quite suspenseful. In the
end, though, Legend just doesn’t reach the lofty target to which it aspired.
One of the problems is that is seemed not to know what audience for whom it was
aimed. Children? Adults? Teenagers? The studio arbitrarily decided it was the
latter, which was one of the reasons the Tangerine Dream score replaced
Goldsmith’s.
And
what of the scores? The Tangerine Dream score is actually quite good—the band had
already done several movie scores and were quite adept at it. It works with the
theatrical version well enough. Nevertheless, the Jerry Goldsmith is far
superior and fits the movie much better. This is classical fantasy, so a
classical score is more appropriate.
The
new Arrow Video Limited Edition 2-Disk package contains the U.S. theatrical
release (with the Tangerine Dream score) and Scott’s Director’s Cut (with Jerry
Goldsmith’s score), both beautifully restored in 2K. They both have DTS-HD MA
2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround audio, and optional English subtitles for the
hearing impaired. The theatrical cut has an audio commentary by Paul M. Sammon
(author of Ridley Scott: The Making of His Movies). The Director’s Cut
features an audio commentary by Scott himself. There are isolated music and
effects tracks for the theatrical release.
Supplements
abound. New featurettes include a documentary on the film featuring interviews
with several key crew members and cast member Annabelle Lanyon (who plays Oona
the sprite); an excellent two-part documentary on the two scores; a featurette
examining the various versions of the film; and a two-part featurette on the
movie’s creatures. Vintage supplements include a 2003 documentary on Ridley
Scott; a 2002 documentary on the making of the film; original promotional
featurettes; deleted scenes; alternate scenes; storyboard galleries; two drafts
of the screenplay (!) by William Hjortsberg; alternate footage from the
overseas release; trailers, TV spots, and image galleries. The package also
contains a wonderfully illustrated booklet with writing on the film by Nicholas
Clement, Kat Ellinger, and Simon Ward, plus archive materials and more. There’s
a two-sided poster with new artwork by Neil Davies and the original by John
Alvin, a pack of glossy full-color photographs by Annie Leibovitz, and
double-sided postcards that are lobby card reproductions. The jewel case comes
with a reversible sleeve of both artworks.
Legend
is
likely of interest to fans of Ridley Scott, Tom Cruise, and the fantasy genre,
but it is especially informative and revelatory in terms of Hollywood history
and how studios and artists often clash in the realization of a marketable
vision. Hats off to Arrow Video!
Film director Jonathan Mostow began his career in film shortly
after graduating college in the mid-1980’s as a television writer and director for
segments on Fright Show in 1985, Beverly Hills Body Snatchers in
1989, and the TV-movie Flight of Black Angel in 1991. While working as
the executive producer of the Michael Douglas suspenser The Game (1997),
Mr. Mostow was also looking to adapt Stephen King’s short story “Trucks†into a
film. Although it had already been shot in late 1985 by Mr. King (in a
directing capacity) as Maximum Overdrive (1986), there was interest to
do another film version of it – until all involved were told that they could
not use Stephen King’s name with the project. This proved to be fortuitous as
most of the locations had not only been scouted but also secured for filming, although
there was no film to be shot. Mr. Mostow took the locations and fashioned a
story about a couple driving across the country to start a new life when
unexpectedly their life takes a huge wrong turn. The result is Breakdown,
a nail-biting suspense thriller that is Mr. Mostow’s feature film debut as a
director, which is now available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home
Entertainment. I spoke with Mr. Mostow recently about the film and the new
Blu-ray.
Todd Garbarini: Thank you for having gotten Breakdown made.
I can safely say that this is the most intense motion picture that I have ever
seen. I initially did not want to see it based on the theatrical trailer
because it looked “run-of-the-millâ€, however I found myself at the Glendale 9
Drive-In in June 1997 while in Arizona on business, and Breakdown was the
only title, aside from Jim Carrey’s Liar, Liar, that appealed to me. I
love Kurt Russell and the film completely blew me away. I was not prepared for the
movie at all, and I don't know how you made it the way you did, but I'm
grateful because I think it's extraordinary. It's a film that possesses a level
of emotional tension that I have rarely, if ever, experienced in a
feature film and it also has one of the best movie scores I’ve ever heard.
Would it be fair to say that Steven Spielberg's Duel was an influence on
the film?
Jonathan
Mostow: I'm sure that it was. First off, thank you for the super kind words.
I'm going to guess that since you saw this at a drive-in, you heard the audio
from inside a car?
TG: No, actually I was sitting on the hood of the car, and
the movie was so full of tension and suspense that I honestly thought that my
sweaty palms would pull the paint off the car! The audio was actually very,
very good. The drive-in no longer had those small, tinny speakers. The audio
instead was pumped through the FM radio band, and there were many cars all
around me that were doing that. I didn't even have to listen through my Ford
Taurus station wagon rental car (laughs), and I heard all the music and
dialogue perfectly.
JM: Oh that’s good, because I'm really a stickler about good
sound.
TG: I am, too.
JM: I want to cringe when I hear about drive-ins because I thought
it probably would have sounded terrible! I want to address something that
you said earlier when we began speaking, and that's how you pretty much didn't
want to see Breakdown as a result of the trailer. I will never forget
when I was a young filmmaker at the time because it was my first studio film
and we had just had a test screening that had gone really well. The way that it
works is that they have a test screening and afterwards they ask questions of
the audience. So, the whole audience was still inside the theater, filling out
the questionnaire, and in the lobby a group of the senior executives from the
studio were milling around and asking each other how they were going to market
the movie. I happened to overhear them, and they sort of intimated that this
would be a good movie for the drive-in crowd, so-to-speak. Especially in the
South, they felt that the South would somehow like it more. Since I was a young
filmmaker at the time, I didn't feel that it was really my place to walk up to
the top people of the studio and tell them their business, but I really wanted
to tell them that this is not the crowd that this film was designed for.
I saw the film as really a nightmare for yuppies. This is a nightmare for the
metrosexual, educated, polo-shirt wearing, white collar middle-aged Everyman. That's
who this is a nightmare for and that's who you should be selling this to.
The marketing campaign, in
a way, I believe sent a different message to the audience than what I was intending
about the film and the result was what you said earlier about not wanting
to see it initially, and how the film ultimately surprised you and you came to
like the film a lot more than you initially thought you would.
TG: I must admit, that doesn’t
happen to me often.
JM: I have heard that reaction
from so many people, and Kurt (Russell) heard that from so many
people. The question was, “Why didn't you think you would enjoy it?â€, and the answer
was, “The way that it was originally sold was that the ad campaign set up
certain expectations that were not the expectations that I would have set
up had I been designing the ad campaign.†I have to say that the
studio (Paramount) did a fantastic job with this brand-new Blu-ray transfer. It
looks gorgeous. For so many years, people have been asking me why they couldn't
find this movie on Blu-ray.
TG: Yes, I was one of those…
JM: And I would have to explain to them that it wasn't available
on Blu-ray. I was thrilled when the studio got in touch with me last year and
they told me that they were going to do this movie right, that they would do a
whole new transfer. I went in and sort of supervised it and signed off on what
they did. I was just thrilled with it. Now, to answer your question about Duel,
I'm a little older than you, and I grew up watching TV movies. Duel was
originally a made-for-TV movie, and it did receive a theatrical release later
on. But there were lots of these TV movies at the time, where a couple is
driving somewhere, they're pulled over for a speeding ticket, or there is a
corrupt cop who ends up imprisoning them and embezzling them for money, or the
wife disappears, etc.
TG: Yes, Dying Room Only with Dabney Coleman and Cloris
Leachman was one of the more famous films of that ilk.
JM: Right, and all these horrible things happen. I don't even
remember the names of most of these movies, but I'm thinking of an aggregate of
that, plus the types of themes that you would see in an Alfred Hitchcock
movie, they were all kind of rattling around in my brain. So, when I had an
idea for this, even though this is a quote-unquote “original ideaâ€, and
arguably no ideas are original because everything's been pretty much done in
cinema, because we are all creatures of the culture that we grew up in, I
thought it should be a road movie.
TG: The climax of the film looked like a real nightmare to shoot.
Did it take a long time to shoot that?
JM: Yeah, we actually spent a couple of weeks on that. That was
one of the few things that we shot that was in the Los Angeles area. The rest
of the film was shot in Utah, Nevada, and all over the place.
JM: We shot everything for real in this movie. Nowadays, if you're
going to shoot a car chase, most of it is digital. I have always been a
believer in the idea that even though you can do things digitally, and back
then the digital technology was still sort of in its infancy, it was kind of
cost-prohibitive, too – to make something visceral, you should really go out of
the way and do it for real. The only thing that was truly digital was in
certain cases during the climax when the Peterbilt cab is going over the bridge
and dangling, that was a real truck. But naturally, it was suspended by
construction cranes and we had to digitally remove all of them, the wiring
holding up the cab, etc. If you scratch beneath the surface, of any movie, what
you have is a director who's basically a child playing with a big electric
train set. It's never easy of course, but it was also super fun.
TG: I became a fan of Basil Poledouris after I heard his magnificent
score to John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian which I saw it when it opened
in May 1982. Was he your first choice to score this phone?
JM: Well, Basil had been suggested to me and we had ended up
bringing in a composer I had worked with previously, Richard Marvin, and he did
some of the music as well, and the net result of what we ended up with was a score
that neither one of them would have done on their own. In a lot of cases, where
we recorded a big score with a large orchestra, I went up just taking out the
orchestra completely and leaving in just a kind of percussion track or
something. Scoring the movie itself was an unusual process and everybody was
happy with it at the end. However, the initial issue that I was having with Basil’s
score was that he was capturing the emotion but not capturing enough of the
suspense. That being said, I don't believe that it was a score that anybody
would have devised on the outside.
TG: I think that the score works perfectly. Especially towards the
climax, the end of the film, you have Jeffrey struggling to get to his wife,
and the intercutting between Jeffrey and the kidnappers, that whole sequence is
just incredible. The tension that you built during that sequence was
magnificent.
JM: Well, you should appreciate this story. One night, we were
working very late in Basil’s studio which was in Venice (California). This was
a very dangerous area back then. It was about two in the morning, and he tells
me that he has to go down the street and get some cigarettes. He asked me if I
wanted anything from the corner store. On the one hand I told him no thank you,
but on the other hand, in my head, I'm thinking, “Are you crazy?! You're going
to go to a corner store at two in the morning?†I wouldn't walk out in that
neighborhood at two in the morning even if I had armed escorts. It was at that
moment that I realized that Basil had no personal fear. He was the sort of the
opposite of me. I’m a fairly anxious person and that's how I was throughout
most of the making of this movie, dealing with my own anxiety. What I realized
at that moment was that Basil was connecting with the sadness. Kurt's
character, Jeffrey Taylor, had this feeling of having lost his wife and didn’t
know where she was or even how to find her. He was also facing potentially
losing his wife forever. Basil was capturing that beautifully, but the problem
was I wasn't feeling the anxiety. So that's why I brought in Richard so
he could just nail the anxiety that I really needed for the movie. In the end, the
score ended up being what I really needed, which was a hybrid between the
sadness and the anxiety. That's why I think the score worked so well for the
film. If these composers had done the scores on their own, I don't think that
they would have achieved the effect that I was looking for. It just had to be a
partnership.
TG: Do you have an all-time favorite movie?
JM: No, because it varies. There are movies that you love
tremendously when you are young, and I'm sure that you have probably
experienced this yourself, and then you look at them maybe 15 or 20 years later
and they just don't hold up for you anymore. I remember watching Barbra
Streisand getting a Lifetime Achievement Award, and she said something that has
always stuck with me. She said that it was great to get these awards, it's
great to be recognized for your work, but the real test is if 30 years from now,
which of these films will stand up? Which of these films will still work? And
that's what's amazing to me when I go back and I look at certain films that
were made, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, and they hold up, that's always, to
me, the miracle. Some films hold up and some films simply don't.
TG: I agree. In 1979, I saw two films that I loved very much: Moonraker
and The Black Hole. Both films have really wonderful film scores by the
late great John Barry. But the former is James Bond in outer space and the latter
was really beautiful to look at, but had very little in the way of action. I
really loved both films when I first saw them, but watching them many years
later, I found the former to be puerile and insipid and the latter to be plodding
and boring. And it killed me that I felt that way. One film from that era that
stands the test of time for me is George Miller's The Road Warrior which
was, is, and I think always will be, the best action film that I've ever seen.
I never tire of that film. There are some problems with it, when they overcrank
or undercrank the action and it just looks like a Mack Sennett comedy for a few
seconds, I don't agree with that, they should have left it alone. The
Shining is another one. That film terrified me when I first saw it and it's
still the most beautiful horror film that I've ever seen. What are some of the
other films that you've seen that have influenced your career?
JM: When I was a child, my father took me to see Alfred
Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. We saw it at this old repertory movie
theater near where we lived, and this film plays a little bit like sort of a
light comedy. But to an eight-year-old kid like me, I found the film to be
totally gripping. The idea in that film is that this woman suddenly disappears
10 minutes into the movie. And the audience is wondering where the hell did she
go? I believe that that notion stayed in my subconscious all these years and in
a way, Breakdown was my way of exercising that out of my subconscious.
So, Breakdown is the film that kind of launched my career. Even though
that is one of Hitchcock's lesser works, for me personally, it had a great
influence. That's also a hard question to answer, because truthfully, I didn't
see a great many movies growing up. By the time I had gotten to college, I
don't believe I had seen more than 15 or 20 movies.
TG: What films did you initially not like, then you watched them
again later on and had a different experience and ended up really liking them?
JM: I have to be honest, there are very few films that I've seen
multiple times. Once I've seen a film, that's it. I've seen it. I remember
seeing an interview one time with a filmmaker, and it came out in the interview
that once he was done with the film he never sees it again. And I hadn't
directed any movie prior to seeing that interview. And I remember thinking how
crazy that was! I thought to myself if I'd directed a movie, I would watch it
every week! Sure enough, I found that once I finished the film, I've never gone
back to watch it again. Ever! Breakdown, of course, is the exception
because I watched it with Kurt Russell while we did the commentary for it. You
see it more than once when you're traveling around the world, doing press
screenings and that sort of thing. But psychologically for me, I'm just done.
And I move on. I have seen Goodfellas a few times. That's one that comes
to mind. Other movies that I've seen before, I might catch a few scenes of it
here or there on television. But I generally don't watch it again all the way
through. I tend to not be a big repeat viewer.
In closing, I just really appreciate that Paramount is releasing
this movie on Blu-ray with our commentary track and all the extras. There are
some really interesting interviews on it. We're actually including the
alternate opening to the film on this disc. This is something that has never
been shown to the public before.
TG: For me, that is worth the price of admission alone. Thank you
very much for speaking with me, it’s been a pleasure.
In
Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown (1997), Jeffrey and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell
and Kathleen Quinlan) seem like a normal and nice middle-aged couple moving
from New England to San Diego to hopefully start a new life from a past we are
not privy to, though it’s one fraught with financial issues. On the way, Jeffrey
nearly sideswipes a dirty brown Ford F150 while reaching for his thermos and
suffers invective from the driver (M.C. Gainey). A minor confrontation ensues
later when both men refuel at the same gas station. Words are exchanged. Upon
leaving, the Taylor’s new Grand Cherokee soon malfunctions, and they are
temporarily stranded as the F150 blows past them. Fortunately, an 18-wheeler soon
stops to help. The truck’s driver, Red Barr (the fine character actor J.T.
Walsh in his penultimate screen performance), gives Amy a ride to Belle’s
Diner to
call for help – except that she never makes it.
If
you recall Steven Spielberg’s 1971 television film Duel, Dennis Weaver
portrayed David Mann, an Everyman traveling to a sales account when his life
suddenly changes after passing a huge oil truck. Incensed by this perceived
breach of road etiquette, the truck driver chases and taunts Mann throughout
the rest of the film. Duel is arguably the granddaddy of road rage
movies, making riveting cinema out of a cat-and-mouse game that holds the
audience’s attention the entire time. Likewise, Breakdown holds the
equivalent mantle as it pertains to missing persons thrillers. As a horror film
fan of forty years, there is little that I have seen that gets under my skin,
George Sluizer’s icy 1988 Dutch/French character study Spoorloos, known
in the States as The Vanishing, being a notable exception. Mr.
Russell and Mr. Walsh have shared the screen multiples times together,
specifically in Robert Towne’s Tequila Sunrise (1989), Ron Howard’s Backdraft
(1991), and Stuart Baird’s Executive Decision (1994). Here they pair up
again in a frightening game that begins when, following unsuccessful attempts to glean info from the
patrons and owner of Belle’s Diner (a terrific turn by character actor Jack
McGee), Jeffrey catches sight of Red’s truck and pulls him over to the side of
the road. Jeffrey’s interrogation of Red regarding his wife’s whereabouts is
met by a perplexing display of gaslighting when Red claims he doesn’t even know
what Jeff is talking about. For a moment, we feel that perhaps this is even
Red’s twin and that there has been a complete mix-up. Following a search
of Red’s vehicle aided by a passing sheriff (Rex Linn), Jeffrey is, like Cary
Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) as described by
Cliff Robertson in the 1973 documentary on Mr. Hitchcock, “a man alone –
innocent, defenseless…†He realizes that it’s up to him to find Amy – and he
has no idea who to trust or even where to begin. What follows is the most intense
nail-biting thriller I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to oversell the film, but I
will anyway. Jeffrey moves mountains to locate his wife and when he does, the
tension and anxiety could not be more powerful. One thing I noticed: Red has
white wings in his hair like the Paulie Walnuts character on The Sopranos.
The
ending of Breakdown has been shrugged off by some critics as being unworthy
of what comes before, and even “ludicrousâ€. I must respectfully disagree. By
the end of the film, what we are looking for is a massive payoff, and I believe
that we get it in spades. The “ludicrous†ending is, instead, tension-filled
and satisfying. Detractors never seem to offer an alternative. I am personally
thankful to Dino DeLaurentiis for making a go of it and letting Jonathan Mostow
direct this film. Everyone has to start somewhere, and this directorial debut
is remarkable.
In
the days of VHS and laserdisc prior to large-screen televisions, Breakdown
is a film that I owned on the latter format in a letterboxed edition. In 1998,
the film suffered the indignity of a rather lackluster transfer on DVD when it
was window-boxed and lacked 16 x 9 anamorphic enhancement, rendering the DVD
nearly unwatchable. The new Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
is part of “Paramount Presents†which is described as a line of Blu-ray
releases for collectors and fans showcasing movies that have generally not made
it to Blu-ray before. Breakdown is number 26 in the list of
titles of
films showcased on Blu-ray in these new special editions. The new transfer is a
revelation.
In
addition to the new transfer, the Blu-ray contains the following extras:
A
feature-length audio commentary with the director and Kurt Russell. If you have
ever heard any of the previous commentaries that Mr. Russell has been involved
with, specifically with director John Carpenter on Escape from New York
(1981) and The Thing (1982), you know that he is one of the most
entertaining people to listen to. He also has a phenomenal laugh and chuckles
through most of the film, even making fun of Jeffrey! Hilarious. They speak
about Dino DeLaurentiis; having gotten cinematographer Doug Milsom who worked on
four films with Stanley Kubrick; Mr. Russell imitating Dennis Weaver in Duel
(“You can’t catch me on the grade!â€); the director discussing how he wrote a
role for Morgan Freeman as a character whose wife was kidnapped and teams up
with Jeffrey, the idea later wisely written out of the script; Roger Ebert
criticized the bank scene, but the commentary states that they were rushed to
get it done on the location but I think it works just fine. Overall, a truly
fun and entertaining listen and easily the best extra.
Newly
commissioned alternative artwork.
The
musical score is isolated on one of the audio tracks, a great feature that I
wish more companies would provide.
Filmmaker
Focus - Jonathan Mostow
(10:45) – This piece is a spotlight on the director that highlights much of
what was said during the commentary.
Victory
is Hers: Kathleen Quinlan on Breakdown
(4:22) – I was so happy to see Kathleen Quinlan included in this edition and
she discusses some of her experiences making the film.
A
Brilliant Partnership: Martha De Laurentiis on Breakdown (8:18) – This is a piece dedicated to
one of the producers of the film. Mrs. De Laurentiis worked with her late
husband, Dino, on the film and this is a look at their partnership.
Alternate
Opening with optional Jonathan Mostow commentary (11:00) – Along with the film’s commentary,
this is a very cool piece to see, as its inclusion changes the whole mood of
the film. The credits run slowly over the opening and the sequence establishes
Jeffrey as all-thumbs – lightyears removed from the Snake Plissken Mr. Russell
played fifteen years earlier. It was the correct decision to remove this
footage, though I feel badly for the other actors in the scene to have been
excised from such a terrific film!
Rounding
out the extras are trailers for Breakdown, Kiss the Girls, and Hard
Rain.
There
are two Blu-rays of this film available, one from the Australian company Via
Vision’s Imprint line and the Paramount Presents disc. Both Blu-rays are worth
owning for die-hard fans of the film as they each contain completely different
extras, but if you have to choose just one, I recommend the Paramount disc as
it contains the director/actor commentary and the excised alternate opening.
(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)
By Mark Cerulli
Thanks
to the Ian Fleming Foundation (IFF,) this scribe was invited to the opening
night party for the massive Bond in Motion exhibit at LA’s world-famous
Petersen Automotive Museum, co-sponsored by EON Productions.You’ve seen the vehicles on screen, but
nothing compares to getting up close and personal with over 34 production-used
vehicles from the 1960s right up to No Time To Die. It’s a collection representing
almost 30 years of sleuthing by the IFF’s co-founder Doug Redenius and other IFF members.
(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)
L007K
UP –
Bond’s hang-glider from Moonraker, the Vulcan Bomber model from Thunderball,
an Osato chopper model from You Only Live Twice and a full-size Cessna
from Licence to Kill.
L007K
OUTSIDE
– Visitors are greeted by the From Russia With Love chase copter.
L007K
OVER THERE
– The V8 Volante from The Living Daylights, the (huge) sub from For
Your Eyes Only, an Octopussy Tuk-Tuk, the AMC Hornet from The
Man With The Golden Gun and a badly damaged Aston Martin DBS used in a
record-breaking stunt from Casino Royale.
LOO7K
AROUND
– At the Jaguar XKR from Die Another Day, a MINT 1964 Aston Martin DB5
(seen in five Bond films), the 1971 Mach 1 from Diamonds Are Forever, Blofeld’s
escape sub from Diamonds, the Glastron from Live & Let Die’s
iconic boat jump and so many more – all lovingly restored by the IFF.
Luciana Paluzzi with Cinema Retro's Mark Cerulli- and an original "Thunderball" underwater sled.
(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)
The
evening started with a rooftop cocktail party where the NEFT vodka flowed like
Tracy’s dress as invited guests mingled and toasted the night’s VIPs – five,
count ‘em, FIVE Bond Girls – Maud Adams (The Man With the Golden Gun,
Octopussy), Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball), Gloria Hendry (Live & Let Die), Lynn-Holly Johnson
(For Your Eyes Only) and Mary Stavin
(Octopussy, A View To A Kill).They all seemed delighted to see each other and were up for a big night
out.
Bond royalty: Maud Adams, Luciana Paluzzi, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Gloria Hendry and Mary Stavin.
(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)
Doug
and fellow IFF co-founder Michael VanBlaricum gave a discussion on their
acquisition of screen-used vehicles, many found in total disrepair across the
globe.Then they shared the spotlight
with the Bond actresses for some Q&As. Next, the 00 VIPS cut the red ribbon,
officially opening the exhibit and crowds swarmed the cars – all artfully
arranged by the Petersen staff in unique dioramas.Even the event’s official car transport – DHL
– got into the spirit by positioning their 007-branded yellow vans around the
Museum.Bond truly is back – and right
now, he’s at the Peterson Auto Museum in LA.
(Photo copyright Mark Cerulli. All rights reserved.)
Although
Yves Boisset’s 1972 French political thriller The French Conspiracy
boasts an international cast of heavyweight actors, the film moves at a snail’s
pace and is chock full of schematic dialog and little in the way of the suspense
promised in the ads. The film opened on Wednesday, November 14, 1973 at the
long-gone 68th Street Playhouse and The Eastside Cinema, both in
Manhattan, and on Tuesday, December 25, 1973 at the ABC Century City Theatre 2
in Los Angeles. My guess is that this film, originally titled L’Attentat
which translates to The Assassination in English, was so named in the
hopes of capitalizing on the success of Constantin Costa-Gavras’s Z
(1969 and winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and also nominated
for Best Picture) and William Friedkin’s highly lauded The French Connection
(1971 and winner of the Oscar for Best Picture). In contrast, both of those
films were riveting and shot in a documentary style. The French Conspiracy
has so many characters and so much exposition that one can only wonder what
film Judith Crist saw when she proclaimed it as “one of the best post ‘Z’
political thrillers to come our way†in her New York Magazine review of the
film. The convoluted plot, penned by screenwriter Jorge Semprún of Z and
L’Aveu/The Confession (1970, also directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras)
fame, is based upon the true-life events of the October 29, 1965
“disappearance†of Moroccan left-wing politician Mehdi Ben Barka who, as
finally explained in a 2018 book, was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence
operatives and killed by Moroccan agents and French police. Pretty awful!
The
French Conspiracy is
not a terrible film, it’s just not a particularly good film either, which is a
shame considering the presence of Jean Seberg (Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de
Souffle/Breathless, 1960), Bruno Cremer (William Friedkin’s Sorcerer,
1977), and Phillipe Noiret (Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, 1988),
in addition to the main cast who have all appeared in films that I have loved
over the past few decades. Composer Ennio Morricone, who was also scoring Dario
Argento’s first three films at this time, does what he can to lift the action,
however there isn’t much of it to be lifted. Ninety-four minutes into it there
is a foot chase that fizzles out, which is a shame as by this point the
audience is pleading for the men to do anything except sit, stand, walk around,
and talk.
The
film is now available on Blu-ray courtesy of Code Red and released by Kino
Lorber and the transfers are beautiful. I say transfers, plural, as there are
two separate versions of the film on the dual-layered Blu-ray. There is an
English dubbed cut that runs 98 minutes in length and a longer French-spoken
with English subtitles version that runs 123 minutes. The film is a lot to take
in, especially with the additional 25 minutes. The 123-minute cut with
subtitles is the version that played here in the States theatrically, so
perhaps the 98-minute cut played in Great Britain, or on television? The longer
cut features Roy Schieder in a total of four scenes whereas the shorter version
features him in only two.
Unfortunately,
there are no extras on the disc, except for a trailers section consisting of The
Hunter Will Get You (1976), And Hope to Die (1972), Max and the
Junkmen (1971), Last Embrace (1978), Caravan to Vaccares
(1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), The Tamarind Seed (1974), OSS
117: Mission for a Killer (1965), The Violent Professionals (1973)
and Puppet on a Chain (1970). I would have loved a film historian’s
commentary to explain the movie’s conception and behind-the-scenes tidbits, but
perhaps there just wasn’t enough time to include it. If you’re somehow a fan of
this film, this Blu-ray is a definite purchase.
The
year 1951 was an exceptional one for movies, among them Best Picture Oscar
winner An American in Paris; the classic drama A Streetcar Named
Desire; two of the best science fiction pictures ever made—The Day the
Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World; the Bogart and
Hepburn adventure, The African Queen; the historical epic Quo Vadis;
plus Decision Before Dawn, Death of a Salesman, Detective
Story… and that’s counting only Hollywood titles.
And
then there is A Place in the Sun, George Stevens’ adaptation of Theodore
Dreiser’s 1925 novel, An American Tragedy. The film managed to win the
Oscars for Best Director (Stevens), Screenplay, Black and White Cinematography
(William C. Mellor), Black and White Costume Design (Edith Head), Film Editing,
and Scoring (Franz Waxman). Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters were both
nominated for Actor and Actress, respectively, and the production was nominated
for Best Picture.
Interestingly,
A Place in the Sun was a remake of the 1931 picture An American
Tragedy, which was directed by Josef von Sternberg. Since this earlier
adaptation received mixed reactions from audiences and critics alike, the
original novel was ripe to be re-envisioned and remade for the post-war crowd.
Paramount
Presents has issued a new digital restoration on Blu-ray that emphasizes the
importance and acclaim A Place in the Sun received at the time. It is
still a beloved motion picture today, albeit being a little creaky around the
edges. Yes, the film might be considered “dated†in the year 2021 in terms of
style and presentation, seventy years after its release, but what it has to say
is still relevant to our contemporary world.
George
Eastman (Clift) is from the black sheep side of the wealthy, prosperous Eastman
family in an unnamed town. He has hitchhiked from Chicago, where his widowed
mother runs a low-rent religious charity outfit. We never learn what exactly
caused the estrangement of George’s father from rich industrialist Charles
Eastman (Herbert Heyes). George is considered by the Eastmans to be from the
“wrong side of the tracks.†In other words, he’s not in the same social class.
Nevertheless, patriarch Eastman gives George a job in his textile mill, first
in the menial labor area. Here, George meets plain-Jane Alice (Winters,
playing, at that time, against the type established by her previous work as a
sexpot). They begin to date, despite company rules against employees doing so.
One thing leads to another, and Alice becomes pregnant. In the meantime, George
has become smitten with Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor, who was only 17 when
she made the picture!). The Vickers are the other wealthy family in town, and
there are often high society pages written about both families. After meeting
at an Eastman party, George and Angela begin to date, leaving poor Alice high
and dry. George is not only in love with the beautiful and lively Angela, but
he sees this as an opportunity to lift himself out of the lower class in which
he has lived and into the more prosperous “place in the sun†enjoyed by the
white, privileged elite in America. Alice will not stand for George abandoning
her, so she gives him the “marry me or else†ultimatum. What happens next is
indeed an “American tragedy,†and to reveal all would be a spoiler.
This
is not a feel good movie. Whether we’re supposed to feel sorry for George is
beside the point of the picture, though. In 1951, audiences perhaps did empathize
with him for the predicament in which he finds himself in the last act. Today? Likely
not so much. He certainly makes some very bad decisions which bring about his
downfall. Is he a victim of his own classlessness, or is he just a cad?
Therein
lies the message of the movie, which is indeed an exploration of the dichotomy
between America’s working class and the wealthy elite. When bad things happen
to the poor, it can be devastating, whereas the rich can usually buy their way
out of trouble. Nothing has changed.
Stevens’
direction is masterful. If the performances on display are a result of the
director, then Stevens deserved his Oscar. Clift was still a relative newcomer
on the scene at the time and displays the smoldering angst of “the Methodâ€
acting style that was just becoming a thing on screen. It is said numerous
times throughout the various supplemental material on the Blu-ray disk that A
Place in the Sun was Elizabeth Taylor’s first “real role†in which she
could exhibit her chops after a career as a child actor. She is marvelous as
Angela, and her screen charisma is astonishingly striking. Winters, in the role
of dowdy Alice, also makes a big impression; however, one might argue that her
part is not a lead, but rather a supporting one.
Aside
from the acting, the direction is evident in the pacing and moods established
by the picture. Takes are long and meticulous, the crossfades are protracted
and bordering laborious, and the music underscore is often melodramatically
over the top. And yet, all these rather dated sensibilities work in the film’s
favor. A Place in the Sun is an emotionally devastating picture, and its
power is due to Stevens.
William
Mellor’s cinematography is extremely important to the representation of the
movie’s themes. All the scenes in Angela’s world are brightly lit, sunshiny,
full of life and joy. By contrast, most of the sequences in Alice’s world are
dark—very dark—full of shadow and drabness. Two classes. Light and dark.
Life and death.
The
Blu-ray transfer from a 4K remaster looks marvelous. It comes with an
informative audio commentary by George Stevens Jr. and associate producer Ivan
Moffat. The enjoyable supplements (ported over from previous home video
releases) are a “Filmmaker Focus†on George
Stevens from film critic and historian Leonard Maltin; a good featurette on
Stevens’ making of the film; and a very welcome collection of “Filmmakers Who
Knew Him†AFI interviews about Stevens from the likes of Frank Capra, Warren
Beatty, Fred Zinnemann, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Wise, and
others. Theatrical trailers round out the package.
A Place in the Sun has earned its place in cinematic history.
Highly recommended for a look back at the barometer of morality that existed in
America in the early 1950s.
In
comparing Masquerade (1965) with a recent review of Arabesque (1966)
here at Cinema Retro, this time we have yet another mid-1960s “comedy-spy
thriller,†a genre that was crowding the cinemas in those days because of the
success of Double-O-You-Know-Who.
In
contrast to Arabesque,this one is a British production, directed
by the prolific and often brilliant Basil Dearden, and it utilizes London
locations as well as spots in Spain. And yet, despite the thoroughly British
DNA running through 95% of the movie, it stars American Cliff Robertson as the
hero, David Fraser, a sort of CIA type who seems to approach all the danger
around him with misplaced naivete and amused detachment.
The
script marks the first appearance of the great William Goldman in a screen
credit (co-writing with Michael Relph). It’s based on Vincent Canning’s novel, Castle
Minerva. Apparently, it was Robertson who had enlisted Goldman’s services,
as the dialogue needed some “Americanizing.†That said, the script is
serviceable and certainly makes more sense than what we saw in Arabesque.
Britain
wants oil drilling rights in a fictional Middle Eastern country, but the
country isn’t playing ball. Colonel Drexel (Jack Hawkins) is engaged by Sir
Robert (John Le Mesurier) to fix the problem. Drexel hires an old war buddy, Frazer,
to kidnap the teenage son of the country’s prince. This is supposed to force the
resumption of talks and ultimate agreement between the two countries. Why this
is considered sound diplomacy is anyone’s guess, but that’s the mission. Frazer
goes along with the plan out of loyalty to his friend; however, at one point he
rejects performing an order because he has “scruples†(but kidnapping a prince
isn’t one of them). Frazer eventually finds that he has competition in the form
of a small gang of Europeans who also want the boy. As the tag line for the
movie in its posters and theatrical trailer shouts, “Who is Doing What to Who?â€
Indeed… the audience will be wondering that, too. (Shouldn’t that be “to Whom?â€)
In other words, the movie is filled with double-crosses, switcheroos, and
things that are not as they seem.
The
picture is lively and loaded with action sequences. The supporting cast,
especially the Europeans (namely Marisa Mell and a young Michel Piccoli), are a
hoot. The British side sports familiar character actors besides Hawkins (such
as Charles Gray and Bill Fraser).
Unfortunately,
Masquerade doesn’t quite succeed as intended mainly due to the casting
of Robertson. Like Arabesque, this needed someone with the comic
delivery of a Cary Grant, and the American Robertson is also oddly out of place
in this British-European milieu. Robertson does his best, though, and he gets
the job done—even if the whole thing is more than just implausible. (The poor
guy gets clobbered on the head several times in the movie; one would think a
concussion might have debilitated him after, say, the third time.)
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray displays that distinctive 1960s film stock look, and it’s
a good enough transfer. It comes with an audio commentary by film historians
Howard S. Berger and Chris Poggiali. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino
Lorber trailers, are the only supplements.
Masquerade
is a
middle-of-the-road example of the 1960s cinematic “spy boom, and the Bond-Wanabe
aspects of the picture plants it firmly within the context of its era.
Filmmaker
Stanley Donen had substantial success with his comedy-thriller, Charade
(1963), which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It was hyped and critiqued
as “Hitchcockian†in tone and style, especially the light-hearted and glitzy To
Catch a Thief (1955). (There are many who mistakenly believe that Charade
is a Hitchcock film.)
The
studio then wanted to repeat that success with a similar picture, Arabesque,
also with Cary Grant in the lead role with Donen directing again. However,
Grant felt that the script was “terrible†and passed. Donen allegedly wasn’t
too thrilled with the script, either, and he wasn’t too keen on making the
picture without Grant.
Then
Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren expressed interest in the movie, so Donen
acquiesced. Sounds like a fairy tale scenario for the greenlighting of a
Hollywood movie, right? The two Oscar-winning stars were cast, and the script
was rewritten… and rewritten… (it is credited to Julian Mitchell, Stanley
Price, and Pierre Marton; however, Marton is a pseudonym for Peter Stone, who
had written Charade!).
Released
in 1966, Arabesque has all the hallmarks of a hit movie. It is
beautifully photographed by Christopher Challis, with colorful usage of mirrors
and prisms and glass throughout the picture. These visuals provide the film
with its spectacular glossy eye candy. Ms. Loren’s costumes (by Christian Dior)
are psychedelic/exotic/1960s fabulous. Henry Mancini’s musical score is fun and
lively—except for the examples cited below. Maurice Binder’s main titles design
hints at something leaning toward a James Bond or Derek Flint film.
These
are the only admirable aspects of the picture.
Both
Charade and Arabesque, when one examines them closely, are really
screwball comedies set in a spy/thriller milieu. The success of a screwball
comedy depends on the comic timing and charisma of the two “mismatched†leads—this
is the core ingredient of the sub-genre. Cary Grant can do these kinds of roles
in his sleep. And this is where the problem lies.
Gregory
Peck is a wonderful actor, but unfortunately here he is terribly miscast. It’s obvious
that he’s trying to “do†Cary Grant (without the accent), and it simply
does not work. The dialogue—meant to be witty banter in the Cary Grant
mold—does not flow elegantly from Peck. Sophia Loren, while looking gorgeous
and mysterious throughout the story, fares little better with what the poor
script has her do.
And
the script? It makes no sense. Peck is David Pollock, an American professor at
Oxford who knows something about Hieroglyphics. He’s “hired†by sleazy Arabic
shipping magnate Beshraavi (Alan Badel) to decipher a code in Hieroglyphics
that he has stolen from a murdered spy. The prime minister of an unnamed Middle
Eastern country, Jena (Carl Duering), also wants the code deciphered, because
“there will be no peace in the world without it.†What? It’s unclear what
conflict we’re talking about or what the situation really is. Pollock meets
Beshraavi’s mistress, Yasmin Azir (Loren), who is working for another group of
spies—maybe—or maybe she’s working for Jena—it’s not really clear—in fact, we
don’t know what Yasmin’s motivation is for any of her actions in the film.
Suddenly, Pollock is on the run as several factions of Arabs and others are out
to kill him. Sometimes Yasmin helps him, sometimes she doesn’t. But, of course,
they fall in love, and they prevent a political assassination in the meantime.
Okay,
it’s a beautiful mess, but it’s still a mess. Even the misplaced slapstick
sequences are dumb—and Mancini’s comic music that underscores some of these scenes
is cringe-worthy (one example—when a drugged Pollock is standing in the road of
a crowded freeway and playing “matador†to oncoming vehicles).
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks quite gorgeous, showing off the colorful
glitz that is the primary asset of Arabesque. It comes with an audio
commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel
Thompson, who all seem to enjoy the picture more than this reviewer did and yet
point out all the same faults. A lovely half-hour featurette on Mancini is a
welcome supplement. There is also a poster gallery (note the cover/poster art
by the great Robert McGinnis), TV spots, the theatrical trailer and teaser, and
trailers for other Kino Lorber releases.
Arabesque
is a
product of its mid-1960s origin, for sure, as it wants to be both Charade and
a James Bond film. It is neither, but it might be a curiosity for fans of 1960s
Hollywood spy movies and pristine cinematography.
When
film fans hear the name of Italian director Lucio Fulci, it almost inevitably
brings to mind his oft-quoted moniker as the “Godfather of Gore,†thanks to the
films made towards the end of his career that caused so much trouble with the
British film censors; Zombie Flesh Eaters
(1980), The Beyond (1981) New York Ripper (1983) being some of the
most notorious.To view him as such
however is to miss out on what was an extraordinarily prolific career which
also included musicals, comedies, westerns, historical dramas, fantasy films,
science fiction and thrillers. This new Blu-ray and digital release of The Psychic, out now in a 2K restoration
from Shameless Films, is an opportunity to reassess one of his less well known
films, which is only now being released in the UK for the first time.
The Psychic tells the
tale of a woman who has visions of murder and death. These visions cause her to
break through a wall in her rich new husband’s old farmhouse, where she
discovers the skeleton of a woman murdered four years earlier. Naturally her
husband is under suspicion, and with the help of a doctor friend with an
interest in parapsychology she tries to replay the memories of these visons in
her head over and over again, looking for clues that might prove her husband’s
innocence. As pieces of the puzzle fail to add up however, she begins to
realise that some of what she has seen may in fact be a premonition of murders
yet to come, possibly her own.
The
original Italian title was Sette note in
nero, or “Seven Black Notes.†The seven notes in question refer to the tune
that is played each hour on a watch worn by our heroine, gifted to her by the
husband’s sister. This sister has dozens of lovers who give her gifts, and the
watch apparently came from someone in the Vatican. This is just a sly hint
towards illicit goings on in the Catholic Church. In some of Fulci’s other
films, such as Don’t Torture a Duckling
(1972), the criticism would be far more overt.
With
its amateur detective attempting to solve a crime by constantly revisiting
distorted memories, The Psychic sits
squarely within the tradition of the giallo,
the sub-genre of Italian thrillers that often featured bizarre murders,
unreliable witnesses, amateur detectives and red herrings galore. Described as
an “elegantly constructed murder mystery†by historian Stephen Thrower (who
wrote the definitive book on Fulci’s career), this is an entertaining thriller
that leads the audience down dark paths and blind alleys before finally
delivering an exhilarating ending straight out of Edgar Allan Poe.
This
new Shameless Blu-ray edition includes both the original Italian and English
dubs, and a wealth of new interviews. Sadly, Fulci himself is no longer with
us, but his daughter Antonella Fulci appears in two separate interviews, one
focused on the film and the other on her father. Put together, she speaks in
these interviews for almost an hour, and it is fascinating to get insight into
both her personal relationship with her father as well as her own analysis of
his career. Also appearing on the disc is the writer Dardano Sacchetti, who
also speaks for around an hour, and with almost a hundred different credits, he
has had a rich and diverse career and is full of great stories. The final
interview is with the film’s composer Fabio Frizzi, who discusses how he got
started in composing for film as well as his relationship with Lucio Fulci.
Frizzi was a frequent collaborator with Lucio Fulci, and several years ago went
on tour performing music from these films around the world (something this
writer was lucky enough to see one Halloween). And if you are wondering why The Psychic score sounds familiar, that’s
because it is yet another Italian score pinched by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill!
The
Shameless Films Blu-ray, in a distinctive yellow case, comes with a collectible
O-ring featuring the iconic American poster art, and also includes a reversible
sleeve which uses the original Italian artwork which made the Edgar Allan Poe
connection even more explicit.
The Psychic deserves
to become better known as a fine example of the 1970s European thriller, and
this new restoration is the perfect way to see it.
(Note: this release is currently available in Region 2 UK format only.)
To celebrate the release of producer Sam Sherman’s memoir,When Dracula Met Frankenstein (Murania Press) Cinema Retro presents
this exclusive interview with the man himself. In our two-hour conversation,
the filmmaker demonstrated a virtual photographic memory when discussing his
remarkable 60 plus year career.Our
interview was a time capsule of the drive-in era where creative marketing,
distribution and production exemplified the true spirit of independent
filmmaking.
Sam Sherman grew up a horror and western film fan.The first horror film Sam ever saw was
Universal’s classic monster comedy, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
(1948) which captivated his imagination at a very young age.Following his dream, he attended City College
of New York to study filmmaking.Like
most CR readers, he was also an avid collector – in his case, horror stills,
which one imagines were almost given away in the 1950s.Those black and white photos, picked up in
the small memorabilia stores that used to dot Manhattan, led to a career – “In
1958, I wrote to Famous Monsters and to my surprise, got a call back from Jim
Warren and asked if they’d be interested in renting my stills,†Sherman
recalled.
“I produced ads for Captain Company (FM’s merchandising
division) and I also acquired product for them.â€(As one who spent a lot of hard-earned
teenage cash on Captain Co products - including a Dr. No movie poster
for all of $4.99 - that was a part of Sam’s long career I could instantly
relate to.)
While ghostwriting articles for FM and working on other
Warren publications like Spacemen, Screen Thrills Illustrated and Wildest
Westerns, Sherman frequently found his enthusiasm for horror looked down upon
by Help! magazine art director, Terry Gilliam. Years later, Gilliam took an
obvious jab (and inspiration) from Sherman’s climactic battle of the monsters
in Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971) with his own comedic dismemberment scene
in Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975).“I made it a point never to see anything
he’s done,†Sam adds.
In the 1950s and 60s, New York was the center of the film
universe and Sherman found himself making the rounds of small distributors
trying to find films to license for his own fledgling company, Signature
Films.Sam later got in with an independent
film company called Hemisphere Pictures which specialized in movies shot in the
Philippines, including the Blood Island horror cult classics directed by
Eddie Romero.Sherman honed his
exploitation skills by creating the theatrical, television, radio and print ad
campaigns which established Hemisphere as The House of Horror with
unforgettable gimmicks and marketing promotions like “The Oath of Green Bloodâ€
for the first audience participation film, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island
(1969).
Sam’s book is full of photos from that era – from
snapshots of early visits to LA, to on-set stills and “ballyhoo†photos of
theater displays, lurid posters and marquees.One image that jumps out is of a young Sam standing behind the iconic Boris
Karloff on A.I.P.’s The Raven set. “Forry Ackerman (Famous Monsters’
longtime editor) took me to the last day of shooting and we spent the whole day
with Peter Lorre and Vincent Price, which was wonderful. I had a nice chat with
Karloff. He finished up for the day and (director) Roger Corman took him away
to do The Terror, which was non-union, somewhere else.â€Talk about maximizing your star!
In 1968, Sherman and several partners – including longtime
friend, filmmaker Al Adamson, formed Independent-International Pictures Corp.(a riff off the very successful American
International Pictures).“Al just wanted
to make movies, he left it to me to figure out how to market them and make
money,†Sam recalls.
Their first production for the new company was a raw biker
film, Satan’s Sadists starring Russ Tamblyn of West Side Story
fame and directed by Adamson. The film tapped into the national shockwaves
reverberating from biker gang violence as well as LA’s horrific Manson
murders.The female lead was a
statuesque California blonde, Regina Carrol, who became Adamson’s girlfriend,
later his wife and star of his films. Wanting to give her a little extra
exposure, Sherman labeled her “The Freak-Out Girlâ€.As the film contained nudity, the then-new
movie ratings board wanted to slap an X on Satan’s Sadists.Sam went to the mat to contest it, even
advising the theatre circuits to rate the film themselves based on regional
tastes vs the Motion Picture Board’s inconsistent classifications for
independent films.
Sam’s book is full of similar throw out the rulebook tales
– like licensing an odd Filipino caveman film named Tagani which was
shot in black & white. To modernize it, Adamson shot some new scenes with
veteran horror star John Carradine but the film still didn’t look right, so Sam
suggested using various tints (“Like they did in silent moviesâ€). He wrote MORE
new scenes (including computer sex!), added an eye-catching title - Horror
of the Blood Monsters and they now had a releasable film!
At Independent-International, Sam and Al shrugged off the
industry’s notoriously unforgiving deadlines: “We released an imported German
picture called Women for Sale which had been a big hit and I said ‘We
can’t find anything like it to follow up with, so let’s make a picture like
this’, it’ll be called Girls for Rent…â€Sam hired an industry friend to write it, months went by without a
script.“We’re getting closer to the key
summer playdates, and we were really in a jam†Sam recalled. “I got another
writer and we knocked the picture out fast, doing the campaign fast, ordered
prints and got it into release by the end of the summer. Sixty days, I couldn’t
believe we could do it but we did and it was a pretty good film!â€
Of course, there’s a chapter on Independent-International’s
biggest picture – Dracula vs Frankenstein, which actually started out as
Blood Freaks (aka Blood Seekers).“The script was not much of anything but I was working on it… we wanted
a name actor so Al went to agent Jerry Rosen who said ‘You can have Lon Chaney,
Jr. and J. Carrol Naish for a week for $6K.’â€They booked them sight unseen – and when they reported for work, both
were in ill health. “Naish had a bad eye and Chaney had throat cancer. (Dracula
vs Frankenstein would be his final horror film.) “Ya gotta meet the people,†Sam adds
knowingly.Diminutive Angelo Rossitto rounded
out the cast as the carnival barker Grazbo. The resulting film was so bad,
backers recommended it just be shelved.Sam lives by the motto “Waste not, want not†and since he was an editor
himself, he went to work watching the film repeatedly until he found a line of
dialogue he could use to expand the storyline to include the last surviving
Frankenstein… and the monster. “And once I thought that I said, ‘Let’s bring in
Dracula for good measure.’â€Scraping
together $50K for reshoots they hired a tall, dark-haired record store
employee, Rafael Engel (named “Zandor Vorkov†by Forry) to play the Count and
7’4†accountant, John Bloom, to play the monster.“I left it to Al to make the picture, but as
the president of Independent International, I made the final decisions,†Sam
adds. Sam also tapped Famous Monsters’ Forry Ackerman who not only acted in the
film, but also secured the electrical equipment and props of special effects
wizard Kenneth Strickfaden for the production. Strickfaden’s crackling
electrical contraptions were originally used in Universal’s Frankenstein
film 40 years earlier.Against the
odds, Dracula vs Frankenstein was a monster hit!Ahead of his time, Sam even released the film
on TV AND in theaters/drive-ins “day-and-date†at the same time.“Nobody caredâ€, Sam says, chuckling, “I did what
I wanted to do.â€
Naturally, Sam devotes a chapter to his creative partner
and “the brother I never hadâ€, Al Adamson, who was tragically murdered by a
contractor renovating his desert house in 1995.Incredibly Sam still had a connection with him because one night after Al
had been declared “missingâ€, Sam silently asked his friend to give him a sign
of where he was… the word “Cement†popped into his mind. He communicated that to police and sure
enough, when they investigated, Al’s body was discovered underneath a cement floor.The contractor was apprehended in Florida and
is now serving decades in prison but the pain of Sam’s loss is palpable.He still keeps Adamson’s name alive with
drive-in screenings and special DVD and Blu-ray releases of their work.
Behind the scenes on "Dracula Vs. Frankenstein": (L to R): John Bloom, Sam Sherman, Zandor Vorkov, Al Adamson.
Now 81, Sam feels the time is ripe for his story to be
told.His oversize book is full of
industry lore and life lessons.“I hope
readers get that if they want to be in the picture business, they can… and people
who aren’t filmmakers but want to know the history of Al and myself, the whole
story is there – how we did it, why we did it and what really happened.â€Summing up, Sam says, “We did what we had to
do.â€
High
school friends Enid Coleslaw (Thora Birch) and Rebecca Doppelmeyer (Scarlett
Johansson) absolutely cannot wait to be free of the prison of school, defiantly
flipping the bird and squashing their mortarboards following their graduation.
Enid isn’t off the hook just yet: her “diploma†is instead a note informing her
that she must “take some stupid art class†(her words) if she hopes to graduate.
Their fellow classmates are caricatures of everyone we all knew during our
adolescence. Melora (Debra Azar) is inhumanly happy all the time and oblivious
to Enid and Rebecca’s sense of ennui and contempt. Todd (T.J. Thyne) is
ultra-nervous to talk with the insouciant Rebecca at the punchbowl. Another bespectacled
student sits off by himself. Enid and Rebecca are at both an intellectual and
emotional crossroads. They want to share an apartment; however, they seem unaware
of the amount of money they will have to come up with for such a
venture. Instead of finding jobs, their post-graduation afternoons are spent
meandering through life while frowning upon society, following strange people
home, bothering their mutual friend Josh (Brad Renfro) and admiring the Weird
Al wannabe waiter at the new 50’s-themed diner which plays contemporary music.
Seemingly without a care in the world, the women have no plans to attend
college, preferring instead to prank an unsuspecting nebbish named Seymour (Steve
Buscemi) who has placed a personal ad in an attempt to communicate with a
striking blonde he noticed, with Enid feigning said blonde on Seymour’s
answering machine. Rebecca is a dour and solemn counterpoint to Enid’s aloof
yet occasionally jovial demeanor. If
Holden Caulfield had a girlfriend, she might be someone just like Enid,
sneering at the losers and phonies in her midst. Searching out Seymour, they
approach him and his roommate at a garage sale where he is unloading old
records for next to nothing. His affection for collecting 78 rpms begins to
endear him to Enid, who confides in Rebecca that she likes him despite their
25-year age difference. They have some truly funny moments together such as
attending a “party†for guys who talk techno mumbo-jumbo, riding in the car
together as Seymour screams at people walking through an intersection, and a
humorous romp through an adult video and novelty store.
Rebecca grows tired of hearing about Seymour,
and presses Enid to get a job but she only succeeds in getting fired repeatedly,
even from her position at the concession stand at a Pacific Theatre cinema when
she ribs the customers over their choice of movie and their willingness to eat
popcorn with “chemical sludge†poured on it. The tone of the film shifts from
one of comedic commentary on the world to one of disillusionment as Enid begins
to feel her world slowly begin to crumble around her. Her friendship with
Rebecca, an anchor in her life for years, is ending and like so many of us at
that age, she has no idea where her life is going or what she needs to be doing
when she isn’t changing her hair color or her now-famous blue Raptor t-shirt or
donning punk rock garb as a sartorial statement. Her summer art teacher
(Illeana Douglas) shows her students her personal thesis film Mirror, Father, Mirror which itself is a
parody of the pretentious student films submitted to professors. She pushes
Enid to create interesting and powerful art when Enid is only interested in
drawing the people she knows and Don Knotts. In short, nothing seems to be
going well for her. The only person she can rely on is Norman, the well-dressed
man who sits on a bench at a bus stop that stopped service a long time ago and
holds the key to the film’s long-debated denouement. Enid is almost like an
older version of Jane Burnham, the character portrayed by Ms. Birch in American Beauty (1999). In that film,
she barely reacted to her father (Kevin Spacey) and here her contempt for her
father (Bob Balaban) and his girlfriend Maxine (Teri Garr) is even more
perceptible.
Director Terry Zwigoff takes the source
material created by artist and writer Daniel Clowes and fashions one of the
most brilliantly entertaining and poignant ruminations on adolescence the
silver screen has ever seen. Ghost World
also boasts excellent use of music, much of it pre-existing, although the main
theme by David Kitay is an elegiac
piano theme that recalls David Shire’s theme to The Conversation (1974). The film starts with a bang to the
seemingly non-diegetic tune of the Mohammed Rafi hit “Jaan Pehechaan Ho†from
the 1965 Hindi film Gumnaam, the
scenes of which are intercut with images of the apartment complex’s
inhabitants. As the camera tracks from the exterior windows of these
grotesqueries, it settles upon Enid’s bedroom where the night before graduation
she dances to the aforementioned tune which we now see is being played back on a
bootleg VHS tape. The beat is frenetic and infectious. Enid, for the first of
only a handful of times in the entire film, appears to be in a state of joy as
she mimics the moves of the dancers. If only she could always feel this way! With this singular sequence, Mr. Zwigoff
achieves something reserved for only the greatest and rarest of filmmakers – re-identifying
a popular musical piece with his movie. I can’t hear “The Blue Danube†without
thinking of spaceships spinning throughout the galaxy.
Ghost World opened on Friday, July 20, 2001 in
limited release in New York and Los Angeles and garnered immediate critical
acclaim. Filmed in 2000, the film is a product of a simpler and more innocent
time. Before the brutal wake-up call of the September 11th attacks, there is a
complete lack of cell phone usage in the film. It makes a great companion to
2001’s other minor masterpiece of adolescent angst, the cult favorite Donnie Darko.
My love of horror films
dates back forty years. In the fall of 1986, I accidentally stumbled across an
aficionado’s bonanza – a local video store had hundreds of video posters in the
cabinets underneath the movies it was renting. One of the posters was for Mortuary
(1983), a horror film from the Vestron Video label that I knew of from another
video store but had not seen. I liked the poster art but knew nothing of the
film. To my recollection, it never played at area theaters, not even the
2-screen indoor/drive-in three miles from me that showed just about anything
that was low-budget and esoteric.
Mortuary
opened on Friday, September 2, 1983 in Los Angeles and is not a great movie,
but it is not terrible, either. It does, however, move at a snail’s pace, so be
forewarned if you have not seen it. It is one of the longest 93-minute
movies I have ever seen. Director Howard Avedis, who has also gone by the
tongue-twisters Hikmat Labib, Hekmat Aghanikyan, and (whew!) Hikmet L. Avedis,
also directed the 1976 Connie Stevens outing Scorchy; Texas Detour
(1978); and They’re Playing with Fire (1984) with Sybil Danning. Here he
enlists Mary Beth McDonough of The Waltons fame as Christie Parson (the
name taken from the characters of Christie Burns and Brooke Parsons in 1983’s Curtains,
or just a coincidence?), a young woman who lives with her parents in their
beautiful and unhumble abode and shows up just in time to see her father
floating in the family pool after getting walloped with a baseball bat on the
balcony. But who would want him dead?!
Her boyfriend Greg (David
Wallace) and a co-worker go to collect tires from a warehouse owned by a
funeral home, and he stumbles upon what appears to be some sort of weird
cult/devil worship shenanigans in another room with all the figures wearing
black cloaks, headed up by mortician Hank Andrews (Christopher George who sadly
passed away two months after the film’s release). Even 2019’s Black
Christmas featured a bunch of crazies running around in cloaks some 35
years later! Greg’s friend is stabbed and killed with a huge pole used for
embalming by one of the members. Christie gets involved and decides to play
sleuth and attempts to get to the bottom of her father’s murder – she refuses
to believe that he “drownedâ€. Her mother Eve Parson, played by Lynda Day
George, wife of actor Christopher George, wants to play everything off as
though nothing is happening. Meanwhile, Hank’s son Paul (Bill Paxton of all
people) is infatuated with Christie and does his best to win her affections,
even serving her flowers in a cemetery in front of her boyfriend – what a guy!
Mortuary is
one of those funeral home-based films that proliferated in the early 1980s and
out of all of them, my personal favorite has always been Tom McLoughlin’s One
Dark Night (1983), the spooky PG-rated Meg Tilly outing as a high schooler
who attempts to sleep overnight among crypts as part of an initiation. Michael
Dugan’s Mausoleum (1983), which starred a fetching Bobbie Bresee as a
possessed woman who had the misfortune of being married to Marjoe Gortner, is
terrible but great fun. Who could forget William Fruet’s 1980 film Funeral
Home with Lesleh Donaldson? That film has yet to be released on Blu-ray. Like
most horror films made since John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), they all
pretty much follow a cookie cutter pattern which starts with something terrible
that happens as either a flashback or as an event that is flashed back to later
on. Mortuary is one of a handful of horror films that were shot in one
year and released in another, specifically between April and July of 1981, but
released two years later more than likely due to budgetary constraints.
The granddaddy of funeral
home films is surely Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979), wildly imaginable
and one of the scariest and most original horror films ever made, though it is
made up of supernatural elements. Mortuary is more of a murder mystery,
but anyone who is a die-hard horror film fan will see the ending coming from a
mile away. It’s almost a mashup of Jacques Lacerte’s Love Me Deadly
(1972), Tom DeSimone’s Hell Night (1981) and J. Lee Thompson’s Happy
Birthday to Me (1981).
Mortuary
uses location filming to great effect as well. If the sprawling Parson mansion
looks familiar, it’s the former Gulls Way Estate at 26800 Pacific Coast Highway
in Malibu, CA which was used on many other films and television series episodes.
The living room itself is opulent, and a humorous sex scene between Christie
and Greg takes place here. The mansion was purchased in 2002 by Dick Clark and
the beautiful pool that Christie’s father died in was filled in with dirt.
Mortuary
has been released on Blu-ray from the MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD
Visual, in an upgraded video transfer attributed to Scorpion Releasing. I like
the concept of this release as it contains a slipcover featuring the old Mortuary
artwork as though it was a beat-up VHS rental return. Unfortunately, if you are
a big fan of this film, you will be disappointed with the overall release as it
contains only a fifteen-minute onscreen interview with John Cacavas who provided
the inspired musical score. The only other extra is a trailers section
comprised of The House on Sorority Row (1982), Dahmer (2002), Mikey
(1992), One Dark Night (1983), and Mortuary (2005). One of the
strangest things about this film is the television trailer, and why it is
missing is a mystery. It is comprised of a single scene featuring Michael
Berryman(!) digging a grave and being pulled into it, but the scene is nowhere
to be found in the movie! Nor is Michael Berryman in the film! I wish that I
had seen this trailer as a teenager, but no such luck. Think of the original
teaser trailer for Alien (1979) with the little egg and the piercing
shriek on the soundtrack.
This Blu-ray falls very
short of being considered a “special edition†despite the inclusion of a
fold-out poster of the cover art. I would have loved an audio commentary and I wonder
why this release is so sparse.
One thing is certain –
you’ll never experience Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik†the same way after
seeing the ending of Mortuary.
Collector
and historian John Buss is back again with another fascinating glimpse into the
world of 1960s adventure television series collectibles. Having already brought
us books on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and
The Avengers and New Avengers, this time we get to see items that fans of Danger Man (known in the U.S. as Secret Agent) and The Prisoner (both starring Patrick McGoohan) could beg their
parents for every Christmas.
Given
Danger Man’s more grounded, often
serious nature, there were not all that many toys or games, but there were
still many different items available, thanks to the show being a major hit
ultimately running to over eighty episodes since it began in 1960. There were
several novels released based on the show, which were translated and available
in several countries including Spain, Portugal, France and Germany. As well as
paperbacks, annuals were also available, and a comic strip was published in the
“TV Crimebusters Annual†in 1962, which also featured stories from The Avengers, Charlie Chan and Dixon of
Dock Green, the latter not the first show you would suggest turning into a
comic strip. Some actual full comics were published as well, firstly in America
and then in Spain, Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands. Only one full issue was
published in the UK. In this book you will find dozens of photos of every
publication that John Buss has been able to track down, also including TV
listings magazines featuring John Drake on the cover.
There
was also a Danger Man board game
issued in 1961, where some players committed acts of sabotage whilst another
player took on the role of John Drake. Fabulous stuff, and just one of the many
items in this book that will have you heading straight to eBay to see if you
can get one for yourself. The book even covers the many different soundtrack
releases on vinyl that have featured one of the versions of the Danger Man theme, including the
unexpected revelation that Bruce Willis recorded one in 1987.
The Prisoner was a
much bigger, glossier, high-concept show than Danger Man, and the available collectibles reflects that. As a result,
one might have expected a vast swathe of toys and other tie-ins. Perhaps its
more esoteric, nay confusing nature and its appeal towards a more grown-up
audience may be the reason that, aside from one Dinky toy car (of the Mini Moke
too, not even Number Six’s own car), what we mainly have here are novelisations
and comics. The Prisoner had its own
strips in TV Tornado and Smash, but no comic of its own. The Prisoner also featured in a set of
collectible trading cards, but that was about it during its original run. Only
years later when the show had firmly secured cult credentials would far more
items be created: one only has to visit the gift shop in Portmerion to see the
difference between The Prisoner’s
commercial potential now and in 1967.
Once
again, John Buss has created a fascinating publication that will appeal to
collectors and fans of 1960s television alike, and provides more evidence that
the author needs to be given the opportunity to curate his own museum.
Kino
Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present
“Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture†with Volume 12—the
double bill of Peek-A-Boo and “B†Girl Rhapsody, two
documentations of burlesque revues from the 1950s.
The
delicious and suitably sleazy pictures in the “Forbidden Fruit†series were
made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system. They were distributed
independently in the manner of a circus sideshow, often by renting a movie
theater for a few nights, advertising in the local papers, and promoting the
scandalous title as “educational.†It’s certain, however, that in this case
both features in Volume 12 were not educational in any way except to provide the
experience of burlesque shows to audiences who were unable to view them in
person.
This
reviewer, who usually welcomes and enthusiastically supports all the volumes in
the “Forbidden Fruit†series, found these two pictures sadly unwatchable, with
the caveat that Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ audio commentary on one of the
titles might well be worth the price of admission.
Burlesque
has a long history in the United States, and the entertainment form goes way
back nearly two hundred years. It was closely associated with vaudeville, but
at the beginning of the 20th Century burlesque broke off and became its own
thing—something a bit more ribald and forbidden. There were still musical
numbers of song and dance, and sketches by comedians who told groaner jokes—but
burlesque added the striptease act.
The
phenomenon flourished in the early half of the century, and especially in the ten
or so years after World War II it enjoyed popularity in the big cities. Burlesque
probably peaked in the early fifties, when these two documentaries—for that’s
really what they are—were filmed. Once we got into the 1960s, burlesque became
even more sleazy and was relegated to the more questionable and red light areas
of “downtown†until it faded away for good.
One
of the unsung impresarios of burlesque in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s was
Lillian Hunt, who managed burlesque performers, produced and directed stage
productions, and documented her work on film to be distributed independently.
Hunt was a former burlesque artist in her younger years, and the fact that she
directed ten feature films (albeit of this ilk) in a decade in which there were
very few women behind the camera is something that can’t be brushed aside.
Both
“B†Girl Rhapsody (1952) and Peek-A-Boo (1953) were staged in the
old Burbank Theater in L.A., renamed the “New Follies Theater†for these
burlesque productions. They were filmed mostly in long shot with a stationary
camera in the front row of the theater so that the full proscenium stage is in
the frame. It’s as if the viewer is in the audience watching the entire show. Sometimes
the camera cuts to a medium shot, at best, but there are never close-ups. As a
result, this does not make for very interesting viewing. The striptease acts
aside, the musical numbers and comedian sketches are, well, pretty bad. As both
audio commentators remark, the actor/comedians were so jaded from repeatedly
doing the routines night after night that the deliveries became rather
uninspired.
The
stripteases? Sure, the lovely ladies of a variety of shapes and sizes range from
being somewhat amateurish to quite accomplished dancers. Unfortunately, these
two titles feature none of the big name stars of the era like Lili St. Cyr,
Tempest Storm, or Blaze Starr. Note: there is never total nudity.
The
two features on Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray disk are surprisingly well preserved and
pristine. The audio commentary for Peek-A-Boo is by Eric Schaefer,
author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films,
and curator of the “Forbidden Fruit†series. He is always knowledgeable about
these subjects.
The
audio commentary for “B†Girl Rhapsody is by the previously-mentioned
and always entertaining Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, whose wit and insight into these
titles and exploitation films in general will make you laugh and appreciate
more fully what you are experiencing.
Theatrical
trailers round out the package.
While
Volume 12 of the “Forbidden Fruit†series is not quite up to par with the
preceding entries, these films of Old Burlesque might find their way into the
hearts of some viewers who are interested in the history of this unique
American art form.
Abraham
Lincoln once famously said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and
some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the
time.†That utterance is evoked in the course of Billy Wilder’s 1966 acerbic
comedy, The Fortune Cookie and it certainly applies to the legal goings-on as
instigated by “Whiplash Willie†Gingrich (Walter Matthau), an unscrupulous
lawyer who sets out to commit fraud against an insurance company for big bucks.
While
it’s arguable that the great Billy Wilder continued to make good films into the
1970s, The Fortune Cookie might be his last superb one. It’s no Some Like it
Hot or The Apartment, but the picture manages to evoke many laughs and also
exhibits what is perhaps the quintessential performance by Matthau.
Jack
Lemmon is sports news cameraman Harry Hinkle. During a Cleveland Browns game,
player “Boom Boom†Jackson (Ron Rich) accidentally runs—hard—into Hinkle and
knocks him for a loop. The stunned Hinkle is taken to the hospital, and Jackson
feels badly. Hinkle’s brother-in-law is Gingrich, who cooks up a scheme to make
a million dollars in a lawsuit against the Browns, Cleveland, and anyone else
that could be a target. He convinces the unwilling Hinkle to play along and
behave much more injured than he really is (he’s actually just fine). Hinkle’s
ex-wife, Sandy (Judi West), with whom Hinkle is still in love, joins in on the
charade because she believes she’ll get a big payoff. The opposing law firm
sends out investigator Clifford Purkey (Cliff Osmond) to spy on Hinkle to gain
evidence that the whole thing is a sham. Meanwhile, poor Jackson is so
distraught about the accident that his ability on the football field declines
until he must consider resigning. Then things get crazier.
Written
by Wilder and his authoring partner since 1957, I. A. L. Diamond, Cookie is a
tour-de-force vehicle for Walter Matthau, who deservedly won the Oscar for Best
Supporting Actor for his performance. The script and the character emphasize
every strength the actor has, from his blustering vocal delivery to his hound
dog facial expressions. He is very funny. Lemmon, who received top billing, is also
good—Hinkle is a stereotypical “Jack Lemmon roleâ€â€”but this is a movie that
belongs to Matthau.
The Dynamic Trio: Lemmon, Wilder and Matthau.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray looks marvelous in its widescreen, glorious black and
white (yes, Hollywood still made black and white pictures in the mid-60s). It
comes with a new audio commentary by film historian Joseph McBride and optional
English subtitles. Supplements include two short clips introduced by filmmaker
Volker Schlöndorff from a filmed tribute to I. A. L. Diamond—a speech by Wilder
about his friend and collaborator, and a scene written by Diamond during his
school years, performed by Lemmon and Matthau and “directed†by Wilder. There
is also a short clip from Lemmon that was a call for extras to show up at the
Cleveland Browns’ stadium for a chance to be “in†the movie. Finally, there is
a Trailers From Hell analysis of the trailer with Chris Wilkinson and
theatrical trailers from other Kino Lorber titles.
By
the way, the “I. A. L.†of Diamond’s name stood for “Interscholastic Algebra
League†(his real name was Itzek)!
The
Fortune Cookie is for fans of Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, Jack Lemmon,
and especially Walter Matthau. Fun stuff.
The
prolific Hollywood producer Walter Mirisch was responsible for spearheading
such famed titles as Two for the Seesaw, Hawaii, In the Heat
of the Night, and Dracula (’79), and served as uncredited executive
producer for a number of high-profile pictures such as The Pink Panther,
The Great Escape, Fiddler on the Roof, and more. Mirisch got his
start, though, at the “Poverty Row†studio Monogram in the 1940s, where he
churned out a few low-budget crime dramas and film noir.
Mirisch’s
second feature for Monogram was a movie that has apparently been out of
circulation for decades. Considering its title, one might understand why… I
Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes! is based on a novel of the same name by the
great mystery writer Cornell Woolrich, and the screenplay is by pulp writer
(e.g., Mystery Adventures magazine) Steve Fisher, who penned scripts for
such flicks as Destination Tokyo (1943), Johnny Angel (1945), Song
of the Thin Man (1947), and The Hunted (1947).
The
picture stars relative unknowns (today), but it’s a tight little “wrong manâ€
scenario that holds one’s interest despite having some plot and character aspects
that stretch credibility.
Tom
Quinn (Don Castle) is an out-of -work dancer in New York City, and he’s married
to Ann (Elyse Knox). Ann works at a dance joint where strange men tip her to
“provide dance lessons,†but it’s really a place where men attempt to get dates
with the dancers. One guy, whom Ann refers to as “Santa Claus†because of his
build, is very insistent on dancing with her (at least he tips her well). One
hot night, Tom and Ann are trying to get some sleep, and noisy cats are outside
howling in the alley. Tom gets up and throws his shoes out the window at
the cats to shut them up (who does this, really?). Realizing he needs his
shoes, Tom goes out to look for them. He can’t find them. Figuring he’ll search
again in daylight, he returns to the apartment and goes to sleep. The next
morning, his shoes are in the hallway outside the door. Later, he finds a
wallet with a lot of money in it, seemingly placed exactly where he would
stumble upon it. It turns out that a wealthy hermit who lived nearby was robbed
and murdered. The police discover a shoe print outside in the mud that matches
Tom’s shoes. Lo and behold, one of the detectives is none other than Clint
(Regis Toomey), the fellow Ann knows as “Santa Claus.†Tom, obviously framed,
is arrested, tried for murder, and convicted. He’s sentenced to die in the
electric chair, so Ann has a race against time to try and prove her husband
innocent. Perhaps if she gives Inspector Clint what he wants from her…?
Okay,
so Tom does a really dumb thing by throwing his shoes out the window. Then,
both he and Ann decide to keep the money he finds after it isn’t reported in
the papers. When they start to spend it, the police get wise to the couple. Later,
if Ann is so devoted to Tom, would she really start an affair with the
policeman who was responsible for Tom’s arrest? The affair is implied, of
course, or at least there is the promise of one if the guy helps her
investigate the crime further. And… maybe the legal machine operated more
quickly in the late 1940s, but Tom is swiftly tried, convicted, and sentenced, and
the execution date set—in seemingly record time!
These
quibbles aside, I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes! does manage to entertain.
Viewers may very well guess who the real killer is earlier than the filmmakers
intended for that to occur, but one does get a “I was right!†feeling when the
identity is revealed.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray restoration brings this little-seen picture out of the
vault, so to speak. It looks and sounds great. One supplement is The
Symphony Murder Mystery, a 1932 short written by S. S. Van Dine (who was
responsible for the “Philo Vance†mystery novels), one in a series of
“Criminologist Dr. Crabtree†mystery yarns that were made as short subjects in
the 30s (with Donald Meek as Crabtree). Its age shows, but it’s an interesting
curio from the era. A second extra is the Warner cartoon, Holiday for
Shoestrings, directed by Friz Freleng, a mostly pantomimed musical parody
of “The Elves and the Shoemaker†fable. Fun stuff.
I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes! is a welcome diversion into Hollywood cinema of yesteryear.
By
all accounts, Jennie Logan (Lindsay Wagner) has it all – beauty, intelligence,
a loving husband (Alan Feinstein) named Michael, and a good friend in whom she
confides (Constance McCashin). While they do not have children, Jennie and Michael
seem to be unperturbed by the lack of tiny bare feet on the hardwood floors –
there is plenty of time for all of that. Or is there? Looks can be deceiving
and it is not long before we discover that this seemingly “perfect couple†have
their own demons to wrestle with.
Guided
on a tour of the sprawling Victorian manse prior to their eventual purchase by
a matter-of-fact realtor (Pat Corley) who off-handedly remarks that the
unfinished attic is unworthy of even the most cursory glance, Jennie feels
drawn to it, though she cannot fathom why. Following their purchase and move-in,
Jennie ventures into the attic and encounters a dress that is nearly 100
years-old (shades of John Hancock’s 1971 film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death).
Trying it on, it fits her perfectly, as though fashioned just for her.
All
is not well in the household, however. Michael tries to get close to Jennie but
she quickly withdraws, plagued by Michael’s betrayal and infidelity with one of
his students. Jennie’s willingness but inability to get past it puts a crimp in
their marriage. She feels that sex for Michael is like taking a shower or going
out for a jog, but despite his protests to the contrary he practically ignores
her while watching a sports game on television, despite her wearing the old
dress that makes her appear more fetching. The dress is the catalyst, a trigger
for Jennie to see and experience a complete and alternate reality that occurred
80 years prior that consists of an artist named David (Marc Singer) who grieves
the loss of his love, Pamela. After mistaking Jennie for Pamela, David spends
time getting to know Jennie while brushing off the affections of another woman,
Elizabeth Warrington (a nearly unrecognizable Linda Gray). David’s affections
turn towards Jennie, and she becomes fulfilled by him. The question then
becomes does Jennie really see and participate in this reality or is it
all just in her head, a projection for a life and a love that she once had, or thought
she had with Michael and lost, but still longs for? Much of the film reminds
me of the Harlequin romances my grandmother and aunt had stacked in their
basements.
The
Two Worlds of Jennie Logan
is the title of this 1979 made-for-television movie that is based on the 1978
novel Second Chance by David L. Williams. I am probably in the minority
here, but Jennie Logan is an above-average outing with an intriguing
story about love, longing and the perpetual life question of the road not taken,
though contemporary audiences will no doubt find it trite and saccharine. As
someone who grew up in the 1970s, I enjoy even the most basic of television
movies as they were a lot more innocent back then in a time before the
1000-plus cable stations offered us game shows, talk shows with despicable
guests, crime dramas, politics, and the rest of it. The world was slower and
not so crazy. Some of these television films worked (Steven Spielberg’s 1971
film Duel) and many of them did not (Corey Allen’s 1985 outing Beverly
Hills Cowgirl Blues). The innocence of these films is one of the reasons
why television movies were not regarded very highly when they were made, and
certainly not today. For me, less was more and although most audiences
and reviewers look upon the average television movie with disdain, I have
always had an affection for them that holds forth now.
Lindsay
Wagner and Alan Feinstein (who reminds me of Daniel Hugh Kelly as the cuckolded
husband in Lewis Teague’s 1983 film Cujo) give decent television movie-of-the-week
performances as the couple besieged by turmoil. Jennie visits a psychiatrist
(Joan Darling) to get a handle on her issues, leading the doctor to believe
that this is all mental, a diagnosis Michael concurs with, though Jennie
believes otherwise. A trip to a local library and discussions with librarian Mrs.
Bates (Irene Tedrow, who bears a resemblance to Fay Compton, the actress who
played Mrs. Sannerson in Robert Wise’s 1963 thriller The Haunting) puts
Jennie into contact with information that she hopes will alter the course of
David’s life so that she can be with him. Her discussion with an elderly
bedridden invalid is shocking in how frightening the woman’s face is – think of
Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963).
The
late writer and director Frank De Felitta is no stranger to supernatural
material. He directed The Stately Ghosts of England for NBC (1965) and the
beloved Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981). He also wrote the novels and
screenplays for Audrey Rose (1977) and The Entity (1982). Here,
he adapts material from another author. While portions of the film take place
in 1899, Marc Singer’s beefcake stature looks out-of-place as though he is
anticipating the arrival of Fabio, but it should please women and fans
of The Beastmaster (1982), the film he is best known for.
Composer
Glenn Paxton provides a lush and romantic score to complement the onscreen
action.
Jennie
Logan premiered on the
CBS network on Halloween night in 1979 and has been released on Blu-ray from
Australia-based Via Vision Entertainment through their Imprint label, the fine company
responsible for the recent Scarface (1932) and Breakdown (1997)
Blu-rays. Here, they offer up a region-free, pristine transfer with a wonderfully
entertaining commentary by critic Kevin Lyons who speaks eloquently and
knowledgeably about the film. He gives us some interesting on-set anecdotes
about the making of the film, such as modifications made to the set as Ms.
Wagner was unable to reach the handle to the attic; a history of the house in
which the film was shot; director De Felitta making The Stately Ghosts of
England, only to discover that the reels were blank after being developed
and having to plead with the ghosts in the location where they were filming not
to mess with the production!
There
is a nice twist at the end of the film, and if you have ever lost a love in the
fashion that Michael loses Jennie, it will have an impact on you.
I
originally saw the Brian De Palma/Al Pacino version of Scarface (1983) on
laserdisc in 1994 and again in a 20th anniversary theatrical
screening in New York, but not since. Recently, I decided to have revisit it on
Netflix and was amazed that I recalled very little of it. The constant use of
profanity and the intensity of some of the violent set pieces, in particular
the notorious chainsaw scene, are tamer than the language and the most violent moments
of HBO’s The Sopranos (1999 – 2007) and Showtime’s Brotherhood
(2006 – 2008). However, in 1983 Universal Pictures was prompted to release the
film with the following caveat in the newspaper ads when the film was released
in December: “CAUTION – Scarface is an intense film both in its use of
language and depiction of violence. We suggest mature audiences.†While one
might think this was a publicity stunt with the objective to get as many people
to see the film as possible, it could very well have instead been a compromise
to having the film released without the dreaded X rating. Director De Palma was
no stranger to sparring with the then Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) and its president, Richard Heffner. Previously, Mr. De Palma’s 1980 film
Dressed to Kill needed to be altered to avoid an X and he went back and
forth with the MPAA on the violence and overt sexual nature of the film until
it was releasable. It is interesting to note that the X rating, generally
associated with explicit sexual content as opposed to violence, was also given
to John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy when it was released in May 1969
(later changed to an R rating), Stanley Kubrick’s masterful A Clockwork
Orange in December 1971 (also later changed to an R rating following the
removal of several seconds of footage), and most famously, to Bernardo
Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris in February 1973 (recently changed to
NC-17). Tango garnered critical acclaim from New Yorker reviewer Pauline
Kael and, arguably because of the promise of sex scenes with the then
45-year-old Marlon Brando, did boffo box office. These are the cinema’s most
notable examples, with Cowboy winning the Best Picture Oscar and Clockwork
being nominated but losing to William Friedkin’s The French Connection
(1971) for that top prize. In the end, Scarface received an R rating and
grossed several million dollars shy of its $23.5M budget but, like so many
films of that period, cleaned up later on from ancillary sources such as home
video and cable television airings. It has become one of the most famous and
beloved motion pictures in recent memory, adding Al Pacino’s famous line about
saying hello to his little friend to the American lexicon, right up there with
Roy Scheider’s quip about needing a bigger boat in Jaws (1975).
It
is interesting to note that the very existence of Scarface began with the
original film of the same name made roughly fifty years prior to it and served
as the blueprint for Mr. Pacino’s interpretation of Cuban arrival Antonio
Montana and his rise to fame in the cocaine-laden backdrop of Miami, FL. Directed
by Howard Hawks between September 1930 and March 1931 and written by playwright
Ben Hecht, Scarface (1932), then billed as Scarface, the Shame of a
Nation, opened at the Rialto Theatre in New York City on Thursday, May 19,
1932 and, like the remake, also suffered its own share of controversy for
violence and sexuality, though not due to the same intensity as the remake. Coming
on the heels of Mervyn Leroy’s Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson and
William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy, both from 1931, Scarface
is widely considered to be the start of cinema’s depiction of and fascination
with gangsters and crime dramas. We are in 1920s Chicago in the time of Al
Capone (upon whose life the film is loosely based) and gangland wars between
the city’s North Side and South Side. The film begins with a single take that
runs just over three minutes in a setup that sets the tone. This must have been
deemed very suspenseful at the time and, while not nearly as intricate as the
three-minute mobile crane shot that opens Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil
(1957) or the three-minute Panaglide shot that starts John Carpenter’s Halloween
(1978), it manages to build tension for an audience not used to seeing such
cinematic techniques at the time.
The
story gets underway with “Big†Louis Costillo (Harry J. Vegar), the most
successful crime boss on the city’s South Side, talking and laughing with
members of his crew at a restaurant when heads to a phone booth. In the
shadows, still in the same opening take, Antonio “Tony†Camonte (Paul Muni),
Costillo’s own hired muscle, appears in silhouette and kills him in a murder contracted
with him by John “Johnny†Lovo (Osgood Perkins), his new boss. This being the
era of Prohibition, the main source of income is not cocaine but beer to be
delivered to speakeasies. A police officer heads to a barbershop the next day
and brings Tony in for questioning, determined to finger him for Costillo’s murder.
A lawyer pulls some strings and gets Tony out of it, but the police want to
catch him in the act of a crime, and they are more determined than ever. As it
stands Johnny, Tony’s new boss, now controls the South Side, with Tony and the
reticent Rinaldo (George Raft in a menacing performance) at his side. Rinaldo
reminds me of Al Neri, Michael Corleone’s reticent henchman in The Godfather
films, played icily by the late Richard Bright.
The
North Side is run by a man named O’Hara and Tony’s thirst for power begins to
swell. Johnny warns him not to mess with business associates on the North Side
because, in the words of Tony Soprano, “it attracts negative attention†and
potential violence. Tony also has his eye on Poppy (Karen Morley), Johnny’s
girlfriend, who initially shrugs Tony off, but warms up to him later when his
flirtations increase as he becomes more intrigued by her. In his apartment, he
shows her the sight of an electric billboard across the way advertising Cook’s
Tours beneath the slogan “The World is Yours,†taken to excessive extremes in
the De Palma remake.
I
love Joe Dante. He has directed some hugely entertaining films and is an
aficionado of the same genres I adore. Additionally, like most film directors,
he is highly versed in cinemaspeak. My introduction to his work came in 1983
when I bought his werewolf classic The Howling (1981) sight-unseen on
RCA’s now extinct CED system and immediately took to it. That failed stylus-based
videodisc format was severely limited to only several thousand titles, so I had
to rely on VHS to catch up with his Hollywood Boulevard (1976), Piranha
(1978), and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) in the mid-80’s following
theatrical viewings of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983 and Gremlins
in 1984. For some reason, his July 12, 1985-released outing Explorers,
which concerns the escapades of three young boys making their way through the
battlefield of junior high school, escaped my list of “must see†films during
that summer and I was only vaguely aware of it through a high school friend who
took to it. Looking back at the film’s opening weekend, it was rushed into
theaters almost ten days after Robert Zemeckis’s already phenomenally
successful Back to the Future and was also pitted against the Live-Aid
concert which was seen by nearly 2 billion people on television. Plus, I was
four months away from obtaining my driver’s license, so I still had to
embarrassingly prod my parents for trips to the theater which was some 10 miles
away.
Filmed
between October 1984 and February 1985, Explorers is most notable for
being the feature film debuts of Ethan Hawke and the late River Phoenix, both
of whom were 14 when the film was shot. Mr. Hawke landed the role while
accompanying a friend to the audition and had no previous acting experience. Mr.
Phoenix had already garnered a significant amount of television credits to his
name by the time filming began. Filling out the triumvirate is Jason Presson,
who appeared in Christopher Cain’s 1984 film The Stone Boy opposite
Robert Duvall and Glenn Close.
We
have all have had dreams of flying. A recurring dream of mine from childhood
consists of me flying on the top of a tree over the street I grew up on and
coming crashing down on to the pavement, awakening immediately afterwards. In Explorers,
Ben (Ethan Hawke) is a teenage science fiction aficionado who gravitates to
films of previous decades, such as War of the Worlds (1953) and This
Island Earth (1955). This rang true for me as my father gave me a copy of
the June 1978 issue of Star Encounters magazine when I was ten which
featured films from this era and was my introduction to them. Ben also dreams
of flying – in the clouds, and over a city that looks a lot like a circuit
board, the schematic of which he draws upon wakening. He shows these sketches
to his friend Wolfgang (River Phoenix) who is studious, nerdy and comes from an
eccentric family. Wolfgang does not have time for frivolities such as teenage
crushes, something that plagues Ben with his infatuation with Lori (the late
Amanda Petersen). Darren (Jason Presson) is disillusioned. His parents are
divorced, and his father has a girlfriend whom his dad argues with. He
befriends Ben and Wolfgang as an escape, but they share similar interests.
Using
Ben’s scribblings as a guide, Wolfgang builds a microchip that can create a
huge bubble that encompasses a large space while moving at incredibly fast
speeds. They take it upon themselves to build their own flying saucer out of an
old Tilt-A-Whirl ride, which they christen “Thunder Road†based on the name of
the song by The Boss. More of Ben’s dreams result in answers to limiting
issues, such as finding a way to produce an unlimited amount of oxygen on the
ship in order to leave Earth’s orbit, which they succeed in doing and end up
captured by a huge ship manned by aliens whose understanding of Earth is based
on television reruns. While this notion may have seemed interesting and
original on paper by the screenwriter, it eventually wears a bit thin in an
overly rambunctious episode that lasts longer than it should. Needless to say,
the boys make their way back to Earth and, well, you’ll just have to see for
yourself as to how their adventure ends.
When
I watched the special edition of The Howling on laserdisc in 1996, I
vaguely recalled Joe Dante mentioning that he had had a three-hour cut of Explorers,
but that it went missing, or it was stolen, etc. I often wonder how that
version would have fared in comparison. Watching Explorers now is
bittersweet as it contains performances by several people who tragically left
this world much too soon. Building on the special effects used to atmospheric
effect in Walt Disney’s Tron (1982), Explorers does an admirable
job of pushing the effects a little further. It is definitely an ‘80’s film and
that is something that cannot be faked. Rob Bottin, the genius behind the
effects for John Carpenter’s The Thing, created the aliens in this film,
with Robert Picardo of The Howling donning the makeup and costumes.
A
new special edition of the film is available on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory and it includes the home
video & theatrical cuts of the film, the differences of which were
imperceptible to me but probably stand out to die-hard fans more familiar with
it.
A
Science Fiction Fairy Tale: The Story of Explorers is a piece that runs about 65 minutes
and features new interviews with those involved with the production of the
film. Screenwriter Eric Luke explains having been given a copy of “Worlds of Ifâ€
magazine as a child ended up whetting his appetite, and he later worked at Los
Angeles’s A Change of Hobbit Bookstore which catered to science fiction
aficionados. Darlene Chan, the Junior Executive in charge of production, really
loved the script and how innocent it was. David Kirkpatrick, who was the Senior
Executive in charge of production of the film, reminisces on how the script
made him feel like a child again. Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One,
echoes those sentiments. Ethan Hawke describes how the film got him his start
in acting.
Explorers was a far more ambitious film in
conception than it ended up being in execution. Numerous public screenings with
negative feedback unfortunately resulted in much of the original material
ending up on the proverbial cutting room floor as the studio rushed it into
theaters far too quickly.
Deleted
Scenes with Optional Commentary By Joe Dante – Further character beats enhanced in footage gleaned from a
Betamax-quality workprint found buried in the director’s garage reveals a far
more interesting dynamic than what is alluded to in the final film, truncated
at Paramount’s request due to an unreasonable running time. This segment runs
about 34 minutes and includes the Amanda Peterson birthday party scene; a
dinner scene with Ethan Hawke and his parents; a wordless scene wherein Mary
Kay Place finds the February 1982 issue of Playboy in her son’s room; more
of the alien ad-libs; a cute reference to Poltergeist (1982); and many
more. It can be viewed with on-set audio or alternatively with director Dante’s
comments. It would have been nice if the entire feature contained a commentary
– it’s absence is puzzling.
Interview
with Cinematographer John Hora
– at just under four minutes, this is a discussion of the challenges that the
production ran into while shooting a film with minors during the Fall. Dick
Miller, who passed away in January 2019, comes in at the end, which only made
me want to see more.
Interview
with Editor Tina Hirsch
– this piece runs over six minutes with the film’s editor and really makes me
want to see the full cut of the film!
The
theatrical trailer is also included.
While
watching the film now I cannot help but be reminded of the Netflix series Stranger
Things which takes place beginning in November 1983, and the wonderful
camaraderie among the youngsters on the show. Explorers, despite being
the unfortunate mess that it is, is a reminder of our childhood friendships and
how things truly seemed possible, no matter how farfetched they seemed.
Want
a fast-paced action thriller, starring attractive leads and a precocious dog,
that deals with Nazi spies in the political climate immediately following the
war, and be done with it in only 62 minutes? This 1946 potboiler directed by
Phil Rosen and starring notorious Lawrence Tierney is for you!
Step
by Step is
not a film noir, which was what most crime pictures ended up stylistically
becoming in the period after World War II. Instead, it’s a rollicking good
action drama that packs what today might be two hours’ worth of plot into a
don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-something single hour. The picture is not only
well-written (screenplay by Stuart Palmer, story by George Callahan) and
well-shot, it has a superb cast that functions quite well in this tight little
ride.
Perhaps
most interesting for today’s audience is the leading man presence of Lawrence
Tierney, who had burst onto the Hollywood scene with the previous year’s Dillinger.
Handsome, rugged, and tough, Tierney could have been a major star… but he blew
it with his off-screen behavior that got him into trouble. Tierney was known to
have alcohol problems and was arrested many times for brawling in public.
Quentin Tarantino brought him—and his legendary Hollywood bad boy reputation—back
into the mainstream in a major guest cameo in Reservoir Dogs (1992). At
any rate, seeing him in Step by Step—young, virile, and surprisingly personable—is
a revelation.
Tierney
plays Johnny, a Marine veteran just home from the war. His smart little
terrier, Bazuka, follows him everywhere. He meets a gorgeous blonde, Evelyn
(Anne Jeffreys), on the beach. Evelyn is a secretary for Senator Remmy (Harry
Harvey, Sr.), who is working with a National Security agent to uncover the
identities and whereabouts of leftover Nazi spies in the USA who are planning
on committing terrorist acts. Before Johnny can see Evelyn again, however, a
trio of the baddies (Lowell Gilmore, Jason Robards Sr., and Myrna Dell), abduct
the senator and Evelyn. Johnny and Bazuka take it upon themselves to rescue
Evelyn—but in the process Johnny and Evelyn are accused by the police of being
murderers and fugitives!
Thus,
Step by Step is a spy movie, a chase picture, a lovers-on-the-run flick,
and even a boy-and-his-dog film… all bundled into a compact ball of excitement.
The
Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray release looks terrific. There are a couple of
welcome supplements, too. The Trans-Atlantic Mystery is a 1932 short
written by S. S. Van Dine (who was responsible for the “Philo Vance†mystery
novels), one in a series of “Criminologist Dr. Crabtree†mystery yarns that
were made as short subjects in the 30s (with Donald Meek as Crabtree). Its age
shows, but it’s an interesting curio from the era. Also included on the disk is
the fabulous Daffy Duck cartoon, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, in which
Daffy becomes “Duck Twacy.†Great stuff.
Step
by Step from
Warner Archive is a surprising, little-known title from yesteryear that packs a
punch. Highly recommended.
The
great Richard Matheson wrote a number of fabulous works in genre
fiction—novels, short stories, screenplays, and teleplays—and was one of the
main writers of the original The Twilight Zone TV series. This reviewer
considers the man a genius of his craft, as Matheson was responsible for some
truly classic science fiction, horror, and mystery tales.
Matheson’s
first published novel, Someone is Bleeding (1953), however, is not one
of the author’s best-known titles. It is a psychological thriller in which the
leading lady may or may not be a crazed killer. The novel was adapted and
filmed in 1974 in France with the title Les seins de glace, which
translates to… Icy Breasts, though the film was released in some countries under the novel's title.
Perhaps
Richard Matheson ended up being happy that the filmmakers did not use his
original title. While it contains some interesting moments, a couple of eye
candy stars, and a story that is somewhat compelling (mainly because one wants
to see how it winds up), Icy Breasts suffers from heavy-handed direction
and poor acting.
Claude
Brasseur plays François Rollin, the protagonist of the story,
even though Brasseur was billed third (popular Alain Delon received top billing,
and his life-partner at the time, Mireille Darc, got second billing). All three
actors have done much, much better work in other movies.
Rollin
is a successful television writer who lives in the south of France near Nice.
One day he meets beautiful but obviously troubled Peggy (Darc) on the beach. She
is standoffish at first, but eventually warms to Rollin’s flirtations and
advances. But Peggy has some dark secrets. She is watched over by the
mysterious wealthy lawyer, Marc Rilson (Delon), who employs creepy Steig
(Emilio Messina), a chauffeur/bodyguard worthy of a Bond movie. Rilson is in an
unhappy marriage to a creepy but beautiful woman (Nicoletta Machiavelli), and
also provides a home for a similarly creepy, bitter brother. Peggy’s own creepy
gardener/housekeeper, Albert (Michel Peyrelon), works for Rilson in order to
keep an eye on Peggy. There’s a lot of creepy going on! Rollin, who has
fallen hard for Peggy, wants to know why everything surrounding her is so
creepy. Eventually he learns that Peggy may or may have not stabbed her husband
to death. Rilson was the lawyer who got her off on an insanity defense. But is
she insane? If so, why isn’t she institutionalized? Or had she been? One thing
is certain—Peggy cannot stand to be touched by a man and becomes irrational and
violent when that occurs. Once the body count starts to increase and threats
from Rilson begin to multiply, Rollin realizes he may be in over his head.
Ice
Breasts is
a little similar in tone and feel to Play Misty for Me (1971) and
perhaps the filmmakers had that movie in mind. Unfortunately, Icy Breasts is
nowhere near as successful a psychological thriller as Misty. Brasseur’s
acting is over-the-top jovial, lively, and energetic. His character is
attempting to be funny and charming to Peggy, but often he just comes off as a
jerk. Is he an idiot? Can’t he see that Peggy is Trouble with a capital T? And
wouldn’t being physically assaulted more than once make a sensible person turn
and run the other way? Contrasting with Mr. Joviality are the rest of the
actors. Delon, Darc, and the henchmen take their roles so seriously that one
would think they’re in an Ingmar Bergman drama. The direction is simply too
ham-fisted.
On
the plus side, the movie is pretty to look at. The Nice and Antibes locations
are scenic. Both Delon and Darc are gorgeous and do light up the screen. The
story is interesting enough to hold one’s attention.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release ports over the StudioCanal 4K restoration from the
original camera negative, which emphasizes that distinctive 1970s film stock
look. The soundtrack includes both the original French (preferred, with English
subtitles) and English-dubbed (avoid!) versions. There is an audio commentary
by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson
that is perhaps more enlightening than the film itself. Rounding out the
package is the theatrical trailer for this and other Kino Lorber releases.
Icy
Breasts is
for fans of French cinema, Richard Matheson, Alain Delon, and 1970s thrillers.
Kino
Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present
“Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture†with Volume 11—Girl
Gang/Pin-Down Girl, a double bill of so-bad-they’re-funny early 1950s
“crime†movies. They were marketed as such, but they were really what passed
for softcore in those days. If the movie ratings had existed then, these two gems
would likely have been rated “R.â€
These
delicious and suitably sleazy pictures in the “Forbidden Fruit†series were
made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system. They were distributed
independently in the manner of a circus sideshow, often by renting a movie
theater for a few nights, advertising in the local papers, and promoting the
scandalous title as “educational.†It’s certain, however, that in this case
both Girl Gang and Pin-Down Girl are not educational in any way
except to show you how to use illegal drugs (uh oh!), and to appeal to prurient
interests.
Producer
George Weiss specialized in fare that defiantly challenged the Production Code
and therefore made cheap—very cheap—exploitation flicks with filmmakers
and actors who were not, shall we say, A-list material. For example, Weiss
produced Ed Wood’s notorious Glen or Glenda (1953), along with Test
Tube Babies (1948, previously reviewed in Cinema Retro as part of
the “Forbidden Fruit†series). Weiss is responsible for both titles in Volume
11.
Girl
Gang (1954)
is a hoot. Unintentionally hilarious, it’s one of the better titles in the
series. Exploitation film regular Timothy Farrell is Joe, the sleazy leader of
a “girl gang†of outlaws—all of them thieves, drug users and dealers, and con
artists who use sex as bait. Joe gets help from alcoholic Doc Bradford (Harry
Keatan), who regularly checks the young women for, presumably, pregnancy and
venereal diseases. There are a handful of young men in the gang who act as
muscle, but mostly the members are 1950s-era Bettie Page-types who, for
example, might hitchhike to stop an unsuspecting male motorist. Once two of the
girls are in the car with him, two more drive up. The four women beat up the
man, rob him, and hijack his car. Back at headquarters, Joe gives them “weed to
make them less anxious.†Some of them have already graduated to heroin. The
alpha-gal is June (Joanne Arnold, a popular pin-up model and occasional actress
of the day), and she sets out to make a big score by seducing and fleecing an
insurance agency head who she gets a part time job working for. Yes, folks, you’ll hear
some of that devil boogey-woogey rock ‘n’ roll and see pot-smoking, smack-shooting,
gunplay and beatings, and scantily clad women, all in a head-spinning 63
minutes.
There
are truly some laugh-out-loud moments, such as when one of the girls has been
shot in the gut. She’s brought to the Doc, who is forced to operate on the
filthy kitchen table. The tremendously bad acting, the clumsiness of the
direction, and the wince-poor editing make it a scene worthy of the Three
Stooges.
Pin-Down
Girl is
the second feature, made three years earlier by the same producer (Weiss) and
director (Robert C. Dertano). The movie is also known as Racket Girls,
and The Blonde Pick-Up, which is what is seen in the opening credits. This
one stars real-life lady wrestler Peaches Page as “herself.†Peaches gets
involved in a ladies’ wrestling “club†that is a front for a gang that practices
racketeering, prostitution, and bookmaking. Timothy Farrell appears again as
Scalli, the gangster who manages the club. One might say it’s more of a crime
tale, although it is sprinkled throughout with sequences of the
leotard-and-tights-wearing women wrestling in the gym for those in the audience
who are into that stuff.
While
Girl Gang is unintentionally bad and funny, Pin-Down Girl is just
unintentionally bad. At 55-minutes, though, perhaps it’s worth it for anthropological
study.
Kino
Lorber continues its fabulous job in the presentation of the Forbidden Fruit
series. Girl Gang looks pristine in its digital restoration. It comes
with an audio commentary by the always-interesting film historian Alexandra
Heller-Nicholas, plus the theatrical trailer.
Pin-Down
Girl is
a bit choppy in places (missing frames of splices) and shows more damage to the
source material. It comes with an audio commentary by Eric Schaefer, author of the
book Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films and
one of the curators of the Forbidden Fruit series. The theatrical trailer is
included.
For
fans of midnight-movie sensationalism and nuttiness… Girl Gang/Pin-Down Girl
is for you!
Some of the
best literary achievements and their respective motion picture counterparts had
their genesis in real-life. Robert Bloch made the grave-robber and necrophiliac
Ed Gein into the motel manager Norman Bates in Psycho (1960); William
Peter Blatty took the ostensibly possessed boy in Cottage City, MD and gave him
the identity of Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (1973); and Martin Sheen
and Sissy Spacek breathed celluloid life into Kit and Holly respectively in Badlands
(1973), based upon Waste Land: The Savage Odyssey of Charles Starkweather
and Caril Ann Fugate. Smooth Talk, Joyce Chopra’s brilliant 1985
film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s equally excellent 1966 short story
“Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?", is no exception. While it may
seem odd to begin this review of what is on the surface, and for all intents
and purposes, a story of a teen-age girl’s sexual awakening, with an overview
of horror films, it must be said that Mrs. Oates based her tale loosely
on the exploits of Charles Howard Schmid, Jr., aka “The Pied Piper of Tucson,â€
a loner and petty thief who seduced young high school girls and was responsible
for murdering at least three of them between 1964 and 1965.
While the
denouement is nowhere near as dark as its real-life roots, Smooth Talk,
the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1986, is a deceptive
film in that it is marketed in what appears to be a coming-of-age film, but it
is not in the traditional sense. At 91 minutes, Smooth Talk is a nearly
perfect film, unlike any other film I have ever seen. Its independent status
and minimal theatrical run have precluded it from deservedly finding a much
wider audience, even today, though it should be required viewing as both an
example of fine independent filmmaking and as a cautionary tale for overly-trusting
young women, especially in the modern age of social media and the #MeToo
movement.
Following
backstory and exposition that was only alluded to in Mrs. Oates’s story, Smooth
Talk, released on Friday, February 28, 1986 at the long-gone 68th
Street Playhouse (I miss that theater!!) in New York with a PBS showing as part
of American Playhouse nearly a year later, is a remarkably faithful film
adaptation that follows the story nearly to the letter. The film gives us
Connie Wyatt, a typical fifteen-year-old girl in a terrible hurry to grow up
and experience life. She lives in the world of the relative but would prefer to
live in the world of the absolute: one bereft of a nagging mother (Mary Kay
Place), an insouciant father (Levon Helm), and her older sister June (Elizabeth
Berridge) who castigates her for transgressions. She envisions one instead full
of sweet and beautiful boys to woo and sing to her. Her summertime vacation
household is one of boredom and antagonism, restlessness, and constant
comparison to other kids. She is a stranger at the dinner table, marginalized
and spoken of in the third person as though she were absent. Her character
changes and comes to life, however, during frequent multiple-hour sojourns to
the beach and the shopping mall (Santa Rosa Plaza and Coddingtown Mall) with
younger friends Laura (Margaret Welsh) and Jill (Sarah Inglis) in tow to the
tunes of James Taylor or Franke & The Knockouts on her boom box. In the
mall bathroom, the homely triumvirate don mascara and lipstick and emerge looking
much older, dressing to impress. Connie metamorphizes from a gawky girl into a
temptress. They yearn after a group of attractive young men with “nice bunsâ€
and poke fun at nerds and generally act older than they really are. Their first
encounter with more than they bargained for is with two muscled-up bad dudes
who lecherously offer them booze and drugs, with the presumption of sexual
interludes to follow. They nervously rush away from the men’s clutches; on
their way home, they stop at an outdoor hamburger restaurant bustling with
older kids. An older man in a shiny golden convertible pulls into the lot, and
his presence goes unnoticed by Connie, but not by the audience. In the days to
follow, Connie and Laura score dates with boys their own age, although Connie’s
catch wants more than she is willing to give when he takes her to a deserted
parking lot – never a good sign – but she manages to extricate herself from his
lust and gets a verbal admonishment from her mother and older sister the
following morning for potentially “getting into troubleâ€.
When
Connie’s family goes to visit relatives, she decides to exercise some rebellion,
opting to remain home instead. She turns on several radios throughout the house
to the same station to hear music anywhere she goes. It is at this point where
the film begins to follow Mrs. Oates’s story almost completely, as the film
takes a 180-degree turn into uncharted territory with the arrival of the
mysterious man in the convertible. He introduces himself as Arnold Friend, and
professes his desire to be Connie’s friend, which is repugnant in and of itself
as he is most definitely not 15 years-old, but much older, at least
twice that age. Bemused, Connie is escorted to his car, a 1960s-something
Pontiac LeMans GTO, which has his name printed in cursive writing on the
driver’s door, and his license plate bears the name AFRIEND. Next to his name
are printed the numbers 33, 19, and 17, the summation of which is synonymous
with a particular sexual act, though its significance is completely lost on
Connie (it could also refer to the ages of the three females killed by the
real-life Pied Piper of Tucson). His last bit of the tour is showing Connie the
left rear fender, smashed in by a “crazy woman driverâ€, as he points out.
What begins
at this point is a slow and deliberate seduction of Connie, like the serpent
tempting Eve into eating the shiny apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil, except here the serpent is using a shiny convertible for enticement
(note the apple grove in the backyard). Initially flirty, Connie’s demeanor
changes when Arnold behaves as though they already know each other, and he
mentions facts about her family and friends that only someone intimately
familiar with her would know. Arnold’s intentions as a sexual predator are
nefarious and despicable. He almost talks to her in code, and everything points
to a double meaning. Removing the “r†from his name yields “an old fiendâ€;
Santa Rosa becomes Satan Rosa; and his arched eyebrows are devilish.
When Arnold
tells Connie that they are meant to be together, Connie says, “You’re crazy, no
one talks like that.†And she is right – but she does not trust her instincts
enough and goes along with him in an effort to rid him from her family’s home
at 2074 Pleasant Hill Road (in Sebastopol, CA, though the film is set in
Petaluma where George Lucas shot his own adolescent masterpiece American
Graffiti in the summer of 1972). It costs her her innocence in the film,
and her life in the short story.
The film is
most notable for being the breakout performance of Laura Dern, who was
seventeen when filming commenced in September 1984, a full year prior to playing
the virginal Sandy in David Lynch’s controversial Blue Velvet (1986).
Ms. Dern should have received an Oscar nomination for this role as her performance
is a revelation. She also was growing up and her sense of being “unaware†is
what drives her natural reactions. Connie is almost a slightly older and less
wild version of Amy Sims, the out-of-control teenager Ms. Dern portrayed in the
1980 episode of Insight called “Who Loves Amy Tonight?â€
Martin
Rosen, the director of Watership Down (1978), The Plague Dogs (1982)
and the little-seen Stacking (1987) with Megan Follows, produced the
film.
The
actor Ray Milland always presented himself on screen with a serious intensity.
His Oscar-winning turn as an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend (1945)
catapulted him into the upper ranks of Hollywood stardom in those years. He
didn’t always appear in A-list pictures, though. Film noir and thrillers
like The Big Clock and So Evil My Love (both 1948) featured
Milland in what might be perceived as moonlighting roles, but he is nonetheless
effective.
Such
is the case with Alias Nick Beal, directed by frequent Milland
collaborator, John Farrow. This is not a film noir, per se, but rather a
thriller-cum-supernatural tale that borrows heavily from the Faust myth.
And while Milland is the fire that energizes Nick Beal, it is third-billing
Thomas Mitchell who is the protagonist of the story.
Mitchell
is Joseph Foster, a district attorney who aspires to run for governor. He’s an
honest and “good†man with a loving wife, Martha (Geraldine Wall). Foster has
influential friends, including Reverend Garfield (George Macready), and he has
ties to a youth center that caters to wayward boys. Enter Nick Beal (Milland),
who offers Foster “help†to attain his goals. The only hitch is that Foster
must, essentially, sell his soul to Beal. To sweeten the pot, so to speak, Beal
brings in lovely but troubled Donna (Audrey Totter) to turn Foster’s head from
what is right and lead him down the same dark path that she is on.
It’s
a classic Good vs. Evil story—one we’ve seen a dozen times—but its retelling
here in something of a film noir style is refreshing. Farrow directs the
picture with flair and grace, evoking a moody, sinister atmosphere with many
set pieces blanketed in fog and darkness. It’s almost a horror film, by the
looks of it. And, while Mitchell is believable and sympathetic in his plight
against damnation, it is indeed Milland who ensures that Alias Nick Beal works.
Milland is truly creepy as the Devil (and it’s obvious early on that he is the
“alias†of the title). Totter is also winning in her role as a tramp who gets
caught up in Beal’s plot to win Foster’s soul, although the Production Code
likely prevented the filmmakers from blatantly depicting what she’s really out
to do to Foster!
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release could have used some better cleaning of the source
material, but it looks good enough in its glorious black and white. Lionel
Lindon’s cinematography is suitably gothic, especially in the exterior night
scenes. The movie comes with an audio commentary by the informed and celebrated
film noir historian Eddie Muller, plus the theatrical trailer for this
and other Kino Lorber releases.
Alias
Nick Beal is
an entertaining diversion for fans of crime pictures, dark fantasies, Ray
Milland, and 1940s Hollywood B-movies in which the creators made lemonade from
lemons.
This
film noir pot boiler, released in 1948 and directed by George Sherman,
borders the fine line between being truly awful and stunningly good. Luckily
for us, it’s the latter. Larceny surprised this reviewer with its
tale—albeit a melodramatic one—of a quartet of con men who make their livings by
grifting wealthy people out of investments, phony real estate scams, or
whatever. Kind of like what’s happening today with e-mail phishing and
robocalls, right?
The
picture stars John Payne as Rick Maxon, one of the con men who might be having
second thoughts about the company he keeps and the people who become his
victims—especially if they’re beautiful women who easily fall for his charm and
good looks. Payne was a handsome and low-key actor who worked constantly from
the late 1930s through the 1950s, and then sporadically in the 60s (his final
appearance being a Columbo television episode in the 70s). Payne played
mostly in crime movies and was a second-string Robert Mitchum type who was
reliable and got the job done—although he didn’t exactly light up the screen.
The
firecracker in Larceny, however,is a young Shelley Winters, who
plays the femme fatale. When she’s on, the film really comes alive.
Maxon
works for sleazy Silky Randall (film noir stalwart Dan Duryea). They
have their eyes set on wealthy and gorgeous Deborah Clark (Joan Caulfield), who
lost her husband in the war. Maxon pretends to be an army buddy of her late
husband, and his intent is to get Deb to invest in a war memorial—when, in
fact, Silky and his team will pocket the money and run. Silky’s wild
girlfriend, Tory (Winters), has the hots for Maxon, though, and the two of them
have been carrying on behind the back of the very jealous Silky. Big trouble
brews when Maxon falls for his prey, and Deb reciprocates… and then Tory gets
wind of the budding romance.
Thus,
there are romantic shenanigans, a clever crime plot, and truly shady characters
that drive this little low budget gem. When the protagonist of a movie is the
bad guy, you know you’ve got yourself a real film noir! Sure, there are
some eye-rolling moments and some acting that is at times laughable, but that’s
all part of the fun. Larceny is indeed astonishingly entertaining. Look
for wonderful character actor Percy Helton as a hotel operator, and striking
Dorothy Hart as yet another female who is willing to commit a crime for ladies’
man Maxon.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray restoration looks good enough. It comes with an audio
commentary by the knowledgeable film historian Eddy Von Mueller, plus the
trailer for this and other Kino Lorber releases.
Larceny
is
recommended for fans of film noir, Shelley Winters, and Hollywood cinema
of the 1940s.
In
the case of The Web, the title is categorized as film noir for
being a crime picture shot in black and white by DP Irving Glassberg with high
contrasting light and shadow, a tale that features cynical and unreliable
characters, a twisty plot, and some double-crosses. That’s about it,
really—there is no femme fatale (we think that one character is going to
serve that role, but ultimately that isn’t the case), and there is a tangible
grittiness to other, classic films noir that is missing here.
Nevertheless, The Web is enjoyable, if somewhat predictable.
While
the lovely Ella Raines receives top billing as Noel, the personal assistant to
wealthy industrialist Andrew Colby (Vincent Price), it is Edmond O’Brien, as
Bob Regan, who is the protagonist of the story. Regan is an attorney—something
of an ambulance chaser, it seems—who is temporarily hired by Colby to serve as
a bodyguard as protection against a former employee, Leopold Kroner (Fritz
Leiber). Kroner has just been released from prison, blames Colby for framing
him, and allegedly seeks revenge. On the first night on the job, Regan is
forced to shoot Kroner in Colby’s office during a struggle. Even though the
police deem the incident as self-defense, Lieutenant Damico (William Bendix) is
suspicious and wants to pin a murder rap on Regan. While Regan sweats it out,
he becomes romantically infatuated with Noel while simultaneously doing his own
investigation into Colby and the man’s history with Kroner.
Yes,
a “web†of conspiracy is revealed, and it turns out to be not so tangled. We
can foresee the outcome, really, from the first act of the picture. It’s no
spoiler to say that a viewer would have to be an idiot not to realize that
Colby is the heavy (he’s Vincent Price—duh!). That said, the film moves along
at such a brisk pace and features an enthusiastic, plucky performance from
O’Brien as the cocky lawyer-cum-bodyguard/detective. Raines, who made several film
noir titles, seems to have been molded by Hollywood to be a second string
Lauren Bacall-type; she does possess silver screen presence and a charisma that
plays well off of O’Brien’s antics. One can’t help but be entertained.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray restoration looks and sounds superb. There is an accompanying
and informative audio commentary by film scholar, Professor Jason A. Ney. The
theatrical trailer is included along with other Kino Lorber trailers.
While
it’s not going to win any awards (it didn’t), The Web is indicative of
the era in which it was released. For fans of film noir, Edmond O’Brien
and Vincent Price, and Hollywood B-movies.
“GOIN’
TO TOWN†(1935;
Directed by Alexander Hall)
“KLONDIKE
ANNIE†(1936;
Directed by Raoul Walsh)
“GO
WEST, YOUNG MAN†(1936;
Directed by Henry Hathaway)
“EVERY
DAY’S A HOLIDAY†(1937;
Directed by A. Edward Sutherland)
“MY
LITTLE CHICKADEE†(1940;
Directed by Edward F. Cline)
(Kino
Lorber)
“GOODNESS
HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT—THE MAE WEST FILMS, PART TWOâ€
By
Raymond Benson
This
is the continuation of reviews of the classic 1930s (and 1940) films of Mae
West, which began here.
Kino
Lorber has just released in gorgeously restored, high-definition presentations
every Mae West film made between 1932-1940—the Paramount years, plus one with
Universal. This review will cover the last five of nine titles.
What
is not commonly appreciated among Hollywood enthusiasts is that Mae West held a
unique position in the history of cinema. Until the modern era, she had the
extraordinary fortune—for her time—of being a leading actress who wrote her
own screenplays. Six of the nine pictures reviewed here and in Part One were
written by West, one was co-written, and all but the first was based on or
adapted from West’s plays or stories. It wasn’t until the likes of Tina Fey,
Kristen Wiig, Angelina Jolie, and a finite number of other actresses appeared
on the scene to write original scripts for themselves that Hollywood allotted
that kind of opportunity to a female performer. West was doing it in the 1930s,
and this was unprecedented. Her talent and wit deserve a renewed appreciation
today.
Goin’
to Town (1935)
takes place at the turn of the century when automobiles are appearing but there
are still horses and buggies. It’s a globe-hopping affair that begins in what
appears to be the Wild West as Cleo Borden (West) is a cattle rancher who
juggles men on the way to fulfill her desire to refine her manners and join
high society. Although her designs are really aimed at British engineer Edward
Carrington (Paul Cavanaugh), she marries
Fletcher Colton (Monroe Owsley) for convenience, but he’s an obsessive gambler.
In Buenos Aires, Cleo faces off with rival Grace Brittony (Marjorie Gateson).
As a recurring theme to this and other West vehicles, the actress sings “He’s a
Bad, Bad Man, but He’s Good Enough for Meâ€! Goin’ to Town is
entertaining enough—it’s better than the previous Belle of the Nineties,
but the picture lacks interesting co-stars for West. The Blu-ray comes with an
audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger, plus the theatrical trailer.
Klondike
Annie (1936)
is overseen by solid filmmaker Raoul Walsh, and it shows. It is perhaps the
best of West’s post-Code pictures, despite its embarrassingly offensive take on
Asian characters, which was standard operating procedure in Hollywood for the
time. It’s the 1890s again (why do so many of West’s films take place in that
decade?). Rose Carlton (West) is a “kept woman†in San Francisco’s Chinatown by
cruel club owner Chan Lo (Harold Huber, not an Asian actor). Rose ends up
killing Lo and escapes on a ship to Alaska, the captain of which is Bull Brackett
(the fabulous Victor McLaglen). Rose disguises herself and impersonates the
deceased Sister Annie Alden, a missionary who was on her way to Nome to head up
the only establishment of worship in an otherwise rough Gold Rush town. Bull
falls hard for “Annie,†and she likes him, too, but she also has eyes for
Mountie-like inspector Jack Forrest (Phillip Reed), who is looking for Rose
because she’s now wanted for murder. Klondike Annie went through major
Hays Office interference and in fact two major scenes were deleted from the
film—the murder of Lo (we now only hear about what happened in conversation
later), and the sequence in which Rose dons Annie’s clothing and dresses the
former sister in the garb of a streetwalker (the censors seriously objected to
this on puritanical grounds!). Nevertheless, Klondike is lively, rather
suspenseful, and features the most exotic of settings for a Mae West movie. The
disk comes with an audio commentary by film historians Alexandra
Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson, plus the theatrical trailer.
Go
West, Young Man (also
1936) was helmed by accomplished director Henry Hathaway, and it fares well for
West and her filmography. West is controversial movie star Mavis Arden, who has
a penchant to get in trouble. Thus, her studio has assigned press agent Morgan
(Warren William, who was known as the “king of pre-Code,†but he was apparently
still working post-Code) to keep an eye on Mavis and stop her from dalliances
with men. On the way to a public appearance, their car breaks down in a hick
town where Mavis and Morgan must stay at a boarding house run by a prudish
woman (Alice Brady) and her more open-minded aunt (Elizabeth Patterson). The
problem is that hunky Bud Norton (Randolph Scott) runs the gas station next
door to the boarding house! It’s another enjoyable West romp that is more of a
screwball comedy than any of her other pictures. The disk comes with an audio
commentary by author/film historian Lee Gambin, plus the theatrical trailer.
Every
Day’s a Holiday (1937)
was the last picture West made for Paramount, after which her contract was
cancelled. She, along with many other actresses such as Katharine Hepburn,
Marlene Dietrich, and even Bette Davis, were deemed at the time by the
Hollywood press as “box office poison†(which was nonsense, of course). It’s
too bad, for Holiday is one of the funnier titles in the West canon,
mainly due to character actor co-stars Charles Butterworth (as Graves, a butler
who is sweet on West’s character, Peaches O’Day), Charles Winninger (as Van
Doon, an outrageous millionaire who also has the hots for Peaches), and
bumbling Walter Catlett (as Nifty, Peaches’ manager). Peaches, who has a habit
of “selling†the Brooklyn Bridge to numbskulls, has her eyes on police
captain McCarey (Edmund Lowe), whose rival is the police chief Quade (Lloyd
Nolan). Peaches, wanted by the law, “disguises†herself by donning a black
wig—and of course no one recognizes her as Peaches anymore (!). Quade, once pursuing
Peaches to arrest her, is now after “Fifi†to woo her. Fun stuff all around. Look
for Louis Armstrong’s cameo leading a marching band and performing a song. The
disk comes with an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger, plus the
theatrical trailer.
