BY TODD GARBARINI

The year 1976 was a phenomenal time for films that went into production. George Lucas’s space opera, Star Wars began principal photography in March; Steven Spielberg, fresh off the success of Jaws, was given carte blanche to bring Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the screen and began shooting in May; and Dario Argento, who became emboldened by the financial success of his latest and arguably best film to date, Profundo Rosso (known in the U.S. as Deep Red), embarked upon Suspiria, a murder mystery involving a dance school hiding in plain sight while housing a coven of witches, which began filming in July. Horror author Clive Barker once described this supernatural extravaganza as what you would imagine a horror film to be like if you weren’t allowed to see it. I believe that this is a good description of what is unquestionably one of the most frightening, entertaining and colorful horror films ever made. Suspiria was edited for its American theatrical exhibition due to some graphic violence that many would have considered shocking for its day. Distributor 20^th Century Fox was reportedly so embarrassed by the film that they created a subsidiary company, International Classics, to release it three months after their phenomenally successful Star Wars, another film they had no faith in.

Suspiria opened in New York on Friday, August 12, 1977 at the long-gone Criterion on 45^th and Broadway before branching out to additional theaters. It’s the first in a trilogy concerning the nature of Death (Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007) are the second and third parts, respectively). The film’s quad-syllabic title quite understandably leaves those who attempt to say it tongue-tied (it’s pronounced sus-PEER-ee-ah). The word itself has its origins in Latin and roughly translates into “sighs” or “whispers” and the film is based upon the writings of British essayist Thomas De Quincey. His most famous work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, was published in 1822. Twenty-three years later he published Suspiria de Profundis which is Latin for “Sighs from the Depths” and is a collection of essays, the most famous of which is Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow which Mr. Argento used as the source material for his trilogy.

In Suspiria, Suzy Bannion, played by doe-eyed Jessica Harper (who was Woody Allen’s girlfriend at the time and passed on Annie Hall because she wanted to go to Italy), arrives in Frieberg, Germany to begin dance lessons at the famous Tanz Academie (the architecture is copied from Haus zum Walfisch in Freiberg). From the film’s opening frames, we already know that we are in uncharted territory as the images are bathed in diffused primary colors. Upon her arrival at the airport, things are already not what they seem. Once she leaves the premises and the glass doors close behind her, she enters a fairy tale in the form of an unusually violent thunderstorm. Hitching a ride from a taxi driver played by Argento regular Fulvio Mingozzi (min-GOATS-see), who worked for the director no less than ten times in both film and television episodes, she makes her way to the school (as a side-note, eagle-eyed viewers can see the director’s reflection in the glass partition in the taxi 3:31 minutes into the film and it lasts for two seconds. He appears, with a large smile on his face, in the lower left-hand corner of the screen).

Just as she arrives, a hysterical woman, Pat Hingle (Eva Axen), appears on the school’s doorstep and makes an unintelligible proclamation before bolting into the deluge-swept streets. Suzy carps with a woman on the intercom, pleading for entry and refuge from the torrential rain. When she’s denied, she re-enters the taxi and rides through the Black Forest, catching a glimpse of Pat as she runs, attempting to make her way past the trees. What could possibly have set her off on such a perilous journey?

Pat makes her way to her friend Sonia’s (Susanna Javicoli) apartment, hesitant to disclose what she has come to learn about the school. In what is considered Argento’s finest hour and the film’s most disturbing and celebrated sequence, Pat is violently stabbed by some inhuman creature with hairy arms and long black fingernails and is thrown through a stained-glass window, the shards of which also kill Sonia. It’s been compared with the shower scene in Psycho (1960) for pure shock effect, though this one is much more graphic.

The calm following the storm reveals a strange faculty staff consisting of lead ballet teacher Ms. Tanner (Alida Valli), headmistress Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett), pianist Daniel (Flavio Bucci), and Pavlos (Giuseppe Transocchi) the handyman. Suzy is told by the headmistress that one of their expelled students, Pat, was murdered by a madman the night before. Wouldn’t that be enough to send one packing their bags? The same scenario plays out for Jennifer Connelly in the director’s other macabre coming-of-age horror film, Phenomena (1985), and the information in that film is met with nothing more than a smile and silence. Unbeknownst to Suzy, the school is a front for a coven of witches who hold black masses within the massive building’s stealthy labyrinths. Her suspicions that all is not right with the school become confirmed when people around her suddenly disappear or are killed off. Like previous Argento protagonists, Suzy plays sleuth to gain insight into the bizarre goings-on, especially the teachers’ concerted effort to hide the directress’s presence from her. When she teams up with Sarah (Stefania Casini) to find out more about one Helena Markos, more people begin to die as Suzy learns of a shocking secret that lies behind an imperceptible door.

Suspiria’s simple premise permits Mr. Argento to stage some of the most shocking and elaborate death sequences of his career, all performed in-camera (that is without the use of opticals or blue-screen technology used later in post-production). The Italian progressive rock band Goblin provides a phenomenal score that, unbelievably, was composed before filming began and was played on the film’s soundstages during shooting to maximize the effect on the performers. It’s an astonishing concoction with shrieks, whispers and wails, which I always assumed to be non-diegetic in nature, acting almost as a macabre precursor to the far more relaxing Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos that have taken YouTube by storm.

Mr. Argento has also put together an eclectic cast, the bulk of whom are women. Joan Bennett, who appeared in Fritz Lang’s coincidentally titled Secret Beyond the Door… with Michael Redgrave (1947) as well as her stint on Dark Shadows, provides the proper amount of sinister air that the film requires. Alida Valli is terrific as Miss Tanner, the “stern and surly” ballet teacher, arguably the most memorable in the cast. Jessica Harper, fresh off her role as Phoenix in Brian DePalma’s wildly entertaining Phantom of the Paradise (1974), appears naïve but turns out to be anything but as she goes to greater-than-usual lengths to uncover The Big Secret.

Suspiria is unique in that it was shot on Eastman Kodak film but printed using the now-defunct three-strip Technicolor dye transfer process which divided the negative into three individual color bands of red, green, and blue. By manipulating the intensities of these primary colors both on the set and in the lab, cinematographer Luciano Tovoli was able to create some truly horrific and stunning images. The set design is garish, colorful and must be seen to be believed. The color scheme seems to have been inspired by Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) and dance film aficionados will likely also think of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell’s stunning 1948 technicolor film The Red Shoes and their follow-up, 1951’s The Tales of Hoffman (George A. Romero’s favorite film), but the story seems inspired by Chicho Ibáñez-Serrador’s La Residencia, a terrific horror opus from 1970 which pits the borstal’s headmistress, Senora Fourneau (played brilliantly by Lilli Palmer), against a school of young women in need of reform. There is a predatory air about Fourneau that carries over to Ms. Tanner in Suspiria. A case might even be made that Ms. Tanner is a psychological cinematic equivalent of the malevolent and sadistic Mrs. Wakehurst in Peter Walker’s House of Whipcord (1974). La Residencia has appeared under such titles as The Finishing School, The Boarding School and here in the States as The House That Screamed when it was released on a double-bill with Anthony M. Lanza’s The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant in July 1971.

Cinema Retro has received the following press announcement:

Laemmle’s Royal Theatre in Los Angeles will be presenting the 45^th anniversary screening of Roman Polanski’s 1974 film Chinatown which itself takes place in the City of Angels. The film will be screened on Thursday, June 27^th, 2019 at 7:00 pm. Starring Jack Nicholson in one of the many classics that he made during that phenomenal decade, the film co-stars Faye Dunaway, John Houston, John Hillerman, Diane Ladd, and Bruce Glover. The film runs 131 minutes.

PLEASE NOTE:

The following cast/crew member(s) are scheduled at press time to appear in person, with the potential for more to be added to the list, so please check the Royal website link at the bottom for updates as the screening day draws closer:

Actor Bruce Glover (Hard Times, Walking Tall, Diamonds Are Forever, Ghost World)

Assistant director Hawk Koch

Author Sam Wasson

From the press release:

CHINATOWN

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.com/ac.

CHINATOWN (1974)
45th Anniversary Screening
Cast and Crew Q&A
Thursday, June 27 at 7 PM
Royal Theatre

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a screening of one of the most memorable films of the 70s, the neo-noir mystery thriller, Chinatown. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards in 1974 (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor Jack Nicholson and Best Actress Faye Dunaway), the film won the Oscar for the original screenplay by Robert Towne. Although it was set in a beautifully recreated 1930s universe, the film reflected the bitter cynicism and disillusionment of the Vietnam and Watergate era.

Towne was a Los Angeles native, and he had long been fascinated by the history of the city, where the sun-dappled beauty belied the underlying greed and corruption. The inspiration for the story were the water wars that had shaped the modern life of the place. These struggles over the city’s natural resources had taken place in the first decade of the 20th century; Towne moved the setting up to the 1930s, partly in order to combine this scorching social commentary with the spirit of classic detective novels penned by authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Nicholson plays J.J. Gittes, a private eye who specializes in sordid cases of marital infidelity. But he gets himself into deeper territory when an investigation into a civic leader’s extramarital affair leads to the discovery of a massive conspiracy by big business interests to seize control of the city’s oveted water supply. Gittes’s sleuthing also leads him to uncover shocking cases of sexual abuse among the city’s elite. Dunaway plays a variation on the classic femme fatale of noir cinema, a beautiful heiress who is commanding on the surface but is secretly and tragically damaged by events in her past. John Huston plays her corrupt father, and the supporting cast includes John Hillerman, Perry Lopez, Diane Ladd, Burt Young, Bruce Glover, and James Hong.

Robert Evans, the successful head of Paramount Studios at the time, backed Towne’s screenplay and decided to make the film his first venture as a producer. When Evans took over as head of the studio in the 60s, one of his early successes was an adaptation of Ira Levin’s best-selling novel, Rosemary’s Baby, which became the first American movie of European director Roman Polanski. That film was a smash hit, and Evans hired Polanski again to direct Chinatown. Polanski had been reluctant to work in Hollywood since the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, by the infamous Manson family in 1969. But Evans persisted and Polanski brought his knowledge of the underside of Hollywood to his depiction of the city’s past, even changing the ending of Towne’s screenplay to reflect his own deep pessimism.

The film’s technical team—including cinematographer John Alonzo, production designer Richard Sylbert, and costume designer Anthea Sylbert—helped to realize the writer and director’s vision of decay beneath the elegant surfaces of Southern California. Jerry Goldsmith’s sultry score, highlighted by a melancholy trumpet solo, clinched the mournful mood.

Variety praised the achievement: “Roman Polanski’s American-made film, his first since Rosemary’s Baby, shows him again in total command of talent and physical filmmaking elements.” Derek Malcolm of the London Evening Standard wrote, “Polanski’s telling of his tale of corruption in L.A. is masterly—thrilling, humorous and disturbing at the same time—and brilliantly played by John Huston and Faye Dunaway as well as Nicholson.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1991.

Our panel to discuss the film will include actor Bruce Glover (Hard Times, Walking Tall, Diamonds Are Forever); assistant director Hawk Koch (who went on to produce such films as Heaven Can Wait, The Idolmaker, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Wayne’s World, and Primal Fear and later served as president of the Motion Picture Academy); and author Sam Wasson (who wrote the biography of Bob Fosse that served as the basis of the highly acclaimed miniseries, Fosse/Verdon, and is writing a new book on the seminal films of the 70s).

Director: Roman Polanski
Writer: Robert Towne
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, John Hillerman, Perry Lopez, Burt Young, Bruce Glover, James Hong, Diane Ladd

The 45th anniversary screening of Chinatown will take place at the Royal Theatre, 11523 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025 on Thursday, June 27^th, 2019 at 7:00 pm.

Click here for tickets.

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

A GHOST STORY FOR ADULTS

By Raymond Benson

Under appreciated upon its original release in 1961, The Innocents is today considered one of the great film ghost stories. After all, it’s based on Henry James’ creepy The Turn of the Screw, a truly scary masterwork published in 1898. In the capable hands of Jack Clayton (fresh off his success with Room at the Top, which had been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director in 1959), the picture delivers a classic Gothic punch that is strange, beautiful, and, ultimately, powerfully disturbing. Faithful to the source material, the story is set in the Victorian era. The gorgeous and inimitable Deborah Kerr stars as a naive and, as it turns out, sexually repressed governess who is hired by an eccentric and secretive man (“The Uncle,” played by Michael Redgrave). She is to be a governess to his orphaned niece and nephew at a lonely country estate, aided by only a couple of servants. He neglects to tell her the place is haunted as hell.

Noted film scholar Sir Christopher Frayling, in a video introduction on the background and production of The Innocents, says that a pivotal scene in the film might be more unsettling today than it was in 1961—and that is when the young nephew (Martin Stephens) plants a very adult kiss on his governess. Yikes! Frayling’s right! At this point the movie takes a sharp left turn into true darkness, the prickly kind that prompts you to turn to your neighbor and say, “Eww.” That’s right, this is a film more about sex than it is about ghosts, although it is certainly that, too. The ghosts happen to be the former governess and valet, who apparently had a steamy love affair in the house, not caring who witnessed it—not even the children. Both died in unnatural ways. The plot gets even more sick—the ghosts are attempting to possess the children so they can continue their love affair in new bodies. What? The bodies of siblings, the ages of whom are somewhere between ten and fourteen?

Eww.

So, right there we know that the giant multi-room house, inside of which the governess is losing her mind, is haunted by sex. Vile, evil sex. And Ms. Kerr’s Miss Giddens, the daughter of a conservative pastor, reacts appropriately. Thus, we are presented with the best kind of ghost story—an ambiguous one. Are there really ghosts? Or is Miss Giddens skyrocketing off her rocker? It’s up to us to decide. It’s not on a whim that the film was originally marketed as adult fare.

Clayton’s sensitive and assured direction, along with Kerr’s riveting performance, certainly bring to the film its winning qualities, but two elements of the production are essential to the picture’s success—the cinematography by Freddie Francis and art direction by Wilfred Shingleton. Francis’ work is specially showcased in this new Blu-ray disc from The Criterion Collection. Francis shot the movie in CinemaScope black and white, and yet he also shaded the corners to shape the image into a subtle, oblong, and more tunnel-like rectangle. The striking contrasts in lighting that occur throughout the interiors and exteriors are, oddly, almost characters themselves in this eerie story. Brilliant stuff.

And it all looks marvelous, for Criterion’s new 4K digital restoration is flawlessly executed—the images truly reach a high-water mark for black and white celluloid on Blu-ray. Sir Christopher Frayling also provides an informed audio commentary. Other extras include a video interview with cinematographer John Bailey about Francis and his work, and a new documentary featuring interviews with Francis himself, editor Jim Clark, and script supervisor Pamela Mann Francis. The essay in the glossy booklet is by Maitland McDonagh.

Without question, The Innocents is a classy and elegant release of a stylish and chilling motion picture. Highly recommended.

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BY TIM MCGLYNN

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (Paramount 1970) introduces the title character, scarred by an acid attack, as she leaves the hospital and rents a dilapidated house in small town Massachusetts. Her roommates are Arthur, an introverted epileptic and Warren, a paraplegic who is also gay. Otto Preminger’s 1970 film, based the novel by Marjorie Kellog, has been missing in action until Olive Films’ Blu-ray and DVD release.

Liza Minnelli stars in this charming story as Junie Moon, physically and emotionally damaged by a horrific encounter with a psychotic lover. Actor-Director Robert Moore (Murder By Decree, The Cheap Detective) is Warren, who will not be limited by his wheelchair in the pursuit of love and happiness. Ken Howard (1776, The White Shadow) is the shy Arthur, who suffers from seizures that seem to be brought on by stress.

After renting a small bungalow from the eccentric Miss Kellog (Kay Thompson), the three set up house and learn to survive by leaning on each other in various times of need. Arthur is offered a job at a local fish market by Mario (James Coco), but is fired when a nosy neighbor claims Arthur is a child molester. Mario, realizing his mistake, befriends the trio and offers them a vacation at a seaside resort.

While on their trip to the ocean Arthur declares his love for Junie, and Warren, much to his surprise, spends the night with a woman. The three are befriended by a local man played by Fred Williamson (Hammer, Black Caesar), who acts as their host. Along the way there are comic encounters with resort guests, hotel clerks and beachcombers. While short on plot, the movie is a wonderful character study concerning the importance of friendship and the overcoming of life’s obstacles.

Junie Moon is a marked departure for the usually bombastic Preminger in that he is more laid back and subtle in his observations of society’s problems and inequities. There are several flashback scenes exploring each character’s history including the use of hallucinations that Arthur experiences before his epileptic attacks.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The 1970s was a good time period for Richard Dreyfuss. He made a splash early impression in the decade with "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz", which begat a leading role in "American Graffiti", which begat "Jaws" and then an Oscar-winning turn in "The Goodbye Girl" and then "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Dreyfuss was so popular that no one even noticed his off-beat, X-rated flop "Inserts". He gave another good turn in "The Big Fix", a 1978 updating of the traditional film noir detective movie set in contemporary times. The lighthearted thriller finds Dreyfuss cast as private dick Moses Wine (we love the name!). He's a modern day variation of the loner private eye: he's divorced and has a fractious relationship with his ex (Bonnie Bedelia), whose new live-in lover enjoys humiliating Moses by reminding him he's his former wife's new bed mate. He has two young sons who he spends as much time with as possible and to increase efficiency, he often takes them on his assignments. Despite this modern spin on an old style of hero, Moses has something in common with his predecessors: he's flat broke and living on the razor's edge in an economic sense.  One day, a former lover, Lila (Susan Anspach), appears out of nowhere and entices him to take on a case with political overtones. She persuades him by reminding him of his one-time late 1960s roots as a liberal activist- and by appealing to his reawakened sexual interest in her. Lila is associated with  the campaign of a progressive gubernatorial candidate named Hawthorne, who is being victimized by bogus flyers and posters being circulated that show Hawthorne embracing Howard Eppis (F. Murray Abraham), a notorious fugitive from justice who is wanted for high profile crimes in the late 1960s. (The character is obviously based on real-life radical Abbie Hoffman.) Lila and Hawthorne's campaign manager, the high strung Sam Sebastian (John Lithgow), maintain that the photo has been doctored and that Hawthorne never met or posed with Eppis. They suspect the forgers are with the campaign of Hawthorne's rival and they hire Moses to help prove it. In order to do so, he must track down Eppis to get the real story. It's a quest that has some deadly surprises associated with it. 

Like many a good private eye mystery, "The Big Fix" is complicated and confusing- not "The Big Sleep" extreme of confusing- but confusing enough to make you wonder at times how all the disparate collection of characters might be interconnected. Dreyfuss shines in the role, dispensing the requisite gumshoe wisecracks and proving to be something less than the perfect hero as the plot turns to murder and a major potential terrorist bombing of the L.A. freeway system. Moses is an interesting character especially when his reunion with Lila reawakens his interest in political activism. There is a poignant moment in which he becomes teary-eyed while watching news footage of the protest era. The late 1970s was a sobering time for liberals. President Jimmy Carter's popularity was foundering and the soon-to-be elected Ronald Reagan would usher in a sweeping era of conservative political power. The film was obviously in production before any of this happened but the left wing could see the writing on the wall and their diminishing clout is evident in the frustration of Moses and Lila, who is going through the motions of backing an anemic candidate because he is the lesser of two evils.

The film boasts a witty screenplay by Roger L. Simon, based on one of his own Moses Wine detective novels and the direction by Jeremy Kagan is also spot-on, with Kagan using the L.A. locations to good effect. Neither Kagan or his cinematographer Frank Stanley attempts to provide an innovative look to the film, which is visually unremarkable in contrast to the (then) recently-released film noir homage "Farewell My Lovely". Stanley does, however, manage some impressive aerial shots in the climatic scenes on the L.A. freeway system. There is an interesting supporting cast with John Lithgow especially good in a dramatic role, Fritz Weaver as an eccentric millionaire, Rita Karin in a funny turn as Moses' obnoxious aunt and F. Murray Abraham as Eppis, who turns out to have been living the good life under an assumed name, having foresaken his political ideals of years past. Look out for Mandy Patinkin in his big screen debut as a kooky delivery man in a tiny but amusing role. 

The Twilight Time Blu-ray has an excellent transfer and is limited to 3,000 units. The region-free disc provides an isolated track for Bill Conti's jaunty score, a collector's booklet with liner notes by Julie Kirgo and the original trailer. If you like Richard Dreyfuss, this one is a must as it showcases the actor at his best.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

On April 28, director Francis Ford Coppola appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival to unveil "Apocalypse Now: Final Cut" which he feels is the definitive presentation of his landmark 1979 film. Coppola, looking trimmed down and very fit at age 80, was greeted by an enthusiastic sold-out audience at Manhattan's historic Beacon Theatre. The event inexplicably got off to a delayed start of almost 40 minutes as eager cinephiles began to grow restless. However, once Coppola took the stage to introduce the film, all was forgiven. He made a few brief remarks and indicated that he felt the original cut of the film was too short and his 2001 "Redux" version was too long. Then to the delight of the audience, he introduced an actor who had appeared in numerous Coppola films- Robert Duvall, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as the self-described "goofy fuck", Lt. Colonel Kilgore. Duvall only spoke briefly, joking that he is grateful he is still around to see the 40th anniversary screening of the film. He then got a cheer from the audience when he shouted in parting, "Charlie don't surf!", a key Kilgore line from the film.

(Photo copyright Tony Latino. All rights reserved.) 

When the film began, it became apparent that the sound system would greatly enhance the magnificent visuals. When explosions occurred, seats vibrated in the manner not seen since the days of Sensurround. There was a slight problem with the sound mixing for this presentation. In at least some parts of the theater, the background sounds often overwhelmed the dialogue, making it muffled and sometimes unintelligible. It appears that it was eventually corrected as the second half of the film did not demonstrate this issue. The sound mix was indeed impressive during the famous helicopter attack set to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".  The visual components were truly stunning with the viewer gaining even more appreciation for the ingenious achievement of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

How does "Final Cut" compare with previous editions? The following observations assume the reader has at least a general knowledge of the film. I first saw the movie in its opening engagement at the Ziegfeld Theatre in Manhattan. The presentation contained no opening or closing credits. Instead, attendees received an illustrated program listing the names of cast and crew. However, unions complained that participants were being denied proper credit in the film itself. Additionally, theater owners worried that when the movie was to go into general release, audiences would be perplexed by having the film end "cold" without any end credits. Thus, for the film's subsequent engagements, Coppola used fiery footage at the end of the film, representing the destruction of Kurtz's compound over which credits were unfurled. In 2001, Coppola reissued the film in the "Redux" version, adding significant scenes that had been deleted from the original cut. "Final Cut" leaves intact most of these scenes:

• Extended footage of Kilgore's mad quest to initiate surfing amidst a raging battle and Willard's prank of stealing Kilgore's beloved surfboard. He also keeps in a later scene in which the voice of Kilgore can be heard from a helicopter demanding the return of the board, as the men hide below in their boat, obscured by the jungle.
  
• The extended French plantation sequence in which Willard and his team come upon heavily-armed members of a proud French family who are determined to retain control of their beloved mansion and plantation. The soldiers are welcomed in to stay the night and Willard allows himself to be seduced by a glamorous widow who smokes cigars in an elegant manner.
  

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

If you’ve ever read one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, you know that there has always been a big difference between Tarzan as he is in the movies versus Tarzan in the books. For some reason Hollywood has never really been able to get the character exactly right. As much fun as the Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker Tarzan movies are, for example, they really didn’t get close to Burroughs’ concept of the ape man. The real Tarzan didn’t speak Pidgin English for one thing. He actually spoke fluent English and French. He was as at home in an English Tea Room as the son of a British Lord, as he was in the prehistoric land of Pal-ul-don. While the movies showed Tarzan as protector of the animals, and friends with cute chimpanzees, in the books Burroughs present a world where death usually came on four feet, although man was often the most treacherous enemy. It was a jungle out there, and it was survival of the fittest, baby.

In 2016, Warner Bros. attempted to restart the Tarzan series with the $180 million “The Legend of Tarzan.” The film made double its budget at the box office worldwide, but it didn’t excite audiences or studio heads enough to continue with a sequel. So it looks like Tarzan will be on sabbatical for a while. Part of the reason for the film’s failure was the script’s presentation of Tarzan. They got the outer dimensions of the character right, but included too many politically correct ideas that weakened the Burroughs concept. For one thing, Tarzan lost too many fights, with both humans and apes. You don’t get to be King of the Jungle by losing fights. But I think it was the total reliance on CGI to create Tarzan’s Africa that was the main reason for the film’s failure. Except for the occasional aerial footage shot over the jungles of Gabon, the entire film was shot on sound stages in England. The movie lacked the reality that a fantasy like Tarzan needs to be believable.

Which brings me to the subject of this review. In the opinion of most true Tarzan fans there has only ever been one Tarzan film that really captures what Tarzan is all about. It’s not perfect, but it’s probably the closest they’ll ever get. In 1959, producer Sy Weintraub took over the Tarzan franchise from Sol Lesser after it was moved to Paramount Pictures. Weintraub injected the series with new energy and new ideas. He wanted to make an “adult” Tarzan flick and he wanted to shoot on location in Kikuyu, Kenya.

He hired a top flight cast of British actors to play the villains in the piece. Anthony Quayle, whose acting experience ranged from potboilers to Shakespeare, was cast as the main villain, Slade, an escaped con and old enemy of Tarzan. Next up, none other than 007 himself, Sean Connery, in an early role as O’Bannion, a tough Irish gunman, who, being too young for the Irish Rebellion, decides there are no causes worth fighting for because “They don’t pay well.” Next is Nial MacGiniss as Kruger, a German diamond expert who doesn’t want to be reminded of the old days of the Third Reich. Al Muloch plays Dino, captain of the boat the gang is riding up river, who has a strange attachment to a locket he wears around his neck. And finally, Italian actress Scilla Gabel as Toni, Slade’s girl. There’s plenty of internal conflict and tension among these five on board a small jungle boat as it makes its way up river to a diamond mine.

The film starts with the theft of explosives from a compound run by a doctor friend of Tarzan’s. The gang needs the gelignite to excavate a diamond mine located upriver, just north of Tarzan’s tree house. It’s interesting to note that the script by Berne Giler is based on a story written by Les Crutchfield, a veteran writer who wrote 81 Gunsmoke radio scripts, and was himself an explosives expert and a mining engineer before he started writing. Explosives figure prominently in the plot.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Years before Michael Cimino released his Socialist-themed Western Heaven's Gate, director Stanely Kramer took a less heavy-handed approach with his 1973 film Oklahoma Crude, which has been released on Blu-ray by Twilight Time. Unlike Cimino's dark and message-laden epic, however, Kramer made the political aspects of his film secondary to the lighthearted tone of the story. Faye Dunaway, seen here in the least glamorous role of her career, plays Lena Doyle, a bitter, man-hating independent woman who is determined to make a success of her wildcat oil drilling venture on the plains of Oklahoma during the early 1900s. Beset by the frustration of consistently having her rig dig up dirt instead of oil, she also has to contend with a bigger threat: a major oil company is determined to seize her land by hook or by crook. When she turns down the offer of a buyout from their cut throat representative (Jack Palance), the oil company moves a virtual army on to Lena's land with the intention of taking her rig by force. Although a crack shot, Lena concedes she can use help and reluctantly hires a down-and-out drifter, 'Mase' Mason (George C. Scott) to help her keep her the assailants at bay. The two have an abrasive relationship, with Lena never smiling or showing an interest in anything other than drawing oil from her rig. They are also assisted by Lena's father Cleon Doyle (John Mills), a charismatic Englishman who is trying to win Lena's love and respect after having deserted her many years ago. Lena can barely stand the sight of him, but faced with the thugs are her doorstep, she has to accept his help.The story mostly takes place on the hillside where Lena's cabin is situated. 'Mase' proves to be a courageous and innovative ally, acquiring U.S. Army hand grenades and using them with devastating effect against the heavily armed gangs from the oil company who try repeatedly to take Lena's hilltop rig and cabin by force.

Oklahoma Crude was a late career project for Kramer (he would only make two more films). Dismissed at the time as a routine Western comedy, the film comes across as a sheer delight when viewing it today. The thin story line isn't the main attraction. Rather, it's the combined talents of four Oscar winners- Scott, Dunaway, Mills and Palance- that add so much zest to what could have otherwise have been a routine experience. They are all delightful to watch, with Scott at his best and Mills in a scene-stealing, wonderful performance as a flawed but charming tenderfoot who summons incredible courage when it is needed most. Kramer hired the best of the best for his crew including cinematographer Robert Surtees, who makes every other frame look like an Andrew Wyeth painting. There is also a fine musical score by Henry Mancini which perfectly fits the "never a dull moment" mood of the movie. 

The film is a sheer delight from beginning to its finale, which features a refreshing plot twist.

The Twilight Time Blu-ray release boasts the expected excellent transfer, an informative collector's booklet with liner notes by Julie Kirgo, an isolated score track and a commentary track by this writer and fellow film historian Paul Scrabo. This release is limited to 3,000 units.

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BY TIM MCGLYNN

“Life’s a banquet, and most sons of bitches are starving to death!”

The Warner Archive has just released the Blu-ray version of Mame, 1974’s film version of the hit Broadway show. The musical itself was based on the play Auntie Mame starring Rosalind Russell, also a film and also available from the Warner Archive.

On paper, this movie had “hit” written all over it with Mame’s Broadway director Gene Saks on board along with Bea Arthur (Saks’ wife) and Jane Connell reprising their stage roles. The popular score by Jerry Herman was augmented with a new song, Loving You. Phillip H. Lathrop was the cinematographer, Onna White staged the production numbers and veteran composer/arranger Fred Werner supervised the music.

The casting of the title role created controversy at the time as the star of the Broadway version of Mame, Angela Lansbury, was overlooked in favor of television and film legend Lucille Ball. It was decided at the time that Ms. Ball would draw a larger audience as film musicals had been sputtering at the box office. Previous efforts such as Paint Your Wagon, Hello Dolly and Lost Horizon had been financial disasters, and the studio wanted to stack the deck in favor of Mame breaking this trend.

Lucille Ball had never been known as a singer and at age 63 she may have not been as nimble on her feet as she was in earlier musicals. One just has to remember her taming the cat dancers with a whip in MGM’s Ziegfield Follies in 1946. Ms. Ball’s performance as Mame Dennis is still enjoyable and, if anything, is somewhat restrained. Scenes involving a comic foxhunt with Mame riding sidesaddle and a disastrous stage debut could have turned into Lucy Ricardo style slapstick, but were wisely held in check by director Saks. Ms. Ball conveyed warmth, strength and gentle humor in her performance as the eccentric, but lovable aunt.

The story follows the young and recently orphaned Patrick Dennis being sent to New York to live with his only living relative: his father’s sister Mame, a free-spirited bachelorette socialite. Mame instantly takes a liking to her nephew and vows to show him all the culture and unconventional personalities of Manhattan during the late 1920s. Her friends include a stage actress of dubious talent, the headmaster of a Bohemian nudist school, a less- than- successful stockbroker and a loyal houseboy.

Mame’s escapades with Patrick are made aware to his guardian, a conservative bank president, who sends the child to boarding school. Despite this setback, Auntie Mame remains the main influence on her nephew’s upbringing, and the story tracks their relationship through Patrick reaching adulthood and his preparations to marry. Along the way Mame encounters the stock crash of 1929, employment in customer service, marriage to a Southern aristocrat and a sudden tragedy. Her one constant through everything is her loving relationship with young Patrick.

A fantastic supporting cast includes Bea Arthur as actress Vera Charles, Jane Connell as Patrick’s nanny Agnes Gooch, Robert Preston as Mame’s love interest Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, George Chiang as the houseboy Ito, Joyce Van Patten as Southern belle Sally Cato, Bruce Davison as the adult Patrick and John McGiver as Mr. Babcock, Patrick’s guardian.

Musical highlights include the beautifully staged title number sung by Robert Preston, a touching duet, My Best Girl, between Mame and Patrick, the hilariously wicked Bosom Buddies, where Mame and Vera confirm their lifelong friendship and a genuine holiday moment with the charming We Need a Little Christmas.

The script by Paul Zindel does drag a bit in the second act as adult Patrick contemplates marriage. There is an awkward jump as one wedding is called off and another takes place. Zindel does include many of the one-liners that made the stage version so humorous. Chiang, the houseboy answers a call from Mame’s financial adviser asking “he wants to know what to do with your stocks before he jumps out the window.” Vera enters the room after an all-night binge and declares: “Somebody has been sleeping in my dress!”

“THE CIRCUS OF HUMILIATION”

By Raymond Benson

The Criterion Collection has upgraded to Blu-ray their earlier DVD release of Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 feature, Sawdust and Tinsel (titled The Naked Night when the picture was first released theatrically in the U.S.). The visual quality has improved with a new 2K digital restoration that looks razor sharp with gorgeous contrasting black and white imagery, and it comes with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack.

Sawdust was a major step forward in the evolution of Bergman’s filmography, although it was not well-received by Swedish audiences at the time of release. It was most likely deemed too disturbing for what appeared to be a movie about a traveling circus. Note that this was before Bergman’s international breakthrough, which would occur a couple of years later with Smiles of a Summer Night. At the time of Sawdust and Tinsel, Bergman was mostly known just in his native country and at the various film festivals around the world where his work had been submitted.

The first several pictures in Bergman’s oeuvre, especially in the late 1940s, were often melodramatic tales of entanglement, lost love, betrayal, and working-class misfits struggling to enrich their lives. It wasn’t until Summer Interlude, in 1951, that a singular stylistic and thematic voice emerged that can now be identified as Bergman-esque. Earlier in 1953, Summer with Monika was released, and that caused something of a sensation with its frank portrayal of what the U.S. distributor called “The Story of a Bad Girl.” That one made a star out of Harriet Andersson, who would work on several other pictures with Bergman over the next four decades.

Sawdust and Tinsel was a very different picture from Monika. Taking place in the early 1900s, the story concerns a poor, shoddy traveling circus that barely supports itself. It is run by Albert (Åke Grönberg), a middle-aged man who left his wife and sons in a small town in order to be a ringmaster. His mistress, Anne (Harriet Andersson), is the bareback rider, younger and yearning for something better. Frost the Clown (Anders Ek) and his wife Alma (Gudrun Brost), who has an act with a sickly bear, are oddballs and constant thorns in Albert’s side. When the circus sets up near the town where Albert’s family lives, he decides to go for a visit. First, though, the troupe must borrow costumes from the local theater run by creepy manager Sjuberg (played by Bergman stalwart Gunnar Björnstrand). There, Anne meets the mysterious actor, Frans (Hasse Ekman), who seduces her away from Albert.

Doesn’t sound like a good time at the cinema? Hogwash. This is a fascinating and haunting battle of the sexes—a typical Bergman theme—but the carnival milieu is so unique to the director that Sawdust and Tinsel is immediately visually striking with its dreamlike photography (it was the first collaboration between Bergman and longtime cinematographer Sven Nykvist), its colorful and eccentric characters, and its moody and often threatening ambiance.

At the story’s core is a treatise on how human beings react to humiliation. The opening scene, in which Frost must rescue his wife from the taunting of the Swedish military performing exercises near the beach, is a nightmarish, nearly silent mime show of anguish and terror (and the facial contortions that Ek’s Frost makes are worth a study in skin elasticity!). The meat of the picture is how the ultimate shattering of both Albert’s and Anne’s dreams force them to re-examine their lots in life.

It’s all powerful stuff.

Supplements on the disk include an audio commentary from 2007 by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie, a video introduction from 2003 by Bergman himself, and an essay in the booklet by critic John Simon.

NOTE: For those of you looking for the sold-out boxed set retrospective of Bergman’s career that was released in November, Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, new copies will be available February 26, 2019.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

It took Sean Connery years to successfully cast aside the shadow of James Bond and establish himself as a diverse actor. Connery had made some fine non-Bond films even during the peak of 007 mania - The Hill, Woman of Straw, A Fine Madness and Marnie. Each of these worthy efforts afforded Connery a role that was significantly different than that of Bond but, much to his frustration, all of them were box-office disappointments, although he did have the satisfaction of seeing The Hill win international acclaim. When Connery left the Bond series in 1968, he made some more fine films. The Western Shalako was an international box-office success, as was The Anderson Tapes, which cast him as a charismatic crook.  Yet, Martin Ritt's The Molly Maguires, an ambitious film about exploited coal miners, failed to click with audiences, as did The Red Tent, which afforded Connery top-billing even though he only had a supporting role. Connery returned to the Bond fold in 1971 for Diamonds Are Forever and then quit the part once again. He gave one of the finest performances of his career in Sidney Lumet's micro-budget drama The Offence, but it played in only a few art houses before slipping into oblivion. John Boorman's Zardoz, which has attracted a cult following today, was a critical and box-office flop at the time of its release, as was a minor Connery thriller The Terrorists (aka Ransom). But Connery was not about to be counted out. He scored with Murder on the Orient Express, The Wind and the Lion, Robin and Marian, The Great Train Robbery and, most significantly, The Man Who Would Be King. All were critical successes even if they were not blockbusters. Connery also played a key role in the WWII epic A Bridge Too Far, a fine and underrated film. Soon thereafter, however, his choice of film projects became erratic. Although the films Cuba, Wrong is Right and Outland all under-performed at the box-office, they at least afforded him the opportunity to work with acclaimed directors Richard Lester, Richard Brooks and Peter Hyams, respectively. But the cheesy disaster flick Meteor could only be attributed to the desire to make a fast buck. 

As Connery matured as a man and actor he still would take on films with limited commercial appeal if he felt the project was artistically rewarding. This was the case with the 1982 film Five Days One Summer which proved to be the final cinematic work of Oscar-winning director Fred Zinnemann, who had made such classics as High Noon and From Here to Eternity. Zinnemann had scored a late career triumph in 1977 with Julia but hadn't made a film since. The movie was an odd choice for both men since the story was small in scale and seemed to have no hope of attracting mainstream audiences. Five Days is very much an art house movie that was nevertheless given wide release based solely on Connery's presence as the leading man. Predictably, it had a quick playoff to largely empty theaters but perhaps more surprisingly, the critics who had lauded Zinnemann with praise for Julia now accused him of making a film that was too small in scope for a collaborative project with Sean Connery. Zinnemann was seventy-four years old when he made the movie and perhaps he felt he had paid his dues to the big studios over the decades. Now in the twilight of his years he might have simply wanted to make a very personal film that appealed to him, if not everyone else. The script is based on a 1929 short story, Maiden Maiden by Kay Boyle. The film was shot under this title before the decision was made to change it to the equally ambiguous Five Days One Summer. In fact, Maiden Maiden was a more intriguing title because it has a dual reference. The first is the the female protagonist of the story and the second is to The Maiden, an imposing mountain in the Swiss Alps where some dramatic events occur. The story concerns the taboo relationship between Kate (Betsy Brantley), an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties and her uncle Douglas (Sean Connery), a successful doctor in his fifties. Since she was a little girl Kate has had an uncontrollable crush on Douglas and as she grew older, came to resent his wife Sarah (Jennifer Hilary). Director Zinnemann zig-zags back and forth in time to show how a schoolgirl crush developed into a forbidden sexual relationship that finds Kate excluding any other potential lover in favor of Douglas. She alternates between joy and depression, the latter mood hitting her whenever she dwells on the fact that she can never be in anything but a secret relationship with the man she loves. Even if Douglas were to get a divorce, the incestuous love affair could never be made public.

The main part of the film concerns Douglas and Kate pulling off a risky holiday trip that will allow them to spend time together in a remote lodge in the Swiss Alps where they can indulge in their mutual passion for hiking and climbing. To avoid any suspicions, she poses as Douglas's wife in a May/December romance.  At first she is as giddy as a schoolgirl because she can finally share a bed with Douglas and they can openly express affection for each other. Things get complicated, however, when their hiking guide turns out to be Johann (Lambert Wilson), a handsome young man who is Kate's age. From minute one he awakens long suppressed sexual desires in her for someone other than Douglas, who immediately perceives the unspoken attraction between the two. The trio enjoy a cordial and professional relationship as the hike and take in the scenic wonders around them. However, Johann becomes more forthright when he learns that Kate isn't married to Douglas (though she does not confide he is her uncle). Johann is outraged and tries to convince her to leave him, telling her that she is in a dead-end love affair with a married man  that can't end well. Meanwhile, on a dangerous hike with Douglas, Johann also confronts him while they are atop the summit of the Maiden (not the most opportune place to have an argument with each other.) Douglas maintains that he is not using Kate and really loves her. Meanwhile, she has made up her mind to leave Douglas and marry Johann. Before she can give Douglas a "Dear John"  letter, word comes that there has been a disaster on the mountain and that one of the men in her life has been killed in an avalanche. In the final scene, she sees a distant figure emerging from the snowy mountain landscape, staggering towards her and a group of rescuers. Is it her lover or her would-be lover? Either way, the result will affect her life in a dramatic way forever. 

"Five Days One Summer" has been likened to the German "mountain romances" that were enormously popular in pre-WWII Germany. These films were known to have skimpy plots but magnificent scenery. If critics were kind to any aspect of the movie, it was Giussepe Rotunno's impressive cinematographer. Most reviewers wondered what it was about this modest story that appealed to Fred Zinnemann, who worked infrequently but generally made "important" movies. Despite the low-key nature of the scenario that unfolds on-screen, there is much to like about the film. The performances are first-rate with newcomers Brantley and Wilson making  both faring well in their first major roles in a feature film. (Ironically, Wilson screen-tested for the role of James Bond in "Octopussy" when it seemed doubtful that Roger Moore would return to the 007 franchise.)  Connery dominates the film, however, with an excellent performance playing a complex character who at times is sympathetic and at other times somewhat of a villain. He's all superficial charm but he cruelly risks destroying his niece's own life by using her as a bed mate. There's no doubt he loves her, but it's clear he isn't about to endanger his marriage to be closer to her. When she finally expresses her frustration and threatens to leave him for Johann, he reacts violently and slaps her. Equally complex is the character of Kate. We're left to speculate as to just why her obsession with Douglas has presumably led to the exclusion of any other men in her life. In this respect, the script is either lacking or intriguing, depending upon the views of individuals in the audience. The only easily definable character is that of Johann. He's a young man of simple means who has no interest in the world outside of the immediate domain in which he was raised. When he is smitten by Kate, his goal isn't to share her life experiences but rather, to incorporate her into his own world. In this respect, Kate's choices of lovers have one thing in common: they both want her to submit to their ideas about what is in her best interests. Douglas has clearly deluded himself into believing that his relationship with Kate is not harmful to her. Johann offers her a more independent, traditional life but still makes it clear that if she marries him, she would have to be content to live in a beautiful but remote mountain region. The end of the tale finds Kate finally exerting her own will and finding a determination to pursue her own destiny. 

"Five Days One Summer" is barely remembered, let alone discussed, in evaluations of Sean Connery and Fred Zinnemann's careers. However that shouldn't negate its many merits. I liked the film far more today than I did upon its initial release. The Warner Archive has released the film on DVD. The transfer is a bit problematic. Some of the sequences in the lush mountain areas do justice to the magnificent cinematography but certain other scenes have excessive grain. Additionally, interiors are over-saturated to the point that characters who are seen in dimly lit rooms are sometimes reduced to shadowy blobs. The film is a prime candidate for a Blu-ray, remastered edition. The only bonus extra is the original trailer. It is a region-free release. 

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Nicolas Roeg, the supremely talented British cinematographer who ultimately became an acclaimed director, has died at age 90. Roeg's unique eye for filming scenes in a creative manner gained him a reputation in the movie industry  in the 1960s. He was a second-unit photographer on David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" and contributed to Lean's "Doctor Zhivago". By 1964, he was credited as Director of Photography on Roger Corman's "The Masque of the Red Death", one of the most stylishly filmed Corman horror productions. Soon, he found himself constantly in demand. Other films he photographed included "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", "Far from the Madding Crowd" and "Petulia". He also contributed to the 1967 spoof version of "Casino Royale".

Roeg next moved into the Director's chair with the bizarre and controversial 1970 crime film "Performance" that has since become a cult classic. Better received was "Walkabout", which- as with "Performance"- he both directed and served as DP. In 1973, Roeg directed his most acclaimed film, the horror thriller "Don't Look Now" which maintains its reputation as one of the most terrifying films ever made. His other notable movies include "The Man Who Fell to Earth", "Bad Timing" and "Castaway". Most of his films made since the 1980s were quirky in content and made little impact. Roeg's sometimes crusty nature also put him out of favor with major studios and he turned to the television industry where he occasionally directed TV movies. However, his best films are still revered by movie scholars worldwide. Click here for more.

"THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS IN THE JUNGLE"

BY EVE GOLDBERG

The Night of the Iguana, Tennessee Williams’s last great play, was turned into a 1964 movie which, in its day, was as famous for its behind-the-scenes spectacle as for what actually appeared on screen.

Today, Iguana is rarely mentioned alongside the other classic Tennessee Williams film adaptations: Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly, Last Summer. Despite a tremendously talented cast, compelling characters, and a can’t-look-away examination of our anguished, redeemable humanity, Iguana is often neglected.

So, it’s high time for a fresh look at this movie — with a focus on its journey from stage to screen.

The Play

"Shannon!" shouts Maxine Faulk from the veranda of her run-down hotel on the coast of Mexico. Thus opens Tennessee Williams’ 1961 play. The setting is 1940. Recently widowed Maxine greets her old friend, Reverend Shannon, a disgraced minister who has been reduced to leading low-rent bus tours. He is currently shepherding a group of middle-aged Baptist women through Mexico. Shannon is in crisis. He has become sexually involved with Charlotte, a 17-year-old girl on the tour, whose jealous, closeted chaperone, Miss Fellows, is determined to get him fired. Already locked out of his church for having an affair with a young Sunday School teacher, Shannon is at the end of his rope. In a desperate attempt to stop Miss Fellows from phoning the States and exposing him, he pockets the ignition key and strands his charges at Maxine’s secluded hotel.

Vacationing at the hotel is a pro-Nazi German family who stay glued to the radio throughout the play, gleefully reporting on Hitler’s progress. Soon, another unexpected visitor arrives: the beautiful spinster artist, Hannah Jelkes, escorting her 97-year-old grandfather, “the world’s oldest practicing poet.” To eek out a living, Hannah sketches and her grandfather recites poetry as they wander the globe. Right now they are broke. Shannon convinces Maxine to let the pair spend the night at her hotel.

Earthy, sensual Maxine wants Shannon to stay on at the hotel and fill her late husband’s shoes. Persistent Charlotte wants to seduce him. Vengeful Miss Fellows wants to get him fired. Shannon wants some peace of mind. As he fights against his own desires for both Charlotte and alcohol, he becomes increasingly distraught and emotionally unstable. He finally falls to pieces after the bus driver wrests the ignition key away from him and leaves with the women to continue their tour. To prevent Shannon from running down to the beach to take that “long swim to China,” Maxine ties him up in a hammock on the verandah. During a stormy night of soul-searching (while strapped to the hammock), Shannon connects deeply with the serene and understanding Hannah. He admits to his “spooks,” she to her “blue devils.” Hannah, who has never had sexual relations, describes to Shannon what she calls her “love experience” with an underwear salesman. When Shannon asks whether she was disgusted by the man’s request to hold a piece of her clothing, Hannah replies with the most famous line of the play: “Nothing human disgusts me, unless it’s unkind, violent.”

As a result of the profound communication and connection Shannon experiences with Hannah, his torment subsides. He frees himself from the hammock. Then, at Hannah’s request, he cuts loose the iguana which is being held captive under the verandah by Maxine’s houseboys. At the end of the play, Hannah’s grandfather finishes his final poem and dies; Hannah leaves to travel alone; and Shannon reluctantly agrees to stay on with Maxine and help her run the hotel.

Night of the Iguana opened on Broadway with legendary Bette Davis in the role of Maxine. The play was well-received, and ran for 361 performances. It won the New York Drama Critic’s Circle award for Best Play, and was nominated for a Tony for Best Play. However, unhappy with the production and her role, Davis left the show after a few months. According to the actress, “There was no camaraderie, no sense of kinship, no attitude of pulling together to make the play work.” According to Tennessee Williams, “If she had ever truly had a command of her talent on the stage, she had lost it by that time.” Davis was replaced by Shelley Winters. Still, Davis hoped to play Maxine on screen. It was not to be.

The Stars

When producer Ray Stark brought a screenplay for Night of the Iguana to John Huston, the director was immediately interested in making the movie. “I was a great admirer of Tennessee Williams,” said Huston. “I had seen the play and liked it, with reservations.”

At that time, Huston was at the peak of a long and illustrious career. His prior films included such popular and critical hits as The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, and The Asphalt Jungle. In the sexist vernacular of the day, Huston was known as a “man’s man” — he was a former boxer, unrepentant boozer, and lover of women, danger, and adventure — who enjoyed making his films in exotic, challenging locations. He was also one of the most literate of American filmmakers. He had been a contract writer at Warner Brothers, penning adaptations of great novels including Moby Dick and Red Badge of Courage. In Iguana, he saw an opportunity to explore Tennessee Williams’s meaty theme of “loose, random souls trying to account for themselves and finally being able to do so through love.”

Huston hoped to cast his movie with big-time stars: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon.

Richard Burton was just coming off mega-movie Cleopatra, where he met, co-starred, and began a torrid affair with Elizabeth Taylor. The stunningly beautiful Taylor was the top female box office attraction in the world. Burton, an acclaimed Shakespearean actor, had become a screen sensation with starring roles in Look Back In Anger and Becket. Both Burton and Taylor were married to others when they began their affair — Taylor to crooner Eddie Fisher whom she infamously “stole” from girl-next-door actress Debbie Reynolds. At a time in American culture when divorce, much less extra-marital affairs, was still semi-taboo, the public couldn't get enough of "Liz and Dick." Their scandalous relationship and glamorous lifestyle captivated millions. Their photos and personal lives were constant fan mag fodder — solid gold for the Hollywood publicity machine.

If anybody could rival Liz Taylor in both the beauty and scandal departments it was Ava Gardner. Brought to Hollywood more for her looks and legs than her acting ability — which, according to the actress herself, was close to zilch — Gardner signed a contract with MGM at age 19. She then progressed from pin-up girl, to small roles in B movies, to femme fatale icon. She exuded a magnetic, sultry sex appeal. And she was gorgeous. According to Humphrey Bogart, "Whatever it is, whether you're born with it, or catch it from a public drinking cup, she's got it."

Gardner gained additional fame for three high-profile marriages to three high-profile celebrities: actor Mickey Rooney, band leader Artie Shaw, and no-introduction-needed Frank Sinatra. The tumultuous Frank-and-Ava marriage was chronicled in the press as avidly as the Liz-and-Dick affair. After six years of a passionately volatile relationship, Gardner and Sinatra divorced in 1957. By the time Iguana came around, Ava Gardner was 44 years old and living in Spain where she hung out with Ernest Hemingway and a bevy of bullfighters. Huston decided that her unique blend of beauty, maturity, and lusty sensuality made her ideally suited for the role of hotel owner Maxine.

As for Bette Davis, who openly coveted the role she had pioneered on Broadway, Huston decided she wasn’t right for the part. He felt she came across as “too threatening” for the kind of Maxine he had in mind.

When 18-year-old Sue Lyon was cast in Iguana as seductive teenager Charlotte, she had exactly one film credit to her name: the title role in Lolita. 'Nuf said.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Deborah Kerr already had 42 films under her belt. She had played a troubled nun in Black Narcissus; a neglected military wife in From Here to Eternity (iconic beach make-out scene with Burt Lancaster!); a widowed school teacher in The King and I; and the tragically romantic heroine in An Affair to Remember. She had been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress six times. On screen and off, Kerr had gained a reputation as a class act. Huston thought she'd be perfect as the chaste painter Hannah.

"We went to see them, one after another" Huston wrote in his memoir, Open Book. "Richard, in Switzerland, promptly accepted; likewise Deborah in London. That took us to Madrid and Ava Gardner." According to Huston, Gardner was unsure whether she had the ability to do the part. However, after the requisite wooing, she agreed to be in the film.

Now the stars were set. The press closed in. The fun was about to begin.

The Production

"We've got more reporters up here than iguanas." -- producer Ray Stark.

In 1964, when Iguana's cast and crew descended upon it, Puerto Vallarta was still a small fishing town with a few hotels; 24-hour electrical service had only recently arrived. Eight miles up the coast, accessible only by boat, was an isolated rain forest peninsula called Mismaloya. High atop the cliff at this lush, mosquito-infested spot is where Huston decided to film Night of the Iguana. A strong believer in location shooting, he thought the wild, sweaty atmosphere of Mismaloya would visually reflect the inner tumult of the movie's characters. He also hoped that the challenging environment would force the actors out of their comfort zones and enhance their performances.

Up on this jungle mountaintop, a construction crew built the movie's weathered hotel set. They also erected 40 bungalows to house the 125 cast and crew members who would live there for the entire 72-day shoot. In addition to living quarters, the crew built an editing room; a large kitchen, bar and restaurant; water tanks and an electrical plant; plus various paths and roads. All materials and supplies had to be carried up 134 earthen steps from the beach to the cliff-top location. It took 280 men and 80 burros to complete the task.

As construction of the miniature city proceeded, Huston and his co-writer, Anthony Veiller, worked on the script.

Finally, Iguana's cast arrived in Puerto Vallarta. As did more than 100 members of the press and paparazzi. Fascinated by the high-wattage gathering of filmdom glitterati, reporters expected plenty of behind-the-scenes fireworks. Especially because Burton was accompanied by his lover, Elizabeth Taylor. With sexy co-stars Ava Gardner and Sue Lyon roaming the set, the press assumed that Taylor wanted to keep an eye on Burton. "I trust Richard completely," she told reporters. "It's just that I don't trust Fate. After all, Fate threw us together on Cleopatra."

And there was plenty more to feed the gossip-hungry public: Burton brought along his publicist, Michael Wilding, who had been Liz Taylor's second husband. Teenager Sue Lyon was visited on location by her 25-year-old fiancé, actor Hampton Fancher III. And Ava Gardner took up with several hunky beach boys. Director Huston, married at the time, was accompanied by his mistress, Zoe Sallis. Deborah Kerr brought along her husband, writer Peter Viertel, who had once been Ava Gardner's lover. Viertel was the author of White Hunter, Black Heart — a novel based on the making of The African Queen — which featured an unflattering portrait of a Huston-like movie director.

Before filming began, Huston assembled his stars, plus Taylor and Stark, and presented each one with a velvet-lined box. Inside the box was a derringer pistol and five gold-plated bullets. Each bullet was engraved with the name of one of the others. A photo from that moment shows the assembled group examining their pistols and sharing a hearty laugh. The atmosphere was loose and fun — regardless of what the press hoped for.

While most of the cast and crew lived at the Mismaloya mini-city for the duration of the shoot, top stars Burton, Kerr, Gardner, and Lyon stayed in Puerto Vallarta.

Wrote Kerr about their accommodations in town: "Never have there been such raucous donkeys, such snuffling and screeching pigs, such shrill and insistent roosters and babbling turkeys. Top this off with a thick sauce of mariachi music, plus phonographs and radios at full blast, season with firecrackers and rockets at all hours of the night, and you have a fairly tasty idea of what the sleeping conditions are like in this tropical paradise."

Early each morning, the stars boarded motor boats to make the 25-minute ride to Mismaloya. Documentary footage shows Deborah Kerr being carried by a crew member, who is waist-deep in the surf, and being placed in a waiting boat.

Lines were drawn on the first day of shooting when Kerr and Lyon announced that they expected the set to be "dry." Burton, a devout alcoholic, said this was "preposterous." He ordered a bar to be set up at each end of the crude staircase which connected beach to cliff-top. Huston and Gardner, both committed drinkers, did not object. Thus, beer and tequila flowed freely during the shoot. Burton took his first drink early each morning before the cameras rolled. Gardner had a personal icebox stocked with her favorite Mexican beer. For her part, Elizabeth Taylor ordered gourmet hamburgers imported daily from the U.S. and brought up to the set.

Despite prodigious alcohol consumption, filming progressed fairly smoothly. While the press anticipated juicy sex scandal and interpersonal catastrophe, the most serious mishap of the production was actually due to the sub-standard materials used to construct the housing at Mismaloya. One night, assistant director Tom Shaw was standing on his balcony when it collapsed. Shaw broke his back and had to be flown back to the U.S. for surgery. Fortunately, his injuries healed and he would work with Huston again.

BY MARK LAGER

The times they were a-changin’ in the 1960s. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho did not feature a foreign monster (no Dracula vampire with an Eastern European accent or Cold War alien creatures or Japanese Godzilla.) The audience follows the main character (played by Janet Leigh) to an American motel where the caretaker Norman Bates appears to be a mild-mannered young man. Then he stabs the main character to death in a shower. The camera slowly zooms out of the eye of the beautiful young woman’s corpse. Norman Bates was inspired by the real-life serial killer Ed Gein, who committed two ghastly and grisly crimes in Wisconsin in the 1950s. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 traumatized the nation and the race riots in 1964 and 1965 showed a conflict and crisis in American society that could no longer be ignored. After midnight, on August 1, 1966 in Austin,, twenty-five year old Charles Whitman stabbed his mother and wife and then shortly before high noon he climbed the stairs of the clock tower at the University of Texas campus and murdered multiple victims by firing at them with his sniper rifle until he was shot by police officers.

Twenty-eight year old Peter Bogdanovich had been obsessed with cinema his entire life. He wrote film criticism for various magazines and had also been a movie programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He had left NYC for L.A. because he no longer wanted to only write about films. He wanted to be a director. Yet it was his writing that gave him his first directing job. Roger Corman had read an article Peter Bogdanovich had written for Esquire, and the two of them discussed filmmaking when they met at a screening. Corman gave Bogdanovich complete creative control over his directorial debut, with one exception. He had to use the actor Boris Karloff and footage from the film The Terror. Bogdanovich had been deeply disturbed by Charles Whitman’s mass shooting and felt compelled to write a screenplay based on the event. How would he incorporate Boris Karloff into this story? Karloff had been the iconic face of horror in Hollywood history. His foreign facial features and voice had frightened American audiences. The 1930s - 1950s was an era when America’s deepest fears were of foreign enemies. The 1960s altered audiences’ views. Lee Harvey Oswald was American. Charles Whitman was American. The enemy was no longer foreign. The enemy was within American society.

Bogdanovich named his directorial debut with the stark title Targets. He co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Polly Platt. He was against his directorial debut being released by American International Pictures. Bogdanovich wanted it to be distributed by a company with historical significance. He sold the movie to Paramount. They had Boris Karloff for five days and a shooting schedule of twenty-three days. They juxtaposed two plotlines. In the first plotline, Boris Karloff plays Byron Orlok (a nod to Nosferatu), an aging horror movie star who wants to retire, which outrages the company who want him to make more films. Karloff was seventy-nine years old when production on Targets started in 1967. He felt rejuvenated by the opportunity to play a character that was a deviation from his usual appearances in the horror genre. This was a character that had nuances and was realistic. Karloff’s performance is wistful and wry, which fits his character who is reflecting on the course of his career. Bogdanovich’s performance is appropriately anxious and nervous as he plays himself, a cinephile who has suddenly been thrown into the management position of his first major motion picture. Bogdanovich plays (Sammy Michaels), a young director who is both optimistic about Orlok (he believes the script he has written will be Orlok’s best and most complex character) and skeptical about the state of the movie business (“All the good movies have been made.”) Bogdanovich had a high opinion of Karloff and was nostalgic for Old Hollywood. This becomes clear in several scenes. Karloff and Bogdanovich watch a sinister scene together from The Criminal Code and Bogdanovich praises his performance. Bogdanovich and the hippie radio DJs (whom he satirizes as absolutely absurd in their lack of serious questions for Karloff) gather around and listen to Karloff’s hypnotic, mesmerizing voice as he recites the ancient fable of the Appointment in Samarra which symbolizes the inescapability of death. This fable doubles as an epitaph for Karloff’s career (Targets was his last major role in an American film) and as a commentary on the mass shootings in American society. Bogdanovich also uses dialogue he wrote for Karloff as a commentary on the changing attitude to the horror genre (“You know what they call my films today? Camp! High camp!”) and on Bogdanovich’s own perspective of Hollywood and L.A. in the 1960s (“what an ugly town this has become.”)

BY TIM MCGLYNN

Never trust a man who says, “Trust me.”

With those sage words of advice, 15 year-old Fannie Belle Fleming leaves her home in the backwoods of West Virginia in 1950 to pursue a career in show business. What happens next is not exactly what the aspiring country singer had in mind.

Blaze (1989 Touchstone/Disney), recently released on Blu-ray by Kino-Lorber, is based upon the true story of the vocalist- turned- stripper who changed her name to Blaze Starr and became scandalously involved with Governor Earl Long of the Great State of Louisiana.

Blaze, played by Lolita Davidovich (Raising Cain, Leap of Faith, Cobb), is persuaded by sleazy club owner Red Snyder (Robert Wuhl) to try stripping, which he assures her is a form of dancing. “Trust me,” he tells her. After a timid start, Blaze becomes a star on the Burlesque circuit moving from New York to Baltimore and finally landing in New Orleans in 1959.

It is there in the Big Easy that Blaze encounters the colorful Earl K. Long, portrayed in bigger than life fashion by Paul Newman. One night Earl stumbles into a Bourbon Street establishment where he apparently knows most of the strippers on a first name basis. Immediately taken with her beauty and figure, Long asks if he may take Blaze to dinner. Remembering her mother’s words, a sadder- but -wiser Blaze asks the Governor “Can I trust you?” and is quite pleased when he answers “Hell no!” Their brief, but passionate affair was the stuff of legend in a state not unfamiliar with political shenanigans. While not addressed in the film, both the Governor and Ms. Starr were married to others at the time.

Writer-Director Ron Shelton’s film follows a late ‘80s trend of comedy-dramas from south of the Mason-Dixon Line, featuring a quotable script and likeable characters who are anything but the backwoods stereotypes we are accustomed to seeing. Much like Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes and Shelton’s own Bull Durham, this movie gives us another strong female lead, confident in choosing her path in life without relying on the support or approval of men. Ms. Davidovich’s portrayal of Blaze is both comic and intelligent in that she is able to partner with Governor Long and guide him through his campaign for Congress.

Paul Newman chews his way through Shelton’s script as a conflicted, progressive politician caught in a system that still sees women and minorities as second-class citizens. On the one hand he supports a civil rights act that will guarantee voting and equal employment opportunities for blacks in 1960 Louisiana, but at the same time he still holds some of the racist beliefs of many in his own political party. “We can’t keep sleeping with them at night, and kicking them during the day” he says during a raucous meeting with state legislators.

“EARTHLY AND IMPERFECT LOVE”

By Raymond Benson

Ingmar Bergman’s celebrated six-part mini-series, Scenes from a Marriage, premiered on Swedish television in 1973. For markets outside of his native country, Bergman cut the 297-minute TV version down to 169-minutes (not quite three hours) for a theatrical release in 1974—which is the version I first saw.

Having recently discovered Bergman in the early 1970s while attending college, I welcomed Scenes with enthusiasm and awe, as did most critics. The film received numerous accolades, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deemed the picture ineligible for Oscars since it had previously been a television mini-series. The acclaim for the film, director/writer Bergman, and the movie’s two brilliant actors, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, was through the roof.

In a nutshell, it’s the intimate, often painful, sometimes joyful story of the twenty-year relationship of a married-then-divorced couple. The tale begins in 1965. Upper-middle-class Marianne and Johan have been married for ten years. They have two tween daughters (who are seen only very briefly in the first few seconds of the picture) and are seemingly happy. However, when Johan has an affair with “Paula” (who never appears), the inevitable separation ensues, followed by a divorce. But as ten more years elapse, Marianne and Johan continue to occasionally see each other—even when they’re dating or married to others—in an ongoing, never-ending tryst.

In fact, in 2003, Bergman made a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage. Saraband was a Swedish TV-movie that was also released theatrically worldwide, and it featured the now elderly Marianne and Johan, again played by Ullmann and Josephson. (Oddly, their daughters’ names in Scenes are Karin and Eva, whereas in Saraband their names are Martha and Sara! Go figure.) Saraband was Bergman’s final film.

What made Scenes so remarkable back in 1973/1974 was its frankness, realism, and the camera’s near-claustrophobic closeness to the actors—especially their faces and what they revealed through subtle expressions or glances. Bergman, perhaps more than any other filmmaker, used the landscape of the face to reveal the genuine subtext of a character’s thoughts. The intimacy achieved in the work was revelatory, and the film is said to have gone on to influence other filmmakers (most notably Woody Allen).

I had revisited Scenes from a Marriage a few times since its first release, but now having the chance to dive into The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray edition, I approached the picture with a fresh eye and mind, especially informed by the experience of age and a long marriage of my own.

I came away this time a bit puzzled. Who are these people, that they can be so matter-of-fact about adultery and mistresses and lovers? It’s as if it’s taken for granted that all married people will have affairs at some point. Back in the early 70s, I suppose we all thought that this was being “civilized” or “behaving like adults.” Or perhaps it was a Swedish or European thing!

It is more likely, however, that Scenes from a Marriage was written and directed to be a somewhat autobiographical treatise. Ingmar Bergman was married no less than five times, had numerous love affairs (and mistresses while married), including a five-year romance with Liv Ullmann (he was the father of her only child). Maybe in his world, or in the contemporary universe of artists and the literati in which Marianne and Johan reside, this kind of attitude existed.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN 

Kino Lorber has released “Singing Guns” (1950), a Republic Pictures “singing cowboy” western filmed in Trucolor. The film is based on a western novel by Max Brand, and is pretty unremarkable except for the fact that the cowboy anti-hero, Rhiannon, an outlaw with a long bushy beard who has been robbing stagecoaches to the tune of over a $1 million, isn’t played by Roy, or Gene Autry, Rocky Lane Rex Allen, or any of the other western stars in Republic’s stable. Rhiannon, is played by a popular singer from that era named Vaughn Monroe.

I remember Vaughn Monroe when I was a kid. I used to hear him singing “Racing with the Moon,” on the radio. He had a rich baritone voice and my mother would turn up the radio every time it came on and sort of stare out into space with a funny look in her eyes. Monroe also had another big hit with “Mule Train,” with lyrics like “clippity clop, clippity clop, Muuuuuule Traaaainn.” Whips cracking. Well, it appears “Singing Guns “was made so that Vaughn could have a chance to sing “Mule Train” in a movie. The song has nothing to do with the story, but fits in with a scene where Vaughn drives a wagon pulled by two mules--- not exactly a train, but close enough, I guess. Monroe sings three other tunes in the film as well.

The script by the screenwriting team of Dorrell and Stuart McGowan concerns the attempts by Sheriff Jim Caradac (Ward Bond), doctor/preacher Jonathan Mark (Walter Brennan), and lady gambler Nan Morgan (Ella Raines) to catch, reform, and fall in love with the aforementioned stagecoach robber, respectively. The movie has a real corkscrew of a plot, starting with Rhiannon holding up the stage occupied by Nan and Sheriff Mark. When Rhiannon finds out the sheriff outwitted him by making sure there was no gold on this trip, he humiliates him making him march into town wearing a pair of Nan’s bloomers and a hat that looks like a flower pot. The sheriff, furious, gets to his office, grabs his other guns and chases Rhiannon out into the desert. Rhiannon gets to his mountain hideout and shoots the sheriff off his horse. He later goes down to bury him (he’s a decent sort of outlaw) but the sheriff was faking it and gets the drop on him.

He’s about to take Rhiannon in, but in another twist, Rhiannon jumps him and shoots him. In another weird turn, he decides to take the sheriff to town so the doctor can patch him up (like I said he’s a real decent sort of outlaw). Doc Caradac tells Rhiannon the sheriff needs a transfusion. The outlaw rejects his call for help (he’s not that decent, he’s gotta get out of town), forcing the doctor to slip him a mickey and perform the transfusion while he’s unconscious. (Aren’t there ethics rules being violated here?) Even worse than taking his blood, the doc also shaves off Rhiannon’s beard! When he wakes up he’s not only a quart low, he’s clean shaven!! And here comes the most unbelievable plot element. Without the beard, when he wakes up, nobody recognizes him. He’s just some guy who saved the sheriff’s life!!!

The story goes on like that with the plot switching back and forth, with the sheriff sometimes wanting to help Rhiannon and other time wanting to jail him, and Nan sometimes hating Rhiannon and sometime loving him, and Doc Caradac saying he’s just as interested in saving his patients’ souls as he is healing their bodies, and just wants everything to be okay.

Ignoring the ridiculous plot, perhaps the best thing about “Singing Guns” is the way it looks. It’s a brand new master by Paramount from a 4K scan of the original 35mm Trucolor nitrate negative. It’s sensational looking. And for the first time I’m aware of, “Singing Guns” shows how beautiful Ella Raines’ eyes were. The film she’s remembered for most is “Phantom Lady” (1944), the noir thriller based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel. It was shot in black and white, so you couldn’t see what color her eyes were. Film historian Toby Roan in his highly informative audio commentary said that cinematographer Reggie Lanning had trouble getting the color right; sometimes her eyes looked green, sometimes blue, sometimes yellow. Roan says he thinks they’re turquoise. Whatever they are they’re fascinating to look at, so much so I found myself having to reverse the disc in several places because I’d lost track of what she was saying. Maybe I was hypnotized. Raines only made 20 films in her lifetime. It’s a pity she didn’t make more..

“Singing Guns” is directed by R. G. Springsteen, who also directed Monroe’s only other western, “Toughest Man in Arizona.” The film is also notable for the number of familiar faces in the cast, including Jeff Corey, Harry Shannon, Rex Lease, and Jimmy Dodd (as well as Eleanor Donahue, and Billy Grey, who would later play Robert Young’s kids on “Father Knows Best”). Bonus features include the aforementioned audio commentary and several trailers for other KL Blu-rays. It’s another one of those discs that astonish you in regard to how good an old movie can look and sound when it’s done right. They can’t release enough of these to satisfy me.

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BY JOE ELLIOTT

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. The movie was a sensation when it came out in 1968, spurring ticket sales in the millions and becoming one of the top-grossing features of the decade. One reason the film made so much money was due to the number of people who returned for a second or even fifth viewing. It seemed audiences just couldn’t get enough of the story about those two star-crossed adolescent lovers from old Verona. The movie’s memorable music score, composed by Nino Rota, also became a best seller. The album quickly went gold and was later repackaged in a beautiful deluxe box set that included the entire movie soundtrack, along with two handsomely produced companion booklets.

There was something about the film, for all its shortcomings, that many found almost hypnotic. I’ll fess up and admit I was one of these people. I didn’t actually see it until the 1970s when it was still being trotted out in theaters in order to squeeze out extra profits for the studio. I was a teenager at the time and was more into flicks like Billy Jack and the Bond films than stories about people who lived hundreds of years ago and spoke in rhyming couplets. The only Shakespeare I had read was in class, the substance of which I found nearly indigestible. I did know something about the movie since one my English teachers had once played a portion of the soundtrack for us in class. However, apparently not having much else to do that summer evening, I decided to take a stroll down the street to our local movie palace and buy a ticket.

The first thing I noticed about the film was how rich in color it was. From the very beginning, following the smoky prologue spoken by Laurence Olivier, everything is drenched in bright primary colors. Things got off to a rousing start with the scene of the bloody brawl in the Verona marketplace between those two wild and crazy families, the Montagues and the Capulets. (I hadn’t realized until then that it was possible to be a real badass and still wear red and yellow striped tights with pointy soft leather shoes.) Soon the cops arrive (the prince and his soldiers) to break up the fracas and issue a stern warning to all those who would disturb the civil peace in the future. Immediately following this we get our first look at Romeo (Leonard Whiting), a handsome love-sick youth with a shaggy haircut. He talks dreamily of some girl he’s got a crush on, but then comes to his senses at seeing one of the wounded being carried away. Meanwhile, back at the Capulet palace, Juliet’s father (Paul Hardwick) is coyly negotiating the marriage of his daughter to a young man named Count Paris (Roberto Bisacco). The first time we see Juliet (Olivia Hussey) she’s running through the house like a kid at play.

All this is interspersed between scenes of Juliet and her bawdy, fun-loving nurse (Pat Heywood) talking to the girl’s mother Lady Capulet (Natasha Parry) about marriage and things, immediately followed by a night scene of Romeo and his friends on a soliquious pub crawl through the deserted streets of Verona. Later that same evening Romeo and his mates crash the Capulet masquerade ball. The ball scene is among the highlights of the film. It is here Zeffirelli really shows his stuff, combining visual pageantry with an almost obsessive attention to detail. Everything about this sequence is highly choreographed, from the beautifully composed dance scenes (“the moresca!”) right down to the fastidious arrangement of the candles and platters of fruit (Zeffirelli had studied art and architecture in his student days). Absolutely nothing is left to chance. In the hands of a less gifted visual director, and Zeffirelli was nothing if he wasn’t visual, all of this might have come off as too showy and distracting. However, here the effect is just the opposite. The viewer almost feels as if he or she is present in the scene, seductively pulled in as we are by the sensuous whirl of warm colors, voices and melodious music. All of it lovingly captured by the gifted eye of cinematographer Pasqualino De Santi who was awarded an Oscar for his efforts on the project. Clearly, the ocular accoutrements of this particular production are as essential to its success as the words of Shakespeare himself.

BY TIM GREAVES

The name Sergio Martino will strike a chord with anyone who has even a passing interest in Italian exploitation pictures of the 70s and 80s. Once seen, who can forget The Great Alligator or The Island of Fishmen – both of which are favourites of this writer in their showcasing of Barbara Bach at her most radiant – or premium Suzy Kendall giallo Torso, or for that matter once ‘video nasty’ and Ursula Andress headliner The Mountain of the Cannibal God? Marking Martino’s second giallo, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (o.t. La coda della scorpione), was released in 1971, sandwiched between a couple of his most highly regarded titles, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh and All the Colours of the Dark. Scorpion’s Tail isn’t quite on a par with either of those, but it’s still a respectable entry in the sub-genre.

When her husband is killed in a plane accident on a business trip to Greece, his unfaithful wife (Evelyn Stewart) is informed she’s beneficiary to a $1 million inheritance, with the one caveat that she has to travel to Athens to finalise her claim. However, there are a number of people intent on getting their hands on the not insubstantial sum, and at least one of them will remorselessly resort to murder to do so. A turn of events results in the arrival of an insurance investigator (George Hilton), who hooks up with a reporter (Anita Strindberg) to check out some irregularities, and they inadvertently set themselves up as targets for the killer.

An enjoyable enough, if not particularly remarkable giallo then, touting a convoluted plot loaded with sufficient a measure of misdirection to keep things unpredictable. Opening in a very clean looking London and moving on to various Greek locales, the travelogue location work certainly functions in the film’s favour, lending it production value that eclipses the slightly ponderous narrative of the screenplay (a collaborative affair from Eduardo Manzanos, Ernesto Gastaldi and Sauro Scavolini). Most of – if not quite all – the standard giallo trappings come into play, primarily there are a number of graphic murders perpetrated by a fedora-wearing, razor-wielding maniac attired in black (who’s not averse to donning a scuba wetsuit when the moment is propitious). Some of them are pretty nasty too, including a startling– if not particularly realistic – moment of eye-violence (squeamish viewers be warned!). However, there’s a conspicuous dearth of nudity, in fact it’s about as coy as they come that department; of course, nudity is seldom (if ever) pertinent, but it’s standard enough a constituent within this sub-genre as to be noticeable when it’s missing. The showdown on a forebodingly rocky stretch of desolate Grecian coastline is fantastic, combining vertiginous camera angles and suspenseful POV to maximum dramatic effect.

Heading up a strong cast – which includes Alberto De Mendoza, Ida Galli (aka Evelyn Stewart), Janine Reynaud and Luigi Pistilli – are George Hilton and Anita Strindberg. Hilton also starred for Martino in the aforementioned pair, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh and All the Colours of the Dark. His rugged good looks found him top billing in a slew of spaghetti westerns – he was a one-spin Sartana – as well as a run of crime and gialli pictures such as The Case of the Bloody Iris, My Dear Killer and The Two Faces of Fear... though 1965’s spoof Bond caper Due mafiosi contro Goldginger (in which he played Agente 007) can probably be safely disregarded! He’s on top form here and rubs along well with the very lovely Anita Strindberg. This writer first became aware of her in Who Saw Her Die?, in which she appeared alongside George Lazenby and Adolfo Celi. She didn’t enjoy as prodigious a career as Hilton, but she did score a lead role in Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key for Martino, as well as featuring in such renowned fare as Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Women in Cell Block 7. Her performance in Scorpion’s Tail is among her finest and there’s no denying that the scene she spends clad in a sheer, clingy wet shirt affords the audience a prurient bonus treat.

BY TIM GREAVES

It was arguably the success of A Fistful of Dollars that really set the ball rolling on the slew of shameless spaghetti western rip-offs and cash-ins that proliferated throughout the 1960s, as film-makers jostled to get a taste of the sauce and chow down on a cut of the rewards from what quickly became a very profitable arena in which to be operating. 

Sartana rode into town a little later than popular gunslingers such as Sabata, Django and Ringo, but he made enough of an impression to warrant a number of official sequels – and several unofficial ones too. Just five legitimate Sartana films were lensed, with Gianni Garko (billed as John Garko) headlining in four of them and George Hilton just one. Cucumber cool antihero Sartana was notably more dapper than most of his mud-spattered box office rivals, a real snappy dresser in fact; with his black cape lined in red silk, sharp matching cravat and crisp white shirt, he cut a fine figure riding through desolate wasteland, deck of cards in one hand, natty miniature four-shooter in the other, always ready to spit out a death sentence when the moment was called for. In the first film he even retrieved a musical pocket watch from a corpse and proceeded to use its tinkly chime to taunt his nemesis.

The fabulously contrived titles of the five films belied a series of enjoyable enough but not exactly top-tier western actioners. Dripping with all the requisite tropes of the genre, and occasionally sprinkling a few unexpected condiments into the pot, they’re perfectly watchable fare, but it’s unlikely many would favour any of them over a Sabata instalment or, indeed, an Eastwood classic. If, for this writer, there’s any problem at all with the Sartana series – and it’s one that prevents them from residing up there among the genre’s finest – it’s that in every instance a plot suited at best to the 50-minute TV episode format was, out of necessity, stretched to feature length, the resultant slightness of narrative rendering them all far too leisurely paced.

The five official Sartana films have now been issued on Blu-ray by Arrow Video in an impressive collectors’ box set. Accompanied by an illustrated book, each film is individually packaged and boasts reversible sleeve art, and the entire collection is housed in an attractive slipcase.

The series kickstarter was 1968’s If you meet Sartana pray for your eath (O.T. Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte), directed by Frank Kramer, a.k.a. Gianfranco Parolini. (Note: in Italian film titles, only the first word is capitalised.) Among the most enjoyable of the quintet, the plot concerns a pair of dodgy bankers who hire a group of Mexicans to steal a strongbox filled with gold, subsequently allowing them to claim on the insurance. In fact, the precious cargo has been substituted with rocks, the valuable contents having already been squirrelled away in a coffin. Following the heist, the Mexicans are quickly eliminated to wipe out any evidence of the scam. It’s up to Sartana to uncover the truth and retrieve the gold. Any anticipation engendered by the opening credit “with the special participation of Klaus Kinsky” (sic) is swiftly quelled; it’s anything but special, for the A-class actor – who possessed one of cinema’s most expressive faces (and intimidating grimaces!) – is relegated to sideline status for much of the action. At least any disappointment on that score is appeased by the presence of a satisfyingly formidable bad guy in the shape of wild-eyed, buttercup-chewing William Berger as Lasky, who, when he’s not gleefully massacring bandits with his hand-cranked Gatling gun, proves to be a single-shot marksman, planting bullets centre-forehead in more unfortunates than it’s possible to keep tally of. An ace cardsharp, Sartana makes a fast enemy of Lasky when he cleans him out at the poker table. Despite the paucity of plot, director Kramer manages to sustain interest, layering in double and triple crosses as Sartana gently manipulates the wrong-doers into turning on each other. There’s a stab at comic relief too in the form of Franco Pesce as the town’s undertaker, but for this writer his theatrical gurning and cartoonish mannerisms eclipse the intended amiable quirkiness to become distractingly irksome.

Arrow’s 2K restoration from the original film materials displays a fair amount of grain, but aside from one brief moment of picture damage at the outset and a slightly protracted patch of vertical scratching further along, the print is in very respectable shape. The film can be viewed in either an English dub or its original Italian with newly translated English subtitles. Supplements comprise a commentary from film historian (and Cinema Retro contributor) Mike Siegel, an interview with director Kramer, a helpful guide to the characters in the Sartana universe, and a gallery of artwork and stills.

A year later, in 1969, I am Sartana, your angel of death (O.T. Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino) was unleashed. In this one our man (Garko again) appears to have been involved in a bank robbery and finds himself at the top of the most wanted list, with a $10,000 dead or alive price on his head. He didn’t do it, of course, so has to hunt down the real perpetrator to clear his name, whilst evading bounty hunters hot on his trail and intent on bagging the reward. It’s a decent enough follow-up from director Giuliano Carnimeo (credited as Anthony Ascott), which showcases another fine Garko performance (with Sartana now displaying a knack for sleight of hand card tricks) and the return of Klaus Kinski (spelt with the “I” this time) in a meatier, albeit less threatening role, that of a gambler-cum-bounty hunter with the best character name of anyone in the entire run of Sartana pictures: Hot Dead. Unfortunately, Franco Pesce (uncredited this time) is also back, now promoted to town mayor, fortuitously only briefly on screen but every bit as annoying. The story unfolds at a sedate price, but Ascott and cinematographer Giovanni Bergamini keep things percolating with some stylish set-ups, the camera lurching sideways whenever bodies spin and hit the dust. One brief scene stands out for this writer, if not for the right reason; when Sartana dodges a spray of bullets from a trio of pursuing gunmen by zigzagging left and right, any sense of suspense is undermined by spurred memories of the amusing Peter Falk/Alan Arkin ‘serpentine’ sequence in 1979’s The In-Laws!

Arrow had access to the original camera negative for this one and the 2K restoration is very nice indeed. Again sound options are English and Italian. Extras comprise a commentary from historian and filmmakers C Courtney Joyner and Henry Peake, interviews with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and stuntman Sal Borgese, plus a gallery of European poster art and German lobby cards.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

My only memory of "Swashbuckler" was seeing it for the first time when it was already in release for a year. The occasion was that this was an in-flight movie on my first trip to Europe in the summer of 1977. In those ancient times, films were still shown on 16mm projectors on pull-down screens in the main cabin. I remember being unimpressed with the film but the distraction of the  (then) free liquor service might have affected my opinion. As Cinema Retro's latest issue features coverage of the 1977 film "The Deep" starring Robert Shaw, I decided to revisit "Swashbuckler" largely because it also stars the estimable Shaw, who never gave a bad performance. I found my opinion of the pirate tale had improved considerably since the first viewing. It's a raucous, old-fashioned yarn that perhaps too earnestly tries to recapture the vim and vigor of those old screen adventures that would star Errol Flynn or young Burt Lancaster. Ably directed by James Goldstone, who takes full advantage of the lush Mexican locations (representing old Jamaica), the film opens in the court of Lord Durant (Peter Boyle), the corrupt British governor of Jamaica who rules the island like a tyrant. When honest nobleman Sir James Durant (Bernard Behrens) runs afoul of him, Durant has him arrested and imprisoned to await execution of a death sentence. He also commands that Durant's wife (Louisa Horton) and daughter Jane (Genevieve Bujold) be evicted from the family estate and forced to live in a tenement. Durant's main nemesis is the pirate Ned Lynch (Robert Shaw), who- along with his merry men- acts as a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the corrupt rich and dispensing much of their fortunes to the poor. Predictably, Jane has an encounter with Ned and professes to loathe him, but as these things inevitably play out, we know the two are attracted to each other. After much griping and fighting that literally includes a duel between Jane and Ned, she implores him to come to the aid of her father, who is facing imminent execution. Ned and his men launch a full-throttle attack on Durant and- if you haven't guessed it- save the day.

"Swashbuckler" is undistinguished on most levels except for the fact that it is exciting and lives up to its title by including an abundance of terrific sword fights. Kudos to all the actors, who performed these extended and exhausting duels with great professionalism, including Bujold, whose slight build must have certainly posed an obstacle in filming these scenes. The supporting cast includes some esteemed names including Geoffrey Holder (in full "Live and Let Die" Baron Samedi mode) and Beau Bridges as a bumbling British army officer appropriately named Major Folly. The action is impressively filmed by cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop and it's all set to a lively score by John Addison. Shaw seems to be having the time of his life in what must have been a physically taxing role for him. Although the stuntmen are in abundance, it's quite clear he did many of his own action scenes. (Shaw says in the production featurette on the DVD that the film was more physically challenging than "Jaws"). Bujold does well as the gutsy young woman who defies sexual stereotypes and Peter Boyle is a great deal of fun as the evil Durant, even if he is miscast as a British nobleman. James Earl Jones has a prominent role as Ned Lynch's right-hand pirate. "Swashbuckler" wasn't designed to win awards or become a boxoffice blockbuster. It represents the kind of modest production that was designed to entertain and make a quick profit in an era before every release represented a major financial risk for the studio.

The Universal DVD features a very nice transfer and some welcome extras including an interesting original production featurette about the making of the film, cast and crew biographies and production notes and the original trailer. Recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Sam Spiegel was one of the most revered and accomplished producers in Hollywood history. His achievements included such classics as "On the Waterfront", "The African Queen", "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia". His body of work, though not nearly as extensive as that of some other producers, was notable in the sense that Spiegel thought big and shot for the moon when it came to bringing to the screen stories that spoke to the human condition. Following the triumphant release of "Lawrence" in 1962, Spiegel did not make another film for four years. When he did, the movie - "The Chase"- turned out to be a star-packed drama that won over neither critics or audiences. Spiegel had a more ambitious idea for his next production, a screen adaptation of the best-selling WWII thriller "The Night of the Generals" by Hans Helmut Kirst. Spiegel had the inspired idea of reuniting his "Lawrence of Arabia" co-stars Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif. They  were reluctant to take on the project, but they certainly owed him. Both were virtual unknowns until Spiegel gave them the roles that made them international stars. Spiegel also added to the mix an impressive cast of esteemed British actors ranging from veterans such as Donald Pleasence and Charles Gray to up-and-coming young actors Tom Courtenay and Joanna Pettet. He chose Anatole Litvak to direct. Litvak had been making films for decades and had a few notable hits such as "Sorry, Wrong Number", "Anastasia" and "The Snake Pit". Spiegel being Spiegel ensured that the production benefited from a large budget and an appropriate running time (148 minutes) that would allow the story to unfold in a measured process.

"The Night of the Generals" is certainly a unique spin on WWII films. There are no battles or major action sequences, save for a harrowing sequence in which the German army systematically destroys part of the Warsaw Ghetto. Instead, it's very much a character study populated by characters who are, indeed, very interesting. The film opens with a tense sequence set in occupied Warsaw. The superintendent of an over-crowded apartment building accidentally overhears the brutal murder of a local prostitute in a room upstairs. From a hiding place he witnesses the killer walk past him. He does not see the man's face but recognizes his uniform: he is a general in the German army. The man keeps this information to himself on the logical assumption that divulging it might mean his death sentence. However, under questioning from the army investigator, Major Grau (Omar Sharif), he tells the shocking details of what he witnessed. From this moment, Grau becomes obsessed with finding the killer. Grau may be a German officer, but he is a pure cynic when it comes to the Nazi cause and the brutal methods being employed to win the war. He can't control the larger picture of how the war is being waged but he can control what is in his jurisdiction: bringing to justice the man who committed this one especially savage murder. Grau soon centers on three suspects. The first is General von Seiditz-Gabler (Charles Gray, channeling his future Blofeld), an effete, well-connected opportunist who is in a loveless marriage to his dominating wife Eleanore (Coral Browne). Then there is General Kahlenberg (Donald Pleasence), a man of slight build and low-key personality who has some eccentric personal habits that may include murder. Last, and most intriguing, is General Tanz (Peter O'Toole), a much-loathed and much-feared darling of Hitler's inner circle whose ruthless methods with dealing with civilian populations disgust his colleagues. Tanz has been sent to control or obliterate the Warsaw Ghetto.

The screenplay (which includes contributions by an uncredited Gore Vidal) is a bit disjointed and cuts back and forth to the present day in which we see a French police inspector, Morand (Phillippe Noiret), investigating the case twenty years later as he tries to tie together Grau's findings with dramatic developments that occurred during his handling of the case. Morand also appears in the war era sequences, having befriended Grau, who does not seem at all disturbed when he learns that Morand is actually a key figure in the French Resistance. Grau becomes particularly intrigued by General Ganz. He is an elitist snob who is devoid of any humor or compassion. A workaholic with seemingly no human weaknesses, Tanz is ostensibly under the command of his superior officer, Gabler, but it becomes clear that his political connections make him the top general in Warsaw. Major Grau interviews all three suspects and finds that any of them could be the murderer. When he becomes too intrusive, he is conveniently promoted and transferred to Paris, presumably to shut down his investigation. However, as the fortunes of war decline for the Third Reich, the top brass is eventually  moved to Paris and Grau resumes his investigation when he discovers that prostitutes are being brutally murdered there as well. There is a parallel story that accompanies that of the murder investigation. It centers on Corporal Hartmann (Tom Courtenay), a young soldier who has been reluctantly acclaimed to be a national hero. It seems he was the last surviving member of his unit after a bloody battle. The brass used him as a propaganda tool, bestowing medals on him for heroic actions. In fact, he is a self-proclaimed coward whose only goal is to stay alive through the war. Hartmann confesses this to his superior, General Kahlenberg, who is amused by his honesty. He assigns him to be General Tanz's personal valet and orders him to show Tanz the history and sights of Paris. Neither he nor Tanz wants to partake in the venture, but Gabler orders Tanz to take a few days vacation, largely because he despises the man's presence. The scenes in which Hartmann tries to appease the mercurial Tanz without making any missteps are fraught with tension and suspense. Tanz is a fascinating character, presumably devoid of the vices most men have. However, in the course of their time together, Hartmann realizes that Tanz is somewhat of a fraud. He surreptitiously drinks to excess and changes into civilian clothes in order to meet with prostitutes in seedy bars. Although Tanz chews out Hartmann for every minor infraction, he seems to come to respect the younger man's professionalism. This sets in motion another complex plot development that also involves Hartmann's secret romance with General Gabler's free-spirited daughter Ulrike (Joanna Pettet). 

Just trying to summarize the various plot strands of "The Night of the Generals" in this space is fairly exhausting. Oh, did I mention that another subplot involves Field Marshal Rommel (a cameo by Christopher Plummer) and the July, 1944 plot on the part of rebellious German officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler? Nevertheless, although the various story lines become quite complex, they are all tied together eventually in clever and compelling ways. The film is part "Whodunnit", part political statement and part war movie. The movie moves back to the present for its intense conclusion as Inspector Morand is finally able to solve the crime and attempt to bring the culprit to justice. When the killer is revealed it's about as shocking of a development as the revelation that the butler did it in one of those old British film noir mysteries. Still, director Litvak (who shares the producer credit with Sam Spiegel because he owned the screen rights to the novel) keeps the action flowing briskly running time and elicits outstanding performances from his cast. O'Toole, who would later capitalize on playing larger-than-life characters, was at this point in his career still very immersed in portraying introspective, quiet men. He is quite mesmerizing as General Tanz and quite terrifying as well. Sharif is, at least on the surface, badly cast. I'm not aware of any Egyptians who became prominent German officers. Sharif has the map of the Middle East on his face and lingering remnants of his native accent. It's to his credit that he overcomes these obstacles and gives a very fine performance as the charismatic investigator who doggedly pursues his suspects with Javert-like conviction. All of the other performances are equally outstanding, with Courtenay especially impressive- and one has to wonder why the very talented Joanna Pettet never became a bigger star. The international flavor of the cast gives the film a Tower of Babel-like effect. Some of the actors attempt to affect a quasi-German accent while others speak with British accents, and then we have the French and Poland-based sequences with even more diversity of languages. Still, if you could accept Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood speaking "German" in their native tongues in "Where Eagles Dare", you won't find this aspect of "The Night of the Generals" to be particularly distracting. I should also mention the impressive contributions of composer Maurice Jarre, cinematographer Henri Decae and main titles designer Robert Brownjohn (remember when films even had opening titles?) In summary, the film-which not successful with critics or the public- is a  thoroughly intriguing experience and affords us the joy of watching some of the best actors of the period sharing the screen.

"The Night of the Generals" has been released as a limited edition (3,000 units) Blu-ray from Twilight Time. The transfer is gorgeous, giving full impact to the impressive cinematography and lush production design. There is also an isolated score track, the original trailer and an informative booklet by film historian Julie Kirgo, who examines Sam Spiegel's attempts to rebuild his career in subsequent years only to find that he was out of place in the new Hollywood.

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“LIGHT, SHADOW, AND MARLENE”

By Raymond Benson

I love it when The Criterion Collection produces a lavish boxed set containing multiple features, an abundance of supplements, and a thick and illustrated booklet. What better collection is there than one featuring the six Hollywood films made between 1930 and 1935 by Josef von Sternberg and starring the exquisite Marlene Dietrich? Hats off to producer Issa Clubb for overseeing what could be one of Criterion’s better products.

These adventure-romances showcased a star who immediately defined the word “exotic”—a German-born, English-speaking, beautiful, sultry, seductress who could act, sing, and dance. Like Greta Garbo, who had arrived in Hollywood during the silent era, Marlene Dietrich exhibited a European mystery to American audiences of the early Depression years. Her self-styled (with the help of her trusted director, von Sternberg) gender-bending wardrobes and mannerisms, her sometimes ambiguous but often overt sexuality, and her allure of “knowing something we didn’t” made her an overnight star… for a while.

As documented in the various supplements that appear over the six Blu-ray disks in the set, Dietrich and von Sternberg enjoyed a successful and acclaimed period during the Pre-Code days. It seemed, though, that as soon as the Production Code went into effect in July 1934, the popularity of the star and the director’s films waned. For the second half of the 1930s, Dietrich, like several other leading ladies, became what was termed “box-office poison”—that is, until she made a booming come-back in 1939’s Destry Rides Again.

Dietrich and von Sternberg first worked together in the 1930 German-produced picture, The Blue Angel, which was filmed in both the German language and in English. The director, already an established filmmaker in Hollywood, convinced his studio, Paramount, to bring Dietrich over and sign her to a multi-picture contract. The young star left Germany on the night The Blue Angel premiered in her native country. Paramount held the U.S. release back until after the exhibition of her first official Hollywood production, Morocco (also 1930). This initial appearance in America proved to be a sensation. The English-language version of The Blue Angel was released a month later, and Marlene Dietrich had arrived.

The historical importance of the films in Criterion’s new collection can be broken down into three words—light, shadow, and Marlene. Josef von Sternberg was a master of visual imagery in motion pictures at a time when black and white cinematography was evolving as an art form. A cameraman himself, he was one of the few directors in Hollywood who knew how to light a set and photograph it (in fact, he is not only the director but also the cinematographer of the sixth title in this set, The Devil is a Woman). Von Sternberg’s use of German expressionism—heavy on the shadows, high contrast between light and dark—did wonders for Marlene Dietrich’s cheekbones. An actress was likely never photographed so beautifully as in those first few films—not even Garbo. The greatest pleasure of the Dietrich & von Sternberg boxed set is the gorgeousness of its images. While von Sternberg certainly had much to say about how his films were photographed, many kudos must be given to the other two cinematographers he worked with—Lee Garmes (three titles) and Bert Glennon (two titles).

By Raymond Benson

The Criterion Collection has upgraded its 2006 DVD release of Ingmar Bergman’s classic Oscar-winning drama, The Virgin Spring, to Blu-ray, and the results are, naturally, spectacular.

The film won Bergman his first of three Best Foreign Language Film Academy Awards, and it can certainly be ranked among the Swedish filmmaker’s best works. Known as a “rape and revenge tale,” the picture was so influential that it was the inspiration for Wes Craven’s first horror-exploitation movie from 1972, The Last House on the Left. Craven took the basic plotline, updated it, and turned it into a gory (and some would say, sickening) fright fest.

Bergman’s film is easier to take, but one can imagine how harrowing it might have been in 1960. As a departure for the auteur, Bergman did not write the screenplay himself. The script was adapted by Ulla Isaksson from a Swedish medieval ballad/legend called “Töres döttrar I Wänge” (“Töre’s daughters in Vänge”). Like The Seventh Seal before it, the story is set during the Dark Ages. It’s the only other instance in which Bergman accurately and convincingly depicts this historical period on film. This time, his visual collaborator is the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who presents the stark, sharp black and white imagery with crystal clarity.

The story concerns Christian Töre (Max von Sydow) and his family—his wife, Märeta (Birgitta Välberg), his teenage daughter Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), the disturbed, unwed and pregnant servant Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), and other household helpers. One morning, the virginal, innocent, and naïve Karin sets off on horseback, accompanied by Ingeri, to deliver candles to a church some miles away. After a frightening, chance encounter with a one-eyed man, Ingeri separates from Karin, who soldiers on with the candles. She comes upon a motely trio of creepy herdsmen—all brothers—with whom she offers to share her lunch. The older two assault Karin, rape, and murder her. The younger brother, who appears to be around twelve, watches in horror. Ingeri, hidden in the forest, also witnesses the crime.

Later, the herdsmen encounter Christian and his family, who are naturally worried about Karin because she didn’t return home. To reveal what happens next would of course be a spoiler—just know that Christian must make a hard decision and summon a strength from within that he didn’t know he had.

It’s all powerful stuff, and Bergman handles it with harsh realism and surprising sensitivity. The assault scene is brief, breathtakingly shocking, and surely something that jolted audiences at the time. Pettersson delivers a particularly courageous performance, and the actress’ work is the heart of the movie. The rest of the cast, especially von Sydow, Lindblom, and Välberg, are also excellent.

Particularly interesting is that the film can be interpreted as either a deeply religious or an anti-religious one. Christianity is often a subject matter in Bergman’s oeuvre, and his disdain for organized religion is usually palpable. In this case, however, when the titular “virgin spring” appears in the picture, it just might represent an acknowledgment of a higher power. It’s up to the viewer to decide.

Once again, the filmmaker recreates on what was surely a very low budget a medieval world that is totally believable. The attention to detail is striking—P. A. Lundgren’s production design and Marik Vos’ costume designs bring The Virgin Spring to life (the latter was nominated for an Academy Award).

Criterion’s new 2K digital restoration looks gorgeous and is an improvement over the earlier DVD release. It comes with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack and an audio commentary from 2005 by Bergman scholar Birgitta Steene. The 2006 supplements are ported over: 2005 interviews with actors Lindblom and Pettersson, a terrific introduction by director Ang Lee (who claims it was the first art film he ever saw), and an interesting audio recording of a 1975 American Film Institute seminar by Bergman—in English! There is an alternate English-dubbed soundtrack, but for my money Bergman films should always be viewed in the original language. The booklet sports an essay by film scholar Peter Cowie, reflections on the film by screenwriter Isaksson, and the text of the original ballad upon which the picture is based.

Among the many masterpieces that Ingmar Bergman made, The Virgin Spring is a shining gem. Don’t miss it.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Imagine, if you will, that you are a Hollywood producer in the year 1969. ABC TV has recently launched its venture into producing theatrical motion pictures and you have a doozy of a concept. It centers on a spoof of Charlie Chan movies with the distinction that you have enlisted some very eager partners in Japan, thus the main character will have to be Japanese.  You are sitting around a long table in a studio conference room with executives deciding how to move forward. The promising venture will be filmed on location in Japan and. thus, will offer the promise of some exotic locations at your disposal. Since the project is very much inspired by the Pink Panther movies, you've scored a bullseye by enlisting screenwriter William Peter Blatty to author the script. Blatty knew a thing or two about the Pink Panther franchise, having co-authored the screenplay for "A Shot in the Dark". Yes, it's all coming together very nicely. Now comes the fun part: who to cast as the Japanese incarnation of Inspector Clouseau, a bumbling detective named Hoku Ichihara. Names are bandied about and you smile in a patronizing manner because you already know who the most logical actor is to cast: Zero Mostel!!!! A collective gasp from those around the table ensues, along with plenty of backslapping on your stroke of genius. Yes, when it comes to playing a bumbling Japanese detective, who could possibly think of someone more suited for the assignment than the rotund Jewish actor from Brooklyn?

One doesn't know if this is how the film "Mastermind" came into existence but its safe to assume at some point a room full of executives had to green light the casting of Zero Mostel in the lead role in what must surely be one of the most ill-advised films of the era. The concept seems even more egregious in these more enlightened times once you get your first view of Mostel decked out in his makeup, which includes slanted eyes and a droopy mustache that makes him look like a cross between Max Bialystock and Fu Manchu, though to be fair, for decades other unsuitably cast Caucasian actors portrayed Asian detectives, Peter Sellers and Peter Ustinov among them. The film is a jumbled mess that opens with the theft of a prototype of an amazing new human-like robot that has a comprehensive understanding of virtually every command. Some shady characters have also kidnapped the scientist who invented the robot, which is named Schatzi and is played by actor Felix Silas. The bad guys intend to appropriate the design plans for nefarious purposes. If anyone gets in their way, they utilize as hi-tech weapon that puts people in a permanent state of suspended animation. The gimmick is played out ad nauseam and reminds us of why it's generally a mistake to have live actors playing statues or inanimate beings (just look at "The Man with the Golden Gun" for further proof.) Inspector Ichihara is called in to solve the case along with his British sidekick Nigel Crouchback (Gwan Grainger) and immediately makes a muddle of things, a la Clouseau.

Anyone can make a bad movie but it's a true rarity to make a movie that is so bad it falls into that prized category of being a guilty pleasure; a film that you may want to revisit for all the wrong reasons. "Mastermind" meets that criteria. How had is the film? It's "Which Way to the Front?" kind of bad. The director, Alex March, had recently saw the release of two major studio films, "Paper Lion" and "The Big Bounce". He gamely plows through some juvenile sight gags and even speeds up film frames to emulate the old Keystone Cops films, a concept that already had moss on it by 1969. It must be said that March does a credible job of capitalizing on the Japanese locations and manages some impressive set pieces among the teeming city crowds, most notably a well-staged car/motorcycle chase. Beyond that, however, there is little to recommend. Zero Mostel gamely goes through the humiliations of playing out every cringe-inducing stereotype that had been assigned to Japanese characters in movies of the era. Most notable are the scenes in which his character fantasizes about being a great samurai warrior, which gives you the heart-stopping vision of what it might have looked like if Kurosawa had cast him in the leading role of "Seven Samurai". Mostel is not alone in having made a Faustian deal in return for a free trip to Japan, as Bradford Dillman is also in the cast.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

This year the ground-breaking British film company Woodfall Films celebrates its 60^th anniversary. After a popular season at BFI Southbank throughout April, on 11 June 2018 the BFI will release 9-disc Blu-ray and DVD box sets containing some of Woodfall’s most revered films, many newly restored. A huge array of special features includes interviews with Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin, archive material, shorts from the BFI National Archive and an 80-page book.

Woodfall revolutionised British cinema during the 1960s with a slate of iconic films. Founded in 1958 by director Tony Richardson, writer John Osborne and producer Harry Saltzman (James Bond), the company pioneered the British New Wave, defining an incendiary brand of social realism. Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959), and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960) spot-lit working-class life with unheard-of honesty. The same risk-taking spirit led the company to find a new generation of brilliant young actors to star in their films, such as Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Rita Tushingham. The global blockbuster Tom Jones (1963) expanded the Woodfall slate in an irreverent, colourful direction that helped define swinging London – further securing its extraordinary chapter in the history of British film.

These box sets bring together eight of Woodfall’s early ground-breaking films, many now newly restored and on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. Each set contains:

Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959), starring Richard Burton as a jazz trumpeter

The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960), which stars Laurence Olivier as ageing music-hall veteran Archie Rice

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960) (as previously released by the BFI), starring Albert Finney as factory worker Arthur Seaton

A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961), legendary kitchen sink drama focusing on working-class women, with a script by Shelagh Delaney and Tony Richardson

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962) (as previously released by the BFI) starring Tom Courtenay at Colin Smith

Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963), (both the original theatrical release and the 1989 Director’s Cut), a raucous and innovative multi-Oscar-winning adaptation of the classic novel by Henry Fielding

Girl with Green Eyes (Desmond Davis, 1964) with Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave and Peter Finch in a lively adaptation by Edna O’Brien of her own novel

THE KNACK…and how to get it (Richard Lester, 1965) which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes

Special features

• The Stories that Changed British Cinema (2018, 47 mins): panel discussion held at BFI Southbank during April, featuring actors Tom Courtenay, Rita Tushingham and Joely Richardson, writer Jez Butterworth, journalist Paris Lees; chaired by the BFI’s Danny Leigh
• Five audio commentaries featuring Alan Sillitoe, Freddie Francis, Dora Bryan, Rita Tushingham, Murray Melvin, Tom Courtenay, Adrian Martin and Neil Sinyard
• George Devine Memorial Play: Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Luther, and Exit The King (Peter Whitehead, 1966, 39 mins): extracts from four plays written by John Osborne starring Kenneth Haigh, Gary Raymond, Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney and Alec Guinness
• Oswald Morris Remembers Woodfall (Alan Van Wijgerden, 1993, 24 mins): the cinematographer reminisces about his time with Woodfall
• Ten Bob in Winter (Lloyd Reckord, 1963, 12 mins)
• O Dreamland (Lindsay Anderson, 1953, 13 mins)
• Seven short films by Mitchell & Kenyon (13 mins)
• Morecambe Carnival (1 min): Topical Budget newsreel
• Lancashire Coast (John Taylor, 1957, 15 mins)
• The Guardian Interview: Albert Finney (1982, 35 mins, audio only)
• Interview with Shirley Anne Field (2009, 10 mins)
• We Are the Lambeth Boys (Karel Reisz, 1959, 51 mins)
• Two video essays by Walter Lassally (2002, 21 & 19 mins)
• A Taste of Honey 50th Anniversary Q&A with Rita Tushingham, Murray Melvin and Walter Lassally (2002, 15 mins)
• Interview with Murray Melvin (2018, 25 mins)
• Interviews with Rita Tushingham as she looks back on her work with Woodfall (2018, 34 mins)
• Holiday (John Taylor, 1957, 18 mins)
• Momma Don’t Allow (Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, 1956, 22 mins)
• Interview with Vanessa Redgrave (2017, 10 mins)
• The USSR Today: Meeting to Mark the 200th Anniversary of Henry Fielding’s Death (2 mins)
• Walter Lassally in conversation with Peter Cowie (2018, 25 mins)
• Film Poetry: Desmond Davis (2018, 24 mins): a new interview with the director of Girl with Green Eyes
• Food for a Blluuusssshhhhh! (Elizabeth Russell, 1959, 31 mins)
• The Peaches (Michael Gill, 1964, 16 mins)
• Captain Busby The Even Tenour of Her Ways (Ann Wolff, 1967, 16 mins)
• Now and Then: Dick Lester (1967, 17 mins): Richard Lester interviewed by Bernard Braden
• British Cinema in the 1960s: Richard Lester in Conversation (2017, 59 mins): Richard Lester discusses his career in film with Neil Sinyard. Recorded at BFI Southbank in 2017
• Staging THE KNACK…and how to get it (2017, 2 mins): short piece with Keith Johnston, director of the original stage production
• Trailers
• Seven stills galleries
• 80-page illustrated book with essays on all eight films, further writing exploring the dynamic, look, and music of Woodfall, plus notes on all the special features.

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BY NICHOLAS ANEZ

The 1970 film Darker Than Amber should have been a huge commercial success. It should have been the start of a major film franchise. It should have elevated Rod Taylor to the ranks of the era’s top action stars. None of these expectations were realized despite the fact that the movie expertly combines mystery, action, drama and romance with a unique protagonist.

The movie is based on the seventh in a series of 21 novels written by John D. MacDonald between 1964 and 1985 featuring Travis McGee, a self-described beach bum who lives on a houseboat called The Busted Flush in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. When not enjoying his sporadic retirement, he works as a “salvage consultant” in return for half of the value of whatever he retrieves for clients. Though he is not an official detective, he possesses intrinsic investigative skills and is an enemy to evildoers. On occasion, he may offer his services pro bono because he is also a knight-errant, though one with sullied armor. His best friend is Meyer Meyer, an economist who lives in a nearby cabin cruiser and who provides him with periodic philosophical advice.

Darker Than Amber was the first and last appearance of Travis McGee on cinema screens. The film’s box office failure may have been due in part to the inexperience of the relatively new studios that produced and distributed it. National General Pictures began distributing films in 1967, including their own productions as well as movies from Cinema Center Films, the recently-formed subsidiary of the CBS Television Network. NGP released McGee’s film debut, which was produced by CCF, with meagre publicity and it disappeared quickly from theaters. (CCF ceased production in 1972 and NGP stopped distributing films in 1973; Warner Bros. subsequently acquired the rights to all of NGP’s movies.)

As Darker Than Amber begins, McGee and Meyer are fishing in a skiff underneath a bridge when his line gets snagged by a woman who has been thrown over with weights tied to her feet. Travis saves her life and brings her back to his houseboat. Her name is Evangeline Bellemer and she is consumed with shame and guilt due to a shady past. Her despair combined with her stoic acceptance of pain intrigues McGee who becomes romantically involved with her. Unwisely, she makes the fatal mistake of leaving the houseboat to retrieve money from her apartment. McGee is infuriated by her fate as well as that of his friend, Burk, from whom he rented the skiff. His ensuing investigation leads him to Terry, Griff and Adele, a trio of crooks who used Vangie in a scam that victimized men on cruise ships. McGee hatches a plan of revenge with the help of Meyer and Merrimay, an actress who resembles Vangie. The plan will take him to Miami, to Nassau and back to Florida. But he underestimates his adversaries who will kill anyone that stands in their way. After Griff outfoxes him, he is only saved from a shallow grave by the appearance of a stray pup. And when his plan to manipulate Adele fails, he finds that he is no match for the ferociously demented Terry who proceeds to beat the living daylights out of him.

This was the first movie that Robert Clouse directed and it is an auspicious debut. Unlike many films in which the location photography serves as a travelogue, Clouse and cinematographer Frank Phillips authentically capture Florida’s leisurely sleaze along with its stunning splendor. He also utilizes peripheral characters to good effect, a good example being the diner scene with the maid Nicole. However, Clouse excels with the action sequences which are further enhanced by the credible exposition of the principle characters. Not only are McGee and Vangie well-defined but Terry and Griff also emerge as atypical villains courtesy of brief vignettes. Because of this, the inevitable clashes are not just exercises in wanton violence. While McGee’s bout with Griff is exciting, it is only a prelude to his eagerly-anticipated fracas with Terry. This bareknuckle brutal fight, which begins on the cruise ship and ends on the pier, is a thrillingly staged, bone-breaking, blood-splattering, vessel-bursting battle between two equally-pitiless antagonists whose only desire is to pummel the life out of one another.

In the screenplay credited to Ed Waters, the novel’s title loses its source. In the novel, Vangie is Eurasian and has dark hair and dark eyes with “irises a strange yellow-brown, just a little darker than amber.” In the movie, Vangie is blonde and no mention is made of her eyes. Then again, the title could pertain to the movie if it refers to something that is quite prominent in the fight sequence: blood. (According to the biography of John D. MacDonald, The Red Hot Typewriter, MacDonald disliked the script and contributed to major uncredited revisions with executive producer Jack Reeves.) Basically, the script follows the novel’s plotline fairly closely, one exception being McGee’s affair with Vangie, who elicits more sympathy than the novel’s callous prostitute. The ending of the film is also more poignant than that of the novel in which McGee is relatively unchanged by his experiences. In the film, the bruised and battered McGee looks sadly out to the sea, unable to forget the woman whose life he saved but whose death he was unable to prevent.

BY TIM GREAVES

When it was announced that Flowers in the Attic was lined up for its UK Blu-ray debut, it occurred to me that I had no real memory of my one and only dip into writer-director Jeffrey Bloom’s adaptation of the controversial, best-selling Virginia (V.C.) Andrews novel – which I guess would have been right back upon its initial release in 1987. Interest to revisit it duly piqued, my anticipation was tempered a tad by the sense that being unable to remember it had surely to be indicative that it wasn’t actually very good. Although it still amuses me that a guy named Bloom wrote and directed a film with Flowers in the title, regrettably my reservations proved well founded. It really is rather awful. There be spoilers ahead!

After the death of her husband, Corinne Dollenganger (Victoria Tennant) falls on hard times and is forced to return, with her four children in tow, to the childhood home she left in disgrace 17 years earlier. Corinne’s puritanical mother, Fran (Louise Fletcher), isn’t best pleased to see them and, although she evidently despises both her own daughter and the grandchildren she’s never met, she reluctantly allows them to stay, telling them that she’ll give them food and shelter but never kindness and love. The children (Jeb Stuart Adams, Kristy Swanson, Ben Ganger and Lindsay Parker) remain upstairs out of sight, whilst Corinne makes an effort to reconnect with her bedridden, dying father (Marshall Colt). She tells the siblings that if she’s able to atone for her past transgressions before he dies, and most importantly convince him that she never had children, then he’ll write her back into his will and they’ll be well-heeled for the rest of their lives. But as the days pass it becomes apparent that the children have become prisoners – visited in their locked room only to be fed – and Corinne becomes ever more distant, spending less and less time with them. What can she possibly have done all those years ago that was so terrible? And what is the purpose of those four child-sized holes being dug in the woods?

All sounds rather intriguing, doesn’t it? An adaptation of the first in a quartet of novels (with a tweaked denouement) it’s certainly a nice set up; once the family receive a frosty welcome at grandma’s abode all the pieces are in place for a potentially gripping and increasingly sinister tale. Unfortunately, things quickly devolve into a bit of a slog, the various plot turns becoming ever more irksome as the children – who are far from dullards – fail to do what anyone with half a brain cell trapped in their situation would.

BY DOUG OSWALD

Steve McQueen steals a high valued automobile from a wealthy Mississippi family and heads to Memphis with two friends in order to woo a prostitute. He gets involved with a horse race and learns a thing or two about life. This isn’t a Steve McQueen action movie, but it is the basic plot of “The Reivers,” a 1969 movie based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by William Faulkner and available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Part road movie and part coming-of-age story, this is the second feature directed by Mark Rydell. “The Reivers” is dipped in Southern sensibility and cinematographer Richard Moore gives 1905 Mississippi a nostalgic dream-like appearance. A reiver is a thief and Steve McQueen plays Boon Hogganbeck, a friend and employee of the McCaslins who run a plantation in rural Mississippi. Boon was adopted by the family at a young age and is a sort of mentor to 11-year old Lucius (Mitch Vogel). When “Boss” McCaslin (Will Geer) purchases the first automobile in the county, it’s not just any car, but a brand new yellow Winton Flyer.

Boss, Lucius’ grandfather, runs the family and farm with a firm, but thoughtful hand. A death in the family requires Boss and Lucius’ parents to depart for four days to attend the funeral. Lucius is left in the care of Boon with strict orders for the car to remain locked up. Boon takes Lucius home in the Flyer after dropping the family at the train station. He gives Lucius a driving lesson and informs him of his intentions to take the Flyer on a trip to Memphis so he can meet up with his girlfriend Corrie (Sharon Farrell) and invites Lucius to join him. They devise a tangled web of white lies and misinformation to deceive various relatives and soon head off for Memphis. Shortly after departing, Ned McCalin (Rupert Crosse) is discovered hiding in the back seat under a blanket (how he went undiscovered back there is hard to explain, but it’s not important). Ned is a bi-racial cousin to the McCaslins and, like Boon, works for the family. Along the way the three reivers get stuck in a mud trap set by a local farmer named Edmonds (played to the hilt with dripping chewing tobacco by character actor Charles Tyner) who sits in wait after flooding a depression in the road making it impossible for horse carts or automobiles to get through without his mule towing services. The three clean their muddy mess after stopping at a local pond.

Entering Memphis is a big deal and Lucius is given the honor of driving the Flyer into town as they arrive at a boarding house run by Mr. Binford (Michael Constantine) and Miss Reba (Ruth White). Ned departs to stay in the black side of town (this is 1905 Mississippi) and Lucius is introduced to Miss Corrie who he perceives as an angelic vision of motherly virtue. The wonders of adult life are presented to Lucius in quick order when he is offered beer at dinner and gets into a fight with Corrie’s nephew Otis (Lindy Davis) who informs Lucius that Corrie is in fact a whore and they are staying in a brothel. Defending her honor, Lucius starts punching and Otis cuts Lucius in the hand with a knife before Boon arrives. Touched by Lucius’ gesture, Corrie vows to give up her life as a prostitute and be the virtuous woman Lucius sees in her.

Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros.

BY MARK CERULLI

There’s a new Tomb Raider in town and she’s not… well… she’s not your older brother’s Tomb Raider. Gone is the statuesque, pistol-packing Angelina Jolie of the iconic video game character’s first movie incarnation. Alicia Vikander’s Lara Croft is pared down to the essentials - a dangerous tomboy who is smart, feisty and tough as nails.

When we meet this Lara Croft she’s broke, toiling as a London bicycle messenger, getting her ass kicked in MMA training and still reeling from the disappearance of her father (Dominic West) seven years ago. He had vanished exploring a mysterious island off the coast of Japan. When she discovers the key to his hidden workroom, she becomes hooked on his quest and decides to follow his trail all the way to the jungle tomb he was desperately trying to keep from ever being opened.

Directed by the aptly named Finnish director, Roar Uthaug, the film starts off at a breakneck pace and rarely slows. The action moves like a bullet train from a bike chase in Central London to a Hong Kong dock melee and then on to a remote island as forbidding and dangerous as the one King Kong calls home. There, Croft encounters her father’s nemesis – a shadowy organization called Trinity which is laser-focused on finding the final resting place of an ancient Queen known as “The Mother of Death.” Their archaeological dig is run by a psychotic thug played with real verve by Walton Goggins (Justified), who could clearly give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money. When he steals Croft’s father’s journal, the path to the tomb and its hideous contents is revealed and the final battle begins.

Vikander is fit and relentless, yet vulnerable for an action hero – when she takes a beating, you feel it. The amount of training Ms. Vikander had to endure for the role must have been epic. As the New York Times’ review pithily noted, she has “a washboard stomach you could play the blues on.” (Sorry, that was too sweet not to reuse!) Cinematographer George Richmond makes great use of the lush South African scenery, and his zooming camerawork flies through jungle canopies and ancient tombs with equal finesse.

While Vikander’s Lara Croft isn’t as snide or as sexualized as her predecessor, hers is a strong debut and like Daniel Craig’s Bond, she’ll make this iconic character her own.

TOMB RAIDER  is released by Warner Bros. and MGM. The film makes its North American debut on Friday, March 16.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

"There's got to be a morning after" went the strains of the Oscar-winning song from the 1972 film "The Poseidon Adventure" and that somber warning always pertains to coverage of the Oscar events show itself. After last year's abysmal event that saw awful comedy bits, offensive omissions of major stars from the memorial tribute and the historic snafu in which the wrong film was initially announced for Best Picture, there was no where to go but up. Much of the success or failure of these shows rests on the back of the host. I thought it was going to be a mistake to bring back Jimmy Kimmel, as I was generally unimpressed with his performance last year. However, the second time was the charm- or almost. (More on that later).  In general, this year's telecast was more tightly structured and moved at a faster clip even though it still ran about three-and-a-half hours. Helping matters was the fact that there was an exciting and highly diverse selection of films competing in the key categories and they boasted some brilliant performances by an eclectic array of actors. Gone are the days when viewers had to suffer through the mandatory opening musical production number, which was generally measured in terms of how misguided it proved to be. Kimmel started off with a witty dialogue that was surprisingly and refreshingly light on the political barbs in spite of the fact that the White House had just gone through a couple of miserable weeks that had brought out a surrealistic number of self-imposed scandals and crises.I had thought there would be so many quips about this that I expected to see President Trump's name listed among the key contributors to the show. (There were, however, some deep digs at Harvey Weinstein, who does not have a political base that can be offended.)  However, I was relieved that Kimmel kept himself in check because I'm among those that think major awards shows should try to stick with the subject at hand: the work and the personalities involved in creating it. With Kimmel having decided to follow the old adage and "Leave the messages to Western Union", it fell upon others to promote diversity and equality. Great efforts were made in both areas with Best Actress winner Frances McDormand movingly calling for all female nominees to stand up. It was a moment that illustrated how fast and furiously Hollywood is moving to finally provide opportunities to females in the industry. Similarly, there were many minority artists on stage as presenters, performers and winners. I was glad to see triple-threat Jordan Peele, the director, writer and producer of the ingeniously quirky "Get Out", become the first African American to win the Best Original Screenplay award.

The awards dispensed during the show all went to worthy winners, though I would have liked to have seen "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" take home the Best Picture prize. Gary Oldman and Frances McDormand were popular, if predictable, winners based on their superb performances. "The Shape of Water" took Best Picture, as did its director Guillermo del Toro. The elaborate presentations for Best Song just emphasized the strengths and weaknesses of each of the nominees in this category, as the songs themselves ranged from pleasant to dreadful, which is often the norm. The show was moving along swimmingly until Jimmy Kimmel took viewers and participants on a major, ill-advised detour just as he had last year by introducing an elaborate gag in which people in an adjoining movie theater were used as unknowing props when Kimmel brought an array of celebrities from the Oscars ceremony next door to surprise them. Incredibly, it was a variation of the same awful shtick he pulled off the previous year. There's something rather condescending about bringing in a boatload of rich people to dispense candy and hot dogs to the grateful masses. It's like watching benevolent nobles toss some trinkets to their loyal serfs. Worse, the gag ate up valuable air time that could have been used for more appropriate purposes. Earlier in the show Kimmel made a snide remark about showing some of those honored with Oscars being dismissed with "blink-and-you-miss-them" clips from a ceremony that had been held previously. He correctly needled the Academy for pointing out that these artists and technicians, who would have once been allowed on stage at the "real" event, were now excluded. But his hypocrisy was revealed when he launched his dopey sight gag later. If you think I'm being a grump then ask yourself if it was more appropriate to spend time showing Kimmel and company tossing food to audience members or have the opportunity to see and hear Donald Sutherland accepting the Governor's Award for  lifetime achievement.

The segment that honors artists who passed away in the last year should also be retired. Although sensitively presented and well-edited, the number of inexcusable exclusions is now almost downright offensive. Yes, it's great to honor those who make the cut (I counted three personal friends in the montage of artists who have left us in the last year), but if you can't extend the segment for even another few minutes in order to include other worthy honorees, then let's just eliminate it altogether. (The Academy does provide a more comprehensive tribute on their web site. Click here to view).

BY TIM GREAVES

Released in 1977, Scalpel is one of only two films bearing the director credit John Grissmer. A decade apart, the other is 1987’s marginally less satisfying Blood Rage. Which isn’t to suggest that Scalpel itself is particularly good, because it’s not. It is, however, the better of the pair.

Plastic surgeon Dr Phillip Reynolds (Robert Lansing) is in a bit of a quandary. His wife is some while dead and his father-in-law, who despised him, has just passed away bequeathing a fortune to Reynolds’ daughter Heather (Judith Chapman). The problem is that Heather disappeared after witnessing Reynolds committing a dreadful crime and she hasn’t been seen for over a year. And Reynolds wants that money! A solution presents itself when he’s out driving one night and almost runs over Jane, a stripper who’s been savagely beaten up and is laid unconscious in the road. Whisking Jane off to the hospital where he works, Reynolds hatches a scheme to refashion her smashed face to replicate that of the missing Heather. As she recovers he makes her a proposal: successfully pass herself off as Heather until the cash is signed over and they will split it down the middle. It sounds perfect. But with $5 million at stake there’s trouble ahead and Reynolds’ cunning plan is about to be derailed by an unexpected arrival...

Also circulating under the title False Face – which arguably has less exploitation value plastered across a marquee than Scalpel, but is technically more pertinent – John Grissmer’s debut film is a bit of an oddity. Although on first run it feels mired in a pervasive grubbiness, when you step back and analyse it that’s more down to the sickly yellow glaze that bedecks the entire movie (the artistic intent of cinematographer Edward Lachman) than anything particularly disturbing content-wise. In fact, a fleeting flash of nudity and a splash or two of graphic bloodshed aside, Scalpel could almost pass as a TV production. This impression is enforced by the headlining presence of prolific actor Robert Lansing, whose work on television (in a fistful of made-for-TV movies, but mostly in episodes of a myriad of series) outweighed his big screen appearances 14 to 1. Nevertheless, he’s on excellent form here as the nutty surgeon with as much of a fixation on his daughter – the manifestation of incestuous desire may be fairly tame but it’s scarcely subtle – as he has on lining his pockets with ill-gotten millions. Judith Chapman meanwhile is every bit his equal in the contrasting roles of Jane and Heather and there’s some very efficient split screen work served up on those occasions that she’s called upon to share the screen with herself.

Director Grissmer also penned the script, based on an original story by Joseph Weintraub, and if it’s not exactly thrill-a-minute stuff it certainly manages to keep one engaged enough through a number of (mostly predictable) twists, although for my money it badly fumbles the ball in the penultimate act with a daft sequence in which one of the main characters descends into gibbering madness.

Provided you don’t go in expecting to be wowed, you shouldn’t come away too disappointed. But the bottom line is that it’s always pleasing to see a movie brought back from the brink of obscurity – for every naysayer there’s always going to be someone else rejoicing – and for that reason alone Scalpel is well worth a look.

In this instance it’s the ever reliable Arrow Video breathing new life into the borderline obscure and the package they’ve put together for Scalpel is very decent indeed. There are two versions of film to choose from, one faithfully retaining the original, rather off-putting yellowish-green hues of the aforementioned cinematography, the other being Arrow’s own newly tweaked version with the colour grading adjusted to attain a more naturalistic look; although staunch traditionalists will favour the former, the latter makes the film more palatable by far. Whichever you select, there’s the option to watch in the company of a commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith. 45-minutes’ worth of all-new interviews with director John Grissmer, DOP Edward Lachman and star Judith Chapman, a slideshow gallery of stills and artwork, plus a vintage trailer combine to constitute the bonus goodies. A reversible sleeve and collector’s booklet may be par for the course now with Arrow releases, but they’re never less than welcome.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

In the opening scene of Republic Pictures “The Man Who Died Twice,” (1950) a car drives along a mountain road and two cops in a patrol car remark that it’s nightclub owner T. J. Brennon (Don Megowan) passing by. Next thing you know the car goes off a cliff and explodes in flames. Then a woman (Vera Ralston) gets out of a cab in front of her apartment building and looks up at the balcony where two men are fighting. She shrieks in horror as one of the men comes plummeting down and lands on the sidewalk at her feet. Splat! She watches as the other man climbs up a fire escape ladder to the roof. But not before a third man appears on the balcony and the guy on the fire escape shoots him. Vera Ralston faints from all the excitement and falls on the pavement next to the fallen corpse. 

The cops show up almost immediately, revealing that the two dead men are members of the narcotics squad and the unconscious woman (whom they just leave lying there on the concrete until the ambulance arrives) is none other than Lynn Brennon, wife, now widow, of T. J. Brennon, the guy who went over the cliff. All this in just the first few minutes of this low-budget 70-minute crime movie directed at a frantic pace by Joe Kane, veteran of countless Roy Rogers and Gene Autry movies., and penned by Richard C. Sarafian, who would later be best known as the director of “Vanishing Point” (1971), the ultimate car-chase movie.

“The Man Who Died Twice” is a pulpy story that borrows a lot from other crime and gangster movies of that era. It’s a coincidence, I suppose, that this film was released the same week as Don Siegel’s “The Lineup,” but the similarities in the two films are pretty striking. The McGuffin (Hitchcock’s term for the thing everybody’s after) in both films is a missing stash of heroin. In both films, dangerous drug dealers want their drugs back and will stop at nothing to get them. In both films two of the more interesting characters are a couple of gunsels who arrive from out of town to get the goods back for their employers and in both films the heroin is stuffed inside a doll. It makes you wonder if Serafian and Stirling Silliphant, who wrote “The Lineup,” had some kind of competition going to see who could turn out the better script using the same story elements. Silliphant wins that one hands down.

The gunsels In “The Lineup,” are played by Eli Wallach and Robert Keith. Gerald Milton and Richard Karlan handle the roles of Hart and Santoni in “The Man Who Died Twice.” While not quite on a level with Wallach and Keith, they do a good job as the two killers. Milton is particularly nasty in a casual kind of way in a scene in their hotel room when he hears a cat meowing outside the door. He goes out in the hall, picks it up and puts out on the window sill and then shuts the window. Karlan yells, “Hey, what’s the matter with you. It’s three stories down.” Milton keeps calling his wife back home only to be disturbed by the fact that she’s never there when he calls. He tells Karlan that one time a bartender pal gave him the number of a hot babe, if he ever wanted a good time. Half-drunk he put the number in his pocket and didn’t look at it until the next day and found it was his home phone number!

Vera Ralston as Lynn Brennon was only 35 at the time this film was made but she looks tired and bored. She was an ice skating star back in her native Czechoslovakia when Republic Studios chief Herbert J. Yates brought her to the U.S. and tried to make her a star. She made over 20 features for Republic but despite Yates’s efforts audiences did not really accept her, and she quit acting after “The Man Who Died Twice.”

The leading man in this B-movie extravaganza is Rod Cameron, who has about as much charisma as a side of beef. Better known for his westerns, he plays Bill Brennon, T.J.’s brother, who had sent him a telegram asking for help, which was unusual because he and Bill hadn’t spoken in 15 years. But you know how it is, when your brother sends you a wire saying he’s in trouble, you gotta do something about it. Right?

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Chances are you've never heard of "Hollow Creek" (or "A Haunting in Hollow Creek", per the UK release title). It's a low-budget ($500,000) indie film that was made under the auspices of the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre, an admirable venture that encourages film industry professionals to mentor promising younger talents in the hopes that they will be able to create inventive new feature films. "Hollow Creek" was written by an alumnus of the Institute, director Guisela Moro, who also has the female lead. The film was co-written by the male star, Steve Daron. It's an ambitious crime thriller by way of supernatural elements that looks more expensive and polished than its budget might indicate. The film, which sat on a shelf for three years, was released in 2016 and was recently made available on DVD and Amazon Prime streaming service. The plot starts off in a leisurely manner: bestselling horror novel writer Blake Blackman (Daron) arrives at his agent's vacation home located in the deep woods of rural West Virginia. He's accompanied by Angelica Santoro (Moro), who we initially presume to be his wife. Blackman is there to write his next novel but he's secretly harboring an obstacle: a severe case of writer's block. Not helping matters are the sexual distractions afforded him by Angelica, who we learn is actually his mistress. Blackman's marriage has been fragile for some time and he relishes the time spent with Angelica- but their bliss will be short-lived. While Blackman is preoccupied by trying to fill blank pages for his next book, Angelica becomes unsettled by some eerie and inexplicable events including indications someone or something is lurking in the nearby woods. She also has a brief glimpse of the ghostly apparition of a young boy. She later learns that the area has been on edge for the last few years due to the unsolved disappearances of three boys. When she thinks she recognizes one of them in the back seat of a dilapidated old vehicle, she gives chase in true Lois Lane fashion. She discovers that two of the boys have been held captive and literally kept in cages in a hidden chamber in house owned and occupied by a crazy, sadistic couple. Angelica, who has just learned she is three months pregnant with Blackman's child, is captured and imprisoned with the expectation that her child will belong to her insane captors. Meanwhile, the frantic Blackman's life begins to unravel. He's released from contract by his publishing house, his wife files for divorce and due to circumstantial evidence, he is the police department's prime suspect in Angelica's disappearance. Nevertheless, he doggedly pursues finding out what happened to Angelica and rescuing her if he can. 

Were it not for some of the more sordid elements, "Hollow Creek" would have fit well into the ABC Movie of the Week productions that were telecast on TV in the 1970s. That's meant as a compliment, not a knock. The film isn't without flaws. It has a primary plot loophole in that, when Angelica goes missing, it's never explained what happened to her SUV, which was parked near the villain's house. Additionally, the film's chaotic but exciting conclusion incorporates elements of the supernatural that seem somewhat superfluous since the film succeeds on the level of being a compelling real-life crime saga. Nevertheless, it's an extraordinarily accomplished work for the aspiring director and her cast. Moro certainly doesn't give herself an easy time of it. In addition to having written and directed "Hollow Creek", she puts her character through the ringer, having to endure torture and death threats from her sadistic captors. Although the film has unsettling aspects to it, Moro refreshingly doesn't bleed into slasher territory and shows restraint when it comes to crossing the line into showing repulsive imagery. She gives a terrific performance, as does Steve Daron. The supporting cast is also exceptional with not a false note to be found. Burt Reynolds makes a brief but effective appearance in an obvious gesture to lend the credibility of his name to the film. The movie is impressively scored and shot, though cinematographer Jon Schellenger can't resist being a bit gimmicky by utilizing a distracting technique of filming some scenes inexplicably in a garish blue hue. The finale packs in some cliches and predictable action scenes but there is an imaginative and moving finale. 

The FilmRise DVD boasts an excellent transfer, but frustratingly there are no extras. It would have been interesting to hear the perspectives of the principals regarding how the film was made. "Hollow Creek" is an impressive, often spellbinding thriller. If there's any justice, we should be hearing more from Guisela Moro and Steve Daron.  

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BY DEAN BRIERLY

There are countless film noirs meriting Blu-ray treatment, but perhaps none so deserving as T-Men (1947), arguably the best of the documentary-style noirs of the late 1940s, distinguished by its uncompromising tone, stylish direction and brilliant cinematography. While many individuals contributed to its success, the film was above all a triumph of creative collaboration between two of Hollywood’s greatest visual artists: director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton. The two capitalized on the film’s narrative—government agents infiltrating a counterfeiting ring in an underworld of sudden cruelty and shifting allegiances—to push the noir/crime film to new extremes of stylized violence and subjective intensity.

Although better known for his dark psychological westerns of the 1950s, Mann honed his craft in the even darker waters of forties film noir. Like many directors of his generation, Mann cut his teeth in the demanding arena of B movies, churning out a dozen bottom-of-the-bill programmers for Republic, RKO and PRC between 1942-1947. Although he made several musicals during this period, Mann was much more at home directing noirish films like The Great Flamarion (1945) and Strange Impersonation (1946), which gave scope to his thematic obsession with conflicted, desperate characters navigating through a world of moral ambivalence and extreme violence.

Mann was the thinking man’s director par excellence, equally adept at staging dynamic set pieces as probing his protagonists’ inner responses to narrative stimuli, usually in the same scene. His sensitivity to characters better able to cope with physical rather than psychological roadblocks made him right at home in the existential uncertainties of noir. Relentless pacing, kinetic visuals and an intense focus on the emotional and psychological dissonance of his characters were among his hallmarks. T-Men, made for Eagle Lion Films, was the fullest realization of his aesthetic to date.

Helping Mann transfer his dark vision to the screen was legendary cinematographer John Alton, whose chiaroscuro photography recalled the glory days of German film expressionism. The Hungarian-born Alton was among the most daring and experimental of Hollywood cameramen. His work sometimes bordered on the abstract, but only when it served the needs of the story. Often stuck with directors unreceptive to his ideas, his pairing with the open-minded Mann was a match made in noir heaven. Alton’s shadowy, half-lit urban environments provide the perfect visual correlative to Mann’s thematic emphasis on paranoia and emotional crisis. Known for his minimal use of lights—he got better effects with a handful of lights than cameramen who used dozens—Alton succinctly summed up his photographic philosophy: “It’s not what you light, it’s what you don’t light.”

T-Men also marked the appearance of another significant creative partner for Mann in the person of John C. Higgins, who had penned the director’s previous film, Railroaded (1947). Higgins was one of noir’s more prolific and dependable screenwriters. In addition to the five films he did with Mann, he also scripted the iconic noirs Shield for Murder (1954) and Big House, U.S.A. (1955). While T-Men’s accolades are typically reserved for Alton’s chiaroscuro and Mann’s nerve-shredding mise en scène, Higgins’ tough, pungent dialog shouldn’t be overlooked. He was arguably the first quality screenwriter Mann worked with.

Higgins’ tight scenario centers on treasury agents Dennis O’Brien (Dennis O’Keefe) and Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder), who go undercover to break up a counterfeiting operation working out of Detroit and Los Angeles. Posing as members of a once-prominent Detroit gang (O’Brien adopting the moniker Vannie Harrigan, Genaro becoming Tony Galvani), the pair gain conditional access to the organization through a low-level middleman called The Schemer (Wallace Ford), offering as bait an engraving plate of exceptional quality. Having fallen from favor with his employers, the Schemer hopes to redeem himself by brokering a deal between his felonious new pals and the organization’s top brass. The latter are interested but wary, and as negotiations proceed keep O’Brien and Genaro under close surveillance by the gang’s enforcer Moxie (Charles McGraw).

BY TIM GREAVES

Although it would be a wait of 15 months before it hit British screens, Phenomena – Dario Argento’s ninth feature release – was first unveiled to Italian audiences early in 1985. It had been three years since Tenebrae (which despite stiff competition is my favourite Argento) and at the time Phenomena was broadly considered his weakest offering. It’s narrative core, which concerns a young girl communing with insects in order to identify a maniac killer, was indisputably a shade bananas (rather apt given the significant involvement of a vengeful primate!), but for me it was by no means his least interesting film to that point and considering the mixed bag of cinematic fodder bearing his name that’s appeared in the years since, I’d not hesitate to cite it as one of his more entertaining.

Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the teenage daughter of a famous movie star, arrives at The Richard Wagner International School for Girls in Switzerland where she learns from her new roommate that a number of girls in the area have gone missing, the possible victims of a serial killer. Jennifer suffers from somnambulism and one night she wakens to find herself lost in the woods, whereupon she encounters a friendly chimpanzee which leads her to safety at the nearby home of its owner, wheelchair-bound entomologist Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence). Jennifer is fascinated by insects and when she tells McGregor she’s able to communicate with them telepathically the two become firm friends. McGregor has been assisting police on the serial killer case in an advisory capacity and believes that the corpses of the missing girls can be tracked down by the Great Sarcophagus, a species of fly that can detect rotting flesh. He duly convinces Jennifer she can help solve the case by using one that he has captive to guide her to the refuge of the killer.

Co-written (with Franco Ferrini), produced and directed by Argento, it’s obvious from the above précis that Phenomena is structured upon some pretty outré ideas. But even if the results aren’t entirely satisfying, I applaud the man for attempting to do something beyond playing safe and recycling the same old giallo formula. Besides which, overlooking its inadequacies – not least of which is a run-time that overstretches the narrative’s ability to fully engage – there’s some really good stuff going on here.

Speaking of that run-time, if ever proof were needed that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing then Phenomena is it. There exist three versions of the movie: the 116-minute Italian cut, a 110-minute international edit, and an American theatrical cut (retitled Creepers and which, at 83-minutes, had almost a third of the Italian original’s run-time sheared off it); against all expectation it’s the latter tightened-up version that arguably plays best.

But I digress. The Swiss locations are breathtaking and in terms of set-up, Phenomena’s opening sequence – which finds a young girl on a class trip into the mountains being inadvertently left behind when the coach departs (they used to count us aboard in my day!) – is terrific. The girl, played by his teenage daughter Fiore, goes looking for help and happens across a chalet nestled in the hillside where someone (or something!) tries to kill her. She flees but is pursued by the grunting, scissor-wielding maniac to an observation platform overlooking a waterfall. All the pieces are in place for the film’s first murder sequence and with almost lascivious relish the camera observes a stabbing, followed by a slo-mo backwards lurch through a plate glass window and finally a decapitation. There’s graphic mayhem aplenty peppered throughout the remainder of the movie (including a protracted wallow in a vile stew of rotting cadavers), but for sheer style this opener is never quite matched. 

Jennifer Connelly was 14-years-old when she shot Phenomena and given that it was only her second feature film appearance (following a small part in 1984’s Once Upon a Time in America), it’s remarkable just how confidently she carries the film; not only a budding beauty but already exhibiting the talent that would carry her on to great acclaim (including an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind) in the years ahead. Donald Pleasence showed up in a fistful of Italian chillers of varied worth during the 1980s and he’s as reliably entertaining as ever here, adopting a Scottish accent as the academic whose closest chum is a chimp. Argento’s long-time partner and go-to leading lady (cf. Deep Red, Inferno, Tenebrae, Opera) Daria Nicolodi delivers with elan, so too for that matter does gorgeous Flesh for Frankenstein star Dalila Di Lazzaro, present as Jennifer’s chaperone and school headmistress respectively. It’s good to see prolific player Patrick Bauchau on hand too, although he’s a tad underused as the investigating police inspector, very much relegated to the sidelines of the action.

BY NICHOLAS ANEZ

Business isn’t exactly booming for private detective Peter Joseph Detweiler, better known as P.J. His makeshift office is in a bar belonging to his only friend Charlie, his sporadic jobs include entrapping cheating wives and he is not above drowning his sorrows in liquor. So when wealthy magnate William Orbison offers him a substantial fee to be a bodyguard for his mistress, Maureen Prebble, he jumps at the chance. What P.J. doesn’t know is that Orbison has already hired someone else to commit a murder. How this murder and the shamus’s new job intersect is the crux of the terrific 1968 neo-noir from Universal, P.J. (U.K. title: New Face in Hell.)

Private detectives were prominent in the late 1960s and included Harper (1966), Tony Rome (1967), Gunn (1967), and Marlowe (1969). P.J. appeared in the midst of this surplus, which may account in part for its box office failure. The movie quickly disappeared, at least in its original form. Due to one extended and bloody sequence in a gay bar as well as to other scenes of violence and sexuality, Universal drastically cut and re-edited the movie for its television network presentation. Since then, it has never been officially released on home video and the original version may be lost forever.

Philip Reisman, Jr.’s screenplay is based on his original story co-written with producer Edward Montagne. The script initially unfolds as a conventional mystery but gets increasingly complicated with each twist and turn. Maureen appears to definitely need a bodyguard, in view of threatening letters as well as a shot fired into her bedroom. And there is no shortage of suspects who would like to see her dead. Orbison’s emotionally fragile wife, Betty, resents the very thought of her husband’s paramour. Betty’s relatives despise Maureen because of her emergence as principle beneficiary in Orbison’s will. Orbison’s Executive Assistant, Jason Grenoble, due to his apparent affluent upbringing, is displeased about being used as a flunky. Making P.J.’s job more difficult is Orbison’s decision to take everyone, including relatives and mistress, to his hideaway in the Caribbean island of St. Crispin’s. And it is in this tropical setting that P.J. is forced to kill a suspect. This seems to be the end of the case. But it is really only the end of the second act. The third act is filled with intrigue, deception, blackmail and three brutal deaths.

John Guillermin is an underappreciated director who created admirable films in many genres, including mystery, adventure, war and western as well as the disaster and monster genres. His success could perhaps be due not only to his skill but to a style that is unobtrusive. He directs P.J. in a straightforward fashion, not allowing any directorial flourishes to interrupt the flow of the story. With cinematographer Loyal Griggs, he cleverly contrasts the seedy sections of New York City with the natural beauty of St. Crispin’s. However, this beauty is soon tainted by the presence of Orbison, whose wealth the island’s economy requires to flourish. Guillermin allows each of the characters within Orbison’s contingent enough screen time to make an impact. Basically, they all appear to be self-centered, greedy and nasty. Orbison is especially sadistic, in addition to being notoriously miserly. Maureen doesn’t apologize for providing sexual favors in exchange for future wealth. Betty is willing to be repeatedly humiliated to obtain her customary allowance. Grenoble continually demeans himself to keep his well-paid position. And then there is butler Shelton Quell, who is not as harmless as his effeminate mannerisms suggest. This is a sordid group of characters that P.J. is involved with but his dire financial state has apparently extinguished his conscience, particularly since he soon becomes intimately involved with the body that he is guarding. P.J.’s essential irony arises from the fact that he is equally greedy, at least initially. He also seems to be morally bankrupt. When he encounters Orbison leaving Maureen’s cottage, it doesn’t faze him that they have just engaged in a quickie. P.J. knows that he has sold his gun to Orbison just as Maureen has sold her body.

In the early 1960s, George Peppard became a major star in expensive films such as The Carpetbaggers and How the West Was Won. In mid-decade, he starred in another big-budget film, The Blue Max, the first of three movies he would make with John Guillermin. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he starred in several smaller-budgeted movies. While some of them, especially Pendulum and The Groundstar Conspiracy are exceptional, others are unremarkable. The commercial failure of these movies diminished his star status and he was relegated to series television. This was regrettable because he had genuine star quality as well as considerable talent.

As P.J. Detweiler, Peppard creates a unique private eye that puts him apart from his cinematic brethren. P.J. initially appears disillusioned with his life and work. Like many film noir protagonists, he is one of society’s alienated outcasts. He is not just down and out but seems resigned to his dismal situation. When he is offered the lucrative position of bodyguard, he is so destitute that he agrees to a humiliating audition of fisticuffs. As he begins his job, he appears impassive to the decadence of Orbison’s environment. However, after he has been duped and discarded, he asserts himself and becomes a traditional detective who is determined to pursue clues and solve the mystery. But unlike traditional detectives, he doesn’t derive any pleasure from the solution to the crime. The fact that he has been maneuvered into facilitating a murder has emotionally drained him. At the end of the film, he forces a cheerless smile at Charlie but he is unable to sustain it, replacing it quickly with a look of despair. All of these emotions are reflected in Peppard’s superb portrayal.

By Hank Reineke

Though often dismissed as a low-budget “Made for TV” feature, director Franklin Adreon’s Cyborg 2087 enjoyed a brief theatrical run prior to its debut on broadcast television in March of 1968. In April of 1967 the film was packaged alongside such similarly low-budgeted, independent features as Death Curse of Tartu, Sting of Death, and even a second Adreon “time travel” themed film, Dimension 5. Though this somewhat lackluster film seemed destined for relegation to the late-night drive-in horror movie circuit, Cyborg 2087 nonetheless displayed some small measure of staying power. That same summer, Adreon’s film was still making the rounds of the secondary flea-pit theater circuit, sometimes serving as the under bill to Sidney J. Furie’s contemporary political thriller The Naked Runner featuring Frank Sinatra.

Though he had worked on serials and a handful of feature films in the early stages of his career, director Adreon was laboring almost exclusively in television by the mid-1950s. Cyborg 2087 does appear as something cobbled together both inexpensively and hastily for the small screen. The initial tipoff is the film’s lackluster and visually non-appealing set designs. Cyborg 2087 is a film visually hobbled by poor production values due to the paucity of budget. The futuristic control room seen briefly at the film’s beginning is non-imaginatively designed and unusually threadbare, missing nearly all of the electronic baubles and flashing accoutrements one might expect. The film’s optical effects are practically non-existent and the occasional appearance and disappearance of Garth 7’s Star Base 7 space-time traveling capsule are not impressive at all. In fact they’re less innovative than those of the camera tricks employed by cinema pioneer Georges Méliès in 1902.

For a science-fiction film, a good portion of the movie’s daylight scenes are shot incongruously on an obvious “Old West” Hollywood set. Director Adreon was either pressed for time or simply didn’t have the skill to compose shots that made the best use of the ghost town’s obvious clapboard facades. The fact that the buildings lining the streets of Desert City are little more than mock-ups are made apparent by the sight of mountain range vistas peeking out directly from the windows. Cinematographer Alan Stensvold’s photography is curiously flat throughout, and he has the bad habit of illuminating the film’s nighttime scenes with a giant, hot-white spotlight. This slapdash method of lighting blows out any mystery the darkness might portend and casts heavy, non-impressionistic shadows in every direction. The too-talkative screenplay of Arthur C. Pierce, his resume of low-budget sci-fi melodramas already duly established, does attempt to dish out a few thoughtful and interesting ideas, but they’re never imaginatively mounted. This is a science-fiction title offering little in the way of suspense or excitement.

Though the script is admittedly not Shakespearean in its construction, it still might have worked if the performances of the assembled troupe of actors didn’t range from merely adequate to painfully woeful. Though Michael Rennie’s character, Garth 7, appears stiff and non-emotive throughout, I’m willing to give him a pass… he’s a Cyborg, after all, a non-human “Cybernetic Organism.” With his silver space boots, matching pistol belt, but otherwise bland service mechanic’s overalls, the lanky Garth 7 cuts a particularly un-dashing figure, save for an impressive brush of silver hair atop his cranium. While he does carry a semi-cool ray gun in his holster, the pistol he’s saddled with can only temporarily paralyze targets, not kill them. If nothing else, this is good news for the nostalgic whiskey drinkers and their attendant German shepherd who re-visit the ruins of the derelict “Lucky Dollar Casino and Dance Hall” of Desert City. Conversely, Garth 7’s futuristic pistol is a useless weapon against the very folks he needs most disarm: a pair of Cyborg “Tracers” who have followed him from 2087 on a mission to eradicate him.

It’s here where we get to the crux of it. Garth 7 has time-traveled from the year 2087 back to April 1966 in an effort to get the professorial Dr. Sigmund Marx (Eduard Franz) and his assistant Sharon Mason (Karen Steele) to abandon their groundbreaking and militarily useful research in the field of radio telepathy. If only Garth 7 can convince Dr. Marx to do this, the impending totalitarian society of 2087 that will arise from the invention’s misuse can be averted. Garth 7 grimly warns - with the foresight time travel has allowed him - that the “Warlords of tomorrow will use radio telepathy for evil purposes.” He assures that the domestic political situation is pretty bad in 2017… Um, I mean 2087, as the military has effectively misused radio telepathy to control the thoughts of the populace. Independent “free-thinkers” are punished and even children are cruelly snatched from the arms of their mothers and made instant wards of the State.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN 

In 1988 Oscar-winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant ("In the Heat of the Night", "The Poseidon Adventure") got fed up with what he called "the eel pit of Hollywood" and moved to Thailand to start a new life. According to the LA Times, he'd grown tired of the power plays, the egos, the hypocrisy and the dictum that homage must be paid to the box office.  He left and never came back.

Hollywood has always had its dark side-- just read "Hollywood Babylon". Silliphant's "eel pit" was never a more apt description than when, a few years later in 2015, the film industry was rocked by the unauthorized release of some really nasty Sony emails that gave a glimpse into what powerful producers and studio execs really thought of some of their stars. Scott Rudin called Angelina Jolie a "minimally talented spoiled brat".  Clint Culpepper called Kevin Hart "a whore" and Amy Pascal said Leonardo DiCaprio was "despicable" And the news coming out of Hollywood these days is even worse. Allegations of sexual harassment up to and including rape by powerful studio heads and A-list stars are being revealed on an almost daily basis. Careers are ending faster than they can yank the latest multi-million dollar "blockbuste" flop out of theaters. And somebody or somebodies may go to jail.

Over the years there have been several attempts to document Tinseltown's seamy underbelly on film. Movies like "The Bad and the Beautiful", "Sunset Boulevard" and "The Last Tycoo" gave it a try with varying degrees of success. But without doubt the most scathing portrait of La La Land ever put on film has to be Robert Aldrich's "The Big Knife" (1955). This stark film, shot in black and white and 1.85:1 widescreen, is a searing depiction of an idealistic actor caught in the clutches of a powerful, merciless studio boss who will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, to get his way. Based on a stage play by Clifford Odets, the poet laureate of the working man, and adapted for the screen by James Poe, "The Big Knife" tells the story of screen star Charlie Castle (Jack Palance), who is described in voice-over narration at the beginning of the film as a man who sold his dreams but can't forget them. He once had artistic aspirations as an actor, but through his own weakness he succumbed to the lure of big money and became instead a drunk, a womanizer, and the property of studio head Stanley Shriner Hoff (Rod Steiger).

Forced to make some lousy pictures for Hoff, who is content with making money and couldn't care less about things like redeeming social value or artistic integrity, Charlie sees a way out. His contract is about to expire. Hoff wants him to sign up for seven more years, but Charlie's wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), insists he refuse to sign. She sees it as a matter of survival. She has seen the steady corrosion of Charlie's soul over the years working for Hoff Pictures. She and Charlie have been temporarily separated on and off for the last couple of years, but she tells him if he signs the new contract she'll leave for good.

Based on Odets' stage play, most of the film is confined to one set, the spacious play room of Charlie's Bel Air mansion. Aldrich and Cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, using deep focus lenses, create a claustrophobic atmosphere, shooting from low and high angles, with lamps and chandeliers in the foreground, conveying the terrifying sensation of the walls closing in on Charlie, as one character after another shows up to take away another piece of his soul.

First is columnist Patty Benedict (Ilka Chase), a barracuda who questions why Charlie has kept Buddy, his publicity man on the payroll after he had served several months in prison for a drunk driving hit and run that killed a child. Charlie tells her he's been a friend for years, and why dig that old news up? She also noses into the state of Charlie's marriage. When Marion appears (Charlie unaware she had entered the house), she tells Benedict it;s none of her business. The columnist leaves in a huff and warns Charlie she better not read about their break up in anybody else's column. Charlie scolds Marion for talking to Benedict that way, and when she rebukes his obsequious, hypocritical act with her, he replies, in typical Odets fashion: "Im in the movie business. I can't afford your acute attacks of integrity"

“The Big Knife” is loaded with hard-hitting dialogue that probably sounds over the top today, but in the context of the film, and in the period in which it was made—a time when filmmakers and writers like Chayefsky, Serling, and Inge were more concerned with moral value than writers are today—it all works. When Charlie discusses his future with his agent Nat Danziger (Everett Sloan), he considers the meager possibilities and concludes: “Every way is a way to die.” Later in the story, when the walls get even closer, he picks up a bottle and tells him “I’m getting sloshed in my own mud and neon.” In a confrontation with Hoff and his hatchet man Smiley Coy (Wendell Corey), who try to force him to sign the new contract, he tells them: “This is all a bleak, bitter dream, a dish of doves. You throw this mess of naked pigeons in my face. What am I to do?”

Further pressure comes from Buddy’s wife, a tramp who throws herself at Charlie, cold and callous, heedless of the way it will destroy their friendship. This betrayal becomes even more brutal when the truth that he and Buddy share regarding the hit and run accident is revealed. Finally, there is Shelly Winters as Dixie Evans, a starlet who knows too much about the hit and run and is seen as a threat not only by Charlie, but more importantly by Hoff and Smiley Coy. She’s the final straw that eventually breaks Charlie’s back. As Dixie says: “First they louse you up and then they call you a louse.”

Wesley Addey is on hand as (Horatio “Hank” Teagle) a writer friend of Marion and Charlie’s, who calls Charlie a half-idealist. “Half-idealism is the peritonitis of the soul,” he tells him. But even that friendship is tainted by the fact that Hank has asked Marion to leave Charlie and marry him. Every straw that Charlie gasps for only pulls him down deeper. Wendell Corey perhaps best sums up Charlie’s character when he calls him: “The warrior minstrel with the forlorn hope.”

BY HANK REINEKE

As one might expect from any 1960’s James Bond pastiche, an assortment of cool spy gadgetry is on display in Franklin Adreon’s Dimension 5 (1966): microchips secreted in the rear compartment of a Bulova wristwatch, a poison dart firing pen, an exploding briefcase, and a cool bullet-firing point-and-shoot 35mm camera. If that’s not enough – and with possible exception of the invisible car from Die Another Day (2002) - Dimension 5 offers us one of the more ridiculous and dubious items found in any secret agent arsenal… a “time-convertor” belt.

We’re first introduced to this device during the film’s mildly exciting pre-credits sequence. In the first few minutes we’re treated to what one expects from a nifty ‘60s spy thriller: a bit of a car chase, a surprising punch-to-the mouth of a double-crossing Asian villainess and a swooping helicopter rescue. What we do not anticipate is agent Justin Power’s (Jeffrey Hunter) unusual means of escape from the clutches of his pursuers. If trapped by enemy spies, agent Powers’ need only activate the power ring on his index finger. The ring sends a signal to the time-convertor waist belt and instantaneously whisks him from harm’s way. This is, alas, a bit of a cop-out; a too convenient plot device that – literally - sweeps the good guys from the forces of evil with little suspense or effort. If it’s any consolation, we later learn that over-use of the time-convertor belt carries an element of danger. There is one chance in one hundred that the user might be transported into the past or future with no possibility of a return to the present.

Having recently watched director Adreon’s sleepy and unsatisfying Cyborg 2087, I must admit approaching Dimension 5 with low expectation. Happily, my fear was unfounded as the team at United Pictures Corp. managed to cobble together a reasonably viable 60s’ spy thriller chock full of the genre’s stock accoutrements. Screenplay duties were handled by Arthur C. Pierce, more noted for his contributions to science-fiction films than espionage tales. Pierce’s “original” screenplay borrows freely from the James Bond EON playbook, especially that of Goldfinger (1964) which was then a recent blockbuster Though the set designs of art director Paul Sylos for Cyborg 2087 were not only unimaginative but practically non-existent, he manages to redeem himself on Dimension 5. His martini-cool design of the multi-level combination office-control room-wet bar at Espionage, Inc. is a perfect example of 60’s lounge elegance. Cinematographer Alan Stensvold’s work here is also measurably glossier than demonstrated in Cyborg 2087. Though Paul Dunlap’s score is serviceable, it’s not particularly memorable. His soundtrack features no musical cues or bravado fanfares worthy of James Bond’s John Barry or of Matt Helm Messrs. Bernstein, Montenegro or Schifrin.

In still another tip-of-the-hat to the cash cow Bond film formula, Dimension 5 offers us both an ersatz “M” (Donald Woods as “Kane”) and an ersatz “Q” (Jon Lormer as “the Professor”). This is alternate-universe, “bizarro world” Bond. If James Bond’s cover was that as an agent of Universal Exports, Justin Power’s converse cover is that of an associate of California Imports, Inc. There are some Playboy-era woeful, groan-producing double entendres sprinkled throughout. Boss Kane and agent Powers engage in a bit of locker room talk when the spy lustily describes female fellow agent Ki Ti Tsu (aka “Kitty”) (actress France Nuyen) as a “penetrating study.” Kane lasciviously concurs with his agent’s assessment and – obviously ignoring the parameters of Espionage, Inc. policies on sexual harassment – tells Powers to “school” his standoffish new partner on “a horizontal curve.” Wink, wink.

Powers and Kitty’s mission is to search out the feared and secretive underworld figure known alternately as both “Mr. B” and “Big Buddha.” “Mr. B” is, perhaps unsurprisingly, portrayed by none other than Harold Sakata, (yes, Oddjob himself), the iconic henchman to Gert Fröbe’s Goldfinger. “Mr. B” is, as explained, an unpleasant and unreasonable sort of fellow. His dossier claims him as the former head of Peking’s secret police as well as the leader of a sinister crime syndicate known throughout the underworld as the Dragon Organization. The Hong Kong office of the good guys suspects the Dragons are planning a major terrorist operation. It’s in this belief that they’re holding one person-of-interest in custody, the belligerent and uncooperative Mr. Chang (Gerald Jann). “Mr. B” is, perhaps, the ultimate Scrooge: we learn he’s threatening to ruin everyone’s favorite winter holiday by destroying all of Los Angeles via a Christmas Day Hydrogen Bomb attack. Just as Goldfinger smuggled in the components of two “atomic devices” into the U.S. via a series of couriers, so has Big Buddha brought in the various machineries to assemble his H-Bomb.

If Goldfinger’s scheme was to wreck the U.S. and world economies by radiating the gold supply of Fort Knox, Big Buddha’s scheme – described here as a “fantastic red plot” and also, not coincidentally, orchestrated by Chinese Communists – is a call for the removal of all Allied forces from Southeast Asia. Mr. B’s more political and personally less pocket-lining threat is not an empty one. His warehouse on a waterfront pier is already stockpiled with the necessary canisters of deadly Unranium-238, brought in undetected via a Japanese freighter and secreted in satchels of imported rice.

BY HANK REINEKE

I have a confession to make. In the unlikely event I’m put in a time machine, sent back to the late spring/early summer of 1969 and given a free pass to only one of two films presently showing at the local twinplex – the choices being Stanley Kubricks’s 2001: a Space Odyssey or Kinji Fukasaku’s The Green Slime… Well, I admit with some degree of shame and embarrassment that I would choose The Green Slime. I do not doubt for a moment the superiority, intellectualism or visual majesty of the former over the latter. But I was eight and a half years old in the summer of 1969 when my parents took me to 2001: A Space Odyssey and I confess I was pretty much bored to tears. Arthur Clarke’s scenario was too obtuse for my grade-school comprehension; the pacing of the film was funeral, the opening bit with the apes and the obelisk bewildering. The outer space stuff, I admit, was pretty cool.

In any case, it was The Green Slime and not 2001 that was the talk of the school back in 1969. It must be said that MGM marketed the film pretty aggressively. The campaign book for The Green Slime suggested theater-owners invest in the ballyhoo package they had masterfully assembled, an over-the-top promotional “Go-Get ‘em Fright Kit.” These kits included “1000 Galling Green Bumper Stickers, 2 Eye Catching, Teeth-Gnashing Stencils, 2000 Greasy, Goggling, High-Camp Pop-Art Buttons in Basic Gripping Green, and 250 Ghastly, Ghoulish, Gelatinous Green Slimes in Guaranteed to Nauseate the Nefarious.” MGM also issued a 45rpm record of the gnarly rock and roll song celebrating The Green Slime, causing all - of a certain age, at least - to twist the volume knob to high on our AM radios.

If that wasn’t enough to piqué interest (and it was), the film campaign also featured one of the greatest one-sheet movie posters I had ever seen – perhaps, still one of the greatest. The closest I got to own a copy was when I skipped down to the local tobacco and stationary store and picked up the September 1969 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. There in the racks was that month’s cover girl in all of her 1960’s pop-art movie poster glory: a frightened Luciana Paluzzi in a clear fishbowl space helmet struggling against the tentacle of a giant, feral one-eyed space monster. True, the poster would bear no relation to anything that actually would happen in the film, but that’s beside the point. The fact is if you were a dedicated, erudite reader of Film Comment or American Cinematographer then 2001: A Space Odyssey was indisputably the science-fiction film of the year. If you were between the ages of 8-21 and a faithful reader of comic books and monster magazines, The Green Slime was the bomb… a “bomb” in the good way, of course.

In June of 1969, every American kid was already talking about outer space. Though shot in 1968 at Toei Studios, Tokyo, Japan, The Green Slime opened mid-week near my home just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, on May 21, 1969. In less than two month’s time, two of the three astronauts on NASA’s Apollo 11 mission would walk on the surface of the moon for the first time in recorded history. The promotional department at MGM took every advantage of public interest in the space-craze. Weeks following the film’s initial release - and a mere month prior to the much anticipated NASA moon walk - the black and white newspaper slicks for The Green Slime would feature a new banner draped across the top of the ad copy: “Lunar Contamination Worries Washington: Will future moon landings expose our astronauts to strange germs that could grow… AND GROW… into THE GREEN SLIME?”

In The Green Slime actor Robert Horton plays Commander Jack Rankin, a neither particularly warm nor likable character, but a guy with a reputation for getting things done. He’s brought out of retirement by an officer at the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) who pleads for his cooperation in a time-sensitive demolition job. It seems as though there’s a six million ton asteroid, nickname Flora, hurtling directly in a trajectory toward planet Earth. At its present rate of speed, the asteroid will collide with the planet in approximately ten hours time, so it’s pretty imperative that Commander Rankin get to work immediately.

The crusty astronaut is rocketed to the circular and tubular Gamma 3 space station where he and a small team will board yet another spacecraft and shuttle over to the surface of the asteroid. They intend blow the asteroid from its current trajectory through the use of a few relatively small explosives. This mission is accomplished, pretty handily I might add, but the real trouble starts to brew when a small specimen of the asteroid’s green slime attaches itself to the pants leg of one astronaut and is inadvertently transported back to C Block of Gamma 3. The green slime soon begins to reproduce and morph from the primordial ooze of its original state to a shuffling, green fire-hydrant shaped creature with deep-recessed red eyes. Their long and groping tentacles electrocute any hapless victim who happens to stumble across their whereabouts.

There are also some inter-personal fireworks aboard Gamma 3 when we learn that Rankin and the ship’s Commander Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel) don’t particularly care for one another. For starters, Elliott is poised to marry the voluptuous Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi), a beauty who walks about the starship in a stylish silver lamè  suit and was, apparently, a jilted paramour of Commander Rankin. It’s difficult to determine why Paluzzi would have – now or at any other time - any romantic interest in Rankin. While husband-to-be Vince Elliott might have his own testosterone-fueled problems to work through, he comes off as someone you might enjoy having a beer with. Conversely, and despite his sun-tanned skin, chiseled profile, and sculptured brush of spray matted hair, Horton’s Rankin is positively humorless and uncharismatic. He appears in the personage of a terminally dour game show host.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Although it picked up significant honors at European film festivals, director Giuseppe Tornatore's 2013 indie drama/mystery "The Best Offer" only received limited release in art houses in North American and UK theaters and thus remains virtually unknown by most movie fans. It's a pity because Tornatore, the director of the much-revered "Cinema Paradiso", has fashioned a brilliant and mesmerizing film that achieves something rare in the modern movie industry: a highly original and offbeat concept.  It's a movie packed with plots and subplots, eccentric characters and an increasingly fascinating mystery. In fact, the movie's many surprises also precludes me from providing all but bare bones details because to do otherwise would inevitably spoil some key plot points. Geoffrey Rush plays Virgil Oldman, a revered and highly celebrated figure in the upscale international art auction market. When Virgil presides over a sale of rare paintings, the art community pays special attention. His success has afforded him an opulent lifestyle. He lives in a plush apartment, dines at the best restaurants and seems to have a sizable bank account. However, Virgil is also a miserable, solitary figure who finds that his sense of narcissism has left him alienated and without any significant others in his life. He has only one person who can be regarded as somewhat of a friend: Billy Whistler, (Donald Sutherland), a failed artist but fellow lover of fine art, who conspires with Virgil in an audacious series of schemes. When obscure but potentially very valuable works come up in the auctions that Virgil orchestrates, he downplays their worth and has Billy act as a shill bidder. When the work is acquired for a relatively cheap price, Virgil takes possession and gives Billy a sizable fee for his part in the scheme. The only true joy Virgil derives from life takes place in an opulent hidden room in his spacious apartment (exactly where the film is set remains vague...at some points it appears to be London, at others times it might be Italy). Here, Virgil sits for hours sipping fine wine and silently admires the massive number of paintings he has acquired over the years. These inanimate objects act as his friends, family and lovers. 

One day a seemingly routine phone call alters Virgil's in a dramatic way. A young woman, Claire (Sylvia Hoekes), calls him to say that she has recently inherited a house from her deceased parents and that it is filled with various works of art, some of which she suspects might be worth substantial sums. She asks if he will visit the house and evaluate them for potential auction pieces. When Virgil gets to the house, he finds it a shambles. Not only that, but the young woman isn't there to greet him. He recognizes some intriguing pieces among the rubbish but repeated attempts to meet with the woman fail, much to his frustration. The handyman employed at the house informs Virgil that he has worked there for years and has never seen her. She stays in touch with him by phone but eventually explains that he will never see her in the flesh because she suffers from a phobia that precludes her from leaving the solitude of her room if anyone else is in the house. Virgil becomes fascinated by the scenario and continues to make visits to the house, ostensibly to evaluate artwork but in reality, he is also accumulating pieces of a mysterious object that he hopes to have constructed in the expectation it might be quite valuable. He sneaks pieces out as he finds them and brings them to a young man, Robert (Jim Sturgess) who is undertaking the arduous task of trying to match up the odd pieces to make a coherent whole. Meanwhile, Virgil becomes increasingly obsessed by the elusive young woman who continues to avoid meeting with him even when they are both in the house at the same time. When they do ultimately meet, Virgil finds the obscure object of his desire is a beautiful young woman who is suffering from a severe form of agoraphobia. This is when the story kicks into high gear as Virgil becomes a combination father figure and would-be lover- all the while unable to control his obsession with her. 

I will not reveal more about this strange, highly complex story line except to say that it consistently veers in directions you never expect, introducing plot elements that are thoroughly engrossing and which are matched only by the central characters, who are richly drawn by by director Tornatore, who also wrote the compelling screenplay. As the film progresses, it builds in suspense and will make you play a guessing game in your mind regarding what everyone's motives may be. The performances are uniformly superb with Geoffrey Rush nothing less than brilliant as the unlikable, yet somewhat sympathetic protagonist. Had the film received wider distribution, he undoubtedly would have received an Oscar nomination. Donald Sutherland in a key supporting role is also marvelous as is the cast of talented young actors. Kudos also to cinematographer Fabio Zamarion and production designer Maurizio Sabatini for their outstanding achievements on this production. 

"The Best Offer" leads to a shattering conclusion that you may not see coming. It's a terrific movie and one of the best indie films I've seen in years. The DVD boasts a fine transfer but unfortunately is not a special edition. The only bonus feature is the trailer. 

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

When it was released in 1971, director Michael Winner's "Lawman" was regarded as just another western. It did well enough, if unremarkably, at the boxoffice thanks to the drawing power of star Burt Lancaster, but in the end, "Lawman" came and went rather quickly in an era in which the genre was starting to wane a bit. The film represented a new direction for Winner, who had gained attention in the mid-1960s with several quirky comedies that captured the mood of London's emerging "mod" scene. In 1969 Winner landed his first production for a major Hollywood studio with the offbeat WWII comedy/adventure "Hannibal Brooks". He was now mainstream and wanted to try his hands at a diverse subject matters. He proved surprisingly adept at directing at a western, as evidenced by his achievement with "Lawman", which has been released as a Twilight Time Blu-ray limited edition (3,000 units). Winner would seem an unlikely choice for the task. He was of the "To the manor born" crowd, an elitist who inherited enormous wealth and who hobnobbed with London's "A" list crowd. Yet, Winner had a reverence for the American west and captured as well as any other director the look, feel and sensibility of the types of characters who inhabited it. 

"Lawman" begins with a group of rowdy cowboys in the employ of  uber-rich cattle baron Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb), returning from a grueling cattle drive and letting off some steam by raising hell in a small town they are passing through. Drunk and out-of-control, they supplement their horseplay by randomly firing their pistols, causing some damage to local buildings before returning to Bronson's massive cattle ranch empire. Bronson assumes his men did little more than disturb the peace and shoot out some windows. Neither he or his men are aware that in the confusion, a stray bullet mortally wounded an elderly bystander. They learn this with the arrival in town of Marshal Jarod Maddox (Burt Lancaster), a soft-spoken but fearless lawman empowered by the state to find and arrest the culprits and bring them back to stand trial. Bronson is genuinely disturbed to learn his men had inadvertently caused a death and his first inclination is to take responsibility for it. He is a local kingmaker and is used to writing his own code of justice since he virtually owns all the local townspeople and public officials, who he has appointed to office. He instructs his short-tempered business partner Harvey Stenbaugh (Albert Salmi) to meet with Maddox and offer to pay for all physical damages done as well as offer generous compensation to the victim's family. Harvey is also instructed to blatantly bribe Maddox, who refuses the offer and makes clear he intends to arrest four men he has warrants for. Harvey is one of them and he draws on Maddox but dies in the ensuing gunplay. This sets in motion a war of wills between Maddox and Bronson who makes it clear no one will be standing trial for what he considers to be an innocent mistake. Maddox is determined, however, and begins to track down each of the four men, one of whom is Bronson's brother. Along the way, he reunites with Laura Shelby (Sheree North), a former lover who is now living with one of the wanted men, a coward named Hurd Price (J.D. Cannon), who takes flight upon Maddox's arrival. Laura tries unsuccessfully to persuade Maddox to spare Price and even beds him in an attempt to dissuade him, but Maddox fearlessly and relentlessly pursues his prey. 

The most striking aspect of "Lawman", which bore a bland title and uninspired advertising campaign, is the intelligent script by Gerald Wilson. He presents fully-fleshed characters who could easily have been made into caricatures of western movie villains. The unique aspect of the script is that there aren't any traditional villains. The men who committed the crimes are honest, hard-working cow hands who are ashamed and appalled that they have killed a man. Even though Maddox assures them they will probably get a light sentence, they can't spare the time to be away from their ranches because it would cause them financial ruin. As for Cobb's Vincent Bronson, he is not the typical mustache-twirling western bad guy. He's a dictator who buys people's allegiance, but he is a benevolent dictator who has provided good wages and ample respect to the locals and people in his employ. Maddox meets the local sheriff, Cotton Ryan (Robert Ryan), a once-esteemed lawman who has fallen into disgrace and now shamefully acts as a flunky for Bronson. He attempts to persuade Maddox that pursuing his goal of arresting men at the risk of his life will be a fool's errand. Even if he succeeds in bringing them to court, Bronson will bribe the judge and jury. Maddox is about to be won over by this cynical view of life when an unexpected development leads to a violent showdown. 

"Lawman" boasts an outstanding cast that includes Robert Duvall, John McGiver, Richard Jordan and Ralph Waite, to name but a few. The performances are all outstanding, as is Winner's direction. The three leads- Lancaster, Cobb and Ryan (reunited with Lancaster after "The Professionals") - are superb. Cinematographer Robert Paynter, a longtime collaborator of Winner's, captures the dust and dry prairies with such skill that you'll feel like having a tall, cold drink mid-way through the movie. (One gripe, though: Paynter has an amateurish fixation on playing with the zoom lens.) The movie also has a typically fine score by Jerry Fielding. The Twilight Time Blu-ray is sans any special features except the trailer, an isolated music score track and the usual excellent collector's booklet with informative notes by Julie Kirgo. The transfer is on par with the usual high quality standards associated with Twilight Time. 

"Lawman" may not rank with the great westerns of Ford, Hawks and Sturges but it resonates today as an excellent film in all respects. Highly recommended. 

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN 

In MGM’s 1958 Western “The Law and Jake Wade,” Robert Taylor rides down from the Sierra Nevada mountains early one morning into a small town and busts his old partner-in-crime, Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark), out of the hoosegow. Hollister is a nasty guy. Not satisfied with escaping a hanging, to Jake’s dismay, he clubs the sheriff and shoots a couple of people out in the street while he and Jake make their getaway. Jake has to take his rifle away from him to keep from killing more people.

Back up in the mountains Clint wants to ride on with Jake but Jake says no. He busted Clint out of jail because he figured he owed him for doing the same thing for him once. Now they’re even. Clint doesn’t agree. There’s that matter of the $20,000 they stole on their last job together. He wants his share. Jake tells him he buried the money and never touched it and advises Clint to forget about it. “Don’t try to follow me,” he tells him. “I’m still pretty good with this,” he says, patting his holstered gun. They go their separate ways and Jake rides down on the other side of the mountain into another town where he pulls up in front of a marshal’s office. Two men inside welcome him back. He takes his coat off and surprise! There’s a tin star pinned to his shirt.

It’s a shocker. He’s a law man, and he just broke a convicted killer out of jail. It seems while Clint continued his career as an outlaw, Jake reformed and became a town marshal. He’s an upstanding citizen now and even has a lovely fiancé named Peggy (Patricia Owens) he’s going to settle down with. Now you might ask yourself why a guy in Jake’s position would risk everything to save his old partner from a noose. It would be somewhat unbelievable if veteran screenwriter William Bowers (The Gunfighter), adapting a novel by Marvin H. Alpert, didn’t provide some background indicating that Jake is not only a guy with a conscience, Clint has some psychological hold over him that he uses to his own advantage.

It helps that “The Law and Jake Wade” is directed by John Sturges (Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Magnificent Seven). Sturges sets a steady, understated, no-nonsense tone to the proceedings that makes everything credible and authentic. His directorial skill is nowhere more evident than in the way he handles a cast made up in part by some familiar Hollywood bad asses. After Jake gets home Clint shows up with some mutual friends—members of the old gang. The first is Rennie, a young psychopath played by Henry Silva (Manchurian Candidate). Silva affects a weird way of talking and looking like he’s about to draw on anyone who looks at him crossways. Next up, Robert Middleton as Ortero, a hulking, cold-blooded gunman with a big belly and a nasty disposition. And last but not least, a pre-Star Trek DeForest Kelly as Wexler, who would almost rather kill Jake than try to find the money. (I know it’s hard to think of Dr. McCoy as a bad ass but actually he played that role in several westerns back in the fifties). Sturges provides each of the heavies enough screen time and action to establish their bonafides.

The story heats up when Clint and his Merry Men kidnap Jake’s fiancé and force him to take them to the hidden loot. Sturges was not only good at getting great performances from his cast, he was also one of the best at filming in rugged locations. A lot of “The Law And Jake Wade” was shot in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Lone Pine and down in Death Valley, an area of the American landscape so often used in westerns that it has long since become part of our national dreamscape. Even movie goers who are not particularly fans of westerns can immediately recognize the mountains and deserts of this stretch of ruggedly beautiful country. Budd Boetticher was perhaps the director to make the best use of this scenery in the films he made with Randolph Scott, but Sturges and his cinematographer Robert Surtees almost surpass him in this film. The movie not only provides compelling drama, it’s also gorgeous to look at.

On top of all this, Taylor and Widmark are at the top of their game. Taylor was 58 at the time he played Marshal Wade, a little long in the tooth, perhaps, to be paired with the 33-year old Owens, but he was still in shape, and age had only added a bit of gravitas to his classic good looks. He spends a lot of time in the film riding along the high passes of the Sierras with his hands tied behind his back, which must have been difficult. One of the biggest marvels in the movie is the way his hat stayed on while they rode over one of those passes where the wind was blowing so hard Widmark and the others all had to hold on to their lids to keep from losing them. But not Bob Taylor. When you’re a star, baby, the hat stays on, even if you have to glue it on.

Widmark has one of his best sadistic psycho-killer roles as Clint Hollister. It’s as though his notorious Tommy Udo from “Kiss of Death” had donned gun belt and spurs and headed west. Henry Silva was plenty creepy as Rennie, but one twitch of Widmark’s snarling upper lip quickly resolved any doubt about who was deadlier or meaner.

The Warner Archive Collection has released “The Law and Jake Wade” on a decent, if somewhat unspectacular, Blu-ray with no bonus features other than the original theatrical trailer. The film lacks an original soundtrack score because it was made during a musicians’ union strike. Thus, the music heard in the movie was lifted from previous features. Despite the lack of special features, this is a solidly entertaining film and this Blu-Ray disc is highly recommended. 

John M. Whalen is the author of "This Ray Gun for Hire...and Other Tales." Click here to order from Amazon. 

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“THE BEAUTY OF IRONY”

By Raymond Benson

Leave it to The Criterion Collection to present a jaw-dropping, eye-popping Blu-ray release of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 masterpiece that many critics have called one of the most beautiful films ever made. While the picture received many accolades upon its initial release, including Oscar nominations for Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay—and wins for Cinematography, Production Design, Costumes, and Adapted Score—it was again one those Kubrick films that was controversial and misunderstood at first. It was not a financial success in the U.S., and yet today it’s considered one of the auteur’s greatest works.

After such titles as Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, it may have seemed to be an odd choice for Kubrick to make a picture such as Barry Lyndon. One must look back to the period between 2001 and Clockwork to understand it. Kubrick had wanted to make an epic movie about Napoleon and, in fact, spent two years in pre-production on it before MGM got cold feet and pulled the plug. The director changed studios (to Warner Brothers) and shot Clockwork cheaply and quickly to prove that he could make them some money—and he did. So what was he to do with all the previous research materials he had amassed for the Napoleon project? He satisfied his desire to study the past by adapting an 18^th Century novel by William Makepeace Thackeray (The Luck of Barry Lyndon) so that he could tell a tale about class dichotomy, ambition, greed, and hubris.

From the beginning, Kubrick wanted to take an audience back to late 1770s England and Ireland to demonstrate exactly what it was like to live then. The authenticity he strove to achieve consisted of commissioning a NASA lens so fast that it was capable of filming by candlelight (as well as utilizing only natural light throughout the production), employing real clothing from the period, and shooting at real locations where this past still existed. The results are breathtakingly gorgeous renditions of English and Irish countrysides and majestic, elegant manors. All of this surrounds the precise depiction of the manners of an aristocracy that hasn’t been seen on screen before or since.

Ryan O’Neal, who was at the time of production still a box-office star, was cast as Barry, at first a naïve Irish boy who allows heartbreak and jealousy to shape his future endeavors to elevate his social standing. He learns quickly that to get ahead in society he must be a bit of a rogue, a schemer, a liar, and a cad. The first half of the little-over-three-hour picture documents Barry’s rise to prominence. After the intermission, we witness his resounding fall from grace.

The story is told with Kubrick’s keen sense of irony—in fact, no other filmmaker has had such a firm ability to elicit this very difficult blend of satire, causticness, and paradox. You find it in all of his pictures, but Barry Lyndon literally exudes it. This is accomplished in no small part by the detached and slightly amused voice-over narration by Michael Hordern.

Yes, the movie is slowly paced—as it should be. Things moved slower in the 1700s. There is a stateliness and pageantry to the proceedings that is entirely appropriate to the setting, but also to the overall message of the film—that despite the airs one puts on to impress, underneath we’re all still human and pretty much the same.

Every aspect of the production is about as perfect as it can get. John Alcott’s cinematography, Ken Adam’s production design, Milena Canonero and Ulla-Britt Söderlund’s costumes, and the musical score, adapted by Leonard Rosenman and consisting of classical pieces and traditional folk material performed by the Chieftains, all combine to transport the viewer into an age of great beauty and yet cold, near-heartless humanity.

The Criterion Blu-ray is a 4K digital restoration that looks magnificent, and this is accompanied by an uncompressed monaural soundtrack as well as an alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack. The music, as well as every birdsong and musket shot, sounds clean, clear, and vibrant.

An entire second disk contains the plentiful supplements that will take a few hours to get through. The main attraction is “Making Barry Lyndon,” a new documentary that features audio excerpts from a 1976 interview with Kubrick about the movie, appearances by executive producer Jan Harlan, the director’s daughter Katharina Kubrick (who also appears as an extra in the film), and other members from the cast and crew (no Ryan O’Neal, though). There are separate featurettes on each of the technical aspects—cinematography; production design; costumes; editing; music; and the fine art of the period from which Kubrick and the designers drew inspiration. An interview with author/critic Michael Ciment focuses on the themes in the director’s works and how they relate to Lyndon. There are two theatrical trailers. The thick booklet enclosed in the package contains an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and vintage, illustrated pieces from American Cinematographer.

In short, Barry Lyndon is a remarkable piece of cinema that is unfortunately underrated by the general public. It deserves a spot alongside Stanley Kubrick’s other acknowledged “masterpieces.” The new Criterion edition is just the way to see it and perhaps rediscover this brilliant work of art.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

Mario Bava’s Gli invasori or The Invaders (1961) was imported to U.S. theaters in 1963 by American International Pictures in a dubbed print as Erik the Conqueror -- not to be confused now with Terry Jones’ 1989 farce, Erik the Viking. It was the sort of genre movie that would have played on a weekend double-bill at the Kayton, the second-run theater in my home town. There, it would have been paired either with another Italian peplum or sword-and-sandal epic, with a Hammer Films horror show, or with an Audie Murphy western. The Kayton’s 1960s double features were eclectic, to say the least. In that buttoned-down Cold War era, the peplums satisfied international box-office demand for movies about brawny bare-chested heroes, curvaceous scantily-clad women, and exotic settings that Hollywood productions like Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), and Cleopatra (1964) were slow to satisfy because they were so expensive and time-consuming to produce. The model for Erik the Conqueror was Richard Fleischer’s very popular 1958 epic The Vikings, produced by and starring Kirk Douglas. The influence must have been obvious at the time even to undiscriminating audiences who watched the dubbed import at the Kayton and its counterparts in other small towns. But The Vikings required an investment of $5 million in 1950s dollars from Douglas’ Bryna Productions and its partners to pay for A-list Hollywood talent and on-location filming in Norway. Bava wrapped Erik the Conqueror for a fraction of that cost using existing studio interiors, exteriors on the Italian coast, a modest cast, and ingenious camera tricks that obviated the need for hiring thousands of extras for crowd scenes and constructing new sets.

American International’s 1963 movie poster played the film for exploitative value. “He lived only for the flesh and the sword!” the tag line proclaimed. The British poster under the title The Invaders similarly advertised, “He lusted for war and women.” Both ads suggested more sex and skin than the script, costuming, and actors actually delivered. Like The Vikings, Erik the Conqueror centers on two antagonists who don’t realize at the outset that they’re brothers. Dispatched by English King Lotar (Franco Ressel) to negotiate peace with the Viking chief Harald, the treacherous Sir Rutford (Andrea Checchi) instead attacks Harald’s village, massacres Harald and most of his people, and engineers Lotar’s murder. Harald’s young sons are separated in the chaos. Eron is rescued and carried to Norway, while Erik is adopted by the now-widowed English queen, Alice. Twenty years later, colluding with Rutford, Eron (Cameron Mitchell) leads an invasion of England and sinks an English warship commanded by Erik, now the Duke of Helford. Kidnapping Queen Alice, Eron installs Rutford as his regent. In the meantime, Erik (George Ardisson) is shipwrecked among the Vikings. In a romantic misunderstanding, Erik mistakes Eron’s bride, the Vestal Virgin Daya (Ellen Kessler), for his own sweetheart, Daya’s twin sister Rama (Alice Kessler). The Vestal Virgins are an anachronism in the Medieval setting, but the conceit gave the producers a chance to include dancing girls in diaphanous gowns to pique the attention of male viewers. Once the misunderstanding with Rama is squared away, Erik rescues the queen and proceeds to a showdown with Eron and the turncoat Rutford.

Arrow Video in the U.K. has released a new, 2K restored print of Erik the Conqueror from the original 35 mm camera negative in a Blu-ray and DVD combo package. The new release provides a renewed opportunity to reassess Bava’s movie in a sharp, letterboxed 2.35:1 Dyaliscope image, with critical context provided by supplementary materials. Rescued from the drab, pan-and-scan format to which it was doomed in old TV and VHS editions, and enhanced even beyond Anchor Bay’s worthy 2007 DVD edition, it emerges as an acceptable B-movie with respectable costuming and action scenes. The production values are notably better than those of most peplums and easily comparable to those of Hollywood’s second-tier Technicolor epics of the 1950s, if not to the overall finesse of higher-profile releases like The Vikings and Jack Cardiff’s lively, underrated Norse epic from 1964, The Long Ships. Plot, dialogue, and characterizations are rudimentary, but then, so are those in the joyless, overstuffed, multi-million-dollar costume epics of recent vintage. At that, some of the sillier lines in Bava’s movie can be avoided by turning on the Blu-ray’s Italian voice track and English subtitles instead of the English-language dub with its alternately wooden and childish voices. The simple-minded dialogue in Gladiator (2003), Robin Hood (2010), and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) is pretty much inescapable short of turning the volume completely off.

BY TIM GREAVES 

The year 1987 saw the release of director Steve De Jarnatt’s debut feature, Cherry 2000, an actioner planted in a dystopian future. A strong headlining performance from Melanie Griffith aside, it’s not a particularly remarkable film, but I liked it when I first saw it and still do. However, De Jarnatt’s second offering, which he also wrote, is a different beast altogether: A unique and intoxicating cinematic nightmare. Where else but in Miracle Mile can you see a fledgling romance play out against the countdown to the apocalypse?

Whilst strolling around a museum in Los Angeles, Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) and Julie Peters (Mare Winninghan) cross paths several times. They get talking and it’s evident there’s a mutual attraction between the two lonely hearts. Having arranged an after-midnight date with Julie when her waitressing shift at an all-night diner on L.A.’s Miracle Mile finishes, Harry decides to take a nap. But his alarm fails to go off and he’s late – almost 4 hours late in fact. Julie has unsurprisingly given up and gone home. He tries to call her from a phone booth outside the diner but gets no reply. As he walks away the phone rings and he returns to answer it. Believing Harry to be someone else, a distraught man’s voice informs him he’s at a silo in North Dakota from where nuclear missiles are set to be launched in less than an hour, with reprisals targeting L.A. expected to follow minutes later...

Miracle Mile’s opening scenes introduce its two instantly likeable protagonists and swiftly lay out enough lightly comic trimmings that anyone going in blind could easily be primed with expectation for a gentle rom-com. Indeed, we subsequently follow the couple through a montage of first-date activity and Harry is introduced to Julie’s beloved grandparents. But hold on, because things are about to veer off into less comfortable territory. Following the aforementioned telephone conversation – a couple of minutes during which the film’s tone darkens quite dramatically – Harry goes into the diner and recounts what he’s just heard to the motley assembly of patrons. In doing so he plants a seed that quickly sprouts into a living nightmare. The sense of urgency builds at an ever-increasing rate as the remainder of the film charts Harry’s race against time to locate and get Julie to safety, encountering as he goes a succession of quirky and dubious characters lurking on the night-shrouded streets of L.A.

With the escalating tension driven by a hauntingly eloquent Tangerine Dream score, there’s one burning question that propels the narrative: is what Harry was told during that phone call for real or was it some sort of twisted hoax? Suffice to say that as time ticks on and the sun begins to rise all hell breaks loose, with politesse kicked into the dirt as panic-stricken people behave the way that panic-stricken people do; cars filled with terrified citizens clog the streets out of the city and there are glimpses of the animalistic manner in which the less conscionable choose to spend what they perceive to be their last minutes on Earth. Worse yet, as potential Armageddon fails to materialise when predicted, Harry begins to fear that he – rather than any genuine impending threat – may have inadvertently instigated all the madness, anxiously likening himself to Chicken Little.

Now, Miracle Mile may be touching 30 years old, but for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the film I shall leave any further discussion about the plot there.

Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham deliver splendidly endearing performances and director Steve De Jarnatt invests just enough time establishing the romantic thread at the outset that, as fate unrelentingly conspires to separate the pair, the viewer is filled with an overwhelming desire to see them make it out alive to pastures green. Although almost every other character in the story appears only briefly, there are memorable turns from Mykelti Williamson as a trader in knock-off hi-fi gear, John Agar and Lou Hancock as Julie’s grandparents and Brian Thompson as a fitness freak who just may facilitate Harry and Julie’s salvation.

By Hank Reineke

I wasn’t expecting Citizen Kane, really I wasn’t. When the top-billed actor in your already quirky production is the Edward D. Wood regular the Amazing Criswell, the failed psychic… Well, you know what to expect on some gut level. The Amazing Criswell, admittedly an already very minor celebrity psychic in his day, achieved certain notoriety for his ridiculous and wildly inaccurate predictions. Following his turn in Wood’s seminal cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and the (very) belatedly released Night of The Ghouls (shot in 1959 but only released in 1984), the pale, blue-eyed, bleached blond Criswell is outfitted in Count Dracula-like garb for Orgy of the Dead (1965). This is, as one might expect, a classic Criswell performance; it’s both refreshing and strangely comforting to listen to him put all his dramatic inflection and stresses on the wrong words, accentuating the coordinating conjunctions rather than the nouns of nearly every sentence.

In Orgy of the Dead, directed by A.C. Stephen from a threadbare “script” written by the revered Mr. Wood, the not always Amazing Criswell portrays the “Emperor of the Night.” The Emperor is holding court at an eerie cemetery… or as eerie a graveyard as one can set-dress on a shoe-string budget and an indoor soundstage. The Emperor is soon joined by his “Empress” (Fawn Silver), a Vampira- meets- Elvira character with Sapphic tendencies who sports a layer of blue make-up that covers the entirety of her body. Well, all of her body except for the deep crease between her two ample breasts. I suppose the production’s make-up artist was too shy to apply and “go deep.”

If this spooky scenario seems promising in a “so-bad-it’s-good sort-of-way,” there’s disappointment ahead. Despite its fog-bound horror film trappings, Orgy of the Dead is not remotely a horror film at all. In fact, the only genuine horror to be found on screen is in the ineptitude demonstrated by this the ensemble of actors, actresses, and, um, exotic dancers. There is no real narrative here; the film is merely a ninety-minute long topless peep-show revue with Halloween trimmings. Before the film sputters to a merciful finale, we’ve been made to witness no fewer than ten interpretative topless dance routines, all mind-numbing and pretty much non-erotic in their presentation. It’s all freeform and non-stop bumping and grinding and jiggling in panties and G-strings and bad costumes. Take my word on this; it’s not as good as it might sound.

Orgy of the Dead is the celluloid equivalent of those 1960’s nudie magazines that featured buxom, cheesecake cuties on their covers. The sort of “men’s magazines” that were prudently stashed in the top-tier racks of tobacco shops and stationary stores as to not offend the readers of Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens. The parade of beauties and near-beauties tapped to ply their trade before a leering camera are not former members of the Martha Graham Dance Company. More probably, they took the night off from their regular gig performing at a local topless gin mill or adult-themed nightclub. Or maybe they were making some quick afternoon dough by strutting their stuff on this grass mat and fog shrouded set.

The dancers try their damndest to play to the camera, but it’s all sort of sad. Almost all of the cast share one common trait, and not a good one: blank and expressionless eyes. Everyone seems to be looking past the rolling cameras into some far-off beyond that only they can see, sadly detached from their own performances-in-progress. I imagine this type of personal disengagement was honed on stage during their nightclub exhibitions, perhaps as some sort of protective emotional cocoon.

It’s almost a relief when, some twenty-five minutes or so into a parade of not-particularly-well-executed interpretative dance routines, that a muse seeking mystery novelist named Bob (William Bates) and best gal Shirley (Pat Barrington) are kidnapped by a Mummy and a Wolfman, dragging the bewildered pair from the bushes. One might expect things to become a bit livelier with this turn of events but, sadly, it is not to be. These two masked monsters (referenced as “The Keepers of the Damned”) simply strap the couple to a pair of stakes in the cemetery, a punishment for their eavesdropping on the unholy ceremony in progress. Forcing this bewildered couple to bear witness to this seemingly endless string of interpretative dance routines can certainly be considered cruel and unusual punishment. They should have invoked the Geneva Convention.

Sync- sound recording is kept to the barest minimum, confined only to the wince-inducing exchanges of dialogue between Bob and Shirley and the self-proclaimed Emperor of Empress of the Night. I cannot reasonably include the occasional and wretched banter between the Wolfman and Mummy as sound synch as both characters are wearing masks and presumably dubbed throughout.

Even for the most unapologetic Edward. D. Wood devotee, this endless parade of non-erotic topless dance routines becomes increasingly tiring, the burlesque showcase more tedious than titillating. Even the Vampira meets Elvira –like “Empress of the Night” character eventually dismisses the parade of nudie dance routines as “infinitesimal bits of fluff,” and for once I’m in total agreement. The film starts off promisingly in the classic Wood Jr. fashion with two bad actors tripping over their tongues as they attempt to deliver halting sobriquets of Wood’s God-awful dialogue. But it’s all downhill from there.

BY TIM GREAVES

Psycho is considered by many to be Alfred Hitchcock's crowning achievement. Although I'd suggest there are several other titles that could justifiably vie for that accolade, there's no disputing that it ranks as a premium couple of hours of suspenseful drama that still packs a punch 57 years on from its release. I can only begin to imagine the impact the burgeoning ill-ease and kinky twist reveal had on unsuspecting audiences back in 1960.

Nowadays it's practically a given that a box office hit will result in a hastily mounted sequel, but back then it was almost unheard of, besides which Psycho delivered a self-contained story with a satisfying conclusion, so there really wasn't any need for augmentation. (To be fair though, one could say that about fistfuls of superfluous sequels today.) In any event, as follow-ups go 1983's Psycho II rubs shoulders with the best of them; yes, it's superfluous, but director Richard Franklin's film wipes out any suspicions of a cash-raking exercise by delivering a beautifully tailored narrative that dovetails impeccably with its ancestor. In fact it’s such a well-considered continuation that one could almost believe it had been planned right from the start. It isn't just good, it's really good.

Opening with a slightly pared down replay of that shower murder from Hitchcock's film, as the camera pans to the window and comes to rest on the edifice that is the Bates house, the image subtly transitions from the black & white of the original to colour. And so begins a tale bristling with devilish twists, one that's almost as thrilling as the first and that unexpectedly weighs in with a hefty emotional payload.

22 years ago Fairvale motelier Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) was arrested following several brutal knife murders – including that of larcenous Marion Crane – and the discovery that as a child he'd poisoned his overbearing Mother. Due to his state of mind he was declared not guilty of murder and incarcerated in an institution for the criminally insane. Now, much to the ire of Marion's sister, Lila (Vera Miles), Norman has been pronounced fit for release. He arrives back at the family owned motel to find that an oily state-appointed manager, Toomey (Dennis Franz), has allowed it to devolve into a dive patronised by unsavoury clientele. Norman sacks Toomey and sets about doing the place up, intending to relaunch it as a respectable establishment. To make ends meet in the interim he gets a part-time job at a nearby diner where he meets and takes a shine to down-on-her-luck waitress Mary (Meg Tilly) and he subsequently offers her lodgings. Although she's aware of Norman's past – there's not a soul in Fairvale who isn't – she's desperate and so, with some trepidation, accepts. As Norman's affection for Mary warms, so the first of a series of notes from his dead Mother appears. Next come the phone calls. And then people around Norman begin to die, each falling victim to a shadowy, knife-wielding figure. Has the rehabilitation process not been the success it first appeared? Are the messages from Mother all in Norman's head? Or is someone messing with him, trying to retrigger his insanity? Whatever the case, Norman quickly begins to unravel...

Having previously directed a couple of efficient chillers in his native Australia – 1978's Patrick and 1981's Roadgames – Richard Franklin's decision to take on a sequel to one of cinema history's most venerated films for his American debut was a bold and ambitious one. Fortunately, Psycho II proved a decent critical and box office success. It boasts a sharp, intelligent script by Tom Holland, who would go on to helm some fine chillers of his own (among them Fright Night and Child's Play), and who appears fleetingly here as a police deputy.

Anthony Perkins – slipping back into Norman Bates' loafers with such ease that it's almost as if he never vacated them – gets the cream of the dialogue, including some splashes of black humour, for example when Norman, former knife murderer, nervously falters in his enunciation of the word “cutlery”. The script also rather daringly turns Norman into a figure of sympathy as he tries to fit back into civilised society, struggling valiantly to quell the re-emergence of his former homicidal impulses whilst external forces seem to conspire against him. There's a wonderful scene which finds Mary comforting Norman and he tells her that she smells like toasted cheese sandwiches, kindling one of the few happy memories of his mostly bereft childhood; if it sounds a bit corny on paper, it's actually remarkably poignant. 

BY TODD GARBARINI

When a film is as uninspired and as amateurishly made as Lance Lindsay’s Star Crystal (1986) is and ends with the words “Filmed entirely in SPACE” following the end credits, you know that you’re going to wish that you had those 93 minutes of your life back. Unfortunately, science has not gotten us to the point where that is possible just yet. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) was the first low-budget Star Wars rip-off that I saw theatrically and I was astonished at how unexciting it was. However, it did give us James Cameron, Bill Paxton, and James Horner so it wasn’t all bad. Crystal, also a product of Roger Corman’s low-budget production company, goes much further than Battle did in terms of “borrowing” from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Dark Star (1974), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Alien (1979), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Thing (1982), Xtro (1983), and Lifeforce (1985). Released on VHS in April 1986, Crystal outright steals from these classic films. Crystal lives up to none of the exceptional movie artwork that was used to promote it, which is a shame as the poster is probably the best thing about it (though it hawks the action as taking place in 2035, not 2032 – is there really a difference?), although it does have a fairly decent score by Doug Katsaros.

In the future, remember this is 2032 and not 2035!, two men on Mars extricate a rock from the planet’s surface and, brilliantly, bring it on board the spacecraft. To think that these guys never saw Ridley Scott’s Alien is a little too much to believe. They have it analyzed by a scientist who determines that it’s…a…rock. Yes, it’s a rock that leaks a mysterious white goo (no, I’m not going there…) which a crew member sticks nearly their entire hand into out of curiosity. Apparently, they didn’t see Larry Cohen’s The Stuff (1985) either. It then begins to turn into a pitiful-looking alien. The rock turns into some sort of crystal, and looks not unlike the titular Dark Crystal from that superior film. These events cause the crew to die suddenly. Too bad it didn’t have the same effect on the viewer. All the computers and onboard spaceship equipment look like they were made by Radio Shack. The action (that’s being kind) then flashes forward two months later when Colonel William Hamilton is assigned to find out why the crew died. Maybe they watched the dailies and committed suicide? An attractive blonde flirts with him in typical 80’s fashion. Everyone on the ship has big 80’s hair, a true anachronism in 2032. Onboard the ship (in reality a poorly-disguised shopping mall) is Roger Campbell (C. Juston Campbell) and his right hand man who cracks unfunny jokes like “I’d rather eat my shoe” when referring to the ship’s food. The ship begins shaking when the cinematographer starts shaking it back and forth and crew members run around frivolously. The shopping mall’s escalators are a hilarious prop.

I could go on and on about this film, but I don’t want to ruin the special awfulness of it for the viewer. I will say that the ending is particularly silly and comes out of left field that features an anthropomorphized blob that breathes deeply. The plot is picked out of many sci-fi films and the director does what he can with the ludicrous material. It makes you wonder, however, if the movie was originally written to be tongue-in-cheek or meant to be serious. Coca-Cola appears in a product-placement moment, and the women on the ship are dressed in outfits that make one half expect them all to break into calisthenics. It’s always nice to have a blonde running around screaming, “We’re all gonna die!!” at the first sight of outer space trouble. The gratuitous sex that was a mainstay of such 80’s fare is completely missing from Star Crystal and it makes one wonder who was the intended audience. Exactly ten minutes into the film, a shot from within the mothership reveals a replica of the Millennium Falcon flanking each side of the entrance. Really? Lucasfilm signed off on this? May the Farce Be With You.

If there is anything this film needs, it’s the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. There is even the dreaded End Credits Song. Why do people think that we want a song at the end of movies like this?

If you’re a fan of this film (no judgment; to each his own), you’ll be happy to know that Kino Lorber has provided a top-notch transfer of the film on Blu-ray. This is the one to get!

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