“NOT SO TANGLED, IT WEAVES”

By Raymond Benson

The low budget 1947 film noir drama, The Web, is a fairly typical example of the type of B-picture that many Hollywood studios were churning out in the late 1940s. No one referred to these crime movies as film noir at the time; it wasn’t until the late 1950s that French critics looked back at this body of work and proclaimed, “Sacré bleu! Film Noir!”—and the term stuck.

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.

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“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 TWO”

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.

Her first two solo pictures (not counting her debut, Night After Night) are undoubtedly the quintessential Mae West movies (She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel) because of the freedom she had in the pre-Code years. Once the Production Code kicked in on July 1, 1934, West battled censorship and the challenges of getting across her risqué humor with more subtlety. It can be said that her remaining Paramount Pictures titles suffered when compared to the pre-Code fare, but they are still entertaining and worth a look.

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 Me”! 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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BY MARK CERULLI

Many movies are a reflection of their time: Dr. Strangelove was a biting 1960s anti-nuclear war satire. Taxi Driver was a 1970s commentary on urban loneliness. Now as America grapples with rising, politically inspired unrest, it’s more than a bit sad that the movie for OUR time may well be The Forever Purge.

This half a billion-dollar franchise started out in 2013 as a humble $3M action/thriller starring Ethan Hawke. Expectations were modest at best… Instead, the film’s main theme – allowing society to “let off steam” with one night where all crime is allowed - touched a nerve, grossing almost $90M and installments (and profits) soon followed.

This latest sequel, directed by Everardo Gout and written by series creator, James DeMonaco, cannily picks up on today’s social and political vibes - a humble Mexican couple, Juan and Adela, sneak into the U.S. in search of a better life, ready to work hard to achieve that iconic American dream. Juan winds up toiling as a ranch hand for a wealthy Texas family whose mercurial son (Josh Lucas) makes it clear he doesn’t want Mexicans around. On Purge Night, as the owners hunker down in luxury to ride the things out; the ranch hands and their families take refuge in a barricaded warehouse. All emerge the next morning to discover the terrifying truth – the Purge genie ain’t going back in the bottle. Paramilitary groups have decided to rid America of all “others”, with NO time limit. From coast to coast, violence explodes. In a clever reverse, Mexico and Canada now offer U.S. citizens asylum, so the wealthy ranch owners must rely on their Mexican workers to guide them to safety.

Tenoch Huerta turns in a solid performance as Juan, the Mexican immigrant gamely trying to fit in. Ana de la Reguera (so good in Netflix’s Army of the Dead) really shines as Adela, whose quiet demeanor masks a fearsome warrior. Veteran character actor Will Patton has a brief, but impactful role as the Texas family patriarch, surprised at how his country has changed. In one telling scene, a hulking skinhead being transported to jail through the Purge Night mayhem, happily rattles off a multitude of gun types based on the bullet sounds coming from the surrounding streets.

The film is a wild ride through an amped up, paranoid, gun-filled American West and while entertaining and well done (one expects no less from a movie that lists Jason Blum as a producer) the resemblance to current events is just too stark to ignore.

The Forever Purge opens Friday, July 2^nd, from Universal Pictures.

“A COMEDY OF ERRORS”

By Raymond Benson

Alastair Sim was a national treasure in Great Britain, a comic actor who never failed to make one smile or outright guffaw. His Scrooge (1951, aka A Christmas Carol) proved that he could also take a serious turn as well. This reviewer likens him to an early sort of John Cleese—an irreverent player who could do irony, surrealism, farce, wicked delight, and pure outrageousness within the confines of a somewhat realistic human being of a character.

As the star of The Green Man (1956), Sim plays an assassin named Harry Hawkins. Yes, that’s right, Alastair Sim is a mad bomber who takes it upon himself to get rid of the pompous blowhards in Britain, whether they be boring politicians or unctuous professors. He even has a Peter Lorre-like assistant, McKechnie (John Chandos), who is willing to obey Harry, even when it comes to the murder of the innocent.

Add the very funny George Cole into the mix to confound Harry’s latest plot to blow up Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley), and you have the makings of a classic.

Harry has romanced Upshott’s spinster secretary, Marigold (Avril Angers), so that he can learn the politician’s movements, but Marigold gets wise to Harry. When she arrives at Harry’s home, McKechnie has switched the name of the house with the empty one next door, and that’s where Marigold meets her end.

But wait! Ann Vincent (Jill Adams) and her husband, Reginald Willoughby-Cruft (Colin Gordon) are about to move into the murder house. Determined vacuum salesman William Blake (Cole) also mistakes the house for the address of his appointment with Harry’s housekeeper next door. Thus, William and Ann discover the murder and take it upon themselves to stop Harry’s scheme. Did we mention that the uproarious Terry-Thomas (as “Charles Boughtflower”) also appears to further stir the proceedings?

Of course, it’s much more crazily complicated than that, with numerous mistaken identities and locations, characters being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and plans going awry. It’s all hilariously funny. In short, The Green Man is British farce at its finest.

The movie is superbly written by the brilliant team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat (The Lady Vanishes, The Belles of St. Trinian’s). A formidable outfit by this time in British cinema, they also produced the picture. It is directed by cameraman Robert Day in his debut (word on the street is that Basil Dearden had an uncredited hand in it).

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray presentation looks marvelous in a 4K restoration from the original camera negative. It comes with an audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle, and it also sports the theatrical trailer for this and other Kino Lorber releases.

Highly recommended, The Green Man will color a grin upon your face and keep it there.

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By Raymond Benson

The witty, controversial, and fabulous actress/comedienne Mae West displays her jewelry to the coat check girl. “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!” the girl exclaims. Mae West coolly replies in her sultry, New York-accented signature voice, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”

The line was also the title of West’s memoir, published in 1959, and is one of her many memorable utterances, along with “Come up and see me sometime.” (However, the first time this one is spoken, in She Done Him Wrong, she actually says, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?”)

Kino Lorber has just released in restored, high-definition presentations every Mae West film made between 1932-1940—the Paramount years, plus one with Universal. This review will cover the first four out of nine titles, with the remaining five to come in a later “Part Two.”

Hollywood knew that Mae West would be trouble (but a possible box office winner) before she was invited to the west coast to star in films. She had made her name in New York vaudeville as a bawdy, talented, sexy, and very funny lady. West could sing and deliver one-liners with the best of them; she wasn’t so much a dancer, but she did have the ability to sashay with aplomb. West transitioned to Broadway, writing and starring in her own shows to great success. One, though, the 1926 play entitled Sex, got her into hot water with the morality police and she was arrested for indecency charges. West quickly bounced back, having garnered even more publicity because of the raid, and became more popular than ever. That’s when Hollywood, namely the more adventurous Paramount Pictures, came calling.

Paramount tended to push the envelope in the pre-Code days with violent gangster pictures, sex comedies, and the early movies by the anarchic, surreal Marx Brothers. Mae West fit in quite well at Paramount, where she quickly took control of her screen career. What is truly remarkable is that West was 39 when she made her first picture. For a Hollywood studio to introduce any actress at that age was unheard of, before and probably since.

All of West’s movies follow a formula established by the second one, which was such a success that it saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Usually there are crime hijinks going on involving former and current boyfriends. West acquires a flirtatious love-hate relationship with the wealthy leading man. All the men try to hoodwink West and each other, and she does some sneaky trickery to foil their plots. At the end West always ends up with the leading man, even after it seemed that they were kaput. Oh, and there are some musical numbers thrown in for good measure.

Herewith are the first four titles released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, all of which look spectacularly “new” and blemish-free.

Night After Night (1932) is really a melodrama/gangster flick starring George Raft and Constance Cummings. Mae West appears in a supporting role as Maudie Triplett, but she steals the movie. In fact, Raft in later years is known to have said, “She stole everything but the cameras!” Joe Anton (Raft) is the owner of a speakeasy (it was still Prohibition at the time), and he must handle conflicting love affairs and competition from rival mobsters. Maudie is a former girlfriend (now just a friend) who comes to the club for a good time. Her scenes with Mabel Jellyman (Alison Skipworth), the matronly woman who is teaching Joe how to speak “properly” and develop more high-class manners, are worth the price of admission—almost. The picture is all right, but without West’s debut, Night After Night would likely have dropped into obscurity. The Blu-ray comes with an audio commentary by film historians Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson, plus the theatrical trailer.

She Done Him Wrong (1933) has the distinction of being the shortest movie (66 minutes) ever to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (it lost to Cavalcade). It also features young Cary Grant as the leading man, just a few months after he appeared with Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932). Since both movies were in production around the same time, West and Dietrich publicly feuded over “who discovered Cary Grant first.” She Done Him Wrong is a comedy-gangster piece and is without a doubt the quintessential Mae West motion picture—the pre-Code suggestiveness in her dialogue and actions was cause for alarm for the Puritanical-minded in the country, paving the way for the Hays Office to initiate the Production Code on July 1, 1934. West is Lady Lou, a risqué singer in an 1890s Bowery saloon (New York City), where the owner and sometimes boyfriend, Gus (Noah Beery Jr.), is also running a prostitution ring (heavily implied) and counterfeit money operation. Captain Cummings (Grant) is an FBI man masquerading as the director of the mission next door. While he’s investigating the crimes undercover, Cummings and Lou become attracted to each other. For a movie that’s just a little over an hour, the plot is seriously complex! Nevertheless, it’s grand entertainment—it’s West at her best. The Blu-ray disk comes with two audio commentaries—one by film historian David Del Valle, and the other by film historian Kat Ellinger. There is also an introduction from Turner Classic Movies by Robert Osborne, as well as a vintage Walter Lantz cartoon starring Pooch the Pup, “She Done Him Right,” that borrows heavily from the style and tone of the Fleischers’ Betty Boop cartoons. The theatrical trailers and other West trailers round out the package.

I’m No Angel (1933) is still ensconced in sassy, sexy pre-Code sensibilities. It was West’s most financially successful picture, coming after the previous hit. Cary Grant co-stars once again. This time, West is Tira, a hootchy-cootchy singer/dancer in a circus sideshow, but she also doubles as a lion tamer (!). In one sequence she puts her head in the mouth of a lion (obviously done with rear-screen projection, but there are scenes in which West is in the cage with real lions and pets one). The sideshow impresario, Big Bill Barton (Edward Arnold) is a crook, Tira’s beau Slick (Ralf Harolde) is just as bad, and Tira wants to break away from the show and be on her own. She succeeds, goes to New York, and meets the cousin of a rich beau, Jack Clayton (Grant), who is trying to keep his relative away from Tira. They fall in love instead, of course. Look for future Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel in an uncredited role as a maid. Mae West was known for insisting on parts being given to African American actresses and actors. Unfortunately, in those days, the only roles for black performers in Hollywood were as maids, butlers, train conductors, and Tarzan natives. I’m No Angel is second in ranking only to She Done Him Wrong, with Mae West in top form in a very entertaining picture. The Blu-ray comes with an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan, plus the theatrical trailer.

Belle of the Nineties (1934) was originally supposed to be titled It Ain’t No Sin, but the Production Code went into effect just as production finished. The censors forced West to revise some dialogue and change the title. It’s a shame, for the remainder of West’s films in the 1930s, while still entertaining, were sadly neutered of their frank boldness and—let’s face it—the daring and evocative innuendos that made Mae West movies something to see. In this one, she plays Ruby, a singer in the 1890s (again), this time in St. Louis. Her boyfriend, boxer Tiger Kid (Roger Pryor) finds that he has rivals in wealthier, “classier” men (who are all crooks, though). She moves to New Orleans for a better position, only to become embroiled in fight fixing shenanigans. Belle is a tangible step down from the previous two pictures. While directed by comedy stalwart Leo McCarey (Duck Soup, The Awful Truth, and later, Going My Way), Belle sort of plods along and doesn’t produce the expected belly laughs. It does, however, introduce the jazz standard, “My Old Flame,” sung by West and accompanied by Duke Ellington and his band on screen. The Blu-ray comes with an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan, plus the theatrical trailer.

Certainly a boon for film history lovers and aficionados of 1930s Hollywood, these new Kino Lorber Blu-ray releases are terrific. Cinema Retro will review the remaining five Mae West titles—including one co-starring W. C. Fields—in a coming piece. To be continued!

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BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

"If a movie makes you happy, for whatever reason, then it's a good movie."

Big E

*******WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*******

Giant bug movies have always been a favorite of mine; Tarantula, Black Scorpion, The Deadly Mantis, Earth vs. The Spider, etc. The best of them all has to be Them!, the 1954 classic about atomic testing causing ants to mutate to gigantic proportions. It was the first and best of the 1950s cycle of big bug movies.

In the 1970s, bugs and just about every other form of nature, struck back against irresponsible humans who were poisoning the planet in a plethora of nature-runs-amok films such as Frogs, Kingdom of the Spiders, Squirm, etc. They may not have been gigantic like they were in the 50s, but they were just as deadly. However, Mr. B.I.G. himself, Bert I. Gordon, the man responsible for entertaining, 1950s giant creature classics like The Amazing Colossal Man, Beginning of the End, Village of the Giants and the aforementioned Earth vs. The Spider, had already brought back giant wasps and worms in 1976's Food of the Gods, and felt that 1977 was the time to bring back the best giant insects of them all: the ants. Using the great H.G. Wells's popular short story as his inspiration, Empire of the Ants was born.

The movie begins when a canister of toxic waste, which was dumped and supposed to sink into the ocean, washes up on shore and leaks its toxic sludge into a neighboring ant hole.

Nearby, con woman Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins) and her lover/partner Charlie (Edward Power) attempt to sell some worthless land called Dreamland Shores to a large group of potential buyers including nice guy Joe (John David Carson), middle-aged Margaret (Jacqueline Scott), beautiful Coreen (Pamela Susan Shoop), two-timing Larry (Robert Pine) and his poor wife Christine (Brooke Palance).

As the group surveys the land, a few members break off on their own. Cautious Margaret, while flirting with boat driver Dan (Robert Lansing), asks him if he thinks the land is a good investment; Larry gets Coreen alone, puts the moves on her and gets a knee to the groin for his trouble, and Coreen eventually hits it off with Joe. All the while, the ants silently watch them.

The entire group is gathered and taken on a leisurely tour of the area. The tour doesn't last long though as the dead body of one of Marilyn's crew (Tom Ford) is found. Joe and Coreen volunteer to check things out and find the remains of a married couple (Jack Kosslyn and Ilse Earl) that were originally part of the group. To their horror, they also find a horde of giant ants and all hell breaks loose as the intelligent insects attack and destroy Dan's boat. With no way off the island, the terrified group starts a campfire in order to keep the ants away.

The next morning, a storm begins and the rain puts out the fire. The group frantically decides to make a run for it with the ants hot on their tail. An elderly couple (Harry Holcombe and Irene Tedrow), who can't keep up, hides out in an old shack. Christine falls, sprains her ankle and is killed by the ants, and, while helping a tangled Marilyn escape from a tree branch, Charlie also meets his demise. As the rain stops, the elderly couple, thinking that i's safe, emerges from the shack only to find an army of ants waiting for them. The remaining group members stumble upon a rowboat and slowly take off down the river. The ants attack again, turning the boat over and killing Larry.

The group realizes that the ants are leading them toward a specific destination upstream and, as they continue to move along, they come across an old couple (Tom Fadden and Florence McGee) who contact the sheriff (Albert Salmi) for them. The sheriff drives them into town, but the relieved survivors soon realize that something still isn't right. They can't seem to find a working phone and everyone in the small town acts very suspiciously.

The group decides to hotwire a car, but while trying to escape, they're captured by the authorities and taken to the local sugar refinery. While there, they discover that the queen ant is using her pheromones to control every human being in the town and forcing them to feed the giant ants. Marilyn is the first to come under the queen's control, but when they try to control Dan, the clever boat captain burns the queen with a road flare he took from the abandoned car. Dan escapes with Margaret, Joe and Coreen, but Marilyn, who snaps out of her trance too late, is killed by the out of control queen.

Knowing that if the gigantic ants aren't stopped they will multiply and eventually take over the world, Joe drives a leaking fuel truck into the refinery and blows the insects to kingdom come. As the entire place goes up in flames, Joe, Coreen, Dan and Margaret reach a speedboat and drive off to safety.

MISSISSIPPI BLUES

By Raymond Benson

Robert Altman’s 1974 crime drama, Thieves Like Us, when viewed today, seems to be a cross between Bonnie and Clyde (which preceded Thieves) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which appeared twenty-six years later). It’s the Depression-era story, based on the novel by Edward Anderson, of a trio of escaped convicts who go on a bank-robbing spree. But it’s also a love story between one of the thieves, Bowie (played by a young Keith Carradine), and a country girl, Keechie (portrayed by a young Shelley Duvall), and this is the aspect of Altman’s film that truly shines. The novel was also the source inspiration for Nicholas Ray’s 1949 film noir, They Live By Night, starring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. As much as I like 1940s and 50s film noir, for my money, Altman’s is the better version.

Altman, who had a decidedly hit-and-miss career over six decades, was on a roll in the early seventies. Thieves Like Us is indeed one of his hits—from a critical standpoint—although it didn’t necessarily do bang-up box office. Filmed on location in Mississippi, Altman and his production team managed to find authentic 1930s settings, lending a you-are-there feel to the period piece. More importantly, Altman chose not to use a traditional musical score but instead relied on vintage radio programs to fill out the ambiance. That part was a stroke of genius.

The director also often utilized a stock company of actors, many of whom appeared in multiple pictures. In this case, besides Carradine and Duvall—who are terrific in their roles—there is John Schuck and Bert Remsen as the other two thieves, and Tom Skerritt as a shady service station owner. Louise Fletcher, in a pre-Cuckoo’s Nest performance, is effective as Remsen’s sister-in-law, who aides and abets the criminals until she has a change of heart.

But the picture belongs to Carradine and Duvall, whose love scenes are intimate, honest, and endearing. Their characters are extremely likable and exude an innocence that is a counterpoint to the violence depicted in the rest of the picture. The fact that these two relatively unknown actors (at the time) were cast as leads attests to the New Hollywood attitude of allowing auteurs do their thing. It’s too bad that the studios clamped down on risk-taking after the 70s.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray has A high-definition transfer of the film—which looks fine—and the theatrical trailer and a commentary by Altman himself as extras. The location scenery—especially the muddy roads, the rain, and the back-country hills and shacks, are strikingly beautiful, thanks to Jean Boffety’s soft cinematography.

One of the better “lovers on the run” pictures, Thieves Like Us is worth grabbing.

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RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

BY TODD GARBARINI

When I was a teenager, the Boy Scout troop that I was a member of consisted of nearly 25 scouts. We had a few older scouts whom the rest of the younger scouts looked up to, and during our weekend camping trips the seniors made every effort to scare the beejezus out of us youngsters with ludicrous tales of ghosts or killers hiding out in the woods. These stories were often woven around a campfire in the late hours of the evening when we were all seemingly vulnerable. During the summer of 1980, Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th was doing well at the box office, so I was already aware of these “murderers in the woods”-themed films. This didn’t make it any easier for us to go on camping trips! The success of Friday the 13th gave birth to countless carbon copies of young adults-being-stalked-in-the-woods films. One such outing is the late Joe Gianonne’s Madman, a film released in January 1982 by Jensen Farley pictures, a distribution company responsible for other horror outings including Richard Ciupka’s Curtains (1983). The schematic premise of Madman is so basic and so bereft of suspense (at least by today’s standards) that I hate to say anything negative about the film, simply because the cast and crew involved in the making of it and showcased in the behind-the-scenes extras are just such nice people! The film probably works great for young kids who have never seen a horror film and are unfamiliar with all the extended silences and dramatic “stings” that have become clichés that populate the second half of the film. Madman opens at a campsite with a scene that appears more silly than sinister. T.P. (Tony Fish) sports a ridiculous belt buckle with his initials on it and does his best to scare a group of young campers and staff members with a song about being killed in the woods. One of the leaders of the camp, Max (the late Carl Fredericks), talks about some nut-job named Madman Marz who supposedly roams the wilderness waiting for someone to yell out his name so he can wreak havoc on them. Naturally, this only compels one dope in the group to yell out his name and make fun of him, challenging Madman Marz to come get everyone prior to an evening of illicit sex. How Madman eats and survives the wilderness is never addressed. T.P. has the hots for Betsey (Gaylen Ross of 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, inexplicably cast here with the name of Alexis Dubin) and makes no bones about it in a silly hot tub scene set to yet another song. The rest of the cast are a group of newbies who are set up for slaughter but their personalities never reach the likeability factor that Laurie, Linda and Annie reached in Halloween (1978).

There is a fair amount of gore spilled in this film and by the end you sort of feel glad that it’s all over. Madman Marz could be considered the cinematic brethren of Andrew Garth in Tom DeSimone’s far more entertaining Hell Night (1981) who creeps around Garth Manor, or even Victor Crwley in Adam Green’s Hatchet movies. Hell Night was the first film that Frank Darabont worked on (he’s not a fan of it!) and it truly deserves a Blu-ray release.

What sets this new Madman DVD/Blu-ray combo set apart is Vinegar Syndrome’s wealth of extras that appear on both formats:

• - The film boasts two separate running commentaries that run through the entire 90-minute running time. They feature comments from director Joe Giannone, producer Gary Sales and actors Paul Ehlers and Tony Fish.
• - There is an intro in HD that runs just under one minute as producer Gary Sales talks before the Blu-ray presentation.

• - Madman: Alive at 35 runs 21 minutes, is shot in HD and features producer Gary Sales and actors Tom Candela and Paul Ehlers who discuss the making of the film.
• - The Early Career of Gary Sales is an interview with producer Gary Sales. Shot in HD, it runs 14 min. and 15 seconds in length, but Mr. Sales speaks with a great deal of energy and explains that he went to film school with director Armand Mastroianni who, at that time, had directed He Knows You’re Alone (1980), a clear Halloween (1978) rip-off. So, despite the sort running time, he includes a wealth of info. It seemed like everyone was making these types of horror films at the time, and Madman is loosely based upon the legend of Cropsey, who became famous in Staten Island, NY. Mr. Sales also explains how he got his start in the industry by working on a sex film in New York in 1973 entitled It Happened in Hollywood. If you were looking to break into the film industry in the early 1970’s, one way to do it was through the adult film industry. It was here that he met Wes Craven who edited Hollywood, as well as Peter Locke. Wes Craven and Peter Locke would go on to make The Hills Have Eyes in 1977, so networking and making contacts are everything. What makes this documentary/interview so fascinating is that we are given a first-hand account by the producer as to what it took for him to not only get into the film industry, but to get the ball rolling on Madman. It wasn't like it is today, where somebody can make a film on a cell phone or an iPad and simply upload it to someone.
• - The Legend Still Lives is from 2011, which is strange as Code Red had just released a 30^th anniversary edition DVD at the time. Shot in SD, it runs an unbelievable 91 minutes (longer than the movie!) and gives you just about all you would want to know about the film. Cast and crew and other experts in the field of horror talk about the film and, in a maneuver that would make Sean Clark happy, we are taken to the filming location, only to find that most of the buildings that appeared in the film have been torn down many years ago.
• - There is a stills & artwork gallery that runs over seven minutes and provides newspaper ads and reviews.
• - Music Inspired by Madman runs just over 13 minutes and consists of submissions of music by fans. This film has quite a following!
• - In Memoriam runs almost six minutes and discusses the passing of both Joe Giannone the director Carl Fredericks.
• - Rounding out the extras are brief discussions with Mr. Sales and Mr. Ehlers at a horror film convention; TV spots, and the theatrical trailer.

I would recommend this to not only fans of the film, but to fans of the genre who want an insight into filmmaking in general, and what it took to get a film like this made in the 1970’s/1980’s.

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“TOMORROW’S NEWS TODAY!”

By Raymond Benson

One wonders if Bond villain Elliot Carver (Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997) ever saw the 1944 comedy-fantasy, It Happened Tomorrow. Carver’s evil plot involved making bad news happen so that his newspapers could scoop the headlines before other media outlets even learned about the events. “Tomorrow’s News Today!” was his slogan.

In the fanciful and entertaining It Happened Tomorrow, a newspaper man receives tomorrow’s news today, allowing him to write the piece and get it ready to go to the presses before the incident occurs.

French filmmaker René Clair had come to Hollywood in the early 1940s after working for a time in the U.K. He made a handful of pictures for different studios, namely I Married a Witch (1942) and And Then There Were None (1945). In-between those notable titles came It Happened Tomorrow, which was based on an unproduced screenplay by Hugh Wedlock and Howard Snyder, as well as a stage play, The Jest of Haha Laba,” by Lord Dunsany. A new script, by Clair and Dudley Nichols, with additional dialogue by Helene Fraenkel, ensued, and the picture was greenlit by producer Arnold Pressburger. The resulting delightful film was a modest success in the USA and did extremely well overseas.

Journalist Larry Stevens (Dick Powell) is astounded when kindly “Pop” Benson (John Philliber), an older employee at the newspaper, gives him a copy of tomorrow’s edition before it has gone to press. A frontpage article with Stevens’ by-line concerns a robbery at an opera theater. Figuring that he has nothing to lose, Stevens asks Sylvia Smith (Linda Darnell) on a date to the opera. Sylvia is half of a mind-reading act with her Uncle Oscar (Jack Oakie), but even she admits that it’s a lot of hooey. Sure enough, though, the robbery occurs, Stevens writes it up—and Police Inspector Mulrooney (Edgar Kennedy) suspects that Lawrence was in on the crime. As time moves forward, Stevens receives even more future editions of the newspaper, so he continues to pursue the stories before they happen. Eventually, of course, he is unable to explain to his boss, the police, and even his girlfriend how this is possible. When a headline predicts Larry’s own death, things become complicated!

This whimsical, cautionary tale is well directed and cleverly written. Cinema buffs might liken it to the works of Frank Capra (who had originally been attached to the project) or Preston Sturges. Dick Powell carries the picture with confidence and humor. The actor was just beginning to transition out of musical-comedy roles into more serious ones (Murder, My Sweet was released the same year). While Powell displays his good-natured comic talent in It Happened Tomorrow, there are hints of the pathos and thoughtfulness to come. Jack Oakie is always hilarious, as is Edgar Kennedy. Linda Darnell is easy on the eyes, to be sure, but her role is perhaps the only underwritten aspect of the movie. Still, there are plenty of laughs and a potent message to boot.

The Cohen Media Group has issued a marvelous Blu-ray restoration from a 4K scan. It looks wonderful, despite a few instances of artifacts and scratches. There are optional subtitles for the hearing impaired, plus the theatrical trailer. Alas, there are no supplements.

It Happened Tomorrow should appeal to fans of fun, time-bending fare such as Groundhog Day. Recommended.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Kurt Russell and the late great character actor J.T. 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). In the Spring of 1997, I saw the trailer for a new film called Breakdown, also featuring these two fine actors. I groaned - it looked like just another run-of-the-mill, headache-inducing, over-the-top testosterone action fest with very little basis in reality. Foolishly, I avoided it until I found myself at the Glendale 9, an Arizona multiplex drive-in while in Phoenix on a business trip. Breakdown was just about the only movie on the marquee that looked remotely interesting, though I still had serious doubts. Reluctantly, I paid the admission, fearing the worst. For the first time in a long time, I was wrong. Completely wrong. My initial reservations about Breakdown were totally erased halfway through the story. Years of suffering through uninteresting action films with empty, amusement park-like “thrills” almost prevented me from seeing one of the best films of the 1990s and a movie that easily lends itself to repeat viewings. I watched Breakdown while reclining on the hood of my rental car. To say that I was absolutely riveted would be a huge understatement. I thought the paint would permanently adhere to my sweaty palms.

For me, Breakdown is a near masterpiece. To disclose the plot would destroy what I found to be an utterly nail-biting motion picture experience, which is something I do not think I have ever truly experienced. There are some spoilers ahead, so non-viewers please tread lightly. There is such an overwhelming sense of menace and peril in Breakdown that it almost becomes a cruel experiment in fear. For a first-time directing job by Jonathan Mostow, who previously scripted the Michael Douglas/David Fincher film The Game (1997), Breakdown is awe-inspiring. The opening credits sequence alone is imaginative and appropriate to the story, utilizing animation to simultaneously represent a mesh of cartographic interstates and what could also be construed as cerebral arteries. The film’s title is a double meaning. Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan are Jeff and Amy Taylor, a forty-something married couple moving from New England to San Diego in a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo SUV. On their way driving through the empty plains of the Midwest, Jeff is momentarily distracted reaching for his thermos and just misses crashing into a mud caked Ford F150 pick-up driven by a large man who shouts obscenities. An unfortunate encounter ensues later when the man castigates Jeff while refueling. Speeding away, the new Jeep suffers an electrical difficulty and Jeff and Amy find themselves stranded in a place befitting of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. The Ford truck speeds by, cheerfully acknowledging the couple’s plight with a long horn blow leading to a brief and tense stand-off which is alleviated by the arrival of Red Barr, a truck driver (the late great J.T. Walsh) who offers to give Amy a ride to Belle’s Diner some miles down the road to call road service (his CB blew a fuse earlier and is non-functioning). When she accepts, Jeff waits…and waits…and discovers an unplugged wire in the Jeep’s undercarriage.

Normally, I would call out Amy’s foolishness for accepting such a ride as a woman her age should know the dangers of hitch-hiking, however New Englanders routinely give rides to one another and this plot point helps explain her action. Jeff makes his way to the diner and all the patrons and owner (a terrific turn by character actor Jack McGee) do not recall seeing her, except for a mildly slow co-worker in the parking lot. This puts into motion a high level of suspense as Jeff’s cell phone fails to get decent service while he rushes to find his wife. It turns out that Jeff and Amy have been pegged for financial embezzlement by Red, Earl (M.C. Gainey as the Ford driver), Billy (Jack Noseworthy, the “slow” diner worker), and Al (the late Rich Brinkley), a husky accomplice. Rex Linn of TV’s Better Call Saul is also on hand as a police officer who offers Jeff some recourse.

Breakdown, which opened on Friday, May 2, 1997, might appear to be an action film, but it is more of a thriller with some action sequences. It has been a longtime indeed since this level of suspense has seen the light of day on the silver screen. It is so good, in fact, that it feels like a Seventies film made in the Nineties. It is amazing that it was not the blockbuster that it deserved to be. Poor marketing perhaps?

Shooting in the 2.35:1 Panavision ratio, Mr. Mostow has created a plausible scenario replete with four of the most frightening villains seen of late. They certainly give Bill McKinney and Herbert "Cowboy" Coward, the mountain men in Deliverance (1972), a run for their money. J. T. Walsh, who unfortunately passed away not too long after this film was released (his death is a real loss to the film world), appears in one of the best performances of his sterling and memorable career: a purely evil man who doubles as an everyday Joe who loves his wife and son (Moira Harris and Vincent Berry, respectively) but commits terrible acts for money. You get the feeling that these monsters have been doing what they do for a long time, although there were moments wherein I thought a double-cross would transpire among them. They all appear to be loyal to one another, making me wonder how these guys ended up together in the first place. The supporting cast all do a phenomenal job as well.

Breakdown’s plot is by no means original. This type of story depicting a person who goes missing has been told over many decades: Robert Fuest's And Soon the Darkness (1970), Philip Leacock's television film Dying Room Only (1973), and, in particular, George Sluizer’s icy 1988 Dutch/French character study Spoorloos, known in the States as The Vanishing. Breakdown succeeds for the same reason that Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971) does (though Duel is more cinematic): it takes two ordinary human beings and thrusts them into a horrendous situation they would never have any reason to suspect they would ever be a part of. That is not to say that the film does not have a few convenient plot devices, but even when it does, they can be forgiven.

“THE FUTURE ISN’T HISTORY, IT’S NOW”

By Raymond Benson

As related by Ian Christie, author of Gilliam on Gilliam, the filmmaker Terry Gilliam has forever had an uneasy relationship with Hollywood studios. He is “difficult” or “problematic” or whatever, because sometimes he runs over budget or the films don’t make back the cost, or whatever.

This is unfortunately true, no matter how hard Gilliam tries to “play the Hollywood game.” That said, any afficionado of cinema can appreciate that Terry Gilliam is always interesting. Even when his pictures tend to jump the shark, they’re always worth seeing. And when he’s good, he’s often great.

Such is the case with the 1995 science fiction oddity, 12 Monkeys. It’s one of the great ones. It is arguably one of Gilliam’s most accomplished achievements, along with Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), and, with some reservations, Time Bandits (1981).

When Gilliam, the only American member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, entered the 1990s, he was coming off the “disaster” that was The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), which, while admired by many, was a money loser and troubled production. It sealed his reputation in Hollywood as the aforementioned “problematic” director. He set out to make The Fisher King under the strict Hollywood guidelines and succeeded, and then proceeded to do the same with 12 Monkeys—and he triumphed with that, too. The studio (Universal), however, attributed the film’s success to the cast, especially the presence of Brad Pitt, and not to Gilliam’s imaginative vision. What a shortsighted bunch of bureaucrats!

12 Monkeys is a time-travel/apocalyptic tale about James Cole (Bruce Willis), a man from the future who is sent back in time to gather evidence and perhaps the tools needed to prevent the outbreak of a deadly virus that wiped out much of humanity in the year 1996. At first, he is mistakenly dropped into 1990, where he is perceived by all, including psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), as insane. In a mental institution, he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a total wacko with environmentalist/activist leanings. He is the leader of an underground, possibly terrorist, group called the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Goines’ father, Leland (Christopher Plummer), is the biologist who ends up creating the virus. The scientists in the future realize their mistake, bring Cole back to their present, and then send him back to the correct year, with the brief hiccup of him landing on a battlefield during World War I. Once again, he connects with Dr. Railly, but this time she begins to believe his story. With his third journey back to correct the mistakes he’s made, Cole and Railly work together to prevent the release of the virus—and fall in love, too.

The movie is a twisty-turny mind-boggler written by David and Janet Peoples, based on a short film, La Jetée (1962), by Chris Marker (which Gilliam claimed to have not seen until after he completed 12 Monkeys). The intelligent script, along with the superb performances by the main cast and the inspired direction by Gilliam, combine to make 12 Monkeys one of the highlights of the 1990s decade in cinema.

Brad Pitt, especially, shines in the film, playing against type as a crazed, hyper-energetic weirdo (wearing brown contact lenses, and one eye that manages to operate independently of the other). He was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar and won a Golden Globe for his performance, and this reviewer is hard pressed to pinpoint a better turn through the rest of Pitt’s career to date. Willis, too, plays up his “sensitive” side—something new for audiences then—and comes across extremely well.

Most significantly, 12 Monkeys plays today as ironically potent, given what the world has been going through since the spring of 2020. It’s a film dealing with a deadly global pandemic that was made 25 years earlier. The tag line at the time was “The future is history.” Today, we could say, “The future isn’t history, it’s now!”

Arrow Video’s exquisite Blu-ray edition was released in 2018. Cinema Retro received the new Limited Edition Steelbook for review, and it’s a gorgeous package. The disk is the same as the 2018 release, it’s just encased in the keepsake steelbook with newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin and a booklet containing a piece on the film by Nathan Rabin and an excerpt from Gilliam on Gilliam. The feature is presented in High Definition with both DTS 5.1 Master Audio and 2.0 stereo soundtracks, plus optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired. There is an entertaining and informative audio commentary by Gilliam and producer Charles Roven. Supplements include a feature-length documentary on the making of the film, a vintage interview with Gilliam by film critic Jonathan Romney, and a superlative “appreciation” of the picture by author Ian Christie. There is also a collection of archive material and the theatrical trailer.

While 12 Monkeys is worth the trip just for Brad Pitt’s out of the box performance, it is also Terry Gilliam at the height of his powers. Don’t miss it.

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“THE ORIGINAL MONEY PIT”

By Raymond Benson

Remember the 1986 comedy The Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long? The official credits of that film do not mention the excellent writing team of Frank Panama and Melvin Frank, who adapted Eric Hodgins’ 1946 biographical comic novel Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House into the popular 1948 “disaster comedy” starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The Money Pit is, in reality, an under-the-table remake of Blandings. It’s a pity that the original was not acknowledged, for, frankly, Blandings is much more realistic (and clever).

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was indeed a popular film and yet during its initial run was deemed to have lost money—just like the hapless Mr. Blandings does while attempting to move out of New York City to Connecticut. The movie is funny enough, for sure, but perhaps in 1948 audiences were wary of a motion picture that shed a dark—albeit comic—shade on what many Americans were doing at that time—moving out of the big cities and into the suburbs!

The Blandings (Grant and Loy) and their two teen daughters live in a pretty nice three-bedroom (or is it two?—it’s unclear) apartment in Manhattan… although like all apartments in Manhattan, it is simply not big enough for the family of four. They all share one bathroom, and the closet spaces are hazard zones. Blandings is an advertising executive who is under pressure to create a winning slogan for a brand of ham called “Wham.” Against the advice of his best friend and lawyer, Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas), Blandings buys a decrepit Revolutionary era place in Connecticut. Before he can remodel it, though, every surveyor and inspector tell him it’s best to tear it down and start building a new house afresh. That’s where the trouble starts. Everything becomes more expensive than was first imagined, and the venture indeed becomes a money pit.

The picture is a collection of often amusing set pieces that feature Grant doing his frustrated slow burn act, with Loy somewhat nonchalantly enjoying the havoc the house is wreaking on the family. Yes, the movie has some laughs, but ultimately there is something amiss when Melvyn Douglas surprisingly steals it away from the likes of Cary Grant. Douglas plays the narrator/friend role with a detached, delightful cynicism, and without a doubt he has all the best lines. Without his presence, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House might truly have been a disaster.

The script, however, is witty. The writing team of Panama and Frank worked with Bob Hope on many of his better pictures, and they also wrote the hilarious The Court Jester with Danny Kaye. Perhaps with better direction (H. C. Potter has only a handful of titles on his CV, although he directed Loretta Young to a Best Actress Oscar in The Farmer’s Wife), Blandings might have soared.

The Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray is an upgrade on a previous DVD release—it looks and sounds sharp with its DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono soundtrack. There are English subtitles for the hearing impaired. Supplements include two different radio broadcasts of the piece. One is the Lux Radio Theater from 1949 starring Grant and Irene Dunne, and the other is the Screen Directors Playhouse from 1950 starring Grant and Betsy Drake. A vintage Tex Avery cartoon, “The House of Tomorrow,” is shockingly sexist and near-misogynistic, but reflects the times in which it appeared. The re-issue trailer rounds out the package.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is worth a date-movie evening and still might serve as a cautionary tale before one does a deep dive into erecting a home. Buyer beware!

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“A LIKABLE CAD”

By Raymond Benson

Robert Young had a career of playing mostly trustworthy nice guys—after all, one could say he was born to play Marcus Welby, M.D. on television. But in 1947, he took the chance of portraying an all-around heel, a no-good philanderer who married for money and looks for every opportunity to score with someone new. And yet, Young’s admirable qualities are still there, making his character of Larry Ballentine in the film noir drama, They Won’t Believe Me, a likable cad. He pulls it off, too.

Audiences didn’t take to the change, though, and the picture was a box office dud. However, the lack of profits when a movie is released is never a true indication of its quality. They Won’t Believe Me is an artfully crafted, well-acted, twisty tale about lies, fate, and luck.

The original screenplay was written by Jonathan Latimer, creator of the William Crane crime novels as well as other mysteries and thrillers of the 30s through the 50s. He was also a prolific screenwriter; his work includes The Glass Key (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). The director, Irving Pichel, was primarily an actor, but he often sat behind the camera for two decades; one of his later pictures was Destination Moon (1950)! Hollywood stalwart Harry J. Wild served as cinematographer, and he already had his film noir chops down with such fare as Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Johnny Angel (1945).

The cast is excellent. Besides Young, who is in every scene of the movie, there is the luminous Susan Hayward, an extremely talented and beautiful actress who left us far too soon. Supporting them are Jane Greer (of Out of the Past fame), Rita Johnson, and Tom Powers (who played Barbara Stanwyck’s doomed husband in Double Indemnity).

Larry (Young) is on trial for murdering Verna (Hayward). His defense lawyer puts him on the stand to tell his story; thus, the film is told in flashback, with the courtroom sequences functioning as a framing device. Larry admits he was not a good husband to wealthy Gretta (Johnson) and that he married her for her money. Gretta was also aware of this and she tolerated his infidelities because she knew he would never leave. After an almost-tryst with Janice (Greer), he meets Verna at his lucrative new office job that Gretta had arranged for him. Verna is likely going to marry the boss, Trenton (Powers), but she honestly reveals to Larry that she’s a gold-digger and, frankly, what we call a “party girl.” She has no qualms with having an affair with Larry. But they actually fall in love, so Larry makes sincere plans to leave Gretta and run away with Verna. Unfortunately, twists of fate interfere with their plans. We know Verna dies from the beginning of the movie, and how this occurs is one of the surprises in the plot. When Gretta meets a similar fate, then Larry sweats it out until he is ultimately arrested. At 95-minutes, They Won’t Believe Me is the celluloid equivalent of a page-turner, and how it all plays out is always unpredictable.

The Warner Archive has released an astonishingly gorgeous high-definition restoration in glorious black and white that looks as if the print is brand new. It comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono soundtrack and English subtitles for the hearing impaired. Unfortunately, there are no supplements on the disk.

You won’t believe how compelling They Won’t Believe Me is until you see it. Check it out.

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“SKIP THE JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND GET RIGHT TO THE SEX”

By Raymond Benson

Kino Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture” with Volume 10—Wages of Sin. Unlike the other exploitation titles that have appeared over the last two years, Wages is not an American picture; instead, it comes from Switzerland and was originally released as a serious drama examining the social problem of illegal abortions and the need to educate the public in birth control, as well as make a case for the legalization of a woman’s right to choose. The original German title translates to, roughly, The Doctor Says… or The Doctor Speaks Out…

However, American producer/director/actor Donn Davison, who at the time was a practitioner in the grindhouse and exploitation film circuit, secured the U.S. rights to the film and released it in 1966 with the salacious title of Wages of Sin. The movie was dubbed into English—although the dubbing actors speak with German accents, so go figure. Davison would appear in a “professional” capacity as a doctor (it is unclear if he really had any medical credentials) to provide a short lecture to the audience and hawk “how-to” sex manuals during intermission. Davison filmed his 15-minute presentation to show at drive-in theaters, where obviously he couldn’t speak in person. (This filmed lecture is included as a supplement on the new Kino Lorber/Something Weird disk, and it is hilarious. He tells us that we “may have seen him on Johnny Carson talking about juvenile delinquency and sexual matters… but tonight he’s going to skip the juvenile delinquency and get right to the sex.”)

These delicious and suitably sleazy pictures in the “Forbidden Fruit” series were made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system, and certainly in this case outside of the U.S. 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.” For adults only, mind you, but exhibited all in the good name of science or health or whatever.

Wages of Sin is such a serious and sincere take on the subject matter that it is mind-boggling to think that anyone would be titillated by it. One can imagine trench coat wearing patrons complaining to the theater management afterwards and asking for their money back, because there is absolutely no nudity or sex in the film. Instead, there is real, clinical footage of childbirth, frank talk about birth control, and dramatized depictions of back-alley abortions.

The story concerns well-meaning Dr. Maurer (Tadeusz Lomnicki) and his superior Dr. Diener (René Deltgen) as they deal with several female patients for various maladies regarding pregnancy, botched abortions, and childbirth. Some of the women’s stories end happily, but others are not so fortunate. Maurer is determined to get the illegal abortionists behind bars but also stop the insane law that criminalizes the women who receive the procedure. In short, the film, while melodramatic and a bit stodgy, has an important message that is still relevant today.

And yet, in the U.S., the picture was promoted with sensational taglines such as, “Shocking! Beyond Description!” and “No one under 16 admitted without parents!” Shocking indeed.

At most exhibitions of Wages of Sin, a second feature, The Misery and Fortune of Women (aka Frauennot, Frauenglück) was shown. This picture, from 1929, is also a Swiss production of the same ilk—a serious drama about pregnancy, illegal abortions, and childbirth—that was just as potent in its original year of release as today. In fact, it might be the better movie in the “package.” It was directed by Eduard Tissé, but the picture was “supervised” and co-edited by none other than Sergei Eisenstein (of Battleship Potemkin fame)! One can see Eisenstein’s influence, especially in the close-ups of faces.

The new Kino Lorber Blu-ray presents both features in high-def restorations and they both look remarkably good. Wages of Sin comes with an informative audio commentary by film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, who brings a welcome feminine point of view to the proceedings. Supplements include the previously mentioned Donn Davison “lecture” and two shorts that were sometimes also exhibited with the two main features—Life and Its Secrecies (with clinical footage of various types of childbirth), and Triplets by Cesarean Section (a silent film of the real delivery of triplets). Both the latter short films suffer from poor visual quality, but it doesn’t make them less icky. Trailers from other Forbidden Fruit titles round out the package.

For fans of exploitation pictures, or for those interested in how the subject matter was handled both in 1966 and 1929, the Wages of Sin disk is for you!

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Film director Richard Rush, perhaps best known for his unorthodox and original 1980 film The Stunt Man, passed away in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday, April 8, 2021 just one week shy of what would have been his 92^nd birthday following years of health issues. He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Claude (née Claude Cuveraux); his son, Anthony; and his grandson, Shayne.

Mr. Rush was born on Monday, April 15, 1929 in New York City and broke into the film industry through the UCLA film program and later worked for producer and director Roger Corman as the co-writer and director of Too Soon to Love (1960), alternatively titled High School Honeymoon, about high school sweethearts who go all the way and the girl ends up pregnant. This was heady subject matter for the time and Jack Nicholson has a small role in the film. Of Love and Desire (1963), a sexually charged film, followed. Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) had Jack Nicholson as part of a motorcycle gang, and Thunder Alley (1967) starred Annette Funicello and Fabian. Another teen, heartthrob Tab Hunter, starred in The Cups of San Sebastien (1967) as a religious artifact thief. A Man Called Dagger (1968) featured Terry Moore in a film about a scientist’s attempts to revive the Third Reich. Psych-Out (1968) was a far-out psychedelic trip about a hearing-impaired runaway searching for her brother in San Francisco, with Jack Nicholson again along for the ride.

Mr. Rush ended the Sixties with crazy bikers in The Savage Seven (1968) and began the Seventies with the counter-culture film Getting Straight (1970), a comedy-drama with Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen. 1974’s Freebie and the Bean pitted Alan Arkin and James Caan against crime as cops, one of the earliest buddy/cop films, but it was his ambitious film interpretation of Paul Brodeur’s 1970 novel of the same name that captivated filmgoers. Years in the making and the victim of a poor advertising campaign and minimal distribution, The Stunt Man pits an escaped convict named Cameron (Steve Railsback) into the middle of an action sequence that is actually the set of a war movie, unexpectedly causing the death of the stunt man of the film within the film. The director, Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole), then puts Cameron in the film, specifically in all sorts of dangerous situations, in order to get truth onscreen. Cross’s manipulation of Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey) is exceptionally cruel. The film is a litmus test for audiences as we have to keep track of what is real and what is in the reel – reality as opposed to the movie-within-the-movie. I see the film as a challenge and it’s a rewarding experience.

Mr. Rush was a true maverick director and was nominated for both a co-writing and directing Academy Award, as was Mr. O’Toole for his performance of the out-of-control director. Despite not getting the wide audience that it deserved, The Stunt Man lives on in the world of home video.

Mr. Rush’s last film was Color of Night with Bruce Willis and Jane March in 1994.

BY TODD GARBARINI

I love home video. It has introduced me to the films that have been held near and dear to me in a far more intimate way than broadcast television ever could. The first home video system that I ever owned was the RCA SelectaVision Capacitance Electronic Disc system, a $500M failure that nearly bankrupted its creator, RCA, just five years after its inauspicious introduction in March 1981, Following 17 years of research and development hell, it proved to be a technological also-ran even before it left the gate. Star Wars (1977) and Poltergeist (1982) were the first two films that I owned on a caddie-enclosed 12-inch capacitive disc that were played over and over again during the spring and summer of 1983. These were not just movies that I saw, these were movies that I owned. They were mine and they became a part of my identity.

I came of age during the video store rental era. I broke my VHS rental cherry by illegally duplicating the only store copy of Media Home Entertainment’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) on Independence Day in 1985 from a local drug store’s video department. I did this even before I owned a VCR and before the anti-copying encoding scheme called Macrovision infiltrated pre-recorded tapes, forcing me to finagle work-arounds. Like so many towns in the surrounding areas, video stores proliferated with their original scent resulting from a mixture of the new carpet and the video boxes that adorned the aisles and shelves. Despite the eclectic assortment of titles, each store was severely limited in terms of the sheer number of VHS titles that they carried. One store actually rented Beta cassettes!

In December 1988, a new and exceptionally large video store with blue and yellow lettering appeared three miles from my house. It was called Blockbuster Video and it offered movies I never knew even made it to home video. I managed to see Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), Brian DePalma’s Sisters (1973), Ulu Grosbard’s Straight Time (1978), and James Toback’s Fingers (1978) all from this one store. I was in heaven! The glaring absence of adult titles was curious since all the local stores had them, even the corporate chains like Palmer Video and later on Easy Video. Porn was most definitely a lucrative part of a store’s weekend intake, but the religious-owned Blockbuster spurned such fare in favor of unrated violent gorefests like Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Bad Taste (1986). Little by little, however, Blockbusters started to show up in neighboring towns sporting multiple key differentiators: having upwards of 25 VHS copies of the newest releases on hand whereas local stores generally only had one copy in stock; allowing renters to keep movies for three days and two nights as opposed to two days and one night; and allowing renters to return the tape to a store after hours through a drop box.

Once VHS was supplanted by DVD as the primary method of home video viewing, Blockbuster was forced to change as well and after having pushed out many of the local rental shops into bankruptcy, Blockbuster found itself up against Netflix, a company that Blockbuster was offered to purchase for $50M - but simply did not have the capital to do so. It is this event (misunderstood by lay people as Blockbuster simply not wanting to buy Netflix), coupled with poor management and the elimination of late fees, that sounded the death knell for the ubiquitous company that at one time had over 9,000 locations. The Last Blockbuster, a 2020 documentary produced by Netflix ironically enough (ouch!), directed by Taylor Morden and narrated by Lauren Lapkus, attempts to both chronicle the rise and fall of one of the most well-known companies in the United States and answer the questions as to why the company ultimately failed. The film succeeds for the most part, but my favorite sections of the film are people reminiscing about renting tangible cassettes and DVDs.

The title itself refers to the last single remaining Blockbuster Video located at 211 NE Revere Avenue in the town of Bend, Oregon, about three-and-a-half hours southeast of Portland. It is still a functioning video rental store, run by the Harding Family. It began life in 1992 by Ken and Debbie Tisher who opened it as Pacific Video until it was franchised and rebranded Blockbuster Video in eight years later. Today, the store finds itself in the same dilemma that it put so many local stores into decades ago – either soldier on or fold. Sandi Harding has worked for the company for over 15 years and pretty much takes care of the entire store. The film depicts her coming in early, checking back in the titles left in the drop box, and disclosing what it takes to keep a store like this in business. She keeps a collection of old computers salvaged from long shuttered Blockbusters in an attempt to keep the database and methods of renting titles up-to-date and running.

The film is not focused on just this last remaining store but rather bemoans the lost art of getting in one’s car and going to the video store to peruse the aisles and pick out something to watch on the weekend. Hanging out with the person behind the checkout counter on slow evenings to talk about movies is another casualty in the time of the Internet and movies at our fingertips. Among the other personalities interviewed in the film are Kevin Smith, Ione Skye, Brian Posehn, Doug Benson, Paul Scheer, and Samm Levine.

As with any disruptive technology, the previous methods of watching movies are invariably swept away and forgotten by the masses. However there is always a small and significant percentage of people who recall with fondness the halcyon days of renting movies from a store. Watching The Last Blockbuster, it becomes clear that video stores were my generation’s equivalent of a drive-in.

Passion River's DVD/Blu-ray package of the film contains an assortment of extras:

The film’s original trailer.

Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee – This is a four-and-a-half-minute piece about a video store that opened in Los Angeles in December 1968 as a thrift store and over the next few decades amassed an enormous collection of tapes and discs. COVID-19 forced this store to temporarily close in May 2020 as they were looking for a new venue.

More with Kevin Smith – Director Kevin Smith is the most fun to listen to, as he really has a true love of movies. His explanation of working as a video store clerk and wanting to do that for the rest of his life is heartfelt and honest. He talks about renting Bloodsucking Freaks, a movie that I have heard of but still have not seen despite growing up with sick friends who loved the 1980 film Mother’s Day. This bit runs six minutes.

Talkin’ Movies with David McAbee – Just over two minutes, this is another movie fan who explains the joys of buying tangible product. I completely agree!

JC from Scum and Villainy – This bit is about two-and-a-half-minutes and echoes similar cineaste sentiments.

Andres The Last Blockbuster Music Video – Under three minutes, this is a clever song about renting movies.

Our Chat with Coach Pete – This piece runs under one minute and discusses the love of renting. I wish that these pieces were longer!

MTV’s Matt Pinfield – This runs about three-and-a-half minutes – I share Matt’s love of going to the record stores and video stores, talking with fellow music lovers and movie lovers, and having other people recommend titles I would not have normally gone for.

Wordburglar “Rental Patient” Music Video – At four minutes, this is a clever song about renting movies.

Ska-Punk show at Costa Mesa, CA Blockbuster Video – This is something that I think you had to be there in order to appreciate it.

The Last Blockbuster is a loving tribute to the extraordinary experience of renting and watching movies. It will not win the Academy Award for Best Documentary, but it belongs in every movie lover’s collection.

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“WHIPPING OUT A STORY”

By Raymond Benson

Kino Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture” with Volume 9—The Lash of the Penitentes. Like the other exploitation titles that have appeared over the last two years, Lash is another piece of American celluloid that will surely elicit jaw-dropping, eye-rolling, and headshaking. How did these things ever get made and distributed? Who went to see them? How corrupted was one after a viewing?

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 salacious title as “educational.” For adults only, mind you, but exhibited all in the good name of science or health or whatever. Reefer Madness. Narcotic. Ingagi. Test Tube Babies. She Should’a Said No!. Mom and Dad. That sort of fare.

The Lash of the Penitentes, from 1936, is sort of a documentary with re-staged and fictionalized elements. Los Hermanos Penitentes, the “Penitentes” of the title, (were? are?) a real religious sect in New Mexico and Colorado that practices extreme rituals on Good Friday of every year. The main course is a re-enactment of Christ’s passion by having “penitents” carry crosses up a mountain while being flagellated by the religious leaders, and then ending with the “chosen penitent” being crucified on a cross (not with nails). The film implies that the man dies, but that is unlikely. Apparently, for decades, these activities were public until more recent years in which the whole gruesome spectacle is performed in private and probably with more care not to really hurt anyone.

However, back when the picture was made, this was some seriously twisted stuff. And much of the real thing is caught on camera.

It has an interesting history, too. A cameraman named Roland Price (we think) went to New Mexico and surreptitiously filmed some of the ritual for the purposes of a future documentary. However, nothing was done with the approximately 18,000 feet of footage. Then, in early 1936, a journalist by the name of Carl Taylor went to write about the Penitentes. He was caught spying on the ceremony, which is forbidden to outside parties. He was murdered. The crime made headlines.

Enter exploitation moviemaker Harry Revier (also responsible for another “Forbidden Fruit” entry, Child Bride). He somehow acquired the rights to the documentary footage, fashioned a fictional murder mystery plot to wrap around it, and shot new material with actors. Of course, the mystery is based on—or at least inspired by—the true killing of Taylor.

In Revier’s version, journalist George Mack (José Rubio) goes to New Mexico to whip out a story about the Penitentes, hires a local young man, Chico (William Marcos), to assist him, and then witnesses the sensational ritual. He is discovered and then slain.

The approximately 48-minute movie was titled The Penitente Murder Case. Besides the (for the time) violent depiction of the flagellation and the creepy religious sect stuff that would assuredly freak out “normal” American Christians of 1936, the motion picture also contained footage of actress Marie DeForrest also being stripped and flagellated on the mountainside, and then “crucified” naked. Why this was included is unclear plot-wise, but it has something to do with her helping Mack in his mission.

The censors (the Hays Office) understandably would have nothing to do with the movie, so Revier edited his masterwork down to 35 minutes—deleting DeForrest’s footage and making other trims. This version was then released to the public as The Lash of the Penitentes and this is what grindhouse cinemas on the exploitation circuit have shown since. It was even released on VHS and DVD in this version by fly-by-night companies in the past.

Now, Kino Lorber has issued a high-def Blu-ray of the full-length 48-minute version that looks about as best as it can get. It comes with a highly informative audio commentary by Bret Wood, co-author of the book Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Film and curator of the “Forbidden Fruit” series for Kino.

Also included is the 35-minute censored version. What makes the entire thing even more mysterious is the inclusion of the theatrical trailer, which contains scandalous footage that does not appear in either edit of the film. The trailer has scenes of a woman being assaulted by her boyfriend, saved by a young boy, but then flagellated while hanging from her arms. Full nudity. In a trailer. None of it is in The Penitente Murder Case or The Lash of the Penitentes. One supposes that this was the only way the distributors could lure an audience—mostly male, it is assumed—to come see the picture when it opened.

Since both versions of the feature are short, Kino Lorber and Something Weird probably could have added another “Forbidden Fruit” title to the disk; after all, several other Volumes in the series contain double features. Why not this one? With that the only quibble, The Lash of the Penitentes should appeal to those fans of film history, exploitation films, and just plain kooky, weird stuff.

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BY MARK CERULLI 

Mike Henry, the rugged former football player-turned-actor, passed away on January 8, 2021 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease and Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, likely from his heavy physical contact during his years in the NFL playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers and LA Rams. Although not a household name, Henry carved out an impressive career playing heroic roles, most notably Tarzan in three films from 1966 – 68. I remember stumbling across Tarzan And the Valley of Gold on network TV as a kid and being enthralled by this hulking, well-spoken Tarzan who wore a suit in one scene and the traditional loincloth in the next. (The series’ producer, Sy Weintraub, cannily tried to jump on the then-raging Bondmania in 1966 by offering up a suave Tarzan equally at home in a city as in the jungle. The fact that Henry bore a passing resemblance to Sean Connery didn’t hurt.) Henry took over the role of Tarzan from Jock Mahoney (who suffered dysentery making Tarzan’s Three Challenges that was so severe, he emerged emaciated from the shoot in Thailand.) Blessed with a chiseled physique that Weintraub crowed looked like it was “sculpted by Michelangelo”, Henry could easily handle the athletic demands of the coveted part.

What Henry endured making the Tarzan films was even more heroic than the role itself. While filming Tarzan and the Great River, the script called for Tarzan to pick up Cheeta (a chimpanzee) and run with him. The film was shot in the jungles of Brazil, so all the onscreen animals had to be flown in – one imagines they were under severe stress in a totally unfamiliar environment. The chimp reacted by biting Henry in the face, requiring 20 stitches in his jaw and a stay in the local hospital for bouts of “monkey fever”.

In the course of making his three Tarzan epics, Henry suffered a severe ear infection, food poisoning, fatigue, liver ailments, almost got clawed by an enraged leopard and was so exhausted by the back-to-back film shoots that when his contract required him to jump right into a Tarzan television series, the actor wanted out. Who who could have blamed him? Ron Ely took over as Tarzan on TV and racked up an equally impressive number of injuries including numerous broken bones and several lion bites during its 2-year run. Henry, reportedly one of the most humble and affable people in the biz, was so traumatized that he sued producer Weintraub for almost $1 million for “maltreatment, abuse and working conditions detrimental to my health…” (Both this and a related lawsuit were unsuccessful in court.)

Although he had a successful career behind the camera, producing TV commercials and documentaries, Henry continued to act – in films like The Green Berets, The Longest Yard, Soylent Green and on episodes of M*A*S*H, The Six Million Dollar Man, Scrubs, Fantasy Island and others. His role as Jackie Gleason’s dimwitted son in three Smokey and the Bandit movies introduced this versatile performer to a new generation of fans. Sadly, due to his illnesses, he had to retire from the industry in 1988.

I made several attempts to interview Mr. Henry, especially when I discovered he lived near me in Los Angeles, but Covid and not wanting to intrude kept me from pushing too hard. Still, he is one of the actors I most remember from my movie-going youth and his dashing appearances at Tarzan, in spite of all the trauma he personally endured, makes him a true hero in my book. Thanks for the magic, Mike.

BY TODD GARBARINI

In January 1998 I attended a book signing in New York City emceed by author Russell Banks and film director Atom Egoyan. They were on hand to autograph copies of Mr. Banks’s 1991 novel, The Sweet Hereafter, which had been made into a 1997 film of the same name by Mr. Egoyan. Despite varying greatly, the novel and the film both concern the aftereffects of life in a small town in the Adirondacks when fourteen children die following an accident involving their school bus when it careens off a slippery, snow-covered road and sinks into the frozen waters of a nearby body of water. Mr. Egoyan claimed that he was inspired to make the film because, he felt, something terrible will happen to everyone at some point in his or her life, and they will need to find a way to move on.

A terrible fate befell nineteen-year-old Jacquelyn M. “Lyn” Helton in 1969 when, just after giving birth to her daughter, she suffered from terrible leg pain that was misdiagnosed as bursitis; it turned out to be osteosarcoma (bone cancer). She sought medical treatment and was dealt grim news: either have her leg amputated and hope that the cancer did not spread or take a chance on chemotherapy and radiation. The former was not an option for her, and so in earnest she began recording her thoughts and feelings about her life with her photographer/musician husband Tom so that her daughter would hear the tapes and know her after she died. This tragic and heartbreaking story inspired the made-for-television film Sunshine which premiered on CBS-TV on Friday, November 9, 1973 (Mrs. Helton passed before the film was made). Reportedly the most viewed TV-movie up to that point in time, Sunshine stars former model turned actress Cristina Raines as Kate, a pregnant divorcee who meets Sam (Cliff De Young), a photographer/musician who has no real means of supporting her but manages to assuage her tantrums by singing John Denver songs to her. The film begins with her death and her ashes scattered, so we know the outcome from the start.

Sam agrees to raise her child, Jill, as his own in the midst of their carefree lifestyle, leftover from the Flower Children of the Sixties, driving around in a small van painted in carefree love motifs. The film deals sensitively with the issues that no adult wants to face in their lifetime: adultery, premature death, and the fear of the unknown. Ms. Raines gives a heartfelt performance as a woman who is both positive and life-affirming but one who also is angry at the fate dealt her. Ms. Raines gave up acting nearly two decades after Sunshine to become a registered nurse, a career path change also shared by former actress Tisa Farrow. Cliff De Young is also a singer and musician and turns in a likeable performance as Sam. Meg Foster is also excellent as Nora, the woman next door who begins an affair with Sam and is ultimately enlisted to help raise Jill. Brenda Vaccaro is also terrific as the doctor who wants desperately to help Kate and tries to convince her to stay the course, to no avail.

Director Joseph Sargent, who honed his craft in directing television series in the 1960’s and helmed 1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project, would follow up Sunshine with the last project one would expect from him: 1974’s brilliant, hilarious and completely politically incorrect New York City film The Taking of Pelham 123. Bill Butler, who turns 100 this year and photographed The People vs. Paul Crump (1962) for William Friedkin, Something Evil (1972), Savage (1973), and Jaws (1975) for Steven Spielberg, and replaced Haskell Wexler on both The Conversation (1974) for Francis Coppola and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) for Milos Forman, does his best to make Vancouver, BC a suitable stand-in for Spokane, WA. Credit should also be given to twins Rachel Lindsay Greenbush and Sidney Greenbush who both played Jill. The film was produced by George Eckstein, who also produced Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971).

If the premise of the film seems a bit familiar, a similar story was written by author Nancy Kincaid as Pretending the Bed is a Raft (1997) and was filmed by director Sarah Polley as My Life Without Me (2003), in which Ms. Polley also starred. Whether or not author Kincaid based this short story on Mrs. Helton’s story, I do not know. Ms. Polley, incidentally, also starred in the aforementioned The Sweet Hereafter.

Sunshine has been released on Blu-ray from the Twilight Time sister label, Redwind Productions, however I cannot verify if they released any other titles. There was talk of releasing Loving You (1957), the Elvis Presley movie.

The transfer was made from either the original camera negative, the interpositive or internegative and was scanned in 4K. It looks like the movie was just made.

The Blu-ray comes with a booklet discussing the film’s impact on the world and how it was released theatrically world-wide.

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“A BIOGRAPHY OF A FILM”

By Raymond Benson

Lately there has been a new trend in film books that are more like biographies than simply non-fiction treatises on the making of a movie. A “biography of a film,” as critic Molly Haskell calls it, treats a particular motion picture in the same way a researcher would examine a person’s life—from the inception to its lasting influence and impact today, meticulously illustrating each step and examining the personnel involved along the way. The recent Space Odyssey by Michael Benson (a “biography” of 2001: A Space Odyssey) is a fine example.

Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy—Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic is one such biography of a film, and it is a magnificent tome. Besides dissecting the all-important sociological milieu that was in the background while Cowboy was being made, the book is an excellent lesson in the filmmaking process.

The film, Midnight Cowboy, was released in 1969 and went on to become the first and only X-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (as well as a trophy for director John Schlesinger, and one for the Adapted Screenplay by Waldo Salt). It was, at the time, a cause célèbre. Controversial, shocking, and undeniably powerful, the picture was a prime example of “New Hollywood” and how the trend was taking hold of the industry. Once the Production Code collapsed in 1966-67, and the new ratings system was instituted in 1968, Hollywood studios began to look toward the younger, “hip” filmmakers to deliver product that would appeal to a younger, hip audience. More adult fare was acceptable. There was indeed a liberation in terms of sex and violence that could be shown on the screen.

Frankel’s book begins, as it should, with novelist James Leo Herlihy. Tall and handsome, Herlihy in many ways was a more intelligent and sophisticated version of his character, Joe Buck, although Herlihy was not from Texas. Novelist, playwright, and actor, Herlihy was also a gay man in a time and place in which one must remain closeted—although he was anything but. His early work, which included more plays for the stage than novels, had subtle homosexual themes and characters. His novel Midnight Cowboy was published in 1965. It did fairly well, but it didn’t take the literary world by storm. Luckily, the book landed in the hands of British filmmaker John Schlesinger, another gay man who struggled with his sexual identity in public.

John Schlesinger was coming off the success of his 1965 “swinging London” eye-opener, Darling, which had garnered Oscar nominations of Picture and Director, and had awarded Julie Christie with Best Actress. As he embarked on making his period adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, he teamed up with producer Jerome Hellman to make Cowboy after that.

It was a rough road for both the producer and director, especially when Madding Crowd (1967) bombed at the box office. Luckily, the duo found an ally in David Picker, an executive at United Artists. UA was known for its liberal policies of allowing filmmakers to do their thing without interference, as long as they stuck to an agreed upon budget. Picker’s instincts were canny—he knew that Schlesinger would deliver a work of art, so he convinced his colleagues to go with Midnight Cowboy.

Casting the film was a challenge. Dustin Hoffman was an early contender for the role of Rico “Ratso” Rizzo, even before the release of his star-making vehicle, The Graduate (1967). Hoffman had to convince Schlesinger he could do the part after The Graduate came out by improvising a costume and showing up in character for a meeting on the streets of New York for a “meeting.” The pivotal protagonist role of Joe Buck was more problematic. Schlesinger had his eye on Michael Sarrazin, but newcomer Jon Voight was also in the wings hoping for a chance. The casting director, Marion Dougherty (whose contribution to the film is duly emphasized in Frankel’s book), fought for Voight. When Sarrazin’s agent asked for more money than what was originally agreed upon, both Hellman and Schlesinger decided to go with Voight. While Sarrazin might have performed in the role quite well, the choice of Voight was a significant move.

And then there is screenwriter Waldo Salt, formerly blacklisted during the HUAC witch hunts, who brought another set of baggage to the production.

The book also provides the reader with a history of the Times Square area of New York City, and how it changed in the 1950s and 60s to the sleazy hunting grounds for hustlers that we see in the film (and it would get worse in the 70s—witness Taxi Driver!). All of this is vitally important to how Midnight Cowboy was conceived and shot, and the background is fascinating.

One of the most surprising revelations about Shooting Midnight Cowboy is the story of its X-rating. The book tells us that the movie ratings board initially rated the movie R for Restricted Audiences! It was Arthur Krim, the head of United Artists, who on the advice of a psychiatrist friend, insisted that the picture be rated X because of its depiction of homosexuality. Later, after the film won the Best Picture Oscar, UA went back to the ratings board and asked that the movie be re-rated to R. The board, befuddled by the request (“hey, that’s what we originally rated it!”), did so… and to this day, Midnight Cowboy is still rated R without any cuts.

Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy delivers a filmmaking lesson, a history lesson, a candid portrait of all the personages involved (complete with interviews with Hoffman, Voight, and others who are still alive to talk about it), and a snapshot of one of the greatest American films—seen through the eyes of a British director—ever made.

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Cinema Retro columnist Mark Cerulli has long championed indie horror films. They generally have one thing in common: the need to use innovative methods to compensate for less-than-extravagant budgets. Cerulli finally decided the best way to experience what it's like making one of these films was to participate in aspects of its creative process. Here is his report.

BY MARK CERULLI

As a writer/producer for HBO, I had been on a number of film sets to do interviews and shoot “B-roll”… tolerated, sometimes even welcomed but never a part of the actual film. As a scriptwriter I had also piled up an impressive number of “passes” (my favorite was from Steven Seagal’s nutritionist!). Then in a Hollywood coincidence I met director Sean Haitz at the premiere of Rob Zombie’s Three from Hell. We discovered that we shared an interest in Area 51, the mysterious military base in the high desert outside Las Vegas and UFOs. We batted ideas around, agreed on a story and I wrote a first draft. Sean came up with a catchy title - AREA 5150 – and revised the script. At age 34, this would be Sean’s 4^th film. (His latest, Cannibal Comedian will be out soon.) He gets things done. Last December, we even took a quick trip to the real Area 51 to shoot some exteriors, all under the watchful eye of “the Cammo Dudes”, the private security force who guard all approaches to the base.

After 10 or 11 drafts, Sean’s very capable Assistant Director, CJ Guerrero, imported our script into studio software where it underwent further changes. My first inkling of that was when Sean cheerfully said, “You might want to wear a cup.”

Oh really?

At the end of February I, along with the cast and a young crew of 15, were in Morongo Valley, a quiet desert community about 30 mins from Palm Springs. Sean had the run of a sprawling vehicle graveyard – cars, buses, construction equipment and the abandoned property next door (“a trap house” as actor D’Shae Beasley called it). Set decorator, prop master and makeup artist Andrea Davoren turned the vacant house into a functional-looking home – albeit without heat, running water or even plumbing. Much mayhem ensued with the walls pierced by hammers, screams and a custom chainsaw. And, of course, splattered with fake blood. (Fun fact: there are two varieties – one for the body, and a minty version for spewing out of your mouth!)

The most surreal event was staging a dinner scene that Sean wanted to do as an homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Since the house had no electricity we had to use an outside generator so the floor was always a forest of cables. (My dropping an axe on one, cutting the power didn’t help!) Since our script had a crazy father role, I asked to play it as I had acted in high school and college and took some classes in NYC before chickening out on pursuing it full time. Even so, I underestimated what was involved in being in front of the camera…

Inside the house, the only source of heat was the old hearth, which production assistants thankfully kept filling with branches from the overgrown property. As it got later and later, the temperature dropped into the 30s. By the time we got ready to shoot dinner – around 2AM - we were all freezing. The others at the table – Aaron Prager (star of Sean’s upcoming Cannibal Comedian), lovely Claire Brauer (a real trooper in a skimpy cutoff t-shirt) and Rob Wight (playing my dimwitted son #2) were all professional actors. Assistant Art Director August Kingsley played my mutant offspring, Timmy, under a custom latex mask. I had foolishly written a speech for my character and suddenly realized I had to deliver it. My first take - sometime after 3 AM - was…um… lackluster. “We’re all tired. You look it and sound it…” the director said from behind the monitor. I took a deep breath and remembered what Bruce Glover (who teaches acting when he’s not trying to kill James Bond) said about “locking up”. I managed a better delivery and we finally wrapped for the night.

For a small film, Sean Haitz managed to get maximum bang for every buck – like getting a helicopter for a key scene. Original landing location dropped out? No problem: he staged a landing on a side road next to a busy highway! Our female lead tried to get away in a car so my (screen) daughter, Ruby Rose (played by our special effects guru, Matthew Lucero) crushed the car and flipped it over with a backhoe! We benefitted from having a great young Director of Photography, Kraig Bryant, who was shooting his first feature after working on music videos. He and cameraman Josh Wagner made full use of every hour of daylight, literally shooting until the sun went down.

Every movie villain deserves a wicked death and mine was a doozy – involving a circular saw and a certain body part. (Hence the cup.) I was wired with tubes running up my pants to a compressor tank filled with a gallon of fake blood. The result was a spectacular Tarantino-ish shower of gore! I drove back to the hotel drenched in drying blood, praying not to get pulled over by a cop.

After 8 long, exhilarating days, over 8 terabytes of data were digitally “in the can”. We had a movie! And I had a new cinematic family – we had all grown close during those days in the desert. That is the part of making Area 5150 I think I cherish the most.

“HATE IS A LOADED GUN”

By Raymond Benson

The years of the 1940s following World War II exhibited a striking change in Hollywood movies. The moods and world outlooks of post-war GIs and the people they had left behind and to whom they returned were more reflective and serious. Awareness of societal ills that had always been with us were now at the forefront… and Hollywood stepped up to address this new American angst in the form of a) what film historians call “social problem films” that tackled issues such as alcoholism, drug addiction, anti-Semitism, racism, government corruption, and other hitherto taboos of motion pictures, and b) film noir, the gritty crime dramas that never sugar-coated anything and portrayed both men and women—the femmes fatale—as hard-boiled, cynical, and paranoid.

Two pictures were released in 1947 that tackled anti-Semitism with frank, hard-hitting realism. One was Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement, a more passive investigation of anti-Semitism in America that won the Oscar for Best Picture. Often overlooked today, however, is the other Best Picture nominee of that year—the film noir crime drama, Crossfire, which examined the subject in a more violent and edgy concoction. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, who would just a year later be under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee and ultimately become one of the infamously blacklisted “Hollywood Ten,” Crossfire could very well be the more substantially shocking movie of the two. It also appeared in theaters three months earlier.

Besides the Best Picture nomination, Dmytryk was nominated for Best Director, the script by John Paxton was up for Adapted Screenplay, and both Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame were nominated for Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively. Crossfire was no throwaway B-movie film noir. It is both a film noir and a social problem film!

Ironically, the story was not supposed to be about anti-Semitism at all. The movie is based on a novel, The Brick Foxhole, by Richard Brooks (yes, the same Richard Brooks who went on to become a formidable screenwriter/director in the 50s, 60s, and 70s). The novel is about the murder of a homosexual—not a Jew! At the time, there was no way the Hays Office (Production Code) would allow a film to be made with this subject matter, so producer Adrian Scott and Dmytryk changed the tale… and yet the film could really be about any “other” against whom racist, bigoted, homophobic, or intolerant people might hate. As police captain Finlay (Robert Young) says in the picture, “Hate is a loaded gun.” The murder victim could have been homosexual, black, Asian, Irish, or whatever—and the movie would have the same potency.

A man named Joseph Samuels is found beaten to death in his apartment. We later learn that the man was Jewish, which was the motivation for his killing. The story unfolds that a group of GIs have been demobilized in Washington DC and are waiting for either further orders or a discharge. They are all disillusioned and restless. Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum) is the world-weary leader of the group, which consists of hot-headed and abrasive Montgomery (Robert Ryan), sensitive and “lost” Mitchell (George Cooper), and hard-up-for-money Bowers (Steve Brodie). Flashbacks reveal that Montgomery, Mitchell, and Bowers met civilian Samuels (Sam Levene) and his girlfriend, Miss Lewis (Marlo Dwyer) in a bar. Samuels empathized with Mitchell’s unhappiness and invited him to come along to dinner with them. They stopped at his apartment first while Miss Lewis went home to change. Montgomery and Bowers followed them, thinking that the party had simply moved locations. Later, once Captain Finlay begins the investigation, Mitchell has disappeared and has become the prime suspect. But all is not what it seems.

This is a tightly-wound, suspenseful picture presented in classic film noir style (expressionistic lighting and photography, brutal characterizations, and plenty of tough talk). The actors are all excellent, especially Young, who handles the proceedings with calm, thoughtful deliberation. Ryan, in this early appearance, established himself as a contender with a showy role that justifies the Oscar nomination. Gloria Grahame, in a small role, portrays a jaded, no-nonsense bar girl whom Mitchell befriends—she, too, displays the hallmarks of many of her onscreen characterizations.

Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray restoration looks terrific in its glorious black and white. It comes with an audio commentary by film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, and there are audio interview excerpts with director Dmytryk. A short featurette on the film’s making and impact is also a welcome supplement.

Crossfire is still relevant today—perhaps even more so than it was in 1947. The only thing dated about it is the 1940s film noir filmmaking style—and what’s wrong with that? Nothing! Highly recommended.

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“BIG TOP SOAP OPERA”

By Raymond Benson

One of the more controversial Best Picture Oscar winners is Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (it won the top prize for the year 1952, as well as a trophy for Best Story—a category that was discontinued four years later). The movie is often cited in pundits’ lists of “Worst Best Picture Oscar Winners,” mainly because many film buffs believe that there were more deserving nominees that year (such as High Noon or The Quiet Man, or even Singin’ in the Rain, which wasn’t even nominated!). The win for Greatest Show was perhaps somewhat of an overdue honor for DeMille, who had been working in Hollywood since the 1910s, was a hugely successful and popular director, and he had never won a Best Picture Academy Award. In this case, then, why didn’t he win Best Director (John Ford did for The Quiet Man)?

Controversy aside, The Greatest Show on Earth is still spectacular entertainment and worth 2-1/2 hours of a viewer’s time, especially with Paramount Present’s new Blu-ray restoration that looks absolutely gorgeous. Steven Spielberg has often pointed to Greatest Show as a landmark for him because he remembers it as the first movie his parents ever took him to see, and he has placed nods to it in some of his own features. It is grand, Hollywood epic-style spectacle, much of which overshadows the rather melodramatic and soap opera plot going on in the story. It must be said that the melodrama is often corny and eye-rolling in its heightened angst. Furthermore, it’s a plot that probably couldn’t be made in today’s social/political climate of #MeToo. But, hey, this is a movie from 1952.

The Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus was indeed known as “the greatest show on earth” during its magnificent heyday decades of the early part of the 20th Century to at least the 1980s, after which the circus began to have PR problems and audience dwindling. Animal rights activists, especially, came down hard on all circuses, and eventually the sensation became something of a past glory of a bygone era.

When DeMille set about making a motion picture about the circus, he made a deal with Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus—then the biggest and best—to be in the movie. Thus, there literally is a cast of thousands in the film—all 1,400 of the circus employees appear in it, along with the select Hollywood actors cast to play important roles. The story follows the day-to-day running of a circus tour in an almost documentary-like fashion, complete with DeMille himself narrating sections of the movie as we see crews assembling the big top tent, loading/unloading equipment, performers rehearsing and dressing, and the breakdown and travel after each stop on the road. This is surely the best aspect of Greatest Show—it is a time capsule of what circus life was really like in those halcyon years.

Brad Braden (Charlton Heston, in an early screen performance) is the manager of the traveling circus, and he is very much a “show must go on” type of guy who takes no guff or excuses from anyone, even his on-again, off-again girlfriend, trapeze artist Holly (Betty Hutton, who receives top billing on the film). In order to keep the circus “in the black” and do a full tour, he is forced by the corporate bosses to hire a big star for the center ring, and this comes in the form of “The Great Sebastian” (Cornel Wilde), a ladies’ man and a fellow known for trouble. Holly is hurt by being kicked out of the center ring to the first ring, so she begins to make a play for Sebastian to make Brad jealous. In the meantime, elephant act performer Angel (Gloria Grahame) also has eyes for Brad, but she is the object of affection of not-so-nice elephant trainer Klaus (Lyle Bettger). Then there is lovable Buttons the Clown (James Stewart, who is in clown makeup through the entire movie and never reveals his clean face!), who we learn is on the run from the law because of a mysterious crime in his past. Added to all this are some gangsters led by “Mr. Henderson” (Lawrence Tierney) who run crooked midway games, and one of his men plans to rob the circus of its takings during a harrowing train holdup.

Thus, there are love triangles and criminal shenanigans going on, but mostly the movie is a visual documentation of the circus-going experience. We see many acts in full, and there are numerous reaction shots of audience members (some of whom are cameo appearances by celebrities like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Danny Thomas, and more).

Perhaps the most impressive thing is that the actors learned how to do much of their characters’ jobs in the circus. For example, Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde really did learn and perform, on camera, the trapeze acts. Whether or not the terribly difficult ones are done by Hutton and Wilde (doubtful), the Hollywood PR machine insisted that they did all their own stunts (unlikely). Nevertheless, that’s really Gloria Grahame being picked up by the mouth of an elephant and carried away as she lounges happily for the audience. James Stewart performs silly slapstick routines with none other than the great Emmett Kelly and Lou Jacobs, two of the greatest clown performers in circus history.

Paramount Presents’ Blu-ray disk is impressive and a treat for the eyes. Unfortunately, the only supplement is a 7-1/2-minute featurette about the movie narrated by Leonard Maltin, which is fine as an “intro” to viewing the picture, but one wishes that more documentary “making-of” material could have been included.

The Greatest Show on Earth may not have been the Greatest Best Picture Oscar Winner, but it is still a fun and colorful spectacle that captures a now long-lost phenomenon.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Tsugunobo Kotani is a film director whose name does not roll off the tongue throughout film circles. A handful of titles to his credit consist of Hatsukoi (1975), The Last Dinosaur (1977), The Ivory Ape (1980), and The Bloody Bushido Blade (1981), and there are a good number of Japanese-language titles that appear in his early filmography. An Internet search of “Tom Kotani,” the Americanized variant of Tsugunobo and the director’s name as it appears in some of his movies, yields even less information. While most people may not recognize him, there is a small but significant percentage of film viewers, yours truly included, who have been deeply affected by one of his films in particular: the made-for-television undersea effort The Bermuda Depths. Filmed in the British Overseas Territory of the Bermudas in 1977, The Bermuda Depths is mysterious for several reasons. It is a film that is difficult to categorize as it touches upon several genres: action, fantasy, romance, and science fiction. It attempts to mix several elements of the fantastic (a giant turtle and its relation to a voluptuous young maiden lost at sea) with the realistic (a young man in search of the truth behind his father’s mysterious and untimely death).

Arguably the most memorable film “inspired” by Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), The Bermuda Depths was originally broadcasted on the ABC Friday Night Movie on January 27, 1978 and was repeated on Friday, August 29, 1980. A smattering of repeat broadcasts and a curiously unheralded VHS release followed. It benefits from a touch of myth from Ambroise Paré’s “On Monsters and Marvels” and plays out in a dreamlike fashion. Leigh McCloskey stars as Magnus Dens, a drifter who returns to the scene of his father’s death hoping to find closure. He encounters an old friend, Eric (Carl Weathers), who is completing his master’s degree in Marine Biology while working for the avuncular Dr. Paulus (Burl Ives). The scientists are both interested in abnormalities and gigantism in sea life, technically known as Teratology, and are looking for any sea creatures that live in the deepest depths of the ocean to study them. At the heart of all of this is an enigmatic woman named Jennie Haniver (Connie Sellecca) who may or may not be real. Jennie lives in the ocean and comes ashore when Magnus shouts her name. Jennie and Magnus used to play together as children, and on the beach they found a large turtle upon which they inscribed their initials. Now the turtle has reached enormous physical proportions and lives deep in the ocean, occasionally rising to the surface. The last third of the film concerns Eric’s futile attempts to capture the sea creature and gives the filmmakers the opportunity to put the three men on a boat a la Sam Quint, Matt Hooper, and Chief Martin Brody, with the “Panulirus” sitting in the for the “Orca”.

If The Bermuda Depths is about anything that we can be absolutely sure of, it’s that highly successful films inevitably spurn imitations. This was certainly the case during the mid-1970’s when everyone and his brother was scrambling to re-enact the success of Jaws. The Bermuda Depths takes the unusual step of adding a supernatural love story into the mix and successfully creates a tragic tale of love and doom. Mr. McCloskey was a successful television actor by this point, best known for the Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) mini-series, and sports the natural Southern California good looks that make Magnus appealing to young women. Carl Weathers of Rocky (1976) fame embodies Eric with terrific zeal, although his truncated half-shirt near the film’s ending is a questionable wardrobe choice. Burl Ives is wonderful as the elder who tries his best to get Eric to look at the situation through scientific eyes. Connie Sellecca, in her first film role at age twenty-two, does an exceptional turn as Jennie Haniver. She possesses a magical, ethereal quality and is achingly beautiful. Julie Woodson, Playboy Magazine’s Miss April 1973, is remarkably beautiful and quite good as Eric’s wife Doshan. Ruth Attaway, who played the nurse in The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) to comedic effect, is mysterious and eerie as Delia, the housekeeper and proverbial party pooper who warns Magnus about the Legend of Jennie Haniver, seemingly a believer in the supernatural.

The Rankin Bass team responsible for their wonderful collaborations in the Sixties and Seventies on the Christmas holiday television show specials that millions grew up on, especially Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) which also featured Mr. Ives, produced the film. There is a definite “Rankin Bass” feel to The Bermuda Depths, particularly in the special effects which today look quite amateurish: the helicopter crash sequence near the film’s end looks similar to the finale of the Mad Monster Party? explosion on the island, and close-up shots of the vessel’s propeller and the trawler crashing against the ocean waves in slow-mo look as though they was filmed in a bathtub. The special effects-laden ending almost compromises the intriguing supernatural and romantic mystery that precedes it. This is a case where the film’s style almost outweighs its substance. Despite this, however, the low-budget effects add a certain charm to the film, a reminder of filmmaking from days gone by when less money and more ingenuity was considered an asset.

The film possesses more than its share of derivations: Dr. Paulus’s throwaway line about needing “a bigger boat”; Eric’s decision to pursue the turtle on the Fourth of July of all days; Delia’s unexplained disappearance from the second half of the film; and Magnus’s inquiry into his father’s death mirrors Luke Skywalker asking the same of Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom Dr. Paulus even resembles. Composer Maury Laws provides a beautiful score which I always wished would appear as a soundtrack album. Hopefully, some independent label (i.e. Waxwork Records) will give this score its due.

While the film does appear somewhat corny after more than forty years, it possesses an innocent quality about it that is sadly lacking in most entertainment product of late. The slow and languid images of Magnus and Jennie on the beach and in the cave recall a time in American filmmaking when the audience failed to be bombarded by fast editing and could actually digest the images presented to them. Unquestionably there are those who will complain about the film’s slow pace, but there are plenty of treasures here film to make it one that deserves a new generation of admirers: the eerie day-for-night photography which Mr. Spielberg also employed in the opening of his 1975 masterwork; Maury Laws’ soothing title tune “Jennie” with vocals by Claude Carmichael; and the use of Antonio Vivaldi’s elegiac “Largo” from his “Concerto for Lute (Guitar), Two Violins and Basso Continuo in D Major” as the lovers’ theme.

BY TODD GARBARINI

In the pantheon of great cinematographers there are certain names that immediately come to mind: Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941); Robert Burks (Vertigo, 1958); Owen Roizman (The French Connection, 1971; The Exorcist, 1973); Gordon Willis (The Godfather, 1972; The Godfather Part II, 1974); Vittorio Storaro (The Conformist, 1970; The Last Emperor, 1987); and Sven Nykvist (Persona, 1966; Cries and Whispers, 1973) to name just a few. The late great Carlo Di Palma, who passed away in 2004 after amassing just over 60 screen credits, is one such master and is the subject of the 2016 documentary Water and Sugar: Carlo Di Palma, The Colours of Life, which opened in Manhattan on Friday, July 28, 2017.

The film performs a tightrope act of trying to be both a loving tribute to an artist by director Fariborz Kamkari, who mixes scenes from the films that Signor Di Palma cut his teeth on in the business and also an appreciation by his widow, Adriana Chiesa Di Palma, who appears in much of the film as a gateway to many film industry people who offer up their thoughts on Sig. Di Palma, often interjecting their own feelings and impressions of his work. The film is at its most interesting, however, when looking directly at his career through past interviews and behind-the-scenes stills, beginning in Italian cinema in the early 1940s as a focus puller and camera operator – at the age of fifteen no less! - for notable Neo-Realist director Luchino Visconti (Ossessione, 1943) and later for Vittorio DeSica (The Bicycle Thief, 1948), while graduating to more high-brow and intellectual fare. Specifically, these were the films he shot for the highly acclaimed and award-winning Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni: Red Desert (1964) with its colorful, pollution-drenched cities swallowing up everyday people; Blow-Up (1966) with the message that one must create their own reality; and the Cannes Film Festival Award-Winning Identification of a Woman (1982) with Tomas Milian as a divorced filmmaker trying to understand women.

Sr. Di Palma worked most prolifically with Woody Allen beginning with one of the director’s greatest films, 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters and the period films Radio Days (1987), Shadows and Fog (1992) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). His hand-held work on Husbands and Wives (1992) is also dissected. Ample time is allotted Mr. Allen, who recalls his experiences working with the cinematographer and how they discussed films over lunch and dinner.

The juxtaposing of interview footage with the film’s subject and comments from contemporaries, such as the late great Bernardo Bertolucci who worked with Sig. Di Palma on 1981’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, are insightful and contemplative; there is also the amazing recollection of how a very young Sven Nykvist happened upon Sr. Di Palma, a fact verified decades later; and finally, the explanation for the film’s title.

Alec Baldwin, who appeared in Mr. Allen’s 1990 fantasy film Alice, makes the case that movies like the ones shot by Sr. Di Palma are art. It makes one wonder about the wisdom on the part of the distribution companies that offer up documentaries about cinematographers, generally only presenting them in the standard definition format of DVD. Without taking anything away from Disney and big-screen Marvel Comics epics that rule home video in 4K Ultra High Definition and Dolby Atmos, would it not make sense to showcase the stories of cinema’s finest visual stylists on Blu-ray as well? The scenes offered up in Water and Sugar examples of the beautiful color palettes of Sig. Di Palma’s greatest works which aided in the accolades bestowed upon these films. The Kino Lorber DVD includes the original trailer as the only bonus feature.

Last of all, can someone please correct the indignity of Sig. Di Palma’s profile pic on his IMDB.com page? It erroneously depicts Italian cinematographer Marco Onorato accepting an award at the European Film Awards on December 6, 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark. While no disrespect is meant to Sr. Marco Onorato, who sadly passed away at age 59, the least that the IMDB can do is correct this unfortunate and persistent oversight.

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