In this rare in-depth interview, the late Robert Conrad is shown discussing his remarkable career on television. Here is the official description from the priceless "Pioneers of Television" project.:  

Robert Conrad sits down to discuss his iconic moments in his career and the famous show "The Wild Wild West" Director: Steven J Boettcher Star: Robert Conrad ? About Pioneers of Television Television’s beloved stars bring their stories to life, offering insider tales and surprising revelations you won’t hear anywhere else. The Emmy-nominated producers of Pioneers of Television open the vault to give you exclusive access.

By Hank Reineke

Technically speaking, OSS 117 secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is not a James Bond knock off. The creation of wildly prolific French author Jean Bruce, the first literary adventure of the spy arrived in 1949 with the publication of Tu parles d'une ingénue (Ici OSS 117). This would pre-date the April 1953 publication of the first Ian Fleming James Bond novel, Casino Royale, by nearly four years. In the years following the publication of that first 007 thriller to his last in 1965, Fleming would deliver an impressive thirteen James Bond novels and nine short stories.

In contrast, Jean Bruce would publish no fewer (and possibly more) than eighty-eight to ninety OSS 117 pulp-adventures between 1949 and March of 1963, the month and year of his passing. It’s difficult to determine how many of Bruce’s novels were of his composition alone. His widow, Josette – and later a teaming of the Bruce’s son and daughter – would continue the pulp series into the early 1990s. So determined bibliophiles will have their work cut out for them if they wish to track down all of the 250+ published OSS 117 novels.

If OSS 117 beat James Bond to the stalls of book-sellers, he also managed to beat him to the cinema screen. Two OSS 117 films were released throughout Western Europe and foreign markets in 1957 and 1960: OSS 117 n'est pas mort (OSS 117 is not Dead) and Le bal des espions (Danger in the Middle East). The latter title, interestingly, does not feature “Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.” Though based on one of Bruce’s OSS 117 novels, a messy rights-issue prevented the filmmakers to use the central character’s moniker. These earliest films, produced as routine crime dramas by differing production companies (and featuring different actors in the title role), came and went without attention nor fanfare.

But in 1963 Bruce’s OSS 117 character was resurrected as a cinematic property following the success of Terence’s Young’s Dr. No, the first James Bond screen adventure. The spy pictures comprising Kino Lorber’s OSS 117 Five Film Collection are tailored as pastiches of the popular James Bond adventures of the 1960s. This new Blu ray set features the entirety of OSS 117 film thrillers produced 1963 through 1968 during the height of Bondmania. And, just as the Eon series offered a trio of actors to portray James Bond (1962-1973), the OSS series would likewise present three in the role of Colonel Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. Each actor would bring some aspect of their own personalities to their characterizations.

Of course, the name Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is a bit of a Franco-linguistic mouthful to market successfully overseas. So, throughout the five films the character usually assumes an Anglo-friendly alias which helps move things along a bit more smoothly: he alternately assumes – among others - such covert surnames as Landon, Barton, Delcroix, Wilson and Mulligan. It certainly makes his character’s many “personal” on-screen introductions easier for all involved.

The Kino set starts off chronologically with 1963’s OSS 117 is Unleashed (original title OSS 117 se déchaîne). Like the four films to follow, the series were all Franco-Italia co-productions and distributed by Gaumont Films. Unlike those four, OSS 117 is Unleashed is filmed in black-and-white. The monochrome photography is not really an issue. But cinemagoers were certainly cheated of enjoying the beautiful beaches and Cliffside scenery of the village of Bonifacio (off the Corsican strait) in vibrant color.

In OSS 117 is Unleashed our hero (American actor Kerwin Mathews, best known to American audiences for his roles in Ray Harryhausen’s special-effect laden epics The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960), is sent to Corsica to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow agent. We’re told, suspiciously, there’s been, “lots of accidents among agents near Bonifacio.” A preamble to the film, culled mostly of cold war era newsreel footage, alerts that an unspecified enemy is working towards “neutralizing” free-world atomic submarine movements in the area. With conspirators tagged with such names as “Sacha” and “Boris,” we can reasonably assume its east-of-the-Iron Curtain intelligence agents behind the plot.

Initially posing as a relative of the recently targeted and now deceased CIA frogman (and later as a Lloyds of London insurance adjustor), Mathews must dispatch and/or fend off a series of enemy agents and perhaps a duplicitous woman. In due course, he survives a poisoning, several (well-choreographed) hand-to-hand combat sequences and even a submerged spear-gun and knifing frogman attack. The latter occurs while he’s search of a mysterious submerged subterranean grotto. The base is outfitted (as one might expect) with high-tech equipment and a detection system designed to bring about “the end of atomic submarines.” The secreted grotto is also equipped with a built-in self-destruct button… always handy, just in case. This is all definitely Bond-on-a budget style filmmaking. Of course, the idea of covertly tracking atomic submarines movements brings to mind the storyline of the far-more-lavishly staged The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

As far as I can determine, OSS 117 is Unleashed was never released theatrically in the U.S. But Mathews’ second (and final) outing as OSS 117, Panic in Bangkok (Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117) (1964) would have a belated release in the U.S. (as Shadow of Evil) in December of 1966. Regardless, Shadow of Evil was not exhibited as a primary attraction in the U.S. market. It most often appeared as the under bill to Christopher Lee in The Brides of Fu Manchu or (more sensibly) to Montgomery Clift’s political suspense-thriller The Defector.

In Panic in Bangkok, Mathews is dispatched to Thailand to, once again, investigate the assassination of a fellow agent. The murdered CIA operative had been investigating a possible correlation between anti-cholera vaccines produced by Bangkok’s Hogby Laboratories to an outbreak of a deadly plague in India. The trail leads Mathews to suspect a certain mysterious Dr. Sinn (Robert Hossein) is somehow involved. Unlike the previous film which lacked a singular villain with a foreboding presence (ala Dr. No), the filmmakers offer cinemagoers a more exotic adversary in Dr. Sinn.

HEROES: The British Invasion of American Comics

25 April – 20 October 2024

Comic books are American as apple pie and Uncle Sam… aren’t they? Visit The Cartoon Museum this Spring to discover how British artists and writers invaded America and made their mark on iconic superheroes and more!

HEROES: The British Invasion of American Comics tells the story of early American comics such as Buster Brown, Miss Fury and Superman, how they influenced British artists and culture, and how the British took that influence and sold it back to America through legendary comics such as Watchmen and V For Vendetta. 

The exhibition also celebrates The Mighty World of Marvel which brought Marvel’s heroes and heroines to newsagents across Britain every week.

In 1972, Stan Lee launched Marvel UK with an event at The Bung Hole wine bar in Holborn, London. Up until then, UK distribution of American comics had been patchy at best, and fans often had to make do with poorer-quality black and white imitations. The Mighty World of Marvel brought Marvel’s heroes and heroines to newsagents across Britain every week, establishing a new fan base and influencing an upcoming generation of comic creators.

We are thrilled to be able to display a rare original press kit given out at the launch event, which has never been on show before. 

The exhibition also shines a light on the many British creators who provided art for iconic superheroes including Batman, Spider-Man, Hellboy and Hit-Girl, including works by Brian Bolland, David Lloyd, Doug Braithwaite and Alison Sampson. On the way you’ll discover British attempts to imitate American strips in the 1940s, find out the story behind the 1972 launch of Marvel UK, and enjoy stunning artwork by key figures from DC Comics and the British Invasion. You’ll even get to see the costume of a real-life British superhero! 

The exhibition features an incredible collection of original Sunday Paper Strips and artworks from the early 1900s and wonderful British and American comic art from the 1950s to the modern day. Among these are works by legendary names such as Jack Kirby, Jack Davis and Tarpe Mills.

Since the 1938 publication of Action Comics #1 the world has fallen more and more in love with American comic books, right up to the box office success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Drawing inspiration from popular characters of the 1940s, such as Popeye and Aquaman, the Brits took no time proving they could do it just as well as the Americans, leading to decades of collaboration and competition across the Atlantic. Through this exhibition you will be able to step back in time and see just how right they were.

“We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.”

- Grant Morrison, Supergods

The Cartoon Museum can be found at 63 Wells Street, Fitzrovia, London, W1A 3AE. Click here to visit web site. 

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Director Sergio Leone’s monumental Western classic ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST celebrates its 55^th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion Paramount Home Entertainment will release the fully restored film for the first time on 4K Ultra HD^™ May 14, 2024, as the latest addition to the studio’s Paramount Presents line.

One of the most iconic and influential movies ever made, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST has been restored from the original 35mm Techniscope camera negative by Paramount’s archive team, L'Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation. This restoration honors the 2007 Film Foundation photochemical restoration overseen by legendary director Martin Scorsese by matching its build and color palette.  The result is the definitive home release of the film, which features the 165-minute extended cut restored to its glory. 

A must-own for every cinephile’s collection, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST will be presented in a Limited-Edition two-disc 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray^™ set that includes both new and legacy bonus content, as well as access to a Digital copy of the film.  The film is presented in Dolby Vision^™* and HDR-10, along with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English Restored Mono Dolby Digital for an exceptional home viewing experience.

Bonus content presented on the Blu-ray Disc^™ is detailed below:

· Commentary by the Hosts of the Spaghetti Western Podcast –NEW!

· A Look Back with Leonard Maltin—NEW!

· Commentary with contributions from directors John Carpenter, John Milius & Alex Cox, film historians Sir Christopher Frayling & Dr. Sheldon Hall, and cast and crew 

· An Opera of Violence                                            

· The Wages of Sin        

· Something To Do With Death

· Railroad: Revolutionising the West

· Locations Then & Now (Gallery) 

· Production Gallery 

· Theatrical Trailer   

Widely considered to be one of the greatest Westerns—and one of the greatest films—ever made, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in the U.S. National Film Registry in 2009.  The film stars Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, and Charles Bronson.

Synopsis

Set in the dying days of the Old West, a struggle to control water in a dusty desert town embroils three hard-bitten gunmen in an epic clash of greed, honor, and revenge.   

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST will also be available on 4K Ultra HD Digital on May 14.

This is a limited edition. Click here to pre-order now from Amazon.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:  

Legendary director Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) directs the iconic John Wayne as an ageing gunfighter dying of cancer in his final screen appearance, a superb adaptation of Glendon Swarthout's classic western novel, The Shootist.

John Bernard Books is the stuff of legend, a renowned 'shootist' whose reputation looms large. But it's 1901, and like the old west, John is dying and a reputation like his draws trouble like an outhouse draws flies. As word spreads that the famous gunfighter is on his last legs, the vultures begin to gather; old enemies, the marshal, newspaper men, an undertaker, all eager to see him dead. Other men might die quietly in bed or take their own lives, but J. B. Books will choose his executioner and face down death with a pistol in each hand.

With an outstanding cast that features not only Wayne, but James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, Scatman Crothers and John Carradine, The Shootist is an elegiac ode to a monumental screen presence and to the Western genre itself.

· New 2K remaster by Arrow Films from the original 35mm camera negative

· High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation

· Original lossless mono audio

· Optional English Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

· Brand new audio commentary by filmmaker and critic Howard S. Berger

· The Last Day, a new visual essay by film critic David Cairns

· A Man-Making Moment, a new interview with Western author C. Courtney Joyner

· Laments of the West, a new appreciation of Elmer Bernstein’s score by film historian and composer Neil Brand

· Contemplating John Wayne: The Death of a Cowboy, a new visual essay by filmmaker and critic Scout Tafoya

· The Shootist: The Legend Lives On, archival featurette

· Theatrical trailer

· Image gallery

· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Juan Esteban Rodríguez

· Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Juan Esteban Rodríguez

· Six postcard-sized lobby card reproductions

· Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critic Philip Kemp

This Blu-ray will be released on March 12. Click here to order from Amazon.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Joyce Randolph, the last remaining cast member of the classic American sitcom "The Honeymooners", has passed away at her New York City home at age 99. She is survived by her son Randy. Regardless of your age, if you grew up in America over the last seven decades, you were exposed to her work on the sitcom, which is iconic in the nation's pop culture. The show was the brainchild of Jackie Gleason who portrayed New York City bus driver Ralph Kramden, bringing to the show elements of his own humble upbringing in Brooklyn. His wife Alice was played by Audrey Meadows and his best friend, sewer worker Ed Norton, was played by Art Carney with Joyce Randolph appearing as his wife Trixie. The concept for the series began as periodic sketches on Gleason's variety show before spinning off as a weekly sitcom. Gleason only did one season despite the success of the series and the episodes became known to fans as "The Classic 39". Gleason would revive "The Honeymooners" as musical sketches in his 1960s variety series. However, he recast the roles of Alice and Trixie, which did not sit well with fans. Additionally, seeing the characters outside of their dank, tiny Brooklyn apartment and now in living color, also dissipated enjoyment of the revival.  In an era in which most female characters were portrayed as mothers who were accepting that husband was the head of the household, "The Honeymooners" went against the grain. For one, both the Kramdens and Nortons never had children, a rarity for the era. Additionally, both Alice and Trixie were not compliant housewives. They challenged their husbands, sometimes in screaming matches, and generally ended up getting their way.

Joyce was a personal friend of mine for many years. On numerous occasions I interviewed her at some of New York's legendary arts clubs including The Players and The Lambs. During these appearances, I would interview her about her memories of the series and it was always in front of a full house. She was gracious, funny and a marvelous storyteller. After her husband Richard Charles died in 1997, Joyce continued to be a fixture on Gotham's social circuit, often holding court at the famous bar at Sardi's. Joyce said that while she liked Jackie Gleason, he was difficult to work with as an actor because he only did one rehearsal before the cast had to film each episode before a live audience. She once griped to me that Gleason had a photographic memory when it came to reading the scripts but had little sympathy for his cast mates who did not. She also felt she was very underpaid compared to her co-stars. She told me that many years later, she got even with Gleason when he was marketing the "lost" episodes of "The Honeymooners", which were previously missing sketches of varying lengths from his 1950s variety show. Gleason called her and asked her to sign a release so the shows could be telecast and also marketed on video. Joyce said, "I gave Jackie a piece of my mind" and told him she had been woefully underpaid. If Gleason needed her permission this time, he would have to meet her price. The Great One backed down and relented.

One of my fondest memories was accompanying Joyce to a musical stage version of "The Honeymooners" some years ago at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey. She very much enjoyed being the center of attention for the press. Fans pressed to get near her and of course many of them tossed out iconic one-liners from the show. Having lived a good, long life, it's hard to say that Joyce has left us prematurely. However, New York won't be quite as much fun as it was when she was making the rounds in the city. I miss her already.

Actor and singer David Soul has passed away at age 80. Soul had a long career. The Chicago native got his first big break with a co-starring role in the TV sitcom "Here Come the Brides", which was inspired by "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". His supporting role opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1973 Dirty Harry film "Magnum Force" led to him co-starring with Paul Michael Glaser in the iconic 1970s TV series "Starsky and Hutch" with the two actors portraying hip, wise-cracking and rule-breaking detectives. In 1977, Soul, who was also an accomplished singer, had a #1 hit with "Don't Give Up On Us, Baby". He would record five albums. In the 1990s, he moved to England, where he enjoyed success on stage and screen. For more, click here.

By Hank Reineke

As a monster-movie loving kid growing up in the shadow of Manhattan, most of my Saturday night plans in the late 1960s and early 1970s were solidly set. That night was reserved for watching old horror and sci-fi flicks on New York City’s Chiller (WPIX-TV) or Creature Features (WNEW-TV). I don’t recall the latter program surviving past 1980 – and even then there had been an interruption of some six years in the scheduling of Creature Features. Though the program would return to the airwaves in 1979, the 8 PM broadcasts were now a thing of the past. The revived telecasts had moved to midnight and well into the early hours of Sunday morning. It hardly mattered, really. I no longer watched Creature Features with the same fervor of 1969 through 1973. I was age nineteen in 1979 and found other (if not necessarily better) things to do on Saturday nights.

This absence from Creature Features caused me to miss out on a number of obscure, aging films broadcast 1979-1980. Among this mix of occasional cinematic gems with near-misses was a mostly forgotten mystery programmer of 1944 titled The Man in Half Moon Street. I was particularly sorry to have missed this one: if my research is correct, I believe the film was broadcast only once – just shy of 2 A.M. - on March 29, 1980. Though one New York area newspaper listing dismissed the film as little more than a “Moody and marginally interesting tale of eternal youth through murder,” such lukewarm praise actually piqued my interest. This seemed my kind of movie. And for some forty-three years I’ve lamented having missing that broadcast.

It has been a tough film to get ahold of: though I’m guessing gray-market copies could have been found at conventions or through those “specialty” dealers of vintage VHS tapes from the ‘80s onward. But as far as I can tell (and, please, feel free correct me if you know better), The Man in Half Moon Street has never been officially available on any home video format: not Laser Disc, VHS, DVD or Blu Ray. Well, that is until now, as we near the eightieth year of the film’s original cinematic release. We have Australia’s Imprint Films to thank for finally issuing this superlative, region-free coded Blu-ray release.

As in the case of many Hollywood pictures of the day, The Man in Half Moon Street was not an original invention of the filmmakers: the scenario was actually based on the British stage drama of playwright Barré Lyndon. Lyndon’s play, published in 1939 by London’s Hamish Hamilton Publishing House, had first toured Bournemouth, Oxford, Manchester and Brighton on a two-week testing-sortie in February of ’39. The play would formally open at the New Theatre in London’s West End on 22 March 1939.

Lyndon’s main antagonist in the stage drama, chemist John Thackeray (Leslie Banks), is a ninety-year old man. One wouldn’t notice the dotage as Thackeray appears decades younger. This is due to the chemist having discovered that by combining radium and periodically replacing his aging super-renal glands with fresh specimens he can retain both youth and immortality. Of course the collection of fresh glands requires innocent others to lose their lives to Thackeray’s ghoulish harvesting.

Over a fifty-year period eight bank cashiers – those with access to large sums of money - have fallen prey to Thackeray’s criminal doings. Dissolving their bodies in acid baths, the chemist then steals the cash reserves his victims had been minding in their bank-telling guardianship. Thackeray requires the large sums so he can pay a confidant: in this case an ethically-challenged surgeon friend, to perform the necessary life-sustaining gland grafts. But Scotland Yard takes up the case just as the chemist readies to take the life of a targeted ninth victim for his evil ends.

Interestingly, playwright Lyndon would go on to write screenplays for Hollywood studios by the mid-1940s, including such moody mystery-noirs as John Brahm’s The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945). But in late January of 1940, it was announced that Don Hartman, a dependable scenarist for Paramount, was scheduled to begin work on adapting Lyndon’s stage play to the big screen. Hartman was, at present, in New York, trying to finish up his co-write (with Clifford Goldsmith) of The Further Adventures of Henry Aldrich.

That May of 1940, Paramount optimistically announced there would be no production delays on their twenty-five million dollar film schedule budget for the upcoming year. This declaration was made “despite war conditions in Europe which continue to threaten returns” in both national and international film markets. One of the films on the Paramount schedule was The Man in Half Moon Street. Early reports suggested that Basil Rathbone was to take on the leading role. The actor was available to assume the role of Thackeray as he had only recently completed work on Paramount’s A Date with Destiny (soon retitled The Mad Doctor).

Rathbone had played the villainous role in The Mad Doctor which, despite the intriguing title, was not a horror film, but a mystery crime-drama. The Los Angeles Citizen-News would report in June of 1940 that while Half Moon too was not of “bogeyman classification,” it on the “fantastic side” with its lurid sci-fi angle. In any case, the film project fell temporarily to the wayside, first due to scripting issues and afterward to the cranking out of patriotic films necessitated by America’s entry into WWII following the attack at Pearl Harbor.

But by early winter of 1943, the long dormant Half Moon project was showing signs of revival. On March 2, 1943 it was announced in the Hollywood trades that Lester Fuller, recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York, had been offered the director’s chair for The Man in Half Moon Street. In spring of 1943, Albert Dekker, a Hollywood “heavie” who recently scared audiences as Universal’s Dr. Cyclops (1940), was announced to assume the leading role.

But on June 15, 1943, Variety reported that Fuller was out of the Half Moon project. Ralph Murphy was now chosen to direct. Technically, the pair’s previously assigned directorial spots were merely traded-off. Murphy had initially been chosen to helm Paramount’s production of Marseilles, but former stage director Fuller was now tasked to assume responsibility on that particular film. Murphy was to move over to direct Fuller’s Half Moon project.

Murphy’s first assignment was a formidable one: he was “to order a complete rewrite job on the script.” There was also a report that such rewriting would likely require a recasting of principal characters. Though Swedish film star Nils Asther had been the latest actor announced to assume the film’s leading role, his participation in the project was now suggested as being “off” - for the time being, at least. The film’s producer Walter MacEwan wanted to weigh casting options “until further developments” in the scripting of Half Moon were resolved.

The re-writing of Half Moon would eventually fall to scenarists Charles Kenyon and Garrett Fort. The final screenplay credit would ultimately go to Kenyon alone who, like Fort, was a veteran of old Hollywood: their work in the industry could be traced to silent cinema’s earliest days. Fort’s resume for this sort of film was particularly impressive: he had written or co-written such totemic pre-code Golden Age Horrors for Universal as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula’s Daughter (1936). But Fort’s credit on Half Moon only noted his role in adapting Lyndon’s play for the screen.

The final screenplay drafted would, peculiarly, expunge most of the ghoulish and murderous elements of Lyndon’s stage play – perhaps America’s real-life wartime experiences were horrific enough. There are no murders of bankers. The Thackeray character (renamed Dr. Julian Karell in the film) appears to be already a man of means, an accomplished portrait artist and scientist. He attends black-tie, high society, posh parties and conducts his experiments at an upscale London row house. The film curiously offers no scenes of on (or off) screen physical violence.

There are no gruesome acid baths in which the bodies of victims are disposed. The film’s lone “action” scene captures a moment when Karell “rescues” a despondent medical student (Morton Lowry) from a watery suicide attempt near the Thames Embankment. Most scenes of this dialogue-heavy script are set in parlors and sitting rooms – which, to be honest, really proves a drag on the film’s ninety-two minute running time. One begins to welcome even the briefest scenes when Karell ventures out into the shrouded night and pea-soup fog of the London Streets. Not that much happens during these interludes, but such moments provide a measure of moodiness to this otherwise slowly paced non-mystery.

Truth be told, The Man in Half Moon Street is no detective nor mystery film; we know almost from the beginning what’s going on. We learn the handsome and youthful Karell is actually more than one hundred years old in age. But through a century of experimentation – and with the assistance of the aging Dr. Kurt Van Bruecken, the “world’s greatest living surgeon and necrologist” (Reinhold Schünzel), Karell has managed to stay young through his drinking of a luminous serum and periodically undergoing fresh glandular transplants at ten year intervals.

There are problems ahead. Following a stroke, the shaky hands of the elderly Van Bruecken are no longer trustworthy to perform the necessary surgeries. Besides, Van Bruecken has undergone a change of heart: he fears that Karell is no longer working in the interest of science and humanity in staving off the aging process. He fears (rightfully) Karell is now consumed only by his burning desire for the lovely Eve Brandon (Helen Walker) and selfish self-interest in maintaining a “fraudulent youth.”

“No man can break the law of God,” Van Bruecken cautions, but Karell is confident if anyone can do it, he can. Even if that means farming the glands of the suicidal medical student he’s imprisoned upstairs. The other more pressing problem facing Karell is that his mysterious activities have finally brought him to the attention of an ethical surgeon (Paul Cavanagh), a cabal of fine art appraisers and Scotland Yard.

With Paramount now holding what they believed an acceptable – and mostly non-horrific - script in place, the casting of the film proceeded in earnest. In May of 1943 it was suggested that young actress Susan Hayward would play a “featured role” in Half Moon, though the report cautioned Paramount was still “having a time of it procuring someone to play the sinister male lead.” The earlier front-running names of Rathbone and Dekker were both out, and rumors of Alan Ladd’s casting were squelched when the actor chose instead to sign up for military service.

That same month producer MacEwan confirmed Nils Asther would in fact play the role of Dr. Julian Karell as earlier rumored. The trades suggested that it was Asther who, in fact, first suggested that Paramount pick up the rights to Lyndon’s play and cast him in the lead role. There was some mild press controversy regarding Asther’s casting. Some Hollywood gossips dismissed the actor as “Yesterday’s Star” (born in 1897, Asther had appeared in silent films with Greta Garbo). Though his character was scripted as someone thirty-five years of age, Asther was in reality 46 years old at the time of production. Still, there was an acknowledgement that the dashingly tall, slender, handsome (and rumored bi-sexual) actor “still has a big following.”

Though the actor was to star opposite the sultry Hayward, the role of Karell’s paramour Eve Brandon was ultimately given to Helen Walker. There would be some delay before she could join the production: the actress, currently on a wartime U.S.O. tour, was expected to report to the set near September’s end. Truthfully, Walker doesn’t have a lot to do in the film. She certainly photographs well as Karell’s doting and perhaps too protective and morally-blind girlfriend. Even though Karell’s work is secretive – so much so that it causes him to disappear for weeks or months at a time – Eve chooses to accept her lover’s “general mysteriousness” as a byproduct of his genius. I personally found Brandon less likable and sympathetic as the film progresses. When it’s finally revealed to her that Karell’s experimentations have brought harm to innocents, she’s so in love with him she dismisses his guilt, choosing instead to reflexively defend the “grandeur” of his ambitions.

If the main characters in this picture aren’t always likable, there’s still a lot to admire about the film. Miklos Rozsa’s moody musical score is certainly worthy of praise. Henry Sharp’s fog-bound “exterior” photography is similarly moody, but unfortunately not up on the screen much. In the final minutes of the film when Karell dramatically reverts to his actual age, long-time make-up man Wally Westmore – of Hollywood’s make-up family dynasty – does his best on the effects. But the camera cheats the audience of a full on-screen transformation ala Westmore’s make-up on Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) – which remains the “gold standard” of Golden Age horror transformations. Ralph Murphy’s direction is competent but workmanlike in execution. He creates very little visual tension until the film’s final scenes and, by then, it’s simply too late. Following the completion of Half Moon, Murphy was planning to move back to New York City to direct the Broadway stage production of Sleep It Off.

Of course World War II was still on-going, interrupting, ruining and/or ending the lives of countless innocents globally. In such an atmosphere Hollywood was not immune to war-time production delays and release date restrictions. Paramount alone had accumulated an unprecedented backlog of thirty-one completed films awaiting release in early summer of 1944. There was some confidence that the tide was turning in favor of the Allies, studios cooperating in the war effort by rolling out whatever patriotic war films they were sitting on. There was a consensus it was time to empty the vault of such films. It was believed that movie audiences would weary of war films following the cessation of fighting overseas.

There was, at long last, a belated screening of The Man in Half Moon Street held at a Hollywood tradeshow on October 16, 1944. Variety thought the script was a “compact and interesting,” the Kenyon/Fort scenario displaying a “few new twists from the formularized style of long-life mystery tales to keep interest at consistent level.” But the reviewer acknowledged, not unreasonably, that the film would best serve as “strong support” to a superior attraction. Other critics likewise suggested Half Moon was too weak to see top-billing on a double-attraction.

Indeed, The Man in Half Moon Street (already in U.S. regional release as early as December 1944 although the film’s copyright is listed as 1945 on the sleeve of the snap case) was featured as the undercard of a double-bill. (On his commentary, Tim Lucas reveals the film actually had its world-wide premiere in Australia in early November of 1944). On its U.S. run, the film was usually topped by director Fritz Lang’s cinematic take of novelist Graham Greene’s Nazi espionage tale Ministry of Fear. This double feature actually did reasonably well, the trades citing solid - if not necessarily boffo - returns as the package was rolled out across U.S. markets and into 1945. Newspaper columnists tended to give the Lang film the lion’s share of its critical attention, though both films were generally branded as little more than decent programmers of primary interest only to devotees of suspense and mystery films.

RETRO-ACTIVE: MEMORABLE ARTICLES FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

By Hank Reineke

In September of 2021 I attended Manhattan’s Quad Cinema screening of Thomas Hamilton’s affectionate documentary Boris Karloff: the Man Behind the Monster. As a life-long fan of the actor - and the owner of dozens of books examining the actor’s career in film, stage and radio - this was the sort of career-spanning appraisal I was hoping to someday see. Then, only a few weeks following that theatrical screening, Cinema Retro was provided a stream of the doc for critical review. This enabled me to watch the film a second time, revisiting bits of commentary I had missed or recalled only hazily. At the time the stream was provided to Cinema Retro, it was still uncertain if Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster would be offered on physical media. That question was answered in October 2022 when the film became available as a two-disc combo Blu ray/DVD set from Voltage Films/Abramorama.

In the sixteen-page booklet that’s included in the set, director Hamilton advises both he and scripter Ronald MacCloskey originally envisioned their Karloff doc as a bold “4-hour, 2-part film or a 6 part miniseries.” They certainly had enough material to do so, with a reported 60+ hours of interviews involving no fewer than fifty-five subjects. And, that sixty hours of recorded interviews, of course, didn’t include the footage gleaned from Karloff’s fabled filmography.

While you’re not going to find some sixty-odd hours of extras on this release, the set does suggest that it offers an expanded director’s cut (titled on packaging - but not on the film itself - as Boris Karloff: The Rest of the Story). This is a bit curious. The version screened theatrically at the Quad ran 103 minutes – at least as per its billing at the cinema. The Rest of the Story disc runs one hour and forty-three minutes. Which, if my math skills haven’t failed, equals the same 103 minutes of running time.

Of course the new set does feature two additional bonus selections. The first, Meeting Boris Karloff, is, truthfully, not a terribly essential addition, but not uninteresting. It’s an offering of fourteen minutes of interview/commentary by three figures a bit tangential to Karloff’s legend. Of the trio, author and film historian Kevin Brownlow shares his reminisce of his November 1964 interview with Karloff. He recalls Karloff as an interesting interviewee – one who wasn’t remiss to take issue or correct erroneous information found in the press clippings Brownlow had collected. But he noted Karloff always challenged misinformation in a gentlemanly manner.

Andrew Pratt, described as a “great nephew” of the actor, then shyly recounts his one and only meeting with his great uncle. He credits that meeting as inspiration to pursue a career in film art direction – a career that would earn him a number of nominations and awards from the Academy, BAFTA, and the Art Directors Guild. The last subject interviewed was Anthony Bilbow, a television host of BBC-2’s Late Night Line-Up. His only real connection to Karloff was when the actor was a guest on the program, September of 1968. He recalls Karloff as a gentleman kind and warm, modest and self-effacing – but not in a “counterfeit” sort of way.

The final bonus feature of the set is a three-minute interview with the co-scriptwriter of Boris Karloff: the Man Behind the Monster, Ron MacCloskey. This New Jersey-based writer and comedian fell under Karloff’s spell at age seven, having caught Frankenstein on a late night TV telecast. A collector of Frankenstein memorabilia, MacCloskey’s interest in Karloff’s work proved lifelong and ultimately led to his teaming with director Thomas Hamilton to start shooting this documentary in 2018.

If the doc itself is truly an expanded version of the original, it doesn’t really change or radically alter anything presented in the theatrical cut. I’m more than willing to stand corrected if indeed, the doc is offered here in an expanded form. My frame-by-frame memories of those 2021 screenings are all a bit hazy now, so I can’t say with any certainty if extra footage/commentary was included. But, if you missed it the first time, I’ll tack on my original “streaming” review of October of 2021. I very much enjoyed the doc on its original run and my opinion of its merit has not changed at all. Read on, should you wish:

There’s a telling moment at the dénouement of Thomas Hamilton’s and Ron MacCloskey’s affectionate documentary Boris Karloff: The Man behind the Monster. Sara Karloff, the now eighty-two year old daughter of the beloved actor, opines that her father’s lasting cinematic legacy is due, in part, to the tenaciousness of his devoted fan base. It’s a demographic that we soon discover consists of a number of amazingly creative people: folks whose loyalty to and enthusiasm for Karloff’s work has not wavered over the decades. Sara’s contention is inarguably true. As this ninety-nine minute Voltage Films/Abramorama documentary unspools – crisply narrated by Paul Ryan and featuring commentary by preeminent Karloff scholar and “Biographical Consultant” Stephen Jacobs - we discover the actor’s admirer’s bridge several generations of fans and filmmakers.

The first generation to discover Karloff in the decades following his big splash as the Frankenstein monster in 1931, include directors Roger Corman and Peter Bogdanovich. Both men would have the opportunity and honor to work with the actor in his twilight years. The second generation of admirers were those introduced to Karloff via neighborhood cinema screenings or through television broadcasts of Shock Theater in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

These filmmakers, profoundly influenced by Karloff’s art, would go on to create a few cinematic gems of their own: John Landis, Joe Dante, and Guillermo Del Toro, to name a few. The latter gentleman is particularly effusive in his praise, describing Karloff’s performance as the vampiric Wurdalak in Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath as a “tremendous” example of the great actor’s “physical presence, his majesty, his demonic power.”

If the documentary is chock-full of talented filmmakers offering tributes, the film is also supported by the erudite commentaries of film scholars David J. Skal (The Monster Show: a Cultural History of Horror), Gregory W. Mank (Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: the Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration), Donald F. Glut (The Frankenstein Legend: a tribute to Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff), Sir Christopher Frayling (Frankenstein: the first Two Hundred Years), and critic Leonard Maltin.

There are also short tributes and reminisces by several actors – three now gone - who had worked with Karloff at some point in their career: Dick Miller (The Terror), Christopher Plummer (The Lark, Even the Weariest River), Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers), and Orson Bean (Arsenic and Old Lace). Karloff’s tells part of his own story through audio recordings made available to the filmmakers courtesy of the British cinema historian/author Kevin Brownlow (The Parades Gone By…) and the Pacifica Radio Archive.

It has long annoyed me that when one searches out the term “Boris Karloff” in the ever-expanding IMDB, the resulting prompt identifies the actor’s signature film as The Grinch that Stole Christmas (1966). My daughters would remind me that my personal agitation of this result is, by definition, a “first world” problem, one hardly worthy of condemnation. But as cinema’s preeminent boogeyman for four decades, seeing Karloff’s storied career reduced to a role featuring only his disembodied voice as the Grinch… Well, let’s just say that I still find it somewhat misleading and inappropriate.

Be that as it may, Hamilton’s film reminds Karloff himself might disagree with my wariness of the Grinch being bandied as the cinematic crown jewel of the actor’s legacy. Sara Karloff recalls receiving a phone call from her father immediately following his recording of the narration for that beloved Dr. Seuss vehicle. The actor we learn was profoundly happy with his work on the now-famous animated holiday classic, telling his daughter proudly, “I’ve done something which I think is pretty good.”

Karloff would pass away a couple of years following the first broadcast of The Grinch that Stole Christmas, but he worked to the very end of his days, appearing in a number of memorable – and a few less-than-memorable – films, several of which would see release in years following his passing. His last films were little more than cameo-length appearances shot on a Hollywood sound stage. It was director Jack Hill’s idea to take the Karloff footage from these shoots and blend the results into a series of Mexican horror films.

Karloff, rightly and proudly, would choose to refer to his spell-binding turn as the semi-autobiographical aging horror film actor Byron Orlok in Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) as his feature film swan song. Technically, it wasn’t. But the brief appearances in that post- Target series of Hollywood-Mexico co-production mash-ups were mostly an excuse for an old pro to continue to ply his trade and keep busy. But working oxygen-tank dependent and wheelchair bound on the Jack Hill-directed sequences, Karloff was prevented from doing much of anything with the already somewhat cut-and-paste material given to him.

Karloff, of course, was not the only “horror film” star of the genre’s celebrated Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s. Karloff, we learn, was actually not happy with the designation “horror movie”, much preferring his films to be termed as “thrillers” or “shock” pictures. His contemporary competitor as grand ghoul of the horror film - one whose own legacy would burn bright into the next century - was Bela Lugosi. Although Lugosi had too often played second-fiddle to Karloff in matters of employment and billing, the Hungarian’s post-mortem fame may have eclipsed his friend’s star over the last few decades.

For starters, Lugosi’s sad and lurid dependency on morphine and alcohol in his final years made him the subject of tabloid fodder, and gossip then – and now – still rules. Lugosi’s slow demise coupled with his appearances in several of Edward J. Wood’s revered cult films brought him a big degree of post-mortem fame. A brand new generation would discover the actor through Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning turn as Lugosi in Tim Burton’s semi-biographical drama Ed Wood.

To be fair, Lugosi’s string of mad performances in Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Glen or Glenda (1953) are, in many ways, were no less better or worse or more undistinguished than Karloff’s walk-ons in the creaky Jack Hill/Mexi-horror films of spring 1968. Though both sets of films are passably entertaining in their own uneven, cult-ish ways, both actor’s cinematic exits were ignoble ends to these two great men who famously made audiences shiver in 1931.

James Whale’s Frankenstein would ultimately transform Karloff into a full-fledged movie star, but it had been a long road to achieving such fame. The actor had been working on various Hollywood backlots since the silent era. In the course of his earliest silent film efforts – beginning with such titles as The Lightning Raider (1919) and His Majesty, the American (1919) – he worked as little more than an extra. His subsequent fame would cause a score of budding film historians to carefully survey battered old prints of Karloff’s earliest filmography in the often futile hope of catching a glimpse as he passed by the camera.

In truth, his decade-long career as a silent film actor was mostly non consequential. He would appear in approximately sixty or so silent films between 1919 and 1929. He would, on occasion, be gifted a role of some heft, most notably as that of “The Mesmerist” in The Bells (1926) opposite Lionel Barrymore, but he was most often cast in adventure-orientated serials as a heavy, or as a Hindu, Mexican or an Arab, a mystic or a general ne’er-do-well.

It was his casting as the sadistic “Galloway” in Howard Hawk’s sound prison drama The Criminal Code (1930) that brought him to the attention of Universal executives looking to cast a suitably cadaverous-appearing actor as the Frankenstein monster. Following Lugosi’s rejection of the part due to the absence of dialogue afforded, Bela’s pass on the role was fortuitous for Karloff. He was still hungry and looking for that big break. Although the role of the monster would forever typecast him, the actor remained forever grateful for having taking the role in Frankenstein, once describing the career door-opening creature as “the best friend I ever had.”

It’s not hard to see why Karloff’s portrayal of the monster remains the preeminent of the Universal series. He was, after all, the only actor to have been given the opportunity to actually act and emote, to bring a sense of pathos to the role. He was abetted, of course, by Jack Pierce’s iconic make-up which, rather than masking, cannily sculpted and made highlight of Karloff’s facial features and sunken cheeks. This gave the monster, according to one of the participants in the documentary, a “full expression range.” The trio of actors who would subsequently portray the monster in the Universal series simply weren’t given the opportunity to apply any emotive effect of their own. Even by Son of Frankenstein (1939), the third film in the series, the screenwriters had already reduced the monster into little more than a hulking, lumbering menace and henchman.

It is discouraging to learn that when Frankenstein had its gala premiere in the autumn of 1931, Karloff was not even invited to attend. He was already forty-four years of age when he assumed the role, a no-name celebrity and hardly a handsome matinee idol of any recognition. The unexpected phenomenal success of Frankenstein would change all that, and Universal was quick to capitalize on the actor’s sudden notoriety as Hollywood’s most beloved boogeyman. Karloff’s natural proclivity for taking on roles of menacing villainous characters with icy stares would allow his casting into a string of Golden Age horror classics – not only for Universal but for other studios as well, including memorable turn in MGM’s The Mask of Fu Manchu. The latter remains a great, entertaining film… if undeniably one of the most politically-incorrect lavish big studio productions of the 1930s.

When the market for horror films softened in the mid-1940s – thanks, in part, due to the horror genre’s continuing perceived transgressions of the Hays Code - Karloff easily transitioned to character roles, where, according to his daughter, her father’s natural “dark coloring,” permitted him to slip easily into “ethnic roles.” As one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild, he was able to exercise his freelance status by working for, amongst others, RKO, Columbia, Monogram, and Warner Bros.

Another avenue of opportunity had presented itself around this same time. In 1941 Karloff was lured, against his better judgement according to this film, to take on the Broadway role of the villainous Jonathan Brewster in Joseph L. Kesselring’s stage play Arsenic and Old Lace. It was to his life-long disappointment that a clause in his theatrical stage contract prevented his returning to Hollywood – as did several fellow members of the original Broadway cast – to reprise the role for the much beloved Frank Capra film adaptation of 1944.

Though initially frightened to work in theatre before a live audience, the success of Arsenic emboldened Karloff to accept several other roles in such Broadway productions as The Lark (with Julie Harris), The Linden Tree, The Shop at Sly Corner, and even in a memorable turn as Captain Hook in a 1950 production of Peter Pan. Fortunately, we of a certain age who missed out still can get a small taste of what we missed since kinescopes survive from early Hallmark Hall of Fame broadcasts of the original production of The Lark and a 1961 re-staging of Arsenic and Old Lace.

Though Karloff’s work in radio is mostly ignored in this documentary, the film does take pains to point out that he was among the first movie stars of his generation to fully embrace television. Though he would often appear in serious televisions drams for such programs as Texaco Star Theater or Playhouse 90, he was not above spoofing his own curious fame as Hollywood’s grandest ghoul on any number of variety programs hosted by the likes of Red Skelton or Dinah Shore.

In the 1960s, he would famously host (and occasionally act) in episodes of the television program Thriller, or appear in drag as “Mother Muffin” in an episode of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E – or with former U.N.C.L.E. agent Robert Vaughn in the spy-film The Venetian Affair (1966). Joe Dante also references the series of wonderful long-playing albums Karloff would record over the years, his unmistakable, lisping voice introducing children to a wonderful selection of folk tales, ghost stories, Washington Irving classics, and time-worn fables.

Boris Karloff: the Man behind the Monster reminds us that the actor (1887-1969) accomplished a lot in his eighty-one-years, a large percentage of which would encompass appearances on screen, on stage, on air, on record, and on television. To their credit, the filmmakers share what they can in the constraint of the film’ ninety-nine minute running time, and the film certainly succeeds as an excellent primer. Karloff wonks like myself might hold out hope that a multi-part, Ken Burns-style series might someday be put into the works, but I imagine that’s unlikely. One hundred and thirty four years have passed since Karloff’s birth. The fact that contemporary audiences remain completely entranced by his filmography in 2021 is testament enough to the worthiness of this loving tribute painting him as one of Hollywood’s greatest.

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By Cai Ross

To TV fans of a certain age, the acronym ITC instantly invokes memories of spies, guns, girls, espionage, memorable theme tunes, lush sideburns, flared trousers, almost continuous smoking, purple flock wallpaper and grand, globe-trotting adventures.

Actually, the wide-ranging TV shows made by Lord Lew Grade’s pioneering company have fans of all ages, with shows like The Saint, The Champions, The Persuaders! and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) (US. My Partner The Ghost) still appearing in television schedules to this day, nearly 70 years after Grade scored his first hit in 1955 with The Adventures of Robin Hood.

And so it’s everyone from grandparents to grandkids who have been tuning in in their droves to hear ITC Entertains The World, a podcast that celebrates all things ITC. Fronted by devotees Jaz Wiseman, Al “Smudge” Samujh and Rodney Marshall, the podcast casts an eye at the output of this much-loved stable, from whole-series overviews to individual episodes. They also look at the movies made under the ITC banner (films like Blake Edwards’s The Tamarind Seed and Peter Sellers’s career-reviving The Return of The Pink Panther).

I spoke to Rodney Marshall about the podcast and his love of all things 1960s, starting with the genesis of the podcast.‘Like a lot of podcasts, ours started in lockdown. Jaz approached me and suggested that we did one based on the little-known ITC show Gideon’s Way, which I hadn’t actually seen. I watched them all and thought it was fantastic. You have all those great 1960s guest actors, the Anton Rodgerses, Peter Bowleses and Annette Andres. I thought the podcast would be very niche but it proved surprisingly popular.

‘I’ve known Jaz for a long time through my late father. Jaz interviewed him for lots of DVD commentaries when The Avengers came out.’ Rodney’s father just happens to be Roger Marshall, a very familiar name to fans of vintage espionage television shows. The creator of popular UK dramas like Travelling Man, Zodiac and Floodtide, Marshall Sr also co-created the highly regarded and influential private detective show Public Eye in 1965, starring Alfred Burke as down-at-heel gumshoe Frank Marker.

He was also a regular contributor of scripts for the likes of The Avengers, writing 15 episodes of the iconic 1960s series.

After the success of the Gideon’s Way podcast, they were encouraged to broaden their scope and cover the entire range of ITC shows, but to do that they needed a new recruit. ‘We thought that in terms of voices, three is better than two. Jaz got in touch with his old friend Smudge, who is very much into the history of Elstree studios, into Hammer films and of course, ITC shows. I think all three of us bring something different to the podcast. Jaz is into things like music and titles, Smudge is very into things like directors and direction, talking about fish-eye lenses and the like. I’m more into the scripts, probably because of dad.

‘It was a learning curve for me because these two guys are ITC-mad. They probably have huge tardis-sized rooms full of all things ITC. If I said to one of them, “Do you have a copy of the scripts for The Persuaders! that my dad wrote for?” and they’d probably have three different copies of it.’

We bemoaned the fact that following the sad demise of the distribution company Network, it now seems unlikely that long-running shows like The Saint will receive the BluRay treatment and be discovered anew in pristine condition. It’s a huge shame since the likes of The Prisoner and Man in a Suitcase have enjoyed BluRay remastering and look breathtakingly fresh and vibrant as a result.

'Man in a Suitcase is very much a shared love. I discovered it in the early nineties when BBC started showing it again during the school holidays. In my early misguided smoking days, I used to copy McGill’s habit of standing my cigarette up on the table between puffs. Naturally, I wasn’t able to pull it off with the same je ne sais quoi as Richard Bradford.

Marshall is very much an admirer of the US actor. ‘Bradford’s performance is astonishing. When you put him up against someone like Colin Blakely or Jacqueline Pearce, Bradford is dynamite. He has an incredibly magnetic presence. A lot is made of the fact that there was a lot of tension between him and the actors and stuntmen, but the main directors on the show absolutely loved him. Peter Duffell who was one of the main directors was our next door neighbour and one of dad’s mates, and he raved about Bradford.

‘He may have overdone the Marlon Brando thing; he would race around the set four or five times in order to look breathless before a take, but he really invested himself in his performances. Like Patrick McGoohan, he was a lead actor who wouldn’t take bullshit. If an actor came along and just wanted a quick cheque, they wouldn’t put up with it. Bernard Lee turned up drunk for an episode of Man in a Suitcase, and Bradford walked up to him and said, ‘I’m not putting up with this crap.’ Bernard Lee immediately switched onto acting-mode and suddenly there were no problems.’

Marshall’s other great ITC love is one of its earlier hits, Danger Man (or Secret Agent in the States), a popular and innovative pre-Bond spy series that made a global star out of Patrick McGoohan. ’I think what kept McGoohan engaged with Danger Man for so long is the fact that he’s undercover in so many different roles. One week he might be playing a roaring drunk, the next week he’s a timid school-teacher in glasses, sending someone into a nervous breakdown by stalking them! That variety made him feel like he was back in his old rep company in Sheffield.’

Danger Man was one of several ITC shows that, like ABC’s The Avengers, made the shift from black and white to colour in the mid sixties, when the US networks made it mandatory. Marshall however, believes that something was lost after the transition.‘I still think that The Prisoner, Man in a Suitcase and the amazing Strange Report aside, the best ITC series are from earlier in the decade like Gideon’s Way, Danger Man and The Saint, which I much prefer in black and white.

‘I always felt that when a show went from black and white to colour, you lost a lot of the subtlety. Take an episode of The Saint like ‘Scorpion’ with Dudley Sutton, who rides around on a motorbike bumping people off and even tries strangling his girlfriend. Perhaps its something to do with the shadows, but you can pull off a kind of darkness in a monochrome episode which doesn’t quite work in colour. Jaz recorded a DVD commentary for the Avengers episode ‘Town of No Return’ with Brian Clemens and director Roy Ward Baker, and they both said, ‘you know, black and white is more…real.’

The podcast casts its net wide to cover not just the big, popular hits but some of the ITC gems that may have faded from the public consciousness. ‘Man of The World from 1962 is very interesting, with Craig Stevens from Peter Gunn playing a photo journalist travelling the world getting himself into scrapes. It actually started in colour then went back to black and white after its budget was slashed.’

Intriguingly, The Sentimental Agent starring Carlos Thompson started off as an episode of Man of The World. The powers that be were so impressed with Thompson that they span it out into a whole series. Marshall explains, ‘Carlos was like a continental Roger Moore, very good looking, very charming, very flirty. But suddenly he fell ill, and they had to make the rest of the series with this humourless guy who was none of the above.’

The podcast, like the work it celebrates, is a labour of love and it’s benefitted from some Lew Grade-style serendipity that brought exactly the right three people together to extol the many virtues of a series of entertainments that are still adored by millions.

‘We’re lucky,’ concludes Marshall,‘because Jaz has access to a library of things like the music and a lot of interviews and DVD commentaries that he’s done with the likes of Richard Bradford and Sir Roger Moore, who was hilarious. On the commentary for The Saint, they debunked the theory that Patrick McGoohan turned down the role. He was interviewed for it, but producer Bob Baker thought he was unsuitable for the role as he refused to do any romantic scenes. They said to Roger, ‘we knew that kissing ladies on screen wouldn’t be a problem for you,’ and he replied in that most Roger Moore way, ‘Indeed not!’

(ITC Entertains The World is available to listen to across all streaming platforms.)

By Todd Garbarini

I was introduced into the world of Billy Idol’s music in late 1983 when my younger sister discovered his music. His signature hits “White Wedding (Part 1)” and “Dancing with Myself” from his self-titled 1982 album emanated from her room daily and I found his energy to be infectious. At that time, his follow-up album, the widely popular Rebel Yell, was just released (it’s now forty years-old!) and it really put him on the map, setting him apart from the group he burst on to the scene with in 1976: the short-lived Chelsea, and then later, Generation X. With guitarist Steve Stevens, who has been with him ever since, and a group of musicians, Billy Idol, whose surname was inspired by one of his teachers labeling him as an “idle” student, began his Rebel Yell tour and was Yours Truly’s first foray into the world of rock concerts. Since then, he has toured the globe and garnered legions of fans the world over.

A self-professed history buff and environmentalist, Billy teamed with then-New York Mayor Bill de Blasio in February 2020 just weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown to promote a public awareness Anti-Idling campaign in New York City to remind drivers that motor vehicles are forbidden to idle for no more than three minutes, and no more than one minute in a school zone. So, he’s very pro-environment.

In April of this year, Billy did something that no artist has ever done before: he performed a concert at the Hoover Dam in Boulder City, NV, which was filmed for the new concert film Billy Idol: State Line, playing in theaters this week. The first 20 minutes of the film reveal that Billy would have been a history professor had he not been in a band (I for one am glad that he never got his teaching license) and gives a brief history of the construction of the modern engineering marvel. Amazingly, this is Billy’s maiden voyage to Hoover Dam and you can tell that he is stunned by it.

He plays an acoustic set at the foot of the dam with Steve Stevens of “Eyes Without a Face” and “Rebel Yell” before taking the stage or, in this case the Hoover Dam helipad, to belt out “Rock the Cradle of Love,” “Dancing with Myself,” “Flesh for Fantasy,” “Eyes Without a Face,” his trademark cover of “Mony Mony,” “Blue Highway,” “Rebel Yell,” “Hot in the City,” and “White Wedding (Part 1).”

Will this venue become a mecca for future bands?

This is a must-see on the big screen for Billy Idol fans.

See the press release below for more information:

BILLY IDOL: STATE LINE MAKES U.S. THEATRICAL DEBUT NOVEMBER 15

FILM DOCUMENTS THE FIRST CONCERT EVER PERFORMED AT HOOVER DAM

IDOL CONTINUES WATER CONSERVATION ACTIVISM WITH PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS IN CONJUNCTION WITH U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Billy Idol: State Line, a Vertigo Live concert film documenting the rock legend’s April show at the famed Hoover Dam - the first ever concert performed at the location - is set to make its U.S. theatrical debut on November 15, 2023. The movie highlights the history and significance of Hoover Dam and includes performances from two unique sets of Billy Idol’s iconic hits: a full band concert at sunset with special guests that electrified and illuminated the surrounding Black Canyon and an acoustic duo set on the roof of the powerhouse at the foot of Hoover Dam straddling the Colorado River, directly on the Nevada/Arizona state line. Tickets and additional info on film screenings can be found at billyidolstateline.com, with additional screenings to be added shortly.

For both sets, Idol is joined by his collaborator and lead guitarist of over forty years, Steve Stevens. Performed in front of only 250 fans, the full band set features special guests Alison Mosshart (The Kills, The Dead Weather), Steve Jones (Sex Pistols, Generation Sex) and Tony Kanal (No Doubt). See the film’s trailer here.

“Our show at Hoover Dam was a monumental and surreal career highlight,” notes Idol. “I’m excited to get State Line out into the world. With this film we set out to highlight the continued importance of one of the most inspiring infrastructural achievements of the 20th Century, while also bringing the power of rock n roll to a stunning, magical location. I think we more than succeeded on both accounts.”

Idol’s first-person experience of the Colorado River Basin drought conditions while shooting the film at Hoover Dam inspired his ongoing efforts to promote the importance of water conservation, including appearing in a series of public service announcements being released by the U.S. Department of the Interior. See Idol’s most recent P.S.A. with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland here.

Of his activism relating to water conservation, Idol adds, “The drought conditions prevalent in the American West are severe and impossible to ignore. It takes all of us conserving water in whatever ways we can to preserve the future of our natural resources for our grandkids and beyond. I’m proud to help amplify this issue in whatever way I can.”

Billy Idol: State Line is produced by Lastman Media for Vertigo Live in collaboration with the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas and is distributed theatrically throughout North America by Unbranded Events and U.K./rest of world via Kaleidoscope Entertainment.

Idol will also perform in Las Vegas the same day as Super Bowl LVIII in February; see below for a complete list of tour dates.

For 46 years, Billy Idol has been one of the definitive faces and voices of rock’n’roll. Between 1977 and 1981 Idol released three albums with Generation X as their camera-ready frontman. In 1982 he embarked on a transatlantic/trans-genre solo career that integrated the bold and simple lines of punk and rock’n’roll decadence. Touring consistently around the world for the last ten years and showing no signs of slowing down, Idol released both The Roadside EP in 2021 and The Cage EP in 2022 on Dark Horse Records, earning praise from fans and critics alike. In January, Idol cemented his name among Hollywood legends with the first Walk of Fame Star of 2023.

Idol recently wrapped the first-ever Generation Sex tour in the U.K. and E.U. The punk supergroup is comprised of Idol and Tony James from Generation X, and Steve Jones and Paul Cook from Sex Pistols. November 10 marks the 40th Anniversary of Idol’s seminal record Rebel Yell, with an expanded edition of the album due in early 2024.

By Hank Reineke

Roger Corman had, over a relatively short period of time, directed and/or produced more than a half-dozen pictures since his entry into the movie industry in 1955. His first efforts were modest successes, but the filmmaker firmly broke into a dependably bankable stride within two years’ time. Though already having helmed two low budget science-fiction pictures with some success (Day the World Ended (1955) and It Conquered the World (1956) his reputation in Hollywood - as a budget-minded money-spinner - was properly recognized following the box office counting of his 1957 chiller combo: Attack of the Crab Monsters/Not of This Earth. Variety noted the package – each film made on a “slenderized bankroll of $85, 000,” had brought in an impressive domestic gross of $800,000. By early November of ’57, that package, distributed through Allied Artists, had earned back the entirety of its production and marketing costs within twelve weeks of its release.

Through the remainder of the 1950s and well into the early 1960s, Corman continued to grind out a dizzying array of feature films, not all of the horror and sci-fi variety: there were plenty of exploitative teenage rock n’ roll pictures and crime dramas offered as well. But from 1960 through 1964, Corman worked primarily – though not exclusively – producing and directing an impressive slate of upscale horror classics. He had already given fans such soon-to-be low-budget cult favorites as Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960). But in 1960 he more famously scored with House of Usher, the first of his iconic and moody cycle of Poe and H.P. Lovecraft adaptations - many featuring Vincent Price in roles as both tormentor and tormented.

One of Corman’s most important collaborators in his early years was screenwriter Charles B. Griffith. Griffith would receive screenwriting credit – or co-credit – on no fewer than eight of Corman’s earliest films 1956-59. The writer would later recall for Beast from Haunted Cave he had been commissioned by Corman to essentially rework the storyline of an earlier film they had crafted together – Naked Paradise (1957) aka Thunder Over Hawaii. Naked Paradise, of which Griffith was brought on late to the project for a re-write, was essentially a South Seas crime-drama set in a pineapple plantation under the umbrella of a glistening sun.

Since that film had done well enough, Corman wanted to revisit the scenario of Naked Paradise for the reimagined crime drama titled Beast from Haunted Cave. There would be a new twist: the new scenario was to take place in and around a gold mining community nestled in the dead winter snow of South Dakota’s Black Hills. Oh, and Corman advised Griffith that he also wanted a genuine cave-dwelling monster thrown in for good measure - that sort of thing was still selling. That was essentially all the background material given to Griffith to get started on the project.

Despite its menacing title Beast from Haunted Cave appears more a crime-drama than horror flick in the course of its 65-minute running time. The story revolves around the criminal doings of a circle of bandits: chain-smoking mastermind Alexander Ward (Frank Wolff), his two minions Marty Jones (Richard Sinatra) and Byron Smith (Wally Campo) and Ward’s oft- inebriated “secretary” Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Carol). The thieves have gathered in the snow-capped mountain winter of the pioneer town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Their plan is to plant an explosive in an abandoned cave in the early hours of a quiet Sunday morning. The explosion is set merely as a strategic ploy to distract authorities for a time, enabling the thieves’ free reign to steal gold bars from an unattended payroll office of a local gold-mining company.

Unfortunately, their plans don’t run smoothly. Ward’s dissatisfied and affection-starved lover-secretary, Gypsy, has a bit of a drinking problem. She complicates matters when she falls hard for ski instructor and trail guide Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), a swarthy, dark-haired gentleman of gentle temperament. (As an aside, I occasionally had a bit of trouble understanding actress Sheila Carol’s dialogue in this film: her diction seemed a perplexing amalgam of drunken slurred words and a faux Katherine Hepburn accent). The cold Ward takes notice of his woman’s wandering eye but is unworried. He has plans to kill Jackson once the skier - unwittingly - guides this gaggle of crooks on a cross-country trail run to a remote location.

Ward had plans to rendezvous with a waiting plane to ferry his gang - and their misbegotten treasure - off to safe sanctuary in Canada. But this plan too is scuttled by an unwelcome blizzard passing through the mountains. (As a second aside, Ward’s cross-country ski scheme is surely the most ineffectual escape route ever mapped by criminals carrying weighted gold bars in rucksacks. They really would have done better just hightailing it out of town in their rented car). To complicate matters further – and this is where the horror finally comes in - their explosive mine charge has awakened the titular beast, sort of an upright walking, giant spider that collects his victims by webbing them against cave walls and drinking their blood at his leisure. Let’s just say the moral of the story is a familiar one: essentially, crime doesn’t pay.

In Corman’s attempt to make their chilly time in the Black Hills more productive and worthwhile (i.e. profitable), the filming of Beast was to be produced back-to-back on location in Deadwood with yet another Charles B. Griffith script, Ski Troop Attack. This second film was to be a somewhat more ambitious project, a snow-bound WWII action-adventure pitting American ski-troopers against their wintry Nazi counterparts. The Corman team would use the same primary on-and off screen talents featured in the cast and credits of Beast for Ski Troop Attack.

The scenario of Ski Troop Attack referentially takes place in the snow-capped mountains of Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, circa December 1944. A small American band of ski-troopers are the only remaining Allied force active in this Nazi-controlled region, hiding themselves behind enemy lines so they can spy and report on SS ski-troop movements. The level-head Lieutenant Factor (Forest), a graduate of the Army’s Officer Candidate School, wishes to stay clear of engaging in active combat with the enemy. As the only team of Allied forces positioned inside the Nazi-controlled German-Belgian border, it is Forest’s belief his outfit should purposely avoid direct contact. He instead wants to concentrate his efforts on secret reconnaissance missions. By acting as the covert eyes of the good guys behind enemy lines, his outfit would be able to transmit vital information on Nazi troop movements back to HQ.

But Factor is at loggerheads with tough-talking Sergeant Potter (a mustache-less Wolff, again cast in a “heavy” role). Potter is described by Factor as an old school “regular army guy,” a man of pure fighting spirit but someone strategically short-sighted. Potter desperately wants to engage the Nazi ski-troopers in active combat and is mostly dismissive of the Factor’s civilian background and wartime decision-making capabilities. Potter does get a number of chances to engage in hand-to-hand combat. The film actually offers no shortage of brutal on screen violence with competing ski-troops ambushing and beating one another with fisticuffs, rifles butts, bayonets, knives and machine-gun fire.

Ultimately, the American’s decide to blow up a strategic railroad bridge that Allied air powers are unable to access and target. But while attempting to get to the base of the bridge to set off their detonators, they must first successfully climb an ice-covered vertical cliff side. If this isn’t problematic or dangerous enough, they must also fend off a team of six pursuing Nazi ski-troopers hot on their trail. The German skiing contingent, incidentally, is led by the badly-dubbed Roger Corman himself. The film’s climactic ending is, somewhat surprisingly for this type of adventure, more bleak than celebratory.

Griffith’s screenplay is actually far more nuanced than it is given credit for in the film’s original round of reviews. The sensitively written dialogue is mature – the scene where soldier Grammelsbacher (Sinatra) sits around a campfire musing if somewhere out there there’s still “a bullet with my name on it” – is particularly gripping. The better written dialogue also brings out better acting performances of all involved – including Shelia Carol who appears midway through the film as a spiteful German captive of the Americans.

The film does plod a bit. There’s a lot of wartime newsreel footage interlaced throughout, and no matter how beautiful the mountain settings are photographed, there’s far too many time-filling shots of ski-troopers silently trudging cross-country style through the tundra. Having said that that, there’s also some well-executed ski chase scenes captured on screen, such action-footage surprising for a film shot on a threadbare budget. The soundtrack of the film is riddled with the sound of machine-gun fire and a decent score courtesy of composer Fred Katz – though fans of Corman’s earliest films will surely recognize a good number of Katz’s recycled musical motifs are in play.

As both projects were to be shot on tight schedules, Roger’s brother, Gene, stepped in as the de facto producer of Beast. Once a Hollywood agent, Gene Corman was co-founder (with Roger) of their company Filmgroup, Inc. Gene’s earliest entries as producer would include a number of exploitative sci-fi efforts such as Night of the Blood Beast (1958) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). With Roger set to both produce and direct Ski Troop Attack, the directorial duties of Beast were given to first-timer Monte Hellman - whose only previous film experience was having worked as an apprentice editor at ABC-TV.

In his entertaining memoir, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (Random House, 1990), Roger Corman recalled the wintertime location shooting in and around snowbound Deadwood as “unbearable” and “a very tough challenge.” When shooting was to commence on the peak of Mount Terry, Corman recorded temperatures of a frigid thirty-eight degrees below zero. In the recollection of script supervisor Kinta Zertuche, her primary job was simply “to find ways to keep the film warm enough so it wouldn’t get brittle and crack.” She was also deigned to find ways of keeping the production cameras from freezing – not always successfully.

Production assistant Paul Rapp recalled he had been tasked to drive the parsimonious Corman – and an automobile-filled cache of film props - from Los Angeles to Deadwood, so the director “could save on airfare and have an extra car on location.” When filming one downhill ski sequence, Corman accidentally set off a small avalanche by shouting “Action!” too loudly through a bullhorn. Rapp recalled while the incident scared him half-to-death, Corman quickly realized the potential visual impact of what the camera was capturing. So the team was commanded to continue to roll film, Corman exhorting via bullhorn that his terrified skiers try their best to “Stay Ahead of the Avalanche!”

In March of 1959, there was a trade announcement that “Corman’s distributing outfit, The Filmgroup,” was planning to release Beast from Haunted Cave nationally (paired with The Wasp Woman) as early as June 1, with Ski Troop Attack (to be paired with Task Force 38) a little more than a month later, July 13. But neither of those prospective release dates would actually roll out as planned, even though the films themselves were ready to roll. Beast would come closest to realizing its projected release date, appearing on some screens in July 1959.

As early as February of 1960, Variety reported that the steamroller that was Filmgroup was optimistically planning to roll out eight feature films a month between March and June of 1960. Ski Troop Attack was to see release on the very tail end of that schedule. The Hollywood Reporter suggested Filmgroup’s plan as more ambitious than even originally announced: the company was planning on issuing no less than twenty-four features over a year’s period, with eleven of those titles already in the can and ready to go.

The company was also interested in testing international markets. It was reported that the usually closed-to-outsiders Soviet film market was interested in importing four Corman titles – including Beast and Ski – assuming whether or not Irving Allen, president of Canada’s Astral Films, could finalize a deal while visiting London. Later in May of 1960, it was reported Filmgroup had sealed another deal to distribute eight films – again, including Beast and Ski - throughout the Philippine islands. Finally, in August of 1960, Continental Distributors would obtain rights of Filmgroup product for European markets.

But the U.S. market was of most concern to the filmmakers. On March 16, 1960, there was a very belated press screening of the Beast and Wasp combo at the Hollywood Theatre. Variety was generally impressed with Hellman’s Beast, but suggested the film’s scenario was completely illogical. The critic also pondered that perhaps interest in horror films was generally on the wane. He opined, audiences were growing “inured to monsters and hardly blink when this one guzzles its customary quota of blood.” The review of Wasp was likewise middling in praise. The trade noted, while the film was certainly an “exploitable” passable entertainment, “it’s pretty slow and not very frightening.”

The “official” premiere of Beast from Haunted Cave was to take place at dual locations in South Dakota: Rapid City’s State Theatre and the Hile-Hi Drive-in outside of Deadwood: the latter venue was to enjoy a four day night run of Beast beginning August 2, 1959. This was obviously a nod of acknowledgment to the folks living in the area of the Black Mountain Hills who hosted and assisted the film’s production. But no matter how well-intentioned the “premiere” honor, Beast from Haunted Cave and The Wasp Woman had already been projected on screens in the mid and southwestern U.S. as early as July of ’59.

Earlier that spring, director Gene Corman had written Allan “Birdie” Arnold of Deadwood’s Chamber of Commerce City Council, a champion of the film shoot. “We saw a rough cut of our picture, it is very good and I’m sure everyone who helped, especially you, will be proud and pleased,” Gene wrote, adding, “I plan to make it a full length picture and hope to release it in the summer.” For their assistance, both Arnold and Mayor Ed Keene of Lead, South Dakota, were given “Technical Advisor” credits on Beast.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Richard Roundtree, whose portrayal of New York City private eye John Shaft made the character an iconic pop culture symbol, has passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 81. Roundtree was not the first actor to elevate the the image of Black male characters on the big screen. Stars such as Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson preceded him. However, Roundtree had his own inimitable style as Shaft: brash, self-assured and cocky. Poitier's detective Virgil Tibbs was also a ballsy man of action but, as a police officer, he still had to stay within the system. Roundtree's Shaft had his own rules and code of ethics. The success of "Shaft"  for MGM in 1971 also was a milestone for director Gordon Parks, making him the first Black director of a highly successful big studio film. Isaac Hayes's Oscar-winning classic title song also helped elevate the film's success. The MGM production inspired two sequels: "Shaft's Big Score" and "Shaft in Africa" as well a a short-lived TV series starring Roundtree. The actor would also appear as the same character in spin-off feature films released in 2000 and 2019. However, there was far more to Roundtree's talents and career and he worked consistently in TV and films before and after the release of the original Shaft film. Click here for more.

The following press release was received from The History Press.

“The 007 Diaries: Filming Live and Let Die” (Fine Press Edition) By Sir Roger Moore KBE

9781803992600 240 pages
4 October 2023, £350

· Will feature a new foreword from actress Madeline Smith (Agent Caruso in Live and Let Die) as well as an existing foreword by the late, great David Hedison (Felix Leiter)

· James Bond is synonymous with luxury, high-end products, and Bond fans typically seek these out (see 007store.com for examples)

· Live and Let Die is a much-loved and iconic Bond film, which lends itself to this format · Will include some more rare images from the filming of Live and Let Die

· The book will be individually numbered, beautifully produced, complete with slipcase

Out of print for over forty years, The 007 Diaries introduces Roger Moore’s James Bond Diary to a new generation of fans. To tie in with the release of his first James Bond film, Live and Let Die, Roger Moore agreed to keep a day-by-day diary throughout the film’s production, which would be published just ahead of the premiere in July 1973. From his unveiling as the new 007 in 1972 through to his first scenes on location in New Orleans and his final shot in New York, Moore describes his whirlwind journey as cinema’s most famous secret agent. Taking in the sights of Jamaica before returning to Pinewood Studios, Moore’s razor wit and unique brand of humour is ever present. With tales from every location, including his encounters with his co-stars and key crew members, Moore offers the reader an unusually candid, amusing and hugely insightful behind-the-scenes look into the world’s most successful film franchise.

AUTHOR DETAILS

SIR ROGER MOORE KBE had an extraordinary career that spanned seven decades, from early television to the golden age of Hollywood and on to international superstardom. Dashing, handsome and every inch the archetypal English gentleman, he was unforgettable as the title character in The Saint and as Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders! But it was as James Bond where he made his mark, playing the most debonair of the 007s in seven blockbusting films.

Click here for more information and to order. 

By Fred Blosser

Released on June 29, 1966, “Nevada Smith” was well-received by audiences who still flocked to A-list Westerns in those days, earning $14 million in ticket sales—about $132 million in today’s value. Produced by Joseph E. Levine and directed by Henry Hathaway, it starred Steve McQueen in the title role, as a young half-Indian man, birth name Max Sand, who determines to track down the three outlaws who murdered his parents. The movie was a spinoff from a previous Levine release, “The Carpetbaggers,” a sensational hit in 1964 based on a Harold Robbins novel. There, in his final role, Alan Ladd played the older Nevada Smith, a reformed gunfighter turned B-movie cowboy actor in the 1930s. Thus the 1966 release was a prequel, as we’d now call it, based on a lengthy section from Robbins’ novel. The reviews for the 1966 production were mostly positive, except for two opinions that observers continue to raise in on-line and print discussions about the film. At 35, they argue, McQueen was too old and seasoned to play a kid supposedly in his late teens. And with blond hair and blue eyes, nobody would mistake him for anyone with Native American genetics. Does either point of view stand up to examination? We McQueen fans would say, not really. Movies are all about illusion anyway, in case anyone forgets all those John Hughes films of the ‘80s starring actors in their twenties as high school kids. At this late date with McQueen’s iconic status firmly established, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing the part. (Although someone else tried, not counting Alan Ladd as the older, more sedate Nevada in “The Carpetbaggers.” Cliff Potts essayed the role in a 1975 TV production also titled “Nevada Smith,” designed as a direct sequel to Hathaway’s picture. Filmed as a hopeful pilot for a TV series, it’s pretty much forgotten now. Cliff Potts was a good actor, usually cast as charming but devious characters, but he was no Steve McQueen.)

In Hathaway’s movie, three drifters, Fitch, Bowdre, and Coe, ride up to young Max Sand and claim to be friends of his father’s. The actors in the roles were Karl Malden, Arthur Kennedy, and Martin Landau. Try to find a trio of that caliber in any 2023 release. Helpfully, Max tells the strangers to find the homestead, immediately getting a bad feeling when they speed off, yelling and firing their pistols. The three drifters know the elder Sand all right, but they’ve really come to demand the gold they believe he’s found in a nearby mine. When he says the mine is worthless, and all it ever yielded was a $38 nugget, the intruders don’t believe him and work themselves into a rage. Coe draws a knife, cold-bloodedly cuts Sand’s Kiowa wife, and threatens to skin her alive if the miner doesn’t tell them where he’s supposedly hidden his riches. By the time Max reaches the cabin, he finds his parents’ mangled corpses, and the killers are long gone.

Max sets out to avenge the murders, but inexperienced and naive, he isn’t cut out for the job—at first. “If you want to find those men, you’ll have to look in every saloon, hog farm, and whorehouse you come to,” warns a chance acquaintance, Jonas Cord (Brian Keith), a friendly traveling gunsmith. “You’ll have to become what they are, and wallow in the same garbage they do.” Realizing he can’t persuade Max to call it quits, Jonas teaches him the essential skills he’ll need to survive: draw fast and shoot straight, learn to play poker, do everything you can not to give yourself away, and don’t trust anybody, “not even your friends.” Working his way up through Coe and Bowdre, he finally locates Fitch. Calling himself “Nevada Smith,” he joins the outlaw’s new gang in a plan to rob a gold shipment, bringing the story, neatly, full circle. Fitch knows Max Sand is after him, but he doesn’t remember what Max looks like; regardless, he grows suspicious and paranoid about Nevada Smith as the day of the robbery approaches.

Filmed at locations in California and Louisiana (where Max robs a bank to get himself sentenced to a prison farm, next to Bowdre), “Nevada Smith” impressed audiences in 1966 with McQueen’s athletic performance against scenic outdoor backdrops, beautifully composed by Hathaway and his cinematographer, Lucian Ballard. This may not seem to be a remarkable achievement until you revisit the old TV Westerns of the ‘60s, which still run every day on streaming platforms like GritTV and Cinevault Westerns, and remember their tired stock-in-trade of aging stars, repetitive storylines, meager action, and generic backlot sets standing in for Dodge City, the Ponderosa, and the Big Valley. A new Blu-ray edition of “Nevada Smith” from Kino Lorber, in a 4K scan of the original camera negative, reproduces the vistas in stunning detail and richness, a long overdue boost for viewers who may have seen the movie only in edited, pan-and-scan TV prints. C. Courtney Joyner, Mark Jordan Legan, and Henry Parke offer a fine ensemble audio commentary, pointing out—among other elements—the legion of fine character actors in the supporting cast. Normally, I pride myself on that sort of Hollywood trivia, but Joyner, Legan, and Parke put me in my place. They pointed out some faces I would have missed otherwise.

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

Review: Clint Eastwood: The Iconic Filmmaker and his Work, by Ian Nathan, White Lion Publishing; 1st edition (7 Sept. 2023), Hardcover, 176 pages.

Clint Eastwood, one of the original stars to emerge from the ‘cool’ era of the Sixties, continues to demand the status of cultural icon on a worldwide basis. From the lone man with no name in the ‘Dollar’ movies to Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry franchise, bare knuckle fighter Philo Beddoe to an ageing Korean War veteran in Gran Torino and The Mule - his roles exemplified an undeniable screen magnetism and a masculine sense of command.

Eastwood was born in 1930 at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. An introverted child (by his own admission), a personality trait that probably surfaced due to an unsettled childhood which saw him constantly travelling wherever his father’s work would take him. He was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War where he became a lifeguard at Fort Ord. On his return he made a few appearances and given minor roles by director Jack Arnold in B pictures such as Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula. His big break came as Rowdy Yates in the TV Saga Rawhide, an hour-long western series which ran for over 7 years. It was during Rawhide that Eastwood accepted an offer to travel to a remote region of Spain in order to make a low-key western for a relatively unknown director, Sergio Leone. It turned out to be a smart move on Eastwood’s part and one that would catapult him to one of the leading lights of Hollywood.

Author and Film Critic Ian Nathan’s new book, Clint Eastwood, The Iconic Filmmaker and his Work (part of the Iconic Filmmakers Series) (ISBN-13?: ?978-0711283657), explores, in detail, Eastwood’s phenomenal Hollywood career as actor, director, producer and composer. As a leading actor in some of the biggest and most respected films to hit the cinema screens, Nathan breaks his book down into several linier chapters which makes for an easy-to-read timeline of events. But the author has also been smart enough to include other important departures such as his tenure as Mayor of Carmel and his move into directing. The transcendence from major box office sensation of the Seventies into more personal film projects of the Eighties and Nineties is smooth and seamless and never misses a beat. The book charts his maturity, examining certain myths and more challenging subjects as a filmmaker. The book explores Eastwood as he gradually moved more behind the camera as opposed to in front of it while maintaining a healthy respect from both fans and his peers.

I also like Nathan’s footer timeline. Appearing at the bottom of certain pages, it works well as a nice guide which keeps you on track during certain periods of his career. Of course, Eastwood’s career is long and distinguished, often making editing a real nightmare of a task. There’s a fine line between examining too deeply or not examining deep enough – especially in a career spanning nearly 70 years (and counting). But Nathan gets the balance just about right here. It covers all the important aspects of a very rich and varied career, and with just the right weight in terms of detail. I doubt if seasoned fans will find anything particularly new within its 176 pages, but they’ll certainly want to add it to their collection, regardless. Anyone wishing to examine Eastwood’s career, perhaps for the first time in book form, couldn’t really go far wrong with this as an entry point. It’s also lavishly packaged. A solid hardback edition which is also housed within a matching hardshell slipcase matching that of the book’s cover is as appealing as they come – and a particularly nice touch - as well as serving as a great form of protection.

Published by White Lion Publishing and released on 7th September, 2023 – this book also contains a wealth of impressive images, from rare posters, production shots and a wonderful collection of stills ranging from the early Universal years right up to Eastwood’s latest release, Cry Macho. Overall. it’s a lavishly detailed publication which I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending. It’s a book in which everyone involved should feel a genuine sense of pride and accomplishment. Darren Allison

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(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro. He also runs The Clint Eastwood Archive web site.)  

"BLAST FROM THE PAST: FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES"

By Lee Pfeiffer

"Saturday Night Live" spawned many a memorable comic character, some of whom were exploited in feature films. While "The Coneheads" proved to be  popular on the big screen, other TV-to-cinema transfers of iconic "SNL" pop culture figures proved to be duds. Al Franken's memorable incarnation of Stuart Smalley was the subject of "Stuart Saves His Family", a 1995 production directed by Harold Ramis that received some surprisingly favorable reviews but ended up with a North American boxoffice gross of less than $1 million. That ranks as a major success compared to "It's Pat: The Movie", released the prior year and starring Julia Sweeney as the androgynous character that proved to be a popular staple of "SNL" during this period. Pat was a visually unattractive figure with an obnoxious manner of speaking that repulsed his/her coworkers, who were constantly striving to discover whether Pat was a male or female. Inevitably, Pat would provide unintentionally ambiguous answers to leading questions that would only heighten the mystery and thwart those who were seeking to unveil Pat's genetic makeup. As the subject of five-minute comedy sketches the concept worked great and Sweeney's Pat became a popular staple of the show. Then Hollywood came knocking. Fox approached Sweeney to turn the concept into a feature film. Sweeney admitted she couldn't envision how Pat could remain interesting to viewers in any format other than TV skits. After putting some development money into the film, Fox agreed and backed off only to have Disney's Touchstone Pictures ride to the rescue and give the production the green light. The result was a disaster. The film was given some sporadic openings only to be pulled within a week due to complete rejection by audiences. The movie's boxoffice gross in North America stands at $61,000. Although modestly-budgeted, the movie still had cost more than $10 million to make. Time has not been kind to dear Pat, as it boasts a Rotten Tomatoes score of 0%. Now those brave souls at Kino Lorber have released a Blu-ray of "Pat: The Movie" and, consequently, it's time to revisit the film.

The plot (such as it is) opens with Pat alienating everyone in his/her orbit with obnoxious behavior. A local store owner gives Pat items for free just to expedite his/her departure. Pat tries various career moves but inevitably loses every job due to ineptness. Just when things seem hopeless, Pat finds love with Chris (Dave Foley in a role originated by Dana Carvey on "SNL"), another androgynous individual. The two set up house together and live as a normal couple, though both seem blissfully unaware that their sexuality is a mystery to those around them. Are they a straight couple? A gay couple? Two men? Two women? A subplot is introduced in which a hunky new neighbor, Kyle (Charles Rocket) and his wife Stacy (Julie Hayden) find their lives disrupted by Kyle's increasing obsession with Pat. He is sexually attracted to him/her, much to the alarm of Stacy, and that attraction turns into a psychological mania that finds Kyle dressing like Pat and even stroking a doll that resembles him/her. Meanwhile, the hapless Pat blunders into some successful career steps by making an appearance with a rock band that leads to him/ her becoming a media sensation. When he/she drops by a radio station to visit a friend, Kathy (Kathy Griffin), who hosts a popular romantic advice show, Pat unintentionally upstages her and gets the hosting gig. Pat's success has alienated Chris, who breaks up the relationship and decides to move abroad. The finale finds Pat coming to grips with his/her faults and making a mad dash to a cruise ship line to prevent Chris from leaving the country.

The animosity extended to "Pat: The Movie", which was directed by Adam Bernstein, is a bit difficult to understand. It isn't very good, to be sure, but it's amusing at times and never veers into the overtly offensive gross-out humor that characterizes many of today's comedies. One of the main problems with the film is that there are no sympathetic characters. I don't recall Pat being an overt narcissist on the "SNL" sketches but here the character is mean-spirited, self-centered and devoid of any likable behavior. Kyle is even more repulsive and barely looks up when his wife leaves him. Now this is an absurdist comedy, to be sure, but the best comedies allow the audience to relate to the protagonists on some level. Jerry Lewis and Jim Carrey played klutzes but they were klutzes you could cheer for. Not so with Sweeney's Pat. Additionally, Sweeney's fears that the one-note concept could not be sustained over the course of a feature film proved correct. Even with the running time of 77 minutes, the movie plods. Still, there are some genuine laughs, most of them centered on the traditional gag of those around Pat becoming increasingly frustrated by their failure to determine his/her sex. When Pat and Chris are presented with a gift of a sexy corset, they both smile wryly and say "We'll enjoy this!" There is also some genuine amusement in Pat's physical appearance, a kind of grotesque version of Jerry Lewis's Prof. Kelp from "The Nutty Professor". But the laughs are too few even for the abbreviated running time. There also some annoyances that are due to simple sloppiness: when Pat tries to escape a pursuer, she randomly enters a building only to find the place is a night club hosting a packed, on-going, ear-splitting rock concert taking place apparently in the middle of the afternoon. Such absurdities leave one to think that the film was slapped together quickly in order to make a fast buck.

Julia Sweeney tragically faced more challenges than the complete failure of "It's Pat" with critics and the public. Around the time of the film's release, her brother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. After caring for him, she was diagnosed with cancer. Sweeney beat the disease and made lemonade from the lemons life had handed her when she wrote and starred in her acclaimed one-woman play, "God Said Hah!" which chronicled her personal trials and tribulations through a comedic lens. (The play would later be the basis for a documentary.) Her co-star Charles Rocket fared worse, committing suicide in 2005. However, most of those associated with the debacle of "It's Pat" found their careers survived. Director Adam Bernstein went on to a highly successful career in television. Dave Foley continues to work steadily in TV and films and Kathy Griffin emerged as a popular standup comedienne and pundit on CNN until her increasingly foul-mouthed rants backfired, topped by sending around an image on social media depicting her holding the bloody, severed head of President Trump. That stunt achieved the distinction of being denounced by even the president's most ardent critics and Griffin lost her CNN gig.

"It's Pat" opened and closed before the age of E mail and social media had taken the world by storm. It's failure today would have been the stuff of snarky jokes and cynical criticisms of all those involved. However, because the film wasn't highly anticipated, it's failure occurred without much notice or damage to anyone's personal reputation. There's plenty of laughs left in dear Pat but they can mostly be found in the original "SNL" skits. Ironically, with transgender issues now the topic of current debates, the film might have found a more receptive audience today.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray has an impressive transfer, a teaser trailer for the film and a gallery of other comedies available through the company.

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By Hank Reineke

If we are to use history as a guide – as we should – Earl Derr Biggers’ creation of Charlie Chan marked the first occasion of a fictional Asian detective (Chinese-American to be precise) to be received warmly by not only a U.S. audience but by filmgoers worldwide. Biggers had published no fewer than six Chan mystery novels in the years 1925-1932. The author may have even continued the series had he not died young, age 48, in the spring of 1933. Though there had been preceding Chan film adaptations – the first being a 1926 serial - it wasn’t until Swede Warner Oland’s assumption of the role in 1931 that the character became an iconic totem of detective cinema.

Though Oland had a clear lock on the public’s perception of the inscrutable, unflappable Asian detective, the literary Chan was now moribund. Sensing a vacuum, yet another American author, John P. Marquand, would create the friendly (and obviously pre-war) Japanese spy Mr. Moto. The missions of that character were first serialized in issues of the Saturday Evening Post (1935-1938), those stories soon turned into novels by Boston’s Little Brown & Co. Following Daryl F. Zanuck’s licensing of character rights for 2oth Century Fox in July of 1936, the studio issued no fewer than eight Mr. Moto mystery films (featuring Peter Lorre) in the years 1937-1939.

Whether it was Lorre who chose not to renew his Fox contract, or whether Fox decided the series had simply played out or whether it was the actions of an increasingly belligerent and aggressive Japan (who would formally align with the Axis Powers in September of 1940), Mr. Moto’s final pre-WWII film adventure, ironically titled Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation, was released in summer of 1939. Whatever the reason, it was the success of the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto series that allowed Colliers magazine to coattail introduce Hugh Wiley’s Chinese-American James Lee Wong series of detective stories in 1934.

In September of 1938 a California newspaper reported that author Wiley had “just sold four of his detective stories, centering about the character of James Lee Wong, to Monogram Pictures.” The proposed film series was purportedly to feature Boris Karloff – just off production of Son of Frankenstein (Universal) – as the film’s title character. Technically, this character licensing report was old news. In February of 1938, there were already reports that Monogram’s Scott Dunlap was looking for the right actor to cast as Mr. Wong. There was one sensible suggestion that the studio was hoping to find a “Keye Luke” type. Luke was now approachable as Oland’s incarnate of Charlie Chan had recently come to an abrupt, sad end. When Oland passed in August of 1938, Luke was passed over for consideration as a successor. The part ignobly went to Sidney Toler, yet another actor of European ancestry.

Keye Luke was already a familiar figure to cinemagoers – he popularly played the “Number One Son” to Oland’s Chan in a number of films in that popular series. Luke chose to exit the Chan franchise following Oland’s passing: but while now available to Monogram he was not considered a guaranteed box office draw. The Los Angeles Daily News reported on April 14, 1938 that, following negotiations on a long-distance phone call, Dunlap had secured the promise of Boris Karloff, age 50, to star in the proposed series. Shortly following that news, snippy Hollywood gossiper Louella Parsons sniffed that Karloff was exhibiting more than a bit of courage should he expect to “muscle in on the territory so triumphantly held by Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto.”

On April 26, 1938, Variety reported that the Monogram president had been “conferring” with producer Scott R. Dunlap, looking to rush into production for the “1938-1939 releasing season” four new feature films, one of which was Mr. Wong, Detective. On 10 May Variety reported that Richard Weil, “the author of the Charlie Chan radio adventures” had been tasked to write the screenplay for the film. But whether due to a “conflict of interest” concern or simply a scheduling issue, Weil soon fell out and scripting duties went to Houston Branch, a Monogram dependable. In any event, it wasn’t until late August of 1938 that the trades announced that Monogram’s Mr. Wong film - suggested as the “first of four whodunits” all to star Boris Karloff - was to go into production in a week’s time. Industry trade Box Office made further note that the four Wong serial mysteries slated for production were Mr. Wong, Detective, Mr. Wong at Headquarters, Mr. Wong in Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wong.

There would be no shortage of Asian detective melodramas in 1938. Monogram’s Mr. Wong was to compete directly against 20^th Century Fox’s Mr. Moto series and the Chan films still touring the regional circuit. And all three would feature non-Asian actors as the title characters. Karloff, of course, was no stranger to accepting East-Asian roles, having already appeared in such films as The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) and, more recently, West of Shanghai (1937). On June 20^th, the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News offered while a complete script had not yet been turned in, cameras were set to roll on Mr. Wong, Detective in three weeks’ time. That deadline was apparently missed, as the first day of shooting on Mr. Wong, Detective would not start until late August (the 25^th according to one contemporary newspaper accounting, the 24^th according to this film’s audio commentary).

We do know that on 3 September 1938, a journalist visited Monogram’s Mr. Wong set. The writer had chosen to sit through a portion of Karloff’s grueling three-and-a-half hour session in the makeup chair of Gordon Bau. Karloff was no stranger to make-up applications, but admitted to the reporter that such wearying sessions weren’t the favorite part of his day. “It’s lovely to get up and go to the studio at 6:00 A.M., stretch out in a barber chair and have somebody with hobnailed boots crawl in and out of your eyes.” Bau defensively parried that such applications were necessary evils, admitting his work on applying rubber cement near Karloff’s eyes to create epicurean folds proved the most challenging part of the actor’s physical transformation.

Karloff agreed the eye make-up applications were the most wearying to endure. “By the time you get done,” Karloff sighed, “my eyeballs are pressed, my vision is off focus and I walk around all day in a haze.” Turning his attention to the visiting journalist, Karloff sniggered, “And when finally he gets through with me, he’s proud of what he’s done. He thinks it is a work of art.” For the most part, Karloff’s reimaging is surprisingly subtle: a slick of pressed black hair, a slim moustache and thickened eyebrows, slight eye folds often disguised behind a set of reading glasses.

If Bau’s reasonably understated make-up appliance was a work of art, critics were divided on whether or not Mr. Wong, Detective was. The story itself concerns a cabal of spies working in interest of an unnamed foreign power and trying to steal a poison gas formula for nefarious ends. The first of Monogram’s Mr. Wong pictures, shot in a mere few weeks’ time, was set for October 5, 1938 release – a mere month following Karloff’s session in Bau’s make-up chair.

Upon the film’s release Variety couldn’t help but comment on the film’s rushed, bargain basement appearance, citing the production as ranging at best from “standard to skimpy.” The Variety critic blamed director William Nigh and scripter Houston Branch for the film’s shortfalls: “First picture suffers from directorial and writing troubles, plus a combination of careless acting and haphazard casting,” the reviewer sighed. Despite such criticism, it was noted that Karloff did the best with the lackluster material given. Fighting “vigorously” against the odds, the scribe conceded that Karloff had at the very least proven his utility as an actor: his presence was enough to prove he needn’t have to affix “grotesque makeup to register.”

Other reviews were kinder. London’s Picturegoer was less critical of the picture, describing Karloff’s Mr. Wong as “a serious rival to Charlie Chan.” But exhibitors were more cautious, split in their opinion of the film’s merit: when one described Mr. Wong Detective, “Worthy of a top spot on a double,” a second complained, “Where does Monogram get the idea this is good? Awful – slowest moving thing I have seen in years.”

Slow or not, by late January of 1939, Monogram was already into production of the second of the series, The Mystery of Mr. Wong. W.T. Lackey took over producing duties from Scott Dunlap, and scripter Branch was relieved of scenario duties, screenwriting credit given to W. Scott Darling. Darling had been the screenwriter of Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936) which, interestingly, pitted Oland’s detective against a villainous Boris Karloff.

This second Wong was more of a pedestrian and routine parlor murder mystery, one concerning the theft of a rare and expensive sapphire. By March of 1939, The Mystery of Mr. Wong was already reported as being in the “cutting room.” The film would be released in April of 1939. Though this second entry of the series fared a wee better than its predecessor in critical analysis, this sophomore effort too was faulted for its “lack of action,” the weaving of too many obvious red herrings into the script, and an appreciable number of wooden performances by the cast.

The lukewarm reviews were of little consequence. That same April, it was announced that scripter Darling was to return and write the series’ third entry, Mr. Wong in Chinatown (aka Mr. Wong’s Chinatown Squad). At Monogram’s sales convention at Chicago’s Drake Hotel in spring of 1939, it was evident - despite the lackluster reviews - that studio bosses were pleased with the box office takes of the first two Wong serials. They promised four more titles were already in the pipeline: Mr. Wong Vanishes, Mr. Wong in Havana, Mr. Wong’s Chinatown Squad and Mr. Wong in New York.

By June of 1939 Mr. Wong in Chinatown was already well in production, screenwriter Darling reported mid-month to have already begun scripting duties on what would be the fourth of the series, Mr. Wong at Headquarters. The scenario for Mr. Wong in Chinatown concerns his investigation into the murder of a royal princess who had been visiting the United States on a mission to purchase airplanes for defense of her country against a hostile nation-state.

When Mr. Wong in Chinatown was previewed in July of 1939, the reviews remained consistent with the first two, tagging the film a “slow whodunit.” Though the picture was lacking in any appreciable action, there was a concession that enough, “color and mystery [was] attached to the proceedings to attract fair trade” – well, if exploited properly. One exhibitor agreed, reporting good box office receipts and anointing Mr. Wong in Chinatown, the “Best of the Wong series” to date.

The blandly titled Mr. Wong at Headquarters went into production in November of 1939, and was already in the cutting room by December’s end. By January of 1940 the film’s working title was officially changed to the more mysterious and exotic The Fatal Hour and scheduled for a January 15, 1940 release. This time Wong is called to investigate the waterfront murder of a fellow detective, the scenario intertwined with a bit of a smuggling subplot. New York’s Daily News thought it a not particularly “absorbing of murder mysteries, although it is filled with enough complications to make a Philadelphia lawyer’s head spin.”

In late January of 1940, the Los Angeles Times reported, erroneously, that a fifth Mr. Wong serial - tentatively titled Chamber of Horrors – was in the works, Dorothy Reid cited as readying a script. Some months later the trades reported, far more reliably, that William Nigh was, for a fifth time, signed to direct a Mr. Wong mystery. Though Reid would not be associated with this final Karloff Mr. Wong effort, there was no reason to disbelieve the Times initial report: Reid had served as a producer and writer at Monogram and had previously collaborated with Nigh on such productions as A Bride for Henry (1937) and Rose of the Rio Grande (1938). There was in fact a Monogram horror flick titled Chamber of Horrors produced in 1940, but this was a Norman Lee film, based on the creaky Edgar Wallace novel of 1926, The Door with Seven Locks. Neither Reid nor Nigh was publically connected to that film’s production.

When the final Karloff Wong film, Doomed to Die (aka Mystery of the Wentworth Castle from a script penned by series’ newcomer Ralph G. Bettinson), played Manhattan’s Rialto Theatre, the Hollywood Reporter caustically reported the picture was, if nothing else, “aptly named for it died within a few days” of its showcase. The Baltimore Sun coldly piled on with a bad notice of its own: “The direction, writing and acting are slipshod beyond the limit of that large tolerance accorded this extravert type of drama.” Still more harsh criticism of the picture lie ahead. “Charlie Chan would shake with professional pity,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune, sighing that the great Karloff “has never had a duller, more unexacting role.”

It was the last of Karloff’s involvement in the Mr. Wong series. There was really no reason for the actor to continue on in the role as he certainly did not need the work – nor did he need the piling on of bad notices that continued to accumulate. In 1940, the year that Doomed to Die was released, Karloff would star in no fewer than nine additional features for Columbia, Warner Bros., Universal, RKO Radio and Monogram. He would certainly survive his departure from the role. But would Mr. Wong?

That question was answered in June of 1940 when Monogram announced Keye Luke as Karloff’s successor in the role. It was a sensible progressive move on Monogram’s part, a UPI correspondent writing a glowing tribute to Keye Luke who would now serve – at long last – as “cinema’s one and only genuine Oriental detective.” Though Monogram signed the actor to a four-picture “Mr. Wong” deal, the only entry produced with Luke in the detective role was Phil Rosen’s Phantom of Chinatown, released in November of 1940. The change of actor (and director) was mostly seamless and arguably refreshing: Luke did bring a bit more energy and excitement to the role. (Karloff was often cited by critics as a miscast who, largely unchallenged, chose to sleepwalk through the role). Most reviews of Luke’s Wong were complimentary, echoing those of a Variety critic who thought Phantom of Chinatown “worthy of the average ‘B’ thriller of this type.”

There was some industry talk in January of 1941 that Paul Malvern (an associate producer of Doomed to Die and the producer of Phantom of Chinatown) was preparing Luke’s return as Mr. Wong for the actor’s second outing, provisionally titled Million Dollar Mystery. Had that film been produced, it would have been the seventh in the Monogram series. But no such film was greenlit (perhaps due to Malvern’s 1941 defection to Universal) making Phantom of Chinatown the last of Monogram’s Mr. Wong series. Luke would fulfil his four-pic Monogram contract in a waste of his talent making small appearances in The Gang’s All Here, Bowery Blitzkrieg and Let’s Go Collegiate, all released in 1941.

It’s of some disappointment that Phantom of Chinatown was excluded from this new Kino Lorber Blu-ray collection. Perhaps Kino is planning a standalone release of the title sometime in the future… at least I hope so. In the meantime, I suppose sad Completists will have to hang on to their copies of VCI’s Mr. Wong Detective: The Complete Collection DVD set for a bit longer. (Luke’s Phantom of Chinatown can be found on that 2008 set in far better quality than you can find any of those bargain-priced PD multi-film “mystery collection” type collections… although the DVD issued by Film Detective in 2015 is also a worthwhile seek out).

The five films featured on this Kino Lorber Studio Classic Blu-ray issue of their Boris Karloff: Mr. Wong Collection are all presented in 1920x1080p, in 1.37:1 aspect and DTS monaural sound. The films have been sourced from new Hi-Definition masters made from 2K fine grain scans. The films are not visually perfect. There are moments of flickering, and scratches and print damage, but this is likely the best we’ll ever get of these dimly-recalled throw-away programmers. I’m certainly not complaining.

Other than the usual removable English subs, the Kino set includes only a single feature – an audio commentary for Mr. Wong, Detective courtesy of Tom Weaver and Larry Blamire. On first pass, it might seem the inclusion of only a single commentary on a five-film set is sparse and ungenerous. But the behind-the-camera artisans of Wong series were a particularly insular if clever and creative cabal: William Nigh, director of all five Karloff entries, actor Grant Withers as “Captain Street” in all five as well, William Lackey, an associate producer of four, and W. Scott Darling the screenwriter of three. The contributions of these and others in front of and behind the camera are duly noted on this set’s single but informative and engaging commentary.

Weaver suggests at the commentaries front end that his plan is to “keep things fun,” and he most certainly does. Both Weaver and Blamire have done their homework, digging out practically every morsel of historical information they could source for these uncelebrated Monogram quickies: this includes their deep dig into (less reliable) information gleaned from ballyhoo appearing in the film’s pressbook and other publicity materials, alongside contemporary reviews from the Hollywood trades and newspapers. Blamire has really gone the extra mile, choosing to preemptively read twelve of the twenty Hugh Wiley’s Mr. Wong short-stories so he might pick out the moments and small bits the filmmakers used for the series.

I wasn’t as admiring of the “actor re-creations” of interview transcripts of Karloff and others scattered about the commentary. It seems unnecessary and distracting - a simple “quote/unquote” recitation of such material is preferable to badly-mimicked vocal imitations. The (thankfully) occasional insertion of MST3K-style sound effects and dubbed-in jokey one-liners were also unnecessary IMHO, but I’m admittedly a grouch. If you prefer your Wong with a dash of irreverence then have at it. Weaver and Blamire also sidecar their commentary with several detours touching on the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto series, all fair game. All in all, the commentary track serves as an excellent primer for fans wishing to learn a bit more about Mr. Wong on page and film. To summarize, this excellent package from Kino Lorber is a “must-have."

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By Todd Garbarini

“Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…”

These four words…sorry, this single word spoken four times…by the inimitable Ben Stein in the late John Hughes’s highly popular teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off while reading off the attendance roster to his near catatonic high school class has worked its way into the American lexicon to the point that it has become recognizable to anyone even remotely familiar with the film. Like its predecessors, the “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” ad-lib from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), and Jack Nicholson’s quirky yet somehow terrifying “Here’s Johnny!” from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), one need not have seen the film to know from where it originated. The adults in this film are all depicted as somehow less smart than their adolescent counterparts and all seem to be easily duped and manipulated. Why are they depicted this way? Was the director, who was also the writer of Mr. Mom (1983), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Weird Science (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986), simply not a fan of the adult world, a modern-day J.D. Salinger?

Ferris Bueller, the titular hero, is a Northbrook, Illinois high school student two months shy of his high school graduation and commits a crime that all students have at one time or another – he feigns serious illness to stay home from school. However, it is not for nefarious purposes: he wants to get his best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck), out of the doldrums. His parents are complete dolts for believing him, though his sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) and Principal Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) both see right through this common ploy and the latter, whose small-mindedness and lack of stature outside of his role of an authoritarian, drives him to catch Ferris in the act at any cost. He goes to great lengths to catch Bueller, breaking the rules, and even some laws, that find him in the Bueller household, face-to-face with a vicious dog.

Playing hooky for the day with a reluctant Cameron and Ferris’s girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) whom he gets out of school posing as her father in a get-up not dissimilar from the accoutrements he would later don as the titular Inspector Gadget he would play in the 1999 film of the same name. The trio finds themselves in a series of misadventures throughout Chicago via Cameron’s upscale father’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder which occupies much of the film’s running time, the most significant of which is the film’s famous and highly celebrated moment when Ferris commandeers a float during a parade and leads the onlookers through an impromptu lip-synch of The Beatles hit “Twist and Shout.” It is not all fun and games, however, when we learn of Cameron’s contempt for his father’s car which the latter supposedly cares more about than his own son. He sublimates his anger in a highly volatile and emotional scene that proves cathartic for Cameron and, in a way, for Ferris as well. It would explain why Cameron is always uptight and unable to relax, something that the carefree Ferris hopes to change. In many ways, Cameron and Jeanie are not dissimilar from one another, as they both find teen life to be insufferable, and that makes them the most realistic characters in the film.

Ferris is unusual in that he is not only a free spirit, but just about everyone in his high school, regardless of their grade level, likes him. Why? He has proven that he can get away with just about anything. He’s also willing to help others out of their predicaments. This mindset is what makes him elusive from Principal Rooney, a self-appointed Truancy Officer determined to catch Ferris in the act of cutting school because Rooney’s identity outside of high school appears to be non-existent. He is the Coyote to Bueller’s Road Runner, and he takes the whole situation personally.

The film, which opened nationwide on Wednesday, June 11, 1986, differs from most comedies in that it breaks the fourth wall in the tradition of Woody Allen’s great Annie Hall (1977) when Ferris addresses the audience directly during much of the action. In the pantheon of teen comedies, Ferris Bueller is clearly de rigueur viewing and, given that it was lensed between September and November in 1985, feels very Eighties and inspired by Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman computer geek from John Badham’s entertaining 1983 film WarGames with Ferris’s ability to remotely change his sick days in the high school computer right before his principal’s very eyes. Ferris rigs his room and front door intercom with an ingenious array of general solutions anticipating most common eventualities that could undo his plan to keep his parents thinking that he is sleeping off illness.

Ferris Bueller did exceptionally well at the box office, easily becoming an iconic Eighties Comedy, the film that essentially made Mr. Broderick a star following his screen debut in Herbert Ross’s Max Dugan Returns several years earlier and playing opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in Richard Donner’s Ladyhawke (1985). Cameos abound by a fifteen-year-old Kristy Swanson just before she became Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, Richard Edson, Charlie Sheen just before he made Platoon with Oliver Stone, and comedian Louie Anderson. With the exception of some on-set studio shots in Los Angeles and Ferris Bueller’s house location in Long Beach, CA (eight houses away from the home that Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko is set in), the film is shot nearly entirely in Illinois, the director’s home state.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has been released on 4K UHD Blu-ray by Paramount Home Video. This is the best that the film has ever looked on video, easily besting all previous releases. It also comes loaded with previously released extras:

There is a feature-length audio commentary by director Hughes, the only one that he ever recorded for his any of his films, ported over from the 1999 DVD release. Glaringly missing from subsequent DVD and Blu-ray editions of the movie (reportedly at the behest of the director who probably got tired of Hollywood and moved back to his home state to keep a low profile), its inclusion here is welcome, appreciated, and more than likely included for two reasons - a response to the director’s untimely demise and to compel die-hard fans to fork over their disposable income for this latest upgraded edition. It is pretty much scene-specific with very minor tangents. It stays on-topic, and Mr. Hughes had a very monotone and droll delivery.

The following are all ported over from the 2006 special edition DVD “Bueller…Bueller” and 2009 Blu-ray editions:

Getting the Class Together: The Cast of Ferris Bueller's Day Off – this piece runs 27:45 in standard definition and the interviews were shot in 2005. The film’s casting directors, Jane Jenkins and Janet Hirshenson, begin this piece feeling that Matthew Broderick or John Cusack would be great in the lead role. Mr. Broderick was in Biloxi Blues on Broadway with Alan Ruck when he was offered the role and their chemistry transferred over from real life to the stage, and then to the audition when the latter was offered Cameron. Mia Sara, Jennifer Grey, Lyman Ward, Cindy Pickett, Jeffrey Jones, Edie McClurg, Ben Stein (a very humorous tidbit), Richard Edson, Kristy Swanson, and Jonathan Schmock all add their two cents on their experiences.

The Making of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off runs 15:29 and really should be much longer and for what it is, it includes some footage shot during the filming in addition to recent interviews taking a look back at the film, such as Jeffrey Jones and Edie McClurg and their “Help, Hinder” game; Alan Ruck talks about the Ferrari and how three replicas were made for the film; Matthew Broderick talks about the parade sequence and how it was a one-shot deal and how knee surgery from years earlier affected him in the sequence.

Who is Ferris Bueller? runs 9:12 and collects cast members and their responses to the question from 1985-87 and 2005. Alan Ruck talks about the wardrobe fittings and how there was no chemistry between the characters and being put at ease by the director. Ferris is a guy who does whatever he wants and has the self-confidence that his friends lack.

The World According to Ben Stein runs 10:50 and is comprised of comments from Mr. Stein in 1986 and 2005 talking about his experiences following the success of the film, with funny tidbits about Kurt Cobain and even President Bush (the first one) having seen the film on Air Force One.

Vintage Ferris Bueller: The Lost Tapes runs 10:16 and provides outtakes from the expurgated restaurant scene of Cameron ordering pancreas that the director refers to in his commentary.

There was a Class Album gallery that appeared in the previous releases, but it is inexplicably dropped from this release.

The film’s original theatrical trailer is also missing for unknown reasons, though you can see it here and a later trailer to promote the Blu-ray at the time.

The ending of the film recalls Paul Brickman’s Risky Business from 1983 (think of Tom Cruise landing on his parents’ couch when they walk in from their trip) when Ferris makes it home just in time to get into bed as his parents head into his room. Ferris, addressing the audience, says, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” This line, which is far more upbeat than the plaintive final sentences of J.D. Salinger’s classic novel of adolescent angst The Catcher in the Rye (1951), rings true for people more today than it did when it was filmed. Social media, computers, and cell phones all conspire to divert our attention from the meaningful things in life.

One can only imagine what sort of mischief Ferris would create today with the World Wide Web and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Perhaps a remake is in order?

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Turner Classic Movies.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will celebrate the life and career of director William Friedkin with a programming tribute this September and November. Friedkin, who died August 7 at the age of 87, started his career by directing one of the last episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He went on to be known as one of the iconic directors of New Hollywood in the 1970s with such hits as The Exorcist (1973) and The French Connection (1971), which won him the Academy Award® for Best Director. William Friedkin was a great friend to Turner Classic Movies and he attended the TCM Classic Film Festival several times, most recently in April 2023.

TCM Remembers William Friedkin Part 1 – Thursday, September 14
8:00 PM – The French Connection (1971) – Two New York narcotics cops set out to bust a French drug smuggling ring.
10:00 PM – To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) – A Secret Service agent becomes obsessed with tracking down a notorious and dangerous Los Angeles counterfeitor.
12:15 AM – The Boys in the Band (1970) – A gay birthday party turns into a night of soul-searching when the host's straight college roommate turns up by mistake.

TCM Remembers William Friedkin Part 2 – Sunday, November 26
8:00 PM – Friedkin Uncut (2018) – TCM Premiere – In this documentary, William Friedkin is interviewed about his career, alongside a number of his colleagues and industry admirers.
10:00 PM – The Exorcist (1973) – A priest battles to save a young girl possessed by demons.

By Mark Cerulli

It’s easy to lose track of time in the Bahamas – every day is sunny and beautiful just like the day before it… and yet things DO change, especially in the almost six decades since the EON film crew took the island by storm to shoot their James Bond masterpiece, Thunderball. Back then it was a sleepy tropical island for the occasional cruise ship and small numbers of tourists making the short hop from Miami. Aside from the port city of Nassau, much of the island was undeveloped.

Today the Bahamas is a thriving tourist destination attracting almost one million visitors annually. On most days, Nassau hosts multiple cruise ships disgorging thousands of passengers who storm the downtown shops and restaurants. Although the Thunderball era is long gone, there are still remnants of it throughout the island. With just a couple of days, no way could I have done the deep dive that Simon Firth did in his definitive Filming James Bond in the Bahamas, but I could visit some of the key destinations still around after 58 years.

Mention James Bond and almost everyone you meet has a story – from encountering Sean Connery to talking about Thunderball. “I used to work in that liquor store,” our airport driver said as we rolled past a strip mall on the way to our hotel. “Mr. Connery would come in and buy wine. He was always very nice.” As we passed a small plaza he pointed “And right there he’d have a coffee and read a book most mornings.” It’s easy to see why Sir Sean settled in Nassau – the locals treated him as just another resident, not the iconic film star he actually was. No autograph or photo requests, just the famous Bahamian hospitality which gave him what all celebrities crave – anonymity.

Still bummed at missing the great fan-organized tours for one reason or another, this was about as close as I was going to get…

LOVE BEACH

In Thunderball, the beach appeared remote and untouched, filled with palm trees, most noticeably the one Bond spears Vargas to while delivering that classic line, “I think he got the point.”

 

Today Love Beach is still beautiful but now there are private homes where the lush woods that Vargas strode through once were. I also read it took a hard hit from a hurricane some years back. The only easy access point is through a surfside bar called Nirvana Beach which charges $5 per person for admittance. I got the impression the place was hopping at night, but during a weekday, there was hardly anyone. After a blazing hot walk on the beach trying to find “THE” spot where the spear-gunning took place, I settled for a random palm tree and my VERY patient wife took the obligatory photo before saying “I’m f---ing melting here.” Further exploration now out of the question, we made tracks back to the Nirvana bar for a couple of ice-cold Kalik beers. I mentioned that a Bond epic had been filmed at this lovely spot. “Oh, really?” was the female bartender’s response, adding, “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Ok, so perhaps not everyone is a rabid fan…

DOWNTOWN NASSAU

We managed only a quick trip in to pick up some souvenirs and were lucky that only one mammoth cruise ship was in port. I went over to Rawson Square which, in our favorite film, Bond and Paula are seen walking across heading for Pinder’s staging area. Along with a busy market, an old government building – Churchill House – is clearly visible. Sadly, Churchill House is no more – a parking lot now sits where it once stood. As Joni Mitchell sang, “They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.”

THE SEAWALL

In 1965 this breakwater was off a sleepy beach road on Paradise Island. Here Bond infiltrates the Spectre dive team as they suit up to move their stolen nuclear bombs. Today it’s an architectural relic located on Cabbage Beach, now part of the massive, 154-acre Atlantis Resort. Few if any of the guests enjoying the beach even know it’s there! Bond aside, there are tons of things to do and see in Atlantis so buying a day pass ($190 for adults, $95 for kids) might be worth it. Along with pools, rides, restaurants you can also walk up to the sea wall. I reached out to the resort a few weeks out from my trip and their PR department graciously responded, allowing me a visit and assigning me a very personable guide named Kool Aid who knew everything about the resort and had an impressive knowledge of the island’s Bond locales.

We walked from the hotel lobby through Atlantis’ underground aquarium which boasted a variety of marine life – from huge groupers to moray eels, sharks and more, all living in crystal-clear water pumped in from the nearby ocean. As part of “The Blue Project”, Atlantis also operates a coral nursery where they grow this vital organism (on lengths of PVC pipe) to replenish ailing reefs. As ocean temperatures rise, programs like this will become more and more important so good on the resort for stepping up. And then we walked over a causeway to Cabbage Beach. Fifty-eight storm seasons had taken a toll on the concrete, but the seawall was still there and looked much as it did in the film. To say I took some photos would be an understatement.

On the way out, Kool Aid asked if I wanted to see the location of the ORIGINAL Café Martinique. Why, yes… yes I would! We went back through the lobby and he pointed to a take-out pizza restaurant in a pink tower which is where the legendary restaurant once operated. Again, it was difficult to picture the elegant and romantic Café from the film in light of the area’s total transformation. Perhaps in a nod to the island’s history, the resort did create another Café Martinique nearby.

On my next to last day, I got to see (for me) the Crown Jewel of Bahamian Bond locations –Palmyra…

LARGO’S HOUSE

For many years it’s been owned by a prominent Bahamian family and its local name is “Rock Point.” Most islanders know it as “The Bond House.” The owners kindly allowed me access to the grounds. (Unoccupied for a number of years, the house itself is firmly boarded up and there is a 24-hour guard.) Yes, it’s run down, but here it was easy to picture it from the film – the balcony where Largo and Fiona shot clay targets is different from 1965 but still hints at the home’s grandeur – and the ocean view is mind-blowing. The basement doors that Connery used to access Palmyra actually lead to the pool’s pump room - the swinging doors themselves are long gone, but the structure is still there.

The huge swimming pool where Bond escapes hungry sharks is intact but filled with brackish water. Even this rabid Thunderball fanatic didn’t want to do a lap in it – although I couldn’t resist wearing my Orlebar Brown Thunderball camp shirt! I also noticed the pool’s cement cutout where the controls for the metal grating used to trap Bond underwater once were.

The circular Shark Pool where the Golden Grotto sharks were kept is still there, but part of the outer wall has collapsed allowing ocean water to flow in and out. Still, it would be a relatively easy fix to restore. The estate also boasts a gorgeous private beach. The owner’s son said the family was talking over various plans to rehabilitate the property and bring it back to its former glory. The bones are all there – the house appears to be structurally sound, and a coat of paint would make it look as it did when Terence Young’s cameras were rolling. In this writer’s mind, there’s no reason it couldn’t become another GoldenEye type destination – or the best 00 bar this side of Duke’s!

As a bonus I managed to hit two more Bondian locations – The Four Seasons Resort Ocean Club (formerly the One and Only Resort) seen in Casino Royale and Solemar Restaurant – formerly known as Compass Point. This was a happy coincidence as we and our friends just happened to go there for dinner. The restaurant was never in a Bond film but it was a favorite of Sean and Micheline’s. Apparently, he used to like their lamb chops so that’s what I had. Yesh, they were great!

Many kind thanks to Simon Firth and Jaime Ciaccia for location tips and pointers.

(All photos copyright Mark Cerullli. All rights reserved.)

"You're Gonna Need a Bigger Theatre".

By Lee Pfeiffer

Those of us of a certain age can indulge in bragging rights because we saw "Jaws" when it first opened in theaters in June, 1975. I was a 19 year-old college student at the time and was serving as film critic for my campus newspaper. Ordinarily, I would have received an invitation from the studio to view the film in advance. But this was not the case with "Jaws". Perhaps the top echelon of critics were given this privilege, but Universal wanted to capitalize on the element of surprise and didn't want spoilers to leak out quickly. Thus, my girlfriend and I stood amidst the seemingly endless queue waiting for tickets on opening night. We were fortunate to get into the theater, as many disappointed patrons were turned away when the venue maxed out. To be clear, "Jaws" was not a sleeper hit; a little-heralded gem that surprised the industry by becoming a major success. Quite the contrary. Peter Benchley's bestselling novel was deemed to be the basis of a sure-fire major studio hit and Universal was optimistic from the start that the film would be a major moneymaker. However, no one could have predicted just how big of a hit the film would be, certainly not the average movie-goer who anticipated a fun flick with some genuine scares. From the first frames of the movie, I realized the film would be something special thanks to the largely untested 25 year-old director Steven Spielberg, who initially won some attention for his direction of "Duel", a 1971 American TV production in which Dennis Weaver is trapped in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a mysterious and murderous truck driver on a desert highway. By the the time the end credits of "Jaws" rolled on screen, I knew I had seen a genuine masterpiece. The societal impact of the film was astonishing. The next day we went to the beach on the Jersey Shore. It was packed but curiously, relatively few people were in the water. The news would later report that so many people had seen the film the first day that they were wary of sticking so much as a big toe into the ocean.

The "Jaws" phenomenon has persisted through the decades, surviving lousy sequels and a barrage of bargain basement imitations. In 2005, Cinema Retro was invited to the official "Jaws Fest" on Martha's Vineyard, a marvelous event that featured cast and crew members, an appearance by Peter Benchley and the town remade into the village of Amity, complete with the original signage used in the film. The highlight was a screening of the film on the beach preceded by a special filmed welcome from Steven Spielberg. Now the ultimate tribute to the film comes to Broadway in the form of the three-character play "The Shark is Broken", co-written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon. Unless you've been living in a cave, you've undoubtedly read that Shaw is the son of the late esteemed actor and playwright, Robert Shaw, who played the role of the Ahab-like shark fisherman Quint in the film. Ian (I will refer to him by his first name to avoid confusing references to his father) also plays his dad in the production. He's joined by Alex Brightman as Richard Dreyfuss and and Colin Donnell as Roy Scheider. The entire play takes place in the fishing boat Orca in which the three fictional heroes in the film set out to kill the renegade shark that has devoured swimmers in the town of Amity. Ian and Nixon delved into researching the production troubles encountered in the making of the film, which went far over schedule and over budget, stranding the cast and crew on the tony island. As the play unfolds, we see Shaw, Scheider and Dreyfuss expressing frustration at their plight. They are angry and bored and the shoot has no end in sight as director Spielberg (not seen in the play, but occasionally heard) grapples with the unforgiving weather and endless mechanical problems that prohibit the giant mechanical shark from operating properly, hence the title of the play. The three men drink, smoke and engage in mutual ball-busting insults, as men will inevitably do when a bottle is passed around. At times they are genuinely friendly but Shaw's alcoholism leads to a tension between him and Dreyfuss, who bears the brunt of his wrath. In this war between co-stars, the cool and calm Scheider tries to play the role of Switzerland and maintain a truce between the combatants. All of them fear that they are starring in a stinker that will damage their careers. The play is primarily a comedy but don't expect pratfalls and one-liners. The laughs evolve believably through the excellent script,which also provides some dramatic and emotional moments concerning Shaw's inability to deliver the most important dialogue because he is drunk.The scene concerns Quint's dramatic soliloquy about the horrors that befell the crew of the sunken U.S.S. Indianapolis, which was sunk in the Pacific during the final days of the WWII. The survivors languished in the water for days with many dying from predatory sharks. As in real life, the play depicts Shaw's self-recognition that he had compromised the emotional heart of the film and we watch him prepare to atone for his sin by doing the scene right on the second take. (Shaw's delivery of this speech in the film should have seen him nominated for an Oscar.)

Director Guy Masterson has a genuine feel for the characters. There are no over-the-top moments and Masterson handles both the humor and the considerable pathos with equal skill. I especially enjoyed the chuckles derived from Shaw reading about the on-going Watergate scandal that was unfolding in 1974 when "Jaws" was being filmed. Duncan Henderson's set design is a model of efficiency. The men may be confined to the Orca but the production never looks chintzy. Credit Nina Dunn's masterful rear screen ocean scenes, which add immeasurably in "opening up" the play. In an age of over-produced, over-priced and over-blown Broadway shows, "The Shark is Broken" is like a revelation. It boils theater down to the basics- and thankfully no one decided to ruin this film-to-stage adaptation by inserting some dreadful musical numbers, as has been the norm on Broadway. The historic Golden Theatre is the perfect venue for this production, as it's not-to-large and not-too-small. It allows the audience to experience the intimacy of the dialogue and the dilemma of the three characters.

The performances are nothing less than superb. Ian Shaw is the spitting image of his father and delivers his mannerisms with precision. It can't be easy playin an iconic actor in an iconic role, especially when he's your father.  Alex Brightman is extremely funny as the much-put-upon Dreyfuss, channeling all of the nervous energy and insecurities one might expect of a Jewish guy from New York who finds himself stranded in Martha's Vineyard with an occasionally psychotic and drunken co-star determined to humiliate him. Colin Donnell has the least-flashy role as Roy Scheider, and he brings off perhaps the most challenging performance impeccably. Why the most challenging? Because not even a drunk at a cocktail party attempts to perform a Roy Scheider imitation. The actor never possessed the signature characteristics of his co-stars, yet Donnell is so good at recalling Scheider's understated mannerisms that we feel we're watching the late actor himself.

"The Shark is Broken" arrives on Broadway following a sensational, acclaimed run on the West End. Now that the great white shark is on the Great White Way for limited 16-week run, it would seem that a similar reception is in store, if the thunderous ovation given by the audience at a sold-out preview performance this critic was invited to see on August 5th is any indication. I hope that the play's populist appeal doesn't result in it being denied much-deserved Tony nominations because it is worthy of official recognition. We've all been through a lot of grief lately: the pandemic, international tensions, inflation and the ugliest political environment the U.S. has seen in the last century. "The Shark is Broken" won't cure any of these problems, but I guarantee it will provide some temporary relief. Don't let it be the one that got away. It's the most enjoyable theatrical experience I've seen in quite some time.

(The play runs 95 minutes without an intermission.)

Click here for information and tickets.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

ENTER THE DRAGON COMES TO 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY^TM AND DIGITAL.

TO CELEBRATE THE ICONIC FILM’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY, ENTER THE DRAGON WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 4K RESOLUTION HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE (HDR)

Purchase the film on 4K Ultra HD Disc and Digital on 8/8/23

As part of the year-long centennial celebration for the 100^th anniversary of Warner Bros. Studio, the iconic martial arts film Enter the Dragon will be available for purchase on 4K Ultra HD Disc and Digital this August.

Celebrating the 50^th anniversary of its 1973 release, on August 8 Enter the Dragon will be available to purchase on Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc from online and in-store at major retailers and available for purchase Digitally from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu and more. Enter the Dragon is considered one of the most influential action films of all time and is credited with bringing interest in the Asian martial arts genre to mainstream Western cinema.

The Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc includes both the theatrical version of the film and the Special Edition of the film which features three additional minutes of footage.

Directed by Robert Clouse, Enter the Dragon stars Bruce Lee in his final completed film role. Lee is widely regarded as one of the most influential martial artists of all time and was a pop culture icon of the 20th century.  In addition to Lee, the film also stars John Saxon, Ahna Capri, Bob Wall, Shih Kein, and introduces Jim Kelly.  It was written by Michael Allin and produced by Fred Weintraub, Paul Heller, and Raymond Chow with a score by honorary Academy Award recipient Lalo Schifrin.

In 2004, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 1999, Bruce Lee was listed in Time magazine’s “100 most influential people of the century.”

Enter the Dragon will be available on Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc for $24.99 ERP and includes an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc with the theatrical version of the feature film in 4K with HDR, the Special Edition version of the film in 4K with HDR, and a Digital download of both versions of the film. Fans can also own Enter the Dragon in 4K Ultra HD via purchase from select digital retailers beginning on 8/8/23. 

About the Film

Bruce Lee explodes onto the screen in the film that rocketed him to international superstardom, Enter The Dragon. Lee plays a martial arts expert determined to take down the ruthless gang leader, Han, who was responsible for the death of his sister. Recruited by an intelligence agency, he poses a student and attends a tournament at a remote island fortress. His goal is to gather evidence that will prove Han’s involvement with drug trafficking and prostitution. With one man focused on crime and the other bent on revenge, the two engage in the now-classic fight-to-the-death finish. They both enter a mirrored maze and deadly battle. Only one will exit.

Enter the Dragon Ultra HD Blu-ray disc and Digital the following previously released special features:

· Introduction by Linda Lee Cadwell (run time: 2:17 minutes)

· Commentary by Paul Heller and Michael Allin (run time: 110 minutes)

Click here to order from Amazon

By Hank Reineke

We film collectors are a spoiled lot: and, yes, I include myself in that assessment. When Australian video label Imprint first announced their seminal Silver Screams Cinema collection in 2021, I was ecstatic. Though the now defunct U.S. based Olive Films had already given us Blu-rays of three titles soon-to-be featured on the Imprint set (Return of the Ape Man (Monogram, 1944) She Devil (1957) and The Vampire’s Ghost (Republic, 1945), it was the Aussie’s inclusion of several long-neglected films from the vault of Republic Pictures - Valley of the Zombies (1946), The Phantom Speaks (1945) and The Lady and the Monster (1944) - that compelled one to pre-order.

The Imprint set contained almost every title a fan of Republic’s horror-mystery offerings might desire… with one notable exception. Where was Lesley Selander’s The Catman of Paris (1946)? It was the one Republic horror flick I had been wishing on the longest. Decades ago I gave up hope of ever seeing any sort of legitimate home video issue. So I sought out the serviceable – if scratchy and hazy - gray-market bootleg long making the rounds on the collector’s market. So the exclusion of The Catman of Paris from Imprint’s otherwise magnificent Silver Screams set was a bit frustrating.

So it was with great anticipation when Imprint’s single-disc Blu-ray of The Catman of Paris recently arrived. I’m pleased to report that the release not only looks great but also arrives with a couple of bonus features. But while this film’s arrival on Blu-ray brings with it a satisfying sense of closure, I think it’s best to acknowledge that The Catman of Paris is by no means a riveting lost classic of horror cinema. Though the film holds a certain charm in my personal nostalgia bank, The Catman of Paris often plods along for most of its hour or so running time. But I’m still a fan.

Republic Pictures was, of course - unfairly, in my mind – deemed a Hollywood “Poverty Row” studio. But the production values of the studio were often of high-caliber despite meager budgets, the studio producing more than a thousand features and serials from its inception in 1935. Though associated with Monogram Pictures – a purveyor of a number of 1940s low-rent horror and mystery pictures (which often featured the likes of genre stars Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Lionel Atwill and John Carradine), Republic was late in getting on the exploitative horror-film train. I suppose it can be argued that they nearly missed the train entirely. The studio only really began to test the horror-picture market when public interest in such fare was clearly on the wane.

But the studio’s first horror pic The Lady and the Monster (1944), featuring Erich von Stroheim as a cold and humorless mad scientist, did well enough for the studio to greenlight a double-dose of new horror in 1945: The Vampire’s Ghost and The Phantom Speaks – two films which we’ll get to in a moment. Generally speaking, the Republic horrors were of similar construct to Monogram’s. But unlike the Monogram films – which have been mostly available over the years on home video due to their public domain status – the Republic horror pics have been, until recently, almost entirely commercially inaccessible to students of the genre.

It’s possible the Republic horror pics have been glossed over due to the fact that, unlike the studio’s western film counterparts – which featured such star-spangled stars as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and John Wayne – their horror pics offered no similar marquee attraction. Perhaps if the Republic horror and mysteries features offered such boogeymen as Lugosi or Boris Karloff there might have been more of a commercial interest in getting these out to fans and collectors. But Paramount Pictures, the company that ultimately absorbed the Republic catalog, seemed mostly disinterested in making available that studio’s horror film efforts.

To be fair, Republic wasn’t Universal: there actually wasn’t a great deal of true “horrors” to choose from. In 1999, film historian Tom Weaver examined some of the Republic titles in his tome Poverty Row Horrors!: Monogram, PRC, and Republic Horror Films of the Forties (MacFarland). A decade- and -a -half later author Brian McFadden published his Republic Horrors: The Serial Studio’s Chillers. Both books were welcome additions to the film scholar’s personal libraries. But while McFadden’s effort seemed to promise a deeper-dive into the Republic’s long-neglected horror catalog, it mostly reminded readers that the studio actually released very few true horror pictures during the Golden Age of the 1940s. Of the ten films chosen for examination by McFadden, only five could justify being classified as genuine “horrors.” The remaining five titles selected were simply mysteries with woven eerie elements.

But if Universal’s reign as the preeminent horror-movie studio was beginning to wind down by the mid-1940s, Republic’s was just beginning to rev up. In early May of 1945, the Los Angeles Times reported that executives at Republic Pictures, “encouraged by the current success of The Vampire’s Ghost and The Phantom Speaks,” were already planning a pair of thrillers of similar design. Under the watchful eye of producer William O’ Sullivan, Republic’s newest horror pics, titled The Catman of Paris and The Valley of the Zombies, was to “be sold to exhibitors as a pair.”

Associate producer Marek M. Libkov told the Hollywood Reporter that their newest, The Catman of Paris, would have a provisional start date of September 20, 1945 with casting to “start immediately.” In fact, most of the principal casting was already in place by early September, though casting notices for small roles were still being announced as late as October 5. It was also later reported that the film’s start date would be pushed to September 22. The film’s presumed co-feature – Phil Ford’s Valley of the Zombies – was already just shy of two weeks into production with production on The Catman of Paris set to follow immediately on its heels. But even the revised start date of September 22 is in doubt. On September 24, 1945, the Los Angeles Times noted production on Lesley Selander’s The Catman of Paris was, at long last, to start “today at Republic.”

It’s of some interest that the two primary cast members of The Catman of Paris, Carl Esmond and Lenore Aubert, were both born in Vienna, Austria. Though neither had ever appeared in a horror film, both already would share near-miss flirtations with real-life horrors. Esmond left for the U.S. as early as 1938 at the behest of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer. The actor had been performing with a touring company in London when Nazi troops swept into Austria in March of 1938. Esmond reflected to Hollywood scribe Maxine Garrison that Mayer dangled an MGM contract before him, warning ‘You would be foolish not to come [to America]. Europe will be lost in war before long.” Esmond admitted, “I had not thought of it that way, but he was right.”

Aubert too left Vienna, choosing travel to Paris. But with German troops already occupying the City of Light, the actress also made the decision to immigrate to America. (Ironically, Aubert’s first screen credit was for a performance as a villainous Nazi spy for Samuel Goldwyn’s They Got Me Covered (1943), an early Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour comedy). Though not a household name to most cinephiles, the darkly beautiful Aubert is likely best remembered for her performance as the sinister Dr. Mornay in the time-tested Universal classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

The Hollywood trades were reporting a lot of activity on the Republic Studios lot that first week of October of 1945… but most interest was fixed on producer-director Frank Borsage’s ambitious and expensive Technicolor effort Concerto. But a wandering journalist noted that only “two stages away,” Republic’s dual monochrome horror pics, The Catman of Paris and Valley of the Zombies, were being shot concurrently for a provisional double-feature release. “On both sets, the visitor must have nerves of steel,” it was reported, “to withstand sudden appearances of perambulating cat people and corpses.”

By Thursday, October 11, 1945, the Hollywood Reporter noted that production on The Catman of Paris had wrapped on the night previous, when “final exterior scenes were filmed on the studio’s back lot.” The report also indicated that co-feature Valley of the Zombies had finished shooting a mere “one day before Republic started rolling Selander’s picture.” If true, the earlier reportage of dual-picture sightings of “perambulating cat people and corpses” was little more than promotional ballyhoo.

So who was this sinister cinematic Catman of Paris? Parisian police detectives are of the belief that it’s none other than the best-selling, dashingly handsome French novelist Charles Regnier (Carl Esmond). The popular-selling author has recently returned to Paris following two years of international travel – including a possibly fateful visit to the tropics. Not everyone has enjoyed his most recent book. Regnier’s fiction-novel Fraudulent Justice has come to the attention – and annoyance – of the French government. It seems Regnier’s narrative appears to have been based on a true-life crime and trial: the details of which were never brought to public scrutiny and the judicial outcome now thought a travesty of justice. So how was it that Regnier could accurately account so much about a secretive government trial?

Regnier has also returned to Paris to wrestle other demons. The writer suffers headaches which bring about unexplainable subsequent episodes of amnesia. During such sessions Regnier is visited by images of violent weather disturbances and of a mysterious black cat. Regnier’s moneyed patron, Henri Borchard (Douglas Dumbrille), suggests Regnier’s fragile mental state is due to his having contracted some sort of fever when visiting the tropics. There’s also a measure of astrological hokum in the scripting mix as well.

Both Bouchard and Regnier’s publisher Paul Audet (Francis Pierlot) are concerned that following two gruesome murders of which Regnier is at least tangentially involved, the author’s book sales might plummet and bankrupt the publishing house. And circumstantial evidence of Regnier’s involvement in the murders continues to mount. The Catman’s most recent victim - Regnier’s high-society fiancé Marguerite Duvall (Adele Mara), was recently jilted so the author might enjoy a new romance with publisher’s daughter Marie (Lenore Aubert). Having completely fallen for the dashing author, Marie Audet is completely convinced of Regnier’s innocence… until she herself is chased through a misty evening garden by a cloak and top-hatted Catman on the prowl for her blood.

Though the film would eventually pair with Valley of the Zombies, The Catman of Paris was initially paired on release with John English’s somewhat better-received ice-skating musical-mystery Murder in the Music Hall. The first wave of reviews of The Catman of Paris were generally fair - if mostly unfavorable. The Hollywood Reporter ignobly described the film as an “absurdity,” a career embarrassments to all involved. The lugubrious screenplay of Republic scenarist Sherman L. Lowe was decried as far too “wordy… every character uttering editorials instead of dialog.”

There were complaints – also not unfair - that the film displayed a curious lack of “physical action.” Variety was a bit more forgiving in its assessment, calling the Valentine’s Day preview of The Catman of Paris “a cross between a garden-variety whodunit and a Jekyll-Hyde horror-meller […] that taxes belief to the breaking point.” The Christian Science Monitor dismissed the film outright as a “routine horror story based on far-fetched thrills.”

Despite the lukewarm reviews of both Murder in the Music Hall and The Catman of Paris, the package managed a successful earning of $35,000 in its first week. Which, at the very least, guaranteed a second week of booking. Republic, presumptively optimistic and encouraged by strong initial returns, inked producer Libkov to a contract of three additional pictures. Though there was the inevitable revenue fall-off in the second week of release, the trades were reporting box office tallies in and around Los Angeles remained “good” if not showing signs of sustained momentum. But by week three, the box office receipts were down to disappointing four figure earnings. As the Catman creeped regionally across the U.S. through autumn of 1946, local reviewers and small-town theater managers found the film a mild mystery offering at best. Subsequently, four-figure weekly returns were now the norm.

 

CNN is reporting that Paul Reubens, the comedy star who created the iconic Pee-Wee Herman character, has died from cancer at age 70. Reubens had been battling cancer for the last six years. He had pre-written a public statement to be read in anticipation of his death. In the statement, which was read on CNN, Reubens apologized to his fans for keeping his health crisis secret and encouraged the public to continue to fund cancer research. Reuben's show, "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" started off as a spoof of 1950s children's programs and had risque elements to it. However, when Reubens learned that children had gravitated to the show, he made the program more family-friendly. The character became so popular in the 1980s and 1990s that Reubens starred in big screen Pee-Wee Herman feature films. 

This story is developing...

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The Bride of Frankenstein

Edited by Emma Westwood

Introduction by Sara Karloff

Midnight Movie Monographs

Electric Dreamhouse (imprint of PS Publishing)

Published January 2023

194 Pages

Black and white illustrations

Hardback

ISBN: ISBN 978-1-78636-880-5

RRP: £20

Review by Adrian Smith

The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) is frequently referred to as the greatest horror film ever made, something which Emma Westwood, the editor of this new collection of essays, would not disagree with. In building on the incredible work done on the original Frankenstein (1931) whilst bringing in the dark humour of The Old Dark House (1932), along with key cast member and fellow Brit Ernest Thesiger, director James Whale delivered incredible imagery, dark themes and iconic performances. In doing so, he was establishing the comedy-horror template that would be utilised so effectively for decades to come (An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981) owes it a great debt, for one). It also became perhaps the first example of a sequel being superior to the original, which is still something that does not happen very often. So how did this happen? What is it about The Bride of Frankenstein that has ensured its legendary status for almost one hundred years?

That question is something that this fascinating collection of new essays addresses from a number of angles. This new addition to the Midnight Movie Monographs series from Electric Dreamhouse (previous entries have included books devoted to Spirits of the Dead (Roger Vadim/ Federico Fellini/ Louis Malle, 1968), Plan 9 from Outer Space (Ed Wood Jr., 1959) and Horror Express (Eugenio Martín, 1972)) presents twelve different chapters covering the production, censorship, the astonishing hair, makeup and costume design, the pioneering use of sound, readings of sexuality, the many films over the years which draw on elements of Bride of Frankenstein, including my own personal horror-comedy favourite Bride of Re-Animator (Brian Yuzna, 1990), an examination of star Elsa Lanchester herself, and much more. Who exactly is ‘the Bride of Frankenstein’? is another question to be mulled over; after all, shouldn’t the film have been called ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’s Monster’?

Whether you have a passing interest in the Universal horrors or if The Bride of Frankenstein is your favourite film, this new monograph, with a foreword from Sara Karloff, daughter of Boris, will cause you to think about the film differently, and brings great wit and insight to this endlessly fascinating film from Hollywood’s golden age of horror cinema. In hardcover with a wealth of imagery and a terrific cover design, this is a beautiful book for any serious cinema lover’s library.

You can order a copy direct from PB Publishing  by clicking here.

By Hank Reineke

There were passing moments when watching this gorgeously curated Blu-ray of Phil Tucker’s cult 3-D masterwork Robot Monster (1953) that I mulled its reputation as cinema’s most fabled wreck was undeserved. Surely, I thought, I’ve cringingly sat through worse sci-fi films produced before and since. But then some particularly awful line of dialogue (delivered woodenly, of course), or a bizarre plot turn, or a not-so-special effect, or an inexplicable episode of dinosaur wrangling would interrupt my musings, causing a return to sober reality. Phil Tucker’s low-low-low budget monster-piece is a crazed vision, to be sure. But acknowledging that, Robot Monster is most certainly not one of the world’s worst films: it’s too entertaining to be dismissed as such. On the same token, it’s undeniably one of the most desperate and unhinged cinematic artifacts lensed by an indie Hollywood film-outfit of the ‘50s.

The sullied reputation of Robot Monster is the result, no doubt, due to the merciless flailing of the production by the smirking Medved brothers - Michael and Harry – who infamously skewered the film in their pop-culture, eminently readable and caustic tomes The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1978) and The Golden Turkey Awards (1980). Still the film’s space helmet and gorilla-suit sporting “Ro-man” (as listed in the film’s end credits) – has somehow managed to become as visually iconic a totem of 1950s sci-fi as the gigantic robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still (2oth Century Fox, 1951) or the Metaluna monster in This Island Earth (Universal-International, 1955).

As is so often the case, the backstory to the creation of Robot Monster is perhaps more interesting than the artifact produced. The screenplay was written by Wyott “Barney” Ordung. The Californian was trying desperately to break into the film business, initially as an acting student working occasionally in walk-on roles, often uncredited. In a 1983 interview with the late film and 3-D historian Ray Zone, Ordung recalled it was in 1952 when he was approached by Tucker – who he’d known casually from working on a previous picture – to write the script for Robot Monster. Ordung recalled he was originally tasked to play the role of the “Ro-Man” – at least in earliest test footage photography.

Ordung’s script for Robot Monster would serve as his springboard into the world of professional filmmaking. Following that film’s release, the Californian would script the war film Combat Squad (1953) as well as another sci-fi guilty pleasure Target Earth (1954). Still (mercifully) unproduced is the script Ordung wrote directly following the release of Robot Monster. That prospective film was, according to Sun Valley’s Valley Times, to feature Ordung’s “3-D comedy” scenario based on “Mildred Seamster’s Hollywood beauty salon.” The plot would “deal with the varied individuals who patronize a beauty salon and their interesting escapades.” Oy.

That film would not materialize, but it was of little matter as Ordung would soon receive his first directing credit when Roger Corman tapped him to helm Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Though Ordung had not previously helmed any sort of film production, it was an offer and partnership of economic necessity. Corman agreed to allow Ordung to direct on the condition he contribute $2,000 of his Robot Monster earnings to the new film’s budget and work for “a piece of the picture.” Hey, a break’s a break.

First-time director Phil Tucker too was looking for his first big break in the film industry and was of the mind that Robot Monster just might be the ticket. But his experience working on Robot Monster was, alas, bittersweet. Less than two months following the release of that film, Tucker was found in Fairbanks, Alaska – of all places - shooting his non-union follow-up epic: the seventy-five minute Venusian “science-fiction thriller” Space Jockey – a film never released and now thought lost. Tucker grudgingly told a journalist in Fairbanks that with only Robot Monster to his credit, he had already soured on the politics of Tinseltown.

“The movie industry is stifled in Hollywood,” he director complained. “They tell you what to write, how to produce it, when to direct it, who [to] put in it and when to try to sell it. It’s a tight little island of rulers and it’s a hard place in which to breathe free.” Tucker did confess he wasn’t trying to be a true auteur in any sense of the word: “I’m not trying to create art. I’m trying to make money,” he offered plainly.

The primary stumbling block to Tucker’s earning any monies was New York-born Al Zimbalist, the executive producer and guiding hand of Robot Monster. The movie was the first of the films Zimbalist would oversee as producer – and occasionally as “writer,” though that was mostly as concoctor of “original stories” and little more. Throughout the 1950s and a bit beyond, Zimbalist delivered such bargain-basement fare as Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), Miss Robin Crusoe (1953), King Dinosaur (1955) and Monster from Green Hell (1957) to the pleasures of a mostly undiscerning cinema-going audience. It was also Zimbalist who steered Robot Monster to go the then popular 3-D filming route. It was an unusual decision for an indie film to be shot on a shoestring budget.

It made some sense. Hollywood’s production of 3-D films was at its zenith in 1953. Box Office would note in April of 1953 that no fewer than sixty-two films to offer the 3-D treatment were either completed, in production or in the planning stages. Practically every major studio was readying a slate of 3-D cinematic fare: Columbia, Paramount, RKO Radio, United Artists and Warner Bros. among them. By far, 20^th Century Fox was leading the way with a scheduled twenty-two 3-D films on the drawing board. There were only a couple of independents in the mix, having chosen to dip their toe in the 3-D pool. Al Zimbalist and Phil Tucker’s “newly organized” Third Dimension Pictures was one of them.

The trades reported on March 21, 1953 that Zimbalist was to employ a unique “Tru-Depth system of 3-D” photography for his in-the-works Robot Monster project. Then, a mere week following the start of the film’s production, Box Office noted that Robot Monster had completed shooting… though no release date had yet been set. Zimbalist was so pleased with the results of the “Tru-Depth” system, that in April of ’53 the Hollywood maverick announced the formation of his “Tru-Stereo Corporation.” The company would “make available a stereoscopic 3-D system to independent producers.” “Tru-Stereo” would serve as an affordable, budget-conscious alternative to the more expensive 3-D systems used by the Hollywood majors.

In fact, there were no fewer than twenty-two competing 3-D systems being used by filmmakers by late spring of 1953. (“Tru-Depth” had since been rechristened as “Tru-Stereo.)” The Tru-Stereo 3-D was proffered as being similar to the others: it too employed two cameras to create the three-dimensional effect. But the system also boasted “an authentic interlocking control which is said to insure against faulty synchronization.” Robot Monster had also boastingly employed “a newly developed stereophonic sound system devised by the Master-Tone Sound Corporation.”

The first casting notices for Robot Monster were announced in March of 1953. Handsome leading man George Nader was reportedly hired to play the role of “Roy” following his appearance in the still unreleased pic Miss Robin Crusoe. Nader’s performance in that film impressed Zimbalist who worked on the same as associate producer. Roy’s love interest, Alice (Claudia Barrett) hadn’t much big-screen experience, but had been steadily working on any number of early television series. The film’s egghead professor would be played by the long-working Ukrainian actor John Mylong, his children, Johnny and Carla, by stage-kids Gregory Moffett and Pamela Paulson, respectively.

The role of the professor’s wife went to Selena Royle, an actress with a familiar face due to her long run as a dependable player at MGM. Royle was happy to get the role – any role – as she had recently been blacklisted in the pages of Red Channels, “the American Legion’s list of 200 motion picture workers suspected of communist leanings.” Her crime was the organizing and serving of free meals to the un-and-under employed actors in and around New York City during the throes of the Depression. Royle vowed to fight the accusations, telling journalist her post-blacklist acting income had dropped from six figures to a mere three figures by mid-summer of 1952. Robot Monster would be one of her two final feature film appearances, Royle and her husband choosing to immigrate to Mexico in 1957.

On September 27, the Australian video company Imprint/ViaVision will release a 4-film box set showcasing films starring George Peppard. Here are the details:

With his dashing good looks and irresistible charm, George Peppard became one of the most iconic actors of the 1960s. 

Enjoy four forgotten gems from his prolific career for the first time on Blu-ray in Australia:

• P.J. (1968)
• Pendulum (1969)
• The Executioner (1970) – Worldwide first on Blu-ray!
• Newman’s Law (1974)

Limited Edition 4-Disc Hardbox. 1500 copies only.

P.J. (1968) – Imprint Collection #252

Peppard faces off against Raymond Burr (Rear Window) when he becomes entangled in an affair with deadly consequences in P.J.

Private eye P.J. Detweiler is reluctant to protect the mistress of a millionaire from attacks by his client’s wife and greedy family. In truth, P.J. is walking into a deadly intrigue in which he is to play a central part. 

Special Features & Technical Specs:

• 1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray from a 2K scan
• NEW Audio Commentary by film historian & author Toby Roan
• Audio Commentary by critics Howard S. Berger and Steve Mitchell
• NEW Interview with author & screenwriter Courtney Joyner on the career of director John Guillermin
• NEW Video essay on George Peppard & John Guillermin 
• Theatrical Trailer
• Original Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono

Pendulum (1969) – Imprint Collection #253

George Peppard embarks on a relentless quest for justice in this thrilling classic.

Cynical Washington, DC, police captain Frank Matthews risked his life to catch a young rapist and murderer. But the psychopath is set free when a civil liberties’ attorney proves to the Supreme Court that Matthews never read the killer his rights. When Matthews’ wife is found murdered alongside her lover, and he becomes the prime suspect, Matthews decides his best option is to capture the real killer himself.

Special Features & Technical Specs:

• 1080P High-definition presentation on Blu-ray
• Special Features TBC
• Aspect Ratio 1.85:1
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono

The Executioner (1970) – Imprint Collection #254

Worldwide first on Blu-ray!

Joan Collins, Keith Mitchell and Judy Geeson also star in The Executioner, the nail-biting thriller and worldwide first on Blu-ray.

When a covert operation in Vienna goes awry, British Intelligence operative John Shay suspects his colleague, Adam Booth, may be a double agent. Appointing himself executioner, Shay kills Booth and then assumes his identity to obtain conclusive evidence that Booth was a traitor.

Special Features & Technical Specs:

• 1080P High-definition presentation on Blu-ray
• Special Features TBC
• Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono

Newman’s Law (1974) – Imprint Collection #255

The creator of Banacek, Anthony Wilson, and George Peppard reunite in the gritty police drama Newman’s Law.

When a hard-nosed LA cop is booted from duty after being falsely accused of extortion, he goes rogue to investigate an organised crime case, uncovering a conspiracy that might extend to the highest levels of his own department. 

Special Features & Technical Specs:

• 1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray from a 2K scan
• NEW Audio Commentary by film historian Steve Mitchell and producer/screenwriter Cyrus Voris
• NEW Interview with director Jeff Burr on the career of director Richard T. Heffron
• Radio Spots
• Theatrical Trailer
• Aspect Ratio 1.85:1
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono

Any pre-order titles will be dispatched in the week leading up to its aforementioned release date. Special features and artwork are subject to change.

Imprint limited editions tend to sell out quickly. Click here to pre-order. (Prices are in Australian dollars. Use  a currency converter to see what the price is in your local currency.) The Blu-ray set is Region-Free. 

By Hank Reineke

Rightfully or wrongfully, I’m going to concentrate this review of Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi from the Vault Blu on two of this Blu-ray set’s decidedly lesser films: Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and The Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959). This is partially due to the fact that the set’s two most prominent titles, 20 Million Miles to Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea, were previously issued by Mill Creek back in 2014 on their twofer Ray Harryhausen Creature Double Feature from the same transfers. Though Creature with the Atom Brain is making its U.S. Blu debut on this set, the film has seen a previous Blu issue on the UK import Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman. So only The Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock is making a worldwide debut on Blu with this set.

All four films in this new set come, as per the title, from the vaults of Columbia studios. Creature earlier appeared on the commentary-free DVD set Sam Katzman: Icons of Horror Collection (2007). As I am not privy to the sales figures of that set, I can only surmise should Mill Creek release a Sci-Fi Vault Vol. 2 on Blu, we might see the “missing” Katzman titles sprinkled into a future U.S. set. This Mill Creek set is not an “all Katzman” edition (ala Icons). The workhorse producer has no connection to either 20 Million Miles to Earth or The Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock.

It’s with no disrespect to the late, great special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen that I’m not going to do a deep dive into 20 Million Miles to Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea. Though these two films are genuine and iconic sci-fi classics, both have previously gotten the Mill Creek Blu treatment and also received transatlantic Blu releases as well. So I can’t imagine anyone interested in these Harryhausen-associated titles not already in possession of copies. Fair to say, if you own Mill Creek’s previously published twofer, their reappearances here are redundant.

This new set, priced at an MSRP of $29.99, is – happily - available far less expensively from any variety of on-line retailers. In some sense, it’s a bargain. This recent edition does offer a new and informative audio commentary on It Came from Beneath the Sea, courtesy of Justin Humphreys and C. Courtney Joyner. So if you’re an enthusiast of commentary tracks, that’s a checkmark in the plus column. On the other hand, there’s no audio commentary included on 20 Million Miles to Earth, a film no less deserving of annotation. So that’s a checkmark lost.

Oddly, Edward L. Chan’s Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), an arguably less-deserving film, does come with a commentary track – this time courtesy of film producer-writers’ Phoef Sutton and Mark Jordan Legan. It’s nice to have a commentary supplied by two established screenwriters since Creature producer Sam Katzman had conscripted the great Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man) to script his low-budgeter. The often curmudgeonly Siodmak was a pretty productive scripter, memorably knocking off no fewer than nine sci-fi/horror programmers for Universal 1940-44 – and many other original scenarios for other studios.

Though Siodmak provides a decent enough script for Creature, director Kahn’s film proves a B-film guilty pleasure a best. On their commentary, Sutton and Legan provide a breezy, lighthearted narration filled with the usual, occasionally colorful, anecdotes, often based on their rattling off resumes of the film’s various cast and crew member. To their credit, the two honestly acknowledge the film’s shortfalls, mulling that “the first four and a half minutes are the best thing about it.” The film is a bit of slow-going unless one has a sense of nostalgia about it.

It was late October 1954 when Variety reported that Katzman had tapped Kahn to direct Creature, the first of the producer’s first sci-fi feature film forays. News of actor Richard Denning signing on to star was reported the following week. Similar to Katzman, Kahn was a film industry workhorse, a director not identified with any one particular genre. In the 1950s, Kahn helmed war films, westerns, gangster pics and teenage melodramas. But he also managed to put the fright into the “Frightened Fifties,” cranking out no fewer than eight serviceable sci-fi pics in a four-year period: beginning with She Creature (1956) and finishing with Invisible Invaders (1959). Actor Denning provided a face familiar to 50’s sci-fi fans: the actor had lead roles in The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Target Earth and The Black Scorpion, to name only a few.

It was Columbia’s intention to bill the more pedestrian Creature as the supporting feature to It Came from Beneath the Sea. In June 1955 it was reported the double-bill was to be first rolled out to thirty-one theaters in and around the Los Angeles area. Both films would be produced under the aegis of Katzman’s Clover Productions. Though Kaufman’s low-budgeted independent offerings weren’t expected to bring in boffo box-office numbers, Columbia’s accountants were aware the absence of big name stars and inflated production costs brought better returns on investment.

A trade paper reported bluntly that Columbia, “feels it’s better to make a 15% to 25% profit on a picture than to stand to lose 50% to 75% on a wholly-made studio picture.” While Katzman’s pictures for Columbia (Creature with the Atom Brain, The Giant Claw, Zombies of Mora Tau and The Werewolf) might not have produced great art, they did bring in worthwhile returns on investment. It Came from Beneath the Sea, the far stronger film (with a bigger budget) managed great business, helped in part by a combination of Harryhausen’s screen magic, word-of-mouth excitement and a supportive radio-television-print campaign of $250,000. Though It Came from Beneath the Sea was not the first “giant” monster movie of the 1950s, it was among the earliest, and this monstrous sci-fi sub-genre would blossom throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s.

Which leads us into our discussion of the final “giant” film offered on this set. The working title of Sidney Miller’s The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock was originally titled The Secret Bride of Candy Brock. The film’s co-screenwriter, Arthur Ross, was familiar writing for films featuring gargantuan(s): he had already helped craft the screenplay for Columbia’s The Three Worlds of Gulliver, a soon-to-be- released pic in 1960. But Candy Rock was to serve primarily as a vehicle for comedian Lou Costello. Though his 1940s heyday was behind him, the roly-poly actor had been introduced to a new generation of fans in the ‘50s through airings of The Abbott and Costello Show television series.

The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock was to be the comedian’s first feature film project following the dissolution of his partnership with Bud Abbott in July of 1957. That pair’s final film, the saccharine comedy-drama Dance with Me, Henry (United Artists, 1956) was generally dismissed as a tired re-play of routines long gone cold. Now, as a solo player, Costello was hoping that Bride might reestablish his box-office prowess. This indie production, shot on the Columbia studios lot, saw Costello’s manager, Eddie Sherman, serving as the film’s executive producer. With such leverage Costello was even able to gift a small role to daughter Carole.

Producer Lew Rachmil suggested to a reporter from London’s Picturegoer that Costello’s titular bride, Dorothy Provine (a 22 year-old blonde that stood 5’ 4” tall), was a “born comedienne – nearly as funny as Lou at times.” Provine was a relative newcomer to Hollywood, having worked only two studio soundstages, one for The Bonnie Parker Story and for a two- episode role as a twelve year old (!) on TV’s Wagon Train. Provine told gossiper Erskine Johnson that she hadn’t “missed a day’s work since I arrived in Hollywood, but I was always scared about every job being my last job.” She needn’t have worried, following Bride the actress was picked to star alongside Roger Moore as a regular character on the television series The Alaskans and would also have a prominent role in the 1963 Cinerama comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

In conception, Bride seems little more than Lou Costello’s attempt to lampoon the popularity of the ongoing “giant monster” craze. Whiling away his days in an amateur laboratory, Costello’s rubbish collector and would-be inventor Artie Pinsetter (‘a world-famous scientist who’s not famous yet”) is determined to unravel secrets: primarily he wishes to learn how the prehistoric beasts that once roamed a local region known “Dinosaur State Park” had achieved gargantuan sizes. He’s investigating an ancient Native American belief that these creatures achieved such measurement due to a mysterious stream of steam emissions emanating from a canyon cave.

To this end he has constructed an elaborate electronic contraption that he calls “Max.” His invention is part time machine – due to its ability for “changing time curves” - and part straight man. Pinsetter hadn’t needed to go through all the trouble of mechanical tinkering. Walking through the canyon, girlfriend Emmy Lou (Provine), accidentally walks through a plume of canyon steam and finds herself having gained an additional 25 feet in height. The steam, we are told, is the castoff of atomic energy escaping from the bowels of the earth.

To make matters worse for Pinsetter, we learn Emmy Lou is the niece of the town’s self-involved and self-important bank president/gubernatorial hopeful Raven Rossiter (Gale Gordon, of Our Miss Brooks fame). Rossiter doesn’t care much for Pinsetter, and his ill-tempered behavior provides much of the film’s lukewarm comic tension. But ultimately, the film’s concentration is whether or not the townies – and alarmed Pentagon officials – can escape the problems wrought by Costello’s foolish inventions or of his skulking thirty-foot bride.

Shot in the fanciful descriptions of “Wonderama” and “Mattascope,” Bride is not a great film by any measure. But having said this, it’s an innocuous 73-minute nostalgia trip that admittedly brought a number of head-shaking smiles to my face. The film is an innocent bit of nonsense, a “family-friendly” movie that I’m certain brought fun to kiddie audiences of its day. My favorite time capsule moment occurs when an airborne Costello nearly collides with the Soviet Union’s recently launched Sputnik 1 satellite.

Sadly, Lou Costello would not live to see the finished film released to the public. The legendary film star would die of a heart attack, just days shy of age 53, on March 3, 1959 – a mere ten weeks following his first day of shooting on Bride in November of 1958 (production wrapped a mere month later). On March 24, 1959, executives at Columbia announced the aforementioned title change. The film was still in editing by June of 1959 – as was the Three Stooges’ sci-fi comedy Have Rocket, Will Travel. In July Columbia shared plans to package Bride as a late summer trip bill of such other family fare films as Rocket and Ted Post’s The Legend of Tom Dooley.

There were studio previews as early as July 7, but when Bride finally was unleashed on movie screens it was not as one-third of the aforementioned package as scheduled - but rather as the under bill to Disney’s Darby O’ Gill and the Little People or Have Rocket, Will Travel. Though there were no critical raves for Bride – truthfully the film was undeserving of such praise – most reviewers found the film harmless and wholesome family entertainment. Which it was. I suppose it would have been in poor taste to completely dismiss the value of the final film of one of Hollywood’s most beloved – and successful – actor-comedians.

In any event, Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi from the Vault collection has made The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock available for the first time on Blu-ray. Previously the film had only appeared on VHS by Columbia/Tri-Star in 1986 and – with a far lesser transfer - on the cheapie Good Times label in 1988. Its first digital appearance was a 2010 release as a DVD MOD from Sony/Columbia Screen Classics. So, regardless of merit, it’s nice to get this one on Blu. Its appearance here should interest fans of both Abbott and Costello-related productions as well as collectors of vintage 50s Silver Age sci-fi. There’s also a light-hearted but informative audio commentary for Bride provided by the Monster Party Podcast team. Think of a few wise-cracking - but informative - movie-buff friends sitting on the couch alongside you. The commentary adds a bit of color to an otherwise monochrome film.

To its credit, the set also includes two bonus features well worth a look: Daniel Griffith’s 25-minute doc They Came from Beyond: Sam Katzman at Columbia as well as his 14:30 minute doc Fantastical Features: Nathan Juran at Columbia. The former gives us a thumbnail tracing of Katzman’s career in film. The producer knocked out dozens of serials for Victory and Columbia - including Superman (1948) and Batman and Robin (1949) - from the mid-1930s on. He later moved on to producing features for Monogram – a studio described here as Hollywood’s “lowest echelon” - where he enjoyed the first of his feature film successes.

Katzman’s films for Monogram and others were usually made on shoestring budgets with tight shooting schedules. The producer didn’t necessarily favor the horror sci-fi genre during his 40+ years working in Hollywood. But having employed Bela Lugosi on the 1936 serial Shadow of Chinatown, Katzman managed to bring the now underworked and underappreciated actor to Monogram for a series of guilty pleasure, fan-favorite cheapie horror-melodramas. But Katzman was not shy on capitalizing on whatever fad was capturing public fancy. His filmography included everything from ghetto dramas, gangster pics, East Side Kids/Bowery Boys comedies, westerns, sword and sandal epics, early rock n’ roll pics – even a couple of Elvis Presley films (Kissin’ Cousins (1964) and Harum Scarum (1965) .

In the mid-1950s, sensing sci-fi was proving popular with audiences, Katzman scored big as the Executive Producer on such less penny-pinching epics as It Came from Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). Both of these films featured the completely amazing stop-motion special effects of the great Ray Harryhausen, with whom Katzman was happy to collaborate. In all likelihood, it’s the appreciative audience of so-called “Monster Kids” that continues to stoke interest in Katzman’s work.

The second bonus doc, Fantastical Features, has C. Courtney Joyner and Justin Humphreys taking a brief look at the films of the fast-shot flicks Nathan Juran directed for Columbia. Though not necessarily a horror/sci-fi film director, Juran had previously helmed The Black Castle (1952) for Universal and, more importantly, for that studio’s great giant insect epic The Deadly Mantis (1957). Once moving to Columbia, Juran managed a number of sci-fi/fantasy epics including such cinematic touchstones as 20 Million Miles to Earth, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) and The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958).

For the most part, all of these black-and-white films look great for their age, though they’re not entirely pristine: one can expect a few not terribly distracting scratches or speckling throughout. Personally, I’m not sure how many more times I will revisit Creature with the Atom Brain or The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock – they’re not great films - but it’s still nice to add these titles to my ‘50s sci-fi film collection. You’ll have to decide if they’re worth adding to yours.

Click here to order from Amazon and save 50% off SRP.

By Hank Reineke

The working title of the Universal-Jewel silent six-reeler The Trap (1922) was Wolf Breed – for reasons that will soon become apparent. Lon Chaney’s feature role casting was reported during the first week of September 1921, the film reportedly to be based on a scenario by Lucien Hubbard. The film was apparently still in production during late September/early October of 1921. Newspapers were reporting that immediately following Chaney’s completion of Wolf Breed, the actor “will appear in The Octave of Claudius for Goldwyn.” That film would in fact be made, but released as The Blind Bargain (1922), directed by Wallace Worsley - who would later helm Chaney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Along with London after Midnight (1927), The Blind Bargain is inarguably the most sought after of the actor’s lost films.

The Trap, by any measure, is a more modest effort than any of the aforementioned trio of films. The photoplay features Lon Chaney as Gaspard the Good. His character is so named as he is a kind and gentle soul. He’s a simple-living, always smiling, bubbly effervescent personality - a man of good-standing in the small idyllic French Canadian mountain village of Grand Bellaire. But Gaspard’s usual pleasant demeanor will soon sour. Returning to the village from a recent trip, Gaspard discovers that he has not only lost his girlfriend Thalie (Dagmar Godowsky) to a seemingly well-to-do carpetbagger named Benson (Alan Hale), but also to his unregistered claim to his pappy’s hyacinth gemstone mine. Gaspard tries his best to sublimate his personal sorrows, one title card noting while “The morning sun was no more radiant,” the broken-spirited Gaspard managed to hold “no malice” within his heart. For a time, anyway.

But things change in the intervening span of seven – yes, seven – years. The cad Benson has suffered several reversals of fortunes, beginning with a calamitous cave-in dooming his mining operation. We also learn Benson has not been a particularly loving husband to sweet Thalie who we watch as she succumbs to a fatal illness. Her husband coldly dismisses his wife’s deathbed lethargy to “laziness.” Sitting astride Thalie’s bedside is her grieving five-year old son with Benson, “The Boy” (Stanley Goethals). Gaspard too has suffered a shocking reversal – a shift in personality as the last few years events have left him bitter. Though Benson’s recent streak of bad breaks should have brought Gaspard a measure of satisfying yin and yang closure, it’s simply wasn’t enough to erase the sting of his personal anguishes.

So seeking a more punishing revenge on Benson, Gaspard convinces a local tavern tough that the carpetbagger has been saying awful things about him. The enraged brute attempts to assail Benson who unexpectedly defends himself with a pistol shot – a crime for which he is sentenced to the gallows. But this sentence is later commuted to a prison sentence when the brute survives the shooting. In the interim, and as per Thalie’s deathbed wish, Gaspard has taken custody of her son - for whom the bitter ex-lover intends to administer a misplaced vengeance. But in short time the innocent “wee waif” reawakens the good in Gaspard’s heart who becomes a doting model foster parent to the child. But when Gaspard is informed that Benson has been released from prison with plans to collect his biological son, a distraught Gaspard - fearful of losing the boy - sets up a diabolical snare involving a trap door and a starving wolf lying in wait.

It’s a melodrama for sure. In its review of May 20, 1922, Billboard suggested while the storyline of The Trap was overly “trite,” the film itself was visually appealing with “most picturesque locations” and “photography showing some rare and perfect gems of outdoor beauty.” (The film was actually photographed not in the Canadian wilderness but in the tranquil and majestic canyons of Yosemite National Park). Chaney’s “remarkable impersonation” of the French-Canadian Gaspard was noteworthy, even though the review concedes “the vehicle is not sufficiently strong to do justice to the ability of the star.” This contrasts with the view of Variety’s critic who thought director Robert Thornby’s excessive use of full-frame close-ups of Chaney – which allowed a bit too much melodramatic over-emoting on the actor’s part – was nothing if not “tiresome.” Personally, I disagree with this assessment. Though there are no shortage of such close-ups, Chaney’s facial expressions on screen enable the actor to convey emotions of sorrow, joy, malice and anger in a visual manner that no title card could ever convey as successfully.

That said, The Trap was an idiosyncratic picture in some sense, and certainly an archetype of the tortured character roles Chaney would more famously play in the future. Many silent pictures of the day were structured around romantic angles in their scenarios. But following Gaspard’s loss of both mine and sweetheart Thalie (the actress being the daughter of the famed Lithuanian-American classical pianist Leopold Godowsky), the film drops any pretension of romantic conciliation or renewal. The movie instead focuses on Chaney’s dark, methodically-plotted and coldly calculated plan of revenge.

By Hank Reineke

The fifteenth annual New York City Independent Film Festival was held during the week of June 4 through 11 at Manhattan’s Producer’s Club on West 44^th Street, a few blocks west of Times Square. The week-long festival would host the screenings of over two hundred indie films. Co-Directors John Anderson and Bob Sarles' absorbing and authoritatively assembled music doc Born in Chicago, screened on the festival’s final day, doesn’t pretend to serve as the definitive nor most academically-minded treatise on the history of blues music in America. Such studies as the seven-episode PBS series The Blues (2003) had already touched lightly on many aspects of multi-layered history of the blues in America. This film’s primary interest lies elsewhere.

The state of Mississippi, the birthplace of the blues and home of some of the music’s greatest practitioners is, of course, referenced early on in Born in Chicago. But the fertile musical and agricultural area surrounding the Mississippi Delta region serves merely as the pregnant preface of what’s to come. There’s no mention that I can recall of the high-end music of band leader W.C. Handy, the self-proclaimed “Father of the Blues,” or of Ma Rainy, “Mother of the Blues” or even of such a master figure as songster Charley Patton, the acknowledged progenitor of the rough and tumble country blues.

Alan Lomax’s 1941-1942 Library of Congress recordings of one McKinley Morganfield (soon to be rechristened as “Muddy Waters”) down on Stovall’s Plantation near Clarksdale, MS is briefly referenced in Born in Chicago, but only in passing. The film recalls Waters as merely one of the many immigrant blues singers who, among non-musical travelers and those feeling racism and economic hardship, would abandon Mississippi - and neighboring states - to seek employment in Chicago’s burgeoning meat-packing and steel industries.

The blues singers arriving in the Windy City would often perform for pocket change on Chicago’s fabled Maxwell Street, and there’s a bit of historic film footage included in the film to document it. But ultimately Born in Chicago assumes that a knowledgeable blues aficionado is already conversant with the complex reasons that Chicago would birth the raw and immeasurably emotive electric blues. Born in Chicago soon time-jumps from a basic introductory primer to a particular moment in history – a period roughly encompassing 1964 through 1970 - when public interest in the blues music would peculiarly shift along color lines.

Though the blues was created by black artists for a primarily black audience, by the mid-1960s it was lovingly embraced by a cabal of young, white and often gifted musicians. In some sense these mostly suburban youngsters were oddballs. Not only were they complete outsiders to African-American life and musical culture, but estranged from even their own middle-class heritages. The best of them were determined to apprentice with the real-deal blues masters whose recordings they had painstakingly studied and cherished.

Such Chicago blues artists as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf (aka Chester Burnett), and Little Walter Jacobs were at their musical – if not money-earning career peaks – in the 1950s. Though Chicago boasted any number of record labels pressing 78 rpm discs of the talent grinding their music out almost nightly in such saloons as Pepper’s Lounge, Silvio’s, Smitty’s Corner, Big John’s, the Blue Flame Lounge, and Frost’s Corner, it was Chess Records that emerged the most important and iconic. Though label co-founder Leonard Chess appears in an archive footage interview alongside his son Marshall, Born in Chicago wisely chooses not to revisit the company’s backstory. That’s a tale already told in several docs as well as in Darnell Martin’s ill-disguised Chess-mirror fiction-feature Cadillac Records (2008).

There’s lots of archival footage threaded throughout Born in Chicago. Some of the film’s moodiest and most intimate saloon environ images come courtesy of several reels of silent B-roll 8mm color footage shot by drummer Sam Lay and his wife. Lay is an important figure here due to his key role in the blues tradition’s transition: he not only worked the South Side taverns with nearly all the blues giants but was also a founding member (along with bassist Jerome Arnold) in the inter-racial Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

Though not a concert film by any means – all performances featured in Born in Chicago are offered in truncated form - there are extended clips of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf to offer insight into the power of their stage presence and hypnotic powers. This inclusion is not unreasonable as the two singers were the figurehead totems of the Chicago blues scene of the 1950s. Muddy and Wolf were also among the most generous and least suspicious of interlopers. They were appreciative of the enthusiasm and interest of these young, white blues revivalists and allowed them to share the stage and showcase their talents.

Of course, Muddy and Wolf didn’t singularly or together create the Chicago blues scene. During the course of Born in Chicago we’re briefly introduced to a number of the first and second wave Chicago’s bluesmen, as well as the iconic sidemen who helped create the sound: Otis Spann, Yank Rachel, Robert Lockwood, Willie Dixon, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Magic Sam, Walter and Big Walter “Shakey” Horton all pass through the film in either image or musical snippet, all honorably referenced as “engines” of the scene.

Though the blues was derived partly from African musical traditions, the blues as the world knows it today was birthed in the area of the Mississippi Delta. Chicago blues was, at the very beginning anyway, mostly an electric, highly amplified extension of that earlier homegrown music, improvised out-of-necessity to cut through the din of celebratory patrons gathered inside cramped and sweaty neighborhood taverns.

The 1950s was the decade Chicago’s blues scene was at its creative peak. The musicians who arrived in Chicago during the great migration from the southern U.S. quickly bonded to a natural audience. They were warmly embraced by audiences that were once – and now again - neighbors. The musicians and their fans shared similar customs, life experiences and musical interests, and such familiarity allowed Chicago’s blues scene to thrive during the 1950s.

But by the early 1960s, the musical tastes of black audiences began to shift, particularly among younger listeners. This group held no bonding memories or immediate connections to blues or rustic southern musical culture. The rhythm-and-blues and soul of Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and James Brown was in emergence and such artists were now the most favored of black audiences. It wasn’t long until the Motown and Stax labels would supplant Chess as the recording mecca for black artists.

But just as black interest in blues was seemingly on the wane, there was a sudden curious interest in the art by young, rebellious and hip Midwestern middle-class whites. Their passion for the music was often ignited by their discovery of late-night broadcasts of blues and old-school R&B found on the far ends of their radio dials. Many of these disciples – which would include such 1960’s blues and rock luminaries as Barry Goldberg, Michael Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites, Paul Butterfield, Corky Siegel, Harvey Mandel, Charlie Musselwhite, Elvin Bishop, Steve Miller and Bob Dylan – are all featured in Born in Chicago. It could be argued they were actually re-born in Chicago.

In any case, this is the time period under analysis in Born in Chicago. Liberal and open-minded students attending (or merely hanging on the fringes) of the University of Chicago – the campus itself nestled within the city’s Southside – played a role in the blossoming blues revival. Through the interventions of on-campus folk music clubs Chicago U. would stage not only small folk-music gatherings but several important folk music festivals – several showcasing such blues artists as Willie Dixon, Memphis Slim, Big Joe Williams and blind street singer Arvella Gray. This new interest in folk-blues music brought many students and scene hanger-on’s to Chicago’s pawn shops in search of guitars and friends and subsequent musical fellow travelers.

The most dedicated – and talented of these musicians – would reverse “integrate” these black-only Southside blues taverns - often under the suspicious and unwelcome gaze of black patrons in attendance. But both Muddy and Wolf and their respective band members would embrace such musicians as guitarist Michael Bloomfield and blues harpist Paul Butterfield et.al. once they realized these searching white youngsters – many demonstrating superlative musical talent – were looking to absorb, as best they could, the essence and emotional comport of the blues.

SUPERMAN Web3 Movie Experience

Iconic DC Super Hero Film Being Released as a Multimedia Living Movie Experience from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Eluvio

Includes 4K UHD Feature Film and Special Features, Interactive Themed Navigation, Explorable Image Galleries, Discoverable Digital Easter Eggs, and more!

Burbank, CA, June 5, 2023 – Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, in partnership with content blockchain pioneer Eluvio, announced today the next installment of the WB Movieverse with the iconic DC Super Hero film Superman Web3 Movie Experience, available for preview at https://web3.wb.com and opening for purchase on June 9. 

The release of Superman Web3 Movie Experience follows the 2022 first-of-its-kind Web3 entertainment offering The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) Web3 Movie Experience.

Superman Web3 Movie Experience is a multimedia NFT for fans to own and to engage with the 1978 Richard Donner film in an exciting way. Through dynamic menu options based on iconic locations from the film, owners can watch the film in 4K UHD on desktop, mobile, tablet or TV, access special features, view image galleries and artist renderings by notable DC artists, discover digital easter eggs, as well as sell the experience in a community marketplace. 

The Superman Web3 Movie Experience will be offered in standard and premium editions:

Standard edition ($30 for 1 week from 8:00AM ET on June 9 to 7:59AM ET on June 16) includes an interactive location-based navigation menu, Superman: The Movie Theatrical Version, previously released special features and an image gallery featuring stills and behind the scenes galleries.

Premium edition ($100 for 24 hours from 8:00AM ET on June 9 to 7:59AM ET on June 10) includes 3 different variations available for purchase separately, Truth, Justice, and Hope, each featuring an illustration of Christopher Reeves’ Superman from one of three DC artists - Ivan Reiss, Ben Oliver, or Bill Sienkiewicz. Each variation includes an interactive and explorable location-based navigation menu and 3 versions of the feature film – Superman: The Movie Theatrical Version; Superman: The Movie Expanded Director’s Cut; and Superman: The Movie Extended TV Edition - along with previously-released special features, and image galleries featuring costume and detail images from the Warner Bros. Archive and stills and behind the scenes galleries.

The Superman Web3 Movie Experience will include a free voucher code for a DC3 Super Power Pack: Series Superman from the DC NFT Marketplace, offering 3 randomly selected Superman comics with rarities from Common to Legendary. These packs are time-gated, open edition drops, limited to one per account. There will be new themed packs launching every few weeks, so stay tuned for updates.

Early access to all editions of the Superman Web3 Movie Experience will be available to DC Bat Cowl NFT holders at 8:00AM ET on June 8, to DC3 holders at 11:00AM ET on June 8, and to The Lord of the Rings Web3 Movie Experience holders at 2:00PM ET on June 8.

“For fans of this beloved and iconic film, Superman: The Movie is being released as an exclusive Web3 film and immersive digital collectible for the first time,” said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio. “As part of the WB Movieverse, consumers can easily watch, collect, and sell their film Web3 Movie Experiences on the blockchain, in the Movieverse marketplace. For Warner Bros., and the broader industry, Eluvio is honored to back this novel digital sell-through experience for 4K films and premium video assets – all streamed from and backed by secure blockchain access and ownership on the Eluvio Content Fabric.”

The Superman Web3 Movie Experience will drop to the public on June 9, exclusively at https://web3.wb.com  and will be available for purchase by credit card or crypto currency. 

To participate in this novel experience, fans can create a secure, easy-to-use media wallet that acts as a digital vault and enables consumers to stream and purchase content via credit cards or crypto wallets.The Superman Web3 Movie Experience is powered by Eluvio, pioneers of Web3 innovation throughout the media and entertainment industry. The Eluvio Content Blockchain provides a high-performance, simple-to-use, and cost-effective Web3 platform built for content. It enables Web3 native media experiences, allowing publishers and fans to directly enjoy and monetize shows, films, concerts, digital albums, digital collectibles, interactive and metaverse experiences, and more.  Content creators, and their communities, benefit from a significantly more carbon-efficient and high-performance alternative to traditional platforms for content streaming, distribution, and storage, including 4K streaming, ticketing, NFT minting, and trading of premium content. Notably, in this experience, the core digital assets along with derivative NFTs are all on the blockchain, not just the token (NFT) itself. Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment and fans enjoy blockchain-backed access control and content rights enforcement, scalable attestation of ownership, smart contracts that enable distributed royalties, and content experiences that can even evolve over time.

Eluvio’s Content Blockchain also provides a breakthrough in carbon-footprint efficiency in the ways it manages media and uses blockchain technology, and on-chain content ownership. Through a novel compositional and just-in-time protocol, the Eluvio Content Blockchain does not make digital file copies and significantly reduces the network storage and usage requirements as compared to traditional streaming and content distribution systems. It also uses an eco-friendly “proof-of-authority” consensus, which avoids the high energy consumption used in computational “proof-of-work” blockchains.

About Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) distributes the award-winning movies, television, animation, and digital content produced by Warner Bros. Discovery to the homes and screens of millions through physical Blu-ray Disc™ and DVD retail sales and digital transactions on major streaming, video-on-demand cable, satellite, digital, and mobile channels.  WBHE is part of Warner Bros. Discovery Content Sales, one of the world’s largest distributors of entertainment programming.

About Eluvio, Inc.

Eluvio (https://eluv.io) is the content blockchain for the creator economy. The Eluvio Content Fabric is a utility blockchain network for owner-controlled storage, distribution, and monetization of digital content at scale. It provides live and file-based content publishing, transcoding, packaging, sequencing, and dynamic and static distribution, and minting of derivative NFTs for all ranges of content experiences. Examples of companies and creators whose content blockchain initiatives have been powered by Eluvio include FOX Entertainment, Globo, MGM Studios, Microsoft, SONY Pictures, Telstra, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, WWE, The Masked Singer, Dolly Parton, Black Eyed Peas, Rita Ora, independent filmmakers, and many others. Eluvio is led by Emmy Award-winning technologists, Michelle Munson and Serban Simu, founders and inventors of Aspera, a pioneer in digital video transport technology, and a core team of innovators. Based in Berkeley, California, Eluvio has received numerous industry awards including the prestigious Engineering Excellence Award by the Hollywood Professional Association and recognized with 11 US patents.  Follow Eluvio at @EluvioInc or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/eluv-io.

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